What Your Webmaster Won't Tell You

By Carl Weiss

If you have a website, then you know your webmaster has the power of life or death over it.  You probably also know that he or she speaks in tongues, where terms like “Link Equity,” “SERPS,” and “Meta Tags,” have a meaning all their own.  In today’s blog, I will part the curtain and allow you to take a look at what the wizard of the web knows that you don’t.  I will also endeavor to show you what you need to know if you want your web presence to be more than a billboard in the desert. 

Who’s On First?

The term “Webmaster” is somewhat nebulous, since the creation, optimization and control of your website can actually take anywhere from 1 to 3 individuals. 

Image courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

1.      Web Designer – There are two flavors of web designer.  The first and best is an online marketer who understands that the look of your website needs to take a backseat to the functionality of your website.  A marketing-centric web designer starts by determining what it is you wish your site to accomplish (generate leads, generate calls, or sell directly from the site).  Then he or she will build the vehicle that is designed to generate the desired result. 

The second type of designer is more or less a glorified graphic artist who is mostly interested in the look of the site.  This type of designer will show you graphically intense designs that are beautiful, that most often don’t generate results.  (If you see a lot of rotating images and morphing graphics, this indicates the use of either Java (which the search engines hate) or Flash (which the search engines hate even more than Java).

2.      Search Engine Optimizer – It helps if your web designer understands the ins and outs of SEO.  If not, then you will be forced to hire an optimizer to help you sell your site to the search engines.  This will entail having a conversation with a person that will spout all kinds of arcane jargon in order to describe what it is they need to do to make your website search engine friendly.  (This is another reason to hire a designer that is ready, willing and able to take care of this during the design phase.)

Courtesy commons.wikimedia.org

Unless you want to bring your techno babble/English dictionary with you when you meet with your SEO pro, I suggest you find a firm that can explain in plain English what it is they are going to do for you and how often they intend on doing it.  For the most part you should only need to optimize your on-page assets once.  Anyone who tries to sell your ongoing SEO services other than link building is wasting your money.

3.      Website Hosting and Updating – There are a number of “Webmasters” that only provide hosting and updating of your website.  If this is the case you need to be cognizant of the fact that should you need to make a change to your website, you will first need to go through your web designer who will then need to motivate your webmaster to grant him or her access to make the desired change.  You may also be required to pay both of these individuals to make said change.  Obviously the best solution is to hire an individual or firm who can do all this at once instead of by committee.

Webmasters are a throwback to a time when it required a skilled IT professional to manage the server that contained your website.  This is no longer the case since nearly all servers are now cloud based.  This makes it doubly galling when you submit a change order to a webmaster and he or she sits on a job for days that literally takes a couple of minutes to accomplish. 

What’s on Second?

Once your website is up and running, you next need to register it with search engines and directories. 

image courtesy of flickr.com

You can either do this manually or you can hire a firm to do this for you.  Again, there are professionals who will offer to perform this time consuming service.  The devil, however, is in the details.  That the task needs to be accomplished is obvious.  If you don’t register with search engines and directories your website will never get found.  The trick is to 
get your site or sites registered with as many search engines and directories as possible without breaking the bank.  (Working the Web to Win offers a search engine push package that will register a site on 100 directories for $300.)

Once your site(s) registered on scads of search engines and directories the traffic will start rolling in, right?  WRONG. Even a perfectly optimized site registered on 100 high quality search engines and directories will not prove sufficient to generate significant traffic all by itself.  Why?  That’s because the game of generating search engine position has gotten a lot more complicated in the past few years.

Image courtesy of pixabay.com

Prior to 2005, all you needed to do to generate high ranking on the search engines was create an optimized website and register your site with the search engines.  The search engines would then send their spiders to analyze your site and determine its rank. That’s literally all there was to it.  Today on-page SEO only accounts for 25% of ranking criteria, the other 75% is comprised of off-site assets, such as blogs, social networks, videos, images and podcasts.  More crucially, not only do you need to create, publish and distribute this online content, you have to do so consistently.  Simply having a Facebook or Twitter feed on your site isn’t enough.  You also need to grow and engage your following.  The same is true of your blogs, videos and podcasts. 

Add to this the fact that the search engine spiders can not only read, but understand your website, blogs and social posts and you can see why generating ranking today is a huge undertaking.  I refer to the Internet as the elephant in the room.  Everybody knows it’s there, but nobody is prepared to talk about it.  As search engine spiders continue to evolve, you need to understand that your success online comes down to a popularity contest.  The spiders award their favors to websites that create and engage the biggest audience.  Therefore, you need to either assign the task of feeding the elephant to several staffers, or you need to outsource the task to a company that will put a team at your disposal to get the task done.  (No single human being is capable of handling all these tasks.  It takes a team.)

I Don’t Know Who’s on Third

The other three factors you need to take into consideration if you hope to prevail are geotargeting, mobile marketing and reputation management.

The Internet is no longer a World Wide Wad.  It is now not only possible, but desirable to geotarget your online assets to attract the best audience.  This is done embedding geographic information in all your online assets.  Before you go about creating or retooling a website, you first need to define who and where your best customers are located.  There is a big difference between creating a website for say a chiropractor that will have a reach of 10 miles from his or her location, to a company that needs to market to a regional or national scope.  Today geotargeting can be employed to narrow your scope to as little as an individual neighborhood.

The first thing you should do is register your business with Google Local and create a Google Map.  Since Google controls more than two thirds of all traffic in this country, the more Google friendly you become, the better your chances of success.  Even better is the fact that once created, you can embed your Google map right on your homepage.  This is another important thing to do if you hope to convert traffic into customers.  Nobody wants to search your site to find out where you are located.  Since people spend less than 2 minutes on your website, it is vital you give them everything they need to make a buying decision as quickly as possible.  Gone are the days when a web surfer would click around your site to check you out.  Today the next click you hear will be them going back to where they found you to check out somebody else.

This is also why it is vital you put your best foot forward in a hurry.  This requires video.  If your current website is composed of a bunch of stock images, what does this tell prospects about your company?  Nothing.  If you want to entice prospects to take the next step they need to know what you are all about.  Since you only have 2 minutes or less to accomplish this task, an intro video that shows who you are, what makes you special and why a prospect should take the next step is vital to your success.  It is also vital that the video be located prominently on your homepage, not buried below the fold.

Even better is a second video that shows satisfied customers extolling your virtues.  Like it or not, the biggest obstacle to converting clicks into cash is credibility.  Video testimonials are the ultimate credibility builder.  That and lots of reviews on Google will not only help you seal the deal, but it is a great way to create Google Juice.  When we shoot video testimonials for us or our clients, we routinely take the person being interviewed over to Google Maps to post a review as soon as the video is complete.  Once you get 10 reviews four red stars will also appear next to your listing which helps you separate yourself from the herd once you make it to page 1 on Google.

Getting Mobilized

Image courtesy of linkedin.com

This brings us to the last and currently most important requirement for generating traction with Google: Mobile.  Several months back, Google made it a requirement for websites to be “mobile-friendly.”  This means that if your website is not designed to reconfigure itself to tablets and smartphones, your chances of getting on page 1 are nil.  To see if your site makes the grade, simply do a search for it on any smartphone.  If the page doesn’t change shape to accommodate the platform it is definitely time you did a site makeover.  Make sure your web designer is using a dynamic language such as HTML 5.  If not, you will need to redo the redo.

What’s It All About?

Unless you have to means to hire an in-house online marketing team that has what it takes to create and distribute content to Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube on a continual basis, you need to find a firm you can trust to outsource your online destiny if you hope to make your web presence work for you.  If not, you will find yourself at more and more of a disadvantage as your competitors reap the rewards online and eat up more market share.  Because the biggest thing you need to understand online is this, “If you are not coming up on page 1 of the search engines and your competition is, does that help or hurt your business?”

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.  You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio   

Are You Ready to The Win BIG Game Online?

By Carl Weiss

When Fall is just around the corner and anyone mentions the big game, most people immediately think of the Super Bowl.  And why not?  With a viewing audience of a hundred ten million for a game that commands nearly four million dollars for a 30-second TV ad, this is one game that’s hard to beat.  Well, at least it is on TV.  When it comes to that other big game, the online marketing game, we’re talking about a whole other arena.

With a worldwide audience of nearly three billion, Internet marketing is in a league of its own.  Unlike pro football, this is one game where literally every business owner on the planet is forced to play.  The problem is that most businesses are still sitting on the bench when it comes to online visibility.  Statistics show that 95% of businesses in the US have little or no presence on page one of the major search engines.  This is primarily due to the fact that this is one game where the rules constantly change.

Time to Get Off the Bench and Into the Game

Most businesses have a website.  In the past this was all you needed to get off the bench and into the 

game. That’s because before 2005, the Internet used a website-centric architecture.  What this means in plain English was that back then all you needed was a properly optimized website to get into the game.  This was in the time before such things as blogs, social networks and online video.  Once these online elements became commonplace on the Internet, the rules of the game were changed forever.  So much so, that by 2014, your website only contributes 25% to your overall ranking.  The other 75% consists of activity related to your blogs, social nets, podcasts and videos.

Sad to say but the days of set-it-and-forget-it online marketing are over.   If you want to succeed online, you need not only to embrace the off-site elements of your web presence.  You need to feed them.  More importantly, before you spend a lot of time and money playing the game of online marketing you need to start off by taking a look at your current strategy.  More precisely, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

    

    1.     How many page one positions does your       site currently have and under which               keywords?

   2.      How much traffic are you now generating? 

   3.      How many sales per month are a direct result of your website?

If your answer to these questions is either none or “I don’t Know,” then you need to head back to the locker room and rethink your strategy.  Because if your current game plan is not scoring, the only solution is to make some changes. 

If the name of the game is to score, then the first thing that every business owner needs to do is define what is meant by scoring.  I mean, are you trying to generate leads, sell your products and services, or simply brand your business.  If you can’t define your online goal, how are you going to be able to achieve it?

The Starting Lineup

The Patriots defense rushes the Eagles offense during Super Bowl XXXIX. The Pats D had 4 sacks costing the Eagles 33 yards. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once you determine what you are looking to achieve on the playing field, then you need take a look at both your offense and defense.  Where most people consider their website to be the quarterback, in today’s online arena it is really only an eligible receiver ready to move the content you create.

You really need to look at your blog as the quarterback, since it is responsible for passing on timely information regarding your business.  Face it, once you create or refresh a website how often do you change it?  Once every year or so?  I you want prospects and clients to stay current with your business weekly blogs are the best way to move the ball down the field.  Of course, there are a number of other positions that are vital to your offense. 

We regard our social networks as our offensive line.  They give us the ability to run interference so that our receivers can get in position to catch the pass before the quarterback gets sacked.  Like any good offensive line, these players need to workout daily in order to keep in shape.  They need to stay healthy throughout the long season.  And they need to get off the bench and into the game.

That brings us to special teams, which is how we regard videos and podcasts.  It used to be that the Internet was text only.  Today that isn’t the case. Back in the late nineties people who found your business online would spend quite a lot of time clicking around your site to check you out.  Today you have less than two minutes to score.  Add to this the fact that people are five times as likely to watch a video or listen to a podcast than read text and you have to ask yourself if going multimedia isn’t a winning strategy you need to adopt.

Your Offense is only as Good as Your Defense

When it comes to winning, defense is every bit as offensive, right.  Think about what would happen to t

Shea Smith, the former quarterback of the Air Force Falcons, looks to pass during the 2007 Armed Forces Bowl. Español: Shea Smith, el ex mariscal de campo de los halcones de las Fuerzas Aéreas, se pase el fútbol durante el Armed Forces Bowl de 2007. Français : Le Quarterback Shea Smith juste avant de faire une passe. Suomi: Pelinrakentaja Shea Smith valmistautuu syöttämään. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

he quarterback if the ball was hiked to him and there weren’t any linemen to keep the other team’s defense at bay.  That would be either a very long day or a very short day for that QB.

Before a consumer or another business owner decided to do business with you, they need to check you out.  While your website, your blogs, your videos and social posts tell them a little bit about what you do, what it doesn’t tell them is what your customers think of you.

The main reason that prospects are reluctant to give you their contact information or make an initial purchase doesn’t have as much to do with price as it has to do with trust.  The Internet is known to be a den of scammers and spammers.  You read about it every day.  Today things like reputation management, online reviews and video testimonials are vital to giving a prospect the confidence to make an initial purchase or sign up for an offer.

That means they want to read reviews and they want to hear what your customers have to say before they do business with you.  I you aren’t cultivating positive reviews and posting credible video testimonials then don’t complain if they decide to do business with someone that does.

Worst of all is the fact that if you do not have a mechanism in place that fosters positive reviews then that only leaves what:  Negative Reviews.  I don’t care how conscientious you are then sooner or later you are bound to rub someone the wrong way.  When that happens don’t be surprised if the disgruntled party doesn’t post negative remarks and ratings about your company.  That’s just the way the web works today.  That’s also why you need to make the effort to cultivate positive reviews.  This way if you take a hit, you will be able to get back on the field and continue to play.

Gimme the Ball, Coach!

Last but not least the thing that separates the dynasties from the also-rans in the NFL is one thing: 

Coaching.  If you are still trying to put together a winning team without a coach, or are trying to coach your team by yourself, let me give you some food for thought.  Working the web to win is not a game

 to be taken lightly.  The success or failure of your business could well hinge on your company’s web presence.  Get it wrong and your website could languish in the backfield of this money game.    This also holds true for anyone you hire to manage your web presence. 

Unless you have the manpower and intestinal fortitude to lead your team onto the field week in and 

U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander, U.S. Central Command, gets ready to toss the coin at Super Bowl XLIII, Feb 1, 2009, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

week out you are going to have to hire a coach.  While there are many  highly reputable online marketing firms out there, there are also a number of firms that can do more harm to your business than a wily competitor.  That’s due to the fact that there are still some people who make their money by trying to cheat the search engines in order to beat the search engines.  While black hat tactics can jump you to page one in a hurry, once discovered these tactics can cause your website to be banished from the playing field altogether.

Therefore it is important that you check out the credentials of anyone who offers to help you promote your web presence online.  Among other questions, you need to ask the following:

     1.      How many years have you been promoting businesses online?

     2.      Can I speak to some of your current clients?

     3.      What are your fees and what will I receive should we choose to hire you?

     4.      How long is the contract?

     5.      Do you offer any guarantees?

     6.      What happens if you fail to deliver?

     7.      Who do I call if I have any questions or concerns?

     8.      Have any of your clients ever been de-listed by the search engines?

Last but not least you should search online to see if their firm has any positive or negative reviews.  (Having no reviews is almost as big of a red flag as having a bunch of negative reviews.)  The last thing you want to do is trust the future of your team with anyone who has not been able to deliver a winning season or who has been penalized by the league. Because when it comes to playing the game of online marketing, you’re only as good as your last season.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.   You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4pm Central on BlogTalkRadio. 

Who Needs Cyberbabble?

By Carl Weiss

When it comes to my day job, which is helping people succeed online, I am many times confronted by prospective clients who are dazed and bewildered by online marketers who make themselves seem important by spouting cyberbabble when asked even the simplest of questions.  I don’t know if they do this simply because they are dyed-in-the-wool computer nerds that speak a language all their own.  Or maybe it’s because they want their prospects to think that all SEO experts are part of some secret cabal. All I can say is that it undermines the job that I and other legitimate online marketing professionals have to do.  More importantly, when I question most of these clients about what it was that they were paying for, they look at me like deer in the headlights.

What is SEO?

While intoning mantras like SERPs and Keyword Density may sound impressive, what it means to 

generating online visibility is absolutely nothing.  (As far as I know, you put SERP on your pancakes.) When it comes to making your website sticky, well that is another matter altogether.  In the first place, Search Engine Optimization has changed so radically in the past few years that it is hardly recognizable as such.

Go back five years and ninety percent of everything you needed to please even the most finicky search engine was on your homepage.  (The other ten percent being backlinks.)  Today, only twenty five percent of what the search engines use for ranking is contained on-site.  The other seventy five percent is contained offsite, including blogs, social networks, videos and podcasts. 

While it is still important to include meta tags (code contained at the top of the page that identifies the site’s content) and alt tags (used to identify images), it is just as important to provide both the search engines and prospects with everything they need to make a buying decision on the homepage.  Gone are the days when people will spend five to ten minutes clicking around your site to decide whether or not to do business with you.  Statistics show that you have less than two minutes to dangle the bait and reel in the fish.  So if your website contains twenty five links, if the prospect has a tough time finding your phone number and/or address, or if they are confused in any way, they are history.

The 5 Magic Bullets

If you want to turn clicks into cash, then what you need are the following 5 items in plain site:

1.      Phone Number – Nobody wants to click onto a subsidiary page to find your contact information.  That is so old school.  Make sure your phone number is highly visible at the top of the page if you want to do business with anyone online.

2.      Address – With all the cybercrime going on people need to know that your business is on the up and up. This means they want to see a physical address.  If you don’t want to be taken for a fly-by-night operation make sure your address and google map are in plain sight.

3.      Intro Video – Since 99% of the people that click onto your site have never done business with you and since you have less than 2-minutes to get their attention, why not commission an introduction video that introduces you and your staff, tells prospects why they should do business with you and asks for the sale?

4.      Testimonial Videos – Want to turn your best customers into your best salespeople?  Create a short video interview that lets them tell the world what kind of experience they had with you. 

5.      Unique Sales Proposition – Many times when prospective clients ask me what they need to do to start selling more products and services online I tell them they need to provide prospects with an offer that will make them want to give your business a try.  (It doesn't always have to be a discount on the price either.  Intangibles such as a white paper or e-book can be a great way to generate the initial sale.)

 What you need to ask online marketers before you trust them with your site.

Like it or not, when you trust your online marketing to an outside agency, you are putting your business’ 

future in their hands.  Should they make one wrong move you could find your website delisted or even blackballed.  If this happens it could take months or even years to climb back onto page one.  Below are ten questions you need to ask any online marketing agency before you sign on the dotted line:

1.      How long have you been doing online marketing?

2.      What services do you provide? (Web design, SEO, blogging, social networking, email marketing, video production)

3.      How many clients do you currently have?

4.      What kind of guarantees do you offer?

5.      Can I view some videos testimonials?

6.      Can I contact some of your current clients?

7.      Has your agency ever won any awards?

8.      How often can I expect to hear from you once I sign up? 

9.      How long do I have to continue using your service?

10.  What do I do if I am dissatisfied with your services.

By having a clear understanding of the responsibilities of both parties, as well as being able to verify whether or not an agency that is vying for your business can get the job done, you will not only be able to sleep better at night, you will have something tangible to show for the effort.  Now please pass the SERP.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.   You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4pm Central on BlogTalkRadio

Start the Presses

By Carl Weiss

Every business owner is always on the hunt for effective yet inexpensive methods to generate a buzz that can get the word out and command the attention of prospects.  While traditional advertising is one way to self-promote, it is not only expensive, but it is also difficult to track.  Pay per click advertising, while eminently trackable, is not all that inexpensive since it is sold for the most part on a cost-per-click basis.  But what if I told you there was one form of promotion that could provide the best of both worlds in one easy to afford package?  And what if this promotional vehicle could not only give you the clout to generate far more exposure than traditional advertising venues, but it could also park you on page one of many newsfeeds and search engines in less than a day.  Would that get your attention? 

What I am referring to are press releases.  Not exactly the new kid on the block, press releases have been around for more than 100 years.  The first documented press release was documented in 1906 when Ivey Lee released a statement concerning a train wreck that killed 50 people in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  His news item was not only picked up by a number of newspapers across the Eastern seaboard, it also set the standard for the vehicle now used by millions of companies and thousands of news outlets around the world.  When you consider that over 80 million people in the US alone get their news online day in and day out, this is a niche that’s begging to be filled.  When you also take into consideration the fact that everyone from journalists to bloggers and broadcasters are always on the hunt for fresh stories and breaking news, then this is one promotional venue that’s hard to beat.

Before you dive headfirst into the water, there are a few things you need to consider.  First and foremost, press releases are not cloaked advertisements.  They are newsworthy stories.  As such, they can announce events, promotions, awards, accomplishments and new products.  Then can also be used to generate a feature story provided that they gain the attention of other writers.  Journalists of all stripes constantly comb though press releases in order to generate material for an assignment. This is also a place where they look for inspiration for an article or broadcast.  So the first rule in writing an effective press release is that you need to grab the attention of a writer or publisher.

You also want to grab the attention of bloggers and search engines, both of which can propel your story to an even bigger audience.  A mention in a popular blog or a page one posting on a major search engine can have a profound effect on both your website’s traffic and your reputation.  It can also result in your receiving a call from other writer’s or broadcasters who wish to interview you for their station or publication.  While fleeting, the exposure from even a single well-placed press release can be game changing.  In fact it can elevate your status to that of “valued expert” which can catapult you and your business to a whole new level.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that you are competing against millions of other press releases all clamoring for attention.  What this means is that unless your last name is Kennedy or you are on intimate terms with a movie star or some other well-known celebrity you are going to have to work long and hard to come up with a story that has star appeal. 

Take it From the Top

In the press release game, the headline is where the rubber meets the road.  Unless you grab the reader from the get go, the chances of your release getting read and reposted are slim to none.  Whether you write the headline first and the release afterward or the other way around matters not.  What counts is whether your headline not only describes the essence of your release, but also jumps out of the herd.  A dynamite release with a lackluster headline will simply get lost in the shuffle. 

Since you also hope to command the attention of major search engines, you need to include important 

keywords in your headline.  In fact, one of the best ways to kill two birds with one stone is to start with the keywords that are likely to generate search engine results and then frame a demonstrative statement/headline that contains these keywords. Feel free to use search engine keyword tools or consult social networks to see which keywords are trending before you begin crafting either the headline or the press release itself.  Not only is using keywords from the outset going to produce greater search engine visibility, it also makes it easier for journalists and readers to find your release.

Brevity Does a Body Good

Next comes the body of the press release.  Just as with social networking, there are rules when it comes to crafting an acceptable press release. Since journalists are your target, understand that they have neither the time nor the inclination to research or extensively rewrite your company’s big announcement.  Therefore you need to write the release as you would like to see it appear in a news story.  Start with the date and city from which the release originates.  The first sentence needs to be concise.  If the headline of the press release reads, “New Caveman Diet Rocks,” then the lead might be something like, “Forget the carbs, the Caveman Diet promises to shed pounds by revisiting caveman cuisine.” 

Then it’s time to move onto the first paragraph which needs to hook the reader into reading more.  Ideally it should fill in some blanks while expanding the lead and providing additional detail.  What you don’t want to do is turn the opening paragraph into either a tweet or War and Peace.  Ideally your release should be a maximum of a page in length.  It needs to communicate who, what, when where, why and how, while sticking to the facts and keeping your copy short, sweet and to the point.  Remember that whoever reads your release will in all likelihood have read dozens of others just like it.  If you want your story to get ahead of the pack you need your release to be more than well written.  You need it to be press-ready.

Who Are You?

Lastly, consistent press releases can establish you as an industry expert. This is important because establishing your expertise helps you gain the trust of your target audience. It can also be a positive boon for media relations. Whenever the media needs someone to comment on an issue related to your industry, wouldn’t it be wonderful if your name was front of mind. Expert status can be an asset that you can take to the bank.  Well written and properly distributed press releases will allow you to stand out among the crowd, gain the attention of the media and above all start the presses rolling.

Carl Weiss is president of W Squared Media Group, a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida.  He is also co-host of the online radio show Working the Web to Win which is broadcast live every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern.