Calgary Technologies Inc. is launching an exciting new program this fall and we are calling all leaders! This program has been customized for the entrepreneur that wants to stay on top of the latest trends in technology and business. Designed to deliver one day workshops with guaranteed take-away value, this is your opportunity to keep your skills fresh and your business competitive!

LEAD! Workshop Premiere - Thursday, October 23rd featuring;
Internet marketing strategies with David Cree of Clearpath SEO

Does your internet marketing strategy begin and end with your website? What if you could get the inside scoop on what really works and where to focus your resources to get the most out of the internet?

In this new one day workshop, you will walk away with the tools you need to start marketing your business more effectively online. In this hands on experience you will come away with:

• Practical SEO (search engine optimization) Tools
• An effective Adwords strategy for PPC (pay per click) campaigns
• Website Analytics and how to read them
• Link building strategies
• Managing your online presence using social media tools such as

Facebook, LinkedIn, etc…

Learn the skills to start effectively managing your online strategy!

Early Bird Special : $199 (register before Wednesday, October 15th)

Regular Fee: $299

Register today at www.calgarytechnologies.com/LEAD!

I think this article was great, it outlines a lot of what I’ve said in the past and is a must read for businesses here in Alberta. Many businesses today don’t see the value of social media, read this article! Many businesses today want to be engaged in social media but don’t know where to start and how to make it effective. This article won’t give you all the answers but it will give you a few do’s and don’t’s as you get started.

I encourage you to spend the 2 minutes giving it a read and then comment here.

I thought the presentation was good. Being an Internet marketing consultant doesn’t always mean you practice what you preach all that well. I was really challenged to blog a lot more and also to start engaging in my email marketing.

These are things that I’ve always known but have been too “busy” to implement, which is funny becuase that’s what I hear a lot of my clients complain about. So, thanks guys for the challenge and I hope you come out to read my blog more often as I’m committing afresh to being fresh!

On this site, the owner (well regarded in the search engine optimization community) contends that you don’t really get SEO unless you bring it in-house. Hmm. Really? How many small- to medium-sized companies can afford to have their very own person doing SEO? There are not many.

But, does that mean you don’t get SEO unless you hire someone internally? Absolutely not. In some cases, if the job is big enough, it might really make sense for you to find someone to hire on a full-time basis to take care of your SEO. Chances are, if you’re one of those smaller companies, you’re going to have that person doing more than just SEO if you do hire someone.

They’ll likely take care of SEO, pay-per-click marketing (like Facebook and Google AdWords), traditional advertising and communications such as press releases. At a smaller company, you’d need to wear many hats.

I’m thinking more about companies that aren’t solely based on the Internet. If your business is primarily on the net, then it might makes sense to have someone just doing SEO.

Hiring a company to handle your Internet marketing, whether it’s search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing or whatever else, often makes sense in a number of situations.

Some of those situations might include:

• No SEO experience in-house.
• To manage a short-term project.
• No marketing people in-house.
• No time to learn SEO.
• No time to deal with SEO or Internet marketing.
• SEO experts are costly for full-time positions.
• Hiring out usually brings more than one expert into your marketing.
• SEO changes very regularly so you have to dedicate a lot of time to stay on top.

If money was no object, sure it would make sense to hire someone full-time to do your SEO. By hiring an Internet marketing consultant you get the benefit of their knowledge for a fraction of the cost.

Alain Saffel 

Well, no big deal you say? Actually it is. This is known as a duplicate content issue, and is something that can get your results hammered in Google. What ends up happening is that if Google sees your page being substantially the same as another, it may put it in the supplemental results.

This is not good. It means your page won’t show up in the search results. No offense to everyone out there, but most surfers aren’t that sophisticated and won’t click on that message you see below your search results.

But even if they do, where will your results appear? Do you really think potential site visitors will search through 1,000 or more repeated results just to find your page? I doubt it.

All the money you’ve spent getting your website up and running and hopefully pulling in business for you is essentially wasted because your site has been pushed into the supplemental results.

Solution to duplicate content

The solution to this issue really is quite simple. Get a professional writer to produce your content. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and good writers are worth the money.

A good writer knows how to get to the point and will word things differently so you don’t run into the duplicate content issue.

If you’re looking at a content management system for your business, resist the urge to use canned copy that might be included with it. You’re not their only client. Don’t take the easy way if you want to see your site appear in the search results.

Rewriting content

A good portion of my day today will be rewriting that client’s content so he won’t be stuck in the supplemental results. It will take a bit of time to get out of there, but it will be worth it. Of course I’ll do the proper search engine optimization on the copy to make sure the right keywords are in his copy, while making sure it speaks to the site visitor.

This client is looking forward to seeing his site actually appearing in the search results now.

Alain Saffel

If you suspect you have a problem with your site content, Clearpath SEO can help. Whether your site isn’t getting the results you expected in terms of visitors, conversions or sales, you just need to freshen up your site content, or need help with all forms of Internet marketing, Clearpath SEO can advise you on the best course of action.

Clearpath SEO is an Edmonton company with branches in Calgary and Scottsdale. The company’s primary focus is on search engine optimization and Internet marketing, such as Google AdWords and Facebook ads. Clearpath also can help with all forms of content writing, having a solid writing staff ready to roll on your project.

It’s called Habesha and they have Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. It was incredible. The waiters were very friendly and helped us figure out what to order. We ended up ordering a big platter with samples of a number of their dishes.

Be prepared to get your fingers dirty because you don’t get forks or knives. Instead you get lettuce and a type of flat bread that’s like a crepe. You pick up your food with those. Or, you can use your fingers.

We were really impressed with the atmosphere and décor; the service and food were great too. 118th has a bit of a bad rap, but they’re redoing it and I hope Habesha does really well. It is a nice place.

They don’t have a website, but I got their card. They’re open Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. and Sundays noon to 10 p.m. I understand the weekends can be pretty busy. Their number is 780-474-2206

The waiter said they also have a coffee ceremony on Saturdays and Sundays around 5 p.m. I would definitely like to be there for that. I understand that Ethiopian coffee is pretty good done that way.

I have wanted to try African food for quite a while, and I was not disappointed today. I will definitely be back!

Alain Saffel

If you hadn’t ever thought about it, but like to read blogs, news, etc, it could be a big time saver. I recently started using Google Reader, and am I ever glad I finally invested a little time to figure it out.

Those blogs I should read all the time, but don’t because I’m too busy to “surf” to them are now available to me every day without having to dig in my bookmarks.

Now that I’m sniffing out all those interesting blogs and news sites on the net, I have a decent sized collection of regular reads. One tip I’ll give is to sort them out into categories. Try and be reasonably specific to make your life easier. I don’t read all mine religiously. I have some categories that I only check once in a while because they’re not full of earth shattering info.

I have the obligatory Matt Cutts blog in there, along with SEOmoz. I even discovered that Stumbleupon has RSS feeds. Nice! I tend to do a fair amount of blogging in Stumbleupon on SEO and Internet marketing topics, so you might want to add my feed.

Now, practically anywhere I go on the Net, I’m looking for the little orange logo. Any suggestions for blogs, news sites, etc, that I should add to my reader? I would appreciate hearing about them!

Alain Saffel 

If you’ve done a little bit of research, you understand how important search engine optimization can be. You’ve probably also done a little bit of reading about how maybe Google hates SEO.

You’re probably wondering “should I even do this?” The short answer is probably yes. But, I would prefer to reframe the whole discussion about SEO.

I’m in Internet marketing

Whenever anyone asks me about what I do, I don’t tell them I do SEO. My job is in Internet marketing. SEO is only a subset of Internet marketing, and is an important part, but it’s not my whole job.

I prefer to say I do Internet marketing because it’s more than just SEO. At Clearpath we do pay-per-click (PPC) marketing like you’ll see in Google or Facebook. We also write press releases and engage with traditional media.

Improving your website

When looking at your site, it’s important to analyze its structure and make changes to better convert visitors to customers. You need to know what’s happening with your site, which is why we make sure your site have good analytics installed. We also help get more links pointing to your site.

Content is also a very important part of your site. Making sure it speaks to visitors and to search engines is key. Content writing is one of the more enjoyable aspects of my job.

Google hates SEO?

Does Google hate SEO? I don’t want to speak for them, but my sense is that they don’t like people who engage in “blackhat SEO,” or SEO that violates their ever-changing terms of service. You probably also heard the term “whitehat SEO.” What is this? The old West?

At Clearpath SEO we only engage in whitehat SEO. Another way to put it is ethical SEO. There’s a lot of debate about what is ethical when it comes to SEO, but we stick to SEO that isn’t going to get you penalized by Google. That’s probably the best way to look at it.

Internet constantly evolving

It’s important to keep on top of emerging technologies on the Internet to see how they might be able to help our clients. Of course, we can’t be experts on everything, which is why we have a number of talented partners that specialize in areas such as logo and graphic design, branding, videography, traditional marketing and web design.

Every day I see websites that could perform so much better. I read somewhere that Google has ten times more pages today than they did in 2000. There is no shortage of work to do! So if you would like to improve your Internet marketing efforts, go ahead and give Clearpath SEO a call.

Alain Saffel 

Everyone is really busy these days and with the flood of information, you need to keep it short. (Please ignore some of my lengthy blog posts below!)

The other day at the CAJ conference I was talking with Tina Faiz who works at CBC Edmonton’s online division. We were discussing the flood of emails, Twits, social media and came up with the terms “web ADD.” I don’t know who said it first, but it is apropos.

I think keeping things to 100 words is a great idea. On Twitter you have 140 characters. I’m picking my battles, choosing my words carefully.

I’m beginning to master my elevator pitch, 30 second commercial, Twit pitch or whatever you want to call it. Verbosity is practically a sin these days.

But content is king!?

Yes, content is king, but people don’t want too much of it I guess. We’re a continent of overeaters, so I guess people are trying to cut back on the words before we actually start trying to cut back on the french fries. And with that, I’m at 241 words. I’ve said too much already!

It was my first time attending a CAJ conference, which I attended in my role as editor of Propel Magazine.

One thing is obvious, the media is increasingly turning its attention to the Internet as a place to disseminate the news and to social media as a way of keeping in touch with what’s happening in the world.

Of course mainstream media (MSM) outlets have their presence online, but it would seem in many cases that it’s more of a token presence and their paper or broadcast product is still their primary focus. That is beginning to change, however slowly, because people are moving away from the traditional media and looking online for their news.

I wouldn’t count MSM out. They have a far greater amount of resources than do new media outlets such as NowPublic. Incidentally, Rachel Nixon of NowPublic talked at the conference about citizen journalism, how the news industry is changing and the role of MSM. I thought it was probably one of the most interesting sessions.

Of course networking was one of the big reasons I went to this event. I met a lot of media people, handed out lots of cards, collected even more and made some new friends along the way. Apparently the next conference is in Vancouver next year. I think I’ll be going to that one too.

Alain Saffel