January 2009 Update
Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that the holidays are behind us already. Although with the retail sector pushing Christmas since before Halloween, I have to admit that I am a bit "Christmas-ed out". But at the same time, I am very anxious to get the new year off to a big start with a huge bang, so I wanted to touch base with you so that you can enjoy it too.
To get the new year started and continue throughout 2009, there are some things you should look at doing to keep the leads coming in. Now with that said, you probably know by now that not all leads are created equally. I would rather see 1 or 2 quality leads a month from you rather than see a LOT of leads where the majority of them are garbage.
One thing you may be wondering is how T1 and larger circuit sales are looking and predicted to be with the current semi-dismal state of today's economy. The answer is that Telarus has seen little impact! Keep in mind that T1's and larger circuits are not typically a luxury but instead are a necessary means of allowing a company to keep doing business and further expanding their business. Yes, they could save all kinds of money by throwing out all their phones too, but then they might as well just shut their doors and give up because the phones, like the higher-end circuits are not a luxury, but a necessary means of being able to effectively do business.
Please be aware that virtually NOTHING offered by ShopForT1 is designed for residential use. You need to get rid of the residential mindset. While there is money to be made in the residential market, those products are in your Commission River portfolio. T1 (and larger) circuits and Ethernet are not appropriate for residential use in 99.9% of the cases, and marketing ShopForT1 products and services to the residential market is going to result in frustration for you, as well as a very distinct lack of sales.
For your online marketing efforts, I understand that you have almost zero control over who clicks your links, nor their "lack of mental agility" to be politically correct. But there are many things you DO have control over, and if you are marketing the wrong keywords, you are going to be attractive to the wrong market, which will inevitably result in zero sales.
Let's take an example of ranking for a keyword. What the user sees:
Example 1: Click here for great pricing on T1 lines.
Example 2: Click here for great pricing on T1 lines.
Do you see the difference in those two lines? The huge and monumental difference between these two lines is the ANCHOR TEXT and that anchor text is what the search engines use to give you ranking power and link juice. In example #1, you are ranking for the keyword phrase "Click here". Is that really what you intended to rank for? I didn't think so. But in the second example, you get ranking power and link juice for the keyword phrase "T1 lines" which is what you really wanted to accomplish. Do you see the difference?
Here is what the HTML code behind those lines use. Since this is an HTML document, I will use parenthese "()" instead of angle brackets "<>" in these examples:
Example 1:
(a href="http://yoursite.com")Click here(/a) for great pricing on T1 lines.
Example 2:
Click here for great pricing on (a href="http://yoursite.com")T1 lines(/a).
Trying to rank for the keyword phrase "click here" is going to net you nothing. Nada, zip, zero, zilch. But if you do a search on Google or any other search engine, you will find a horrendous number of companies that rank well for the keyword "click here", including companies that should know better such as Adobe!
Be very aware of what keyword phrases you are trying to get ranking power and link juice for so that you can avoid this huge "beginner mistake".
How do you find out what keyword phrases to use? There are a gazillion products out there that provide this information, and many of them are quite good if you want to pay for the software, but one of the most valuable and also FREE tools for this is the Google Keyword External tool, which can be found at:
Google Keyword Tool External
There are dozens of similar programs out there, many of them also free, but since Google controls more than 70% of the search engine market by some reports, doesn't it only make sense to find out what Google thinks is important? Ya, I thought so too.
One very interesting aspect that has recently been reported in several SEO forums is a big difference in how Yahoo ranks you compared to how Google ranks you. In short, Yahoo seems to put more emphasis (read "ranking power and link juice") on anchor text that is contained WITHIN your article or paragraph/verbiage, whereas Google seems to place less emphasis on that and relies more heavily on the anchor text on your links page or links section of your site. Again, the studies seem to indicate this but obviously neither Google nor Yahoo will confirm what they use to provide ranking power, so this is just something to be aware of.
Be very cautious about what keywords and phrases you want to rank for. I would definitely NOT recommend the term "broadband". That term has been thrown around by the carriers who are pushing DSL and cable (barf, gag, spew...) to residential customers, and most residential customers are not tech-savvy enough to understand that although T1 and greater circuits are indeed "broadband" by technical definition, your SFT1 site has nothing to offer the residential customer. Even "business DSL" is typically not reliable in the long term nor applicable to the residential customer, and I won't touch it because as I have explained in previous newsletters, business DSL is not worth my time to sell nor worth your time to market. Also note that a "home office" is still residential and rarely needs or can afford a T1 line.
One of your most important assets in gaining ranking power and juice are links. Have you investigated the FREE linking package that has been made available to you? This was discussed and demoed in the SFT1 agent training call a couple of months ago and is highlighted in your Commission River back office. If you have stand-alone sites, one of the single-most powerful things you can do for your site(s) is to get inbound links to them, and this plugin allows that to happen, painlessly and seamlessly. It will even check to make sure that your link to them is still being reciprocated with their link back to you.
With linking, however, be aware that you want to keep your inbound links coming from a "good neighborhood". First and foremost, another site in the same or similar market or industry is your best bet. Beyond that, look closely at the link to see if it will help you or actually be a detriment to your ranking. For example, consider the following two requests from sites that want to do a link exchange with one of your sites:
Example #1: http://top-gambling-site.com PR4
Example #2: http://drugs-for-you-right-now.com PR5
Example #3: http://underwater-basket-weaving-made-easy.com PR2
At first glance, you might be tempted to accept all three link requests. At second glance, you might be tempted to accept link #1 and/or link #2 simply because they have a Google Page Rank (PR) of 4 and 5 respectively, and ignore link request #3.
Wrong answer! Regardless of the PR rank, link #3 is the only one from the link requests above that you should consider. Links from gambling sites, porn sites, drug sites, etc, regardless of their PR ranking, are going to hurt you more than help you at the end of the day because they originate from bad neighborhoods. I would accept link request #3 over #1 and #2 any day of the week and would DECLINE the link requests from #1 and #2 in a heartbeat.
Summary
I appreciate you and your efforts and look
forward to continuing to work with those of you who are as serious about this as I am, so that we can both reach our goals.
I appreciate your leads and your efforts with ShopForT1, and you
need to know that I do take leads very seriously, since without
QUALITY leads, neither of us make money.
Please
feel free to contact me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions.
God
bless,