How Do Your Potential Customers Spend Time Online

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Infographics kind of fell out of favor with me a while back since there were just too many of them floating around. That said, I found this one to be pretty interesting and thought I’d pass along the information. If the study is accurate (and I can’t vouch for its accuracy), it’s important to see what people are doing when they’re online and how you can use the information to promote your own business and find more potential customers.

For example, it says that 50% of visitors go to Google each day, and 40% visit Facebook. If you’re bleeding from the wallet using AdWords, you may want to change your strategy and go with some Facebook ads, which will cost less and perhaps be more effective. In fact, by a very skinny margin (.19%), Facebook’s reach is outshining Google in a given day. More people stay on Facebook longer, too.

Man, I wish I had that kind of time. If you’re a successful business owner, I’m guessing you don’t either. So, you need to pick your battles.

Just notice Twitter. I’ve been thinking Twitter is so yesterday for a while now. Others will vociferously disagree, but check the market share: 6.7%. Is it really worth wasting time there? Wouldn’t your social media marketing time be better spent where there are more visitors, who stay for longer periods, and where you can write longer posts, too? Twitter was a great fad, but in a war between Pinterest and Twitter, I’d say Pinterest is winning right now. Could change, but on the Internet, trends don’t normally go backwards.

Here’s more interesting information for you:

The Most Popular Websites
Source: TopComputerScienceDegrees.com

I’m sure you found something of interest in there. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop them into the comment box. I answer every one. (As long as you’re not a spammy spammer, which is just rude.)

What Happens When You Don’t Understand Your Perfect Customer

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In the last couple years, J C Penney has been losing sales. They have upset their core customer base and are now trying desperately to win them back with social media.high heels

What happened?

They hired a CEO who didn’t understand their perfect customer, and tried to market to a crowd that wasn’t interested. They lost a full one-third of their clients, and according to Cris Crum at WebProNews, in his article, “Will J. C. Penney’s Social Media Strategy Help It Win Back Customers?” holiday sales were down 32%.

J. C. Penney is a tad above the Target Brand. In my mind, there’s Walmart & KMart (They’re rather equal in my mind), Target, Sears, J. C. Penney, May Co. to Dillard’s to Nordstrom’s to Saks. Yes, my mind, my list. But you see… J. C. Penney falls somewhere in the middle. The clothes they carry are of better quality than KMart, but they’re not Saks, either.

The corporation’s customers are in the middle, and the CEO, Ron Johnson, wanted to take Penney’s to the next level. Big mistake. He’s no longer the CEO.

But it’s kind of a no-brainer. To the people in the next level, Penney’s is just OK. Nothing special. People who buy at Nordstrom’s wouldn’t be caught dead shopping for clothes at KMart, and neither would the May Co. customers ready to go back into Penney’s clothes. So, though Penney’s might have bought more expensive inventory, the brand reputation for middle-of-the-road was too hard to overcome. So, they lost market share.

You need to know who your customers are, no matter how big or small your company is. Just because you want to be Saks, doesn’t mean you can. Once your brand gets a reputation, it’s hard to change things. Here are some things to ask yourself before deciding who you’re going to market for: Continue reading →

Content: Then and Now

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Nine years ago, SEO was very different. I remember being taught how effective lots of keyword-laden navigation links were in the footer of your page. When articles could be written, spun into 100 versions and uploaded to every article directory on the Internet (and there were hundreds). Oh, yeah, and you could buy tons of backlinks. No problem!writing content

But this is 2013, and in just the past two years, search has changed dramatically. With the activation of Google’s Panda and Penguin filters, we’re living in a Brave New Internet. It’s a world of content, of adding value to the Web, and of being good business people.  Oh, sure the charlatans are still out there, but what really crushes it today is branding your business and keeping brand integrity high throughout the Web.

One Keyword or Five?

And concentrating on a single keyword or group of keywords is Continue reading →

More Free SEO Tools for Your Business

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I had a lot of positive feedback on the post I did about free SEO tools a while back, so I thought I’d give you a few more to consider. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of them, though they’re probably accurate enough. I just can’t guarantee them. However, they will help you to find things you want to know and all for free.

Here are the sites I tested today:

Small SEO Tools

This site is really interesting, as there are so many free tools to choose from. I particularly like the plagiarism checker. I work with several content writers and before I really get to know them well and trust them, I run things through a duplicate content check. If you have writers writing for you, this should be something you do, too. Nobody wants re-hashed PLR articles, especially when they’re paying to get them.

Another fine tool is the keyword position checker. It will help you to check up to the first 10 pages at Google, Yahoo, and Bing for whatever keywords you choose. It takes awhile to report, but I can see its usefulness.

This site also has a backlink checker, a Google page rank checker, and even a reverse IP tool. Pretty sweet… all free.

seo book free seo tools

I have loved this site for years. It has some of the kickin’ -est free SEO tools around. The keyword suggestion  tool is the best, and it really pulls in almost everything you can think of but the kitchen sink.  From WordTracker to Quintura to tons of links that lead to myriad clues at the bottom of the results page, it’s really bomb. Not for beginners, unless they’re adventurous, but this tool is definitely Top 5.

You can also get a meta tag generator, keyword density analyzer, spider test tool, and more. You get a LOT for free at SEOBook, but there’s a premium version, where you get stuff like competitive research tools and such, too. it’s totally awesome

Plus, the blog is great for keeping up-to-date on search trends. I read it regularly.

Xenu: free seo toolThis is a great free SEO tool in that it goes through any site and checks for broken links, spider traps (endless loops) and gives you a spreadsheet with all of the problems listed. If you have a big site, Xenu takes a long time to run, but it can be sooo worth it.

Google really doesn’t like it when your site has too many 404s (as in broken links). Checking regularly to assure that all your links are live and well is a pretty good idea.

Plus, spider traps are really bad. They can really make your SEO life hell, if you don’t know about them and fix them. I run Xenu periodically to be sure that everything inside the site is ship shape.

That’s enough for one day. All of these free tools are really bomb and the first two have great things inside for you to check out. It will take you a good long while. So, I’ll be back with more sites and free SEO tools, but I encourage you to try all of these today.