Internet Business and Marketing

The Two Main Secrets of Success and Failure.

September 25, 2008

The two main factors or qualities of success and failure are the same thing. If you have these two traits then you're probably successful at whatever you do, if you don't have them, then you're probably not successful and perhaps even a failure.

Let me give you an example:
I'm working my tail off on a few projects right now. That's one reason my posting frequency on this blog has been below normal lately. One of the projects deals with my music and recording some new material. I needed to setup my recording equipment in a new location and prep the area for recording by temporarily installing a bunch of acoustic dampening material (acoustic foam). I had a deadline to meet and an even shorter window of opportunity to get the work done because my wife was having her gall bladder removed and I had to finish before her surgery so that I could help her and take care of things around the house.

Yet what happened? I found myself spending an exorbitant amount of time building wooden frames to hold the acoustic foam panels. Previously, in the other location I used to do this, I had the foam panels mounted directly to the wall; I couldn't do that in this location and needed to make something to hold them. This setup involves a lot of equipment and cabling, and I spent lots of time getting every little thing as perfect as I could. Finally, I started realizing that my window for getting anything written and recorded was getting smaller and smaller. So I stopped being so anal about the setup and started doing what was actually important at the moment: recording. I met the deadline; however, I could have done more if I'd had better clarity of focus and self-discipline.

Kind of goes back to when I was a kid and my dad would send me out to mow the yard... I'd spend two hours fixing the lawn mower when it wasn't even broken. I'd sharpen the blade, adjust the carburetor, gap the spark plug, etc. Yes, those things occasionally need doing, but more often than not the thing will run good enough to mow the grass.

Like Larry the Cable Guy says: "Git-R-Done"!

Once you get something accomplished you can spend a little time fixing the lawn mower or building more wooden frames to hold things. Then accomplish something else. Rinse and Repeat!

My example is actually not that bad because I accomplished what I needed to for the most part. But sometimes it's worse. Have you ever cleared a weekend to work on a special project or two and find yourself sidetracked over and over? Then by the end of the weekend, on Sunday evening, you're so mad at yourself you can't stand it because you didn't even finish one of the things you set out to do. This is where most people fail. Like a jinxed horse in a race, never getting out of the starting gate. This came up, and that came up, and you turned on the TV, and two movies later you're still sitting on the couch eating lunch except now its dinner time. Rinse and Repeat!

If you're into sports or music, you've seen people who buy every item they can to help their game, instrument, or performance. If it's sports, they own everything Under Armor makes. If it's a guitar, they have every accessory, every gizmo and enhancement, and every setup adjustment they can find. Then there's the other end of the spectrum: they guys who have the bare minimum of equipment, or just a high quality instrument, and they rely on their skill and execution ability.

This second group will generally be the ones to succeed and will get the endorsement deals for all the equipment and accessories - after they've proven themselves, after their self-discipline and clarity of focus have helped them to succeed.

There are a lot of things that can help you get and maintain self-discipline and focus. Everything from yellow sticky notes to paid mentors, coaches, and teachers. Being hungry and really wanting what you're striving for helps too.

You read a lot in this internet marketing arena about the key to success being taking action or even taking inspired action, but I want to add to that and make it: taking the correct action and taking it now.

Clarity of Focus - identifying the things that will make your wheels turn verses just revving up your engine for show.

Self-Discipline - doing the things that will make your wheels turn verses just revving up your engine for show.

Until next time,
Fred

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10 On-Page SEO Ranking Factors

September 22, 2008

Here's a list of 10 items that are standard parts of web pages and how they affect your ranking in the search engines, primarily Google.

First a few definitions:

• Keywords are the words you want to rank well for in Google.


• The process of making your site rank well in searches on a search engine is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.


• If it's part of your web page, it's called On-Page vs. Off-Page things like links to your site from other web sites.

Now on with the show:

1. Keyword Density: Don't over use keywords. If you were talking to me about Rachael Ray's cooking show, you wouldn't use Rachael Ray 400 times in the conversation. You'd use her name a few times and you'd use pronouns most of the time. A normal way of having a conversation. Your web pages, articles, and blog posts should follow that same pattern of normal conversation when it comes to how many times you use your keywords. Keyword density use to be a very important factor, however, the algorithms that modern search engines use are much smarter than they were then, the best advice now is just be natural and don't over do it.
2. Don't "stuff" keywords. Very similar to not overusing them, "stuffing" refers to trying to use your keywords without it being obvious. For example, hidden text, or text that's the same color as the background, making strange entries in the non-visible portions of a web page such as the head section, or putting your keyword in a link's "title" tag or an image's "alt" tag 20 times.
3. Keep the page title short. This implies that you should have a page title. A page title is a tag in the head section of the web page. Your page title should be relevant to the subject and contain your keyword phrase. If you're trying to optimize for multiple keyword phrases then you can alternate which keyword phrase you're using across different pages instead of trying to put them all the title of all the pages.
4. Keep the page title unique. This implies that you should have a page title and it should not be the same as any other page title on your site. If you have a blog, then this is usually, or at least can be, handled automatically by combining the post's title with a base title to create a unique title for each page.
5. The Keyword META Tag is a tag in the head section of the web page that contains a comma separated list of keywords. It's not used all that much these days by most search engines because of how much it was overused in the past by people trying to stuff keywords and game the system. However, some search engines still use it, and other software will look at it as well, so you should have a short to medium list of keywords in your keyword META tag. Now notice I said short to medium. Don't list every keyword under the sun that you can think of, keep it as short and concise as possible.
6. The Description META Tag is a tag in the head section of the web page that describes your site or your page. Again, short to medium length is better than long and definitely better than way long. Google will use this description in the short snippet of text that it displays to someone searching for your keywords, IF, your description contains the keyword phrase that they searched for. This fact alone makes this a very, very important tag - it is in effect a headline and you should spend some time crafting it to get as many people to click on your site's link when listed in the results of a search.
7. Garbage is Trash. Make sure you don't have junk on your site. Have quality content, links that work, no links to illegal sites, porn sites, questionable sites, etc. If you accept links in a link exchange directory, accept articles in an article directory, or, accept comments to blog posts, then you need to make sure that these do not contain any junk or spam either.
8. Link Structure: Make sure that there are easy to follow links to the pages on your site. If you use a JavaScript menu system or something similar, then you would be well advised to use a text menu system at the bottom of the page to link to your most important pages. The objective here is to make it easy for people and an automated software tool, such as a search engine, to find your various pages of content.
9. Link Title Text: When you create a link you can specify an optional parameter to the link code called a title tag. This is the text that you will see if you hold your mouse over a link without clicking. Its purpose is to farther describe the link to the user. You should make moderately conservative use of this tag for internal linking. Internal links are links to pages on your own site. Again, don't over do it, but do use it by sparingly putting some keywords here and there.
10. Alt Image Text: When you put an image on your web page, there's an optional parameter to the image code call alt text that is used to display descriptive text when image display is turned off in the browser, or, when you hover the mouse over an image. Again, you should make moderately conservative use of this tag. Don't over do it, but do use it by sparingly putting some keywords here and there. If you want an image to be listed in the image search portions of the search engines, definitely put some descriptive text in the alt image tag.

How important are these on page factors? Not as important as they used to be, but they're important. If you have a page ranking that's nowhere to be found, these changes may help it get found, but it probably won't put it on the first page of results. But when used as a part of an overall plan that includes other items, such as link building (3WayLinks), then it can make a big difference.

Until Next Time,
Fred

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Playing Chicken with Google

September 3, 2008

In a previous article I talked about Google Dip, and I've also mention here before that Google will take a site that's ranking well and seemingly just give it a wack to see what happens. I think that this is built into their algorithms to try and throw off Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts of people trying to get their sites indexed unnaturally.

What do I mean and why would they do this? If you're focusing on content and providing a web site or blog that gives value to your visitors, the search engines will do a pretty good job of finding and ranking your site. Combine that with the SEO methods that I use and promote on this blog and you can get good rankings.

However, if you're trying to "game" the system and rank well for terms that maybe don't have that much to do with your site, or trying to keep a site ranking well that's not very good, perhaps all ads, poor content or something, then you're more likely to jump and tweak your site anytime your rankings waver.

The Dunking
So by Google randomly, and I will add, temporarily, giving your SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking a dunking, maybe they think they can rattle the nerves of those types of sites and cause them to make changes that will, or possibly will, result in their SERP ranking going down permanently. What? Yes. For example: if my site is ranking on the first page for a particular keyword or keyword phrase and has been there for a while, and then all of a sudden, without me changing anything, my ranking drops to 150 or 300, then I'm rattled. I panic. I started ripping out code and changing things. I start altering my linking strategies, etc. But.... It was a head-fake. Had I done nothing, in few days to a week my SERP ranking would probably have returned to near where it was before. But, because I was intent on "gaming" the system, I panicked with a kneejerk reaction and now who knows what will happen.

Proof?
Don't believe me. Below I give you a history report from one of my sites for two different keyword phrases. I'm not going to reveal the site or the phrases because that usually results in people trying to beat my rankings or Google messing with the rankings (maybe). This data comes from my ranking tracking software that I'm developing and have mentioned several times. I had hoped to have it finished in August but it's not ready yet... to many other things going on! Be sure to sign up to my announcement list and when the software is available you'll have a day or two to get it at a reduced price before it officially goes on sale!

The drop is more noticeable with Keyword Phrase 1 than with Keyword Phrase 2, but its there in both. I've been monitoring this particular site for much longer than the data I give here and it's a regular occurrence for the SERP rankings to follow the patterns below. Note that 0's mean the site was not found in the ranks, or, an error occurred.

P.S. Remember to sign up to my announcement list and when the software is available you'll have a day or two to get it at a reduced price before it officially goes on sale!

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Anorexic Mouse Bagged with Hair-Trigger Marketing Techniques!

August 26, 2008

I started to title this post: "How to catch a skinny mouse", or, "Hair-Trigger Mouse Trap for Anorexic Mice with Eating Disorders". Either way, it reinforces the fact that there are lessons all around us as we go through life, all we have to do is be observant enough to learn from them.

I hate having a mouse in the house, but it happens. I'd like to stakeout the kitchen in camo, automatic weapon in hand, and a Rambo like grimace on my face, waiting until the little trespasser showed his furry face so I could put a M60 slug through his tiny little mouse heart... I didn't do that. I wanted to, but I didn't.

Instead, I went to the store and bought a pack of 97 cent mouse traps. I baited the traps with peanut butter (as suggested), protected my fingers and gently placed the traps where the mouse had obviously been.

The next morning before breakfast I checked on the traps.... the little varmint had eaten all the peanut butter from both traps without setting them off. I'm talking licked clean too! Not a trace of peanut butter remained.

The next night I decided to use cheddar cheese as bait. My thinking was that maybe the peanut butter was too soft and using harder bait would result in the mouse tripping the trap. Wrong. The next morning, the cheese was gone; the traps were still cocked, and no mouse in site.

Grrr..
Now I'm getting mad. I'm being had by an anorexic mouse with an eating disorder who does not even weigh enough to trip the mouse trap. Or, perhaps he is just really smart? Or, maybe it's a ghost mouse and he floats above the trap while eating? I don't know but I'm determined to get him!

More determined than ever, I decided the problem was that the trigger arm on the mouse trap was not slick enough to slide out of the little trigger platform easily. I locate some petroleum jelly and proceed to grease each mouse trap. I then baited the traps with peanut butter: this time with a much smaller amount so that the little monster will have to get closer in to get his first bite. I re-cocked the traps and gently placed them in the cabinet and went to bed.

Foiled Again...
The next morning I'm sure I'll have a mouse. Absolutely, 100% sure. There's no doubt in my mind that when I open that cabinet door, there will be mouse number 1 from the mouse most wanted list laying there with his tongue hanging out. I slowly open the door to reveal... nothing but completely empty traps... licked perfectly clean again.

ARRRGGGG
At this point, I have a few choices. I can go buy an electronic mouse trap that shocks the mouse as they step on it. Nope. I'm mad. That's just too easy. I want to get even with this critter and that means only one thing. I want a trap that goes BANG. So the next choice is to modify the mouse trap to have a "hair trigger" that my resident as-skinny-as-Paris-Hilton-mouse will set off. The third choice is to keep feeding the micro-rat until he's big enough to trip the trap as purchased. The third choice will take too long, so it's to the drawing board with a Tim the Tool Man Taylor laugh to trick-out my mouse traps.

Hair-Triggered and Loaded
A "hair trigger", for those of you who don't know, is a trigger on a gun that takes almost zero force to pull. This is usually implemented as a second trigger: when you're ready to shoot, you pull the first trigger and that engages the second or hair-trigger which just takes a touch of force to fire the gun. This is a common setup in target shooting rifles, etc. So I study the mouse traps and determine that by simply bending the trigger arm a little at just the right spot, I can create an angle where the trigger arm engages the trigger platform that will probably make it much more sensitive. Indeed, I had trouble just keeping them cocked long enough to place in the cabinet. This time, I'm sure it'll work. I bait them again with a little peanut butter and go to bed.

But I'm Too Anxious
After about 30 minutes in bed, I get up to check on the mouse traps. I took a flash light and peered into the cabinet. Guess what's looking right back at me! Yep. The little cursed varmint that thinks he's smarter than I am. He didn't even run, he just turned and walked off to hide. Confident in my modifications (no peanut butter was missing at this time) I went back to bed.

BAM!
This morning I had one dead mouse, trapped by one highly modified mouse trap! Insert another Tim the Tool Man Taylor laugh here!

Why is this important?
There are some good parallels between this story and marketing: like not giving up. There's also the constant modification of the bait and mouse trap to finally catch the mouse. You should always monitor your marketing, sales pages, etc. to make sure that you're not letting the mouse (sale) get away and that you know what combination of things actually bagged your mouse (made the sale). Stay tuned to this blog for future articles on how to do this. Only then will you turn your marketing efforts into a hair-triggered sales machine.

Until next time,
Fred

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Marketing Lesson from the Homeless...

August 18, 2008

You've heard that experience is the best teacher. You've also heard that there are lessons everywhere if you only look for them. So what can you learn about marketing from a homeless person? Plenty.

In my town, the local churches help the homeless. They help some of them get jobs selling the Sunday paper at busy intersections. These "vendors" as they're called prefer to stand in the middle of the road on the concrete medians at intersections. There are only a few intersections around town that are busy enough to warrant this. You have to have a lot of respect for these people, they're out there every Sunday - the same ones - no matter how cold or hot, in freezing weather, snow, rain, or blazing sun.

In the last few months, this has become a legal battle between the newspaper and the city. The city council decided that the newspaper sales created a traffic hazard - although no accidents or injuries have occurred, and passed a local ordinance against such sales. The newspaper said that the new ordinance violated their 1st and 14th amendment rights. The newspaper has a pending lawsuit against the city, but in the meantime, this problem has surfaced in other towns because the N.C. Senate passed a bill making it illegal to prevent the sale of newspapers on roadways. Governor Mike Easley signed the bill on Sunday, August 17th, so I guess this coming Sunday we'll see the vendors in the medians again.

The local ordinance that was passed in my town did not prevent the sale of newspapers from sidewalks, only from the medians. After the ordnance went into effect, the vendors tried selling their papers from the sidewalks at the side of the road, but after a few weeks we didn't see them very much. I wondered why they stopped selling the papers, I just figured that they were frustrated by the legal issues and were waiting until the pending lawsuit was settled.

You may be asking yourself what's the big deal. And that's where the marketing lesson comes in. Why do you think the vendors liked selling from the median in the center of the road? Because when people stopped at the intersections, they were right there beside the driver's window. They could walk up and down holding their papers and sell them: a lot of them.

There is an article in this morning's paper about the Governor signing the bill. In the article, the reporter states that the sales of papers from the eight vendors at intersections before the ban went into effect averaged about 800 papers sold on a given Sunday. After the local ordinance went into effect and the vendors tried selling from the sidewalk, some vendors sold only 13 papers in 6 hours. That's why they stopped selling from the side of the road. And that is the marketing lesson.

The homeless vendors quickly learned that to maximize their sales they had to get out in front of their potential customers: i.e. the middle of the road. This is directly applicable to Internet sales as well. Buying cheap ads just because they're inexpensive is analogous to selling papers from the side of the road. You should not decide to run an ad simply because it's the only one you can afford. You should decide where to place your ad based on where it will be seen by the most people who are likely to purchase your product or service. If you can't afford those locations, then don't run the ad. Search for the next best place or location. Simply running an ad in an inexpensive location because you can't afford a location that's a good fit for you or your product is a waste of money and a foolish way to run your business.

Until next time,
Fred

P.S. This goes for any type of exposure, free or paid: blog widgets, banner exchanges, etc. If it's not exposing you to a good, solid source of potential customers then it's not worth your time.

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When Good CSS Goes Bad

August 12, 2008

It was a dark night, very dark. It had been raining and was steamy hot and muggy. Veronica was a little nervous walking through this part of town alone and at such a late hour. She clutched her purse close and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. She could hear footsteps behind her that seemed to keep getting closer and closer, almost matching her steps, as if they were trying to avoid being noticed. She kept wishing she had remembered her cell phone this morning. As she approached a narrow alley she had an uneasy feeling, she slowed down a little but didn't want to stop because of whoever or whatever was behind her. So she kept walking. Just as she got to the alley, someone stepped out in front of her and she felt a hand on her shoulder from behind. Luckily she had some pepper spray and unloaded it on the two culprits: CSS and HTML.

That's where I come in. I'm a P.I., a Private Investigator. I find the answers people think they want, but usually after they get them, they wished they'd never asked. It's a dirty business, but someone's gotta do it. Veronica hired me to find out why she kept having trouble with CSS and why CSS that had helped her so much in the past had now turned bad and was cheating on her.

When she first appeared in my office, I ask her: "What's a classy dame like you doing in this part of town?". She confessed that although she was created with classes, they just didn't seem to work anymore. It even got to my jaded, calloused heart when the tears welled up in her big baby blues as she admitted that even though she still had some style, she had lost her class...

So, like the sucker that I am, I took the case... and here's what I discovered.

First let me give you some background information.
CSS = Cascading Style Sheets
HTML = Hyper Text Markup Language

Both are used together to create web pages. CSS is not required but is used to define how something on the page looks. HTML is the source code behind a web page. For example, if you use your browser's menus to view the source that makes up this web page, you'll see a lot of HTML code. CSS allows you to remove as much of the styling of a page into a separate file vs. having it mixed in with all the parts of the page. This has a lot of advantages and I have a previous post that talks about that: Learning CSS Makes for Better Web Sites. With CSS you can define default styles, or how something looks, to paragraphs, images, headlines, etc. This includes font sizes, colors, and the actual font definition itself.

So where does class come into play? A class is a named set of styles that you can apply to page elements. For example, you may define a class in your CSS that's named checkout and you could apply it to a part, or all, of the checkout page.

You can learn more about HTML and CSS with my free course: Web Site Design Course: HTML, CSS.

The other thing about CSS is that it is cascading, hence the name, cascading style sheets. Cascading means that, for example, if you apply a paragraph definition at the page level and then deeper in the page you apply a different paragraph style to a page element, that page element will be rendered with the formatting of new style and all the formatting of the page-level style that's not defined by the new style. In other words, the page-level style could define the margins, font-size, color of text, and background color, and if the new style only changed the font size, then the new paragraph would be rendered with the same color as the main part of the page but with a different text size.

Another part of cascading, where a lot of people get hung up, is that you can define the same style multiple times in your CSS definitions, but the last one is the one that counts. And it's easy to overlook that fact and edit something over and over wondering why it's not working, when several lines down in your code you have the same style, and it includes the same element(s) you're trying to alter.

Well, that's how it's supposed to work. Now let's get back to my case....

It turns out that Veronica has some pretty complicated pages. A dame that looks like that is always complicated! Her pages have DIVs and Tables nested one inside another. Now that shouldn't be a problem if it's laid out correctly. But she could only go so deep before the style classes would stop working. The problem usually happened on the 5th level deep. Parts of the class would apply, for example font color, but other parts would default to the parent element's style, for example font-size. This occurred in all the browsers I tested it in too: Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox, and Opera.

I fixed several small problems that I just knew would fix the larger problem, but it made no difference. Nothing I could do fixed it. I hate to admit it, but this went on for days. I made all the normal rounds looking for answers, even going a few places I don't like to go these days, but no one knew anything. Nothing.

Then it hit me. Maybe CSS classes, even though they have names, don't really work by name 100%. So I rearranged the CSS file and put the classes in order of hierarchy as they appeared in the HTML file. Bam! It worked! Problem solved!

So Veronica left a happy, satisfied woman.

I'm still scratching my head wondering why order made a difference and why the problem only happened past a certain level. But that's how it is. Sometimes you solve the case but end up with more questions than you started out with!

Until next time,
Fred

P.S. Ok, so I made most of this up... CSS is pretty boring by itself, I thought it needed some help! The problem and solution are real. I recall the T.V. show Magnum, P.I. where Thomas was trying to pick the lock on the Ferrari after Higgins had taken his keys. He kept repeating to himself "pick the lock, don't look at the dogs, pick the lock, don't look at the dogs... woops, I looked at the dogs!". There's a lesson there!

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