Friday, December 16, 2005

Hope you are warm and toasty - it's pretty chilly here. Below are some things to check out. We hope you enjoy your weekend. My daughter is out of school starting next week for the holidays - actually she is out today because the roads are icy - so we'll be on a limited posting schedule (read that as maybe no posts) till Jan 2nd. During this time try to find some other ways to piggy back your ads. We'll do the same and post our thoughts in January.

We hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and Happy and Prosperous New Year. Thank you for letting us be a small part of your lives.

There seems to be a battle going on between Yahoo and Google over paid links.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002955.html
http://battellemedia.com/archives/002123.php


A recap of the recent Chi town Search Engine Conference

http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchbrief/senews/006339.html

Ratings on the search engines - no surprise Google leads - interesting though more people are searching which is good news for everyone.

Click here

Top 99 search terms with 9 letters from A9.... hmmm

http://blog.a9.com/blog/2005/12/14/the-99-top-9/

Tim and Lisa

Thursday, December 15, 2005

So did you come up with something you could use -

First an example of some good marketing - If you search for Auto Tape Measure in Google -

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=auto+tape+measure

Who do you see at the top of the list.... Black and Decker - excellent marketing. So what you want to find is someone that isn't doing it.

What do you get if you search for home depot elf... one result. If you had something related to hardware / gifts for me you could plug your ad in there and get some unexpected traffic.

If you search for Bud Light Venus - there are no results in the ad box - so probably for ten cents or so a click you could drive some traffic.

Hopefully this gets some creative juices flowing. The main thing is to think of things for your target market - and it doesn't have to be commercials it can be topics within a show. If it is a show topic you need to try and get the ads setup the day of the show. People have very short memories. Commercials usually run more than once.

Stuff you can use -

Tax time is coming soon - check this article out.
http://www.sbtimes.com/articles/05/12/2.shtml

Speaking of taxes this site gives some good info on mileage deductions.

http://smallbusinesstaxcenter.com/records/mileage1.php

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

So the commercials I found were -

Pre Game -

Fed Ex
Ford F 150 BCS
Comcast HDTV
GMC

1st Quarter
Budlight / Venus
King Kong
Energizer
Cardiezem HBP
Home Depot - Elf
--
Nissan Z
Best Buy (Games)
According to Jim
--
Dominos 5 buck deal
Nissan Frontier - shift offroad
Diet Pepsi - Vending Machine
Hope and Faith - Christmas Freak
--
Nissan Frontier - compact trucks
Michelob Ultra
Subway - Chicken Bacon Ranch
Auto Tape - Black and Decker
--
Fedex
Phillips - sense and sensability
In Justice
--
Subway - Chicken and Bacon
Visa Check Card
Snickers

So what do those commercials have to do with anything - these people spend huge amounts of money on their campaigns - I have found though that many don't branch out to the web. Let's face it, many people watch TV and surf. What stops them from searching Google for some keywords they find in ads. Using the commercials above try and find some searches where there are no Adwords - don't worry if it's not your niche - just use if for practice. I'll give you my results tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Did you have a chance to do your homework from last night - if not don't worry I did. We're running behind schedule today and have some obligations later today so we'll talk about it more tomorrow.

I did find an interesting thing this morning - MSN may pay you to search - would you switch if someone did this???

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2649

Monday, December 12, 2005

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - we had a pretty good weekend more on that in a bit - first some posts from the weekend.

A nice way to get out of the sandbox from Google -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=57368

I watched two excellent football games on Sunday and it got me to thinking that I probably hadn't shared with you a good (cheap) way to promote your site and bring more traffic... which in turn brings more sales. It does take some work and some money - so if either of these are in short supply for you then you may not want check out the blog in a week or two.

To help learn about the concept you need to do a little work - tonight watch the first quarter of Monday night football. Even if you don't like football one quarter shouldn't be too much for you to wade through. As you watch the game write down all the commercials that you see - as well as any advertisements you may see. Even if your audience would hate football just bear with me. We'll talk some about those commercials tomorrow.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Google's Ten Rules for business -

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051206-114834

Search engine strategies is going on in the big C - here's a place to catch some updates on whats going on.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051205-141249

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Monday, December 05, 2005

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Some things that may get your tractor cranking this morning.

Google has now made it possible to seperate content bids and "normal" bids. Instructions can be found here -
http://perrymarshall.com/google/separate.htm

Some excellent info on creating niche sites -
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18376

Friday, December 02, 2005

Matt Cutts has some good advice in his blog on software -

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-software-mistakes/

We hope you enjoy your weekend - hopefully we'll get some Christmas shopping done today.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

So what might Google be up to with Google Base - this article might help to explain things a bit.

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/next_up_google_shopping.html

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Monday, November 28, 2005

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I had a lot of fun with my daughter - we goofed off on World of Warcraft quite a bit. Lisa and I also watched a bunch of sappy holiday movies (think Hallmark). It was a very enjoyable time away from the computer... and if you haven't taken a list a few days away, remember the old saying all work and no play.

If you've heard about Sony's "rootkit" and the hub bub surrounding it then this is interesting.

Click Here.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Some nice articles to feast on before turkey day -

Are you really targetting your customers ?

http://www.enquiro.com/marketing-monitor/know-your-target-audience.asp

People are still searching for stuff on the web - you can find numbers below.

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=34827

Some Thanksgiving recipe ideas
http://www.recipelink.com/thanksgiving.html

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A nice article on Email open and click rates -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_66.shtml

Google analytics has halted new accounts for now - apparently they grew too fast....

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/wp-trackback.php?p=36

Monday, November 21, 2005

We hope you enjoyed your weekend - we'll be posting things till Thursday this week - then we'll probably snarf down some Turkey - enough to make us hibernate till Monday.

A nice thread on someone that is trying to start things off with zero cash - more info here -
http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3177

Some comments from the Google pub relations guy at a recent conference.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=56221

Friday, November 18, 2005

Google has a new tool that helps detect timeouts, errors, unreachable urls etc., when they crawl your site. Want to make sure that Google finds all the good stuff on your site then check it out.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

If appears that Google Base is now up - you can check it out here -

http://base.google.com

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Want to know some search stats for your industry - click here.

What exactly is web spam - learn more here.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Pretty cool - Google is now offering free stats for your site -

A nice article on this can be found here -
Click Here

Or you can check it out from Google here -
http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html

I kind of feel sorry for those programs that cost hundreds of bucks a month.

An excellent paper concerning page rank -
Click Here

Monday, November 14, 2005

Hope you enjoyed your long weekend - can you believe that next week is ThanksGiving... I can't either.

Is the Jagger dust settling???
Click Here

Ebay is now offering some pretty awesome marketing research stats - more details can be found here.

A nice article on links - more info

Thursday, November 10, 2005

A nice interview the Brett Tabke founder of Web Master World.

Click here

We'll be taking a break tomorrow since it's Veterans day - and hey I'm a vet... good excuse anyway for a day off :o).

I served in the 3 ID - in Schweinfurt Germany when there was still an East and West Germany.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Wal-mart scared of Google ... hmmm maybe. Check out the following story from NY Times (might have to register to view the page)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/technology/06google.html?pagewanted=1

Enjoy your day.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Monday, November 07, 2005

Lots of tidbits over the weekend.

Google has filed another patent - apparently soon they will be individual results for each searcher....

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=8547

The "official" patent can be seen here -

Click here for the patent link -

Is Yahoo in the process of a big update?

http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55461

Enjoy your Monday!

Friday, November 04, 2005

I don't know about you but I'm glad it's Friday.

Some good info about Jagger Changes -

http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55306

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Our newest newsletter is out -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz255-05nov.htm

An excellent article on creating passwords -

http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=271347
(scroll down to post three)

Firefox has an excellent program that lets you check useful SEO stats as you surf.
http://www.pandia.com/sew/105-check-seo-stats-while-you-surf.html

Monday, October 31, 2005


Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend - we had some excitement at our house as the cows invaded. :o) -

That's me - looking rough after all it was early Saturday morning. My daughter Haley and "Bessie". Bessie brought along 7 or so of her closest friends as well.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Google is up to something... besides the update. They are in the process of starting Google Base - you can find more details here -

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2013

and the "new" site can be found here -
http://base.google.com/

although I got a database error - so maybe it's not ready just yet.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

More Jagger stuff -

How did XML site mapped sites fare -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54883

It's not over till its over - make sure to check out Google Guy's post on this page -
http://www.searchengineworld.com/forum912/4-2-20.htm

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Friday, October 21, 2005

Couple of more notes on Jagger -

How to contact Google if new results are full of trash -
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/update-jagger-contacting-google/

An excellent conversation is going on here as well - next week - after some more dust settles we'll give some observations.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54379
You'll have to register but it takes about a minute to do that.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

An excellent article on improving your sites navigation can be found here -

http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/design/menu-builder.htm

If you haven't subscribed to their newsletter yet, you should.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Is there another Google update going on - maybe... maybe not. Details can be found here.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002654.html

Monday, October 17, 2005

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. If you are looking for a place to find keywords without having to pay - then you may want to check out Nichebot -

http://www.nichebot.com/

Thursday, October 13, 2005

If you use windows XP and it seems to have slowed down - then these tips may be just what you need. One reminder before you try new things make sure that you BACK UP your files.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1949

We mentioned before about Google and dupe content - check out this -
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/4091

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

hmm it appears that Google is going to get involved as a payment service (like paypal) - what better way to streamline their payments to affiliates etc. More can be found at the link below.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1940

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

The link below has 12 tips for growing your newsletter subscriptions -

Click Here

Monday, October 10, 2005

The service we use to send our newsletter is offering free leads - you may be interested in that so here's the link -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_50.shtml

Enjoy your Columbus Day!

Friday, October 07, 2005

What happened today in history - you can find out at the following link -

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/

Enjoy your weekend.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before - a good place to learn about recent changes in the SEO world can be found here -

http://www.seroundtable.com/

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

A nice article on Indexing and Ranking can be found here -

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3552906

Also if you didn't get a chance to check out the October issue of our Newsletter you can find it here.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz254-05oct.htm

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

An excellent article on competition and what it can mean for you -

http://www.businesslyceum.com/compete.html

It seems like that the states want in on income they may be loosing from taxes more details here -
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3552921

Enjoy your day.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Friday, September 30, 2005

An excellent article on finding the right platform to run your ecommerce site can be found at the link below -

http://ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/building/article.php/3551461

Enjoy your weekend.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

The war is over... maybe... you know the one where search engines say they index the "most" content. Details can be found at the following link -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3551586

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

We talked last week I think about being prepared for an emergency - so what if you have pets - this site may help you get them prepared as well.

http://www.hsus.org/hsus_field/hsus_disaster_center/disaster_preparedness_for_pets/

Monday, September 26, 2005

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend - DEMC had an informative ezine over the weekend which included an excellent one on Pay per clicks -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_41.shtml

Make sure you check out the other articles as well.

Friday, September 23, 2005

A nice tool to find out if you've been banned from Google -

http://123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

A nice list of video and audio downloads from business leaders - best thing no charge to download.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/av_speakers.html

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

A nice search engine that will help you find out how you're doing for terms in multiple search engines - find out more here -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3550681

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Monday, September 19, 2005

Friday, September 16, 2005

If you like crosswords / cryptograms then you'll enjoy this site -

http://oneacross.com/

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Don't forget to send your estimated taxes in tomorrow ... Bah Humbug.

A great resource for disaster planning (for you and your business) can be found at the link below.

http://www.youngandsuccessful.com/newsletter/ys_weekly_090805/

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

We've talked some about usability in the past - you can find some good info at the following link -

http://webreference.com/authoring/design/usability/

Some good stuff there if you dig for it a bit.

Monday, September 12, 2005

If you like to keep on top of the latest trends I would highly recommend the following newsletter.

http://www.trendwatching.com/

A newsletter I look forward to getting.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Unfortunately when you have a disaster scammers come out of the wood work. The link below may help keep you safe (from scammers).

http://www.scambusters.org/hurricanekatrinascams.html

Have a wonderful weekend.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

It seems that Google did a PR / backlink update over the weekend - guess they didn't take the holiday off - some details on that can be found in the following forums.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7673
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31072.htm

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The Sept. issue of our newsletter can be found at the following link -

Building business relationships, interesting newsletter stats and more.

We hope that you and your family had a wonderful holiday weekend.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

A few good tidbits today - note we won't be posting tomorrow or Monday so enjoy your holiday - hug your family and have a bit of fun.

Are alt tags worth it -
http://www.searchengineguide.com/aws/2005/0830_aws1.html

An excellent guide to wordtracker - click save as since it is a pdf file.
http://tanny.com/keywords/keyword-research/Wordtracker-Guide.pdf

Earlier we said that Yahoo was going to be creating a service similar to AdSense - you get paid for your traffic. Their beta is open and details can be found here -

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/nl/aug05tu.php

Again enjoy your weekend.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Unless you've been living under a rock you've seen the devastation of Katrina - we have some clients down south that we haven't heard from yet. Please continue to keep them in your thoughts and prayers and if you want donate something as well.

http://www.redcross.org/

http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

SE Conference Review -

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7257

Earning money with Adsense and others -

Tidbits -

There are more folks that pay publishers than Google.
Yahoo is in beta with something that will compete with Google.
A note from About on mixing up your ads.

Monday, August 29, 2005

Just a quick note today - say up a prayer for those that may face Katrina today or her remnants in the days ahead. Tomorrow we'll start working again on the SES conferences.

Have a great Monday.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Since the kiddies are back in school - it won't be long till they have to do research and reports. Google has a new search engine that may help them.

http://scholar.google.com/

Thursday, August 25, 2005

So why do you think Google has made these changes... these are just some of my thoughts.

1) They are moving toward a "portal".
2) The more real estate they have - on your desk, when you search, your home page - the more "eyes" they have, the more advertising opportunities exist - although for now they say they won't. Recently they eexpanded the number of ads at the top of listings from two to three - there is only so much more they can do there .... unless they choose to fill up the whole page with paid ads . Don't ever forget ... they're in this to make money.

Have a good one.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Google has had a couple of big announcements recently:

1) They've revamped their desktop product -
Click Here

2) They have a new IM Product -
http://www.google.com/talk/

More details about it can be found here -
http://www.google.com/talk/about.html

So.... why do you think Google launched these products. I'll let you think about it for a bit and I'll give you my thoughts about it tomorrow.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

We'll talk some this week about things gleaned from the last SES Conference.

First thing is about "mobile search". If you've not thought about it - now is the time to do it. Why because everyone has a cell phone - soon they will all be able to surf the web. Some details about research etc. can be found at the following link.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7254

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Just a link to check out today - hopefully by next week I'll be feeling up to par.

It's about "good" writing and Google.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1874

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

I'm in the process of getting a cold.... achoo... wasn't going to post today but saw this in my inbox and got me to thinking.

http://photo.stamps.com

You can now put pictures on a stamp - they are a bit expensive but if you mail a lot of things for your business (advertising / etc.), it could make the difference of someone opening it and not. How much of a difference the only way you would find out would be to test it.

Just make sure that the only change on the envelope is the stamp.

Have a good one.

Monday, August 15, 2005

The latest SES conference has wrapped up - today we're going to give you some links to review - we'll talk a bit about each one this week as well as things for you to do... so for today just read them.

The links to the summaries are here -

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=7186

Friday, August 12, 2005

Whew... first week of school is over. I think we're all getting back in the swing of things. If you've been keeping up with things you should pat yourself on the back :o) Remember we're working on tweaks a little at a time - one tweak won't make much of a difference but together they amount to quite a bit.

Continue working on the project from yesterday - here's some info you may (or may not) be interested in.

Trump has a blog - hopefully my blog is not as boring.
http://donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com/

Lots and lots of cool stuff on "how things work".
http://science.howstuffworks.com/

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

This project will probably take a couple of days -

1) Find your niche in this directory -

http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Directories/

Say my niche is paintball -

I would click sports -
Then paintball -

2) Visit each of the sites in that list
3) Request a link from each of those sites / add your site to their listings.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Today's optimization tweak is pretty easy - make sure that domains that you are promoting / marketing are renewed for at least 2 or 3 years. Why? When we spoke about Google's patent, one thing it does is allows them to check on things regarding your sites domain status - so domains with longer expiration dates will likely not be spam sites - will it help? It's hard to say. Will it hurt? No... so do it.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - I can't believe that school is getting ready to start. Since the next couple of days we'll be dealing with that - can't believe my daughter will be in the third grade - we'll resume posting on Weds.

Tell then enjoy 30 things you can do on the internet - some things I didn't even know about.

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,120784,00.asp

Friday, August 05, 2005

Got this in my inbox today - some interesting stuff on increasing your sales as people leave your site.

http://www.bizweb2000.com/gazette/

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

While you are working on testing your pages - this article was pretty interesting about Divurging results.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3524411

Have a great day.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Remember a while back I asked you to create an account for Google Ad Sense - divide your site into 4 or 5 sections - If you have 20 pages on your site - then it would be four pages to work on each day.

Now take the snippet of code and add them to your site - does the content for the ad reflect what you're optimizing the pages for. If not then ....

1) Tweak the title tag.
2) Add content to the page.
3) Tweak the product descriptions / names on the page.
4) Tweak the other meta tags.

Upload the page changes.

Refresh the page - does it reflect what you want now in the ads - if not tweak some more. If so delete the ads and go to the next page. Work on every page of your site. This will be your project for this week.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Have you finished all the steps this week - remember that they will all add up. So if not continue working on them. Today subscribe to a new newsletter that is in your niche. An easy way to find was is to type in "your niche newsletter" in Google. Have a great weekend.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Today you're going to make sure that all of your links actually point somewhere -- no dead ones.

If you have a bunch of links you can use the following tool to check them.

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Also you're going to add this to your "To Do" list to do monthly.

Also personally visit the links on your links page - any with a PR of zero - or that have changed their content remove them from your list.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Today you're going to create a marketing spreadsheet - we'll be expanding this some as we move forward - but today we'll make it simple.

1) Create the following headings across the top -

Date ~ Traffic (this can be page views / visits - doesn't matter just be consistent) ~ Orders (number of orders for the day) ~ $$ (value for the orders) ~ Profit (profit on those orders) ~ Subscribers ~ Current ~ New (Total subscribers to your newsletter, number of new subscribers for the day).

2) Daily start tracking these numbers.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Do you have your counter in place? If not make sure to check out yesterdays post.

Your homework today is if you don't have one - create a Google Adsense account - don't worry we won't be adding advertising to your site, but there will be a tool we'll be using in the near future.

You can create an account here -
https://www.google.com/adsense/

Then click on click here to apply - getting an account is super easy.

Make sure also to check at the adsense blog - save it in your bookmarks.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/

Monday, July 25, 2005

Before you embark on any major promotion campaign - you need to figure out where you are now. If you don't currently have a stats package then it is very important that you get one before you start.

Here is an excellent article on that subject -
http://1x.com/advisor/maher16.htm

Friday, July 22, 2005

So have you thought of some "baby steps" you can use to build your business. Next week we'll work on giving you some methods - some easy ways to build traffic - something that will take you five or ten minutes that you can do each day.

Till then have a great weekend.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

If you think about it - almost every huge project starts with a single step. Example - building a house starts by digging a scope of dirt, laying a single brick etc. You can build your business is simple steps - instead of thinking of the large (impossible) end result - think of the simple / single steps.

If you contact one new person a day by the end of a year you'll have contacted 260 people in a year. If you get two new links for your site a day - by the end of the year you'll have 520 new links. If you saved $5.00 / day - by the end of the year you would have $1825.00.

Why not take a small step today.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

An excellent article on adding the sitemap / xml to your site for Google's site maps.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/misc/xml-sitemap.htm

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Monday, July 18, 2005

Whether you noticed it or not - Google updated their page rank - they did some tweaking to it, but as always just a couple of things to remember.

When you get a note to exchange links -

1) Would visitors to your site enjoy / benefit from the link - if not - trash can.
2) Visit the site - is the link to the links page on the index page of the site - if not - trash.
3) Check out their links page - would some links their benefit your user - are there any that are offensive - if so trash - if no benefits trash.

Have a good one.

Friday, July 15, 2005

So what did you learn from the article yesterday - here's what I learned.

1) People still search mostly for information on the web.
2) People are starting to use the internet more than the yellow pages.
3) Most people still can't distinguish between paid listings and organic listings.

So what can you do -

1) Include information / tutorials on your site. Include research / info keywords in your paid / organic listings.
2) If you use the yellow pages - think of transferring some of those funds to paid local search listings.
3) If you have the cash use both organic and paid listings.

If you want to waste some time this weekend - look no farther than here -
http://www.miniclip.com/Homepage.htm

Tim

Thursday, July 14, 2005

An excellent article on how American's search -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3519361

Think of some ways you can take advantage of the findings - tomorrow I'll give you some of my thoughts.

Tim

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

An excellent article to review - particularly if you use Google Ads on your site and/or if you're trying to optimize your site for Google - which should be all of you...

http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter263.shtml

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Vacation was a blast. Visiting the beach during hurricane season can be somewhat of an adventure. The worst part of course is getting back into the swing of things... which we're doing gradually.

If you use firefox then you definitely want to get the google tool bar plug in.

You can find that at the link below.

http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/

Till tomorrow have a great day.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

I know I said we would work on details for getting the Google update working - I'm running a bit short on time getting ready for vacation and thunderstorms popping up in the middle of things.

So we'll regroup and resume posting on or about July 12th.

Till then enjoy your summer and remember to take some time to smell the roses.

Tim
I know I said we would work on details for getting the Google update working - I'm running a bit short on time getting ready for vacation and thunderstorms popping up in the middle of things.

So we'll regroup and resume posting on or about July 12th.

Till then enjoy your summer and remember to take some time to smell the roses.

Tim

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

So what exactly is the google site map service -

It basically tells Google when to spider your site.... who wouldn't want to be able to do that.
So you could get Google to crawl pages that are deep within your site - and / or let them know when you make changes to your site.

Either way it is a win win situation.

Tomorrow we'll talk more about creating the actual site map.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Happy Monday - hopefully you had a wonderful weekend.

This week is going to be short for us - no posts on Friday - no posts next week.

This week we're going to be talking about Google sitemaps - and overview is here -
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Don't stress about it - we'll go into a step by step process.

For now though make sure to create a Google account if you don't have one yet.

Special Deal -

Get a $100 gift from Sandals for purchasing this -
http://webmaster.sitesell.com/blitzpromotions.html

Friday, June 24, 2005

If you like art... or just want to take a some time off, then check out the Louvre.

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/alaune.jsp?bmLocale=en

Have a great weekend!!

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

If your site depends on Google News Service for some or all of your traffic then this might be of interest to you -

Long Link

So what does this mean - don't ever put all of your eggs in one basket.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

First some informative threads on the Bourbon update -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=46557
http://toprank.blogspot.com/2005/06/googleguy-answers-google-bourbon.html
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29727-2-10.htm

The main thing I believe that Google did on this update was to remove things with duplicate content. You can find sites that may have your content by going here -

http://www.copyscape.com/

So what steps can you take -

1) Offers to provide you with "content" should be taken with a grain of salt - if they are sending it to you , then they will be sending it to hundreds of other folks as well.

2) If you write an article that is going to be an optimization page - put it on only one page - you may link to it from other pages, but don't send it out to others.

3) If you are sending it to others then realize the page won't be ranked well - but again put it on only one page within your sites.

4) If you have duplicate content within your sites work on making only one instance of the content - link that content from other places if you wish - delete the page where the dups were at.

Have a great day.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - this week we'll be working on continuing our discussions on the patent from Google - with some tidbits on what the recent Google update "Bourbon". We'll start talking about Bourbon tomorrow and go from there.

Enjoy your Monday.

Friday, June 17, 2005

An awesome speach by Steve Jobs can be found at the link below - some great tidbits on business and life -

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Enjoy your weekend!!

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Before we left Google had an update - on one of the forums we frequent "Google Guy" gives some hints about the changes -

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29727-2-10.htm

You can click on his user profile and gain some useful information. The main thing is that as with algo changes most of them aren't done all at once - so wait for a bit before making any drastic changes.

Have a good one.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

As you know anytime I go on a trip somewhere I try to learn something - so what did I learn from this trip?

My Grandfather made a big impact on a lot of people -

1) He called people on their birthdays and anniversarys - he had a huge book with names / dates and phone numbers (at least 300+ or so). Without fail on that special day you would get a phone call from him. The minister at the funeral asked how many had been called and of the 500 or so in attendance probably 3/4ths raised their hands.

2) He truly cared about young people - sports events, graduations, plays, youth group meetings, he was there. You could tell from the number of young people at the funeral that he had made a difference in a lot of their lives.

So what does this have to do with running your business. If you truly care about your customers they will know - and tell others.

Have a wonderful day!
Tim

Monday, June 13, 2005

You might have noticed we weren't around last week - we were out of town attending my Grandfather's funeral. It's piled up a bit around here but hopefully tomorrow we'll get back to our normal posting.

Tim

Thursday, June 02, 2005

More info from -
http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

and the patent -

quote -

High scores are also assigned based on the amount of time a user spends on a page. But how can Google know how long you're browsing a page and whether or not you accessed it from your bookmarks? Now you know what things like My Search History and the Google Toolbar are really for (cue ominous-sounding music).

And what happens if people used to spend 30 seconds on average looking at a page, but now only spend an average of 5 seconds looking at that same page? You got it. Page score goes down.

end quote -

So how can you make them spend longer on the page -

Again -

1) Provide useful - updated information.
2) Explain things that may be obvious to you - ie how to use that uber fishing fly to catch more fish.
3) Offer tips on the use of the product.
4) Offer uses for the product that they might not have thought of.
5) Provide customer testimonials.

Tomorrows issue today -

Check out these funnies -

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2994


One other note my grandpa is very ill - they live in Oregon and one of his requests was for me to be part of his funeral. He has lived a rich full life, but they don't expect him to live for the next week or two.

This means that their could be some delay in blog postings. We plan on taking our laptop, but we will only be checking emails a couple of times a day. Please do keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Have a good weekend.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

We continue with some clues from the patent -

Taken from -
http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

Traffic, Clicks and User data -

Quote -
The patent implies that Google is tracking not just how many clicks a search result is getting, but also what kind of traffic is going to the page in question. Higher relevance is awarded to pages that are accessed through browser bookmarks, for instance, since those pages are assumed to be more valuable to searchers.
End Quote -

So....

1. Make sure your site is interesting.
2. Make sure your let your visitor know that you make changes - so it is important to bookmark your site.
3. Give them instructions on how to book mark it.
4. Offer useful / relavent information besides just trying to sell something - such as....

Your selling jewelry - give them some useful tips on how to keep it clean, how to get it appraised, tips on storing it etc. The more useful information you give them the more likely they will be to bookmark it.

More info tomorrow.

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - what was your score on the quiz?

Today feels like Monday so we're catching up - tomorrow we'll start working on continuing our discussion on the patent.

Till then enjoy your Tuesday!!

Friday, May 27, 2005

First hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend - we won't be posting on Monday but will resume on Tuesday.

If you have a chance - take the SEO Quiz -

http://www.socengine.com/seo/guide/seomoz-quiz.php

If we get a chance we'll do the same and post our scores on Tuesday as well.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Continuing our discussion on the patent - possible changes on the google algo.

Again taken from here - http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

RATE OF DOCUMENT CHANGE -

What helps :

Blog or News pages that change frequently.
Greater weight is given to changes in the title .... hmm.


What doesn't:

Changes to nav bars - navigation structure
Java / Ads etc.

The rate of change -

If you accelerate the rate of change you're given more credit - so monitor your competitors - note their rate of change if any.

Make it a goal to goal slow - say change every month or so - if your competition increases their rate of change then you do the same - to every couple of weeks.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

So how can you take advantage of the changes / coming changes in the last lesson.

1) Make a list of your top ten or so competitors.

On your spreadsheet list -
1) Terms
2) What postion they are in Google.
3) Start monitoring the page changes - update when they changed / what changed.
4) Do this for a month or two.
5) Monitor their positions -

It may actually take more than a month or two to find a trend.

So what is an easy way to monitor page changes - you can find out more information from this site.

http://www.thegrid.org.uk/about/help/updates.shtml

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2178631

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

So what can we learn from that patent application -

Make sure to read the complete newsletter here -

http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

We'll just be adding our comments to the discussion -

Document Age:

First - think for a moment - which page do you think should rank higher.

1) A page that has been online a week.
2) A page that has been online for three years.

Note that I didn't say changed last week - but has been online a week.

Google obviously likes fresh / content. I agree with the article that probably in instances where newer topics are discussed that fresher pages may prevail -- but if your optimizing for fishing lures then older - fresh pages are key.

So take away things -

1) Old pages can be made fresh with content updates and getting fresh links to them from other sites. If you're still getting all the links to your home page it's time to mix things up.
2) If you redesign your site it is now even more important to keep the structure.

We'll talk more about the patent tomorrow.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Market position posted an excellent newsletter - please take a moment and review it -

http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

Most important (and something we'll be discussing some tomorrow and Weds) is the patent application and what it may mean for your site.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. We'll be taking some time off this week so we should be back to our regular posting schedule next week.

Have a good one.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Something to take a look at - A new take on tags and links - an interesting read.

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3503596

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Another aspect of preparing the garden is getting ready for the harvest. We'll talk first about a follow up plan -

Do you have a plan on contacting someone even if they don't order from you? Believe it or not some folks won't order the first time or the fifth or even the tenth.

You can find more information about creating a follow - up plan at the link below -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz185.htm

Tim

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Have you had a chance to work on the worksheets from yesterday? I know that mainly it pertains to someone building a new site but it might help with an old one as well.

If you want a break try http://www.20q.net/

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Continuing the website prep - take some time today and check out 12 Webdesign Decisions.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/12design.htm

Make sure to save it / print it out. We'll be discussing it more as the week progresses. For now just download / save it / read it / print it.

Have a good one.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Hopefully you had a chance to do yesterdays task.

This weekend do the following :

Get 5 - 10 volunteers to visit your website while you're watching them (not all at the same time of course).

Ask them to:

1) Order a specific product.
2) Contact you with an email.
3) Tell you what your normal shipping time is.
4) Order 3 additional products.
5) Ask them to sign up for your newsletter.

How did they do?

If you notice that all of your test subjects struggle with a certain task - you may want to think about making that task easier. Things that may be super simple to you - may be extremely difficult to someone visiting your site. Ask them for input on things they found hard, ways that you could improve your site.

For tomorrow - download and read the following .pdf on search engine optimization.

We'll discuss this in depth starting next week.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/presentations/organic-seo-itzone.pdf

So make sure you save it somewhere.

See you Monday. Don't forget to HUG your Mom this weekend.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

First step in growing our garden is preparing the ground - after all you wouldn't just dump seeds on rocks and expect them to grow.

Garden #1

Make sure that your site is viewable using Firefox.

http://www.getfirefox.com/

Explorer has held the crown for many years - but Fire Fox is slowly but surely catching up. If you haven't viewed your site in Fire Fox make sure that you do.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

A great new contest from Yahoo - you could win a million free impressions. Looks like entering the contest is pretty simple. The only requirement is that your business is small. You can find more details on the contest at the following link.

http://thinkbig.yahoo.com/

Monday, May 02, 2005

Hopefully this week we'll have a bit more time to post - last week was pretty wild - stormed quite a bit / busy etc. Today it feels like winter time again, but hopefully no storms this week.

Have a great Monday!!

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

No Seeds - No Business

Some people come to me and ask why isn't their business doing well on the net. After a few conversations I learn that they haven't done anything to promote / grow their business. For some reason they think that business will just magically appear. This of course couldn't be further from the truth. Without constantly planting seeds (promoting), your garden will not produce anything. Sure on occassion you may get a plant or two but you will never get a crop.

Tomorrow we'll start our conversations on preparing your garden.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. Something weird happened here yesterday... it snowed. 70 -80 degrees during the week and then snowed some on the weekend. Some of it actually stuck on the grass and cars. No snow storms scheduled for this week but who knows.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Couple of notes to wrap up the week -

Congress is looking at extending the ban on internet taxes -
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3498991

A good blog for seo information -
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/

Have a great weekend.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

How your business is like a garden.

For the next bit we're going to be using the analogy of your business as a garden. We're going to cover a variety of topics and hopefully as you relate it to a garden it may just make things clearer to you.

Here's an overview of the lessons.

Preparing your garden.
- tilling the soil
- what makes a garden grow
- choosing your seeds
- rouge plants
- watering your garden
- fertilizer anyone
- tracking growth
- harvesting your crops
- getting more from your harvest
- starting the process again

We hope you'll enjoy it - we'll start tomorrow with preparing your garden. Please note that each topic may take a couple of days to cover.

Have a good one.
Tim

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

This week.... if I can get this crazy thing to work we're going to talk about planting seeds. Spring has sprung and it's a perfect time to think about growing your business in terms of planting a garden. One thought to get you started. If you don't plant anything (advertise / promote) how can you expect anything to grow. Something to think about.

Friday, April 15, 2005

I really hate paying taxes... I don't guess that many people do. I give you permission to take the weekend off. My wife though has a good way of looking at it - she said it could be worse.... you could have not made any more. So I guess that is true, still I really don't like writing out the checks much. I guess the April 15th one makes it worse, because you pay the double whammy - taxes owed and the first ES form. So enjoy your weekend... you deserve it!!

Thursday, April 14, 2005

So how do you make it easy for new customers to shop at your site -

1) Explain everything - then explain everything again. While shopping on the net is easy for you, this will be the first experience for them. Explain exactly how the process works. Explain what happens after they push a button.

2)Inspire confidence - even though they may not have shopped - I'm pretty certain that they have heard horror stories about the web. Make them feel secure - offer them an alternate means of ordering your products - the phone.

3) Explain what happens after the order - how long does it take the order to be processed, when will it be shipped etc.

4) Detail how you will communicate with them.

Have a good one.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

I had someone ask me how that gas prices could relate to increases in web traffic. Here goes a simple but worthwhile explanation.

1. I live in a very small town - while we do have a Wal-Mart :o) - say I want something that isn't mass produced / but unique. Lets say I want a certain video game.

2. I now have a choice - I can drive two hours to the nearest "big" city that may have it - or I could buy it online. If I drive the four hours I'll spend an extra $20 or so dollars in gas. Online I find the game - same price as the store in the big city - shipping is four bucks.

I don't know about you but I would much rather save the $16 bucks. Next time I need to make the purchase I'll think about the video - how easy it was - didn't have to drive - came to the door - no traffic hassles - no big gas expenditure - so I buy something on the web again.

Once you do things a few times it starts to be a habit. So even if gas prices do come down after my happy experiences of buying on the web, I'm more likely to continue that.

Tomorrow we'll talks some about dealing with these first time buyers, to make their experience a pleasant one.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Hope your weekend went as planned. It was great here - for once it didn't rain and temps were in the 70's. In fact we had to turn on the AC. Have you noticed the price at the gas station lately - filling up your tank is getting a bit out of control. What isn't great for your car, may be great for your website. Personally I think this will increase web sales - where folks may have only visited your site around the holidays - they may actually come by more often for other purchases. Just something to think about.

Have a great Monday.

Friday, April 08, 2005

If you have a site that caters to kids - you may want to make sure your site is listed in the search engines that are at the following url - especially pay attention to those that are near the bottom of the page - starts with - "Other Children's Search Engines".

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156191

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

I got another update on the Google Auto Link program. I don't really see much wrong about how they're doing things now... but what could happen in the future. Take a moment to check out the following article -

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3490576

Pay particle attention to code you can add to your site to kill the auto link.

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/1562

Even if you don't have links to books - I think this move by Google definitely bears watching.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Someone asked about how we got rid of the spyware / viruses.

After trying various methods (and none of those working), I decided that it would be much easier just to reinstall xp - but this time to include service pack 2 - and to stay far far away from windows explorer.

1) I made sure all the important files were backed up - emails, code, programs I own that are downloads only, passwords etc. I backed all these up to an external hard drive. You don't want to back up settings etc., because these might have been compromised by the malware.
2) Check again to make sure you have everything. Don't forget your bookmarks, you may also want to include your address book.
3) Format the hard drive. There is a fast method - which I've found doesn't do the job, and a slow method.
4) Reinstall XP
5) Reinstall all the drivers and programs that came with the computer.
6) Install and update your virus protection / firewalls.
7) Install SP 2.
8) Download any additional windows updates.
9) Install your other programs and make sure they work.
10) Run a virus scan.
11) Take a break.
12) Setup your email.
13) Install Mozilla.

I have a slow internet connection - not by choice we just live in the boonies - the whole process took about six hours or so. I figure though that it was time well spent since my computer runs faster and the spyware doesn't take over things (knock on wood).

I had the leisure of planning my reinstall. Sometimes you won't have that luxury. Make sure if you haven't backed up things in a while that today (or this week) you do it.

Tim

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Recently our computer got infected with some nasty spy ware. We have the the firewalls, blockers, etc., but for some reason we got them anyway. One of the first things I do when this happens to me is to check out what kind of windows processes are going on (by hitting ctl - alt - del with xp). Some of these processes I have no clue what exactly they are. Now you can find out what they are and what you may need to do to stop them.

http://www.processlibrary.com/

Just enter the process in the search box and you'll find out what the process is. They do sell a product - which I don't own yet which is supposed to remove some of the pesky ones.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Hopefully on the blogging forefront this week will go better than last (ie I couldn't post). If you didn't move your clocks ahead last weekend then you're late.... was kind of funny on Sunday I thought I woke up early till I logged on my computer and found that I hadn't. Have a great Monday.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

I'm not exactly sure what the problem is with blogger - yesterday it wouldn't let me in - today it has been difficult to post. I'll try to figure out what the problem is.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

I know I had mentioned continuing our series - but just got an important tidbit in the mail yesterday. For those of you that have been around for a while you might remember Snap. We'll they're back at it again. You may want to make sure your site is listed and that you take advantage of their logo service. Details are at the link below.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3493061
I know I had mentioned continuing our series - but just got an important tidbit in the mail yesterday. For those of you that have been around for a while you might remember Snap. We'll they're back at it again. You may want to make sure your site is listed and that you take advantage of their logo service. Details are at the link below.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3493061

Monday, March 28, 2005

If there is a double post then there is some type of glitch - This week we'll be continuing our discussion on numbers. Also just a reminder - Saturday night you need to set your clock up an hour - Spring Forward - since Daylight Savings Time starts.
Our weekend was great - hope yours was as well. This week if things go well we'll continue our discussion on numbers. One reminder - don't forget this coming weekend it's time to Spring Forward by setting your clocks up an hour on Saturday night.

Have a great Monday.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Thursday, March 24, 2005

I've had a few folks ask some questions about the recent update / algo change from Google.

One of the better explanations of it can be found here -

http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0305.htm#TWO

Some take away notes:

1. The sand box may be easing up a bit - it has been long thought that Google sometimes put's new sites in a sand box of sorts before allowing them to be ranked.

2. Some changes on how links / linking works. The 15 tips they include there are excellent.

3. Stale sites rank worst - if you haven't updated the content of your site in a while - make it a priority to do it today.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

To continue a bit on our conversation and numbers - we first need to review some definitions. Review the following terms from the Marketing Terms site - you may want to bookmark them for future reference.

http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/keyword_research/

http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/2/

http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/1/

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

I get an excellent newsletter every few weeks from DEMC.

http://www.demc.com/newsletters/3_16_05.html

There was an excellent article in that latest newsletter about niches - you can find it at the link below.

http://www.demc.com/newsletters/3_16_05.html#4

Have a good one.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Last week went by way too fast - hopefully your picks did well in the NCAA. Yesterday I started reinstalling XP ... again. If you have a firewall don't be a goofball like me and turn it off. I turned it off for ten seconds and got about 20 bits of spyware, some which I couldn't remove no matter how hard I tried and it was very annoying.

I will also take my own advice and not use explorer (using firefox now). I don't know if using firefox would have saved me, we shall see. I'm still working on reinstalling things so hopefully you have a more productive Monday.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Hmm this is a second try - having some technical difficulties.

MSN starts a new PPC program -
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3490346

More info on tracking eyeballs -
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3490486

Have a great weekend.
This week has flown by - I am a huge basketball fan and with my daughter being home on her spring break blogging time has been short.

I did manage to find some excellent articles for you to review -

I mentioned eyetracking before - some more great information can be found here -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3490486

MSN is going to launch its own pay per click program - similar to Goggle and (Goto / Overture / Yahoo Search).

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3490346

Have a great weekend.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Today we're going to talk a little about testing - we'll be expanding on this as we go on but this is just a basic lesson. It will help us with numbers because when we start working on improving things we'll use testing and those numbers.

Test Basics -

Testing is trying different things in order to improve our results.
You can test any number of things - your ad copy, pictures on the site, colors etc.
Just like in an experiment you have to use a control - in our case the site before we change things - and the experiment - the changed site.
You need to make sure you test only one change - why? If you test more than one thing at a time then you won't know what made the change.

Have a good one.

Monday, March 14, 2005

We hope to continue this week where we left off on our talk of the magic of numbers. My daughter is on her spring break for a few days this week so some days we may not post.

Hope you enjoy your week.

Friday, March 11, 2005

A very interesting study shows some things that you could have probably figured out by yourself but it's nice to see it in print anyway. It tracked where people looked when they were presented with search engine results. Is your site in the golden triangle?

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb213516.htm

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Take a break from our regularly scheduled stuff today for this... if you haven't heard yet, Google is beta testing Auto Linking an addition to the toolbar - for now it will supposedly be just for certain items. If you remember a while back Microsoft was going to try the same thing (Smart Tags) - embedding links in your site. More details can be found at the article below -

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3488166

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

You have a nice stats package now - so what do you do with it / how do you read it. The link below will take you to an excellent article on how to read them.

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/marketing/a/visitortracking.htm

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

The big thing about tracking numbers is monitoring changes. Step one is being able to monitor your web traffic. If you have a good stats package then you can take the day off (:o) if not then start working on getting one. We talked in some of our previous entries about choosing a good package. You can find those posts by starting here -

http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com/2004/08/this-week-were-going-to-be-talking.html

You can also see the whole series at a glance - just remember to scroll down to the August 9th post first - then scroll up.

http://smallbizpromo.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_smallbizpromo_archive.html

Friday, March 04, 2005

Found a very useful site for getting free content for your site (photos, video, etc.)

http://creativecommons.org/find/

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Numbers... using numbers you can improve a lot with your business.

If you aren't tracking the numbers you should be. Say your site gets a hundred visitors a day and you make one sale a day. With everything remaining constant (mostly the quality of the visitor) if you got 200 visitors you would make 2 sales, 300 visitors 3 sales, 1,000 visitors 10 sales. I think many people don't grasp that concept. It is VERY powerful.

If you cold call 10 people and make a sale - if you cold call 20 you should make 2. There are many different variables of course, but the numbers should remain constant. I think next week we might expound a bit more on the power of numbers.

Have a good one.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

So you've broken down your goals into smaller bites - now what do you do with those bites.

Now you need to create an action plan. Let's say you have a goal to save $20.00 a day or $100.00 a week. List five or so ways you can achieve this. Saving is all about either making more or spending less. So you could perhaps do the following.

1) Save loose change in a jar - $5.00 / week.
2) Eat the value meal for lunch - $10.00 / week.
3) Eat out only once a week instead of three times - $40.00 / week.
4) Plan grocery shopping - coupons / buy in bulk / track sales etc. $20.00 week.
5) Review expenses - do I really need all those things on the phone / 3 cell phones etc. $25.00 week.

Make sure to put the money you save in the bank.

Tomorrow we'll talk more about numbers.

Tim

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

You have your long range goals - now we're going to work on turning the mountains into molehills.

Lets say for instance that you have this long range goal.

I will double my business in five years.

Currently let's say you're doing $100,000.00.
So in five years your goal would be $200,000.00
Each year you would need to increase your business by $20,000.00.

So the first year you would need about $2300.00 / week in sales.
Year 2 - $2700.00
Year 3 - $3100.00
Year 4 - $3500.00
Year 5 - $3850.00

Say your goal was to save $50,000.00 in five years.

(Not counting your interest ) That would be $10,000 / year - $193.00 / week or $38.50 / day (just the work days of the week).

Breaking the goals down will make them much more doable.
Tomorrow we'll start talking about the doing.

Tim

Monday, February 28, 2005

Was a mess here last week so we'll try to do better :o) - Tuesday we'll resume the goal discussion.

A very informative article on when people open emails and how it varies by season.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2927

Tim

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Completely forgot that Monday was a holiday - spent most of the day goofing off with my daughter. Tomorrow we'll resume our goals discussion.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Hope everyone enjoys the weekend - if you haven't done so make those goals we talked about earlier in the week.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Hopefully your goals are going well - today the goals you're going to write down have to do with your finances - different than your business - think personal, retirement, debt, things you may really want - you could also put here. Don't just say out of debt - say exactly how much ... ex. I want to pay off my debt of $22,000.00 in five years or seven or ten etc. Another ex. I want to buy (pay cash) for a new Hummer in five years. You get the idea, now go for it.

Next week we're going to work on turning these goals into a reality (think turning mountains into molehills)

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Did you get those goals written yesterday - if not .... STOP... Do not pass go and don't keep reading. Do that before you continue. Each step builds on the last.

Today - using yesterdays template - write five long range goals you want to accomplish in your family life. Sometimes it hard to quantify love - but you could have a goal like - In ten years I want to have enough money saved for my childs education at the college of her choice. (Insert that dollar amount somewhere in the statement).

Five by tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Today we're going to work on making our first long range goal. By now you should have some notes on where you want things going in various areas of your life. Today we're going to think about business for a moment and make our first long range goal.

You should remember that you don't want to be vague - in other words grow my business beyond my wildest dreams, while that may be good we want some solid numbers. Provide better customer service would be a good goal - but again there is no way that you can see if you achieve the goal. So a good goal would be - In 5 years I want to increase my business by 500%. ... or In 5 years my returns / refunds will decrease to 0.1%.

So today write five long range goals for your business.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Hope you enjoyed your weekend. We'll be talking more this week about goals... if you haven't done your homework from Thursdays post - get with it!!

Have a great Monday.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Saw this interesting article this week. Its about standards and function - but the main tidbit I got from the article was this.

"Yahoo's Tim Mayer said speed is a major concern, and to ensure fast loading page the company uses standards to reduce file size. Tim went on to say Yahoo's crawlers prefer fast loading sites and that they really don't put a lot of emphasis on validation. They have not seen a correlation between validated sites and good quality relevant sites. "

You can view the entire article here -
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3482116

We hope you have a wonderful weekend - don't forget your goal homework.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

We've talked a bit on making goals - and the benefits of making long range goals - so what areas should you make goals in. Don't worry next week we'll set to work on actually making goals.

Your business
Your health
Your wealth - this is different than business - when do you want to retire... how do you want to retire.
Your family -
Spiritual -
Yourself - what would you like to learn how to do - what hobbies would you enjoy - if you could go anywhere where would that be

Now write these headings down on a sheet of paper -
Your homework for the weekend is to jot down some general things under each heading - think 5 or 10 years from now. Dream BIG!!

Have a good one.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Yesterday we talked a little about creating goals and the proper format - today we're going to be talking about long range goals.

The goal ( :o)) of goal making should be to provide you with some steps that you can take daily to meet them. In order to do this the first thing we need to do is create some long range goals. Like we talked about these can be dreams but they need to be specific as to amounts / times. These global goals don't have to be as specific as short term ones - think 5 or 10 years down the road.

So a good one might be - I want to double my business income in five years. I want to be able to pay for my child's college tuition in 10 years.

Tomorrow we'll talk a bit about the types of goals.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

The next couple of days we're going to talk about some goal basics.

To create a good goal it must have the following components -

1) It must be clearly defined - losing weight is not a good goal - lose 10 pounds by June 1st is. So it must have
a) Specific - think numbers
b) Time - must have a time limit
c) Clearly defined - make more money in my business - that isn't clearly defined - make $1 million dollars by next year is - but not really as clearly defined as I like - we would call that a global goal. Get 20 new customers in 6 months is a great goal.

Lets think a bit about Global Goals - these are long range goals or dreams that you may have.

Homework - keep thinking about goals - but start focusing now on your global goals a bit more - where would you like to be in ten years from now.

More tomorrow.

Monday, February 07, 2005

This week we're going to begin an in depth discussion of goals - if everything goes well.

If you haven't done so yet make sure to check out the start of our goals guide which you can find in the last issue of our ezine.

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz246-febr05.htm

Friday, February 04, 2005

Next week we're going to be talking about goals - so make sure that you stay tuned.

Got this in the email this morning and it's an excellent article on how USA Today gets more subscribers to its newsletter. With a little tweaking it would be valid for almost any business.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2907

Have a wonderful weekend.

Tim and Lisa.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Now you should have a list of sites to contact for possible links -

1) Review their site for how to link - many of them will include clear instructions - ie how to link, who to contact, if you qualify for the link etc.... by the way - you need to make sure you have this included on your site, it will make your life much easier.

2) Contact them using the information they provide in #1. Make sure to chart on your spreadsheet when you contacted them, put their link up, when they put yours up, etc.

If they don't provide that information -

1) Contact them using a contact form or email address - make sure to
a)Address them by name if possible.
b) Explain how / where you will link them.
c) Mention something about their site that lets them know you visited.
d) Include your - link information, how to contact you, what to do if they have questions.

Then do it - it's not fun, it will take a while, but it does help.

Tim

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

An excellent article that reviews the things we've been talking about can be found here -

http://www.marketposition.com/mp-1204.htm#ONE

One note when you get the part that talks about links to get first - you can also use those directories as a good starting off point to gather links.

Gather sites that are in similar categories as your site.
Then go to the sites / review their links page and gather some more.

It's usually much easier to gather numerous sites before actually contacting them.
When you gather the site information make sure to get -

URL-
Site Name-
Page rank -
How to link -
Contact Information -

Tomorrow we'll talk some about the contact process.

Tim

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

We just posted the Feb. edition of our newsletter - when you get a chance make sure you read it. This week we'll finish Weds. and Thurs. with the how to get links series and next week we'll start working on creating goals.

Here is the link to the newsletter -
Enjoy -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz246-febr05.htm

Monday, January 31, 2005

Most of the bad weather missed us so that's good - this week the plan is to continue on telling you about some easy ways to get links.

Till tomorrow we hope that everyone enjoys their Monday.

Tim

Friday, January 28, 2005

Something to read over the weekend - an article on optimizing not just for Google.

http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/The-Various-Search-Engines-Their-Whims-and-Wishes/

We're supposed to get some ice this weekend - and if we do then it may take a while to dig out / get power restored - so we'll see you Monday (or later :o)).

Thursday, January 27, 2005

First what exactly are you looking for when you search for links -

1) Sites that aren't competitors.
2) Sites that look good without excessive popups / ads / etc.
3) Sites that deliver a service for visitors of your site - ie you sell baby gifts and link to a parenting advice site.
4) Sites that have a PR greater than zero - a PR of zero may mean they are in trouble with Google - beyond this don't worry much about PR - think first of #3 - a service to your readers. If it's an excellent site and they have a PR of 1 - rest assured that as word gets around their PR will climb. Conversely if their site is junk and has a PR of 9 forget them because their deeds will eventually catch up with them.
5) Make sure the sites resources page has a clearly visible link for the front page. It is better if it is a text link.
6) Review their links page - do links actually link from the site or do they use a code to link. I would be wary of linking to sites with a code because that doesn't actually deliver you any PR at all.
7) Take a moment to review some of the links from their links page - what are they like - would they provide value to your customers.

Next week we'll talk about the actual process of finding links.

Have a good one.
Tim

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Monday, January 24, 2005

Sorry for my absence last week - long story so I won't bore you with it.

Does Google have an aging delay - this article makes some good sense.

http://www.searchengineguide.com/claiborne/2005/0117_sc1.html

Hope to get things back on track tomorrow.

Tim and Lisa

Friday, January 14, 2005

Hopefully the weather is not too wild where you are - the past week it's seemed like spring time here. Now today it has turned winter time - after thunder storms and high wind yesterday.

An idea of getting prospective links into your inbox can be found at the link below -

http://links-for-you.com

We'll be taking Monday off so we'll see you on Tuesday.

Enjoy the weekend.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

We all know one of the main reasons for working on linking is to improve our page rank - are there ways you can adversely impact it - certainly - and you can find out more information at the following link -

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=361407

Tomorrow we'll review a bit about what we've talked about so far.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Hopefully you had a good weekend. Our pooch of 14 years hasn't been feeling to well lately, he walks around like a drunk man - believe it or not the vet says that is from an inner ear infection. It's like his whole world is leaning to the right... enough about that though. This week (I promise) we'll start / resume our talk on links. Till then I got this in my in box over the weekend -

http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

It is a list of various directories on the web as well as costs involved with submitting your site to them.

Have a good one.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

This week has been a little busier than I expected it would be (not complaining mind you). Hopefully we'll get back into our regular swing by next week. Till then if you have a chance check out our latest newsletter -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz245-05jan.htm

Monday, January 03, 2005

Happy New Year !!

So how many resolutions have you broke :o) - this week we'll work on continuing our discussion about linking / how to link. We want to wish everyone a wonderful, safe, prosperous New Year.

Tim and Lisa.