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?
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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.

 

Why Yellow Pages Will Be Dead in Five Years

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Nick Stamoulis

Let me start of by saying that I do have a Yellow Pages listing for my SEO company, Brick Marketing. It costs me about $50 a month for the profile on the Yellow Pages website. It’s a good way to help with my local link building, get a FEW additional local visitors and YP.com is a very trusted domain, so that helps uphold the value of my link portfolio. A few months ago, I got a phone call from a Yellow Pages representative asking me if I was interested in upgrading my account. Was I super interested? Not really, but I thought I should hear the representative out and see if I get could a few more links and visitors in more regions for a little extra money each month. The numbers I heard had me floored—and not in a good way.
In order to upgrade from just a city listing to a county listing, I would need to hand over

Click here for the rest of the article from Search Engine Journal

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.

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.

US Newspapers are hit by downturn in online advertising

Milwaukee companies looking to advertise on the internet should follow the national trend.  Deal with an internet marketing specialist.  Newspapers were able to sell ads in their newspapers for two reasons, reach and timely content.  In the past getting the news every 12 to 24 hours was quite fast, and readership was huge.  Everybody got the newspaper.  Not anymore.  With Social networks, blogs, online news, and website news services.  Do you really read the newspaper?  I know the local newspaper in Milwaukee has online versions of their paper, but do people really go to it when the news they are looking for is usually right on their homepages?  Or being updated on twitter in real time?

  To make matters worse they decided to charge you for the content after something like 20 page views per month.  Really?  The newspapers have become the middleman when it comes to delivering the news and delivering ads to customers.  The internet is available to everybody, the content and distribution on Yahoo and Google is available to anybody who advertises on Google, Yahoo and Bing.  You don't need to pay for all the overhead required, or sign a long term contract.  Shop around, you will be surprised to find out how inexpensive it is if you work with the right people.
Here is a great article showing how online advertising revenue is dropping for newspapers at a time when overall online advertising is booming.

Posted by

Roy Greenslade 

As if the news for the US newspaper industry couldn't get much worse, it now appears that online advertising is vanishing.
According to the Newspaper Association of America, digital advertising revenue in the first quarter at newspapers rose just 1% from a year ago. That's the fifth consecutive quarter that growth has declined.
This troubling trend comes against a background of US newspapers fleeing print to go online and the imposition of paywalls by many publishers.
Publishing executives and analysts believe that a flood of excess advertising space, the rise of electronic advertising exchanges that sell ads at cut-rate prices and the weak US economy are all contributing to the slowdown.

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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.