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

Keywords

Keywords… Sounds simple enough, but most people still don’t understand what they are and how they relate to the success of a website.

First, I want to define the word, Keywords.

In corpus linguistics a keyword is a word which occurs in a text more often than we would expect to occur by chance alone. Keywords are calculated by carrying out a statistical test (e.g., loglinear) which compares the word frequencies in a text against their expected frequencies derived in a much larger corpus, which acts as a reference for general language use. Source: Keywords: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_(linguistics)

Thanks to the Wikipedia, we can get a good understanding of the definition of the word itself, and that is ‘key.’

But that’s just one definition, and although a good one, we need to get more depth and precision to the word, so let’ see what Dictionary.com has to say

key⋅word

[kee-wurd]

1. a word that serves as a key, as to the meaning of another word, a sentence, passage, or the like: Search the database for the keyword “Ireland.”
2. a word used to encipher or decipher a cryptogram, as a pattern for a transposition procedure or the basis for a complex substitution
3. a significant or memorable word or term in the title, abstract, or text of an item being indexed, used as the index entry.

Ok, these deal more with databases and titles and gives us a better depth that we can work with.

From the standpoint of a website, keywords have 2 distinct uses that most people don’t understand when they design their web site, or more importantly the text on the web pages.

1. Use keywords to attract the attention of a Bride.

   There are 3 ways to use keywords when writing your website for a bride.

   a. Use keywords to highlight important benefits of your service.

   Have you heard the phrase,’ sell benefits, not features?’ Your website should be full of benefits that your service brings to brides. It’s a good idea to highlight them, bold them, or put it in all caps when you want to emphasize your benefits.  The best practice for this is to have a list of benefits, and highlight the actual benefit. For example, if one of your benefits is that you want to promise a stress free wedding reception, your wedding keywords would look like this: Our 10 years of experience allow us to bring you a stress free wedding reception. That way, when the bride scans your text, she can immediately see the words stress free and her eyes will be drawn to that sentence. She has not choice but to go back and read the entire sentence or entire paragraph.

   b. Use keywords to get the brides to take action.

   When a bride is on your web site, you want them to take some kind of action. So why not use your keywords to tell them what you want them to do? It is a general understanding that ‘PEOPLE NEED TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO!‘ Even if it’s common sense to you that you, that is not to say that it’s common sense to your readers.  When you place a form on your website, as suggested on my post about converting bridal show leads into customers, or your phone number, it’s not automatic your visitors expects you to call them or fill out your form. You really have to use keywords to tell them what you want them to do. If you add the keywords, call us today, fill out our simple contact form, send us your information so that we can contact you, call for pricing information, call or fill out the form to check for availability; you will see a huge spike in the number of people who will either call you or send you their contact information. This is by far, one of the most important calls to action you need to put in your website (and you should have it many times, not just once; but not too many times)!

   c. Use keywords to make a strong point.

   You want to emphasize and set yourself apart from your competition. When you do that, it should be bolded or it should stand out on it’s own… Especially if you are a one of a kind business or if you want to stress how your services have been recognized around the area by the media or by any other means. This will add a bit more of curiosity and trust to the reader’s mind!

2. Use keywords to attract the attention of the Search engines.

   You first want to write for the brides, then go back and edit it by adding keywords that you want to be found for. Let’s say for example, my website,  Elegante Entertainment, I want to rank for the words Wedding DJ and Houston. Those are my main keywords that I want the search engines to associate with my website. I try to use those words as often as I can and make them fit as natural as I can into sentences. It’s pretty challenging, but it’s well worth the time.

   What you should understand is this: A search engine wants to give relevant results to the person using the search engine (Eg. Google.com). When you search for the keyword ‘doctor’, you don’t want to get results about a wedding dj… you want to get nothing but results that have the words doctor in them. Pretty common sense, right? So when you write your page, the only way a search engine, or a group of computers, can tell that you are a Wedding DJ, or a Wedding Photographer, or a Wedding Coordinator located in houston is to include the actual words, Wedding DJ in Houston.

   You want to include the keywords in your Title, Your Meta Tags, and strategically, throughout your entire web page. This is what is known as Keyword Density (Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. -Wikipedia).

   It would be a great idea to also bold these words or to make them a heading (using the <h1> tag) and working them into the keywords that you previously bolded for your brides to read.  Let’s look at our previous example, Our 10 years of experience allow us to bring you a stress free wedding reception. You can add the words “in houston” for greater search engine density. It may look and read a little odd, but you would be surprised how easily your readers can forgive you for it or make up acceptable conclusions in their head about why you did it.

If you understand the best way to use keywords on your website, you will not only be able to use kewords to lead your bride into booking your service, but you will also fuel the search engines with a great site that they can present to future potential brides.

Happy Bloggin!
–
|o| Simply Frank |o|

I am NOT a search engine marketing guru, but I hold #1 and #2 spots on all the search engines for ALL my targeted keywrods.

Ranking high on the search engines is crucial if you do any kind of online marketing. The people who know the secrets want to charge you an arm an a leg for something they cannot guarantee. Once you stop paying them, you lose out on the benefit and you see your search traffic and website visitors die down.

Blogging allows you to keep your website up to date. Just by writing at least once a week, you can keep your search engine rankings and your search traffic at a constant level and you don’t have to depend on your online marketer for your website’s success.

Here are a few tips to consider if you want your search engine traffic to remain at a constant level.

1. Post to your Blog Often.

   Search engines want to give its users, the brides (or anyone using the search engine), the most up-to-date results as well as the most relative results when they search for something. The rule of thumb I use is, the longer I go without posting to my blog, the lower my search engine result will be. Ideally I would like to post an article every weekday to my blog, but in reality I only get to do so about once or twice a week. Also, if you establish a fan base for your blog, they will expect to read from you often. They want that free, valuable advice you have to give them. Some visitors will even rely on what you have to say. Even though at first you may think this is not good for your business, it is. Giving away, free valuable advice helps those brides that are about to make a decision.

2. Target a Wide Variety of Keywords in your Titles.

   The bloggers with most creative minds will prevail here. Being creative is key to gaining getting a successful blog going. Everyone is creative, everyone has a unique twist to things, it’s just a matter of trusting yourself and doing it. Especially if it’s different and nobody has done it before. In a previous post, How to find Related Search Engine Terms, I give you an idea of how to find some popular keywords, I even gave you some of mine so you can just change it to fit your niche inside the wedding industry. For example, I am running a series of blog posts that pertain to a specific venue and adding what I do to it. Let me show you.. Now this may seem like something easy to come up with, but who do you know that’s doing it.. Nobody? I thought so.. Again Easy to do, it took some creative thinking on my side (patting myself on the back) and it has worked like a charm.

   Examples: Paraiso Marabilla Wedding DJ in Houston, Bella Terraza DJ Houston, and Sweetwater Country Club DJ.

   Whenever the people search for either of those venues my website comes up, whenever they look for a DJ that has DJ’ed that venue i should be one of the first websites to come up.

3. Install All in One SEO Pack for your Wordpress Blog.

   This one plugin for wordpress does all the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for you. You just install it and it does the rest. I’ve noticed about 20-30 more visitors to my website since I installed this tool. So all the keywords that I am targeting are getting ranked pretty well in google.com. Again, Search Engine Optimization is critical for getting your blog listed on the Search engines and this does EVERYTHING for you. Without this, the previous step is useless

4. BONUS TIP:

   Always, always, always… Aim to help someone with your experience. If your blog is not about helping others, it will never succeed no matter how far high in the search engines you get it. SEO is for the robots that crawl your webpage, but good, juicy, helpful content is for the readers that land on your site. Think of it this way, brides are absolutely clueless about weddings, if you give them a golden nugget that saves them time, saves them money, or saves them both… you will hold a place in their mind and fighting for mind space is what all marketers are aiming to do. Once you are in their mind as someone they can trust… you’ve made a happy customer.

Blogging success, like anything else, does not require a brain surgeon…err marketing guru, just a little work and determination. Follow the 3 tips above and you are on your way to reaching success through blogging.

Happy Bloggin!

–
DJ Francisco
Owner and Blogger of a Wedding DJ in Houston Blog