Employment Lawyers SEO – Demand Driven Marketing

Demand Driven Marketing

SEO for Employment lawyers

If you are an employment lawyer looking for a SEO and Social Media Strategy, this is for you.

Before you build a website or write 1 page of content, it’s worth spending some time upfront building a strong foundation for your marketing if you want your phone to ring. Continue reading

SEO Strategies for Photographers

Keyword for Photographers

Want a steady flow of new customers for your photography business? Let’s start at the beginning. Before your web site, your SEO Strategy, Facebook campaigns, Pinterest, Instagram or YouYube videos, you know what your customers want, what they search for and how to meet their demand.

The purpose of this post is to show you how to build a foundation with your website and social media strategy and attract new customers.

Continue reading

How To Choose High Converting Photos For Facebook Ads

How To Choose High Converting Photos For Facebook Ads

I’m creating a few Facebook ads and wanted to share some best practices for those trying to figure out how to choose high converting photos for Facebook Ads.

Here are a few tips

  1. Choose Photos with Eyes That look directly at your customer. These are proven to be the best for grabbing attention.
  2. Women Convert Better Than Men – Even when women search, they will click on a womens’ image more frequently than men.
  3. Keep Them Super Simple. I use the word simple to emphasize a point. You have very little space to work with. Less is more with small photos.
  4. Facebook recommends sizes of 1,200 x 627 minimum pixels.
  5. Choose 6 Photos – Facebook allows for 6 photos. Take advantage of this to determine which one converts better.
  6. Logos – For local branding or big brands a simple logo may not get huge amount of clicks but valuable for promoting the brand.

Here are a few photos I am going to try for my next Facebook ad. Let me know which one below you would click.

The Ad will say – Love Local Branding – LIKE US!

I’ll report back with the results.

 

How To Choose High Converting Photos For Facebook Ads
How To Choose High Converting Photos For Facebook Ads

Portrait of beautiful business woman with laptop CV 1 I Want You beautiful eyes of a wild wolf Beautiful Girl Touching Her Face. Isolated on a White Background. Perfect Skin. Beauty Face. Professional Makeup NQF Logo online learning and internet signs in blue hexagons

The 5 Why’s That Are Sure to Solve Your Business Problems

5 Why's to Solving Your Business Problems
5 Why's to Solving Your Business Problems
5 Why’s to Solving Your Business Problems

As I write this blog, I am still trying to solve a business problem I just encountered. Maybe you are going through the same thing whether a business issue or a personal one.

My issue – I have been trying everything to get small business owners to learn about my internet marketing course. I spent a fair amount advertising online with great success. Apparently my sales message was well liked enough that over 500 people opted in with their email for my ebook and visited my sales page to watch my video.

Problem is that my site crashed and all 35 of my videos were lost. Imagine how exciting it was to see all this traffic, then how devastating it was to lose it all at the same moment.

After going through an emotional roller coaster, I settled down enough to ask why.

I asked my web developer why after blaming him, then I asked my hosting company and blamed them.

I kept asking questions.

After about 5 questions, I learned why.

Then my wife told me a story of the 5 why’s.

Lets say you go into your garage and find that your car’s tire is flat..

You ask why did this happen? Then you realize there are nails on the floor.

If you just clean up the nails and fix the tire, it could happen again unless you ask…

Why are there nails on the floor?

So you look up on the shelf and you see a box of nails has fallen over. There is the problem.

But now you have to ask.  Why did the box fall over?

You look closer and find the wall is bowed out. There, the problem is solved right?

Not yet. You have to ask, why is the wall bowed out?

You look deeper and find the wall is soaking wet. Why? It appears the wall bowed due to a wet wall that bowed out for some reason.

Then you ask why?

It turns out you have a huge leak in your roof. When it rains, excess water comes down the wall pushing the weak area out. It knocks over a box of nails that dropped on the floor.

If you keep asking why, you’ll solve your problem.

Now that I know this story of the 5 why’s, next time i run into a problem like my website blowing up, rather than blaming everyone, I’ll keep asking why. Hopefully it just takes 5 why’s to find out. Usually it does.

To change m frame of mind, I found this video. Next time you have a problem, keep asking why until you get to the heart of the problem. Then watch this video to overcome. Have a great day and let me know if this helps you.

 

Five SEO Methods for Beginners

Beginning SEO tips

Beginning SEO tipsIf you’re completely new to the world of building websites and using SEO methods for traffic, the whole process can be quite overwhelming. Actually, it can be downright intimidating, especially for total newbies to the online world.

You might not even know what the acronym SEO stands for. And Google analytics, well, it sounds like something your old boss might use when you’re called in for an employee evaluation. Don’t even get me started on what it means to rank and drive traffic. Sounds like quite a lot of hard work!

Certainly, there is work involved. When you’re first figuring out how to bring customers to the beautiful new website or blog you just published, it does take considerable time and effort to learn the basics. But it’s really no different than when you first learned how to use a computer.

Remember that first brand new Apple or PC? You flipped the switch and instantly began exploring all the endless possibilities that your software would allow. Over time, you learned right where to point and click, and before long you were able to quickly navigate your computer and the internet to boot.

Take the First Step for SEO Success

And in the same way, that’s how it is with local search engine optimization and traffic building. You kind of have to dive in and start. Not wait until you thoroughly learn every single detail. Part of the beauty of working online is you may learn as you go. There’s no hard and fast rule of how to get where you want to be. In many ways, you simply have to take that first step.

Now that’s not to say that there isn’t a process to follow. There are fundamental rules for creating sites and then having them rank with the search engines. And that’s what I want to talk about with you today.

What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization helps you modify your website content so that potential customers find you among the hundreds, and possibly thousands of other businesses, in your local area. As you are writing content for your website or blog, there are specific techniques you can use to put you far ahead of your competition. You know, those guys that just throw up a website with a brief list of their services along with an address and phone number. Those are the types of businesses that sort of build it and think that hundreds of customers are just going to pour in. You can see more about this Field of Dreams website building point of view in our previous blog about the subject.

For now, let’s look at fundamentals of local SEO so that you can begin putting these techniques to good use on your site.

5 Beginning SEO Methods for Your Blog Posts

If you are just now developing content or already have it published to your site, there are a few tweaks you can complete to ensure that your pages are fully optimized for your target keywords.

1) Blog post URL should use your keyword and be relevant to content of blog.

For example, in this post we’re using the keyword “SEO methods.” As you can see in the example below the permalink or URL address includes the full title of our post (highlighted in yellow).

Example of SEO Methods

2) For main keyword, use H1 tag appropriately in the body content. The following pic comes from this post, and I’ve highlighted the keyword:

Keyword SEO method
3) Main Keyword should also be in title, body text and meta description. Here’s a snip from the title and first paragraph of this post with keyword highlighted:

SEO methods

4) Avoid using duplicate content.

5) On all images, add keyword in the alt description. See example:

SEO methods for alt description

There are plenty of other advanced SEO tactics to use to rank your site especially for high competition keywords. But as beginners, if you stick with these 5 steps, you’ll ensure that each page of your site is fully optimized for Google and the other search engines.

Any questions? Leave us a comment below.

How To Optimize Videos in Local Markets Before It’s Too Late

How to Optimize Videos in Local Markets
How to Optimize Videos in Local Markets
How to Optimize Videos in Local Markets

Optimizing videos in local markets is one of the most powerful ways to build your brand. Amazingly, many small businesses in local markets are still paying for classified ads in newspapers. Take a look at the image below of how Virgo Business Centers in New York City ranks with Google Places and a video. The search term is Virtual Offices Empire State Building. This is one of the biggest and most wide open opportunities for local marketing ever in history. It’s super easy and fast.

If it works in NYC in one of the most competitive local markets, imagine the results in smaller markets. I am working on a new course that shows how to make these videos and get them ranked on Google and where else they can be used, all with just a few clicks. If you are interested in the course, grab a free copy of the NicheQuest Formula ebook and get on our mailing list. We’ll send you a note when it’s ready.

In the meantime, take a look below at Virgo’s results and the info graphic with video statistics.

 

How to Optimize Videos in Local Markets

Small Business Video infographic

 

Business Blogs and Gym Memberships – What They Have in Common

after-231x300Get In The Best Blogging Shape of Your Life and Start Making Lots of Money

Over the past 5 years I have written well over a thousand blogs. I have tested the results to determine what works and what doesn’t. If you are not making money from your website and blog, then read this because what we do produces lots of profits and will for you too.

First and foremost, if you don’t maintain your blog or have someone do it for you, it doesn’t work. So, if you’re not getting business from your blog, either it’s not being maintained or you’re doing it wrong.

It’s just like joining a gym. It doesn’t matter how good the gym is, if you don’t go, you won’t get any results. The more you go, the better the results. Add in a personal trainer and your results will improve provided you stick with it. The biggest mistake we all make is to go for it way to hard and too frequently.

When it becomes like work, then we frequently stop. We add back those lost inches, start feeling sluggish and our energy level plummets. We know what needs to be done, but now we have to go through the anguish of starting over.

Business blogs are the same thing. They need to be consistent. We recommend 1 per week. There are some blogs that are written daily and even multiple times each day, but you should stick with just 1 per week until you are in good blogging shape.

How Much Business Does a Blog Produce?

contentiskingOne of our clients, Enforce Coverage Group, sells workers compensation insurance. That’s their specialty. They maintain their blog once per week, sometimes more frequently. Their traffic count is solid and growing to over 1,000 visits per month. They get 1-2 leads per day. They are on pace for 400-500 leads this year with 20-30% converting to new clients.

Another client Madstone Floors, a specialty decorative concrete floor company in the Providence to Boston area, has their blog maintained by us once per week. Their site traffic is over 1,000 visits per month also. They get 5 leads per week sometimes more.

We have other clients like Madstone who do not maintain  maintain their blog. As you can imagine they get a minimal amount of business.

One of our clients called the other day to tell us they got a $100,000 lead from an internet call. This happens frequently. The internet is where business comes from today. If you don’t have a plan or haven’t started, you are missing out on lots of awesome business. Companies are expanding with our simple plan, while others complain that it’s the economy or that their site doesn’t work.

Those who are consistent get results, those that don’t, just don’t.

Why Consistent Blog Updates Produce Huge Sales

hows_my_blogingBlogs are a sales tool. We teach our clients to start each blog with keywords that clients search for. Start with the keyword first, then write the blog. Just like in sales or at the gym, you need to have a long term blog strategy or you’ll quit. Blogs are demand driven marketing. Calls that come in from an internet search are from real buyers. They may not buy from you, but I guarantee that someone who calls from the internet is getting close to buying.

We have found that 1 blog per week works like magic. It doesn’t happen overnight, just like you can’t lose weight at the gym overnight.3 times per month is ok, but there is something about the once per week plan that produces a consistent flow of leads. Of course you have to do it right.

When you use keywords in your blog properly, you end up with a diverse amount of keywords. Just because you rank #1 for a good keyword on Google, doesn’t mean you will get leads. It doesn’t work that way.

Consider a client who gets 1,000 visits from their web site and blog. Are there a few keywords that produce all that traffic? The answer is absolutely no! There might be over 800 different searches that bring a client to the site. The top searched keywords might only produce 10-15 visits per month.

So, if your site ranks for just a few keywords, that’s not enough diversity to get found. The way search engines work and Google in particular, they answer queries with the best information. That’s what Google is, an information provider. Blogs and using a diverse amount of keywords, teach Google about your business. Google rewards quality, consistently updated content.

What To Do If Your Site and Blog Are Not Producing Leads

tyra-banks-in-shapeA leader in online marketing made the statement that everything that happens online, both good and bad, is a result of you. Just like working out at the gym or not, is up too you.

I have not met a business yet that cannot profit and grow from a website and blog and yours is included.  If you are not getting leads start working your blog every week for 30 minutes. If you don’t have a strategy call us for help. Our websites and blogs are excellent. They are built for performance. We have features and tools built into them that your competitors don’t even know exist. Plus we have tutorials that will help you out.

Their are no excuses, start working your blog and get in blogging shape! You will definitely start making money if you want.

Outliers Review – What We Can Learn From Bill Gates – Step 10

Outliers Review
Outliers Review
Outliers Review

I read The Tipping Point and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell back to back. The Tipping Point was written in 2,000 and is more applicable today than when it was written. Outliers is a natural sequel to The Tipping Point. If you are planning on reading Outliers, read The Tipping Point first. Both are excellent books about what it takes to succeed in your niche.

Bill Gates’ Niche

An Outlier is someone who is way ahead of anyone else. Gladwell uses case studies of a few Outliers like Bill Gates and The Beatles to make his point. What made them so special? Based on what I read, everyone today has a chance of being an Outlier in their Niche. To become an Outlier we all need a tipping point. It’s that one thing that opens the doors for us.

What Gladwell explains is that to achieve the tipping point and become an outlier requires 10,000 hours spent doing one thing. It also requires a tremendous amount of luck, good fortune or whatever you call it.

The story of Bill Gates starts when he was an eighth grade student. The mothers group at his school have a bake sale every year. They buy something for the eighth grade class with the proceeds. It just so happened that they bought a PC before they had software. To get the PC to perform required punching holes in a card, then putting the card in the PC. It started working. Gates was obviously consumed and challenged by the process. But keep in mind that he was the only one in his class who became a household name.

He kept with it until he couldn’t go any further. That was in his sophmore year in high school. It turns out that University of Washington, conveniently was across the street from high school, had the next level computer he needed. There he met Paul Allen who became his partner 4 years later.

No doubt that Gates had an extraordinary aptitude for programming and software development. However a few things lined up for him, but it was, as Gladwell explains, 10,000 hours of focused hard work on one thing that ultimately led to the tipping point in his career.

10,000 Hours and The Beatles Story

We can learn a lot from Bill Gates and The Beatles story and apply to our own niche business by understanding and mastering a few basic concepts. First is that every endeavor requires hard work, focus and efficiency. If 10,000 hours is the requirement to become an expert at one thing that leads to the tipping point in our own business, then efficiency and focus are the key ingredients. The lucky breaks come as a result.

The Beatles story of success is similar in a way to Gates achievements. The basic story, according to Gladwell, was that the Beatles got a chance to play at pubs in Germany when they were around High School age. These were small pubs, so we can assume that is wasn’t much different from the corner bar. Not very glamorous.

The story goes that they only knew 3 songs when they started. Their job was to play 8 hours a day. That’s a lot of hours to play the same 3 songs. So they started coming up with new songs. They played every day for over two years. If they played 7 days a week,  that’s about 3,000 hours per year. That means it took them 3 1/3rd years to reach their 10,000 hour mark. Of course there were a few opportune breaks that came along. The timing was right. They achieved their 10,000 hours as Rock and Roll become the hot new thing.

How You Can Reach The Tipping Point

Bill Gates had access to a PC that led to becoming an Outlier. The Beatles had access to consumers. Both capitalized on one thing by staying focused and putting in their 10,000 hours.

Today we have extraordinary technology for promoting our businesses. By learning how to use these technical tools we have a significant opportunity for our businesses. Gates and The Beatles caught the wave before anyone else. You can too.

Those who are coming into business behind us don’t have the edge we do. We’re early in online marketing. Those small businesses who develop optimized websites in their niche will be way ahead. It will be difficult for new niche businesses to capitalize in markets already dominated online by someone else.

The Niche Quest System

I have developed an online marketing system for small, local business and niche products that produces extraordinary profits. The system works! But contrary to those who claim huge profits with minimal work, my system requires commitment, focus and hard work. Any other way is pure folley.

If you have a niche business and need some guidance or ideas call me or send me a note. I can help you analyze your business and examine where you can capitalize and how to apply the system. It’s all laid out here. Start with Step 1 in the process. Each step takes about 2 minutes to read. Click here for Step 1


How To Dominate Your Local Niche Market- Step 9

think_education

If you’re just joining us, we’re in the process of building the internet strategy for Hudson Concrete of New York City. We started by researching the keywords that customers search relevant to their market. We found over 3,000 terms. Then we searched the online competition. As is typical, we found minimal online competition in all the local markets we targeted including New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Boston.

To catch up click here for step 1. It takes about 2 minutes to read each step of the process.

How Rock Solid Surfacing Dominates Their Market

To understand what we’re doing for Hudson Concrete and what you can achieve for your business, let’s take a look at the Rock Solid Surfacing website.

Rock Solid is based in the Vail Colorado area. They specialize in applying floor coatings on concrete in commercial and residential properties. Like all businesses they were faced with the challenge of getting a pipe line of new business. Their projects typically take 2-5 days. For Rock Solid to thrive, they need new projects coming in constantly to make the business model work.

We built their site around the keywords that customers search for. Then, we created content that educated their potential customers about their service. Creating an online brochure doesn’t covert to sales. We created content in a very organized manner that explains the benefits and processes. Basically everything the consumer wants to know. By knowing what customers want from our keyword research, we know what to give them.

As a result Rock Solid gets leads from educated customers ready to spend. They do not get leads from tire kickers. The sales process is short since customers know and understand the Rock Solid business.

How Rock Solid Surfacing Gets Found

They don’t have just one or two prime positions on Google or Yahoo. They have over 100. Just about anything a customer searches for within the state or a town relevant to concrete flooring, they are at the top. In many cases they are #1. When they get a click, the conversion to a sale is extremely high. That’s due to creating a a website that educates the customer.

I would like to point out that pay per click leads don’t convert as well for companies who don’t provide educational content. If you think driving traffic via directory listings and pay per click to your online brochure converts to sales, think again. If you don’t give the consumer what they want, they will leave in a blink no matter where they come from. That’s why it’s critical to start with your keyword research. Even social media marketing is ineffective if your visitors don’t get educated from a visit.

It all starts with keywords and the idea of giving your customers what they want, not what you think they want. Your customers are not searching for phone numbers, they are searching for information.

Blogs and Article Marketing

Just building a website with proper use of keywords and educational content will not give you the ranking you need to get enough traffic. It’s the combination of the website, a blog that is updated at least a few times per month, and an article marketing campaign with links back to your site that gets performance.

We (that’s me and my clients) have been testing the results for the past 3 years. We have found what works and what doesn’t. We’re still learning. The combination of the 3 gets performance. 2 out of 3 gets lackluster results. Just an optimized website gets OK results and takes a long time to get any meaningful traffic.

The combination of the 3:

  1. Optimized website
  2. Blog Updates
  3. Article Marketing

starts to produce within 4-8 weeks. Within 8-12 weeks new business starts coming in regularly. By the sixth month it’s humming along nicely, producing more every day.

Only Online Businesses Are Thriving Today

I have found that those who have strong online exposure get lots of business, even in the depth of a nasty recession. Those who don’t, get little business at all and may be going out of business. The recession is indicating that those who want to buy a product or service search online. If you’re not there, you don’t get the call. I have found this even for businesses who get word of mouth referrals. They get the referral, but if they don’t get found online or their site doesn’t connect with the consumer, they don’t get the business.

There are customers who are buying what you sell every day. But, if they don’t find you, they go with someone they find.

Rock Solid Surfacing is a perfect example. They get found everyday. They are thriving while their competitors are starving. At this point it’s going to be very difficult for their local competitors to catch up.

 


The Tipping Point Review – How To Apply To Your Niche Step 8

The Tipping Point Review

Summary

If you’re just joining us, we have been building an optimized website for Hudson Concrete of NYC. The site is going to be a business producing machine. We’re targeting lots of low competition, highly productive long tail keywords. I’m in a lull about the process until the site is built so I thought I’d get into some interesting tidbits I picked up recently. If you want to start at the beginning click here for Step 1. It takes about 15 minutes to catch up.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell – A Review

The Tipping Point is a book about communication. Gladwell discusses Case Studies of  some extraordinary communicators in various periods of history who have been able to start epidemics.

If you are looking for proof that spreading the word can yield profitable results then this book is a must read. The question is how to be a good word spreader? Some people are really good at it. Some are just naturally effective at socializing and being extremely credible. As we’ve seen in life and what Gladwell says in the book, is that effective communicators seem to be average people.

The Story Of Hush Puppies

Early in the book Gladwell talks about the once popular Hush Puppies shoe brand. By the mid 1990’s the brand almost faded into oblivion. Sales were down to 30,000 pair per year. Then something happened. Some hip communicators in Manhattans lower east side started wearing them and they caught on. An ad agency was looking for a pair for a fashion shoot and they started taking off. Soon Hush Puppies became an epidemic. Within two years they sold 2 million pairs.

The Hush Puppies owners didn’t do anything differently. There were no expensive advertising strategies. It started with a small group or even a single individual who was a communicator. The word spread.

What Is The Tipping Point?

Gladwell provides numerous Case Studies and interesting research about what makes something spread. What is it that causes an idea to become popular by the masses? That’s the tipping point. The point at which something takes off. Gladwell does an excellent job of communicating inspiring case studies.

The Law of The Few

Gladwell discusses an interesting story about Paul Revere and the famous quote “The British are Coming”. Revere got word that the British were mounting a raid to seize weapons from the colonists. He sent his buddy William Dawes on a southerly route west of Boston and Revere took the northern route. It turns out that Revere was an effective communicator and Dawes wasn’t. Those along the northern route were ready for the Brits and those along Dawes route weren’t.

What we learn is that there are a small amount of individuals who are effective communicators.

Gladwell goes on to explain there are three types of people with social skills. Communicators who are good at linking others together. Mavens who are information specialists and Salesman who have unique persuasion skills.

He also talks about what makes an idea stick.

How To Develop The Tipping Point For Your Niche

The Tipping Point was published in 2000, 5 years before Facebook, Twitter and the social media epidemic. Websites were around, but in most cases they were online brochures.

Today all the tools like websites, blogs and social media are readily available enabling small businesses to become members of The Law of The Few Club. Whether a local business or one that go can regional or national, we all have tools at our fingertips that enable us to be communicators, mavens and salesmen in our niche.

It takes work and commitment to learn how to effectively use the tools available (and a willingness to fail before mastering), but the results can be life changing. Even in the depths of an ugly recession that doesn’t want to quit, small companies who have embraced the new technologies are getting all the business and growing while their competitors are whining that there is no business.

No matter what business you’re in, you’re in the marketing business first. Those who see this will discover the tipping point for their business.

The Tipping Point is a more timely read today that when it was first published. Gladwell should consider a sequel.

Click Here For Step 9