Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of web designers. Some of my ‘best friends are web designers’. But sometimes I come across situations that cause me to harbour dark thoughts about web designers, and that way the industry conducts itself. Why? Because it adversely impacts my own area of expertise in 2 ways… Revenue Reputation But the big issue that really ‘boils my britches’ arises when a web designer tells his/her client the following… I know all about SEO I’ll make sure your site has all the right keywords Your site will be ‘search engine friendly’ The client is left with the mistaken impression that his/her site will be easily found in Google. If the client is relatively unsophisticated, s/he will type his/her company name into Google and find themselves in the #1 spot. This type of client will go home happy, and fail to understand their ‘result’ isn’t all that useful from a search engine optimisation perspective. If the client thinks a bit harder, s/he might realise its a lot more useful to be found for search...
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Anybody with an exposure to business networking understands that referral marketing hinges on your ability with the one-to-one meeting. A one-to-one meeting involves two people: you and the person you’re meeting. It’s purpose is to build the relationship, establish trust and become credible as a source of your particular product or service in the mind of the other person. As you can see, the purpose is not to make a sale (i.e. a one-to-one is not a sales appointment). If you spend your time at a one-to-one trying to lever a referral out of the other person, you’re not investing in the relationship, trust or credibility in the mind of the other person. Your focus in a one-to-one must be on the relationship. This is crucial. This implies that the objective of a one-to-one is not to secure a referral either. Most networkers understand there’s little to be gained from selling at a one-to-one. Not seeking to prise a referral out of the other party is a little harder to swallow! Here’s why this is a crucial key to your success in...
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The root canal is a space under each of your teeth that contains blood vessels and nerves. If the root canal gets infected it can lead to a build up of puss, which causes pain and swelling. This can damage the bone around your teeth. An infected root canal may lead to gum disease, which can in turn lead to heart disease. For this reason an infected root canal should be treated as soon as possible. Root canal treatment used to be very painful, but that’s no longer the case – if you select the right dentist. I had reason to do this recently. I’ve learned (the hard way) that all dentists are not created equal, and when it comes to something as important as a root canal, a good dentist is worth his/her weight in gold. If you live in or around the Battersea area of London, I strongly recommend you call SW Smiles. Especially if you need root canal treatment, and desire a friendly and pain free experience! These guys are very very good.
One of the ways I send targeted traffic to my site is via the traffic triangle. In very general terms it works like this… Write an article that links back to my site, and publish it in one of my blogs Post a tweet about the article on Twitter Ask a friends, colleagues and clients to retweet Of course, it’s a little more involved than that. I’m not interested in sending random traffic to my site’s homepage. My goal is to generate targeted traffic for a specific landing page on my site. The purpose of the landing page is to generate leads for a specific product or service. For example, let’s say I’m looking to pick up a new SEO client. I might create the following offer… A 3 month SEO campaign for £250 per month I’ll achieve a specific agreed SEO objective I’ll give a full refund if I don’t achieve the agreed objective I then create a landing page based on this offer. At the bottom of the page I include a web form that...
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Here’s an interesting question I hear quite a lot: Why doesn’t my website make money for my business? This is a useful question to ask if you have a business website, and it’s not making money. In my opinion, it comes down to one or more of these 3 factors… What is the #1 purpose of the site (the actual rather than intended purpose) Who is attracted to the site and why do they visit? What happens when those people arrive at the site? The Site’s Purpose A business website that sets out to make money must have one of the following objectives… Generate a targeted business enquiry (i.e. lead generation) Generate a sale direct from the site (e.g. shopping cart) Most business sites achieve neither objective, even if they set out to do so. Instead they seek to inform, educate or otherwise satisfy some in-house need to boast. A business website can’t afford to fart around with the latest design fad, or rave on endlessly about the site-owner’s knowledge, experience, qualifications or skill. If the site’s purpose...
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Marketing expert Peter Simony of Promo Cards has kindly allowed me to republish his report 7 Simple Ways to Catch More Customers, in full, right here on this blog. Hi, my name is Peter G Simony. Thank you for taking the time to checkout this report. I help businesses with their marketing strategies. I have talked to thousands of business owners – many of whom have become great friends. We first created the PromoCard marketing concept in 1998 and have been developing and refining it ever since. We have helped over 1,000 businesses create their own PromoCards® and have helped many of them them to implement some simple successful marketing strategies. I hope you will find this useful, and will be very happy to advise you on any aspect. Just contact me and I’ll do my best to guide you. In any event I wish you every success. Peter G Simony Don’t Let Business Slip Through your Fingers The Seven Simple ways of “catching more customers” that you are not using! 1. Increase the amount of recommended business you get. Reach areas other marketing...
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I like Open Source software, and not just because I’m cheap. I support the basic ideals expressed by the Open Source movement, and use a range of software products in conjunction with or as an alternative to their commercial competitors. In the past I’ve tended to rely on a commercial FTP package to manage my websites, but had installed Filezilla for clients that wanted to upload a file to their sites from time-to-time. When I bought a new laptop, I decided to switch to Filezilla rather than upgrade my commercial FTP package for Windows 7. Naturally I downloaded the latest version, which is a significant upgrade over the one my clients were using. It includes many fantastic features, including the ability to run multiple sessions in tabs. This is a welcome advance, and wasn’t even included in my previous commercial package. However, it wasn’t all wine and roses. There was a major thorn in version 3, and it constantly annoyed me. Every time I saved changes made to a file, Filezilla would display a window telling me the edited file had changed...
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A deep link is a link to a page other than the site’s homepage. From an SEO perspective, the purpose of a deep link is to improve the indexing on a specific page within a site. For example… The site Abicord.com has a Smoking Cessation page. If the site’s owner wants to improve the performance of the smoking cessation page in search engines, s/he could generate links back to that page. Of course, there’s a little more to it than that. The site itself should also link to the smoking cessation page. These internal links must reflect the external linking on the site. When you create external links to an internal page on your site, you’re telling search engines the page is important. If internal links on the site don’t reflect this importance, a search engine may decide you’re simply trying to fool it into ranking the page. This doesn’t usually end well! As you’d expect, all the normal rules for linking apply. You want link diversity… Links from different domains Links from different types of web site, not only from directories or...
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