Direct Mail advertising has advocates and detractors. The advocates of direct mail advertising are typically the same group that takes the time to fully think through their campaign. A direct mail campaign is about far more than mailing a bunch of postcards with random pictures and text.
Here are our thoughts on using direct mail.
First, you need to run the numbers. Get at least three prices for what you need. You need to price the direct mail design cost (in and out of house), printing cost, postage cost, and also any costs for buying mailing lists. It would be advisable to get mailing pricing for small, medium and large campaigns. Know that a return rate of 1-2% is typically considered to be acceptable. Factor in the value of an average sale and you can quickly decide if it will work for for you.
Second, take a hard look at what your business really needs. Are you seeking to move a particular product or service? Seeking to get more customers in the door? Trying to sell more high-margin products or services? And then think about what is going to bring you an acceptable ROI.
Second, work on your design. Understand that you have a very limited amount of space on that direct mailer and you need to make the most of it. Don't clutter the space with every photo you can find or paragraphs of text. Use a clean design, with a good color scheme, include your complete address, phone, website address and hours of operation. Let people know the closest major intersection and business park.shopping center where you are located. And have everything proof read by 3-5 people.
Third, meet with your printer of choice to negotiate your best price, and double check your designated card stock and print finish. Confirm the deadline for your order and getthe printing done.
Fourth, order your mailing lists from a company that can also do your direct mail postage. Their ability to get bulk mail rates can save you money. Get the information in formats that you can manage easily and prepare separate mailing campaigns of whatever volume you have defined in step 1. Bring the direct mail company your printed materials and let them launch the campaign.
Fifth, consider keepin a small quantity of your direct mailers in your office to use as a follow up piece for new leads you get through other channels. It allows you to make a quick, professional follow-up with ease.
Other considerations are matching your direct mail to any relevant situations such as seasonal peaks, market demands, grand openings, etc. Direct mail can produce good results if you plan it well.
News and articles on internet marketing, inbound marketing, SEO and related topics.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
An Older SEO Overview
Competition is both a challenge and an opportunity in business. In SEO, your competitors can be the most valued source of data. When performing competitive research, the goals are to discover:
• How entrenched a competitor is and how hard it is to unseat them;
• The competition's SEO skills; and
• Link prospects, so you can trade links, host articles and do reviews.
For analyzing where you stand compared to the competition, using "mortgage loans," a very competitive search term, as an example let’s refer to this as a tier 1 keyword, since it's the top search term within this category.
1. Determine link popularity. Go to Google, type in the tier 1 keyword and pick the top three ranked sites. Then go to marketleap.com and use the link popularity checker to see how your site compares in terms of incoming links to the top three sites from Google. Look for sites with the highest Google rankings and lowest amount of incoming links. Keep in mind that MSN records the highest number of back links--incoming links from one website to another--but also pay attention to the Yahoo! results, since it's the best linking engine to use for link review. Also, Google recently updated its Google webmaster tools and has enhanced its link tracking system. Make sure to get an account and compare the results with the others in this step. Write down all the numbers.
2. Find sites to target. Next, go back to Google and enter "allinanchor: mortgage loans." This restricts the results depending on the number of links coming into a site based on that key word phrase. This will help determine which from which sites target links originate.
3. Review link counts. Go back to Yahoo! and enter "link:www.yourbusinessdomain.com" and review the number of results with the numbers from Marketleap in the first step. Note that Yahoo! orders the list by power, or the sites with the most links coming to them. Those sites are the most important to target and are likely to have a good page rank. At this point, you'll know how much work you have ahead of you. If it seems impossible, start by looking at the fifth step about keyword research to narrow down keyword selections and start again.
4. View source and "on page" SEO factors. Once you've found the top list to target, go to each of the sites and review the source code. Make sure to review the title, description, meta and H1 tags on the sites. They should be programmed as discussed in my previous column, "10 Steps for Increasing Visibility Online." Some handy SEO tools can help you validate your work, including SearchStatus, a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla, and SEO for Firefox. They can help you indicate quickly whether the competition is doing things right.
5. Perform keyword research. Use the search term suggestion tool at inventory.overture.com, which is one month behind in data results, and look for keywords and their permutations with a good search volume. Any number more than 20,000 to 30,000 is a good average. Continue looking at the tier 1-type terms until you spot an opportunity to build on. Use other tools like Google keyword tools, keyworddiscovery.com. Use the keywords you select in this step by adding pages to your site, a common SEO practice.
6. Consider conversion rates. Finally, visit the competitive sites and compare them with your own. Do they have content, flow and site structure that encourage conversion? Are the sites easy to navigate? Do they emphasize call-to-action statements like "download a white paper," "sign up for this newsletter" or "buy this product now"? Look to see if they are using long tail keywords, such as "mortgage loans for police officers in Los Angeles." If they are, then you should consider doing so, too. Misspellings in text on your page also can work, but be careful not to confuse your visitors. A little trick is to include them in a PDF or Word document. Search engines, specifically Google, spider PDF and Office documents.
Competitive research is a serious SEO exercise for gaining advantage online. Having the tools, capabilities and expertise are not enough; you also need to look at traditional media--print, radio and television--to learn what the competition is up to. Fight back with more pages, more content, improved design and source code, and more incoming links with diverse descriptions. Use tools like UrlTrends to track your progress and SpyFu to look at advertising costs, giving you an indicator of your competition's activity, spending and strategy.
Don't forget to open their spam e-mail marketing messages that you receive. You may learn something by studying that material, however painful. Also review what they send you through the regular mail and discover ways to improve your own campaigns, both offline and online.
• How entrenched a competitor is and how hard it is to unseat them;
• The competition's SEO skills; and
• Link prospects, so you can trade links, host articles and do reviews.
For analyzing where you stand compared to the competition, using "mortgage loans," a very competitive search term, as an example let’s refer to this as a tier 1 keyword, since it's the top search term within this category.
1. Determine link popularity. Go to Google, type in the tier 1 keyword and pick the top three ranked sites. Then go to marketleap.com and use the link popularity checker to see how your site compares in terms of incoming links to the top three sites from Google. Look for sites with the highest Google rankings and lowest amount of incoming links. Keep in mind that MSN records the highest number of back links--incoming links from one website to another--but also pay attention to the Yahoo! results, since it's the best linking engine to use for link review. Also, Google recently updated its Google webmaster tools and has enhanced its link tracking system. Make sure to get an account and compare the results with the others in this step. Write down all the numbers.
2. Find sites to target. Next, go back to Google and enter "allinanchor: mortgage loans." This restricts the results depending on the number of links coming into a site based on that key word phrase. This will help determine which from which sites target links originate.
3. Review link counts. Go back to Yahoo! and enter "link:www.yourbusinessdomain.com" and review the number of results with the numbers from Marketleap in the first step. Note that Yahoo! orders the list by power, or the sites with the most links coming to them. Those sites are the most important to target and are likely to have a good page rank. At this point, you'll know how much work you have ahead of you. If it seems impossible, start by looking at the fifth step about keyword research to narrow down keyword selections and start again.
4. View source and "on page" SEO factors. Once you've found the top list to target, go to each of the sites and review the source code. Make sure to review the title, description, meta and H1 tags on the sites. They should be programmed as discussed in my previous column, "10 Steps for Increasing Visibility Online." Some handy SEO tools can help you validate your work, including SearchStatus, a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla, and SEO for Firefox. They can help you indicate quickly whether the competition is doing things right.
5. Perform keyword research. Use the search term suggestion tool at inventory.overture.com, which is one month behind in data results, and look for keywords and their permutations with a good search volume. Any number more than 20,000 to 30,000 is a good average. Continue looking at the tier 1-type terms until you spot an opportunity to build on. Use other tools like Google keyword tools, keyworddiscovery.com. Use the keywords you select in this step by adding pages to your site, a common SEO practice.
6. Consider conversion rates. Finally, visit the competitive sites and compare them with your own. Do they have content, flow and site structure that encourage conversion? Are the sites easy to navigate? Do they emphasize call-to-action statements like "download a white paper," "sign up for this newsletter" or "buy this product now"? Look to see if they are using long tail keywords, such as "mortgage loans for police officers in Los Angeles." If they are, then you should consider doing so, too. Misspellings in text on your page also can work, but be careful not to confuse your visitors. A little trick is to include them in a PDF or Word document. Search engines, specifically Google, spider PDF and Office documents.
Competitive research is a serious SEO exercise for gaining advantage online. Having the tools, capabilities and expertise are not enough; you also need to look at traditional media--print, radio and television--to learn what the competition is up to. Fight back with more pages, more content, improved design and source code, and more incoming links with diverse descriptions. Use tools like UrlTrends to track your progress and SpyFu to look at advertising costs, giving you an indicator of your competition's activity, spending and strategy.
Don't forget to open their spam e-mail marketing messages that you receive. You may learn something by studying that material, however painful. Also review what they send you through the regular mail and discover ways to improve your own campaigns, both offline and online.
Link Building
Link building should be a part of your internet marketing strategy. Backlinks help a search engine to take note of a particular site for a particular service/product/topic. Link building can be done by a qualified link building service or a business owner may decide to do it themselves.
When undergoing a link building campaign it isimportant to understand the ground rules. There are no value links, bad links (which can harm your site), okay links, god links and great links. How do you know one from the other? Great question.
BAD ONES: First, avoid any porn, gambling or "bad neighborhood sites" like black-hat SEO forums. NEVER link to them, even if you are trading links. Second, don't waste time on low traffic, cheap looking sites. It has no value and, by association, makes your site look bad. DO NOT use a link farm - typically comes to you as a cheesy offer (100 hgh quality links for $49). Search engines may penalize your site if you get associated with the link farms.
GOOD ONES: First, learn what is considered "spammy" and play by the rules.
Try to find sites with High Page Rank . Beyond that you would like to get links from sites that are .gov. .edu .org .com, etc.
You can get some links from articles, blog postings, etc. however many of these places have a general "no follow" on all links so you're wasting your time if you are seeking link juice.
Don't forget to get links from "authority sites" like the old DMOZ site, business.com and others.forums, comments in blogs. Know that DMOZ is notoriously slow to add sites - and sometimes may never do it.
As youlearn, or if you have questions, remember to come back to our site and post a comment or question. Good luck on your link building!
When undergoing a link building campaign it isimportant to understand the ground rules. There are no value links, bad links (which can harm your site), okay links, god links and great links. How do you know one from the other? Great question.
BAD ONES: First, avoid any porn, gambling or "bad neighborhood sites" like black-hat SEO forums. NEVER link to them, even if you are trading links. Second, don't waste time on low traffic, cheap looking sites. It has no value and, by association, makes your site look bad. DO NOT use a link farm - typically comes to you as a cheesy offer (100 hgh quality links for $49). Search engines may penalize your site if you get associated with the link farms.
GOOD ONES: First, learn what is considered "spammy" and play by the rules.
Try to find sites with High Page Rank . Beyond that you would like to get links from sites that are .gov. .edu .org .com, etc.
You can get some links from articles, blog postings, etc. however many of these places have a general "no follow" on all links so you're wasting your time if you are seeking link juice.
Don't forget to get links from "authority sites" like the old DMOZ site, business.com and others.forums, comments in blogs. Know that DMOZ is notoriously slow to add sites - and sometimes may never do it.
As youlearn, or if you have questions, remember to come back to our site and post a comment or question. Good luck on your link building!
New Website or More Marketing?
When business owners get into a serious assessment of why their website is underperforming the conversation always centers around which is more important - a total website redesign or more SEO/marketing. So which is it?
An effective internet marketing program requires two fundamental pieces:
1) Find and engage qualified prospects. This is largely done with SEO for competitive search engine ranking, local search marketing, and online advertising which includes anything from PPC to directory advertising.
2) Hold and persuade website visitors. Once a prospect gets to your website you need to make it past the 7-second judgment to stay or abandon your site. If they stay your site needs to be easy to navigate and have an adequate amount of information to persuade the prospect that your business is a viable solution for their need.
So, back to which is more important. It depends. If your website traffic vovolume is acceptable you probably have a lame website. If your website traffic volume is too low, the answer is obvious - you need more prospects. A secondary thought for either instance is evaluating the quality of the traffic. Is your website found on search engines for truly relvant phrases? Are you finding the right people?
In many cases, we deal with a business that relied on the brother-in-law approach to get their website created and hosted - it's a disaster every time. In almost every situation like this the business needs to start from scratch on everything.
Whether it is a new website design, or more SEO and internet marketing, this is the time for serious thought on exactly what needs to be done to achieve the desired results. Best practices for internet marketing reqire a thorough knowledge of online user behaviors, search engine algorithms, web design standards, browser requirements and much more. Your best assurance of getting positive results for your investment are to hire a competent and experienced internet marketing company and website design firm.
Check back for our next articles on website redesign criteria and search engine marketing ideas.
An effective internet marketing program requires two fundamental pieces:
1) Find and engage qualified prospects. This is largely done with SEO for competitive search engine ranking, local search marketing, and online advertising which includes anything from PPC to directory advertising.
2) Hold and persuade website visitors. Once a prospect gets to your website you need to make it past the 7-second judgment to stay or abandon your site. If they stay your site needs to be easy to navigate and have an adequate amount of information to persuade the prospect that your business is a viable solution for their need.
So, back to which is more important. It depends. If your website traffic vovolume is acceptable you probably have a lame website. If your website traffic volume is too low, the answer is obvious - you need more prospects. A secondary thought for either instance is evaluating the quality of the traffic. Is your website found on search engines for truly relvant phrases? Are you finding the right people?
In many cases, we deal with a business that relied on the brother-in-law approach to get their website created and hosted - it's a disaster every time. In almost every situation like this the business needs to start from scratch on everything.
Whether it is a new website design, or more SEO and internet marketing, this is the time for serious thought on exactly what needs to be done to achieve the desired results. Best practices for internet marketing reqire a thorough knowledge of online user behaviors, search engine algorithms, web design standards, browser requirements and much more. Your best assurance of getting positive results for your investment are to hire a competent and experienced internet marketing company and website design firm.
Check back for our next articles on website redesign criteria and search engine marketing ideas.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Is Social Media Good For A Business?
Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter have become quite the thing to do these days. Social media sites receive mixed emotions when considered for business use. In many instances, but not all, social media sites can present a perfect medium to develop and promote your branded image. So what should you consider before venturing down the social media trail?
First, whether or not you decide to get a business page on a social media site, your company should create a Social Media Policy that is given to all employees. A typical social media business policy will advise employees to use the utmost discretion when posting about, or not make any reference to, the company, its employees, vendors or customers. This should cover any text, photos, parodies or other public mentions. It is imperative that a business take this necessary step to protect reputations and branding from the detriment caused by unacceptable online behaviors.
The type of business that can benefit most from a social media site is a business that has customers whose friends and family members are prospective customers. By having an individual "friend" or "like" your business page your business automatically gets a referral which can create a "warm lead".
The most productive business use of a social media site is to engage customers and prospects with useful information, let them know about meaningful developments within your company and discuss (business) things of interest to the customers.
In any event, it is very important for a business to view their social media site as a commitment and make frequent posts. Any blog, forum or social media site that is relatively abandoned will quickly lose any popularity. Always post with discretion and leave 'em wanting more!
First, whether or not you decide to get a business page on a social media site, your company should create a Social Media Policy that is given to all employees. A typical social media business policy will advise employees to use the utmost discretion when posting about, or not make any reference to, the company, its employees, vendors or customers. This should cover any text, photos, parodies or other public mentions. It is imperative that a business take this necessary step to protect reputations and branding from the detriment caused by unacceptable online behaviors.
The type of business that can benefit most from a social media site is a business that has customers whose friends and family members are prospective customers. By having an individual "friend" or "like" your business page your business automatically gets a referral which can create a "warm lead".
The most productive business use of a social media site is to engage customers and prospects with useful information, let them know about meaningful developments within your company and discuss (business) things of interest to the customers.
In any event, it is very important for a business to view their social media site as a commitment and make frequent posts. Any blog, forum or social media site that is relatively abandoned will quickly lose any popularity. Always post with discretion and leave 'em wanting more!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Business Logo Design
Are you thinking of updating your logo or do you need a new logo? We recommend taking some time to think through the design from more than just an aesthetic value. Thinking about it from top to bottom let's review a logo design:
Your logo is the primary visual branding element for your business. As such the design should be reasonably neutral with regards to elements that are trendy and could quickly cause your logo to look dated. Currently this would be something like a drop shadow or any type of elliptical lines. Text treatments are increasingly popular and a viable option for any B2B or industrial business.
Color selection is very important. Generally speaking you want colors that are suitable for your business. Black may look sleek and elegant but it's much more suited for a limo company than a daycare center. If you market globally you may also consider perceptions of colors in different cultures. For example, white is a funeral color in many parts of the far east. Scalability is another consideration. Something like the Starbuck's logo is okay for large signs and on trucks but it becomes unattractive in small scale use like business cards. Remember that using more colors will cause any printing costs to go up. Also, treatments done for internet use may not be able to be reolicated in print.
If your business is new you obviously have no real constraints, but there are considerations. You should try to avoid color schemes that mirror competition color schemes. Never use any graphics or images that are not your property or that you do not have authorization to use.
If you have an existing logo and want to change colors you should consider implementing slight color variations over several years to make the change gradual and virtually unnoticeable.
Some of the best logos are simple, iconic and free of distracting elements. When you hire a logo designer, don't pay over 50% for any deposit, and make ceratin that you get the logo in 72dpi for web use (jpg, gif or png format), 300dpi (min) for print use, a color and a grayscale version. Also be certain to get the original art files (psd or ai files) in case you need to make changes. It is highly recommended to get the logo designed in vector format so that you can resize it without loss of clarity.
Assuming that you hire a good logo designer, don't argue to much with the designer, and don't get design advice from friends and family. Trust your professional designer.
Your logo is the primary visual branding element for your business. As such the design should be reasonably neutral with regards to elements that are trendy and could quickly cause your logo to look dated. Currently this would be something like a drop shadow or any type of elliptical lines. Text treatments are increasingly popular and a viable option for any B2B or industrial business.
Color selection is very important. Generally speaking you want colors that are suitable for your business. Black may look sleek and elegant but it's much more suited for a limo company than a daycare center. If you market globally you may also consider perceptions of colors in different cultures. For example, white is a funeral color in many parts of the far east. Scalability is another consideration. Something like the Starbuck's logo is okay for large signs and on trucks but it becomes unattractive in small scale use like business cards. Remember that using more colors will cause any printing costs to go up. Also, treatments done for internet use may not be able to be reolicated in print.
If your business is new you obviously have no real constraints, but there are considerations. You should try to avoid color schemes that mirror competition color schemes. Never use any graphics or images that are not your property or that you do not have authorization to use.
If you have an existing logo and want to change colors you should consider implementing slight color variations over several years to make the change gradual and virtually unnoticeable.
Some of the best logos are simple, iconic and free of distracting elements. When you hire a logo designer, don't pay over 50% for any deposit, and make ceratin that you get the logo in 72dpi for web use (jpg, gif or png format), 300dpi (min) for print use, a color and a grayscale version. Also be certain to get the original art files (psd or ai files) in case you need to make changes. It is highly recommended to get the logo designed in vector format so that you can resize it without loss of clarity.
Assuming that you hire a good logo designer, don't argue to much with the designer, and don't get design advice from friends and family. Trust your professional designer.
Industrial Website Marketing
Marketing an industrial website can appear to be a daunting task. With a little planning, and an understanding of your options, you can determine a course of action that will yield the results that you need.
The first course of action is to define your objectives. Are you needing to improve your overall site ranking on search engines? Get keyword specific placement? Expand the breadth of your online visibility?
Next, define your desired timeframe and budget. These two elements are closely linked. In order to get immediate results you need to find opportunities for paid listings. This could include pay per click advertising (i.e., Google Adwords, Yahoo Search MArketing, MSN Ad Center), industrial directories (i.e., ThomasNet, GlobalSpec, Arcat), or general online directories. This is where things can become very confusing and intimidating. There are a LOT of choices, and salespeople don't provide objective recommendations. A knowledgeable internet marketing company can help you to sort through the options, assess reasonable budget numbers, and evaluate the relevance and value of any possible paid inclusion opportunities.
For long term success an industrial company needs to engage the services of a qualified industrial SEO company to achieve top organic search engine placement. SEO services can often yield positive results within a few weeks however SEO should be viewed as a long term strategy for industrial website marketing. SEO services require strategic on-site and off-site work to achieve optimum results. Don't believe that SEO is simply "meta tags" and "adding keywords". SEO is a professional service.
Additional opportunities for industrial website marketing can be created through press releases, articles and even traditional marketing efforts. The simple fact to remember is that if you don't have a commitment to marketing your industrial website you will be handing your competition a lot of business.
The first course of action is to define your objectives. Are you needing to improve your overall site ranking on search engines? Get keyword specific placement? Expand the breadth of your online visibility?
Next, define your desired timeframe and budget. These two elements are closely linked. In order to get immediate results you need to find opportunities for paid listings. This could include pay per click advertising (i.e., Google Adwords, Yahoo Search MArketing, MSN Ad Center), industrial directories (i.e., ThomasNet, GlobalSpec, Arcat), or general online directories. This is where things can become very confusing and intimidating. There are a LOT of choices, and salespeople don't provide objective recommendations. A knowledgeable internet marketing company can help you to sort through the options, assess reasonable budget numbers, and evaluate the relevance and value of any possible paid inclusion opportunities.
For long term success an industrial company needs to engage the services of a qualified industrial SEO company to achieve top organic search engine placement. SEO services can often yield positive results within a few weeks however SEO should be viewed as a long term strategy for industrial website marketing. SEO services require strategic on-site and off-site work to achieve optimum results. Don't believe that SEO is simply "meta tags" and "adding keywords". SEO is a professional service.
Additional opportunities for industrial website marketing can be created through press releases, articles and even traditional marketing efforts. The simple fact to remember is that if you don't have a commitment to marketing your industrial website you will be handing your competition a lot of business.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Selecting A Web Design Company
Selecting a web design company can be difficult unless you have a set of standards. Without a set of standards, especially if you are a very trusting person, can cause you to lose your money or receive grossly inferior work.
When you are first developing a list of potential web designers we recommend using this Phase I Criteria:
1) Does the firm have a website and does it look acceptable? You can't expect your site to look very good if they won't do good work for themselves.
2) Does the firm provide these services full-time? Invariably, freelancers and part-timers make your job a lower priority and probably have a lower skill set.
3) Does the firm have a portfolio of at least 30 sites? Any web design firm that has reasonable experience should have no problem in creating a portfolio of 30+ sites - and how do the sites look?
4) Does the designer use only templates? If all or most of their portfolio sites are templates you can bet that they have very liomited design and coding skills, and probably can't handle requests fro customization or special features.
5) Does the design firm offer "post-launch services" such as SEO, search marketing, etc? You will need ongoing services to maintain and develop your site, optimize your site and assist with site promotion, listings and link building.
6) Does the designer/firm have a business license? If they do not have a business license you should be extremely wary and concerned.
Always verify these things and don't simply assume that the salesperson is telling you the truth. Beyond these Phase I qualifications you can feel confident if the potential designer/firm has Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accredidation and has been a full time business for over 5 years.
For more information on how to assess or qualify the sepcific skills and capabilities of a design firm leave us a comment.
When you are first developing a list of potential web designers we recommend using this Phase I Criteria:
1) Does the firm have a website and does it look acceptable? You can't expect your site to look very good if they won't do good work for themselves.
2) Does the firm provide these services full-time? Invariably, freelancers and part-timers make your job a lower priority and probably have a lower skill set.
3) Does the firm have a portfolio of at least 30 sites? Any web design firm that has reasonable experience should have no problem in creating a portfolio of 30+ sites - and how do the sites look?
4) Does the designer use only templates? If all or most of their portfolio sites are templates you can bet that they have very liomited design and coding skills, and probably can't handle requests fro customization or special features.
5) Does the design firm offer "post-launch services" such as SEO, search marketing, etc? You will need ongoing services to maintain and develop your site, optimize your site and assist with site promotion, listings and link building.
6) Does the designer/firm have a business license? If they do not have a business license you should be extremely wary and concerned.
Always verify these things and don't simply assume that the salesperson is telling you the truth. Beyond these Phase I qualifications you can feel confident if the potential designer/firm has Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accredidation and has been a full time business for over 5 years.
For more information on how to assess or qualify the sepcific skills and capabilities of a design firm leave us a comment.
What Is Reputation Management
Reputation Management is one of the hottest topics among smart business owners and managers. Reputation management is the services, including tactics and methods, for locating, managing and neutralizing negative comments or information about a particular business.
As the internet has developed there have been more blogs, forums, local listing review boards, "gripe sites" and other online venues for customers (or even competitors) to post negative comments, start rumors or generally damage a company's brand value and customer perception. Needless to say this can have a profound impact on lead generation and sales revenue.
The solution is to hire a competent reputation management company who will apply the necessary resources to locate, manage and neutralize such negative information. A reputation management service can be done as a one-time audit to take a general assessment of your online reputation, done as a quarterly "keep an eye on it" approach, or a full time engagement to locate and neutralize any damaging information as quickly as possible.
The cost for reputationmanagement services will vary depending upon the size of the client organization (particularly the breadth of their online presence and likelihood of negative comments). In almost every instance the cost of reputation management services will be dwarfed by what a client saves in lost sales revenue.
It is well worth a business owners interests to take at least 10 minutes to contact a reputation management company to learn more about the costs and value of their services - otherwise you are allowing others to silently harm your business.
As the internet has developed there have been more blogs, forums, local listing review boards, "gripe sites" and other online venues for customers (or even competitors) to post negative comments, start rumors or generally damage a company's brand value and customer perception. Needless to say this can have a profound impact on lead generation and sales revenue.
The solution is to hire a competent reputation management company who will apply the necessary resources to locate, manage and neutralize such negative information. A reputation management service can be done as a one-time audit to take a general assessment of your online reputation, done as a quarterly "keep an eye on it" approach, or a full time engagement to locate and neutralize any damaging information as quickly as possible.
The cost for reputationmanagement services will vary depending upon the size of the client organization (particularly the breadth of their online presence and likelihood of negative comments). In almost every instance the cost of reputation management services will be dwarfed by what a client saves in lost sales revenue.
It is well worth a business owners interests to take at least 10 minutes to contact a reputation management company to learn more about the costs and value of their services - otherwise you are allowing others to silently harm your business.
The Importance of Local Search Listings
Local Search Listings on search engines should be a top consideration for every business. If there are any doubts let's clarify some basic facts:
1. Search Engine Companies (notably Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask) are run by smart folks. If they create something like "local search", and keep it, then it's safe to assume that people like it and use it. Why purposely ignore the potential customers that use local search listings to find a supplier/vendor?
2. It's a free opportunity to leverage prime internet real estate to reach more prospects. Sure, you can also count on your website's ranking, or utilize pay per click advertising but why would you not want to take advantage of free advertising?
3. It is a great way to compensate for a website that is poorly optimized and does not have high, competitive organic search engine ranking. Your local listing is somethng you can set-up or claim/manage with little effort.
Every business owner should take the time to create their local listing or confirm and mange an existing listing. If you're too busy you can easily hire an internet marketing company to handle it for you at minimal cost.
A local listing typically includes the obvious name, phone and address info but also includes info that is important to consumers. You can list hours of operation, brands carried, payment options, include a business description and lots of other data.
1. Search Engine Companies (notably Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask) are run by smart folks. If they create something like "local search", and keep it, then it's safe to assume that people like it and use it. Why purposely ignore the potential customers that use local search listings to find a supplier/vendor?
2. It's a free opportunity to leverage prime internet real estate to reach more prospects. Sure, you can also count on your website's ranking, or utilize pay per click advertising but why would you not want to take advantage of free advertising?
3. It is a great way to compensate for a website that is poorly optimized and does not have high, competitive organic search engine ranking. Your local listing is somethng you can set-up or claim/manage with little effort.
Every business owner should take the time to create their local listing or confirm and mange an existing listing. If you're too busy you can easily hire an internet marketing company to handle it for you at minimal cost.
A local listing typically includes the obvious name, phone and address info but also includes info that is important to consumers. You can list hours of operation, brands carried, payment options, include a business description and lots of other data.
Google Algorithm Change 2010 -Disrupt LongTail Searches
We've heard from multiple customers of ThomasNet that there catalog pages were becoming un-indexed at an extremely high and fast rate. Obviously this is a critical problem for these business owners. ThomasNet is working on a "fix". For anyone having a similar problem here is a report of and article found on www.SearchEngineLand.com
The article below is credited to Vanessa Fox
Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates. Focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.
However, sometimes a Google algorithm change is substantial enough that even those who don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the algorithms notice it. That seems to be the case with what those discussing it at Webmaster World have named “Mayday”. Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A, ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”
I asked Google for more specifics and they told me that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before. Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.
This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).
My complete speculation is that perhaps the relevance algorithms have been tweaked a bit. Before, pages that didn’t have high quality signals might still rank well if they had high relevance signals. And perhaps now, those high relevance signals don’t have as much weight in ranking if the page doesn’t have the right quality signals.
What’s a site owner to do? It can be difficult to create compelling content and attract links to these types of pages. My best suggestion to those who have been hit by this is to isolate a set of queries for which the site now is getting less traffic and check out the search results to see what pages are ranking instead. What qualities do they have that make them seen as valuable? For instance, I have no way of knowing how amazon.com has fared during this update, but they’ve done a fairly good job of making individual item pages with duplicated content from manufacturer’s databases unique and compelling by the addition of content like of user reviews. They have set up a fairly robust internal linking (and anchor text) structure with things like recommended items and lists. And they attract external links with features such as the my favorites widget.
From the discussion at the Google I/O session, this is likely a long-term change so if your site has been impacted by it, you’ll likely want to do some creative thinking around how you can make these types of pages more valuable (which should increase user engagement and conversion as well).
Update on 5/30/10: Matt Cutts from Google has posted a YouTube video about the change. In it, he says “it’s an algorithmic change that changes how we assess which sites are the best match for long tail queries.” He recommends that a site owner who is impacted evaluate the quality of the site and if the site really is the most relevant match for the impacted queries, what “great content” could be added, determine if the the site is considered an “authority”, and ensure that the page does more than simply match the keywords in the query and is relevant and useful for that query.
He notes that the change:
•has nothing to do with the “Caffeine” update (an infrastructure change that is not yet fully rolled out).
•is entirely algorithmic (and isn’t, for instance, a manual flag on individual sites).
•impacts long tail queries more than other types
•was fully tested and is not temporary
The article below is credited to Vanessa Fox
Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates. Focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.
However, sometimes a Google algorithm change is substantial enough that even those who don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the algorithms notice it. That seems to be the case with what those discussing it at Webmaster World have named “Mayday”. Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A, ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”
I asked Google for more specifics and they told me that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before. Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.
This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).
My complete speculation is that perhaps the relevance algorithms have been tweaked a bit. Before, pages that didn’t have high quality signals might still rank well if they had high relevance signals. And perhaps now, those high relevance signals don’t have as much weight in ranking if the page doesn’t have the right quality signals.
What’s a site owner to do? It can be difficult to create compelling content and attract links to these types of pages. My best suggestion to those who have been hit by this is to isolate a set of queries for which the site now is getting less traffic and check out the search results to see what pages are ranking instead. What qualities do they have that make them seen as valuable? For instance, I have no way of knowing how amazon.com has fared during this update, but they’ve done a fairly good job of making individual item pages with duplicated content from manufacturer’s databases unique and compelling by the addition of content like of user reviews. They have set up a fairly robust internal linking (and anchor text) structure with things like recommended items and lists. And they attract external links with features such as the my favorites widget.
From the discussion at the Google I/O session, this is likely a long-term change so if your site has been impacted by it, you’ll likely want to do some creative thinking around how you can make these types of pages more valuable (which should increase user engagement and conversion as well).
Update on 5/30/10: Matt Cutts from Google has posted a YouTube video about the change. In it, he says “it’s an algorithmic change that changes how we assess which sites are the best match for long tail queries.” He recommends that a site owner who is impacted evaluate the quality of the site and if the site really is the most relevant match for the impacted queries, what “great content” could be added, determine if the the site is considered an “authority”, and ensure that the page does more than simply match the keywords in the query and is relevant and useful for that query.
He notes that the change:
•has nothing to do with the “Caffeine” update (an infrastructure change that is not yet fully rolled out).
•is entirely algorithmic (and isn’t, for instance, a manual flag on individual sites).
•impacts long tail queries more than other types
•was fully tested and is not temporary
CMS- An Enemy of SEO
The purpose of every business website, whether directly or indirectly, is to find new customers. This is best achieved when the client’s website has high ranking in the organic, or natural, search engine results. This is achieved through Search Engine Optimization, commonly known as SEO. The majority of website development companies are obsessed with development technologies and do not understand SEO. As a result website developers often sell clients on Content Management Systems, commonly known as CMS. This is an Internet marketing mistake because CMS is an enemy of SEO.
Why do clients buy into CMS? CMS is an easy sell to many clients because they demand having control of their website. This is like giving a teenager the keys to a sports car – the result is going to be ugly. These clients are obsessed with saving money that they would pay a web company to make content changes. In reality this control results in losing money through missed sales opportunities. Additionally, these clients are unintentionally sending these sales opportunities to their competitors. This defeats any logical reason for having a business website.
Why do website developers promote CMS? At best they simply don’t know better. In all probability it’s because implementing CMS means more money in their development contract and they are so techie oriented that they love to add “geek features”. Remember that website developers are just that, website developers. They are not marketing or sales professionals – certainly not SEO experts. And this goes for those in-house IT people. Don’t get them involved in your website design or development.
Why is CMS an enemy of SEO? SEO is a very complicated process requiring technical knowledge to optimize coding, marketing skills to develop optimized content and overall a sound understanding of how to combine the two elements in a white hat fashion. Knowing that a significant part of the SEO process is in creating optimized content it is obvious why CMS is problematic. It is the vehicle through which a client has the ability to wreck SEO. Clients wanting good Search Engine Optimization results need to give the keys to an SEO professional.
Chances are that spending a few hundred dollars a year for an Internet marketing firm to update your website is completely acceptable when you understand that your new sales will pay for the services. This is a simple cost of doing business for the purpose of having a business website to find new customers. On the other hand you could be obsessed with control, save a few hundred dollars a year in website maintenance expenses, and cost your company thousands of dollars in sales by employing CMS - an enemy of SEO.
Why do clients buy into CMS? CMS is an easy sell to many clients because they demand having control of their website. This is like giving a teenager the keys to a sports car – the result is going to be ugly. These clients are obsessed with saving money that they would pay a web company to make content changes. In reality this control results in losing money through missed sales opportunities. Additionally, these clients are unintentionally sending these sales opportunities to their competitors. This defeats any logical reason for having a business website.
Why do website developers promote CMS? At best they simply don’t know better. In all probability it’s because implementing CMS means more money in their development contract and they are so techie oriented that they love to add “geek features”. Remember that website developers are just that, website developers. They are not marketing or sales professionals – certainly not SEO experts. And this goes for those in-house IT people. Don’t get them involved in your website design or development.
Why is CMS an enemy of SEO? SEO is a very complicated process requiring technical knowledge to optimize coding, marketing skills to develop optimized content and overall a sound understanding of how to combine the two elements in a white hat fashion. Knowing that a significant part of the SEO process is in creating optimized content it is obvious why CMS is problematic. It is the vehicle through which a client has the ability to wreck SEO. Clients wanting good Search Engine Optimization results need to give the keys to an SEO professional.
Chances are that spending a few hundred dollars a year for an Internet marketing firm to update your website is completely acceptable when you understand that your new sales will pay for the services. This is a simple cost of doing business for the purpose of having a business website to find new customers. On the other hand you could be obsessed with control, save a few hundred dollars a year in website maintenance expenses, and cost your company thousands of dollars in sales by employing CMS - an enemy of SEO.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Problems With Yellow Pages Websites & Internet Marketing
The yellow pages business is dying and the phone companies are using Internet products to replace lost revenue. Their Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), template websites, “click programs”, and other gimmick products are riddled with performance problems. The faults and problems with phone company websites and Internet marketing services are something that business owners should know.
Here’s an insider’s view of the yellow page business – Yellow Pages advertising was once a necessary evil for business owners. The phone companies exploited this and squeezed as much revenue as possible from their advertisers. Marketing programs and pricing structures were rolled out that almost forced advertisers to spend more and usually penalized advertisers for downsizing their advertising programs. Products were introduced to create new advertiser-to-advertiser competition with the sole intent to make an advertiser spend more money to keep a competitive presence. Reps are trained in how to “pitch” products to make the biggest possible sale. Sales reps rarely understand the costs or effectiveness of other advertising options and they almost never present fair and objective comparisons that encourage advertisers to spend money elsewhere. The bottom line is that phone companies are experienced in printing phone books and extracting revenue from their customers. They are not experienced in comprehensive Internet marketing and website development. Now, about those problems
Websites –
NOTE: You are locked into long term contracts with limited design and development options.
1) Website designs are “sold” to customers requiring monthly payments for as long as you want the website. The truth is that you do not own the website and it will never be paid off! Over a ten year period you may pay over $30,000 for a website that you would own for $4,000 by using a true web development firm – and you can easily reach your contact at a web design firm.
2) Phone company websites are typically bland templates built out in a production environment that stresses quick completion to start your billing. Aesthetics are sacrificed for speed. Content is created without any real research on the client’s industry, competition or local market situations.
3) Phone company websites do not include true search engine optimization techniques which means that theses sites will hardly ever rank well in competitive headings.
4) Phone company websites do not offer many high value options like multimedia creation, searchable catalogs, e-commerce, website analytics, link building, custom design features.
Search Marketing –
NOTE: You are locked into long term contracts regardless of your satisfaction level. It is in their interest to keep your Internet presence dependent upon using their search marketing products. The performance reports have no backup data, are developed to help with renewals, and do not verify ROI.
1) Submissions to search engines and portals is minimal if done at all.
2) “Click Packages” that hype a number of clicks to your website. This does not equal sales and in many cases you may not have control over the keywords selected to generate clicks.
3) No creation or implementation of critical search engine support elements.
4) No critical support services for link building, press releases, blog development, etc.
5) No support for submissions to vertical directories and other online listing opportunities.
Internet Yellow Pages –
NOTE: Over 85% of all searches happen on Google, Yahoo and MSN. The minor remaining percentage is divided between thousands of vertical directories and Internet Yellow Pages are not your best bet to market your website. It can be very expensive and extremely aggravating.
1) Priority listings get the most calls however they are usually extremely expensive (poor ROI).
2) Specialty products like Tile Ads usually perform horribly despite their prominent placement.
3) Geographic Market exposure is often very limited. Large market customers lose the most here.
If you’re tired of yellow pages books and want to leverage the power of the Internet you should employ the services of a true Internet marketing firm. An Internet marketing firm can provide you with objective advice on search marketing and provide cost effective solutions – not expensive, long term contracts. In any event you should carefully explore your options and avoid these problems in Internet marketing.
Here’s an insider’s view of the yellow page business – Yellow Pages advertising was once a necessary evil for business owners. The phone companies exploited this and squeezed as much revenue as possible from their advertisers. Marketing programs and pricing structures were rolled out that almost forced advertisers to spend more and usually penalized advertisers for downsizing their advertising programs. Products were introduced to create new advertiser-to-advertiser competition with the sole intent to make an advertiser spend more money to keep a competitive presence. Reps are trained in how to “pitch” products to make the biggest possible sale. Sales reps rarely understand the costs or effectiveness of other advertising options and they almost never present fair and objective comparisons that encourage advertisers to spend money elsewhere. The bottom line is that phone companies are experienced in printing phone books and extracting revenue from their customers. They are not experienced in comprehensive Internet marketing and website development. Now, about those problems
Websites –
NOTE: You are locked into long term contracts with limited design and development options.
1) Website designs are “sold” to customers requiring monthly payments for as long as you want the website. The truth is that you do not own the website and it will never be paid off! Over a ten year period you may pay over $30,000 for a website that you would own for $4,000 by using a true web development firm – and you can easily reach your contact at a web design firm.
2) Phone company websites are typically bland templates built out in a production environment that stresses quick completion to start your billing. Aesthetics are sacrificed for speed. Content is created without any real research on the client’s industry, competition or local market situations.
3) Phone company websites do not include true search engine optimization techniques which means that theses sites will hardly ever rank well in competitive headings.
4) Phone company websites do not offer many high value options like multimedia creation, searchable catalogs, e-commerce, website analytics, link building, custom design features.
Search Marketing –
NOTE: You are locked into long term contracts regardless of your satisfaction level. It is in their interest to keep your Internet presence dependent upon using their search marketing products. The performance reports have no backup data, are developed to help with renewals, and do not verify ROI.
1) Submissions to search engines and portals is minimal if done at all.
2) “Click Packages” that hype a number of clicks to your website. This does not equal sales and in many cases you may not have control over the keywords selected to generate clicks.
3) No creation or implementation of critical search engine support elements.
4) No critical support services for link building, press releases, blog development, etc.
5) No support for submissions to vertical directories and other online listing opportunities.
Internet Yellow Pages –
NOTE: Over 85% of all searches happen on Google, Yahoo and MSN. The minor remaining percentage is divided between thousands of vertical directories and Internet Yellow Pages are not your best bet to market your website. It can be very expensive and extremely aggravating.
1) Priority listings get the most calls however they are usually extremely expensive (poor ROI).
2) Specialty products like Tile Ads usually perform horribly despite their prominent placement.
3) Geographic Market exposure is often very limited. Large market customers lose the most here.
If you’re tired of yellow pages books and want to leverage the power of the Internet you should employ the services of a true Internet marketing firm. An Internet marketing firm can provide you with objective advice on search marketing and provide cost effective solutions – not expensive, long term contracts. In any event you should carefully explore your options and avoid these problems in Internet marketing.
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