Internet Marketing Clinic

How Google Works!

rgm — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:08:36 +0000

In many of my class presentations, I take a few minutes to review the basics of a Google search operation. I just “stumbled upon” a great summary of the Google operation on the web.

This is a nice step-by-step guide to what happens when someone goes to Google and looks for something. It is all interesting, but the key parts for people wanting to get rankings for their sites is understanding the “index” database (where the engine stores all the information that will later be provided in a search, as well as the information that will determine who ranks where in the search results), and understanding the importance of the links that Google tabulates.

There is not much discussion here of where the links come from or how they are evaluated, but that is what we have the free Internet marketing Clinic for. Stop by some Wednesday evening when we are in session and see how we can help you promote your business over the web!

PS: If the StumbleUpon link above stops working, you can read the article at its original location here, “How Google Works“

Review Sites, a reference list

rgm — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:13:34 +0000

Review sites are sites that feature reviews of other sites. These sites provide a valuable service by setting up referrals to your site and adding links directly to your site. You certainly need to be aware of anything that is said about your business on these sites, and it can be a good idea to encourage your satisfied clients or customers to go to these sites to give you a testimonial. Most of these sites will allow you to edit the information they have on the site about your business, and this is an important part of the process. You should definitely take the time to do this!

There are many of these sites around, but here is a list of some of the better known sites for you to work with:

As with any list, the organizations listed can vary in their focus and requirements, so you have to investigate each one on the list to see whether it is appropriate for your site or business before you go to the trouble of submitting your site to them. In this case, in particular, you might want to get familiar with the site and the kind of traffic they have before you try to send any of your clients to the site to write reviews for you.

Article Submission Sites, a reference list

rgm — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:25:23 +0000

One effective way to publicize your site is to submit informational articles to sites that make the articles available to other web sites for republication. We have put together a short list of some sites that you might consider for this purpose:

Some of these sites have different targeted demographics in their readership, so you have to look them over to see if your material is a fit. Don;t submit articles that do not fit in with the focus of the site your are submitting to. It is not only a waste of your time, but it could give you a bad reputation on the web, which will not do you any good!

Links for your site?

rgm — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:32:21 +0000

Getting good links for a web site is one of the most important steps a developer or webmaster can take. Directories and local search engines are two of the most important resources for acquiring good links. A handy listing is available on this site under the caption “Sites Related to Links“.

Client Testimonials

rgm — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:02:30 +0000

Client testimonials are one of the best ways to evaluate a service offering. I am happy to have had clients who have been willing to give me good testimonials over the years, and offer some of their comments on my web site for your consideration. Here are some of the things they have said:

“You showed us how to have the website we want and one in which we can make the changes on our own time table with no costs involved.”

“The phone is ringing and we are busier than ever. “

“We have more than made back our investment in new, high-quality paying clients.”

“We’ve had 100 guys come in here to talk about our web site, but no one gave us the kind of useful information you did.”

“This is the kind of follow-through and communication I thought only happened in dreams.”

“Thanks for trying to help us with all our computer problems. I finally feel we have someone in our corner.”

“Your involvement in our project saved us $150,000!”

“I would never have gotten it done by myself!”

To read more detail in their comments, go to my web page showing some client benefits.

Client testimonials

rgm — Thu, 05 May 2011 22:57:37 +0000

As many of the participants in the Internet Marketing Clinic already know, I conduct a consulting practice helping business owners to take control of their Internet marketing programs by educating and coaching them through the development of their own web sites.

The goal of my practice is to help small businesses by providing them with a beginning site that is constructed according to sound site optimization practices, and coaching and educating them from that point so that they can take control of the process and manage the site independently for as long as they wish.

I am always available to supplement their work by taking on tasks that are too complex or too time consuming for them to complete on their own, but my support is provided strictly on an “as needed” basis. For small businesses with tight budgets, this has proven to be the most attractive service that I can offer, and the least expensive way for small businesses to promote themselves over the web.

I am now collecting some testimonials from satisfied clients to illustrate how this approach is working for them. I invite you to read these testimonials from tiem to time to see whether any of their experiences might be relevant to your situation or business.

Long Tail Searches affected by Google?

rgm — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:27:12 +0000

Google’s latest algorithm update is anticipated to have an impact on web sites that might not have performed well under the prior algorithm. Comments on the Google Webmaster blog recently indicate that sites with lower traffic should perform better in searches typically described as “long tail” because they use keyword phrases that are not the high volume phrases that much SEO effort focuses its attention on.

What this means (we think?) is that the technique that we espouse in our clinic discussions of making sure that your site pays attention to all the phrases that might be relevant to your content instead of focusing all your effort on just the top ranking phrases could experience a great boost in results. To put it another way, if you have worked on phrases when developing your content that are further down the list of ranking phrases, this might mean a big payoff for your approach!

This is the kind of thing we think is a great reward for “doing things the right way” from the beginning! As always, we try to provide you with the techniques that have staying power with search engines, not the “tricks” that fool the engines for a short time, but the practices that are consistent with improved quality of content and improved performance results for the search engines. We encourage a “win-win”approach to marketing, something that works for you and for the search engines at the same time.

Starting a new Facebook promotion!

rgm — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 04:39:24 +0000

This is the beginning step in a new marketing campaign using the new features and capabilities of Facebook.

Internet Marketing | Promote Your Page Too

The initial operation is to create a page in Facebook for the campaign and get a badge, as seen above, to use in promoting the page across different platforms. This blog post is sort of a “stream of consciousness” trail of what I am doing. There will be more entries to follow as I progress.

Starting a New Business?

admin — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:45:46 +0000

Many people are starting businesses these days, due to the job situation we are experiencing across the entire nation. The New York Times just ran an article describing how young entrepreneurs are starting businesses with little or no investment. Many of these businesses do not succeed, but many do, and some have become large and profitable businesses.

Marketing is one of the many challenges that new businesses face, and the internet provides one of the best tools a new business can have for reaching out to the world to let people know about a new product or service or provider. Read a short summary of the steps to starting a business to help you get your business going faster.

For years, business people in Houston and nearby cities have been coming to our free internet marketing clinic to learn how to market their businesses more effectively on the Internet. Do yourself and your business a great favor and join us!

Social Media for B2B

admin — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:48:06 +0000

The newsletter I get from eMarketer is one of my favorite sources of information about what is going on with businesses and marketing on the Internet. Today, they provide information about how businesses are using social media to improve their marketing efforts to other businesses.

We have talked in other postings about how social media can drive traffic directly to a web site, and how it can be used to improve brand awareness. These are fairly obvious applications of the medium, and are entirely consistent with the efforts we make at marketing through our web sites themselves.

Less obvious, perhaps, is the benefit that social media offers in doing research into customer attitudes and preferences. If your company has established a presence on social media, you have an opportunity to listen to what your audience is saying about your business. That kind of information can head off some serious customer relationship issues, on occasion, but can also contribute to strengthening y0ur marketing of your site in more traditional ways.

We are always on the lookout for keyword phrases that can be important to our audience, and, in particular, phrases that might be overlooked by our competition! Those phrases are of special interest because of the impact they can have on the specific audience we are trying to reach, and because they can be much easier to achieve very high rankings on!

Keep on top of this important medium by following our comments on social media marketing.