New Orleans Internet Marketing

I just posted this LiquidWeb announcement on Dedicated Server School, two minutes later I googled the text to see if it was posted anywhere else on the web, and I was amazed to see that my post was already indexed.

See the screenshot:



Notice the text to the right of the URL that says “2 minutes ago.” While that in and of itself isn’t very impressive, the fact that I posted it 2 minutes ago, the blog pinged Google and it got crawled and indexed that fast is pretty amazing.

If you’re a small business who can’t afford to have a professional PPC management company run your Adwords campaign, then use this simple guide to get started on the do-it-yourself plan:

• First and foremost, make sure you can track conversions so you know how your Adwords campaign is performing. Start by getting a cheap 1-800 number from Kall8.com and forward it to your regular number. Replace your phone number on your website or Adwords landing pages with this one so you can check your call detail to see which calls came from your Adwords campaign.
  
  Then make sure you set up conversion tracking in Adwords, this usually only requires putting a small bit of code on your “thank you” page.
  
  It also helps to have Google Analytics installed on your website, with “Goals” setup properly. With “goals” in Google Analytics, you can easily track conversions whether it be a lead submitted through a contact form or purchase through an online shopping cart, and Analytics allows you to see quite a bit of information about the different types of traffic your website receives, much more than what you will get form the Adwords interface.
  


• Second, make sure that your site is conversion-friendly. Internet users have short attention spans, and some may not visit more than one page of your website. Since you are spending your hard-earned money to get these people to your site, it’s of utmost importance that you can turn a visitor into a conversion on that first page.
  
  This may mean setting up landing pages that are targeted for each type of ad you’re running in Google. For shopping carts, the ads should send the visitor to the specific product page or category that they are targeting. For lead generation sites, the ads should send the visitor to a page that deals specifically with the ad and keywords you’re targeting. Most importantly, web pages should have your 1-800 number displayed prominently on the website, and if it’s a lead generation site, there should be a contact form on every page.
  
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I’ve been designing web sites since 1998, but that’s really not important. Anyone can design a web site. But how many people really understand how traffic flows on the internet? I spend  e v e r y   w a k i n g  moment trying to figure it out.

I’ve helped bring traffic to websites in many different ways. It started with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When I started doing SEO, the results were amazing. I read a few good resources, like The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, the doctoral thesis by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. I spent countless hours on WebmasterWorld and SearchEngineWatch and reading newsletters by people like Jill Whalen. In no time at all I was hitting the top of the search engine results with every keyword phrase I targeted. I was also learning Social Work at the time, and I wrote my master’s thesis on Search Engine Accessibility and Community Resources; it was a project designed to help community resource agencies design web sites with search engine optimization in mind. The research I did at this time gave me an in-depth understanding of how search engines work.

I was still designing web sites at the time, and with incredible results. My client’s sites did great in the search engines. That’s when I realized that I needed to start designing web sites of my own. I realized that no matter how much I charged for the web sites I designed for small businesses, my time and effort was just as valuable, when put towards developing sites of my own.

Needless to say, the success I had was great. The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory was my first real project I did on my own, and it’s still one of the top sites in its niche today, well enough respected that therapists fequently submit articles for publication on the site.

I’ve since moved on to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), running ad campaigns in Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and their collective search partners. I’ve done a lot of experimentation with those campaigns on my own sites, which has helped me learn what works and what doesn’t.

Then came social networks. Forums had always been around, but social networks? To be honest, I had my head in the sand, hoping that they would go away at first. I was “too busy” to go on myspace.com, and wayyyy too much of a rebel to be a part of the “mainstream” by doing something like “having a myspace page.” Boy was that dumb. People are navigating the web in a completely different way now, and it’s going to continue to change. Hopefully I never put my head in the sand again. Now I actually like myspace, and I “get it.” Even though I’m 31 years old and definitely not “with it.”

Did I mention that World Spearfishing Guide (case study coming soon) is #1 on myspace.com right now when you search for “Spearfishing?” I’ve found a whole new area of internet marketing – social media search engine optimization – let’s call it “smseo” for short. :)

So this is what I do now. It started off as Independent Layout & Website Design, and it’s now New Orleans Internet Marketing (dba inlayout, LLC). The focus of my work is designing proprietary, niche, web sites that provide information and services to the public.

 Thanks for stopping by,

 Chris Hartwell