Quick Response Codes!
Usually these are called QR Codes, and they’re just a type of bar code. Unlike most bar codes you see, these can store a fair amount of information, topping out at about 3000 characters. And, any smartphone with a camera can decode that data.

There are a few types of things that are commonly stored in these codes.

• Website links
• Contact info (vCards)
• Event info (to import into a calendar)
• Text message links
• Plain text

They’re easy to create and don’t take up much space. You can make your own at http://www.qrstuff.com/ It will take you seconds and create an image you can use in printed materials or online. If you want a larger one, you might try http://goqr.me/

They’re easy to scan; you just use the phone’s camera. If you have an app that scans product bar codes to check prices online, it should handle QR Codes too. Also, many Android phones come with Google Goggles installed, which reads QR Codes in addition to doing visual searches. There are plenty of dedicated apps too. Just search your app store for “qr code.”

For example, this QR Code stores a link to my Twitter profile. If you have a smartphone, just fire up a barcode scanning app and point it at this image. You’ll be shown the link and be able to go right to the website with zero typing.

You can put those on any type of printed marketing materials to make it easy for people to connect with your online presence. You could also use them in store to take people to detailed product pages, or at the point of sale.

This code has my vCard in it. Give it a scan and you can add me to your contacts instantly. Now that saves some typing! Why not include a QR vCard on your business card?

As I understand it, not everyone in America knows what these are. In Japan, everyone knows. In Europe most people know. Here, it wouldn’t hurt to include some instructions. Something like, “Scan this with your favorite smartphone bar code app to visit our website.”

There are countless possible uses for these codes. Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

• Put a link to your Facebook page at your point of sale and offer a small discount to anyone who “Likes” you on the spot.
• Use a QR Code to reveal a promo code that people can redeem
• Put one on your website so people can open it on their phone without doing any typing.
• Print up some QR Code stickers and create a virtual scavenger hunt with each code containing a clue for finding the next one.

At the very least, I suggest putting a vCard QR Code on your business cards and one linking to your website on any fliers or posters.

You can also get a bit fancy if you like. If you understand how they work you can alter a code to include your logo, like so:

If you’d like help integrating QR Codes or other forms of mobile marketing into your efforts, drop me a line. I’d be happy to help out or point you in the right direction if I’m not the right person for the job.

The plan includes removing keywords from “referer” data. Read on to learn what referer data is, why I’m misspelling that word, and what Google is changing.

When you visit a webpage, your computer sends various bits of information along to that webpage that you never see. These are called headers. One of the headers is the referer. The referer header tells the site you are visiting where you came from. When you click a link your browser tells the page you land on the address of the page you came from.

The reason it gets spelled “referer” instead of “referrer” is that this misspelling was included in the original specifications for the web, back in 1996. I think it’s a fun bit of internet trivia, but I’ll go back to spelling the word correctly now.

Now, when you do a search on Google or other search engines, the words you search for are included in the address. For example, a Google search for [how to play chess] would take you to an address like:

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+play+chess

That’s a nice way to do it because then people can link to specific searches. Also, when you click a link after searching, the site you visit is told the address you came from in the referrer header. That lets site owners track what search terms brought people to their website.

That seems harmless enough, but consider another example. Say someone in Syria or Iran were to search for [how to topple an autocratic regime]. Suddenly this whole situation gets serious. That kind of search could get them arrested, or worse.

And, it’s not just the site you visit that can see your searches. Your internet provider can too. Here in the US, our providers snoop into our traffic to mine data that’s sold to advertisers and such. In countries with dictatorial leaders… well, you can imagine.

So, Google is rolling out encryption on searches. Soon, anyone who is logged into a Google account and does a search from the main Google page will have their searches automatically encrypted. This is really great for privacy. They will also be removing all referrer data when you click a search result. Again, good for privacy, but webmasters won’t be able to see what search terms brought traffic to their site.

This has the SEO community up in arms. (Well, this and another little tidbit to be discussed below.) We pay a lot of attention to the keywords that are bringing in traffic. That’s one of the best metrics we have to judge the success of our efforts.

Personally, I’m okay with trading keyword data for better privacy. I believe that the more encryption is used on the web the better. Here’s the kicker, though: Google will pass your search terms on when you click one of their ads.

That’s right, they will protect your privacy unless someone pays them not to. In fact, they’ll be going out of their way to share your search data with advertisers. Normally, when you’re on an encrypted page and click a link to a non-encrypted page your browser will not pass any referrer data. Google will actually be rigging things such that you will send referrer data to advertisers.

All the keyword data isn’t going to just go away. Probably less than 10% of searches will get encrypted this way. If you have a website, be sure you’re making use of this data. You can find the report in Google Analytics under Content » Keywords. In the long term, we might have to look for other metrics. Time will tell.

This post first appeared in my small business email newsletter’s Halloween edition. Sign up with the form at the upper left to get a useful article in your inbox each month.

Often times when someone searches for a local business, or category of businesses, Google will show a “7 Box” of local results along with a map. The normal results generally come after this. For example, here’s what I found after searching for [chapel hill coffee].

If you click on the name of the business you will go to their website. To the right of the name is a tally of reviews and “Place page.” That’s a link to their profile in Google Places.

The Place page is a collection of all sorts of data that Google has collected from around the web like reviews, hours of operation, and pictures. The more information Google can find on the web about a business, the more authoritative that business is, thus bringing it higher in those local search results. In local search, mentioning a business, it’s address and telephone number is like a vote of confidence in that business, just like links are for websites in normal search results.

You’re not at the mercy of what Google can find about you, though. Business owners can claim their listing and manually add content. The more content you add, the more Google likes you. So, get out there and claim your listing, and add as much to it as possible. Do a Google search for your business name and city or find yourself on Google Maps to get to your place page. Then, just click the link at the top right that says “Business owner?”

To prove yourself, Google will call the phone number associated with your listing and have you enter a code. It only takes a few minutes. Plus, once you’ve claimed your listing you’ll be able to see statistics about how often your listing shows up for searchers and how they interact with it.

One caveat: These listings are non-transferable. So, don’t have an employee claim your listing while signed in with their personal Google or Gmail account. Generally, the easiest thing to do is create a new Google account to use for the business, and claim the listing with that account.

I’ve put together these 7 rules from a few different sources: Hemingway, Orwell and Bird. If you ask me, it’s worth brushing up on these sorts of things periodically. I should probably do it more often.

Use short sentences.
Hemingway was a master of this rule. He learned it from a newspaper’s style book. Short sentences make your writing easy to digest. That’s very important in our fast paced world.

Eight words make for an easy sentence. Sixteen words is okay. Thirty two is too much. Your reader may lose track and lose interest.

Use short paragraphs.
Nothing deters a reader like a wall of text. Break up your ideas into easy to digest chunks, and don’t make every paragraph the same length.

Break up your text.
There are a number of ways to make your text less intimidating beyond short sentences and paragraphs. For example,

• Bulleted lists
• Headlines and sub-headlines
• Images
• Bold or italic type

Be positive.
That doesn’t mean to always be happy. It means describe what something is rather than what it is not. Call something affordable rather than inexpensive. That produce is organic rather than pesticide free.

You can compare your offerings to your competitors and still be positive. Just talk about what your offering is rather than what theirs is not. For example, “Acme widgets are 32% stronger than Brand X widgets.”

Use the active voice.
This one will keep your sentences shorter and more potent. You wouldn’t say, “the championship was won by us” would you? No. You’d say, “we won the championship.”

Draw the reader along.
Make it easy for your reader to keep reading to the end.

Build curiosity. Don’t give everything away in a headline. Use curiosity to draw your reader along. What else?

Questions help. You can bridge two paragraphs by ending one with a question. Naturally the reader will go to the next for the answer.

Additionally, you can use carrier words. At the start of a sentence, these tell the reader that there’s something more to get. Examples include, furthermore, plus, also, finally, next and and. (It’s okay to start a sentence with and. You aren’t writing a term paper.)

Stay lucid.
What this all boils down to is clarity. Your writing should make sense and have a logical flow.

A good test is to ask a layperson to read your writing. Ask them if it’s clear. If not, revise.

Finally, I don’t know who said this, but here’s a quotation to keep in mind:

“Something written to please the writer rarely pleases the reader.”

When Google first opened their search engine in the late 1990′s it revolutionized the way people found information online. Google came along with a way to show the best results at the top of search results. PageRank (a trademark of Google) is what made this possible. Understanding how it works is vital if you want to make your site show up higher in search engines.

PageRank is a numerical score. The higher the PageRank, the more important and authoritative the web page. It’s assigned to every page that Google indexes. Basically, PageRank is the likelihood that someone clicking links at random will visit a particular page.

Google uses PageRank to figure out what results to show first. It figures out what pages are most relevant to the phrase that was searched for. Then, it filters and sorts those results based on PageRank.

PageRank is calculated by looking at all the links pointing to a given web page. Each link is like a vote of confidence from a third party.

The amount of PageRank gained from a link depends primarily on two things:

• The PageRank of the page the link is on (The authority of the third party)
• The number of links on that page (How discriminating the third party is with their votes.)

Think of PageRank as a liquid– link juice. The higher the PageRank of a page, the more juice it has to spread around. Links are like pipes that share that link juice to other pages. The number of links determines how much juice gets shared with each linked page.

For example, if The White House linked to you from their home page, Google would see you as being very, very important. The White House doesn’t have any links to other websites on their home page, and that page has one of the highest PageRanks around.

If you got a link from some deep page on a no-name site with hundreds of other external links on it, it would do next to nothing for you.

In recent years, Google has gotten more sophisticated in how PageRank gets calculated. Links at the bottom of a page pass less juice than links in the middle of the body text. Also, links found on every page of a site (Run-of-the-Site Links) don’t count for much.

That’s what’s important to understand. Every link is not created equal.

What’s not important is getting caught up on your actual PageRank score. Google won’t tell you the exact score, but they’ll give you a rounded off estimate that’s a few months old if you install their toolbar. That doesn’t do you a lot of good, and PageRank doesn’t take relevance into account anyhow.

What you should keep an eye on is where you show up in actual search results. Go to Google and search for what you offer. Where you show up is what matters, and getting good links can help you move up.

Google sometimes personalizes results based on your past search behavior. If you’re seeing a customized page of results, there will be a link at the bottom of the page labeled “View Customizations.” Click that, and then click the “without these improvements” link to see the raw results.

If you see this link, Google is personalizing the results.

If you want a more exact explanation of PageRank, you can always read the patents that have been filed.

Note that there are also links that don’t pass any juice. If, in the source code of a webpage, a link has the attribute rel=”nofollow” then Google will not transfer any PageRank juice through that link. It’s still good to have those links pointing at your site because people can click them to get to your site and search engines may still use them as clues to the subject of your site.

I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible, but it’s a complicated subject. If you have a question or know something I left out, leave a comment below!

You can go on and on about how great you are and all the benefits people get when they do business with you, but it’s still just you talking. You’re biased, and people know it… “Of course they say it’s the best thing since sliced bread, they came up with it!”

When a third party talks about how great you are, it’s completely different. They don’t profit when you make a sale. Yet, they took the time to write a few words expressing their satisfaction. A visitor to your site can read some testimonials and feel reassured that real people have gotten real benefit from doing business with you.

Of course, since the testimonial is on your website you could have written it yourself or edited it heavily. In fact, a lot of people do write the testimonials themselves and ask clients to sign off on it as if they had written it. Don’t do that. Your testimonials will all sound the same and people will not be swayed by the words.

Your testimonials must be authentic, and there’s a few basic things you can do to make sure they come across as the words of real, three-dimensional human beings:

• Get people to write their own testimonials. The main reason I hear why people write testimonials for their customers or clients is that they asked for testimonials and never got them. It’s not because people don’t want to write them or don’t have time. It’s because they don’t know what to say.

  When you ask someone for a testimonial, give them some guidance. Ask them what benefits they received from buying your products or services. Ask them what they would tell a close friend who was considering buying your products or services. Whatever you do, don’t just say, “Can you send me a testimonial?”

  Everyone has their own voice and that’s the single most important thing to capture in order to make your testimonials authentic. The varying tone and voice in your testimonials will make everything believable to the reader.

• Give attributions for each testimonial. Real people have names, occupations, and live in specific places. Provide that info along with the testimonial!

  Nothing says unauthentic like testimonials without names. Granted, some industries shouldn’t give out names for confidentiality reasons, but whenever possible provide a name.

  If you serve a wide geographic region you can show that off by listing the location with each testimonial. This will reassure readers that you’re a match for them even if they live further away from your home base. Additionally, it adds another layer of authenticity.

  Listing the occupation of your testimonial’s author is another way to show visitors they’re in the right place, that what you offer can help them. This is especially useful in the business to business market. It lets you demonstrate that you either serve a wide range of industries or have a specific niche that you focus on.

• Got pictures? Use them! Reading words and names is one thing. Seeing someone’s face is another. If feasible, provide a picture along with each testimonial. Outside of video, nothing will make your testimonials more three dimensional than a picture.

Remember to capture and showcase the unique voice and identity that goes with each testimonial. Your visitors will recognize the authenticity and be reassured by the third party validation.

Of course, testimonials aren’t as powerful as reviews in third party websites or publications, or word of mouth. They are a powerful sales tool, though. I suggest having a section of your website devoted to showing them off, and using them any place where a visitors will be making a decision on whether to do business with you or not.

You'll find In-Page Analysis under the Content section.

When you click the In-Page Analysis link you’ll be taken to a page that shows your website within Google Analytics. You’ll have a column on the left with lots of handy stats for the page you’re looking at. Even better, you’ll see a little bubble by every link on your site showing what percentage of clicks were on that link.

When you first start this feature up you’ll see your site’s homepage. Look at the link stats. Since every website is different and has different objectives it’s hard to give universal advice about what your numbers should ideally look like. Think about what path you want visitors to take through your site and see if the numbers match your ideal. If not, make a note of the issue.

After you look at the homepage, click one of your links and have a look at the next page. Consider where you’d like visitors to go after that page and see if your click statistics match up. While you explore, pay attention to the Entrance and Exit percentages in the left column as well. A high exit percentage on your Contact page is normal. On your homepage, it’s a problem.

You can explore your whole site this way, and I suggest you do. It never fails to amaze me how quickly I can find actionable information this way.

I expect Google will be improving the In-Page Analysis feature a lot as time goes on. Perhaps eventually they’ll even give us click heat maps showing exactly where clicks happen, down to the pixel. Of course, by then you’ll be a pro with this feature because you started using it religiously after reading this, right?

Note: If you have the kind of website that you log into as an administrator, you may need to log out before this feature will work correctly.

In crafting all your marketing materials tune your message to your ideal audience. Whether it’s an ad on Google or a sign out front, you want the ideal prospects to feel like it was written just for them. So, why not write it just for them?

First, you’ll have to figure out who “they” are. For example, let’s say your making a sign to draw college students into your store. Imagine your favorite student customers, or what perfect student customers might be like. Then, narrow it down and imagine a single ideal student customer. Give this ideal a name, an age, and some hobbies. What are they like? What interests them? What gets under their skin? Who do they vote for? Do they have any pets?

Create your own Avatar, as local marketing guru Howie Jacobson calls it. (He took a group of us through this exercise for Google Adwords a few weeks back.) So, you have this three-dimensional idea of your ideal prospect. Now, imagine they’re about to read your sign. What’s going through their head? Maybe they have just walked in your store and are making up their mind. What are they concerned with as they see your sign?

Grab a sheet of paper and write for three minutes. Write their internal “diary” as they are about to look at your new sign. Taking a few minutes to put the words on paper can help you really flesh things out. Think about what brought them in, what they want, and what they don’t want. Then write a short stream of consciousness diary for them.

Now you have your target. Write your sign or other marketing message to appeal directly to your diary author. Use your copy to help them get what they want faster and wash away their worries. If they’re thinking about options when they come in, then give them a handy guide to their choices on your sign. If they’re worried about their purchase holding up, then show off your guarantee. If they have a specific price point in mind, then pump your low sale price. You get the picture.

A little imagination can go a long way, so don’t forget to explore things from the perspective of your ideal prospect. You can make a few avatars to cover the different kinds of ideal prospects you have. You can use this technique for any of your marketing message, from in-store signage to e-mail newsletters.

This post first appeared in my Small Business Email Newsletter

Common Sense SEO For Beginners

Put these 3 quick lessons to work and you’ll be moving in the right direction.

• Lesson 1: Keyword Research is Mandatory, Always
• Lesson 2: Put Your Keywords Where It Counts
• Lesson 3: The Deal With Links

Lesson 1: Keyword Research is Mandatory, Always

Always do your keyword research. This can not be emphasized enough. People are searching for what you offer. They’re using some keywords more than others. You need to know the high traffic keywords for your market.

To get started, I suggest two tools that are free and pretty easy to use.

• Google Insights for Search — This lets you see nice comparative graphs of search traffic for your keywords. It’s perfect for identifying seasonal trends and comparing different keywords. If you scroll down on the page you’ll also see info on various trends, including geographical data.
  Keep an eye on the geographic region you’re targeting to be sure the data is relevant. For example the keyword [kosher deli] gets lots and lots of traffic in the US, but 95% of it is from New York.
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool — Here’s where you’ll really flesh out your keyword list. This tool will spit out a lot of data, and come up with related keywords you might not have thought of.
  Don’t get overwhelmed. The only column you need to worry about is titled Local Monthly Searches. That will give you an approximate number of searches per month in your country and language. If you’re targeting international markets, look at the Global column.
  The Competition column tells you how many people are advertising on that keyword using Google Adwords. This can be a good indicator of how profitable a keyword is.

Spend some time brainstorming all the phrases that someone might type into Google to find your site. Then use the above tools to figure out where the big numbers are.

Lesson 2: Put Your Keywords Where It Matters

Now that you know what keywords pull the most traffic it’s time to put them to use. Use these keywords on your website. Put them in paragraph text, headlines, and page titles. Stick them in your footer. Just don’t repeat them without reason. Spammers are known for putting huge lists of keywords at the bottom of their pages in little tiny text. Search engines know this and will take you right out of the listings if they catch you “keyword stuffing.”

Keep your text geared to the user. Your content is for the user first, and search engines second. Don’t get hung up with your “keyword density” — the amount your keyword is repeated. Just try to use those high volume keywords more often. You’ll want to use them with links to your site too.

Lesson 3: The Deal With Links

Links are vital. I’m talking about links from other websites to your site, and specific pages of your site. Every time a search engine finds a link to your website they count it like a vote of confidence in your site. More links makes your site more authoritative, bringing you more traffic.

Remember your keywords? Use them in the link text, or near it. This tells search engines you’re more relevant for those keywords.

Now there are links that don’t pass SEO juice like this. They are marked to tell search engines not to count them. They have been marked as “NoFollow” links. For example, every link you post on twitter is a “NoFollow” link. The same goes for links in most blog comments.

Obviously these “NoFollow” links can still drive traffic to your site even if they don’t count for SEO. They don’t count as a vote of confidence, but they are natural. If you don’t have any links that have been “NoFollowed” then you’re probably a spammer.

So, if you’re just starting out don’t worry too much about it and just get links. Look for directories related to your site, forums and blogs on your topic. Don’t go posting a ton of links and nothing else, but contribute a meaningful comment or insight and link where it seems reasonable.

For best results, spend some time every week building links. Fresh links are like fresh buzz for your site, and Google will reward you for staying fresh.

Doing a little SEO yourself can be very rewarding. Just remember to do your keyword research and target the words that really matter. Keep all your efforts focused on helping the user and you’ll avoid spam penalties. It could take a few months, but you should be able to move up a few spots in the rankings and boost your traffic just by using the right keywords and building some links.

There are hundreds of places to share your video online. Click above to search for them.

Video is huge. It’s all over the web these days. There’s nothing new about that, but what I see is a lot of small businesses that still aren’t using it. It wasn’t that long ago when having video play right on your website was a difficult and expensive task. Today, there’s simply no excuse: video sites handle the technical side for you and affordable HD cameras can make you look like a pro.

In the average US home, a television is turned on for over 6 hours a day. No matter how familiar someone is with the web you can be sure they’re used to video. No matter how complicated your website is, video is simple. It takes a click to play it, and then your visitor can just sit back and consume your message.

There are a variety of ways you can put video to use effectively.

• Welcome Videos — These are really good at getting the visitor’s attention and making sure they feel like they’re in the right place. Ideally the video will show a person talking, but it could also just be a slide-show with voice over.
• Product Videos — If you’re doing eCommerce then product videos can really boost your conversions. Looking at pictures and reading about a product can only make it so real for us. When we see it in motion, with a real person using it and talking about it, a product becomes much more real.
• Virtual Tour Videos — Show off your facilities and offerings with a video tour of your business. Be sure to highlight things that make your shop unique and get someone passionate to narrate the tour.
• Sales Videos — Use video on a sales page to drive home the benefits and wash away the objections of your prospect.

You can pick up a pocket sized HD video camera for less than $150 plus the cost of a memory card. I got a Kodak Zi8 for my birthday this past week, and I think that’s the best option out there, right now, for web video.

If you’re camera shopping, make sure it has a microphone jack so you can upgrade your audio equipment as your budget allows.

You can edit your video in iMovie or Movie Maker then just upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, and tons of other sites. Then, just look for the “embed” link and send that code to your webmaster or paste it into your site. Don’t forget to post links to your video on your social media sites as well.

So, when you’re out doing your weekend shopping why not pick up a cheap camera and start playing around with video. Your website will become instantly more engaging for users and you’ll benefit from the increases in visit depth, time on site, and conversions.

 
This post first appeared in my small business e-mail newsletter.