Tag Archives: Internet marketing

2018 SEO and Internet Marketing. Things Are Changing!

Things are changing!  The 2018 version of the way the Internet is used is significantly different than just a few years ago and continues to evolve.  How fast can things change? For some of us,  an Internet without Google is still a very clear memory.  Things change fast, and you need to adjust as they do.

Today 70% + of all traffic is going through three websites (and their owned properties) those being, Google (YouTube), Facebook (Instagram), and Amazon and this trend is increasing every year, with no signs of slowing down. Think of that, 3 out of 4 users are on one of those three sites at any time. The other user is on one of the other millions of sites that exist.

This is Important! >>>>>
Add to that the new proposed changes to the “Net Neutrality” regulations that could go into effect in 2018,  which may allow ISP’s to offer discounts to users who for example only want access to the big three, and its time for a new approach to Internet promotion, marketing, and visibility.
Although SEO continues to be a viable option for those sites that already have decent Google rankings or presence, new sites are becoming much more difficult to push into the first few spots for searches.  Google also has done a good job of showing the paid ads first both in the Maps results and the organic listings.  A huge change from a few years ago.  Great organic listings simply are not as valuable as they were once, because they have been pushed down the page, and therefore are not seen nearly as much. (For popular keyword searches)
So whats the solution?
Google: Use a small and highly targeted pay per click program.  Ad words have a pretty bad reputation for results, but with an intelligent approach with an experienced manager, you can see a good return on investment. (we have excellent references).
Also, uploading and promotion of Youtube videos are part of the Facebook and Google strategy.  YouTube has a completely different system for ranking videos as opposed to Googles search engine, so to get a video viewed it’s important to understand YouTube SEO
Facebook: Facebook has become a pay for play service, for the most part for businesses. In its favor, it has excellent demographic targeting and is less expensive than Ad Words.  The challenge is having new and interesting posts to promote and having a clear understanding of your target audience.  It takes about 30 to 60 minutes to research, develop, write, post and promote a post after you have your campaign set up.
SEO:  Local SEO has become a niche Geo and topic game.  You can see good results if you focus intently on defined geographic areas, and narrow services or products.  Its called Hyperlocal SEO, and it still works.
Here’s what we are suggesting as the basic program to keep you visible and allow new prospects to find you on this new Internet.  For around $1300  a month you can have the Google, and Facebook marketing covered, and see a good return on investment using:
1.)  Google Pay per click.   We design your ads, and campaigns and then manage and improve them monthly.  Our strategy is to start very narrow and grow as you see success.
2.) A  Monthly Interview on the 24-7 home show site. This is hosted on Youtube with a link to the site as well as On the 24-7 home show site.  You can also use the interviews on your site at no charge.  We advertise the interview on Facebook.
3.)  Individual FaceBook posting on your facebook page.  We post and promote interesting and promotional pieces on Facebook. You’ll reach 1000’s of potential customers monthly through their Facebook feed.
4.)  (Optional) Hyperlocal SEO.  Define the most important areas to market into for your service(cities), clearly, define the service you want to sell and we write the plan, which includes new Hyperlocal SEO content to your site, backlinks to those pages and promotion of those pages to get them well ranked on Google.
Google my business is also a must for local companies.  We set it up, and optimize it for you.
We know every business is different and will customize an Internet marketing program specific to you.

SEO Leads. How To Generate Leads For SEO Services

SEO Leads. The How to generate more Leads.

<<< — Click to call us anytime by clicking on the click to call tab on the left.

Since writing my blog on how to sell SEO services (http://www.salesjumpstart.net/blog/2012/02/09/how-to-sell-seo-services/, and having one published on SEOmoz  http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/selling-seo-is-link-building-but-with-human-links, the number one question  I get is,… OK,  now how do I generate more leads.  So, with that in mind I will give a few sample systems that are so powerful you must promise never to tell anyone about.

But first, I have to say that you must be willing to spend either a good amount of your time, or pay someone a good amount of money to have a strong ongoing sales program. If you can’t do either of the above, this isn’t for you.

Quick recap.  Your best prospects fall into 1 of 4 categories.

  • They have no idea who you are
  • They know who you are
  • They trust you
  • They buy from you

So your job is to get, what is clearly the largest group, the “I have no idea who you are”, into the “they trust you” category.  Selling SEO is about trust.

Step One: (Tremendously Important) Your Target List.

Step one is like on site SEO, if you don’t do it, the rest of the program will not work.  I mean it. Define what type of company is most likely to trust you. We use what we call, a sales crystal ball system for this. Here is how that works.

Take your best customers over the last 2 years, and identify their common traits. Location, number of employees, age of company, industry, and associations they belong to. You should be able to see a clear pattern. We use 50 + possible areas of commonality, but if you have the basics above, and of course use your gut feeling about who trusts you, and you should have a good enough picture.

Now, let’s say in your research of your customers, you found that the most common areas are they belong to the BBB. They have 5-9 employees. They are in the Industrial Parks, and they have been in Business more than 6 years.

So your target customers will be members of the BBB, have an office in an industrial type building, have more than 5 employees and have been in business more than 6 years.

Español: Vista previa

Go develop this list, or hire a list broker to get the list for you.

Step Two:  Contact them.

Here’s the hard part for so many business. You have to contact them! Funny how this step stops about 90% of business from moving forward with a super powerful, gonna make you happy, sales campaign. Why?  The fear of rejection and it’s administratively outside of a SEO companies comfort zone. So here are two ways to make that first contact. One for the more courageous (or with the budget to hire a professional firm to do calls) and one for the more timid, who think of a cold call as a dip in a frozen lake.

Lion - Louisville Zoo

For the Lions (Courageous, or lot’s of marketing dollars to spend)

Call each company on the list and ask if it’s okay to send them an invitation to a webinar or seminar your company has produced specifically for their industry.  The actually script is important, so you may want professionally help on this, or hire a professional telemarketing firm to make these calls and log the results in a CRM for you. During the call you want the name of the person who makes the decisions on Internet marketing, as well as their email.  Promise to never spam them or sell the email.

Make sure you enter all of this in a CRM.

Let’s say you have a list of 500 businesses. You should call every one, and end up with about 100-150 approved emails to send invites too.  (You are well on your way at this point).  Your time frame will vary, but count on making 3 contacts an hour in this type campaign, so with 500 businesses someone will be calling for 167 hours. You can always start when you have 50 emails, and just continue the calling as you start your webinar/seminar program.

Step Three: Invite to your seminar/webinar.

The secret here is to have an absolutely killer name for your seminar/webinar. Something like: Learn the two simple and fast ways our ______ < industry> clients make more sales in a month than others do in a year using the Internet. Free.

 (YOU MUST BACK UP THIS CLAIM WITH PROOF)  

A well crafted email invitation with RSVP to your 30 minutes of powerful ways to attract new clients on line will start moving businesses on your list from they don’t know you to they do know you. This is a bigger step than you think.  And if nothing else happens, you now have a bunch of targeted companies that didn’t know you, who now do know you.

Use constant contact or a similar email system so you can track who opens the email, and have a RSVP  tracking. Offer three different days and times.  And have a well thought out- all about them, actually examples seminar/webinar ready to go.

Constant Contact

I am not going into detail here about how to pull off a great webinar/seminar and get people to RSVP . If you do some research you will find a ton of good information and help on-line.

Step Four: Give the Webinar or Seminar (On different days and times).

Basics here. Make it valuable. Give them real information and examples.  Do not spend more than 90 seconds talking about you or your company. They don’t care at this point. Make it great tips on how to utilize the Internet to get more calls or prospects walking in the door.

At the end of the webinar, offer your help.  Something like, if this all sounds a little over whelming, we do have 10 spots open for clients that we can do this work for.  And as a thank you for being on our call, we want to make a special offer, you can have both the programs we just talked about for the price of one,  or we can through in an additional $$$$  for your new Google Ad words campaign if we start this week. Or the offer of your choice.

Many of you have been on webinars or in seminars where this exact process happened. I can tell you that they work if done correctly.

System for the more timid: Joint venture with a company that targets the same group of prospects. A web design company that doesn’t provide SEO services is a perfect joint venture. They have prospects that already trust them. Make a few calls and see who would be interested in hosting or promoting a webinar on the topic you developed.  If your content is good and valuable for their customers and prospects they may be very open to it. You save a ton of time and get a third party endorsement as well. Or find the associations these prospects are most likely to belong to, and make then an offer to provide this content at no charge.

And finally if you can not do either of the above.  Send a series of three letters (each with different content) to the target list spaced by two weeks.  Give then a web site to register for the webinar, and repeat the process every two months with new letters. The letters need to be well crafted, and here again, I would recommend you get professional help if you are not a pro at the copy writing thing.  If you’re sending to 500 businesses, your cost will be around $250.00 per mailing, and $750.00 for the three letters.

At the end of this process (and it never really ends) you should have about 200 businesses that now have moved from the “don’t know you”, to the “know you”.  With a good webinar series, you should see about 150 of that move to the trust you bucket!  And of those, you should see new sales of about 35 to 50 over a year.

This is just one of several successful sales programs we have developed for clients over the last 10 years. It’s not original, as many of the most successful companies in the world use this system, or one like it.   I’ll blog more on other systems in 2013 if we get enough requests.

Now if all of this seems a little too much, and you want some help, we can provide all of the above, or direct you to good vendors for the parts you need help with.  We have room for 4 new business development clients in the first quarter of 2013.  If you are interested in this, just send me an email. The Basic cost is $ 2800. a month for all of the development and calls (30 hours a month)  to your target list. We also will co-host your webinar the first time if you need that.  As each program is different, and we must have confidence in your commitment to succeed, we need to do an interview with you to determine if this is the right fit and the right program. We have other highly successful programs that may be a better fit both for your budget and your goals.

 

Have comments or want to discuss this post?

<<<<<<<< ———————–Click to call us anytime by clicking on the click to call tab on the left.

Or, email me at mike@myonecall.com  and lets talk.  I

By Mike Bayes

Managing Partner of My One Call LLC


 

 

 

 

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Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Pay a Good SEO Company

Top 10 reasons Why You Should Pay a Good SEO Company

  1. Your prospects use the internet to find your services.
  1. Your Revenues come from one or two primary sources, and the Internet isn’t one of them.
  1. You have tried to get your site more visible on your own, but it’s not.
  1. You have tried Pay Per Click and it didn’t work.
  1. You have used a SEO company and never saw real results.
  1. You would like new prospects to call you every day.
  1. Your site was built by a friend of your sister who now has gone into real estate and doesn’t have time to make changes, but you think it’s a pretty good site.
  1. You don’t have 16 hours a week to keep up on the latest SEO news, research, and changes.
  1. You hate to work on a computer.
  1. Because you didn’t build your own house or car right?English: seo company 

Reasons your shouldn’t hire a SEO Company

  • They promise you first position rankings
  • They are very inexpensive
  • They sent you a very impressive email sales pitch
  • Your sisters company used them for “Locksmith for your home in Garden City” and they are now in the 5th position under that keyword.
  • Your prospects do not find your services on line.
  • They talk about really complicated Internet stuff and seem to understand the Interweb really well.
  • They know secret Google information because they worked there 5 years ago as an Intern.
  • They know secret SEO tricks they won’t tell you. (There are no SEO tricks BTW)
  • They have no references in your industry.
  • They can not produce 5 references from the last 12 months.
  • They won’t tell you who they have worked for based on client privacy. (Huh?)

What you are paying for when you hire an SEO.

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 17: Chelsea Rising watches ...
NEW YORK, NY – MAY 17: and  Clear Vision into SEO (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)


  • Years of experience.
  • Constant research into changes in SEO.
  • A clear and proven understanding of White Hat SEO.
  • A long track record which recent success in generating revenue through the Internet.
  • Transparency and reporting.
  • A complete understanding of on site SEO, Social media as it relates to promoting your site, conversion tactics on your site, content generation, your link profile, and high authority site attraction.

What you shouldn’t pay for when you hire an SEO

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 17:  People attend  the 5th...
NEW YORK, NY – MAY 17: People attend the 5th annual Internet Week. Are you taking Notes?


  • Submitting your site to a bunch of directories every month.
  • Writing poorly written articles and spinning them on a bunch of Article sites.
  • A secret sauce.

Search Engine Optimization has changed more in the last year than in the history of the service. The proof that a SEO is worth its fee is if their clients have not suffered in the last year, and if it was local SEO, since April 2012.

Ask them for references from 3 similar industry clients who have used them for several years, and 3 that have started with them since April. Call those references and look for them on line.

Our company, My One Call llc provides internet visibility marketing for Attorneys, CPA’s, Residential Contractors, Home Improvement Companies, Publishing Company’s, On Line E Commerce sites, Professional services, and many more.  We often get called in after a business has spent far too much money on sub standard SEO services.  Using the above guidelines will save you money, and get you to the right Internet Marketing company quicker.

Call us if we can help. 303 500 3053.

 

 

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Add Pay Per Click to Your SEO Campaigns?

Time to Add Pay Per Click to Your Denver SEO Campaigns? The Answer is yes.

Google has done a masterful job of slowly, yet consistently diminishing the visibility of the local maps on search engine results over the last 18 months.

Let me give you an example.  Here are the results from a search for Mold Removal Denver about 2 years ago.

Here they are now (June 2012)

Here’s another example of Electrician Northglenn CO. from a few years ago.

Here are the results today:

For a great overview and infographic on this read and view the David Mihm web design and Local SEO blog at   http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/world/

It’s pretty clear… for great Internet visibility for your site, working on Google Maps (now Google Plus Local) is only part of the strategy. Not long ago it could provide the vast majority of your traffic. Today, it’s only a piece.

I have been involved very recently in two conversations where clients are under the impression that people don’t click on the Pay Per Click ads. This is very understandable from someone who knows something about how Google serves search results, because we all know someone just paid to be there. As I pointed out in each conversation, it is somewhat amazing to me how many Denver business owners are NOT aware that the top three results (in many cases) are in fact paid advertising.  And the more recent research seems to indicate that generically, about 15% of clicks are on Pay Per Click Ad’s. Hey… that’s as good as being in a top 3 position!

And, it’s not all that different than the days when consumer’s used the yellow pages to find local services. The biggest ads where (and are) listed first, and they receive the vast majority of the calls. People understand that they were paid advertising, and didn’t page back to find the smaller or line ads, because the company didn’t pay for that listing.

So a complete SEO program needs to take in to account three different areas, those being, organic search, local results , and Pay per Click advertising. And it should be designed to take into account the four different methods a person may use to conduct a local search:

Keyword + Suburb

Keyword

Keyword+ Major City

Keyword + zip

Each serves up different results.

Another big advantage of using the Google Ad words program is you can see great traffic statistics for key words that have become unavailable since Google stopped providing this information on many searches.

So to answer the original question, should you be using Pay Per Click?  Yes, but,  Ad words has become increasing difficult for a novice to navigate. It’s easy to waste a lot of money if you are not trained and familiar with keyword types (exact match, Phrase match, Broad Match, Negative match and others) as well as the location targeted, quality scores and types of bidding available.

Our suggestion is at least have a Internet Marketing firm who has experience in PPC set up and monitor your ad words (and any other PPC services) for you.  We have lot’s of clients getting strong return on investment using PPC.

Please feel free to call me at 303-500-3053 ext 1 if you want some help.  I may not pick up, as I get several calls a day from this blog, and have lots of other phone calls and meetings to be on or in, but I will call you back! Or feel free to email me as well at mike@myonecall.com

 

 

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How To Sell Search Engine Optimization Services

How to Sell Search Engine Optimization Services:

Why do so many small SEO companies struggle with selling their services?  Many reasons, as you will see below. SEO and Internet marketing services are, in the universal world of all type sales, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being really hard, and 1 being simple, about a 7.  Here’s why.

White hat seo symbolizes good ethic techniques...

1.) You are generally selling to a small business owner or manager.Small business owners really hate spending money on anything they can not see a very quick and tangible result from, and they have very good reason to feel this way. You must understand that most small businesses operate on a very slim margin of error when it comes to advertising and promoting their business. Unlike the fortune 500, where a $100,000 campaign is small fry, a few thousand dollars to a small business can be a big investment.  A $10,000 investment may be one of the largest advertising investments they make.

2.) They don’t understand the process and experience needed to do SEO.

Ensure Website Visibility With Search Engine O...

It’s far easier to buy a T.V. or radio campaign than SEO. You can see or hear what you are paying for. It’s an easy decision (in comparison) to purchase a new server, computer, or furniture.  SEO is a promise, an “IOU” if you will.

Many small business owners I have worked with just think it’s some sort of I.T., PR, Web based thing we do.

3.) Most local SEO providers don’t have sales experience and rely on word of mouth.  This in itself isn’t a bad thing. If you have to rely on referrals and word of mouth you are going to have to be very good at what you do to keep the existing customers happy enough to refer you, so if this is your number one (and possible only) sales strategy, you are probably doing pretty good work for your clients! (That assumes you are getting referrals)

4.)  Most Local SEO providers don’t really try to sell. This goes with number 3. Because they do not have the experience or training, they just don’t try. Can’t blame them really, if someone asked me to rebuild my cars engine, and just handed me a book with “how to rebuild your cars engine”, the job would most likely, never be done. Or if it was, the car would not run, or be so rusty due to the passage of time, that it would be worthless.  Does that sound like the state of your sales process?

5.) Many businesses in some markets have had a bad experience with SEO  or Internet marketing.

Clicks-Hype in Toni Kurz because Nordwand (Fil...

This is the old one bad apple syndrome. 

So what are the solutions?  If you look at all the reasons there is one very large commonality.  They are all fear based both on the prospect side and on the sellers side.  A SEO service has to reduce and eliminate the fear of buying and the fear of selling.

How do you reduce the fear in buying?  You replace it with confidence by identifying what the fear is, and addressing it.  Let’s look at the first fear:

1.)    I am afraid I will waste my money. How do you replace this with confidence?  First acknowledge the concern (fear).  Let them know you understand that many companies have a natural fear that SEO won’t work, and it will be a waste of money. And of course ask them if they feel this way.

2.)    How do you answer that or address it?  Actual current examples of SEO clients that are similar to their business with a full explanation of their success. Don’t go summary version with this. Have all the facts and details ready. Where they where ranked, what their traffic was and how much revenue increase they have seen. Have 4 pages of explanation, and the last page being the reference letter from that client. Three of these type examples, and a phone call from the prospects office to one of your current clients, on speaker phone,  to let your current client tell your prospect how great your service is, and that fear as significantly put to rest.

All the buying and selling fears above can be addresses with logical, honest tactics, and having trained over 1000 sales professionals,  hundreds of sales managers and business owners, I know that any company that makes a commitment to the sells process will see results.

Let me know if you would like a free consultation on how to grow your revenue.  You can reach me at mike@myonecall.com

Oh… and if your challenge is just not seeing enough new prospects, we have proven systems that can jump start your sales with lead generation.

 

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Inbound Marketing Doesn’t work

Inbound Marketing Doesn’t work…. for many small and medium businesses.

Had an interesting discussion with a business owner this week that I have known for over 15 years. He recently invested a bunch of energy and money into a new data center and is putting together his marketing/sales strategies. Having been in the industry for 20 years, it was a logical move, and he wanted to discuss SEO and other search engine marketing systems.

As with any new prospect I wanted to see how he was selling his services today, and to whom. During that piece of the discussion, he asked me is outside sales and cold calling, dead. (For some history… my sales experience started in outside sales, after a few months as a telemarketer, and at one point I managed a sales force of over 650 sales professional, and a few amateurs, and today my company manages outside sales programs for several businesses, so the question caught me a little off guard.

I can completely understand the question. Everything you hear today is about Inbound Marketing, Social Media, SEO, and anything Internet related.  Tom Hopkins and the gang of “sales trainers” that use to dominate the sales scene are either retired or selling books on the Internet.  Internet type marketing now dominates the small business thought process.

Inbound Marketing works!

But I am here to tell you, outside sales is alive and well, and very large successful companies still use out side sales as the foundation of the revenue generating process, but the out side sales process has changed in a few decades. Buyers are far more educated because of the internet, and in many cases more price aware because of the economy.

That’s why Inbound marketing can make a lot of sense. If your prospects are looking for your service on line, then … YES be an inbound marketing fanatic.


Inbound Marketing Doesn’t work!

Inbound Marketing Disclosed: Behind the Scenes

There are many type companies that their sales are relationship, and referral based, and their customers do not use the internet to find and purchase their offering. The fact that only about 5-7 companies per service type in a local area are really going to generate significant traffic from an Internet marketing program also is pretty much no brainier when it comes to how much revenue is actually provided by In bound marketing in an industry type. Inbound marketing is a very limited crowded over financed space.

Cold calling and out side sales does work!

Let me give you an example. A commercial contractor does not find customers on the Internet. They find new customers through face to face contact. We did research of buyers in the commercial construction industry and found the largest commonality for making a purchase from a new vendor (and we spoke to over 100 buyers in the market) was…. they had looked the company they bought from in the eye, and had a face to face meeting of one sort or another to start the process. Read that statement again, a face to face encounter to START the sales process.

Companies that had made a phone call to get on a bid list, or sent information had almost no chance. Companies that actively worked on getting in front of new prospects were the winners. That contact was overwhelmingly through an outside sales type tactic.

One of our clients is positioned number 1 – 3 for just about every keyword you can imagine a prospect would use in their city for commercial construction.  They bill over 4 million dollars a year. How much from the Internet in 2011? Nothing. Did they get bids from the Internet, yes, a few, did any close? No.

Second example.

We did sales coaching and  SEO for one of the largest residential paint contractors in the state. They have incredible rankings throughout the metro area for most house painting terms.  They do as much business through leads on the internet as many paint contractors do in 5 years. Is this their number one source of sales? Nope. There number one source of sales is the 50 outside direct door to door sales people they put on the street every year for 5 months or so.

The fact is Inbound marketing should be a piece of your marketing strategy, and maybe a large piece, if you have a service your prospects look for on the Internet. But out side sales and business development still may be the number one tactic your company should use. That’s why we provide both Inbound Marketing and Business development, because every business is different.

Call me if you want to discuss which is the better option for your marketing. http:www.salesjumpstart.net

 

 

 

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In Search, Location and Local Intent Matter

Image of Google & Yahoo offices in Haifa. Both...

In Search, Location and Local Intent Matter

I was just reviewing another SEO’s report to a client. Wow. Looking at the report you would think that they were dominating the local search for their keywords.  But, and here we go again, they are only tracking one of the four type search queries a prospect might use to find their type company when it comes to a local intent search.

The report notes rankings for the following queries:

Suburb of city plus Keyword.

Search Engine Optimisation. Search Engine Opti...

Example, if you were a plumber in Kansas City would be

Riverside MO. Plumber.

But the reality is, that prospect might use any of the following queries, and depending on where (the location) that Google thinks they are in, the results will be different.

They are just as likely to use

“Plumber” with no local intent.

In this case Google is going to serve the results based on their information as to where the search is being conducted.  Most likely you will see a Map’s listings.  Very different than the search the SEO is tracking.

Or, they may use the main city in the search

Plumber Kansas City.

This can bring up blended results, with possible Map’s listings and organic.

Or, they may use a zip code (Less likely, but it happens more than you may think) Plumber 90123

blended and different results.

So the reality of the SEO ranking report is they are only viewing a minority of search queries for this customer. Frankly, intentionally or not, they are putting the best foot forward, and hiding the other foot.

Local search engine optimization is a different process than national or generic optimization. In each keyword, a good local SEO knows to focus on having the client rank in all 4 of these type queries.  That’s great SEO.

If we can help you with your local SEO  or Internet marketing, give me a call for a free assessment of what it might take.

Mike Bayes, 303 500 3053 ext 1

 

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How To Link Build for SEO

How to Link build, and a List of Links for SEO.

Learn How To Become A Great Link Builder

Over the next few months you are going to learn how to become a great builder of back links, and we are going to not only teach you how we do it, but provide you with weekly opportunities we have found to help you see that our system of acquiring web visibility is white hat and powerful.

So how many times has a business owner  or anyone searched for, or wished for, a simple list of links that they can use to add their site url and magically watch their web site rankings move up in the organic search results?

225,000  searches

Google Chrome
Google Chrome (Photo credit: thms.nl)

According to my Google Ad Words Keyword tool, that term is searched about 22,000 times a month in the United States.  “How to link build” is around 65,000, add the associated terms and you are well above 225,000 searches a month.  For those of us in the Internet Marketing world, that doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but when you consider that a quarter of a million searches are completed looking for either a list of SEO links, or how to build back links, that’s a bunch of interest.

Get a couple Links a week

English: White hat seo symbolizes good ethic t...
Image via Wikipedia

I want to start giving a couple of good linking opportunities a week here. That should help some of you who are in the do it yourself mode, and also provide some additional evidence, through your feedback, that these sites actually send traffic to your web site. Other local SEO’s may find this helpful as augmenting their SEO work for local clients.

But first I want you to understand our philosophy on search engine visibility. You should only take an action that you would take if Google and the rest of the search engines didn’t exist. Why? Because if you are adding your site to a directory, or commenting on  a blog, or buying URL’s and building mini sites, or writing a bunch of different blogs, or book marking your site on social book marking web sites, for the sole purpose of increasing your rankings, you are heading for big trouble.  That’s the stuff Google and Bing don’t like, and are continuing to develop tactics to identify these questionable links, and downgrade or penalize the sites. When they do that, your site loses trust, and can fall off the rankings chart.  Why work hard on a tactic that is eventually going to fail?

Not only will we be providing a few great sites you can add your site to, but, we also want to teach you how to find good opportunities to build your web visibility.

How do you get the link information, just subscribe to our news letter, and we will send you out the information weekly. Sign up here http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=kgftjqcab&p=oi&m=1102206047434

Just choose if you want just SEO tips, or want the Sales Tips as well. I look forward to your feedback!

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How to Sell SEO Services

How to sell Search Engine Optimization Services.

Mike

Our company provides several sales acceleration services, one of which is business development, as in selling more. So I thought I would give the SEO and Internet Marketing firms that are struggling a little with sales, a few thoughts on what has worked for us, and what works in sales in every thing.

Our company, My One Call, LLC gets about 95% of new clients through referrals from happy clients, and other business influencers in Colorado. In the distant past we did some pay per click and other marketing.  For any of you who have been down that path, you know the challenges associated with selling to an advertising generated lead, those being, they are shopping (that’s how they found you right?)  so you will be competing against mainly price, and they don’t know you or trust you. A well known marketing guru once wrote; “if you think about it, advertising is really an admission of failure”  Or some thing like that. I think the point is if you provide spectacular service you shouldn’t need to advertise, that your happy customers will send you lot’s of business and to an extent that’s true, but you need to remind them that you need that from them.

In sales there are four steps with a prospect.

  1. They don’t know you
  2. They know you
  3. They trust you
  4. They buy from you or refer you to others who will.

Trust is the point you need to get to with all prospects. The best way to get a prospect to the trust category is get a 3rd party endorsement of your service. If someone they trust tells them that you are the cat’s meow, the big dog, and the best ever, you are in great shape.

So selling more means getting more endorsements. I am not talking about a written testimonial for your site (although that’s great!) but the reality is most prospects need more than that.

  • We send out a monthly email to our current and past clients. It has very specific copy written to encourage them to tell other companies about us. Frankly, we bug them all the time for referrals.
  • We also refer business to them at every opportunity.
  • We also try to provide out of the box free services, as an example we hold quarterly networking meetings with business owners to discuss how they can help each other in business.
  • If we hear about or see  something working well in advertising or promotion we investigate it, and pass on the information to our clients who might benefit.
  • We provide a free research service for clients who are approached with new advertising opportunities. We call the references, speak with the sales peoples, and give them an honest opinion if we would do it or not.
  • And we bug them for referrals in very systematic and persistent ways.
  • We play golf with Clients.
  • We try to find new ways to be valuable every day. Not new ways to make money.

 

The final point for now is you should target influential businesses.  If you spend all your time working with start ups, your span of influence is limited. If you work with businesses who are part of the community, and well respected, your referrals will go through the roof.

I know that many web design firms and Internet Marketing companies are very good at what they do, but selling doesn’t fall into their skill sets. It’s frustrating to see other companies that may provide less service and a lower quality product sell more month after month.

We have a great marketing and business development program for these type companies. Affordable and strategic, they return over $20.00 for every $1.00 invested.  They are the Business Development program, and our sales coaching programs.  If you need to grow your company, and are outside of the Denver Metro area (Hey, you guys don’t need the help) call me for a free sales and marketing assessment. I guarantee you will get at least one new idea that will build your sales fast.  303 500 3053 ext 1  <<<  That’s me… Mike Bayes

www.salesjumpstart.net

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Top 3 Rankings Google In a month.

Always good to end the week with some good news. We had two new campaigns start less than a month ago with our Internet Marketing, including search engine optimization, and both are in a top three position for a important keyword search.

Blue Sky is already number one for basement finishing in their city, and now remodeling.

And American painting Specialist started a few weeks ago…

From nowhere on the first page to either number 1 or number 3.  Not all of our clients see this type of fast rankings growth, but they all do eventually. Watch for Pinnacle Structural Services in the first few SER’s over the next few weeks.

Search engine visabilty is important for most small business and it always feels great to see it working so well.  If you are working on your site’s visibility there are several key areas to pay attention to.

SEO TIP:

Although the term “meta title” may sound like an eighties rock band, it’s the most important on site piece of information Google and others look for. Not only is your home page title important, but every page on your site should have a unique meta title.  Google doesn’t rank your web site, Google ranks a page.  Don’t let your pages compete for the same keywords!  Make sure you choose one page you want to promote, and use your main keywords in that pages title, and then DO NOT use it in all the others.

Our starter SEO packages is also a great way to get your site more visible in search engines and it’s rankings moving up. You can read about it n our starter SEO page.

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