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Why Lead Generation Companies are a Bad Idea

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Money is Tight!The experts say that this ‘tough economy’ is going to go on for several years before finally hitting a tipping point back into some sort of stability.  Times are already straining for many businesses, and news like this isn’t good for those riding the almost-going-out-of-business fence.

Today I stumbled upon a press release about a local real estate company that hired a lead generation company to help them generate more customers (in theory).  The lead generation company’s website gives four easy steps to generating leads:

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Posted in leads, Marketing, small business | 5 Responses »

Business Learning: Big Week Coming Up

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Next week will be a great week to be a business owner in Saint Louis.  There are a lot of events, all of which are focused on helping you build your business and customers.

St. Louis Business Expo – Oct 18
The biggest business expo of the year.  An entire day of terrific speakers (including myself) on a wide variety of topics.  Also, a speed banking opportunity and tons of vendors!

Business seminarHow to Build Your Credit Profile – Oct 18
The Saint Louis Small Business Meetup Group is awesome.  This month’s speaker is Willie Smith from WCS Credit Sense.  Learn how to identify and repair credit report errors and find money to run your business.

Using Video to Increase Your Website Traffic & Sales – Oct 20
Another great meetup, this one dedicated to helping business owners get on top of Google, Yahoo! and Bing searches for their industry.  This month’s class is all about video & how to use it to get to the top of the search engines.  Speaker: Mason Duchatschek

Show Me the Blog – Oct 21-22
The second annual SMTB conference will feature speakers from various Internet Marketing and Social Media outlets.  Topics will include new media, social media, SEO, blogging and technology.

Posted in conferences, St Louis | 1 Response »

If I Were A… Limo Rental Service

Monday, August 15th, 2011

There are certain times in everyone’s life when a limo is a great idea.  From birthdays to weddings to special nights out, a limo is a great way to make the night even more memorable.

St Louis isn’t a huge town.  It’s not like New York or LA where limos are seen every day.  If you see one here, chances are it was rented for some sort of event, not because a famous person is cruising by.  And this isn’t Vegas, where they’re waiting by the hundreds at the airport.

I imagine that owning a limo rental company can be a bit stressful.  Those rides aren’t cheap, they have a somewhat high need for maintenance (especially cleaning) and need to be on the road more often than not.  So keeping the limos booked is a huge priority.  The following is a few things I’d do if I owned such a company.
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Posted in If I Were A, Marketing, small business, St Louis | 3 Responses »
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St Louis Small Business Meetup Group Presentation

Saturday, July 16th, 2011

Your Website Needs Traffic

Back in May, I spoke to the St. Louis Small Business Meetup Group about getting traffic, climbing the search engine rankings and beyond.  It was a great meetup in a small restaurant in Kirkwood – a terrific atmosphere and I think you’ll enjoy this video.  In it you’ll learn:

  • Why Shotgun Marketing is a think of the past
  • Why You need a CMS
  • What Google Thinks About Your Site
  • How to Spy on Your Competitors
  • Plenty More Tips

Posted in SEO, small business, St Louis, traffic | No Responses »
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Your Website Needs to Be on an Island

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

Since the mid nineties, I’ve owned a web hosting company.  Although I rarely promote it, it is a terrific complement to my SEO business.

One of the great things about having my own servers is that I can control many of the things that a typical hosting company won’t let you do.  One of those is IP addresses. Click to continue »

Posted in competition, hosting, SEO | No Responses »

Are Free Blogging Services Smart for Your SEO Strategy?

Friday, May 6th, 2011

Will, we’ve heard what you say about blogging being a great way to increase your overall search presence, but we’re not sure where to start.  Blogger, WordPress.com and others offer free blogging platforms – is that a good way to get started?

- Mike

Good Idea/Bad IdeaThis is a great question, Mike.  I get this question in nearly every presentation I do.

In short, my answer is no, don’t use a free blogging service.  The entire reason that I preach blogging as such a great tool for SEO is that it generates content for your website – for your domain.  Ultimately you want to build your domain (website) up as the authority for your industry.

By using a free blogging service, you’re basically giving that content over to another company (another domain).  By blogging with them, you are ultimately ranking their domain for your keyphrases.  You are helping another business get traffic, not your own.

Don’t be confused, WordPress(.org) is a great blogging tool that you can download and install on your domain. That’s the way you should go.

Keep the great content, tips and how-to’s on your site. Grow it big and kick butt.

Posted in blogging | 1 Response »
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Google Places, UPS Boxes, and Your Mail

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

It’s been a long time practice for many home based business owners to purchase a UPS box for their business, both for convenience & separation, as well as the advantage of getting an actual street address (which is not your home).  The street address can then be put into Google Places, Yahoo! Local, etc and help businesses rank for local searches.

UPS box for SEOSince this ‘strategy’ has been going on, Google introduced service areas which helped alleviate a lot of the issues related to being a home-based business.  But there are still a lot of small businesses using UPS boxes to help rank in different local districts.

I’m not necessarily saying it’s the right way to do it, but there are definitely a lot of them still doing it, and it works in many cases still today. Click to continue »

Posted in Google Maps, location | 2 Responses »
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Should I Put Money Into PPC or Link Building?

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Will, I’m doing alright on clients right now, but by this summer I know it’s going to dry up a bit, so I’m thinking about doing PPC or a link building campaign.  Which do you recommend?

- Jon

I’m not a huge fan of PPC.  While I know it works, and works quite well for some businesses, it’s overall a very short-sighted strategy.  If you have the budget, pay per click is an easy way to the front page for many terms.  Problem is, most small business owners don’t have the budget they need in order to get or stay near the top.  Plus, once that budget runs out, the ads immediately disappear and you are literally back to where you were when you wrote this email. Click to continue »

Posted in link building, PPC, small business | 2 Responses »
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Return to Spender

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

According to a recent survey, nearly 47% of small business owners are now investing in their own businesses as a growth strategy.  This number shows an 11% increase from last year (2010) at this time.  I tend to believe these numbers reflect the growth in the SEO industry as a whole as well.  I don’t think 47% of all businesses are doing SEO, but there is definitely a similar percentage of growth in those actively participating in some sort of SEO strategy.

No matter what people say, “the economy” is still hurting business owners in a big way.  I get calls from business owners all the time wanting to find out about SEO as a way to increase their revenue.  Why? Because they’re hurting for customers.  Some small business owners (and large businesses) are starting to really feel the crunch – and they’re reaching out to friends and clients for help.  Somehow, somewhere, they hear about (or stumble across) SEO and realize that they are nowhere near the top.  They have no idea what SEO is, what it involves, or what the costs are to get there.
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Posted in Marketing | No Responses »

If I Were A…St. Louis Pool Contractor

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

This is part two of my “If I Were A” series.  This week I’m taking on the swimming pool industry, one that has really been hurt by the economy downturn.  Who’s installing pools? Not a lot of people, but there are a few local companies who are toughing it out.  Here are some tips for them, and maybe you can apply these to your own industry.

Two Distinct Markets

In the pool industry, there are two main markets: those that want a cheap above ground pool, and those that want an expensive inground pool.  One is a ‘give the kids something to do’ mentality, the other a long term investment.  So we’re already targeting two markets.  In most cases, however, inground swimming pool installers also sell above ground ‘kits’ which you can set up yourself.  So for purposes of this post, I’m going to go with an inground swimming pool installer. Click to continue »

Posted in Marketing | 2 Responses »

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