205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 3

Now we are cooking! Sort of nice to have things that are totally in your control to make your site better and stronger isn’t it. Welcome to Part 3.

Today’s list of 10 are more things you will have control over or not. And if you are like me, you love, control. More tecky stuff than I like but someone has to do it.

21. Duplicate Content: Identical content on the same site is one of those things that is not liked and can negatively affect your site’s search engine ranking.

22. Rel=Canonical: When used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from considering pages duplicate content. Canonicalization can be a challenging concept to understand (and hard to pronounce: "ca-non-ick-cull-eye-zay-shun"). It is essential to creating an optimized website. The problem is that canonicalization can fix stem from multiple uses for a single piece of writing a paragraph or, more often, an entire page of content that appears in multiple locations on a website or on multiple websites. For search engines, this presents a problem. Which version is the "real" version that they should be showing to searchers? SEOs refer to this issue as duplicate content. Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to utilize the rel=canonical tag. The rel=canonical tag passes the same amount of link ranking power as a 301 redirect, and often takes much less development time to implement. The tag is part of the HTML head of a web page.

23. Page Loading Speed via Chrome: Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time as this takes into account server speed, CDN usage and other non HTML-related site speed signals.

24. Image Optimization: Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption.

25. Recent Content Updates: Google Caffeine http://webtrends.about.com/od/webportals/a/what-is-google-caffeine.htm

 update favors recently updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Google shows the date of a page’s last update.

26. Content Updates: The significance of edits and changes is also a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is a more significant update than switching around the order of a few words.

27. History Of Page Updates: How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5-years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.

28. Keyword Prominence: Having a keyword appear in the first 100-words of a page’s content is a significant signal to the little web spiders.

29. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags: Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal.

30. Keyword Word Order: An exact match of a searcher’s keyword in a page’s content will generally rank better than the same keyword phrase in a different order. Remember we are dealing with web robots not real live thinking people. For example: consider a search for: “Snake charming”. A page optimized for the phrase “Snake charming” will rank better than a page optimized for “practice of hypnotizing a snake”. This is a good example of why keyword research is important.

Larson Notes & Satire:  So we got a little tacky today. You did not think it would be all easy and straight forward and just anyone could walk in a do it, did you? All I can say is lie with it, Fix and do what you can and it will work out, maybe.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 2

Are we having fun yet? Come on this is a game you are now playing between you, your completion and Google.  You can play if you have or control a web site and you can win or beat your competition at the game of web ranking.

So you ready for more. Today’s list of 10 are things you will have a little better control over. Some of the items from yesterday were sort of out of your control and I know, for all you control freaks it was driving you up a wall. Have no fear it’s not all that bad. So roll up your sleeves and take care of what you can.

11. Keyword in Title Tag: The title tag is a webpage’s second most important piece of content after the content of the page. The title sends out a strong SEO signal to all the little web spiders filtering through you site to say what you are about, at the top.

12. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: According to Moz data a title tags that starts with a keyword seems to do better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag. Might seem like a small thing but each hit up (or down) can compound and snowball your site to the highest heights to oblivion.

13. Keyword in Description Tag: Another relevancy signal. Not especially important now, but still makes a difference. Really don’t listen to all those web experts who say it does not make any difference anymore. Everything counts. So things count for the good and some for the bad. Put lady luck on your side.

14. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a “second title tag” that sends another relevancy signal to Google, according to results from this correlation study http://cbutterworth.com/do-h1-tags-still-help-seo/ .

15. Keyword is Most Frequently Used Phrase in Document: Having a keyword appear more than any other likely acts as a relevancy signal. But I will warn you not to black hat yourself and spam your key word though out your text like we did in the old days of SEO. Keep those words relevant throughout your copy

16. Content Length:  Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferred to shorter superficial articles. SERPIQ found that content length correlated with SERP position. http://blog.serpiq.com/how-important-is-content-length-why-data-driven-seo-trumps-guru-opinions . Now I am a long content kind of guy so don’t listen to me but say what you got to say. Put most things in the first paragraph and let the just flow.

17. Keyword Density: Although not as important as it once was, keyword density is still something Google uses to determine the topic of a webpage. But going overboard can hurt you. Yes those days are long gone.

18. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): Try saying that 3 times fast. LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words with more than one meaning (Apple the computer company vs. the fruit). The presence/absence of LSI words (probably) also acts as a content quality signal.

19. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags: As with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags probably help Google discern between synonyms. May also act as a relevancy signal. Yes you got to work the ideas on both the front page and the back page of your site.

20. Page Loading Speed via HTML: Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Speed matters. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on a page’s code and file size. Even if you could care less about all the little web spiders your customers and prospects sure don’t want to be waiting for your site to come up. So make if FAST.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Ok the rubber hits the road today. This is stuff you can all take control of. Some things big some small but it all counts for and against you and your competition. And if you don’t care, someone else does. Don’t let them take your site ranking and get your customers because you are on page 2 or 3 of a Google search and not page 1.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 1

Type in “Telemarketing for Printers” for a Google search. Go on do it. . . .

Surprise. Who is right at the top? Yours truly (I hope). I work very hard at my ranking for that position. Work? Mmmmm well not work. Let’s call it a game between me, my competition and Google. And I like, I really like to win.

So you want to stake out your territory in cyber space?

You probably already know, or not that Google uses about 200 plus ranking factors in their algorithm and they are always changing the rules so what is here today could be gone tomorrow. What is White Hat today could be Black Hat and get your site kicked out of Google tomorrow.

So what the heck are they? Well today and for the next few days I’m going to give you 5 to 10 cyber ideas until you have my complete list. Some are proven. Some are controversial. But remember it’s a game so let’s play!

1. Domain Age: Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. Matthew "Matt" Cutts is an American software engineer. He is the former head of the web spam team at Google, and is currently on leave in his role of working with the search quality team on search engine optimization issues. Matt states that: “The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.”. SO in other words, they do use domain age…but it’s not very important.

2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain: Doesn’t give the same kind of boost that it used to, but having your keyword in the domain still acts as a relevancy signal. After all, they still bold keywords that appear in a domain name.

3. Keyword As First Word in Domain: A domain that starts with the target keyword has an edge over sites that either don’t have the keyword in their domain or have the keyword in the middle or end of their domain. Might not seem like a big deal but we are talking micro-cyber inches of higher rankings here.

4. Domain registration length: A Google patent ( https://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-age-how-important-is-it-for-seo/7296 ) states: “Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain”.

5. Keyword in Subdomain Name: Moz’s 2011 panel agreed that a keyword appearing in the subdomain can boost rankings.

6. Domain History: A site with volatile ownership (via whois) or several drops may tell Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the domain.

7. Exact Match Domain: EMDs may still give you an edge…if it’s a quality site. But if the EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the EMD update (http://searchengineland.com/google-emd-update-research-and-thoughts-137340 )

8. Public vs. Private WhoIs: Private WhoIs information may be a sign of “something to hide”. Matt Cutts is quoted as stating at Pubcon 2006: “…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “who is privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual.  …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”

9. Penalized WhoIs Owner: If Google identifies a particular person as a spammer it makes sense that they would scrutinize other sites owned by that person.

10. Country TLD extension: Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.cn, .pt, .ca) helps the site rank for that particular country…but limits the site’s ability to rank globally.

Larson Notes & Satire:  It’s a start but not the BIG Guns. You got to come back and get punished more with my satire and writing skills. Or you can throw your hands up and just hire me.  That works to.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Speeding Up The Sales Cycle with Telemarketing

Telemarketing and telemarketers are a rare breed. Telemarketing is not only a perfect marketing way for businesses selling products/services to their target market at a pretty low price but for B2B markets it can speed up the sales cycle for the more expensive sales representative regardless of its simplicity or complexity . Telemarketers are usually helpful at the initial stages of a sales cycle. After that, the sales representatives should take over to close the deal.

It Speeds up the Sales Cycle

Early in the sales cycle, it takes thousands upon thousands of calls made to a list of thousands and thousands of customers and prospects. Some end as leads and some don’t. Telemarketing and teleprospecting are perfect for making the kind of high volumes of cold calls necessary at this stage of the sales cycle. At the back end of the sales cycle, customers require more detailed information on the service/product. This is the time for sales representatives with a higher level of product skill and understanding to convert prospects into customers. It is just as unpractical to expect a telemarketer to close a sale as it is to expect a sales representative to make 1000s of cold calls.

Role Of Telemarketing Services

Telemarketing services assist in generating leads by handling the bulk of phone calls. This cuts down the sales cycle for the sales rep. A business can start telemarketing job in-house or can contract out to another company like Larson & Associates for a better Return on investment (ROI).

Creating a telemarketing team and having them called to thousands customers won’t get results unless of course they are trained well to increase the value of the sales cycle. Automated calls are usually end hang-ups. Therefore, in order to yield results it’s important to train telemarketers with business processes and on customer dealing to avoid such issues.

Benefits of Telemarketing To Businesses

Fixing Data:

Databases that are publically available have a lot of inaccurate or inadequate data. Telemarketing services can come in and correct the information so your sales representatives won’t have to. Its time better spent else ware. Come to think about it most in-house lists are messed up as well, sometimes even more so because no one is in charge of cares about keeping it up to date.

Accumulation of Proprietary Data:

Telemarketing services can also assist in adding proprietary data to the prospect’s records within the database. This includes company’s decision makers name, equipment replacement, etc. which is all helpful in the timing sales calls.

Aid in Building Brand Identity:

Telemarketing services also aid in brand building even when the calling doesn’t yield leads. Calling to the same prospect or customer again and again establishes a feeling of stability and visibility.

Timing Is Everything:

After collecting relevant information, telemarketing can set-up the sales representative’s call. When a customer tells the telemarketer that the equipment needs replacement at a particular time, or they have a project coming up to bid on, the sales representative can call at just the right time to focus on the sale.

Your business shouldn’t spend valuable time and resources in the early stages of the sales process. Use your skilled sales representatives to concentrate on the later phases of the sales cycle.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Use the right people at the right time.

For the telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads in your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Telemarketing Tradeshow Tips

What makes a successful marketing attack for a trade show?

There are 3 components to effective trade show marketing, pre-show, at-show and post-show. Without the post-show follow-up, the marketing strategy is not complete and often the sale is not made. So Follow-up might just be the most crucial part of the trade show marketing equation. True trade show success is not measured by the number of catalogs handed out or the number of business cards collected, it's the sales generated from the leads gathered at the show that make your participation in the show successful or not.

Pre-show: Send a pre-tradeshow mailer to all perspective clients know who, what and where of the show. You should be able to get the preregistered list from the show manager and either mail or email them. Then have someone make a phone call to personally invite them to your booth and set up a person appointment and demo. Decide if you will handle the leads in house or outsource to a telemarketing firm.  

At-show: Decide what you consider to be a qualified lead and have your staff accept business cards from future clients that meet all of your criteria. You need to be quick in the qualification process and not linger with people who are not potential clients. Get in and get out. It is not beneficial to accept 10,000 business cards and have only 45 of them turn into leads. You only have so much time and money for follow up. Have a info packet ready to go for immediately mailing out for hot prospects and list them as a priority lead on your calling list.  

Post show: Take the most qualified buyers that attended the tradeshow and add them to a telemarketing call list. Clean up your calling list. A clean list is crucial to a cost-effective telemarketing program. All prospects should be contacted within 1-2 weeks of the tradeshow. Companies need to move promptly and efficiently while the prospect's memory is fresh. Call the high potential prospects 1^st but then go back and fall the rest. There could be some sleepers in your list that did not seem like it on the show floor.

Follow-up is the key for a successful telemarketing program. The time, effort and work involved from start to finish with a tradeshow is a total waste if the final stage is not done. Handling of requests for additional information will show potential clients you value their time and provide quality customer service.  

Finally Close those sales. When it is all over, evaluate your success. Did you meet your goals? Were you able to reach the right prospects? What can I do next time to change my return? Brainstorm for next year while everything is fresh in your mind.

If you need help in the marketing coordination of your next tradeshow, contact us for more information 847-991-1294 or howard@larsonassociastes.ws

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account
acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospecting for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

The USPS® Rate Decrease Effective April 10, 2016

What will Your Business Save?

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is set to reduce First-Class Mail prices on Sunday, April 10, 2016. Yes, you read that right: the rate change is a reduction for the first time in nearly a century! Regardless of the type of mail or sort levels, you will realize average savings of over 4%.

Why now? The reduction comes with the expiration of legislation that imposed an exigent surcharge for mailing products and services for two years. The goal was to help the USPS manage financial challenges mainly due to the recession and declining First-Class mail volumes. The 4.3% exigent surcharge is set to be reversed after the USPS collects additional funds totaling $4.6 billion. They are expected to hit this threshold by April 10, 2016.

How the Rate Reductions Stack Up

FIRST-CLASS MAIL

·        Stamp price decreases to 47 cents

·        ~4.2% decrease for all First-Class

STANDARD MAIL

·        ~4.2% decrease for all Standard Mail

PACKAGE SERVICES

·        ~4.2% decrease for all Package Services

·        Retain $0.001 IMb barcode discount for BPM Flats

FULL SERVICE

·        Full services IMb incentives remain in place

SPECIAL SERVICES

·        ~4.2% decrease for Special Services

Note: The cost of sending Certified Mail with Return Receipt will now be $6.47 (compared to $6.74) for a one ounce letter. Consider checking 2-3 day rates with your private carriers to see if they are less money. Or, switch to Electronic Return Receipt which saves $1.35 each.

Making SEO Work

If getting your web site found organically is important taking a quick look at the basic principles of SEO is always good. .   If you have read me at all you know my adversion to PFC (pay for click). So just how important it is to create your site according to the specifications of the search engines, after I say VERY. . .  

MOBILE RESPONSIVENESS

A survey conducted way back in 2013 showed that at least 87 percent of Internet users accessed the Web through a mobile device, and that was in 13. You know it has to be even more now with better data packages out there, Heck even I do some mobile web searches now and you know if I do, almost anyone who can, is. I would say mobile should be a priority of yours to ensure that your site allows users on any devices to have access. Not doing so, (soon) will cost you in your website rankings on Google but you did not hear ME say that.

DOMAIN NAME EXTENSION

With the increased impact of local SEO, emerging brands may want to consider adding a local extension like .chicago to show how local you are. It is not going to be as good as getting your Google plus account set up ( https://plus.google.com/+LarsonAssociatesPalatine ) and any SEO bump is still up for debate, but it does show your immediate area you’re serious about working local and that should be worth a few brownie points.

DESCRIPTIVE PAGE NAME

The name of a site should be as descriptive as possible. While exact match domains tend to be cheap or spammy sounding (such as bestratemotel.com), the name should have a connection to the brand or the product’s name. The previously mentioned local domain name extensions can help brands achieve this goal when their ".com" is taken.

SITE SPEED

Website visitors expect a site to load quickly and so do the search engines. You might want to consider using Google Page Speed to check for loading issues, as well as current Web design trends that can strip down a site to its most basic elements. Sometime times less is more in terms or getting higher and seen more

PAGE ACCESS

How many clicks does it take to reach the page a person wants to go to on your website? If someone has perform multi-clicks to get to the page they are looking for, there is a good chance they will leave and never come back. Put page links where users can see them and hit them.

SITE CONTENT

This is not quite the function of the website designer, but the content that is being posted can have a huge effect on its SEO ranking. You need compelling content that also utilizes key works you want people to be using to find you in an organic search.

SITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography does matter and I am not talking just about the look of the shot. Take for example a site for a photographer. If the photographs used on the site are too large and are slowing the site’s speed down or even stalling it out you had better make some changes, like fast.

Larson Notes & Satire:  If you don’t know where your web site is sitting you might want to get an Alexa Traffic Ranking. I have been tracking my site for years and find it more of a game to tweak it up and make little changes to see what happens. Words, meta tags (yes you heard me) links, content it all counts and all works together.

So for the answer to your SEO problems call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting up higher on the rankings

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.