site ranking

...now browsing by category

 

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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…
  6. 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.
  7. 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 Marketing, Saint Louis, content, local marketing, networking, site ranking, small business, twitter | 2 Responses »
Tags: , , , ,

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 Marketing, SEO, competition, personalities, 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 »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »