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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