When it comes down to WebbyCtrl – we believe the availability if online sales far outweighs the need for an actual person over the phone but does not make having sales personnel  obsolete and here’s why.

Having an in-house sales department can have its ups and downs – performance is measured in numbers, rewarding employees based on their quotas can cost companies 1000’s.  Furthermore, the need for in-house sales is not all that important in today’s market.  Your customers are now internet savvy and the expectation of online ordering is growing.  Take for example, Company A has 10 or so sales professionals working, each bringing various numbers – numbers are never consistent no matter what the outcome.  Generally, each sales person should be able to pay their own monthly income and the income of 2 others for the company to stay profitable.  If you have 7 employees who are barely able to pay for their own income, your company is at a loss because there isn’t enough profit to sustain the other employees as well maintain overall operations of the company.  There is no growth.

The idea behind a ‘pro-active’ sales performance is when your search engine optimized website works as hard as the marketing effort behind it.

Companies are who have an online ordering page generally have a larger profit margin because the need to pay sales wages is no longer there and the need to pay X amount of sales benefits and bonuses also decrease – increasing profit margins.  In essence, you would be able to reward customer service and IT for a job well done in terms of building customer loyalty with great service and the IT department for avidly taking on an SEO approach to sales.  We all know search engine optimization or S.E.O is an art form in itself and it takes a well gifted individual to perform these tasks on a daily basis.  The right SEO with the right website structure can bring in equal or more sales than a typical sales professional would do.   There is no delay in taking orders, no lunch breaks, no smoke breaks – just pure 100% pro-active sales performance.  The idea behind a ‘pro-active’ sales performance is when your search engine optimized website works as hard as the marketing effort behind it.  There are a multitude of programs out there can increase your sales efforts with minimal costs involved, such as:

• PPC or Pay Per Click Advertisements on Google, Yahoo or Bing: a well thought, witty advertisement box generally ranges in $1.00 per click up to $10.00 per click.  It is dependent on the keywords you are targeting. For example, if you are targeting “health insurance” your top placement for that ad will be approximately $8.95 per click because the popularity of that keyword is enormous.  If you were to demographically target  your PPC Ads such as “Downey Health Insurance” then the keyword would be a lot less because the popularity is lower and yet you would get a great return on investment (ROI) because you are targeting customer close enough to you.  Know  your customers and the locations they serve – make it work for you and you won’t be disappointed.
• Affiliate Programs: have your customers and/or the companies you work with sell your products for you and reward them with a piece of the pie.  WebbyCtrl currently has an affiliate program designed specifically for valued businesses and clients.  Even though it is not intended for the public, we greatly reward our clients and partnerships because we see the value in them.  We are strong believers in taking care of our Affiliations.  This is another method of keeping the sales personnel down to a minimum while maintaining a steady stream of sales performance – by having a referral program that actually rewards the client for their efforts.  There are many companies offering Affiliate Programs, but many do not pay as handsomely as we do, typically the rewards on these companies range from 1% and up to 3% – not much worth mentioning or working towards to.

I could mention a couple of programs out  there to help you build your online presence, but the greater reward is in the research in finding these.  You will learn more by actively seeking these programs for yourself.

So in conclusion which is better, In-House Sales or Online Ordering Page? To put it bluntly, your typically spending about $40,000.00 per year per employee plus commissions, 401K and employee benefits – with online order pages and pro-active web marketing, your performance greatly ranges from $150.00 to $1000.00 per month depending on how you go about it.

I realize this article may end a couple of jobs in various industries which is not our intention.  Our goal is bring to light the opportunities that are there for online sales.  Bottom line, if your sales force is not performing its numbers, then try online sales ordering with a pro-active approach to web marketing  – it could save your company thousands or it may just save your company period.

Below is a list of our favorite tips we give to our friends and colleagues.  Sure they are basic, but this article isn’t meant for the SEO guru or SEO professional this article is meant for the busy professional who doesn’t know anything about search engine optimization.  Search engine optimization should be at the top of every would-be website owner.

If you’re a seasoned SEO professional feel free to leave your advice for business owners who’ve just started up a website.

Create a great <TITLE> for each individual page. The title tag is the title of the current page and is indexed by search engines and should be keyword injected.  The word “injected” means to have certain words that are listed in the keyword meta tags used throughout the website.

Example: <TITLE>YourWebsite.com your total website management source for custom templates, admin control, seo optimization</TITLE>

Create keywords for that page only. Keywords should only reflect words used throughout that specific page.  You should not insert keywords that do not relate nor place a competitor’s company name.  Although there is no limit to how many keywords you are allowed to have on any given page, you should be aware that keyword overuse or saturation is a definite ‘no no’ with many search engines.

Example: <META TYPE=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”webby control, webbyctrl, webby ctrl, total website management, custom templates, admin control, seo optimization”/>

Create great H1 wording for the page and keyword inject it. Do not use H1 more than once on a single page.  Google sees H1 as a main title for the page and must reflect correct page titles for that page alone.

Example: <H1>About WebbyCtrl.com – Total Website Management in the city of Downey, CA</H1>

Create compelling H2 tags about strong intro text to the paragraphs. Google sees H2’s as important relevant data or text that needs to standout and should be keyword injected as well.

Use bold <b> and italics <i> throughout your website. Google’s robot program searches for bold and italics throughout the site and verifies its importance to the overall page title, h1, h2, and so on – so don’t overdo it.

Add articles to a blog, if you don’t or can’t afford to write the articles for the blogs or product reviews get a ghost writer! Ghost writers are great for keeping content fresh and up-to-date which Google loves!  Ghost writers are cheap!  You can find a ghost writer from India for 1.00 per article!  However you still have to take the time to read, review and check the content for hidden sensitive issues, subject matter and grammar.

Update all of your ALT tags in every image to be relevant to the image and to the page!

Example: <img src=”images/yourimg.jpg” alt=”WebbyCtrl.com services include SEO Templates”/>

Update all of your TITLE tags in every link! Many do not care to do this anymore and yet it is searched by all search engines!  Don’t forget to update TITLE tags throughout your embed files such as Flash files, movies, iframes, links, etc.

Example: <a href=”http://www.WebbyCtrl.com” title=”WebbyCtrl – HOME – Total Website Management”>HOME</a>

Make sure there are no broken links! If you have even two broken links you will hurt your page rank – so make sure there are no broken links!  A broken link is a link to a page that does not exist or the link does not function correctly due to bad code or bad URL destination.

Keep keyword enriched content away from Javascript, Jquery, Ajax, etc. If you are animating or putting strong content that relates to keywords within any of these languages – it will NOT be indexed by search engines.  Keyword enriched content should be in static text, nothing fancy – just keep it simple.

Get some inbound links! Get your site out to blogs, social media, and every outlet you can think of!  You should have at least 150 websites out there that link to your website to increase your ranking.

Create some outbound links! Your outbound links aren’t as important but it should lead to ‘relevant’ sources of data for that page.

In relation to the inbound and outbound links, if you think about joining a link farm you will get thrown out of most search engines!

So that’s the basics of search engine optimization, there really isn’t much to it.  We did not cover advance topics or dive deep into that front.  For advance SEO services, be sure to read reviews on the SEO provider first, ask for references to current customers and give them a call.

Remember, SEO is not an ‘instant’ punch for better search engine searches or ranking, it’s a way of life for successful website owners.

My buddy (@hoffco) who is new to Twitter asked me to show him the ropes about Twitter and how he can get followers – I gladly abliged him. I am no marketing or Twitter genius at all but I do know a thing or two about successful campaigns and messaging boards – and Twitter is no different.

First off, you should have a website about your company and place a Twitter icon of somesort on the front page where it is most visible and easily accessible – usually next to the login section of your website if possible. This will give your traffic a sense of community where they can easily reach you for direct messages and see whats new at your company.

One thing to keep in mind and its one of the most important is that you should not tweet about products all the time. That gets extremely boring and you’ll loose followers fast. What you want to do is tweet about current trends, subjects, issues, and various things that may relate to your website that people want to read about your opinion on subjects that matter most. Doing this will give your followers a sense of a real person behind the company. What I like to do is take 15 minutes to read whats hot, new, and searched subjects on Yahoo! Then Tweet them on a day-by-day basis on how I feel about it.

Another way of getting followers is very simple, follow others and they’ll most likely return the favor. So that means that whatever they tweet on their account will pop up on your home page as well – and vice versa. This will allow you to get a variety of different subjects shown on your homepage for your reading pleasure and you can tweet about what matters to you most and it will appear on theres.

Go ahead and ask people if they can mention you on their Twitter account! It never hurts to ask and 98% of them actually do it! Just be sure to return the favor when they do. By getting people to do this allows their 1000’s of followers to read what they got to say about you and quite possibly generate more followers for you.

Then, you want to tweet once or twice a day about different subjects. Do not tweet about products PRODUCTS PRODUCTS cause thats just Twitter Spam.. What you want to do is offer some insight on things like SEO, web design, articles, and then throw in your company name such as “WebbyCtrl” tweets every now and then. Then you got to follow people who already have a ton of followers and ask them to give you praise or to do you a favor and tweet something about you on their end. They’ll do it for the most part but you better do the same for them. You have to keep an eye on what people are searching such as Jay-Z or Eminem and tweet a message such as:

Jay-Z, GET FREE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AT WEBBYCTRL when you sign up and grab one of our SEO Templates!

So that when people search for Jay-Z they see your tweet which has nothing to do with Jay-Z, which helped me get followers instantly. 

Alos, try following a bunch of people so that people can follow you. Try finding people - just type in a name like David and follow everyone on that list. Your message under your settings should read something about your company.

For Example: WebbyCtrl – Total Website Management provides high quality website templates for doctors, dentists, insurance brokers and lawyers!

That way when people saw that you followed them, they instantly read your profile message even if they dont accept you as a follower but you got them to read something about you.

Thats all for now, if you have any ideas or thoughts about this article, go ahead and post them below!

Take care,

WebbyCtrl
Twitter: @WebbyCtrl
Total Website Management