This month the focus will be on higher conversion rates with less traffic and expense from AdWords.  We dropped our two highest traffic keywords due to CPC being high, and conversion being low.

I have reached my March goal 5 days ahead of schedule.  My April goal is another 50% increase in total visits while maintaining our quality time-on-site and bounce rate scores.

I’ve noticed a number of sites in our general sales area starting to copy our model, but I doubt it’s going to happen for them like it will for us.  Here’s hoping.

One of the major obstacles that I think I’m going to come up against is the downplay on a “catalog” style site that so many of our competitors do. We are a premium lab. It’s like the difference between going to Linens-N-Things and buying a piece of art or having someone paint something for you. You pay more for having someone paint a new item, but there is a certain value to it.

So, with all that in mind, my semi-weekly newsletter from Web Marketing Today arrived this morning telling me about keyword search tools – and specifically the free service offered by Google itself! It’s amazing to me already the services that Google offers, but the fact that they freely offer up not only the keywords you suggest, but related terms, and then tell you how much your competitors are using of each term. They’re practically handing you market niches. Amazing.

Here’s the tool. Check for yourself.

Google AdWords: Keyword Tool

ProStruck.com – This is a business with a new presence in the area. The site was designed to deliver the most critical information in the most straighforward manner to a less-than-technical audience. The design of the site was such that you can find out how to contact the right person to get the information that you need in the easiest way possible.

LCHE.org – The Logan County Home Educators website has been a thought floating in my mind for many months. It has incorporated some of the most powerful Joomla! components availiable and, hopefully, will enable this organization to reach new levels of communication and effectiveness. The site was designed with two primary goals: to educate prospective members and curious visitors as to what homeschooling is in the LCHE, and secondly to reproduce all of the tools (plus a few new ones) availiable to the group through their existing Yahoo! Groups site. For the users, it is a way to communicate not only their neccesary documents, but hopefully will now be a place where they can improve all of their individual homeschooling pursuits.

Russellville Dental Lab – Link is the DEMO. The site is up in it’s BETA form on the .com domain. We have acquired the .com and russellvilledentallab.com domains in addition to the original russellvilledental.net domain in order to secure as much of the traffic as we can. The site, wether it is on the .com or existing .net domain in the end will now give us the power to increase email functionality, to communicate products and services more effectively to our doctors, and will reinforce the brand and quality or work to existing and new customers. The addition of a newsletter to our offerings (along with giveaways) will keep our clientele coming back for more. We will be implementing Google Analytics with a targeted AdWords campaign to increase traffic. The site will also be a way of passing along technical information and communicating the robust professional pursuits of our technicians to an otherwise uninformed community. We will be running less of a “we offer these products” showcase site, and more of a professional community designed to increase brand awareness. Exciting stuff.

Logan County Republicans – the site was updated to include more content and Google Analytics was added to track traffic in addition to BSQSiteStats component in Joomla. This site is in final form and requires only general upkeep.

LeeCoursey.net – The “What I’ve Learned About Joomla!” page was added and the “About Lee Coursey” section was updated at the same time to tell more about me. I was in a writing mood.

RusselvilleDental.net (.com) is currently undergoing review (at the .com address) for final install.

Russellville Dental Lab, LLC (demo)

Pro Struck, a company with a new branch in this geographic region, is getting a new site from me. That will be prostruck.com . They will be using Joomla for content, Google Apps for email, and Google Analytics for stats (first combination with Joomla, but all early reports are that it works very well).

LoganCountyRepublicans.com underwent a MAJOR renovation recently. Be sure to check that out. More content is coming soon.

The Russellville Arts Council has talked to me about setting something up for them, so I’m hoping to get that knocked out this week.

I have proposed that the Logan County Tobacco and Heritage Festival needs an autonomous web presence seperate from the Logan County Chamber of Commerce, but that is taking a back seat until at least the ’08 Festival.

RussellvilleMethodist needs a facelift now that I am more comfortable with Joomla and designing for it, but it is functioning. Training members of the “web team” for this and LCRP is the biggest obstacle to overcome.

I am developing courseyblog.com and fullerblog.com in my spare time. Hopefully I’ll be able to have MORE spare time after I get done with some of these projects.

MyLoganCounty.com and ShopLoganCounty.com have also been relegated to “spare time” projects. I know what MyLoganCounty will be, and I know how to do it, but I don’t want to do it a little at a time – I want to go full board and get it done in one spurt. ShopLoganCounty.com will be a premium extension of MyLoganCounty.

Wish me luck.