Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Networking Outside Your Normal Circles

I always do what I can to network outside of the IT community. When I look at the clients I have, almost none of them have come from meetings with fellow IT community members. First there's Tom Dampsy, the London Ontario Real Estate Agent who I met at Toastmasters. Next is Don Hill the clothing wholesaler who I met through Forest City Surplus and who I designed a website for his wife's baby wear business. Then there is Franz Cauchi from Funclips Coupons who is a fellow Freedom Party member. I remember introducing myself to Franz at a Freedom Party post-election meeting in 2008. To my surprise right before were ready to start a Freedom Party executive meeting he said that he remembered that I was a website developer and asked if I was accepting any new clients. I gave him a business card and we were in touch later that week. After a few e-mails I convinced him of the value of my search engine optimization and website improvement services.

I'm quite impressed with the improvements I did for Franz and his Funclips Coupons website. If you're unfamiliar with Funclips let me give you a little bit of background on the organization. Funclips is an organization which sells coupon books in the greater Toronto area (Toronto, Mississauga, Barrie, and Oakville). In the past customers were simply given a list of businesses that had advertised in the coupon book. Now prospective customers can be more certain of their purchase because all the coupons that are in the book are listed at the bottom of each city webpage. The additional coupon details should have a positive effect on long tail searches for the businesses listed in the coupon book.

One thing that surprised me about Funclips from an SEO standpoint was that despite the fact the website had been in existence for over 10 years it had almost no backlinks. I would have thought a company that had a web presence for 10+ years would have more than a few backlinks. I guess this proves that if one does not go out and actively seek backlinks on an occasional basis one will not get any backlinks. It will be interesting to see what happens to Funclips coupon books and its Google rankings. When I started it wasn't showing up for almost any search term. It will be interesting to see what the results will be when I'm done.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Trying Out New SEO tools

I've been experimenting with Squidoo, Blinkweb, and Weebly to see how they work with SEO and linking.

I just created a bunch of new real estate advice pages for my friend and client Tom Dampsy who is a real estate agent. 15 Key Questions You Should Ask Before Buying Property, determining what you need in a home, advice on planning your move, understanding the costs of selling your home, 4 factors in selling your home, Why Own Your Own Home Instead of Renting and what REALTORS need from you.

It will be interesting for me to find out if any of these three websites will even be discovered by Google.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Is Your January Going To Be A Slow Month Or Your Best Month Ever?

I was determined last year to make January the best month for sales at the Forest City Surplus website. I just needed a reason to make customers buy from our site. I found tons of super warm clothing and created an extreme cold weather clothing section. Then I prepared a newsletter to our newsletter subscribers showcasing that collection of extreme cold weather clothing.

Thanks to being in the moment and pushing what's in season I helped turn what is usually the slowest month in retail became the best month of the year.

So I challenge you to think of good reasons how this slow month could be your busiest and best month.

It’s easy… mechanics could advertise remote starters, battery blankets or block heaters. Tax preparers can offer people earlier returns of their tax returns (and their refund cheques).

Take a look at your business. What reason can you give your customers to buy from you this January?