Join us for our Website Design and Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals Seminar Series.  We teach you the basics and show you the tools that industry professionals use daily.  We let you in behind the curtain!

We are breaking out this jam packed 3 hour seminar into several pieces:

3 Easy steps to increase conversions

• 3 Things Never to Do
• 3 Things you should Always Do

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals:

• How do Search Engines work and how can I create a plan of attack to get exposure and drive up sales?
• 10 steps to a successful Search Engine Optimization campaign!

Social Media Use:

• Social Network opportunities, am I missing the boat or should I let it sail off?
• What’s really important in the Social Media world?
• 2 Fundamental steps to creating trust and driving revenue with Social Media

Who should come?

Business owners, Marketing Professionals, and Anyone who wants that extra bit of knowledge to put in their toolbelt to help get a business more exposure using the Internet.  More Business = More money!

Claim your seat NOW for the Website Design and SEO Fundamentals Seminar scheduled for Friday 9/11/2009 at 9am MST in Westminster, CO.

Seats are extremely limited!  Claim your seat now….  Website Design and SEO Fundamentals Seminar

Every small business has questions on how to market their business online as well as how much to spend and best practices on measuring ROI. MSNBC had a great clip on this very topic:

5 reasons why Internet Marketing kicks-ass over traditional marketing efforts:

1. Testing an off-the-wall idea is easy

With the Internet, you can go from idea to conception within a few days.  In many cases, digital is so much easier and quicker than having to go through a design/print or guerrilla marketing campaign.

2. It’s easy to measure ROI

With proper web analytics, you can judge the success of your campaign.  Whether it’s tracking traffic or conversions, show ROI!

3. It’s relatively inexpensive

With a budget of a few hundred dollars, you can test things out through pay-per-click – just to test out an idea.  Where else can you test out an idea on a massive targeted marketplace for that cheap?

4. More efficient – cost per click is going down, so targets are being fine tuned.

With proper keyword research and targeting, you can actually test your idea on a specific demographic.  Instead of throwing something on the wall to see if it sticks, at least focus in a bit and throw it on the wall in the direction of someone that may actually be interested.

5. It’s pretty quick.

You can get a campaign up and running pretty quickly compared to traditional marketing such as planning an event, attending a trade show, designing, printing, and mailing postcards.

Forrester Research projects that paid search marketing will grow 26% this year, reaching $11.4 billion in the U.S. In addition, the company’s “U.S. Search Engine Marketing Executive Survey” (conducted by Jupiter Research prior to its July acquisition by Forrester) forecasts that search budgets will remain stable through much of 2009.

Don’t get me wrong…if consumers are not spending money then Search and Internet Marketing WILL SUFFER, but not as much as traditional marketing efforts.  You’ll see a decline, but businesses still have to market for long term growth and they will focus on things that bring them more sales vs. brand building.

Okay, that title was a bit harsh!  Not ALL PR companies have their head stuck in the sand…quite a few are evolving and growing.  We’ve seen this lately through business closures.  Several PR firms are closing their doors because they didn’t adapt to a changing market – even though they thought they had.

One big gap that still remains is PR companies focusing solely on Adwords and sponsored links (pay-per-click) without any On-page SEO or Inbound Marketing initiatives – this is an expensive recipe for failure.

How does pay-per-click work?

Let’s think about how Adwords and Sponsored links work.  Essentially, you are bidding on specific keywords.  As long as you bid high enough, your ad and web site link will show up wherever the Search Engine is serving ads (SERP or Ad delivery networks).  Each time a user clicks on your ad, you pay your bid amount.  The Search Engine decides when to show your ad, how often, and in what order.

There are a few inherent problems with basing your whole marketing strategy on this:

1. You don’t control the Search Engine.  They choose when and were your ad will show up and how much you will pay for the click or impression.  Yes, you choose a limit, but ultimately the Search Engine still has control.

2. You can estimate how much to bid, but you can’t be 100% sure how high you need to bid to take the top spot.

3. If your business plan is based on Pay-Per-Click, then any competitor old or new just has to out bid you in order to take your spot. You can be de-throned and lose a lot of traffic if you are relying just on sponsored links.  This is assuming your web site and product are mediocre.

4. If you did not spend enough time figuring out what keywords to target, then you  may just be throwing all of your money down the toilet.  Pay-per-click assumes you know your market and you know what keywords to target.  If you are targeting the wrong words, you may be wasting your marketing dollars because you  may get traffic, but no conversions or sales.

5. Even worse is letting the Search Engine decide what keywords best suite you.  With Google this is called Broad Match. It takes your list of keywords and then makes an assumption to related terms.  If you targeted the keywords “dog biscuits” and you used broad match, then Google may also show your ad for someone searching for “dog kennel cough” – they both deal with dogs, but someone looking up kennel cough may not be looking for dog biscuits and those marketing dollars were most likely just wasted.

So, what’s the missing key?

Do use pay-per-click, it’s a good way to supplement gaps in Search Engine Coverage, get visibility for new product launches, or even help you with keyword discovery.

Don’t plan your whole marketing campaign on pay-per-click.  Make sure you are looking at on-page SEO and off-page SEO – that’s what you’ll need for long-term sustained growth.

Some people are afraid of change…Unfortunately for some and Fortunately for others – change is now part of life and business as we know it.

Here’s a quick video illustrating change and how change is increasingly speeding up…to me it’s exciting:

I’m still trying to figure out why people have an aversion to change?  Is it the unknown?

Please post a comment and share your thoughts!

According to answerbag.com the most popular answer is:

“Some people are set in their ways…and change means having to do, view, think of things differently. Some are afraid they won’t fit in or they aren’t prepared.”

For me, I’m kind of excited…If everything out there was already created and marketed, then we may as well go get a job at  7-Eleven…but there’s still great opportunity for those who choose to lead the pack and embrace change.

If you are one of those who feels unprepared…it’s okay.  There’s still so much out there to learn, if you get started and learn new things, you won’t miss out.  There’s no shame.  Unless you look back in 20 years and still haven’t learned anything new…

Best of luck.

We’ve met some great Search Engine Optimization milestones for our Denver and National clients in 2008 through various Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing strategies.  But, we do not intend to rest on our laurels!!

In our never ending quest to improve our strategies and tactics to help our clients climb the Search Engine Result Page (SERP), we are heading out to California to attend Search Engine Marketing Expo West!

Now, before you just assume we will be on a sun-filled vacation, know that we’ll be stuck (hapilly) in the Santa Clara Convention Center pretty much every day this week from 8am to 10pm.  We are glad to do this as it helps us stay ahead of our competition and keep our Search Engine Marketing tactics sharp and effective.

A few of the companies that we will be meeting with and listening to are:

It should be a great conference and we are already excited about some of the new things we can try out as soon as we get back!

Make sure you contact us to see how we can help your business scale the Search Engine Ladder.

With 2009 just hours away, there’s hope, expectation, and reservation in the air.

A few thoughts: 2009 will be the year of…

The self-employed

There is one key attribute to success that most do not realize.  Everyone is self-employed.  Whether you work for a corporation or have your own freelance company…you are essentially self-employed.

If you work for a company as an employee and get a W2 at the end of the year, you are still in theory a one person company and your product is…you.  Your time, your creativity, and your talent…that’s what you get paid for.

In 2009, I believe we will see people take more responsibility for their own progress and careers.  Instead of leaning on job security – which is a mind game anyway – we will lean towards independently looking towards progressing ourselves.  You are your own boss…even if you have to answer to someone.

Through this realization, we will see people branch out into other areas.  You no longer have 1 job…you may open up a side business selling info products, freelancing, blogging – who knows.

2009 will be the year of the self-employed.

Shifting priorities

As retirement accounts dry up, loans are called, and credit lines are reduced we need to optimize and adapt for the better.  What were priorities in 2007 and 2008 will change this year.

From families and businesses paying off their debt and re-structuring their expenses to save more to real estate investors going crazy over bargains to be had.

From workaholics spending more time with their families to students finding new ways to pay for school so they don’t have to borrow.

From parents taking back control of their retirement by not relying on extremely leveraged institutions for help to college savings accounts being started for new born babies.

2009 will be the year of shifting priorities.

Inbound Marketing

As marketing morphs into consumer interaction and corporate execs become transparent a new way of reaching your audience is taking hold.  Inbound Marketing is the process of building your brand and evoking consumer loyalty through communication, relationships, and an equally satisfying need to make our world a better place.

Utilizing Search Engine Optimization, Brand Marketing, Social Media, and overall Reputation management; start-ups will compete with giants by creating communities for niche markets and taking over market share through quality products/services and Inbound Marketing.  If you build it correctly, they will come.

2009 will be the year of Inbound Marketing.

Personal Branding

In line with being self-employed, the personal brand comes into play.  No longer do consumers only care about the product or service, they now care about the people behind the curtain.  With so many companies faltering in 2008 it becomes increasingly important to put your money towards the leadership behind a cause.

With the transparency that social media networks bring to executives, personal brand will play a big role in consumer confidence.  This is extremely apparent when you look at Apple and Steve Jobs…then the challenge is how do you pass on “your brand” to the company yet still take it with you when the time comes.

2009 will be the year of Personal Branding

Twitter Emergence

Many people are confused by how to monetize or even utilize social media networks.  Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or twitter, they are confused.  And rightly so…these applications have a feature set but it’s up to the users to determine how that feature set is used.

In 2009, I see twitter emerging to a mass audience.  Whether they know how to use it or not, twitter offers something the other networks are not geared towards..the ability to find and connect with strangers of like mind.  Networking and building, this is where I see twitter exploding.

2009 will be the year of twitter emergence.

On a side note, if you are interested in a really cool twitter showcase coming in January ‘09 – follow me @arifgan – details to come early Jan…seriously, you don’t want to miss this one.

Now, on to you…our readers are clever, creative, and determined so let’s hear it…

2009 will be the year of?

So, here’s a tip that’s so simple, many of us have forgotten it – I figured most people had already taken this precaution…but I found that not to be the case.

It is SO Simple, yet it may save you a lot of grief and lost sales. Ready?

• Create a 400 Error Redirect (through Apache or whatever web server you are using) if traffic doesn’t reach you in the manner you were expecting it to arrive.

It’s literally a precaution, in case things don’t turn out how you expected them to.  As I was researching a few blogs I clicked on an advertisement, not sure why – I was curious as to what they were selling I guess.

Here is the Ad I clicked on:

After clicking on this Ad that this company is paying for…guess what comes next?

A brilliant Sales page?

A phenomenally written blog post?

A corporate website with logos of their fancy clientelle?

NO! Here’s what I end up with

Not Found

The requested URL /jvsrc=BtoBlonline_Banners was not found on this server.

You’ve got to be kidding me….

You worked SO hard to put together your Internet Marketing campaign, you’ve got Ads rolling, you’ve got landing pages created, and in case someone ends up at a place you didn’t expect – you are going to lose that visitor because the URL got jacked up or a page was moved.

The fix is easy…so easy.  In your Apache settings or whatever Web Server you are using, you can setup a .htaccess redirect – if your web host supports it.

You can just put in a simple line like this into your .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

and create a notfound.html page for users to see instead of the 404 Not Found message.  At least then you haven’t lost them and you’ve gotten a 2nd chance.  Sometimes a 2nd chance is all you need to capture a lead.

Consider it…prepare for the unknown!  I’d love to hear from others on simple ways to dodge Murphy and make the most of your Web site or blog.

Comments?

Alright, this may be a stretch in some regard but it was quite apparent and clear to me.

We are putting together our Serious Internet Marketing Dashboard and through a lot of research I’m finding that there are a lot of Internet Marketing Consultants out there. They charge anywhere from $75 – $1,000 an hour.  Seriously, $1,000 an hour.  Why would anyone pay this?

I’ll tell you why someone would pay $1,000 an hour. Because it’s an investment.  Warren Buffet did an interview last month with Charlie Rose and talked about our current economic “issues” and why they’ve occurred.  He talks about the stock market, un-real valuations, and why people still bought.

Why do people spend THOUSANDS of dollars on coaching and e-books to help them market on the Internet?  Because it’s easier than marketing in the real world, and there’s the potential for great RETURN on your investment.

But, you have to do it right…for long term growth.  Slow and steady. It’s not about a big bang to profit, it’s about growth, reputation, and building.

Buffet talks about his $3 Billion dollar investment in GE…Cash is King, but only if you use it…but before you use it, you have to earn it!

In essence this video is about not following and charting your own course…with low start up funds and almost no free time, Internet Marketing is yoru best bet to creating new revenue sources.  Think like an Investor, not like an Imitator, or an Idiot!

A piece of interesting data so you can see how Search Engines interact with one another.