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North Star Internet Marketing Blog

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Monday, August 1st, 2011

We’ll be sharing information about all sorts of topics related to websites, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, and destination marketing in the Sedona-Verde Valley area. If you have a website, an online business, or any business that you want to grow, you’ll find useful, practical information here. Please feel free to leave replies and comments…we would love this blog to turn into a lively dialogue! Just click on the Comments(0) number to be able to leave your questions and comments.

Olin Robie
North Star Internet Marketing

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Categories : Internet Marketing

Who Uses the Yellow Pages Anymore?

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

I gave short presentation recently to a group of about 18 local business people. I asked two questions:

1. “If you need to find the phone number of a business in town that you know,  do you grab the yellow pages or do a search on Google?”
2. “If you need to find a plumber/lawyer/Realtor or other kind of business in town, do you grab the yellow pages or search on Google?”

In both cases, 14 or 15 of the 18 people in the room went with Google. What ensued was a conversation about how expensive it is to advertise in the the yellow pages and how ineffective it has become. It wasn’t a positive conversation!

The upshot of it all is that we are now building small websites for companies that want to use their website to replace their yellow pages ads. For around $500 we can build a simple 1-3 page website, optimize it for local searches, and get it listed in Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Local so that people will find your business at the top of Google when they search locally for your kind of business.  For less than the cost of a year’s ad in the yellow pages, they have a website that will live on for years.

If you already have a website, getting it listed in Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Local is pretty simple. You should do it right away!

Olin Robie
North Star Internet Marketing

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Categories : Internet Marketing, Online Advertising, Websites

Google Knows Synonyms

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 
If you search Google for a hotel, will Google find motels as well? No it won't, but it will find inns, lodging, and accommodations. Yes, Google has an 
extensive and context sensitive ability to equate your search terms with (what it judges to be) synonymous searches. This is useful for us when we search,
but it is also important to know when we are optimizing a website for the search engines.
If you are search engine optimizing your website to rank well on certain search terms it is useful to know what synonyms Google will recognize. For instance,
if "sustainable" is an important search term for you, then it would be useful to know if Google will treat "green" as a synonym for "sustainable". The answer is
no, Google does not treat sustainable and green as synonyms so for the website I am working on right now, we'll have to optimize for both search terms.
Is there a way to figure out which synonyms Google recognizes? Yes, it's easy. Send me an email and I will reply with an explanation of how to do your own
synonym research. Email me at Olin@NorthStarInternet.com
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Categories : Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Inbound Links Are A Key Factor In Your Search Engine Rankings

By Olin Robie · Comments (1)
Friday, December 16th, 2011

Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are one of the most important factors that Google evaluates when ranking your website. These are links from other websites to your website without a reciprocating link from your website to theirs. The quality and quantity of your inbound links both count toward Google’s evaluation of your website.

So, how do you get inbound links?  Here are some ideas to get you started.

  • Get listed in DMOZ
  • Get listed in Google Places and Google Maps
  • Get listed in the Yahoo local directory (local.yahoo.com)
  • Go to friends and friendly businesses with websites and ask them to link to you. It is OK if you arrange for reciprocal links but they aren’t nearly as valuable as one way links.
  • Look for directories in your industry. They are easy to find. If you are a hypnotherapist, Google “directory of hypnotherapists” and variations on that theme. You will have to evaluate each directory you find, and go through their process for getting listed or claiming your listing. Sometimes there is a cost involved, usually not.
Building up your backlinks is time consuming, but worth the effort if you are concerned with your search engine rankings. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself, give me a call. We have developed a list of over 200 websites and directories on which we can get valuable one-way links to our client’s websites. If you’d like, we’ll use our list and do the work for you. Since we already know what sites to go to, we can do it more quickly than you can.
There is a lot more to talk about in terms of the quality of the links you get, and how to maximize their value to you. Perhaps I will discuss that in a future post.
Happy Holidays
Olin Robie
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Categories : Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Look for Google Chrome to Dominate the Browser Space

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Monday, December 5th, 2011

Internet Explorer has been the big guerilla  in the browser space for quite some time, with Firefox in 2nd place and the newer Google Chrome in 3rd. But according to an article on Linked-In, Internet Explorer and Firefox are losing market share and Google Chrome is taking it away.

Further, Google provides Firefox with the majority of it’s funding and that deal has expired so Google is in a position to cripple Firefox and take second place. And since most people in the know consider IE to be the most deficient browser available, we see Google Chrome rising to the top over the next 2-3 years.

Google could become the dominant force in yet another area of our Internet life. How do you feel about that?

Olin Robie

 

 

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Categories : Internet Marketing
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About Your Search Engine Positions…

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

I have a question for you…how do you measure your positions in Google? (and Yahoo! and Bing)

Do you open your browser and do some searches on your most important keywords and then look for your website in the results? That takes some time and will give you an indication of where your website ranks, but not a very good one. You see, Google personalizes the results you get when you do a search, in an effort to bring you the best results based on the wealth of information they have about your searching and browsing history. That’s great when you are searching for something, but it skews your results when you are trying to measure how well your own website ranks.

What you really need is an objective SERP report – Search Engine Result Positions or Search Engine Relative Positions – and there are a number of services out there that offer that. Search Google for “free SERP reports” and you’ll find a number of services available to you. These services will provide more objective results and it is faster than doing the searching yourself.

One such service worth considering is Authority Labs (www.AuthorityLabs.com) where you can set up a free account with up to 10 keywords. Your positions will be updated daily, and you can log in any time and check them. If you need to track more than 10 keywords, give us a call and we can set you up with as many keywords as you’d like for less money than your own Authority Labs subscription will cost. 928.282.1396.

All the best to you…

Olin Robie

PS – If you would like to know more about “search personalization”, drop me an email or reply to this post…

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Categories : Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Sedona Verde Valley Website Traffic Down

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

We just took a look at the website traffic across 6 substantial tourism companies in Sedona and the Verde Valley for the last 30 days. Traffic is down on all 6 sites, as much as 36%! We expected a seasonal drop in traffic about now, but this is bigger than we expected. How is your website doing? Feel free to share a comment, below. Click on Comments(0).

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Categories : Internet Marketing, Sedona - Verde Valley Tourism, Websites
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There is a mobile website in your future.

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Sunday, November 13th, 2011

The only question is when.

The number of people going to the internet from mobile devices is growing at a phenomenal rate. The latest industry statistics I have read say that half of all Internet users will be on a mobile device by 2014. As usual, the travel and hospitality industry is a leading driver of this growth.

Mobile website traffic in Sedona is approaching 20%.

We measure the mobile website traffic on several Sedona-Verde Valley tourism websites. The percentage of mobile traffic to those sites has grown from under 7% in 2010 to around 16% at the end of September this year. It may hit 20% by the end of 2011. That’s real fast growth!

What does this mean for Sedona Verde Valley tourism businesses?

Half of the people coming to your website on a mobile device can’t read or use it, and that percentage is growing fast. (The other half is using an iPad.) That’s why we say that there IS a mobile website in your future. It is just a question of how many of your website visitors can you afford to ignore?

Olin Robie

 

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Categories : Internet Marketing, Mobile Websites
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Find Your Ideal Domain Name

By Olin Robie · Comments (0)
Sunday, November 13th, 2011

Domain names are an important factor in your search engine rankings.

Google and the other search engines take your domain name into account when they rank your website.  There is nothing better for SEO purposes than having a domain name that matches the most important search term your customers and prospects use when they are looking for what you sell. If you sell titanium widgets, the best domain name you can own is www.titaniumwidgets.com. I call it your ‘generic domain name’ or ‘search term domain name’.

A Sedona Example

The M Diamond Ranch sells horseback riding in Sedona. Their website was, logically, www.MDiamondRanch.com. That’s great for branding, but lousy for the search engines. We found that www.SedonaHorsebackRides.com was available.  bought it and put their new website up under that domain. We also preserved the www.MDiamondRanch.com name so we didn’t lose their existing website traffic.

The new website now ranks in the top 2 positions of Google on 11 different search terms that are related to horseback riding, and they rank very well on several others. It is fair to say they dominate their market niche here in the Sedona-Verde Valley market.

Olin Robie

 

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Categories : Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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