It all started with a gravestone
This is a guest post by Ling who blogs about car leasing at LingsCars.com.
On a motor industry forum, some contributor had posted about a man called Jeff Smith, who is a well-respected and well-known UK Motor Industry trainer. Jeff runs askinsight.com. As well as speaking at conferences and product launches around the world, Jeff continues to work with motor manufacturers developing training courses for their dealer networks and he also runs open training courses and bespoke in-house programmes for individual dealerships and major groups. You get the idea of his provenance.
So, I took this silly post on this quiet forum and thinking it looked like an epitaph, turned it into a gravestone – pointing out that I was doing this to make the post look silly, not Jeff himself. I had quite a lot of respect for Jeff.
Now, I did not know Jeff at all, I had never spoken to him. I may sell cars, but I’m certainly not part of the UK motor industry establishment.
Obviously, someone on the forum knew Jeff Smith and suddenly an email from the great man arrived saying
“just for the record, I would like to make the point that as of 15:00 on Tuesday 19 February, I am still very much alive and kicking so don’t write me off too quickly :))))))))”.
Wow, I was impressed, this man who is the author of the definitive and best selling Motor Trade Key Performance Indicator bible “The KPI Book”, was talking to me! His book provides profit-based guidance in parts, service, sales and general management. It sits on most motor-managers’ desks.
We exchanged a couple of polite emails and I pointed out to him that my livelihood at LINGsCARS.com depended on generating Google visitors from free searches, who then saw the opportunities in my brand-new, cheap, contract hire cars which are rented for 2 or 3 years. Over 50% of my incoming business is as a result of natural links on Google.
“Oh”, said Jeff, “I dominate Google with The KPI Book”
Hmmm, “you dominate Google, huh?”, I said. That was like a red rag to the Chinese bull! “Give me 10 minutes, I’ll put my neck on the line to show you your Google dominance”.
I had 10 minutes, so I (copied and pasted most of it from Jeff’s website) began to blog (here) about Jeff and his damn book. I included a couple of pictures with nice names, and tried to fit in as many keywords as I could within 10 minutes. Pressed “save”. I panicked. I emailed Jeff Smith: “I’ve put my money where my mouth is. Google is now digesting me and you together. Wait. Either I will fall flat on my face, or I will amaze you.”
Jeff emailed back “What do I do now?”
“Search for “The KPI Book”, Mr Dominance”, I told him. I had everything crossed.
Within 2 minutes the reply: “Whoa!!! Now I’m mega impressed - when can we have coffee? I need to know this stuff.” The results he saw on Google, linking to LINGsCARS.com, astonished him.
Google: “the kpi book” – LINGsCARS comes 5th
Google: “service kpi book” - 2nd
Google “parts kpi book” - 2nd
Google “read the kpi book” - 3rd
Google “kpi motor industry” - 4th
Google “jeff smith the kpi book” - 5th.
Google “jeff smith explains the kpi book” - 2nd
Google “jeff smith trainer” – 2nd
Google ” motor trade kpi indicators” – 2nd - on this search I even beat Jeff Smith!
This 10-minute result was impressive, even to me, and especially as Jeff owns the domain www.kpi-book.co.uk. I was beating Amazon, where the book had been available for years! I made sure my blog article was favourable to Jeff Smith and contained a link to his website, I didn’t want to steal his customers. The result of my “domination demonstration” was, I had an instant new friend - one of the Motor Industry’s top guys. It shows the power of blogging and the effects of a clearly written article. Jeff wants to talk to me about using this stuff in his training. Who knows what will come from this?
Thanks from me, go especially to Patrick Altoft who has given me help and guidance that has enabled me to pull off this 10-minute trick, and thanks to Google, my business lifeline, for working so efficiently, quickly and superbly – as ever!
Ling
Categories: Search Engine Optimisation
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That’s a pretty cool story.
Ling - do you think you could get a bit more colour onto your car website? http://www.lingscars.com/ It looks a little bland to me
Tejvan
Tejvan Pettinger February 21, 2008 12:24 am | Reply
That is brilliant. At least he acknowledges what you have done and didnt just put it down as black magic.
Tom Beaton February 21, 2008 12:25 am | Reply
Congrats Ling, your a celebrity in the offices I work in, the way you took down the dragons was wicked. Good article and it shows that if you do things correctly from the get go it can have real effects on traffic and listings.
Luke February 21, 2008 12:55 am | Reply
Great Blog looking forward to reading more in the future!
OVL Vehicle leasing February 21, 2008 9:20 pm | Reply
Thanks for this great info.
cayumi February 21, 2008 10:18 pm | Reply
It’s funny that this page now ranks higher for the search term “The KPI Book” than Ling’s article.
Mike February 27, 2008 1:58 am | Reply
I am Jeff Smith, Author of The KPI Book. The story that Ling has given is absolutely correct, I was really stunned at what she achieved with Google in 10 minutes!
Thankfully, Google has sorted itself out now and I’m now back on top ranking, phew! Take note, that’s not a cue for any of you guys to try to beat Ling’s effort - leave me alone now, the point has been made!
On a more serious note, Ling and you guys have taught me a few very valuable lessons regarding Google and the Internet in general. The most important one being that this is not a game or a part-time vocation for nerds. Controlling the Internet to the degree to which you want to control it is a major skill. It’s a profession of its own kind with the proficiency, mental grit and determination equal to that of a top flight professional sportsman.
My hat goes off to you all,
Best regards,
Jeff Smith
soon to be at http://www.jeff-smith.com any advice would be welcome.
Jeff Smith February 27, 2008 2:33 am | Reply
Hi Jeff,
My first comment would be that you have two websites with largely the same content which is a bad thing in the eyes of Google. You might want to just choose one site and stick with it.
Also your landing page could do with being given a makeover to appear more professional, try testing the conversion rate for a few different designs.
Patrick Altoft February 27, 2008 2:49 am |
ReplyThanks for that Patrick, but what does “More professional” mean; what sort of thing could I do to enhance it?
BTW, If you think http://www.kpi-book.com is bad, you should have seen my last web site!
Regards,
Jeff
Jeff Smith February 27, 2008 3:07 am | Reply
I’m no designer but if you look at something like apple.com with all the white space and minimalist design you can see what I mean.
Patrick Altoft February 27, 2008 3:26 am |
ReplyThanks Partick. I have taken advice from Ling and she says the same thing as you; here’s my plan…
http://www.jeff-smith.com will be about me and my ativities and http://www.kpi-book.com will be about solely about the books I write. They will have link to each other but will lok quite different, hope Google will be hapier too?
I think you are right, for the “Jeff Smith” page I will go for the minimalistic look and leave the book site as it is because it does do rather well for us.
Many thanks for your advice.
Regards,
Jeff
Jeff Smith February 27, 2008 3:57 am | Reply
Hope I can jump in:
I have discovered Jeff Smith has a fantastically interesting calendar and trains high-powered people and organisations all over the world. I have been badgering him to blog about this because I would love to read about this stuff myself. Plus, I would love to learn some of his wisdom.
While Patrick and others here are really clever at figuring out and implementing web ideas, Jeff is sort-of-OK in this respect (all his images are alt-tagged and named well, and his website certainly works selling loads of books) but he is absolutely quite stunningly brilliant in the training and business advice arena. We both happen to concentrate our business activities in the motor industry (although not solely, for Jeff). The difference is the massive scale of earnings and the global nature of Jeff’s business compared to mine. I must say, I will do everything to help Jeff on the basis (apart from the fact that he was recommended to me and he is a really smashing guy) that I might learn something, in return.
Ling
Ling valentine February 27, 2008 6:48 am | Reply
Well guys, thank you for all your advice. With a great deal of help from Ling, we’ve managed to set up a blog at http://www.jeff-smith.com
This is my first attempt with a blog and I’m not really sure what it’s all about yet. If you could take a look at your leisure and let me have some feedback all comments good and bad will be most welcome.
Many thanks in advance of your support.
Cheers
Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith April 10, 2008 7:50 am | Reply
I suggest optimising your permalink structure to make them like the ones on Blogstorm and then installing the “all in one SEO plugin”
Patrick Altoft April 10, 2008 9:41 am |
ReplyThanks Patrick, but what does that mean in English?
Jeff Smith April 10, 2008 9:49 am | Reply
My url/permalink structure is http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/it-all-started-with-a-gravestone/ while yours is http://jeff-smith.com/?p=1
Having the page title is more descriptive.
Also you might want to remove the default blogroll and add some relevant blogs that you read in your industry.
Patrick Altoft April 10, 2008 1:37 pm |
I see…how do I change that?
Jeff Smith April 10, 2008 1:39 pm |
In your Settings > Permalinks section of the admin panel. You need to use a custom structure with /%postname%/
Patrick Altoft April 10, 2008 1:48 pm |
Thanks for your advice Patrick, the whole things looks much better now. I’ve installed all in one SEO but can’t get it working - appears to be a common problem, no great shakes though.
I owe mega thanks to Ling Valentine because she has set up WordPress for me (I’m not techie at all) and is always willing to help with the many questions that I have - she did the permalinks for me and a load of other stuff. If you are interested in the progress that’s been made from knowing nothing to up and running in 20 days, you can see it here:
http://jeff-smith.com
My thanks to you all,
best regards,
Jeff Smith
Jeff Smith April 26, 2008 9:56 am | Reply