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SEO Update – Fort Wayne Web Design – Doing Better

Posted by Eric on May 1, 2009  |   3 Comments »

If you’ve been following my blog at all, you know that I have been working hard over the past couple of months at getting my web site to appear at the top of Google, MSN, and Yahoo for the key search term of “Fort Wayne Web Design.”

Well, my site continues to move up the rankings.  Here’s the latest results:

  1. Google – I’m currently number 5 on the site.  If you search for “Fort Wayne Website Design”, I am currently number 2 and show up number 5 in the local listings.  So, the big questions – what’s causing the difference?  Why am I higher for “Fort Wayne Website Design” than for “Fort Wayne Web Design”.
  2. MSN – I’m currently number 1 on the site.  I’m not totally sure what is different about MSN’s sorting process, but I seem to have a much easier time getting to number 1 on MSN than on Google.
  3. Yahoo – I’m currently number 4 on Yahoo.

So, all in all this is really good news.  The “Fort Wayne Website Design” versus “Fort Wayne Web Design” thing on Google is a bit perplexing.  Also, it looks like over 200 people a month search for “Fort Wayne Web Design”, but there isn’t enough data on “Fort Wayne Website Design”.  So, obviously, it’s much less than 200.

So, has all the work paid off?  Well let’s look at traffic.  According to Google analytics, I have received almost 32% of my visitors from Google.  The number one term?  You guessed it – “Fort Wayne Web Design”.  It’s still not a ton of traffic, but it a narrow space.  I compared that to November 2008.  Back in 11/2008 I received 16% of my total traffic from Google.  And, the search terms were all over the board – just really random stuff – fort wayne chat, lotus jump, how to do maintenance, etc.  So, I’m definitely making progress.  The next question is – how many of these visitors have moved into actual clients?

That’s really my next step – start looking at what these visitors are doing on my site and working to generate a higher contact form conversion.  I’m not sure I have all that figured out yet on Google Analytics.  But, I will.

To that end, I’ve created and subscribed to an RSS feed of all my contact form submissions.  While I could just go back and look at my e-mails, a nicely formatted RSS feed, showing up in my MAIL program seems like a really easy way to be able to quantify how many people are contacting me.

Right now, my concerns / thoughts are:

1.  Is my contact us form to low on the contact us page?  Is there too much text?  Are people missing the form?

2.  Should I have more ways to contact me – perhaps a request quote form or get more information form?

Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted with anything I learn.

Fort Wayne Area Phone Calls – Less Than $3.00 / month!

Posted by Eric on April 10, 2009  |   No Comments »

So, I’ve just started getting really upset at my cell phone bill. I live and work in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area and have Verizon as my cell phone provider. Now, Verizon does a fine job of cell phone service. I get 1,400 minutes a month for around $105 a month. But, recently my bill has been closer to $200 a month after all my overages. Most of the time, I can trace my overages to long support phone calls, etc. Making a call to tech support on behalf of a client that ends up lasting 30 – 45 minutes can really start to eat into cell phone minutes.

So, I’ve just started looking for a better solution – something that works well here in the Fort Wayne area.  And, about the same time, guess what Google introduced?  That’s right – Google Voice (http://www.google.com/voice).  Now, Google voice is a private beta service.  You can only use it IF you had an account with the company they bought – Grand Central.  But, it just so happens that I do indeed have an old Grand Central number.  So, I’m part of the private beta.

Here’s a brief run down on Google Voice.  First – it provides no dial tone.  It is simply a number that others can call and then it is basically forwarded to another number – like a cell phone, home phone, VOIP phone, etc.  It also has GREAT voice mail and a ton of features (caller ID, call waiting, call listen in, all that normal jazz).  The voicemail is really nice in that Google will attempt to transcribe the message and e-mail you a written copy of it with a link to listen to it.  So, if the transcription isn’t good (although it has been really good so far), you can simply listen to the voice mail as you would any other.

At Google Voice’s home page you have a list of all your addresses (imported from Outlook, Address Book, or Gmail), list of all incoming calls, all placed calls, all voicemails, etc.  Basically it is a lot like GMail, but just for Voice.

Now, the problem is NO DIAL TONE.  This is a forwarding service only.  So, what good is that?  Well, for me, not much as my goal is to offload work from my cell phone.  So, I paid for a SKYPE IN number.  A Skype In number is a number OTHERS can call me at and it rings my skype.

So, that’s all good, but how about making an outgoing call?  Simple.  I go to Google.com/voice and click place call.  Then I type in the number or select it from my address book.  Google then calls my skype (so skype thinks it is an incoming call).  Once I pick up skype, then Google calls the number I wanted to call.  And, now, Voila – I have an outgoing call, WITHOUT paying for skype out.

Just in case you are wondering, skype in is only $2.95 a month.  And the sound quality is great.  So, now, for right at $3.00 a month, I have unlimited incoming and unlimited outgoing calls and great voicemail and all the features (like caller id, etc.) that I could want.

Plus, should I ever want to, I can forward my Google Voice number to my cell phone, home phone, etc.  Just in case.

So, far, from my experience here in Fort Wayne, it is awesome, cheap, and a great service.

Any else tried out either Skype In/Out or Google Voice?  Let me know.

When 7 equals 350 million

Posted by Eric on February 13, 2009  |   No Comments »

Just got done listening to a webinar by the good guys at HUBSPOT.

I love what these guys do and what they have to say. This most recent webinar was called “Viral Marketing: How to Create a World Wide Rave”.  It was really awesome.

My favorite part of the webinar was one of the introductory stories.  It’s the story of when 7 equals 350 million.

The story was told of the lady who was tasked with the job of marketing the brand new Universal Orlando Theme – The Wizardly Word of Harry Potter.  She had an almost unlimited budget for marketing.  She could do anything she wanted.  So she thought about her options:

  • Direct Mail Marketing
  • TV Commercials
  • Super Bowl Commercial
  • E-mail Marketing
  • and, I’m sure a ton of others

So, what did she come up with?  The slickest super bowl commercial ever?  A million dollar give away?  

Nope, she set up a special – by invitation only – webinar.  The webinar was scheduled at midnight (you know – the whole Harry Potter wizard thing).  Invitations went out to a whopping SEVEN people!  That’s right – only seven.

How were the seven people picked?  Again, did she pick major news people, journalists?  Theme park revieweres (assuming they exist)?

Again, nope.  She simply picked the seven most popular Harry Potter bloggers and invited them to this special invitation event.

All seven agreed.

Her bosses, of course, were beside themselves.  I can only imagine the questions – why aren’t you buying magazine ads?  Why aren’t you buying tv commercials?  Why aren’t you hiring a super exspensive Ad Agency?

She didn’t have an answer UNTIL 24 hours AFTER the event.  

So, what happened?  Of course, we know the story.  All seven bloggers immediately wrote posts about the event.  They posted pictures about it.  They put information on facebook, they tweeted about it.  And, within 24 hours, over 350,000,000 (that’s right – million) had heard about the new park.  

And, it isn’t just a random collection of 350,00,000 people.  It was 350,000,000 people who had some sort of interest about Harry Potter – exactly the kind of people you want to know about your brand new Harry Potter theme park.

All I can say is “WOW”!  The simple truth is that you can’t buy that kind of publicity.  Literally – no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy that.

So, the question is what does a story like that mean for you and me?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Here’s a couple of my very short and very brief thoughts:

  • NEVER underestimate the power of social media
  • Be real – form a TRIBE – get the book TRIBES from Seth Godin to see what I mean
  • Giving up control can have AMAZING results – to do something like this – you have to be willing to give up some control.

Other thoughts?  Let me know.

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