I live and breath bounce rates.

I live and breath bounce rates.

I think that a bounce rate is the single best measure of the effectiveness of a page.

This is because I organize my site as a big sales funnel where each page on the site is like a step in a classic (ie face-to-face) sales call. If you organized your sales process as just one page, it would mean a lot less.

The entry pages are like a salesmen saying, "Hello, would you like to talk a little?"
The next page is like a conversation in which the salesmen and prospect discuss the product. Information is exchanged, trust is built.

The click from this page to get to the service link means that the prospect is intrigued and wants the benefits and features that he's learned about (actually, she....most of my customers are Moms).

And the sign-up page is the page that resolves all the sales inhibitors (ie, do I trust these people? Is the price too high? What if I change my mind?). If I can resolves enough of them, I can get them to enter their credit card and click enter.

Then, the real fun begins.....

Marketing Plans for 2009

Here's what I'm thinking about in terms of strategy...

Fine tune the SEO strategy or keep throwing pages and links at it? Are there overlooked phrases? Do we have phrases that never convert that we should rethink? The answer of course is yes. But, if we really devoted two man months to this project, could we improve our performance enough to make it worthwhile? Or, should I go with my traditional approach of just throwing my pages and links at the problem?

How to reduce my credit card processing fees? I have a whole blog on my questions about merchant accounts.

Improved email marketing. Our best asset might be our lists of people who have asked for my info and our lists of happy satisfied customers. We've finally built the tools to explore and market to these lists. I'm expecting this to be the single largest engine of growth for 2009. To really take advantage of it, I'll need more products and services to market.

Mastery of advertising revenue. I'm planning to get more effective at making money from advertising. This year, we experimented with CPM advertising but not with much success. We got some nice $2-$6 rates but only on about 2% of our inventory. I'm hoping next year (thru maybe Tribal Fusion) to get $2 on some large amounts (50%) of our inventory of above-the-fold wide skyscraper ads.

Product diversification. I'm thinking that while SpellingCity is a good start, the reality is that 80% plus of the costs are programming and less than 20% is content. So, for just a 40% increase, I could probably get the site recreated for French and Spanish. hmmmmmmmmm. Plus there's the long-awaited VocabularyCity.com

The Time4Learning Holiday Party

I'm pleased to report that the 2008 Ft Lauderdale Time4Learning holiday party celebration was, just like 2008 for Time4Learning, a great success.  Key staff all attended and a good time was had by all.

It was held at John and Carmen's house in Ft Lauderdale, Florida.  Jennifer Eaton, Jennifer Zibrin, Suzanne Roberts, Tim Horvath, Ilan Berkner, Spirit Cannon, Jennifer Sullivan,  Leslie Vogel, Nela, Suzanne Roberts, and Dawn were  present.

Jennifer Eaton

 This is the fifth holiday party for the Vkidz company. The first two were very low key events at John's Pompano Beach house. The first one included some  advisers to a business that was not yet formed. The attendees of the second one at John's Pompano home only included a few staff and contractors including Kenny Brooke and Jennifer Eaton.  The next two parties were held at the Sea Watch Restaurant on AIA between Pompano Beach and Ft Lauderdale.   This was the fifth one and was held at the Coral Ridge home of John and Carmen. The idea is to rotate venues every two years so there should be another party at the home next year! (as it turns out, we grew so much that year that we needed to switch venues)

john edelson

Kris Craig

Nela

Suzanne Roberts

Leslie Vogel

Local Search, SEO, Joomla, Revenue

The topic of Local Search, SEO, Joomla, Revenue is pretty confusing. It's a jumble. Welcome to my world. I try to think thru all these problems at once. In any case, here's a plan with some questions. What do you think?


I have a site - spellingcity.com - which is a link magnet. Schools and parents love it. They link to it. They bookmark it. They tell their friends about this great way to prep for spelling tests. I'm lucky to say it's mine. (It's also a money pit but I won't whine on about this since in retrospect, most of these software money pits are essentially due to lack of clear thinking. Which in retrospect, appears really stupid).

SpellingCity has hidden, in it's fertile joomla-php-html body, a home page for each public and private school in the country. Wouldn't it be cool if these pages came up high in the search engines?

School Page Positioning in the Search Engines. There are a few steps: Setting the pages up right, telling Google about them with a Google Site Map, and getting some links.

The Google Sitemap is a bit of a mess of a project. Joomla, you see, has a set of automatic site map generators. But, with our version and implementation of Joomla, none of these seem to work the way that we want them to. So we will probably write our own.

Setting up the Pages Right - We have (I should check if this is true) set up the pages so that the:

H1 Tag - School
H2 Tag - City
H3 tags - zip code, street address, city, state, school name

Content: All of the above plus (still to be optimized).

Somerset Elementary School has this page for it's teachers and students and parents. Any parent or teacher who would like to, can create an account on SpellingCity.com, and save their spelling and vocabulary lists for the use of the students. Many schools to help their students with their homework and studying, link directly to this page.

SpellingCity.com - SpellingCity helps build spelling and vocabulary and reading skills. Anyone can enter their spelling word list and take the tests, use the TeachMe funtion, or play the educational word games. Free! To save lists, you must register and become a member which costs between $19.95 and $39.95 per year.

There are plenty of questions to resolve about page titles, URLs, metatags, metadescriptions, and alt tags. We'll work them.

Questions:

1. If I want to appear high in the search engine rankings for the school, what is the best use of the Heading tags? Page title? URL? The problem is that since we're using joomla, we have uneven control over these elements. But it would help if we had any sense of what people have already learned about how Google is treating these issues.

2. Over time, I will put up some modest advertisements on these pages. Lets say for instance that we get Huntington Learning Centers as a sponsor. Ideally, we would have some way of providing direct links to the local centers. So, on each page for instance, there could be a generic Huntington advertisment followed by a listing or link to the sites that are closest to the school. I guess this could be done by Zip code. The same concept would work with book stores (BORDERS - want to sponsor SpellingCity?), Kumon, Sylvan Learning Centers, or, if I can't do better, McDonalds health centers or the 7-11 value stores.

One possibility for making a few bucks might be to try and put up google or yahoo local advertising. Questions:
- Does this make more generally than other Google ads?
- If I want local advertising, is this automatic or do I have to do something different?
- I have never really understood what google keys it's adsense from. I doubt many people do. But is it the same mysterious complex array of info including page title, anchor text of incoming links, H tags, and content analysis? I would guess that it's simpler. I would guess that local advertising starts with:
A. The location of the viewer
B. Title tags, Heading tags, and content

Any special insight into these challenges?

Tracking and analytics

I thought the state-of-the-art was quantcast. I was just talking to an ad network and they were pushing Compete.com. People still ask about Alexa & Google pagerank. Google analytics feels to me like a standard. Here's a quick list:

Quantcast - gets data from ISP. You can improve data by putting it on your site.
Alexa - gets data from browsers. Easily gamed.
Compete.com - No idea where they get their data.
Google page rank - The green bar is a very simplistic count of how many links in you had some number of months ago.
Google Analytics - Increasingly, this is being generally adopted so they become a uniform way of counting and comparing websites.

Other market leaders?

Statistics - Who Cares? You should!

I've been involved in online marketing and learning SEO for five years now as a practicitioner and I've observed a number of constantly repeated mistakes by the industry. Near the top of this list is their total ignorance regarding statistics.

I often look at great analytical methodologies which are impressive in their approach but which never deal with the problem that they often make major strategic decisions without considering whether their sample size validates a decision or not.

I've yet to see an article or discussion on this topic. I've seen people give talks before thousands of other supposedly industry gurus in which they describe methodology in great detail without mentioning sample size and statistics.

At times, I've asked and probed. The industry gurus look at me puzzled and wonder what I'm going on about.

Am I the only one who took statistics courses in college and business school?

Sick of domain parking?

Are you sick of domain parking yet? I am.

I don't like it because it's trying to make money by being clever without adding value. I don't like stumbling across parked domains. I don't like how much time I've wasted trying to figure out this stupid area. I don't like that I haven't made any money domain parking.

A month just ended so I got this email from godaddy. Is it worth doing what they suggest?

We want you to know exactly how your CashParking plan is doing, so each month we email you a monthly account update. Here's where your account stands for November 2008:


==============================

==================
REVENUE:
November 2008 Revenue Earned*: $34.31
RPM**: $38.86
Approximate Payout Date: January 15, 2009

TOTAL DOMAIN SUMMARY:
Total Domain Count: 74
Active Domain Count: 73
Removed Domain Count: 1

DOMAIN ACTIVITY:
Domains Added: 0
Domains Removed: 0

Account Status: Active
Domains within 30 days of expiration: 2
Active domains not pointing to CashParking Name Servers: 1
================================================


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A parked page that looks like a Web site increases the likelihood of more clicks --
and that means more CA$H! So add a one-of-a-kind page header that's sure to grab attention!

SignUp forms that slide in

I would like to try to see how they work for us. I don't know if they are javascript or what. Here's some examples:
http://www.searchenginecollege.com/index.shtml
homeschool.com's internal pages (i think after they slide in once, they set a cookie so you don't see it again)
http://www.surfnetkids.com/

note, some of them are not up all the time.
Many are programmed to only slide in the first time you visit the site (in 30 days).

I like other people's business issues

For reasons that are entirely my fault, my back is hurting again. So, I went into a new local massage place and had a great massage.  The therapist helped me diagnose the problem and took good care of me. Plus, it was 50 minutes for $44 which is a better deal than what I've been paying. ($55 and a haggle each time for 50 minutes).  The massage was better too.

On the way out, I chatted with Sharon who owns the place and was working the front desk and is also a massage therapist (I like her already, she's my sort of hands-on entrepreneur).  There being a recession these days, we started talking business.  And me, being me, I started kibbitzing on her business and her website. Frankly, I really like thinking thru other people's business problems and opportunities.  They're much more fun than mine.

 Pretty soon, I'm suggesting and diagnosing and generally, not minding any of my own business at all.  She already has a great website which gives out the vitals, which we successfully found this morning online, and which allowed us to book a massage for 10am when they open this morning. It's great.  

Kudos. You have one great website.  

But it could be better.  Here's some thoughts.

1.  Get intense about what keywords you want to place well for on the search engines.  Terms that come to mind:

Fort Lauderdale affordable massage

Massage parlor in fort lauderdale

massages, swedish massages, deep tissue massage, etc etc

north fort lauderdale, east fort lauderdale, north east fort lauderdale, coral ridge, the landings

back massage,  massage therapy, back rub, back therapy, 

etc

The point is not to think about these terms as marketing slogans but in terms of whether they would get used by people looking for masssages.  BTW, typos should ultimately be considered too. I get about 25% of my kindergarten traffic from people who spell it kindergarden. It's wrong but I have a page on my site in which I've spelt it wrong.

2. Prioritize the keywords.  Focus on the biggest and best ones first.  Then the others.  There are techniques for analyzing which terms people use when they search.  But, you might do just as well by thinking about it and asking a few people what terms they might search on.

3.  There are a few ways to use the keywords.  

Put them as your page title.

Use them on the page.

Get people, who might link to your site, to use these keyword as anchor text for the links.  Like this.  I just had  a some great  massage therapy from a fort lauderdale spa.  

4. Then go get more links from more people. Pay attention to any local directories that people might use to find massages.   If there are hotels and other services which link to local services as a service to their clients, find them and get linked. (This isn't that different from putting your business card in their lobby, its a low level of business cooperation).

In any case, there's a link and a few ideas.  Food for thought. I think I'll go ice my back some more.

$299 for the Yahoo directory - worth it?

When I started my business four years ago, I paid Yahoo $299 to list my site in their directory. And since then, another $300 per year.

They're now asking me to renew. My reaction this time is:

Why? And how come they don't bother to provide any data to me on why this $299 is a worthwhile expenditure. It's a lot of money. It feels pretty arrogant to me that they don't rationalize it all.

How many views? How many click-thrus? What sort of visibility?

What do you think? Useful? Arrogant?

Dear Yahoo! Directory Submit Client:
We hope your business has enjoyed a fruitful year and that yourlisting in the Yahoo! Directory has contributed to your success.
This is a reminder that the annual renewal date for your site iscoming up on:Dec 6 2008
On the above date, your credit card will be charged the recurringannual fee of:299.00.
Your listing will then be reviewed again by the Yahoo! Directory Submiteditorial team to ensure that your site remains relevant and isproperly categorized.Currently, the URL of your site is:http://www.time4learning.com/

Your site appears in the following category:
Business and Economy/Shopping and Services/Education/Homeschooling/Time4Learning
with this description:
Comprehensive suite of lessons and activities that provides a personalized educational program for preschool through eighth grade children.

Learning about Preschool Homeschool

We are trying to optimize our pages about preschooling. To do this, we have gone thru a learning process involving looking at keyword volumes via Adwords, our traffic and conversions from analytics, our rank in Google, and which landing page it hits. For instance, we have a page where parents can learn about preschool games.

Then, we make decisions and pick some keywords that we want to do better on. In this case, it's homeschool preschool, and preschool online. Then there's the cross of expressions as in preschool activities online.

Of course, our page has to be well-written. And I quote:

Time4Learning is a great answer to many parents search for a safe and easy-to-use program that will enhance learning with appropriate preschool learning games. Time4Learning provides preschool learning games in a system that guides the children from one activity to the next, keeping track of their progress.

Lastly, lets quote some other links to high quality preschool sites such as:

Preschool pyramid.
Preschool Kids Learning games
Preschool Activities

The Insider's Guide to Transferring Domains

I've been purchasing a few domains lately and the last few purchases were from private owners who ended up transferring the domain to my account. The first couple purchases this week were already registered at GoDaddy, which is where I was transferring the domains, so it was a snap. They had great easy to follow instructions on how to get the transfer completed.

Then, it came time to transfer a domain from another registrar. Wow! GoDaddy has a set of instructions for this as well and apparently someone who really likes blue arrows worked very hard to explain all the steps. Unfortunately I was dizzy by the time I got to step 10.

They tried. I think they should keep trying.

Check it out for yourself. Bring your barfbag.






del.icio.us

Domain Parking

If you follow this blog, you'll know that I've intermittently gotten excited about making money from parking domains. Mostly it's been a failure. But I had one success that I was very excited about.

At trafficclub (now called domainsponsor), I parked six domains years ago and this year, they sent me a check. One domain made some money. It now appears that it's over. Here's the revenue by month for me from there:

Month - Visitors - Total Revenue
10/2008 - 51 - $21.68
9/2008 - 106 - $83.30
8/2008 - 82 - $101.68
7/2008 - 64 - $63.82
6/2008 - 24 - $20.59
5/2008 - 35 - $17.31
4/2008 - 55 - $25.30
3/2008 - 49 - $22.79
2/2008 - 47 - $25.63
1/2008 - 0 - $0.001
2/2007 - 0 - $0.00

It seems that my one success was also short-lived.
I also have 68 domains parked for money at Godaddy. In Oct, it produced $8.25, Sept was $15.26. I've tried to get help from them with configurations and so far, it doesn't seem to help. BTW, they weren't so helpful.
At NameDrive, I have 15 domains. In Sept, $2.01: in Oct $0.13. At name drive, I have ten domains related to education and 3D (also 3D University) , four related to credit problems and bankruptcy, and one related to online cyber schools (note - I do have a strong portfolio in this area)

I'm officially disinvesting in parking domains. I'll now start shifting my 300 or so domains into some sort of system where they are forwarded one to another with some that have a few pages of content and links and advertisements and then pointing my big domains which are my bread and butter. I'll also start putting more of blogs onto their own domain names.

Recent new blogs:
http://homeschoolcurriculumcity.wordpress.com/
http://learntowriteablog.com/
http://learnseowithme.wordpress.com/


Previous posts on domain parking (non exhaustive):
There's no such thing as free lunch with domain parking - Sept 2006
Parking domains at GoDaddy
Parking domains for money
Monetizing Parked Domains
Making Money thru Parked Domains.

Teaching google to read

I just sent this is to Google. I'm trying to learn how to teach google what I mean.....

My spelling site is running many ads about wiccah and wizards and magic and such. There's a confusion around the word "spell".

While I personally think it is humorous that google's algorithms confuse magic "spells" with "spelling" (ie vocabulary, phonics) but many of my members, evangelical christians types, seem to find this offensive and are accusing me of all sorts of things.
Can you prompt your algorithms away from magic, mysticism, and wizardry? thanks

BTW - I might be de-emphasizing this blog in favor of a new one about learning seo with me....

Halloween Party

(WOOPS - I Posted this on the wrong blog....For the full post, check out a Black Belt at 50)
Our dojo hosted a halloween party this past Saturday night. Since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I dressed like the undead and showed up. Fun Fun. Thanks. Here's a glimpse. Again, I wish I was more diligent about bringing my camera.


And stay tuned, I will be posting this week about my little daughter who is suddenly is in my advanced adult karate class (OK, I've had a long time to see this coming. It didn't exactly creep up on me. But still, for me, this is HUGE). Also, we've been doing some Muy Thai which means learning a different type of roundhouse kick. We've started a new type of kata derived from KungFu and Han Karate (yes, I do need help with my spelling). But today, it's halloween picture day.