Bretts Marketing Bytes

A lot of customers who I first begin to work with get the idea that by hiring my company to do SEO work for them it is like flipping a switch and they will be ranking for highly searched keywords in a week or month or so.

Even after I make every attempt to tell them this is not the case. I don’t know how many different ways that I can say SEO doesn’t happen over night. I guess some customers just want to believe what they want to believe and they ignore what I repeat over and over. So I decided to write about it.

SEO is like growing a really nice lawn from scratch. Think about the process. First you lay the foundation soil, rake it smooth, seed it, cover with hay and water every day until it is fully grown.

This is similar to SEO. In the beginning you lay the foundation by creating the landing pages, fixing the technical issues with the site, optimize the page copy, submit  site-maps and finally link build every night.

Just like the first few weeks of watering your lawn it feels like nothing is happening. Link building is the same, you are germinating the links.  But then one day you wake up and you have a thin layer of grass or a sign that all your link building efforts are paying off.

Of course you can’t just stop watering your lawn at this point or your grass won’t grow to be full and lush. So you water it for the next few weeks, then cut it and then water it some more.

And if you want a really lush lawn you spend even more time fertilizing it and maintaining it for several months each year.

SEO is not much different. If you give up once you start seeing some results you will never have a really successful campaign. It takes time to see that first result but once you get some traction, you must nourish it and continue to build links to  help it become a healthy campaign.

In summary growing grass and SEO are really not all that different when it comes to patience, time and results. The more time and effort you put into it the better your results will be.  I hope this helps clarify the SEO process.

Keywords are at the heart of every SEO campaign. But what most people do not realize is how important their keywords choices are. Most people think that broad terms are the way to go, but niche targeted terms is where it’s at.

The idea is that niche targeted keywords will produce less traffic than broad terms, but will bring in more quality traffic, hence producing more conversions.  Below are a few examples that will help you identify niche targeted keywords.

Broad terms are for shoppers and niche terms are for buyers

1. Let’s say we have a company who makes Liquid Absorbers for Hazardous waste spills. The first broad keyword term that comes to mind is  Liquid Absorbers. This is a very broad term that could mean anything. Who knows what the searcher is looking for? A better term to target would be Hazardous waste liquid absorbers. This is a better term and will result in more conversions.
2. Let’s do another one. This time we will add a geo target. This website will help families find a nanny. The first keyword that comes to mind is the broadest term, find a nanny. But usually when someone is looking for a nanny they are in a geographic location. Let’s just say that our nanny searcher is in Boston. A better keyword to target would be find a nanny Boston. Pretty simple right?
3. Okay, one more. This time we have a website that caters to the tourist region of Niagara Falls USA.  Of course the broad term would be Niagara Falls, but a better and more niche term would be things to do in Niagara Falls. This  keyword is more relevant to the tourism industry and will produce more conversions on this site.

Summary: The whole idea is that broad keyword terms will produce a lot of traffic to your site, but niche keywords will bring in more conversions.  I hope this helps you identify the proper keywords to use in your SEO campaigns.

What is a CMS (Content Management Systems)?
A CMS is a graphical user interface that allows you to add, update and delete pages on your website. The beauty of one of these systems is that it makes it easy for even a non technical person to make quick changes to their website.

In today’s day and age it is critical to have a CMS. One of the most common mistakes that companies make when they hire a web development firm to implement a CMS is that they trust their web developer too much.

Not to put web developers down, but the problem is most of them don’t keep up with SEO on a regular basis. That is why I always say SEO is a marketing function, not a development function. I can’t tell you how many times I go to work with a company and they just had their website re-designed and I say…I can’t help you unless you get this fixed. And their response is… But I just had this done; shouldn’t my web developer have told me this?

It is unfortunate because the customer has usually spent a significant amount of money on the system at this point. But more often than not, I can’t help them. So I put together this list of important elements that every CMS should contain.  If your web developer is not providing these, walk away. If they say, oh yes, we will do that; make sure you have it in writing. Below is the list.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who are going to be in the Buffalo NY area, I am speaking at a Social Media conference put on the by the  Buffalo Niagara Partnership Wednesday Aug 26th at 8am.  It should be really interesting. The event is a total of 3 hours with three very impressive speakers. See the line up below.

• Brett Burnsworth – Search Marketing
• Adrian Dayton – Twitter for business
• Bryan LeFauve – Facebook & LinkedIn

If  you would like to attend register here . You will enjoy every minute.  I hope to see you there.

If you use email marketing as a form of reaching out to your customers you must read this post. Find out if your Email marketing sucks by reading below

If your emails are:

• Longer than 2 paragraphs. (You have 8 seconds max to catch someone’s attention. Don’t blow it)
• Not formatted in an easy to read format. (I mean all bunched up together with no header text.)
• Plain text with no images.
• Boring and do not provide anything worth reading. (Of course you won’t know this, so ask someone.)
• Sent with a subject line that is not descriptive of the body of the email.
• Being sent to people who did not opt-in.
• Not segmented into different interests.
• Sent without  links back to specific articles or pages of your site.
• Sent without the ability to track and analyze results.
• Not getting above a 25% open rate.
• Not going out on a consistent basis.

If your emails meet any of the above criteria

YOUR EMAIL MARKETING SUCKS!

Change it

Google is rolling out a new “under-the-hood” search technology, codenamed “Caffeine,” that could change how your company ranks in its search results.

Matt Cutts of Google says Caffeine is not intended to combat spammers like previous updates, but simply to update the foundation of the Google search infrastructure. He also notes that this update will not make Google look any different; however it may affect search engine rankings in a minor way. Unlike other algorithm updates, Google is actually giving us a preview of what our search results will look like if affected by the update.

To find out how your search rankings will be affected by cafeine click here to see the Google sandbox.

Here is what Google says

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” two engineers wrote in the company’s official blog.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

You will begin to see these changes take place over the next few weeks or months.

The last article I wrote was How to feed your blog into your Facebook page. This post will show you how to feed your blog into your Twitter account.

There are several applications that will work to complete this task, but the one that I like best is Twitter Feed. Twitter Feed takes about 3 seconds to set everything up and best of all, it is very straight forward.

Here is how to set it up.

1. Sign up for Twitter Feed.
2. Login to your new account.
3. Click on the “New Feed Button”
4. Name your new feed.  Example : A blog about adobe training would be something like -  Adobe Training Buffalo
5. Copy and paste your RSS feed from your blog to Twitter Feed.
6. Click on “Advanced settings” and set your Update frequency and other options.
7. Click the “Create Feed” button and you’re done.

I use a post prefix of  “Blog Post-”, so that my Twitter followers know that it is a blog article. Hope this helps.  Good Luck.

So you want to have your blog feed into your FaceBook Business page? Thank god for RSS feeds.

This task is pretty easy if you know the right Facebook application to use. I find that RSS Social (Formally known as RSS Connect) seems to work the best. It is easy to setup and works like a charm. Follow the steps below.

1. Make sure you are logged in to your Facebook page.
2. Click on this link
3. Click the  “add to page” button
4. Another page will appear. Along the bottom you will fill out the information. In the URL area, you will paste your XML feed from your blog.
5. Click on the News feed tab, and choose “yes” for news feeds. This will automatically post it to your business page wall.
6. Click update
7. Your done.

Wait a few hours and you will start seeing your blog post on your wall.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below. My next blog post will be how to automatically have your blog feed into Twitter.

What is the difference between being ranked number 1 and number 2 on Google?

I often get this question when I am out on meetings talking with customers. So I decided to write a post about it. All of the data below is based on a leaked document from AOL that was posted a few years back.  Even though it is from AOL, it should reflect all of the other search engines including Google.

To figure out the difference between a number 1 listing and a number 2 listing, you have to think in click-through rates. A click-through rate is the amount of times a searcher will click on your listing from a Google search.

The information below will help you understand how much traffic you may be losing out on. Remember…Traffic = Sales.

• Ranking Number 1 receives 42.1 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 2 receives 11.9 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 3 receives 8.5 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 4 receives 6.1 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 5 receives 4.9 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 6 receives 4.1 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 7 receives 3.4 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 8 receives 3.0 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 9 receives 2.8 percent of clicks
• Ranking Number 10 receives 3.0 percent of click s

This means if you rank number 1 on Google for the term ” Niagara Falls Hotels “  and that term gets searched 100,000 times per month, you should expect roughly 42,100 clicks.

If you rank number 2 on Google for the same term, you can expect to get 11,900 clicks.

I know what you are thinking. Who cares about clicks? Well… you can’t sell to someone who isn’t clicking on your site. That just means they are not finding you at all. Imagine if you were on page 2 or even worse… page 10? You would be out of business if you were an online retailer.

Search engines are one of the first places that consumers go to when they are looking for products or services. Your company should be there. If it is not, you are losing out on making money. To find out if you are listed on page 1 of Google just type in your products or services in Google and view the results.

I help companies everyday accomplish the task of ranking on page 1 of the major search engines. If your company is not listed and you need help, contact me to set up a free one on one consultation with you or your company.

Good Luck!

The fact that I am writing this post on my iPhone is probably a clue to what I think is the best Internet marking mobile device.

All of my favorite tools can be used either on the iPhone browser or via an app. For example, right now I am using the wordpress app to connect to my blog and write this post. I also use another app called JAM to make extensive updates on my Joomla websites. Social networking is also a breeze.

The Facebook app for iPhone makes it easy to post status updates, pictures and interact with friends. I also use a LinkedIn app that allows me to easily accept requests, look people up and send “inMail” items to my network. Let’s not forget about Twitter. The Twitter apps are endless. Tweetdeck for iPhone and twitterfon are just a few that are excellent and free. Because of the camera on the iPhone it also makes uploading pictures to Flickr extremely easy. It doesn’t stop at social networking though. Search Marketing research can be done via this device as well.

Keyword research, link building and website analysis can all be done while waiting at the doctor’s office or in the airport. I give the iPhone a thumbs up when it comes to Internet marketing.

I have had many other devices and none of them have lived up to the functionality of the iPhone.