SEO Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

Why Your Website Strategy Doesn’t Get any ROI

27 April 2014 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers31

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker

Let’s face it – you’re still not happy with the results your website is generating for you. You’ve changed designs, updated copy, and added new photos, but it still doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction. At Search Engine Pros we offer personal and ethical search engine optimization that utilizes the latest, most effective online marketing strategies. Based on our experience, here are some reasons why your web strategy may not be providing a strong return on your investment:

  • Lack of an Overall Strategy: Over 81% of consumers make buying decisions on the internet, and your business needs a total strategy to attract their attention. A sexy website alone isn’t enough to do the job. Your strategy must include all elements from “The Strategic Circle” for website marketing success.
  • Consumers Can’t Find You: A website that just talks about your business without any search engine optimization (SEO) will not appear in search results.
  • Nobody is Linking to You: Search engines look for websites that have links to and from other sources as a way of establishing credibility and topical relevance. Back links are online referrals for your business.
  • Not Functional on all Devices: Consumers are now accessing the Internet from PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Websites that don’t translate well to all devices are missing out on potential traffic.
  • No Social Media: Your customers like to stay in touch and are using social media to do it. Be sure to have links to your Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages and keep them updated, too. Have a constant stream of outgoing information, try to link up with online influencers, and respond quickly to requests for information.
  • One Language Limitations: In a bi-lingual and multi-lingual world, a website that only provides information in English excludes a significant portion of the buying public. The key to International SEO is optimizing a page for foreign language natural search.
  • Not Driving Customers to Your Site: Sometimes a little extra push is all a consumer needs to be motivated to visit your site. Properly worded and placed pay-per-click (PPC) Google Adwords can provide just the right touch at the moment of decision.

As online marketing professionals, our role is (1) to help you gain a better grasp of what is often a complex maze of decisions; (2) to help ensure that decisions you make are carried out; (3) to keep your strategies up-to-date.

Our clients include small business owners, financial professionals, lawyers, doctors, and corporations – people who struggle for time to carefully focus on their online marketing goals.  The Accelerator Plans we offer are advanced marketing plans designed to optimize your internet presence and grow your customer base.  All project related information is stored in the project center. Google Analytics and Get Clicky tracking software are utilized to fine tune efforts each month.

Web Marketing Strategy

As your marketing partner, we’re experienced enough to be proactive, not reactive. Working with a marketing agency should be fun, not annoying, and tiresome. We handle all the time-consuming details in a cost-effective way for you. Remember that the true cost of working with our company is ZERO when considering year-end business growth figures. Inaction is much more expensive in terms of lost market share and lost revenues.

SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

How To Make Your Website Sexier

31 March 2014 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers32

Does sex sell? Many marketers think it does. Just ask the editors of Sports Illustrated whether having images of bikini-clad models on their cover helped sell any magazines! Consumers want to be associated with products, services and brands that help them feel good about themselves. Your company may be able to increase its sales by having a website that plays into this need for self-appreciation.  Your web site needs to be sexy to convert visitors. Even the greatest SEO marketing strategy will do no good if it draws traffic to your site only to bore the visitor. 

Sexier Websites

At Search Engine Pros we offer personal and ethical search engine optimization that utilizes the latest, most effective online marketing strategies. We have helped clients in every type of industry improve the appearance and sexiness of their websites without sacrificing SEO strategies or content. Based on our experience as web site conversion optimization specialists, here are some suggestions you can use to make your website sexier:

  1. Smashing Design: Start with a dynamic website design that pops out, invites visitors to stay, and leads the eye on a coherent journey through the information you need to impart.
  2. Looking Good: Closely inspect the graphics you use to draw attention to your website. Photos should have attractive people that will appeal to the visitor’s eye. Graphics should be clean and classy, with a feel of elegance and sophistication.
  3. Beautiful Buttons: Most web designers fail to focus on the little things that can make a web site more attractive. Those “submit, cancel and download” buttons don’t have to be just a dull gray square. Use some color, beveled edges and gradient fill to really make them pop.
  4. Social Sharing: You want visitors to let others know about your site, so it’s important to make it appealing to share on social media. Make sure your social sharing buttons look great, load quickly, offer choices that will help your SEO, and fit with the overall feel of your page.
  5. Relevance: Nothing is sexier than finding out what visitors want and providing it. It’s the online equivalent of “I hear you.” Is your website screaming “It’s all about me, Me, ME!” or is it saying “Here is how I can help you achieve more in your life.” If your content doesn’t live up to the hype, no sexy photos can help make a sale. 

Need our help? Call upon the professional web design conversion experts at Search Engine Pros and we’ll help you design eye-catching banners and embed powerful calls to action which will lower your bounce rates, boosts conversions, increase the time people spend on your site (which will increases rankings and doubles your sales).

learn more about how a web site marketing strategy can help your company grow

If you’d like to learn more about how a website marketing strategy can help your company grow, visit our booth at the 2014 Santa Barbara Business Expo at The Fess Parker DoubleTree Resort, 633 E. Cabrillo Boulevard on Saturday, April 5 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.  Search Engine Pros Founder, Taylor Reaume, will be presenting from 9am-9:30am on “How To Rank Your Web Site by Helping Others First”.   Add yourself to the SBBE Event page,  Click LIKE on the fan page: https://www.facebook.com/BusinessExpoSB to stay up to date.   Download the event flyer here

SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

The Hottest SEO Tips for 2014

30 March 2014 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers34

If your business isn’t increasing its customer base each month, you might have an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) problem. SEO is how your company gets found on the web. At Search Engine Pros we offer personal and ethical search engine optimization. Over 81% of consumers make purchasing decisions online. What that means to your business is that SEO is no longer optional.

When consumers use keywords to search for products or services similar to yours, your company will benefit by appearing at the top of their results. With that in mind, here are some of the hottest SEO tips for 2014 you can use to help your business grow:

  • Using The Three “Pillars” of SEO: According to Entrepreneur.com, effective SEO has three pillars – links, content and social media. Content attracts the attention of your target demographic, social media gets the word out to a wider audience about what you do, and links from other sites help build the credibility of your business. These elements must be incorporated into an ongoing SEO strategy that is consistently working to keep your website fresh, relevant, and dynamic.
  • Mobile Optimization is Rising: As more and more consumers turn to mobile devices to perform their search functions, businesses will need to have a responsive website as well as a mobile content strategy. 
  • Social Matters: Google is increasing its monitoring of social networks to look for mentions of your brand, product, service, or content. Having Facebook posts and “links” that circle back to your blog will help to capture Google’s attention.
  • It’s All Relevant: Businesses can’t just increase the amount of content and social media they use to promote their brand; it must be relevant to members of their target audience in order to make them take notice, click, share, or visit the website for further information. 
seo tips

Search Engine Pros offer a wide range of quality online marketing solutions, all designed to give your business the very best possible return on investment. We can provide an All-In-One Plan to cover every aspect of your SEO process or help with specific areas with our PPC Pro (pay-per-click), SEO Writer Pro, or Social Media Marketing Pro.

Curious to learn more about your business that can benefit from a cutting-edge web strategy? Search Engine Pros Founder, Taylor Reaume, will be presenting at the 2014 Santa Barbara Business Expo which will be held at The Fess Parker DoubleTree Resort, 633 E. Cabrillo Boulevard on Saturday, April 5 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

Social Media Marketing on St. Patrick’s Day

17 March 2014 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers35

Although marketing is a year-round endeavor opportunities sometimes come along that you shouldn’t miss. Associating your business with a holiday can increase your chances of search engine optimization. Many consumers are searching for variations of “St. Patrick’s Day” key phrases on Google, and this presents a unique opportunity to catch their eye and lead them to your web site. Social media tie-ins can be used by both B2B and B2C marketers. Here are some tips for marketing your business with social media on St. Patrick’s Day:

  • Expand Your Reach: Don’t stop at posting a nice blog about how your business ties in with the holiday. Post a Facebook update and photo with a link to your article, Tweet about it, send it to your Google+ circle, and find a great picture to link to it on Pinterest. Social media content that includes mention of a holiday helps increase engagement with your target audience, and don’t forget the hashtags!
  • Make It Relevant: Social media is a conversation that should not just be about your business. Make it relevant to your target audience. Offer a useful tip, insider info, or short piece of news that helps your audience use your product or service more effectively and you will increase engagement and improve the potential for sharing.
  • Build on What’s Happening in Your Community: If your target market is in a community that has a big St. Patrick’s Day parade or celebrates the holiday in some other way, try to find a way for your marketing to build on that. For example, a sign company could post about the best signs in the St. Patrick’s Day parade or a florist might write about the perfect flowers for a St. Joseph’s Day table.
  • Content Marketing Works: A constant stream of relevant information is required from your business to stay top of mind, generate top search engine results and drive website traffic. Be straightforward, encourage sharing, and tell audience members what action you want them to take.
  • Social Media Works for B2B and B2C: Don’t think that your business can’t use social media because of who your customers are. Although it might seem more obvious for B2C to work ideas around a holiday, that doesn’t leave out the B2B marketers entirely. Think about what the holiday represents and how it ties in with what your customers need. Sending holiday greetings with valuable information is both powerful and effective.  Most businesses are leaving out the “valuable” part – make sure you are adding value with your content.
Social Media Marketing

In order to rank well on the internet’s largest search engines, your social media sites must contain informative, original content that contains the relevant keywords from which you’d like to capture traffic. Part of the success of your business depends on your ability to generate top ranks on Google and other major search engines.

Successful businesses today are creating remarkable content for their blog, and re-purposing the content to their social media channels.  By consistently adding value to your target audience, you’ll stay top of mind, and increase loyalty levels.

Search Engine Pros can help your company utilize social media more efficiently to achieve its internet traffic and revenue goals. Marketing your business effectively with social media will increase the number of coins in your pot o’ gold!

Holiday Marketing Online

Web Marketing

PageRank Sculpting and SEO Siloing

10 December 2011 by
PageRank Sculpting and SEO Siloing

PageRank Sculpting and SEO Siloing : Is that a no-follow link on your contact page, or are you just happy to evaporate link juice?

I would like to update everyone about the latest Google Algorithm update. PageRank Sculpting (Google’s own policy) is no longer an effective way to increase your page rank. This article will discuss PageRank Sculpting and SEO siloing and how the two interact to form Google’s impression of individual webpages.

Page Rank (link juice) is Google’s measure of how important you site is on the WWW.  (largely determined by the number of inbound links you have.)

PageRank Sculpting: Spending A Page’s Authority Money

Let’s take PageRank sculpting. In general, every individual web page that Google finds has some degree of importance that the page can pass on to other pages – PageRank. Links from that page to other pages are how it passes that importance along. And in its most basic, earliest form, each link on the page equally shared some of the importance.

Consider it like this. Imagine authority is money, and a particular page has $10 in “authority” to spend. It links out to 10 pages, so each of those pages gets $1 ($10 divided by 10). If it links to 20 pages, each gets 50 cents ($10 divided by 20). If it links to 5 pages, each page gets $2 (you get the math by now).

With PageRank sculpting, the idea is to effectively block some of the links on your web page (using the nofollow attribute or some other means) from getting any authority. Perhaps you have a lot of navigational links to other pages inside your web site. Rather than spend authority money on these pages, you might prefer to spend it on a smaller number of important pages that could use a boost.

This was revealed in the last SMX by Matt Cutts (Prominent Googler). Please review the below link for your reference,

http://searchengineland.com/google-loses-backwards-compatibility-on-paid-link-blocking-pagerank-sculpting-20408

also:

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2009/06/nofollow_makes.html

and

http://outspokenmedia.com/internet-marketing-conferences/chat-with-matt-cutts/

Why is Google doing this?  one reason might be because it’s encouraging sloppy web mastery.  If one builds a website correctly, from the start, there is no need to use no-follow tags on links (for outbound links or for site navigational links).

What does it all mean?

Read this except from the above article:

Long before the days of nofollow, Bruce Clay, Inc. has advocated a site architecture practice known as SEO siloing. SEO Siloing relies on two things to create sections of a site that are highly relevant to the targeted keyword: linking and theming. By linking pages with the same theme (virtual SEO siloing) and by including those pages within the same directory (physical SEO siloing), you can create a section of your site that will be considered pertinent to targeted keywords.

With the advent of the nofollow attribute, we recommended nofollow use to eliminate superfluous links to pages that were off-theme. However, we considered PageRank sculpting using nofollow to be a marginal support for SEO siloing. If a forthcoming Google guideline were to discourage nofollow-based PageRank sculpting, it would not affect the core principles of SEO siloing, a powerful web site architecture technique that improves site structure and the related relevancy signals. If Matt is suggesting that webmasters build a site with PR flow in mind from the beginning, SEO siloing is an ideal solution still deserving of attention and implementation.

Bottom line  –  we have 6 months or so to clean up our no follow tags.  We won’t be penalized if we use them, rather, we will just lose out on passing “page rank power” for that link. Implementing these changes now will help webmasters abide by Google’s new algorithm and increase web site traffic.