Clint's Internet Marketing Blog

Google What?

2008-12-19T13:57:00.001-08:00

I was listening to the radio the other morning while driving into work and it was one of the funnier morning shows I had heard in a while. They were having people call in that had Googled someone from their past and the funniest or most bizarre story won some tickets to the Nutcracker. There were people calling in saying that a boyfriend they had from years ago had gone to prison or an ex-husband had told authorities and filed a case for being abducted by aliens. Some really funny stories, but it got me to thinking. Do me a favor today and Google your name. If you haven’t ever done this you should. Your name and information is very viewable these days and these are the types of things your potential patients and clients are doing as they become more affluent in searching on the web.

My point is pretty simple. People start building a relationship with you before they even speak to you. So it leaves me to ask the question of what people are finding on Google when they search for your name. Is it a good reflection of you? And does that information give them the perception that you want them to have of you?

These are just some things to think about. If you would like to talk about your current online image or how to improve your online image, please contact me. I would love to hear from you.

Choosing a SEO Firm

2008-08-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

I was at my aunts 4th of July BBQ last month and met a great lady working for a nonprofit organization dedicated to K-9’s. We started talking and she told me how she has been working with an SEO firm and wasn’t seeing results after working with them for a year and spending lots of money with them. So that got me thinking of all the other times I have had practices come to me saying the same thing. They are skeptical of SEO and question if anyone can really provide results that are measurable. If I was in their shoes, I would feel the same way so, I put together some questions to ask a potential SEO firm that you may be considering.

How long they have been doing SEO?
This is a not a huge qualifier. It doesn’t take years of experience to know effective, honest SEO tactics, but it does take a deep knowledge of the Internet and search engines, and you don’t want to be their first project.

Can you show me three clients who you have positioned on first-page results?
They should always be able to provide current clients that are consistently at the top of the search engines. Also, look for testimonials. These are things every firm and practice should have, including yours. These are very powerful in the eyes of the visitors.

Can you illustrate any significant traffic boosts or conversion boosts?
They should be able to provide you with clients’ results before and after working with them, showing where they were before they started helping, and where they are now. This is a very important metric that should be tracked and recorded.

How do you optimize websites, and how does it differ from other SEO firms?
Any good firm will have no problem explaining how they get results. We want our clients to understand what we are doing. It helps us build trust with our clients and they know we aren’t hiding anything from them. If they seem to be hiding things this should raise a red flag to you.

Do they understand your Industry?
Your website marketing firm should understand the economics of your business as it relates to the Web. I only work in a few industries and I know those industries very well. Knowing the ins and outs of their practice is critical. I know how their consumers shop and what they look for when buying. So ask them questions about your business. See how well they know it and if they have worked with people with in your industry before.

What are your criteria for choosing keyword phrases?
There are many tools out there to see how many people search for certain terms a month. We select our keyword phrases through many years of doing this and working with select professional service industries. We understand your business and how consumers research your services.

Do you have any guarantees of your work?
Most top SEO firms work off their reputation and some even offer guarantees. The firm should clearly explain why they do not have guarantees or what their guarantees are. Make sure you understand exactly what keyword phrases, search engines, and time frame they guarantee.

I hope this helps and if you would like to talk more about making sure you have found a great SEO firm, I would love to speak with you.

Duplicate Content

2008-06-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

One of the most frequent issues or concerns I talk most about with my clients is duplicate content. Is it true that Google will penalize you for your duplicate content? Simply, yes they will.
Google has a webmaster help center and has a very good publication about duplicate content. Also check out the webmaster central blog where there is a great post about duplicate content as well. I suggest reading both as the information you read there is straight from Google. Because this information is out there, I don’t want to sound like a broken record on this issue, so I will just cover a three points.

1. “How to check for duplicate content?” It is a true pain in the butt to check for duplicated content, but thankfully someone a lot smarter than me has come to our rescue - www.copyscape.com. You can enter the URL of the page you want to check and CopyScape will return a list of pages that Google has indexed that contain text that is duplicated on your site, or for more detail you can subscribe to their copysentry service. I get asked all the time about “What percent of a page or website has to be duplicated before I get penalized?” the answer is 13.3333%. Sorry, just kidding, unfortunately none of the search engines reveal this information, mainly because if they did people would know the exact line to get to before they crossed it and would inhibit the search engines’ ability to prevent duplicate content.

2. “How can I make sure I don’t have duplicate content?” Simple, make sure it is written by humans, completely different from any other combination of letters, symbols or words on the web and clearly not manipulated or just reorganized. Here are a couple tips to avoid having your content duplicated:

Make sure that your content is copy written exclusively for your use.
If you have multiple domains that point to the same website content, take advantage of permanent redirection. (301 status report) This informs the spider of the redirection so they understand you are not putting up duplicate content.
When you find duplicate content in your website, rewrite it in your own words so that the search engines can reindex the page with the new, original content.

3. “What to do if you feel someone has duplicated your content?” You can report the duplicate content issue to Google under the DMCA guidelines they provide at http://www.google.com/dmca.html

If you have any question or want to discuss in-depth your situation I would love to hear from you.

Importance of Content with Search Engine Optimization

2008-05-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

I get requests every day about optimization and search engine marketing (SEM). The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to improve your website’s organic listings for a specific set of targeted keywords, i.e. Denver Lasik, San Francisco Cosmetic Dentist, or Cincinnati Personal Injury Lawyer. Each search engine has a ranking system of algorithms, methods of determining relevancy, and how often it will index pages. Unfortunately, this information is not made public. There are, however, what I call “Best Practices” to use to give your webpage a better shot at being recognized by the search engines and have them find it relevant and credible for those keywords or search terms. There are many “Best Practices” to use, so this post will cover the single most important one, content.

Content, and the organization of your content, is the single most important need for search engine optimization. Search engines rely on the content of a webpage to assess how pertinent and credible that information is to a specific search. The more strategically and unfailing a phrase is used within the content of a web page, the more pertinent and credible the search engines may consider that page to be for that phrase. This is called keyword density, but there is a point where too much of this will appear “spammy,” and raise a red flag in the search engines eyes and hurt your credibility. Another red flag is using duplicate or plagiarized copy. This will also hurt your credibility (to be covered in more detail in my next blog).

Writing content that is made for search engines requires a lot of work. You need to make sure it isn’t just “copy and paste” content. You also need to make sure that it is formatted in a way that it is easy to read and understand for any consumer that will come to your website. People read information from a screen much differently than a magazine or newspaper. I suggest writing at no higher than a 10th grade level. I also suggest having your content written just for your website. With that being said, when I work with a client, I need them to be devoted to the content and review it and give their input. After all, this website is a reflection of you and your practice.

After you have developed and written all the content to get your webpage up and live, (I suggest having 25 to 50 pages of content depending on how competitive your market is), there is an ongoing maintenance that needs to be preformed to keep your content up-to-date and fresh. This way, when the search engine comes around and indexes your pages, it will always see new, fresh content. Search engines love to see fresh content and they will index your pages more frequently when they see it.

There are a couple of ways of doing this, such as adding new pages every month, like FAQ pages, or specific procedure pages. However, the easiest way to add pages and keep fresh content is a blog. Blogging is so easy. You can write about a patient or client that just came through your door and was ecstatic with the their results from your practice. You can also put testimonials into your blog (in addition to an actual testimonials page). Also, develop links within your blog to direct the consumer to target pages. For example, if you are blogging about porcelain veneers, have a link to your porcelain veneers page so they can get more information.

These are just a couple “Best Practices” to use. In the paragraph above, I wrote about links within your blog, which helps with link building. Link building is another way to help your search engine results. If you would like to discuss link building, content development, or any other SEO-related questions, I would be happy to talk with you.

Should I Do Nothing?

2008-04-22T15:33:00.000-07:00

One of my clients recently asked me if they should do nothing? Meaning should they just keep doing what they are doing with the marketing they already have in place. My answer is really pretty simple and someone has already said it better than I ever could "If you keep doing what you're doing , you will keep getting what you're getting." With the economy the way it is you should never just do nothing. You should still be spending marketing dollars but spend them more wisely and in a more cost-effective way. When you're talking about web marketing and search engine optimization, time is the one thing we can never get back. Meaning it takes time for you to show up on the first page of the search engines. It doesn't just happen over night. You don't want to be desperate for leads and just now looking at the Internet to provide those leads. They won't come immediately, and you will be starving for six months and your competitors will be capitalizing on you having just done nothing.