M & A Rainmaker

You know that saying – belt and braces – well having a couple of blogs at the top of a 100 and something million search needs a bit of that

When my Pinterest page suddenly dropped out of the Google search for Sales and Marketing Expert post the Hummingbird revision I had already planned for it – thank goodness !!

You have to plan ahead in most things and certainly when it comes to protecting a top ranking position in Google for a competitive search term like Top Digital Sales and Marketing Expert you do.

The Centripetal Network Consulting blogs that are currently ranking at the top of Google are the ” belt ” and this blog is the ” braces “. I do actually have a 3rd ” back-up ” which is a Pinterest page which complements an older Pinterest Page   which has been ranking very well for searches on Digital Marketing Expert UK fort some time. However, as I mentioned it fell out of the rankings recently. It might return.

http://www.buckarooleather.com.au/miners

Why so important ??

Obviously it is important to be found for the things that you do and provide. When you are providing a service that includes being found in search engines then clearly it is important to be found and to be found easily and quickly.

The top 5 or 6 positions of the first page of Google are the sweet spot and that is where the current blog posts are. Around 40/50% of all the traffic goes to the top position and the remainder is spread between the rest – typically.

Of course the reason why we want to rank high in Google is because it is a major source if not THE major source –  of traffic to our blog and website.

Everyone that wants visitors to their web or blogsite needs to spend time working out what they want to rank or be found for and then how easy or difficult it is to do that. There are various tools that we can use to help with that task.

Of course Pay per Click is one way of getting found on Google but it is an expensive way and we always recommend that you build a strategy around ranking naturally for key words and phrases.

I already had a top 5 position in a Google search for the highest ranking Digital Marketing Expert but that was with Pinterest which was sort of cheating

A few days ago I decided that it was time for a Plan B and maybe even a Plan C and time to put the Digital Marketing Ecosystem to work again

Some people might have thought that my Pinterest listing at the top of Google was a lucky demonstration of my Internet Marketing skills. I obviously didn’t make a Pinterest page with that title for no reason. However, when I was working on other Pinterest pages recently I noticed a few strange things happening and it got me to thinking that I needed a back-up plan for my ranking for this term so I determined to write a blog on the Centripetal Network Consulting website that would also rank   .

I am also writing this blog as a sort of Plan C !! 🙂

If you read this blog please take at least one thing away with you – to rank today you need a strategy that combines Social Media with a great website. Trust me – you do.

Getting a website or a blog to rank high for a specific term is an art form. Seeing that website or blog there is literally the tip of the iceberg. The part that you see of an iceberg is about 1 Tenth of the overall mass of that berg. Most of it is below the surface.

Most of the reason why my blogs rank so high is ” below the surface ” – you can’t see it even if you know how to analyse websites and blogs. Let me explain something to you. My blogs and websites are not even specifically targeted at Digital Marketing !!!! Obviously Centripetal Network Consulting is a global digital strategy, sales and marketing company. However, in a similar way to us ranking for ” Wealth Management London ” searches if I really wanted to  rank for Wealth Management terms I would build a blog or website focused on Wealth Management. Everything on it would be about Wealth Management. It would be THE authority on Wealth Management.

This site is about M & A ( Mergers and Acquisitions ) but the likelihood is that this blog is going to rank high.

Why ???? QUALITY !!!

From it’s foundations up the Centripetal Network Consulting website is a QUALITY website. It’s content is produced by humans ( mostly me ) and it is relevant to the topic in question if not focussed on it.

There’s something else that very few people talk about because they don’t understand it. If you think about it a web or blogsite is software running on a server ( like a PC or Laptop but built to ” serve ” software ).

Where is this server ?? Well it is usually in some sort of data centre somewhere in the world – could be the U.K. – might be  the U.S. , Europe or India.

Is it a shared server or a dedicated ( to you ) server. ( It is likely to be shared unless you have specifically sought a dedicated server ).

You might be wondering what the relevance of this is ?? You know how your PC and Laptop runs slowly when it has lots of software applications open on it ?? Well if you are sharing with other people with resource hungry web/blog sites your web/blog site is going to run slowly too.

That’s not all – your website can run slowly if it is not configured properly and has too many ” plug-ins ” .

The geographical location of your server and it’s connectivity also affects your website performance.

All of this affects the  ” performance ” of your web and blogsite and is one of Google’s ranking factors.

The positive effect of good website performance is the reason that companies like WP Engine  have started up. On their first page they have this testimonial for example :

“My site loads ridiculously fast, my page views are up, and my business
is seeing the results. I rest easy at night with the level of support.
My only regret: that I didn’t move to WP Engine sooner.”

– PHIL SIMON, AUTHOR OF THE AGE OF THE PLATFORM

We don’t host with WP Engine – we have our own hosting facilities, located in a place where there are high speed internet pipes in and out of the facility and our Chris Butler is always monitoring the performance of our site.

Hopefully you get my point – the foundations of our web/blogsite are rock solid and this is a primary factor in why I can rank so well for something like Digital Marketing Expert.

I started at ” this end ” of the factors because typically most people start at the other end. They have got a requirement for a website and whilst they think about the design of the website and what it needs to say they don’t think much about the ” infrastructure ” of that website.

You can sort of understand that but I didn’t get to the top of searches by worrying about design. WordPress is pretty much our default ” software ” for websites because we know that using WordPress we get great ranking results. We also know that there are a host of great plug-ins built for this environment and that there are thousands of people out there with WordPress knowledge if we need help. There are tens or hundreds of great ” themes ” to use.

Certainly we subscribe to the ” Keep It Short and Simple ” ( KISS ) approach. Over complex websites are going to load and serve slower. You don’t want loads of fancy graphics or plug-ins.

I always say that there are a few different types of people who get involved in website design ( it’s an over simplification ) – Graphic Design and Marketing people. Programmers and S.E.O. people. None of those people have a deep understanding of the true objective of a website which is to sell things.

I am not just a Digital Marketing Expert – I am also a Digital Sales Expert and a Digital Businessman – as are my partners at Centripetal.

I get loads of comments on my M & A Rainmaker blog. ( ok lots of them are just link spammers – I know ). I read them all and I value them all ( well except the link spammers that write horrible, incomprehensible, inane things and then expect me to approve them ! ).

It has gone way beyond being a place where I wanted to write down my experiences of starting, building and selling companies. In the main it has become a place where my journey through Internet Marketing has been documented. This was a journey that started in the early 2000’s. It was a journey that was driven by a desire to understand how to get found on the Internet. My firm belief was that people would search for information about nearly everything on the Internet – and then, sometimes, they would actually buy. In other words whatever you sold you needed to have a presence on the Internet and you needed to be found for the services and products that you supplied.

Now there are many blogs posts on this website that are meant to be found for certain ( Google ) searches. For example if you search on
” Internet Marketing Strategy Lichfield ” you will find that a couple of blog posts from here rank at at the top and that further down there is a Pinterest link, a Digg link and then a Twylah link. Yes, some social networks will give you search results aswell !!

But I digress, this post was supposed to be about my blog needing a really good sort out.

Actually I think it is a mother beautiful blog. It was designed for me by Nikki Pilkington and I love the colour and the ” clean lines “. It is uncluttered by, well anything really.

What does it need though ??

Well there are a few things that I plan to add sometime:

1. I need links to all my Social Network pages. ( At the moment these are just on the ” Contact Page ” ).

2. I need you to be able to share all my blogs easily on your Social Network pages.

3. I need to put ” Call to Actions ” on my blog posts e.g. at the bottom of this one.

4. I need an email sign-up section ( but this assumes that I am then going to start emailing my email database ).

5. I am thinking about adding ” Skimlinks ” and have actually signed up for it and been approved.

I could put adverts on my blogsite – not sure if I will but I could.

6. I should have some sort of comment spam filter – at the moment I just approve or not comments.

Actually that’s about all I am thinking about.

( Maybe – mobile friendly ?? )

Yeah , I know I should have some pictures here aswell !!

If you have any thoughts then please let me know 🙂

A year or two ago I started using HubSpot’s Website Grader to evaluate the performance of client’s and suppliers ( potential and actual ) websites. HubSpot’s Website Grader has since evolved into Marketing Grader which looks at the wider picture of a companies Internet Marketing efforts including it’s website, blogsite and social networks, automation software, analytics and internet influence ( Klout ).

Having put quite a few websites and internet marketing efforts through the HubSpot Grader I now know that there are a lot of companies in the 30/40 out of a 100 range, quite a few in the 50/60 range and only a few in the 70/80 range.

Nikki Pilkington ( who designed this blogsite ) has a grade of 85/100. see  http://www.nikkipilkington.com/ and http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.nikkipilkington.com. This is a very rare score. Nikki’s website is based on WordPress and she has large networks on e.g. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest. She blog’s regularly.

Nikki’s Marketing efforts are a great implementation of what I call an “Internet Marketing Ecosystem “.

One of the companies that has most impressed me is Staffordshire IT.  http://www.staffordshireit.co.uk/ . The reason that I am impressed is because often, when I show people the HubSpot Marketing Grade, they go into denial. Many of them have not heard of HubSpot ( which I am not totally surprised at but you would think that Internet Marketing professionals would be aware of a company that has created a whole new way of looking at Internet Marketing – known as Inbound Marketing ) and whether they have or have not they often have a ” who are they to grade my internet marketing efforts ” ? sort of attitude. John Bryan, M.D. of Staffordshire I.T. was not like that – he took the report in his stride and actually grasped the points that were highlighted in the report and worked on them. http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.staffordshireit.co.uk .

When I first met John his score was around 75/100, Since he has worked on it he has reached 84/100 and has a stated ambition of reaching 90/100 which would be an amazing achievement.

Staffordshire I.T.’s website is also based on WordPress and they have a blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts and use Google Analytics.

Some sceptics say that the only way that you can get a high score with HubSpot’s grader is when you use HubSpot software for your website. This is clearly not the case as we have two website’s in this example that are WordPress based and which have high scores.

When SEO companies used to call me up saying that they could get my website to rank on the front page ( usually some poor salesperson who didn’t have a clue who I was ) and knew all about Internet Marketing I would casually say oh ok, so you know all about SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation ) then do you ??? of course the answer was yes. So, if I google ” SEO and Internet Marketing ” you will be on the front page will you ?? ( Usually I was doing it in the background ). Then I would give them the bad news and help them by saying well maybe if I Google ” SEO and Internet Marketing in wherever it is you are based ” you will be on the front page ??? Ummmm! Maybe .. was usually the response. ok then, last chance, what would I have to Google to find you on the front page ???

I am not TRYING to be cruel I am just saying that if you want to ring me up and tell me that you are the best at SEO and Internet Marketing then you had better be able to prove that you are !!

Nowadays there are many companies around the world who proclaim that they are Internet Marketing Experts. Previously, as explained above , I used to test this with Google,  but these days I have another tool that I use called ” HubSpot Marketing Grader “.

HubSpot is a Boston, U.S. based software company that mainly provides HubSpot based websites and promotes an Internet Marketing philosophy called ” Inbound Marketing “.

To promote the company ( and get leads ) HubSpot provides a number of free Tools like Marketing Grader ( a development of Website Grader ) and Twitter Grader.

I used Marketing Grader to look at a number of websites in the Lichfield and Tamworth area recently and that was how I came to ” rate ” Staffordshire IT as, probably one of the most knowledgeable companies in the area. I first came across them on Twitter ( where they have more followers than most other people from Lichfield and Tamworth ) and then looked at their website using Marketing Grader:

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.staffordshireit.co.uk

When I first looked at their grade it was 76/100. They have improved it since then to 80/100. This is an amazing score and I have only ever graded one higher score ( not in the Lichfield and Tamworth area ) which is Nikki Pilkington’s website:

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.nikkipilkington.com

which has a grade of 87/100 which is incredible. Nikki was the designer of this M&A Rainmaker blogsite.

Some info on Staffordshire IT

We are a professional website design firm based in Tamworth and Lichfield, however we are able to service clients nationally. We have very competitive prices, easy to use, clean and professional web design, and programming services.

Having a website is just the start of a good internet marketing strategy: now you need people to look at it! You need to get more visitors to your site, so you need good website ranking, and it shouldn’t need to take 6 months and thousands of pounds to get to the top of Google, Yahoo & Bing.

You need a company with many years in online marketing (check), very reasonable costs (check), who are diligent and hard grafters (check), and show a willingness to constantly monitor your site alongside you, to keep you at the top of the charts! (Big check!)

From the very start we can demonstrate proven white hat (legal) SEO techniques to you and we GUARANTEE we will increase your traffic. In fact, we are so confident in what we do, that you do not need to pay a penny until you have been shown an increase in visibility of your website online!

Good, savvy Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not an option in today’s fast-moving markets– it’s essential and the key to success in any marketing campaign is pretty simple. The Return on Investment (also known as ROI) must outweigh the initial and ongoing outlay of funds. In a web environment, there are multiple ways in which this may be measured including online sales, enquiries through the website (be they emails, surveys or phone calls), website traffic and overall increase in brand awareness.

A well-optimised site can provide numerous benefits, as long as the site is designed well in the first place. It is important to optimise a site for the most relevant terms whilst at the same time including more popular, generic key phrases.

Please feel free to give us a call on 01827 313111 and we can provide a free SEO report for you.

You may have missed it but yesterday Google opened up it’s new social network, Google +, to everyone in the U.K.  – oh and the rest of the world too !

G+ or g+ has been on ” a very limited field trial ” since June 2011 and I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in this limited field trial ( by some kind people in my network ) and so can count myself as a first generation G+ user.

I am not sure that I had any room at all for another social network in my life but I certainly do have an interest in search, internet marketing and Google and therefore really felt that I had to take a look at G+.

Depending on whether a social networks content is ” open ” to search engines or
” closed ” to them ( Facebook’s content is mostly closed to the world outside of Facebook but e.g. Ecademy’s content is quite open ) social networks are powerful e.g. blogging platforms.

If content on G+ was linked to Google search results then there would be at least one very powerful reason for participating in the production and sharing of content on that platform.

There were some interesting aspects to the time that I spent in the G+ ” field
trial “.  i.e. from June to date.

Since G+ had essentially emanated from Silicon Valley on the West Coast of America my first connections ( On G+ you ” circle ” the people that you want to follow and those that want to follow you back circle you ) were U.S. West Coasters. Unsurprisingly many of these were involved in the High Tech. industry but perhaps more surprising was that there were many artists and photographers – who produced and posted some interesting and even stunning work.

There were also lots of marketing people and quite a few Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, business angels and venture capitalists. ( It may not be well known but Silicon Valley has been booming with new start-ups and slightly older ones getting more funding ).

So, from a social point of view I felt right at home in G+.

G+ rolled out across the U.S. and the Western world – but I should mention that there were a lot of Chinese and Far Eastern members of G+ in the early days aswell.

One of my tests for any software and certainly any social network is that it is easy and intuitive to use – which G+ certainly is.

I also found the people on there amazingly polite ( they had definately been trained in ” netiquette ” ! ). How long this will last now that it has been opened to “the masses” has yet to be seen. Certainly there are a number of 1st Generation G+ users who are dreading a massive decline in the quality of the content and the friendliness of the members.

Opening up G+ to everyone in the U.K. and the world is regarded as G+’s 100th ” new feature ” and the demarcation point between ” field trial ” and ” beta trial ” – yes – even though everyone can now join G+ it is still in
” beta “.

Another thing that I noticed with G+ was that the G+ Community Managers were very good at telling us all about new features and plans.

Recently a feature was launched whereby if you clicked on the G+ symbol on a piece of content ( one not on G+ as far as you knew )  not only were you ” voting ” on this content but also you were able to ” share ” it on G+.

It seems very likely that content that comes up high in a Google search in the future will be influenced by those that G+ and share that content.

Avid followers ( are there any ? ) of this blog will have noticed the recent blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/01/31/dog-friendly-pubs-in-holywell-flintshire/

On Monday morning I decided to post this blog with the objective of getting exposure for The Glan to those people who were Googling for a ” dog friendly pub near Holywell, in Flintshire, North Wales “.

Between us ( you and me ) we have made this blogsite pretty authoratitive and known to Google. Quite frankly I am sometimes amazed at the speed that Googles spiders find new blogs that I post and how well they rank in Google searches.

I can only guess that the reporters at the Daily Post were thinking about ” Dog Friendly Pubs ” that morning because, I promise you, 2 hours after the post went live the phone rang at The Glan and a Daily Post reporter said that she wanted to send a photographer around.

The photographer wanted dogs in the picture and so a mad rush ensued – phoning customers and asking ones that were in to bring in their dogs.

Photos taken the photographer stated that the article would be in The Daily Post the following day – sure enough

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2011/02/01/north-wales-most-dog-friendly-pub-is-in-flintshire-55578-28090242/

there it was.

The TV and radio stations obviously trawl the papers websites so it was not a huge surprise when Radio Cymru

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiocymru/index.shtml

called and asked Cerys if she could do an interview ( in Welsh ) around 4 p.m.

This also happened and so in 2 days we had gone from Dog to Superstar !!

Following the last blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2010/12/21/driving-internet-leads-for-uk-smb-using-hubspot-inbound-marketing-part-2/

we got the 2 landing pages done as discussed earlier.

The visit/lead tracking system is working and we can see recent visitors details. These can be transferred to a CRM system and Salesforce.com is probably the easiest one to do this with although other are possible. We will address this shortly but for now the visit and lead records will be held within HubSpot ( they are always held in both places anyway ).

We had done some work around keywords/phrases – looking for words/phrases that were relevant but not too competitive – and we input these to the HubSpot system. We also had the HubSpot system look at the keywords/phrases being used by typical competitors. The HubSpot system identified which keywords/phrases were ” stronger ” than others.

The HubSpot system will show where the visits/leads are coming from in terms whether they are direct ( someone types in the FutureLine url ) via a Google search or from e.g. The FutureLine Blog, Social Media or Press Releases.

Typical Social Media sources would include:

– Delicious

– Digg

– LinkedIn

– Reddit

– Sphin

– Twitter

– Yahoo Answers

– Yahoo Buzz

– YouTube

We set up the FutureLine Blog and discussed the type and composition of beneficial blogs. It was noted that there should be ” Call to Action ” pieces at the end of each blog. HubSpot gets many of its leads via the HubSpot blog.

We also discussed what defined ” strong ” links and noted examples of these. They include e.g. links from high ranking blog sites; links from Press Release sites.

We also discussed the fact that we could ” buy ” traffic using Pay Per Click or Media buying ( CPM ).

We determined to get the ” Call to Actions ” set up on the website together with the landing pages that we had built.

We would also do more work on keywords and phrases and when we had arrived at the best words and phrases give consideration to including these words and phrases on the website and in blogs.

We would also do more research on the ” Top 10 questions ” asked by FutureLine’s customers and prospects.

following the blog post

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2010/12/19/driving-internet-leads-for-uk-smb-using-hubspot-inbound-marketing/

We decided that we needed to create some ” Call to actions ” on the website and that these might include the completion of the sign-up form

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This blog describes an effort to drive Internet leads for U.K. S.M.B. FutureLine using HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing process.

FutureLine ( http://www.futureline.net.uk/index.html ) is a U.K. based Hosted Voice solution being promoted to SMB’s and SMB resellers in conjunction with Cisco Systems. FutureLine addresses a particular demand from small SMB’s ( say 1-50 telephone users ) for a Cisco based hosted voice solution. The FutureLine solution allows small SMB’s to adopt Cisco solutions at a very low initial cost and then to upgrade seamlessly and inexpensively and grow as the business grows.

As a Hosted or SaaS ( Software as a Service ) solution it is believed to be best practise and important that the FutureLine website and FutureLine marketing messages be found by interested SMB buyers via Internet search.

It is believed that FutureLine’s target market will find FutureLine via Internet search to a very large degree and indeed the Internet Marketing efforts carried out so far bear this out as there have been a number of leads and indeed sales that came from Google searches.

I have been aware of HubSpot for some time ( see earlier blog posts on them ) and there are a number of interesting parallels here. For example:

• HubSpot’s founder, Brian Halligan, founded HubSpot when investing in and mentoring SMB’s. He realised that a different marketing approach was required to really drive sales.
• HubSpot has a dual focus on the SMB end user and the SMB reseller as with FutureLine.
• HubSpot has a very sales orientated approach which fits with the sales philosophy that we and FutureLine believe in. We all believe in tracking visits, leads and actual sales.

Those involved in this effort are already aware of some of the main principles of on Internet marketing e.g. the importance of relevant content, on and off page optimisation and good, powerful links.

We are also aware of the main components of the HubSpot solution e.g. website usage tracking, content management, SEO, CRM etc etc

We also have a network of experienced and potentially suitable contacts and resources, including website designers, SEO specialists, Social Media Marketing experts, CRM consultants, HubSpot qualified resource, Sales and Marketing specialists, P.R. Experts and Business Strategy and Business Value Creation specialists.

We decided that, in this instance, whilst it was obviously very important to generate leads for FutureLine it was also important to work through and prove the HubSpot process thoroughly.

It was decided that the first tasks included a thorough review of FutureLine’s target markets ( even though this has been done before ) which are broadly SMB end users and SMB ICT ( voice,data, PC/Server/Application ) resellers and a review of the message to each of these target markets.

It was also important to install HubSpot tracking and content management code on the FutureLine website so that we can gat a clear picture of the situation regarding visits, leads and sales , now and in the future.

Further posts will follow as we work through the effort.