Jennifer Tanzi

Here is a helpful article for novice small business operators looking to understand the impact of SEO on their sales as written by my guest, Jennifer Tanzi of Buydomains.com:

Using SEO to Court Search Engines

Ever since Google became a verb, small business owners have wondered about guaranteeing prime placement when prospective clients go a-typing in their search engines. Times have changed since you simply added “AAA” to your business name and scored first place in the yellow page listings. Marketing yourself is more complicated in the digital age, but with a little bit of insight and a few simple steps, you can catch the eyes of those search engines, and propel your businesses name up those prospective clients’ lists of results.

You know how people use name repetition (sometimes relentlessly) to remember yours? (“Hi, Sandra, so good to meet you, Sandra. Can I get you a beverage, Sandra? Sandra, let me take your coat.”) Search Engine Optimization — SEO — works kind of the same way. Repeating key phrases in your domain name and throughout your website pages makes your business more appealing to the search engines. Once they find you, so will all those new clients. You just need to put some thought into choosing the right keywords, and some craft into your copy so your message sounds fresh, and not repetitive.

First, figure out your key keywords. Let’s say you sell organic lavender, tended and harvested on your own pristine acres of New England farmland. You’ve done your homework on choosing domain names that attract type-in traffic and landed one that screams “organic lavender” right there in the URL. Now, how can you ensure that every person looking for your product sees your business name in lights when they go Metacrawling?

Perhaps your website boasts glorious photos of lavender plants so vivid you can smell them through the screen, and describes memorably the many attributes of your farm — the perfectly tended soil, the soothing scents of the lavender as you coax the shoots from the earth. But when Elinor the Florist needs a supplier for her tremendously successful hand-tied organic bouquets, what words will she type into her search engine? Organic lavender. And, since she wants to go local, maybe also, “New England.”

So there you have ‘em. New England. Organic. Lavender.

Your new SEO keywords, New England organic lavender, should appear five or six times on each page of 500 – 600 words of copy. So your site needs to describe the perfectly tended soil of your New England organic lavender farm, the soothing scents of your New England organic lavender plants as you coax the shoots from the soil. Placement of the keywords is critical, too. You should include them in <H1> header tags, in your first paragraph and in links throughout the site.

As you master SEO, there are a few pitfalls you’ll want to avoid. Vary the titles and meta data of your pages, so that if several different pages of your site pop up in the search results, customers see difference slices of information about your business from your site.
When you’ve mastered the SEO strategies, test your efforts. Cruise the web yourself to see which sites your keywords bring up, and what your competitors are doing differently to place high in the results. And be sure to use web analytics on your site so you know exactly how your visitors are finding you.

To small business owners, those search engines might at first seem a fickle bunch. But once they get to know you — through SEO — they are really going to love you.

Great post written on the value of using the free WordPress platform not just a blog, but as a website. I’ve talked to many startups and small business owners that don’t have a website to just use WordPress for their site. So many advantages including the fact you can get something up in minutes! But, more importantly, there is so much functionality and control built into WordPress, along with it being very search-engine friendly, that it can’t be ignored. Here is an excerpt from the post “Why Settle for a Blog When You Can Have a Blogsite“:

Blogging tools have evolved significantly due to the tremendous popularity of blogging in general. Because of this evolution blog software has actually become one of the best ways for small businesses to easily build feature rich, simple to edit, search engine friendly web sites.

I would urge anyone without a web site or with a boring static brochure site to take a good hard look at free piece of software called WordPress. The current version of the software can be downloaded from WordPress.org (They have a hosted blog version at WordPress.com but you want the download from the .org site.)

You can use this software to create your entire website whether you have or want a blog or not. (But, of course you need a blog too.) One of the best functions of this set-up is that anyone in your organization with the proper login permission can update and edit the site including adding pages, text and images without any knowledge of HTML or web design software such as Dreamweaver.

On of the core elements of WordPress is something called a theme. This is essentially the design template that controls the look and feel of all of the pages throughout the site. There are lots of places you can get pre-designed templates for blogs, but recently designers have started creating themes for the type of web site implementation I’m talking about in this article. Using these themes your web site looks like, well, a web site, instead of a blog.

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Too funny. And a little too true.

Guy Kawasaki at SXSW 2009.

Lucky me. I got to sit down with marketing guru and popular author, Guy Kawasaki across from our ServerBeach booth just minutes ago at SXSW. A Tweet up was brought together at the Opera booth with Guy who fielded any questions. He’s really excited about his latest venture, Alltop. He’s launching a MyAlltop this upcoming week. Very cool guy and refreshingly down to earth. I’m a big fan of Guy. My company, PEER 1 is one of the sponsors of JFSA’s Innovators Lunch with Guy as the speaker in Vancouver on April 1st. This by chance meeting was a nice surprise.

The original founders of Microsoft... and a token brown guy.

Last week, I had the pleasure of touring the humungus Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA. Suren Singh of Microsft gave myself and my colleagues a personal tour of the grounds which is home to over 30,000 employees and spreads across 8 million square feet. I still can’t get my head around it. What struck me most about the impressive grounds is the university campus feel it had that got me feeling nostalgic about my days at UVic. There are plenty of soccer fields outfitted with outdoor artificial turf, immaculate landscaping that retains the pacific northwest feel, and buildings up buildings divided by business concentrations.

The highlight for me was a visit to the Microsoft museum that covered the history of the company from it’s humble start in 1975 up to present day innovations like Surface and Xbox 360. By the way, Surface is VERY cool and ironically (I learned) that it almost never came to fruition. There are endless possibilities for this technology to be used in everyday workplace and home appliances. Below are some photos from the museum, but quite honestly, they don’t do it any justice. Visit it in person if you ever get the chance. Worth the trip out to Redmond. And, thank you Suren for the hospitality!

Love this commercial!

I’m sitting in on an excellent presentation (that is me in the back row, third one in) by Nate Elliott of Forrester Research who is presenting his findings on the New Influentials – Internet users who maintain a weblog or personal homepage, who join in discussions on web message boards, forums, etc. and regularly update their social networking profile page – who continue to become a growing influence on consumers in decision-making around products, technology, music, etc. New Influentials primarily exert active influence by proactively giving advice, but are rarely sought out as compared to Classic Influentials who’s opinions are sought out but who rarely give unless asked. Forrester’s research shows that classic influence remains stagnant, while new influence continues to grow. But, as users grow overwhelmed by influence, they will seek greater context and ways to filter New Influencers for opinions they would value. So what needs to happen? New Influencers need to be rated so users can filter and decide who’s opinion they want to follow. And the further development of social graphs that map the people you know with the content you are looking at online. For example, you go to a restaurant review site, and are immediately shown reviews from the people you know immediately, and likely trust.

Today, my marketing team officially unveils PEER 1’s new branding campaign where we ask the question, “Is your business ready for a million hits?” and introduce PEER 1’s new tagline “Fully scalable hosting solutions” that will appear below the PEER 1 logo. The tagline speaks to PEER 1’s position in the marketplace as a full solution IT hosting provider offering businesses the choice or combination of Managed Hosting, Dedicated Hosting (through our ServerBeach division), Co-location services, and in the near future, Cloud Computing. It also captures my company’s core value proposition of delivering “scalability”, or our ability to grow with our customer’s online hosting demands; conversely, our ability to scale down when less hosting horsepower is required.

The campaign also speaks to PEER 1’s extensive geographical footprint – 15 data centers and 21 network PoPs across North America and Europe – and our reputable high performance SuperNetwork™. At PEER 1, we’re confident that we deliver the most scalable IT hosting environment for startups and SMBs ready to explode online, as well as enterprises looking to scale their current needs. Clients like Club Penguin, YouTube, and PlentyofFish all began as relative unknowns that quickly turned into mega Internet sensations with PEER 1 and ServerBeach there all the way. Through this campaign, we want to let every IT professional and business operator know that we can do the same for them.

The campaign is largely comprised of online banner advertisements and three 30-second commercials shown above that take a cheeky approach towards individuals who experience a sudden increase in online traffic or “hits”. Let me know what you think. If you like them, please help me spread the message – link, embed, tweet, blog, and share anywhere and everywhere on the net. Cheers!

Idan Factor of Exactfactor sent me their cool free SEO tool that his company offers. I’ve tested it out and found it to be easy to use and more importantly, useful in checking your position in search engines against your competitors. You can also get regular email alerts and weekly reports. There is a full online presentation on the service that you can review. Very nice! Have a try and see for yourself. Thanks for sharing, Idan.

I was interviewed for a cover article that appeared in this week’s edition of Business In Vancouver. The story reads “Surge in Social Networking Rings Corporate Security Alarms” and talks about the rising use of platforms such as Facebook and the potential negative affects it could have on the workplace. Privacy and security are increasing concerns as more people congregate, share and communicate online. I don’t disagree, particularly when it’s employees of companies disclosing corporate information not intended for the public on a ‘company Facebook page’. This is particularly true with publicly traded companies. The same careful administration bestowed to a company website, should also be taken with a Facebook page or Ning community site or Myspace space.

But this shouldn’t stop your company from embracing these social media tools and platforms, which allow you to reach prospects and customers in a meaningful and massive way like no other. First, you’re reaching them where they go and on their terms. At Facebook, a user will only get updates on your company if they opt-in by becoming a fan. At Twitter, a user will only receive your messages if they become a follower. They also have the power to share it with their friends, fans and followers instantly, giving you some viral love in return.

And second, these tools aren’t trendy, they’re cultural. More and more people find these tools to be just way too simple and powerful to ignore. And the price is right. Our raw and primitive need to communicate and connect will never change. How we do, does and will. And technology leads the way in helping us serve that need cheaper, faster and easier. These tools and platforms are revolutionizing the way we communicate and connect, and businesses may as well learn how to use them to their benefit, and not their detriment. Below is an excerpt from the article:

While a company may not be able to control negative comments that are posted on the Internet, the web’s interactivity allows companies to respond to them. “There’s a whole etiquette to social networking that not everybody gets,” said Rajan Sodhi, vice-president of marketing at PEER 1 Network Enterprises Inc. (TSX: PIX). One consistent rule is to communicate openly, honestly and often.

Vancouver-based PEER 1 uses a number of social networking tools and has an employee whose sole role is to cultivate the company’s online presence. PEER 1 also monitors the Internet for content that mentions the company. “It can be positive or negative,” said Sodhi. “If it’s something [about PEER 1] they aren’t happy with, we acknowledge them right then and there.” As well as reacting publicly on a blog or network on which a negative comment was posted, PEER 1 will usually follow-up with a phone call.

“We’re a real believer that these social media tools and platforms are here to stay,” said Sodhi, who is the administrator of PEER 1’s Facebook site. “You can be fearful of it and not embrace it, but I think you’re going to lose one of the best tools for communicating and reaching your market.”

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