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In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about the two E's of Internet Marketing - Ethical and Effective. One without the other is as useless as having neither.

This newsletter focuses on giving you practical, interesting insights into how to successfully use technology as a tool to improve the way you do business. Bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding that all entrepreneurs have will help you make money online.

At the end of this article there is both a link and an explanation of the Internet Marketing Song. I ask that you please read the article before viewing the sillyness. My apologies for my voice and guitar skills.

All the best,

The two E's of Internet Marketing
...Ethical and Effective

Ever spend time with a greasy used car salesman? How about the insurance guy that just can't shut up about how much you need better coverage? We all run from people like that when we see them at a cocktail party.

Those folks are tame compared to Internet Marketers - my personal estimate is that more than 95% of all services sold in this category are fraudulent. Most Internet Strategists I know disagree with me, they think the number is higher. I've seen some incredible examples of outright fraud in the last 15 years, people taking gobs of money for services they didn't even attempt to provide is actually pretty tame in the grand scheme of things.

We've all seen those come on emails - you'll rank NUMBER ONE in less than 24 HOURS. Some of the scams are so obvious it is almost hard to feel sorry for the people that fall for them.

Most entrepreneurs have read an article or two about this issue and are aware that these sorts of "tactics" usually lead to search engines just banning your site and deleting all links to you. So they might know about the two aspects of Ethical:

1. You need to make sure anyone offering Internet Marketing services isn't just plain ripping you off.

You do this in the same way you'd do it for anything else - you ask for references and actually call them, you make sure it is real business with appropriate licensing and perhaps even membership in a chamber or the BBB. Anyone in the Internet Marketing business will not only appreciate your caution - they're used to it and they'll be happy to provide you with all this necessary data.

2. You need to make sure they aren't doing things that make Search Engines angry.

The battle has existed since day one - Search Engines want to provide the best possible results to their customers. Marketers strive to manipulate those results to feature their clients. Ever search for something and the first 20 results are the same website? As far as Google is concerned that is a disaster, a total failure of their technology.

Search Engines are well aware that many people fall victim to unethical Internet Marketers and they offer some guides on the subject. Any Marketer who talks about "doorway" pages, hidden text, or duplicating content is usually well aware they are about to get yet another website banned from the search engines. Some of them aren't and to them I offer my response: ignorance is no excuse.

This one is a bit tougher, Internet Marketing is legitimately complicated and for the non-technical user it is hard to sort it all out. Ask potential Internet Marketers if they've ever had a client site banned. Ask for client references , and do the best you can to question anything that seems to good to be true - it probably is.

Then we get into the second E of Internet Marketing - effective.

I find it remarkable the number of entrepreneurs that pay for Internet Marketing services on a regular basis but don't measure anything. The web runs on careful measurement, it is the basis for all intelligent action. There are many Internet Marketers that don't "steal" as we discussed above, they are ethical people - but they totally fail at being effective. They just do random stuff they "think" is effective.

The first thing Internet Marketers tend to talk about is Search Engine Rank. What is your "result" for a particular search. Fundamentally this is correct, rank is an important factor.

So you need is a list of words that you are trying to rank for. There is quite a bit of detail on how to select a "good" list but we'll just skip over that for now. Then you need a list of search engines you are working on, there are only about 10 major engines. They are the ones you have heard of: AltaVista , AOL, Ask , Excite , Go , Google , HotBot , Lycos , MSN , Open Directory (DMOZ) , and Yahoo.

Then you or your Internet Marketer should use a piece of software to produce a Search Engine Rank Analysis Report - your rank at every engine for every word you desire.

Then the Marketer should make whatever efforts they think are appropriate to improve your rank.

....and then you measure again - hopefully finding that you now have 74 "number one's" when previously you had just a half dozen. Whether you understand what they are doing or not it is easy to understand that the proof is in the pudding - you can judge all Internet Marketers with measurement.

The other thing to keep in mind with "effective" is traffic.

All the rank in the world is meaningless if people don't actually visit your website. Most of the time "great" rank and low traffic means you are trying to rank for the wrong words.

Bottom line this is another very simple way to judge any Internet Marketer - last month we had 50,000 unique visitors and this month we have 60,000 - nice work.

It may be helpful to remember that an Internet Marketing is only half of the equation (traffic) - a great website is the other. (conversion) Total sales are all that matters to entrepreneurs and that is always determined by looking at your traffic and conversion rate together.

So if the world is so full of Internet Marketers that don't achieve the two E's how do you find one?

I wish I had some magic answer to this question but unfortunately I don't. I can tell you that almost everyone who is a top ecommerce entrepreneur does this work themselves in house.

To hire an Internet Marketer focus on that first E - ethical. Trust but Verify. Then measure the results to focus on that second E - efficacy. That is the best way to get your Internet Marketing efforts going.

As many of my faithful readers know I've been playing with online videos recently. Apparently you are supposed to do things that are "fun" and different, so with that in mind I decided to do a musical edition of this newsletter.

Click here to check out the Internet Marketing Song

Click Here to see My YouTube Channel