Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

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Improving Online Brand Image in a Poor Economy

Posted by Brent on June 16th, 2009

It is always surprising to see major brands and companies that have been around for decades that still have website built in the 90’s.  It is fairly common and many times this is simply not a priority especially if the company “doesn’t gain new business prospects via the web”.  The response to this kind of comment of course is “Of course you don’t if your website is old and invisible to Google”.

More large companies (across all industries) are starting to realize the importance of improving their online marketing capabilities.  For most, it is a matter of simply focusing on it, making the commitment, and having an internal team to head up the effort.  Even if the Internet marketing and website development initiatives are going to be outsourced, mostly companies will still need and internal marketing team leading the charge.

Some company owners and executives wonder if now is a good time to invest in improving their online exposure.  The answer of course is that it has never been a more crucial time.  During good economic times, consumers and potential customers do not scrutinize these types of things as much nor do they price compare a shop around as much as they do now.  You have one shot when someone visits your website.  This is important especially if your website is your key resource for providing information about your company and services.

So once you have decided that it is time to make the commitment, what is the next step?  Here are some tips for getting started:

  • Define your business and marketing strategy: Your business goals should drive your marketing strategy.  Look at what you are currently doing (or not doing) and set some benchmarks.  Research your competitors that are doing it better.  If your major competitors have a better website (that has been redesigned in the last 12 months), great rankings in the search engines, and an exciting social media campaign, then you have some work to do!  But don’t worry…the fact that they are doing it proves that you should be too.
  • Website redesign/redevelopment: Before launching the marketing strategy, you need to prepare your online platform for traffic and converting traffic into new business.  Think of this as having a house warming party.  You wouldn’t send out 100 invitations and make big plans to show off your home unless you have done spome “house cleaning” first.  Your website needs to be compelling, user-friendly, offer great value to your visitor, and have good calls to action so the user know what you want them to do.
  • Internet marketing strategy: Start with the basics.  A good search engine optimization (SEO) campaign is the right long term investment to make.  There is no point investing in a new website if noone is going to ever see it (or at least not many people).  Remember my comment above about companies saying that they do not gain new clients or business from the Internet?  Well this is meant to change that.  Great rankings relevant to your industry, business, and services, will eventually build traffic and foster new customers – if the website is set up to convert.  Pay per click (PPC) advertising can be a great way to get quick results in the search engines, target specific areas and consumers, and get faster results than you will with SEO.  PPC is advertising where as SEO is more like a true investment in the future of your business.  Other strategies include social media marketing, email marketing, display ads, retargeting, etc.

The best way to get the process started is to talk to people you trust who are currently doing it.  The most important thing to realize is that consumers in all industries are researching online and could find you if you take the time to “be found”.  The web is a trasparent place and people want to know who you really are.  The days of hiding behind a website that has limited information are over (if you want to survive).   Consider starting a blog and get the executives involved.  If the CEO of Ritz Cartlon can make time for blogging and Twitter, so can you!


SEO Fraud: Small Business Owners Beware

Posted by Brent on June 7th, 2009

Like most industries, the Internet marketing world is fraught with companies and individuals seeking to make a quick buck by ripping people off.  One of the most common is SEO fraud.  There are unfortunately many firms or “consultants” out there preying on the unsuspecting small business owners and selling them SEO “guarantees”. 

Frankly, there are a lot of larger SEO companies doing similar things by charging outrageous prices while spending about 2 hours a week on your project and telling you to “stay the course” and that it takes time.  They use iron clad contracts and by the time you are frustrated by the lack of results and fire them (if you can get out of your contract), they have collected thousands from you.  These days of course that is harder to get away with because do to the economy, companies will price compare more often.

So how do you find the right SEO company? How do you compare the good ones from the not so good ones, and choose a company where you feel confident that the money you invest is in good hands and will generate good returns?  Here are a few tips:

  • Do as much research on basic SEO as you can on your own so you know what questions to ask
  • Choose a few firms and learn as much as you can about them
  • Be careful about the pitch where they show you all the “rankings” they have gotten for their clients – you never know what was involved, what kind of rankings the client had before, or if they are even still a client, etc.
  • Look at the firm’s own rankings and see if they practice what they preach
  • Look at their website:  if they are selling you SEO but don’t even have title tags, descriptions, etc…RUN!
  • Ask them details about their SEO practice, strategy, process, link building efforts, etc.
  • Know who their SEO engineers and project managers are:  chances are your campaign and keyword strategy will only be as good as that individual’s knowledge
  • Check certifications/qualifications
  • Read their blog, if they even have one
  • Ask if they attend the SEO trade shows, seminars, etc. to make sure they are continually learning too:  SEO these days is all about staying current
  • NEVER work with a firm offering ranking “guarantees” because you might be treading closely to black hat SEO and potential penalties

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SEO Link Building and Business Development

Posted by Brent on June 5th, 2009

Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are constantly changing as we chase the SE’s latest algorithms and try to keep up with what Google wants from us.  As search engine marketers, we have to always be on top of the best practices and guidelines in order to properly serve our clients and ensure that the strategies used are sound. 

The greatest part about SEO these days is that its less about repetitive activity (though that is still a big part of it) and more like business development (in my opinion).  SEO has become more and more natural and it all starts with adding real value to the web by creating a site with good content.  These days good content can and should come in the form of all kinds of media:  blogs, articles, video, podcasts, etc.  The SE’s are giving rankings to sites that really have that “wow” factor when it comes to valuable unique content. 

All of the basic rules still apply and things like having good site structure/site maps, unique content, and solid link building strategies are the foundation of any good SEO effort.  The on-page portion is of course all about continually adding fresh content for your users (content that is relevant and hopefull educational).  The off-page portion has become the mosty important ongoing effort in the form of link building.

Link popularity is about building solid inbound links from relevant websites.  The more quality links you have the more “votes” of assurance Google will notice and the rankings will follow.  The days of link trading and link farms are over as we all know.  Follow those practices or any unnatural method for building links and you could find yourself sitting on the search engine sidelines for a long time. 

Below are some initial steps to beginning your link building effort:

  • Build a healthy content rich website that adds value to your online community
  • Submit your site to all the top directories
  • Purchase key “paid” links
  • Always SEO optimize your press releases before sending

The rest of your link building effort is where it gets tricking and time consuming.  As stated above, the best link building strategies are natural and well planned.  Use some of the steps below to get started once you have completed the steps above:

  • Run Google searches using your targeted keywords
  • Find sites that are relevant and similar but not competing
  • Call or email the webmaster and formall request that they link to your site
  • Offer reasons and benefits (consider offering to link to them as well but don’t over do the “link trading”)
  • If you have other websites with related material or partner companies, make sure they are linking to your website
  • Use anchor text when setting up the links and try to have the link coming from the home page or other powerful pages on their website
  • Set up a blog and contribute to other people’s blogs – once you are a trusted source you can start throwing some links in as long as they are relevant and the page on your site you are linking to offers additonal value to the reader

The key to these efforts is that you simply have to commit the time to do it.  Google will usually only recognize a fraction of the links you build so make sure you are going after quality, not quantity.

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Google Paid Links Debate Over Android Ion Phone Giveaway

Posted by Mike Martin on June 1st, 2009

Michael Gray of GrayWolf has postulated that by Google providing free Android Ion phones at Google I/O is actually a breach of their own paid links guideline.

Michael’s logic is that the phone (valued at approximately $400 – although sold on EBay for nearly $800) is a way of Google “paying” people to generate buzz and thus link to them.

google ion

Michael Gray: @dannysullivan seems like a double standard to me google gives free stuff & links are fine but on viralconversations.com I have to nofollow

Michael Gray: @dannysullivan I jumped thru all sorts of hoops getting Viralconversations.com google complaint and google breaks all those rules today

Michael Gray: @dannysullivan I specifically have to tell ppl to nofollow any links but google nope they dont have to follow those same rules

Michael Gray: @dannysullivan how hard would it have been to put a note with the phone enjoy the phone but please if you link to us use the nofollow tag

Then Michael redirected his wrath to Matt Cutts

Michael Gray: @mattcutts oh so google is judging paid links on intent now … google gonna borrow the term mind meld too to figure that out?

Michael Gray: @mattcutts srsly you cant have everybody else operate under one set of rules with gifts for links and not google #arrogance #aristocracy

Michael Gray: @mattcutts I thought google would have learned from buying links in japan guess not #googlebuyslinksbutyoucant

Matt Cutts: @graywolf google.com is the most-linked-to domain on the web. We don’t need links & aren’t looking for them. We’re looking for developers.

Michael Gray: @mattcutts and just because you dont need links doesnt mean you didnt give away cash in kind gifts to get them

Michael Gray: @mattcutts just remember when celebrities get caught shoplifting its still a crime #googlepaidlinksdoublestandard

Michael Gray: @mattcutts so when are you going to punish google.com for selling links the way you did google.jp or do they get a “bye”

Michael Gray: @mattcutts how hard would it have been to put a note here the phone for free if you link to us please use a nofollow tag #leadbyexample

Michael Gray: @mattcutts the ebay link is proof the gift has cash value or is a cash in kind gift #paysattentioninclass

Michael Gray: hey @mattcutts how those paid links for android.com working out how many of the 57K came from the free phones http://tinyurl.com/mk7mdx

Michael Gray: looks like those phones google gave away and turned into links to android.com have a cash in kind value of $760 http://tinyurl.com/kmy29u

This all started when Michael was recently arguing that TechCrunch should NoFollow the Sponsor links using http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/13/contenture-wants-to-fail-whale-your-ad-network/ as an example.

I was eating lunch with Matt Cutts & MG Siegler of TechCrunch along with Danny Sullivan so it presented the perfect opportunity to get to the bottom of Michael Gray’s concern.

matt cutts michael martin mg siegler

Michael Gray: @googleandblog good I hope @mattcutts mentioned this post too http://tinyurl.com/opkmun #sponsoredposts

MG stated he wasn’t aware of it and when Matt looked at the offending page he said he didn’t have an issue with it since it wasn’t within MG’s control.

Michael Gray: @googleandblog sorry I call BS its an advertorial

This whole time Danny was fighting back to stay out of the fray.

Andy Beard even chimed in with this post.

Do you think Michael Gray is getting carried away or does he have a point in either or both paid link concerns?

I was going to ask Sergey Brin about this but instead asked about his thoughts on Microsoft constantly changing search engine names as it relaunches officially at SMX Advanced in Seattle next week.

Danny Sullivan: @googleandblog asks sergey what he thinks, bing or kumo? sergey doesn’t answer but says “we been happy with google”

There was laughter throughout the room when Sergey responded that he is happy with the name Google which was picked up on several sites including TechCrunch.

sergey brin michael martin

I was invited to cover Google I/O since I run a popular Android site as Google’s Android platform for mobile devices was front and center at this Google Developer Conference.

At the conclusion I got on my flight home to San Diego with my Ion phone ready to present at SMX Advanced on Tuesday June 2nd, 2009 in Seattle representing Internet Marketing Inc – please come say hi if you are attending.

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All Things Online – ATO

Posted by Yashar on May 14th, 2009

Our very first ATO – All Things Online. Expect one new episode every week.


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Internet Marketing Inc SEO Director Speaking At SMX Advanced

Posted by Mike Martin on April 29th, 2009

I’m speaking at SMX Advanced

I will be representing Internet Marketing Inc. at SMX Advanced in Seattle on June 2nd as a speaker on the Mobile Search panel.

SMX Advanced is a two day event taking place at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center from Tuesday, June 2 to Wednesday, June 3 in Seattle, Washington.

There will be a Meet & Greet party at the Odyssey Maritime Museum on Monday June 1st hosted by Microsoft who has timed the announcement of its new search engine KUMO later at the conference.

SMX Advanced in my opinion is the pinnacle of all major Internet marketing conferences as such if you could only attend one conference all year this should be the one, although PubCon would be a close second.

This conference has sold out each year and the last chance to get the early bird lowest pricing is on Friday May 1st by saving $200 at this SMX Advanced Registration page.

Please let me know if you will be attending the conference or in the Seattle area in early June by emailing me at mike AT internetmarketinginc DOT com

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Small Budget SEO Strategies

Posted by Brent on April 20th, 2009

As the web grows, search engine optimization (SEO) strategies will get more competitive.  Its happening already.  As SEOs scramble to keep up with the latest and greatest with Google’s algorithms there are other looming issues to keep in mind.  The simple growth of the web and increasing competitive landscape make it more difficult to rank for competitive keywords.  The search engines are also delivering better results on the first page and fewer users feel compelled to look any further.  One query will get them great web page results, news results, local business results, video results, etc. all on the first page.  So what is a company to do?

More and more companies are seeking to get a better return from their smaller marketing budgets.  To accomplish this, they are turning to the most cost effective and measurable way to market…Internet marketing.  Natually one of the best long term investments in a company’s web growth is in organic search engine optimization (SEO).  But then the question remains, how long will it take to get to page one and will it be effective for you?

There are many key elements of course that go into estimating when “success” will be reached.  Noone can really predict how long it will take to achieve results but you can look at your online marketing competition to see what they have done right (i.e. how many pages does their site have, how many inbound links do they have, is their website user friendly and does it provide fresh valuable content, etc…).  The list goes on and on.  When companies make the decision that they do in fact need to make this investment and start down the SEO path, they will need to consider a few fundamental items that will shape their future:

  • How much budget is available to put towards SEO in the next 12 months
  • How competitive is the industry online (i.e. what is a realistic timeline and budget?)

The bottom line is that companies that decide to higher and SEO company will have to face these questions and make some decisions.  These days companies large and small have budget issues.  These decisions will be different for every company depending on how large that marketing budget is and how many other marketing channels are being pursued.  SEO takes time to show results so the tangible ROI may be 6 months out or more.  Therefore, most companies will be using organic SEO combined with Internet marketing strategies that will produce more immediate results.  This will leave only a certain amount of money to put towards SEO and companies that are new to SEO may be hesitant to put all their eggs in one basket.

Naturally, Internet marketing companies and SEO firms will make recommendations based on the competitive nature of their keywords.  Also, SEO can be a get what you pay for strategy.   It is not realistic for companies who only have $500 per month to spend on SEO to go after highly competitive terms but there are ways to get creative and work towards these goals anyway.  Before we break down the recommendations for small budget SEO campaigns lets identify the differences in keyword strategies.

Broad Keywords:  Broad terms are generally reffered to as the more generic (less specific) keywords and keyword phrases that drive more traffic.  An example term would be “shoes”.  This type of search is very high level and usually used by a person doing general reseach, surfing the web, etc.  But ranking for it will drive high volumes of traffic.

Long Tail Keywords:  Long tail terms are more specific keyword phrases that drive less traffic but can be more targeted and have better conversions.  An example long tail term would be “women’s Spring shoe sales” or “women’s running shoes Nike”.  These terms are very specific.  Often they will have a geographic focus as well for people looking for something specific in their area.

From a competitive aspect, broad terms are naturally more competitive and hence usually take more budget to put together and effective SEO campaign.  They also take longer to achieve first page results.  Long tail terms might be a bit easier to get and have decent conversions, but will that alone be enough?  Generally, the recommendation is to develop a keyword list that combines both broad and long tail terms.  This gives the company a chance to capture the lower hanging fruit first while tackling the tougher times over time. 

So what should you do if you have a very small budget but your terms are highly competitive?  Here are some creative recommendations:

  • Develop a long tail keyword list and go after the less competitive terms
  • Make sure your website has basic SEO coding and a sound strucutre from which to build this effort
  • Get involved:  set up a blog on your site and start writing content relevant to your users, your indsutry, and your keywords (link keywords to pages relevant to those terms)
  • Write on other relevant blogs and send links back to your website
  • Try social media as a support element to the SEO effort
  • Don’t expect results over night, or in three months for that matter

All companies need to get creative on how they spend money and achieve success.  A great online marketing strategy does not have to mean huge budgets.  But be careful about the “doing it in-house” route unless you have a qualified team experienced in all aspects of the campaign.

Related Blogs


Michael Martin- SEO Expert

Posted by Brandon on March 30th, 2009


Universal Search: Out with the Old, In with the New

Posted by Brent on March 18th, 2009

The days of simple on page optimization are over and have been for a while.  A year ago most search engine optimization strategies included the simple practices of basic site structure, seo copy written content, and building inbound links.  As Google continues to progress and make new updates to the algorithms, we must also adapt and develop new strategies that will keep us competitive.  A well-rounded approach is imperative which is why a good Internet marketing company can take on all aspects of search engine marketing and combine them to create a truly united front.

I tend to use the analogy of military combat when analyzing business and marketing situations.  For example, the reason a small special operations force that has superior training and works as a team will always defeat a larger force with mediocre training is becasue each person on the spec ops team works in complete synergy with one another.  In Internet marketing, it will no longer suffice to use one approach with a non-targeted strategy if you want to be competitive.  A comprehensive online marketing plan will ensure true optimization of all online assets and maximum exposure and conversions.

So what does all this mean?  What is Universal search?  What are digital assets?

Bascially, it means that optimizing all of a company’s digital assets is the best way to ensure good rankings as they apply to Google’s new “universal” search.  Universal search means that Google gives rankings to not only web pages anymore but also news results such as press releases, video content, images, local buiness results, etc.  Simply optimizing the pages of a website will not ensure that a site will rank as well as its competitiors.  Websites that use well rounded internet marketing strategies are getting traffic from other assets that appear in the search results pages.  For example, a company’s web page might not appear for a specific result but a SEO optimized press release might.  That press release if optimized properly would then have links back to the website which would drive trafic.  The same situation would apply for video content appearing in the results.  The vidoes if well optimized could then have links or calls to action noting the URL that people should follow. 

So are we taking about social media?

Basically, yes.  Social media is popular for many reasons other than viral marketing and online reputation management.  Social media can be a fantastic provider of inbound links which of course supports the ongoing organic search engine optimization campaign.  A good SEO company will optimize all a company’s digital assets to ensure the best possible ROI.

Where does conversion optimization come into play?

True conversion optimization is at the root of all online marketing strategies…or at least it should be.  Nobody wants to spend time and money implementing any marketing plan unless there is a strategy to ensure conversions and ROI.  Conversion optimization is more than just manipulating a web page to make the user do what you want.  All marketing strategies should be completely complimentary and support the same goals…that goes for offline and online components. 

Not so long ago, an SEO team would work independantly from a PPC team, and nobody would be communicating with the print team.  These days that is just poor marketing.  Everyone must be in constant communication with each other…that is, if you were to use different teams for each component.  The best practice for having a truly effective online marketing plan is to use the same team for all aspects and make sure that team knows how to coordinate with traditional media aspects as well.


Internal Linking for SEO

Posted by Brent on March 11th, 2009

A very important part of our SEO strategy is linking. The inbound links play an important role too but these are definitely not the only important links. Wikipedia defines an internal link as: a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or domain of the internet. Why not take it directly from the best source out there – Wikipedia the epitome of internal linking.

Here are some of the reasons why internal linking is so important:

  • To insure that your website gets properly crawled these links make it easy for the search engines to crawl a website and this also makes sure that all pages can be correctly found and identified by the search engines.
  • Adding a text link builds the relevancy of a page to a specific keyword phrase. For instance tying the keyword chocolate chip cookie to a page that contains a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
  • Inner linking all pages on your website will increase the probability that these pages internal pages get ranked in the search engines and will increase the PageRank of an internal pages

Linking your pages makes sure that every page of your website is able to be found by the search engine spiders. Internal linking is very easy to do through a CMS editor so this is an easy step you can take to optimize your website. Internal Linking if done correctly can increase the number of pages that a search engine ranks your site for, it can also increase the number of keyword phrases that your website can rank for in the search engines.  Internal linking sets the proper foundation for a good orgain search engine optimization campaign.

Don’t blindly add links to each page!

There is a process that you need to follow when you are optimizing your website, so don’t just start adding links to all of your internal pages.

First and foremost: You need to add title tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords to each and every one of your pages. All of this information that you are adding to each page has to be specific to that particular page. For instance on a page talking about how to bake chocolate chip cookies you need to add metadata coherent to chocolate chip cookies and not about roasting chickens. Adding the correct meta data to each and every page will tell the search engines to rank that specific page about chocolate chip cookies for the keywords chocolate chip cookies. To build upon this and to validate this keyword to that specific page you want to create internal links from other pages to the chocolate chip cookie page. For example on the roasting chicken page you can have a paragraph about how chocolate chip cookies are a great dessert after such a great chicken meal. Here is where you will hyperlink this text “chocolate chip cookie” to the page about how to cook these. This gives a point or vote to this particular page for that particular keyword.

For the most part your homepage will target your most competitive keywords and phrases and your internal pages will focus on targeting less competitive phrases. When creating internal link on your homepage you will want to keep in mind which keywords you want to rank for first because the links on your homepage are seen as more relevant the closer you are to your homepage. Be careful to not overload all of your pages with internal linking and try to keep it to 3-4 per page.

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