Tag Archives: internet advertising

Banner Ad Scams Too Good To Be True

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Banner Ad ScamsIf you have a website or blog you have probably been hit up by “professionals” who are interested in “helping you” in a variety of ways. Sadly, many of these so-called pros are actually out to scam you. They may be after your money or they may be looking to infect your computer or your website with malware.

I am not an IT expert, I know enough about my computer and coding to get the job done–most of the time. I do have a good sense when something feels squirrelly. One of my sites was hacked once and I can tell you from personal experience that it was a royal PIA to get it cleaned up. Frankly, I don’t understand how people get their jollies this way–that site was not making any money, so it certainly wasn’t to make financial gain!

I digress…as I so often do 😉

The latest came through my contact form. The good news is that I can safely read the messages from my contact form. The other good news is that I was smart enough, awake enough, alert to the possibility enough (you choose the descriptor you think is right) to NOT click on the link.

Whenever I have a question about if something is legitimate I do a simple Google search. And guess what I found this time? Yep, lots of people are reporting this scam.

Here is the content of the message I got (please do not go to the URL listed–I have definitely NOT activated the link, but want you to be able to see the full scam)

Subject:     Contact Form Results
From:    Josephine Bergson <josephine.bergson@lltconsulting.net

Josephine Bergson wrote:
Hello!

My name is Josephine Bergson representing the advertising department of the LLT
Consulting company. We are interested to place ads (banners), of your choice, on
your websites.

Design and sizes can be seen on our website at www.lltconsulting.net/id_fvo24fca/
Depending on the banner size you choose we can pay up to $950.00/month.

If you are interested to become an advertising partner please let me hear from you.

Kind Regards,
Josephine Bergson
josephine.bergson@lltconsulting.net

Website:
IP: 209.222.26.85

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Too good to be true? That’s because it is!

This might be a great deal, but one of the flags is the dollar amount the are “offering”…but you don’t have to just take my word for it.

Read what a couple IT/high tech guys have to say about this scam (this links ARE active and click away!)

Michael Sheehan AKA HighTechDad: http://www.hightechdad.com/2015/01/22/blogger-warning-llt-consulting-banner-ad-scam/

and Len at Telapost: http://www.telapost.com/bloggers-scam/

Both these guys give good hints on how to determine if what you are being offered is spam. I love this part, do a simple “who is” search and “if the domain is new, registered to a funny name, in a foreign country, renewed recently, and does not belong to a legitimate sounding company you can be sure that the email has ill intentions.” (Thanks Len for that quote).

Also, be realistic, not greedy. If your site doesn’t get significant traffic (yet) then you probably won’t be getting these kinds of offers. If the money seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Clicking on links can load your computer with a malware or trojan. Len stated that he believes this single scam has affected hundreds of machines or more already. If you are one of the unfortunates who did click the link, check these guys out for suggestions on how to clean your machine.

To your successful online business–and pooh on scammers!

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Your Site Name

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This is part 5 of a 6 part series on search tips for local businesses

Should Your Site Name be Your Business Name?

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Your site nameFor many businesses, they want their website name to be the same as their business name. And for many this makes sense. Especially if you are a big, well-known brand. Someone looking for a hardware store in your area may just type in the name of one of the big box stores rather than using keywords. In those instances have your site name (your URL) match your business name is important.

If you aren’t a big brand, you might consider using a keyword in your URL, possibly in conjunction with your business name. If your business is specific to a town then you may want to also consider using your town name in your site name. Both of these can help the search engines know what your business is about and where you are located.

When people search for a Mexican restaurant they may not include the town they are looking in. That’s okay, because the search engines are smart and know the IP address the search was made from—and the town that that IP address is located in. It isn’t perfect, but it means that they will tend to serve to the potential customers the Mexican restaurants nearer to them, not ones across the state or country.

By including your town in your URL you can help the search engines serve up your listing to people in your area.

One word of caution—if you have your town in your URL then you do not want to put your town in every page and description. Sometimes that can be misinterpreted by the search engines as “keyword stuffing”

OK, you want to build a brand and therefore you want to have a website with your name, not a keyword based URL. That’s okay. There are ways that you can have your cake and eat it too. By having two URLs you can take advantage of local search strategies and still build your brand and name recognition.

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Reviews

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This is the final part of a 6 part series on search tips for local businesses

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews

Search Tips for Local Businesses: reviewsDid I mention reviews?

Reviews = “Social Proof” that your business is real. Positive reviews on a variety of sites, including Google+ are in important part of getting found online. If you think you are doing everything else right and you still are not ranking—take a good, hard look at your reviews.

Do you have reviews with stars? These are extremely powerful. You have to have 5 reviews at the time of this post in order for the stars to show up on Google. So if you don’t have stars, get more reviews. Ask your happy customers to review you on your Google+ page.

Make it easy for people to give you a review. Hand out a postcard or colorful piece of paper letting your customers know where to place a review. Be sure to list the sites that are popular in your area. If Yelp is big where you do business, be sure your Yelp site is up, accurate and give folks that link. Angie’s List big in your town—ditto. Facebook? Whatever service(s) your customers use the most, be sure they are active pages with accurate details, and have those links handy. Whether it is the biggest in the country is not the issue (other than Google—that ALWAYS makes a difference.)

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Content

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This is part 4 of a 6 part series on search tips for local businesses

Provide Important Information, AKA “Content”

Search Tips for Local BusinessesWhen you are building your pages pay attention to both the content which is the information ON the page, and the tags and metadata—the information behind the scenes.

Even though some people will claim that the search engines don’t use keywords any longer, that is really a misinterpretation. It is true that keywords have been overused and abused, which has led to changes in how search engines work. But a keyword is at its most basic simply a word. It is a word, or group of words that people use when searching for your business. As long as people use words to search, then keywords will have a place in search engine algorithms.

Think about it this way. Twenty years ago if you wanted to find a place to have dinner you would grab the phone book and look under the restaurants section. “Restaurants” was your main keyword even back then, we just didn’t call it that!

Now, if you had a hankering for great chili rellenos, you would further refine your search and look for “Mexican Restaurants.”

Of course the phone book you grabbed was for your city or town, or neighborhood, right? You wouldn’t be looking in a San Francisco phone book and expect to find a great Mexican restaurant in Phoenix.

That is the importance of the information behind the scenes. By using metadata, tags, and even titling for your posts, pages, and images, you are helping the search engines determine which “phone book” your business belongs in.

Place your most important keyword, like Mexican restaurant, in your titles, images, and descriptions. When you are building your page content, you want it to sound natural, but you also have to create the right road signs so search engines can find you.

Some of your “road signs” will include links. These may be external links that take a reader to another site for additional information. You should also have internal links: links that go from one page of your website to another page on your website. Think of links as another way to help your readers (and the search engines) to find the information that is most important to them.

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Multiple Locations

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This is part 3 of a 6 part series on search tips for local businesses

Multiple Locations, Multiple Pages

local business search tips for multiple locationsIf you have more than one office or storefront then you will want to create a webpage for each physical address. Depending on your business you may choose to have separate websites, but that may not be necessary, or even desirable.

Is each business a separate entity? Does each office service different cities or areas? Then you may want to have multiple websites.

On the other hand, it can be helpful if someone learns of your business from a friend or associate that they can discover you have multiple branches. They can then choose the location that is most convenient to their home and the one closes to their office. This can actually help you get more business than if each location had its own website.

Whether you have separate pages or entire sites is up to you, but either way be sure to have all the location information for your customers. Maps and photos of what the specific office looks like are a big help, too.

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Local Search Optimization

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This is part 1 of a 6 part series

Local Search Optimization

local search marketing

Be sure your business is optimized for local search. It is important to note that this is different from traditional SEO practices. While having a website can be a great idea, it is not necessarily the first place you should start–even when talking about getting found online! (I know, sacrilege, right?)

What local search optimization does for you is it actually helps the search engines and your potential customers to fine you online. It also helps them to find what content is most important on your site, if you have one.

The first thing you must decide as a local business owner who wants to improve their local search rankings is what is most important for YOUR business. And that depends on the type of business you have. The needs of a retail shop will be different from those of a restaurant and those of a doctor, for example.

Most local businesses want more customers to come into their physical location. As one friend puts it, “boots in the door.” With that goal in mind, you want to focus your web presence on getting local search results.

If you don’t have a website yet, this is the ideal time to get it done right. A website is not just about looking good. It is about being found, and that requires the right structure. It takes some planning, but really is a pretty logical process. You can take this on yourself if you have or get the right training. Otherwise, hire someone who specializes in websites for local search results. This is a very important distinction to make when having your site built.

Already have a website? No worries. You can tweak what you already have to get found more easily by Google. If you don’t know how, give us or another local search company a call to improve your results.

The tools of the trade to get results: website structure, optimizing each page, using tags properly, and adding keywords, links, and metadata.

Social Proof is in the Pudding

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Social proof is a common catch phrase these days, but what does it mean?

It is being suggested by many “experts” that social proof is something new, something that business people didn’t have to think about before.friends talking

Perhaps I just think of social proof more globally than some other internet consultants, but I think that idea is crazy. Social proof is not a new local business marketing concept at all, but how it works today is quite different from the past when it was neighbors talking over the fence or over a beer.

Businesses have always relied on social proof in one form or another. It is just that the form changes and now we have a convenient label for it.

Word of mouth advertising has long been the standard for social proof, and is most certainly not a contemporary construct. Businesses large and small have long known that if they can get their happy customers to tell other people about them and recommend them that it is the least expensive and most successful advertising campaign they have.

Social proof has always been about customers indicating their support for your business. That has not changed.

What has changed is HOW they demonstrate their support.

Today your customers are online every day. They get most of their information from the internet, more than the television or radio, more than print publications. And this trend continues to accelerate as we are seeing the millennials and younger folks ever more tied to their electronic devices.

Whether shopping locally or buying something across the globe, more and more people are relying on the internet to gather information before making a purchase.

Social proof has always been part of that research process, it is just easier to get these days. You no longer have to talk to lots of different people to learn their opinions and experiences–it is all there online.

What is social proof in current terms then? It is how your business is supported online. This can be done by customers posting a review on Yelp, Angie’s List, or any number of other review sites. It can be comments left on your blog or your Facebook or G+ page. It can even be that someone links to your business website on their blog or Facebook page, or that someone shares a post that you have written.social media icons

How do you get more social proof for you business?

Excuse me for stating the obvious, but you have to get social. Nope, you don’t have to do it all. Unless you have a lot more time on your hands then most business owners I know, you can’t anyway.

Learn a little bit about the various types of social media and pick one, give it a go and see if you like it. I’m a firm believer that if you enjoy it, you will have better results. If you find you aren’t enjoying it, you can try a different avenue.

If you are a visual person or you have a visual type business, then Pinterest might be a good choice for you. If you naturally talk in sound bites, you might try Twitter. If you are in a B2B field, or are looking for professional connections, check out LinkedIn. Facebook is gaining ground on the major search engines and gives businesses some more flexibility in their posts and pages. These are just a few of the many options that are available to your local business.

There is no one best social media, one that works for every single business in every single market. Find where your customers are online and start there. Then dive into that online “pudding” and get some social proof.

Are Citations Important for Local Business Success Online?

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The short answer to the question, “Are citations important for my local business?” is yes, if you want to have success online.

local business online success

What exactly is a citation?

A citation is when your business name, address, and phone number appears on another site on the internet. There does not have to be any other information about your business to qualify as a citation, but there are many other sites that will give more complete details about your business.

In order for your local business success online to happen consistency is crucial. It is vital that your citations be consistent in the information that they have about your business. Inconsistencies, even minor ones can have an adverse affect on your online success.

There are literally thousands of places where you can have a citation for your business. Opinions differ on whether or not you need to try to go after them all, which is an on-going task as sites come and go. Sometimes it depends on your business, your location, your service area, and the competition that you have online. Like most things, there isn’t a “one size fits all” answer.

If you have a presence online and you are not having success with getting customers through the internet, one place to look is at your citations. If you are not sure how to do that, or if you do not have the time or inclination to spend the time on the computer adding hundreds of citations it is time to call in a professional.

Contact Internet Advertising That Works and we can help get your online citations in line and more customers to your local business.

Not All Website Traffic is Good

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In the world of internet advertising, marketers often look at website traffic as an indication that their work is successful.

black-cars

It may seem like the more traffic that is coming to your website the better, right?

Not necessarily.

Think about it like you would your brick and mortar store. You certainly want more “boots in the door” as one client puts it. But you want more than that as a business owner. You want people who will actually buy your products or pay for your services.

That doesn’t mean that every person who comes in the door has to buy something on the spot or you will kick them to the curb! Depending on your business you may actually have plenty of activity that does not, in that moment at least, seem to generate income.

Potential customers may browse through your shop and not buy now. For some, they look around and learn that your store does not fit their needs or style. Others like it, but don’t see anything right at this moment–but they probably will come back.

You may be a service business and provide free consultations. Perhaps you have a business where you offer free samples. These are types of advertising where you spend your time and/or money/goods in the hopes that you will get some customers. You know that your will not convert all of these trials into clients or customers, but if you are doing it right you will get more than enough to make this a great way of getting new business.

Now apply this logic to your website traffic. You may offer products for sale directly on your website, you may provide information that potential customers “consume” online as a way to get to know you (“a sample”), or your website may allow them to book an appointment, reach you by phone, etc.

These are all great forms of traffic. Some may convert to paying customers. Some will not. Just like the storefront example, there will be potential customers who decide that you are not a good fit for their current needs. That is OK. You don’t want or need every single human being on the face of the planet to be your customer. You want the RIGHT customers.

So when is website traffic NOT good traffic?

Let’s look at the storefront example again. Do you want to have a bunch of people who have absolutely no intention of buying your products or services loitering about, making it hard for your ideal customer to get through the door? Nope, you don’t. Do you want people coming in who are going to steal from you? Of course not.

You may not have a problem with too many people loitering around your site in cyber-space, but we can have problems with people trying to “break in” to our sites. These hackers may try to get in through the front door or they may use sophisticated code to try to come into your site through the backdoor.

Just as you might have security cameras to monitor and safeguard your physical doors, you will want to safeguard your cyber-doors as well.

Hackers will try to break into sites for many reasons. Sometimes it will be to try to get sensitive data. But just because you don’t collect information or accept payment on your website don’t think that you are uninteresting to cyber-thieves.

Be sure that your webmaster is keeping your website protected. The last thing you want to have happen is to look at your website and discover that it has been hacked. Best case scenario it is merely inconvenient–an inconvenience that takes time and money to fix. Something you just don’t need when you are trying to run a business.

How YOU Doing? Do You Even Know?

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One of the most important things for any business to know is where their customers are coming from. This is especially important for smaller, local businesses with limited marketing budgets. 2013-04-23 18.06.21

Truthfully, it should not be that hard to get this information, but sometimes you would think we are asking our clients to perform surgery without anesthetic on their customers. Now, isn’t that a comforting image?

Of course you don’t want to barrage your customers by asking them for lots and lots of personal information or hound them. We all want to be respected when we are doing our shopping. And certainly not everyone is going to be forthcoming with personal details–and why should they?

The simplest way to find out how people found you is to ask. Ask when you are ringing them up as part of the conversation. Even if they aren’t buying anything right now they may come back later. See if you can begin to build a relationship with them so they know you and your business. Make your place a fun place (or serious place if that’s your style…just make it THE place they want to come to for your product or service.) ringing up customers at your local business

I have clients who want me to advise them on the merits of X or Y or Z advertising media, but they have no data to provide me. I cannot honestly tell someone if that vehicle is worth the money if they cannot tell me if they have had any results from it. Guessing just doesn’t help anyone.

You have to know your own business and your customers. I love it when a client tells me they know some general information about their customers. At least that is a start!

As the business owner you must consider where your business is located when deciding how to spend your marketing budget. Pretty much across the board it is safe to say that you want to be found on the internet…but does that mean spending a lot of money on a website? Does it mean you have to make big online ad purchases? Maybe…or maybe not.

Is the phonebook dead? Are newspaper ads valuable? These are questions we get all the time. The answer is: maybe…maybe  not.

Even if you never liked taking tests, sometimes we have to test the waters to figure out what works. With some basic information on how your current customers are finding you we can help advise on what makes sense…but there will still be some trial and error.

Don’t ignore what has worked in the past!

Have you used mailings in the past with success?  Is your business downtown where an old fashioned sandwich board sign or colorful balloons have drawn in passers-by? Have you built connections through your Chamber of Commerce? These are all traditional methods that are great as long as they work for you.

Bottom line–you want your phone to ring or people to walk in the door, right? Then do what works for YOU and YOUR business even if it isn’t the what all the “experts” are telling you works today.