SEMbyDesign

July 18, 2011

Buy It Local – Professional Services

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 4:49 pm

Why outsource to someone you can’t sit down and discuss your project with?  2 local firms I work with can give you a fresh perspective on your marketing – Teresa Cassiday of Catena Creations does design for print and brochures, as well as copywriting and marketing.  Dan Miller from Vamonos Marketing specializes in web and new media marketing, as well as media buys and placement.

These are just 2 examples of local professionals who know their profession and also love to keep it local.  Personally, I don’t find it any easier to manage a project when you can not sit down and work face to face, so think about this the next time you need to outsource a professional service in Omaha.

June 23, 2011

Local SEO Strategies

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Optimization — admin @ 3:17 pm

Lots of lists focus on what you should do to improve your local SEO, but I recently ran across a list that hit on important things NOT to do.  It was so good that I am just providing a link to it here: Local SEO – What not to do.  I think you’ll find it valuable.

March 4, 2011

Why Dex (and the phone books) Should Stay out of PPC

Filed under: Marketing Your Site — admin @ 5:26 pm

More and more of my local searches are turning up paid ads for clients by Dex.  Why I believe this is bad:

1. They all have the same ugly template and offer no opportunity to brand the business.

2. They are not driving the searcher to the Dex client’s actual web site.

3.  The ads show no regard for whether the keywords will produce a conversion (and it likely won’t even if it is good based on point #1)

4.  Often, the ads are displayed on irrelevant keywords.

5.  The ads displayed on the right side of Dex’s landing page are very often not relevant to the key words (so not adding any value to THAT advertiser) and distracting to the user who has arrived at the page.

6.  These ads drive up the price for businesses who are legitimately trying to run a good ad campaign with relevant key words and good ad copy – much better for the consumer to have specific, targeted ads placed in front of them.

In general, I feel that the phone books do a terrible disservice to the client when they buy a domain for the client and put up a splash landing page to run the PPC campaign to.  Why not do it correctly and drive the traffic to the real domain of the business.  A domain I saw the other day didn’t even make sense – it was for The Cookie Company, Dex bought myTheCookieCompany.com and applied their expert design skills to the landing page.  Terrible for the brand image of the client, confusing for consumers, and probably much more expensive for the client in the long run.

If you need help with your online exposure via paid or organic search please be sure to give me a call -  I have the expertise you need as an Omaha Adwords professional.

February 18, 2011

Google Ads for Mobile

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 2:45 pm

As mobile searches become more prominent, Google has addressed the advertisers needs.  Google does have several ways that you can a) target mobile customers, and b) make it convenient for mobile users to contact you.

Since 1 in 3 mobile searches show local intent, one useful extension is the phone number extension – if you add it to your campaign, it creates a phone number that can be clicked to call your place of business directly.

Additionally, you can use the location extension to display how far the user is from your location and also to get a map directly to your place of business.

If you would like to learn more about these adwords functions or would like a consult on how mobile can work for you, please contact me here in Omaha.  I am a Google adwords marketing expert.

January 20, 2011

SEO copywriting in Omaha

Filed under: Optimization,Traffic Building,Uncategorized — admin @ 3:24 pm

A recent question came in from a friend who has delved into the world of SEO copywriting.  I actually get this question a lot – on-site blog,  separate blog, or both?  Here’s my response:

Fresh content is always good, so if you already have the on-site blog, continue with that.
The benefit of adding the external blog to the mix – get some links coming in from an outside source.  Other ways to accomplish this would be to get involved in a forum where you can leave a link in your signature, commenting on someone else’s blog post, submitting articles to ezinearticles.com or even establishing a relationship with another blogger to “guest blog” where you would have the chance to link to your site.
The inbound links provide a signal to the search engines that your site is relevant to the keywords you link it with, and often a handful of well placed links with strategically chosen key words can make a big difference for you.
Rather than maintain a second blog, you might be better off finding a couple of these other spots to link back to your site.
Hope that all makes sense, usually you can get me to talk for an hour or so about it if you just buy me a coffee too.

December 10, 2010

Universal Info Blog #Samerules #Newtools provides sound advice.

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 4:16 pm

Todd Murphy of Universal Information Services, an Omaha based firm that provides media analysis, among other services, provides some great advice and information in his blog.  SameRulesNewTools.com showcases some of the new tools used to monitor and analyze traditional and new media channels.

Todd states:  “Our media analysis and position as a news monitoring service has led us to the conclusion that the fundamental rules of public relations communications has not changed, only the tools we have at our disposal are new.”

For practical advice on these new tools, check out SameRulesNewTools.com or follow @Universal_Info on twitter.

September 23, 2009

Quick Traffic Advice for A local Shopping Cart and Blogger

Filed under: Traffic Building — admin @ 8:14 am

I sent an email off to a business acquaintance who had some questions about his web site this morning.

Some things that you can do to help get targeted traffic:
Write in your blog frequently – link a short blog post describing a product to the item in your shop. The post contains valuable keywords for search engines to get ahold of and if the blog is updated frequently, Google will come back and index your site frequently. This is probably the most important thing you can do – 2-4 times a week at a minimum – you have a topic and products that online consumers are searching hard for.
Put those videos from YouTube on your site, embed them directly from YouTube – this is simple to do – just put them right in a blog post. It’s great content, establishes credibility and encourages the visitor to stay on your site longer.
Submit your RSS feed to FeedAg.com: this will distribute your Blog content around the web via RSS-the more spots you can get this, the better.
Hook your RSS feed up to a fan page in Facebook – this will make your facebook page look updated, and will automatically update every time you update your blog. Social Networking and gaining friends via this method is a great medium for your store – it really helps that customer relationship.
Submit your product list to Google Base: This will get your items into Google’s comparison shopping engine. You’ll need a plug in for OScommerce or whatever shopping cart you are using to generate an XML product list that can be submitted – you’ll want to regenerate on a monthly basis, or as often as you change your shopping cart and submit it every 30 days to Google.

________________________________

These are just some of the things that you can do, all simple, but require time spent on your site, working on it. But this is what will separate your site from others, in terms of traffic.

August 20, 2009

Adwords Training in Omaha

Filed under: Marketing Your Site — admin @ 12:02 pm

For several years I have been helping small businesses in the Omaha area with online marketing. Many small business owners are interested in Google’s Adwords program but just don’t know where or how to get started.

I have an exciting new service that I am offering – a 3 hour on-site Adwords training session for up to 2 employees of any local Omaha business. For just $199 you’ll get quality training on the basics of the Adwords interface, training on picking out key words, and setting up your web site for maximum conversions. If your Adwords account is new (within 2 weeks) I have a $100 new account credit that can be applied as well.

Here’s a basic overview of the session.

Intro to Adwords – why the marketing works.
Setting up your account.
Setting up your first campaign
Proper targeting geographically
Proper key word research and bidding techniques
Proper landing pages on your web site.
Effective Ad writing.

Please contact me if you are interested in setting up a time for me to come train you or your employees. You’ll need a computer with a connection to the internet and a quiet spot with no interruptions as I cover quite a lot in 3 hours of time.

Steve 402-210-3283

July 18, 2009

Why SEM with Google Adwords is a great investment

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Small Business Issues — admin @ 11:42 am

So, you want to have a better online presence, you just invested in a new web site, or you just plain don’t know where to begin marketing your site online? If you haven’t heard, Google’s Adwords program is still considered one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. And it’s not just any traffic, it is very targeted traffic – the kind of buyer who is researching your product or service and is ready to buy. You don’t have to show up at the top of Google’s organic search (though it can help) in order for this type of marketing to work wonders for you. That is what makes this a great option for even the smallest of businesses – no contracts, no minimum payments, just try it, and if you see the ROI on your advertising, then continue using it.

Some tips:

Optimizing your landing page – not only does this help with the conversion rate of your visitors that have been directed to your site by Adwords, it helps with the natural search. It will also benefit your advertising campaign with a higher click through rate and lower cost per click.

Writing a great ad – and using keywords within – this will also help clickthrough rate and help with your cost per click – it ultimately will help your conversion rate.

Selecting targeted keywords – the bottom line – these are what trigger your ad. If you don’t do the research to find what your customers are searching for, you will not have a very successful campaign. Most small business owners either lack the skill, or the time to do the proper research – which is why it is best to hire a Google Qualified Individual to assist in setting up and managing your campaign. I have found that many times, I can pay for myself with a combination of increased conversion rates and lower cost per click.

I am an Omaha, Nebraska Google Qualifed SEM professional.

June 5, 2009

Quick WordPress SEO

Filed under: Optimization,Traffic Building — admin @ 2:24 pm

This is an excerpt of an email I sent to a friend about SEO on their WordPress site. They had the XML Sitemap Generator installed, and the All In One SEO pack, so the assumption is that you start with this.

1. Make sure you go to Google Webmaster tools and acutally submit the Site Map. I can expand on this if you need me to, it will require a small amount of technical knowledge to complete it.
2. Make sure you fill out the All In One SEO pack info by: 1. Setting the default Title, keywords and Description for the home page – you should do some key word research to find out what people of this demographic are searching for on the theme of your site, ie. if the key phrase is “Christian Child Rearing” you should be including that phrase in your posts on a regular basis. For the Title, use only 90 characters, For the description, use only 160 characters, for the Key Words, use only 6 to 10 of the most important ones, nothing extraneous, the second part of this is, for each post, do the same thing, by clicking on “All In One SEO Pack” at the bottom of the post page, and fill in the information using key words specific to your post.
3. Make the title of your post contain key words, and repeat them in your post.

That’s the “On-site” optimization.

Off-site:
Submit your RSS feed to FeedAg.com and other RSS feed aggregators – if you google you will see many of these.
also, you can use a service called Pingoat.com – do it after each blog post.
Join Technorati and BlogCatalog – these are pretty good ones.
Send your feed to your Facebook profile – each new post gets put up for all your friends to read.
Leave Comments on other people’s blogs with a link to your own within the key words that you are trying to optimize for – ie if you were trying to optimize for “baby devotions” you would link the words “baby devotions” by using <a href=”http://www.excellentbabyblog.com”>baby devotions</a> – Do this as often as possible – it really does work.

That’s the quick rundown – it’s not easy, and I don’t know what kind of traffic you are getting now, but if you do all that you should see an increase. Also, consistency in your blog will get you a following, especially if it is a niche topic – lot’s of times a broad topic will not attract loyal followers – try picking 6 topics, rotate between them – if you post 3 times a week you will write about each topic 2 times in a month – continue with the same 6 topics (which – if researched to find out what people are searching for-say “baby strollers”) you will start to see the site come to the top for those specific topics, rather than if you only write one post every 6 months on any given topic. Keep in mind that “Content is King” in the internet world and it does mostly come to that. Frequent updates (3 times a week is good) and 300 words or so per post are good.

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