Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

I have been debating whether I wanted to share this with you or not. It is one of those things that will be changing everything on the Internet. No, not will be, it already is and has.

What is this little tidbit that is changing everything? What has happened that makes the future of the Internet full of great possibilities for those who get it?

The now and future growth of the Internet in general, is no longer going to entail the "geek" factor. Oh, there will still be those things that power-users will want to get involved with, but they will serve that niche market in general, but there won't be much growth there.

You now know the way. We have talked about here and others have for years about technology being for the consumer, not for the business.

Now when you consider the simplicity of YouTube and MySpace, it's not hard to figure out why they are so successful: make it simple for the end-user and you have hit the pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow. That is what they have done.

What's the secret? Make everything so easy that all you have to do is click a button, and then simply get out of the way of the visitor and let them do what they want. Simple? Powerful? Check out the success of YouTube and MySpace and tell me.

One of those little secrets that people don't like going around too much is the power of the Internet to reach niche markets. Now this doesn't sound too much like a secret as it seems everybody talks about it. The secret behind it all is that you need more than one niche market, most of the time, to be successful. You may make only about a hundred dollars profit from one site a month. The real secret is to have a number of those sites like you would have a stock portfolio.

Now assuming that you have a decent looking, funtional website, here are three easy steps to take to make it successful:

One Google (GOOG) Adwords mistake that I still find quite a large number of companies doing is to take the easy route of pointing their destination URL to their homepage rather than taking a little time to deterimine the best URL to point each ad to. Each ad needs to be targeted to a very specific URL.

When you think about it, you take all the time to make a list of targeted keywords that take into account all the unique products and services your business has to offer, then for some reason think that you have to send them to your homepage and make them attempt to navigate your site to find what they were looking for.

It is much more efficient and productive to direct your viewer specifically to the targeted keyword URL page which was described in your ad copy.

As broadband usage continues and consumers demand more flexibility and a variety of content, a major trend has been revealed and understood by many of the major players. Now you can take advantage of this knowledge.

What is this ongoing trend? Web users want small bits of content to nibble on. OK. That doesn't sound too new or important. But it is more important than you could imagine.

One way to look at the importance is in measuring the various things your visitors do. For example, a number of online retailers no longer use measuring as a means of understanding long-term use. Many of their visitors come to their sites to 'nibble' on some content about certain products that they have no thought of buying at the moment, but will be seriously considering buying 60-90 days down the road. This is causing them to change the entire way they are measuring their web strategies.

In any business it is very tempting to think it terms of 'You're the Pro' or 'You're the expert' etc., when thinking of hiring someone or buying something to help you. One of the problems with that thought is there are many 'experts' out there whose main purpose is to sell you something. It is hard to bypass all of that to get to what will really help you.

You find this in almost every aspect of online marketing. Just take one area: SEO, and you can find good companies to some of the biggest cons there are. They make impossible promises and many times don't deliver even close to what they say they can.

In this area good companies will turn down business because they know that no matter how much traffic and high a ranking you get, all the other things that need to be in place aren't there. They know that if they go ahead and make a quick dollar on you, that will do more to hurt them than the few dollars they get.

Is there anything wrong with flash and video or great pictures on your website? What about those supposedly fancy pages that open up your site?

The answer to that question is that it depends on what your site is created for. Because this is an online marketing blog, there can only be one reason for your site to be created: to get customers! This has a number of details involved because it could be to get someone to sign up for an email list, get a free download, buy something now among a number of things. Still, it is to get the customer to do 'something.'

While a lot of consultants say that you need a great looking site, and I I don't disagree with that, it really depends on your definition of great. Great should be functional, not trying to create some type of masterpiece artistically; save that for the museum sites.

AOL is attempting to become a full-blown Internet television network or possibly the equivalent of an entire cable broadcast offering.

One of the areas that has been a pleasant surprize for them has been what they have called their "Coaches" channel. This is basically a self-help area that began as a small niche strategy and has grown into a fully interactive video workshop.

It has become so popular that before the end of 2006, it will have a stable of 15 A-list self-help leaders and numerous others that are a level below the big guns.

"Coaches" takes full advantage of the online medium, offering tools, quizzes, resources, expert questions and answers, and exercises to improve consumers' lives. There are also links to purchase books and videos."

With traditional media print outlets understanding that they will have to respond to the online marketing challenge, there are several questions that they need to ask themselves, that all online marketers would benefit from answering also.

The questions are designed to answer the question of how well the traditional publisher is truly embracing the strengths of online marketing rather than simply regurgitating their print version onto an Internet platform.

Here are questions that they need to ask:

Adding content to your site is nothing new for better SEO placement, yet here are several things that need to be consistently done if you want to be successful:

1. The more content on your site the higher your rankings will be.

2. The content needs to be added consistently. Add an extra page a minimum of every two weeks.

3. When you add content, make sure that it's around 250-500 words long and relevant to the site

4. Here's possibly the most important part of it: The content needs to be different by a minimum of 40% across the pages on your site. Google knows if you mirror pages or if you mirror across domains. It needs to be fresh content added; not necessarily your own, but again, on subject and related to the purpose of the site.

Keep these things going on your site and you'll be optimized in this vital area of SEO.