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What’s The Difference Between SEO & Internet Marketing?

June 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment
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potato Is it po-tate-o or po-tot-o? SEO and traditional advertising and marketing are consistently talked about as two completely separate things. SEO companies mention their abilities to go out and get links, marketing companies mention their abilities to grab an audience. The truth is, and I don’t know why more people do not mention it. The two are so intertwined in necessity online, that if you are working with either one, they should be great at both. Here is why.

The Most Important Thing In Search Engine Optimization

The most inportant thing you can do in SEO is go out and get backlinks to your website from other credible websites. It sounds to simple, but it works. Of course it gets deeper than that, but for the most part, that is SEO summed up in a nutshell. The trouble is that there are really only two ways to get links to your website online. The push methods, and the pull methods.

Push Method Of Getting Links

The push method is going out and begging for links, putting you site in directories, article marketing, forum posting, and blog posting. It does work, but it is extremely tedious and a constant uphill battle. Think of it as going to networking event where the only people in the room are realtors, stock brokers, and insurance agents. Not that there is anything wrong with those professions, but they are all their for themselves.

Pull Method Of Getting Links

The pull method of getting links works a little bit differently, and is rarely talked about by SEO companies except for the best. This is where you do exactly what you should have been doing all along, and creating extremely valuable, or interesting content for your target customers. It could be a blog post that comments on a hot topic asking people to join in the conversation, or a really good tutorial on how to do something. It could be a poll, or a contest. Whatever it is, make sure it is what the reader is looking for, and not a sales page. Those come later. Focus on providing great content for the sake of great content and getting it out there, and you will begin to drive more traffic.

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Why SEO Alone Isn’t Enough. Understand The ROI Of Internet Marketing

June 15, 2009 By 1 Comment

Is Your Business Using It’s  Marketing Budget Correctly?

We have recently seen a trend in the past six months of businesses becoming more aware of the necessity of using online marketing in some form or another in their marketing mix. The trouble with this new found awareness is the inability to distinguish where to spend their money. This lack of knowledge of the different potential ways to spend their marketing or advertising budget prompted us to right this article to help educate potential clients how to achieve their marketing or advertising goals using the online medium.

What Services Provide What Returns On Investment

We always explain to new customers the differences between their choices for marketing online in the return it will provide, and how that return will be realized. Not all business are best suited to use the same marketing strategy. For instance, if you have a highly ambiguous product or service that no one knows about, SEO will not help you a whole lot. The reason being is that on one is searching for your product or service. In the land of search, keywords are everything, if no one knows the words to search for your service or product, it won’t matter how good you SEO is. You would have to try and rank for a term that you market is aware of, but will eventually be penalized for not have a site about that topic. In this case, you are better served applying your budget to awareness using Press Release, Social Media, Internet Video, & Pay Per Click.

The difference between SEO ROI and PPC ROI

This part is simple. SEO provides a higher return on investment that PPC does if done correctly, but it takes a  lot longer to realize that return than PPC. Pay Per Click marketing (pay a set fee per visitor from search engines and sites such as facebook) can be seen the day it is implemented. The down side is that once your money is spent, it’s gone. Unless you were able to capture the information of that client during their first visit, the odds of ever seeing a return out of that money is slim. Pay Per Click can be very profitable if done correctly. The secrets to profitablility are taking the time to set up a campaign properly, and understanding the results of that campaign to adjust it over time.

SEO on the other hand can take a while to start giving a return. The difference is often that the return achieved is sustainable over the long term. I often instruct clients to think about listing the costs of their SEO development on land, plant, and long term assets, or whatever they choose to use as long term assets in their finances. The reason for this is that much like making improvements to a building or land, creating internet wide quality backlinks to your site over time holds a real value. Even if your business goes belly up, a high ranking website can be sold forhundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

Social Media ROI

Social Media Marketing can be a great brand building tool if used correctly. The trouble is that it has become the buzz word of 2008 and 09. Everyone has heard it, only some know what it really is, and even fewer know how to use it properly. Return On Investment can be difficult to rate in quantitative monetary terms for social media since it’s best use is to connect with a target audience. It allows large and small firms to engage in relationship marketing on a much larger scale then previously possible. Just know that if you are getting into social media to sell product, you will most likely be ill received unless you are approaching your prospects properly.

Firm Misrepresentation Issues

There is no getting around it. Internet marketing is still very much the wild west of marketing and advertising. Though it has grown from it’s infancy over the past 20 years, it still is cloaked in mystery for most businesses. This allow many firms to unfairly profit of unknowledgable companies for services which are often times drastically ineffective, or even detremental to the business seeking the marketing in the first place. SEO for example is one of the most sought after, and misrepresented service in the internet marketing business. Website design firms have become aware of how profitable the fad can be and tabs about search engine optimization have popped up on website design sites, across the net. Seeing our business grow is a great thing, but there is no regulating body to help companies determine whether or not the firm they are working with actually can achieve successful results. It is not just with the small companies either. Large firms are charging upwards of $150/hour to use parlor tricks to achieve mediocre results for clients.

How To Protect Your Investment

This one is tough for most people. The only way to really ensure  that you are getting your monies worth with online marketing is to become fairly knowledgable yourself. At the very least, you should know what the effects working with a successful firm will bring. Here are just some of the things you should see from an internet marketing firm.

Establishing A Benchmark & Link Profile

They should show you a benchmark for who you are trying to compete with for keyterms in the search results if you are using them for search optimization. This should include the top competitor, the size of their site, and how many backlinks that site has, how old the site is, and several other important factors such as your page rank compared to their’s and the competition in the market. Establishing this, while not perfect, gives you a finite way to measure results on a monthly basis. Since more competitive terms will take some time to reach the top, you should also recieve your websites ranking stats for the search terms you wish to dominate.

Tracking Analytics & Site Traffic

You need to be able to read the analytics reports from your website to see if your website traffic is increasing for the search terms that you are targeting. If they are not within 2 months, it is a fairly good sign that you marketing company has no capability of doing what they said they could do. Be careful not to read to much into the stats however. Search results traffic has a tendency to jump around a lot. Often websites will see a large dip in traffic about a month after they reach the top, only to be put back to the top again.  The point is that if you firm has done their job correctly from the start, you will begin to recieve TARGETED traffic from their efforts. If you do not, what are they their for. You have far less expensive friends.

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Remove A Ripoff Report & Online Reputation Management

May 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment
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reputation_managementIf you own a business, the last thing that you want to see when you google your brand name is a rip off report by an angry client or competitor because they did not get their way. Though some rip of reports are valid complaints, most are just some complaining the world did not bend around them when they wanted something extreme and unjust. The credibility of these so call consumer rip off reports is in heavy debate for the last couple years. The business plan is ingenious. Let consumers make unsubstantiated claims against companies, the person who made the report wants everyone to know how bad the company is so they link to the report and build up the strength of the website, then they charge a fee (very large fee) to remove the company from the list. The trouble is they are consistently showing up in the top search results.

How To Get Rid Of A Rip Off Report?

Unfortunately the only real way to get rid of a rip off report is to pay them to take it off. Given the price and extortionist tactics, this is far from the best option. If you are a search engine optimization specialist, your goal is to knock them down passed the first one or two pages of google for your keyword terms. Since over 95% of the people that use search engines never go past the first page.  This is not a cure all however, sometimes the issue requires other remedies. If for some reason (hope this does not happen) a well known blogger or a larger  website wishes to hurt your good name, you may be in for a little more than a monetary issue.

Often time we have seen companies try to bribe a blogger with money to remove a negative review. This is generally a road to disaster. The blogging community generally has a sense of truthfulness to them, and may feel the need to blast you further is they are offered monetary compensation. Usually the best thing to do is to ask them their opinion on the matter. Ask what they would like to see changed to remove the review. If they suggest money, then you can decide if it is right. The web is full of stories of companies who unsuccessfully bribed a blogger, and ended up be battered exponentially worse than the original review.

How Do You Know If There Is  A Rip Off Report For Your Business?

You can use Google blog search to scour the web for any new mentions of certain keyword phrase. For instance is did a Google blog search for “Orlando SEO” I would know every time the term is mentioned in a article. This is key if you are planning on improving your reputation online. A famous Dell case study explained the impact of this. Dell began looking for mentions of it’s name and would have Dell employee’s respond to comments to see if they help or what they could do better. Within six month negative mentions of Dell online dropped from near 50% of all comments being negative, to just over 20%. That is HUGE!

How Hard Is It To Knock Down A Rip Off Report?

If you are a search engine optimization consultant, it takes some time, but it is not that hard. If you are everyone else, it can be a daunting task. Instead of getting one search result to the top of  list, you need to get 8 or 9 up there ahead of the rip off report. This can be done by traditional SEO methods using link building, but it can take some time depending on how strong the rip off report comes out.

We hope you have found this article helpful. Please leave comment or link back to this page if you found it helpful. You may contact us at 727-410-6165 for help repairing your reputation.

Social Media | Pay Per Click | Search Engine Optimization | Organic Seo | Local Search Optimization | Law Firm SEO | Realty SEO

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Define Content, Your Website, And SEO

April 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment
writing-great-content

writing-great-contentRegardless of what type of website your are looking to have, all great websites have one thing in common. It may not be noticeable at first, but it’s true. Any great website has great “content“. This will undoubtedly lead to another question. What is “great content“? Or, What is “content“? Content can be described simply on a broad scale, as something that fulfills the needs or wants of someone looking for your site. Content can take many forms. For an e-commerce website, it can be clearer pictures that explain the product better than other stores. It can be answers to questions your target audience has, or help tips. The medium of how you deliver content irrelevant. What is important is that it is helpful to your audience, and that they can understand it.

How do your make your content helpful?

This requires two things and only two things. Your content needs to offer something the target visitor wants, is looking for, or would interest the visitor if they new it existed. The second thing is that it needs to be relevant to your target audience. For example, if you have a website that services manufacturers attempting to source products from china, you want to give them information that would help them in the process, but also can be understood by your target audience. Every industry has specialized jargon, acronyms, technical terms, etc. that are not understood by a beginner, but are common knowledge to anyone who has been in the industry for a while. Are your articles targeting those in an industry that already have substantial knowledge, or those looking to get into that industry? This is crucial because the two will result in drastically different content. Keeping this in mind when writing your content and it will go a long way. You will notice on this website, that most of our articles are written explaining concepts in pretty simple terms. This is because our target audience is not industry SEO professionals. We offer internet marketing management services such as SEO , PPC, and website conversion optimization. It would make no sense for us to write articles that are deeply technical for our target audience. Although many would find them helpful, and we do write them from time to time. Our main goal is to establish rapport with potential new clients. We want to be helpful to the person who know’s they need to become competitive in online marketing, but we do not need to overwhelm them with technical jargon. There are plenty of great blog’s for do it yourself SEO. I suggest Seomoz.org if you really wan’t to start the long process of becoming an SEO expert. We do like to give great information at Orland Search Engine Marketing. We just can’t help ourselves.

SEO and your content

Now the you have the right content, it is time to get it seen. SEO to most people is a lot like Golf. If you play Golf you will understand this. Most people become self taught at Golf. They learn how to swing wrong, but then make little adjustments here and there so that they are able to still hit the ball. If you are going to train them the right way they are going to get worse for a little before they get better. Search engine optimization is just like Golf. Most people learning a couple things, hear about long tail keywords, and then go stuff them everywhere they possibly can. I know because that is what I did! Experience can be really helpful.  They then end up getting hit with an over optimization penalty from google. This is where Google decides you are trying to game the system, and you see your website fall out of the index for the terms you were trying to rank for.  After a period of this “over optimization” they get past the glass ceiling and then can use SEO in a helpful way. Organic SEO if done correctly, looks like it was never done at all. There will be no awkward sounding sentences. The keyword phrase will not appear 80 times in one article. Usually for the beginner less is more. Just shoot for using you keywords in your articles a couple times. If you need a tid bit of technical information, add on modifiers to your keywords phrases throughout your articles. Modifiers are those terms that people are most likely to search for along with your main phrase. For example, when it comes to “SEO”, people will use organic seo, cheap seo, affordable seo, orlando seo, seo for small business. Make sure that you get those variations into your articles. Just make sure that your keywords fit the topic.

Great content ideas

I want to make sure that I do not take credit for these, as the ideas have been rewritten all over the net. I just wanted to make them easy to find. If you have another great idea, please feel free to add it in a comment. If it is a good one, I will take it out of the comments, put it in the article and give you a link back to your site.

Top ten lists

People love lists. They always have, and always will. How many times do you think a womens magazine comes up with truly new news, compared to how many headlines about a new way to bust 10 pounds before spring break. They use these things to get you interested. Lists are quick, effective, and people love them. Take some time to make a great top ten list and you are on your way.

Question and answer format

Q and A’s are a great way to get keyword phrases in without sounding akward. On top of that, they provide for a more laid back structure to how the article develops. People find them easy to read because they scan the questions to see if what they were looking for was asked.

How to or tutorial

Everyone loves a free how to. This is one of the strongest forms of content. If you had a problem doing something and have been able to figure it out. Tell people how you figured it out in a step by step tutorial.

Asking a thought provoking question

While the tutorials are there to answer questions, asking a question can be a great way to stir up conversation. Some of the main ongoing conversation in our industry are whether to use white or black hat SEO tactics. White hat SEO is when you play by the rules. Black hat is exactly the opposite. If feel I should put a disclaimer here. Using only white hat is a no brainer if you intend for your website to be around for any length of time. Often times, the people that use black hat tactics have thousands of sites that are used like scrappers. They do not care if a site gets banned. YOU DO! go White Hat. We use 100% white hat tactics.

Feel free to read through our articles and find more great information. If you liked the article, take an action. Leave a comment, link to it, or digg it.

Social Media | Pay Per Click | Search Engine Optimization | Organic Seo | Local Search Optimization | Law Firm SEO | Realty SEO

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