Mr. Technique

Ikon Financial Atlanta

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:50:26 +0000

Name: Ikon Financial (View Website)

Industry: Mortgage Broker

Location: Atlanta, GA

Services Provided: WordPress Website Design

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Using YouTube for SEO

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 07 May 2013 02:53:41 +0000

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had success with doing SEO work for a few of my clients. I noticed their visits had increased according to Google Analytics. In addition, my clients reported a jump in phone calls and website inquiries.

I wanted to let my visitors know about my success, so I filmed a few of my website design clients talking favorably about my services and uploaded them to my YouTube account. YouTube is the third most visited website right behind Facebook and Google according to Alexa. It only makes sense that I take advantage of YouTube’s power.

Another reason for uploading the videos to YouTube is because I didn’t want to have the videos hosted on my server. Videos can really eat into my bandwidth which could cost me major $$$ that I don’t have. Google has way deeper pockets than I do, and they host my videos at no additional cost to me, so using them to host my videos is a no-brainer.

When you upload a video to YouTube, a screen like this appears. Make sure that you fill out the title, description, and tags fields.

Title – Be sure to tell the truth and give the video an accurate title with some relevant keywords. Dr. Blackburn is an Atlanta Restorative Dentist and he’s giving a testimonial of my Website Design and SEO services, so I’m not lying to YouTube.

Description – Do the same here, but you can actually add links to your website in the description. Notice that I have http:// in the URL. If you do not include this, the URL’s will not be hyperlinks. You can also further explain what the video is about. Don’t be shy. Say as much as you can.

Tags – Google references what’s in the title and descriptions, but this is almost like the meta keywords. This isn’t as important as the first two, but fill it out anyway. Put every keyword or keyphrase that you feel is relevant to the video in this section.

Recently, I just received a call from a dentist asking me about my SEO services. They told me they had found me on Google, so I did a Google search and there I was in the top 10.

If you look at the screenshot below, you’ll see that the video I made is on the first page of Google for the phrase “seo for dentists in atlanta ga” and even ranks above my own website page about Dr. Blackburn.

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Setting up Custom Navigation Menus in WordPress

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:01:22 +0000

Most themes in WordPress allow you to control what’s on the navigation menu bar.

To set up your navigation menu, you’ll need to know how to log in to your WordPress admin area. Once logged in, go to Appearance –> Menus.

Type in a name for your navigation menu, and click the Create Menu button.

Check the pages you want to include, and click Add to Menu.

The pages will show up in the menu section on the right. To create dropdown submenu items, just drag any menu item to the right until it snaps into an indented spot.

You can also rearrange menu items by dragging them to their new spot. When you’re done, click the Save Menu button on the top or the bottom.

You’ll get a confirmation message letting you know that your menu has been saved. The last step is to assign your menu to an area. Select a menu from the dropdown menu, and click the Save button. Most WordPress themes will have a primary navigation menu area.

You’re finished. You can check the live site to see your navigation menu.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.

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Bring Traffic to Your Website by Giving Advice

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:43:32 +0000

Manta is an advertising solution for small businesses. You can register for a Manta account for free. You can even add a few links back to your website and social media pages in your Manta profile.

I’m not here to discuss setting up a Manta profile though. There are millions of free business directories that you can do that with like HotFrog, MerchantCircle, etc. I doubled my website traffic by commenting on the Manta Forum. This is where small business owners gather to get ideas from each other.

A few months ago, I saw a post about online directories for SEO, so I decided to give some advice with a link back to my own blog post. I didn’t think anything of it. I did make sure that I used keywords in my backlink though. The next day, I checked my Google Analytics account and saw that my visits jump up drastically.

See the big hump? That was the day I posted my helpful hint on the Manta forum. Not only did my visits jump up, but I received a few more inquiries as well. A few people contacted me to let me know that they wanted to link to my blog post.

You could sign up for a Manta account and comment on their forum or you could comment on forums in your industry. Just type in Google something like [your industry] forum or [your industry] discussion board.

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Arum Son

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:47:11 +0000

Name: Arum Son (View Website)

Industry: Art

Location: Atlanta, GA

Services Provided: WordPress Website Design

Project Description: Arum Son needed a website to showcase her work. We worked side by side on most of the project, so she could convey her ideas better.

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Pure Perio

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:14:41 +0000

Company: PURE PERIO (View Website)

Industry: Dentistry

Location: Atlanta, GA

Services Provided: Website Design

Project Description: Dr. Gordon Fraser has been a client of mine since 2006 and is a sought after dental specialist.

He is frequently brought in by general dentists to do specialty operations. In addition, Dr. Fraser teaches dentists how to do some of the specialty procedures.

He needed a website which he could update himself to showcase his services. I actually worked with him on site at the end of the project.

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Show Off Your Testimonials in Kudzu

Tom Nguyen — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:05:21 +0000

Kudzu is another website where visitors can leave a review on your business, and it was around before Yelp, another review website. You can set up a Kudzu business listing for free.

Once you set up a listing, I recommend you send an invitation to a few of your customers or clients to leave you a favorable review. I’ve gotten a few clients of Kudzu and given good service which lead to more good reviews. Luckily, I don’t have any bad reviews on the website just yet (knock on wood).

If you do get a bad review, Kudzu allows you to respond to it. Unlike Yelp, Kudzu does not filter their reviews. Yelp’s review filter isn’t perfect as sometimes legitimate reviews get filtered. Kudzu’s free account allows you to list your website URL which brings another backlink to your website. Take a look at my Kudzu profile to see for yourself.

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My Preferred WordPress Plugins

Tom Nguyen — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 23:34:30 +0000

These days, most of my website projects are developed with WordPress. I use these plugins in many of my WordPress websites. They are all free of charge.

ThreeWP Activity Monitor - Tracks all user activity including login attempts. If someone atttempts and fails to log in to your site, you can see what password they tried. If you are setting up WordPress sites with an ‘admin’ username, I suggest you use something else. Accounts named ‘admin’ are heavily attacked. One of my clients sites was hacked because it had an ‘admin’ username.
WP-DBManager – WordPress’ content is database dependent. If you’re running WordPress, you definitely want to have your database backed up. The State of Georgia called me in to restore one of their WordPress websites, and luckily, I was able to accomplish the task because they had multiple backup copies of their database. With that being said, this plugin can automatically back up your database and store the backup on your server or email a copy to whoever you choose.
Custom Sidebars – You may not want the same sidebar widgets throughout your entire website. Javier Marquez’s plugin takes care of this problem. With his plugin, you can have a different set of widgets on each page if you so choose to.
WordPress SEO by Yoast – This is a must have if you want your website optimized for Google and the other search engines. Joost de Valk’s plugin shows a preview of what your listing will look like in Google. His plugin also lets you know if too many characters are being used for your title tag or meta description. If you’re optimizing your site for a certain keyword or keyword phrase, the plugin gives you a checklist of what needs to be done.

Many of these WordPress plugin developers will ask for a donation, and many times I will give a donation. I feel good about it, and I’ve learned that nothing in life is free.

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Hot vs Not and Best of the Internet Directory

Tom Nguyen — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:50:32 +0000

If you’re an SEO guy, maybe you have heard of Hot vs Not. They’re not DMOZ, but they are a solid directory.

Hot vs Not is a Google PR6 directory. I’ve submitted a few sites to them. You can even submit multiple sites to them if you want to build some deeplinks. Deeplinks are links to website pages other than the home page or index page.

What’s the cost of getting into Hot vs Not? For a 6 month listing, the cost is around $30. A permanent listing costs around $200. Want to save a little bit of cash on either type of listing? Use the promo code MRT20HVN to get 20% off.

Hot vs Not has started a new sister directory called Best of the Internet Directory. I would suggest you list your site in this directory soon. A few months ago, I could pay $20 for a permanent listing and the directory was a Google PR0. Today, I paid $25 for a permanent listing and the directory is now a Google PR4. Amazing. There aren’t any working promo codes for this directory yet unfortunately, but I’m sure that will change as their prices go up.

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Some Free Online Directories

Tom Nguyen — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 23:38:43 +0000

Building backlinks is tedious, time consuming, and costly. I’ve used a combination of paid and free online directories to bring backlinks to my sites and clients’ websites. In a previous blog post, I mentioned a few paid online SEO directories. If you’re low on cash and can’t afford a paid directory listing, here are a few free ones:

Jayde (Google PR 6) – Email validation required, but submission is approved within a few days.
SoMuch.com (Google PR 6) – Has an option for a paid 24 hour review, but it’s not necessary.
Pro Link Directory (Google PR 4) – Paid featured and paid standard listings appear above the free listings, but it’s not necessary.
MasterMOZ (Google PR 4) – Requires you to sign up for an account, but your listing is added immediately.
CrunchBase (Google PR 7) – Requires you to sign up for an account and allows you to add your Twitter account and videos. It takes about a month or two to get your listing approved.
The Business Journals (Google PR 7) – Requires you to sign up for an account, and like CrunchBase, it takes a month or two to get your listing approved.
Skaffe (Google PR 4) – You can save yourself the $44.99 fee by submitting your website for free anytime from 6pm on Friday to 6am on Monday.

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