San Diego Internet Marketing provides Internet Marketing Solutions with Search Engine Optimization,
Web Design, Internet Marketing, Directory Placement, Search Engine Placement, and Pay per Click Marketing

Customer service is something every business strives to be good at but most of the time they fall short of excellence. Most businesses forget it’s the customers who make their business a success. The fitness industry is probably one of the worst at customer service. They want you to sign up a membership usually for at least a one year commitment if not more and you pay them a large fee up front or monthly never really caring if you come in and work out. Sure they say they want you to come in and work out and they have staff to show you how to use the equipment but do they really care if you come in?

To my surprise Lava Fitness aka The Boxing Club does want you to come in and work out hence the reason for writing this blog. Here is how The Boxing Club showed me great customer service in an industry where customer service really lacks.

I have been a member of 24 Fitness for years. My yearly membership is only $49 so why would I ever cancel. I can use any 24 Fitness Sport in the country which is really cool. Play racquetball, swim, lift weights, but do I go? Not really. One day I was driving to Grossmont Center and noticed The Boxing Club was opening up soon. I used to study kick boxing years ago with my wife and loved it. But when you live in America’s finest city with the best weather in the world you don’t want to be inside. You want to be in the sun biking or surfing or what ever it is you do. With that said I needed something to challenge me. I needed to get in shape and surfing and biking are great activities but when the time changes it is harder to get outside to ”work out”. I need to lose weight and get in real shape, the shape I was in when I was practicing real kick boxing. So I decided to go by the The Boxing Club and see what they had to offer. I called Salam who is the manager of Lava Fitness / The Boxing Club in La Mesa and he said come by and he would go over the special programs for new members. I went by and was impressed with the programs and the facility so I signed up for a year. I started to use the facility at UTC by doing some kickboxing classes after work and I was hooked. This was the type of butt kicking workout I needed. I came out of a class and felt alive and exhausted at the same time. I was going to make this a regular routine.

When the La Mesa club opened I started to go to the kickboxing and boxing classes. I went at least twice a week. Then I got bronchitis. Then the fire hit so the air was bad and I still was not well enough to go. I went one time after the fires but I was not fully well and my cold turned to pneumonia. So I decided to lay off a couple more weeks and get healthy then start my classes again. I was hooked and enjoyed the classes and the great staff. But I received an interesting phone call while I was recuperating. It was Salam, the manger of The Boxing Club, asking me if everything was okay? I had not been in for a while and he was calling to see why? I was shocked! They are getting my money anyway why would he care whether or not I came in? But he did, and he cared enough to call the members of his new club. He saw that I was coming in regularly then not at all. When I explained why, he was looking forward to seeing me back in the classes getting my butt kicked by the great instructors. Most of all he showed me real customer service. He did not have to call his customers who are paying monthly as to why they were not coming in. He did not have to reach out to anyone, after all they are getting my money monthly. But what Salam showed was that he cared about his clients. That The Boxing Club is not just another fitness club that wants you to sign up and then not show up. Salam and his bosses want you to come in and work out. Don’t just sign up at The Boxing Club, but USE The Boxing Club. He was saying to me with his phone call is come by and work out because we want you too. He showed me a great lesson in Customer Service.

No other fitness club has ever showed me this kind of customer service. No other fitness club cares enough to call its members as to why they are not coming in and working out. The Boxing Club is not just any fitness club. It is the best fitness club that I have ever been a part of and because of the supreme customer service shown by the manager of the La Mesa Boxing Club, I will be a member for a long time. And I will be working out at least three times a week very soon. I was already telling everyone how good I felt in the short time that I was going but now I wanted to tell anyone in the world who reads this that The Boxing Club in San Diego is the best fitness club of all. More importantly that they are the best fitness club because they have the best customer service I have seen in years!

The CEO of Yahoo, Jerry Yang, had to testify before congress on why they turned over their Interenet logs to the Chinese government. This very action done over a year ago lead to the arrest and prosecution of a Chinese journalist Shi Tao who was sent to prison for 10 years. The person that the Chinese government arrested and convicted was visiting “subversive” web sites. Since China is a communist country that embraces limited capitalism true freedoms do not exist like we have in the US. But the fact that Yahoo was willing to turn over their Internet logs to an oppressive government like China is just plain wrong. All of the big three want to tap China’s vast number of Internet users for ad revenue but the fact that Yahoo was willing to turn over logs to the government who will prosecute individuals based on where they go on the Internet is wrong.

I urge a complete boycott of Yahoo. Any large US business who does not promote the values of our great country and stand behind the freedoms that allows them to prosper here is not worthy of my business. Yahoo has committed a great injustice and they need to feel the heat. I am all for the freedom of speech even speech that I do not like. But when a company builds its business on those freedoms then helps prosecute others for exploring freedom in oppressive countries to gain ad revenue from the vast number of users that country has should be punished in some way.

Yahoo, shame on you. I hope that the traffic on your web site gets cut in half. You need to pay the family of Shi Tao whom you put in jail and you need to do what you can to have Shi Tao who is wrongly imprisoned in China to be released. Jerry Yang is the CEO of Yahoo and is of Chinese heritage so why he would even allow this to happen is beyond me. He has made billions off of the ad revenue and hopes to make even more by tappping into one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Yahoo would not turn over the Internet logs to the US government without a fight but yet they bent over backwards and gave what ever the Chinese wanted.

Join me and say no to Yahoo until they stand up for the freedom of all around the world.

Yang offered a personal apology to Tao’s family today, saying:

I want to take a moment to recognize the families of the dissidents sitting behind me. I want to say we are committed to doing what we can to secure their freedom. And I want to personally apologize for what they are going through.

For me I will not be using Yahoo until they secure the release of Shi Tao and I hope you join me in moving your search traffic to MSN, Ask or Google. Please put your ad dollars to a company that will fight for your privacy. We use the Internet for business and pleasure yet we should all around the world expect some sort of privacy. And if you feel stronly about this issue email or call your congress person and ask them to preserve the privacy of the Internet.

If you use PPC advertising from January to September you may have noticed that the cost per click you pay stays pretty constant. Sure there are times when it goes up and down a little but for the most part you are paying a reasonable fee with probably a reasonable click thru rate. But when it comes to mid October things start to get expensive. More players enter the advertising arena and they start bidding higher for the cost per click.

So what can you do? Well it is time to get smarter. Sometimes adjusting your bids by time of day to keep you position say from 12 noon to 4 pm then lower your cost the rest of the time. If you have been analyzing your traffic thru the year you can see the time of day when most people are shopping. Make sure the landing pages are the best for the terms you are paying for. Quality scoring is still key to keeping your price per click reasonable and your placement higher.

The end result is that you will be paying more to advertise this time of year if you are in the retail. But if your business generates 35 to 45 percent of theie business from October 25th to December 31st then paying more is probably in your best interest. If your business does not rely on business this time of year but fees are going up sometimes it may be worth dropping your cost per click and save up for when you need to increase your spending.

We here at DSD Internet Services are praying for a speedy recovery to all of those affected by the recent wildfires in San Diego County. Many of our families were affected by this great tragedy. We are thankful to our local firefighters and those who came from all over the country to help us in our time of need. We want to give a special thanks to the CFO of our company Kayley. She is part of the all volunteer Mountain Rescue Squad and she was on the front lines in search and rescue efforts during the fires.

We are also proud to help Barratt American Home Builders who are offering their exceptional home building skills in being the first large builder to offer home rebuilding services to all of those who lost their homes.

We at DSD Internet Services wish you a safe and happy Labor Day weekend. Many people consider this the end of summer but if you live in San Diego, we are blessed to, then you know this is the beginning of our summer. The weather is usually the best during September and October, the water temp at the beach is usually 70 degrees and the beaches are not crowded at all.

We love the labor day holiday because it means we get to enjoy the best of San Diego. And if you are not from San Diego then come visit this time of year and see why we locals call this the beginning of San Diego Summer.

Have a great holiday weekend!

So you need to know what keywords are relevant for your web site. What keywords do you want to use for Pay Per Click campaigns? What are the most important phrases to have in the content of my web pages. Keyword research is the answer and an on going process. Many businesses do research one time and think that is it. But if you sell products and add new services you have to realize that new offerings from your web site have a whole new set of keywords.

Take the iPhone for instance. The iPhone just came out and since its release there are a whole new set of searches involving the iPhone. One of our clients sells iPhone skins but since our intial research the iPhone did not exist. Now that the product is shipping people want to know where to find iPhone accessories, new updates or software to load onto their new iPhones.

You may offer a new service for your business. How do you know what keywords people use to find about that service you now offer. Updating your keyword research will help identify trends. This will also help you keep your content fresh since having the right keyword phrases in the content of your web site is vital to the success of that web page.

Don’t let stale keywords keep your web site from reaching more people. Update your keyword research and the content associated with it and your site will increase its rankings in the search engines.

We would like to tell you about a great company here in San Diego called Skin It. What does Skin It do. They make vinyl skins for cell phones, laptop computer skins, skins for iPod MP3 players, and vinyl skins for game consoles such as the new PS3 and Nintendo Wii.

What is so cool about Skin It is they have 1000’s of vinyl skins including skins for all major professional sports teams (including the Chargers), skins from all major colleges and universities, entertainment skins and thousands of designer skins. But it does not stop there. The best part is you can upload any photo or artwork you have and they will customize the skin for whatever device you want.

So if you want a top have your kids on your cell phone, or a picture of your favorite vacation spot just upload your photo and pick the electronic device you want and in about 10 days you will have a custom long lasting vinyl skin. They are easy to put on and they are a great conversation piece.

I like to show off my support for the San Diego Chargers by having my laptop skinned with the Chargers logo. So if you want to be cool and hip and show off your individuality get a vinyl skin from Skin It. You will not be disappointed.

As we continue trying new search engines on Fridays we suggest ASK.com this week. ASK is the 4th largest search engine behind the big 3, Google, Yahoo and MSN. ASK properties include My Way and Iwon as well. What I really like about ASK is the narrow your search options on the left hand side. So if you start a very general search the options they provide are very useful.

I wanted to find the tides for San Diego Beaches so I started with “San Diego Tides”. The first option provided by ASK was San Diego Tide Tables with the second option being San Diego Tide Charts. So I clicked on the first option and found a very useful site with the latest tide information for Friday. I really like the narrow your search option.

ASK has all of the other search options including local search, images, blogs and shopping. The results I found with ASK.com was just as I expected and I did find some different sites than the big three which is nice and all of the results are very relevant. The nice thing is the index was not loaded with Craigslist results for some search terms unlike Google which I really liked.

So Give ASK.com a try this Friday. Who knows you may discover some really cool web sites.

Everyone knows that Google is the number one search engine and that more people use Google when they begin searching the Internet. But are you really getting the best results? Are you stuck in a rut because you think Google is going to deliver the best results? One of the leading search engine gurus, Danny Sullivan, began a new thing called Google Free Fridays. Now it is not that we are against Google but there are some really good search engines we seemed to have forgotten about and their results just might surprise you.

So each and every Friday in July I will recommend a new search engine to try and this Friday I recommend trying MSN.com. You might find that the results you get in MSN could be more accurate for the specific keywords you are searching for. I needed to look up something this morning and MSN delivered the exact results I was looking for. The interesting thing is that I got more specific web sites instead of sub pages from Craig’s List or from Merchant America, two sites that have been showing up a lot in Google especially when I am looking for local businesses.

MSN.com has gone to great lengths in improving its index of web sites and I think you will find the right web site you are looking for. Then tomorrow you can go back to Google.

Happy 4th of July from DSD Internet Services. I would like to take a few minutes to remind all why we celebrate this day. It is the birth of America, the declaring of our independence from England. It is the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the start of the greatest country on earth.

Yet many young people do not know why we celebrate the 4th of July. I heard where they asked college age people what is the 4th of July. The answers were mind boggling. Some thought we fought the Civil War, while others thought our independence was declared from Mexico or Canada.

This is really sad that the American youth do not even know why we celebrate the birth of this great nation. Why men and women have given their lives protecting the freedom of this country for 231 years. Why we have the greatest freedoms of all in free speech. That America offers us Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. So many around the world do not even get the basic freedoms we enjoy.

So as we fire up the grill, head to the beach or take in a ball game remember that this is the greatest country of all and today is our birthday. Every American needs to celebrate and salute our flag and say God Bless America!

Happy Fourth of July!