Marketing is everything you do

Marketing is about sending messages. Think of all the ways you might be sending messages – whether you intend to or not. What could be critical is the unintended messages that you might be sending.


The way you look
Your dress, manner and character say the most about you and your business. It is not so much how you look and sound but more importantly how people feel about how you look and sound.


Phone
What message do you want your phones to say about you and your business? Now go check to see what it really says.


Your staff
Your staff is a reflection of you. So if you think that you have ignorant, lazy and sloppy staff – look in the mirror.


Your material
You are not your business card. But if that is all we have – you are that business card – at least in our mind. And what could be more important than the image in the mind your prospects and contacts?


Website
How do people check you out? The Internet. They use their favorite search engine. They might wonder why you are so hard to find. The might wonder why your site is so difficult to navigate. They might wonder why it is so cold.


Check out the messages you might be sending.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Power Marketing on Facebook

Google Your Key Words and Phrases

Google is King of search on the Internet. If you want to be found you better be found in Google. That includes both pay for click and search engine optimization.

At least once a year and perhaps every quarter you should Google all the words and phrases that might be important to your business.

For example those words might include:

Your name (person and business)
Your product names
The generic name for your product
The pain or problem that your product fixes
Your trade marks
Your slogan
Your competitors’ names
Your competitor’s product names
Your competitors’ trade marks
Misspellings of the above
Your industry + the word “expert”
Your industry + the name of your city or geographic area of business
The names of your best clients
The names of your key suppliers

Study the results and look for patterns, insights and opportunities.

Google is the King of Internet Search – but Google is also a servant King. Ask the right questions and it will answer. But you need to ask and listen.



George Torok

Marketing Expert

Marketing Speaker

Canadian Business Speaker

Marketing Sherpa Case Study: Homepage Redesign

Homepage Redesign Puts Target Sectors Front and Center: 5 Steps to 100% Lift in Key Metrics


SUMMARY:

The most relevant marketing content speaks directly to your prospects’ needs. But does your website give target industries an instant connection to the content that matters to them? See how an IT consulting firm redesigned its homepage to give special attention to their top target industries. They used big buttons to lure clicks from key prospects, and drove traffic with a vertical-focused direct mail campaign. As a result, they’ve seen a huge jump in Web metrics, such as a 100%+ increases in time on site and pageviews per visit, and are arranging sales meetings at a faster rate.


CHALLENGE

Zaphyr Technologies provides IT consulting and services for the small-medium business sector. But that horizontal focus made it difficult for Shawn Butt, CEO, and his team to create marketing campaigns that resonated with specific types of businesses. “When you say ‘We’re a one-stop shop that does it all,’ it doesn’t connect with people in a certain vertical or industry,” says Butt. “We realized we had to start to define which verticals we are interested in, and which we have expertise in.”The team embarked on a process to identify its top industry targets, and then refine their marketing strategy to immediately connect with the needs of prospects in those industries.

Read the rest of this case study here.
Acess is open until May 14, 2009.

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RESULTS

The vertical focus of the team’s new website has caught the attention of their target audiences.After the redesign:o Unique visitors increased 125%o Average time on site increased 106%o Average page views per visit increased 153%o Average monthly email newsletter signups increased 117%

Who's Talkin - search tool

Whostalkin.com is a neat free tool for searching for who's talking about you on the social media. You can also use it to search for any other topic.

I used it to search my name and found my name and material quoted in places that I wasn't aware of - even though I already use Google Alerts.

Give it a try and add it to your list of social media search tools.

Whostalkin.com

If it looks like SPAM it is SPAM

If it looks like SPAM it is SPAM

Below is an excerpt from an unwanted email that got through my SPAM blocker and filters. The sender manually authorized their email address to get through.

Notice that the opening line boldly stated that "This is not SPAM." And they they gave a lame excuse.

There are legal definitions of SPAM And those vary by country. Generally SPAM is massive emailings to lists of names that have not asked for the email. This email wrongly claimed to have a right to send me their "information". There was no link to allow me to unsubscribe from their list. They falsely claimed to be an organization that doesn't exist but might sound official. No snail mail address was given.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
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Attention! This is not SPAM and this letter is delivered according to the legislation since the e-mail address is in open access


The Canadian Drugs Medical Association

blah, blah, blah .... The selling text and links to their site have been removed.


Respectfully, The Canadian Drugs Medical Association
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The links went to a Google Groups page that was selling the usual drugs.

I use the SPAM blocker called SPAM Arrest which works very well.

Keep your blog out of a courtroom

How to Keep Your Blog Out of a Courtroom - Advice from Legal Pro on Providing, Creating Content

Informative article from Marketing Sherpa. Access to this article is open until November 18. If you have a blog you should read this article. The Internet is not the wild wild west. There are laws that you should know and follow to stay out of legal trouble.



SUMMARY: A company blog can be great for marketing. But inappropriate content and troublesome comments can also expose you to lawsuits.Here's advice from a 30-year business attorney with extensive knowledge of the laws on blogging and user-generated content. Includes tips to avoid turning a blog post into "exhibit A."

Click to continue
(Open access until November 18th)

Check your name availability

Check your name availability

Would you like to know if your name is still available?

Use this free tool to check over 60 web services in seconds for the availability of your name.

http://usernamecheck.com/

If you are venturing into the use of the interent social media you might want to use the same user name on several services. Perhaps you just want to reserve your name while you have a chance.

http://usernamecheck.com/


George Torok

Website Grader

Website Grader

Here's a neat free tool to check your website and those of your competition for search effectiveness.

It takes a few seconds to give you a fairly comprehensive report of how your site is performing along with suggestions on how to improve. You get a grade out of 100.

Website Grader

Plus

There is a Twitter Grader

There is a Press Release Grader


George Torok

Questions about CAN-SPAM

PDF: Dozen Key Questions Answered on Latest CAN-SPAM Provisions

SUMMARY: Three email pros answered 12 questions during a recent webinar on what marketers need to know about the latest provisions for CAN-SPAM. Here is a transcript of that session.

Hope Hopkins, Membership Content Manager, MarketingSherpa, realized that many Sherpa members still had questions about the new CAN-SPAM provisions. She organized an event with a trio of authorities who discussed what the recent changes mean by responding to a dozen questions.The webinar served to put a bow on this issue for many members who were seeking more clarification on new CAN-SPAM provisions.We share a transcript of that session with you.

Click to continue(Open access=permanent)
This will open a pdf document.

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If you want to know what is and isn't SPAM - read this panel interview.

Get First Page on Google

Get First Page on Google Searches

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Basics and Tips
By Jim Estill

Do you want to get first page on Google? If you have a web page or blog, you likely already are first page for some searches. With a bit of SEO, you can gain first page on more searches. And its simple.

The first and most obvious step is think about what words or phrases you want to be first page on.

Once you have that list, determine how many people are searching for those terms. To check how popular a search is you will need a tool. I use Wordtracker (there is a free online version). The higher the number, the more popular the search. No point in trying to optimize for a word or phrase that is rarely searched.

There is also no point in trying to optimize for a word that is too popular because getting a high ranking there will be almost impossible.

Think about "long tail"

Think about how people will search. People often search with a question. EG where do I find X? Or where do I find Y in Canada. The longer the string, the less competition you will have for it so the easier you will get ranked.

So make the list of phrases you want to "own" and ones that are realistic to "own".

Now it is simple. Just put these words and phrases in your titles, picture descriptions, videos and in your text. The titles are the most important. That is why a blog called "Shrimp Fish Soup Recipes" will get good Google juice on all 4 words. So searching "Shrimp soup" will get first page. Or "fish soup recipes" or "Shrimp recipes" etc.

Yes you want to repeat your words and phrases often in the text. This said - write naturally. Never let SEO be a substitute for good content.

So you do this and you still are not first page. That is because you do not have enough credibility with Google. You need another free tool to check this. I use a free Firefox plugin called searchstatus. It gives me both the PageRank and the Alexa rating of any web page. Higher PageRank numbers are better. High credibility is your ultimate goal as that is what gets you ranked first and Alexa tells you traffic (a lower number is better)

How do you increase your PageRank?

It is all about quality inbound links. You want people with a high credibility (PageRank 4+) to link to you - eg Wall St Journal would be great. More is better and link rank is almost logarithmic so a PageRank of 6 is worth 10 times one of 5 etc.

This said, for you to get a link from an 8 rated site like pornstars.com would not increase your rank in the business genre. Sites are ranked for relevance.

The best inbound links are contextual. So someone blogging and saying I heard time management guru John Doe speak and hot linking from "Time management guru" is great for John Doe. Second best, hot link from "John Doe". Third is just having a link on a blogroll without any context.

You get a higher rank if you update your content regularly. That is why having a blog on your site is a good way to increase your ranking.

Moderate cross linking within your own material will also increase your rank and clarify for google what it is that you do.

3 ways to get links to your site:

1 - Ask politely. You might not always get a link but it never hurts to ask.

2 - Comment on other relevant blogs (and have your PageRank on so you ignore low PageRank and high alexa). Note that most comments in themselves do not constitute a link. But being out there gets people to look at you. You need people to look at your stuff for them to be inspired to link to it.

3 - Have good material. People link to quality. But of course they have to see it so promote your content:

Have your URL on all your print material, cards, letterhead, email sig file etc
Write guest articles and blogs in the right (high traffic) places (check the Alexa).
PR - get written about
Contribute to other sites. EG write reviews on Amazon, join the conversations.

And a word of warning. Never play games (like buying links).

In the end it is about having good quality material. And being out there so people look at your material. People link to quality without you asking as long as they know about it.

Jim Estill is the CEO of SYNNEX Canada, a $2 Billion distributor of computers.

To learn more about his successful business strategies, visit his blog at http://www.jimestill.com

Jim Estill's CEO blog at http://www.jimestill.com also has information on ordering his audio book and ebook, Time Leadership.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Estill
http://EzineArticles.com/?Get-First-Page-on-Google-Searches---SEO-(Search-Engine-Optimization)-Basics-and-Tips&id=1555230

Twitter: Should you be there?

Twitter: Should you be there?

I'm not yet decided on this Twitter thing and I decided to check it out.

I certainly made the wrong quick judgement about blogging - and look at me now.

I just created my account on Twitter and you are welcome to "follow me" on Twitter.

I welcome your feedback.

George Torok on Twitter

Link to me

Link to me

Lately, I have received several requests to trade links.

Nothing wrong with that. Links to your website boost it in the search engines. And I am happy to exhange good links.

However, many of the requests to link seem to come from gmail or other free email addresses - not from legitimate email address. What does that say about the person requesting the link? Why are they hidding?

So I agreed to trade some links. And after I linked to them and asked for a response - no response.

We should learn from our mistakes.

This is my response to future resquests for trading links - "You go first".


George Torok
Marketing Speaker & Author
Business Speaker

Website Marketing: One way links

Website marketing: One way links

Links to your website help people find your site from the site that linked to you and more importantly improve your status in the search engines.

The thinking is that if other websites link to your website, the other websites must think that you are an authority on your topic.

However, the reality is far more selective. All links are not equal. Some links are more valuable than others.

These things make the link to your site more valuable:
The site that links to your site is on a related topic.
The site that links to your site is a higher Google page rank.
The site that links to your site only links to other sites of related topics.
The page that links to your site has a reasonable number of links. Somewhere less than 100.
That site is linking to you without you linking back to them - called one way links.

That last factor - one way links - is tough to get. Yet it is valuable because the search engines thinking is - if you have inbound links without outbound links to that other site it must be because they really love you. It's preceived to be more that a dirty trade of favors.

Too many "web marketers" email you asking to trade links with you. There's little value if the topics are unrelated, their link page has hundreds of links, those other links are unrelated and their link page can't be found from their home page.

I tend to ignore those requests.

One Way Links
Here is a website that specializes in helping you get one way links. Haven't tried it yet - but it looks interesting. I will check it out.

One Way Link Building


George Torok
Marketing Speaker
Marketing Expert & Author

TinyURL!™

TinyURL!™

Here's a cool tool to shorten your long URLs.

Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

http://tinyurl.com/

Yahoo Video

Yahoo Video

YouTube might be better known when it comes to Internet video but there are others out there. If you are posting video on YouTube, (owned by Google), then you might as well post the same videos on Yahoo Videos.

Once you have the video - publishing the video is free and as easy as posting on YouTube. So if you already posted your videos on YouTube - it's a nobrainer to also publish on Yahoo.

Yahoo Videos seems to have similar options to YouTube - the sharing options and ability of imbed the video on your website or blog as demostrated below with the first video that I published on Yahoo Videos.

This particular video did not publish correctly on YouTube. The sound and video were out of sync and choppy - but it worked perfectly on Yahoo Video.




George Torok

Marketing Expert

Marketing Speaker

Toronto Convention Speaker

Google your name

Google your name

Google your business name.

Google your own name.

Google your product name.

If your websites don't come up in the top three - you have a problem to fix. If you don't appear on the first page of Google - you better move quickly.

If you don't appear on the first three pages - you better stop answering your phone - because it might be the bank calling to call the loan.

George Torok

Spy on the competition

Spy on your competition with - SpyFu - https://www.spyfu.com/

The heck with marketing research when you can spy on them.

If information is power - this is a must have tool for the internet marketer. It helps you spy on your competition regarding their search engine strategy and reports back real numbers. Amazing stuff. Read what they say about their product.

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SpyFu lets you see which keywords your competitors are buying and which ones they optimize their site for. Once you understand the competition, you can beat them at their own game or your can exploit their weaknesses.

We get our data directly from the source; there are no middlemen. Every month, we extract 125 million ads and search results directly...
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https://www.spyfu.com/

You can try it for free.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Check your website load time

Analyse your website - Free tools

Here is a good set of free tools to analyse your website.

Of particular note is the "Load time test". It tests how long your website takes to load and tells you where the delays are.

Of course you might not realize how slow your own website is because after your first visit it is cached in your computer. So you can be fooled into thinking that your site is faster than it really is. I was surprised when I tested one of my sites with this tool.

The site is Submit It

Here is an excerpt from the page of free tools.
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Time for a tune-up...
The below tools (and to the left) are listed chronologically to assist you with site preparation and testing. Website preparation and testing are your first steps to reaching those magical top positions in major search engines (actually there is no magic, just hard work... learn more).You can use our tools as often as you like and even place them on your website to offer free web tools to your viewers and generate traffic (Add MiniTools to your website). We also ask you to help us keep an almost nine year old (June 23rd) Submit Plus tradition absolutely free by displaying one of our (buttons) on your website... So, let's get started!

Link Popularity [Low link popularity = Low ranking... Check it Out!]

Load Time Check [Good loading time = happy surfers/spiders... Check it Out!]

Test Your Meta Content [Major engines still reply on Meta Tags!... Check it Out!]

Spider Simulator [See what engine spiders see... Or don't!]

Generate Meta Tags [Improve or create new Meta Tags... You need them!]

Alexa Ranking [Archived info and web traffic information ]

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Test your website

George Torok

Marketing Expert & Author

Motivational Business Speaker

Domain Stats Tool

Domain Stats Tool

Here is another free tool for checking your website or those of your competitors. Just type in the url and it will tell you the age of the domain, links and pages indexed by the three major search engines.

Take it for a spin. Warning - it seems to take about 30 to 60 seconds to return the results.

George Torok

Domain Stats Tool Enter Domain Name

Marketing your Website to the Search Engines

List of Best and Worst practices for designing a high traffic website

Here is a checklist of the factors that affect your rankings with Google, MSN, Yahoo! and the other search engines. The list contains positive, negative and neutral factors because all of them exist. Most of the factors in the checklist apply mainly to Google and partially to MSN, Yahoo! and all the other search engines of lesser importance.

This checklist is the most comprehensive one that I've seen. Yet it is written in a format that is easy to scan and simple to understand.

http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

As I continue to learn more about improving my own websites I will post some of the best gems that I discover on this blog for you.

George Torok

Marketing Speaker

Co-author of Secrets of Power Marketing