Online Marketing Case Study

Penny Lane’s QuickBooks Now!

Creating and Marketing a Business Website

Penny Laneinfo@quickbooksnow.comwww.quickbooksnow.com

Presented by: Penny Lane Crull

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QuickBooks is #1

• QuickBooks is the #1 Small Business Accounting software, used by millions around the world.

• Through my bookkeeping business, Business Matters, I noticed that small businesses needed more information from their accounting system, but their lack of ability, or their bookkeeper’s lack of ability, to use QuickBooks was getting in the way.

• I started providing one-on-one training and consulting – which is effective, but costly, especially for learning the basics. I envisioned a better way….

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QuickBooks Now! is Born

• Live classes to learn QuickBooks are a popular idea, but in today’s world, not very convenient and vary greatly in quality.

• Learning to use software from a book doesn’t make much sense, very awkward.

• Video tutorials are the most effective, but I envisioned something better than what was available on the market…..and created QuickBooks Now! Interactive Online Tutorial

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Online QuickBooks Tutorial

• Practical Instruction• Immediate Online Access• Completely Interactive

I created QuickBooks Now! so that people could access the tutorial immediately - anytime, from anywhere, online.

Unlike other tutorial products, it’s completely interactive, students use the program while learning.

Penny Lane’s QuickBooks Now!

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Getting Started in SEO

“Being an online product with a wide audience, it was clear from the start that I would need potential customers to find my product on the web. I have no expertise in this area. I read a couple of books that were helpful, but the information was overwhelming. Enter Coryon. Together, we were able to outline and implement the SEO plan that I’m going to share with you today.”

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Recent keyword research indicated that “how to” was a searched for term that I hadn’t noticed before in relation to learning QuickBooks. Further research and filtering of this term resulted in a list of keyword phrases I might use in my content, or as a Google Ad words phrase to attract these searchers.

Keyword Example Keyword Local Monthly Searches (United States)

[how to use QuickBooks] 1900

[how to learn QuickBooks] 390

[QuickBooks how to] 210

[how does QuickBooks work] 110

[how much is QuickBooks] 110

[how much does QuickBooks cost] 91

[how to do payroll in QuickBooks] 73

[learn how to use QuickBooks] 58

[how to do QuickBooks] 46

[how to use QuickBooks 2010] 36

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Using Keywords - Keyword Rich Pages

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Using Keywords - Keyword Rich Pages• Keywords are used in the content on my

site so that Google will identify that my site is about the keywords people are searching for.

• I use my top keywords in my content as much as possible. Additionally, I create pages that are rich in one keyword phrase. On this page, for instance, I’ve chosen QuickBooks training and used it as many times as possible in my content.

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Using Keywords – SEO Plug In I’ve installed an SEO plug in on

my WordPress website, which allows me to customize my page title, meta description and add meta tags to my pages – notice I’ve used my focus keywords for this page “QuickBooks training” here as well.

Link BuildingGoogle likes incoming, outgoing and internal

links

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Incoming Links – Directories

• I started out by researching where my competitors were getting their incoming links using yahoo site explorer (no longer available), try: blekko.com linkbuilder.wordtracker.com or opensiteexplorer.org

• I then went to the directories and other sites they got their links from and got listed on them as well whenever possible.

• I also searched out online directories – general, small businesses, as well as education and created listings on these sites, mostly free and sometimes really detailed. Examples: manta.com, hotfrog.com, syracusedeals.com.

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Incoming Links + Online Presence via Social Online Marketing

• The MOST effective online marketing tool I use is posting answers to people’s QuickBooks questions on community.intuit.com and quickbooksusers.com forums, as well as LinkedIn groups. Every time I post an answer – I get at least 1 link to my site from these sites, which have a lot of “link juice”. These are my best links, plus my answers stay on the forum indefinitely, sometimes viewed by hundreds over time.

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• Here’s an example of a question I answered on Community.intuit.com, that to date has been viewed 1026 times

• For some search terms, my answers appear in the top 3 on Google

Posting on Intuit Community

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Other Social Online Marketing

• I also post my blog articles on several sites, including: ezinearticles.com, usbusinesforums.com, work.com, ehow.com and blogger.com

• I have a Facebook page and linked in profile that I update frequently• I have a YouTube channel, where I post demo videos• I answer questions on Yahoo! Answers• I have a Google blog alert and post comments on related articles

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Tracking Results

• Google Analytics –for tracking keyword traffic and site usage• Google Webmaster Tools – tracking search query trends and incoming

links

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Google Analytics

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Traffic to my site

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Google Webmaster Tools

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Links to my Site

THANK YOU

THANK YOU