Google loves "authority" web sites. Sites that provide valuable information and expertise, and don't just try to sell stuff.

And to show their love, Google will reward authority sites with high search engine rankings, and lower cost per click AdWords keywords.

Sound good?

If you're ready to be the authority in your industry, here are the five major characteristics of an Authority Web Site:

1. High Quality Content – good, useful stuff
2. Large Quantity of Content – lots of pages
3. High Frequency of Updates – so Google sees the site is always growing and staying current
4. User Friendly – with intuitive navigation and helpful links
5. Good Reputation – as determined by other authority sites linking to you

The easiest way to create your own Authority Web Site is by blogging. My entire askHowie site is constructed as a Wordpress blog (it was free, except for some design of the header and some custom hand-holding, er, programming for special features).

If you're interested in attending a 3-part blogging webinar, which I haven't decided whether I'm going to offer or not, please reply as a comment below so I can get a sense of the amount and intensity of interest before I create the webinar.

Posted via email from askHowie

My thoughts on bailouts…

Not Just Dogs

Love is Having to Say You’re Sorry

When’s the Last Time a Business Showed Remorse?

“I Understand How Frustrating This Must Be For You.”

Southwest and JetBlue: Getting it Right

What About Your Online Business?

The Dirty Secret of Screw Ups

Today’s Offer

Every summer, my daughter participates in a local youth theater company.

As much as it thrills me to talk about this, I’m guessing your reaction is something like this: *yawn*.

Why? Because the idea of local youth theater is commonplace. Nothing to capture your imagination. Nothing to get you thinking. Nothing to make you go “huh?”

There’s no Big Idea in that first sentence.

But wait – because I haven’t told you the whole story. And I’m not going to either. Instead, I’ll share the Big Idea of the theater company:

All-girl Shakespeare.

That’s much better, isn’t it? In just three words, you get the Big Idea. 

Now I can go on and tell you all the details. How it started 10 years ago. How no adults are involved, except as drivers. How it’s grown and flourished, and how it’s provided an amazing leadership and teamwork experience for dozens of local girls over the years, ranging in age from 7 to 18…

But if you’re interested at all, it’s because those details are filling out the picture of the Big Idea. A bunch of girls who decided to turn the original all-male genre of Shakespeare plays on its head, and slaps mustaches and beards and swords on 13-year-old girls, and no boys allowed!

Here’s another big idea I read about recently:

Klingon Opera.

Only two words, but if you’ve ever watched Star Trek, you know that the Klingons are a race more or less opposed to the humans who feature in the original series. So there’s this group of Klingon fans who have filled out their language and created an opera, titled “U”. Here’s the basic plot, ripped straight from a feature story on NPR:

U is the story of Kahless the Unforgettable, “who dices 500 warriors with a sword forged from his own hair and some help from the Lady Lukara. To celebrate their victory, they make love in the ankle-deep blood.”

Take that, Madame Butterfly!

Another word for Big Idea is “meme” – an idea so compelling, it spreads easily and effortlessly. Through word of mouth. Through emails. Through Facebook.

Susan Boyle is a great example of a Facebook meme: Underdog Shows Them. (Not us. Them.) And really, the meme of Susan Boyle is understood even quicker and deeper in sounds and images than words. That’s one reason that movies provide us with such a plethora of memes, from “Make My Day” to “Feeling Lucky?” to “Life is like a box of chocolates” to Indiana Jones shooting the guy with the whip to “Rosebud.”

Your Elevator Speech is Way Too Slow

In the old days, we had the elevator speech. We have, the story goes, 30 seconds to tell other people what we do. Well, that’s very last millennium. Three seconds is the new 30. If you can’t capture someone’s imagination in the first three seconds, with a well-constructed meme, your message is just another swatch of audio wallpaper (thanks to Ann Convery for that meme) on the vast vista of Items Competing Vainly For Our Attention.

OK, so you’re not going to write an opera or start a Shakespeare company. How can you find – or manufacture? – a meme for your business?

Here are some famous business memes (at least they’re famous to marketing junkies like me):

• One-legged golfer
• “Bottom of the Jar” Money-Back Guarantee
• _____ For Dummies
• Delivered in 30 Minutes or It’s Free

Gary Vaynerchuk created a meme with WineLibrary.tv: Blue Collar Wine Expert (or, “Anti-snob wine expert”).

Thousands of people sell wine. But Gary was able to cut through the clutter with an idea, never expressed in words but permeating the entirety of his business, that lots of people instantly got and instantly loved.

Deconstructing the Meme

Memes work by stopping our brains in their tracks. Some juxtapose items never before combined in our minds (Klingon Opera). Some paint a visual picture that overrides our inattention (Bottom of the Jar, One-Legged Golfer). Some just feel like, “Wow, I’m glad somebody thought of that” (or, less charitably but more common, “Darn, I wish I’d thought of that”).

Memes are simple. Obvious once you hear them. 

And potentially worth millions of dollars.

I’m guessing there’s a meme hiding in your business. Right now. A concept that just pierces the competitive cacophony of “great service, low price” and makes you more memorable and more attractive. 

You may not be able to see it. To you, it may be ordinary. That’s where OPE’s (other people’s eyes) can come in handy. 

Get a friend to interview you about your business. Have them pretend they’re an investigative reporter, and you’ve got the most interesting thing going since Thomas Crapper invented the U-bend. 

If you truly can’t find a meme, then it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. What would you like your meme to be? You’re going to have to create the concept, then live into and up to it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to work on my masterpiece: All-girl One-legged Klingon Opera For Dummies.

Products (Links You Should Click)

The Ring of Fire AdWords and Online Marketing Coaching Club

The big idea? You have a question or a problem related to online marketing or AdWords? Push the red button on your phone and say, “Howie, get in here. I need you for a minute.” That’s the Ring of Fire. A bunch of online marketing experts and newbies all contributing in forums and live coaching calls. If you ever wished AdWords For Dummies could talk back to you (in a good way ;), check out the Ring of Fire. As low as $20 a month. Plus more “little idea” benefits than I can fit into a blurb.

Look Over My Shoulder (LOMS) AdWords Success Videos

The big idea? Dozens of short (2-5 minute) video tutorials to turbocharge your AdWords expertise. Just like you’re standing behind me, watching over my shoulder as I “do my AdWords thing.” You can read about it and mostly understand, or watch and get it instantly. Watch a sample video and see a list of topics…

Last week I was relaxing in Bad Godesberg, Germany, on the banks of the beautiful Rhine river. Recharging before a week of non-stop consulting for a European publishing house.

In the park next to my hotel, I see a toddler circling a fountain on a push bike. No pedals, no training wheels, just two feet alternating on the ground to keep vehicle and child upright and safe. (Something like the photo below, which I grabbed off a site selling the Skuut brand of push bikes.)

Which reminds me about…

The strange history of the bicycle

Da Vinci or a student of his may have sketched one some time in the 15th century. But like his famous flying machine, the bicycle never got off the ground either.

Fast forward four centuries, to 1816, the famous Year without a Summer, when crops were destroyed by really freaky weather. Like snow and ice in Pennsylvania in July and August.

In Europe, crop failures led to starvation and social unrest. One of the most egregious effects was the decimation of the horse population. There simply wasn’t enough oats to keep them alive and healthy.

German inventor Karl Drais put his mind to work to develop a horseless form of transportation. On June 12, 1817, he amazed the public by riding his Laufmaschine ("running machine") from Mannheim to Rheinau, a 118km trip along the banks of the Rhine.

Now, 118 kilometers (75 miles) is a decent afternoon’s ride on my Bianchi hybrid road bike. But imagine going that far on what’s essentially a seated muscle-powered scooter – a two-wheeler with no gears and no pedals – just two feet alternating on the ground to keep the good Herr Professor upright, safe, and motoring.

Why No Pedals?

The really interesting thing about the bicycle’s evolution was how long it took for someone to act on Da Vinci’s inspiration and stick a couple of pedals on the darn thing. I mean, it seems pretty bloody obvious to me that the thing would go faster, with less effort, if you used pedals and a chain. This technology had been around in mills for thousands of years. What was the limiting factor?

The problem, as it turns out, is that no one could conceive of a rider being able to keep their balance without constantly touching down with a foot on one side or the other. Why add pedals when the feet were needing for balance?

It was only after that particular limited belief was challenged that the modern bicycle could appear – and now small children can learn to stay upright in an afternoon (provided some loving adult is willing to sacrifice their spinal integrity to help).

What Does This Have to Do With Online Marketing?

Nothing, really. I’m just trying to justify a tax write-off for a new bike.

No, silly IRS auditor. That was just a little joke. Not serious at all.

What Does This Have to Do With Online Marketing? Be Serious This Time

OK. Fine.

Inherent in your business (and mine, and everyone’s) are beliefs that limit what we think is possible, based on what’s going on now.

If you’re getting 20 leads a week from AdWords, it’s hard to imagine what 200 leads a week would look like. From your current perspective, it will probably look just like 20, except 10 times more.

But when volume and velocity and quality of traffic increase, lots of things change. Big time.

You can get much pickier about the leads you accept as clients.

You can create hurdles to prescreen and prequalify, and to give you the power and authority in the relationship.

You can create waiting lists to generate the perception of great demand.

You can raise your prices.

You can build your business and hire help, so you get to focus exclusively on the stuff you love and are good at, instead of having to do it all yourself.

You can refer business to your competitors and become the go-to guy or gal for your industry.

If you sell products, you can start to source them at a cheaper rate.

You can negotiate deals with your suppliers.

You can cut out middle men and go straight to the manufacturers.

You can increase your profit margins.

In all cases, you end up making more money while expending less of your life energy (time and emotional angst) to get it.

It All Starts With Traffic

When you understand your market, and what keywords they search for, and what they want when they’re searching, and how to engage them in your ads and landing pages – you start a process that can end with you being the biggest player in your market.

No traffic, no sales.

No traffic, nothing to test and improve.

No traffic, no conversations with customers and no feedback on how to build a better business.

Is Your Business a Stationary Bicycle?

Without enough velocity, any business can feel like a stationary bike. Lots of hard work – good for the soul, right? – but not much movement.

And if you’re a cyclist, you know that you simply can’t describe the exhilaration of a fast downhill on a cool morning, after cranking up the hill via switchbacks and granny gears, to someone who just goes to the gym and pedals a stationary bike for 45 minutes while watching CNN or listening to Lil Wayne on their iPod.

Two completely different universes.

Are you ready for that downhill?

Traffic Surge Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Wednesday 20 May, 2009, is the first day of the long-awaited Traffic Surge telecourse.

Due to my inability to interpret a calendar, the course is not filled. Instead of putting out the required number of promotions in the right time frame, I was busy consulting in Germany (and now I’m up at 4am in NYC, writing this before attending and speaking at a Media Relations Conference all day).

So I just put out a free webinar loaded with great content (watch the replay here), sent one email, and golly gee – it wasn’t enough.

So I can’t say, "Hurry, there’s only one seat left." Actually, there are more like 6 seats left. I can’t use that "extreme scarcity" technique to get you to sign up. (I could lie, I guess, but you’d see right through me. I have no poker face.)

So here’s the real scarcity pitch: the bleepin’ course starts tomorrow! It’s deeper than I’ve ever gone into the mind of the market.

How to combine the insight of an anthropologist with the high-tech savvy of an online marketer.

How to find out – quickly and for free – how big and hungry the market is before committing resources.

How to write ads and craft landing pages that scratch the big itch – and make you the most desirable path to action for your prospects.

So hurry, there’s only ONE SEAT DAY LEFT.

Find out all about Traffic Surge – I’ll bet it’s less expensive than you’re assuming.

Hope you’ll join me for that ride. It feels better than most people can imagine.

Wishing you health, happiness, prosperity, and the wind in your hair,
Howie

But first: Last chance to register for either of two live web clinics today.

Spend an hour on the phone and the computer with me, learning about "How to Create a Surge of Traffic to Your Site."

One clinic at 1pm EDT (10am Pacific), the other at 8pm EDT (5pm Pacific). Sign up for whichever is more convenient.

http://askhowie.com/traffic-surge-web-clinic

When I started marketing online, I saw myself as a "creative" type who looked at numbers, charts, and graphs the way Queen Elizabeth might view a mouse in her Yorkshire pudding.

"Ugh," I would think. "I can’t fill my sensitive and sparkly marketing brain with a bunch of data. How unromantic!"

After a while, it became clear that I needed to learn how to respect the numbers. Generate them. Look at them. Learn from them. And I discovered something amazing: those numbers actually allowed me to become more empathetic, more sensitive, and more creative. And then I remembered…

1980: The Year I Fell In Love… Repeatedly

I was 15, and I began falling in love as a habit.

Melissa, Gabi, Erica, and at least a dozen more.

The fact that my affection was generally unrequited (and in all probability, completely unnoticed) just made the experience all the more intense.

Here’s what I remember most: the single-minded attention I paid to the current girl of my dreams.

In gym class, I would track The One no matter what I was doing, my team was doing, or she was doing.

I’m up at bat during springtime softball, the score is tied with 5 minutes left until the period is over, two runners on base.

Am I sizing up the pitcher? No.
Taking in the outfield alignment? Hardly.
I’m checking to see if She’s watching me.

Is she at the water fountain?
Talking with friends?
Resting with her eyes closed?

Huh? Strike three? What the… ?

I could have told you everything about The One at the end of the day. What she smiled and laughed at. Which of my jokes met with annoyed eye-rolling.

What she doodled in the margins of her social studies notebook. What she ate for lunch. And so much more…

Are You in Love with Your Market?

If you really want to run a successful online business, you have two choices. You can be truly, madly, deeply in love with your market, or you can fake it.

I’m not here to lecture you about business ethics, so all I’ll say here is, it’s a heck of a lot harder to fake it.

If you’re in love with your market, you’ll pay close attention to what they want. What they say. How they act on your site.

You’ll track them as they encounter your various ads, sign up or not for your free reports or e-courses, and convert or not to paying clients and customers.

Love turns out to be the mediating force between the opposite poles of bean counting and creative promoting.

When you’re in love with someone, you’re hungry to know everything about them. "Market research" changes from tedious chore to pleasurable obsession.

Split testing goes from technical gymnastics to fascinating questions and answers.

"Customer service" goes from necessary evil to delightful opportunity.

The Secret to a Surge of Leads and Sales to Your Site

The secret isn’t some fancy SEO technique.

It isn’t a stealth AdWords network nobody else has heard about.

It’s knowing as much as you can about your market.

- How many of them are there?
- What do they want so badly they’ll spend time searching for it?
- How do they currently satisfy that desire?
- What actual words do they use when they search?
- Who is currently serving them well right now?
- What are the economics of reaching that market predictably and consistently?

And the secret of staying on top of all this data is to combine the passion of a young lover with the analytical bent of an accountant.

And there’s no better medium to start combining the two mindsets than AdWords:
Virtually instant data, simple testing, clear reporting.
Short, haiku-like advertisements.

So whether you’re by nature a poet or an accountant, you can use AdWords as the crucible to strengthen your non-dominant side.

Just imagine the love songs this could inspire:

"Oh, baby, won’t you raise my CTR?"

"Since I been lovin’ you right, I haven’t got any wrong impressions."

"I’ll have to say I love you in an ad."

No-cost Web Clinic today (Wed May 6): Traffic Surge

• Do you have a web site and not enough visitors and sales?
• Have you been "noodling around" online but haven’t found a market or a business model to commit to?
• Are you running a successful business and just know there’s a way to use the web to take it to the next level?
• Are you just getting started with AdWords and hitting the brick wall of Google Confusion?
• Are you overwhelmed by all the different techniques and tactics and programs and courses, but don’t feel like you’ve found a solid foundation yet?

If you’re nodding your head in self-recognition at any of this, join me for the zero-cost Traffic Surge web clinic:

http://askhowie.com/traffic-surge-web-clinic

Wishing you health, happiness, prosperity, the soul of Rumi and the brain of Einstein,
Howie

I just took my 2002 Prius to the local Toyota dealer for the 100,000 mile service call. Since the kids and I are driving from North Carolina to New Jersey tomorrow (yes, hockey fans, we will rub people’s noses in the ‘Canes’ upset over the Devils ;), it seemed like a good idea to make sure the old girl wasn’t going to conk out somewhere around the 495 Beltway around DC.

Now, I’m used to service stations and dealers in New Jersey, where the standard operating procedure is to make customers guess where to park, what line to wait on, and what those strange stains are on the back of the computer monitor, walls, floor, and eventually, your credit card. So it was an amazing shock to see how the system works at Mark Jacobson Toyota of Durham (sadly, I don’t get the family discount).

Landing page lesson #1: Show visitors exactly where to start on your landing page

First thing is, there’s a sign that tells you exactly where to go for service (see below). It points to a row of four clearly defined, large parking spaces.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so I’m going to say it: I don’t think Susan Boyle is the world’s greatest singer. (Please don’t hate me.)

She’s good, but if you just heard her karaoke rendition of "I Have a Dream" on the radio, without the drama surrounding her triumph, you probably wouldn’t rush out and search for the album.

And yet Ms. Boyle has become an instant sensation. Her performance has been viewed about 100 million times on youtube. You can hardly find a Facebook page without a link to her performance. And the media and blogosphere are having a fabulous time deconstructing Susan and telling us what she means.

And now, so will I.

The Recession and the Rift

This recession has revealed a psychological rift in the world’s consciousness. A lot of people are scared and angry.  They’ve lost their jobs, their businesses, their insurance, and in some cases their self-worth. They feel victimized by events, by elites, and by entities. So they bob up and down, waiting to be rescued by a government or a hale wind or a friend. They hunker down into a form of abdication of self-responsibility because it feels better to be justified in misery than vulnerable in power.

And the interesting thing about this first group is how threatened they are by the second group.

This second group of people may be suffering just as much in real terms as the first group, but they refuse to see themselves as victims. Instead of giving up and waiting for rescue, they are scrapping and hustling and retooling. Starting businesses. Taking risks. Flexing muscles they may not have fully understood or claimed before. In crisis they are making opportunity, and in the process, taking responsibility for making themselves. Tending to the inner landscape, the "Spirit Lake" within.

This second group discovers something amazing about work: that it really isn’t about the money or the power or the status. In other words, not about the external rewards. Those are nice (actually, they’re awesome when received in the right way), but the real reward of work, or entrepreneurship, is the flowering of passion. When we take responsibility for our contributions to this universe, we discover that work truly is, in Khalil Gibran’s words, "love made manifest."

The Acorn Theory of the Soul

A wonderful book, The Soul’s Code, by James Hillman, presents the "acorn theory" of the soul. In Hillman’s understanding, our souls arrive on this planet knowing their destiny, and they do everything they can to give us the experiences – both seemingly good and bad – that prepare us for this destiny.

Yet our big brains often short-circuit the call of the soul, and we wallow in Thoreau’s "quiet desperation" punctuated by weekends and evenings of addiction and distraction.

I have to admit, I don’t know if the acorn theory of the soul is literally true, or just a useful construct. When I’m in such a quandary, I generally settle it by asking myself, "What are the implications – positive and negative – of believing this story?" In the case of the acorn theory, it’s all good. It puts a positive spin on all the pain and suffering and confusion I’ve experienced (it all sensitized me, taught me, and prepared me for this moment, whatever "this moment" turns out to hold and unfold). And it tells me that my life matters. A lot. And that respecting, unpacking, and honoring the quiet voice of my soul is the opposite of self-indulgent; it’s what I’m on this planet to do. It’s my responsibility.

Why Group One Hates Group Two

I was talking with a friend about the importance of having passion in one’s work, and why that seemingly obvious (to me) idea triggers so much rage and cynicism in so many people. "It’s because they don’t have passion," he explained. "So they refuse to believe it can exist in anyone else."

I think that’s partly true. Another part of the truth – of which I was reminded recently by my friend and marketing mentor Perry Marshall – is that they once believed passion and joy was possible, and they no longer do. So the message that life is more than punching a clock and earning our daily bread is a painful reminder of what they’ve lost (or perhaps abandoned and betrayed).

But there’s a third part of the truth: the acorn is still alive inside each of us, however shriveled and starved for nutrients. We may neglect it, ignore it, and tell ourselves it doesn’t exist, but deep down each of us knows we are an extraordinary being here to be, do and experience extraordinary things. And we may respond with rage and fear when someone (like me now ;) lectures about this, but the deepest longing of our being arcs upward and outward at the resonant field created by Susan Boyle. How else to explain the phenomenon of her popularity?

A lot of our acorns got watered by Susan Boyle in the past couple of weeks. Here’s a prayer that those acorns sprout and find purchase in nourishing souls and soils.

And now a couple items of business…

Announcement: Zero-Cost Web Clinic on Getting Traffic to Your Site

How do you find profitable online markets? How do you start getting affordable and qualified traffic to your site? How do you jump online without risking everything? If you already have an online business, how do you find the people looking for what you’ve got? This stuff is really important, so I’m making it ultra-convenient for you. Two web clinics, you choose the one most convenient for you: Wednesday, May 6, at 1pm and 8pm EDT. Sign up for this zero-cost web clinic here: http://askhowie.com/traffic-surge-web-clinic/

Reminder: The Keyword Spying Web Clinic

It happens on Monday, April 27 at 8pm EDT. Spaces still available, and if you register you also get the recording later. Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/577359970 Wishing you health, happiness and prosperity, Howie