My highly biased advice about SEO, PPC and making money online

SEO and PPC are absolutely what to do to make money with a web site.

I am not going to give you a discourse about what these things are: I am by no means an expert – yet – but I'm getting there. Instead, I will tell you how to get started, some of the things I myself have done so far:

Google the term 'SEO'; one of the top results will be Wikipedia – read that. Then go to the Google site and read about their advertising programs, AdWords and AdSense – not exactly the most exciting reading, but this is where you find out what you are getting into.

Before you go wild, sign up with Google and start maxing out your credit card, get a little education about these things, much of which will be free. Here are the people you want to hook up with:

1 – Perry Marshall, the absolute guru when it comes to AdWords. You can start by getting a free 5 day course he offers. Go here: http://m171.infusionsoft.com/go/default/caco. Perry Marshall is a consummate professional. You will end up on his mailing list; everything you get from him is useful. This is one of few cases where you will be glad to be on a mailing list.

2 – PlanetOcean, the real SEO authority. You will need to get involved in SEO because a lot of the things that apply here also apply to PPC. I signed up with them, and the first thing I do on the first of each month is to read and apply what they present in their monthly letter. The ebook they give you access to is also updated monthly – it is the book that most consultants use to stay up to date on the subject. Perry Marshall himself uses it. When you are ready, you can sign up with them here: http://www.searchenginehelp.com/Timo/.

3 – Mark Widawer; you can have a PPC campaign or a well optimized site that gets a lot of traffic, but this is all wasted if people land on your site and don't buy – or opt in or sign up. Mark offers an ebook about how to put together a landing page that will convert – turn visitors into buyers, or members, or email recipients – or whatever you want your visitors to be. This is not rocket science, but you will be surprised how many little things you can overlook or do wrong when you build your landing page. Highly recommended. Go to http://www.landingpagecashmachine.com/cmd.php?Clk=2132822.

None of the above is to say there aren't other people or companies that can be of great help, but I have spent the last three months looking at everything that is available. What you want to make damn sure of is not to associate with something where you are going to waste your money and time, or worse, get penalized by the search engines. There are a lot of 'gurus' out there who pitch what I call SEM – Search Engine Manipulation. You want to make sure you do not hook up with one of those.

It seems to me that this SEO business is becoming less complicated as time passes. In the end, if you put together a great site, with great content, and optimize it correctly for the keywords you want to use, you will get your traffic.

A lot of sites you see are created just to milk the search engines – and there are a few people out there making big money doing that, but little by little, that is coming to an end. The search engines are not run by dummies; they are quickly figuring out all the tricks and techniques they are abused with. They are improving their algorithms so they don't have to rely on words or items provided by site publishers to rate your pages – that's why they don't even look at keyword metatags any more.

If you run into one of these 'gurus' who tell you about all the 'tricks' you can use to get high rankings or positions, start running fast and don't look back. Just a few days ago, I saw a sales page from someone that tells you how to "dominate Google". Gimme a break!

And yes, the links you see above are my affiliate links. I will make a little commission if you click on them and buy, but that will not change your cost. I could spend a couple of weeks and become an affiliate for a thousand outfits, but that's not my game – I just want to recommend programs that I sincerely believe are worthy.