Between a friend’s divorce and helping her move (and losing her as a steady client in the turmoil until her business can be moved and formulating can resume), my 91 year old mom falling and fracturing a hip and being back in her wheelchair, and spending a lot of time working with and learning Sony Vegas Movie Studio video editing software I’m still just one step away from taking a job as a forest ranger somewhere, hopefully with a horse.

So after a few edits and Youtube uploads (see my Caddy’s on the Beach video) I’m happier now than in a long, long time since my frustration with Nero’s video editing software knew no bounds. Sony Vegas even permits me to upload video’s longer than 15 minutes (with a warning) which is perfect since Google/Youtube granted me longer video status a while back.

As a “don’t take life so seriously” move I’m also doing an amateur series of exercise and martial arts Youtube videos and articles on my personal blog for the casual get in kinda-sorta awesome shape without competing with anyone but yourself.

Search engine optimization really deals with the question of how do you deal with strangers. Strangers who google whatever they google to find you have to find optimized pages, but what and how optimized? What does optimized mean to you if it’s not making you money?

Well that’s just it. If it’s not answering customers’ needs then it’s not optimized right. If you have a shop you know that everyone who comes in the door year after year is not the same so you’e learned to ask questions. You’ve gotta do the same on the web. Ask, listen and respond. Watch where they go, see where they seem to be having difficulty and and then mork to make it easier for the next time.

Keeping improving a web visitor’s quality experience means knowing what they want and why they’re there on your site by asking for feedback and by tracking their movements on and in your site, and tracking them from wherever they’ve come from to see how they react differently when coming from different referral points on the web (Google searches vs a link in DMOZ for example). If you can do that then you can optimize content differently in each area to satisfy every segment of visitor.

So it’s not mere keywords and return page position we’re talking about, but true optimization that will take your site to the competitive forefront of your market niche, keep you there and gain you the strong advantage that you need.

Live blogged from my Droid.

zOMG! TWO weeks Since My Last SEO Post!? is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

Quite often I get calls from both existing and prospective clients who would like to build a web site all by themselves without having to pay for instruction or advice. I understand the problem and the frustration since eleven years ago I was in the same position myself. I was working as a network administrator for the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum in my home town of Manhattan when my partner asked me to help him find some software to quickly build web pages. He had downloaded about 20 programs and I tried out a   dozen and so did he. What I found was one program that was heads above the rest in ease of use, flexibility, potential to – very important! – to grow in and do just about anything required – and finally – inexpensive AND (with just a few hacks) portable! That’s right – take it with you on a thumb drive along with the web sites and work on it anywhere IF you have to! Here’s my video. Take a look at what I found:

Is it the ONLY software I use to build web sites? By all means no, in total I use about probably about 40 different programs and online services but that’s because I’m a professional, and believe in the right tool for the right job. But if you want to know which is my “Swiss Army Knife” of web page making software, Web Page Maker will always be one of my favorites. So, without further ado, enjoy the “How to Build Your Own Web Site” video.

How to Build Your Own Web Site is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

I was doing a bit of reading yesterday and today from Content Rich, a book by Jon Wuebben, and early on he’s got a formula for determining whether a site has enough meaningful content or not.  Jon’s argument essentially is that there are (or were at the time he wrote his book back around 2007, anyway) “seven types of content”. I prefer to see these as content platforms or delivery methods, and each one has it’s own very specific sets of rules to make each work.

The seven are:

• Site
• Videos / Podcasts
• Email
• Newsletters
• Blogs
• Articles
• Press Releases

I’ll break down these experiences one by one in order to give you what I know. First of all, every single one needs to be copywritten to sell and optimized to be found – including the video and podcasts believe it or not because transcripts will inevitably be made, especially if the videos are to be featured on your own site.

Wuebben says that there are four types of sites: E-Commerce, Blog/Social Media, Brochure and Lead Generation, and he ranks the importance of the above seven (except for on Blog/Social Media sites where he leaves off the importance of a site, articles and press releases entirely) differently for each of the four types of sites. So accepting these four types of sites as covering the majority of sites out there then meaningful, informative and readable content is needed, and to keep people coming back, frequent updates will be required. By frequent I mean a few times a week and possibly every day. Google and site visitors like content, they like fresh content, and they like good content.

Video vs Podcast – Podcasts are definitely easier to do. You don’t have to worry about your hair, your teeth, your tie, your anything – and you can keep some notes handy to help you move smoothly from point to point and for intricate details. Matt Cutts, Google’s Chief Web Spam Engineer says to sign up for an account at HotorNot.com and if you score under a 5 to do Podcasts, over 5 do Videos. I don’t recommend signing up there though (I did) because you’ll be getting emails from them forever and it’s very hard to unsubscribe. Video is a whole ‘nother beast though. You can do straight camera phone videos in one take uploaded directly to YouTube,FaceBook and Twitter or you can invest in a fast video editing computer, buy video editing software like Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.0 or Final Cut (The Vegas Movie Studio is fine – whatever you do stay AWAY from Nero Vision video editing software: it is a nightmare with one issue after the other and no matter what you do your YouTube videos will be fuzzy no matter how High Definition you shoot your crystal clear videos).

I went the Nero Vision route at first but have since abandoned that and am using Vegas Movie Studio now. Other video concerns if you want to go more ‘pro’ will be adjustable illumination lighting / spotlights, special raised platform for your smooth moving video tripod (for shooting above crowds – this also is NOT a standard camera tripod – it has to be a video tripod otherwise your movements will be choppy and ruin your scenes). Plenty of microphones!! Six people outside talking and walking in a breeze or a wind are going to be impossible to video without lots of mics and all the channels.

Don’t let me scare you away from video though. Gary Vaynerchuck has done a spectacular job of doing almost a video a day for years and hosting them on Viddler using a fairly simple setup and camera system done almost entirely from behind a desk he tastes and rates various wines. Great videos, great book (CRUSH IT!) and the concept (successful video blogging) is transferable to other types of businesses.

Vaynerchuck doesn’t do any zooming, panning, or anything else – just aim, shoot and talk. BUT he’s got CONTENT in his videos! He’s able to grab and compare 3 different bottles of wine a day from his business’ inventory to do it, and he knows a good deal about his subject and is able to play with wine tasting jargon in such a way as to make his shows unique and quite fun. Rather than say a Burgundy is a bit earthy with a hint of muskiness, he might choose a phrase like “it tastes like an old sock” instead. Fun and irreverent at times, but accurately giving a much needed review to direct wine drinkers toward what’s best.

Email – here’s one that always astounds me. So many people simply don’t send out emails to market, or simply don’t know the rules of how it’s done. One company I know purchased the list of local Chamber Members and proceeded to send out sales pitches to everyone in the chamber on a regular basis. Nobody had opted in (I know I didn’t) and I tolerated them for a few years until they finally stopped. Another business much more successful provides free monthly seminars and gathers email addresses that way. Each month’s speaker is different and so the emails are always at LEAST informative in that the upcoming guest speaker may be someone interesting worth coming to listen to. Coffee and cookies and the whole night is a win. The services provided by the “GREEN” company are something you always want to keep in mind, so it works.

Email marketing ties right in to newsletter marketing though. Actually the email announces the newsletter (here the two often become confused) which can be in an Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Word (or other installed on many people’s computer document format) etc. There is an entire science to e-Newsletters though, and rules that work together to form a concept.

Send the email with some of the content of the newsletter itself and maybe a few coupons – and put a LINK to your web site where the full newsletter resides (without the coupons!). So the time sensitive value of the newsletter is in the 10% off coupons and the information plus the link to more information is a bonus for both the recipient and your site which now has added content for the search engines to crawl!

Now we come to the Blog. The blog is going to be what gives your customers the means to ask questions, interact with your story, interact with others on the blog who have left comments on your story, and to see all of the new and interesting things about your industry that they’re interested in without having to see a bunch of products listed on the pages. You can link to the product pages if they help define the cure for the customers problem, but you don’t need to have shopping cart buttons and product photos in that area.

Article sites – Finally we get to “Article Release Websites” – Pretty much dead from an SEO value point of view. What’s much better now (Jon Wuebben wrote this book in 2007 I think) is Guest Blogging. Write your article on other people’s blogs as a guest author, and have them do the same on yours if their a good fit. Another writer, Jim Cockrum (Free Marketing 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business Online & Off) suggests Googling blogs in your type of industry and approaching the littler fish first on page 3 or 4 to Guest Blog, and as you exchange guest Blog posts with them AND interview them for your blog you’ll eventually rise and emerge as a sort of an expert yourself, and then gradually move up to interview and Guest Blog on bigger, better blogs. Or something like that.

Press Releases: Here’s one of my all time favorites!

If you’ve been running any sort of a blog long enough you’ll know that sometimes a story catches your eye which is so dead on with what you’re talking about that you have to link to it because it’s illustrative of what you’re saying. Well, qute often press releases are how those stories got there. What YOU Link to might not be what everyone else links to, but multiply YOUR link by another 10, 50 or 500 people per day on the days the release is most actively viewed and you’ve got incoming, permanent, organic links. You’ve also got increased relevant pre-qualified interested traffic that might just want to buy from your site, sign up for your e-newsletter emails, call for quotes or consultations or perform whatever other call to action there is on your site.

Wuebben and I agree though that no matter what kind of a site you have, more different kinds of content CANNOT hurt IF the content is good – and that’s the key to success for your Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization campaign.

Content Rich is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

WORKING JOE SEO

The Boutique SEO business owner (which includes all of the solo artist independent Search Engine Optimizers working on the web and many of the small SEO businesses employing only one or two associates from time to time) IS NOT the gentleman or lady social media all day Tweeter or Facebook marketing “brand” personality you’ve learned to love. The Boutique Sized SEO Business is run by a manager who’s multitasking through multiple windows in various web site optimization project schedules.

Your web site is underperforming and your site needs:

• on site and on page optimization
• off site back link development
• brand recognition via regularly scheduled press releases
• on-site news announcements
• an email newsletter signup
• an email marketing campaign
• to be plugged into social media in more than one place
• to have marketing videos (over 20 of them! they can be short, but you need a bunch),
• marketing copywriting done to sell your products to people who do visit your site
• to have tracking in place and someone who will handle analyzing your site
• better conversions.

Whew! Did I mention this isn’t all?? Building the site and expanding it – updating it and creating new content to keep it growing so it’s always got something fresh for readers to come back to – it’s what makes a site work.

That said – you can easily see how anyone serious who is working alone or with one or two helpers even on one single client’s site has got precious little time for (gaak!!) things like writing an article like this one for posting on Facebook or Twitter, let alone hanging out and posting tons of links to tons of such articles every day all day long. A little investigation by a savvy webmaster reveals that the Tweet and post to Facebook all day socialites employ fairly decent sized full and part time staffs, often numbering in the double digits.

There are two types of Search Engine Optimization: Either you go with the bigger “We Do It All” highly visible SEO companies and you pay a lot (and over time this gets costly because they are usually managing it full time because you are left out of the loop unless you also ask that they teach you), or you put in the sweat equity under the SEO you hire who will direct you on how to perform your part of the ongoing work.

Which type of SEO client are you?

1) If You Can’t Take Direction, if You Procrastinate, if You Can’t Stick to a Schedule, Are Too Busy, or Lack Too Many Computer Skills:

I recommend that you take a hard close realistic look at yourself. In my experience over the past several years working with clients who need search engine optimization to make their business web sites attract more visitors and convert more visitors into customers the majority need to have the work done for them by someone else start to finish if they expect real lasting results and they should probably be prepared to pay out about $5000 or $6000 over a period of a few months for a small site of about 100 pages, and $500 plus per month thereafter for four or five hours of work per month with analytics and course corrections not including the creation, optimization and promotion of fresh content or any social media work. This is standard pricing based on time, effort and expertise.

Below is a sample Gantt Chart (linked to the article explaining in detail what this is) displayed to show that many tasks are being carried out simultaneously on any real SEO/Web Site Marketing project. Thus tasks which would normally be assigned to you or your staff if NOT finished on time would hold up the rest of the job. For example in the top half of the diagram below “WBS 1 Summary Element 1″  WBS 1.1 Activity A cannot be started until WBS 1.2 Activity B is also started – so if your SEO assigns you Activity B and you don’t start on time you (or your company employee[s] assigned the task) are holding up the job which delays the SEOs scheduled jobs in queue elsewhere and losing him money – which raises the cost of  your search engine optimization work. Similarly if you begin WBS 1.2 Activity B on time but do not complete the activity within an agreed to time limit you (or your staff) are delaying the start of WBS 1.3 Activity C which is a Finish to Start activity. Similarly, the 2nd half of the chart “WBS 2 Summary Element 2″ contains a number of activities which may need to be carried out by some 3rd part subcontractor who would need to complete all activities by the end of “WBS 1 Summary Element 1″ (top of chart around week 12) for the full concerted benefits of the SEO project to generate leads.

2) If You Have Motivated Intelligent Employees With an Extra Hour or Two a Day to Help Build Your Web Business:

If those employees (or yourself) are able to take direction, ask questions, and learn at a fast pace you’re on your way to growing your site into a never ending, always expanding, customer attracting and sales making branded web site where YOU get to play the Social Media Butterfly while your staff stays in the trenches providing ongoing quality support building the reputation of your products and services.

IF you and your employees can be counted on to stay on track, take direction, learn at a rapid pace and complete their part of the work on a regularly scheduled basis the job should take about 70% of the time and save about 25% of the initial fee – with the monthly analytics being performed by the trained employees – and very possibly with these same employees also doing the new content creation, uploading, new page / category creation and promotion as well for nothing since you’re paying them already.

What Kind of SEO Service Does Your Web Site Need? is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

Mom at 90

Several years ago I began Brooksville Computer’s web site for my new business down in Hernando Florida because I’d left NYC to help take care of Mom after my Dad died.  The site I built was static, but over time I began familiarizing myself with WordPress and started 3 or 4 blogs.

I’ll tell you right now based on my experiences, if I were to begin today with the technology available on the web at this very moment I wouldn’t have built the static site but would have gone with just one blog. If I’d had one well laid out static HTML site with separate category and product pages then converting it to a blog (along with all 301 redirects in the .htaccess file) would have been relatively straightforward and easy. I know this to be the case because I’ve converted client’s product sales web sites over to WordPress without a hitch, without a lost sale, and showing improved results, manageability and much improving the clients’ ability to control the sites themselves.

My nightmare is different. Using an export / import utility I exported all of my posts (pictures etc) from each of the three blogs and then imported them all into one blog. Now I’ve got this blog as a result – which requires major re-editing work, with nothing organized, no linear progression, and LOTS of things only half written, very little of if more than a first draft, and in some cases the pictures did not export / import correctly – which is the least of my difficulty.

But that’s ok – I’m dealing with a mess and I’ve got some time before I head back up to NYC (I hope Mom will stick around a while) and at least a little while to get this site polished and straightened out, and put together some good work now that I’ve figured out a workable plan.

So what I’m telling you based on experience is to have a site built for your business built upon the WordPress Engine. You’ll be able to backup the database easily every night automatically, export all the text/pages/categories/images and import the same somewhere else quite easily, safely and securely. But start fresh – and re-writing your existing HTML static site into WordPress can be done but should be done by a professional and won’t cost you that much money. The benefits of switching over though are huge and instant where you’ll have freedom to make changes you never had before and control over everything.

Switching from a Static to a Dynamic Site is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

The Incredible Line of Bullshit

Chemists sell chemistry books to other chemists but never (or rarely) to non chemists because they’re simply too hard to understand AND they’re impossible to use (you NEED a chemist!)
Here’s a video to prove what I’m saying – even the author says you have to practically be a chemist to understand how to use his books:

That said, the vast majority of SEOs aren’t writing real SEO “chemistry” sites but are writing “The Incredible Line of Bullshit” sites with charts, graphs, anecdotes, with sign up forms and all the rest (I do it myself sometimes). There’s another group that “kinda-sorta” writes SEO chemistry sites, but they’re targeting other wannabe SEOs who are dying to learn (either because they are deluded into thinking they can become fabulously wealthy without actually having to do a lot of work if they get a job as an SEO [they can't, it is a lot of work - AND you actually have to be good at it*], or they really desperately want to become good SEOs and are willing to pay to learn).

What I’m saying is that the meat and potatoes aren’t the glitz and glitter dress-up but the technical specifications and precise details that ARE the chemistry that makes it all work and that is often proprietary and guarded – combined with whatever skill, talent, and hard work and endless hours and headaches to make a site not excellent, but totally fucking awesome.

SEO in New York City. Call (917) 460-8312

How to Sell Too Technical to Non Technical Minded People is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070910_481583.htm

Making SEO Work For You is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

Getting it all together: SEO and the Videographer

Here’s a quick clip of one I did recently (without any scrolling marquis or anything in the least bit complicated except a secondary stereo microphone to give my client the best sound possible for her speech.)

Though the above video lacks the crystal clarity on YouTube it is shot in High Definition

(See the HD footage below)

What’s most important in video isn’t so much the clarity (though that’s nice) but the playability without delay on all devices including Smart Phones and other Mobile devices and crisp audio.

What’s important is what you have to say about what your topic is and if it’s a product or a service, yes, you’ll want it to be clear and crisp – but you’ll also want to have a strong, memorable and convincing message.

For these videos I needed three separate video cameras recording at the same time and had five separate microphones (3 mono, 2 stereo) recording sound to get a good mix during editing. The actual video is over 2 hours long and I didn’t use all of the footage from each camera, but redundancy is essential since equipment and power failures will happen – that has to be counted on, even if it’s only one connection that fails in one area only once during a shoot.

So what does this have to do with Facebook and Twitter? What does this have to do with Social Media and helping your site’s searchability? It has to do with association, valid and valuable information, and popularity. Indicators that point back to your site are valuable to Google in determining whether your site is valued by the general public. Facebook links clicked that turn into hits to your videos and that themselves contain links back to your web site that are clicked tell YouTube that your site is actively being visited and is valued by users on the web.

This translates to higher rankings overall in the search engine return pages so your site rises higher in the returns and comes closer to page one, number one in the returns. Much bigger mega-sized corporate businesses often reject and look down on social media site usage and ignore it at their peril. Smaller more flexible smart businesses embrace and use social media and YouTube both to help their social causes and to give their business sites (which they use to fund the work they do to help society) a boost.

Sometimes it’s necessary to do videos just as a public service, but that’s enough to convince people who need your products to come to you and not to go to your deaf, dumb and blind anonymous competitors.

Here’s another video to make that example clear:

So which came first? The chicken or the egg? These videos and research are for real – my client isn’t interested in making money from them, but in order to continue the work she loves money has to come to pay for it, and it has. So what if you’re not into helping society’s bigger problems but just have to pay your kids way through college? Does this mean you can’t benefit or find a way to use YouTube and social media to help your company’s Search Engine Optimization? Not at all. Give me a call and I’ll be happy to help. 15 minute free consultation to anyone who calls. 352 232 1678

Facebook and YouTube is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for web sites. What is it? Why use it? How is it supposed to work?

SEO covers a lot of ground. Business issues, case studies, domain names, news and press releases, product reviews, video, social networks and media, and search engine marketing.

A good site is one that is clearly and well written that provides good information. It’s a site with products or services that are competitively priced and in demand within whatever niche it finds itself. The goal of optimization is to improve upon those positive qualities through the use of several disciplines, not all related to what is on the web site itself because much of SEO is behind the scenes, under the hood, so to speak.

Great SEOs won’t hesitate to advise on every single detail of each aspect of what’s needed to improve an existing site, or to recommend what’s needed to build a nicely optimized site from scratch. Starting SEOs will deal with the mechanical behind the scenes, under the hood work and leave it at that NOT because they’re not technically proficient necessarily, but because they’re beginners and are learning the ropes. Back in 2003 (I was already an IT professional with four technical, engineering and Cisco certifications) as a complete SEO day one dummy I remember looking into SEO and admiring what they did immensely for their dedication and ability to communicate their ideas so well to one another on the web. I remember thinking I’d need years to bring myself up to speed. New SEOs aren’t necessarily bad if they’re serious and learn well, so you can often get good nuts and bolts work from them, but remember, it’s basic. Pay them a few thousand to start but find out what they’re going to do in writing and then demand proof that it’s been done. (screen shots, account setups etc).

The goal of SEO is to make you more money through higher conversion rates, more visitors, greater brand awareness in social media, press and news releases and more links to your site. The means to doing that as already mentioned is well written relevant and helpful information that will be appreciated, and good service and product prices, benefits and convenience. The whole thing today with Google’s use of social media signals really isn’t anything new, it’s just a new metric for them to do more accurately what they’ve always tried to do – find out what people want to see most and give it to them.

So the goal of good SEO for good web sites is partly cooperation. Cooperation between the site/business owner and the potential customer – you want what I have, I have what you want – and Google delivering on their promised goal of bringing you both together. Cooperation also works with SEOs helping each other out on the web with updated tips and tricks, hints and help on how to make things work better. So a lot of newer SEOs are greatly indebted to the old school SEOs but most can’t develop any kind of meaningful rapport beyond the casual brushes and comments on blogs and Twitter. To the new SEOs I say this: Don’t worry about the old timer SEOs. They have enough friends and have built over time powerful long lasting relationships and have solid resources and do not need you.

What you need to do if you’re a newer SEO is develop relationships with other newer SEOs and help each other. The old timers are happy to sell you services, software, seminars etc, but they’re not your friends and will be wary of your trying to become a friend thinking that you’re only looking for a one way advantage at their expense. That’s life.

For the business/website owner working on polishing and expanding content is important and so is having forms on your site to help you gather qualified people’s contact information for when you’re putting out newsletters. SEO isn’t set it and forget it (unless it’s the basic mechanical type and that’s all you want – those are essentially just settings). SEO and Search Engine Marketing require thought, direction and planning with an eye on growing traffic, visitor conversion, tracking and tweaking, and really connecting with your site’s visitors almost as if they were physically standing before you. Making their experience problem free, efficient, pleasurable and rewarding is the first step in positive Search Engine Optimization Marketing beyond the basics of simple SEO.

The Direction, Aims, and Form of Search Engine Optimization is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO

Too many times I read that Google sucks by the top SEOs in America. Too many times I read that Google is getting too big and forceful and demanding and sneaky on the one hand, but that they have so many features on the other hand. Then I read about how SEO is always only talking Google because Yahoo and Bing have such a small market share that they have to follow suit.

OK – fine – so today I got an email from a good friend and long time client telling me about a Yahoo service she really likes that a local business woman is using to promote her business.

What’s that service? FREE NEWSLETTERS! Turns out that the company that’s sending it to her was using some Mac software that’s now outdated and no longer in business and their email list was too big and couldn’t be upgraded so they switched over to Yahoo Lists and in step 3 configured it as a Newsletter.

Yahoo. Who knew?

…so down at the bottom “who can post messages to your group” is Only group owner (Newsletter).

Ok – so some of the SEO snobs will say this isn’t “professional” enough – no we’re not selling our products or services – we’re selling “professional” as if people cared WHO sold them their candy bar when they want a candy bar right now!

You can join MY NYC SEO Yahoo Groups email Newsletter by adding your email address below:

Bing? Yahoo? Google? I’ll take a much closer look from now on at ALL of what EACH of you have to offer from now on, because Google might be the Big Kahuna, but that doesn’t make the other ones worthless.

Why pay for Constant Contact when you can have Yahoo Groups set up for FREE as your eNewsletter carrier?

Maybe, for once, it’s not about leading clients where we want them to go, but finding out what they value most, and going there.

Bing Sucks, Yahoo Sucks, Google Sucks is a post from: NYC Small Business SEO