Put Your Website To Work In 2013

Is your website doing the job you expect of it?  Is it being the dutiful sales tool you paid for and helping your build your business?  If not don’t feel bad, most websites are sitting out there and nobody but the owners has ever see them.  Once in a while, you read about a website with millions of visitors.  That is such a small percentage of the internet world, it has created and industry of thousands of businesses like the Bourquin Group where I work.

Last week I was referred to a business by a current client.  Since the business was local, I stopped in.  Not something I normally do, the owner didn't know who I was and asked what I did.  I explained that I ran an online marketing company.  The response was clear that he didn’t understand.  I said we do SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  Still a blank look.

Then I said, I help people find your website when they are looking for your kind of business, and he got it.  Every day there are 300,000 new websites added to the internet.  Most of them will get less than 1000 visitors in the next year.  Many will get less than 100 unique visitors.  Why would a business spend the time and money to build a website that nobody sees?  It happens more often than not.   In most cases the website becomes an expensive digital brochure and nothing more.

If you are going to spend the time and money to build a decent website, why not spend the time and money to market it?  Don’t you want to get more potential customers to find it online?  So how is your traffic?  Do you know?  I am amazed at how many business owners I talk to have no idea.  They just see the site out there.  Some look at Google Analytics, and know their traffic, but have no idea how to influence it.

Recently I offered to double the monthly unique visitors for a businesses website for $1500 a month.   The owner had no idea that was only 12 people.  We ended up growing the site 100% per week for 8 weeks straight.  Now he has 200 unique visitors each week, many of them are potential new customers and call for information.  He pays $875 per month, not the $1500 I initially presented.  It is still growing double digits each month.  Just one new customer from that group pays my bill, and the rest is gravy.

When you started your business, why did you do it?  Freedom, Happiness and Income are the three biggest reasons I hear when I interview new potential customers.  And yet most of them tell me they feel trapped by their business, and more importantly trapped by their online marketing efforts.  One guy was spending six hours each day on his website, social media and e mail marketing.  How can you run a business doing that?

Before you go out and hire an online marketing company spend $15 and take a look at our books.  Even if you don't choose to do it yourself, you will know the right questions to ask.  Any or them or all of them will help you better understand what companies like mine do.  It will help you make better choices when hiring a company or deciding to do it yourself.

Build it and they will come doesn’t happen online.  You have to reach out and make sure you are in front of them where ever they are and lead them to your site.   Don’t let them get away.

Internet Marketing 101

Internet Marketing is something that every person I meet wants to know more about.  Or at least they say they do.  When I start asking questions, or trying to help their eyes usually roll up and they check out of the conversation.

Every business owner I meet, every real estate agent I work with and every salesperson I talk to wants to increase their business using the internet, and so far not one has had an idea how to do it.  Have you been buying those internet marketing courses only to find they make no sense at all.  Do you feel like some kid is taking your money and telling you to give up your life so you can make money online?

I want to change all of that.

If you are new to this blog, I run an SEO.  My company helps websites get to page one in "organic search".  That alone is a daunting task, and depending on your competition can cost several thousand dollars each month.  So how is a small company going to compete with the people handing me several thousand per month?  Can it even be done?

The answer is, Yes, it can be done and in less time than you think.  The secret is focus, and knowing your customer.  As much as I want to have every small business in American be my client, I know that isn't a reality.  So, in order to fulfill my personal mission of helping business owners break the handcuffs of their business and achieve freedom, I have made some changes to my business.

The first major change is letting go of a few of our closely held internal secrets.  Like most secrets, they really aren't "secrets" at all.  They are just simple common sense actions that we all overlook because we are so "busy" running our businesses.

After years of frustration, failure and wasted effort, I used my brothers logic (patented by the way) and found a way to effectively market my clients business in less than one fifth the time I had been spending previously.  Not one of my clients complained when their invoice dropped 75% in a twelve month period and their results were still improving.

In order to help more people I took the major parts of our "secret sauce" and put it into a book that you can get for under $12.  It just might be the best $12 you spend on marketing your business all year.

Internet Presence is your position on the internet.  It is the combined result of your online marketing efforts, digital PR, your website and social media efforts.  More importantly, included in your Internet Presence is your customers online opinion of your business. Many owner feel like this is totally out of their control.  My experience tells me the opposite is true.  You can change the online opinion of your business with very little effort.  You just need the right effort.

If you want to start 2013 off on the right foot, pick up a copy of The Easy Guide To Internet Marketing today.  You will quickly learn how to position your business and build your online presence in just a few hours each week.  Don't let the competition get ahead of you, get your internet presence plan in place today.

Are You Marketing On Facebook For Free?

Facebook is clearly the king of Social Media.  Just having a solid Social Media Foundation on Facebook can bring your real customers.  I don't mean the kids that spend eight or ten hours a day on Facebook, I mean real paying customers.  Recently I have learned that several of my high level power friends only will respond to me on Facebook.  Like me, they have someone else that reads their email because there is just too much spam.  Facebook and LinkedIn have become to the high level communications platforms for the power players and high rollers.

As a small business or a local business, it is entirely possible to have your entire online marketing platform on Facebook for FREE and keep busy.  My dog groomer is just such a business.  I would like to sell her some marketing, but she is booked solid, and has no current desire to grow.  Her only marketing avenue?  An incorrectly placed Facebook Profile for her business.  Currently using a profile for a business is against the rules, so she will have to change it.  Her customers have already started the process for her, building a place page and a fan base.  Now all she has to do is claim it, and keep the customers happy.

The funny thing is her competitor just three blocks over doesn't get it and won't hire my team to do the same thing for her business.  The competitor "has a guy" that built them a website which does nothing for them.  

Clearly Facebook is the king of Social Media, and these days, it is really a better starting point than a website.  The best part about Facebook for a small business owner is the price, FREE.

Facebook is probably the best starting point to build a foundation for Social Media Marketing.  It depends on the kind of business you have where you’ll go next, but just like building a good house, the longevity aspect starts with a good foundation.

Start by learning how to build your Facebook foundation correctly the first time. Once you have a foundation, you can market on Facebook for free with just a few hours each week.  Free marketing on Facebook is pretty straightforward but there are some big mistakes you can make early that can cost you.  While your kid might be on Facebook for eight hours a day, Facebook marketing isn’t a place to let anything go.

Once you have a foundation on Facebook properly built, then you can use your marketing strategy to build your plan for Social Media Marketing beginning with Facebook.  In order to make sure you get it right, I wrote a book with a step by step guide to get your foundation built correctly.  Included in How To Market On Facebook For Free is several strategies that you can tailor to your business, along with a few things not to do on Facebook or anywhere online.

Currently you can get How To Market On Facebook For Free at Amazon only on the kindle.  The paperback should follow shortly.  If you get it before the five days are up you can check it out for free too.  After that, it will be under $5 for the kindle version and under $15 for the paperback.  It will be money well spent.

Google Graphs Change the Game

The online real estate game is changing and Google is making it very clear who the landlord is.  A very popular article hosting site came up for sale for less that $2000 even though it still has some great traffic.  Google graphs is going to help Google really fine tune the responses you get before you get them.  No more "aggregator" or junk websites.

The article site that is for sale only makes about $30 a month from adwords, and it would take a shift to turn it into a subscription base given that Google is now downplaying the input from the article sites.  May authors like me are sticking to the big pages like blogger and wordpress.org.

So what is a business to do?  Real brick and mortar businesses are at a huge advantage right now where some individual people and online only companies are at a loss.  Any solo or small business with a business address can build a solid following online or pay an SEO to to local listings for them.   We have programs for under $500 a month that are very successful for our clients.

Who it doesn't help are people like Real Estate agents where 50 or 100 agents might use the same physical office address.  The broker is the only one gaining ground.  Individual agents are now double tasked with online work and social work to just keep up with the rankings and traffic for the office.

The timing couldn't have been worse for me as I made the decision to focus my business on the Real Estate industry and join my wife as an agent for Keller Williams Newport Estates.  The fun part is looking at how all of this has changed marketing for Real Estate, a market that has been beaten down for over 6 years.  We'll get it figured out, it just means I have to put in more effort than I expected when I started Real Estate School last fall.

For my existing clients, many saw some traffic improvements with very little additional effort on our part. We only had to make a couple of minor changes for law firms,  auto service centers and the like.  For the real estate work, we are taking on an entirely new direction.  We don't know how it is working yet but one of the techniques we are trying is the billboard and newsletter style websites.

The billboard website is a website like www.newportcostamesa.com where there is a newsletter of the events for Newport and Costa Mesa.  Then we are going to create a subdomain like AutoService.NewportCostaMesa.com and build a one page billboard for our Auto Service client in that area.  For them it should work nicely.  For realtors, we don't know how it will pan out due to the sheer numbers.

I'll let you know.  In the mean time, if you get a Google Graphs page, let us know what you think!

Who is your SEM helping you or them?

Google is making some big changes.  Using smarter natural language engines, they are preventing "over SEO'd" sites from making it to the top.  That is great for my company and clients, not so much for the big guys.

SEM or Seach Engine Marketing is the paid ad part.  When I go head to head with a national player very few people understand the game.  They just send money and hope those little numbers under the phone means real customers, not sales people looking to sell you something.  You can't ever know for sure.

What you can know is who Google is crediting for your ads.  You might have a landing page in your domain like http://replicaspeedster.truspeed.com, or you could have a landing page on your vendors domain like http://replicaspeedster.bourquingroup.com.  If you are paying for the ad, with 25% to 50% markup, which domain should it go too?  As your marketing consultant my answer is yours of course.

Our policy is that all landing pages are created on the customers domain for SEM.  For SEO, we create separate pages based on the city the company is based in.  With the exception of Real Estate Agents and Brokers, we only accept one of each type of business per city.  If you are a bigger business that covers two or three cities, we'll let you "buy" all of those cities.

Since we specialize in Real Estate Office Marketing Online, we can accept two or three per city, each with a different "niche".  Huntington Beach, CA for instance has three distinct markets, so we represent one agent for each.  Reno Nevada, has two parts of town and then there is Sparks.  The agents that try to cover it all won't make it, so we don't want to work with them.  Specialists make the money.

SEO and SEM are separate programs which should be intertwined to get the most value.  Mobile and Local programs should also be in the mix.  Doing them all gets you the most reach and the lowest overall price per contact.  Getting reach to local and mobile customers is a big part of the small business game online these days.

When your SEM company places ads that link to their domain, it is easier to set up and easier to manage.  They don't need access to your website to do it.  If they are doing your SEO work though, they should have access to your website to make minor tweaks to comply with Google policies and changes from time to time.

The problem with the easy route is that every time your ad is clicked the SEM company gets the hit, not your website.  I have had clients say they don't want to be tied to an adwords campaign, and this is exactly how you end up tied to paid ads forever.  Your ads and the the SEM companies website will be out pacing your own website if they get more clicks on your search terms.  If you stop paying, they get the clicks for another client.  You are now tied to them.  It can take 3 months to a year to fix.

As an SEM of course, my little company will probably never make page one on Google for search marketing agencies because the big 10 companies all have their clients campaigns linked to their domains.  This process is giving them better ranking on Google automatically, which leads to more customers because they are easier to find than the little companies like mine.  Word of mouth is 95% of our new business each year.

This arrangement is fine with me. I am glad to have the scraps and do a better job for my clients without the hassles of large offices, thousands of employees and in a couple of cases, large investors trying to run the company.  At the end of the day, I know my clients are getting the best marketing they can buy online at any price.  What are you paying for?

Google Gives Away $100 Coupons to Ad Agencies

I got a nice gift from Google today.  The funny thing is I can't use it really. Google sent me a stack of $100 coupons for adwords.  If you have a small business and want to start advertising on line, call me, I have some free coupons.

Why would Google give me a stack of $100 coupons for adwords?  Google knows that ad agencies can get two to ten times better response per ad than most users can.  You have a business to run.  Advertising and Marketing isn't your business.  Maybe Google sent you a $100 coupon and you used it only to find it frustrating that you didn't get any new customers.

Google wants to change that.  Instead of sending out coupons to every business in the world, they send stacks to Search Engine Marketing companies like the Bourquin Group.  As an SEO and SEM business, online ads and websites are what we do.  Your success online is our success.  Google wants your ads to work, and they know if they send me the coupons to send to you, the chances of your success increase.

If you want to start an online ad campaign that really works, call me and let me show you how we can help.  What have you got to lose, a $100 Coupon from Google?  Call me at 775-589-2655

Todays Simple Tip - Be Great at One Thing

Today I just want to post a reminder that has been handed down from business guru's since the beginning of time in business guru land.

Be Great At One Thing.

No body is great at everything.  Bo Jackson tried, and came close, but I don't believe he is mortal.

So for the rest of us, practice good habits doing something that makes you happy every day.  Don't live in a job or life that makes you miserable.

If you are a writer, write every day.  If you are a salesperson, sell every day.  Never let up, be great.

That is the real secret to success.

In the Cloud, Storing or Sharing?

More and more "The Cloud" looks like the easier alternative for data storage.  It is just another way we can hold someone or no one else responsible for something that is ours.  Recently a CPA suggested that I switch to an online version of the accounting software my business was using.

Like many things in life, it is cheaper this month to "rent" than to buy.  For $39 a month I could get software that I could download for $99.  Ok so month one I pay $39, and keep $60 in my wallet.  The next month, I pay another $39 and keep $21, but then the third month I am now $18 behind and each month, I get another $39 behind the financial curve.

The truly rich rent nothing and buy everything.  Looking at the accounting software option, you can quickly see that the software company is getting pretty rich because they own it and other people rent it.

My next concern is simply: What am I really doing with my data?

Am I just storing my data or sharing it?  If the data sits in my office, the little green light on my server tells me it is there doing fine.  The CD on the shelf and the one I take home make me feel better about my data being there in the morning.

I did look at "renting" the online version of the software but I found two things. First the EULA made my eyes cross and there is another company that offers just about all the same features for just $19 a month.   I discovered a couple of features that even my "purchased" version didn't have.

What I was trying to find before my eyes crossed while reading the EULA was an answer about what happens to my data if they get bought or the CEO goes nuts with company money and they go out of business?  What if I sell the company and get audited two years later?  Would I be able to get the data?

I never got to the answer if it was in the EULA, and decided the $99 download only version was the quick and easy way to upgrade for the year.  A little more background is probably due here.  I was using a 2009 version of the software.  One feature was going to go away in May.  When I sent my files to my CPA for my 2011 taxes, he couldn't open the file or make changes because my software version was too old.  That is why I started looking.

As soon as I upgraded the software, I got a popup asking me to "share how I use" the software.  I started thinking, if they know how I use the software and what is in the data, who is really running my accounting?  The problem I have is that "they" aren't going to have to sit with the IRS when something goes wrong.

The more I looked at the accounting software the more I started to wonder about anything else stored in "the cloud".  I mean if Facebook shuts down and my pictures disappear, I will probably live without them being online just fine.  If LinkedIn shuts down and my business life story is erased from their servers, I probably wouldn't know for a few days at least.   Just for fun I have copies of the good pictures on my little home server.

For now, I'll keep "buying" storage devices for my home and office.  At least I know where they are.  Anyone else have any thoughts on "the cloud'?

Simple Lesson of the week for better marketing

This is a very embarrassing blog to write.  Twice this month my website went down and my phone number quit working.

Ah Technology.....

Now we all have things happen where a website might not work, or a phone number goes out of service for a little while and we fix it and move on.  These were both internal technology oversights, and that is why they are embarrassing.

In order to help us troubleshoot a website, I gave a vendor access to our servers.  Not knowing that we hosted more than 100 websites on that server alone, they uploaded a file to the main folder.  All of the websites quit working and no body knew it.

Thankfully, I pay for a monitoring service that randomly checks all of our sites for errors each day.  I get an email right to my phone when the site is found to be down.  I don't know how many customers found our website down and got a 404 page not found error or a 500 server error.  It really doesn't matter if it was one.  That one could have been our next big client.

The phones were another issue all together.  We buy banks of phone numbers to track add campaigns.  Our main number is in one of those blocks of numbers.  Unlike a regular phone number we "buy" these blocks each year.  This year, for whatever reason, one block didn't get paid for and our number was in that block.

I am glad to say it was only the block of numbers for our company, and no customers lost a call, but again how many calls did we lose?  Fortunately some vendors had my home number and called me to make sure I was OK.  That is the value of a good vendor relationship.  I never call my office, so it could have been weeks before I knew.  You can't fix that kind of damage easily.

More recently, a client had a Trojan horse infect his website.  He wasn't a hosting client, so we had nothing to do with the website at the time.  The hosting vendor blamed the long delay in removing the Trojan horse on several factors.  They are now a hosting client.

Just today I met with a company and 90% of the pictures on the website weren't correctly addressed so the site looked like a sixth grader built it for a class project and forgot the camera.  Seeing it would have made me bounce off the walls.  When I called the office to tell them, no body could find the "computer person".

After doing a little checking it was clear their website was like that for months.  So a couple of quick tips.  Have everyone call your numbers regularly so you know they work, and either pull up your website every day or pay for a service to make sure it works.  Keep in mind many browsers just show you the "cached" web page until you reload or navigate around, so just making your website you home page might not alert you to a problem.