Tracking Your Web Site

by John Eberhard

I routinely run into people who are not tracking the statistics of their web site and have no idea how many people are coming to the site. I realize that a web site and Internet marketing are not a priority for every business. But if you are trying to generate business with a web site, it is vital that you have a mechanism in place to track how many people are coming to the site.

Minimally this will answer the question on whether you need to a) concentrate on generating traffic (if you traffic is really low) or b) work on changing the web site to get more leads from it (if your traffic is decent but you're not getting enough leads).

There are a number of web statistics software programs and services available, but several years ago Google came out with Google Analytics, a free service that is quite good. So Analytics is the service I recommend to everyone at this point.

Putting Analytics on your site involves putting some code onto every page of the site, although if you have a Wordpress site, one simply has to download a plugin that allows you to hook up Analytics, then enter your account number.

You can view these statistics for your site on a weekly or monthly basis.

Visitors: The first thing you should track with your web site is the number of visitors that come to the web site each week. I graph this weekly for my own web site, and I report the number of visitors monthly to my monthly marketing clients.

Some people say that the statistic you should pay attention to is the number of unique visitors, which is the number of people who came to the site, discounting if they came more than once. So if 100 people came to your web site, but one of them came 21 times, the unique visitors stat would be 100, but the total visits stat would be 120. I prefer the total visits statistics because I think you want people to come to your site multiple times.

Pages: You should look at what pages people came to on your site, and how many times for each page. As you make changes to your site, this will tell you how well those changes are working and how well you are directing people to go to the important areas of your site.

Referring Sites: These are sites that have a link to yours, and it shows what sites actually referred you some traffic in the week or month. This is important because it shows which search engines are sending you traffic, which social media sites you are getting traffic from (showing how well your social media marketing efforts are going), and in general it shows how well your link building efforts are going.

Keywords: Google Analytics will show you what keywords people entered in search engines, that resulted in their finding you and arriving on your site. This is important because it is an indicator of which keywords your site is ranking well for. Because people wouldn't actually be arriving on your site using that keyword if your site was ranking lower than page 2 or 3 for that keyword.

Good luck with tracking your online marketing and site activity.

Artificial Scarcity

by John Eberhard

In this article I am going to talk about a marketing strategy or copywriting strategy, and actually, a whole business model, that exists today. You may have seen this strategy used. I'm not in favor of it.

My first experience with what I will called the "artificial scarcity" model was maybe 20 years ago. I responded to some offer of a free 2 day cruise or something like that, and you had to sit through a presentation where they tried to sell you something. In this case we got on a bus and went up to the desert. They had built a recreation center and hotel in the middle of nowhere, and they were selling plots of land around this thing.

The idea was you buy a plot of land, you get access to the recreation center and hotel, like a timeshare, and eventually a town will get built there and your land will be worth a lot more. Well I didn't know if a town was ever going to get built there. Before I committed to spending $15,000 I wanted to d a bit more research. But no, the deal was only available that day.

About 5 years ago, a company called Stompernet released a course on how to market on social media. I think the course cost around $2,000. This was at the beginning of social media marketing, and these guys knew how to do it and no one else did at that time. So their course offering broke all records and they made millions within two or three days.

Since this release made such a big splash, I did some research on it at the time. There was one guy associated with the release who did the copywriting and the release strategy.

Basically it was a case of created, artificial scarcity. The course was only going to be offered to X number of people and only until X date. But why was it only for X number of people and until X date? Why couldn't it be a situation where they could sell it to an unlimited number of people, and continue indefinitely, the way most companies do business?

They purposely made it that way to create the idea of scarcity. From the marketer's point of view, this gives you a couple advantages:

1. Some people will sign up for the service who otherwise would not have, because they fear they will miss out otherwise.
2. People have no time to do any due diligence on the purchase.
3. You can probably inflate the price higher than you could otherwise charge. 

Of course there is one big disadvantage, which is, if you end up having a big hit on your hands, you are limited to how many you can sell and how long. You aren't really in a business. You're just sort of doing something temporarily. And you can't later go back and say "Hey we're offering this now again, or for a longer time," because then you totally lose credibility.

I studied some material from this copywriter who did the Stompernet release, and he listed out all these other releases he had worked on (mostly courses), and they were all done this way, with the release only being offered for a short period of time and then it wasn't offered any more.

One reason offered for doing it this way was that the person giving the course and the "personal coaching" could only coach so many people at a time. But this was a made up reason, because if he's such a good coach he could train other trainers, like most businesses do.

Recently I saw a reputable company that I respect offer a course on doing copywriting this way, with headlines saying that you could "5x your conversions." I checked into it and found they were promoting this artificial scarcity strategy. I had no interest in this, and I have never tried to create a campaign this way for my company or any of my clients.

I object to this model for a number of reasons:

a. I think scarcity is not a happy thing in life or society, and to artificially create it is not a constructive business tactic.

b. I don't like the way this strategy or business model manipulates people and plays off their fears. Based on fear, some people will end up buying the product or service that would not have otherwise bought it and may not really need it. Also they will probably end up paying too much for it.

c. I think to create a viable business or service offering is not necessarily an easy task, so to assign an arbitrary cutoff date, where you won't sell the item after that date, is foolish from a business perspective.

I think the proper way to write copy and market, whether it is online marketing or offline marketing, is to have a product or service that people need and is a helpful and useful product or service, to tell people why it is good and what benefits they would get from it, let people do any research they want, and let them make up their minds. The usefulness of the product or service should be what sells them, not gimmicks or manipulation.

That is not to say that you can't occasionally have a buy now discount, that ends on a certain date. That's quite a bit different. But threatening to take away the product or service completely is too manipulative, and I advise people not to take this route.

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Social Media Engagement

by John Eberhard

In past articles I’ve talked about the necessity of getting lots of friends, followers and connections on social media sites, if you want to use them effectively for marketing purposes.

But there is another important point that is vital in effectively using social media sites to market. That is your amount of engagement with others on social media sites. By engagement in this case I mean “interacting back and forth with people on the social media sites.”

The idea is that you are not just outflowing information or messages to your friends, followers or connections on sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You should be viewing what other people are doing or saying and interacting with them about it.

I was talking to a friend about this recently and I could tell he thought it would be a daunting task, i.e. that it would take him too much time. But I think it is important if you want to get much benefit from social media sites, and I don’t think it has to take a lot of time. Here are some examples:

1. On Facebook, click on “Home.” This brings up a feed of things that your Facebook friends have posted, including short blurbs about what they are doing, comments on things, links to articles elsewhere on the web, pictures they have uploaded, or links to videos on YouTube. Quickly scroll through this feed to look for things that interest you. If someone has posted a blurb or comment that you agree with, click the “Like” button underneath that post. Or post a short comment on it yourself. Similarly if someone has posted a link to an article or video that you like or agree with, click the “Like” button or post your own comment. It is easy to spend excessive time on this but you should discipline yourself and make it take no more than 5 minutes a day. When you click the “Like” button or post a comment on someone else’s content, they receive an email. It shows them that you give a hoot about them and it’s not all about you.

2. On Facebook, in the upper right area of the page you can click to see a list of your Facebook friends for whom today is their birthday. Review this list and for anyone who is a real life friend, write a quick “Happy birthday Joe” message.

3. On Facebook there are groups or fan pages you can find about areas of interest or about your industry. Click “like” on some of these groups and follow or join in the discussions that appear on their fan pages.

4. Facebook has its own email system. Read any Facebook email you get and reply to it.

5. On Twitter, you can spend a few minutes following the posts of other people that you are following, then “re-tweet” the ones you like (that means to send that particular post again out to all of your followers). Or you can send them a direct message via Twitter.

6. Set up folders in your email program and set up mail rules that will dump all Facebook emails into a folder for Facebook and all Twitter emails into a folder for Twitter. That way they do not clutter up your main inbox and you can handle those emails when you have time.

7. On Twitter, you will receive emails that say “Direct message from Joe Jones.” Unfortunately a lot of these will be automatically generated messages that others send out whenever someone follows them, most saying “Thanks for following me. Look forward to reading your messages.” Some will include a link to something they are pitching. I think whoever invented the auto direct messages on Twitter should have a special seat reserved for them in a very hot place, next to that guy who invented that sticky tape along the top of a CD jewel case. The auto direct message is an unfortunate thing you have to put up with. But be on the lookout for any direct messages from others who are actually communicating to you. Reply to them.

8. One thing you can do on Twitter is do a search for your company name or brand, and see what people are saying about you. Then respond to them or re-tweet their stuff if it is positive. If it’s negative, it gives you a chance to monitor any problems and respond to them.

The web, and especially social media sites, are all about interaction, a conversation, back and forth. In the days before the web and social media, most companies were used to putting out communications that their public or consumers would receive. The public could write them a letter but most people never did that.

Today with social media it is much easier for people to write back to a company, or to comment about it. It’s vital, especially as your company expands, to be aware of what people are saying and to respond and be engaged in conversation.

But even beyond managing your public relations, it is best to engage with others on social media sites. By showing interest in your online friends and what they are saying and in responding to their communications, it ensures they will show more interest in you.

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Online Email Services 2013

by John Eberhard

There are a number of online email services being offered. These allow you to do email marketing, to create databases of email addresses that are stored online (not on your computer) and then send emails to them as often as you want. Most of the services charge you according to how big your list is, though some charge you based on how many emails you send out.

These online services allow you to:

* Put up subscription forms on your site, and then if someone fills it out their name gets added to your database of email addresses
* Set up multiple databases for different purposes, i.e. for newsletter, for sales leads, etc.
* Send out different emails to the different lists you have
* Set up autoresponders. These are emails that get sent out automatically to someone once they subscribe.
* They all provide templates that you can use to create your emails

I wrote an article back in 2010 about the biggest providers, Aweber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact and iContact, and included grids showing the differences between them and their pricing.

Here is some updated information on the services:

Monthly Pricing:

Service	1-500 names	501-1000	1001-2500	2501-5000	5001-10,000	10,000-25,000
Aweber	$19	$29	$29	$49	$69	$149
Mailchimp	$10	$15	$30	$50	$75	$150
Constant Contact	$15	$30	$30	$50	$75	$150
iContact	$14	$19	$29	$47	$74	$109 (10,0001 to 15,000)

As you can see the prices are all pretty much comparable and they have hardly changed at all in three years.

Features Grid

	Aweber	Mailchimp	Constant Contact	iContact
Has HTML email templates
Can import email lists
Easy creation of signup forms to put on website
Double opt-in feature
Tracking tools
Free support
Autoresponder
Sends email to you once person signs up, with their name and other info
Requires sending out a re-opt-in message to any list you import

If you compare this to the features grid in my earlier article, you'll see that hardly anything has changed. But one major and important thing has changed, which is that three years ago Mailchimp did not require sending out a re-opt-in message to any list that you import, and now they do.

Here's what this means. Let's say that you start a new account with one of the companies above, and you already have a list of email addresses that you have compiled, either while using another email service, or by hand. You can upload that list to your new account, but there's a catch.

Each of the services above will require that an email gets sent out to that list, asking if the person still wants to be on that list. If they do not respond, they are then taken off the list.

That means that if you have a list you have compiled in some way prior to uploading it to one of these services, that due to the re-opt-in process, you will lose 80-90% of the subscribers on that list.

I was discussing this with one of my clients the other day, who has compiled a large email list by having people fill out cards at home shows and fairs where they sell their product. So through the re-opt-in process she would lose 80-90% of those subscribers, even though the people did validly opt-in to the list via filling out a physical card at a show.

Some of the online email services will consider not having you do the re-opt-in process, if you have built up an opt-in list with an account on one of the other major online email services.

What to Do?

The question comes up as to what to do if you have built up a large email list, but not via one of the major online email services?

The first thing to do, if you have not done so, is to set up an account now with one of the online email services, so that anyone on your website filling out a subscription form from now on will be considered an opt-in subscription. In other words, it handles any new subscriptions so that are considered opt-in and they won't get lost.

If you have been in the habit of collecting email addresses by having people fill out a card, like at a show or in a store, it would be better from now on to have a computer there and have the person fill out a form online, that will dump their email address into a database with one of the online email services. That way, they will consider it an opt-in email whereas with a card they won't.

Next, if you have a large list and don't want to lose 80-90% of it through the re-opt-in process, you will have to set up a software program to send emails to it on your desktop or laptop computer. In other words, you won't be able to send to it via one of the online email services. I recommend a program called Send Blaster 2, which I use and have had a good experience with.

Next you have to figure out what type of email account you will use to send the emails. You use what is called an SMTP server and it gets a bit technical. Most ISPs have limits on how many emails you can send per hour, and with most it is really low, like 100 per hour or 100 per day. So you can see that if you have a list of 10,000 it is going to take forever to get out your emails that way.

I have an account with www.web.com and they allow you to send 1,000 per hour, max 5,000 per day. You have to cut up your lists into chunks of 1,000 each, but it is a lot better than 100. If your list is opt-in and you don't expect any complaints, you can get an account with a company called Turbo SMTP, and they have no hourly or daily limits, just a monthly limit. And you pay more if you want a higher monthly limit.

Which Email Service?

Although it is the most well known, I consider Constant Contact the worst of all the email services, just because they don't give you as many options on how to do things.

I consider Aweber and Mailchimp to be the best services for online email marketing and use Aweber for my own business and for most of my clients.

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Navigation on a Website

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by John Eberhard

 

A well thought out navigational structure for a website design makes it easy for visitors to find all the content. A poorly thought out navigational structure makes it hard for the visitor to find content and prevents the site from being user friendly.

 

Too many sites today use a navigational structure that was popular 5-8 years ago, where you have certain navigational buttons on the home page, and you go to one of the sub-pages, and on that page you have more navigational buttons that you didn't have on the home page. Often these buttons are arranged in an additional navbar structure in the sidebar. Sometimes each of the main sub-pages will have its own additional navbar structure.

 

I have seen some sites where there are buttons on the home page, but you then can't reach or find any of those buttons on any of the sub-pages. So to find any of that content you have to go back to the home page.

 

The problem with these navigational structures is that you have to remember which pages have those other navigational menus, and you may have to click around for a bit to find what you're looking for. This makes it harder to find content and it takes more time.

 

Now think about the process you go through when you are looking for something online. Think about your patience level and how much time you have to be searching for things. If you are like most people, you want to find things fast and you don't have much patience with a confusing or time consuming navigational system that makes you hunt around for things.

 

I favor and recommend a navigational structure whereby you can reach any page from any other page on the site. This strategy involves a set of navigational buttons that usually make up the general categories, with dropdown menu items below some of the main buttons.

 

This is a more compact system too. The main buttons, usually along the top, usually number between 6 and 12 buttons. But each one can have up to say 10 dropdown menu items below it. And each of those dropdown buttons can have further dropdown buttons below it. So you can fit quite a few buttons into this arrangement.

 

And it makes it easy to find things. The main thing in planning this out is to make sure you pick general categories for your top level buttons, and select buttons under each that fall into that general category.This makes for a more user friendly web design.

 

This strategy with a set of buttons with dropdown menu items below them has become the common strategy today and has more or less replaced the idea that you click to go to one page and that page has more menu items on it that you can’t reach unless you are on that page.

 

A note on WordPress. For some reason WordPress and many purchased themes make it difficult to have a menu along the side. You can do it but it is much harder. If you’re going with WordPress it is better to plan to have your navigation buttons along the top.

 

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Has the Internet Changed the Basic Nature of Marketing?

by John Eberhard

The idea occasionally pops up that the Internet has changed the basic nature of how we do marketing. The idea is that through Internet 2.0, with social media and blogging and all that, that marketing has changed from a top-down conversation to a back and forth conversation. It empowers the consumer to be able to talk back to the company and so on. In other words, it's no longer one person speaking to thousands, it's now a one-on-one conversation.

There are various outgrowths of this idea.

1. One outgrowth is the idea that one has to have permission before he communicates

2. Another outgrowth is the concept of duplicate content being bad on the Internet.

3. Another outgrowth of this idea is the concept that the traditional method of marketing, where ads are inserted amongst content the consumer wants, like in a magazine or newspaper or on TV, now called "interruption marketing" by some, is now outdated and doesn't work anymore. Instead, we have search engines and people come there specifically looking for something.

Well I guess it is partly my job here on planet Earth to be an iconoclast (One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions - American Heritage Dictionary Online).

First of all I will say that I have been involved full time in marketing, for a wide variety of industries, for 24 years, since 1989. That was well before there was an Internet, so I think I am well qualified to answer the question in the headline above.

The basic nature of marketing is that there has to be communications going out from one source to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or more, people. That's the initial marketing push, and that has to be where you spend the majority of your attention and budget.

The only thing that the Internet has changed is that through social media and blogging it is now easier for the consumer to talk back, give his opinions, communicate about problems and so on. And the wise company will pay attention to what consumers are saying.

But the idea that the Internet has changed the basic nature of marketing is complete and utter nonsense. Any company that buys this idea and decides to stop sending out communications to wide audiences in order to interest those audiences in their products or services, will drown. If you think you can market your products or services just one on one, you will starve. That's the sales model, and sales and marketing are very different animals.

You still need to send out marketing messages to the multitudes, in order to make them aware of your offerings, and to generate responses. And you need to handle those responses with sales people, and pay attention to the consumer feedback that the Internet has facilitated and made easier.

Now let's address some of the ideas that have grown out of the concept that the Internet has changed everything.

1. Permission marketing: This idea largely came from a guy named Seth Godin, and it grew out of the large amount of spam email that was occurring in the early to mid 2000s. But if you examine the idea, it falls apart. How can you get someone's permission to send them a communication if they do not initially see a communication from you? I mean, I get the whole thing that people don't want to be inundated with unwanted email, and perhaps Godin's concept applies mainly to email. But we do have the CAN-SPAM Act, a federal law that requires companies to remove someone who requests off a list.

So if companies follow that law, why do we need every email company on the planet requiring that all email sent be opt-in? Why do we need vigilante companies compiling lists of "spammers" that ISPs subscribe to, in order to block those people? Permission marketing in terms of email is now virtually enforced.

2. Duplicate Content is Bad: According to SEOMoz, " Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place (URL). This is a problem because when there are more than one piece of identical content on the Internet, it is difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query. To provide the best search experience, search engines will rarely show multiple, duplicate pieces of content and thus, are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the original (or best)."

So we see that this is really a search engine problem. But this idea that duplicate content is bad has been so thoroughly disseminated that you probably have the idea that there is something inherently wrong (bad, evil) with having two or more web pages with the same content.

As an example of this, sites like Squidoo.com and HubPages.com will no longer even accept an article that exists elsewhere on the web. They will only accept totally unique content.

According to this idea, if you have an article that you want to syndicate in multiple places across the Internet, you can't. You have to write a separate and unique version of that article for every place on the Internet that you want it to appear.

I have been doing link building for clients using articles and press releases for over 7 years, putting the articles on dozens of sites, and putting the releases on dozens of sites, and have carefully tracked the results, and have seen absolutely NO negative impact for the clients. Using this program I have been able to build 500-1,000 links per month for clients, and I am not aware of another program that can create that kind of volume of links.

Yet most other SEO consultants are in such a state of propitiation to Google that just the fact that Google says it is bad is enough for them to accept it verbatim.

My thought is that when you write an article, you want it to go out widely so that thousands, tens of thousands, or hundred of thousands of people see it. That's marketing. And I will continue to resist people who tell me I can't do it.

3. Search Engines, No More "Interruption Marketing": Search engines are a new innovation and have added a new dimension to marketing, a line for marketers to place themselves in front of people who are actively searching for something.

That's great. But it still doesn't change the fact that initial marketing and branding of a product needs to be done widely to the masses. And I will say again that if you drop your communications going from one source out to thousands, in favor of only being in front of people who search for something, you will starve. And I think that people who advocate that no one do any more "interruption marketing" are hopelessly naive and short sighted and will steer people wrong.

For one thing, how did that person who went on the search engine first learn about the product or service to know enough to search for it? Huh? Gotcha thinking, didn't I?

Summary

I know I am taking a position here that is out of agreement with a large group of people, and may even offend some or piss people off.

But I feel strongly that these ideas I have mentioned above are wrong and are stopping people from marketing today. And I think it is my job to say so.

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

To CMS or Not to CMS

by John Eberhard

CMS stands for "content management system." It is a system used for putting together a web site, where the site owner can log into an interface and make simple changes to the content themselves without the web designer. Changes like the text or pictures on a page.

There are a number of content management systems available today. Some of the most commonly used ones are Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. There are other less known ones, and some companies develop their own.

The advantages of having a CMS are many, including:

* The site owner can make changes to the site anytime they want, not having to wait for a trained web developer to do it.
* Most content management systems have what are called "plugins," that can be installed and give various added functionality, such as search engine optimization features, installing Google Analytics, easy hookup with social media sites, Flash animation, slide shows, photo galleries, and site backup.
* From the designer side, a CMS makes it easy to make certain changes that then affect the whole site, without having to go manually to each page to make the change. Wordpress also has other advantages that make things easier for a designer to add certain features.
* Easy integration with a blog.

Our company decided to go with Wordpress as a CMS and have been using it for over two years now. Wordpress was originally designed as a blogging platform, but has gained a lot of popularity as a CMS over the last couple years because it is so easy to use. It also has a plethora ($5 word) of free plugins available. We can also work with Joomla and Drupal sites.

Going with a CMS or Converting to a CMS

Going with a CMS or not is a decision you will need to make at the beginning of a web design project.

I think there are lot of pluses and I can't think of a whole lot of negatives, but there are a couple so let's be honest about them too:

* Wordpress and other CMSes pull data from a database to compile the page, and this can sometimes slow down the page loading.
* Some people think they will be able to make any change to their site with a CMS, but that is not the case. To make changes to the background, the header, the footer, and for the most part to the sidebar, you will have to have advanced web design knowledge.
* If anything goes wrong with the site you will definitely need to bring in an experienced designer, but that would be true in any case.

But by and large I think going with a CMS is a good idea, and over the last two years I have designed most of my client web sites using Wordpress.

So if you are having a new site designed or having a current site re-designed, now is a good time to make that site in a CMS. So you need to use a designer that is familiar with the CMS you want to use.

Responsive

I use a customizable Wordpress theme called Catalyst, which then allows me to implement whatever custom web design I come up with. It also has a feature that converts the site into what is called "responsive."

Wikipedia defines responsive web design as:

"Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)."

So responsive means your site will work well on mobile phones and pads. That is becoming more and more important, especially for certain industries. Adding this responsive feature is a good reason all by itself to convert your site to a CMS. For the most part it should be possible to convert your current site to a CMS and have it look almost identical, if desired.

Posted via email from Real Web Marketing's Posterous

Social Media Stops

by John Eberhard

I have observed a kind of bizarre phenomenon recently, where the main social media sites are trying hard to stop people from using their sites to do social media marketing.

Facebook

Facebook has recently instituted a policy where they say you are not allowed to propose to someone to be a friend on Facebook if you do not know them personally. This is a major change, in that many people have used Facebook up until now to connect to and meet new people, and network with people in their industry, church groups, political connections, etc., through groups on Facebook.

Twitter

Twitter has gotten a lot more aggressive lately in terms of not allowing people to do what they called "aggressive following."  If you try to follow a lot of people in one day they will just stop you at a certain point. I don't know what the exact point is but it seems to relate to the number of followers you have (a percentage of that). They also do not want anyone to use any software to do following and unfollowing of people (which they call "follower churn"), or to send out automated tweets. If you violate what they consider an acceptable level of activity, they will sometimes suspend your account. You then have to supplicate yourself on the rug and beg forgiveness for them to restart your account. I had them suspend a client account recently after following 30 people on the first day and 30 people on the second day. They thought that was too aggressive.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has started making it harder and harder to add new connections. After you get to a certain level of number of connections, they will sometimes require that you have to know the email address of the person you're trying to connect with. I have had a couple of accounts where we just weren't able to add any more connections at all.

Why?

One of the primary principles of marketing your company on social media sites is that you have to have a lot of friends, fans, followers, or connections. A few hundred won't do. You have to get those numbers into the thousands or tens of thousands.

So what is the reason for all these barriers being placed in the path of decent folks trying to market their products and services on social media sites?

Well first of all there has been a marked "anti-marketing" sentiment spread out across the web, virtually since day one.

Back in the 90s I worked for a software company and our public was IT guys, and at that time I noted a marked anti-marketing sentiment amongst IT guys. They just seemed to think that anyone trying to market anything to them, was bad. I always thought and still think that this is a bizarre idea, as all those IT guys work for a company, which needs marketing and sales in order to survive and pay that IT guy's salary. (Having been in marketing for 24 years, I strongly feel marketing and promotion is a positive force that keeps commerce going.)

So I think the anti-marketing sentiment I noticed in the IT world in the 90s has become an anti-marketing sentiment on the web in the 2010s. You see this in various ways, such as the various anti-spam sites, or many free blogging sites that have started not allowing people to add links to their blog posts.

Now I think we are seeing it in the social media sites being persnickety about people adding too many friends, or adding friends that they don't know personally, or (gasp!) using software to expedite the process. Probably the sites are getting a complaint or two from their "anti-marketing" IT guys in-house, or maybe from 1-2 users who got a friend request (shudder!) from someone they didn't know. It's a common fault of companies to overreact to a few complaints and assume those sentiments are much broader than they are.

There are also some people on planet Earth that just don't like other people to communicate. Those people wouldn't want others to market something, and they sure wouldn't want people to (heaven forbid) actually meet and start communicating on the web. I think those people are making their presence felt here.

The Solution

Since I disagree with the "anti-marketing" crowd and do not think it is a crime to market something and actually believe that marketing is a positive force in the world, and because I do not ever condone the idea of stopping people from communicating, I cannot agree with these recent actions by the social media companies. I think that these are wrong-headed actions and will not help the web, or indeed help the social media companies.

I do not think there is anything wrong with using social media sites to market a product or service. And if you are overly obnoxious about it, people can always unfriend you. That's a protective feature that's built into the system.

The solution in my opinion is to continue using social media sites to market, and move over, around and avoid and ignore these barriers that they are putting up. And occasionally, maybe send them an email telling them that stopping communication is not the way to go.

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Social Media Demographics

by John Eberhard

I recently came across some demographic information on the various social media sites, i.e. who uses them, that I thought would be very interesting and helpful to people in terms of deciding which sites to use to market their business.
There is an article on www.pingdom.com entitled "Report: Social network demographics in 2012."
This article breaks down who the audience is of the main social media sites by age and gender. Take a look at this chart:

I found this information surprising. Note what percentage of the audience of some of the top sites are over 35 years old:
Facebook: 65% of users are over 35 years old
Twitter: 55% of users are over 35 years old
LinkedIn: 79% of users are over 35 years old
I guess no big surprise on LinkedIn, as that is a site that is really geared towards professionals and business networking. But Facebook? 65% over 35 years old.
This charts breaks down social media sites audiences by gender:

Once again I am surprised by the results. Except for a small handful of the sites reviewed, most are frequented by over 50% females. 60% of the audience for both Facebook and Twitter are female. Even LinkedIn: 53% female. The audience for Pinterest is 79% female. And the audience for Blogger is 66% female.
Social Media Users by Income
The next bit of information is from www.kissmetrics.com, from an article on their blog entitled "Who Likes What?".

	$0-25K	$25-50K	$50-75K	$75-100K	$100-150K	$150K+
Facebook	12%	34%	32%	12%	7%	4%
Twitter	15%	33%	25%	16%	7%	4%
MySpace	12%	51%	22%	9%	4%	2%
Digg	19%	37%	21%	15%	5%	3%

Social Media Users by Education Level:

	No HS Diploma	High School	Some college	Bachelors Degree	Graduate Degree
Facebook	10%	10%	55%	18%	8%
Twitter	7%	7%	49%	28%	9%
MySpace	14%	8%	63%	12%	4%
Digg	8%	7%	43%	33%	9%
StumbleUpon	7%	6%	55%	26%	7%
YouTube	13%	10%	51%	18%	8%

By knowing who is frequenting the various social media sites, and comparing that to the demographics of your business, i.e. who buys your products or services, you can make intelligent decisions on which social media sites to use in marketing your business.
(Grateful acknowledgement to Pingdom.com for permission to reprint their charts above.)

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Online PR as a Component of SEO

by John Eberhard

Search engine optimization (SEO) today typically consists of two components:

1. "On-page optimization," which means doing keyword research and then writing titles and descriptions using the keywords and inputting that data onto the pages of a web site.

2. "Off-page optimization," which means link building. This is the process where you create links on other web sites that link to your web site. This improves your ranking on search engines and leads to more traffic.

It is possible to just do the "on-page optimization," but it is much more effective if you also do a link building program for a period of time, usually 6-12 months or more. And by more effective, I mean you will get much more increased traffic to the site from search engines.

One action my company has done as part of link building campaigns, for the last 6 years, is online PR. So what exactly is online PR?

Online PR is where you write a press release about the activities of your company, and then this gets posted in various places online. The press release is written in journalistic style, usually at least 300 words. We have found that some of the topics that can be used for a press release are:

1. Some actual event that occurred with the company, such as a new web site, new product or service released, new person hired or promoted, company receives award or certification, company exhibiting at trade show, company holding seminar, etc.

2. The company just completed some service with one of their clients to a good result.

3. Company releases some list of useful information or recommendations to the public, related to the company's activity. Or company warns public of some danger.

4. You can write a release about one of the company's services. It does not have to be a newly released service. You do not state it's a new service but sort of imply it.

Once written, then the idea is to get the press out where it will create links back to your web site. Depending on how aggressive you want to get, here are some places where you can post a press release online:

a. Free online PR sites. There are a variety of these. My company typically posts client press releases on five of them, each selected because if accepted the press release will also be posted on Google News. These sites tend to be rather arbitrary in their rules of what they will accept, hence our practice of posting to five of them. Also when they do accept the releases these sites tend to rank very highly on search engines, thus giving what I call a high quality link.

b. Blogs. We maintain blogs for client news, and we have also put up client news blogs on a number of free blogging sites. We also often set up blogs for each client on the free blogging sites. We post the release to all these, including 3 keywords in the release linked back to the client web site.

c. Paid PR sites. I typically have not used these in the past but just starting using a paid PR site last month and my client's release ran on 105 sites, including a number of sites for major daily newspapers. So I am starting to implement that for a number of press release clients.

The main purpose of press releases and online PR for me up until now has been part of search engine optimization and building up links. But with paid PR sites we can add getting the release to run in a lot of media web sites to the equation. And each of those counts as links too.

Online PR is a powerful way to create high quality links to your web site, as part of SEO.

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Responsive Web Design

by John Eberhard

In my article last week on New Year's Resolutions, I realized later that I should have included something on "responsive" web sites. The idea being that people should convert their web sites to being responsive this year. What is this and why is it important?

Wikipedia defines responsive web design as:

"Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)."

There are a number of ways to accomplish a responsive web design. I convert the site to Wordpress and use a customizable theme called Catalyst, which then allows the site to be responsive. Catalyst allows you endless customization, so you can create virtually any design, and you can convert virtually any site into Wordpress via Catalyst. And all the new sites I am designing are responsive.

So when you have a web site that is responsive, people using pad devices or mobile smart phones can view your view without having to scroll from side to side. It takes the content of the site and sort of rearranges it so you can see most of it by just scrolling down the page, rather than back and forth. If you have a graphic that is wide, i.e. more than say 500 pixels, a person on a pad or mobile will still have to scroll from side to side to see that whole graphic. But for most content, the user won't have to scroll from side to side.

So why is this important?

Well a lot of people are using pad devices and mobile phones today. I heard a statistic in the last year that 50% of all interaction that people are doing with social media sites are being done on a smart phone. So half of what people are doing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites, is being done on a mobile phone.

Especially if yours is a local business like a retail store, a restaurant, a home improvement business, or a health care practice, people may be trying to find you while they are out and about, and if your web site is mobile-friendly, that is going to be a plus, because the person can take greater advantage of the site while they are away from their desktop.

I saw something in the last year that predicted that desktop computers were going to soon be a thing of the past, with everyone doing their computing using pads and smart phones. I don't agree and think that is taking it a bit too far. Certainly people are not going to do all their computing chores on the small screens. I like my big screen desktop, thank you very much. But it's an indication that mobiles and pads are an important trend. And having your web site so it can easily be seen on a mobile is the first step in keeping up with that trend.

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Internet Marketing New Year’s Resolutions for 2013

by John Eberhard

It's that time again to do your planning for the new year, and to make resolutions on how you will improve the marketing of your web site. Here are my suggestions.

Think Big: I resolve to think big and think in terms of how I can significantly increase and improve my web site marketing this year, and work to break out of the trap of agreeing with the sorry economic news that greets me regularly.

SEO and Keyword Research: I resolve to get search engine optimization done for my web site in 2013 if it has not been done in the last two years, knowing that SEO and link building are the best route to significantly increasing my web site traffic. I know that I should be targeting keywords that have high traffic, but a low number of competing sites, and that single word keywords are almost impossible to rank for. I know that with a local business I should be targeting local oriented keywords.  

Link Building: I resolve to greatly increase the number of links to my site from other sites, knowing that Google says that the number of links is the most important criteria they use to determine how high my site will rank for my targeted keywords. I resolve to do link building on a continuing basis and I know that it takes time but if I stick it out the rewards are great.

Google Maps: If my business is a local one servicing one geographical area, I resolve to take steps to get a Google Maps/Places listing online for my business and work to get that listing onto the first page of results by getting lots of positive online reviews about my business and putting up lots of listings about my business, all of which pushes my Google listing towards page one.

Posting to the Blog: I resolve to post new content to my blog at least once a month in 2013, realizing that search engines give more weight or importance to blogs specifically because they usually have fresh content added regularly. I realize that a blog post can be just a comment and link to some other content on the web, or posting a video of interest from YouTube. I realize that putting up a blog, but not posting anything to it in 2012 (you know who you are) doesn’t help my online efforts.

Email List: I resolve to take actions to build up my in-house email list, and to email things to it regularly. I resolve to offer items on my site such as free email newsletter subscriptions, and free reports and eBooks, to capture the identities and email addresses of people visiting my site.

Copyrighted Content: I resolve not to use copyrighted content, such as text and pictures, from other web sites, knowing that people are getting sued for this.

Survey Data: I resolve to get more survey data on my targeted public this year, so I know what message to use to motivate them to buy.

Pictures on Social Media: I resolve to use more pictures in social media, not just text posts, as this has become increasingly important in the last year.

Negative Search Engine Listings: I resolve to take steps to handle any negative search engine listings related to my name or business name, knowing that something can be done about this.

Web Statistics: I resolve to ensure my site has Google Analytics on it, and to regularly check the stats so I know how many people are coming to the site, what pages they are visiting, what sites are referring me traffic, and what keywords people are typing in on search engines to find me. I know that without web statistics I am flying blind.

Web Site: I resolve to make sure my web site gets fully re-designed in 2013 if it has not been re-designed since Egypt was a super power, and to update the content of the site regularly so it is current and fresh.

Video: I resolve to get a video made for my business in 2013 if I don’t yet have one, or to create more video content in 2013 if I already have some, knowing that online video is one of the best ways to present my business and sell it.

Don't Be Timid: I resolve to be aggressive in promoting my business, and to realize that contrary to what some people seem to think, that marketing online is not a crime. I resolve to continue communicating online about my business and its products and services.

Google: I resolve to be aware of what Google is doing, in terms of its Penguin and Panda updates and how that impacts my online strategies. But I resolve not to give Google god-like status like some people do, and realize that despite their size, they do not dictate all online actions. 

Consultant: I resolve to respect and take the sagely advice of my marketing consultant, and to pay him on time.

I wish you the best in 2013 and want to put out the decision that we will make 2013 the best year ever.

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RealWebMarketing.net Designs New Web Sites for California DanceArts

New Web Sites Will Highlight Organization's Dance Instruction and Professional Dance Company

LA CANADA, CA: Real Web Marketing Inc. (http://www.realwebmarketing.net), a web design and website marketing company, has completed designing three new web sites for California DanceArts and California Contemporary Ballet, located in La Canada, CA (http://www.caldancearts.com, http://www.calballet.com and http://www.snowqueenballet.com).

California DanceArts is a dance school offering everything from contemporary dance instruction to classical ballet, for beginner to the professional level. California Contemporary Ballet is a non-profit professional dance company that puts on several major original ballet productions per year, including "The Snow Queen" in mid-December. The school and company were founded by Aerin Holt.

Aerin Holt, Founder and Artistic Director of California DanceArts and California Contemporary Ballet, stated “I am very pleased with the work that Real Web Marketing did on re-designing my site. My intention was to have a very big, bold, and dramatic web site that really showed what we do visually. We reviewed the web sites of other top ballet schools and companies around the country, and I think the final product that we got rivals any of them."

John Eberhard, President of Real Web Marketing stated, “Coming from an artistic background myself, being a designer and formerly a full time musician, I enjoyed working with Aerin and creating a web site that highlights the creative work that she does."

All three sites are built using a similar design, where the entire background is taken up with a large photo of one of the school or company's activities, and each section of the site has a different background picture, giving a lot of visual variety to the sites. Plus the main text box and sidebar are partially transparent, allowing visitors to see the entire large background picture. And all the sites are built in Wordpress, allowing Holt to easily make changes to the content of the site.

John Eberhard has been involved in marketing for 23 years. Real Web Marketing Inc. was founded in 1999 in the Los Angeles area and incorporated in 2011, and has clients all over the U.S. Services offered include web design, pay-per-click advertising campaign management, search engine optimization (SEO), link building, social media marketing, local marketing, copywriting, article syndication, online PR, and video production.

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Real Web Marketing Designs New Web Site for West Coast Fab Inc.

New Web Site Highlights Company's Precision Sheet Metal Fabrication Services

RICHMOND, CA: Real Web Marketing Inc. (http://www.realwebmarketing.net), a web design and website marketing company in Los Angeles, has completed designing a new web site for West Coast Fab Inc., a precision sheet metal fabrication company located in Richmond, CA, in the Bay area (http://www.westcoastfabinc.com). The site features an extensive photo gallery of samples of the company's products.

Tom Nelson, President and founder of West Coast Fab Inc., stated “I am very pleased with the work that Real Web Marketing did on re-designing our site. We wanted a site that was a lot more modern and dramatic. The new design accomplished that and it immediately communicates what our company does, and shows off our finished products and our facility."

John Eberhard, President of Real Web Marketing stated, “I enjoyed working with the folks at West Coast Fab. They obviously are a top sheet metal fabrication company and I wanted the site to reflect the level of quality that the company maintains."

West Coast Fab Inc. was founded in 1973. As a precision sheet metal manufacturing company, the company fabricates everything from enclosures to brackets, from chassis to panels, and faceplates to fixtures.  Their sole purpose is to provide our customers with the finest precision sheet metal fabrication possible. The company provides services to a variety of industries, including computer, lighting, entertainment, architectural, home improvement, automotive, sports and recreation, scientific, aerospace, military, marine, industrial, medical, semiconductor, communications, and construction.

John Eberhard has been involved in marketing for 23 years. Real Web Marketing Inc. was founded in 1999 in the Los Angeles area and incorporated in 2011, and has clients all over the U.S. Services offered include web design, pay-per-click advertising campaign management, search engine optimization (SEO), link building, social media marketing, local marketing, copywriting, article syndication, online PR, and video production.

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Building an Email List

by John Eberhard

Back around 12 years ago I did a lot of email marketing to rented email lists. Then we had the spam email explosion and that basically killed the rented email marketing universe, just because people were getting too much email.

I have never been in agreement with Seth Godin's idea that you must never email to anyone unless you have permission. A guy I used to work for said he thought it was easier to get forgiveness than permission, and I like that concept.

But on the other hand, it is good to build up a list of people who have contacted you and given you permission to send them email. Then they tend to be more accepting of and interested in your email when it comes.

So how do you build up an email list? Basically you have to put up multiple ways for people to contact you on your site, and offer them multiple things that they would want, where they have to give you their email to get it.

Unfortunately this takes a little time. But you need to formulate a strategy and implement it so that you can start building that list, because having a large email list is an incredible resource.

The point is that with a large email list, you can market to it on a regular basis for little to no money.

Building a List

The key to building a list is to offer things that people will respond to, giving you their email address.

1. Contact Forms on Your Services Pages: If you have various pages on your site talking about your products or services, put a form on each one of those pages so the person can contact you for more information. On my site I have forms for people to contact me regarding SEO, pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and so on. Then when someone fills out one of the forms, they get an automated email right away that tells them that they will automatically be subscribed to my newsletter, and they can opt out at any time.

1. Email Newsletter: Offer a free email newsletter subscription on your web site. This doesn’t have as much appeal as it used to because people are getting so many emails. But if you put together a good newsletter with good content and promote it, people will come. Of course you have to commit to writing and putting out the newsletter regularly.

1. Free Reports or White Papers: I have used this tactic successfully for a lot of companies. Come up with a topic that you think will resonate with your target public, write a snappy title, then write 1,000-2,000 words, and design it with a nice cover and some graphics. Put it in PDF format so you can email it to people for free. Your topic should be something that is directly aligned with your product or service, so that everyone reaching for it will be a possible prospect, now or later on. Then get the word out on various channels and offer the report for free, but of course require that they give you their contact info including email. Works great for consumers and business to business.

1. Software Demos: If you sell software, it is vital to offer a demo version of the software on your site, and this will get you more email addresses than you can shake a stick at, IF you are getting traffic.

I have sometimes seen companies have videos on their site and make people give their email to see the video. But generally I have not seen that work as well as offering people a white paper. Somehow the offer of a free report or white paper seems like more of a tangible item that people would receive, rather than just seeing a video.

What and How Often to Send

Once you build up hundreds or thousands of names, you can email to them on a regular basis. I would say that usually up to once a week is OK. More often than that and you will start to get a lot of askoffs.

Send them an email newsletter. I am sending mine out weekly now, and I get a steady stream of business from it. The main part of the newsletter should be some article giving advice or data of some value, but you can include ads or blurbs selling your products, and of course with lots of links to your web site and blog. You can have more than one article, or an article along with various news items about your company. But I have generally seen that one article is adequate content for a newsletter, along with some short blurbs and ads for your services. The article should be 300-800 words.

You can also come up with emails promoting special offers, new products, old products. You can also send out a press release announcing some new product or service whenever you start a new one.

How to Send

You can either send using an email program that sits on your computer desktop, or you can use one of the cloud based email services.

I used a product called Mass Emailer for years that is desktop based, but recently it just stopped working. I found a new product for desktop based emailing called Send Blaster, and that is working well for me. I create my HTML newsletters or emails in Dreamweaver, then send to my heart’s content.

There are also several online email services, including Constant Contact, iContact, Aweber and Mailchimp. Those are the most popular services. Constant Contact is perhaps the most well known, but I find it the worst in terms of giving you different options to do different things. I like Aweber the best and use it for most of my clients.

These services cost in the neighborhood of $20 per month at the beginning. You sign up, set up your list or lists, then create a web form, and put that onto pages of your web site. Some HTML knowledge is required to get it set up with your web site. Then to send something you log into your interface and either use one of their templates or upload a file you have created using Dreamweaver or some other web authoring program.

Also makes sure you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, with mainly consists of putting your physical address in the email, and having an opt-out option for people. And you have to remove anyone who asks off in 10 days.

Good luck with building up your email list.

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Copyrighted Content

by John Eberhard

I want to warn my readers about a new trend that is happening with regard to the Internet.

When content is copyrighted, such as written text and pictures, that means that the copyright owner has the sole right to use that content. And if someone else uses it, he has the right to demand that they stop using it, and he has the right to demand that the other person pay him money for each use of the copyrighted material.

Technically, a person who wants to copyright something has to fill out a copyright form and submit that to the Library of Congress. But for practical purposes, all they really need to do to be able to support their claim to a copyright for content on the web, is to put a notice on the bottom of the page that the page is copyrighted.

I have seen that many people think that they can “borrow” content from other web sites, by copying and pasting written text, or downloading photos or other graphics. And I know this practice is widespread.

Over the last two years I have seen several instances where a person or company did this – borrowed content from another web site - and then were later threatened suit by the original owner of the copyrighted content. And the monetary demands were not small. In most cases in the $2,000 range or more.

Owners of stock photography sites, where you pay a fee for the use of a copyrighted photograph, have been doing this for years, i.e. locating people who had used their photos without paying money, then demanding money from those people. But lately I have seen owners of other web sites taking the time to try to locate people who had used their copyrighted content, then hiring a lawyer to send that person a demand for money.

We could comment on why this is happening now. Maybe it has something to do with the state of economy. Who knows? But the point is that borrowing copyrighted content from other web sites has now become a very dangerous practice. Search engines make it relatively easy for someone to search for their written text content, or even for the names of photo files if the borrower did not change the file name.

So the upshot of all this is to realize that you CANNOT use written text or photo or graphic content from other web sites, whether they show a copyright notice or not.

Secondly, I recommend that anyone who has borrowed written text or graphics from other web sites, spend the time to search through and remove it from any of their online content. I am not a lawyer so if you think you have a potential liability, you might want to consult a specialized copyright attorney (they are not cheap).

Good News

The good news is that there are a number of sites where you can find free photos for use on your web sites and blog posts. I use a site called Stock Xchange (www.sxc.hu) which offers free stock photos and has a lot of content.

Over the past several years I have purchased a lot of photos from iStock Photo (www.istockphoto.com) because they started out with very low prices, usually $2-5 per photo. In the last year, however, they have started dramatically raising their prices. So I have not been too happy about that. Then lately I found a site called 123RF (www.123rf.com) which has lower prices like iStock did in the beginning.

There is also a concept called "creative commons" with photo sharing sites, where people can upload their photos and allow others to use the photos for commercial purposes. Flickr has a creative commons area, where you can download photos and use for commercial purposes. And there is a lot of content there.
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Here is a helpful article on creative commons:
http://www.savingforsomeday.com/blog-law-posting-and-using-photos-on-photo-sharing-sites/

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More on SEO Today

By John Eberhard

My recent article "What is SEO Today" got more responses than any recent article, so obviously there is a lot of interest in SEO (search engine optimization) these days. Here is more on how to drive traffic to your site with SEO.

Often when I go to look at a site where the site owner has asked me to evaluate their SEO or give them a quote for SEO, I will see lots of single word keywords being used. This is not a good idea for several reasons.

First of all, the idea with keywords is you want to select keywords to use on your site that you have a chance of ranking for. In other words, the goal is you want to rank well for a given keyword, so that people will see your listing and visit your web site.

You want keywords that have a good number of searches, but not a lot of competing sites. If there are a lot of competing sites, you will not have a shot at ranking well for that keyword.

The thing with single word keywords is that most of them have over one million competing sites. Chances are you are never going to be able to rank well for that keyword. And if you did, it would take you years and likely cost you a lot of money to get to that point.

The Search Cycle

At the beginning of the search cycle, people type in more general keywords, either single words or phrases that describe the whole category of thing they are searching for, such as “MP3 player.” Then after they have done some initial searches and learned a bit about the category, they will then enter more specific phrases, such as “ipod mp3 player.” Then as they are getting ready to buy, they will enter even more specific phrases describing the specific product they want to buy, such as “ipod nano 4GB.” Note that this final, third phase is the time when the person is most likely to BUY. At that point he is usually looking for places where he can buy the product and comparing prices.

Keywords that are from this third phase of the searching cycle, which are most descriptive and which tend to be 2-4 words or more are called “long tail” keywords. These keywords are not only usually easier to have your site rank for them, but they tend to be the phrases the person types in when he is closest to being ready to buy.

Most people who I talk to who are not trained in these facts tend to think that they want to target keywords that describe the overall category, usually single word keywords, like “golf,” “consulting,” “dentist,” “chiropractor,” “marketing,” “computers,” etc. Although these single word keywords tend to have lots of searches, people typing them in are not usually at the buying point in the whole search cycle. And because most of these single word keywords have millions of competing sites, in most cases you won't be able to rank for them.

Local Keywords

There are a number of SEO guys out there today pitching that they will get your site to rank well for local oriented keywords, meaning keywords that contain words related to your product or service, plus the name of the city or cities where you operate.

I think using local oriented keywords is a good idea. But I have some qualifiers. First of all, be aware that most of these keywords have little to no traffic coming to them. So it's great if Joe Blow SEO guy can get you to rank on page one for "landscape contractor Butte MT," but if there are 3 searches per year for that keyword, it is not worth the trouble to do that or to pay money to have someone get you onto page one of Google for that keyword.

So I think it is a good idea to take your highest traffic keywords related to your category, and add city names onto them and target those. But be aware of the traffic issue. Because you can be #1 on Google for a keyword but if no one searches for it, that won't help you at all.

For local businesses, I think it is more profitable to embark on a program to get to the top of the Google Maps / Google Places listings.

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What is SEO Today?

by John Eberhard

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is basically what you do to make a web site rank better on search engines and therefore get more traffic. Getting more traffic to a web site is the goal of SEO.

There are two parts to SEO, called "on-page optimization" and "off-page optimization." On-page optimization is what you specifically do to a web page to make it able to rank better.

Off-page optimization is where you build up links to a web site coming from other web sites. If a web site owner has not done any type of link building, a typical web site will have anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand links. To compete properly you should have links into the tens of thousands.

Google has stated that the number of links coming to your web site is its most important criteria for determining how high to rank the site. And the number of links that you need is determined by how many your competitors have.

Both on-page and off-page optimization are vital in order to achieve the goal of SEO which is increased traffic to the site.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization consists of:

a. Doing keyword research to determine the best keywords to target. You need to find keywords that have good traffic, but a relatively low number of competing sites. You generally want to stay away from single word keywords, as these will tend to have competing sites into the millions, so you'll never be able to rank well for those keywords. Plus multiple word keyword phrases (often called "long tail keywords") tend to be more detailed and are usually the keywords people tend to type in when they are actually ready to buy something.

b. Selecting three primary keywords for each page of your site, based on relevance to the page, high traffic and low competing sites.

c. Writing custom titles and descriptions for each page of your site, utilizing the primary keywords for that page. These are the titles (underlined in blue) and descriptions that appear on a search engine when your listing appears in response to a search.

d. Put the titles and descriptions onto the website in the appropriate places, and use the keywords in any other appropriate places.

This process used to be just called SEO, but in the past two years the term SEO has been expanded to include link building. So that's how the term "on-page optimization" was created by some bright chap.

Off-Page Optimization - Link Building

Link building is the process whereby you build up the number of links leading to your site coming from other sites.

In the past, the owner of a site used to email other site owners and ask to trade links, i.e. "I'll link to your site if you link to mine." This is called reciprocal linking and is not done much any more because Google discounted the value of it about four years ago. But some SEO consultants still do it, much to my amazement.

It is best to create what are called one-way inbound links today. The best ways I have found to do this are:

a. Write articles and submit these to article directories. This is the most successful way to get volume links.

b. Write press releases and submit these to multiple online PR sites.

c. Create multiple blogs and post the articles and releases from "a" and "b" above to all the blogs.

A link building program should be continued for at least 6-12 months.

Let's talk about volume for a minute. A successful link building program should be able to create 500+ links per month.

A few months I read an article by a well known Internet marketing lady, and she said she was testing three link building services. After a month the top one had gotten her 38 links. I practically fell over dead. If we got a client only 38 links in a month, I would assume we forgot to show up. You need thousands of links so 38 per month is not going to cut it.

In the past year and a half, we have heard a lot about the Google Panda update, and then the Google penguin update. Panda was in the spring of 2011, and penguin was in February of this year. What's this all about?

Well the deal with Google is that they have a system of ranking web sites and they try to make that work well for users. And over the years a lot of web site owners have used various methods to try to make their web sites rank higher. Because higher ranking means more people will see your listing and visit your site.

Google has branded a lot of these methods as "unethical" and maybe some of them are. But I think in their zeal they have adopted an attitude whereby they don't really want anyone to be able to be "cause" over their rankings. In other words, they have arrived at a point where they don't really want you to be able to do anything that positively affects your rankings.

And this includes SEO consultants. Google occasionally tries to make it appear like they are working with SEO consultants and all, but ultimately they don't really want SEO's to be able to do their jobs. It just makes more work for them. I've written about this before and hopefully won't belabor the point too much here.

But the upshot of all this is that supposedly the Google Panda update was designed to hurt or penalize the activity of using article directories. And supposedly the Google Penguin update was designed to hurt the activity of creating what are called "anchor text" links, where you get a link from some site linking to yours, and the words that are linked are a popular keyword.

We have been hearing for years that the best possible type of link you could get to your site was an anchor text link, i.e. a keyword linked to your site. So now Google thinks "Oh my gosh, we gotta do away with that!" Supposedly now you are only supposed to have a certain percentage of your links be anchor text, because anything over that indicates an "unnatural link pattern." I mean, you couldn't make this stuff up.

I say "supposedly," because I have continued submitting client articles to article directories for the past year and half, carefully monitoring results. And I can see absolutely NO negative affect from doing so over that period of time.

And when I learned about Penguin, I checked my client accounts and found that the percentages were OK. In other words, the percentage of "anchor text" links were not above the arbitrarily offending level.

Sometimes I think that Google says that they are doing something in the update, but it's actually just a threat and they don't really do it. One effect of the Panda update is that the number of article directory sites has decreased a lot, which is a shame because they are a great way to create volume links.

I have recently written some articles on SEO case histories, showing significant increases in traffic due to an SEO program. Doing an SEO program and sticking with it over a year will get your excellent results.

 

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