My name is Cole Pannell. I'm a web designer and SEO professional from Southwest Missouri, currently residing in Branson. I specialize in providing Search Engine Optimization services for Branson-based businesses and clients worldwide who want to see their websites rank higher in the search engines. I have earned over 250 first-page placements for the SEO campaigns I've launched. 250 and still counting...
Want to promote your website for free? It’s easier than you think!
So you’ve got your own website… Now all you need to do is drive mass amounts of traffic to it, turn that traffic into qualified sales (or leads), and make enough money to retire in less than a year, right?
FACT: An average of less than 3% of all traffic to your website will actually result in a sale or lead conversion. LESS THAN 3 PERCENT!!!!
While it’s true that a minuscule percentage of website owners will ever become millionaires, you can still have a successful website and use it to promote your business and ultimately make money as a direct result of it. Basically, your website should be the top-producing “employee” in your company, meaning that it needs to work for you…
Does your website actually work for you? If not, then you probably should have saved your money, instead of WASTING it on web design, development, and hosting fees. If the general public can’t find your website, what’s the point of owning it?
How do you resurrect it into becoming the hardest-working, most efficient employee on your team?
The easy answer is “Learn all you can about Search Engine Optimization and just do your own SEO to make it rank higher in Google.” Everybody knows that ranking #1 for the most competitive keyword in your market is more beneficial than using a billboard on Main Street to advertise with. Unfortunately, most people aren’t SEO pros, nor do they have the time to learn the craft and practice it everyday. Or they might not have the budget to hire a professional SEO firm to launch an aggressive campaign.
So… How do you drive 1000’s of unique visitors to your site without being an SEO expert?
There are many FREE resources and mediums that you can utilize to drive that traffic to your website. And the best part is: you don’t have to know a damned thing about SEO to do it
In my experience, I’ve found the following to be the most useful:
1) Social networking.
Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are definitely one the best ways to promote your business for free. You don’t even need a website to harness the power of social networking! In fact, you can simply create a Facebook fan-page for your business (for free) and use it as your official web-presence.
Every time I look at the traffic stats for my websites, the social networks run right behind the major search engines, as far as sending the most visitors to me. Facebook and Twitter send A LOT of traffic my way. And they can do the same for you.
2) Article marketing.
Article marketing kicks ass! You can write an article on virtually any topic, product, or service that you are offering to the world. And most article sites will let you place up to 3 links that point directly to your website or landing page.
One of the biggest benefits to article marketing is the fact that it allows you to actually make your sales pitch before the reader ever clicks on the link to your website. When done correctly, you can actually have someone sold on your product or service before they even go to your site.
3) Craig’s List.
Craig’s List is another awesome way to send people to your website. I like it because of their category system. If someone is offering real estate services, they can post their website address and contact information in the “Real Estate Services” section.
It works the same for just about every other business type you can imagine - computer services, web design, auto repair, furniture stores, jewelers, lawyers, etc. - the list goes on and on. And the possibilities are endless.
4) Press releases.
Press releases are great because most of the press release domains have a lot of “authority” in the eyes of Google. Basically, you can write a free press release about your business (and it doesn’t even have to be “press-worthy” news) and as long as you focus on a keyword-rich topic or market, you’ll be able to get a decent rank from it.
For example, I can write a press release and use “Branson web design” for the topic. All I have to do is make sure I focus on how my business offers “Affordable Branson Web Design Services“ and I can almost guarantee that the press release will rank well for those keywords.
Press releases are another source that allows you to place direct links to your website inside of them.
5) Word-of-mouth.
Yeah, I know it sounds cliche and old-fashioned. But it’s true! Word-of-mouth advertising can be powerful.
How many people do you know? And how many people do each of them know? The numbers grow exponentially and it’s one of the best ways you can promote your website for free.
The only drawback to word-of-mouth advertising is that you need to have an easy to remember domain name for your website. Instead of picking www.ihaveadomainnamethatissolongthatpeoplewillnotrememberit.com, you should try to get www.easytoremember.com. Friends, family, and associates can all help to spread the word about your website and send a few visitors your way.
You don’t have to spend tons of cash on SEO. If you have the time, you can use any of these methods to get some traffic and generate serious income from your website.
When it comes to website promotion and online marketing, just remember one thing: If it’s free, go for it!
Are you tired of seeing your competitor’s outrank you in the search engines? If so, the Branson Pro team can help you by implementing our effective and proven search engine optimization strategies.
We can help you generate more leads, get more sales, and see a larger return on your investment!
Please contact us today for more information about our affordable SEO services.
We are proud to announce the latest addition of a new Marketing Director / SEO Consultant to our team.
Kiren Raj from Chennai recently took up the position, in an effort to provide new levels of service and client satisfaction. Mr. Raj has over 2 years experience in the search engine optimization and search engine marketing industry. Well known as an authority in his field, Mr. Raj brings in loads of fresh ideas and a whole new marketing concept to the table.
His expertise in social networking and the field of social media optimization will benefit every client of ours by helping businesses generate multitudes of traffic, leads, and revenue through the World Wide Web.
We wanted to be able to offer our clients a new and exciting way to gain traffic to their websites. And we also wanted to be able to take advantage of the latest forms of online collaboration. Kiren’s talent will definitely enable us to accomplish all these goals and serve our clients much more efficiently.
Currently, we have already helped over 200 clients achieve first-page rankings for targeted keywords in the major search engines. And with the addition of Kiren Raj to our team, we expect our number of clients to more than double in the next 2 years.
Our clients come first. We strive to deliver results and insure the highest level of client satisfaction. Kiren’s marketing power will enable us to take it to the next level.
Vacation Services of America is an excellent business located right here in the heart of Branson, Missouri. They have a really outstanding company with great people.
They have an excellent office and very friendly staff. We recently held a meeting with them to inquire bout purchasing a vacation and travel package. They gave a very informative presentation and explained the details in a very thorough manner. There was no rush, no hurry, and absolutely no hassle.
We were also impressed by the way Vacation Services of America offers travel discounts and benefits to multiple locations across the United States, not just in Branson. Vacation Services of America has inclusive packages in other countries, as well.
The dates of availability that Vacation Services of America provides are so good that we can travel on virtually any date of our choosing. This fact makes their program stand out from the rest and should be a major incentive to anyone who is looking for a quality travel club program.
I highly recommend their services and the travel club program they offer. In fact, I’ve already recommended them to my friends and family. And I’ll continue to do so with every opportunity that arises for those who are in need of affordable travel rates and good deals.
The program offered by Vacation Services of America includes several awesome discounts on condos, fine hotels, restaurants, rental cars, and even airfare. Now we can travel anywhere and enjoy our vacations much more comfortably with the help of Vacation Services of America.
Are you an avid traveler? Do you want to learn how you can save tons of money and travel more frequently? Then head on over to Vacation Services of America and join their travel club program!
Have you ever wanted to know who owns a particular domain? Ever looked at a website and became curious as to who it’s registered to?
There’s a simple way to find out the registrant for any domain. It’s called “WhoIs”.
WhoIs is basically a database query protocol that was implemented to determine “who is ” assigned various resources on the Internet. Back in the day, all WhoIs commands had to be ran from the command line prompt. But today, there are several websites that offer WhoIs information as a free service.
My favorite is located here at Domain Tools. I prefer it because they offer a lot of other useful features, in addition to traditional WhoIs record information. Specifically, their SEO text browser. It allows you to view a web document in the same manner as a search engine.
Why are WhoIs records valuable? For me personally, I find it valuable for link exchanges. When I’m scouring the web for related sites to obtain links from, I’ll go to the WhoIs and pull up the domain owner’s email and contact information. From there, I know exactly who to talk to.
Of course, there is always the possibility of a domain owner to opt-in for private registration. If they have domain privacy in place, you won’t be able to get any of their contact details. However, domain privacy costs extra during the time of registration and many webmasters don’t use it.
Whether you are using WhoIs to assist in link request missions, discovering who your competitors are, or if you’re just plain curious - it’s definitely a valuable tool!
There has been a lot of controversy over the Meta “keywords” tag throughout the SEO community. Many webmasters obsess over it. Others believe that search engine optimization revolves solely around it…
But the truth (and fact) of the matter is that the keywords tag is dead and virtually useless.
To back this statement up and prove why it is dead, I’ll be referencing a case study that was conducted by SEO guru Paul. He is a world-renowned SEO professional in the UK. His site is located at: Making Money On Sitepoint.
A little history: a few years ago, Google and the other major search engines put a lot of weight into a web page’s keywords tag. The keywords that were listed inside of this meta tag told the search engines exactly what the page was about (and therefore helped to add relevancy to the page, boosting it’s spot in the SERPs).
But it didn’t take long before people started abusing the keywords tag in order to manipulate the search engines. The practice of “keyword stuffing” became common. And webmasters began to repeat the same keywords, over and over. Or they would even jam 1000+ keywords inside of the tag, in an effort to fool the search engines.
Google quickly caught on to this and began to devalue the tag as a whole. It didn’t take them long to finally quit “paying attention” to it. And it’s probably not part of the ranking algorithm anymore (nobody can say that for sure but based on the following research, it’s clear that they don’t use it in their algo).
Take a look at this page: http://www.word07.com. Once you view the source code for it, you can see that the meta keywords tag reads: <metaname=“keywords”content=“Microsoft Word 2007, free tutorials” />
And since the web page is all about free Microsoft Word 2007 tutorials, the keywords tag is clearly relevant to the site’s content. Right?
But if you do a Google search for the content included inside of the keywords tag, the site does not come up anywhere: Click Here To See. The same results are shown in Yahoo and MSN (Bing).
If the keywords tag could alter the SERPs and actually help a website rank higher, then why wouldn’t Paul’s Word07 site show up in the above search? It’s obvious that Google isn’t including it as a determining factor for ranking.
I’ve even went as far as completely removing the keywords tag from some websites before, just to see what would happen. And even after a couple of months, they still held their rankings for the same keywords that were being targeted.
If anything, the keywords tag could potentially hurt you. I say that because all a competitor has to do is view the source of your page and then they can see the keywords you are targeting and try to go after them to beat you.
But Paul says:
“What I normally do is include a keywords meta tag just for completeness but have the expectation that it has no effect…”
So you might decide to keep it in place, just to stay on the safe side of things. The day may come when the search engines start to value it again.
Still to this day, it cracks me up when I’m doing SEO analysis on a website and see that they have 50 keywords placed inside the tag. But it only goes to show how little the webmaster knows about what is really important (relevancy and links).
Honestly, if you hire a company to do your SEO and they have stuffed your keywords tag, you might want to consider firing them on the spot A stuffed keywords tag is a clear indicator of an uneducated person….
If someone truly knows SEO, they know that the keywords tag is NOT an element of the SEO process.
Thanks again to Paul for all of his efforts and researching!
It happened again sometime last night or in the early morning. Google updated the toolbar PR (page rank) cache - for the third time this year.
I can’t believe it! Never before have they made 3 updates to the toolbar PR in such a short amount of time. For those of you who don’t know, they normally do the update only 3 or 4 times per year. This being the third update of the year so far is totally out of Google’s norm.
It makes me curious as to what exactly is going on at the big G. What is Matt Cutts up to?
The really odd thing is that after the toolbar update that occurred last December, Google claimed they would not be doing any more toolbar updates in 2009. Is anyone else scratching their heads about this one?
Already our new boat slips website, the Tri-Lakes Boat Slip Exchange is seeing some great progress in the SERPs.
It already ranks #1 for a couple of my secondary keywords and it is climbing up there for my main keyword. But it still has a ways to go before I’ll be happy.
We’ve already seen a good response from advertisers here in the Branson area. And we are getting some people to list their boat slips for sale. I think it will be a big success in a short amount of time.
At the start of next week, we are going to go out and do some “grassroots” marketing for it. My friend already has the business cards and red-tape in the works.
Needless to say, we are very happy and excited about it. And honestly, there’s nothing like building an income-producing website for yourself.
This is an update to the “Star Position Sucks“ post I wrote earlier today.
After doing some research online, I have found that many people have received mass amounts of un-solicted emails from the same Robert Sexton joker that contacted me earlier today.
And apparently, there have been some people who paid Star Position for their #1 spot in Google but never got it as promised.
For more information, simply do a Google search for the keyword: star position scam. And also, do a search for:star position spam.
There are many other people complaining about them.
Let all of my readers be aware - steer clear of Star Position!
Once again, I find myself amused by so-called “SEO professionals.”
It all started when one of their “advanced SEO specialists” sent me an email. Here is the original:
“Hello,
I represent a company called Star Position, a company that does what’s known as advanced search engine placement. We reach a Network of over 35 million people who are predominantly US based. Our Network is entirely opt-in, and the users on our Network allow us to present them with a preferred choice whenever they are looking for anything on the top sixteen search engines. (GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN and thirteen others.)
I seek one source to send the users on our Network, from the major search engines, for real estate in Branson and surrounding markets.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I will be in the office daily from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Pacific time.
Best regards,
Robert Sexton Director of Business Development,
Star Position Phone: 800.481.2979, ext 2001”
So naturally, I call thse guys up to see what “advanced search engine optimization” techniques they are offering . And let me tell you - these guys are lames!
Robert Sexton, their salesperson who sent me the original SPAM email and who also answered their phone told me how great their SEO services are. He told me that for $599 per ,month, they would guarantee me a #1 spot for any 2 or 3 word keyphrase. And he said for only $999 per month, they would guarantee any 1 word.
Hmmm….last time I checked, the only man on the face of the Earth that can absolutely GUARANTEE any keyword goes by the name of Matt Cutts - and he’s not selling or providing any services of the kind.
Anyway, as I had this jack-ass on the phone, listening to his sales speech, I immediately ran a quick SEO analysis of their website: www.starposition.com.
And here’s what I found:
> Major canonical URL issues
> They do not have a 301 permanent re-direct in place
> Their site is only a PR 2
> Meta title, keywords, and description tags are the same for every single page in their site
>No headings used
> No DMOZ listing
> No Yahoo directory listing
> Only 365 in-bound links
And if that were not enough, they do not even rank anywhere in the top 200 positions in Google for their primary keywords.
I’m actually laughing my ass off as I am writing this!
How can any self-proclaimed “advanced SEO service” ever have so many problems with their own website? These guys are SEO half-breeds for sure! And it pisses me off because they give the real SEO pros a bad name.
After I ran the SEO analysis on their website, I confronted him about it. I asked him if they wre only a PR2. He replied “No, we are higher than that.” (blatant lie). I asked him why they were not in the DMOZ when their site is over 5 years old. I asked him why they did not have a 301 in place…. All he could say was “Can you elaborate on that?” Basically, he was saying that he had no idea what these terms meant and he did not have any clue as to the technical side of the SEO field.
And the only rebuttal he could come back with was: “We have a very high Alexa rank.” STOP RIGHT THERE. Once again, Alexa rankings are VIRTUALLY WORTHLESS. They only collect data from those users who have the god-forsaken Alexa toolbar installed on their browsers. This is a very small number of users!
Anyway, I went on to tell them that they should stop spamming me and they need to do some research before they go spamming people because every now and then, they might run into someone who actually knows what true SEO is all about.
Star Position, I courteously salute you with my award for being one of the crappiest ”SEO service providers” :
You guys most definitely suck. I would recommend you not spamming anybody until you get you get your own website straightened up… and even then, make sure you know what you are talking about before you try to sell it.
It’s people like you who give us real SEO pros a bad name.
Now, I’m no Burt Reynolds…but I know a great band when I hear one. And if you haven’t heard the new band Motion Sensor yet, you definitely should.
The up-and-coming Motion Sensor hails from the town of Neosho, Missouri. And they are by far the best group of talented musicians that Southwest Missouri has ever spawned.
Motion Sensor has that kind of fresh and unique sound that the music industry needs. They bring a clean sound and raw talent to the sacred alter of rock music. And it won’t take long before these guys go big, as they are quickly establishing themselves as a music-industry force to be reckoned with.
The band has a totally new style and sound that is exclusive to them and them alone. I’m talking all-original songs that are executed in a manner that grabs your ear and holds it captive like a noose of pleasure around your neck.
If you are ready to hear new music that rocks, check out Motion Sensor!
Motion Sensor features:
>Tyler Burkhart - vocals / keyboard
>Phil Burkhart - guitar / vocals
>Dakota Cholka - bass / vocals
>Clay Pannell - drums
The band is currently booking shows in the 4-state area. To listen to the band’s music or for more information, check out the band’s MySpace profile: http://www.myspace.com/1motionsensor.
“Clay, Phil, Dakota, Tyler - I’m proud of you guys! When are you coming to Branson?”
We just completed a brand-new website. Well, almost completed There are still a few bugs that I’m trying to work out. But for all intents and purposes, the site is ready.
The name of the site is Tri Lakes Boat Slip Exchange - www.trilakesboatslipexchange.com - and it’s a personal site for me and a friend of mine. My friend had a great idea so we just ran with it.
Basically, the site is for people in the Branson area to list their boat slips, boats, and personal watercraft. It’s a new and unique idea to this area. And since there are 3 major lakes here, I’m sure there is plenty of sellers out there who would like to list their boat slip or boat for sell.
Now since this site is a personal one of my own, I’m going to push it as hard as I possible can and see just how high I can make it rank.
But instead of just going for a keyword like “Branson boat slips” or “Table Rock Lake boat slips“, I’m going for the gold on this one. I’m going to target the broader, more competitive keyword - “boat slip“.
Of course I’ll pick up the location-specific terms as well. But the main goal for me is to rank for the big one.
The real challenge for this site comes from the fact that it’s session and cookies-based. And we all know that makes the SEO job that more difficult.
Right now, there are only 1,790,000 results showing up in Google for the keyword: boat slip. I plan on being in the top 10 of those results within 3 months. It’s going to be interesting to see how it goes.
So I go to log in to my Twitter account today and see a notification telling me that my account has been suspended for suspicious activity. What the hell?
I’ve never abused Twitter. I’ve never spammed Twitter. And I’ve never done anything remotely “suspicious” on Twitter. But yet I’m suspended!
Anyway, I’ve submitted my request to have my account activated again. They say it can take up to a month. I’ll give it 3 days and if the problem is not corrected, I’ll just create another account.
The only reason why I haven’t done so yet is because I don’t want to lose all of my followers.
There is huge debate over which is better for SEO - absolute or relative paths for your links.
Here’s the difference between the two:
An absolute path gives the full URL for the page. It goes by protocol, server or domain address, directory, and then finally the document or page itself.
An absolute path looks something like this: <a href=”http://www.thebransonpro.com/whatever/whatever.php”</a>
The first part of it (HTTP) is the protocol. The domain name (thebransonpro.com) is the server address. The first /whatever is the directory. And the last whatever.php is the actual document name.
Since absolute paths give the full address for a resource on the Web, they can be used on virtually any other web document and still make it to the correct “destination”.
Relative paths, on the other hand cannot do this. A relative path would look something like this: <a href=”whatever/whatever.php”</a>
Notice that is omits the protocol and server address for the resource. This is because a relative path is only relative to the specific server or directory that the parent file resides on. Relative paths automatically assume that the file is already on the same server or domain as the document that is calling it.
There’s nothing wrong with using relative paths for the pages in your website. As long as all of the pages are on the same server and possibly in the same directory, it’s not going to matter, as far as navigation goes.
However, some SEO pros will tell you that you should always use the absolute paths, no matter what. The reason being is simple. They claim that in order to get full “credit” for the links on your web pages, it’s necessary to use the absolute path so that Google and the other search engines will be able to parse them correctly. By using relative paths, you might not be getting the full “link-juice” from your internal linking strategy.
Honestly, I don’t see any big difference one way or the other. I’ve got websites using only relative paths and I have websites using strictly absolute paths. And all of them are doing well.
But just the same, for the purposes of page rank sculpting or some highly arcane internal linking scheme you may want to implement, go ahead and roll with the absolute method for defining your links.
Better safe than sorry And honestly, it only takes an extra second or two to define the absolute path of your page.
Google did it again…and this time, the interval between the toolbar page rank updates was very short.
I saw some excellent gains! Of the 12 websites that I do SEO for, every one of them increased in page rank by at least 1 point. And I even had one of my personal sites climb up from a PR0 to a PR3 - and it’s only 51 days old
The last time Google updated the toolbar PR was on March 2nd of this year. And now just a little over 2 months later they made another update.
For those of you who don’t know, the Google toolbar is one of the few ways that the general public can see the page rank of a web page. For a further explanation about this, please read the post located here: http://www.thebransonpro.com/google-toolbar-update/
Honestly, I have never seen G make an update that fast before. They usually only update the toolbar PR about 3 or 4 times a year. So now I’m curious as to why they did it so soon, especially since after the update in December of 2008 they said they would not be making any toolbar PR updates in 2009.
I’ve seen a lot of changes in Google over the last couple of months. They implemented the customized search based on recent activity feature. But it’s not showing up any more. They are changing the webmaster tools interface. And even the image search has undergone some minor adjustments.
Personally, I think it is due to the “pseudo-search engines” that are starting to come into play. Mainly, Wolfram|Alpha.
But let’s remember that page rank doesn’t necessarily mean a better “rank” in the SERPs (search engine results pages). I’ve seen sites that are a PR1 have a higher spot in the SERPs than sites with a PR5. And performing SEO tasks for the sake of building page rank alone isn’t the best idea. Instead, it’s better to focus on providing the best possible content for your visitors.
If you use Google Webmaster Tools (if you are not using them, you should be), then you’ve probably noticed that they’ve made some changes recently.
I noticed that during the past few days, GWT was acting funny. It wasn’t showing any of the data for the top search queries. And I noticed it running a little bit slower than usual.
I logged into GWT this morning and saw that they now have a completely new interface.
My first impression of the new design is that it is very close to the design of Gmail. It is much cleaner in appearance and they’ve changed the navigation style somewhat.
Instead of “What Googlebot sees”, it now says “Keywords”. And it also has a link for “Crawler Access” now. (which appears to be the same data as before).
Over-all, I do like it. But as with all new changes, it will take some getting used to.
How often do you update your website’s content? Once a day? Once a week? Never?
We all know that fresh content is one of the key elements to SEO and bringing traffic to your site (both repeat visits and new visits). But how many of us are actually practicing a strict updating regimen?
I honestly don’t think the “how-often” is as important to the “how-regular” aspect of it. What I mean is that I think it’s more important to update your content on a set schedule, regardless of how often that might be.
If you think about it, it really is better to have a routine time for updating. That way, your visitors will know when your new content goes live and they will know exactly when to come back. If you update 7 times one week, and then neglect your site for 2 weeks after that, how many visitorsdo you think you will lose? Probably quite a few because they might give up or quit checking your site because the content is stale.
But if you took those same 7 updates and spread them across that 2 week period on a regular basis, you would be more likely to keep your visitors. And they would be less likely to lose interest in your site.
If you really want to bring the traffic and keep them coming back time and again, you have to give them fresh food. But also remember to stick with a set schedule. If you can handle updating on a daily basis, then I tip my hat to you. Otherwise, you should aim for a bi-weekly or weekly updating schedule.
I know most of us don’t always have the time to make an update. Or maybe we get too wrapped up in other areas of our lives and work…But we still need to find the time to keep our content fresh.
To insure I always have time to devote to updating my site’s content, I set aside 1 hour a day, every day just for that purpose. And I live by it. It’s usually the second or third hour after I wake up and rink my coffee. And I keep the mentality that deviating from my schedule is simply not an option.
If you do your best to be persistent, you will be much better off in the long run. And your visitors will be happier.
So set aside an exact time and day that you will update your content and stick with it.
“To bring the visitors is only the beginning of the fight. To keep them coming is the meaning of the battle. Keeping it fresh is the apparatus of the war…”- Cole Pannell
Rank Higher Today!
Are you ready to see your website climb to the top?
Contact me at: (417)231-0099
