Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
- Antisthenes (Greek philosopher of Athens, disciple of Socrates, 445-365bc)

Last night I was driving home from the grocery store when I heard a commercial on the radio for “FreeScore123.com“.  I listened to the 30-second spot carefully, as I know these people are making some decent money referring these ‘free’ credit report-type websites.  During the commercial, they repeated the ‘freescore123.com’ part several times, which is good.

Problem was, they never spelled it.  “Free” on the radio sometimes sounds like “three”.  Ironically, the commercial mentioned several times that they checked the scores of all three credit bureaus.

Taking this information, I went home and pulled up the ‘ol laptop.  I looked up 3score123.com and threescore123.com, both of which were available (and purchased immediately).

Both of these domains have been forwarded to an affiliate account for one of the free credit score companies, at around $18/referral. Just since last night, I’ve had 7 clicks, one conversion.

All because I paid attention.

We’ve got a small newspaper in our town.  By small, I mean they probably have a circulation of around 25,000.  It has been around for years, it comes to your mailbox free, and its chock-full of community information.

Many, many people are used to the newspaper, its information, and its consistence.  So its no wonder when I peruse through it each week that it’s full of ads from local companies.  The ads aren’t cheap, either.  $75 for a business card-sized ad, per week, with a 6 month agreement.

Not cheap, particularly for very local small businesses.  Yet with (what small business owners must consider) a modest circulation, they must believe that its worth it.  But I think there’s a problem.

Every week when I look through the paper to check out the ads, I’m amazed at the types of businesses that advertise in there.  Game stores, towing companies, payday loan companies and more.  I’d estimate that 60-75% of the ads are for businesses that should be targeting the 40 and under crowd.

Do you see the problem?

It’s a question I’m wondering as I receive more and more calls from various businesses, both small and large, who are suddenly finding themselves in need of some marketing.  People aren’t buying like they have been in years past, and some businesses are smart enough to realize that the future of marketing is on the Internet.

So as I continue to receive these calls, the industries are starting to overlap.  A landscaper calls, a lawn maintenance company calls, a pool builder calls.  While these industries are different in their respective ways, they are also the same.

So it got me wondering - are other SEOs receiving more calls, and if so, are they able to be more picky and/or command a higher price for their services than they were say a year or two ago?

I should preface this by saying that my company personally will not take on more than one client per industry.  If a landscaper hires me, and another calls, I have to turn them down.  The biggest reason is ethical - I can’t get both businesses to rank #1 for competing keywords.  Perhaps other SEOs will take on more than one client per industry, but I don’t see how they could do it and still sleep well at night.

Now, if a landscaper and a lawn maintenance company hire me, they are similar but aren’t really competing over the same rankings, so I wouldn’t have a problem with it.  Even better, they could cross-promote each other and make a bit more money/get more referrals that way.  It’s a win-win.

So back to my question - which I guess is actually two quesitons.

1. As an SEO, are you finding that you can be more particular about which clients you take on?  Are there more than one business per industry considering your services?
2. And if so, are you raising your rates because of this demand?  Or, are you finding that there is more competition (since there are more customers) and you are having to lower your prices to stay competitive?

Today Google released a new tool called SearchWiki, which allows users to modify the organic results they see for some phrases. The users, when logged in, can now ‘vote up’ or ‘vote down’ results when they do a search on the popular search engine’s website.

How will this affect SEO?

Personally I think it’ll have a bigger effect on very large and high-volume websites such as travel sites, news sites, etc. Smaller-trafficked websites probably won’t see much of a change IMO.

Look at it this way. If you are creating quality content for your customers, and you are doing it all honestly, not spamming, not keyword stuffing, not cloaking, etc, you’ll probably be fine. People will come to your website, see what they were looking for, and have no reason to vote you down.

If, on the other hand, you’re running an affiliate poker or viagra website, be prepared to see your rankings tumble for these custom users. That is, unless you’re providing quality content. Have I mentioned quality content yet?

Keep in mind that at this time, Google is not using these modifications for their ‘normal’ search that John Doe off the street would use. This only changes the results if you are logged into your Google account, and you do a search. Voting up your favorite websites won’t affect the overall organic results (at this time, according to G), so don’t waste time voting up your own website to the top of every possible keyword. You’ll just have skewed results that you can then fool yourself into believing are really organic.

While some people are saying this will have a major impact on search overall, I don’t see it happening yet. Now, will Google at some point take this data and use it towards their algorithm? Very possible. We’ll have to wait and see.

My Mom sent me this, and it looks kinda cool. I’ve got a house full of kids, so we may do this on Saturday morning (before the big event)

ZIPLOC OMELET

(This works great !!! Good for when all your family is together. The best part is that no one has to wait for their special omelet !!!)

Have guests write their name on a quart-size Ziploc freezer bag with permanent marker.

Crack 2 eggs (large or extra-large) into the bag (not more than 2) shake to combine them.

Put out a variety of ingredients such as: cheeses, ham, onion, green pepper, tomato, hash browns, salsa, etc.

Each guest adds prepared ingredients of choice to their bag and shake. Make sure to get the air out of the bag and zip it up.

Place the bags into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. For more, make another pot of boiling water.
Open the bags and the omelet will roll out easily. Be prepared for everyone to be amazed.

Nice to serve with fresh fruit and coffee cake; everyone gets involved in the process and a great conversation piece. Imagine having these ready the night before, and putting the bag in boiling water while you get ready.

And in 13 minutes, you’ve got a nice omelette for a quick breakfast!!!

Today was my last SEO seminar for the year, and I wanted to thank all of the people that attended.  We had a great time and the reviews were all positive.

I’d like to give a shout out to Larry over at Diversified Packaging, Jeanette at Crafts by You, and Chris at Home Furniture Savings.

Were you at the seminar? Let me know and I’d be glad to throw ya a free link =)

This weekend is Scouting for Food, the nations largest one-day food drive. Every year my boys go out and hand out bags one weekend, then the next weekend we go collect the food.
This year’s event happens on November 15th (bag handout) and then the food collection is on Nov 23.
Please take the time on the 23rd to set out a bag of food for the boys in your area to collect.

My company Lighthouse Technologies is now in need of a part time intern. I’m looking for someone who is interested in and understands basic web design and wants to learn SEO. Candidate would be willing to work in exchange for knowledge transfer of Web Design skills, Internet Marketing and SEO.

Applicants do not need to live in the Saint Louis area, but must be actively online and respond to email/IM in timely manner. All work will be done virtually.

What you must have…

• A serious interest in web design
• Knowledge of web editing software (Dreamweaver preferred)
• Working knowledge of PhotoShop
• Knowledge and understanding of Search tactics
• An interest in marketing and social media
• Honesty, integrity and a willingness to learn

What we offer…
This is not a paid position, however there are many benefits:

• The chance to develop your talents and portfolio.
• Experience that will look great on your resume. Our web site has an excellent reputation, and potential employers will be impressed.
• A progressive management style that allows you to take on a great deal of responsibility and provides a supportive, stimulating and fun interactive environment.
• Letters of reference for future job opportunities.
• The opportunity to gain significant knowledge in the Internet Marketing field

Possible assignments include…

• Build new pages for various industry web sites.
• Assist in the development of new websites.
• Offer input and assistance with new design ideas for these sites.
• Potential revenue sharing on
• Create landing pages for SEO campaigns
• Participate in split testing

How to Apply…

Send your resume, the URL of at least one web site that shows your editing skills (be specific about the role you played in developing the site, versus what was done by others) and a cover letter that answers the following questions:

• What are your career goals and how would this internship help you achieve them? What do you hope to gain from this internship?
• What kind of coursework and/or experience do you have that would make you a valuable intern?
• In what areas are you most interested in attaining experience through this internship?

From the applications, we will select interviewees. Deadline for applications is November 28, 2009.

Mail cover letter/resume to:

Lighthouse Technologies
1243 Water Tower Place
Suite 180
Arnold, MO 63010

You may also email us your resume to sales@techlh.com. Please use the subject line INTERN JOB. We will reply with a confirmation of receipt.

If you want to really impress me, email your items then follow up via direct message at twitter or Yahoo! IM. ID at both of those locations is ‘techlh’

I’m looking for a good PPC ’spy’ program, and I’ve come across two (what seem to be) major players so far: SpyFu and KeywordSpy.

Do you use one of these?  If so, what are your thoughts on it? Do you like it? Is it worth the money? How did you choose which to use?

If you use a different program altogether, what is it? What are the things you like about it?

I recently took on a new title: Director of Internet Marketing for a local real estate firm. We worked out a deal where I get a portion of the revenue that is generated because of their website. Any lead that comes from the Internet is credited to me, and if it turns into a home sale, I get ca$h.

So it behooves me to do a few things:

• Make sure that their website is running in tip-top shape
• Modify their site to position them for the best rankings
• Start an offsite campaign which includes link building, listing their site on Yelp!, Mixx, etc
• Fine-tune the PPC campaign to produce highly targeted traffic
• and more

The biggest part of my mission in this case is to get people to the website. Once they are there, I can use tools like CrazyEgg to see just where they are clicking. I can watch them coming and going via Google Analytics. I can see what pages they landed on, and I can see at what point they abandoned the website.

Now, as someone who is only making money if they actually contact the real estate agency, I need to make uber sure that those leads are not only happening, but that I can track them. That’s where the fun starts.

Currently on most websites, there are a few ways you can contact the business: email, phone and online form. These are all fine tools, but there are a few problems.

Email

Since I took over this website in an already-functioning form, the email addresses listed on the page were there long before I came along. If a new visitor sees a home they like, they can click and send an email to the agent. They can ask to see the home, ask questions, whatever. They don’t, however, have to mention how they came up with the email address in the first place.

This causes a problem, because that email address can be on the signs in the home’s yard, business cards, flyers or whatever. There is no way to 100% be sure that that lead was generated from a visit to the website. So I’ve got to fix it.

There are a few things I can do here.

1. Change the email address
   Probably the easiest fix. Set up a forwarder that goes to the old email address, but shows that it came via website_lead@domain.com or whatever. Incidently, in this case I can’t set up a forwarder because the system that the real estate agent is set up on doesn’t allow new email addresses, and certainly not forwarders.
2. Add a subject line message to the link
   It wouldn’t be hard to add something like this to the code: <a href=”mailto:info@domain.com?subject=Website_Referral”>
   I’ve always found this a bit hokey. First, you have to assume that the visitor is actually going to click on the email link on the website. Second, you have to assume that their browser knows how to accurately handle the click and open their email program. Third, you have to assume that the visitor won’t just delete what you’ve stuck in there and write their own.
3. Remove the email address
   Well that’d be just plain silly. It’s an option, yes, but not one I’d do. Why take away a way for a potential customer to contact the client?

So what’s the best fix for my scenario? Number two, I guess. Hopefully it sticks. Got any other ideas?

Online forms

Forms. I love ‘em. Well, in most cases. Forms let us collect info from any visitor that cares to fill one out. They are widely used, particularly by those people who want to communicate only via online methods, who have a question, or who just don’t want to talk to someone face to face (or ear to ear).

If you have a decent amount of ‘control’ over the website server, you can write scripts to do all kinds of cool things with the forms. I’ve used Mootools to generate some fancy-looking popup forms, I’ve written fake form scripts (that look like they are searching a database, etc) and more. Forms are great as I said, unless the user won’t fill one out.

There’s a fine line you have to walk when using a form. You want to collect a bunch of information from the visitor, but at the same time you don’t want them to be turned off and click their BACK button. So you’ve got to collect just enough that you can get by, and hope they will give you more info if they are interested in your product/service.

But what happens if you don’t have ‘control’ over the server? Perhaps you use Yahoo!’s shopping cart, which lets you build a form, but doesn’t let you add custom fields (such as a CC: email address). People can fill out the form, contact your client, and you have no idea there was ever any contact made.

If you have a thank-you page of some type, you could set up a goal in Google Analytics for that page. You’d then know that someone made it that far, but that’s about all you’d know.

Ultimately, I think this one comes down to trust. You are going to have to trust that your client will credit those leads to you.

Phone calls

Ok this one is my new favorite.

In the past, a marketing company had no control over getting credit for phone calls that were generated because of their campaigns. Whether it was a billboard, direct mail, or whatever, there really was no way to track these phone calls without purchasing a second line and installing it in their clients office (expensive).

Along comes call tracking - a cool new service that lets you get as many virtually forwarded phone numbers as you’d like, at a very reasonable cost.

I’m not going to go into great detail about how the call tracking works, but let me just say I’ve used it now for several months for several clients, and there is no doubt where these leads are coming from.

Basically, I get a custom phone number just for a client’s website. It can be a local or toll free number, whatever. Same cost. When a visitor comes to my client’s website, they see the phone number and perhaps call it. The call is routed through the call tracking system directly to the clients office. They get the calls just as they did before, but the call is credited to the website - because that is the only place it is listed.

So the phone problem is solved. Leads are counted, and my pocketbook increases.

I’d love to hear other creative ways that you use to make sure those leads that you are generating actually count. As a part-time affiliate marketer, I know it’s tough sometimes to trust your end vendors - are they crediting you with all your leads, or just most of them? It’s good to know there are at least some ways that we can keep them honest (not that they aren’t - I’m just sayin’…)