I recently published this 2-minute link optimisation tip to avoid a common mistake a lot of people make.
Archive for the 'SEO' Category
During my recent Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation event tour in Adelaide, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney, participants heard a preview of my rant on Privacy Pirates which I’ve been proselytising about for quite some time. Karen Bonanno, a 2011 Exponential Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Winner, sent me the infographic below that I just had to share with you.
I will expand on this in an upcoming Do It Yourself Google Sales Lead Generation For Small Business series of workshops… But in the meantime have a good read of this infographic. You’ll start to get a sense of where I’m coming from and how I am guiding my clients to avoid being victims of the Privacy Pirates.
Imagine being able to SEE the flow of visitors as they navigate your site – how cool and VALUABLE would that be?!?! Well, Google’s done it again – they are releasing this new functionality in their signature Analytics platform – WOW!
Click on this image to read more about this new release!
I have an event coming up called Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation that will reveal how quick, easy and fun strategies can help you improve your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and acquire new leads for free by blogging.
Here is an example using an Infographic. Karen Bonanno posted an interesting infographic (shown below) on what happens on the Internet in 60 seconds on her School Management Library Blog.
Along with these amazing stats:
- Search engine Google serves more that 694,445 queries
- 6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr
- 600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content
- 695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Social Networking site Facebook
- 70 New domains are registered
- 168,000,000+ emails are sent
- 320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Social Networking site Twitter
- iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times
- 20,000 new posts are published on Micro-blogging platform tumbler
- Popular web browser FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times
- Popular blogging platform WordPress is downloaded more than 50 times
- WordPress Plugins aredownloaded more than 125 times
- 100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn
- 40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com
- 100+ questions are asked on Answers.com
- 1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content
- 1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com
- 1,200 new ads are created on Craigslist
- 370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users
- 13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora
- 1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company
This blog post alone has 6 embedded strategies to help Karen and me attract new sales leads.
If you want to know what they are and how other business owners are leveraging their blogs to generate free sales leads, you’ll have to attend the Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation event!
Even though small businesses in Australia lag in Internet adoption with most small businesses either not having a website established or not having a fully integrated, functional website, in contrast, Australian consumers are quite techno-savvy.
According to recent research, 37% of Australians use smart phones and is predicted to be 50% by the end of 2011. 92% say they use smart phones while consuming other media; 46% while watching TV, 43% while listening to music, 36% while online. A whopping 26% say they have purchased something on their smart phone. Average number of apps is 25, with 8 being purchased. Nearly 50% browse the web every day on their phones.
Nielsen research shows Australians are #1 in usage of social networks
Neilsen reports that Australians spend 7 hours 17 minutes per person each month on social networks and blogs. Australian social media usage was highest for the second year running, out of Nielsen’s Internet-metered markets including: Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, U.K., and U.S. This means Australians used social media 25 minutes more per month than the previous year. That’s quite a bit more.
Most small business owners still don’t fully appreciate the value of social networking for business purposes.
A lot of it is due to ignorance (not knowing) and confusion. For example, there’s a common misconception that links last a lot longer on Facebook than Twitter, because the newsfeed moves slower than the stream, but recent research confirmed this is not the case.
The half life of a link (i.e. the time it takes to receive half its total clicks from when it’s first shared) is on average 2.8 hours on Twitter and 3.2 hours on Facebook – not a massive difference, although on YouTube links last considerably longer.
What’s more interesting is that a link pointing to a topical news story – like an earthquake – is likely to have a lot shorter half-life than a link pointing to something oblique (like lolcats).
The graph below illustrates this phenomenon, but once again ignorance (not knowing) can be damaging. The concept of the half life of a link is important if you’re in the news business, but if you’re a business looking to stay in business for years to come, what is important and relevant to you is the value of the individual links established, not the half life.
Half Life Of Internet Links In Social Media Networks
This is a vitally important concept we will cover at our Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation event, it’s an exclusive by-invitation-only event that you need to contact us if you want to attend.
Why is a blog important for business?
Blogs are used to establish contact and communication with a business. A website by design is static, whereas a blog and Facebook are interactive, engaging the prospect. More importantly, he/she can read and assess the type of communications others have had with you/the business.
In this day and age, it’s not a nice-to-have sales and marketing tool, a blog is a must-have sales, marketing and customer support and brand building tool.
Let’s face it, if you’re not blogging, you’re just not serious about sales lead generation.
Google Instant is not new, but it is having a dramatic influence on how people search….
As you can see when you use Google, the search results change dynamically AS YOU TYPE. The suggestions DO influence what people will type in – this is having a dramatic effect on Google Adwords…
Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours sent this Google Warning article link to me several months ago. I shared this with my clients giving them hints and suggestions, but those are beyond the scope of a blog post.
If you’d like ‘instant’ access to tip and tricks to make sure you avoid mistakes and are kept informed in ‘real time’ – contact us to join one of our many programs.
Recently, I was reviewing infomercials (they are a great source of creative ideas). A popular TV pitchman had the audience repeating the mantra, “just set it and forget it!”
Set And Forget Might Work For BBQ Chicken, But Not Your Website
While this might be an exciting idea for a dinner appliance, it’s suicide for your website. Like a car or a house, your website requires regular, on-going maintenance.
What is “Website Maintenance”?
I define website maintenance as both the art and science of keeping a website current in both technology and (Killer Kopy™) content. That means assuring proper functionality (how users move around the pages), verifying the accuracy of copy, fixing any broken links and images as well as performing an overall brand/positioning assessment of the site to make sure it reflects how you and /or your company wants to be perceived online.
An easy metaphor to explain website maintenance is home maintenance.
You can take a look at your home for light bulbs that need to be replaced, look to see if there are any new cracks in the foundation, maybe a room needs some new paint, tiles or carpet.
The same is true of your website. It’s good practice to review your site at least once a month.
Website review tips:
- Check date sensitive content such as an announcement of an upcoming event. After the date passes, it should no longer be “upcoming” and the date or deadline changed. The longer the old date remains, the more out-of-date your website appears to your visitors.
- Even though computers “don’t make mistakes”, functional elements of your website including contact us forms, event registrations, product purchase links and other e-commerce and database functionality should be checked. Often, these break due to an indirect parameter being changed somewhere else on the site. You don’t need to check everything each month, just run a random spot check or pick a section of your site each month to review.
- Check external links (links to other sites) on your site. There are several free utilities that can provide this function for you. Recently, I had someone send me an email with a link in her signature that was broken…
- You should review as many pages on your site as you can, paying special attention to the links in the navigation bar(s), make sure the visual elements appear correctly on all pages. This can be done very quickly to find the most obvious errors.
- Check for images that are not displaying correctly or have the dreaded “red x”. This can usually be done by skimming the pages quickly – you may realise that some images load too slowly (all you need to do is reduce the file’s resolution to a web optimised format.)
I highly recommend taking notes as you do your website review. You’ll get ideas for immediate and future improvement that can become part of your tactical and strategic deployment respectively.
What do you do when you find an issue?
Google has made recent changes that significantly affect your SEO effectiveness. One of them I discussed recently, called Google Previews. Today’s post is regarding Google Places – another attempt by Google to fend off Facebook’s domination by forcing you to put additional information into Google to increase Google’s ranking – not necessarily improve your own SEO results. In fact this complicates the process in a zero sum game. More work, effort and cost for the same or WORST outcome than you previously had.
Contrary to what they want you to believe, Google is in business for themselves and Google Places I am sure you’ll agree is yet another task that you have to undertake to not lose whatever presence you previously had.
As a blog reader and subscriber, I want you to know about these shifts. If you want to know what to do about them, you’ll need to become a client. We have a wide variety of Internet programs and products to choose from. Contact us and we’ll discuss the various available options.
I don’t want to leave you completely in the dark so here is a link that explains the potential negative impact of Google Places. Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours originally sent it to me.
(Psst! Thanks Ray!)
Earlier this week, I blogged about how Vaseline and radioactivity are related to make a point – well actually, to illustrate how William Tucker has been able to reduce the fear mongering propaganda of the mass media to simple, easy-to-understand metaphors and analogies that any 5th grader can understand.
Mt Tucker recently added another article to his on-going explanation regarding Infant formula made from Tokyo tap water.
His brilliance is simplifying the otherwise complex into something easy for the layperson to grasp.
One of the key strategies that I will be teaching our elite VIP and Platinum Members this weekend is how to do this systematically.
How to leverage tools like the one below that Mr Tucker shared with us in one of his recent articles.
Every business has hidden assets like this – the key is to know how to use them effectively within an automated approach.
We’ll miss you this weekend.
Japanese Earthquake - Radiation Dose Chart
Psst! If you’d like to give your business results a non-radioactive boost, contact us to discuss our business coaching options and we’ll have a chat about how we can GUARANTEE RESULTS in writing…
I am sure you’ve come across Google Previews (as shown below), but what’s important about it is it’s going to change the SEO and web design concepts as it becomes more popular. Google’s done this to keep you on its page longer, in an attempt to regain it’s #1 status on the web, which it lost to Facebook in 2010. Facebook has more views and the visits are 10 times longer (22 minutes versus just over 2 minutes on Google per day).
I’ll talk about other strategies Google is using which are going to make your SEO strategies even harder and more cumbersome, but for today, I wanted to focus on Google Previews.
We’re all going to need to design our pages according to this new feature. Hopefully Google will explain how it selects the summary text, at this stage it all seems quite random even though it’s not. As soon as Google reveals anything worth reporting – I’ll let you know.
Google Preview Example
This second example of a Google Preview shows how complex this is because the preview is page-by-page depending on the listing, keyword search, etc…
Google Preview Example
Did you know you can fart proof your dog? If you’ve ever had a dog with flatulence, you know how valuable this can be.
The Internet Marketing Lesson is that I explained how to leverage this fact to two clients: One leveraged it and the other didn’t.
Which one do you think has doubled sales and tripled profits?
Enough said.
The point is that you have to capture people’s attention – especially on the Internet where people’s attention is measured in seconds.
The proof is in the pudding – I bet you you can’t bear NOT knowing how you can fart proof your dog – EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A DOG!
This is how powerful Killer Kopywriting™ can be. The difference between struggling to get people to your website and having an avalanche of qualified prospects…
As I mentioned yesterday, we’re at the Marriott Hotel, staging the last of the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamps - ever. We’re not opening it up to the general public anymore, we’re going to keep the content for our most privileged clients – our Platinum Program Members… That being said, there is one concept that you can gain instant access to, it’s called Virtual Real Estate and as I’ve mentioned previously on several occasions, the program will be re-branded, re-formatted and the price substantially increased. At this price, it’s an absolute bargain because it introduces you to the concept that we’re leveraging for brick and mortar businesses every day. Plumbers, dentists, engineers, doggy day care centres, consultants, you name it.
Social Media Marketing is a time consuming waste of time – UNLESS you know what you’re doing and how to do it properly.
This is a program that can save you in excess of 200 hours of searching plus a lot of the information in the bonuses you simply would never find on your own.
Go ahead and click here on the hyperlink here – to find out about Virtual Real Estate.
At the Bootcamp, I am spending 3 hours explaining this concept in detail – not for people to actually Flip Websites For Profit, but to leverage the business model to create an endless stream of qualified prospects walking into their stores or businesses that become paying clients.
Imagine having a lead generation system that is free. That’s right, new leads that don’t cost you a cent.
That’s what Bootcamp attendees are learning about this weekend – you’re not there, so the next best thing you can do is get the online video program and try to get as much from it as you can. Otherwise you’re wasting a lot time and effort for… nothing.
There is a better way, an exponential way of doing things.
Google Page 2 ‘Almost’ As Good As Page 1? Google recently reported that 38 to 45% of people searching on Google immediately click to page 2 because too many people are manipulating keywords to be on Page 1. That means you now need to be both on Page 1 and Page 2…
“The Internet is the easiest thing that is hard to do.”
As a business coach, advisor and mentor, I teach my clients little known facts like these to make sure they are always one step ahead of the competition. There’s a joke that explains this metaphorically:
There are two guys in the forest and they come across a bear. One says to the other “Oh SH_ _! We have to out-run the bear!” when the other says “No mate, all I have to do is out-run you!”
That’s the reality of Google rankings. If you want to make sure you’re always one step ahead of your competition, contact us. Most of our programs now come with a RESULTS-BASED GUARANTEE.
That says it all don’t you think?
With Google Caffeine, Google now analyzes the web in small portions and updates its search index on a continuous basis, globally. As they find new pages, or new information on existing pages, they can now add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.
Google Caffeine
Google Caffeine allows the indexing of web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Google Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Google Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.
That’s what happens when you drink too much caffeine – you get hyper!
On the last night of every Exponential Business Building Bootcamp there is a session on Internet Strategies where participants can ask any question to increase their online traffic, sales and/or conversions. The Internet Marketing Strategies we teach are proven and tested for real brick and mortar businesses – not the spam like ‘link building’ and other affiliate marketing strategies associated with get rich quick schemes.
This November, in Melbourne, we’re staging the last Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp. We’re not abandoning Internet Marketing Strategies, we’re just going to restrict access to our Platinum Program Members. As I’ve mentioned before, there are too many Internet Marketing Spruikers out there selling empty dreams at multi-speaker salesfest events. We don’t want to be associated with that genre. We’re focused on producing GUARANTEED RESULTS for our clients.
Today’s post is an example from Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours. At this year’s Exponential Business Building Bootcamp, I explained how to blog to optimise Search Engine Optimisation for new lead generation as well as improving your Google Keyword Ranking. Ray, as a multi-award winner, knows that you need to take action to create results.
His latest blog post, called Squash Lessons For Engineering is an ideal example of how to do it. It’s a derivative of my Squash Lessons For Marketing and another case study in how to grow your business exponentially leveraging my 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine. Too many people chase the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when all the success, wealth, health and happiness is right there, within their reach – if only they knew what to do and how to do it… That’s why you should seriously consider attending one of our events – our programs now include a RESULTS BASED GUARANTEE.
Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours came across new data that shows Google searches are getting longer and more specific. Attached are a few pointers on how you can adapt.
The data reveals that the percentage of clicks based on search term length is changing. Clicks made through searches over eight words grew by 8.3%, with searches over seven words growing by 5.3%.
In contrast, clicks made through searches using one word fell by 1.1%, with clicks made by searches over two words falling by 1.5%. Searches using three words remained flat.
The data isn’t surprising as the growth of the Internet as a business tool results in more users searching for more specific data, such as brands and product names.
Google reports that 20% of searches are absolutely brand new, meaning they have never been typed into the search engine before. Users are having to think about being more specific to get through jargon and get to what they really want.
This is important for you, as you must think about what keywords you can use in order to show up in as many searches as possible when your target market is looking to acquire your product or service.
One of the biggest trends ignored by small businesses is search-by-location. You must start to use keywords relating to your location, as users are more and more searching for specific brands and products by suburb.
Not enough small businesses think about ranking for their suburb name, which is an extremely easy thing to rank for and people will use it in very specific searches. This is necessary even though Google is getting better with that sort of thing, with both maps as well as business listings.
At eight words, which is pretty high, think about the things people would be searching for and the combinations they would prefer…
That means you must consider what you think users will be searching for and that means not just what you think should be an appropriate keyword.
For example, Qantas probably use the keywords cheap flights, but they aren’t targeting cheap air fares. Similarly, you might want to use the words “cheap accommodation” but also consider most people won’t type that into Google, chances are they’ll type in “cheap hotels” or “cheap motel”.
As I’ve explained in previous blog posts, you must not get obsessed with adding as many keywords as possible, but instead should add the right types of keywords.
Google Adword strategies are beyond the scope of this blog post, I just wanted to highlight that BECAUSE searches are getting longer, you need to keep that in mind…
You can thank Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours for the initial source of information – by going to his site and having a look around – that’ll help his SEO!
Most companies automatically choose their company name as their domain name. While that’s a wise move, it’s often a BIG mistake to stop there. In fact you could be losing as much as 75% of your leads because of it – keep reading if you want to avoid making this Internet Marketing Mistake!
Testing multiple domain names and picking the one that performs best (for example, in Google AdWords ads) is a very profitable strategy. Read More »»
One of my mottos is that life’s too short to be too serious. The world I attach to this way of thinking is what I call Antimimeticisomorphism. Having FUN doing out-of-the-ordinary things that create extra-ordinary results with the least amount of effort and lowest cost. Click on the hyperlink to find out more… But today’s YouTube video is something that rings true for most of us – not looking forward to going to the dentist… Watch the video and I’ll get to how a dentist can use this to grow his practice.
This video’s fun to watch even though you always kind of know what’s coming. It takes something most people don’t enjoy and makes light of it.
The exponential leverage is achieved by…
OK, while I have you here – start or keep giving recommendations to people on Linked In. If you haven’t done it yet – SHAME ON YOU!
Start GIVING them to clients so they will reciprocate and give YOU recommendations. Aim to give 1/day or /week when things are quiet. You’ll quickly start to see activity increase! Make sure when you accept the recommendations they give YOU, that the following are done. You’ll want to make these edits when you RESPOND to the Recommendation, not before. Consider it a mini-checklist.
SEO Tip: Linked In Recommendation Checklist Read More »»
Last week, I mentioned in my blog that you should leverage other people’s youTube videos. I’ve since realised that I should lead by example and show you what I mean by leveraging someone else’s video – in this instance it’s Paul Telling, T-E-L-L-I-N-G’s video.
YouTube Tip: Use Other People’s Videos
This example is ideal because it triangulates a lot of VALUE for you. First of all, you need to know who Paul Telling is. He’s an amazing graphic artist, client and friend. You can access his website at the hyperlink above. He was also a participant at our inaugural edition of the Unleash The Speaker Within event.
By telling you about Paul, I am also creating a series of hyperlinks for you to see what we’re all about, I Kall them Killer Konversations – part of the Killer Kopywriting System I’ve developed.
Of course Paul has attended the Killer Kopywriting Workshop…
But getting back on track – Paul attended Unleash The Speaker Within and this was his final performance:
Paul Telling’s Testimonial about the Unleash The Speaker Within event is below:
And now for HIS video… that I have embedded here for you: It’s an exercise as part of the Professional Protege Program that encompasses the Unleash The Speaker Within event…
What Makes Paul Telling Unique
So there you have it in a round about way – LEVERAGING the power of YouTube for YOUR benefit!
If you need any help with your video production – contact Paul Telling. If you want to get better results online, check out our Internet Mastery Programs and events!
