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Get Your Online Marketing Plan Ready For The Holidays

27 November 2014 by
Taylor Reaume Blog Headers29

Can you believe it? The holiday season is here, though it seems like 2014 just started. From the team here at Search Engine Pros, we’d like to take a moment to wish you a happy Thanksgiving, and a prosperous and safe holiday season.

For the companies out there, you likely know that it’s time that you start planning for holiday marketing. With an economy that is finally back on an upswing, it’s expected that this could be a record quarter for sales as we finish out the year. That is why it’s important that your business has a dedicated web presence this holiday season. If you don’t, then you’ll be missing out on valuable clients and an increase in customers during a golden time of year to do so.

If your current online campaign is leaving you with something more to be desired, then there is no time to waste. With a search marketing team on your side, you’ll be able to get back in the game and earn more recognition for your company.

When it comes to working with a web marketing company for the first time, you may not be familiar with what to expect. Here are some of the services that an online marketing team will provide you with.

Holiday Marketing Plan

A Personalized Website = 24/7 Employee

First impressions mean everything when it comes to your online presence. That is why it’s imperative that you have a fully personalized website that makes a lasting impression on your clients.

In order to implement a personalized website, you’ll need a marketing group that can provide you with top web design ideas. Your web design needs to be something that works best for you and that really shows off your company’s personality.

In addition, your website should also be optimized for future growth as well. The internet is always changing and the way people look for information is as well. Therefore, your web marketing approach should include a strategy to ensure that your site will last for years to come.

By building trust with your customers through your website, your marketing plan will be much more effective to build from.

A Diverse Marketing Plan

Having just a website isn’t going to be enough to get the type of sales that you are looking for. It’ll help, but you’ll also need a diverse marketing plan that uses a variety of different methods.

With an SEO marketing plan, you’ll be able to rank higher in search engine results provided by Google, the largest search engine on the web. With social media marketing, you can target customers on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and more.  Email marketing and list building are also essential elements to your long term success.  The more that you build as an online presence, the more successful your marketing approach will be. Keep this in mind as you look for a marketing agency to assist you, and make sure that they have a comprehensive approach.

Diligent Customer Care

Working with a marketing service that you can trust will hopefully go well right out of the gate and everything will be smooth. But because we all know that business has plenty of variables, you never know what’s going to happen. That’s why it’s important to work with an agency that promises diligent customer care. There is no telling what obstacles that you may come across, which is why it’s vital that you work with a team that is ready to take on additional challenges with you. A reputable marketing company will evaluate what is working and what is not, and then help you make adjustments accordingly to better implement your strategy.

Happy Thanksgiving

As the year comes to a close, we’ve had the chance to look back and realize how grateful we are and how much we appreciate everyone who has supported the growth of Search Engine Pros over the years.  Many, many thanks to our wonderful clients for your continued trust in our team.   Thank you to our dedicated staff for your exceptional focus, drive and determination. Your contributions make a real difference every year.

qanda22
  • Q: Why is web marketing more important than traditional marketing during the holidays?
  • A: Black Friday was once thought to be something that was worth going out for in order to get great deals on things. However, with so much chaos that ensues every time, people are now starting to opt for more online purchases. That is why you need to ensure that you are online for people to find when they are looking for ways to beat Black Friday madness.
  • Q: Why is web marketing a better investment than physical mailers or advertisements?
  • A: When you use web marketing, you are building multiple different avenues to keep in contact with your clients.  With an investment into online marketing, you can build email lists and social media accounts, which then will make for even more cost-efficient marketing in the future.
  • Q: How long does web marketing stay relevant?
  • A: It doesn’t look like the internet is going anywhere, so it’s safe to say that your online marketing approach will be relevant for years to come. By getting a head start on your online marketing, you’ll be able to get ahead of the curve and stay relevant for years to come.

About Search Engine Pros: Search Engine Pros is a Santa Barbara web marketing firm specialized in online marketing, SEO marketing, PPC (Pay Per Click Google Adwords) and SEO/web design. Visit the website and Facebook page or call 800-605-4988 for more information or to request a copy of 101 Ways to Drive Traffic.

Big budget results. Small budget costs.

Step 1. Design a site that captivates, informs and motivates customers to action.
Step 2. Develop a content publishing plan detailing specific steps to success.
Step 3. Delegate execution to a team with a strong track record for success.

Ready to get started?  Fill out this form to receive a free website analysis and rank report.

Smile, It’s Contagious!

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

Web Marketing

My Lunch With Retired Google VP Wayne Rosing

30 May 2010 by
My Lunch With Retired Google VP Wayne Rosing
Retired VP of Google Wayne Rosing and Taylor Reaume

I felt very fortunate to be able to be involved!

I got an email last month from Catalyst who let me know the details about an upcoming lunch opportunity with retired Google Vice President of Engineering, Wayne Rosing. I simply could not pass this up, being so heavily into Search Engine Optimization.

We met about Noon, April 15 in downtown Santa Barbara at the University Club. I first became aware of Mr. Rosing after I attending an interview conducted by a fellow SEO colleague of mine Jaques Habra at SBCC. I was fascinated by the gems of wisdom Wayne shared about managing employees, and the Google Way.

I left very fortunate to be involved in the lunch meeting with Wayne, and I actually got to sit right next to Wayne at the table. I learned some interesting new facts about Waynes history with the “G”, and also was fortunate to ask a couple questions as well. A few key takeaways I had from Mr. Rosing with regards to the Google hiring process:

1. The candidate must be highly technical

2. The candidate must be high sociable

3. The candidate must be able to work long hours and be passionate about success.

Wayne says Google was successful in hiring many people right of college. The ability to learn and adapt, and the work ethic he says was generally stronger with that demographic.

There were many other tid bits of wisdom Wayne shared with the group, such as making sure your employees are motivated, and incentivizing them in some way. He spoke about hiring the right people and how to manage them successfully, the Google way, and how to sharpen the hiring focus.

The more I listend to Wayne speak, the more I realized how much Google is really one of the foremost “epicenters of innovation” in so many ways. All in all it was quite a fascinating experience to be at the same table with Wayne – a very friendly and personable guy.

Wayne Rosings’ training has been in mathematics, physics and astronomy. Gaining experience as an engineering manager at DEC and Data General in the 1970s, he became a director of engineering at Apple Computer in the early 1980s. There he led the Apple Lisa project, the forerunner to the Macintosh. He then went on to work at Sun Microsystems and headed the spin-off First Person. At Sun Labs, his team developed Java. Rosing served as Vice President of Engineering at Google from January 2001 to May 2005.
He is a computer engineer by vocation, and has been programming, doing computer, electronics and optical design and telescope engineering since high-school.
Most recently, Wayne founded Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc. (LCOGT) now located in Goleta, CA.

At LCOGT, he and his staff of engineers and scientists are currently developing scores of 1 & 0.4 meter aperture telescopes to be placed in various locations around the world. These telescopes will be used  for scientific research as well as be available for educational use by “learners of all ages.”
You can check their work out at: http://lcogt.net/
Mr. Rosing currently resides in Santa Barbara, CA.

MINDS
“tapping global resources, locally”

SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

Learn SEO: 301 Redirects And How They Impact Ranks

29 May 2010 by
Learn SEO: 301 Redirects And How They Impact Ranks

301 Redirects can be a powerful tool for search engine optimization if they’re utilized correctly. For the webmaster hoping to learn SEO, 301 redirects are a critical service to be understood. This article will explain what exactly 301 redirects are and what a webmaster, whose goal is to learn SEO, should be doing to make the most of them.

One segment of web-based tools that seems to be expanding by the minute is the URL shortener. These are sites like tinyurl.com that allow users to redirect their long, cryptic URL to a much easier to remember web address. It’s obvious that these tools have the potential to make a lot of money: controlling a link is the same as controlling web traffic. And there are a number of ways in which a URL shortener can use the links it creates.

There are several advantages to the end-user of a URL shortener:

  • The most obvious is that the web address is, well, shorter. A long web address is not only hard to remember, it’s difficult to use in many other web-based services such as a Facebook Status Update or a Twitter tweet. Short web addresses conserve valuable character space in these services.
  • Many URL shortener services keep detailed traffic statistics about the web address, which means the owner of the shortened web address can see not only how much traffic visited the web address but also where the traffic came from.
  • A shortened web address hides the “real URL” or the destination page. This is great when your original web address is long and hard on the eyes. But it can also help some unscrupulous page owners by hiding the identity of the page behind the shortened web address, which sometimes might be a page that many users wouldn’t want to visit.
  • Some URL shorteners allow users to choose a custom web address. The advantage of having a memorable web address is that a web surfer doesn’t have to search for it; it’s also re-usable, meaning the web address can be re-directed to new content. One example is http://tinyurl.com/mypictures, which might point to an online album with an almost indecipherable web address.
  • The best URL shortening service will use a 301 redirect to pass along their Google page rank to the destination web address. This helps the redirected web address advance in search rankings.
  • Many web services utilize their own forwarding scripts that allow the link to be loaded into a frame, leaving the original page from which the link was clicked intact – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all do this. This allows a user on this site to link to relevant information without the reader leaving their profile page.
  • Some URL shorteners give their users access to their link database through an API. These links can provide users with limitless analytics potential to mine data and traffic information. Imagine if TinyURL could be merged with a Reddit or Digg.

But as with anything else, a URL shortener comes with its own set of disadvantages:

  • As noted above, unscrupulous users can hide potentially offensive or malicious destination pages with a shortened web address. Some URL shortener providers have begun to display the destination address alongside the shortened web address, and this practice will likely become more prevalent.
  • Creating a web address shortening service is relatively easy, but many attract so much traffic that their web hosting bills skyrocket and their services go out of business. When a URL shortening service shuts down, so do all of the links that anyone ever created with the service.
  • Shortened web addresses generally don’t convey any information about the content on the destination page and therefore offer no incentives to click on the link. A shortened web address in Twitter won’t contain any link text, and the reader is forced to gather context about the link from the text of the update. Optimizing social media SEO requires an entire skillset in its own right.
  • Many URL shorteners don’t have robust user account features – they simply allow anonymous users to redirect web addresses. While this might save time, it also prevents frequent users from being able to use a dashboard to organize their shortened web addresses and to keep track of which ones they’ve shortened.
  • Shortened web addresses generally have no link text and therefore do not associate themselves organically with a keyword. Readers have to either gather context from the surrounding content or take a chance with the link.
SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

Local E-Marketing Company Sells Increased Web Traffic

11 October 2009 by
Local E-Marketing Company Sells Increased Web Traffic

Search Engine Pros Offer Salvation for Floundering Business Websites

Friday, October 9, 2009
By Ty Manning

https://www.thesearchenginepros.com/uploads/2009-10-11_154641.png

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): According to the Search Engine Pros (thesearchenginepros.com) founder Taylor Reaume, it can make or break your business. Basically, by making websites more user-friendly, capitalizing on highly-searched, non-ubiquitous keywords, and utilizing the advocacy of reputable websites, SEO aims to increase website traffic.

This is where Search Engine Pros come in.

“We are different than other SEO companies because we have a lot of information on our site that helps people do their own optimizing,” said Reaume. “We add a lot of value up front to help businesses succeed.”

Aside from their resourceful, abundantly-paged website — a testament to Reaume’s belief that a successful website should have “at least 100 pages of helpful content” — the Search Engine Pros offer a free SEO workshop every Thursday at the Eagle Inn at 211 Natoma Ave., Santa Barbara. “It’s a great place to come and learn about what you need to do or have done to generate top ranks with your sites,” said Reaume, who conducts the meetings by picking a business name out of a hat and evaluating what they are doing right and wrong. While the meetings bring a lot of business to his company, Reaume has also noticed that the workshops attract those who want to learn SEO on their own.

For those businesses that choose to hire the Search Engine Pros, they should hold high expectations. According to Reaume, clients should experience a much more beneficial relationship with web marketing when working with his company; “We help them to simplify what will increase website traffic, which is primarily done through link-building and content generation.”

Additionally, clients should expect prices lower than those offered by competing SEO companies, which Reaume attributes largely to his international business contacts — the result of an extensive career in e-marketing.

Following his graduation from Humboldt State University with a degree in Marketing and Economics, Reaume also founded Loopwise.com — a music collaboration website that was later retooled as eStockMusic.com — before serving on the board as an e-consultant after selling it to Jupitermedia.

After observing a trend among business websites concerning a disconnect between web design and SEO, Reaume moved to Santa Barbara to start his own SEO company; he has since felt a tremendous demand for his company’s services. “Let’s just say I have more business than I know what to do with,” said Reaume.

For more information, visit https://www.thesearchenginepros.com