Archive for June 27, 2008

27 Jun 2008
internet marketing • small business

Trends In Business – Where Are You?


Trends in business is what every business owner wants to know and should know about in order to stay in business and grow their business.

Do you know where your business is trending to?

Maybe you think you do, how would you like some information to help you find out? And best of all, it’s FREE, thanks to Google.

Google Trends is a free service that takes information collected by Google to show you the trends in business and really any keyword phrase. Here’s how it works…

1) Go to http://www.google.com/trends

2) Type in a phrase about what you do. Let’s say you’re a dentist. So, you type in the word dentist and click on the “Search Trends” button.

3) You’ll see a graph showing you some dips and hikes. If you’re a dentist in the US then on the top right hand side of your screen change the “All Regions” to “United States” and then in the “All subregions” section choose your state.

4) If you want to know the trend in a specific time period, change the “All years” to the time period you’re looking for.

5) Is the graph going up or down? Is it steady?

What this graph is telling you is the volume of searches for the keyword phrase. It gives you an idea of the trend that is happening for that particular aspect of your business.

Let’s say you’re an attorney in New York and you specialize in Divorce, Bankruptcy and Patents.
Let’s see how these three specialties are doing in the markeplace.

1) divorce attorney – new york – all years – no data (not enough data for this)
So, since there’s not enough data we then make the scope wider, we go to all subregions
instead of just New York.

2) divorce attorney – all subregions – all years – graph shows trend going up.
Interestingly enough, the state with the most request for divorce attorneys is Minnesota.

3) bankruptcy attorney – all subregions – all years – graph shows trend slightly up.
Nevada is the number one state with the most requests for bankruptcy attorney.

4) patent attorney – all subregions – all years – graph shows trend down.
DC is the area of the country with the most requests for patent attorneys.

Conclusion: This small sample gives the attorney an idea of which of his services will be bringing in more income for him. If he was planning an ad campaign he would avoid putting money into his patent services since the trend in the past few years has declined. Instead, he should be putting his marketing dollars into upward trends.

Let’s try another specialty, Web Design and Marketing. Since this is a service that can be provided anywhere we’ll stick to All Regions but keep it down to the last 12 months.

Here are some keyword phrases and their results:

1) Web Designer – graph shows a steady trend
India is the top market for web designers

2) Web Designs – graph shows a slight decrease
Pakistan is the top market for web designs

3) SEO Services – graph shows a slight increase
India being the top market for seo services

Note: change the graph on seo services from All Regions to United States and you’ll see a huge
spike in Jan 2008 and it continues to increase. Does that mean businesses in the US have
finally “found” seo?

Conclusion: Web design companies could take from this small sample the concept that the trends in business is more towards internet marketing and seo services than simply for web design. If this trend continues and they want to grow their business, they would integrate seo services into their list of services for their clients.

Okay, let’s try one more – I’m having too much fun to quit.

Let’s go for a limousine service company in the United States for the last 12 months.

1) limousine services – graph shows an absolute decline.
Connecticut is the state with the most requests for limousine services.

2) limo service – graph shows a slight declince.
Connecticut is the state with the most requests for limo service.

3) airport limousine – graph shows a slight decline.
Again, Connecticut is the state with the most requests for airport limousine.

Conclusion: If you’re looking to open a limousine business somewhere seems like Connecticut is the place to do it! Seriously, this small sample of data indicates that a limousine service website should be marketing the phrase “limo service” vs “limousine service” since the trends in business for limousine services is much lower than limo service. I also tested “wedding limousine” and “prom limousine” and both of these trends were much lower than airport limousine so this tells me that a limo service website should emphasize their marketing on the airport service.

Well, all these trends in business are quite interesting. So, check out Google Trends and find out where you are in the latest trends in business. How can this information help you to improve your business?


eckweb | 4 comments | Tags: ,
20 Jun 2008
seo • small business

Ethical SEO Services


Ethical SEO Services should be abundant (in a perfect world) but alas, that is not the case.

I know that today’s economy is taking a toll on traditional SEO firms because I’m seeing press releases highlighting sales, new fee structures and new services. So, I can only guess that companies are beginning to feel the pinch.

One of these companies (and I won’t mention who but I’m sure you can find them if you type in “seo by the hour”) – anyway, one of these companies is offering a new service of SEO by the hour.

Is this providing ethical seo services? I’ll let you decide.

This seems to be how it works…

1) You pay $150.00 per hour
2) You choose from a list of services what you want done on your website.
3) These services include…

* Keyword Research
* Meta Elements: Titles, Descriptions & Keywords
* On-site Links
* Off-site Links – Community Links, Paid Reviews, Competitive
Linkbuilding
* Content Creation
* Content Editing
* Content Optimization for Search Engines
* Content Creation & Distribution for Backlinks
* Publicity Writing: Press Releases, Articles & Blogs
* social networking – Managing Profiles, Content & Friends
* Creating an XML Sitemap to Submit Directly to Search Engines
* Creation of New Targeted Landing Pages
* Competitive Analysis, General or Link building
* Consulting To Explore New online marketing Ventures

So, each one of these services is separate. You’re basically buy a la carte. Sounds great, right? I mean you can just pay them whatever your budget allows and whatever your budget allows will determine the amount of work your website gets done to it.

The question if these are ethical seo services is in what they don’t tell you.

What they aren’t telling you in this new “system” is that SEO is very integrated. One piece of the puzzle relies very much on the other piece of the puzzle. I mean, what if you purchased “Meta Elements: Titles, Descriptions and Keywords” but you didn’t purchase “Keyword Research”. What’s the point of optimizing the meta tags if you don’t know what phrases to optimize for? That’s like purchasing drywall without purchasing the framework to hang the drywall on.

Sure, some of these features could be a la carte, social networking, publicity writing to name two but many of these features rely on other features in order to work.

It’s misleading to give the customer the impression that he can purchase what he wants and the site will work just fine. Now, I don’t know, maybe in the phone conversation with this company they tell you this, maybe they try to get you to buy the whole package, I don’t know but the article they wrote does not explain that. The article refers to the fact that they can work with you so that you don’t have to spend as much as you may with other SEO firms.

Now, I’ve been doing SEO for 8 years now and I work with my clients and their budget. My services are somewhat a la carte but there are some services that I don’t sell without others, I mean I would never claim to be able to optimize meta tags or web content without the keyword research.

So, is it ethical seo services? Could be, it’ll depend on the information they give you when you contact them!


eckweb | No comments | Tags:
15 Jun 2008
home business • internet marketing • small business

Internet Advertising Ideas


As a professional Internet Marketer, I am often asked for Internet Advertising Ideas. It could be from a potential client on the phone or from someone I meet at a party. So many people have the notion that Internet marketing is some kind of bag of “secret tricks”, I suppose they are on the lookout for new and interesting Internet Advertising Ideas.

Well, in my 8 years of experience with Internet advertising, I’ve accumulated some knowledge about Internet marketing, so here are my “Internet Advertising Ideas“.

1) Be specific about what you’re marketing. If you sell greeting cards, assign several pages to each niche of greeting cards that you sell. “Birthday cards”, “Get Well cards”, “Thank You cards”, etc. This allows you to focus specific keyword phrases onto these niche pages and it allows the search engines to identify what the pages are about.

2) Write, write, write, write, write!!!! Do it yourself, hire someone, barter with someone, whatever! You are supposedly an expert in your field, well, show it! You gain trust from viewers on the Internet, you gain exposure on search engines and directories and guess what? Even the search engines will see that your website must be a hub of information because of all the incoming links! Post what you write on blogs, free article submission sites, your own website, other websites, forums, message boards, social networking groups, etc.

3) Craigs List – post your items on Craigs list, it’s free!

4) Create your own commercial and YouTube it!

5) Get your website optimized! Only about 20% of websites are actually optimized, which means that 80% are NOT! I don’t get it. What’s the point of having a business website if it doesn’t bring you business?

6) Add coupons to your site. There are directories out there that only accept websites with coupons on them. To get your site listed on those directories and benefit not only from their traffic but the incoming link to your website, you need coupons on your site. It’s as easy as adding another page to your website!

7) Internet advertising ideas also includes reviewing your website for flaws. Do you have enough call to actions? Is your contact information easily accessible? Do you have forms for your visitors to fill out? Do you change your content? There are many, many issues to consider! One huge mistake many website owners make is to create a website and forget about it. Websites are not brochures, they’re not flyers, they’re meant to be interactive and dynamic.

8) PPC (Pay Per Click) is one of those Internet Advertising ideas that can be quite costly but depending on your product and/or service, it can also be very profitable. The trick to PPC advertising is to make sure to keep tabs on the ROI. In my experience, after 3 months of marketing the ROI begins to decrease. It doesn’t mean you should stop the PPC campaign but perhaps you should focus the campaign on other keywords or themes.

9) Find out what your audience wants and then give it to them. How do you do that with Internet advertising? Easy! What are they typing in? What questions are they typing in? What information are they looking for? How do you do this? Well, there are programs out there that capture SOME of the keyword phrases people type in, programs like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker. You can also use the Google AdWords tool, although this shows you what people are bidding on, not necessarily typing in.

10) Create a mailing list and use the mailing list. That means provide your customers, past, current and future ones with SOMETHING. A newsletter, an update of sales, events, etc. Anything to keep your company name, your company products and services as easily available as possible.

Internet Advertising Ideas are not “secret” or “magic”, they’re advertising like most any other business advertising. It just takes some planning and action by people who know the medium.

If you want to discuss other Internet Advertising Ideas, feel free to contact me, Esther Kane at Eckweb Designs!


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , ,
02 Jun 2008
seo • small business

Appropriate SEO Prices


So, what are appropriate seo prices?

I hear set up ranges from 1000.00 to 10,000.00 no matter how small the websites are. I had a call just last week from someone shopping around for seo services who told me he got a quote for 10,000 for his website. His website is only 8 pages!!! And the 10,000 fee is ONLY for the set up. The monthly marketing fee is 350.00!!!

Now, how is a home based business with a website of only 8 pages supposed to recoup that kind of money? How long would it take him to get a decent ROI? It’s a ridiculous fee.

What do I think are appropriate SEO prices?

My fees are 135.00/month for marketing and the set up is usually under 2000.00 for sites of 10-15 pages. It depends on how much clean up work needs to be done on the coding. That is, after all, the most complicated and time consuming part of the set up.

I think these fees are reasonable and affordable for small and home based businesses. And truthfully, if a business can’t afford these Internet marketing fees, I have to question to business plan. Anyone who has been in business for themselves knows that it just takes time, hard work and some money to get a business going and to keep it successful, it takes just more of these three factors.

What do you think are appropriate seo prices?


eckweb | No comments | Tags: ,