SEO

Retargeting and Marketing Automation For Beginners

Blog, PPC, SEO No Comments , , , , ,

One of the more difficult aspects of digital marketing is explaining how a process works to a client who doesn’t understand, or doesn’t have time to understand how the technology that helps convert new business works.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
– Arthur C. Clarke

At the end of this post, I have included my Slideshare Conversion Optimization Flowchart For you to use as you see fit. It is a fantastic visualization on how the entire process works together.

Retargeting and Marketing Automation are two unique inbound techniques that can work great independent of one another, but when combined can lift a marketing campaign to new unparalleled levels.  The question is, how do we get these campaigns to sync up into a cohesive understandable system.

Retargeting Lists

Retargeting Marketing StrategyTo begin a successful campaign, we need to begin organizing our visitors into lists or buckets.  To keep things simple, we’re going to start with 4 lists.

  1. All Visitors
  2. Visitors we do know
  3. Visitors we don’t know
  4. Customers

This is the most basic way to differentiate between our visitor types.  Depending on your automation provider or technology involved, you can gain insight into the visitors and gain information about that visitor without requiring a form-fill, but to keep things simple we’re going to assume a visitor must provide their information through a form-fill or phone call.

Now, how do we differentiate between each list type? Tags (Or Cookies.. or pixels.. doesn’t matter)

All Visitors

The first thing I do is tag each visitor that comes to the website. This is allows us combine, remove, or edit sub lists to target the precise users that we’re trying convert.

I won’t go through how to do this at a technical level today.  Depending on your provider (Google, RadiumOne, Bing, etc) you will have slightly different methods to create those lists.  Personally, I use Google, and One Third Party provider to keep things simple.

Visitors we do know

When I began writing this, I started with visitors we don’t know, but logically it makes more sense to do it this way. We need to create an additional tag for customers we do know.  The goal of this tag is to identify any visitors that we have contact information about, that are not customers.  We then can place this tag at various points in our digital strategy to allow us to target these visitors with specialized messaging.  A few examples –

  • Thank You Pages (After form-fills)
  • Emails targeting leads from CRM (Not Customers)
    • Phone Call Entries
    • Previous Data
    • Data Collected via 3rd party provider
    • Social
    • Purchased Lists
    • etc.

This data allows us to target visitors we have information about.  If we have an email address, this is where we can begin the Marketing Automation process, which I will be talking about in greater detail in a little bit.

Visitors we don’t know

This is the easiest List we can make. Subtract Visitors we do know From All Visitors.  This gives us our third list.  Visitors we don’t know.

This list is our primary target for our retargeting campaigns.  We want to market to this list and convert these visitors into visitors we know.  This is where Retargeting will come into play.

Retargeting

Retargeting can serve two purposes.  For Google AdWords, we can use our lists to decrease or increase our bid % based on visitor activity.  For example, if you tag a visitor who visited a certain product page, you can now retarget that customer if they’re looking for that or similar products again through google.  You can increase your bid to increase the likelihood of that visitor seeing your ad and returning back to the website again.

Additionally, Retargeting allows us to offer display or text ads on tagged visitors as they traverse other websites.  For our purposes, we develop a profile of target customer and establish a list of websites that are frequently accessed by that profile.  We can then show tagged visitors relevant messaging on those websites creating new engagement opportunities to bring them back into the funnel.

We limit our retargeting for these visitors to ~ 3-5 impressions per day.  We’ve found that more engagements can be perceived as spam and in some cases can adversely affect campaigns.

Google has some great insights (they call it remarketing.)

 Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is a great tool that we suggest using in conjunction with other digital strategy platforms.  This technology is  effective when we have enough information about our visitors or leads to target them automatically with predefined strategies.  You can tell through tags what products the user is interested, how frequently they come back, etc.  You can then use this and automation to send them communications to push them down the funnel, offer promotions to encourage a sale, and even screen pop your sales agents when that visitor returns to the website.  Some websites that do this extremely well are amazon.com, newegg.com, and cars.com.

A great example of the whole process working together-Retargeting and Automation Funnel

  1. User visits website (Tag All Visitors)
  2. User Goes to Product Page (Retag Product Page)
  3. User Bounces to ESPN (eligible for retargeting)
  4. RETARGETING
  5. User Clicks Retargeted Ad
  6. User Comes back to website and fills out form (Tag Visitor We Know)
  7. MARKETING AUTOMATION
  8. Wait One Day Send Follow Up Email (Automation)
  9. No Response
  10. Wait One Week Send Email With Discount Offer (Automation)
  11. User Returns to website
  12. Screen Pop Sales Agent when user is on the website
  13. Sales Calls User
  14. User Signs Up – Becomes Customer
  15. REMOVE RETARGETING AND AUTOMATION

 

And here it is, a great flowchart for you to look through the process of Retargeting and Marketing Automation working together!

[slideshare id=28491765&doc=conversionoptimizationflowchart-malachithreadgill-131121084528-phpapp01]

Matt Cutts has some Brady Bunch love on youtube

Blog, SEO No Comments , , , , , ,

First, Matt Cutts recently released a great video highlighting common misconceptions about the SEO community.  I recommend taking 5 minutes to hear his thoughts on Penguin, Panda, and Link building.  It’s truly great stuff.  After the video finished, I was pulled from my desk to work on a quick project.  I came back to a hilarious picture of Matt Cutts and a semi-Brady Bunch title screen.  Hope you enjoy.

Matt Cutts youtube Brady Bunch

 

HyperLocal Advertising – The Bare Necessities

Blog, local 2 Comments , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been doing a lot of work for companies needing “hyperlocal” advertising for the last half decade.  Businesses like Foursquare, Gowalla  ,  Facebook, Yelp, and other social media outlets have definitely convoluted hyperlocal advertising and promotion.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

A few years ago, a well edited kml file attached to the Google Maps API, a halfway decent landing page, and a claimed Google Listing almost certainly guaranteed high ranking for localized searches.  Today, competition and a more internet savvy userbase has increased the complexity of a successful localized marketing campaign.  Below I have included some quick tips to help start your journey into hyperlocal advertising.

Claim You Local Listings – This is the newest change to local advertising and needs to be the first thing you do after reading this post.  Go here and claim you Google Places listing from google.  More than likely it will take a few weeks for the postcard and phone number to arrive, but you need your listing in the “directory” if you’re going to have success down the road.

Create a Localized Landing Page –  No matter what size business you are running, having a personalized and localized landing page is necessary for hyperlocal advertising success.  If you’re a franchise with strict guidelines there may be some red tape, but work with your marketing team to make sure you have a landing page with these key elements.

    1. Keyword Rich Content – If you know anything about SEO or PPC you will understand why keyword rich content is important, especially for local landing pages.  If you’re a florist in Dallas, Texas, or a Carpet Cleaner in Phoenix Arizona, you definitely want to have descriptive keywords to describe to potential customers what you do and what you’re about.  This is SEO 101.
    2. Phone number in the upper right corner of the page –  This is more about best practices,
 but users have inherently learned to look for contact information in the upper right hand corner of any B2C page they visit.  Over a decade of reinforcement has made this practice a mainstay for the foreseeable future.  Just place your 10-digits in the upper right hand corner and conversions will be increased.
  1. Address above the fold –  This should really be a 2a. Especially for local businesses.  You need to have an address readily accessible to your visitors.  If you are a B2C with a brick and mortar it is absolutely imperative to your local advertising campaigns to let your customers know where you are and in addition to that they need to know….
  2. Google Map API, with the ability to give directions – How to get to you.  Visualization is the easiest way for potential customers to see where you are.  If you can show a user where you are on a map, and give them an option to get directions to your location, you will have a much higher conversion rate.  Google Maps makes both of these tasks extremely easy.  There is no reason not to toss the API code onto your site and make it easier for your customers to find your store.
  3. Hours of Operation – Continuing the trend of basic information that needs to be included.  This key metadata is critical to potential customers.  If you own a business that has non-standard hours, this information is even more critical. If a customer doesn’t know your hours of operation and shows up outside of those hours, you will more than likely lose a customer and the lifetime value they provide.  It is simple to include your hours of operation on your site.  Customers will appreciate it.  Don’t forget to update your hours during the holidays.
  4. Value Proposition or Call to Action – Don’t forget to give your customers an incentive.  Sometimes a call to action is all someone needs to start the buying funnel and convert a lead into a customer.  Including an updated list of current offers, promotions, or incentives, is a simple and reliable way to give your customers the perception of value and drive further conversions.  Don’t forget to included expiration dates or deadlines to create urgency!
  5. Access to user reviews – Customers trust other customers.  If you have primarily bad reviews, this may not be a good bullet, but if you have moderate to great reviews, definitely use these reviews to highlight the positives of shopping with your business.  If your reviews are less than stellar, offer incentives to happy customers to post a review for a a future discount or another offer.  Remember, happy customers rarely leave reviews.  They buy their product and go on their merry way.  Unhappy customers will leave terrible reviews in many different places and can be difficult to placate.  This makes happy customers even more valuable.  Do your best to encourage positive reviews whenever possible.
  6. links to social media  – Social Media is the future… er, um.. the present.  Right now there is a very large focus on social media.  Use this to  your advantage by linking your local pages to your social media sites.  Also, link your social media sites to your localized landing pages.  Use cross-promotion where necessary to encourage overlap and exposure.  If you can, offer incentives to users who are willing to leverage your social media assets.  This will allow you “push” access to your customers and you will be able to reach them more easily and effectively.

So, you’ve done all your hard work and have an amazing, functional, and informational landing page ready for your customers to visit.  Now its time to make sure this is the main site you’re generating localized visibility through.  Make sure you’ve linked to this site on local search engines and other outlets including:

Pay Per Click Advertising –  Bonus!!!!  If you have any budget left for marketing, I highly recommend testing a local PPC campaign to your landing page.  It is easy to setup, integrate, and launch.  And you can market your site with maximum exposure and very little upfront cost.  Done correctly, a PPC campaign can cost < $300.00 a month and generate far more revenue.  If you’d like help discussing setting up a PPC campaign with a proven adwords expert.  Contact me, I’d love to help.

 

Hyper Local SEO that Will Survive The Test Of Time

Blog, Guest Authors, local, Search Engines, SEO 1 Comment , , , , , ,

Dallas, hyper local SEOLocal SEO has seen some major changes in the past year.  Since 2010 Google has completely changed the way they handle local keywords.  For example “city name + keyword” went from a 3 pack to a 7 pack, then to a 10 pack and then they created a whole new search result category called blended results.  Now, when you search for a local company, you will see a mixture of “places” results, a few organic results, some ads (of course) and usually a few pictures or videos.

Local search can seam like a volatile market, and even though there have been some major changes lately, there is still an underlining steadiness.  Here are 3 straight forward approaches to localizing your site’s content.  I won’t lie to you and say they are easy, but they are simple.  If you follow them, you will see positive results.

 

1. It’s Ok To NAP On The Job 

Your “NAP” is the foundation of all local SEO efforts.  NAP stands for, Name, Address and Phone Number.  Every year David Mhim releases an exhaustive study called “Local Ranking Factors,” in which he reveals the most important on and off page elements in local SEO.  Every year local citations makes the top of the list.  In fact, this year NAP ranked #4 right behind having an address in the city you want to rank for,  (thank you captain obvious, jk,) and verifying your page with Google (which you can do here.)

Google looks at your NAP wAs you can imagine, there are hundreds of millions of businesses worldwide, and they all have a unique address.  Because of this, Google requires that you have your local citation formatted EXACTLY the same every time you list it.  It would be statistically improbable for Google to figure out different variations of every companies NAP and attribute them to the right place. The best way to format your NAP/local citation is to create a text file that lists your companies information, then you can just copy and paste it into different directories.

 

Your NAP might look something like this. 

BrewSEO

530-636-2412

2920 Veda St, Redding, California 96001

Tags/ Categories: example keywords (sorry fellas, I’m not going to give away my target keywords that easy!) 

Image:  Decide what image to use, and stick with it.  

Description: This is an inbound marketing company..etc. 

 

Once you have your NAP formatted go to every local directory you can find (most of them are free) and create a profile.

Pro Tip: Use yext.com to find a good list of local directories.  Instead of paying them to create a listing for you, download their list into a spreadsheet and go make the profiles yourself.

 

Dallas SEO, hyperlocal2. Hyper Localize Your Content:

Once you have your local citations under hand, it’s time to start optimizing your site. (You do have a website, right?  If not, go find a good web designer and hire them to build you one!) There are a few things you can do to instantly improve your rankings.

 

Have your NAP on every page of your site 

One of the easiest ways of doing this is to put your address and phone number in your site’s footer/header.  It’s up to you how you list it, but make sure it’s uniform and user friendly.

 

Use Local Keywords In Your Page Titles

If you have a carpet cleaning site, you can create a page title that looks like this: City Name Carpet Cleaning | Your Company Name.  When you make a title, put your keyword first, and your company name second.  Unless you have a household brand, it’s better to keep your keywords on the left of your brand name. This will help you rank higher in SERPS, and it will tell visitors exactly what your site is about.

 

Hyper Localize Your Images

When you upload an image, make sure the image is named something relevant to your local keywords.  Use the name of your city, and your keywords in the image title.  After you upload the image also make sure the alt text of your image uses local keywords. Here is an example of locally optimized alt text:

<a href=”where you want the image to link to“><img src=”the url of your image. This is probably going to be hosted on your web-server” alt=” your local keyword. this should also describe the picture.” title=”the name of your image. this should have your city name in it.” width=”xxx” height=”xxx” /></a>

After you’ve localized the images on your site, you can also upload them to Panoramio. Panoramio allows you to add geo tags to your image.  It will set the longitude and latitude of your picture, and give your site even more local emphasis.  When you upload your image to Panoramio, set the coordinates to your office address.  When you do this it will also allow your picture to show up in your Google Places profile.

 

3. Get Creative With Local Pages


Lastly, you need to have locally optimized content on your website.  We’ve all heard the somewhat annoying mortar, “content is king” while every SEO is tired of hearing this, it still holds some truth.  The truth is that yes, content is still king, but the reasons that statement is true has dramatically changed over the past 10 years.For the purposes of these local SEO tips, your content needs to at least mention your city name and keywords.  If you have a company that has offices in multiple cities, you can  create “local page profiles” for each one of your offices.The trick here is to create relevant and high-quality copy that isn’t duplicate content. There are a few ways you can do this. 

Do Local Pages Like Pink Berry 

Pinkberry takes a minimalist approach to local content.  You can use their store locater to find their locations.  Each location has the store address, store hours, the store’s services (catering, deliver, etc…) the store’s name, and a newsfeed from their blog. That’s it!  If you take this approach, you’ll have to do a little extra link building.  But with a few high-quality links, you’ll be able to rank competitively for your keyword.

 

Do Local Pages Like Nerds On Call

The other option is to take an over and above approach to local content and create a sub-site for each store that has completely unique content.  (This is a project that I worked on.)  Each store has a local page that is highly customized, and has unique content.  You can check out a few of them here and here.

The trick here is to create unique content.  Do not copy/past content from one sub-site to another one.  Lazy duplicate content is one of the worst things you can do to your site.  If your company has locations in multiple cities, the chances are you also have enough employees to make this work.  You can easily leverage your employes to help you create unique content.  If you sell a service, then take the descriptions you used for your services. Interview your employees about the services you offer, and re-write the service descriptions using their own words.  Everyone talks, and describes things a little differently, so you’ll have unique copy about your services directly from an industry expert.  You’ll have to do a lot more work if you choose to use this approach, but it will pay off in the end.

Local SEO is under a major overhaul, with the creation of Google + Local pages, and Google’s new local PPC ads.  Not to worry, if you follow these techniques, your site will survive almost any google algorithm change that happens.


About Bryant Jaquez.  Bryant is the founder of the innovative and creative marketing firm BrewSEO.  BrewSEO is full of SEO Extraordinaire, Social Media Moguls, Web Designer Superstars and Branding Geniuses. You can follow us @brewseo

How to Get Local Traffic from Google+

Blog, Guest Authors, local 2 Comments , , , , ,

We have another guest posting about Local Search.  Today Ashley Bennett  will be discussing the benefits of Google+ and how to get local traffic. 

What is Google+ Local and Why You Should Care

Google+ imageGoogle+ is a new social media network created by Google.  It is most similar to Facebook, but it also has a lot of unique features that are not present on other social media networks.  It is a place for businesses and people alike, so there are ways to share messages, videos, and just about anything else on the website.  In the initial stages you had to be invited to join the network, but now Google+ is currently open to the general public now.  It is not quite as popular as Facebook or Twitter, but you should care because there are a lot of people on the website and it will give you a chance to promote yourself.

Tips to Optimize Your Google+ Listing

– Claim your Google+ if you have not already done so

Google will automatically create a listing for your business in most cases, whether you know or not, so it is up to you to claim it.  Unfortunately, a lot of businesses will fail to claim their profile on Google+  and simply leave everything to chance.  It is recommended that you claim your business, start a Google + account, and start making people aware of your presence.

– Maintain accurate information about your business

One of the biggest problems that businesses have online is making sure that customers know how to contact them.  A lot of businesses have websites and social media accounts, but in some cases they will have inaccurate contact information.  This could be something like a different phone number, email, or even web address.  It is essential that all of your information is current so that people know how to contact you.

– Use local keywords

Emphasize the use of local keywords on your website and social media pages.  This means you should use terms like “San Francisco Photographer” or “Chicago Restaurant”.  Try to use the terms naturally in a post or add them as part of your keywords on your post, but do not over do it.  It is best to use 3-5 keywords in your post to prevent diluting the strength of those keywords.

– Communicate with customers on Google+

Given that Google+ is a social media network, you definitely need to be social even if you are acting as a business.  Round up your customers on that are Google+ and start a group.  Start posting news about your business or offering coupons or discounts on Google+.

– Encourage positive reviews from your customers

As you probably know, people are allowed to write reviews of your business on your account, so you need to make sure that they have positive things to say about it.  You are not allowed to compensate people for these types of posts, but you can encourage customers that have had positive experiences to tell others about it on the website.

– Link your Google+ to your website and tell your customers about it

One of the most important things you can do to get traffic from Google+ is to link your website to the page and vice versa.  People should be able to get all of your social media links from your website and they should also be able to reach your website from your profile.  Although it sounds really simple, a lot people forget to do it.

Google+ is gaining popularity everyday, so it is better to join in on the action early.  It has a very intuitive interface and most find it easy to use, so go ahead and get started today.

Ashley Bennett is a marketing consultant and owner of MarketingMages.com.

Think Global, Market Local: How the Internet Attracts Customers from the Neighborhood

Blog, Guest Authors, local, PPC, SEO No Comments , , , , ,

Announcement! We have our first guest post from fellow internet marketing ninja Shane Jones.  Thanks for taking the time to write this post for us.  It provides some great local marketing tips!

We often think of the Internet as a way to reach customers all over the world, but you don’t have to be a global company to reap the benefits.  In fact, online marketing can be a great way to reach customers right in your own neighborhood.

Everything is moving online, including your local newspaper, magazine, and radio station.  Since more and more of your customers are spending significant amounts of time online, you need to take your local marketing strategy there as well.  Here are a few ways to do it.

Get Listed

Your town may have listings on Citysearch and Craigslist, but it most definitely has listings on sites like Yellowpages and Yelp.  When you publish your site, get more traffic by registering it on all those sites.

Some web hosting services provide the tools and instructions for getting listed in local web searches.  Many of these sites will display your business name, address, website address, phone number, and even reviews from happy customers.  This helps local customers decide if your business can best meet their needs, but it’s also great if your business provides a service that people will need immediately when they search for it.  After all, how often is someone going to casually browse for a service like rodent control?

Advertise on Local Media

As mentioned above, your local newspapers, magazines, and radio stations are hosting their own websites.  Since you probably already advertise in their traditional formats, why not advertise online as well?

In fact, this is a good way to create an integrated strategy.  Buy your usual ad space, but throw in a few well-placed banner and display ads in the process.  This serves two purposes.

First, it creates a more cost-effective, accountable way to reach local customers.  Second, since traditional readers and listeners also go online, it doubles the chances that they’ll learn about—and reach out to—your business.

Create Locally Based Content

Blogs and other forms of content marketing have become very popular ways to promote your business and drive more traffic and sales.  But not many people create content that integrates their business expertise with their location.  Now is the time for you to start.

For instance, if you run a clothing store, you could talk about the same fashion trends that everyone else is talking about, or you could talk about the fashion trends you’re seeing as you walk around your town.  If you do this, you’ll see another benefit – because you’re focused on your local area, your search engine rankings will catch the attention of local people looking for your type of business, which is exactly what you want.

Find the Customers Next Door

The Internet spans the globe, but it’s a pretty good way to find customers in your own community as well.  Put your local marketing strategy online and find more customers right down the block from you.

 

Shane JonesAbout Shane Jones : I am an internet marketer, and blogging fanatic, who loves to write about business, the current economy, anything marketing, and SEO.  I also am an avid outdoors-man, who loves hiking, rock climbing, and kayaking.  You can also follow my opinions on soccer and sports at http://www.localsoccernews.com.  Tweet me @shanejones15 about anything! I’d be happy to talk!

5 Things Your Dog Can Teach You About Marketing

Blog, Marketing, Search Engines, SEO, social media No Comments , , , , , , , ,

I have a dog. His name is Dubya. He’s My bestfriend.  (I’d like to avoid any political flaming for having a dog named Dubya, so let’s all pretend I gave him that name because he’s a Welsh terrier.)

My weekends are often spent on my back patio having a cerveza and working on my projects while watching Dub get into trouble in the backyard.  These characteristics he’s developed over the last year and a half can help put some perspective into how you can successfully (or very unsuccessfully) market to your customers or consumers.

1. Dubya is easily distracted –  His favorite toy / best friend in the world is his hippo.  The first thing he does when we get home is say hello, and then go into his home and get his hippo out to take wherever we’re going to be spending the evening.  The funny thing is that he loves his hippo until you distract him with his monkey.. then the hippo no longer exists… until he is re-distracted by the hippo again.

Consumers are Easily distracted and distractable.

Marketing works the exact same way. In a nutshell, I am marketing which toy I want Dub to play with (albeit without any personal gain.) Consumers are easily distracted.  In this era of sensational products changing exponentially quicker than Moore’s law should be accounting for, Marketing is playing a larger role than ever before.  How does apple get users to spend 100’s or even 1000’s of dollars on a product knowing that a “refresh” may launch within the next 10-12 months.  Marketing and Distraction.  It works… and i want the iPhone 5…

2.  Neglect is a BAD Thing –  Dubya doesn’t respond well to neglect. (and I promise we don’t actually neglect him)  Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you have to work late, or get stuck in traffic and you arrive home a little later than anticipated.  Dubya is on a strict schedule, with his diet and bathroom breaks.  Any deviation from that schedule and he will knowingly punish us for making him adjust his needs.  There have been multiple occasions when we’ve been left liquid and solid presents for our less than stellar accountability.

Do Not Neglect your Customers, you will regret it

Marketing requires a schedule and a plan.  You have to be prepared to touch and nurture your clients and customers.  you can’t write a blog post once every three months (which we’ve all been guilty of at some point) and expect your readership or business to grow.  Obviously unexpected life events affect our jobs, but having a schedule and proceeding with as little deviation as possible is necessary for any marketing campaign to succeed. All industries have different levels of acceptable touch. It takes research to know how often you can ping your prospects, but once you’ve figured out those ideal numbers, deviation will result in lost opportunities.

3.  Having a dog is Fun! – It is important to have fun.  I’d be stretching this post way to thin if I correlated marketing in companionship, so I won’t, but having a dog is fun.  Dubya provides entertainment, exercise, and many other endearing traits that increase my quality of life substantially.

Marketing Should Be FUN!

Marketing should be just as fun.  If you aren’t having fun in your marketing job (or any job for that matter) you should consider looking for alternate opportunities.  Marketing departments are the fun departments.  You frequently get to think outside the box and tackle problems in unorthodox and creative ways.  Whatever you’re doing, have fun.

“There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”
― Henry Ford

4.  Dubya is Unpredictable – That dog has a mind of his own and he always finds a way to surprise me.  From eating his own poop and watching tv, to jumping into the pool to save my wife when he thinks she’s “drowning,” dubya teaches me something new (good and bad) every single day.

The Market is Unpredictable, so the future of marketing is Unpredictable.

Marketing is completely unpredictable.  A year ago nobody could have predicted that pinterest would become a large player for social media marketing.  People were still discussing how QR codes were going to be the next big thing (fail).  With that, we have  no idea where marketing is going in the next year or two.  Newspapers and commercials are fading out, but what does the future hold.  How will we market to consumers that have been raised with complete access to facebook and how will we market to an entire generation of retiring baby boomers.  It’s all in flux and the only constant is change.

5.  Dubya is 100% Loyal – I don’t think anyone can truly understand the feeling unless they have a dog as well.  Not only is he my best friend, but he’s also 100% loyal.  He “protects” the house and my wife at night, he senses trials and tribulations and offers empathy and affection through thick and thin.  This isn’t automatic.  It’s grown, through nurturing, patience, practice, and time.

Treating your customers right will create Brand Loyalty

This one is a little tricky because brand loyalty can be lost by any department in a business.  If a product is substandard loyalty can be driven away.  If Customer Services is improperly trained or under developed, customers will abandon ship.  If marketing creates a substandard message or over promises on product expectations, then loyalty can be lost.  They say it takes a village to raise a child.  If that is the case, it takes an entire organization to launch and maintain successful products.  Work closely with your coherts and drive for success.  If you have a dog, give him a hug for me.

moz.com – a new search engine from Rand and the team at seomoz?

Blog, Search Engines, SEO 8 Comments , , , , , , ,

Edit:  Rand was nice enough to respond and explain a few things… his comment –   “No plans to build a public search engine, though we’ll likely keep developing the back end elements and perhaps someday even have a sandbox where one can see how our algorithms/metrics compare to the engines (definitely a few years or more away).”

Rand Fishkin and the team over at seomoz have been on a tear with their SEO tools over the last half decade.  They have slowly and steadily become the premiere source for SEO news and resources.  The have also been working on a top secret project under the domain moz.com.  What are they going to do with this amazingly short and precise URL?

Could a Search Engine Be In The Works?

The seomoz toolset already provides some of the most accurate resources for gauging online content.  The team has continued to roll-out and update their technologies to provide a precise view of how websites are ranking or should be ranked by the current major search engines.  More importantly, MozRank is the generally accepted alternative to googles PageRank algorithm.

Other key developments in 2012 are showing a much more aggressive push from the team in Seattle.  The company reported over 58 billion urls indexed in january of this year.  This amount of indexation is useful for the SEO products they’re marketing, but with an index of that size, there are obviously additional avenues they can monetize.

Additionally, SEOmoz is going to begin tackling webspam with a very “ambitious project”.  If Rand and his team can get a good understanding of how webspam is being handled by Google and Bing, not only can he provide a better service for his clients, but he can also incorporate those tools into his index and potentially create viable alternative to the primary engines currently available.

Lastly,  Moz just received $18 million in venture capital.  This capital is a welcome lift to the already profitable organization.  They have made it clear here that the capital will allow them to be more aggressive in terms of growth, both organic and through acquisitions.  They also discuss growing the index about 3x to 150b and also “Launch one very big, exciting new project we’ve been building since last year, hopefully in October or November of 2012, but possibly early 2013.”

I am not sure if they are actually building an engine, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt.  Faith in google is at an all time low and startup engines like duckduckgo are experiencing nearly vertical growth… literally  .  There may finally be room for another niche engine.  especially one with an already loyal user base.  And if this engine is willing to disclose a little piece of their magic algorithm, everyone may be a winner.

SEOmoz always preaches whitehat, best practices, are the key to online success.  I think they may be creating an engine that can prove it.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves… Bing has proven that creating a new search engine can be very difficult… and very costly..

 

What do you think moz.com is?

 

Top 5 Essential Word Press Plugins For Starting Your Next Blog

Blog, SEO 1 Comment , , , ,

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Working with SMBs who are ready to make the jump into the blogosphere, I always find a few missteps.  They are make the correct assumptions by attempting to utilize the web to increase awareness, drive traffic, and eventually build revenue online, but they’re also putting themselves at a disadvantage by not incorporating the right tools from the get go.

This is my barebones list of WP plugins necessary to begin your online marketing journey.

  1. Akismet – Now included with WordPress installations, this amazing tool is your #1 resource for fighting blog spam.  It is definitely worth the time to sign up for the API and for the good it does, I recommend paying the $5.00 a month for a Pro Membership
  2. WordPress SEO  by the Amazing Yoast – His amazing WP SEO plugin is self described as “the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today” and the industry generally agrees.  All major SEO outlets recommend this  plugin for adding SEO to your posts.
  3. Google Analytics for WordPress by the Amazing Yoast – Another plugin from Joost de Valk.  This guy knows how to create useful plugins to help grow online traffic.. but he also created the best plugin to help you manage your online traffic.  This easy to install, update, and incorporate plugin will insure you dont miss a beat when tracking web traffic through your analytics accounts.
  4. WordPress Database Backup – There are a ton of these plugins out right now.  following the fiasco of wp sites getting generally destroyed last month with insecurities.  Making sure you continuously backup your WP database will insure you don’t feel the affects if another disaster strikes your website.  I recommend this one for one reason. It’s simple. It works.
  5. WP Super Cache – Another plugin now included in most WP org installs.  This caching plugin will generate html files that lower the drain on php and sql servers.  If you’re lucky and get the reddit or inbound.org affect on one of your websites, you’ll be glad you had this plugin installed…. for a few minutes.  Do the easy thing and turn this puppy on, avoid some headaches later.
  6. BONUS!  Related Posts –  There are a ton of these plugins, so just search on WP for them.  I would link to one, but the majority have too many ads and are a headache to navigate.   Add a Related Posts plugin as soon as you start blogging and TAG ALL OF YOUR POSTS.  As your blog grows, the link network will inherently grow as well.  This will increase readership while simultaneously dropping your bounce rate.   This is a win-win.

Do you have any better plugins I didnt mention? Did I completely miss the mark?  Let me know what plugins you like / dont like.

 

Google Maps SEO – Death of the KML boost

Blog, SEO No Comments , , ,

Over the past few years, I’ve made a little name for myself working with businesses on incorporating KML files with GEO sitemaps.  This practice is very beneficial for microsites wanting to incorporate multiple locations on a single google map for SEO or PPC campaigns.  I have previously blogged about this and provided step by step instructions on how to incorporate it.

Using Google’s proprietary KML format, developers were able to incorporate relevant data into listings including phone numbers, address, images, or anything else.

Google recently adjusted their policies to remove a lot of the boost associated with these practices.  It is still possible to incorporate certain data points, but the gains we’ve seen over the past few years using this secret are no longer possible.

Time to find a new way to include these details in landing pages.

 

1 2 3