Many Small Business Owners Don’t Grasp the Meaning of SEO or Search Engine Optimization – Here’s an explanation:

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re like me, the way you find stuff on the web is type a few words into Google. Generally you enter words which are relevant to what you’re looking for.

For example, if you wanted to find the most handsome man in Southern Maine, you’d probably type in my name – John Moore, and some phrase like “rugged good looks”.

Hopefully, you would find a relevant link to me close to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages).

The process for making a web site more likely to show up at the top of Google is called SEO.

Why is SEO Important?

Generally speaking, if you’re web site doesn’t come up on the first page of results – then it’s likely that nobody will find you. In fact, the lower you rank, the fewer click-throughs you get.

If you’re in the type of business where you want to make money, bad results mean your website is an expense not an asset. Your competition is eating your cornflakes.

If you don’t have the technical know-how to optimize your site, then contact us and we can help.

Do you ever need to persuade anyone of anything? If so, you’re going to want to turn off all distractions and watch the above video because it’s going to give you a little known key of human persuasion.

Because it’s so powerful – you can use this secret word in sales copy, your blogs, offline marketing, or just convincing a friend to pay for dinner.

What’s this copywriter’s secret which can bump up my conversions in sales and marketing?

Quite simply it’s the word, “because”. This happens to be one of the most powerful words in the English language.

Why? Because we have been conditioned since birth that anything that follows the word because automatically justifies what came before it. No, this doesn’t turn people into zombies ready to do your bidding 100% of the time. But it will increase your chances of gaining compliance in communication.

There was an interesting university study done where there would be people in line for a copier. (I’m getting flashbacks to waiting for copiers at the school library). A research assistant would try to cut in line by saying something like, “do you mind if I go in front of you because I need to make some copies?”

Many many times people would say “OK” even though her reason was pretty crappy.

Then, she would do the same thing but eliminate only the word “because”. Her success rate was suddenly terrible.

You might try this yourself by split-testing some copy with and without the word because and seeing which gets the better results.

Next time you’re out with your friends try something like, “do you mind picking up the tab for dinner because I’m really stuffed.” It’s worth a try, right?

Hey Adam, Bite This

Send a prospect an unsolicited critique of their web site.

Why This Marketing Tactic Never Works

Back in the 90s, everybody and their brother was a web designer. Today all those people are “social media experts”. It seemed like an easy way to make money back then.

So millions of these folks, thinking they were original would send off unsolicited letters to companies that went something like this:

Dear Manager,

Your website sucks. In fact it’s the suckiest suck that ever sucked. When you hire me to redesign your web site I’m going to fix the following 3000 things that your lazy and malodorous web designer was too stupid to include….

Usually the designer would include a mockup, or a link to a site where they had already mocked up a new lovely design for the prospect.

I have never once seen this work and here’s why it fails:

1. The designer is probably sending the letter to the person responsible fort the web site. They have just insulted the prospect – game over.
2. Most people do not know good web design from bad, so they don’t immediately see a compelling benefit.
3. People hate to be sold and presumptuous salespeople are the worst.

There are probably many other reason, but these are the top three.

So I had a reason and an opportunity to commit this sin recently and show off some fancypants Internet Marketing, So I did.

My FancyPants Internet Marketing Consulting Sin

I recently went to a Portland, Maine networking event where a woman gave a round table talk on sales closing techniques. After the meeting I thanked her and asked for her business card.

I gave her mine and without asking, she started to tear it apart. Looking at the logo she said, “Why is this on here, I don’t care about this?” And proceeded to mock everything on my card – including the QR code – which she clearly didn’t understand. Then, without knowing much about my business, she proceeded to tell me what I needed to do to get clients. Her suggestion – do screen captures of people’s facebook pages and outline what was wrong with them.

Ah yes, the sales pro was telling me to do the one thing that a couple of decades of experience told me never worked.

When I got home that day I took a peek at this person’s web site. It was nice, but clearly home grown. I was not search engine optimized, had no way to capture leads, and not even a single link to social media, or a blog. It clearly isn’t doing anything for her.

So I whipped up a quick nice to meet you card and included a note, “Here are a few suggestions I have for you to get your web site to work harder for you.” I was extremely tactful and nice merely offering suggestions like, “I think you should have contact information and a lead capture form on your home page so people who want to hire you can get in touch easier.”

I think I included 5 tips.

Well, she got the card today and fired off a somewhat angry and very defensive email explaining why I was wrong, how I handled it poorly, that my photo was ugly. She told me that Internet Marketing doesn’t matter for her business, and I could only help her if I had already succeeded in her business.

I wrote back saying I was confused by her reaction since I merely followed her exact suggestion. I apologized for any offense for offering unsolicited advice, but that since she began the relationship that way I mistakenly believed she’d be open to it. I think she cooled down eventually, but still doesn’t get it.

Honestly, I fully expected her reaction. I was trying to prove a point, which I believe I did.

My point to you is, just don’t use this marketing tactic unless you want to fail, or you’re feeling snarky and want to prove a point to someone.

Image via CrunchBase

The meeting discussed marketing funnels, value ladders, web traffic, squeeze pages, and more. Everyone participated and had a lot to offer.

Meeting space was graciously provided by Allied Engineering, Inc. a Portland, Maine engineering company.

Here are a few video testimonials from people who came:

Joining the group is free – you can go to the Maine Internet Marketing Meetup page to sign up.

SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) are terms that are often used interchangeably.  So, are they the same thing? No. You mean there’s a difference? Didn’t I just say there was?

So here’s the skinny:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a set of activities which make a given web site more optimized for better search engine results. It’s usually a pretty technical thing involving titles, headers, site structure, internal links, etc.

The main goal is to seem relevant to the search engines, and to potential visitors so you get good listings and good traffic.

Awesome right?

Well, technically, SEO is a part of SEM, which is a whole slew of activities … but I’m getting ahead of myself.

On-page SEO

So there’s this thing that some people refer to as on-page SEO. I just call it SEO. It’s really the stuff you do to your web site to market it to search engines.

Off-page SEO

I really think that this one belongs in the search engine marketing bucket, but I’m not going to split hairs with those who disagree. In the end, who cares what you call it if it produces results.

So the off-page stuff mostly revolves around getting backlinks (links back to your web site) from high authority web sites so that the search engines will think you’re a big shot. Part of most search engine’s algorithm involves seeing if people “vote” for your web page by linking to Since search engine spammers used to use black hat techniques like creating farms of many thousands of links to fool search engines, the search engines place higher weight on sites with authority. Authority is a little too complicated to explain in this post, but if the Whitehouse pastes uo a link to your web site, that’s going to carry more weight than your little brother’s Pokemon blog.

So, what the flip is SEM?

SEM = Search engine marketing. It is an umbrella term for anything you do to market to, or with search engines. It includes a whole slew of activities which may include:

• keyword research and analysis
• web analytics analysis
• SEO
• Local search listings
• seeding social media / social media integration
• developing viral media
• etc.

I hope that clarifies things a bit. Honestly the terms only matter so that we can have a conversation about something and both be talking about the same thing.

Getting together with your legion, you are armed with the latest knowledge  of IM weaponry like SEO, SEM, social media marketing, list building, video marketing, etc. You meet like-minded people, experts, and potential joint venture partners.

Let me ask you a question: How much would that be worth to you?

What if you could arm yourself with all those business-building Internet Marketing superpowers for FREE?

Would that get you to read on?

If you care about success it would.

Well future warrior, the time is now. The Maine Internet Marketing Meetup has formed around a stellar core of experts and newbies alike. Everyone is dedicated to sharing knowledge, partnering up, and propelling Maine small businesses to truly “Hulk-like” growth. (and you thought I might be done with the superhero references).

All you have to do is to go to the home page and sign up. You’ll be informed of new meetings, and new resources. And, best of all you’ll get to connect with a great group of people. Memberships and meetings are FREE!

Sign up now, before you forget!

“99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns,”

~Gary Vaynerchuk

So, the other day a fairly well known, Maine-based social media expert asked for a suggested resource over Twitter. I replied to this person with a suggestion to solve the problem at hand. Not a single response.

No “thanks,” no “hey that’s a stupid response” nothing.

As well known as you are, if you ignore people on social media, particularly if you’ve broadcast a request for help – YOU SUCK AT SOCIAL MEDIA.

The Word “Social” is in There for a Reason

It’s called a conversation, something human beings like to do.

Unfortunately, what many people see social media as is simply a new medium to broadcast marketing messages out like some kind of fertilizer spreader. And sure, if I subscribe to an obviously branded corporate Twitter account or Facebook page, I know what I’m getting into.

If you are branding yourself online as a person, and your communication is decidedly one-way: YOU SUCK AT SOCIAL MEDIA.

Why Social Media Experts Especially Suck on Twitter

“Provide value, send out valuable links,” this seems to be the battle cry of the experts. Hey, I’m all about providing value. Have you looked at Twitter lately, it’s an ADD nightmare with everybody auto-posting scheduled links to their crap.

Worse yet, all the links are shortened, so you really have no idea what you’re getting into when you click. Let me ask you this: how many links do you see on Twitter that you actually click. What’s the percentage? Of those that you click, how many give you something useful and how many give you crap?

I certainly understand the value of tweeting and posting your own content. If you write a blog, and we’re connected in social media, I expect to see links to your posts.

Gary Vaynerchuk talks, in the video linked above, about being at the top of a social media bubble. I think we probably are. Social media is now super-mainstream and people are getting more savvy. They are going to figure out who is being genuine.

Most email marketing sucks even worse.

Pardon me while I brag for a minute … I am really good at copywriting, particularly as an email marketing and auto-responder copywriter. I write email that gets open and clicked on.

But it’s not bragging if you can prove it right?

Email Marketing Open Rates

Let’s look at a couple of figures that are important to writing email that brigs heavy boxes of cash into your business.

The first rate is open rate. This is the rate at which an email you send get’s opened and hopefully read. It’s an interesting statistic because it basically tells you how well your subject line works.

It’s only part of the equation, but it doesn’t go very far telling you how successful a campaign is going to be. Yes, you need people to open and read your email, but merely reading email doesn’t make it rain.

No, you need to know how those people are responding.

Click Rates for Email

Click rates use tracking URLs to tell you how many people (as a percentage) are clicking on the link in your message. This is usually measured as a percentage of clicks per total email messages sent.

If people aren’t clicking the links in your messages, they aren’t buying from you.

Normal Open and Click Rates

According to the data at MailChimp open rates and click rates range by industry. Generally, however Open rates range from around 13% to a high of 25%.

Click rates are dismal. They range from 1% to a high of 10%

However, both of these numbers are in line with a lot of direct marketing. The Direct Marketing Association shows that open rates of in-house email lists are around 19% with a 6.6% click through rate. Direct mail response averages around 3-4%.

OK John, What are You Getting At With This Email Marketing Stuff?

Well, I just want to give you a peek at a campaign I did for a sports related niche. According to Mailchimp, Operates for this vertical are just above 19%, and click throughs are a little less than 5%.

Well, here’s a screen capture of my open and click rates:

Yes, this is an actual screen grab from my email service’s dashboard showing a 52% open rate and a tremendous 15% click through rate.

More than double the open rate and more than triple the click rate per email.

So you can conclude that I write email that gets read, and clicked on.

How are your email marketing results? Are 2/3 rds of your customers clicking delete instead of coming to your site and buying from you?

How do you fix it?

My suggestion: hire me to write your email campaign for you.

So here’s a list of US territories and states, starting with Maine, arranged by population.

Suck it Guam!

Maine 1,328,361
New Hampshire 1,316,470
Rhode Island 1,052,567
Montana 989,415
Delaware 897,934
South Dakota 814,180
Alaska 710,231
North Dakota 672,591
Vermont 625,741
Washington, DC 601,723
Wyoming 563,626
Guam 178,430
US Virgin Is. 109,825
No. Mariana Is. 88,662
Amer. Samoa 65,628

Because lots of people and firms make lots of claims SEO expertise, and it’s hard to know where the truth lies, I want to give you some proof. Here’s a case study

Background of SEO Project

One of my passions is martial arts. I have been studying since I was a boy. Today I teach martial arts and self defense.

To promote my passion I created the web site: Maine Martial Arts.com

I have been focusing SEO efforts on this site for a little over a year. Here are some of my results:

Here’s a screen capture showing a #1 position on Google (out of 5.5 MM results) for a very competitive key phrase.

Here’s another set of keywords with over 6 MM results, once again I’ve captured the #1 spot on Google.

Once again, here’s a highly competitive long-tail key phrase. Not only did the site get the number on position, but I’ve dominated the whole first page of Google. Shown here are the first seven results in Google all mine.

Here’s one final example where I’ve captured  the first two results on Google for a very localized search.

I’d just like to add that everything I’ve done is white-hat and squeaky clean. I don’t want to get punished by an algorithm change down the road.

SEO Results

Getting to the top rank on page one of Google is only part of the search engine equation. For a site to be successful, you need to make sure that the keyword you’re ranking for are things that customers are looking for. You also want results from top tier to long-tail keywords.

I also rank very high globally for a number of higher level martial arts and self defense related terms. I get global traffic, sometimes more than 10,000 unique visitors per month. I’m not running my martial arts site as a business, so there are no revenues to report, but the traffic is high and it would be very easy to monetize.

The lesson here is that even a small business in Maine could use the Internet to go global. Or, with some SEO consulting, rank very high on local searches. Let me add that I outrank competing web sites that have existed for a decade or more,

The proof is in the pudding.