I check my website stats from time to time and it helps me see not only how my visitors arrive to my website, but it also springs new ideas into my head about articles I should be writing. If enough people are looking for that information on the web, then obviously there is a need for that information on the web. Creating a blog post that is useful and informative helps you achieve that expert status with your clients when they do go through your blog digging for information about your products and/or services.

Below are the top 5 keywords used Yesterday to arrive on my website. If you notice, most of these keywords signify, to me, that the bride or potential client, is in the research stage of their planning (gathering information/research) process… the perfect spot for your name to enter their minds. You know what they say in marketing, the sooner your name enters your client’s mind, the better of a chance you have of winning that client over.

So here are the keywords used to arrive at my sites, organized by search engine, then in order of hits, from Higher to lower. For the Google.com results, I will add a link to the article that is ranking high on the search engine results… Or you could just go to Google.com and type the keyword or copy and paste it into the search bar and see for yourself how high I rank… All of these are on the first page of Google.com…

Site: FHPEntertainment.com

Google.com

1. responsibilities of a dj
2. houston bridal extravaganza 2010
3. list of cumbia songs
4. quinceanera songs
5. guidelines for master of ceremony
6. BONUS: architectural dj uplighting

Yahoo.com

1. quinceañera songs
2. marbella ballroom houston
3. popular spanish wedding songs
4. list of songs to dance for my quinceanera fun dance
5. GOBO’s wedding dancefloor

Bing.com

1. Quinceanera Speech
2. Bridal Extravaganza Houston
3. Dj Insurances
4. Popular DJ Songs
5. Cake Cutting Songs in Spanish

Site: HoustonPartyBooths.com

Google.com

1. photo booth template
2. photo booth rental houston
3. picture booth rentals and houston
4. photo booth
5. photo booth for bat mitzvah

Yahoo.com

1. houstonpartybooths.com
2. photobooth in houston to rent

Bing.com

1. rent a photo booth in houston

It may seem like my website, Houstonpartybooths.com does not rank high for Yahoo or Bing.com, but it is actually ranked number one for many keywords… So that leads me to the conclusion that most people still use and trust Google.com for their research.

I hope this helps you see what people are looking for on the net and how you can get inspired for new ides to write articles about  your line of work.

Happy Bloggin!

|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

Wedding Marketing Case Study Introduction

Wedding Marketing is a subject that covers many topics. First, there is Print Marketing which it itself is divided into subtopics such as magazine marketing, post card marketing, business card marketing, etc…

Next we have the online marketing which is endless in possibilities and MOST of them are free. There is Blogging, Social Medias (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace), Paid Search Engine Marketing, Organic Search Engine Marketing, Link trading, Directory listings, etc…

As mentioned on my previous post about Wedding Marketing News, I am a firm believer that all you need is a website,  a properly hosted blog, and a bit of patience in order to build up a business. I have completely survived without any offline marketing for the last 3 years. I had an ad on one magazine, but it did not generate much income, mainly because by the time I got a lead from the magazine I was already booked. I have not done a Bridal Show in years… I can’t even remember off the top of my head when my last Bridal show was. I was considering doing the Houston Bridal Showcase in August, but I could not find anyone to help me with my booth. I did not want an untrained person there either.

Wedding Marketing Case Study

Well to prove that effective blogging, blogging with a properly installed blog on your existing domain name, as stated on my previous post about wedding marketing news, I have taken an existing website, one with a blog on those free blogging platforms, and completely redesigned the website to include the blog on it’s own domain name as opposed to having it on the free blogging platforms.

Audrey Hu-Gonzales is a wedding coordinator in the Houston Area, she used to host her blog at wordpress.com. Her OLD blog can be found at http://eventsbyaudrey.wordpress.com/. She was under the false impression that she was doing good by blogging on the free blogging sites and had no clue that her efforts were really pointless.

After Months and months of blogging, her website

1. did NOT generate any traffic because of her blogging
2. did NOT go up in the search engine traffic rankings
3. did NOT increase it’s lead generation
4. and did NOT benefit completely through her blogging efforts.

I took on this project back in March (March 27th, 2009 to be exact) and the first thing I did was to set an initial benchmark to see how her website ranked on Google.com, Yahoo.com, and Live.com (now Bing.com)… Yahoo and MSN Live did not even know her website existed, Google knew it existed but ranked her very very low…

OUT OF 24 KEYWORDS, GOOGLE ONLY RANKED HER FOR 7 (NOTE THE LOWER THE NUMBER THE BETTER)

Do you know if your website is even showing up on the search engines, and for what keywords???

Out of those seven keywords, the closest she could get to the first page of the Google.com search results was one keyword which ranked #83. That showed up on the 9th page of the Google.com search results for that one keyword. That means that people looking for a wedding planner using that ONE keyword had to go through 9 pages of results before they got to her website… NINE PAGES!!!

There is a common belief on the web that says that most people do not even go past the 3rd or 4th page of Google.com when they search for information.

Just think about when you search for something, and can’t find it, how many pages into the search results do you go in before you try another keyword or phrase or just select the best looking page for what you are looking for? I’m guessing not very far, and the majority of the time you don’t go to the 9th page. I know I don’t.

Wedding Marketing Case Study – the Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With some minor tweaking to her site, a few off-site optimization techniques, and some Search Engine Optimization to her website, only a month later, on April 24th, 2009 to be exact, was already indexed by Yahoo, MSN Live and Google.com

Out of her 24 targeted keywords her website was ranked as follows (NOTE THE LOWER THE NUMBER THE BETTER)

Well as you can see, just by doing some Search Engine Optimization to her website, the search engines started to rank her website and more importantly, to rank her higher for some of her highly targeted keywords. Now I cannot release the keywords that she is going after because that would is one of the things that I am highly guarding. After all, the keyword hunting was one of the first things we did and that gave us a target to shoot for.

Some keywords are more more important than others because they are searched for, more often.

The keyword hunting took us about a couple of days and it was not too hard but it did involved some head-aching brainstorming and figuring out which keywords were the ones we wanted to go after.

As you can see from the Search engine results, we can conclude that Google.com is slow on ranking a website higher, yahoo.com immediately took her website to the #10, 11, and 19 for some very competitive and highly targeted keywords.

To Be continued…

Happy Blogging!

|o| Simply Frank |o|
Professional Blogging Wedding DJ in Houston

I was inspired to write today because one of my readers sent me a friendly reminder that I have an interesting blog, but that I had not posted since JULY!!!!

That’s like the #1 rule of blogging that I broke, post often.

Due to many things going on in life like, my PHOTO BOOTH Rental business growing tremendously, My Houston DJ Service business BOOMING with events, dedicating as much time to my wife and daughters as possible (there is never enough time in the world for that) and maintaining a ‘regular job’ from Monday through Friday… I’ve left blogging to the side.

Blogging is an important part of any online business. I’ve grown two very successful businesses through blogging and I’ve helped countless other people do the same. I guess because of my success that I’ve already achieved I’ve left blogging alone for, well now going on two months. It has not affected my bottom line, I have established both of my wedding vendor websites on the first page of Google.com for my targeted keywords and the business has been so steady that I actually turn away business on a daily basis.

But that is no excuse to find an hour a day to dedicate to my blogging habits.

Wedding Marketing News

As time goes on, I am finding out that more and more Wedding vendors are creating new blogs incorrectly. And that is by going to the FREE blogging platforms and getting a blog started on Wordpress.com, Blogger.com or Blogspot.com.

Those who spend the extra $50 to have a blog installed on their domain name will almost instantly see the effects of it.

When you get a free blog at wordpress.com, for example, your domain name is
my-wedding-blog.wordpress.com.
So wordpress.com gets credit for everything you post and all the traffic that you generate.  Your website will never get any credit for that. Why is that important? Well the reason you blog is #1 to attract readers to your blog and #2 to attract traffic for the search engines… in order of importance. And in the hopes that those readers or that traffic converts into a lead and then into a client.

When you get a blog at your website, my-website.com, for example, the blog would be
my-blog.my-website.com
and all the traffic generated by your blogging efforts will go to my-website.com. So every time you create a new blog post, the search engines start ranking your website since it is hosted by you, not the FREE blogging websites.

Getting a blog through blogger, blogspot, or wordpress.com is free and easy for many reasons …

1. All your hard efforts WILL go unrewarded, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
2. Your website will NOT get credit for any new traffic that you generate (Traffic is key to any website). the FREE Hosts get ALL the traffic benefits
3. It is NOT a professional way to blog (Kinda like printing your own business cards at home)
4. Whenever you post a new blog post, the search engines WILL NOT index your site, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
5. Your Website WILL NOT move up in the search engine rankings for your targeted keywords, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
6. You CANNOT target your keywords effectively, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
7. YOU DON”T OWN YOUR BLOG!!! (At anytime, for any reason they can take it away and leave you back at NOTHING). This has happened over and over again and why would you risk someone taking away your blog? All the hard work and brainstorming that you have done… GONE, in an instant, no warning, to time to back up, no time to save or transfer your previous posts… just GONE!

Do you remember when websites first came out, NOBODY wanted to invest in putting their website on their very own domain name. People would go to the free hosting places like Geocities or AOL and they would put that address on their website on their Professionally designed business cards. I can even remember people not wanting to tell others they had a website for that same reason… they were ashamed of it… cuz it was free, or very badly developed. Man how times have changed.

Now, YOU KNOW you must put your website on your own domain name because it looks more professional.
Today, we are in the same situation with blogging. We don’t now what is the best way to do it, so we see what others are doing and we figure, hey if they are doing it, why can’t I? Right?  Save yourself a few years of going in the wrong direction.  PUT YOUR BLOG ON YOUR DOMAIN NAME.

I would NOT recommend that you go out and buy a new domain name for your blog as it will also not help you in your quest for more traffic and better search engine results.

Here are the top 5 Reasons I’ve discovered of why hosting your blog on your already-existing domain name helps your search engine rankings.

1. Every time  you post a new article, the blogging software automatically pings, or tells the search engines, that there is some new content on your webstie.  Search Engines LOVE new, unique content, so they visit your website and add it to their search results.
2. Every Post increases your page count. This is important because the more pages that you have the more authority that your site builds up.
3. You can target MORE keywords that you are going after. So if you find a new keyword that you want to rank for, you simply write a new post about it, do some search engine optimization and before you know it you will be ranked for those keywords. I used this to get ranked for Wedding Venues in the houston area, up lighting, etc…
4. Your clients only need to remember 1 domain name.
5. It is the most effective use of your time.

So spend some money, to the right thing and host your blog on your professional website. You will almost immediately see the power of a blog!

Happy Bloggin!

|o| Simply Frank |o|

Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

Did you know you could use your blog to easily increase and climb up the search engine results?

Disclaimer: This will not work for you if your blog is hosted on a 3rd party host such as blogspot.com, blogger.com, typepad.com, wordpress.com, or any other FREE blogging host.

Here is a bit of background on this subject.

Did you know that if Google.com does not find many relevant websites that contain the keyword phrase that a user is looking for, they will just start adding results that Google thinks may be relevant to the search results? Most of the time they really are not even close to what the user is searching for. If you EVER see anything like this, it’s clear that there are very little to no websites out there that are targeting those keywords.

Let me give you a live example, because I suck at explaining concepts…

A few days ago, and I do mean Days, I was not even close to being ranked for the keywords “Gobo Design Houston.”  In fact the top spots were for very non related websites. There was one gobo design company in Houston and the rest were either from California, Gobo Manufacturers (not designers), and well wedding DJ’s from other cities and states.

What that means is that there either were very little to none actual websites that Google could show to people looking for a GOBO Designer in Houston or some poorly optimized websites of gobo designers.

I wrote a short article entitled, “Gobo Designs in Houston” and Viola!!!  My Website is Ranked #3 & #4 for the keywords “Gobo Design Houston” Not only That, I received a couple of  unrequested links to my website with the same keywords, a Digg and they are ranked #1, #2 &#10 for those keywords.

So Where I was not even ranked before, I now  own 5 of the 10 positions on the front page of the search engine results. It took actually a few minutes to an Hour for my website to be ranked so high with those keywords…

WHY?

As stated before…

1. Lack of competition
2. lack of websites targeting those words
3. lack of knowledge from business owners who are targeting those keywords.

What’s in it for me?

More business! More income! More Clients! More people going through my sales funnel and not only needing gobo design, but possibly even a DJ or a Photo Booth!

This is a great example of bloggin for the sole purpose of increasing Traffic to your website.  Additionally, be sure to track your traffic to see where it comes from and how you can use this one idea to increase traffic by capturing related terms to this search keyword.

There you have it, now go out and try it for yourself, be sure to use the google keyword analytics tool as discussed on the post on how to “Grow Your Wedding Traffic, One Simple Technique to Try” to gather ideas for keywords you may want to target.

Give it a try!!

Happy Bloggin!

–
|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ

Very few is done to educate wedding vendors how to properly run their blogs. It’s exciting news to hear that there will be an upcoming bloggin Bootcamp here in Houston. If you want to learn the correct way to run a blog, this might be an event worth checking out. $150 is not a lot compared the the benefits you WILL receive once you properly run your blog. As stated in my previous Post, My blog currently brings in over $100 a month by doing NOTHING, just sitting there and hosting Links for other advertisers. And that’s beside the amount of business that is brought to my website as a result of a properly run Blog!  Most, I would say over 80%, of the people who already have a blog are doing it incorrectly, losing out on a huge opportunity that is the internet, and missing out on a lot of money and business because their blog is not run correctly.

So, there could be nothing but great benefits from attending any form of training on how to properly Blog!

You already know why you should blog.  We’ll show you how.

Blogging Bootcamp :: Houston
presented by Liene Stevens of Blue Orchid Designs and The Smart Planner™

Who: Any wedding professional who wants to effectively leverage online media to grow their business
When: Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Time: 9 am – 4 pm
Where: For Your Memories at the Lofts of Post Oak
Cost: $150 per person

Since the launch of the Blue Orchid Blog in 2006, it has grown to include over 3000 unique daily visitors and is partially to credit for the launch of two new Blue Orchid Designs offices on the East Coast.  In the Blogging Bootcamp, Liene will share specific strategies and techniques she has personally used to grow the Blue Orchid Designs blog to where it is today.

This workshop is open to all wedding professionals, not just wedding planners.  Space is limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis so reserve your spot now!  Laptops are optional and lunch will be provided.

Topics covered will include:
*How to discover and leverage your blogging voice
*How to maximize your blogging ROI
*How to develop killer content – consistently
*How to set short term and long term goals for your blog
*How to effectively analyze your stats and blog traffic
*How to increase your readership and keep them coming back for more
*Specific strategies and techniques to use your blog to improve your main website’s SEO or “findability” on Google
*How to promote your brand through your blog’s design and content
*Maintaining professional boundaries while still being personable
*And more!

The Blogging Bootcamp will not be a class on blogging philosophy.  You already know that blogging is a good idea.  We’ll be showing you how to do it so that it is worth your time. No topic will be off the table, and any questions you may have will be fair game.

This event would not be possible without the generous support of Beginnings Wedding and Event Planning and For Your Memories Wedding Consulting.

Questions? Please send an email to workshops{at}thesmartplanner.com.

The fine print: Payment must be made in full prior to the event and is non-refundable.  Payment may be made via credit card or PayPal at the Eventbrite website.  Lunch will be provided and is included in the cost of the event.  Space is limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. In the event that the workshop is cancelled due to not meeting minimum registration requirements, a full refund will be issued to each registrant via PayPal.  Prices and terms are subject to change.