Every now and again I get someone asking me if I can teach a course on how to become a local marketing consultant. I have certainly thought of the idea because I have been told my local marketing skills are quite savvy.  But when there is already a great training course available from a guy who taught ME how to be a local marketing consultant – I will gladly pass the information over.

And that is Howie Schwartz with his IM Leadership program…

Howie has been involved with internet marketing for several years now and has generated some amazing results with his social media marketing. We’re talking about owning 80% of the first page of Google for various competitive keywords. This is not an easy accomplishment to achieve.

When Howie saw the need for a local marketing consulting course last year, he jumped on it. Taking all his skills including social media, seo and copywriting – and applying them to the local market, he was ready to teach local search marketing to 50 students.

47 successful case studies later… (including me)

Out of the 50 students who signed up to the training, 47 ended up becoming full time local marketing consultants. That is a 94% success rate.

Why is IM Leadership so successful?

Well, he only takes on a few students at a time to ensure a small virtual classroom and leaving more personal one on one training time for each student.

So, if you are interested in becoming a local search marketing consultant – be sure to check out IM Leadership with Howie Schwartz.

Well, Google has done it again. They tweaked the flux capacitor and made local search results even more goe-targeted than it already is. I have found this new emerging trend by implementing postal codes into local search, thus making the results very geo-targeted.

These days, when customers search for a business or service within their local area, usually they query service + geographic area as seen in my example below.

In this example, I am searching for restaurants in Victoria BC.  The seven local search results at the top are restaurants listed with Google’s local business centre. A free submission that any business with an mailing address can own.  Now that’s awesome, but…

Let’s say though, I am staying at Bear Mountain and want to know what restaurants are located near where I am staying. So, I search for restaurants and then add a Bear Mountain postal code.  Here are the results.

See how all those local results have changed? Google is showing me all the local search results that are within the postal code area.

As a customer, this is great because I can find the service I am looking for that is very close to where I am. As a business owner, this is a huge opportunity to attract local customers by implementing your postal code within your own website.

How can you take action with these postal code local search results?

Well, if you haven’t already, get your business listed within the Google local business centre.  You are required to have a Google account to be listed.

The other action I suggest you take is have your postal code listed on your own website.  The contact page would be the most suitable place. What will happen is Google will index it and when someone searches for your business category and that postal code, your business will be shown not only within the local results – it will be shown below in the natural search results.  Now you then own more than one spot on that first page.

For you visual folks, I have made a quick video explaining all this in plain language. Enjoy!

For those of you who have been following this blog and have attended any of my live speaking events, you know that I dabble in the realm of affiliate marketing. It’s a world that I very rarely talk about, but since it now consumes most of my business endeavors (because it puts big bread on the table), you can say I’m coming out of the affiliate closet.

That being said, I have been quietly working away on a new website that allows visitors to rate, review and submit affiliate resources such as affiliate training programs, seo tools, article spinners and much more.

Well, after a couple months of late night coding and tweaking the flux capacitor, IMrush, Inc. is proud to announce that our awesome affiliate resource website AffiliateResources.org is now live and ready for submissions.

AffiliateResources.org is primarily for affiliate marketers of all skills levels but can also be applied to traditional online business or websites.  The current affiliate resources listed on the site are a small handful of tools that I use personally to build and run my various affiliate marketing campaigns.

The reason why I started this website is the result of not finding reliable resources for my affiliate marketing business and education. I would literally spend more time researching decent affiliate resources than I would building my campaigns. I quickly learned that I was in the same frustrated situation as many other affiliate marketers, thus why I felt the need for a one-stop place for tools and resources.

If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing (as it’s something I’ve never really talked about), let me give you a quick explanation.

Affiliate marketing is essentially an online based system where you (as the affiliate) get paid for referring sales or customers to another business.  This is not to be confused with Multi-level marketing (MLM) where there is a tiered system.  In traditional business, affiliate marketing can be defined as a paid endorsement.

Here’s a simple example: One of the tools I use for keyword research and SEO is called Market Samurai. Now if you click on that market samurai link and end up purchasing the software, I will receive a commission of $50. So, every time someone purchase that software from through any of my links I have on the web, I make money. I’m sure if you do the math, you can see how lucrative this business is.

So, back on track… If you are involved in affiliate marketing or have a keen interest in getting started, check out the shiny new affiliate resource website – AffiliateResources.org

Have you ever had a customer that continues to buy from you over and over again?  This is what we call a power customer and you have cracked their oyster shell.

Huh!? What does an oyster shell have to do with marketing and my customers? Well, my friend Kyle (a Victoria BC resident) over at Wealthy Affiliate puts it best:

“This is the home for the oyster.  The bigger the shell, the more the meat there is within the oyster.  The longer you leave an oyster on the beach (ie, the more time you invest in it), the bigger the oyster grows and the more money it is worth.”

This translates into customer value in the Internet marketing world.

The more patient and more care you give your oyster (customer), the better the opportunity you will have to earn not only the first sale from that customer, but multiple sales.

While I would love to take credit for this great business concept and metaphor, Kyle is the one who came up with this concept.  And he knows his stuff, Kyle has become a tremendously successful internet marketer and has taught thousands of people how to become full time internet marketers.

I want you all to head over to Kyle’s blog post and check it out yourself.

==> click here to visit the Oyster Shell Marketing post

For Immediate Release:

Announcing IMeye Keyword Research Tool

The Revolutionary New Internet Marketing Tool That Spotlights The Cash-Rich Markets, Niches and Opportunities You’ve Been Crying Out For and Delivers All The Profitable Keywords You Need.

The creators of Niche Blueprint, Commission Blueprint and loads more infamous Internet Marketing products, have just spent $100,000 and recruited a work force of 120 people in order to produce the most game changing tool in Internet Marketing since Word Tracker arrived all those years ago.

A Few Powerfull features of IMeye:

• Easily discover massively profitable markets and niches
• Quickly identify the highest paying Adsense markets
• Pin-point super-profitable ecommerce niches
• Highlight high volume keywords $.05 a click on Google
• Effectively market Clickbank (or any other) products through SEO
• Profitably promote CPA offers through Adwords

IMeye is an incredible new Internet Marketing / Keyword Research tool that has the potential to multiply your income in the remaining months of 2010 and beyond. It works in a completely different way to other popular tools like Keywordspy, Spyfu, Market Samurai & Keyword Elite – as excellent as they all are.

IMeye uses a proprietary method (which means exclusive) of gathering the very best keywords out there, doing all the analysis and

research on them, then storing them in a HUGE database ready for your call.

All you have to do is tell IMeye what criteria you want for your next big opportunity and IMeye delivers the top maching keywords instantly. This means that almost all the tiresome search work is eliminated and with a push of a button, you will be able to:

• Rake in tons of cash by identifying the highest paying Adsense markets and then being shown targeted low competition keywords phrases that you can dominate on Google almost immediately.
• Pin point super-profitable ecommerce niches that have minimal competition but have the potential for millions of dollars in sales.
• Find high volume keywords which are just 5 cents a click on Google so you can drive tens of thousands of interested prospects to high converting Affiliate offers.
• Get access to vast sources of untapped traffic that you could use for any number of affiliate or online marketing projects.

Right now, IMeye is offering a limited 3 Day Trial to essentially ‘kick the tires’ and see the power of this new application. If you are interested, we have a demo video of IMeye ready for you to view.

Click Here to See IMeye in Action

Social bookmarking is a strategy used by search engine optimization pros and webmaster to generate traffic and to get premium backlinks from good sites.  This is important in search engine optimization and it helps those in affiliate marketing, programs such as Google AdSense, and online advertising.   Search engine optimization, or SEO, means the website will appear in the first page of the results list.  This is important because most surfers only click on what is on the first page of the results list and the increased visibility increases hits and consequently, the profits.  The two options are manual social bookmarking and automatic social bookmarking – each option has pros and cons that you should weigh against each other.

Manual social bookmarking is very time consuming because a single submission can take as much as five minutes.  Since you will be entering the details in many social bookmarking sites, this can take a long time and it is very inconveniencing.  They notice because they have come up with new methods of ranking sites such as TrustRank, meaning the traditional methods of SEO will not work.  However, automated social bookmarking eliminates this problem completely because the system changes the details.  Major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! are coming up with new methods of ranking sites and pages and automated social bookmarking is one of the few available options to beat the system.  Automatic social bookmarking has other advantages over manual social bookmarking such as low costs since there is no need for as many employees and it is convenient and easy to use.

For automation, try using social bookmarking software.  You can choose between different software available in the market and they make the process seem very natural.  If this is not possible, go through product reviews, ask for a free trial period and always check customer testimonials before purchase.  Compare different software by doing research online, get trial versions of the software if possible, go through product reviews, or read customer testimonials, but the best way to get automatic social bookmarking software is to get recommendations from people who have been successful with the software.

There are several mistakes that people make with automatic social bookmarking and you should know them so that you can avoid them.  You should not only bookmark your website’s URL – create links to all your pages.  You should use the tool in moderation because you will be abusing the ISP when you run it continuously and it is easy to be caught and because the social bookmarking site will see through what you are doing and block you if you overdo it.

What I were to tell you that most visitors who land on your website only read about 30 percent of your content and the majority of that content is at the very top AND on the left side.

It’s true, your visitors are only picking up a fraction of your message. Our eyes are ‘trained’ or ‘conditioned’ to pick up the content that is on the left side.

Want to know what your visitors are reading on your website? Print out one of your site pages, and draw a big ‘F’ on the page with a highlighter. The content or images within this ‘F’ is what your site visitors are seeing and absorbing.

Don’t believe me? Have a look at the below eye tracking study from a Google Search engine result page (SERP). See the ‘F’?

So now that you understand that why your website deserves an ‘F’, make sure that the most important message is within this area of prime visual real estate.

Search Engine Marketing vs Search Engine Optimization

It seems there is a big misunderstanding as to the difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

So let’s clear this up by first defining what each term or service is:

We will start with Search Engine Optimization.
This is defined as optimizing your website so the search engines feel that it’s a friendly website (technically speaking) and will rank well based on it’s optimization.

So what does that all mean? Basically, search engines like websites that play by the rules which are quality content that have keywords that relate to your business within the content, a simple navigation with a clear definition of what each page is about. I can go on and talk about sitemaps, h1 and h2 tags, keyword density but I think you get what Search Engine Optimization means now.

Another term for search engine optimization (SEO) would be on page optimization the area of search engine optimization that applies to the content and structure of the website itself.

Now what is Search Engine Marketing?

I have to admit, Search Engine Marketing is my favorite because it deals with the outside world of your own website. Search Engine Marketing basically means promoting your own website from other websites to drive traffic to your own website.

Websites such as Squidoo, Hubpages, Social Bookmark sites (like Digg), YouTube and other external website that would drive massive amounts of traffic to your own websites by providing a link (by using anchor text) to your site from these external sites.

Another term for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) would clearly be the antonym of on page optimization and that would of course be off page optimization.

So Which One Is Better?

One isn’t better than the other, it’s more a matter of which one should be done first then followed by the other.
In my opinion, Search Engine Optimization should be tackled first once your own website is optimized, then focus on Search Engine Marketing. This is essential because you want to prepare your website for all the traffic that SEM will bring in.

I hope this has cleared up some questions you may have had in regards to Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing and wish you the best of success in all your online markeing efforts.

Google has introduced some fancy new options on it’s search results page giving the user an opportunity to refine the search to videos, forums or even reviews.

For the keyword researcher – these are powerful new features.  Including the new ‘related searches’ section located at the bottom of the search options page.  This hot new feature shows related search terms that users have ALSO searched for. So basically Google is telling you what keyphrases people are using to find information.

So, if you are looking for a new keyword research tool – have a look at the new search options feature right within Google.

After writing a brilliant blog post, you breathe a sigh of relief thinking you have completed all the nessesary steps for proper blogging. Think again.

As awesome as WordPress is when it comes to writing blogs, it lacks a certain essential aspect to blogging and internet marketing. The ping and social bookmark.

What Is A Ping
Pinging your blog is essentially letting the search engines and blog directories that your new post has just been written.

What Is Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmark sites let you share your favorite bookmarks. Because social bookmarks are public, they get ranked in the search engine thus ranks your blog post. Here is a great video called ‘Social Bookmarking in Plain English‘.

How To Ping And Social Bookmark

After you write your blog post, head to a site called Pingates.com and enter your blog post details. This will submit your post to all the major sites that keep track of weblogs.

Next head to social bookmark sites such as digg, del.icio.us & reddit and submit your blog post details. You will need to have an account with all of these social bookmark sites, but once signed up – social bookmarking will be easy.

If you do this simple process every time you add a new blog post to your website, it will create an avalanche of traffic to your site thus increasing the opportunity to land new clients. Keep in mind that this info is merely scratching the surface on the subject of social bookmarking. To get up to speed on how to dominate the search engines, try one of our On Demand Video Tutorials.