Get Links To Your Blog By Commenting On The Right Blogs
By WordsmithBob | August 17, 2008
There are many strategies to get links to your blog or to get people to comment on your blog. one of the best is to comment on other blogs related to your subject.
I believe I’ve mentioned that your comments must contribute to the discussion and give some kind of valuable insight or the blogger will probably remove your post as a waste of time.
However, there’s one other thing you must watch for. Wordpress and Blogger have an automatic system that adds a “no follow” tag to comments people make on these blogs.
Topics: business blog | No Comments »
Wall Street Journal Article "How To Create A Successful Web Site For Nothing" Missing Vital Information
By WordsmithBob | August 12, 2008
The Wall Street Journal article on the front page of the Monday 8-11 Small Business section titled, “How To Create A Small Business Web Site For Nothing (Or Almost Nothing)” has some mistakes and missing information that could cost small business owners dearly in the future.
In other words, if a small business owner follows it verbatim, they are going to need to spend an inordinate amount of money later to fix the problems.
Topics: business website, business website success, small business websites | No Comments »
Is Google Page Rank Important For Small Business Web sites?
By WordsmithBob | August 9, 2008
The short answer? No. Google Page Rank gets bandied about quite a bit by people who really don’t know anything about SEO but want to pretend they do.
Google Page Rank is really all about trust. Google looks at a number of factors when anointing web sites with Page Rank but none of them have much to do with Search Engine Optimization.
Mostly, Google looks at how long your web site has been around. Their theory is that the longer your web site has been around, the more likely you are a going concern that isn’t going to shut down next week.
Topics: business website, search engine optimization, small business websites | No Comments »
Adapting Your Business to the Internet
By WordsmithBob | August 6, 2008
Yesterday, I was a guest on WCCO Radio and I was stressing that almost any business could be adapted to the Internet. The example I gave was a residential window washing business.
You might wonder how a window washing business could be adapted to the web. Here’s how he did it.
The guy had a residential window washing business. He contacted a web designer and had a web site designed where people could sign up for window washing service in his city. Next they designed a calendar with week days between Monday and Friday and times between 9am and 5pm where people could sign up for window washing service.
Topics: business website, local business marketing, offline marketing, online marketing, service business marketing, small business marketing, small business websites | No Comments »
Roshini Rajkumar Interviews WordsmithBob on WCCO Radio Today…
By WordsmithBob | August 5, 2008
Roshini Rajkumar, guest hosting on the Al Malmberg Show on WCCO Radio, interviewed me from 4:30am until 5am. Listen to the interview.
I’ve known Roshini for quite awhile and I’m actually a client of hers.
Her firm, Roshini MultiMedia leverages her years of experience in front of the camera in TV news to teach others how to be comfortable if the news media come calling.
She also teaches people how to do their own PR work to get “Ink and Air”, as she calls it, from the media. Check out Roshini’s blog.
Topics: business promotion, free online publicity | No Comments »
Google Analytics - Have You Installed It Yet?
By WordsmithBob | August 1, 2008
Google Analytics is the best free analytics package out there for keeping track of what is happening on your web site. Why do you care what’s happening on your web site? Because if you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it.
Do you know how many people are visiting your web site? Do you know what pages they are visiting the most? Do you know which pages they are leaving from? do you know which pages they visit the most and how long they stay on those pages?
Topics: business website marketing, do-it-yourself search engine optimization, search engine optimization, small business websites | No Comments »
Improving Search Engine Placement Through Regular Web Site Maintenance
By WordsmithBob | July 29, 2008
When was the last time you had your web site checked for broken links? I know I can sound like a broken record sometimes but the search engines really don’t like badly maintained web sites.
Regular maintenance of your web site is an important part of search engine optimization and keeping your web site rising in the search engine rankings. It’s also good for business.
How many times have you gone to a web site and clicked on a link only to get an error message? How do you react? what do you think when a site seems to have problems or isn’t well maintained?
Topics: do-it-yourself search engine optimization, search engine optimization, small business websites | 1 Comment »
Referrals - least expensive, lowest risk, highest potential return for getting new customers or clients
By WordsmithBob | July 28, 2008
As you may know, I’m a big fan of Jay Abraham. So when I’m looking for a new marketing idea, I often turn to his “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got” book.
Today, I was reading up on referrals. If you really are focused on customer or client satisfaction, this is a great way to leverage that relationship.
If you’re that kind of business person, sometimes it’s difficult to see the Return On Investment (ROI) from all that great service. Other than the customer or client coming back to you for more business. A formal referral system leverages or multiplies the essence of all that extra work you put into every customer of client.
Topics: Jay Abraham, local business marketing, offline marketing, small business marketing, word of mouth marketing | No Comments »
Using Free Downloads to Collect Email Addresses
By WordsmithBob | July 17, 2008
I’ve read some articles recently that claim that free downloads don’t work anymore to get email addresses from visitors. I’ve just seen proof positive that those people are wrong.
Again, I reference Roelofs Remodeling because it is such a fresh example. As part of his online marketing campaign, I created a series of ebooks for Roelofs. He gave me the planning questionnaire he usually goes over with potential customers to help them narrow down what they really want for their remodel.
Using it as a model, I contracted Lisa Drew of Lyrical Biz to create a series of impressive looking ebooks that people could download by simply giving their name and email address.
Topics: business website marketing, e-mail marketing, online marketing, website marketing | No Comments »
need Search Engine optimization? don’t get ripped off…
By WordsmithBob | July 17, 2008
I don’t know about you but I get approached all the time by companies (mostly from somewhere in the Southwest) telling me they can get me first page listing on Google by search engine optimizing my website for me. Obviously, these morons haven’t even looked at my website or they’d know I DO search engine optimization.
What should that tell you? There are some pretty shady individuals out there offering to do search engine optimization. even worse, I’ve had people complain to me that SEO doesn’t work because they paid some firm thousands of dollars to SEO their website and nothing happened. Then I check the code and the copy on their website and it’s obvious that nothing was done.
Topics: search engine optimization | 1 Comment »
