We’ve decided to consolidate all of our Internet Marketing, SEO, Business and Social Media pages from The Moxie Maven, Moxie Mafia and from Kettlewell.net into one primary location at our new main site, located at Mox & Dom

We took The Moxie Maven and The Dominator, and combined them into “Mox & Dom” and has been serving us quite well from an image perspective, and our ability to bounce ideas off each other better, and combine our specialties gives our clients and audience a better picture of online marketing in one location.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be transferring the three blogs into Mox & Dom, but all the content that you’ve found valuable on this site, will eventually be located over there.

The only exception are personal opinions, blurbs, and fun things that I as a father, friend or funny-man have put up here, will remain here, and this will turn into my personal blog for me, about anything I want to rant about.

If you’ve never visited us at Mox & Dom, I highly recommend that you take a few minutes and check things out.

See you there.

Matt  aka ‘The Dominator’

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of optimizing elements of your website so that your website will rank higher in search engines like Google.

It seems that many a web designer has realized that offering SEO and Internet marketing advice and services will somehow benefit their clients.  So they find some old articles on the subject, and type out a pretty, well formatted article, and declare that they are experts in the matter.

Even in my own town of Grand Junction, Colorado I’ve recently seen a swarm of web designers that are entering the field of SEO.

Here’s the problem….

They have no proof that they can accomplish what they are talking about. I ran Google searches on a variety of related topics that they should be ranking on, but they are no where to be found.

They don’t really know how it all works, so they write up a few articles on information that they found, and call themselves experts.

But the information given in some of these articles is old (sometimes defunct and even dangerous) and not keeping up with the ever changing algorithms and structure of search engines and how they operate.

Google and the other search engines realize that they are being gamed, and that the game is changing.  Since they own the game, they get to set the rules and change them when they want.  Typically we notice major changes on a quarterly basis, and minor changes continuously.

Learning SEO (and maintaining your skills) is a nearly daily learning activity. It’s a fast paced activity, and can’t be done by reading a few well crafted articles. There are myriad resources of SEO books and videos to buy ( and some for free) that need to be read/watched and then analyzed and absorbed. It’s not unlike going to school where you read from books, do research, and then submit a final project. It takes time and energy.

Think about this, Twitter is now streamed directly into the search engines for results. Social media friends within your own social media circles  was introduced recently.  These are things that we’re possible 6 months ago.  They are new, as the game changes.  This means that you now have to optimize your site to compete with Twitter, FB and all the other social media circles.

Ideally, a web designer should either partner up with and SEO company, or hire someone in-house that only does SEO and Internet marketing.  SEO is a full-time responsiblity.  There is no way that a web designer can be an expert artist, and keep up with the changing rules for SEO.  There’s just not enough hours in a day.

I don’t actually optimize this blog anymore, but I bet if you Google Grand Junction Marketing I’m still on page one!

As the old Latin phrase goes “Caveot Emptor” – Buyer Beware!

You remember those days don’t you? You were searching for the Whitehouse homepage, and would land on a major porn site? Ahh the good ol days of when Internet technology was new.

I’ve recently been writing articles for Ezine Articles’ “Hundred Articles in 100 Days” contest, and am really getting into it. I get to stretch my mind, hone my cognitive abilities, and retrain some of my creative processes.

There’s also huge value to a website’s traffic through article marketing as well, and is considered by some to be the single most effective form of online marketing.

After I recently submitted an article,  a pop-up dialogue box told me that I used the same phrase too many times, and that I needed to write a better article. In this particular article, I wasn’t targeting a keyword.  Nope.  Just a good article about search engines, so the term “search engine” was used where needed.

Keyword stuffing is another term used for this, if it’s used in a bad way.  I thoroughly preach to all businesses to never, ever keyword stuff.  There’s no reason to, and search engines are known for degrading your rankings if they think you’re keyword stuffing.

I’ve been teaching myself over the years to use nouns instead of pronouns. To use more descriptive language that is easier for readers to comprehend, and make use of. I don’t always do it, but I try to write this way a majority of the time, partly because it does add some SEO value, but it also increases the readability of most of my articles.

So is it a problem that my articles had the term “search engine” in it too many times?  From Ezine Articles’ perception, yes.

Do I agree with Ezine Articles’ decision to block my article?  yes.  Why?

Because they have too many people that abuse their system with articles only for SEO purposes.  They are looking for quality content to add to their site.  This means that they have to set certain guidelines to filter out potential trash.  I respect this decision to filter.  It’s a protection mechanism that covers 90% of the bad articles from getting listed.

I want my articles to be side by side with good articles, so if my article gets flagged as being keyword stuffed, then it gives me a chance to reflect, improve my own writing, and make corrections.

But is it really a problem to have the term “search engine” in my article, if say I posted it on my own blog? Not at all, so long as it’s sole purpose is to convey your message to your readers.

What I’ve found is that by writing an article that is easy to read and understand, especially technical articles, that I need to use nouns a lot more often, and be slightly more descriptive, which will naturally lend certain terms to be used more often.   This leads to what I refer to as “Natural Keyword Saturation”, and I think is a good thing.

But if you’re after some contrived “keyword saturation” number, then you’re writing your articles and content for the wrong reason.  The primary reason that you need to be writing articles and pages is for your readers and visitors.  They are the ones that will get the satisfaction of the words that you write, and will return day after day to listen to your wisdom.

So take the time to write some good articles, put them on your blog, and don’t worry about keyword saturation.  Just let the keywords saturate themselves “naturally”.

Beyond that one needs to understand a little bit about how search engines work.  Each search engine has its own complex algorithms that determine what it takes to put your site on the top of a results page.  Optimization is the process of modifying a website’s characteristics to make it stand out from all other websites, in the eyes of a search engine.

Optimizing web pages is part science and part art.  Search engines, like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others, don’t actually reveal what their algorithm is to the general public.  SEO experts hypothesize through experimentation, testing and analysis to make a “best guess” approach.  It might be fair to say that SEO is nothing more than an educated guess, but it does go with extensive analysis, sometimes on the level of a university setting, getting intertwined with mathematical diagrams and charts.

Part of the testing process is analyzing competition for a given set of keywords, and comparing them to find common denominators.  When you can find certain common characteristics that only top resulting web pages provide, then you have an idea of what the search engines might be looking for.  Optimizing for these common characteristics that are found in top search engine rankings is the essence of SEO.

Website characteristics can include mundane things like how long have you owned a domain, to more important things like the title of your webpage, and how many people are linking to your site.  Though they may be mundane, they are extremely important, and require constant testing and experimentation to verify that everything is in place.

One extremely important misconception is that websites are ranked in the search engines, but it’s really web pages that are being ranked.  The distinction is that SEO has to be done on each and every page of your website to maximize your exposure and optimization to the search engines.  Think of it this way, when you search for a term, do you get just a homepage,  or do you get a page that is specific to what you’re looking for?

There is of course much more to it than that, but unless you want to be an expert in the field,  I recommend that you get acquainted with the subject, and hire a consultant to guide you and your website along an appropriate path.

Well fast forward 15 years, and the search engines no longer view the meta tags as the best source of information, mostly because the tags were spammed with irrelevant keywords for so many years.

The goal of a search engine is to match a question with an answer.  Your question is the search engine query, and your answer is the search engine result page.  The better the answer that a search engine can give, the better it is at doing it’s job, and the more likely you are to use that search engine exclusively.  So the search engines do have some motivation to provide you with the best answers possible.

So is it possible that the meta tags are being used by the search engines to provide quality results to search engine questions? Yes and no.

No they aren’t the exclusive ranking mechanism that you would’ve found 15 years ago, and there is no guarantee that all search engines are using them at all.

But Matt Cutt’s, one of Google’s own engineers, had put together a video that explained that the meta description tag is sometimes used as the descriptive statement that goes in the search engine result pages, underneath the title of the result.  The meta tag is used if it finds the content of it a more succinct fit to a result page than what it can compile on its own.

This said, I’ve found that providing your own meta description won’t always be on display, but by having it available, it gives search engines an opportunity to display your better written teaser message to get a search engine user to click your link, rather than your competitor.

The meta keyword is still out for open discussion, but I’m of the camp that they are used in certain “related terms” algorithms that use it as a list of terms that a page might also be relevant to, even though the keywords aren’t specifically in the content of the webpage.

I make sure that every page I have has proper meta tags for both keywords and descriptions,  mostly because I’ve seen what the end result can be if they are in there, and what the end result can be without them.

The title tag is not that exciting by itself, containing a beginning and an ending tag, with the contents between these two title tags being the title itself.  The title tag should be the first thing in the HTML’s HEAD section, to give the search engines the clearest picture of what your site is about.

The title of your webpages need to be unique for each page, and pertinent to the content that is on that page.  So if you have a page that is your “about page”, then you want to give a title that describes a little bit more regarding what your page is about.  Something like “About Acme Drilling Company in Los Angeles California” is a lot more descriptive than “About Our Company”

Feel free to use industry specific terms, if needed, but make sure that your title jives with any keyword research that you’ve done.  If you haven’t done any keyword research for your webpage, then common sense will get you descent titles as well.  Just think about how people would describe the page to you, and formulate a title based on those words.

Be as descriptive as you can, but keep your title short at the same time. Don’t use all caps, and don’t just stuff your favorite keyword into the title either.  I suggest that you look at any instances of pronouns, like he, she or it, and replace those pronouns with actual nouns (person, place or thing).  Also use descriptive terms in front of nouns, instead of “Jacks Restaurant” why not “Jacks Famous Buffalo Burger Restaurant”?  See how a few descriptive words can enhance the presentation of your page?

The title is what is displayed in the search engine result pages, so you really want it to stand out to your readers, and give them an extra incentive to click the link to your page.  I highly encourage you to take the time to look at your webpage, and go page by page to make changes to the title tags.  Every little bit helps when it comes to SEO.

Search engines do give credit to a site in search engine rankings if the URL contains keywords in the domain.  But what would be a good domain name?

Two or three words put together are generally great domains, and not too hard to get a hold of.  For instance, CarBuyer.com, BBQlife.com and SwimTeam.com all of them have two keywords tacked together in an easy to remember way that can create a lasting bond between your customers and your business.

Domains with keywords in them tend to be naturally easy to visualize and remember, so you’ll get a lot of repeat customers because they can remember the URL, and will type it in directly.  Over time, and good domain name that is found in the search engines will be clicked on more often because people remember your brand.

Part of the search engines algorithm also seems to imply that there is a certain preference for domains that have the keywords in it.  So if your industry is used car sales, then UsedCarSales.com would rank fairly well, over a more obscure domain like RefurbishedRollingTransporters.com.  Notice also that the obscure domain is really long, and doesn’t use words that completely relate, even though in this case they had similar meanings.

Another thing to avoid in a domain is the hyphen (-) because of it’s appearance related to spam.  So Reburbished-Cars-4-Your-High-School-Graduate.com might (or might not) be relevant to used car sales, if no one will click on it because it sounds like spam, then it’s not worth your time either.

GoDaddy has a related domains feature, so when you try a domain, and it’s taken, you can see domains that might be similar.  This can give you great ideas of related terms to use for keywords.  There is also the option to view related domains that are for sale.  Who knows, maybe you’ll find a great domain for a bargain price that suits your needs.

But no matter how you come about your domain, make sure that your domain is clear about your business, is easy to brand, is easy to remember, and that it has a keyword or two thrown in for good measure.

An SEO company is just like any other company.  There are good ones, and there are bad ones.  You will mesh well with one, and not another.  It is very important to find a company that you feel confident with and feel that they answer your questions satisfactorily and in a timely manner.

Aside from “gut feeling” and personality traits, there are some very specific questions that you need to make sure are answered correctly.  For instance, do they have a portfolio, complete with testimonials?  If they have been in the SEO business for very long, they likely have a portfolio, but many are also protective of their clients, which can be another benefit to you.

Ask potential SEO companies what sort of reporting they provide, what will be in the reports, and how often they can expect to receive a report.  A minimum report should include the locations of the back links that they’ve put into place, what on page SEO changes were made, and a Google Analytics report that includes a summary of traffic results from the previous month.  Monthly is usually adequate for reports, though some will send out reports quarterly.

Ask if the SEO company you are interviewing provides ethical whitehat only solutions, and have them describe what SEO techniques that they plan on using. Have them put it in writing for you, so that you can go to one of the SEO forums, like WarriorForum, to ask around and get other opinions.

Avoid companies that email you with guarantees of page one results.  They don’t own Google, and can’t make such a claim.  Usually they are using PPC advertising, or ranking your site for a keyword that has no volume, and no competition.  Always be wary of email solicitations for SEO services, just like you do for other unsolicited emails.

Part of your job as an SEO shopper, is to educate yourself on the generally accepted practices for SEO.  It’s your site, and if an SEO company does the wrong thing, your site can go from little traffic to no traffic overnight.  Take the time to get to know who you’re hiring, and you can have a site that gets much more traffic than it’s getting now.

If you’re new to article marketing, you may be wondering what the big deal is.  For starters, only 1000 authors made the mark.  Its not difficult, but it takes a certain level of dedication, focus and persistence.

I will mention that the awards are pretty awesome, my favorite being an invitation to a private 4-hour Article Marketing TeleSeminar hosted by Chris Knight, EzineArticles Publisher & CEO (Valued at $10,000).  That would be pretty awesome to win, and he’s giving this away to the first 100 people to qualify.

The other giveaways are things like fleece blankets, hats, mugs, etc – traditional contest prizes.

But none of those prizes should be why you should enter the contest. Nope.  None of the prizes will bring visitors to your site, which aren’t worth near what the prizes are worth (except maybe the grand prize).

The real reason that you should enter this contest, is for exposure to your business.  Article marketing is considered by some (myself included) to be the single most powerful internet marketing technique available in your traffic building arsenal.

Why?  Because it builds upon human psychology factors and search engine optimization factors simultaneously.

The human factor is the part where they are reading what you have to say about a subject.  You are educating them on what you have to say.  You are their authority on the subject.

If well written, they will want to know more, and will click on one of your links in the resource box at the end of the article.  That’s part human factor, and part SEO.  The act of clicking on your link is human behaviour at it’s finest.  The link in the eyes of Google and Bing, is abonus point to you in the search engine rankings.  Do this again (say 100 times, in 100 days?) and you’ll have more human interest and search engine interest than you’ve ever seen before.

But wait – There’s More!

EzineArticles.com isn’t the only article directory online.  There are hundreds of article marketing sites that will take your article, and make them open to public view, with credit to you, and another link back to your site.

And if you want to, you can even submit the same article to them as well.  Some say that you should not submit the same article to more than one place, out of fear of a duplicate content penalty.  Perhaps.  But if it’s that good, then you are really more concerned about the human psychological behavior of them clicking on the link back to your site, right?

There are even some online article submission companies that will take your article, and submit to 10’s to 100’s of sites for you, on your behalf.

So you’ve just taken a single article and had it thrown around the net to a hundred places. Now imagine if  you have 100 articles!  I think you can get the point here about number of backlinks for SEO, and the human factor of getting more people the opportunity to read your article and click on your links.

And if you want to re-purpose the article even further, you can submit the article to your own blog as well.  There really isn’t an end where you get your articles syndicated to.

As you can well imagine, I’m a huge fan of article marketing.  And with that, I give to you my pledge…. my pledge to write 100 article in 100 days….

Let the race begin.  Please join me on the journey!

I’ve been reading about the merger, and it seems that there are both good and bad things about the Microsoft and Yahoo merger.

Randfish of SEOmoz gave a nice summary of the top 10 things that might change with the Microsoft and Yahoo Search Engine merger, and gave some nice insight into things that could change.

I hadn’t even considered that Yahoo Site Explorer could go away, which right now is the best source of back link information, through the linkdomain search query operator.

There are some, as noted in this SearchEngineWatch article on the merger reaction, that seem to think this will be a good thing for advertisers and marketers.

I personally think that is a wee bit too early to decide for sure what this means, but I do think that with only 2 major players at the table, there will be more and more reason to SEO a site for both of them, instead of just relying on optimizing for Google.

What does this mean for SEO cost?  it might cost more to get organic results if you push to have both search engines return your site in top search engine rankings, but I think that overall PPC costs will go down on a “per click” basis, but having to manage two separate accounts, instead of just an AdWords PPC campaign will cost more to manage.

Less is more… or so I read in a Unix book at one time.

I do think that with only two big search engines, instead of one big one, and two little ones, that we might see some neck-to-neck competition.

Just like the good ole beginning days of AMD and Intel, duking it out to to see who would be the first to 1Ghz… or who could pipeline more data simultaneously.

Personally, I think that it will be a humbling experience for Google, and they will be forced to do a little bit more, and raise the benchmarks for superiority a little bit higher.  But I’m sure that Yahoo and Microsoft are well aware of this, and will be ready to charge forward with their own ideas of what it will take to dominate the search engine marketing space.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited to see what the future of search engines has in store for us in the near future.

I still content that this is a fairly accurate statement, and if you break down the content of a page, I’d say that the title of a page is the king of the on page content.

A page has many (hundreds perhaps) factors that influences it’s rankings in the search engines, but none are nearly as influential as the page title.

The page title sets the stage for what the rest of the article or blog post is going to be about.  It can be descriptive enough that the content of the page need not be read, for the title says it all.

Google gives the page title as the heading for each of it’s result pages.  I think that it would be fair to say that the implication is that Google itself sees the page title as the king of content.

And what should be in a title?  Company name?  Address? Descriptive details? Yes.  All the above.  Carefully phrased, concise and to the point, a short headline title can include it all, and maximize your interest by readers and search engines alike.

For blog posts, a concise and striking headline title will do.  For an e-commerce product, a product model number, brief description and possibly a category will work.

Some businesses can get the complete company name and address in the title of a contact page. But no matter what you have in your title, make sure that it is unique and relevant to the page that you are writing.  Don’t use a generic title for your entire site.  Each page is ranked individually, and requires a unique title for each page.

After watching this Alarming Headline on Christmas Shopping, I realized that what he’s getting at is is so true ( be sure to watch the Comedy Central Clip on the Economy too).

So what do you need to do to begin your Christmas SEO?

Two things: 1) Decide that you’re going to SEO your site for Christmas and 2) Make a plan for how you’re going to SEO your site for the Christmas holiday.

Number 1 has to be done first.  It is the essence and crux of every plan.  You must make the decision that it is what you want.  If you haven’t been convinced either way, then you need to make that decision soon, or you’ll miss out on the extra holiday search engine traffic.

The second element is the plan.  Don’t just get in the car and decide to get there (get where?) , or you may end up with your car in a river!  Plan the family vacation to Disney Land, pack the swimsuits, put gas in the car and map out the route.

Take that analogy and apply it to your SEO campaign.  Pick your keywords, plan your online day, purposefully place links all over the internet in support of your website, blog or ecommerce site.  Optimize title tags for the holiday spirit, have articles written, ready to submit to directories and blogs… and the list goes on.

I know that I’ll be starting to SEO  my Sexy Lingerie store soon, especially since the holiday trend is maximal at the Halloween through Valentines day time frame.

The moral of the story is:  Start your Christmas SEO projects and campaigns now!

Good Luck!

And the answer is both simple, and complex.

The simple answer is “More than your competition for a given keyword”.

The complex answer involves knowing what your goals are.

Backlink strategies are not something that you just “set and forget”.  Backlinks are something that you need to plan, a specific number every month.

For instance, let’s say (completely made up here) that the top 5 competitors for the keyword you’re trying to rank well for each have about 10,000 backlinks (per Yahoo, not Google).

This tells you that you need to have about 10,000 backlinks today, but you’ll also need to be gaining more per month, since your competition will be doing the same thing.

You also don’t want to suddenly have 10,000 links, since the search engines will immediately view that as SPAM.

So create a plan to get your 10,000 links over time.  Split it out over 6 or 12 months.  Once you’ve obtained your 10,000 link goal, you need to create a smaller campaign to keep steady.

But always keep an eye on your competition.  If they are getting more links, then you need to match – nay, beat – your competition in number of back links.

Just keep at it, no matter what your competition is.  The more competitive the keyword, the more work you’re going to have to do.

If you’re just starting out, I highly recommend starting with the optimization of lesser competitive keywords.  The volume may be less, but if you can be in the top 3, you’ll make it up in clicks direct to your site.

Now I’ve only used a few shopping carts, like osCommerce, X-Cart and Zen Cart, but they all had various SEO components installed and a high degree of configurability.   I assumed, wrongly,  that all shopping carts had this capability.

Looks like there are shopping carts that don’t give you a product-by-product or category level page titles.  From an SEO perspective, these are imperitive.

There are a lot of things that you need to look for in a shopping cart to fit your needs, but now you need to know more about the SEO capabilities of the cart as well.

Read more about how to choose a shopping cart for SEO.

The SEO Plan

Set & Almost Forget SEO Basics

1. What makes a word a keyword?
   Your website will be made up of many words, but a keyword is special, it is what your website is about. Take this one step further an define a keyword phrase as a group of words that define what your website is about.
   • Focus on 1 – 5 keyword phrases for your entire website.
   • Focus on 1 – 3 keywords phrases for your each individual page.
   • Keyword phrases need to be in heading, titles, hidden tags, etc.
   • Focus on keywords sounding natural in the text…don’t overuse.
2. Savvy to the Competition
   This is a very important point to understand: all businesses have both competitors on the web and competitors next door. What is your REAL competition on the web.
   • Where do they rank in the search engines?
   • What Keywords and keyword phrases are they focusing on?
   • Who is linking to them and why…what are they saying?
3. Form or Function on Website Design
   Always choose function! You could end up with a very pretty picture, that the search engines can’t see. Remember, search engines see text. How do you know if your web designer is really making and SEO friendly site?
   • Each page has a unique title and unique meta tags that describe the page.
   • Headlines are not in images…important words should always be in text only.
   • The designer has talked to you about unpalatable content or content management.
   • The designer has at least mentioned the word “keyword” in a conversation.
4. Set the Map
   A sitemap is a fundamentally important hidden part of all websites. It is the document that maps out your website for search engines and other spiders. This document controls what pages you want the search engines to find and which ones you want them to consider unimportant. You don’t have to know how to do one yourself, just to this sitemap generator and generate a sitemap for free.

The next article will focus on the tasks that should be done repetitively. These are scheduled tasks that should be done routinely to make sure that your efforts are paying off. Really, what is the point of doing all this work unless you are tracking and refining the process to get more conversions?

You have your work cut out for you…so away you go!

The inauguration of Barack Obama is on everyones’ fingers. Typing aways searches about the coverage of the ceremony, or the first 100 days, finding out all the details about the historic event of Barack Obama’s step into the White House.

So what does Barack Obama have to do with SEO? Nothing really. It is the trend of searching for Barack Obama’s name that has to do with SEO and SEM.

The picture below is from Google Trends and it shows that there have been a few spikes in searches for the term, “Barack Obama”. It also shows that searches are on the rise. No real surprise, since the inauguration is happening tomorrow.

Now, here is the funny part. The person may be “Barack Obama”, but the person has a persona that has become known as “Obama”, and if you look at Google Trends for “Obama”, there are some pretty interesting results.

First of all, notice that there are more peaks, more search volume, and in general more activity.

The real tricky part…understanding these results. The one for Obama as the search term will also include Michele Obama, and other extraneous information if someone is just searching for Barack.

This phenomenon is not uncommon in determining what keywords to be used in order to make sure your website is being found.

Let’s take the example of a web site dedicated to the inauguration of Barack Obama.

As we can tell from the previous two trends, we have a base trend, and that is the searches for the term “Obama”. However, as mentioned, it contains extraneous terms that do not pertain to the web site we are working with.

We can further narrow down our target by taking the base keyword and adding a qualifying keyword. In this case making the search target “Barack Obama”.

One step further and create a term that would considered a long tail keyword. “Barack Obama Inauguration.” This really exemplifies what a long tail keyword is. There won’t be as many people searching for that particular phrase of words, but the ones that do will be very targeted and very interested in one thing.

So, what do you do with this knowledge?

• When you are writing articles, or creating pages for your web site. Do a little research on Google Trends and find out what people are really searching for.
• Find out if there are particular times of the year that those terms are more popular.
• Determine if there is a qualifying word(s) you should add to your keywords that will narrow the field of searchers, but give you more qualified visitors that are really looking for what you have to offer.

It is all about understanding your customer and their search habits. Understanding what they search for and when they search will help you target that market as effectively as possible.

So do you want to hear the truth?

Search engine marketing on Google is still alive and kicking, as a matter of fact the big guys not only swear by it, they post their results for everyone to see. Talk about some outstanding results! It is no wonder why you see big name companies working Google AdWords and not worrying so much about their natural ranking.

Here is a link to just a few testimonials for Google:

http://www.google.com/ads/success.html

What you will see is what a good Google AdWords set up can do for your business.

Now, you may have opened an account in the past, blown through a couple of bucks, and you have completely written off advertising on Google.

Guess what? I caught you reading. That means that you are still a little curious about how it all works and how you can use it to your advantage.

Would more visitors, more conversions, and more cash interest you?

You see, it is simply all about getting the right keywords, tweaked just the right way, and the knowledge to see the patterns on what keywords actually bring the best conversions.

The bottom line is, and always will be, all about the bottom line! How many visitors actually turn into buying customers? The answer to that question should be well above 1%!

See now were talking…you don’t need deep wells of money to throw at a marketing experiment. Here’s the deal, if you want the conversions, you just have to know a few simple tricks.

1. Research your keywords: With Google the tool is to do this is integrated into the actually building of your ads.
2. Pick a budget: It doesn’t matter if your budget is $10 a day or $100 a day.
3. Pick a test target: This is where you evaluate your campaign; a couple of good breaking points might be every $100 or every $200.
4. Stick to it: Here is the hard part, watching $100 drain out of an account and not getting enough conversions to even come close to breaking even. HOLD ON! This is where most will throw in the towel and never look back…but keep going.
5. Evaluate test: You have spent the $100, now see what keywords actually brought conversions, which ones did absolutely nothing for you, and which ones brought visitors without conversions. Take out the ones that didn’t work and add some new ones.
6. Stick to it: Once again watch your $100 come out of the account, but this time the damage shouldn’t look as bad. You might not be breaking even yet, but you are probably a lot closer.
7. Evaluate test: Take the time to once again evaluate your ads and keywords, keep the winners, and dump the losers.
8. Stick to it: No, I am not kidding you…run this again, another $100 with your new keywords and ads.
9. Evaluate test: This result should be a lot closer to what you want. If probably even broke even this time.
10. Stick to it: I know, I know you think you get this by now, but give it one final whirl at the $100.
11. Evaluate test: This time, I’m sure you will see that you broke through and your ad is now pulling you in conversions.
12. Put in maintenance mode: Evaluate every month or every quarter, whatever makes sense for you, and make changes based on what you see.

This is just a basic frame work you can use to run a test to see if a market is right, if your message is right, and if you have the right combination of keywords. I recommend that you try different wording, otherwise known as split testing, to see which combination of words prove to be the most effective.

You can also take this one step further and improve your chances of converting if you have special landing pages for each ad. This allows you to target a very specific audience with your keywords you choose, the ad, and finally the actual page they land on.

As you can see, most will fail because they give up way too soon in the process. Any marketing effort needs to have a test period and those test periods don’t come for free. As long as you understand that from the beginning and you are prepared to see a result of spending $100 with absolutely no conversions, but knowing that by pressing on it will get better, than you really are ready to give Google AdWords a REAL try.

Earl Nightingale once said:

“There is no such thing as competition, only a need to create.”

Wow! What a motto for 2009. Business is all about filling needs. If you have ever watched the Disney movie Robots you might remember the motto, “See a need. Fill a need.”

Many times when looking at a competitive environment a business gets into a mindset that there is too much competition instead of asking what need is not being filled.

This is much simpler to say than it is to do. Looking at any industry, any environment it takes thought, and thought is time, with time equal to money, that means no time for thought!

Simply put, if a business owner doesn’t schedule time to just think about the needs that are not being filled, the business owner will always see competition instead of opportunities to create.”

Doing business online is really about finding the searchers that are not being served.

Often times in an industry there is tough competition for very few keywords. The creative part comes in finding the keywords that a lot people use that are being ignored by your competition.

Finding those hidden treasure troves takes precious time. This is why as a business owner looking at using a Professional SEO consultant could be the answer to unlocking your precious time, as well as unlocking the precious treasure trove.

Understanding that your business needs to create, rather than compete, is the first step. Finding the way to make the creation happen is a goal that all businesses should have for 2009.

Ponder this:

• Outsourcing more of the things that are not core to the business.
• Demonstrating to employees the passion that is our business.
• Locating experts to find new ways of bringing our business to our customers.
• Exploring new marketing alternatives.
• Identifying what isn’t working and quit doing it.

These are just a few things to ponder, but really the bottom line is looking internally for answers, not your external competition. When you are inventing, moving, growing, it doesn’t matter what your “competition” is doing, because you are creating.

Go forth and create.

This is what my youngest daughter will say when she is waiting patiently for something to happen and we have drawn an invisible line telling her that is where she needs to stay.

It works just as well for an adult as it does a three year old.

Think about the invisible lines in the sand that you tolerate for yourself, your business and your web site.

The New Year is the perfect time to evaluate lines, test them out, and decide if you want to keep them or cross them.

So, what do some of those lines look like in terms of Internet marketing and search engine optimization?

1. Rank in Search Engines – virtual line that only the big guys rank well in the search engines.
2. Time to do a Newsletter – virtual line that lets the clock win and your customers miss out.
3. Money to Afford SEO – virtual line where your wallet continually defines your online marketing efforts.
4. Only so Many Hours in a Day – virtual line that keeps you stuck at square one wondering when you could possible take the next step (hint: there is a lot of time spent wondering).
5. Bold Statements Online – virtual line that defines your company, slowly eroding the passion that really is your business.

These are just five of the lines that can be drawn in the virtual online sand. Sometimes these lines are drawn without even realizing it.

Make 2009 the year that you step over the lines, and refuse to be defined by a line.
Happy New Year from Kettlewell Enterprises.

Tweet…Tweet..all my Tweeples, check out a recent RT about a DM that I received for help.

Now, if you are not familiar with the world of Twitter, than you probably need a little translation for that previous line.

So, here it is:

“Listen up (Tweet) all my friends (Tweeple) on Twitter, I was recently quoted (RT) out to everyone about a direct message (DM) that I received asking for help.”

See, not that bad…ok, yes there is a learning curve. This learning curve is nothing to fear, I will take you through everything that you need to know to enter into the world of Twitter and do it with a loud splash sending ripples of your presence out into Twitterland and beyond!

Twitter Background

Twitter is a phenomenon known as micro-blogging. There 140 characters per tweet, or message, that will go into the stream of tweets and be seen by all of your followers. It is no coincidence that when you send a text message you have only 140 characters per message. Many people will use SMS, or text messaging to tweet, what a formidable way to stay connected.

In April of 2008 an American journalist was saved from an Egyptian prison when he had a few moments to send a message out to all his social groups, including Twitter, with the message, “Arrested.” Now, people knew where he was and his message was taken very seriously, without that message it may have been days or weeks before what happened to him became clear.

In December of 2008 Pepsico was challenged by a tweeter about their new ad campaign in Germany that focused on the “One Calorie” being so lonely that it commits suicide. Bad judgment, I would agree, but even more profound when a solitary tweet turns into Pepsico apologizing on Twitter to all who were affected by their bad judgment.

With just those two stories alone it is easy to see the power and potential of Twitter. So now let’s get started on what you need to do to jump into Twitter.

Open up a browser window and let’s get started.

What follows for members is a 14 page PDF detailing how to get started on Twitter and how to have as many followers as you want in a very short amount of time.

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Welcome, members! Here is the PDF Tweetorial for you to enjoy. Please remember if you have any questions we are here to guide you through the Domination of your industry.

Tweeterific PDF Click Here!