Google Maps Optimization Tips

Doug Williams @ 5:33 am

This blog entry was posted on November 29, 2010.

Google map results are triggered when someone includes a city or state name with certain search terms. Although these map listings are free when a business registers with Google Places, only the top 7 listings are displayed on the results page when a search is done. To appear in the top 7 listings, you will still need to optimize your map listing.

Keywords: This is very important as you create your new business listing. Not all keywords will produce a map listing when paired with a city name. You will need to test this as you finalize your keywords. Make sure your keywords are highly relevant to what you sell.
Local: The address and phone number for your business must be local and the same as you use on your other online locations. Place your address on every single page of your website, blog and web directory listing.
Categories: This is the business category that your business falls under. The category should be your keywords you selected above. The first category must be a legitimate Google category but the next 4 can be completely arbitrary and keyword rich.
Develop Citations: These are web pages that “cite” your company, address and phone number. You can develop these citations yourself by creating pages or listings at: squidoo.com, aboutus.org, kudzu.com, google.com/profiles or brownbook.net.
Customers Reviews: The more reviews your listing has, the better your position. It not only provides social proof for your company, reviews will keep your listing near the top. Try sending new customers an email asking them to leave you a review. You can even do this automatically using an auto responder series that greet new clients.
BackLinks: An effective targeted link building campaign can do wonders for your placements. This can move your listing above your competition by using keyword anchor text in a backlinking campaign.

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Filed under: Local Search

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Setting Goals For Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Doug Williams @ 4:52 am

This blog entry was posted on November 27, 2010.

Your customers do read and use social media. It is in such high use today that every business should be incorporating social media marketing into their marketing strategies. So how do you get started? The first step should be setting goals.

Just how big is the opportunity?

5 of the top 10 highest-traffic websites (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogger and Twitter) are social media websites.
With over 500 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world.
5.4 billion videos were watched by US audiences in October 2010 with YouTube having the majority share of viewers.

Before you start your social media marketing initiative, you need to establish your goals of what you want to accomplish. How is social media going to help your business? Many companies that are new to social media have a hard time with this because they don’t understand what is possible.

Sample social media marketing goals

Increase brand awareness using social media marketing
Monitor and measure the number of mentions of company brand / name online.
Gain a better understanding of how your target audience feels about your brand / company.
Build and develop relationships with your current customers.
Increase search engine traffic to your website by 40% by the end of the year.
Generate 50% more quality sales leads over current levels.

What are the next steps?

Start by listening and monitoring.
Select which specific social media sites to start with.
Start small and stay focused.
Measure results.
Make adjustments and changes.
Expand your campaign.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing

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5 Very Common Mistakes in Selecting keyword Phrases

Doug Williams @ 4:45 am

This blog entry was posted on November 25, 2010.

Selecting the right keywords that will attract interested visitors is the most critical step in any search engine optimization campaign. One of the biggest dangers is selecting the wrong keywords and then building an expensive campaign around them. Watch out for these all too common mistakes.

Search Volume: Don’t select phrases based on the daily search volume, instead select first based on relevance. Would someone that typed in a phrase for a search really want what you are selling? I would rather have a hundred interested visitors instead of a thousand uninterested ones.
Word Order: Don’t optimize for words in the wrong order. Do your keyword research based on “phrase match” rather than “broad match”. Example: “marketing small business” appears to have a high search volume (broad match). Researching in phrase match shows that the real phrase with high search volume is “small business marketing.”
Phrase Length: Don’t select short phrases. Short phrases don’t attract buyers. Buyers will typically use phrases with 3-5 words or even longer. Researchers look for short phrases (1-2 words) and they are very general. Buyer phrases are very specific and will include things like make and model or specific locations or details as searches get refined.
Commercial Intent: Don’t select phrases that attract people that just want information. Other phrases attract people who are interested in a transaction. Microsoft has Online Commercial Intention tool that will show which phrases will have a high level of commercial intent.
Local Phrases: Don’t select broad, national phrases if you are a local business. It is much easier and faster to get ranked for local phrases (broad terms + city or other geographic descriptor). Your local area is where 80% of your sales come from. This could be your neighborhood, city, state or a multi-state region.

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Filed under: SEO Strategies

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There Ought To Be a Law Against Spam!

Doug Williams @ 4:04 am

This blog entry was posted on November 23, 2010.

There is… It is called the CAN-SPAM Act. OK… looking at our inboxes, we can see it isn’t working well. Rather than create new laws, we need to get this one being enforced. After all, any law without enforcement isn’t really a law at all.

The term spam is generally thought to have originated from the well known Monty Python Spam sketch. Unlike the spicy lunch meet, spam, the email is a form of mass marketing like junk mail. Let’s take a look at this law.

CAN-SPAM stands for “Controlling the Assault of Non Solicited Pornography and Marketing.” The act was put into place January 2004 to set out requirements for those sending out commercial emails, establish penalties for spammers, and give consumers the right to ask e-mailers to stop spamming them.

Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000,

From: Don’t use false or misleading header information. Do not disguise who the sender is in any way.
Subject: Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the receiver.
Identify the message as an ad. Clearly and conspicuously state that it is an advertisement.
Location: Tell recipients where you’re located. Include a physical address or a PO box on every email.
Opt-out: Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Specific instructions or an opt-out link must be included.
Honor opt-out requests promptly. All opt-outs must be processed within 10 business days.
Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. You are responsible for another company if you hire them to send out emails.

The law seems clear… Why then is there no enforcement? Why then are our inboxes so full of spam?

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Filed under: Email Marketing

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7 Tips to Boost Your Site’s Conversion Rate

Doug Williams @ 5:06 am

This blog entry was posted on November 21, 2010.

Good traffic is important, but high conversion rates are even more important. Getting a steady flow of visitors is easier. Getting people to sign-up, join or buy is harder. If your site isn’t converting enough of your visitors into buyers, or at least into prospects, you can fix this.

Audience: Are you attracting the right visitors to your website? The best website won’t convert visitors if you’re targeting the wrong keywords. What answer are visitors looking for when they arrive? What is their intent?
Clear Action: Visitors arrive looking for a specific solution. If you can demonstrate you have the best solution, then they are ready to take action. Make it visual, visible, clear and easy. When your website visitor is ready to buy, make it easy for them.
Clear Navigation: Design your website’s navigation as cleanly and simply as possible. The more options and paths you have on the page, the higher will be the chances of the visitor getting confused.
Subscriber Sign-up: The best way to convert a visitor into a customer is to convince them over a period of time. Grow your email list via an opt-in or subscriber form on your website. The idea is to keep inviting people back and to encourage the repeat buyer.
Sign-up Incentives: Your incentive needs to make an impact. Something that causes them to say “wow” I need more of this. The key is start by delivering something they really want in your initial incentive.
Build Trust: Show visitors that you are trustworthy. Show prospects there are no risks. Build trust at every step. Show your phone number and address. Post a guarantee. Have a no-risk returns policy. Show your privacy policy. At an action step such as a sign-up for, reassure with an excerpt from your privacy policy.
Social Elements: Using social media, merged with eCommerce is one way to improve conversions. This includes product reviews, ratings, consumer feedback, wish-lists, favorites, blogs, forums or chat rooms.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing

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How Important Are Keywords in Your Domain?

Doug Williams @ 3:56 am

This blog entry was posted on November 19, 2010.

For SEO, having keywords in your domain name will give you some benefit, but it only has a minor effect on rankings. I think there are more important considerations as you select your domain name. It has more importance in branding and trust building than in SEO.

Choose a .Com: 74% of all domains registered in the US are .com. If you choose a COM top level domain (TLD), people will generally assume you have been around longer and that your company can more easily be trusted.
Company name: The natural choice from a branding point of view is to use your company name. People will trust you more if your company name and website domain are the same. I have even had some clients change their company name to match their website URL to make a stronger branding statement.
Keywords: Using keywords in your domain name will give you a slight SEO boost. This is only considered a very minor ranking factor. Keywords in your domain seems to help more with Bing than with Google. The best solution is if you can combine your company name, keywords and have a .com… all the better.
Easy to Remember: You want people to easily remember your website URL. Try not to abbreviate or choose a hard to remember acronym. Easy to remember is more important than shorter. I made this mistake when I first started my business as Doug Williams and Associates. My first domain was dwassoc.com… I later lengthened it to dougwilliams.com.
Age: Older domains will do better in getting a top ranking in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Generally two years and older perform well in getting a top ranking. Google in particular seems to apply a new domain “penalty”, especially on competitive keyword phrases.
Renewal Term: Renew (or purchase) your domain for the longest period possible. Choose 10 years if your registrar will let you. This will give you a slight bump in rankings. After all, if you believe your website will be around for 10 years, then Google will “trust” you more.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing,SEO Strategies

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SEO is the Ultimate Art of Influencing

Doug Williams @ 5:36 am

This blog entry was posted on November 17, 2010.

No person can control Google. Nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking for you. Not even a Google engineer. So how do some SEOs offer a guarantee? The short answer is that they can’t. Google tells you “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings. Instead have them show examples of their work, talk to some of their clients. So… what is SEO?

SEO is the art of persuasion. SEO is about building trust. It is about convincing Google that your website deserves a top ranking. That it is the website that Google searchers most want to visit. It is the answer to the problem that searchers are looking for.

A top ranking in the SERPs is not a right, it is a privilege. It is a reward for delivering great content that is packaged well. It is a message for communicating your message clearly and eloquently.

Influence is an art form. It is not a blitz attack by infantry that takes the top position by storm. It is subtle moves and finesse that gets the best results.

SEO influences by carefully focusing your efforts on a keyword phrase and using it prominently and tastefully through the website. It is about creating content that is so compelling and interesting that other websites want to link to your content.

Build relationships between your website and others. Use social media and blogs to get your content out to the right audience. Use fresh ideas in your press releases and articles to reach out with.

SEO is not forceful. It does not guarantee results. It is an art form, it is subtle and it is compelling. It takes persistence and patience. It does not happen overnight. Most of all you need to show that you deserve it with tasteful and quality content.

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Filed under: SEO Strategies

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How Best to Add Videos to Your Website

Doug Williams @ 4:29 am

This blog entry was posted on November 15, 2010.

Using Video on your site increases your chances of keeping your visitor interested and engaged. Use video’s audio visual method of storytelling to captivate your visitors. Video also grabs the viewer’s attention.

According to ComScore (October 2010), 83.9 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video during the prior month. The average video was 4.9 minutes. We now recommend adding video to every website as a way to better connect to prospects.

How you should use video on your website

About Us: This is the most important video to have on your website. Use video to create a personal connection with your visitor. Give a human face to your corporate website. Use it to create trust as you tell your story of who your business is, what makes you different and how you got started.
Meet the Staff: Create profile videos that introduce your customer facing staff and your key management.
Product Demonstration: Show your product in use and give tips on how to use it correctly to get optimum results.
Tutorial: Use video to educate your customers. Include detailed how to videos to teach people how to use your product, assemble it or install it. Many people are visual learners and video really appeals to this group.
Testimonials: Bring life to your testimonials by using video. People can hear the excitement in the voice and watch facial expressions.
Virtual Tour: Give a walk through of your physical location so that visitors can understand your company and what goes into the products and services that you sale.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing

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How to Optimize Title Tags For Maximum SEO Benefit

Doug Williams @ 5:27 am

This blog entry was posted on November 13, 2010.

Are you looking for a quick boost to your website rankings? Your website title tags should be the first place you look. Title tags are one of the most important ways to get top rankings on Google. Big gains can be had with just small changes.

Title Tag Optimization Process

Keyword Research: Always start with keyword research, selecting keywords that are highly relevant to your web page. Select one phrase to be your primary phrase and up to 3 additional secondary phrases for a page.
Primary Keyword Phrase: Use your most important phrase at the beginning of the Title tag. Google assigns greater weight to the words at the beginning. This signals the search engine what your page is about. Place the company name at the end of the tag if you want it included.
Length: Google displays a maximum of 70 characters from your title tag as the title of the search result. The search engines will give credit for words used beyond the 70 character max that they display. Good practice is to keep it shorter than 100 characters. Some SEOs will use lengths of up to 150 characters.
Hyphens: Using hyphens are a good way to get recognized for variations of the same phrase if it could be used in a compound word or as separate words. As an example, race-car would be interpreted as both race car and racecar.
Unique and Relevant: The title tag should be unique, specific and relevant to each web page. Avoid having duplicate title tags on any of the pages on your website. These should be written for your visitors as well as the search engines. So avoid just listing a series of keywords separated by commas. Your title should be a clear sentence, phrase or description.
Synonyms: Use of synonyms is a legitimate way of adding repetition into a title tag to reinforce what a web page is about. Using WW2 and World War 2 conveys the same meaning while avoiding repeating the same word.

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Filed under: SEO Strategies

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20 Link Building Terms You Should Know

Doug Williams @ 4:54 am

This blog entry was posted on November 11, 2010.

Anchor Text: The visible text in a hyperlink. Sometimes called link text
Anchor Text Optimization: The strategic use of keywords in the anchor text in inbound links as a SEO technique.
Backlinks: Incoming links to a web page from an outside website. Sometimes called inbound links.
Deep Links: Links to a page other than the home page. This is considered more natural by the search engines.
Hidden Links: A SEO spam method where text links are designed to be seen by spiders but not by human visitors.
Image Link: A hyperlink that consists of an image linked to another web location.
Inbound Links: Hypertext links from an external web page to your page. Inbound links with optimized anchor text are highly valued by search engines.
Linkbaiting: Content on a website or blog that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.
Link Building Campaign: Using methods and strategies to attract links from external websites in an effort to improve search rankings.
Link Exchange: See reciprocal linking
Link Farm: A spam technique by setting up sites that can be crawled by search engines, just so they can put in thousands of links to sites they want to boost in search rankings.
Link Popularity: A measurement of the quality and quantity of inbound links to a webpage. A factor which affects a website’s search engine rankings.
Nofollow: This is an HTML attribute or tag that instructs a search engine not to pass credit or “link juice” onto another website. Google encourages the use of nofollow on all paid ads.
One Way Link: An inbound link from an outside website where there is no return link. Different than reciprocal linking.
Outbound Link: A link from your website to an external page on the web.
PageRank: Google’s measurement of how important a page is and affects search rankings. This is an index that values Web pages on a scale of 0 to 10, based largely on link popularity.
Paid Link: A backlink that is paid for or rented from another website. This is considered a spam technique today.
Reciprocal Links: These are links to another website placed on your site in exchange for links back to your site from theirs. Technique to improve search engine rankings and now considered a spamming method.
SERP: Search Engine Results Page
Spamming: Using a method that Abuses the normal search engine ranking techniques, such as using hidden text, hidden links or using a link farm.

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Filed under: Link Popularity