Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite!

The Importance Of Proof Reading When Blogging

Don’t forget the importance of proof reading before publishing your blog posts.

I’m guilty of this myself - but I am aware of it and try my best to minimize my mistakes. Each day as I scour through the latest news in my feed reader I can’t help but notice the numerous proof reading mistakes that are not caught by spell checkers.  It’s especially apparent in the titles of the posts - perhaps because they garner the most attention.

Here is an example. A recent post about blogging had “bog” instead of “blog” in the title. Well, that certainly took the thunder out of what may have been a huge traffic generating blog post had it not had this simple mistake in it.

So, I urge everyone to proof read their blog posts before publishing them and scrutinize your titles. It’s worth investing this extra bit of effort!

Why Do Other Businesses Rank Higher For My Business Name?

Why do other businesses rank higher for my business name?

As a business you may be wondering why when you search for your name someone else ranks higher than you. Perhaps it’s the web developer who built your site, and then wrote a case study about it. Perhaps it’s a news site with a press release you wrote a few months ago. In principle your site should rank highest for your name, right. So why is it not?

Modern search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN rely on computer algorithms to determine which pages are most relevant for a given search term (aka keyword) instead of manually configuring the results. In a case like this the search engines have determined that the other sites are more relevant for your business name than your site.

Why does this happen?

There are hundreds of factors that have a role to play in affecting the search algorithms but there are a few which carry the most weight as follows:

• HTML text based content. Odds are the sites that are outranking you have more html text based content which references your business name.
• The page that is outranking you is probably named something like “your-business-name.html” and thus the page is much more relevant for that keyword.
• The Title, H1, body text and perhaps an H2 all reference your business name, further enforcing the relevancy of this page to your business name.
• The pages outranking yours are probably linked directly to from the the home pages of the sites in question - telling the search engines that the pages are “more important” than others on those sites further away from the home page in user clicks.
• The sites that are outranking yours may have a higher PageRank, or are newer and the sites themselves probably have more good quality, on topic back links pointing to them.

If you take a few moments to look at these sites you’ll probably begin to see some of the things I am writing about and you’ll certainly begin to see a pattern.
What can you do about it?

The simplest thing you can do, is try and reproduce on your site what they have done to theirs. The most obvious place you can do it is on your “about us” page which you most likely have named “aboutus.html”. Here is what I recommend you do:

1. Rename your aboutus.html page to my-business-name.html
2. Change your title of the page to “About My Business Name” and include nothing else.
3. Change the meta description tag to “Learn why My Business Name is right for you” or some statement that includes your business name.
4. Change the H1 tag of your page to “My Business Name” and ensure you write a good strong paragraph or two about your business which also mentions your business name.
5. Further expand the content by adding an H2 tag which repeats your business name
6. On your home page either rename About Us to including your business name, or if space is limited add a “Call Out” to the page which includes an html text link “About My Business Name” which links directly to your newly modified about page.
7. Finally, edit the title, meta description, and H1 tag of your actual home page to include your business name, if possible. This will further indicate to the search engines your relevancy for your business name as a keyword.

Once you’ve done all of the above - sit back and wait a week or two for the search engines to crawl and index your updated site. You should start to see your page bubble up to the top of the search results.

What if it does not?

If the pages that are outranking you are really strong from an authority perspective, or it’s for another company with the same name you may need to do some link building using your business name as the anchor text. Here are some suggestions on link building:

• Buy the Yahoo!, Business.com and Best of the Web directories. It will be the best $1000 you spend as you will obtain direct qualified traffic from these sites and you will instantly receive authoritative links to your site for your business name.
• Submit your site to the hundreds of free online directories (for a workable spreadsheet containing these directories please post a comment and we’ll email it to you).
• Ensure you are listed in all of your local website directories, and chamber of commerce sites.
• Go through all of the book-marking sites such as delicious and ensure your site is book-marked using your business name as a tag.
• Write a few press releases and publish them online, ensuring that your business name is referenced in the title and used as anchor text for the link to your site
• Consider writing a small article or two and publishing them online - much like the press release mentioned above.
• Sign up for LinkedIn. Facebook and other social media sites and ensure your profile references your business name.
• Creative business profiles in sites like Squidoo and include links back to your website
• Ask for links from your customers websites using your name as the link text
• Participate in Blogs and Forums that are of interest to you and comment on the discussions. Your profile will leave a nice link back to your site. In this case it’s not necessary to use your business name as the anchor text - just your personal name will suffice.

Do some link building over a one month period trying to generate as many links as you can. Keep checking your ranking position - it should begin to climb up again and overtake the other sites. If it does not, then you’ve got a real competitor on your hands and you should seriously consider engaging the expertise of a search engine optimization firm.

Google Adds User Profiles To Applications

Google adds User Profiles to their applications in a constant move towards making their application more social.

In their push to make all of their applications more social (perhaps in fear of Facebook) Google has added user profiles to their applications. Now you can upload a photo of yourself and describe your interests. I’m not sure where they plan to go with this information, but it’s worth configuring if you have a Google Account.

Here is a screenshot of my user profile.

If you have a Google Account I recommend filling it out this information. There is no harm (that I can see) of doing so. You never know how this information may pop up in the future to your benefit!

WhoCalled? - Tracking Phone Calls from PPC and SEO…

Full disclosure on this post… The following is a case study from one of our clients about our new call tracking service, WhoCalled.

Through a combination of Google Analytics and Google Conversion Tracking Code, we are able to track leads sourced to SEO and PPC efforts. From there, we have the ability to track ROI and build a business case to invest more money in internet marketing efforts. In general, internet marketing results a lower cost per (insert any of the following: sale, lead, customer etc.) Analytics and Conversion code is limited to online activities and can not track offline activities like phone calls. Until now!

WhoCalled allows us to insert dynamically generated phone numbers on to a clients website each time a user comes from paid search or organic search. If a user calls that number, the call is tracked back to either source, effectively tracking a positive action (lead) for a client.

Over a 50 day period, these results were gathered:

Email leads from PPC sources: 20
Email leads from SEO sources: 24

Total: 44 email leads

Phone call leads from PPC sources: 54
Phone call leads from SEO sources: 90

Total: 144 phone calls

Overall, internet marketing generated 188 leads for this client through email form fill outs and phone calls. Before we installed this system, the ROI calculated for this client was vastly different than the actual ROI with phone calls included.

What Every Business Should Know About Their Web Site

Here are 7 things every business should know about their web site.

Time and time again we come across businesses who literally don’t know much about their own websites including who owns the domain, who their registrar is or what their FTP information is.

In my honest opinion every business should have the following information stored away in an encrypted folder for safe keeping.

1. A list of all your domains
2. Who the registrar is for each domain
3. The status of each domain (parked, pointed, hosted, etc.)
4. What the FTP information for each domain is, if it’s used
5. A copy of your website on each domain (if they are different)
6. A copy of the source files used to produce your website (Photoshop, HTML, purchased graphics, fonts, etc.)
7. Have the administrative account for each domain configured with an active email account so that you can renew the domains when they are up for expiration

In addition to this every business should own their domains! Never, under any circumstance should they let a supplier purchase a domain the suppliers name. They can buy it for you - but in your name! If it’s in their name and your relationship sours - you are at their mercy and they can literally do what they wish with your domain.

This information is vital to a business it should not be left to a supplier to maintain for you. If you don’t have this information you should certainly request and keep it on file.

The Physics of Information - At The Perimeter Institute

Bob McDonald hosts an all start panel of Physisits at the “Permiter Institute” discussing The Physics of Information - could the Universe really be a simulation? Listen and decide for yourself.

I’ve filed this under Innovation and Creativity simply because listening to this podcast will open your mind causing you to think critically about your surroundings and your impact on them. Loosely it’s related to computers as well because part of the discussion is how the Universe compares to a computer and software program - as well as a discussion on whether that program can be manipulated!

Download “The Physics of Information” and listen to it. You’ll be amazed at what this all star panel of physists have to say about our universe. Things like - everything is information encoded in bits. Or, the universe could be a simulation but no one knows who’s programming it. Or, how the universe compares to a computer.

This episode is absolutely fascinating. Please give it a listen as I am sure you will find it fascinating as well.

New Search Engine Wikia Search Has Launched

Search engine Wikia.com just launched. Will it be the fourth search engine?

Will Wikia Search become the fourth search engine next to Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Who knows. Perhaps the fact that it’s an open source platform will help it do so. Wikia.com is the brainchild of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Some of the more interesting things about Wikia Search are that it’s based on user managed content (like a Wiki) and that it’s Open Source. Since the engine is absolutely new - the quality of the data in it is very low. However, if it takes off the quality of the data will increase dramatically because of the power of the community contributing to it.

I’m a little sceptical though. Any social media platform can be gained - and this is no different. While it requires a large crowd of resources to influence it - there is nothing preventing someone from enlisting the help of a large crowd!

Only time will tell! I urge you all to test out Wikia Search and become a participating member. It will only be good if many people participate!

How To Hire A Search Engine Optimization Company

Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science and the kind of work and level service each company provides varies greatly. Knowing what questions you should ask is critical to deciding who to hire and who to stay away from. We decided to put together a list of questions a business should ask when evaluating and hiring a search engine optimization company. We did this because we want to help businesses stay out of trouble and get good quality search engine optimization services.

All of these questions are more or less equally important so we’ve not placed them in any particular order. You should evaluate 3-4 search engine optimization companies first, and only choose firms who put this service as their first core competency (Don’t choose developers or designers who also have an SEO service). Ask each company to answer these questions below.

• What kind of contract do you have - is it month to month, or longer term?
  You should not sign a long term contract. The SEO company should be willing to go month to month as long as they are meeting your expectations. If you have to sign a long term contract you should make sure that there are metrics in place to gauge the quality of service each month. The contract should also stipulate in your favor - that a failure to provide status reports and stats should allow you out of the contract obligations.
• What is your search engine optimization process?
  They don’t have to give away their secrets, but they should be able to explain in simple terms their strategy for getting you to outrank your competition.
• Please explain what you do for our account every month?
  They should be able to explain in simple terms the activities they perform for you on a monthly basis - and how those activities contribute to your search engine optimization.
• What is your process for developing back links to our site?
  Does it include link exchange services or are they attempting to develop naturally occurring back links that will endure beyond the life of your contract with their company? You should never rent links for two reasons. First, they don’t last forever. Second, the search engines are cracking down on it.
• Please describe your monthly status reporting.
  Will they be providing you with monthly status reports which cover such things as keyword rankings, analytics and the quality of traffic coming to your site, work performed, and work planned for the coming month(s)? Beware if they don’t provide this information.
• What do you do to stay current?
  What is their company doing to stay abreast of the changes in search engine optimization strategies and techniques? Search engines are constantly changing and therefor so are the strategies. Staying abreast of the industry is critical to high quality search engine optimization services.
• Do you include Pay Per Click positions in your evaluation of Search Engine Optimization rankings?
  Even if the company is offering Pay Per Click for free as part of your search engine optimization - you should not allow the PPC positions to be included in your search engine optimization evaluation because pay per click positions are “rented” and are not part of the organic search results.
• Please provide us with a list of search engine optimization references and examples of ranking results.
  Are they willing to provide you with a list of references that can be called? How well are these sites ranking for their terms?
• What kind of on-line reputation does the company have?
  Search their company and see what you can find. Do the same for the key staff members. Make sure you like what you read about them!
• How do you charge for your services?
  Some companies use a pay for performance model, while others charge a flat monthly fee. Regardless of the method it should be reasonable and fair, and easily measured and calculated.
• Do you offer a guarantee to get us first place positions?
  You should not accept any offer that guarantees first page placements. The search engines favor no one, and therefor it is impossible to guarantee any position. Some guarantees are acceptable. For example, a company may guarantee to “improve” your rankings against a baseline set of measurements calculated prior to the commencement of their work. This would be an acceptable guarantee because if they can’t make any improvements, why should you continue paying?
• What are your core values and vision?
  You should ask about their core values and vision - are they in line with yours? Remember that you’re trusting future revenue to this company - you’d better have similar values!

Now that you have the answers to these questions put them in a spreadsheet where you can easily see the questions and answers provided by each search engine optimization company. Review the answers and rank the companies based on their answers. Now think about it. Consider your gut feelings - would you be comfortable working with the company you ranked number 1? If yes you should finally ask to speak the people who will be working on your account, and then if you’re happy - sign the deal and feel good about it.

An RSS Feed Of Project Management Blogs

I’ve taken the initiative to produce a single RSS Feed of some of my favorite Project Management Blogs to share with everyone!

As an avid consumer of project management related content including blogs. newsletters, portals and podcasts, I felt compelled to start sharing some of my favorite blogs via a single aggregated RSS Feed courtesy of Yahoo! Pipes! If you’re interested in getting this aggregated feed - just subscribe by clicking the BIG RSS Icon.

Below is the list of sites I am currently “feeding” (pun intended) into the Yahoo! Pipes aggregated feed. You can visit them directly and subscribe individually, or save the trouble and subscribe to the aggregated feed. If you want to recommend a blog for this feed - please post a comment and include the URL! I’ll have a look and add it into the feed if I think it’s worthy of inclusion.

I’m also toying with the idea of using OdioGo to podcast the feed but that’s for another day!

• Project Portfolio Management Today - Demian Entriken
• Planview Blog – Terry Doerscher
• Journyx Blog
• Agile Management Blog - David J. Anderson
• Project Portfolio Management Blog – Atlantic Global
• Gantthead Blog
• Project Management Blog - João Almeida
• The Art of Project Management – University of California Extension, Santa Cruz
• The Collaboration Blog – Collaborative Strategies
• IT Toolbox Blogs - Providing Leadership & Improving Organizational Performance

As I suggested - if you would like to have a blog added here, please post a comment with the URL and I’ll review it!

Search Engine Optimization: Business Owners Should Get In The Habit Of Writing Fresh Web Content

Business owners looking to improve their search engine optimization should get in the habit of writing new web content for their website.

It should come as no surprise, but then again, perhaps it will, that HTML text is the only way to get a website to rank in the search engines and even then only for the words you’ve written. Then why do so many business web sites have very little text and much of it does not speak specifically to the services that people are looking for with precisely the combination of keywords their using in the search engines? There really is no good reason other than the fact that most business owners create a website, and then forget about it. They consider it “finished” and no further work is necessary. The exact opposite is true. Once the website is created, it’s just the beginning of an ongoing process of reviewing analytics to fully understand your visitors behaviour and expectations and then writing new content or optimizing existing content to meet their expectations!

Here is a simple process you as a business owner can repeat every month and it will surely improve your rankings and decrease your bounce rates. Keep in mind this is just about content, and bounce rates - there is a lot more you can be doing besides this.

1. Install analytics on your site - Google Analytics is free and easy to integrate
2. After one month of collecting data review the analytics to understand which keywords they are using and what the bounce rate is for each keyword.
3. For each keyword that has a bounce rate over 20%-25% you should identify which pages they are landing on for that keyword and then review the copy on that page.If the page is not really about that keyword - then create a new page (naming it with the keyword combination separating each work wit an underscore or hyphen). Make sure to mention the keyword in the title, description, H1, H2 and body content of the page.Link to this page from your home page using the keyword in question as “Anchor Text” to the new page.
4. Repeat these steps for each keyword that has a bounce rate above 20%-25%.
5. Wait another month, and start all over again at Step 2!

As you continue to do this month after month you’ll begin to see your bounce rates decreasing for the relevant keywords you are trying to optimize for. In addition, because your adding more relevant content to your site for each keyword your ranking for that keyword will improve and will continuously draw in more traffic!