Erich Stauffer

Category: Marketing

  • About Google Caffeine

    Google Caffeine is the latest version of the search engine’s algorithm, or method by which they search and index the Internet. One thing that hasn’t changed is that backlinks are still important, but other things have.

    One major change is that the search engine now can update it’s index in seconds, instead of days, which means that anything you post on your website, blog, or Twitter will be updated in Google’s search results within seconds as long as its in the index of results already. This is powerful because it means that the search engine is extremely up-to-date at almost every moment.

    The other big change is how it views relevance. Relevance is how Google determines whether or not your page is worth ranking at the top of the search results. In the beginning Google used a mathematical formula that took into account the number of pages linking back to your page, the content on your page, the content of the pages linking to your page, and the links from your page to other relevant sites (based on content). That core feature is still in the algorithm, but it’s been added to and tweaked over the years.

    No one except the Google engineers know what the algorithm actually looks for, but we have hints from its behavior and from Google’s blog that lead us to believe that a new feature of Caffeine is that the search engine now takes synonyms used on the page as a factor in determining relevance. This means that a site that uses a keyword of “web design” should also have related terms like “web hosting, SEO, and web development.” If you think about it, it makes sense as it builds context around a term. For those who have built their web sites around a primary keyword, this can hurt, but if you write naturally and really know what you are talking about, this should be okay. Just keep in mind that internal and external linking to relevant sites with similar content will help your site have relevance and get better search engine rank results.

    If you need help getting better results, contact us.

  • Traffic + Conversion = $

    I’d like to propose an equation that I believe is a new way forward: Traffic + Conversion = $

    If you’re still interested, keep reading.  I have written this guide based on things that I have learned over the last couple of months.

    Using proven, repeatable techniques there is little risk and great rewards involved in marketing products for profit.  Much work has already been done for us in the form of processes and software tools.

    There are two key phases to this process:

    Research and Analysis – Identify a micro-niche inside a penetrable market that has profitable products that people are already selling.
    Marketing and Testing – Promote the products and test the results.  If the traffic and/or conversions do not meet thresholds in a given time, start over.

    The rate of success with this method is anywhere between 1 in 6 to 1 in 10 and marketing and testing can take anywhere from 1 to 30 days.  Success is defined as more money coming in than is going out each month and that includes all opportunity costs (time that could have been spent making money in other activities).  Tracking is critical not only with the data of the results, but with the finances and time spent.  If you are comfortable with this, keep reading.

    Metrics and Rules of Phase ! – Research and Analysis

    Micro-niches are identified as the #1 keyword receiving at least 80 clicks per day and websites containing that keyword being less than 30,000 globally.

    At least 3 keywords other keywords within the micro-niche with similar criteria must also be identified, if not, start over.

    Top-10 competition for the top 4 keywords has to be penetrable within the time allowed.  Metrics to consider are:

    • Domain age
    • # of back-links to domain
    • # of back-links to page mentioning the keyword
    • # of back-links from .gov or .edu domains
    • Exists in Yahoo! Directory?
    • Exists in BOTW (Best of the Web) Directory?
    • Exists in DMOZ (ODP) Directory?
    If the competition has a young domain age, a low number of back-links, and does not exist in any of these directories, then the market is penetrable.  If the opposite is true, stop and start over.

    Check to see that related products are both available to be sold and are being sold by others.  If either is not true, stop and start over.

    If both of those tests pass, then make sure the products are giving a referral amount that you deem acceptable.  If not, stop and start over.

    (All of the above can be done using the Market Samurai tool semi-automatically, but can also be done manually.)

    You now have products in a penetrable micro-niche that are profitable to sell.  Move on to Phase II – Marketing and Testing.

    Phase II – Marketing and Testing

    Begin by setting up a place to place your products.  This is where your marketing efforts will point back to.  It can be a Squidoo page, a Blogspot Blog, or WordPress running on your own domain.

    If you are using Blogspot or WordPress, install Google Analytics to track traffic.  If using Squidoo, there are tracking mechanisms built into the site.

    Once you have a place to put your products, begin writing copy for the site.  You will need to write the following:

    • About Us page – use keywords and talk about the product
    • Ad copy for the products – if using Market Samurai, there are built-in features for helping with this, but you can do it manually too
    • Create posts about the keyword subject matter within the micro-niche

    Next, begin to create back-links to your site by placing links to the domain, the blog posts, and the the product pages on social bookmarking, social media, and in blog comments in your related market.  Be sure to add links from .edu and .gov domains. You can search Google specifically for blogs on those domains manually, but you can do this semi-automatically with Market Samurai too.
    Track the incoming page hits.  Testing for viability can begin only after your product’s page is receiving at least 200 hits per day.  If you are not getting 200 hits per day, then try these things first:

    • Increase the number of blog posts on and off the site using other services like hubpages and squidoo – then promote all of the new posts again
    • Make sure you are promoting on at least 30 different sites for each post – you can use services like ping.fm or trafficbug to assist with this task
    • Pay to have your site listed in the Yahoo! Directory
    • Pay for Google Adwords or Bing (Microsoft) AdCenter
    • Add pictures with descriptive text to get hits from search engine’s image searches
    • Add video to Youtube with links and comment on other videos in your micro-niche
    • Make sure you are posting to Twitter and Facebook regularly and engaging in conversation, not just promoting

    If after 30 days or at your own set threshold, you are still not receiving 200 hits or more per day, your product is not viable.  Quit and start over.  You have just found one of your 6 to 10 failures.
    If you do have over 200 hits per day, but are not getting conversions, first try changing out your ad copy, images of the products, and/or placement of the two on the page.  Refer to Dan Kennedy’s sales letter technique.
    If after changing all three of these variables and still your conversion rate (revenue) is below your expenses, then start over.  If not, you have a profitable business.  Consider selling it for ten times it’s worth and starting over.

    References:

    The Thirty Day Challenge
    http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/

    The Immediate Edge
    http://www.immediateedge.com/

    The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    http://www.amazon.com/Back-Napkin-Solving-Problems-Pictures/dp/1591841992

    Turn $150 into $15,000 in 30 Days
    http://www.15kchallenge.com/blog/

    How to Make Money From Your Blog (61 page PDF printout attached)
    http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/how-to-make-money-from-your-blog/

    Insiders Circle
    http://dankennedy.com/

  • Managing Forward

    screenshot-02-20-2009
    Managing Actions, February 2009

    We have gone through several changes in the last year including a major facelift, a name change, an identity crisis, and now a new way forward.  It’s time we stop managing our thoughts and start to manage our actions.

    From now on you can expect to find fresh content daily on subjects ranging from self-development to happiness, from management to marketing, and from pop-culture to programming.  Where else can you find out how to delete a Digg submission and how to live a purpose-filled life in the same blog?

    Zac and I are passionate about life and we want to help you become more of a success than you already are.  If you’re reading this article right now you have already chosen the first step in learning more about yourself, your purpose, and your life.

    We want to inspire you, motivate you, and lift you up so that you can go do whatever it is that makes you feel strong.  Be better tomorrow than you were today.  Move up in the world.  Get exited about life.  Find your spirit and develop it.

    Thank you for reading Managing Actions.  We are glad that you are a part of our life and look forward to bringing you great content for a long time.  Cheers.

  • SEO Terms – By the way, what does SEO stand for?

    When I first got into web design, I didn’t even know what SEO was, let alone stood for. If you’ve stumbled upon this article you might already know that it stands for search engine optimization. This refers to the process of improving search engine results, which leads to our next SEO term, SERPs. SERP refers to search engine results page(s). The number your site is on that SERP is your PR or page rank. When the term is smashed together with no space it is a Google registered trademark. You might also see the term PR5 or PR4. Search engines give greater credibility to sites with links from PR1-PR5 websites. PR, as noted before stands for page rank and the number indicates the rank on that page (1-10). A PR1 website is the number one website for a given search term, for example.

    If you choose to get help on your Internet marketing, how do you decide which SEO firm to go with? Erich Stauffer, an Indianapolis SEO firm writes that, “web design built around search engine optimization,” is something to look for in a SEO firm. SEO is more than just in-bound links. The website has to have good content and a good structure. Are you using H1 tags on every page? Strong tags instead of bold? Are you adequately using your description and keyword meta tags? Are you using tables or DIV tags to organize your information? Can your web page be viewed on a mobile device? Have you submitted your website to ODP? If you do nothing else, please do this last step as the ODP, the Open Directory Project, is the most important step in your SEO or Internet marketing campaign.

  • 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Small Business Forever

    1. Ultra-Local Marketing – direct communication between business owners and their local markets allows for business large and small to add a personal touch and an heir of transparency to give them a human edge in an increasingly no-touch technology world awash with noise.
    2. Networking Old-World Advertising – the still-successful outdoor advertising and television commercials are now being used in conjunction with Twitter to give businesses more ROI and feedback on ad placements and their effectiveness. Even without tie-ins, searches for responses on Twitter can sometimes be just as revealing.
    3. Uprooting Wall Street – think of the “Mad Money Effect” on steroids.  When people start talking about a stock and that it should be bought, it gets bought, and conversely, talk about selling leads to selling.  This is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, but nevertheless is an effect of Twitter on business stocks.
    4. Making Blogs Relevant – blogs entered the scene in a huge way a few years back, but have since become mainstream and a bit of a victim of their own success.  Because of the ease of making blogs, their overall saturation is high and readership has suffered.  Enter Twitter: hyper-focused followings with links to blog posts of interests have made blogs more powerful than ever before.  Call it the SEO effect or not – Twitter is shaping how blogs are viewed as a resource around the world.
    5. New Ways to Gather Data – never before has there been a literal tap into the stream of consciousness as there is on Twitter.  A quick search on Twitter’s real-time search engine at http://search.twitter.com reveals whatever anyone was last thinking.  Businesses have an amazingly powerful research tool like never before.
    6. Helps TV, Radio, and Print Interact – when you see CNN co-anchoring Twitter side-by-side with the host of the show, you know Twitter has hit mainstream.  Twitter allows live television shows,  radio stations, and magazines get feedback on what they are doing, know what people think, and how they feel.
    7. Channeling Micropayments – Twitpay and services like it facilitate small loans or payments to companies or between individuals  and will extend the reach of operations like eBay’s (EBAY) PayPal. eBay, Amazon (AMZN) and other e-commerce companies will get a financial benefit from real-time micropayments.
    8. Changing Telecommunications – Telecom companies have chosen to manage user behavior by forcing customers to transfer voice, video and data on platforms that they can track. Twitter will force telecoms into a position similar to the one cable companies find themselves in.
    9. Government Interaction – Large government agencies will quickly realize that Twitter may be one of the single best ways to communicate with the public and may even mandate that Twitter participate in some programs to distribute emergency notices to citizens quickly like with the Emergency Broadcast System that was used to reach the public over radio and TV starting in 1963.
    10. Enhancing Charity – The Internet and the major products set up to use it are changing at a remarkable speed, permanently altering the way we live. Twitter could have as large a role in this transformation as Google and Facebook have had in the past decade.

  • Marketing Research for New Business Ideas Using Twitter

    I’m going to use Twitter as a marketing tool. I’m going to search for “wish there was a way to” “i would pay for” “i want but” and see what I come up with for possible products or services for a business.

    “wish there was a way to”

    twitter feature: stop following people for certain parts of the day
    wish there was a way to send one casting to all my model friends
    wish there was a way to download the “Dont stop believin” version from Glee!
    wish there was a way to connect my Flickr with my Twitter
    wish there was a way to pump gas without getting out of the car
    Wish there was a way to send you some of the heat here
    wish there was a way to “detect” the tweets of people near you.
     I like the Picnik editor on flickr, just wish there was a way to do a whole set at once
    Wish there was a way to convince people that we just need to keep offices at a normal temp when it’s hot. Not at absolute zero
    wish there was a way to mute the commentators without the background noise
    wish there was a way to create ‘groups’ of people to follow on twitter
    wish there was a way to order Showtime and HBO and nothing else.
    wish there was a way to really be as indestructable as i felt last week
    wish there was a way to sleep longer.
    wish there was a way to transfer a custom Google map you created (pins and all) to the iPhone Google map app
    WISH there was a way to permanently hide any news feed info relating to those “What kind of blah blah are you” quizzes on facebook.
    wish there was a way to download iTunes Pass content onto the iPhone.
    Wish there was a way to remote into a computer to enable vnc remote management
    wish there was a way to opt out of getting messages from some people in facebook. Seems like whey need a spam filter.
    wish there was a way to convert guitar tabs to ukulele tabs!
    wish there was a way to transport my Pandora stations to my car. Bump “the networks” lol
    wish there was a way to turn device updates off except for @ replies
    Wish there was a way to make that txt face with a fat lip 😉
    wish there was a way to post PDFs in #Facebook messages…
    wish there was a way to store up my morning energy and use it when Jude has his nap in the afternoon. So tired and so much to do.

    “i would pay for”

    I would pay for the NYT and did.
    @JetBlue, I would pay for WiFi! (As long as you also have outlets.)
    I would LOVE for a man to do that for me! I would pay for it lol Romance is dead in these dudes eyes because no many women are
    I would pay for some of them to come home and do nothing. Just to get them out of office
     #ubertwitter is best bb app I’ve used twitberry bbtweet yatca and tinytweet. I would pay for uber and will when beta is over
    i think i’m ready to start paying something for #twitter not alot, yet, but who wants to spend for fun? I would pay for technical support
    I would pay for an audio copy of the conversation that accompanied these actions. =D http://tise.io/7a60c2
    I would pay for 8 hours of uninterrupted snoozy times.
     @hodgman I wouldn’t pay for a song, but I would pay for you to record the message on my answering machine.
     @TweetDeck I so wish my settings/groups were Global and updated the app no matter where I signed in… I would pay for that
    might let the s15 go the insurance/repayments on it is about the same as what I would pay for a wrx with a secured loan
    I would pay for the data plan.
    is there anyway to win backstage passes? cos i really wanna see enrique so bad, or i would pay for them?
    You know, I just had that same thought! I would PAY for a better Twitter to stamp out spam & crap! lol!
    I would pay for my college
     I love my xm! Never thought I would pay for radio but boy do I love it!:)
    lol true but i don’t know if I would pay for twitter though…
    it’s days like this i would pay for someone to bath me.
     I would pay for content online. Frankly, I’m surprised that it has been “free” this long! Make it easy and really QUICK to pay.
    It is free, and really good, so can’t complain. They have to monetize somehow. I would pay for no ads TwitterFon.
     i would pay for a megavideo subscription if i wasn’t 10000% sure that they’d spam my inbox & usps mailbox with crap.
    tanning rocks..i would pay for it but i like the sun..cheaper ahah
     I take it back – TwittedFon app update starts with last 20 tweets and stores everything from there. Ads still blow. I would pay for pro ver

    “I want but”

    Working on my book list…so many I want but how many do I need?
    Buy all the T-Shirt Hell shirts I want but can afford and then spend the rest on a strippers and booze.
    I know what i want but dont know how to get it.
    Thinking about things I want but cant have… Because life is just that way?
    Dont know what i want but i know its not you. I know in my heart its not.     <<<—-OUCH!

  • Life ROI

    How to judge the return on investments you’ve made in your life.

    Using the base point of a high school graduate or GED equivalent aged 17-18 years old, what life investments show the greatest ROI (return on investment).  Is it better to start working for another company right away to build experience and move up the corporate ladder or is it better to sit it out four years in college, then start at the bottom working for another company?  Is it better to attend a trade school or 2-year college then enter the workforce as a type of hybrid?  Is working for someone else better than starting out on your own in the beginning, middle, or late in your working life?  How does being married affect your success in life?  Does it matter if your spouse supports you or if you have an unhappy marriage?  How do children affect success?

    There are many metrics and many examples of each scenario.  It is hard to know how you want to end up when you are 17-18 years old, but if you could do it all over again – if you could share your experiences with someone just starting out – or just laid off and starting over – what advice would you give them?

    My Path

    After high school I attended college for 5 years during which time I got married and had children.  I graduated with a bachelors degree and a mountain of debt, going to school and working full time as a bank clerk during and after college.  It wasn’t until I went back to school to get Microsoft certifications that I could get beyond the clerk job.  The 6-month certification training nearly doubled my 5 year investment in college tuition and board.  I watched as peers who didn’t go to college at all were at or above my clerk level and were without the college loan debt.  The only thing that allowed me to move up was going beyond the BS degree.  Because of that experience I tend to recommend going straight into a technical training field or apprenticeship straight out of high shool whether you plan on working for someone else or yourself.  Become an expert in your field and above all, follow your passions, but listen to those around you.  If you keep hearing the same advice from different people, its probably right and should be considered.

    Success can be measured many different ways.  While children may take your time and energy, they also give you motivation and fulfil your innate desire to leave a legacy behind.  The joy and agony that comes from raising children is uncomparable to any other duty in life.  Have you ever heard that behind every good man is a great woman?  This is usually true if the man and wife are supportive and loving of each other.  A constant bickering under one roof can only restrain what could otherwise be successful endeavors.  How can we measure success?  How do you measure success?