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

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

This 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.

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.

PPC is fairly easy to set up, it’s quick, and gets you traffic right away.  If you are a short-term thinker, this may be the way to go.  Just realize that there are no long term benefits – it’s money spent and gone.

Link building, on the other hand, is not fast.  Since some sites are not crawled for up to six weeks at a time, a link placed on one of those today may not influence your rankings for two months.  And even then, if you’re on page five for a result, and the search engine finds your link, and it influences the rankings, you may jump to page two or three – still no significant increase in traffic.

But link building has a long-time effect on your overall rankings.  If you were to build 300 links over the course of a month, you’ll see that effort come back to you in increased rankings over time for multiple keywords and keyphrases.

Obviously the rankings you achieve by starting a link building campaign depend on the keywords you choose.  Selecting some that have little competition, such as geotargeted phrases, are more likely to rank on page one quickly.

So it pretty much depends on your end goal.  If you want to put money into PPC every summer, and see no benefit from it during the other three seasons, then by all means do it.  But if you want to get to the top of the organic rankings, a steady push at link building is the way to go.

But today I’m going to tell you about a tip that you can take advantage of today, and it’ll help you today.  But first, a little background in domain kiting.

Go Fly a Kite

There’s a thing out there in the ‘domain world’ called domain kiting or domain tasting.  Basically, it goes like this.  Paul finds a great domain that is a misspelling of another website – say freecrditscore.com.  He buys the domain, forwards it on to a credit score affiliate, and watches to see how much traffic he gets from people fat-fingering the domain.  If it’s a good one (he’s making money) then he keeps it.  If not, he simply requests a refund from the registrar and gets his domain registration fee back.  He put his kite out there to see if it’d get struck by lightning or not.  If not, he wasn’t out any money.  It’s an interesting way to live on the edge, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Buying domains with misspellings is nothing new, but I’ve found a new twist on it that you may be able to take advantage of.

Which brings me to today’s tip.  Something that I discovered only a week ago.

Stealing Traffic Legally

There’s a new domain extension available from most registrars.  It’s the .co extension.  So if you were so inclined, you could go and buy yourdomain.co for around $29/year.  Yeah, it’s a little high, but that’s ok if you’re interested in keeping your brand in check or don’t want others to register your name.

The great thing about the Internet is that so many diverse people use it.  Not everyone is a great typist, some use the hunt and peck method to type in their information.  These are the people that we can target to our advantage.

There are some big companies that haven’t yet claimed their .co domain name.  For those in St. Louis, can you believe:

• KMOX.co
• ecolifestl.co
• KPLR11.co
• RiverfrontTimes.co
• BrownandCrouppen.co
• STLCars.co
• Fox2Now.co

These are just some examples that are available and could bring significant traffic to your website.

Who in your industry is the big hitter?  (If it’s not you,) you should consider purchasing the top .co domains and forwarding them to your website.

I’m Not a Lawyer

Now there may be some instances where trademark law comes into play, but for most domain names, you can probably simply purchase the domain and forward it to your website without problem – especially more vague ones such as autoloans.co or

Your Feedback

What are your thoughts on buying domains for misspellings or domains that others have overlooked?  Sneaky? Unethical? Genius? I’d love to hear what you think.

I’ve dabbled in the flipping world, but in a reverse kind of way – I’m flipping my own sites.

I’ve been enamored by the Internet for many years now.  Over time I’ve bought some pretty killer domain names.  Typically I’d buy the domain with some grand plan in my head, execute it, SEO it and then get bored with it.  Or I’d find another domain name and be off on the new site, forgetting the previous one(s).

Renewals are Reminders

At some point, the registration for the domain name comes due and I’d ask myself, do I want to keep this domain name?  The answer is nearly always Yes.  Usually after renewing the domain I’d tell myself that I need to update that site, but rarely if ever did I go further than that.  Until recently.

About a year and a half ago I started a website in a niche with basically no competition.  It was a rare find and I was eager to get something going with it.  At the time I was messing around a lot with Joomla, so I put up a site and spent some time making it pretty.  I pulled in some RSS feeds with topics I liked and thought the site would take off.  It didn’t.

Then recently the domain came up for renewal, and I remembered how this niche had nearly non-existent competition.

From Jan 1-April 15 I had a total of 654 visitors with a bounce rate of 44%.  Not impressive.

What I Did

So I decided to rebuild the website in WordPress and set to the task.

• A week or so later I had the site ready and published it over the old Joomla site.
• I hired two writers and started putting good content on the site twice a week.
• I trolled Yahoo! Answers and Twitter search and found out what people were asking, then wrote up pages that answered those questions.
• I submitted one article to EzineArticles with my major keyword linked in the footer.
• I started a Twitter account and started following everyone who mentioned the niche or related posts
• I replied to those twitter accounts with a link to a relevant article on my site (if there was one)
• I set up twitterfeed to post to twitter every time there was a new blog post
• I started a Facebook Fan Page for the niche in mid-June
• On Facebook, I added the blog feed to the Fan page
• I started a Facebook advertising campaign, spending on average $5/day.

Traffic Results

From site launch, April 20 to the end of June, I had 4,865 visits and pulled my bounce rate down to under 33%.  So far this month, I’m averaging over 200 visitors per day – well on my way to an easy 50,000 visits by the end of the year.

Other Lessons Learned

We SEOs preach it all the time: Content is King.  The articles I’ve had written are pulling in plenty of visitors.  The search engines love the content and I’m climbing the rankings quickly.

Facebook advertising is cheap.  Since starting the ads, I’ve had 989,499 impressions at a cost of $133.82.  I’ve gained 215 fans thus far, and it climbs every day by about 6.  Worth it?  You bet.

The site isn’t currently making money, but will be soon.  I’ll introduce some non-intrusive ads or sell some sponsorships.  Since I own my own hosting company, the only real expense besides my time is the Facebook ads.  I’ll make that back quick, especially if the traffic continues at this pace.  Leveraging that traffic to get advertisers will not be a problem.

So Let Me Ask Ya This

What sites did you build back in the day that still have great potential?  Are there some really cool domain names just lurking in your repository that could turn into nice revenue?  Do you have a site that could use some updating?

The results can be phenomenal if you just take the time to do it.

Waiting is part of the process.  It’s a painful part for most clients, because while they’re waiting, they’re still writing checks to me for SEO work.  Their level of trust with me is incredible, and I’m appreciative of it.  I’ve done my part to sell my trust to them, and now they wait to see if I can deliver.  Which I do.

In recent months, however, I’ve noticed a trend among my newer clients.  Seems they’re being hit hard by the economy, as are many business owners.  And that I can understand.  They came to me in the first place because their customers were slowly dwindling away and they saw the need to get in front of them again.  The best way nowadays to do so is online. Find a good Internet marketing company that can help them get in front of customers, and they’ll be on the track to profits once again.

Well, if it were only that simple.  Sure, that’s the first step, but there are more.  And some of my clients aren’t fully understanding nor committed to the long haul (as I’m finding out).

I’ve often said that SEO is like a person pulling a train.  Pulling such a heavy thing isn’t easy, and seems impossible at first.  But finding someone (like me) who is willing to take on the challenge is the first step in getting the train moving.  And getting that train to move isn’t easy either.  But pulling and pulling will soon result in a bit of movement.  Slow at first, but as time goes on the pulling gets easier and easier.  Soon the train is moving, (traffic is coming) and the task of getting things moving (sales, conversions, profits) isn’t so hard.  But it takes time.

I used to require a six month minimum from all new clients.  But now I’ve moved that up to one year, and I’ve also bottomed out my exclusive starting price.  This has done a few things for me:

Requiring a one year commitment from clients has helped me weed out some of those who simply wanted a quick fix for their lack of SEO effort and web design crappiness.  No longer am I having to fix a ton of problems before I can even get started on the traffic part.  And no longer do I have clients that want to throw a few dollars at it when times are good.

It has also helped me as a business owner build a stronger relationship with all my clients.  Six months isn’t a long time when you come down to it.  Especially when the first few months of time is used fixing pages, doing keyword research, etc.  They don’t see a lot of results, and they get (understandably) antsy.  These fears are quelled as time goes on and the relationship grows.

Lastly, by setting a minimum price per month to hire me (exclusively), I’ve once again removed myself from those businesses who are just looking for a quick cheap fix, and I’ve set myself up to help those that are willing to put in their portion to the goal (both financially as well as mentally).

Education is a big part of what I do.  I don’t just take your money each month and perform magic.  I tell clients what I do.  I involve them in the process.  I invite them to free classes that I teach.  The more informed my clients are, the better I can serve them.

Once they understand the SEO process, even at a basic level, the more they understand that waiting out the results will yield great benefits.

In the end, we both win.