Calgary-Internet-Marketing

Archive for the ‘Steps to Success’ Category

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.

—————————————————————–

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.
—————————————————————–
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.

Enter our contest to win a free website upgrade worth up to $4000.00. We will rebuild or redesign you current website so that it is more effective in helping you build you business. You new website will be built using the 4 Steps to Internet Marketing Success as outlined on our website. For more information or to qualify simply go to website-contest.

Many business owners know that they need to make improvements to their marketing programs if they are to grow their businesses. It doesn’t matter whether it is a small business with a local client base  or a larger company with a more expanded reach. Using the same marketing methods day in and day out will ultimately produce the same results (or worse).

So they attend seminars, read books or search the Internet for new marketing tools to help them get customer attention and of course new clients.  What is interesting is how many never actually use the ideas they find.  Often they will buy a book and read a few chapters without moving ahead with any of the tactics presented. How many sign up for a get rich quick program only to find out it is the same information Dale Carnegie wrote about in “Think and Grow Rich” modernized with fancy forms and new terms.

One website that our company is currently working for to increase traffic is a real estate site. On the site there is a request form for contributors to apply for the privilege of adding content in the form of blog posts about the real estate market in their area. In return they will be able to use the most important search engine optimization method available  – linking to their own website – as a way to promote their business.

As the Internet marketing representative, I have received numerous applications from real estate agents or mortgage brokers supposedly interested in submitting content. Ironically, when we respond and ask them to submit an article for review, they simply do not follow up with any reply or material at all.

Success in any form requires some effort. Either that or you have to pay someone else to make the effort for you. Simply completing a form,  downloading a free report or buying a book may feel like you are doing something to improve your business for a few minutes, but it won’t have any impact if you don’t do something worthwhile with the information.

There are no silver bullets. The 10 minutes that you feel elated that you have taken a step toward success are simply a less expensive version of going to a Motivational Seminar. After the emotion has subsided nothing has really changed.  The first real step to success comes after that initial high has faded.

Take real action!