For instance, business isn’t conducted in a small town the same way it is in a big city. Where I live, many businesses are basically invisible. They don’t have websites; their proprietors will likely argue until they retire that they don’t need to be on the Internet.

I’m not poking fun here: my story has a point. (I’m getting to it.)

Last month, we were having issues with our heating system. There was heat in some parts of the house, but not in others. My husband farted around with it himself for a couple of weeks before he finally broke down and decided to call in a heating expert—a suggestion I’d been making for some time, might I add(But I digress).

There’s a van that drives by our house all the time with the name of the business and a phone number written on its side. I will not share the name to protect the innocent, but I will say that I had a hunch the guy could help us because the word “heating” was in the business name.

So, we made up our minds to call that person as we’re new to the area and my father told me he’d called him before to clean his furnace and he was a good honest guy.

My husband started looking through the phone book and there was no listing for the business. He checked the Yellow Pages under Heating and Furnaces. Nothing. We figured he was probably listed under his own name and not his business name —something that doesn’t help at all when you don’t know the person’s first name.

So I conducted a Google search for the business name. Nothing. I even went so far as to check the provincial government’s business directory (which is an unsearchable beast itself but that’s a story for another day) to no avail.

The business we needed to call did not appear to exist. It was invisible.

Of course, then I did what anyone else would do. I called my father to see if he knew this guy’s name.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi Dad, do you know how I could get in touch with the “business name” guy?

Dad: Well, you could check the phone book.

Me: Thanks Dad. I tried that already. There’s nothing under the business name and I don’t know the name of the guy.

Dad: What’s wrong with your furnace?

Me: I don’t know, that’s why we need this guy. Do you know his name?

Dad: I think it’s Joe but I’m not sure. (Sounds of Dad flipping through phone book.)

Me: So you think it’s Joe?

Dad: It’s not in the book.

Me: I know.

Dad: Well, just call Henry.

Me: Who’s Henry?

Dad: Joe’s brother. You know, his wife is so-and-so who works at the such-and-such.

Me: Um. Okay. So, do you know Henry and so-and-so’s number?

Dad: Here, I’ll call Henry myself. I’ll call you back.

And that’s how we got the number for the heating guy. We had our doubts about what kind of operation it might be, but literally, within ten minutes of my husband calling, they were here in the basement fixing us up.

The service was great and they knew what they were doing. At least with furnaces.

Now as far as marketing goes . . . the biggest sin a good business could commit has been committed. It is impossible to locate this business the moment you need the services it provides, unless you already knew the man you needed to call.

If you need the services of a plumber or a locksmith or a furnace repairman, you’re going to search the Yellow Pages or you’re going to head to Google. You’re not searching for a business name in most cases (however in this case I knew the business I wanted and I still couldn’t find it): you’re searching for the service you need.

This business owner needs a website. It’s fine and good to have your phone number on your van, but unless my heating system goes tits up the same exact minute your van is driving by my window and I have time to notice and jot down the number, it’s not helpful at all. I don’t impulsively think, “oh hey, I should write down that number in case I ever need that guy’s help.”

Anyway, thankfully my father knew the guy’s brother and we got ourselves straightened out. And that’s probably the way a lot of these business owners think. They’ve been around long enough that people will know how to get in touch with them when they need them. And in all fairness, now that I think about it, in my case it actually worked.

This story reminds me of back when my husband and I were in our first apartment together. We asked our elderly landlady what our mailing address would be. She said, “Oh just put York on it and it will get to you.”

That’s the way it works in small towns and you might laugh but she was probably right.

Disclaimer: If you’re local and know the business I’m talking about, please know that we were very happy with the service we got. I’m not trying to be mean. I just happen to think in blog posts.

Now if you were to ask me today when the last time I was visited by a vacuum cleaner salesman, I would have to say…oh…sometime before lunch.

It’s true. There was a vacuum pusher (pun intended) prowling around my sleepy little village this morning knocking on doors with a stack of business cards four inches high in his fist.

There are a lot of reasons why door-to-door sales people are extinct. For starters, nobody’s at home during the day anymore (and if we are, we’re VERY busy meeting deadlines, preparing meals and keeping children alive). Then there’s the concern of opening the door to a stranger (always something to be cautious of, boys and girls) and the fact that most of the civilized world has access to the Internet for their purchasing needs or a vehicle to take them to a store to buy what they want.

In the case of the vacuum salesman…well…I don’t have carpet. That’s exactly what I told this man, “I don’t have carpet.”

Then he said, “What do you have, hardwood?”

“Yes.”

“Well you still should be vacuuming them.”

Me: Blank stare of disbelief.

Him: “When you use your Swiffer, you get dust in between the boards and your floors are likely starting to buckle.”

Me: Blank stare of disbelief. I don’t, in fact, use a Swiffer. I have one of those new-fangled contraptions called a broom.

Him: “Do you have any allergies or air quality concerns?”

Me: Still staring blankly, “Um…”

Him: “Because we do air testing and things like that now.”

Me: “Um…I think we’re good.”

Him: “Okay. Just vacuum your floors, it doesn’t have to be one of our models,” he says as he hands me his card and walks away.

I close the door and think about how long a day this guy has ahead of him if this is his bread and butter. If you’re going to try to sell me a vacuum, at least put on a suit.

This scenario presents the perfect opportunity for me to discuss the importance of relationship marketing.

Consumers are busy these days. We’re busy and we’re cautious of where our money goes and we’re smart. We’re really smart. We have tools (Internet) that allow us to compare products before we ever leave the house to buy something…if we do have to leave the house rather than just order something right there from our sofa.

If you want to try selling me something I don’t need, you have to convince me why I’m wrong (that I do need it) and you need to gain my trust because, you know, there are only so many dollars to go around.

This is why Facebook is so important. If this vacuum cleaner guy has a Facebook account he should have his own Facebook page that he could use to educate his friends and potential customers about his products. See, if I’d heard of him before I probably would have at least felt like listening to him or inviting him in.

He could have fun contests and trivia. He could post information about why older models don’t work…about why Swiffers are harming hardwood floors. (See, if you lead by telling me I’m making a mistake that’s harming one of my home’s biggest assets I might listen.)

With a Facebook page you’re building relationships and you’re educating the market…if you use it the right way.

That tidbit he told me about the Swiffer could have made a great blog post. Blogs are a great way to build relationships with your customers. (If I came across that info on my own, I likely would have run out and bought some sort of vacuum cleaner.) A door-to-door salesman just seems so pushy.

This guy should be on Twitter, posting information about air quality issues and how a good vacuum can help.

The thing is…I feel one of the big reasons why the door-to-door thing is dead is because nobody wants to be sold to. If I want a vacuum, I’ll find someone who’s selling them.

This brings us to SEO and search marketing. A nice, sharp website targeting those in need of a vacuum will be way more successful than having some joe schmoe wandering around from town to town getting doors slammed in his face.

I could go on forever but I won’t. I have things to do (remember, interrupted by a salesman earlier).

How about you? Do you have some tips on how to sell a vacuum in 2010? What do you think about my advice?

Today we’ll talk about what keywords you should use.

Rule #1. Forget about trying to optimize on your name or business name.

If you come up on the top of Google’s list of results when your own name or business name is searched, that doesn’t mean you’re doing okay. The exception to this rule is if you’re an established brand (think Coca Cola or Lego) or a celebrity.

For the rest of us, we want people to find us because we’re not yet household names.

Start making a list of things you think people are searching for to find you. Let’s say you make organic candles in your candle shop in Maine. Your list might look like:

• where can I find candles in Maine
• homemade candles in Maine
• natural and organic candles
• Maine organic candles

And so on and so forth.

You take your list and you go to Google’s fun keyword tool. (There are more scientific ways to do this but this method will do if you’re the DIY type.)

Start to enter your phrases and see which ones are actually being searched. (You’ll be surprised to see that what you think people are searching for is likely different than what they actually are searching for.)

You’re looking for a high number here but keep an eye on the advertiser competition. There’s no point trying to optimize on a phrase that gets 10,000 searches a month if there are a gazillion other sites already optimized for that phrase.

For example, in the case of our candle maker, he needn’t bother trying to optimize on the phrase “candles” because there would be hundreds of thousands of websites out there already trying to get traffic on that phrase. The age of a domain counts in search too, so sites that have been in existence for years are likely not going to budge much from their position in Google’s search results.

You want to find the sweet spot. The phrase that gets lots of searches…that’s targeted…that doesn’t have a lot of competition. That’s why I would recommend our candle maker use his location or his niche (the fact that his candles are natural and organic) when searching for keywords to optimize on.

Makes sense, right? Any questions?

You ask him if he’s ever spoken to her. “Gawd, no. She doesn’t even know I exist.”

You ask how he knows that. “Because we have no common friends, no common interests and she lives in another city.”

You ask him if he has tried to get him to notice her. “No, I don’t know how to do that.”

What would your advice be? To keep doing what he’s doing and hope for the best?

I’m betting not. (Unless you’re really bad with women.) I’m guessing you would suggest that this young man try to show up somewhere that this girl will be -a hockey game, a shopping mall, etc. In other words, he has to put himself in a situation where this girl will find him when she is most likely looking for a fella.

And this is the purpose of search engine optimization.

When you optimize your site for a targeted list of keyword phrases, you’re putting your site where your customers are looking for you. If you have a site thrown up there with no thoughts of how people will find it…you’re that young man in a different city than the object of his affection doing nothing and wishing for her to find him.

Let me explain how this works in search.

When you type a phrase into the Google search bar, in the seconds it takes for a list of results to appear in front of you, Google has scoured the Internet for the pages most relevant to the phrase you’re looking for.

Google uses a top secret algorithm to determine what page is most relevant (it remains secret so it’s fair for everyone to try to get to the top of the results) but we do know certain things:

• One way Google determines a page’s relevancy is by checking to see if your keyword phrase is in the title tag and meta description of the page
• It’s also looking at whether or not your keyword is in your domain
• Keyword density of the content among your pages is being weighed

See, if someone has searched for “maple tree seedlings” then Google figures a website page that is titled “Maple Tree Seedlings” is pretty relevant. If that page also has the phrase “maple tree seedlings” sprinkled through the content then it’s likely even more relevant. If it has a meta description that says, “Maple tree seedlings are not a sturdy plant. Find tips for protecting maple tree seedlings” and a domain like mapletreeseedlings (dot) com it would be that much better.

There is more that goes into it but that’s a basic explanation that should show you why this SEO thing is pretty important. It will help your website get a position in the top ten results for a Google search and you really should care about that. Because if you don’t appear there then you don’t exist.

Next time I’ll help you determine what your keyword phrases should be.

Any questions? Fire away!

So when we get out of the van, my husband walks around to my side to let out our five-year-old and I walk around to his side to let out the little monster. We’ve been doing this for a year now.

Last weekend we were doing a bit of traveling around and the little one starts shrieking because she’s sitting behind Daddy and she wants to sit behind a girl. The sound of the screaming is like knives going through your skull so I had the big idea to let the girls swap seats.

When we stopped to get out at our destination (post-car seat swap), I just opened the door on my side to let the diva out and Jason opened the door on his side to let our other child out.

No walking around the van like morons.

Sometimes a problem doesn’t seem like a problem until you find a solution.

How many website owners out there complain that they invested hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars into their web presence only to have no traffic? A lot.

If your website isn’t working for you, there are a gazillion things that could potentially be causing the problem but here’s the thing. If you’re not getting traffic, I’m willing to bet that nobody along the way has asked you about keywords. And that is a huge problem.

It doesn’t matter how pretty the site looks (unless you’re a big brand or already have a following and people know to search you by your brand name) or how many fancy bells and whistles you have on there (a.k.a flash animation, disco ball, talking heads, etc.) if you haven’t optimized your content with an eye towards SEO then you’re not going to be getting any drop in traffic.

Now, I’m not some self-proclaimed SEO hero/guru/aficionado. But I do know quite a bit about it and I am a website copywriter who applies it everyday.

I also know how to explain this stuff in simple language so that when people hear me talk about it, they start to understand why they should be optimizing their content. Some get panicky wondering why they hadn’t done it sooner.

So I’m going to finish this post here. I’ll be back later this week with a more extensive (yet basic) explanation of search and how to figure out what keywords you should use in your website content.

Do you have questions about optimizing your website content? Ask away and I’ll try to address them later in this series of posts.

There’s a spot within 20 minutes of where we live that my husband and I really enjoy. I actually wanted to go there on Mother’s Day but the website told us they were closed on Sundays and Mondays. I was impressed that the restaurant had a website because many small local business in my province don’t.

Anyway, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to go. They have an outdoor patio overlooking the water, it was a weekday evening so they’d be open and probably not overly busy.

So I pulled up the website to check out the menu (it’s been awhile since we’ve been there…I’m talking years!) to see what price range we were looking at. There was a special that looked very good – a 16″ pizza, 12″ garlic fingers and donair sauce for $24.99. You don’t get much better than that so off we went.

When we got there, a large sign read, “Now open 7 days per week!” Hmm. I couldn’t help but wonder when that took effect. I didn’t think much of it until we went to order and I asked for the special I saw on the website.

The server laughed and said, “We haven’t had that special in forever but it was a great deal.”

A lot of good that does me, I think.

Anyway, we are very easy going people and we ordered a different special. The food was amazingly delicious. Among the best pizza I’ve ever had. Service was great, atmosphere can’t be beat.

But the website. If you have a website and it’s never updated, it’s worse than having no website at all.

See, for Mother’s Day, if there wasn’t a website for this place I would have had to call to make a reservation or to find out what their hours were. Maybe it was open and we could have gone there. We would have enjoyed it and we likely would have been back sooner. Instead, I got information on the website that may or may not have been accurate but I took it as current and believed it. Much like I believed the special on a restaurant’s website would probably be something we could order at said restaurant.

If you have a “local” business with an out of date website…why? I can only assume that it’s because you either don’t think anyone is looking at it or because you can’t maintain it yourself and it’s too expensive to hire a web developer to do it for you.

If that’s the case, I urge you to go and find someone who can set you up with a website you can maintain yourself. Or hire a virtual assistant who can make the updates at a lower cost than your web guy probably charges.

Your website is your most important marketing piece. Please treat it with respect. Load it with good, search engine-friendly content, current information and details someone planning a visit/purchase needs to know.

Anyone else feel like pizza all of a sudden?

In any relationship it isn’t the grand gestures that makes a bond stronger, it’s the little details woven in between that really matter and hold it all together.

I found a gorgeous pair of earrings on etsy (etsy is a commercial site for homemade and vintage-y stuff as well as arts and crafts supplies, etc.) a couple weeks ago. I have no idea how I ended up there and I didn’t know the seller from Adam but the earrings were pretty and sparkly and I could picture myself wearing them on a date with my husband with the candlelight dancing off of them. So I bought them.

I immediately received a standard, automated response from the system, thanking me for my order, but I also received a personal message from the seller, Laura, who owns the shop I bought my earrings from, Vintage Valise, personally thanking me for my order and telling me she’d ship it out that afternoon.

Then I promptly forgot about the earrings until I received them in the mail. They were wrapped in a lovely little box, tied with a ribbon, and this postcard was tucked inside the envelope they were mailed in:

Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling! I’ve been buying stuff online for a long time and very rarely do items come with a handwritten note, but when they do…wow! You really appreciate someone taking the time to do something like that.

I wouldn’t have remembered the name of the shop where I bought those earrings if I didn’t receive this card with my purchase even though I had received that email earlier in the transaction.

We get emails ALL the time. We never get a handwritten note.

They say that it takes 7-11 “touches” before someone buys from you. I don’t necessarily think that’s always true. When some of the touches are unexpected and delightfully personal, I think it can take less.

I think Laura is going to have a successful shop if she can convert every buyer into a repeat buyer like she did with me. All it took to make me love her was taking the time to write a thank you note that was personalized for me (noting my purchase and even spelling my name right).

The worst thing a small business owner can do is make his or her customers feel invisible. We all love those little details so why don’t we see more of them?

Do you do something personal like this in your interactions? Has it become part of your brand? Please tell me about it!

I’ve headed there for supper with my kids more than once, only to find it closed at 5:00 in the evening even though it had been open hours earlier for lunch.

For the past year or so, this eatery has been teaching us that you never know when you’ll catch it open so we don’t bother with it very much since with two young children, when we head to a restaurant we need there to be something there to feed them.

Of course, there’s no website for this restaurant so you have to call ahead for the hours and with no recording that tells you the hours, you have to assume it’s closed if nobody answers. The only other option is to just show up and hope for the best. With so many other options around for dining, this really doesn’t cut it.

Yesterday we drove by this restaurant on our Father’s Day travels and noticed it was open at supper time! But guess what? The parking lot was empty. On Father’s Day. Arguably the busiest day on the calendar for restaurants.

My husband and I had a pretty good idea of why there was nobody there and it’s proof that you can be doing everything else right – good food, good service, good prices – but if you don’t make things as easy as possible for your customers (keeping regular, memorable hours, posting a menu/hours/specials on your website or Facebook page) then you’re not going to do well.

If you’re reading this and you have a business with no web presence, you need to get in the game.

Even if it’s a simple one-pager with your hours, your contact information and key services/products, that’s better than nothing. Facebook makes it easy with their “pages” feature. They’re free and can easily serve as a make shift website.

Always remember that people are searching for you online FIRST and if they can’t find you there, you do not exist. It’s as simple as that. Give the people what they want – the chance to scope you out from their computer before checking you out – and you’ll be golden.

Operating a local business and not having a web presence for it would be like looking at a lineup of qualified customers in front of your store and telling half of them to go away, that you don’t want their money. You wouldn’t do that. Would you?

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I were driving along and passed a shop I wanted to check out to see if there was anything interesting inside (I have been there before and always find something cool).

Problem was, we couldn’t tell if it was open. (If you’re reading this in a reader, you might want to check out the actual blog to see the picture and get the full meaning here!)

Now…I don’t claim to be some marketing genius (okay sometimes I do) but this is clearly not a good move.

We stopped to take a picture and once we got closer we could see a dimmed out “Open” sign so we assumed they weren’t operating that day.

I’m not going to pick on this place too much. Obviously someone forgot to take down the open sign – or the closed sign – but we all do the same thing in our businesses in one way or another. It’s just not as obvious.

When you operate a business in this day and age, your website has a major role to play. Like it or not, people are looking for you online and unless you want your competitors to do better in your market than you, you have to cater to web surfers.

Website visitors have no attention span and they have a million options thanks to Google.com to find a better site than yours to get what they need. If you’re lucky enough to get them to your site in the first place, that’s great but you have to keep them there.

That means you have to:

• Have content optimized so web surfers can find you.
• Have content written in a “web-friendly” manner (with headings and  easily scannable copy)
• Keep your online information current, compelling and engaging.
• Narrow in on their pain points as much as possible.
• Make no assumptions.
• Tell them what to do.

See, you never know which page of your website a visitor is going to land on, so you have to give a piece of your story on every page, and make it clear what you want them to do. Should they contact you for more information? Should they visit your blog? Peruse your services?

You have to make it easy for people to do business with you because a web visitor’s attention span is not long enough for them to bother with you if they don’t have to. Lay out your information concisely and clearly because unlike a retail store where you can be assisting customers, your website content and navigation has to do it all.

Imagine how you would have felt if you were me, standing in front of a shop you wanted to visit but there was an open and closed sign in the window at the same time.

Now imagine someone visiting your website for the first time. They look at the “Welcome to our website” headline, the standard “hope you enjoy our website” content and are bored to death. You don’t stand out, they don’t know if you can solve their problem and the information you do provide doesn’t have any logical sequence to it.

Be engaging, be compelling and be clear and concise with your message. If you can’t do those things, hire a copywriter to do it for you

I didn’t want to call an exterminator because I don’t like the thought of the harsh chemicals they use, but I figured that I just couldn’t share my house with these insects anymore, so I picked a name out of the yellow pages, checked them out online and made contact.

They responded via email, gave me a price and told me what day they would be coming…Thursday March 25.

On Tuesday they let me know that they had double booked and would be here Friday morning instead.

No big deal, I work from home, I told them.

So this morning (Friday) I’m checking my email and I have a message from the exterminator telling me they’d be here around 10 am and that me, my kids and my pets would have to be gone for a few hours during the treatment and a few hours afterwards.

That email was sent at 9:30pm last night.

My husband and I are sharing a car today, I work from home, I have two children under the age of 4 and an indoor cat.

Now, keep in mind that one of the email exchanges we had was about my concern about the chemicals that would be used as I have young children and an indoor cat and all I was told was the name of the chemical and that when applied by a professional it is very safe.

So why didn’t he tell me at that time that we would need to be gone during this process? Holy bad customer service, Batman!

I’ll tell you, this company has lost a customer. First the double-booking thing and then the no-notice thing. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions, but I think someone in a business like this, while they likely assumed that I would know we’d have to leave the house for the day, should have a list of guidelines and information sent to their customers before they treat for whatever pest they’re going to be eliminating.

This man is clearly a solopreneur and he’s probably a very busy one. He should have a virtual assistant fielding his calls and emails. This person could systematically send an email with information to each customer to avoid this problem, which must have led to some loss of business. I can’t be the only one who can’t pick up and leave at the drop of a hat!

I’m sure we all make assumptions in our businesses, but it’s a dangerous thing to do.

This guy obviously assumes that everyone knows they have to be gone while he’s treating, but he’s wrong. I didn’t know and I’m really smart.

Could you be doing something like this in your line of work?

I know I’ve done it. I’ve assumed before that when I start writing optimized content for someone that they will know what keywords they want me to optimize for. Not always the case.

Part of my job as a writer and part of Buddy’s job as an exterminator, is to educate our clients. Whether we like it or not, it’s important that we explain our process before we start.

I suggest you sit down with a piece of paper and a pen then write down your process from start to finish. Write down everything no matter how obvious it should be.

I mean, if you’re a painter, don’t assume that someone will know they need to take down the old wallpaper before you show up to paint.

Identify the gaps, the items that you should be discussing with your clients before you start work, and document them. Put together an information sheet…something that you can send to people before they work with you.

If the exterminator had done that, I’d be packing up my things now and headed to Nanny’s house for the weekend. But he didn’t, so instead I’m sitting here angry, writing this blog post, preparing to wipe down all of the old ant bait and put down some fresh.

I’m going to take my chances with the ants because I think I might end up better off than with all those chemicals anyway. At least for now. And if I do decide to call an exterminator it will be somebody different. Call me crazy, but when I’m leaving my house with a stranger in it for hours with harsh chemicals I want someone I can trust. And sorry, but two strikes is more than enough to be out in a game like this.

Moral of the story…never make assumptions about what your customers know or don’t know because you will be proven wrong at some point! Bet on it.