When I saw this interview with Barack Obama I was very pleased to see our government finally recognizing the economic engine of our country, small businesses. As he says small businesses have created 65% of all new jobs in the past decade and a half. With numbers like these why hasn’t government been sending more money to small businesses? I was actually surprised that none of the presidential candidates would not interview us on the small business site My Success Gateway, considering we are focused on small businesses and small businesses have the impact on the economy that they do.

While Obama is allowing for $13 billion in new lending for small businesses (33,000 of them) and a health reform plan to offer better health insurance programs offering a tax credit all of these moves are very welcome! He is also urging congress to to increase the maximum size of SBA loans.

I met Jim Ayer, a wooden jigsaw puzzle maker of J.C Ayer & Co. a few months ago through my son who wanted to stop by his Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle work shop here in Marblehead, Massachusetts. (He has a big wooden jigsaw puzzle piece outside his business as his sign and that attracted us to his business). Since the internet is perfect for niche businesses, this is the perfect niche business and I happen to be an internet marketing consultant.

Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles are not like the typical cardboard puzzles. (Jim gave my son and I a “loaner puzzle,” actually Jim said that back during the depression that puzzle makers used to “rent puzzles” so families could entertain themselves). Here’s what I found out. First off this wooden jigsaw puzzle was very well made. Each piece fit exactly together. In some ways I was wondering how the heck could anyone cut a puzzle so well that there appeared to be no room for the knife? The other thing I noticed was this puzzle was about the size of a 9″ x 12″ envelope but it filled up an entire table when the pieces were not together. The point here is that the the pieces fit so well together they create the illusion that the size of the finished work is 2-3 times the actual. I guess I’ve had this happen more than once in my life where I thought I was going to be doing more work based on first glance at the project, has the same happened with you?

What else was really special about this puzzle is there are special pieces cut out. Jim especially likes the piece he calls “Jane Bond” the girl figure with the gun, see the photo. While many of the special cut out pieces were obvious some of them were not until the puzzle was actually together. For example, there was a three part figure that appeared to be a Radio City Rockette dancing girl. Again there were illusions in the puzzles as there are in life.

What was even more interesting was the fact that this puzzle offered “perspective,” on everything I’m doing and we are doing. As I was building it if I walked away from it for a while and got a glass of water and walked back I was able to put together several more pieces almost magically. As with work if we get too close to it for instance and don’t take a break from it like a vacation our thinking can be distorted or a better word is clouded. I could see the wooden jigsaw puzzle much more clearly if I stepped away.

What is also interesting about this wooden jigsaw puzzle maker is that he can put messages in the wooden jigsaw puzzles like “will you marry me,” or “thanks for the 25 years of great work” if someone is giving the puzzle as a corporate gift. These puzzles can the perfect gift for the person who is hard to buy for.

As in building a puzzle it parallels in life. There is no direct route, sure you can assemble some of the big pieces i.e. education, career, family etc. Each piece requires effort and focus and with some patience and care somehow they all fit together. I also had a little help from my friends Sean Bohan and Chris Peake.

Recently I’ve been going through a personal and a professional “re-org.” I’ve been meaning to write about the CRM subject for some time now. I recently attended an all star business event at Harvard called Gravity Summit. The event promoters pulled in top talent from many different companies, sort of like a who’s who of the major players in the online space both large and small companies.

This one guy, happened to be an immigrant and successful entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk was doing his usual in your face wake up call to all of the willing participants, live and online (CNN was broadcasting on CNN.com). For some reason I like his style, “in your face authentic.” The real deal. He tells it like it is. If you don’t want the “truth” read a boring business book. Vaynerchuk was going on about scaling customer service, or CRM. He said someone said to him, “awe that’s just customer service, what about all the other stuff?” Garys’ reply: “That is the stuff!” Here it is:

Go to the 8:00 minute section of this video to see what I am talking about. What is interesting about this customer service comment he uses an example earlier how the cable TV companies are bundling their packages and Gary is paying for Japan TV which is something he does not want. More on that in a minute.

So where I want to go is back to customer service. Getting to 1 call resolution is great, lowering call times is great, getting customer service satisfaction surveys about the call center agent is great, we’ve all optimized these things to the nth degree. I can tell you that 98% of my customer service calls have been excellent. Where companies totally miss the boat is on the corporate policies. I would dare a Fortune 500 company to give a survey on their corporate policy. i.e. “Mr. Customer how do you like our bundled TV services at GiantCableTV, did you enjoy the basket weaving program in Swahili last week?”

I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago I was in the mood to test the cell phone market. I’m a “double diamond” client with Sprint, or they might call them a preferred client, I’ve been with them for 10+ years, I pay my bills on time and I have an “all you can eat package”….but I hate my Palm Treo. It is ready for the recycling bin. It drops calls, the browser no longer displays graphics and I don’t feel like waiting on hold for 20 minutes to tell Sprint of my problem. However I knew that I could get a sales person on the phone pretty quickly if I said “I need a new cell phone ASAP.”

I like Sprint. Their coverage where I live is excellent for the most part. (However they went into ROAM mode at Harvard at the Gravity Summit). I do know that Sprint will be one of the first carriers to come out with a 4G wireless network, and Boston is slated to be one of the first cities to get it. This will be nice to get my desktop computer, LAN and Wireless all on one network, one bill, bundled package that I would pay for.

When I called the Sprint sales person I asked them if I could get a top of the line Blackberry. He said yes. I asked him for a “deal.” he gave me a GREAT deal, I did have to work him. I’m pretty sure it was a Tour, for a grand total of $49.00. I said, great. I’ll drive over to the Sprint store and pick it up. He said “hold on” you can only get this if we ship this to you. You cannot get this phone in the store for $49.00. I said, “I want to touch and feel it.” I even went to the Sprint store to see if I could hondle the guy down. No dice. But I could have it in the store for about $200. I didn’t get it.

I like Apple, and I would love to own an iPhone. (Love is a strong word). I called the Google 411 directory and asked for Apple. Hi, my name is Jim, I need a new cell phone ASAP.” “Great Jim we have iPhones.” The price of the phone was around $200. Not bad for the king of the wireless road. Then I ask about the cost of their wireless plans. I could get just over 2 hours for ~$120 per month, from AT&T. Hmmmmm….this is where the real deal is and isn’t, the old continuity program. Plus there was extra for a certain amount of usage on the data plan. (Who really counts that stuff other than the carriers, and I asked if I could be sent an e-mail when I was about to reach my monthly threshold? No Dice.) Plus I have a friend in Marblehead who can’t use his iPhone because AT&T’s reception sucks out on the Neck. Hmmmmm I think I would rather talk on a Sprint phone than look cool with an iPhone that does not work and that is more expensive.

OK Jim, get to the freaking point. The point is, all of their company policies suck. And what is worse is they don’t know it, or they do know and don’t give a hoot. Because they don’t ask. They hide. So, while I really don’t need a new cell phone ASAP, I really want one ASAP but I’m going to wait until I find what works for my situation. I’m just a tiny example of millions of wireless clients….and the big guys have “no clue” as to what we really want because they are “faking it” when it comes to the only thing that matter to guys like me and Gary Vaynerchuk and the millions of masses. Seeking someone who cares.

To take it one step further. Intuit. I ordered Quickbooks 2009 from Amazon. I thought I was buying a brand new copy of Quickbooks 2009. I registered the software and low and behold it was registered to someone else. I have just bought a used copy of the software. Damn, I had some serious bookkeeping to do before a certain deadline. I called Intuit and asked them to give me a new registration #. No dice. “Not our policy.” (Creating a sequential registration number is like the government creating new money, it is just a few one’s and zero’s, and it is totally free).

So I finally called Amazon. They promptly realized the error and sent out a new copy and I sent them the old copy back. Intuit said they were going to call their legal department. I don’t care how the error occurred. But I’m now blabbing about stuff that should have been to bed a long time ago, just give me the damn registration number and let me be on my way. Again company policy getting in the way of CRM or customer service. As Vaynerchuk states in the Gravity Summit, big companies are going to fail in this new economy.

Not to mention any names but there was someone speaking at Gravity Summit who was from Intuit. I reluctantly told them the story. He said “we are listening” to our clients. I said if you are listening then have the president of your company call me, he has a little problem with his distributor selling used software as new with your brand name on it, I’d like to give him an earful. As of 9-21-09 right now the silence is deafening, no phone call.

So the point of all of this is go out and do a company policy survey and see how your customers like your company policies. Wouldn’t it be great if the government did the same thing? I know, I’m really reaching on that one!

I’m currently working with several different companies in a few different industries, Healthcare, Software, Education and Small Appliances. Each industry has their own language and their own differentiation. At the same time there are many commonalities. All of these businesses are looking for qualified leads or qualified prospects to do at least one of the following:

subscribe to a newsletter
fill out a web form
call an 800#
walk into a store
purchase a product online
download a white paper
etc

There are many ways to get people to come to the company web sites. The best way in my humble opinion is through the press. media has the most creditability and bang for your buck. What media also does is give you links. As many of us know Google wants two things: 1) quality content 2) quality incoming links pointing to your site. An article on the New York Times Business Home Page gives you links and creditability and traffic.

Hiring a press agency or PR Firm can be expensive, and the good ones deserve the money they get. I like to teach business owners how they can capitalize on using the media to their advantage. One such client is Intervention Services Inc. Mike Loverde landed a huge interview on CNN just after the Michael Jackson story. I have written a product that teaches people how to get on the Six O’Clock News.

The point here is that Mike took action on this “PR Test,” and it worked. He now not only has more traffic coming to his site and more inquiries but he now has a video he can share and reuse for new clients. The only cost of the “test” were his fees to me and his time which were small. The name of the game is to “test” for as small of an investment as possible and roll out when the test works and do more of it.

In another client situation my customer has an electronic sound machine. It is like a clock radio but also with sounds of sea gulls, a running river, chimes etc. He has found success in selling these products in big box stores, however his margins are much better in a direct sale environment. One area he has had success is in the hospital market. He has found that he is able to get multiple orders in hospitals. What I have recommended to him in starting to exploit this market is to test some advertising in newsletters that go to the buyers in hospitals. Again we have to find a newsletter(s) that won’t cost an arm and a leg (hopefully less than $500) with reasonable reach and see if it works. In the mean time we will be making a new landing page for this specific audience. it might sound like a lot of work but in actuality it only takes about a week to put these together.

In another healthcare related situation I received an e-mail today from a Drug Treatment Center asking my opinion of his videos. (I’m a HUGE believer in Video SEO as a matter of fact I am building a business around it to distribute online videos). But my question back to this prospective client was: “How many phone calls did you get from them?” And his response was: Good Question. I’m not sure what it took to produce the videos but they looked like they were well produced and professional, however, they were missing a lot of things. They were not tagged correctly, I only saw them on one video network, there was no call to action etc. So the point here is I commend this person for venturing out into video and testing it. He might have been better served hiring someone like me before producing and distributing them.

A bigger point to all of this is that testing is an investment. If this is true, then we want to maximize our investment as much as possible and stack the deck in our favor and give ourselves an unfair competitive advantage when we test. Too many failed tests cost a lot of money and it doesn’t have to be that way. One of the advantages my clients have is using my experience and many failed tests in learning what NOT to do. Here is one of my favorite quotes:

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” Red Adair

Save yourself a lot of time and money, hire someone with experience and results in their given field, it should serve you well.

The Big Squeeze

French's Mustard Bottle Shrink 6 oz.

It seems like the consumer products that aren’t loaded with sugar or corn syrup are getting smaller and while the products loaded with corn syrup are being supersized here in the USA. I’m having a little trouble making the financial sense of it all. In the last week or so (Aug. 01, 2009) I went to my local grocery store to pick up some regular items and one of the things I needed was Frenchs Mustard. I like it because it is a condiment alternative to ketchup and it tastes good.

Low and behold I purchase the “new and improved” Frenchs mustard and I come home to realize (compare the old and the new) that the Frenchs plastic bottle shrank by 6 ounces from 20 oz. to 14 oz. We are talking more than 25% shrinkage. The price did drop however from $2.19 to $1.89. But I have seen the same thing with Columbo Yogurt and even did a post about Columbo Yogurt here on my blog shrinking from 8 oz. to 6 oz. another 25% shrinkage.

Columbo Yogurt Product Shrinkage

My bet is that the price of this product will creep back up to $2.19 and the size will be a puny 14 oz. bottle of Frenchs Mustard, meanwhile the “size” has been reduced significantly, but I do bet one thing will go up….Frenchs profits. Do you think this is a deceptive practice or is this just plain old capitalism at work here?

Here is a simple way to look at SEO. Relevancy.

Basically Google cares about 2 things in the SEO game:
1. Writing great content
2. And quality inbound links to your site

Having been on the Internet since the mid 1990’s I’ve seen a lot of stuff come and go. As soon as something gets hot i.e. Facebook or Twitter a lot of people seem to try and capitalize on the traffic and the opportunity which only makes sense in a free market economy.

SEO is hot and has been hot for a few years now. It should continue to stay hot.

Lately I’ve been helping clients with their overall web strategy which can include product positioning, SEO, PPC, video SEO, offline lead generation and several other tactics. At the end of the day none of these tactics are hidden secrets but you do want to know what you are doing before you are about to dump a lot of money into them. Test then track.

Having spent some time in the DRTV media buying space I learned something that they were using that crosses over to the Internet space. It is called MER or media efficiency ratio. What MER is, is media spend to revenue ratio. For example, if I spend $100 on Google PPC Adwords and I generate $1,000 in product sales from my PPC efforts we would call that a 10:1 MER or just simply a 10:1 ratio. This is simple economics. Make more than you spend. (10:1 would be amazingly great in the DRTV world).

So why is there a problem with SEO? The barrier to entry is basically nonexistent. The problem is that anyone can get into the SEO business or industry and call themselves an expert. (So this means anything goes if you are not careful). What this means is that your web developer might tell you that they will get you ranked on Google. OK, we are excited right? Not so fast. If I’m in the drug treatment business and am selling residential drug treatment to drug addicts you would think that the keyword phrase “drug rehab” would be great to rank for? Not necessarily.

Why the traffic from “drug rehab” might be desirable, it is not the “right traffic.” If I’m a drug treatment center in Chicago then “drug rehab + Chicago” will be a much better fit. Location based has a much higher chance for conversion, in this particular example let’s say a web lead or a phone call. I can go into all the different permutations on why this is so but what really needs to be looked at is the keyword research. First, you need to think about the clients you want to attract and then use the keywords (language) that they use to search on.

Too many times I have seen clients get ranked for keyword phrases that no one is searching on. (This means that there was no understanding of keyword research). That is sort of like opening up a hamburger stand in the desert with no road coming into or out of the hamburger joint. Kind of like opening the hamburger joint on a busy corner or a back alley. A little bit of keyword research can solve this problem and I teach clients how to do it for themselves. It typically takes 2-4 hours. Or I can “do it for them.”

The problem with SEO is that too many times I have clients come to me and tell me that their SEO guy is not delivering, the phone is not ringing or the leads and orders are not coming in. SEO is not the only game in town, it is one of many tools. The first question I ask is please give me “read only access” to your analytics reports. When I get an answer like “what is that?” I know they have been taken for a ride. The reason analytics is so important is we want to see where the clients are converting on both the paid and the SEO side of their web traffic and how they are using the site and how they are coming into the site.

I can also tell right away how they are doing by looking at how Google sees their top ranked natural SEO keywords. If their company name is 8 out of their top 10 in their natural SEO results then they have major problems. The deal is you want to rank for generic category keyword phrases like blue suede shoes.

In a recent case last week we discovered that the “SEO Company” was sending links out to the clients’ competition among other things. This was a blatant form of either stupidity or carelessness. I don’t think that they were offering any real link value in those out bound links but why send someone off your page? Get them to call you first then you can determine if you can refer them, not unless you get so many calls where they are a nuisance. These guys were so deceptive that they then offered to open another web site and control the DNS and the Web hosting. When the relationship ended with the client they held the site hostage, but it didn’t matter since it only had 1,600 inlinks and a 0 page rank….and it was generating no leads for the client.

The other point about SEO is inbound links. The more you have and the more relevant to your business the higher your page rank will go as well as your search results pages on Google. To see how many links your web site has coming in go to your Google tool bar and hit the back links button or use this better tool from Yahoo called Site Explorer and “explore your URL.”

If you have a question if your SEO Company or technical team is doing their SEO right visit Speechrep Consulting or call me at 781-631-9691 or send me e-mail and I can basically tell you in a matter of minutes, no charge, if what you are doing is on the right path. Sometimes some fixes are simple. Other times the fix requires breaking of contracts.

I was asked by Businessweek to write this article for their web site.

How CEO’s Can Play in the SEO & Social Media Sandbox, by Jim Peake

Leveraging Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media (SM) is something that everyone at a business can participate in. There is a hidden and vitally important role that an executive (CEO/CXO) can play in the SEO game. Because executives often have higher level relationships with other organizations they can carry influence. The way to use this influence is to ask your partners and customers for their “web links also known as backlinks” from their web sites pointing back to your web site.

Without going into a long drawn out dissertation on SEO there are two things that executives need to know about SEO.

1) Get organic links from other authority sites (ask for them)
2) Write great original content

CEO’s tend to be in the “deal flow” often. If a customer is driving a hard bargain on a negotiated deal and you know you can give them what they want, tell them they can have it but they have to give you a link from their homepage to your web site in return for this great deal. In some cases this can be of huge value. (They might not give you the link but you can command your higher price). Having relevant incoming links can be of huge value for a few reasons:
1) send qualified traffic from their site to your site (potential leads and/or paying customers)
2) the home page link is where many of their incoming links are going to which carries more weight in the SEO world
3) check the page rank of the customer link on their home page, if it is a PR 3 or higher you are adding valuable linkage to your site (a PR 7 and above is fantastic)
4) if you do business with the government or education markets ask for .gov and .edu domain links because they typically can carry the higher page ranks

Your web team will be really happy to see that you are helping them get more high quality relevant inks. Links are like money in the bank, literally. Take a look at this Businessweek web site and see how many links they have coming in.

The point here is that Businessweek.com has over 2.5 million incoming links from other web sites. The more links you have the more opportunity you have not only of getting traffic but also of ranking higher in the SERP Pages (Search Engine Results Page = more clicks on your web site).

In Businessweek’s case they have incoming links with a PR-8 Rank from RefDesk and CEO Express. This is excellent when you can get these types of home page links coming in. These sites not only have a lot of traffic but they cater to the same CEO’s and executives as Businessweek does, hence these are relevant links and Google loves relevant links coming into your site. Google and Yahoo provide high marks for these links. The high marks turn into high search results pages.

Now I don’t expect CEO’s to start writing copy for web sites any time soon unless they are with a small business and are also the product manager who wants to make sure the information is accurate. This is something just to keep in mind and it is a continual process and you want to keep adding more high quality relevant content to your web site.

How might an executive play in the social media space?

Start by getting a LinkedIn profile. If you already have a LinkedIn profile make sure you encourage everyone in your organization to link to you. You will be amazed at how valuable and profitable their information is in customer feedback and product development if you allow them the access.

LinkedIn Two things to do to get started on LinkedIn:

1) Tell people you are on LinkedIn put it in your bio on the web site, people will want to link to you because you are a leader
2) There is an “Answers section” on LinkedIn. Answer 1 question per month and you will be amazed at some of the people you will meet there. Keep those conversations going, give your knowledge away, and it will pay back handsome dividends
There are plenty of business applications for using Facebook, but my recommendation is that if you are going to go “social media” go Twitter instead. Twitter is a personal news service that allows short messages to be delivered in real time through the web or mobile devices. It will take too long to explain Twitter in detail for this article but you can follow me and ask me how to use Twitter by going to http://twitter.com/JimPeake. On a quick side note Twitter is the perfect place to do market research and customer surveys and get answers back on the same day even within the same hour. Doing this alone can save millions in some cases.

Are you a thought leader? Have you heard about people developing their own personal brands? If you want to make a statement to the business community and you are serious about getting into this social media game, get a “professional blog.” Hire a professional to develop a blog for you. Yes, you can get a blog for free but you will not be putting your best foot forward, and it will show. I hired experts to build and design my blog on http://speechrep.com so that I could present a professional image. I’m not so concerned about “selling” on my blog as I am about allowing people to get to know me and making an environment where they will pick up the phone to call for more information. My blog is constantly evolving with content and functionality.

Think of your blog a front porch to your house, people can swing by and say high but they don’t actually have to come into the house. Directing them to your business web site is like inviting them into your living room or home office, that is where transactions occur. Having a professional blog allows familiarity to exist, people do business with people they know like and trust, and since people like to get to know you before they do business with you a well written blog is a great way to accomplish this.

Be a thought leader and write on your blog your opinions of other articles and papers. 2-4 times per month of this type of writing is enough, 2-3 times per week is excellent, but who has the time? Allow others to comment on your blog posts. Two C-Suite bloggers are Bill Marriott and Fred Wilson.

If there is only one thing you need to remember, write the copy yourself, be yourself and be authentic. If you don’t, you can and will be exposed. It is ok to have others “review” for you but make sure the words are your words and not those of a PR person.
In wrapping up, make sure you comment on others blogs and leave a link back to your site or to your blog, it will help your SEO efforts over time.

Jim Peake is an Internet Marketing Consultant with SpeechRep Consulting in Marblehead, MA who brings products and companies to market using the holistic approach in marketing PR, SEO, PPC, Video, Social Media and offline methods. http://speechrep.com

Internet Strategy Primer for Therapists, Counselors and Treatment Centers – Jim Peake and Bernie Groshman

In these tough economic times, learning new skills and taking a step back to take a “personal” or “corporative” inventory will often reveal areas for major improvements and some glaring gaps in business practices. When it comes to marketing and business development, there is no better source than the Internet, especially for the counseling, therapy and treatment industries. With the Internet as the marketplace for new business through hundreds of millions of searches, a good website is not only needed, but it needs to be well optimized so it can be found when potential clients search for the services you offer. A website without optimization, no matter how good it looks, is no more useful than an expensive, glorified business card with no one to see it.

If you don’t have a web site it is strongly recommended that you invest in one, specifically built by someone who has experience building websites in your industry. A web designer and optimizer with knowledge of your specific industry can save you critical time and money. The authors of this article are two such people, and we’ll endeavor to share our knowledge and experience in this area so as to prevent costly and time consuming mistakes…

As a counselor, therapist or treatment center you are selling “people, expertise, relationships and experience.” People’s first introduction into who and what you are as a professional or treatment provider is through your website. It is human nature that individuals do business with people they know, like, and trust. In keeping with this reality, we want to allow the web site to convey the messages of personality, philosophy, experience, skills and specialties so that visitors can actually “get to know” you and your how you approach your profession when they browse through your website.

What we will cover in the article is how to prepare your web site and your business to take advantage of the massive search traffic for behavioral healthcare services on the Internet.

So how do therapists, counselors and treatment centers actually get clients? Some rely on the yellow pages to generate business and sometimes they come from other professionals. The fact is that in today’s world the Internet plays the biggest role of all in getting business into the healthcare field, period. So unless you have more business than you can handle (how many of us are in that situation?), it is imperative that you engage in Internet marketing. In today’s world, success in the behavioral healthcare field is intimately related to one’s ability to successfully market themselves on the Internet. If an individual searches the Internet for therapy or treatment, you need to be positioned in such a way that you get their business. Where else (besides the Internet) can you share ALL of your papers, articles, pictures and testimonials with the rest of the world for virtually the price of a cheap cup of coffee each day? The key is to share it in a way that it will be found when individuals in need of help search for the terms that are most relevant to the specific services you provide. Your practice or treatment center can literally be a walking, talking billboard of your expertise and services on the “Information Super Highway.”

The Internet does a great job at helping people with specific problems find the best people with the right solutions to meet their needs. For the purposes of this article, the preferred method of client acquisition (from the Internet) is to have your Internet leads come through your own web site first and not through a third party [web site]. (This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use directories or Internet Yellow Pages – in fact in many cases the exact opposite is true, but we’ll discuss that later in this article). Also, in many cases, referrals from the Internet will only come in through your web site AFTER they have qualified you based on the information they find on the Internet about you. For this reason it’s imperative that your website be in-depth and informative about who you are and what you have to offer, and it’s equally imperative that you have links from other relevant sites on the internet linking to your site…

Why links you ask? Well, would you trust a medical reference that didn’t cite its sources? In the same way, Search Engines don’t trust websites without supporting, relevant links. Links should be thought of as “votes” given by one website to another on the Internet… the more of them you have, the more intrinsic value your site has compared with all other sites on the internet in the eyes of Search Engines (Google in particular – this is the basis of the Google PageRank Algorithm as developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin during their studies at Stanford from 1995-97, and developed into a general rating system for websites on a scale from 0-10, known as the PageRank scale)… And the greater the relevance of the site that’s linking to you (in relation to the content of your own site), the more value you’ll get from each individual incoming link – in other words a “vote” from another treatment professional or treatment center is naturally more relevant and therefore more valuable than a vote from a car dealership…
Web site optimization (also known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO) can be divided into two main areas. First, you have “on site” optimization, meaning the content and HTML tags are accurate, in keeping with established standards, and maximized for relevance. Second is what’s called “off site” optimization, which entails link building and linking strategies (internal and external) to enable your well written, well optimized content to rank.

Onsite Optimization for Therapists, Counselors, and Treatment Centers

To achieve success in Internet marketing, you should take just as much pride in your website as in your profession, not only in the design and copy of the site, but also in your website optimization (SEO). (Which in turn results in attracting the right clientele)
Often times, but not always, people who are in need of therapy or treatment do a Google search on the services followed by the location, i.e. “drug treatment centers in Florida”. What typically come up are “local listings”, and often directory listings.

Directories are great, and in a perfect world I tell all my clients to get listed with as many directories as possible (track the ones that help you rank and drop the ones that don’t). The way I value directories is how many links they give me, period. I don’t value them based on the number of clicks they can or can’t send to my website… The clicks are for the most part superfluous – they’re not the real value of advertising on important industry directory sites. The real value is in the relevance these directories transmit to your website for terms for which you want to rank better. The more relevant links I have the better chance I have of being found in searches for the services I provide. More on that in a minute…

Where SEO enters the picture is if I’m a heroin addiction counselor in Marblehead, and I have my therapist web site properly “optimized with tags” (which I will get into in a second) and full of high quality heroin addiction content unique to my website, I stand a possible chance of ranking somewhere in the first 10 pages on Google’s search results for “heroin addiction counselor”, but even so, just being in the first 10 pages on Google isn’t good enough. Very few people look past the first page of search results, and virtually no one continues searching to the 10th page or beyond. To have success with Internet searches for key terms specific to your profession and services, you need to be on the first page, preferably above the fold (above the fold is everything visible on a computer screen without having to scroll down), so for most popular screen resolutions that means within the top 3-5 results.

So how do I ensure that my heroin addiction counselor in Marblehead web page gets to a top spot on Google’s search results? [See Part II about Off-Site Optimization]

Let’s assume you are the best heroin addiction counselor in Marblehead. We will assume you have at least 700 -1,000 words of content (fewer is not favorable for Google) talking about your experience providing heroin addiction treatment and heroin addiction counseling, your education, level of skill, and your approach to treating clients. The content is in place, but Google needs to know that this content is there on YOUR domain. The easiest way for Google to find and index your website is for you to “TELL” THEM IT’S THERE! How is this accomplished? You “tell” them by tagging the HTML code you used to build your web page accurately and informatively – you put your main key phrases in the page’s main tag, use XYZ tags to give alternative textual representations of all images on your site, tags for links, meta tags etc. etc. Or ask your web person to generate the proper Title Tags, Keyword Tags, Description Tags, Alt Tags, Image Tags, etc.

The big blue link you read on the Google search result is your TITLE TAG (as referenced above, the HTML syntax for which is ). The black text is often the description tag (or an excerpt thereof), or if a meta description is not present Google will grab content off your web page and use it as the search result description, which might not be what you would want as a description. (Google may pull text that isn’t very useful as a search result description). (Also, you don’t have a lot of room here to write a description so it should be concise and to the point – a good rule of thumb is to limit your meta description to 25 words or less). So if your site is JohnSmithCounseling.com and you’re really good at treatment for heroin addiction, the title tag might read something like Heroin Addiction Counselor | John Smith Counseling Marblehead (Title tags should be limited to 65 characters according to several SEO experts, but there is flexibility). Why would you write your title tag this way, instead of simply John Smith’s Counseling Services? Because unless people know of you by name in advance, they won’t be searching for “John Smith Counseling” – they are exponentially more likely to search for Heroin Addiction… or Counselor… or Counseling in Marblehead etc… With title tags, you always want to put your most important keyterms first.

For the meta description tag you have more space to work with, so you naturally want to offer more information than the title tag allows – but just as with the title tag, it should be relevant and keyword rich, and contain the same keyterms you used in the title tag. So continuing the example, the description might read, “John Smith Counseling of Marblehead is the leading authority on heroin addiction in the state of Massachusetts for the past 25 years.” You want to draw the Google searcher to click the link to your site… As long as the information on the landing page (the page that they go to when they click the link in the search results) is well written and informative, and answers the searcher’s questions. The combination of your content and good optimization (and links, we’ll go into that next) will make you rank well enough for your site to be found by searchers, and assuming they’re looking for counseling you stand a great chance of getting that client!

So now we have the easy part completed… Many SEO specialists, web developers, and consultants can provide this SEO service for you – it’s basic optimization 101. I personally prefer to teach clients and have them provide the direction to their development team. Once it’s learned, onsite SEO is fairly easy to execute (doing it well and ranking #1 for competitive terms however requires much more skill and experience).

Part II Offsite Optimization for Therapists, Counselors and Treatment Centers

In order to build your business online you need to get links, lots of links, as many relevant links from high value sites as possible. It is always a good idea to try to request links from hospitals, universities, doctors’ web sites, directories etc., and embed links to your website when commenting on other people’s blogs. These links are how people (and Google) find websites, and are a big factor in how Google ranks them as well. In fact, on today’s Internet, they’re the biggest factor, PERIOD.

Links are also the most efficacious advertising product available in the therapy and treatment industry to make your website rank – PERIOD. If you were a marriage counselor, I would search for a few marriage counseling web sites, directories and blogs to advertise on. Getting multiple relevant marriage counseling links to your marriage counseling site is of paramount importance for generating rankings and traffic, because they’re instantly recognized as high value links going to your web site by Google and Yahoo. If you’re a drug treatment center, search for Authority directory sites in the drug treatment industry on which to advertise, like Treatment-Centers.net and receive hundreds and even thousands of inbound (super-relevant) links showing up in the Google index in a very short period of time over 2-3 months.

One brief comment on Authority sites – you’re probably asking yourself what does this term “Authority site” really mean? Authority sites are category leaders, they’re sites in any given industry on the internet that are attributed greater value by search engines than all of the other sites in that field – they’re also the most relevant and have the most valuable links available on the entire internet for your specific business… Think about it, if your goal is to rank #1 for “drug interventionist in Massachusetts” the most relevant link on the entire Internet (and therefore the most effectual single link available anywhere in helping you rank) will be from the site that ranks #1 organically for “drug intervention.” How do you find Authority sites? Look for sites that you keep finding at the #1 spot, top 5 and top 10 results across a broad sampling of the biggest, broadest, and most generally relevant terms in your industry.

In order to get the links needed to rank for competitive terms, it takes time to research and find the best directories and professional websites from which to get links, legitimately (through link requests, exchanges and advertising contracts). You can also buy links from link brokers or you can pay people to write blog posts on other blogs and link back to you for the purpose of increasing your link value and PageRank (both of which are technically questionable by Google – Google strongly discourages the buying and selling of links for the purpose of increasing search rankings). When building links and considering a certain site for link acquisition, be thorough and ask questions, and always check the other site and see how many links they have coming in. Most importantly, in the case of directory sites, ask them how many links you’ll get by listing or advertising with them, and make sure you’re getting LIVE links from them. Some sites provide links through internal redirects, negating any value you would otherwise get from the link! (Examples of large resource/directory sites that use internal redirects for links are Soberrecovery.com and Sober.com – Examples of ones that provide LIVE LINKS include SAMHSA, NIDA, Treatment-Centers.net, AboutDrugRehab.com, Drug-Rehabs.com and Intervention-Referral.com) Links with internal redirects look the same as any other links, so always have someone who knows HTML look at the code of the links before you get them.

How many incoming links are necessary to rank well? There is no simple answer to this – you might rank in the top 10 for very targeted 4 and 5 word terms (and of course your own name or the name of your organization) with fewer than 100 incoming links… Ranking for more competitive, more general terms might require anywhere from 1000 to 100,000 incoming links. We also recommend having at least 50-100 web pages packed with well-written, unique, keyword rich content relevant to your practice or treatment program – the more pages of well optimized content the better. Search Engines (especially Google) love content. Give Google what Google wants, i.e. relevant links and rich content about your business and the terms for which people are searching.
Developing and optimizing a successful website for your business in the behavioral healthcare field is an ongoing process, and top-notch rankings aren’t garnered overnight. That said, if the advice in this article is followed closely and implemented diligently and consistently, results will ensue very rapidly, rankings will rise, and your website will begin to produce a steady flow of visitor traffic and phone calls into your business.

Authored By:
Bernie Grohsman is an 8 year Internet marketing veteran, and is considered by many the premier Search Engine Optimizer and Internet marketing expert in the Behavioral Healthcare field. His accomplishments include the design and/or optimization of some of the best-ranking and best-known sites in the behavioral health and addiction treatment field, he is the former Director of Internet Marketing for CRC Health Corporation, and is the Founder and owner of Treatment-Centers.net.

Jim Peake is a 15 year Internet marketing veteran with SpeechRep Consulting focused on treatment center marketing and Internet consulting. Jim is also a certified SEO consultant at Submit Express the 10 year old Search Engine Optimization company in Burbank, CA, and is a Technical Marketing consultant for Treatment-Centers.net and strategic consultant for Natural Language Processing Search Engine MyRoar, Inc.

Is Twitter is a Drug? As a matter of fact there is a web site called Twitterholic. This is a post about Twitter Detox and Withdrawal Symptoms from a guy who was told by a former mentor I “gambled in business” too much, going for the brass ring.

Authors note: I wrote this post in early 2009. Since then my blog has gone down due to some hackers so I decided to re-build it, hence this post is a few months old and it is now Saturday may 30th, 2009.

I’m a guy who lives on the edge, but I won’t bore you with the details unless enough people ask. I’ve been through the parties, you name it I’ve done most of it. I’ve let go of the traditional substances for they didn’t offer me much other than a headache the next morning and a feeling of despair from the “big night out.” (Notice how little I incriminate myself here). So I found a new drug. And it is powerful. It’s called Twitter. Twitter is my drug of choice. It gives instant gratification any where any time and I don’t have to go to the bathroom to do it or hide it, because today it is still legal. I mean Twitter is a real dopamine rush.

Some have heard of it and some haven’t. Think computers and cell phones. Twitter is THE killer application for the cell phone bar none. At the end of the day it is like an instant messaging news service on steroids (sorry A-Rod, A-Roid, A-Fraud, I couldn’t resist). You get “tweets” on your desktop and your cell phone from your “followers.” It has grown into a massive community of millions. Twitter is making Reuters and AP wet their pants (The New York Times already took a big dump in theirs) with a real time news service broadcasting globally images and text of the plane in the Hudson River just one minute after the event. (Twitter is changing the world almost as fast as the New World Order and the Bilderberg Group. More on that in a minute. I just hope like hell Twitterville, Tweeple and the Twitterverse wake up and see the light and have a Twestival to stop the NWO and Bilderbergers). The way to stop this from happening is two fold reaching out to the Oathkeepers and dismantling the Federal Reserve. The US Congress has the power to do that. Our so called leadership is fleecing blind and we are a bunch of suckers for allowing it to happen before our eyes, take a look at this video to see where our country is going.

The next thing you know Matt Drudge has the Hudson River plane image on his home page and it is all over Facebook and Friendfeed in a matter of minutes all because the information came from Twitterers. So, let’s get relevant, you want to keep up with friends and find out if they want support at the big New Year’s Party so they don’t relapse, you can track them by Twitter and they you too. Not as dramatic as the Hudson River crash but interesting nonetheless.

On Wednesday Feb 18th 2009 I was experiencing some actual withdrawal symptoms because my 1,000 + friends on Twitter I couldn’t access and send out “tweets” to (tweets are 140 text characters that can also be sent by SMS on a mobile device). So my brain says this must be some sort of a technical problem and the tech’s at Twitter are probably working on it. But I was sending out some “controversial tweets” and my brain also aid was I being a little “too free” with my free press? Here were a couple of sample tweets:

JimPeake
1. We’ve been brainwashed. People have been told that they need to have income taxes. How did we fund gov’t in 1776 -1913? http://zi.ma/2a3a5e 11:47 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

2. “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Goethe http://zi.ma/2a3a5e 11:40 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

3. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. Mark Twain #quotes #tcoc 11:23 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

4. Carnival Networking Party/Event Friday, February 20th 8:00 PM to… very late Zanzibar restaurant/lounge 645 9th Avenue at 45th St 10:08 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

5. “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. ” Woodrow Wilson http://zi.ma/d2ac8b 9:46 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

6. no longer a government by conviction & the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion & duress of a small group of dominant men. 9:37 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

7. @gacconsultants @stevecase @karlrove @nancypelosi In a time of deceit telling the truth is revolutionary. George Orwell http://zi.ma/2a3a5e 9:28 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

8. @SteveCase this whole thing is by design Steve. http://zi.ma/9ff342 8:33 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck in reply to SteveCase

So these little cryptic notes look innocuous right? Spend a little time on the links and see what they have to offer, you might be surprised. The old adage “question authority” is in play here. I’m extremely concerned for my now 9 year old son and the rest of the beautiful kids in this world that they will be inheriting a Prison Planet ruled by the Global Elite and the Jesuit Order.

To be honest I’m scared writing this blog post, but the last thing I want to do is look my kid in the eye 5 years from now and answer his question, “Daddy, so what did you do to while this was happening? Why didn’t you do something? I don’t like living this way under Marshall law.” I will speak out and not cave in like cockroach who scurries when light is shed on them.

So in sending out this information can make one paranoid, I am paranoid like a cocaine addict is with police. Getting my account suspended on Twitter concerned me that maybe the New World Order was a lot closer than I thought, or maybe I was just fucking going crazy. So I waited about 12 hours or so after I contacted customer service. I was without Twitter. I could not communicate with my community. I work from home so I have all of these “office buddies” who are online. We keep in touch face to face, online, Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, business, local Tweet Up’s etc. Some days my work and my community I work 20 hours per day, and sleep very little, this is a Twitter addict. When I have finished that last proposal or that report I go on Twitter and throw out my 2 cents on something.

Sometimes I go to DrudgeReport to find a thought provoking article to stir the sleeping masses on Twitter to see if someone is awake, often I find one or two. It usually works but the conversations are short lived to tell you the truth, as time goes on this might change. Many people couldn’t really give a shit except guys like @infowars @infowarsstories @gacconsultants (he got out of the U.S.A and moved to Costa Rica maybe because living in the USA has become so unbearable for some). More on GAC in a minute.

So it is Thursday morning, no Twitter. Thursday early afternoon, no Twitter. Paranoia kicks in big time. (But you thought that only happened to drug addicts’ right)? Wrong. I’m a Twitter addict. Finally, Thurs late afternoon I sent Twitter an e-mail customer support ticket I was issued by Twitter that did not work for me. I was not getting answers, I needed a Twitter Fix. I was Jonesing….and many of you readers know exactly what I’m talking about, I needed an answer as to why I was suspended! I needed to be back on Twitter, I needed to mainline some Twitter.

I re-read the terms and conditions, did I spam @stevecase? Did I upset @nancypelosi while she was vacationing at the Vatican getting her New World Order orders from the Pope Benedict? Did I offend @karlrove? He’s a pretty sensitive guy but he has a good rap. Did I send out too many Tweets too fast or accumulate too many followers too fast? I was worried it was the content. I got hammered recently when I sent this video out with David Icke in an email, he is a passionate “radical fellow” but he supports his argument well on the New World Order theory. Maybe I should have gone easier on my e-mail recipient and sent out Freedom Fighter Aaron Russo’s Freedom to Fascism video? Aaron recently died.

At this time in the process after I sent out the e-mail to Twitter I was shaking. I was shaking like an addict. For me it was similar to driving long distance for 20 hours (I did a lot of that in college) and drinking 7 cups of coffee on an empty stomach. The caffeine I had that day with the Twitter withdrawal I was a mess. I realized it when I was on the phone with my new and good friend Liz Strauss, (daughter of a saloon keeper and person who poured her first draft at 4 years old) we met on Twitter just a few months ago and she will tell that story in an upcoming blog post with www.1to1media.com. I realized I needed help. The help for me was not a Twitter Intervention but it was a conversation with Liz, it was food (something I forgot to do –eat) and it was fresh air. So I did all of those things. I felt better.

At 9:21 P.M. I was whole again, at least partially whole. Twitter sent me mail saying that my URL on my Internet consulting blog was the problem and it was some sort of a malware link. (Maybe my Twitter account was hacked and someone stuck in a malware link)? So Twitter removed it and I was back in business, or at least I thought so. It has still been sputtering and I have been having trouble adding followers. The reason we want more followers is that it helps build our community. (Except I was being followed by a FBI Twitterer and I chose to block them because of my paranoia and I know they have better ways to keep track of me). One of the things that the government will be doing anyway unless we put a stop to it is inserting RFID chips into us.

I might Tweet on something, New World Order, Yankees or anything and one Tweet can spark a great conversation as it did with Mark Harai @gacconsultants. Now here is a great guy. Never met him face to face yet but we have been Tweeting each other for a few weeks and we talked on the phone the other night and he and I are friends. I mean that with all sincerity, this is a true friendship in the making as my friendship is with Liz all cemented with the glue of Twitter. We are all around the same age and we have gravitated towards making the world better place each in our own small way.

So right now on Friday night as I write this I am getting so many followers I can’t keep up and follow them back. The system seems to hang on me and I don’t have the energy to submit it ticket, it is 12:43 AM. (The system is back to normal, Twitter does a great job maintaining a complex service that is in high demand).

When I interviewed Biz Stone with my partner Ronald Goedendorp we talked about how people have said that they would rather give up sex for two weeks or x period of time than lose Twitter. How many of you drug addicts have given up sex for drugs or alcohol? A few I bet. So this Twitter thing is here to stay and more and more people are weaving it into their daily lives like a drug or like air and water. When it becomes too much for some people do you think it will require a full on Twitter Treatment Center Rehab and Clinic for people to quit the addicting Twitter habit?

Hey, before I go how would you like a little education on the real under belly of the drug industry? How would you like to know who is pushing all these drugs here in the USA? What would you say if you knew these drug dealers by their first and last names and even knew the names of their children? How about, why are they pushing all of these drugs in the USA? Mike Ruppert, is a former South Central narcotics detective with the Los Angeles Police Department an LAPD cop, but Mike is a modern day hero speaking out on this issue. He starts out the meeting “Hi, my name is Mike and I’m an alcoholic.” Mike does not speculate, he delivers only the facts. What is at stake is our freedom and what is at stake is our future.

What can we do? Start by calling and writing your congressman and demand that the Federal Reserve be dismantled. Cut the head off of the snake. George Green explains in Project Camelot follow the money and we solve many of our problems or otherwise we will be in a prison planet or a dead planet.

Be well and take care of yourself, you deserve it. Come join me, I can be reached on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/JimPeake and http://twitter.com/impairment

Have a Passion for Natural Language Processing?  Want to help found an exciting Natural Language Search startup company?

Start up Natural Language Processing search engine company with world class accurarcy in the industry is seeking team player for equity based and co-founder leadership role in a pre-revenue opportunity currently raising an angel funding.  “A round” is in place and spoken for.

We are looking for a talented hacker to work with a fun team on cutting-edge NLP projects. You are an excellent coder, a creative problem solver, and are deeply interested in NLP. We are a dynamic team carving out a new niche in the enterprise search engine market.
Attributes sought: Great Java hacker, at least passingly familiar with Python. Facility with other languages is helpful. Familiarity with NLP technologies, e.g., WordNet, statistical parsers, or named entity recognizers. Contact Jim @ e-Mail is jimpeake08 @@gmail.com or phone is better at 781-631-9691. No Recruiters.