This site audit is my gift to Chrystal Bougon in return for her generous contribution to Team in Training and the Leukemia Lymphoma Society on my behalf. Thank you Chrystal!

Did the title get your attention?

This reminds me of when I was running for student body secretary. I guess was a born marketer and didn’t even know it.

One of my campaign posters was completely black except for big, white text that read SEX, and under that in very tiny white print it said, “Now that I have your attention, vote for Kathy for secretary.”

It worked because during the lunch hour on the first day I posted it, a crowd of students flocked around it. Problem is, it offended the janitor so he took it down and gave me a tongue lashing. But I had already accomplished my goal, i.e., get attention.

That was then, but times have changed. These days people are much more open about their sexuality and Chrystal Bougon is using that to her advantage with her off and online adult toy store called “Bliss Connection.”

And while she’s doing well locally, she’s not getting much attention in the national market. This is because her business exists in a VERY CROWDED space and competes online against big guns (no pun intended) that spend upwards of $140,000 a month on PPC ads to assure they are seen on that first page in Google!

This sponsorship offer has passed.

But local businesses, look for opportunities like this to get inbound links. Your business benefits, but so do those you support. It’s a win/win.

Here are some search queries to perform to find your own sponsor opportunities:

“become a sponsor”
“donate”
“our supporters”

And if you want to find those sponsorship opportunities in your city simply add + “your city” to those queries.

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You’ve heard it over and over again. You need links on other sites pointing to yours to climb in Google. And that in turn gets you seen and then brings you customers. And you’ve heard SEOs state over and over again that a great way to get those inbound links is by sponsoring a non-profit, an event, or your community’s little league, for example, because typically those organizations will list you as a sponsor on their website along with a link.

Today, I’m offering businesses something much more beneficial than your typical sponsor links.

If you know SEO at all, you know that you can increase the power of your link juice in the following ways:

I’m bummed. I had a client who probably spent an hour writing a glowing review at Yelp about what I did for his business with my KickStart consultation program. It was a full page filled with all the details of how I helped him and the embarrassing results he got – embarrassing because he commanded 8 positions on the first page of Google. He was aglow and went on and on and on. It was the kind of review that every business wants to get.

Sadly, I’m guessing that Yelp considered it too good to be true, so they removed it. That’s not all that uncommon. They do it in an attempt to keep out spam. Unfortunately, though, it may appear that they are over-zealous, some say unfair, and then come the conspiracy theories about Yelp.

I don’t want that to happen to you, so I want to share two pieces of advice with you and give you a REVIEW TOOL for FREE that might help you get and keep the great reviews you deserve – it’s just not going to be on Yelp.

Why is that? Because it’s against Yelp’s policy to ask for reviews.

“But I’m not prompting them what to say and I’m not only asking those who had a good experience,” you may argue.

Doesn’t matter. Requested reviews are just not as credible as those that come spontaneously by your customers.

Also, Yelp knows that businesses will actually incentivize reviews with things like, “Leave a review and get a free latte on us!” And then how authentic are those? NOT!

For the good this does for consumers and for businesses who have to compete against the unethical review practices of their competitors, I stand behind Yelp’s decision on this. I think they are doing a great job keeping the platform trustworthy even though to the business owner like me who gets their authentic review filtered from time to time, it may not feel so fair at times.

(Honestly I wish Google would be so stringent.  Fake reviews are easy to fake there. Just go google “how to buy fake review on Google” and you’ll see. In November 2023, Google announced that they are revising their review algorithms so we’ll see if this changes.)

But don’t despair, I’ll also be giving you a tip on how you can drive new business from Yelp even without asking for a single review.

Google or yellow page sites? Where should you be? On one or in the others? In 1? 2? 3? Oh my.

Just when I thought I was done, Myles Anderson posted this absolutely great research over at Searchengineland.com on how the Google Panda updates have impacted the traffic on yellow page sites, and I can’t keep silent about it.

(Notice I have not capitalized “yellow page” there. If you read Part 2 of this series, you’ll know why.)

I hope you read that post in its entirety, but I also know most people aren’t as nerdy as I am to even care for that many numbers and that much explanation, nor do they have the time, so I’ll summarize here for you with some important takeaways on what it means for your local business.

I just got this on my Facebook wall:

“Hi Kathy, you are my resident expert…I am trying to increase the audience of my new blog, Stepford Husband, do you have any tips or suggestions?”

David’s post came with this picture on his blog:

Now tell me, if you saw that wouldn’t you follow it?

Or would hiring an SEO and a #1 position be worth the investment?

If you haven’t already, read the prologue to this post. If you don’t want to bother, then here’s a bit of info to set the stage.

In that post I showed how chiropractors in Scotts Valley were just about rendered invisible because Google bestowed a “Site Links” blessing on another chiropractor in town for the query “Scotts Valley chiropractic.” Dr. Hinde, though in position 2, looked like a mere mortal, while Dr. Thibodeau apparently achieved sainthood. On other queries, though, all chiropractors appeared to be on an equal playing ground, yet Dr. Thibodeau still reigned supreme.

This post answers the question, should Dr. Hinde in position 2 for the more popular and lucrative keyword “chiropractor” try for position 1? He also commands the first THREE positions for “Scotts Valley chiropractic office.” Is that enough?

And what about the other chiropractors further down the page and on other pages? Is it worth their time and investment in SEO to try to improve their rank in Google?