How To Grow, Profit & Organize Your Business » Increasing Web Traffic

5 Search Marketing Tips From SMX

Rob Kelly — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:21:37 +0000

My Search Marketing Expert friend Dan Rosenbaum was kind enough to let me share a summary of the SMX conference he attended recently. Here are 5 Search Marketing Tips he learned from the conference: 1. Don’t bother creating separate site to appeal to Bing and Google. Back in the Bad Old Days, it was considered a good idea to code your website in such a way that it would appeal to the half-dozen or so search engines — each of which wanted to see something different. Now that Google gets the majority of searches, people don’t do that so much anymore. But with the rise of Bing, there was some concern that Bing might be focusing on different signals than Google. Rand Fishkin, of SEOMoz, showed some experimental data that implies that although Bing and Google are probably weighting their results somewhat differently, the differences are not enough to warrant any particular effort to change the way you’re producing your site. 2. Post a Video Sitemap. Really. If you have much video on your site, Google was very clear on this point: create, post and maintain an XML video sitemap in addition to your standard XML sitemap. This is, frankly, [...]

How To Select The Best Domain Name To Attract Search Engines

Rob Kelly — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:07:10 +0000

Did you know that one domain name could easily get you 5-times as much search engine traffic as another similar-sounding domain name!? Picking the best domain name for your business is an important decision…especially given that search engines will examine your domain name to determine how much traffic to send it. To pick the best domain name for a search engine, you’re gonna have to consider: What words or phrases are your prospective customers typing into search engines? Should a search engine know about your location? How many domain names should you own to maximize your traffic from a search engine? What’s the importance of “Micro-Sites” or “Campaign-Sites”? And more! To help answer those domain name/search marketing questions, I reconnected with my old friend Lana Goldenberg the other day (we worked together at Topica and Hot Topic Media). Lana is now a Search Marketing Coach and was kind enough to share her thoughts on how you should approach using/choosing a domain name that Google and search engines will value. And she even offers you a freebie consultation — Enjoy! The Best Domain Name For Your Business Q: Hi Lana. For starters, does the name of a web site (i.e. the [...]

How One Biz Used A Free Coke To Get 25,000 Facebook Leads (Real Leads with Physical/Email Address!)

Rob Kelly — Sat, 22 May 2010 01:50:54 +0000

If you want to generate free leads on Facebook, Scott Crider is someone you should listen to. He’s been preaching the benefits of creating value through social media for a few years now. Back in 2007 Scott built the Dogs Against Romney blog after hearing Presidential hopeful Romney tell a reporter about how he had once strapped a dog cage to the roof of his car (with his dog in it!) on family vacation, traveling 80MPH…scaring the dog so badly that it shit all down the side of the car. Dogs Against Romney was an overnight viral success picked up by major media outlets — it generated at least 500,000 visits in less than a month. Scott also helped his friend and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee get hundreds of thousands of free Web site visitors during his campaign. If Elvis Presley were still alive, he’d probably be asking Scott for help monetizing Facebook (Scott’s firm, Aristotle Interactive, handles email marketing for Elvis Presley Enterprises). Scott and the Aristotle team had a recent win helping a business generate leads through Facebook. I asked him a few questions about lead gen win and general subject of making money through Facebook — enjoy! Q: [...]

How To Get Followers On Twitter (Ones that Buy Things!)

Rob Kelly — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:39:54 +0000

I recently met a neat guy named Mitchell Cogert who gave me some good Twitter tips. He’s the president of ad agency Johnson Cogert & Strauss and has worked with Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Intuit and other leading businesses on marketing strategy. For himself, he has used Twitter to build a profitable little business selling poker books. Mitchell was kind enough to answer questions on such topics of Twitter as: How do you get free Twitter followers? Is it a good idea to buy Twitter followers? How do use auto-follow and unfollow to get more Twitter followers? How fast should you get Twitter followers? Here’s the Q&A on: How To Get Followers on Twitter Q: Hi Mitchell, let’s start off simple. How do you get followers on Twitter — what are the top few tips? Here are three easy and free ways to get followers on Twitter: Add a “Follow-me on Twitter” icon and link on your website Add your Twitter account name on your email address Announce to your mailing list that you are on Twitter Q: Would you discuss how to use Twitter’s auto-follow feature to get followers? Twitter does not have an auto-follow feature to get followers. [...]

How To Have X-Ray Vision About Your Competition

Rob Kelly — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:43:12 +0000

Imagine if you had x-ray vision about your competitors…and even your partners and clients!? Well, lately, I feel like I do. I’ve been using a free tool for a month now and it allows me to instantly see the following things about almost any Web site: How relevant Google thinks they are in their space How Many Web Pages They Have Built How Many Other Web Sites Link To Them How Much Traffic They Receive Their Ranking by Traffic How many of the social networking sites (such as Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc.) link to them What organic position they appear (on Google) when people search certain keywords It’s called the SEO Toolbar (instructions on downloading it are below); it provides you a toolbar on your Firefox Browser that you can turn on or off while you’re using the Web. Let me explain a few of the top ways I’m using this SEO Toolbar (using eBay as an example) In the first screenshot, I hit the blue info button in the upper left-hand corner to get the pop-up yellow screen of information about eBay). Doing so tells me the following about eBay (I’m going to pick highlights): In the first column (of [...]

Discover How To Network Like a Top-500 Web Site CEO

Rob Kelly — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:16:18 +0000

I chatted with DocStoc Founder & CEO Jason Nazar the other day.

I think you should know abut Jason and DocStoc because Jason is an amazing networker (among other things) and DocStoc has been one of the fastest growing Web sites in the last few years (ranked 407th by Quantcast with 15 million unique visitors per month, according to DocStoc).

Jason and I had a little chat in which I asked him a few questions. He agreed to let me share it with you.

How To Use The Google Wonder Wheel To Create More Efficient Content

Rob Kelly — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:20:08 +0000

Have you heard of the Google Wonder Wheel?

It's been available for 8 months, but few know what it is...and I hadn't heard of it until recently.

I use Google Wonder Wheel (it appears within the "Show options" after you search something on Google) as a word reference tool when I'm writing a new article -- to get an idea of things to include.

Google Wonder Wheel = More Efficient Content Creation

How To Get Incoming Links to Your Blog (or Web Site)

Rob Kelly — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:47:07 +0000
I've seen traffic from my blog go from zero to 8,000 visitors in eight months...and I'm starting to learn how to get incoming links. I thought I'd share some tips (many of which I still need to master myself!) on how to get incoming links to your blog (or Web site).
Top 8 Tips for Getting Incoming Links
If you're like me, you're going to learn all sorts of things as you try these tips out - including finding potential business opportunities beyond just incoming links. Ok, let's begin the list of my top 8 tips for getting incoming links:
Incoming Links Tip 1: Provide Valuable Content on Your Blog
For starters, you should have valuable content on your blog -- if you do, others on the Web will eventually find you and link

What is Affiliate Marketing? — Tips From a Veteran

Rob Kelly — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:46:03 +0000
Pam White has helped affiliates sell millions of dollars of products…and those sales were made at little risk to the affiliate marketer’s she managed, as they were primarily performance-based (they didn’t layout any cash until the products were sold!) She generously agreed to answer some questions to help us understand the affiliate marketing business. Q: Welcome, Pam. A lob-ball question first: What is online affiliate marketing? A good description, I believe, is “selling other people’s stuff” on the Internet and receiving a commission for doing so. Q: If you’re a business, and you have products to sell, how do leverage affiliate marketing? Determine the financial benefits of handing over the marketing expertise of a “staff of affiliates”, versus the cost of marketing the product through your own marketing department’s expertise. Does the competitor have an affiliate program? Maybe you should consider it as well. Q: If you want to run a business, but don’t have any products of your own, how do you leverage affiliate marketing? 1. Learn all you can about affiliate marketing – in general. SEO, PPC, etc. 2. Research products or services of which you have expertise and are passionate about. 3. Analyze keywords and quantity of [...]

Black Friday

Rob Kelly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:13:46 +0000
I woke up today and noticed that Google Trends lists “Black Friday Deals 2009″ as the fifth hottest trend in terms of search traffic. As I reviewed my other keyword tools, it looks to me like more than two million people will search the keyword “Black Friday” this month. Here are some examples of the number of searches involving “Black Friday” in the most recent month available (September): Black Friday Ads: 246,000 Black Friday Deals: 110,000l Black Friday Sales: 90,500 Walmart Black Friday: 22,200 Black Friday Specials: 9,900 Black Friday Coupons: 5,400 Black Friday Flyers: 1,300 What is “Black Friday”? Black Friday is primarily an American event referring to the popular shopping day of the Friday following Thanksgiving each year. Many retailers provide deals on Black Friday to attract the numerous people who take that Friday as a vacation day. The news media hypes up Black Friday as the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S. — this has been true twice this decade (according to Black Friday Wikipedia). The Black Friday history dates back to January 1966 when the Philadelphia Police department described the day after Thanksgiving as “Black” because the excessive shopping that day brought traffic [...]

SEO Tips From eBay’s SEO Specialist

Rob Kelly — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:10:10 +0000
I sat in on a talk that eBay’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Manager Dennis Goedegebuure gave at eBay’s headquarters in San Jose earlier this month. I got to chat with Dennis and he’s both smart and interesting — away from eBay he blogs about poetry, tips on San Francisco (in Dutch) and a favorite topic of mine: Black Coffee. Note: Just to be clear, even though this was an eBay SEO specialist presenting his tips are not focused on eBay Store SEO or any other SEO for eBay Web pages. While Dennis was through most of his presentation, I realized that he was going to make the slides available online — They are located here: Dennis Goedegebuure on SEO at eBay DecCon09. I decided to go ahead and include my notes (below) as there were some comments Dennis and attendees made that are not in the slides — I encourage you to look at both! Ok, on to my notes: Dennis’s Definition of SEO Free traffic More visitors More downloads More transactions Those sound like things you want? Here are some SEO tips, tricks and topics: Be Worthy First and foremost, Dennis recommends that you make sure that your product [...]

Some SEO Basics

Rob Kelly — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:56:38 +0000
I chatted with a guy named Dan Rosenbaum today. Why? He knows a bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — he increased organic referrals for #1 women’s site iVillage by 30% in one year. Plus, he and I used to work together at a then-amazing company called CMP Media; and he said he was looking for his next adventure (job). If you know anything about SEO, you know that good SEO people are hard to find! Plus, I look out for CMP alumni! Dan’s perspective on SEO is made all the more interesting because he has 30 years of experience in content (offline and online). I decided to pick Dan’s brain on some basic SEO stuff and share it with you. If you’re interested in hiring Dan, then check out Dan on LinkedIn. Ok, so here are my questions in bold — the rest is pure Dan! Ok, Dan, so what type of SEO professional are you? There are three types of SEO professionals. There are some people who are very code-based about it. They see things through a lens of technology. There are some who see it through a lens of analytics. My lens is a lens of content. [...]

Got Googlejuice? Nine Simple Tips for Showing Up in Search Results

Rob Kelly — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:50:21 +0000

Googlejuice!

If you had to master one concept in online marketing, this would surely be it.

I'll give some Googlejuice tips below...but first, some of you might be asking: what is Googlejuice?

Googlejuice is a catchall for a handful of things that you and others can do to make your products, business or anything else show up high in Google’s rankings when people search.

By the way, there's a great book called What Would Google Do?" target="_blank">What Would Google Do? that recently came out -- it has a few pages on Googlejuice and in general how to work better with Google.

So why is Googlejuice so important? Because it can send enormous traffic to your Web site -- and you don’t have to pay marketing dollars for it!