Can I be successful running an SEM campaign on my own?
Running a typical SEM campaign can consume around one hundred hours per month at the outset and, because of that, is normally outsourced to SEO companies. While the do it yourself aspect might be tempting, re-dedicating a hundred hours to an employee or yourself is not going to be the best allocation of labor, especially there isn’t anyone in-house with SEM experience.

How do I know if SEM is working?
Contrary to advertising via traditional media, internet related activity is highly measurable. You will be able to track visits, click throughs, conversion rates, and a host of other metrics. Tracking is normally summarized by SEO companies on a monthly basis. Additionally, you can always check the keywords and phrases that are being optimized to see where your web pages are ranked on the search engines. One word of caution, any SEM campaign will take some time to show results so don’t be frustrated if you’re not on page one after two weeks. The timeline for significant results can vary widely depending on the level of competition for the keywords you are optimizing and your monthly budget.

How do I go about choosing an SEM/SEO company?
You’re going after results and the firm you go with should be able to deliver them. The best way to determine that is to check out how their existing clients are doing, i.e. how they rank, increases in traffic, conversion numbers, etc. If all other things are equal, lean toward a larger rather than a smaller one to ensure continuity should there be some turnover in personnel. Again, this is about results. You’ll have your choice of firms so be ruthless about demanding proof that each company can live up to its own billing.

2) Branding – According to search engine user studies, 36% of searchers believe that company pages that rank at the top of search engine results are the top brands in their field. Consider the amount of money it would take for that kind of brand recognition using offline methods and suddenly the money being paid for SEO services looks like a bargain at ten times the amount.
3) Credibility – Running alongside the branding benefits, occupying real estate on page one of the search engines translates into higher credibility with searchers. Multiple listings on page one can lock up the credibility factor even further.
4) Proactive reputation management – SEO that results in multiple listings on the top pages of the engines can act as a pre-emptive reputation management technique by making it difficult for negative content to get to the front pages of the search engines. Compared to the process of moving negative content off of page one once it’s embedded, keeping it from getting there in the first place is a much better outcome. With statistics showing that nine out of ten users never go beyond page one and virtually no one goes past page three, a search engine optimization plan that occupies a lot of listings in the top thirty spots can keep damaging content from ever seeing the light of day.
5) A better user experience – Following basic optimization guidelines should mean that visitors immediately get a sense that they will find what they’re looking for, a key factor in keeping them on your site. Ease of navigation and quality content results in a positive user experience and increases the site’s trustworthiness, keeping visitors coming back to the site which improves the odds for…
6) Conversions – Combine branding, credibility, a great reputation, and a positive user experience and you are going to get conversions at an increasingly higher rate. Continuing search engine optimization and analysis to improve weak spots on the site can further improve the site’s overall performance and conversion ratio.

An experienced SEO company can deliver benefits which go far beyond a high ranking and targeted traffic. In fact, when measured against a typical advertising budget, the money spent on search engine optimization can provide deliverables and a return on investment that dwarfs what could be expected from traditional and offline efforts.

Protecting and promoting your company’s brand is important, obviously; what’s less obvious is how to both protect and promote your brand using search engine optimization (SEO).  People recognize your company through your brand, and if it isn’t treated properly it can destroy your sales.  Companies are willing to spend thousands of dollars on office space a month, but they try to get away with spending less than a thousand on their website.  Today, your website is the face of your company and it represents you, your brand and your perception.  The content on your website will drive traffic to you, or potentially deflect it away from you, which is why SEO is a vital part of any successful online marketing campaign.

Targeting your SEO correctly involves carefully implementing keywords that are associated with your brand.  For example, if you sell dress socks line, it’s important to note all the terms that are associated with dress socks.  Associated terms for “dress socks” include “men’s dress socks,” “wool dress socks,” “nylon dress socks,” and so forth.  If you leave these terms out, or if you’re too inclusive with your terms, you could get traffic you don’t really want or not enough.  Quality search engine optimization is often an art, not a science.

Part of getting the most out of your SEO is having realistic expectations.  Whereas in the past, every CEO wanted to be on the cover of The New York Times, today they want to be on the first page of Google for a particular search term.  Neither expectation is realistic after one press release is sent out, or after your website has been online for two months.  These days, it can be difficult to get high rankings for keyword phrases, even if they’re rarely used.  If your site isn’t at least a few years old, your SEO efforts will be less likely to provide the results you want.  That’s why it is important to have a long-term goal in mind when considering how to measure the effectiveness of your SEO.

For example, at this moment there are hundreds, if not thousands of debt consolidation companies.  The keyword phrase “debt consolidation” is most likely incredibly saturated, so expecting to have even a top 50 ranking three months after your site has gone live is just not realistic.

A skilled Internet marketing and online reputation management company can move you forward much faster, but even then it is up to the mighty search engine gods.  Using keywords for SEO properly, measuring your analytics accurately, using social networking tools and Google adwords will all move you in the right direction as quickly as possible.  It will take time however for even the most sophisticated product and service launches to garner the kinds of results every business owner is looking for on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask or other search engines.

Overall, having a highly qualified online marketing agency that understands the history and future of SEO is going to be important to your success.  Handling it on your own, or paying your nephew to do it on the side won’t yield the kind of results you’re most likely looking for.

If you are looking for a sophisticated approach to strengthening your brand using SEO, contact the Gervais Group today at 770-529-2262 or visit www.gervaisgroupllc.com
Gervais Group LLC – Atlanta SEO / SEO Company / Atlanta Web Design / Web Design Company

There’s much that is misunderstood regarding search engine optimization (SEO) including some myths that have been dispelled but seem to carry on anyway. Here are a few of them:

1) New content always helps improve rankings on search engine results pages – New content might increase the frequency of spiders returning to a site but it’s not going to do much for rankings if it’s not relevant. Optimized new content that isn’t stuffed with keywords will help, especially if done consistently.
2) Meta tags must be rich with keywords to help with rankings – One of the early black hat techniques stuffed irrelevant keywords into meta tags. Once the search engines figured it out, they classified the tags as spam and don’t give points for it anymore. Meta titles and descriptions do help with rankings
3)  For search engine optimization (SEO) to be effective it must be submitted to the search engines repeatedly – Not true, the spiders are what count now. Search engine optimization, when properly executed and marketed, is very effective regardless of submissions.
4) Flash kills search engine optimization – Flash doesn’t kill SEO; it just doesn’t score with the search engines. Where flash hurts is when it is relied on exclusively. The spiders don’t read it so if there’s nothing to index there’s a problem. That being said, a little flash never hurt anyone.
5) A site that isn’t getting much traffic doesn’t need search engine optimization or marketing – Well, it may not be getting any visitors because it’s doing neither of these activities to drive traffic to the website in the first place.
6) Buying links will get a site banned – Black hat techniques used to manipulate the rankings can get a site banned but buying links isn’t considered to be one of those practices. If crawlers determine the link is paid, it won’t count the votes from that link but that’s a lot better than being banned.
7) SEO has failed if the site doesn’t rank as a number one – For search engine optimization to be effective, it must deliver a return on investment. That return can be wiped out if optimization isn’t cost effective, which can be the case in going after number one rankings. Due to the drop-off from page one to page two on all search engines, a page one ranking is important, but a cost effective ranking in the seventh spot is much better than budget busting number one ranking.

The one thing that will always be true about SEO is that it is constantly evolving. The algorithms and the general environment can change so quickly that what might be true today could end up on someone else’s “list of myths” tomorrow. The other possibility is that the myths written about today become truths at some point in the future, so stay tuned.

Gervais Group LLC - SEO Company / Atlanta SEO / Web Design Atlanta / Web Design Company

For more information call 770-529-2262 or visit www.gervaisgroupllc.com

There is a lot of stuff out there on the internet. In July of 2008, Google announced that it had indexed over 1 trillion unique URL’s. The good news is that almost all of them are not optimized, marketed, or were designed based on any kind of market analysis. What that means is that there are almost a trillion URL’s in existence that are not producing anything of substance for their owners. Those are daunting numbers but having a productive website is not only feasible, it becomes highly likely if you’re willing to do some groundwork before you get started. Start with these six “to do’s” before you do anything else and you’ll go a long way toward building a website that is a true rarity; one that produces leads and revenues for your business.

Here’s your list:
* Determine who is going buy what you are selling – Selling the answer to a question that isn’t being asked is a sure way to burn both money and countless nights wondering why nobody is paying up for your brilliant idea. Being on the cutting edge is great as long as there’s enough demand to keep the lights on while you wait for traction. Just be sure that you’re efforts and expenditures are going to find some support, even if it’s a tiny niche at present.
* Get information on who else is already doing what you want to do – If no one else is in your space, figure out why. If you can’t figure it out revisit the cutting edge “to do” above.  If there is competition, don’t be intimidated. In fact, a little competition can provide some intelligence on what is being done well in the market you intend to serve, where opportunities exist, and validation that there is a market in the first place.
* Get your value proposition done – One of the best value propositions ever was developed in one of the most competitive businesses around. When Domino’s started saying “”You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less — or it’s free”, their business took off and never looked back. It’s alright if your value proposition doesn’t make it into marketing textbooks, but you still need one to differentiate your offering from everyone else.
* Learn how your market is searching for what you are selling – A “deep dive” into keyword research will be one of the factors that will maximize your return on investment. Don’t be tempted into the shortcut of thinking that the associated keywords are obvious and that you can write the list in five minutes. High traffic keywords can also be highly competitive, making it difficult and/or expensive to get to the front pages of the search engines. Going with less competitive and long tail keywords, derived from analysis, will make moving up in page rank faster and will bring more targeted traffic.
* Decide what you want visitors to do when they come to your site – Impressing a visitor is one thing, having them buy something is another. Long intro pages, special effects, and other distractions may look great but visitors will lose interest and bounce off of your site without some sort of immediate gratification. If the objective of your website is to sell products and services, make it easy and obvious to the visitor that you have what they want and how they can purchase it. Starting with the landing page, guide the visitor through the process in the simplest format necessary to get the sale. Giving them the information they need, a call to action, and straightforward navigation will go a long way toward getting conversions on your site.
The simplicity of setting up a website has lulled the vast majority of website owners into thinking that they can slap a website together and have it work miracles. It rarely works that way, but with some research and analysis you can beat the odds with a site that generates traffic, leads, and conversions.

About Gervais Group LLC  – SEO Company / Atlanta SEO / Web Design Company / Atlanta Web Design

Gervais Group LLC is a full service IT consulting company with global reach. Our company has been designed to provide state of the art results across a broad array of products and services. In our partnership with your business we only measure our performance by the success achieved by your business. We work for that success first by taking the time and effort to assess how your business operates, its objectives, and the IT solutions required to reach the full potential of your company. We’ll also provide solutions for the improvement and optimization of overall operations in the most cost effective manner possible.
Gervais Group’s analysis and implementation can then be applied to specific areas such as web design, search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing and/or across your company’s infrastructure including full spectrum IT services such as consulting, strategy, governance, and process/service management. Additional services include programming, software customized to your business’ needs, information risk management, forms processing and database management.  In all cases we provide ongoing solutions management, allowing you to focus on running other critical elements of your business.
Partnering with Gervais Group LLC will provide a key component in the long term success of your business. Call us now at (770) 529 2262 for an initial assessment to maximize the potential of your business.
www.gervaisgroupllc.com

* Black Hat Techniques – Black hat SEO is the catch-all phrase used to describe a variety of tricks and shortcuts that are considered unethical by the SEO community and the search engines. Use of these techniques can be tempting because of their lower costs and the fact that they can work temporarily. Basically considered a short sighted solution to a long term problem, these techniques will ultimately hurt the ranking of a website at best, with the worst case being that the website gets banned or blacklisted by search engines.
* Cloaking – A bait and switch technique designed to fool search engine crawlers. This tactic has a site’s server feed keyword rich content to the crawlers but if a visitor clicks on the link he will see completely different content.
* Doorway Page – A doorway page is meant to trick the search engines into thinking that a page is rich in relevant keyword content. These pages typically contain only keywords and are therefore useless for visitors.
* Hidden Text – Relevant or keyword rich content that is programmed into the html code which is invisible to the reader but will be picked up by search engine crawlers.
* Keyword Stuffing – Just like it sounds, the practice involves cramming as many keywords into the text as possible to increase the page ranking. Readers know keyword stuffing when they see it because of the blatant repetition of the same terms throughout the copy on a page. Keywords can also be stuffed in comment tags, alt tags, and in hidden text on the pages of the abusing site.

These are but a few of the unethical practices which describe black hat SEO techniques. The search engines are very aware of “search engine spam” techniques and are always on the lookout for them. Getting caught using them is costly both in terms of rebuilding a site that has been banned, and from the lost sales opportunities as a result of getting tossed out of the search engines. Also hurt in that type of situation would be any branding efforts involving the offending website. Building and marketing websites can be extremely lucrative over the long term when done correctly. Trying to cut corners using black hat techniques is a sure way to turn a short term problem into a long term quagmire.

Search Engines

Typically, search engines use numerous factors to rank websites.  The main job of a search engine is to do a keyword search.  This search matches a keyword or keyword phrase and provides the user with the most relevant articles and websites.  Search engines use algorithms with many variables in order to find the most relevant article based on the keyword or phrase.  This does not necessarily mean that the sites featured as most relevant contain the most of the keyword or phrase.  Many variables are involved in ranking sites which produces better results but makes Search Engine Optimization more complicated.

Basic Search Engine Optimization Concepts

In order to implement Search Engine Optimization, a website designer will generally make sure that the site contains many Search Engine Optimization keywords and Search Engine Optimization keyword phrases in strategic locations throughout the website.  He or she may also change the HTML to make the site more search engine friendly.  These concepts are somewhat basic and have been being used since search engines first started being used in the mid 1990s.

There’s More!

Though making sure that the website has many keywords and phrases is very important, there are other secrets to Search Engine Optimization.  Search engines also take into account the uniqueness of the content, the overall design, ease of use, quality of content, and the number of inbound links.  There are numerous other factors as well, although not many people know them.  Google uses over two hundred different factors in determining its rankings.  It should be kept in mind that some things can effect a rating negatively; the search engines do not concentrate exclusively on positive factors.  Experts in Search Engine Optimization know more of these factors than most people but much of their work is based on conjecture.  Search engines add more factors frequently in order to prevent webmasters from promoting unhelpful sites.  Fifteen years ago, filling a site with keywords would be enough to rank high on a search engine’s list.  This is not the case in the present.  Generally, if a website is of a very high quality, it will rank high with the search engines.

Since most people only look at the search results on the first few pages of a keyword search, it is important for websites designers to use Search Engine Optimization concepts in order to move closer to the top of the list.  Many factors are involved, not just the quantity of keywords.  In general, if a site is designed intuitively and contains unique quality information, Search Engine Optimization should not be a problem.

Website development is the most important part of developing an internet presence. Without a nice looking design and a functional website, you cannot have a web presence. Finding a web development company to build a nice web site is the easy part. Unfortunately having a beautiful looking website is just not enough. It can have all of the greatest functions in the industry and that will all mean nothing if people do not visit the website. This is where web design for search engines becomes important.

Typical Website Design

Your average development company will build a great looking website. It will be clean and pleasing to the eye. The problem is that they will have no idea what to do in order to insure the site is built for search engines. The only goal is the look and feel of the website along with the functionality. That will become a problem in the future.

Understanding Search Engines

The number one way to get traffic to any website is through search engines. If you are going to have a website built, it should be built for search engines. There are specific things that search engines like and some that they strongly dislike. When a web design company builds the site, they are probably not thinking about those things. It is your job to insure that they are.

The way that your URLs are set up, the ability to customize meta tags and title tags and the quality of the code all have affects on search engine rankings. Some of the more obvious things to look for would be that the html and CSS are validated, which will also have an affect on rankings. This is normally not an issue with any professional web design company.

Functionality Over Glamour

A lot of the flash elements and glamour that you can find on a lot of websites are not going to get you rankings in the search engines. Some programming languages such as Java Script are not supported by the search engines. While it is okay to have some of these elements, it is important not to over do it. Not only that, but you need your website to be fully functional to all of your users. Be aware, that not everyone has fast internet connections. Loading time is a big issue with a lot of websites.

When all said in done, you have a very important job when it comes to having someone build your website. You have the job of making sure you hire someone that will do it the right way. All you have to do is make sure they know what is important. If they are aware of the importance of search engines and how they work, you know they are on the right track with good web design.