(512) 537-5868
(512) 537-5868
No longer is it just large businesses that are using video marketing as a way to increase their presence online. Today it is something that many small businesses are finding an effective tool in helping to gain an edge over their competitors and help them to attract more traffic to them.
So why are people choosing to use video marketing rather than banner or pop up ads to advertise what they have to offer today?
Quite simply it is down to the fact that video marketing allows you to create a more personal connection with potential customers to your business. If a person is faced with a video of someone talking to them or demonstrating something they are more likely to stick with it and find out what it is about. However of course when it comes to banner and pop up ads we simply find them annoying and will completely ignore them rather than learning more about what they have to offer.
Through videos a person is able to build up some kind of rapport with the person viewing it and as a result they are more likely to gain that persons trust. The more comfortable a person feels about dealing with someone they haven’t actually met then the more chances there are of them actually wanting to know more and then making a purchase from that person.
Just got this email from Google and it says
Ok so I don’t just want to know WHAT is happening on Google Tags – I seek to understand the why they would cease the program.
Why would Google cancel its monetization on one of its MOST popular programs – the local google listings where businesses can seem to jump out from the natural searches?
First, let me show you what I mean by local listings – and you can see the tag and map etc.
See these stand out from the usual search engine results listing ten webpages per search result page.
So what’s happening.
I believe its a because they can command more from a Google Boost Pay Per Click Ad. You pay per click but its based on what Google thinks a click is worth. You pick a level of exposure and choose a ceiling of the maximum number of clicks for which you want to pay.
A Google Boost Ad is like an adwords ad but LOOKS like a natural search result listing. See this one below -
Interesting to note -
Google Boost is a pay-per-click advertising option to feature your Google Places listing. The main reason why a business would want toutilize Google Boost is to ensure search customers can easily see your outstanding customer review counts.
So you probably don’t want to do this if you have a lot of negative reviews.
And if you have a lot of negative reviews, let’s get them tended to and maybe get more positive ones to push them down. Oh, and there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this – do it the way Google doesn’t like and you’ve killed your google places listing. If you need help, shoot an email over and let’s see what you may have to do.
And if you’re using Google Boost, how is it is working for you? I’d like to know.
What could it mean to your business in terms of dollars if your website came up higher in the search engines? When you think about it – its quite a simple formula – the more targeted traffic that come to your site and do something, you generate more business. For the purpose of this article, I’ll focus on the getting more people to your site. What is important to realize is that just a small increase in rankings – or how high on the searge page your website comes – can have a profound impact on your business.
Plainly speaking, the higher your business website comes up on Google, the more customers will find you. That’s straightforward, yes? What is not that obvious is how your ranking coorelates to your bank balance. Getting your website to rank on the first page of Google for your search terms such as “dentist Austin TX” is the first step.
If you want to maximize the profit from your website your goal should be to rank not only on Page 1, but at position # 1. The way that works is if your site is #1, more people click the #1 site than the #9 site.
You might rank third on Google for a keyword. If your site can get to the #1 position for that term, you can expect your traffic to quadruple for that keyword.
You may find that statement impossible to believe, but the information comes from Google. Back in 2006, AOL, whose search is powered by Google, leaked data on 29 million Web queries collected from 650 thousand users over three months. When that data was analyzed, here’s the percentage of clicks each position got: No. 1 gets 42.13 percent; No. 2 gets 11.90 percent, or 3.5 times fewer than No. 1; and No. 3 gets 8.5 percent.
Ninety percent of all clicks went to the results on the first page, with more than 40 percent going to the top result.
So how much can you afford to spend on increasing your rank and still make money? You will need to have some idea of your conversion ratio – how many leads per month and how many of those convert into paying customers.
Your conversion ratio is how many visitors it takes to make a sale. If you get 10,000 visitors a month to your website and can attribute 200 sales to it, your conversion ratio (sales/visits) is 2 percent. (If you don’t have a site yet, use 1 percent as your ratio, just to be very conservative.)
You can use a great free tool to find out how many searches are done on a given month in Google – The Google Keyword Tool. By typing in the search term you can see how many local searches meaning in the US are done on a monthly basis. And you can even have it give you related keyword ideas so you can perhaps discover other ways people look for your service or product.
Say your research shows that there are 1000 searches a month for your preferred keyword. And you’d like as many as possible of those 1000 searches to direct people to you rather than your competitor. And say you make $500 a sale and convert 1 percent of visitors into customers.
If your site ranks # 1, about 40 percent of those 1000 searchers (400) will click through to your website. That’s 4 sales – or $2000 a month in profit. If your site ranks # 5, you’ll get about 5 percent of the clicks possible, or 150 a month. At one sale per 100 visitors, you’d average about one and a half sale per month.
So now that you see how the ranking and the numbers add up, you can get an idea of how much return on your investment of getting your site to rank higher. What you’re looking for is search engine optimization services. An improvement in where your website ranks often pays off very well; SEO in general gets a better return for a longer period of time than many online marketing methods.
If your goal in 2010 is to earn more from your website investment, look into boosting your ranking. If you would like to schedule a no cost consultation to discuss your goals for your website in 2011, contact me today.
Before I begin that – let me ask you – what is the purpose you have in mind searching “SEO in Austin“?
Are you needing SEO (search engine optimization)? or are you trying to see what your options are?
Either way its all fine. I’m glad you found me – 
let’s talk a little about what’s in SEO in Austin for you.
Most business owners in Austin or anywhere else in the world, make the logical assumption that when they have their website designed, whomever they hired to do their website has done their SEO. Its what had to be included because its a website because website = SEO, right?
And secondly, most business owners when accosted by so many businesses approaching them to be hired for SEO services, naturally fall back on what and who they know and assume that their original website designer can perform those exact same services – maybe cheaper to boot since they have already done business with them before.
Duh – right?
I mention this for a reason. First there are two huge assumptions going through this thought process, maybe more but two huge ones.
1. A website designer is also an SEO expert -
2. A business owner has to understand SEO before they feel their can profit from it
Let’s address #1 in this article more in depth. An Austin website designer most likely IS very familiar with SEO and knows there are certain places in the html code to place specific words so that a page can be considered optimized. And human desire to only have to work with a single entity is so strong – most of the time businesses work with GREAT designers who have PEDESTRIAN SEO skills just because its easier and on the surface it makes sense.
And that’s not your fault.
You would only go to a dentist for issues related to your teeth and a general practitioner for an ear ache – right? Because you understand the boundaries of each plus you don’t have the added layer of confusion by your dentist calling you and asking if you have an ear ache.
So is it really wrong to rely on your graphic designer? No. But it is wise to understand the boundaries of what they typically have to offer.
Graphics – yes
Website search functionality – yes
Text and text changes – yes
SEO – typically only ON PAGE SEO -
Keyword research – typically no
Building continued social media presence – typically no
Ranking your site – typically no
I will be writing more on this topic here – please sign up to the RSS feed or ask me your most pressing question (see box on upper right hand area of site)
Next topic: HOW MUCH DO YOU HAVE TO KNOW FOR SEO – here’s a taste – SEO for the CEO
My speciality is SEO for Austin TX businesses. And so often when I speak with business owners – they know what SEO is and maybe a little bit of the terminology but not the expertise or desire to learn how to do it – they just want the phone to ring.
And for years this mystery about what SEO entails has been perpetuated because keeping it a mystery has made money for many people. But its hurt a lot of businesses. How many have sent away a $5000 check to some company with a slick approach only to find out later – that traffic or those new “clients” weren’t targeted, weren’t interested and certainly weren’t going to bring in the business to even cover the expense.
So a lot of folks have been disappointed, think SEO doesn’t work or least doesn’t work for them, and are jaded even if the real deal walks in their office, they have no way to assess what’s accurate and what’s not. In short, because they don’t know who to trust there is a lot of money left on the table that their compeitors are getting.
If I could change one thing about how SEO is spoken about it would be to speak of SEO in one of two ways – on page SEO and off page SEO. Why? Off Page SEO accounts for 70 – 80% of why a particular site is ranked #1, #2, #3 and so on.
On page SEO is what most graphic designing firms or individuals offer. This is where they place specific information or data in the appropriate places for either a human AND a search engine to see or where specifically a search engine might see.
If you hear the term “meta data” this is information that only the search engines are designed to read. Most website designers will be familiar with the basics and you should ask them to quote with on page SEO included.
Off page SEO is where a lot of what seems to be magic appears. In short, off page SEO is basically what is happening on other sites (directories, websites, social media, blogs, article directories, press releases etc) that point back to your site.
A professional SEO consultant will have specific knowledge on WHAT to generate on all those other sites but HOW to do it in a way that appears natural to the search engines.
On page SEO for the most part, even if you do it really “wrong”, won’t get your website removed from the search engines. But Off page SEO done incorrectly can at best – not give you the boost in rankings that you need or at worse, get your site removed from the natural search results.
I’ll write more on this because I think its important to educate local businesses so that they know if they were to compare the investment of $45 a month for ineffectual “SEO” or $300 a month for professional results driven SEO that brings in business – they can calculate a real return on their investment.
I know that to a CEO, search engine optimization will either sound like “black magic” or expensive, or more likely, both. So this is written to provide some insight into what you are spending money on, what you should be spending money on and what you shouldn’t.
What is the strategy for SEO?
First, you need to know that 75%-80% of a website’s traffic comes from search engines. And research shows that most people don’t go beyond the first 2 pages of results.
So by not being within the top 20 results and ideally the top 10 results will have a direct impact on your bottom line.
Your company website coming up first when you search for your company name or website doesn’t count. You need to have your site come up when customers are using words for the service or product you provide while they search in Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines. In other words, you need to be relevant to what your clients are looking for and making it easy for search engines to know that.
Now what specific tactics are used to advance the strategy?
This is where we look at two different aspects of your website – the on-page – what’s there that a search engine sees or doesn’t see and the off-page – what other sites have to say to the search engines about your site.
What most people don’t know is that even for a 100% fully-optimized site – the on-page factors account for only 20 -30% of the reason why a search engine places a particular site within the results where they do. Which means, the rest it, namely 70 -80% account for the other factors for why sites are in the #1, 2, or 3 spot.
The good news is that most sites are not fully-optimized. The bad news is many established sites have been at this for a long time and they have a large contingent of sites that tells the search engines “this site is an authority about x”.
ON PAGE Factors
So specifically, on-page factors will be all the meta-data that only the search engines see. This means defining what specific keywords you’re wanting to go for overall.
Then there are four (4) specific locations per page that are viewed by the search engines. If you don’t want your head to spin just remember its title, description, URL, and header info. Most webmasters should know what this is – although you would be working with them most likely to refine the information to conform to a format that most search engines consider “expected”. This is not an area to be creative, in other words. Follow instructions.
OFF PAGE Factors
This is an ever increasing range of factors – basically it boils down to other sites linking back to your site. What those sites are and what site search engines believe are authority and relevant information is what constantly increases and changes. So this is where hiring an seo firm can get interesting. There are multiple ethical ways to increase links and most of those require hard work, elbow grease and some degree of imagination.
The amount of time spent on off page factors once the on page factors are in place will most likely be 100% of the time. This would be the the 5th nail, the 6th nail, the 7th nail etc in the house you call your website. Its what gives it search engine sticky goo between the keywords you go for and the search engines (and their bots) coming back to your site.
How long before you see results?
Typically, you will see it bounce around initially once a site is optimized and it should take about 3 months for it nestle into a settled spot within the natural search results. Whether its for a restuarant or a Fortune 500 company, the steps to increasing backlinks aka “the work”, it takes the same effort no matter what.
Also, note that very competitive search terms will require a longer committment to acheive higher rankings. Low competitive keywords will generally start ranking quickly. So how it takes is relative to how many other sites are aiming for the same target keyword.
How will you know its working?
You should begin to notice an increase in the traffic naturally coming to site especially when viewing the search terms that source the traffic. That’s why analytics are so important prior to beginning an SEO/SEM procedures. You need to know where you are to be able to see when you’re moving.
How long will this last?
Well, as long as you’re offering something that people buy, you’ll be fine. What you are not in control of is what your competitor’s do in response to whatever SEO efforts you have done. If you have more or higher authority links than your competitor, you most likely will rank higher until such time as they get more or higher authority links. Its like the search engines grade on a curve, it depends on whose in your class.
Monthly reporting
If you are paying monthly for SEO services you can expect to receive monthly reporting to confirm the ranking and traffic from the targeted keywords. The items to look for are traffic and the specific keywords bringing in the traffic. Ideally, you will be able to see more and more general keywords and not just your business name.
Final words about SEO
A word about visitor behavior, all the best SEO in the world for your business won’t matter if the website experience isn’t conducive to the visitor. Your SEO should get a visitor to your site, your compelling description and offerings are what keeps them. So don’t blame your SEO company if you can’t convert a visitor to a client, their job is to get them there, your job is to keep them there.
It is in a company’s best interests to maximize the visit of a prospect to the site. Capture of their name and email in exchange for a white paper, or a special report or a personalized review of their needs are some best practices and then a timed repeat communication by email is the most effective way to change a visitor to a client.
If you would like to speak with someone about SEO in general or to review your current website, fill out a contact page at Your Austin SEO Company to have someone get back with you.
Best SEO tip ever – SEO is like dating etiquette guidelines for how your website stands a better chance of getting noticed by Google and the other search engines.
Let’s face it – we want Google to marry our websites and yet Google wants to date us and practically everyone else on the face of the internet. So its up to us to know how to best grab Google’s attention and keep it.
Hygiene
Hygiene is important – just like in the offline world.
* You want your content to be clean – stay away from adult content OK if you want to stand a chance for positive organic search engine results.
* Build a site that loads quickly and easily. First impressions mean a lot even in the Google bot world. If your site takes too long to load for Google – they aren’t going to let you near their customers.
* Make sure you don’t have html errors – they don’t have to be visual to you to be seen by Google. You can run your site through an html checker to find if you have any and where they are.
* Make sure your links are working. Broken links are seen by Google and they don’t like them.
Be Friendly
Make it easy for Google to see your site. If you’re doing FLASH on the homepage of your site – there’s nothing there for the search engines to READ. They need WORDS. So if you ignore this point expect for Google to walk past you on the street and not say hello. No matter how pretty you are, Google can’t see you without words.
Be Yourself
Like in real life – if you are being yourself you may not have a million friends but the ones you have will really be your friends.
So being yourself in terms of your website is knowing what you are about and then being that. Know your keywords – don’t try to make every page or the home page of your site reveal the entire purpose of your life, site or business.
Focus on adding pages or posts and then optimize those for that one search term. SEO not just your home page but consider a page for each of your main keywords.
Google LOVES the clarity and simplicity of that. Using so many keyword terms, Google will assign various weighted value to each. Pretty soon NONE of your keywords has enough weight for Google to “take you to met the parents” on Page 1.
Your Friends
At some point when you’ve been dating long enough, you might introduce your friends to your date. In terms of Google, your website’s friends are other sites that link from their site to yours.
Now you don’t introduce all your friends right away in the offline world and that’s true in the online world of Google as well. To suddenly have 1000′s of links to your brand new site would spook Google. So if you’ve been around for a long time Google is comfortable and that makes sense to Google and you won’t spook anyone. But if you’re brand new and you know everybody? Not likely unless you were doing something to trick the system. And Google will stop returning your calls.
What’s interesting about Google is that it actually cares about the quality of those other sites. Google wants you to have your own friends because it doesn’t want to be your only connection to the internet world. Google can relax a little – that you’re not just dating them for the rankings.
So find out who Google likes and make friends with them.
Google loves active social sites – its a bit like dating a high maintenance date – they want you to look good to them at all times and go dancing every night.
You or rather your website needs to stay in shape, be interesting, be its own person and know that if you’re cheating Google will dump you on the dance floor.
Such a long phrase for basically saying “get more clients from the internet”.
Here’s some of the questions I get -
But what if I don’t know a lot about websites, I just want to run my company?
Great. You can have all the benefits from being found on the internet and not have to be a website guru or html expert.
And then
Yeah, and I know its going to cost me a lot of money and then I’ll have to have more business just to pay the bill for the company that got me all the business.
Well, if you did something rash you might. But not with me.
Well, for one thing, perspective. I’m a local Austin business, just like you. I have a store front for one of my businesses, just like you. I got fooled in the past by other companies promising me lots of clients if I paid them a lot of money every month, just like you.
Plus I want you to succeed right here in Austin. There’s a lot of business right here.
I have a program that either gets your business on the front page of searches done every day by the Austin BUYING public. And its affordable – under $250 and its guaranteed to get your business there or you get your money back.
Yes, you heard right. There’s a way with search engine marketing Austin that will most likely increase the number of Austinites seeing your business – interested?
You can contact Your Austin SEO Company right here or call 1-512-553-5756 (I’m local but this is a Google Voice number so you can reach me wherever I am.)
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