Gervais Group, LLC – Internet Marketing & SEO Company

Recent statistics show that if Facebook was a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world. With the growth of social media such as Facebook , Twitter, and LinkedIn, an SEO program which does not include provisions to develop a presence, optimize for, and participate in the social web is effectively leaving money on the table and ignoring a massive opportunity for leveraging the content distribution and linking benefits of these social websites. The foundation of these networks, which encourages sharing, opinions, reviews, comments, and linking, provides an extremely efficient method to distribute search engine optimized content to the masses with an extremely cost effective effort.

Here are five basic steps toward optimizing your returns through social media sites:

1) Find the sites that fit your company’s demographic – Locating your audience is critical so find the sites where people will be looking for what you have to offer.  If you are offering products and services geared toward the AARP crowd, building a MySpace presence won’t be the most efficient use of your resources. That being said, with the size and variety of users on the major social media sites, you might still get some attention but it won’t be near as much as being present on sites with a better fit. If you’re unsure, starting tracking your audience using social media monitoring software that can identify where your company related keywords, and content related to them, are showing up.
2) Clarify your SEO/social media objectives – Direct selling on the social media sites is usually considered an annoyance and often thought of as pure spam. Because of that, social media related search engine optimization is a different animal than SEO in its pure form. Here, the optimal role of SEO is to directly influence discovery of social communities and/or content via search, guiding conversation, and building/protecting brand perception.
3) Determine how you’re going to participate – Successful participation on social media sites is centered on providing content, interacting, and being a part of the conversation. Be sure to put your best foot forward in all areas. If you’re uncomfortable with public communication, find someone who is. Make sure that all your communications present your company in the best light possible, are search engine optimized for your keywords, and are easy to share amongst members of the community.
4) Develop your content mix – Your content mix for a successful social media marketing effort should be based on how your audience receives and shares content whether via video, articles, research, etc. Doing the due diligence here will be well worth the investment as a seamless integration in to your community will develop your credibility and provide the means for getting your message out faster.
5) Test, measure, re-test – One of the great attributes of search engine optimization is that there is so much that is measurable and quantifiable. Goals, benchmarks, and objectives should all be tracked in order to constantly improve results. The combination of social media monitoring services as well as web analytics can provide measurements which can tell you whether you are on track and where results can be improved.

The importance of successfully combining search engine optimization with social media is growing as fast as the social websites themselves. For a free analysis on where your social media efforts should be focused, call The Gervais Group today at (770) 529 2262.

The process of setting up a website and going into business has never been easier and has convinced a large percentage of website owners that they can load some content on to a template and visitors will arrive. This practice rarely works in that manner but by taking the following five steps you can greatly increase the odds of building a website that generates traffic, leads, and conversions.
Take these steps before you do anything else:.
* Know your consumer – Determine who is going buy what you are offering and where you can find them. Search engine optimization will help with rankings but you can also reach out to your potential consumers through blogs, articles, and social media sites. These consumer direct venues may not generate a lot of revenues but they will help you build credibility with your consumers and the revenues that do come can help pay the bills while optimization efforts unfold.

* Know your competition – Getting advance information on whom else is already doing what you want to do, what keywords they’re using, and the costs of going head to head with them will allow you to set up a search engine optimization strategy with the highest potential for a return on investment. Competition isn’t a bad thing so don’t be intimidated. The benefit of having some competition is that you can gain intelligence on what is being done well in the field, where keyword and other opportunities exist, and get a sense on the size and activity of the market you plan to address.

* Differentiate your business – Separating your business from the competition by addressing neglected issues or offering the best product or service in the category will gain valuable attention from searchers. Try not to get bogged down with a “me too” type of product that looks like the same thing consumers can buy from a handful a sites. Articles, white papers, and blogs can also help to establish your brand’s superiority.

* Research your relevant keywords – Thorough keyword research can help you learn how your market is searching for what you are selling and will prove to be a significant factor in maximizing the return on investment for your SEO efforts. Many owners make the mistake of assuming that the keywords relevant to searchers and spiders are obvious and can be defined without paying for research. Popular keywords can generate tons of non-targeted visits, can be highly competitive, and can be extremely expensive to get ranked on the front pages of the search engines. Using relevant keywords with less competition, derived from analysis, might drive less traffic to the site but your stickiness and conversions will be much higher.  The can also be search engine optimized for faster results.

* Determine how you’ll define a conversion on the site – While a whiz-bang website might impress a visitor, but having them convert is what is ultimately going to generate revenues. If the objective of your website is to sell complex or customized products and services, a conversion might be defined as a visitor setting up a phone appointment for more information on your products or services. If the offering is clean and simple make it easy and obvious to the visitor that you have what they want and how they can purchase it. Beginning with the landing page, your site should guide the visitor through the process using the simplest format necessary to get the conversion.
It may take a while longer to get started, but following these five steps will get results much faster than plowing ahead blindly. Additionally, employing the services of an SEO Company can ensure that pre-campaign preparation is thorough, efficient, and gives you the best chance for optimal results. If you’re contemplating the initiation of a search engine optimization campaign, call the Gervais Group today at (770) 529 2262.

Keyword selection and usage, when incorporated using research and planning, can generate targeted visitors and increased conversion rates while taking shortcuts or operating with pre-conceived ideas on what will work can lead to a site’s underperformance and ultimate failure. Due to the required investments in time and money for effective search engine optimization of relevant keywords, many site owners attempt to do their own SEO projects and make the following mistakes:

* Getting dense on keywords – This kind of activity presents a couple of critical problems, the first being that search engines can decide that the site is “stuffed” with keywords and penalize it, resulting in a drop in rankings. The second, and most important issue is that content with overly dense keyword concentration can be awkward and amateurish, resulting in a poor user experience. Page visitors decide very quickly on whether to stay or leave, largely due to the content in front of them. Repetitive keyword use will turn an interested visitor into a departure with the click of a button thus negating any and all search engine optimization efforts.
* Making assumptions on which keywords will work – Have your SEO Company research which keywords will drive visitors to the site and conversions once they have arrived. When keywords are selected by pure guesswork the end results are usually terms which are too broad, too narrow, or overly competitive. Broad search terms might generate traffic but visitors will bounce off quickly while narrow and competitive terms typically result in minimal traffic. Keyword research will find terms which can generate targeted traffic with appropriate investments of time and money.
* Impatience – Search engine optimization and marketing are time intensive endeavors which can require hundreds of hours of labor for content creation, link building, and other activities. Many site owners make the mistake of getting impatient with the process and either change strategies, start making changes to the site, or quit the project. Using search engine placement ads is a great way to get on the front page in the sponsored links section while waiting for the results in organic search.
* Letting content go stale – Search engine optimization, even after making the front pages of the search engines, is an ongoing process requiring consistently fresh content. Regardless of how great your starting content may be, it needs to be supplemented on a regular basis. The implementation of new content works both to satisfy the search engines and to keep visitors coming back to site. Neglecting to add fresh content will result in the site being ignored by search engines and visitors alike.

These are all avoidable mistakes which will continue to be made by website owners across the web. Working with an SEO Company which can provide guidance, research, and an honest appraisal of the cost and time required for a successful campaign will go a long way toward achieving the objectives you set for your website. For a free consultation on optimizing your site, call The Gervais Group at (770) 529 2262.

By the end of 2008, industry watchers were estimating that the total number of websites on the internet was approaching 200,000,000. In July of the same year Google made the announcement that they had indexed on trillion web pages and weren’t finished yet. It’s a big (and growing) sea out there, making it more difficult by the day to get your website to the top of its perspective heap. If you’re making some of the following mistakes, it won’t only be difficult; it could be expensive as well.
A list of SEO don’t do’s:
1) Using broad or generic keywords – There are actually two issues with broad keywords. The first is that the competition for them can be extremely intense and therefore expensive and time consuming. Broader terms like “travel” or “kitchen appliances” are typically the province of multi-billion dollar companies with commensurate budgets to lock down the terms. Even if you were to out maneuver the big boys for a broad keyword you would be faced with a second problem; visitors that land on your site but don’t see what they want. For instance, if a visitor looking for vacation spots finds your site using “travel” as a keyword but you’re only offering travel gear, that visitor will bounce off of your site quickly. This can be extremely expensive and frustrating on a pay-per-click campaign.
2) Design your landing page so that it doesn’t relate to your optimized keywords – You only have a few seconds to grab your visitor once they’ve landed. It’s so easy to back off of any site that you have to let your visitor know that they have found what they’re looking for immediately.
3) Populate your landing page with amateurish content – Poorly written content will lose visitors in no time. While not everyone can write compelling content, they all know bad content when they see it. Trying to position your site as a trusted authority on a product or service with mis-spelled words, syntax errors, and/or miserable text is not going to work. If you’re a writer it’s one thing. If you’re not, hire one or have your SEO company do it.
4) Let your site get stale – Repeat visitors are looking for something new when they return. Reward them with new content, inventory, etc. A static site won’t encourage them to come back and can fall off of a consumer’s radar as soon as they find a more dynamic destination.
5) Make conversion a difficult process – It’s best to assume that a prospective buyer will have a “canary in the coal mine” mentality throughout the conversion process. If that visitor gets confused or can’t figure out a way to buy, make contact, or leave information they’re likely to head off into another direction. Keep the conversion process as simple, convenient, and secure as possible and you’ll end up with a much higher conversion rate.
6) Refuse to track your site’s performance – If you’re not paying attention, you’re not going to know the weak links of your site. By tracking conversions and where visitors are bouncing off of your site you can see what’s working and what isn’t. Pages with high bounce rates aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do and will need to be re-vamped. The best sites are the ones that are constantly being improved.
While it may be tempting to keep the money in your wallet and do it yourself, the best results are going to be seen when you employ the services of an experienced SEO company. For a review of your website and where its weak points are, call the Gervais Group today at (770) 529 2262.

Search engine optimization, especially when integrated with aggressive search engine marketing, can send thousands of targeted visitors searching for information on, or seeking to buy products and services from, your website. Getting visitors to your website, however, is only half the battle. As successful as your SEO/SEM efforts may be in driving traffic to your site, you still have only three to seven seconds to keep those visitors from clicking away from your site and continuing their search.
Getting your visitors to stay on your site then becomes the key to achieving a conversion whether that means leaving contact information, requesting more information, or making a purchase. It all starts with making sure that when the visitor lands on the associated page they immediately receive information that tells them they have found what they’re looking for. This can be accomplished with a headline directly related to the original keyword used in the visitor’s search. As in any advertising campaign, that headline’s purpose is to keep the visitor reading the next lines of the content your search engine optimization company has placed below the headline.
The next lines of content should contain information on both the problem your visitor is trying to solve and the solution to that problem, naturally available through your website. The problem/solution relationship should address the subliminal needs behind a typical purchase:
* The possibility to make or save money
* Saving time
* Greater convenience
* Pleasure
* Self esteem, enhancement, or improvement
Similar to the headline, this aspect draws visitors further into the site and encourages them to continue to follow the conversion process. Be sure to provide a link to additional product or service details to more fully describe the benefits the buyer will receive as well as to provide links to technical information such as “how it works” and “why you need this”.
Concurrent with the sales process, the site should be working to develop the trust of the potential consumer. Providing information as an authority on the subject and delivering it in a clear and concise manner is great start. Adding proof in the form of testimonials, reviews, galleries, and money back guarantees should follow directly.
The “call to action” is where, after establishing authority, trust, and superior product/services, the visitors are encouraged to do one of the following:
* Make a purchase at the site – Ideal for an easy to describe product service where person to person contact is not necessary. The shopping cart process should be easy to navigate and understand with clear terms, conditions, and guarantees. Offering secure transactions is a must.
* Make a purchase or get more information via phone – Make sure your phone number is visible on every page.
* Leave contact information – Maker your form interactive and easy to submit. Assure the visitors that their email is secure and that they will not be spammed if they provide it.
* Set up a consultation – For complex or customized products and services an initial consultation may be required. Be sure to display your phone number and to respond quickly if the request comes in via email.
* Sign up or subscribe to a newsletter – Use autoresponders to get the information to your consumer as quickly as possible. Be sure to include the same conversion process in your e-newsletter as you have on your site.
Buy knowing your product/service, an SEO company will tailor the onsite conversion process toward the most relevant mode for your visitors. Financial services, for instance, would be highly unlikely to need a shopping cart for conversion while a financial information product may be perfectly suitable for one. By providing your visitors with the product/service they’re looking for, being seen as an authority on the subject, and providing a simple means of conversion, your website will do what you always intended it to do; grow your sales.

The process of reputation management is most often undertaken at the advent of an attack which, depending on whether the company being attacked is doing any kind of monitoring on the internet, can lag the first posts by days or weeks. In fact, it’s still very common for companies to find out about an attack/rumor/review from outside sources either in the media or from their own customers. By the time that occurs, the negative content has likely been seen by hundreds if not thousands of potential or existing customers.

That kind of situation can be avoided or at least marginalized by engaging an SEO company that is also familiar with reputation management techniques before damaging content makes its way to the internet. There are several advantages to engaging proactive SEO services:

* The first objective of search engine optimization and marketing is to push the website to a position where its pages occupy the rankings on the front pages of the search engines. Statistics show that, regardless of the amount of search results, the only pages that matter are the first three which represent the top thirty positions. In fact, nine out of ten searches never go past page one and only 1 in 50 searches ever make it to page three. By occupying multiple positions in the top thirty, and preferably the top ten, there’s less room for negative content.
* Optimizing for the most relevant keywords and keyphrases makes it much tougher for negative content to be found by searchers using the most popular search terms.
* An SEO company, in order to do the best job possible, must develop a working knowledge of the companies they’re working with. That knowledge would include files on articles, press releases, etc., as well as a general familiarity with company operations and its competition. In terms of executing a reputation management strategy, having an existing relationship can speed the response time for a counter attack, especially when compared to a new company that has been hired after an attack has started. With an existing relationship its not uncommon for counter measures to start within 24 to 48 hours.
* An SEO company which also provides reputation management services can monitor consumer generated media such as blogs and social media to get early notice on negative commentary. Where possible, the SEO company could engage in conversation to provide rebuttals and positive content directly at sites where discussions are being carried out. By contributing to and/or controlling the conversations on forums, blogs, and social media sites rumors, hearsay, and damaging reviews can be handled at the source.

Engaging an SEO company with reputation management capabilities has other benefits as well including branding, increased traffic, and a higher conversion rate. Being proactive in protecting those benefits, along with the reputation of the company and its products, can be much like carrying an insurance policy, the difference being that this kind of policy can pay for itself many times over.

Once the decision is made to outsource your search engine optimization, the next move is to decide on who does it. Here are six of the choices you’re likely to come across:

1) The whiz kid – There is always someone in your life who knows “someone” or “has a guy”. While their intentions are most likely honorable, the suggestion to hire their son who is home for summer and can do amazing things with a computer isn’t going to do you any favors. Taking on an “intern” who may or may not be familiar with search engine optimization may save you some money but will be about all the good that comes from it.
2) The moonlighter – Like the whiz kid referral, people start coming out of the woodwork as soon as you start talking about designing a site or hiring an SEO company. The moonlighter usually has a job that takes up most of the work day already but has some experience in doing what you need to get done. More often than not, the moonlighter will be a friend or someone in your social circle and with that comes a degree of trust but there’s also the risk that the relationship becomes a problem if things don’t go to plan. Maybe the question to ask is, “If this person can deliver the SEO results I need, why isn’t search engine optimization this person’s day job?”
3) Two guys and a dog in their garage – The first sign that your prospective SEO company is structured along these lines is that your meetings are held at Starbucks which, hopefully, is big enough that you don’t have to sit next to the frappacino machine. There can be a lot of talent in these types of companies and many of them can run successful SEO campaigns. It’s all good unless a bigger fish arrives at their doorstep. With a finite amount of hours in the day and a couple people to work them, making time for a bigger project could cut into the time they’re able to spend on your website. The other possibility is that your site gets outsourced with all the risks that go along with that option.
4) Guys in black hats – Black hat SEO will not only cost you money, it could cost you your online business. Reminiscent of the old “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” commercials, replace the words Mother Nature with Google and wait for the lightening to strike your website if your SEO company is using practices that the search engines don’t agree with. Not getting results is one thing, but getting your site blacklisted will be a much bigger problem.
5) Big promises, low cost, no results – These SEO companies tend to use words like “guarantee”, “first page”, and “SEO secrets unknown to anyone else”. Whether they’re guys in black hats or just guys trying to separate you from your money, run away fast and far if you hear those words in the sales pitch. The low cost part doesn’t work either. With the time and labor required of successful SEO campaigns, the only way this kind of company can make money is simply by doing nothing or something close to it.
6) Companies that deliver – Successful search engine optimization requires time and labor, both of which require money. There is no way around it and reputable SEO companies won’t hesitate to tell you that. Optimizing for competitive industries and associated keywords can take hundreds of hours just to get things moving. Nonetheless, the return on the investment made for successful search engine optimization is much greater than any other form of advertising, bringing with it branding, awareness, and consumers looking to buy what you have to offer.

It’s human nature to look for shortcuts and the best deal out there. In hiring the right SEO company, taking shortcuts is counterproductive and the best deal is likely to be much more expensive than others on the table. It’s said all the time, and it couldn’t be more true than in search engine optimization, “You get what you pay for”.