Questions To Ask An SEO Consultant

OK, you've decided you really don't know what you're doing.

You've decided you probably don't stand a chance of getting your website top ranked, in your lifetime, using your current strategy.

Maybe you've spent three or four months and haven't seen your rank at Google budge.

Worse, it may have actually fallen!

The good news: The same thing is happening to everyone.

The bad news: Frankly, the world of search engine optimization (SEO) is getting more complicated, taking more time, and requires more expertise than ever before.

If you're going to hire an SEO consultant (or company) to optimize your website and get better positioning in the search engines, for the keywords you are targeting, here are some of the questions you'll want to ask:

1) Can we see your client list?

2) Can we see their top positions?

Questions To Ask An SEO Consultant

Generate More Revenue From Your Website With Bridaluxe

The other day I got a heads up on a interesting resource for wedding
professionals. The company is Bridaluxe and its founder, Jeff James and I had a conversation about what they're up to.

Bridaluxe is an affiliate network that helps people in the wedding industry make money from their website. Let's say you're a florist and you have a website with photos of your work, testimonials and a lead generation form. As an affiliate you can also have a section of wedding products and articles from Bridaluxe. When your visitor makes a purchase from one of the Bridaluxe merchants, you make a commission.

Will you get rich quick? Not likely. But if you're already out there
pounding the virtual pavement to bring brides and grooms to your site, the program provides you with an additional source of revenue. You get a lead for your wedding cake business, and you also sell a cake topper. Not bad!

Bridaluxe is unique because it's the only affiliate marketing network
catering exclusively to weddings. There are plenty of smaller programs out there, but the "network" concept allows the company to roll together an impressive 4,000+ products from 24 merchants.

If you're interested in learning more, visit the website or give Jeff
James a call or email. He is enthusiastic about Bridaluxe, is eager to
answer questions and help even a novice affiliate get started.

Visit: http://www.bridaluxe.com

Free Internet Marketing Tips for Wedding Professionals

Marketing To Brides Online

Starting June 2, 2008 I am switching to Constant Contact to deliver my Internet Marketing for Wedding Professionals newsletter.

The move was prompted by many of my subscribers who were telling me they had problems with receiving my newsletter or other email messages from me.

If you would like to continue to receive my FREE Internet marketing tips and advice for Wedding Professionals please (re)subscribe using the option below.

Internet Marketing for Wedding Professionals will help you:

* Get better results from your website
* Increase your inquiries 30%, 40%, or more!
* Get better search engine rank with Google
* Convert more brides who visit your website into inquiries and sales
* BOOK MORE WEDDINGS !!!

If you are already a subscriber you'll have to renew your subscription.

If you are a new subscriber, use the same link!

http://www.bookmoreweddings.com/public/317.cfm

Search Engine Optimization: Who Has The Time?

One of the problems with search engine optimization is getting your hands around it.

It's very often explained incorrectly or in terms that make you want to turn, run, and leave the room. If your websmaster can't clearly explain what, why and how in 10 to 15 minutes you probably need to fire your webmaster (there are a lot of things webmasters don't tell their clients).

Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important. Showing up in what are called the "organic" listings, "natural" listings, or "free" listings on a search engine results page (SERP) can add thousands of dollars to your bottom line and increase your sales dramatically (100%, 200%, or more - I've seen it first hand).

Here's the case for search engine optimization:

* More than 300,000,000 million searches are performed every day
* More than 183 million searches per day in just the US
* 40-90% of websites are found through search engines
* 80% of users start an Internet session searching for something
* 70-75% start at Google
* Over one-half of all Internet users search at least once a day

There are two factors that deterimine the search engine ranking of your website:

* Site optimization
* Site popularity

Getting your website top ranked at Google doesn't just magically happen. It takes an expert, strategy, and patience.

Why Isn't My Website Working? (2)

OK...

Number #2 on my list is poor design, specifically poor first impression.

Keep in mind, the bar on this Internet marketing thing keeps getting raised and one way it does is when your competitor bites the bullet and goes out and gets a professional designer to design a new website for him/her.

When your website leaves a poor first impression, when a bride has visited four other websites... she's probably looking for something BETTER.

Good design means it looks very professional (not home grown), it has colorful, eye-catching graphics, with happy brides and grooms, with easy-to-read text that delivers a strong marketing message.

Good design means your page loads very quickly, with no hesitation or errors (which can spook a bride into thinking you're doing something to her computer).

There is a lot of bad Internet marketing advice going around and too many Internet marketing myths to keep track of, frankly.

Why Isn't My Website Working? (1)

I get asked this question a lot:

Q: Why isn't my website working?

Today I'll start a series of posts that answer that question. As you might guess, there are many reasons a bride might leave your website. I call it "bail-out" and Google calls it a bounce (if she leaves in less than 60 seconds or doesn't click on another link at your website).

#1 Give A Bride What She Came For

You can have all the traffic in the world but if you don't give brides what they came for - they just leave.

A bride wants to know five things:

* What you do?

* What you will do for her?

* Why you are different than the last five websites she's visited (unique value proposition)?

* What you have done for others (testimonials)?

* How to contact you?

Believe it or not, you have about 8 seconds to deliver this information on your home page. You do this with WORDS (your marketing copy) and PICTURES( that support and re-emphasize the message in your marketing copy).

If I visited your home page today, would I be able to tell what you do, where you do it, what you'll do for me, why you are different than your competition (because I was just at their website too)? Do you show me happy customers (pictures and testimonials) and do you give me at least six options on every page to contact you or get to your contact form?

Successfully marketing to brides online takes careful planning and optimized execution. Nine out of ten brides are using the Internet for their wedding planning. If you're not getting the results you expected from your website drop me a line.

Distraction Points Quickly and Adversely Impact Conversion

Marketing to brides online is more competitive than ever before.

The brides are out there on the Internet and everyone in the wedding industry knows it. It's hard enough to get quality traffic to your website these days, the last thing you want to do is lose a bride once she finds your site.

There are a handful of things that very quickly turn a bride who finds your website into a "bounce" (she stays less than 60 seconds or hits her browser's BACK button).

When I review a website I look for what I call "distraction points" and here is my list of the most common ones...

Wedding Business Today Officially Launched

I'm pleased to announce the launch of Wedding Business Today (.com).

Stop by and take a look. Each day, Monday through Friday, we'll be posting news, information, and resources related to the wedding industry that will help you stay in touch and help you marketing to brides.

If you have news about your company, a press release, a new website, a promotion... anything... let me know and I'd be glad to post it.

We'll be out in print later this year. Be sure to sign-up at the website for your subscription.

Visit Wedding Business Today (.com).

Marketing To Brides: Wedding Fashion

Here are the returns (pages that match) at Google for the following keywords:

wedding gowns - 3,850,000

"wedding gowns" - 3,790,000

wedding dresses - 9,440,000

"wedding dresses" - 9,740,000

YIKES!

Traffic Building Strategies (Overview)

Today I was giving a seminar on Traffic Building Strategies. I thought I'd share my overview with a few brief notes:

Traffic Building Strategies

Organic Search Engine Optimization: Optimizing your website and the pages there to acheive top ranked listings in the search engine results pages.

Link Building: Building links to your website using link exchanges, asking for inbound links, and creating links from your website. Links have traffic value and SEO value.

Advertising: Break out your wallet, online advertising is almost a requirement to compete online these days. The days of free traffic are probably mostly over.

PPC/SEM: Pay-per-click (Google Adwords) or search engine marketing.

Word of Mouth: Still works! You can't beat the results when a bride posts a nice comment about you in an online bulletin board (like at http://www.talkaboutweddings.com/).

Blogging: Works! Easy, fast, cost-effective and provides a great return on investment. Increases your overall online visibility, helps your SEO, good stuff.

Web 2.0: YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Offline: Integrate your offline marketing to promote your website. "Visit our website for free worksheets and additional information to help you plan your {wedding photography}."

Chris Jaeger
Book More Weddings
http://www.bookmoreweddings.com/

Get the ADVANTAGE for your website. More traffic, more brides, more inquiries, more sales.

Google Adwords

Often understanding the concept of how something works leads to better use.

But in the world we live in "fire, ready, aim" are words that come to mind and I've been accused of applying.

Who has the time to figure all of this stuff out.

Plus Google makes using Adwords look so easy.

Many of my clients don't understand Adwords (which is why I manage it for them).

For those of you who want a better understanding of Google Adwords you'll find this explaination and documentation very helpful and valuable.

If you're new to the entire Adwords playground you may want to start with this glossary of terms.

Adwords works. If you are using Adwords and it's not working for you two things are the likely problem: (1) you don't have it set-up correctly, (2) your website has a conversion problem and can't turn a qualified click/visitor into a desired form of action (inquiry, phone call, sale).

Chris Jaeger
Book More Weddings
http://www.bookmoreweddings.com/

Get the ADVANTAGE for your website. More traffic, more brides, more inquiries, more sales.

Creating A Better User Experience Using Breadcrumbs

Marketing to brides online is very competitive. One way to turn more of the brides who find your website (assuming they are finding it) into inquiries, phone calls, and sales (known as "conversion") is to create a more user-friendly experience at your website.

Simple enough, right?

One way to do this is to create easier to use navigation - the links to/from and between the pages at your website. These links are called "bread crumbs" and they are simple links that appear in a primary navigation system, usually at the top of a page (but not bad if they're found at the bottom of a page either, where people scroll down and then say "what do I do now?").

Here is a screen shot from my Wedding Planning Links directory.

It shows how bread crumbs are created and used at the top of a page. They allow a user who has "drilled down" in the directory to very easily "click back" to the main Orlando wedding vendors page.

* Click the image for a larger, clearer view!

Navigation is a key component to not only user-experience (better navigation equals better user-experience equals better results from your web site), but also is critical to search engine optimization and crawling.

Chris Jaeger
Book More Weddings
http://www.bookmoreweddings.com/

Get the ADVANTAGE for your website. More traffic, more brides, more inquiries, more sales.