What are organic search results? In Google, they are the listings that appear [...]]]> At last! SEO Defined

Search engine optimization (aka SEO) is the art and science of getting a website to appear prominently in organic search engine results (SERPs – search engine results pages) when a searcher submits a query relevant to that website.

What are organic search results? In Google, they are the listings that appear below the ads highlighted in peach at the top.  Organic results are not paid for and are based on the contents of the page itself.  Organic results are coveted by marketers because searchers know the SERPs are not ads and are more likely to contain content they are looking for.

So, in a nutshell, SEO is about GETTING FOUND!  And not only getting found, but getting found by people who are actively looking for your products or services.  In sales, these are called ‘highly qualified prospects’ because they are taking action, usually geared toward making a purchase.

A well-optimized website, therefore, is something akin to the Holy Grail of marketing.  It provides the right content to the right person at the right time.  The big companies spend millions on advertising to do just that.

So, if you’ve got a business with a web presence, not being findable by the major search engines is akin to not being listed in the phonebook – only worse, perhaps.

Today, when someone is looking to make a purchase, no matter what their age, the first thing they do is go online.  They are either looking for information on what is best to buy, or looking to buy.  In either case, if you can get found, share information, establish credibility, provide a reason to act and overcome any objections to taking that action, you will most certainly generate a steady stream of qualified sales leads from your website.

But SEO is not as simple as it would seem.  There are the page internals to deal with (parts only the search engines see), links, and content that is optimized for the right search phrases.  Why?  Your “steel drums” may be musical instruments, or they may be industrial parts. You’ve got to optimize for the right topics and for the right stage in the buying cycle.  For example, if someone is looking for a ‘rochester accounting firm’ they are probably ready to hire one.  However, if they type ‘why should I hire an accounting firm?’ they are probably in the research phase, which gives you an opportunity to attract them to your site early in their buying cycle.

The bottom line: A properly executed SEO strategy helps you be “there” for the right search queries and attract the right traffic to your website — qualified sales leads from people who are actively looking for the products or services you sell.

Want to talk SEO?  Contact BrightWay.  We offer several affordable search engine optimization programs for local and/or national markets.

Email is still one of the most cost effective and powerful ways to market your company and drive new or repeat business.  The challenge is, you basically have two (2) seconds and less than fifty (50) characters to entice [...]]]> Email open rates not what you’d like to see? The problem may be your subject line.

Email is still one of the most cost effective and powerful ways to market your company and drive new or repeat business.  The challenge is, you basically have two (2) seconds and less than fifty (50) characters to entice the reader to open your email. If you are seeing open rates less than 10% when sending to a list of recipients that have opted-in (signed up), here are some tips for creating subject lines that are sure to increase your open rates.

1. Personalize it.  Personalization within the subject line is a powerful tool to entice a recipient to stop scanning and start double-clicking to open your email. Inserting the recipients name into the subject line, like this: “Yes, Cathy, we have a special offer for you”, is certainly more likely to get Cathy’s attention than an email without her name in the subject line.  Agreed?

2. Make it value based.  What’s in it for your recipient?  People are motivated by desire and pain.  That’s it.  Marketing 101.  So if you want people to open your email, make your subject speak to their desire, or how you help them avoid pain.  For example, if your email is about a product you offer, highlight what that product does to improve the recipients life?  BrightWay recently created an three-touch email campaign targeted to small grocery chains for a software company announcing a new product line.  Here are the three email titles with their respective open rates.
1) An Invitation for Grocers (27% open rate – people love invitations! The invitation was to view a personalized demo.)
2) At Last! Pricing and Item Maintenance Made Easier (19% open rate)
3) At Last! Management Information at Your Fingertips (17% open rate)

All three were value based and you can see the impact on open rates.  If you need help polishing up your next email campaign, contact BrightWay.

In the six years BrightWay has been creating brands, sales materials, websites and marketing copy, there have been many great projects and there have been some duds.  And when a project doesn’t go right you always [...]]]> You get out of a project exactly what you put in…garbage in = garbage out.  Here’s what I mean.

In the six years BrightWay has been creating brands, sales materials, websites and marketing copy, there have been many great projects and there have been some duds.  And when a project doesn’t go right you always feel bad and try to analyze what went wrong and why.

So as a natural teacher and advisor, I am going to share with you the lessons I have learned about what it takes to create a great project together.

Lesson #1: Take ownership like a CEO.  You own the project not the designer.  You own the company, you own the message, you are the captain of the ship.  It is up to you to provide the information, direction and guidance and then LET GO so your designer can do their job.  This is a difficult balance to achieve, but this is what great CEOs do every day. They hire great people, they provide the vision, direction and guidance, and they trust them and let them do their job.   Too much control will inhibit the creativity of the designer.  Lack of vision and guidance, will result in a lackluster product.

Lesson #2:  Get clarity.  Know who you want to market to – exactly what you want to accomplish with the piece – and the message you want people to remember.  The message must be crisp and clear and not full of over used phrases like ‘quality service’, ‘professional staff’.  If you can communicate who your target is, what you want the piece to do and what you want to get across, you have a much better chance of achieving brilliant results.  BrightWay uses a questionnaire process for every project to get clarity on these aspects, which are critical to the project outcome.

Lesson #3: Like attracts like.  What you put out to the Universe comes back to you like a boomerang.  We need your passion and commitment.  If you are passionate (or at least lukewarm) and committed to the project, your energy will project into it and your content developer will be inspired to create something special.  Ideas will flow like waterfalls.  Conversely, if you are unavailable, non-responsive or lacking in focus, that is exactly the result you will get.  I know you will blame the designer, but if you look deep into your heart and do an honest assessment, you will realize that you just didn’t commit.

Lesson #4: Know your true difference.  A huge part of what the designer creates is a visual representation of what you offer that is truly unique.  This gives people a reason to pick you.  Every company possesses skills, products, people or processes that are unique.  How can you expect your web designer or content creator to communicate this if you can’t?  Be prepared to discuss how you are different in great detail.  Don’t use generalities like we give ‘quality service’.  That says absolutely nothing (and it is an expectation of doing business today).  Give the designer a detailed explanation of how and why you are different.  Tell them what you do.  Tell them about your competition and why you are better than them.  Don’t leave out any detail.  The more detail you can provide, the better the result.  For example, a heating and cooling company I worked with explained that their techs, who live in various areas around Metro Detroit,  take the trucks home at night.  This means if someone needs emergency service, they can dispatch the nearest truck and get there faster than if everybody was coming from headquarters.  That is a difference your designer can communicate with perfect clarity, and a solid reason for a prospect to pick you!

If you have marketing materials that are lackluster and are just not working for you, BrightWay has a process that can help. If you are passionate and ready to commit, then call 248.709.7882 for a free consultation.

1. Start by optimizing your most popular web pages to get people to sign up.  How do you know which pages are the most popular?  You [...]]]> Want to grow your email list so you can drive more sales?  Here are some new ideas I’ve gathered from my various marketing resources to help  you do that.

1. Start by optimizing your most popular web pages to get people to sign up.  How do you know which pages are the most popular?  You can use Google Analytics to find out.  Just set up an account and install the code on the pages you want to track  (BrightWay can help with this).

Then design an incentive that invites email sign up.  Make it appeal to the visitors that are coming to your popular pages.  For example, my interior designer has an amazing gallery page that showcases her work.  When someone visits they are probably looking for ideas, so this is a great place to put a newsletter sign up form; right next to the gallery offering FREE design ideas and tips.  Or you can go the pop-up route (which I personally find annoying) and display an ad to sign up.  The more prominent the “opt-in” call to action is, and the more clear the value of what they will get, the better response rate you will see.

2.  Create a great offer that inspires action.  For example, you might create a “subscriber-only club” and offer special products or discounts for subscribers only.  Or just ask them to sign up to receive monthly promotions and discounts.  I like the club idea.  People just love to be part of an exclusive group.

3. Ask a partner or referral source that serves your same market, but doesn’t compete with you, if you can ‘buy’ all or part of his “opt-in” list.  An “opt-in” list means that the people on the list have given the business permission to market to them.  For example, a jeweler might offer to purchase an “opt-in” email list from an Interior Designer or high end furniture store; both of whom serve a high end market willing to spend money on luxury. You get the idea.

Also, to reduce the chances of getting blacklisted as a SPAMMER, please let the recipient know how they got on your list.  You might say somewhere in the email, that they are receiving this because you are a partner of ABC design.

4. Last but not least, be sure to collect emails from all the people who call you (prospects) or people you meet at marketing events.  Have a system for your sales team or employees to enter the information in.  If it is a casual business contact, such as someone you met at marketing events, I suggest you ask them if they would like to receive free marketing tips and ideas.  For me, I get annoyed when people just put me on their list without asking.  How about you?

BTW- BrightWay never sends SPAM to purchased lists, EVER.  This is a quick way to get shut down by your email service provider and get blacklisted, which is highly counterproductive to your Internet marketing efforts.

If you’d like to learn more about marketing your company properly using email, call BrightWay at 248.709.7882.  We’ll fill you in.

First we’ll start with some definitions…

PPC is pay-per-click advertising.  You (or BrighWay) sets up the ads and they are displayed on the search results page (SERP) when someone types a phrase [...]]]> Am I talking another language?  What does the title of this article mean?  If you are curious read on for a true story.

First we’ll start with some definitions…

PPC is pay-per-click advertising.  You (or BrighWay) sets up the ads and they are displayed on the search results page (SERP) when someone types a phrase you have bid on.  If they click on your ad, it goes to the designated page on your website and you are charged the bid price for that click.

SEO stands for search engine optimization.  This refers to the natural page rank (SERP) of your web pages.  This is based on the content of the actual pages themselves, and also known as ‘organic SEO’.

So, how can PPC improve SEO you ask? (now that you are so much wiser).  It works like this.

With SEO, we can only optimize a web page for 3-5 phrases related to that page’s content.  The more topic specific the page, the better likelihood of achieving page 1 ranking for those phrases, especially if we are targeting a local geographic area.

However, with PPC, we can target 100s of phrases and drive them to that same page (i.e. your home page).  Thus we can attract more searchers (remember what I said about long tail search?).  And we can see what people actually type to find the goods or services you sell.

A case example is an online activewear store I do search marketing for.  They sell durable, designer work out wear; beautiful stuff.  Prior to working with BrightWay, they had ZERO online sales.  The owner contacted me to get the website selling for them.

We started by optimizing the website for activewear, fitness clothing, and workout wear… BrightWay set up a PPC campaign using Google Adwords to drive people to their home page.  Of the hundred or so search phrases we picked included all forms of yoga wear, which they actually did sell, but did not have a web page for it.

Within a month it was astoundingly clear why they had so little traffic to their site.  VIRTUALLY EVERYBODY WAS SEARCHING FOR YOGA PANTS!  (1152 impressions in 2 weeks vs. 248 for the next top phrase, which was yoga clothing).  Who knew?

So BrightWay immediately added a main menu tab for ‘yoga clothing’ with sub menu pages for ‘yoga pants’, ‘yoga tops’ and ‘other yoga clothing’ and the owner put in the products.  When the pages were ready for publication, BrightWay worked those phrases back into the home page and optimized the yoga pages for the clients target selling area.  Within a week, the client closed their first sale ever from the website (they had owned the business for over 6 months!).  The owners were happy!

This is a case example on  how PPC can improve your SEO, and why BrightWay never does search marketing without it. We offer affordable, fixed price search marketing programs that target local, expanded local, statewide,  multi-state and national markets.  If you’d like to know more about how BrightWay can help your company get found online, just call 248.709.7882.  We love to improve your rank!

To check out this exciting new tool just visit: http://marketing.grader.com/

Type [...]]]> I attended a search marketing seminar last week from a company called HubSpot and they shared an interesting, FREE tool that shows you how well your website is doing in terms of the aspects needed to drive leads from the web.

To check out this exciting new tool just visit: http://marketing.grader.com/

Type in your website address and your competitor’s and blamo!  See how you rate.  Great stuff!

If you don’t like what you see, contact BrightWay and set up a free 30-minute Internet marketing consultation to discuss what you can do to improve.

Most ESP’s (email service providers) such as Constant [...]]]> If you plan to start an email marketing campaign, or you already have one and you collect emails from a form on your website, here is a great tool to check the validity of the email addresses before you send. Why do I need to do this?

Most ESP’s (email service providers) such as Constant Contact or iContact, require you to have valid email addresses in your list.  Too many invalid emails and they WILL put a freeze on sending from your account.  They stake their reputation on being able to get your emails through, so their tolerance for bogus email addresses is pretty slim.

So… if you are starting an email campaign and you are not sure the emails in your list are totally up to snuff (remember: people change jobs, change internet providers, and they change their emails all the time) – you can check 3 a day for FREE or a large list for a small fee by visiting

http://tools.email-checker.com/

It’s worth it to not get shut down by your ESP!

For the sake [...]]]> Getting noticed by spiders, robots and crawlers (ewwww!)

Even though the thought of spiders and creepy crawlers might cause trepidation for some, when it comes to search marketing, spiders, robots and crawlers are your friends!  You want to go out of your way to attract them.  Here’s why…

What is a crawler?

For the sake of this article, we are going to refer to all of them as “crawlers“.  A crawler is a program or script (often called a ‘bot’ – short for robot) that scuttles around the web visiting URLs.  Crawlers navigate around by following the links on the pages of the websites they visit.

How do they work?

All the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) continually send their crawlers across the Internet to find and index new and existing websites.   Once they find the web pages, they make copies of the text and index them for future reference.  This enormous index, which is essentially a database of all the pages on all the websites the crawler could successfully visit, is what the search engines use to provide lightning fast results when you search.  When you enter a search query into a search engine, such as Google, what you are really querying is the search engine’s index, which is the last snapshot of your website, not its present state.

Of course web pages change, websites change and new ones are added.  That is why crawlers are always out there, visiting and revisiting pages to build, update and refresh the search engine’s index.  If you think about it, the quality of the index is critical to the quality of results.  For the search engines, it’s all about delivering the most relevant results of your search.

Different search engines have their own individual crawlers and each indexes the pages slightly differently.  Some fetch the entire page, and some get bored easily and only look at some of the content.  Most think the copy in the title of the page and up near the top is more important than what’s further down the page.

What does this mean to me?

Well, what’s in the search engine’s index is what the crawler “sees”.  If you want to see what it sees when it looks at your web page, visit that page and press CTRL-A to view the copy (Apple U on a Mac).  If you are in Google, you can also click on the ‘cached link’ at the bottom of any search result to see the crawler’s most recent snapshot of the page.

What you want the crawler to ‘see’ is the search phrases you want to get found for.  You want it to ‘see’ all your pages and be sure that the content on them is properly indexed.  And you want the crawlers to keep coming back to your website so your indexes are current.

So… a very significant part of any SEO initiative is to make it as easy as possible for search spiders to find and crawl your website.  If your pages don’t get crawled, they won’t get indexed by the search engines, and you won’t get found.

How can I ensure my website is properly indexed?

Site structure and Page Links

Links and intelligent site architecture are very important in ensuring that the crawlers can successfully visit every page on your website.  A well constructed website with clear navigation that links to all pages in the site will help tremendously.

Create and Submit a Sitemap

One very basic way to help out the search engine crawlers is to create a sitemap.  A sitemap file (BrightWay creates both html and xml sitemaps for search clients) provides the crawler with a listing of all URLs (aka pages) on the site–at least the ones that site creator wants the crawler to see.  Additional information about individual pages can also be included in the sitemap, such as when a given page was most recently updated, how often it changes, and how important each URL on the site is relative to the other URLS. (home page is usually more important than the contact us page)

Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Ask all accept sitemap submission; however it should be noted that non guarantee that all submitted URLs will be crawled or indexed.  Once submitted, Google usually indexes the site within a day or two.

Keep your links accurate – remove any broken links

Crawlers can easily hit roadblocks and bail out on entire website if there aren’t links for them to follow or they come up against a wall such as a broken link, missing page, weird technology or code. Be sure to keep your links accurate and up to date and remove any broken links or links to pages that no longer exist. Also, if you have links that go to other sites, be sure to add “no follow” tags to them so the crawlers won’t leave your site.

Keep your Content Fresh

There is nothing like fresh content to keep the crawlers coming back.  Frequent updates to your website attracts crawlers and lets them know that your site is alive and functioning; not dormant and possibly dead.

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If you want help checking how your site in indexed and/or building a sitemap, call BrightWay at 248-709-7882 or email  inbox@brightwaymarketing.com.  This is something we can do for you very quickly and cost effectively.  We love to help you get found!