Charlotte Personal Trainers

It's not hard to find a personal trainer in Charlotte. Every gym has teams of them.

What separates a good personal trainer from a great one is their level of commitment.

If you're trying to get back in shape, the last thing you want is a trainer that you're paying to only give you a half-committed effort. The more effort and motivation your trainer provides, the easier it is to achieve your goals.

It sounds simple, right?

If only...

I've worked out my entire life, so I've spent plenty of time in the gym. Since I've moved back to Charlotte, I've been a member of just one gym. The quality of personal trainers in this one gym varied greatly, so you just don't know what you're getting when you blindly find a trainer.

I personally know the top Charlotte personal trainers (in my opinion), and I'm impressed with their knowledge and level of commitment to their clients.

-Travis

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Roofing Contractors in Charlotte

Roofing Contractors in Charlotte

Here's a local business that knows it's online marketing.

CZ Contractors just dominates the SERPs (both natural listings and the local results) for almost every local search term I could think of. They show up for every leaky roof, roof repair and new roof term I could think of.

Not only that, but I've seen their site listed several times within the same group of local listings.

The thing about these sites is that they're not spammy at all. They've generated all these top rankings with tons of good content, which backs up my theory that you can dominate small local markets with plenty of good content.

They're my favorite roofing contractors in Charlotte :)

-Travis

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Search Exchange Conference- Day 2

Where Fun Meets Finance

There was a lot of talk today about social media, social marketing, Twitter, Facebook, and other time wasters.

Actually, before you get upset, the term “time waster” is relative to whatever market you're in. For selling hard goods and products, any type of widget, I'd say its very difficult to make these mediums create revenue for your business.

However, web consultants go nuts over these because they're very effective for local businesses, which happens to be the majority of their clients.

I learned a lot about FourSquare, a new location based app. I had never heard of it, but half of the people at the conference were users.

Here's how it works: when you give the app your location, it gives you suggestions on what to do. For example, many people from out of town would “check in” to their hotels through FourSquare, and the app would suggest different things to do and places to eat.

Not too helpful when you're an old school SEO and trying to sell widgets online.

But it has tremendous potential for local businesses. For example, you can go to Dunkin Donuts, “check in” through FourSquare, and get emailed a coupon for a free doughnut.

There are a lot of possibilities for businesses on the web (obviously)... but its getting to the point where there's no excuse for failure.

I better stop there before I get too bold.

Until Next Time,
Travis

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Charlotte Search Exchange- Day 1

I've been in the search game since I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill back in 2005. In the past five years, I've been to many internet conferences to educate myself on the best ways to maximize your website's exposure... including:

Direct Marketing Association
Stompernet
Charlotte SEO Meetup

Yesterday, we wrapped up the first day of the Charlotte Search Exchange Internet Marketing Conference. It was definitely different then most seminars & conferences I attend because there was a lot of tapdancing around some issues.

For example, most speakers would present information about what they do, and spend only small amounts of time on how they do it. As an entreprenuer, hearing about what someone else does isn't the best way for me to learn how to maximize my business or my online potential.

It might just be the type of learner I am. The best speaker, for me, is the one who walks up on stage and spends the next 90 minutes outlining bullet points on what tactics worked for their sites:

Rollover images increased conversion x%
Adding this word in my PPC terms increasing click thru rates by y%
By adding more content and increasing my internal linking structure, we were able to increase our rankings

One of my favorite speakers of all time is Amy Afrika with Three by Three media. She blew me away at the Direct Marketer's Association show in Atlanta in the summer of 2005. She walked up there and gave everyone about 200 action items in an hour... and ran out of time.

But back to the search exchange show... the speaker I most enjoyed was Jon Boykin of WeBuildPages.com. He shared some very unique ways that he's built links for his clients.

Today, we'll be discussing how to quantify social media efforts. I've sat in on several seminars on this and am no closer to mastering it than when I first began. Hopefully that will change now.

-Travis

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30 Day SEO Challenge

This blog has been more of an experiment than anything else. I've always been a firm believer that you should own YourName.com just in case someone decides to do some sort of online background check on you. You should always control the SERPs for your own name. My wife Heather has mastered this.

My (easily attainable) goal was to get a double listing for my own name, Travis Zboch. Considering I'm the only Travis Zboch out there, it wasn't too hard.

Now, I've noticed that I've been ranking for some pretty interesting terms.

I'm currently #15 for the term “charlotte seo”.

And apparently Google regards me as a “charlotte seo expert”. I happen to agree.

I also noticed that out of about 5 or 6 posts, and hardly any inbound links, I had generated some page rank on my site.

So here's my challenge- I'm going to post daily for the next 30 days, just to see what happens. Even if it's just a five minute post (which is usually all I have time for), I'm going to try to post any content I can.

Here are some things I'll be keeping an eye on:

If my double listing for my name “Travis Zboch” will change to site links
How high my site will rise in the SERPs for the term “charlotte seo”
How much my site's Page Rank will increase

I'm a firm believer that if you want to learn anything about SEO, you don't try to read about it. You test it somehow, so that you know for sure. There are a lot of SEOers out there that have only learned based on theory, and have very little experience.

So, at the end of the thirty day challenge, I'll post my findings.

Thanks,
Travis

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