I have never spoken with someone who has been happy with their experience buying SEO services from Network Solutions. I have not hired them myself. So, I have no first hand experience. And I welcome them to defend themselves in my comments. However, I've had a handful of clients who had negative experiences with them.

This is from a colleague:

They hired Network Solutions to do some SEO work and it did not yield more traffic and leads.

This is from a client:

"Network Solutions and [my business] were not a good match. Their communications were not timely and their reports were not user friendly."

The interesting part is that I am sure Network Solutions knows what they're doing. Here's a video with an exec at Network Solutions. She knows SEO and has good advice:

Here's the problems I have with Network Solutions:

• SEO is rarely successful, where success is defined by a measurable marketing ROI, if it is a one time outsourced task. Network Solutions sells it as a one time outsourced task. SEO requires a collaborative effort between an SEO expert and the subject matter expert who is creating compelling content. In house subject matter experts can be trained to do the basics and be successful if they're blogging and doing keyword research. But, if you're going to outsource SEO, you need a long term partner. It's not like buying advertising. It's more like hiring a salesperson who focusses on lead generation/lead qualification.
• It is extremely difficult to guarantee results. I've helped 50+ clients rank for their keywords and I rarely ever guarantee a ranking for a specific keyword. In other words, I know what it takes, but I don't make specific guarantees. My guarantee is that if you do what we tell you, you will generate more traffic and leads within a few months. Network Solutions guarantees top 10 results in one of a few top search engines. This is sneaky and doesn't necessarily translate into results. Surprisingly, or not, many small business owners fall for the guarantee. I'm reminded of the scene from Tommy Boy when he suggests crapping in a box and putting a guarantee on it - in order to battle a sales objection. I might start using that line.

I'm fine with Network Solutions selling SEO services. They just need to start doing it right. There are enough fly-by-night operations selling SEO shams, that make it harder for the good guys doing the right things for their clients.

Not only do they have a reputation to protect of their own. They shouldn't be doing the internet marketing industry a disservice.

Network Solutions should be taking the high road. They should be selling SEO results and delivering an iterative SEO process. Not selling a few promises and a few hours of "SEO work".

Michael Putnam and I met a month or so ago when he needed to figure out SEO for his awesome new startup, Zeer. He hadn't launched yet, but knew that he need to plan his internet marketing strategy before launching. We helped him round it out a bit.

But, he and his team deserve all the credit for being named to Time's 50 Best Websites in 2008.

And go check out his site. It's an awesome community site that helps consumers help each other make healther decisions about their diet. 

In October, I blogged about a woman suffering from Post-Partum depression, who was missing. A fellow father and buddy of mine, Eric Sagalyn, blogged about her missing too.

I was looking at my inbound links today and saw that Eric had linked to me. In his comments, he linked to an article about how the mother was found in November:

A huge reward and massive search failed to find 35-year-old Katie Corcoran of Lincoln, R.I., but when a Baltimore shopkeeper did a simple Internet search all was revealed.

"Recently, [the shopkeeper] noticed a woman who appeared out of character," said deputy chief Brian Sullivan, of the Lincoln Police Department. After she approached her, the shopkeeper was only able to get her first name.

"The shop owner then got online and Googled missing Katies," Sullivan said.

She stumbled upon a Web site created by Katie's husband, Rob Corcoran, who flew to Baltimore to pick up his wife after she was found. He had posted her picture online along with a letter calling her a dedicated mother. He pleaded for her return.

The article makes a few poor conclusions. The journalist obviously doesn't know about the importance of On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. A big reason that Katie was found was because the Title tag of the home page on the site her hubsband built said, "Missing - Katie Corcoran" (on page SEO) and because people like me and Eric linked to the site (off page SEO). If those two things didn't happen, the shopkeeper, when he did a search for "missing Katie's" would not have been directed to the site her hubsand constructed to help find her. Her website would not be #1 in google for a search for "missing Katie's". The guy might have tried something else, like report it to the police, and she might have been found that way too. Of course, the reason she was found is because the shopkeeper cared. But, SEO and the fact that the family did a great job of getting the word out about her missing - played an important role.

Of course, this isn't that important in the scheme of things. Of paramount importance is that she was found and has returned to her family and to get help. I'm hopeful she's doing well, now that it's 6 months later.

When I am qualifying whether someone is qualified to do business with HubSpot, I ask them how much time they will have to dedicate to their online marketing, specifically to creating content.

They are usually the same people that think SEO stops when you tweak your title tags. Actually, they usually think it's about tweaking "meta tags", which we all know is not that critical anymore.

They usually ask what would I need time to do? So, I say, "To really succeed at online marketing, especially SEO, you need to create content. The more pages you have on your site, the more keywords you can target. The more keywords you can target, the more traffic you can get from search engines. Also, when you create great content, people are compelled to link to it. Links increase your search rankings and send direct traffic."

Then, I ask, depending on how difficult it is to rank for their keywords and how much traffic they need to generate to hit their lead and sales generation goals, "Do you have x hours/week to dedicate to writing content?" where x is usually 2-10 hours.

About 1/3rd of the people I speak with, say something like, "I Don't Have Time To Do That. I Need to Run My Business."

To which I respond, "Ok. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

One guy said to me today, "Is that the end of your pitch?".

To which I responded, "Do you want me to blow smoke up your butt about how I can get your website out of invisible-land for $3500 and a wave of my magic wand?"

He laughed and said, "I appreciate the honesty. I guess I'll call you when I have more time to spend."

I said, "I'm here when this is important for you to do right."

Content & links are critical to internet marketing success.

Just so you guys know I'm not making this up, here's some very smart and successful people saying the same thing. 

• I just posted - at the HubSpot blog - an interview I did of internet marketing phenom, Courtney Tuttle of Court's Internet Marketing School. He reiterates that business owners and marketing professionals who want to succeed online must improve their SEO copywriting and link building skills.
• Here's a great post from CopyBlogger that talks about how content creation and link building are intertwined.
  
• I've been helping Kara Brook of the Brook Group place content for some of her clients on 3rd party sites with links pointing back to her clients' sites in the article.
  
• I just got off the phone with Greg from TrafficWorx discussing his content creation and link building strategy for his Directory of Boutique Hotels website. 

This is the most important stuff if you want to increase your organic search rankings.  And if you're doing it right, compelling content creates links. 

I think that the basics of search engine optimization should be a prerequisite for graduating high school. It should be a course offered to marketing majors in college. If you're in a marketing profession and/or responsible for generating leads online for your business, you should strive to be an expert at SEO.

I think I linked to this before, but my sales cycle would be so much quicker if more prospects understood the ABC's of SEO before they talked to me. So, here's a quick overview of the basics of SEO created by Noah Brier:

Watching that will take you 7 minutes. And at the end, you'll know more about SEO than 70% of the people I speak with. That'll make you 70% more likely to be equipped to attract more traffic to your site. I sound like an infomercial here, but if growing your business is important to you, and your website is an important part of growing your business, you should spend the time.

Awhile ago, HubSpot published a bit more detailed search engine optimization tutorial.

In case you missed it a few weeks ago, here's SEO mistakes I see every day when I look at prospect clients' websites.

More advanced stuff coming soon.

The other day, a prospect asked me what the average annual revenue of a HubSpot client is. I said "I have no idea". I also asked why she asked. Since this was over email, she hasn't answered yet.

I should have answered. "It's rising."

I was talking to Frank Damelio this morning and this is a paraphrased quote of what he said to me: "I'm really excited for you Pete. Over the years, it's been great to have someone like you to share stories with as we've both built our businesses and learned hard lessons. And you are working on the cusp of something huge and I can tell based on how things are going for you and your excitement, that you're really in a good spot. And that all of the things you've learned, you're putting to good use and really helping a lot of people.

Previously, large businesses had access to the capabilities that HubSpot provides. But, now it's possible for every small business to afford these tools. And business is going to increasingly be initiated online at Google, blogs, LinkedIn, etc. And you are positioned to really help small businesses make the transition. No matter whether it's a hair salon, a tire repair place, or whatever, they're going to need someone that can give them the tools and guidance to switch from old ways of marketing to using the web to attract prospects to them. The web is where their customers are looking for someone like them. They need to be there."

I certainly couldn't have said it better myself. I think Frank could even deliver it almost as well as HubSpot's CEO has in this video, since Frank is a public speaking coach.

Frank's right, though. This stuff is now affordable for small businesses. It's less about the dollar investment. It's more about whether they can spend the time and whether they have the aptitude to pull it off. It's not rocket science. But, it takes committment.

HubSpot's clients include large businesses like Kelley Staffing, Geico Insurance and SolidWorks, the leader in 3d design software. But, we also have lots of clients who are 5-10 person teams just setting out to change the world like Darcy's Safety and CPR training business, Boston Micro Machine's Adaptive Optics, Objective Management Group's sales recruiting business, Midnight Trader's After Hours Trading Information business, B&B Aesthetics revolutionary laser lipo procedures or Frusterio's Home Renovation Design business. HubSpot even has plenty of successful one person shops like Doug Sauerhaft's 'Buy Mail List' business, Paul Orselli's Museum Exhibit Design company, Bob Mattingly's River Rafting Adventure business, Dr. Edward Kwak's Asian Plastic Surgery business and Mari McCarthy's Journal Writing Therapy Business.

There's lots more. I'm proud to have brought many of these businesses on board. And what gets me really excited is when they start building readership on their blog, doing their own keyword research and tracking for SEO, improving ppc performance and leveraging social media so that it has an impact on the topline of their business.

And it's even more exciting when customers talk about it themselves. Here's the latest HubSpot internet marketing case study from telecom expense management software provider, Vocio. (Video editing by Catie Foertsch.)

It's amazing to think that we've had a part in helping this business grow their business. It's amazing to think about the fact that 46 new clients signed up last month to embark on the same process. The impact that we'll have on their business and their lives is awesome. We're putting people in control of their marketing, something that has been pretty much a guessing game for more than a century. I think it's a high point for the direct marketing business. Now, it's possible to not only measure things, but engineer, predict, and improve with instantaneous feedback. I'm pretty sure that Gutenberg didn't think that would ever be possible when he invented the printing press.

The Worcester Business Journal ran an article about online advertising the other day quoting 3 local marketing agencies about online advertising.

The majority of the article quotes Laura Briere, owner of Vision Advertising, which is good. Laura actually knows her stuff quite well. Not as well as she thinks she does, but if I had to pair someone up with a local full service marketing agency who gets the web, Laura is a good bet.  She doesn't make the mistakes that marketing agencies outside of Central MA stopped making in 2001. (I haven't used Laura myself so I don't know what she does and doesn't know. But, on the surface, she's dangerous with this stuff.) 

The other two are pretty hopeless. They're still placing online ads on newspaper sites, designing banner ads and all flash websites (SEO no-no #1) for their clients instead of doing search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, blogging, landing page optimization, and leveraging social media successfully. (Not just expensively.) 

I am sure this problem is not unique to Central MA. But, if marketing agencies want to stay relevant they better learn how to shift their thinking of "how do I spend my client's advertising budget effectively?" to "How do I do things that generate a predictable and measurable ROI for my clients by generating leads that turn into business for them?" 

If the WBJ wants to provide informative articles about online marketing to their readers and help Central MA businesses really leverage the web effectively to grow their businesses, they should look for some more experts past 495. Maybe even hire an online marketing expert to do the writing.  This is such an important thing to get right for the future of the region's business health. 

It's been awhile since I've ranted or called anyone out. Sorry, in advance, for those that I've offended. You deserve it, even though it should be privately directed.

I'll be returning shortly to educational blog posts about online marketing and my networks' activities. 

HubSpot just launched an 11 page free internet marketing eBook. If you're a small business owner, marketing or sales professional and are frustrated with not generating enough leads from your website, you should go read it online or download it.

Here's the sections: 

1. How the Internet Has Transformed Business
2. Outbound vs Inbound Marketing
3. B2B Marketing Research
4. Organic vs Paid Search
5. On Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6. Off Page SEO or Link Building
7. Starting a Blog
8. Convert Website Visitors into Leads
9. Web Marketing Analytics
10. Other Internet Marketing Resources.  

Marketing Automation is the topic du jour in the marketing world. Aweber has been the pioneer allowing marketers to segment "types of buyers" and then setup "drip email marketing campaigns" that educate buyers about how to solve xyz problem [usually] using the marketer's abc solution.

There's many more new solutions out there that are much more sophisticated now. More expensive too.

Marketing Automation is smart. Usually, I think it makes the job of salespeople easier if the prospect can communicate their problems, and are confident that your solution solves their problems - going into the sales process. Marketing automation gets your prospects up to speed.

At HubSpot, we have prospective clients with multiple employees that are subcribed to our newsletter, attended several webinars, downloaded our white papers, visited our product and pricing page, left 4 comments on our blog, visited our site a total of 10 times and filled out 6 forms over 3 months. When we call [or rather: they call us], as you could imagine, they're pretty much ready to buy.  

And I think there is a rule in sales that says something like, "When the buyer says they're ready to buy, it's time to shut up". Right Rick? Dave? Al? 

Regardless.. The topic of Marketing Automation is top of mind for many marketers.  

I even had a local realty franchise owner tell me he wanted to do marketing automation. To which I asked:

• How big is your email list?
• How many people sign up for your email list every month?

His answers were low hundreds and a few every month. He's not a candidate for marketing automation. Marketing automation should be done by people who have many more leads than they can handle and can't find any other way to figure out who the sales people should call first.

I also asked the realtor:

• Are your sales cycles long - involving multiple types of decision makers each with different agendas, concerns and challenges?
  
• Do you sell different products to different types of buyers? Are you selling one thing to engineers and another to the CTO? Are you selling one product to people in the auto industry and another to people in the aerospace industry?
• Do you have to educate your buyers before they're ready to buy?
  

He answered "No". Again, he's not a candidate for marketing automation. Marketing automation is good if you need to educate your buyers with bite sized chunks of information over time. If your sales cycle is short and only 1 or 2 people are involved in the buying decision, you don't need marketing automation. Marketing automation isn't going to close more deals for you. (Better salespeople might.) 

Just to drive the point home, I asked a few more questions:

• What types of things are you doing online that will get a prospect to come back to your website? Are you writing blog posts where they can leave their thoughts? Are you doing regular webinars that they can attend? Are you publishing white papers or articles they can sign up to download?  Do you have new promotional offers they can sign up to receive? New Press Releases they can read?
  
• How often are you doing all of this stuff?
  

He said, "My website really needs some work. I even have trouble editing what I have now, let alone adding things to it. I know that I'm not getting all the leads I could be getting because I don't have anything to offer them to get them to come back to my site." Again, he's not a candidate for marketing automation.

I stopped there. I recommended he use Constant Contact as that would be a better solution for him for email marketing. Besides that, I recommended that he should just focus on getting more traffic to his website and converting more of his visitors to leads, so that his agents would have more people to call and he'd have more people to send his email newsletter to.

Their lead to deal conversion rate isn't the problem. It's that they don't have enough leads.  So, marketing automation is not going to solve their most pressing issue. Improved PPC performance, SEO, blogging and more lead conversion events such as webinars, promotions and downloadable articles (eg "how to lease commercial real estate") are what's needed. 

They don't need to do online marketing automation. They just need to start doing more online marketing. And start measuring what works. And what doesn't.

Are YOU ready for Marketing Automation?  

Bruce Mendehlson and I have been chatting by email about this. I also spoke to Debra Simpson on the West Coast about this. I plan to speak with Rita Coco and Allison Chisholm about this too.

But, Bruce is the first one that has demonstrated some knowledge about what I think is required to make blogging work for businesses. Here's his thoughts:

There are A LOT of blogs out there, and many (in fact, most) are poorly written, rambling, off subject and add little (if any) value that relates back to the product, service, or business someone is trying to promote.

After all, it's challenging to compose relevant, compelling content on a regular basis--after a few dismal attempts most business owners move on to something else. It's not that they don't have the desire; they don't have the time or the discipline to devote to a labor-intensive product like a blog.

The key is to help your clients understand how a blog (or a podcast, RSS feed, widget, etc.) should and must be integrated within a broader marketing and communications plan. For example, if they have a product in R&D or coming to market, they'll want to use the blog to build interest in and excitement about the product or service. They'll want to create a dialogue with consumers in which consumers can share their thoughts about the product or service.

When it comes to blogging in our Web 2.0 world, it's all about the 5 C's: Collaboration, Content, Converged services, Community, and Conversation. Your job is not only to help business owners understand the important of blogging, but also to invest the necessary resources (time and money) to creating a well-written, interactive online dialogue through their blog.

This is extremely well said. Blogging is just a tool. It's how you use it that's critical.

I've signed on about 15 companies since the beginning of the year who all are in the process of starting their blog, at my suggestion. But, it's not something to enter into lightly. And it's not something I'd recommend someone do until they develop a strategy.

Blogging should fit into a strategy that supports the business. The ultimate goal of most marketing activities should be to generate interest from qualified prospects. So blogging should fit into their traffic and online lead generation strategy. In order to get the most out of it, the following should be done first:

1. Search Engine Optimization Keyword research to inform topics that should be written about. 
2. Launching a blog on a blogging platform that is optimized for SEO and community development - on your own domain name.
3. Reading and commenting on other blogs in order to start entering the conversation. 
4. A system in place that tracks new links, traffic and leads generated from the blogging activities.

If you don't do all of this, you run the risk of writing a blog that noone reads and adds no value to your business.

But, as Bruce points out it's equally important to go into blogging knowing that this is an investment of time and money, like any other marketing expenditure. So, it requires the right resources to pull it off.

In order to help my clients, I'm seeking a stable of professional writers who I can recommend. If you know anyone, please send them to this post and ask them to contact me here. I'm going to need to be comfortable that they can do what Bruce talks about, but also do what I bulleted above.

They are going to need to be able to coach clients towards their business goals using blogs as a tool.

Right now, "How to Generate Leads Using the Web" is the title of my blog. I'll probably change it at some point.

But, "generating leads via the web" is what I am helping my clients do. That won't change. I'm planning on doing a series of step-by-step videos to demonstrate how to do generate leads via Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Blogging and Engaging in the Blogosphere and on Social Media sites... for the benefit of my clients as well as readers. The knowledge to do this should be in everyone's hands. Right now, the knowledge I'm going to share is not known by many people. I'm about to piss off a lot of search engine optimization and social media marketing consultants. 

To do this stuff right, you don't "NEED" them. However, to do it right, you NEED the tools. Since I'm providing my clients with the tools, I have a lot of reasons to share the knowledge of "how to generate leads" openly. I'd rather educate a few hundred people at a time, than one on one.

The place to start is always with Keyword Research. Using the HubSpot tools, I've been able to help almost all of my clients identify keywords that:

• have a large amount of search volume,
• aren't too difficult to rank for in the organic search rankings,
• and where they are already ranking in the first 100 results in google's search engine result pages (SERPs)

These are the gems because with a little bit of work, it's easy to start ranking high on the first page and start enjoying that free traffic. But, since there are a lot of internet marketers publishing to the web, it's difficult to identify keywords for myself. (Luckily for me, Mike Volpe and the marketing team at HubSpot has done the work to rank for "internet marketing" and a bunch of other phrases, and they supply with as many leads as I can call.)

What I'm struggling with is how to show examples of doing it without giving away competitive advantage. For example, we discovered a few keywords that one of my clients should focus on, he changed his title tags and voila ... he went from result 79 to 9 in the SERPs. I would never share what those keywords are because it would make it too easy for his competitors to duplicate. The actual work he did to rank is obvious if his competitors simply look at his site, assuming they have enough knowledge of SEO. (0ne of his competitors already knew about this keyword and is optimized and ranks for it.)  However, I'm not going to advertise how he did it in a video. 

The struggle is over.

So, I'm happy to report that I discovered a solid keyword phrase, where pc4media ranks "19" in the SERPs and there's approximately 140 searchers per month. I would not have discovered if it wasn't for the integration of HubSpot's keyword research tools and web marketing analytics. A few people came to the site as a result of the search. Then, with one click I determined where I was ranking, how many people searched for that phrase in a month and whether or not it'd be difficult to get to the first page.  HubSpot's keyword tool tells me that it's not that difficult to get higher than I already am and I've already made a change to my site to get higher.

So, I've found a good one. Were you hoping I'd share it? Not until I do my videos. I don't want another internet marketing expert to wreck my progress while I'm making the video. I expect others to compete with me for the keyword after I do the video and lots of people see it. But, that's why search engine optimization is an ongoing process.  Also, by then, I'll have done a bunch of blogging, link building and social media marketing in order to rank. It'll be harder to duplicate my efforts. And I'm sure I'll find more terms to go after by then too. But, this'll serve as a good way to demonstrate "how to generate leads" via SEO.

1. Search Engine Optimization. Hell yeah. Here's Aboutus.org's website grader report. Aboutus.org has a page rank of 5/10. Google thinks aboutus.org is important: They've indexed 650k+ pages of the site. Further, you can create any link on your page - within reason and with good faith - with good anchor text. Link building sites don't get any better than Aboutus.org. And the nicest thing about Aboutus.org, if the community continues to keep out the riff-raff, it's creating a really worthwhile service for all of us.
   
2. Secondary Search Result. Again, I'm going to go with "Hell Yeah". If you are going to have another website come up in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for a search for your name, wouldn't you want it to be one that you can edit? That's what Auboutus.org does. We'll give it a day or two, but I'm hoping that Aboutus.org edges out the guy that owns pc4media.com in a search for pc4media. This guy is definitely capitalizing on the pseudo-popularity of my blog. He hasn't built a website for someone in at least 2 years.
   
3. Direct Traffic. Yes again. Although probably without the "hell" prefix. According to the website grader report, Alexa puts Aboutus.org in the top 1% of traffic garnering websites out there. But, my guess is that most of the traffic comes from search engines and leaves fairly promptly. But, I bet there are also some power users on there. Probably SEO professionals. Regardless, I'd expect some traffic from it as if it were a rest stop or reference check between you and the search engines.
   

1. Local Search Engine Optimization: If you're a business that does business locally, your website should be designed to attract local traffic from search engines. For example, if you're a cosmetic surgery place in Southborough, MA you should also be getting visitors from google who type in "rhinoplasty boston ma". If your website isn't designed to do that, we should talk.  But, even though your website is designed to catch that traffic, you still need links pointing to your website that confirm that your website is about that. Do you really expect google, yahoo, msn and ask to just believe you? So, that's what Hive411 allows you