May, 2007

If you’re just starting out in SEM, a great way to get started is to find a local business that will pay you for leads. I mean a real, brick & mortar store that will pay you.

The reason I say that is because it is a good way to make some money, and you can rank for local terms fairly easy. Its a great way to get started in SEM and play with your rankings. Once you’re comfortable with ranking for local terms, take on a term that has half a million results. You’ll be surprised that with a little finesse you can rank for that as well.

Yesterday I got a local newspaper in the mail, and as usual I just glanced through it. As you may know, I’m in the middle of launching a local niche site that promotes a particular local service, so I’m always interested in seeing what ads are in the paper.

As I glanced through, I noticed an article titled “When obtaining automobile repairs, follow these tips to protect yourself“. Now, I’m not interested in auto body, but the placement of this article was a little odd. For a local paper, this article just didn’t fit. It was really generic, mentioning things such as getting multiple bids, etc.

So I fired off a quick email to my friend, a public relations and publicity guru, asking him about the article.

“Yep, that would be PR from the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud,” he replied. “The difference between an article like this and a standard press release is that it’s pre-packaged — basically an unsolicited, ready-to-print article.”

Oh realllyyyy??

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