Calgary-Internet-Marketing

Author Archive

Congratulations to Mitch Reynolds of Life Guard Insurance for achieving Page1 Ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo for his most important key word search phrases. He was able to do this within 8 weeks of launching his new WordPress CMS (click for definition) website.

Mitch works in one of the most competitive markets on the Internet today with over 610,000 pages to compete with. His competitors are big companies with lots of money to spend. They hire expensive website developers, pay expensive search engine optimization and link building companies and have expensive marketing experts who write their content for them. Mitch was able to do these things himself at very little cost. His investment was his time.

How did he manage it? By following a few simple instructions and investing his spare time doing some serious work.

With a little guidance from Millenium Consulting, persistent analysis and constant evaluation of his efforts, Mitch has been able to meet the criteria needed to establish his position on these 3 important search engines. He did most of the work himself.

The 4 most important phrases Mitch needs to drive traffic to his site are listed below. These phrases are researched locally 1000’s of times each month in his market. He is on page 1 or 2 in most cases.

Keyword                                 Google   Bing    Yahoo   Google.ca  Bing.ca Yahoo.ca

Life Insurance Calgary              4          4          3          4             7          16

Life insurance quotes Calgary    6          11        7          5             11        30

Calgary Life Insurance              9          14        6          9             7          13

Calgary Life Insurance Quotes   9          31        8          10           15        30

The reason for posting this information is simple. I constantly tell my clients that anyone can achieve top ranking on the search engines by fulfilling 3 simple requirements.

1. Add search engine friendly content and optimize your site for search engines.
2. Create some inbound links from other related sites and social media sites.
3. Create activity by updating pages, adding articles and advertizing with Google Adwords and other online advertising vehicles.

It is that simple but unless you do it all your results will simply not be all that you hope for.

Visit Mitch online at http://www.lifeguardinsurance.ca or http://www.life–insurance-calgary.com.

On a personal note, if Mitch invests10% of the effort in understanding his business as he did over the past few month learning how to manage his website, I think he must be an exceptional insurance agent.

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While the Internet Marketing community moves ahead with social media, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and many more Internet marketing methods, the average business owner who has built a website still sits waiting for the calls to come in and the emails to arrive. But nothing is happening. Why not?

Its because they think that once they have paid for their website to be built and it is up and running, that they are done. They are wrong!

Even large businesses who have invested a lot of money in professional marketing website designs that look great and contain massive amounts of information about their products and services are not aware of how Internet marketing actually works. You have to do stuff.
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Your website is a significant part of your business’s Marketing
department.

In some cases, unless you are investing in other marketing and advertising methods, your website may be your entire marketing department.

Imagine a large corporation selling any product or service ignoring their marketing department. No investment in any kind of advertising. No ads in newspapers or magazines. No mailers. No radio or TV ads. No yellow pages.

While some businesses are still using these out of date methods you know they are all using the Internet. However whenever you see or hear any of these marketing methods still being used you can count on the fact that they have included or mentioned their web address.

Everybody knows how important the Internet is today for marketing but once their website is built, they think the work is done. Sorry, but this is only the beginning. All you have is a new Marketing Department that is ready to roll so…

1. Update your web-pages regularly by adding new content.
2. Add articles about your work and industry regularly.
3. Get a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account to make friends and build relationships.
4. Start promoting yourself a little each day on these social media venues by using the proper tools.
5. Let the world know what you are doing by linking your website updates to the social media networks.

The entire world and your local business community are all online. If you are sitting still you are losing ground. Sooner or later your competition is going to catch on or some young upstart will race past you so fast you will wonder what happened.

When was the last time your website was updated? Who knows about it?

Is it their post graduate education? Is a PhD more reliable as an expert than person with only a BA or MA in the same field?

Is it their experience? Does somebody who spends more years in school studying the books and researching their topic of interest actually know more than another person who is out in the field working with the materials or ideas? So what makes a person a health expert, or an expert writer, a great film director or an Internet expert?

I guess there really isn’t any complete answer to those questions. Some of the people considered to be the greatest experts in their fields never completed school because they became bored or impatient.

Thomas Edison was basically self-educated.  He began reading important books at the age of 10 and never stopped.

Steven Spielberg dropped out of university to make movies and learned on the job.

Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to work on his computer programming business in his home.

Really, when you stop and think about it, getting a degree in University involves reading the right material and understanding it well enough to get the diploma. So, anyone can become an expert if they are motivated, interested and persistent enough to research the material and use the methods needed to gain experience in their field of interest.

Want to learn how to write good marketing material for your website?

Try these books:

The AdWeek Copywriting Handbook by Joseph Sugarman.

Web Copy that Sells by Maria Veloso

Of visit the http://copyblogger.com for some really good information.

What makes person a winner?

In many sports the difference between being the winner or the loser is often the result of milliseconds. There are many factors that contribute to success in sports but often the difference between those who win the top honors and those who lose are so negligible as to be hardly noticed. In sport and in business those who are triumphant may only accomplish 3% to 5% more than those who fail.

There are many factors that will impact your results with reference to being successful on the Internet but no matter how you approach your website, these are fundamental requirements.

• Take action – do something every day to improve your site.
  • Research articles and add them to your site.
  • Learn about Social Media and start networking online.
  • Rewrite a page.
  • Try Pay Per Click for 30 days.
• Be persistent – don’t let your lack of knowledge stop you dead.
  • Don’t give up because it isn’t as easy as your thought.
  • Ask questions and find better answers.
  • Schedule 1 hour every day to accomplish something.
• Trust in your ability to find the answer.
  • The answer to any question can be found on the Internet.
  • Watch videos on YouTube.
  • Read other peoples blogs about your situation.

You may not be an expert today but you can become one if you take action everyday.

“Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will.”

Norman Vincent Peale

Every morning, probably like most people who work in front of a computer, the first thing  I do is scan my e-mail to see if there are any important messages from current clients or potential customers. Having dealt with the urgent items, I like to sip my coffee and begin the process of evaluating all the other material to see if there are some additional news nuggets worth reading before hitting “delete”.

I have had to become more discerning as time passes because I continue to subscribe to newsletters from many professional Internet Marketers and SEO experts who blast out so much material  that it is impossible to actually read most of it.  So I scan the subject  lines, and maybe the first few sentences to see if there is anything offered other than another “hot method” to make a 6 figure income in 2 weeks using a new technique previously unknown to the masses.

Then there are the interesting tidbits from friends and associates about business or social events either local or more universal in nature. I received 2 such messages this week and was inclined to read and then follow up on them both to see if what they said would have any impact on me personally or professionally.

The 1st message was simply a link to a  1.5  hour long video documenting how the international movement to stop the progress of  global warming  was actually being driven more by a politically motivated agenda than a scientifically accurate one. I was drawn in by the first 10 minutes of this movie only to realize that I already agreed with some the opinions being offered  in this professionally done presentation and decided my time could be better spent elsewhere. You can watch it for yourself at if you like at http://tinyurl.com/yzwt2y8 to see how it aligns with your opinion.

The 2nd message sent me to a website that claimed to be sharing  ” The Web Design Trends for 2010“. I went through the list in detail making note not so much of the actual trends as they were being presented but by visiting the example websites used to validate the writer’s “opinions” to see who they represented and how they were being marketed. After all I am mostly concerned with Internet Marketing trends.  Unlike the author, I looked beyond the unique and exciting graphics she was focusing on into the business potential of what I saw.

You see the author is a graphic designer and like the corporations and the  politicians who are promoting the business of global warming to achieve their own ends, she can’t help promoting the trends that will generate more business for her.  Do I agree with her opinions?  I think I will keep my opinion about that to myself.

What I did see by going through this process was that the opinions of many Internet marketing experts whose e-mails I continue to  read remain relatively accurate. Blogs are in!

One trend was that almost every example presented  including her site  was that they were all  in blog format. Anyone who is getting eyes on the web these days is blogging.

Another trend was that these graphically designed websites were not effectively optimized for search. They didn’t need to be because they fell into several categories that the average website and small business owner doesn’t often achieve. They were owned by famous people,  or famous locations or possibly well known graphic designers and people the artist may associate with.

Some of these websites like the one owned by Matt Mullenweg who is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc. com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web have a higher than average page rank . Matt, who  is one of the developers of the WordPress blogging application has a page rank of 8. Others were ranked 4 and so on.

Some of the other websites didn’t rank as well. In case you don’t already know this, the more traffic you get to your site, if it doesn’t bounce, the higher your page rank will go. Also, Google no longer positions you for search based upon page rank like it used to.

Ultimately for the less famous there is one truth that becomes obvious. If you want to get more traffic and attract new business through your website it has to be found and effective SEO is needed to achieve a good position on the search engines.

There are really only a few ways to effectively get visitors on your website. You can advertise outside the virtual world like in olden days.  You can use Pay Per Click ads, develop connections with extensive social media networking and links from other sites or you can apply effective organic search engine optimization methods.Actually. they are all helpful.

And this is not a trend or based upon an opinion. It’s a fact.

I keep getting e-mails on behalf of companies who are notifying me that one of my websites has just been added to their long list of on site links. It happens a lot. About 4 or 5 times a week.

Each message is similar. They tell me that a link has been placed on their website and that they would like me to reciprocate by adding a link to their website on mine. They inform me that it will be mutually beneficial and help improve my page rank as well as increase traffic.

Correct me if I am wrong, but reciprocal linking was removed by most search engines as a determining factor for the value of websites a couple of years ago because it was obvious that companies were selling the service to anyone who would buy it with no consideration of  a website’s quality or actual  value for searches. I have read that Google actually sees reciprocal linking as a negative.

For a while I would reply back telling the contact my theories on reciprocal linking and suggesting some more creative  linking approaches. To date only one has ever replied and agreed to a more effective linking strategy. They generally do not reply at all and that makes me suspicious. I always reply to everyone who contacts me with important news or responds to an email I have sent to  them.

Who are these people?

I think they are representatives for so called professional SEO companies who must still be selling the old reciprocal link scam to unsuspecting website owners who don’t know that it is outdated and not benefiting them at all.

So, if you are getting messages from people who have added a link to your website to their websites and want you to reciprocate, you need to check them out. Here are a couple of things you can do.

1. Find out the page rank of their site and the page you have been added to.  If it is lower than your current page rank, it is of no value for you to be added to their site.
2. Email them asking them why they are looking for reciprocal links when they are of no value. Ask if there are other sites you can add instead to create a 3 or 4 way link arrangement.
3. Make certain the page you were added to is connected through links from their main pages and not hidden with no connection to the site. I have seen this as well.

Or simply ignore them.

If you would like to find out how to effectively run a link campaign that will benefit your page rank and search engine performance feel free to contact us for as free evaluation.

The Hype

I subscribe to newsletters from several “online marketing guru’s” whose main focus is selling products about how to become an “online marketing guru”. These people claim to and may truly have achieved phenomenal success at making millions online.

The Bait

They offer ultimate Internet Marketing training courses, fantastic tools and even free websites for unrealistically low prices with the guarantee that I will be be able to make a fortune through Internet marketing myself if I just sign up for their monthly subscription for the amazing ” Internet Marketing Secrets“  they have to offer.

The Hook

Today I received an offer for a Free List Gathering Website which would ultimately provide me with 1000′s of email addresses that I could put into my e-mail marketing program to increase sales of my services. The benefit of this is to reduce the time needed to get an email blast our to 10,000′s of interested readers immediately instead of building my own list from the traffic that visits my website naturally.

Caution Required

While I am not going to offer an opinion about the Free Website I am going to caution anyone thinking of using any method to send large quantities of emails to a large list they have purchased to beware. I learned this the hard way some time ago.

If you normally send a few emails a day and then send 1000′s to a list you have of  “Opt In Subscribers” you may find that you get listed as a spammer even though you aren’t. This is because your email service tracks and reacts to large variations in your email patterns.

The Solution

Release your emails in smaller sends evenly over time and slowly build the numbers so that the fluctuations are less dramatic.

If you send 10 one day and then 10,000 the next you may be shut down and placed on the blacklist.  However, if  you build to 100 per day, then 250, then 500 over a period of time you can promote a seminar or special product offering in a major blast when you have reached the point that your large numbers are not red flagged by the software looking for major variations. It will be assumed that you have increased the number of subscribers over time and that they are not the result of some email gathering software program or purchased email list .

It is interesting how much impact a simple error like a broken link can have on your potential to reach your business’s Internet marketing goals through your website.

The Numbers

One of my clients and I were reviewing traffic statistics with Google analytics recently and were surprised that the new traffic was way up but the number of conversions was not. With an increase of about 20% of new visitors, it only follows that the number of conversions should increase at about the same rate. This was not the case. In fact there were no new conversions at all.

The Problem

After discussing recent changes to the site we discovered that the most important call to action contained a link that was supposed to send visitors to the registration page was directing them to no page at all. All they were finding was an error message.

It wasn’t just that they were not finding the registration page quickly and conveniently which is necessary for success when you have only a few seconds to convert an impulsive action to sign up for a service or buy a product. Credibility for the company and their ability to deal with customers effectively was being lost. Many people who encounter this type of mistake will see it as a major flaw in the company’s ability to deal with details and will simply leave never to return.

Not only that, if people are finding bad or broken links, so are the Search Engines and bad links can have a negative impact on your positioning results.  Working links are important in every way to your success online.

It Gets Worse

Another business site I visited worked fine in Internet Explorer, but I prefer Firefox to do my web browsing. It loads faster than IE and has lots of handy plugins that I like to use. When I landed on the home page, all the links in the menu had not been programmed or optimized for Firefox and simply did not work. This is a major failing created by the website developer.

About 25% of Internet users use Firefox and  the many millions of Mac users (the numbers are increasing daily) use Safari which comes loaded on the system. If your website isn’t designed to function on these web browsers you are loosing business.

The Solution

1)     Make certain that all your links are pointed at the pages you want them to go to.

2)     Check that your website is displayed properly on as many web browsers and the many versions of each those web browsers or have your website developer verify that for you.

3)     Check to be certain that you website functions and displays properly on cell phones and other new media devices.

With Internet marketing, the smallest details can make a very big difference in your results and ability to achieve you business goals.

I was looking for a little reading material at lunch today and grabbed a copy of Seth Godin’s book, Permission Marketing which was published in 1999.  Not certain if he was responsible for that phrase but the book explains how  “Interruption Marketing” doesn’t work in 1999 and how the Internet was beginning to reflect that. By 1999 the Internet had 200,000,000 commercial websites and was growing in leaps and bounds.

10 Years Later

Wow…have times changed. Those numbers are minuscule compared to the figures we see today. There are some other statistics in the book that made me chuckle. Hind site from 10 years later is astonishing to say the least.

My Father’s Book

My father turned 85 this month and just finished self publishing a book about his life. It is a narrative of his life story and to be frank, only me and a few other family members will ever read it I suspect.  Still, the perspective of how times changed for a farm boy growing up in Ontario until now is pretty amazing.

One chapter talks about how he started his own business when he was 22. I suspect he invested about $200.00 and was up and running. He was a butcher and sold meat door to door; no advertising, no PR,  no mailers or website.

Time is Passing

I see people today who think the world still works like that . All you have to do is invest a few dollars, start networking and tell the family and you are off and running. At least when I talk to them about marketing, that is the impression they give me. The want a website (because they know you have to have one) built by a friend, neighbor, neighbor’s kid or the least expensive web service provider available.  Then they wonder why their business is failing.

You Have to Think Ahead

Reading my father’s book  and then reading  Seth Godin tell about how complicated the world was back in 1999 and then thinking about the world we live in today really got me thinking how quickly times change. In the world of Internet marketing, 10 years is a lifetime.

Most ads try to club you over the head and beat you into submission. Search engine marketing is a completely different form of advertising because rather than trying to tell you what to do, the searcher requests to see the ads and views them as relevant to their wants, needs, and goals. Advertisers bid to show up where they are relevant – when they are irrelevant. If they bid for irrelevant keywords they lose money on every click.

Read more…(Click here)

posted from SEOBook

The Scenario:

You hired an SEO company 2 months ago and “Lo and Behold”  you just did a search on Google for your best keywords and there you are – on page one.  Or are you?

I just checked my own website on Google for “Calgary Internet marketing” and was suddenly number 1 in the search results. “Wow!” I thought, ” I am good! Yesterday I was only number 10 or 11.”

Unbelievable Results:

Then I was on the telephone to a client in Toronto who said I was number 11 on his Google search. So I used my Rank Tracker software and sure enough I was ranked number 10.

Recently I was informed that Google is now using search patterning and site visit counts to adjust individual search results to make them more “user friendly”. So if you visit the same website a lot while on your computer and use Google to search with the keywords that the website you keep visiting is optimized for, it will get better positioning than other potentially better websites might get.  Not on other computers – just on yours.

It’s like adding it to your favorites or bookmarks automatically. It’s like Microsoft Office “helping you” correct grammar mistakes you haven’t even made.  Remember! Computers are not smarter than people.

Who Can You Trust?

Experts who understand SEO and the ever changing realities of Internet marketing could use this to their advantage. Those who trust and pay them might be convinced that the results they are seeing on their own or their service provider’s computer are the results everyone else is seeing, and be greatly mistaken.

I recommend you get a search engine page ranking tool like Rank Tracker. It is easy to use and tells you exactly how effective your search engine optimization expert really is at positioning your website. Or make certain your search engine optimization expert is using a similar software tool.