Search Engine Marketing & Optimization
A blog for truly small businesses
The old marketing and PR rules don’t work
I’m reading a new book that is helping me put words to my own experience as a search engine marketing expert and I’m excited about sharing the information with you. The book is titled: The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition
So far my favorite phrase is “interruption advertising”. That is his term for those awful, loud, obnoxious TV ads that we have all grown to hate so much. He talks about how those big companies (and the PR companies they are paying the big bucks to) are trying to stick with those old rules of advertising in this new world of web marketing and why it doesn’t work!
I agree 100% !- Interruption ads are those God awful ads you get on your Yahoo Mail and Facebook – you’re not there to buy anything but the big companies with bottomless budgets are there SHOUTING at you – “Buy Me and you will be special!”
This is the first time in history that the little guy (you and I) get to thumb our noses at the Madison Avenue crowd and win by doing what is right instead of what is expensive. Wahoo! I’m in are you ready to come along?
If so, watch this blog for more tidbits and guidelines.
Coburn Enterprises becomes official
There are still a few more things to add to both of our websites http://www.coburnenterprises.com and http://www.sitebuildernow.net (which will soon be found at http://www.betterwebsitebuilders.com) but it’s official, we are now operating as Coburn Enterprises.
I’m excited about our re-launch and the upcoming announcements about our new Search Engine Optimization and Marketing products. For years we have helped our clients get first page listings. However, it was a lot easier when we started in 2001 than it is in today’s competitive web space.
For a long time we didn’t think we wanted to jump on the “search engine optimization and marketing for a fee” bandwagon, but as more and more clients asked us to review the bombardment of sales pitches from companies all over the world promising to get their websites on the first page …. for a fee… we found ourselves more and more involved in this aspect of each client’s business. After extensive research I came to realize that I am a search engine optimization expert – and I can do a better job for my clients than some company out of India – and, based on what my clients tell me, – for a fair price.
If you would like to learn more about how we do it you can check out our SEO / SEM productson the new Coburn Enterprises website at http://www.coburnenterprises.com
True first page (non-paid) listings are gained by doing the right things. There is no magic pill, no magic list you can get your site listed on. The only way to come up on page one for your chosen keyword phrases is to create and maintain a website that is truly beneficial to the person searching for those key words, do good business and get links to your site from other sites that share similar interests and clients. This is only done by investing the time it takes to do it.
SiteBuilder Now to become Coburn Enterprises soon!
After nearly 10 years of “helping small businesses compete on the world wide web” we have come to realize that our roll is much more than being a website builder or web design company. What we have discovered is that we are actually small business advisors.
It is not uncommon for a client to contact us for a website and, through our initial questioning process, discover they are not really ready to launch a website. This is because the market we service – the “Truly Small Business” or “TSB” – consists mostly of individuals or a small team of people that have a great idea for a product or service but limited life experience in starting or expanding a company and launching their product. Unlike the well know “Small to Medium Business” or “SMB”, a TSB is usually a self-funded, self-managed company that is not looking for venture capital and/or large start up loans. I find it ironic that I read about “small businesses” and they are companies with 50 employees generating a few million dollars a year in revenues. Whereas, a truly small business generally has less than 10 employees (if any) and often generates just enough revenue to pay their expenses – on a good day. Yet, this sector of business is what really makes up the majority of “small businesses” in our country. Thus, at Coburn Enterprises, we have decided to promote the phrase TSB – Truly Small Business – to help this market sector gain recognition in the marketplace and gain a voice in our society.
With these ideas in mind, we are relaunching our company under Coburn Enterprises. This is the name we have been using for a few years now for our EIN number, merchant services account and other critical business activities. Although we will keep the branding of SiteBuilder Now for our “do-it-yourself” product group, we feel that Coburn Enterprises is more fitting for our current services.
Coburn Enterprises helps truly small businesses compete – not just on the world wide web. As small business advisors, we help companies, and individuals hoping to start or grow a company, ask themselves critical questions and make educated business decisions. We help our clients match their short and long term goals to available products and solutions – from what type of website to start with or upgrade to, to merchant service providers. We help them understand how these decisions will effect them today and in five years. We also help our clients filter through the bombardment of opportunities that come their way as soon as they register their dba or domain name.
Depending on the type of business and where they are at in their development process, we can help them with marketing channels, finding vendors, public relations and content development. We help companies determine revenue channels, pricing structures and new marketing strategies. For our clients that are at that crossroads between “staying small” and “taking it to the next level” we help them look at the advantages and disadvantages of their choices and opportunities.
When necessary, we also help our clients find outside consultants and resources. We help them write policies, hire employees and find the best accounting solutions for their needs.
And, of course, we are experts in website marketing, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.
In the coming weeks you will see some exciting announcements including an introduction to our new product set and the official launch of our new websites. CoburnEnterprises.com and BetterEverything.net (http://www.bettereverything.net) a blogging system that will be part of our web marketing solutions and SMS – Social Media Synergy concepts.
Questions? Ideas? Fears? Don’t hesitate to contact us.
Control of your domain name is the number one most important thing you need to have
Having been in the website building business for more than 10 years now I’ve seen a lot of things. In the early days, when many hosting companies were still being run out of garages, it was not uncommon for people to call me ‘desperate’ because their website was down and the hosting company had “vanished”. To my amazement many of them didn’t have personal backups, and most of them weren’t listed as the owner of their own domains – which made it extremely difficult to reclaim it and theyoften had to start from scratch.
Surprisingly, I still get those calls today. Fortunately – most of the time we can at least build a new site on their original domain name. However, a recent experience reminded me that many people, including my clients, simply trust their webmaster to manage that information for them. But you should also check this yourself. Like I tell my clients it’s my “drop dead clause – If I drop dead these are the things you need to know”.
Often, it is not your web master’s intention to put your domain under their ownership – it’s just that we have all these tools that we use to support you and if we forget to make some edits – suddenly we find that we are the owner of your domain and not you – which is all fine and dandy until something happens to the webmaster (or you get really mad at them). So, here is what you need to do – check your records – do you know where your domain is registered? Do you know who the underlying wholesale provider is – for example I sell domains to my customers for convenience. But I purchase them from a wholesaler called Enom – so if something were to happen to me, my customers could actually go out to Enom and manage their domain. As a courtesy, I provide my clients with the information they would need to access that resource should something happen to me.
To find out if you are truly the registered owner of your domain (and where it is registered) you can go to DNSStuff.com – they have a tool called “who is” type your domain name in there (just the domain.com part) and you will get something back that looks similar to what I’ve posted below (scroll down for further explanation). Unless your domain was registered with Network Solutions – in which case you will be told to go to Network Solutions to look things up – but once you find the place to look it up you should see something similar to this:
Registration Service Provided By: Coburn Enterprises dba SiteBuilder Now
Contact: *******@sitebuildernow.net
Visit: http://www.sitebuildernow.net/hostmanager
Domain name: yourdomain.com
Registrant Contact:
Your Name ()
Fax:
12345 NE 162nd Ave
Vancouver, WA 98682
us
Administrative Contact:
Your Name*****@yourdomain.com)
+1.608967449
Fax:
12345 NE 162nd Ave
Vancouver, WA 98682
us
Technical Contact:
Harmony Coburn *****@sitebuildernow.net)
+1.608967449
Fax:
12345 NE 162nd Ave
Vancouver, WA 98682
us
Status: Locked
Name Servers:
NS1.COBURNENTERPRISES.COM
NS2.COBURNENTERPRISES.COM
Creation date: 20 Nov 2004 02:27:00
Expiration date: 20 Nov 2012 02:27:00
The most important part of what you see here is the Registrant’s information – as long as you are / your company is the Registrant – you can recover management of your domain even if you don’t know how to access it – it’s work but a website consultant could help. If your webmaster or hosting company is listed as the Registrant, you have no legitimate “rights” to your domain so you need to get in touch with them and get that changed as soon as possible.
For convenience I am often listed as both the Administrative and Technical contact for my clients – that way I can manage the tasks that are required to make sure the “internet” knows where to find their website – as long as you are the Registrant you’re ok. However, you should also know where and how to access your domain so that you can change things at any time – if you get mad at your webmaster, it is best to make sure they no longer have access to your domain and that you have full control before you notify them that you are leaving them – all hosting companies and webmasters are not necessarily as ethical as one would hope.
A final thought on this subject – LEGITIMATE REGISTRARS DO NOT SEND RENEWAL NOTICES IN THE US MAIL!If you get a notice in the mail that your domain is going to expire – contact your registrar or your webmaster or your hosting company and ask them about it – do not send money. Although most registrars have a default setting of “locked” these days, which prevents the transfer of your domain from one registrar to another without your permission, if yours was not locked, you could inadvertantly give your domain to someone who would take it over and put spam links on it or worse! In most cases, you will just be out the (ridiculous) fee they tell you to send.
As a small business advisor, specializing in helping truly small business determine the most effective use of their marketing dollars, including their website, I have helped many clients recover from unexpected losses of their website and domain. But it is difficult at best. If you don’t understand this or your have more questions feel free to contact me. I’ll be glad to help.
Remember the hell of uninstalling AOL? Well, Facebook is trying to get you in the same boat
If you haven’t heard, Facebook has announced a new application that website owners can install on their websites that will “personalize” their site visitors experience by using the information you’ve made public on your facebook profile. This means all of the posts that your friends post and your photo gallery and everything else you share. Facebook’s is not offering this as a “free” tool out of the goodness of their hearts – the goal is to “own” your information and share it with people that are willing to pay for it – think about this – you will turn on the TV and go to your favorite show and see ads that say “Hi Harmony, we have selected to advertise these items to you because other 51 year old women have purchased them”. Oh, by the way, since you’re a woman and 51 you probably will see ads for things like Menopause vitamins, bladder control, anit-aging cream etc etc etc – is this the world you really want to live in? The worst part of this is that Facebook has made your info available by default – they didn’t ask you if you wanted to share this information – instead, you have to realize that they are giving it away freely and go into your facebook settings and “uncheck” the box that says “Yeah, tell the world about me”.
This guy has done a very nice matrix to help us understand the latest announcements by Facebook: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/21/facebooks-crusade-of-colonization/
I don’t know about you but this is over the edge for me I strongly recommend you read this and take action immediately:
FACEBOOK is at it again…violating your personal information: As of today, there is a new privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” that shares data with non-facebook websites and it is automatically set to “Allow.” Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and uncheck “Allow”. Please copy & repost.
Truth be told, if I weren’t in the business of assisting people to be found on the web I would cancel my account on Facebook altogether and use the newly available “social suicide” tool to remove all of my data permanently. Unfortunately, I live in a world of followers, which means that I have to help my clients navigate the waters and if their customers are using facebook they have to participate in facebook – for now. Ultimately I hope that Google will quit supporting Facebook by no longer sending their bots out to search their posts -this would immediately eliminate the “power” facebook has gained – in fact, if Google does not take this action they will help Facebook kill Google. Google is not perfect but they have built a successful business by trying to be ethical and allow us to maintain our privacy while providing tools to find the information WE CHOOSE. Sure, they sell ads and make a ton of money doing it but you ONLY see those ads when you are looking for something that they relate to. I don’t like the idea that I might come to your website looking for a saddle blanket and have an ad for Adult Diapers thrown in my face!
