“What Not To Do In Your Newspaper Ad #2″

Examples of Bad Adverting #2 is a post from: Greco-Mitchell Marketing

“What Not To Do In Advertising Your Service Business”

Examples of Bad Advertising #1 is a post from: Greco-Mitchell Marketing

Website Review of: Tuna Town – A Sushi Restaurant In Huntington Beach, CA.

Check out the video below.

Some major highlights:

• Dark Background with Light Text - should be changed to light background with dark text. Remember, the bigger, better websites have it right.

• Pop-Ups – Um, Hello!!!???!!! Stop using pop-ups for annoying and non-urgent crap! If I want to see your review, I’ll click the link. Otherwise, it makes you seem very insecure.

• Incentives For My Email – I’m not just going to give up my email, so you can spam it. Plus, your site doesn’t seem very exciting about the Email Club. What reason do I have to join it?

• Images Should Not Be Used For Important Content – the only exception to that rule is, of course, if your image is the content.

• Everything Matters – Having an incomplete page is not a very good reflection of your business. Why would you want to communicate carelessness and/or oversight when it comes to your business. You’re serving raw fish! Where else have you been careless?

• Important Information at the TOP! – you can put it anywhere else on the site. But it must be at the top!

Website Review: Tuna Town is a post from: Greco-Mitchell Marketing

So let’s say you want to buy something online, like a movie you really like. Say it’s Braveheart – you gotta love that one, right?

So what are you going to search for? Braveheart? Braveheart Movie?

Those might be some decent suggestions. Then again, perhaps anyone searching for Braveheart may be looking for information about the movie, say perhaps that script, or the cast, or the director. Maybe they’re looking for images, or just some ancillary information regarding the movie.

Let’s turn things around now. Let’s say you’ve just been given a large box of factory-sealed, high-definition, wide-screen, special-edition, Mel Gibson signed Braveheart DVDs. They retail for, $400! (This is just an absurd analogy, so just go with it.)

What would your search term be then? What do you think people who are looking for exactly what it is that you have are typing into the google search box?

People who misunderstand search, and keywords will look at your box of Dvd’s and think, “Oh, it’s Braveheart.” Those who are educated (and making money online) are going to find ways to build a more defined and precise phrase for their offering.

That’s what a long-tail keyword is. It’s basically a 3-5 word phrase that best describes whatever it is you’re trying to rank for.

So back to the box of Dvds. Here are some long-tail keywords we could try to rank for:
Braveheart Move High-definition DVD
Braveheart DVD Special Edition
Braveheart DVD Widescreen HD
Braveheart DVD Signed Special Edition HD

You can see that anybody looking for any of these terms is probably more cued to buy, than someone who’s just looking on the term Braveheart Move.

I’d be willing to bet that if you’re not ranking for your search terms, or if you are but you’re not seeing much traffic, it’s because of a failure to really take the necessary time and attention required at building a quality list of long-tail keywords.

Keyword research and selection is the critical component and the foundation of any online success. Therefore, it’s imperative to get this one right.

Pete and I are offering an exclusive and 100% FREE Keyword Research Course for you to learn all you can about this important process. Simple go the our Internet Marketing Keyword Research Course here and start learning.

Understanding Long-Tailed Keywords is a post from: Greco-Mitchell Marketing

Website Review of:  Nikai Sushi – A Restaurant in Jackson Hole, WY.

Check out the video below.

Some major highlights:

• Dark Background with Light Text - Remember, look at the more popular sites all over.  They (usually) have it right.

• Hours of Operation – HUGE pet peeve!  You’re a restaurant.  Your hours of operation are super important, especially to those browsing online.  Get your hours posted at the top of your site.

• Poor Use of Space – A lot of the site is blank space.  Not Feng Shui sort of spacing either.  The best real estate (top-left) it not being used.  Maybe you could put important info there, such as HOURS OF OPERATION!!!!

• Location – use a clickable map like Google Maps, or Yahoo Maps.  This makes it much easier to get directions.  Plus, why re-invent the wheel?

• Sans Serif Font Families Only – Serif fonts are very hard to read online.  Give your readership a break and keep in in the sans serif families.

• Text Formating – this includes the colors, the font-family, as well as the size and spacing.  Bold topic-lines and headlines should be separated from the text cluster.  Increase the size of the text to make it web readable.

Website Review: Jackson Hole Restaurant is a post from: Greco-Mitchell Marketing

Keywords are the major factor when establishing yourself and your business online.  Missing the mark at this step, and you’re entire online campaign may be lost at sea.  I can’t believe how many people are putting up sites that will never be found.  Reason?  Because they’ve missed this critical component to online marketing.

Choosing the best keyword for business is quite simple.  Notice I didn’t say easy.  Nor quick.  This isn’t some sort of cursory stepover activity you get done in before lunch.  In fact, there are some SEO experts who suggest that the company take a good 6 months to a year to build their keyword list.

This is good advice.  Your keyword list should be as organic as your company and industry.  But we’re getting ahead of things, aren’t we?  For now, let’s just focus on how to choose the best keywords for whatever it is you want to do online.

I’m going to suggest you look at 3 main components: Search-Activity, Fine-Tuned, and Competition.

Search-Activity

Did you know that I can guarantee you – yes, I said the G-word – that I can put your site on the front page of Google.  I absolutely can!  And for only $100,000 a month, you can have as many front page Google listings as you want!

Sound good? – Don’t answer, yet.

The assumption that remains undisclosed is the particular search term we’re talking about.  See, I was going to get you a front page listing for Martian Water-Gardening Tools.

What?  That doesn’t work?  Probably not.  But the reason I can guarantee a top listing is because I know that absolutely nobody is searching for that term – so what doesn’t it do for your business (even if you were selling Martian Water-Gardening Tools)?

The first element we need to focus on is the Search Activity of our keywords.  We want popular, highly-search phrases that can generate traffic.  If we were talking about this 5 years ago, keyword research would be a lot easier.  Today, however, with more education and attention online, finding a well searched keyword phrases takes effort.  It’s not difficult, as much as it is time-consuming.

Fine-Tuned

If I did live on Mars, and was trying to peddle some of my gardening wares,  do you think it’d be good enough to just use the term “gardening” as my search term?  No way!

A term like “gardening” is so generic.  I could mean anything.  Right?  Somebody searching for the term “gardening” could be looking for gardening pictures, or gardening ideas, or gardening services, or stores, or anything really.

Contrast that with someone searching for “martian water-gardening tools.”  What do you suppose they are looking for?  That’s right, the keyword says it all.  Not just gardening tools, nor water-gardening tools, but martian water-gardening tools.  That’s a very specific and defined keyword.

We need make sure that our keywords are as focus and fine-tuned as can be.  It’s okay to have a keyword like gardening, but it shouldn’t be on the top of our list for the rankings – we’ll never really compete there.  Instead, we should spend the bulk of our time fleshing out the most refined and defined keyword phrases available to us.

Competition

This may sound a little counter instinctual, but we when it comes to competition, we want to make sure we are not all alone – that there are some competitors out there.  Not saying that we should go after the big boys, but just a few competitors trying to rank for the same or similar keywords as we.  That way we know it’s a somewhat viable market.

Along with that, however, we also want to be certain that there isn’t so much competition that we’ll never see the light of even the second page of the search results.  I can tell you without doing any research, that you’re not going to get on the front page of the Goog with a term like Gardening.   Well, not unless you’ve got a lot of time and a Warren Buffett account to throw at it.

The level of competition should be just enough to indicate that there is a pulse in the market.  Of course, there is always exceptions.  There may be some breaking fad in your industry that you can grab hold of.  We encourage you to test these keywords out.

But if your whole set of keywords and keyword phrases is either over- or under-burdened with competition, it may be a sign that we should re-think your brainstorming process.

Again, the first step in any attempt at coming online with you business, is to discover the landscape available to you.  Such a landscape is comprised of keywords and keyword phrases.  By ensuring that your keywords have a particular level of search interest, are as defined and articulate as possible, and have a competitive balance that indicates an opportunity for success, one major (highly major) piece to our online puzzle is accomplished.

How to Choose the Best Keywords is a post from: Greco-Mitchell Marketing