People in this day and age really put a high value on personal interaction, but not by face to face meeting, rather interaction in “safe places” like LinkedIn and Facebook. I personally find the interaction refreshing and participation is opening up a wider global marketplace in which to provide my services. But, I have to say that my interaction in these social networking sites is not all about selling, it is about connecting on a personal level one person at a time.

When was the last time you saw pictures of a client’s 8 month old baby and were able to interact and then find out that your client had four kids? What about the time were you knew in advance a prospect or client’s birthday the day before so you could send a personal email and digital gift? These social networking sites cement relationships that you have and help to build new ones that you would like to have.

I will be testing out a new “Facebook-like” site in India for a new connection which I found through LinkedIn Answers. The review will be interesting for me and of value to him to have experienced feedback. No pay involved, just good will and an opportunity to be exposed to the growing market in India. Who knows were that business relationship will go.

Social networking is fun, doesn’t take much time, and I find the business opportunities endless for the savvy entrepreneur. The important thing to remember on these platforms is that it is all about being “real” and seeing what happens when you give a little bit of yourself. Once you really buy into the concept, you’ll be an advocate too, just like me!

What has your experience been with Facebook or LinkedIn? Do you like the applications and do you use them? Click “Leave a Comment” to tell me your experience.

Yes, e-newsletters have become more difficult to serve to readers especially those behind corporate firewalls, but they are not dead. We still recommend e-newsletters as a great way to keep your client base and prospects informed, but we do recommend a few additional actions to help with distribution to the widest audience possible. Here are our tips:

1. Make sure to create a text and HTML version of each newsletter. Let your subscriber services decide which to deliver to each client by preference or auto-sensing. That’s why you pay a service to maximize deliverability.

2. Make sure to archive your e-newsletters back on your website so search engine spiders can see the new content for the freshness factor, but so your newsletter content can show up in the search results. Link your e-newsletter archive into your website navigation. Promote subscribing to your e-newsletter on the page and showcase past issues. You would be amazed at the information that prospects can glean about you and your services from previous e-newsletters. We know that some of our old e-newsletters which have been spun off into new pages in our website due to interest have become some of our hottest entries from the Web into our website. Here’s one of our top pages that speaks about how to set up email for multiple addresses: http://www.mccordweb.com/e-newsletters/instructions/setting-up-multiple-emails.php. This one page gets thousands of visitors each year wanting to know how to set up multiple email accounts and return addresses in Outlook. Put your old e-newsletter to work for you. When we find a topic that generates real interest we spin out additional articles feeding that interest. One example is our Instruction section and our Tech Notes section.

3. Make sure to create an RSS news feed for your e-newsletters. Some people will not want to share their email address with you, but may choose to subscribe to your e-newsletter the anonymous way using an RSS feed. Make sure you are using this technology for your e-newsletter. You will need to manually create the xml file each time you add an e-newsletter, but it is not complicated and you can even use a service like FeedHoster. Here is a link to our feed subscription page. If you have multiple RSS feeds make sure to make it easy for people to subscribe to all the news you offer with one click using auto subscribe buttons.

E-newsletters are not dead, you just have to massage them a bit to get them to really work for you.

First, I was speaking to her about a top performing AdWords account that had gotten hit with some “poor” quality score ratings on seemingly important targeted keyword phrases. She commented to me that Google weights by default all general phrases with a location description at a lower quality than a phrase without the location description. For example, bed bugs New York City will not perform as well in Google search results as bed bug exterminator New York City or for that matter bed bugs. She mentioned that when there is a location descriptor, Google is looking for an additional context clue about the services provided on the landing page. So bed bugs New York City would be a good phrase for an information site, but not one for a pest control firm. A better phrase for a pest control firm would be bed bug control New York City, or bed bug exterminator New York City.

Additionally her insight was on location description in the Google quality score index. She said by default these keywords will not be searched with the frequency that keywords without the descriptor will be in the Google index and so by that very nature these phrases will carry a lesser quality score regardless of what YOU do. That is interesting news, particularly for advertisers that are targeting a local market in campaign settings.

Google has long said that adding your city name to your keywords is not necessary when you are advertising in a radius or city targeted setting. Now we know that actually, if you have those keywords in your list, you may get a poor quality score simply due to the way people search and the way that Google weights those words in their index. You may receive this lowered score regardless of the fact that you may be highly optimized on your landing page for that geographic descriptor — very interesting!

Thanks Catherine for these important tidbits that will help locally targeted AdWords programs and help us to understand better the evolving changes to AdWords quality score!

Mike Veny

This new blog offers reviews on products from Mike Veny’s online music store. Our writer will be featuring guitars, pro audio equipment, and other musical instruments that Mike offers in his extensive online store. Mike Veny is a professional drummer based in New York. Our blogger has just started posting to this blog on Wednesday October 1st.

Increase Visibility

This new blog using two of our blog writers offers insight and information on search engine optimization and organic search placement techniques. Increase Visibility is a full services search engine optimization firm that has received top ratings for services. We started posting to the blog this past Monday. Check out the posts we have just started to write under the names SEO Pro and Organic Search Expert.

Topics for this month are:

1. Google AdWords Changes Cause Sweeping Impact in Cost Per Clicks

This feature article discusses Google’s new AdWords update that was rolled out on September 15th and what it means in layman terms for Google AdWords advertisers. What you can expect in your own account, what to look for, and our concrete recommendations to help your account return to a level of performance.

2. AM Warner Insurance is launched.

3. McCord Web Services is redesigned.

Review it online now!

First, what Google did was to do just a few important tweaks to their highly profitable ad delivery system called AdWords. Here the changes are in a nutshell.

1. Keywords are no longer marked “inactive for search” - Google now allows all words to be shown in the search index and will deliver clicks based on quality score, bid price, and daily budget.

2. Quality Score is now more accurate - Google has stated that they will evaluate the quality score as the search query is entered.

3. “First page bid estimates” replace “minimum bids” - Google also said that they would start showing information to help advertisers know how much to bid for certain hot property keywords to appear on the first page of the search results.

What has happened in accounts, as of this change, has been broad and sweeping. The change has particularly affected advertisers in major market such as Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York City, and San Francisco, just to name a few. The change has been pretty striking in regards to increasing the cost per click, as much as a 35% and sometimes even more to have specific hot property word appear on the first page of Google search results. This impact has been felt particularly on “Poor” quality score rated keywords, but even keywords with an “Ok” rating.

What I have seen just a few days after the AdWords rollout was a striking drop in average ad position across the board on many accounts in many diverse business sectors in major metropolitan markets. Typically we like our client’s average ad position to be from 2 to about 6; depending on the client’s daily budget, the importance of the keyword, and the price to be competitive with the market competition. We saw many accounts which had been operating at this level suddenly have an average ad position drop to an average position of six to nine or lower. We have needed to adjust the maximum cost per click in many of these accounts; fattening Google’s pocketbook and stretching the client’s budget to the limit.

Many smaller markets such as Cincinnati, Ohio; Louisville, Kentucky, and other similar markets have not really been impacted by this recent change. However, the major metropolitan areas have been hit hard. What I found even shocking, as a professional account manager, was some of the notes on what Google recommended that the advertiser pay to appear on the first page of Google search results. Just one example is for family dental care (for the Washington DC metro area) the bid was $57! I do want to make sure to caution clients, who self manage their Google AdWords accounts, to be careful on upping the ante to these recommended figures. Remember, Google is in this to make a profit, this tactic may be considered “up-selling.” This is also a good time to evaluate the quality score of a keyword and to pause or delete those keywords that may be sapping your program’s health.

What I found interesting was that for many of the keywords where Google suggested a huge increase such as $15 to $26 PER CLICK to be on the first page of search results, the monthly figures showed that the keyword already had an average position of 2 or so at a figure of around $6.50 per click and in some cases have a quality score of “Ok” and a decent click through rate. In one specific case, the maximum cost per click was set at $12.00 but the actual cost that Google billed was $2.02. Remember, the client whose ad appears in the number one position is definitely being charged $12.00 per click by Google as they are the price leader.

Here are my recommendations from about two weeks worth of careful review of many Google AdWords accounts.

1. If your budget is under $500 for clicks per 30 day period translating into an figure under $16.67 per day, you really must consider increasing your click spend in order to get in the game. If you really cannot increase your spending level then you should only run one or two ad groups in your account. You can identify if you have fallen out of the competitor mix by reviewing your ad spend. If Google has not been able to spend your monthly budget for clicks, then your cost per click setting is too low and you will not garner the impressions needed to make your AdWords advertising program successful.

To read our other recommendations please subscribe to our e-newsletter and receive the full article in your in box on the morning of October 1.

If so what pull-back approach are you taking?

Are you cutting advertising as a result of efforts to trim costs?

Have your client account payments been affected?

These are just a few of the questions that small business owner such as myself and my clients are discussing. I had one client tell me that his own client base had just simply stopped paying on time. We have experienced several client situations where we have had to turn client accounts over for collection for the first time in eight years.

In a tough economy, such as ours, it is important to keep a cool head and focus on your business longevity. Many of us will be able to weather this storm and come out stronger, unlike some industries such as the real estate and the mortgage industry, where the crisis is so deep that some firms are being driven out of business.

So what do you do when times are tough for your business? One quick comment, it is not the US alone, but a global issue. I have chatted with several contemporaries in Spain and the United Kingdom who are experiencing many of the same issues that we are in the US in regards to draw-down and pull-back.

This is what my firm is doing:

1. Getting very proactive with slow payers to bring them into line with our payment terms.

2. Working with a collection agency for the first time in eight years to collect accounts over 90 days old.

3. Reviewing carefully our spending history. This is not necessarily a time to just routinely upgrade software. I have purchased some upgrades but made very careful selections, but others, I will defer to later or indefinitely.

4. Carefully reviewed my business profitability. If I cannot offer a service profitably, I have dropped it or realigned it to be profitable; factoring in the cost of credit card processing and overhead has been extremely important in some of my most recent decisions in regards to pricing models.

5. Stopped doing business with clients that simply will not pay on time and sap my available time with collection efforts.

What have you done to keep you business afloat in these trying times? Click add your comment below and leave me a note. I would be most interested in hearing what you are doing to move your business forward.

.com is for anyone

.org is typically reserved for non profits

.net is typically reserved for Internet communicators firms and telecommunications

However with the glut of website all this has been turned on its ear when a business cannot find its name in it preferred .com state. If you choose a domain ending other than .org and you are non profit, will you get a legal note demanding that you change. No, of course not, but I recommend that you check first to see if you can find your domain name with the correct - best business practices ending first, and then look outward to other domain name endings.

If your domain name is not available as a .com, I suggest considering the .us (if you are a US business), a .biz, or the new .pro (if you are a lawyer or other licensed professional). It is always best to try to stay within ICANN guidelines on domain names, but with the few .com’s that are still available you may need to consider branching out.

Here’s just one example of the many changes that we have seen happen this week since the September 15th AdWords update:

1. For bed bug extermination and bed bug related keywords in 2006 we paid around $1.25 per click, now to be competitive in the New York City market we are over $4.00 a click. Yahoo is still serving quality converting clicks for this account at about $1.65.

2. Here’s another example of the competition on AdWords since the update. For a dentist in the Washington DC metro area, Google states their account control panel that to appear in the firs page of search results they should now pay $57 per click for the phrase family dental care. Mind you, this is not to be in position one, but rather in position 11. What I don’t understand is that this same client has been getting clicks with Google showing the average ad position to be over 6 in the data and he is paying around $7 or so per click - so why the $57 note in the control panel?

3. Some accounts that we manage are totally being hammered with the update. One client who typically gets 70 to 80 conversions from Google each month is down to 20 so far month to date and we upped his cost per click twice since September 15th! Yahoo has brought in 16 conversions for him so far this month and at a significantly lower cost.

Yahoo is looking better all the time. In fact if you are not seriously contemplating advertising in Yahoo and trimming back your advertising in Google AdWords while this shakedown is occurring, it may be a good time to give it very serious consideration. I think that Google may have gotten too greedy in this last change and will be chasing out advertisers with these new cost per click figures to retain their desired average ad position.

Here’s why at McCord Web Services, we’re so bullish on blogs:

1. Blogs bring and build website traffic.

2. Blogs increase the stickiness of your website.

3. Blogs add new fresh content to your website - if your blog is posted under your domain.

4. Blogs build contextual authority on your topic for your website in the eyes of all top three search engines.

5. Blogs build topical entry pages that are keyword dense and on one topic that readers can use to find you and your services.

6. Blogs build interest with readers and can operate as a point of interaction between you and prospects.

7. Blog comments can build controversy and discussion on your selected topics where an open exchange is allowed.

8. Blog interaction, comments, and traffic let you know clearly the topics that your audience is interested in knowing more about allowing you to shape your services and products to your visitors needs.

9. Blogging is a very effective way to become different from your competition.

10. Blogging allows you to put a personal face on your business and to connect with others in a productive and interesting way.

You can review our white paper called “The Tangible Benefits of Blogging” or more really in-depth information.

Just this week, I upgraded to Peachtree Complete 2009. I opted to upgrade to 2009 so that I would have the ability to run reports from any year range that I wanted instead of only a two year period. I opted to upgrade from Pro to Complete because with the $140 discount I got from Staples on the Complete version I was within dollars of just upgrading to Peachtree Pro 2009.

The reason for this post is to let you know what a time saver for me one of the features that Peachtree Complete has that Pro does not - Time Billing. Now I can track, notate, document, and bill my time without using a timer, a log sheet, or even creating a new invoice. I can do it all from the Time Billing interface.

I have to tell you that for my business web services - which is built around billing customers for time I expend on projects, this is a huge time saving improvement. I believe that I will be able to even increase my profitability by accurately logging my time on phone calls and email correspondence for clients with the integrate timer. But it is the integrated time logging and then customer billing that really has me going. Wow, I just cannot begin to state how effective this will be for again streamlining my business billing processes.

If you are like me, the majority of your income comes from time you bill clients, you need to automate this very important part of your business. As for me implementing Peachtree Accounting software was one of the very best things that I did this year. Not only do I have a better handle on my business and its profitability, but I have been able to minimize the time I spend on accounting and paperwork to run my business to doing the things I love which are selling and providing my services.

One quick note, I am not being paid for this review in fact Peachtree doesn’t even know I am writing it. I just wanted to share with you one of the great features that I have found and why I am so glad that I upgraded from Peachtree Pro to Peachtree Complete 2009.

Some website owners are still hung up on the big numbers that web hits convey, but in reality a hit is simply the number of images, files, and component items that a single page contains and not a measure of a real person visiting your website. One page can create hundreds of hits in your statistical results if it contains a lot of graphics as the browser downloads the components.

A much better measure of real success is to measure not page views, but unique visitors. Google Analytics and Urchin Web Site Statistics provide these important statistics. By measuring the number of unique visitors you can get a real view of how popular your website really is. Sure the number will be way less than hits but it will be an accurate measurement. On top of that measuring unique visitors is a web standard and one that professional webmasters talk about, dissect, and try to improve.

So don’t think that by saying you got 1 million hits on your website that it means anything, it simply shows unfortunately, your own ignorance of what is really important when it comes to measuring success on the Web.

First we saw on Monday the line next to the keyword that says something like you will need to pay $16 a click to be on the first page of results. It is interesting that some of the keywords that this phrase had been placed next to already showed an average placement of 1 to 3.

Next we saw on a number of account Tuesday and Wednesday a significant drop in ad position causing us to increase the CPC across the board and by keyword depending on the situation.

I have not yet seen a significant rise or drop in impressions yet in accounts. Some accounts I have started to notice that there is more activity on more keywords, but not across the board on all accounts.

Clearly Google is working to tweak AdWords.  To find out exactly what AdWords has announced, please visit this post on the AdWords blog.

In a nutshell here is what the changes are about:

Remember when Google recommends a budget or a cost per click this is called add-on selling. It does not mean that you need to act on the advice!

Clearly from what we are seeing across many sectors there is an upwards price adjustment happening, but will this impact an account with more impressions and a lower CTR. It is all too new to know exactly, but one thing for sure is that CPC is moving up and strongly on some accounts.

Best Time to Publish

With WordPress it is easy to write ahead and publish early to not miss readers who may subscribe through feeds and review your news every morning. For my blog, I post ahead and then publish before 7:00 AM on weekdays, typically on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. For our blog writers, our rule is post must be up the day it is due before noon Eastern Time.

Are There Best Days to Publish?

Sure, if you watch your website statistics and you are a typical service related business, the best days to publish are week days. For most service based businesses traffic will drop on weekends and blog readership will also drop for these businesses during those times too. For e-commerce sites, weekends are hot! From my experience Sunday is typically a soft day for most and Saturday more important. But make sure to check your website statistics as I have found the opposite true for some businesses with Saturday being flat and Sunday being big. For our blog customers and my own blog, I am not working on Saturday and Sunday and so you won’t find posts on my blog on the weekend or for our clients.

What’s the Best Frequency for Blog Posts?

From my experience, I like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have blogged five days a week for long periods and I have not seen an increase in readership, traffic, or organic placement. Some of our clients like blogging services five days a week, but I have not seen that moving to posts five days a week really makes a big difference for a blog other than to build up content and authority more quickly. But blog less than three times a week and your blog may flounder. If you post infrequently readers don’t follow you regularly, they just don’t think you are serious about your blog and their attention. My Yahoo will even fold up the RSS feed listing and state no new posts in the last 7 days - even if that is not exactly true if you are not on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule. So for posting frequency, I like three posts but only as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

What’s Best For You?

So what’s best for you and your blog. Leave me a note by clicking comments and share what works best for you and your blog.