I live in a very small town. We’re talking 400 residents small. It’s knowing-everyone-else-in-the-grocery-store-at-10-on-a-weekday-morning small. I love living in a place like this, but sometimes it strikes me how someone from a big metropolis would find some of our ways very funny.

For instance, business isn’t conducted in a small town the same way it is in a big city. Where I live, many businesses are basically invisible. They don’t have websites; their proprietors will likely argue until they retire that they don’t need to be on the Internet.

I’m not poking fun here: my story has a point. (I’m getting to it.)

Last month, we were having issues with our heating system. There was heat in some parts of the house, but not in others. My husband farted around with it himself for a couple of weeks before he finally broke down and decided to call in a heating expert—a suggestion I’d been making for some time, might I add(But I digress).

There’s a van that drives by our house all the time with the name of the business and a phone number written on its side. I will not share the name to protect the innocent, but I will say that I had a hunch the guy could help us because the word “heating” was in the business name.

So, we made up our minds to call that person as we’re new to the area and my father told me he’d called him before to clean his furnace and he was a good honest guy.

My husband started looking through the phone book and there was no listing for the business. He checked the Yellow Pages under Heating and Furnaces. Nothing. We figured he was probably listed under his own name and not his business name —something that doesn’t help at all when you don’t know the person’s first name.

So I conducted a Google search for the business name. Nothing. I even went so far as to check the provincial government’s business directory (which is an unsearchable beast itself but that’s a story for another day) to no avail.

The business we needed to call did not appear to exist. It was invisible.

Of course, then I did what anyone else would do. I called my father to see if he knew this guy’s name.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi Dad, do you know how I could get in touch with the “business name” guy?

Dad: Well, you could check the phone book.

Me: Thanks Dad. I tried that already. There’s nothing under the business name and I don’t know the name of the guy.

Dad: What’s wrong with your furnace?

Me: I don’t know, that’s why we need this guy. Do you know his name?

Dad: I think it’s Joe but I’m not sure. (Sounds of Dad flipping through phone book.)

Me: So you think it’s Joe?

Dad: It’s not in the book.

Me: I know.

Dad: Well, just call Henry.

Me: Who’s Henry?

Dad: Joe’s brother. You know, his wife is so-and-so who works at the such-and-such.

Me: Um. Okay. So, do you know Henry and so-and-so’s number?

Dad: Here, I’ll call Henry myself. I’ll call you back.

And that’s how we got the number for the heating guy. We had our doubts about what kind of operation it might be, but literally, within ten minutes of my husband calling, they were here in the basement fixing us up.

The service was great and they knew what they were doing. At least with furnaces.

Now as far as marketing goes . . . the biggest sin a good business could commit has been committed. It is impossible to locate this business the moment you need the services it provides, unless you already knew the man you needed to call.

If you need the services of a plumber or a locksmith or a furnace repairman, you’re going to search the Yellow Pages or you’re going to head to Google. You’re not searching for a business name in most cases (however in this case I knew the business I wanted and I still couldn’t find it): you’re searching for the service you need.

This business owner needs a website. It’s fine and good to have your phone number on your van, but unless my heating system goes tits up the same exact minute your van is driving by my window and I have time to notice and jot down the number, it’s not helpful at all. I don’t impulsively think, “oh hey, I should write down that number in case I ever need that guy’s help.”

Anyway, thankfully my father knew the guy’s brother and we got ourselves straightened out. And that’s probably the way a lot of these business owners think. They’ve been around long enough that people will know how to get in touch with them when they need them. And in all fairness, now that I think about it, in my case it actually worked.

This story reminds me of back when my husband and I were in our first apartment together. We asked our elderly landlady what our mailing address would be. She said, “Oh just put York on it and it will get to you.”

That’s the way it works in small towns and you might laugh but she was probably right.

Disclaimer: If you’re local and know the business I’m talking about, please know that we were very happy with the service we got. I’m not trying to be mean. I just happen to think in blog posts.

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When’s the last time you answered a knock on the door only to find a vacuum cleaner salesman? If you asked me yesterday, I would have said sometime in the late 80s when a clean-cut college kid was trying to sell a fancy Electrolux to my mom.

Now if you were to ask me today when the last time I was visited by a vacuum cleaner salesman, I would have to say…oh…sometime before lunch.

It’s true. There was a vacuum pusher (pun intended) prowling around my sleepy little village this morning knocking on doors with a stack of business cards four inches high in his fist.

There are a lot of reasons why door-to-door sales people are extinct. For starters, nobody’s at home during the day anymore (and if we are, we’re VERY busy meeting deadlines, preparing meals and keeping children alive). Then there’s the concern of opening the door to a stranger (always something to be cautious of, boys and girls) and the fact that most of the civilized world has access to the Internet for their purchasing needs or a vehicle to take them to a store to buy what they want.

In the case of the vacuum salesman…well…I don’t have carpet. That’s exactly what I told this man, “I don’t have carpet.”

Then he said, “What do you have, hardwood?”

“Yes.”

“Well you still should be vacuuming them.”

Me: Blank stare of disbelief.

Him: “When you use your Swiffer, you get dust in between the boards and your floors are likely starting to buckle.”

Me: Blank stare of disbelief. I don’t, in fact, use a Swiffer. I have one of those new-fangled contraptions called a broom.

Him: “Do you have any allergies or air quality concerns?”

Me: Still staring blankly, “Um…”

Him: “Because we do air testing and things like that now.”

Me: “Um…I think we’re good.”

Him: “Okay. Just vacuum your floors, it doesn’t have to be one of our models,” he says as he hands me his card and walks away.

I close the door and think about how long a day this guy has ahead of him if this is his bread and butter. If you’re going to try to sell me a vacuum, at least put on a suit.

This scenario presents the perfect opportunity for me to discuss the importance of relationship marketing.

Consumers are busy these days. We’re busy and we’re cautious of where our money goes and we’re smart. We’re really smart. We have tools (Internet) that allow us to compare products before we ever leave the house to buy something…if we do have to leave the house rather than just order something right there from our sofa.

If you want to try selling me something I don’t need, you have to convince me why I’m wrong (that I do need it) and you need to gain my trust because, you know, there are only so many dollars to go around.

This is why Facebook is so important. If this vacuum cleaner guy has a Facebook account he should have his own Facebook page that he could use to educate his friends and potential customers about his products. See, if I’d heard of him before I probably would have at least felt like listening to him or inviting him in.

He could have fun contests and trivia. He could post information about why older models don’t work…about why Swiffers are harming hardwood floors. (See, if you lead by telling me I’m making a mistake that’s harming one of my home’s biggest assets I might listen.)

With a Facebook page you’re building relationships and you’re educating the market…if you use it the right way.

That tidbit he told me about the Swiffer could have made a great blog post. Blogs are a great way to build relationships with your customers. (If I came across that info on my own, I likely would have run out and bought some sort of vacuum cleaner.) A door-to-door salesman just seems so pushy.

This guy should be on Twitter, posting information about air quality issues and how a good vacuum can help.

The thing is…I feel one of the big reasons why the door-to-door thing is dead is because nobody wants to be sold to. If I want a vacuum, I’ll find someone who’s selling them.

This brings us to SEO and search marketing. A nice, sharp website targeting those in need of a vacuum will be way more successful than having some joe schmoe wandering around from town to town getting doors slammed in his face.

I could go on forever but I won’t. I have things to do (remember, interrupted by a salesman earlier).

How about you? Do you have some tips on how to sell a vacuum in 2010? What do you think about my advice?

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My last posts talked a little bit about what SEO is and why you need to care. Hopefully you’ve read those and are going to try to beef up your website by having it optimized.

Today we’ll talk about what keywords you should use.

Rule #1. Forget about trying to optimize on your name or business name.

If you come up on the top of Google’s list of results when your own name or business name is searched, that doesn’t mean you’re doing okay. The exception to this rule is if you’re an established brand (think Coca Cola or Lego) or a celebrity.

For the rest of us, we want people to find us because we’re not yet household names.

Start making a list of things you think people are searching for to find you. Let’s say you make organic candles in your candle shop in Maine. Your list might look like:

• where can I find candles in Maine
• homemade candles in Maine
• natural and organic candles
• Maine organic candles

And so on and so forth.

You take your list and you go to Google’s fun keyword tool. (There are more scientific ways to do this but this method will do if you’re the DIY type.)

Start to enter your phrases and see which ones are actually being searched. (You’ll be surprised to see that what you think people are searching for is likely different than what they actually are searching for.)

You’re looking for a high number here but keep an eye on the advertiser competition. There’s no point trying to optimize on a phrase that gets 10,000 searches a month if there are a gazillion other sites already optimized for that phrase.

For example, in the case of our candle maker, he needn’t bother trying to optimize on the phrase “candles” because there would be hundreds of thousands of websites out there already trying to get traffic on that phrase. The age of a domain counts in search too, so sites that have been in existence for years are likely not going to budge much from their position in Google’s search results.

You want to find the sweet spot. The phrase that gets lots of searches…that’s targeted…that doesn’t have a lot of competition. That’s why I would recommend our candle maker use his location or his niche (the fact that his candles are natural and organic) when searching for keywords to optimize on.

Makes sense, right? Any questions?

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A young man approaches you for advice, distressed because he’s in love with a girl and he can’t get her attention.

You ask him if he’s ever spoken to her. “Gawd, no. She doesn’t even know I exist.”

You ask how he knows that. “Because we have no common friends, no common interests and she lives in another city.”

You ask him if he has tried to get him to notice her. “No, I don’t know how to do that.”

What would your advice be? To keep doing what he’s doing and hope for the best?

I’m betting not. (Unless you’re really bad with women.) I’m guessing you would suggest that this young man try to show up somewhere that this girl will be -a hockey game, a shopping mall, etc. In other words, he has to put himself in a situation where this girl will find him when she is most likely looking for a fella.

And this is the purpose of search engine optimization.

When you optimize your site for a targeted list of keyword phrases, you’re putting your site where your customers are looking for you. If you have a site thrown up there with no thoughts of how people will find it…you’re that young man in a different city than the object of his affection doing nothing and wishing for her to find him.

Let me explain how this works in search.

When you type a phrase into the Google search bar, in the seconds it takes for a list of results to appear in front of you, Google has scoured the Internet for the pages most relevant to the phrase you’re looking for.

Google uses a top secret algorithm to determine what page is most relevant (it remains secret so it’s fair for everyone to try to get to the top of the results) but we do know certain things:

• One way Google determines a page’s relevancy is by checking to see if your keyword phrase is in the title tag and meta description of the page
• It’s also looking at whether or not your keyword is in your domain
• Keyword density of the content among your pages is being weighed

See, if someone has searched for “maple tree seedlings” then Google figures a website page that is titled “Maple Tree Seedlings” is pretty relevant. If that page also has the phrase “maple tree seedlings” sprinkled through the content then it’s likely even more relevant. If it has a meta description that says, “Maple tree seedlings are not a sturdy plant. Find tips for protecting maple tree seedlings” and a domain like mapletreeseedlings (dot) com it would be that much better.

There is more that goes into it but that’s a basic explanation that should show you why this SEO thing is pretty important. It will help your website get a position in the top ten results for a Google search and you really should care about that. Because if you don’t appear there then you don’t exist.

Next time I’ll help you determine what your keyword phrases should be.

Any questions? Fire away!

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My youngest child is a real handful. She’s 30 pounds of attitude, this one, and she doesn’t seem to like her father as much as she likes me. She has this thing when our family goes on a drive. Her car seat is on the driver’s side of the van and her older sister’s car seat is on the other side. My husband likes to drive when we go somewhere together and when he opens her door she throws a hissy fit because she wants Mommy to let her out.

So when we get out of the van, my husband walks around to my side to let out our five-year-old and I walk around to his side to let out the little monster. We’ve been doing this for a year now.

Last weekend we were doing a bit of traveling around and the little one starts shrieking because she’s sitting behind Daddy and she wants to sit behind a girl. The sound of the screaming is like knives going through your skull so I had the big idea to let the girls swap seats.

When we stopped to get out at our destination (post-car seat swap), I just opened the door on my side to let the diva out and Jason opened the door on his side to let our other child out.

No walking around the van like morons.

Sometimes a problem doesn’t seem like a problem until you find a solution.

How many website owners out there complain that they invested hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars into their web presence only to have no traffic? A lot.

If your website isn’t working for you, there are a gazillion things that could potentially be causing the problem but here’s the thing. If you’re not getting traffic, I’m willing to bet that nobody along the way has asked you about keywords. And that is a huge problem.

It doesn’t matter how pretty the site looks (unless you’re a big brand or already have a following and people know to search you by your brand name) or how many fancy bells and whistles you have on there (a.k.a flash animation, disco ball, talking heads, etc.) if you haven’t optimized your content with an eye towards SEO then you’re not going to be getting any drop in traffic.

Now, I’m not some self-proclaimed SEO hero/guru/aficionado. But I do know quite a bit about it and I am a website copywriter who applies it everyday.

I also know how to explain this stuff in simple language so that when people hear me talk about it, they start to understand why they should be optimizing their content. Some get panicky wondering why they hadn’t done it sooner.

So I’m going to finish this post here. I’ll be back later this week with a more extensive (yet basic) explanation of search and how to figure out what keywords you should use in your website content.

Do you have questions about optimizing your website content? Ask away and I’ll try to address them later in this series of posts.

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