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Search engine marketing (SEM), is a great field, filled with plenty of interesting personalities. The new SEM Interview Series is intended to shine the spotlight on leaders in the field. The format is a unique one I use on several of my blogs. I love to call it the “6 Question Interview”, which allows the interviewee to make in-depth answers, but is also short enough for the attention spans of most internet surfers. So far I’ve received a lot of positive reviews of the other six question interviews I’ve done, like the Blogger Interviews and the SEO Interview Series

If you know of a SEM who would be good for this series, let us know. We’d love to interview them.

Most people you run into online will agree that a ton of incoming links is important for any website. They’ll suggest ideas on you can acquire links, but I think it’s important to take a look at the long term picture. Successful websites always gain links, even over several years. Any type of link building efforts that you use will require follow up and maintenance. And the biggest key to building links is to make sure that fresh websites are always finding you and linking in.

Some of the ways you can assure that you keep on gaining links is to keep on doing the things you’ve done up to that point that have brought success. If you write content articles, and this brings in the links, then continue to add more, to ensure a fresh supply of links. If you buy links, buy the same number every month, so your website doesn’t appear to fall off the map.

The easiest way to get links over a long period of time is to simply offer something of unique and lasting value. It’s trite advice, but it’s accurate. MySpace doesn’t sit around worrying about “getting links” most days because they know they have users who will help grow the site. Anything you can do that makes your website unique is worth trying. Even something as corny as a contest could be used to get a quick infusion of links to your website.

Don’t just follow the crowd, but really try and add a page that offers a unique look at a familiar problem, and the incoming links will multiply like rabbits. Before long, your whole link building program could go on auto-pilot.

Viral traffic is just great because it’s the gift that keeps on giving. I never experimented at all with viral marketing until May of this year, and now I’m already convinced it’s one of the best possible ways to go. If you can up with something funny, useful, or entertaining, it’s amazing the speed at which your marketing message can travel.

The best part of viral marketing is that it’s not you doing all the work. You make a tool, and others promote it for you. They’ll tell their friends, or forums that they belong to, and it won’t be you out there being insulted for promoting yourself. That in itself can be a big bonus, because promoting your own products will sometimes leave you being tarred and feather.

Search engine marketing is still a very strong driver of traffic for me, but I’m getting more fascinated with the viral marketing because it shows how people act. People, if you entertain them, will be quite happy to keep on sending their relatives and friends to you. As a core part of a long term internet marketing strategy, it just can’t hurt to have fresh people that you don’t have to pay for show up daily.

Okay gang, let’s do a list. We all know how exciting that can be. I’d like to enumerate the main methods of internet marketing that I’ve actually found to work in 2006. These methods are “tried and true” and have been able to survive even the most grueling anti-SEO environment seen in recent years.

1) SEO – It’s not dead and I doubt it can be killed. SEO cannot be your only strategy, but it has to be a big part of it. To deny search-engine friendliness is to deny your own success.

2) Viral – You need to go viral like a fat kid love cake. Why? If you don’t have the talent or capability to pull off a viral marketing stunt, hire someone else to do it, or just replicate something popular with your own unique spin. There’s enough API’s out there right now that you’re bound to be able to put together a decent tool, even if you can barely program. Viral traffic is the gift that keeps on giving. What’s an example of a viral marketing tool? Are you a Link Pimp?. You need tools that get spread through email and forums because they’re fun and unique.

3) Social networking – no man is an island and all that. You better hone up your social skills if you plan on making it in today’s day and age. In the past, it was okay to be a bit of a lone-wolf, but now you’ll be “marked for Death” by the beligerent search engines. More importantly than search traffic, you also can build traffic through social networking. When I speak of social networking I mean using sites like Digg, but I also mean good old fashioned sales and human relationship building. The better you are at selling yourself, the more likely you are to move product

4) Credibility isn’t everything online. It’s the only thing. Sorry, Vince Lombardi, for the Web 2.0 version of your old chestnut, but I really believe it applies today.
People buy from people they “know”. It takes a real effort to get people to know you online. Take that effort. If you remain a face in the crowd, you’ll lag the others. If you can seperate yourself from the pack and make people aware of you, you’ve won the battle.

5) Rely as little as possible on third parties. You need to rely on yourself. The only one who can keep a tight schedule going online is you. You don’t have time to allow your agenda to be set by others, and don’t EVER rely on other companies to put money in your pocket. The more you can control the experience, the better.

6) Leverage your existing customer base. Enlist those who already read your blog to help you market. Get people who already bought from you to buy once again. Your current customers like you. If you don’t let them down, they’ll never let you down, either. Always give good service to your customers, and if you don’t have customers, then treat your visitors with respect. They’re guests, afterall, and are the main the reason you’ll succeed, if you do.

I feel that’s an interesting term. What exactly is an internet marketing expert? It’s someone who is willing to proclaim themselves experts in a field that changes every day. For a person to make such a claim, they need to be working actively in the field, and doing their best to keep abreast of the constant changes in their field.

I think the best way to determine whether someone is an internet marketing expert is to consider whether you’ve ever actually run into their website, or managed to hear of them online. If they’ve been doing their job, chances are that they will have turned up here and there in searches, or you would have happened along their website at some point. If an internet marketing expert cold calls you on the phone, chances are good they don’t really know a ton about internet marketing.

No matter who you go with, for any of your basic internet marketing needs, do so without a contract. Contracts are a company’s way of saying “we suck and we know that once you figure it out you’ll want to cancel.” Marketing companies that push contract services are likely to have experience the problem of customers wanting to quit many times before. There only skill might be in selling you high-priced internet marketing services. Be wary.

Myself, I’m not pretentious enough to think of myself as an internet marketing expert. I manage to earn a decent living online, but by no means am I an expert in reliably driving traffic to websites no matter what. Like most people, I’ve had my shares of successes and failures, but I can’t guarantee any of the work. If you can actually find an internet marketing expert who will guarantee the work in writing, and offers some sort of refund if you’re not happy, then it might be an offer worth considering.

The more I read about click-fraud lately, the more I begin to think of it as the “Achille’s heal” of the contextual ads game. If you don’t stop it, people lose faith in the system and it goes the way of the Hula Hoop. Google has been getting in trouble for click-fraud, but they claim to have the problem under control. Others are not so sure.

This recent article indicates that click fraud on the web continues to rise.

The sales referrals generated by clicks on the brief advertising links popularized by the two Internet powerhouses are a sham 14.1 percent of the time, based on information collected from 1,300 online marketers.

I’ve actually seen quoted numbers as high as 30 percent this week, but in any event, between 14 and 30 cents of every dollar you spend is being wasted on fraud? Whoa! This is a red flag that’s so huge it actually makes me shiver to my bones. If the numbers get any higher, it might place the entire legitimacy of the system in question.

If 30% of Google’s revenues come from click-fraud, it would mean their revenue is over-inflated by around $1 billion per year. If investors adjusted for this, Google would lose billions of dollars of market cap in days.

Yahoo, I feel, has been extremely worried about click-fraud in YPN. They’ve never gone international in almost a year, and they don’t appear to be expanding the program much. They also showed lagging numbers to Wall Street. Part of the slowdown might be seasonality, but I’m really beginning to wonder if there’s a system slowdown occuring.

If you build a big website, or even a large network, you’ll have people landing all over you pages. You need to think about where they land, because if you’re not careful, they may become disjointed. More importantly, you need to try and warm them up and lead them to a better page, if you feel the page they landed on wasn’t the best one for them.

You have to work on landing pages, even if you’re sending the traffic along to third parties, because the warmer the traffic is, the hotter the conversions. If you’ve ever seen an affiliate plan really sing, it’s a thing of beauty. My favorite memory was an obscure named person who I managed to rank for. I found an “adult site” that paid $40 per conversion and installed the code. Remarkable enough, the person made the new nationally because of a scandal. My page was about a scandal, and sent the person to a form where they could purchase a video. I’m proud to report, I actually crashed their signup server with 36 signers in 12 hours. Yes, indeedy, that’s 36 x $40 and it was for one of the lamest pages of content ever produced by man.

Can you have success like that? Of couse, but only if your REALLY think about who’s coming into your website and where they’re going. If you can match the needs of the visitor with the needs of the advertiser, you make great money in the middle.

Now is not the best time to be in the online gambling business. The FBI is going after certain companies that offer online gambling.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday that BETonSPORTS was among 11 individuals and four corporations facing various charges of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud. The founder of BETonSPORTS.com, Gary Kaplan, 47, was also charged with 20 felony violations, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest, it added.

20 felonies? Whoa. Hearing numbers like that, it makes you sort of glad you always ignored any instincts to get into the high paying online gambling market. BETOnSports has had a habit of ignoring legal issues. Until now. The FBI has even instructed companies handing backhaul for BETOnSports to cease operations.