George Goes to Las Vegas

I will be doing a presentation for Courier Magazine’s Special Delivery 2007 conference in Las Vegas from November 1st thru the 3rd. My topic will be “The Fundamentals of Online Marketing.” I look forward to discussing how to get more targeted traffic to websites and increase conversion rates into more leads and more business for website owners. I have over ten years experience working with all size companies and specialize in developing twelve month online marketing plans.

Without a plan most business owners and website owners try a multitude of things to get more traffic to their websites. Sometimes this results in more traffic but not more business. The idea is to get those that are interested in the company’s products and services to visit the site. Targeted traffic is the key!

It’s important to look at a website as a sales and marketing tool for the business. It is an extension of the business and sometimes it is solely an online business. Demand more from your website and make the commitment to have your website make you money instead of cost your money!

I will not be posting to my blog until I return on Nov 5th.

SPECIAL NOTE: I will also be presenting at the Biz to Biz Expo on Tuesday, Nov 6th from 6 pm to 7 pm at the Sheraton, Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida. The topic of discussion will be “How to Get More Targeted Traffic to Your Website!” Call 954-730-7127 or visit http://www.biztobiznetworking.com

Website Check-up Questions

Answer YES or NO to the following questions:

1. Are you getting what you expect from your website?

2. Is your website costing you money or making you money? What is your ROI (return on investment)?

3. Is your website an effective sales and marketing tool?

4. Are you getting targeted traffic to your website?

5. Have you established KPI (key performance indicators)?

6. Do you have a twelve month online marketing plan in place?

7. Do you know what your conversion ratios are: visitors to sales, visitors to sales leads, visitors to shopping cart, shopping cart to sales, etc?

8. Do you know who your target market is?

9. Do you have a monthly online marketing budget?

10.How much time do you or your staff or anyone else involved with your web project have available to spend on weekly online marketing efforts?

11. What is the objective of your website?

12. Does your website Home Page readily explain what you do, what are your products or services, what are the benefits of using your products and services and what separates you from your competition?

13. Is your site search engine friendly: robot .txt files, 404 error pages, site maps, developed with CSS templates, text navigation links, clean URL’s?

14. Is your website SEO (search engine optimized)? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?

15. Has your site fully SEO (search engine optimized) with a main topic for every prominent page that integrates your target search terms into your Page Titles, Meta Tags, Alt Tags on images and visible page text?

16. Do you monitor and track your visitor statistics on a regular basis?

17. Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic?

18. Do you know your link popularity and that of your competitors?

19. Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?

20. Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimize for them?

21. Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for and fix broken links regularly?

22. Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps?

23. Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer?

24. Have you checked to see if your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines?

25. Do you check your key performance indicators (KPI) a regular basis and establish your conversion ratios?

26. Is your site easy to navigate?

27. Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an easy way for them to provide such feedback?

28. Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?

29. Does your site readily display a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?

30. Does your site properly utilize your page real estate by following a conventional layout and position important items based on eye tracking studies?

31. Do you have an ongoing link building campaign to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site's link popularity?

32. Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors?

33. Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute or two?

34. Does your search engine referrals and site traffic grow each month?

35. Does your website provide a “call to action” to offer a reason for your visitors to contact you, leave an E-mail address or buy your products or service?


Unless you can answer YES to all of the above, your website is not working hard enough for you and needs some work. Get with some online marketing experts to help you establish how to do it and how much it will cost!

Free SEO Tools

Here are some tools I have gathered up that may be convenient to you if you want to check your web standings.

The following list is some of the tools that WebStream’s SEO staff uses to analyze and evaluate websites before we perform SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) work for a site:

1. Alexa --> Web Traffic Indicator / Related Link Finder / Incoming Link Finder --> Find out where you and your competitors rank amongst over 100 million websites. Also find out who links to you and related links in your business category. Great resource for link building programs.

2. Link Popularity --> Find out how many prominent linkbacks you have to your website. You can also check and compare your competitors' link popularity.

3. Spider Simulator --> See what the search engine robot spiders pick-up when they come to your web pages.

4. Keyword Position Ranking --> Select a keyword or keyword phrase and see if you rank in the top 30 with the major search engines.

5. Cool SEO Tool --> Great SEO tool for ranking and competitive analysis plus other SEO information.


If you would like me to perform a website evaluation of your present site either call (888-932-2333) or email your request.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases Increase Visitors, Rank Higher and Decrease Marketing Budget

In Web Development, Keyword Themes Stack the Odds in Your Favor

Don't think of the search engine as having millions of entries per keyword or phrase. Understand that there are 1,000 entries and that's it. The rest exists in a black hole in space that will not be seen in time to earn you a dollar or a visitor.

Looking at the results for any key phrase, the statistics tell us that there are, for example, 489,876,431 entries. On closer review, we can verify that 489,876,431 entries are never listed on the major engines. There are in fact only 1,000 entries listed for a search.

If you aren't in that first 1,000 of those millions of reported search engine statistics, your site has no search engine representation. That means it is impossible for anyone to find your site except those to whom you specifically give the address, totally defeating the purpose of having a web site in the first place.

The keyword theme helps us overcome the outrageous odds stacked against our sites.

Using specific search engine optimization formulas in our initial web development, we can produce several related key phrases that effectively boost our placement in search results. Not only can we be sure to be among the 1,000, using this strategy fully should get your site in the top 25 within 30 - 45 days or sooner.

Web development’s ultimate goals are to accomplish the following:
-Inform and convert visitors to leads or sales
-Attract search engine robot spiders from as many engines as possible
-Get high rankings for a particular keyword or keyword phrase

By applying proper keyword themes, you can decrease your online advertising and marketing expense. Use the following tools to help in developing your keyword selection and themes –

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Seminar Turnouts

I received a great turnout at my last two Online Marketing Seminars. We had packed houses with individuals and business owners looking to find out how to get more targeted traffic to their websites. I went over the “Ten Commandments of Online Marketing” and “The Fundamentals of Online Marketing” with the groups. We also spent a a considerable amount of time on link building. The three most important things you can do as a foundation for online marketing is –

1 - Properly optimize your site for search engines with keyword rich content, alt tags, meta tags and header tags

2 – Make your site search engine friendly with robot .txt files, 404 error pages, text link site maps, Google site maps plus use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for design

3 – Build as many quality links back to your site as possible

Then follow-up by developing a twelve month online marketing plan with an established budget and available in-house man hours. It is critical that you have a good stats program and the ability to track all your marketing campaigns. Online marketing is like “paddling a canoe upstream.” The harder and faster you paddle the greater your progress, but if you stop you will go downstream real fast! Online marketing is a process that never stops as there is no “magic bullet” for success, just a commitment with a plan in place and constant tracking and monitoring your efforts.