Podcasts about website design agency

In this episode, Phillip Lanos and Jason Miller are joined by Sol Alsina, Founder, and CEO of Mundoh Designs. Sol Alsina shares her story and how she views the daily war in business and the importance of international relations and business. You will also uncover how to overcome a business struggle that may help save your business.Tune in to learn more!ConnectStrategic Advisor Board: www.linkedin.com/company/strategic-advisor-boardJason Miller: www.linkedin.com/in/jasontmiller-sabPhillip Lanos: www.linkedin.com/in/philliplanos/Mundoh Designs: mundoh-designs.comSol Alsina: www.linkedin.com/in/solalsina

Ensuring that your website is accessible is important for several reasons. First and foremost, confirming that people with disabilities can use your site is simply the right thing to do. We all owe it to one another to do what's within our power to make life a little easier for other people.Website accessibility is also essential from a business perspective. If users can't navigate your website easily and find the information they're looking for or take the actions they want to take, they're very likely to leave your site, visit another, and become someone else's customer.But how do you know if your site is fully accessible? Fortunately, there are both manual and automated tests you can perform to determine whether your website can be used by people of all abilities.Simple Manual Accessibility Tests You Can PerformWhen you're in the process of creating or enhancing your website, there are several steps you can take to assess its accessibility. They include: Check keyboard navigation. Can visitors get around your site using only a keyboard? For instance, if you're at the top of a page and start tabbing, can you get to every link or button on that page? Assess highlighting. When you tab from item to item on a page, is each field, link, tab, etc. highlighted and easy to see? Evaluate color contrast. Are you using a color scheme that provides enough contrast that text and objects stand out and can be seen? Check screen reader compatibility. Screen readers render text as speech or braille output. Is your website designed to interact with them? Evaluate layout. Every website visitor relies on information being presented in a logical, orderly way. Does your website meet that requirement? For instance, are there different headers for each level of information, and are they used correctly? Ensure proper and complete labeling. Each object on your website should be identified. Does every field or other item on the page you're assessing have an appropriate label? Check multimedia operability. Visitors should be able to pause or stop videos or animations easily and intuitively. Is that the case on your site? Confirm closed captioning and transcripts are available. Any videos embedded on your site should be closed-captioned and there should be written transcripts for audio elements. Are those assistive measures in place? Check for alt text. Alt text is used by screen readers to describe items like images. Does your website have alt text for every element?These are just some of the website accessibility evaluation steps you should take. But going through this checklist can give you a general understanding of how accessible your site is and where you need to focus your attention to make it even more so.There are also several website accessibility testing tools you can use to further fine-tune your site.Automated Accessibility TestingAfter doing an initial, manual assessment of your website's accessibility, it's a good idea then to use automated testing tools to perform a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of your site. The Wave web accessibility evaluation tool is one example. Its ability to check site characteristics quickly and efficiently can be very helpful.Tools like WebAIM can also be valuable in assessing aspects of a website that are sub

Welcome to another episode of the Action and Ambition Podcast! Joining us today is Qamar Zaman, Founder and Chief of Growth at KISS PR Brans Story. KISS is a creative Digital Marketing and Website Design Agency with expertise in exceptional Web solutions. As the name implies, KISS PR stands for Keep-It-Super-Simple and Promising-Results. Its vision is to provide premier digital design and online marketing services to small and start-up businesses around the world. Qamar shares his story of surviving a destructive hurricane and finding the inner strength that made him where he is today. Tune in to learn more!

Most agencies use the expected social media platforms to promote themselves, but this couple took a different path from the usual Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin posts to help them find potential clients. In choosing to leverage their Youtube channel “Design Break” they've been creating a different kind of buzz. In this episode we chat about:• How they use social media platforms to promote their brand• Why they chose to jump “across the pond” to America rather than focusing on larger clients closer to home in the UK• Splitting their time to give equal focus to both their agencies offices• How they maintain strong ongoing relationships with their clients• What a typical projects is for Dunclyde• How they balance having their husband/wife arm-in-arm process and including clients in their process• Niching down their category focus to 2 main industries• How tech startups focus on features rather than benefits to their peril• What's it's like to work with your spouse in an agency setting• How having a personal time away from work and from each other helps in setting boundaries• How they achieve psychological distance between work life and home life, especially during COVID• How they manage global time differences to work with their team in California• Why they dropped some of their social media platforms and leaned into Youtube• How they create video content that helps their audience with Webflow features• How setting a strict schedule to video content creation helps in achieving better content• How to overcome the struggles in building an agencyTo connect with Daniel Clydesdale & Eilidh Dunsire:Email: hello@dunclyde.comDesign Break Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/DesignBreakWebsite: www.dunclyde.com/ Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, head on over to the following links for more of my work and some valuable resources to get you started on your own branding initiatives. Until the next episode!VISIT MY WEBSITE:http://www.philipvandusen.com JOIN THE BRAND•MUSE NEWSLETTER:  http://www.philipvandusen.com/muse JOIN THE BRAND DESIGN MASTERS FACEBOOK GROUP:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/branddesignmasters/SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL:http://www.youtube.com/c/PhilipVanDusen FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER:https://twitter.com/philipvandusen FOLLOW ME ON PINTEREST:https://www.pinterest.com/philipvandusen LIKE MY AGENCY ON FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/verhaalbranddesignBring Your Own Laptop - Adobe Training with Daniel Scotthttps://www.byol.me/philip InVideohttps://bdmpodcast.com/invideoDiscount Code: “PHILIP50”Tubebuddyhttps://wwwtubebuddy.com/philipvandusen ____________________________The Brand Design Masters Podcast is targeted to entrepreneurs, designers, creative professionals, and anyone interested in brand strategy, business planning, graphic design, personal branding, trends and marketing.Philip VanDusen is the owner of Verhaal Brand Design, a brand strategy and design agency based in New Jersey. Philip is a highly accomplished creative executive and expert in brand strategy, graphic design, marketing and creative management. Philip provides design, branding, marketing, career and business advice to creative professionals, entrepreneurs and companies on how to build successful brands for themselves and for the clients and customers they serve.

Wonder if your website is branded well enough? How to actually get conversions from your website? How detailed do I need to go on my website design? Here's the episode to answer all of your questions with the lovely Megan Martensen!   Welcome Megan from Mint & Poppy - she owns a Brand and Website Design Agency for female entrepreneurs and service based businesses. She recently launched her online coaching program - digital dream biz where she helps women start and grow online businesses.   Check out Megan's Agency on IG! Check me out on IG! Want a FREE training on How to Market Your Product on Social Media?? CLICK HERE!

Welcome to Episode 250 of the Yeukai Business Show. In this episode, Ken Tucker and I discuss how local businesses can grow using strategic marketing to increase your return on investment. So if you want to learn how to effectively use tools such as search engine optimization and sales funnel system to generate clients fast, tune in now! In this episode, you'll discover: Duct Tape Marketing System to identify your ideal costumer and to analyze your competitionsImportance of creating a marketing system to fuel your businessNecessary steps that you can apply right nowThe best way to overcome difficulties that come from running a business About Ken Ken Tucker is an expert in Strategy base marketing whose accomplishments include: Founder of Changescape Web, a Digital Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businessesSpecializes in search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, lead generation, email marketing and marketing automation.Digital Marketer Certified PartnerMaster Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant and Duct Tape Marketing Professional Services Marketing Expert Certified ConsultantInbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010) and SEO for Growth ConsultantDirect-Response Copywriting Specialist and Customer Value Optimization Specialist Certified Consultant More Information Learn more about how you can improve your results with strategy-based marketing: www.changescapeweb.comhttps://twitter.com/changescape?lang=en https://www.facebook.com/Changescape/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentuckerweb/  Strategy Base Marketing Links & Mentions From This Episode: Amazon Author Page: Ken Tucker Thanks for Tuning In! Thanks so much for being with us this week. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Please leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode on business growth strategies, please share it with your friends by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic episode updates for our "Yeukai Business Show!" And, finally, please take a minute to leave us an honest review and rating on iTunes. They really help us out when it comes to the ranking of the show and I make it a point to read every single one of the reviews we get. Please leave a review right now. Thanks for listening!

Ken Tucker is the founder of Changescape Web (www.changescapeweb.com), a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses. They build websites that generate customers. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, lead generation, and marketing automation. Ken tells us how a small business owner can beat a large national chain by having more flexibility and using local apps instead of local SEO. Ken and his team specialize in providing 12 month social media campaigns to drive traffic back to websites. Previous Guest Appearance: MarketerOfTheDay.com/533 Ken Tucker's Site 

Ken Tucker is the founder of Changescape Web (www.changescapeweb.com), a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, lead generation, and marketing automation. Ken is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010), and an SEO for Growth Consultant (stlouis.seoforgrowth.com). Ken is the author of Social Media Marketing for Restaurants and co-author of Reputation Management (Marketing Guides for Small Businesses). This compact guide explains how to create and protect your online reputation. Ken created and taught one of the first college credit Social Media Marketing classes in the US at St. Charles Community College. He has taught a course on Content Management Systems. He serves as Co-Chair of the St. Charles County Chambers of Commerce Technology Committee.

Ken Tucker is the founder of Changescape Web, a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in developing comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses across the US. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, and lead generation. Ken is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010), and an SEO for Growth Certified Consultant. He provides strategy and training in the Duct Tape Marketing System and Social Media as well as offering a complete range of marketing, advertising and consulting services. Ken is a co-author of the book Reputation Management (Marketing Guides for Small Businesses). This compact guide explains how to create and protect your online reputation.   Connect                                                                                       Twitter – https://twitter.com/Changescape Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/changescape Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentuckerweb/ Google+ – https://plus.google.com/+Changescapeweb Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/user/changescape Website – https://changescapeweb.com/   People Mentioned Barack Obama – https://twitter.com/barackobama   Resources Thrive Themes – https://thrivethemes.com/   Books The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles: https://goo.gl/Ervi9S

Ken Tucker is the founder of Changescape Web (www.changescapeweb.com), a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, lead generation, and marketing automation. Ken is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010), and an SEO for Growth Consultant (stlouis.seoforgrowth.com). Ken is the author of Social Media Marketing for Restaurants and co-author of Reputation Management (Marketing Guides for Small Businesses). This compact guide explains how to create and protect your online reputation. Ken created and taught one of the first college credit Social Media Marketing classes in the US at St. Charles Community College. He has taught a course on Content Management Systems. He serves as Co-Chair of the St. Charles County Chambers of Commerce Technology Committee.   During This Show We Discuss… How powerful social media marketing can be for your business How effective social media marketing is for businesses who advertise locally and nationally  The best marketing strategies for local businesses What business owners can do offline to grow their business Great strategies that combine both online and offline marketing What duct tape marketing is, and how it works The most effective ways to market in today s business environment  The keys to having a great website 3 things every great website should have… but most do not  How effective SEO and SEM are when it comes to increasing search engine traffic Basic things everyone should do on their site to improve SEO How you can get a free review on the strength of their website SEO now The importance of having a positive online presence when it comes to your company s reputation And much more…

Ken Tucker Important Local Online Strategies, Specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses across the US. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, and lead generation marketing automation Hey, this is Dave Negri with Contractors Secret Weapon. Today, I have a fun guess. There's going to be a lot of fun. His name is Ken Tucker. He's the founder of Changescape Web a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses across the US. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, and lead generation marketing automation. And Ken is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010), and an SEO for Growth Certified Consultant. Ken is the author of Social Media Marketing for Restaurants. Coauthored Reputation Management (Marketing Guides for Small Businesses) and this compact guide explains how to create and protect your online reputation. Awesome. This is really awesome. Ken, I just you know thanks so much for being with us and being willing to share your expertise. Thanks, so much Dave, I look forward to it. Cool. Just how did you get started in this crazy business because it's ever changing, ever moving and is no slow pace to it at all, is there? No, not at all. So, I actually started my company in 2005. Prior to that, I had been in the software development business and I had worked on some very large projects for the Department of Defense. I started my company largely focused on the Information Technology Business, Dave, that I had done a lot of web application development and not necessarily marketing websites that business you know business web applications I should say. But I, because I ran an entire division of the company. I had to be responsible for my own marketing and so we took on that role we actually built a team of marketing consultants in India to help us supplement what we were doing here in the U.S. And so, when I started my company in 2008. When the economy took the downturn we just decided hey what do we like to do the most and when we have the most fun with. And we found that that was doing the website design work and then turning that into you know all of the other cool things that you get to do as some digital marketing agents. That's cool cause then you get to see and get to help people and you get the result. Like me and most people they just say oh I want to see the results. I have no crazy idea. Yeah exactly. And you know that's the thing I love about anything that you do from a digital perspective you get. Yes, you can measure and track just about everything. And sometimes there's too much data. Sometimes there's a lot of noise. And you know in terms of data and information that you get that really doesn't mean that much for your business. But at the end of the day if you do it right you can have a lot of accountability. As a matter of fact, I think it's the most accountable way that I know you know to do marketing. Right. Like you said you get that track and see, you get to see what works, what’s not working or and then you can tweak it a little to see and get it to work better or scrap it depends on how many overall applications. Yeah absolutely. And you know one of one of the things that I know, IBM, kind of became famous for after they became kind of the monolith and they had to reinvent themselves when they moved into the digital space. They, you know, they basically developed a strategy of failing quickly. Yeah. Because you're never going to be able to build a perfect solution. So, the goal is having these, have these little experiments you know. Continue to make progress. Be prepared to constantly adapt and change and you're constantly improving and so I kind of liked that model. I mean I don't know that I like necessarily failing, nobody does. But the reality is you're never going to you're never going to know if you're accomplishing anything if you don't have some failures along the way. And we all, we all have those. Right. And the important thing is what do you learn from it. How do you incorporate it and make it better and how do you seize those opportunities? And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that I think most business owners have is that of course, no one likes failing and like you said. But the key thing is to try multiple things at once and instead of one thing to see if it works and then finding out it doesn't work. And then slowly you move on to the next thing and that will drive you crazy in itself. That's right. You don't know obviously you want to set up you know environments that you know and experiments that you can track and monitor you know. I mean when I talk about failure I'm not talking about the catastrophic system. I'm talking about you know like if you were running a Facebook ad for example or Google AdWords Campaign. You know the first month of that is you're going to gather a lot of information that you better be taking and reinvesting the knowledge that you're learning to tweak and optimize that the performance of that ad campaign. And if you do that you're going to be rewarded because your ad is going to perform so much better. The reality is it's hard to make a decision and it's hard to get something set up perfectly from the start. And so, you know you definitely need to think about the structure of when you're when you're moving forward in any event whether it's a Web site design, whether it's copy that you have on your homepage, or call the action button on your homepage. Measure or track it. See what behavior is happening and be prepared to change it. And you know the great thing is there are so many inexpensive tools and solutions that a lot of people can do it themselves. A lot of people may not ever want to mess with that, but you know there's plenty of technology out there for all levels of users. Right. Yeah, I agree. And it's just it's just creating habits, is really all that is. Whether it be five or 10 minutes I mean going into your you know Google Analytics just check see what's going on and little stuff like that. But I agree with you. And it's even I mean it's all forms of marketing because nothing works perfectly out of the case. Yeah. That would be nice because there would be oh I can do it the first time and I think that’s what gets people frustrated that they can't get to a point where they want it to work so bad the first time that they say well it doesn't work and a lot of that I think has to do with the mindset of I need to work. Now. They're not planning for the future. You know what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. And so much of digital you know I mean there are some things that are very immediate and direct but a lot you know we're like the example from search engine optimization perspective, that you know that can take quite a bit of time to really optimize and you get to the point where you work at what you have it working the way you want it to. You know so. So, I think it's important also to strike that balance and you know one of the things that's interesting you know is I often think you know think coming from a software development background I come from my mindset is I think about software development like I think about building a house. OK. You know where you have blue clear blueprints and you have you know different diagrams for you know your different contractors you know the electrical contractors and plumbers and all kind of stuff. Well, you do software very much the same way when you do it on a large scale and especially you know for Department of Defense where you're building software and if that fails people you know people's lives are at stake. Right. Well, I don't see marketing any different than that. And so you know I think it's really important to have some kind of a system that you use to create all of these different blueprints and have these understandings in place, in these different systems in place to be able to build an effective overall marketing system that does kind of start to break down a little bit in that analogy and that application on the marketing side is you know if I'm if I'm hiring somebody that's building a window for me I want them to get that pretty accurately measure that building. And so that's really where I think best practices and experience come into play. You know in the world of marketing we can't be as precise as a lot of you know a lot of contractors and home builders but you know with best practices and with marketing automation and things like that where we can build repeatable systems and components, it helps us to you know to get much closer to that. Right. And one of the cool things about the digital marketing and like you said earlier is that it's almost instant gratification in a sense. If you can get it you know you may not get the exact results you want but you can spend a little bit of money to find out if that concept is even going to work. Then you can add onto it because now if you took it into the old school way which would be EDDMM or Letters, and stuff like that then you've got to wait months sometimes to find out if just because you got one word that's wrong, you've got to wait months. But with digital, bingo it's like almost instantaneous, isn't it? Yeah, it is. That's a great point. I think it gives you the ability to create a lot of really inexpensive experiments to find success. And you know it's a fraction of the price of a lot of the old traditional types of things that we used to do in marketing. Right And then a lot of times you know I'll suggest to guys, to your social media when you Google AdWords or your Facebook ads and put them together see how they work and if they pull well. Now design a postcard off of that information and that. Yeah. And instead of reversing it. So now you've already done a little bit. And you run it by hundreds and even thousands of people. And now you can ___ and do your mailing if you want to then send them back to the website or whatever the case may be. Yeah absolutely. As a matter of fact, I'm a big fan of Integrated Marketing Solutions. It's not all about digital. You make a great point. I mean you can use. You can do use digital messaging to find out what resonates most effectively. But you know take it take another step, and incorporate some other different type of touch point. For example, every door direct mail I mean you could do a targeting of a Facebook ad for based around the zip code or when you go overlay and every door direct mail campaign with those mail routes that line up pretty well with that zip code area. And now you're touching people from a marketing perspective in a couple of different ways. You know not everybody learns and not everybody responds in the same way. So, you'd be very receptive to a digital message. Other people want to have that tactical or that tactile physical touch you know and being able to read a postcard or a direct mail piece of what is sent to them. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities and honestly, I think that's a huge missed opportunity for most people. They picked one thing they do it and they don't they don't compliment it and they certainly don't create enough touch points to really have the effectiveness. You know it takes seven touch touches typically from a marketing perspective to be effective. Right. And when you when you balance digital and you know and some of the more traditional styles, you can really cut your costs substantially. Oh, that's an interesting topic. Yeah well here's the here's the thing that I was thinking about and I just wanted to see what you think. I think that a lot of guys don't. There's a couple of reasons why they don't do both. One is that they don't think about it. And second is I think maybe most people think of marketing as an expense instead of as an investment. Saying they don't track it. So, if they tracked it then they would know what type of return they are getting, or any at all. Yeah, that’s exactly right. You know I also, I mean I look at advertising it's easy to kind of fall into the trap of thinking that that is an expense and that is it. There's no doubt it is an expense I mean you are laying out cash in return. Right. But you know, and the other thing about you know paying paid advertising is that it only works for as long as you keep continuing to do it. As opposed to now there are two really true investment strategies with digital too I think where you make an investment in building your online reputation where you're getting quality reviews about your business. You're putting content on your Web site and optimizing that content. When you do those things. You know even though you're paying for that maybe one time to create a piece of content and put it on your Web site. Every piece of content that you do that for, it turns into a long-term investment in your business. So, not everything in digital is measured in the same way either. Right. But they also have different returns and different timeframes that they return. Right. Yeah because your blog post on your content is never going to go away. That's right. And it will always be there and you know. Yeah. Just like when we do our podcast, all the interviews go back go up on anchor so it keeps rotating in and out all of the time. So, it's always replicating and it's always there. Yeah. So, I want to ask you this question because most of our listeners are contractors okay. Local Search Engine Optimization. I know that's really it should be a big focal point for most contractors. What do you think about that? Yeah absolutely. You know I think that from a strategy perspective I think it's really important for a business to be honest with themselves. And if they're not prepared to spend money on a monthly recurring basis there is no end there. Their goal is to be found online from their Web site. Through to search engine optimization. I'm not talking about a paid advertising strategy. I'm talking about building a website and having your Web site start to rank consistently Businesses need to be really honest about that. Some businesses honestly can't afford search engine optimization. And so, they're better off developing a referral marketing program or you know doing advertising campaigns here or there. But I think you know them from every contractor I think would benefit from a local SEO’s strategy. As a matter of fact, it gives the independent guys an opportunity to outperform some of the larger companies. Then you look at search engine optimization there's a very localized set of tactics that you would want to do what we refer to as local SEO. And that would be where somebody is typing into a search for a plumber in a particular location. And so, number one. the number one ranking factor right now appears to be the quality and consistency and currency of online reviews. And so, developing a review funnel where you're constantly getting a stream of high-quality reviews where you're responding to those reviews whether they're positive or negative ads. Google's paying attention. The other review sites are paying attention if people are writing reviews and you don't acknowledge those. You're losing opportunity there. So, it's really important to respond to people who are writing reviews. And if it's a negative or a record review I recommend everybody still reply but try to take that offline and say we're sorry to never get experience. Contact us at this number. This email we want to make it right. Right. But after that, you know the other thing that a lot of businesses could take advantage of is you know it's not obvious at all but there are all these different Web sites that are directory listings that point back to your business. And there are literally hundreds or thousands of these directories. They all carry. Not all of them but a lot of them carry tremendous domain authority which is you know a trust factor when Google sees your business as listed on a site like CitySearch for example. You know that that carries a lot more weight. And if a small business association of 10 businesses all got together and created a website for themselves, they decided to link to your Web site. They're probably not going to have the same main authority as CitySearch so having your business what we refer to as the name address phone number record, consistently, exactly the same as in as many of these directory listings as you can be a really big deal because it just provides a tremendous amount of trust to the search engines and it's a very powerful thing. So, I typically talk about reputation management program where it's a combination of reviews and directories. One of the biggest problems with businesses online is there's so much bad data out there. There were bad phone numbers or bad physical addresses. You may have changed your name. You may have brought on a new partner and as a result, you changed your name. Maybe you used to work out of your house. Now you have an office you work out of. You know look those are all captured at one point or another whether you whether you do anything or not that information is being put on websites. And so, it's important to take control and ownership of that. So that's fine I would go back to something you said a little bit earlier about the contingency of about name address telephone number because I know that there are guys that have in the past because they think well let’s say carpet cleaner and I do carpet cleaning and let’s say Joe’s Carpet Cleaner. OK. But on one directory put Joe’s name as Carpet Cleaning and another directory says I'm going to buy Joe's famous Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning. That's a no, no? It is because it introduces potential confusion to the search engines, one. But it also introduces confusion. You know with potential searchers. Consumers who are looking for a company and maybe they get referred from a friend by one name and so they go you'll look them up online and they find that their information and they are like I'm not sure it's the same company. So, you know it's one is you know more about a user experience related issue. But the other is a search engine related issue. Now, humans, we can probably make a judgment call and say you know those names are close enough to where yeah that's probably the same company I'm going to go ahead and give them a call. The search engines don't operate that way. They don't necessarily have the sophistication to say these are the same company. And so, you've just eroded the confidence that a search engine has in delivering the search results. And when you think about it if Google consistently delivers search results that are not what somebody is expecting when they do those searches. They're going to stop using Google and they're going to go start trying being or you know a variety of other search engines that are out there. That's Google's number one job is to deliver the highest most quality and most relevant and accurate search results that it can for you know based on what people are typing into those searches. So, don’t go changing things around. Whatever you start off with. Stick with that. Everything is the same, your name, your address, telephone number, and if you have to change and you've got to go back and throw those directories and change everything, don’t you? You do. It's really important to do. And the other thing is, keep in mind that you know these are going to be created whether you do anything or not. So, it's important for you to go and do an audit. You know they are going to pull from you know where you were. Every state you know wherever you put your business license information. When you register as a business with that city or state, where they're going to have a record of that, that somebody, some Web site is going to pull that data from. And so even if you're like for me you know when I started my company it was Changelandscape, now it's Changescape Web. Part of my challenge was I found that a lot of people thought we were in the landscaping business because of the name. So, I wanted to be really obvious that you know where in the web space. And so, I have a Doing Business ads but my company is still technically you know and certain Web sites it's still listed as changscape. So, I actually have some management tools that I used to go out there and run some business scans to see how my business is listed in it. And you know you can either sign up for subscription services where that you can control that data or can do a regular push to that data or at least make it give you a central console so that you know you can go in and periodically just do a quick check yourself to make sure that that information is still accurate and up to date. But it is very important to do. The access it's got to be something fluency in there's got to be consistency so that you get to get the maximum exposure from Google that you can possibly get. That's right. And you know the good news is if you if you decide to take that on I guarantee it the majority of your competitors are not. If you do that that you know just by doing that could be the thing that puts you know over the top and helps you show up on those search results especially on the Google map results. Yeah because I know that you know just getting there on the first page of Google. I know it's important and but I know with the map and the local and the views I think everyone needs to if nothing else really spend their time in getting reviews from their customers Yeah absolutely. And you know not all review sites are equal. So, a lot of a lot of you know the folks that listened to this podcast. You know they like Home Advisor or thrummed or Angie's list or is probably pretty important. And yes, they are important. But keep in mind that there are a lot of solutions that are out there and a lot of tool vendors that give you a view capability that will build a review profile for you and you spend a tremendous amount of time getting reviews that are listed there but they're not the same as being a having a review on you know some of the industry-specific sites and especially not the same as Google. Right. You know Google is such a fundamentally important review site for every local business that that is the first place I would ask people to go write reviews and just you know it's kind of a shame because I see a lot of people who have done a lot of really hard work and they've done the right thing to go get a lot of customer reviews. They're just putting them on websites to really make an impact for them. And so, I really strongly encourage everybody to go do that was with Google. You have to be careful in the way that you get reviews on Yelp. That really needs to happen much more organically but Yelp reviews are important for almost every business. And when you look at the reviews that are pulled in on being search results it's pulling from Yelp. So, because Bing doesn't have a native Review feature. Oh ok, I never knew that. Yeah. And the interesting thing, as a matter of fact, I was with somebody not long ago and they were talking about a kind of Google paperclip. And they go you know this is kind of interesting for everyone out there that Bing pays per click is cheaper and all your it's all Microsoft. So, it's going to Bing first unless you change it over to default in Google. Yeah, that’s the point I mean Bing still gets about 25% of all search traffic. Yeah. So, it's less competitive from an advertising perspective. And you know, there maybe I mean depending on the demographics of you know your typical customer you know if they're the type of customer that they buy a computer and they never change any settings the default search engine may very well be Bing because they may not ever know when they buy a brand-new computer it's from launch edge Microsoft's browser and that's going to return Bing search results unless they go in and make that change. So, it's important to understand who your customer is and you know I we certainly encourage and also search engine optimization techniques are a little bit different on Bing and a lot of people forget all about that if they're going to do. So, we think it's important to absolutely consider Bing. Wow. This has just been a ton of information. It’s really been awesome. Is there any last minute thing like in the back of your mind that you want to share with our audience that did not get a chance yet. Yeah absolutely. So, Google has just as matter of fact it's in 17 cities right now. It's called Google Local services ads. It used to be called Google Home Services Ads. Now, this is going to impact plumbers, electricians, track contractors, garage door service companies, and locksmiths. And what's happening is this is a new brand-new advertising program that Google, as a matter of fact, it's coming to St. Louis by the end of the year. So, they're rolling it out to an additional 13 cities. It's in most of the major metropolitan areas right now as of the end of the year. It's been you know 30 total cities. It's a paper lead strategy. They're going to dominate the very top of the page. They're going to have a listing of three rectangular listings at the very top followed by the Google ad words followed by the Google map results and then you're going to have your organic search results. And so, anybody who is in any of those affected industries, I really strongly encourage you to learn about those. It's I think it's you know it's going to be a really interesting thing. I was talking to you know a person from Google the other day about setting this up for one of our customers. And in the St. Louis market it's going to be a ten dollar per lead price which is not bad. That's really reasonable. Yeah. Yeah and you know it's you're only going to be charged if somebody takes a very specific action from that ad so they can click on the ad to go read more about your business. But you're only going to be charged as one of these businesses if somebody places a phone call and Google's going to give a call tracking number so they're going to know that somebody called that number sends a text message or fills out a form on the on the page that they'll be taken to when they click on the ad.  So, if your them if you are it you have the ability as a plumber or any of these you know to pick your geographies that you want to show up for. And also, to pick the set of services for your locksmith and you don't want to get calls at 3 o'clock in the morning because somebody locked themselves out of the car. You don't have to turn on that that that specific category of this Ad. So, I think the important thing is that it's a paper calling out not a paper clip. That's right. Yeah And it's going to dominate the top of the page for the five industries I mentioned which again are Garage Door service companies, Locksmiths, HVAC, Electrical, and Plumber Yeah, That’s pretty awesome. So how can how can our guest get in touch with you? So our Web site is  www.changescapeweb.com  and we actually have a blog post that we just add to the Google Local services ads that people might want to check out should be on our homepage right now. And we're on social media with the handle changescape for Facebook.Com/changescape or on Twitter Instagram @changescape. Very cool cause we'll put all that stuff in the show notes when it when we get this whole thing up and running and ready to go. OK. awesome I appreciate that.     You may visit the website of Ken Tucker for more details below:   www.changescapeweb.com www.facebook.com/changescape   Twitter and Instagram: @changescape   You may also contact this number for more details: 636.549.8745         There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.   4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers   If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com   and she will send you our guest sheet.       Our sponsors     Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information.       http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money      How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb      Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/  

Ken Tucker is the founder of Changescape Web, a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, lead generation, and marketing automation. Ken is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010), and an SEO for Growth Consultant (stlouis.seoforgrowth.com). Ken is the author of Social Media Marketing for Restaurants and co-author of Reputation Management (Marketing Guides for Small Businesses). This compact guide explains how to create and protect your online reputation. Ken created and taught one of the first college credit Social Media Marketing classes in the US at St. Charles Community College. He has taught a course on Content Management Systems. He serves as Co-Chair of the St. Charles County Chambers of Commerce Technology Committee. Links to resources, websites & offers mentioned during the show: Changescape Web Social Media Marketing for Restaurants St Louis SEO for Growth Ken Tucker on LinkedIn Changescape Web on Facebook