SEM

Search Engine Optimization Consulting – Dallas, TX

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Consulting for search engine optimization (SEO) can be a daunting task.  In order to be a good consultant in any industry, you must first properly set expectations.  It is going to be a much healthier relationship with potential and recurring clients if your goals are outlined and well described from the outlet.

About 8 months ago I left SEO consulting behind here in Dallas.  I Decided to focus my efforts full time working for a telco at the INFOMART.  I have to say that this has been a very pleasurable experience and I hope to continue my relationship with this company for a long time to come.  By taking a risk and leaving my consulting role, I have learned many new skills outside of Search Engine Marketing and Optimization and have a much wider marketing skillset that has expanded in to print and media buys.  I love the challenge of learning something new, but my number one joy is still seeing the pages I create or help optimize showing up on the first page of a google SERP.

Remember when choosing the right SEO for your website or company to work with someone  you trust and can relate to.  Avoid blackhat shops or anyone who makes guarantees or sets unrealistic timetables.  SEO and SEM are quantitative processes that don’t change over night.  Patience with SEO and all business is a virtue.

I am also working on a couple new and exciting projects that I hope to discuss more in the future on this blog.  I want to see if some new techniques in SEO are favorable to the Google Instant search while still implementing long-tail.

PPC Marketing vs Search Engine Optimization

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I recently wrote a series of blogs for the company I work for.  I have changed it up a little but, but the general post follows –

Pay Per Click Marketing, unlike Search Engine Optimization, is a paid approach to search engine advertising.Companies pay the major search engines for placement in the sponsored links sections typically on the top and right hand side of the search engine results pages (SERPs.)The placement of a company’s sponsored ad depends on a Quality Score derived by the search engines based on the quality of content on the company website, the context of the ad, and the amount a company is willing to pay per position. For the most part, the business model works well for the search engines, advertisers, and potential customers.Unfortunately, there are a couple of glaring issues with search engine marketing.

The first issue with PPC is that there is a 95 character limit on ads for paid search.It is nearly impossible to offer product differentiation from company to company when confined to 95 characters.This makes ad copywriting a very creative and difficult task, as you need to find a way to provide relevant information as well as your value prop in a very confined space.To add a little perspective, twitter, which some view as restrictive, allows a tweet to be up to 140 characters.

The second issue with PPC is the persistent rise in cost per lead acquisition. Many companies are competing for the same piece of the proverbial pie and offer very similar products.This competition especially in paid search is continually driving the cost per click higher on the top industry keywords.Over the past year, we have seen as much as a 50% increase in cost per click for higher converting keywords.This directly increases the cost per acquisition across the industry and as each company tries to spend more to outbid the opposition for better positioning, costs continue to increase.Unfortunately, there is no short term solution for this cyclical increase in online advertising.Unless each of the company’s marketing managers and directors get together and put a cap on online spending (hint, hint), advertising spend will continue to increase until the cost per lead and cost per click reach equilibrium and the model implodes.

Obviously, Google loves this type of competition.If the statistics are correct and Google receives 90% of their revenue from Paid Search advertising, then it is absolutely no surprise why they have a market cap of nearly 150 billion and growing.I see no end in sight as long as this type of advertising continues to be beneficial to both Google and the advertisers who are using their AdWords platform.

Even though Google is the alpha dog and has a commanding lead in search traffic across the board, we have seen success in utilizing Bing and yahoo for paid search advertising.Both secondary search engines have a substantially lower cost per click and still drive a considerable amount of traffic to our website.

Although there are major issues with PPC, this advertising platform isn’t all bad.The company I manage PPC for sees quality leads come through our paid search campaigns on a daily basis.You, too, should work to gain market share with online advertising, and try out various PPC techniques to increase your quality score and gain competitive advantage.

Landing Page Design: Exhale Mind Body Spa

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Exhale Mind Body Spa 

yourthinkbox.com was hired to design the landing pages for a new PPC campaign that exhale spas are running.  We expanded the standard format to the 960 golden grid system, customized pictures, formatting, and created better calls to action for the New York spa locations.  These simple steps help build Quality Score and PageRank, which will help the SEM camapign perform much better.  On top of that, we are implementing additional SEO tactics to help boost exhale spa increase organic ranking.

 Please feel free to click the link on the left and review our design of this fantastic landing page.

Tutorial: How to easily create a Google Map for SEO Part 1

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This is going to be Part 1 of a 2 Part tutorial.  In this tutorial, I will go over how to do an easy coordinate based Google Map.  In Part 2, I will create the same Map using the very friendly KML system.

There are already a ton of tutorials online on how to learn coding for creating Google Maps using the API.  I am a firm believer that once the wheel has been invented, there is no reason to reinvent it, just modify as you deem necessary.  This is going to be a short tutorial on how to create a multiple location Google Map with as little coding as necessary.  

If you want to learn more about the Google Maps API and learn, I recommend starting at the source: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/

Now that you’ve reviewed that and have a basic understanding of how everything works, I will show you how to create a great google map in a short time.

Step 1:

The first thing you need to do is get a unique map key directly from google here:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

This key is free, but if you plan on having more than 500,000 pageviews a day, Google needs to be notified to allow additional provisioning. 

Once you have the key, open up notepad and paste and save the key.  You will need this later. 

Congratulations, you have just completed the most difficult part for this example.

Step 2:

The second step in your Google Map creation is to convert all of your addresses to latitude and longitude coordinates.  Luckily for us, this wheel has already been perfected.  All you need to do is visit http://www.batchgeocode.com/lookup/

Now, put in your addresses one by one and copy the coordinates to a file. (obviously keep track of which coordinates are directed to each address)

Step 3:

The Third step is just as easy as the second.  This time you will go to http://mapmaker.donkeymagic.co.uk/

On this website, all you need to do is put in the coordinates for each location.  From there, give each marker a name, and add your additional content.  The amazing thing about the additional content is that you can include html tags including links.  

From there, all you need to do is click get javascript and paste this content into whatever website you need.  Obviously, there will be some modification of the code to make it fit your site.  

*This is where you will need to replace your Google Maps API key in the system with the key for your unique domain. 

Now, you have a great google map!  If you did everything correctly, you have all address information, phone numbers, and relevant content in one simple and concise tool that utilizes one of Google’s best products.  

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will respond and alter this tutorial to be as thorough as possible.

In Part 2, I will show you how to create a map utilizing SEO standards to boost you up the organic listings.

 

As with all online services, please review the individual websites terms & conditions and if you can, donate to these guys.  The put a lot of hard work into this system to allow us to create these maps with such easy.  Give them a little payback.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising

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Advertising for your business can be a difficult process.  Google, Yahoo, and MSN all offer their own respective options for Search Engine based advertising.  Personally, I prefer using Adwords as it is the most comprehensive, popular, and even yahoo is starting to roll it out on their website. 

Pay-Per-Click advertising is pretty straight forward.  A company designates a certain area of the webpage for advertising.  From there, a company trying to advertise will setup campaigns with one of the big 3 search engines.  The Search Engine will then determine what ads are relevant based on the content of a website and show the closest relevant ads.  For every ad that is clicked,  the company must pay a predetermined amount. 

In Adwords, a company can setup the maximum budget for a day or for a month.  From there, Google’s system will actually determine the amount of times the ad will show and can even spread it out throughout the predetermined time.  This software is very robust and offers many different options.  The enduser can see which keywords have the best conversion percentage and even chose keywords to avoid. 

There are also other methods that include Nextag, Revsense, and others.

Small Business SEO and SEM in a Recession

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During the last year, a lot of businesses have been making cuts in all aspects of their respective operations.  For an online enterprise, Search Engine Optimization is one area that should not catch the ax of cost cutting and I will explain why.

During this period of Economic uncertainty, Big Businesses are taking sweeping cost cutting measures.  Companies like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Frito Lay, can afford to make these online marketing cut backs because of one thing – Brand Recognition. These Fortune 500 companies have created recognizable world wide brands.  Even if the company isn’t advertising, the products are advertising themselves.

Although there is uncertainty, this is the perfect time for smaller businesses to seize control of their online destiny.

With larger companies making cut backs – specifically in online marketing.  Small companies in every industry can take advantage of the downsizing and use combinations of optimization and search engine marketing to reach out to customers that were previously unattainable.  

In the words of Mark Cuban, “I want the risk and I want the gain.”  In all business, there will be risks.  Right now, while many people are hunkering down in this storm of uncertainty, those who are willing to take a chance to expand their business are likely to see success.  Yes, the opportunity for failure is present, but the fruit of victory tastes much more sweet.  

If you are in a business that can see increased revenue in these uncertain times by investing online marketing, you may want to take that risk… you could see a great reward.