Ever wonder what questions to ask when you’re searching to hire an SEO firm? Here’s a short video from a colleague of mine that addresses just that:
Posts Tagged Steamboat Chamber
Selecting an SEO Firm
Apr 1
This post comes from Chris Crum of WebProNews:
Social Media policies of well-known organizations often appear in the news with commentary throughout the Blogosphere, the Twitterverse, etc. There is an ongoing debate about just how restricted social networks should be when it comes to employee use.
Bloxx, based in the UK, has released some research finding that 90% of IT Managers surveyed believe access to social networking site should be banned or restricted. 90%. That’s a lot. The managers surveyed came from across the UK public sector as well as private organizations.
The concerns addressed in this survey were the usual suspects: staff productivity, network security risks, and damage to the corporate reputation. Productivity was by far the top concern.
The Bloxx Report Findings
More Bloxx Study Findings
The research found that not only are an increasing number of organizations completely banning staff access from social networking sites, but it is also quite common for staff to post disparaging remarks regarding other employees, their boss, or the company on social networks.
Over 22% of respondents don’t have any controls in place for staff accessing social networks. 35% of IT managers believe staff are spending over 30 minutes each per day on average accessing social networks. The companies are potentially providing an additional 16 days paid vacation for each employee, Bloxx says. Still, the research also shows that social networking is increasingly being used as a valuable business tool. Obviously access is required to take advantage.
“UK businesses really can’t afford to underestimate some of the risks of Social Networking use in the workplace,” says Bloxx CEO Eamonn Doyle. “However, our view is that a complete ban is unrealistic and adopting this approach means that companies can’t obtain the potential business benefits of Social Networking and can alienate staff.” Among Doyle’s suggestions are increased employee education, “well-thought-out” acceptable use policies, and the use of Web filtering.
There are plenty of reasons why social network access shouldn’t be completely banned. We cover these reasons about every day. If your company completely ignores social networks, you’re ignoring a tremendous amount of opportunities for marketing, customer service, traffic, sales, communication, etc.
Social networks are not going away. The popularity of specific ones may change in time, but the concept of social networking is going nowhere. It’s not even a new concept. Forums and email are pretty much social media for all intents and purposes. Social networks have recently been blamed for $2.25 billion in lost productivity. I wonder how much money lost productivity from personal email and general web surfing accounts for. I wonder how much employees simply talking to each other at the workplace has cost companies. That’s not necessarily online, but it’s still socializing. How have you handled email and general web use in the past?
Reputation issues are one thing. Security is another (and I think employee education plays a big role there) but as far as productivity, I really don’t see that the use of social networks is really that different than any other form of simply not working. People can spend their time using the phone for personal calls, but you probably haven’t completely banned the telephone. You may need that to communicate with customers, drive sales, etc. I’m sure you see my point.
PPC advertising is one of the most popular and widespread forms of online marketing. Combined with SEO, it makes up the other half of the puzzle that goes into marketing your website in the search engines. With SEO, you work to produce organic traffic to your site. However with PPC campaigns, you work to generate paid traffic to your site, from visitors who click on your advertisements displayed on the results pages of the search engines.
Whether you’re a Steamboat Springs marketing company or you work in Steamboat web design, there are many different best practices that can help you make the most out of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns. The truth is that many companies waste a great deal of money through ineffective and inefficient PPC campaigns, and many companies also leave a great deal of money on the table by failing to capitalize properly on the potential of PPC marketing. If you learn the best practices that will enable you to instantly improve your PPC campaigns, then you and your online business will be able to take off.
One of the biggest mistakes made with PPC advertising is getting into a bidding contest for the top spot of a particular keyword. Unless you have a huge budget, this strategy is going to backfire. Save your money and see a higher ROI by bidding more moderately. Shoot for a middle of the road first page ranking, perhaps the fourth or fifth spot. Your costs will drop off by a huge margin, but you’ll still be able to drive a large amount of high quality traffic to your website.
Another best practice for making the most out of your PPC campaigns is to test different versions of them. The littlest factors can have an effect on the performance of your advertisement. The wording of your ad title, the page URL it shows underneath, the keywords you target, the way your landing page looks and what it offers and many other factors as well.
With all of these possibilities, the only way to find a working solution is by testing out different variables. Test one factor at a time across a series of similar advertisements and campaigns, take a look at the results and then optimize your campaigns with what you found out to work better. Your ads will become much more successful and cost efficient in the process.
Don’t forget that when you’re participating in PPC, you are providing an ad that people find when they search for something. Your job is therefore to make your ad compelling to that person, and to make your website compelling to the person who clicked on the ad. Therefore you have to provide the searcher with exactly what they are looking for. Target your ads as precisely as possible and strive to provide an exact solution to a specific need.
For example, people looking for Steamboat Springs marketing and Steamboat web design often are really looking for the same thing. They want to break their company out into the national stage, find new prospects and customers and ultimately bring in more profit and revenue. The same thing holds true from companies from all corners of the country and the world. Learn to maximize your PPC campaigns and you’ll be one step closer to accomplishing this goal.
Why Hire A SEO Firm
Oct 8
If you’re exploring your options for getting your website ranked well with the search engines, you’re probably asking “Why should I hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm?” Your gut might initially tell you that you can achieve positive results from doing it yourself.
While anyone can certainly spend the time and effort it takes to submit a site to web directories and create some good backlinks, there’s definitely some skill involved in managing these tasks. I live in Steamboat today and work with clients throughout the country. I often encourage my contacts to weigh all sides of the issue before deciding to hire anyone to manage their SEO. So you don’t waste your valuable time, let’s explore the question of hiring a SEO versus doing it yourself.
SEO- The Breakdown
Hiring a professional SEO company can bring with it many advantages. Any SEO worth their salt has studied and knows what exactly the search engines are looking for. Not to bore you with too many details, this includes:
- “Do-Follow” vs. “No-Follow” links
- “On-page” vs. “Off-page” optimization
- PR (Page Rank) weighting
- Anchor text, and the proper use of it
- Keyword competition vs. monthly traffic
… and the list goes on.
Just like a lawyer needs to completely understand statutes and a doctor masters anatomy, SEO comes with its own set of rules. For a business owner pursuing SEO for themselves, and not as their full time job, this knowledge can quickly become cumbersome.
Believe it or not, the vast majority of active websites online today are optimized for the wrong set of information or not optimized at all. What a professional SEO brings to the table is the knowledge it takes to guide a site owner in the right direction so that all SEO efforts flow together toward the end goal (more traffic / more sales).
“Keeping Up With the Jones Family”
Remaining well versed in the most up-to-date and accurate information about what the search engines are looking for is the job of a full time SEO. I’ll go as far as to state that any business owner not pursuing SEO professionally is severely behind the curve.
Adjustments are constantly needed as entities like Google and Bing continue to revise their algorithms. It’s not best business practice, in any industry, to set the wheels of marketing in motion and never review the progress. Just like any form of advertising and promotion, regular adjustments are needed to maintain a websites’ competitive edge.
Well Researched, Professional Submission
Another advantage a business owner has when choosing to work with a professional SEO is the comfort in knowing their site will be submitted to the engines in the proper manner. This includes the research that goes into the marketing plan both before and during the SEO process.
As their customer, you should expect to receive timely reports on the status of directory and link submissions and the movement in your site’s search rankings. Reports should be supplied demonstrating where your site is positioned as well as where your traffic is coming from. If your site is positioned well for a keyword phrase and you’re happy with the traffic, there’s really no reason at that point to re-submit to the directories. A good SEO will rather shift focus to more competitive keywords and help a business rank well for multiple search inquiries.
Submitting your site manually, and not through the use of any “black hat” tricks or shortcuts is also something you should expect from your chosen SEO company. If you’re finding that too much of the work is being automated, the odds are good that its not being done properly.
Open communication throughout the entire process should be expected from your SEO as well. A good SEO should be able to explain his process in terms that you can best understand. Understanding what exactly you’re getting for your money is one of the most important things you should expect from your SEO firm.
DIY or Outsource?
So all of this might sound like a lot of work, and quite frankly, it is. Let’s face it, you’ve got a business to run and some things are better outsourced to professionals. A “do-it-yourself” approach in this aspect of your marketing is not always the best decision.
If you’re planning to hire an in-house employee to manage the job for you, first consider the cost of that as well. There’s salary, insurance, 401K, sick days, vacation days and liabilities involved in having a full time employee.
By outsourcing your SEO needs, you get skilled professional results but on a contract labor basis. Depending on your needs, a custom-tailored plan of action for your business may only run anywhere from $300-$1200 per month. It’s often far better and more cost effective to have a trusted pro manage your online campaign rather than retain another full time employee.
Your sales boost will also be a key indicator of worth. An SEO that’s getting your site ranked in the search engines and driving traffic to your website should often be seen as a “marketing expense.” As with any form of marketing, you should expect to see revenue increase above and beyond the expense you incur.
Tweet Like a Human!
Oct 7
The co-founder of Twitter (Jack Dorsey) recently advised users to tweet about things of interest to your followers, the public and prospective clients. Finding things that other people will find useful is one of the best attractors when it comes to gaining more followers.
But let’s not forget the humanizing factor that Twitter offers as well. There’s a great potential for this interface to introduce your personality to clients as much as the utility to transfer information. The occasional tweet about a new dinner recipe you’ve tried or taking the kids to soccer practice might just be the perfect way to endear us to our clients. Ultimately, your current followers as well as prospective clients often look for more than just “business as usual.” Try it!
With executives gaining more and more information on the importance of search engine marketing, budget allocations for search engine optimization (SEO) are on the rise. Simply put, the opportunity to maximize profits through online sales and lead generation has become too enticing to ignore.
A far as a long term strategy goes for customer acquisition and consumer presence, SEO is taking a larger role versus traditional marketing avenues. Reports are in that corporate spending on SEO pursuits is expected to see a dramatic increase over the coming years. With the current down economy, more serious talks are taking place in boardrooms across the country as to how these businesses will more effectively position their websites within the search engines.
Highly touted publications predict that organic search efforts (unpaid traffic generation) will rise anywhere from 17 to 20 percent while we simultaneously witness paid search (pay per click advertising) decline in the neighborhood of 11-15 percent. A fantastic outline of this is depicted in the graph below, from our friends at eMarketer:
SEO Market Growth
Surveys are also beginning to suggest that companies placed in the top 5 of organic search results hold a slightly higher value and garner more targeted click-through traffic. This doesn’t mean that paid advertising with Google, Yahoo and Bing doesn’t get its fair share of traffic, just that organic results are getting equivalent conversions as consumers become more aware of the differences between paid vs. organic rankings.
The most obvious way to positively impact search engine results is to participate in both paid and SEO endeavors. Pay per click offers immediate results while search engine optimization is a longer process that takes time and persistence. Many large and small companies are finding that a pay per click campaign becomes a needed initial expense while SEO initiatives take root. Many businesses can then realistically begin to decrease dollars spent on pay per click as they see their organic search results rise.
No matter what online activities a company decides to begin, proper reporting is the key ingredient to success. Without having the proper tracking and reporting infrastructure in place, many dollars can be wasted on poor decisions. There becomes no way of properly gauging the return on investment received from these pursuits without the statistics to back it up.
Web analytics are vital in order to gain useful knowledge and information when judging the results of a campaign. Google offers “Google Analytics” which is free and only requires a small line of code be added to your site. The type of data supplied from Google about a site’s traffic and visitors sources can be extremely helpful.
The bottom line with increased investments put toward companies’ online efforts is that anyone not exploring the options with search engine marketing is sinking further behind the curve. In addition to increased traffic to their website, businesses need to consider SEO much like their public relations arm. Getting ranked in the search engines gets customers in the door but in the end, it is the products and services offered that ultimately make the sale.