New Orleans Internet Marketing

Ever “Googled” yourself? If so, what do the search results show? If you have social media profiles and web pages with your name on them - there’s a good chance these will show up. This is what the concept of reputation management is built around - managing your online reputation. For people who do business on the web, their company name frequently comes up in social media circles….potentially on forums and blog posts, and it has become increasingly difficult for businesses to deal with negative statements about them. Although the best defense in good customer service, we all know you can’t keep everyone happy all the time.

Worst case scenario is having sites like these (click) pop up about your business. Who wants a whole website devoted to attacking their reputation?
:(

Sometimes the best defense is an early one, and here are two simple ways you can monitor your online reputation:

1. Alerts: Google, Yahoo, and MSN all have alert services that will let you know when the top 10 or 20 search results change for a search you choose. Here’s where to set them:
http://www.google.com/alerts
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/alerts/
http://alerts.live.com/Alerts/Default.aspx

2. Search Blogs: Use Technorati.com to monitor the blogosphere by subscribing to RSS feeds of the searches you want to monitor.

Many people are aware that I work for an internet marketing firm called Foreman & Pike Consulting (used to be www.ForemanPike.com). We have now changed our name to Reciprocal Consulting (www.ReciprocalConsulting.com). I am happy to say that we will continue to be able to provide the same top-notch service that we are well known for in the industry. Here is the letter from John Pike on the change:

As the internet advertising market changes each day, so must we.

Foreman & Pike Consulting has always been on the cutting edge of growth, development and performance; and this will not change. We will continue to offer Internet advertising solutions, successful conversions, increased sales and most importantly, a return on your investment — all on a pay for performance basis. However, we benefit from your success as much as you do because after all, without you we would be without purpose.

It is for this reason that Foreman & Pike has changed their name to Reciprocal Consulting.

We believe that Reciprocal better describes who we are, what we do and what we offer, as our relationship with our clients is mutually beneficial. We want to stress, as we always have, that we are Partners with our clients. We take on your vision, make your goals our goals and our success is measured only by your success. This is the difference between an Internet Marketing firm and Reciprocal Consulting.

Nothing has changed and nothing will except for our name, which we feel better represents us and our relationship with you, our clients.

Sincerely,

John E. Pike, Owner & President

Reciprocal Consulting

When I moved almost all of my websites to a dedicated server at LiquidWeb about 4 months ago, I thought I would be getting some peace of mind, but I had no idea about all of the other great things that would result from having a managed, dedicated server of my own.

Here are some of the things I find really advantageous about dedicated servers as opposed to typical shared hosting that I was handcuffed by before.

1. Incredible Response Times - granted these differences are in milliseconds, but obviously there is a significant difference here. These two charts are my site monitoring results from my dedicated server at LiquidWeb, and my Gridserver (shared hosting) account at Media Temple. If you look at the scale on the left, you will see that the LiquidWeb dedicated server is about twice as fast on average. I should also mention that the Media Temple account has regular unscheduled downtime, still to this day.
   LiquidWeb Dedicated Server:
   
   MediaTemple Gridserver:
   

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re involved in the internet marketing profession, there is eventually going to come a time when you will need a picture of yourself for a bio or “about us” page. Especially if you’re a blogger - a good picture helps readers to connect and get a feel for who you are; Problogger has a good post on the benefits of using your picture on your blog.

My time had come. I needed a picture for our firm’s website. I’ve been getting along with some crappy old pictures that I cropped from random photos for too long. So being the internet marketing hacker I am, I hit Google up for some “New Orleans Photographers,” and that’s how I was lucky enough to find George Long.

Read the rest of this entry »

Being the webmaster of a site with over 400 direct advertisers (who are therapists), I often get asked about stats, and currently I don’t have anything set up to deliver stats to my directory’s advertisers. The population I advertise for are therapists who, for the most part, are relatively new to internet marketing. Since I also manage a few individual marketing campaigns for therapists, I have a good idea about the kind of traffic that converts into referrals for them, and the kind of traffic that doesn’t. I even get to see how good my site’s competitors do at sending conversions to therapists. It’s a really unique vantage point, and here’s what I’ve come to learn from it.

The truth about what people are selling you in terms of advertising, is that the bottom line is the price you pay for each conversion. In the case of the therapists who advertise on my website, a “conversion” is a referral for counseling services. With that being said, statistics on visitors and pageviews that people send their advertisers can potentially be meaningless due to the fact that conversions are highly dependent on how targeted the traffic is.

Read the rest of this entry »

LSU 38, OSU 24.

While the Ohio Buckeyes started off strong, their #1 ranked defense was no match for LSU’s offense. Congratulations LSU Tigers we’re proud of you.

I didn’t even know about managed DNS until I read about it on John Chow’s blog a long time ago. I could relate to the stress of DNS propagation issues though, and I thought it would be a good idea to try it out.

Today, I’ve been using externally managed DNS for about 4 months, and I’m very happy with the results. For my more important websites (the ones that make money), I decided to keep backup copies of them on a less expensive hosting account just in case my dedicated server ever goes down. I realized the need for this type of setup after years of dealing with shared hosting and unscheduled down time (inevitably at the worst possible time).

Under normal circumstances, a backup copy of your website on another server won’t do much good, because if you need to switch to the backup - you can expect a 24hr delay as DNS propagates. Not with externally managed DNS though. Now I can switch between the two servers in 5 minutes. No more having to wait until the next morning to find out if my site is functioning properly on the new server. Read the rest of this entry »

Title tags are one of the most important aspects of on-page search engine optimization. While there are a lot of aspects of a web page that help it to rank well for keywords, the title tag is undoubtedly one of the most important.

The title tag is the html code that looks like this: <title>Title Goes Here</title>

It is contained within the <head></head> section of the html document and shows up at the top of the web browser. It is also the link that shows up at the top of your site’s listing in the search results. Here are some important considerations that will make your use of title tags more effective.

Read the rest of this entry »

I met a guy named Chris on Digital Point the other day, and he did some work for me. He did a really good job, so I asked him if he did anything else. He then tells me about these Ebay affiliate sites that he’s selling to people for dirt cheap. He sends me a bunch of examples, and I was blown away.

The sites are setup using Wordpress with an ebay affiliate feed for whatever type of item category you choose. He sets a cron job to update the feed, and walla! You’ve got an ebay affiliate site, SEO friendly and ready to go in a few hours.

So I had to try this out myself. I bought RolexWatchAuctions.com, and I bought AppleComputerAuctions.com for a friend of mine as a Christmas present. Here are some other sites he’s done:
http://1dollardvd.net
http://rockbandsource.com
http://guccigallery.com
http://mycoachstore.com

I got a few links for RolexWatchAuctions.com, and it’s already on the first page of Google for “rolex watch auctions,” I haven’t even had the site 2 weeks yet.

Here’s what you will need:

1. Choose a topic that you think will be profitable for an ebay affiliate website.
2. Create an affiliate account at Commission Junction so you can join the ebay affiliate program.
3. Buy the domain name.
4. Choose a Wordpress Theme (I customized the graphics at the top for mine, Chris didn’t do that).
5. Setup hosting somewhere or add the domain on to an account you have that allows multiple websites.
6. Send me $50 through Paypal (Click Here), and I will get you in touch with Chris so he can start your site. Make sure you put your email address in the Paypal message if it’s different from your Paypal email.

This offer expires on Jan. 10th, 2008.

I do a lot of pay-per-click management for the firm I work for, and I think I’m pretty good at it. I can build out good ad groups and ads, lower click costs, improve clickthrough rates, build good content match campaigns etc., etc., etc., but every now and then I do a consult for a client that’s thinking about using us for SEO. Here’s where I shine. SEO is my one of my favorite topics, and I have been doing it with success for many years now. These are the top 5 reasons I think SEO is one of the best investments you can make in your website:

1. Improvements to the way you organize your site and it’s content, will help the Search Engines to find and index your site better for the rest of its life. Best of all, it should help visitors as well.
2. The suggestions that your SEO gives you will be “best practice” standards that you and your designers can use for any future work you do.
3. New, original content that you add will be yours forever, and you can bring in search traffic from it for as long as it’s there.
4. Many links that you get will be permanent links, that will continue to exist, drive traffic, and help your search results for as long as the linking site remains online.
5. Most importantly, you never pay a cent for showing up for keywords that you aren’t targeting. In fact, long-tail searches that weren’t planned for can bring in a lot of converting traffic as well.

SEO is a great long term investment in your website. I like to look at a website as a piece of property, and SEO is not only home-improvement, but it also puts you in a better neighborhood.

I have about 15-20 websites that I manage, and most of them are database driven these days. Managing databases adds another whole level of complexity to moving and backing up websites that didn’t exist when everything I managed was plain html years ago. Only having to deal with MYSQL databases these past few years,
admittedly, I’m not a pro. But I’ve managed to get the hang of things, for the most part.

So the old process was really cumbersome. At times, I had to install PHPmyadmin if it wasn’t already on the server, then worry about conflicting versions or settings between PHPmyadmin on different servers. Frequently, I got errors when importing SQL files that were dumped from another server. It really became a nightmare when I was trying to move sites from Media Temple to Liquid Web recently.

Then I found Navicat (http://www.navicat.com). Navicat is a program for Windows, MAC, or Linux, that allows you to manage MYSQL databases with a nice GUI and easy to use, straightforward features.

Have you ever purchased software, when you really didn’t want to spend the extra money, and then afterwards you thought to yourself, “wow, that was the best investment I’ve made in a long time?”

That’s how I felt after purchasing Navicat. It stores al of my DB settings, and I can backup,
transfer, sync, edit, import & export, all with just a few clicks. It’s literally cut my DB management time by about 75%. Talk about “making an amateur feel like a pro.” Another good thing was that they had a fully functional 30 day trial available for download. So I got to use it for a while before I actually made the purchase.

I just wanted to pass this on because Navicat is “good stuff.” It seems rare these days that I run into products that work out of the box, and help me to accomplish my goals easier.

For those of you that don’t know who PayPerPost is, they are probably the biggest paid blog posting service on the web. They have a network of (according to them) around 80,000 bloggers, and anyone can sign up to create an “offer” for paid posts from the bloggers. Advertisers can request links from the blog posts, and specify PageRank requirements from the bloggers as well.

This has put PayPerPost in a position to get a LOT of business from SEO’s looking for relevant links. At the same time, it’s put a target on the backs of all of their paid blogging network that Google is aiming at sharply. Last month, Google dropped the axe on many PayPerPost bloggers, reducing their PageRank considerably. If you didn’t see it coming, you don’t know much about SEO. Read the rest of this entry »

After struggling for years with the frustration of poor technical support, latency, and down-time, it appears that I’ve finally found the solution to my web hosting woes. Liquid Web’s Dedicated Servers have been nothing short of excellent for me so far. If you’re serious about your websites, and they are a source of income for you, it’s not worth the savings to buy cheap web hosting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I did a little work on a privacy policy I have been writing for a website. Privacy policies are something I have ignored in the past, but they are becoming increasingly important as more people on the web these days actually read them, and they can give more “trust” to your site from certain parties.

I started it off with the information gathered from Google Analytics that I use for various purposes. Google Analytics is a really great analytical tool, and it is an effective way to run pretty reports that clearly show visitor trends, effectiveness of marketing, search queries, etc. I’ve had a few clients ask some pretty tough questions in the past, and on occassion, I’ve had to dig deep into Analytics to find the answer. Did you know that Analytics tracks visitor stats down to browser type, OS, geographical location, Java version, network location, screen resolution, and more? Read the rest of this entry »

I recently upgraded to MS Office 2007, not really because I wanted to, but because there were some glitches with Office 2003 that were giving me trouble and I was sick of fighting with them. I tend to avoid new MS products for a while when they first come out due to their mass quantities of bugs and patches…

So the upgrade goes smooth, then I notice the slowdown. OMG every time it does a send / receive, it’s like my computer locks up for 5 seconds! How can Microsoft screw up a simple POP3 connection? Shouldn’t innovative new updates to existing programs IMPROVE their efficiency? Why do we keep having to get bulkier programs that use up more system resources with each new version? This is why I need to buy a new computer every year, to keep up with the trash that MS puts out. Done venting.

How much per month do you spend on SEO, not including on-page stuff like content and changes to your site? Is it enough? How much would you need to spend to be comfortable with the SEO effort?

I do SEO for a bunch of sites, some for other people, some for myself. I think I spend around $700 / mo. on link building for my own sites. Although I’m really not happy with that. I would like to spend $1000. If I spent $1k / mo. on link building I think I could totally dominate the keyword phrases I want. But I do have top rankings for like 7 out of 10 kw phrases I want (see the correlation there?) :)

Without going into details that would help my competition devour me (I think they probably spend twice as much for not nearly as great results), my budget breaks down to about an even split of several different forms of link building. Including the occasional email from yours truly to the more exceptional websites I want links from.

For my clients, I find I can hit moderately competitive keyword phrases for around $600 / mo., given about 6 months time if they were no where on the charts before I start. By “moderately competitive,” I mean the top results have some well optimized PR4 sites, maybe a PR5 or two. It seems like a PR5 is more difficult to attain these days than it was a year ago.

What do you guys spend on link building, and how competitive is your market?

This morning I ordered a new battery for my digital camera through a company called MemorySuppliers.com, they have a really good online store where you can buy all kinds of memory, batteries, etc. I got an email an hour later stating that my order had already been shipped! Great service!

Then I get this email from them, and it says:

We have a special money saving offer for you today: If you would like to receive a $15.00 credit back on your credit card for this order, simply post a link to MemorySuppliers.com on your website, blog, personal profile page (i.e. myspace) with a short one or two line description of our website and products. When finished, email us the web address where the link is posted and we will give you a $15.00 credit back on to your credit card.

This is a great idea, that I have actually tried in the past. The only problem was that I tried it on my marriage counseling directory, for new therapists who signed up to advertise. That population is not very tech savvy, and I got so many questions about how and what to do in the first few weeks, that I abandoned the campaign completely. It wasn’t worth the time it took.

Still, a great idea if you’re in an industry that deals with tech-savvy people. Try it out!

I currently have many of my websites hosted on Media Temple’s Gridserver. If you click on the link, don’t get sucked into their slick marketing and hyped up “Grid Hosting” talk. Today my sites on those servers have been dead slow to respond all day long. About 15 websites. Since moving them to the gridservers they have also been plagued with database errors, even after upgrading to “dedicated” memory for my db’s (Grid Containers). I’m now spending a around $80 / month for two accounts, and I don’t feel safe keeping my sites there much longer. I lose money every time something like this happens, and it never fails, that it happens at the worst possible time (like the day you spent a bunch of time and money doing extra marketing to get people to your website).

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a website with excellent organic search engine rankings for moderately competitive keywords that are well-targeted for a lot of advertisers. I run Adsense on this site, and it has always done well for me. But in the past 6 months or so, Adsense revenues have been declining somewhat, so I decided to take action.

The best performing Adsense ads are usually showing up at the top, so I did some research and found which two had the best paying affiliate programs. One paid around 30% per sale, and the other had a very good per sale payout that wasn’t dependant on the percentage. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are a few popular article publishing websites. The first one, Squidoo, is a little more than just an article publishing site. On Squidoo, you create a page, or “lens,” where you can add different types of content like graphics, rss feeds, affiliate links and more. Articles submitted to many others typically rank well themselves in search results.

http://www.squidoo.com

http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.e-topic.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
Read the rest of this entry »