Keyword Research

‘What’s in a name?’ said Shakespeare. Well, he didn’t know Google was on its way. If the keywords used in your content do not match exactly the same used by the users, your article is going to be lost in transit i.e. it will never really reach them. Hence ensure that you carefully study your keywords and phrases with respect to two things. Firstly are they used by a good chunk of customers and secondly are they ignored by the competitors.

Attractive Title

Once you have the correct keyword, it is essential that you make an attractive title out of it. This will get the users to read your articles in the first place. When they see it on Google, they don’t see the article but the title. A well written article behind a lame title is a strict no-no because it is a wastage of both effort as well as domain space on the web.

Great Start

The first few seconds that the user spends reading your article are crucial. This is when they are making an assessment of your expertise and whether they should even be listening to you for any advice. Hence ensure that the start of your blog is power packed. It should contain certain facts or analysis that is likely to rattle the user. This convinces them that you are an expert and then they are in a mood to listen to more.

Content

Back it up with content that is logical and make sense. It is important to realize that you can’t always be exciting. Some parts of your content will be mundane but that should be okay if that is informative and does not make your article, one amongst the hundreds that already exist.

Controversy

Lastly ensure that you take a stand which is in the middle. People like to hear both point of views before they make a decision. Emphasize on the positive aspects of your product and downplay the negative but represent both sides. This also creates a scenario where users start arguing with each other. This brings more clicks and traffic from both types of people who are for it as well as against it.

The post Blog Marketing Strategies: That Makes People Click first appeared on StayOnSearch.

One of the key reasons is templates offer the ability to quickly scale up landing page campaigns with no need for web development resources or any advance knowledge of CSS or HTML. One of the best platforms on the market that I have used is the Performable landing page platform. One continuous issue is always limitations on both web development budgets and web development resources so I have found the best work around is to use a CMS platform to create all my landing pages. The other benefit of using dedicated landing page platforms is that elements such A/B testing can be automatically performed until a test reaches a statistical significance and you don’t have to guess which landing page design works best.

Landing Page Options

I advise to use the standard templates as they are fairly decent and quick to customise, but if required you can create your own custom template or import an existing page URL into performable to match your existing website design.

How to host the landing page?

While it’s typically an better long term idea to setup a dedicated domain or subdomain for your landing pages, you can also embed your pages within a current website file or subdirectory which keeps most decision makers happier.  So if you need to keep the new landing pages within your standard site structure you are given 3 different options

1. Javascript version (recommended by them)
2. iFrame version (gets around ASP.net nested issues)
3. Full HTML page (standalone file)

What about reliability?

It’s no surprise that very few companies have the same hosting resources as platforms like Performable who can offer both maximum speed and very fast page load times served via 2 Content Distribution networks. One of the big points that large retailers like Amazon have made is that page load time impacts on conversion rate but it also can affect your AdWords quality score, so the money you save with a better quality score and conversion rate should easily cover any costs associated with the performable platform.

One of the recent issues experience was when a site went down due to a Denial of Service attack this would not have been such an issue if we were running all ppc campaigns on performable. The issue is when your own website goes down your PPC will deliver traffic until it’s paused which may cost your thousands before you are notified by your hosting company. Money was wasted on PPC traffic and valuable leads were lost due to the DOS attack that can be the difference between a successful ppc campaign and failure.

Why not automate your Leads?

One of the key elements of any successful campaign is the ability to reduce human errors by automating as much of the tedious processes as possible and make it scalable to attract more leads via PPC and Social Media and have the forms sent direct to relevant departments/managers direct from the platform. It’s fairly common to see staff having to cut and paste details gathered in the backend CMS of their website and pasting into an email before forwarding it onto the relevant department/manager, this is not efficient way to distribute enquiries and leads to possible mistakes and missed opportunities.

Using landing page platforms you can with a simple click of a box you can ensure elements such as email confirmation messages are sent to customers after they submit a form but also reducing duplicate submissions if the user submits the form multiple times. Another cool little feature to speed up the process of gathering customer details for future marketing campaigns you can easily begin passing form data via the following:

• WebHook “HTTP callback”
• MailChimp
• Constant Contact
• SugarCRM
• SilverPop

Automate Tasks based on User Behaviour

Typically it has been both expensive and time consuming to try and match back user behaviour based on if they have or have not completed certain goals or interacted with various parts of your website. If the visitor signs up to shop online but then leaves items in their shopping cart you can email them immediately if they leave the site or wait the average time to purchase period and send them a reminder email to come back and finish their order.

Performable Automated Email Process

• Name the Process
• Starting condition (event)
• Send via ESP or Webhook
• Add another step OR add a delay

To send automated emails platforms like Performable can integrate with your email service provider such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor or via Webhook, but the automated email feature typically work best when you have fully enabled it’s identity capture features.

Understanding user behaviour

While a number of marketers currently measure their success by the number of form submissions they limit their true impact and are not measuring all they should be.  One of the growing areas that are being tracked are how visits to particular URLs and what on-site button clicks can be attributed to driving user form submission.
You can begin to understand what items on your site have a posistive influence on users and encourage them to complete an event.  Also it’s a sign on how easy your website is to use as you can begin to measure how long it takes for users to complete an event such as a purchase or form submission.

Dynamic landing page elements

It is possible to easily run geo-targeted campaigns and customise small elements of your landing page for each visitor based on:

• Country
• Region
• City
• IP Address

Another feature that will lift conversion rates is to gather information from URL parameters using Query.param variables, so a search for rental properties that leads to a contact form will change the landing page message to the suburb or city they searched for based on the referring URL. But for more advanced users the performable template language allows for some cool advanced programming with Python to set custom variables, logic and loops.

So why do I need it?

If your current website fails to convert PPC visitors or you don’t have the budget to refresh your whole website, landing pages are the perfect solution and reduce the resource drain on your IT department and just sign up for a free trial and test how using landing pages can uplift your conversion rates.

The post Why Use Landing Pages? first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Pre-launch Product Checklist

1.  Lead Generation Setup

Hopefully you already have a nice in-house marketing list that you can leverage to reach out to your readers about your new product.  If not, you should start right away.  The more e-mail addresses you can collect, the better chance you have for more exposure and sales.

• Freebies – Start by offering a piece of content for free, in exchange for their e-mail address.  Giving away the 1st chapter of your eBook, a video interview you did, a podcast or a whitepaper are great incentives for gathering e-mail addresses.
• Giveaway Sign-Up – Give an incentive that if they sign-up they will be entered into a drawing to win your product for free.
• Optimized Contact Form – Make sure the lead gen form is simple and easy to fill out, with minimal information needed from the user.

2.  Reaching Out to Industry Influencers

• Give Your Product to 5-10 Industry Influencers – By doing this you can leverage their readership and traffic to try and create some buzz about your product.  Try asking them to write a review about the product or maybe ask them to conduct an interview on you, that they can then use on their blog.
• Ask to Guest Blog – Reach to reputable blogs to see if you could write a guest post that covers topics related to your product.  Then add a soft sell in your author bio about the new product launch.
• Gain Feedback – While you are still putting the finishing touches to your product, it is important to get some feedback from other in the industry.  Doing a focus group or reaching out to the people who you gave your product to gain some feedback on how it be improved.

3.  Affiliate Area

• Create a Page – If you choose to offer an Affiliate Program where people can earn commission for marketing/selling your products, you should have a section on your site that speaks directly to them.
• Create Marketing Materials – Provide your affiliate with all the necessary materials they will need to market your product.  Include banner ads (various sizes), training materials, sales letters, incentives, coupon codes, etc…
• Create Incentives – Starting a contest or offering incentives for your affiliates will give them a reason to heavily promote your product and entice them to want to make your product more, over others.

4.  Landing Page Creation

• Create  a Landing Page or Micro-site – Depending on the quality and value of the product you will want to have a central place where you drive readers to.  If you are selling something at a low price like an Ebook, it would probably make sense to have a landing page on your current domain.  However if your product is more complex like a Training Course or login area with premium content, you may want to create a new domain that matches the name of your product.
• Add Promo Graphics – Make sure that you have multiple spots on your site where you can help promote the product.  Usually in the sidebar, at the bottom of a blog post and at the end of an RSS feed are great places to add a promo graphic about your new product.
• Include Conversion Best Practices – Make sure that your landing page is using all the best practices to increase your conversion rates including capturing headlines, feature/benefit statements, special pricing, optimized checkout process, money-back guarantee, testimonials, etc…

5.  E-Mail Newsletter Creation

• Auto-responders – Have a series of auto-responders for anyone who signs up to be informed when the product launches.  Include various content that talk about what’s included in the product, how its going to help you, and timely offers if they act right away.
• Branded Template – This is not mandatory but it would be nice to have a newsletter template that has the same look and feel of your website.  This will help improve branding and associate your logo/colors with the product.
  

6.  Create Social Buzz

• Post Updates to Your Social Profiles – Post updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin about anything newsworthy that relates to the product launch.
• Monitor Keyword Mentionings – Reach out to people who are discussing similar products and topics. Create a strategy that engages with these people and makes them aware of your upcoming product launch.  Offer these people a discount or reason to fill out a form so that you can follow up with them when the product launches.
  

The post Increase Conversions with this Pre-Launch Product Checklist first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Social Media Toolbar Examples

Mashable

A simplistic approach, is the toolbar that Mashable uses on their site.  You can share content by clicking the “share page” button, which will allow you to share with Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, E-Mail or IM. There is also a Meebo integration which will allow you to chat with friends that are on Meebo, AIM, or Facebook Chat.

Facebook

One of the more complex, but easy to use toolbars is used by Facebook.  This customized toolbar will allow you to access nearly everything facebook has to offer.  Browse applications you use, groups you are on, photos, events, the marketplace and more.  The best feature I feel is the ability to chat with any of your friends who are signed into Facebook at that time.  You can also get quick notifications in the lower right corner.

TechNews

This is a demo of what the PV.M Garage toolbar tutorial can do for your site.  This toolbar is probably the most stylish I have seen and offers a wide variety of social media options including Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Reddit and StumbleUpon.  The menu panel is great for adding quick links to certain areas of your site.  Examples they use are “Premium Members”, “Become an Author”, “Submit News”,  “Send Us Feedback”.  Again this toolbar can be easily minimized by clicking the down arrow.

MarketingPilgrim

They have used the Wibiya plugin to add this toolbar to their blog.  They have customized it so that you can search the MarketingPilgrim website for specific content.  You can also translate the content into over 10 different languages which is great for foreign users that cannot read English. They also have a quick link to recent posts, pulling in from an RSS feed.  You can share this content by clicking the share button and social bookmarking it, email it, or tweeting it.  Another personal touch is you can access the site owners twitter account and see the latest tweets made. The toolbar is easy to minimize by clicking the down arrow if you feel it is obtrusive.

Google Friend Connect

This Google toolbar will allow you to help increase community members by making it simple for users to register and join your site.  You can see what friends have also joined the community, community comments, and the ability to invite friends to a community you like.

How Do I Add a Social Media Toolbar To My Site?

Wibiya Toolbar

If you want a quick and easy way to add a toolbar to your site, this is the place to go.  I just added this to the StayOnSearch blog and had it up and running in less than 10 minutes.

Sign up for an account, customized the toolbar by picking the color scheme and buttons you want on the toolbar.  Once you have done that, Wibiya will give you mulitple options on how to integrate the toolbar based on the blog/site platform you are using.  I used the wordpress plugin, but you can manually add the code to your site if you would like.

PV.M Garage

If you design savvy and you would like to build your own toolbar, you can use this tutorial provided by PV.mgarage using CSS3 and jQuery. This tutorial will give you much more flexibility and customization options.

Conduit

Conduit is a company that specializes in building custom toolbars for your company website.  They have build toolbars for sites like Travelocity.com, Answers.com, and TheTwitterToolbar.com. This may be a very good option for companies looking to let their users download and install a toolbar that permanent lives on their web browser.

The post Make Your Content Shareable By Adding a Social Media Toolbar To Your Blog first appeared on StayOnSearch.

With all of these measures Google has taken to promote site performance, leads me to the question:

…will site speed and load time become an important ranking factor in Google’s algorithm.

My thoughts are that in the near future Google will start testing site performance in the search results.  It probably will not have a huge impact on rankings at first, however as time goes on, and Google stresses load time, it will gradually become a significant factor.  Users are developing less patience’s and want real-time content, so it is only natural that websites cater to their needs by serving content quickly and effectively.

Here is a great interview with Mike McDonald and Matt Cutts that discuss Google’s thoughts on if page speed should be a ranking factor in their algorithm.  Matt explains that many people at Google think the web should be fast and that page speed is an important part to having a good user experience.

Watch The Entire Video:

Google has already started to provide the tools necessary to analyze a sites performance and how load pages much faster.

Webmaster Tools: Site Performance

Google launched a new tool within Google Webmaster Tools that will allow you to see your sites performance and load time.  Not only will Google tell you how many seconds each page takes to load, but they will also give you detailed reporting on why your page is loading so slow and how to improve it.

As you can see in the image below, Google will show you the number of server requests and DNS lookups that are made when loading each of the pages.  You can also drill down into each bullet point to see how you can improve each factor that makes up the loading time of each page.

PageSpeed Firefox Extension

In order for this tool to work you need to install a few firefox extensions first.

• Download Firebug Extension
• Download PageSpeed Extension

From Google on Page Speed:

Page Speed evaluates performance from the client point of view, typically measured as the page load time. This is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser.  The best practices cover many of the steps involved in page load time, including resolving DNS names, setting up TCP connections, transmitting HTTP requests, downloading resources, fetching resources from cache, parsing and executing scripts, and rendering objects on the page.

Yahoo! YSlow is another firefox extension that is similar to PageSpeed that will measure your site’s performance and load time.

Webpagetest.org is another resource you can use to help diagnose speed issues with your site.  Simply enter a url and the tool will analyze the entire site and show reports and recommendations.  This tool is ideal for a web master or developer.

Related Posts

• WebProNews: Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010
• Yahoo! Developer Network: Exceptional Performance
• WebProNews: Google Launches Site Performance Feature
• Google Webmaster Central Blog:  How Fast is your Site?
• GetElastic: The Importance of Site Performance

The post Google, How Important Will Page Speed Be in 2010? first appeared on StayOnSearch.

What Makes a Successful Weekly Feature?

You’ve probably seen a ton of blogs with features like “Saturday Cat Video Showdown” and “80s Wrestling Wednesday,” but how many of them are memorable? How many of these themed features engage you enough that you look forward to them every week? If a feature ropes you in, it’s because it’s consistent, it’s timely and the content is great. Let’s look at some examples.

• The pioneering comedy website Something Awful (which is not generally safe for work or safe for the faint of heart) used to have a feature I enjoyed called “Your Band Sucks.” I’m a musician and I enjoy SA’s brand of humor, so I tried to check out David Thorpe’s column whenever it was posted. The problem with being posted twice a month instead of weekly, however, was that the scheduling often made me forget about it. The column eventually gave way to “Garbage Day,” which was nearly as good and started out as an actual weekly feature. This was a huge plus, but it eventually fell into an irregular schedule and I forgot about it entirely.

• NPR’s All Songs Considered has a fantastic blog with one feature I consistently enjoy called “Drum Fill Friday.” These interactive posts feature an inventive game that allows the reader to match a drum fill with the song it comes from.  I’m not a web designer or programmer, so I imagine a lot of work goes into each of these, but they still don’t come out in a timely fashion. I’m thrilled whenever I try out a new one, but I often forget that the feature even exists.

• As far as I’m concerned, SEOmoz does everything right with its “Whiteboard Friday” series. The content is great, it posts weekly and it posts regularly. “Whiteboard Friday” is simply a video series that explains a certain aspect of the SEO world using a whiteboard to illustrate each point. It’s concise, entertaining, educational and unique. I can also take comfort in the fact that it goes up every Friday without fail.

What can you Look Forward To?

So, you’ve decided that sites like SEOmoz have a good thing going and you want in on the action. Once you decide on a theme for your weekly feature, what is it exactly that you can look forward to with this content?

• At a base level, the theme you choose allows you to work within certain confines. This narrows your options of course, but it also gives you some great guidelines and starting points to think creatively and produce good content. A lot of great art and writing are born from constraints.
• A weekly themed post can help you pick up some readers that might not otherwise happen upon your site. If you run a retro TV blog and feature the aforementioned “80s Wrestling Wednesday,” you might gain an avid follower who loves reading about the exploits of The Million Dollar Man but couldn’t care less about your regular analysis of Silverhawks.
• If it’s a high quality feature, your readers will look forward to it all week. Sure, they’ll be enthusiastic about your other content as well, but a great weekly feature will bring the social media shares and comments rolling in.
• A themed series lets you experiment with something new and there’s a lot of room to let it evolve. You might even get enough ideas that your feature becomes something else entirely and necessitates a name change, but that’s okay—this is your groundbreaking content that reflects your personality.
• You can use the time table to your advantage. If you’re feeling particularly motivated, you can write four weekly features in a row and schedule them to post every Wednesday for the next month. Or you can give yourself some space to reflect on what didn’t work in your last post and use those six days to improve the next one.

What to Watch Out For

Writing a weekly feature isn’t all smooth sailing and easy page views. There are certain dangers you need to watch out for and certain things you need to know before plunging in. What are the potential pitfalls of weekly themed content?

• It can be a blessing, but the scheduling aspect of a weekly series can also be a huge burden. The quickest way to lose and alienate readers is to miss a post or two. Something they once looked forward to becomes a huge disappointment if it’s not there. It can be hard to keep the schedule if you’re not motivated, especially at first.
• If you don’t pick a theme that’s ripe with possibilities there’s a good chance you might run out of ideas. Even if you manage to come up with a limitless amount of ideas inside of a little box, they might get stale pretty quickly. Choose something that allows you to explore and innovate—it should never seem like a chore.
• Your weekly feature needs to stand out from the crowd. If a ton of other sites in your community regularly feature mongoose-related content, perhaps “Mongoose Movie Monday” won’t gain any new readers. Your content needs to ooze with your personality and unique ideas.
• The other side of that coin is that your weekly feature needs to stand out from your content. If you make a post about lasagna every day, “Spinach Lasagna Saturday” is not going to entice or excite your readers. Give them something to look forward to that differs from the rest of your content.
• Understand that a themed weekly series is not the same as a roundup. Aggregating good links for your readers is great, but this kind of feature needs to be unique content or at least be content that you have a unique perspective or take on. Comics Alliance’s “Best Art Ever” series, for example, transcends traditional roundups because it takes submissions from its readers. A roundup can be a good starting point, but a roundup is not a reliable weekly feature.

A themed weekly feature is just one good strategy in the battle for reader engagement and devoted blog followers. There’s no single, fix-all solution to producing an excellent blog, but if you have a series that’s consistently on time and full of content that’s both unique and fantastic, your readers will look forward to it all week.  Simply put– If you’re motivated by the potential rewards it might provide and have a plan to combat the potential hazards it might present, a themed weekly series is a solid weapon in your Great Content arsenal.

The post Using Weekly Features to Better your Blog first appeared on StayOnSearch.

By quantifiable, it means that the effectiveness and results of these online marketing strategies can be measured more easily and promptly through various tools and methods. Two of the most popular forms of internet marketing, display advertising and affiliate marketing, for instance, could be measured through metrics and cookie-based tracking, respectively. Here’s how:

Measuring Display Advertising: The Metrics

Display advertising can be measured through metrics. There are effectiveness quantifiers on planning, performance and visitor information that could be used in crafting strategies for the next roll of the campaign.

Planning Metrics

• Cost per Click – This is the total cost of the marketing campaign divided by the number of clicks acquired.
• Cost per Action – This is the total cost of the marketing campaign divided by the number of successful actions, be it sign ups or registrations, surveys, or whatever is asked for on the landing page.
• Cost per Mille – This refers to the cost incurred for every 1000 times of displaying the advertisement piece.
• Number of Ad Impressions – This refers to the number of times that the ad is shown.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) – This is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of ad impressions.

Performance Metrics

• Engagement Metrics – This measures the amount or number and length of users’ interaction with rich media advertisements such as those moving ads that change when one hovers the mouse over them. Ads of this type make use of various interactive digital media such as streaming audio and videos.
• Brand Awareness – This is measured by the increase in product, company or campaign-related search activity as a result of the campaign.
• Direct Response Metrics – This is measured through the CTR or Click Through Rate.

Visitor Information Metrics

Especially for those doing niche online marketing, it also pays to measure visitor information against your advertising campaign in order to better tailor these strategies to target your niche. This can be done by profiling your website visitors and cookies and matching them with (1) the profile of your target customers and with (2) your goals and objectives for the campaign. Study the behaviour and actions of your visitors and design your marketing strategies based on their behavioural trends (behavioural targeting).  For instance, you can program certain ads to pop up only to certain visitors or types of visitors.

Measuring Affiliate Marketing: Cookie Tracking

The thing about affiliate marketing is that costs are incurred only when there is conversion. In other words, merchants or businesses promoting their products or services only pay affiliates for every successful action, be it clicks, survey completion, sales, downloads, membership registration, etc. Thus, measuring the planning, performance and cost for affiliate marketing can be easily done.

Affiliate advertising can be managed by in-house staff or outsourced to “affiliates” or “affiliate networks”, which will be paid based on successful actions brought in. It usually involves various tools and strategies like placing ads or links in various sites including search engines, targeted content websites or blogs, and price comparison sites, among many others. These ads and links lead to landing pages that allow users to perform actions like those mentioned above. Whatever the affiliate tools used to acquire the desired campaign results, it can be traced mostly by cookie-based tracking.

Why measure online marketing?

Another advantage of online marketing is that since it is easily quantifiable, it is also easily scalable.  By measuring the cost and effectiveness of online marketing campaigns and strategies, it is easier to project the cost and actions that would be needed should there be plans for expansion or any change in campaign goals.

Evaluating campaign effectiveness will also help determine which strategies and tools acquire the best results so that you could maximize them in future campaigns.

The post Measuring Online Marketing Metrics first appeared on StayOnSearch.

What can WordPress do to resolve all these problems?

Even the executives behind WordPress have no definite solutions to this issue. The first thing you can do is make sure you find good WordPress backup solutions. The site’s services resumed after a day but continued to intermittently have loading and Dashboard accessibility problems. Bloggers and business owners around the globe never stopped complaining. This could be good news for WordPress competitor Blogger. I heard and read some alarming statements from WordPress users that they will not hesitate to switch to Blogger (and even Tumblr) if these accessibility problems persist.Reports said that WordPress management did not mention the origin of the denial-of-service attack. WordPress executives were honest enough to admit that the problem was hard to resolve given the wide range of its effect. Satisfying the needs of 30 million users is no easy feat, after all.

The attack has subsided, but users outside the USA are still experiencing some service problems. I received some news from friends that they put up new blogs on other blogging platforms just to continue their service. Some of them extended their service through Facebook and Twitter, but losing access to their Dashboard remains to be a major problem. It wasn’t WordPress’ fault, but I guess this sends a signal to large companies who have been with them for a long time. WordPress is still one of top blogging platforms in terms of service and features, but these problems could very well lead to WordPress’ decline in popularity. Does WordPress have the technology needed to secure their service and users against these denial-of-service attacks? I hope they do, because if this happens again, I may have to leave WordPress behind and use Blogger instead.

The post WordPress Service Problems: Downtime and Vast Web Attacks first appeared on StayOnSearch.

Establishing the ground rules upfront can, in many cases, turn even the most feisty, anxious and initially untrusting clients into the best client they can be.  In my past five years as an SEO consultant I have put together some rules I follow when giving my initial presentations that are meant to govern client expectations (both initially and throughout the campaigns lifecycle).

Without further adieu let’s take a look at rule # 1.

Rule 1: Get Organized & Educate Your Clients

In my personal experience – 75% or more of clients I have consultations with know very little about Search Engine Optimization. In many cases they have just heard the buzzword and are unaware of what SEO is and what is involved with the SEO process.

This list I bring along with me is meant (more than anything else) to keep ME on track and forces me to cover the key points in educating them about SEO.
It includes discussion points about On Site SEO Factors, Off Site SEO Factors, Some information about search engines and how they work etc.  Of course I refine this list monthly to make sure that there are no major changes in algorithms or otherwise that make the list inaccurate.

Some other key points you may want to cover are:

1. The importance of backlinks
2. Onsite SEO is just the beginning
3. Competition Research and why it takes time
4. Anchor text and its importance

There are of course many others you can add to the list – but this largely depends on your personal preferences. I personal focus on showing them just how much work goes into SEO and how it IS NOT a “set it and forget it” system. The last thing you want them to think is that SEO is a turnkey, simple, cookie cutter system that any one can easily do for them.

I have done some interesting comparisons, which compare the clients I acquired in the early days (before I was organized with this list) and after. The amount of phone calls and emails I receive from clients in these early stages were as much as 10 times greater than those clients acquired after I created a standardized list.  The clients who are properly educated initially are far better clients – trust me!  In other words, by spending some extra time with them upfront and making them understand SEO – I cut my calls and emails down by 90%! Imagine what you could get done with that kind of free time!

I invite you to leave comments to this post and if you would like to ask for some advice on what to include on your own list – just let me know and I will answer as quickly as I can!

Coming up next – the all-important rule # 2 – SEO Success is Measured in Months Not Days!

The post Keeping Your SEO Clients Expectations In Check – 5 Rules To Live By (Part 1/5) first appeared on StayOnSearch.

* Topic: Building Community On Your Blog
* About: A blog REALLY comes alive when it has community. In this session Darren Rowse teaches the secrets of moving ‘visitors’ into ‘readers’ and ‘readers’ into ‘members’ who feel a sense of belonging to your blog and who begin to take ownership of it to help you take it to the next level.
* Speaker: Darren Rowse

Live Notes

Darren is going on to the 3rd pillar, which is Community.

He starts off by asking a question to the audience…”What was your best experience of Community? and he wanted everyone to tell the person next to them their favorite experience.

Why it’s important to build a community.

* Makes Your Site More Useful:  It allows people be interactive and the community can share their ideas and experiences.
* Social Proof Makes it Easier to Promote
* Increased Page Views (CPM Advertising)
* More Valuable to Sell More

How to Build A Community

I know its hard to make out, but basically this is a diagram that shows the life of a blog.  When you first start your blog, you are the only reader…then maybe a few family members….then a few in your industry…and it grows slowly, over time.

* Be the Community you Want to Have
* Invite Interaction (Ask Questions)
* Consider an Off-Site Community Area
* Start with Your Comments Section
* Drive Traffic to other Social Outlets (Facebook, Twitter) besides your Blog
* Write in a Personal and Engaging Tone
* Use ‘you’ and ‘we’
* Reader-centered posts
* Offer Additional Ways to Join or Become a Member
* Social Proof – Highlight Interaction/Community/Numbers
* Identify Natural Leaders –  Give Jobs, Train, and Pay Them
* Teach the Wisdom of the Crowd to Your Community
* Invite Reader Generated Content (Guest post & Compilations)
* Set Homework/Projects
* Give Your Readers a Chance to Show Off
* Involve Readers in Decisions and Change
* Be Accessible (He shows an example of how he uses Ustream for a public Q&A forum)

Dealing with Trolls

* Think about Policies and Standards Before You Need Them
* Model the Good Community
* Reward Good Behavior
* Outline Roles of Moderators Carefully and Talk About Policies, Values, and Procedures
* Marginalise Trolls (Be overly polite)
* Be Firm, Polite, and Calm with Trouble Makers

Make sure you tweet this post with the Hashtag #bwe10

The post Live from Blog World Expo 2010: Building Community On Your Blog first appeared on StayOnSearch.