Why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best option for most Small Businesses

What do you value most?

If you are a small business owner and you read beyond this paragraph, I’m going to share my inexorable logic why outsourcing inbound marketing is the best of all possible options to find new customers for your small business.

If you are a small business owner, what are the two things that you value most?

After speaking and working with many small business owners, and being a small business owner myself, I can tell you without a doubt, the two most valuable things you possess as a small business owner are (1) time and (2) money:

1. Time. There’s just not enough of it. It’s your most valuable resource. With it you create the 2nd most valuable thing which is:
2. Money. It’s scarce. If you invest it, there’s got to be a return on investment, period. The higher the better, so if you can measure it, and improve it, so much the better.

Time and money are your most valuable resources. And everybody wants what you’ve got. That is precisely why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best of possible options for you.

First, why outsourcing your marketing makes business sense

If you outsource your marketing, it saves you time. You don’t have to do it. If there’s a return on investment, and it helps you make more money, then you’d be foolish not to do it, right? You’re saving time and making money!

Second, out of all the marketing alternatives, why inbound marketing?

If you are looking for something you need, what do you turn to first? Do you go to the yellow pages? Or do you do a search using your favorite search engine? If you’re like most consumers and business buyers, you sit down at your computer, or use your smart phone, and search for what you’re looking for… and you ultimately find what you’re looking for (without the yellow pages).

And the companies who show up at the top of the rankings, and provide you the things you’re looking for? They’re practicing inbound marketing. With Inbound Marketing, you develop a web presence, and promote yourself online so that when your customers are looking for products or services that you offer, they  (1) find you and contact you first (2) you convert them into a customer, and you (3) measure the results.

Inbound Marketing: How it Works

Inbound Marketing uses the best practices in Web Design, SEO, PPC, Blogging, Social Media… and ROI Analytics:

• Web Design ~ WordPress Websites and Blogs that position you in your unique niche, and put you in the driver’s seat.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ~ Top search engine rankings for keyword phrases that drive targeted traffice to your website.
• Pay per Click Marketing ~ Pay per Click Marketing augments your organic SEO, and helps you focus on keyword groupings and landing pages that will help you convert traffic into inquiries and sales.
• Blogging ~ Timely and relevant information that positions you as an expert in your niche, so that when your prospects have a need they call you first.
• Social Media ~ Connect with People, Collect and share information that it useful to your prospects and customers, Use that information to inform your own Editorial Direction, and Create your own content. 
• Traditional and Online PR ~ Leverage content, events, accomplishments to gain back links from other influential websites, and also media hits with traditional journalists.
• ROI Analytics ~ Measure the effectivness of your marketing activities to see what’s working and what’s not working, and invest your dollars where you can achieve the greatest ROI.

The catch? It really works best if you are doing all of these things simultaneously. It doesn’t work if you just try one tactic here, another tactic there. You might get some results with one or two tactics, but to really make it work, it requires a commitment–and it’s a process, not an event. But you can execute an Inbound Marketing program very cost-effectively, and that leads me to why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is your best possible alternative.

Third, why Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best option

What are your options?

1. Do it Yourself: Not an option. You have more important things to do with your time.
2. Use an In-house Resource: It’s expensive to hire a full-time person, and it might only get partly done because many different skills are required. To be effective, Inbound Marketing requires simultaneous execution of multiple tactics, and a sustained effort.
3. Outsourcing Inbound Marketing to a Competent 3rd Party who can handle it for you: It’ll get done and you can measure the ROI.

The great news? Inbound Marketing is very cost-effective. You can get a lot for a relatively small investment.

Conclusion: So now hopefully I’ve been able to present a logical argument why outsourcing your Marketing, if it’s producing a measurable return on investment, is a wise decision. And by implementing an Inbound Marketing Strategy, you’ll help you find your prospects and customers find you at precisely the most important moment: when they’re looking for you!

And that is how I arrive at my claim that Outsourcing Inbound Marketing is the best of all possible alternatives for your business. Because it’ll help you spend more of your time doing the things you need to do to take your business to the next level, and you’ll be making more money.

Pages related to Outsourcing Inbound Marketing :

• Ghost-Blogging and Blog Management
• Social Media Marketing

If you are looking for Outsourcing Inbound Marketing please contact me today.

Are you confused by all the Local Internet Marketing options? You are not alone…

Who's the trusted advisor?

The typical small business owner does not have the time or expertise to effectively manage all the Local Internet Marketing investment options.  

Not only are there more numerous–more complex directory relationships, but pace of the fragmentation in the marketplace is outpacing everyone’s attention span.        

How is a small business owner supposed to keep track of all the different ways to promote their business? Directories, Internet Yellow Pages, Search Engine Optimization, Pay per click Marketing, Blogging, Social Networking, Mobile Advertising, Hyperlocal Advertising Sites–as well as Web Design Issues, Marketing Experiments, ROI Analytics, and all the other time-consuming issues of running a Local Internet Marketing program.           

This is the primary reason so many 3rd-party providers have jumped into the Local Internet Marketing game over the past few years. There is a void to fill. And there’s a desire on the part of small business owners to hand off this business of Local Internet Marketing to a trusted advisor.          

Who ‘s the Local Internet Marketing Expert?

So who’s the expert in Local Internet Marketing? Your Web Design guy? The local SEO expert? How about the Local Phone Company? Your Local Newspaper? The Company that publishes your Tax Software? Because all of these people also claim to be your best Local Internet Marketing Expert.  If everyone is a Local Internet Marketing Expert, the problem is: “Who do you trust?”  

Whoever you choose to help you–here are a 7 Things Every Small Business Owner Should Do  to launch a Local Internet Marketing program, obtain greater visibility, and drive business through the door. I’m going to share some of the things I have done and that I do to help me drive business for myself, and hopefully by doing that, you’ll pick up an idea or two that will help you with your business. 

7 Ideas Every Small Business Owner Should Do to Achieve Success in Local Internet Marketing        

 1. Claim your Directory Listings  

Claim your listings

All of your contact information should be consistent on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Best of the Web, Yelp, and the Mobile Directories.  

At the very least, you should include your business name, address, phone number, your main keyphrases that someone would type in a search engine to find you, and include links back to your website or blog. Also make sure your Google Map is up-to-date. Luckily you can do this all in one place with a Universal Business Listing. 

2. Create a web presence  

A web presence is essential

 You can create a free website at WordPress.com. Or Weebly.com. Or even better, get a designer to create a self-hosted WordPress website with a pre-built theme customized to match your logo. You can take a pre-built them, make it your own, and have a website you can be proud of for a relatively small investment. While you’re at it, create a Facebook Page for your business, and a Company Profile on Linked-in, because these days they’re all connected. 

Even then, keep it simple. Regarding your website design, all people want to know is: “Who are you?” “What do you offer?” And “Why should I trust you?” Unless you have an ecommerce website and are selling lots of things online, or you’re selling something very complicated, a simple 5 page website plus a blog should suffice for most small businesses.  

Small Business Tip: If you already have a web presence, make sure that it’s easy to optimize your website to get traction with the search engines. Maybe you don’t need a new website, when a simple SEO Makeover with On-page Search Engine Optimization would suffice. If you want to add blogging capability, maybe it’s time for a do-over anyway. 

3. Create a Special Offer for New Customers  

Offers drive business

Restaurants regularly offer 50% off one item for new customers, or an appetizer for free with a minimum purchase. Hair stylists offer a free color with a hair style for new customers. Do you have an offer especially designed for new customers?  Use the offer in conjunction with a Groupon, or a FourSquare program. 

If you structure your offer correctly you should have no problem driving new customers through your door. Keeping your pipeline filled, and new customers are the lifeblood of any small business.  

4. Optimize your Website
One of the best ways to maximize the results of your Local Internet Marketing is by optimizing your website for local keywords, for example: Your Service > Your City, Region, State, Zip Code.  Also you can add a list of the local communities or municipalities in your service region at the footer of your website to drive additional local traffic. The trick to getting top spots in the search engines is to create pages with high keyword densities (the proportion of the number of times one keyword phrase is used to the total number of words in the page: 3-4% is a very good number to aim for). 

I have optimized my website, and in the image below, I’m showing you a top-view screen shot of my Google Analytics Web Statistics from the last 30 Days, so you can see how this is working for me, and how I use it.  

Use Web Stats to Measure your results

As you can see from my Web Stats, my main keyword phrases are: ”Direct Marketing Consultant” and “Small Business Marketing” in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. If you looked at the rest of my stats you’d see that I get small ”long tail” hits for every combination of those keywords, as well as some great traffic from some my more popular recent blog posts, like “How to Build a Great Website” and “How to Create a Better Linked-in Profile.”  

Small Business Insight: I’m also getting a lot of unintended and undesired traffic for how to make an *c-h-e-a-p* (sic) small business website, because in my most popular recent blog post “How to create a great website,” I used the word *c-h-e-a-p* (sic) twice. So now I need to think about a way for me to rephrase that to take advantage of the current traffic, and instead of that undesirable word, use the word ”low budget,” which I could actually turn to my favor: small business owners who have a little bit of budget to create a website.  

5. Get Other Influential Sites to Link Back to Yours  
Your search ranking is determined not only by the web optimization and the quality of the content on your website, but also who links back to you. A great way to create back links is to sign up for local directories, to submit your blogs and articles to other influential websites (like Ezinearticles.com and Bizsugar.com), and to comment on other influential blogs in your area. You’ll see I’ve got some nice traffic coming from BizSugar.com, Linkedin.com, Smallbiztrends.com, and Twitter.com. It all adds up!   

Small Business Tip: Linked-in and Facebook are influential sites. Two great ways you can control getting other influential sites to link back to yours are by Optimizing your Linked in Profile and Gaining Likes on your Facebook Page for Business. 

6. Create a Small-budget Pay per click Marketing Campaign
Pay per click gives you additional insights into what’s working and what’s not working.  Start with $100 or $200 per month on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Ad Center, and/or Facebook.  The trick to Pay per Click is to create a separate landing page for each logical grouping of keywords. The investment will quickly pay off (quickly meaning you can start gettting hits today). Pay per click Marketing is a great way to augment your organic (free) search traffic. 

Take advantage of all the PPC networks

7. Measure your results
Why is it that so few companies measure their results? WordPress.com Stats is Free. Google Analyticator is Free. My new favorite, Going up Web is also Free. Increasingly, your company website is the focal point through which you can measure the results of your marketing. Each of these tools provides great insights that will help you improve your traffic and your inquiries and sales.     

So that’s my bare bones strategy for Local Internet Marketing Success. Whomever you choose to work with to help you with your Local Internet Marketing, it’s going to require some real work, and if anyone tells you it’s easy, then maybe they’re not telling you the whole story. Every small business owner should be doing each of these things simultaneously, and doing them now! 

If you are a small business owner, and you do these 7 Easy Steps to Local Internet Marketing Success, chances are you’ll be happy you did. If you do, let me know how it works out! 

Pages related to Local Internet Marketing :    

• Hyper Local Internet Marketing
• How to Get Great Leads

If you need help with Local Internet Marketing please contact me today.

If you want to build a great website, how do you do it?

A horse designed by a committee is a camel

If you want to build a great website, the number one mistake most people make is not that they’re not thinking “big enough“.    

On the contrary, most mistakes occur because they’re not thinking “small enough“.    

To build a great website, it doesn’t take rocket science. But too often a great idea gets bogged down in committee, or shot down by an influential person with a different agenda–and it’s too bad because everyone suffers.    

The number one failure of most websites when you want to build a great website is a two-pronged failure: (1) failure to articulate the vision, and (2) failure to execute. That’s why I am a big advocate of web projects that are small and easy.    

To Build a Great Website, think Small and Easy

Small is understandable. Easy is doable. After you’ve had a success or two, then you build from there. First you build a great website - then you promote it (using SEO, PPC, Blogging, Social Media, PR) – and then you enjoy the results (and you keep working on improving).    

In the small and easy spirit of projects that are both understandable and doable. here are seven ideas that will help you build a great website that will yield many positive returns for your business or community.    

Seven Small and Easy Steps to Build a Great Website:

1. Put one person in charge. The project leader. This person can get the best thinking of the group, but create one “decider” who represents the voice of your company or community. In the words of David Ogilvy, “There is a reason there are no statues erected to committees.” Or “A horse designed by a committee is a camel.”    

2. Decide what you want it do do. Great websites seamlessly guide the user to to the intended objective, i.e. place a call, fill out a form, make a purchase. What’s the purpose of the website? What do you want it to do?    

3. Be helpful. Most websites say: “Hey there, look at me, aren’t I cool?” Instead you want your website to say: “Here’s what you were looking for…, here’s how I can help…, here’s how you can take the next step.” In other words, “How can I help?”    

4. Less is more. Mies Van Der Rohe created a whole branch of architecture based on this principle. Like Professor Strunk said: “Be Concise.” Use fewer words, fewer pages, less fine print. All people want to know is “Who are you? How can you help me (make more money, save money, and/or avoid pain), and “Why should I trust you?”    

5. Hire the best. Pay her, and let her do her job. There’s a lot that goes into a great website and great inbound marketing…  Ten mediocre web consultants you found on oDesk (a place to get really cheap talent) do not add up to one rock star. Hire the best, then go for a walk, or take a  yoga class. Relax. Just breathe.    

6. Don’t cut corners. Your website is a pivotal component of your business, perhaps the most important component of marketing your business. If you want to build a great website, you need to spend a little money. Low budget websites look, well…, low budget. Don’t cut corners. You’ll end up paying for it in others ways (like lost opportunities).    

7. Measure your results, and act on them. Edward Deming had the right idea: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. So use your own version of Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. Gooogle Analytics is Free. WordPress Stats is Free. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. After you’ve measured, take the best and leave the rest. Measure it again, take the best and leave the rest. Rinse. Repeat.    

Yes, Mr. Schumacher, when you want to build a great swebsite, “small really is beautiful”.    

Of course it’s always possible that I left something out. If I did, your thoughts and comments on how to build a great website are always welcome. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends. Share  

Pages related to:  How to Build a Great Website 

• Professional Website Design and Development
• On-page Search Engine Optimization
• 7 Easy Steps to Successful Local Internet Marketing

Oh, one last thing, if you’d like some help to build a great website, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins for Direct Marketing 2.0

It's a work in process

 The greatest thing about WordPress is that it’s open source, and there’s a huge community built around designing and developing WordPress Websites.       

Used by over 300 of the 10,000 biggest websites on the Internet, WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today.  It has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install–at last count there are 10,872 different plugins!      

In fact, there’s a plugin for almost every kind of functionality I’ve ever wanted or imagined to add to any of my blogs.  Undoubtedly you have seen blog posts claiming to be the Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins, but here is my very own Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins that I have used or tested, and use regularly in many of my websites.    

My Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins

Les Proctor’s Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins

• After The Deadline  ~ Adds a contextual spell, style, and grammar checker to WordPress. Write better and spend less time editing. 
• Akismet ~ Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.  
• All in One SEO Pack ~ Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.      
• BulletProof Security  ~ Protects your website from ALL XSS & SQL Injection hacking attempts. Protects wp-config.php with .htaccess protection. One-click .htaccess security file activation. One-click website under maintenance activation (HTTP 503). WordPress META Generator tag removed – WordPress version hidden, verify and ensure WordPress DB errors are turned off, check WordPress file and folder permissions, complete system info (PHP, MySQL, OS, Memory Usage, IP, Max file sizes, etc.). 
• Code Markup  ~ A filter that displays <code> blocks nicely while still allowing formatting.
• CommentLuv ~ Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
• Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress ~ A plugin that asks the commenter to complete a simple CAPTCHA if a spam detection plugin thinks their comment is spam. Currently supports Akismet and TypePad AntiSpam.
• Exclude Pages from Navigation ~ Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. 
• External Nofollow ~ Add rel=”nofollow” to all external links in post content
• FeedBurner FeedSmith ~ Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
• Google Analyticator ~ Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. 
• Google XML Sitemaps ~ This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to better index the pages in your blog or website.
• Gravatar Signup Encouragement ~ Displays message to users without gravatar that they don’t have one with link to Gravatar’s sign-up page (e-mail included).
• Hana Code Insert ~ Easily insert any complicated HTML and JAVASCRIPT code or even custom PHP output in your WordPress article. Useful for adding AdSense and Paypal donation code in the middle of the WP article.
• HubSpot for WordPress ~ This plugin makes it simple to add HubSpot Tracking Code to your WordPress CMS.
• JW Cloud Sites WordPress Scanner ~ Scan your WordPress installation for hidden files, backdoors in wp_options, spam links in your posts, modified core files, and remove world and group permissions from all files. Designed for Rackspace Cloud Sites. 
• Members ~ A plugin for making WordPress a more powerful CMS; this is a user, role, and content management plugin for controlling permissions and access.  
• New Tag Cloud ~ The plugin provides an widget wich shows a tag cloud with the tags used by the new WordPress own tagging feature.
• OptinPop ~ OptinPop is designed to help you build your blog subscriber list by showing your visitors a pop-up window containing the optin form of any webpage you create. You can tune the appearance of your pop-up window and other parameters on the OptinPop Settings page within the Plugins menu. 
• Page Lists Plus ~ Adds customisation options to the wp_list_pages function which is used to create Page menus. Change the link text and title attributes, redirect, nofollow or unlink links, and remove links from page lists altogether, all through the WordPress dashboard.
• PHP Shortcode ~ Based on kukukuan’s Inline PHP plugin, this plugin allows you to embed and run PHP code in posts, pages or widgets with a WordPress shortcode.
• SEOPressor ~ SEOPressor automatically optimizes your On-page SEO by bolding, italizing and underlining your main keyword. It also optimize title and image tags. You can use the Suggestion Feature to tweak your content for high search engine ranking. 
• SexyBookmarks ~ SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.
• Shopp ~ Bolt-on ecommerce solution for WordPress
• SlideShare ~ A plugin for WordPress to easily display slideshare.net presentations      
•  Smart 404 ~ Rescue your viewers from site errors! When content cannot be found, Smart 404 will use the current URL to attempt to find matching content, and redirect to it automatically. Smart 404 also supplies template tags which provide a list of suggestions, for use on a 404.php template page if matching content can’t be immediately discovered.
• Smart Archives Reloaded ~ An elegant and easy way to present your posts, grouped by year and month.
• Subscribe To Comments ~ Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. 
• SurveyGizmo ~ The SurveyGizmo WordPress plugin lets you access and monitor your SurveyGizmo.com surveys remotely.
• TweetMeme ~ Retweet Button Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.
• Widget Context  ~ Display widgets in context.
• Widget Logic ~ Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home, etc.
• WordPress.com Stats ~ Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
• WordPress Database Backup ~ On-demand backup of your WordPress MySQL database. 
• WordPress Related Posts ~ Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress.
• YouTube Embed ~ Embed YouTube Videos in WordPress
• YQL Auto Tagger ~ This is perhaps the coolest plugin on my ultimate list of WordPress Plugins. It suggests tags for your posts based on semantic analysis of your post content with the Open Calais API.      

So while I realize many have claimed to have the Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins, I hope you like my Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins… and you are able to make good use of them! Happy Blogging.  

Pages related to Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins : 

• Custom WordPress Websites

As my needs evolve I am sure I will find other useful plugins and I will be sure to add them here. If you have any you’d like to suggest for my Ultimate List of WordPress Plugins please let me know by adding a comment below or contacting me today.

Why is Lead Generation and Nurturing so Important?

Focus on Your Sales Funnel

One of the most challenging and most commonly misunderstood components of successful business-to-business marketing is Lead Generation and Nurturing (or ‘demand generation and management’).

Starting with how you generate inquiries through the challenging hand-off and follow-up by your sales force, and most importantly how you measure the results, this ”discipline” sees more wasted money, more missed opportunities, and more downright mistakes than any other area in business-to-business (B2B) marketing and sales.

Now that some of the traditional direct mail disciplines (Multivariate testing, A/B splits) are being used on the Internet (web design, email marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising, landing page optimization, social media, web 2.0), it has made Lead Generation and Nurturing (or Demand generation and Management)  process more complex to set up, but at the same time easier to manage than ever. 

Why Lead Generation and Nurturing is so important

Focusing on your lead generation and nurturing process is important for three reasons:

1. There is always room for improvement – And, the return on investment from improving your lead generation program is usually well worth the the time and effort. 
2. You can build a competitive advantage – in most industries your competition is probably managing their lead generation and nurturing process at the same level you are, or worse.  Your efforts can help you develop a competitive advantage and win market share from your competitors. 
3. You can make more effective use of your budget–when you measure your results, you can put your money where it’s working the best, and align your budget to achieve strategic objectives.

The purpose of this series of blog posts is to outline a solid process, and offer some tips and techniques that, when applied to your business’s sales and marketing process, it will turn your lead generation program from mediocre into a source of pride for your organization.

Pages related to Lead Generation and Nurturing:

• How to Get Great Leads

If you’d like help implementing a lead generation and nurturing program for your company, please contact me today.

What are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO?

Google wants to deliver what you're looking for

“If SEO works so well,” many of my clients ask me, “why I’m recommending the use of Blogs to drive traffic to their websites?”

In order to understand why Blogs are not only necessary, but they’re an essential part of driving traffic to your website, and why you’d want to know the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO, it’s  it’s important to take a step back and talk a minute about how Google develops the rules that determine how high our pages rank in the search engines.

The Google PageRank Algorithm

Several years ago,  few people really could imagine the explosion of social media engines like Linked-in, Facebook, and Twitter.

Google did.

“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” ~ Google co-founder Larry Page 

When Google modified its Pagerank Algorithm to include backlinks, it was the beginning of the Social Media Revolution (or the revolution of user-generated content). Google dictated that it’s not only structure of your code on your pages that determines your page rank, but also how many influential websites link to yours…, in other words, your search engine visibility is determined not only by the quality of the content on your website, but by who is linking to you. 

This is why why Blogging is the new strategy to attain search engine visibility - and why it’s important to know the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO - because Blogging provides a platform to share your ideas, get others to connect with you, and if your ideas are good ones, they can share you ideas with others. So you’ve got one platform that facilitates all three actions of social media: (1) Connect (2) Collect and Share, and (3) Create.

Success breeds success. If your posts are popular and they follow the best practices in blogging for SEO, chances are they’ll also achieve greater search engine visibility.

Here are the Best Practices in Blogging for SEO

The page that does the best job with on-page optimization and has the most inbound relevant links will have the highest search ranking. Think of it from Google’s shoes… “Pagerank is based on relevant inbound links.” What does it mean? It means that Blogging combined with an SEO program is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website, and get your phones to ring.   

1. Focused Content ~ Create an editorial focus for your website. If your customers are small business owners, write only about things that are of interest to small business owners. Write about sales, marketing, managing people, managing your taxes, building your cadre of trusted advisors, etc.
2. Keyword Research ~ Research keyphrases to incorporate each page and post. And only use one keyphrase per page in the on-page optmization efforts (your title, in your text, and in your hyperlinks). The more specific you are the better. For example: you’ll have a much better chance achieving a top ranking for the search term: ”ISO 9001 Certification Requirements” than you will “ISO 9001″.  
3. Optimized Pages and Posts ~ Content should be relevant to a site’s core theme, products or services. Each page should be optimized around a specific keyword phrase to achieve a keyword density of at least 1% (meaning if your post is 450 words, you should use your keyword phrase at least 5 times). Make use of the keyword phrases in header tags (h1, h2, h3), use your keyword phrase in the “alt description” of the image on the page.
4. Provide Fresh Content ~ Fresh and updated content shows people there are signs of life on your website, and if you’re continually adding new pages to your website, that creates more new opportunities to gain traction with the search engines. 
5. Speed Page Delivery ~ Slow loading websites frustrate visitors. Frustrated visitors look elsewhere for their needs. They will either back click or close the search altogether and then visit your competition. You can get a CDN (Content Delivery Network) or there are plugins for Wordress like WP Super Cache on WordPress that speed page load times.
6. Be Selective About Outbound Links ~ High quality outbound links are links that are relevant to your website’s core theme, product or service. Even then use them selectively. Best Practices in Blogging for SEO means to add “ref=nofollow” to most outbound links.
7. Create Quality inbound links - Avoid ‘link farming’ at all costs. This practice can result in your website being penalized. The most effective and highest rated links are those that are created organically. Organic links are links contained in relevant articles, directories, industry specific websites, news distribution sites, and most importantly, people commenting on your blog posts. If you’re using WordPress for your Blogging Platform, use a plugin like Comment Luv to give your commentors the opportunity to create a relevant back link from your website. Also, you might consider distributing SEO and Social Media enhanced press releases from time to time, for example with PR Log, a free news distribution resource; this is an excellent method of obtaining additional high quality inbound links.

If you follow these 7 Best Practices in Blogging for SEO – you’ll get a lot more quality inbound traffic, and the next things you’ll want to start working on are reducing your bounce rates (people visiting your site and leaving because you  aren’t giving them what they want), and increasing your conversion rates (registrations, downloads, requests for more information). 

If you need any help increasing your search engine visibility with Best Practices in Blogging for SEO, please contact me today.

How do you Create a Better Linked-in Profile?

While Linked-in is acknowledged as the premier business-oriented social networking site, many people look at it as a simple online CV or resume.     

But Linked-in is greatly underrated as a place to showcase your talents, grow your capabilities, and develop new business opportunities.  It is certainly worth your time to build a better-Linked-in Profile.   

I know for a fact that many Human Resource Professionals use Linked-in to help find and screen candidates. If you’re a job seeker, your should optimize your Linked-in Profile–just in case someone is looking for someone like you at this very moment.  If you’re a manager or an executive, you should take time to create a Better Linked-in Profile–to put your best foot forward.     

I realize there are many blog posts out there about how to Build a Better Linked-in Profile, but I put together the 5 main things that I do whenever I update someone’s Linked-in Profile. These 5 things will help you (1) connect with others and let them connect with you (2) collect and share information that’s important to you, and (3) to showcase your own content that positions you as the expert, so that when a client or prospect has a need they call you first.     

5 Easy Tips to Create a Better Linked-in Profile

 1.Clean up your URL with your name. When you first create your Linked-in Profile, it gives you a URL that ends with Gobbledygook. You should change this to something shorter. My LinkedIn profile URL is http://www.linkedin.com/in/lesproctor. It’s a much easier on the eyes, and looks nicer when you email it to people.     

2. Add your Twitter Account. In case you missed it, Twitter is going mainstream. And your microblog posts (or “tweets”), can now show up on the status update at the very top of your Linked-in Profile page. You can see a post that I put up entitled “An Open Mind is Good for the Bottom Line.”  These status updates are important because they illustrate to people visiting your website that you are active, and that “the lights are on and someone’s home.”     

Les Proctor's Linked-in Profile

3.Add Anchor Text to your Website Links. You can add up to 3 links on your profile to your website, or different pages on the same website; these links pass Linked-in’s SEO authority to your website, so you should take advantage of them. Customize the text on the links, so that the search engines understand more about the content of pages they link to.     

In my case I’ve added 3 Links to different pages of my website: (1) Direct Marketing 2.0 Blog, (2) Results Marketing Services, and a (3) Free Website Analysis.  

Adding Applications to your Linked-in Profile

You can add all kinds of really cool applications to your Linked in Profile. Your Creative Portfolio, Polls, Events, Your Reading, a Blog, and more. In my case I’ve added my Reading List and my WordPress Website Blog.      

4. Add your reading List. What people read tells a lot about who they are. By adding my reading list this I am giving you a sneak peek at the books in my library. Art, books, culture…, these are the things that bind us all together.     

Les Proctor's Linked-in Reading List by Amazon.com

 5. Add a Blog. In this case, my website is developed on WordPress, which is the most popular web publishing platform around. By adding my Blog, I’m publishing my 4 latest Blog posts, so people can see what I’ve been writing about lately.     

Direct Marketing 2.0 Blog

I know there are many others things you can do to create a better Linked-in Profile, but these are the areas where I consistently see an opportunity for improvement. I’m sure I’ve left something out.     

Please let me know what *you do* to build a better Linked-in Profile. And, if you liked this post, please share it with your friends. Share

If you’d like me to help you Build a Better Linked-in Profile or a Social Media Marketing Program, please contact me today.

What is Lean Marketing, exactly?

Improve your marketing

Everyone’s looking for results. 

Is there a sure-way method to find them?  

Yes–if you take the time to measure your results, which many companies are simply too busy to do.  

“You can’t improve what you  can’t measure.” 

Many companies think they’re practicing “Direct Marketing” without taking the time to measure and report the results… they enjoy the results, but they don’t try to figure out how they could do better. 

Like Direct Marketing, Lean Marketing is targeted, personalized, measurable, but most importantly, it’s improveable.  

As consumers, and as business managers, we’ve all seen successful examples of Direct Marketing. You go to your mailbox, open your mail, and there’s a letter that stands out — it comes from a real person directly to you with an offer designed to delight you and make you want to respond.  

As marketers, if you use Direct Marketing regularly, you know that for every $1.00 you spend you can get $20.00 back, or $24.63, or whatever. Predictable return on investment helps you with your budgeting, your cash management, and your profitability.  

Lean Marketing is Continual Improvement applied to Marketing

Lean Marketing is Direct Marketing with a commitment towards improvement, i.e. it’s Quality Management or Continual Improvement applied to Marketing, which can be illustrated by the PDCA Cycle that was popularized by Edward Deming, who is widely recognized as the forefather of improving design (and thus service), product quality, testing, and sales.  

The PDCA cycle is designed to be used as a dynamic model. The completion of one turn of the cycle flows into the beginning of the next, creating a “virtuous circle of continual improvement”. The process can always be reanalyzed and a new test of improvement can begin.   

1.  PLAN: Establish the processes needed to achieve an acceptable response rate and a cost-per-acquistion of new customer. 
2. DO: Implement the processes 
3. CHECK: Monitor and measure the processes and report the results 
4. ACT: Take action to test new ideas and maintain and continually improve the response rate and the cost-per-acquistion of new customer. 

By testing new ideas, i.e., New offers, new creative strategies, new package formats, you’ll continue to make improvements… and in the process you’ll acquire new customers, sell them more, get them to refer others to you, and ultimately you’ll be a stronger and more profitable company.  

By monitoring and measuring the processes and reporting the results, you’re able to quickly see what’s working and what’s not working, which will then allow you to align your budget with achieving your company’s strategic objectives.  

And that is why Lean Marketing is so powerful.  

Lead Marketing is Direct Marketing the way it’s meant to be practiced.

Pages related to Lean Marketing :

• Direct Marketing 2.0 applies the principles of quality management to your marketing so you can measure and improve your ROI

If you’re looking for a consultant who can help you implement Lean Marketing in your operations please contact me.

Do you have a compromised WordPress Website?

Have you been hacked recently?

If you have a compromised WordPress Website that has been hacked recently and affected by malware, you are not alone, particularly if you’re on a shared server (like the Rackspace Cloud, or Godaddy for example).

These attacks are not specific to any particular hosting company or to WordPress. These malware attacks can affect any website running out-dated software hosted by any company.

I have 20+ WordPress websites hosted on The Rackspace Cloud (about which by the way I am a “raving fan”). And several of my sites, along with innumerable others, were the target of malicious hackers. Rackspace has been great throughout this whole process. And they reminded me ‘why it’s important to implement security measures in the first place‘ and keep my software updated with the most recent patches.

An ‘ounce of prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure’. But what are you supposed to do if you’ve been hacked? How do you fix a compromised WordPress Website?

How to fix a compromised WordPress website

If you’ve got a compromised WordPress website, the first thing you need to do is to get a snapshot (“Go to .snapshot”) of your WordPress website and restore the last known files that were working to your webserver so you can see the Website and access the Admin. If you’re able to do that, then here’s what you want to do next…, along with two great plugins to make your life much easier:

Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress

1. Update your .htaccess file in the root folder to memory permissions to 128K (‘php_value memory_limit 128M’)
2. Update to the latest version of WordPress
3. Update all your plugins to the latest stable version

Secure your website with .htaccess security (Bulletproof Security)

Protects your website from ALL XSS & SQL Injection hacking attempts. Protects wp-config.php with .htaccess protection. One-click .htaccess security file activation. By Edward Alexander.

1. Install .htaccess security at both the wp-admin folder and the root folder.
2. Protect your wp-config.php file.

Secure your website some more and clean it (WP Cloud Sites WP Scanner)

With this plugin you can easily adjust your file permissions on Rackspace Cloud Sites hosting for a more secure installation. Includes tools to look for and eliminate other common exploits in the cloud, looking for hidden php files, non-core files, modified core files, auto loading options with malicious code, and posts/pages injected with javascript. By Jackson Whelan.

1. Adjust your file permissions correctly on your entire website, and then revert while upgrading.
2. Scan options, tables, and posts for malware and transient feeds.
3. Search for Hidden Files and Modified Core Files

Secure both the website and your MySQL database for maximum protection

1. Change your passwords for both FTP and your MySQL database (you do this in your control panel and in your wp_config.php file)
2. Change the main admin’s user name from admin to something else unique to you (you do this through phpAdmin on the wp_users table).
3. Change the prefix on the tables in the MySQL database from “wp_” to “wpxx_” (you do this through phpAdmin and your config.php file, where xx is a variable you choose) tightens the security on your install immeasurably.  **

**If this is too technical for you, then you need a web developer to help you fix this. Please feel free to contact me. I’d be glad to help.

Ok so hopefully by doing this you’ll be able to restore your compromised WordPress Website, secure it, and clean it so it’s the way it was prior to the attack. If not, if you were unable to restore it, then the last resort is to perform a clean WordPress re-install to your backed up MySQL database.

Many thanks to Jackson Whelan, Edward Alexander, and particularly Josh Prewitt from The Rackspace Cloud (Rackspace is known for their fanatical service, so the bar is already set pretty high–Josh went way above and beyond the call of duty–thank you Josh!), so I can now move on to other projects.

Again,  Rackspace Cloud, “I’m a raving fan of your fanatical support. I wish all of my vendors were like the Rackspace Cloud. My life would be 100% stress-free!”

If you need help fixing a compromised WordPress website, please contact me today.

3 Social Plugins to Gain Likes on your Facebook Page for Business (or 3 Easy Ways to Get People to Like You)

Even Scrooge "likes" it

Facebook is changing consumer behavior.  

Instead of searching online, consumers and business buyers who have a need are connecting to people they trust, and asking for referral sources. This is why it’s *more important than ever* to be connected, and Build a Facebook Page for Business. 

As I was writing this post I was trying to come up with a punchy headline, and it occurred me that maybe I ought to write a headline that would appeal to the Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us. I too, was resistant to the social media bandwagon at first, I admit it… Social Media, Bah humbug!  

One this is undeniable though–there are 500 million Facebook users and counting.  

So if you’re a small business owner these days, while you’re counting your pennies and watching every expenditure, you’re also wondering “how do I leverage my network and tap into my market that’s on Facebook?” It’s gotten too big to ignore. That’s why it’s important to know how to Build a Facebook Page for Business. 

To illustrate how this works, I’m using 3 Facebook plugins that illustrate how you can quickly and easily ”Like” your Facebook page from your website. 

3 Social Plugins to Build a Facebook Page for Business

Like Box - The Like Box you to attract and gain “Likes” from your website. The Like Box enables users to see how many users already like your Facebook page (including their friends), read recent posts from the page, and like the page with one click (I am using the “Like Box” in the right sidebar of this website under Measurable Marketing Tips).  

Like Button – The Like button lets a user share your content with their friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website.  

  

Share Button - The Share Button is the easiest way to allow your content to be shared on Facebook. If you click this button it will share this post with all your friends.  

Share  

Ok, so hopefully you’ll see how easy this is to get people to “like” you–it’s so easy even Scrooge would like it.  

Happy Facebooking, and “God Bless us everyone.”  

Note: If you’d like to Build a Facebook Page for Business – I’ve included links to the code for each of these buttons, so you can forward this post to your web developer, and put the button you’d like on your website.  

If you don’t have a web developer, and you’d like to implement Social Plugins to Build a Facebook Page for Business – please feel free to contact me today.