Key elements for ANY effective site:

Video on front page – video sets the tone and allows you to “meet” Tamra to get a sense of her work

Email opt-in with free report on home page and blog pages – used Mail Chimp to manage email collection and automatic delivery of a free PDF report. Allows an email list to be built that becomes an asset to ANY business.

Integrated Blog – The Word Press platform allows a dynamic, article driven, search friendly site that does NOT have to look like a standard blog – this was a custom Word Press theme design with an integrated blog for Tamra to add articles and posts. (Tamra also loves Word Press as it allows her to make all content updates directly and she learned it quickly!)

Facebook integration – Facebook increasingly important for both personal and business use. We included the Like Box on the home page and blog and also Facebook comments on every blog post, which allows for easy commenting for all Facebook users. Also helped her customize, prep and promote her own Facebook business fan page as well, which serves as a mini-website: http://www.facebook.com/InnerLifeExplorations

Effective Copy – Thanks to collaborator and expert copywriter Erica Schreiber, WriterErica for finding and expressing so well the “voice” of Tamra.

Great Design – Thanks to Tricia Evenson at Evenson Design Group for a perfect logo design that set the graphical tone of the site. We worked with that top banner as a foundation for the rest of the site design. Also, thanks to Meganne Forbes for use of her beautiful watercolor artwork -  Meganne Forbes Gallery

A great team! This was a team effort and could NOT have done this without my fellow teammates. Thanks all!

Contact me with any questions, or if you need a GREAT site or site enhancements to your current website. Any of the above can and should be added to your current site if missing any of these components.

Wayne

Google bomb dropped last week: The most radical shake up in search in the history of Google? For SEO pros, this throws a serious monkey wrench into the works, as we generally like to get our clients keywords into the top 10 search results. But now what if there are NO universal top 10 search results. Every searcher gets DIFFERENT search results. Whoa! Basic principles of sound SEO will still apply but once again, Google has changed the game!

From their blog:

Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features…

Continue Reading >>

A recent reaction forwarded to me by the author John Schuster: “Who are the media folks who put your movie together?  It is so well-done!  WOW!” I tend to agree

Music by the late great Pat Milliken, watch in full screen by hitting button lower right and then click on video to jump to original movie with a “Free Gift” button below – click this to get a free chapter of John’s excellent book and a special discount link to buy the book at 30% off. It’s a good one!

Sure, much of these 2 Billion views are “viral” dancing cats and such things, but increasingly, small businesses of all kinds are using YouTube in their marketing to directly increase sales. A fun example is the now semi-famous Will It Blend campaign from Blendtec, which increased product sales 700%, 5 X the companies old record.

The campaign educates while entertaining, using clever lab coat humor to ask a funny question: what can’t you put in this powerful blender? The Blendtec YouTube channel now boasts 170M video views and 40K channel subscribers. If you have not seen one of these, here is the Will It Blend iphone video. Note: do not try this at home (the black smoke from a pulverized iphone is most certainly toxic.)

Introducing vSEO – Video Search Engine Optimization

One of my online marketing mentors is YouTube “Queen” Julie Perry, who introduced me recently to a whole new subset of SEO, called vSEO, a study of what it takes to get your video to the top of the search engines. See Julie Perrys recent article at Fastcompany.com blog site: How to Make YouTube Part of Your Social Media Marketing.

YouTube Video Optimization = Content + SEO + Community

Julie also introduced me to a great vSEO resource: reelseo.com (clever name eh?) According to ReelSEO founder Mark Robertson, it’s not just about tags and text anymore. The basic methods may still work for very long-tail keyword queries, but for more competitive keyword phrases, you now need to:

1) create quality, compelling video content

2) publish using SEO best practices, and

3) engage with the community, both within as well as outside of YouTube.

How to Optimize and Market YouTube Videos – Presentation

In Mark’s presentation slides below, you will see in detail:

• Making the case for online video and for YouTube in particular
• How to publish and optimize YouTube videos (the gist of which starts on slide 8. )
• YouTube ranking factors and things to consider
• Promoting and marketing YouTube videos
• Driving conversions with YouTube videos
• Customizing YouTube embed

Now, as of March 18, 2011, all that will change, and for the better. Now iFrames work on all Facebook pages, which basically means you can point to and load a web page from any standard server, with all JavaScript and PHP coding operational. Cool! Recently YouTube also switched over to the iFrames method to embed video in sites and it works great.

Great iFrames tutorials here

However, there are some new hoops to jump through as well. To get this to work, you have to sign up as a “developer” and get a unique program ID for each “application” (facebook page) you are custom building. Not a big deal, but will be too technical and time consuming for most small business owners.

Let us take this job off your plate and help you to create a dynamic and fully functional Facebook fan page. Need to add your email list building form or video to the page? No problem. Need a custom welcome page for folks not yet fans? No problem. Want to offer a discount or special code for those who become fans, as an incentive? No problem. We use and recommend the latest marketing techniques to attract new fans and convert them into customers fast.

See: Fantastic Facebook Fan Pages for more info (just ignore the reference to FBML – we now do everything using the state of the art iFrames)

My teacher Mari Smith is pretty much the Queen of Facebook and covers this in much more detail here:

Essential Guide To Facebook Page Changes

So, say goodbye to FBML and Hello to Facebook iFrames!

The inspiration for the name of this business, Kaizen is a concept introduced to the Japanese by American Edward Deming, perhaps responsible for their long run of automotive success. Why? Because they focused on small incremental changes over time. Literally, Kaizen is two characters: 1) Change and 2) For the better.

Making a series of small changes, consistently over time, is the one, sure-fire, guaranteed way to insure your business success.

A new idea, a small change to your website, a minor tweak to your ad campaign, or a larger shift in strategy. With accurate testing and tracking, you know exactly what works and, between 2 options, what works BETTER.

Always try to beat your own control for the best ad, the best web page option, the best subject line in an email. Forget about what you LIKE or THINK is better. Tracking tells you what actually IS better, in terms of results.

Kaizen – The Art and Science of Continuous Improvement.

Unlike traditional guesswork advertising, modern internet advertising is both an art and a science, hence our Kaizen tagline – The Art and Science of Continuous Improvement.

Check out this new short video video from my teacher and the smartest business strategist I know, Paul Lemberg. All about making “kaizen” tweaks to your business.

Small Changes = Big Profits >>

Check this on the concept of Kaizen – from Wikipedia

Kaizen (Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”) refers to a philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management. It has been applied in healthcare, government, banking, and many other industries. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain.^[1] By improving standardized activities and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses after the Second World War, influenced in part by American business and quality management teachers who visited the country.

The front page of Google, the top 10 sites showing (sometimes out of Millions) on Google search results page, is perhaps the most valuable bit of online “real estate”. Below are the basic elements required for getting your chosen keyword term to rank in the top 10.  An easy to rank term with few competing sites (usually few searches too but not always) may require very little effort. The more competitive the term, the more work will be required on all levels.

These are all considered “white hat” and long term practices not likely to get the famous “Google slap” as will so many flavor-of-the-month “black hat”, spammy techniques. Taking time for good keyword research is key to know what terms are getting searched and not overly competitive. Having the keyword in your domain name does not hurt, but is not necessary. If you can, save the file name to include the keyword. On most blog sites like Word Press, that means changing the “permlalink” to include the post title, which will have the keyword.

Step 1 – Write Quality, Themed Content

Quality content is keyword focused, not only on primary keyword but themed or related keywords as well. Use software tool such as webcontentstudio.com to help write good themed content. A 500-700 word article is ideal, with primary keyword in title, meta tags, body copy and related keywords throughout. An occurrence of a related keyword every 5-10 words seems to be most effective. Can outsource this to trained writers (we got em for $100 per article)

Step 2 – Pinging and Social Bookmarking

Most blog software like Word Press will automatically ping your post when you publish but if not use pingomatic.com.  Immediately, also use socialmarker.com or similar (or outsourcers) to bookmark your article using the top social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Propeller and others. This should take you 15-20 minutes using the socialmarker tool, or you can outsource it. There is some controversy over whether these links are “followed” and counted by Google, but I have seen first hand my rankings improve with this step alone. Just do it!

Step 3 – Article Marketing

Can simply post copies of exact same article to the scores of article directory sites,  including the mammoth ezinearticles.com, with a link to your page in the resource box.  The incoming links will be valuable but if exactly same content, both pages will not be ranked. Better yet, have the article rewritten to be unique (change by at least 50%) while preserving the themed content in step 1. For just $70 per article, Kaizen Marketing will do a high quality rewrite of your content and submit (via outsourers) to 100 article directory sites for good backlinks AND possibly multiple rankings – front page results for more than one site.

Step 4 – Other Authority Backlinks

In addition to article sites, you should get as many high authority Web 2.0 sites to link to you as possible, including sites like Youtube, Facebook, WordPress, PRlog, eHow, Blogspot and others where you can create and save content, including links. Also, many forum type sites allow user profile pages with links that are followed by Google. Do this yourself or outsource to someone well trained in these methods (Kaizen Marketing of course!) For just $100, we will build 30 high quality links to your specific keyword focused page. For the current top web properties to get links FROM, download the free rank decoding engine. While the sites are not the highest authority, I have seen improvements using this handy link network service: Textlinks.com – the free trial gives you 25 links you can keep.

A front page google ranking is not hard for some terms just using a well optimized page, with quality themed content. For most worth having, you will also need to include a link building campaign, using the keyword in your anchor text links. Kaizen Marketing can help you get there. Contact us for a free site evaluation and specific suggestions to increase your success, and get more targeted traffic to your web site.

[If the landing page they are sent to ALSO includes this phrase, both the searcher AND Google are happy and Google will reward you with a higher quality score, which lowers your costs per click. You can do this manually (long, tedious, boring) or set up also dynamically. For more on that see Dynamic Landing Pages. ]

The usual bit of coding is  {KeyWord:Default_text} where Default is what will show if your keyword is too long to fit in the short adwords title space.

But what if you want the ad title to show as BLUE Widgets or blue widgets or Blue Widets (my personal favorite)? Maybe you want it in initial caps if it is in the title but lower case in the body of the ad.

Here are some advanced techniques on how the capitalization works with DKI:

• If you want the dynamic text to be all lower case, use {keyword:Default_text}.
• If you want the dynamic text to start with the first letter of the first word capitalized, use {Keyword:Default_text}.
• If you want the dynamic text to have the first letter in caps for each word, use {KeyWord:Default_text}.
• If you want the dynamic text to have the first word to all be in caps, use {KEYword:Default_text}.
• If you want the dynamic text to have the first word to all be in caps and the other words to start with the first letter in caps, use {KEYWord:Default_text}.
• If you want the dynamic text to all be in caps, use {KEYWORD:Default_text}

Want a PPC expert to help? A well designed campaign can save you a bundle if you are spending money on adwords. See Google Adwords PPC services.

Why is social media important?

With nearly 400 Million active users, Facebook is now the size of the country of Germany, and adding over 1/2 Million new users per day! Twitter is not as big but is also growing fast.  The phenomenal growth of these online giants ultimately reflects our compelling desire  to connect with each other around common interests. AND it presents a whole new paradigm for communicating and selling online.

The old distinctions of B to B and B to Consumers are not as meaningful anymore as everyone from the janitor on up to the CEO is on Facebook, swapping news and stories with friends. Ultimately, people do not buy from companies, they buy from people and social media can put a more informal, hip and personal face on an otherwise impersonal company.

As successful online marketers such as Frank Kern and Jeff Walker have discovered and proven with testing, folks hate to be sold to, but they love to buy from a trusted friend or advisor. I would add that they especially hate to be sold to by a huge, faceless, impersonal corporation, who doesn’t understand them or give a hoot about them. But give them true value for free via social media and other forms of  direct communication, building both trust AND desire, and they will LOVE to buy from you.

The True Value of Social Media

This is the true value of social media for your online presence. In an era of greater transparency and authenticity, social media is rapidly delivering a new standard of interacting more person to person, even if it’s just one person in your company who is chosen to be the active “face” in that realm. If you update a blog regularly, you can auto update both Facebook and Twitter from your blog posts, so it doen’t have to take a bunch of time. Don Crowther, social media guru, says a highly effective social media strategy can take just 20 minutes a day. NOTE: And you cannot, must not sell directly or blatantly spam your follows, or they will unfollow you quickly.

Getting started and doing it right does take some work, especially to standardize your brand across the big 3 social media sites – your face or brand needs to be consistent on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube and each site requires a bit of customization to achieve this.

Also, Facebook especially can do all sorts of cool tricks with their version of HTML called FBML, including a custom landing page for non-fans with your email opt-in form embedded.

See also Fantastic Facebook Pages for more on our Facebook Page design services.

WE CAN HELP! Kaizen Marketing social media services start at just $500 for a fully customized social media presence. Contact us to get started right away. Social media is important partly because it can help you present a human face to human buyers of your product or service to help you sell MORE of your product or service.

See also Facebook Ads – the new kid on the block is a serious competitor to Google adwords and can target demographics in ways Google cannot touch. Wanna show ads only to middle aged men in California whose favorite book is “Think and Grow Rich”? For just 50 cents per click? You can now do it. Within a few hours.

Call for a free consultation at 805-403-1128

Of course, I just also added this post to my Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin streams with one click using a handy service called Yoono – I recommend it. Use it to quickly send shortened URL sites with your comments to your friends.

In this example, Twitter and Facebook links hold an honored spot next to Authorize.Net.

So here it is: the reason why these methods (and so many other lead generation and traffic generation methods) fall flat on thier faces is that… drumroll please… there’s no way to tell if the prospects you attract are buyers or tire kickers.

But here’s the important part: if you can’t clearly identify people who have an actual history of buying a product similar to yours, you’re wasting the majority of the time, effort and money you invest in lead and traffic generation.

Continue reading…