Search Engine Bytes #1
Questions & Answers with Michael Campbell

A - I'm amazed at how few local businesses have web sites. I'm also amazed how many local businesses fail to use the technology to their advantage.

A friend of mine was looking for restaurants in Vancouver using the search engines and couldn't find anything. Same deal for me. I checked for hair stylists, barbers, beauty salons, but always using my city name Vancouver. Turns out there's very little competition. Someone with even the most basic optimization knowledge, could easily bump off the next guy, and get to the top of the search engines.

I tried doing the same searches for local suburbs like Burnaby, North Vancouver, Surrey and got even fewer results. Running my same tests on Seattle and other American cities gave similar results. Funny how everyone optimizes their sites for generic keywords but no one is optimizing for their city names.

Back when I was doing web site design for a living, I was surprised at how few local businesses understood the internet. I spent half of my time educating them. They had no clue as to how much money they could make, simply by having a web site that gets found in the search engines. Take for example this true story of a Vancouver Deli. Why would a place that makes soups and sandwiches for lunch, want a web site? It's not like you can ship a sandwich (mayo goes bad really fast, phew!

They don't even own a computer or know how to use one. Ah yes grasshopper.... but you don't need a computer to take the orders. A fax machine does that just fine. They set up a little five page web site that included an online order form. Since they don't have a computer at the deli to accept the orders, customers were encouraged to print out the form, go round the office, pick up lunch orders, and fax them in before 11:AM.

Business started booming. Encouraged by their success, they printed up some one page flyers. Basically it was telling people to print and use the fax in order form on the web site. They stuffed it into every brown bag and left them on the counter as well. Once word got circulated in the government buildings just two blocks away, things exploded and they had to hire extra help just to keep up. Now - thanks to a five page site - they make more money in a single day, than they used to in a week.

What about other local businesses? How does the service garage or hair stylist use the internet to their advantage? Consider your dentist as a prime example. Do they send you a postcard when its time for a cleaning? Or do they phone you and book an appointment? Mine phones me. It's proactive marketing at its finest.

Yes, make a web site and please optimize it for the search engines using your city name, but don't wait for customers to come to you. Go to them! Say I've been going to the same garage for a couple of years. If they want to keep me as a customer for life, why don't they put my car's entire maintenance profile into their computers.

Not only could I budget for regular scheduled maintenance, they could email me to remind me its time. If I get a little lazy and don't come in, they could always followup a month later for a spring tune up, or get ready for winter special. Don't laugh. This is not as far fetched as it seems. I know of several companies that have programmed "maintenance" software and are busy trying to sell it to car service centers.

The hair stylist can email me saying its been six weeks. Its time for a hair cut. We reserved your usual date and time for you. Please let us know if this time does not work out for you. They could also build goodwill by emailing a birthday greeting or sending product coupons I can give to my friends.

Put a local business on the web? You bet. Of course you should. Even if its only a five page site. Just be sure to put your city name in your web page titles and at the bottom of every single page. Not only will local people find you, you just might start making more money. A LOT MORE money.

If you would like to know more about promoting local businesses on the web, my friend Sharon Fling has written a "getting started guide" that does just that... You know who you are . You're one of those dozen or so email I get every day asking, "Where do I start with all this? I'm a plumber or a carpenter, or I have a bakery, garage, retail store, accounting firm, drug store, notary, practice, fly fishing shop, dry cleaner, grocery store, shoe repair, tailor, hair salon, etc...

Regardless of WHAT city your small business or service business is in, Sharon CLEARLY defines what the internet is, how to use it to your advantage, and provides enough info to make you dangerous to web site designers. You'll ask the right questions, stay on time and budget, and get an internet presence that suits your needs.

You can find out more about Sharon's ebook, "How to Promote Your Local Business on the Internet" using the link below.

http://www.cdzn.com/plb

Q - Last issue you wrote about Google and Authority style pages. You wrote, "Don't use more than five links on an Authority style page." What's an Authority style page?

A - An Authority page is part of the PageRank scheme that Google uses to determine your ranking on their search engine. Think of an Authority as the final destination of your keyword search, where detailed information, or answers to your questions can be found. Its a page rich in content with many incoming links but very few links going out.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Hub style page. A Hub page is the opposite of an Authority page. Like a portal or directory, it contains many links out. Sometimes 20 sometimes 500. Hubs being the source of links, generally link to Authority pages.

If you put too many links on an Authority page you weaken its PageRank. After you start putting more than about five links on an Authority page, you start loosing PageRank and start leaning more towards being a weak Hub as opposed to a strong Authority. Hope this helps.

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Q - You always say to get IP addresses that are far apart, to spread your hosting around, or not on the same C class block. I asked my hosting company and they said it shouldn't matter to the search engines. I don't get the C class block relation either.

A - Links to "same topic" sites on the same C class block are given less "weight" or points because of Web Map Filtering. At least three major search engines employ this technology. This is to prevent people from setting up networks on one hosting company and linking to their own sites to boost popularity.

Usually an entire C class block is given to one hosting company, which exists in ONE geographic location. What the engines want to see is several IP addresses that are FAR APART linking to your site. This means - to them - that the links are completely legitimate, coming from several hosting companies or geographical locations in the world and given full weight or ranking points.

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Q - I have a friend with a web site. They show various cakes that people can order and buy. It's only for local people because the cakes are delicate and spoil too quickly to ship. I think they could do way more business than they are now, but their site needs work.

Also, if you search for cakes, or wedding cakes, or birthday cakes, their site is nowhere to be found in the search engines. Any help would be appreciated.

A - This reminds me of the first day at design school. The prof gave us a design assignment as a test. After working on the project for two hours, all designs were posted on the critique board, where one at a time, the entire class critiqued each other's work. What we quickly found out, none of us - save one with ad agency experience - knew anything about design.

In fact, this site - no offense intended - looks as though it was done by someone's nephew. It's the opposite of everything mentioned in this newsletter. Unfortunately, its also representative of many local business web sites out there.

At first glance there's a Javascript on the home page that doesn't do much. Just a little text animation. It works on PC but not on the Mac. Take it out or risk alienating a portion of your audience. It also hampers your search engine rankings. When I hit 10 different fonts and 10 different colors, I stopped counting. Remember, pick two or three colors and fonts, create a harmony and use them throughout your site. Pick up a basic website design book at any book store, and look at the before and after makeovers.

Design using a grid and stick to a particular template throughout the site. Some pages draw fine while others look like a train wreck. Stick to the same widths of tables and try to make the overall look and feel consistent. Several of the links going to the home page don't work. Always double check every link on every page before and after transferring files to your server.

There's lots of pictures of cakes, but no pictures of people. Are you really in the business of selling cakes? Or is your business spreading joy though the happiness your cakes bring? See what I mean? Bring the human element to your pages. Show a wedding. Show a birthday. Show people enjoying your product with smiles and warm embraces. That's what people really want from your cakes.

Show your staff behind the counters with big smiles on their faces. Show them holding a cake up for the customer to see. Show the smile on the customer's face as they are handed the cake.

It's nice that you do have a picture of every cake, but they are dull and grey looking. The icing is not white. Most have a green tinge to them. That means the photos were taken under florescent lights without color correction. A little nudge to the green channel using Photoshop would easily fix that up.

As for search engine optimization. Most of the basics were missed. All you would need to do is put the city names in the page title, url, at the top of the page in headline tags and at the bottom of every page. A low cost ebook like the SEO Fast Start by Dan Thies tells you exactly how to do this - http://www.cdzn.com/fast

This site shows promise and potential. Most of it however remains unlocked. I do like the maps showing store locations and hours of operation. I also like testimonials from newspapers and all the community awards. Now all that's needed is a color harmony. A set of fonts. A focused look and feel. More human elements. Fixing of the photos. And a little SEO work.

Given these changes, there's no reason why you couldn't be at the top of the search engines and have maximum credibility in the eyes of the consumer.

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Q - I'm trying to understand your advice on home page design. It should be focused content, full of keywords and written expressly for the engines, but with only a couple of links? How do I link up to 18 products, including product descriptions?

A - That's right. For best results - generally speaking - the home page should be information based, keyword rich, and have no more than one to three links on it. One of which leads to an internal site map or directory page.

From the directory page, link out to all 18 of your products. Put each product on its own highly-focused page. Be sure to use keywords in links, both to and from the directory page. The home page acts not only to attract search engines, but to state your brand or USP (unique selling proposition) in the opening sentences.

You should clearly state what your web site is all about, in the opening headline. State what people can get from you, they can't possibly get anywhere else, and why they would be crazy not to deal with you.

Use your USP as a negative qualifier so that you avoid unwanted traffic and frustrated users. In other words, if you sell life insurance, you don't want car insurance visitors. Be sure to tell them clearly, right at the start, that term life is your only business.

The other trick is to monetize that negative traffic. Since you don't sell car insurance, the visitor is going to leave your site anyway. You may as well provide a way for them to leave. An exit link.

Put up a car insurance link for them to click on, and drive the departing visitor through your favorite - car insurance - affiliate program. Monetize everything! Especially the traffic leaving your site.

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The above answers have been reprinted with permission from Michael Campbell and Dynamic Media Corporation, Inc. and is copyright 2000-2003. Michael is a well-known Internet marketer and a leading search engine specialist who also publishes a free newsletter called Internet Marketing Secrets.

Campbell gives you FREE heavy hitting SEO information. To qualify, join to his superb newsletter. Once inside, send your questions to one of his email addresses and I guarantee a personal professional response within couple of hours.

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