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.
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January 24th, 2008Aaron R Stewart
I created a new site on Friday, and by Saturday exactly 24 hours later it was in Google’s Index. I posted about this just over a month ago in my post, 7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours. I had a lot of comments about whether or not Adwords was necessary, so I thought I’d try it again without running Adwords this time. Here’s how it all played out:
1) I created 5 pages of content (Home, FAQ, About Us, etc.).
2) I put them in a simple template with site-wide links. I also linked to it from one of my other sites (it’s very relevant so it makes sense).
3) I added tagged the site on only 2 social bookmarking sites.
4) Commented in 1 forum, put the URL in one directory (niche specific), and submitted it to Digg.
When I checked exactly 24 hours later I was sitting in the index and had already begun to get a few visitors from Google.
I had previously done Google adwords out of both necessity (get quick traffic) but also because of the trust factor I believe it gives to Google, and the fact that Google integrates a quality factor into their quality score (so they come to your site and look at it). Obviously this is just one test compared to several others I’ve done with Adwords, but it seems its very possible without running some ads.
Anyone else seeing 24 hour indexing for new sites?
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January 7th, 2008Michael D Jensen
The other day we were leaving a soccer game for my 6 year old boy. My 2 year old wasn’t quite happy with her perceived lack of playground time, and she expressed her upset quite loudly, while she thrashed around. I calmly (kind of) chased her down, picked her up and lovingly wrestled her into her car seat. She reacted to her entrapment with unrelenting, ear-pearcing screams. Over this outburst, I couldn’t hear myself think, let alone my car’s reverse alarm, and we subsequently backed straight into a light pole. The bone-jarring thud caused instant silence, which was quite nice, but I dreaded getting out to view the damage. I slowly walked to the back of the car, and to my complete surprise and extreme delight I had hid that poorly positioned pole dead center. The only damage was to my trailer hitch cover, it was completely shattered, but it costs less than $100 so I was happy. I went from total dejection to total elation in just a few seconds. What a relief.
Now I really love that trailer hitch cover, and in honor of its fine protection, I wanted to replace it with a new one. Unfortunately I couldn’t remember where I purchased it, I knew it was online somewhere, but it was over a year ago and I can’t even remember my kids names from day to day. So I went to Google and searched “Jeep Trailer Hitch Cover,” which seemed to be a pretty good description. But, while I love search, and I love the amazing supply of products online, I do get a bit frustrated with all the information we get back in the SERPs, it can be way too much. With so many of the sites just being unhelpful noise, much of which is caused by all this Adsense craziness. It makes efficient searching more difficult, and the SERP I was looking at was too much. Fortunately, because I knew what I was looking for, I just clicked on the Images link at the top of the page, and was happy to find an image of the hitch cover I was looking for at uhaul.com
I went to the page, determined the formal name for the product, and searched again, to find other suppliers of the hitch cover. I quickly figured out the best deal, which happened to be at uhaul.com anyway. But going through all this, I became curious as to why U-Haul’s image of the product showed upon the first image SERP, but the image from the other online stores did not. I assumed it was due to U-Haul wisely naming their image well, and using the description tag to inform the search engines about the image, but I was wrong. It turns out U-Haul needs to thank Google for this particular sale. U-Haul’s images are actually served up from a image database, and no image names or descriptions are passed through to the product page, leaving the image without direct description. However, Google knew there was an image on the page, and wisely assumed it was related to the first 3 words on the U-Haul product page, namely “Jeep Hitch Cover,” so Google decided to return this page with my query. People can bang on Google all they want, but in this situation, they performed well.
So what could the other online stores done better to insure they are being found more readily through image search? First let’s look at stores which use the same product image as U-Haul, and see what how they named their images:
1. Jep_hitchstep.jpg
2. 10903_step_jeep.jpg
First, neither store used the image description tag, so it would be very difficult for any search engine to match my particular query by virtue of the image name alone. Both pages were also full of content, obviously trying to show their authority on the topic Jeep accessories, but Google couldn’t seem to figure out what they were selling in their text. Now if both stores were to name their images a bit more descriptively and add “Jeep Trailer Hitch Cover that is also a step” or something similar in the description tag, they will do better in the future for queries similar to mine. It is very important for us to think about what our customers will type in the search engine, which combination of keywords they will use to find us, and make sure our product images are labeled accordingly. The search engines are smart, but they are looking for some sort of relevance, and if we provide them this information, we will be rewarded with qualified traffic.
One final note, due to the shear volume of web pages being added each day, Image search will continue become more important. Image search allows us to narrow some searches more quickly, to find what we need more efficiently. I use the Image search function quite a bit, if I know what I am looking for, or I am not familiar with an online store for a particular product type. How important is image search to you? How often do you search via images?
Oh, and as a note, my daughter did stop crying… eventually.
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November 8th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
As you’re learning about search marketing and SEO, you will definitely run into the phrase “the long tail”. Let’s turn this odd term into a familiar one by looking into long tail keywords.
What are Long Tail Keywords?
When you are identifying keywords for your internet marketing (both SEO and PPC), the metric used most to compare keywords is its popularity. If you put all the keywords that “exist” into a graph, it would look something like this:
The y-axis is the popularity and the x-axis are the keywords themselves. On the left hand side we have the most popular keywords, which are also highly competitive. Because these are the “opposite” of our main topic, long tail keywords, we call these just “keywords” or for fun, “short tail keywords”.
On the right hand side of the graph are the long tail keywords (looks like a tail doesn’t it?). Despite these keywords being less popular, they are still used every day by searchers around the world. And the exciting part is, they are (1) less competitive and (2) easier to rank well for without a ton of work!
Recently a company shared their long tail vs short tail keyword data, and they showed that almost 70% of their search engine traffic came from the long tail. This company is not alone, long tail keywords can be powerful sources of search engine traffic for any site!
Is it a Keyword or a Long Tail Keyword?
Separating out short and long tail keywords is best done by counting the number of words, although there can easily be overlap between the two. Short tail keywords are often 1-2 words in length, sometimes 3 words. Long tail keywords are typically 3-6 words in length, but they could be even longer than that!
How Can I Find Long Tail Keywords?
Finding keywords is pretty easy, there are lots of tools available, from Google Adwords to WordTracker to our own tools that aggregates several of these keyword databases (free trial). But before you get too excited, there is one important thing to know:
YOU WILL NEVER IDENTIFY ALL THE LONG TAIL KEYWORDS
Why is that? The main reason is that new searches happen every day, a lot more than you would think. Google has said that 20-25% of searches haven’t ever been seen before. That is amazing! What that really means is that there are tons of opportunities for you to get traffic, and with keywords that aren’t highly competitive!
How Can I Capitalize on Long Tail Keywords?
Let’s make this one into a step-by-step process:
1) Today’s Long Tail Keywords - Start figuring out what long tail keywords people are using right now to find your site. I recommend HitTail. They have both free and paid services that track who hits your site. You can do it with Google Analytics too, but I like HitTail’s interface and focus on just the long tail.
2) Tomorrow’s Long Tail Keywords - (a) Brain storm by yourself, with co-workers, friends, and family for long tail keywords. Email a bunch of people you know asking for 10 searches they would use to find your product or service. (b) Use keyword search tools (like ours) to find keywords that are 3-6 words in length. Start with a popular keyword and see what comes up. Add it to your list of keywords but mark them in some way that they are “new”.
3) Unique Content - You’ll find it rather tough to rank for a long tail keyword without actually using that keyword in your content. Either write or pay someone to write content (like one of our companies) based on each of your keywords, one per page. I suggest doing no less than 250 words, and 350 words is probably better. I wouldn’t worry about keyword density, but have it in there 3 or so times, as well as in the title and header (h1) tag.
4) Internal Linking - The easiest links are internal links! Of course they don’t count the same as external links (backlinks), but they are useful and make a difference. Make sure you link to your new content in some organized way (Read about theming by siloing), preferably more than just one link on one page to your content. Site-wide links should probably be reserved for your “short tail keywords”.
5) New, Fresh Content - After getting content for your site with your “new” list of long tail keywords, you need to stay on top of your game by constantly adding fresh, new, unique content. We started our content company, Applied Content, two years ago for just this reason. If you can’t afford to buy new articles weekly (we recommend 3-5 new articles per week), there are other options. Starting a company blog is a great way to do it, and you can share the writing between yourself and other employees. Have a set day to post so everyone knows to have a post ready. If you don’t want a company blog, then just write articles and expand your site. The point is to have new content with new phrases and potential long tail keywords.
Armed with the steps to capitalize on long tail keywords for your site, you can be well on your way to realizing the hidden potential of long tail keywords!
For an advanced look at the topic of short and long tail keywords, look at my post about Links vs Content.
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October 18th, 2007Michael D Jensen
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.
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September 24th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
Patrick Gavin of TLA and some others launched SketchCast.com today, and I was in on the beta testing. I created a SEO tutorial that helps people get started with SEO, which you can view below. And don’t forget to try out sketchcasting yourself!
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September 24th, 2007Michael D Jensen
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.
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September 7th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
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.
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August 30th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all - be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.
So if SEO is important, and we can learn it, how much time should we spend on SEO as a small business owner? It is an excellent question, and ultimately depends on how much business a firm hopes to bring in through their online efforts. For example, if a firm has in mind that in 12 months they would like to have 50% of their sales coming from online sources, and they currently only enjoy 5% of total sales from the site, then they should probably spend a considerable amount of time working on the site, making sure all the pieces are in place, so not only will the site’s visibility improve, but potential clients will be happy with what they find. Conversely, if this firm wants only 50% of their sales from online sources, but they now enjoy 60% of total being online generated, then they should focus more attention on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising until this ratio changes.
Once one has a basic grasp of SEO, they really should get themselves an account with SoloSEO, in order to put this knowledge to use, using the most comprehensive set of SEO tool on the web. Much like exercises in Accounting and Economics, actually using the tools, and seeing the results of your work, drives home the SEO concepts, and puts the finishing touches on the learning process. Through working with SoloSEO’s tools, a solid understanding of the pillars of SEO, namely keywords, links and content will form, and SEO will then seem not only doable, but pretty simple.
So once we understand what SEO “is,” then it is time to really understand our industry online, and review what our competitor’s are up to. This online Competitive Analysis can also be done using some of SoloSEO’s tools and reports. We must remember we are competing within a different marketplace, with new competitors, and how they have positioned their sites online, could and should influence how we position and optimize our sites today and in the future. There is not a pre-determined set of guidelines at this point for SEO, no matter what some might say, much of what we need to do to compete most effectively online will be determined by what our competitors have done and will do in the future. While the process of SEO is standardized, the focus of our specific SEO strategy will need to be flexible to face the challenges put forth by our online competitors. If we watch what they do, and manage our online SEO accordingly, then we can keep pace or outpace what they are attempting to do, and better our online exposure.
In my mind there isn’t a business out there today which cannot benefit from an online presence, especially a site that is well prepared, and skillfully promoted. Small business owners need to take every advantage, use every possible tool and strategy available, to insure their eventual, or continued success. I can think of nothing more vital, more accessible and more easily implemented (not to mention more affordable) than SEO. A site which runs well, and effectively targets the right potential clients, promotes a firm’s image in a positive way, while making sales, even while we sleep, or while we play golf (not that anyone would do this during business hours). Take the time to get to know SEO and you will quickly understand just how big your little company can become, and that realization can be quite jolt.
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August 7th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
Just over a year ago Danny sullivan said “Look out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo! Answers”. Yahoo! Answers is becoming not only a great resource, but also a social network (who isn’t, right?). I like Yahoo! Answers because people ask real questions and often get a handful or more of responses.
Sometimes links are all about ranking, but in this case you can get a good flow of traffic (Matt McGee on why he loves it) from a bona fide link on Yahoo! Answers. Every time I’ve jumped onto Yahoo! Answers, I’ve had a fun time. Not only responding, but also reading other people’s comments and questions.
Yahoo! Answers Made Easy
For starters, let’s make following your favorite topic really easy on Yahoo! Answers. They have a RSS feed, just like this blog and other blogs, that you can subscribe to and watch as new questions are asked.
The name of the game is get there first (or early) and answer the question. If you answer it well, correctly, and in a thorough manner, chances are you get most of the attention and are selected as the best answer. Then “forever” afterwards if that search comes up in the SERPs you’ve got a great chance of getting some traffic.
The best way to use Yahoo! Answers is to primarily be there to help others. If you have something on your site or blog that is helpful, then point them to it. If not, point them somewhere else. A good mix of those would be very natural.
Do you ever have a hard time figuring out what to write? Why not take a question, or part of an answer to someone’s question, and expand it on your blog? Better yet, answer someone’s question on your blog (quickly) and then add it as a response!
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July 6th, 2007Michael D Jensen
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. 
The other day we were leaving a soccer game for my 6 year old boy. My 2 year old wasn’t quite happy with her perceived lack of playground time, and she expressed her upset quite loudly, while she thrashed around. I calmly (kind of) chased her down, picked her up and lovingly wrestled her into her car seat. She reacted to her entrapment with unrelenting, ear-pearcing screams. Over this outburst, I couldn’t hear myself think, let alone my car’s reverse alarm, and we subsequently backed straight into a light pole. The bone-jarring thud caused instant silence, which was quite nice, but I dreaded getting out to view the damage. I slowly walked to the back of the car, and to my complete surprise and extreme delight I had hid that poorly positioned pole dead center. The only damage was to my trailer hitch cover, it was completely shattered, but it costs less than $100 so I was happy. I went from total dejection to total elation in just a few seconds. What a relief.
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).
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 
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. 
To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all - be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.
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