205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 7

In part 7 we are getting more into the inner workings of your site. What makes a site really work and not work.

60. Parked Domains: A Google update in December of 2011 decreased search visibility of parked domains. So what is a Parked Domain? It is a web address that does nt have a site attacted to it or hosting of a site and is only redirects people to your primary site. A parked domain is NOT a website. Instead, it is a forwarding trigger so to speak to take the person to your primary domain name and web site for your company. Parked domains are commonly used when:

You need a place to park a domain for which you do not have a website

You have more than one domain that should lead to your primary domain

You have common misspellings of your domain name that you have registered.

61. Useful Content:  The key here is what is useful? Google decides. As king of web searches Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content. Again this is a game and you need to learn how to play the game.

62. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: Google has stated that they’re on the hunt for sites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the table, especially thin affiliate sites.

63. Contact Us Page: Google wants what they call prefered sites with an “appropriate amount of contact information”. You get a bonus and brownie points if your contact information matches your whois info.

64. Domain Trust/TrustRank: Site trust — measured by how many links away your site is from highly-trusted seed sites — is a massively important ranking factor. There are services that you can subscribe to for your site to become a trusted site. I guess if you need a quick fix it might be a good thing but I like to do things organically because they are more lasting in the long run.

65. Site Architecture: A well put-together site architecture (especially a silo structure) helps Google thematically organize your content.

66. Site Updates: How often a site is updated — and especially when new content is added to the site — is a site-wide freshness factor. A blog, a new service page in the beginning do daily updates or changes to your site after a while a few times a week should be enough to keep those little web spiders coming back to your page looking for your changes.

67. Number of Pages: The number of pages a site has is a weak sign of authority. At the very least a large site helps distinguish it from thin affiliate sites.

68. Presence of Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility.

69. Site Uptime: Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your ranking and can even result in deindexing if not corrected. If your down all the time maybe it is time for a new hosting company.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Your site has to look nice load fast and now be able to be mobile friendly. I’ll take my personal satire down to a minimum because I don’t make the rules I just try to figure them out as they happen. BUT if your site is not on the 1^st page of an organic search and you did not let me play with it.
Page 1 results got 92 percent of all traffic from the average search.
In a sample of over 8 million clicks over 94% of people only clicked on first page results and less than 6% actually made it over to the second page.  One of the biggest drop off’s is between the 10 spot (bottom of the first page) and the 11 spot (top of the second page).
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 6

Here we are at part 6.
As before today’s list of 10 are all things you could do yourself but might want to outsource. Most of it is just content, content, content.
50. WordPress Tags: Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signal.  Tagging your pictures is always a good way to ad in keywords.
51. Keyword in URL: Another important relevancy signal. If it fits work the key word in the page URL.
52. URL String:  The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about. This is one place I love. You might get hammered out with one or two key words but if you can work your key word strings to be nitch specific like “telemarketing for printers” , see what company comes up on page 1 with that string, you will start to get my excitement over them
53. References and Sources: Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states that reviewers should keep an eye out for sources when looking at certain pages: “This is a topic where expertise and/or authoritative sources are important…”. However, Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal. But Google could change the rules tomorrow if they wanted to. I tend to think that if you put in any sources for your content research it is an addition to key works and you could pull in possible hits from those companies or people.
54. Bullets and Numbered Lists: Bullets and numbered lists help break up your content for readers, making them more user friendly. Google likely agrees and may prefer content with bullets and numbers. I love numbered or bulleted content copy. I think or at least I like to have things laid out for me in a nice order to follow along.
55. Priority of Page in Sitemap: The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file may influence ranking. Most of you are not even going to get into the site map of your site but its there.
56. Too Many Outbound Links: Straight from the aforementioned Quality rater document a few blogs ago. Keep your links down to those that are important to you and your business. Don’t link out just to do it.  Don’t distract from the Main Content of your page
57. Quantity of Other Keywords Page Ranks. If the page ranks for several other keywords it may give Google an internal sign of quality. Keep in mind you want to be content consistent but all (keywords) matter.
58. Page Age: Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page. Yes age does have its benefits. But like a hair cut keep it fresh, cut and trimmed monthly.
59. User Friendly Layout: Citing the Google Quality Guidelines Document yet again “The page layout on highest quality pages makes the Main Content immediately visible”

Larson Notes & Satire:  This is all stuff you can do and be checking MONTHLY. If you don’t want to get a hold of me and I can do it for you. I took my page up to #1 so I know I can do the same for you.

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.

Class for becoming a professional Salesperson

Over the last 6 months I have seen a lack of sales professionalism.

From my companies lead generation work salespeople are handed qualified sales leads and are not able to close them. They are not even hitting a 5% (1 out of 20) closing ratio, and that is after going through an initial leads generation process where the really bad prospects (or do you say suspects) are already taken out. Then there are the sales people who call me up try to sell me something. Yes, I answer my own phone so be careful when calling. It is one of my ways to find new associates and interview them without their knowing. I will even tell them I have no interest in what they’re selling or just say no and yet they still PUSH. Sad, so sad.
 
To that end I am opening up what I have only done with interns at college level in their quest to become sales and marketing professionals and hit the ground running so they can pay off their student loans.
 
For the small investment of $30.00 per secession (free if you’re a Larson & Associates client) plus the cost of your meal at the designated restaurant (not free) where your groups is meeting we will be covering:

Course Syllabus:
1) Introduction and The all mighty 7 to 30 second introduction.
2) Identifying your service, product, market and territory.
3) Promote your company with different marketing channels.
4) Prospect and gathering information about your potential accounts.
5) Attracting your prospects attention and interest quickly.
6) Probing to learn important facts about your prospects.
7) Uncover problems or situations your prospect might need to move forward.
8) Solve your prospect’s pain and problems to everyone’s satisfaction.
9) Demonstrate your solution to solve a prospects pain or want of gain with facts, advantages and benefits you can uniquely give.
10) Create a climate of desire for your prospect to buy from you and you alone.
11) Asking for the order
12) Handling objections.
13) Closing the order and creating a customer for life.
14) Know your numbers for long term success.
15) Conclusion
 
Requirements:
1) You must have 5 to 10 hours a week minimum to put into working through the program to achieve sales results during a 30 week period We will be meeting fortnightly.
2) Morning breakfast and lunch times are available.
3) You must have some flexibility in your schedule to work with YOUR prospects and clients from your first meeting to closing of the sale. Prospects don’t work on your schedule but theirs. To be successful in any kind of sales you need to keep the customer’s needs at the forefront of your thought process.
4) You must have a love for people and working with them to find the best solution to their unique set of goals and problems.
5) You will be doing actual commission sales during the semester.
6) Must have a base understanding of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and craigslist to name a few programs and social sites we will utilize.
7) Must have own your own computer and have access to the internet
8) You will be required to write a weekly blog post with full name credit.
9) Phone telesales as well as some (possible) face to face
10) Plans are underway to find a suitable venue offer this course training online in a small group setting so those not in Chicagoland can participate.

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.

Know Your Numbers And The Sales Funnel

A friend of mine, Aki Jackson is always asking the question, Do you know your numbers?

In my business, target marketing and telemarketing for lead generation, I deal with 2 kinds of numbers.

The 1^st are what I call the “Magic Numbers” These are the key figures that tell you ahead of time if your business is going to grow or shrink. These could be anything from how many inbound inquires you have, to how many new proposals you put up this week, to how much junk mail your company got. Ok that might be a stretch but some of these magic numbers can be that off the wall.

The other number I am going to talk about here are your ratio numbers. The numbers of sales in your industry and your company that it takes to convert to a sale. How many raw leads does it talk to get a prospect, how many prospects does it talk to get an inquiry, How many inquiries does it talk to get an appointment. How many appointments does it talk to get a quote or proposal and how many quotes does it take to get a sale or project. And last how long or short is your sales cycle?

This brings us to the sales funnel. A sales funnel reveals to you how many prospects you have in each part of your sales cycle, and also details the conversion rates for each stage. This will tell you whether you have enough deals in your funnel to meet your goals, and whether you need to give special attention to certain areas of the sales cycle.

This number differs with each kind of business and each business within a specific industry. So Do you know your ratios?  Do you know your industries base line ratio numbers?

If you had 100 raw leads and started contacting them how many prospects would you get? Figure it out.

If you got 1 out of 20 you would have 5%, 1 out of 15 6.66%. But you need to understand that each of us have different and unique ratio numbers. They are ours and ours alone.

You can only manage what you can measure. If you have just 12 deals in the first stage of the and you KNOW you need 20, then it’s a clear sign that you are in trouble and need to find and add at least 8 more new prospects in order to achieve your numbers

If not there are 4 different things you can do:

1) Get deals from stage one to stage two quicker. Moving projects though the funnel faster.

2) Increase the size of the projects

3) Increase the size of your projects by up-selling
4) Practice and learn the art of salesmanship

 The challenge for most companies is to generate enough good quality sales into the funnel and to keep adding enough leads on a steady basis into the sales pipeline. Telemarketing and teleprospecting, when used in conjunction with other forms of marketing such as Blog, Social Media Marketing (seo)Content, SEO, E-blasts, Website and Analytics can be an effective means of communicating with your target market.

It is essential that you are set-up for success with your telemarketing and teleprospecting activity, by having good quality content on your website (people often visit your website after they have been called), a dedicated landing page to measure the success of your campaign and follow-up materials that can send to people that are interested in receiving more information.

A good quality database is vital to the success of any telemarketing and teleprospecting campaign.  Once you know your ideal client you need to find the correct database based for your target market and decide on what qualifies as a qualification lead. Then carry out the telemarketing and teleprospecting campaign. If required, you need to be make adjustments on the fly in order to ensure the best possible results. These types of campaigns typically generate some sales ready leads but many are marketing qualified leads that are not yet ready to convert and nurturing. So starts the sales process

Larson Notes & Satire:  Easy and hard all in one. So do you know your numbers and ratios?

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 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.