WordPress PollDaddy Poll – How Do You Use McBuzz.com?

Mar 4, 2009

You can create a professional-looking online survey or poll on your WordPress blog – or any website – in about 5 minutes using PollDaddy. You can customize the look and feel of the survey or poll using CSS, or pick from a set of snappy-looking prefab themes.

Polls are great for getting quick feedback from your visitors. And they are so easy to create with PollDaddy, you can start using them immediately.

Let me know if you need help installing the WordPress plugin. On WordPress.com-hosted sites, the plugin is already installed. PollDaddy will work on almost any blog, including Blogger.com, and on any website that allows you to edit the HTML. There are many great features, including the fact that you can export the data from your survey or poll as a spreadsheet or xml file.

Here’s an example:

[polldaddy|1425871]

AdWords & Pay-Per-Click Tip: Use a Custom Landing Page

Jan 5, 2009

When you pay for an AdWords ad, or an ad on the Yahoo or MSN search marketing networks, it’s a good idea to use a custom landing page. What’s the most important feature of a custom landing page? Arguably, it’s that the keyword that triggered the ad appear on the web page the ad takes you to.

This may seem obvious to some readers, but I’m always surprised to find major players in the online marketing space – real estate websites, in particular – that fail to apply basic search marketing techniques – like using custom landing pages with keywords placed in obvious locations.

Here’s an example. The following is a real AdWords ad:

Find a Loft in Seattle WA
Search for Condos & Lofts
Using Seattle’s Top Real Estate Search
www.TheMLSonline.com

This is a well-written ad: compelling, to the point. “Top Real Estate Search” sounds great. If I’m thinking of looking for a loft or condo in Seattle, this ad will catch my eye and might make me click.

But there’s a serious problem: no custom landing page.

Instead of taking me to a page that is set up so that I can easily find a loft or condo in Seattle, I’m taken to the generic home page of The MLS Online Seattle (http://sea.themlsonline.com/home ). The words “loft” or “condo” are nowhere to be found. The word “home” is all over the place. Are “home” and “loft” or “condo” synonymous? No way. Even if they were synonymous, “loft” and “condo” are keywords in the ad, so they should be displayed prominently on the landing page.

The AdWords ad above takes you to a generic MLS Online home page, not a custom landing page. The appropriate keywords do not appear, and it’s hard to find a loft or condo, which is why you clicked on the ad in the first place.

What’s even worse than the absence of the right keywords is that if I want to search for a loft or condo on this page, I have to scroll down to find and select the right menu options in order to do so. I don’t even see “loft” or “condo” in the menu options. Confusing! I don’t have time for this.

I guarantee that MLS Online is losing visitors immediately from this page because the page is not tailored to the people who are clicking on the ad.

But who has time to make custom landing pages? Well, I found a 4-bed, 5-bath, six-thousand-square-foot condo on this site that’s listed at $13,495,000.00. You would think MLS Online would be willing to spend 30-40 minutes customizing a landing page if it enabled them to sell that puppy!

Of course, one of the real strengths of pay-per-click and related forms of search marketing is that you can measure your results. Is it worth the time it takes to create a custom landing page? Go ahead and create one and send half of those who click on your ad to that page while sending the other half to the generic home page. Now you can use basic analytics software like Google Analytics to find out if people who go to the custom landing page are more likely to “convert” – fill out a contact form to request more information, download a brochure, pick up the phone and call (using a custom 800 number), etc. – or not. Simple as that.

Any good search marketing consultant will tell you that there are about five basic things you need to do to get the most out of your AdWords or Pay-Per-Click advertising dollars. Custom landing pages are near the top of the list.

Twitter Seminar in Seattle

Aug 27, 2008

I will be offering a seminar on Twitter in Seattle on September 9, 2008. The seminar is sponsored by Web 2.0 Media Group and taught in partnership with Wayne Bishop, creator of Joint Contact project managment and collaboration software.

Twitter is one of today’s hottest Web 2.0 social media technologies.

Our two-hour seminar will show you:

• How to get started with Twitter
• How it works, who is using it and the different ways it’s being used
• Twitter’s advantages over other types of communication
• Current trends and what it means for business
• Using Twitter to make an impact

For more information, see our Introducing Twitter seminar page on Biznik.com.

As a founding member of Web 2.0 Media Group, I’m committed to spreading the word about the Web 2.0 social media / social networking movement through education and collaboration with like-minded folk in the Seattle area and around the globe. Learn more about Web 2.0 Media Group here.

McBuzz and Mark McLaren on Twitter

Apr 17, 2008

If you haven’t done so yet, check out Twitter.

Twitter is a “micro-blogging” tool that allows users to send out short messages that can be read on the Twitter website, or on a desktop program (or “client”) like twhirl, or via text messaging. It also integrates with things like Status Updates on Facebook (in case you were wondering).

It’s similar to instant messaging in that you can keep in touch with your friends, but it has a significant advantage over instant messaging because you can follow messages from people you don’t know or haven’t (yet) met – provided they let you do so, which most Twitterers do.

So, for instance, I can follow the “tweets” or short messages of renowned marketing authorities like Guy Kawasaki, or of entrepreneur search marketers like Andy Beal and Danny Sullivan.

Some Twitterers are better sources of useful information than others. Sometimes people just make idle chit chat. Sometimes they share a link to a blog post or story they think is important. But, in general, it’s great to get these folks’ take on what’s going on in the world.

Online marketer Jennifer Laycock calls Twitter “acceptable evesdropping”. And – let’s be honest – who doesn’t like evesdropping?

You can “follow” (connect with) Mark McLaren and McBuzz. Just create a profile on the Twitter website and login to the site, then go to the mcbuzz profile (click here), click on Follow (to connect with McBuzz), and send me a “tweet” (a message) that starts with @mcbuzz, which directs the message to me.

You’ll get the hang of it quickly.

But wait! Twitter does more: just like blogging or LinkedIn or Facebook, it establishes your brand. It can help to establish or strengthen your reputation as an authority in your field. It gives you greater visibility online. (Do a Google search for “mcbuzz” and you find the McBuzz Twitter profile on page one.) And it can create or foster connections between you and other professionals you might not have met.

In short, Twitter has got some serious mojo. It has characteristics that the early World Wide Web and blogging had way, way back… Not long ago, there was a time when it wasn’t clear that those two things had much to do with marketing and communications. And Twitter is more immediate, more concise. In a day and age when twenty-somethings use text messages and Facebook instead of email, and fewer and fewer people take time to read a newspaper, immediate and concise is where you want to be.

Of course, Twitter itself may not necessarily be the tool people are using in a year or two, but the tool (or some part of the tool) we are using then will be a lot like Twitter. Better to get aquainted with the technology now than two years from now.

If you like Twitter, try the desktop client I mentioned, called twhirl. It’s got more features than the Twitter website – just like your desktop email client (Outlook, Thunderbird) has more features than web mail – and it’s easy install and use.

Here’s one success story’s take on why Twitter: Penelope Trunk on Twitter

As webpronews.com puts it, “Anyone with a desire to connect with others in a quick way, while reinforcing one’s name and personal brand, will find [Twitter] useful.”

How to See If a Page or Document on Your Website Has Been Indexed by Google

Mar 13, 2008

If you would like to find out if a page or document on your website has been indexed by Google, use the query modifier “site:url” like you would to see how many pages on your site have been indexed (and which ones), but instead of using “site:mcbuzz.com”, for example, use “site:mcbuzz.com/wordpress/what-is-wordpress” or whatever the entire URL or file name is that you want to check.

In other words, say I have a PDF on my site called “mcbuzz-wordpress-tutorials.pdf” (which I don’t – this is just an example). I can do a search using Google for “site:mcbuzz.com/pdf/mcbuzz-wordpress-tutorials.pdf” and Google will tell me whether is has this file in its index or not. Remember to use the entire path or URL for the page or document. If you keep your PDFs in a directory on your site called “pdf”, then you need to include that in the URL as shown in this example. (If you have quesitons about this, send me a comment.)

This post follows along the same lines as an earlier one called “Are PDF Files Indexed by Google?” But I also wanted to talk about this topic for a couple of reasons related to Search Engine Optimization and WordPress.

1. In WordPress, it is possible to specify the URL of a page or post — independent of the title you give the page or post — using the “Page Slug” / “Post Slug” feature. If you don’t specify a slug, WordPress will make one automatically using “Permalinks“. I told WordPress to give this post the URL “mcbuzz.com/2008/document-webpage-indexed-by-google”. If I hadn’t done so, WordPress would have called it “mcbuzz.com/2008/how-to-see-if-a-page-or-document-on-your-website-has-been-indexed-by-google”. Shorter is better as long as the relevant keywords are included in a URL, so I made it shorter by tweaking it a bit and removing words I don’t think are as relevant for SEO as the ones I kept.

2. Google is indexing pages and posts very quickly these days, sometimes in under an hour. The post you are reading right now was indexed in less than 7 minutes. If you have a URL indexed by Google, you may not want to change it because if you change it, the link to the page that’s in Google’s index will be broken. Someone might find your page or post by doing a Google search, but when they click on the listing, they will get a “Page not found” error from your site.

So, if you want to use the Page Slug / Post Slug feature in WordPress to customize your URLs, do so before or shortly after you publish a page or post. If you are thinking of changing a URL, you can check to see if your page has already been indexed before you change it.

If it has been indexed, you need to weigh the possible long-term SEO benefit of changing the URL so that it is more likely to show up on page 1 or 2 of Google for your target keywords — because Google will eventually re-index it. But if it has been indexed already and you want people to find it for some searches right away (in the next week or two, say) then you are probably better off leaving well enough alone.

Here’s an update to this post. News flash: That last paragraph applies only to WordPress.com-hosted websites and blogs. If your site is hosted by a third party rather than WordPress.com, and you are comfortable enough with WordPress to be able to download, install and activate a WordPress plugin (or you know someone who can help you do so), then you don’t need to worry about whether a post or page has already been indexed by Google or not. You can use a WordPress plugin called “Redirection” to redirect someone to the new URL when they request your page or post using the old URL.

In other words, say you create a post called My New Post with the URL http://www.example.com/my-new-post/. It gets indexed by Google in 30 minutes or whatever. Then you realize, Oops!, I should have named that post My New Post About WordPress, because it’s about WordPress! And you really should include “wordpress” in the URL to make the URL more search engine friendly, i.e., to let search engines know that the post really is about WordPress. One of the absolute best ways to do that is to put your keyword — in this case “wordpress” — in the URL. So go ahead, rename your post and either create a new post slug yourself or let WordPress do it for you.

Now your new URL can be http://www.example.com/my-new-post-about-wordpress/ (or whatever you want to make it using the Page Slug /Post Slug feature in the editing window). If someone finds your post using Google, and Google is still using the old URL, that person will click on the link and when their web browser asks your host’s server for the page at http://www.example.com/my-new-post/ , the server will know that they really want the page at the new URL http://www.example.com/my-new-post-about-wordpress/ and it will redirect them there. The fact that you changed the post title and the URL will not keep people from being able to find the page. Pretty cool.

Now for this to work, you have to know how to install the Redirection plugin, and how to set it so that it does what you want. And you also have to be using permalinks. (Read more about WordPress permalinks here.) I just installed the plugin on mcbuzz.com, at it’s one of the easier plugins to use. Just follow the directions in the readme.txt file that comes with the plugin. You can set it to create redirections automatically when a post slug changes, or you can do it yourself manually when a post or page slug changes.

Confused? Just send me a comment using the form below.

Most Popular Search Engine: Google's Share of Search Market Still Three Times Yahoo!'s

Feb 25, 2008

The most popular search engine is still Google by a large margin. The latest numbers from Nielsen Online say that Google’s share of the search market is nearly three times Yahoo! or 56.9% to Yahoo!’s 19%.

Here’s an update: According to one report, Google grabbed 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending June 28, 2008. Nielsen Online still shows Google at 59% (PDF document).

That’s why, when web marketing professionals talk about optimizing a website for search engines, they mean optimizing for Google. In general, ranking well in Google search results will bring more visitors to your website than ranking well in Yahoo! search results will. And a paid advertisement on a Google search page will typically be seen by more people than a paid advertisement on a Yahoo! search page.

However, more people clicking on your ads and more visitors to your website does not always mean better results. One way to measure results is by the number of “conversions” on your website, that is, the number of visitors doing what you want them to do, like picking up the phone and calling your business. It’s always good to remember that people searching on Yahoo! or MSN.com might be of different demographics than those searching on Google. For every 100 visitors that come to your site from a Google search, you might get one phone call. (Just a hypothetical example.) But for every 100 visitors that come from a Yahoo! search, you might get 5 phone calls. With that information, you may want to advertise more on Yahoo!

Then again, even conversions, like the number of phone calls you get for 100 visitors to your site, are not the final measure of results. What if almost every phone call you got from a Google search resulted in a sale, whereas only a small fraction of the calls you got from a Yahoo! search resulted in a sale? In that case, even though more calls are coming from ads on Yahoo!, it would still be smarter to do most or all of your advertising Google. (Again, these are just hypothetical examples.)

Ultimately, more traffic is good, but more qualified traffic is really what you want, whether it’s from Google or Yahoo! or whatever. And you need to use website traffic tracking software like Google Analytics (which is free and easy to install) to collect this information. Combined with other techniques, such as putting a special 800 number on your website so that you know which inquiries and sales are coming from your site as opposed to through other marketing channels, you can get a good idea of which online marketing channels are working well and which are not.

WordPress Tutorials – McBuzz Video Tutorials Now Available for WordPress

Oct 26, 2007

Mark McLaren of McBuzz Communications has finished a series of tutorials for WordPress users. These WordPress tutorials are available on a McBuzz website called “Business Blogging 101″. They are also available on the McBuzz YouTube Channel, YouTube.com/mcbuzzvideo

Here’s one sample, called How to Edit a WordPress Page. You can watch it here on the McBuzz website by clicking on the arrow below, or click on this How to Edit a WordPress Page link to watch it on the McBuzz YouTube Channel, where you can see all of the McBuzz WordPress tutorials available.

How To Edit A WordPress Page
Time: 6 minutes

Natural Search Results vs. Paid Search Results – What's the Difference?

Oct 23, 2007

Here are examples of “natural” or “organic” search results vs. “paid” search results on Google:

The orange boxes indicate paid search results. Google marks these as Sponsored Links. Sponsored Links always appear at the top or on the right side of search results pages. Businesses pay Google to be listed here. These are also called text advertisements, “paid placement” ads or “pay per click” ads.

The green box indicates a natural (also called “organic”) search results listing. As of today, October 23, 2007,  McBuzz is at the top of local search results for “seattle marketing communications”. McBuzz does not pay Google to appear in this spot.

It’s worth noting that since this post was created, Google has done away with local search listings for “seattle marketing communications”, and McBuzz is no longer featured in this top position. Try “wordpress websites seattle” instead.

Yahoo! and MSN.com search results pages have a similar format — with both paid and natural search listings.

Google Indexes Pages Much More Frequently Than Before
Here’s an interesting sidebar. I created the post you are reading right now at 10:16 AM today, October 23. Looking at the Google search results page just now (at 10:30 PM the same day), I see that this post has already been indexed by Google, meaning that it shows up on page one (in the number 10 spot at the bottom of the page) for the same keyword.

Why is this important? Because it shows just how quickly new content on your website can affect its performance in search results.

The post you are reading right now was indexed by Google and listed on page one of serch results for “seattle marketing communications” the same day it was created! What does this tell us? When you apply basic search engine optimization techniques — including making frequent updates to your site with keyword-rich headlines, bullet points and text — you can see immediate results and bring in more customers.

You may recall the days when you had to wait three to four weeks, sometimes longer, for updates to your website to show up in search engine results pages. If you optimized your site, it might take at least that long to find out if what you did worked or not.

As this example shows, those days are long gone — provided you are doing the right things with your website. And that’s a significant qualification. What are the right things? Exactly what we talk about on mcbuzz.com, like following our Web Marketing Tips — and the fact that you should use content managment or “blogging” software like WordPress to build and maintain your site rather than old-fashioned, “static” format HTML. (The latter includes sites created with do-it-yourself, “site builder” tools you find on GoDaddy.com, Network Solutions and Yahoo! web hosting.)

Let me know what you think!

McBuzz Web Marketing Tips
#1: Use “site:url” to Find Out If Your Website Is Indexed by Google

#2: Use XML Sitemap Generator to Get All Your Website’s Pages Indexed by Google

#3: Submit an XML Sitemap to Google

#4: Use Keywords in Web Page Titles

Web Marketing Tip #4: Use Keywords in Web Page Titles

Sep 26, 2007

Page titles are a critical and often overlooked part of web marketing and search engine optimization. If you have ever tried to find a business on the Web by typing the name of the business into Google or another search engine only to be confronted by dozens of pages that refer to that business — with none of them actually providing a link to the business’s website — then you are familiar with missing or weak page titles.

Many web pages have default values like “Untitled Document” or “New Page 1″ as their title. The title displays along the top of your web browser. Few people even notice it. But search engines definitely notice page titles. The title is one of the first places a search engine like Google looks to determine what a web page is about.

The page title is one of the first things search engines look at to determine what a web page is about. Many web designers forget or don’t know about the importance of page titles, hence the prevelance of (totally useless) default page titles like “Untitled Document” and “New Page 1″.

If a business’s website does not show up on the first page of results when you type the business name (and the city the business is in if it’s a common name) into a search engine, the business name is probably not in the title of the website’s home page.

If you don’t know how to change your website’s page titles, see Web Marketing Tip #5 (coming soon) or comment on this post and I will get to it right away!

If you are using a website building tool on a service like Register.com or Yahoo! Geocities that makes it difficult to change page titles, then it’s time to get a new hosting setup! Your new customers will thank you.

Web Marketing Tip #4 is “Use Keywords in Web Page Titles” because the name of your business is obviously not the only thing people search for when looking for businesses like yours. If yours is a local brick and mortar business, put your address in the page title of your home page, or at least the city, state and Zip code. If you are the business owner and you want people to find your business’s website when they search for your name — put that in the title as well.

For example, note that “Mark McLaren” is in the title of my McBuzz Communications website home page and my McBuzz Communications blogspot blog. If you Google “mark mclaren”, you will find both sites on page one. (Search results vary from week to week. Right now I’m on page one.)

Don’t use the same title for every page in your site. Tailor page titles to the content of each page. One of the great features of WordPress is that it creates page titles for you automatically. Put keywords in the titles of your posts and they appear in your page titles as well.

If you have a local business in a particular neighborhood, use that neighborhood name in your page titles. In many cases, this will do wonders for your position in search results.

Of course, you want to use keywords in lots of other places besides page titles, but — first things first — page titles are a great place to start.

Using MySpace For Business Websites

May 29, 2007

MySpace is seen as a viable alternative to buying web hosting and a domain name for some businesses, according to an article in Honolulu’s Pacific Business News.

Local Web designers face competition from MySpace.com
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) – May 25, 2007

On the face of it, this is a good counter-argument to my post about Free Web Hosting and Blog Services vs. Buying Web Hosting and a Domain Name. It seems that some small business owners are using MySpace as a way to create a website for their business — for free — and they are getting good results in the form of new customers and purchases. One business featured in the article is a clothing boutique.

It makes sense that people who might be looking on MySpace for things to buy would be interested in fashion and shopping for new clothes. And there are lots of other businesses that would appeal to the same MySpace demographic: coffee shops, skateboarding shops, surf shops, music stores…

Part of the appeal of MySpace is that people don’t necessarily go there looking for things to buy. They go there to talk to friends, share stuff they find interesting or funny, etc. But the fact that someone may find a store on MySpace that sells cool clothes, and then go to the brick-and-mortar store and have a great shopping experience, well, that’s huge, of course, because they are likely to talk about it on — duh — MySpace.

Obviously, if you are selling something like legal services or rare books, then MySpace may not be for you. However, if you have a business that appeals to 16-24 year olds, then setting up a free MySpace page might just be a no-brainer.

The Business News article sets up a false dichotomy — a choice you don’t really have to make — between creating a small business website on MySpace and buying a full-blown, professionally designed website for, as they say, anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000.

My point is, you may want to spend $5K to $20K, on a business website. You may need some serious eCommerce capabilities, or cutting-edge graphic design, or pages and pages of product samples or whatever. Most very small businesses should not pay anything like $5,000 for a site these days. There are just too many good low-cost options available — using WordPress, for example. But, regardless, there’s no reason you can’t have a site on MySpace in addition to a dedicated business website with your own hosting and domain name, and then link the two together.

The same is true for a listing sites like MerchantCircle.com. Check out the McBuzz Communications listing on MerchantCircle. These are free, easy to set up websites, and they are just one more way to increase the visibility of your business on the Web.