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Arnold MO Chamber of Commerce Meeting – What I Maybe Would Have Said

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Earlier this week I attended the Arnold Chamber of Commerce meeting for February. Arnold is a small town of about 20,000 residents, south of Saint Louis in Missouri.

I was surprised to find so many businesses taking part in the Chamber meeting. Several people who had taken my classes were there, so it was nice to see some familiar faces from the get-go.

The meeting included a lunch served by the people at Ponderosa Restaurant and a drink (water for me). There were a few announcements along with the opportunity to introduce the guests (me and many others). I met some nice people and had a good time.

Apparently normally the Chamber has a guest speaker at most of their meetings, however this one backed out, so they decided to do a ‘topic’ instead, and this months topic was Marketing Your Business. Right up my alley, or so I thought.

The first speaker was from DDI Media, a local billboard company. She promoted her billboards and told of her pricing schedule. No mention of ‘marketing’ tips.

Second and third were salesmen from local newspapers. They talked about their great subscription base and blurted out their inflated circulation numbers, all in an attempt to get more advertisers. No mention of marketing tips.

Can you see where this is going?

Next up was supposed to be the ‘Welcome Wagon’, a company that puts (imagine this) ads in a little packet that they give out to all the people who apply for residency permits. No mention of marketing tips.

Last was the good ‘ole Yellow Book. This lady was even worse than the others. She simply read from a flyer that she had handed out and told the business owners about all the great things that YB does. She mentioned (incorrectly) Pay to Click, and Search Ads, although I guarantee I could talk circles around her about her own product. It was funny to watch her read what she was selling when it was obvious that she didn’t know jack squat about it.

So, since there was no mention of actual marketing tips (the “topic” of the day), I’m going to simply pretend like I was asked to also speak.

“Thank you for this opportunity. I’d like to share with you seven tips that you can go back to the office and do today that will help increase your business revenue.

Add your business to Google Maps. Take the time to put in as much information as you can, including your products, services, hours and what kind of payments you take. Add information on what you do, how well you do it, and verify your address through Google’s verification system.
Start asking customers to write reviews about your business on Yelp!, Mixx, and other local-based websites. Don’t fake the reviews yourself, or ask your relatives to do it – those are too obvious.
Set up a blog on your website, and publish something each week (at a minimum). Listen to your customers, and use their questions as fodder for your upcoming posts. Blogging for business can lead to very nice ROI.
Get a Twitter account, and start posting daily messages about your business. Don’t be boring, post things that people will find interesting. Link your account to your website, and set up an account through twitterfeed that automatically posts your new blogs.
Start tracking your website visitors. Add Google’s analytics program to your site and learn where people are finding you. Do you know how many people call you because of your website? …which brings me to number six…
Consider getting a call tracking service. Call tracking lets you get separate phone numbers for each of your marketing campaigns. You can then track that campaign and literally tell how well or poor it did. Doing a direct-mail campaign? Get a phone number that only shows up on your mailer. When people call, you’ll know just how that campaign did. And it’s not expensive.
And lastly, consider attending a seminar on Search Engine Marketing (SEM). You’ll be blown away by the amount of things you can do online that can increase your bottom line beyond what you ever thought possible. There are competitors of yours out there who haven’t heard about SEM yet, but when they do, you’ll be sorry you didn’t get to it first.

Ok sure, some of this may be self-serving in a roundabout way, but hey at least I’m giving real marketing tips.

I look forward to future Chamber meetings, and the topics they’ll cover in the future. I could definitely use some education on things like accounting and such, so I’m sure it will benefit me in the long run.

Posted in content, local marketing, Marketing, networking, Saint Louis, site ranking, small business, twitter | 2 Responses »
Tags: advertising, chamber of commerce, Marketing, meetings, social media

Analyzing an SEO Spammer

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

We’ve all seen the emails, promising us high rankings if we’d just reply. Personally I’ve deleted hundreds of them, ignoring their great offers of near-world peace.

For some reason though, today I thought I’d just check one out. The email was just like the others.

From: Jerry Dennison
Subject: your website
Date: January 21, 2009

We can put your site at the top of a search engines listings. If this is something you might be interested in, send me a reply with the web addresses you want to promote and the best way to contact you with some options.

Sincerely,

Jerry Dennison
Big Block Search

So I thought I’d do a little research on Jerry’s website, and his claims to get me to the top of the search engines. Which is cool, because I really want to rank for the term ‘SEO’. I’m sure if anyone can do it, Jerry can.

First stop, BigBlockSearch.com. It’s a pretty generic website, most likely it is the same landing page as all the other SEO-spam emails I get. There’s a form that I can fill out to find out more information. No information about the company, no other pages. There is a little blurb on the page about Christmas approaching. I guess they mean Christmas ’09. Man, this company is on the leading edge!

There’s two contact us links on the page, both going to linda@. Hey wait, where’s Jerry?

So I fill out the form (Get a free review of your website!) for one of my newer websites, along with the message ‘not sure what you can do but we need more traffic’. I don’t want to leave a phone number, so I leave it blank. Whoops.

Guess I should filled that out. Interestingly, the title bar says Unable to Send E-Mail – CoffeeCup Form Builder. Ah, coffeecup. FrontPage’s cousin.

So I hit the back button, fill out all fields, and hit Submit again. Funny thing, I get the same result. So apparently they aren’t relying on the website to generate many leads, or their site just happens to be down when I visit. Either way, it doesn’t look like my chances are good for my one-word ranking. Darnit.

Next stop: WHOIS. According to them, the site was just registered in December of 2008, its not even a month old. Yet, it says that the site is climbing the Alexa rankings like mad, and that it gets over 3000 visitors a month. Wow, really?

The domain is privately registered, so that’s a dead end. The server is located in China, and when I click through to the 2 other websites hosted on this server, they both come back as Chinese sites. WHOIS gives them an SEO score of 68% (I know it doesn’t mean much, but still, shouldn’t it be 100%?)

Next stop: archive.org. It’s a long shot, but what the heck. Sure enough though, no info.

Last stop: Google. Maybe they’ll have some info for me. I really want these guys to help me rank.

Hey, I’m in luck! My buddy jerry is listed here, linda is mentioned here, and here too. There are some other mentions, but they are all about the same.

Darnit, it looks like my rankings are still far off.

So the big question still lingers, what is the purpose of all of this? They obviously aren’t getting much business from it. 3000+ visitors? I don’t believe that. Especially when their forms don’t work.

My only theory is that they are simply using it as a ruse to gather email addresses for other spam-related mailings. The SEO stuff is just a ruse to get business owners to fill out the form for their email address.

I should also mention here that I could have emailed “Linda” for more info, but I decided that was probably a bad idea. I’m really hoping I’m wrong, and that Jerry (or Linda) will get me to the top of the search engines soon (sarcasm).

What’s your theory?

Posted in competition, Marketing, personalities, SEO, site ranking, spam | 1 Response »

Should I Register My Domain or Build My Site First?

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

I’m surprised how many time this question gets asked on various forums and answer websites. I’ve seen some pretty crazy answers out there, and I think I’ll add mine to the list.

My process is simple: Get hosting. Buy your domain. Develop your website. Launch.

Purchase Web Hosting

Since my business started doing web hosting way back in the 90′s, I’m a bit partial to hosting with my own company. For less than 11 bucks a month you can have everything you’ll need to get just about any website a place to live.

There are tons of hosting companies out there, just do a search and you’ll find plenty. For SEO purposes, I’d recommend staying away from Windows servers, though.

Now, you don’t have to have hosting when you go to buy your domain, but it is highly recommended. We’ll discuss that below.

Making the Decision – Domain Purchase

There are literally thousands of domain names being researched and registered every day. Heck, every hour! If you find a good domain name, you should register it immediately. This is without question the most important step.

Let’s say you’re building a new website for your company. You know your name is available, but you want to get the site up first. You don’t want to have one of those ‘under construction’ banners on your website, and I can’t say I blame you.

Finally you get your site ready, and then you go to get the domain name and sure enough, someone has registered it. What could have cost you $20 bucks or less now may cost you hundreds, thousands, or even worse, the person doesn’t want to give it up. Now you’ve got to come up with something else. That bites.

The Development Period

During the time after you buy the domain and before you launch the website, you can do a few different things.

Under Construction – Back in the early to mid 90′s this was the norm. People would buy a domain name and put up a crazy (or boring) message saying something to the affect of “This site is under construction. Check back later”. Like someone is really going to check back. My recommendation: don’t do it.

Block the Spiders – If you’d prefer, you can simply block all spiders from crawling your page. This will allow you to build your website right on your domain (if you so choose) or you can put up the God-awful ‘under construction’ banner, but it won’t get indexed. I’d only use this method if you are in no big hurry to get indexed. Need to know how?

Park the Domain – Another one I’d probably not recommend. Most domain registrars, when you purchase, will offer you the option to park the domain for free on their server. They’ll put up a splash page with ads and basically make money off any type-ins that may occur.

Probably the biggest reason that parking occurs is because you have purchased a domain name, but haven’t got around to getting the web hosting yet. This is something you need to have prior to getting your domain because they’ll ask you for information (such as name server addresses) when you purchase the domain name.

Splash Page – If you want to at least let the search engines know you exist, and briefly what you do, you can put up a simple page of content (text, not graphics) that explains what your website will be about. This will give your visitors a reason to check back (if they like what you’ve written) and will also be a small bit of fodder for the spiders.

From a marketing standpoint, this is probably your best option. While you won’t have much info out there, at least it’s something. And you can start doing some low-end link building too, which may help you when you finally launch your site.

Conclusion and Cheap Plug(s)

If you come across a good domain, or if you have a business and want to register your name before someone else does, do it. Don’t wait.

If you don’t know anything about registering domains, or need ideas for good marketable domains, just contact me or visit my business website. If you need hosting, I’ll throw the domain in free for the first year. What could be easier?

Posted in domain names, hosting, site ranking, small business, web design | No Responses »

Why Should Business Owners Want Organic Results?

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

Many small business owners don’t understand the huge advantage that SEO gives them over other online marketing methods such as PPC advertising or traffic buying. I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts on this topic. It’s nothing new, but may help some of my newer readers understand the benefits of “being at the top of Google”.

More People are Using the Internet than the Yellow Pages for Local Search

While this may not be a surprise to most of my readers, it should be a jolt to small business owners who are stuck in their ways when it comes to marketing. Since most SMBs have small marketing budgets and little or no knowledge of how to get the best ROI for it, they just assume that the Yellow Pages is still the way to go.

Sorry folks, it’s not. While I encourage any SMB to continue to put their ad in the YPs, they should drastically reduce the amount of money they are spending on it. A simple ad that has phone number and website URL is all you need. Target the local phone book and maybe the large ‘city version’ if there is one. That’s it. Put the rest of that money where more people will see your information – online.

Most Searchers Won’t Go Past Page Two of Google

This applies to all search engines, but since Google has around 70% share of the US search market, I’ll use them.

Most people when searching for something, expect it to be there when they hit the ‘Search’ button. If it’s not, they may go to page two of those results, but most will not venture any further. Instead, they’ll change their search string and start over until they find what they want. So if your business isn’t listed on page one or two, those customers are just going elsewhere.

Being on Page One of a Result is Like Getting a Referral

When someone is looking for something, and you have it, they are more inclined to buy from you simply because you had the information they were seeking. Having good content that answers questions they have is like you talking to them in person. You become a ‘subject matter expert’ and therefore gain trust.

SEO Lasts a Long Time – PPC Stops when You Stop Spending

I was talking with a client last night who has been doing SEO for about a year and a half now. They are so far beyond their competition that it’d take a while before the others could ever catch up. Some of his competitors are doing PPC, which is good, but once they stop spending for those clicks, they go back to a negligable amount of visitors (if not zero).

On the other hand, an SEO’d website could withstand literally cutting their budget for 3-4 months and not lose a lot of ground. Sure, they’d lose some, but the overall effects of it would dwindle over time, not immediately. (This isn’t something I recommend you telling your SEO clients – they may just try it!)

PPC has it’s place in the overall world of search, but it shouldn’t be the hinge you balance your entire marketing platform on. Just like the Yellow Pages, it should be used in conjunction with your SEO efforts, but should not be the main focus.

Top Ranking for Long Tail Keywords is Money in the Bank

As a general rule, the more specific the search, the higher rate of conversion. This means that if you rank at the top of the search engines for ‘blue widget with 12hp motor’, the chances of that visitor buying your widget is definitely higher than someone searching for ‘blue widget’. These longer tail keywords are easy to attain high rankings on, and they bring better overall traffic.

Ranking Brings Brand Recognition

Think about this – if a person is searching for something, and your website keeps coming up at the top, they are going to see your logo several times over the course of their searches. Even if they don’t buy from you on that day, you still had your brand in front of them several times. What is that worth to you?

Location, Location, Location

Just like picking out a physical location for your business, you wouldn’t want some backstreet that no one sees, would you? Same goes for online marketing. You’ve got to be where the traffic is driving past.

Summary and Shameless Plug

While this is far from a complete list of the reasons you should consider SEO, it’s definitely a good start. I’d love to hear what you think about the list, and let me know what I missed.

If you are a business owner who needs to get your website to the top of the search engines, it all starts with a phone call (888-341-2551) or email. Give me a call and I’d love to discuss what I can do, or visit my website at http://www.WhereIsMyBusiness.com

Posted in Marketing, PPC, SEO, site ranking, small business, yellow pages | 1 Response »

Beginner SEO/SEM: You’re Worth More Than That

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

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.

– Jessie B. Rittenhouse

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.

Posted in beginner sem, customer service, money, networking, site ranking, small business | No Responses »

The Epic Dash vs Underscore Battle

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

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?

Posted in beginner sem, content, Marketing, SEO, site ranking | 1 Response »

Missing Meta Description Alert Script

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Whether in haste or just laziness, many times the meta description tags are not added to a page. This happens a lot when a company pays a (cheap) web designer to build their site, but the designer has no clue about SEO. Not having a meta description tag isn’t a deal breaker, but if you want to rank, and you want people to click on your rankings, you need to have them.

If you’ve been hired to do some SEO for one of these clients, I’ve got a nice little script that you can use to help you identify the pages without descriptions.

Part One: Getting all the pages to display a description tag

If you’re lucky, the designer built the site in a way that the header is it’s own file, usually called something like header.inc or header.php. This file houses the top HTML tags, the title tag, any javascript, CSS links, and of course the meta tags. Having one header file is great if you’ve got a top nav menu that you want to be the same across an entire site, or if you just want easier ways to identify your files.

The problem with one header file is that you can’t really hard-code the meta description tag, because then it’ll be the same across the entire site. In reality, every page on your site needs its own unique description. So how can you do this with one header file? Easy. Turn the tag into a variable.

<meta name=”description” value=”We offer the best widgets in the entire St. Louis area…”>

becomes

<?php $pagedesc=”We offer the best widgets in the entire St. Louis area…”; ?>
<meta name=”description” value=”<?php echo $pagedesc; ?>“>

Now that we’ve changed the description to a variable, we can play around with it a bit. First, we need to open a page (lets call it services.php – our services page) and add it’s custom header.

(top of services.php)

<?php $pagedesc=”We offer widget repair services in our fully equipped widget shop…”;
include ‘header.php’; ?>

By putting the pagedesc before the include, it will already have it set for that particular page. Now all we have to do is make one more change to the header file and we’re set with the description tag for every page.

<?php if (!$pagedesc) { $pagedesc=”We offer the best widgets in the entire St. Louis area…”; } ?>
<meta name=”description” value=”<?php echo $pagedesc; ?>”>

Now if a page doesn’t have a description, we can give it one. Albeit generic, at least we’re moving in the right direction, and the search engines will be happier and display a little better description of our site.

Part Two: Setting an alert for your pages that don’t have a description

This can be a pain, particularly if you’re taking over someone elses work, and you are perhaps a bit cloudy on the entire site layout.

What we’re going to do is simply add a few more lines to the header that will email us every time someone visits a page that doesn’t have a description. The email will have the link to the page, and we can then go in and start to fix these pages as they are visited.

(header.php)

<?php if (!$pagedesc) {
$page=”http://www.domain.com”.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
$message=”The following page is missing a description:
Page: $page\n”;
mail(“will@willhanke.com”, “Page missing Meta Description”, $message);
$pagedesc=”We offer the best widgets in the entire St. Louis area…”;
} ?>
<meta name=”description” value=”<?php echo $pagedesc; ?>”>

Now I know there are programs out there that can do some fancy searches and spit out a list of all pages in violation of the page description tag, but since it’s not a deal breaker for web ranking, I like this method. It emails you, and when you have time you can get in there and update the pages that are (at least) being visited.

Posted in helpful scripts, metadata, SEO, site ranking | 3 Responses »

Diapers and Groceries? No! Rankings, Leads and Sales!

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

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.

Posted in beginner sem, business blogging, content, site ranking, small business | No Responses »

SEO Seminar Yesterday

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Yesterday was my first seminar of the fall 2008 season. I may end up doing another, I’m not sure.

I’ve been teaching Internet Marketing now for 4 years. Originally the size of the seminars/class were packed out, but now they are waning. I was teaching one every month, now it looks like maybe 4 a year.

I think part of the problem is perceived value. The seminars are free, and therefore not much value is passed on. I bet if I charged $50 for the seminar, people would be more likely to come. Problem is, I can’t do that as a library volunteer, since its a library sponsored class. I’d have to find another venue, which means costs for me.

I received only good feedback from the class, which is always nice, but I often wonder what happens after the people leave the class. Are they simply overwhelmed by the volume of information they got, and don’t know where to start? Are they overwhelmed to the point that they just say ‘forget about that’ because its so time-intensive? Or do they simply file this in the ‘I need to do this stuff’ category, and probably never do.

I was asked about my fees, which are comparable to most local SEO firms, probably a little cheaper. However, as usual, the fees are received with an “Oh wow” or “Oh my gosh” kind of tone. This probably goes back to the classes being free. The people that do show up are not those that are apt to spend a lot on their business marketing.

It’s a bummer, really. There are so many local businesses that could use SEO to their distinct advantage. I’m continually very surprised by the lack of big businesses that are doing this, giving small businesses in the area a HUGE opportunity to profit, but they don’t see it.

A local furniture store owner, however, has seen it. He hired me late in 2006 after attending one of these seminars, and has seen record months for nearly a year now. Record months, month after month! They are on track to a record year, and they’ve been in business for over 20 years. They attribute this to SEO, no bones about it. They’ve dropped their YellowBook ad size significantly, they’ve added some more ‘hip’ products (like organic mattresses – who knew?) and they’ve ramped up their SEO spending. They are outranking some big furniture stores in the area, and even nationally. They’ve started drop-shipping some items because of their sudden national exposure. All these things have resulted in their best year ever, even with the economy in the dumps! Why don’t other businesses get it?

I implore everyone who has taken my class to take advantage of the information I’ve given you. I don’t care if you hire me, but use the techniques I’ve shown you and watch your business grow. It’s really that easy.

As for upcoming seminars, I will be on an SEO panel for an upcoming blogging convention in St. Louis in September, and I may do another free SEO seminar in October. It may be my last.

Posted in competition, free stuff, local marketing, seminars, SEO, site ranking, St Louis | No Responses »

Saint Louis MO Search Engine Marketing and Optimization