Published by Patrick on 19 Jul 2008
Archive for July, 2008
Published by Patrick on 14 Jul 2008
Twitter Updates for 2008-07-14
Published by Patrick on 13 Jul 2008
Website Optimization for Targeted Keyword Phrases
We’ve all heard the phrase Search Engine Optimization or SEO. We’re all familiar with the need to optimize our websites for the keyword phrases that are central to our businesses. But how many of us truly know how to go about it? How many people really know all the different places we can load keywords? I’ve discussed this before in a post about the primary SEO success factors. Well, here are a few more pointers.
Create pages for each keyword phrase.
This is a basic one, but one that is often overlooked. Let’s say you’re trying to promote your business in Walnut Creek (the city Tactical Execution is based in). You obviously want your website to rank high for people putting “Walnut Creek” into their search querie. The first thing you should do is create a page called “Walnut Creek” or better yet “Walnut Creek [business keyword phrase]”. By doing so, you’ll create a new URL on your website that includes both your city name and your primary business keyword phrase, side by side.
Search engines put a lot of weight on the words included in your URLs. Check out All American Hauling. I built this site for a friend and you’ll notice I’ve created individual pages for each city they service and every service they offer. In addition, I’ve included links to all these individual pages right on the homepage. Not only does that include all the relevant keywords on the homepage but it also adds keyword-rich URLs pointing to keyword-rich descriptive pages.
Put keywords into image tags.
Every image on your website has a “Title” tag and an “Alt” tag. Those tags all represent places where you can include more descriptive keywords. Again, you can look at All American Hauling for an example of this. It’s a very basic site but the mechanics are very strong and it has a #1 Google ranking for keyword phrases including “hauling Walnut Creek”, “garbage removal Walnut Creek”, “East Bay garbage removal”, “Contra Costa garbage removal” and “Clayton garbage removal”.
Every image on this site has keyword-rich tags. The search engines know the “Alt” tag shows when someone scrolls over an image. That means the words you put there are almost always relevant to the topic of the page. Take advantage of that and put your targeted keywords into your image tags.
Use keyword-rich anchor text.
The words you use for your links play a major role in the ranking of the destination pages. Again, we can take All American Hauling as a case study. All the services that All American Hauling offers are described on individual pages. Those services are also listed on the homepage and each one is a link to the associated page.
The alternative to this approach is to references “the services offered by All American Hauling” and then put the link on “services”. There’s no value in that. “Services” says absolutely nothing about what the company does. Take advantage of the opportunity in your internal link structure. By putting the links onto your targeted keywords, you increase their importance within your entire site.
These are just three small tips and there are many others. Get creative when optimizing a website. Think about all the possible places where you can include more keywords. If you leverage all the SEO opportunities, you can create an extremely effective website. The All American Hauling website only has 34 pages but it delivers organic visitors all day long and you can do it too!
Published by Patrick on 12 Jul 2008
Twitter Updates for 2008-07-12
Published by Patrick on 12 Jul 2008
Social Media Intregration
I continue to be amazed at the opportunities to integrate your online activities on different platforms. I’ve written about this before, specifically as it pertains to Twitter and Utterz, but wanted to write another post to describe some of the other tools I’ve stumbled upon recently.
This Tactical Execution website is build on WordPress and there are a number of things you can do to integrate your blog with your other social media accounts. Last week, I installed a plugin entitled Twitter Tools. It basically does three basic things. First, if you post a tweet, it will automatically create a post in your blog presenting the contents for your website visitors. Second, if you post a blog post (like this one, for example), it will automatically post a tweet announcing your post to your twitter audience and telling them where to find it. And finally, it allows you to post a tweet from your WordPress dashboard.
I originally installed the plugin because of this last feature. I don’t do a lot of texting and never get around to visiting my twitter account so the ability to post a tweet when I’m managing my website is a great feature. But since I’ve installed the plugin, I’ve come to appreciate the first two features as well and have noticed an increase in traffic to my blog as a result. I’ve also had a number of new people start following me on twitter.
In my post about twitter and utterz, I described the ability to make one cell phone call into the utterz platform and automatically populate your twitter account, your website (via the blue widget you can see on the left hand side of this website) and your facebook profile (because twitter integrates nicely with facebook). Well, it turns out that facebook can be seamlessly integrated with your blog as well. By going to your “Notes” page, you can add the RSS feed from your blog and have your facebook profile be updated every time you write a new blog post.
Between my website, facebook, twitter and utterz, all my activity is completely integrated. I am now looking at ways to integrate other platforms like LinkedIn or BlogCatalog or YouTube. I’m sure there are and just have to allocate some time to do the research and then take the steps necessary to complete the process. My point is that your digital footprint grows exponentially when you integrate your different audiences and it doesn’t cost a thing.
This same concept is true for so many things. Take YouTube videos. If you do just one video, you’ll most likely get lost in the thousands of other videos. But if you do a series, you broaden your reach. Think about it like a fishing net. You want your net as big as possible, catching people in different ways and for different reasons. But once they see one of your videos, they’ll quickly see all the other stuff you’ve done. And at that point, the cross-polination increases the traffic to all your videos, not just the original one.
With all the social media platforms, you can see the same effect. You have friends on facebook. You have followers on twitter and utterz. You have fans on YouTube and visitors to your website. Regardless how they find you initially, they can immediately be introduced to all the other stuff you do, augmenting your online identity and increasing your traffic at the same time.
Published by Patrick on 09 Jul 2008
Twitter Updates for 2008-07-09
Published by Patrick on 07 Jul 2008
Twitter Updates for 2008-07-07
Published by Patrick on 07 Jul 2008
Become an Organizer of a Successful Meetup Group
I am the organizer of the Entrepreneur & Small Business Academy (a Meetup group) and tonight is our July “content meeting”. We have one primary meeting each month and it takes place on the first Monday of the month, starting at 7:00 in the evening. We meet at the New York Life offices located in Emeryville.
As of this morning, we have 596 members and it’s growing all the time. These people all find our group on the Meetup platform. I have never done any real marketing for the group. People ask me why my group is so successful and I usually respond with three primary factors: content, structure and communication. We have one of the most active meetups in the area and our members keep coming back because they get good information in a predictable format.
Last November, the Entrepreneur & Small Business Academy got sponsored by American Express. They selected the 50 largest entrepreneur clubs across the country and put a program together to support them while building awareness for their OPEN program. I never solicited their sponsorship. They found me. This is just another example of the power of Meetup.
Our members are all entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs or established business owners. We have a great group of people and I truly enjoy the role I play. It’s been a great experience and has allowed me to meet a ton of people I would’ve never come across in my regular business life. Today, I have people I can call for almost anything I might need in my business, all from my Meetup group.
When I became the organizer, I was hoping the group would be a source of business for me. I wanted to use it to promote myself and find new clients. As it turns out, I have yet to make any money from the group but the benefits are far greater than I ever expected. The underlying objective behind the group is to allow members to share and benefit from each other’s expertise. We facilitate that very well and I have learned incredible things from their presentations and contributions.
Meetup is a fantastic platform for creating and building clubs. With valuable content, a little structure and good regular communication, you can build a successful Meetup group and gain exposure for yourself while meeting tons of new people. Further, the experience will help you build confidence and improve your leadership skills. Planning, coordinating, holding effective meetings – all valuable skills for your career.
What’s your passion? What are you interested in? What are you good at? Think about these questions and then consider starting a Meetup group around that topic. You’ll probably be surprised how many people find your group and if you deliver value to your audience, you’ll see that group grow and grow. And as Meetup becomes better known, your audience will grow even more.
Last July, my Meetup had about 170 members. Today, it has almost 600. I’d bet the Entrepreneur & Small Business Academy will have over 2000 members by this time 2009 and I can’t wait. I want to hold bigger events with more content and more attendees, and I have no doubt it will grow into that naturally. In the meantime, I have to finalize my agenda for this evening and invite you all to come by and visit.
Published by Patrick on 06 Jul 2008
