Clicktostart Clickisms

Guaranteeing Page 1 Rankings is SEO Malpractice and "SEO" Trademark?

2008-05-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

An SEO firm in Washington state has been sued over it's practices and may face thousands in penalties and fees according to Search Engine Watch. The core issue had been that their services were not clear, that they made inaccurate guarantees, and if their competitor's post is true, called this service a "scam to avoid".

read the full article by Scott Goodyear

http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2008/04/guaranteeing_pa.html

District 60 Toastmasters Spring Conference

2008-04-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

I am away this weekend at the District 60 Toastmasters Spring Conference. What an event! The schedule was packed to the point of hectic so I had to pick and choose what to do and see.

Of course, I attended both contests. As you may have already read on my site at http://www.speakersandtrainers.net the International Speech Contest was fantastic. James Ng from Brampton won with his speech "25 and some months" an original, inspiring and instructive look on how to not grow old but not die young.

Today though was even better! At the Sunday brunch we had the pleasure of meeting last year's World Champion of Public Speaking: Vikas Jhingran. Now, I had heard prior to this that sometimes when the world champion comes to a Toastmaster's conference they can be convinced to deliver their winning speech from World's.

Vikas was confronted by a very enthusiastic audience this morning. When given the choice of his regional or world speech, we asked for both... and he not only delivered, he explained how he developed the speeches and what made them International contest level speeches from an engineered standpoint.

In addition when time came for questions, he was asked to perform the speech that won him through district (it takes three unique speeches to win all the way to world level). We were thrilled when he complied.

All this in addition to his keynote on how to rise to the top in speaking. What an inspiring morning.... my first time hearing a world champion in person and the high point of a great conference.

Customer Relationship Management Solutions???

2008-04-05T07:04:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last year casually looking for a replacement to my Goldmine Contact Management software.

Goldmine is just not designed to be easily set up to accommodate multiple email addresses, lists and opt-in forms.

I use aweber and I do love it. Unlimited lists, messages and autoresponders, integration with Google Analytics and PayPal. Great product! However - I want to be able to add offline opt-ins easily. Not at the rate of 10 a day. And not at a double-opt-in level.
I also want to be able to store my own template. I am a graphic designer and it seems a shame to have to pick away at code every time I want to send a newsletter.

I have looked at http://www.salesforce.com and do love them too.... except you are limited to 1000 emails a day. Not useful for sending to a list of 10,000 when your offer is time sensitive. Granted I could buckle on another email sender like Vertical Response but then I am charged by the email. I already pay for hosting and ISP, I do not see what value is provided.

So I have just purchased MailLoop - after contemplating it for years. What I appreciate is that it has all the features of aweber plus list import, template creation, my own email addresses AND no monthly fees. I bought the pro version for $379 - the tutorials that come with it are worth that!

Now I just need to implement it - another learning curve to climb! Oh well - this version has a lot of built in wizards to speed up the task. I will be using this software to manage my site http://www.speakersandtrainers.net launching in May.

Last Week's Seminar

2008-03-31T04:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I was given an opportunity to deliver a Coaching Corner at the Barrie Business Enterprise Resource Network.
The topic was: Taking Your Website to the Next Level

I had never delivered a seminar on this topic so I was pretty excited - the group was to be small, pre-screened for people who had existing websites AND I was to review participant websites during the session... something else I had NEVER done.

I was actually more nervous than excited. The first time doing a seminar it can be tricky to know if you have the right amount of material. And you usually get a very mixed bag of interests at this type of event.

It went really well.
We checked with participants at the start to determine what they hoped to learn and I went through some prepared slides - encouraging the plethora of questions all during the first 2 hours. The last hour was spent on specific techniques to attract the ideal client through building targeted traffic, then build a relationship based on understanding their needs and personalizing the type of messages sent to them.

This portion was delivered with the real world examples of what I would do if I was upgrading participant websites. Rather than feeling on the spot, I felt a great opportunity to know I was helping in both broad and specific ways.

If you are interested in a free marketing consultation, you can get started by filling out the form here.

What do you wish you didn't have to do?

2008-03-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

In business there are some necessary evils.

Things you never want to do.

Things that you tell yourself - "as soon as I have the cashflow, I will pay someone to do this for me."

In my case that is bookkeeping. I always used to say, if only people could pay me in produce and chickens like the old time rural doctor, life would be much simpler.... oddly enough just last week Mr bob from http://www.mrbob.ca/ actually paid me with an incredible prime rib roast that he was paid with from one on his customers.

Now that I actually have a predictable cash flow and some great free time tracking software: Timestamp from http://www.syntap.com/ this dream can come true.

That got me thinking about what I can offer clients to ease their stress.

In my clients' businesses, the answer is more often - I wish I didn't have to do PR and marketing. I never seem to find the time, the energy or the creativity so it keeps getting pushed to the back burner.

I love to work with solopreneurs that are struggling due to a growth phase in their business. We now follow a new 6 step process to really focus their technology marketing and then I implement it, track it, tweak it and report back.

I have three clients that I have mentioned this to. All three are thrilled with the prospect of off-loading a large portion of their marketing efforts while keeping firm tabs on the actions and results. Over the next six months I will be documenting our progress, learning and accomplishments - and yes probably a few "boo-boos" as we work together. It will be an exciting time for me as usually I sporadically give away these services for free. To be able to provide a planned concerted (paid for) effort to build on each month will let me create incredible results for these clients.

Solopreneurs and Marketing

2008-03-22T12:27:00.001-07:00

One of the things that really frustrates me is seeing a great business - one that is unique, interesting and innovative - run by a solopreneur. Not because it shouldn't be - but because as a solopreneur it is very difficult to work on the business. Planning, Marketing and Public Relations.

Talking this over with my coach, she asked me - "How is that a positive?"

"How is what a positive?" I asked. "How can it be positive that so many people have so little time for the activities that would grow their business?"

As the silence grew I felt I should have an answer. (The great thing about a business coach is that they ask some very challenging questions - then they make you answer them yourself.)

"Well," I said, "the customers I am thinking of have a lot in common. They have a passion for helping, they have a passion for what they do - and if people just knew about them - or heard them talk about their business like I get to - they would choose to do business with them."

"How is that an advantage?" she asked.

"Well - there is strength in numbers," I joked.

"And how can you use that to solve their problem?"

Thus began our planning for a site I am lauching in May. http://www.speakersandtrainers.net

You see - most of these companies grow their business by sharing their expertise speaking, training, or informing the media.

The more that people get to hear their knowledge and ideas, the larger their company grows.

SpeakersandTrainers.net will showcase these subject matter experts - to groups, associations, conference centres, event planners and journalists. I can spend time marketing this site as the place to find a speaker or trainer - multiplying the effect of every hour of marketing for each member.

Targets

2008-01-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

I have been working with a business coach on her website and streamlining my business. She keeps after me to find clients that I need as much as they need me - preferably clients with a budget and a solid business. No matter how much I protest that start-up businesses need me most, she is brutal. She feels that my marketing services outweigh my design service as I help people sculpt their technology to invigorate and automate their sales cycle.

Targets - for markets and search engine optimizing

2007-11-30T17:15:00.000-08:00

I have been teaching my clients that they must focus on one or more specific target markets to grow their business faster and more controlled. Having specific markets also means that you can create better search engine results. For instance, if you are a dog groomer the term dog groomer is very general, if you have a specialty in poodle grooming, you eliminate much of the competition while appealing stronger to the poodle owner searching for your expertise.

For my own business however, I have long resisted defining my target market. But it is time to walk the talk and focus. I have lots of excuses for not zeroing in on a target - our market is small (wait a minute... the Internet is small?), I don't want start-up businesses to feel left out and so on.

Stay tuned as my business coach helps me flesh out my new focus.

Google Analytics

2007-11-30T17:11:00.001-08:00

Step 2 was blogging regularly - here I am.

Step 3 is Google Analytics. Another free tool from Google, this one provides intelligent tracking of activity on your website.
I installed the basic code that lets me know how many visitors, unique visitors, time spent on the site, time spent on each page, paths through the website.
That was exciting - one of my hidden pages has people stay on it for an average of 5 minutes.

Next I added tracking to find out how many people came to my site just to log in to webmail or their website OS. Important for judging the accuracy of my "Bounce Rate" A bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave the site without exploring other pages.

Now I am tying in my Analytics to my Aweber mailing list subscription to see what my conversion rate is on my hidden pages.

Web 2.0

2007-11-27T06:04:00.001-08:00

I listened to a speaker try to teach a group of local business people about web 2.0 marketing last month.... in half an hour.
Wow. He was ambitious. You could tell he was excited about his topic and had a lot to share. Unfortunately, he needed 3 hours to even touch the surface.
That got me thinking.
What are the elements of web 2.0 that a local business needs to know. And that brought me to Google marketing. With Google serving up more than half of the searches online, it just makes sense to focus first on getting in strong with Google, and Google is very web 2.0 with paid blogger service, real time statistic analytics, Google local search maps and paid ads in Google AdWords.

So I decided to start maximizing Google for my website.... my business has been primarily a referral fed business for the last 3 years. My website has been kind of neglected.

Over the next 6 months my goal is to get the optimal local results using Google.

Step One: Local Map Listing
I visited the Google Local Business Centre
I already had a Google account so I logged in - if you don't have an account, you can set one up for free.
Next you add your business information, choose a category - up to five - that your listing should show in.
After that you can verify your listing instantly by automated phone call.
Then wait - it can take up to 4 weeks to be added.

I did a search under "Midland Ontario web design" and found my business was already visible on the map - I did have to click the view more results - and there I was item H.

What surprised me though was that my "organic" listing on Google was number two for that search term - right under a directory site called Canada Firmlist. I am the only Midland Ontario web designer listed on that directory which means my listing is number one, two and three on Google for that search term. I guess that shows that some results can be achieved just through relevant content. I also found I came up number 1 on just "Midland Web Design"

Step 2 - start Blogging regularly
This is a hard one for me. I forget. I will try to add a post every time that I work on my Google exposure.

Back from Peru

2007-07-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

It is great to be back. The mission trip was very intense and rewarding and exhausting.

I came beack with new inspiration for non-profits and fundraising websites that I am looking forward to creating.

I will also be creating more PHP sites to offer money savings to clients - many pre-developed applications for websites are available.