Ready for some news that’s both surprising and yet not-so-surprising? Nearly 70 percent of adults in the United States “rarely or never” use the phone book.

That’s according to a recent study by Harris Interactive.

Instead of the phone book, people are turning increasingly to the Internet to find a product or service. Judging from the stacks of unopened yellow pages, most people probably will nod and agree with the overall trend.

But, what does this mean for businesses, many of which still advertise in the old-fashioned phone book?

Well, it means your company is advertising in the wrong place. And it means your competitor is probably grabbing your market share.

It wasn’t that long ago when yellow page advertising was one of those necessary evils. Like most other business, if you wanted your phone to ring, you had to pay to play. And it wasn’t cheap.

Now, all that’s changed and we business owners — regardless of whether we like it or not — must be willing to change, too. The fact is your prospects are more likely to be sitting in front of a computer screen, tablet PC or a smart phone, using Google, Yelp and Bing. They want immediate results. And they’re not willing to spend a lot of time and energy searching for it.

This means your company must develop its online footprint and ensure that your potential clients can indeed find you easily online. The easy solution is click-thru advertising.

The smarter approach, though, is to optimize your web identities, like your website and social media profiles, for higher organic rankings. In the geek world, we call it SEO, or search engine optimization.

SEO can be segregated into two parts: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Both are important.

On-page SEO refers to the things you can do to ensure that your website is properly recognized by the search engines. Search engines regularly send bots (software) to scour the Internet and catalog what they find. You want your website to “sing” your targeted keywords while making it easy for the bots to “read” your website.

If you’re an attorney practicing employment law, you may want your website’s content to include relevant keyword phrases like: labor attorney Hawaii, labor attorney Honolulu, labor law Hawaii, labor law Honolulu, employment lawyer Hawaii, etc.

At the same time, you need to make sure your website is coded in a way to facilitate the search engines’ abilities to understand your website’s actual content.

It gets a bit technical here. But your rankings will improve if you take the time to do it right.

Below is a list of some of the things you should address. Give the list to your web head and get a fixed-price quote for what it will cost. Larger sites having more pages will obviously take longer and thus be more expensive. In general, market pricing typically will range from $500 to $1,500 per website for on-page SEO, depending on the scope of work.

Here is a quick guide towards good on-page SEO (source: www.seoco.co.uk):

• Internal linking: Make sure that all of your web pages can be indexed by search engines, and make sure that they all have at least one link from somewhere on your site.

• Unique content: Make sure that you have unique content on every page. Simply bold and underline your target keywords present in the content. A word of warning: Do not overdo it. You don’t need to bold and underline all target keywords present in the content, only a few.

• Page title: Your page title tags and description tags should describe the content of your different web pages. The page title tags should be less than 68 characters and the description tags more detailed but less than 148 characters.

• Meta tags: Make sure that your meta tags are arranged correctly. Meta description should be used to describe the site and Meta keyword should be used as a list of words that inform viewers about the main focus of the page.

• H tags: Make sure you label the different headers on your web pages using H tags.

• SEO-friendly URL: Make sure that your web page URLs are SEO friendly; use mod rewrite for Linux and Apache hosting or use IIS redirect for Windows. Ideally, make it so that the URLs describe your content.

• Complete links: Make sure that the links within your site are complete.

• Right image names: Make sure that you use descriptive URLs for your images.

• Alt tag: Make sure that you label all of your images with descriptive alt attributes.

• Meaningful anchor text: Make sure that you make good use of anchor text links within your content — if you have a page about blue widgets, use the phrase blue widgets in the text that links to it.

• Unique website: Make sure that there is only one version of your site.

• Unique homepage: Make sure that there is only one version of your homepage.

• W3C validation: Make sure that your code is valid; in some instances bad code can lead to search engines not being able to properly read a page. Use the W3C validator to check your markup.

I know. The above list is full of geek-speak. But your web head should know what to do.

Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing Services

Technology is like that for me. It’s my ocean. It pulls me closer to new horizons and at the same time eventually delivers me back where I began – kind of like something out of T.S. Elliot’s famous poem “The Waste Land.”

The metaphor works for just about anything. For in the end, we realize the only way to truly learn about life (or technology) is through constant exploration.

And so, as we wrap up this calendar year and look towards the next, with bellies full of hope and renewed enthusiasm, we should list our resolutions for self improvement. Here are my suggestions:

Get the next generation iPad. It’s due the first quarter of next year. You don’t have to like the iPad, but as a business person you do have to understand it. Consider the purchase small investment in your education. After you’ve played with the ‘natural interface’ for a while, install an app called Flipboard (flipboard.com) and play with a variety of content sources. The iPad and its competitors herald a new era in hardware and software. Now is the time to thoroughly grasp why the iPad is so popular and to figure out how your business can take advantage it.

Join the South By Southwest (sxsw.com) interactive conference in Austin, March 11-15. This yearly event brings the best and the brightest together for one long weekend of seminars, speeches, panel discussions and schmoozing. Think of it as Spring Break for nerds. Everyone is welcome. I highly recommend it. You will learn a lot about what’s happening in social media, e-commerce, search engine marketing, user experience and how your business can leverage those trends to boost profits. Let me know if you’re interested. We should go as an informal hui and serve as the geeky ambassadors from Hawaii.

Start using Plancast.com. As you might have guessed from the name, Plancast helps you plan what you intend to do. But equally importantly, it helps you meet the right people. Are you trying to break into a new market or industry? Want to deepen your network? Plancast is perfect for business. You can follow thought leaders and see which work-related seminars, conferences and events they are planning to attend and then map your own schedule accordingly. You can also see who else in your field is attending and make arrangements beforehand to meet. Plancast is free.

Ask questions, get answers and learn what you need to know at Quora.com. Social Q&A sites are nothing new. If you haven’t yet had a chance, check out LinkedIn Answers. I like LinkedIn Answers because I can help people and because in the process those people may eventually become my clients. Lately, though, I’ve been playing more with Quora. It’s a bit more social and a lot more fun. Create your Quora account during your lunch break today. It’s free and just takes a minute to get going. Follow topics and people relevant to your industry and start interacting with others. Use Quora to position your company as a leader in your field and start turning those prospects into leads.

Share your presentations using SlideRocket.com and SlideShare.net. The beauty of the internet is you can easily sell your product or service to anyone, anywhere and do it with relatively little start-up capital. Both SlideRocket and SlideShare are excellent tools to pitch clients globally. One solid presentation, coupled with strong distribution, could really boost your company’s sales. Both solutions will let you add analytics so you can you can measure your presentation’s effectiveness. You can even embed lead forms inside the presentation so viewers can easily contact you.

Access your files wherever you are with DropBox.com. It wasn’t that long ago when we stored all our files on our local hard drives or the office server and accessed those files while at work. Now, we find our working environments far more decentralized. We want to get to those files at all hours of the day, regardless of where we may be. DropBox is a terrific tool for making sure you have immediate access to the files you need. DropBox will automatically distribute and update the important stuff across all of your devices. Need the same set of files to be on your iPhone, your home computer, your office computer and your laptop while on the road? No problem. DropBox will do exactly that. And it will make sure its the most recent version of those files.

Use Evernote.com as a business tool. Evernote’s goal is to be your online brain. I use a Moleskin for quick notes, phone numbers, passwords and messages. But I use Evernote for everything else, including shopping lists, reading lists and daily action items. It’s great for capturing content on the fly and then referencing it later. But Evernote is also good for work. For example, you can snap a photo of a printed doc, store it in Evernote, and then review it during the commute home. Using its character recognition capability, you can use your cellphone to take pics of things like of business cards and expense receipts, and then file them accordingly. Evernote works across all your devices, from your cell phone to workstation, and syncs all your data so you get what you want, when you want it.

Curiosity is the key to knowledge and knowledge is the key to success. This is especially true in business, where trends and the changes in trends can bring great opportunity. The tech world is moving at warp speed. What worked 5 years ago for your business may not offer as much value today. To stay competitive, we must be competitive. That means we must maximize our exposure to new things. And given the significant return on investment it offers, harnessing the power of new technology should be one of our top priorities. Just jump into the sea. You can figure out how to swim along the way.

Last year Professional Image merged with New Tech Imaging. It was the perfect time to redesign their website.  But instead of creating another brochure online, they asked themselves a super relevant question, “How can the Internet help us do what we do even better?”  In other words, how can the website be used to take orders, facilitate payments, build relationships, and even offer new products and services?

Of course, the new site had to look good.  After all, they have a million dollar brand;  they need a million dollar website. It must exude confidence, competency and professionalism.  It needs to be fresh, upbeat and contemporary.  Take a look:  ProImageHawaii.com

But Professional Image didn’t let aesthetics drive the redesign.  Most business owners want the sexiest, flashiest site on the block.  This is a mistake.  Unless you’re in the design business, your site’s graphic design sense is only one part of the equation.

To avoid falling into the graphic design trap, Professional Image did what every company should do when overhauling their site: They first determined the site’s purpose and then let the design follow function.  If you think about it, a pretty site is pretty, but a useful site actually gets work done.

Making a site that works, though, entails more than just focusing on function.  A site must get recognized by the search engine crawlers.  It’s got to be engineered to get noticed.  This requires optimizing the site, both on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  If you Google “copying services Honolulu”, ProImageHawaii.com ranks number one.

But a successful website is more than just high organic rankings.  If you show me a website with high rankings on search engines, I am impressed. But show me a website that consistently sends you business and I am in love!  Traffic is good.  But high conversion rates (converting prospects into sales) are even better.

Take a look at the call-to-action items on ProImageHawaii.com.  One well-placed button could be worth millions of dollars.  Their site is carefully designed to generate leads and it works very well.  In fact, the sales team doesn’t have to spend as much time doing cold calls anymore.  The website is doing that for them 24/7.  As a result, they can focus on serving clients even better.

Running a successful business is more than just capturing sales. Operations are equally important.  Your website should reduce administrative costs, speed turnaround, and improve quality control.

To help clients submit orders, we added a file upload feature to their site.  Sounds like a minor thing, but remember this is a print shop. Those file sizes are sometimes 500MB or more.  You cannot easily email them.  Sure, you could ask the client to FTP them, or deliver the content on disk.  But why do that if it everything can be done from the website?  The whole point of technology is to make life simpler.  And the special file uploader provides this much wanted convenience.

One very exciting area of business for Professional Image is photo books.  This service allows families to create custom books for everything from childhood memories to family reunions.  To help them create books, we added a software wizard to the site.  Now, anyone at anytime can download the tools and get started with their creations.

We also added automation.  After the photo book is created, the shopping cart automatically calculates the cost of the photo books and sends those orders with the appropriate order numbers to the right printing centers.  We even customized the e-commerce module so Professional Image processes orders at lower merchant fees.  This means huge savings for them over time.

A big issue with any e-commerce site is a shopping cart abandonment.  It is exactly what it sounds like:  someone shops, adds items to their cart, and then at the final moment, decides – for whatever reason – not to go through with the purchase.  As you can imagine, this is a serious problem for any business.  To help understand what’s really going on, we added metrics their site.  We can now measure how many people come to the site, how many actually get started with the photo books, and how many leave the site before completing an order.  By studying these numbers and by tweaking the site accordingly, the business can test what works and eventually boost conversion rates.

Professional Image is exploring other smart ways of using technology:

• They are creating an online video tutorial to help photo book users create their books.  Again, nothing fancy is required.  As we’ve seen with the success of YouTube, the video does not have to be Hollywood quality.  It just has to be useful and organic.  Video is very powerful.  Interesting fact:  Video messages enjoy a 3x higher retention rate than text and 5x more views than text.

• Professional Image provides litigation support for law firms.  It’s good business for them.  The logical next step is to develop special offers for the legal community.  This can be easily accomplished using e-mail marketing tools like Aweber.com and ConstantContact.com.

• Social media is the new rock and roll.  Every business must find ways to harness all that social horsepower.  For the photo book enthusiasts, social media offers a unique forum to exchange ideas and develop companionship based a shared interest in crafting.  Remember, a Facebook fan is more likely to spend more on your product or service, more likely to purchase from you more often (repeat sales), and more often to recommend your company to their family and friends.  It’s perfect.

• Click-thru advertising works very well if you do it right.  Refrain from creating generic ads and sending your prospect to a generic home page.  Think laser.  Craft a specific ad targetting a well-defined demographic, and then send that prospect to a custom landing page, focusing on selling that particular product or service.  Again, test, measure, tweak, repeat.

• Never underestimate the lowly e-newsletter.  Your clients want to hear from the owner.  They want to know what’s new and exciting in their industry.  They even want to get to know your new employee.  Make it fun, informal, relevant and a soft-sell.

• Automate the feedback process.  Customers want to hear from you, but they also want YOU to hear from THEM.  They may have an issue or they may have a suggestion.  The sooner you get to the truth, the stronger your business will be.  Some of our best ideas at SuperGeeks actually came from our clients.  Galvanize them.  Use internet-based surveys to get the job done.

The upside of the economic malaise is we business owners are forced to re-think our business models.  With the advent of all things digital, it’s the perfect time to reexamine long-standing assumptions and re-tool your company around the internet.  Step outside the day-to-day noise of current operations and look for inspiration and best practices from unrelated industries.  I am confident you will find gold there.  As they say, we never want to miss a good crisis.

Want a custom website for your business?  Does your existing site need to be modernized?  Request a FREE quote for your project.

Very interesting:

More than seven in 10 customers that create an online shopping cart fail to complete a transaction, according to Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy.

Why do website visitors abandon shopping carts so frequently? The answers might surprise even some veteran e-commerce executives. Research indicates that it has very little to do with the actual checkout process and a heck of a lot to do with shopper behavior.

A recent Forrester Research study shows that the cost associated with shipping and handling is the No. 1 cause of shopping cart abandonment; some 44 percent of consumers terminate their session when shipping fees are revealed. Nearly as many (41 percent) say they were not ready to purchase the product. Other reasons for shopping cart abandonment included the desire to compare prices on other sites (27 percent), product prices that were higher than they were willing to pay (25 percent) and wanting to save products in the cart for later consideration (24 percent).

Determining what causes shoppers to abandon their online carts solves only part of the problem. E-commerce executives need to figure out what they can do to recover abandoned shopping carts.

Nicholls recommends what he terms “remarketing.”

The key, he says, is to reconnect and “remarket” to the shopper in a way that keeps the store brand top of mind. “What continues to amaze me is that so few currently remarket to their site visitors (fewer than 20 percent, according to a recent survey), despite this being so well proven as a technique in driving sales,” Nicholls says, suggesting that others steal a page from Amazon’s book. “Amazon … is one of the biggest proponents of remarketing, yet it is done so subtly than many don’t realize that they are being remarketed to.”

Unfortunately, Craigslist does not yet support embedded video.  Sure, you can include a link in your post, but people are generally reluctant to click on them.

There is a neat workaround, though.  Here’s what you can do:

1.  Go to your YouTube page and take a screenshot of the video

2.  Edit the screenshot so it’s just the video screen – nothing else

3.  Host that image somewhere online.  Example: Flickr.com

4.  Create a Craigslist ad using this HTML code:

<a href=”http://www.YourYoutubeLink.com” rel=”nofollow”>
<img border=”0″ src=”http://www.YourImageLink.jpg” width=”480″
height=”295″>
</a>

5.  Post your ad

Using the above workaround, your ad will look like a video screenshot, but will actually by an image of a video which is linked to your YouTube video.  The user sees your ad, is enticed by the video pic, clicks on it to watch it, and voila!  The video plays.

Use this technique for all sorts of Craigs ads, including employment ads.

Here’s an example of a Craigslist ad I was playing with last Friday night: http://honolulu.craigslist.org/oah/act/2719811635.html

The above link shows you the finished Craigslist ad.  If you click on the video-looking pic in the Craigslist ad, it will take you to the website and play the video.  Note:  You can play your video from any website.

I love that joke.  But it’s also germane to this column’s topic.

First, I found the joke on Wikipedia.  I didn’t open the yellow pages. Nor did I go to the bookstore.  The internet is the new Encyclopedia Britannica.

Second, the joke is the product of research by Richard Wiseman, who created a website called LaughLab.  The purpose of LaughLab was to crowd-source the collection and ranking of jokes.  His mission was to find the funniest joke in the world – independent of culture, religion and socio-economic status.  Note:  The joke was the top joke in the UK.

Lastly, the joke serves as a good metaphor for your website.  You think your site is a cute baby, but actually it looks like a monkey.

If you want your company to stay competitive,  you must invest the time and resources into leveraging your company’s website.

This is what you need to know:

Yes, you need a website.

If you have a business, you need a website. Period.  Last year I met successful ‘old school’ executive who earns business the ‘old fashioned way’:  word of mouth.  That still works and should be encouraged.  But the world is bigger now and referrals may not span oceans.  The executive learned this the hard way when his company lost a big contract because the company on the mainlaind which was awarding the job found his competitors online but not his firm…because he didn’t have a website.  The bottom line is:  Your customers, vendors and even your competition have already moved online.  You have to do the same.

Action item:  If your company doesn’t have a website, go to GoDaddy.com and register a domain name.  It costs $15 per year.  While you are there, purchase the cheapest Linux hosting.  It’s cost $10/month or so.  Don’t buy any extras.  No need.  You can add more features later if you need to.

Keep it simple.

Internet users are like fast food junkies.  They want it and they want it now!  Don’t design your website like it’s the next Taj Mahal. Yes, it must be professional and it must capture your brand, but don’t over design it or over engineer it.

Too often, business owners approach web design with an excessive emphasis on design. They think more flash (pun) and more shazam is going to bring more business.  Wrong.  Web users want to find what they are looking for.  They don’t want to watch a splashy opening sequence and they definitely dont want to read paragraph upon paragraph of mundane text.

Skip the bun.  Just give them the meat.  Let the home page start selling right there.  Show the benefits of your product or service.  Ask for sale.  Make the call-to-action.

Action item:  Take an hour and pretend you’re a potential customer.  How would you search for your company’s product or service?  What do you expect to find on the website?  Decide your site’s primary purpose and make sure your it is solely focused on that target.

Go ahead, be crappy.

Voltaire said: “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” The better is the enemy of the good.  I have seen clients spend a year trying to make their websites look perfect before launch.  Meanwhile, the competition got started with what they had and benefited from a year’s head start.

Your website will never be perfect.  There’s always something that you will want to change and improve.  But don’t let small things get in the way of big idea.  Example:  Facebook was conceived, coded and launched in less than six months.  Was the original version the same one currently used by 400 million people? Of course not.  It evolved over time.  Your site can do the same.

Action item:  If you have a site in the works, get the core of it done, make sure there are no bugs, fix all the typos and launch the damn thing.  Business is war.  Don’t waste time polishing the canon.  You can get to that later.  For now, just get going.

It takes three.

Who builds a winning site? Is it the graphic designer who makes the attractive comps? Is it the geek who takes that design and codes it into a real website?  A successful website actually requires three types of people.  And it’s very rare to find someone who has all three skill sets.

The first is the designer.  This is the person who chooses the right colors, fonts, layouts, etc.  He/she has a real talent for what the human eye likes to see.  Important.

The second is the web geek.  This is the person who takes the design and turns it a web page.  So if the designer is the architect, then the web geek is the engineer.  The web geek typically has no design sense but can program like a champ.

The third animal is the one with business sense.  Just because a site is visually attractive and just because it ‘works’ on the internet without hiccups, that doesn’t mean you have a good website.  At the end of the day, your website has to deliver results.  It has to perform.  The third person is the one who focuses on the user experience and the site’s overall utility. He/she weaves together the designer and the web geek to ensure the site meet its overriding purpose.

Action items:  Look at your site.  What are the calls-to-action?  Is it to sell something?  Or to capture an email?  Also, when someone new comes to your site, does he/she ‘get’ within a blink what your company does and how it can help?

You get what you pay for.

I have seen companies pay $15K for a site which was really only worth $5K and I’ve had people wanting a $5K site but willing to pay $500 for it.

Websites are labor intensive.  If you want quality, you have to be willing to pay for it.  But be careful not to overspend.

What should you expect in terms of cost?  Well, it depends on what you need.  If your company needs a professional site just to share information about your products and services, expect to spend $2000-$3000 for site which is search engine friendly and can be easily modified and upgraded down the road.

If you want to want ecommerce added to the site, budget another $1000.

And if you need a database running in the background so clients can create profiles,  manage info, etc, then you’ll need to allocate another $2000.

I have a client who wants to clone Groupon.com, an e-coupon site on the mainland.  That’s $5000 to do it right.  I have another client who wants to emulate the functionality of StudentsofFortune.com, where students can post questions and get answers.  The site may look simple from the end user’s perspective, but the backend (the guts of the site) is actually pretty big.  Expect to spend $6000 for something like that.

In general, the more complex the site, the more it’s going to cost and the longer it’s going to take to get the job done.

Action item:  There are good website designers and then there are beginners.  Look for responsiveness, professionalism and quality work.  Most will want a 50% deposit at time of order and the balance due upon delivery.  Make sure you own (control) the hosting, the domain name, and the site itself.  Get a backup and all relevant passwords when work is done.  Keep everything in your name.

Avoid subscriptions.

A number of web design companies offer subscription based solutions. You basically lease your website.  The upside is you don’t have to pay get going.  The downside is you don’t really own the site and over the long run you will spend more money.  Although subscription business is smart business, I don’t recommend it.

One of the biggest reasons is control.  Most subscription business models give you only limited control over the website itself.  This means you may not be able to optimize the site for search engines, add multiple languages, integrate metrics, etc.  The bottom line is you ultimately need autonomy.

We have a dental client who signed up for one of those subscription based solutions.  They signed a three year agreement.  Unfortunately, it isn’t workng out well for the dentist.  All changes to the site must first be approved by the vendor and often it takes a week or more for the vendor to respond to requests.  Not good.

Action item:  Cost of ownership must factor in lost opportunity.  It may be cheaper to get started with websites you can rent, but ultimately you want to own instead of lease – especially if you expect your business to thrive.  Make sure you receive a complete backup of your site from the web designer, make sure the domain name and hosting is in your name, and make sure you have all logins and passwords:  domain name registration, hosting control panel, and FTP.

And consider using WordPress for your website.  WordPress is free, open source, and fully featured.  It’s a terrific content manager, meaning you can use it to update your site and create pages without having to know any techy stuff.  Cnn.com, NYTimes.com and SuperGeeks.net are done in WordPress.

Test. Measure. Repeat.

The neat thing about internet business is you can change things on the fly. Amazon.com is always experimenting with slightly modified layouts and color schemes, new features, special offers, etc.  You should do the same. Did you know you can automatically serve different versions of your website to potential clients?  The visitor won’t know the difference.  The good news is you can measure conversions (how many people accept the call-to-action), look at the metrics and determine which layout and which message generates the best results.

Action item:  Add Google Analytics to your website. Google Analytics is a free tool for measuring how many people are visiting your site, where they are coming from, what they’re drilling into and how long they stay.  It’s super critical info.  Takes only 10-15 minutes to install and configure but the data is invaluable.  Let me know if you need help installing Google Analytics.  I will gladly do it for you free of charge.

Also, check out Bit.ly.  Bit.ly will enable you to create ‘smart’ hyperlinks, so you can get data on who is clicking on your links.  This is useful when posting content online.

Socialize it. Participate. Share.

Social media is the new rock and roll.

First there was the phone, then the telex, then the fax, the copier, and email…Now there’s social media.  It’s a powerful tool for nurturing business relationships and – like it or not – it’s here to stay.  Regardless of whether you understand it or not, just jump in and started using it.

The way we market and sell has changed dramatically over the last few years.  Traditonal marketing like TV and radio was deliberately disruptive.  The idea was to grab your attention and say, “Here I am.”

Contemporary marketing is all about social media.  It’s more like honey.  The idea is create compelling content and share it with everyone.  Be the expert.  Be helpful.  And the sales will come.

Action item:  Create Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube accounts.  Use tools like Ping.fm and HootSuite.com to weave all those accounts together so you can reduce the workload.  Do more by doing less.

Create a Facebook business page.

After you create your Facebook profile, be sure to create a page for your business.  It takes only a few minutes to get started.

Facebook has some 400 million users.  About 50% log into their accounts on any given day and spend an average 55 minutes there.  You can’t afford to miss those eyeballs.

Action Item:  Facebook will let you create a vanity page once you have 26 fans.  A vanity page has a vanity URL, like Facebook.com/yourcompanyname.  For example, ours is Facebook.com/supergeeks.  A vanity page is easier to promote on your biz cards, packaging, store doors, etc.

Also, take a look at customizing that business page.  Facebook offers lots of free software to make your business page do what you want, like offer coupons, play an intro video, show an online registration form, and much more.

Brand it.

With everyone scrambling to be everywhere online, it’s more important than ever to stand out in the crowd.  What makes your company different than your competitors’?  What’s your story?  How will people recognize your company in a blink?  All of these things must be answered over and over again.  This is especially true online, where there’s a lot of noise and where web users have the attention span of gnat.  Be clear, decisive and bold.

Action item:  Customize your social media accounts so all of them carry the same look and feel.  Make sure your slogan is prominent and easy to understand.  Really spell out what makes your business different.

All roads lead to Rome.

Your website is your best salesperson.  It speaks 13 different languages, works 24/7 and doesn’t need worker comp insurance.  Make your site the epicenter of your marketing campaigns.  It’s OK if all those roads leading to Rome are unpaved.  Web users will take dirt roads.  Just make its easy for people to stumble upon and follow those roads.

Action item:  Go to Google Business Listings (www.google.com/local/add) and add your company.  Take the time to customize your listing.  It will appear in Google Maps and other directories.

Rank higher organically.

It’s called search engine optimization and unfortunately there are a lot of scammers out there ready to trick you into purchasing a product or service you don’t need.

Search engine optimization is important.  You want your website to hit the first page of Google’s search results.

The key to getting there is two-fold.  First, don’t try to sell everyone everything.  Think laser.  If you can sell some of the people all of the time, your business will grow.

Two, make sure the search engines love your website.  Search engines regularly send automated bots to troll and categorize sites on the internet.  Do you think those bots have any patience for a site which is difficult to read?  No, the bots will just move onto the next site.  For this reason, make sure your site is visible to search engines.  Customize your page titles, your page descriptions and your page content.  Avoid certain technologies like Flash which aren’t search engines friendly  Note: Search engines love WordPress.

Action Item:  Go to Google Keyword Tool (www.google.com/sktool/) and look at the actual volume of searches per keywords.  You can see how competitive certain keywords are for click thru advertising.

Caution: Don’t compete with the big boys.  In other words, don’t try to optimize your site and search engine marketing where it’s most competitive.  You will loose that battle.  It’s like challenging Michael Phelps to the 100 meter butterfly.  Instead, choose less competitive keywords and build your campaign and your site around that.

Pay for clicks.

I love a qualified lead.  A qualified lead is someone who is genuinely interested in the product or service you offer.  For example, because we dont sell tires, I wouldn’t get too excited if 100 people line up in front of one of my service centers looking for tires.  However, if 10 people showed up wanting computer help, then I’m interested.

That’s the beauty of click-thru advertising.  Since you only pay for actual clicks, you’re basically paying only for qualified leads.  And if you know what’s an acceptable acquisition cost, you can determine how much you can afford to spend on a click-thru advertising.

Google is the biggest player in this market.  You can create a Google Adwords account within minutes and start advertising online by sundown. You can target certain geographic areas, like Honolulu, and you can set limits on when those ads run and how much you want to spend.  It’s great.

Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube offer similar advertising models.  Their platform is interesting because you can deliver ads to more narrow demographics.  For example, I can show a very targeted wedding ring ad solely to engaged females over age 30 living in Hawaii.

Action Item:  Click-thru advertising will bring more traffic to your site.  But don’t send the qualified lead to your home page.  Chances are your home page is too generic for that targeted ad.  Instead, craft a special landing page for that specific ad.  Play with the layout and the copy of that landing page.  Measure the conversions and find what works.  In the end, online advertising is just a math equation:  (Cost per click) x (number of clicks) / (number of conversions) = cost per actual sale.

Study the competition.

You can learn a lot by studying your competitors.  Hop on their websites, see what works and what doesn’t.  Find the leader in your industry and emulate their best practices.

Please do not think you have to create every brochure and every ad campaign from scratch.  In business, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.  Model success.

We regularly mystery shop our competitors and it’s not uncommon to find policies, procedures and materials which were clearly ‘borrowed’ from SuperGeeks.  I tell my team not to worry.  Our job is to innovate and to lead the industry.  Focus on widening that gap between us and all of them and we will be fine.

Action Item:  Look locally, nationally, and internationally.  Find who is excelling in your market and emulate their best practices.  (Don’t plagiarize.) And be sure to study companies outside your industry.  You may find good inspiration there, too.  For example, we regularly study automotive repair, retail, and health care for new ideas.

Use these free tools.

Use Website Grader to see how you can optimize your site for search engines: www.websitegrader.com

Use this tool to make sure your site’s HTML coding is compliant with major browsers: http://validator.w3.org/

Check for broken links on your site: http://validator.w3.org/checklink

I hope this column is useful.  Please let me know if I can help with anything: help@supergeeks.net

James Kerr – Chief Geek, SuperGeeks (Twitter: supergeeks)

Let SuperGeeks build your new site or redesign your existing one. We build creative, compelling, cutting-edge websites at affordable prices.

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• FREE site review (if you currently have a site)
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HTML Validator - http://validator.w3.org/

CSS Validator - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Link Checker - http://validator.w3.org/checklink

Competitor Analysis can be found at http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/competitor-analysis.aspx or http://www.alexa.com/ (also good for a page ranking of sorts)

Calculate your  Google Rank http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Site grader:   http://website.grader.com/