Over the weekend, my automatic garage door sprung a spring — meaning I had to pull the red emergency cord to get it to close.

Because I’m a handy-with-tools kind of woman, I could see how to fix it, but given that the pulley / cable combination had broken too, figured it better to call in the pros. (Plus, my garage door, which is solid wood, is *heavy.* As buff as I am, I couldn’t lift it to the open position.)

Going online, I searched for “garage door repair Plaistow” and was presented with the Google map pack.

Read the one review for Cass Shumsky Overhead Garage Door Corporation. The customer was very happy with her garage door repair. Bingo. Called the company on Sunday afternoon and received a call back from Cass Shumsky himself Monday morning.

I told Mr. Shumsky I had found his site through Google and he said, “They say now the yellow pages no longer work, so I’ve been working hard to make sure I show up in Google.”

Even better, to get people to leave a comment on his Website, he entices them with a $5 gas card — an enticement I read about on his Twitter feed. How cool is that? (I left my own comment.)

The entire experience of dealing with Mr. Shumsky was wonderful. Eric, his repair person, showed up at my house at 12:15 and because I had a call scheduled for 1:00, he had my door working again by 12:50. I was very impressed.

Small companies like Shumsky’s call me regularly because business has dropped off and they’re scrambling. I explain about why they need to be online, but I get resistance.

Here’s why being online — with just a simple Website that’s not even optimized — worked for Mr. Shumsky:

1. Because he has a Website and has claimed his Google Places listing, his business appears in the Google map pack.

2. He encourages people to leave testimonials, ensuring future business.

3. Simple site shows what he does — fix and install garage doors.

4. Phone number is on every single page making it easy to call.

But there’s more to it than that. Mr. Shumsky succeeded with me because he treated me with courtesy and respect (I can’t tell you how many male tradespeople have treated me like I’m an idiot), he had his repairman out when he said he would, and the repair was done quickly and cost-effectively.

Yes, the Internet has changed all the rules with regard to marketing. But some of the rules haven’t changed — as seen in my experience with Mr. Shumsky. As he said to me on the phone, “My name is on my business. That means I stand behind my word.”

Thank you, Mr. Shumsky, for reinforcing this “traditional” way of doing business, and thank you for fixing my garage door. It works better than it did before it broke. And, you’ll definitely get my order when I’m ready to order a new garage door.

Network Solutions has been running a radio spot advertising $4.99 Websites, an ad that makes me want to scream.

I want to scream because I get so many calls from small business owners who are pulling out their hair. They’re not getting any traffic, they can’t find their site in Google, and no one is calling them.

Half the time it’s because they’ve fallen prey to these sales pitches.

People, here is the simple truth: Go with a $4.99 Website and you’ll get $4.99 worth of results.

Think about that for a minute. If you’re a manufacturing company with over $1 million in revenues each year, you need to generate XX number of calls and emails to generate that $1 million (or more) year after year.

People are online searching, interacting, reading, emailing, chatting, Tweeting, blogging, video watching, and Facebooking.

Doesn’t it make sense to put your money where your customers are?

Yet I meet people all the time who will spend more money on a daily cup of coffee than they will developing a Website that attracts new customers.

Spending the equivalent of a Grande Iced Caramel Macchiato isn’t going to get you a site that helps you generate $1 million in business — or even a few hundred thousand.

That’s because a $4.99 Website doesn’t even begin to cover the costs associated with successfully marketing your business online, including:

1. Custom Web design — The problem with using those templated, one-size-fits-all Websites offered by all-in-one “Web solutions providers” is that you end up with a a cheap ugly site that looks just like all the other businesses using that cheap ugly template.

Your business is unique and as such, your site should incorporate your brand, your message, and even your own photographs.

Your Website is also your virtual storefront. I don’t know about you, but when I’m out in the real world, I can tell instantly whether or not a business is doing well — I just look at its store front. Either I want to walk in — or I walk away.

Your Website is the same. Don’t scare people away with crappy design.

For great design, you can call Rachel Cunliffe at Cre8d Design who specializes in WordPress, Jim Somers at Sonora DesignWorks, Matthew Nelson at Digital Marketing Frontier, or Mike Smith, a Web developer.

2. Search engine optimization — Forget all the crap you’ve heard about putting keywords in a “meta tag.” Google is constantly changing and adjusting to marketplace revolutions, including Twitter, Facebook, and video, and what was true yesterday isn’t true today.

If you want people to find your site in the search engines, you’ll need to hire an SEO firm who knows what it’s doing. You can call someone like me, or Jill Whalen at High Rankings, Andy Komack or Derek Edmond at Komarketing Associates, or Susan O’Neill at @Website Publicity. (I know all of these people and how they work and *highly* recommend them.)

3. Content, content, content — Your Website is a dynamic entity that needs to breathe and grow. You help it grow by constantly creating new content: blogs, e-books, white papers, reports, guides, videos, podcasts, e-newsletters, articles, Webinars, etc.

Ignore this step and you are hosed. It’s that simple.

4. Social media — You use social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, YouTube, Google Buzz, etc. to alert your customers, fans, followers, influencers, and others that you have new content.

These people pass your content on their fans, followers, influencers and others — driving traffic and building links to your site.

Ignore this step — and step #1 — and your site will wither and die no matter how much great content you have.

5. Time — Whether you do all of this yourself, hire an experienced online marketing person for your team or outsource it, marketing your Website takes time. Lots of time.

Web marketing is changing constantly. Last year at this time we didn’t have Google Buzz or Facebook’s new “I like” feature. Matt Cutts hadn’t yet said that Google is looking to see if sites have video — and ranking them accordingly. Smart phones were cool but marketers didn’t really see that mobile marketing is dramatically changing how we all approach the Web.

Sure, you can spend $4.99 and build yourself a cheap Website. But if had the same $4.99, I’d buy a cup of coffee and then sit down to write my resume — because relying on a cheap Website to grow my business would essentially mean I’d be out of business.

Adding a PDF, such as a brochure, white paper, or e-book, to a B2B Website makes sense: PDFs are relatively easy to download, they keep highly graphical information intact, and instead of coding a new page of content, you simply link to the file.

However, PDFs do have a few disadvantages. They’re harder to optimize than straight HTML files. And, companies often post links to PDFs without supporting text. This means that PDFs often appear in the SERPs (search engine results pages) lacking proper a Title tag and a nice description that compels people to click the listing.

And, too, people hesitate to click a PDF link within the SERP, says Google’s SEO master Matt Cutts in a March 14, 2010 interview with Eric Enge of StoneTemple.

A few things to note from the Cutts interview with regard to PDFs (and I note these because I often get these questions):

1. Yes, Google does index PDF files.

2. Cutts doesn’t address whether PDFs pass PageRank.

3. PDFs are not treated the same as HTML files. Cutts states that PDFs “are kind of like Flash in that they aren’t a file format that’s inherent and native to the web, but they can be very useful. In the same way that we [Google] try to find useful content within a Flash file, we try to find the useful content within a PDF file.”

He goes on to add that “users don’t always like being sent to a PDF. If you can make your content in a Web-Native format, such as pure HTML, that’s often a little more useful to users than just a pure PDF file” (emphasis mine).

But it makes sense in certain cases to format information as a PDF — especially something like an e-book, replied Enge.

Cutts’ response? “I think of PDF files as the last thing that people encounter, and users find it to be a little more work to open them. People need to be mindful of how that can affect the user experience.”

So how can you improve users’ experience when they encounter PDFs on your B2B Website? Three very simple steps include:

1. Develop a landing page for each high-value PDF. Whether you’re offering an e-book, white paper or report, develop a page for the content that includes a summary of the information people will find — and include a link to this page on your home page, “Resources” page, press releases and blog posts. This will help increase downloads as the summary adds credibility and improves trust in your content.

If you’re offering a number of reports or e-books on one page, the way Marketo does (and the way I do, too), be sure to include a brief blurb with each offering — versus overwhelming people with a page of links.

2. Optimize the landing page. Be sure to include keyword-rich Title and meta tag information, a headline for the page, and your keywords in the summary. (And, don’t forget the call-to-action!)

3. Use the same report name across all platforms. I read a fair number of reports, white papers and e-books and one problem I often run into is that when I search for a piece of content by name, I can’t find it.

When I hear of an interesting piece of content, for example, and a link isn’t included to it, I will cut and paste the title directly into Google — and am always surprised when I can’t find the content. That’s because the company calls the piece of content by one name within a social media context or a print ad and by another name on its Website.

When promoting your content, use the exact title of the piece when posting to social media, during interviews, on press releases, and within your Website. This makes it easy for people to find who search for it.

Here’s an example of a ReachForce e-book landing page that includes a summary about the e-book as well as link to the PDF.

Related Content:

Blog post: A+ Ad Promoting a White Paper: D+ URL

Article: Five Tips for Ensuring Prospects Find Your B2B White Papers

Teleclass transcript / mp3 — SEO for White Papers: How to ensure your white papers rank high on search engines, a teleclass I did with Mike Stelzner in 2007.

Having spent over five hours writing Web content changes into a Word doc in order to send to the client’s Web designer, I realized that WordPress is one of those “best kept secrets” that businesses need to know.

Many people know of WordPress as being a blogging platform, but few realize you can use it for your company Website as well. I’ve come up with 10 reasons why small business owners and marketers should consider a WordPress Website.

1. It’s easy to make changes — Typos, SEO tweaks, copy changes, all are easy to do. Just open a page, make a change, and you’re done. No more sending Word docs to designers or trying to do it yourself using complex programs such as Dreamweaver.

2. You can find a plugin for just about anything — Want breadcrumb navigation? There’s a plugin for that. Want to allow people to view your most popular blog posts or retweet them? You can find plugins for those functions as well.

3. You can incorporate your blog — Instead of maintaining two sites, you can add your blog to your Website and in the process, send all that really lovely traffic to one site. Woot!

4. You can incorporate your newsletter — One thing I struggled with for a long time is newsletter html redundancy. Not only did I have to produce code for the Constant Contact interface (xhmtl, to be exact) but I had to produce html code for the Website in order to archive each issue. It was a total pain in the butt and cost money, too.

Thanks to WordPress, I can now easily add each issue to my site and in the process, my newsletter archive page is updated automatically. Even better, people can now leave comments on each issue versus having to email me.

5. You can make SEO tweaks on the fly — Using the All in One SEO Pack plugin, it’s really easy to develop Title and meta tags, plus the plugin tells you the character count of each. Previous to WordPress, I had to write my Title and meta tags in Word and then use the “word count” feature to determine the character count.

When you want to make minor changes to a tag, you open the page and make them. Presto, you’re done.

6. It’s easy to add new pages — Once you have your Website template in place, it’s super easy to make new pages and post them to to your site — an important consideration now that we’re all content creators / publishers.

7. It’s easy to add video — As Matt Cutts of Google stated, the search engine is looking to see if sites now incorporate video. WordPress makes is very easy to add video clips.

8. Your site is smart-phone friendly — WordPress sites render really well on iPhones, Android and other smart phone devices.

9. You save time — Instead of back and forth, back and forth between multiple people over email, you can create a page in WordPress and have people view it and/or edit it in “Draft” mode.

10. You save money — You can make lots of simple changes on your own in a quarter of the time. (For more advance changes, I do call on my WordPress designer. I also use him for help with plugins as some of them can get a little tricky.)

Can you think of other reasons why small business owners and marketers need a WordPress-enabled Website?

The founders of HubSpot, Inc., Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, last week announced the publication of their new book, Inbound Marketing: Getting Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs (Wiley).

Full disclosure: I edited this book, so this post isn’t a book review nor was I paid (or even asked) to write it.

. . .

The one reason I really like Inbound Marketing is because Brian and Dharmesh talk about viewing one’s Website as a city or hub. You can have a Website that’s a small town, like Bath, New Hampshire (pop: 893), which has one road in and out — like this:

Or, you can have a Website that’s New York City where all roads, trains, buses, and planes lead to it — like this:

Because a small town Website has only one road to it, it has little in the way of visitors.

A large city Website has hundreds of ways to visit due to links from blogs, industry portals, other Websites, social media, and search engines — hence it gets loads of traffic all day every day.

If you want your Website to be an asset, you must view it as a thriving metropolis, and as Brian stated at HubSpot’s book launch party on Friday, October 16, you have to use all of the tools currently available to encourage people to visit it.

The more roads or paths you create, the more traffic you drive to your site, and the more leads / conversions / sales you get.

That in a nutshell is the basis of inbound marketing (a term coined by Brian and Dharmesh).

Brian and Dharmesh wrote Inbound Marketing because they wanted to share what they’ve learned as the founders of HubSpot and why marketing is changing. In it you’ll find their explanation for why inbound marketing works, and why it’s really important that you “get” the concept of inbound, as well as hundreds of practical tips for creating your own inbound marketing hub.

Although I consider myself a fairly sophisticated Web marketer, I learned quite a bit while editing Inbound Marketing. The book is an easy and interesting read, it’s geared toward small business owners, and it’s full of “real world” case studies on companies, from Zappos.com to Whole Foods Market, using inbound marketing tactics to reach customers and prospects.

So be sure to pick up your copy of Inbound Marketing — and be sure to download HubSpot’s new e-book: Hiring in the DARC Ages: Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?

The e-book is a chapter from the Inbound Marketing book and it’s really fabulous as Brian and Dharmesh explain how to hire people who understand social media and inbound marketing — and how to apply it. After reading it, I realized I bring far more value to my clients than I knew.

Brian and Dharmesh, thank you again for the opportunity to work with you, and congratulations on your book and business success.

The SEO world is abuzz with Google’s confirmation that it does NOT use the keywords in the meta keyword tag when determining how a site ranks in the search engine.

In its Google Webmaster Blog, Google states, “Google doesn’t use the ‘keywords’ meta tag in our web search rankings.”

For those of you who don’t know, the meta keyword tag is found in your HTML source code. To find it, open your Web browser and click “View” and then “Source.” This will open a new page where you can see the HTML code. As an example, I’ve shown Yahoo’s! Title and meta tags below:

I’m glad Google repeated their stance about the keyword tag again — because quite frankly, I’m still amazed at the number of people who think that the keyword tag is important.

One prospect called me a few months ago, for example, asking about my SEO services. When I gave him a quote, he choked due to sticker shock and said he had to “get back to me” (re: find a cheaper alternative).

He called me a few weeks later to exclaim, “My site’s optimized! I found someone to do it for me.”

I had to laugh because the SEO “expert” had simply put keywords in the keyword meta tag.

I’ve had other companies say, “We want to rank for this keyword,” and when I say, “Well, you need content to support that keyword” (as in a new page or pages plus links), I usually hear, “Can’t you just put keywords in the keyword tag?”

Short answer: No.

So people, listen up. Google does not and never did look at the keywords in the keyword tag. Period. If you don’t want to listen to me, do pay attention to Google’s Matt Cutts.

According to the experts at Planet Ocean, publishers of Search Engine News, “. . . very soon any business, small, large, local or international must include a plan and strategy to incorporate Local Search optimization efforts into their online marketing plan or be left to catch up on those who do.”

This is basically the same thing I said in my MarCom Strategist newsletter, “Increase Business with Local Search” (I read SE News after publishing it, so obviously great minds think alike!).

In short, local search is going to be BIG! HUGE! (as Julia Roberts says in the movie Pretty Woman) so it pays to take steps now to ensure customers / prospects can find your site when they’re searching for it — whether they’re down the street or across the U.S.

In addition to having a site optimized for search engines, you also need to get your business listed in the three search engines’ local listing centers.

Before you begin, take a moment to ensure you have accounts with all three search engines. You’ll need a Windows Live ID for Bing.

Google Local Business Center
Yahoo! Local
Bing Local Listing Center

Once you open your accounts, you’re effectively creating profiles people can see, so you’ll want to take a minute to ensure that people you don’t know are viewing only the information you want them to see.

Setting up your local listings is pretty easy but can take a good half hour or more — and after having just added my listing to Yahoo and Bing, I have three tips you can do before-hand to help you save some time.

1. Create a tag line — Each listing center requires you to include a tag line of approximately 150 to 200 characters that describes your business. Be sure to develop a tag line that describes what you do using action verbs and plain English.

2. Write a description — Yahoo and Bing also require that you include a longer description where you can flesh out the services you offer and what makes you unique from your competition.

I created a really good one for Yahoo and then kicked myself when I realized that I couldn’t access my Enhanced Yahoo Listing since it’s pending review — hence, I had to make a new one for Bing from memory.

So be sure to have your tag line and description ready to go in a separate document when updating or adding your local listings. (This step ensures that your tag and description are the same across all three platforms, too.)

3. Have images ready to go — All three local listing platforms let you upload images, including photographs of your products (or yourself) and videos. Save time by having these images and/or URLs ready to go.

In addition to the basic listings, Yahoo offers an Enhanced Listing for $9.95 per month and a Featured Listing for $24.95 per month.

And speaking of Yahoo, you can also pay $299 annually to be listed in the Yahoo Directory. Now, I’ve read in places that getting listed is good for SEO as Google considers the directory a trusted source. (This is because a “real” person reviews each directory listing.)

However, some people believe that a Yahoo Directory listing can adversely affect your Yahoo rankings, so I can’t advise you whether you should pay the fee or not.

And, if you were grandfathered into the Yahoo Directory the way I was (and hence don’t have to pay the $299 annual fee) and you’re listed in the wrong category but your URL is correct, just leave it alone (which seems to be the general consensus).

And that’s it for setting up local search listings. Once they’re complete, you’ll then want to ask your customers to post online reviews to sites such as Yelp — which is a Google Partner — as reviews are now part of the local search algorithm.

When I give presentations and people ask if they should be on LinkedIn or Facebook or both, I tell them that both social networking sites fill a similar function but that the social “rules” are very different.

LinkedIn is like a professional meeting or face-to-face networking function. You know how to dress (no jeans or sexy clothing) and mingle with people.

You know that you don’t pick up chicken with your fingers or talk too much about yourself (the best networkers always ask lots of questions of the people to whom they’re talking).

In short, “business professional” is a mode of behavior and dress that we all know and feel comfortable with.

That’s why many people like LinkedIn — it feels comfortable and familiar.

Facebook, according to the anecdotal evidence I hear, causes anxiety. This is because Facebook is like attending a Saturday BBQ at your boss’s house.

The event itself brings up a whole host of questions for which the rules aren’t clear — especially if you’re in corporate or work for a conservative company:

Which clothes should you wear? For women, this is particularly tricky: can you wear the sexy sundress or should you stay with something more modest?

Can you eat that BBQ chicken and corn on the cob with your fingers — which can become pretty messy — or stick with something safe?

Should you drink?

Do you bring the spouse? The kids? The pet dog?

What do you talk about? Business? Personal? The books you’re reading? What if you don’t read and watch trashy reality TV shows instead? Is that something you want everyone to know?

Now I know many people use Facebook quite well for both business and pleasure — and that they’re able to keep their personal lives separate from their business lives via the judicious use of groups within Facebook.

I also know that people feel quite relieved when I tell them they really don’t have to use Facebook for business.

In fact, many people tell me they use it only to keep up with far-flung family and don’t use it for business — that’s why they use LinkedIn.

And some people even admit they don’t have a Facebook page at all.

Here’s the bottom line with regard to social media: Do what makes you feel comfortable.

Along that note, I decided to delete my Facebook profile altogether.

After reading The Power of Less, I decided it was time to simplify my life, including my online life.

So, I deleted my profile in order to stop worrying about the fact that I had a profile that I virtually ignored.

How do you use Facebook and/or LinkedIn — and how do you feel about each one? I’d love to hear your story.

Yield Software is offering its new free e-book, The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small & Growing Businesses (no registration required).

(Full disclosure: Yield is my client and I helped put the book together.)

The 70-page e-book explains why small and medium-sized businesses need to sit up and pay attention to the Link Economy.

As authors Matt Malden and Derek Gordon state in the book, it’s no longer enough to simply have a website.

These days, you must understand and employ the Link Economy — which means you must create content that other site owners will want to link to and in turn, you must link out to other content.

The Link Economy concept is something I knew about based on my own business and how people find me but I didn’t connect the dots in a big picture way until I began working on the book.

What hit home for me: links don’t just happen between website and website.

They happen when someone includes a link to your blog post via a Tweet, another blog post, a news article, a Facebook or LinkedIn comment, or an e-newsletter article.

They happen in iPhone apps, in YouTube videos, and within e-books like this one.

And they happen when someone comments on your blog and you comment on theirs.

In short, we are a Linked Economy and the sooner you as a business owner or marketer understand this — and take advantage of it — the further ahead you’ll be.

A Silicon Valley start-up, Yield Software offers its Yield Software Web Marketing Suite.

The software enables small and mid-sized businesses to automatically perform multivariate testing for SEO, PPC, and landing page optimization across all three search engines — and then serves up the best performing pages automatically in real time.

Based on my own experience working with small companies, this type of software is desperately needed as many small mom and pop shops are losing their shirts on PPC campaigns and have no clue to how to maximize SEO and landing page tactics.

Be sure to download the e-book (it’s chockablock full of Web marketing info) and do check out Yield Software.

You can test drive the software via a risk-free, no obligation demo.

According to the new 2009 Lead Generation Benchmark by ExperiGenExperts and Mac McIntosh, Inc., the vast majority of B2B lead generation professionals use multiple methods to reach key groups of prospective customers.

“Leads from Website” topped the list of most productive lead generation tactics at 59.4%, with Inside Sales/Telemarketing (51.7%), Outside Sales/Account Executive (47.2%), and Email (39.4%) rounding out the top four lead generation methods.

B2B companies continue to use tradeshows (27.2%), direct mail (20.6%), and social networking (14.4%), but these sources don’t yield high conversion rates.

That companies see high conversion rates from Website leads isn’t surprising. According to a June 20, 2009 B2B Magazine article, “Natural Search Adherents Learn the Value of Tweets and Tweaks,” B2B marketers have realized in the last six months that search engine optimization (SEO) is the “most effective way to get traffic, leads, and sales.”

According to the article, SEO is on the rise due to the drop in PPC ad spend.

Both the survey and the article struck me as a bit funny. I feel like I’ve been preaching the benefits for SEO for years and only now companies are “getting” it.

These days, not having an optimized site is just plain stupid and short-sighted given the fact that we’re now a linked economy — and that SEO and search is dramatically changing.

Due to these changes, simply having a Website won’t suffice if a company wants to remain in business.

Interestingly, about one third of benchmark participants believe that some lead generation activities generate responses that should go directly to sales for follow-up, including leads from tradeshows, Web inquiries, leads from channel partners and responses from email campaigns.

I found this interesting because the benchmark survey didn’t define the type of lead coming from the Web — someone who downloaded a white paper? Attended a Webinar? Signed up for a free trial or a demo?

A person who downloads a white paper for example, is not as qualified as someone who signs up for a free 30-day trial.

However, according to the benchmark survey, the majority of respondents “believe that most responses from lead generation activities need to be further qualified before being passed on to sales as leads.”

The benchmark survey also asked respondents who should provide the list or database for lead generation. Two-thirds (66.7%) stated that marketing was responsible for providing prospecting lists for lead generation.

As the benchmark survey points out, while two-thirds of respondents believe that marketing is responsible for lead generation, a little more than half said they tie marketing strategies to sales goals — with nearly one in five indicating they seldom or never tie their marketing strategies to sales goals.

This piece of data lead me to ask, “How does marketing get in tune with sales?” I often hear anecdotal evidence that marketing will develop great campaigns that sales does not bother to take advantage of.

Clearly, it behooves marketers to work with sales to learn what they need as well as learn how to determine campaign ROI and ensure their efforts are tied to business objectives. (Which is why I’ve stated in the past that B2B marcom professionals need more than the ability to manage multiple projects and write well.)

You can purchase the 2009 B2B Lead Generation Benchmark at introductory price of $159. The report includes all data plus detailed conclusions and recommendations by Patrika Hardnett, President and CEO of ExperiGenExperts, and Mac McIntosh, the B2B sales and marketing consultant.

This is one of the few reports to provide B2B benchmarking data — and with all the chatter about social media, inbound marketing, etc. — is a timely resource all B2B marketing and sales professionals need in order to help justify larger investments for lead generation or to justify existing budgets.