The Proper Perspective

Whenever I start a new website development project, I ask the customer for a list of the keywords and phrases they would like their site to be listed under. The intent, of course, is to incorporate those keywords into the website content so that Google, and the other major search engines, will then index the site using those keywords.

Over the years, I've noticed that the quality of the lists I get back tend to vary wildly. Sometimes, I get lists of vendors or product names of items being sold on the website. Other times I get lists of terms related to the technical aspects of the items, such as ingredients or parts lists.

Perhaps the most important advice I can give regarding keywords is to think about it from your customer's perspective. The whole purpose of picking keywords is to enable your customers to find your website, so it only makes sense to pick words and phrases that are of importance to them.

For example, if you sell little green pills that relieve pain, the term Ibuprofen might seem like a good choice, and it may get you a few hits. However if you think about it from the customers point of view - they're not searching for Ibuprofen, they're actually searching for headache medicine or pain relievers, both of which would likely be more effective keyword choices.

Another downside of technical terms like Ibuprofen is that they are prone to misspellings. Although search engines are getting better at dealing with misspellings (You typed Ibuprophen, did you mean Ibuprofen?), it still makes your site harder to find. Of course, if there's one common misspelling of an important keyword, it may worthwhile to make a second version of a particular page and purposely misspell the keyword as a means of gaining that traffic.

Another important consideration in certain cases is geography. For example, if you're an interior designer in Hartford, it doesn't do much good to be found by users in Seattle. In this instance, your keywords should be qualified with a geographical reference - Hartford interior designers or interior designers in Connecticut. Just be sure not to restrict your choices too much. It's obviously better to have too much traffic than too little.

Unfortunately, finding the perfect keywords, and website optimization techniques are an inexact science at best. There are tools available on the web (WordTracker, WebCEO, Google, etc.) to assist in the effort, but they can be difficult to learn and the process takes time. Furthermore, it's an on-going process. Even after you've achieved page one on Google, the process must continue as your competition strives to overtake you.

As a result of this iterative process, search engine optimization tends to be rather expensive to the small business owner. This leads many to forego the process and to rely on common sense and business savvy in picking keywords and phrases for their website. This approach can be effective if it's combined with good text content, that is written from the customer's perspective.

Using eBay to Attract Visitors

I grew up in the 60's and 70's. When I graduated high school, I had a cheesy mustache, pork chop side burns, an afro the size of a basketball, and I played the drums in a rock and roll band. Today, I have two boys in high school, the mustache and sideburns are gone, my hair is thinning, and the basketball now resides in my belly. Although I still play the drums, I now play on a small electronic set that only I can hear through my headphones (which probably preserved my wife's sanity).

Back in the day, my drum kit consisted of no less than nine drums along with a forest of cymbals and various other percussion gadgets. My original hope was that one of my boys would learn to play, and eventually inherit my kit. But while both took a few lessons, neither developed any real interest. After a while, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was time to sell my drums.

A Swing and a Miss
The first decision I had to make was to settle on a price. The kit was a little over 20 years old, but everything was professional quality and in top-notch condition. Due to their age they were considered "vintage" drums, and one dealer was telling me that I should expect to get about $4000 for them. I thought that might be pushing it, so I listed the kit on eBay, with a reserve price of $2000. The kit generated quite a bit of interest, but at the end of the auction, the highest bid was only $1800. Since this was below the reserve, there was no sale. I did however get several inquiries and offers on a few of the individual pieces.

The Logical Approach
Being a "web guy", the logical next step was to create a website where I would show the entire set, but list the pieces for sale individually. But how would I be able to attract visitors to the site? I didn't want to spend a ton of money on advertising, but in order to get top dollar I needed to generate interest on a national, if not international, level. My solution was to use eBay.

Planting The Seed
During my previous auction, I received several inquiries about one of my cymbals. It was a rare, hand-hammered version made in Turkey. Since this figured to be my most marketable piece, I placed a listing on eBay to sell the cymbal. In the listing, I mentioned that I had several additional cymbals, drums, and hardware for sale, and I mentioned the address of my website. This was the ONLY means available to find my website.

Happy Endings
During the two weeks of the auction, my site received several hundred visits, and I sold about half the set. The cymbal on eBay eventually sold for nearly $800 to a guy in Boston, and other pieces of the set went to buyers in Kentucky, Georgia, and Illinois. I even sold two of the drums to a drummer in Italy! All told, after paying the eBay fees and all shipping charges, I made a profit of nearly $2500. But perhaps the best part is that with all the pieces that didn't sell, I still have a professional quality drum kit that can be used if my boys ever do catch the bug, or if annoying neighbors move in next door.

Anyway, I think it's a pretty good example of how planting a few seeds in the right places (in this case one listing on eBay) can really help to bring targeted traffic to your website.

"Offline" Website Marketing

Establishing a successful eCommerce website is a tricky proposition. As with any business, a proper marketing campaign is necessary to spread the word about your site efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. But just because it's an online business, you shouldn't restrict your advertising methods to online offerings and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I'll Take Geography For $100, Alex
Although it may sound a bit odd at first, small businesses that are limited to a particular geographic region actually have an advantage in trying to attain natural search engine rankings.

Let's say you sell seashells in Southern Connecticut. It doesn't take a Yale marketing degree to know that it would be unwise for you to spend money advertising to folks living in Utah. Instead, you'd focus your SEO efforts on phrases that included some form of geographic reference, such as "Connecticut seashells" or "seashells in New Haven CT". This is a way of targeting your marketing efforts to people who are actually potential customers. It also has the added benefit of restricting the number of competitors to websites that are within your geographical region.

Unfortunately, for small businesses looking to sell on a national or international level, limiting their marketing efforts to a small geographical region puts a severe limitation on the number of potential customers their ads will reach. Conversely, removing the geographical reference increases the number of competitor sites, and this often results in having to compete against the "big boys" with their stratospheric marketing budgets. It's a classic lose-lose proposition.

If You Build It, They Will Come
While this concept made for a decent movie, if you think it applies to websites, then you're indeed living in a Field of Dreams. If you want people to visit your website, they need to know you're open for business.

This can be difficult as many small business owners fall into an expensive and time-consuming process of trial-and-error, utilizing methods that focus solely on online advertising techniques.

Planning Is The Key
But the real key to successfully marketing your business is to actually market your BUSINESS - not your WEBSITE. And the key to any successful marketing campaign is to make a PLAN. Unless you're extremely lucky, the trial-and-error approach is a classic waste of time and money. And while it's a bit of a cliché, failing to plan really is planning to fail.

The advice I typically give to clients when starting up a new ecommerce site is: First, get the ball rolling by using some type of Pay-Per-Click program. They provide targeted traffic to your site, and most give you the ability to set budgetary limitations to keep your spending in line; Second, enlist the services of a professional marketer to construct a proper marketing plan. Small business owners sometimes see this as an expensive proposition. But it is, in my opinion, a necessary step to a successful online business. While it does involve a small investment, a good marketing person can help to ensure your advertising dollars are spent wisely. This is a must if you're going to play on the same field as the big boys.

Closing the Deal
One question I've heard a number of times is: "People love my site, and I get a decent amount of traffic, but why aren't they buying?" Of course there are many potential answers to this question, but the first thing to look for is pricing.

The Internet makes it very easy for people to find the lowest price (including shipping and handling). And if their perception is that everything else is equal, they will ALWAYS opt for the lowest price.

So if you're looking to sell something on your website, consider a PPC program to get things rolling, hire a professional to help you design an appropriate marketing plan, and be certain to set your prices accordingly. This should improve your chances at long-term success.

Putting SEO to Work

As an experienced “Webmaster” (I really dislike the term, but that’s a subject for another day), I’m often counted upon by my clients to help them increase traffic to their website. Of course, as small business owners they’re particularly interested in techniques that are easy on their budget. In my last article I mentioned the value of online directories. Today I’ll give an example of one of my client companies, and discuss the additional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods we used to dramatically increase their website traffic.

The Situation
The client in question is an established and growing firm in an extremely competitive marketplace. The owner is intimately involved in the business, both from an operations standpoint, and as a marketer. Several months before she had a website, she purchased a domain name that included a typical “under construction” page. Realizing the importance of the Internet as a tool her customers would use to find her, she began listing her business with various online directories. Later, when we published her informational website, she immediately began getting several dozen visits a day, and her business picked up proportionately.

The Challenge
Over the next several months, traffic at her website continued to grow at a healthy and steady rate. Referrals from search engines, however, were completely flat. Research showed that her rankings for several keywords were in need of improvement – particularly in Google. With the holiday season fast approaching we decided to focus our efforts on improving her rankings for a few targeted keywords.

The first step was to identify the desired keywords. We then identified the pages of her website that would be best suited to integrating the selected words without impacting the readability of the page. Our optimization efforts also included an update of all the usual elements – page titles, headings, alt and meta tags, etc.

The Results
In mid-November we rolled out the revised pages. Within a couple of days her website was on page 1 on each of the big three search engines – Google, Yahoo, and MSN – for each the keywords we selected. The impact on the traffic stats was equally impressive. Total visits increased by a factor of three from October to December, and by a factor of five from May to December. In addition, referrals coming from Google alone increased by an amazing ten-to-one over October levels.

Was it just a fluke or some kind of statistical oddity? Perhaps it was holiday season spike? Those thoughts did cross our minds. However, since the January-to-March numbers have maintained levels nearly identical to December, it’s obvious that it’s neither a fluke nor a seasonal spike. Obviously, the owner is absolutely thrilled with the results and the impact our efforts have had on her business. Her company is experiencing record sales and unprecedented growth.

The Cost
Of course, it’s one thing to achieve results like these when money is no object. It’s another thing entirely to do it for a small business on a limited budget. In this particular instance, the client had gotten off on the right foot by getting listings with several online directories. From there we focused on picking the right keywords, choosing the right pages, and utilizing tried and true optimization techniques. In the end, the cost to the client was less than $1000 – a mere drop in the bucket compared to the long-term increase in revenues her business is already realizing.

Big Rankings for Small Business

No matter how nice your website looks, and no matter what cool features were programmed by your developers, if people don't know about your site, your business is failing to reach its online potential. But what can a small business do to get noticed on the Internet today?

This question has spawned a new category of web consulting - Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. But while SEO consultants can certainly help a business to get noticed, the cost of their services can be prohibitive for the small business owner on a tight budget. And while it's convenient to hope that merely having a website is enough, small businesses invariably find out rather quickly that the web doesn't work that way.

But there are a few strategies that can be employed successfully for low, or even no cost, outside of the time involved in implementing them. The one that I often explain first to my clients is getting your website listed in as many online business directories as possible.

Directories are a smart idea for a couple of important reasons. Many offer free listings that are categorized geographically, and more importantly, directories quite often claim the top spots in popular search engine results pages.

The geographical categories used by many directories is particularly important to small businesses since many only serve a local or regional market. As a result, it's impossible for them to compete for the top search result slots with larger multi-nationals, or "super" store franshises. But it's crucial for them to be found by their name, or by searches that are qualified by the name of a neighborhood, town, city, county, or state. That's why directories are so perfect for small businesses.

Their combination of low cost listings, geographic organization, and the fact that they're often found at the top of search engine results, provides an ideal win-win scenario for small businesses with a tight marketing budget.

So how do you find the best directories to be listed on? No problem - just do a search on the term(s) you desire. They're the ones listed right near the top.

The concept of "The Web Guy"

I create websites for a living. It's what I do. It's what I know.

I started my company based on the premise that every business today needs to have a web presence. After long and careful consideration, I decided to target small businesses on the premise that while most small business owners recognize that they need a website, many lack either the skills, or the time (or both!) to build and/or maintain a website on their own.

Most large businesses today already have existing websites, as well as full time webmasters, and maybe even entire staffs of web designers, copy writers, and programmers to handle the maintenance of their sites.

But who does the small business owner have? All too often it's cousin Fred, or the neighbor's daughter-in-law. You know who I mean - he or she took an HTML course a few years ago, or played with a free version of Frontpage 2.0. They're proficient web surfers, and know how to use Yahoo to secure a domain name and FTP a webpage to a web server. Invariably what results is either a remarkably bland page, or one that contains a hideous combination of fonts, clip art, over-sized fuzzy images, and web gadgets.

Although they may think they saved a few bucks establishing their web presence, a poor quality website will ultimately cost the small businessman more money than a professionally built website. Here's how I explain it to my prospective clients:

Let's say you're looking to buy a house. You might start your search by looking at newspaper ads, and spending a Saturday afternoon driving by a few listed properties. Even though you're not entering any of the houses, it's fairly safe to assume that the interior of the house has been maintained with the same amount of care as the exterior. At any rate, your decision to look at the interior will certainly be influenced by what you observe externally.

In this analogy, your website represents the exterior view of your business. Potential customers are going to make their decision to 'enter' your business based upon their experience while visiting your website. A poorly-designed site will repel new customers just as surely as a well-designed website will attract them. This is true even if you're not selling anything directly on your website. For many prospective customers, your website provides the first impression of your business.

What the small business owner needs then, is a "Web Guy" - a single point of contact that they can depend on to take care of whatever web-related issues arise. A "big-picture" person who is capable of viewing the entire forest, while tending to the individual trees. Someone who is reliable, capable, and economical. This is the niche market that DCS has been built to serve.

Our service offerings include everything from domain name registration to website maintenance plans, and everything in between. While our specialty is to serve as the "Web Guy" for our clients, we can also be engaged for more specific projects such custom programming, Search Engine Optimization, or website usability reviews.

Anyway, if you know somebody who has a "cousin Fred" website with fuzzy graphics and too many fonts, do them a favor and let them know they're losing money. Better yet, tell them to contact DCS, or some other professional "Web Guy".

OT: The Final Frontier.

As indicated by the OT: in the title, this post is a bit off the topic of this blog. But I just got back from vacation in Florida with my family, so I'm a bit distracted at the moment.

We've been to Florida many times before (stemming from my days working for a software company HQ'd near Orlando), so we weren't doing the park-hopper tour this time. Primarily it was an R&R agenda. But our boys are now 11 and 12 years old, and we all had one day remaining on our Disney passes from a previous trip, so we spent a day at Epcot. And since I've always been interested in the space program, we spent another day at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Since we'd been to both of these venues previously, there wasn't much that took us by surprise. But we all agreed that our favorite new attraction was the Mission: Space ride. It's about a manned trip to the planet Mars, and it's pretty cool. You even get to experience what a 5-G liftoff feels like. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that this attraction is located at Epcot, and not at KSC.

Following our day at KSC, while driving back to our timeshare, it occurred to me how sad it is that NASA gets beat by Disney in presenting an attraction that is perfectly suited to the type of content that is NASA's specialty. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy spending a day at KSC. But to be brutally honest, there isn't a lot there that can't be experienced by watching some combination of PBS, CNN, The History Channel, and The Discovery Channel over the course of a week or two (unless you're lucky enough to see an actual launch).

Let's face it - when it comes to space, there is no equal to NASA. In fact, it's safe to say there isn't even any legitimate competition. They have mountains of authentic space-related content that includes missions to all the inner planets of the solar system, the Voyager missions to the outer planets, the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Mars Rovers, among many others.

They have a ton of land located within easy driving distance to one of the most popular family vacation destinations on the planet. They also have access to the most advanced technology on Earth, and their very business is to provide a bold and exciting vision for the future of mankind. Is it my imagination, or does this combination just scream "THEME PARK"?

Imagine an Epcot-style park where the rides take you to far away galaxies that really exist, and instead of visiting different countries, you're visiting different planets. And occasionally, instead of a nighttime fireworks display, how about a nighttime shuttle liftoff. I've seen one, and it's literally out of this world!

Perhaps I'm over-simplifying here, but I suspect that if NASA were to go private, building a Disney-caliber theme park could fund just about any mission their visionaries could dream up.