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Geeks on Steroids did search engine optimization for a select group of clients several years ago but decided to get out of online marketing for other people and focus on our own sites. This year after many meeting and lots of talks we have decided to once again start offering search engine optimization.

Archive: December 2006

Blogs and Traffic

I’ve been studying some of the top blogs and the one thing they all have in common is that they all post a lot. Some of them get as many as two dozen post a day. I’ve decided to take one of my blogs and starting on the first I’m going to attempt to make around 10 post per day every day on that blog. I want to see if this alone with no other marketing will allow me to get traffic to the blog and if so how much.

Dominating a Market With Conversion

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to dominate a market, I’m not talking about making a living in a market, I’m talking about truly dominating the market.

It’s not as hard as a lot of people want to make it out to be but it does take a lot of hard work and a person that is obsessed at being the best. If you think you have what it takes and want to hear my two cents then keep reading.

I’d start with the name, you need something that stands out from the crowd. Something that says we are both different and better then the competition and most importantly, your design needs to say the same thing. Your text needs to speak to your potential clients and make the browsing site visitor want to become a client. Your site content needs to be powerful and emotional, letting the site visitor know what your product can do for him.

I’d have a picture of the site owner on the website to help build credibility, an about us page, an 800 number, contact information and real business address on every page, testimonies from real clients, I’d keep my home page fresh and updated weekly, custom 404 pages, text written like a real person, links to my privacy policy on every page and a website that had personality from the design to the text.

Once this was done I would test and improve the site daily, common sense says that if your obsessed with site conversion then it’s only a matter of time before you can dominate the market. Everything else being equal, if I’m bidding on AdWords and can convert more site visitors into customers then you can, then it’s only a matter of time before I’m able to out bid you on every keyword because I’m making more money then you are.

Step one in dominating a market is having a website that will convert site visitors into site clients.

PPC vs Organic

I’ve seen a lot of people posting on different forums that either PPC does not work or that it does not work as well as organic results. I have to wonder how much these people know about setting up a page for PPC.

Paid Per Click works as well or better than organic results if it is done correctly but then there are very few people that understand how to do them correctly and this is the reason so many people say organic is better.

With Google AdWords I’m able to build a site for my visitors. If I want to use pictures, graphics or anything else to help convert that visitor into a customer, it does not matter. The site is 100% for the visitor and has nothing to so with the search engines.

Everything I do is about improving conversion rates and this starts with the keywords I choose. If I’m selling 18kt gold earrings then I do not want to bid on keywords like; jewelery, gold, earrings, rings, neck lesses or anything else that does not describe my product perfectly. The idea is to convert every single person that lands on that page. My keywords could be things like;

18kt gold earrings
Custom 18kt gold earrings
earring 18kt gold

and the list can go on and on describing my earrings to the point that any visitor that lands on that page will get exactly what he wants. Also the more exact my keywords the less the competition and the less I have to pay for each click.

Once I get my list of keywords together I need to create a page for each of the keywords and create those pages for converting visitors.

If my keyword is going to be 18kt gold rabbit earrings then the page they land on should have pictures of the 18kt gold rabbit earrings, the first line of text should say 18kt gold rabbit earrings, we should have text that tells them what’s in it for them and a call to action that guides them in the direction we want them to go.

The conversion is effected by the navigation, motivation, and trustworthiness of the landing page.

Now that we have the pages set up we need to add our keywords into AdWords.

AdWords comes with  broad match set as it’s default setting. This means that if my keywords are 18kt gold earrings my keywords will show for anything with 18kt gold earrings. Examples; 18kt earrings gold, Zales gold earrings and 18kt rings, Colombian 18kt gold and silver earrings. While you may rank for keywords you did not think of you will also rank for a lot of keywords you did not want to.

The AdWords also come with the default setting that allows you to rank for things you’ve never thought of. Let’s say my keyword is 18kt Colombian Gold Earrings, this default setting allows me to rank for 14kt Colombian Gold, Colombian Jewelery, Colombian silver and many others. The advantages are that I rank for keywords I never thought of the disadvantage is that I rank for keywords I never wanted to.

By Placing square brackets around my keywords I change this setting. [Colombian 18kt gold earrings] now I will only rank for that keyword when it is typed in exactly that way.

There is a lot more to the AdWords then this but I only wanted to make a point that the AdWords do work better or as well as the organic searches, if they are set up correctly and that there is a lot more to setting them up then just throwing some keywords together and starting to bid on Google. When someone says that they have tested and tried them and that the organic searches did better I have to wonder if they set them up correctly.

I’m not saying not to do SEO but don’t leave out the PPC.

Starting A Forum

I’ve been asked by many people and I’ve seen many people post, asking how to get a forum started. I’ve always stayed away from these types of things because there is a lot more to it then what most people see.

Getting a forum started is really a pain and even after it gets going that pain still remains. You have to constantly figure out new ways to keep the spammers out while at the same time trying to keep the forum active.

But due to a new project I’ve recently taken on, we have decided to add a forum to that site. So here’s some of the things I’ll do to get that forum going.

1. I’ll create the forum with few topics to make it easer to get going.

2. I’ll make up members and post to make the forum look busy.

3. I’ll write articles and at the bottom I’ll put links back to the forum that says of you would like to discuss this more then join our forum and share your ideas.

4. I’ll set up a private section where you can see the headers but can not read the post unless your a member.

5. I’ll put the most recent threads on the front page of the site.

6. I’ll participate in other forums similar to or on the same topics as mine.

7. I will promote the most active members to moderator.

8. I will reward people after so many post.

9. We will have lots and lots of free giveaways.

10. I’ll give away links to the most active members.

Blogging Like Perez Hilton

I’ve spent some time today looking at http://perezhilton.com/, after all he’s involved in a 7.5 million dollar lawsuit with X17 and you have to work hard to get sued by the paparazzi. I found the lawsuit rather funny as it seems that X17 thought once they fixed their site so you can no longer right click and  save the photo that this would stop people from stealing their photos.

They said a lot of other stupid stuff like they were suing because they don’t like him but I don’t think Perez gas got 7.5 million and he has a pretty good case His attorney, Bryan Freedman, said Hilton has a legal right to make satirical or humorous use of newsworthy photographs.

If the copyright lawsuit succeeds, “the effect would be to eliminate the ability to comment on and transform photographs under the fair-use exception to the Copyright Act,”

I think X17 should put their money and time to better use by figuring out ways to secure their business.

But that’s not why I spent the day looking at http://perezhilton.com/ my interest in the blog is to see what made it so popular. Now the lawsuit has helped him out in that popularity area but here are some other things I’ve found that he does.

1.Updates his blog two dozen or more times a day.
2.Uses a lot of photos
3.Breaking news
4.Short and two the point
5.Rude

He’s made a six figure income this year and his office is a corner booth in a coffee shop. Might be worth looking into ways to use what he does in our own businesses.

Marketing With Silicone Bracelets

My name is Janeth Duque and I’ve been successfully building and marketing websites online for the last five years. I’ve dealt with a lot of people over those years and the one thing they all have in common is that they want to get their name in front of potential clients and customers.

There are a lot of ways of doing this and some are better than others but there is one that everyone needs to have in their tool belt and that’s silicon bracelets. The neat thing about silicon bracelets is that they are not only inexpensive but you’re able to put your company name, logo and a little information about your business right there on the bracelet.

There are so many advantages when using silicone bracelets that is almost impossible to name them all. While the prices are the best I’ve seen for any marketing budget the marketing benefits go a lot deeper then that.

For example, let’s say you’re at a trade show and want to hand out silicone bracelets to visitors at your booth. The bracelets are nice looking and trendy so people are going to keep them and it makes since that people will come from a wide range of places for the trade show, this allows you to get your message out beyond your local environment.

While the effects of a TV commercial will only last for seconds the effects of the silicone bracelets last for the life of the bracelet which could be many, many years from now.