Did Twitter Kill Bruno, Save 50% on your Yellow Pages Print Ad - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 23

Episode34 min2009-10-25

Yellow Pages advertisers can cut their bill by 50% simply by threatening to cancel, and any CMS like DotNetNuke can support strong SEO if it allows page-by-page control of title tags, meta tags, and content.

Cover art for Did Twitter Kill Bruno, Save 50% on your Yellow Pages Print Ad - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 23
Key takeaways
Twitter gave just easier access to people to say the movie was bad and then forward that information.

About this episode

We discuss if Twitter really did kill the movie Bruno. How did we save 50% on our Yellow Pages Ad and the comments of a former Yellow Pages employee. We answer the question is DotNetNuke good for SEO. Also we give a simple process for calculating ROI for your Internet Marketing. Find out more about Internet Marketing at our website E-Webstyle.com.

Questions this episode answers

Can you negotiate a lower price on a Yellow Pages print ad?

Yes. eWebStyle reported getting the same Yellow Pages ad at 50% off simply by telling the rep they were considering canceling. The host notes that in Paul Hanson's three-plus years as a Yellow Pages salesman, prices never dropped, making this a sign of how far the medium has declined.

Is DotNetNuke good for SEO?

According to the episode, DotNetNuke can support solid SEO as long as it lets you control title tags, meta tags, keyword tags, and content on a page-by-page basis. The hosts say any CMS that gives you that control is, in their words, an SEO-able system.

How did Twitter hurt the Bruno movie opening weekend?

The episode explains that Twitter let disappointed viewers spread negative opinions almost instantly after seeing the film. Instead of the projected $30 million opening weekend, Bruno earned around $20 million, with fast-spreading bad reviews on Twitter cited as the main cause.

What should a website have before you start driving SEO or paid traffic to it?

The hosts say a site needs clear calls to action, contact information including a phone number on every page, working purchase paths, and focused messaging. They warn that sending traffic to a site that cannot convert it is wasted money regardless of how much traffic arrives.

In their words

Twitter gave just easier access to people to say the movie was bad and then forward that information. And so, instead of having a $30 million weekend, he ended up with a $20 million weekend.

Chris Burris

In three and a half plus years, it, it, never, ever. Dropped.

Paul Hanson

I can bring a thousand, 2000, 10,000 people to your website, but if it's not, if it cannot handle that traffic and funnel it to an end result, I don't want to do that.

Chris Burris
Terms defined in this episode
Content Management System (CMS)
A platform such as DotNetNuke or Joomla that lets users manage website content. The episode says a CMS is SEO-friendly when it allows page-by-page control of title tags, meta tags, and content.
Call to Action
An element on a webpage that prompts visitors to take a specific next step such as buying, calling, or submitting a form. The episode flags missing calls to action as a critical website flaw.
Break-even point
The number of sales needed to recoup an advertising spend. The episode calculated that a $450 per month ad budget with a $30 product requires roughly 17 new sales per month just to break even.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
A paid advertising model where advertisers pay per click. The episode discusses using PPC on multiple search engines beyond Google for branding and lead generation.
Read the full transcript (6,344 words · 32 min read)

Hi, and welcome to the Unknown Secrets of SEO Podcast. Yes, welcome back. Thank you for joining us for another fun-filled edition of our podcast. My name's Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And this is Paul Hanson, the sales manager of eWebStyle. Make sure all our ringing devices are off here. We don't want to get interrupted in this. First things first, again, I still don't remember. Do we talk news or do we talk... Let's talk the old podcast. So the old podcast, we talked about the possibility of using PPC for branding. And that's where you might actually do both search engine optimization and pay-per-click just so that your name's on the page more than once on the first page. And when I say your name's on the first page, that assumes that you're using our service. Yes, and don't forget using PPC for... Also using other search engines for PPC. People get in the habit of using Google for a lot for their search. I know I do. But don't forget there are other viable search engines that you could do a pay-per-click campaign on, not just Google. In fact, some of those might even be more valuable. And I definitely believe so. And if that intrigues you, you should go back and listen to our previous podcast. Yes. Which you can find our podcast... Well, you're listening to it, so you found it somehow. We are available on iTunes, and we are available on our website, on our blog. If you just go to e-webstyle.com and then click the blog link, I'm sure you can find it, because we've put it in a pretty easy spot to find. Yes. So that's that. Anything else from last time? No. That's the podcast. We talked a little bit about renaming the podcast and issues associated with renaming the podcast, so that's great. On to news. What's in the news today? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. News. Well, you know, it's an exciting day. We actually had to dig a little bit, and somebody's been thrown into the forefront of the news, and

we've got to give them props. His name is Mark Mueller. Who is Mark Mueller? I know who Mark Mueller is. He's a guy who is giving away AK-47s. I was going to say, I just read that. If you buy a truck. Okay, so if I buy a truck, I get a semi-automatic weapon that I thought was illegal. Well, I think if they're semi-automatic, then they're actually legal. Okay. And as long as you don't buy that kit that's readily available on the internet, you turn it into a fully automatic. There we go. In fact, I think in this country, you can actually own the kit and the gun. As long as you don't apply the kit to the gun, you're in good shape. Yeah. It's very specific, very liberal. We love it. That's, you know, like it's legal to have bongs and drug paraphernalia as long as you have no drugs. That's actually, even though there's no other reason to use them. Exactly. Um, uh, so it's a pretty fascinating, there's a pretty hardcore interview, uh, on CNN. Where'd you find, oh, CNN. Yeah, it was CNN. And, um, and the girl's really going after her, the, um, CNN correspondent's really going after him about, uh, you know, giving away AK-47. And he said, well, last year they gave out handguns and they were hoping to sell a hundred more trucks this year. So they thought the AK-47 would do that. Well, maybe next year they should hand out, uh, bazookas. Yeah. They really might meet their sales goal. That would, that would be awesome. Or tanks. Here, come get your tank. And he did make the point that they, you know, they don't sell to felons. They don't sell, you know, they, they don't just give the guns away. They've got to go through the whole process and everything. It's just, uh, it's a great, in fact, their marketing slogan is Gun Gods Guts in American Pickup Trucks. I mean, does it get any more American than that right there? I, I, I don't, I

don't. Just put it in baseball, just for good measure. Yeah, baseball. Yeah. Add in baseball. That's good. So we're thinking, uh, we'd like to get your feedback. Anybody who wants to, to write to us, you can write to us at podcast at e-webstyle.com. And we're thinking, uh, we might do a similar promotion. We don't have a crafty slogan yet. Um, gun gods, God guns. And, uh, websites. And websites. All right. And, and first page Google. Uh, because God loves guns and websites. And guns and Google. There we go. Guns and Google. Guns and Google. All right. Uh, there's our slogan, AK-47s. Give us some feedback. Uh, you know, if it's something, uh, everybody's really interested in, we'll, we'll do it. Maybe we'll give a gun, uh, AK-47. What kind of gun, what kind of gun do you, do you just, yeah, yeah, true. Maybe, maybe, maybe our listeners are, you know, a little more sophisticated and the AK-47 isn't what they're interested in. They want something else. Let us know. Well, I think we've covered guns and Google long enough. Yeah. Guns, gods, and Google long enough. Um, the other thing, I, I read a really interesting article, um, and I think the title of the article was along the lines of, uh, Twitter killed Bruno. Uh, actually killed Bruno? Uh, I think we should have a band today. I'm, I'm going to promote legislation to get rid of Twitter. It's killing people. It's killing people. From, no, okay, so. I never saw the movie, so what, what happened with Twitter and Bruno? So, I haven't seen, uh, the movie yet either. Uh, for those who don't know, uh, Bruno is the next character in Sacha Baron Cohen's, uh, line of characters following Borat. So, you may have seen Borat. You may have watched the show Borat. Um, if you don't know who Borat is, uh, come out from that rock you're under and, uh, you know, Google it. And, uh, I thought that movie was pretty hilarious. We enjoyed it. Um, but Bruno is

his next character. So, uh, there was a lot of hype. Um, the article I read, it looked like the Friday sales for the Bruno movie were going to put him in a whole other category. You know, a huge, over $30 million of sales for the weekend. And, uh, by the end of the weekend, it turned out that he only had, like, $20 million of sales. The theory is, is that Twitter, uh, the availability of Twitter. So, you know, you may walk out of a movie, Bruno, that you were expecting to be hot and not like it and tell people on Monday at the office that you didn't like it very much. Or, uh, you may, you know, go home and send an email or whatever. But it, the, the premise is with Twitter, people were able to actually say that it was so bad so quickly, um, in their opinion. Again, I haven't seen it, and I will see it, because I, I, I do like his characters. I like, I like what he puts together. Um, but, uh, Twitter gave just easier access to people to say the movie was bad and then forward that information. And so, instead of having a $30 million weekend, he ended up with a $20 million weekend. So, it's... And like they say, good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster? Faster, yeah. I mean, wow. I mean, so, that's a testament to social networking. If you're wondering if social networking works, that's proof in the pudding right there. And then, another great example, go back to two or three podcasts ago. Uh, two podcasts ago. Two podcasts ago, yeah. We did an example of how social networking helped a company. Um, so, that's proof in the pudding. Social networking works. If you do it properly. Yeah, that, in that example, it's a great example. Go back and listen to it. We, we talked about how one twit. Yeah, one twit. One twit actually, uh, brought, like, thousands of people to a store. 2,500. 2,500. And they

only had, like, 80... 80, they sent out 80, a twit to 80 followers. That returned 2,500 new customers. Awesome. That is awesome. Twitter, Twitter is absolutely awesome. So, um, we've got a couple of interesting things to talk about today. One of them is, you know, we always, uh, we are kind of always talking, uh, about your last job as a... Uh, stripper? No, not that one. The one before that? A Yellow Pages publisher. A salesman at a Yellow Pages publisher. Oh, okay. As a Yellow Pages salesman. We kind of bring that up from time to time because Paul brings a lot of relevant information. It, it actually really helps us here at E-WebStyle to really kind of understand the ins and outs of Yellow Pages and Yellow Pages sales and everything. Um, so we're really appreciative to him for that. And, uh, we noticed one time without, even without his help, because we think he could have helped on this, um, one of our, our advertising organizers got the same Yellow Page ad that we had last year at a reduced price. Now, when you say reduced, explain reduced. 50% less than we paid last year. We got the same ad in Yellow Pages. What did you have to do to get that? I think he just said he was going to cancel it or something like that. And, boom, 50% off. Bill got cut in half by just saying they were going to cancel, man. If that's not a testament to what's happening in the, uh, print, at least in the Yellow Pages, the print Yellow Pages industry, I don't know what it is. It's, if they're that hungry for business where, if any industry is not that hungry for business where they'll cut your bill in half just by you asking for it. Just saying, hey, I'm going to quit. Uh, so they're obviously, it's, everyone understands by now, Yellow Pages is a dying medium. It's not what it used to be, and they're doing whatever they can to hold on to what

little market share that they have. What little money they have. Yeah. So, you worked with Yellow Pages for a while. How many times did you see a, a, a reduction in the bill from one year to the next? Uh, never. Ever. Oh, never. Ever, ever, ever, ever. In three and a half plus years, it, it, never, ever. Dropped. If they went out of business. Yeah, yeah, zero. Zero, yeah. After they paid out the contract, you know, until it's in. But, yeah, that's, that, that, that's tough. So, that medium, and, and, you know, is it a bad idea to invest in the Yellow Pages? Well, we're running that ad again. Now it's half off. Yeah. So, now, yeah, I didn't run a Yellow Pages ad. It did it half the price. Why not? We do still get calls, and we did a podcast earlier on call centers and the fact that we do cold calling, because we had a conversation with a gentleman about, you know, is cold calling something that you should do? You know, you're an SEO company, you're on the first page of Google and all of that stuff. Um, why are you doing cold calling? And, and the reality is, is, you know, it's all about ROI. If cold calling is an effective way to generate customers, then we're going to do cold calling. If, um, Yellow Pages is effective? Well, you know, and then, then there's the real balance, the real business decision, the real ROI decision, which is, you know, okay, you could have a huge Yellow Pages ad, and you could pay lots of money, and if it only brings you one customer, and that customer doesn't have that much value, then it's bringing you customers, but it's not paying for itself. In our case, um, even, even last year, the Yellow Pages ad, you know, you usually end up, somebody on your team usually ends up fielding those calls. What do you, we definitely got calls, and it paid for itself. I think we got one, maybe two

customers out of it, so it paid for itself. Excellent. Did it bring a high ROI? No, but at least it paid for itself. It's good for, you know, again, that's, it kind of goes to branding, where if they can look in the Yellow Pages, they can do a Google search, um, and on a Google search, you're in organic and pay-per-click, and you start, you know, building a lot of credibility for, uh, for your company. So, um, yeah, if you guys are, uh, out there running a Yellow Page ad, um, threatened to cancel it, and, uh, see what happens. Tell them, look, you know, you've, uh, you've moved to a company called eWebStyle to do, uh, online search engine optimization and pay-per-click, and, uh, you can track the progress, you can, uh, everything that we do is demonstrable, and, uh, and you're just considering dropping your Yellow Pages ad, and, uh, see what happens. And let us know. And, uh, send us 50% of whatever you save for that advice. Yeah, because it's free advice, but we take a commission. We, yeah, we, we gladly take donations. Yes. All right, well, we got an email this week, um, from a gentleman by the name of Joe Trevino, and he asked, uh, he has a pretty interesting question, uh, it says, uh, knowing that I cannot pay for SEO, what are your unbiased feelings regarding SEO and .NET Nuke? I got it. Delete. Can't pay for SEO. Nah, we'll take his question. Well, and this is, again, this is from Joe Trevino, his website, um, and, and I know that he's actually talking about another website, because I asked him, uh, but his own website is, uh, Trequeen.com, so you spell that T-R-E-Q-U-I-N.com, and, um, so .NET Nuke, I'd heard of it, uh, you know, we do a lot of different programming, I'm really in charge of the programming on this side of things, uh, at, at the office here, and, uh, so I, I had heard of .NET Nuke, I didn't know exactly what it was,

so I did a little bit of research, um, actually, before I did any research, I sent a response back to Joe, and really what I said is, listen, Joe, if you've got control of, on a page-by-page basis, so, really what .NET Nuke is, yes, .NET Nuke, it's a content management solution utilizing the .NET technology. Okay. So, we've probably talked about content management solutions, like, Joomla is one, uh, there's a whole bunch of them out there. Yeah, yeah, um, and there's a, there's a whole bunch of them out there, um, those are on the .PHP framework or network, you know, uh, uh, code system, um, .NET Nuke is actually on the .NET system, um, so, what, uh, what I really told them, I said, look, if this is a content management solution that gives you the ability on a page-by-page basis to address the following issues, meta tags, which is descriptions and keywords, the title tag, on a page-by-page basis, and then, of course, you've got full content of, uh, control over the content, um, over any of the, uh, HTML tags that are on the page. If you have the ability to do that on a page-by-page basis, then you can do, uh, SEO. Uh, you can do it really well with any sort of CMS, um, again, that's content management solution, uh, system. Um, it, it can become a little, I think maybe what he was really asking was, is this system designed for SEO and does it make SEO incredibly easy? And, uh, and I don't really know, uh, I don't know the answer to that. I just know that, you know, SEO is not rocket science. It's also time-consuming. It's not, it's not easy in the sense of, I don't have to do much. There's no environment that I know of where you just click a couple buttons and you've turned a horrible SEO website into a great SEO website. Um, it takes effort, it takes logic, it takes time, you've got to do the right things, you've got to do the

right things with the descriptions, the titles, the meta, the meta tags in terms of keywords, uh, the actual header tags that are on your, in, in your content, uh, the alt tags, all of those things need to be well done. Then your linking internal to the website has to be well done and it has to be using the right keywords to get you from one page to the next. And then you start working on outbound, uh, links coming from the out into your website, uh, and making sure that those have the right text links. Uh, you know, all of those things are involved in SEO and really, uh, you know, when it, when you boil down to it with any sort of system, including a content management solution system, uh, if you've got full control of all the components you need control of, then it's an SEO-able system. An SEO friendly. So if I'm hearing you correctly, as long as you can manipulate things like title tags, header tags, description tags, and you can manipulate them on a page by page basis, you would, you would support a content management solution as long as you can do those things. Yeah. Well, another way to put that is probably if somebody came to us and they created a system in .NET Nuke and they wanted SEO services, we would say yes. Okay. So we believe that we can work, work, work within that framework and not jeopardize the framework or the system or the website and still be able to create good search engine optimization. Awesome. So I think that, that addresses that. Yeah. Joe, thanks for the, um, for the email. Um, Joe is actually also, uh, the drummer for the music that you hear at the beginning of our, um, of our podcast and for the end. He's actually the, the Latin percussion drummer. So thanks Joe. Thank you, Joe. I hope things are going well for you out in California. Um, all right. So what do we got next? Anything on our list?

Uh, we have another website. We, we received the request for an analysis from a, another website. I don't want to give it out just yet because we haven't received their permission, but a ministry group that it's a consult, a consultant that helps. It is kind of hard to explain. She's a consultant and she's a, uh, Christian based therapist, uh, relationship therapist. She's yeah, I don't know. She does a lot of things. Okay. Uh, but she's a therapist. She helps, she's a, um, she helps people get over their problems. Um, and she also has a ministry. Her goal was, Hey, I'm looking to do some marketing for this website. Tell me what I need to do to market the website, to market the website. Have you given her any marketing advice yet? Um, I know you've given her a lot of advice as of right now. No, no marketing advice. Cause right now what's so important is getting her website ready to be, to, to be marketed. And I say this so often I can bring a thousand, 2000, 10,000 people to your website, but if it's not, if it cannot handle that traffic and funnel it to an end result, I don't want to do that. If it's, if it's not ready, it's just all that traffic is just wasted. You know, it's interesting because we work with another company here in Houston. Uh, that company is called right on the money and they do bulk mail outs. They do a lot for the political campaigns in, in, uh, a little, uh, suburb of Houston called Katie, Texas. And, uh, they're very similar. Uh, one step back, they won't do a bulk mail out for a company that doesn't have a website. And I would actually agree with that. It's, it's because if you don't have a website, you're going to get a much lower ROI on those, uh, on those mailings. Yeah. So, you know, that's just really, we could have easily said, Oh yeah, we can get you on the first page, pay

us. And I think she was even looking at, at a contract with yellow pages publisher for a writer, a contract right at $450 a month. And we could have said, Hey, just give us that money and we'll get you on the first page. And we certainly could have done that. But you know, the reality is, is we really want to create and add value to companies. Yeah. That's what we're really about. So we don't even want that $450 until, uh, we can get that website to where it needs to be. And, and we'll make those recommendations and we're happy to do it because we have in-house services that can take care of it. Uh, and if she's got a designer that she needs to do great, I'd rather her take the time. Uh, actually we'd rather her take the time, go get your website straightened out. You know, let's, let's, let's really make this so that once we start driving traffic to your website, you can actually start converting. And here's something that I run into a lot. And I think a lot of people, they spend, you know, you, you get this website and you spend money on it and you're very proud of it and you're happy with it. And then I talk to them and I say, well, listen, you're going to need to change X, Y, and Z and it's going to cost you. And they go back and they get a quote from me or they get a quote from their original designer and they come back. Well, it's going to cost just as much as it did to rebuild this, to, to make those changes as it did to build the site. And then they're upset and they don't, they don't want to do it. And I try to say, listen, this is not a criticism of your website. These are things that I'm going to tell you that will help you convert traffic. And that's just the bottom line. It's not, I like it. I don't, this is

going to help you. So try to remember that if someone tells you, you might need to redesign your site or do some, some, make some changes to it because it's really, it's all to help you. And that's really what I was doing. Just I made some recommendations. This will help you convert traffic, which is going to help make your SEO or PPC or whatever you do successful. More, more valuable to you. Yeah. Yeah. You did a little analysis for her, I think, um, regarding her, um, counseling costs and how much she was going to spend on that yellow pages. What can you, can you run through that? Well, the first thing when she tells you, I'm thinking about marketing with the, um, using a yellow pages services to put me in some online directories. They also have partnerships with some search engines. They'll do her PPC. And I said, okay, um, well, let's talk ROI here because it's all about your return on your investment. She was going to spend $450 per month. Her main product costs $30 per month. Whipped out a quick calculator, comes out to 16.6 sales to recoup the cost. We'll go ahead and round that to seven, 17 new sales per month or to pay for her advertising. That's a break even point. So at that point I'm like, okay, do you, I mean, let's, you know, do you think that ATT can deliver that? Or I shouldn't say that company name, but do you think that company can deliver that? She didn't really know. So I tried to break it down. Well, let's think about this. How much traffic do you need to, to bring in a, a, how many impressions? Yeah. You know, I mean, prices, you need to bring in a click, how many clicks you need to bring in a sale. Let's go over all this. Uh, and it, it really just, the numbers didn't work out. I said, you know, expecting to get 17 new sales from day one of marketing your website. It's just

not likely with your current pricing structure and with the type of services that you provide. Um, I do think that you can market your website and make money with this service, just not the way that you're currently doing. So we had to talk a little bit about her packages, her business. And really this was just talk about ROI. It wasn't marketing. It wasn't SEO structure. Yeah. It was just, is this going to make sense? If you spend this money and you're expected to bring in, you know, not as much money as you're going to spend, let's rethink your structure. Let's rethink how we can make this profitable for your company. And everyone should do that. You know, no matter what your product or service is if you're going to market, think about your ROI. We, I think we say that all the time. Yeah. It's about ROI. I think it's a really simple calculation. Uh, hopefully most people are doing it. And if you're not, hopefully this, uh, you know, this, this discussion we're having really lends you in the direction of doing it, which is basically if you're going to spend some money on advertising or, or you have this understanding that you're going to start a business or you're in a business and it's got some fixed costs, some fixed monthly costs. You need to just stop and say, okay, where do I make my money and how much of that do I need to sell? If it's a subscription service, how many subscriptions do I need to have? Uh, how many, you know, books do I need to sell? How many sessions do I need to sell? If you're some sort of therapist, um, understand what that number is. So you have a target. So, uh, so that you have full faith that the plan, the marketing plan and the strategy that you have in place together with your website and search engine optimization and everything you're thinking of doing is going to cover those costs. And let's face it, we're not

in business. No one's in business to cover the costs. Is it going to make you the profit is, is maybe you're going to get some residual customers from one month onto the next month and you can anticipate that some percentage is going to grow your business at a, and that's great, but you have to have some sort of strategy that's going to pay for your business, you know, from day one, really, you know, a lot of people talk about how businesses you shouldn't expect to make any money. And I just don't believe that. I think you really should get involved in a business and get involved in it in the right way. So that it's making you money from day one. Um, you know, and you, you found, who's that guy you found that, uh, you found a great business where he started to set for nine, 10 bucks. Yes. Steve Pavlino or something along those lines. Um, I can't pronounce his last name. Sorry. Um, sorry, because I don't remember how it's spelled. Um, but we, we happen to, I was, uh, you know, during lunch, I always stumble upon, you know, finding new programming techniques, finding new business ideas and, and self-help stuff. And I happened across his website and he's got a really good Alexa rating and he talked about his business, uh, his second business. Now his first business, he said he threw a lot of money at it and learned a whole lot of stuff. His second business, he said, I'm going to start this with $9 and 50 cents. That was his cost at the time for domain name. And he wasn't going to invest any more money in it until it started making money. And he just grew his business that way. And like he said, it's got a really good Alexa rank ranking, like 10, 10,000, which is a, is a phenomenal number. So, um, so yeah, you know, make, make, design your business so that it's a, that it's going to make money from day one.

Uh, cause, cause you can actually do that. Um, so on this website, we can, we're going to give you. Yeah. And I can go over some, uh, some other points. Basically, um, the, with this particular business owner, she was affiliated with a church and with her church, she had started some ministry to help people doing some counseling. She got licensed to do counseling. So now she's doing counseling. And one of the big major issues with her site is that her ministry, so affiliate with her church is, is all over her website. And then her products, her counseling services and her eBooks, things that she's written are also on her website. And it really looks like the, uh, a marriage of a business and a Christian ministry. And that to me, this is like a classic example of mixing your business with your pleasure, with pleasure. Yeah. With your personal life. And I recommended, I said, Hey, I think these are all both great things that you're doing. I would recommend that you separate the personal things away from the business. And let's focus on the business. I know, I understand that your, your, your ministry helped you start in this business. Um, but I think that people, when they see, they see a.org domain name, they see that there's a lot of, you know, church related things on your website. They may stay away from it, even though they might need your services. So classic example of mixing business with pleasure. Uh, we'd recommend you don't do it. That was a recommendation. Let's, let's bring the business to the forefront and let's let people know you sell products and services, which was not there. She did not have any calls to action on her website. Uh, nothing that says, Oh, she, she's got one on the very first page. It says advertise with us. She has about four sections blocked off where for someone else to advertise. And, uh, something I told her son, not her, I didn't get a chance to tell her this.

Um, I think it was off of there. Yes. Yeah. Hey, if you want to advertise, you want to sell spots on your website, Hey, go ahead. You know, if it brings in extra money and it doesn't take business away from you and you do it properly, that's your business. So how, how is it that she's going to send people somewhere else and it's not going to take business away from her? Probably. Yeah. Can you explain that? Just, probably not. Probably won't happen. Probably won't happen. You were being very, uh, very diplomatic. Yeah. Yeah. It just, and I'm like, she needs to take that off of there. Don't put advertise with us on there. Um, I just don't have that to begin with. Like even if you don't have ads, you might have one of them, you don't have it the way. And really this looks like, um, a bit of a, of a template. And so, uh, you know, whoever, whoever put the template together just left, Hey, look, these are places that people could advertise with you. And you know, that sounds really good. You're like, Oh, I can make money. The reality is, is you need to have some substantial traffic to make money. And if you've got products of your own services of your own, then you really shouldn't be sending people to other places other than like highly credible fact finding places. True. And I'd say, you know, if you've got the traffic to where, uh, HP wants to buy an ad, you know, you're probably, yeah, you know, you're, you're, you're doing well, exactly. Yeah. You're, you're doing very, very well. So, you know, a big company of Yahoo wants to buy ad space and I'm not, I'm not talking like AdWords space or, you know, some, a large company. Hey, I want to purchase a spot. Dell wants to buy advertising space on your website. Then, Hey, you're doing something right. If they're coming to you, you got serious traffic, but the little advertise with us logos, I said,

Hey, let's drop those right now. It's a brand new website. Let's focus on the business, not on trying to make money from other ways outside of the business. Uh, so let's focus on that. Let's bring your products and services to the forefront. There's nothing on her website that lets me know she sells for these particular products and services. There is one link that says eBooks. And then on that particular page, each, each book is not, there's no way to pay for the book. No way to purchase it. There's no way to purchase it. She's going to work with PayPal. And I said, Hey, that's fine. But it's interesting also, sorry to interrupt. It's, it's interesting also because there's not even a phone number. Yes. Right. So why, why even, why even have this section up? There's no phone number to call. Like if somebody wanted to order this book or buy this book. Well, it's, it's not on the site at all. No, I said this, that was another thing. You got to have your contact information. She didn't have a phone number. She did have an email address. Uh, but see it's some basic things that we talk about on this, on this podcast often calls to action. Make, let's make them take action right now. Didn't have a call to action, uh, contact information, not on every page, no way to call, no way to write a letter to, uh, no contact form where she could sit. Someone could submit a question to some basic things that I, that I said, Hey, let's start with the basics. Uh, I'm trying to think what else? She had plenty of content on the site. Um, she does have meta tags. I'm looking at her source code. She's got some meta tags. Her keywords, uh, are not useful. I think, um, you know, as with a lot of people, they start a website, they, they, they start the website, you know, kind of thinking, okay, the description and the keywords are about me or whatever. The

reality is how many people are going to search for her, at least in the early stages. Uh, certainly her name should be, well, you, you don't even have to bother putting her name because as long as her name is in the text, then, you know, it was probably the only place that's in the text and social show up in the search engines. Um, it really needs, you know, your keywords in her situation need to be about the message, the mission, you know, those things again, that are going to drive people to, uh, through, through searches to her, to her website. So there's a lot of great things we can do, uh, with this particular website. Um, once we get it cleaned up, we'll, we'll, and, and we're going to take off. And, you know, after sitting there explaining with her, you're going to need to make some changes. She was hesitant. Um, her son, who's kind of worked as her, her internet consultant who was hesitant, but now they both understand these changes will help me, um, convert the traffic into sales. So they're going to have to spend some more money and now they're, they're, they're agreeing to it or somewhat. Um, but it, but it's going to be worth it. So don't be afraid of that. Don't be afraid to have to spend more money to make your, um, website convertible, saleable. What, uh, give me, you get the to convert traffic into your desired result, which, uh, in, in most cases of sales. All right. Well, that's a, that's our podcast for today. Thank you guys for listening. We want to remind you that we do upload a podcast every week. Uh, usually it's on Friday. I know, I think next week it's going to be on Thursday cause I'm going to be leaving out of town. Okay. Um, so we upload a podcast every week. So come back and check us out. Look for that new podcast. Uh, we've got a lot of great podcasts in the past. So go ahead

and check those out. Uh, keep sending questions. Yep. Keep questions, answers, requests. Uh, those questions you can send to podcast at e-webstyle.com. And thank you guys for listening until next time. I'm Chris Perez. And this is Paul Hanson. Bye bye for now.

This episode answers

Matthew Bertram, host of The Best SEO Podcast
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint

Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG® (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.

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