SEO Mentor

Most of you already know that I joined the Trust Guard team in the middle of 2008 and we have been very busy with some innovative new products and services to help online marketers around the globe. Some of those being the new Video Security Seal and now PCI Scanning Services.

This new service gives Trust Guard the unique ability to combine the power of PCI Scanning with their industry leading 3rd party security, privacy, and business verification services, further solidifying Trust Guard as one of the leading brands in online trust seals. The best part about Trust Guard’s PCI scanning services is that the prices will be half of its competitors such as McAfee Secure and Control Scan.

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So it has been a while since I have posted anything and can’t say I am sorry! I have had a great break for the past month with family and friends and can honestly say that 2008 was a great year.

With the birth of my first child (little Gracie, the SEO Baby), my wife and I have never been so happy! With me joining the Trust Guard team, I am totally enjoying each day of work. I am thankful to all those that have allowed me to interview them for my weekly podcasts.

As 2009 approaches I feel very lucky to be alive and am happy to continue my journey of life. I want to thank all those that take time to read my blog posts and listen to my podcasts.

Stay tuned for more great podcast interviews from the leaders in the online industry also stay tuned for more tips, new, and resources to help you with your everyday lives.

Check out this video below I put together for Trust Guard using Animoto.com:

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This week I took the guys over here at Global Marketing Strategies; Dave and Scott Brandley, and talked about their background in online marketing and some of their amazing tools. Not only did they give some great tips they also shared some interesting things going on with Trust Guard, their online website verification company. Take a listen above or read the transcript below.

Garrett: Hello everybody, this is Garrett Pierson here, Your SEO Mentor. I’m excited today to interview Dave and Scott Brandley of Global Marketing Strategies and Trust-Guard.com. I’m going to start off today with asking a question, so that those who don’t know the Brandleys can get a little bit of background on your SEO and online marketing industries, maybe your family, hobbies or anything else you want to talk about. Give us a little bit of your background, Dave.

Dave: Scott and I are father and son. We’ve been doing stuff online since 1997, back when the internet was a rumor. People were just starting to do things with it. We’ve kind of figured out how to make things work over time. It’s taken us a while. We built our own shopping cart. We sold products online, figured out how to get traffic in a small niche. We were getting about a million visitors a year to that small niche, which was pretty good. About four or five years ago, we sold that business. We realized that we had some skills that we had learned along the way about traffic and conversion. We love doing that kind of stuff. We’ve developed some tools that help people with their traffic and conversion. That’s kind of our hobby too. We love to come to work and do things like that.

Garrett: You guys work together, father and son. Scott, how has that been, working with your dad?

Scott: It’s been great. Sometimes we want to kill each other, but most of the time we’re like best friends. We work off of each other. We come up with good ideas and make our good ideas even better. It’s been a lot of fun.

Garrett: Why don’t you guys tell us a little bit, about why you guys enjoy it? Dave, you mentioned that it’s a hobby. Tell us a little bit, about why you guys enjoy online marketing, the industry, and your career these past ten or eleven years that you said you’ve been doing this?

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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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It’s official! I am proud to announce that I have joined the guys (Dave and Scott Brandley & Team) at Global Marketing Strategies owners of Trust Guard.

Although I don’t think much of titles, I am honored to be the “Operations Manager” where I will be organizing the operations of the company by taking my managing skills and putting them to work. I will also be taking on the task of building up strategic alliances/partnerships with related companies in the online marketing industry. So if you are at all interested in a partnership with Trust Guard then feel free to email jv (at) trust-guard.com or call me at (877) 848-2731.

I also will be the mouth piece at the new Trust Guard Twitter account at Twitter.com/TrustGuard and other Web 2.0 properties that Trust Guard will be setting up in the future.

If you have not yet checked out what Trust Guard has to offer then I suggest you do so NOW! You might want to compare Trust Guard to companies like McAfee Secure (HackerSafe), Truste, BBB, ControlScan, Verisign and see what we have to offer that they don’t and compare pricing.

If I told you that placing the Trust Guard seals on your website would and could increase your sales/conversions by 41% not sure if you would believe me, but what if Bryan Hoover of RadiantSmile.net told you and other website owners just like him. Now, am I saying that your conversion rate is going to go up 41%? NO. But what I am saying is that myself, Bryan Hoover and others have had similar results with being verified by a third party like Trust Guard and simply placing the seals on our websites.

Sorry about that last two paragraphs, seemed a bit salesy (is salesy even a word) but hey I am very passionate about my new position and the Trust Guard services. Can you blame me?

P.S. Next week I will be doing a podcast interview with Dave and Scott Brandley with more about Trust Guard latest innovations. So stay tuned!

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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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