Beat Recession with SEO
Recession-Proof Your Business with SEORecession and economic slowdown is a fact of life as we face more uncertainties in the coming years. The sharp downturn in the economy, both nationally and in the Minneapolis St Paul area, has forced businesses to search for the most cost-effective marketing strategies possible to stay afloat. Those who succeed will survive and even thrive. Those who stick with obsolete and ineffective marketing strategies will shrink or fold. There's no longer any question that a strong website Search Engine Optimization strategy is critical to small business survival. Stubborn reliance on expensive Yellow Pages ads and increasingly ineffective media advertising has been the downfall of far too many businesses. The website is now the key tool for attracting new customers and retaining old customers, and SEO is a crucial element in that strategy. Just having a well-designed web site isn't enough. If people don't visit your website, your investment in web-design and hosting is a waste of your shrinking marketing budget. Attaining a good return on investment depends on getting potential customers' eyes on your website. That's where SEO comes in. SEO Brings The Customers to YouHow do potential customers find your website? They do it the same way you find websites: They use internet search engines, and they use Google by a huge margin. Search Engine Optimization is the key in getting your website to the top of the search results when people search for your type of business in the Minneapolis St. Paul Metro area or nationwide. With properly implemented SEO strategies, common search phrases specific to your business type will lead searchers right to your website. While that sounds simple enough, appearances are deceiving. It's not simple at all. Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to rank websites, based on keyword frequency and placement, along with many other factors. Google's rankings are also based on other criteria they hold close to their vests. Old SEO techniques that worked at one time are now screened out by Google. Some so-called "Black Hat" SEO techniques used by SEO scam artists can lead to sites being banned from search results. Only carefully designed SEO strategies, based on extensive research and SEO expertise, will lead to top placement in search results. Bogus SEO "experts" and SEO websites that promise miraculous results at cut-rate prices just can't deliver the goods. They could even harm your website's search engine results. Make no mistake: Your competitors are using SEO techniques right now. If their websites end up at the top of results and yours is way down the page or, worse, not even on the first page of search results, your customers will find them, not you. Your Investment in Quality SEO Makes the DifferenceYour business deserves the most expert, most experienced SEO consulting available. An effective SEO strategy requires up-to-date understanding of search engine ranking algorithms, proper implementation and continuing evaluation over time. Enlisting a top-of-the line SEO consulting company isn't the cheapest solution, but it pays off in bringing more customers into your business. That means success in today's recession and tough market environment. Check out our latest SEO Insider's Tip on CMS Optimization: Minneapolis CMS SEO
SEO Marketing
SEO Can Make Your Business ThriveWhatever type of small business you run, you know that old marketing and advertising methods just aren't as effective as they used to be. With your marketing budget tight, spending up to $5000 per month for a half-page Yellow Pages ad makes less and less sense. Expensive newspaper display ads also reach fewer potential customers every year. Costly internet "inDEXes" and "Directories" just don't deliver the goods. Today, your website is the key to informing current customers and attracting new ones. But, can potential customers actually find your carefully-designed website? All too often, they can't. Solving that problem is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does. Think about how you look for a business to serve your needs. If you're like 71% of internet users, you head for Google and search. If you don't find what you need on the first page of Google results, you modify your search query until what you're looking for shows up at the top of the results page. Your customers and potential customers are doing the same thing. Search Engine Optimization is a specialized set of techniques that customizes your website to show up at the top of Google and other search engine search results. Fine-tuned to your type of business, location, and using research into how potential customers use search engines, an SEO optimized website leads searchers to your website by getting top spots on search results pages. SEO for Maximal ExposureOnce upon a time, physical location was the prime consideration for small businesses. Today, the prime consideration is virtual location in search engine results. Where your business's website shows up when web-users use the most-likely search phrases is a make-or-break factor in your visibility. Unless your site pops up at or near the top of the first page of search results, you simply won't be noticed. If a competitor shows up in that location, that business gets the click-through. An effective SEO strategy for your website helps give your website top billing in search results whenever potential customers use common search terms. When it comes to getting people to your web site, quality SEO isn't just a good idea … it's a must! SEO Is NOT an Amateur's GameWhile Search Engine Optimization sounds simple, it's not a job for amateurs or fly-by-night SEO firms. The internet is littered with SEO scams. Some guarantee your website top search results cheaply, then use search phrases that nobody would ever type into a search engine to accomplish that. Some unethical SEO firms, use tricky techniques that were effective years ago but that have been screened out by Google and other search engines. You pay plenty, but get no results. Worse, Google may even block your website from all search results if these spam techniques are used for your website. Some small business owners believe they can implement SEO on their own. That almost never works. Implementing effective SEO is a specialized skill. The same thing applies to letting a web designer try SEO. Web designers are excellent at creating effective and attractive web sites, but most know little about SEO or use outdated and ineffective techniques. Finding an SEO Consultant in Minneapolis St PaulYou need careful, expert planning for an SEO transformation of your web site. A reputable SEO consulting firm will research keywords and search terms that will actually be used by your potential customers and will implement those into your web site and other internet activities to drive your web site to the top of search results. You'll get results, not just promises. Your business is in the Minneapolis St Paul. Try a Google search for " Minneapolis SEO" or " SEO MN" An effective SEO service company for the Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota should be able to position its own web site at the top of results for that search. If they can't, how can they help you with your own SEO needs? Call us today at (612) 991-5678 and let us provide a Free SEO Analysis of your company's web site. We can help your site get the same kind of results we get for our own business.
Understanding SEO
Over the past decade, business owners have learned that their website is the prime mover in driving new and continuing customers to their business. Costly advertising in Yellow Pages, and newspapers has taken a solid back seat to effective search engine marketing. With increasing competition on the internet, making your web site the go-to site for your type of business has never been as important to success. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term you've heard over and over again. Understanding what SEO is and how it helps your business should be a critical concern for you. Myths and outdated information about SEO are stumbling blocks to making SEO work. Search Engine Optimization IS All About The SearchSearch Engine Optimization simply means using a series of techniques to make your website appear at or near the top of the first page of search results. Google is the primary search engine today, with a whopping 71% share of internet searches, and SEO focuses on putting a website at the top of Google Searches. If SEO works in Google, it also works in other search engines. When internet users go to Google, they type in words that describe what they're looking for. These keywords and phrases affect the results they see. Often, a search doesn't lead to the desired results, so users alter the search until they find what they want. For example, searchers looking for SEO services in Minneapolis might type "SEO company" into Google. The result page will return generic sites from SEO companies around the world. So, they add other words to their search, like location, and get closer to what they want. Eventually they type in something like " Minneapolis SEO company" and get a list of businesses in their own area. Typically, a searcher then clicks on the first results that fit his needs. If your website isn't one of the top sites on the search, your competitor's site will get the click-through and probably the searcher's business. SEO HistorySearch Engine Optimization came to the internet marketing arena with the beginning of internet search engines. About 10 years ago, it was easy to get your website high on search engine results. There were few competing websites, so simple strategies worked. Today, with over a billion websites, getting your website at the top of search results is a daunting task. As search engines grew more sophisticated, early techniques for optimizing search engine results not only lost effectiveness, but were screened out when search engines like Google implemented sophisticated algorithms to rank websites. Keyword stuffing, keywords in invisible text colors, phony link engines, and other techniques no longer work. In fact, Google often bans sites that use these techniques from appearing in search results. Getting your site to appear at the top of common search engine queries is a sophisticated scientifically based process. It involves research into query psychology, analysis of competing websites, keyword placement, and more. SEO Works Only When Managed by ExpertsSearch Engine Optimization can get your Minneapolis St Paul business at the top of search engine results, but only when implemented by experienced SEO engineers. It's an ongoing process, requiring continuing monitoring and fine-tuning to keep your site in front of the eyes of internet searchers. Not all SEO firms are created equal. Some still use outdated or bogus techniques that no longer work and can actually get your site banned by search engines. Others make promises, but don't deliver. Using such a firm is simply wasting money. You need an SEO firm with integrity, experience, and up-to-date knowledge of effective SEO strategies. The highly qualified expert SEO specialists at Site Revamp will work with you to optimize your company's website so it appears at the top of Google searches and will work on a continuing basis to keep it there. Call us today for a Free SEO Analysis.
SEO Scams by Web Design Firms
Search engine optimization can turn a business around if done right. However, there are many rip-off or scam artists out there who have no SEO qualifications or experience. Their so-called "SEO" can do more harm than good to your web site's rankings and your business bottom line. It is unfortunate that many of these SEO frauds are committed by web designers or web design companies. Many business owners who have been victimized by various SEO scam schemes have serious doubt as to whether SEO is a good way to market to their customers. To help you protect your business and investment, we provide some tips on how to spot an SEO scam. 1. An "SEO Add-On" by a web design company is worthless. Most business owners fall for this trap and buy the SEO packages offered by their web designers or web design companies. A web design company is NOT an SEO company. Having your web designer optimize your web site is no different from having your dentist do a liver transplant surgery. Web design is about communicating visually and artistically through layouts, colors, graphics, animations, etc., whereas SEO is about numbers, algorithms, analytics and math. For web design, the right brain is much more involved than the left brain, while the opposite is true for search engine optimization. 2. How to tell a web design company from an SEO company. Many honest web design companies tell their clients that they can't deliver search engine optimization. Some of them help their clients find a quality SEO expert or firm to handle the optimization work. But if your web designer or web design company isn't so upfront their inability to deliver what they promise, what should you do? Check out their web site and see if their primary focus is on web design. Most web design companies have a brief mention of their SEO service. A typical web design company has a portfolio of the web sites they design, but they don't have any top search engine ranking samples to show. That is a sign that the company has NO ideas about search engine optimization 3. Get a clear explanation of how SEO works. Even if you know search engine optimization, pretend that you don't. Ask the SEO provider to explain in layman's language what SEO is all about, what needs to be done and how it is done. If the SEO provider keeps referring "meta tags", it is a sign that all they know is some outdated techniques, or even some banned techniques by major search engines. 4. Be aware of any low-price packages like $99.95 a month. Instead of paying $99.95 for 6 months, you are much better off paying an SEO expert a couple of hours for consultation. Quality search engine optimization services are not cheap, but when you compare SEO to marketing through other media, you will find that SEO is most cost-effective. A half-page ad on the Yellow Pages can cost $5,000 a month in the Minneapolis, St Paul area. If someone tells you that for less than a $100 a month, their SEO can outperform your Yellow Pages ad, doesn't it sound too good to be true? 5. Always find your SEO company at Google. Does 50-pound-overweight person have any credibility in giving out weight loss advice? Does an SEO firm have any credibility if their own web site is not findable at major search engines, especially Google? Do your own homework and check out the rankings of the company you plan to work with. If they can't get their own web site to the top, they can't do yours.
SEO vs Yellow Pages
If you have ever talked with a salesperson from your local Yellow Pages company, you can feel how desperate the industry is. In the old days when every business had to have a presence in the Yellow Pages and companies compete with each other for attention by printing larger ads, Yellow Pages in some locations charge $5,000/month for a half-page ad. That is $60,000 a year! A full-page ad can cost a business over $100,000 a year! Well, as search engines become the place for people to search for products, services and information, smart businesses are putting their money into search engine optimization to make their websites more findable by searchers. When it comes to cost, SEO costs only a fraction of the Yellow Pages ad's. Unlike Yellow Pages charges a fixed price over 12 months, regardless of the results, SEO can be very scalable. The SEO cost can be varied based on the business' needs. Even spending $5,000 on SEO can produce great, long-lasting results. Many business owners are still skeptical about the effectiveness of SEO. Well, if SEO doesn't work, why do you think your competitors are all doing it? Based on the experience of our clients, those who advertised on Yellow Pages have all stopped after they started with our SEO service. In term of the return on investment, SEO outperforms Yellow Pages by 5-10 times. Yellow Pages companies are pulling some "magic" internet tricks, which amount to some worthless advertising. They build a generic website from their standard template so your web site looks identical to your competitors' sites or even sites from another industry. They then use the pay-per-click advertising to get some traffic. Only 20-30% of web users use pay-per-click. The Yellow Pages strategy leaves out the majority of the web audience. No wonder it didn't work, isn't working and will not work. If you are still debating whether to renew your Yellow Pages ads, here is an objective look at this dying industry by The Wall Street Journal: The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines.
In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web -- flocking to sites like Google -- the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet
would be its salvation.
But that strategy hasn't panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin.
The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster.
Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses -- the industry's bread and butter -- find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply.
... ,.. Quoted from Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers, by
EMILY STEEL, The Wall Street Journal, Nov 17, 2008
SEO Guarantee
There are several types of "guarantee" offered by some search engine optimization companies. These guarantees include: - 1st-page Google rankings for specific keywords
- No. 1 ranking positions at Google
- xxx% increase of web traffic
- xxx% increase of web leads
- xxx% increase of web sales
No matter how these guarantees are phrased in fine print, they are nothing but a scam. Many businesses fall for these scams and you can be sure that there are plenty of "SEO experts" or "SEO companies" that are not afraid of promising you the sky. The truth of the matter is that no SEO guarantee has ever worked or can ever work because search engines like Google and Yahoo don't take orders from anyone. Search engines play no favor to any sites that are owned, created or optimized by anyone. If an SEO company tells you that they have a special relationship with Google, which guarantees you higher rankings, stay away! Here is a typical SEO guarantee statement: Our SEO Guarantee depends on the number of keywords, competitiveness of the keywords, your current website ranking positions, competitiveness of your market etc. Based on the agreed keywords, we guarantee top 10 Google rankings for 40% of the agreed keywords and top 20 Google rankings for 60% of the agreed keywords. A typical guaranteed SEO package runs for 6 to 9 months. Watch out for the fine print when you sign the contract. You can be sure that most of these "agreed keywords" are worthless long keyword phrases that no one would ever search for. If you are a national marketing agency, would the phrase "cheap powerful effective internet creative marketing firm in America" mean much to you? Does it pay to pay an SEO company to get this long phrase to No. 1 at Google? The answer is "NO", because no one would ever search for a long phrase like this. Another trap of these SEO guarantees is that as long as the "agreed keywords" show up once at their target positions, the "SEO company surely has delivered the guaranteed results." If SEO is your long-term strategy, are you happy with a 1st-page ranking that lasts no longer than a day? Even if you get a No. 1 Google ranking for a day for a desired keyword phrase, will it help your business much in the long run? The worst scams are those that guarantee the number of web leads and sales. Search engine optimization can increase your web traffic, but whether your website can sell depends on many factors, including price, reputation, customer service, and location. These factors are far beyond the control of the SEO company. Not everyone who comes to your website will buy your products or services. Search engine optimization can bring visitors to your website, but their decision to contact you or buy from you has more to do with your business than the SEO company. How can the SEO firm that you barely know guarantee your products and services sell better than your competitors? These lead or sale guarantees are a waste of time. The end result for you is that you lose money to these "SEO firms" and you lose business to your competition. If a search engine optimization firm gives you these "guarantees", you can be sure that you want to stay away from them. But how do you choose the right SEO company? Read our advice here: How to Choose the Right SEO Firm
SEO Cost
How much should you pay for search engine optimization services? This is the question that has baffled most business owners who are new to SEO. There are companies or freelancers who offer $49/month. Some web design firms, including yours perhaps, claim they can provide SEO as an add-on service for $400 a month. Then, there are SEO firms or SEO consultants who charge $5000 a month or $1000 per hour. Which one should you choose? Which one will deliver the results? How much business you need to attract to break even with the SEO expense? How do you justify the cost First of all, forget the $49 per month deal! It is nothing but a scam. Can you get a prime time TV commercial for $100 per minute? Most of these low-priced SEO packages are nothing but some software-automated spams which can end up hurting your SEO campaign and your site's rankings. Services like this don't include any consultation with a real expert. They treat all websites the same. Remember, no two SEO campaigns are the same. A good SEO starts with an in-depth analysis of your business, your competition, your web design, and most importantly, your keywords. Then, a considerable amount of work is done both on your website and off your website. There isn't any software that can substitute the experience and intelligence of a highly trained SEO consultant. Second, SEO should never be an "add-on" service offered by your web design firm or web master. Most of web designers have no training or experience in SEO. SEO and web design require very different skill sets and thought process. Would you think a dentist can do an open heart surgery? Do you see a dental clinic advertising open heart surgery as their "add-on" service? If you see a company that is known mostly for their web design or development services, chances are they have no clues about search engine optimization. These companies often charges anywhere from $100 per month to $1000 per month for pretty much nothing. We have seen web design companies that use old spam techniques like doorway pages and keyword stuffing, which can draw penalties by search engines. Third, is the $500 per hour or $1000 per hour SEO consulting fee by SEO firms fair? Yes, if they can deliver the results. Top SEO firms are hard to find and their services are in high demand. How do you tell if an SEO firm is worth the cost? Google them. Use search engine optimization relevant searches and see how their own website ranks. Remember, if an SEO firm or expert can't get their own website ranked at the top, it is a sign that they can't deliver results for you. Another way to assure you are hiring a good service is to check out references. Satisfied SEO clients LOVE tell you their successful stories. How can you afford paying $5000 a month for SEO on top of all your marketing? Many business owners simply reject SEO, reasoning that they can't afford it. However, upon a closer look of their marketing budget, we often find that these companies are flushing money down the drain by spending tens of thousands of dollars every month on Yellow Pages, print ads, billboards, and TV commercials. Every business owner should ask themselves this question: when was the last time you hired a service out of a Yellow Pages ad, newspaper ad, magazine ad, billboard ad, or TV commercial? Compared to the cost of traditional advertising, search engine optimization is still the most cost-effective marketing. Your business doesn't have to spend extra money on marketing - all you need is to re-allocate your marketing dollars from the old advertising venues and invest them in SEO.
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