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 Continued…

Well on my last post I started to a Wedding Keyword Marketing Case Study about a client of mine who allowed me to share her website statistics. I guess it’s time I post on here the conclusion, to that case study…

I will post statistics from August of 2009 even though it is the beginning of November just so that I can show you how quickly the search engines picked up her website and started showing it to her clients

Wedding Marketing Keyword Results (August 2009)

So let’s see, Now her website is ranked for ALL the keywords she was after, even though she is not highly ranked for some, she at least is ranked for most of them now.

The more popular keywords she is now ranked in the first page of the search engines.

Once again, the process is simple, and with the help of some very basic search engine optimization, her website is now picked up by all the search engines…

What is the Wedding Website in Question?

The website In question is Our Coordinator Friend, Events By Audrey… at http://www.EventsByAudrey.com.

How is her website doing now?

Why not check for yourself, today, if you were to go to Google.com and search for “Wedding Coordinator in Houston” you should see her website rank #3 or #4 on the search engine results.

Click the following link to see for yourself ( it will open up a new window)
Wedding Coordinator in Houston

Conclusion

Getting your website ranked high on the search engines is not hard work.

The steps taken for this case study were:

1. Search for Wedding Coordinator Keywords
2. Eliminate Blogspot.com, Blogger.com, and Wordpress.com
3. Install the Wordpress.org Blog on http://www.eventsbyaudrey.com domain
4. Install a FREE wordpress.org theme and edit it to fit our needs
5. Do some basic SEO
6. Blog at least 1 time per week

How easy is that? Besides 1 or 2 semi-technical steps, the rest is pretty easy and basic and now EVERY Blog post that Audrey Creates will benefit her and help her website increase her traffic.

Happy Bloggin!!

|o| Simply Frank |o|

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

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

All Brides are GO!

Ok so it’s been a little over 4 months since I posted any sort of post. In that time, we’ve had a long season of successful Holidays, a new president has been elected, we’ve entered the year 2009 and now it’s time for me to show you guys the standings for traffic during that entire time.

We all know, if you’ve been doing any type of online marketing, that January is the month that brides flock to your website. Why? For many reasons, here are three;

1. NEW YEAR’S or CHRISTMAS ENGAGEMENTS
2. THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER, OH YEA, WE HAVE A WEDDING TO PLAN
3. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO FINISH THEIR WEDDING PLANNING

1. NEW YEAR’S or CHRISTMAS ENGAGEMENTS

Christmas is probably one of the days that, us guys, think it’s a great idea to proposed to that loved one.

Our thought probably go something like this: “We’ve gotten her sweaters, perfumes, dresses, jewlery… We love her, what else can we get her?? Oh, yea a huge diamond engagement ring, she will surely love me now!!!”

Ok, so a bit of humor there, but it really is one of the most popular days to get engaged. So once Christmas is over and New years has gone by. The first thing they have to do, is start searching for people to do their wedding. Everything is usually closed New Years and Christmas day, so most Brides go online to do a few web searches to see who the top dogs industry are. Where do they go…. It’s almost a verb…. Google.com, they ‘Google’ their vendors. Ok so it is a verb, just not in the dictionary yet.

From the comfort of their home, they get to read your websites and your Sales Copy to see if you have what they are looking for, more importantly if you can convince them to buy from you!

2.THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER, OH YEA, WE HAVE A WEDDING TO PLAN

During the Holidays, it’s hard to do any research for wedding related planning. Most brides, well most of my brides at least, do all their planning all the way up to November, after Thanksgiving, they enter into Holiday Mode, where, if they have the time, they will completely procrastinate their wedding planning up until the holidays are over. Unless their wedding is the Month of January, February, or March, chances are they will not be looking online for a wedding vendor. This is also a huge part of why there is such a huge rush of brides to your webstie. If you don’t know this… shame on you.. you don’t know what you are missing… Top paying brides looking for wedding vendors, again, from the comfort of their very own home.

3. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO FINISH THEIR WEDDING PLANNING

Ok, this one is not as popular, but it is a reason why brides rush your site during the month of Januray.  Brides make it a part of their new years resolution to finish that harsh, endless, job of planning their wedding. Planning a wedding is hard, it’s no easy task, that’s what Wedding Planners are there for. But a lot of brides decide to do it for themselves and before you know it, they are behind on all their tasks and their goals have gone out the window. So they have to do something like, make it a new years resolution to finish planning the wedding by March 13th… The day before their wedding!

BONUS: THERE ARE NO OTHER HUGE DISTRACTIONS

Here is a bonus reason why brides rush to your websites during the month of Januray. For once there is a month with no distractions! There may be a Bridal Show or two to attend, but for the most part. There are no huge distractions during January. The brides have time to relax, clear their head, go to their computer and calmly take a few minutes to do a quick search and find the local talents. What better way to relax than to the calm sounds of your home, sitting in front of your computer, and searching for vendors to fulfill their needs and expectations!

Why did I not Put Bridal Shows?

Ok, so most of you are wondering, why would I not put Bridal shows like the Houston Bridal Extravaganza, or the Bridal Symposium, or Sonja’s Bridal Showcase… Well, mainly because I don’t attend those events and I sitll get more traffic than 90% of the people that do attend. Most of the time it’s the exact same brides… Why?  Good question, I will answer that in a later post, just remind me. Don’t get me wrong, bridal shows are a great way to drive traffic to your website, but what’s the point, you’ve already had a one-on-one with the bride, a personal Sale is a lot more important to me than a remote sale, or selling them through your website. I think the reason you want people on your website is to drive them to call you or set up an appointment. Not to drive them away once you meet them. That is not good business and it makes no sense to me why people tell the bride, when SHE’S RIGHT IN FRONT FO YOU, “just go to the webstie.” My interpretation, if I were the bride, you don’t want my business.

Compare the Results

Lastly, you want proof. You want to see that I’m not just making this up. Of that I’m sure… So I logged on to my Google Analytics program to get a display of the past few months of traffic. Additionally, I have another visitor tracking program on my website, which I think is more accurate and I will display some details from there.

Elegante Entertainment Web Site Statistics

In the image above, you can see that starting from September 2008, wedding inquiries died down little by little all the way until December 2008, and in January 2009, they just sky rocketed almost doubling the number from December.

Elegante Entertainment Traffic Results for December, January, & February

In the image above you can see the actual numbers as reported by the visitor tracking program I use on my website, which is called Trace Watch. That is probably the greatest, or second greatest, tool I installed on my website. Without it I am blind as to what to do and more importantly, when to do it. And if what I did resulted in a positive or negative outcome.

What do the terms above mean?

• Unique Visitors: The number of unique visitors to my website that day, or under the months, that month. The way it is measured is that it counts each person once per day. So if I visit my website more than once, it will only count me one time. However, the next day, it will count me again, but just one time.
• Sessions: This one counts me or any other person, every time the access the website, leave and come back again. So if a bride visits me once in the morning and once in the evening, it will count her twice, as two sessions.
• Page Views: Pretty self explanatory, the number of pages viewed by the visitor, or bride. Page Views are also known as hits by other trackers.
• Robot PViews: This one is important, it tells you how many robots visited your website in one day. Robots are sent by the search engines to gather new information. This information is then stored by their databases and displayed when a user goes to the search engine to perform a search. Robots, are not counted in the Unique views nor are they counted anywhere else.
• The rest are daily averages of all the other results. Those are more important on the far right hand side, where you can see your daily average, for that month.

As you can see, by the above images, my DJ Website gets over 150 Hits a day, which is awesome, it’s more than most wedding directories and most local wedding websites can get. Those people you pay money to be on their website… They don’t get nearly as many hits as Elegante Entertainment DJ Website does on a daily, consistent basis.

YOU DON’T NEED THEM. Stopy paying them money for nothing!!!!

Remember the Bridal Extravaganza Show in Houston??? Well even because of that, I got some traffic. Wanna know how???

Well if you are smart enough to figure it out, you can try it on your website, and you will see for yourself… Below are two images,  One for the number of total visitors the Elegante Entertainment DJ Service and the other of what the people who arrived at Elegante Entertainment DJ were searching for (keep in mind that the Houston Bridal Extravaganza Show was on January the 10th and 11th of 2009):

Elegante Entertainment Search Results for the Bridal Extravaganza Show

Google Results for Elegante Entertainment on January 8th, 2009

These are the results for One Day, through One Search Engine. The first image show the number of results for three days and many different search engines, the second image shows you what people actually typed into the search engine to arrive at Elegante Entertainment’s DJ Website.

Well, that’s all for today, that should get you going on installing a blog onto your website. They are effective and they work. It may be too late for this January, but more than right on time for next January: January 2010!

Happy Bloggin!

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