Master SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It means making sure your site is build on a solid foundation (optimized) for search engines to find you.

Think of a search engine as the librarian at your high school who has to label all of the new books with the old Dewey Decimal System and put them on the right shelves.

If she labels a book on sports as being a book on cooking that book will be lost forever.

Likewise, if you have a nice website or blog with great pictures of your products and each photo is labeled “img_1″ or “photo-234″ they will be lost forever.

To know how you should be labeling your site, which includes Titles, Descriptions, Tags, Headlines and even content checkout Google’s Keyword Tool.

It’s free to use and it gives you insight into what the marketplace types into Google’s search bar when they are looking for what you do and/or offer.

When I do a search for “email marketing” I see that there are 1,220,000 searches for that phrase. (I also did some research on Cost Per Click and found that it would cost me over $14 per click to advertise for that phrase and that’s rather expensive. I’ll discuss CPC later.)

I also see that “email marketing software” is searched “just” 135,000 times while “email marketing system” is searched just 4,400 times.

Since a big part of my business is supporting entrepreneurs on Infusionsoft’s email marketing system I decided to write a “lead magnet” entitled “40 Ways To Profit From Your Email Marketing System.”

I named it that for several reasons:

• It contains the phrase “email marketing,” which is an expensive keyword on which to bid on Google
• It contains the less-searched entire phrase “email marketing system,” which means I can start to get ranked for that “long-tail keyword phrase” easier (more on long tail keywords in another post)
• It attracts the types of clients I want.

If you right click on this post and “View Source” you’ll see my title, description and keywords and you’ll see that they contain “seo,search engine optimization,email marketing software,infusionsoft crm,email marketing system.” That’s one of the reasons you found me.

If you would like with SEO on your own site or getting the most out of your email marketing system drop me a line.

Good Selling.

Working with Roger Bauer on an updated version of The Sales Geyser webinar showing Old Town Tire’s 22% growth in Q1 of this year.

Exciting internet marketing info. Check out Tuesday’s webinar for The Sales Geyser here.

There are a lot of bull$*t web designers out there trying to scare you into thinking you need to pay them THOUSANDS of dollars up front and HUNDREDS of dollars a month for them to build and host your simple site.

They start by pulling up the W3C Markup Validation Service site and entering your site’s URL and then rubbing their head with their furrowed brows as they point to your “47 errors and 3 warnings.”

“47 ERRORS AND THREE WARNINGS!? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? CAN YOU HELP ME? AM I INVISIBLE TO GOOGLE? HOW MUCH WILL IT COST TO FIX IT? CAN YOU HELP ME PRETTY PLEASE???? PLEASE!!!!!!”

The all-seeing, all-benevolent bull$h*t web artist tells you,

“Well…maybe…but it will be hard…and it will take time…and…what is your budget?”

Look. Do you know where I got those numbers? Those are the numbers that came up on my site last night after I was adding pages and videos and photos and other goodies to my own WordPress site over the course of about a week. I ran my site through the validator, which is a good tool, then sent the report to my programmer and WHAMMO – my site is now clean as a whistle!

Does it take skill to clean up those errors quickly? Yes.

Does it require moving your whole site and redoing it on some bull$h*t artist’s proprietary platform? No! HELL NO!

If you site does not pass and you’d like my programmers to clean it up hit the Contact Us form and we’ll run it through the validator and give you a simple quote and timeframe for how quickly we can get to it.

But if some dude or chick tries to imply your site is hopeless because a couple of errors pop up and your only chance of being found on the web is to pay them big bucks tell them to go pound sand and give me a shout.

Remember, Life is good. It’s gooder when you’re not being snow-balled by some cheesy web dude.

Putting the finishing touches on a 3-part, live, hands-on workshop with fellow Southerner, Kurtis Gilbreth of Who Knows a Guy, to teach Southern California business owners how to get found on Google.

Google is the 800 lb G-O-RILLA in online search and mastering the tips and tricks and tools and techniques it takes to get found and stay found by Google can be quite confusing.

At the end of 7+ hours of live training our clients will be much less confused. When all is said and done attendees will understand what Google is looking for in a page and a website, how it indexes a site, how to create sites Google loves and can easily index and about 1,132 other things.

Look for an update tomorrow on the workshop to be held in Murrieta at Commerce Bank of Temecula Valley March 4th, 11th (webinar) and again in person on the 18th from 1-4.

Remember, life is good. It’s gooder when you’re selling.

Last month – to the day – I wrote about the demise of the Yellow Pages.

Yesterday California lawmakers want to join Cleveland and Miami in outlawing the production and delivery of the white pages without the home owner actually requesting the book.

While I agree with the decision, I disagree with the reasoning. (Despite the fallacy the entire global warming hocus pocus has been proven to be, Californian politicians are more concerned with placating their bases rather than actually making a small business-friendly state.)

If the White Pages are outlawed today, how much longer will it take for the Yellow Pages to be outlawed? I think the Yellow Pages will be around for years and probably decades because consumers 45 and older still like them (or at least remember them nostalgically) and business owners still think “my daddy grew this business with his own sweat and tears and an ad in the Yellow Pages and that’s how I’m going to continue running the business” (right into the ground, there Scrappy.)

Consumers under 40 don’t use the White Pages or the Yellow Pages except as door stops, booster seats and computer monitor stands.

To be found today you need to optimize your internet marketing, which includes Google, Google Local, Google Maps, social media (yes, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc) as well as blogging (ain’t that what you’re looking at now?), the mystical SEO and the paid version of advertising, SEM / PPC.

You need to hire professional copywriters if writing isn’t your cup of tea to make sure you are being found on the internet and are then connecting with your prospects.

And you need video. And you need it distributed to dozens – even hundreds – of sites weekly so you can dominate the search results of your prospects and clients.

Like Home Depot says, you can do it. We can help. Give me a call.

Where are your Yellow Pages?

When was the list time you used them?

When was the last time you conducted a Google search and found a result from ANY Yellow Pages on the first page of a Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page)?

And the first page is ALL THAT COUNTS.

Why, you ask. Consider these statistics from Cornell University:

1. The first two results on page 1 get up 50% of the attention of viewers and the #1 listing gets clicked on up to FOUR TIMES as much as the #2 listing.
2. The last listing on Page 1 is 2.5 times more effective than being the last listing on Page 2.
3. The top 5 listings get 88% of the click traffic from a search.
4. The top 3 listings get 79% of the click traffic from a search.

When will the Yellow Pages die? It will take awhile because the Baby Boomers that own businesses think that’s how to advertise so I expect the Yellow Pages to be around until the last of the Baby Boomers retire (willingly or forcibly).

Besides, the Yellow Pages salespeople are quite adept at instilling FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the minds of gullible, desperate, naive business owners when they respond to the client wanting to shift their funds from trees to the screen, “Can you afford to have no clients for an entire year if you’re wrong?” (Queue the sound of the top right hand desk drawer opening, the business owner sighing, the pen clicking and being put to a company checkbook for yet another, albeit smaller yellow pages ad and a faint, yet noticeably-louder-than-last-year toilet flushing.)

(As I’m writing this I had this dialogue with my 11 year old son, “Matthew, have you ever used the Yellow Pages?” He said, “The book? Ah, yeah. Once or twice I think.” To which I asked, “Have you ever done a Google search?” With rolling eyes, a bus-stop laugh (you know, the “PSTCH”) he replied, “Plenty of times.”)

Being almost 40 (WTH?) I can say the last time I used the Yellow Pages was to conduct prospecting training for clients just to prove a point. So I know without a doubt that our kids will only know Google and online searches to get their questions answered and to find local vendors and suppliers. And that trend is working its way up the demographic age scale at an accelerating pace.

The “We” generation is back in power and they have technology at their finger tips that will tell the world how you fooled them and it will appear online before they leave your parking lot. So you best do what you say you’re going to do.

But first they have to find you.

If you’d like a little help getting found let me know.

Happy New Year.

Why in the heck is social media so confusing? So full of wasted energy and broken promises? So full of snake oil salesmen promising you “secrets revealed” and the “one thing you gotta do to make money with social media?”

If these guys and gals are so good why do they hide behind fancy websites and 240 page PDF’s and 95 CD’s they know you’ll never get through?

What happened to good old-fashioned, real life, live interaction?

Well, I guess it takes a Southern boy to bring Southern hospitality to the world of Social Media Marketing.

Please join me live every Monday morning to kick start your week with new ideas on how to leverage social media to grow your business. And because I’m a longtime salesman we’ll also get into persuasion, follow up, writing compelling copy, making powerful lead magnets, getting the attention of decision makers and a whole lotta other cool stuff that will help you garner and focus the energy and the power of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Ning and YouTube and all the other 57 million (it seems like) social media platforms popping up out there.

And the good part is the calls will be recorded and you can download them anytime to listen to forever!

And the even better part is…it’s AFFORDABLE! These classes will only be $47 per month!

Yep, you read that right: $47 per month. Not per week or per day or per hour or per half hour or per quarter hour or per minute or…you get the point.

Just $47 per month gets you live weekly calls with me and a host of experts and other sales people, business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals to exchange ideas, share best practices, learn from each other and from the best social media marketing minds in the country.

And you’ll get access to a new membership site we’re building as I type this blog update so the same $47 per month will get you access to the membership site, also.

And, check this out, you’ll also be able to attend any future training or participate in any future workshop I’m conducting at 50% off the published price as long as you’re an active member of the Social Media Marketing Mastery Monday Mastermind.

So what do you have to lose except headaches and backaches from staring at the computer screen all day long?

Sign up now before we get the first 100 and have to either cut it off or add another class at a higher amount. (It would be worth it at $97/mo but let’s hook each other up and do some business together and grow ourselves to our true potential.)

Roger Bauer, http://magicsqueeze.com/, discussing how to build a list of qualified prospects.

Jeff live on stage.

Jeff Schwerdt preparing 8/12/09 on the stage in Murrieta, CA. Covering video marketing and the power of social marketing.