The next Vancouver SEM meetup will be on Monday July 19, 2010. We talk about Search Marketing, PPC, Social Media, CMS, SEO tools and so much more. If you want to learn about Search, this is the place to be every month. I will be there along with the official organizer, Jose Uzcategui, from The Vancouver Search Engine Marketing Group:

Announcing a new Meetup for The Vancouver Search Engine Marketing Group!

What: Vancouver SEM Monthly Meetup. Mark The Date: Presenter: the next Meetup will be a presenter’s round table. We’ll have experts answer questions you’ll propose and vote on. (I’m humbled by the quality of the panel, thanks guys).

When: Monday, July 19, 2010 6:00 PM

Where:
Ceilis Irish Pub
670 Smithe Street, Vancouver, BC
Vancouver, BC V6B 1E3

Learn more here:
http://www.meetup.com/VancouverSEM/calendar/13827106/

“Alex presented his dynamic and interactive workshop called “eMarketing101: Preliminary Steps” to our entrepreneurs in training at the YMCA New Ventures Network.  Everyone was in awe of his vast knowledge about the subject of search marketing and they now understand how critical using the right keywords in their website can be.  Alex has a great depth of knowledge and years of experience helping businesses to optimize their websites.”

/// Cheryl McNicol
Business Advisor
YMCA Vancouver Downtown
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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) /// KPIs help organizations achieve organizational goals through the definition and measurement of progress. The key indicators are agreed upon by an organization and are indicators which can be measured that will reflect success factors. The KPIs selected must reflect the organization's goals, they must be key to its success, and they must be measurable. Key performance indicators usually are long-term considerations for an organization."

/// Read the Glossary

Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (Canada)

Read about it on my Search Marketing blog

The number 1 reason why you are losing money with your Web site

So you have a Web site, hey? just like thousands of other companies. But tell me: How much traffic did you have last week?

You would be surprised to know that most directors of marketing and senior VPs haven’t a clue how many visitors their Web site gets in a given period. Most will proudly answer the question by saying, “I got 20,000 hits last month” thinking that this must be good. If they answer the question in terms of hits, I know that they don’t know what they are talking about.

A hit does not mean what you think it means and it certainly does not mean the amount of people who visited your site.  Most online business owners look at the biggest number in their stat reports - hits - to measure their success.

I use hits to measure lost opportunity because so many online business teams who use the word are uninformed. Most business owners don’t know what a hit means and more surprisingly, their webmaster may not know it either.

Once you progress in the learning curve you will start to master the language. The key to online savvy is education.

If you cannot answer a question about how much traffic you had last week it generally indicates that you are not doing search marketing as you should and are probably losing sales just like thousands of other companies who have beautiful Web sites, but no visitors. 

Many of you may have budgeted for a site re-design recently, but how much has been budgeted for the most important part of your online success, a search marketing campaign?

If your Web site seems more like a money pit than a source of revenue, learn about search engine marketing, search engine opitimazation and page views. And ask yourself this question:

Who is marketing your website?
a) the company hired to design the site
b) your in-house tech person
c) your in-house marketing person/team
d) nobody (we don’t have a budget for online marketing because we spent it on the design of the site)

Like most companies, you probably rely on your webmaster or your web designer to make website updates. Some webmasters will take care of your online promotion when they have the time, but they rarely do. You should know that most web designers are not interested in gaining traffic as they are not compensated based on sales.

Know this: getting 1-percent sales gain by search marketing takes only a few hours per month—building an online reputation is a full time position.

Building a site may take a few weeks or months. Gaining more traffic and maintaining a relationship with your customers is an ongoing effort, the same amount of sustained effort as building a business.

Traffic and sales have a direct relationship with one another: if you want more sales, increase your traffic. Read more about traffic here: articles.