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Upgrade your Blogger* blog to self-hosted WordPress – just $47 – This weekend only

January 2, 2009 by Marc Leave a Comment

*Offer is good not only for Blogger/Blogspot, but also TypePad, LiveJournal, BigFolio, SquareSpace, Xanga, and others … even WordPress.com. But only this weekend through Sunday night (Jan 4th) EXTENDED THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT, Jan 5th

I thought I was going to travel some this weekend, but the plans fell through. So I want to put the time to good use and offer some savings for a substantive improvement if you have been thinking about improving your blog and your relationship with your website visitors and internet marketing presence.

The advantages and benefits of having your blog on your own website are very well known: higher search page rank, improved branding and URL recognition, more visitors, who spend more time spent on your website, and you control all your work. If you want these advantages, here is a quick and affordable way.

For just $47 I will:

Install and test the newest version of WordPress 2.7 on your web-host
Install a number of WordPress themes with similar layout to how your old blog is formated. You can then choose the one you want.
Upload a number of plug-ins to optimize the search marketing and networking success of your WordPress blog. Includes contact form and SEO configuations
Import, as supported by your current blog, your previous posts and content into your WordPress blog
Provide unlimited support through email and our private support forum for you as you personalize your WordPress blog with your images, art and color scheme.
And when you feel your new WordPress blog is ready to go live I will revisit to test, make live and install redirects and notices on old blog.
And, if you want me to do the personalization for you, with your art, images and colors it is just another $47.

So no matter which option you might want, it is a very inexpensive way to increase your presence and potential for success in 2009.. Win-Win.

And our support is available free for the life of your blog. If you have any questions please let me know via “marc at marcfuller.com”

~~Here are links to the shopping cart~~- (offer no longer available, thank you to all who participated)

Upgrade:

Upgrade with personalization:

Filed Under: Blogs, Search Engines, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: BigFolio, blog, Blogger, Blogs, Blogspot, LiveJournal, Squarspace, TypePad, Upgrade, WordPress, Xanga

Why a blog makes a poor web/blogsite main page and a how a splash page is even worse.

January 1, 2009 by Marc Leave a Comment

Just a quick post. I wrote a longer post over on the Kertesz WordPress Web/Blogsite for Professionals site that explains in detail what a unique “property” your website’s main page is. Why a blog is not a very good main page for a full business web/blogsite. And a Flash splash page is worse. Click here to give it a read.

Filed Under: Blogs, Search Engines, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: Blogs, blogsites, search marketing, SEO, website, website marketing, WordPress

Blogging advice wrap-up

January 1, 2009 by Marc Leave a Comment

This is the final (for now) post on how to blog. Your website’s blog can make a huge difference in your on-line success, increasing your search engine result page rank, visitor traffic and presenting you as an expert in your field. Here are a few other helpful perspectives.

In his recent brief and excellent Slate article titled “How To Blog“ Farhad Manjoo provided an excellent outline from noted successful experienced blogging experts on … how to blog, outlining the specfic steps to take on a regular basis to create a satisfying and popular blog.

And for more detail on blogging from a wedding point of view, Christine Boulton of The Agency at Think has recently posted a three blogging advice items:

Out of all of this advice, the most important thing to do is to just do it. There is no perfect post, even the best blog has some bad ones. But with a little time and regular blog posting you can create a valuable marketing resource for your business and many of today’s brides-to-be.

Blog readers are not your only marketing target, but they are a sizable group (for 2006 in the USA about 36 percent of the total population) and are easy and inexpensive to effectively reach. Just do it.

Filed Under: Advertising, Blogs, Search Engines, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: blogging, Blogs, search marketing, SEO

Yet Another Blogging Resolution, use your blog for “look forward” marketing

December 31, 2008 by Marc Leave a Comment

I think too often we tend to look at the past when creating blog posts. For the New Year I will try to use my blogging to explore potentially emerging market segments.

What I mean is that blogs are supposed to be a dialog with our site visitors and too often we don’t risk advancing new ideas through that dialog. For example when we carefully craft a blog post using tools like Google’s keyword analyzer we are looking at the past. But we know the market changes with time. And the related keywords may not have developed enough to be very popular, but could be used enough in the internet to provide an edge.

Keying in on what Rebecca Grinnals noticed about the change in “Sex In The City”, I would add phrasing that includes terms related to “meaningful”, “valued”, “lasting”, “family”, “friends”, “warmth”, “permanence”. And because I am working with a couple who are paying for all of their wedding costs and bought their home in 2007 (planning on getting marrided this Spring ’09) and now owe more than it is worth, I also intend to “forward explore” using keyword terms related to “affordable”, “economical”, “wise”, “freedom”, “financially responsible” and other similar terms.

By using a few of your blog posts to explore effective evolving search marketing terms you don’t risk confusing your recognized brand position, but are still able to “see” where the market may be going by tracking the visitor referral stats for those blog exploring postings. Without committing to the unknown risk redrafting all your package and product/service descriptions.

Filed Under: Advertising, Blogs, Search Engines, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: blog posts, blogging, market research, marketing, Wedding Marketing

Another New Year’s Blogging Resolution, details details details

December 30, 2008 by Marc Leave a Comment

Be more explicit! Totally explicit!

As I look back through my search engine referrals and the terms that brought them, I repeatedly find that it is the details and specifics that are very important. So put all the details in the blog post.

In the “old days” (circa 1996) we used to use very general search terms because there was so little on the ‘net. If you didn’t, often there would be almost no results. But, today’s internet is so content rich that savvy search engine users have learned to be more specfic. As we all have experienced the more specfic your search terms are, the more relevant the search results.

What do I mean? Well I was looking at a photographer’s blog who has a very good habit of regular posts, but I could not figure out the place where she was taking a set of photographs. They were beautiful photographs in a beautiful outdoor setting, but the location was only described as “Rochester”. Rochester what? Where? I wanted to know … was Rochester a town, in what state, or perhaps a local park or a Country Club or… . If someone was looking for a photo or wedding location in/at “Rochester”, they would include most include at least the state. But because that detail was missing in the blog post, it would be doubtful that her blog would show high enough in related organic search results to be seen.

So go ahead, put it all down in your blog. There is no additional cost other than a few more moments. You never know what locations, landmarks, colors, materials or other details (even the time of day) might be important. If you are a event planner or decorator share the material and equipment. Mies van der Rohe once said “God is in the details“, it is as true now for blogging as it was for his architecture.

And, remember a very sizeable percentage of weddings are planned (at least in part) by people who have limited familarity with the general area where the wedding and reception will take place. Your added details will be very helpful.

Share all the details and specifics in your blog posts for ’09 and benefit from more traffic.

Filed Under: Blogs, Search Engines, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: blog writing, blogging, Blogs, search engine optomization, search marketing

A New Year’s Blogging Resolution

December 29, 2008 by Marc Leave a Comment

As I read through my own blogging, and that of other wedding professionals of all walks, I see that I/we need to makes some changes for the New Year.

PROMOTE YOURSELF! Use at least 10%-20% of your posts to:

Share your solutions.
Stress your benefits.
Promote your business.
Illustrate your work.
Demonstrate your dedication
Portray your professionalism.
Educate about your continuing education
Celebrate successes.
Quote testimonials and thank yous
Be your own hero.

Your blog posts can be your best advertising, and few of us use it to that benefit. It is often difficult to publicly trumpet what we do that is exceptional. But we must! One or two posts out of ten is not too much about what makes you and your business special. We tell our friends, in ’09 let’s tell our readers.

Filed Under: Blogs, Sales, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: blog writing, blogging, marketing

What is a top search result showing worth to your business

December 12, 2008 by Marc 2 Comments

What is it worth to your company to show up in the top search results for your type of services or products? Shouldn’t that be the primary goal of your website? Shouldn’t your website market you, rather than you having to market your website?

Many of us make decisions about our website without first determining the primary goals for having a website. Instead we chose what seems pretty or something similar to our competition. I have nothing against pretty, but it is subjective and difficult to use for the evaluation of results. And I think it is very good to have better results than your competition, so don’t automatically do what they do either. Doesn’t it make sense that a primary goal should be improved marketing through high search results?

What do I mean by high search results? Just this, “high placement based upon likely generic search phrases“. For example, it is not significant to rank high on a search term like “love story wedding videography Miami” because really how many brides would be searching on a phrase that specific? Virtually none! What is important is a generic phrase like “Miami wedding videography”. That is an almost universal type phrase used by many South Florida brides seeking video services. And would result in a lot of website visitors for any videographer ranking high based on that phrase.

Let’s examine some of the other benefits of high search results, besides increased visitors. How about greater credibility, allowing for higher margins? Yes! Two recent studies have found that surprising outcome related to placing higher in search page results. First a report from iProspect revealing that “top rankings in search results transmit brand value to fully one-third of online consumers” and second this comprehensive study out of the University of Indiana titled “In Google We Trust: Users’ Decisions on Rank, Position, and Relevance” that had this finding

“An eye tracking experiment revealed that college student users have substantial trust in Google’s ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When the participants selected a link to follow from Google’s result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position … This demonstrated trust in Google has implications for the search engine’s tremendous potential influence on culture, society, and user traffic on the Web.”

So a wedding business that has a high search ranking with generic search terms can also have higher brand value making for higher income margins. Not only will high search rank provide more business, it helps support higher prices. Here is an example from an article titled “What is a #1 Google Ranking Worth?”.

Even better, how about an example from a successful wedding photographer? Many of us have heard of Houston wedding photographer Christine Tremoulet of Houston TX. Her photography is gorgeous. Christine has put the lesson of high search ranking to work by using the ideal of a WordPress based web/blogsite (with Flash limited only to portfolio galleries) that gets tremendous search rank and traffic. We can see this because she has also generously chosen to share her recent site activity through her site tracker. (Thankfully for the rest of us, true market leaders and innovators like Christine are almost always willing to share with the rest of the profession). If you take a look at the tracker you can see that her website regularly gets over 200 visits a day, with 50%+ coming from Google searches. Her largest single search term … “Houston”. Google “Houston wedding photographer” and she will almost always come up in the first page or two of results. And not because of costly Google Adwords, but free natural search. All this helps allow not only for a lot inquires, but also fees sufficient for a good income. That is the purpose of good marketing. Learn from leaders, she does not market her website, her website markets her.

So when trying to determine what to use for your website; if income is important to you, I recommend you chose what will get you the highest search results … a WordPress based web/blogsite.

Filed Under: Advertising, Blogs, Profits, Sales, Search Engines Tagged With: blogsites, marketing, search optimization, SEM, SEO, SMO, website marketing

WordPress Based Websites Dominate SEO Worldcup Challenge

December 10, 2008 by Marc 1 Comment

Did you know that there is a large-scale SEO competition … until a few days ago neither did I. And after telling wedding professionals that our WordPress based websites would dramatically increase their search ranking I am happy, because now there are concrete results for what is the best website basis for excellent search results.

The competition is sponsored by Busby Web Solutions of Australia. For four months, hundreds of contestants use their best ethical SEO skills to try and place their webpage at the top of Google’s rank for a specfic defined phrase. First place wins $5,000.

What do the winners all have in common that us non-SEO geeks can learn from? They all choose to use WordPress for their efforts. In fact the current top ten all use WordPress! We know that competition results in advances to the state of the art for all of us to benefit. Cometition is how we learn what works. This competition shows that the best website search performance comes from using WordPress. Something that any of us can afford use for our websites. Now we have proof – for the best search results base your website in WordPress. Like the winners.

So now to the point: Hundreds of savvy website experts from all over the world are competing in a SEO challenge the has a $5,000 grand prize. (many are from countries where $5,000 is more than the average annual income). They can chose any tools to win that they want to use. And what do the all winners choose to build their website? Not hand coding, not Dreamweaver, not Drupal, not Joomla, not DotNetNuke and of course not Flash … they could have but didn’t. The winners, and the top ten leaders, all used WordPress. Isn’t easiest (and cheapest) to learn from the winners?

Filed Under: Blogs, Search Engines, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: best practice, challenge, Google, results., search marketing, search optimization, SEO

No way! That’s a blog?

December 6, 2008 by Marc 2 Comments

It may not look like one, but at its heart it is … a blog/website. Take a look at the new “reskinned” website for The Agency at Think Like A Bride. New template, new colors, new site organization without needing to redo any content. Pretty. Easy.

While it offers all the innovation and appeal of the latest website design, it is also as easy to manage and modify as a simple one page WordPress blog. Which means you have both the ultimate search optimizing platform and a website that requires no special software. It can be edited from a lap top at a cafe or even an iPhone.

Comprised of the same pages and posts and a simple stylesheet that you are probably familiar with, plus some cool features like a unique main page with slider to showcase your latest site additions. All elegantly, attractively formatted to work together to provide one excellent website for your business and your potential customers. Providing unsurpassed high value search marketing optimization combined with low cost. The economics of owning a great website has come down. A lot.

Do you want to reduce your advertising expense and increase your income? Let me upgrade your business to a WordPress web/blogsite. Appeal plus proven search marketing strength. The highest return on investment (ROI)!

Filed Under: Blogs, Internet Marketing, Search Engines, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogsite, marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, SEM, SEO, WordPress

Why should I care about this SEO stuff?

December 5, 2008 by Marc 4 Comments

The most basic question is often the best question. And this is also a question that my brother-in-law asked. My brother-in-law said after listening to a lot of words about SEO he still didn’t understand the value of it or why the proposed fees were so high. Might I help him understand?

To keep it simple and direct, I tried this analogy.

Almost any website places your business in the “white pages” of the search engines. Where you can be found, but only if some one is looking specifically for your business by its name. So you are pretty much lost. And like the regular white pages in the phone book it has little marketing value.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization which is about marketing your business using the search engine. Or in other words it is like placing your business prominently in the “search engines’ yellow pages”. Where your business can easily be found and chosen by people searching just for the services you offer and not needing or even knowing your name.

To get more prominent placement in the search engine yellow pages doesn’t take a lot of money. Or arcane difficult to learn knowledge. It just takes a little awareness and planning.

As I have recently outlined in some previous posts here, it only takes a website that is structured to be receptive to search engines and content that is relevant to what your target market is seeking. If your website presents your business well to the search engine, the search engine will present it more prominently to anyone seeking what you have to offer. And unlike the phone book yellow pages … at no extra charge.

So if marketing is important to you, require that your website provider demonstrate in an easy to understand format that they they offer can provide quality “yellow pages” search engine results. Why have a website if people never see it?

Filed Under: Advertising, Blogs, Search Engines, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: search marketing, SEM, SEO, SMO, Websites

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