Some of the advice that is given to job-seekers also works well for companies that want to attract more customers online. You need to do your best to make a good impression because it is rough out there and there is a lot of competition.

There are many companies—both established ones and upstarts—who are out there trying to lure your loyal, longtime customers and get to new customers before you can.

Check your company out on search engines

What is the first link that appears when you search for your company name online? Is it something positive? Does it lead to your website or to someone else’s? When someone types your company name into a search engine, they want to see what is said about you and you want them to have accurate information that speaks to what is great about your organization.

This is why search engine marketing is so important: when you work to make sure that pages on your website attract the notice of Google and other search engines, you can be assured that content you’ve created is what will be seen first.

Check out potential customers

Job applicants have to research potential employers and you need to do some research about customers if you are “applying” to provide them with a service or a product.

Increase Visibility can help you with this with a keyword analysis that will tell you the words people are using when they go online to search for companies in your field.

We can also analyze your website to give you vital information about which pages are visited most frequently and how much time internet users spend on these pages. These are things you need to know if you want to improve search engine optimization and attract more customers.

In order to improve Your Site SEO , you need to make certain that titles for each page of your website contain important keywords. To do this, you may need to get rid of filler words (the, and, an, of, etc.). You want to minimize these words while ensuring that your page title still makes sense.

There are times when “the” really is not necessary; why not replace it with a keyword that will improve your chances of getting noticed by search engines, which in turn will improve your chances of being noticed by prospective clients and customers?

Your page title is very important because it is what people see when they look at a certain page. It is also visible in the bar that is at the very top of a web browser. You never noticed that, you say? Take a little time to visit a few of your favorite sites and check out the page titles.

As we mentioned, the better your page title, the more likely that search engines will notice you. And since it is the function of a search engine to make introductions and act as a go-between for you and internet users, you need to grab their attention.

So not only do you want to make sure that your page titles are keyword-rich, you also want to make sure that you lead with the words that people are likely to type in first while searching for an organization like yours.

If a business called “Grandma’s Attic” sell homemade quilts and blankets, then those items should come first in a page title. An SEO-friendly page title would be “Homemade Quilts and Blankets–Grandma’s Attic” and not “Grandma’s Attic Makes Some of the World’s Best Homemade Quilts and Blankets” because you want the main search term to be first to boost Your Site search engine positioning.

We know that you know your industry, your products and perhaps even your customers inside and out. However, can you name the top three keywords that internet users type in when searching for the kinds of products and services that you offer?

Even if you have an accurate profile of your ideal customer, you still may not be aware of how those who do not fit that profile think. It is great to know your ideal customer, but when it comes to sales you want to reach as many as possible, even those demographics that you think will not be interested. This is why keyword analysis is so very important. Getting expert help in determining the search terms that internet users type in to find you can make all the difference to your online marketing campaign, which in turn can have a great impact on your bottom line. This is where Increase Visibility can be of great assistance: We offer a comprehensive industry-specific linguistic research including keyword/keyword phrases and keyword/keyword phrase stemming analyses. Increase Visibility will identify the searching behavior of your industry’s prospective customers/clients. Armed with this data, we then develop effective search engine friendly web pages to use for attracting targeted, high converting consumer/clients to your web site.

Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. That might have worked for Romeo and Juliet, but it doesn’t exactly work when it comes to search engine optimization. If you website does not contain the words that customers type in when they have your kind of company in mind, then there will be a disconnect. Potential customers that might otherwise have considered your organization, will instead be directed to the websites of other companies because your company will not appear in their search results and you do not want that to happen.

If you are running a small business, please do not think that search engine optimization is just for the big guys–firms with thousands of employees and offices all over the country or all over the world. Sure, international conglomerates certainly do need to make the most of their web presence, but so do you.

There may be someone across the country who would love to purchase your gourmet cookies, rare car parts or made-to-order handicrafts, but they cannot because they are not aware that of your business and all that it has to offer.

And not to scare you or anything, but there are any number of small businesses that are offering items that are similar to yours. What you have unique to be sure, but if someone does an online search and comes across something in a similar vein and they have never seen your products, they will not know that they are missing out on the real thing.

This is where Increase Visibility can help. We know you have great things to offer and with the holiday season fast approaching, we know you want to get your name out there and your products in front of as many people as possible.

We recommend a two-tiered approach that involves organic search methods like building link popularity and using social media with paid advertising. While organic search marketing can take time, we can get you started with a pay per click ad program that will advertise your business right away. It is possible that in a few days, you could see an increase in online traffic.

We have three different Pay Per Click packages; they can be purchased separately or are also included in our full SEO packages. The packages differ in terms of keywords. The higher the level, the more keyword terms will be promoted. No matter the package you choose, you will be included in the major pay per click search engines and get monthly click-thru reports from Increase Visibility so you can see who has been visiting your site.

Earlier in the week, we looked at why good organic search engine optimization is not really the same thing as advertising.  With organic search, you have an ever-present internet store window display. We mentioned that while advertising certainly has its place, it is kind of like the old movies where a little more stands out on the sidewalk trying to entice people to by newspapers by yelling “Extra! Extra!” At some point, that little boy will get tired or need to go home.

And when it comes to people just walking by, you may not mind if certain people don’t pay attention because you are not selling papers by volume as the little boy is. With organic search optimization, you have tailored your internet store window with a certain kind of customer in mind. That person will not be able to resist stopping in for more. This is exactly what you want–you want internet users who are interested in what you have to sell and disposed to purchase or at least start to form a connection with you and your products to be drawn to you.

But you may be thinking–how do I know who that person is? If you haven’t already analyzed your ideal web consumer, let Increase Visibility help. We can analyze your web traffic to tell you who is already visiting your site, who is staying and what time they are spending on what pages, among other things. We can also look at your website to see if you are making effective use of the those pages. For example, if it seems that your target customer is not interested in perusing page after page, we can advise you on how to streamline your website.

Increase Visibility offers a free website analysis. We can run this free analysis and provide you with a free ranking report and it will not take forever to complete. This is a service for which most companies charge $399 or more. This will allow our trained technicians to see what the search engines see and determine what needs to be done to improve the success and top positions of your website. An experienced search engine consultant will email you the findings within 24 hours of your request and then contact you to discuss your options and how we can help you increase your revenue this year from your company website.

When they consider getting the word out about your goods and services, some companies just lump any effort to do this under the broad banner of advertising. And since we specialize in looking at search terms and keywords as part of our work, we want to be just a little bit picky about that. While it is okay for internal documents if your search engine optimization efforts are thrown in the budget under the banner of advertising, it really does not pay to think of SEO as advertising.

No doubt you have seen footage of newspaper boys standing on city sidewalks yelling, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” Sometimes that is all they yell; other times they go on to throw out a tantalizing tidbit from the news, one that they hope will entice someone to buy a copy of the paper. In some ways, advertising means that you are paying money for the form in which that little boy stands out and yells: is he on a busy or deserted corner, does he yell in English or some other language, is the tidbit that he is giving based on facts or gossip.

When it comes to SEO you are not so much employing someone to yell for you, as you are doing your best to lure people to your website based on what you have to offer. Good SEO is more like the display in the store window that the little boy is standing in front of as he tries to sell those papers. If the display is artfully done, it will bring people into the store. If not, they will barely notice it can just keep walking by. While you may have sought help in creating your display, it is not the same as employing someone to continually shout your praises. The store window is visible day or night and does not have to go to bed.

Effective organic search optimization techniques work for you day and night, rain or shine. It does not matter if your customers are early risers or night owls, they will not have to be awake at a certain time to hear or see your ads. They will not have to decide to pick up one magazine or one phone directory versus another. Because no matter what other media they may choose to read, you can safely assume that the vast majority of the people you want to reach use the internet.

For more information on SEO call Increase Visibility at 1-877-SEO ADVICE (877-736-2384).

Sometimes it pays to get back to basics. We do not want to assume that everyone who comes to our website is fully versed in what search engine optimization (SEO) is or that it can mean for their presence on the web.

We all hear so much about the web, web 2.0, and search engines that it is hard to believe that some of these terms and concepts are still in their infancy. The term SEO has only been around since about 1996. And like most infants, the web is continually growing and changing, so what may have worked last year, may not bring the same results today. This is why organizations employ the services of a firm like ours. Increase Visibility can stay on top of your website positing so that you can take care of the day-to-day concerns of your business.

To optimize anything is to improve or make it better. If you have a website you rank somewhere…but where you want is what makes the big difference. If you are at the bottom of the pile, you are there…but the customers you are hoping to reach will not see you.

Search engine optimization is a multi-step process. Our work includes correcting your existing HTML and Meta tags so that they are read correctly by the search engine spiders. We also analyze what key words your prospective customers are most likely to use, develop new Web pages (rich in content that gets the attention of search engines and web users) that feature these words. Part of our work also includes submitting your site to search engines. In addition to those things, we utilize more traditional traffic-generating strategies, such as making sure you’re included on key Internet and industry-specific directories, for instance.

Visit our website and take a look at our SEO Plans. If you find that you have a lot of questions, do not hesitate to give us a call at 1-877-SEO-ADVICE (877-736-2384). We are happy to speak with you and we do not mind explaining what it is that we do. You seem that is what separates a legitimate SEO firm from the less-than-honest ones: are they willing to be open and honest about their work? At Increase Visibility we will not ask for a fee and keep you in the dark. We want you to understand how we can improve your web presence so that you will be able to recognize the signs of growth.

All search engines are not created equal (as you probably already know). For the most part you want to get the attention of big search engines such as Google, but it does not hurt to be aware of the other search engines out there.

Metasearch engines
With a metasearch engine (Dogpile, Webcrawler), you can search more than one search engine at a time. Many experts will tell you that metasearch engines really do not give better results than looking up a term in just one search engine. Web users figured this out even without expert advice and just tend to go straight to their favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo!, etc.). We mention metasearch engines to tell you that they are not an area where you need to focus since the replicate the results of the search engines you are already wooing.

Local search engines
On the other end of the spectrum, are search engines that do not aggregate results from different sources, but instead concentrate on one specific region. An example of this would be the Yahoo! Yellow Pages, which will look up terms as they relate to a particular area and not do a worldwide search for a particular term. Some global search engines have the technology in place to incorporate the location of the web user into the search, so someone in the United States looking for a tailor in Birmingham, will not be given listings for tailoring shops in Birmingham, England, but shops in Birmingham, Alabama.

Specialty search engines
Various industries have their own search engines as well, narrowing down the field of possible results. One rather prominent example of this is Technorati, which is a search engine for blog content.

No matter where you are trying to fit into the range of search engines, Increase Visibility can help you stand out and get noticed. Contact us today at 877 SEO ADVICE (877 736 2384) and visit our website to learn more about our SEO plans.

We can help you increase your online sales, qualified traffic and general business exposure through our quality search engine optimization programs. Because you are not making the most of your web presence if search engines don’t even know your name. Each one of our search marketing programs include full website optimization and we make sure to custom design a program to fit your specific needs based on your target industry and your marketing goals.

On Tuesday, we talked about how sometimes you can find yourself disappointed with the results of an advertising campaign (If Advertising Hasn’t Worked, Try SEO). The rise of our internet culture put the power of choice into consumers’ hands. Really, the choice to buy or not to buy always rested with consumers, but some companies mistakenly believed that they could lead or sway consumers by blanketing the world with advertising.

The fragmentation of the media means that people are not watching one of three news channels during dinner at 6pm or deciding between a few major magazines. Now, everybody is looking for messages and products that are tailored specifically for them. And although it sounds chaotic, this is actually a good thing. Your next paying customer is not expecting you to knock on his or her door. They are actively seeking you. It is up to you to make sure that this person can find you.

People still tend to go with the recommendations of friends, relatives and sometimes even strangers. While search engines are not something people would call “a trusted friend,” they still pay a lot of attention to what search engines have to say about the companies in a certain field. A search engine basically makes recommendations based on the information that it has gathered after combing the internet. It takes the search terms that internet users type in and compares them to what it has found on various websites, looking for the closest match. Search engines also take into account how many other internet users have looked at various sites too. While this is a very simple breakdown of what search engines do, you can see how they act to recommend websites and why you need to get their attention.

Increase Visibility can analyze your website to see if you are using the kind of keywords that will lead eager customers to your site through the various search engines. If you are the best in the world, but they cannot find you, this does you no good. You want to make sure that customers can find you based on common themes.

At Increase Visibility we work to get you in place to be seen by those searching eyes. And to reach those human eyes, you first have to get the attention of search engines. We will determine the keywords that will get you noticed, implement these keywords as part of an SEO plan and report back to you with the results.

We recently came across a very interesting article on organic placement by a professional who was not in our field, but yet this person made a compelling case for search engine optimization. He was actually advising his colleagues to invest in getting help with SEO and organic search placement. According to this professional, one of the reasons that advertising does not necessarily bring in the expected yield is that we have all become savvy editors for ads, much in the same way a Tivo can extract commercials.

This man remembered the 1970s when direct mail was all the rage. Apparently he once had a forward-thinking boss, who even in pre-Internet days, spoke to him about the limited power of advertising.

You can do all kinds of research and go crazy trying to lure people to your website or online store, only to find that they continually pass you by. So what do you do? You get the customers to come to you. And you can do this using organic search placement. . If you have spend a lot of money trying to come up with clever slogans and enticing messages only to wonder if that money could have gone elsewhere, why not try to make the most of your web presence through search engine optimization.

Rather than plastering the world with advertising and playing the numbers game, you can be in place so that interested customers come to you seeking the products and services that they already know that they want. Once they see that your organization is a top of line supplier of what they are looking for, they will not need to be primed to take action, because they will already be set on making a purchase.

Simply visit our website and fill out a form for a free website analysis. This will allow Increase Visibility’s trained technicians to see what the search engines see and determine what needs to be done to improve the success and make certain that your website is at the top of the list when people search for terms related to your industry. An experienced search engine consultant will email you the findings within 24 hours of your request and then contact you to discuss your options and how we can help you increase your revenue this year from your company website.