Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Why Local Business’s Need Search Engine Marketing

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Local Business & SEO

Business owners can benefit by organic search results because searchers skip over paid advertising more than not. People don’t want to be “sold to” but would rather look “to buy” something. So why are there countless companies out there trying to sell local business owners on a one dimension solution with pay per click advertising?

The local search market is different than the general search market. SEO for local business’ should provide you with quality optimization (on-page) as well as a well rounded submission, social networking and ranking service (off page).

Reviews are very important! As a business owner, you should have your SEO company provide you with an easy to access URL so that you can encourage your customers to write an online review. Business’s receiving these types of reviews and details about their services, food or operations will tend to rank higher in the search results.

Get your own domain name! Your business will benefit in the rankings over those businesses who do not have their own URL. This is a simple process that does not need to cost a lot of money or take a lot of time. A one page informational site with directions and clearly marked address and phone number will suffice.

Be linked with other related businesses or professional organizations, these quality links will increase your rankings as well.

Quality Content Wins Over Quantity Content! Make sure your site content addresses what your customers most want to know. Affordable hair styles, painless dentistry, 5 star restaurant, 22 years in business etc. Place what you do at the top of the content.

If you take the time to present your business to the potential customers searching for your type of services online - you will increase your business.

For any questions or comments contact Top SEO Marketing, Inc. a leading provider of organic search marketing and local search marketing services.

Tags: Local Search Marketing, Local Search marketing tips, Regional Search Marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, small business search marketng
Posted in Local Search Marketing, Online Marketing Tips | 2 Comments »

SEO And The Snake…a true story

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I am fortunate in that I get to spend a good amount of time in the “East Texas Piney Woods” where I’m within 15 minutes of 3 major lakes. Lake Fork is one of those lakes and if you’re a fisherman you know Lake Fork is considered the bass capital of the world! Recently one of the fisherman was telling me a story about a family who came out to fish at Lake Winnsboro. They had all the gear, and pretty much appeared as if they knew exactly what they were doing. The wife had a spiffy rod and reel and got busy baiting her hook and casting into the water…while her husband and son did the same. After several unsuccessful attempts to catch a bass, the wife casts her bait and suddenly begins yelling, “I’ve got a fish! I caught a fish”. Furiously reeling her fish in, she triumphantly draws her rod up to pull the fish out of the water. My friend said just about that time, everyone within 5 miles of Lake Winnsboro could probably hear the wife screaming bloody murder! Instead of seeing a bass on the end of the hook, she had somehow managed to catch a snake! Clearly upset by this freakish fishing folly - the wife panics and throws rod, reel and snake into the lake, upsetting the husband who had just bought the new rod and reel. Needless to say, that put a damper on any further hopes of fishing that day!

By now you may be wondering what this has to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Top SEO Marketing’s core focus of search marketing. It reminds me of all the people I’ve met who told me stories about the disappointing results they received after they paid their web design company additional dollars for “search marketing”. Business leaders who only thought they knew what search was all about - and web designers who presented on the right “sound point keywords” to appear as an authority. Together this ill planned and ill equipped venture was a bit fishy from the start. Expectations high, the CEO begins to plan on how bes to handle the leads the “optmization” will produce. Not too long after writing a check out to the web design turned SEO expert, the CEO begins to feel as though he’ll never get a nibble to his web site from search. Instead of pulling in qualified leads, up pops the snake! When questioned, the newly minted SEO person tells you its Google’s fault, not theirs.

When you go fishing you expect to see a fish on the end of your line. When you go to hire an SEO company, make sure you can tell the diference between a fish and a snake. If you do get burnt by an SEO company, do not think all SEO companies are the same. Don’t throw in all the equipment, let us show you what we have accomplished for other bsinesses simlar to yours and what we believe it will take to make a credible lead generation tools from your web site, www.topseomarketing.com

Call us for a free site evaluation today!

Tags: east texas, fishing, Search Marketing, SEO, SEO tips
Posted in SEM, SEO | No Comments »

Local Search Marketing

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

How do you obtain business from the web when your business is primarily catering to a local clientele? There are several options, including pay per click ads. But if your budget is limited this may not be the best option for you.

Local businesses might view search engine optimization as useful for larger sites, companies who sell products online, not a local dentist, medical center or career counselor. While its true that SEO makes a huge difference for larger businesses by driving qualified traffic to their web sites, local search marketing is designed to drive traffic into your brick and mortar location.

Tags: geo targeting local markets, Local Search Marketing, local search markets, SEO
Posted in Local Search Marketing | 1 Comment »

SEO And Web Design

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

We hear a lot of people saying that they were told by a web designer that the way to optimize a site is to first re-design the web site and have the designer optimize this new site as they build it. There are days I wonder if there are any web designers out there who haven’t met a site they couldn’t re-design. Where’s the integrity? I suppose if pressed, these designers can be viewed as having good intentions, afterall there is no such thing as a perfect web site.

Reality has shown us that intentions may not be all that good, as the changes recommended by designers are not content related, nor are they related to improving the sites usability or navigation. Nor are they backing up their recommendations with facts, instead sounding more like technology junkies out pushing the latest “live chat” or ”cool flash”. These recommendations to add flash, new graphics packages or “live chat” are all wrapped around the same content, saying that content is the responsibility of the site owner. We have experienced one instance where our client achieved a phenomenal 1466% ROI from our local search marketing services only to lose visibility (and new clients) because they changed the look of their site with a company who assured them they would retain their rankings, then changed from html to aspx without doing 301 redirects.

In an effort to be fair and balanced, there are more than a fair share of instances where businesses paid an SEO company to increase their rankings only to find that after 3 or 4 months those rankings disappeared or were non-existence.

The purpose of this article is to educate and inform business owners about the relationship between web design and SEO. To draw synergy and show how you can leverage the best of design as well as SEO to achieve the ultimate goal - growing your business.

The Perfect Trinity: Optimization, Web Usability, Design

Some preliminary evaluation of your web site is in order. Good design and optimization depends on one other aspect - a trinity of success, so to speak:

Good design - a clean look and feel with a good balance between graphics, flash and content is critical.
Optimization of the entire site, down to descriptions of every product or service, technical compliance and keyword density within the site’s content are but a few factors needed to increase search engine visibility
Incorporation of usability data within the design and the optimization will increase sales conversions and provide your visitors with a satisfying experience on your site.

Examine Your Business Goals
Why do you have a web site? Does it say what you want it to say? Is it easy to navigate and allow visitors to find what products or services you have? Do you know why visitors are coming to your site? Do you know if they found what they were looking for? Is it easy for them to find what they are looking for? You have less than 30 seconds to satisfy a visitors initial question of “does this site have what I am looking for?” Placement of menu’s, navigation, design and content that moves the visitor further into your site are issues usability can address.
What graphics you have on the site , contrary to what some web design companies may tell you—will not sell your products. Getting on page one of Google, may bring you the quality traffic your business desires, but if your site doesn’t meet a minimum standard of usability, chances are those visitors will not stay around long enough to find out that your services and products meet their needs.

Many times businesses think that by giving the site a “new look” visitors will come flocking to their site and buying like there’s no tomorrow. Clients expectations from a good search engine marketing campaign also need to understand that our job is to bring in quality traffic, to provide your business with the opportunity to close new business, but we can’t close that business.

Business owners need to work with a web design company who understands and respects the need for a fully managed, long term SEO camapaign. Businesses should seek out an optimization company that understands usability factors. Afterall, the only way an SEO campaign is viewed as successful is by meeting the objective of why we are hired in the first place - to increase business through visibility within the search engines.

Tags: optimization, SEO, web design, web usability
Posted in internet marketing | No Comments »

Organic Fixes For PPC Mistakes

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

As this is the third client we’ve taken on that has the same PPC type of problem, I thought it merited some attention from the organic search marketing side of the aisle.

Here’s the situation: company buys multiple related domains. Company is told by PPC management company to utilize all those domains, creating ”landing domains” for various PPC keyword groups and campaigns. The sites are poorly written, some are designed without regard to branding, providing a different look and feel for each “landing domain”. And in some cases duplicate pages are put in to provide “filler” - poor copy multiplied by X number.

The client doesn’t understand why they are not ranking in organic. Some of the domains are ranking and they don’t understand why conversion is so low in both ppc and in organic. The light bulb goes off when we explain that creating one authority site with good content, depth of resources and well thought out calls to action for one site would be better than the 8 or 10 domains now competing with each other on PPC ads and on page six and seven of the organic rankings, if that well ranked.

We also explain the credibility issue, branding one look and feel across multiple forms of internet advertising rather than this patchwork collection that is difficult at best to track clicks to sales conversions.

Bottom line…if your company is looking for a consolidated, organic and / or organic with targeted PPC internet marketing, go to a company whose focus is on driving results via organic long term and who also has the ability to provide short term PPC with traffic stats that show the return on investment separately as well as together.

Top SEO Marketing
www.topseomarketing.com

Tags: internet marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Marketing, SEO
Posted in internet marketing | No Comments »

Oh The Expectations Of Online Marketing…

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Online marketing has become a bright spot for businesses in this time of cutbacks, layoffs and government bailouts due to it’s high ROI. On the other hand, the expectations given to the customers by some nefarious SEO companies looking for a quick buck…or those web designers who don’t want to lose the revenue but don’t want to take the time to learn the right way to manage organic and throw unknowing customers under the PPC bus.

I ran into a situation a week ago that still has me frustrated over what occurred. The “web design company” (and with skepticism, the full service marketing company) I ran into takes the grand prize. We had done a local (geo targeted no more than 15 mile radius) for a client about a year ago. They were happy, we were happy and we have the documentation to show that the impact increased their business by a very signficant margin. Almost a year later, their placement was still high and the traffic was still translating into revenue.

Enter the web designer. No problem, we had recommended that they get a fresh look for their site. However, the client calls me and is incredibly unhappy with them after realizing that the contract included online marketing as a part of the package.

After taking a look at the new site, it was immediately apparent that they’d been sold a boatload of kewpie dolls. Let me give you a few examples:

When updating the “new” site, they kept none of the local geo targeted optimization of the site.
As the site was live, it seems that they forgot to do 301 Redirects so that all the listings that were in the organic went to a page not found. They claimed later, this was just an inconvenience and told the customer that this was not a problem.
They added on more charges than our fully managed SEO campaign with nothing to show for it.
They designed the new site, eliminating the footer with contextual linking - which is an important element in maintaining critical focus of keywords and pages.

The client was duped. I became the bad guy in pointing these things out, but yet everyday we talk to clients and potential clients about what they went through with these types of companies in the past. A very real part of what we do is to reset the expectations and provide concrete evidence that online marketing is not for the faint of heart and or those looking to make a quick buck because the client doesn’t understand redirects, the difference in geo targeting etc.

In the end, my guess is that like many companies out there, they will be told that the only way to achieve first page rankings is to pay for it in ads.

Tags: local search, online marketing, SEO
Posted in Online Marketing Tips, SEO | No Comments »

Ways To Increase Productivity with SEO / SEM

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

With belts across the business world tightening, we have redoubled our efforts to educate clients to be in more control of their marketing spend dollars. We talk to concerned business owners every day about ways to improve usability, productivity of their web sites and to increase conversion performance. Here are a few helpful tips that apply to just about every business trying to leverage the power of online marketing to increase revenue.

Add content that uses terms searchers or new potential clients understand. You will have the opportunity to convert them over to the way your terminology later on specific product or service pages. But if you are a telemarketing company, but prefer to be known under demand generation and fill the content with everything but telemarketing…it makes it much harder to get those pages ranked under telemarketing.
Utilize Your URL In All Business Advertising. It surprises me when I see businesses advertising their businesses and omiting their URLs. Even if you are passing out pencils - your domain name should be prominently featured.
Testimonials. We can not emphasize the importance of communicating your customers experience working with your business enough. Actively solicit customer testimonials and continue adding them to your web site. Ask customers to provide you with a review in Google local, Yahoo Local or MSN Live Search (local). This plus word of mouth advertising is shown to increase business.
Press Releases. Included in our services for search engine optimization campaigns is submission of press releases on a regular basis. Keeping our clients names out there is a great way to increase branding, traffic and revenue.
Blogs. Does your company have a blog? Does someone in your company monitor blogs to see what’s being said about your business? Your business blog provides potential customers with fresh up to the minute content and provides an easy way for you to share industry insight and knowledge. Blogs can also be a good way to build credibility and expertise in your industry. We integrate blogging into our clients sites and make sure that the blogs are updated on a regular basis. It’s a great way to keep in the forefront of your business market and attract new qualified visitors to your site.
Linked In. Are you linked in? If not, then take a minute to join, (it’s free). Linked-In has developed into a nice social networking site that can be useful and potentially productive to businesses. You can find background information on potential clients, join groups in your area of expertise, find former colleagues and associates, easily request recommendations for your business or yourself. You will be amazed at how many people are connecting to this social media platform.
Control your dependency on PPC. There are other ways to get your company on page one of search engines other than buying ads via pay-per-click. Work with your search engine marketing company to get a balance between short term objectives (PPC) and long term gains (organic search marketing). If your PPC company does not offer organic search, then find a company that specializes in organic or natural search.
Monitor click fraud. Google tied up with Click Forensics trying to further address this issue. The latest reports say that the fraud levels on Pay per click campaigns have come down by 0.2 percent in this quarter of 2008, the bad news: Click Fraud Index calculated the fraud rate at 16.2 percent in September 2008.
Free Analytics. Watch out for so called “experts” in search marketing that provide you with only the free Urchin type stats. A quality search marketing company should be Investing in good analytics programs which today are critical in order to dig down and understand visitor patterns, seamlessly integrate PPC and organic statistics and provide vital information for their clients to understand the best ROAS and maximize their ROI.
Expect Business Via Your Web Site. At Top SEO Marketing Inc. we are committed to bringing our clients new business as a result of our efforts. We are transparent in our process and exacting in our collection of data that helps us manage our campaign and helps our clients build better web sites for user experience and conversions. If your web site is not providing you with a significant revenue stream, you should think about changing the way you manage your web site. The lack of productivity can be fixed before you spend money getting visitors to your site - take the time to make sure that you have the right information and calls to action to capture those visitors.

Tags: online marketing, Online Marketing Tips, organic search, Search Marketing, Search marketing tips, SEO, SEO tips, web site productivity
Posted in Online Marketing Tips | 5 Comments »

Online Search Engine Marketing

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

How can search engine marketing help your company compete in today’s business climate? If you are like most companies, you’re trying to get the most of your advertising dollars but you have trouble distinguishing between what works and what is just hype. It’s difficult when you are not familiar with the new online media and all the new options and buzzwords out there. Take some consolation in the fact that this is a significant problem for companies large and small.

See if any of these questions sound familiar:

What demand generation campaigns will net you the best ROAS?
Can we afford a long term solution?
How do you avoid the trap of pay per click dependency?
What is the best way to reach potential customers utilizing the internet?
How affective are directories?
What is social media?
Are Yellow Pages still a good way to spend our marketing dollars?
Will spending money to make videos increase my search engine rankings?
Should I shift my yellow pages ads to directories online?

The Old Versus The New

The Internet has definitely changed the way potential customers are finding new products and services for business and consumers. Gone are the days that people rely on the Yellow Pages to let their fingers do the walking. Today those fingers are walking over the keyboard, mobile phones typing queries into search engines. The amount of information given by phone books, looks outdated when compared with pulling up a web site full of the latest information, locations and products. Below are some revealing facts from the Kelsey Group.

74% of US households use the Internet as an information source when shopping.
Approximately 45% of searches had a buying intent.
The percentage of respondents who used yellow page directories decreased from 75% to 62%.

Today more than ever businesses need a company that can take them where they will be found online by new customers and keep them away from expensive submissions where there is no measurable return on investment.

Managed search engine marketing companies can provide analytics to track pay per click, organic campaigns that include social media, local search placement, press release distribution, copywriting in addition to optimization and email advertising without the additional cost of hiring a PR or ad agency.

If you are looking for an affordable solution to managing advertising spend, laying down a foundation for long term sustainable sales channel or seeking a company that will help you navigate the advertising options online, visit www.topseomarketing.com or give us a call at 214.288.0853.

Tags: local search, search engine marketing, Search Marketing, SEM, SEO, Yellow Pages
Posted in SEM | 3 Comments »

Content - Keep it going

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Add Content frequently to your site.

Updating the content on your web site will achieve better search engine rankings more than you may expect.

Remember that adding new content will help in 2 ways:

1. Updating your content frequently for visitors gives them a reason to want to come back.

2. Update your content frequently for the search engines. If the search engines see that you’re updating your content every day or several times a week, then these search engines will spider your site much more often.

Your information needs to make the visitor feel as if they gained something good. Always watch for ways to work with adding both emotional content as well as informational content. Most people make their purchasing decisions using emotions and reasoning. A Search Engine Marketing Firm can help you to keep your site content rich. SEO companies will work with you to build content pages around keywords selected to drive target traffic to your site. Content Optimization is just one way to help your site achieve better rankings, using a SEO Company can provide this service as well as many other Managed Search Engine Marketing Optimization Services to help you to drive your site to the Top of the Search Engine mountains.

Michelle Smith

Director of Campaigns

Top SEO Marketing Inc.

Tags: managed search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO Company
Posted in Local Search Marketing, Regional Search Marketing, SEO | 2 Comments »

Driving results for your business with managed search engine optimization