The simple message is – stay away from these masters of domain deception.

We all seem to own domains, and it seems as though there are thousands of domain registrars out there. Domain registrars being companies we buy domains (URL’s) from.

Yesterday, I took a call from a client who received mail from Domain Registry of Canada (DROC). Look at the form below – it looks legitimate – almost governmental. To a non-technical business owner/manager it comes across as their domain is expiring and they need to renew it. The problem is, our client did not originally buy his domain from Domain Registry of Canada, it was purchased through a different registrar.

When someone actually fills this out and sends it in, it’s actually a domain transfer agreement, so your domain will be transferred from your current registrar to DROC. Not only that, but you are paying a premium to do so, anywhere from 3-5 times more than if you were to re-register with your current registrar.

From the BBB:

Based on information the BBB has obtained, consumers are receiving renewal forms from Domain Registry of Canada to renew their domain names. The issues with the renewal forms however, is that they are not renewals at all. In fact, by filling in the form and sending it in, the consumer has actually agreed to the transferring of their domain name from their current registrar to the Domain Registry of Canada. The BBB would like to remind consumers to carefully read all correspondence before filling in and submitting any forms.

 

On July 25 2012, the BBB requested that the company modify their mailed correspondence/advertisements to clearly indicate that the advertisement is actually a domain transfer request form, and not simply a renewal request from the consumer’s current host/registrar or a form from the Canadian Government.

After reading Owen Clark’s post today where he states that #1 On Google Is Not What You Want - I have a few quick thoughts. Thanks to Owen for making me think today – although I don’t agree with his headline – he makes his point.

+ For the vast majority of businesses – being #1 on Google for your relative key terms makes a big difference. Actually being in the top 3 versus anything else means a big difference. LocalTrifecta works with some great businesses where we see that it does make a difference, and business owners notice, too. I spoke with one client an hour ago who noticed that his call volume has dropped noticeably as he went from #3 to #5 on the first page for a few key terms of his. So, it’s on us to help him rebound, and we will.

+ Is it the same if it’s a solopreneur vs. a business that is being optimized for? Sometimes there is a difference. The biggest difference? If you’re solo you get a web lead and if you don’t follow-up on it right away, then

+ Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing. Do you understand the difference? Does it make a difference to you, even if you do understand? Typically outbound marketing channels are the hardest hit by “marketers.” In the past whether it’s been mailers, newspaper ads, yellow pages, emails – we’ve been inundated with a lot of noise. Now the channel has just been turned to social and we are being increasingly barraged through Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. Outbound marketing will never die, but marketers more than ever need to understand the importance, power and effectiveness of inbound marketing – and find ways to take advantage of it.

So really the question is – what are your thoughts on inbound vs. outbound marketing? And is one or the other, or both effective for you?

Nothing can quite stir human emotion more than something that really ought not to matter – race. And that’s race, in terms of individual ethnicity.

The US big box hardware store (which has recently expanded into Canada) pulled its commercials from the reality TV show “All-American Muslim” on TLC. Their move has been immediately seen as bigoted, and the outcry has been tremendous.

Because of social media – and in this case Facebook – news has spread far, and over 24,000 comments have been posted to the status update on Lowe’s Facebook page explaining what they did.

And since that status update on Saturday at 1:41 p.m. – it’s been more than 72 hours – and NOTHING. Lowe’s – a company that ordinarily posts daily, and doesn’t go two days without an update – is frozen.

This isn’t a social media issue, as much as it is an internal Lowe’s Value System issue. The company made a decision to advertise on the show for particular reasons. It was calculated, and they made the commitment. No one expects anyone to be perfect – but being accountable and communicative are vital. And social media helps people and companies to reach out in a faster, more transparent way than every before.

They have opportunity for dialogue, but instead of that, they’ve chosen to be silent. Perhaps hoping that it will all go away. Technology ensures it won’t go away soon.

There are ways to make this right. And I’m suggesting I have the right decisions for Lowe’s, but from a social media consulting perspective – it needs to be accountable and communicative – no matter what they it decides moving forward.

For us being located in Vancouver Canada at the moment we are still struggling with helping a vast majority of business create their 1st website and/or update an incredibly old site. In fact Google indicated in an event held in Toronto that 55% of Canadian businesses DO NOT have a website!

Newspapers, for example, make up six per cent of media consumed by Canadians, but attract around 30 per cent of advertising budgets, he said at a session on the “digital revolution” organized by the Toronto Board of Trade Monday. Digital marketing makes up between 10 and 20 per cent of most companies’ advertising budget, but 68 per cent of Canadians are online, he added.

Chris O’Neill, managing director at Google Canada

To really compound this issue Canadians spend THE MOST time online and especially watching VIDEOS! The Financial Post recently did an article (Apr 28 2011) that began

Welcome to Canada, where we’re all about hockey, poutine and online video.

Article Link

TODAY eMarketer posted an article indicating US online video ad spending to grow 43.1% in 2012! (eMarketer Article) In fact even the UK is years beyond Canadian Businesses when it comes to digital adaptation!

Does anyone have any insights into WHY Canadian Businesses are SO far behind the US and UK when it comes to websites and internet advertising!?

Google recently announced changes in how they will rank maps (basically Google Reviews will be a HUGE component while Citations wont play quite the dominate role they once did). Our own personal insight has been that citations still play a more significant role that they are perhaps letting on. This seems to be especially true for CANADIAN businesses. While we are still encouraging our clients to work on reviews we thought we would share a list of the top 58 canadian citations:

As LocalTrifecta grows, as we welcome new clients, and increase our revenue, which we have done increasingly since starting just over a year ago, it’s important for us to keep balanced.

Just a couple of days ago, we were asked to become involved in helping a great cause. AdoptAnAfricanClinic.org is a website that we’re helping to put together that bands dentists together for work in Africa.

We look forward to being involved in more initiatives and figure it’s just a matter of time as we increase our exposure and opportunities find us, or we find them. More to come on this when it goes live.

+sam

Just received a couple of postings for a non-profit entrepreneurial organization based in Surrey. SEEDS Business Development Centre has been around a good number of years is is approaching its 100th graduating class. I’m on the board of directors and the mission of the organization is fantastic.

They have facilitators (instructors) who come in and teach various modules of business to budding business owners. Recently they’ve made a move to include more Website Development and Social Media into the curriculum and there are two postings for facilitators. So, if YOU or anyone you know are interested, click below.

Tweet me if you want any additional insight – @samuelaraki

http://seedsbdc.com/facilitator__social_media
http://seedsbdc.com/facilitator__website_development

I received an interested an interesting email this morning from Yelp entitled “Your Yelp Updates for the Week of May 2″. The email was dedicated to a survey they had conducted with Yelp BUSINESSES and their interaction with the Yellow Pages. Below in an excerpt from the email:

——————————

Most Business Owners Agree: Yellow Books are Irrelevant

“Internet directories have led to a dramatic decrease in the number of business owners and consumers who use phone books.”

Last week, we presented a survey to gauge how business owners feel about yellow page phone books in the digital age. Only 24% of our 3,500+ respondents said “Yes” to the question, “Are yellow page phone books still relevant?”

That’s quite a find. Here are some others:

1) Most business owners don’t think yellow page phone books are useful to them:

“Yellow page phone books are useful to me as a business owner.”
Agree – 11%
Somewhat Agree – 17%
Somewhat Disagree – 19%
Disagree – 52%

2) Only about 10% of business owners use yellow page phone books more than once per month; 3 out of 4 don’t use it at all:

How many times per month do you rely on a yellow page phone book to find a local business?
“Zero” – 75%
“Once” – 14%
“Between two and four times” – 8%
“Five or more times” – 3%

3) Very few business owners believe customers find them using a yellow page phone book.

Estimated percentage of customers who find me using a yellow page phone book.
“0%” – 43%
“1-25%” – 47%
“26-50%” – 5%
“51-75%” – 3%
“76-99%” – 1%
“100%” – 0.1%

The conclusion: Business owners have clearly observed the shrinking relevance of yellow page phone books. As we continue to move away from printed phone books, online and mobile directories will continue to grow as the customer’s choice for local business information.

——————————

Our personal experience with business owners would match these results. In fact here in Vancouver the numbers are even more definitive in the uselessness of Yellow Pages (and CanPages). So where are all these consumers going? Google indicated there are almost 2 BILLION local searches PER MONTH in Google alone … its crystal clear that the search engines have replaced the Yellow Pages (and have for YEARS). Its only recently that business owners seem to have caught on to this. Call us today to learn more about how Local Trifecta can help you leverage the internet to GROW your business!

We are in the process of helping a potential client understand how internet marketing can impact their business when they drop this bomb:

As noted we are not coming up on any searches which is not good.

What exactly are you going to do to increase traffic? Key words are just a small part of SEO and SEO in our definition is separate from conversion once you get them there.

Somewhere along the way we have failed this potential client … keywords aren’t a small part of SEO they ARE SEO … the right, intent driven keywords, will ultimately generate the most qualified traffic to a site.

The most critical component of SEO is to ensure your targeting the right keywords. Once we have those keywords selected (through PPC intelligence and client collaboration) we do the on-site and off-site optimization. This increases/improves the position for the site in the search engine results and ultimately improves traffic.

There is a huge difference between traffic and conversion … which is again why keywords are so important. We need to ensure the intent of the keyword search matches the content, delivery, and call to action of the page that traffic is driven to. Again this is a collaborative effort but core metrics and analytics will provide preliminary data on intent based on click through to a call to action, time on page, bounce rates, and other metrics.

So … are keywords SEO or is SEO keywords? YES

Special occasions can be big business for any retailer – especially on April Fools Day.

Surrey.com put out a clever little one today that even got me! Good thing I’m not a Canucks fan … But the thoughts were running through my head …