Bretts Marketing Bytes

Is this possible? Let’s break it down.

Let’s say you go after a highly searched keyword and are able to rank on the first page of Google. Let’s say that this keyword is searched 1 million times per month. Of course you are not going to convert all of that traffic, but let’s say you converted only 1%. For this example we will assume your average product sale is $10.00.

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One of the most common mistakes business people make is thinking that if they type their business name into Google and their website comes up, that they are optimized.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Potential customers are not typing in your company name, they are typing in your products or services.

Do this simple test to see if your site needs to be optimized.

Zoodle Marketing Group offers Search Engine Optimization services.

Do you want to know what the secret to good SEO is?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often viewed as a secret spice type of technology with SEO firms hiding their techniques from companies wishing to engage with them. However, most of these secret techniques are nothing more than snake oil. Easy steps to making your website rank for unqualified traffic. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to discredit legitimate SEO’s out there. But a true quality SEO knows that to bring in quality traffic it requires more than just a few tricks pulled out of a hat.

So what is the SECRET?
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So you want to create a blog but are not sure how to get started? Like any venture, blogging requires a plan to be successful. Below you will find 7 simple steps to starting a blog.

1. Decide what to blog about. This is a a difficult task for most people, but can be really easy if you can answer some basic questions.

a. What are you passionate about?

b. What could you talk about for hours?

c. What do you know about that others do not?

If you cannot answer any of these questions, then blogging may not be for you.

2. Narrow it down . OK,  So you have answered the questions above and you know what you want to blog about. But you are probably asking yourself, isn’t everyone already blogging about that already? Why would someone read my blog over everyone else’s? These are all valid questions and can be very discouraging to most, but to be successful at blogging you should narrow your topic down to a niche within a niche. For example; if you decided to blog about  Smartphone’s, narrow it down to the iPhone, even take it one step further to a specific software for the iPhone or a specific use for the iPhone like photography. The more niche your blog is, the easier it will be to get and maintain readers.

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Will the internet be the next artificial life form? Not quite, but it is looking like the new search engine, Wolfram Alpha to be released later this month is the closest that computer technology has ever come to being human.

What makes Wolfram Alpha so special? Well quite honestly the proof will be in the pudding, but so far the idea sounds like it could change the way we use the internet forever.

Wolfram Alpha recognizes human questions and spits back relevant data and also a neat page of related information. The beauty of this search tool is that it can calculate and compute things on the fly. For example, you could say, “life expectancy, male in Italy , 19th century compared to 20th century.” It will bring up distributions of life expectancy and also a comparison of the two centuries.

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Believe it or not search engines do not index all of the pages on your website.They really only index the pages that they feel are most important. So how do you figure out which pages are indexed and which ones are not?

Indexed = pages that are in the Search Engine database.

In order to see which pages are indexed in the Google search engine you can use the Google “site” command. This will pull up the pages from your site that have been indexed from the Google search engine.

Example: Go to Google and type in:  site:yoursite.com Make sure to replace “yoursite.com” with your company website.

The results will be all of the indexed pages of your website. Now you will know if you need to work on some pages that arent indexed to get them into Google.

I can’t tell you how many times a day I hear “I don’t get twitter” or “twitter is lame” or “I don’t see a use for it.” Does this sound familiar? If you answered yes, you are not alone.

The reason why twitter is so confusing to most people is because it is a vague product/service. It is one of those things that has no true meaning or usefulness until you give it meaning or usefulness. It doesn’t just come naturally; it takes a little thinking on your part to make it work for you.

Why some people think it is lame.
Let’s pretend it is your first attempt at twitter. You chose your username, created your account and are ready to write something. Then you sit there… uhh ok, now what? You ask yourself “what do I say?” Not sure what to write you decide to see what others are writing. Naturally your first thought is to look at someone’s profile that you know. Let’s say it’s your cousin. On his twitter page he talks about how he just took the dog outside, cut the lawn and is now cooking a steak dinner. At this point, you start thinking… Why is this important? You get frustrated and give up thinking twitter is useless. Does this sound about right? This is the average initial experience on twitter.
I suppose if I had no followers and the initial tweets that I viewed were about my cousin taking the dog for a walk, I would think it is pretty lame too. But guess what?
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Psycho Hockey Lady

Contrary to what most people new to blogging think, blogging is not just about online conversations. It’s about traditional communications as well.

We are humans and humans love to socialize, whether it is in person, online or over the telephone.  When creating a successful blog it is important to tap into all of these channels and network with other bloggers.

The more you network with other bloggers the more successful your blog will become.  Other bloggers can provide you links, trackbacks, references and possible exposure to more subscribers.

There are many ways of networking with other bloggers,  but the one that gets over looked the most is the face to face communication.

If you meet another blogger in person, ask them if you can get a picture taken with them and blog about the experience. This creates a good bond between you and the other blogger. It is also a great opportunity to share links and possibly get some exposure to each other’s readers. I have included an example below.

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Google recently released the new Google mobile application for the iphone and BlackBerry. After much hype, I finally had the chance to upload the app to my new iphone.
In a nutshell, this application allows users to voice their search terms instead of typing them into their device. I have to tell you, this is really useful when driving.  Aside from some minor issues that I had getting it to recognize certain terms, the app is pretty solid. But what I found most interesting, is how it pulls search results.

The Google mobile app uses the GPS in your phone to recognize the location that you are searching from to pull up relevant searches in that area. This is a neat concept if you are looking for pizza, or movie times. But what about companies who rely on organic results for lead generation? I did some experimenting to find out what this means for them.

During my experiment I used three searches. The first two were very similar with a city name included in the search. My third search excluded the city name. Here are my results.

First search: I vocalized the term, SEO Buffalo NY into my iphone and it brought up the Google local results first. This is because it was pulling from the geographical location that my internal GPS was giving it.

Second search: I spoke the term,  Search Engine Optimization Buffalo into my phone. Again, the same local results came up. This is no surprise as both of these searches include the city name of Buffalo in them.

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I am constantly asked about the benefits of Search Engine Optimization. Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has many benefits to a company. I have put together a quick list of a few of them. Enjoy!

• SEO provides excellent trusted brand. When someone sees that your company is ranked high on Google, it builds trust.
• Search Engine Optimization provides a high ROI.  It is often higher than any other form of marketing.
• SEO generates large amounts of targeted traffic. Traffic means new customers.
• SEO will increases leads/sales dramatically.
• SEO never sleeps, the promotional effect of it will be effective 24 hours a day
• SEO is a long term solution, the results of an SEO campaign last

There are several more than this, but these are just a few that came to mind at the time of writing this post.  If you would like to add more, please put them in the comments section. Thanks