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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Web Design and SEO in Milwaukee | A Simple Stratagy

The Simple Strategy for web design and SEO.

Remember the old saying? Keep It Simple Stupid or KISS? Plain and simple. If your a business looking to gain customers. Keep it simple. Or at least, start out simple. With all this talk about Tagging, and Back linking, and content and this and that. Remember the end user and what these potential customers are looking for. That’s what we are all looking for right?
Click here to read more

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site for SEO | internet advertising Milwaukee

Milwaukee businesses advertising online can use some of this information to help getting better position online.

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. by Victoria Edwards,
  And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.
What are search engines looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your visitors/customers, as well as Google, Bing, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?
During the Introduction to SEO session at SES New York, Carolyn Shelby (@CShel), Director of SEO, Chicago Tribune/435 Digital, fully explained the extreme value SEO can deliver to a site, and stressed the importance of basic SEO using the following analogy:
"Skipping the basics and spending all your time and money on social and 'fancy stuff' is the same as skipping brushing your teeth and showering, but buying white strips and wearing expensive cologne," Shelby said.
Although the Introduction to SEO session was intended for industry newcomers, Shelby's tips offer important reminders for even experienced SEO professionals who have been optimizing sites for years.

What is SEO, Exactly?

The goal of foundational SEO isn't to cheat or "game" the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to:

Create a great, seamless user experience.
Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

How Social Media Is Changing Business | Milwaukee Advertising Tips

Nice article showing how business is changing and has changed already. Not only on how business find customers, but also on how businesses add employees, and how employees interact with each other and thier clients. Social media is being used here in Milwaukee more and more. The way we are using it today will with out a doubt change again.
Here is the article from Mashable.

A decade ago, businesses didn’t have company Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts or Instagram feeds.
In fact, Facebook didn’t exist.
When you start thinking about how much social media has changed the way that businesses operate in the past few years, you can’t help but wonder how much more — and how — it will change in the coming decade.
According to Sandy Carter, General Manager of IBM Ecosystems and Social Business Evangelist at IBM, there are a lot of exciting changes to come. As an author, speaker and expert in social business, Carter not only makes sure her company stays on top of the latest technology trends and how they can be incorporated into the workforce, but makes sure other companies recognize that potential, as well.
To learn more, we chatted with Carter about what exactly a “social business” is, why it’s beneficial, and how companies can start to adopt that kind of forward-thinking strategy in their business and hiring practices.
What is a “social business,” and why is it so effective?
Over the past two decades, the Internet has disrupted the way companies operate in a huge way — it’s almost unimaginable to think how we got anything done without it. Now, we’re seeing that same transformation in the social realm — businesses are moving beyond having just a Facebook page or Twitter account, and they’re incorporating social functions into everyday business processes and decisions, from sales and marketing to HR and product development.
It’s really a shift in the way we work, communicate, collaborate and share expertise with each other. Social businesses use social tools to listen to customers, spur innovation, identify new market opportunities and create a smarter, more effective workforce.
For example, IBM is one of the most prolific users of social networking in the industry and one of the largest corporate-wide social media communities. Every IBMer has a social network page, as well as access to thousands of internal information sources, blogs, communities, wikis and instant messaging. IBM takes social networking seriously — to develop products and services, enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, train the next generation of leaders, and build awareness among clients, influencers and other communities.
What is the most important element of a strong social strategy? What advice would you give to an entrepreneur or executive who wants to expand his or her social strategy?
Far and away, the most important element of a strong social strategy is the corporate culture behind it. Without a culture that supports sharing and collaboration, the underlying social technology being implemented is futile.

Click here for the rest of the article

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Adding Social Media is now a Must for your SEO | Internet Marketing Milwaukee

As I have stated before, content is key in your online marketing campaigns. Social Marketing is a way that search engines are able to build trust in you and your product and that they are able to assume you are actively speaking with relevant customers in your area.

SearchEngineland has a great column here written by Trond Lyngbø

The peppered moth (Biston betularia), once white with black spots, faced a strange challenge in London during the Industrial Revolution. Buildings and trees, stained with soot, turned black. The light colored moths could no longer hide against this backdrop, and were eaten up by birds.
But some peppered moths survived – by turning black themselves!
To survive, you must adapt and change with your environment. Otherwise, you’re dead. That’s the powerful lesson business owners, marketers and entrepreneurs can learn from a humble moth.

The Times, They Are A-Changin’
A major shift has taken place that alters the way you’re doing business online — and offline. It has to do with social media, SEO and public relations (PR). Ignoring their impact on your marketing is suicidal. Weaving them into your strategy can be transformational.
Let’s talk about why you mustn’t merely include social media, SEO and PR in your existing business and marketing, but intelligently integrate them in a manner that lets you dominate your niche. With the right approach, you can create and reap synergies that will deliver long-lasting effects at a high ROI.

The Shift In Emphasis Toward Trust
Tactical SEO games are about to end. Google will no longer ignore manipulative SEO tricks based on fake check-ins and false reviews. Tactics like that could destroy trust in Local Search, and Google doesn’t want that to happen. Thus, there’s a concerted effort on Google’s part to determine identity and assign trustworthiness based on it.
Then we have Google+. Did you believe it’s just another social network for folks to meet, greet, and share information? No, it’s much more — it’s a far-reaching effort to establish user trust levels.
Trust has become Google’s financial lifeline. With the majority of the search giant’s $50.2 billion revenue in 2012 coming from ads, Google wants people to keep coming back. And they are coming back — because they trust Google’s search results. Once they stop finding relevant and reliable answers, they’ll abandon the big G.
To prevent this, Google must:

Correctly uncover searcher intent and understand their problems, mining data from the knowledge graph.

Provide local ads and search results relevant to people, wherever they happen to be at the moment.

Identify real people and assign them a trust score, using signals that are tough to game or cheat.

This means SEO suddenly has grown very complex. Isolated on-page and off-page SEO tactics are no longer enough. SEO is now true marketing. It’s also about social media and PR.

Where Are You Investing Your Marketing Budget?
Blindly throwing cash at outdated techniques is a road to slow, sure death. To succeed today, your approach must change. You must evolve to survive.
According to Google, 97% of customers search for local businesses and offers online. If they can’t find you, they’ll go to your competition. Optimizing for local and mobile search is therefore critical.
Google CEO, Larry Page, has said that the knowledge graph is only 1% of where they want it to be. They want to know more about their users, and this includes you. They seek to judge whether or not your content, your website, your offer — your business — are worth sharing in their search results.
It’s a long journey, and there won’t be any quick fixes. There are 3 key factors at play in this dynamic marketplace:

Technological advancements

Human behavioral and attitudinal changes

The digital ecosystem

Google needs to keep pace with all of them. If you’re worried about how challenging this all seems for your business, just think about how much harder it must be for Google!

Google Knows Where Your Customers Are

The search giant recently launched a knowledge graph carousel for local search, which means that local search results are now displayed higher on the SERPs. The carousel is populated dynamically based on the searcher’s location, so the geographic location of a business or outlet will impact which search results users will see first.
Social signals and PR also play a greater role. People come ahead of links.
Until now, the focus on links was like the proverbial Achilles heel. Google relied primarily upon links, which were easy to manipulate. Google has to find a way around this — not to replace the value of links, but to gain a greater perspective by considering them in context.
While SEO in general is still the same, local SEO is influenced by 2 unique factors:

The citations your business has received

The number and tone of reviews from local customers (tone being positive, negative or neutral)

Guess which carries the highest weighting? That’s right — the one associated with social signals. In other words, positive reviews. Convincing your satisfied customers to post stellar reviews of your business can have a dramatic impact on your local search rankings.

Click here to read more

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Internet Advertising Milwaukee | Content Marketing for SEO

Marketing your Milwaukee business online has become more and more based on the content that you are putting out for your customer to read. Here is some great techniques you can use.

The Cornerstone of Content Marketing

Successful creative content marketing strategies can be broken down into three distinct phases:

Discover: How does your audience find content?
Consume: What type of media helps you optimize for that experience?
Act: What will inspire your audience to take action? How do you want people to feel when they consume content? People act on emotion.

5 Creative Content Sourcing Ideas

Odden shared fantastic takeaways for participants who may struggle with the creative aspect of content marketing. Inspiring people to share and socialize can happen in a number of ways and the more creative you are (within reason), the better the chance of success.

Visualize Trends: Export data on trends such as SEMrush, Google's Keyword Tool, Majestic SEO, and Ubersuggest. Visualize these trends so content is easier to consume. Tools like Wordle and TweetCloud are great for this.
Your site: Source content from your site such as onsite search (logged queries in Google Analytics), form text area analysis, queries in analytics and data from Google Webmaster Tools. You can also create content by analyzing inbound link text
Frontline staff: Utilize your human capital and assets to create content across sales, customer service, and marketing departments.
Become a publisher: Think like a publisher, act like a publisher, become a publisher. Source content from magazines (recurring features, themes, short form and long form) newspapers (timely, objective, sensational) and television (storytelling, recaps, previews)
Customer Journey: Map, produce and optimize content based on your customers journey and pain points as they move through the buying cycle.

This is a piece of an article found on Search engine watch written by Andy Betts,
click here for the full article.

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

SEO Milwaukee | Call The Pros

As Internet Marketing and Online Advertising Consultants In Milwaukee, We Specialize in SEO, SEM, Website Construction, Reputation Marketing, Display Advertising, Local Advertising, Video advertising, and Social Marketing. Why do we handle all of these areas? Because in order for a business to to be found online, it needs to be where perspective customers are looking for them. And that is everywhere. We handle all of this at a rate lower then most internet marketing firms. Why? Because in order for us to provide you with the most effective internet strategy. You will need all of these areas covered. Most companies will charge a separate fee for each product that you are using. We don't, we know that in order to market your company effectively, all of these areas need to be covered at a reasonable cost. If you want your business found on the internet, contact us. Effective online marketing at a fair price. 414-699-5444.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Milwaukee Advertising | SEO Metrics That Matter

Looking to get your Milwaukee Advertising off the ground using SEO?

Forget Rankings: Here Are 6 SEO Metrics That Matter
Eric Siu, December 13, 2012It would be an understatement to say that the SEO landscape has changed a lot through the years. In just the last two years the changes have been dramatic.
Panda and Penguin top the list as the most visible game-changers, but there is another one that occurred somewhat under the radar – but has been equally dramatic in its impact on SEO.
That change is Search Plus Your World. In a nutshell, Search+ personalizes your search results. Google evaluates your location, brand mentions, your friend’s search history, who is in your social media sphere and even your search history.
Think custom-tailored results.
What that means is you and I could both search for “swine flu” or “tablet” and come up with different results. Each of our respective result pages will be tailored toward those factors I mentioned above.
When the number of searches for those terms multiply into the thousands – now you, as an SEO practitioner, have a problem. A typical client is looking for consistent rankings in the top three spots on a number of key terms. That’s what he’s been trained to expect. He or she is thinking old-school search, and will be sorely disappointed in your results.
What you need to get him to think about are the new-school SEO reports, because Search+ killed normal rankings. What exactly are those new reports? Here are the six you need to pull from Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.

Click here to go to Search Engine Watch for the rest of the article.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Milwaukee Internet Advertising | Getting The Most From Your PPC Budget

Milwaukee businesses are being pummeled with phone calls from huge companies offering Pay Per Call advertising and display advertising. Here is a nice article

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Jeremy Decker
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

Full article

When speaking to business owners who are new to search advertising, a common concern is that their marketing budget is simply not big enough to compete with some of their competitors who are investing huge amounts of money into their marketing efforts. If this sounds like you, then I have some good news for you!
Although having a large PPC budget will help you to achieve results much faster, there are still ways in which you can set up your AdWords account to perform well with even the smallest budget. Below are some ways in which you can get the best possible results out of a small PPC budget:

Target Lower Ad Positions
Many advertisers tend to target the first one to three positions on Google based on the belief that these are the only ads that will be clicked on by Google users, when in fact this is not the case at all.
Adverts in positions 4+ still obtain traffic, often at a much lower CPC (Cost-Per-Click) price than the higher positions. Furthermore, for some industries, these lower positions can even convert better, as well. This is due to the fact that sometimes the top positions will attract a lot of “tire kickers”—that is, people who really aren’t interested in making a purchase at all and just clicked the first Google listing they saw.

Target Only Specific, Long-Tail Keywords
If your AdWords budget is extremely limited, the importance of using only the most targeted and specific keywords is much higher than usual. In general, specific long-tail keywords (keywords made up of 3+ words) that describe your exact services are much more likely to convert compared with broader, single word keywords.
For example, if you were an PPC agency looking to attract more customers, you’d probably want to focus on terms such as “PPC agency Milwaukee” rather than a keyword like “PPC.” This is because a person searching for “PPC agency Milwaukee” is obviously only looking for one thing: an PPC agency in Sydney.
However, someone searching for “PPC” in Google could be looking for a range of different things; they could be looking for information on PPC, a blog, the AdWords login screen etc.

Create Specific Campaigns for High-Converting Keywords
One of the biggest mistakes made by business owners running an PPC account (see this article for a full run down on common problems found in self-managed campaigns) is only creating single campaign for all of their campaigns. This can create many problems, one being that it groups all of your traffic under a single budget cap each day.
If you’ve got broad, highly popular but low-converting keywords within the campaign, then there’s a chance that these keywords will obtain traffic very quickly, exhausting your budget before any of your other keywords can a chance to obtain traffic. Because of this, it’s recommended that you dedicate at least one campaign for only your high-converting keywords. This will give your high-converting keywords their own dedicated media budget, which should allow for more conversions overall throughout the day.

Avoid the Display Network
While the display network has the potential to drive huge traffic volume and expose your brand to a massive audience, conversion rates seen in this channel are generally nowhere near as high as what you’d see from search traffic. Because of this, if your budget is limited then it’s probably best to disable the display network.

Analyze Location Segment Reports, Then Refine Geo targeting
Thanks to the extremely granular reporting provided by PPC, you’re able to quickly identify which cities and states your traffic is coming from. If you’ve got conversion tracking installed on your account, then you’ll also be able to see which areas are delivering conversions.
To maximize your conversion rate with a low budget, it’d be a good idea to monitor this report about once a month and exclude any areas that have poor conversion rates compared to other areas. You may even want to create specific campaigns that target only your highest converting locations, too!
These points should help you get the most from your limited PPC budget. However, the most important thing to do to ensure you’re getting the best results possible is to pay close, regular attention to how every aspect of your campaign is performing. Ensure that campaigns, adverts, and keywords are analyzed regularly and optimize your account according to the data you see.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Research For SEO vs. PPC

Often when I complete a keyword research project for a client, they ask me about keywords I may not have included, or they want to know what the relative competition on the keywords looks like. This happens often enough that I thought I would remind everyone that while research for SEO and PPC can go hand in hand, they’re actually very different.
First, think about what your goals are with each medium. What are you trying to do, and what constitutes success in that area? Next, think about how the keywords will be used. Where, when, how often?
Finally, consider what your margin for error is. If you don’t get exactly the right keyword, what’s the penalty? Search Engine land Aug 28, 2012 at 11:11am ET by Jenny Halasz

What… Is Your Quest?

In SEO, your goal should be to understand the keyword landscape of a topic. What keywords do people search for, and what does this tell us about their intent? What can we learn from looking at keywords in a broader context?
For PPC, your goal should be to find the keywords that you can bid on. Which keywords are going to make you the most potential money for your cost-per-click investment?
You should focus on keywords that suggest a purchase (or goal completion), that represent a category area that is profitable for you, and that you can’t easily get ranked for in organic (most of the time – there are exceptions to this).

CLICK HERE to go to entire article.

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Reaping the Long-Term Benefits of Content Marketing

Milwaukee business owners trying to be found online have to remember 1 thing, CONTENT. Search engines are looking for relevant up to date content. It is one of the ways that they are able to tell if you are engaged with your customers and that you are a legitimate business. Here is a great article that explains more.

Content marketing has the power to produce more than just links – it can enhance your brand image and build relationships with key brand advocates who are sure to get you even more links and exposure than you ever could without a content-based strategy.
It may sound counter-productive, but focusing less on link building can actually gain more links.
The four content marketing benefits below can all come with the additional side effect of natural links. Craft your content strategy with these core benefits in mind, and you can spend less (or even zero) time on link acquisition.

Click here for the full article from Loren Baker, on Search Engine Watch

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Back to School Search Marketers

Ok, time for us SEO marketers to buckle down and see how your customers are doing.

The end of summer means it’s time for back to school. Kids of all ages are trading in their swimsuits for backpacks and heading back to class.

Now that summer vacation is behind us and a busy Q4 lies ahead, it’s as good a time as any for search marketers to crack open the books and make sure your account is in good shape and you have a solid plan for the future. Dave Ragals, August 30, 2012

Click here for full article from Search Engine Watch

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Geolocation Changes Google Keyword Rankings 69% of Time [Report]

Its a good idea to make sure you list you location online. Search engine watch has a nice article on this written by Miranda Miller, August 13, 2012

In 69 percent of cases where a company’s website ranks in the top 30 on Google for one location, it doesn't rank for that keyword across all other locations, according to a new report from Linkdex. Their study also included an examination of ranking variations across 10 different geolocations, in that case finding that ranking deviated by average of 11 positions.

Geo-Variance Research Explores Search Results Across 10 U.S. Cities & Towns

Linkdex tested 2,000 keywords across a mix of 10 major U.S. cities and smaller towns and found that at higher levels of variance, the majority of the results in Google’s top 10 changed completely, depending on the searcher’s location.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Google getting even more of a share of the Search engine Market.

I remember yahoo overtaking AOL, thinking well this is the future of the internet. Well, Google further increased its already dominant share of the U.S. search engine market in June, topping its own record set in May, according to comScore. Bing also saw its market share increase, while Yahoo’s decline extended to 10 months.
Google’s share of the U.S. search engine market stood at 66.8 percent as of June – topping its record 66.7 percent, set the month prior. Google commanded 65.5 percent of the U.S. search market a year ago.

Full article on Searchenginewatch

Friday, July 27, 2012

Images, Status Updates, Videos Spur Most Brand Engagement

A recent study from marketing firm Perfomics shows that 33 percent of people are most likely to respond to brand offers when they are reposted by a friend. The study states that 27 percent will do so on the brand's page, 26 percent from the newsfeed, and 20 percent from a social ad.
The study also touched on some valuable information about branded content engagement. Consumers are most likely to engage with branded content containing images (44 percent). A close 40 percent of people said they are likely to engage with Status Updates and 37 percent with videos.ClickZ, July 27, 2012

Another interesting piece of information the study stated was the social media tendencies of mothers and fathers. It showed that moms are more likely to have a Facebook account than dads, although dads are significantly more likely than all other men and women, including moms, to have YouTube and Twitter accounts.
This information is based on the Perfomics Life on Demand social media survey which studied 2,000 Americans who visit a social network at least once a day about their use of social media across devices, channels and screens.

More
Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Writing for Search Engines

Dave Davies, July 19, 2012
Some believe that the world of search engine optimization (SEO) is changing in the post-Panda world. A belief that content has suddenly appeared on the radar as the end-all, be-all of ranking highly on the search engines is discussed on virtually every relevant site I've been to.

Here's the problem with that belief: content has always been an important factor. How content influences results may change over time or (better worded) our understanding of how to use content may evolve, but to be sure - content has always and will always be a key factor in the algorithms in one capacity or another.
If we flash back to the “Wild West days” of SEO, content keyword stuffing and keyword density targeting were all the rage. Massive sites were built, injecting regions onto pages to rank sites for a wide array of locations - and it worked. These sites ranked and why? Content.

Full story here

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Successful PPC Ads

Trying to get position online against other Milwaukee advertisers can be tricky, here are some tips to building the best ppc ad copy to beat your competitors.

So much technical work goes into your online marketing that you may get lost in the minutiae. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that creative advertising still matters.
A great example: ad copywriting, which plays a crucial factor in your company’s success. Nowhere is this more evident than in PPC advertising, where you have little time to capture the attention of a potential customer.
Stop dwelling on “audience targeting” and all of the technical settings you can use. It’s far more important to write ad copy that resonates with your customers.

Full article here

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

7 Habits of Highly Effective SEO

When I started my professional career (selling advertising), one of the most influential books that I read at the time was "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", by Stephen Covey.
It’s not much of an over-statement to say that this book changed my life.
What’s interesting to me is how many of the tenets that Mr. Covey conveyed in this book hold true in many facets of my life, and specifically with digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
I speak to many prospects for SEO services, every day. Some of these believe that SEO is a one-and-done affair.
While I find instances where companies could see some solid gains by simply implementing proper title tags and correcting a few things, more often than not, proper SEO efforts need to be worked on a regular basis to realize the types of gains that can deliver really solid, long-lasting and “optimized” (optimal) results.
Every SEO company will have its own processes for performing SEO, and I’m not suggesting that what follows covers everything that goes into an ongoing SEO effort, but the key ingredients are here.
*Note: items in italics come directly from Stephen Covey’s website.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas--Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.

Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern--things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.

In our world, being proactive means you can't chase an algorithm.

Full Story here

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Paid Search Continues to grow

Milwaukee businesses are aware of how well PPC has grown as a part of everyone's online search strategy. What they may not be aware is that it is now growing much slower then in tie past.
Paid search spend growth is relatively steady, but slowing from the impressive rates seen over the previous few quarters.
U.S. mobile paid search spend increased astronomically, while organic search visits from mobile, mobile as a percentage of total search spend, and mobile clicks and impressions all rose.

Q2 Paid Search Spend Up But Growth Rate Slows

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Brookfield Wi Dentist Marketing tips

If you are a dentist, you might have noticed by now that the number of patients checking Yellow Pages and calling you afterwards has drastically dropped. There are a few exceptions such as places with limited access to Internet.
Instead, it has been replaced by on-line channels such as Google, Yahoo, Yelp or other specialty directories. But what happens when patients go on-line and look for a dentist? How do they select the provider of their choice and how do they book an appointment? The following dental marketing tips will help you get a better grasp of the on-line behavior of patients:

First and foremost, you need a website! But the era of just having something up and running is over. Besides having a beautiful, informative and engaging dental website that adds value to your patients, you need to make sure it will be viewed by enough prospective patients.

You need engaging and reliable content on your website to educate your patients, before and after their treatment.

You need to be at the top of the search engine results. When someone looks online, they rarely go beyond first page of Google, and most of the time they select one of the first three results. You need to be among them. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a series of techniques including on-page optimization, link building, setting up the proper analytic and submission tools such as Webmaster Tools, etc that help you improve your rank in search engines. The better SEO you have, the more visitors you will have to your website.

You need a Google Places Page. You have to build it and manage it constantly. In local searches, Google shows the results from Google Places and they are becoming more important every day.

Build and manage your on-line listings on Yelp, Super Pages, Online Yellow Pages and other specialty directories. Patients check your reputation on-line in those channels.

Build your reputation. You might want to ask your patients to spread the word.

Sometimes there are negative reviews on-line; you might want to check on-line reputation management solutions.

Engage in social media! Your patients are on Facebook; they use Twitter and LinkedIn and watch on-line videos. Be in those channels, be active and add value to them.

Set up a blog and engage your patients with new updates on the practice, the area or the industry.

Have an on-line newsletter and send it to your patients regularly. They deserve to be informed.

Make videos and educational material and put them up on the internet and your YouTube Channel. You can ask Video Marketing experts to spread the word.

Being a dentist, your time is probably limited. You might need to have your front desk take care of some of these tasks or ask for professional help. The good thing about professionals is that they know their job and won’t waste your valuable time.

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers. Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Do Milwaukee buisnesses need a middleman to advertise online?

Nice article from Searchengineland.com regarding advertising online and the different ways an SMB may use a middleman to market their business. I have to agree with this article but disagree in the fact that he see's automation in the future. I think that SEO, Local, and Social media is changing so rapidly that the need for constant monitoring would be required by somebody other then automation if you want to continue to be successful.
Full article here

Having worked in the local search space for a while, I am often asked how is it that SMBs are so slow in adopting self-serve systems in their online advertising. And indeed, in the age of Internet advertising, when anyone can purchase keywords on search engines, is there really a need for a middleman anymore?

by Hanan Lifshitz

While an important function of these middlemen is to convince the local plumber or dentist to spend their hard earned money on online advertising, they also help guide the SMB owner through the planning phases of the ad campaign, explaining the various options and helping to optimize the campaign.
In this post, I will review a number of local search platforms, from the traditional to the new, and examine the complexity that is involved in advertising on them.
Print Yellow Pages, the forefathers of SMB advertising, are relatively easy to understand – in order to gain visibility, an SMB has to purchase a large ad on the first page of his category. Pretty straightforward and simple:

Online Yellow Pages have added new features to their offerings, but the concept is still mostly the same – visibility is determined by size and placement of the SMB’s ad:

Local Search Sites such as CitySearch have added yet another level of complexity with features such as performance advertising that require some additional explaining.

And then we get to what many regard as the most effective form of local online marketing – search advertising. Search Engines have opened a whole new spectrum of options that make it far more difficult to understand and manage local ad campaigns. There is constant discussion on what SMBs should do to rank better (a couple of weeks ago, David Mihm posted his second volume of Local Search Ranking Factors – 27 experts analyzed and evaluated 49 criteria). Many SMBs may think that if they appear “first” on Google Maps in a certain relevant search, their job is done… However, this is often far from true.
Take for instance the following searches, conducted a few minutes apart, and the results they generate.
Search 1: plumbing contractor los angeles

Search 2: plumbing contractors los angeles – note that “The Best Plumber I Ever Had”, #1 from the previous list, is nowhere to be found.

Search 3: cheap plumber los angeles

Search 4: emergency plumbing los angeles, ca – and here is “The Best Plumber I Ever Had” again…

There are many more possible searches in this category and it is very likely that each of them will yield different results. Small, seemingly insignificant variations of a keyword (e.g. from singular to plural) or a geographic modifier (adding “ca”) can change the content of the 10 pack. This inherent complexity has bred a whole new class of companies like ReachLocal, Yodle and Webvisible, that help SMBs effectively manage such campaigns.
Looking at the development in the local advertising industry, from print to online, and even within the online world, it is clear that if anything, local search advertising services are getting more complicated. It is ironic that the question of whether mediators are still required in this industry has intensified in parallel to the ever growing complexity of online advertising. A complexity that for now, for the majority of SMB owners, can be overcome only with the help of… a middleman.
Being a big believer in self-serve, I predict that one day these complicated ad services will also be automated into systems that mask their complexity and enable users (SMBs) to simply enter their needs and budget and get the right solution. However, that will take some time and until then, the middleman will remain a critical component of this eco-system.

Disclaimer: The postings of opinions on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my clients or publishers.

Jim is an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. His mission is to help you increase your advertising return on investment and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He works with local businesses, agencies, and Non-Profits. Feel Free to call him at (414)699-5444 to schedule a Free Consultation.

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