SEO Mentor

So if you remember my post a week or so ago about me Joining the Trust Guard Team, I had a lot of great feedback and acclamation about my new position but suddenly realized that I didn’t talk much about the benefits of Trust Guard. I mean come on, I am a marketer and didn’t even talk up the company that I am trying to help market!

First off Trust Guard can sell itself if you just visit Trust-Guard.com, but let me tell you what I think of trust seals and how they have helped my own business.

Everyone in the online industry is trying to get more traffic and sometimes this is all they think about. They sadly forget to think about what happens after that and a majority of the time these people or businesses fail. So you start pushing traffic to your website and hey you might even get a couple sales here and there. Here is the problem. YOU CAN BE GETTING MORE SALES! If you believe you have a great product and your website looks half way decent then the next step is to give your customers the trust they deserve.

A recent article by Mike Sachoff of WebProNews.com gives us a great example of why providing confidence to our customers is so important these days.

“The majority of Americans are concerned about what is being done with their personal information online according to a new poll from Consumer Reports.

The poll found that 82 percent of people are concerned about their credit card numbers being stolen online, while 72 percent are concerned that their online activity is being tracked and profiled by companies.
ConsumerReports.org

Over two-thirds (68%) of Americans have provided personal information to gain access to a Web site, but 53 percent said they were not comfortable with Internet companies using their email content or browsing history to send relevant ads, and 54 percent are uncomfortable with third parties collecting information about their online behavior.

The overwhelming majority (93%) of people think Internet companies should always ask permission before using personal information and 72 percent want the right to opt out when companies track their online behavior.”

These numbers should alarm you, do to the very fact that you could be losing sales. Actually, I know you are losing sales because of this lack of confidence people demonstrate.

Where am I going with this? Well in the start of this article I said I was going to talk about (OK really was going to try and sell) Trust Guard. So with the quote above in mind you need to realize that people want and need to feel comfortable buying from you, essentially they need to trust you without even knowing you. This is where the Trust Guard website verification and trust seals services come into play. How, you might ask? Well great question!

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I had a blast interviewing James Duthie from Down Under! With his amazing Australian accent and wonderful online marketing tips and content, James is the epitome of a up and rising online star. James is famous for his powerful guest posts that rock the industry every time a new one is posted. Listen above to my interview with James or read the transcript below!

Garrett: Hello everyone, Garrett Pierson, Your SEO Mentor here with James Duthie. How are you, buddy?

James: Very good, Garrett, how are you?

Garrett: I’m great. I hear that Australian accent there, is that right?

James: Yes, that is correct. I’m from Melbourne, Australia, sunny Australia. It’s a beautiful spring morning where I am, at the moment. It’s a good time of year to be in Australia. It’s just coming into summer in the next few months.

Garrett: That’s awesome. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions throughout the interview, and it sounds like there’s a slight delay. We’ll work through that. James, tell us a little bit more about yourself. For those who may not know you, what is your background in the online-marketing industry, your family, your hobbies, or whatever you want?

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So I have come across a lot of debate about putting Trust Seals on your website. First of all I am letting you know now that this post is going to be short and to the point: TRUST SEALS WORK! It is that simple. Personally I endorse Trust Guard seals and here is why:

Two Recent Consumer Reports™ National Surveys show that…

• The #1 concern visitors have:
  Is my personal information Safe and Secure?
  (88% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• The #2 concern visitors have:
  Can I Trust the site and the information on it?
  (81% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• The #3 concern visitors have:
  Does the site have a good Privacy Policy?
  (76% of Internet users surveyed, viewed this as “Very Important”)
• 95% of those surveyed want access to a websites;
  Email address, street address, and phone number.

Trust Guard takes care of all these consumer issues, and this is the simple reason why I choose Trust Guard seals over HackerSafe, TrustE, BBB, and Comodo.

But don’t take my word for it check out a couple of their great testimonials:

“After putting Trust Guard on my web site my conversion rate went from 6.8% to 9.6%! (A 41% Increase!) It has been a tremendous asset for my company! Thank you!”

-Bryan Hoover, RadiantSmile.net

“In the two weeks following installing the Trust Guard seals on my site, sales increased 116% over the prior two week period! Clearly, I’ve been losing sales for months by not having a third-party site verification like Trust Guard. On the Internet, Trust is everything. Thank you Trust Guard! I’m glad I found you.”

-Larry Weaver, FunnyEmployeeAwards.com

 

I also add my testimonial that Trust Guard seals work I have had much success with using the seals on my LearnSEOLive.com site and many others. But the best thing about Trust Guard seals is that they are effective and affordable. Go to their Comparison chart and you will see that you can save $1000s.

So there you go, but don’t take my word for it check it out yourself.

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So I was doing some research on Facebook.com for some clients that I mentor for Social Marketing. Through my research I found the following articles below that helped me understand a little better what Facebook.com is really all about:

Facebook – Wikipedia

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while still a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to only Harvard students but was expanded to the Ivy League. The website has more than 69 million active users worldwide. According to Alexa, the website’s ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007.

Facebook – The Complete Biography

Facebook is the second largest social network on the web, behind only MySpace in terms of traffic. Primarily focused on high school to college students, Facebook has been gaining market share, and more significantly a supportive user …

Find Cheap Gas on Facebook

Then you should try the cheap gas application on facebook. The app simply takes your Zip Code that you have registered and automatically shows you the locations & prices for the cheapest gas. It breaks these down by regular unleaded and …

Facebook in Reality

To give you a sense of how ridiculous some aspects of Facebook are, idiotsofants.com have produced a video called Facebook in Reality. It is currently running at 460000 views and comes up first when you type Facebook into YouTube. …

Using Facebook for business (part 2): making it sustainable

If we’re not careful, we can end up with blogs that never have posts added, or Facebook pages that are little more than a few fan photos. This is why I spent a lot of time evaluating Facebook before getting our company into it. …

So if you were ever wanting to learn a little bit more about Facebook.com then I hope this quick post and resources helped.

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I recently had a question from Mike Florence about Universal Search and what it is. Blended Search or Universal Search, whichever you call it; both are changing the online world. Google was the main pioneer of Universal Search and of course all the Major Search Engines (of course I mean Yahoo & MSN) soon followed.

Here are a couple things changed in the search engines when Universal Search came to fruition:

Digital Content syndicated in search results such as -

• Video Content
• Images
• Press Releases
• Articles
• News
• Local Listings
• Books
• etc.

Let me show you a quick image example of what I am trying to explain in words:

As you can see from the screen shot above, images and video are part of the organic search results. I don’t see any better explanation of blended search than the above image.

So how is Universal Search effecting the SEO and Search Engine Marketing industry? Well think of it this way, at one point you were competing with 10 other results to be on the first page of Google. Now with universal search, if there is a news and video result within the search query your website now only has a 80% chance to be listed on the first page of the search engine.

So you might be asking, “What does this mean for me and my business?” Well no need to worry. IF!!! You are taking advantage of video, press releases, image optimization, news, etc. Sites such as the well know YouTube.com, PRWeb.com, and Flickr.com just to name a few will help you take advantage of Universal Search.

Now you also need to know about the latest Social Media, also called Social Marketing, Social Networking. Search engines are picking up content from Social Networking sites such as Hubpages.com, Zimbio.com, and Gather.com, and these are just a few examples. Stay tuned for more about Social Marketing in future posts and podcasts.

Hope this answers your question Mike!

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So I found out about Ed Dale a huge Online Marketing Guru that I have actually had the chance to meet in Atlanta at a conference. Ed is hilarious and is a really great guy. If you haven’t heard about his Thirty Day Challenge you really need to start watching his new Live Thirty Day Challenge TV channel at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/thirty-day-challenge-tv. But if you would just like to watch it here I have embeded a live stream of the TV channel. Thanks Ed for being such an inspiration to the online marketing industry!

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