Hi Joel - Yup. Totally agree. Having links that count is one of the benefits of hosting your own blog. But for folks who are commenting on a Blogger blog - and there's a lot of Blogger blogs out there - it's important to know that links in comments don't count.

Hey Barry - All right. Cough up the names of those plug ins! I totally agree about the SEO thing. After doing it for 5+ years, I've come to the conclusion too that social networking is a much better way to build relationships and ultimately sell products or services online. The funny thing is that when you do social networking right, your rankings improve!

Elge

Hmmm....Good food for thought.

I'd love to move away from hourly pricing but I'll have to think about it a bit. Part of the dilemma is that one of my main bread and butter services can vary widely from client to client in terms of my time investment based on the "ready to print-ness" of the content they send me. For some clients, their content is ready to go. For other clients, it needs some work! It's tough to know which camp a client is going to fall into until I've worked with them for a while.

It seems like it would be weird to change horses mid-stream (i.e. go from billing hourly to flat rate). Maybe it's a matter of asking better questions before writing the proposal?

Thanks,

Elge

Any advice on how to work this into writing proposals? The vast majority of the work I do is on a proposal basis. Part of the work is discrete projects and some is ongoing so billed hourly. Although I've gotten better at knowing what a job is going to take, the rapid changes in my industry make it a moving target and sometimes I wind up feeling like I'm making $5 an hour in order to really deliver results to clients.

Hi Joel,

Hate to break it to you but I've learned the hard way that the vast majority fo the time links in blogs comment don't count as a link to your site in the search engines because they are no follow links.

Elge

I once met a mortgage broker at a networking seminar and even after hearing all about the reasons to specialize she still introduced herself with "Oh I work wtih every one." You know what? I can't refer business to her. I don't know "everyone." I know inidividual people. If you want peopel to refer business to you, you have to specialize enough to be able to tell them who you work with.

I'd love to meet for coffee or lunch during the day.

Kaya and I have been messaging about having an infomral event to talk about future events. Maybe people who are interested in hosting an event or being more active in the Portland community can meet for coffee or something like that. Let me know if you're interested and I'll try to coordinate something.

Elge

Hey Mark,

I think we all learned that you OWN the Gandhi, Mandela, MLK + Marketing key phrases in Google! ;-]

Based in part on what I heard from the group that they're looking for, this morning I'm going to map out an event on the basics of eMarketing. What areas (websites, newsletters, blogs, SEO, etc.) you need to consider what questions you need to answer to use them to your advantage. I'm putting out a tentative date of June 11th.

If anyone is interested, let me know. I'll also put out a promotion when I have the copy for it worked up.

Elge

Hey Jeff,

I look forward to meeting you in person. Susan Rich and I had tea last Thursday and she mentioned you. I think I'll also see you at the SECP event in May. Correct?

Elge

The process you describe, aka reciprical link campaigns, is a huge time investment and has a terrible ROI. You'd be lucky to get one website out of 100 to agree to link to you and at the least you're going to need 100 links to make a difference. When you think about how long it will take to find 10,000 websites and contact them all, you quickly get an idea of the scope of the project you're taking on.

You're better off, creating link worthy content and leveraging online relationships to promote that content.

Hi Dan,

Really solid advice. If people follow the guidelines you describe, they will go a long way to finding an ethical SEO company. A point you touch on that I'd like to drive home to folks is that there are several "not so ethical" SEO companies out there.

My sister got caught up in a scam with a company that called her (red flag #1) and guaranteed first page rankings in Google (red flag #2). What my sister didn't realize, and most business owners don't, is that the way they keep their “guarantee” is to get you good rankings for phrases customers don't use and no other sites are trying to rank for. Lesson: When it comes to evaluating success, make sure it’s for key phrases customers actually use!

I'd recommend posting a job or on the forum of PDXMindshare (http://www.pdxmindshare.com/)

Hi Elsa,

Thanks for sharing your story. I do want to bring one thing to your attention. You write about your website: "The placement was enhanced by the provider, who in turn upgrades, and refreshes the site. They also link us back and forth with like sites under the House Cleaning Alliance umbrella. It's now the only advertising we use."

This is a danerous linking strategy. While this reciprocal linking approach has worked in the past, Google has changed and they WILL punish your site (and the other sites) for it. I strongly recommend that you or your web company work to get links outside the circle because you will see your rankings start to drop and they could drop by a lot.

Good job Brandi! This is a good primer for anyone working in marketing to show their clients. I'm not a graphic designer but I recognize good design when I see it. For someone like me who's focus is on stuff like SEO and copywriting, a good looking brand goes a loooong way to making my job easier.

While I completely agree with the points Bill makes, Biznik is not the appropriate place to post your press release. Just as your clothing articles convey a first impression, so do your written articles.

We want to hear from you, Bill. This “article” makes me think you've paid someone to create your profile and promise you online exposure which doesn't sit well in the online social networking world.

How many times can I vote to get this article up to a 10? This is a story every business owner considering a new website or a redesign should read.

As an SEO person I do have a few comments about #2 in how it affected your site. Not that you don’t’ have VERY valid points, just to clarify.

Keywords. The keywords on each page are not the same. A couple of pages have the keywords I gave them, a couple have the craptastic ones they came up with. Oh, and the contract called for 50-70 keywords per page; they gave me 5. – You should not be targeting more than 5 key phrases a page!!! Their contract with 50 to 70 key words (and words are different than phrases) per page promised should be a huge red flag to anyone considering SEO services. A. The page titles don’t contain the correct keywords. - That's a problem. Search engine love title tags. B. The meta tags don’t contain the correct keywords. - If by "meta tags" you mean the key word meta tag, that's not a problem. Search engines don't pay attention to those anyway. The only people you're helping with nicely written keyword meta tags are your competition. If by meta tag you mean the description meta tag, that’s a problem. C. The images have no alt-tags. - This is a big problem on a site with a bunch of images.

Sorry you got burned. That sucks.

Where I see the inefficiency is in slogging through every mention of a key phrase with the hope that one (or more) of them is going to turn into a business opportunity. It's kind of like trying to optimize your website for the word "consultant." Yeah, you'll get some hits but how many of them are going to be relevant and worth the time you put into it?

I'm all for finding new and creative ways to connect online but there are SO MANY ways to do it, you've got to evaluate the return on investment even if your investment is 'only' time.

You're right. There's ways to use Twitter. Here's an excellent post by Guy Kawasaki on the subject. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/10/how-twitter-mad.html

I don't disagree that it's possible to start a business coversation by monitoring Twitter for pertinent key phrases. It just seems like a very inefficient way to do it.

Hopefully if folks have success with it, they'll post their results.

If you're seriously suggesting this as a way to get clients, I've got to disagree. With the hundreds of ways you can market your services, it would be more effective to pick phone numbers out of the phone book at random and call them.

However, if you're suggesting this as a research tool, I could see some value in it. For instance, when you really want to see what people are saying about a particular topic or for brand management. But as a way to directly generate business, I don’t think so.

Good advice and very timely considering Biznik'snew video capability.

Good advice Joe! This will be my first saved article. I'll refer back to it next time I'm strategizing for an event. :-)

Elge

This might be a little too high level for newbies. But if you need to, read it twice to make sure you get it because it includes great examples of how social networking and social media can be used to make connections online.