Who is Anthony Johnson?

The path to becoming a successful digital marketeer with 38.9k followers by Anthony Johnson, founder of Digital 4 Trade.

 

• A series of fortunate accidents in the life of a self-confessed geek
• Experiences from the last 12c years of Anthony’s career (don’t worry - we’ll explain the 12c years
• See his hints and tips on successful digital marketing

 

 

Who is Anthony Johnson?

We met Anthony at the BNI Inspire Chapter in Coventry early one Thursday morning a couple of months ago. Now, he did try and avoid us to start with but he needed to try much harder than simply not replying to one email. We’ve moved past that now to the point where Anthony doesn’t (visibly) wince when he sees us – I think he might even quite like us. Or maybe he just likes the opportunity to talk about himself. Probably best to ask him directly to be certain about that @AnthonyJohns0n.

So, Anthony, is a Digital Marketeer (Marketer?) who loves Twitter (it’s his favourite form of social media). His Twitter bio describes him as:

“Im just a #geek who has been doing Digital Marketing for 12 years or so, giving free #SEO and #SocialMedia advice to #Business & #StartUps@Digital4Trade #BNI”

 

and that’s pretty much how he describes himself in person too. His love for Twitter comes from his short attention span: everything moves so quickly on Twitter that there’s always something new to look at, engage with or a technique to try out. The advantage of the speed is that, if you say something wrong, it’s gone in minutes. Conversely, though, that makes it tough to be heard above the noise sometimes.

 As for the rest, he’s not a fan of Periscope nor is he a fan of all the gimmicky stuff you can find for example apps that teach you how to communicate with people because, while he might be a digital geek, Anthony knows the value of a phone call. This is also quite literally meant – a phone call just netted Anthony £10k.

His rationale for why this works? It all comes down to people: marketing shouldn’t be considered B2B or B2C but rather people 2 people. To be successful you need to engage with real people through real content on a real level. It can be easy to forget you’re in work mode or separated from others by technology but people warm to the genuine and authentic.

What is digital marketing?

According to Anthony, it comprises 4 elements: 25% social media, 25% internet marketing, 25% SEO, 25% PPC

 

 

You don’t need to ace all of them. We were given Groupon as an example. flick’s Suzee got a Groupon for her Hollywood tour of star homes (as totally irrelevant side note – Suzee was in her element with this. She knew more than the tour guide). Anthony suggested that we wouldn’t have found Groupon for searching for Hollywood Tours but I ended up using them anyway – I found them (or, more likely through the use of cookies, they found me).

Not wanting to fall into the trap of believing what we’d been told about Groupon, we did the search for ourselves. You can see the results below and, guess what, Anthony was right.

 

How did Anthony get started?

It was 12c years ago.

This means 15 years ago. He didn’t want to say he’d been in the business for 13 years (surely also a superstitious chap) so he stuck with the 12 year mark. In hindsight, moving to the format of 12a, 12b, 12c seems more entertaining.

It was an accident.

In a series of rather remarkable accidents, Anthony stumbled across internet marketing by accident. By accidentally writing a football blog for Coventry Telegraph: he sent in his thoughts on a Cov City match and, in fact, one day he did that five times and all five blogs got published. The result: an accident blogger.

What Anthony did next. 

He went off to learn more. Given what he describes as his natural ability to understand systems and a very good memory, he set about figuring out how to be successful by picking apart someone else’s system. It was probably also helpful that he’d always been intrigued by computers and had a ZX Spectrum* when he was young. Once confident that he could achieve, he put his neck on the line with the company he worked for at the time doing a deal with them which gave him 6 months to succeed. He did.

This prompted what Anthony considers to be a very successful career – he “lived the dream for a while” and enjoyed his business (I wonder how many of us can say that?). Quite ambitiously, there are still some goals left to achieve and that’s after setting up Digital 4 Trade and his previous company, the number one SEO company, SEO GO, where companies 5-times his size were using him to white-label their SEO.

*in case you're also wondering what a ZX Spectrum looks like (we had to Google it) imagine an even more basic-looking version of the BBC computer. 

Look at him in action

(and check out the difference between Google then and now!)

 

 

 

NB - this video is a few years old so the guidance isn’t in keeping with modern day best practice.

 

A trip down memory lane…

We discussed what Old School SEO was (see it in action below):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you get it? It was back when you used white text on a white background to simply add in loads of the key words. It seems so far off the SEO guidelines we’re using today.

We also reminisced about the early days of the internet and what we could remember being around at the time Anthony was starting out on this path. We’ve put together a timeline of the evolution as best we could remember but we weren’t 100% sure. What can you remember?

 

 

 

Share your memories with us

 

Top tips on digital marketing success from Anthony Johnson

 

• Love what you do – if you can’t give 110% then it’s not worth doing

• Stay hungry to learn more – with SEO the boundaries are always changing, this means you’ve got to stay on your toes to keep up.

• It helps if you’re competitive – the SEO game is about being number-one and going up through the rankings. If you’re the type of person who aspires to be the best, then the spirit of this will appeal to you more naturally (and if you want to see how flick applies this spirit to e-learning, you can find out more in our blog on 10 way reasons e-learning should be gamified) 

• A/B testing – success comes from a relentless sequence of trial and error, trial and error. You learn what works and then you keep refining it until it’s hitting the right levels of success for you.

• Communicate in the language in which people are talking to you – you can try and fight it and try to educate them but it’ll be quicker and easier to simply talk their language.

• Be committed – don't approach social media with a “have to” attitude. Engage and commit for the best returns.

 

Top tips for companies looking to outsource digital marketing

• Don’t believe everything you read online – blogging, for some, is a business, so be discerning: are you looking at a blog or a paid ad/endorsement? There’s a big difference. Or it’s a matter of wording:

The spin – “previously worked with Muhammad Ali”

The reality – did the SEO for the UK website selling t-shirts showing Muhammad Ali and/or things he said.

• Always speak to previous clients for a testimonial – don’t outsource your digital marketing until you’ve spoken to a happy customer of the company you’re considering. This will separate those who talk a good talk from those you’ll get you to the top of Google or gain a million followers on Twitter (feel free to substitute for your own personal goal)

• Only buy a .co.uk domain if you also buy the .com domain – within 12 months you won’t be able to use the .co.uk site if you don’t own the .com site.

• Follow the progress/growth throughout a SEO project – don’t wait until the end of the project to calculate as you can track things as you go through. Social media engagement in the early days can help initially while other stuff kicks in. Be cautious about measuring certain stats in isolation eg traffic volume as there’s nothing to ensure that it’s the right traffic for your company/product. The key metric is conversions.

 

Just for fun!

Apple vs Google – Apple for hands on hardware/kit, Google for the virtual world

Tea vs Coffee – Tea

Cats vs Dogs – Dogs

 

and that's it for the latest in our guest blog series. Thanks for taking part, Anthony. Would you like to be part of it too? If so, leave us a comment below and we'll get in touch.

 

What We Do And Why Everyone Wants In!

What We Do And Why Everyone Wants In!

Over the years we have been leading the way in SEO and other digital media processes whilst developing a system to help small businesses as a secondary project.

It started in 2008 with a system we created, which was an affordable way for businesses to get high rankings by working together on content sharing, networking and link swapping and loads more.

It was received very well and went toe to toe with the leading search directory for a while (it was actually much better and cheaper)

But unfortunately this system relied on the members being proactive and helping each other to help themselves.

THEY WERE JUST TO BUSY!!!!!!

After battling with my lack off faith in local business people “the ones I set out to help” I was approached by the chamber who was interested in the system for their members.

I worked closely with them and many businesses to discover just what businesses need, how much time they could commit, and developed a new strategy.

So after two years of study the main factor we decided was the issue was

THEY WERE JUST TO BUSY!!!!!

When this information clicked with a real big light bulb moment!

Why don't we re-develop the system and add a package where we combine our Seo and Social media skills with this system and do all the work needed on our clients behalf!

Obvious or Genius, you decide! lol

What We Do........

Im not going to sell that to you now, im just going to tell you what we do and how you can do it yourself.

So, In my opinion after lessons learned over the past 12 years, you need a four pronged approach, Start with optimising your website, make sure it has the right message to convert into sales, in the past, techniques to get high rankings failed to do this and had a negative effect on visitors, creating a false economy, being number 1 on the search but with not conversions or sales.

Set up a social media campaign, following your brands guidelines (if you don't have any BRAND GUIDE LINES create some) using call to action banners and buttons.

Target local first, don't sell at them, engage with them, join local groups and networks. Social Media is the buzz word at the moment but dont rush in, Twitter and Facebook are the most popular but not always the most effective. Have a look at Linked in , this is a business "Facebook" and can be very good for B2B sales.

Look outside the box, If your retailing you can use Pinterest or Instagram to promote images of products. there are social media platforms out there that are industry pacific, have a look for these also.

You need to get creative! Write about your product or services, the more the merrier, content is king.

Make it interesting and informative, and on put it on your website! this content is the starting point for your SEO campaign.

By this point you should have a few connections locally from your social media campaign, get them to promote your content in return, you do the same. This is Search engine optimisation and this will create links to your website which is still a very big factor in ranking on Google.

Internet marketing is were people who think they know my businesses and have no clue look at me funny!

This is often miss represented as SEO, Internet marketing is Visual online marketing, let me give you an example, Group-On, they use Internet Marketing, you will probably have been on a weekend break with Group-On but you will not find them at the top of Google, or even in the top 10 for the term Weekend Break. the promotion of banner ads, emails, apps are key to and are the finishing touch to a good campaign.

My latest catch phrase has been

DIGITAL media courses cost £1400 plus

if You can learn a new trade in a day, this is for you!

Or if you are a realist and JUST don't have time?

Let our qualified professionals do for only £150 per month!

Ok I may have slipped a sales pitch in there after all!

But.........

There is no secret formula, short cuts or good quality offshore cheaper options!

Just as in your business and what you do, its Just good old fashioned hard work.

Anthony Johnson

Seo is more than just link building and well written content.

Seo is more than just link building and well written content.

Having a professional Seo company look at the structure of your website is a must if you really want to make sure that search engines rank your website at the highest level. If your website's pages contain certain errors, search engines (mainly Google) will pick up on the errors and flag them.

See if your website has any critical issues

Critical errors will have an immediate effect on the rankings of your website on Search engines, Broken links are the main cause.

Most website have broken links. If you update your web pages frequently, you may find broken links that need addressing.

Hosting errors are another issue, the cheapest servers are not always the best. Use UK hosting from a reputable company, preferably with a instant support facility via chat or local rate phone number, last resort a fast response ticketing system.

Server errors can cause major problems with search engines. Slow loading pages can be overlooked by the search engines and some not even indexed.

This also delivers a bad customer journey.

Your website pages have to communicate with the search engine and your visitor, not having titles on your pages or duplicate titles can cause the most important of your pages not to show in search also.

There are tools out there to check this for free, but they will not fix the issue.

So your website has no critical issues, but still not ranking?

There are many influencing factors to ranking on search, you really need to go to town on your pages content and the message you want to deliver.

One major issue for people is page content and the pages themselves being duplicated or even being very similar to each other, there is no penalty for duplicate content, but one page will usually be chosen to be displayed to the visitors search and the other give no or very little rank.

Web pages with no content or little text content won't get high rankings, also very importantly check the spelling.

If your web pages are linked with and without www, and with both http and https, there can be canonical URL problems. Ask your server provider to make the changes, they are usually happy to do so or get a pro to add a canonical attribute .

Some website designers accidentally block search engine robots. If a web page blocks search engine robots, it cannot get high rankings.

A very high click depth can be an indicator that people cannot find a page easily. Web pages that aren't easy to find should not contain important content.


Temporary redirects are very common, these can cause problems as do pages with to many out bound links.

There has be a lot said about the websites meta description and if it influences rankings, but this is still very important, this is the wording that shows in the search bellow your title, your visitors will use this as a quick reference as to weather your site is the one they need. Also a duplicate meta tag will flag the page as poor quality.

Websites can always be improved!

The information above will help you on your way to having a high ranking website, there are many more factors that you can find on my other posts.

Here is a list of other issues to look out for.

Redirect same URL
Upper case URLs
Rel. link to domain
Canonical URL used
Meta Robots None
Meta NoFollow
Meta NoIndex
Meta NoSnippet
Anchor text wasted
H1 tag keyword
H1 tag empty
H1 tag missing
H1 tag wasted
Image problems
Perm. redirect (301)
Other redirect (303)
Temp. redirect (307)
Forbidden (403)

Checking these things will make sure that your web pages is optimised.

You can contact us to do the audit and repairs for you anytime.

Free SEO and Social Media Advice

 If you need advice on #socialmedia #seo ect let me know.

My advice is free!

If you want a full campaign £150pm 

We can do that too.

When will Google learn?

When you have been doing digital marketing as long as I have, it becomes like fashion, the methods keep coming back round again! But it's googles fault, every time they think they fix a problem two are created. Many years ago we used RSS feeds to dominate the market by tricking G into thinking the site was updated with fresh content every hour, now all the top sites are doing it again! Ah Google when will you learn! Lol

Link building still works.

 Google's recent updates have spread fear, uncertainty and doubt among webmasters. Which tactics can you still use to build backlinks to your website and which tactics should you avoid? There are some old-school tactics that still work if you do it right:

1. Forum backlinks

How not to do it: Automatically created forum backlinks are a sure way to get a Google penalty. There have been many tools and services that automatically created forum accounts with keyword rich links that pointed to the websites of the user. These links do not work anymore.

How to do it right: If a high quality forum is closely related to the topic of your website, a link from that forum can still have a positive influence on the search engine positions of your web pages.

2. Directories

How not to do it: Bulk submitting your website to directories that will accept any kind of website won't do your rankings any good.

How to do it right: If your website is listed in a high quality directory that delivers targeted visitors to your website, you should submit your site to that directory. Links from authorative directories (including niche directories) with strict submission guidelines are good for your website.

3. Guest blogging

How not do to it: Using the same article on several blogs doesn't work. Using keyword rich links in that article might even trigger a Google penalty. If the main purpose of guest blogging is getting links, don't do it.

How to do it right: Guest blogging can drive targeted visitors to your website if you write for blogs that are related to your business. Your guest blog article should offer the readers of the blog insights or other valuable information. Individual articles on related blogs can have a positive influence on your website's performance.

4. Link pages

How not to do it: If your link pages contain links to every Tom, Dick and Harry, chances are that these link pages won't be good for your site.

How to do it right: highly themed link pages that contain links to closely related high quality websites are good for website visitors and search engines.

    
It's easy: spamming doesn't work anymore, building real backlinks works better than ever before.

Search-find.co.uk

Via axandra

learn to seo http://ping.fm/vVAun part 1 of many!