SoloSEO

Don’t be a Victim of Online Fraud

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on January 24th, 2008

Due to all the mortgage fraud around here, and throughout the country, there have been public service announcements popping up, to better “educate” us about the dangers of fraud. Fraud seems to be a part of life, with new ploys being developed all the time to take advantage of trusting individuals. The last comment of one of the public service announcements heard frequently around here states: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” We all have heard this comment before, and frankly it is a good piece of advice. Due to blatant greed, we all need to be suspect of almost everything, if not everything. I can promise you there is no money locked in a secret US bank account, which only you can get out to help a banished Prince of Nigerian royal decent, and for your efforts the good Prince won’t be giving you a few million as a commission either.

In online business the same goes, I am sad to hear of stories of people who put out their hard-earned money on some hyped-up trick to increase traffic to their site. These programs might in fact increase traffic a bit, but it isn’t quality traffic, it isn’t qualified traffic, so it isn’t worth what was paid.

Then there are the “online marketing experts” who are willing to open their secret treasure trove of online selling secrets for a nominal fee. These are the secrets that have “made them millions” and they are going to hand them out to you for only $29.95. Oh, but that’s not all, you can also get a special bonus of the super-duper extra secret online marketing magic techniques for just another $19.99, but you have to do it before that 60 second timer ticks off to zero… hurry!!! Please…

I am also tired of hearing of the many SEO scams, and then dealing with the fallout these scams put on the SEO industry. These SEO scammers are the people who ask you to pay a relatively small fee up front, then monthly fees thereafter for their masterful “SEO services.” All of which can’t be audited or proven, while you are being assured by the scammer they are working hard on your site, and you sense they are sitting in their underwear, and you swear you can hear Halo 3 being played in the background. I am sure there have been many occasions when all these SEO guys have done is sign our sites up for that traffic-pusher scam system mentioned earlier, and then they just sit back and claim the new increase in traffic is from their relentless SEO efforts. Total scam.

In the world of Internet marketing, let’s just agree on this… If it sounds to good to be true, it MOST DEFINITELY IS NOT TRUE. Please do not fall for any of these and a myriad of other online scams, there is not easy money out there, not legally anyway.

Making a site a success is like anything else in life, it takes work. SEO is work, it takes time to build links, create content, research keywords, all of which are important in SEO efforts. There are tools you can use to make the process of SEO more manageable, but the work has to be done by someone, somehow, somewhere, in order for a site to really improve its performance. You can use a system like SoloSEO to help you keep track of all your progress and provide you with tools and training to do it yourself, but it does take time and effort. Or you can hire a reputable SEO firm, one that will be a bit pricey, but they will tell you what they are doing, and show you reports of the progress they have made, and you will see an increase in qualified traffic, and ultimately sales. Good SEO efforts drive real potential clients to your site because they already know what you are offering and it is what they are searching for, that is the type of pre-qualified clients we all want browsing our product pages.

At SoloSEO we are working to make the tools and processing of SEO easier to use, as well as more educational. We not only want our clients to see their sites improving the right way, we want them to know how SEO works and to understand what the tools and processes are doing, and why the positive results are happening. Understanding the concepts behind SEO allow us to better understand our online marketplace, and helps us quickly determine the different online tactics be employed by our competitors, so we can better compete. Learning and doing are both important in SEO, as it is with many other worthwhile endeavors.

In short, please be careful when purchasing SEO services, make sure the providers will be accountable, make sure they give you some benchmarks on what they will accomplish over the term of the contract. Not so much in terms of traffic, traffic will come if the SEO is done right, instead make sure they give you a timeline on when the keyword research will be done, how much time they will spend building links, and how they build links, (hopefully they avoid purchasing links), and how much time will be spent on content, etc. Pin them down, and make them commit to a defined time-line. This is the way business is typically done in the offline world, we should demand and expect the same level of responsibility from the online world. Don’t be intimidated by their perceived expertise, you know more about other stuff than they do, I assure you. Speak with confidence, and expect them to stand by their performance.

If you have any questions on whether a SEO service provider is a good one or not, ask them to provide you a few URLs they have worked on and talk to the owners of those sites, see how past clients have felt they were treated. You could also use our SEO tools to analyze these sites and see if they have addressed basic SEO principles required to improve a site for the long haul.

Ultimately, just be wary, money can make good people do some pretty dumb/dishonest things. We unfortunately had $20K stolen from us last year by a family friend. This someone we allowed in our home as one of the family and we mistakenly trusted, so it can happen easily, anywhere, anytime, even to the most untrusting among us.

One final note on fraud, pay attention to all the political campaigning going on right now. Some of the very best scammers in all the world are now running for President of the United States, it is fascinating to watch. Let us all remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, even ( or especially) in politics.

4 comments Visited 922 times January 24th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Paid Links are Bad, No Good, No Bad…

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on December 13th, 2007

Michael Gray doesn’t know who I am, I don’t expect him to. We sat next to each other one day at lunch during Pubcon, he is a polite, engaging guy, with obviously tons of knowledge in SEO/SEM field. I enjoyed Michael’s many interviews on Local search, and learned much from his posts. He has earned a great deal of respect for his knowledge in this industry, no bones about it. (And here comes the but). But in his latest rant concerning Google and paid links, which was in response to Matt Cutts’ blog post about paid links, I think Michael’s perspective of the situation is just a bit too simplified. Now, I am not what anyone should consider a SEO, I am more of a SEO theorist at best. I have been learning SEO to selfishly help our businesses grow online, so I analyze SEO related, and most business related situations through my experience as a small business owner and based on basic economic principles. These lenses are the only ones I feel comfortable using when analyzing interesting business issues, just so we have established my perspective.

Michael Gray has a problem, as do many, with the apparent hypocrisy within Google. On one hand Google asks us to not buy or sell links, and to report sites which do one or both. Google tells us this will allow them to adjust a site’s rank, and relevance calculations accordingly, which needs to be done because links currently influence a site’s rank. So, in a paid linkless world, Google, in theory, would only be serving up the most relevant sites for each of our search queries. This of course is a preposterous dream, but we will leave this a discussion on another post, it still remains the stated purpose of Google’s actions.

Now to the other hand, while Google publicly denounces and punishes those dealing in paid links, they turn around and make piles of cash selling links for placement on their SERPS, as well as on other sites participating in their ad delivery system. On the surface there is definitely some cause for concern, and the appearance of impropriety is nothing short of glaring. It is this apparent conflict of interest which has Michael Gray and SEO minions riled up. “Why can Google sell links on their site, but we can’t sell them on our site?”, is their united cry. It is a good question, it is a fair question, and one I don’t think Google has quite answered completely or eloquently enough, which possibly increases the ire even more.

So from a simpleton’s business perspective, let me provide Google with a little defense fodder to this whole selling links dealio. I do not come at this as a dyed-in-the-wool Google Kool-Aid drinker, although I do use them as my primary search engine. Nor do I do this because Matt Cutts was genuinely cool to Michael Jensen and myself as we left PubCon one night. (Matt: we sincerely hope you are using and enjoying the SoloSEO swag item in good listening health.) We all enjoyed a few minutes crossing a busy street together, which in Vegas is a bonding moment, as is any other near-death experience.

The simple reason Google is trying to manage the paid link situation in this heavy-handed manner, is they are protecting their core business, that’s it… That’s the answer, nothing more to see here, move along. Now Gray suggests in his post that Google had in fact created the paid link mess, but this isn’t totally correct. Links have always been a good measure of a site’s popularity, many of us will remember all the early sites, which proudly displayed a “Links” page, I used those “referral” pages all the time. Links to companies, from companies I already trusted, made a difference to me, as I am sure they did to many. Even today, links out from trusted sites are a good referral, and lend credibility to that site. So not including the incoming links as a measure of a site’s quality would be a huge mistake for any search engine. Links must to be measured by all serious search engines attempting to deliver relevant results. And because links are beneficial to our site in terms of traffic and sales, some are willing to pay for them, that is why paid links abounds. So Google didn’t create the paid link mess, but by profiting the most through the selling of links, they definitely have the appearance of being holier than thou in their current stance. Perhaps Google and their billions don’t particularly care what we think, but I don’t think that is the base motivation behind their actions.

There is one area in this paid search mess which does concern me a bit… Google’s position on why buying links from them is ok, is based on the fact that when we buy from them, they know who we are, and they know not to pass page rank from those links, in order to keep their rankings systems pure. Here is the tricky part, if Google is squeaky clean, then the relevance and popularity of any paying client’s site should not be improved or effected, even though they are paying clients. We can only hope Google is ethical, and this is how it is handled, otherwise Google is no better than Tyco, WorldComm and Enron. Unfortunately, I know of some who now buy ads with Google, not only because they hope to get more traffic through SERPs, but also because they believe it potentially improves their organic positioning on the SERPs. So, in an odd way, Google actually profits from the appearance of a possible impropriety, most likely based on the current corporate climate, in which many of us just assume big businesses are greedy, lying, cheating, crooks. Pretty sad.

Ultimately we may never know if there is a benefit to a site’s ranking through advertising with Google, this is a part of Google’s “secret sauce” and protected as proprietary. So unless someone from the Google inside commits corporate hara-kiri, and tells the world how it all works, we will never know. So, in a perfect search world, paid links to Google would not have an effect on a site’s organic position within Google’s SERP, this practice, in principle, would be going against their core business model of providing the most relevant, naturally occurring search results for every search query.

For me personally, I understand why Google sells advertising… Because they can, and because it makes them loads of the green. We all would do the same if we could, in this regard the Google haters are being a bit ingenuous. I also understand why Google tries to manage the paid links conundrum, in a sense, to protect and improve their ability to provide their clients with the best search experience possible. We can only hope Google is being responsible in keeping the two practices mutually exclusive, and not influencing results based on their paying client list. It is also easy to understand why many are suspect of Google, there have been so many instances of corporate greed in the past, that many are cynical, rightly so. But not to worry, history has shown us again and again that business is the survival of the fittest. And the fittest companies are the ones that do things ethically and honestly for the long term. Eventually the law, or competition puts the fakers/takers in jail, or out of business. It has always been that way, it doesn’t matter the market, it doesn’t matter the product or service, and it doesn’t matter the company, eventually time runs out. We will know at some point in the future if Google is doing what they claim to be doing, or if they are truly are as slimy as some believe them to be. In the meantime, while Google carries their big stick, we might want to think twice before buying links, not everyone at Google is as pleasant as we found Matt to be.

9 comments Visited 1415 times December 13th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Specialized Search is Simple Economics

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 29th, 2007

There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into Specialized Search technologies. Bill Slawski, our industry’s legal expert, has done a masterful job of following the patents issued to the search engines for various new personalized search techniques, and he asks insightful questions on how these patented technologies might affect search in the future. Bill helps me think, which isn’t easy. Bill’s SEO by the Sea blog has a has a full category on the personalization of search. It is worthy of your time if you want to better understand the great strides search engines are making to innovate to further customize the search experience for every individual client.

Additionally, Michael’s post of yesterday entitled: Local Search is Changed Forever - Now Google Knows Where You Are also discusses the amazing trends in local search. None of us should be surprised that the search engines are going to try to improve the search experience for their clients, it is basic economic principles at work here. We have to remember that Google and Yahoo! are competitors, I would say fierce competitors, and if these companies do not evolve, and implement new & better search strategies, then they run the risk of losing market share, and eventually becoming irrelevant over time. I don’t think either company will allow themselves to become the next Excite.com in the world of search.

There are many who believe Google and to a lessor extent Yahoo! are out to kidnap our personal preferences, and somehow use this “personal” data for some unsightly purpose in the future. Yes, even in search we have our own group of conspiracy theorists. I have read blogs recently of some who feel tricked that Google has been modifying their search results, based on their personal search histories and their locations, without their permission. While I am not one that wants to lose any personal freedoms, if while I’m using Google’s service, Google saves my search history to improve my search experience in the future, it seems like a pretty good business decision in my mind. Nothing overly Orwellian about it, just a vendor trying to better help a client, and fight off competition. If I am more satisfied with my search results, then the chances of me moving to another search engine is greatly reduced. That is pretty much what all of us business people are attempting to accomplish, develop a loyal customer base, and do all we can to prevent them from going elsewhere. If we aren’t moving forward in the marketplace, we are being left behind.

So as search results become more based on individuals, what effect will that have on SEO, and SEO strategies? It is an interesting question. If each of us are getting manipulated/personalized results based on our personal search history, then how can the SEOs “prove” their worth to their clients? I mean if we can’t see our sites rocketing up the SERPs, and show our friends, how will we know what we have paid out has been it? Or how will be know our personal SEO efforts are effective? While the benefits of SEO work may not be as obvious and homogeneous on the SERPs, we can be hopeful the resulting traffic driven to our sites will become more qualified, and our conversion rates will hopefully climb a bit. We have heard many times, we should rather have 10 people visit with 5 people purchasing, then 1000 visiting with only 1 purchase (assuming we aren’t a big Adsense site).

I believe specialized search will also increase the importance and necessity for more online competitive analysis strategies. Michael and I have been discussing other competitive analysis tools to add to SoloSEOs current tool set to further improve our clients abilities to understand what the competition is up to, especially when compared side-by-side to their own site’s performance. Then clients will be able to use the trends these metrics provide to accurately measure how effective their SEO strategies are within their competitive marketplace. Competitive analysis will provide more of the confirmation we need on our SEO strategies, especially as SERPs continue to morph to meet the personalized needs of search clients. It will be exciting. I will be interested to see if specialized search might possibly give those who didn’t get out online as quickly as they had wished, an increased ability capture new specialized clients by focusing on long-tail keyword phrases relevant to their specific market.

It is going to be fun to watch and be apart of all the fast approaching changes, and it will be fascinating to see which of us figures out how to capitalize on the new opportunities of Specialized Search.

We are looking forward to meeting many of you at PubCon in a few days, I did enjoy it last year. Please travel safe and enjoy. As an alum of UNLV, I know from personal experience, Vegas can be great, and Vegas can be absolute crap. I hope the former Vegas for all of you. If you to make is to PubCon, please come up and say “hi,” we are going to be handing out some SoloSEO SWAG, which is pretty cool. Quantities are limited. I may resemble one, but I am not a pack mule. )

Add comment Visited 1921 times November 29th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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What the Customer Actually Wanted

Posted by Michael D Jensen on November 3rd, 2007

38 comments Visited 20910 times November 3rd, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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In SEO - Be A Tortoise, Forget the Hare.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on October 30th, 2007

On Aaron Wall’s site www.seobook.com, Aaron Wall makes a statement which makes me chuckle every time I read it, not because it isn’t somewhat true, but because I can imagine how it must drive others crazy. Aaron states,

“SEO is not hard, Anyone can be successful at it with the right information.”

While I agree that anyone can be successful through SEO, if they have the right information and the right tools, I don’t think SEO is “easy” for everyone, not even for most people. I personally have only met Aaron once, and have heard him present on a few occasions, and just based on those observations I can see why Aaron would see SEO as easy, I think for him SEO is easy. But for the rest of us, the average humans, SEO is tough work. It is especially difficult for those who are running more traditional/non-technical businesses. There is so much to do as a small business owner, and the entire organization relies on you and your efforts. Quite frankly you don’t have the time to sit down and work with site optimization all day, or dedicate enough time to learn how to make the required changes to web site pages in just a day or two. It is going to take more time than that. How much time really depends on not only your available time, but also on how good your information and tools are.

With accurate information, like from Aaron’s SEOBook, and excellent SEO tools, like we have developed here at SoloSEO, the SEO process can become more manageable, that much is true. But please never let anyone convince you SEO will be easy, unless you are a technological genius, and there are more than few using SEO as a profession. This hard work revelation probably isn’t what anyone with aspirations of quickly making it big online wants to hear, but I wouldn’t feel good about giving the impression SEO is some magic online wand, which when waved, instantly delivers more traffic and orders than a site can handle. It just doesn’t work that way. I am sure there are many out there who have heard and believed the claims of this “SEO ease,” then got in, got to work, and became quickly disenchanted with the SEO process, perhaps even felt frustrated at their inability to quickly grasp the “simpleness of SEO.” If you have felt this way, you are not alone, it is common, it is okay.

As perhaps some of you have done, I have spent my life as a very average person, not overly smart, not overly quick, not overly fun, not overly funny, not overly thin, just not overly impressive in almost everything. Fortunately I came to grips with my total averageness a few years ago, and I realized my only chance to get ahead in this world, was just to work harder than the naturally talented and smarter people were willing to. I can’t compete with the “blessed ones” one on one, hour to hour, but if I only sleep 4 hours, and they sleep 10, then I have picked up 6 hours a day on them, and my chances are better. I have no problem seeing myself as a tortoise, and I have always loved that story. I think most my fellow slower folks have too.

I think most entrepreneurs, who have created and succeeded in their own business, have either worked harder, or are “blessed.” For most of us it is simply a matter of out-working the competition, we may never be the biggest, or grow the fastest, but we can be successful, and live a comfortable life by out-working the others. And if we work harder, using the best tools and information, we can not only increase our chances of success, but shorten the time required. The same is true with SEO.

To me SEO is similar to the process of digging for gold. There are many technologies we can use to find gold now, and those technologies get better all the time. With today’s technology we simply don’t have to head out with a shovel and start digging hither and thither until we find something shiny, there are better ways. But even with all the modern tools and technology, when it comes right down to it, getting the gold out of the ground is going to take work. We can dig with a shovel, we can dynamite, we can use large equipment, and we can hire an army of miners, but it is all work and it is required to reap the eventual reward. No way around it.

There is no doubt SEO can be worth much to a company looking to increase sales, it can take a struggling company trying to make any sale at all, and turn that company into an online success story. Where they once wondered if they would convince anyone to buy at all, they now they struggle with cash flow, barely having enough cash on hand to pay vendors, so they can barely stay ahead of the orders onslaught. But to experience this kind of transformation in online sales, the SEO work must happen. We are going to need to focus on our site’s Keywords, Content, Links and effort must be spent to put it all in place. No way around it. We can use all kinds of great tools, and have the latest information to make our efforts as efficient and effective as possible. We can even hire others to do our SEO for us, but SEO is the price for long-term online rewards. SEO isn’t easy for most people, it isn’t a get rich quick scheme, there is nothing magic or extraordinary about it, but if the SEO work is done well, then success is more than likely, if not virtually assured. I like that about SEO, we can work harder at it than others do, and see success for our efforts. And as for all the other tortoises out there, I know you will like that about SEO too.

4 comments Visited 1051 times October 30th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Image Isn’t Everything, But It Is Something.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on October 11th, 2007

Taking a look at the corporate logs in the image to the left, how do you feel about those brands? Do you feel anything? Much in marketing is focused on influencing the public’s perception of our companies, our products and our brand. We want others to think our products/services are high in quality, a good value, safe, reliable, fun, entertaining, satisfying, or simply the best. So how is this done online, is it different when compared to more traditional ad mediums? For, example in TV commercials we have just about seen it all, from diet cola commercials, which appeal to our hip and healthy side, to luxury cars like Lexus, BMW and Mercedes, which tout their extreme quality, and attempt to impress us with their prestige. All this presentation created simply to influence our perception toward these brands. And with TV being so visual, the advertiser can use all sorts of techniques to spin their products in a very positive light. Many are now wondering if TV advertising is as effective as it use to be? I’ll bet there are a million or two Tivo owners who will tell you it probably isn’t, but that is a discussion for another day, but does suggest a need to come up with other methods to improve our corporate image.

We all know TV ads aren’t real life, and although I doubt there is any girl that choose to hang out with a guy because of the type of diet cola he drank, at least I hope not, we all know some people drink certain brands of soda or diet soda because they believe they are being perceived by others to be cool, sophisticated, wealthy, discerning, or concerned with their health, etc. Many choose to use these brands because of the brand image they have in their own head, will hopefully be identified by others as the product is consumed. My wife loves Diet Coke, and I mean LOVES it. She says it tastes better than all the other diet beverage choices out there, without question. I personally disagree, I think Diet Coke tastes like licking dirt off a pitching wedge. She also thinks Diet Coke portrays a certain image, say of an attractive blonde girl cruising along a beach-side path on roller skates, bopping to the music as she enjoys her Diet Coke. But while I like the commercial quite a bit, and it matches the image of my wife well, I personally still see Diet Coke as the drink of choice for attendees of a 1929 high school reunion, held last weekend, and not the drink of anyone remotely hip. So this ad, although excellent in my opinion, has not changed my perception of Diet Coke one it, or its brand, it is still yuck, but many others feel differently. So when we work on our brand, we attempt to positively influence as many as we can, knowing full well we can’t change everyone’s perception, and that is ok.

Online we obviously don’t have the ability to visually create an image as well as a TV commercial can, although with YouTube and others we are getting closer. So we instead have to rely on other marketing opportunities to influence potential clients. In search marketing, our prestige and our perceived value are currently tied to how well we do in the SERPs. Many of us know that being on page 1 of a SERP isn’t necessarily the best way to determine if the particular product or company is the best (no offense to Google and Yahoo). And we know a high ranking it is not a guarantee of a good quality product or of excellent customer service either, but there is no doubt we notice the sites on page 1 more quickly, and we take a look at sites on page 1 more often than potentially better products and sites buried on subsequent SERP pages. So in a sense, the work of SEO directly influences the perception potential clients and the public will have on our businesses, at least initially. If we are ranking well on the results page, then we will be perceived as being market leaders, the most popular, the most cutting-edge, the highest quality, whatever, whether it is reality or not. The better we do on the SERPs, the better we will be initially perceived, and they more clients will visit our site. Then it is up to us to make sure our sites are designed well enough to deliver what client needs. We need to ensure visitors can easily find the information they need, that they feel comfortable with us, and we need to be sure they can easily order when it is time to purchase. Online, SEO should be seen as our ability to influence the initial perception of searching clients. SEO can be online marketing and online PR, all wrapped up into process, and really our opportunity to make a better first impression.

When considering the benefits of SEO, we need to remember that through the SEO process, we are improving the perception of our companies to potential clients. It isn’t just a matter of gaining more traffic to our sites, it is a matter of promoting and influencing the long-term image of our company and products. If we can make them initially believe we are great, then prove it to them with our site, products and customer service, then we have won a tough online battle.

Add comment Visited 973 times October 11th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Is a Customer Ever Wrong?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 24th, 2007

The simple answer is yes, there are times when the customer is wrong, but that doesn’t really matter much in the end. We still have to deal with the situation and attempt to make the most of it, while not further upsetting and potentially losing a client. This can be very tough for some, I fortunately have wonderful partners that are very kind, and considerate, probably to a fault, and they handle most of the customer service needs around here. But I had an interesting experience last weekend, which made me think (I know, I know, finally the dummy thinks).

My wife and I had the opportunity to get out of town, and head up to Salt Lake City on Saturday night. Now it isn’t too big a deal, Salt Lake City is only 40 miles North, but it is just nice to get away from a college town, and the mass hysteria that occurs on the weekends here, especially homecoming weekend. We decided to get reservations at ZTejas at The Gateway, and were looking forward to a good meal, and a change of atmosphere. Well, it didn’t turn out quite the way we had envisioned it.

We were sat quickly enough, even a few minutes before our reservation time, so that was great. Unfortunately our table was by a window, which meant my wife was going to be cold (she is known to bump up the thermostat from a warm by manageable 72 degrees, to sometimes over 75, you guys know what I mean, way too hot). We ordered our food, and were served a Diet Coke for my wife, which is essentially the only liquid she has consumed for the last 20 years of her life, and a water for me, as I have recently got off the diet soda wagon. Although, had I known there was an apparent water shortage in SLC, I would have milked that tiny drink of water like crazy, because we didn’t see refills for 20 minutes after that, and the ZTejas cuisine can prove to be very spicy.

The appetizer came quickly enough, but it was missing the guacamole, which is just unpardonable in my simple mind. And we didn’t even get that nice warm corn bread everyone else seemed to be enjoying, we were totally forgotten. In all fairness to our server, she was sat 3 large parties all at once, so she was obviously crazed, but it would have been nice if she had just popped in as she was running around to tell us she hadn’t forgotten us. The real problem in my mind was the manager, who busy walking around with his hands in his pockets, and not helping this server out even a little bit. He glanced at our table, and others every once and awhile, and even with empty glasses in view, he did nothing. He could have at least been yelling out encouragement to the server, as he stood there motionless, it would have been something, but instead he played statue. Anyway, it was quite a humorous, but frustrating display of inept management, and incredibly poor organizational protocol. The server needed help, due to the over-seating in her section, and management apparently did not have a back up plan to deal with this sort of situation. I believe in the restaurant biz, this sort of thing must happen all the time, so the lack of a back-up plan seems remote, so it was probably just lack of effort and an unwillingness to put the plan to action that caused the problem, and this server’s whole section suffered because of it.

When our server finally got things semi under control, and worked her way back to us, we explained our frustration. Our mouths were burning, and our throats were dry, no guac, and no cornbread. My wife usually is the one who expresses our upset on our behalf, as I look down at the table and remain quiet. I don’t like to complain, I find it troubling. I am convinced that if I do complain, Karma will make sure I deal with upset clients at work all the next day. And I don’t handle upset clients well, so I try to avoid them at all cost. Fortunately my partners are quite good at calming situations down, where I tend to escalate them. At least I know some of my limitations, and it takes more than my fingers and toes to count them all.

Once our concerns had been expressed, we quickly had refilled drinks, hot corn bread, (unfortunately it was after we had finished our food) and a promise that the manager would come over to speak with us. My wife then informed me I would be speaking with the manager, as she was not happy with my head down, quiet tactic, as it made her feel I was not supporting her. When the manager came over I decided to try something new… I simply remained calm and explained to him our disappointment, that we had driven 40 miles to have a nice meal, through the driving rain, and it was just too bad it wasn’t as good as we thought it would be. The manager was obviously ready for a fight, so I think my calm comment kind of threw him off a bit, he stumbled when he spoke, and eventually said he was sorry, offered to “buy us a dessert,” (why do they say this, he isn’t paying for anything, we all know he isn’t), and offered to take the price of the appetizer off our bill, which was very considerate and appropriate response in my mind. He then quietly walked away. Our free dessert came quickly, we didn’t get to choose it, and unfortunately it had coffee flavored ice cream, which just plain tastes like dog breathe, so we didn’t eat it. But in a few more minutes the manager returned, he again told us he was sorry, and he then gave us a $50 gift certificate for the next time we made it up to SLC. I was impressed, he didn’t have to do that, I surely wasn’t expecting it, the free dessert and appetizer seemed an appropriate response for the trouble we experienced, so this was way above my expectations, and I look forward to going back to ZTejas someday. That was not the way I was feeling just a few minutes earlier.

When he came over the second time, I was very interested in what he said. He told us that he had thought about it, and if he had arranged to take his wife out, and driven 40 miles in the rain, looking forward to a nice meal, and the same thing had happened to him, he would have been upset. And that made sense to me. In business things aren’t always going to work out, there will be clients that aren’t totally pleased with our service, or our products, and we are going to have to deal with the upset. We have learned as a company that quickly taking responsibility for the problem, even if it is just our portion of the problem, and quickly apologizing, is by far and away the best way to diffuse the situation. It is amazing how quickly a rational discussion can begin, once a sincere apology is made. As customers, I would suggest we try to remain calm when something isn’t quite up to our standards, and attempt to make the problem we have personal to the person we are talking with. If they can get an inkling of how it might feel, if it were them experiencing the trouble, then I would suggest the eventual outcome will be much better for both the participants. The customer will get resolution without an increase in blood pressure, and won’t feel the need to kick the dog, yell at their spouse and kids just vent their pent up frustration, and the provider will keep a client and better comprehend just how their clients feel when things don’t go well with the service. This understanding might cause a provider to reanalyze their business model, and potentially make changes to better the company’s product or service. I will say this; a soft answer does seem to turn away wrath, and apparently it also gets you an extra $50 from a manager who originally didn’t seem to care about any of us, not too shabby an outcome.

Add comment Visited 741 times September 24th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Hey Businesses… Its about Blogging time.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 7th, 2007

A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This friend owns an auto dealership in Provo, UT (free link alert) and deals mostly in high-quality, used BMWs. He also has a repair shop as well, where they specialize in repairing most German made cars (this needs to be stated more clearly on the website). He, like many of us, just wants to be a bit more visible online.

In our conversation he mentioned he was considering signing up for a local online business directory, and perhaps purchasing some advertising on their site. He wondered if I thought it was a good idea, so I took a look. After some initial poking around, it was soon obvious that signing up was free, and the site existed solely on ad space it sold on the site. So I had no problem with him signing up, at least it is a new link to him, and this directory is well put together and has quite a comprehensive overview of local business, organized by category. I didn’t tell him if I thought purchasing an ad on this site was a good move or not, I don’t know enough about this directory’s traffic mix, or his business to understand if online advertising will provide a high enough ROI to make the ad price worth the investment. I will leave that decision to him.

But after a quick review of his site, I just gave him a few ideas that I think will help its performance in the search engines. First off, he does an excellent job of keeping the inventory of current cars up to date. As soon as they receive a new car, they clean it up and takes some nice pictures of the car, and then put those up with a simple description of each car on the site. I suggested that they should spend a bit more time on creating content for each car, focusing more on some keywords they are targeting, as well as the specifics of each car. These keywords should come from what they feel their strengths are, with local references included, like Provo, UT, Northern Utah, 40 South of Salt Lake City, UT, as examples. Additionally, I would have them use SoloSEO tools to analyze other local automotive sites doing well in the search engines, and then start targeting those keywords as well. Finally, they should also make sure the photos for each car are labeled clearly, and using an occasional keyword here and there, in a picture description, isn’t going to hurt rankings either.

Once a car is sold, they currently take the content and the pictures of that car off the site. I think this is a mistake many of us make. Rather, I would suggest they create a sold page, or past inventory page, then organize all the cars by model and year on this sold/directory page. Keep all that content written about each car, and the descriptive photos for each in play for the search engines. If they spend time creating the content, then they should continue benefitting from it. Plus, it might help potential clients find a model of car they are looking for. Thayne does a great job finding cars according to a potential buyer’s specifications. He did this for me, and it worked out great. So, if a potential buyer found a car on Thayne’s site by browsing the past inventory, which takes no time from Thayne’s sales people (truly a major benefit of any well conceived site), and Thayne gets a new client to work with, along with all the specs he needs to find a similar car, it is a win/win for everyone.

Next, I would suggest they start a company blog, it is another easy way to add content. We of course love WordPress Blogging system, we use it ourselves, and highly recommend it to everyone. On the Independent Import’s blog I would have them blog about sales they are having on certain cars, about automotive tips, about information on recalls, about new performance parts or options to “pimp our rides,” and even about the new innovations BMW is coming out with all the time. The automotive industry is one of constant innovation and change, and this provides excellent and frequent topics for a blog. Keep the blog fresh, with one or two posts a week at least, and also let his current and new clients know about the blog. Many new car owners are passionate about their cars (especially BMW owners), and reading new info about their brand of car and possible improvements/options, is very interesting and will increase business. I’ll bet Thayne could get quite a good subscription base fairly quickly, I know I would sign up.

I would guess there are many of us who feel like we need to do better online. Our site is there, but we need it to perform better, if at all and bring us some new clients. This is most easily done through search. Look for ways to increase your content, adding new pages, and a blog. Then write about products, changes in the industry, and keep your content, don’t ever throw it away. It may need to be tweaked or placed on an archives page of some sort, but you worked hard to create it, let it continue to work for you, it will make a difference in search engine rankings. As far as all the free advice to Thayne, I will take it on trade for a M3 convertible, black… of course.

1 comment Visited 1656 times September 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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The Marketing 4 Ps and SEO

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 30th, 2007

Much of a discussion on marketing can be broken down into what is termed “The Marketing Mix, or the 4 Ps” namely; Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Product being the service or product we sell, Price being the retail price a customer will pay for the product, Place being the locale where the product is purchased and Promotion being how we get our message out to the masses, and what we attempt to communicate in order to convince them to buy. The goal of a marketer then is to properly address the 4 Ps for their specific situation and to sell as many units of product as is potentially possible.

The online world is a bit of a different marketing animal. Some of the 4 Ps haven’t changed much, and others have. Our Product essentially remains the same. The Price is also not changed too much, although with increase access to information, and more access to online resellers, economists would expect at least a downward pressure on price, if not overall lower prices altogether. Place can also can be a bit different, while many of us may still have a store front, there are some small business owners who only sell their products online. So presently, we either sell both online, and through a brick and mortar store front, or we just sell online which is a new spin on “Place.” Finally we have Promotion, which in some cases is very similar to how we promote offline. Using banners and Ads on webpages. As an example, at the top right of Andy’s Marketing Pilgrim home page, we see ads prominently displayed to Andy’s thousands of visitors. This can be a very good online advertising option, as we are able to target clients who we can predict visit sites with a certain theme, and we have a degree of control on the content, color and message of our ad. Advertising our revolutionary new socks for example, on a site developed to provide marathon running tips to novice runners would predictably be a good advertising opportunity/match.

In online promotion we also have the opportunity to start an ad campaign and purchase ad space on search engine results pages. Both Yahoo and Google have programs for doing this. So if we search for “marathon running” in about any search engine, we will not only have organic or unpaid results, typically found in the center of the page, but we will also see a column of paid ads down the right hand, and sometimes even across the top of our results page. Again this type of advertising allows marketers to target potential clients they believe would be most interested in their product. However, these results page ads are frightfully limiting compared to other forms of both online and offline marketing. The ads all look the same in color and size, there are limitations on what can be stated, and on how many words can be used to get the message across. So it is much more difficult to really stand out through ads on a results page, I personally rarely look at these ads. Imagine driving down a Freeway with all the billboards having a white background, with an underlined blue heading (sometimes it may be bolded, wow!), black text of approximately 10 words, and a green URL link at the bottom, that’s it. Not many keen marketers would pay the billboard owners for such a poor advertising opportunity, but it may be a good way to get rid of all the billboards. Now, I am not a big supporter of billboards in the first place, in fact, they don’t make much sense to me at all. It has nothing to do with whether they work or not from a marketing perspective, I just don’t understand why we want these colorful distractions taking the attention of drivers moving along at 70 mph, with other distracted drivers all around them. It seems smarter to keep all the attention focused on the road, hey, maybe billboards painted right on the road? And don’t tell me these billboards are mainly for the car passengers, the HOV lanes around the country prove there aren’t many passengers in all those cars.

Anyway, to make standing out or ranking well on search engines results page even seems more difficult, when we learned earlier this summer from Google’s Udi Manber, that 25% of all search queries are brand new, and never have been used previously. So how to do we target those evolving clients?

In this apparent increasing difficulty in search engine marketing, we should really be seeing an opportunity to become specialists at anticipating the keywords our clients will use to find what they need. I see a very interesting research project here. It would be cool to analyze the behavior of a test group when they are all given the same, random items to search for online. It would be amazing to see how each would construct their query to best find what were looking for. It is this intellectual process we need to focus upon as online marketers and small business owners, how potential clients are conjuring up their searchers, what is the basis of their search, how do current events and trends influence their queries? With these questions in mind, creation of new keyword phrases will keep things fresh and relevant. We need to remember that due to the thousands of pages thrown on the Internet each day, the process of search has become quite different and more complex. Many of us understand that our searches need to be more detailed in order for us to truly find what we want, quickly. Searchers actually use long-tailed, localized keyword searches to get around the garbage Wikipedia like pages, and the miserable “informational” websites only created to rake in Adsense revenue. My average search queries are now at least 5 words, and usually contain a localization aspect to them.

So if we are mindful that 25% of search queries are new, and potential clients are using longer and longer tailed searches to find what they need, then we understand our creative juices really need to get flowing to benefit from the new long-tailed keywords trend. And we need to be addressing these long tail keywords possibilities for all our sites on a regular basis. Whether we create a new web page, change some product descriptions, or add a blog post using our new keyword phrases, it needs to be done. It is actually quite amazing how quickly one can rank number 1 when the keyword phrases used are unique and well placed. And many will be surprised when some of these phrases not only start bringing in new clients for the specific phrase, but also start ranking well for just portions of the original long-tail phrase originally created.

Add comment Visited 1069 times August 30th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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When the First Result Is Not the Best Result

Posted by Michael D Jensen on August 27th, 2007

You have probably tried Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button before. But what if you based your business and purchasing based solely on getting the first result of a query?

I recently met with some folks that found their SEO company based on the first result of the query “search engine optimization”. The results have obviously changed since then (now its Wikipedia). Their experience with the SEO company was not a positive one: a lot of money paid for next to nothing.

The problem with relying on the first result has several components:

1) Many first results are not naturally boosted to the first result. Some of these make money just on your visit (and click), others may actually do sell the product or service you are looking for. Just because they are good at ranking high for that keyword doesn’t mean they are good at making their product or doing their service.

2) Your query may be the problem. You may be looking for one thing, and your query thinks you are looking for something else.

3) Comparing products and services is essential to good business and purchasing practices. Even the search engine result snippets can be a first level filter, telling you from the meta description or content of the page more information related to your keyword than just the page title.

That said, it’s still everyone’s dream to be number one in the search results. Why? Because you do get looked at, and you get clicked on, and your chances are better for gaining that customer than if you’re lower on the results page, let alone the next page and beyond.

Just don’t make a habit of hiring people because they are the first result.

2 comments Visited 939 times August 27th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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