The Me Meter is a simple online tool to check where your content is more customer focused, or self focused.

The more your content is customer focused, the more you tend to deal with their problems and solutions.

More than ever today’s Marketing, not to mention Social Media Marketing #SMM, is more about ”Don’t tell me how good you are, tell me WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR ME!?” (something Marketing Guru’s stated long ago). The same old in your face “We are the Best..We Are the Oldest etc” is a turn off to customers and prospects.

Feel free to try it let me know what you think.

Cheers!
Greg

Register at http://seom.im/JMX6sg

Bring your most burning questions about effective link building, link reputation, link diversity and SEO.

Your 3 panelists for this event are:
Greg Mate of Search Engine Academy Montreal, Quebec
Steve Scott of Search Engine Academy Tampa, Florida.
Nancy Wigal of Search Engine Academy Washington DC

All seats are free but register early to reserve your spot.
Enrollment is limited to the first 500 attendees.

Happy tax deadline day Canada!
Cheers! Greg

You can see the upcoming Montreal class dates here http://seom.im/HFpXMp and the world wide dates here http://seom.im/InUbnJ

Here is a link to a press release with more information http://seom.im/InSwP3

Here is the link to sign up seom.im/seaw122

The slide deck will be quite different than normal, so I would greatly appreciate your friendly support and any feedback you can give me.

Of course please share the link above with your colleagues or friends that might be interested.

Please feel free to let me know of other topics you would like me to address.

WARNING: this could be unlike any SEO webinar you’ve attended – in a good way I hope.

Sep 27-28 is the West Island (Chamber of Commerce) Business & Job Fair at the Pointe-Claire Holiday Inn (6700 Trans Canada Highway)

This year there will be allot going on at our booth:

1. We are holding a draw to attend our 1-Day Masters’ in SEO.

2. Be the 1st to run your website copy through our brand new “ME-METER” we are unveiling tomorrow.

3. QR-Codes are gaining momentum in Canada, we now have a Free Online QR-Code Generator come by and you can create a QR Code for your business and find out more about uses for your business.

4. We are offering a very special show discount on our all our SEO workshops to attendees.

Due to scheduling conflicts I will the be at the show 1-7 PM tomorrow.

The show runs Tuesday Sep 27 11 AM – 8 PM & Wednesday Sep 28 9 AM – 5 PM

If you are unable to make it and want more info of course please get in touch.

Hope to see you this week, have a great one.

Short story – To get the Pair of tickets to tonight’s Montreal Alouettes Football game vs Winnipeg Blue Bombers (7:30pm start, exhibition):

1. Show up in person after 4pm today
2. at Montreal West Island Supper Club Paul Stevens 514-695-6545 1866 Boul. des Sources, Pointe Claire, Quebec H9R 5B1
3. and be the 1st person to donate a minimum of $100 to the Starlight Children’s Foundation, via Steve Traynor, Paul Stevens co-owner
4. only 1 pair of tickets is available, price listed on each ticket $64.95+tax, the seats are in the Gold section D1 row 12.

Long Story - Search Engine Academy Montreal is donating 2 tickets, to this evening’s Montreal Alouettes Football game – 7:30pm start- to help raise awareness & money for the Starlight Children’s Foundation of Quebec at their 7th Annual Strangers in the Night Gala Event taking place this weekend Saturday June 18, 2011 where Performing Live are KC & the Sunshine Band plus local performers and donating food many of Montreal’s Great Restaurants. To get the tickets follow the 3 steps above.

Cheers,
Greg

Well after a long day of slideshows and coffee from paper cups I was not only ready, I had a few extra minutes to spare before my commuter train trip back home so I sashayed over for a closer look.

There before me were 5 or 6 various games one could attempt in an effort to win a all expense paid weekend (week?) vacation at any of the hotel’s properties worldwide.

I evaluated and chose the game where I felt had my best chance of winning, with one hand put the colored fish in to the like colored tins, with a 1 minute time limit.

It was fun at the outset, even though I was slowed down by 5 or more seconds having to ask which tin a light colored fish belonged in (it was the dark purple tin) and there were some oohs and awes from the crowd that eventually came to see what I was up to as I masterfully flipped the colored fish into the appropriately colored tins.

Well at the end of the minute I was 5 or 6 short of getting them all in, I had a smile on my face, I had relaxed a bit, I had fun. Which is probably what the hotel intended. Hotels are often filled with stressed out folks be it from traveling, doing business etc.

I’m sure they also hoped to get people thinking about choosing there other properties worldwide when they next had the opportunity.

So now here I was now ready to fill out a card to drop in the box to register for the prize draw.

Well it turns out there will be no prize draw for me, as I then learned you had to complete the task – in this case get all the fish in the tins – or you were “not eligible to register” but instead I could have “a coupon for a free drink at the lobby bar today only.” Really?!

Well of course by now I didn’t have time to have a free drink at the bar. So not only did I not complete the event, I did not get a chance to win a prize, and I did not get a free drink.

I walked out of there feeling that all the effort the hotel made to engage me, and the effort I made to participate with them, was wasted.

Moral of the story, like with Social Media Marketing, do make an effort to engage your customer, just be sure to think of the consequences, anticipate the possible outcomes good and bad, plan for them and be ready to deal with them to avoid disappointment and dissatisfaction, in spite of your best intentions.

Cheers!
Greg
May 27, 2011

Why would Search Engines want to promote High Quality, Original Content in their Organic Search Result Pages?

Because that is what we Humans want high quality content too.
Google is so uptight about this that it will penalize your whole site if it contains some poor content on some of your pages “…low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings….”

However with our SEO Training the rankings of the our graduates’ websites (and websites we design and consult on) continue to bring in targeted traffic as the Search Engines like Google make over 400 changes (“500″ planned this year) some major like the Panda update & the rest mostly minor tweaks, to its algorithms each year.
So spend your time doing research to find out what your visitors are interested in and “be sure to provide high quality content” many of you have heard this more that than a few times in our workshops, I hope you were listening!
Link to the original Google page of May 6/2011 from the Google Webmaster tools http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

Cheers!
Greg

We’re trying to make it easier for you and just announce Special Pricing for 2011 Certified SEO Training Canada

1. Fear of not marketing effectively (38%)

2. Fear of never being able to retire (33%)

3. Fear that they are not staying abreast of new technology (20%)

wrote Rick Spense for The Financial Post appearing in the Montreal Gazette today.

Lets face it, its as fast a paced world as ever, and knowledge is king. Fear number 3 (behind on new technology) can effect Fear 1 (lack of marketing prowess) and of course both fears have an effect on Fear #2, the ability to retire, early or at all, and comfortably or even more than comfortably

Amongst other things, Spense correctly points out that tracking results from marketing is imperative and of course farely easily accomplished electronically. Forgive my Yellow Pages Advertising Agency background but phone call counting services are great for tracking online and offline results as well.

SEO is of course technology that can help eliminate Fears 1 and 2, and there need not be any fear involved. Simply participate in any of the Certified  1, 2, 3 and 5 Day SEO Workshops where you will learn the Basic Essentials of SEO right up to the most Advanced SEO Techniques and quash those fears with Increased Web Site Traffic by attaining higher Search Results Rankings.

Have no fear, we have upcoming course dates  http://www.searchengineacademy.ca/workshop_dates.htm