My Blogroll

Seth Godin's Blog

Marketing insights by one of Internet Marketing's top guru.

Small Biz Trends

Just started following this blog - the name says it all.

SEOMoz Blog

Information on the latest in the world of SEO.

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

"If you can't measure it - you can't manage it." (Drucker). Avinash tells you how to measure everything on your website.

aimClear Blog

Aimed at people doing their SEO and online PR 'in house' - there is a wealth of information on all aspects of promoting your site.

Mashable

THE blog to read for current information and trends in Social Medai.

Copy Blogger

READ THIS if you ever get stuck writing copy

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Archive for the ‘business’ Category

Client or Customer?

I have just started reading Jay Abraham’s book “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got”. Near the beginning of the book he makes the distinction between ‘client’ and ‘customer’. In the first chapter he quotes Webster’s Dictionary:

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Marketing Tip – Be Easy to Find

I have been working on a directory and interactive map for local tourism related businesses. The directory is just a simple ‘no frills’ directory, the map has the name and location of the business.

For a variety of reasons I am creating the map manually. Which means I need to get the address for each business being listed. To my amazement, many businesses, particularly restaurants and pubs, don’t have there address on the Home page. Or, if they do it is below the fold, so I have to search for it.

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Tracking Page Speed in Google Analytics

Google has confirmed that page load speed is one of the 200+ variables that contribute to the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). While there are a number of sites that will tell you how fast your site loads to your location, it would be nice to see how long it takes your site to reach your customers. In addition, once your site gets past a few pages, tracking the load speed of each page become a REAL PAIN.

Google Analytics Site Speed metric has changed that.

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Where In the World Are You

I was adding some information to a client’s. The client runs a bed and breakfast in a rural setting and I was adding the locations of restaurants and pubs near their location to their Google map. An easy job, if somewhat boring.

Adding this information requires getting the latitude and longitude of each location. An application at itouchmap.com makes this a simple operation. One option is to put in the address and it will spit out the latitude and longitude.

Problem #1 – the two most popular local pubs didn’t have their address prominently displayed on their websites. In one case the address was there, but way down on the page. In the second case the address was not on the Home page – but on a inner page.

Problem #2 – In both cases the addresses was not found in Google maps. They were using a local variant of the street address ‘Island Hyway S.’. Google shows the same road as ‘Island Hyway W.’ (Which is strange since it is to the East of the ‘Inland Island Hyway’. )

To be fair to Google Maps – it will actually find the right address if you enter the closest town. However, it displays the address as ‘Island Hyway W.’.

Should you be a slave to Google Maps? (MapQuest couldn’t find the address at all.) I guess it depends on whether you want you want only local people to find you?

 

Getting The Top SERP Just Got Harder

On Oct 27th Google announced a major change in local search results. The changes give more prominence to the Google Places results.

Like the old map search results, the Places results are placed near the top of the page. The map overlay has been enlarged and placed in the right column, previously reserved for Adwords (PPC). Surprisingly, the map overlays the PPC, so as you scroll down the page – the top PPC listings are hidden ‘behind’ the map.
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Don’t Ignore Bad Reviews


FreeFoto.com

I am planning a vacation for later this year. And, for the first time I am booking the rooms online.

We are flying to London and there are a HUGE number of hotels to choose from. So, I started looking at the review on TripAdvisor. One hotel in particular had a four star rating, was reasonably price, for London, and was near where we wanted to stay. It had a great website looked like exactly what I wanted in a hotel. But was getting hammered in TripAdvisor.
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Pinbud – An Interesting New Service

I got a comment from Lucien at Pinbud.com. He pointed out a spelling error in one of my posts. Spelling mistakes happen, even when you are using a spell checker. In this case the mistake was in the title, which I hadn’t run through the spell checker.

I hadn’t heard of PinBud before – so I checked out the site. It is a search engine for finding trades people within your geographic area. And, it is REALLY good.
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When You Have To Do A Presentation

Let me state this right up front.

I hate Power Point presentations. I hate doing them – I hate viewing them.

Unfortunately, every now and then I have to do one. More often I have to view them – which is why God gave us iPods and laptops with WiFi access.

While I can’t always stick to it – I like Guy Kawasaki’s 10 – 20 – 30 rule – 10 Slides; 20 minutes; 30 point font. The rule was designed for presentations to venture capitalist. These poor souls must sit through hundreds — maybe even thousands of presentations that, for the main, say the same thing, “Our product will change the world and all you have to do is give us truck loads full of money.”

You may not be asking for “truck loads of money”, but some times you have to give a presentation. Besides keeping in mind Guy’s rule, here are five things to do before you make the presentation:

  1. Choose a quite, well ventilated room that will comfortably hold more than the number of people you expect. To often good presentations are destroyed by noise or an over crowded room. A room full of people generate a lot of heat. Nothing is worse than having to ‘open a door’ just to get enough air to keep everyone from falling asleep.
  2. Respect your audience. Assume that they all can read as well as you. The slides are there to give the audience something to remember – not to be read verbatim. Make every slide concise. This is Power Point presentation NOT Power Paragraph presentation.
  3. Get there early. How many presentations have you been to where everyone was waiting for the projector or screen to be setup?Things go wrong. By getting there early you can at least try to get them fixed before your audience arrives.
  4. Face the audience. In his blog post Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin’s first point to a good Power Point presentation is:
    «. . . make yourself cue cards. Don’t put them on the screen. Put them in your hand. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make sure you’re saying what you came to say.»
  5. Practise – Practise – Practise.If you aren’t interested enough in your topic to prepared – no one else will be interested either.
 

A Yahoo Hompage – Really?

Is it just me – or is the concept of a ‘Home Page’ becoming passé?

Back in the old days, the last century for those of us using Linux, browsers only had one window. And, when you started your browser it opened up your ‘Home Page’. Fast forward to 2010 and even Internet Explorer has tabs and can restore a session.
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Web Marketing Strategies

Have you ever tried to explain your job to someone. One of the hardest parts is remembering all those little items that have, over time, become second nature. The things you do or know without really thinking about them.
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