 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Posts Tagged ‘GOOGLE’
Every good SEO program begins with keyword development and monitoring.
Keeping track of where your website ranks on Google for important keywords and keyword phrases can be a full time job. Although many tools exist for monitoring search engine position, properly evaluating SEO performance requires a disciplined approach.
There are a variety of ways to measure search engine rankings for your website. Popular website tools like SEO Elite and Web CEO include search engine ranking tools that can track where your site ranks for identified keywords. But what if you don’t own SEO software?
To evaluate search engine rankings, you simply need a means of measuring rankings on a regular basis. Follow these simple guidelines:
Create and maintain a spreadsheet of your rankings. Having a document that you continually update can help you see weekly changes as well as trends over time. Be sure to keep it updated at least once a week so that you are always aware of how you rank for keywords and keyword phrases you are watching.
You can choose your keyword list based on the keyword phrases you’ve selected as important, those your competitors rank well for, or individual phrases identified by SEO software. If you want to get a jump start, you can identify which keyword phrases your site is ranked for in the top 20 on Google using SEOdigger.com. This tool provides a listing of which keyword phrases your site ranks within the top 20 Google search results for and can be a great tool to identify your competitor’s keyword rankings.
- Record changes in search engine result placements simply by entering each keyword term in to Google or using SEO software. You can also find free tools online to report your rankings like CleverStat or GoogleRankings.com.
- Continue to make changes, build links, and record your results. This step will never be completed but rather is an ongoing process. You should strive to become number one on all your SERPs and get so far ahead that none of your competitors will be able to compete. This requires constant and never ending consideration to building links and creating more and more reasons for other sites to link to you.
- Consider reciprocal linking, link acquisition, as well as adding free tools to your website, valuable content, and helpful downloads. Access to these tools is ideal if you want to attract links to your website. Once you’ve added these valuable tools, make sure to let others know that they exist. Consider a free press release, email campaign or promotion.
- Expand your keyword list. As you improve your overall rankings on major search engines, consider adding other keywords phrases that may be relevant to your website, products or services. Focusing on an expanded keyword list can result in more traffic and broader appeal.
Monitoring and managing your search engine rankings, especially on Google is necessary if you wish to increase the organic traffic to your website. This begins with basic monitoring and evaluation of your rankings on key search engines. Once you’ve developed your spreadsheet, update your rankings each week with free tools or SEO software. - Continue to focus on your rankings and developing inbound links through free tools and resources on your site as well as proactive link requests. Over time, as you improve your rankings for key terms and phrases, expand your list. Improving your rankings is a never ending process, but an important one. Stay the course and you’ll experience the results you’re looking for.
Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and the President of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit MarketingScoop.com for further details and more marketing articles including tips on how to improve search engine rankings for your web site.
Over the years of working with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses I have seen it all when it comes to websites. I have seen corporations spend thousands sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars more for a company website than they should. I have seen sites that don’t match brand, take forever to load, SEO that doesn’t matter ("I am number one on Marketing Strategy Experts Who Work On Venus"), and even navigation issues that you would think don’t exist this day and age. As a business owner or person in charge of buying a company website; If you remember these 7 mistakes you will save money, be more profitable, and have happier customers.
The TOP 7 Mistakes Businesses Make When Buying A Website
- Have no idea about the technology - This particular mistake drives me crazy as someone who has bridged the gap between technology and business for almost 20 years. Typically technology companies target the marketing or communications department of an organization and not the information technology department when selling website and design services. This gives the company an advantage because normally business oriented departments have no idea about asp, html, java script, flash etc. Even more troubling is they have no idea about how long it takes to write an application or what it would cost in real dollars. I sat in one meeting where the Marketing group actually cared more about the person’s shoes than the technical part of the presentation. Now, I can appreciate shoes, but in the end not paying attention and not including the Information technology department in the buying decision meant they spent 500 thousand dollars on a site that should have cost 10 thousand.
- No consensus on what the website is for – Some people think a website is a digital brochure. Or, some want to ‘sell stuff’ on the site while others want to put up a site for people to call in so they can then ‘sell stuff.’ The website can be used for both, but to be truly effective, you need to have a goal in mind. What do you want your customer to do? What is it there for? This is important because if you don’t know, you can bet that a vendor or other supplier will come along and decide for you. This may or may not work to your best benefit.
- Don’t know your place in the market – BestBuy and Walmart have been caught using location specific pricing, so why would you think web developers and designers are any different. Your place and status in the market determine what companies charge you for their services. If you are at the top of the market don’t expect too many people offering bargain web development and design services to you. At one company the prices they were quoted were 30-40% higher than another company of less stature and profit. A typical way they do this is by pricing the services separately (coding, visual design, meta data, and SEO strategy). You need to do the price research outside of your company structure. Be sure not to send requests from name@millionaire.com for example.
- Forget to shop around – You would never buy a car without shopping around? Right? Time and time again companies buy from someone they heard on the radio, or a referral from someone, or my favorite, from who their competitor used. I have heard things like "Their site looks pretty good. Who did they use?" Just because someone used a company does not mean they are a value for what you need. Maybe the company the referral came from for example paid way to much as well. If you take anything away from this point please get several quotes and stay anonymous otherwise you have to go back and read mistake number 3.
- Get stuck on Form VS Function – Say it isn’t so! People buy based on looks just like they pick their mates. Well, some do and some don’t. Always remember who your company is and who your customers are when building a site. Be careful to not have your preference override your customers. If you are a fashion magazine then it may be important that your site be beautiful, but if it does not function as well you will loose customers to sites that do. You need to always balance speed, function, and design for typical websites. It is worth mentioning that the more complex your form and function the more your site will cost.
- Don’t ask the hard questions – The more questions you ask, the better your understanding of what you are getting will be and for what costs. If you are new to technology make the vendor explain in detail anything you do not understand until you do. Be sure you ask several times what is included in the proposal and what is professional services or extra. You would never spend thousands of dollars of your own money without some detail and clarification. Right?
- Don’t ask for working client sites – I have seen this one more times that I care to mention. Typically it looks like this. A vendor comes in to propose developing your website and shows you all these beautiful sites. You sit there totally amazed not knowing that they are just mock-ups made by expert designers and not actual working sites. Always ask for sites that you can look at and see on your own from the Internet. If it is an intranet site ask to visit at least one of their client sites. If they offer their intranet site, press again for a client site and let the vendor know this is a requirement for the project.
If you remember these 7 mistakes and take action to address them, you can easily save thousands of dollars on your next company website. If you have more specific questions or want to know more issues that come up in web design send us an email.
P.S. We have had several people ask questions about site developers that we can recommend and what our site runs. If you need a quote on a site let us know and we can forward your email and introduce you to some great developers. To answer the second question, Our site is a base Revolution template by Brian Gardner that has been heavily modified by US for SEO and readability. It is 100% WordPress driven and published through windows live writer. Plug-ins we use are sharthis, sphere related content, askimet spam, Google analytics, Google sitemaps, wpseo (modified by us), Post Plug-in Library, Similar Posts, wordbook, WordPress automatic upgrade ,and IPHONE Auto Formatter.
If you’ve emailed a Microsoft Word (or Corel WordPerfect, for that matter) document to anyone, you may have unwittingly sent confidential information to a friend, colleague, or even competitor. You see, when you create and edit a document in these programs, the software creates bits and pieces of information and hides it within your document.
If one chooses to reveal these bits and pieces, or metadata, they’ll discover who created, opened, read, printed, deleted information, added information, and where the document was stored as well as how long it took to perform the task on any particular date and time.
What is metadata?
Metadata, as defined in Beware the Dangers of Metadata, is “simply described as ‘data about data’. Think of it as a hidden level of extra information that is automatically created and embedded in a computer file.”
Some metadata is easily viewed (steps shown below). Other metadata is hidden and can be revealed by accident or by using a binary file editor. Both of which are quite possible in any office.
Microsoft indicates that the following metadata is stored in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files:
· User name and computer name
· Comments and tracked changes
· Hidden text, worksheets, data columns, and data rows
· Embedded objects such as Excel worksheets, drawing objects, and pictures
· PivotTable® cache
· Speaker notes
Why does it matter to me?
All the information indicated above is great for productivity and is an important part of a technical communicator’s life. In fact, we embrace the ability to collaborate! Document management systems rely extensively on metadata, allowing users to find a relevant document based on who edited it, how it was distributed, keywords, and subject or matter information.
Metadata makes life easy, right? Well, MOSTLY.
As I was researching this article, I found multiple references to blunders made by individuals, governments, and even the United Nations, in which bank account numbers, assassin names, original authors not attributed in a document, smoking guns in memos, and more were revealed. Here is an article in the Washington Post that has some good examples. I was particularly intrigued by the story of Tony Blair providing Colin Powell a document that had large portions plagiarized—grammar mistakes and all!
I’ve spoken with colleagues who had several months worth of documentation seized simply because a team member, who was involved in litigation, had simply opened a file once upon a time. The team lost hours of work and had some tense times making their deadlines.
What can your document’s metadata reveal?
Your document can reveal quite a bit about your work. When I was working on a presentation about metadata, I went fishing in my archives for an older document that would reveal sloppy document management. I opened a file that was used in a collaborative project when working on my Master’s degree eight years ago. I believe the original document was created in Word 2000, but can’t be sure with a cursory review.
Just by a simple selection, I revealed the following information about the document (Figure 1) I created earlier this year.
Figure 1: Metadata information in Word 2007 (top) and Word 2003 (bottom).
So, what’s interesting about this? I created this document on February 27, 2008, but my metadata says it was created on August 1, 2007. While this was a brand new document, I had opened up an older folder that had my styles already set. Instead of reflecting revision one, it showed that this was the third time I had revised the document. Though I had actually worked on the document for about 10 minutes, I apparently had it open for 50 minutes at the time of the screen capture. The title of the document was even wrong!
For me, the scariest thing I found was on the Summary tab. It says that the company that created the document was Company X. I haven’t a clue about that company. To my knowledge/recollection, I’ve never worked for or collaborated with anyone in that company. When I did a Google search, I couldn’t find anything that seemed to fit Company X, nor did any representative with that company have any connection whatsoever to this document. But there it is…. Somehow this document descended from a document (from a document from a document) that was created by a classmate who probably worked for Company X EIGHT years ago!
Not only would this information be embarrassing if a client saw it, I could be opened up to some intellectual property issues if somebody chose to be litigious. Now fortunately, a forensic review of the document’s metadata would reveal the truth. But it could be expensive.
It pays to be aware of what your document says about you and to make sure it reveals what you want it to reveal.
How do I reveal my document’s metadata?
It’s easy, with one click you can reveal your properties.
· Word 2003 or earlier: select File > Properties
· Word 2007: select Office Button > Prepare > Properties
How can you protect your document’s metadata?
Many ways are available for ensuring that your personal or company data stays with you:
· Turn off Fast Save. This feature speeds up saving a document by saving only changes made to a document. However, text that you delete from a document may still remain.
· Remove personal information from a document when you save it.
In Word 2002 and 2003
In Word 2007
1. Click Tools > Options.
2. On the Security tab, under Privacy options, select Remove personal information from file properties on save.
3. Click OK.
1. Click Office Button > Prepare > Inspect Document.
2. Select Options for inspection.
3. Click Inspect.
4. Select Remove All.
· Turn off the Track Changes tool.
· Use a third-party software to remove the information.
· Use a clean template/document each time.
· Save the document as an .rtf, .txt, or .pdf file.
This article by Louellen S. Coker of Content Solutions appeared in the May 2008 issue of Technically Write, the STC Lone Star Community’s newsletter. Louellen’s brand new blog offers great tips and tools for making content (and technology) work for you.
Most people think of search engine optimization to improve their search engine rankings as being such a skilled task that, without putting a great deal of time and effort into it, it is simply beyond their capabilities. Wrong! Yes, improving search engine rankings in competitive topic areas does require a good deal of knowledge and expertise and search engine optimization experts are needed, but most websites aren’t in very competitive areas. Many of them can achieve top rankings by applying just the search engine optimization basics – which can be learned in less than 30 minutes.
This article lays out the basics of search engine optimization. It can be well worthwhile trying them before paying an expert as, oftentimes, the basics are all that’s needed.
NOTE: the SEO copywriting method (a.k.a. search engine optimization copywriting) applies these basics to a site’s existing pages. It doesn’t go into more advanced search engine optimization techniques that require more knowledge and expertise.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization is the process of achieving top rankings in the search engines for a website’s most relevant search terms. The most relevant search terms are the phrases that people are most likely to type into a search engine when looking for what the website has to offer. These are the search terms that it is essential to rank highly for, and these are the search terms that search engine optimization targets.
The first step is to choose the most suitable search terms for your site. Then allocate one or two of them to each suitable page within the site. One search term per page is preferable, but two per page is not so bad. Sometimes it is useful to split a largish page, that covers several closely related topics or several aspects of a topic, into two or more smaller pages so that a different search term can be targeted on each of them. Matching search terms to a page’s content is essential.
NOTE: smaller pages are better than larger ones because it is easier to target a search term when there is less text on the page to dilute the focus.
Search Engine Optimization – the basics
Link structure within the site
An obvious, but sometimes overlooked, aspect of search engine optimization is to make sure that search engine spiders can actually find (crawl) all of the site’s pages. If they can’t find them, they sure as hell won’t get spidered and indexed, and no amount of search engine optimization on them will help.
Some points to note
Off-page elements
Link text
<a href=”url”>some link text</a>
This is one of the two most important elements for good rankings. The link text can be on pages within the site or on other sites’ pages. Either way, it is important. The target page’s main search term should be included in the link text. When possible, don’t use identical link text for every link that links to a page, but do include the target page’s main search term in the link text.
Google attributes link text to the target page – as actually being on the target page, and it treats it’s pseudo-presence as being an important element of the target page. Links carry even more weight if the text around them is concerned with the target page’s topic and search term(s).
On-page elements
The Title tag
<title>some title words</title>
This is second of the two most important elements for good rankings. Make sure that the page’s search term is contained in this tag, and place it as near to the front as is reasonable, whilst ensuring that it reads well. There’s nothing wrong with placing the search term up front on its own, followed by a period; e.G. “PageRank. Google’s PageRank and how to make the most of it”. The target search term is, of course, “PageRank”. Obviously each page’s Title tag should be different to the Title tags on the site’s other pages.
The Description tag
<meta name=”description” content=”a nice description”>
Some search engines, such as Google, don’t display the Description like they used to do but, even so, it should still be included in each page for those engines that do, and for the odd times when even Google displays it. Write an appealing description for the page and incorporate the page’s search term into it at least once and, preferably, twice. Place one instance of it at the start or as near to the start as is reasonably possible.
The Keywords tag
<meta name=”keywords” content=”some keywords”>
The words in the Keywords tag were never treated as keywords by the search engines; they were treated as text on the page. The tag isn’t as effective as it used to be but there is no reason to leave it out. So put plenty of relevant keywords into the tag and include the search term once at the front, and a second time further along the line. There is no need to separate keywords and keyphrases with commas, as is often done, since the engines ignore commas.
The H tag
<Hn>some heading words</Hn>
“n” is a number from 1 to 6; the biggest heading size being 1. H tags are given more weight than ordinary text and, the bigger the H size, the more weight it receives. So include the target search term in H tags at least once on the page, and two or three times if possible. Also, place the first H tag as near to the top of the page as possible.
Bold text
Bold text is given more weight than ordinary text but not as much as H tags. As much as is reasonable, enclose the search term in bold tags when it appears on the page.
Text
Use the search term as often as you can on the page whilst not detracting from the page’s readability. Make sure that you use the term once or twice very early in the page’s body text and as often as possible throughout. Reword small parts, and even add sentences, to make sure that the search term is well represented in the text.
In all probability, each word in the search term will be found on the page separate from the search term itself. This is good. In fact, if they are not there on their own, add a few of them through the page.
Alt text
<img src=”url” alt=”some alt text which is displayed on mouseover”>
Include the search term in the alt text of all images on the page. Keep in mind that some systems such as Braille readers and speach synthesizers use the alt text, so you might want to make them usable whilst including the search term.
Summary
- Select your main search terms.
- Allocate each search term to a suitable existing page. Split some pages if necessary.
- Organize the internal linkages and link text to suit the target search terms and their pages.
- If possible, organize links from other sites to suit the target search terms and their pages.
- Organize all the on-page elements to suit each page’s target search term.
- Sit back and watch your rankings improve!
A few weeks ago, I was in Wal Mart, on the prowl for some type of exfoliating cream. The winters in Texas aren’t bitter, but the dry heat inside can work a number on your skin. It’s been some time since I bought facial products at a store, but my usual facial remedies just weren’t doing the trick.
I stood in front of several shelves of products dressed up in all sorts of colors. What struck me were the names.
Clean and Clear, Anti-Dullness Face Wash, PorePerfect Pore Minimizing Wash, Easy Healthy Skin, Deep Clean Gentle Scrub
There are many ways to use names in your company. First, there’s your company name. The last 10 years, we’ve seen a surge of ‘non-definition’ company names in the marketplace. They are cool and non-evident on purpose. Xpedx, Activa, Red Hat, and others may be cool, but unless your brand takes off they don’t do much for helping your would-be customers find you.
Other names might include products or packages you offer clients. If you have a book, your title is a large part of what makes people want to buy it. If you have a seminar, the same rules apply. Even your newsletter’s name plays a role in your success.
Imagine me standing at Wal Mart looking at a bunch of bottles called Face Exfoliating Wash with the manufacturer’s name on it. How would I begin to choose? There is definitely something in a name.
But what is that something?
Here are three steps to creating a snazzy name that will be ever more attractive to your clients.
- State what the item or company does in benefit terms. Increase profits, Boost revenue, Transform business, Turnaround services, Decrease risk.
- State what the product is. Seminar, program, package, face wash, exfoliating scrub
- State a way your client wants it. Fast-acting, Turbo-charged, Super-easy
Put these three together and viola! You have your super magnetic name that is easy for your ideal customers to spot and easy for your non-ideal customers to bypass.
I know you would like some examples, so here you go…
Some good ones (in my opinion):
- Company: The Sales Company
- Newsletter: Bookseller’s Sell More Books
- Product: Buns of Steel
- Book title: Damn, Why Didn’t I Write That? How Ordinary People are Raking in $100,000 or More Writing Niche Books and You Can Too
- Seminar title: Born to Win
Some that could be improved (again, in my opinion):
- Company: Slo*Fit (Who wants to get fit slowly? I visited the site to check it out after seeing this on a building – only a marketer would do this – and it is called Slo Fit because you only work out once for 30 minutes, but the first impression is counterintuitive.)
- Newsletter: Name of Company + Newsletter (Snnnzzzzz)
- Product: Poo Kiss (Believe it or not, this is something you eat.)
- Book title: Nothing But Words On Paper (Amazon Book Rank: #2,087,786)
- Seminar title: Association or Organization name + Seminar (Yaaaawwwnn)
Don’t be tempted to use a name that is too cutesy or off the beaten path. Do get creative and infuse your company’s personality into your names. There are many ways to brand your company and one of them is to get your names working together. Remember, the names need to make sense to your ideal clients. Keep that in mind! There are tons of examples in the world of names that don’t follow these rules – think big companies, big advertising dollars – Starbucks, Nike, Google – but then look at these companies again and you will see the consistency in the brand names!
If you have a winning name, send it to us and we’ll feature it in an upcoming Marketing Mojo with a bit about what you do and who you do it for!
How to Build Free Backlinks for your Site (backlinks are links from other sites that can help increase your site’s popularity).
Although paid methods can help you get backlinks a lot faster, using these free methods can save you a lot of money.
- Directory Submission. There are literally thousands of free web directories out there. This is one good way to build backlinks, although directory submission takes weeks to months to years to get approved because these are manually approved. Please make sure the directories have a Google PageRank value.
- Article Submission. To do this, first you need to have an article ready. Your article must be unique, well thought of, and related to the site link you want to place on Articles Directories. Articles on Article Directories are then copied to other sites along with your link, that means it helps in getting more backlinks for your site.
- Comment Posting. Akismet was created to prevent people from spamming blogs. To prevent your site from being banned, make your comments relevant and sensible and don’t place a link on your comment, but only on the URL field. Make sure these comments doesn’t have a nofollow on the link rel attribute.
- Write Quality Content. Quality content means original and interesting content that people will talk about and possibly post links from their site, talking about the post you made on your site. It is best that your content is current and the topics are widely talked about, even controversial topics are good link bait.
- Social Bookmaking. Got a good content that nobody knows? Share it with everybody. Social Bookmaking sites help increase your site visits and backlinks when people bookmark your site on their favorites list. Just make sure you don’t abuse by bookmaking all the pages of your site or you will be banned by them.
- Give something away for Free. Do you know how to create web templates? Build as many as you can and people will start using them, and along with it are your links. The number of backlinks generated are endless. But if you cant, you can still give away something for like free quote-of-the-day, etc. something like that.
- Contribute to Wikipedia. Are you an expert of something or have some good information you want to share? Post it in Wikipedia (sign in required) and along with it is a link to your site as the resource page of the information posted on the wiki. Make sure you don’t post all the time of they’ll ban you.
- Social Networking. MySpace, Friendster, FaceBook, and even YouTube can be called a Social Networking site. These sites are good sources of traffic, especially if you a lot of friends in the list or you have a funny and interesting content you have posted on your account page. Get connected and you can get links.
- Government and Education Sites. Government and Education sites are quality backlinks, meaning Search Engines value sites more if they are linked from these kind of sites. It’s very hard to get these kind of links but you can start by participating in their forums.
- Forum Posting. I admit. I have been doing these to spam sites, but not anymore
. The right forum posting technique is to participate on sites that you are really interested in. This way you can enjoy posting on forums and you will be surprised you already have thousands of posts on forums with your links on your signature. - Join Groups. Being an active member of several organizations can help you get backlinks as well. Most established organizations have good traffic and PR and if your site is linked there, your site can have a good backlink from this site as well as other members can link your site from their sites too.
- Participate to Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! Answers is a very popular section from Yahoo! and people visit there to ask questions and participate by posting the best answer. First, look for a question you think you can answer, post the answer on your site and finally post the Answer in Yahoo! Answers along with your link.
- Post on Craigslist. Most of the traffic this site gets are from the US. If you wish to get good traffic from Craigslist, make your post catchy and not spam. Craigslist is more of a traffic generating site than a source for backlink since a post expires after sometime. Make your links last by posting regularly.
- Know your Competitors’ Backlinks. Check out your competitors backlinks at BacklinkWatch.com.
Link to relevant sites / categories. If your site is about cars, link to pages related to cars only.
Link to sites with good Page Rank value.
Link to sites with good traffic.
MANY Backlinks are good for your site.
RELEVANT Backlinks are better than regular backlinks.
RELEVANT and HIGH PR Backlinks are better than relevant backlinks.
HIGH TRAFFIC, RELEVANT and HIGH PR Backlinks are the best backlinks every site needs.
Tired of paying a buck and a quarter for every information call? The planet’s greatest mover of information has an answer for you. I tried this out just a few days ago and was stunned at how easy it was to use, and how fast the voice recognition software worked. “Wow!” was all I could say.
Just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone, and Google411 takes it from there. Simply state the business name or type and location. Then choose your number from the list of numbers provided. Once you choose, Google connects the call for free. It’s super easy and it’s f r e e!
If you have patience and want to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) yourself there is only one source we trust on the topic, Aaron Wall and SEOBook.com.
SEOBook is a leading SEO blog covering the search and search marketing space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to his mind. The first version of his popular SEO Book came out in December of 2003 and has been updated about 50 times since then. In addition to SEOBook, Arron continues blogging, speaking at conferences, and participating in many search marketing communities. He consults for clients large and small.
The other advantages of Arron’s work include his vested interests in both the paid and free search engine optimization space. This allows him to give you the big picture of both spaces and can save you many hours on research.
So, next time you are wondering why you are on page 15 of GOOGLE, get some rest and head over to SEOBook and let the education begin.