Search engine optimization has become the weapon of choice for small companies to compete.

Traffic is shifting to the web

SEO for short, is what people search for along with SEM which is short for Search Engine Marketing.  One would think that traditional advertising is dead but that is far from true.

Mail, email and websites are all viable methods of marketing. To twitter or not is not the question. The fundamentals are much lower than the high level question of precisely where to market.   DFW marketing recently came across a company providing search engine marketing with a single focus of buying links called linkbacks and they never even see the stats of the website they are promoting instead relying only on the link tracking of the service they use to buy the back links. Fortunately we educated them to some basics and they will be more successful as a result.

Tip Time: If you signed up for SEO or SEM and the marketing company has not asked for access to your stats fire them right now! Do not waste another dollar or try to educate them because they should be educating you.

Tip Time: Before you signed an agreement was a specific measurable goal discussed? Something to think about..

MADE IN THE USA!

The slowdown has affected everyone, but you can help your neighbors.  This help is easy and comes back to help you! In economics there is a term called the velocity of money. It has to do with how much business is exchanged between different businesses. We want the flow of money to stay within our community called The United States of America instead of flowing out of the country.

When you buy something it affects someone somewhere. The next time you go to the store read the labels to see where the products are actually made and try to pick a US produced product. Just because the label is Japanese does not mean it’s made in a foreign country. Just because the label is from an old fashion American brand does not mean it’s made in America. Hershey’s candy labels say made in Mexico for example while a house brand chocolate bar is made in America and less expensive to boot. Toyota builds trucks in the US. There are hundreds of examples like these where things are not as they seem.

Read the labels! Content control issues from China just reinforce that buying American made is a good choice but you have to read the label.

If there is any doubt as to the difficulty of how to reach the top of the search engines consider that there area almost 70,000,000 domains in the United States.

So should you buy one of the other top level domains instead if the .com you want is taken?  Since there are only 7 million .net domains there is a good chance you could find your magic gem is available as a .net.  Some would say you need to get a .mobi or .us or .cc but in general sticking with the top internationally known domains is the best choice.  Getting an obscure domain name from a small island in the pacific also means many ISP’s may not even accept email from you.  This is an important consideration when picking a domain name.

We have a good pulse on the domain market and work with a variety of agencies.  Find a good Internet consultant and discuss your business and market then start registering and developing the name(s) that will help you meet your Internet marketing goals.  Go to market with a solid strategy that the professionals will help you achieve.

Source Ref: directi.com

We all love Google for the good they bring, the summers of code and other great projects they helped move forward.  They have some good tools and here are a few tools that can be used by the average business owner without needing a PHD in computer terminology.  We purposely will not look at the adwords, adcenter or any tool that requires a login or account before you can use the tool.  Everything listed here is free for use and not to difficult.

First up is trends.  What are the search trends for your industry, product or service?   Hop right over to Google Trends and start searching.   www.google.com/trends You can combine multiple search terms with commas and see how they compare.

Put competing companies up on the search as this can be very informative.  If you are a stock trader this is a fantastic tool and gives you a view not seen by the standard stocastics tools for stock picks.  The view compares several years so you get a big picture view including major news and associated search peaks.   Look up your search data and think about the low spots.  Did you spot a trend?  What can you do to help your business avoid any valley shown in the metric results?

MSN offers several tools in the question of search relevance and search value.  Keyword search group is a tool to help you with related terms for your search.  Our tests honestly did not reveal much and pretty much only worked with single words not phrases.

 Try out the keyword funnel tool.  It means keyword not key phrase.  Type in 2 a word phrase and don’t expect to get results.  Single keywords work well unless you sell something like windows where obvious conflicts between software and actual windows come into play.

The MSN keyword mispelling tool is very weak.  It will catch a few but we know from actual web logs the results from the tool are just not very thorough.  There is value in how easy it is but we wanted more from the search results.

The MSN keyword forcasting tool is nice, has good metrics and gives an interesting view of search consolidation for multiple terms.  Be sure to click the “text” link shown below for a numeric view of the results.  We like numbers!!

Here is a link to all the MSN tools so you can do some quick data mining. MSN Free Search Tools.

There are many additional tools and search professionals available.  Find someone you can talk to in your own timezone and armed with some information from the search tools above you will really help your SEO company take you to the next level.  You can do a lot yourself but a professional will let you go run your business while helping achive your online search goals.
Sponsor: Dallas ISP

If you own a domain it is very possible someone might like to buy it from you.   As business people we instruct our IT staff to buy certain domains but do not always end up using them.  If the domain is not a strategic asset then reevaluation is in order.  If the domain is parked and effectively not in use then consider selling the domain.  There are many ways to do this and some companies are in the business of buying and selling domains.   One mans junk domain is another mans treasure as the garage sale phrase goes.  If you go with a company that does this you will probably have quick exposure to lots of potential buyers.  This really depends on the company and we are not here to advise on that topic.  We sell our own domains and don’t have any sales fees.

When you agree to sell your domain to someone you do not know it is a good idea to have a couple of things in place starting with a domain purchase agreement.   This can be a simple document and we will gladly provide one that we use.  Just fill in the form on our contact page and we will shoot it right over.    The basic elements of a contract are required with specific additional clarifications for the current registrar and if you will be giving access to the current registrar account or having to move the registration record to a different registrar.

Sometimes you may want an escrow down payment showing good faith if the purchase price is a significant amount of money, $25,000 or above.  Most domains do not go for anything near that and a couple of hundred dollars is more likely for a domain that has never been marketed or used.

There are escrow companies you can use if you feel the buyer is questionable.  Above all, do not accept a foreign check and immediately give the domain to the seller.  Electronic funds, western union, paypal are going to be less risky than a potentially forged money order.  Anyone can buy a MICR toner printer cartridge and manufacture a check.   Do not give a buyer your bank account number unless it is for this purpose only.  I know some are laughing but this had to be written., do not give out your bank account information.

What if you are buying a domain..

If you are buying a domain you also want the owners name because you may not be dealing with the owner directly.  Payment should go to the entity or person named on the whois records.  A quick search gives you this information including an address to check.   One of the things you are trying to avoid is paying your money and not getting actual ownership of the domain.  We have seen some sellers create documents that amount to a long term lease instead of the sale of a domain.

An insider tip is to have the seller update the whois record by putting some text in the second line of the address field.  This will let you know the seller does have access to the registration record.  The whois could take a couple of days for an update to show up although that is not the usual case.   I would rather wait a couple of days than find out I just sent money and about to experience the loss of that money.  This little test also lets you know the person is technically capable of getting into the account and can make changes.  It has happened where someone wants to sell but does not have a clue about what to do after you pay them.

A written agreement helps for a smooth sale.    We can help if you need it.