SEO: Using Key Sites and Experts

The internet is a big place. The potential for business is huge. How does the normal small to medium sized business get there? It all starts with a quality site and SEO/SEM.

Nobody ever knew how internet marketing was going to turn out once it got started a few years back. This was the concept being introduced by people about a decade ago which is now flourishing and giving the utmost results to many people all around the globe. It involves many techniques, tactics and skills. It has emerged as a strong, lively foundation with the local and international commercial fields creating a whole new industry that is growing everyday.

The expanded concept of information and technology has supported and advanced the website skills and tactics in which SEO experts have a fundamental role to play. They are essential and important for the internet marketing field because of the knowledge, information and skills they have. Search engine optimization or SEO is the creativity of designing, writing, coding, link building and programming several different types software that add up to enhancement of web pages. SEO experts come up with the ideas where these elements can appear on the web pages giving priority to the people typing in the specific keywords relative to their search.

SEO experts are behind the science of marketing and they generalize the positioning of the website instead of learning more and more about how to divert traffic towards a particular product. SEO experts give the respective audience a chance to target the needs and concerns they have through online websites and content posting. They make it convenient for the readers to find the suitable and relative information they want on the web pages. They have mastered the skills of copy-writing, website designing, effective coding, development, programming, linking, and analytical skills. 

For link development, an SEO expert knows how to carry out publications within websites to create value added content. Many of the business organizations which are out there in the market hire SEO experts to optimize their websites and develop suitable advertisements for visitors to find.

The maintenance and progress of the company depends on the team of SEO experts which are the real players of the game. They have the knowledge which helps in all of the beginning and advanced stages of search engine optimization. Although you can also perform the task of search engine optimization on your own if you have some basic knowledge and know how to implement some SEO techniques practically. However, if you running your business on a large scale then it is advisable here that you should get some assistance from SEO experts in order to carry out each and everything in the right direction. You will find an excellent firm that work magic on the SEO front with thousands of pre-established links and a proven SEO strategy. Check out A Greater Town to establish a relationship with the top SEO experts in the industry.

Overcoming the Price Objection

"I just can't afford it". "My budget won't allow for that kind of expenditure". I'm sure these and similar statements rank in the top three objections your potential customer uses to end the sales process. There are those times when it's actually true. In most situations, however, it's conveying something else entirely. Such as, "I don't have enough information yet to make an informed decision." Tell me more".

Too many of the people with whom we deal are paid to get the best deal they can. And that means asking for a better price, even when they know they are getting a great deal. And, human nature being what it is, it's only natural for many people to try to get the best price that they can.

That being said, it is still possible to reduce the number of times we hear it, and, perhaps more importantly, it is possible to reduce the intensity of the comment. In other words, we may still hear it, but many of our customers won't mean it as intensely as they once did.

While we can't control our customers, we can control our behavior. And many times it's our behavior that prompts the customer to ask for a discount. By changing our behavior, we can impact the customer. Here are five specific strategies to help you prevent the price objection, by focusing on our behavior.

1. Look like you are worth more.

Our appearance impacts the customer's subconscious view of our value. If we look like we don't value ourselves, it's natural for the customer to assume the same about our product. 

If you look confident, competent and successful, you send the subtle message to your customer that you, and your offering, is worth a little more. You just look like you are less likely to discount your price in order to get the order. Practically speaking, that means to dress like your customer, only a little better. Project a demeanor of a successful, confident salesperson.

2. Believe in your price/value relationship.

Do you believe that your offer represents a good value to the customer? If you don't, it will be difficult for you to convince the customer of it. You don't have to believe that your product is the best or that your company is the best. You just have to believe that it is a good value, giving the customer his or her money's worth. More people buy Fords than buy BMWs. It's not about being the best; it's about a good value.

This can be difficult if you, in your personal life, are a bargain shopper. If you refuse to pay the asking price for anything and won't buy it if it's not on sale, then you'll have a difficult time convincing your customer to pay the full price for what you are selling. Your core beliefs will influence your behavior, and be communicated to the customer in a number of subtle ways.

To counteract that tendency, carefully examine the offer you are making from the customer's point of view. Do whatever it takes to convince yourself that it is a good value to the customer, worth every penny the customer will pay.

3. Don't inadvertently sow the seeds.

Sometimes we can blindly sow the seeds of discontent with our stated price by our poor choice of language. For example, when we say things like, "This is our retail price," "This is our rack rate," "This is list price," or other such terms, we immediately convey to the customer that there are other, lower prices, available.

We have inadvertently encouraged the customer to ask for a discount. The word "price" doesn't need an adjective to describe it.

4. Don't advertise your willingness to discount.

Sometimes, in our eagerness to make the sale, we advertise our willingness to make price concessions in order to secure the business. We say things like, "We'd be happy to discuss pricing with you." Or, "We may be able to do better." Or, "If you give me the last look, I may be able to sharpen the pencil."

5. Be careful about  discounting but be prepared to do so .

If you discount your prices in response to a customer's request, on even one occasion, you have conveyed to the customer the idea that your quoted price is not your final price. Now, forever in the future, the customer will remember that you can discount when pressed. He will, therefore, press for discounts. If, however, you never discount from your quoted price or you establish a price that is customized for that client, you convey that there is some integrity in your pricing, and that you are quoting him your best price and you're willing to adjust for their particular needs or constraints.

It's OK, on some occasions, to walk away from a piece of business rather than to discount in order to get it. The net impact is that the customer respects your pricing, and is less likely in the future to ask for a discount. Then again, a discount might be the only way to secure a deal. In businesses that are just beginning to establish a price point, experimentation might be necessary to find the optimal range. If you have a vast amount of potential clients out there then promotional pricing should be part of the strategy.

If you get almost every deal, your prices aren't sufficiently high. You need to lose some in order to gain the customer's respect as well as a sense of where the market price is. No matter how you look at a price point, the bottom line is the sale.

I've often thought that the idea of asking for the opportunity for a "last look" – which most salespeople strive for and proudly proclaim as proof of a good business relationship – is merely another way of saying that you'll discount the most. Why would the customer give you a "last look" if he wasn't expecting you to discount some more?

It's so easy to complain about the customer and the constant pressure to reduce our prices. It's the thoughtful salesperson who understands that our own behavior can often be the cause of the price objection. Change your behavior, and you'll improve your results. As you’re looking at yourself, don’t forget to look at who you’re selling to as well. Some businesses are genuinely constrained in the amount they can spend. It is up to you to decide if this is a valid concern. 

Working the SEO Angle

One of the major misconceptions that businesses have about search engine optimization is that the end goal is ranking highly on Google - or other rival search engines. While this is undoubtedly one of the main aims of search engine marketing, it is not the be all and end all. There is another far more important consideration; the actual number of sales leads and conversions created by an effective SEO/SEM campaign that works on several levels..

According to industry experts, one of the major concerns that SEO agencies have is that businesses often get hung-up on a set of very specific keywords that will rank highly but are unlikely to be searched for by internet users. While it can be easy to get obscure phrases to the top of Google search engine results pages, if no one is actually looking for those specific keywords then the effort is wasted.

While generating leads is not the responsibility of an SEO agency, it should be something that is raised with clients that are adamant on ranking for very obscure key phrases. This can be done with three simple words - return on investment. Companies can end up wasting a lot of cash if they stick to their guns and push ahead with a search engine marketing campaign that doesn't generate leads.

Unfortunately, there are those who will always attribute total SEO success to the ranking of a keyword that they’ve grown personally attached to. Equally unfortunate, there are a huge number of unscrupulous SEO companies out there that would happily take businesses' hard-earned cash and get them high rankings for perfectly useless keywords.

That's not how your approach to SEO should be, though. If you have a bunch of keywords that someone gets you ranked for but they do nothing to help you, you're going to think SEO just didn't work. 

Businesses should work closely with their chosen third-party SEO agency to ensure their search engine marketing activity is offering concrete results. Insight and experience offered by SEO experts should not be overlooked. Meaning in-house is good but specialists will target the myriad of considerations a business must be concerned with when developing an effective SEO strategy.

Plan the Time to Time the Plan

There are many people and businesses out there mistaking time tracking for time management. They keep track to a fault of everything they do, for weeks or even months. And then they stop doing it because they haven’t realized any positive changes. But keeping track of how you spend your time isn’t time management.

Time management is about making changes to the way you spend your time. For effective time management, you have to apply a time management system that will help you see where changes can and should be made.

The first step of time management is to analyze how you actually spend your time so you can determine what changes you want to make.

This is where many people’s attempts at time management fail. They look at a specific day in their Day-Timer or Outlook calendar or on their Palm which is packed with activities from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and don’t know what to do with it. So they fall back on the tried and true techniques and eliminate a few events and prioritize others. But they haven’t really managed anything; they’ve just rearranged it. All the perceived problems and frustrations of the day’s activities are still there – and at the end of their day they’re still frazzled and frustrated.

Manage Your Time with Time Management Categories

How do you actually manage time? The secret is in the categories. Look at your calendar for tomorrow. It’s probably already full of events and activities that you’re hoping to accomplish. As you work or afterward, you’ll be filling in the blank spaces.

Now look at the list and categorize it. How much time during your working day did you actually spend?

1) Putting out fires. An unexpected phone call.  A report that’s necessary for a meeting that should have been printed yesterday. A missing file that should be on your desk. How much of your day was actually spent in crisis mode? For most people, this is a negative category that drains their energy and interferes with their productivity.

2) Dealing with interruptions. Phone calls and people dropping by your office will probably top the list when you’re assigning events to this category. Once again, for most people, this is a negative category because it interferes with (and sometimes kills) productivity.

3) Doing planned tasks. This is the most positive use of time during your work day. You are in control and accomplishing what you intended to accomplish. Planned tasks can include phone calls, meetings with staff, even answering email – if these are tasks that you have put on your agenda.

4) Working uninterrupted. You may not be working on a task you had planned to do, but you are getting to accomplish something, and for most people, this is a very productive, positive work mode.

5) Uninterrupted downtime. Those times during the work day that is used to re-energize and regroup. Lunch or a mid-morning break may count IF they’re uninterrupted. If you’re lucky enough to work with a company that offers on-site work-out facilities or nap rooms that would count, too. Everyone needs a certain amount of uninterrupted downtime built into their day to be productive during their work time.

A Week of Your Past Is the Key to The Future

Now that you understand the time management categories, it’s time to use them to analyze your “typical” work week. Using whatever calendar system you use for listing appointments and activities in your daily life, go back and select a recent typical week. Go through the entries of each working day and categorize them according to the time management categories above. Keeping a running total at the bottom of each day will make it easy to see just how you’ve spent your working time each day.

Now you have the data you need to make changes to the way you spend your time at work. Are you spending too much time putting out fires? Then you need to make the organizational or physical changes to prevent or defer these constant crises. Clean up and reorganize your desk, for example, so you can find the files you need easily, and establish a routine of putting the files you need for the next day out on your desk before you leave for the day. Not getting enough uninterrupted downtime during your working day? Then you need to build it in. For instance, stop eating lunch at your desk and physically leave the building for your stipulated lunch time.

By applying my work categories of time management, and making the changes you need to make to spend more of your time during your working day in the positive categories and less time in the negative categories, you’ll truly be able to effectively manage your time at work – and accomplish the true goal of time management, to feel better.

MapWide Scam Alert!

Update: MapWide and Dr. Said run a scam operation and should be avoided by all businesses.


MapDentist Inc., a marketing and technology company that empowers businesses with smaller advertising budgets to maximize their online presence, has found that interest in local Internet search has skyrocketed, particularly among first-time Web advertisers. MapDentist which is popularly known as MapWide.com, has created a unique and streamlined “vertical” search engine that caters to consumers who want to find a business within their specified locality.

Why is local search so significant to these businesses? Local search uses localized Internet marketing to pair a customer with a nearby business. When a company places an ad online, people from all over the globe can find it. However, what many customers really are looking for is a local business to meet their needs. Search results are now more refined, and with the right targeting, can deliver that walk-in business along with online patronage. For the advertising dollar, a local business would be well served by prominent placement in a powerful local search engine such as MapWide. As research has shown, paper based advertising is close to extinction. 78% of local consumers now rely on local searches to find a business.

What is unique about Mapwide’s advertising model is the valued added features subscribers are entitled to. For about the price of a yellow pages thumbnail ad per month, businesses can purchase a year’s worth of space. Ads include; a prominent page one graphic, personalized blog and chat room features, coupon placement, and other well thought out features. One key element that is very unique to this model involves the businesses ability to log into their subscription and change any element, including regenerating coupons.

"We've helped many of smaller advertisers get online to date and the single common denominator is that they've keyed in on local search," said Dr. Said, CEO and founder of MapWide. "This is not a nascent trend any longer -- local search is what consumers now demand and only businesses found by these search engines will be in the list of choices.

An informal survey of MapWide clients who are first-time advertisers found that local search topped the list of marketing goals, ahead of Yellow Page Ads and Direct Mail. After three months, MapWide clients reported an increase in localized business leads as a result of targeted campaign management, and these in turn are resulting in a significant number of conversions.

According to Dr. Said, "MapWide has proprietary technology to geographically target Internet marketing to keep it local and to separate traffic so that customers in a specific area are directed to local businesses." In addition, the company has partnered with top local directories, destination sites and search engines to provide its customers with the best traffic possible.

MapWide’s local search marketing efforts can range from pinpoint campaigns for national companies tied into an event or promotion in a specific locale, to geolocation targeting for smaller private sector firms. Mapdentist Inc. is a marketing-driven technology company that empowers businesses with smaller advertising budgets to maximize their online presence. MapWide’s solutions provide these businesses with the same opportunities as those of larger concerns through the use of advanced reporting tools; dynamic campaign management; a unique optimization engine; personalized customer support; and an advertising network tailored to local and national markets. MapWide’s technology is now being used to manage hundreds of thousands of keywords and campaigns with outstanding results. The privately held company is based in Tustin, CA.

The fact that Gary Mirkin, the former President of Inc. Magazine, is now MapWide’s President, tells the industry that MapWide is becoming a formidable force. Recent investments, coupled with innovative technology has given rise to what could be the next prominent search engine. In regards to vertical searches on a local level, MapWide has already created something so unique that major players are aligning themselves in what is sure to be a major innovation in the way consumers finds local businesses.

Author: Chris Borowski

SEO Optimization: Part II - The Value of News

There are many advantages to building news stories and just one of those advantages is that search engines treat news as syndicated content. Search engines do not treat news as "duplicate content" because news is meant to be duplicated through syndication.

The search engines do understand syndication. News is 100% white hat, regardless of how many news sites or feeds or Web pages that a story gets published on. In some case, when you get a news story published, it will get picked up by hundreds of other media outlets too. But remember the old rule about everything in moderation when link building?

You always want to build links slowly and in a natural way (which is true for
most aspects of SEO or increasing your pages visibility in search rankings.) But when it come to working with news stories, you have a huge advantage that
allows you to get hundreds or even thousands of good links, within only hours
(and with no danger of penalty.) This is because news is meant to be syndicated.


Having several hundred media sites feed your news stories out to editors and publishers can result in huge traffic spikes as well as increased link reputation that will never be penalized, assuming you are doing things the right way. News is something that is always changing. It's always fresh. Sometimes, for example you'll see on Google news that a story was just published 5 minutes ago or another story published 12 minutes ago etc. Then if you look further in the results, you see additional links that may say 125 new articles (on that same

topic) or maybe 770 more articles on the other topic.

If content published in more than Web site is considered "duplicate content" 
here is an above board way that is fairly easy to build effective links, without
the stress. Learn how to write and publish news and you have a huge advantage.

Remember, this is not just about writing any type of content.

It needs to be considered either real world hard news or else valuable newsworthy content. There are many different ways to put your news content out to editors that are free. There are some paid services that are well worth the investment too. Remember that once a story gets published somewhere that link back to your Web site can be priceless. In some cases, even once the traffic spike dies down, you will still have your press release showing up in search engine results even years later.

Some publications may send your story out to  their subscribers and if your news story is popular, it can spread extremely quickly all across the Internet. Consider the impact of your story going out to even just one source that may have 200,000 to 500,000 subscribers. There are many other ways to build powerful link reputation, without the stress too, this is only just one way that works extremely well.

Managing Information Overload: Is it Possible?

We are observing increasing hype about the wonders delivered by newest information technologies in an era characterized by knowledge as the critical resource for business activity. With the advent of new technologies, such as datamining, intranets, videoconferencing, and webcasting, several technologists are offering such solutions as a panacea for meeting the business challenges of the knowledge era. Trade press coverage of the 'productivity paradox' has further added to the speed of the information technology (IT) treadmill by suggesting that increasing investments in new information technologies should somehow result in improved business performance. For instance, some recent stories published in the trade press have asserted that certain technologies, such as intranets, have some inherent capability for facilitating organizational transformation initiatives, such as knowledge management.

Interestingly, some technology experts and academic scholars have observed that there is no direct correlation between IT investments and business performance or knowledge management. For instance, Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT Sloan School, notes that: "The same dollar spent on the same system may give a competitive advantage to one company but only expensive paperweights to another." Hence a key factor for the higher return on the IT dollar is the effective utilization of technology. How industry executives should go about deciphering the mantra of 'effective utilization,' however, remains an illusive issue. This conclusion is supported by the industrywide analyses of IT investments by the technology economist Paul Strassmann. There is no relationship between computer expenditures and company performance whatsoever. On a similar note, John Seely Brown, director of the Xerox Parc research center in Palo Alto, California, underscores that in the last 20 years, US industry has invested more than $1 trillion in technology, but has realized little improvement in the efficiency or effectiveness of its knowledge workers. He has attributed this failure to organizations' ignorance of ways in which knowledge workers communicate and operate through the social processes of collaborating, sharing knowledge and building on each others ideas.

Toward A New World Order of Business

The contrast highlighted above may be attributed to a transition of the economy from an era of competitive advantage based on information to one based on knowledge creation. The earlier era was characterized by relatively slow and predictable change that could be deciphered by most formal information systems. During this period, information systems based on programmable recipes for success were able to deliver their promises of efficiency based on optimization for given business contexts. Success stories of IT miracles of this era, such as Mrs. Fields' Cookies, have been chronicled by the Harvard Business School case writers and many others in the academic and trade press. However, as argued by Brian Arthur, Dean of Economics and Population Studies at Stanford and author of Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, the new world of knowledge-based industries is distinguished by its emphasis on precognition and adaptation in contrast to the traditional emphasis on optimization based on prediction. He suggests that the new world of knowledge-based business is characterized by "re-everything" involving continuous redefinition of organizational goals, purposes, and its "way of doing things." This new business environment is characterized by radical and discontinuous change which overwhelms the traditional organizational response of predicting and reacting based on pre-programmed heuristics. Instead, it demands anticipatory response from organization members who need to carry out the mandate of a faster cycle of knowledge-creation and action based on the new knowledge.

Knowledge Management in the 'Old' Information Era

In the information era characterized by relatively predictable change, technology gurus, as well as hardware and software providers, have been offering out-of-box solutions that are expected to enable knowledge management. Such off-the-shelf solutions are expected to offer means for storing best practices devised by human experts in information databases which may be later used for crunching out the pre-determined solutions based on pre-defined parameters. For example, a Software Magazine article defined knowledge management in terms of understanding the relationships of data; Identifying and documenting rules for managing data; and assuring that data are accurate and maintain integrity. Similarly a Computerworld article defined knowledge management in terms of mapping knowledge and information resources both on-line and off-line. The convergent and consensus building emphasis of such systems is suited for stable and predictable organizational environments. However such interpretations of knowledge management -- based primarily on rules and procedures embedded in technology -- seem misaligned with the dynamically changing business environment.

Such programmed solutions may be good enough for devising strategies for a game of business that is based on pre-defined rules, conventions and assumptions. However such mechanistic solutions based on the traditional information-processing emphasis of knowledge management are increasingly inadequate in a business world that demands increasing flexibility and resurfacing of existing assumptions. This is the world which requires not playing by the pre-defined rules, but understanding and adapting as the rules of the game, as well as the game itself, keep changing. Examples of such changing rules, conventions and assumptions of business are suggested by the changing paradigms of organizations with the emergence of virtual corporations and business ecosystems.

A Definition of Knowledge Management for the New World

We propose a definition of Knowledge Management that attempts to go beyond the quickfix solutions or unidimensional views offered by many others. This definition is intended to move the thinking of corporate executives towards the strategic, non-linear and systemic view of Knowledge Management reviewed in this article.

"Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaption, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings."

Knowledge Management in the New World of Business

The traditional paradigm of information systems is based on seeking a consensual interpretation of information based on socially dictated norms or the mandate of the company bosses. This has resulted in the confusion between 'knowledge' and 'information'. However, knowledge and information are distinct entities!! While information generated by the computer systems is not a very rich carrier of human interpretation for potential action, 'knowledge' resides in the user's subjective context of action based on that information. Hence, it may not be incorrect to state that knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection of information, a point made two decades ago by West Churchman, the leading thinker on information systems.

The confusion between `knowledge' and `information' has caused managers to sink billions of dollars in technology ventures that have yielded marginal results. He asserts that the business managers need to realize that unlike information, knowledge is embedded in people... and knowledge creation occurs in the process of social interaction. On a similar note, Ikujiro Nonaka, the renowned Professor of Knowledge, has emphasized that only human beings can take the central role in knowledge creation. He argues that computers are merely tools, however great their information-processing capabilities may be. A very recent Harvard Business Review special issue on Knowledge Management seems to lend credence to this point of view. This issue highlighted the need for constructive conflict in organizations that aspire to be leaders in innovation and creation of new knowledge.

The 'wicked environment' of the new world of business imposes the need for variety and complexity of interpretations of information outputs generated by computer systems. Such variety is necessary for deciphering the multiple world views of the uncertain and unpredictable future. As underscored by the strategy guru Gary Hamel at the recent Academy of Management meeting address, non-linear change imposes upon organizations the need for devising non-linear strategies. Such strategies cannot be 'predicted' based on a static picture of information residing in the company's databases. Rather, such strategies will depend upon developing interpretive flexibility by understanding multiple views of the future. In this perspective, the objective of business strategy is not to indulge in long-term planning of the future. Rather, the emphasis is on understanding the various world views of future using techniques such as scenario-planning.  

Lessons for Business & Technology Executives

So what can executives do to realign their focus from the old world of 'information management' to the new paradigm of 'knowledge management' discussed here? A condensed checklist of implementation measures for business and technology managers is given in the following table.

Table 1. Implementation Measures for Facilitating Knowledge Management

Instead of the traditional emphasis on controlling the people and their behaviors by setting up pre-defined goals and procedures, they would need to view the organization as a human community capable of providing diverse meanings to information outputs generated by the technological systems.

De-emphasize the adherence to the company view of 'how things are done here' and 'best practices' so that such ways and practices are continuously assessed from multiple perspectives for their alignment with the dynamically changing external environment.

Invest in multiple and diverse interpretations to enable constructive conflict mode of inquiry and, thus, lessen oversimplification of issues or premature decision closure.

Encourage greater proactive involvement of human imagination and creativity to facilitate greater internal diversity to match the variety and complexity of the wicked environment.

Give more explicit recognition to tacit knowledge and related human aspects, such as ideals, values, or emotions, for developing a richer conceptualization of knowledge management

Implement new, flexible technologies and systems that support and enable communities of practice, informal and semi-informal networks of internal employees and external individuals based on shared concerns and interests.

Make the organizational information base accessible to organization members who are closer to the action while simultaneously ensuring that they have the skills and authority to execute decisive responses to changing conditions.

In the final analysis, managers need to develop a greater appreciation for their intangible human assets captive in the minds and experiences of their knowledge workers, because without these assets, the companies are simply not equipped with a vision to foresee or to imagine the future while being faced with a fog of unknowingness. As noted by Strassmann, elevating computerization to the level of a magic bullet may lead to the diminishing of what matters the most in any enterprise: educated, committed, and imaginative individuals working for organizations that place greater emphasis on people than on technologies.