Home pages MUST rule. That is, if you think about it, you get one chance and once chance only to impress the website visitor enough that they want to “stick” on your website long enough to learn enough to get them to contact you or buy something. You get one chance. And that one chance comes from your home page, where they first “meet” your site and your abilities, eh!

“Meet,” you ask? What do I mean? Well, its the home page where folks land that will either convince the website visitor that yes, this is a site where they can spend a few more clicks to learn about your skills, your products or your services to make an informed decision to contact you for more information. This is the page that pre-sells your prospective client/customer to “buy-in” to the next step, of sticking around for a few minutes. Anything else in todays world, means they jump away and take that opportunity to sell something to them with them. Bub-bye!

So, if the home page is so important, and if you’re whole online existance is dependant on what it shows a prospective client/customer, then what are some rules to follow in making same “sticky” to attract drill-downs that will end with a “call to action”? Ah…well, here’s the most important rule, in my mind — your English usage!

I CAN NOT TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES I’ve been in SEO forums or web boards or message pits and have seen the same type of #1 issue with this arise…that people who think that they’ve developed the best of the best websites in their channel, simply have no bloody idea! Mostly it’s because they are non English speaking site owners or developers and they not only do not understand grammar, spelling, idioms and slang, but that they get so dang upset when you point that out to them! I’ve been sworn at, had my email bombed with spam, have had my online rep trashed (or they at least threatened to do that) and overall, been told that I’m a racist or too too old to know s**t or too stupid to understand the ‘modern’ web world or too anti-pickanycountry- ist and lastly, yes, against their country because of where on the globe it sits. Honestly, that’s the kind of flack I’ve taken for pointing out just how poor their site is trying to communicate!

I’m pretty sick of it, I must admit and for the most part, I’ve about given those “Site Review” threads a wide berth in the past year or so. I don’t need the hassle, but I do want to make this point here….

That if you think you want to sell something to somebody online, then you need to do it in the most professional, best practices methodology to gain that new client or customer. And that means that you need to use perfect English, if the site sells to the English speaking world. You can NOT get away with second rate grammar. You must spell all the words you use correctly. If you use metaphors  or anythink like that, remember that they must be used properly and must be “on point” too! If you use idioms, then they too must be “spot-on” to once again ensure that your point is valid. Why, you ask?

Because of the general approach that all of us have, when we first think of searching for a product or a service. You need to “sell” to a visitor and you get one chance to make that first impression. Once chance to prove to them that your domain is THE ONE to contact.

Want to sell me a new furnace, for example? Well, as my kids will be living in my house and your furnace uses/burns natural gas, then I must feel that you have not only good pricing for that furnace, but that your installation team will follow the best practices when they do the installation too.  My family is at stake here, and if I get even a glimpse, a peek into your domains inability to follow the best of all practical methods of furance installation — via — your inablity to spell words right on your homepage — you get ZERO trust from me! And I surf away!

Give this a try. Go to your homepage and read it — better yet, ask a few of your current clients or customers to take a “hard look” at your home page and then get back to you with their own opinions. Include in the guidelines that you want to know if the copy on the page makes sense? Does it flow? Does it make them think that you DO know your business too? And anything but positive feedback here, means you need to look at that homepage with a fresh eye, eh!

Anything else, means you’ll never do well by never establishing TRUST to get online sales, eh! But don’t worry, you’re not alone….there’s hundreds of millions of sites just like yours….sigh….

Well, the interesting part of all of the competing nations and their striving to win gold medals is the search patterns layed down by global or nationalistic searchers….and that shows peaks that are very interesting, eh!

Ably reported just yesterday by Google themselves on their Official Google Blog in this manner –

“During the past two weeks, athletes from around the world competed at the Games in Vancouver. While these thousands strove for gold, millions around the world searched for “2010 Winter Olympics, 밴쿠버 동계올림픽 (Korean for “Vancouver Winter Olympics”), and Juegos Olimpicos de Invierno 2010 (Spanish for “2010 Olympic Winter Games”) using Google search. Now that the medals have been handed out, we thought we’d take a moment to share how some people from around the world searched for information about the Games.”

The full piece goes on to show how various nations citizens searched for items related to the 2010 Olympics and covered Norway, Japan, Korea, the U.S. and yes, Canada too!

“Canada:
Canada was not only the host — it also won the most gold medals of any region during any such games. Like the U.S., interest began with the opening ceremonies, and was dominated by men’s hockey queries, causing a huge spike during the gold-medal game on February 28 as well as smaller spikes for games against USA (February 21) and Russia (February 24). The final women’s hockey game against the U.S. on February 25 also caused a small bump in searches.”

As you can see, over the period from Feb 12th to Feb 28th, we peaked during what can be seen as the “important” event dates for what Canucks seemed to be interested in knowing more about….the Opening Ceremonies, Can/US hockey game day, Can/Russia hockey game day and yes the all important final day Gold Medal hockey game too…won I’d very much like to add by Canada!

 As well, it also appears when taken from this article on the Google Blog, that we canucks were much twice as much more likely to search for “Vancouver 2010″ or “medal count” on Google, which ain’t bad for a country of 34 million, eh!

So, GO Canada….and yes, IMHO, we DID own the Podium, eh!

Why do I say that and what kind of proof can I offer that if you actively blog about your business, you’ll gain traffic? Simple, really…the kind folks over at HubSpot have just done a study showing that what we too have been preaching to our clients, is spot-on, eh!

Companies that blog have far better marketing results and specifically, the average company that blogs has:

• 55% more visitors
• 97% more inbound links
• 434% more indexed pages

Just take a look at this bar chart  and you tell me what do you notice?

Yup, just what we have been saying for the past 2 years, eh! That is you blog about your business online actively, i.el you post oftern, that you too will enjoy increased SEO success from more website visits from prospective new customers/clients. That is because your own blog readers will likely find something engaging and proceed to learn more about both you and your company too! And as you can see the difference between the no blog/blog sites is pretty dramatic too! If you have a blog, it’s quite clear that you will gain both SEO success and referrals too from various searches and past customers/clients as well! Now that’s good news, eh?

For more information, you should zip over to HubSpot and read some of their marketing library items that offer up great tips and techniques to get your own marketing campaign underway. Here’s a terrific link to a starting point that lists out for you 6 Reasons Every Small Business should be Blogging!

Maybe you’re really “brand new” to Social Media, and might be thinking…’so, why’d I ever even need to consider Social Media marketing for my SME business…’ and the answer to that is yes online too! Take a look/see at that short presentation for Canadian SME business owners and then pop right back here for my list below…

Want to learn more? Then click on some of the links below to learn the ‘hows and why’s of how Social Media can help build your business by providing you with solid information to use, to follow and to succeed with too!

Social Media Examiner is a very interesting website, that uses a graphically cartoonish look but still provides great online articles and information for the social media newbie! What I especially like is the overall conversational tone of all their well researched pieces and how they list solid items for consideration at the same time. Take a look around the site too, they’ve got some interesting videos available as well as the standard tools sections too listed on the home page. For a great look at how they see the whole Twitter experience, make sure to read their “4 Ways to to Use Twitter to Capture Customers”  too!

One of the best known online resources for the traditional whitepaper research model, is HubSpot! They have a host of various items available and they do tend to update that area with new arrivals on a regular basis too. These are traditional Adobe Acrobat .pdf whitepapers that you can simply download to your own computer and read or print out and read at a later time. One of the best in a bit, is a new one there called “How to Use Facebook for Business” which is a 22 page .pdf that once again has topnotch advice and can help you learn just how to get onto Facebook with a business viewpoint and start to earn credibility and reputation in an online channel! There are others there too and the last one (at least on today’s page) is also pretty good I know after downloading and reading same myownself, eh! Never too busy to find time to learn, I always say! And if that’s not enough, then add their HubSpot blog to your daily reading list too, as it always has something for the SME business owner to consider as well!

Another great spot for both online articles and guides/research papers is the Marketing Profs site that has tons and I mean tons of information available to the SME business owner who wants to learn more! Try the link on their home page to their Marketing Resources area and you’ll be able to see the vast number of pieces that they have ready for you — and yes, while many are free, this site also offers up a membership, their PRO network that can add even more information for you to view at a cost of course. But there is still quite a bit of information available for the Free memberships too, and even I see, a Trial PRO membership as well if you want to test the value proposition first! Try this free one — “Why Social, Mobile, and Email Are BFFs (Not Archenemies)” –  just published today, to see if they’re worth the visit…and I know you’ll agree!

While I’ve only outlined three online resources, there are of course thousands more and a simple google for “online social media marketing” gets over 200 million hits…so yup, pretty popular a topic I’d say….give this some time for consideration, I’d say…and remember, you need to be able to bring many different and valid tactics to any online marketing strategy, and Social Media is one of them, eh!

UPDATE: Just found this great piece on Marketing Sherpa, that explains with an actual case study, how using Social Media marketing can bring in new sales and boost credibility within their channel at the same time! Great piece!!!

And how big exactly is 411.ca, when it comes to online searches? Their latest stats show that 411.ca has close to 10% on online users generating 13 million queries for local Canadian businesses each month! They state quite clearly, that they are the most visited online LOCAL search engine in Canada, with over 2 million Canadians using their services to find more than 1.5 million LOCAL online business listings!

Now, that’s a claim that needs some notice, eh? Realizing that for most of us, that huge yellow paged book sits in a kitchen or office drawer, for the most part ignored by us all, online searches for businesses is the most efficient, real-time method to find a listing for a business you’re looking for at any given time.

We know that these listings come in many guises in the 411.ca directory, from basic free ones to full premiere listings for fees, we believe that if you run a business somewhere in Canada — you need to be on same!

Go to their “Add your Business” page and begin the process of getting that listing, to help your firm get “found” online….and remember, if new customers or clients can NOT find you, then you’re giving them the opportunity to find your competitors, eh!

What a hoot, eh?

And as I see it, this is true belief that at least if one of the continent’s best known biz humour artists think that our industry is worth noticing — then we’ve arrived, eh!

Here’ s the one from yesterday that caught my eye and gave me a real chuckle….

Watch for more in your own daily paper or visit the Adams website here to see them online….

Like Dilbert, we canucks do, eh! And while it appears that this might be a “single” SEO comic to begin with, I like the idea that he just might revisit our world on a regular basis!

Oh, it’ll take about another 8 to 10 months to fully implement that take-over, but effectively the longest serving competitor to Google has been eaten up by BING, which launched last year.  With Google having over 90% of all searches use it’s site/index, Yahoo was stuck at around 4% and BING after lauching recently acheived around 4% or so….which will now put the combined Yahoo/BING numbers at less than 10%. But, so what, you ask?

Well, what has happened is that MS via it’s BING search engine has now positioned itself as the only real Google competitor after this business maneuver. They intend it appears to continue to compete in the search engine channel against what can only be described as Google’s monolithic hold on that industry. Think about it for a second or two…this business merger has just been okayed by both the US and European regulators. It vets the position that while you will still be able to search using Yahoo’s search buttons — the results do NOT come from their own algorithms, but in fact will be supplied ‘back door style’ from BING, using Microsoft’s own algorithms to show results. But that’s not all the news, eh!

In fact, while the search engine that BING provides will power both BING and Yahoo, the new advertising partnership, will entail Yahoo selling premium search advertising services for both companies, is a frontal assault on Google. Yahoo does advertising for both firms and MS via BING provides search resultst…a splitting of capabilities, but now merged under one roof, eh! Google as you all know, has long dominated the search market, but to be honest here, I think that Google is used to this kind of attack. I mean really, when you’re #1 — ALL the competitors are gunning for you and even when to take into account the huge SIZE of this new alliance attack by Microsoft and Yahoo, how scared can you be, eh! Swatting mosquitos is maybe the term to think of, in my opinion!

So, to us canuck SEO practitioners, what does all this matter? It means that even more now, we depend upon Google for our rankings and client traffic!

Well judging by stats, about 10 folks out of 100 use some “other” search engine than Google, to find what they’re looking for….so we’re talking first of all about a small minority! Next, of those 10 searchers, only about 8 or so will be using the BING/Yahoo search engines to find stuff — so we’re again talking about tinier minorities here…and IMHO, Google has the right to not be worried at all. Neither Microsoft via BING nor Yahoo had any success competing for search engine stats before, so combined, they’re even less of a worry as BING’s algorithm really and truly is a teensy player.

But us SEO types think about this from a slightly different point of view….because we think of optimizing your sites for ranking success. And as of today, we’re all on notice that there is one fewer search engine to nurture, to nourish to, to develop into showing our clients with the best possible rankings…and that’s a bit of news that we will all react to! Here at KKT INTERACTIVE, we run the Top 10 search engines for all of our clients as a matter of course, and with today’s news we can at some point this year, drop the Yahoo/Yahoo Canada engines as those numbers will be exactly the same as the BING serp results…so what we’ve now got is the Top 8 results only. More and more, Google dominates and that’s not a good thing for the globe, in my opinion. And what that also means is that we SEO types who need to provide skills to gain traffic for our clients, need to find “other” ways to find that traffic…and with Yahoo now gone, we need to widen our search too!

Sigh….search engines morph daily with their algorithms and their results, it’s true…and while this makes our job slightly easier, to be honest, I will miss Yahoo….been running their optimization tactics for over a decade and it’s just sad to see them go, eh! Oh well, off to find some new search engines to replace them, eh!

• A great SEO Blog opinion…much like my own, eh!
• Yahoo Search Press Release…
• Network World Story….
• Computer World Article…

Think marketingsherpa.com! That’s a marketing site that is chock full of various research, one can look over in all online channels, to help you and your clients (or if you are the client yourself too!) to learn about just how to succeed in marketing your site/services/products to succcess!

Billed as “a research firm specializing in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not)…” they publish great research and this latest report is no surprise either! Social Media marketing is HOT-HOT-HOT and this report, though priced at almost $400 US, can help you plan out your own firms — or your clients — social media strategy plans to succeed at driving new traffic and revenue streams to your websites!

Let’s look at a short piece from their Report Excerpt, shall we?

This area concerns Social Media Budgets and how they will change in 2010 and this can be very important to the Marketing Department for any firm and here’s a pull quote from same… 

“Chances are your overall marketing budget was hit hard by the economy in 2009 and the prospect of recovering a substantial portion of these funds in 2010 is not very likely. But there is good news for social media marketers. This chart shows that social marketing will benefit from very significant budget increases in the year ahead no matter what industry your organization is in. What this chart doesn’t show is come.

“As a relatively new and rapidly emerging tactic, social media is generally funded by either increasing the overall budget or, more often than not in the current economic climate, by shifting funds from other marketing line items to social media. Social marketing budgets are growing at the expense of other tactics and a deeper dive into this study will show you which ones and to what extent.

The human factor will account for nearly 60% of social marketing expenditures next year including staff salaries for blogging, content development, social monitoring, etc. Another 20% of the budget will go outside the organization to agencies, consultancies and other social marketing service providers.”

This area points out rather specifically that yes, social media budgets will undoubtedly be increased as a result of decreasing budgets to other normal marketing channel expenditures…with over 60% of those budgets being salaries/payments etc made to staff/third parties for items like (ready for it?) blogging, content development and social media montoring! Imagine that, blogging salaries as more and more firms/SEO types turn towards social media as a tactic to increase their SEO Campaigns…

Ahh….good news IMHO and I hope you’d agree too, as we pointed out the results just a few weeks ago about how Blogs can help a firm or SEO practitioner to increase SEO rankings for clients! Truly good news!

Go to the site via this link here to get the copy of the Report Excerpt…read same, and then if you truly want to learn more – go here to the actual page for the purchase of same. Valid research, from a well known online marketing company with research reports available on many many topics for both clients and SEO practitioners, eh!

Oh, and do drop by the site too at least weekly — they publish a great “chart of the week” and this one below. I wanted to wanted to know how various organizations allocated their online marketing budgets for each of the following tactics, including personnel, media and other direct costs — and marketingsherpa.com provided just that info! And guess how much of that budget went to Social Media marketing and it appears that this is now in 2010 rated at 11%…all of which is good to know, eh?

As you  may remember and most likely know, …we work hard each and every day on our canuck seo clients accounts so while our blog is important, we’re still just a bit too small to be able to write each and every day on breaking SEO news. That said, look here most likely on a Friday for our “potpourri” column on all things of note in SEO!

First up today, is a great infographic from the folks over at DIY SEO, and it’s all about where the marketing spend dollars are being used — and we note quite happily that older generational spends (like newspaper advertising) is decreasing while new media (read SEO here!) dollars are increasing nicely!

This is good news for all of us involved in both SEO and/or new media as the stats come from Forrester, one of the best research companies around and points out just where the increases and the decreases are coming from in marketing budgets. We like of course that there are nice gains shown in the SEO area, but also we note in social media, PPC and email marketing too.

And I do like the artwork too — those folks over at DIY SEO are still in private beta, but once they announce and go live, we’ll of course take the tour and report back on their attempt to bring SEO to small business via a DIY strategy. This is not easy to even countenance, but we’ll await their launch and cover same here on our Canadian SEO blog! So, more to come, eh!

Once again, we find that the SEO troop over at Greenlight have again produced a nice  global SEO search engine marketshare infographic that points out just who gets what percentage of daily searches, and while I knew some of the numbers, it was Russia and China’s numbers that were the most surprising. And wow, do those Italians and Spanish users LOVE Google, eh!

On the whole topic of Greenlight themselves, it just might behoove the SEO interested reader to drop by their SEO blog on a regular basis to read up on their take of what’s important, SEO-wise over in the UK. We added that blog to our own daily visit reading list and they usually have some pretty good articles on SEO from over the pond, eh! And it never hurts to learn as much as you can if you’re interested in SEO!

Had to add this one too, eh! The people who run this site at searchengineoptimization.elliance.com, have a great sense too of what to show in an infographic, and I love this one! To quote them they say “Tapping into what already exists online such as photos on Flickr and reviews on Yelp gives users a richer experience. From a search perspective, this infographic illustrates how including all the social media content on your site could also prompt other sites to link to your site. This in turn will help drive up your rankings in the search engines…” and that about spells out the “new” social media meme! Add them to your list too — I did already!

New to us is the humour piece I’ve shown here, a comic actually, from a great site on SEO humour, at Social Media Fish’s site. Funny? You bet! SEO hip? You bet! I added them to my list too!  You should see their Google suggestion piece on their full blog…priceless, eh!

Yup, there’s lots that’s funny in an SEO practitioner’s life, and these guys got that covered! Give them a look see and you’ll chuckle like I did, eh!

I hear you. And I’m the same, I totally love what I do and can’t wait to get up each morning and into the office and at my computer to see what’s what and who’s who in the SEO world. I receive over 300 emails daily and after deleteing all the spammy ones there’s still about half to go through….and I love it! It’s me — but I also know one more thing, that I only can go so long, so far without giving back to my community.

Huh? Well, what I mean in a larger sense is, that we provide SEO for a couple of local clients on a pro bono basis to try to give back to them and thru that donation, back to our community. Let me explain a bit better…

We have clients, who we work for doing their SEO Campaigns, and we love that. We work hard and we test and empirically justify all of our work and our efforts on their behalf. This consumes our week (and sometimes weekends too) on an ongoing basis and for that, we are greatful and happy to provide our best professional services for them.

But we also, do exactly the same thing – the same hard working on the full line up of tasks for a couple of pro bono clients too, that is, we do those SEO Campaigns for free….for not a red cent as we think that working on behalf of a selfless non-profit who aids our community as the “right” thing to do. We cut no corners, nor do we work on their accounts in any “second-class” manner — they get exactly the same quality SEO work that our biggest clients get too….and that’s a fact we insist on.

And while yes, it makes the weeks longer and yes, it doesn’t help to pay for the phone bills or ISP charges…but there is a larger thing here at work — the fulfillment that you feel when you help others who are engaged in helping your own community and it’s citizens.

That kind of work, cant’ really even be called work, eh…it’s more of almost a feeling of “doing one’s duty” and trying to help all via the channel that you’re particularily good at. Sure, I could (and do of course) send in donations and help by serving on boards and advisory councils — but in my line of work what I can do that appears to be a “best practices” thing is to do what I can do best for those who can’t afford to pay for it. It works, simply put and we enjoy that immensely too!

And it wouldn’t be fair nor totally honest to not add, that in reality, we do get paid for that SEO Campaign in the end…how’s that you ask?

• Well, we get paid by feeling good about ourselves first of all…which I’d suppose is selfish, but honest.
• We get paid because our pro bono clients get new incremental traffic which brings them new business and donations and clients of their own.
• We get paid because while it’s not well known by many others locally, the few who do know, have always acknowledged our work privately to us and it’s most appreciated!
• And lastly, and perhaps the best thing of all, is that we get paid simply by the smile we always get when we drop by a pro bono clients offices….it’s muchly appreciated and a feel-good situation that is never old, never stale and in fact, what makes us want to do that again next year too!

So, point of this post is? Simple really….find your own pro bono clients and help your own community by giving back! You’ll feel as good as we do and in that way both you and your community gain, eh!