SEO
BUILD TARGETED WEBSITE TRAFFIC
“Why use a cannon to kill a mosquito?”
The wisdom of this Japanese proverb unveils the truth about advertising in traditional media such as TV, radio, newspapers and direct mail.
They usually quote their ad rates by CPM or “Cost per Thousand” people, to make the cost easier to digest. What they’re not telling you however is the cost to reach 1000 customer prospects for your business is actually much higher because only a percentage of their audience (often a small percentage) are qualified prospects. These outlets rely on vague demographics in hopes of reaching a specific group of people, but the targeting is often quite limited. Show us a group of 1000 “18 to 34 year-old males” in your city and we’ll show you 1000 different consumers!
Would you advertise retirement packages to teens, or veterinary services to consumers without pets?
It used to be you had to pay to hit tens of thousands of unqualified prospects to meet your advertising goals because there was no alternative. Like the cannon used to kill a mosquito, a lot of firepower (your advertising budget) was wasted.
With the Internet that’s all changed.
Search engine marketing has become the most cost-effective way to reach your customers and offers unprecedented targeting capabilities.
At WSI we use unique tools and business processes, combined with techniques like Web ads, Search Engine Optimization, Guaranteed Inclusion advertising, among others, to ensure your business attracts the highest volume of targeted Web traffic possible.
One of our specialties, Pay-Per-Click advertising which is the leading form of search engine advertising, is the equivalent of a customer-seeking smart bomb. PPC allows you to reach consumers when they are actively searching for your products or services, sending qualified buyers straight to your business.
This is achieved by bidding on specific search terms, or keywords, people use to find things online (your city flowers, tubular steel, women’s shoes, your country molded plastics supply, just to name a few of the countless possible terms a business can bid on). Your ad will show whenever your search terms are used. When a consumer clicks on your ad, you pay the nominal fee you bid on for that search term.
PPC (also known as Pay for Performance advertising), allows for complete control of your costs because you only pay when your ad is clicked on. If your ad is displayed 1000 times and one person clicks on it, you only pay for one click!
Your WSI Internet Consultant will research the keywords for your business that will deliver the most qualified visitor traffic to your website, as well as manage every aspect of your campaign. We’ll also show you how to improve your website’s conversion rate to turn more of your web site visitors into buyers.
Learn more about Customer Conversion in the final step of our ABCs of Internet Marketing Success.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – The Web’s Leading Internet Marketing Strategy
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, has been around since the ’90s when the first webmasters and content providers started optimizing websites for companies. The process involves internet spiders from a search engine, also known as crawlers, to scan a website and store the words, other content, as well as outgoing links in their server. The search engine then already has the appropriate listings of possible websites that contain the keywords that users type in.
According to the Google logs, Google, the most used search engine in the US, has over 2 billion searches a day and has dramatically decreased the use of a phone book.
Most search engines are accessible by cell phones and this phenomenon is putting magazines and phone books slowly but surely in the dark. Many business owners are just not seeing the results they use to get when purchasing a full-page advertisement in their literature. The fact is that the internet has changed the way we experience advertising and many businesses have not taken advantage of it yet, especially SEO. But what is search engine optimization and how can you take advantage of it?
For example: Let’s assume you have a guitar business and have been selling locally in your town and been doing pretty well. Now, let’s assume you heard about the internet and have decided to get an internet store for several thousand dollars and have been trying to sell those guitars and electrical needs via an internet store because you heard your competitor in the city next to you has been selling three times more than you did just through an online store. So you get everything done and online but don’t sell anything for several months and ask yourself: “What am I doing wrong?”
The answer is, you don’t have people on your website, also known as web traffic. How do people know your online stores exist? Now, you could give out some of your business cards and flyers and have the website printed on them right? Well, then you wouldn’t be taking advantage of the true power the internet has. Just the keyword “Cheap Electric Guitars” has been typed 18,100 times in the Google search engine in the last month, according to the Google keyword tool.
Finally, ask yourself, what if you were the #1 result on the result page of your keyword? Just with a 3% conversion rate* you would have made over 500 sales.
Keep in mind that a 3% conversion rate is less than the average conversion and those 18,100 searches a month are also not that high of a search volume in the Google searching world.
Search engine optimization is the most cost-efficient marketing strategy there is out there right now. Unfortunately, too many SEO businesses have come upon the world wide web and many of them not knowing what they are doing and wasting many businesses’ time. It takes a professional business marketing companies with the right SEO and technology experts to help you get it done in the most cost-efficient way possible.
Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the most leading search engines and no one can promise whether they can rank it for certain keywords or not. It is said that Google looks at over 200 factors to decide a website ranking on a result page and these factors change from time to time to help Google users find more accurate results. It takes a professional SEO expert or webmaster to identify these changes on the web and search engines and to bring the information back to the company.
Today, SEO has remained the webs leading business marketing strategy and it is up to the right business marketing and technology consulting firm to guide you through these strategies.
Fraudulent SEO Organisations – Should You Be One Of Them?
All organizations make mistakes, but instances of fraud crop up regularly. Not every mistake is malicious; however, some failures of businesses turn into errors which can lead to loss of reputation and hamper the success of the company. This is where the Services of an SEO specialist are vital. In cases of fraud, the organization itself can be penalized leading to blacklisting of the company.
Here are some of the reasons for you to opt for the services of an SEO specialist organization.
Every company loses something if it does not invest in the services of an SEO specialist. For instance, if you as an owner of a successful business go for the services of a leading consultancy agency, you stand to gain from their knowledge and experience. In the case of a smaller business, a lead generation strategy implemented by your company using SEO can also lead to an increase in customers.
a) Will they guarantee your naming and branding?
Almost every SEO specialist in the UK will provide you with a complimentary marketing register, so you know who you are dealing with. In the case of a smaller company, this information is not so crucial as it may be either debated internally or by your existing consultants.
b) Do they have a specialist team?
A company that has a good reputation in the industry will usually have consultants working with them. Not every company has a team of specialists but you should check to see if it includes a Web Design team or a link-building team. Just having a good team of designers and link builders will not necessarily mean that they know how to optimize or market a website.
c) Do they keep up with the latest trends?
Some SEO companies specialize in orHubpagesand Squidooand are aware of the latest trends. This will mean that your site will be listed on the first page for both single keywords as well as your business-specific keywords and key phrases.
d) Do they know the “rounds”
Search engine optimization is a field that changes regularly and it is important to see a company that has an extensive and current campaign. Not to mention, if they have one of the top listings on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), then it obviously makes the brand stand out and brings more traffic.
One of the main benefits of opting for an SEO specialist is that you can focus on your business and have the time and resources to know your business inside and out. This means that your online marketing is in constant focus and the results will start to show immediately.
One of the main things you should look for in your SEO specialist is experience. Yes, there are plenty of new companies out there who have made their mark on the market and have built a good reputation, but it is important to consider the resources they have at their disposal and whether they are enough for your business to make a mark.
Firms that have been around for a while will have an experienced and loyal clientele and will be able to give you all the necessary guidance and support you need.
e) What have they got to lose?
Always bear in mind that an SEO specialist is reasoned enough for you to make the investment in your brand. These days if you are not on the first page of Google, you are probably not going to be up there for long.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make when implementing a digital marketing campaign is because they are doomed to fail before they start. Many companies have just been constructed with a hurry to market which only involves buying a domain and a website.
Not only is it difficult to see the end result from within these companies but it is even harder to see how they could compete against the big boys who have armed themselves with teams of experts and strong branding.
Other mistakes companies make is thinking that their website is static and that it won’t need an update.
While an updated and renewed website will certainly bring more return traffic, it is important to remember that search engines want to see the website as active as possible.
In addition to this, an SEO specialist will be able to boost the conversion rate of your website from just a visitor to someone who actually might be interested in what you have to offer.
Of course, this is something that you need to be aware of when going to set up your campaign.
Keeping your website dynamic with different types of content, such as video, infographics, and maps, will help you attract more visitors and keep them on your site for longer.
Making an effort to share it with social media such as through delicious, humble master, tweeted or liked, etc would help too.
While there is no guarantee that your website would get on top of Google if you decide to go with the services of a specialist, the above points are some of the ways that they have proven to increase the rank of a website.
How to Choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist Who Will Actually Help You Make Money
Are you looking to get make more sales online? Do you wish you could tweak your website to get more visitors? Are you looking to hire an expert to make this possible?
If you answered yes to the questions above then continue reading. Hiring the wrong expert to help you get more business online can leave you frustrated after having wasted a lot of time or money, even if they tried their hardest.
How could this be?
Before I answer this question let’s go over the four types of experts that you may consider hiring to help you make more money online or with online business promotion and how their expertise could affect your efforts to get more business from the internet.
So, here they are:
- Web & Graphic Designers
- SEO Experts
- Copywriters
- Comprehensive Website Promotion Experts
Let’s discuss what they specialize in and how to use them properly.
Web & graphic designers
They are artists. They create websites out of thin air. They’re very creative. These are the people responsible for flashy websites. They’re masters of adding bells and whistles to your website.
Most websites are designed by these types of experts. But, when it comes to actually attract visitors to your site then their work falls short. It is not their job to promote their website.
Their job is to create a website that is visually pleasing to the owner and that serves a few basic purposes. They don’t specialize in attracting business to their site. And, if you expect them to then you’re in for a rude awakening. Tip: More times than not, pretty looking websites make it more difficult to get high search engine rankings and convert visitors into customers. Sometimes, the simpler the better.
SEO Experts
They provide search engine optimization services. A good SEO expert will generate your top search engine rankings. This is done by making your website search engine friendly and by creating inbound links. If your website is ranked #1 for a given keyword then you should receive about 42% of the visitors who type in that keyword to your site.
There are 2 types of search engine optimization methods to get top rankings. They’re a white hat and a black hat. A white hat is what your SEO expert should do. The black hat may get you faster rankings but search engines frown upon the methods that are used to get those top rankings. When found out, these sites drop in rankings, and sometimes they’re forever banned from search engines. So, stay away from black hat SEO consultants.
Bringing a lot of traffic is not enough. Your website needs to convert your visitors into customers. Most SEO experts specialize in getting you more traffic but when it comes to monetizing your traffic they, also, fall short if they lack copywriting skills
Copywriters
A pretty website and lots of traffic won’t do you much good if you can’t convert them. That’s where copywriters come in. A good copywriter is like an artist with words. They write compelling ad copy that helps convince your visitors to take the desired action. That action may be to pick up the phone and call you, fill out a request online, or make a purchase on your website. While their copy may be very compelling they’re not experts at creating sites and optimizing them to get a lot of traffic.
Let’s pull it all together.
Before you hire any of the above-mentioned specialists to help you make more money online you should consider what your website needs.
Does it need higher rankings?
Does it need better navigation?
Or, perhaps your site is not convincing enough and you’re leaving money on the table due to low conversion ratios.
The first thing you should do is have your entire website audited by a comprehensive SEO consultant who can dissect every part of your site. Your end report will suggest what is working for you and where improvements could be made to help you monetize your website.
Some SEO consultants provide these services at no cost.
Necessity of SEO Friendly Web Development Services
In the recent past, the internet has opened up the floodgates giving unprecedented opportunities to the small and the big business houses to market their brand and services and at the same time exploit the myriad possibilities. Internet, without a doubt, has become the most secure and the most perfect platform for advertising and promoting products. In this regard, business websites are the prime face that carves a prominent presence online. Thus, the business houses focus on the development and designing services of their websites so as to impress the visitors. However, a fully functional website does not end the story, rather, the development process of the websites needs to be search engine friendly. Thus, special emphasis nowadays is put on SEO friendly web development service. A website with SEO friendly design helps the business achieve a dominant position in the online domain.
Website development service, in general, includes all areas of developing a user-friendly web site. Website development includes components such as XHTML, CSS, usability and semantics, programming, server administration, content management, marketing, testing, and deployment. SEO friendly Web Development means optimizing a website in a manner that its visibility is increased it ranks higher in the search engine result pages. SEO friendly website is visible to the search engine robots and is indexed easily, in the process, helps it to list in top ranks in the SERPs.
There are many services associated with search engine optimization such as link building, article submission, link exchange, keyword researching, meta title edit, Pay Per Click Services, and more.
The prospects of the SEO services are huge and Pay Per Click Services are one of the best ways to generate instant traffic. In PPC services, the advertisers need to bid against a set of keywords and the highest bid wins the confirmation of ranking higher in the sponsored listing of the search engine. In Pay Per Click Services, the advertisers need to pay an amount when a user clicks on their links and stays at the website for a certain fraction of time or more. PPC advertising is the sure-shot way of gaining comprehensive exposure in minimum time.
SEO friendly website development usually conforms to the standard coding such as XHTML, HTML, and other similar programming languages. Building external links, creating Meta titles, tags, and descriptions for each page also mark vital parts of web development service. The web developers deal with monitoring the links and content of the pages and upgrading the necessary components on each page. In an SEO friendly web development process, content development and website design play crucial roles.
One of the most significant aspects of SEO friendly webpage development includes inserting text content, text links, heading tags, externally referenced scripts. The SEO web developers also focus on the content of the websites. The web content needs to be keyword rich so as to make the website search engine friendly.
In a broader way, SEO friendly website development tends to enhance web visibility, whereby the enterprises can enjoy a prolific profile, and gain prominent brand recognition. Thus developing a website conforming to SEO basics is mandatory. A website’s worthiness must reflect in all the search engines and attest to the company’s corporate identity. By framing SEO friendly web development strategy, a website can surely attract a number of online users and hence improve their visibility.
White Hat SEO Versus Black Hat SEO?
What is the difference between white hat and black hat search engine optimization? In a nutshell, the white-hat strategy focuses on quality search engine optimization techniques whereas the black hat strategy focuses on unethical or “adversary” tactics to optimize website performance. There are pros and cons to both strategies, so it is important to know what the difference is before making your final decision on which one to use for your own website. We will go over the pros and cons of both strategies and provide you with an SEO comparison chart to help you make this important decision.
The primary difference between the two strategies lies in the methods used to optimize a website. White hat strategies take longer to implement than black hat strategies, but they usually yield more permanent results. With white hat optimization, you will generally need to monitor your rankings on a regular basis in order to keep them consistent. However, in the long run, this proves to be less costly since organic traffic tends to convert better than paying traffic.
Black hat SEO works quite differently. Usually, these techniques will push your website right out the gate with little to no SEO work behind it. This can lead to dramatic surges in traffic after a short period of time, but if your site’s content is not properly optimized, it could take even longer to realize any benefits, if it does at all.
The biggest difference between the two strategies lies in how quickly rankings can be affected. With white hat SEO, you could see an immediate increase in ranking based on the amount of time it takes you to do maintenance such as backlinking and optimizing content. Since most people understand the value of white hat SEO, this shouldn’t be too hard of a concept for most webmasters.
The downside of these techniques, however, is that they have more risk involved in them. While they might help you get onto page one of search results, there’s always the chance that you won’t be able to maintain rankings for long. At the same time, you could find that your competitors are overtaking you just because they used these techniques in a hurry. If these techniques prove unfeasible, you could find yourself with an even worse problem: your competitors are moving up the ranks at record-breaking speeds while you struggle to maintain yours.
In terms of effectiveness, this strategy relies on content. It might seem difficult to make content relevant to the search engines, but if you use the right tools and take the time to write truly useful content, you should be able to succeed. The most basic tool you should use is a keyword relevancy tool. These tools look closely at the words in your site’s URL and rank them based on their relevancy. If the keywords in your niche are all over the place, or nearly so, you will want to revise your approach.
An alternative to keyword relevancy is keyword density, another consideration when thinking about white hat SEO versus black hat SEO. A site that has too few relevant keywords will appear less natural and will likely suffer from low rankings. This is one of the more subtle differences between these two strategies. You need to be sure that you aren’t simply cutting out keywords because you think they’ll make your site more successful. Instead, you should choose keywords intelligently and strategically.
Of course, ranking high in search engines isn’t the only benefit that using these methods will bring you. These techniques are also more reliable since they are less likely to be manipulated or abused. While it might not seem logical that ranking high would equate to more sales, studies show that consumers who are offered the choice between two products (a la Google AdSense) tend to purchase the higher ranking product. While it might not make sense on the surface, the logic behind this strategy makes sense once you look at the results.
Social Media — A Remarkable Opportunity You Can’t Pass Up
Social media has certainly dominated the headlines, and it remains perhaps the most important new frontier in the world of marketing. Inexpensive and seemingly easy to implement, social media is an extraordinarily attractive platform for business of all sizes. With that said, there’s a right way and a wrong way to engage in social media, and you don’t want to be “spinning your wheels” with little or no results. This is where WSI can help!
Social media refers to so-called Web 2.0 technology that doesn’t merely present information, but that allows for user-generated content and community interactivity. You’re no doubt familiar with some of the pillars of social media — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, WordPress blogs, Tumblr, various forum builders, and Google+. Successful social media marketing maximizes customer engagement to foster a sense of community and increase traffic through the “snowball effect” of content/link sharing.
Engagement, Interaction, and Community-Building
As mentioned, social media without a targeted strategy is wasteful, and it may even conflict with the branding and messaging you’ve established with other marketing efforts. Depend on WSI to determine what works and what doesn’t in your social media universe. A results-oriented approach makes your social media content creation efficient and effective.
Consider the advantages WSI’s social media strategy offers:
Value Creation:
User-generated content is inexpensive and yet, if applied and utilized correctly, can create a tremendous amount of value.
Community Engagement:
Enjoy an unprecedented level of access and intimacy with your customer base, and create coveted brand loyalty.
Social Authority:
Consumers are more savvy than ever, and in a 21st century world, the kind of authority, trust, and expertise demonstrated via social media channels is invaluable.
Don’t get left behind. WSI has developed winning social media strategies for small- and medium-sized business owners, and we can do the very same for your organization.
Contact us today to learn more about our social media services.