Internet marketer, copywriter, entrepreneur, project manager and product/company launcher, Rob Hawthorne does it all. He's been involved with Internet marketing since 1999 and has over seven years of fulltime Network Marketing experience, having generated seven-figures in commissions using the Internet as the vehicle to build his business. In 2009, Rob's focus turned to LaunchCrafters, LLC, a product and company launch service he started with two partners.
This idea guy generates wild out-of-the-box marketing ideas and publicity for nearly any niche or industry, which not only create a lot of buzz on and off the Internet, but yield million of dollars in sales.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Can you tell us a little bit about how the landscape has changed on the web in terms of Internet marketing since you first got on?
ROB HAWTHORNE: It's noisy, it's confusing, and it's overwhelming. I often think when we're creating different products or working with different clients and creating marketing materials for them, often I find myself having to take a step back and think what it would be like to be in someone's shoes who's just trying to learn all of these strategies and grasp Internet marketing for the first time.
I can see how a lot of people can quickly become overwhelmed and be pulled in 1,000 different directions. Years ago there may have been just a couple of products teaching you SEO or how to get back-links. There were a few strategies that you could learn, but it wasn't anything like it is today. Now there are hundreds of different products covering thousands of different subjects relating to the Internet marketing work.
That's true whether it's affiliate marketing, creating your own products, CPA, or any of the thousands of other ways to earn an income online. It's changed for the fact that when people are just getting started online, they really need to be focused and concentrate on different areas that they want to learn. Focus on just learning from a couple of different individuals, and unsubscribe from those 500 email lists that, probably, a lot of you are on.
That's only going to really delay where you're trying to go, and it really adds to the confusion and overwhelm. That is a very common problem. A lot of people you ask, "How are you doing in Internet marketing? Where are you?" They just say, "I'm overwhelmed. There is so much information out there."
TAMMY LAWMAN: I totally agree with you. I've done the same thing. I have totally limited the amount of email newsletters I get because you could spend all day just going through your email inbox and never get anything else done.
ROB HAWTHORNE: A day will pass, which will turn into weeks, which will turn into months, and then you look back at a calendar and say I've been at this Internet marketing thing for a couple of years and haven't really accomplished anything except that I've filled up my hard drive with 50 software programs and 400 ebooks.
TAMMY LAWMAN: You guys at LaunchCrafters have worked on all kinds of product launches. Why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the launches you have worked on or some of the projects you've worked on. What kind of companies have you helped?
ROB HAWTHORNE: The three of us have worked together on and off for many years on multiple different projects. A lot of the typical clients are information product owners or creators. They're really good at the information creation side and want to stick to that, and need someone to take care of all the marketing for the products. We've worked with a lot of people.
I don't want to name names, but there have been bestselling authors and a lot of Internet marketers who I'm sure most people listening to this call know very well and probably get their newsletters. I've been involved in a lot of other smaller launches where someone has a really great product, software, or a service. We come onboard and draft out an entire launch plan and put all the pieces in place.
It's an interesting niche and an interesting business to be in because it's not just the typical, what some folks may know as, the Jeff Walker product launches. The product launches really encompass a lot of things under an umbrella. There are company launches, there are product launches, and there are specific re-launches that you can do. For all of those, there are different strategies that you can use to really boost your income and your revenue for your launches.
The average client or kind of folks we work with is all over the board, from small individuals to larger corporations that are looking for some unique ways to launch their products or services or company.
TAMMY LAWMAN: When you're doing these launches I am assuming that one of the things that you're looking to do is to drive traffic to a website?
ROB HAWTHORNE: Yes, that is correct. Out of all of the launches and the products that we've been involved with over the years, a lot of the launches and products are geared toward people who are, maybe, a little bit newer to Internet marketing, more on the basic-training side all the way to the advanced side. What kept coming around full circle, year after year, was this: How do I get traffic to our website?
We decided to start to document some of the things that we were doing on our own and doing collectively. I have multiple blogs out there where I'm always testing different strategies. We started to document some of the things that we were doing to get up into the search engines and get tons of Twitter followers and become an authority in a niche very quickly, as well as to get featured in magazines.
It really all came down to just doing a few specific techniques and strategies that are wrapped up all into one new course that we just recently released called "Traffic Siphon."
TAMMY LAWMAN: You siphon traffic from other people's websites, right?
ROB HAWTHORNE: Yes. Basically the way it works is this. We call Traffic Siphon because siphoning is simply siphoning traffic from other people's websites or visitors to their websites to your website. How do you do that? There are multiple ways. Say, for example, you're in the dog-training niche. You want to try to drive some traffic to your blog. Let's say you're in Seattle, Washington.
You could start doing some searches around Google and looking for some other dog sites or dog blogs that you could start to comment on to get some links back to your website. There are a lot of strategies there. There's a lot of stuff I'm going to share with you on this call. I'm going to be talking fast at some points. We're going to be covering a lot of stuff, but I don't want to get into all the details of that yet. We'll talk about that in a moment.
First I want to talk about back-links and why they're so important and why we really need them. First of all, back-links are great because they live forever. [Indiscernible] or guest blog post for a site. Those live out there forever. That's great for a few reasons. First, it's great for instant traffic, especially if you're commenting on blogs that directly relate to your niche. That's an important piece. I want to pause there for a second.
A lot of the training out there may forget to mention, or just don't mention, something, which confuses people. They say to go out there and get a bunch of blog comments or do a bunch of blog comments and link all those back to your website. What they sometimes forget to tell you is that there are a few things you want to do to make sure that those links stay active and that you're linking to your website correctly.
If you go to any blog out there right now, you'll see that people are commenting on whatever the post is about. Where it says 'Name', they'll put in their first name, like Dan, for example. Then they'll link their website where it says 'Website' and post in their comment. When you read Dan's post and you see his name highlighted there, it's going to link to his website.
He probably doesn't fully understand SEO and the benefits to getting some high quality back-links to your website and providing what's called anchor text to your website. What I mean by that is this. Let's say Dan is a calculator salesman. I'm just looking in my office and that's the first thing I saw, so he's a calculator salesman. He has a website or blog about selling calculators. What he should do is comment on a blog that's related to calculators or talks about calculators.
When he posts his name, instead of writing Dan, he would say 'Best Online Calculators', or whatever search term he's trying to rank for. Then he'd post a link to his website. Those words, 'Best Online Calculators', are directly linked to his website. That's a really important piece that we'll talk a little bit more about later in the call. The other side is, again, you get instant traffic.
You get long-term traffic, and then also SEO for the benefits to getting back-links to your website. These are things we'll talk about in just a couple of minutes here. I want to try to stay in line and not confuse folks, because when it comes to back-links there are about 5,000 different schools of thought out there. With any technique you'll find out there, I'm sure you've seen this yourself, one person will say, "Do it this way," and another person will say, "Do it this way."
There's no real right or wrong answer as far as getting back-links to your website, but I will tell you this. I know you probably have some questions for me, but let me say this. Bing on Webmaster Central back a few months ago posted exactly what Bing is looking for in order to get ranked on Bing for the specific keywords that you're looking for. Basically, what it all comes down to is staying out of bad neighborhoods. That's exactly what they call them, 'bad neighborhoods'.
A bad neighborhood is a website that's basically flagged by Bing, Yahoo! and Google; they all use this as well. That website is delisted from the search engines and, typically, any sites linking out from that site are banned from the search engines or delisted, as well. What a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of the link-building techniques and strategies that they're using are actually hurting them. You're moving closer and closer to getting your website delisted if it's not already.
Basically a bad neighborhood is a lot of those link exchange programs, a lot of the programs or services that you can buy very inexpensively that will tell you they'll go out and build 1,000 back-links for $50, or whatever it is for you. They'll typically post a lot on these so-called bad neighborhoods, which are just basically link farms. That'll get you delisted from the search engines. There's really no tricking them. They know exactly what you're doing out there.
It takes some pretty hefty software and a lot of pretty significant investments to effectively trick search engines. They can see exactly what you're doing. It's very transparent out there, so if you're trying to pull any fast ones on them or your getting links from all these link farms, or if you have 50 sites that are all on the same server, that are all linking to each other, eventually those are going to be found out, tagged as a link farm, and delisted from the search engines. On the call we'll cover some strategies that you can use that definitely won't get you banned.
TAMMY LAWMAN: One thing that comes to mind is that maybe some of the people on the call don't really understand SEO and how the search engines work. Can you just explain a little bit about how they work so that they will understand, and how Google knows that some of those are not good links?
ROB HAWTHORNE: That's a big question. I'll give you a very high-level overview. Basically, the first part of the question, as far as SEO, search engine optimization has changed a lot over the years and will continue to change. Years ago there were a lot of different tricks that you could do to get ranked up high in the search engines. You could have the bottom of your website all white and put in a bunch of white text saying your keyword over and over again.
That used to work until search engines got smart, and they don't allow that anymore. Basically at the end of the day, what does a search engine want to do? Their job is to provide you with highly relevant results to whatever it is you're looking for. Their job is to sift through all of the junk websites, all of the automated blogs, all of the things that people are doing out there trying to generate revenue in ways that might have worked a few months or a few years ago, for example.
Basically, search engine optimization is just techniques and strategies that you use on your website or blog to help your website get ranked in the search engines. We received an email just the other day from one of our customers. He said, "I'm launching a new product. I have a squeeze page. Here are my terms that I want to rank for. I want to be listed in the search engines this week for all of these terms."
Unfortunately, we wish it was that easy but it's not always that easy to get listed in the search engines for your chosen keyword or keyword phrase overnight or in a week. Basically, a little bit longer-term strategy to be listed in the search engines, they rank a whole number of things. A lot of things we don't know, but some are the domain age, your site description, the proper use of what's called h1 and h2 tags.
H1 is just the text size of your headlines, your images, your content, and so on. There are a lot of great courses, a lot of great information out there, as far as SEO. The other big factor in determining where you rank in the search engines is the number of websites linking back to your website. In addition to that, what words are being used as anchor text that are going to your website?
I'll give you a real example. There's a website out there that you can sign up for and it's free. If you have a blog and you're receiving a lot of traffic in the niche that the blog is in, you can put in this little code on your website, and then the company will sell text links for you. You'll get a percentage of the revenue generated. Today on one of the blogs we have we received a couple of notifications that some text links were posted and we earned a commission.
Just one of the words that they bid on was randomly in a post to the word 'bathroom' was mentioned. There is a company that sells bathroom accessories that bid on that term, and now they're paying, I think, around $15.73 or something per month just for that one little link on a blog that we have hundreds and hundreds of pages on. On one page, on one word, that link is worth at least $15 a month to them. Why? Because search engines, again, provide so much weight on the number of back-links you have and the anchor text that's directing back to your website.
TAMMY LAWMAN: That was a great example. Thank you for simplifying that. I know it can very technical, but the important thing for you to remember is that you don't have to be tech savvy and know everything there is to know about SEO to understand all this. There is a lot of great information out there so you can learn more if you want to. Tell us a little bit about the three key benefits to back-links. Why do so many people get it wrong?
ROB HAWTHORNE: I'd say there are several more than three, but we'll stick to three as far as SEO, the benefit of getting back-links, to getting found in the search engines like I'd mentioned. Also, there's direct traffic. That's when people read a blog comment, a forum post, or a signature link that you have. Then they are clicking from site A to your website. Then there is also authority and building reputation on authority blogs in your niche.
This is a powerful technique that I'm going to talk to you about in just a moment here. One of the ways with authority websites that you want to really concentrate on is becoming known on that authority website. Let me give you an example. I'm constantly using dog training, and it's funny because it's one of the niches we're not involved with, but I'm always using dog training as an example.
TAMMY LAWMAN: That's okay; it works as well as any other subject.
ROB HAWTHORNE: Let's say, again, that you're a dog trainer. You do some research and you find that there are five authority websites that are in the dog-training niche. What is an authority website? Authority websites always rank very high in the search engines. They typically have many pages, many blog posts, covering dog training as the higher level, and that will break down into five, 10, 20 different subjects or subcategories, such as training your dog, how to walk your dog, dog toys and so on and so forth.
Google and a lot of other search engines provide a lot of weight on authority websites not only to get them ranked, but also any outgoing links that they have. That's really important. The best link that you can get back to your website is from the 40 websites in your niche. That's an important phrase, 'in your niche'. What if you find an authority website that talks about penguins, and you're on there trying to get back-links and posting comments on their forum and blogs talking about dog training?
Those two don't really go together unless you have a pet penguin, I guess. With authority websites, step number one is you want to find who the authority websites are in your niche. Number two, you want to start to comment on them. Take a little time every single day and just start commenting on the blog posts that they have on their site. Start to get into some conversations with others within the posts so people start recognizing your name.
You start to build authority there. The absolute cream of the crop, as far as getting listed in authority websites is the following. Before I go into this, let me say that when you contact an authority website and say, "Will you link to my website?" or "Can I be a guest author for you?" or something, you've got to understand it it's an authority website, they're getting tons of requests every single day.
You have to figure out different ways to stand out from everyone else. These methods that I'm going to share with you are methods that we've used in the past. They work very, very well. They help you stand out from the crowd, and they help people take you seriously as someone who is really serious about building your website, your niche. The first way to be sure you get a foothold in an authority website is this.
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Let's say you want to write a guest blog post. Guests blog posts are great because that's going to drive a lot of traffic to your website. You get, typically, write about subject that you're very knowledgeable about. You get to talk about what you're passionate about and you get to put your URL at the end of your article. Then people are going to your website, and that's driving a lot of traffic to your site. How do you do that?
Number one, you could do a favor. Look through some of the blog posts. Look for things that they're trying to find or their trying to do, and go do it for them or hire someone to do something for them. Maybe it's a search project or just some information they're trying to get, whatever it is. Take a little bit of time, do it for them, send it over and just say, "I read your post and saw that you were looking for XYZ, and I went ahead and did this for you. By the way, here's my website.
"I'm actually a dog trainer, and I'd really be interested in writing an article for your website. I have a great angle on XYZ," or whatever it is. Also, once you get the okay for them to be a guest author, there are a few strategies that you can use that will dramatically increase the amount of traffic that you get to your website, and I'll tell you about that in a moment.
First let me you about one other strategy that I just remembered that we use. I don't recommend this for everyone, but in some niches this works really well. It probably won't work as well if you're trying to do this on an authority website that has to do with cars or something. Basically, it's a little bribe. You look through some recent blog posts and see what the person's talking about, what they would like.
The first example a couple of weeks ago would have been an Apple iPad. They would love to have one, would love to try one out, and so on. You would go out there and buy whatever product or service they're looking for and then send it to them. In the package that you send to them, write a nice little handwritten note and just say, "I read on your blog that you're looking for one of these; here you go.
"By the way, I'm a dog trainer and I have this website. I would love to write an article for your website. Here's my information." It's a little bribery, but sometimes you've got to get their attention in unique ways, and it's a good way to do it. Once you get the nod that you can go ahead and start writing your article, here's a little advance strategy that you can use to really boost the number of people, the traffic, you get back from that website.
Think about some of the search terms and keywords you want to rank for. [indiscernible]. If they do not [indiscernible] any article or blog post out there that ranks for. Let's say, for example, you're going to write an article about how to teach your dog to flip. You write a great quality blog post, do some research on the keywords, and you write your article. It's really full, using SEO tactics to make sure that blog post or that article is going to be ranked in the search engines. Also back-link it the article to your website using anchor text if they allow that.
Just use 'dog training Seattle' or whatever it is linking back to your website. What happens is this: with an authority website, typically, and especially for terms that are not so competitive, when they post a new blog or a new article, they could be listed in the top five, or even the number one spot, shortly after the article or blog is posted. That's one of the many advantages of having an authority website..
They give a lot of trust in you for providing a lot of great content and great information for the niche. Again, you're seen as an authority. If you did your research and you found some great terms that you want to rank for, but it's just not working on your website because you're not the authority, then why not just take that content, put it on someone else's website that is the authority, and then link back to your website?
What that also does is establishes your credibility in the niche that you're going after because you're posting on XYZ.com, which is the big authority website of your niche. Then people going to your website from an authority website is already going to have a different frame of mind, especially if you wrote an article compared to them just doing a search and finding you randomly on a search engine.
TAMMY LAWMAN: What are some other back-linking strategies you can share with us?
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