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.

SEO is more than a buzzword. It is a key part of doing business that is here to stay. The business you do on and off the web is affected by how much effort you put into your online marketing efforts.

One recent industry survey found that a very large percent of the respondees did not really understand the purpose of search engine optimization. At the same time a overwhelming majority said they used SEO techniques despite the fact that they really do not understand it and that SEO accounts for a larger percentage of the traffic they get on their websites.

It was also eye-opening to read that more that half of the respondees thought that practices that industry insiders consider to be unethical would bring results. Trying to trick search engines into boosting your rank will not have long lasting results. At the same time, they were also able to recognize ethical and effective SEO practices as well. So this points to a problem of distinguishing between honest SEO practices and ones that are underhanded.

Then again, maybe we should take heart: a good number of business owners actually know what SEO is. Now it is time for our industry to work on educating them about the best ways to increase visibility on the web. If they were totally unaware of any SEO techniques, then we would have that much more work to do.
With this news, we have to say that here are Increase Visibility, although we are the experts, we want you to understand what is going on as we help you plan and administer your online marketing plan.  AS our slogan says, we provide SEO you can understand and results that you can see.

One of the reasons that you do not want to fall for an SEO scam is that not only will you not get results, you will not be any further ahead than you were before. In fact, you may actually be behind because you will have wasted valuable time and money. Signing on with a dishonest SEO firm may also cause you to enact marketing practices that could possibly offend your clients and colleagues.

The other part of the survey that disheartened us was learning that some survey respondees felt they could not afford to get help from an SEO firm. At Increased visibility, we offer different levels of SEO plans and will work with you to tailor a plan to suit your needs.

There are tricks to every trade. On Tuesday, we explained how search engine optimization increases website traffic. SEO employs a proven variety of techniques to attract search engine spiders and maximize indexing of your website into Internet search engine data bases. SEO vastly improves the probability that your site will be displayed on the short list when a consumer inputs a query about products, services or information offered on your website. And that short list is where you want to be. Studies have shown that most consumers never click beyond the first page of search matches. The goal of SEO is to get your site ranked highly enough by Internet search engines to put it as close as possible to the top of the first screen of query responses.

As we mentioned, there are tricks to every trade and SEO is no exception. With more than 20 years of combined experience in search engine optimization and Internet marketing, the SEO experts at Increase Visibility have developed and perfected specific techniques proven to drive maximum traffic to your website. Among the most important of these SEO techniques are keywords, title tags, URLs and linking.

• Keywords. Deciding which words to optimize for search engines is the most crucial and most difficult task in formulating a SEO plan. The words selected as keywords must match those most often used by consumers to search for what you sell. Finding the specific words that are most popular and create the highest search volumes is as much art as science. There are tools that measure search volumes for specific words, but it’s selecting the right combination of highly-relevant keywords that will bring paying customers to your site.
• Title Tags. For successful search engine indexing, the text that appears in the title bar of your browser is the single most important element on your web page. Loading this title tag with keywords maximizes indexing when search spiders crawl your web pages. Each page should have a unique title to ensure indexing. Otherwise it’s like having a shelf of books all with the same title. No one knows they’re different books.
•  URLs. URL structure is equally important. Because search engine spiders crawl URLs much as they do individual web pages, your URL should be constructed to make use of keywords rather than the default numbers assigned by many publishing systems. To avoid confusing search spiders, each page should link to a single URL.
• Linking. The way in which other sites link to yours impacts your search engine ranking. Including keywords in linking anchor text improves search engine rankings. You can encourage this by providing copy-and-paste HTML code for linkers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most effective way to drive traffic to your website. When consumers search for products, services or information on the Internet, Google, Yahoo or whatever search engine they use sifts through millions of websites in its data base looking for the best matches to the query. It ranks those matches according to its particular standards and algorithms and shoots them back to the consumer. While the search engine may produce thousands, even millions, of matches, only about 10 to 12 at a time are displayed on the consumer’s view screen. Most consumers will check out matches on the first page provided and a few will click to view page 2 or page 3. Beyond that, your website might as well not exist. Search engine optimization is like putting bright, blinking neon lights around your website. It tells search engines: “Here I am! Choose me!”

By targeting search engines and the techniques they use to match consumer queries to websites, SEO effectively increases the visibility of your website on the Internet highway, increasing website traffic and bringing more potential consumers to your door.

 

“The typical website gets 61% of its traffic from organic (nonpaid) search engine results, and 41% of all traffic from Google alone,” Christopher Null wrote in a recent posting to PC World’s Business Center blog, “Ensuring that the company’s site ranks highly in search results is, for most businesses, a make-or-break proposition.”

Optimizing your website to consistently gain the attention of Internet search engines requires a multi-dimensional approach that specifically targets your preferred customer base. The goal of SEO is to place your website as close to the top of the results list as possible when a consumer initiates a search related to your business/industry and the products and services you offer. It’s not a job for amateurs. Search engines are constantly changing the way they rank pages to keep up with new developments in computer algorithms, spam avoidance and technology. Web pages need to be re-optimized monthly to keep up and maintain their high rankings.

You can’t count on search engines to simply “find” you. Web pages must be manually submitted to search engines in strict accordance with highly technical guidelines developed and constantly revised to eliminate spam. Experienced SEO firms have also found that it’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket, so they also submit web pages to major directories. Directories are human-edited lists of websites that are also indexed by search engines and included in their query response data banks. Placing your website in major directories increases your opportunity to be cataloged by search engines and discovered by consumers.

On Friday: Specific SEO techniques that improve search engine rankings.

Remember when you were a kid and you went to the store with mom or dad. There was a big sign over the door announcing “Hale’s Hardware” or “Belmont Cleaners” or “Grier’s Grocery.” As you walked in, the shop owner greeted you from behind a high, polished wooden counter. Maybe he chatted with your parent while he walked around his shop, helping your parent find what he came for. They’d exchange a few more pleasantries while purchases were rung up and bagged and you were waved off to the next errand with a cheerful good-bye. Shop owners who were able to create that special personal connection with their customers thrived. People enjoyed shopping in their stores and kept going back.

Even in today’s world of impersonal big-box stores, business owners understand the value of creating a personal connection with their customers. That’s why Wal-Mart employs seniors to welcome you to the store and hand you a cart. It’s the reason someone calls out “hi” when you walk into a Staples or Best Buy. It’s why Target employees walk the aisles asking if they can help you find what you’re looking for. And it’s the reason savvy business owners today have websites.

Websites are like the polished shop counter of the brick and mortar stores of your youth. They’re what greet potential customers as they exit the Internet highway and come in the “door” to your business. The tone of your website content, the ease with which customers can move around your website, the depth of the product information provided, pictures, video feeds, Q&A features, chat rooms, forums – all of these website elements work together to build that highly-prized personal contact with your customers that keeps them coming back.

What many business owners fail to realize is that no matter how fabulous their website, no matter how gleamingly polished their “counter,” customers will never find them without a nice, big, bright “sign” over the door. When you create a website, it comes with an ordinary, little sign, your URL. But there are thousands of URLs out there littering the Internet highway, competing for customers’ attention. It’s search engine optimization that surrounds your sign with bright lights and makes it stand out above your competition. It’s search engine optimization that catches the attention of consumers and leads them to your door.

Next Tuesday: How SEO increases website traffic