Wizard of Ads Clay Campbell

My Partner Ray Seggern wrote this piece below on the American Small Business site. I am participating in the event and helping produce it and promote it. I you have ever thought about what you could do to make your business grow...well this is it!

Several of the partners in the Wizard of Ads group are teaming up to create a jam-packed two-day event designed to help you accelerate the growth of your business.

Boom Your Business will feature keynote addresses, including "How to Calculate Your Ad Budget & Buy Word-of-Mouth," "How to Fight the Big Boys and Win," "Your Website: The Marketing Tool for the 21st Century," "Get Big Results from Small Ad Dollars," "The Mother Lode: Hitting the Vein of Gold in Marketing to Women," "Signaling Theory: What Are You Really Saying to Your Customers," "Ad Writing 101," "The Commodity Revolution; Differentiate Your Business at the Local Level," "Thinking Outside the Box" and "Marketing in 2008 and Beyond."

Boom Your Business takes place at the Sheraton Music City hotel in Nashville, Tennessee on August 1st and 2nd.

At a ridulously low price of $299, can you really afford "not" to be there.  Get more details and sign up at http://www.wizardsontheroad.com/

Search Engine Optimization 101 Part Two- Working your way to the top

My objective is to try and achieve good search engine ranking on every website I work on. That is not always possible. Just like in a horse race the objective is to come in first. Sometimes even when you try and do your best, your horse comes in last. But by consistantly following what we know to be right, we can increase the chances of coming up in the ranking, to be on the first page, and most of the time in the top three.

Keywords in Domain name

There are some folks that believe keywords in your domain have a great value. While it may be less today then years ago, keyword domain names to tend to perform better in search engine rankings than those that do not have keywords in their domain.
The importance is that it is relevant to your business and does not include anymore than one hyphen. Multiple hyphens are common in spam sites and will hinder your rankings.

Keywords in page specific URL

Responsibly using keywords in a page’s URL can increase ranking as long as it is part of a file name that is relevant. For example, if your site pertains to Kentucky Lake resorts: mysite.com/Kentucky lake/accommodations/resorts/my resort.html

Heading Tags

Target phrases when placed in heading tags will establish the importance of those phrases. Heading tags are used to identify words that are the most important on the page text. While not as important as they used to be they are still helpful to good website.

Link Anchor text

Link anchor text is contained within your text and allows the user to click on it to go to a linked page. Link anchor text will boost your rankings in Google as long as the links are relevant and somewhat specific. “Click here” will not give you a higher ranking nor is it likely to appear in search results.

Image Alt Text

The biggest role of image alt text is if you use image-based navigation. Just as link anchor text will direct you to another page, the same is true of image alt text. It should also be short and relevant. A friend asked me, "Just what the heck is Alt Text?" Well, the spiders don't  "see" an image or graphic, so alt just says what it is in words. Like: Photograph of a 1957 Belair Chevrolet. If it's a picture of the Chevy we can see it, but it's invisable to the spiders.

Inline Links

Inline links are found within the text, not as menu items. It is incorporating links into text passages, which provide additional information or take you to another page. Again, relevance is important when using inline links.

Site Navigation

In order for Google to crawl a website your site must be spiderable by the search engines. There are a number of ways that your site may fail in this aspect.
Flash is a common mistake is used as the only means of navigation on your site. It will hinder your rankings considerably. Java Script/DHTML cannot always be spidered by Google, which in turn will make you invisible. Image based navigation needs to be relevant and brief. The alt text is similar to anchor text and links without the alt text will not appear.

URL Structure

While longer and more complicated URL’s can be indexed by Google it is still best to be short, relevant and clean which will in turn make it more search engine friendly. Adding extra characters, words, letters, and symbols, if not relevant, also just looks bad.

While just a beginning, the above actions will help you achieve higher rankings in Google, Yahoo  and the other major search engines. The next post in this series will delve more deeply in optimizing for Google.

# 7 Ranking - How it works

What is it and how does it work? Google is the biggest search engine. Next is Yahoo, then MSN, Ask and about 10,000 others.
When you go online, pull up Google or Yahoo and enter something like “motels Nashville” in the search bar. You think nothing of this. It is like you go into a dark room and flip the light switch. You just want light. You don’t care about how the electricity got there, or the big dam with the turbine engines, the electric grid that sends the power, or the local power company that resells it. You just want light. Very similar is the person searching for something online.

Very few people are interested in what goes on behind the scenes of electricity or search engine optimization ( SEO) . They just expect it to work. Many times business owners say something like this to me, “We have a website, but when I type in my category or my keywords in Yahoo, hundreds of websites come up, but not mine.”

If the electric light doesn’t come on when you flip the switch and your other appliances are all working and you put in a new bulb. You might say, “OK, why doesn’t that stupid light come on”. My answer is you need a licensed electrician (an expert) that can fix it. Same with the business owner and the website that don’t come up in the search engines.
You need SEO.
The SEO expert works the “inside” of the website, like the electrical engineer at a nuclear power plant.

Search engine optimization happens in the strange little world of cascading style sheets, html code, php, flash, many different kinds of website software programs. The task is to abide by the rules. Google and Yahoo and the rest of the search engines determine the rules. They send out little robots called “spiders” that collect information from billions websites. There are millions of them that go out 24/7 and bring back the information from your website to their home base. Then when you type in “motels nashviile” (even misspelled) you get hundreds of pages of search results. The websites at the top on the first page are what the search engines think are most important. Research indicates 75% of users won’t go search past that first page. So it’s really important that you try to get on the first page for your keywords.

A ton of books and articles have been written about this. It is very complicated.

Business owners with a website are busy and just want to “flip the switch” and have it come on. That will not happen.
SEO is a process that happens over a long period of time. Taking short cuts and trying to hurry it up is a bit like herding cats, and can cause your site to actually go down in ranking instead of up.
Here are nine things that will help bring your website UP in the ranking to the top of the search engines and nine things that take it down.

Nine things that bring your ranking up

· Good content articles, a blog, or forums add the fresh content to a site that spiders and people both are looking for.
· FAQ’s that change up often
· Perhaps a calendar of events
· Before and after experiences as testimonies from happy customers
· Product reviews. If your industry has products or software to review, you could write reviews of those products.
· Short tips. If your product or service lends itself to short tips, write up a series and put them on your site
· Most people go online to look for information, or comparison shop. If you can solve problems for your visitors, you're giving them just what they're looking for and they’ll probably return.
· Historical data and information about you.
· Interviews or news events pertaining to your particular industry.

Nine things that bring your ranking down

· No tag/no follow in the html code
· All flash on the index page.
· Lots of pictures with little or no text at all
· Poorly written content
· Incorrect meta tags
· Poorly written descriptions in your html code
· Poorly chosen keywords and incorrect keywords
· Pages with links to errors and
· Links connected to completely unrelated sites

And about 100 other things

There are hundreds of thousands maybe millions of websites that rank very poorly that could be corrected to rank very good by doing a few simple things on a daily basis.
It’s not brain surgery. Anyone can do it. You just need to learn how and have a lot of time.
If you don’t have the time and don’t want to learn, then the best advice is to hire a good writer and a trustworthy SEO person. Usually you will not find that talent in the same person.
Neither will you usually find a creative, artistic website builder that is also great at SEO.

10 Steps to a Better Website - #6 Relationships With Your Customers

A good website will help you build ongoing relationships with customers to develop repeat business. Most of the time, people like to do business with people they like and trust.

In trying to keep an ongoing relationship with a customer it’s good to remember that there are two kinds of customers. Transactional and Relational.

The Transactional Customer:
• Thinks short term.
• Cares only about today’s transaction.
• Enjoys the process of shopping and negotiating.
• Fears only “paying more than they had to pay.”
• Is willing to spend lots of time investigating.
• Considers themselves the expert.
• Hinges every transaction on price.
• Is a good source of word-of-mouth advertising.

The Relational Customer: • Thinks long term.
• Considers today’s transaction to be one in a series of many.
• Does not enjoy comparison shopping or negotiating.
• Fears only “making a poor choice.”
• Hopes to find an expert they can trust.
• Considers their time spent shopping to be part of the purchase price
• Is likely to become a repeat customer.

The goal of the Transactional shopper is for you to make no profit on them.
Transactional shoppers will go to whichever store is advertising the lowest prices.
Then they’ll brag to their friends about how they got it at such a deal.

Contrast that with the Relational shopper. She is happy for you to make a profit as long as she feels you are meeting her needs. Try to convince her with your website that you indeed will meet her needs.

It is very true that a customer can be a Relational Shopper in one product category and a Transactional Shopper in another.

I needed a multi media projector and a laptop. I was very transactional in the manner I shopped for those. After doing a lot of looking, I finally bought at Tiger Direct, because they had the cheapest price.

On the other hand I like godaddy.com and I buy my domain names there and use their services. I get a newsletter from Bob Parsons and I like it, and I always read it. It has good content that is helpful to me as a business owner. I have godaddy.com on my list of favorites. I know of other places that have the same services for less money, but I just like godaddy and I like Bob’s newsletters.

I also get emails every week or so with “very special unbelievable spectacular deals!” from Tiger Direct and always delete them. I don’t even look at them. I only bought from them because they had the lowest price and I don’t want their “Great Deals” emails. I almost view them with contempt.

So one website visitor may be relational and enjoy reading an “about us” page and your company history or getting a friendly newsletter from you. Another visitor may be transactional and could care less about you but may really like a page of discounted coupons or a monthly newsletter with “special discounted prices”.

You can have a better website and get a better bang for your buck if you understand better how the transactional and the relational shoppers think.

So, for this new year, here are some questions: Are you happy with your advertising? Do you need an advertising consultant? Are you wanting to attract the relational customer but your advertising is bringing you the transactional customer? Does most of your business come from relational customers, but most of your ad budget spent on the transactional customer?

10 Steps to a Better Website - #5 Design your site

I was explaining to my wife once how the internal combustion engine worked. After a while she said, “I don’t care about all that, and I don’t want to know or learn about all that, I just want it to start and run when I turn the key”.
Small business owners sometimes that feel that same way about a website; they usually don’t want to know about all the technical stuff. They just want it to be functional, work right, and make a good first impression. In these 10 Steps I am just passing on things I learned that were helpful to in the beginning.

The home page of your website must capture the attention of visitors, drawing them into your site within about 2-3 seconds or your visitors will disappear as quickly as they came. The page design and navigation have to be clear and direct to keep them there.

You’ve heard the saying, “one picture is worth a thousand words,” but have you really thought about that? A good graphic design and pictures can communicate, but along with those, you must also have the right words regarding your business, if you to come up in the search engines.

Search robots don’t read graphics and pictures, so you will need alt text under them. Many times I see a home page that has lots of graphics and flash, and very little text or no text at all. That is great for humans, but if you want to rank well in the search engines, in the organic search, you need text as well. Plan for that in the design of how it will look.

Get the visitors’ attention quickly. Tell them who you are and what they will find on your site. Make it easy to find information. Site navigation plays a big role in how long visitors stay and explore.

The first time visitors will quickly glance over the content and then look around to locate the information they searched for. Put the important part of your site within two clicks; don’t make potential customers drill down through multiple layers of links to find your important information.

A clean layout that uses a lot of white space improves legibility and encourages visitors to read the content on your website. Keep the number of fonts, font styles, and colors to a minimum. Younger visitors are OK with really small print; older visitors find small print difficult to read. (medium size about like Arial 12 is usually about right)

The focus should be on the content. Over done Flash is an aggravation. Use animation sparingly. A lot of different fonts, styles, colors, and animation will only project an amateurish image anyway. You should design each page to be under 40k in size. Use graphics, Flash animations, and scripts only as really needed because they make it take longer for the visitor to download it. Design pages for easy viewing on a typical 15-inch computer monitor.

Your website, just like your store location, is judged initially on its appearance. Whether it is a website or brick and mortar store, the first impression lasts a very long time and may never change.

I like to look at a mock-up or storyboard of the designers’ ideas before starting to build out the site. Make sure your happy with that first. Have several people you trust to give you’re their honest opinion on the design mock up before it is built out. Then you’ll be happy with your design when you see your site live online. There are millions of websites but probably only a few that would be your direct competition. Design your site to look as good or better than those.

10 Steps to a Better Website # 4 Gather info and name the pages

This series of 10 Steps to a Better Website is for the small business owner with a small ad budget. My suggestions/steps are a process you must go through, to get a website that you are happy with, that does what you want it to do.

“I have a website site but I’m not happy with it” is a statement I hear a lot. When updating or building a new website you’ll need to be able to explain to the Webmaster what you want. Otherwise they will make for you something you may not like that does not function well.

Take a look at your competitors’ websites. Right click your mouse to view the source and see what keywords they are using. What information do you feel is most useful or compelling on their site? Start making a list. Look over other sites in your industry. What did you find that want or don’t want? Which design styles do you prefer? Which writing styles appeal to you? You must communicate this info to your Webmaster. The better understanding you have with her/him on what you want, the happier you will be when it’s done.

Your list of information should include a list of the pages you want, and a list of what to put on each page. Gather up all the pictures, graphics, logos, and text copy you think you may need. Put it all together in one place.

Make sure your site contains plenty of useful information for the visitor— not just advertising. Give them enough information they need to decide to visit your store, or purchase your products and services.
In order to give you a bid for a website, one of the first questions a Webmaster needs to know is: How many pages do you want?

Here are ideas for web pages that I have on my own sites and some I have recommended for clients. As with all my suggestions, take what you can use, and ignore the rest.

· Home
· About us
· Testimonials (written, audio and video-we live in a Youtube world, so video testimonials are great)
· Products or Services
· Location (and a map that gives directions)
· Contact us
· Frequently asked questions
· News & Events
· Sign up for our newsletter
· Our Staff
· Photo gallery
· What we do
· Store hours
· Our Guarantee
· Write a review
· Local Weather forecast
· Our Rates/Prices
· Things to do in our area
· Area Attractions, Restaurants & Motels
· Employment
· Site Map
· Our Mission
· My Blog
· Links
· Our History
· Catalog
· Calendar of Events
· Entertainment & Shopping
· Sign our Guestbook

Next you will need Meta tags. Those are keywords, titles and descriptions for each page. These must be thought out and well planned. One of the reasons a person can become unhappy with their website is because they begin to realize it wasn’t planned very well in the beginning. However all this website planning is time very well spent. A good website is well worth the investment of time energy and effort. If have a good designer, a good writer, and it’s easy to find your way around on the site, the website will bring you business. It will increase your credibility, enhance your reputation, increase the word of mouth advertising about you, and will be a resource and benefit and a great service to your customers.

10 Steps to a Better Website-# 3 Establish a budget

This series of 10 steps to a better website is intended for the novice. For people not very savvy to “Internet stuff”
It just gives a little help on things that I needed help on when I first decided we needed a website.

The cost of creating a website depends on a lot of things. Many I covered in earlier posts. Cost will be determined in large part on the purpose of the site and how many pages. (Decide up front how much you should spend.)

The other key factors are high quality and high performance. There is no point spending any amount of money on a website that presents an amateurish image and does not function properly. Although a general rule may be that the larger your investment, the better your result.

I had lady in my office and she was asking for help with her website. She said friend of hers did her a favor and built her a website for “just a few bucks.”
I told her it would take less time to build a new one than to fix all the problems with here current one. She complained about spending money on the old site and now spending more for a new site. Probably all small businesses have had this same thing happen in some fashion or another.

If you want a professional looking website be prepared for it to not be cheap.
I do advise people get the best bang for their buck, but I learned from bitter past experience that hiring the lowest bidder to build a website or anything else is also running the risk of maybe having to do it all over again and paying for it twice.

Creating a website can be less expensive if you do it yourself, but only if you have the time, inclination, and tools to do a good job. Otherwise, get several bids from highly recommended designers and developers.

Clearly define your goals, style, and expectations for these Webmasters. As I suggested in another post and it’s worth repeating here, “Look at several sites that your potential Webmaster has built. If you don’t like the others he/she built, you probably won’t like yours when it’s finished.”

After you have what you feel is an acceptable bid, add in promotion and advertising expenses. As your company grows, you can expand your site, spreading your investment over time.

Buying advertising on Yahoo and Google to get more visitors to your site can get very expensive quickly. Decide on a monthly budget. Money spent on good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a wise investment. Good SEO work can bring your website up in the search engines to the first page and many times in the top three.

It’s been my experience and that of my clients too, that if you’ve had good SEO work done on your site up front and your website is in the top three or four for your chosen key words, and then you also have an ad from Google or Yahoo right above it, or right beside it, you will get fewer clicks on your ad. Because people are becoming savvy to the fact that those sponsored results are ads.

Attracting customers for very specific ad words on search result pages where you are not in the top three is a good idea if the adwords are not too general.

For tips on getting the best use of your ad dollars in all your advertising, read 12 steps to More Bang for Your Marketing Buck.

My new book came out this week titled Get Big Results From Your Small Ad Budget it has some very good tips making your advertising dollars go farther. You can order it through Wizard Academy Press in Austin Texas.

Check out Vess Barnes seys Hello at:
http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/?ShowMe=Vess_Barnes_Says_Hello

Contact me at Clay Campbell.biz

10 Steps to a Better Website -#2 Plan your content

This is number two in this series. These ten posts are for all the people that say to me, "I'm just not savvy to Internet stuff"
What is the purpose of your website? What do you want to achieve with your site? You need to establish your goals and priorities up front.

Do you want information about your company, products, and services? Or do you want to actually sell your products online? Or maybe influence and motivate potential customers to visit your store or do you want them to just call your phone number? Do you want to brand your company and refine its image? Provide great customer service? Or do you want some combination of all the above?

How you answer these questions will guide the design and development of your site.

You don’t need an elaborate plan. Just sit down with a pencil and a legal pad and answer some of the questions above plus these.

· How many pages do I need?
· Do I have the content already? (* Note-the best investment in your website is to hire a good writer)
· What would be the titles of those pages?
· Find three or four websites you like and tell the Webmaster designing your site that you want something like that. That will help with colors and layout
· Look at several sites that your potential Webmaster has built. If you don’t like the others he/she built, you won’t like yours when it’s finished
· The content will attract or turn away the visitor quickly, and will also play a large part where you rank in the search engines. (Yahoo Google etc)
· Make very sure your text content is not an exact duplicate of another site.

10 Steps to a Better Website-# 1 Choose a domain name carefully

# 1 Choose a domain name carefully

From my own research, my own experience as a business owner, and my experimenting with ten of my websites; I am offering some ideas and tips on having a better more effective website. You’ll really need this info if you need to build a new site, remodel an older one or want your site to rank better in the search engines.

In today’s marketplace, a website is often the first point of contact for new customers.

While poor design can possibly drive prospects away, a professionally designed and well-managed site is an advertisement telling visitors that your company is well run and successful. That will give people the confidence and trust to do business with you. Your website is a key component of your overall marketing and it should advance your overall business strategy.

Your website needs to communicate to your visitor with words, graphics, and information about your company. Information that you feel that gives visitors your vision, your purpose, pertinent information on products, and/or service. Why not make it easy for customers to get the information they need or buy the products or service they want?

I hope these10 Steps to a Better Website will be helpful for you. They will later be made into a PDF and made available on my blog and website

10 Steps to a Better Website

# 1 Choose a domain name carefully

A domain name is your unique Internet address for your website such as www.claycampbell.biz Choose an easy-to pronounce, easy-to-spell name. Some say choose a name that reflects your business. However ebay does not reflect an online bidding site. Neither does the name google convey that it is a powerful search engine. I had a name problem with one of my sites. I had what I thought was a great name until I was running a radio campaign to promote it. It was going to take the whole commercial to explain how to type in the address. So I had to buy two new names, and use a redirect on those, to make the radio ads work.

You can have several web addresses all going to the same website. It’s not a good idea to have several web addresses going to websites with the same content. Google, Yahoo and other search engines will give search results for just one index page. (Home page) They will not give search results for the others. Trying to have multiple sites with the exact same content, and others like filling up your home page with keywords, could very well get your site banned because the search engines may see that as you trying to manipulate the search results.

You can register your name in your state before you even put it on line. If your company is already established, you should register that name asap however; you’ll find many common words and terms and great names are already taken.

I always suggest if you can, choose a domain name that has key words in it that will appear on your home page. This will help potential customers find your site when they search for those words in search engines. To find out if a domain name is currently registered, go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html Or I usually go to www.godaddy.com or www.dotser.com and just type in the search bar a name I am interested in. If it’s available I buy it right then. The cost is usually in the $5-$10 range. If the name you want is taken, be creative or find a creative person to help you. Any of the Wizard of Ads Partners could help you. Or bounce your ideas off an associate. Keep trying until you have a name that “works” and…is available.

Fear Of Failure Is A Bigger Obstacle Than Shortage Of Money

70% would like to start their own business. What is stopping them? Capital is a little more difficult to get now than even 2 years ago. With the recent mortgage scare, banks are being a lot more careful lending money. According to the most recent Bureau of Census data, these are the figures for money needed for new businesses:

-1% needed $1,000,000 or more
-14% needed $25,000 -- $999,999
-34% needed less than $5,000
-26% did not require any money at all!

Stats indicate 69% of all new businesses starting up need less than $10,000 to get up and running. 70% of the people on the street say they would like to start their own business. Why don’t they?

I just read of a man who wanted to have his own antique business but had no money. He was able to get an option on a lease for a warehouse with no money in advance. Then he divided the space into 74 equal spaces. He leased them to vendors. Next he collected the first and last month’s rent. With that money in hand, he finalized the lease, did $20,000 in improvements, kept 3 spaces for his own merchandise, collected 10% commission on everyone’s sales and launched himself into a very positive cash flow from day one. I like a guy like that!

Many ideas today that use service, information, or technology do not require much money. They don’t require buildings, employees or inventory. You don’t need a half million to start a successful business – think in new ways. Many businesses that do require lots of capital are old-style businesses – very traditional brick and mortar businesses with little leverage and upside potential. Look for ideas that can be started with little or no capital that have a system that allows for duplication. Those have the potential to make insane amounts of money.

I have a good friend that started 6 years ago learning to build websites. He was experienced in ad lay out and design but a friend of his needed help building websites, and offered to teach him. He went to work for that guy at $7 per hour. He learned quickly and now makes $40 an hour working in his pajamas, in an office in his home. He sets his own hours and says he is as busy as he wants to be.

I just read an article about a guy named Lee Lentz. He loved doing magic tricks. He was thrilled seeing people’s responses to the unexpected. But how do you get paid for doing little card tricks? Today, Lee and his wife Vanessa stay booked at $15,000 per day doing innovative product introductions at conventions.

I started a newsletter for my customers and last year I acquired another newsletter from a friend. I added both of the databases together and built a website around the tourism industry here. I have about $300 invested in it. It earns $1000 per month advertising revenue with zero expenses. I’m starting another one in another town this week.

What is your area of expertise that you could position as an income-producing business? Fear of failure is a larger obstacle than not having any money. The antidote for fear is faith. Wikipedia says: “an antidote is a substance which can counteract a form of poisoning.” I say: Fear is a form of poisoning in your mind. The antidote: have faith in yourself, and if you are a Believer; have faith in God.

Fear knocked at the door; faith answered-and no one was there.