Month: July 2010

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How Do I Get in Google’s Top 10 Results?

Boy, that is the million dollar question isn’t it? How do I get in the top 10 Google.com search results? First, not every website realistically can get there. Sometimes the competition for the top spots is so fierce that a new website simply can’t break in.

This is particularly true with new small websites of under 10 pages in most business sectors. The key to garnering top organic placement, or at least improved organic search placement (that is placement you don’t pay for), is to create a plan and then work your plan.

These are the things that I know will help improve organic search placement:

  1. Make sure your content is original and is keyword dense but readable.
  2. Create a strategy to add new pages to your website every month.
  3. Get blogging on your domain. (ie www.yourdomain.com/blog not blog.yourdomain.com and certainly not on Blogspot or WordPress.com)
  4. Work on creating value for readers. Provide free information not just about your services. Give in-depth knowledge on topics and show your expertise.
  5. Make sure your home page is not all images or Flash. You’ve got to have content!

For some websites you have to work your plan to build web authority. Suddenly it seems that you hit a tipping point and start to get placement. In some cases you must lower your expectations and work to own smaller local markets before you move to the state and then national level if you can even move to a higher level.

Additionally, there are some markets that are really tough to own, take real estate for example. A five page website, no mater how pretty or optimized, will ever bump a national firm out of top Google placement. However that site may be able to place for city and county searches organically.

When it comes to moving up in the organic results, you have to take a long range view. You’ve got to be doing everything right over time to really see progress in your placement on the search engines.

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Sometimes SEO May Not Be Right For You

Sometimes SEO source code optimization of a website to improve organic search placement may not be the right choice for a project. In some cases content creation for the website, blog writing, and a focus on Google Placements (Google Maps) may be a better use of funds.

Organic code optimization of a website may sometimes run over $2,000 to $3,000 – and that’s for a relatively small website. When keyword research shows very little volume of searches on keyword targets and the client sells in a local geographic area, spending cash to optimize may simply not be a wise investment. Especially when the keyword targets in a very specific market don’t show statistically in the keyword research.

In this case, a program of content revision and creation with a focus on location additions, blogging with location targets, and work in Google Maps may actually generate the results the client really needs and be less expensive.

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What Can You Automate to Drop Your Overhead?

If you are a small business owner like me, you need to keep your prices low to garner business and yet keep your overhead low to make more profit. So, what can you automate or farm out to others in order to have the time to do what you do best – sell your services?

For me, it was automating much of my accounting as this was a huge time drain for me. By purchasing accounting software I made billing customers faster and more accurate.

My next step was to automate my credit card billing process. By integrating my credit card billing into my accounting software I cut multiple steps of having to manually log payments.

I then looked very carefully at the simple, no thought process, tasks that I perform daily that seem to take up time and I have trained an assistant to do them affordably. Sometimes paying a flat rate to do a task can work, especially when it is with your own children. For me, I have my kids check off that my writers have turned in their blogs and done their tweets. That way I can focus only on the problems or late items that need my personal action. My kids make summer time money and I get more time to sell jobs.

I also decided that I needed to train a helper. Not everyone needs this, but if you can find someone competent you can train a person to do some of the repetitive tasks you do daily or weekly. For me, I use a helper to add blogs that customers write themselves to their blog control panel and add links that I have selected and written up in advance to social bookmarking services. I don’t let me helper do things that really require sophisticated knowledge or decisions that the client is really paying ME for, but for the mundane tasks that are a part of certain service offerings I try to use my helper.

By really reviewing what you can move off your daily queue, you can allow yourself more time to follow-up with leads, have more time to really talk to and service existing clients and prospects, and time to have a vision for your own business.

When you are so inundated with daily tasks you have no brain power left to create new services, position your own business where it needs to be on the Web, or to look for new ways to serve your existing clientèle. So, what can you automate to get back to what you love, which is why you started your own business in the first place? Let me know what you have automated by leaving a comment below.

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Signs Your AdWords Account Has Been Hacked

I just started up a client account in AdWords which had been dormant since 2009. When I logged in I told the client to me it appeared that the account had been hacked. This was verified by Google one day later and a credit was applied to the client’s credit card.

So how did I know the AdWords account had been hacked?

  1. Daily budget was set at $630 per day. That is a spend of $18,900 per 30 days. Previously the budget was $63/day.
  2. Keywords hidden inside an ad group with the correct name were payday loan related.
  3. The URL and ad text in the ad group had been changed from the client’s website.

This can happen to anyone. If you are not going to use your AdWords account it is best to either close it or to remove the credit card information.

In this case the client only got hit with a $10.00 charge before AdWords shut the account off. The last hacked account I saw had a $10,000 charge on their credit card for fraudulent clicks in less than seven days, so it is very important to watch what is happening in AdWords or better yet hire an account manager who will keep a careful eye on your account.