Scepter Marketing

SEO With Blekko - SEO Made Easy

Blekko is hands down one of the best SEO tools I have ever found. While I'll probably have a fuller post on either my personal blog or my company blog, I wanted to share this tool with everyone as soon as possible.

I'm assming I'm actually late to the game on this one since I heard of Blekko some time ago, but for those of you who occasionally miss terrific tools, here's your notice!

Blekko.com is a search engine that doubles as an amazing SEO tool. In the absence of Yahoo Site Explorer, SEOs have needed a tool that helps them understand (and copy!) the backlink profile of competitors. YSE was perfect for this and so were other tools such as SEO Book's Backlink Tool and Market Samurai's backlink checker, both of which are not expired.

Fortunately, now there's Blekko. Blekko allows you to search for any site and pull up the inbound links to that site. It also gives a breakdown of what countries the links come from, WHOIS data, and a list of other sites on the same server making it a fantastic research tool. I've already used it to uncover dozens of useful sites for my latest project.

While their index is not as great as Google's or even as wide as Open Site Explorer, it is enough to get started with. As you probably know already, I don't particularly enjoy SEO, but Blekko at least makes it easy!

I don't have time to go into too much detail at the moment, so suffice it to say that this tool is one of the best I've found when it comes to SEO and even overall research of competitors and I wanted to share it with all of you. So enjoy, and, as always, please leave me any comments or questions.

Auto Auctions in Michigan - From Scepter

Auto dealers are used to going to auctions to find vehicles to buy or to offload their unwanted inventory. Though noisy and often crowded, auctions are the venues that bring dealers together from all over the region. There are dozens of auctions around the state of Michigan, and now there is one central location where dealers can go to find out about all of the auctions. That site is called Auto Auctions in Michigan and is owned and operated by Scepter Marketing of Lansing.

Auto Auctions in Michigan is another site in the great litany of sites that Scepter has been launching in Lansing and marks the first one that reaches beyond Lansing to the wider audience of the state of Michigan. The goal of the website is to provide a list of all of the car auctions throughout Michigan and centralize them in one location so that dealers and the public can quickly browse and find auctions near them.

One of the best features of the new site is the map. The map has markers for each auction. When a marker is clicked, the user is taken to the listing of that particular auction and can see the contact information, link to the official website, and some details about the auction.

The site is in its infancy, but as it grows, it will hopefully incorporate more features such as links to auction inventories and calendar that shows all of the auctions in the State so that dealers can have a handy resource for keeping track of dates, times, and lists of cars that will be ran through the auctions.

And that's the latest update from Scepter as to what we're working on! Stay tuned for more updates and more news about what we're doing by following us here on Posterous!

Scepter Launches Online Billboard Model

On our official blog we have just unveiled the beginning of what we are calling The Lansing Network. The Lansing Network is a group of websites that Scepter is launching for the area. The goal of the websites is to help people in the city connect with businesses, organizations, and each other in new and meaningful ways.

GymsInLansing.com is one of the first sites that we are beta testing. While it's nothing revolutionary, it represents a model of marketing that is well known in the offline world but not as well known in the online world. The concept is that of billboards.

Gyms in Lansing is essentially a billboard online and functions in much the same way as offline billboards. When ranked at or near the top of the SERPs for keywords related to gyms or work out facilities in lansing, it will likely attract a very good amount of traffic which would warrant the leasing of it.

The whole operation is just getting underway and we are expecting to see significant results by year end 2011. Stay tuned for more!

Letter to a Client about Comparing SEO Services

If you’ve had a website with a contact form for any length of time, you have probably gotten an email from one of them claiming that they can get you great results in the search engines by doing XYZ marketing tactics. I recently had a prospective client who was trying to sell his book, ask me to compare and contrast a competing company’s SEO services with my services. I figured that this information would be helpful to others of you as well who are considering purchasing SEO services to get you more exposure and more traffic...

Read More at ScepterMarketing.com: Letter to a Client about Comparing SEO Services

WP Pages All Get 404 Errors Except Home Page (Index.php)

Today I ran into a pretty darn frustrating problem. I had moved a wordpress-based client website offline to work on it and somehow lost ALL of my interior pages. My home page, the index.php page, came up fine, but every link I clicked on led me to a 404 Not Found Page. After double-checking that the wordpress database had been moved properly, I started poking around online. As you probably know, trying to figure out the solution to your problem online can be just as frustrating as the problem itself. I figured I would post this solution...

Read the solution at Sceptermarketing.com:WP Pages All Get 404 Errors Except Home Page (Index.php)

SEO: Why Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Rule The Day | From Scepter Blog

Nearly everyone uses the internet to search for information that interests them. People search for information about companies, schools, local businesses, products, services, certifications, and just about everything else. Because of this, the internet has become the place to be for those companies who want to bring in new customers and new business. In order to be effective online a business needs two things. Firstly, it needs a website. Having a professional website allows your company to make a great first impression with the prospective customers who visit your site. But having a great website is not enough...

Read more on ScepterMarketing.com: SEO: Why Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Rule The Day

Scepter Marketing Announces it's WordPress Center

WordPress Setup, Installation, and Hosting

Everything You Need to Get Started with WP!  

Affordable Web Page Design

Need Help Setting Up or Configuring Your WP Website? We can Help!  

Custom Wordpress Design and Development

Get Help with Changing Your Layout, Adding New Features, or Redesigning Your WP site  

Christian School Website

Here is an example of one of the latest websites that we've created over here at Scepter. The website was built on Wordpress utilizing a premium theme that had many features which we heartedly utilized to create this brilliantly clean looking website.

The website was for a Christian school in Lansing MI. You can read more about this project on our website and see the rest of our work in our portfolio

Scepter Dives into WordPress

However, there have been a few times when clients have needed some custom work done to fit there unique needs, and up until now I have mostly had to direct them to developers. But I have decided to make the leap into finally learning PHP and the WP CMS so that I can solve my clients' issues (and my own) more readily without outside help.

I have already solved a few issues with clients' sites myself and I'm enjoying the learning process. In fact, I'm enjoying it so much that I'm going to start offering these services through my company. We are already well adept at setting up and configuring WP and we have set up entire sites for clients using the WP community's themes and plugins. Now it's time for us to start venturing into our own custom wordpress stuff - design, development, themes, and plugins.

I've already talked to the Scepter team and we've begun work on a few different WP themes. Some we hope to sell, and others we hope to give away through WP.org's directory and others. Who knows, if we get good enough at this stuff and like it enough, we'll probably even set up our own affiliate-type system like the other large WP developers out there.

Anyway, I'm excited about our new ventures.

- Marketer Matt - King of the Internet

Changing Things Up

There are points in life where we have to make the decision to stick with what we're doing or change it up. Of course changing things usually means a new learning curve and can definitely be risky. It is in just such a postion that I've found myself recently. Having acquired much knowledge in internet marketing, I have built a company that is profitable month in and month out servicing small businesses in my local area. Business is growing, and for that I am thankful!

But I've always wanted to do something big. Bigger than what I'm doing now. And recently, I've been presented with the opportunity to work with a few different groups of people on some potentially major projects... And I'm taking them up on it.

So what will become of Scepter Marketing? I'm not sure exactly. All I can say is that I will continue to service my current clients and probably even take on some new ones. But even now things are changing. If these big projects go well, it may very well open up the door to having the type of business that I've always wanted. In fact, these opportunities, if they turn out well, may end up rocketing Scepter Marketing forward because of the capital to hire a staff and because of the "link juice" I could command while working on these projects.

Anyway, as an entrepreneur, I'm always down for doing something new and exciting if it'll be worth my time. I have three projects that I'll be working on. You can read about them here: Scepter Internet Marketing Blog

Wish me luck,

- Matt