I respect this man as an entrepreneur and an internet marketer but I did not like the example he used to illustrate his prowess in the SEO field. Basically he used the keyword heavy URL’s of Checkmove.com and Checkmove.net to place high in a zero competition market. Everyone knows links are 90% of SEO and there are ZERO links on these two sites. All he really did was put the word check moves in the url, title, and body.

Come on Rex I expect more from you than using this weak example of “the  tools we use to drive sites toward the top of Google.” On the other hand as an easy example of a site you have close to the top for a keyword like “check moves” that you can basically count on having for quite some time I guess its a good business move.

So I would like to see if this blog post can place for the keyword Check Moves with link building. Whats stronger a keyword rich URL or links with keyword rich Anchor Text? Anyone willing to help link to this blog post with the anchor text CHECK MOVES.

——

Michael Hewitt-Gleeson (born Melbourne 1947) is a cognitive scientist and author of Software For Your Brain (1989), which first published his invention of the universal brain software known as the digital switch. Hewitt-Gleeson has been an international consultant on strategy and sought by organizations and corporations from the United Nations, and the White House to IBM, Fujitsu, and BMW. Hewitt-Gleeson is a best-selling author of books and numerous articles on lateral thinking, selling and leadership.

He describes that no one can close a sale. The buyer must chose to be sold. A sales mans job is to always be in contact so when the choice is made you are an option. “In Check Moves, the salesperson is simply challenged with being in touch with the customer.  Every time the salesperson is in touch with customers, she is in a position of what Hewitt-Gleeson calls ’check’. If the salesperson is not in touch with customer she is in a position of ‘uncheck’. Check and uncheck are binary. You can’t be in both. You are either in check with a prospect or in uncheck. The goal is to always be in check.”

I am sure you have heard of the idea that within seven connections you know everyone on the planet. The check moves sales process can take advantage of this. Always be in check even with your current clients. The more contact you have or the more often you are in “check” the more comfortable your clients feel with you. When you keep them close to you they feel like they are minimizing risk.

As you stay in constant contact with your customers the become loyal customers and then even friends. You must frequently remind people of the upgrades you offer and talk to them about the benefits you are providing building your brand. As you stay in check with your customers and stress the value and quality of your services your new friends and loyal customer will begin to send referrals.

Every customer influences at least ten other people. So by staying in check moves with 10% of your target audience you can actually control the whole group. Find out who it is that moves your customers. Is there a trade journalist, or guru, or community group in your area? When these people talk everyone listens. Your marketing plan should include how you are going to win over these influential people in your field.

Remember you cant sell all you can do is stay in check.

check moves

For large commercial websites CMS is a must. Consequently large businesses and their managers initially accept the costs that accompany such systems. According to a 2002 report by the Yankee Group, 80% percent of businesses with more than $10 million in annual revenues used content management software for their website. These figures show the extent to which CMS has emerged over the past ten years.  However, the much-hyped technology promising to simplify the way companies organize, create, publish, use and reuse content is struggling to show a return on investment (ROI). Although CMS can strengthen operations, the proper balance between cost and features must be maintained especially for smaller businesses.

Deploying CMS on your own can be a massive undertaking. You face an array of technical and business issues that set the stage for disappointment. Another recent study, this time by Jupiter Research,  found 61% of companies that have deployed a CMS have reverted to manual processes for updating their web sites. Jupiter also found that one in 20 companies surveyed planned to use another system after failing to achieve a ROI with the first. Obviously, there is divergence between expectations and outcome for CMS. “This is an area of technology in which people overspent and found themselves over deployed,” says Jupiter’s Matthew Berk. “The need is still there, it’s the question of how to meet that need cost effectively.”

SO, do YOU need content management features for your website?

Our experience shows that it is seldom an emergency to build a website.  But when it comes to changing or updating the content of a website it always seems to elevate to emergency status.  Think about it.  How fast might you need to update the price of a product, or change the members of the management team?  At times like these, you can not afford to wait for some engineering change notice (ECN) to be drafted, then sent to, and finally accepted by your off-site web development team.  And finally when your ECN  bubbles to the top of their priority list the change might get done correctly the first time.  NO! You need to have the power to click a couple of times with the mouse and type a sentence or two and presto, the content is updated.

Feature to demand in a CMS

Say No to Bulky Narrowing Systems
Many CMS vendors develop have solutions with a bigger-is-better psyche.  The results is a costly, bulky system that is more isolating than anticipated. We have found that businesses want a simple to use system without useless features that they are not ready to handle. Let’s face it, do you know: XML, XSL, CSS, RTF, CVS, HTML, Javascript, Flash, .Net, ASP, ASPX, and SQL?  Are you planning on learning any or all of them any time soon?  Well then, you too are looking for a less is more CMS solution for your website. Find a CMS that has focused on developing website content management systems for the small and medium sized business that are easy to:
• Understand
• Afford
• Customize
• Use
• Scale

Familiar & practical tools for authoring and editing web content.

Web Access: With a secure Username and Password so you can securely add, edit and delete content on your website, from any computer connected to the web.

Work Flow: You can begin adding a new menu or paragraph without having it show it on the web until you are ready to have it shown.

Simple Forms: Using forms just like any other form you have already filled-out online, we have developed a paragraph centric publishing system.  You type in the information you want displayed on the website in the field with intuitive word publishing features.  Next you click a submit button.  Presto! The content is captured into a database and published on the web in seconds.

Graphics: You can upload images and include them along with paragraph content.  With the click of a mouse you can place the image on the left, center, or right of the paragraph text.  Custom solutions also allow flash to work in place of any graphic.

Training  in 30 Minutes. If you cant learn how to use it… well its trash.

Many small businesses attempt to set-up FREE online shops with hosting providers like Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod and MSN rather than registering and hosting their own web site.  The problem with using many free hosting providers is you end up with an address like: www.members.tripod.com/DeanArrowAndAssociates.  Which web address would you rather use: the one listed above or www.DeanArrow.com?  Your not the only shopper who feels reassured by a “real” business web address.
The same holds true for email addresses.  If you are running a business, it is a good idea to set up an email account that uses your unique domain name.  As you send messages to: potential clients, your bank, or suppliers; info@DeanArrow.com looks far more professional than
info-DeanArrow@aol.com.

Avoid the No-name Pitfall

It is possible for you to register a domain name for less than $12.00 a year.  If you must, you can point the newly registered domain name to a free hosting provider and get a single email address for an additional $10/yr. That should fit even the most constrained budget.  However, once a domain name is registered, you should set-up with a real hosting provider.  They will provide you with a wealth of services including: multiple email addresses, unlimited auto-responders, database support, huge bandwidth, backup & restore support, technical support, multi-media support, and the list goes on; all for less than $35/month.

2) Uuuugly

“That is the ugliest web site I have ever seen!” Or, that is what most people think when you have your friend’s cousin’s high school student design your web site.  Nothing against high school students, but one semester of keyboarding does not a web designer make.   An alternative solution would be to download some free web design tools and use one of their templates.  Many tools are freely available with basic templates and color choices.  This is an acceptable option if you don’t mind your site looking like 10,000 other sites.  Otherwise, you need a custom design.  However, unless you are a better designer than the average person, it is a good idea to have a real artist design your site.

Avoid the Uuuugly Pitfall

Have a professional web design artist develop or extend your brand with a custom online presence.  The new brand will define your position in the market place as it breaths, speaks, and listens for you.  It will display a constant and consistent message visually and verbally.

3) Stagnant Content

AOL and Disney have proven “Content Is King.”  Users visit your site looking for something.  They will return to see what’s new.  If your site is not changed at least every 6 months it is stagnant and will lose its appeal.  Some websites change content by the minute.  Most sites need to change their content somewhere in between these two extremes.  If you developed the website yourself you know how time consuming that can be.  On the other hand, if you paid to have the site developed, you know that constant changes are going to be expensive.

Avoid the Stagnant Content Pitfall

Develop or have your site developed with Content Management features that allows your content to be dynamically generated.  This typically requires a database and/or web services but will save you time and money, not to mention keep your clients coming back again and again.  Content Management Systems (CMS) allow real estate companies and online stores alike to efficiently keep their inventory up-to-date with the click of a few buttons.  If Content Is King, it is a gentle King, inviting users to make return visits to see the latest.

4) Usability

Remember how Content Is King and visitors come looking for something?  Seldom are you able to show all you need or want to show on a single page. Your web site is suppose to be full of all the information a customer would ever want to know just not all on the homepage.  Organizing your content for usability is called Information Architecture and is typically conveyed through menus.  The more information you have to share the more time must be spent developing your Information Architecture.

Avoid the Usability Pitfall

Three simple rules apply here:
1. Keep your menu structure to two levels.
2. Never hide your first level.
3. If you think your information is so complex that you need three levels, refer to rule #1.

5) Printability

More often than you realize, users want to print the information they have found at your web site.  Surfers have to show what they found to someone else or read your information offline.  Browsers make it easy to print any page.  BUT sites that are too wide for the printed page make for frustrated customers.

Avoid the Printability Pitfall

Design issues address printability.  In general, pages should print nearly the same as they appear on the screen with the following exceptions: 1) Background colors and images do not print unless that particular feature is switched on in the browser. 2) Since the computer screen is wider than the printed page, if any portion of the design is wider than 715 pixels, accordion style design must be used to allow the page to shrink to fit on the printed page.

6) Narrow Vision

Many companies are jumping onto the website band wagon to catch-up with their competitors only to build a “me too” site that lands them in one or more of the previously mentioned pitfalls.  If your going to go to the trouble of developing a website, look for a real Return On Investment.  Build in features that actually server your customers.  Ask yourself, what information and services can I provide directly to my customers right on my website?

Avoid the Narrow Vision Pitfall

Go beyond presenting products and information by integrating business process into your web site.  Customer Relations Management, Order Placement, Information Distribution, Data Collection, Computer Based Training, Webinars, and Surveys, are all examples of business processes that can be integrated to some degree on the web.  Robert Carter, CIO of FedEx recently conveyed that it only costs 4 cents to track a package online, compared with $2.14 when a live customer service agent gets involved.  Currently, the FedEx web site gets an average of 2.3 million package-tracking requests a day, which adds up to a $25 million savings each month. These statements clearly show that Business Web Integration is the key to ROI.

7) If You Build It, They Will Come

A web site can be a friendly open door to your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, answering questions and generating interest in your services.  Clients should be able to come to your Internet office and browse around for free information at any hour that is convenient to them. However, if no one knows about your web site, the door is essentially closed.  Marketing is the avenue of promoting your web site.  No Promotion, no traffic!

Avoid the If You Build It, They Will Come Pitfall

Letting clients know about your new open door does not have to be rocket science.  While there are many options, consider the following:
1. Traditional:  You should add your web site address to every piece of business correspondence:  Completed Work Signatures, Business Cards, Stationery, Envelopes, Invoices, Fax Cover Sheet, Voice Mail Messages, TV/Radio Ads, Yellow Page Ads, Association Directories, Car and Yard Signs, Press Releases, Direct Marketing Material, Pamphlets, Brochures, and Proposals.  Do not bother moving on to high-tech marketing until you are well underway with traditional marketing.
2. High-Tech: Email Marketing, Banner Ads, Link Exchanges, and Affiliate Programs are all good examples of high-tech marketing methods.  But Search Engine Optimization should take precedence.  Top ranking in a major search engine like Google, Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, or AltaVista will often generate more targeted traffic than any other online marketing tool.  The trick is knowing the key words that users actually use and seeding your pages with those key words.  Any business that focuses on a specific set of key words can greatly benefit from search engine positioning.

First off you want to work with a company that has proven themselves. There is a right and a wrong way to broker links.

There are many places out there just make sure they help you broker natural links. When you see examples of their links on other sites is the first thing you think “Spam”? If so you should probably look some where else.

Some of these brokers routinely get black listed by Google so it can be hard to know who to trust. Let us put together a custom package for you. Send us a list of the keywords you are going after and the budget you need to stay under and we will be able to get you the best links posible with out doing anything black hat.

I have found a Firefox extension called Autofill Forms. This extension has more features than I know what to do with! It is a great way to simplify things so you can save time when you comment on blogs.

When you install this firefox extension, a default profile will be created for you.  Typically, The fields used on most blogs are labeled Name, Email, and URL. Press Alt-J which is the Autofill Forms keyboard shortcut, it automatically fills in those fields with these configured values.

To add field rules to your profile, check out the How To Add A Specific Field Rule Form Fieldwiki page for detailed instructions. Once this plugin is configured, blog commenting is as simple as pressing Alt-J on the keyboard and then typing out my comment. The only issue I have with this tool is well really an issue I have have with blogspot, they want your password for some other site in order to post, it also does not work with Disqus or other third party commenting systems. This extension ends up saving a ton of time.

Title Tags for SEO

<head>

<title>Keyword</title>

</head>

Remember to put your keywords BEFORE your category and BEFORE your website title. Separate your categories in the title tage with a | and not a – or other system.

Alt Text for SEO

<img src= “keyword.jpg” alt=”Keyword” />

Alt text for your images is now one of the most important onsite SEO factors. Remember a good alt text can also help your site be found in Google images search.

Header Tags for SEO

<h1>most important tag for your Keyword</h1>

<h2>second most important tag</h2>

<h3>third most important tag</h3>

Bonus Tag

You can also bold your keywords. This can help a little but don’t over do it.

<b>Keyword</b>

SEO Firefox

While doing SEO for clients and for my own site it is always nice to have quick access to all your favorite tools. There is nothing worse than scrounging around looking for information in front of a client.

I know there are a thousand tools and add-ons out there but I have found 4 that take care of almost everything.

SEOmoz Toolbar

The power of Linkscape is now available inside Firefox with the SEOmoz Toolbar. Check mozRank, mozTrust and other Linkscape metrics in your browser get quick and easy access to all the SEOmoz tools and other PRO resources.

This is a free tool but you do have to be a Pro member to get access to the mozRank and mozTrust stats.

SEO for Firefox

This toolbar give you easy access to all the free tools you use every day:

• PR: (Google PageRank)
• Links: a rough estimate of links from Yahoo! linkdomain
• Age: pulled from Archive.org
• WhoIs: makes it easy to look up the whois data for any site.

All of these features and many more are available for free. You are also able to view search results 100 at a time and get instant access to other free tools like Google’s keyword tool.

SeoBook Toolbar

Seo Book’s toolbar gives you access to all of SEO for Firefox at the tip of your fingers. They have another tool called “Rank Checker” It looks cool but never works  stick with the first two.

AddThis

Increase traffic with the easiest, most popular sharing tool in the world. This adds a button to firefox that lets you add any website with on click to any of your favorite social bookmarking sites.

These 4 tools save me hours a day and should be used by any SEO.

Internet Advertising revenue will surpass TV ads in the UK.

According to new studies from the Internet Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCoopers the advertising dollars spent in the Uk, the world’s most developed internet advertising market, will surpass the amount spent on television ads this year. Guy Phillipson, CEO of the IAB said:

“It’s clear marketing directors now recognize the value of online (marketing) to drive their business.”

Get a better return then the Yellow Pages!

Yellow Pages themselves came out with a study showing how valuable their services are. But wait! Their own reports show their online version of the yellow pages beats their print ads AND Organic Internet Marketing dominates them both. Why would you settle for second best?

Find out how Internet Marketing can help YOU.

Why bother with lower returns on your marketing dollars. You want the best bang for your buck. You want a way to stretch your advertising dollars. We can help. DeanArrow & Assoc. has been helping businesses get the most out of the internet for 7 years.

Get your FREE internet marketing consultation today!

My name is Gary Hall and I have been working in the internet marketing field since 1999. My first venture was building a manual search engine called GetExactly.com. We eventually branched away from manual search and became the largest affiliate marketing company in Denver, Colorado.

I left GetExactly to serve a two year full time mission for my church in Tijuana, Mexico. I am now fluent in Spanish although my business vocabulary is not what it should be. I returned to the states and married my better half. She is venturing into the blogging world with a recipes for kids blog.

I worked for one of the top local internet marketing companies and learned all about local SEO. After a while I started feeling the entrepreneurial urge and I moved back to beautiful Denver, Colorado! I grew up near Denver and I was so excited to be back! I worked out a deal with DeanArrow, and a few weeks later we launched InternetMarketingSpecialistsDenver.com a branch of DeanArrow focused on bringing the highest quality search engine optimization to the Denver Metro Area!

We truly are Denver’s Internet Marketing Specialists. Dean Arrow having been a website development company in the Denver area for over 15 years was a great fit for me. With my knowledge of SEO and PPC as well as many other aspects of internet marketing I have been able to assemble a  team of the best Internet Marketing Specialists Denver has ever known. We have

Internet Marketing Specialists Denver

We have chosen the Blue Archer as our logo because it really represents what we are trying to do at DeanArrow, We want to help you “Target Your Customers”  with “Pin Point Accuracy.” W have helped many companies all over the country reach their marketing goals. We have the experience and tools to be your Internet Marketing Specialists.

Major search engines such as – Google, Bing.com, and Yahoo! – use complicated computer algorithms that decide if your website is relevant to the search terms a potential customer has just typed. These algorithms also decide where on the results page your website will show up.

Due to the technical complexity of SEO, you are well served to have a team of professionals on your side. Leave it to Dean Arrow. We’ll analyze your site and create a strategic plan that will ensure you hit your marketing targets.

After the ump-teen time I came up with a list of the top 10 things an SEO newb can do.

1. URL – If you have not bought one yet try and get a domain name that has your keywords in it.
2. Title Tag – This is probably the most important place to put your keywords on your website. Your title can be found at the top of the browser next to the “e’ if you use explorer or the “firefox” symbol if you are using Mozilla. Note: If it says “Home” you are a newb!
3. Meta Keywords – If you have stuffed these tags with a thousand keyword hopping to get Google to like you… you are a newb. Google has de-valuated the meta keyword tag and it means almost nothing, so try and keep it down to about 8 solid keywords that all relate to one theme.
4. Keyword Density – Make sure to mention your keywords on your homepage. If you have a huge list of keywords at the bottom of your page or hidden in the background… Your a Newb! This is a black hat (bad) SEO practice called keyword stuffing and can get you penalized.
5. Static Pages – When you make a new page make sure it is not using a Dynamic URL, and put your keywords in the URL. example: http://example.com/keyword/keyword-ideas.com
6. Internal Linking – If all your links to other pages use anchor text like “click here” or “next page” guess what… You’re defiantly a newb. Use your keywords when linking to your pages.
7. H1 Tag – Use keywords
8. H2 Tag – Use keywords
9. H3 Tag – If you don’t say “Use keywords” your a newb.
10. Alt Text – By now we know you are an SEO newb, make sure your pictures have an alt text tag and that they use keywords. Remember the Google Bot doesn’t know that your image is a photo of a cat, you have to tell it.

This list is usually all an SEO newb can handle by them selves. I always offer them my services if they decide the really want to do some serious SEO.

If you feel you can handle a little more I found some other lists of Onsite SEO Tips:

24 Onsite Checkups

12 Basic Tactics

Onsite Tips

Feel free to comment if you are a newb and have any questions.