I know you are eager to get started with your Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. You want visitors NOW! And you want conversions and revenue NOW! But as I learned from (bad) experience, you should halt and plan. Otherwise you end up doing the same thing over and over, correcting previous errors and mistakes.
What makes corrections worse is the multiple effect Google and the Internet have on mistakes. If you start without proper Search Engine Optimization knowledge and planning, you end up in the wrong category with the wrong keywords. Your bounce rate will be unacceptable because your site is not really relevant to the searches. I made this mistake and one year later still suffer from it.
So READ, UNDERSTAND and PLAN well before you start.
At this point you want to look at a couple of helpful tools and services you want to sign up with and purchase:
Not only is Google the most important search engine and one of your focus for search engine optimization, Google also offers a number of free services especially helpful for SEO and Internet Marketing:
Googlemail: You can use Googlemail as the central mail when you start. Import all your addresses, almost all social network sites offer auto import from Googlemail. This makes your life so much easier. Then use this email address for your network profile. Google is pretty good at catching SPAM and you separate the network “noise” from your regular mail.
You can also use the Google services with your regular email, but I do not recommend this. Every time you publish an Email address, you invite SPAM. And there are also the announcements from your networks, friends and sites. Some other free services you might want to sign up for later (e.g. free ranking tools, SEO software) reuire a mail address and will send you regular annoucements.
All of this you do not want to see in your regular mail box. So it’s good advice to use Google Mail (Gmail for short). Klick here to sign up for Google Mail.
[* Suggested for all participants]
Once you have a Google Account and Google Mail. Click on MORE to see the additional services to sign up witth:
Google Webmaster Tools: provide you with very valuable information about your website. You see your keyword ranking from Google’s view, internal and external links, errors and warnings. Add your XML format sitemap to ensure that Google finds all of your pages.
[* Suggested for all webmaster]
Google Analytics: Extremely important and incredibly detailed information on your visitors, where they are going to, coming from, which keywords led where, bounce rate, conversions and much more.
[* Suggested for webmaster, can be shared]
Google Adsense: Run adverts like you see on Google search engine result pages (SERP) and make money from your visitors.
[* Suggested for webmaster, cannot be shared]
Google Adwords: Advertise on google. If you are running a shop or sell or promote on the Internet, Google Adwords are the fastest way to get traffic. But you are buying it and the price might be significant. Even if you don’t plan to run adverts, it is worth signing up for just for the Keyword Search Tool (we will explain this in detail later)
[* Suggested for webmaster, marketing, can be shared]
Google Alerts: Great to monitor when and how Google is picking up new links to your site. You see links you generated with social networking and social media and you can tell your success. And you will also see who else is linking to you. You have to monitor all of these links somewhere else and we will show you how. But since incoming links “found” and registered by Google as yours influence your page rank and you might want to know about them independently.
[* Suggested for all participants]
Google Feedburner: If you are providing an RSS-Feed (and we will tell you why you absolutely MUST have one), use Google Feedburner to collect statistics on your subscribers, feed items, clicks and views. Google Feedburner will also integrate with Google Adsense and provide adverts not only for yourblog, but also for the actual feed items.
[* Suggested for webmaster]
Google Docs: Few users seem to have noticed the triple value of Google docs:
- Google docs are a (light) office package you run in your browser. You don’t need to buy an expensive office product and can run it even on an old machine.
- Google docs let’s you access your docs from anywhere (e.g. Internet cafe, work, hotel) from any system. So you have your documents always at hand.
- Google docs lets you share and collaborate on documents. If you are in any kind of workgroup, the whole team can work on a document together and everybody will always have the latest copy.
[* Suggested for all participants, documents can be shared]
Google Reader, iGoogle and Google Desktop: Use these tools to see see the headlines from all of your Google tools and access them easily.
Use Google Reader to view all your RSS Feeds from your sites, your network and others, you are following.
iGoogle and/or Google Desktop help you to consolidate all the information you will be receiving from the services you signed up with. That’s a lot of data you need to monitor and these tools will help you get a good overview.
[* Suggested for all participants]
Picasa, YouTube and Panoramio: These Google services are very helpful for Internet marketing. Later on, we will show you how you can boost backlinks and referral visitors by providing media for these two. Use your Google account to sign up for them. Panoramio integrates with google Maps. You can upload photos and tag them with their location. They will then show up on Google Maps. We will explain how you can use Google Maps and Panoramio to boost especially local sales.
[* Suggested for all participants]
Orkut and Blogger: Orkut is Google’s social network platform It’s not really successful right now, so don’t spend too much time here. (Later on we will tell you which social networks you should sign up with, how they rate for Internet marketing and SEO and what to do.)
Blogger is great if you want to quickly set-up a blog. We will later tell you about the disadvantages on a third party hosted blog such as Blogger and reasons why you should have one anyway.
[* as required]
Google Base: If you have something to sell, make it available in Google Base. More visibility = more traffic = higher sales. Plus it provides backlinks.
[* as required]
Google Maps: Local sales benefit very much from Google Map entries. Create your own entry (we will show you how and what to avoid) and also link to your own map.
[* as required]
Google Trends and Google Search Based Keyword tool: Both are invaluable for your keyword selection. We will show you how to use them.
[* available to all]
We will look at most of these services in more detail later. In the meantime sign up with Google and add the services you like. You can then use Google Dashboard and/or iGoogle to view and access the services you signed up for.
Google is free but the next tool unfortunately not. But it’s more than worth the about 40 USD you need to pay.
CLIPMATE from Thornsoft is an incredible help for Internet marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
Clipmate extends the Windows clipboard and turns it into an incredible database you can access with a double keystroke. Anything you save to the clipboard (CTRL-C to copy or CTRL-X to cut out) will be saved as an individual clip. You can then go to Clipmate and select any previously saved clip and insert it into the document you are working on (CTRL-INS).
Why is Clipmate so important when you do Internet marketing and SEO? Because Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization are incredibly repetitive. You need to use the same words, terms, sentencs, descriptions, titles over and over. Wether you create a website, work in your blog or social network profile, upload photos or videos. You have to fill identical forms and add descritions, links and tags over and over.
With Clipmate you organize your initial entires and insert them with a double keystroke or the click of the mouse.
This product has saved me hundreds of hours and prevented my from hurting my fingers. 
Download the 30-day full trial version or buy it right away. You won’t loose clips you saved during the trial period when you buy the full version later.
(Links to Clipmate will be provided soon).
Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird: Mozilla Firefox is currently probably the best browser to use. It’s faster than Explorer and the many add-ons you an get make it an incredible tool for Internet marketing and Search engine Optimization (SEO). We will recommend a number of add-ons you should have to make your live as an Internet marketing and Search engine expert much easier.
Mozilla Thunderbird: is a brilliant Email client. It allows you to download your emails and work on them offline. You can add as many email addresses as you like and poll all of their servers at the same time. Since Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization will require quite a number of email addresses, especially if you run more than one site, you can consolidate your email in one place.
Click on a logo to download Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird.
This concludes your first step preparations. It will take you some time to register and set this all up. When you are done, come back and hopefully we will have the next step ready.
Explanations:
[* Suggested for all participants] – all interested in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should sign up.
[* Suggested for webmaster] – webmasters or anybody running a website and is interested in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should sign up.
[* Suggested for marketing]- marketing and editors interested in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should sign up.
[* as required]- sign up for these if you think you will use the service.
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