This the latest installment of our Q&A Series – short interviews with talented, experienced, and successful entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of running online businesses. I’ve always believed that it’s a big mistake to not at least listen to those who have worn the same shoes that we are putting on every day. I hope these interviews prove to be as informative to you as they have been for me.

Today’s guest is Elizabeth Pitt, CEO of CareGiverNeeded.com. I had a chance to sit down with Elizabeth recently. She’s extremely bright and has some really valuable insights on starting a business for the first time, acquiring traffic, and the importance of learning as you grow.

B5: Talk a little bit about what CareGiverNeeded.com is all about.
EP: CaregiverNeeded.com is the fastest and easiest way to find senior in-home care on-line. We have thousands of in-home senior caregivers on our site, and hundreds of in-home care agencies, so when a family is looking for care, we are an ideal resource. We answer a lot of questions families have about home care on the site, and we have experienced caregivers on staff to answer questions live.

B5: How do you make money?
EP: We make money from subscribers who pay to see all the contact information for caregivers, and from home-care agencies who pay to be in front of families who need care. We also make money from Google ads embedded in the content on our site.

B5: How long has CareGiverNeeded.com been in business? And how long have you been associated with it?
EP: The company has been in business since 2005. I’ve owned it since May 2009.

B5: What’s your experience with the company been like so far?
EP: Buying a business has been an amazing and life-changing process.  To go from an employee in a company to a 100% shareholder requires such growth and such a shift in mindset. I had to make that shift quickly, and I am still making it.  I’ve had some tremendous successes, and more than a few surprises. But for 9 months into the business, we’re doing well.

B5: Tell us about the most valuable learning experience(s) you’ve had since taking over the business.
EP: There are quite a few lessons I’ve learned so far, including:

1. Whatever you think you need in cash and time to get the business humming, double it. If you started your own business, you are by nature optimistic. You think that things will go better than planned and cost less than planned.  You are wrong.  New things are uncertain. Your business will eat up more time, money and energy than you could ever think possible.

2. Invest in your education. You just can’t be an effective owner of a business that’s web based until you have a firm grasp on internet technology and search engine basics. Find mentors, seminars, courses, books and educate yourself about SEO/SEM, web technology, your industry, finance/investing, and sales and marketing. You may have learned all this in business school, but take the time to refresh, and do it from the perspective of a small business owner. You will never regret an investment in yourself.

3. Vendors who are selling you things have very different incentives than employees you may have worked with when you had a J-O-B. Make sure the money follows their performance. Pay as little as possible up front, make no progress payments, pay the most at the end, and reserve a little in case they screwed up so that they have an incentive to fix it.  Or, if feasible, set up a small, test project or pay for some hourly consulting to test the waters first.  I don’t mean to be cynical…it’s just that incentives are different in the free market than in the corporate world.

B5: Is CareGiverNeeded.com backed by any investors, or is it bootstrapped? Bootstrapped. Can you talk a little about why you took the company in that direction?
EP: I purchased an existing business to reduce some of the risk – the value proposition has already been proven, and it just needs to be tweaked here and there to grow/become more profitable. I had the financial wherewithal to finance that stage of the business, so it made more sense to keep control/ownership to get started.  We are investing in tests to find growth levers, and if we find a way to make the business really take off (but that will probably suck up cash in the process), it will be an appropriate time to take on an investor. The fiduciary responsibility of outside cash is non-trivial, and I want to take it on when I have a clear picture of how it will benefit the company.

B5: Your company doesn’t offer any physical products or have any physical locations. What’s unique about running an online pureplay?
EP: It can be hard for others to understand your business…bankers/investors, customers, advertisers…because as much as people use the Internet, it can still be hard to grasp Internet business models. Also, you must, as the chief executive of the company, have a deep understanding of all the web levers. This can’t be under-emphasized. Though my business is in senior in-home care, so I have to know as much as possible about that subject and the competitors/partners who offer similar products for the same customer need. When it’s a pure play, knowing as much as possible about the Internet as a sales channel is imperative. You can’t outsource it. It is a huge part of what the business is about.

B5: How much of your marketing strategy is organic search versus PPC?
EP: 100% organic. We are testing PPC campaigns now.

B5: What can you tell us about your strategy for each?
EP: They are complementary strategies.

Before even looking at organic vs. paid, you need to diligently think through your macro search strategy.  To win in any business, you need to solve an important problem or fulfill a need. In the world of search, you must understand what need your product/service meets for customers, and what words they would type into a search bar to get that need met. More specifically, what words are they typing in when they are just doing research vs. when they are ready to pull their credit card out and make a purchase? How do you want to interact with them during their search and buy process?  What words and terms let them know that your product/service is a perfect match for what they are looking for?  Once you do the research to understand that, you need to filter by the territory your competitors may have already staked out. Is there someone who’s already optimized for a lot of the terms you want?  Or are competitors paying an arm and a leg to buy certain terms at prices that could never be profitable for you?  If so, what terms are still good for you, but not already dominated by another player? Or, are there multiple, lower volume terms that you could focus on that competitors aren’t focused on today? The result of this analysis would be your “keyword strategy”, and then you can start to think about organic vs. paid.

I think about organic as the core, bread and butter, what you want to be known for set of keywords, and also the words more aligned when someone is doing research to get them to land on your site so that you can convert them to paying customers downstream with a good user experience. I think of paid as the set of keywords that mean someone is really close to buying, really teed up and ready to go, and you grab them and convert them. I also think of paid as a way to test out a new set of keywords or marketing messages that you think might appeal to customers, but you’re not quite sure. You can get good quick and dirty feedback on an idea/concept/marketing message with paid search.

B5: What tips can you share with our readers about traffic acquisition? What have you learned that you didn’t know when you started the business?
EP: With traffic acquisition, there are the basics, and then there are the new/cutting edge strategies.  You need to have your basics in place before you get creative. You need the right tags, the right indexing in Google, the right page tracking. If you don’t have the basics covered, trying all the buzz-filled techniques of the day are a waste of time.  And the basics can be hard to get completely covered. If you think you’re close, find an mentor/expert/specialty firm in search to give you the once over and help you tweak.  (Finding good help takes a lot of work, by the way) Once your basics are covered, then figure out some of the techniques to give you extra “juice”.  This depends on your business. It might be to focus regionally and have a way to get regional searches to your site. It might be to start a blog, or start publishing video content.  It might be to create “feeder” sites on similar, complementary topics that can get clicks to your site.

B5: What are CareGiverNeeded.com’s plans for the future?
EP: Right now, the business is cash flowing and profitable! The next phase is growth. We are exploring whether we have some good levers to pull for growth that will add value to our customers, that we will deliver and fulfill to the level of their expectations, and with which we can be profitable. But we are keeping our eye on the core business and making sure it runs well before heading off in too many other directions.

Qualified traffic.

Small business owners and startups who rely heavily on their website for sales all stress over how to get more of it. Oh, and they want it cheap. Quite the conundrum!

There are lots of ways to get more traffic. All involve some level of investment (either time or money). None involve some level of magic (unfortunately, because that would be kind of cool).

Success acquiring qualified traffic starts with getting the basics right first. And the basics don’t always involve hiring a super-expensive SEO firm that claims they are going to make you millions in 3 months (by the way if anyone tells you that, just hang up).

If your website can do all of the following, you’ll see more qualified traffic. And it won’t burn a huge hole in your wallet.

1. SEO fundamentals - if you are going to do just one thing, this is the one. This all starts with making sure your keyword list is accurate (pertains to your specific products and services) and realistic. For example, stop trying to compete for the broad keywords that the big brands shell out tens of thousands of dollars per month to dominate. Start out with local terms and build your way up. If you can afford it, hire a professional to build that keyword list for you. If you don’t get that list right, it will make everything else on this list a lot harder.

Use those keywords to build your URLs and meta data (page titles and meta descriptions). Get those keywords in H1 tags, alt tags, and in the content (without blatantly stuffing them in there). Do all of these things are your website will have the basic foundation you need to start chasing organic traffic.

2. Choose the right domain - whenever possible, build your website (or an affiliate website to feed your website traffic) around an exact match domain. For example, if your business is in car insurance, the most valuable domain in that industry will be carinsurance.com. Domains that are an exact match get bonus points from the search engines that can be tough for competitors to overcome.

3. Link-worthy content – search engines love quality, unique content. And they like to see lots of it being added frequently. Coming up with a 6-12 month content strategy for your website is crucial. And every bit of content you create should always be worthy of a link, meaning someone reads it and thinks it’s so good that they want to link to it from their website or blog. If it doesn’t pass the linkworthiness test, toss it and move on to the next idea. Remember, links are GOLD. The more links you can acquire from quality and relevant sources, the better it will perform in organic search (which should lead to more traffic).

3A. Linkbait - this is a lot easier said than done. It’s almost like trying to come up with an idea for a viral video. Everyone tries it, but very few execute it to the point they get a return. The thing I always tell people when they ask how to create something viral is to look within to see if your business produces unique data. Then think of a way to present it in a clever, visual way that doesn’t require any heavy lifting to understand. The best recent example I can think of was this post by Mint. This may or may not have come from internal data, but it sure garnered a lot of attention because it was topical and easy-to-grasp (especially the video). Look at all of the retweets and comments! Best of all, they picked up hundreds of links. That’s the real value.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising - this is the the fastest way to pick up lots of qualified leads. It can also be the most expensive. If you have money to burn, try it yourself but don’t get frustrated with the long learning curve. Chances are you’ll be competing with professionals that really know how to play the PPC game. So many companies try to manage this on their own and become so disenchanted with the whole thing that refuse to get involved again. All that does is block a very valuable source of traffic. So either be patient or hire a pro.

5. StumbleUpon - these days you have to be really lucky to have something get hot on Digg or Reddit. Don’t waste your time trying to compete. Stumble is an easy way to pick up some traffic. And it’s free to Stumble your own content! Just make sure when you Stumble something that you put it in the right category.

6. Word-of-mouth - take extra good care of your customers and you will be rewarded. The more you make them feel like you’re listening, the more likely they are to refer you to their friends. It doesn’t cost anything to treat someone right.

7. Two-way conversation - make your site social. The key here is you have to have great content. Try to write only about things that your target audience really cares about. Offer them a place to discuss it with you (like in a comment section). Not only will you get return traffic but you’ll learn a lot about what your customers think and want from a product like yours.

Here’s what didn’t make the list: Facebook and Twitter.

Look, you’re a startup or a small business. There are only so many hours in the day and resources are most likely not unlimited. I think having Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are time traps. Everyone says, follow me on Faceboook and and Twitter! But how many companies are really doing things on either that’s producing business? Very few. And it’s mostly big brands that can pay people to just monitor their presence on those properties. Until you can afford to do that, put all of your money towards getting traffic to your website.

Have you tried any of these tips? What was your experience? Let’s chat in the comment section below.

This the first installment of our new Q&A Series – short interviews with talented, experienced, and successful entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of running online businesses. I’ve always believed that it’s a big mistake to not at least listen to those who have worn the same shoes that we are putting on every day. I hope these interviews prove to be as informative to you as they have been for me.

Our first guest is Ryan Thompson, co-Founder of FileLater. I recently had a chance to sit down with Ryan. He had some great insights on starting a business, traffic, and the importance of listening to customers.

B5: Briefly, tell me a little about what FileLater is all about.
RT: FileLater was developed to help the 15 million people who file tax extensions every year.  There are a lot of misconceptions around tax extensions, and until FileLater, there wasn’t an easy way to get more time to do your taxes. So, we created one leveraging our expertises on the internet and taxes.

B5: How long has FileLater been in business?
RT: FileLater is 3 years old, although we spent about half of that time researching, building the product, and working with the IRS to become and authorized IRS e-file provider.

B5: I won’t ask you to get into numbers because I know how secretive startups are about sales, but how are things going so far?
RT: Things are going much better than expected, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it. It’s a real satisfaction to know you’re removing so much stress for thousands and thousands of folks by letting them know there’s an easy way to get more time to do their taxes. We’ve really learned to appreciate and listen to what our customers want, and we really believe that’s been instrumental in growing the business as quickly as we have.

B5: Are you backed by any investors, or is FileLater bootstrapped?
RT: Wow – how much time do you have for me to explain this one? The short answer is that we are entirely bootstrapped.  Although, we’re a little lucky it turned out that way. We talked to lots of potential investors along the way and the bank account ran pretty low in Year 1. Looking back, that was good for us. It’s really amazing how creative you can be when needed to save on expenses. Luckily, we’re in a much better position now and can invest in growth.

B5: Your company doesn’t offer any physical products or have any physical locations. What’s unique about running an online pure-play?
RT: I think the most unique thing is that there’s almost an expectation that you don’t support your customers because everything is online, which I think is just the wrong way to do business. Think about it – every restaurant or retail shop you go to, you’re generally greeted by warm smiles and “Thank Yous” on the way out the door. When you’re serving tens of thousands of customers over such a short period of time, it’s much harder to do… but, as I said, that’s very important to us and part of how we see ourselves different than other online tax providers.

B5: I would think qualified traffic is pretty much do-or-die to your business. Is that true?
RT: Yes. The reality is that everyone who buys from us starts as a lead one way or another.  We do see a lot of word of mouth and return users, but still the vast majority come from our marketing efforts. Establishing ourselves in the search space is very important to our success.

B5: How much of your marketing strategy is organic search versus pay-per-click?
RT: Our strategy certainly includes both, but I’d say we spend 70-80% of our search efforts on organic. The decision really comes down to return on investment.  It’s no surprise that bidding on tax related terms in April isn’t cheap, and it’s very competitive. So, we’re better off focusing the majority of our search efforts on SEO, and we’ll compete in PPC where it makes sense. Plus, SEO has a longer term benefit that brings additional value to our company. There are lots of companies out there that get acquired for their SEO rankings alone.

B5: What else can you say to startups about SEO?
RT: Come up with a plan and start executing it early. Once you start, stick to the plan and be patient. We are a very seasonal business. Every year we come up with a 6-month plan for creating new content and getting new links. The trick is sticking to it and not over-reacting if what you are doing doesn’t always result in instant success. Even today we are seeing benefits from some of the things that we did last year. Patience is key.

B5: What tips can you share with our readers about traffic acquisition?
RT: That’s a great question. Well, first I’d say that there are no shortcuts.  Things like link exchanges or black hat SEO tactics just don’t work in the long term. You’re much better off investing in the right content and earning your way to the top of SEO.  Also, having the best product will earn you word of mouth that will really help you grow. And, as hard as it is, you have to have some element of patience. Growing a strong following for anything simply takes time and effort.  Oh, and when someone tells you they have a shortcut and it seems too good to be true, it probably is, and I say all of this from experience.

B5: What have you learned that you didn’t know when you started the business?
RT: Well, as I mentioned earlier, we knew technology and the tax space pretty well when we launched.  However, the Internet changes so quickly that you have no choice but to keep up. Things like social media, advancements in SEO strategies, and new developer tools are moving so quickly that you’ll get left in the dust if you don’t keep up with them.  And, I’d also reiterate the focus on making a great customer experience. We knew it was important when we started, but I don’t think we completely understood the magnitude of what it means to have a product that customers will tell their friends about.

B5: What are FileLater’s plans for the future?
RT: We’re committed to having the best tax extension service on the web. There are other tax and let’s say “civic duties” that we think we can use the Internet to help simplify, but we’re carefully balancing that against finding a niche and solving it very well. Between now and mid-April, we’re heads down with tax extensions, and we’ll regroup when the dust settles to flush out the rest.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. Don’t be shy!

It happens to every business.

Usually with experienced entrepreneurs it happens before doors officially open.  For others it happens 3 months, or 6 months, or even 12 months after an official launch.

Eventually, a business will see the light. And it’s a strong light. A light where sunglasses are required, and maybe some SPF to be safe. Inevitably, once that light hits there’s smiling, some high-fiving, and that certain satisfaction that comes with making a discovery.

The light that every business eventually sees is the realization that their success is intimately tied to how their website performs in the search engines. All of a sudden it becomes clear that in order to thrive the business has to make itself known to the throngs of potential customers that are looking for their products or services through search. Pretty powerful light, right?

After the band stops playing music and the enthusiasm subsides, a BIG question looms like a black cloud: is it too late to do anything about it? Is our business too far down the road to reverse our failure to see the light until now?

The answer is a emphatic NO. It’s never too late.

Granted, it’s a heck of a lot easier if your company has a search engine optimization strategy from Day 1, but as long as a business has enough breath in it’s lungs to survive at least a few more months then there’s a chance to make something very good happen by leveraging the light.

Just how long it will take to jumpstart a businesses’ search profile depends on a few things:

1. Competition - how sophisticated are the strategies being deployed by the other companies in that industry? Are they investing tens of thousands of dollars per year into search? Or, are they still in the dark? The more sophisticated the competition, the longer it will take to make a dent in the problem, let alone compete directly. But that doesn’t mean a company can’t make up some ground pretty quickly.

2. History - Before the realization, was the business completely ignoring seo or was it inadvertently caught in a cycle of bad habits? And, how much content has been created? Are we dealing with a website that has hundreds or thousands of pages of content? The point is this: how much damage has been done and how much has to be fixed? A website with poor seo habits and thousands of pages of content is a larger rescue effort than a small website that has good content but didn’t employ any of the basic seo fundamentals.

3. Commitment - seeing the light is the first step. Committing to a long-term plan is something different. Results can take time. And the longer a business can commit to a plan, the better the chances it will see results. In other words, committing to a 4-week plan isn’t the right strategy for a business that’s gone 2 years without doing anything for seo.

To those companies who have just seen the light, welcome to the real world. Try not to focus on the time that’s been lost. Instead, figure out what you’re going to do to change the tide. Come up with a plan and commit to it.

Has your business recently seen the light? I’d love to hear about it in the comment section below.

News flash: running your own business is tough. There are a cagillion things to do and only so many minutes in a day. It’s inevitable that important success factors will get overlooked – especially when the business is just getting started.

One of the most often overlooked aspects of a companies first marketing plan is search engine optimization. For some reason, it slips between the cracks for so many small businesses. I think what happens, especially with a lot of first-time entrepreneurs or young companies, is there’s a natural desire to plow through the startup checklist so that the business can start and hopefully the money will begin rolling in.

You know the checklist, right? You’ve probably done it yourself.  Name for the business? Check. Bank account? Open. Domain? Grabbed it. Logo? Designed it. Website? Launched. Coffee maker? Brewing as we speak.

Eventually the checklist moves to marketing and,  ‘How exactly are we going to get people to pay us for our product or service?’. The key mistake that most startups make is assuming that just having a website is enough. They think, ‘Well, we have something out there for people to check out. It looks really cool and does a good job of selling our product. So, we’re covered there.’

What’s missing from that logic? The business didn’t bother to think through how exactly they are going to get traffic, and better yet qualified traffic, to visit their website. And so what usually happens is a company will look at their analytics after 90 days of being in business and realize traffic and leads from the website is nonexistent.

In a past post I wrote about the importance of launching your first website before you launch your company. This is different. What you need to have is a full SEO plan. I recommend that you generate at least a 6-month SEO strategy when starting a new business.

At a high level, here’s what you need to include:
Keyword research: find out what your industry’s most valued keywords are and start competing for them. Be sure to constantly monitor progress and don’t be afraid to re-evaluate keyword priorities every few months. This is the most important step in an SEO strategy. If you’re not going after the right traffic, or traffic that’s too competitive for a young company, you won’t get the traffic needed to survive.

Content strategy: it doesn’t matter how much you have, the content on your website the day it launches is not enough. Every website needs a vehicle for adding quality content rich in the most valuable keywords on a consistent basis. The easiest, and highest ROI SEO vehicle to add is a blog. Other examples are resource or educational sections. Ideally, there’s new content being added every day. That can be a drain on resources, however. So try to at least add something a couple of times per week.

I can’t emphasize enough how important a content strategy is for your website. Without some kind of plan to add new content, it will fall by the wayside. I see it all the time with my clients. Spend a day or two planning out 50, 100, 200 blog posts and then figure out a plan for getting them done.

Pay-per-click plan: at some point you need to test the pay-per-click waters. Every business should. Set aside the cash you need to at least test buying keywords. One of two things will happen: either it works and you’ve found an additional way to get qualified leads, or it doesn’t work and there are lessons that can be learned. For example, did you get a lot of click-thru’s but low conversions? That’s usually a sign the website needs to be optimized for conversion. Either way, make sure that the person managing the campaign is an SEO professional. Don’t try to do it yourself unless you’re willing to spend through the learning curve…and there is a learning curve.

Do those three things and you’ll be ahead of the game when it comes to having a smart marketing plan for a young company.

What’s been you experience with defining an SEO strategy? Let’s talk about it in the comments section below.

On January 1, 2004 I officially made the leap from Cubicle Land (that’s not actually my old desk in the picture) in corporate America and started my own company. These last six years have been pretty typical of someone who sets out on their own – full of highs and lows, challenges and rewards. Every day is unique. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Like a lot of us, I tend to use this time of year to reflect and look forward to the challenges that are awaiting me in the New Year.

Looking back, I figure I’ve worked an average of 50 hours per week for all 312 weeks over those six years. It’s probably more, but let’s go with 50. That means I’ve invested more than 15,000 hours into being an entrepreneur (I’ve also spent time working on side projects and additional ventures).

According to Malcom Gladwell, I should be an expert in entrepreneurship by now. I’m definitely not. Far from it. But I have learned countless important lessons that influence the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis. In fact the learning that takes place every day is one of my favorite parts of being an entrepreneur and is why I get out of bed each morning.

In thinking about all of the lessons learned, here are my top six from the last six years:

Entrepreneurs are not normal people.
When I first started Brand5, I naively thought that anyone could run their own business. The truth is that anyone can start their own business. But only the rare bird known as the entrepreneur can ride the never ending roller coaster that goes with putting up your own shingle. Entrepreneurs are hard-wired differently than everyone else. Anytime I meet a fellow entrepreneur, I have instant respect for them and the unique pressures they face every single day. It’s a rough game and not everyone is cut out for it.

Resist the urge to be perfect.
I have experienced this myself and seen it play out over and over again with clients and other startups. When launching a new business that is primarily or completely online, there is a strong temptation to wait until everything is absolutely perfect before launching it to the public. That’s completely wrong. Realize that your website will never be perfect. Someone, either you or your partners, will find something they want to change. The more time spent trying to make it perfect without launching, the more money you waste. Pick a sensible launch point and spend extra time trying to get customers.

Leave your ego at the door.
A lot of entrepreneurs figure out pretty quickly that there are not enough hours in the day. It’s impossible to do everything. In order to grow, tasks need to be delegated. When I first opened up shop, I tried to learn a little bit about everything – taxes, legal, and bookkeeping to name a few. That was wrong because, first, I’m not ever going to be good at those things. And second, learning that stuff took away from my time growing the business. Don’t be hard-headed and try to micro manage everything. Focus on what you do best.

Google rules the world.
If you have ever run an online business or even a website, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You cannot successfully market anything on the web without heavily involving Google. Whether its marketing through organic search, paid search, content ads, maps, calendars, or the local business center…a mastery of Google is required. Make sure that any venture you take part in includes someone who knows how to leverage all of the incredible power of Google. If you don’t have someone in-house, hire those skills immediately!

Bootstrapping is not overrated.
One thing I never envisioned when I first got started was the opportunity to serve on a board of another company or get involved as an equity partner. I’ve been extremely lucky to do both in the last six years. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is to hold on to equity like a vice grip. It sounds like a no-brainer, but not everyone does it. People rush to get tons of funding and before no time they own a tiny share of the company. What fun is it to work a million hours for something you barely own? The barrier to entry to start new web-based businesses is zero these days. Fund it yourself. And if you don’t have the money, wait until you do. Or find a partner that will fund if for you without taking a huge part in the company.

A good lawyer is priceless.
Don’t laugh at this one. Seriously, find legal counsel that you can call or email anytime you need help. Thankfully my business has grown over the past six years. As it grows, things get more complicated – contracts, NDAs, copyrights, trademarks, operating agreements, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Like I said before, I don’t have the time to dissect every line of every contract. While I admit that writing those checks for a high hourly rate are painful, it’s worth it every penny because I know that, in the end, my interests are protected.

What lessons have you learned from your time as an entrepreneur? Let’s talk about them in the comment area below.

Here’s a quick client success story in-the-making that I think is worth sharing with you: the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl is a client of ours. For you non-sports fans out there, the Holiday Bowl is one of the post-season bowl games held annually in college football (aside: it’s one of the best bowls year in and year out). We’ve had the pleasure of working with them for the last few years.

After last year’s game, the Holiday Bowl said they wanted more organic traffic for the 2009 game (being held at the end of December).  Although the site gets decent traffic all year long, it gets an overwhelming majority of its annual visitors in December (when the game is played).  So December is very important. It’s their entire year. The vent is once-a-year, so the better the webiste performs in that month, the higher they can charge for ad deals, partnerships, etc.

We did a few basic things to help improve their overall search profile. And so far, those things have paid huge dividends. Traffic for December of this year is way up when compared to last year (stats listed below) and the year before (which is as far back as we have traffic stats for the site).

Here’s what we did:
1. We looked at the last 18 months of data about how the site was performing organically. As you might guess, the site dominated searches for “holiday bowl”. But we noticed for searches like “holiday bowl tickets” (a really popular search), the site was getting beat by ticket dealers and brokers. We saw a huge opportunity to gain substantial traffic just by improving on 10 searches similar to “holiday bowl tickets” – ones that had high volume and low/”beatable” competition.

2. Here’s where we addressed the fundamentals: for all of the pages we wanted to rank in those 10 terms, we rewrote the URLs and meta data using the most valuable keywords.

3. We checked out any pages that were listed as “not found” in Webmaster Tools and redirected to existing pages. This saved them a bunch of wasted link juice.

That’s it. That’s all we did. I’m not saying that took us 5 minutes to do, but it wasn’t like we had to come up with come kind of extravagant plan. We just stuck to the fundamentals.

Here are the traffic numbers so far for December 1-9 (as compared to December 1-9, 2008):
* Traffic is up just over 82%
* Pageviews are up 70%
* Average time spent on the site is up 10%

That’s all great, but what about organic traffic? (what they asked for):
* Traffic coming from Google organic search is up 120%
* Traffic coming from Yahoo organic search is up 24%

The best, and most telling, number might be this one:
* Last year people visited the site as a result of clicking on the search result for just over 2,400 keywords. This year that number is 5,200 keywords! So the net that was cast out in the search engines was twice as big this year than last year. That’s a huge difference.

And finally, traffic from the term “holiday bowl tickets” is up 180% thanks to be ranked #1 in Google.

What’s the big deal? This reinforces what we tell potential clients when we talk about our strategy to help them. You have to get the fundamentals of search engine optimization right first.

We frequently talk to companies who are eager (rightfully so) to change their search profile. They are in a big rush to get aggressive with massive PPC campaigns and the like. That’s great.  We can do that for you, we tell them. But often times, as is the case here, we can deliver huge ROI just by making sure the basics are done right. Page titles and URLs are underrated when it comes to SEO, but they make a big difference.

Granted, the Holiday Bowl has the best domain name possible. That’s super valuable for them. That being said, the way the URLs were built didn’t leverage that domain fully. So now what we are seeing is improved performance in the long tail of keywords. And that’s where any website, regardless if they have the perfect domain, can see a serious improvement in traffic.

Thoughts? Comments? Any similar experiences? Share them in the comment section below.

I’ve recently noticed a lot of companies making the same exact mistake in social media. They make an announcement about new content they want you to read on their website, but they forget to include a link to said content.

Look, I know no one out there is perfect when it comes to social media practices. It’s still relatively new and there is a learning curve (don’t believe anyone who tells you success on social media is instantaneous). In fact, I applaud companies for trying. But from what I’ve seen, too many companies are forgetting a basic fundamental of usability – make it easy for the user to find the content they want. The harder it is to for them to find, the less chance they will have a good experience on your website and return again.

From what I’ve seen, the offense is taking place more via Facebook Fan Pages than Twitter (although I have seen it happen more than once on Twitter). The announcement typically sounds something like this,

“We just posted a new/great/helpful article about XYZ on our website. Check it out!”.

I cringe every time I see it. No link or any sort of direction about how to find it once you actually get to the website. (Aside: I left out the annoying trailing set of four exclamation points. That’s a topic for another day.)

Here’s why not including a link is wrong:
1. No one has the time or patience to look for anything. Let me get this straight. You want me to read your update, type in your URL, then magically find the new fantastic content you mentioned? Sounds like a homework assignment. I’m out. If there is a perception that work to find your content is involved, your conversion rate will be super-low, if not zero.

2. It’s hard enough to build a loyal user-base. If you’ve been lucky enough to build an audience, treat them like gold. Don’t blow it by using social media. Make your announcement short-and-sweet and lay out the red carpet with a link that takes them right to the new content. If your content is as great as you think it is, then they will keep clicking every time you post.

3. You wouldn’t do it on your website. So why is it okay to do in a social media? Is it because you feel like you are limited by a certain number of characters. Word to the wise: something isn’t worth tweeting if you need more than 140 characters to say it. If you need more words, then you should be using your blog and not Twitter.

The solution to this problem is really simple. Just add a link to the end of your Facebook post or your tweet. Advanced users should strongly consider using a URL-shortener with tracking like bit.ly.

Here’s an example from my last blog post:

Now I’m not claiming I get 100% click-thru rates every time I tweet or post to our Fan Page, but I get a heck of a lot more people reading my content than if I didn’t include a link.

Have you seen this same mistake lately? I’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

I’m taking a chance that few who read this blog are as passionate as I am about college football and search engine optimization. I realize that. But there is a link. I promise. Just let me explain.

Bobby Bowden (below) is a legend in college football. He is a Hall-of-Fame coach that has won more games than almost anyone who has ever coached the sport (388 to be exact). He’s 80 years old and is in the news because he just decided (some say forced to decide) to retire after this season ends.

Bowden will be remembered for a lot of positive things – but the hard core college football junkie will remember him for recruiting speed. In its heyday, Bowden’s Florida State teams won with a whirlwind of pure athleticism and speed. His players were just plain faster than the other teams’. And as the saying goes, “There’s no defense for speed”.

So what’s this got to do with SEO? Google announced today an experimental feature called Site Performance making its debut in Webmaster Tools. And guess what? It’s all about speed!

Google has said that they want to make the web faster. Now they are giving every webmaster a way to check and see just how fast their site downloads in a browser. Google’s theory is a lot like Bowden’s – speed is essential to winning. And in the search giant’s clase they are talking about winning customers. The faster a page downloads, the more likely a person is to have a better experience on the site. In turn, the site will be more profitable due to higher retention rates.

Not only does Site Performance provide download times, it also tells you how speed on certain pages can be improved.

So what is Google getting at? Speed is becoming increasingly important for SEO. Although they haven’t come out and said this verbatim (correct me if I am wrong here), it sure feels like Google is trying to tell everyone that speed is going to be a consideration for search rank. So that means we all need to consider optimizing our download speeds folks.

To see Site Performance, click on the “Labs: link on the Webmaster Tools left-hand menu.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

I got an email today that I wanted to share with you loyal readers. The title was 1st Page Results Guaranteed. Now I never ever read emails that are obvious spam. Even though I knew the contents of this one would be garbage, I couldn’t resist.

Here’s what it said:
“Do you wish you could increase your online leads? Getting a GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING is easier and more cost-effective than you might think. We have helped a lot of businesses thrive in this market and we can help you! Simply hit reply and I’ll share with you the cost and the benefits. See you at the top!”

Have you seen an email like this one before? What about a claim on an SEO’s website similar to this? Or maybe you’ve been told something like this when you’ve met with a search engine optimization firm. If you have, hopefully you deleted it before picking up the phone. If you haven’t, you are lucky because guarantees like these seem to be everywhere.

If you have not seen or heard anything like this before, then I am going to give you a visual to keep in mind for when you do. I want you to associate the SEO guarantee with this picture:

Yes, the SEO guarantee is a pile of garbage. Here’s the super-simplified version of why:

1. Chances are the company that sent this to me did so via an automated script. It’s a mass emailing to a ton of people. That company has no idea what industry I am involved in. A huge part of SEO has to do with the competitive landscape in your industry. For example, there’s a tremendous difference in the amount of work required when it comes to getting on the first page for “baseball tickets” (254M results) versus “san diego software developer” (3.45M results). And that’s just one metric. A good SEO can’t just look at your website for a minute and tell you exactly what it will take to help you. They need to do their homework on your website’s SEO history and the competition that’s getting better results than you.

2. Things can change in an instant. For example, we have clients who are listed on the first page for results of valuable keywords but their slot on that first page changes literally every day. For example, some days Google will add news results. Some days they’ll add maps. Both of those drastically affect results. Trust me, search engines constantly tweak their algorithms. There’s no way anyone in their right mind should ever stake a guarantee on something as volatile as search.

3.  Lack of transparency. At the end of the day, no one outside of search engine company employees know the secret sauce. The beauty of SEO is that it’s open to interpretation. There are a number of different thories about what’s effective and what’s not. That being said, there are a ton of things that really good SEOs know how to do. And those things work for more often than not. But it’s not because they have been given secret access to the Google magic. They are successful because they are experienced. And any experienced SEO will never flaunt a gaurantee in front of your face becuase they know that’s crazy.

So, look out for the SEO gurantee. If you hear it or see it, move on to the next company. Hopefully they will know what they are talking about.

Have you ever been given the SEO guarantee? I’d love to hear your story in the comments section below.

I love working with startups. I’ve been a part of several (some successful, some not) and have been lucky to work with a bunch of startup or early-stage clients with Brand5. There’s always so much energy and optimism working with brand new companies. It’s a blast to help them out and watch them try to make it. In each situation, I learn incredibly valuable lessons that can be applied to future projects.

I want to touch on a common mistake that I see a lot of startups make when it comes to planning the launch of their website. Companies that have it in their marketing plan to rely on traffic from organic search (regardless of the expected percentage) fail to take into account search engine lead-time. As a result, there’s a gap between the launch of the site and the beginning signs of organic traffic.

Here’s usually what happens: Company X plans to launch their website on a certain date. For the sake of this example, let’s say July 1. As they work on getting their website built and ready for launch, there’s nothing (maybe at most a landing page saying “Coming Soon”) live on their domain.

July 1 rolls around and Company X launches their website. By the end of their first few days, Company X looks at their analytic and sees no one coming to their website via organic traffic. They wonder, “Where’s the love from Google?”.

Here’s the problem – Company X didn’t do anything to let Google know they existed before July 1. They never opened a Webmaster Tools account or submitted a sitemap. And the big problem is that Company X is now on Google’s clock. They have to wait around for Google to acknowledge the website exists and slowly start to creep into results. There’s no telling how long Company X will have to wait. It may take months for traffic to start seeping in, especially if Company X is in a highly-competitive industry for keywords.

Here’s how to avoid this common mistake:

As soon as you finalize your domain, launch something. At the very least, launch a landing page that has optimized title and description tags. A bonus would be to put some text on the page using your most valued keywords. In other words, give Google some indication of how they should index the website. While you’re at it, add analytics code to the site. There probably won’t be any traffic, but if there is, you want to know where it came from.

2-3 months from your hard launch, do a soft launch. I realize every company is different. Some want to be super-quiet and don’t want anyone to know about them. I understand that (sort of). But for the rest of you, upgrade that single landing page to at least a few pages – enough for a sitemap of more than one page. Consider adding more keyword-rich content and make sure every new page has optimized title and description tags. Most of all, submit a sitemap to Google through Webmaster Tools.

Make sure early traffic knows how to find you. If you are worried about getting potential leads too early, give people a reason to find out more about the company. Tell them your website will email them when it launches. Ask them to call or email you if they want more information now.Don;t just have something that says “Coming Soon”. No one will ever remember to come back again.

Bottom line: regardless of how little you think your new website is going to rely on organic search for traffic (trust me it will be way more than you plan for, it always is), don’t wait until launch to set the wheels in motion with search engines. Get your sitemaps submitted as far in advance as you can so pages can start getting indexed. Anything you can do to minimize the gap between launch and letting search engines your website exists will pay off.

Ever wonder how to automatically post your Tweets to their own separate tab on your Facebook Fan Page instead of on the Wall tab? Well, I’ve been trying to figure it out and finally did thanks to Involver.

Involver has a free and simple-to-install app called Twitter for pages that allows you to setup a separate Twitter tab on your Facebook fan page.

Here’s a view of Brand5’s Facebook Fan Page with the Twitter tab installed.

Here’s what you need to to do install it (it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes):

1. Make sure you are logged in to your Facebook account.

2. Visit the Involver app gallery and click “Install” in the Twitter app box.

3. From the dropdown, select the Fan Page that you want to install the Twitter tab to.

4. Click the “Add Twitter for Pages” button.

5. Fill out the form and click the “Save & Continue” button. The form asks for pretty basic info. Asking for your phone number is lame, but there’s no validation so you can put in a fake.

6. Click the “Continue to Fan Page” button”

7. Click the tab with the “+” on it and then select “Twitter” from the dropdown.

That’s it. Complete those steps and you’re done. Every time you Tweet, it will automatically post to this new tab you created. From what I have experienced, it take a couple of hours for the tab to update.

Here’s what the Twitter tab looks like on the Fan Page I used in this example:

Involver offers some premium services, but unfortunately doesn’t say what they are unless you contact them through a form. That’s unfortunate.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. By the way, this post is not an endorsement for the Involver Twitter app. I am not being compensated in any way for this post.