Google Analytics is the first thing that I add to a website, so we can determine where to focus our marketing efforts. This week, I got a nice e-mail post from Google for introducing one of the most valuable tools in Analytics – Their Traffic Sources report.
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I love success stories, how-to guides and all the “What To Do To….” stories, but even better, and often funnier, are the What not to do” stories. Hubspot came out with a wonderful, tongue-in-cheek, slideshow “How To Market Like It’s 1999″.
Check it out. Oh, and if any one actually does these things, we offer some great workshops educating small business to use online marketing.
Getting better search results for local businesses is becoming one of the top 5 topics I get questions about lately. It’s a whole different ball-game than improving website seo. Here’s the simple 1-2-3 step process to improve your local search results. 1.). Our first priority is no longer programming your webpage for keywords and search engine readability, but claiming the listings in the search engine’s local directories. 2.) Instead of worrying about off-page links, we have to make sure other directories have the correct business Name, Address and Phone (NAP). GetListed.org is one of those insider secrets for finding out [...]
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I often promote that content marketing gives the best return on your your marketing effort, but it requires the most valuable commitment – a business owner’s time. With other forms of marketing, a business owner hands over a check and the marketing people do their magic. Yes, the checks can really add up, but the business owner can focus on what they do best – running their business. With content marketing, if you don’t want a fluff piece, a business owner needs to spend time to craft and cultivate the message. A lot of the time a business owner spends [...]
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What would it be like if someone had said “I approve of all the choices you’ve made”? What would it be like if I never doubted that I was making the right choice? Having a peer review group can be so important for a small business. Many small business owners are bombarded with demands, requests and desired from the customers, sales people and internal staff, that it becomes easy to say yes or no based on today’s immediate demands, without any serious consideration if the request makes sense for long-term growth of the business. Every small business experiences ups and [...]
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Facebook just announced some changes to their profile, including how you can share posts on an individual basis. The assumed reason that they are doing this is to compete with Google+’s “Circles”, but with 600+ million subscribers, why do they really need to compete against Google+? Yes, there may be a finite number of people who will use Social Media, and most of us try new platforms when they come out. While there is no loyalty in the social media world, we typically go where it is easiest to communicate with our friends. Is Facebook worried that the 600+ million [...]
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I get asked this question all the time, and my answer always seem to disappoint. Google produces a list of search results based upon the word phrase you enter into their search box. This word phrase is called a Keyword Phrase, and the search results will vary greatly based upon the word or words, the order of the words and the person who is searching. The number one variable for how long it will take and how much it will cost to get on the first page of Google, is the number of competitor results for the keyword phrase. If [...]
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A few months ago, I attended a networking session, sponsored by the Fairchester Networking Group, and our key speaker was Paul Lavoie of “Response – the power to provoke”. 5 Marketing Success Principles for Every Business: Recommended book by Chet Holmes If all the rules of marketing have changed, why do we keep doing the same things? In the good old days two main methods of marketing. Put an ad in the Yellow Pages and wait for the phone to ring Get a customer, open a business, take good care of the customer and get referrals I was recently asked [...]
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Have you used Google Places yet? What is Google Places? Google is more than just a search engine, now they are also a directory, but a directory on steroids! Instead of the Yellow Pages, consumers are using Google Places to find local business’s phone numbers, addresses and information for services they need. Unlike the Yellow Pages of old, this service is free. You’ll discover hundreds of advantages for listing your business on Google Places. Listed below are 10 advantages worth mentioning. Online listings like Google Places is the way of the future, and in many areas, it has replaced paper [...]
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For years now, we have heard of a wonderful technology called blogging. For anyone who does not know about blogs, it is a simplified technology to publish content to the internet. Using blogging software, anyone familiar with a word processor is able to add a page of content to the internet without going through a web-master or programmer. With blogs, suddenly the barriers to publishing are torn down, and the news industry, public relations and sales people have been adapting ever since. There are many advantages of publishing content to the web, and blogging reduces the cost and technical requirements [...]
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