Anyone who knows me very well understands that I like a good boy band song every now and then – something to lighten things up every once in a while. But you can take away a lot more than predictable music from these Pop and R&B stars. In fact, there are a few business lessons to be learnt from looking closely at the boy band model.

Define your niche and stick to it

When you used to buy the latest boy band album you knew exactly what you were getting. Even without listening to it, you knew almost exactly what the songs would sound like. Boy bands don’t do country music, they don’t do jazz, they have their niche well defined and stick to it.

There is a ton of money to be made in the smallest of niches. Whether you are passionate about wine or perhaps something as unique as scrapbooking, if you’re willing to put in the work to make it happen, there is money in almost anything.

Don’t try to please everyone

Boy bands pull on the heart strings of teenage girls. Sure, their audience might extend past that and the people purchasing their CDs will go beyond that as well, but the majority of the attention they get is from this market. They don’t really care if 20-something guys like me enjoy their music or not because they are still getting rich from killing it in their niche and by pleasing their target market.

Not only can you make money in a well defined niche like scrapbooking, but it’s also important to know your target market and audience. Have a product tailored to new moms? Stop wasting your time trying to sell it to Dads if they aren’t interested in it. Spend your time making it even better and more appealing to new moms.

Size doesn’t matter despite what people think

How many boy bands have you heard of with over 5 people in them? Most boy bands have three to five members in them at most. There might be a select few with one or two more but five seems to be the magic number.

Now think of one of the metrics that you use to define the success of a business – number of employees is likely one of them. When I mention to people that I run a few businesses – mainly online – one of their first responses is typically, “oh wow, how many employees do you have?” When I tell them I do it with under 3-4 people their excitement seems to fizzle out.

Growing rapidly and hiring isn’t always the best strategy for a business. It depends on a lot of factors and in my opinion, over-hiring, especially early in the game, is a sure-fire way to stumbling through the early stages of business and risk ruining a potentially awesome business culture. Until you physically can’t handle a task anymore (and can’t automate it with a set of processes) you should not be hiring.

Building a good brand is one of the most important things you can do

Didn’t boy band members used to dress in matching outfits all the time? Yes, they certainly did. Boy bands were consistent in almost everything they did. They built a brand that eventually extended well beyond their music, which enabled them to grow and reach new markets.

Being consistent across platforms and keeping the same message is extremely important when doing business. Think of the consistencies across many organizations social media profiles, online and print branding, communications, etc. Personal branding is just as important, especially if you are a local business owner or online entrepreneur. You need to make sure that people know you as the go-to-person in your industry. (Looking for a motivational video on personal branding? Check out this vid of Gary Vaynerchuk in Web 2.0 Expo NY from 2008.)

I’m sure there are many other business lessons you could take from the boy band example. Have any in mind? Feel free to share in the comments below. In the mean time I’ll leave you with this:

Enjoy.

This is an increasingly popular topic in the local business SEO industry. For many local search terms, Google will display 7 local results above the regular 10 organic results. This is what is referred to as the Google Maps A to G listing. I have included a screen shot of this that you can see.

Being included in this listing is equally if not more important as having high organic results for local keywords. The reason for this is because it is displayed about the organic results in most cases. If you are wondering how to get your business on Google Maps, you’ll first need to make sure you exist within the system.

How to add your business and website to Google Maps

Adding your business website to Google Maps is as simple as creating a Google Places listing. This process can take up to a couple weeks so I suggest you do it sooner than later when launching a new website or business. The reason for the delay is because Google will send you a PIN that you will need to enter to verify your business and address.

Once you have created the Google Places account and completed the verification process, your website will start appearing in Google Maps. However, it doesn’t end here. There are ways that you can increase your changes of being listed in the A to G listings.

Optimizing your Google Maps and Google Places listing

When it comes to Google Places SEO there are a few things that really help boost your ranking in the A to G listing. Most of these things can be done quite quickly on your own and will help with whatever local SEO initiative you are running.

Get links from local business directories

The more Google associates your website with the specific town or city that you compete in, the more likely you are to show up in the local business listings. One of the great ways to do this is to get listings from local business directories, such as a city listing of businesses or the local chamber of commerce directory.

Cite your address on other websites

Wherever possible, include your address when you link back to your website. For example if the local directories allow you to include a description, be sure to add you address as well. This way Google will associate your business and website with the address and you are more likely to be shown on the A to G list. You don’t need to use the address as the anchor text, just try to include it wherever possible if it looks natural.

Promote your Google Places page on your website to get reviews

Have a link to your Google Places page on your website. You should be able to find the URL in your Google Places account – it will be in the following format: http://maps.google.ca/maps/place?cid=#########. It is also very beneficial to encourage customers and visitors to leave their reviews of your business on your page.

Follow good organic SEO practices for your website

The higher your website ranks in the organic search results for local keywords, the more likely your site will be included in the Google Maps list. Promote your website to get back links and make sure your on page content is optimized well and the listings will follow.

As always, remember to be patient. Good things don’t happen over night.

I wanted to shed some light on a small SEO tip that many people overlook. Although most people are aware that they should be doing this, I’ve noticed that surprisingly few people take the time to make sure they practice it when handling SEO on a website. I’ve even noticed a lot of people that offer Internet marketing and SEO consulting with this issue on their own site.

So what’s the tip?

Simply use an alt tag for the image you are using as a logo in your header.

Sounds simple enough, but lets look at why this is important:

Internal links are extremely valuable

Good site structure and proper internal linking can be the difference between a first page ranking and a first place ranking. For many websites, every page is linked to from every page from within the site navigation. However, for websites that target keywords with deep pages or blog posts that may not get links from the main navigation, it’s important that you work in links to these posts from other pages and posts on your site.

For example, on this site, I have a post about Google Places SEO, or optimizing your website to rank in the A to G listings within Google for local keyword searches. Once this post gets pushes off my front page, it won’t have a direct link from my homepage. So what I should do is make sure I work in some links to the post whenever I mention Google Places SEO.

It’s important to remember that Google ranks web pages not websites. Nicely anchored links from other pages on your domain are just as valuable as links from outside your domain.

Only the first link to a specific URL counts from any one page

This might sound a bit confusing so I’ll use an example.

You’ll notice that I linked to that blog post about Google Places SEO above. That link will pass Pagerank and anchor text and will tell Google that essentially, that page is about “Google Places SEO.” However, many people think that if you send another link to the same page that it will send double the link juice and value. This is wrong. Stop wasting your time.

If I were to send this link to the same page, Google won’t care. The first link is what matters – especially when it comes to anchor text.

It’s not going to hurt you if you have multiple links going to the same URL, but you must remember that anchor text only passes through the first link.

Optimizing the alt tag in your logo

Now that we know that internal links are important and that the first link is what matters, we can quickly see why optimizing the logo’s alt tag is important. Your logo is usually the first link on every page that points to your homepage.

The alt tag acts as the anchor text when linking with an image. This means that you are likely sending dozens or even hundreds of high quality links to your homepage from within your website without using optimized anchor text. Even if you have another optimized link to your homepage in your navigation bar or sidebar it won’t matter because your first link has no anchor text or alt tag.

Follow this one simple tip and I guarantee an increase in rankings. This is what pushed my business website to the first page in Google Canada for the term Internet marketing.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

This is one of those topics that simply does not want to die. The use of meta-keywords in search engine optimization and where it stands with search engines. If you’re looking for the quick advice: never use the meta-keywords tag on your website. Lets visit the topic in a bit more detail.

Quick history of the meta-keywords tag

Meta tags are bits of metadata that describe your website. There are a number of tags, the more popular being the meta-keywords and the meta-description tags. The meta-keywords tag was made popular in 1995 when the search engines AltaVista and InfoSeek encouraged webmasters to use it. There was a best practice behind it – it was meant to tell search engines the keywords that each page was suppose to be about. It was used extremely aggressively by SEOs back in the 90s and even early 2000s as a primary way to try to rank websites. SEO back then had a huge emphasis on this tag.

Around 1998, when new search engines (including Google) came to the market the meta-keywords tag started to fizzle out. This is because Google did not support the meta-keywords tag. That is, they knew webmasters used keyword stuffing (see image below) in the meta-keywords tag and therefore didn’t use it as a ranking signal. Many people placed irrelevant keywords, or even competitors’ brands, over and over in the meta tag to try to increase their rank – especially back when link analysis wasn’t very popular. Sounds great, but why do I recommend not using them?

Why you should not use the meta-keywords tag

Google does not support them. This has been stated over and over again yet I know many people (and even huge companies like Web.com) that offer SEO services that promote the use of meta-keywords as a way to increase rankings. This frustrates me because it’s just ignorant. Here is a blog post from 2009 where Matt Cutts discusses Google’s view on the meta-keywords tag. There have been even more since then.

Bing uses meta-keywords tags as a spam signal. I suspect they have found a correlation between spammy websites and the use of meta-keywords. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land touched on this in this blog post back in October 2011. It stemmed from the fact that Bing announced that they do use meta-keywords tag information as a ranking signal back in summer of 2011, which caused some commotion in the SEO world. Turns out they use them as signals – but mainly as spam signals.

They give away your keywords to competitors. This might not matter to a lot of people, and frankly it doesn’t matter much to me either, but I know some SEOs that would sacrifice their loved ones before giving away low competition and high volume keywords. There are gems of keywords in any industry or niche that good keyword research will find that are much easier to rank for with decent search volume. You could get away without any competition on these terms if you’re careful enough, but if you decide to list them in your meta-keywords tag you’re simply giving them away to competitors.

A good example of this is a website I run, Cash for Gold Headquarters. I compete on the main higher-volume keywords in the industry – cash for gold, sell gold, selling gold, etc. most of which after a few months I rank in the top three. However, I found a nice keyword – where to sell gold – that had a decent volume and that none of the other main competitors were targeting. I had first place rankings within a month for that keyword and an easy extra 6-10 visits per day from it. These are the types of keywords you risk giving away if you list them in a meta-keywords tag (or I suppose if you blog about them on your personal blog).

If you’re still stubborn, use them right

It’s not the end of the world if you use the meta-keywords tag. There are a lot of WordPress SEO plugins that will add this meta tag based on the categories or tags of your posts for example. A few relevant keywords isn’t necessarily going to make or break anything – just make sure that you are not trying to abuse the tag as there may be some issues with Bing from it.

Here’s what I mean by an obvious spammed and keyword-stuffed meta-keywords tag:

Don’t do this. Don’t think it’s okay. Don’t tell others it’s okay. Don’t think that this is what SEOs do. This is an extreme example, obviously, but people get carried away when they think that the meta-keywords tag will help their rankings.

Hopefully this helped shed some light on the use of meta-keywords. Have any meta-keywords horror stories? I’d love to hear them.

Seriously. You are losing business by not picking up your phone. It blows my mind the amount of people that are willing to spend an entire day optimizing their website so it loads a half second faster to try to lower their bounce rate, but avoid picking up the phone when a client or potential client is calling.

I get it – we live in a text/IM/email world now and very few people actually pick up the phone to call someone anymore. Heck, I rarely call a store to ask for their business hours, instead I’ll spend 5 minutes trying to navigate their crappy website to find if they are open or not. It’s not the most convenient thing, but it gets me out of making a phone call, right?

If you run any sort of business you should be so pumped when the phone rings. Phone calls = money. I’ve worked with companies that have paid me per phone call that I can generate from their website – do you know how pissed I’d be if they weren’t picking up their cell because they didn’t recognize the number? Many business owners get this, but there are a surprising number of them that don’t. Know how I know? I used to be one of them.

Why people don’t answer their phones

You’ve been there. Looking down at your caller ID and wondering, who the heck is that? Or thinking, I really don’t want to talk to them right now. I bet there are few people who haven’t experienced that on multiple occasions.

It’s my opinion that for the most part people don’t answer their phones because they are afraid. What if it’s an unwanted phone call? What if it’s an awkward phone call? What if I don’t have the solution? What if they yell at me? Who cares, answer your phone. I’m willing to bet that 99% of the time it’s a great conversation.

Don’t let fear of the unknown keep you from answering your phone and making more money.

You don’t have to waste the day on the phone, just pick it up

I’m not saying spend the entire day on the phone – there are definitely more effective and efficient ways of getting things done. A prime example of this happens to me and my business quite often. We don’t typically offer tech support via the phone. That is, we don’t breath in your ear while we fix your issue and give you second-by-second updates of what we’re doing. It’s way more efficient for us to handle support via email whenever possible. That said, we answer the call, take the info and follow up when the issue or request is fixed or completed.

If you want to be successful, answer your phone. It’s that simple.

Every phone call is a potential sale. It’s an opportunity to connect with someone again, to touch base, schedule a meeting or cup of coffee to catch up. It’s a chance to strengthen a relationship or start a new one. Every phone call is more money in your pocket – stop throwing it away.

I remember my phone ringing on a Friday evening while I was waiting to board a plane to go to Toronto back in March. I didn’t recognize the number (or the area code for that matter), was two beer in at the airport bar, and had every reason not to answer. I picked it up and talked for 6 minutes and I’ve been earning $30 per month from that person since March. Six minutes, and two quick check-up emails for $240, so far.

If you don’t answer your phone, I’m going to call someone else and they will. Then I’ll be doing business with them instead of you.

Choosing the right keywords to target on your website or blog post is likely the most important aspect of any Search engine optimization initiative. I believe this process is what divides traditional blogs from business-oriented websites. The reason for this is because the keywords you choose are the foundation of your work and everything else from optimization to promotion will be built upon the keywords.

Why is keyword research important?

The major reason to do proper keyword research while you are building or optimizing a website is so you learn how your customers are searching for your products and services online. You can stop the guess work and learn the exact keywords they are using to find you – they may be different than you thought. Having this information allows you to better tailor your content to attract these searchers without having to pay for them.

Using the Google Keyword Tool

There are a lot of paid keyword research tools out there that do an excellent job at finding you excellent keywords. For the sake of this lesson, I wanted to assume that most local businesses wanted to operate on an extremely tight budget when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (read: no budget).

The best place to start your keyword research is with the Google Keyword Tool. This tool gives you a variety of information on keywords such as global and local search volumes and the cost to advertisers.

Using the GKT isn’t that difficult, but I have made a quick 4-5 minute video to help you better understand what to look for and how we use it to determine the best keywords for our clients. This video is the same process we use to start any keyword research.

Note: click the expand button on the bottom right to get the video in a larger screen.

How many keywords should I target?

This really depends on how much content your website has, how many pages and articles you may be creating, and much more. To keep things simple, we recommend 2 core keywords for your main home page. Most of the time, these are city keyword and keyword city (eg. Halifax web design and web design halifax).

For your product and service pages, you may want to target a service-specific or product-specific keyword such as buy keyword in city or just buy keyword (eg. buy fishing rod in Halifax).

Every blog post you write on your website, should also be somewhat targeted toward a keyword. Even if that keyword only has a dozen or so searches per month, it is beneficial to capture those visitors with your blog post and have the opportunity to convert them with your website. Without proper keyword research, they wouldn’t have found your site in the first place.

Need some help?

Our Web design package includes basic on-going SEO optimization and promotion. If you currently have our service, simply send us an email and we’ll be happy to give you a hand. If you’re not currently a subscriber, we will still offer a free keyword and competitive analysis on your website free of charge. Just contact us through the contact form above.

Local SEO is quite a bit different than most search engine optimization initiatives. It involves a few additional things to consider, as well

Identify The Best Keywords

Doing proper keyword research and identifying the best performing keywords is extremely important when it comes to local search engine optimization. Both companies and consultants can waste a lot of time if this step is taken care of before any work is started.

I have a video outlining the best way to identify keywords for local businesses. Follow these steps to make sure you are starting at the right spot.

Get Your Website on The Map

The local search engine maps, that is. Both Google and Bing-powered search engines have a local Maps listing with most of their local keyword results. The starting point for this is to get listed on Google Maps by creating a Google Places account. This will take a couple weeks since you will need to wait for a verification PIN to be sent via snail mail, so the sooner you start on this the better.

Getting on the list can often be more valuable than having a number one spot on Google. These are the coveted “A to G” where Google returns 6 Maps results. The reason these are so sought after is because they are not necessarily the top ranked results for the organic search, but they are displayed above the rest of the results. This means your website and business has a chance to getting a top ranked Google Map result in addition to your organic result, which will double your exposure on the first page.

Research Your Competition

One of the main reasons why local seo services are typically less expensive than if you were competing for a global keyword is that local search terms are are typically – although not always – less competitive than their root keyword. If less people in your market are using local search engine optimization techniques, your hard work will have a quicker and greater return.

The best place to start is by seeing who has the top results in the search engines. Once you know who is ranking, take some time and use free tools to check where they are getting their links and promoting their site. Is there a local business directory site that is proving most of their value? Get your site listed as well. Many local links can be duplicated relatively easy and then you can typically outrank most sites with a little extra hard work.

Track Your Results

It’s important to know where you started with your local seo service as far as rankings and traffic goes. Make sure you have Google Analytics and Google Web Master Tools. These are two excellent free tools for tracking your traffic and rankings.

Test and Optimize Your Conversions

An increase in targeted traffic is only good if you convert that traffic into value for your business. Most of the time this is done through converting the traffic into leads and sales. Test your site’s layout and call to actions to see what works the best to get your visitors to stick around. This is one of the most important steps in local SEO that is often overlooked.

When it comes to local traffic, it is very important that it is easy for them to contact you – have your phone number easily accessible on the website and make sure it’s easy for them to connect with you if need be. One of the things I noticed that really works is to add a live chat option to your website so you have the chance to connect with visitors in real time while they browse your site.

I have co-owned and operated a web hosting company for the past seven years. Seven years. It still boggles my mind every time I say that. We have worked with hundreds of clients mainly within Halifax Nova Scotia, but also across the Country and World. It has been and continues to be a great learning experience in so many ways.

Recently, we launched a Halifax web design initiative to trial a new set of packages we are offering. These plans were developed in partnership with some of our resellers after a lot of feedback from our existing hosting clients. We identified some pretty major issues with how the web design and development industry operates today and are very confident that our new web design packages will solve them.

Major problems with the web design industry

After surveying many of our customers based on their experiences with web designers, freelancers, and design firms we noticed consistent feedback concerning relationships and communication, ongoing support issues, and management, among others.

Support issues

Coming from a web hosting background we are familiar and efficient with handling support requests, as long as the customer knows to contact us. There seem to be too many parties involved in the process: a domain registrar, web host, project manager, and designer. The client is confused as to who to contact and when, often getting passed back and forth between the parties involved.

Relationships and communication: expect a service but get a product

This is definitely the biggest issue from all of our feedback. The client will pay for a new website, get a wonderful looking site, but often rarely or never hear from their designer again. The business is expecting a service, but often gets a one-off product (the website) without any service or support.

Once the designer gets paid, they rarely have a vested interest in their client and from what we are told, often fall out of touch.

Management of the website

This ties into the above issue of not having an ongoing relationship. The client will often have to reach out to others in order to get their website updated – which is an additional cost they were not expecting. They are often left with a great looking and expensive online business card.

How we plan on solving them

We have combined all the core services and features for getting a website and business established online and bundled them into an extremely convenient and affordable monthly package.

Our monthly model eliminates the up-front cost of getting an excellent looking website that stands in the way for so many businesses. We include domain registration, unlimited web hosting, around the clock technical support, monthly updates, and so much more.

We even went as far as to offer a monthly SEO initiative along with in-depth, one-hour monthly consultations where the client can ask anything surrounding Internet marketing, search engine optimization, social media, or anything else they can think of.

This way the client gets the convenience of having all services in one location, the absolute best bang for their buck, an ongoing relationship and a vested interested in their business doing well.