Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams

To first understand how to make the most of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your business, you need to understand exactly how it is that search engines go about their business.

In the English-speaking world, the major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (which includes AskJeeves).

Typically speaking, search engines perform two functions.

• They “crawl” the web and create an index (database) of the billions of documents (web-pages) that are available online - this includes your business’ website.
• They use this index to provide useful answers to questions that users ask of them, most often in the form of a list of relevant web sites after someone searches on a particular phrase or term; such as “plumbers in melbourne”

Let’s look at each of these.

Crawling and Indexing

Search engines don’t just head out across the expanse of the web at random. Instead, they proceed along methodical lines. Most every webpage you’ve ever been to on the internet contains at least one or more hyperlinks to other website pages or files. This sharing of links, in theory, serves as a network connecting all of the pages that exist on the internet. By using these links, the software that search engines use to scour the web (known as “crawlers” or “spiders”) can reach the billions of documents available on the web through any given starting point.

Randfish explains it brilliantly using the analogy of a city bus or subway route. While the main points of interest are the various stops and cities along the route (think of these as the web sites and files), the streets connecting them (the hyperlinks) are critical and of no less importance.

So if you don’t have any hyperlinks (on other webpages) that point to your business’ website then the search engine spiders will never be able to find your website and place its pages in the index. It is this web structure (hence: world wide web) that the search engines crawl through, making these stops, where their next task is to take a look at the code that makes the pages and store the relevant sections of code in their database for retrieval…

Retrieval and Rankings

When most people go to search for something on the internet, say looking for someone to fix the leak in the bathroom… they submit a query at a search engine, by typing in the phrase/term they are looking for (plumber melbourne), and in return they get a list of relevant web pages.

To do this, the search engine looks through its massive collection of documents, and performs a two-step process. First, they return results which are likely to have some relation to what the user was looking for. Secondly, and this is important, they determine the order, or “rank” in which these pages are displayed to the user.

To make this determination, the search engine judges two aspects of your businesses page: relevance and importance.

Relevance is a very complex matter that we’ll be discussing throughout this guide. Suffice to say, relevance is no longer simply a matter of having the right words (plumber & Melbourne) in the text of your webpage. SEO goes far beyond that and incorporates a great number of factors.. but as a starting point; the only way the search engines can determine what your business (website) is about, is by reading the words of test on your sites pages. So if you are a plumber, make sure you incorporate words such as plumbing, plumber, leak, toilet etc etc in your copy.

Importance, from the search engine’s perspective, has to do with how popular your site is… and just like in high school where the most popular people had the most friends… the more links you have pointing to your site, the higher your importance, and the higher your rank in any given search.

If you’ve used a search engine before, you likely know this, but the more relevant and important a page is thought to be, the closer to the top of the search engine results list it can be found. How many times have you even bothered navigating to the second page of a results list to find what you’re looking for? …Exactly….

Of course, these two factors are determined by machines, so there’s a lot of room for error. But rather than see this as a negative thing, we should look at how we can capitalize upon it. In other words, if we figure out just how search engines go about determining how important and relevant your page is, we can make sure that they award us high rankings.

In the next post we will be going further into the actual look and feel of a Search Engines Results Page and how that all works… stay tuned..

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimisation, search, engine, optimisation, google, yahoo, msn, sem, serps, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur marketing, preneur, marketing, small business, small, business

Like many small business owners, you may not have even heard of SEO before. And yet, it is one of the most critical things that you need to understand if you want your website to stand out from the crowd and actually generate positive results for your business.

Just What is SEO?

SEO refers to “Search Engine Optimization”. And basically, it involves making very subtle changes to your website so that it becomes more attractive to the programs running the net’s most popular search engines - Google, MCN, Yahoo etc etc.

If you’re not convinced that this should matter to you, take note that the majority of all web traffic is generated by just a few major search engines: Yahoo!, MSN, Google, and AskJeeves.

When was the last time you went to the yellow pages to find a business instead of Google? Exactly.

If these search engines can’t locate your site, then your site cannot be put into their databases. If you aren’t in their databases, you can’t turn up during a search.

In other words, you will never reach those people who are out there, actively looking for your product and services.

This isn’t just a matter of generating random traffic; it’s about ensuring that those people who are in the market to buy your products already will be able to find your site when they come looking for it. If your website is not getting listed on the first page of the Serach Engines Result Pages (SERPs) your business simply doens’t exist online…

So How Exactly Does SEO Work?

Search engines are constantly looking for ways to improve upon their services; they want to go deeper into the web and return better results to their users… That’s their business - to return (display)the most approprite sites on the internet for the ’search term’ entered by the user.

However, it’s ultimately computer software that is conducting these searches, not a human being. As such, they’re prone to error, as I’m sure you all know by now. The good news is that these programs search for sites in a very predictable and methodical fashion. If you know how they conduct their searches, you can make the changes to your site that you need to (often, just a tweaked word here or there!) to take you from the bottom of the search pile to the top!

Why wouldn’t you want to be part of this?

In this blog series, we’re going to cover SEO at a high-level. But before we get into all that, you need to ask yourself if SEO is what you’re looking for… Why did you build your website in the first place? Was it to satisfy your ego and burn money on a slick-looking interactive brochure that nobody is ever going to read? I doubt it, but if so, then you can probably achieve that goal quite nicely without bothering any further with SEO. However, maybe your aim was to generate new leads for your business? If so, then SEO is one of the most effective means to that end in your entire arsenal.

Are we on the same page here? Have I convinced you that you NEED SEO if you want to take your business anywhere in this day and age?

If make sure you check back here in the next couple of days to read the next installment which will cover: How The Search Engines Operate… How the Search Engines Rank Your Site… and much more.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimisation, search, engine, optimisation, google, yahoo, msn, sem, serps, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur marketing, preneur, marketing, small business, small, business

On a few different occasions this year, I found myself in lively discussions about the validity of branding… Actually they have been more pistols-at-dawn debates on whether a small business owner should be pro-actively focused on growing their brand, or let their brand develop as a byproduct of their direct-marketing and organic business growth…

It first came up during a Club Nesso session in June(ish), and then again recently in the Infiniti Telecommunications office during a marketing meeting (read: beers @ 6pm), when one of the new team members dropped the need to focus on Michael Porters 4 P’s and work hard to develop a widely recognised brand, when developing a new division.

They way I took the point this university educated (there’s the source of the problem) team member was trying to make was that we should be investing resources and time to develop a brand like Nike, Apple or Adidas… You know, adopting the whole ‘Madison Avenue Marketing’ approach to business.

That is.. spend the equivalent of Lindsay Lohan’s coke habit, on Billboards and TV commercials in hope to capture a small slice of the markets mind-space … so when they need a business phone system for their small business they think Infiniti and call us etc etc etc

As John Moore over at Brand Autopsy says regarding the brand phenomenon known as Starbucks “…(They) never sought to create a brand. The company was too busy being a business than trying to be a brand. Starbucks was too busy building a viable and profitable business to think about something as seemingly trivial as branding… You cannot create a brand before you create a business. Your business creates your brand. Your brand should never create your business.

In ode to my good mate Scott Ginsberg and his love of lists - For those of you who have small businesses the key to building a strong brand are:

• Build your business on direct response marketing… and word of mouth will grow your brand
• Focus on SEO and PPC advertising… and your brand will become associated with keywords you rank for. (…more)
• Donate to charities… helping the world, helps increase your brands exposure
• Speak at local events and chambers of commerce… sharing your experiences will increase you and your businesses credibility
• Join a local BNI Chapter… not only will it generate sales but word of mouth for your branding
• Really focus on getting your business in the media through free publicity… as they say any publicity is good publicity
• Create something that can go viral… Viral marketing is the best way to build a brand in a web 2.0 world.
• Do right by your customers… excellent customer service is the basis of a strong brand
• Force word of mouth… ask for referrals
• Use your logo, tagline and call to action on all marketing material… you’ll never grow a brand if you don’t at least mention it

What ever you do, always remember - You cannot create a brand before you create a business. Your business creates your brand. Your brand should never create your business.

Technorati Tags: Branding, brand, marketing, adverting, direct, response, Starbucks, john moore, JohnMoore, john, moore, autopsy, BrandAutopsy, scott, ginsberg, ScottGinsberg, Scott Ginsberg, Club, Nesso, Club Nesso, Travis Madden, Ross Mitchell, Infiniti Telecommunications, Infiniti, itlecom, Michael Porter, Porter, Pete, Williams, Pete Williams, PeteWilliams, preneur, Prenuer Marketing, publicity, free, BNI,

Today’s youTube video is of Bryant Simon, Professor of History and Director of the American Studies Program at Temple University. In this speech from the Taste3 Conference, he discuss’ his study of how the desires of daily life are revealed from the comfy coaches of Starbucks.

This is not, however, just a study of just Starbucks, but an exploration of American life both in the states
and abroad in the 21st Century. His research explores the very desires of daily life as they are revealed on the comfy coaches and in the drive-thru of Starbucks. As he looks at what it means to consume Starbucks, he also investigates what Starbucks consumes of us – our labor, our landscapes, and our politics.

One of the comments on YouTube hit the nail on the head: “I often share with my clients that Starbucks is a marketing company that happens to sell coffee to support its machine. This paradigm, this way of doing business is what separates those businesses that completely diminate versus those that exist.”

Technorati Tags: Starbucks, Coffee, Bryant Simon, Bryant, Simon, Temple University, Taste3, Conference, Marketing, Culture, Business, Pete-Williams, Pete, Willams, Preneur

There you go, I said it! Most sales environments make selling easy.

Now, if you are in the sales game you are probably going red in the face right now, ready to go to war with me over this, especially if you have a boss like ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’… but, if you consider the parameters in which most sales people work - selling advertising, insurance or soft-drink accounts - it allows for the building of relationships (which makes the sale easier), the ability to continually follow up (which makes the sale easier) and the reassurance of the next sales period (which again makes the sale easier).

How does the game change when you need to sell a project? A project that has a defined and distinct end?

On the surface there’s not much different: it’s all about getting as many hungry and qualified leads into your funnel as quickly as possible and helping them discover that opening their wallets and throwing money at you is in their best interests.

Selling a ‘project,’ however, needs to solicit action immediately… not action later so the sale will fall in the next month’s budget… there is no reassuring ‘next sales period.’

Most sales trainers will preach the adage that ‘it takes 6-7 contacts to make the sale” and, if you have the luxury of time and opportunity for repeat business, these ‘clichéd statements’ actually do have merit.

But, when selling for immediate response, you need to make an offer that moves the prospect to jump NOW. You don’t have time to educate the prospect over 2 long lunches, a chat on the par 5 and 4 direct mail pieces.

It comes down to a powerful offer with a solid and justified ‘end.’ Did you notice the word justified?

Simply adding ‘this offer expires on February 30th’ won’t cut it– you need to explain and justify to the prospect, in their terms, why they must act now and why the offer honestly can’t last. It’s amazing what a candid explanation will do to your bottom line.

Now, did you also notice the term ‘hungry prospect’ above? This is the real key to selling projects (and accounts).

The late Gary Halbert often asked if you were to start a hamburger stand and could be the ‘best’ at one element what would that be?

Having the best hamburgers, a secret sauce, the best location, the best pricing, etc., etc.?

Well, all of that is irrelevant… all you need is THE hungry crowd, as they will eat anything if they are hungry enough.

Technorati Tags: Enlightened, Wealth, Institute, Selling, Sales, Tecnhiques, Gary, Halbert, Pete, Williams, Pete-Williams