BlueSkyVista: All You Need To Know About SEO

PubCon got off to a great start with an inspired talk by Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures (formerly an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc.). The subject of the keynote was Innovation…something Guy knows a lot about. My take-away of the lecture was this:

1. Figure out what makes your company unique and of high value.
2. Don’t settle for business-as-usual. Don’t try to duke it out with your competitors on the existing playing field. Your job is to create a newplaying field…to create the next curve.
3. Having a product or service that is 10-20% better than your competitors’ product or service is not enough. It needs to be 10-20 TIMES better. (Think Apple Nano or a Breitling watch)
4. Ignore the bozo’s who tell you it can’t be done.
5. Rinse. Repeat.

Other PubCon Stuff:

Rae Hoffman is absolutely hell on wheels…I love her.

I finally got to talk with Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney) and Barry Schwartz (RustyBrick) in person.

Got a few awesome ideas on acquiring .edu links. (this tip basically covered the cost of the entire conference)

Got a tip on how to improve my clients’ AdWords quality score. (this tip also covered the cost of the entire conference)

MartiniBuster gave some great link building advice (these tips also covered the cost…okay you get the idea.)

Never fear, gentle readers…PixelPunk and BlueSkyVista.com are going down to Sin City so you don’t have to!

I am heading down to the PubCon Conference in Las Vegas next month to learn the latest and greatest secrets from the Industry; leaders in all things Search, Internet Marketing, SEO/SEM, Affiliate, and General Webmastery.

Matt Cutts from Google will be there. ShoeMoney will be there. Danny Sullivan will be there. Andy Beal will be there. Aaron Wall will be there. Greg Boser will be there. The list of SEO rock stars goes on and on.

This is a great opportunity for me to learn from the best in the business and to put what I learn to work for my clients.

I just signed a new client today. Here’s the strange thing (to them)…they have TONS of traffic already! They called me and said they needed “search engine optimization”, but after a little research I found that they rank in the top-10 on Google for almost ALL of their preferred key phrases! (And they are GOOD key phrases, BTW…they really know what their customers are searching for.)

So you’re probably thinking, “So what’s the problem? Good for them! What do they need you for, anyway?”

Am I right?

These guys are pretty savvy and they’ve already done their homework with regards to SEO, and they’ve done a great job. The problem is, once a visitor gets to their site, they don’t know what to do! There’s a ton of great information but no direct ‘Call to Action’. In other words, they have not figured out how to turn these ‘visitors’ into ‘buyers’.

They currently get about 100 unique visitors a day to their site, but only 1 out of 100 visitors actually become customers. They told me they wanted me to increase their traffic 100% to 200 unique visitors a day.

Yeah, well, that’s a no-brainer, really…anyone can generate more traffic to a web site.

I countered, “How about I DON’T focus on increasing your traffic at all, but instead increase the number of new customers by 500%…how does that sound?”

They signed on immediately.

Simple arithmetic and a company balance sheet are wonderful things.

The lesson here is simple: Do you want more traffic? Or do you want more sales? Sometimes you *DO* just want more traffic, and that’s fine…just be sure you really identify what your goals are.