Erich Stauffer

Tag: SEO

  • Mixer Sales Hits Page One of Google

    Mixer Sales asked Erich Stauffer to help them get better search engine rankings for their primary keywords, best mixers and mixer sales – and now Mixer Sales is ranking on the first page of Google for ‘mixer sales’!

    While Mixer Sales ranks #6 for the keyword ‘mixer sales’,  they currently don’t rank in the top 100 for ‘best mixers’, which means we still have some work to do, but we believe in celebrating the small victories.   We also helped them setup what we call a ‘sticky page’ which is a page that stays on top of WordPress blog post listings. This is named after ‘sticky posts’, but uses a page instead of a post to prevent double posts on the front page. Going forward we’re going to recommend on product marketing sites like this a “start with sticky” policy because it provides a kind of launching pad for all of the other posts, which can sometimes get lost. Users can still find posts using categories or tags, but for the most important posts, they should be linked to from the sticky page and possibly even through the top navigation bar.  Most of the time we will start off with allowing WordPress to automatically display pages, but as the site ages and becomes more concrete, we’ll go back and manually manipulate the page navigation to add posts and other keywords for SEO reasons.

    Overall we see good things for Mixer Sales and wish them well in their endeavor to help people find the best deals on kitchen stand mixers, which have become more and more popular over the last several years.

  • What Are Our Basic Costs for Web Design and Maintenance?

    Our web sites can range from $600 to $3500 but I doubt you’ll want either of those. Here is what you’ll get for $1200 during our Spring Special (Ends April 21):

    • A custom-designed website co-designed by you to match your company, your brand, and your tastes
    • The training and ability to edit your website content whenever you want
    • In-person meetings, phone and email support
    • ‘One-off’ email setup or email management for your whole company via Google Apps
    • Logo and brand editing with options for logo creation and marketing material creation
    • Acquisition or transfer of your domain (your website address)
    • A Facebook page and Twitter account setup and integration (if not done already)
    • RSS syndication feed from your website
    • A marketing partner that can offer advice on web and traditional based advertising

    After the website is complete, changes are free for 30 days, after which you have the option of signing up for a monthly maintenance package than can include your mix of changes to the website or SEO/marketing of your business. Packages range from $200 to $800 a month. $200 gets you Facebook and Twitter updates and backlinks as well as minor changes to your website such as text changes. $800 is ‘outsourced’ marketing where we actually write copy for you on your site and others in order to create more backlinks and take up more search engine positions to cast a wider net for search engine traffic. We’ll also be available to take calls from marketing or advertising vendors such as AT&T. You’ll be able to forward them to us to find out the details and negotiate any deals that we may feel are beneficial to you.

  • Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010

    As a fellow business owner I can understand that it’s been a wild ride over the last couple of years.  Since I created Erich Stauffer back in 2007 we have seen markets rise and fall, businesses start and fail, and entire economies collapse.  Next year promises more of the same, or worse, but we have reason for hope.  There will always be a place for the kind of business owner that adds value to each customer interaction because people will always have needs to be met.  Meeting customer’s needs and exceeding their expectations no matter what happens will continue to pay dividends despite the economy.

    We have gone through several changes since 2007. We added more services as our customers have asked for them, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, and traditional advertising assistance in addition to our original web design and development services.  Jason Cobb, Chris Hendrickson, and most recently my wife, Suzanne Stauffer, have all worked hard to serve our customers since 2007.

    Jason Cobb and Chris Hendrickson have served as executive and sales managers, respectively, but will both be transitioning into sales support role part-time as they take on new roles in other endeavors.  Because of Suzanne’s work over the last year I have promoted her to Marketing Director and Vice President of the company, while I am remaining as CEO. In this role I lead and guide the direction of the company.

    I want to personally thank you for your business over the last year and together look forward to not as things are, but as they could be.

  • The Monetization Connection

    How to make money from a blog or mini-site

    Previously I wrote about blogging for profit, but didn’t go into detail about how to monetize the content. In other words, how do you make money from a blog?

    There are three primary ways to make money from a blog:

    1. Ads – this is the easiest, but lowest-paying form of revenue. However, it can be a good way to get started and prove viability. Popular ad networks include Google Adsense and Chitka. Ads like these are pay-per-click or PPC which means you get paid regardless of if the advertiser makes a sale.

    2. Affiliations – Affiliate ads are potentially more profitable, but require a well defined niche or else it is too hard to attract visitors that will actually buy the products you are promoting. Affiliate ads are pay-per-purchase or PPP, which means you only get paid when the merchant advertiser makes a sale.

    3. Direct selling – This is when you are directly selling something on your site that you are responsible for fulfilling. This has more potential for profit than affiliate advertising since you can make higher margins, but its more risky and you have to do fulfillment yourself. Examples of this can be anything from ebooks to beef jerky.

    4. (Bonus) Transform – the pinnacle of a website is when it can be converted into a book or television show. This means you have hit the big time, but its because your site has the two major ingredients listed below.

    What do all four of those revenue sources have in common?

    1. Original Content – some estimates say to post up to eight times a day. If you are just starting out, shoot for once a week, then move it up to once a day per blog.

    2. Visitors – Don’t stop writing content until you have at least 200 visitors a day (track with Google Analytics). If you already have 50 or more posts, but are lacking in traffic, start promoting your sites.

    Promotion

    The easiest way to promote your site, like with SEO, is to start with your site. Make sure you are linking to previous posts with appropriate keywords (I call this ‘threading the needle’, but its also known as ‘siloing’) and displaying navigation correctly. Visitors should be able to find more content they want to browse easily, but remember the goal is to monetize by either promoting other people’s goods and services or by selling something yourself so don’t get too carried away in internal self-promotion.

    Once you have fixed any issues on your site and made internal linking a habit, begin bookmarking your posts on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, and Delicious. After that is done, look to join a relevant forum to join and comment often. Soon you will be able to add a signature that will show up on all of your forum posts with backlinks to your site.

    If you do all of these things and you are still not successful, try a different micro-niche.

  • Blogtrepreneurs Blogging for Profit

    The Internet is a great unsettled land not unlike the discovery of a new world – and entrepreneurs everywhere are taking notice

    Entrepreneurs who blog for profit are sometimes called Blogtrepreneurs. Whether they come from a business background, an Internet marketing background, web design background, or are still in high school, anyone who can identity a niche (read: need) can turn content creation into revenue creation. In fact, that is exactly what I do everyday whether I’m actively working on a blog (or mini-site) or not. That is because blogging for profit is like a fly wheel. It takes a lot of energy to get it going (finding a niche, an appropriate domain, adding content, and promoting), but once the fly wheel is going it takes little effort to keep it going and you are free to start a new fly wheel, or blog.

    Niches

    Niches are segments of a market and are generally well covered. Micro-niches are segments of a niche and are generally covered less. This is where blogtrepreneurs can add value to the market by helping people find answers to what they are seeking in a nook of a market segment. For example, digital cameras are a market. SLR cameras are a niche of digital cameras and NIKON SLR cameras are a micro-niche of SLR cameras. A site about NIKON SLR cameras could sell it promote or educate about the cameras themselves and about all of their accessories. I have a blog about family photography that talks about different digital cameras and techniques for taking family pictures, for example. Identifying a micro-niche is not easy, but there are many sites out there that can help you identity how to find a niche.

    Domains

    Once you have a niche picked out, its time to secure a domain. There are still good domains to be had, but everyday there are less and less as more people gobble up the remaining ones. In the same way there is only so much land, there are only so many words and combinations of words, which is what adds to domains value over time. When choosing a domain you should include your primary keywords if at all possible. If you don’t know what your primary keywords are for your niche, stop and find out. There are plenty of sites with advice on how to choose the right keywords, which you should use  in your domain. Domains can be registered at registers like GoDaddy.com, but also at hosts like HostGator, 1and1, and BlueHost. I can recommend any of these.

    Content

    Once you have your domain registered with hosting, you’ll want to start adding content. One of the easiest ways to do this is to setup WordPress on your server. BlueHost makes it easy with SimpleScripts, but you can install it manually almost as easy at 1and1 and others. Once WordPress is installed, you can start adding posts, but where will you get the content? Think of writing content like writing a research paper. You can’t copy works, but you can quote and reference. Ultimately you wafted to add commentary and value to the material without plagiarising. You won’t get an F, but Google may not rank your site if it contains duplicate content so write your own. For my nook covers site I pieced together facts around the web to create something whole and new and its paid off.

    Promotion

    Now that you’ve created your content its time to promote your site. Promotion starts from within and that means finding a WordPress theme that is SEO ready it making it so. I’m not going to go into SEO here, but there are lots of sites that explain all about search engine optimization. The next step is creating backlinks, which are links back to your site from other, preferably relevant, sites. Think of backlinks as votes that Google uses to decide who it should rank first for a given set of keywords. Find relevant sites to create backlinks on by commenting or by adding to a forum discussion for example.  I was able to greatly increase my ereader accessories traffic by adding a link to it in a forum about ereaders.

    So do you think you have what it takes to be a blogtrepreneur? Don’t wait. The longer you do the more you delay getting paid and risk losing out on the perfect domain. Want more? Check out my other blog on how to make money online.

  • Erich Stauffer Web Design

    Erich Stauffer WordPress Web Design and Development for Small Businesses in the Greater Indianapolis Area

    When our sales managers started to realize that what customers really cared about was the ability to control their own website, they realized that they were not just selling great looking web design and SEO services, but control and access to their websites, and the ability to change text or add pages as needed. From this point it was decided to be more transparent about the content management system (CMS) they were using to support their clients: WordPress.

    WordPress is an open source CMS, originally used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL, but has since been expanded to be able to support almost any web site. It has many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system and is used by over 12% of the top 1 million websites.

    The most popular CMS in use today, WordPress was first released on May 27, 2003 and has since added features like integrated link management, a search engine-friendly permalink structure, the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to posts, and support for tagging. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers like us to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

    By embracing WordPress and having more upfront pricing, we think this greater transparency will lead to a better customer relationship over time. If you are interested in working with friendly, professional, and experienced WordPress developers, contact us today.

  • Introducing a Brand New Way to Market Your Business

    Grow Your Business Organically

    A lot of SEO companies market how they will promote your business online using Internet marketing and online advertising techniques, but Erich Stauffer noticed a gap between where promotion stops and business begins and so we used social media management to not just promote your business, but grow your business.

    Digital Marketing Strategy

    We’ll work with you to create a comprehensive strategy to marry your business brand, vision, values, products, and services with traditional outdoor, radio, TV, and yellow page advertising alongside social networking and social spaces like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other technologies like apps for the iPhone and Android phones.

    SEO is Not Enough – Content Marketing

    It’s no longer enough to have a top-ranking website in Google if your web site is not converting traffic, your story is not consistent, and you are not creating lasting relationships with customers. Erich Stauffer can help you to do all three with content marketing.

    Social Media Management

    We are excited to offer social media management to help your business organize and streamline their marketing efforts with a consistent message that is in-line with their mission, vision, and values. We believe so strongly about this product that we would be happy to take you out to lunch to show you how it works in a one-on-one session. Are you interested in learning more?

  • Geek Hand and The Settler’s League

    Hate the Game, Not the Player

    I set out to create a new “Home” brand of technology consulting so that I could offer Indianapolis computer repair in homes without damaging the brand I was establishing with business customers.  I came up with “Professional Technology Consulting at Home,” but the domain was taken so I started looking around and trying different keywords.  I found that “codageek.com – The last geek you’ll ever need,” was available, but I kept looking.  I eventually stumbled upon “geekhand.com” after looking up synonyms for ‘friendly’ (handy).

    I liked “Geek Hand” enough to consider grabbing it, but I wanted to do a little bit of research on the name and domain first.  I found that it had been used prior by another person for personal use and had since been abandoned.  I liked that there were already a lot of backlinks to it from other sites, but because much of the links were from sites about gaming, I wondered if it was the right fit for my in-home computer repair business product I was developing for Indianapolis business consulting firm, Watershawl, Inc., where I was CEO.  It seemed like it might be better off as a part of my blog network at Cost Publishing Media Group as a board game micro-site.

    I went ahead and picked up the domain, setup WordPress, the theme, the plugins, and the SEO.  I created a logo for it which consisted of a 0 and 1 which has both game and binary code meanings.  I used this logo as a background on Twitter and as it’s icon.  By the way, I don’t hardly purchase domains unless the username is also available on Twitter.  In this case, both were available and I took that as a sign before purchasing the domain.  While all of this setup is going on I’m thinking about content and products to sell or promote.  I did a quick search on Amazon and determine that board games, video games, and card games would be my primary products with the “news” of the site being centered around the geek culture of movies, television, and conventions like Comic-Con.

    To promote the site automatically I did two things: I setup a Tumblr account to pull in WordPress posts automatically push tweets out to Twitter and a Facebook page to push out to Twitter anything I post there.  So I only really have to post in WordPress, then copy the link to the post to Facebook to post on what is now the ‘Settler’s League’ page there in order to have coverage to Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter all at once.  Sometimes I’ll bounce those around on my Facebook wall and on other Twitter accounts I manage for different brands.

    The next step was to add content and put the promotional procedure into place, which I did.  I had a minor problem with links overflowing in the footer, but a quick CSS tweak fixed that.  I have a WordPress theme that I use as a base for most of my Cost Pub sites.  I also make custom WordPress themes and do web design and SEO for the Indianapolis area using Watershawl’s Growmotion marketing where we Growmote web sites–first we build them then we promote them; don’t just promote your business, grow your business with Growmotion.

    Update: I have since converted Geek Hand into more of it’s original role of personal computer repair, but with a slant towards mobile phones – a play on the ‘hand’ in the title.  Here’s the link to the new Geek Hand Facebook page in case you’re interested and a link to Settler’s League’s home page.

  • 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.