Believe it or not, all of the guns in the image below are airsoft guns.  For those of you who may not know what an airsoft gun is, I’ll explain.  Airsoft guns are toy guns that shoot small rubber balls out of the barrel.  The rubber pellets leave the muzzle with a velocity of about 300-500 fps (feet per second) and if hit on uncovered skin you will most likely show a small welt or at higher velocities you might even break the skin.  Airsoft guns have received a lot of attention lately because of how similar they look to actual guns that are carried by soldiers, hunters, bad guys, and cops.  I mean honestly, look a this image below and tell me that these do not look very, very real.

You would be hard pressed to harm or kill an animal with an airsoft gun, but the concern is that these guns often look so real that cops cannot tell if you are  holding a real gun or a toy gun.  This might lead officers to shooting an innocent teen playing shoot-out in the alley with his friends.  This also is a concern for concealed carry permit carriers in the state of Utah as any flack pointed at gun owners can lead to more stringent laws related to gun ownership and conceal carry laws.

I spoke with Mike Steck, a local Utah Concealed Carry Permit Instructor, recently about this issue and he commented “concerns with airsoft guns looking so real can provide ammunition to anti-gun enthusiasts, leading to a potential push for stiffer concealed carry laws.”  He also stressed that fact that “while an airsoft gun cannot kill an animal or human, it’s crucial that everyone treats all guns with respect and it’s crucial that children learn this at a young age even if all they are playing with is a toy.”  He suggested anyone serious about handling guns should always take a Hunter’s Safety or Utah Concealed Carry Class.

So, here is my viral idea.  If you are a concealed carry instructor you could do all kinds of posts related to the look of airsoft guns being so similar to real guns and could show the top 10 airsoft guns that look just like real guns.  You could show the real gun and the airsoft gun right next to each other and have people choose which is real and which is a toy.  Then you could have the answers below for people to see how they did.  Titles could be something like: Real Gun or Fake Gun, You Decide, or Are U.S. Soldiers Carrying Real Guns or Fake Guns, or Top Ten Airsoft Guns That Look Like Real Soldier Guns.  You would have all kinds of PTSD soldiers reading your post and commenting all night long on how they carry real guns and “can show you it” later if you want.  You would also get many moms reading your post and taking away their kids’ airsoft guns…so all and all you would have lots of fans.

Yesterday I had a chance to sit down with a company in the satellite television market.  They are a local Utah company that does door-to-door sales for satellite tv offers from Dish Network and from DIRECTV.  They had asked me to come in, sit down with them, and tell them what I could do for them on an SEO level.  I always like the opportunity to discuss SEO and of course always like the opportunity to provide a quote on my services for online marketing.  After a long discussion about my background, current and previous clients, SEO theory, and the expectations they could have with building a website and marketing it online, they asked me what would stop them from just learning this and doing it themselves.  My answer to them was simple…nothing but your own desire, time, and effort.

The reality is that SEO isn’t a magical potion that only a select few can perform or understand, rather anyone can do SEO but the level of success will depend on your desire to do it well, the time you have to dedicate to learning and performing the trade, and the effort you put forth in making SEO work for you through you and your network.  I basically said, if you want to take your focus away from your successful business to try and do this on your own, that is fine with me.  In the end I think they realized it was much better to hire a professional SEO to do it for them.  I’m not sure if they will hire me or not, but I at least think they realized that they are going to need some help on it.

There was no were else in my career that taught me this fact more than while I was working at Prosper Learning.  While at Prosper Learning I literally worked with 1000’s of small ecommerce start ups and these business owners basically had two choices…they could either learn SEO and do it on their own, or hire it out to a professional.  Most of them, due to lack of funds, decided to try and learn SEO and do it on their own only to fail in the end because they didn’t have the desire, time, or put forth the effort to really do it well.   We’ll see what happens with this satellite tv company, but I hope they find someone to help them reach their goals and honestly, I hope it’s me.

Earlier this week while at a scouting event I had a chance to talk to a few young scouts about how they were doing with their personal finance merit badge.  To get the merit badge a scout has to keep a three month record of all their financial transactions including all debits and credits to their checking and savings accounts…that is if they have account as compared to just keeping their money rolled up in a wad in their nightstand drawer.  Well one of the boys pulled out a wallet he had made of duct tape and said…”I’m doing great and I have a $100 right here in my wallet”…yes you heard me correct, a duct tape wallet.  The wallet was completely made out of duct tape and as I tried to grab it to threaten to take his $100 if he wasn’t keeping a history of his transactions part of the wallet tore off.  Oh well, he can just add more tape to fix it he said.

Anyway, he had money in his wallet and in his savings account, but he had not been writing down his transaction history and to get the merit badge you must keep that record.  So here is the idea…for a company that specializes in home budget software or home budgeting software you could show a group of scouts that used your household budgeting software to help them get their personal finance merit badge and title the post something like, 8 Scouts Use “Company Name” Personal Finance Software to Get Their Personal Finance Merit Badge or Get Your Personal Finance Merit Badge by Using Our Home Budget Software for Free if You Are a Boy Scout.

This merit badge is by far one of the most difficult badges for any scout to receive because they have to apply themselves for a period of 90 days to keep that record and in the last 4 years I have only seen 2 scouts do it.  My brother is working to get his Eagle Scout Award right now and before he turns 18 (has 10 months left) and the last merit badge he has to get is, you guessed it, his personal finance badge.

There you have it!

The other night I’m at dinner with a few friends and there was a couple there that we hadn’t seen for some time. The husband had recently left his old job for a new job in event management. I asked him some questions about his new job and the things he likes about it and what he didn’t like about his old job. Pretty common answers came back like his new job is more exciting and more flexible than his old. He then asked me for an update on my business life and I let him know some things that were happening and that I was happy with business. He then asked, “so how did you get started in online marketing and SEO”; that is a very common question I get asked so I figured I would toss this post up explaining it.

I launched my first site in 2001 with a partner that I still do business with. It all started with us sitting around saying…we need to do something that let’s us be in control of our lives and gives us a chance to make a lot of money. We decided on the internet and launched our first site MyLDSMissionary.com which is still online and profitable today. From there I started working with a number of small business consulting firms and eventually decided to work full-time for a company named Prosper Learning. My experience there is what really gave me the push I needed to really dig deeply into online marketing and SEO and while working there I launched 5 additional ecommerce sites, most were successful, a few failed.

Prosper Learning is a company that coaches or mentors small business owners on how to launch, grow, and create a successful business. The specialize in mentoring in 5 major areas of business: Ecommerce, Real Estate, Personal Finance, Stock Investing, and General Entrepreneurship. While working at Prosper Learning I had the opportunity to mentor thousands of small online business owners through the concepts and process of building a website and marketing it. I got to rub shoulders with many extremely successful entrepreneurs including: Robert Allen, Mark Victor Hansen, Anthony Robbins, David Bach, and many more. I also attended every convention you can imagine in the realm of online marketing and SEO including: SMX, Pubcon, SES, CJU, etc. I already knew what it took to build an launch a successful website before working there, but having the chance to hone my skills and work with thousands of businesses really gave me a unique look into ecommerce. Most small business owners rarely start and build more than 1 or maybe 2-3 business during their lifetime, but I had seen thousands of business launch. Of course not all succeeded, but I could see why they failed and learned from it.

After leaving Prosper Learning I have gone on to create my own SEO firm, Dream Systems Media and Utah SEO Firm along with my two partners and have continued to build and create profitable ecommerce businesses. I think my greatest moments of learning where watching a business that I had high hope for fail. It gave me a direct seat to see what should have been done better to make it work. I have been involved in ecommerce and online marketing now for 8 years and like to think I know how to do it well now.

So there you have it…how I got started in online marketing and SEO.

I get asked this question all the time, “I’m getting all this traffic, but no one seems to by buying, what should I do?” That is a great questions and it’s normally followed up by me with this question, “what information are you seeing from your web analytics; like where is your traffic coming from; what are they searching for you by, etc.?” Almost always I get a blank stare and a great big, uuuhhhh I don’t know. Well of course you’re not getting any sales because you are clueless. Most small business owners don’t have a clue what information is in their analytics software, or even how to access the data; my advise…start getting that information ASAP so you can answer your own question. One client had tons of traffic coming to their site and were finding all sorts of information on which celebs have Alzheimer’s, that great unless you are trying to sell Alzheimer’s vitamins or drugs. If that is the case then you are getting the wrong traffic and of course it is converting low for you.

Here is how you fix that, call your web master, host, or who ever is taking care of your site and say, how do I access my web analytics? Once you have access log in and start reading the data. If your web master replies with, you don’t have any web analtyics software installed then get on it. Install a software and then give a few weeks and then start your data mining.

There are tons of applications you can use to track your online traffic. If you are looking in the arena of free then I would check out Google Analytics. Google Analytics is probably the best free analytics software on the market and it’s really easy to install and can be installed on just about any and every website out there. There data seems to be a little off to me every now and then, but it’s worth using.

If you have a little money to spend check out Mint and www.haveamint.com. This has to be installed server-side so no cookie cutter sites will work with it, but it’s a great program and looks sexy as well.

If you want the best of the best then Omniture is your answer. Omniture is the most accurate web analytics software on the market and is worth the price tag. Just make sure to use the data once it’s installed.

Hopefully, now you can answer yourself when asking that questions, why all this traffic and no sales!

Today I spoke with a friend about search engine friendly URLs and how they are important for SEO in regards to your site indexing and ranking well in the search engines.  Many content management systems and other hosting platforms don’t offer SEF URLs as a standard feature of the system.  It’s very worth your time to find a plug-in or module you can install to help you accomplish this task.  Some will allow you to automate the process of naming your pages and other require a bit more work, but either way it’s one of the first things you’ll want to do to your site if it’s not already set up.   This is the case with many popular content management systems such as Joomla.

Why are SEF URLs important?

Search engines prefer static URLs as compared to dynamic URL’s.  Static URLs are simply easier for engines to crawl and a static URL is completely read by the engine.  A dynamic URL would often appear like something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?pageid&=123456w&1212121212%search

or

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?pageid&=123456w&3434343434%search

You get the idea.  When an engine reads that domain they are going to stop at the ? on every page on your site meaning they are reading every page as http://www.yoursite.com/index.php.  That is not a good thing because these URLs appears as duplicate URLs to the engines.  You want the engines to read your URLs as separate pages that are unique.  Engines much rather prefer a static domains structure such as the examples below:

http://www.yoursite.com/about-us.php

or

http://www.yoursite.com/seo-tools-and-resources.php

I hope this helps you better grasp the concept and importance of SEF URLs.

A few days ago I had a so called “consultant” say to me…I’m not really sure what I should tell people when they ask me what kind of info I should be telling my clients to include in their title and meta data. This person has been in this industry for over 5 years now, I was shocked. This probably comes from the fact that this person learned the correct answer to that questions 5 years ago, and hasn’t stayed up to date on it. So, here is my answer…if you have the same questions, I hope this helps.

Title

Your title is the most important element of your page. You must include it and optimize it if you want to have a chance at ranking for the important keywords you are targeting for that given page. Your title should be about 3-5 keywords in length and can be limited to that only as there is no need to waste that valuable space with anything else. If you were targeting the financial budgeting arena on your page here is a sample of what your title might be:

Financial Budgeting Software | Home Budget Software | Home Finance Software | Personal Finance

That would be it. Don’t load it up with anything other than the words you are targeting and be specific.

Meta Description

Your meta description is still important to a point because many engines still use it to serve as your description in their engine. Therefore, you want to fill it out with regards to your targeted keywords for that page. It should be around 25-30 words in length. Another financially related example:

At “domain.com” we believe that home budget software and home finance software is vital to your personal finance success. Use our financial budgeting software to stay on track for retirement.

Meta Keywords

This section is the least important by far of these sections. Some will say, don’t bother filling it out, but I teach that you want to fill it out in the right way or it will hurt you a bit. Limit this section only to the keywords you are targeting for that page and keep it simple. Don’t fall victim to your desire to load this section up. Example for the page we have been using as an example:

financial budgeting software, home budget software, home finance software, personal finance

That is it. Don’t load it up anymore for this given page and you’ve done it right.

Conclusion

I hope this helps provide you with some concrete examples and guides to assist you with writing your page title and meta data.

Today while reading some SEO blogs, I came across this excellent post on link building fundamentals and thought I should let you all know about it. The post was written by Adam Audette who is the founder of Audettemedia.com. This article does a great job at covering in detail the value of link building along with some helpful hints on creative ways to link bait. Any way, enjoy the read.

Click Here to Read Article

Back…It never left. I have read about eight blog posts and articles today on how the title tag is becoming really important again and that website owners should start including their keywords in their page titles again. I think it’s been good practice to optimize your title since I used Metacrawler to search the web. I mean really, what SEO would be able to tell their client that page titles are not important and keep a straight face.

Page titles are the most important element of onsite optimization and should be a focal point for every website owner that intends on creating traffic through search. I guess I’m just surprised, more than anything to see, that that many SEO’s are talking about how all the sudden the title is important again. To demonstrate in a clear way, I will give an example of a title used in offline guerrilla marketing…see the picture below.

Here’s a title, in a sense, from an offline service company that installs vinyl fencing in Utah. It’s their name and it says Vinyl Fencing on it; good keyword placement. It’s at the top of the fence and doesn’t include more than about 10 words. And, it’s clearly out there for all to see. I guess my point is, if you can make good use of a “title” when installing a vinyl fence offline, you might want to make sure you actually make use of an optimized title on each page of your site.

For the past year I have overseen my companies shopping network strategy for multiple sites including my memory foam mattress site www.rockymountainmattress.com. Believe it or not, there is strategy that goes into getting ranked well in a shopping comparison site such as shopping.com, shopzilla.com, and the like. The reality is you have to treat your product rankings at these sites just like you treat your site rankings at Google. And it’s worth it!

Over 100 million shoppers visit the shopping comparison engines per month, yet only 1 in 4 merchants use these engines to market themselves. The best news is that over 84% of those merchants state that they find it to be an extremely effective method of marketing for them.

Here are the top 8 things you need to do well for SEO in a shopping comparison engine.

1. Your product title is the biggest factor that will help you rank in most all of the shopping networks online. You generally have about 200 characters to make use of so make sure you use a relevant title and get your main keyword in it. Good example would be something like this: 14″ Rendezvous Memory Foam Mattress with I.C.U.

2 . Your product description should be complete and include good info along with keyword repetition. This goes back to content being king. You need to use the 200-1000 characters provided before truncation and make it convert as well. The first 50 chars are by far the most important so get your keyword(s) in at the front and then let em’ know that you offer free shipping or any other promo.

3. Products that are missing a picture will not do well. Make sure you include a picture that works well as thumb nail size. That is all they will see at the comparison site.

4. Get your product category right! If you are selling kitchen accessories and your products are listed in the auto category, you have missed the boat and your conversion will be zero. Make sure to follow the individual shopping networks category taxonomy when listing your products on their engine.

5. Include the model number or SKU when inputting your product. 38% of people who use shopping comparison sites use them to compare the same product offered by multiple etailers. Make it easy for them to compare your products with others.

6. Get customer surveys. Getting positive feedback through the customer surveys provided by the network will help you become a trusted store and increase your rankings in that engine. You need to use them, no matter how annoying they are.

7. Set your PPC price high enough to get you ranked…and higher if you really need the help. Most comparison engines will tell you that setting your PPC high won’t get you ranked highly on it’s own. I believe them a little, but I have noticed that if I jack my price I jack my rankings…use the rest of my tips though to heg your costs so you rank well naturally as well.

8. If you want to show up in product results on Google search make sure you select the product type as “product” in Google Base when setting up your products there. Don’t create your own or use one of the other defaults…only select the type of “product”.

If you have any suggestions on things I left off let me know so I can keep this updated.