blogging Archives - Page 14 of 16 by Mark Murnahan

Cigar Prices Rising With Bad SEO and Social Media Marketing

Cigar prices are rising because of social media marketing and seo? I must be joking, right? No, not at all, my friends. Cigars are just one of many categories of consumer products suffering higher prices and lowered standards due to inefficient use of marketing resources. I am using cigars as an extreme example, but you can see it in many industries beyond cigars, too. While you read this, consider how it may fit into your industry as well. You may wonder how in the logic of Murnahan poor marketing decisions can make prices rise, but I will explain.

Online Cigar Stores Are Inefficient

I received a call from an online cigar store owner yesterday after he came to my website while searching for a cigar-related term. It may seem strange, because I am not in the cigar business. I am a marketing guy who just happens to like cigars. It is crazy that I have more people coming to my website searching for cigars than a lot of the companies who actually sell cigars. Then again, I get a lot of car dealers and surgical supply companies here, too.

I liked this guy who called me, and we had a great chat. We talked about his industry challenges, and how it seems that one of the biggest of them is that all the online cigar stores are battling for the best cigar prices. They fight with the cigar makers for the best prices, and then they fight to gain customers with low prices. After all, that is how you sell stuff, right? If you give them free shipping, a free cigar cutter, and lower your prices to the point all the profit is gone, it should be good for business. It seems that as an industry, online cigar stores have this impression that if they slash prices it will make them more appealing and somehow by the grace of cigar smokers it will help more people find them. They will magically find them and buy cheap cigars that leave little or no profit for the cigar store owner. I see this in a lot of different fields, where people make the mistake of giving away all their profit by trying to compete in a price battle rather than using marketing strategy to win the value war.

Oh, but wait! Don’t businesses need profit? This price battle starts to seem like a bad idea once all the profit is gone and competitors keep dropping prices, doesn’t it? After all, unless you actually have the capability to be the biggest cigar company online, you had better start figuring out how to be the best cigar company online first. Wouldn’t it make more sense to try and keep the customer churn rate low and provide better value? Doesn’t social media help to do that by building brand awareness and brand value? Oh yes, it does, but sometimes values like that can elude an entire industry … that is, until somebody steps up and pulls the rug from under them.

Online Cigar Stores Place Price Over Value

Many cigar stores will have a big inventory of cigars that sat on a shelf in a warehouse for a long time, so they offer them at a huge discount. They run a big special on that brand. They are not so concerned with quality as much as they are concerned with moving the product. This happens in many industries, such as consumer electronics, automobiles, real estate, food, clothing, and many more. Moving more product often comes with an urgency. Get it out the door so you can buy more inventory … whatever it takes. So what happens is while the frantic overstocked cigar store is playing this game of catch-up, somebody is selling the new inventory of cigars that actually yield a profit. They often tend to forget that there is also somebody out there who is making a profit. They may even be selling more of the same thing, but selling it for more money because they have proven value, and because more people know and trust their brand.

The reactive seller is an industry follower and not a leader. They are doing business as a reaction instead of a cause. They have not done what it takes to build brand-loyalty, and to develop stable and sustainable marketing numbers. They keep making the mistakes, but they do not learn from them. What they do learn from the mistakes are the wrong lessons, based on the wrong sets of numbers. They watch what everybody else is doing and try to emulate it instead of innovating. They dig their own grave this way, and often call a guy like me once the only question left is “can I afford this?” They end up with such terrible results of chasing their tail that when they actually realize a problem, they are too late to implement a solution. They are not proactive. When they are equipped to make good decisions that will sell more cigars, they do not see a need, and when they see a need, they are no longer equipped.

Online Cigar Stores Know Cigars, Not Marketing

In every business, there is a need for marketing. Better, smarter, faster, more effective marketing is what makes companies successful. Marketing is what puts their products into consumers’ hands. It is what sells cigars, and everything else … even which emergency room people go to when they are hurt or sick. Without a proper market reach, companies fail. The best market reach for companies is online. It is where people are, and you can reach them a whole lot better here than you can with a 30 second television spot; a newspaper advertisement; a Yellow Pages telephone book clip; and whether you like it or not, better than you can reach them with word of mouth alone.

Marketing on the Internet is not based on luck. You do not just put a website out there and hope for the best. Hoping people will find you and buy from your online cigar store is like hoping it will rain Nub cigars. I hope it will rain Nub cigars, too, but I am not going to my bank to deposit them just yet. The fact is that in order to create more business, it requires marketing talent, marketing creativity, and a lot of work.

I should add that the gentleman who telephoned me yesterday found me because of an article I wrote on February 2, 2009 titled “Nub Cigars by Oliva Cigar Company Fall Short” and it discussed the shortcomings of cigar marketing. It has created a lot of traffic to my blog and a few phone calls as a result of cigar related terms such as the list below and this extended list of the top 200 cigar search terms that people used to find my one little blog post. Note that only two of these searches included the words “cheap”, “cost”, or “price”.

It is a sad but funny fact that the biggest concern the caller had is how much it will cost to get the results he wants. At the same time, he did not really even know what results he wanted, or what potential he has. He just knows that he wants to sell more cigars online, and he wants to achieve his unestablished goals cheaper than anybody else. The better questions are in the cost of not doing what it takes to create more business. How many more cigars can you sell if more people know your cigar store exists and have a reason to buy from you instead of the other guys? How much is it worth to have more people coming to you instead of somebody else when they search for things like these:

nub cigars
short cigars
nub cigars for sale
best short cigars
nubs cigars
nub cigars online
oliva nub cigars
buy nub cigars
cigars nub
company produces cigars
difference between nub cigars
marketing cigars
oliva cigars nub
where to buy nub cigars
who makes nub cigars
nub cigars retailer
“short cigars”
#cigars
a website with guys and cigars?
best 4 short cigars”
cheap nub cigars
cigars
cigars “social media consultant”
… more cigar search terms

In the case of my caller, he wanted me to create a plan for him and get back to him with some figures. I know he may not understand this, but without a target, I don’t even load my gun. I need to know what I am aiming at before I just start shooting out proposals. What I sell is not an item on a shelf, but rather the smoke that comes from my brain … not my cigar.

How Does SEO and Social Media Affect Cigar Prices?

There are actually two ways that cigar prices are affected by social media and SEO. First, let us consider what happens when a company is inefficient. They could sell more cigars if they used their marketing dollars more productively. Being productive means doing things that create more sales, generate more profit, and lower their cost with the cigar manufacturer. The second way that cigar prices go up due to social media and SEO is that a cigar store that markets their brand well and generates a loyal customer base can stop fighting price battles and start winning at providing the value that customers are actually asking for. Most of the time when people say they want “cheap cigars”, what they really want is to get their money’s worth … whatever the cost.

I only plan to do business with one online cigar store, and it will not be “cheap”. I don’t offer cheap marketing, because I know the difference of Marketing Cost vs. Marketing Value. As it is, I may have to say “no” to a good number more of them before a light bulb goes on for one of them and they decide to be the next cigar tycoon.

Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference

There are good SEO (search engine optimizers) and there are bad SEO, and if you cannot tell the difference, your money and time will be wasted. I am going to give you some third party objective tools to tell the difference between good and bad SEO. These can help you to determine whether yours is working, whether you have hired it out, you are seeking to hire it out, or you are venturing into the ever-popular DIY SEO. The information I will provide in this article also includes some great SEO tools just to satisfy your curiosity. This can help, in case you wondered why there are not more people coming to your website, or to estimate how well your competition is doing. First, I want to be sure that you understand what SEO is and why good SEO is important, so I will start with that.

Why Good SEO is Important

We should first establish that it is important to be listed when somebody searches the Internet looking for what you offer. Searching the Internet is the most common way for people to find a business. If people do not find you, they will find somebody else. Obviously, they will find your competition. Count on it!

I will be really basic for a moment, in case you are totally unfamiliar with SEO. In this article, I will use the term SEO as both the field of search engine optimization (the art and science) as well as search engine optimizer (the person). In basic terms, SEO involves placing your website at the top of a list when somebody performs a search on the Internet. SEO also has a lot to do with making sure that when your link is found in a search, people will click on it, read what you have to say, and take an action such as buy what you have to sell, tell their friends, fill out a form, call you on the phone, and etcetera. These are the things that will produce more business for your company. It really involves a lot of different areas of art and science, so I want to give you some ways to measure both of these things.

Now, let us assume for a moment that good SEO actually exists. It is not a unicorn chase, and it is not some VooDoo witchcraft. Somebody actually is at the top of those searches, they are making sales, and there are reasons for it. So, let’s look at this from a standpoint that there actually is such a thing as good SEO for a moment, please? After all, we can be pretty sure that there is a reason the company at the top of a search for, let’s say, “travel” is not just a brand new company with a $400 budget and 13 incoming links to their site. No, it does not happen that way … ever.

Tools of the SEO Trade

Good SEO is not just made up of a couple of big factors. Yes, there are some big things we look at, but there really are a lot of little things that make up the big picture. Some of the factors are specifics about the website itself, such as the programming code, the servers, XML sitemaps, robots.txt, text content, link structure, keyword usage, and much more. There are a whole lot of pieces to the puzzle of the website itself that add up to make a difference. You have to get those things just right, and have every piece in place to achieve high search engine ranking for competitive search terms. That is to say, the things people actually search for when they need you. Then, there are the things that exist in the world outside of your website. These are things that a lot of website owners often feel are a bit out of their control, or really hard to improve. It is not so hard, but it does take some work. When there is work to be done, there are tools for that work. My father was a craftsman, and he always expressed the importance of using the right tool for the job. If you use the right tools, the job will always go much smoother. My father was really on to something.

Understanding SEO is Not Like Understanding “Rocket Surgery”

SEO does not require a degree in “rocket surgery” (rocket science and brain surgery). A lot of people will try to do some, if not all, of their SEO on their own, and it really can help. I respect anybody who wants to try to build their search engine optimization. Having people understand that SEO is important and that it actually works when done properly is one of the biggest hurdles in my job. In fact, I do everything in my power to be sure my clients and prospective clients understand SEO enough to help themselves. I tell them to read the “Google SEO Starter Guide“. I teach them the good reasons to blog, and I want them to have a better understanding of SEO. Most good SEO will generally try their best to be helpful, because they equate their success with the client’s success. They realize that it is a joint effort. Good SEO know that when they make clients massively successful, they have a lot easier career path. It is why people who Google the term SEO lessons find me at or very near the top. I want people to understand how and why it works. That makes my job much easier.

One of the biggest factors of SEO is backlinks, or links that point to your site from other websites. As you surely understand by now, this is not a silver bullet, but it is a huge factor. So let’s look at link building for a moment, and how to see if you or your SEO are doing a good job.

How to Check for Backlinks (incoming links)

Since a primary factor of good SEO is backlinks, we need to know how to check for them and monitor them. When I say backlinks, I mean links coming to your website from other websites. This is the biggest factor of Google’s PageRank algorithm, and it is what will make the difference between two otherwise equal websites. One with a lot of high-quality incoming links will be ranked, while the other may be totally invisible to search engines, or somewhere between. This is so important that if you could just see me right now, I am jumping up and down and screaming.

Most SEO fail at link building. They get it totally wrong, and their link strategy fails miserably. If you want to know why, I strongly suggest reading this article: “SEO Backlinks: Why Most SEO Fail at Link Building“.

I will give you some tools to check for backlinks. Each of these are useful, but for the most comprehensive look at incoming links, any SEO knows to use Yahoo Site Explorer. By default, it will show you the links for the particular page, so if you enter your website, be sure that you click the “inlinks” button and then select links to the entire site rather than just looking at the home page. After all, people link to the pages they like, and not just link to the homepage and tell people to look for it. Only television stations do that, and perhaps you have heard what kind of trouble they are in these days.

Your search for backlinks should look something like this search that shows tens of thousands of “inlinks” to my blog or like this search excluding internal links.

Another useful tool for determining incoming links and whether they are doing any good is to look at SEOmoz Linkscape. Linkscape will also show your mozRank, which is similar to Google’s PageRank but, in many people’s opinion, more useful.

It seems that most people are confused about backlinks. High-quality backlinks do not just mean any link from any website, and they do not mean just any type of link. The quality of the linking website makes a big difference in the quality of the link. Also, a link coming from a picture is not all that great, but a link from text is fantastic. Wait, but not just any text. A link that points to you with the words “pink ponies for sale” is not so great if you do not have any pink ponies to sell. You want links that are relevant to what you offer, and links that benefit your site. This is where Open Site Explorer can be handy. Open Site Explorer (another SEOmoz tool) will show you which links are valuable to you. It will tell you the actual text within the links pointing to your site (e.g. pink ponies for sale), whether they are “nofollow” links or “dofollow” links (which is another blog post), it will tell you the domains that link to you (e.g. facebook.com), and even how many domains link to them (which is also important). There is a lot more functionality to Open Site Explorer than I will go into here, so be sure to check it out. If it starts to feel like you are just tinkering with useless information, then you are getting the picture about why there are people who actually do this for a living.

Now that you know a little about checking for links, you may also like to know how to discover new ones as they arrive. For this, you can keep checking back, which I suggest anyway, but you can also set up a Google Alert to email you or monitor the RSS feed for new links coming in. That is another blog post, but what we want here are ways to decipher good SEO from bad SEO. So, let’s look at some tools that examine good or bad on-site SEO. This is to say, the things about the website itself that are working correctly, or need some tuning.

SEO Website Readiness Tools

Is the website ready for the incoming links? Let’s find out. I know that I probably spent too much of your time with that drawn out portion about incoming links. Backlinks really are very important … extremely important … but there is more. If you are still with me, I want to share some good SEO tools that will help you to uncover on-site issues that may be stumping your search engine optimization efforts. Running your website through these free SEO tools will help you find things that you can often fix quickly and relatively easily. If you test your website with these tools, and fix it as directed, your SEO will get better. If you are trying to determine a good SEO from a bad SEO, their website should be standing tall in these tests.

Note, that a good SEO also knows which “rules” to break. Nobody will have this all just perfect, because sometimes you just have to break the rules to get the results you want. For example, my site will not validate as XHTML Strict, because I use Disqus commenting system, TweetMeme for people to easily share my articles on Twitter, Apture for cool content display, and I use an anchor target in some of my links so that pages open in a new window. This is OK, because I know which trade-offs are worthwhile. However, the SEO’s own website should provide a good indication of their SEO knowledge. I understand the whole excuse of “the plumber with leaky pipes” (I have been guilty, too), but this is not a good excuse! Any good SEO should be able to show some pretty impressive results with their own website. I find a lot of people trying to sell SEO services who have very few incoming links, and really rotten rankings for their targeted keywords. Try these tests to compare SEO:

HubSpot Website Grader
SEOmoz Toolbox (an assortment of good SEO tools)
W3C Markup Validation Service

Website Traffic Estimates and SEO Website Age

If you are comparing SEO, you should know a couple of key things about them. Does anybody know they exist? You can find a really quick answer to this question by checking their Alexa.com rankings and see their estimated website traffic. This only gives a reasonable estimate based on sample data, but it can definitely tell you a lot about the SEO. If they are unknown there is a reason, and there are no good excuses for it. There is also the often more definitive Quantcast, but a lot of SEO do not wish to share that much data.

I see a lot of SEO with new domain names. This is not always a red flag, but it can be a sign that they are either new, or their previous domain was banned by search engines for abuse. It happens more than you may imagine. This is not the kind of SEO you want to do business with. If they have been banned, you can bet some of their clients have been penalized as well. I said that a new domain is not always a red flag, because there are a few newer SEO who have talent, or may just be beginning their freelance career. However, if their company website is new or unranked, they better have a really good sales pitch. You can look up domain ownership with a WHOIS tool such as YourNew.com WHOIS Lookup or DomainTools.com

Content Creation is Important to Good SEO

Content creation is where many of these SEO factors come into play. A great looking website that is easily indexed by search engines is a good start. Now let us consider content production. If the website does not have good content that includes topics and keywords people search for, it will not matter. You must have something fantastic to offer once the website visitors get there. This is where a lot of the art of SEO comes into play. This is where marketing talent and creative content really make a huge difference between success or failure. How important is creativity in marketing? The easy answer is that it is absolutely critical. Great website content is what creates a desire to buy what you sell, and is also the biggest factor in that important SEO goal I wrote about above. It builds links! If people like what you have to share, and if they find your website content to be useful to them or somebody they know, they will share it. They may tweet it, digg it, stumble it, facebook it, or blog about it, and that creates links.

I explained that incoming links are the most important off-site factor in good SEO. This is an undisputed fact in my industry. Now I want to explain that you do not get those backlinks by taking a pink pony ride with one of the SEO offering to add your website to a squillion search engines and directories. No, that is not how this works. That is how the bad SEO will often try to get your money. You will get the best links with great content, and being useful to others. Even then, good SEO results only happen if you make all the other pieces fit just right.

By the way, good SEO also means they read it all the way to the bottom of the page.

You Know it is Bad For Business, So Stop It!

In business, there are a lot of bad habits that can stunt your growth. You do not have to look for a pitfall, because they are looking for you. There are many distractions to get in the way of doing the marketing you should be doing, and doing better. So, what is holding you back? Is fear and insecurity holding your marketing back? Are bad habits holding your marketing back? Are you missing profit by putting off better marketing until tomorrow? Are you guilty of knowing that something is bad for you, or just not good for you, but you keep doing it anyway? If you look carefully, you may just find that you are not so different from everybody else. Most people find it hard to push the marketing go button, but I found some other obstacles you may not have considered.

I recently visited with a treasured friend, Mike Burgess of Spinnaker Web Design, and we discussed people, their habits, their psychology, and how most of them are not well-suited for business. They may be good at what they do, but business decisions, and particularly marketing decisions, are not most peoples’ strong point.

Mike has been my close friend for a long time. We have great conversations, because we each provide our unique view of industry issues. In addition to being a web developer, Mike is also a Kansas State Legislator. The people who do that job on a state level work hard and are not in it for the money. They have to put up with a lot of rhetoric from constituents. This makes Mike a good balance for me as a friend. I take no crap at all, and he takes crap and turns it into a breakfast omelet. I will share a couple of things we discovered.

It is Bad for You, But You Keep Doing It

I told Mike that I was confused about people. I told him that although I am seeking one new marketing client, that I am getting all kinds of crazy callers wanting to grow huge profit for their business, but they have it all wrong. They think they can achieve massive success without any sacrifice. It is as if they hope for the equivalent of buying a McDonald’s restaurant for a single month’s worth of McDonald’s restaurant revenues. I mean, if you want to generate a million dollars of revenue, you don’t do it with a few thousand dollars. Bill Gates, John Davidson Rockefeller, and Warren Buffet cannot do it, so why do other people think they can? I remind them that there is no pink pony ride to success, and that there are certain laws of Internet marketing that can never be broken.

Mike had some interesting observations.

People Do What is Comfortable

Mike pointed out that most people will do what is comfortable, even when they know better. They understand that the extra cheeseburger and fries is not good for their diet, but they keep doing it. He pointed out that although I have heard about the risks of smoking, I still smoke. He pointed out that people have done business the same way for a long time, and breaking those old habits is really hard for them. They cannot see or touch the idea of doing more business online. It is intangible to them, just like lung cancer to a smoker or a cheeseburger is to an obese person with heart disease. They know that what they are doing is bad for them, but they keep doing it because it is comfortable, and because change is not comfortable.

Go and visit a grade school lunchroom sometime and see how many kids are eating their vegetables. I have three kids and I love the school lunchroom. I call it my favorite restaurant. People learn things young. Being around kids reminds me of this, and how important it is to break bad habits as quickly as possible. If you are doing the equivalent of “smoking cigarettes” and “eating cheeseburgers”, it is time to ask yourself why you continue to do what you know is unhealthy for your business. I will tell you the way Bob Newhart said in his popular comedy skit, “stop it!“ Just Stop It!

People Do Not Pay Attention

As I talked with Mike, we reminisced about stupid things we have witnessed on the Internet over the years. I was reminded of a particular sample of my company’s website design and search engine optimization services. The sample website was so appealing that we started having a flood of calls for the product. It was a designer bedding site, and people were calling to purchase designer bedding. We are an Internet services company … we don’t sell designer bedding! The number they were calling was only displayed at the very top of each page, or when a user would try to place an order. It was placed conspicuously in a notice stating clearly that the site was only a sample of our website design, search engine optimization, and ecommerce services, and that we do not sell bedding. It was in bright red and bold letters. We could not have made it any more clear, but people kept calling about that bedding for many years to come.

The point in this is that while marketing a product or service, you have to do the thinking for them. It is funny, but we also get a whole lot of similar calls for Ethicon surgical sutures and car dealerships.

Most People Don’t Know Their Shortcomings

Knowing your shortcomings is a good start to being more productive in business, but it is only a start. I know mine, and I am doing something about it. I will share it with you, but I want you to consider yours at the same time.

I stink at sales. Actually, I take that back. I am amazing at giving factual data of how I will increase a company’s profits, and I am even good at expressing the emotional benefits of what I do. I am so good at it that I should never, ever, in my lifetime, be allowed into a boardroom. I am that guy who will give it to them straight and without any apology. I say it how it is. I do not hold back. If I see incompetence, I am not shy to express it. People do not always like the truth. They like a soft-handed salesy approach that pats them on the bum and makes them feel all cozy and warm, like a baby in mother’s arms. That is not a service I provide. As I have often said, “I am not your mother!” When people don’t “get it” I am not a guy who will keep working on a sale. It is because I am pretty (ok, obsessively) selective about the clients I will work with. I mean, they are getting the big dollars out of the deal, so when they don’t “get it” I know that we are not a good match. OK, I said I am not a salesman … so get off my back about it! It is my shortcoming, and so I always seek sales reps who can explain what I do without wanting to choke somebody. There is not enough Valium to prevent a choking when somebody has a glazed over look after I give a presentation. I am making them money. They just have to pay me for it first, because it is far too easy for them to try and steal from me (like the story about Suture Express).

If you find that your shortcoming is in your marketing and you understand that exposure to thousands more targeted visitors to your website and better marketing talent will help, then ring me up. If you are looking for a pink pony ride to success or some fine designer bedding, then you were not paying attention. In that case, Call Mike!

Produce More Website Content … But Why? SEO?

“You should produce more website content.” This is a pretty common message that many search engine optimizers will tell you. They say that “if you produce more content, you will have more website traffic.” Are they lying to you? No, but there is another piece that is missing. I am going to give you that piece, and it will not cost you a cent. I will give you the good and bad sides of creating more content on your website, along with some encouragement that it is not as difficult at you may imagine, so pay attention.

You want more website traffic. Don’t try to deny it. I want more website traffic, too. Website traffic makes me happy. It makes me feel vindicated for all my hard work. It makes me money … (insert sound byte of screeching tires here). Incorrect! More website traffic actually does not pay me a penny. It actually comes with a cost. Maybe this is why I am telling you the truth. I may just lie to you if I earned a dollar every time you click another page, but I do not. Go ahead and look around to see that I do not have a bunch of cost-per-exposure advertisements or cost-per-action links to “buy now” or “register here” on my blog. I have a couple of my own books listed to the left, but I am not force-feeding that to you. They are not my big money-maker. So, you may ask, “what is the catch, and why do you want to share this with me?” There must be something dirty in this plan, right? No, in fact, I actually do not want to sell you anything at all. I will explain, but first, I want you to understand some facts about producing more website content. I will explain why more website content is important, and also why it is not important.

Benefits Producing More Website Content

If you produce more written content on your website, there will be more things for Google and other search engines to add to their databases. This means that as long as you do everything else just right, you will have a higher chance of being listed when somebody performs a search. Do not underestimate the importance of this fact. Consider why Wikipedia is found so often when you search for something. Wikipedia has a lot of useful website content … things you want to know.

I recently illustrated the huge differences in website traffic based on adding new website content as compared to the reach of social media. I suggest reading “Twitter is Useful but Blogging is Better” and also a piece titled “10 Really good Reasons to Blog“. Your website really is the epicenter of your business efforts online, so you should treat it that way. If you are in business and want more business, you should really be producing more website content … but here comes the hard part.

Producing More Website Content Does Not Matter

Website content is important. It is important enough that more website content, alone, is not what really matters. Your competitors are producing more website content, too. The race is on, and now it will require marketing talent to win. Doing it right is what matters. Giving people information they want and need, becoming a market authority, and being ready with a solution for the reader’s need matters more. Volume of website content will get people there, but having something truly spectacular for them is what makes them a customer.

There is a balance to be found between more website content and great website content. Some content will get traffic and public attention, but people will only look further if it grabs them and pulls them in. The people who visit my blog because they searched for “best hookers” (and they do) are not buying what I sell, but it is a pretty darn popular piece of blogging content. The people who happen upon that piece because I referenced it, like I did here, are why I wrote it. There is also a lot of value in reaching the audience just outside of your focus using “lateral keywords“. This means keywords in a lateral and sometimes unexpected market.

Producing Website Content Gets Easier

Producing website content gets easier with practice, and it can really create a snowball effect. Just consider this: I set out to write a book about Twitter in 2009. I was just out to write one book, but all of the sudden it got easier and I wrote two more within three months. I also blogged enough to wear my fingers smooth.

You do not need a degree in literature to produce successful website content. I can prove this statement. The website content that I have produced over the last decade is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people per month. It has also earned me millions of dollars. I left school at 15 years of age and I am the CEO of a wholesale Internet company. I didn’t have the time or education to write more website content either. I am glad that I did, and it provided inspiration for the book “Living in the Storm“.

You can do this, and it really does make a difference. When you cannot, there are also a lot of website content producers available to hire out the work or to augment your efforts. There is also a search engine optimizer on every corner. These fields grow with each round of layoffs at companies that didn’t produce more website content in time to beat the competition.

When Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other tools you have tried just aren’t working like you hoped, it is likely that you simply didn’t produce enough quality content that people were looking for. Think about it like planting a tree. If you want shade, the best time to plant it is ten years ago. You cannot go back and plant it earlier, so the next best time is now.

Why I Do Not Want to Sell You Anything

I wrote earlier that I do not want to sell you anything at all. That deserves an explanation, because I really do not mean to seem rude or impersonal. The truth is that I am actually looking at the guy over your shoulder. I want your competitor. I want the one who is out to crush your business because they understand the importance of not only producing more website content, but also producing the content that will smash the competition. That is how I earn a living for my family. So, if you call me on the phone or message me, be sure that you tell me you are out to cause a marketing massacre for that other company who read this blog article (yes, they are reading it, too).

Write Page Titles That Get Attention

Page titles that get attention are smart, short, and compelling. Without a good page title, the rest loses importance. If you want to write a page title that works, stop using so many words. Write like you want it to be read.

I am a conversational writer, and I use too many words. I write books and long blog articles. You use too many words, too. Most of us use too many words. We make sentences too long. If we word-it-up, we (think we) seem smarter.

Page Titles Get Clicked

Page titles are a top priority for SEO. Titles are indexed, and page titles are what people click to read the rest. Practice writing page titles. Write it in fewer words if you can. Make it easy to understand.

Try using Twitter if you need practice.

Stop using too many words.