When it comes to internet marketing, the most successful people are not always those that play by the rules. Some of the internet’s biggest moguls started out small, built their empires through unconventional practices, and now run the game with a different set of guidelines. Want to do the same? Then quit doing what’s in the books, and start innovative with unconventional search engine marketing tactics.
In business, there are only two kinds of people. The first are those that innovate. They build the big businesses of tomorrow, topple entrenched competition, and create the products, services, and businesses that lead us into the future. The others are imitators. They have successes, sure, but they rarely create anything remarkable. These five tips will help you push your internet venture into the first category, and avoid falling into the second.
1. Don’t just take advice, experiment for yourself.
Log into any online marketing forum and you will see hundreds of opinions. Some are valid, some are not-so-valid, and others are downright dangerous. There are thousands of people out there that would love to give you advice, but very little of that advice can help you create a long-term, sustainable online asset. Take advice by all means, but balance it with action and experimentation.
2. Guerrilla SEO is much more scalable than one-at-a-time link building.
It is always best to have other people doing your work for you. Thankfully, this is not too difficult a task for SEOs. Instead of laying down thousands of links on your own, give the general public reasons to do it for you. Sometimes all it takes to gather thousands of links is a well-titled blog post, a well-timed Digg submission, and a bit of viral growth.
3. Never submit your own content to social bookmarking websites.
Social bookmarking websites can smell spam a mile away, and will quickly delete or slap anything that seems too self-promotional. Fight the risk head on by having other people submit your content for you. It only costs a couple of dollars to have someone else submit and vote for your links, and it protects you from being directly accused of spamming social bookmarking websites for backlinks.
4. Turn negative publicity into positive power.
Some businesses are built on brand power; others are not. If your business is a one-time transaction business — an affiliate sales business, for example — you can use negative publicity to your advantage. If you can craft an email, press release, or product summary that’s so bad it gains attention in the blogosphere, you could end up with thousands of properly labeled do-follow links.
5. Spend a lot for authority, and people will spread you for free.
It is difficult to get a link to a commercial website from Wikipedia, but it is worth it. Not only to you get a link from one of the world’s most popular websites, but you also get top placement in an area that is frequently linked to from blogs, papers, and online resources. Get in the footnotes on a major website and you won’t just get direct link juice, but second-level link juice from people that use your website as a reference point.
