The face of the web is changing as it moves to a more commercial model. The big corporate giants
are awake and it won’t be long before the internet is a commercial medium just like television,
radio, print and everything that came before. It will go - for the most part - commercial, it has to!
Sure we’ll still have some free search engine listings, our home pages, our little corners of the net,
but expect the big money to continue rolling in and control the advertising you will see, and believe
me you will see a lot more advertising. As bandwidth increases we will continue to see a growth in
audio commercials over the web, more full page ads, more pop up browser windows, more email in
our inboxes every day.
The difference now, is companies that own big chunks of the telecommunication networks and
bandwidth, will get together with the companies that have the lists. What lists? The lists are the
email addresses and demographic profiles that everyone has been collecting since the moment you
went online.
Ever shopped online? They’ve got your name and address. They can tell by your zip code how
much money you make because of the neighborhood you live in. They can tell by the books or CDs
that you’ve purchased what your tastes are. List owners can build highly targeted email campaigns
and deliver their seductive sales message right into your email box where you’re most likely to see
it. And because they know what your interests are, you’ll probably buy the product if they say the
right things in their advertising.
The search engines will continue their evolution into paid directories and portals. There will be
a continuing trend of less free advertising and more human interaction for reviewing sites. Each
search engine company has an editorial team to review web sites and add them their directory
(similar to your phone company’s yellow pages).
The directory sits “on top” of the underlying search engine. The directory is all those clickable links
you see on the home page of every search engine. They’ve tried to “sort out” the internet, providing
people with what they consider to be “the best” web sites. The paid directory listings are often the
search results that are displayed first, ahead of the “organic” search engine results. It’s time to write
the editor of the search engine and ask them to add your site to their directory. I’ll show you some
successful examples of letters I’ve written to editors later on.
The search engines will get “smarter”. They will attempt to “assist you” in what you are looking
for. For example if you search on the word “fruit”, the search engine of the future will not search,
it will ask, by “fruit”, do you mean; apple, banana, orange, fruit growing, importing, stores,
transportation? Click all that apply and click the search button again.
There will also be growth in “trigger” words. Trigger words are words like city names, the engine
will return results for your geographical area only. Slowly over time, more and more common
words will become trigger words, and the more control the search engine will have over the results
you will see.
The concept of purchasing or bidding on keywords, key word phrases and common names will
continue to grow in favor. There are some search engines where you pay for or bid on the top
listings. Debates will rage as search engines slowly start charging money to get listed at the top.
Why shouldn’t they? It’s not like they need “content” or anything. They already have millions of
pages in their indexes.
A word of advice, dont expect paid advertising in search engines to be any “smarter” or “better”
than what you are constantly getting bombarded with from radio, print and TV.
Affiliate or associate programs are turning up everywhere and are proving to be an extremely
effective sales tool. Simply put, you give your associate a tracking code and pay commission on all
sales they bring in.
Associates drive the traffic to your site, usually with banners, ads, endorsements and sales letters.
The visitors become paying customers, and you pay your affiliate a sales commission. Affiliate
networks are quickly replacing classifieds, banners, and many other forms of traditional advertising,
as the second most popular way for people to find you, and get new customers (search engines -
whether paid or free - are still the first).
Increased direct email marketing to opt in lists and customer databases. Mailing to an opt in list
(people that have requested to receive email from you) provides one of the greatest returns for your
advertising dollar. Here you have a list saying “Yes, I want to receive email from you. I’m interested
in your news, your product, your service, please keep me posted.”
The most important thing you can do in business today is, get your customer’s and prospect’s
email addresses. Once you have their email address, send them a piece of personalized email
immediately. Let them know they will be receiving email from you in the future.
Use one web site, to sell one product, or one product category. The only logical choice is to buy that
one product or move on to the next web site. All product sites link to each other. This effectively
splits one large web site into smaller sales sites that cross link to each other.
Creating smaller sites boosts positioning in many search engines because of link popularity.
Findability is also increased, as more sites give more keyword rich pages working for you in the search engines.
