Our Latest Site

We just finished our latest site: www.romapm.com

The father son commercial plumbing and industrial mechanical company is a small business with locations in Voorheese, NJ, Philadelphia, PA, and Orlando Florida. They have been in business for over 30 years and have a great reputation. Previously Roma used word of mouth, networking and the yellow pages for all their marketing needs.

They are now looking to expand their operations and bring on some new employees and clients.

The main goals of the site were to convey their professionalism, talent and let people know how to contact them for all their plumbing and light mechanical needs (HVAC, Boilers, etc). Read the rest of this entry »

Helpful WordPress Pluggin

For those of you that market on Twitter and run a WordPress blog I wanted to give you information on a pluggin that I love.

Tweet Blender

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweet-blender/

It installs easily and displays your latest tweets in your sidebar area.

Here is how I do it:

Go to pluggins section of your wordpress admin.
At the top click the “Add New” button/link.
Search for “Tweet Blender”

Click the link to “Install Now”

Next click “Activate Pluggin”

Now you have Tweet Blender installed it’s time to do something with it.

Go to your “Appearance” link in the left navigation of your Dashboard.
select “Widgets” sub menu.
You get a list of all the available widgets – and over on the right are all the areas on your site.

Decide where you want to place the latest tweets and drag “Tweet Blender” (no the tweet favorites or tags) in the desired section.

I’m going to put it in my sidebar under categories and follow the hashtag SEO (#SEO)

click save.

You are done!

Very easy, no advanced configuration needed.
If you do want to go more advanced you can set a bunch of options in the settings page and even follow multiple topics or people on your blog.

Very cool and very simple.

The Very First Thing You Need to Do for SEO

The very first thing you need to do is install Google Analytics.

Seriously, if you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your site, you need to stop reading right now and go install it.

I’m not kidding. Stop reading and go install it. It’s easy!

OK, since you are still reading I can assume you fall under one of the following categories:

You have Analytics installed – Great! stop reading this post and move on to something more interesting
You don’t know what Google Analytics is or how to install it – It’s OK, read on, I’ll help
You don’t believe me – you are a fool

What is Google Analytics?

It is a small piece of code you add to your website that sends information to Google.
Google crunches the data and gives you amazing reports that help you make money.
You don’t really need to know what it is to know you need it.
If you are hiring any SEO or Webdesign company and they don’t tell you to get analytics – I wouldn’t necessarily trust them.
If you’d like a more complex explanation check Google’s site.

How to get Google Analytics

It is extremely easy, don’t get discouraged, just do it.

Very basically you:
Go to www.google.com/analytics – sign up – fill in all needed info about your site – add a small piece of code to your site.

If you follow along Google’s step by step guide you should have no problem getting the small piece of code you will need to add to your site.

You can click the image to the right to see what my code looks like.

If you are using wordpress you would add the “analyticator” pluggin to wordpress and add the code there.

If you are using some other CMS or hand coded site you will need to add the code to your header or footer. Google would prefer you put it in the top of the code so it tracks even if your page fails to load, but footer works fine as well.

After you get it installed go back to analytics and click the “check status” button to make sure it’s working.

That’s it – you are now tracking all the important information about your site that anyone helping you on your site will need.

Now leave it alone and let it do it’s job.

I’ll do another post next month with the reports you should be paying attention to.

Local Listing Special

When looking for a florist, a pizza shop, or a place to host their next event – People start by searching Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Get your business listed in Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local – all for only $100!

Even if you don’t have a website, you can still have a listing. Help customers find you!

Holy Bad Design Batman

If you ever use a design company that has an ad that looks like this, you deserve to be removed from all future ad buying decisions.

Just in case you are color blind, or all the way blind, let’s take this ad apart.

Uses bad gradient in every bit of heading text. Guess he just learned how to use that tool in class this week?
too many different fonts.
no respect for the color wheel
did you notice he/she also uses the gradient in every one of his/her backgrounds?
everything is in boxes with thick borders
too much bold. Where are my eyes supposed to focus?

Might as well point out a couple of good things while I’m here:

No typing mistakes. You’d be surprised how many ads have them
Stays on target. Tells you what you get in 3 bullet points per item

You don’t need a website

If you don’t want customers, don’t want to grow, don’t want to expand, then you don’t need a website.
Your website is not a place to send people from your business cards, it’s a place to get business and find new customers. It’s important and it’s easy. Don’t be a fool!

When I’m looking for tree services in Cherry Hill NJ I don’t look at the phone book. I don’t go to my roledex and flip through cards. I go to Google. I go to Google and I search “Cherry Hill Tree removal” or “Cherry Hill tree service” or similar. I asked my wife who we used last time and she said to “Google” it up and it should be there.

I know the last time I had my trees pruned I used Express something or other. Guess what, they don’t come up. Even though they are located in Maple Shade NJ and I’ve seen their trucks in my neighborhood, and I used them!

We would all love it if our customers thought of us first when thinking of purchasing products and services, but they are lazy. Google has made them that way. They are going to “Google” the type of service they are looking for.

according to my research “tree service cherry hill nj” receives 150 searches a month.
Express Tree NJ – 60 searches a month.

That’s 140 potential customers that are seeking out your business and can’t find your company.

Do yourself a favor. Stop wasting time talking to your cousin about building a site and get serious about making money and growing your small business.

Small Businesses Should Use WordPress

I have been telling my clients for years that they should take a good look at wordpress before investing in a new website.

Seriously. You can get the fundamental root of your site up in 8 hours of work instead of hiring teams of people to do it.

http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/03/28/top-10-reasons-for-building-small-business-websites-with-wordpress/

I do a couple of websites a week for people using wordpress as the back end.

Want me to build your site on wordpress?

For 200 bucks I’ll install, configure, add the pluggins I use, and give you a 30 minute lesson on wordpress.

I will not do the graphic design for that price When you start getting into the look of the site you are talking more about a marketing plan, market research, SEO, Customer Relations.

Of course I do those services as well, but I get paid a lot more for that type of work