The Best Networking & After Hours Parties @ Pubcon 2011

Going to Pubcon 2011 - the best search marketing, social media and online advertising conference of the year in Vegas? Well you’ll want to know of all the killer after hours networking events and parties Vegas has to offer! We’ll show you the places you want to be during the week of November 7, 2011 to build great releationships with your fellow search marketers. Keep in mind, there are a few conflicts this year, so you may have to pick and choose

If you know of any more parties, just let us know in the comments below and we’ll add them. Can’t wait to see you in Vegas at PubCon 2011 !

Networking Events

(FYI: Bring your registration Badge to these events to get in)

Monday November 7th, 2011:

• The Pubcon Kickoff Classic (Open Bar) - Kickoff Pubcon Vegas 2011 the right way at the first networking event held at the convention center. You’ll be able to avoid the lines of registration by registering early too! From 5:30 – 8:00 PM at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Tuesday November 8th, 2011:

• Pubcon Networking Reception Party (Open Bar) - This is one of the Pubcon events you won’t want to miss. It’s being held at the Pub & Keg room in the Monte Carlo hotel and casino. It’s in the rear of the casino near the Pool and the “Street of Dreams”. From 7:00PM to 9:00PM its an open bar networking event you must be at if you’re not at one of the poker events.

Wednseday November 9th, 2011:

• IntentClick After Party - THE afterparty for Bloggers. Hosted by IntentClick this party is a must attend for bloggers looking to make money, save money and increase online revenue. Held at Zuri Bar inside the MGM Hotel from 6:00 PM til ?

Thursday November 10th, 2011:

• VegasClubReviews @ Gold Lounge / HAZE - We’ll be at the Gold Lounge and HAZE in Aria Resort & Casino on Thursday at 10PM doing an in-depth review of the clubs, join us for drinks and some of the most killer dance moves you’ll ever see. If you’ve never been to Aria, you must make it a priority to come see one of the most beautiful casinos in the world!

Friday November 11th, 2011:

Most of this is really common sense stuff and aimed toward 1st time vegas / pubcon visitors, but there are definitely some keys to having a great time and getting alot back from your trip to Pubcon 2011. This post should really be titled, “How to get the most out of your 2011 Pubcon Vegas Trip” but I think you get the point.  I learned a valuable lesson last year. Sleep is good. 5 days in Vegas, just trying to muscle through a 105 degree fever due to dehydration and lack of sleep is no fun. The plethora of information I came back with however was priceless, and that’s why this post is here; to help you learn how to get the most of your 2011 Vegas Pubcon trip (and not kill yourself).

SET YOUR VEGAS PUBCON 2011 SESSION SCHEDULE IN ADVANCE

Look at the session grid: http://www.pubcon.com/pubcon-vegas-2011/sessions and plan out the sessions you want to attend. You don’t want to be scrambling around last minute trying to figure out what is the best thing to see for your company.

LUNCHES

Guess what, lunch is a great way to meet new friends, but if you’re really hungry for decent food (the conference food sucks and lines are horrible) hook up with a few new friends and walk over to the Marriott Rennisance hotel next door to the convention center. They have a great little café and a full service restaurant, and it’s a bit more intimate so you can really talk to your new found friends! Too bad they don’t take tickets. Usually no lines or wait there either unlike the 30 mintues you’ll spend waiting for food in the expo hall only to see all the tables are full.

BRING AN IPAD OR LAPTOP

Take plenty of notes during each session, you’ll be glad you did. The conference CD you’ll receive is a great resource, but you can only really use it for recaps. You’ll get plenty of cool links to great tools you never knew about that aren’t included in the presentation CD.

HYDRATION.

Vegas is fun, it can almost be too fun. There’s plenty of alcohol flowing (remember, this is PubCon) so you really need to make sure you drink at least a glass of water every hour or two. You’re gonna need the pre-hydration for the parties at night.

SLEEP.

Again, Vegas is fun, I never want to sleep, but this is absolutely a requirement to get the most out of your sessions. Plan at least 6 hours of sleep each night before the conference. Try and be in your room no later than midnight on Monday – Wednesday. The lack of sleep I had last year was a major contributing factor to the eventual 105 degree night fevers I had.

SET AN ALARM / WAKE UP CALL

Sure, you may blow your curfew one night with a couple new friends, but make sure you get up for the keynote the next morning, if this is your first trip, the keynotes are always great and a must-see.

SET A DAILY GAMBLING BUDGET

Don’t blow your wad on the first night. You don’t want to be stuck in your room the rest of the week while everyone is out having fun. Set a realistic daily gambling budget, and STICK TO IT! If you lose it, stop playing. Don’t forget… When you say to yourself “I should quit” – QUIT!

LAY OUT AN ADGENDA

Sure there are always last minute after-parties you’re invited to. However you should still layout a rough plan on what you want to do. Dying to eat at a certain restaurant, make plans for a certain night and call for reservations beforehand. Want to check out a certain nightclub? Call the host of that club NOW and get on the guestlist, It will usually save you an hour wait in line. A great resource for nightclub host names and contact info is here: www.jackcolton.com

MAKE DINNER RESERVATIONS

Vegas is known for its world-class food and wine, this year at MGM there are a few notable dining experiences I’ve been to that are a must.

$$$$ – Craftsteak, a five star steakhouse by Tom Colicchio of Gramercy Tavern in NYC
$$$ – Shibuya, The ultimate sake, sushi and teppanyaki experience.
$$ – Diego, An authentic Mexican countryside menu with over 100 different Tequila’s.

Of course there are many others in Vegas. For off premises dining try:

$$$ – Battista’s, An old-vegas style hole in the wall you’ll be glad you went to, complete with Accordion player.
$$ – Peppermill, Diner-style breakfast, lunch and dinner where the rat pack used to dine.

KNOW YOUR ALCOHOL LIMITS

Feeling a bit too tipsy? Time for bed. Sure, were in Vegas, but get the most out of Pubcon by not being hungover. Drink a glass of water right before sleeping to help keep you functioning in the morning. Stay a few extra days if you want to drink it up like crazy. That’s my plan!

BONUS!

You know what they say: “What happens in Vegas, doesn’t stay at Pubcon” – You’ll probably be photoed, tweeted, facebooked, and much more. Remember, we’re all internet marketers. Just a good FYI so you don’t arrive home to a dear John letter. Also if you find yourself in a dead conversation with a new friend. Just say “So what about Panda this year?”

That’s pretty much it. Sure it’s mostly common sense stuff, but Vegas is Vegas, and our inhibitions are usually put on the backburner. Stay for the weekend, and turn it into one of the greatest trips to Vegas you’ve ever had. Stay tuned for more great PubCon Vegas afterparty tips coming later this week!

UPDATE: Pubcon Afterparty List

Buffalo Wild Wings dropped the ball on their Facebook Fan Page.

Today is September, 4th 2011. NFL Preseason has been officially over since Thursday, and with 1000′s of fans eagerly awaiting the offical season to start this coming Thursday, BWW left themselfs wide open with this post.

“What preseason game are you watching today?” – Cue comments. ”Perhaps they’re talking about hockey?”, “What kind of dumbass question is that? Nice sports knowledge”, “Hey MORON, what game are you watching today?” Over 500 negative comments about poor sports knowledge. Could this have been a joke to get higher customer interaction on their fan page? Possibly. However is it worth risking corporate image over? Probably not.

With the millions of BWW fans on facebook (now over 5,000,000) and with their brand image of “Beer, Wings and Sports”, this single post has clearly been a fumble on part of BWW’s social media team. Will they lose fans over it? It’s possible that some may have been so insulted by an attempt like this, they could lose a fan or two, however with over 5,000,000 standing strong, I’d seriously doubt any serious harm to their brand image more than a slight embarrasment over a “dropped ball”. I think the lesson to be learned here is not to let your geeky social media team that has no sports knowledge start cranking out posts about games that aren’t even happening. What are your thoughts?

Here is the quick fix to 404 or 500 errors when dealing with a shared hosting plan on Godaddy.

Godaddy .htaccess URL Re-Write

Edit your .htaccess file to look like this:

Options -MultiViews
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]

#Just Change .php to whatever your extension is.

The simple key is to add a Options -MultiViews above the mod_rewrite.

This is what is happening behind the scenes.

htaccess MultiViews

If the server receives a request for “/directory/yourdirectory” and multiviews is enabled – if that directory does not exist, the server checks the directory for a file named “yourdirectory.*” and names all those files and assigns them the same media types as if the client asked for them by name. This needs to be disabled to ensure it does not look for the file extension.

If you see any errors, let me know and I’ll fix them.

See you soon!

SEO is a very important part of many companies online marketing strategies. There is tons of competition in the SEO marketplace so pricing can be all over the place when being quoted for services from different agencies. The key to knowing if you are getting accurate pricing and not getting ripped off is to know what services you actually need. Just make sure you aren’t being oversold by the SEO consultant you choose.

SEO pricing is based on many different variables such as the size of your website, the size of your company, the competitveness of keywords and the reputation of the specific SEO. The first step in pricing is to do a basic search for the keywords that focus on your industry. Determine the amount of competition in the results. You can usually tell if a keyword is very competitive if there are lots of what look to be “optimized” titles.The title tag of a web page is one of the number one factors in ranking well for a specific page. Many companies will use keywords loaded in their title tags to influence higher rankings. If you see alot of “optimized” titles, you most likely have found a competitive keyword and can expect pricing to be higher. There are also other free tools available to determine competitiveness such as SEMRush and the Google Adwords Tool. If you get a basic understanding of the amount of competition in your terms, it will help determine if you should be on the high or low end of the following pricing models.

SEO isn’t just “SEO”. It is a product of multiple efforts and methods used to help increase your traffic and ultimately, sales to give you a proper ROI. Don’t let a company tell you that they’ll rank you for “X amount of keywords” on the first page. That is just rediculous. What you want is traffic and conversions.

Prices For SEO Services You Probably Need:

.

Basic Website Review:

Price Range: $250 – $2,500

A basic website review is an overview of your current website, and can range from $250 – $2500 easily depending on the size and complexity of it. The lower value would be a small business site with just a few pages, while the higher number is a very complex ecommerce site with 20,000+ pages and 1000′s of products. The service should include server and hosting issue reviews, website html and code reviews and a written protocol on what needs to be done to help increase your sales by using SEO.

Website Code Overhaul:

Price Range: $500 – $50,000

Rewriting code is a complex process and prices can vary greatly depending on a number of factors. Again like the above example, this is mainly based on number of pages and complexity of the code. Small business owners shouldn’t spend more than $500-$1,000 on this service while large corporations can easily spend over $50,000.

Link Building:

Price Range: $500 – ∞

This is where to avoid being oversold. A proper link building campaign is not going to include 1,000′s of links to your website. Its going to include quality content creation and other methods used to organically increase the number of other websites linking to yours. In the end, links pointing to your website have the most influence on what terms you rank for. So this is a very important step. Small businesses in a local area should budget around $500 – $2,500 for a service like this.

Web Design:

Price Range: $1,000 – $100,000 +

A pattern is forming here, again this is a service based upon size and complexity of the website needed. Small local companies, depending on the quality of design, can expect to spend $1,000 – $5,000 on a simple website. This should include all the design work, image licenses, and rights of use.

Monthly SEO Retainer:

Price Range: $1,000 – $25,000+

This service should include everything above. Many SEO companies use a monthly retainer with a set contract that has been customized specifically for their client. It will usually include everything from link building, content maintenance, copywriting and design services. Be careful not to get ripped off by your SEO agency here. Small local companies should be paying between $1,000 – $5,000 a month. Always make sure the profits you expect to make from this campaign will outweigh the costs. It’s very easy for a company to bill you monthly after they have attained your rankings and just collect a check and not do any more work. Check your contract and make sure it includes a minimum amount of time that will be put into your SEO efforts each month. Some companies offer a guarantee of service. While many seem too good to be true, there are a select few companies out there that pride themselves in their services and can successfully offer a ROI guarantee.

Do-It-Yourself:

Price Range: $0 – $1,000 / month

Sure you can do SEO for your site for free. There are tons of free resources and SEO blogs with tips and tricks to optimizing your site. (See: SEOmoz, SEObook, etc.) Just take into account, while you are saving cash by doing it yourself, is it really saving money or could your time be better spent creating additional profit for your company doing what you do best?

How much time does SEO take:

SEO is an ongoing process, once it starts, it should never end. The time it takes for ranking increases for specific keywords can be given a timeframe of 3-6 months, but if they are competitive in nature and other competitors are consitently doing SEO, as soon as the work stops, the rankings may possibly fall. The key is to gain momentum with your SEO strategy, and it will take less effort to keep it going once its running strong.

So give me your comments, how do you charge or what do you expect to pay? I’d love to hear any input. See you soon!

Social Media and Branding

What is branding, and how important is it to a growing a successful business?

First off, branding started off as a term used by cattle farmers for a process in differentiating their cattle from other farmers cattle by placing a unique mark or symbol on the cow’s hide. Over the years, the term branding entered the marketing world and is used to differentiate one companies products and services from their competitors.

Branding is essential to all business in the fact that it creates unique characteristics of a company that its customers will remember and will drive future purchase decisions. So branding starts as a company name, logo and tagline and slowly evolves over the life of the company into a promise of quality.

Many small businesses have little to no money for marketing, is social networking a way for them to grow their business

Absolutely. Social networking is a great cost effective tool that companies can use to help build their customer base. Many social networking websites are free to use and I’m sure you know of the major sites out there such as facebook and twitter. Managing multiple accounts can be time consuming, so there is also tools out there such as HootSuite to merge all your update feeds into a single interface.

The key to using social networking effectively as a business, is to remember that you are talking to individual people, not other businesses. When I first start helping many of my clients that are testing social networking, I find that many of them are “constantly selling”. The bottom line is, people dont want to be sold to every day and are looking for a more personal approach. So businesses want to include personal updates, ideas and opinions as well to connect on a closer level to their customers.

Does every business need branding?

Sure, just by starting a business, a company begins branding. The goal is to maintain a quality product or service, and give it appealing characteristics to your specific audience. That will ensure they remember you when the time comes to make a purchase decision.

Blogging and twittering is terms we keep hearing about but how do you get people to follow you?

Getting people to follow seems difficult, but in actuality is very easy. One easy way is to follow others that are in your interest area, read their blogs and write interesting comments on them. By doing this, other bloggers out there will begin to read your blog and follow you. Another great way to get followers is to just create unique and interesting content. By doing this, your search engine rankings will rise, more people will find you, and you’ll naturally gain more followers.

So follow us. We’ll follow you and offer free tips on how to naturally increase your search rankings and get more traffic to your website.

Here is our list, compiled from various sources throughout the internet, of pretty website backgrounds that we use frequently in our new designs. Take a look, and share more if you know about them.

Pretty Website Background Textures

Cardboard Background

Here is a cool cardboard background texture that works well with natural, warm designs.

Cardboard Background Texture

Denim Background

This is a nice denim background texture that works well with  textile based companies.

Denim Background Texture

Wood Background

Here is a good image of OSB (subflooring) that works well as a wood background texture.

Wood Background Texture

Metal Background

Cool image of a metal background texture with a cool industrial worn feel.

Metal Background Texture

Organic Background

Nice image of some long grain rice that can be used as a good background texture.

Organic Background Texture

Leather Background

Warm, rich, brown leather background texture that can be used for just about any website.

Brown Leather Background Texture

Sandstone Background

Nice, flaky standstone. Great for use as a background texture on a website.

Sandstone Background Texture

Concrete Background

Concrete, a good all around background texture for web use.

Concrete Background Texture

More Backgrounds

Here is a good list of a few other websites that have textures available for download.

• 70+ Background Textures @ Tripwire Magazine
• 29 Texture Packs @ Web Design Ledger
• 99 Free Background Textures @ Tutorial9

Hope you’ve enjoyed these pretty website background textures. Use them frequently in your website designs, and you’re guaranteed to help increase your conversion rates!

See you soon!

If you’re looking to delete an old WordPress category that is causing numbered slugs, you found the right place. Good thing that this is a pretty easy fix. It just requires that you have access to your database with a interface such as phpMyAdmin. Although this is easy, this is a very advanced change, and caution must be taken. I can’t be responsible if you click the wrong thing and it causes errors in your database. Just be cautious and double check all names and categories before deleting them.

Step 1. Login to your hosting backend. Usually something like GoDaddy Hosting Control Panel or cPanel.

Step 2. Login to your database editor using phpMyAdmin or similar interface depending on your host.

Step 3. Click the name of your database in the top left side to drop down the entires.

Step 3

Step 4. Click the item wp_terms. You should see the page populate: term_id, name, slug, slug_group

Step 4

Step 5. Click the Browse Tab

Step 5

Step 6. Navigate to the problem slug that has been deleted and click the red X in that row. MAKE SURE IT IS CORRECT (You can damage your wordpress if not.)

Step 6

Step 7. Close phpMyAdmin or your DB Editor.

Step 8. Return to WordPress and try and create the directory you were having problems with. You should have no problem.

Thats it. Told you it was easy, now you know how to delete an old duplicate category slug fron the WordPress Database.

Update 3/13/11 : No coupon code yet but here is the contact info to call and get the credit.

New! For a limited time, you can activate tags for free, and cancel anytime. Also activate Boost and Learn more or call 877-613-4501 to speak with a sales representative.

Yep. That’s $100 in free google boost dollars. It’s essentially adwords for your google places campaign. Only available in certain cities. See the link after the jump.

Got a new “in” at Google.. Unfortunately as of now, the only way to set this up is to call me. As soon as I get a coupon code available, I will post. In order for you to be eligible for this credit, set up your Google Boost campaign, give me a call and I’ll give you the sales rep’s phone number that can give you the credit. I’d normally post the info for all to see, however I don’t want this to be up for so long that this guy gets like 100′s of calls. Basically trying not to spam google with phone calls. I don’t really want to turn out like this guy Google outs sketchy SEO company

No strings attached, really.

Call Matt for sales rep contact info. (615) 772-0111

Guaranteed (at least as of the time of this post) to not find this anywhere else on the web.

If you’re not familiar with Google boost.. See the link below. Basically its AdWords for your Google Places account. AND ITS MUCH CHEAPER!!!!

http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1040967

Rand Fishkin – SEOmoz Blog

Huge player in the SEO industry. They used to do consulting, but now mainly focus on building “Bad Ass” SEO Software called SEOmoz Pro. Lots of very educated posters here. Make sure to keep on top of randfish’s posts. (SEOmoz founder)

David Mihm – Mimorandum & GetListed

I love David’s posts. Very intuitive. Make sure to follow both blogs. David posted this post about Local Ranking Factors (a few years ago, before the changes in Oct. 2010) at Mihmorandum. Great stuff.

Search Engine Watch

I’ve been following this since it used to be Danny Sullivan years ago, but this blog is full of great ideas from guest bloggers. Keep an eye on Danny Goodwin’s posts.

Michael Gray – GreyWolf

Good blog, but in my eyes, a little hard to navigate, not to mention the ads, but if you can twist your way through and find the good posts, it’s definately good reading.

Those are just a few of my top reads. More will come up in future posts, so stay tuned.