As some of you know, I have recently been trying to get into Twitter. It has been a very interesting ride. I have met many incredible people, and learned much about a variety of business models and ideas. The Twitter community is growing rapidly with Mashable reporting an astounding 752% increase in 2008. Many project 2009 will be even higher. Who uses Twitter is a question I had in my mind when I first dove in. The best explanation of Twitter I have ever heard, was from twitter user @wisekaren who tweeted to me the following:
“FB (Facebook) is for people you used to know; Twitter is for people you’d like to know.”
Which is a comment I have learned to be absolutely true.
As I see it now, Twitter is a social media platform that provides opportunity for real business growth, understanding, learning, and networking. In social media realm Twitter is like the infamous lunch date tactic all we young executive types use(d) when we were expanding our careers, working 80 hours a week, but still wanted to meet someone worthwhile, without blowing a whole evening and serious $$ on someone who was not quite right. Twitter gives everyone the opportunity to sample ideas, musings and knowledge of others, not only in your same area of expertise, but in areas of expertise where you have great interest, but lack knowledge.
There are some great Twitter help aides out there, that assist in getting the most out of Twitter data. Some of the Twitter tools I am now using include: TweetBeep, created by my biz partner Michael Jensen. TweetBeep allows you to save keywords and keyword phrases, then the TweetBeep service will email you tweets containing your keywords at predetermined times. Imagine putting in some important keywords for your business and receiving the resulting tweets with those keywords every morning. You can easily see emerging trends, and pick up other related keywords that should probably be considered in your SEO keyword strategies. It is a marvelous SEO tool.
I have also been using TweetGrid. This is a web based tool/system, which allows the selection of 6 topic keywords, and then streams all tweets containing these keywords. If you want to learn about a topic quickly, pick a keyword you are interested in and watch the data fly by. This is also a great way to find and engage Twitter users directly who have similar interests, and perhaps strike up a relationship for future work together, or at least someone we can bounce ideas off. It is an excellent tool to leverage Twitter.
For folks on the go, there are many amazing Twitter tools that provide the benefits of Twitter on the road. I personally use Tweetie on my iPhone to tweet, but there are many others, including: Twittelator, Twitterrific which offers all of Twitter’s functionality and TwitterFon, which is a free, but very basic iPhone Twitter client.
Some other cool Twitter tools for the iPhone include Fastweet, which allows for quick reading of many tweets. GeoTweeter which adds GPS coordinates to your tweets, GPSed, lets you share maps of your travels to Twitter and Twitter Trend which gives you a snapshot of what topics are really hot on twitter for the last 24 hours. Very cool.
I know many of those that use SoloSEO are small business owners, and are working diligently to get their online business screaming. We can see how much work is being done through the use of the SoloSEO SEO tools. Please also consider using Twitter to bolster your online exposure, and knowledge about your online market, it will make a difference.
Just a quick note on some Twitter rules of engagement (suggestions really). When someone “follows” you on Twitter, it is a good idea to follow them back. How many followers you have is a big deal to many. It doesn’t indicate exactly if you are a good Tweeple, but does show how popular you are on Twitter. Following people who show interest in you makes good sense, as many will have something in them you will be interested in. I have learned this tidbit over time, and am now in the process of ditching those I follow that don’t follow me, and following my followers. Its just good Karma. Also, on Fridays there is a custom of recommending good Twitter users others should follow. You simply list the user’s usernames with a hashtag (def. a keyword with # at the beginning of the word, which allows organization a group of tweets) of #FollowFriday somewhere in your tweet. For example, I tweeted earlier today the following:
Which essentially tells those that read my tweet that I recommending these 7 users as worthy to follow.
Those are just a few things on Twitter. The best way to learn and love Twitter is to just jump in and get going. Sign up for Twitter here. At anytime, if you have a questions about how to use Twitter, just tweet about it, and you will find just how helpful and responsive the Twitter Nation can be. Hope to see (follow) you soon.
Finally, we would sure appreciate a follow once you get up and running. @mdjensen & @aaronstewart
I’ve been inspired today by a post written by Demian Farnworth entitled: What a Cocky CEO Can Teach You About World-Class Blogging. The post was excellent, and as a small business creator and owner, I loved the points made in the blog on keeping our companies “focused, lean, fast.” Embracing these attributes usually keeps you competitive, especially against larger companies, which can occasionally bog down under the weight of their own hierarchy, policies and procedures.
However, in my experience in working with large clients, I have learned much about them. When I was younger, I used to get quite frustrated with the sometimes arduous process to get anything approved, or to get policies changed, in order to make it possible for clients to use our services and technologies. But over the years I have learned to be patient, as we have seen that once the required changes have been made, and the contracts signed, there is nothing more satisfying than the stability a large client can provide to small business cash flows, and A/R collections. We currently spend more way more energy running around attempting to collect from small clients, than we ever had to spend waiting for a large client to put everything in place for us. So to all small businesses out there thinking about servicing large clients, go for it. It may take years to get a contract in place, but once it is there, it is a very comfortable place to be. In one example, one of our current Fortune 500 clients took almost 5 years of discussions before we actually got the business, but we have now been working with them for over 3 years, and just renewed our contract for 3 more. It is very, very nice in these economic times to have a contract in place with a sound, stable client.
So how do you land these large clients? Is it an art? Are there any tricks? I have thought about these questions quite a bit over the years. There are no tricks per se, but here are some steps we have found to be very helpful.
1. Before approaching a client, learn everything you can about the company, their history, the current management team, read all the latest news articles. I love to look over their stock price, and history. Many working within the company will watch the stock closely, as it has much to do with how their salaries, bonuses, 401K and retirement will be calculated. Whatever you can do to increase your knowledge about them, and what they do and are about, the better off you are going to be once the discussions begin. With every phone call, I have found the opportunity to ask them about some aspect of their company, or mentioned something I have learned, or I congratulate or commiserate with them on their stock price. Once they know you really know about their company, you have made an impression that is invaluable.
2. Don’t be afraid to follow up. There are many demands on employees at large firms, they are required to attend all kinds of meetings, produce reports, and they do not have as much control over their time as small business folks do. The polite, squeaky wheel does eventually get the grease in this case. We try to follow up at least once a week during the courting period. That is a lot of contact when it takes years to finally get in place, but again, think of the long-term prize, and keep your expectations realistic on the amount of time required to get the deal done.
3. Make sure your product is not only great, but it is a near perfect fit with what they are doing. Do not call and fish to see if they just may possibly have needs for some form of what you could possibly do for them if they had time to listen and share what their needs are… (annoying run on sentence used purposefully) There have been many times we have pitched our product or service, which fit well with what the potential client was doing, but while talking to them we realized we could offer other products and services that might be even better based on their immediate needs. We would then approach them later with a new proposal that is not only more comprehensive, but excites them more because of their current needs. This is a great way to get the ball rolling more quickly.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals, even during the negotiating process. One of our current largest clients was actually a referral from a client we were in negotiations with. Those you are speaking with know others in other companies in their line of work. They went to school together, attend conferences together, might be in local organizations together, and they will know if your services might prove helpful at another firm. A referral from a person of stature in a large company, to their counterpart in another firm is golden. We literally started working with the referral company the same week the referral was made. It was a fabulous surprise.
5. Take the time to travel and see those you are talking to. As small business folks, we don’t always have the working capital to fly all over the world on a whim, but maybe consider taking a family trip to a city where you have a potential client. Michael and I were in a city for SoloSEO business, and since we were going to be in the area anyway, we just called up a potential client we had been working with in another opportunity and said “hey we are going to be in the area, and were wondering if we could come by and meet with you?” They were very accommodating, and we actually got to meet with entire executive group. We had a great discussion, demoed some stuff, and moved the discussion along more in a hour, than we had been able to do over the previous 12 months.
6. When all else fails, invite them to golf. Oh laugh if you must (and my wife will ), but there has been many times when I have tried and tried unsuccessfully to get someone on the phone or to answer an email. But eventually I will call, when someone tries to give me the brush off, or if I have to leave a VM, I will say “well, I have a tee-time today at 2:00, and have had an opening, just wanted to see if _______ wanted to join us.” I am either put on hold and put through, or I get a call back in less than 5 minutes. Great thing about golf, I then have 4+ hours with the person I needed to talk with. And, never, never, never allow them win, that’s terrible. If they beat you straight up, fine, but if you can take it to them, then you will earn their respect. Once you trounce a CEO, President, VP or anyone else on the golf course, you have their attention, respect, and they will take your calls from then on, guaranteed.
7. Probably the most important, just be yourself. You are good enough, just as you, to hang with anyone, no matter how big the company is in your sights. Your products and services are (hopefully) excellent, and you will do a good job for them, and make their company more competitive or efficient. As long as you can focus on this, the whole process is easier to exist through. I have no doubt that what we have to offer the companies we approach can help them be better at what they do. If they choose to use us, they will see amazing results, and they will be grateful they decided to work with us. If they choose not to go with us, it is their choice and their loss. Chances are we will work a deal with their competitor, and the original company will eventually learn how good things could have been.
8. Once you have landed the big client, keep them by providing customer service they have never experienced in-house. We try to respond to any request or comment from our Fortune 500 clients as soon as they come in. We will tell them instantly what we are doing to address the concern, and how long it will take to get it done. When someone works in a large company they are used to their request taking days, and sometimes weeks to be addressed. So they are happy when things are dealt with more quickly, but we don’t allow ourselves to become complacent because their expectations are way low. We respond as quickly as we possibly can, even though we don’t really have to in order to keep them happy.
9. When contracts eventually come due, and it is time to negotiate, realize these companies are going to do all they can to keep the price as low as possible, or to lower the price. They have budgets, supervisors, and stocks holders they have to be concerned with. We like to have at least three possible pricing options for them, with varying levels of products and service we can offer at these varying price points. The client can then choose what is best for their needs. In all the packages we can be profitable, and we have addressed the concerns our clients have. If we are doing our jobs right, we usually know what these concerns will be, by listening during time we spend working with them.
Working with large clients is challenging, it is demanding, but it is incredibly interesting, and most of all it is very enjoyable. I consider the people I work with at these firms to be great friends, I enjoy their phone calls, visits, and solving their challenges for them. We have gained quite a bit of business by current clients just asking if there is anything we could do to help them solve a new problem. In many cases we have, and it has developed into a new product or service we can then offer in the marketplace.
So get out there and land a big client(s), it can be done, and when it is done, it will be well worth all the effort.
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February 19th, 2009Aaron R Stewart
In the evolution of all things online, we have come to a place where individuals can now employ some online strategies to really hammer at a firm’s or individual’s reputation. And if these dipsticks are good at what they do, they can have a disastrous influence on potential clients and partners. Michael and I have had the opportunity to meet with a number of large firms, even Fortune 500 companies, to discuss online strategies and systems, including online reputation management.
Yesterday we sat down with a company we are quite familiar with. We have had discussions with them over the years on a number of different technological systems to improve aspects of their business. We first discussed SEO strategies with them starting back in March of 2007. But at that time, due to some management changes and architecture issues, we didn’t have the opportunity to help them much. Yesterday their online situation had changed a bit, in that they are now facing some online reputation challenges, and they know something needs to be done, and the sooner the better.
No doubt about it, we will see more and more of these sorts of online attacks in the future, there seems to be something very empowering about a keyboard and a screen. Words and comments people would never say in public or audibly, get thrown up on blogs and as comments every day, with little consequence to the mud slinger. So what can we do about protecting our firm, and our firm’s reputation. Here are a few words of advice.
Michael made a great comment yesterday about openness in business, which has become so more important in this online revolution. We as business owners and managers of firms need to be more open to the public, even if it is uncomfortable or unnerving. I personally was raised in a family where we kept our “problems” “in house” so to speak. I mean we felt like “why should we share our dirt with the neighborhood?” It was none of their business, and we didn’t want to look any less perfect than we already did. In corporate America, this type of “keep the dirty laundry in-house” attitude has been prominent. Large firms used to be very good at ignoring what others were saying, they would just pretend to look the other way, refuse to comment and they hoped, with time, the problem would eventually go away. And to a degree I think this strategy worked and had merit. But that won’t work anymore. If we aren’t willing to get in the discussion, especially a negative one, then we risk appearing out of touch, and most importantly we risk letting others present our firm’s image in a light which may not be representative, nor fair.
This type of corporate openness can also have sort of a self-policing aspect to it. If we are open about what is going on inside the company, freely discussing issues head on, there will be more internal effort to make sure nothing actually does goes too wrong internally, as people are being held responsible for their actions, and frankly dealing with problems is a royal pain. I wonder if the stories of Tyco and MCI might have been a bit different if openness from top to bottom was a policy in those organizations? Perhaps.
So, how can we get involved in the online clammer? One method is to pay attention to what others are saying about your company. There are many ways to do this. Michael shared the example of how Comcast monitors Twitter for comments about their company, then quickly responds to these comments, positive or negative, to make sure they are heading off any potential problems. What a wonderfully proactive way to interact, and to be apart of the online social conversation. Obviously watching the Twitter feed to perhaps find something about your firm would be time consuming, and maybe impractical if it is a small firm, but it is also possible to go back and search the archives of Twitter. Then, when we have the time, we can write a blog post using keywords that might associate our firm with the past comments, and deal with the issue head on. I also would suggest contacting the person who made the comment directly, just to see if there isn’t anything that can be done to improve their attitude toward the company. You might find them pretty surprised you cared, and possibly shocked you knew they had commented in the first place.
I personally use Google Alerts to watch for keywords which are important to me. I use it for my name and each firm name, just to keep any eye on things online. If anyone uses these tagged words online, Google alerts me, and we can then go and check it out and deal with it. It is a very helpful, and frankly reassuring system. When a hot topic comes up, and our firm is put in the discussion, we make sure to get some content out there, on a new web page, or in a blog to address the issue, making sure we use the very keywords used in the attack. We all need to make sure that when someone puts across a potentially negative view, that we have provided our own narrative of the situation to buffer a searcher’s reaction. If we are open and honest to the problem, potential clients will give us the well-deserved benefit of the doubt , which we essentially earned by responding directly. I don’t think individuals are naive enough to believe everything they read, but they are more likely to believe when no opposing view is offered.
When considering future pages or blog post, perhaps we should discuss items that might be problems in the future… If you are an injury attorney, I would have a page discussing the term “ambulance chaser.” A used car salesman should discuss the whole sales process and perhaps offer steps on how to avoid buying a lemon. Helpful content like this is not only beneficial in reputation management, but also assists in building a group of loyal readers who appreciate your unique view of your market. We each know our individual markets better than most our clients will, and they might as well learn it from us. Then when shots are taking at our reputations, we have a trusting readership to come to our aide, and participate in the conversation. So the online noise will not only be from some delusional competitor or a disgruntled client, but also from us directly, and others that have learned to trust us over time.
The bigger the firm, the bigger the challenge to manage online reputations. Fortunately there are more complex and technologically advanced methods for larger companies, with more online real estate to protect, but these strategies take a new mindset, a great deal of money and usually new internal and technological architecture to fully implement. Most of us will never have to worry about this extreme level of reputation protection, but if there is a time when your large firm or you yourself do need some help, let us know, we have learned a great deal on how to deal with these challenges, even on the largest of scales.
In short, as a buddy of mine likes to say, “just keep it real,” and online that advice is good as good as any, especially when managing what others can find out about you through search.
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July 16th, 2008Aaron R Stewart
I have blogged here regularly in the past, I could easily see blogging was a pretty great idea, especially to generate new content for a site you want to start ranking well. I still think blogging is an excellent method to add content to a site, we have seen the benefit of content with SoloSEO.com, and our rankings. However, I was also pretty shocked to discover some unexpected results from blogging, which I kind of feel need to be addressed.
Others have discussed the time commitment required to keep a good blog going, such as adding a good post once a week, well written, and contributing something worth reading. This is definitely the case, and I personally think blogging is even more difficult for the small business owner. Owning your own business, let alone two or three, means you have a number of hats you need to wear to keep the business running. Small business owners have to be the marketing, HR, accounting, sales and maintenance departments all at once. Allocating time to manage a blog, although important, may not be the best use of your time. It really depends on the type of business being run, and just how much revenue is hope to be gained from online leads and sales. If online sales will never contribute more than 25% of total revenue, I would suggest not spending to much time on it. If more then 25% is or hopefully will be from online leads and sales, then working on content is a good strategic use of time. In this case, my suggestion would be to keep posts pretty short, a paragraph or two, and focus them on the company, products, policies, and vision of the company, etc. I good history of the company and how it came to be, can also be good reading and provide clients with a good feeling about the business. Blogging like this makes it pretty easy to write something quickly, as business owners are well versed in these areas, and are virtually assured to use keywords which relate well to what a business is and does, which in turn helps rankings for keywords potential clients are using when the search.
There are other results of blogging which I never imagined. Over the last few years I have attended PubCon and SMX. They are great shows, and I have a great time learning, but the last show kind of freaked me out. I was just moving along through the show, headed to another session, when I was stopped by a few people who kindly informed me they liked some of the stuff I had put up on our blog. I had never been stopped abruptly like that before, expect maybe a Highway Patrolman. It was very nice of these folks to stop, it was very nice of them to be nice, whether they really felt this way about our blog or not, but I was kind of mystified by it all… Everyone needs to understand before they start a blog that putting your stuff online, and attaching your name to it means your content will be there for a very long time, if not forever, and you might actually become “known” in the industry are attempting to succeed within. There are those on this earth who crave attention, and desire to be in the public eye. I am sure you know a few, there are some obvious examples in the SEO industry. However, I am not one of these people. For me personally, any notoriety at all is not a good thing, positive or negative. I would rather sneak through life leaving as little a mark as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be educated, successful in business, I want to be a good dad and husband, but I would rather accomplish these things without anyone else outside of my close circle really knowing or caring.
My personal goals include contributing to the public good, help as many people as I can, through business, through sharing expertise, through any method possible, but I want to be able to do it as anonymously as possible. The thought of being recognized out on the street, by anyone, for any reason, is very, very unsettling, I want no part of it. So, if you are like me, and are attempting to go through life as quietly as possible, I would suggest not blogging, or at least not blogging with your name attached to it. Instead blog as a company staff member, or use a stage name, “SEO Stan,” “Golfing Joe,” or something like that, so you can remain nameless.
The experience at the show has really reduced my desire to blog, which is too bad… I want to share stuff I have learned, I want our site to grow and continue to rank better, and blogging is an excellent way to get that done, but I don’t want any notoriety for it. Kind of a weird place to be… When was the last time you listened to a nameless face offering advice? I am not sure how to get that done at this point, but I am working on figuring it out, when I do, I will let you know, until then I guess I blog as me.
All this being said, content really is king for sites attempting to rank well for a long period of time, and blogging is a great way to get the content up there, it just isn’t as painless as I had originally thought, or hoped it would be. To avoid the spotlight, perhaps we could just spend time on improving or expounding on the products pages and descriptions, as well as on pages about the company, product quality, guarantee policies, new products, goals for the company, etc., rather than just blogging this new content. The topics for new pages to add to a business site are endless.
Ultimately, if you want to get your name out there and be recognized as an expert in the field, then blogging is a great way to do it. If you don’t, that’s fine too, but content still needs to be created for your site, either don’t attach your name to it, or just focus on pimping out your web pages, with superior, unique content as no author’s name is required.
Oh, one last thing… If our paths happen to cross in the future at any of the upcoming shows, just ignore me completely. I would really appreciate it.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th of July holiday.
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July 3rd, 2008Aaron R Stewart
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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Visited 13760 times
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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Visited 2708 times
September 24th, 2007Michael D Jensen
As some of you know, I have recently been trying to get into Twitter. It has been a very interesting ride. I have met many incredible people, and learned much about a variety of business models and ideas. The Twitter community is growing rapidly with Mashable reporting an astounding 752% increase in 2008. Many project 2009 will be even higher. Who uses Twitter is a question I had in my mind when I first dove in. The best explanation of Twitter I have ever heard, was from twitter user @wisekaren who tweeted to me the following:
There have been many times we have pitched our product or service, which fit well with what the potential client was doing, but while talking to them we realized we could offer other products and services that might be even better based on their immediate needs. We would then approach them later with a new proposal that is not only more comprehensive, but excites them more because of their current needs. This is a great way to get the ball rolling more quickly.
), but there has been many times when I have tried and tried unsuccessfully to get someone on the phone or to answer an email. But eventually I will call, when someone tries to give me the brush off, or if I have to leave a VM, I will say “well, I have a tee-time today at 2:00, and have had an opening, just wanted to see if _______ wanted to join us.” I am either put on hold and put through, or I get a call back in less than 5 minutes. Great thing about golf, I then have 4+ hours with the person I needed to talk with. And, never, never, never allow them win, that’s terrible. If they beat you straight up, fine, but if you can take it to them, then you will earn their respect. Once you trounce a CEO, President, VP or anyone else on the golf course, you have their attention, respect, and they will take your calls from then on, guaranteed.
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).
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