It’s all over twitter – more and more businesses are looking to SEO, social media and other forms of online “advertising” to get the word out about their services and products. And I’ve done my share of proposals for these businesses as well. Some hired me, some didn’t. But it’s always fun to reflect back and see who contacted me throughout the past year. Below is a small but interesting list of companies I did SEO proposals for in 2009.
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Just Who’s Thinking About SEO?
Thursday, December 10th, 2009Saint Louis Sees 16% Rise in Business Bankruptcies
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009News came out today that business bankruptcies in Saint Louis have increased some 16% this quarter. This is apparently below the national average, but still a huge chunk of revenue and jobs going out the window.
I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks talking to business owners about their overall financial and economic situation. As expected, nearly every industry is down for the year. Overall, I’d put the average drop at right around 30%.
A 30% downturn in revenue can really hurt a business. One business was down over 50%. Ouch.
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Upcoming Business Series Announcement
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009More and more businesses are getting online every day. Most of these businesses are doing so only because ‘everyone else is’. This sense of urgency is good, but needs a foundation. There’s nothing worse than a business that has a website simply because their competition does. Online strategy should be learned, discussed and acted upon in order to succeed.
As many of you know, I’m the moving force behind Market Saint Louis, a twice-a-year business conference that focuses on teaching local St Louis businesses the ways of online optimization, advertising and more. Speakers from around the country fly in to share their expertise on various subjects, from SEO to Pay per Click and Analytics. 2010 is going to be even bigger, with the conferences featuring two separate tracks – one for beginners and one for businesses that are already in the game to some level.
The event isn’t cheap (although the pre-agenda tickets aren’t very expensive) and some small businesses may have a hard time shelling out several hundred dollars in this economy just to learn how to spend more time and money on the Internet. But it’s crucial for every business to be online now.
To help quell the fears of those business owners, I’ve partnered up with the Jefferson County Library to teach a series of free classes (yes, I said free) on Online Marketing, Social Media and more. This series of classes will run January through March, and will be very limited both in amount as well as seating.
If you’re wondering just how your competition gets their website to the top of Google searches for items you sell, you’ll learn. If you know your business needs to be on Twitter or Facebook, but you don’t know how to use these tools, you’ll learn. And if you want to grow your online sales, you’ll learn.
Scheduled Dates
Twitter Basics and Tips
Jan 14 – 9:30AM to Noon or March 4 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Learn how to set up a Twitter account and how to ‘tweet’. You’ll learn about some great tools that will help you get more followers, find great information about your interests, and how to utilize some ‘behind the scenes’ tricks to get the most out of your new account.
Marketing Your Business Website
Feb 4 – 9:30 AM to Noon or Mar 25 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Do you wonder why your website isn’t listed on Yahoo! or other search engines? Are you clueless about search marketing techniques that can draw customers to your site? We will cover topics such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), online advertising tips and avenues, along with ways to increase your website traffic along with other offline marketing ideas.
Social Media for Business – Leverage Community to Build Your Brand
Feb 11 – 6:00PM to 8:30PM
Learn how to leverage blogging, video and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to grow your business.
Sign Up Now
All classes have very limited seating and will be at the Arnold branch of the Jefferson County Library. To sign up, call 636-296-5171.
These will be the only classes offered this Spring. For more information on the upcoming Market Saint Louis conference (and to get the cheap ticket price) visit MarketSTL.com
An Open Letter to Manufacturers
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Dear Manufacturer,
You’ve got some cool stuff. So cool, in fact, that many people around the country have businesses that sell your items through their store. You’ve got stuff that’s in demand. It’s hip. It’s high quality. You’re proud of what you build.
You’ve got something that people want; good for you. Yet there’s a problem. You’re so far behind the times that sales are zipping right on past you. Why?
I’m glad you asked.
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Don’t Stop at Two
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009There are business owners that understand what SEO is, how it works, and how to use it to their advantage. These SMB owners are on the leading edge (and I still believe that is the case today – most biz owners have no clue about SEO’s potential impact on their business) and they are a little more willing to try new things. They love the idea that they can rank at the top of Google, Yahoo!, or Bing for their industry’s top phrase. They even understand the importance of the long tail, and ranking #1 consistently for hundreds or thousands of different keywords and phrases.
But I don’t think they understand this: You can decimate your competition for any search. Outranking them is one thing, but completely removing them from the first page of results is very possible. Even better, you can do all of this without going gray/black hat – you’ve just got to be a bit creative.
Face it – getting the top spot on a SERP is great. And at times you’ll even get a second indented result, further tempting the searcher to click over to your website. (This of course depends on a lot of things, including unique page titles, simliar content, etc).
But why stop at two of the top ten spots in a SERP? Why not all ten? Why not push your competition down to page two, where only an estimated 11% ever visit? It’s possible, and I’m doing it right now for some clients. They are totally dominating the entire first page of results in their industry.
Getting Started
There are a few things you’ll need (and hopefully you already have). You’ll need a nice keyword list that you’ve either done yourself or paid an SEM to do for you. You’ll also need access to your analytics so you can see what people are currently typing in to find you.
Armed with those two things, you should continue to build great content, but also start to branch out your link building with these phrases. When asking for a link, anchor it with a keyphrase that you’d like to dominate for. If possible, give the linker a little paragraph about yourself, that includes the same keyphrase. Help them rank their page (that’s linking to you) for that keyword/phrase.
The same goes for sites like CraigsList and BackPage. Build your ads in a way that these pages will rank highly for the term you’re targeting. Visitors to these pages will still end up at your site.
Ranking Other Sites? Seriously?
Yes. Think about this. If every page on a SERP points to you, you are ruling that search. No matter which link the user clicks, they end up at your site. What’s not to love?
There is one thing – be careful of which sites you build links and content on. If there’s heavy competition for something (particularly in the local market) then it may not help you to be ‘another link’ on an already crowded website. Find those sites that cater to your niche and that have very little of your competitors listed.
Also – if you’ve got the money to run PPC, you’ve got yet another opportunity to get on that same SERP. I’m not a PPC expert, but I’d bet having your URL mentioned multiple times on a page would increase the possibility of a click-through.
There’s more than just ranking high. There’s ranking first. And there’s ranking multiple times. And there’s ranking all ten slots. It’s possible, trust me. Push your competition to page two, or three. Why not?
SEO is Now a Team Effort
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009I’m the proud father of four children, ages 11-17. As an Internet Marketer, it goes without saying that there are plenty of computers around the house, and almost always a child parked in front of one at any time.
Children of this age make terrific guinea pigs. They are awesome resources that can find things online that even a seasoned SEO expert may have a hard time finding. Why? Because they don’t use Yahoo!, Google or MSN very much.
Want one of my kids to find something online? Most often, their first stop is YouTube. That’s right. Need info on a person? Forget Yahoo!’s people search, there’s Facebook.
And these kids aren’t really any different than most other teens. Comscore’s May numbers show that YouTube searches are up 4 percent, while Google’s searches dropped 2 percent. Yahoo is down 4 percent, and Microsoft’s sites are down as well.
What’s up? Well, YouTube as I said, as well as Facebook and Craigslist.
Still Growing, Already Dividing
SEO (that is, Search Engine Optimization) is still a pretty new industry. There’s not a week that goes by that I have to explain what it is I do and (very generically) how I do it. People (usually clueless business owners) are fascinated that there exists an entire world based around increasing website traffic and climbing the rankings of Google and such. They had no idea the system could be gamed. (Yeah, I know, gamed isn’t really the right word to use here, but hopefully it gets the right idea across).
But now that there’s an increasingly younger audience to our SEO efforts, we’re starting to see more and more blog posts on things like Optimizing your Twitter profile, or How to turn your Facebook fans into sales leads.
Wait a minute: I thought my job was to optimize your website for certain terms, build links and make the user experience so that it increases conversions (ie ROI).
Now there are Social Media consultants (or “experts”). They help you build up your Facebook profile, tweet for you, and help you create community around your brand. It’s a terrific idea, and one that ultimately supports a business owner’s SEO efforts, but my gosh it’s time consuming. No wonder these people are creating their own industry.
And this isn’t really the first time SEO has divided. We’ve seem people go the way of Linkbait expert in the past, along with many other spin-offs.
Get to the Point, Will
Which brings me to the point of this rant: Choose your battles. Gee, you haven’t heard that one before. But really, how much money can the average small business owner throw at an SEO project? And then on top of that, social media, PPC, viral campaigns, linkbait and video? Forget it.
I’ll be honest with you. There is no one person that can do all of that effectively. No way, no how. It takes a team. Sure, that team may be all quarantined inside a single office, each doing their own little piece of the work, but there’s no way one person can promise a small business owner all of these things his/herself.
If your “marketing guy” tells you that he can do your email blasts, create videos, handle your SEO and run your PPC campaign, you’d better find out if he’s got a team behind him.
Dominating Your Niche
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009I’ve got some clients who are not really serious about their niche. They dabble around with a few hundred bucks a month and think that they’re going to get big gigs from it. Month after month they trudge along but never really get anywhere.
Then I’ve got other clients who are afraid to grow. Their niche in the Saint Louis are is WIDE OPEN, and they see what Internet Marketing can do for their business, and they are afraid. They aren’t afraid to spend the money, they’re afraid that their business will grow and they’ll have to “do more things” like hire people, etc.
And then I’ve got a few clients who own their niche. They are excited about where their website is taking them. They are attending industry conferences and shows, constantly prowling for the next vendor that shows signs of Internet awareness (so they can partner up and dominate even more). These clients are online day and night, learning about their industry, teaching themselves SEO basics (so they can spot opportunity) and they aren’t afraid to email me with questions and bounce ideas off of me.
Those are the clients we all love to have. They aren’t here to joke around. They are here to do business, make money, and dominate their niche. They see the potential in their business online. They see new niches that branch off and strengthen their core, and they dominate them too.
Check out what Gary Vaynerchuk has to say about using the Internet as your business platform and then let me know how I can help you get there.
SEO Seminar ‘Failure’ – Lessons Learned
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009For four years I’ve taught HTML, Blogging, Internet marketing classes and more at the local branch of the public library here in my town. Over the years, I’ve fine-tuned my classes into two hours of jam-packed information. I’ve received “rave” reviews since I started, and have been told many times that I need to get these presentations to bigger audiences. Many that took my classes have said that they would have paid for the info they got in them.
Well, either it’s all gone to my head or there really is a market out there for business owners willing to pay for a solid, quality conference to learn how to get their websites rolling. Or maybe a bit of both.
So after the spring session ended and my teaching classes was off until the fall, I thought I’d make a go of hosting a real seminar/conference, get some real industry professionals to speak, and host an awesome info-packed event for STL businesses.
But I failed. Kinda.
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Upcoming Internet Marketing Seminar in St. Louis MO
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
I’ll be speaking at the upcoming Look at Me Internet Marketing Seminar in St. Louis on June 11. I’ll be talking about SEO and how it can help your business create new streams of revenue.
This seminar is the first of it’s kind in the Saint Louis area, and was created for the purpose of helping businesses find new ways to wade through the recession. It is for St. Louis area business execs, includes a nice lunch and a networking event afterwords.
The event is currently looking for other speakers on various subjects such as PPC, landing pages, and more. Check it out and maybe you’ll learn something!
They Finally Took the Phone Books Away
Thursday, April 16th, 2009In St. Louis, every March and October the Yellow Pages (YP) are delivered to the homes and businesses across the area. These new phone books replace the ones delivered the year prior. Delivery dates may be the same across the country, I’m not sure.
Many of you know that I do some web work on an Army contract several days a week in the Federal Center in downtown St. Louis. Well, I make it a point to watch for the new phone books, which showed up around March 8th this year. Because of the large amount of worker bees here (about 250), they wheel the phone books in on pallets and put them in the hallway. Then the worker bees can just come by and grab a new book (and put their old one in a recycle bin).
This year, I kept tabs on the amount of phone books. Over the period of 38 days, about 16 phone books were taken from the pallet of 200.
Sixteen books.
Just for giggles, I visited a few of the other floors in the building to see how many phone books were still sitting around. Every floor (except for the IRS area) had about the same amount of books remaining on their pallets.
They finally wheeled them out yesterday. I hope they went to a recycling center somewhere.
Mr. Small Business owner, what does this tell you about the future of Yellow Page advertising? Are you still spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on YP ads? Your audience is shrinking, and your money is being wasted.
I have a few clients who are ahead of the curve when it comes to Internet Marketing. They recognized the poor use of their marketing budgets with YP and have since scaled back their spending on these sources, and have put that money into building their online presence through blogging and link building. They are reaping huge harvests on their well-placed seeds.
I’m not saying to drop your YP ad. In fact, I think it’s still a viable source of traffic, particularly if your target audience is over the age of 50. But I am saying don’t put so much money into it any more. A simple ad with your company name, phone number and URL is all you need.
Shameless Plug: Quit wasting money on dying forms of marketing/advertising. Put that money into hiring someone (like me) that will help your business continue to grow and thrive. Create a presence and a following online, provide outstanding customer service, and the customers will come.
