Tag Archives: Google

Nov 07 2012
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Web

Optimize Your Website Without Doing SEO

ImageBusinesses, and even consultants, often do more damage than good when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Google’s search algorithm is constantly evolving and getting better at what I call “SEO detection” — the ability to detect artificial backlinks and attempts to manipulate your website to rank better.

In a lot of ways, what worked a decade ago for SEO still applies today. But intentional SEO — such as over optimizing your website, too many backlinks with keyword anchor text, lack of diversified backlinks and other tactics — can actually get you in trouble with the search engines. Google can distinguish, for the most part, what’s natural and what’s not.

One thing to remember is that Google likes sites and content that other people enjoy, find useful and share with others. When was the last time you shared a site that felt like spam or had little content on it?

Here are four tips that can help improve your website’s SEO, without doing any SEO:

Related: The Basics of Using Keywords for Better SEO (Video)

1. Create killer content. Just because you offer a service or are an expert in a particular industry doesn’t mean your website deserves to rank on the first page for your particular set of keywords. What ranks is quality content and resources that people find useful and want to share.

As a business owner, your time and money is best spent on generating original, useful content for your site. Try to post a new piece at least once a week, if not three times a week. Google loves fresh, original content.

2. Include your keywords in your articles and titles. Let’s say you’re a manufacturer of solar panels and one of your keyword phrases is “solar panel manufacturer.” You’d want to write an article on what to look for when seeking a solar panel manufacturer, and work that phrase into the headline. This isn’t SEO rocket science. It’s about properly labeling your online content.

Related: 5 Tips for Making Your Website More Social

3. Incorporate social media share buttons on your site. Increasingly, social signals are being taken into account by search algorithms. Why? Because people share content that’s worthwhile. Having social media buttons allows your online visitors to share your website and its content.

You’ll also want to incentivize people to share. Host a contest or product giveaway to get people tweeting and sharing your website URL.

4. Offer expert advice on other websites. Most blogs, magazines and news sites welcome content submissions. Offer to contribute an article or post explaining something related to what you do. These sites often receive a lot of submissions, so make sure that yours is authentic and informational.

Not only can contributing to other sites help generate awareness about your brand, it’s an effective way to getting high quality, non-spammy links back to your site. If you do it right and people like what you write, this can help establish you as an industry expert as well.

Related: SEO Metrics You Don’t Need to Obsess Over

Read more stories about: Google, Search engine optimization, SEO, SEO tips

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Jun 14 2012
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Business Tips

How to get Customers for Your Start Up

Editor’s Note: This is the first of three excerpts from The Startup Owner’s Manual, a recently published step-by-step guide for building companies.

There are a million-plus apps for sale on mobile app stores and an infinite number of commerce, social and content websites, so the mere fact that you’ve launched a new one doesn’t make it a successful business.

Building your product is the easy part. The hard part is getting customers to find your app, site or product. It’s a daunting, never-ending challenge to build customer relationships, quite literally, one customer at a time.

Let’s get started with the first two steps for “getting” customers: acquisition and activation.

In the acquisition phase, customers learn about a product before they buy. With web/mobile apps, the effort focuses on bringing as many customers as possible to the company’s “front door”– the landing page. There, they’re introduced to the product and hopefully buy it or use it.

The second phase — activation — is when the customer shows interest through a free download or trial, a request for more information, or a purchase. Customer should be considered “activated” even if they don’t purchase or register, as long as the company has enough information to re-contact them (whether by e-mail, phone, text, etc.) with explicit permission to do so.

Unlike the door-to-door salesmen of yesteryear, your job on the web is to “pull” customers to you rather than to push your product at them.

Your first step in customer acquisition and activation is understanding how people buy or engage with your product. Here’s how it happens:

Step one: People discover a need or want to solve a problem. They say, “I want to throw a party,” or feel lonely and decide to find a hot party or a dating site. Then what?

Step two: They begin a search. Overwhelmingly, in this century, that search begins online. It often happens at Google.com, but it can happen on Facebook, Quora or hundreds of other special-interest websites from Yelp to Zagat to TripAdvisor.com.

Step three: They don’t look very hard. In fact people often only pay attention to the first few things they uncover (how often do you search beyond the first page of results on Google?). You must make your site, app or product as visible as humanly possible, in as many of these places as possible where your customers are likely to begin the search.

Step four: They go where they’re invited, entertained or informed. You don’t “earn” interest from your customers with hard-boiled sales pitches or bland information. You earn it by providing inviting, helpful or entertaining information in lots of formats (copy, diagrams, white papers, blogs, videos, games, demos, you name it) and by participating in the communities and social media your customers are likely to be.

When it comes to acquisition, you can use free or paid tactics. Free is obviously the best cost, and includes public relations, viral marketing, search engine optimization and social networking. After you get the free acquisition programs going, you should start to test paid tactics, such as pay-per-click advertising, online or traditional media advertising, affiliate marketing and online lead generation.

You’ll want to run some quick and simple acquisition tests to gauge customer reaction. Try controllable, inexpensive, easily measured tactics:

• Buy $500 worth of AdWords and see if they’ll drive customers representing five or 10 times that amount in potential revenue to the site or app and at least get them to register. Monitor performance and drop ineffective ones.

• Use Facebook messages or Tweet to measurable audiences to invite at least 1,000 people to explore the new product. If none of the messages work, the product or offer may well be the problem.

• Buy an e-mail blast list of targeted customers for $500 or $1,000. Send at least two versions of the offer and expect to generate at least three times the potential revenue to at least sign up, if not purchase.

• Find traffic partners, which are typically contractual relationships with other companies that provide predictable streams of customers or users to your company while you provide either customers or fees to the partner.

For web/mobile businesses, activation is the choke point — the make-or-break place where customers decide whether they want to participate, play, or purchase.

Quick activation tests include:

• Capture the customer’s e-mail address and get permission to follow up with further information. Follow up with 1,000 customers and expect at least 50 or more to agree to activate.

• Offer a free trial, download, or white paper or a significant discount to 500 or 1,000 customers. Try this with at least three different offers, hoping to find at least one that generates a 5 percent or greater response rate.

• Call 100 prospects who don’t activate immediately. See if the phone calls generate enough of a response-rate improvement to warrant the cost. Three times the response rate is probably needed.

• Try free-to-paid conversion: Offer a seven- or 14-day free trial of an app, service, or web/mobile product. Or offer the use of some but not all of the site or app’s features.

Monitor the results of all tests and, when you’re not satisfied, revise the program and test again.

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Apr 04 2012
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Marketing Tips, Web

Keywords? SEO? Ranking?

The web runs on keywords and, yet, most website owners don’t know the first thing about how powerful keyword research can be or how to integrate it into their websites.

A keyword or keyword phrase is a word or series of words that a user enters into a search engine. Keyword research refers to the process of choosing a few of the infinite number of possible keyword phrases to use in search engine optimization efforts for your website.

For example, if you’re planning a family trip to Disney World and want to find the weather forecast, you might search for the phrase: “average Orlando weather in June.” Google takes this text and compares it against the billions of web pages in its index, using its complex algorithms to determine which sites represent the best matches.

Here’s a look at what you need to know about keyword research for your site, why you should care and how to get started:

What makes a good keyword?
Getting a high rank in search engine results pages is important, but it’s the specific keywords you’re ranked for that can determine how successful your website will be.

To understand the difference, compare a site that’s ranked for “make money online” to one that gets a high ranking for “online tutorials on underwater basket weaving.” Because more people are searching for the first phrase, a search engine ranking for that term can generate significantly more traffic and hopefully enable the site to make more money.

Two important concepts help us determine which keywords to target: search volume and competition. Volume refers to the number of people who enter your chosen keywords into the search engines. Greater search volume is usually better, enabling your site to draw more natural traffic.

But search volume should be tempered by a careful analysis of the competitiveness of the keyword phrase. In the example above, the keyword “make money online” receives significantly more volume, but it will be much more difficult to get your site bumped into the top 10 search results for that phrase than for “online tutorials on underwater basket weaving.”

Related: How Backlinks Can Boost Traffic to Your Website

How do I conduct keyword research?
The first step involves researching potential keyword phrases to target. There are plenty of tools that provide this data, but one of the easiest to use is Google’s freeAdwords Keyword Research Tool.

You can enter phrases related to your website or just your site address, and the program will generate a list of keywords to consider. The tool also will provide data on how many global and local searches occur for a particular word or phrase each month, as well as Google’s estimate of the difficulty of getting ranked for the keyword.

Unfortunately, there are no “search volume versus competitiveness” rules to follow when choosing keywords to target from this list. But keep in mind that while the competitive keywords will require more time and effort to build a high ranking, they can pay off in increased search traffic to your site.

As you research keywords and integrate them into your site, you should start to see a pattern in terms of the ideal mix of search volume and competitiveness. Much will depend on how big an investment you’re willing to make in search engine optimization.

Related: How Using Microdata Can Improve Your Website SEO

How do I integrate keyword research into my website?
Once you’ve identified a few potential keyword targets, start integrating them into your site. To increase your chances of getting ranked for your chosen terms, you’ll want to follow standard search engine optimization practices, including any of the following:

  • Create pages on your site featuring helpful content based on your target keywords.
  • Incorporate your target keywords into your page’s HTML in various places, including your site’s title, heading and meta description tags.
  • Build backlinks pointing at your site using your target keyword as anchor text. The anchor text of a link refers to the part that remains visible and underlined on the referring page. For example, the link <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>keyword phrase</a> would appear like this: keyword phrase. This lets the search engines know that this phrase is relevant to your site.

It will take some effort to target particular keywords but, over time, your research should yield significant improvement in search traffic volume.

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Mar 02 2012
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Social Media Tips

Cue the Tumbleweeds: Google+ A “Virtual Ghost Town”

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that fledgling social network Google+ may very well be a “virtual ghost town,” despite having 90 million registered users since launching in June. According to new data from research firm comScore Inc., users are signing up — but rarely return for another visit. “Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period,” the report reveals, noting that mobile usage is not factored into comScore’s data. So what’s the problem? “Nobody wants another social network right now,” explains Altimeter Group analyst Brian Solis. “Google hasn’t communicated what the value of Google+ is” for users already spending much of their time on Facebook. Yeah, it’s rough out there for any company whose name doesn’t start with an F and end with “book.”

 

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Feb 17 2012
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Marketing Tips

Facebook Mobile Ads – to Use or Not to Use

Ahead of Facebook’s IPO, it’s only natural that the social network is looking around for new ways to monetize its usage — and please its new shareholders. Enter Facebook‘s latest revenue generator: Running ads on mobile versions of the site, which currently attract roughly 400 million monthly users.

Earlier this month, Facebook struck a deal with Bango, a United Kingdom-based, mobile-payment service provider that has the technology to enable commerce on mobile devices. And while terms haven’t been disclosed, I’ve heard plenty of speculation that Facebook will unleash mobile advertising beginning as soon as March 1. And supposedly it will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Is this a potential boon to small businesses that currently advertise on Facebook or plan to do so? Does this move have the potential to present your business with an additional audience numbering in the hundreds of millions? Hold the wedding. Before you reach deep into your advertising budget, here are a few thoughts I have on the issue:

First off, the notion of mobile advertising strikes me as intrusive, annoying and alienating. For one thing, it’s hard enough to read anything crammed onto a 2-by-3-inch screen, and now you want to crowbar an ad onto that limited real estate? And I’m not even going to go into what that ad might do to the connection speed or lack thereof. When it comes to my mobile device, don’t interrupt my experience — enhance my experience.

In order to do this, Facebook must move beyond traditional digital advertising as such a large percentage of its revenue and instead evolve advertising in unique and compelling ways around user-generated content without being overly intrusive.

About 85 percent of Facebook’s revenue currently comes from advertising, compared to about 95 percent of Google’s. But Google can be forgiven because its marriage of search and advertising is a natural part of its value proposition. Not so for Facebook, which may eventually run into trouble if it continues to rely on revenue from a product that is not inherently part of its value proposition to users.

If Facebook is smart about this thing, they’ll deliver me an ad that’s geo-location specific, interactive and initiated by me. But limiting my News Feed view with a soft drink or automotive ad — something I don’t need at the moment — is likely to prompt me to ditch my FB mobile app.

Of course, I could be wrong. According to eMarketer, two-thirds of mobile phone users say they’re comfortable with mobile ads. And Nielson reports 51 percent of consumers are OK with advertising on their devices if they can access content for free.

So what’s the relevance of all of this to you and your business? Tread lightly where mobile advertising is concerned because you might just alienate users. Worse yet, you might pay for something that no one chooses to see.

How have you used mobile devices to spread the word about your business?

Leave a comment and let us know.

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Feb 03 2012
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J2 Marketing, Web

Tech Speak and Why You Need To Know It

No matter what kind of small business you’re starting or running, you will be expected to understand the jargon and culture of online information technology. That will be true whether you’re building your websiteyourself or hiring pricey contractors to lead yourbusiness to Internet glory.

Full Web fluency is almost never necessary for success. As a busy entrepreneur, you have a million things to do. But a working knowledge of the terms and concepts businesses use online can be critical.

Here is a basic guide to online terminology worth learning for business owners of all industries:

1. Basic programming languages: There are dozens of programming languages used online, but HTML, HTML 5 and XML are the most common. They are written in short commands that tell a Web browser what to display onscreen. Also important are CSS and CSS3 – short for cascading style sheets — which determine the layout of multiple Web pages at once. Javascriptis another, more complex programming language that is used to add interactivity to HTML websites.

W3Schools.com can be a useful resource that contains definitions, tutorials and do-it-yourself programming exercises.

Related: How to Recruit a Great Programmer as a Partner

2. Static Web content: This refers to Web business content that remains more or less the same – such as the main pages on your site, contact information and “About Us” links. Think of these pages as your digital storefront. They have to be perfect, so they’ll take the most up-front investment of time and resources to create. It’s important to know that these pages are the foundation the rest of your online strategy will be built on.

Website builders Yola and Wix.com allow you to make your own static content, but can require assistance from programmers if you want a custom site.

3. Dynamic Web content: This refers to Web material produced in real time, such as blogs, tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn updates. The point of dynamic content is to be fresh, well-thought out and compelling enough to drive customer awareness. Understanding the difference between static and dynamic Web content, and when each is required, can help you keep your business relevant online.

Sophisticated content automation tools that pull in content from around the Web or automatically update social networking accounts can help make your content dynamic and compelling to customers. This includes traffic-boosting tools such as TweetAdder, which can help users quickly identity and interact with potential followers, and more involved content curation services such as Curata, which can aggregate specific content from around the Web for your blog.

4. Software as a service (SaaS): Unlike business applications such as Microsoft Office which are installed directly on your computers, software-as-a-service apps are installed on a computer or server outside your office and are accessed over the Web. Examples include task management tool Basecamp and office applications suites like Google Apps. These products back up information automatically, allow access to data from most any computer connected to the Web, and offer remarkable collaborative features.

These applications offer businesses flexibility as employees can use them from anywhere. And because an external third party hosts SaaS applications, they also have the potential to ease the burden on your own I.T. staff.

Other related terms for this family of products include “Web services,” “cloud-based app” and “Web app.” When deciding on a SaaS product, you might consider using Get App, an app search tool specially dedicated to businesses looking for software to use in their shops, orGoogle Marketplace.

Related: One Way to Navigate the Business App Marketplace

5. Organic search: This is the world of products, content and marketing efforts determined by proprietary algorithms that appear on the left side of results from the major search engines. The trial-and-error processes of “search engine optimization” and “search engine marketing” often require considerable effort and luck.

If your business is looking for Web traffic, it’s important to understand the basic ways in which Google and others will direct users to your site.

6. Paid search: These are the sponsored advertisements that appear at the top and along the right side of search pages from search services like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Paid search requires using an ad service such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Advertising Solutions. Businesses bid on relevant search terms they hope will attract customers. Also called pay-per-click advertising, businesses pay only when an ad is actually clicked. Knowing how paid search works is critical to any serious online marketing effort.

You might need help to manage the bidding process for a serious paid-search campaign. Consider paid search management tools such as Word Watch or ClickSweeper, which can automate parts of the bid process.

Related: How to Run Business Software Between Macs and PCs

7. ‘Like’ and ‘Follow’: These terms are the referrals social media services such as Facebook and Twitter can provide to a brand. Businesses often enter into the time-consuming process of creating their own social media content to drive both likes and follows. Companies can also purchase marketing on these platforms and reach potential customers directly.

8. Payment gateways: These are the online version of credit-card terminals. They encrypt and connect sales orders on your website to your merchant bank. Examples of major payment gateways include Authorize.net and VeriSign.

9. Point-of-sale: The generic term for technology attached to a checkout location, either online or near an actual cash register. New mobile point-of-sale solutions such as Square and Intuit’sGoPayment use smartphone-attached card readers, so payments can be processed just about anywhere.

While this list is by no means exhaustive, mastering these basics can give you a solid foundation upon which to expand your online tech chops.

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Jan 26 2012
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Web

.com – What you should know before buying your domain name.

You’ve decided to put up a website. Now you need a domain name, so your customers can use your website. YourName.com is taken, so what should you do? Let’s talk about your options and why .com is not the end all. Incase you didn’t notice, our very own website is found at J2Marketing.co. That’s right, .co, not .com.

Many people subscribe to the idea that the only good domain extension is the .com. We disagree. The .com is, however, the most popular and most easily recognized, but there are far too many options out there to say .com is the only one. Let’s look at a few others.

.co – great for the .com domain you can’t get.

.info – perfect for a simply informational site

.net – the second most popular domain

.org – great for your non-profits or churches

.me – for your personal website or blog

.mobi – we use this one for our mobile site. Try J2Marketing.mobi on your smart phone.

There are a whole host of other domain extensions, but these are the main six. Using one of these is the safest bet when choosing a domain name.

Simplicity

The other thing to remember when choosing a domain; simple is better. Recently we searched for a domain for a new client. We found a domain at .name. .name is not an ideal extension because it’s not widely known and when printed, doesn’t always look like a domain, more like a typo. However, the domain was one word which was his industry. This simplicity is sought after in the domain world; you can find general, one-word domains for thousands of dollars, compared to the average $10.

Simplicity can also refer to an easy to remember phrase. It could be your motto, or adding a ‘my’ before your name (MyAccelerators.com). Also, try to avoid lots of dashes or random letters.

Relevance

Make sure your domain has relevance to your business or industry. This seems basic, but it’s very important to remember.

Creativity

If you’re struggling to find your ideal domain, be creative and think outside the box. There’s a local church in our city that has a common name. They chose to go with HonoringHim.com because their ideal domain was taken. This domain fits in all of the proper categories, simple, relevant, and creative.

Where to buy

There are domain registrars littered throughout the web. Choosing the right one can be like finding the right paint color. Many are exactly the same, and the difference between them is negligible. Here are a few the we like:

GoDaddy.com – GoDaddy is probably the most popular registrar. We like them (not because of their scandalous commercials) because they offer almost everything you need to get a website up and running. Their services are reliable, and the hosting is fast, which means your website loads quickly. We don’t like their commercials, and we don’t like some of their prices (however they do have deals on domains at times).

GoToNames.com – GoToNames is our first choice. We like GoTo because they offer the services we need (domains, hosting, emails, etc.) at a very affordable price. Last time we looked, we have purchased around 100 domains through them. The downside we see with GoTo is that they don’t offer some of the less popular extension (like .co).

Those are the 2 registrars we recommend. There are many other choices, but these two will satisfy any web needs you have.

When to buy

If you’re wondering when you should buy your desired domain, the answer is now. If you know which domain you’d like, and you have the $10-15 needed to purchase it, don’t wait. That domain could be snatched up by someone else, even your competitor. Recently one of our clients wanted the .com version of their domain, but they waited too long. Now that domain is being offered to them for $5,000. That’s a little out of their price range. Lesson learned, don’t hesitate. Even if you’re not ready to put the website up, having that domain tucked away is very beneficial.

So, if you’re ready to make the step into the world wide web, do your research, choose the right domain, and make the purchase quickly. If you’re still lost in this process, we can help you.

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