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How do I choose a web design, SEO or social media marketing company?

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Beware of the “One Man Shop”! I met with 4 companies today who each had their website built by “this guy”… ARG! It pains me to see their brand new site they purchase is a complete sour lemon! And they can’t return it. Please please please take time to learn enough about 3rd party evaluation tools to at least be able to do the BS TEST! Please… help your friends and colleagues by sharing this note with your Facebook or Twitter friends! You might just save their business.

A lady who had a website built 6 months ago (graded a 36 with no traffic) said “Jennifer, I can’t afford to get a new website”. My response, ” then you are saying that you CAN AFFORD not to ever generate 1 client from the website you have now”.

Thank you, Jennifer Bagley – CEO

“I don’t care if you go with a different website development firm… I just want you to pick one who knows how to develop websites that perform, please let us help you with an unbiased analysis of the companies of your choice.” Jennifer Bagley

How do I choose a web design, SEO or social media marketing company?

Make a list of key performance indicators (KPI’s) that are going to help you in your decision making process. Here is an example of measurable items (KPI’s) that you can compare and contrast different companies. While there are almost 50 different critical components (as you will see in the complete proposal below) these are some high level KPI’s you can quickly check. Of course you want to evaluate their company site and approximately 10 samples of their client sites (use different price/package ranges – so you can get an idea of what they can do for a similar budget as yours and what they can do for their smallest and largest clients).

Example of a good comparison analysis for web development, SEO and social media marketing:

Company
Sites Grade
Pages
Back-Links
Traffic the lower the better
Price for like features
Security do they stress and monitor
Maint. do they not only host but maintain
Marketing seo/sem, article marketing & social media
Yrs. in Business Size number of staff and revenue

Other factors to consider:

Team Members – You should be working with a company that has the following resources working on your behalf/project – these skill-sets are rarely found in one individual and are required to build you a website that will perform on search engines, attract visitors and convert customers. Be very careful of the “one man shop”.

Web Developer and Database Architect
Graphics and Web Designer
Search Engine Optimization Engineer
Social Media Marketing and Integration Specialist
Project Manager and Coordinator

Example of a good comparison analysis for each web development companies clients.

Web Firm Name:
Client Site URL
Website Grade
Indexed Pages
Back-Links
Traffic the lower the better
Price for like features
Marketing seo/sem, article marketing & social media

If your company is comparing multiple companies we highly encourage you to complete your own assessment similar to the one above. You can utlize www.websitegrader.com or www.alexa.com to gather data on a web development and seo firm’s performance for them and their clients websites. This sampling will help you make an educated un-biased decision based on facts and figures. If you need assistance completing the comparison a Compliments International Business Dev. Consultant will complete this assessment complementary.

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Google Keywords: A great tool for selecting your website keywords

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Google Keywords: A great tool for selecting your website keywords.

Google has great tool for help you understand what terms people are using when they search for things and how much competition there is for a particular term or phrase. Below is a short video on how to use the Google Keywords tool. Several things to keep in mind when watching this video and trying to select keywords or keyword phrases.

First, remember the keyword Trifecta: High Relevance, High Traffic and Low Competition. When selecting your keyword or keyword phrase for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you are not likely to find a keyword or keyword phrase that fits all three. You will have to use some judgment on how to balance between the three. If you are shooting for high relevance in a popular market you are probably going to find a lot of competition for that word. You may want to trade off the high traffic phrases for multiple lower traffic phrase that have less competition. One way to do this is adding a geographic term to the phrase. Instead of going for “locksmith” try for Dallas locksmith, Fort Worth locksmith, and Plano locksmith.

Second, when selecting the keyword or keyword phrase for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the Google Keywords Tool is a piece, but it is not the whole picture. You will also need to go to the search engine, put in the keyword phrase and take a look at the quality of the websites that come up. How optimized are their Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals, how many inbound links do they have, how good are they at writing a post, how many index pages does Google have for that particular phrase.

So having said all of that, here is a short video to get you started on understanding Google’s Keyword tool for Adwords.

I would love to have your comments and feedback, please feel free to leave your ideas, thoughts and suggestions on how this can be improved or other subjects you would like to have posted.

Tags: adwords, keyword phrases, keyword tool, optimization seo, Relevance, search engine optimization
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Business Blogging

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

So why should business blog? now there is a great question, and if you are a business owner and you haven’t yet considered adding a blog to your internet marketing strategy then you should and fast. Why? what is it about blogging that is so important that I would make a statement like that.

First of all, one of the reasons you should add a blog is it provides a personal form of communication with your audience, or in your case as a business owner, your customer. It allows you to create the “expert” factor in your marketing and you can run it on your web site or alongside on a separate domain name, plus you’ll benefit from the increase in traffic or searches that you’ll receive. If that wasn’t enough to get you running out and starting up a blog, Google and search engines in general love blogs, this is because they provide frequently updated and valuable content, and for that reason they get indexed faster than a standard web site and will, as long as you publish good quality content, end up ranking on the first page of Google.

Blogging is an extension of your business web site and allows you to add a personal touch to your web marketing, blogging also allows you a platform to discuss customer service issues or any issue that you believe relevant to your market. If you start to think where your customers get their information from today, you’d realise the value of a number one ranking on search engines.

Think about the Gen X&Y’s, how many of them go to the Yellow Pages to check out business or services? research says none of them do, they “Google” it, so you need to make sure your business web site ranks highly. Blogs allow you to keep the formal and conversational side of your business separate,this is done by running your blog alongside your formal web site. Your blog can be updated daily with information,products or promotions whilst linking to your main web site.

So what are the benefits to a business blog strategy?

Simple low cost PR – Blogs allow to put information on line quickly.

Establish your Expertise – Blogs help Position yourself and your company as the experts in your field and can raise your visibility within your target market.

Customer service & relationships – Blogs are your human face and your voice to the public. Blogs allow you to join customer discussions, respond to concerns, provide tips and insights or receive feedback about your services or products.

Build your online community – Blogs allow you to build a community around your business or product as well as providing an outlet for discussions about you and your business

Promotional tool – Because blogs can be updated frequently and are indexed very quickly by search engines, you can use them to create promotions around your brand or service and create a buzz for your products.

Higher search rankings – Search engines love blogs and your company can benefit from higher search rankings

Blogging is not hard, and it has real benefits for your business once you get your blog established. The most important things to remember with a blog once you start, are be consistent with your posting and provide good quality original content.

Are there any businesses that can’t benefit from a blog? No not to my point of view, so what are you waiting for, get started.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland. To read more articles and get tips and advice on Internet Marketing visit www.mikeandrewconsulting.com

Tags: blogging, Business
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Using Article Distribution Services for Website Promotion

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Article marketing has been around for years. It has worked for many, and will continue to work for others. The concept of article marketing is simple. You have an online business that you want to promote. Now you need to get the word out.

On the Internet, getting the word out means letting potential customers find out where your website is. In other words, it’s all about links. The more links you have on external sites, the easier it is for others to find you. So what does that got to do with article marketing?

You see, when you write and submit articles, article directories allow you to promote your own websites in the author resource box. Usually, you are allowed to leave up to 2 live links in your author signature. Whenever someone reads your articles, and like what you have to say, they will click on the links and visit your website. Here is when you try to sell them your wares.

But before you get to enjoy the benefits of article marketing, you first have to know how to get your articles published. Fortunately, article marketing is so simple that even a fifteen year old can do it. All you need is an ability to write decent articles, and an Internet connection so that you can submit the articles for publication.

The only problem with this traffic generation technique is that it takes up way too much time. If you are a prolific writer, you can write a 300 word article in less than 15 minutes. However, not everyone is a prolific writer. Some are not even comfortable writing in English. So how can these people get into article marketing?

The solution is simple: outsource.

The process of article marketing is time consuming by its very nature. You need time to write articles, and you need even more time to submit your articles to hundreds of article directories. As an online business owner, you have lots of important work to do, like developing partnerships or product development. You hardly have time to sit down and write articles for distribution. So to give your internet business the kick start that it needs, outsource your article marketing activities. In other words, leave the grunt work to professional service providers.

When you do that, two things will happen. One, you find that you don’t have to worry about doing it wrong. You can skip the learning curve for article marketing altogether and head straight towards your goal, which is to bring in the traffic. Professional article distribution service providers will be able to write search engine optimized articles for you to help you promote your business. They will also create your author resource box for you so that the articles contain live links to your site.

Secondly, you now find that you are free to work on other aspects of your business. This has been mentioned earlier but it’s so important that it’s worth mentioning again. You absolutely has to spend your precious time working on business development. You are the owner of the business. If you don’t develop your business, no one is going to do it for you. So spend your energy where it’s most needed.

When done right, article marketing can bring a steady stream of visitors to your website. How you want to monetize this traffic is up to you.

For affordable Article Distribution Service starting from $6, please visit our distribution site – List of Article Directories

Tags: Article, Distribution, Promotion, Services, using, website
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How to Get to the Top of Google

Friday, June 18th, 2010

If you’re doing business online you need traffic – human visitors coming to your website, viewing what you have to offer, and making a purchase of your products or services. The way that most potential customers find your business is through a Search Engine such as Google. Those businesses that occupy the first ranking position on the first page on Google are more likely to get a greater share of traffic than those that are further down the first page, or even worse, on another page.

No one can guarantee that you’re going to get to Number 1, the top spot on Google. However, many people do achieve the top position on Google and other search engines through hard work, persistence and the right knowledge. So what factors can help you to get to the top of Google?

REPUTATION: Your reputation comes from what Google and other reputable sites think of your site and its content. Google really care about reputation and those sites that make it to the top of Google are considered to be the best and most reputable for that search term.

Reputation is created through good practice. Your reputation can easily be damaged through poor hosting, lack of branded domain name, swathes of unoriginal content and so-called black hat SEO techniques. Keeping a relevant blog, providing relevant articles or information, linking to reputable sites and having those sites link to you are ways to develop a positive reputation with Google.

AGE: This refers to age of your site, or most often, the age of the domain registration. If you’re planning to start a new website, it’s often better to get the website registered before you start working on the site. This way, Google values the age of the site from it’s registration date, not from the time that you start filling the site with content.

LINKS: Google likes you to be popular in order to place you top of their rankings. If your website receives lots of links from sites that operate with relevant areas to your own website content, then Google smiles upon you. This type of link is sometimes known as an inbound or incoming link. Although not as valued as inbound links, outbound links (those you make from your site to others) are also helpful to your ranking. Again these are tested by Google for their relevancy to your website subject matter and their own reputation and quality.

CONTENT: Google’s spider crawlers that ‘read’ the web actually assess and evaluate the quality of the content of your website. They know if you’ve endlessly repeated text, if you’ve just copied content from somewhere else and if you’ve overstuffed your content with keywords. Google likes high quality content that’s fresh, relevant and original.

These four areas all help Google to create a perspective on your website. If Google has a negative opinion of your website and its content, you’ll have to work very hard to get a positive one. If you want to get to the top of Google, you’ll need to continually work on all four of these areas to obtain and maintain the top spot on Google.

Ben Norman is a UK Based SEO Expert and Google Consultant who specialises in helping businesses to significantly improve their online visibility.

Tags: black hat, blog, business online, doing business, domain name, domain registration, google, human visitors, number 1, other search engines, persistence, relevant areas, relevant articles, reputation, right knowledge, search engine, search term, traffic, website content
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Targeted Web Traffic, or ” I Know What You Didn’t Do Last Summer “

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Picture The Scene.

It’s a hot summer’s day last year. There you are at the latest Internet Marketing seminar. You’re thinking “This is it, I’ve messed around too long with this thing “.

” I’ve bought my site, read some forum posts, even found some free ebooks on how to monetize my site in the quickest time possible. I read the ebooks. Seemed like good stuff. But I’m still not making money “.

” That’s why I’m here. I’m determined. I’ve spent a grand on this seminar and all the top gurus are there, this’ll take me over the top to Internet stardom! “.

So, you sit there at the seminar, wide eyed, taking notes so fast you can barely read your own writing. One speaker after another tells you to focus on generating targeted traffic to your web site.

It’s the mantra of the weekend.

Targeted Web Traffic.

” These gurus really know their stuff “, you say to yourself, ” When I get home, I’m openin’ a whole new can o’ kickbutt!”

You’ve learned so much, your confidence exploding. You get home late after the seminar. Just got to get some rest.

Next morning, you wake up, still inspired but confusion replaces the confidence of yesterday.

” What was it they said? Yeah, that’s it. Targeted web traffic “.

” Now, how d’you do that again? What do you do first? Squeeze page was it? Can’t remember…oh, no, if I do it wrong, I’ll never have another chance”.

Paralysis sets in. Tail between legs, the lukewarm can o’ kickbutt goes gingerly back in the fridge.

One Year Later.

Your buddies call out ” Hey, Got that targeted traffic yet, Dude? “.

That sinking feeling comes again. The same feeling you had last year when, again, you didn’t DO what you learned.

You can learn all you want but ultimately, unless you DO SOMETHING with it, you won’t move on. Even if you fail, you can always get up and try another strategy. Don’t let the paralysis get you.

To Get You Started

Write some articles on your computer. Don’t try to be good, just write them.

Next, submit them to article directories and include your web site link at the bottom.

Now, while you wait for those articles to send targeted traffic to your web site, write some more.

DO IT NOW, so your buddies can no longer say ” I Know What You Didn’t Do Last Summer! “.

You can get “How To Increase Targeted Traffic To

Your Web Site In Just 5 Days” , your free 5-part mini course here: http://www.getfreetargetedtraffic.com

Tags: Didn't, Know, Last, Summer, Targeted, traffic
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A Link Strategy for Outbound Links

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Helping Boost Your Pages’ SEO Score

Most people aren’t aware that outbound links can have a major impact on how well their site ranks with Google.

Coming to terms with how links works in regards to Google PageRank is very important and a much under-used strategy for gaining search engine dominance. Using bad linking can cause what is known as unnecessary PageRank bleed, which will result in links sending less PageRank to the pages you really want to send it to!

Sounds complicated? Let me explain this in simple terms.

We are going to use a hypothetical situation here, because no one outside of Google can be certain of exactly how Google uses Page Rank.

Let’s say your page has 100 points of PageRank value (PR) to spread around. If you have ten links on your page, you can pass ten points of PR to each page you’re linking to.

If you have about 100 links on the page, you can only pass one point to each link! Remember, internal links also pass PageRank, so you don’t want to bleed too much of your PR into your outbound links. You should conserve as much PR as possible to be passed on to your own internal pages, and to other sites you own.

Let’s for example say you are citing a few resources as references in an article you are going to be putting on your site. You might not want to pass any of your valuable PageRank to these sources, because this does nothing for you.

The only real exception would be if you were linking to an authority site with a good PageRank, because it’s theorized that linking out to quality sites also gives you credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

But if you’re linking to sites that aren’t of the highest quality, you can prevent the bleeding of PR to these pages by using the nofollow attribute on these outbound links. Using nofollow will cause most search engines to ignore that link as if it doesn’t exist at all.

You may often be tempted to use the nofollow attribute on links that you send out to traffic trade partners, but this is deceptive and unfair. It is not a great idea to do this, because one of the main purposes of reciprocal linking is to gain backlinks.

If they’re linking to you properly, and you link to them with a nofollow tag, then they really aren’t getting any value from your link to them. If you’re trading links with other sites and you intend to use the nofollow tag on these links, it’s important to state this up front. Some sites won’t want to exchange links if you do this, so keep that in mind.

Something else worth paying attention to is where links appear on your page. If you want to be sure to pass along as much PR as possible to a certain link, you should make sure that link is not in a long list of links with no other text between them. Search engines see long lists of nothing but links as being a bit spammy, so they tend to weigh these links with less importance. A link that is inside a paragraph of text is typically given more weight, because it looks like a more natural link. It looks like a news site citing a reference, or a writer linking to a particular resource.

By being careful with your outbound linking strategy, you can maximize the PageRank that’s sent to the pages you really care about, while minimizing the bleed of PR to pages you don’t. This is why it is so important to carefully plan your outbound links.

Paul Smithson is the founder of Intellimon and the driving force behind the best-selling XSitePro web site development tool (http://www.xsitepro.com). Paul has set up five multi-million dollar companies, one of which is now owned by the BBC. His areas of expertise include business strategy, e-commerce, on-line and off-line marketing, software development, and maximizing the potential of on-line businesses. Copyright (c) 2008 Paul Smithson

Tags: Link, Links, Outbound, seo, Strategy
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The amount of knowledge and information required to do a WordPress Blog post-hacking repair is large and above the heads of many WordPress Blog owners.

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

The amount of knowledge and information required to do a WordPress Blog post-hacking repair is large and above the heads of many WordPress Blog owners.

People with Internet and web experience of all levels have worked to make sure that their websites, web service accounts and browsers were as safe as they could be from computer hackers. However, the hackers practice an old baseball saying which goes, “If you want to be a success you have to hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

The weakness that the hackers have found is the WordPress Blog. Many may have never considered a blog to be worthy of a hacker’s attention, yet with the way that advertising and marketing dollar potential have soared, that’s what sets a hacker off on their hunt for a victim.

The hacker attacks on WordPress Blogs take the person who wants to come to a particular blog to a different site that’s full of ads, many of them obscene and many of them virus filled, which obviously does not present what was the assumed landing point blog in the best light. In fact, one hacker attack, no matter how quickly it’s spotted and dealt with, can destroy all the work that the owner of that blog has done. If it’s a blog full of content with years of archive material, a hacker’s attack will turn all of that work into worthless untrustworthy words.

The attacks launched on WordPress Blogs by hackers get even worse for the blog owners. Google, for example, when (not if) their robots detect something suspicious about a WordPress Blog will include the following in the search result for that WordPress Blog.

“This site may harm your computer.”

If a person clicks on that phrase, which appears as a link within the search result listing, they will be taken to a page that will repeat the warning of harm to their computer and suggest that they go to another site or blog that came up in their search results.

Even if a WordPress Blog owner catches the damage quickly, the time it will take to repair that blog’s reputation will be costly at a variety of levels. People will remember the warnings of computer harm no matter how strongly it’s presented that all with that WordPress Blog is well. A loss of blog traffic will mean a loss of ad revenue. In many cases this could mean the loss of advertisers since many affiliate ad programs require a specific level of traffic activity.

WordPress Blog owners make the mistake of thinking that since the warning signs that their blog has been hacked are so obvious that they’ll be able to catch the problem before it becomes a major disaster. They would have to be proactive rather than reactive and monitor their WordPress Blog every minute of every hour of every day. Just five minutes under a hacker’s control can destroy the connection that WordPress Blog had made with the thousands of people who visit it at any point.

While WordPress does the best they can with security updates, that’s still just a reactive option for the WordPress blog owner.

Compliments internet developer and expert Chris Heney, with 15 years experience in the development of programs that assist and educate people, has created WordPress Secured.

The amount of knowledge and information required to do a WordPress Blog post-hacking repair is large and above the heads of many WordPress Blog owners.

Tags: archive material, baseball, computer hackers, google, hacker attack, hacker attacks, marketing, phrase, reputation, robots, search result, service accounts, virus, web experience, web service, websites web, wordpress blog
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Fundamentals

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Why is SEO important?

In the United States

Number of monthly newspaper circulation – 28.4 million
People who watched TV monthly- 285 Million
Number of monthly internet searches – 14 Billion (with a B)

So where to people go to search?

Distribution of searches

Google 63.7%
Yahoo 20.5%
Microsoft 8.3%
Ask 3.8%
AOL 3.7%

How do search engines work?

If your web pages or web site is not Search Engine Optimized so that it is indexed properly you are not going to be found. When you search Google, you don’t search the web, you search a copy of the web. Google sends out requests to all the i.p. addresses, then indexes all the words that are on those pages and saves a copy of the page on their server. When you do a Google search you are actually searching their server, not the web. When you search a particular phrase, Google will match that phrase with its index of words and will send you back results. These results will be ranked based on their formula and may be different based on whether you are logged in to Google or not, your geographic location, the browser you are using, operating system, and hundreds of other factors.

Definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

A set of methodologies that make it easier for search engines to FIND, INDEX, CATEGORIZE and RANK web content.

Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

Content is reachable and readable by search engines
Content is added consistently and often
Content is organized logically – themes/categories
Keywords exist in content and internal text links
Quantity of quality sites linking in
Monitor, adjust

What is a SERP (Search Engine Results Page)?

This is the page that comes off of the search engines server when you type in a particular keyword phrase.

If it can be searched, it can be optimized !!!

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tri-fecta

Keywords
Search Friendly Site
Link Building

In finding keyword phrase you want to get in the mind of your customer. Depending on what phase they are in will depend on what keyword phrases you will want to optimize for. If they are in the research phase you will want to optimize for reviews, studies, etc. If they are in the buying phase you will want to optimize for sales, guarantees, and product names.

What phase are they in?

Research
Consideration
Buying

You must find the keywords that your customers use to find your products/services. Brainstorm based on solutions & customer needs, interview or survey customers, review current web analytics, poll sales & customer service staff, review competitor content. The key is you want to convert them, or a high conversion rate.

Some tools for keyword phrase research include:

Free: Google keyword tool, Google Insights, Google Ad Planner, freekeywords.wordtracker.com

Paid: Wordtracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com, SEMRush.com

Create a keyword glossary ranking the phrase with traffic, relevance and competition.

So where do you want to use the keyword phrases once you have selected them?

Title Tags
Headings
Paragraph titles
Keywords in body of copy
Anchor text in links
URL
Image names
Image alt text
Image description
Meta description tag

Be careful not to keyword “STUFF” by putting the keywords too many times. The title tag is the most important location for a keyword phrase. Make sure the important keywords are to the left, 8 to 10 words or 65 characters, focus on 1 or 2 keyword phrase per page. Each page should have a unique title tag and meta description. Follow this link for more ideas on How to Write a Post.

Include your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in all of your digital content. Text, Documents, Images, Videos, Blogs, Media Coverages, Social News, Bookmarks, etc.

Summary:

Research customer driven keyword phrases
Create a keyword glossary
Consider searcher intent & where they are in the buying cycle
Use the keyword phrases in the Title, URLs, body copy, etc.
Extend keyword SEO to all digital assets both on-page and off-page

Tags: google search, keyword phrase, optimization seo, search engine optimization, search engine results, search engines work
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