I just finished creating a new page on the site to showcase some of our clients, and will continue to keep it updated from now on.
Check out their sites and learn what we do to help improve their businesses at the Clients page:
http://www.conquerapathy.com/clients
After finding some of the best Web Design firms in the World, and talking to their owners, I have decided to launch a PPC Management Affiliate Program that pays $250/client referred.
The partner program is geared toward web designers/firms that are looking to increase their profit, without spreading themselves too thin trying to offer extra services.
Not a designer? No worries! Even if you are a past client of mine, feel free to contact me about earning $250 by referring new clients. I’d be glad to setup a partnership with you.
There are two options for earning more money while we handle PPC Management for your clients:
1. Referral – You design/build a website, then tell your client about our PPC services. They sign up, we happily send you $250!
2. White Label – You design/build a website, then tell your client about your PPC services. We take care of everything, you take the credit and earn a recurring cut of each month’s payment.
If either option is interesting to you, please contact me to get started. Want to learn more? Check out the partners page for details.
I’m looking forward to forming some fantastic partnerships with this program, so thanks to all the designers out there!
Many of my clients have asked for web design services, and since I specialize in PPC Management and Website Consulting, I decided to spend some time scouring the Internet for the best firms for my friends, clients and business partners.
After careful research, I’ve narrowed it down to 14 excellent firms, even of which offers something different than the others.
They’re all great choices, and hopefully my descriptions will help narrow your search even more:
http://www.conquerapathy.com/design
Please feel free to let me know if there is another design firm you think I should add, or if you have any questions about any I have listed so far, in the comments.
Of all the ways to determine how to structure your website and what content to produce for your visitors, using the Google Keyword tool is a great one. The ability to determine what people are already actively searching for is widely-regarded as the best way to perform quick, effective research, and Google’s tool is arguably the best free resource available.
Until now…
Google just released the Beta version of a new Keyword tool that has some attractive new features and a great filtering system (match type, common keywords, ad share, search share, and more)!
Check out the new Keyword Tool from Google and let me know what you think:
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer
If you run a website, it’s you’ve likely come to realize how many pieces of information you need to analyze your own site, or your competitors’. Everything from web hosting and WhoIs info, to IP Addresses, to backlinks and nofollow attributes, it’s incredible how many browser add-ons are required to have all of this (and more) at your fingertips all the time.
To make matters worse, many of the add-ons slow Firefox down tremendously, and the developers can be slow updating and bug testing their code with a new release of Firefox, which is frustrating when you are doing research.
To solve this problem, an incredible WordPress developer created a bookmarklet that’s easy to use, and does WAY more than the aforementioned research for you.
It’s called “Quix“.
Not only is it awesome, it’s quick and easy to setup and 100% free!
Here’s how to get started with it:
There are too many cool things this tool can do, so here’s a link to the full list. Enjoy!
I just finished the application & verification process for the Better Business Bureau, and Conquer Apathy LLC is officially accredited with a grade of “A”.
I’ve seen many local businesses with BBB logos throughout the years, and I know it’s just one small aspect of running a trustworthy business, but I have to say I’m quite proud to have the seal on my website now too (thanks to my good friend Dan Keltner).
Over the years, I have seen many business owners struggle with their websites (including myself).
It’s rarely finding out how to fix problems, it’s finding what problems exist in the first place! There are just so many little technical elements to consider when optimizing your website for conversions and Search Engines simultaneously.
The key to striking a (profitable) balance between your visitors and the engines lies in knowing the highest-impact tweaks to make for each.
Of course this is much easier said than done, unless you’re using the proper tools…
Here are two of my favorite website analysis tools:
These are both fantastic tools for analyzing your website to determine what core factors you need to improve. It’s also nice to get credit for what you’ve done correctly! 
While both tools provide a wide variety of helpful insights into website optimization, both have been created for quick reports, meaning their full analysis is part of a premium, paid service provided by the creator. Thankfully, in this case, both of these services are excellent (HubSpot & SilkTide), and I highly recommend them.
A while back, I referred one of my clients to these tools, and the response caught me off guard:
That’s all well and good, but I don’t know what half of this stuff means!
Now, he went on to say that they did do a good job of explaining each factor, but that it was difficult for him to truly grasp the power of the tools because of his lack of experience.
I realized there was a simple solution to this, but it would take a great deal of time for my clients: creating a crash course to help them lay a solid foundation on these key optimization factors. However, after discussing the idea, it’s clear that the people that benefit most from information like this are potential clients, who don’t want to pay for anything at this stage.
I racked my brain for weeks trying to figure out how best to convey this information on a per site basis, for literally zero cost to my visitors.
The tools cover a good deal of information, and their explanations are flawless for someone with a basic knowledge of SEO, but in order to help my potential clients fully grasp this information and use it to their benefit, I created my…
“Free SiteScore Website Analysis“
This is now part of my 100% free consultation, and it comes with a custom, detailed look into your website’s:
All of this information is delivered to you, personally from me, in an easy-to-read 10 pg PDF, before our consultation.
This way, you can get a much better understanding of where you stand, and what will help you most to discuss in the free consultation session. Between this and the phone call walking you through anything you’re interested in, you’ll be in a great position to decide if my services are right for you.
So far, my clients have greatly enjoyed this free service, and I think you will too! Fill out a short form telling me about your website to get started today.
Yahoo! recently released a blog post entitled “You’re in Control“, which describes a huge step in the right direction for them.
One of the only issues I’ve experienced with Yahoo! Search Marketing is the fact that they’re not as transparent with your traffic data as Google. It always annoyed me to see referred traffic in my analytics & logs coming from really strange, sometimes spammy websites, when there was no way to control it. Thankfully, all that has changed…
Now, with Network Distribution, you can choose where your ads are displayed on the Yahoo! platform.
In the past, the only option was “Entire Network”:
Now, it’s possible to choose where your ads are displayed:
This flexibility adds a great deal to the YSM platform, in my opinion, making it easier to control the quality of your clicks, thus improving Ad Quality and, hopefully, profits.
Not only that, but Yahoo! supplies you with data (based on the prior 30 days of your campaign) to help you determine which of the three options is right for you:
Overall, I believe this change will greatly improve results achieved through Yahoo! Search Marketing.
What do you think? Have you also been bothered by low-quality referring URLs in your analytics, as a result of Yahoo!’s Partners?
When people visit your website, they might not be seeing what you think they see.
You put all this effort in to make it look just right, but someone with a particular browser might see something so far off that they’ll leave in disgust. You don’t want this, do you? Then it’s crucial that you check your site for browser compatibility!
Many webmasters pride themselves on making sure their websites are compatible across all the major browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, etc.), but how do they know? They don’t literally download every single browser and open their site up in all of them, do they?
Most designers use a combination of various tools that provide screenshots of what your website looks like in different browsers, and manual checking (to make sure the functionality is intact too).
Luckily, you don’t have to do any of that, and there’s very little guessing, now that Adobe launched “BrowserLab“.
BrowserLab not only provides screenshots, but it allows you to scroll through and interact with your website as you normally would, mimicking any browser you want! It even simulates what your site would do with different Operating Systems (e.g. the dreaded Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP, or Firefox 3.5 on Mac OSX).
This is a very powerful way to verify that everyone who comes to your website is seeing what they should see.
Browser Market Share
In case you’re wondering, here’s the current browser market share :
How to Get Started
If you have an Adobe account, you can sign in directly. If not, you’ll have to sign up (free), but it only takes a minute. Here’s what it looks like:
The website I tested in this example is DailyBurn.com (using Firefox 3.0 on Mac OSX). Let’s see what it looks like compared to IE7 on Windows XP:
It appears that DailyBurn is doing an excellent job keeping their design similar across the major browsers. However, BrowserLab offers something I’ve never seen with other browser compatibility services called Onion Skin View (one browser view over another):
Alright, so I know that’s not the most fun thing to stare at, but the point is that simply looking at a couple screenshots (like with the tools I used to use) just doesn’t do the trick!
This view shows us that even though things look similar, the design is shifted between the top 2 browsers, which could cause alignment or other design issues in some circumstances.
In this case, things are very close, but I’ve found a couple examples of my own that are quite far off. It’s best to check this sort of thing out instead of losing visitors due to things you never knew about, so give BrowserLab a try on your site.
An earlier post about the Top 5 Search Engine Ranking Factors covered the highest-potential impact elements to understand and take action to improve.
However, there are literally 100’s of factors that Google considers, according to Matt Cutts at PubCon.
Check out the list over at WebmasterWorld to get a better idea of how complex the Search Engine ranking algorithm really is. We have heard tales of website owners stuffing keywords in their meta tags and getting first-page rankings for competitive terms in mere days, but over time Google has refined its algorithm to include everything you can imagine…and then some.
A big focus has been filtering out the tricks & gimmicks that webmasters have tried to employ over the years. It used to be much worse, which was the reason Googlers would find themselves on pages with 500 links to spammy websites or with 100 words of content and 12 banner ads.
Thankfully, Google has pioneered the advancement of search results, eliminating the chance for (most) of these sites to exist. It appears to be their goal to continue improving the experience of their users as much as possible, and while many website owners have been crushed in the path of the mighty Google, most have been for the better.
The key here is to remember that the Search Engines are NOT our enemy!
It’s crucial that we work alongside Google, Yahoo! & Bing to improve the quality of results, by creating “Unique, Useful and Updated” pages.
What do you think? Are there too many “rules”, or is this the best way to improve search results?
Ready to get started improving (or launching) your website? I'd be glad to help!
Click below to fill out a short form and get a FREE consultation including an in-depth "SiteScore" website analysis (Value: $149):
Consulting: Overwhelmed with Internet Marketing? Nothing a little guidance couldn't fix.
SEO: Want those coveted top 10 rankings? It's actually a lot easier than you might think...
PPC Management: Ready to get more bang for your buck? PPC is the way to go.
Optimization: Are you wasting money with every visitor? Without these 3 things you are!
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