Gervais Group, LLC – Internet Marketing & SEO Company

Gervais Group – SEO Tips by Gervais Group an SEO Company

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

It was once said about the cost of advertising, “I know that half of the money I spend on advertising is totally wasted, I just don’t know which half.” The same cannot be said about search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing due to the incredible amount of documentable information on the internet. This information allows for more focus and precision in terms of targeting customers than ever before in any other medium.

Tracking the available information allows for extensive testing on what is working and what isn’t which, in turn, will increase the efficiency of advertising and marketing efforts. The list of what can be tracked and tested is quite long but includes the following:

* How much traffic is there for the business category – This can determine the overall size of the online market, the budget required, and/or the viability of SEO/SEM

* What keywords are driving the most traffic in the category – What searches will lead visitors to your website

* How much competition is there for specific keywords – Going after highly competitive keywords in an SEO strategy may be counter-productive due to the high amount of resources and time required to move up in search engine rankings. Focus on can provide more immediate results

* How many  visitors are coming to the site – Provides a base line to measure against for effectiveness of SEO/SEM

*  How many visitors are search engine spiders/crawlers/robots – Another base line measure

*  What keywords are driving traffic to your site now – If these are working, incorporating them in   the SEO campaign is a must

* Unique vs. repeat visitors – Another baseline measure

* How long do visitors stay at the site – This can determine the effectiveness of keywords, possibly used in Pay-Per Click, the “stickiness” of the site, or whether there are navigation issues. If visitors are bouncing back off of the site within seconds, the keywords being used could be too broad in nature. Another factor could be that they’re not seeing what they’re looking for when they arrive so they “back” out. Figuring theses issues out is especially important if you’re using PPC as you are paying for these visitors that are bouncing out immediately. If visitors are leaving the site after visiting a specific page it could be a sign that there are navigation or content issues that are driving visitors off of the site.

* Is PPC profitable – PPC in general is carrying less weight for visitors than say, eighteen months ago. The organic searches are what most visitors consider important so a review of the profitability of your PPC efforts is probably in order. If PPC is not generating enough leads or conversions that money might be better spent on SEO/SEM, focusing on a higher page rank.
These are only a few of the metrics that can be tracked online. The companies that are successful on the web are constantly testing, analyzing, and fine tuning their marketing efforts. Using the information available, you can too, and with a little determination and planning your website can be converted from an online brochure to a cash generating machine.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and the manner in which people search on the internet are evolving so fast that books on the subject can be outdated before they make it to print. One area in particular is the extension of single and two-word keywords into the optimization long tail keywords or key strings. In many instances optimizing for one or two keywords can have several disadvantages. Among them are:

* They can be too general in nature – The term “mortgage” has loads of traffic but the term is not targeted toward anything specific. This keyword could cover someone looking to take out a loan, do a mortgage modification, or someone looking for a mortgage calculator.
* The competition for keywords can be intense – With high levels of competition, getting to the front page of the organic section of search engines can be a long and costly endeavor. Upon getting to the front page you’ll still have a generic and untargeted visitor.
* Pay Per Click’s can use up a monthly budget in a heartbeat – Highly competitive keywords have become very pricey. All of the top 50 keywords cost $50 or more according to spyfu.com. It’s expensive and extremely frustrating to be paying that kind of money when you’ve got visitors bouncing back off of your site after being on it for less than ten seconds.

Longer key strings will not carry as much traffic but they do have distinct advantages such as:

* A longer keyword decreases competition and defines the searchers purpose to the point where you can anticipate their need and offer content that will greatly enhance your chance at conversion. A phrase like “loan modification mission viejo ca” is very focused. A searcher clicking through that finds that you have what they’re searching for is highly likely to convert.
* Competition is decreased – It will be much easier and more cost effective to move up in page rankings. Being on the front page for 20 targeted key phrases will be much more advantageous than one front page listing for a generic term. A variety of long tail keywords can dominate specific small niches, providing less traffic but a much higher conversion rate.
* Pay per Click – Pay per Click becomes much more manageable if clicks aren’t costing you fortune, especially if the click through’s are converting.

It’s easy to guess at a few keywords and assume that a website is optimized for them. This is area, however, where some research can go a long way toward determining the long term success of a website. The right key phrases will both make and save you money. Unless you’re “fluent” in search engine optimization, having a pro do the research on key phrases that will drive targeted traffic to your site will be one of the best business investments you are likely to make.