Archive for year: 2008
SEO Techniques
/in Articles, Web design and promotion, Web Marketing/by Art-DSo you want Your website to be on the first page of every Search Engine – Art Dimension SEO Techniques will help You get there! The Techniques on this page will enpower You with the information that will move You towards that goal. Set Your aim high, the sky is the limit! Others have done it, so why can’t You — Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is really quite simple!If You have been putting off optimizing Your website for a higher Search Engine results position, today is a good day to make Your start. SEO Techniques will make it much easier that You expected!
The following list of SEO Techniques will help you optimize your website so you will get a higher Search Engine Results Position (SERP). Some of the items can be done quickly – others will take a bit of time.
If you complete all the items on the following list of SEO Techniques, give the Search Engines some time to send out their bots to deep crawl your website, your site traffic will increase. Make sure you are ready for it!
Search Engine Optimization – What is it?
Optimizing your website so you will obtain a high search engine results position is what SEO Techniques is all about. It is reported that 65% of all websites visited start with a search from a search engine.
For people to find your site via a search engine, the site will require a high Search Engine Results Position (SERP). This means when they search keywords phrases like SEO techniques, they will find you site page on the first page of the search engine results. Ending up on the 10 page of the search engines results will not get you any traffic.
Getting a high SERP is a combination of a number of things. Leaving out any of the items on the following list of SEO Techniques can result in your page not getting as high a search engine results position as it could.
The SEO List
There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let’s get started by reading the following list of SEO Techniques!
- Domain & File Names:
Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page. - Keyword Phrases:
- Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
- Add keyword synonyms to your content.
- Put the keyword phrases in the <title>keyword phrase</title> .
- Insert the keyword phrases in a <h1>keyword phrase</h1> tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
- Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.
- Keyword Density:
Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length. - Bad Techniques:
Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very imformative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website. - Title & Meta Description Tag:
Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content=”Description phrase” or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title. - Meta Keywords Tag:
The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn’t ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway. It is as follows, <meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords,go,here” /> and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page. - Author & Robots Tags:
The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company’s name.
<meta name=”author” content=”Solutions with Service” />
Use a generic Robots Tag on all pages that you want indexed. This instructs the robots to crawl the page. The following is the generic robots tag.
<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” /> - Quality Content:
Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind - Quantity Content:
The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality. - Changing Content:
You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed. - Avoid Dynamic URLs:
Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the “?” that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
Static pages are the best but if you have a db driven site, make sure the menu and site map like go to inventory.cfm not inventory.cfm?vn=0 . - Frames:
Many search engines can’t follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames. - Site Map:
A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need. - Site Themes:
All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage. - Site Design:
You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.
These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.
Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given.
Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don’t have a proper doctype on each page Internet Exployer will go into quirks mode and display it different.
Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation show you any broken code that could cause your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions. - Separate Content & Presentation:
Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview. - Robots.txt File:
While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don’t get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Ultimate Social Media Optimisation List
/0 Comments/in Articles, Web Marketing/by Art-DOver the last couple of months I’ve found myself reading through more and more social media optimisation (SMO) articles. I found Lyndon Antcliff’s enormous linkbait list to be a great resource so I thought I’d share a similar list of articles which I found to be useful in improving my own understanding of SMO.
Pronet Advertising
Introduction to Social Media Optimization
A Comparison of SEO and SMO
Social Media Optimization Vs Social Media Marketing
Targeting Social Media Optimization
Will Social Media Optimization become mainstream?
55 Sure-Fire Social Media Headline Formulas That Work
Social Media Sensationalism
Measuring the ROI from Social Media Marketing
Social Media Discussions at SES
Traditonal PR with a touch of social media
SEOmoz
Social Media Optimization, eh? Let’s See What’s in Our Bag o’ Goodies
Rohit Bhargava
5 Rules of Social Media Optimization
Search Engine Land
Forget ABCs – The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS
More Letters of the Social Media Alphabet
Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines Second
Social Media Marketing Is Ethical!
social-media-optimization.com
Social Media Optimization Not For Everyone
Are You Welcome in the Neighborhood?
Looking at the Social Media Numbers
Search Engine Journal
Social Media Optimization : 13 Rules of SMO
Tropical SEO
Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing
Lee Odden
New Rules for Social Media Optimization
New Tools for Social Media Optimization
The Power of Social Media, Blogs and Online PR
GrayWolf
The Dark Side of Social Media Optimization
Profiting From Social Media Optimization
WebProNews
Social Media Optimization: The Backlash
SES: Social Media Optimization
Different Approaches To Social Media
Stunt Dubl
Pubcon Vegas Social Media Optimization Presentation
Eran Arkin
Popularity of Social Media Sites
Search Engine Roundtable
Optimizing for Social Search and Web 2.0
When Will Google Begin Devaluing Social Links; Such As Digg.com, Yahoo! Answers & del.icio.us?
Andy Beal
The Five Pillars of Social Media Optimization
If you know of any more feel free to add a comment, please note that social media optimisation is spelt with an s instead of a z the UK and is also known as social media marketing.
The Ten Commandments of SEO
/in Articles, Web design and promotion, Web Marketing/by Art-DFor the Gods of Google to accept your site, you must do more than offer up a golden cow. Here are the Ten Commandments to follow. Sinners will face purgatory with a penalty or be sent to hell with a lifetime ban.
The First Commandment – Thou Shalt Have Fresh Content
The easiest way to accomplish this is with a daily blog. One to three paragraphs of original content related to your site.
The Second Commandment – Thou Shalt Do Keyword Research
For each of your daily blogs, go to the Free Keyword Researcher on our Free Biz Tools page and identify a keyword string of 2-4 words long to title your blog.
Use the Keyword string in your blog content 1-3 times.
The Third Commandment – Thou Shalt Submit Daily Blog to Social Bookmarks
The exact keyword string that you identify for you blog’s title will be used in each submission. Change up the description for each submission.
Here are the angels of Google that will help you ascend in the rankings and find a home in Google Heaven:
http://bibsonomy.org
http://bringr.com
http://buddymarks.com/
http://clipclip.org/
http://clipfire.com/
http://del.icio.us/
http://faves.com/home
http://folkd.com/
http://linkagogo.com/
http://mixx.com
http://multiply.com
http://myweb.yahoo.com/
http://netvouz.com/
http://newsvine.com/
http://panamanewsblog.com/
http://pixelgroovy.com
http://reddit.com/
http://searchles.com/
http://shoutwire.com
http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl
http://sphinn.com/
http://spurl.net/
http://startaid.com/
http://theoryoffun.com/
http://wikio.com/
http://www.a1-webmarks.com/
http://www.blinklist.com/
For the complete list of Social Bookmark Sites go here.
The Fourth Commandment – Thou Shalt Use the Site Name in the Title
The Google Gods want you to be true to yourself and not try to trick your fellow man.
The best way to accomplish this is to use it in the second half of the title. Ex: The Ten Commandments of Search : Sta.rtUp.biz
The Fifth Commandment – Though Shalt Have Links from Directories
Identify the keyword string that you want your index page to rank for and use it in the title of your submissions. Also, only do a couple of submissions each day.
Here is a list of PR4+ directories that have free submission. The $299 Yahoo directory submission is also a good move.
http://www.dmoz.org/ 8
http://www.la-ma.org/ 6
http://www.mxdu.com/ 6
http://www.jayde.com/ 6
http://www.mygreencorner.com/ 6
http://www.ghinmeca.com/ 5
http://directory.classifieds1000.com/ 5
http://www.concensus.org/ 5
http://www.directorydice.com/ 5
http://www.domaining.in/ 5
http://www.freewebsitedirectory.com/ 5
http://www.illumirate.com/ 5
http://www.info-listings.com/ 5
http://www.publimix.net/ 5
http://searchsight.com/Directory.htm 5
http://www.uc33.com/ 5
http://www.amray.com/ 4
http://www.a1webdirectory.org/ 4
http://www.boshuda.com 4
http://www.businesspagesupdate.co.uk/ 4
For the complete list of Free Directories go here.
The Sixth Commandment – Thou Shalt Post Comments on Blogs with Do-Follow
Do-Follow simply means that a link on a page is valued by the Google Gods. Be sure to post a good comment and use the keyword string that you are focusing on as your name.
Here is a list of Do-Follow Blogs:
http://brownsista.com 6
http://foolswisdom.com 6
http://www.billhartzer.com 5
http://howtosplitanatom.com 5
http://andybeard.eu 5
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net 5
http://www.davidairey.com 5
http://www.fastlanetransport.ca/blog 5
http://lifelearningtoday.com 5
http://www.pixelheadonline.com/blog 4
http://www.logon.ie 4
http://www.howtowakeupearly.com 4
http://www.joebartender.com 4
http://jakeldaily.com 4
http://tallfreak.com 4
http://blog.achille.name 4
For the complete list of Do-Follow Blogs go here.
The Seventh Commandment – Thou Shalt Use Signatures in Forums with Do-Follow
Focus your signature around the main keyword string for your home page. Try to be the first response to new posts and participate on long discussion threads that will consistently be pushed to the top of the main discussion page.
Here is a list of major forums with Do-Follow signatures:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/- SEO
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/ – music
http://forums.seroundtable.com/ – seo
http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs/
http://www.startups.co.uk/ – business
http://www.v7n.com/forums/ – seo, webmaster
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/ – webmaster
http://www.webicy.com/ – Webmaster, seo
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/ – comic books
http://bzimage.org/ – photo
http://www.earnersforum.com/forumsindex.php – ecommerce, advertising
http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/ – domains
http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/ – books
For the complete list of Do-Follow Forums go here.
The Eighth Commandment – Thou Shalt Use Free Classified Ads
This is an easy way to get a little push and some customers at the same time.
Here is a list of some of the large free online classified sites:
http://www.craigslist.org/
http://www.thefreeadforum.com/vbull/
http://www.adlandpro.com/
http://www.gumtree.com/
http://classifieds.yahoo.com/
http://www.google.com/base
http://caklassifieds.com/
http://classifieds.myspace.com/
http://expo.live.com/default.aspx
http://www.kijiji.com/
http://www.adlandpro.com/
http://www.backpage.com/classifieds/
http://www.usfreeads.com/
http://www.oodle.com/
http://www.adpost.com/
For the complete list of Free Classified Websites go here.
The Ninth Commandment – Thou Shalt Create and Submit RSS Feeds
Here is a list of free RSS feed directories that will get your feed slurped up by Google:
http://www.aspin.com/
http://www.bloogz.com/
http://www.daypop.com/
http://www.daytimenews.com/
http://www.devasp.com/
http://www.dummysoftware.com/
http://www.feed24.com/
http://www.feedage.com/
http://www.feedbomb.com
http://www.feed-directory.com/
http://www.feedfury.com
http://www.feedooyoo.com/
http://www.feeds2read.net
http://www.feedsee.com/
http://www.feedsfarm.com/
For the complete list of Free RSS Directories go here.
The Tenth Commandment – Thou Shalt Not Forget about Google Images
Google images accounts for a large amount of traffic and should not be ignored. On each daily blog, you should have an image that is clickable. Remember that Google images shows a bunch of thumbnails and not your blog content. Then use the keyword string to name the image, alt tag, and caption.
Although I may not be Moses, this list just may save the soul of your website.
Another Social Network for Small Businesses is Born
/0 Comments/in Articles, Web Marketing/by Art-DAnother network is also in existence that is separate from the major players like Facebook and MySpace. It’s called Sta.rtUp.Biz, and it offers some similar features to Visa’s creation. Dot Com Mogul explains:
Not only can you network with other small business owners, the site is jam packed with resources for the small business owner, such as Motivational Video Clips and Free Search Engine Optimization. The forum also has three experts to provide you with assistance in each major area of small business. A corporate lawyer will answer your legal questions, the “Search Guru” helps you with Google rankings and provides Free Search Engine Optimization, and there’s a veteran serial entrepreneur to mentor you on business management and strategy.
Upon first glance, it looks like a nice blend of a lot of useful content and resources for small business professionals.

Profile pages include the usual personal information as well as blogs and a list of the member’s recent activity, such as comments, and what groups the member has joined.
I’m not a big fan of the del.icio.us-style domain for reasons I’ve gone into before, but the site appears like a useful B2B tool just the same.
If anyone signs up for this network or already has, let us know what you think of it. Would you recommend it to other small business owners or would you just as soon stay within the established Facebook/MySpace/etc. crowds?
Thinking About Rebranding Your Business?
/in Articles, Brand identity, Branding/by Art-DThink it through!
Sometimes when business isn’t going as well as planned, it pays to consider changing your image. Making your business seem fresh in the public eye can be huge for attracting new customers.
The important thing to remember when trying this approach however, is to not let down your current customers. They are after all the ones keeping you in business in the first place.
If you choose to rebrand, make sure to include their best interests unless you are prepared to lose them. It’s one thing if you can afford to start over again from scratch, but unfortunately, many small business owners do not have this luxury.
Erik Johnels at the Weakest Link has some great advice in a post called Re-Branding 101 – Changing Your Image.
Jessica Seid at CNNMoney once cited the following 7 mistakes that people often make when trying to re-brand:
1. Clinging to History
2. Thinking the brand is limited to the logo, stationery and corporate colors
3. Navigating without a plan
4. Not leveraging existing brand equity and goodwill
5. Not walking in your customer’s shoes
6. Believing rebranding costs too much
7. Bypassing the basics.
If rebranding is something you are considering, I urge you to read both of these articles before making any drastic changes. Don’t stop there either. This is a big step for your business and you should do as much research as possible before taking it. Look at other companies that have done it. Try to figure out what made them successful or caused them to fail.
Be sure it’s really what you want to do. Take it slow and consider expanding too. This can often lead to more success without losing the brand you have established.
By Chris Crum
For Sale: Facebook Shares, 67% Off
/0 Comments/in Articles, Web Marketing/by Art-DWhat is Facebook really worth? We know it’s not worth $15 billion — earlier this week a federal court, ruling on the ConnectU case, confirmed that the company has already placed a different value on its shares than the one they publicly announced as part of last fall’s Microsoft deal.
Now Mike Arrington reports that Bill Dagley, a California money manager, is repping a seller with a block a stock they’re willing to part with at a “value far less than $15 billion.” He then cites a source that says the valuation Dagley’s client is looking for is in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.
Sound plausible? It does to us. We’ve heard a different but similar version of the story from “Stone”, a prolific and anonymous SAI commenter, for a while. The last time that Stone threw this one out — this week — he asserted that the valuation was “less than $4 billion for sure.”
And now, prompted by Arrington’s report, we’ve heard from a different source — this one we know, but have agreed not to identify — who says that in April, he was offered a 0.25% stake for $12.5 million — a $5 billion valuation. Our source, who didn’t move forward with the deal, says they weren’t approached by Bill Dagley but by a Facebook employee, inquiring on behalf of another Facebook employee.
So either said Facebook employee is now working with Dagley, or there are multiple Facebook shareholders looking to unload shares for 2/3rds or less of the $15 billion number the company boasted about last fall. We’d bet on the latter.
Peter Kafka
Domain Name Keyword Importance
/0 Comments/in Articles, Web Marketing/by Art-DKeywords in domain names have very little importance in actual ranking calculations – that’s been the case for years now. The positive effects people see are a consequence of sites linking to the domain using the URL as anchor text – link text containing keywords is what helps the domain rank, not the actual appearance of the keyword in the domain name.
It’s a common mistake SEOs make – differentiating between “direct” ranking factors and “indirect” ranking factors is very important. People just tend to make the wrong assosciations – they optimise a keyword domain site and see it rank for the keyword and assume that this is down to the keyword in the domain. It isn’t.
The strength of keywords in domains is very easy to test. Find a keyword with mild competition (say anywhere from 500k +), buy the domain, stick a page up with content that doesn’t mention the keyword (nowhere in the body copy, title, etc). Then link to the site from another site using the text “click here”.
If the appearance of keywords in the domain name were so important, then the domain would rank well. But it won’t. That’s because it used to work (circa 2002, 2003) and Google SERPs were filled with spammy keyword domains hosting scraper sites so Google heavily devalued the impact keywords in domain names.
Think about it logically. If this was such an important factor – i.e. more important than any other SEO factor as people are saying – why would Google allow this? A keyword in a domain says nothing about the quality of the content on the site – it’s something that anyone can manipulate in an instant and at very low cost.
BobsWidgets.com ranks well for “widgets” because people link to it using the text, “Bobs Widgets”. There’s a reason that marketing.com, seo.com, searchengineoptimisation.com, travel.com, food.com, etc aren’t number 1 for their respective keywords – that reason is that they have uncompetitive levels of keyword inbound link text compared to their competitors and the domain name is largely irrelevant.
That’s just the “pure SEO ranking” value however. You need to also look at other types of value that can come from keywords in domains – it makes link building easier – people link to the site using keywords more often so rankings can come quicker because of that.
But look at the issue in a larger context – sure having “widgets” in your domain name will help you rank faster because people link to it saying “widgets”. But widgets isn’t your only keyword is it? What about the dozens, hundreds or thousands of other keywords you want to target? The appearance of “widgets” in the domain name doesn’t help them in the slightest.
For those reasons, overall keyword in domain names have very low value to even small campaigns and the overall value decreases as your campaign increases.
Personally, I wouldn’t even rank the value of this factor in my top 10 – it’s inconsequential to a SEO campaign where even a made up word as domain name (i.e. a brand) can achieve the same success just as easily.
There’s also an issue of image. I guess many people won’t realise and this is probably less and less of an issue as time passes, but there was a time when keyword domains were synonymous with spam (because as I said, spammers used to buy up keyword domains and throw up spam sites because they used to rank well because of the keyword in the domain). Personally, I ignore link requests and business requests from keyword domains for that reason – this may be the exception rather than the rule, but I believe there are probably a good percentage of website owners who feel the same.
And then the marketing issues. You spend loads of money on SEO for edinburghwidgets.com just for someone else to go ahead a buy up glasgowwidgets.com or buyedinburghwidgets.com and legally there’s nothing you can do about it – and there’s a decent chance they will outrank you and capitialise on any marketing efforts you are making. Why would you risk that as a business when you can optimise “abrand.com” just as easily?
Keywords domains are good for some applications, but I would be seriously concerned if a legitimate business wanted to spend money developing a keyword domain for their core business solely on the belief it will help them rank better.
By Scott Boyd
Giving Props To Essential SEO
/0 Comments/in Articles, Web Marketing/by Art-DThe basics never go out of style
Search engine optimization covers an array of topics, from a decent title tag to the world of viral video and social media connections. It’s the basics that matter most
If you spend much time online, there’s a good chance you have a greater affinity for technology than the average person. Something new comes along, and you’re looking for a reason to give it a try. It’s fun, and it could be rewarding too.
Lisa Barone looked at the current state of search marketing and SEO, courtesy of Andrew Goodman’s assessment of SEO and recent trends. There’s a lot of curiosity and love for the latest and greatest ways to attract attention, she noted:
There may be great value in spending the time and money creating Facebook applications, toying with viral YouTube videos, and seeing if MySpace is filled with anything other than strippers and bands, but that often comes with an awfully low return on investment compared to the traditional stuff.
All the latest technologies have their place. In a number of examples, social media and viral videos brought tremendous attention to their points of interest.
Such potential should not be ignored, but Barone cautioned against getting too caught up in them. Content building, link development, and researching analytics for trends and necessary adjustments may not be the flavor of the month.
But like a vanilla cone, they still deliver what people really want when things get hot.
Sixty-Five Percent of Small Businessse Say ‘Following Up With Leads’ Biggest Failure in Marketing Efforts
/0 Comments/in Articles, Web Marketing/by Art-DLeads Going Cold Seen as Biggest Gap, According to Infusionsoft Survey
PHOENIX, AZ (May 14, 2008)—Surveying the landscape of small businesses across the U.S., and amid concerns over the need to grow sales while reducing expenses, small business owners say the number one frustration they face daily when it comes to sales and marketing is the inability to consistently follow up with prospects. In a survey of entrepreneurs across the U.S. conducted by small business marketing automation software provider Infusionsoft, 65 percent of small business owners cite an inability to consistently and efficiently follow up with leads as the top concern.
The survey indicates a growing frustration among small business owners and marketers with closing an immediate sale, saying that they forget the nurturing process and instead let leads simmer. Small businesses increasingly seek a way to automatically capture and court leads until they are ready to buy, thus allowing the business owner to work on strategically growing the business.
Infusionsoft, a leader in marketing automation software for small businesses, reports that small businesses want to send more email to customers and prospects, capture information from web visitors, prospects, and then automatically follow up with those people.
The following is a list of the top 10 marketing-related frustrations as cited by small business owners in the 2008 U.S. Small Business Marketing Frustration Survey (ranked in order of importance):
- Too difficult to follow up with cold, warm and lukewarm leads consistently and efficiently
- Can’t properly track and manage prospects and customers
- Need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts
- Poor email deliverability
- Too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process, no automation
- Can’t track sales activity
- Lack of centralization, too many different programs and systems
- Too costly to maintain servers and IT staff
- Too difficult to manually manage multichannel campaigns
- One-dimensional marketing
The survey asked small business owners across the country to choose their top marketing-related issues from a list and then rank them in order of importance, recording results from 1,000 respondents. Infusionsoft conducted the survey via email and phone to organizations with 2-100 employees from January 1, 2008 through April 30, 2008.
“These findings are telling for understanding the challenges a small business owner faces,” said Clate Mask, President and CEO, Infusionsoft. “Small business owners are trying to figure out how to make their marketing more effective amid the reality of smaller marketing budgets, limited time to manage campaigns, smaller organizational infrastructure, and longer to-do lists. So these results are eye-opening to understand just how simple, yet real their daily frustrations are with converting more leads into sales.”
Automation of marketing and processes enables the small business to convert more leads into customers, grow the business without the need to grow staff, and increase sales from existing customers.
Automated Follow-Up Marketing for Small Business
Marketing automation software from Infusionsoft is built for small businesses. The web-based software allows small businesses to track contact details, capture leads automatically from their websites, send emails, execute multi-step and multi-channel campaigns, distribute leads to salespeople, and create orders and fulfillment tasks. Infusionsoft is capable of handling prospect and customer marketing communications, from one-off emails to complex multi-step, multi-channel campaigns that would be nearly impossible for an individual or group of individuals to do without an automated system.
“The benefits of marketing automation are huge,” said Mask. “It’s the difference between having a struggling small business that is just going day to day, trying to make a go of it and on the other hand rapid, consistent growth and really building a much stronger business that doesn’t require the business owner to be at the center of it.”
About Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft, the leader in marketing automation software for small businesses, is revolutionizing the way small businesses grow. There are 10 million small businesses in America that need an easy-to-use, affordable, powerful software solution that increases sales while freeing up their time. The company’s follow-up marketing software answers that need by helping small businesses automatically convert more prospects to customers, get repeat sales, and grow their business without growing staff. The privately-held, Inc 500 company, based in Gilbert, Arizona is funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures. For more information, visit www.infusionsoft.com.

