We are officially launching our Local Accelerator program to the Colorado public. Designed to accelerate online lead generation and sales for Colorado small businesses, this program promises to offer a complete Internet marketing makeover to one lucky local business every month!

The program combines fulfillment services with access to Kutenda’s Internet marketing tool-set and training to get your company successfully marketing online. We’ll be choosing one lucky company every month … Selected companies will receive over $9,000 in services at no cost and 3 months of free Kutenda access.

If you’re based in CO, submit your company here: http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html

According to new projections from Outsell, Inc., digital/online marketing will overtake print in 2010. Companies are projected to spend $119.6 billion on online and digital strategies. For small businesses, marketing online is a known challenge due to the intense learning curve, budgetary constrictions and the lack of available software. Kutenda has set out to change that with it’s Internet marketing tool-set for small businesses and the Local Accelerator program is making the extra leap locally by offering tools, services and training for free.

The Local Accelerator program includes all of the foundations for a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy that will drive leads and sales. We begin by creating a website or optimizing your existing website for lead generation and search engine rankings. Companies walk away with a list of campaigns, content and the tools, training and support to pick up where Kutenda’s fulfillment process ends.

Specifics include:

• Promotional landing pages with automated response emails
• A prospect-focused email marketing campaign designed to convert
• Customizable email templates
• A search advertising pay-per-click campaign
• Live local search listing
• Optimized keyword list for specific products / services
• A knowledge base of Internet marketing best practices

In order to qualify, companies must be based in Colorado. We’re accepting submissions at http://kutenda.com/accelerator.html via a short form. Each monthly winner will be contacted directly by Kutenda’s director of training, Alex Ross. We are allowing companies to resubmit monthly for another chance to win.

Submit your business today!

Suggestions for increasing your chances of being chosen:

1) cross your fingers

2) grab your rabbit-foot key chain

3)  send your intern on a hunt for the perfect four leaf clover

4) maybe eat a bowl of Lucky Charms… whatever it takes…

GOOD LUCK!

We had an excellent turnout for the first installment of our free three-part webinar series on search engine optimization (SEO). We also had some excellent questions at the end. If you have questions of your own, be sure to register for part two now!

In part two, Kutenda’s director of online marketing, James Omdahl, will expand on his novel ‘SLEEP’ method (search, leverage, evaluate, estimate, perform) for generating inbound leads through SEO.

Part II: On-Page Optimization and Tracking (Evaluate, Estimate)

* How to evaluate your web site and tips to optimize
* What the competitive landscape looks like for your business
* How to measure progress by tracking your results

Why attend?
If your business isn’t ranking in the search results for key terms, you’re missing a huge, cost-effective opportunity to drive leads and fuel growth. Our webinar series will help you seize this opportunity.

Who should attend?
Business owners and marketers who want clear, practical guidance on using SEO to increase leads, sales and revenue. Maybe you need a refresher on key SEO principles. Perhaps you’re brand new to search engine marketing. Either way, you’re guaranteed to learn something you can use to grow your business!

What if I missed part one?
Don’t worry. Each installment is designed to stand on it’s own. Register here.

Yes, it’s true: Some people continue to use phone books.

But today’s consumer increasingly favors that great information repository known as the Internet, and they use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to find what they’re looking for. With this change comes a new mandate for businesses: make sure your web site gets found.

So how does one get found in the search engines? If your business serves a competitive market, just having a web site doesn’t mean you’ll rank for key search terms. Google may list your competitors ahead of you in the search listings, and studies show that searchers rarely even look at the results beyond the top three. If you’re not in the ‘Golden Triangle’ you’ll get crumbs for clicks while your competitors get all the action.

We can help. We’re offering a free three-part webinar on search engine optimization, which is the process of optimizing your web site’s content and code for better placement in the search results. It also involves off-site factors, such as acquiring inbound links (which Google interprets as votes) from other web sites.

The series will help businesses ‘SLEEP’ their way to the top of the search results. (SLEEP: search, leverage, evaluate, estimate, perform). At the end of the series, we’ll provide attendees with a free SEO checklist that will help you apply what you’ve learned to your business’ web site. Register for the webinar today!

Register here for Kutenda’s free three-part webinar series on how small and midsized businesses can SLEEP (Search, Leverage, Evaluate, Estimate and Perform) their way to the top of the search results.

As we mentioned in a previous post, if you want to meet new prospects and close more sales in today’s internet focused world, you need to be visible in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) for the search terms/keywords that are relevant to your business, a goal achieved through search engine optimization (SEO).

Problem is, SEO can be confusing for small and midsize businesses that don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to optimizing their company presence online. We’ve got the solution: Kutenda’s free three-part webinar series on how small and midsized businesses can actually SLEEP their way to the top of search results. Register today.

James Omdahl, our director of online marketing, will walk you through Kutenda’s SLEEP (Search, Leverage, Evaluate, Estimate and Perform) technique and provide the best practices, tips and tricks you need to start driving qualified traffic to your web site today.

Throughout the three sessions, James will demystify the optimization process so that you can grow your business online no matter the size of your marketing team/budget. All attendees will receive a free checklist designed to help you get started immediately.

Who should attend
Internet marketing beginners, small business marketers, and anyone else who wants to improve SEO.

Details/Registration

In my last two posts, we learned how to select the right core keywords and how to add the right geographic modifiers to take advantage of local online marketing.  In this post, we’ll walk through the various elements of search engine optimization (SEO) and how to use the right local keywords to optimize web pages for a local business web site.

The five primary areas where you use local SEO keywords are:

1. Title tag
2. Meta description tag
3. Meta keywords tag
4. Page content and H1 tags
5. Internal and external links

Let’s go through each of these and learn what they are, where they can be seen, and the guidelines for using keywords in each.

TITLE TAG
What it is
The title tag is one of the most important elements of a web page for search engine optimization. It serves as a key indicator for what your web page content is about and it is visible in the search results.

Where you can see it
In the browser: This is visible at the top of your browser window
In the web page code: Located in the <head> section of the page code, the title tag can be found between the <title> and </title> tags.
In the search results: The title tag is seen as the blue and clickable part of the search results in a Google search

Guidelines for Writing Title Tags
- Use your primary keyword once
- Use one secondary keyword once
- Title tag length should be about 65 characters
- Include your company name at the end
- Make it attractive to a searcher so they are more likely to click

META DESCRIPTION TAG
What it is
The meta description tag is a short description of what the web page is about.  It is an SEO factor, but more importantly, it often shows up in the search results as a web page’s description.

Where you can see it
In the browser: The meta description tag is not visible in a web browser when viewing the page
In the web page code: Located in the <head> section of the page code, the title tag can be found after the tag <meta name=”description” content=”
In the search results: The meta description tag is often visible in the search results as the description for a web page located under the blue and clickable text.

Guidelines for Writing Meta Description Tags
- Use your primary keyword once
- Use two secondary keywords once each
- The length of your description should be about 150 characters (including spaces)
- Include a call to action or include special promotions, offers, etc.
- Include your company name

META KEYWORDS TAG
What it is
The meta keywords tag is really just a list of keywords that you think match the content of your web page.  While Google no longer uses this tag as a ranking factor in their search results, it still can help with optimization in Yahoo! and Bing, and can help a web site’s internal search engine find the right results.

Where you can see it
In the browser: The meta keywords tag is not visible in a web browser when viewing the page
In the web page code: Located in the <head> section of the page code, the title tag can be found after the tag <meta name=”keywords” content=”
In the search results: The meta keywords tag is not visible in the search results

Guidelines for Writing Meta Keywords Tags
- Use the primary keyword along with variations
- Use your two secondary keywords along with variations
- Use other secondary location keywords
- Maximum length should be no more than 20 keywords
- The keyword (or keyword phrase) should be separated by commas

PAGE CONTENT AND H1 TAGS
What it is
The page content is the text you see on your web site (not including the text in the images on the web page).  <h1> or heading tags are a page style that makes text more prominent on the page.

Where you can see it
In the browser: The content on a web page is what is primarily seen in a browser window.  H1 tags often appear as larger headline text on a web page.
In the web page code Usually the content between <p> tags.  H1 tags are seen as the text between opening and closing <h1> tags.
In the search results: The page content is usually not visible in the search results.

Guidelines for Writing H1 and Page Content
- For heading tags, use you primary keyword once
- Make sure your heading makes a visitor want to read more of your content
- Make your heading brief
- In your page text, use a minimum of 300 keywords per web page
- Repeat your primary keywords about 6 times on the page
- Repeat two secondary keywords about two times each
- Spread the keywords naturally throughout the content
- Make the content readable (write your content for readers first, search engines second)
- Make sure your text drives your visitors to convert into leads, sales, registrations, etc.

LINKING TEXT (INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL LINKS)
What it is
Linking text, or anchor text, is the text that is clickable to take you from one web page to another.  This text can take you from one page on a web site to another page on the same site (internal linking) or from one web site to another (external linking)

Where you can see it
In the browser: Any text that is clickable (traditionally it is blue and underlined text)
In the web page code: Can be seen in the code like this <a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com”>Anchor Text</a>
In the search results: Anchor text is not shown on the search results page, but is a factor in how a web page ranks.

Guidelines for Anchor Text
- Use your primary and secondary linking text for different links to your web pages
- Vary your anchor text using variations of your primary and secondary keywords
- If it is an image that is linking to you, put your keywords in the alt image tag

Kutenda’s Lead Generation Tool Can Help
If you are looking to optimize your web site for localized business terms, Kutenda’s lead generation software can help.  Our built-in optimization tools can help you research and implement local search keywords that can help you rank for the right keywords. Make sure to check out our product demo to learn more.

To critics, SEO is all about gaming a meritocratic system—using tricks to move up the search ranks before you’ve actually earned it. To SEO proponents, it’s about making sure your needle of a web site has a chance of being noticed in the haystack that is the Internet.

As with most controversial issues, the devil is in the details. How you use SEO makes all the difference, which is why online marketers coined the terms ‘white hat SEO’ and ‘black hat SEO,’ the former being perfectly acceptable, the latter being another form of spam that can get you in trouble with the almighty Google.

There’s another reason SEO has a spotty reputation—and that’s the high number of SEO hucksters making big promises and charging even bigger fees. As a general rule, the more promises to you hear, the faster you should flea the scene. The only people whose promises are worth anything in the SEO world are Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer (CEOs of Google and Microsoft, respectively). As I said in the beginning, SEO is a process, and it involves trial and error, a lot of guesswork, and the knowledge that you don’t always know what’s working now and what’s going to work later. The smartest SEOs are typically humble, aware that search engines are arbitrary and capricious creatures. It’s the SEOs who self-identify as ‘gurus’ or ‘wizards’ that you need to avoid.

Anyway… the tips I’m about to present fall within the ‘white hat’ category. They are subtle things you can to do your web site that will help it get found in Google (no promises!) and the best part is you don’t need to sacrifice your integrity to implement them.

1. Pay special attention to your meta data and title tags
A web page’s meta data is made up of two components, meta keywords and a meta description. They should tell what the page is about and use words and phrases that people might type when searching the web. Also, since your meta description sometimes appears verbatim in the search results, it should be persuasive enough to encourage people to explore further. Same goes for your title tag, which is often the linked text that shows up in the results. Make sure your title tags are relevant, descriptive and compelling (and no longer than 90 characters, including spaces).

2. Fix broken links
When Google’s spiders index a web site, they follow hyperlinks just like you and me. If your web site is littered with broken links, you make it harder and more laborious for spiders to index your web site—and that’s a bad thing. You want to make it as easy as possible for Google to crawl through your site. That means checking every link on your site and making sure it works properly.

3. Remove gratuitous outbound links
Links are votes in the search engine world. If your web site is full of links to other web sites, you could be sending a signal to Google that you don’t value your own content—because why else would you be voting for every other web site under the sun? (On the other hand, if you have a lot of inbound links, you can afford to link out more. You’ve got more cred in the eyes of Google if you’ve got a lot of inbound links.) If your site is new and/or obscure, avoid gratuitous outbound linking. A lot of SEO sticklers will tell you to avoid outbound linking altogether, but that’s cheesy advice, not black hat or anything, just lame and somewhat antisocial. Don’t be afraid to link to other sites, just don’t go crazy doing it if SEO is important to you.

4. Mind your anchor text
Many people still use words like ‘click here’ or ‘learn more’ as the actual clickable link. As a result, spiders read ‘click here’ or ‘learn more’ and don’t bother indexing it. This is a missed opportunity. Instead, strive to use more meaningful anchor text. Your visitors will still understand to click the text—the text formatting provides the cue—and the spiders will have even more relevant words to take back to the search engine index.

5. Know when to leave SEO alone
Here’s a disclaimer that should be applied to every bit of search engine optimization advice: Use SEO techniques as long as they’re practical, ethical and as long as they don’t make you look lame, because if you slavishly adhere to every single SEO ‘best practice,’ your web site will end up looking hollow and spammy to human readers, even if you stick to ‘white hat’ methods. In other words, if ‘click here’ is desirable anchor text, go ahead and use it. If you want to link to scores of web sites, just do it. If you’ve got better things to do than sweat over your meta keywords… you get the idea. SEO is just one tool among many in your online marketing toolkit.

We talk a lot about web sites here at Kutenda, but perhaps we don’t spend enough time describing what a good web site can actually do for your business. It’s pretty simple:

A good web site turns traffic into money.

How? A good web site converts traffic into revenue by issuing compelling calls to action, capturing visitor information and generating leads — leads you can nurture and ultimately convert into new customers (revenue).

That’s the big picture. Let’s focus on the call to action, which is the piece that sets the whole process in motion.

In general, your calls to action will involve some give and take with your site visitors. You offer something in exchange for information (name, email address, phone number, etc). Your site visitors get something of value and give you permission to market your products and services — they opt in to a relationship with your business.

This may sound pretty abstract, so here are some examples of calls to action (requiring varying levels of commitment from visitors) that you’ll find on many commerce-driven web sites.

• Subscribe to Our E-Newsletter
• Get a Free Quote / Consultation
• Buy Now / Sign Up Today
• Talk to a Sales Representative
• Download a Free White Paper / Coupon
• Get More Information

The point is to engage, to spur passive browsers to take another step, however small, into your sales funnel. Some will be ready to take the plunge and fill out the ‘Buy Now’ form, others will be more comfortable starting with the ‘Subscribe to Our Newsletter’ form. The key is to give them the opportunity to engage.

There are a few ways to make your calls to action more effective.

1. Write compelling CTAs that appeal to visitors’ self-interest
2. Position your CTAs in high-profile areas of your web site
3. Provide CTAs that ask for varying levels of commitment
4. Make it easy for visitors to take action with web forms

You don’t necessarily need forms on your web site — you could provide a phone number or simply list your email address, and those should always be visible — but forms typically deliver better results because they make things easy and are nonthreatening to prospects, many of whom aren’t ready to place a call or initiate a one-on-one email conversation.

Your web site is also where you can employ some subtler forms of marketing, like filling your pages with high-quality content that educates visitors and positions your business as an authority. Why spend the time to do this? Because the richer and more helpful your content is, the more authority you’ll accrue, and more authority you accrue, the more persuasive your calls to action will be!

To sum up, here are two bedrock principles for building a web site that turns traffic into money:

1. Establish authority with high-value content. Authority translates into greater persuasiveness, which will come in handy later in the sales cycle. Plus, better content typically draws inbound links, which can give your site an SEO boost. (Read more about SEO here.)

2. Issue engaging, value-driven calls to action and make it easy for visitors to respond with web forms. This will bring in more leads and give you more opportunities to generate new business — and new revenue.

A search engine results page, or SERP, in Google.

My first forays into online marketing left me asking a lot of questions. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Luckily, for people like us, there is a wealth of resources and expert knowledge available on the Internet to help even the greenest of online marketers get started.

My first step was to get a working definition of SEO. I quickly learned that SEO stands for search engine optimization, the process of optimizing your web site so it is easier for the search engines to find it, thus driving more visitors to your site. More visitor traffic means more chances to communicate, and more communication can provide opportunities to produce more sales.

As a beginning SEO, there were a few resources that helped me immensely in charting these new waters. This particular one is a great guide to search engine optimization that starts right at the beginning:

Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

I highly recommend reading the entire thing (it’s several pages) if you really want to further your knowledge and give yourself an edge. This guide covers just about every key topic including:

• How search engines work to gather information, and some simple steps you can follow to take advantage of these processes.
• Keyword research: What words/phrases people are using to search for your information and how to incorporate those keywords into your site.
• Great tips on how to make your site accessible and create content that is valuable to your customers.
• (And much, much more including links to other helpful resources.)

Here’s another great resource, courtesy of the web site Search Engine Watch:

SEM Basics: A Guide for Webmasters and Search Engine Marketers

They offer great tips, and several “101” articles to help beginners get started.

A great way to learn is to periodically check some expert SEO and online marketing blogs. In addition to our own blog (blog.kutenda.com), the following sites have excellent insights into the world of Internet marketing, as well as SEO-specific tips, techniques and news:

• Seomoz.org
• Searchengineland.com
• Seobook.com

Here are a few tips for developing a foundation in SEO:

1. Learn in manageable sections. When you have some time devoted to this, sit down and work on a couple of topics. Maybe play with some different content ideas, or spend an hour learning about Pay-Per-Click advertising and what it can do for your business.
2. Use the guides above or an interesting article to help you decide what topic to learn about.
3. Be sure to bookmark this blog and return for a regular dose of practical tips and helpful explanations.
4. Consider using a free RSS reader (we recommend Google Reader) so you can subscribe to numerous SEO-focused web sites and read them all from one place—a huge time-saver.

No one can expect to become an expert over night, but with some practice and the right tools—such as the Kutenda Online Marketing Suite—you too can be using Internet acronyms with the best of ‘em!

The current rage—the whiz-bang, change-the-world way to market your business—is social media.

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, you could spend your entire day being lured into it all. And there are many bloggers and business consultants out there touting the big benefits to social media. They’ll tell you that if you’re not using social media, you’re missing the boat.

There certainly are benefits to social media, but let’s be clear—its not the big solution to the problem that is paramount in your mind—How the heck do I drive more traffic, close more deals and make my business thrive?

That’s not to say that some small businesses aren’t successful using social media tools to help market their businesses. The New York Times recently published a story about a few small businesses using Twitter to alert people about deals, specials, etc. And, I know of a few small businesses here in Colorado that are using Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with customers. Here’s the thing though: All of them have a web site where they are hoping to drive traffic to. They use social media as one way to drive that traffic.

Here at Kutenda, we do that too. In fact, we get a good amount of traffic from Twitter to our blog.  I say good amount, not fantastic. It’s consistently just under 5 percent as a referral source. Contrast that to traffic coming from Google, Yahoo and Bing—the result of searches on our key terms—that’s over 30 percent of our visitor volume.

What does that tell you? Still the #1 way for people to find you is using search.  So, if you have limited resources—both money and your time—the biggest bang for your marketing dollar is still search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising (PPC).

Should you try a social channel? Sure. But if you’re going to do it, think about what you want to achieve first. Ask yourself some questions to steer your strategy about what might work for you:

• Is your audience far and wide, or do you just want to touch your local market?
• Do you have the time to dedicate to daily interaction, or are you more likely to do something once or twice a week?
• Do you have a good way to make connections online that will delight people and not make you look like a spammer?
• Do you have interesting things to communicate?
• Are you naturally helpful?

If there is a Social Media Club or Social Media Breakfast in your area, check it out. You’ll meet other people who are experimenting and find our what is and isn’t working for them.

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PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0