Blog Archives

What Do We Mean By Flat Rate?

There are two kinds of flat rate, the kind that is still customized, giving your company a monthly budget and the one flat rate for everyone type services.  We are speaking specifically about the one flat rate for everyone type services.  You’ve seen them all over the web, the “achieve top rankings for just $299.99 a month” type services, the add on “seo services” that web design companies offer, or even worse the “seo packages” hosting companies offer for as little as $99.99 a month.  Sadly these companies make up the majority of search engine optimization options out on the web for small businesses, and ultimately give seo a really bad name in the small business community.  In this post we will do our best to explain why these types of services are a total waste of money, and if your business cannot afford a customized search engine optimization plan, it’s OK, and often times better to save that money for when you can.

SEO Requires Extensive Knowledge of Unique Markets

Each market is totally different not only in the approach it will take to rank well but in the approach it will take to be successful online.  It is important you use a small business internet marketing company that understands this. To be successful in a given market you have to know a lot about it, you have to know what it is going to take to rank, and ultimately what its going to take to convert.  Even similar markets can be as different as night and day, and sometimes markets that seem very different can be very much the same in the plan of attack that works.  Having a single approach not only could never work in theory if you talk to anyone who has had flat rate SEO services for their small business they will more often that not share that they do not work in practice either.

Why Do People Sign Up? Why Do People Stay?

There are a lot of reasons people will sign up for flat rate seo services for their small businesses but there is one overwhelming reason, lack of education.  That isn’t calling people stupid, after all small business owners are some of the most intelligent people out there it’s just impossible to know everything about everything.  We know small business internet marketing, that’s just a small piece of even just the internet marketing world, we wouldn’t know the first thing about what type of fence to put in our yard.  The problem is everyone wants more traffic, after all that’s why you built a website in the first place for your business, then you see someone offering a “tsunami of traffic” to your website which peaks your interest, then you see it is hands off which is even better, after all you are busy running your business, then you get hit with the price point and everything is aces!  People sign up, and at $200 or so a month nobody really thinks about the charge at the end of every month.  Often times it will take months or years for people to even notice it isn’t working, and that is if they are lucky enough to even notice.  These systems are setup to deceive the customer from the very start, they are not transparent about what they do and that should be your first warning sign.

Learning From Your Mistake Chalk it Up To Education:

Sometimes making a mistake is viewed as simply that, a mistake.  We like to view things like this as a learning opportunity.  Knowing when to pull the plug is just as important of a decision.  It takes some time to know what you don’t know as they say and the only way you are going to is by reading blogs like this, or talking about internet marketing with other small business owners.  Often times what people are doing for online marketing isn’t really a hot topic between business owners, especially if they are competitors in the same market.  We tried many things in our day, made many bad investments, and had loads of expensive “learning opportunities” after all we are small business owners too, trying to grow our business, its better to try and fail often times than do nothing, as long as you learn from your mistakes and they don’t put you out of business its always a good thing to be out there trying to break the mold.

Many businesses both large and small will run pay per click advertising, these are of course the paid ad’s you see down the right hand bar, and often times at the very top of the search results. One of the biggest mistakes a business of any size can make with paid search is not tracking. Since we deal with mostly small businesses, we see this situation a lot. The reason for it is when you don’t actually sell something on your site it is very difficult to track conversions. A conversion can be anything from a phone call to an email, basically it is when the website visitor does what you want them to do. Even though the sale often times isn’t made on the site specifically it is important to know how many phone calls and emails you are getting.

What is CPL?

Basically, CPL is what it costs you to get a lead or more simply how many clicks you have to buy before someone calls or emails. This is a very important number to keep in mind for the simple reason of profitability. Say for example it costs you $25.00 a lead, something pretty common, and lets then say it takes you 10 leads to close a sale. Then let’s say you make $500 per sale. You would have a gross of $500.00 with a cost per acquisition of just $250.00. At that point you would want to buy as many leads as possible.

There is a saying in PPC where once you are $1.00 profitable you can open the flood gates. Once you are profitable you will want to have your company or yourself tweak your campaign as much as possible to lower your CPA. On the other side of things if it takes 50 leads to close a deal you know you will need to acquire your leads for under $10.00 a piece to be profitable. Basically your cost per lead should guide all your marketing efforts when it comes to PPC.

What To Do With CPL

Once you know your cost per lead you can change all sorts of things to help lower it. For example if only 1 in 100 people to your website fill out a form, try changing things around to make that 1 in 75, that will give you a 25% decrease in cost per lead. You could also take a look at the words you are bidding on and remove high cost low return keywords, which will also help lower your cost per lead. A third was is lower your bid price and positioning, move from the second spot in paid results to the 5th something like this will greatly reduce the number of leads you get but typically more clicks turn into leads. We could pretty much go on all day with ways to lower your cost per lead and that is the important thing to remember. In the beginning it will most likely be as expensive as it will ever be, it takes time to figure things out and with PPC advertising that takes money.

Bottom Line

Online advertising for small businesses is a tough game, dealing with typically much smaller margins, stiff competition, and smaller marketing budgets makes competition pretty tough, that said if you do it right, you can dominate even the biggest competitors. You just need to stay committed to constant improvement, lower costs per lead higher conversion ratio, and closing more calls and emails. It can be done.

What Are Links?What exactly are link? The answer to that question is pretty simple, and also complicated at the same time. Links are something we click on every day we are online, which for most of us means literally everyday, you may see them in their natural state with a look like “click here” or you might see them in their more sneaky for with custom anchor text like “discount shoes Chicago” either way they may appear it is pretty consistent that you will see a lot of them each day.  It is basically just words on a page that are coded to take you to another place on the page, on the site, or on a different site, basically it is how we get around on the Internet.

How Do I get Links?

Well most links on the internet are made by whoever is managing the website, blog, or video.  For example, if I have a blog it is up to me if I want to link out to another website, often time’s people will link to something they are talking about or often people will link to your website as a resource or helpful option.  It goes without saying the better your website is typically the easier it is to get links.

There is another whole way people will often link to your website, lots of websites out there make money simply by providing links to other websites, directories and review sites are a good example.  Often times you can get a directory to list to your webpage for free while some of the major ones like business.com will charge you to review your site and make sure it meets their standards

The third way people get links, by posting on blogs, forums, releasing press releases and other web release methods.  For most people this type of linking dominates their strategy and doesn’t have a good return on investment.  Often if you focus on having great authoritative content on your website people will naturally link to it.  Many small business owners have never posted on a blog, or maybe don’t even read any, personally there are only about 2 blogs we ever read and it’s hard to imagine posting links on there all the time.

Why Do Links Matter?

So why are links so sought after?  So much sometimes people will resort to black hat techniques like buying links and risking getting their site hand edited out of google.  Well for the most part we like to think of links as a vote.  If someone for example links to your Discount Shoe website with a link like “click here to check out discount shoes” it is a way is like they are voting for your site to be about discount shoes, and if it is then that is a good vote.  By the same logic they couldn’t link to your site with “poker” and expect it to climb in the poker rankings.
The other thing to keep in mind about links is that some of them carry a different weight, the more authority a particular domain carries the more powerful their link is.  For example, CNN is a page rank 10 site, obviously one of the most authoritative sites on the web, a single link from them is going to be more powerful than a lot of other links.  Without getting into too many specifics or different scenarios that general rule applies, the more authority a domain has, the more powerful their link is.

At the end of the day the more links or “votes” your site has about the content that is on it, from credible sources the higher it will typically rank in the search results.  Most websites cannot be boiled down to a single keyword and in most cases we cannot control how people link to us, just know it’s a good thing when they do. (In most cases)

Hopefully this helps clear a little confusion on the real value of links, what they are and how they can help you.

As a small business owner it is impossible to employ all the talent you will need to truly dominate your competition, even the largest corporations in the country outsource work for cost and talent reasons. It is important to understand the two main benefits of outsourcing, one is you are going to get the true expert, someone who knows specifically about what you are trying to do, and two is in most cases it is the most cost effective. Often time’s people only associate cost with the reason for outsourcing and the fact of the matter is for a solid business that is almost never the case, say for example you wanted someone to work on your company’s website and handle some online marketing and you pay that person maybe $35,000 a year. Then when you want to do pay per click advertising and SEO you hire another person at say $45,000 a year, then what happens when you want to start doing email marketing and other types of marketing, most small businesses could never sustain all those salaries but still need those services, that is where outsourcing comes into play.

Another important point to keep in mind is the fact that outsourcing doesn’t always mean to another country, it is about finding the right person for the job at the right price for your business. The only way small business can compete when it comes to online marketing in many cases is if they have better people on it, the larger competitors have more money to throw at it albeit not optimal it raises the costs for small business owners and raises the bar for quality. Now that we have thoroughly educated you about things as a small business owner your likely already know it is time to talk about hiring a freelance worker. There are several things you should keep in mind before trusting just anyone with your marketing plan.

1. Use a reputable source whether that is eLance, Odesk, or Guru make sure wherever you may be posting your job is a reputable place, I would avoid places that your not familiar with or places like Digital Point, even though a lot of people post there, you can find a lot of unsavory people on there at times. Obviously the best source is a referral, another small business owner, friend, or family that had uses someone before and was willing to stand behind them.

2. Check references, you may get someone who doesn’t have a huge portfolio and that’s ok, but you want someone who has at least done some work for people and has results to show you. Talk to at least 2 former jobs and make sure if possible you see the final product.

3. Don’t pay upfront, the most you should is half upfront and the rest when the job is completed to your satisfaction. You should also try and build in an option for a few hours of their time at a later date for tweaks to the final product. Just remember if you give them everything up front best case is they don’t have any incentive to get the job completed on time, worst case is you never hear from them again.

4. Don’t forget to give them a nice testimonial to use if you are happy with their work, and don’t be afraid to correct them or complain, it is best to do this while they still have a chance to fix things, doing it later doesn’t do anyone any good.

5. Use a traceable payment form, the generally accepted form is paypal, if someone wants you to wire cash or use some other payment type that makes you uncomfortable skip it. Now that said we use freelancers that we wire cash to but that is because we have known them a long time and there are other reasons for it, but for most people you will want to avoid it.

Typically the first step and often times the last one small business take when it comes to online marketing is a website.  Certainly you cannot do much without having a website in the way of internet marketing, but what is troublesome is how bad most of them are.  Often times products or services are exchanged for a website, or someone has a “cousin” who knows a friend that knows how to make a website. Though, sometimes small business owners just don’t have the money, time, or connections to meet up with the right company for the job.

Often times as we scour the web for local businesses, we are always wondering why the websites are so bad. Once we talk to these businesses and find out they paid several thousand dollars for their website—we really get mad.  That very fact has inspired this particular post about things a small business owner should keep in mind when it comes to designing their businesses website.

1. Get Multiple Quotes

Getting multiple quotes doesn’t just mean from several webmasters in your town, take the time, ask around and get quotes from national companies as well.  While in our opinion the best work comes from freelancers it can be very hard to find a reliable one.  For example we went through maybe 20 of them before finding our guy and now we use him every single day.

2. Have Lots of Helpful Content

One of the most common fears is “if I give them all this information they will just do it themselves.”  While sometimes that is true, most of the time if someone is a do-it-yourself type of person they would be a great customer anyway.  They may purchase some small items or services, but will typically be more trouble than they are worth.

In our experience, sharing information with potential clients or customers helps gain their trust and that is worth more than anything.  If your customers know you, like you and trust you, they will be more loyal than most anyone—they’ll come back again and again.  The best way to do this is with showing them how authoritative you are by sharing information.

3. Usability Is Very Important

Make sure your website is easy to navigate, what people are looking for has to be easy to find.  In many cases ourselves included people online have the attention span of a 3-year-old child.  You have to show them what they are looking for, tell them why they should use you, and complete the transaction whether it’s a physical sale, a phone call or an email.  Either way it isn’t easy.  You should ask people, friends and family to check it out and see what they think, it must at all costs be easy to navigate.

4. Have an Obvious Contact Option

This is perhaps the easiest and shortest point but you need to give your potential customers an easy way to contact you, have a contact form that is quick and easy to fill out to request more information and of course you will want to have a phone number to call whenever possible.  If you are not open 24-hours-a-day make sure you list the hours that you will be able to take the call.

5. Track EVERYTHING

Make sure you have Analytics installed (Google Analytics is Free) to track how many visitors are coming to your businesses website, the pages they like and the ones they don’t.  Just one quick example of how having analytics will help you.  There are two particular pieces of information that are pretty helpful, entrance page, this is the page they landing on of your website, it is most often your home page and exit page, this is the page they often leave from.

If you have a really high amount of people exiting a particular page you can assume they are not finding what they need there, or you need to take a look at the page and see why people are leaving.  For example, if it is a contact us page maybe it makes sense, but if its your pricing page—maybe you need to check your prices or possibly not list them.

Bottom Line

As you can see, there’s a lot to keep in mind when you’re a small business and hoping to maximize your return on investment for your website.  As a small business owner you will have to wear many hats, this will just be another one for most people.  Below is a list of what you should (roughly) expect to pay for a website.

•    Basic Website (custom design)- $2000-$3000
•    More Advanced Website (some ecommerce or blog applications)-$2500-$5000
•    Full E-commerce site (a full shop and buy here website with lots of products) $5000 +

This is just a guide to let you know what to expect. Can you get a website for $500.00?  Yes; however, you get what you pay for. Aside form giving you the lowdown on how to optimize your website without getting ripped off, we also what you to know what to expect when you’re ready to get your businesses website going.

When you are a small business, your marketing is one of the toughest things you will have to tackle. When every dollar you spend on marketing comes directly out of your pocket, decisions can be tough to make. You have to maximize your return on investment or at the very least be able to track your spend. Traditional advertising outside of using traceable 800 numbers offers very little tracking. Taking out a billboard, a newspaper ad, or yellow pages ad makes it very difficult to trace impressions, and in our world becomes known as “spray and pray” marketing (since you just shoot something out and pray for results). Internet marketing was traditionally thought of as something for big businesses and pure online companies.

The fact of the matter is that Google and other search engines are amazing when it comes to local type searches, and there is a shift in the way people are looking for businesses from traditional sources like phone books to online. Having a good mix of search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, a great website and email marketing is now a necessity.

Search Engine Optimization

For most local businesses, we serve a strong push for roughly 12 months, and continued upkeep can keep your business outranking your competition on your choice of keywords providing they use a local identifier like “plumber Chicago.” We have found that, in most market niches, competition is limited to just a few players (except in highly competitive areas like personal injury law, where the competition is a little stiffer). Still, most competitors in these markets will be overtaken in time.

It is important that your current and potential clients find your business in the organic search results. This instantly provides a feeling of authoritativeness and trust. It says, “Google says my site is the most relevant,” and these customers will be typically more likely to do business with you. It takes time to rise in the organic search results, but if you go about it the right way your rankings will be fortified against your competition.

Pay Per Click Advertising

This is typically known as the ads that appear on the right hand side bar of the search results. They often appear on the top as well. For small businesses, this can be a pesky thing to handle. You will really need someone to work with you and make sure you have landing pages, tracking 800 numbers and conversion tracking working properly.

That said, even the smallest business in the smallest town should be running pay per click advertising. It is literally the one form of advertising that is 100% traceable and attaches directly to the bottom line. Bidding on terms related to your business, your business name and even the name of your top competitors will all drive significant traffic to your website and eventually to your office.

Email Marketing & Website Design

These are two areas local businesses sorely lack. From our experiences, we think the reason is that too many crummy vendors wanting to charge $10,000 for a website. The fact is that most website we build look very professional, do everything they need to do and are built for under 3K. With that said, there are good web design companies out there that aren’t trying to rip people off. We are not trying to make a living selling websites, and we are not trying to turn this into a sales pitch.

Businesses will spend tons of money on a nice showroom or billboard, but they let their website look terrible. Your website is your business. It is what people will associate with you. If you have a professional, clean looking website with loads of information, customers will be much more likely to do business with you and spend more money.

As far as email marketing goes, it’s just a small thing, but it helps build value with your current and prospective clients. Don’t just blast them with sales and buy now offers. The key is to add value, show them you care and earn their trust. As small business owners, you already know how important trust is and know how much easier a sale is when you have this key element.

The point is that small businesses, no matter how small, don’t have to be the little guy (nor should they act that way). The internet is the great equalizer, a place where you can compete with the national chains and big box stores by showing your potential clients a first class experience on the web.

In today’s competitive environment it seems even the smallest custard stand must have its presence known online. What often seems to get lost in the shuffle is building trust, establishing yourself as superior and authoritative and, more importantly, letting your potential customers know you before you know them. There are several ways to start building the trust that will allow your business to succeed online, and it starts with your company’s website, and communicating to your potential clients how they should communicate with each other. This doesn’t mean build a Facebook page for your plumbing company. It means understanding where your clients are looking for you online, what they expect, and how to best reach them. Let’s go through a few examples of how this is done.

Establish a Human Connection ThroughYour Website

There are several things you can do on your website to build trust and authoritativeness. First of all, make sure your site is packed with helpful content. There is nothing wrong with sharing a little premium information now and again. This helps to build trust, and once you are comfortable with the idea you will see that it certainly brings more business than it loses.

Also make sure you have a nice “About Us” section with pictures and bios of the people your potential customers will either talk to or see in person. It is important that your potential clients connect with you on a personal level and see that there are real people behind your services. Once they know you and trust you, doing business is really an after thought. Remember: Customers trust people, not companies.

Build Communities Through Groups and Forums

Developing these options are very good ways to spend your time. Once you understand where your potential clients look for information, you will want to establish yourself as an authority. For example: Years ago we used to target dealerships specifically for Internet marketing, so we would make sure to participate in forums like ADM and Driving Sales, as well as always post on blogs like Dealer Refresh. Establishing yourself as an authority in those spaces (not always trying to sell products and services) and genuinely helping people will bring you more business. More importantly, it will lead to a profitable business.

Social Media like Twitter, Myspace and Facebook

One of the hottest marketing tools pushed by news and online outlets is social media. Often times it gets billed as “the solution to all your marketing problems.” I don’t blame the social media services for this, I blame the journalists and bloggers who say such crazy things. The fact of the matter is that – just as with all marketing channels – you have to do your research.

It is likely that many of your customers are on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. The important thing to consider is whether or not they are LOOKING for you there. They might be there, but do they want to hear your message through these outlets? If not, you’re just spamming them. Take the time to carefully understand where your clients are going to look for your service, and approach them there. It may sound like an oversimplification of the marketing issue but it isn’t. You wouldn’t advertise handguns on a cooking website, would you?

Effective online marketing involves understanding where your potential customers are looking for you and establishing a presence there. Don’t be afraid to give away information at the expense of a potential customer. You will build authoritativeness, trust and a strong client base. People will respect you for saving them a little time and money. If you see someone with a problem that is easy to fix, go ahead and do it. In our experience, the client comes back later and refers others to you. Word of mouth still works, even on the Internet.

There are a lot of reasons small businesses stay offline, some think they cannot afford it, some think they don’t need it, and others have tried and failed.  Even though there seems to be no limit to the reasons our local baker doesn’t have a website what it really comes down to in our experience is bad information.  Whether it is fellow business owners, self serving trade magazines, or in the worst case and often the most common case—poor advice from vendors in the industry small businesses don’t have many resources for quality advice on Internet Marketing.

Obviously, we do Internet Marketing for a living so there is a little worry that this post won’t be taken seriously, but there is a reason nearly every new client we take on has a horror story about getting some bad information or getting ripped of by some snake oil salesperson—and it is true.  Below are some things you will want to look out for when choosing a company to help you market online:

Is it too good to be true?

Things like promising a “Tsunami of Traffic in Just 30 Days!” just is not going to happen.  Ask yourself this simple question, if it were that easy why isn’t everyone else doing it?  If someone claims to have “cracked the Google code” steer clear, even when issues are exploited on Google changes are made very quickly to not only fix the glitch but often times punish sites that were trying to take advantage of it.  Any good online marketing company should understand that your business is your life, and it is not to be messed with.

Do They Have Real References…People You Can Talk To?

We are not really sure why people seem to always skip this step.  Many online companies will have a list a mile long of testimonials and “case studies” but at the end of the day you trust someone with your potential livelihood and that should not be taken lightly.  Often time’s references are not checked, and then someone gets ripped off or feels like they were lied to when a simple reference check might have avoided it.  It is important to ask for multiple contacts as to avoid talking to an employee at their company or a friend of the owner.  This task seems like a paid at times but most reputable Internet Marketing companies should have no problem presenting several very happy clients.

Do They Have A Realistic Approach Do They Use Jargon?

The other really important thing is do they care if you understand what they are doing?  In reality you have to have at least a general knowledge of what services they are going to provide, and what general results you should expect, at least what the expected results should be.  What we do can seem like a mystery to most and it is really important that the Internet Marketing firm’s success that you understand what they are doing for it to be a successful long term relationship.  Internet Marketing is not a one off solution, it is about building a long term relationship and if the company doesn’t seem to care about that stay away.

These are just a few of the things small business owners can do to make sure the relationship they form with an Internet Marketing company is mutually successful.  There are a lot of shady people out there, but don’t let that discourage you, the good ones are out there too you just have to look for them.

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words you choose in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you’re linking to. It tells search engines what the page is about. For example if your car dealership webpage includes a link to an article about “financing your new Chevy Silverado with an APR that won’t balloon,” then your anchor text in the link should reflect those keywords: How to finance a Chevy Silverado without ballooning interest

What Not to Use

If, on the other hand, you use keywords like “click here” or “part 2”—you’re telling people the page is about the subject “click here”. If you use “Part 2″ as the anchor text, your telling the search engines the page is discussing “part 2″. As you can see, Google and the “humans” reading your anchor text will find well-crafted anchor text much more authoritative than “click here for more info”. The point is to make your anchor text authoritative and digestible. If your anchor text incessantly rambles, it may be a good indication you need to revise: How to go about finding really, really awesome financing deals for your brand spanking new Chevy Silverado so you won’t have to put your kids up for adoption next month and your wife will still love you Know too, to keep your actual links relevant to the content on your page. If you have a car-dealership webpage then make sure your links are about car-related topics and not about World of Warcraft! Here’s some key place to be including anchor text:

• External links - links from other sites
• Internal links - links on your pages’ Navigation maps
• Links on your main page

The Benefits The benefit of wisely using authoritative anchor text is it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google. If you’re wondering why Google would even care about something like this when considering page rank—they do! Here’s why: The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of your site pages because search engines give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages. Google has a special operator: “allinanchor:keyword’, which picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages. This further implies that Google’s algorithm is configured to index anchor text as separate query-able data, thereby making it evident that Google considers anchor text to be a key indication of page relevance. Our internal research leads us to believe that weight given to anchor text has been raised recently in the Google algorithm. With these changes, it is possible to enhance your website’s ranking by using the right keywords in anchor text. Bottom Line

• Yes, Google cares!
• Use anchor text and links that match the content of your webpage
• Make sure your anchor text is both authoritative and digestible for humans and search engines
• Use the right type of links

I just wanted to update the readers of this blog a little about my spare time events. Friday night my good friend and I started recording some demo’s that have been songs for a long time, it is my hope that this is the first of many I will be posting here over the following months. Take a listen: