SEOIntelligence: Search Marketing Made Simple

While at EliteRetreat a few months ago, I met up with Jeremy Hermanns and he briefly showed me his new site and webmaster service called SEOIntelligence. Jeremy has a deep background in SEM, which you can read up on at his SimpleSEM blog. When I first saw his new SEOIntelligence site, it was in beta, but now it’s live and available for full use. I really like the program, stats reports and tools available through the system which I will outline now. Paid search is a great way to make money, but if you can master your web site’s SEO and get well ranked in the search engines for free, your site is good as gold! The service has a monthly membership fee of $39.99 a month, but also offers a free 14 day trial to test the system out.

What is SEOIntelligence?
In short, any webmaster or web site owner, will find SEOIntelligence.com as an easy and cost effective solution to study, improve and manage their search engine marketing campaigns. All software is hosted and updated regularly on the SEOIntelligence web site, which makes it easy for you login and find what you need. Once a member, you can pull full data reports on your site’s search performance, keyword listings, linking strategies, full site analysis and more.

SNAPSHOT (Welcome Screen)
- The first thing you see when you login to a web site, whether it be an affiliate network or your facebook/myspace account… you should see the latest updates and what’s new. That is exactly what SEOIntelligence has setup for you when you log into your account. In the “Snapshot” break down, you will see a graph charting your web site rankings, along Daily Statistics from ranking networks such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa, Technorati and Compete. Using the SPOTLIGHT pull down menu, you can change up all of these tracking charts and stats based on Backlinks, Pages, PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Rank and Compete Rank.

COMPETITION TRACKER
- One of the major attractions and pushing factors behind many online businesses, is to rank better than their competition. Using the “Competition Tracker”, you can make a list of competiting web sites in your niche area, and pull reports on their positions vs. your continuing increase in search position. Competition Tracker reports include Number of Links, Google Pages, Yahoo Pages, PR, Alexa and the ability to re-crawl your competition’s backlinks reports with the click of a button.

Report Manager
- Personally, I love data reports and pulling figures, but it gets really annoying to have files downloaded and having to create new folder and sub-folders… then they are spread all of your computer. SEOIntelligence makes pulling and looking at your site reports so easy, because everything is hosted on their end and a simple click or two will pull up your report and save it for future use. The Report Manager will pull and save performance, backlinks, competitor reports and more.

keyword Locator
- Keywords are always a hot topic with everyone. Whether you are trying to create a new keyword list for a pay per click campaign, or what to target what keywords are best for your seo positioning… keyword tracking and tools are important. With the Keyword Locator, you are given multiple sources of keywords from the top tracking sites online.

Keyword Competition
- Now that you have the Keyword Locator tools, you can focus on what keywords you want to target and where your competition stands. Instead of wondering where your potential customers are shopping, pull a quick report and actually your competition in an easy to read chart.

SEOi Web Stats
- My favorite tool or section on the site is the SEOi Web Stats which is basically a breakdown of all reports and graphs on your site. This breakdown of reports in cludes Site Visitors, Time Spent, Traffic Sources, Links, Searches, Site Content, Referring Sites and much more. Once you are setup with an account, you are given a simple line of code to place on your site to track and report activity back to your SEOIntelligence account.

Though it may have seemed like a long post, it’s just the tip of the iceberg on tools, reports and functionality that you have access to through SEOIntelligence. As a webmaster or reader of this blog, you may think… “Well, I can look up some of that information for free“… which is true, but how much is your time really worth? For less than $1.34 a day, you can have access to instant reports and immediate updates that you can save and study for future use.

Don’t just take my work for it, visit SEOIntelligence and walk through their “Product Tour” and you will see full charts and more trackings/tools available through their site. Remember, if you would like to check your web site statistics and see how you compare with your competition, grab a free 14 day trial today. If you have any questions or comments about the service, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to have Jeremy answer all of your questions.

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Leverage the Power of Affiliate Marketing Contests

A few days ago I wrote a post my big Market Leverage contest, which has some really great prizes. These prizes are really ridiculously easy to win, and just commenting on the post will get you an entry. The best way to win the contest is to sign up for Market Leverage through this blog, if you haven’t already. In addition to signing up, you will be sent a Free MoneyReign T-Shirt… you just need to send me an email through the contact me page with your Market Leverage CD number.

In addition to this blog’s contests and prizes, many other blogs are holding contests of their own as well, and many of them are ending at different times. I recommend you take a look at the following blogs and their Market Leverage promotions. You can still enter to win some nice prizes, even if you are already a Market Leverage affiliate.

- Ian Fernando
- Affiliate Confession
- Garry Conn
- CDF Networks
- John Chow
- Blogger Noob

Make sure you also take a look at my original contest post and make sure you get your entries in… the prizes are the following:

Awesome Prizes! Super Easy Contest! Mad Money to be Made!

PRIZES UP FOR GRABS:
- iPod Nano
- USB Drive Pen (3 Winners)
- $200 ML American Express Rewards card
- Flip Video Camera *The NEW MINO
- BONUS: iPod Touch

The first batch of Free MoneyReign T-Shirts will go out this week to everyone that has signed up and requested one so far. Thanks and Good Luck!

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Interactive Banner Advertising Converts to Leads

Yesterday I came across a new banner advertisement from CPX Interactive, which is a cpm banner based advertising site like ValueClick Media or CasaleMedia. Instead of the the traditional banners we are all used to, with the goal of simply getting the user to click, this new banner was quite interactive with the user. The concept of this banner was to have the visitor answer a question (check box) from within the banner, then walk them through a couple extra questions, while the offers would pop open in a new browser. Not only was this good for the advertiser, but it was good for the site the banner was placed on, because the visitor never left the site. Here is how the banner process went.

STEP 1: First Banner Appearance
The first time you see the banner above, it simply asks the question, “What is 50 Cent’s real name?“. You are then given three choices to select.

STEP 2: Would You Like a Free Ringtone?
The majority of banners in the past that I’ve seen, would usually send the visitor directly to a ringtones landing page, but not this one. After all, you already have interaction with the user, so why not ask what they want. If you click “YES”, a popup window will appear with the landing page for a free ringtone. If you click “NO”, you will not get a popup, and the step 3 will be shown instead.

STEP 3: Choose Your Free Gift
Now that the advertiser already has the visitor answering questions, (and possibly already got a ringtone signup), why not ask for me? The advertiser then follows up with an option to select a “free gift”. Once selecting your choice, a new pop up window will appear along with the free gift form process.

STEP 4: Thank You
To end out the banner process, you are given a thank you page, which then reminds you to go through the signup process and provides you with a link, if you hadn’t already seen the pop up window earlier.

I’ve seen a lot of banner ads over the years and I know the flash / gaming type banners (which lead to zip/email offers), have done very well with click through rates. I’d like to see what type of numbers these ad campaigns back out into. If you were able to create this same type of banner process and buy a ton of cheap inventory across social networks (because cpm ads are usually cheap!), you could probably make good money. After all, CPX Interactive has been around for quite some time and it looks like they are running these banners and campaigns in-house across a few sites.

Have you come across any new banner types like this, or seen anything better that grabbed your eyes?

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Motive Interactive Bonus to New Affiliates

I’ve been working with Motive Interactive for a few months now and they have great looking network, as well as some original offers. Like most networks, Motive Interactive isn’t run off the DirectSystem and instead has a very impressive AJAX system which lets you quickly navigate through the site and easily preview creatives and landing pages. Another highlight to working with Motive Interactive is that my good friend Sam Harrelson just recently took the position of Director of Performance Marketing at the company.

I was looking at their network email I received with their latest offers and at the top they had a new bonus offer I thought I’d share with everyone. It looks like Motive Interactive is rewarding any new affiliates that join their network and can earn $1,000 or $5,000 in their first month. The bonus amount is an extra 10% in earnings, as shown on the chart below.

Whether you are interested in promoting zip or email type offers, or looking for actual services or products to promote, Motive Interactive has a wide variety of offers. I took a quick screenshot of a few of their “exclusive offers” available.

There are currently over 15 Exclusive Offers to choose from.

Just came across this promotion for new affiliates and thought it might be useful for some of you. Take a look at Motive Interactive, and if you are already an affiliate with them, let me know what you think.

- Visit Motive Interactive

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Do You Trust Your Affiliate Manager?

As an affiliate, we are our own companies. If you had a book full of your business plans and details on how to run your day to day operations, would you let your friends… or even your competition look at it? In most cases, probably not. There are only a handful of people that I have built relationships over the years, that I feel completely comfortable with and can pretty much tell them anything and not have to worry about it. These are your true business friends, and people that can really help you succeed online.

What about the affiliate networks? We all with them and if you’ve been in this industry for more than a year, you may have noticed that people at one company, may not be at that same company a year later. I’d say it’s a safe bet that this is the most active industry for people to jump back and forth between companies, so fast and so easily.

Your affiliate manager is your contact and access into the affiliate network and offers world. They want you to make money with them, almost as much as you want to make money for themselves.

The bottom line is… can you trust your affiliate manager? There is no easy answer… but the safest answer is “No!“… but you want to be in the position to say “Yes!” In any business relationship, trust is a major factor you need to work on building that trust and that relationship. Affiliate networks I work with, know I am loyal to them because of the work we have done over the years, and I know they are loyal to me, by providing private campaigns, always being there when I need something, and making sure I get premium payouts… even if that means they aren’t making a problem on my volume.

To show examples and my appreciation to those along the way… Kris Jones of PepperJam, Jordan and Tina at NeverBlueAds and Erick and Deborah from MarketLeverage are all awesome people and understand what it takes to build up these type of trustworthy relationships. Because of their business ethics, personalities and dedication, I’m able to succeed that much more with their companies and networks, while feeling completely comfortable in the process.

If you are working with a network where you have affiliate manager constantly wanting to look at your landing pages, or asking what type of keywords you are using… something might be fishy. I’ve never had a network or anyone ask these type of questions, especially if I wasn’t the one who started the topic. When I have a new campaign, or really excited about a new idea, I usually show a couple people my idea or landing page, but that’s for you to decide… not the other way around. Remember… just because you were assigned a certain affiliate manager, it doesn’t mean you are stuck with them. Contact the company or your “desired” affiliate manager directly and I’m sure they can make all of the necessary changes.

So my question to you is… “Do You Trust Your Affiliate Managers?“

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