Coolbreeze Air Conditioning in Tuscon, AZ speaks Spanish!

Through our iMarket Solutions partnership, we have a client in Tuscon Arizona, CoolBreeze Air Conditioning and Heating. In their market, they have a large Spanish speaking population. And since Cool Breeze cannot necessarily afford the expense of having an entire website translated into Spanish (particularly when considering all the ongoing blog posts and social media content strategies they employ), they compromised on having a landing page translated into Spanish. The approach is to let their Spanish speaking potential clients know that they have staff both on the phone and in the field that can communicate in their native language. So far, this program has met with great success.

In particular, when discussing what can be a difficult subject matter for any consumer, it is important that the language not become a barrier. Air conditioning repair might be straight forward to CoolBreeze as they are experts. But talking about why an air conditioning system might not be working, or the options for air conditioning installation, or even describing the needs for an air conditioning repair can be difficult and confusing to the ordinary person let alone having the communication be compounded by a language barrier.

So the lesson is that you don't necessarily have to manage your entire website in a different language but if you do have a client segment that you know speaks another language, reach out and dedicate a page or section that speaks to them in their own language. It might be more expensive in the beginning but you will show that you care and earn more business. It has certainly been true for Cool Breeze and their air conditioning repair programs.

Cheers, Andrew

iMarketSolutions.com - Vermont Design Works Partnership Launches 16 New Websites in March

Vermont Design Works started a partnership with iMarket Solutions (www.iMarketSolutions.com) in the summer of 2010. Since then, iMarket and VDW have created over 30 websites with full online marketing, blog, content and social media services. Our Domination package is bringing companies with very little presence in the SERPs to the top of the Organic listings within a few months of launch. And these HVAC and Plumbing companies will stay on top because we add new fresh content to their websites, update their promotions, add testimonials, and manage their social media on a daily basis.

In March, our partnership allowed us to launch 16 new websites for iMarket Solutions customers. And now our post launch activities are starting. These websites will always be up to date with new content that the search engines and customers love.

One recent search in a town outside of Tampa revealed that our customers held 3 of the top 4 positions in the google organic listings for the highly coveted "air conditioning repair" keyword.

Our mission continues. April looks like it might be just as strong.

The basic philosophy is to combine excellent user friendly design, with search engine friendly programming, with extensive click, email, and phone call tracking. After that platform is created, add fresh new keyword targeted content at least once per week (iMarket Domination customers get 3 new keyword targeted blog posts per week). Track all the leads and results and modify the approach to maximize the cost per lead of the websites. Our sites generate customers at a cost per lead that is 90% lower than industry averages. And we are adding more than 10 new pages to the Google index per month. Each one of those pages is like a raffle ticket just waiting to be read by a prospective customer.

Our results are strong and we intend to keep it that way.

Inbound Marketing Webinar

I am listening to the Inbound Marketing Webinar by Hubspot at #Inbound2011. Some of the data is great. More money and effort is being expended on Inbound marketing (blogging, social media, linked in, etc) versus outbound marketing (TV ads, radio, trade shows, telemarketing, PPC). The costs per lead for Inbound marketing are much lower than the costs per lead for outbound marketing.

Some great statistics and information. I'll post the followup report later.

The biggest hole in this presentation is that they have not considered Yellow page advertising at all. It does not seem to be on the radar screen.

While these folks (#inbound2011) have just addressed my question about yellow page advertising on the webinar, I think they are reducing the discussion to far too narrow a focus.

Their idea was to cut Yellow Pages advertising by 10% and see if your leads drop by 10%. If not, reduce even further. But it will be critical to move those reduced yellow page spending into building an Inbound marketing strategy.

Stock Options 101

Vermont Design Works just launched a great new website that supports the http://www.terrystips.com/ project. Terry gets so many questions about basic stock options information, that we wanted to create a website dedicated to the basics of trading stock options.

On Terry's Tips behalf, I acquired the URL http://www.stockoptions101.com/ from a person that was not using it. The URL had been registered for a few years so it already has good history online despite not having a good website full of content.

Then, Terry wanted the site launched quickly...of course. So we used Vermont Design Works "template" program where we took a standard installation of our ContentWorks content management system with a standard set of tools. In just a few weeks, we had the site designed and built and ready for content. Terry, despite having limited technical skills, was able to populate the site with content, set up navigation, and get the site ready.

We launched the site and we don't even know how, but Terry got his first sale without doing any advertising of any kind. Just another reason why content is king!! Publish good content on your website that speaks to your audience and is full of good keywords and google will give you traffic!!

More on the success of this site as we start to actively promote it online.

Cheers, Andrew

Blog updates made easy

Every website needs to have a blog or news update module. A blog is an easy way to create new pages on your website easily and efficiently without hiring a content writer and stressing about what you will say. Ideally, you will use your own customer service policies, schedules, and selling points for your business to update the blog.

Essentially, each blog post is a new page on your website. Each new page is like a raffle ticket that might draw a potential customer into your sales funnel. In addition, it also shows your site visitors that you are an active business that takes the time to stay on top of their website updating. And that similarly, they take care of their business as well as they take care of their website.

If your website looks at all like it is not getting attention, your web visitors will assume that you manage your business in the same way.

And in the worst case, not having a website clearly states that you are not in business or taking your business seriously.

Ok. Back to blog/news posts. Here is a quick list of ways to add blog posts on a calendar that is easy to execute:

10 federal holidays - list your hours of operation, emergency phone numbers if necessary, and let your customers and potential customers know about your availability during holidays. This can actually turn into 20 posts. A week before, announce your schedule. The day before, remind everyone of the schedule and wish them a happy thanksgiving, memorial day, presidents day, etc.

1 promotion per month (12 per year) - offer something each month as an incentive for web visitor to take action and become a customer. It doens't have to be the best deal ever. Just enough for the customer to take the next step with you and for you to build a stronger relationshiop. Usually, this can be set up once per year and it will automatically appear each month on your website.

Tips/Articles/Suggestions once per month (12 per year)- whatever business you are in, surely there is advice that you give customers every day in your business or on the phone. Use this same advice to come up with 1 suggestion or piece of advice each month about your business. Visit other websites, see what others in your industry are doing and use that for inspiration.

Post links to other tips/articles/suggestions (12 per year)- if you don't feel comfortable or dont' have time to write, find a good article from your industry, post the link on your site, and write a 1 or 2 sentence commentary on the article. Make it easy on yourself by using content from other websites!

So with holidays, promotions, and just links to other articles that you don't write, you are looking at 44 updates per year. Almost 1 per week. If you then write a few articles yourself or provide tips, you can get this up to once per week in no time.

Weekly updates to your website would put you ahead of 95% of all businesses on the web.

Social Media Forum Review

Rick Burnes of HubSpot on Inbound Marketing using Social Media

A forum hosted by BTV Social Media Breakfast Club

Twitter account: @rickburnes

Here are my notes (and some elaboration, corrections, and expansions on my part; very little editing or checking was done)

1. Interruption marketing is the old media model
2. Inbound marketing takes time but eventually saves money for a business (Inbound marketing being defined as providing great content, surrounding the content with on and off page search engine optimization, and letting your customers and prospects find you)
   Invite people into your website instead of “interrupting their lives”
3. Rick made a big mistake by declaring unabashedly that ALL traditional media is dead. He got hammered b/c he suggested that all traditional marketing is bad and online is the only way to go
4. Including direct mail and Pay Per click that don't work effectively
5. While I think Rick goes too far to suggest that internet marketing is the only way to go, I wish all my clients had been there to hear how effective and inevitable a content rich web presence is for all businesses if they want to compete in the long term.
6. I suggested to Rick and in my opinion it is more accurate to suggest that it is the effectiveness and ultimately the return on investment of traditional marketing that is diminishing. That on the rise is online marketing which includes providing lots of free content about your industry and business and your specific business approach.
7. I went on to tell him not to trash traditional marketing but talk about the trends in marketing. Traditional marketing still works but the trends all point to a diminishing return on investment. Starting now with online marketing means you'll be a player down the road when the trend lines get more severe.
8. There was a lot of conern in the audience about the quality of writing (the “I can’t write” problem) Writing content for the web does not have to be elegant. Just use the same language you use to sell your services, promote your products, and talk to your customers. Start a conversation about what you know. It does not have to be complicated.
9. As you live your life and business, put yourself into the content mindset.
10. Repurpose every interaction in your business into a content opportunity.
11. Probably the strongest analogy that Rick made was the Lottery Ticket. It's all about content. Each page or article of content from your website that appears in the search engines is a lottery ticket. Would you rather have the same 8 static pages as lottery tickets or a 100 new lottery tickets per year as you write 2 blog posts per week about your business?
12. Every business is different in terms of measuring success of your online presence. What are the metrics for your business? Customers? Subscribers? Diners? Do you make large one time sales? Do you have recurring revenue clients? Set your metrics and then measure them (and he wants you to use HubSpot).
13. Rick finished by giving a relatively subdued pitch for the $250 per month HubSpot online marketing software. $3000 per year might seem steep but if you were able to prove positive ROI (return on investment) on the $3000, it would be worth it.
    
    Questions from the audience:

Question: I use direct mail. It works. Why should I stop?

Rick: Online is better. Which was not a great answer. What he should have said…keep doing direct mail. But put effort into online marketing and continue to measure the return on investment for both channels. Over time, you will probably learn that the online marketing approach will provide much higher rates of return.

And in fact, use direct mail to build your list of email addresses so that you can continue to follow up with your direct mail prospects for almost nothing with email marketing.

Question: Must a business have your own blog on your own domain?

Yes. And I agree with Rick. Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that you might not put the same blog entries (or a shortend version pointing back to your main website) on a blog hosted at blogspot or wordpress. But you want all that wonderful blog content to be credited to your main Domain (aka, website address or URL or URI).

Question: Do I need a website and a blog?

Rick didn't answer this as we ran out of time. However, a blog can in fact act as a website. They can be one and the same. However, the blog format does not always lend itself to providing some of the basic information about your business nor advanced functionality that a full website can offer. Having just a blog is always better than nothing and some blogs are hard to differentiate from full websites! And a blog is always better to have than to have a web site that never gets new content or updates.

That’s all for now. I will surely touch on these topics more in the future. Content is king!

Please contact me if you have any specific questions about these issues.

New Terrys Tips Weekly Newsletter - The Difficulties of Making Money at Expiration

The Difficulties of Making Money at Expiration

A nice piece of how making money with stock options trading can be so tricky.

This is the kind of regular updating that we want all of our website customers to be making even if it can only be quarterly.

Content is king!

Terrys Tips Newsletter Posts

Adding content is critical! For Terry's Tips, we took their weekly newsletter which they were sending to their entire newsletter list every Monday and posted it to the website with an archive tool. We are now adding 1000 new words to the home page every week and adding articles to the archive. Within a week, this content is indexed by Google and appears in the search engines. And we are providing a great service for first time visitors. They get a tone of what Terry's Tips is all about and a snapshot into what the service being offered.

If you can, create a strategy that includes adding new content about your services, products or industry every week! Daily is best. Weekly is good. Monthly is a minimum.

And each of Terry's newsletters focuses on "trading stock options" which is one of their number one sought after keywords.

Why do you need Search Engine Optimization?

Why do you need Search Engine Optimization?

I am so convinced about the efficacy of doing search engine optimization for almost any kind of website, that I rarely sit down and ask myself this very question. And well, I haven't asked myself this question...but I did get this question from a prospective client the other day and it has been eating away at me ever since.

I know i shouldn't be emotional about something as seemingly innocuous as getting good rankings in the search engines, but with my need to understand how search engines work, my desire to figure out how they can be used effectively by small and medium businesses (large corporations have whole teams on this kind of thing and still don't get it right) and my seemingly insatiable competitive spirit, I can't help but being a bit passionate about SEO.

Anyway, as I stared down this prospect, I thought to myself, yes, why indeed care about search engine optimization for your business?

While all the craze about the Internet, the web, and the information revolution, is that search engine optimization has become as necessary as having a fax machine, using the telephone, and taking credit cards. It is not only a necessary function for any small or medium sized business, it can and will be a critical and probably dominant marketing sector of this century. I don't exaggerate. Over time, search engines will replace the yellow pages, directory assistance, and most other hard copy forms of information distribution. Why print this information when you can make 2 taps on your iPhone and get the information (or even your 1 cent freebie phone from your local cellular company).

Essentially, search engine optimization is a combination of building your website with the search engines in mind and keeping them happy with new keyword rich content. Building the code so that it can be used effectively by search robots, organizing the navigation, naming the pages, writing the content, optimizing the images, adding some "webmaster" tools like XML site maps, doing some basic submissions, getting backlinks, getting listed in directories, the list goes on...

The bottom line is that for whatever your business niche is; whether it is selling to an international or national audience or selling a product/service/software that is not geographically dependent; or you are just focused on serving your geographic area (for service, retail, or local businesses); your market can be expanded with search engine optimization and if you aren't doing it, your competitors certainly will.

Every day, I find business segments in the search engines that are under-served. Our work with Able Paint and Glass recently demonstrates this. In just a few weeks, we are starting to dominate their local search engine traffic for their website http://www.ablevt.com/. We simply organized the pages, optimized the code on each page, and did some basic submissions and linking. 44 #1 positions for their top keywords on the Big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN).

Once we add hyperlocal blogging to the mix, we plan on increasing all of these numbers!!

In the end, much like paying your website hosting bill, your yellow page advertising, and your local chamber of commerce dues, paying for ongoing search engine optimization with fresh optimized content and keeping up with the every changing world of search engines systems will be more than necessary.

And ultimately, in my opinion, ongoing dedication to SEO will provide a very lucrative return on investment for your business. If there isn't a return, I would never recommend it!

What are Internal Links? - SEO Basics

Internal links are links primarily within the content area (body) of each page that link to other, oftentimes deeper, pages within the same site. Usually, Internal Links can weave into the web page copy in a logical manner that points the visitor to further or deeper information that would logically flow from the page they are already viewing.

Since most Search Engines including Google follow links to other pages, internal linking is a great way to provide users with logical next steps for accessing information from your site and to expose as many of your webpages to the search robots as possible.

Ok, so now you say "internal links provide good additional ways for users to access information they might like but...": Can you drive good web ranking or page rank from Internal Linking? What kind of juice is there with internal links?

By no means does Internal Linking ensure that your website will be well ranked. What internal linking can assist with is guiding the search robots once they have visited your site. Once landing upon an individual page, the search robots will follow other links in the content area. So if your more popular, or better positioned web pages had internal links to deeper pages within your site or pages that get less attention from visitors, you are providing opportunities for these pages through Internal Linking.

Ok, now for some examples of our bad, good, better, best ranking system.

Bad
Linking to dozens of other internal pages from each page on your site with little thought or logical flow to the other pages. You already have (hopefully) a well thought out navigation structure and a site map built into your site so we don't recommend taking Internal Linking to this extreme. For example, on a mortgage company site, having internal links to every loan program offered (there are dozens of combinations) on every page would probably not pass the smell test with the search robots and it will drive the user insane. Why would a website visitor think that there was any difference in a applying for a mortgage in South Burlington, VT versus Burlington, VT? Having 2 separate links to these pages is purely for search engine purposes and could "turn off" a website visitor.

Essentially, you can't stuff internal links just to try and get a boost from the search engines. It lowers your integrity with website visitors and with the search engines.

Good
Providing a link or two within the site content where appropriate. if you reference a program or a webpage that is on your site, go ahead and set up a link to that page.

Better
Not only would you provide the link when mention content or pages that might be of further use to the visitor, you optimize the "anchor text" within each internal link to provide keyword juice to those pages.

Instead of "In order to check out our section on jumbo mortgages, click here: http://www.mortgagecompany.com/loan-programs/jumbo-mortgages", you would write the internal links smoothly within the flow of the sentence: "And from our South Burlington, VT office, you can learn more about our jumbo mortgage programs." The optimized "anchor text" for this link scores points for the jumbo mortgage page and still provides a clear path of action for the website visitor.

Best
To get the most from Internal Linking, work with your website content to make sure that you are able to add at least 3 internal links on every page and use optimized "anchor text" to point the way! (of course, by using keywords from your master keyword list). One part strategy and one part execution will combine to give you, your website visitors, and the search robots an optimized internal linking strategy that works.