Max Response Media - Maryland Internet Marketing

Why a Simple 5 Page Site is the Last Thing Your Business Needs

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:20:00 GMT

Pretty odd title coming from a company that, among other things, creates websites as one of its services. But one of the things I hear time and time again from business owners typically sounds like this: "I just need a simple, 5 page website". The number of pages is a bit unimportant...could be 10, 20, whatever. What's more important is why thinking like this is just a way to set up your business's online marketing efforts for failure and how to avoid wasting money on a website that doesn’t really help your business.

A lot of business owners I come in contact with say that they just need a "simple" website - something with a homepage, about us, services page, and perhaps a few others. I don't know if "simple" sometimes means "I don't want to spend a lot of money" or if it's more a case of not wanting something too extravagant or complicated. The good news is that you can have a more effective website created without having to spend a fortune. But let's talk about why a "Simple 5 page website" is probably going to be a not-so-great investment for your business.

Not Updated Often and No Reason for People or Search Engines to Return
First of all, one of these simple sites is probably going to be a static website, meaning that there's no new content added to the site over time. It's just the same pages, same list of services and so on. The problem is that this doesn't give people a good reason to come back to your website. The same is true for the search engines, which tend to visit frequently updated websites much more often (for obvious reasons). Many people ask why they're not getting much traffic to their website. The better question is "Are you giving people a good reason to come there in the first place?”

Less Opportunity to Rank for a Variety of Keywords
Having just a handful of pages also limits your site's ability to rank well for a variety of keywords that people might be using to search for the types of products and services you offer.

Less Credibility for Your Business
A static website without any updates is also less credible these days. Would you rather purchase from a company with a website that looks like it was built 8 years ago (with copyright info from 8 years ago) or a website that just posted a new article this week on some topic that helps you better understand how their product or service can help you?

Less Chance to "Tell Your Company's Story"
Only having a few pages on your site doesn't really give you a chance to fully tell your company's story. And by company story, I really mean how your products or services impact the lives of your customers. What if you ended up on a chiropractor's website and it just had a handful of pages and a contact form. Then you find another one that has all the basics, plus several case studies about how the doctor was able to solve her patients' back pain, work injury or other problems. Who would be more likely to earn your business? Again, if you have any sort of customers (and by definition every business does), then your website is an excellent way to share your success stories and case studies with your website visitors, to toot your own horn a little bit and convince prospects why they should do business with you.

Lousy Benefits for the Costs Involved
The most insidious part of all of this is that some web companies will sell you a "simple 5 page website" with zero regard for how well it's going to help your business. And the cost? Nearly the same as what you could pay for a more effective system.

Instead of investing in a "simple 5 page website", we recommend that if you're a business owner interested in setting up a new website or investing in a website re-design, you should get in touch with a professional web marketing company (such as us...shameless plug) that offers web design AND web marketing services. Working with such a company, you'll discover several options for making a more effective, more profitable website. It will also help shift your thinking in terms of how to best use your website so that it becomes a powerful sales and marketing tool for your company that converts casual website visitors into lifelong customers.

Why a Website is a Key to Your Small Business Success

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:27:00 GMT

Every so often, I come across an established business that still doesn't have a website. For one reason or another, some business owners don't think they need a website for "their kind of business". And while that might be true for a handful of businesses I can think of, the vast majority of companies could greatly benefit from having a website, especially if that website is setup in such a way that makes it easy for the business owner (or staff) to use without spending months learning HTML and so on. Here are just a few ways that a website can be a key component to your business success.

1. Market Your Products and Services - The first and most obvious is way is that a website helps you market your products and services. More and more people are searching online first when looking for companies to do business with, even for local businesses where you might expect phone books or other traditional sources to be used more often. If you can make a case for being in the phone book, you should definitely be online as well.

2. Educate Your Market - Unless you sell a low-cost service or commodity product, you'll probably need to educate your customer a bit before they decide to make a purchase. No matter what the product or service, a website is a great way to educate your market about how to purchase whatever it is that you offer and help them understand why your company is the best choice for that purchase. You can also demonstrate the value your product or service offers, which is especially helpful for higher-priced items that might otherwise cause sticker shock unless that price is adequately justified.

3. Establish Expertise - For most businesses (and especially those that charge higher fees), people generally want to know that they're dealing with an expert in their field. A website can be a great way to demonstrate your expertise through publishing articles, before and after photos, videos or other types of content.

4. Provide "Social Proof" - Social proof is simply the idea that all of us are more likely to believe what someone else says about you and your company versus what you say about your company. A website is a fantastic way to provide this "social proof" through the form of testimonials. If you have an established business, you probably already have plenty of testimonials you could use on your website (or could easily get testimonials). This would go a long way to separating your business from the competition and helping to establish your credibility. Speaking of which...

5. Establish Credibility - A website helps your credibility in a number of ways. First, re-read those sections on establishing expertise and social proof. But those are just a couple of ways. The other thing to keep in mind is that these days, people expect a "real business" to have a website, with its own website address (not a site hosted on some freebie service). People seeing your newspaper ad or other advertising may want to visit your website to see examples of your work, learn about your process or request more info. Not having a website might make you seem like a "less serious" business than the competition.

6. Provide Customer Support - Your website can also serve as a customer support aid. By publishing information like frequently asked questions or having web forms that allow customers to contact you in a non-interruptive way, you can take back control over some of your time while still addressing your customers' requests for assistance, questions and so on.

7. Stay "Top of Mind" - It's more expensive to get new customers than it is to keep existing customers. So it's a good idea to stay "top of mind" with your satisfied customers and even your prospects. A few ways of doing this include using email marketing, blogging or having a customer message board. All of these are great ways to keep your customers coming back to you and your site over and over again and keeping your business on their minds. You never know when they might come across a friend that could benefit from your services or when they'll need to purchase from you again.

Don't Choose Dumb Keywords for Your SEO Campaign

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:45:00 GMT

I was reviewing some requests for SEO services recently and couldn't help but notice that many...and I mean a LOT of the requests were from companies looking to rank for super generic terms. I mean keywords like "employment", "recruiting", "jobs" and so on. Here's the problem...

Do Any of Those Terms Indicate Buying Behavior
or That Someone is Ready to Take Action?

Nope.

If you're like most businesses, your profits are based on making sales, not just getting traffic to your site. I suppose that if your business was purely based on advertising, then it might make sense to go after really generic terms like these, but I'm still not sold on the idea, even in those cases.

SEO is far too time consuming and far too expensive to waste time targeting terms that are unlikely to bring qualified visitors to your site that are ready, eager and willing to buy. I say "buy" but that could also be "request a quote", "call for a free consultation" or whatever action it is that you want your website visitors to take.

Keep in mind that when you go to the doc or your accountant, you're relying on them to guide you down the right path based on what you're trying to do (feel better, pay less to Uncle Sam, whatever). The same is true if you're working with a savvy SEO consultant or company. A better approach is to let them know where you're trying to get to, then let them propose a few suggestions for how to get there, based on their unique and specific experience. Then evaluate their recommendations and adjust accordingly until you both reach a workable solution.

Any SEO that agrees to get your site ranked for something as broad and vague as "employment" clearly doesn't understand how people search online or what the real goals are for most businesses. And even worse if they say they can do it for $99 a month. :)

Needless to say, I didn't take on this project or any of the others like it that came my way.

But it does make for good blog fodder.

Beyond Google Sitemaps-4 Powerful But Often Overlooked Uses for Google Webmaster Tools

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:20:00 GMT

Google has a great little tool that (surprisingly) many of the business owners I come in contact with still don't know about. The tool is Google Webmaster Tools and there are tons of great reasons why you should be using this tool for your website too. The most obvious is for Google Sitemaps, but let's look at a few additional uses for Webmaster Tools aside from allowing you to add and monitor sitemaps.

1. Keep an eye on your rankings, traffic and which terms are bringing yout he most traffic in a given month (at least from searches on Google)

One of the best reasons to use Google Webmaster Tools is to keep an eye on some of these core website stats. Webmaster tools gives you insight into your site's rankings for specific keywords, how much traffic you're getting for those keywords (as a percentage, not raw numbers) and many other useful points of data. And as they say, you can't improve what you don't track. This is a no-brainer.

2. Determine which keywords to focus on for your SEO and/or PPC marketing campaigns

Since one of the things Webmaster Tools tells you is which keywords you rank for, why not use that info to help guide your SEO and PPC efforts? For example, if you find that your site is being visited for a particular keyword and your site shows up a few pages deep in the search results, if that keyword is valuable to you, it might be a good idea to focus on optimizing for that keyword to improve your ranking. After all, if you're on page 3 or 4, you're nearly "in the game".

3. Find out which pages are being linked to from other sites online

Of course, for SEO results, linking is one of the most important factors. Webmaster tools can show you a "Google's eye view" of which sites are linking to which pages on your site. And keep in mind that this info is different than what you'll find using the "site:www.websitename.com" search operator. You'll likely find many more sites linking to pages on your website that show up in Webmaster Tools, even though it's a well-known fact that Google doesn't show all of the backlinks to a site when using the search operator mentioned earlier. Another part of this tool shows you the anchor test being used to link to your pages too. Good info to know, especially if you need to reach out to those sites to get your anchor text changed or to provide them with additional content to get even better links to your site.

4. Find out which pages are giving 404 page not found errors

This is also a no-brainer. Find these 404's, then redirect those links to working pages on your site. Basic SEO/webmaster stuff, so 'nuff said there.

Now keep in mind that you'll need to verify your site for some of these features to be made available to you (which is a good thing, don't want just anyone to be able to see some of this stuff). It's pretty simple, just upload a blank HTML file with a filename that the Webmaster Tools interface specifies. It looks for the file on your website and figures that if you can upload to the site, you probably own it.

Recommendation: Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, add your site and a Google Sitemap, and check this tool periodically (once a month is probably good enough for most sites).

How to Know if Your Business Really Needs a Website

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:24:00 GMT

These days, more and more people are realizing the insecurity of having a traditional job and are venturing out on their own to start their own business, whether it's a part-time endeavor to supplement their income or a transition to becoming a full-time entrepreneur. You may be wondering if having a website is really the best investment to make at this point in your business. As a web marketing consultant, I'm obviously a bit biased in this regard and feel that having a website is an important part of most modern businesses. That being said, if you're still on the fence on this decision, here are a few things to consider as you make this decision.

1. Are People Searching for Your Products/Services Online

The first thing to consider is whether or not people are even searching online for the types of products or services you offer. Sure, pretty basic, but still something that needs to be considered. For most businesses, the answer is an emphatic "Yes!". But to get a good sense for how many searches there are each month, you can always use a free tool such as the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to get an estimate on actual numbers.

2. Are Your Competitors Currently Marketing Online

In addition to the number of searches done each month online for your type of business, another key indicator that you might need a website to remain competitive is if you notice several competitors who have an established online presence. If your competitors are online, and especially if they generate a good number of sales via their website, that's a strong indication that you'll want to have a website for your business also (keeping in mind item #4 below).

3. How Long Will it Take You to Recoup Your Investment in a Website

As with any business investment, it's also a good idea to consider how long it will take for you to recoup your investment in a website. I say "investment" because typically a website will come with a non-trivial price tag. Getting a website is simply not like buying phone service or some other relatively low-cost commodity. Generally you pay for a website once to have it designed and setup, plus a smaller ongoing fee for maintenance and support. Meanwhile, you'll be using it to generate sales throughout the life of your business.

It's good to know how many sales you'll need to cover the initial cost of the website. For any real business, the monthly fee for maintenance and support will be inconsequential since that's typically pretty small. If you make $500 profit per sale and the website costs $1500 to have setup, that's a measly 3 sales to break even. If you can expect those 3 sales over a reasonable period of time, then investing in a website is a no-brainer since additional sales thanks to the website are pure profit you might not have otherwise attracted.

4. Are You Willing to Use Your Website as an Integral Part of Your Sales & Marketing System

The most important consideration is that you actual use the website as part of your sales and marketing system. Like most tools, having a website isn't a silver bullet and it's not going to do anything if you just sit there. However, if you incorporate your site into the rest of your sales and marketing system, you'll likely see excellent results.

Using your website to provide automated, on-demand customer support via frequently asked questions, training or other methods is one option. You can also use email marketing form your website to keep convert prospects into sales or foster repeat purchases or referrals from past customers. And don't forget directing people to the site via your other marketing methods such as direct mail, classified ads and so on. If you're planning to use your website in this way, then having one definitely makes sense.

If you're hoping to "build it and they will come", then you should probably save your money.

How and Where to Start With Marketing Your Business Online

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:20:00 GMT

I've been talking to more and more business owners who are interested in learning more about marketing their business online. I guess that's to be expected with the way the economy is going. Marketing online has so many advantages in terms of cost, being able to track what's working, and being able to reach people EXACTLY at the time that they're looking for your products or services.

That being said, it can be a real challenge learning this stuff. I was thinking about this the other day. There are so many nuances to online marketing, or even particular aspects of Internet marketing like pay per click, search engine optimization, social media and so on. I realized how daunting a task it must seem to be to get started, or to at least learn enough to be able to choose the right company or consultant to help you navigate the online marketplace.

So I thought, "What would I tell a prospective client if I were sitting in front of them as far as how to get started with online marketing". I'm assuming the business has a website already or is planning on having one created. I say "assuming" because you really don't NEED to have a website for some online marketing methods (e.g., email marketing). But for most businesses, you'll want to have a website. So with that little caveat out of the way, here's what I would suggest:

1. Decide exactly what you want your prospects to do once they visit your website.

Sounds simple, but most websites aren't focused on this. You really need to think of your website as a lead generation device. It provides information, testimonials, perhaps prices, and other information for potential customers. Okay, then what? What do you want them to do next? Do you want them to pick up the phone and call? Come in your store? Submit a message via your contact form and make an appointment? Whatever that is, you need to be sure that your website is setup in such a way that it makes it AS EASY AS POSSIBLE for the website visitor to take that action.

So if you want people to pick up the phone and call to make an appointment, be sure simple things are covered...like having your phone number on every page. Same goes for your contact form, if that's the primary action you're looking for. I know, I know, you already have a "Contact Us" page on your website, right? But even that single little click seems like a lot of "extra work" for your website visitors and some portion of them are probably leaving your site as opposed to submitting the form or calling you. Easy fix. The whole game is to make it as easy as possible for website visitors to convert - convert into calls, contact form submisisons, or whatever action you're shooting for.

2. Learn how get traffic to your site - choose 2 or 3 methods and implement.

Now that you have a site that hopefully has a good chance of converting website visitors into sales, it's time to get some traffic to the site. There are a bazzillion and one ways to drive traffic to websites. So I'd first suggest learning about the pros and cons, ups and downs of each method. This sounds like a good idea for the next blog post, so keep an eye out for a post on that in a few days. However, once you know the ins and outs of traffic generation methods, just pick 2 or 3 and test them out. I suggest a few because you never want to have all your eggs in one basket. But you don't want to try everything at once because you'll just drive yourself crazy unless you have a huge staff to help out.

3. Test and track everything.

This is where people tend to drop the ball, unfortunately. So we have a site that will hopefully do a good job of converting visitors to leads, sales, etc. And we've done (or are doing) what it takes to drive traffic to the site. Well now we need to measure the results and see how well our site is converting those website visitors. I think a lot of business owners skip this step because it's not something they include in their other marketing. The newspaper guy or phone book sales rep isn't going to tell you how to track the effectiveness of your ad, because most likely, it converts at an abysmal rate. So people neglect to do this with their online marketing too.

The thing is, tracking is dead simple with things like Google Analytics or the stats package that's built into our online business builder tool. With today's economy like it is, it's not time to be just throwing darts and hoping something works. Instead, why not track the results and identify areas of improvement? On which pages are people entering or leaving your site? How long are they staying? How many "actions" are you getting for a given number of visitors? As they say, what you measure improves.

So if you're a new business or an established business interested in online marketing, this is the rough plan I'd suggest. Keep an eye out for a more in-depth post covering more on item #2 above.

The Must-Know Numbers for Measuring Your Website's Performance

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 02:49:00 GMT

I wrote an article on 5 Strategies for a More Profitable Business Website awhile back that ended up getting posted on quite a few sites online. After checking out some of the comments on one particular site, it seems like a follow up article on tracking would be a good idea, specifically focused on Google Analytics. If you're not using Google Analytics, this free service is a powerful way to get insight into how well your site is performing. But since there's so much information that Analytics can provide, let me give you a few tips for which metrics really matter and what you should try to improve.

Overall Traffic

There are a few key things I look at in my Analytics account. One of the first things is also the most obvious...the amount of traffic. It's always a good idea to know how much traffic your site is getting and any trends that might show up over time. But since that's such an obvious one, let's quickly move on.

Bounce Rate

I like to know the overall bounce rate for my sites. Bounce rate is a measure of how many people leave your site without clicking past the initial page they land on and is shown as a percentage. So a 100% bounce rate means that everyone coming to your site views the initial page and then leaves. That doesn't mean they leave immediately, just that they leave without looking around on other pages. This is good to know, especailly when you can see what the bounce rate is for each page people land on, though typically this will be the home page.

Time on Site

Time on Site is another measure I look at. As the name suggests, this tells you how long visitors remain on your site. It doesn't tell you if they only viewed one page or several, so I like to look at this along with bounce rate to get an idea of how people are behaving once they get to the site. I look at this on for both the oveall view and the time on site for each traffic source.

Traffic Sources

Another key thing I look at is the various sources of traffic. This could be organic searches from one of the search engines, links from other sites, pay per click advertising, social bookmarking sites or visits direct visits to your site (people typing in your website address).

And more specifically, I'm not just looking for overall volume of traffic, but also how that traffic behaves on my site. I want to see if that huge spike I got was from Stumbleupon or a sudden boost in search engine rankings. And I want to see how long those people stayed on my site, what the bounce rate was for each traffic source, etc. You'll quickly see that not all traffic is created equal.

For example, a lot of the traffic on some of my other sites comes from article directories and social bookmarking sites. A lot of times, those visits from article directories are just competitors trying to figure out what you're doing and the social bookmarking visitors generally come and leave quickly (low time on site and often times, high bounce rate). Looking at your traffic sources like this can give you insights into what's working and actually worth your time and what's probably not.

Keywords

I also like to see which keywords are brining traffic, especially from organic search. Initially you might not see much from organic search, but as your rankings improve and more of your pages get indexed, you'll start to see long tail search terms and even some of the terms you'd really like to rank well for. Analytics tells you which keywords brought how much traffic for a given period of time and breaks these up into lists to show free traffic and paid traffic.

New vs. Return Visitor Counts

Sometimes it's good to know how many of your visitors are new vs. returning visitors. Initially, you'll see mostly new visitors since it's a new site. But hopefully, you'll quickly see that some of those visitors become "returning visitors". That can be a good indication that your site offers enough value for someone to bookmark it or remember it well enough to come back and check things out later.

Number of Visits (especially prior to sale for ecommerce sites)

I also like to look at the number of visits, especially for ecommerce sites where you can see the number of visits prior to making a purchase. This is great info to know if you're selling items on your site and can lead you in all sorts of directions. For example, you could create a survey to find out what people are considering before making a purchase (if you see that it's taking several visits prior to making the sale). Or if you see that people are buying during their initial visit, perhaps your prices are too low and you should do some price testing, add an upsell or something similar.

Those are just a few of the ways you can use Google Analytics to help you get inside the head of your website visitors. Google Analytics or similar tools can be great additions to your marketing arsenal, but you have to actually get in there and use the data they provide to really get the most value from it.

7 Low-Cost Online Marketing Strategies for Any Economy

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 02:54:00 GMT

Like any good entreprenuer, I've been a subscriber to Entrepreneur Magazine for quite awhile. If you haven't had a chance to take a look at one of their latest issues, you might want to at least visit their website and read their suggestions for 21 Low-Cost Marketing Ideas. I think it's pretty telling that 7 out of the 21 tips in that article have something to do with online marketing. So I figured I'd write a little follow up article of my own to add my take on some of the ideas they suggested.

1. Blogging

Blogging is huge, yet some people are still confused about what exactly blogging is and why it's so valuable. In a nutshell, a blog is just a website (but all websites aren't necessarily blogs...most are not). Here are just a few of the benefits of having a blog:

Ease of Use - Blogs are generally pretty easy to use, even for non-techies. If you can use a word processor, you have all the technical skills necessary to run your own blog
Comments - Blogs allow website visitors to leave comments. This allows you to interact with your potential customers, get an idea of what types of information, products or services they're looking for and so on. Just like in the "real world" it helps to talk to your customers, having a similar "conversation" via your website is also useful. Blogs make that easy to do.
Built-In Goodies - I'm not going to get into the technical details of this particular blog feature. But let's just say that all of them have "stuff" that works behind the scenes that lets you know when other blogs mention your website and vice versa. This can be a great way to subtly get to know other people in your market, get traffic from related sites and possibly even become "known" within your field. Nothing like expert positioning to help your business.

There are other reasons to use a blog too, but I have a feeling this is going to be a long post. If you have some ideas for other reasons to use a blog, try that comment thingy I mentioned and leave your suggestions below. :)

2. Distributing Content

One of the best things you can do to get more visitors to your site and to let people know about your business is to distribute content. For now, let's just talk about text-based content in the form of articles or other info. One thing that always seems to get people hung up is thinking they need to be some sort of Pulitzer Prize winning writer. Not so. If you know about your business, writing a short, 400-500 word article shouldn't be much of a problem. In addition to the sites mentioned in the Entrepreneur article, I suggest submitting articles to:

Buzzle.com
EzineArticles.com
ISnare.com
Industry websites that accept guest articles
Trade journals that accept guest articles (whether online or offline versions)

3. E-Mail Marketing

E-mail marketing is probably the single most valuable thing a small business can do to quickly add an effective online marketing method to their marketing plan. You know for yourself that in the offline world, often times most people do not buy your product or service during their first visit. It's no different online. People visiting your website might not take whatever action you're hoping for during their first visit (requesting a free estimate, calling you directly, placing an order, etc).

What if you could capture the names and email addresses of some portion of those people to follow up with over the next several days? Or what if you have a restaurant and could add the names and email addresses for your diners to an email list and send them updates on specials, coupons, etc. Keep in mind that you have to provide good content in email too, so in that restaurant example, it might also be a good idea to send people with exclusive recipes similar to what your restaurant offers (e.g., Italian recipes if you're an Italian restaurant).

Imagine if you have 1000 people on your list and each time you send an email, 10% of them take you up on your offer...and each offer nets you $50. That sounds like $5000 to me! Not bad for a system that would only cost you around $20 a month to keep running. Bottom line...email is GOOD!

4. Surveying

Speaking of email, one of the best ways to leverage your email list is to survey your subscribers. The Entrepreneur Magazine article recommends SurveyMonkey.com and I also recommend iContact, which seamlessly integrates surveys with your email list. Want to know what your customers really want? Just ask!

5. Social Networking Groups

Social networking is something you might have heard about with the rise of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and others. These can be a great way to reach out to your existing customers and to broaden your business network. Don't get wrapped around the axle about this stuff...it's just like networking face to face. The benefit is that you can get to know other people in your business, other business owners who also sell to your ideal customers, and you can have a direct connection to your customers.

If you'd like to learn some quick ways you can use social networking to help grow your business, I'd like to offer you a free copy of a special report I've created titled "Social Networking for Small Business - How to Use the Internet to Expand Your Small Business Network". You can get it for free by joining me on one of the following social networks (or if you're an overachiever, you can join me on all three). Then send me a message and I'll send you a link to the free report:

6. Video (and other multimedia)

Using video content can be an excellent way to gain exposure, rankings and traffic to your site. Do yourself a favor and checkout the videos on YouTube related to your market. Not the kid skateboarding off the roof, but real, informative videos that help people solve problems. If you find videos related to your market, great. Be sure to take note of the number of times those videos have been viewed and how long the video has been on the site.

Some of those views probably represent multiple views by the same person, but even accounting for that, you'll probably find that there are a LOT of people watching videos in all sorts of markets on sites like YouTube. Why not use this low-cost method for promoting your business? All you need is a cheap video camera...a good lapel microphone would also help too, and will make you look and sound more professional.

You can get a lot of the same benefits from audio content such as podcasts too.

7. Leveraging the Web

One of the tips in the Entrepreneur article was bit broad and recommended leveraging some of the popular free sites online such as Craigslist.org, Digg.com, Squidoo.com and others. The benefit of sites like these (and others mentioned in the article) is that often times, they have such authority that they can rank well on their own for specific terms related to your market. This can be a way to create sites that rank well and are one click away from your own site. Bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us are also a way for fans of your product or service or people who are passionate about your industry to spread the word about your business and the unique value you're bringing to the table.

Pssst...wanna' peek behind the curtain and see some of my own links and find some additional online marketing resources? Click here to see what's currently in my del.icio.us account.

Wrap Up

Whew, that was a loooong article. But the original one from Entrepreneur had some really great info and I felt compelled to share my spin on it.

I guess the big takeaway is that if you're not using at least some of these elements of online marketing in your business, you're getting behind the curve and probably spending way more than you need to.

If you'd like to turn that trend around, why not contact me for a free online marketing consultation?

Beginner Tips for Small Business SEO

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:16:00 GMT

This is a pretty good video covering some of the ins and outs of search engine optimization. If you're a small business thinking about investing in SEO, this video provides some great insights and things to keep in mind. Below, I've included a couple of my own comments, along with a few things I don't exactly agree with and one extremely critical piece that was missing from this discussion (but hey, it was a pretty short video):

Comments:

"It can be the difference between success and failure for a small business" - I wish more small businesses understood this and how powerful a good search engine ranking can be for their overall marketing and sales strategy (yes, even local brick and mortar businesses). It's becoming a much bigger deal than ever before as more people have access to high-speed Internet connections and grow more comfortable with searching before buying.
Having good content is a must. Too many websites out there still have only a handful of pages. Keep in mind that many of the sites online with the highest traffic are actually blogs. Why? Because they offer the reader updated, fresh content that is generally more informative than sales pitch (though you should always have a call to action). This is why most of the web design projects we complete for clients are based on a popular blogging platform rather than just static webpages that can't be easily updated or added to. This makes for a website that does better in the search engines and one that is easy for clients to maintain on their own.
Writing articles sounds tougher than it is, but it should be fairly easy if you know your product and the benefits that would makes someone want to purchase it. Put on your "sales hat" and appeal to the customer's emotions to explain those benefits while also giving them great information. Help educate your customer about why your product is the best choice.
Another way to get links to your site ties in with writing articles. You can write articles and submit them to online article directories such as EzineArticles.com, ISnare.com, IdeaMarketers.com or Buzzle.com. Another option (and probably better but harder to find) is to submit articles to industry websites related to your market. Each article can contain a link back to your site, ideally using keywords you'd like to rank well for. This is a great way to build credibility and get links to your site at the same time. You can also repurpose articles into other formats such as audio or video and distribut them that way too.
If you get in one search engine you'll probably rank well in the others, but for most businesses, your primary focus should be Google. They get the vast majority of searches compared to the other search engines so most of your customers are probably using Google too.

Points I Disagree On:

More links is not necessarily always better. It's best if they're related to your site and are from authority sites. I say authority sites to refer to other good content sites vs. links from directories or other low-value sources.
I agree on the importance of title tags, but other meta tags are of different levels of importance. Description tag is important for conversions since it will often be used as the text description that appears when your site shows up in the search results after someone searches for a particular keyword. On the other hand, the keywords tag is essentially useless and is even a way competitors can find out which keywords you're targeting, so it's probably best to simply leave that one blank.

The Big Thing That Was Missing?:

So what's the big thing that was missing from this segment? Well, with all this talk of title tags, links to your site and so on, we've already seen that it's important to include keywords that you'd like your site to rank well for. But how do you know for sure what people are using to search for your products or services online? Are they searching for "Maryland real estate", "Maryland real estate agent", or "Maryland REALTOR" more often (and which of those is most likely to bring you website visitors that convert into actual sales)? Depending on the market, the difference could be hundreds or thousands or searches per month and you want to be sure you're going after the right keywords.

The only way you can do this is through keyword research. No matter how well you know your market, you should always use keyword research to verify your guesses for how people are searching online and to find additional keywords that people include in their searches. Doing so can not only help you identify the best keywords overall, but can also help you find less frequently searched terms that, when added together, account for more total searches than the generic keywords everyone is competing for. This is called the "long tail" of search and often times, is how the SEO game is fought and won.

That's why we start all of our SEO campaigns by finding out about our clients' business and who their target market is. Then we conduct in-depth keyword research to help the client discover the most important terms that need to be part of their SEO effort.

To find out more about how we can put together an effective search engine optimization or Internet marketing campaign to help promote your business online, click here to contact us for a free consultation.

6 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Designer

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:54:00 GMT

Having a website created for your business is almost essential these days. It's almost inconceivable that someone would be in business today without one since a website can be such a powerful part of your business marketing and sales process. That being the case, before you decide to hire a web designer or web design company, there are some key questions every small business owner should ask.

1. Do they have online marketing experience?

You definitely want to work with someone with experience selling products and services online. I've met too many web designer with minimal, if any, online marketing savvy and that's just going to cost you down the road. Simple things like having an checkout process with minimal steps or having a call-to-action on each page should be something your web designer knows in their sleep. Otherwise, you might end up with a beautiful website that doesn't help you make any sales.

2. Do they offer any elements specifically designed to help you make more money? Which ones and how?

Speaking of that first item above, does your web designer offer anything that's specifically tailored to help you get more sales? That could be something as simple as adding an email marketing campaign to follow-up with website visitors, a prominent call-to-action on each page, testimonials from happy customers, or photos of people using your product or enjoying the results of your service.

3. Will the site be easy for you to manage?

The last thing you want to do is end up with a website where you have to play "Mother may I" with your web designer every time you want to add something to your site or make a simple change. Be sure your website will be easy for you to manage, at least for basic stuff. Otherwise, you'll end up being nickled and dimed every time you need a change made or you'll have to wait longer than you want for those changes to happen.

4. Will the site be in HTML, Flash or a combination? What do they see as the main differences?

You definitely want the site to be in HTML, not Flash. This is a search engine optimization issue, since flash sites still aren't as easy to rank in the search engines. If you're not planning on getting a lot of search engine traffic to your site, then this doesn't matter so much. But otherwise, you want HTML, or at most, a combination of the two, with the flash elements being something like a simple banner or other graphic. Just not the whole site.

5. Will the site be search engine friendly? Why is that so?

Everyone is going to tell you their sites are search engine friendly. The good news is that most sites are. But search engine friendly can just mean that the search engines will be able to index the site, not that the site will rank well for keywords that will bring you visitors. So be sure to ask "why" the site is search engine friendly.

Hint: If they don't do any keyword research to find out what terms people are using to search for what you offer, it's probably not going to get you much traffic. If they do offer that sort of research, you've found a winner.

6. Will you own the website and all content and be able to move it to any webhost you choose?

Don't get locked into some deal where you have to stay with some company forever to keep your site online. I've seen plenty of real estate agents and investors buy these type of "all in one" packages and is really stinks when you get sick of paying the fee and are forced to lose your site. If you pay for a site, you should own it and be able to move your files anywhere online that will provide you with web hosting. You shouldn't be tied to your web designer or the company you bought the website from.

That being said, if your web designer or company is offering you good service at a reasonable price, it might be best to stay put. There are a lot of BAD web hosting companies out there that can be true pain to deal with, with unreliable service, poor uptime and other headaches.

Why Having Your Site Built From Scratch is Probably a Dumb Idea

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:54:00 GMT

I saw this post recently over on the SEO blog at Seer Interactive. I had the good fortune of meeting Wil Reynolds at a recent industry event and continue to check out the tips and info that he posts on his blog and elsewhere. Wil makes a couple of really good points in this post where he says:

Why do companies continue to not use off the shelf tools, to build their own CMS / Blog / Forum, I don’t know.

By using a highly popular platform for your content delivery, you’ll likely:
1 - Cut costs & open yourself up to a larger developer pool in the case you need development help
2 - Make it easier for Google to parse your data

He continues on to cover more about #2 in the rest of the post.

That being the case, I'd like to address #1. In fact, this has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine lately.

A friend of mine recently won a bid for redesigning a local Chamber of Commerce website. I wish I had been more involved in this process. The initial plan was to use something like Joomla as the core software to run the site. Great option, runs a gazillion websites online, strong user base, lots of addons. This seemed like a solid plan. However, the client wanted a few features not readily available in Joomla. At that point, it would have probably been a better idea to either:

Outsource the development of the necessary add-ons and bill the client accordingly or
Let the client know about the limitations and see if they'd agree to adjust the scope of work and deliverables

Neither of those things happened. Instead, the web developer created a custom CMS and the database guy (a different person than the web developer) created the database functionality. Here are just a few of the problems with this setup (there are a bunch and I'll probably miss some):

The CMS now needs to be tested for just the basic functionality (like making sure all the links work, etc), changing the project from a web design task to a full-on software development/software testing task (a much different level of effort).
Documentation has to be created for the custom CMS from scratch, proofread, etc.
The client will have to go back to THIS SPECIFIC developer if new functionality needs to be added to the site, unless they can find someone that's proficient with PHP and the code is well-documented.
The database was done in Java (I think) and requires a server setup that is making it difficult to even find a decent web host. Why not MySQL or something else that's already found on the umpteen million web hosts available online? I dunno'.
The database and CMS aren't playing nice with each other. As you navigate through the site, the results you get vary based on the sequence of pages you click on as you move through the site, sometimes resulting in blank pages because of poor database interaction. It seems like this could be an infinite loop as far as testing goes, or at least an exponentially huge number of possible test cases for each and every way someone could click through to find a specific page. Ouch!
And no mention yet of how secure the website will be or any security testing being done (and no user based of webmasters to help identify possible security issues either).

The list goes on and on.

Needless to say, I agree with Wil and it's insane to think that you need to develop some sort of custom script to run your website. Not only could you possibly miss out on some of the potential SEO benefits Wil mentions in his article, but what business wants to go through the headache of software development if they don't have to?

I doubt there are many businesses out there that have a website idea so novel that some smart web geek somewhere hasn't already figured out how to do that. After all, you can even buy scripts that allow you to create your own YouTube, probably one of the most technically complex sites out there. So why re-invent the wheel? I saw a recent blog post titled "Complicated Businesses Suck". The same holds true for websites, unless you want your project delivered late and wrong.

Just as an aside, the same can be said for basic web design too. One of my favorite articles on this is from Seth Godin discussing "How to Create a Good Enough Website". Here's a quick excerpt of what Seth says in that article:

I'm going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there's one that you can start with? If your organization can't find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job.

Not a site to rip-off, but an inspiration. Fonts and colors and layout. The line spacing. The interactions. Why not? Your car isn't unique, and your house might not be either."

Bottom Line:

If you're a business owner looking at having some sort of web development project done, don't be lured into thinking that because someone is doing something "from scratch" or "by hand", that it's necessarily better. This is not baking a cake. And very rarely will you be paid more for doing things the longer or harder way.

Local SEO Step 4 - Making Changes to Your Site

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:31:00 GMT

The next step in our local seo quick start guide is to take care of the "on-page factors". I hate to even use that term because to a non-SEO, it's just jargon...so let's translate that. The "on-page factors" are all of the elements of your site that affect your search engine ranking that. Keep in mind that there are elements "off" of your site that also come into play, but for right now, we're only focused on changes we can make to the site itself to make it better.

Examples of Changes that Might Need to Be Made

First, I'm going to assume that you don't have any major technical issues related to your server or web hosting setup. That's something that needs to be checked, but most likely, you won't have any of those issues. Some other on-site changes that show up pretty frequently when a site needs SEO work done are:

Title and description tags - these should be unique for each page of your site
Text links vs. image links - links to the pages within your site should be done using text, not images and the text should include descriptive, keyword-rich words that describe the content of the page being linked to
Fixing issues related to dynamic content - ecommerce sites are especially prone to this since they often have multiple ways of viewing the same content (e.g., links for sorting the order of products, viewing the printer-friendly version of a page, etc). Since the content is often the same for each of these links, they should be no-followed to keep the search engines from adding duplicate versions of a page to their index
Long URLs - again, with dynamic websites, long URLs can be a problem, especially if they use a session ID or any other element of the URL that changes each time you visit the same page. This is another situation that can lead to duplicate content. In addition, some experts believe that having keywords in your URL helps your rankings (the keywords for a particular search are highlighted in Google, even if they're in your URL). Whether that's true or not, it's certainly better from a human visitor perspective since keyword-rich URLs can give the reader a sense of what's on that page before the click through.
Content, Content, Content - You'll probably need to rewrite some of the existing content on your site or add additional content in order to target a wider range of keywords that could bring you web traffic.
Internal linking - linking to pages within your site can be beneficial from an SEO perspective since it passes link reputation and link authority between pages in your site. This is another reason why it's better to have a larger site vs. a smaller site - more pages = more chances to add internal links and pass more authority to pages within your site.

These are just a few of the things that need to be considered when looking at on-page factors. The good part is that most of the time, you generally only have to check through these items once. Then, it's just a matter of making sure any additional pages you add are also optimized.

That leaves you more time to focus on getting links to your site, which is the next step in the process.

Local SEO Step 3 - Competitive Research

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:13:00 GMT

Let's continue with our Local SEO Quick Start Guide with Step 3 - Conducting Competitive Research. First of all, it's important to point out that competitive research isn't necessarily to decide whether or not you should roll out an SEO campaign. After all, your market is your market, and unless you're flexible enough to completely change businesses, you probably have to deal with whatever the realities are when it comes to your competition.

But competitive research still comes into play since it can give you a sense for how skilled your competition is from an SEO perspective, how easy (or difficult) your SEO efforts will be, how long it will probably take to see results and so on.

Some Signs Your Competition "Knows SEO"

When working with clients, one of the things we help them with is surveying the competition. In fact, I like to get an idea of how good or bad the competition is in terms of SEO before I even take on a client. If you understand basic SEO, then the things I look for will come as no surprise.

Do they use effective title tags and do they appear to be targeting the best keywords?
Do they have compelling description tags on each page
Do they have different titles and descriptions on each page
How many links are pointing to the site? Are they good, relevant, authority links or just a bunch of directories? Are they just pointing to the homepage or to internal pages too?
Are they using text links for their navigation, with effective use of internal linking?
How many pages are on their site? Do they have a static site or do they appear to be adding content periodically? How often are they adding content? How good is the content and is anyone linking to it?
Do they have Google Analytics or some other form of tracking setup on the site? If not, they're probably not keeping tabs on what's working and what's not as far as their SEO efforts go.
Do they have a call to action on most of their pages (more of a conversion issue than a pure SEO issue, but it still counts)
Are they collecting names and email addresses (minimum) to follow-up with website visitors (conversion issue vs. SEO issue)
Are they split testing anything (conversion issue vs. SEO issue) - most won't be

Keep an Eye Out for Competitors Focused on Conversions Too

Note that some of these are conversion issues rather than pure SEO issues. You can have a great search engine ranking without split testing, collecting visitor information for follow-up later on, etc. But having these elements in place speaks to the overall web-savvy of the competition in your market (or the experts that are advising them).

Don't Let Competitive Research Be the Deciding Factor

The whole point in doing this sort of analysis is to get a feel for how tough your SEO work is going to be. You might decide that some keywords aren't worth going after right now. Or that your competition is ignoring a large number of long-tail keywords that, when added together, will probably bring in more traffic and better qualified traffic than the generic terms they've chosen to focus on.

The point is, don't let competitive research alone dictate whether or not you invest in an SEO campaign. But definitely use it as a litmus test for which keywords you might want to target for the fastest, most profitable results.

Once You Choose Your SEO Trust Them to Do Their Job

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:33:00 GMT

I heard an interesting story from a colleague of mine last week regarding a potential client he was about to start a project with. It turns out that the deal didn't work out because the client was being stubborn about some of the specifics of the project...in particular, which keywords the site should be optimized for.

As a business owner, I can see how someone would want to have a say in which keywords their business site is targeted for. However, the job of any internet marketing consultant or firm you hire should include helping you come up with the best online marketing strategy. The unfortunate reality is that most business owners unknowingly end up choosing keyword phrases that are far too generic. There are at least two very important reasons why this is a horrible strategy:

Generic terms can be harder to rank for and don't necessarily lead to conversions (i.e., profits)
Using only generic terms means missing out on a potentially huge amount of traffic generated by the larger number of less-frequently used search terms (the so-called "long tail" of search)

Keyword Selection Should Be Driven By Profit Potential, Not Ego

The first item above is just bad business. Why on Earth would you want to target terms that are more likely to be based on ego than by profit potential? That's like buying a huge billboard that doesn't generate any new business. It doesn't matter if a site ranks well for a term if that keyword doesn't bring traffic that leads to sales. That being said, it's also reasonable to expect that a good portion of traffic represents good prospects for the business to target, assuming the keyword phrases being used are focused enough.

Long Tail Terms Might Bring More Traffic With Higher Conversions

The second item above is an even bigger point to hammer home. As an entrepreneur, I would (naively?) expect the primary concern of other business owners would be the bottom line profits for their company. If you could create an SEO campaign that targets not only the generic terms, but also a large number of "long tail" terms that, when added together, equal or exceed the amount of traffic from just the generic ones...why in the world wouldn't you go after those terms too?

And keep in mind that the long tail terms are probably less competitive and easier to get top rankings for (yes, this depends on the market but in general, is a safe assumption). To me, not taking advantage of this sort of opportunity sounds like an incredibly shortsighted plan.

Why Not Trust the Expert YOU Picked?

The bigger issue in all of this is that the potential client didn't want to trust the judgement of the SEO expert he had chosen for his project...emphasis on the fact that the client picked the SEO, not the other way around. To the best of my knowledge, the client was not cold-called or otherwise roped into this arrangement. He sought out the unique expertise of this colleague of mine, then saw fit to question that advice without really having a solid understanding of some key concepts necessary to make such a decision.

When we choose a doctor, we tend not to question the perscription they write for us. The same for an attorney (well, for the most part). And the same could even be said for a personal trainer, though we might not make it to the gym as much as we should (I played hookey all week).

The point is, when you decide to hire an expert, why not trust their judgement? That's not to say that you shouldn't question their methods or advice. As a business owner, you're ultimately responsible for the operation of the business. But if the talent you bring on board to handle your project can provide a good rationale for the advice they have, and if this is the person you picked ahead of all the competition, shouldn't a little trust be in order?

After all, that person has probably spent much more time honing their skills in that field than you have. And if the roles were reversed, I'm sure you would expect the same level of trust from them. Otherwise, why choose them in the first place?

Local SEO Step 2 - Keyword Research

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:12:00 GMT

This is a continuation of our Local SEO Quick Start Guide. Once you've established what the goals are for your website, the next step is to do keyword research. Nearly everything you do to market your business online is based on the keyword research you do during this step so it's absolutely critical to get this right. The goal is to figure out how people are actually searching for your products/services online or the solutions that your business provides. Here are a few quick steps for doing keyword research.

Start With the Right Tools

First, it helps to start off with the right tools. There are a few that we use for our clients that you can use as well. Truth be told, there are a myriad of keyword research tools available online but in the interests of time, this article will focus on two:

Google's Adwords Keyword Tool (free)
Wordtracker (paid)

The Google tool is usually the first one I suggest simply because Google gets the bulk of online searches and traffic and this tool shows you how many people are searching for a particular phrase each month. However, Wordtracker usually includes lots of additional keywords that might be useful for helping you create content or find additional long-tail keywords that get fewer searches but bring in more targeted traffic.

Figure Out How People Are Searching For What You Offer

With either of these tools, your goal is to find out how people are searching for your products and services online. This could be by name, by type of product/service, or by searching for answers to problems that your business provides solutions for.

As an example, let's say you have a product about back pain. People might be searching for:

The name of your product (if it's well known)
Terms like "back pain aids", "back pain remedies" or similar terms
Terms like "stop back pain", "back pain help" and so on

Of course, with some businesses, the product or service being offered is so focused that there may only be a handful of terms most people would use when searching for it. But for most businesses, you won't really know all the variations people are using to search for your type or products unless you do keyword research.

See Which Terms Get the Most Traffic (That Would Convert Into Sales)

Once you know how people are searching for your business online, you can determine which terms get the most traffic - traffic that will likely convert into sales. These terms will most likely be the terms you want to have your homepage optimized for. Most of the time, you'll also see second- and third-tier terms that get less traffic but that are still relevant to your business. Ideally, you'll create additional pages on your site that are optimized for these terms.

For example, with our back pain site mentioned earlier, we might decide that we just want to target the generic term "back pain" on the homepage. We might also want to create additional pages to target more specific terms such as "back pain exercises", "back pain treatments", "back pain therapy" and so on by creating separate categories or sections for each of those terms.

If the purpose of this site was to sell a product that helps relieve back pain, it would be smart to not only offer the product itself, but also provide plenty of useful material related to back pain that would rank highly for people searching for solutions and answers to that problem. Keyword research and a well-structured site would allow us to do just that.

Use Keyword Research to Drive Your Other Online Marketing Efforts

Once you've done keyword research, you can use those results to drive everything from how your site is organized, which new pages need to be added, what types of content/articles need to be created, etc. It can also give you insights into what questions or problems people are looking for answers on, and of course, being able to provide those solutions at a reasonable value is the basis of a great business.