Today Google announced that they have rolled out Social Search.  It’s now available to all users who are signed into Google.  This is something that has been talked about recently but nobody really knew exactly how it would work.  As with all things Google they will be constantly tweaking it as time goes by.

There are a lot of interesting implications to Social Search so we will see how this all plays out. I think it’s pretty amazing that when I search for information about a new movie or a restaurant in town I could see reviews, blog posts and other content from people I know, like and trust.

This will have a direct impact on companies who are not paying attention to their online reputation management and addressing concerns in a positive way.

If you are a small business owner it’s time to take the reigns of this use it to your advantage.

To your success,
Ken Partain

I just sent out our January Monthly Marketing Newsletter.  The focus this month is on Social Media Marketing.

There are lots of links to helpful information so check it out and let me know what you think.  You can leave your notes in the comments section below.

If you would like to have the newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, use the signup form in the right column to register.

Have a great day!

To your success,
Ken Partain

The answer to this question will be different for everyone, but I want to share with you a way to figure this out and what you can do to improve it.

The value of a new client will determine the decisions you make about pricing your products and services, hiring support staff and how much you will spend on marketing and advertising to attract your ideal client.

Let’s look at an example.  Let’s say you sell widgets.  These widgets cost you $20 to produce and you sell them for $40.  You now have a gross profit of $20 on each widget sold.

Now let’s say a typical client buys one widget a month and stays with your company for 2 years.  Each widget makes $20 in profit times 24 months, which equals $480.  That means that each new client is worth approximately $480 in profit to your small business.

Now how much money would you spend to attract that client? $10? $50? $100?

Let’s look at this from another angle.  If you are spending $1,000 on advertising and marketing and you only attract 2 new clients you are losing money, especially if those new clients don’t buy as many widgets and don’t stay with you quite as long.

Now let’s see what you can do to improve the value of a new client.  If you were to raise the price of your widget just 10% to $44 and your costs remained the same, your profit is now $24 per widget, which bumps the value of a new client up to $576 ($24 profit x 12 widgets x 2 years).

And what if your new client bought 14 widgets per year?  Now the value of a new client is up to $672 ($24 profit x 14 widgets x 2 years).

And what if your new client stayed with you for 2 1/2 years?  Now the value of a new client is $840 ($24 profit x 14 widgets x 2.5 years).

Now how much money would you spend to attract your ideal client?  By making improvements in several areas of your business, you can attract a much more profitable client, which in turn allows you to market your small business more consistently across multiple channels and attract even more clients.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.  Please share them by commenting below.

To your success,
Ken Partain

One of the biggest challenges small business owners face is trying to find affordable marketing solutions that work for their company.  Recently we have been talking to a lot of companies that simply don’t have the money to optimize their websites or can’t swing a big up-front payment to get things going.

With that in mind, we have made some changes to the pricing of our SEO Plans and have added two other options.

First, we have reduced the setup fee on all of our SEO plans.

Second, we have added an SEO Jumpstart plan.  With this plan you will have a one-on-one phone conversation with us to determine the direction you want to go.  We will then conduct our keyword research and optimize the home page of your website.  We will also provide you with a Comprehensive Website Marketing Analysis so you will know exactly how to improve your site’s overall optimization.

In addition to the SEO Jumpstart plan, we are now offering a free 30-minute SEO consultation and online marketing review.  This call will be packed with information to help you optimize your site.  We’ll identify the primary issues affecting the ranking of your site and provide you with guidance to correct those issues.

In our December Monthly Marketing Newsletter I set some goals for our company.  One was to help 100,000 small business owners market themselves more effectively.  The other was to add 100 new clients to our roster in 2010.  My hope is that by reducing the prices of our SEO plans and offering some introductory products, more small businesses can afford to optimize their web sites.

Give me a call at 1-877-334-8022 and schedule your free consultation today.

To your success,
Ken Partain

Over the weekend I realized that I overlooked an important piece to the on-page optimization in our series last week on Search Engine Optimization – Back to the Basics.

The structure of your URL is just as important if not more so than your Title tag when it comes to your on-page content.  The thing you want to remember is to try and use the primary keywords in the naming of your page.  If you are optimizing a site that is already in place, you probably don’t need to worry about renaming the pages, but if you are adding new pages to your site you will want to keep this in mind.

If you are using a content management system or blog software for your site then you probably don’t need to worry about this either because most of them will use the title of your post as part of the URL.  And if you use your primary keywords in the title of your post you’re in pretty good shape.  However, you have to make sure and set it up correctly in order for it to work right.

Here’s an example of a poor URL:  www.yourdomain.com/?id=123.  ?id=123 is the name of the page in this instance.  It doesn’t tell the search engines anything about this page.

Here’s an example of a good URL: www.yourdomain.com/blue-widget-special.  blue-widget-special is the name of the page in this instance and it tells the search engines (and your human visitors) what to expect when they visit that page, a special on blue widgets.

I hope this series has been helpful.  If you have any questions please leave a comment below or get in touch with me.

To your success,
Ken Partain