Looking for blogs that you can probably leave keyword-targeted comments on? Try searching for this
“just another wordpress” keyword
Since these bloggers haven’t modified the general description, chances are they aren’t real SEO savvy, and you could probably get in some nice one way links. Just don’t outright spam them, at least leave a halfway interesting comment…
I bargained with life for a penny
And life would pay no more
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store
For life is a just employer
He gives you what you ask
But once you have set the wages
Why, you must bear the task
I worked for a menial’s hire
Only to learn dismayed
That any wage I had asked of life
Life would have willing paid.
For those of you just getting started in SEO / SEM consulting, listen up.
Earlier this year I partnered up with a business colleague to do some revenue share for him. Basically it was this: I do SEO for him and I get a percentage of the revenue that the website creates. I actually do this for several local businesses, but I’m not sure that it’s the best option.
While small businesses love to ‘partner up’ with other business owners, I’m really having second thoughts about doing this in the future.
Here’s the deal. You offer a great service, one that can propel a business (literally) into a new revenue stream. You have the know-how and understanding to create wealth. And wise small business owners will see this and want it. However, most small businesses lack one thing – money. While this isn’t always the case, it has been my experience that a lot of small business owners want a lot, particularly things they can’t pay for. Of course, who wouldn’t.
If I owned a coffee shop, and in came a guy with a laptop, having meetings, talking to business owners, I’d want to know what he offered. I’d want him to market my business. But I’m just a little coffee shop owner, I don’t have that kind of money to throw at marketing.
Just a word of advice – RUN!
My wife often tells me that I’ve got this soft spot for people in a pinch. For some reason I feel bad when I see a business owner struggling, and I want to help. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes – perhaps they’re really bad at accounting. Perhaps they are funding useless causes. Perhaps they have no idea what’s going on at all in their business. Whatever it is, all I see is the outward sadface, and I offer to help.
Most often she’s right (dammit!). She sees me working for these people ‘in hopes of a future return’. She sees the kids wanting new this and that, and she sees me working away, but the bank account doesn’t increase. I can’t blame her for getting aggravated.
So if you’re good at SEO, and you know it, don’t fall for these things. You offer a damn good product, quality advice and the power to increase sales. Don’t let it go for cheap.
Disclaimer: There are plenty of reasons to help out a small business. I am in no means telling you to avoid these altogether – rather I’m telling you to be wise. If you have a friend that needs help, throw him some link juice. Do a small link building campaign. But don’t go overboard just to prove yourself. If you want to do that, do it on your own website, not someone else’s.
Most small business owners don’t have time to run a full out SEO campaign by themselves. Yet there are a few things that any SMB owner can do on just a few minutes a day that will help their site rank (albeit slowly).
Let’s take a hobby shop owner. He sells die cast cars, pinewood derby kits and model trains. On any given morning, our owner could go to Google and search for hobby shop directory and then visit each result, adding his link where indicated.
If you did this just three or four days a week, over time you’d build up a decent backlink list. While these links aren’t the best, its at least a start.
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…
What we offer…
This is not a paid position, however there are many benefits:
Possible assignments include…
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:
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 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:
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.
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.
So what’s the best fix for my scenario? Number two, I guess. Hopefully it sticks. Got any other ideas?
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.
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’…)
Many small businesses are clueless about Internet Marketing – particularly smaller Mom & Pop businesses. For many (and in some cases many many may) years, marketing meant spending money on a Yellow Pages ad and perhaps sponsoring a local baseball team or getting a booth at the Home & Garden Show. These things may still work, but it’s not the 60′s any more.
These hyperlocal businesses have relied on the uniqueness, and have never even considered taking on the big guys. They are run mostly by older folks who are not yet ready to embrace the Internet, nor the technology related to it. Heck, even talking some of these people into getting a website is a chore.
This is all about to change, as these ‘older’ small business owners start to retire, they are going to either
No matter what they choose to do, the younger small business owner crowd will be more adaptive to the newer technology. While some of these new owners may still be older than the Apple IIe generation (remember using that in school?), a majority of them are going to be more receptive to websites, Internet Marketing and even Social Networking. That means you still have a shot at getting their business, but you’ve gotta take it slow.
There’s nothing more exciting than landing that first client and jumping right into the link building/onpage SEO immediately. But hold on there, sir knight – you’ve got some work to do before you even think about doing actual SEO stuff. Below is a list of preparations I think you should make before putting any time into link building/onpage changes.
Prepare a baseline
Every SEO campaign must show improvement – whether that means more traffic, more leads or higher rankings. If you don’t get a baseline established from the start, you won’t be able to show improvement over time.
Wake Up the Spiders
Now that you’ve got your baseline, you’re going to need to get the spiderfood ready. Since most likely you are going to be dealing with a site that has probably had little or no updates in some time, the bots aren’t exactly knocking down your proverbial website door to get your new content. Since your client may be on as much as a six week visit cycle, you need to help them realize there is movement in your camp.
Assuming you follow most of these suggestions, you are now armored and ready to start actually modifying and changing your clients’ website. Go ye – take thy rankings and climb to victory!
For a long time I’ve read that there is a difference in how search engines see and index filenames and URLs that contain dashes or underscores. For a long time the general concensus has been that the search engines consider a dash to be simliar to a space, whereas they consider an underscore as no space. If that’s true, then your new page called will_hanke_wins_lottery.htm is going to rank as willhankewinslottery. Had you named it will-hanke-wins-lottery.htm then you’d theoretically have a better chance at ranking for a mixture of those individual words.
But c’mon, do you really believe that with all those algorithm nerds in California can’t figure out how to differentiate between a dash and an underscore?
In my recent SEO seminar, most of the attendees were surprised to hear me tell them that starting a blog is a great way to connect with their customers. Since blogging is becoming more and more popular every day, getting mentions on nationally syndicated shows, being quoted in the news, etc, more and more people are getting familiar with the word ‘blog’.
Problem is, once people hear it enough, they go online or ask a friend what exactly a blog is. Most definitions fall in line with something like “an online diary or journal. people post thoughts about news or events that affect their lives”.
That’s a good definition, but we’re missing something there. When people hear that definition, the words that hit home are ‘journal’ and ‘diary’. They immediately pigeonhole the concept into nothing more than an online version of what they did that day.
When I mentioned blogging as a great way for your website to start ranking better, particularly for long tail searches, they were pretty surprised. Why? Well, they were thinking along the lines of “I changed the baby’s diaper today. Went to the store. Got some turnips” instead of “Saw a great opportunity for one of our widgets to help an elderly lady today at the store” or “ten great ways to use blue widgets when cutting the grass“.
There are plenty of reasons to start a blog for your business, no matter what the industry. Blogging about industry trends will help get you noticed as an industry leader. Blogging about some of the bigger competitors will get you ranking for their name. Blogging about upcoming events and products (in a non-salesy way) will lead you to more customers. Blogging about local happenings, concerts, trade shows, whatever, will get you noticed in your community.
Think beyond the diary mentality. There is an endless amount of material right there on your desk. Keep it fresh, don’t give up, and you’ll see positive results.
This post is for those really small businesses (that are usually based in someone’s home).
I’d define a really small business (RSB) as one that operates out of someone’s home or other residential location. The RSB does not have a ‘main office’ or even a place for customers to drop off checks or view products. A majority of these businesses have a website, and rely on it for most, if not all, of its revenue generation. Most of these businesses have one to five employees.
Since these RSBs rely on their website, and thus their marketing/ranking of their website for a majority of their income, it would make sense that they need to rank well for local terms. It would also make sense that they would prefer not to use their local address (ie home) on places such as Google maps, Yahoo local, etc. – yet they really need to be listed on these sites. Plus, these websites won’t accept PO Boxes for addresses. They want a real physical location.
Well, these businesses can have a ‘real’ address, not a PO box, and can use that street address to add their business to these sites.
Everyone knows that the UPS store will ship things, but you may not know that they also provide post office-type services as well. They have PO boxes, but with a twist. Instead of your address being PO Box 123, you can use their street address and then use a Suite # or Room # to distinguish your business. This gives you a real street address for your business.
For example, my hosting business is run from my house. But I don’t want people showing up at my house, and I don’t want to list my house address for my business on Google maps. So I went up to the UPS store and bought a box, at a whopping $8/month, and now I have a real address which I can list on all the various websites.
Lighthouse Technologies Web Hosting
1243 Water Tower Place
Suite 180
Arnold, MO 63010
I could also say
1243 Water Tower Place #180
or even
1243 Water Tower Place
Room 180
The goal here is to get a physical street address, which this accomplishes.
I should also mention that there are other companies that do this as well. MailBoxes Etc is a good example, and there are other local ones that may work for you. The trick here (pay attention) is not to get the cheapest one, but to get the service that is physically located the closest to the center of your town, or the town you are targeting.
Why? Because when someone searches Google maps (for instance), they may type in something like ‘widgets in Utopia KS’. If your fake PO Box address is located closest to the center of Utopia, KS, chances are you’ll be the first listing for widgets in the area. This, of course, means you’ll have to optimize your business listing to have the word ‘widgets’ on it, which isn’t a hard task.
So how do you find the ‘center’ of town? Easy. Simply type in the name of the town into Google maps. This will give you what Google maps considers to be the starting point of reference for anything related to that town. In most cases, it will actually give you a street address.
Now you can go do a search for local mail box providers (make sure you weed out mailbox manufacturers and sellers, like hardware stores), then get a box there.
It should also be noted that it’s not necessary to get a box in your town. If your ‘target town’ is one of more affluent people, then get a box in that town! Wherever you think more people will search for your products or services, that’s where you need to list your address!
Lastly, there’s no rule that says you can’t have more than one address, neither. If you can afford it, get a box in several target towns!
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Will Hanke is part husband, father, geek and all kickass SEO. Follow on Twitter or stalk elsewhere.
