Marketing Tidbits: SEO Scan

Have you ran an SEO Scan Lately?

http://www.stompernet.net/jvp/aw.aspx?b=25&a=1362

In this video, my good friend Andy Jenkins will teach you how to optimize your pages in order to get double indented listing in the search engine pages in Google.

Topics Include:

• Learning Cache Dates
• How to use your XML Sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools
• A page not indexed or ranking well? How to drive page rank.
• Avoiding duplicate content

Also - here’s…

A program is called “Stomper SiteSeer” and is free to Mobile Beat readers. Thanks Andy!

To get started with “Stomper SiteSeer”, please visit http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural3/vide3_site_seer_submit

Enjoy!

Robert Starkey

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This post sponsored by Outside The Box, provider of plug-and-play planning forms, timelines and more for DJ Intelligence’s Event Planning Software. Product of the day as of this posting is our Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah Day of Itinerary.

Marketing Tidbits: Keyword Metatag Not Indexed

In a recent post I threw something at you that would come from the view of an amature website owner/maintainer trying to make their site SEO ready - it was the “Keyword Metatag”.  Search Engines (Yahoo & WebCrawler) use to use the keywords tag on the page to providing information as to page content.  Google came out and said right from the start that they would be gathering data on a site based on site content topic, inbound links, and more. The other search engines then said, “oh - ok… us too”.

Why am I telling you this?

I want you to know what your sites’ keywords should be because it is important in finding out what other search terms people in your area are using. It’s equally important for you to know your keywords so that you can build content around them. But do not waste your time with the Keywords Meta Tag on your page(s).

Researching Google on the topic “Death of the Keywords Metatag” will provide reference materials on this topic.

Marketing Tidbits: SPECIAL SERIES -> Consultations

The following is an excerpt from http://start.prodj.com, originally addressed in response to member, “BB”. I felt it was worth sharing with those reading “Marketing Tidbits” here on Mobile Beat.

The Sales Consultation

I’ve guided several DJs to conduct their consultations - and works with approximately a 90-95% booking rate. Before I begin, let me state that by the time they reach the consultation they’re already sold anyways and price is no longer a factor.

When at the consultation, remember that this is yet another opportunity to build the relationship. What you’re speaking of when “you go in for the kill” is called a “Hard Sale” in sales terms. My approach is soft. Remember that they have a story to tell, and their story is much more important that your story when they’re the ones paying.

Think of meeting with your Bride & Groom almost as a “First Date”. Ask more questions, do more listening, and less talking. Ask about them as people, learn them as people, and more importantly open up and let them know you as a person. Sales these days are build on personal relationships - we as DJs are no different.

Next - remember that it is our skill that sets us apart of an iPod. So much talk these days about iPod weddings and DJs fearing if it might be their last event - I won’t have it in my town. You will not find one iPod Wedding here in Lake Havasu City, AZ and that’s because our residents are taken care of. Trust me - if there was, I’d hear about it.

As I shared on my business inspirational blog the other day…

Sell with Confidence
Sell with Emotion
Sell with Honesty

Under Promise, Over Deliver.

Your clients want someone who is going to care about them as a person, and truly care about their event. That’s why I recommend to the DJs I mentor that it is important to tell them that you want to care about their event like their friends and their family care about their event <– That always catches them off-guard.

Interested in joining my one-on-one private coaching program? My door is open. Contact me at Robert@OutsideTheBox.biz.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The above is my view points and opinion, not that necessarily of Mobile Beat Magazine or ProDJ Publishing.

FURTHER EDUCATION: To learn about “The Art of the Soft Sell” please contact my good friend Mr. Ken Day. Ken be reached via email - Ken <at> movin-tunes.com

Marketing Tidbits: Keywords (Pt. 3)

Found the keywords that pull for your business? Great!

Places to use those keyword include some of the following:

• Title Tags
• Meta Description Tag
  
• Meta Keywords Tag
• Image “ALT” Tags
• Hyperlink “TITLE” tags
• H1, H2 and H3 Page Header and Subheads
  
• Body Content
• Footer

IMPORTANT NOTE: Keywords should not be combined all together. Write your keywords in to sentences and phrases - Google clearly identifies a “SPAM Website” as one in which the content is not created for an end reader. Search Engines are not stupid - you will get punished by lower ranking if you insult the search engines using keywords all thrown together.

Let’s take a look at how a keyword might work. Let’s use the keyword “Creative Wedding”.

<TITLE>Las Vegas - Respected DJ for your Creative Wedding</TITLE>

<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Creative Weddings is our specialty at XYZ Entertainment in Las Vegas, NV.“>

<META NAME=”Keywords” CONTENT=”Las Vegas Nevada NV N.V. DJ D.J. Creative Wedding bride-to-be bride“>

Body might look like:

Hello Bride-To-Be,

Having your Wedding in Las Vegas, N.V.? Here in Nevada Brides are trusting XYZ Entertainment for all their Creative Wedding needs. We cover all of NV, not just Las Vegas so call us today and let our D.J. Company have the opportunity to speak with you.

Your footer might look like:

Copyright (C) 2008 XYZ Entertainment - Serving Las Vegas, NV. since 1981

Tired of reviewing Keywords? This is the final episode on Keywords (I’m pretty sure).

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Robert Starkey, as a Disc Jockey himself running an operation out of Lake Havasu City, Arizona under “Robert Starkey’s Wedding Entertainment” and serving as a Wedding Specialist. Robert also is owner of Outside The Box DJ Tools, a service which sells products and services such as Enhanced Planning Forms for DJ Intelligence.  For further information on this venture please kindly visit http://www.OutsideTheBox.biz.

Marketing Tidbit: Keywords (pt 2)

There are many DJs who have been asking me to share more on the information I’ve learned about search engine optimization a.k.a. “SEO” - it’s been my pleasure taking you down a journey in my mind of the nutshell information to obtain high rankings within the search engines but the question remains, “Are  YOU following along?”

We’re now on part two of the keyword research segment. We’re going to pack as much as we can.

In the last segment I talked about common keywords: “dj djs dj’s d.j. d.j.s d.j.’s disc disk jockey jockeys…” but now it’s time to take things a step further.  We all know there are other words that are searched on the internet that we wish we could come up under, maybe you’re a wedding specialist, maybe you’re bar/bat mitzvah specialist or you do corporate parties.  Wouldn’t you like to come up under that search term?

Here is a good way to compile a starting list of “search combinations”:

COVERAGE AREA (city/cities)     +     Common Variables     +     Shifting Variables
Las Vegas                                                 Wedding                                   DJ
Las Vegas                                                 Wedding                                   DJs
Las Vegas                                                 Wedding                                   DJ’s
Las Vegas                                                 Wedding                                   D.J.
Las Vegas                                                 Wedding                                   D.J.s
Las Vegas                                                 Wedding                                   D.J.’s

… the list continues on… and on… and on.

NOW - take these combinations, and visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type your combinations in there to receive additional search alternatives for your “common variables” category.

We’re going to come back to this tool in a moment. I’d like to quickly educate you on the differences between Broad Match vs. Phrase Match vs. Exact Match –  “Broad Match” means the words can be in any order and may have other search words in front of, in the middle of, and behind your terms.  “Phrase Match” means that the customer has placed quote on it, the search results may contain words before or after but the search terms must be in the order specified with no words in between. “Exact Match” means someone has placed brackets around the [search term] and the engine is only to return exactly as submitted.

Why did I just tell you all this?

Because now you must reverse engineer your keyword list and change the column order:    “Las Vegas Wedding DJ” vs “Wedding DJ in Las Vegas”.  You could to this process by hand, or you could use this great little tool that all the search engine seo specialists use as found at http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-list/generator.php

Remember the link I shared to the Google Keyword tool (above)?  Use this to search the many terms that you’ve built up to what you call a “list”.  My keyword lists contain over 9,000 keyword combinations - no joke when you’re dead serious. Yours may be smaller, that’s ok.  Enter the combinations line by line in the Google Keyword Tool and once you get the search results back, click on the hyperlink column header that says, “Average Search Volume”.  This will sort the search combinations by what yields the highest search results for any given term.

Want to test keywords that may already be pulling traffic to your site?  Visit your hosting company’s cPanel and review the logs to see what search terms are pulling traffic   — OR — even better is I recommend using the Google Analytics tool. Google Analytics is FREE and it is very in depth in its reporting. Learn not only what key words pull for your site, but what keywords pull for a certain page, what pages people leave on and the ratio of which they do so, and more.  Setup your free analytics account at http://Analytics.Google.com

Once you’ve found the top 3 to 5 keyword phrases that match, you’re now ready to get started with your first step in getting your site SEO Optimized.  Hope you’re ready, this will begin in next week’s Marketing Tidbits Segment.

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Robert Starkey, as a Disc Jockey himself running an operation out of Lake Havasu City, Arizona under “Robert Starkey’s Wedding Entertainment” and serving as a Wedding Specialist. Robert also is owner of Outside The Box DJ Tools, a service which sells products and services such as Enhanced Planning Forms for DJ Intelligence.  For further information on this venture please kindly visithttp://www.OutsideTheBox.biz.

Marketing Tidbit: Keywords (pt 1)

What are keywords and how do they relate?

 

Keywords are the essential part of your website. They’re what pull your visitors in to your website from the search engines.  Do you have to have an SEO specialist in order to rank high for your keywords? The answer is NO.  Luckily we’re in an industry where more than 90% of us are of service to our local community only - which means gearing down on keywords brings us to compete with our local competition.

Remember this important obvious but often overlooked fact:   A potential customer is not going to search for your DJ Company by name, that is unless the name of your company contains keywords, i.e. “Havasu Wedding DJ” (where “havasu” is the city in which I reside).

Let’s start at the top of your website.  There is what is called “Header” tags which look like…

<html>
<head>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”

 

… it is within the keywords meta tag that you will want to place search terms that a potential client might be searching.  Let’s use my company as an example.  Keywords for me might include the following:

Havasu, DJ, DJs, D.J., D.J.s, Dj’s, D.J.’s, D.J’s, disc, jockey, Wedding, Planning, Planner, Music, Entertainer, Entertainment

These are just a few example.  If you already know about the Keyword MetaTags, then take this piece of fruit home with you to eat. Your keyword meta tags do not have to have comma’s separating them (as given in the example above), the comma is more or less for the web designers use. This means repeating words is not necessary, i.e :   Havasu DJ, DJ in Havasu, a DJ in Havasu.  List the word only once.

LASTLY — Keep your keywords list short and specific.  Do not try and reach broad or you may be rated low by the search engines.

 

Now that you know what your keywords are…

 

What?  You don’t?  oh.  Ok.      Well, let’s start here:  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This hyperlink will bring you to a keyword search tool that will help make suggestions based on what you enter as an example.  Look for the Highest searched keywords - and use multiple variations to see which way may be searched the most.   (i.e.   Havasu Wedding DJ vs Havasu Wedding D.J. vs. Havasu Wedding Disc Jockey)

 

Now you got your keywords?  Great!

 

The next thing to do is re-write the content of your website (sales pitch/copy) to include these keywords in their variations for maximum ranking by the search engines.

 

stay tuned - lots more to come.  if you start now, you’ll be achieving higher search engine ranking within 1 month.  But you have to follow along with each series as we go.

 

Write comments, let us know what your thoughts are.  Questions?

 

For the road - here’s one more keyword resource:
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Robert Starkey, as a Disc Jockey himself running an operation out of Lake Havasu City, Arizona under “Robert Starkey’s Wedding Entertainment” and serving as a Wedding Specialist. Robert also is owner of Outside The Box DJ Tools, a service which sells products and services such as Enhanced Planning Forms for DJ Intelligence.  For further information on this venture please kindly visithttp://www.OutsideTheBox.biz.

Marketing Tidbit: Is your website SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. A term coined by the consultants who performed this service on behalf of their clients dating back to the 90s. Unfortunate thing about SEO is that it is always changing. Search Engines must get smarter in what their algorithm indexes and doesn’t index, but unless you’re a professional or do your homework - you’ll never take full advantage of SEO or how to get top site rankings.

In the coming issues of this blog post series, we will cover different methods of SEO, provide resources to help guide you into understanding what SEO is and how it applies to our businesses within the DJ Industry. There will be online applications that you can use for free, videos you can watch that will open your eyes (For Real!!), and more.

… Our first MINI-TOPIC: “Keywords”

• What are keywords and how do they relate?
• How to track keywords that are already pulling
• Common misconceptions to keyword usage
• Using Keywords with Organic vs. PPC
• How to use keywords to form valuable site content

See you next week as we dive into part of keywords!

Robert Starkey is owner of http://www.OutsideTheBox.biz.   Staff Blogger for http://www.MobileBeat.com

Marketing Tidbit: Blogging

Blogs these days is one of the easiest ways to communicate over the internet. Did you know that it has more of an impact on your business than you may have originally thought? Let’s take a little in depth look as to what Blogging is and what to consider.

There are two main ways to blog - Hosted Blogging and Server Side Blogging

Hosted Blogging
Software such as http://www.blogger.com is hosted on a separate service provider but are free to use. They require no uploading or installing on your part and the setup screen is

Server Side Blogging
There are blogging scripts such as WordPress (ref: http://www.wordpress.com ) which physically get download from their servers, uploaded to your domain and installed on your server. The added benefit to this is that unlike Hosted Blogging Sites, the search engines come back to your site on a regular basis and provides a higher score for your URL, providing you higher ranking in some cases.

Tips to Blogging:

1) ON TOPIC: Pick a topic that is right in line with your company and your company focus (Weddings, Corporate, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, etc).

2) RELEVANCE: To gain the highest blogging exposure, write content that is of interest to your readers. This will create more desire for them to return to your site again and again.

3) KEYWORDS: Your blog will be indexed. This is a great place to put rich keyword into your posting content. If it falls in line with the rest of your sites content will complement your site in the eyes of the search engines.

4) UP-TO-DATE: Both human being’s reading your post, as well as the search engines love content that is updated on a regular basis. Keep consistent with your updates, should you choose to do it daily, weekly, monthly or other - just keep it consistent.

5) LINKING: Your blog is a great place to link to your main website and that of vendors and other web partners you may have. Remember that the goal is to link with quality sites, it’s not about quantity. Check their Alexa rating if you’re not sure of the quality of a potential linking site.

6) COMMENTS: To be effective with your blog - it is recommended by many experts to allow customers to comment on your blog postings. This will increase the popularity of your new marketing tool with your readers, as well as please the search engines with “fresh content” as each of your readers respond.

SEO Tips to Blogging: Participate actively in other blogs / forums within our industry.

Homework: Get started on your own blog today. Keep the information provided in your mind when setting up and posting.