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.

Time for a change

For some time we have known that the name Rustic Creek has run it's course.  A new name is in the works, it is harder than you think!

The Domain Name, Corporate name and trademark logo are officially up for sale.  e-mail your bid to ap@rusticcreek.com if you are interested.

The blog will remain on blogger, however the future writing will be at blog.scottbourquin.com and www.beachstreetnews.com

RusticCreek.com was sold and we have been holding it.  The buyer again has asked us to sell it as their needs have changed.

Build Good Rules for a Good Business.

He has an Aim Point, Do You?

An updated version of this is now at

Http://blog.scottbourquin.com

Aren’t successful businesses built with good rules?  I mean pilots use rules to fly, the big burger chains use rules to make burgers and the government is loaded with rules.  Last I heard Pilots were doing a pretty good job getting people where they wanted to go, the burger chains were making good money and the government, ok I’ll skip that one.

As a commercial rated pilot for over a quarter of a century, it is pretty rare that I go flying without a purpose, reason or direction.  Even as a student I had a plan and followed the rules.  All the while I considered my flying career a success.  When I fly, there is always someplace to go, something to see, or something to do in the airplane.  Isn’t that a lot like business? When a pilot starts out, he has a destination or an aim point, a plan to get there and a few thoughts in case the plan doesn’t work out.