We at IMJ have been working hard to get the best speakers and internet marketing events to Ahmedabad, India. We are super excited to announce that the first event of the year 2012 will be held on January 16th. We are fortunate enough to have SEO Mom as she is popularly called in the SEO industry.

We would like to welcome Gillian Muessig to Ahmedabad. She is a founding president of SEOmoz, providers of the world’s most popular SEO Tools.

So, what we are going to learn in this event? This time around we are not going to learn advanced SEO techniques or Google secrets. We are going to learn something different.

The topic of the event is: “What are They Thinking?! Keeping US/UK SEO Clients Happy“

Here is the agenda:

You’re pitching a big new client and you need to get inside his head. What does he want? What are his ‘hot buttons’? What will make him happy and how can you keep him happy after you make the sale and the job is underway? Get a closeup look at what UK/US customers are focused on and how to keep them happy throughout the entire project so you can close more business and more repeat business.

Sounds exciting???

Let’s start the new year in a rocking style.

We are also looking for sponsorship of the event. As this event is not for making money, we will provide sponsorship on first come first serve basis. Kindly do not consider it as Advertising opportunity but treat is as Corporate social responsibility. For sponsorship details contact Jaydip Parikh on jaydip.parikh@gmail.com or call on +91-9898915234.

Thanks to Krinal Mehta, Amit Panchal, Hemang Rami and Vishal Shastri for volunteer support.

For information on entry passes contact Kaushal Shah on kash.shah@gmail.com or call on +91-9924986867.

Strong client base will be the key for every successful SEO company. Every company who offer or provide SEO & E-marketing services have different model to approach their client. Here are few successful business models which could be helpful for SEO experts to fetch more business.

Reference Model

Reference model is the most powerful and effective model to fetch business. Once you have you client and provide them satisfactory services, you can ask to give you reference of his two close business friends or personal friends who might interested in SEO or other services which you offer. From each client try to get at least two contacts as reference and do strategic approach to them by mail first, followed by call.

Or if your client is SEO service provider and outsourcing his work then ask him for collaboration.

SEO website model

As every website required good SEO to get ranked at high, the same way every SEO company also need to design one effective website for SEO consulting and enrich it with all creativity and quality contents to make it successful. Start fetching direct inquiry from market which are very potential.

Bidding Model

You can create a profile on portal and find domestic and international clients who are looking for the SEO and SMO services from companies and individuals.  You can bid with your profile, show experience with some of your case study and client will select the best one from the bid participants. Client use to filter and select the company from profile, past client feedback and portal history of business done without any complain on site.

It sounds very simple but Bidding is not an easy job. Its the science of getting business from online clients. This model required home work, documentation, ability to wait till right time, constant effort and time investment.

This model is advisable for two kind of SEO service provider, one is a company who have strong portfolio and in house team. And second are those who have very competitive rates and open to work on result bases.

Both of them have maximum ratio of consume around 68% of awarded SEO projects on bidding portals. Other 32 % are lucky enough to fetch business from their current clients, new client who just join bidding portal, and those who have really good contents  at bidding  profile and effective communication skills to ensure client about their capability.

Strategic Advertisement Model

Apart of Google Ad-sense, you can try to advertise your services at industry specific zone. for example at export – import magazine, you can give advertisement that on Christmas get online traffic to convert your targeted consumer and grow your business. These kind of strategic advertise model will help your SEO services grow.

But you need industry specific knowledge, business model information, and online demand analysis to invest on strategic advertisement model.

Mail blast Model

You can design one or more domain specific template to market your services and solution of SEO and shoot it to prospective clients. Data of the prospective clients are the key to achieve success in this model.

Make sure you hire server for this, as your server or IP could be ban due to spam activities by sending mass mails.

Outsourcing Model

Many company do smart work in place of hard work, they do not hunt for individual clients, but they invest their time to get some outsourcing partners or affiliates who can provide long term and consistent business to them.

In international affiliation model company use to tie up with outsourcing partner who has local presence and strength to market the services but do not has enough staff or cost effectively to execute those project offshore and in house. Those company or consultants use to outsource their bulk work to the company who can provide them support in term s of report, analysis and cost estimation and e-marketing work.

You can find these kind of affiliates online on some affiliation or business networking sites.

Brand approach model

This is out of the box model, which need lots of efforts, research, analytical skills and strong technical writing ability with psychometric components to succeed.

This model follows these steps.

• Find fortune five hundred or any huge brand that do not have fund or investment issues.
• Analyze their website, identify area of improvements according to their branding and market reputation.
• Approach them with list of suggestion to enhance their site with SEO and SMO which can enable their site to improve sales in X ratio percentage.  Make sure you define X percentage base upon current market standards, consumer & commodity analysis and trend analysis.
• Make sure you do proper data analysis. Analysis should be effective, not base upon hypothetical and logical with reference or case study.
• Now offer them your SEO/eMarketing service with personalize approach towards their website enhancement base upon possible business growth. Make sure you do not disclose all your e marketing strategy to prospective client until you get contract signed.

These all basic models will surely helpful to take your SEO company or business to the next level of growth. Apart of these there are more 14 effective, proven & Out of the box models are there to do Business development for SEO marketing company, which I will share in upcoming posts at IMJ.

Keep reading…!!

Success !!

I shared my way of SEO Sales Life Cycle in this; I hope this will help our IMJ fans a bit.

(1) Generate The Lead:

To grow your SEO business, firstly you have to generate the leads.

(2) E-mail to Prospect:

Once lead is generated after that we have to get in touch with client through E-mail but make sure not with phone call, because E-mail is the professional way. The E-mail must describe each every information about our services, infrastructure, strength and capabilities, previous work (If possible then show the relevant industries work) along with SEO packages.

(3) Gather (Discover) Requirements:

After sending the E-mail you have to arrange a call or chat session with client to gather information about his requirement and services which client is seeking for. Collect all the information from client like his website address for which he wants SEO services, what is the expectation of client from the service provider, what’s the budget of client, where he is located and he want services only for local or he want to represent the whole world, get information about competitors, get full knowledge of his business and  which industry he wants to target, etc.

(4) Analysis:

Once the information is discovered you need to start the analysis of clients website. The analysis must include each every information about the particular website like, On-page optimization status, Off-page optimization status,  Social media presence , Navigational structure , Coding issues , Conversion ability etc. Prepare a full detailed review report for the particular website and deliver it to the client.

(5) Convince The Client:

After sending the analysis report to client again arrange a meeting on call or chat to explain the whole report to client and also give some recommendation for the same. Give the full explanation about our packages and give the suggestion as well. Still client is not getting convinced then you can also go for customized plan as per clients requirements. We can also offer discount or cut down the cost but only for the long term clients.

(6) ROI(Return On Investment):

Provide ROI (Return On Investment) for all the plan and explain to client that what he is investing and what he will going to get by investing on your services, explain in currency figures so that client will get more confidence on you.

(7) Commitments and Deliverable:

You have to give commitments and time frame to prove your commitments. Never give any false commitment to the client, if you do so then it will be very harmful for the business and it will ruin your reputation in the market. As SEO is a long term process so give commitment accordingly, so it will be beneficial for both.

(8) Maintenance and Support:

Actually the business secret is that you can generate comparatively more revenue from maintenance (the site which ranked already) and support because it will increase your ROI. You need to allot less resource on particular project and generate more revenue so it will increase your ROI. So once your contract will complete with client then try hard to convince the client to go for maintenance and support services.

I hope you must enjoy this article. I would appreciate if you share your view by comments.  Even you want to add something to this or you want discuss something you should comment on that. So let’s see who is commenting and keep reading and sharing at Internet Marketing Journal.

Back in August, 2010 Google officially announced the change in their ranking algorithm that will now show more than 2 search results from the same website, but it was not mentioned why this change was made.

They only mentioned that “For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, we’ll now show more results from the relevant site.

We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year. We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”

People had mixed reactions on this as the example in the above mentioned blog post by Google was showing that it was showing 7 results from the same domain. One concern was that if someone is searching for the review of that particular brand and he gets 7 results from the main brand domain, he is going to spend more time searching for what he wants. That is not what Google wants!

So, again in November 2010, this algorithm got tweaked a little; and it was informed that now Google will show maximum of 4 results per domain.

They mentioned that “Today we’re expanding the feature so that, when appropriate, more queries show additional results from a domain. As a webmaster, you’ll appreciate the fact that these results may bring targeted visitors directly to the pages they’re interested in.”

According to Andy Beal of Marketingpilgrim, this will help brands in reputation management on Google and help push those RipOff Report listings on the second page.

SearchQuest has nicely explained the SEO implication of this algo change, “I am sure many of you will be asking whether or not this has any impact on SEO practices and techniques and if anything, it means that webmasters must ensure their website is full of relevant content and is fully optimised for set keyphrases to obtain first page positions as essentially, what was 10 positions on the first page may now be as little as seven, if four results are shown for a single domain. It is a further attempt by Google to display only those websites which are highly relevant on the first page and so long as a website is original, unique and relevant to the search term, there is no reason why domains should see a drop in ranking positions.”

According to Vanessa Fox, “What does this mean for site owners? On the one hand, if you’re ranking near the bottom of the first page for a query, you might now be pushed to page two if a site above you expands to four results vs. two. On the other hand, in the cases where your site expands to four results, you have new opportunities to showcase the content you have to offer. Take a quick look at the queries that drive the most traffic to your site and check what pages are now showing up and what your shortened snippet looks like (obviously, I have some work to do on mine!).”

What all these guys are talking about are brand keywords including Google. If you search for “Apple” or “Microsoft” you are going to see these results, but what I saw yesterday was amazing. I saw 4 pack result for a generic keyword. Here is the screenshot:

Let me know if you have encountered any of these kind of results in Google. Share your experience with this new change, and how you are coping up to rank better for your websites.

Everyone who have their site want to fetch traffic from the internet. To ensure and empower their web presence they use SEO & SMO as key tools to generate leads. Now when client start hunt for SEO company or freelancer, they face very hard time to find best match for his requirements.  We need to understand what client wants from an SEO company or individual. Here are 5 key points which will help you to understand client psychology and by understanding that you can close more business for your company.

1 – Be consultant instead of being hocker

The key difference between Consultant and hocker is ” Hocker will speak what they have with him and Consultant will listen what you want to have “. With the concept of eMyth study you will find that ratio of successful closer will be increase while client speak three time more then business development executive.

Majority of business development executives do not have detailed SEO knowledge so they start telling about what their company do, they did and they can do like a hocker. But client is not yet satisfied as still he doesn’t speak enough to execute their idea, their need or key result area.  So the first step for successful SEO discussion with client, company need to have SEO friendly executive only who knows the difference between consultant and hocker.

2- Understand His Need with touch base:

In some cases client could not speak much as he want to judge the company about SEO knowledge. Client want company executive to ask him relevant and logical questions to find out what he is looking for. Make sure you do not afraid of asking relevant questions to client. You should know his entire business model and domain to make sure you both are in to same page. So make sure that you understand client’s end to end requirement and his vision towards e marketing activities with result expectation.

3 – Demand clarity by asking relevant questions :

Clarity is the basic thing which required before you start any project. It will help you to avoid rework and change at ongoing project . You should confirm these key things during your discussion with the client to demand clarity on SEO project:

• What is client’s business model ?
• - What is the key objective for your website or web portal ?
• - What geographical market client focused or client want international market to focused upon ?
• - Who will be the targeted costumer for client’s product matrix ?
• - What age group you target most for your product or services ?
• - What Social media sites you are with / you are planning to target ?
• - Do you have any Blogs or Forum which are live ?
• - Do client define any keyword to be targeted or we can suggest them base upon our research ?
• - What ranking you expect base upon your current ratings ?
• - What are their key competitors as if now in the industry ?
• - What is client’s expectation in numbers form this activity ?

Base upon these there are many more questions you can ask but these are minimum required question you need to ask.

4 – Negotiation Analysis :

Clients has lots of option to execute their work due to market awareness about SEO. To avoid competition you need to give extra edge during your communication with client by suggesting the maximum possible ways, tools or changes [ if required ]  to meet client’s objective. If you attend client as Consultant they will never negotiate with you on commercials according to human psychology research. Eg. we never ask doctor to give us some discount in fees !!! Because we can not compromise with our health. By the same way client do not want to compromise with the health of the website

5 – Documentation :

You can offer free analysis document to the client to acknowledge that you really understand his requirement and you put your efforts to provide them snap shot of current condition with scope of improvement. Very few company provide this report to clients in first reply as they think its non value added activity for his resources however I observed if you provide one extra facility by investing only 30 to 45 min,  which increase the chances for positive response from client as a end result. Client do not afford to pay to check your skill matrix so its advisable to offer it free.

Apart of client’s site documentation, keep creating repository for some case study from client base you / company has already worked with. Make sure that you keep client details or website confidential if you sign NDA [ Non Discloser Agreement ] with client. Those case study will help you to execute your domain knowledge and success ratio from your past work.

I bet if you follow these five key rules during your SEO client communication then you will maximize the ratio of success for business closer. Make sure you be slow, polite and allow client to speak more and more. Do not forget to open and close your talk with greetings for the day.

All the best !!

Success,

We all aware of Google places rolled out. IMJ we’ve written blog post of Local SEO, that you would like to read  10 ways to get more with Local Search Engine Optimization &  Google Local Listing is Back to Rule on SERP.

We are happy to announce our Thanks Giving Give Away to IMJ Fans, List of 100 UK local Directory list.

For getting this Local UK Directory List.   You have to subscribe by Email for getting updates of SEO, SEM, PPC & Analytics and many more by Internet Marketing Journal.

Email Subscribe Link –http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=imjfeed

P.s This offer will end on 4^th December, 2010.

So Hurry Up to grab the IMJ Give Away.

Lately I have been really busy to blog anything about the latest updates about Google. After Google Instant Update, there are many interesting updates that I want to cover in this article.

Google TV

Yes, you heard it right! Google is on TV now; they can search the channels you want to watch. Apart from searching you can also browse websites, watch photos and videos, play games and many more things with the help of Google Chrome and Adobe Flash.

There are many Apps for Google TV like Netflix, Twitter, CNBC, Pandora, Napster and more. The best thing is you can send website, video or photo from your android phone or iphone directly to TV. Moreover your phone can work as TV remote control, so no need to fight for it!

This can be a very good option for someone who wants to check email from his TV, but can be a nightmare for designers. They have to make the site now TV compatible as if IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari compatibility was not enough! Well, here is the link that will show you how to design and optimize for Google TV.

Tempted to buy Google TV? Get it here.

Google Adsense User Interface Improvement

Since last year, Googlers have been experimenting with Adsense interface. After listening to user’s needs and trial & error, they have come up with more user friendly interface. The new interface was rolled out on 11th November to all the accounts.

According to Google adsense team, “You can now run even more detailed performance reports by ad type, ad size, ad unit, targeting type, and bid type for total earnings and other metrics, over custom date ranges. You’ll also find graphs of your data on the new Performance reports tab. You can quickly view impressions, clicks, and earnings all in one graph, compare text ad performance to image ad performance, compare date ranges, and easily analyze data to recognize trends.”

Here is the tour video of new adsense interface that will help you make understand the new features, reports etc. in detail:

Google Instant Preview

After the introduction of Google Instant, they have come up with Google Instant Preview. Instant preview shows you the preview of the search results page right on the right side of the results. When you click on little magnifying glass icon it will show you the preview of the webpage along with the call out text which is relevant to your search queries. Here is the screen shot for you how it really looks:

There is a very good article written by Andrew Shotland on SEO implications of Google Instant Preview. He has explained why content will be more important than ever as Google have started showing relevant text along with the screen shot of your web page.

This service is still in its first phase, so try checking out different keywords and combinations for your website. Over the time it might get uplift but currently there are many bugs, as it is not showing any preview for flash websites, some of the websites preview is not available and other things. Here is one more screen shot:

Please let me know in comments if you know any other Google update that I forgot to cover here.

You must aware about Google rolled out with Local Changes and its comes to ruling on SERP. You might be read our prior blog post on Google Local Listings are Back to Rule SERP – Be Prepared!

Local Presence is must for Online Business or Offline Business maters a lot now days. Local search marketing for a business can help in many ways like increasing the online visibility where your geographic target market and search engine gives priority to local business in ranking.

Follow some quick tips for enhancing your business with the help of local search engine optimization:-

1. Use Country Specific CccTLDs Domains -

Its worth to have a ccTLD domain name like co.uk is for if your business’s targeted location is uk, co.in for India targeted Business, com.au for Australia targeted business etc.  if your business is focuses on local audience. By having a local domain extension you can let Search Engines know your exact targeted business location. Local business directories will spend less time in recognizing the business location while approving your business request.

2. List your business in major search engine –

Claim your local business listing in major search engines with Google Local, Yahoo! Local and Bing Local

3. Get listed in local directories & data providers –

Submit your business in local directories & data services like InfoUSA, CitySearch.com, Yelp.com, Acxiom and Localeze because these local directories has their own database / technology from the foundation of the search engines For local indexing at different level.

4. Choose right category for your business listing –

The reason behind this step is that if your business listed in right category which helps for enhancing your business ability to show up for your targeted audience. Some time happens that if your business is listed in either wrong category or entered wrong keyword or incorrect mapping details will harm your business’s listing and reputation.

5. Formulate your business information is unswerving –

Keeping business information which matches across web that results into increase confidence of Google algorithm for providing accurate search result. Make sure that you put correct phone number and address information everywhere when your business is listed.

6. Obtain your contact information in Microformat or add a QR code on your website –

Microformat: -

A Microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup that seeks to re-use existing XHTML and HTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes. This will help to improve local search marketing and optimization.

QR Code -
QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging)
I’ll write separate blog post on creating Microformat & QR codes.

7. Build KML file and upload it to Google Webmaster Central.

We all know about XML Site Maps. But I’m going to elaborate on creating KML Files. KML stats for Keyhole Markup Language. It’s basically location map or geo sitemap having specialized file format with latitude and longitude of physical business locations listed on website and gives them one more confidence boost in the location of a particular business. It will help you to boost business listing in the particular location.

8. Use geographic keywords & Brand Name in your title tags.

This is more of a general suggestion: make sure that you include your city and state in the title tag of your contact or location page, and if you’re in product or services oriented sales, use words like “City Name Product” or “Products in City Name” on assorted other title tags on your website.

9. Make sure you have Analytics installed on your website.

Web Analytics tool can give you great insight into which keywords are bringing traffic to your website, and what pages are engaging your users and leading to new business.

10. Play with Competitive Analysis -

Take a look at both the Organic and the Local search results for some of your target phrases. Check on which phrases competitors are showing? For more advance competitive research use tools like Linkscape or Yahoo Site Explorer to see if there are particular websites linking to competitor and not you.

This is a bit techie post but very important for all SEO people who are concern with the website analysis and performance.

Few days back I was browsing through some Internet Marketing and SEO forums and I found one very interesting thread posted in very popular forum which actually got my attention. I took the image screen shot for you, so go through it.

Here seller is selling 10000 Hits every day just for $5??
See few other interesting packages are also mention by seller.
Isn’t it so cheap??
Let’s check it further.

Here is one more example. This is a Google search result example.

Get 10000 Hits A Day For Free!!!
Looks so attractive right?? But it is not.

If you read both the examples properly, everywhere seller has mention “Hits” which is my point here for writing this post. Should people go to buy such packages sending hits to their website? Does getting thousands of get really beneficial for website? Yes or No? And what is the reason?

So let’s understand what the seller of 10000 hits mean by?

Well, according to Wikipedia the definition of Hit is “A request for a file from the web server. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity.”

That means if you have a single page with multiple images on it, each of these is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded. Now think about above example that if you apply this definition to 10000 hits, what will be counted?
Actually this is the main reason why hit is not useful metric while you are looking for genuine analytics of your website. The more useful metric is Visits.

The definition of Visit from Wikipedia is “A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request”

So mostly if you are on site for 30 minutes it will count as one visit, then if you leave site and come back to the same website it will counted as second visit. Sounds more genuine, right? Well visit is always considered as better metric than Hit because if one is looking for genuine performance of website then there is no meaning counting graphic objects in performance report. Otherwise it will give false performance review only.

However Mr. Avinash Kaushik recommends Absolute Unique Visitors as a best metric in his book called Web Analytics 2.0. Absolute Unique Visitors are individual website visitor which gives you exact statistics of visitors to your website. This is the perfect metric to look if you want accurate performance report of your website for any arbitrary time period you select.

So before ending this post..

The life lesson to learn is: never look for how many hits you are getting. Also never trust such paid traffic senders who sends traffic in form of hits. Rather looks for Visits and Absolute Visitors. They are better metrics for website analysis.

That’s it from my side now, but please don’t forget to comment. I am looking for your valuable inputs to grow further and to write better.

Today morning I was surfing through internet and found something strange, what I found is local listing are embedded in SERP, Yeah I know local listings are very old story, but in early days local listing were proving information within 2 lines that included URL, phone numbers and address line (I am talking about general SERP page not local.google.com). This time local listings are proving description along with address line and phone number. What made me wonder is, its look like and embedded in Organic listings (sometime above organic listings), and map has moved to right.

Take a Look at below image.

It seems that now again its time to consider local listing in the picture and from above image you can get the idea that this time we need to put more focus on Google local.

You can not ignore local listings any more no matter whether you’re a large company or a small start thinking locally because that’s where your customers are.

New to Google local? No worries here are some tips for novice, of course experienced are also allowed to take a look . Wait for a moment, prior to creating local listing please do necessary changes in onpage i.e. adding city name in your site content, title and Meta tags.

Step 1: Log in
To create your Google Maps listing follow these easy directions:

•    Navigate to http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter
•    Log into your Google account
•    Click “Add New Listing”
Note: Before adding new listing its advisable to check if there any listing of your business? (Yes that happens several time if your listing is exist then claim it).

Step 2: Create Your Listing
In this step you will need to:

Enter your Company/Organization Name: Mr.XYZ SEO Expert San Jose, CA
- Don’t forget to use your service with business name i.e. SEO Company but please use it wisely.

Good Example: Mr.XYZ SEO Expert San Jose, CA

Bad Example: Mr.XYZ – SEO Expert San Jose, CA, Social Media Expert San Jose, SEO Consultant San Jose (Congrats you have increased your chances to get your account banned in Google local, Find another place to show your spamming expertise)

- Street Address, City, State, ZIP, Phone, Email address, Website address and Description (Sorry this is not the place to spam). To the right of your data, a preview window will display what your listing will look like.

Step 3: Add Spices to your listing

- Add pictures (strongly recommended where possible)
- Add video
- Choose category (5 at the max)
- Put as much as additional information as possible i.e. parking options, opening hours, local area information (without fail).

Step 4: Add / Claim Your Listing
If Google already has a listing for your business, you will have the option claiming the current listing or adding the listing you just entered. If this is first listing of business then  click the “Add Listing” option. To claim the listing, click “Claim” and follow the instructions. Google will verify your listing by calling the phone number you entered. Answer the phone and type in the pin number listed on the screen.

That’s it, you are done! really? Well yes and no too. As far as google local listing submission is consider you are done but to improve visibility following step may helpful.

Submit your site to local directories, following would be good example for USA Business (If your business is not in USA then you may need to find local directory of respected region).

1. CitySearch.com
[Includes Reviews of Local Businesses]

http://www.citysearch.com/

2. InsiderPages.com
[Includes Reviews of Local Businesses, Google Maps uses this system]

http://www.insiderpages.com/

3. MerchantCircle.com
[Includes Reviews of Local Businesses]

http://www.merchantcircle.com/

4. Yelp.com (I read somewhere that sometime google is talking data from Yelp, As my memory is too powerful i forget the source)
[Includes Reviews of Local Businesses]

http://www.yelp.com/

5. AllPages.com

http://www.allpages.com/

6. Local.Botw.com

http://local.botw.org/

7. Local.com

http://www.local.com/

8. SuperPages.com (idearc)

http://www.superpages.com/

9. YellowPages.com (AT&T)

http://www.yellowpages.com/

You are all set to grow your business with Google local.

I might be missing few points, lets make this more interesting with your inputs.

Have a nice time.