Skip to main content
All Posts By

Mike Blaney

Wondering If Forms Work on a Website?

By Uncategorized

Recently we have been adding “Call To Action” forms on most pages of a website as you never know when a visitor will have the urge to ask a question.

Do they work? Yes if you follow the research in the infographic below. This was developed by Lisa Margetis of www.singlehop.com a pioneer in cloud computing. Click here to visit their website.

The number of fields, wording and the info you share all impact the success of converting visitors to clients.

contact form Infographic

How to Use Your Sphere of Influence to Improve Your Business

By Marketing Strategy

Paper PeopleYour sphere of influence can be the greatest source of referrals and repeat business. Why are avoiding marketing to your raving fans?

Here are some steps to get back on track:

1) Take a look at your list and revisit why they are on the list. Reflect on where you met them and why they are on the list. Then grade them:

A= Likely to refer to you
B= Needs a little more contact with you and then they would refer to you
C= Questionable
D= Delete

2) “Touch” Your Sphere Each Month or On a Regular Basis

There are many ways to “touch” your sphere depending on your business and your budget.

  1. Mail a letter
  2. Phone them
  3. Email a newsletter
  4. Mail a note card
  5. Mail a newsletter

3) Keeping in Touch Does Not Make You a Bad Person

There is a natural barrier to keeping in touch. We feel like we are imposing on them or wasting their time, but that is the wrong way to think. Successful sales people are givers. We are not imposing we are giving them information. It is often referred to as “Give to Get” marketing. If you send market information or call a past client you are giving them something. Maybe you are just listening to their problems, but they appreciate you are giving your time.

Your sphere of influence sees your “touches” as giving something to them and it it makes them open to giving back to you.

4) Relax. No One is Keeping Score

Don’t create an unrealistic timetable that will stress you out. Whatever you do should be sustainable. A Christmas card once a year may be all you can do. If you can add in a quarterly newsletter that would be great. If you could call 2 past clients a week even better. Create a keep in touch program that fits your budget, your personality and your schedule.

5) Spend a Proportional Amount of Time to the Business You Receive

Look at your sales this past year and determine how much business comes from people you know and people who are referred to you. If it is 80% of your business spend 80% of your time, effort and marketing budget accordingly. It is fun to attract new clients and necessary to build your business, but it is expensive, hard to track results and takes time away from your raving fans.

Give us a call about client contact, client retention and prospecting programs. 800-568-8338

Google Hummingbird Release – Game Changer for SEO

By Uncategorized

Hummingbird SEO ChangesThis is an excerpt from the website Searchengineland.com which is an excellent source of search information.

“Hummingbird” is the name of the new search algorithm that Google is using as of September 2013, the name comes from being “precise and fast” and is designed to better focus on the meaning behind the words.

Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

Google Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back better results.

What does this mean to you? To say it is a game changer is an understatement. The websites that respond to the change will definitely rise in the rankings so that only leaves the other ones the option of falling in the search results.

How are we responding to Hummingbird? In some ways it is business as usual as we have always created websites that provide useful, topical information to visitors in context, but we are more focused on adding original content throughout a website that reflects the type of search term we are hoping to rank for. For example if you are a Realtor and you want to rank well for the search term “Edgemont Village Homes For Sale” then we make sure the content of your website is related to the area and makes your website authoritative.

In a recent tweet we said “If you optimize an Ubertor website for visitors, there’s almost no chance that a Google algorithm update will penalize you. We do SEO right!”

Marketing Strategy Checklist

By Marketing Strategy

A good marketing strategy provides specific goals and can include:

  • a description of the key target buyer/end user
  • competitive market segments the company will compete in
  • distribution channels
  • the unique positioning of the company and its products versus the competition
  • the reasons why it is unique or compelling to buyers
  • price strategy versus competition
  • marketing spending strategy with advertising and promotion
  • possible research and development
  • market research expenditure strategies

An overall company marketing strategy should also:

  • define the business
  • position the business as a leader, challenger, follower, or niche player in the category
  • define the brand or business personality or image that is desired in the minds of buyers and end users
  • define life cycle influences, if applicable

 

Ubertor Website SEO Project – Ken Rigel Group

By SEO

When Ken Rigel, a Realtor in Calgary approached us about improving his search engine results we were fooled into thinking that a great looking website with all of the bells and whistles you could ask for was already optimized. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In response to the new release of the Google algorithm called Hummingbird we went to work to make a great looking website live up to it’s appearance. We made the entire website more user friendly by adding titles to each page and side menus so visitors could navigate easily.

We renamed more than 200 pages with more SEO friendly names and created custom, keyword-rich Page Titles and Descriptions.

The last touch was adding keyword blog posts and marketing the website.

We learned not to judge a book by its’ cover and it takes a lot more to be relevant to search engines today than even a few months ago.

Is your website on page 1? Do you want it on page 1? Then give us a call at 800-568-8338.

www_krgroup_ca

Custom Ubertor Mobile Websites

By Mobile Websites

Shane Dent Mobile

As of September 2011, there was a jaw-dropping figure announced – only 1.25% of businesses had ‘mobile-friendly’ websites. This is coupled with Googles’ prediction that 1 billion worldwide will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point in 2014.

By 2015, it is projected that more users will access the internet from their iPhone than from a computer. Creating a mobile version of your website doesn’t have to be painful or expensive. In fact, we recommend a smaller version of your existing website with a more simplistic design. The important thing is to identify the key actions you want your clients to take when accessing your mobile site.

We offer standard Ubertor mobile websites for a onetime fee of $99.00 and custom, branded templates for a onetime fee of $149.00.

The Most Common SEO Mistakes

By SEO

One of the primary focuses of any site promotion campaign is website optimization. By optimizing a website we make changes that increase your site ranking with the major search engines. When we take on  a client for SEO services, there are three things we fix before we even think about social media or any other strategy. To improve your lead generation from the Internet you have to have the SEO basics covered. Here are some places to start.

1. Page titles tend to be too long, and often aren’t relevant to the content.

I am not picking on Realtors in particular, but it seems that they are the most guilty of having long titles, and I know why. They want to capture many different areas. But that’s what your inner-pages are for! Your front page title should be short and focused. Google is becoming more “local” over time and if you want to specialize in an area your website needs to focus on a more defined area rather than a region.

2. Descriptions that are way too long, not a sentence or sometimes missing altogether.

Your description should be 155-164 characters, or as close as you can get without going over. There is absolutely no point in having a very long page description. Google isn’t indexing your super-long description anyway, so you might as well pack it in tight. It also serves as a call to action to the reader so it should clearly indicate what that page has to offer.

3. Improper use of heading tags on the home page. A perfectly optimized website uses heading tags.

Not only does it help organize the content for humans, but it helps search engines to understand what your page is about in a common sense fashion. Make sure you only have one tag on your website. Make sure it’s at the top of the page, and make sure it’s an overview of what you do.

Need to boost your Search Engine Ranking? Contact us today or view our SEO Services Page for additional information.