CLW Consulting Blog

One of my SEO friends recommended that I try a social website called stumbleupon to improve my generic rankings in search engines. Of course I was skeptical at first, but I tried it anyway. Stumbleupon shows you random websites that are based on your interests. I thought to myself, oh great, now I have to sit and look at a bunch of poor quality websites. But after I set my preferences, I expected the poorest and most irrelevant sites imaginable. To my surprise, I was able to stumble upon some very interesting websites and I found myself bookmarking about 5% of them. I rarely bookmark a site unless it has someone incredibly useful to offer. The reason that the websites were more relevant and better than what you would normally get from a standard query on a search engine is because over 2 million stumbleupon members can vote whether your site was useful or not and they can leave positive or negative comments about them.

This exercise started to make me think about my own sites. Do my websites offer something useful to visitors within 2-5 seconds? Do my websites make me to appear to be an authority on the subject? Are my websites easy to understand and navigate through? Do my website offer clear benefits to visitors?

I tried posting several of my websites up on their advertising section just to see how stumbleupon users would react to them. One of my websites received a lot of praise because I offered a useful free video on the top right of the home page that was relevant to my URL name and the landing page content. That particular video cost me $8k to produce and I was once tempted to set it up as a pay-per-view on google video but then I decided it would be best to offer it free to draw new and repeat visitors to my site.

I also tried entering one of my client�??s websites that has a recognized brand name. Within minutes it received 3 very positive reviews. In fact, two of the reviewers happened to be former employees of the company.

It was great to get the instant feedback for my websites and the exercise opened my eyes to some things I can do to further improve the way my websites project themselves to the public. Now I almost think of my websites as contestants on American Idol that might be voted off for poor content or delivery.

How can your websites avoid a �??thumbs down�?�? I suggest asking as many of your friends to criticize your websites until the text, images or media on your sites themselves radiate �??The Law of Attraction�?�. In other words, try to determine the positive ways your website should project itself to reach the targeted customers you are trying to attract.

You may also consider reading a book by Al Ries & Jack Trout called �??The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing�?�. Try to align your positive messages about your products and services with these immutable laws of marketing. Start using the new demographic tools that some search engines such as stumbleupon are use to target customer interests and preferences. This information should help put you on the right track for increased traffic and higher conversion rates.

Christian Wilson - Born in North Hollywood and raised in Mexico, Brazil, New York, Idaho, Utah and the beautiful islands of Tahiti and Hawaii. Graduated from BYU Idaho and BYU Hawaii where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Adminstration. Christian spent the last 25 years in business, computers and marketing - primarily as a computer programmer, retail manager, nutritional supplement manufacturing consultant and last 8 years as a SEO/SEM consultant.

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What do keywords, keyword optimization, keyword stuffing, keyword ratio, and more do for your business? Why the hype and what is so important?

There is no doubt keywords are vital. They are the words folks might use to locate your information.

For example, a person researching cell phones might use the following keywords typed into Google, Yahoo, Metacrawler or any number of the available search engines.

- Cell phones
- Wireless phones
- Cell phone planes
- Prepaid cell phone
- Best cell phone
- Cellphone
- Cell phone deals
- Cell phone reviews

When choosing keywords for a business the first step is to consider what terms people will use to find you. It takes three steps to accomplish this.

1. Brainstorm ideas. Brainstorming keywords with pen and paper may seem ridiculous at first but it is an excellent strategy. The brainstorming exercise will be a success if you are creative and think like a potential customer. Try to think of 50 potential keywords. Even misspelled keywords, like the ‘cellphone’ example used in the above list.

2. Ask your friends, family, customers, associates. Step two is to start asking around. Find out from people what keywords they would use to locate information on your business idea. Friends, family and associates are generally the best place to go however if a business has a close relationship with their customers, then asking a few key customers may be beneficial.

3. Keyword popularity tools are used for research. This third step is where business owners often skip right to. However if you don’t attack a keyword popularity tool with a plan, you can end up with thousands of potential options ‘ a real mess. Take keywords you have complete confidence in and use the keyword tools to examine how often they are used. This will help business owners determine what their primary keywords are and what keywords to use in their content or on secondary website pages.

There are free keyword tools available such as:

a. https://adwords.google.com/select/ Keyword Tool

b. https://www.wordtracker.com/trial/ Free trial

c. inventory.overture.com/

d. http://keywordspy.com Free Trial

That leads us right into a very frequently asked question…where are keywords used? Several places actually…The home page and index page of a business website is where the primary keywords are located. This is the page people land on when they come to a website. Maybe it has sales copy, maybe it tells a bit about the company’s products or services, or maybe it offers informational copy. A basic rule is to find one or two primary keywords. They should be placed in the headline, first and last paragraph and then distributed throughout. Keyword stuffing or jamming your copy full of you keywords makes the copy read like a phone book and the search engines don’t like it.

Secondary keywords can be used on subsequent website pages, articles, press releases, press releases, advertisements, blog posts and so on. Using the example from earlier a primary key word might be “cell phone” or “cell phones” and a secondary keyword might be “cell phone reviews”

Keyword hype is justified. They are a huge influence on a company’s profitability. Future customers use keywords to locate products, services, and information. Your business is found with them. Traffic will come to your business website if you set up the right keywords and most commonly used keywords on your site. More traffic and bigger profits are the end result.

Joan Finholt is a retired teacher who is co-owner of Bound and Determined Books. She enjoys using the internet to market the business. Visit her site at:

http://www.boundanddetrmined.com

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How does article writing, publishing, or listing, help my Search Engine Optimization? Good question, I’m glad you asked. Writing, publishing, or listing articles is one of the best ways to give your rankings a boost. Let’s explore what happens when you write an article and publish it in an article directory, and then we will come back to why you benefit from listing someone else’s article on your site.

Writing articles:

The best way to explore this, is to take a look at an articles lifecycle. First step is to write the article.

There are many things to remember when you write the article:

• Make it informative- try to have some new information about your product or services.
• Make it as entertaining as possible- engaging the reader is going to have the best effect on the article popularity.
• Keyword rich title and content- placement of keywords associated with your products or services will benefit you, and anyone that list your article on their site. The more relevant your keywords, the more relevant sites will want to list your article. Having sites that are relevant to your products or services listing your link, is what article writing is all about.Author Bio with links- You should have one key word link, one web site name (ie www.mysite.com), and a call to action ( i.e. Visit us at, see for yourself, etc..) in your bio

We will explore the above, and other key factors, in other articles, for now, let’s see what happens after you write the article.

Publishing:

The 2nd step is to publish your article in as many directories, and blogs as possible. It is physically impossible to go to each article directory out there and publish your article. There are programs that can publish to many article directories at one time, however, I’m not sure about the quality of the directories they publish to. It’s like advertising on a billboard located in crack town, will it ever get noticed? (unless your selling crack) You want to concentrate your efforts on high ranking directories first. This is more like a billboard on the highway just before your exit. Directories like the one where you find this article. The higher ranked directories get your article listed in search engines much faster, and carry more weight in the bio links. Then. if you want, you can publish in the lower ranked directories just to get the quantity of links back to your site. That brings us to link popularity.

Link Popularity:

This is where the real magic happens, and you can actually watch it happen in the search engines. The top four search engines are Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask.com. These are the ones you will be checking your articles popularity in. Just put your articles title in quotes in the search boxes of the search engines and watch what happens. Each day you will see the pages that list your article grow. Hence, your link popularity also grows. You should check them on a regular basis, and visit the links to insure they are in fact listing the bio box, do a page view to make sure they do not have a �??index, no follow�?� rule in the link as well. I will get into article protection in more detail in another article.

When you see these numbers starting to drop, it is time to list it in even more directories to extend it’s life.

Ok, now we understand the benefits of writing and publishing your articles in directories, let’s take a look at why you should list other peoples articles on your site.

Listing Articles:

Content is the buzz word here! Content is king, and link popularity is queen when it comes to search engine optimization. The cost of link for some content is a small price to pay. You want to choose the articles you list carefully. You want articles that followed the above listed rules. Keywords are the.. umm err.. key. The more relevant the article to your product and services the better the content is considered by the S.E. spiders. Well, won’t having all these outbound links hurt me? No. If you chose your articles carefully, then you are linking to sites that also have relevant content to the subject. Not to mention linking to a higher ranked site will never harm you. This is a quick way to get content for your site. You should be doing a little of both, writing and listing. Try to pick a mix of articles so that your content will be a little different from somebody doing the same thing.

When someone does a search query on a term, then all the sites with content related to that term will pop up in the top of those list. The more content you have on the subject, the more relevant the S.E. sees your site as being to the user.

Engaging your visitors is another benefit. Number of page views and visitors have a high importance to your Alexa ranking, and that has a high importance to MSN and Yahoo rankings. The more engaged the visiter is, the more pages they view, the more pages they view, the better you conversion rate on average.

They final benefit is fresh content. Changing they articles out, or moving older ones to an archive folder, and placing new articles on the top will tell the search engines they need to visit your site often because the content is constantly changing. The more often you change the content the more often they will visit your site, the more often they visit your site. This means your pages get listed quicker, and you receive more search engine links as more of your pages get indexed, increasing your relevancy even further. RSS feeds are a great way to keep the content fresh, just remember you want to keep the articles on static pages too, especially for archiving.

I hope this article has been of use to you, and that I was able to explain the benefits of writing, publishing, and listing articles in a clear fashion.

Jim owns and operates http://www.neutonmarketing.com and has many free seo tools for site members. He also offers web site hosting, .name and domain registration. Stop in and get some free tools, and tips today.

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It’s said that like there is no �?�free lunch�??, there are no easy answers, especially when it comes to health care. The recent radical changes in the health care industry have changed all the trends�?� the health care industry is emerging in a new shape, offering new opportunities and ushering in a new era. With the way the industry continues to change, I’ve come to realize, even with almost a decade’s experience behind me, I have as many questions as I do answers.

Marketing professionals are continually faced with the Herculean task of sending exciting new messages to the target audience �?” messages which evoke interest and make them visit your health care facility, enable your facility to stand up to face and fare well in the wake of the constant new challenges.

The problem arises when, in zeal to come up with something new, they forget to cash on the goodwill and equity generated by the previous marketing messages. We forget to be consistent.

Being consistent in all our communications going out to the public at large, enables them to identify and relate to a common denominator which is being conveyed through all messages �?” it can be the customer friendly approach / hospitable staff or an IT savvy health care facility �?� the message needs to be consistent in all communications to drive home the factor and market it as a USP.

Your marketing message must consistently reinforce the image that you hope is present in every customer’s mind. Losing sight of that message causes the perception you’ve worked hard to develop to slowly erode away.

Consistency is an important aspect in all domains of health care marketing - it’s a key component to outstanding customer service. Have you ever thought about how your customers (patients) view your system’s services after traversing the continuum of care �?” from the point of entry into the hospital system to the point of discharge from the hospital system- from the emergency department and admissions to nursing units, radiology, and the lab, patients are treated with varying levels of respect and courtesy. These inconsistencies cause the process to seem disjointed, and the patient to feel unimportant.

Consistency is also vital for your non-hospital services, as well.

Are all of your physicians delivering the same high standard for customer service? What about the physician that has a reputation for always being behind schedule? It’s important to remember, in the patient’s eyes, your whole system is only as good as the patient’s worst experience. It needs to be understood that we need to be explicit when setting customer service expectations for our organization. By giving specific guidelines to all parts of the organization, we can assure a consistent interpretation of what the organization expects when it comes to good customer service.

http://bahlatul.googlepages.com/

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