Archive for the ‘Search & Marketing’ Category

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It wasn’t all that long ago that people in my industry had to convince business owners of the value of going online. For the most part those days are past. I think the value of the web has proven itself more than we can possible realize. Today I can pay bills, stream movies, schedule and even watch my DVR from anywhere in the world, so long as I have internet access. Getting your business online isn’t just about making money–it’s about accessibility.

Even if your business as little commercial viability online, having an accessible website allows people to learn more about you, your products or services, what types of things you do, what you believe in and care about, and how to contact you if needed. It’s about allowing people to come to you instead of pushing yourself on to them that is typical of most forms of advertising.

If you run a business of any size and you still have not made the jump to the Web, why not? If you know your business can make money online, (i.e. you sell an in-demand product or service) then investing money to build your web presence is almost a no-brainer. The question then becomes, how to do it right so you can be profitable.

If you run one of those niche businesses where online success isn’t a certainty, there is still value in being online. There is also value in investing in a bit of marketing in order to make sure your site can be found by those looking to find you, even if they just seek information.

Regardless if your business that can make a profit online or if the site’s just another way to provide information to the public, there are a few things that you’ll want to consider when budgeting for your website’s success.

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In the first six parts of this series we asked questions related to in-sourcing your search marketing efforts. Specific areas addressed were for those considering doing SEO themselves, subbing out SEO to another person, and hiring an in-house SEO with and without SEO experience. In Part V we addressed issues of outsourcing your SEO campaign completely, asking questions regarding related to hiring an SEO consultant vs. hiring an full-fledged SEO firm.

In this installment we move into the realm of pricing and asking questions related to costs versus return on investment. When outsourcing your SEO to a firm or consultant it becomes a bit more difficult to control costs than it does when you hire-in house. But that’s not to suggest that cost cannot be controlled and you cannot get a return on investment. It’s all a matter of knowing how to manage the campaign, expectations and the budget that goes along with it.

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This is a continuing series of questions that need to be asked before you engage in any kind of SEO strategies or services. We started in Part I with questions that need to be answered if you in-source your SEO campaigns, specifically addressed questions about doing it yourself. In Part II we continued the in-sourcing line of questioning but addressed issues of splitting the work between you and another party. In this installment we’ll expand the in-sourcing line of questioning further, looking at the questions regarding hiring a dedicated SEO to bring into your company.

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Though extremely minor, Google posts another month of loss after what was a steady increase. I don’t expect that to hold but it’s something, especially in light of MSN posting its best numbers in three months.

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Monday I was interviewed by Jennifer Evans Laycock and Ross Dunn on Webmaster Radio. Aside from me talking over Ross quite a bit I think it all went well.

The topic of the show is SEO 101 so Jennifer and Ross asked me about my SEMMY winning article, Best Damn Webmarketing Checklist, Period. We talked a bit about things we look for first when optimizing and what might be most important in terms of architecture and usability.

You can listen to the SEO 101 Interview here.

When was the last time you ran a search for your own, or your company name on Google? If you’re interested in how you rank amongst your peers, you might find it interesting to check it out. Do you monitor your reputation?

Searching a name as uncommon as Stoney deGeyter, you may not be surprised to find him in all of the top ten results, but each and every one of the top one hundred results are either articles Stoney has written himself or are about him. I stopped checking after page 10.

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Google show’s a slight decline to the benefit of Yahoo and MSN. It would be nice to see if this trend can be sustained, but I suspect it won’t.

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Over the last few months I’ve become a convert to Google. I’ve always used Google as my primary search engine but only recently have I started using a few other Google products such as Gmail, calendar and documents. I’m a fan.

But when it comes to search, I’m fed up with Google’s dominance. We could use a little competition in search.

Of course, it’s really not Google’s fault that they run between 50-70% market share, depending on who you ask. It’s really the fault of all of us searchers. We use Google because we like the results. We don’t use Yahoo or MSN because for whatever reason we feel the results are inferior.

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I attended ion Interactive’s “Extreme Makeover: Landing Page” series this week. On Wednesday landing pages for lead generation were addressed, then today landing pages for transactions were covered. I found both of these webinars provided good information, however I felt they weren’t much different from each other. The advantage for attending both was that I was able to see/view more examples.

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Since movies can wait 10 or 20 years to produce a sequel, I thought that it wouldn’t be so out of sorts writing a sequel to a post from 2002. Back then, Google was the rising star, there was a lot more competition in search and GoTo dominated the PPC market. Only a few things have changed since then.

Six years ago I wrote a post about what I wanted from Christmas from the search engines. I thought it would be a good time to revisit what I asked for back then, whether it happened or not, whether I really wanted it (20/20 hind site) and perhaps ask for a few new things.

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