Incoming links to your websites are like votes for your website.  If there are competing websites and one site has 300 links and another site has 20, likely the website with 300 links will have better page rank and better Search Engine positions for certain terms.   However there is an art to link building and below are some keys to follow when building links to your website:  Read more... (415 words, 1 image, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

1. It is very important for your links to be built naturally, which means don’t go from 1 to 1000 in a day.  Google looks for slow but steady link building that looks natural instead of artificial.

I had an interesting local search weekend.  I am always interested to see who is optimized for local search as I feel that companies in Canada are not as optimized as well as they should be.  So I was out on Saturday looking for a certain DVD and I dropped into Rogers to see if I could find it.  While in there I thought I would see how a large player like Rogers performs for local search.  I did a local search on Google Maps on my Blackberry (that has  a GPS) for “DVDs” and to my surprise Rogers did not ever come up.  Surprised that such a large player would not be optimized for local search.  So I thought I would test another large retailer, I live by an Indigo (Chapters) Bookseller retail store.  So right outside their doors I searched for “Books” to my surprise they did not even come up in the results.  Then I went by Golf Town and searched for “Golf” and they did not even come up.  Interesting.  Read more... (285 words, 1 image, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

I attended a presentation at the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Marketing Association luncheon last week and the presenter was a marketing executive from Canwest Global.  He was discussing the important elements they use in their marketing strategy:  Read more... (326 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

• work outside your comfort zone
• concentrate your advertising at times (ie taking over all advertising on a website etc)
• be consistent with your message
• surprise your audience

It really floors me when I hear that certain people from certain industries still think that a website has no affect on their sales process.  I was speaking to an accounting firm the other day and he was adamant  that companies do not consider a website when they are looking for an accounting firm.  He said it is all done by referrals.  I agreed with the referral part, there are certain industries like financial planners, lawyers and accountants where there is no doubt that the initial interest comes from a referral.  However, prior to 1994 potential customers did not have another means to research further and do some due diligence on the supplier they were considering.  Now there is this little online library of information called the Internet where no company can hide and where prospective clients are definitely going to want to research your company.  I met with a financial planning company and I explained how I felt the decision process would go:  Read more... (484 words, 1 image, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

I find it interesting the adoption of online marketing over the years.  I have been selling online marketing solutions since 1999 and the adoption bell curve is pretty well right on and has certainly affected the ease and challenge of the selling cycle.  Back in the late 90’s websites were still in the early adoption stage.  It was not an easy sell to everyone but there were a lot of companies, especially the companies that had a product to sell online, that took the plunge and invested in a website.   At this point typical early adopter stage a lot of suppliers charged high prices as few new the true costs to build a website and some just took advantage of their customers.  Read more... (366 words, 2 images, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

About a half a year ago our company made a decision that we wanted to start to look for new office space in downtown Winnipeg.  We looked for a good 6 months before we found the right spot and we were pretty lucky to find a gem of a building like the one we are currently in.  It’s a heritage building that was built in 1901, price to build at that time was $6,000, how costs have changed.  I have to admit I was not convinced that moving downtown was the right place for our company.  I had always worked in the burbs and enjoyed the easy ride to work, easy parking and certainly not paying for parking.  However, when I talked to several companies that work downtown, they all told me that they would not work anywhere else and their employees love being downtown.  This intrigued me and I wanted to investigate further.  Finally it came to me that downtown was the place to be for our company.  Now that we have been in our new space for a month I get what the others were talking about.  The key advantages of being downtown in my observation are:  Read more... (475 words, 1 image, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

One of our largest clients – McNally Robinson Booksellers – announced they are going into bankruptcy protection.  The company has been struck with some hard times with rising costs from opening a new store at Polo Park Mall (Winnipeg) and another new location in Ontario.  According to McNally the Ontario location (just outside of Toronto) experienced serious problems with the developer of  the mall.  According to Paul McNally, they did a poor job of getting other retailers in the mall and offered poor signage which caused a lot of issues for the book store.  The news is a little misleading at this point if you ask me as it seems as though McNally is closing its doors for good.  That is not the case, they have gone into Bankruptcy protection and are still operating 2 of their stores, one in Winnipeg (Grant Park) and one in Saskatoon.  In addition they have full intention to maintain their e-commerce website as they feel it is an efficient method to sell books and certainly the wave of the future.  Many companies go into Bankruptcy protection and then come out with a plan and continue to be very successful.  Recently we were interviewed by CBC’s  Wab Kinew regarding McNally.  The clip is at the 10 minute mark of the segment, Click here to see the news broadcast.  Read more... (229 words, 1 image, estimated 55 secs reading time)