A Look at On-Page Search Engine Optimization and What It Means for Your Business

Website Analysis

Conducting a thorough analysis of your website and its search-engine friendly features includes taking a look at the code imbedded in your pages. Since search spiders cannot recognize or decipher Flash or JavaScript, the more you use them, the less search-engine friendly your website becomes. Incorporate both Flash and JavaScript sparingly.

URLs should be short and include the primary keyword for the page. Even if you don’t feel up to the task, it is important to use canonical URLs to specify the best URL for search engines to use in an authoritative manner. A well-constructed site map is also essential for search engine friendliness.

Maintenance

Once your initial website is up, it is essential to maintain its existence. What does this mean for you? Either you, or a company that provides SEO services, must continually keep your website up to speed with your on-page SEO efforts, tweaking and improving your site in order to obtain high ranking on the search engine page results.

Testing and Measuring

Testing and measuring the results of your SEO efforts is just as critical as maintaining your website’s on-page search engine optimization. Your page rank is clearly the most visible indication of this. 

To learn more about how we can help you use Search Engine Optimization to grow your revenue in a tough economy, contact us at (916) 933-7414 or Lou@wsiMarketBuilders.com.

One of the most common questions I get when meeting with small business owners or presenting at small business events is about marketing methods.  Something along the lines of "I don't have much money to spend on marketing. What type of marketing will provide me the best results?"

This isn't a new phenomena.  John Wannamaker, a department store owner in the late 1800's said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half."  Knowing what marketing techniques to invest  scarce marketing dollars in,  and knowing how long to ride that horse is tough, especially in a challenging economy.

Well, its time to switch horses.  Google recently commissioned an independent research firm to study how and to what degree smartphone users are accessing their devices for buying purposes.  The results were surprising in how massive the uptake is of smart phone owners using their devices for search and shopping.

A summary of the results:

• 81% browse the web
• 77% use search
• 48% watch videos on their phones
• 95% look for local information
• 93% use their smart phone for shopping while at home
• 77% used their smart phones to contact a business
• 88% that found info acted on it within a day
  

Watch this video from Google on some of their findings regarding smart phone use for search and shopping.  Clearly mobile marketing is a marketing method that all businesses should investigate as they continue to look for effective ways to reach their target market.


Contact us to learn more about a mobile website and mobile marketing programs for your business and how we can help you grow your revenue, even in a tough economy.

Leading Internet Marketing Consulting Firm in Sacramento to Provide Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, and Social Media solutions to Drive Rapid Growth

 WSI MarketBuilders, the leading Sacramento-based Internet Marketing Consulting firm serving Northern California is proud to announce its newest client, Earth Guard Pest Services, located in Sacramento, CA. 

 Earth Guard Pest Services provides a complete set of green pest control management and extermination services for both commercial and residential clients throughout the Sacramento Valley.  While very successful over the past several years, the owner, Dave Picton, has an aggressive growth plan, and was looking for the right strategy to enable the company to achieve its business objectives in 2011, even in a tough economy.

“With the vast majority of people looking online to find the products and services they require, it was clear that we needed to take an aggressive approach to making Earth Guard Pest and our innovative green solutions more visible on the search engines as well as on the leading social media platforms,” said Mr. Dave Picton, owner.  “We consider ourselves fortunate to be working with someone of Lou’s immense experience and drive to succeed, as well as the rest of his team at WSI MarketBuilders.  They will be the key to our success in 2011.”

The project includes:

• Increasing local visibility by focusing on search engine local profiles and online business directories

• Improving Earth Guard Pest’s website to increase conversions and search engine relevance

• Increasing search engine visibility and rankings with Search Engine Optimization

• Managing and optimizing a Pay Per Click campaign to drive and immediate flow of prospects to the website

• Creating a vibrant Social Media presence on Facebook, including a custom branded landing page supported by a pay per click campaign

• Social reputation monitoring and management

 

 “We are excited to welcome Dave and Earth Guard Pest Services as our client” said Mr. Lou Unkeless, Managing Director of WSI MarketBuilders. “This multi-dimensional project will provide Dave and his company broad-based high visibility throughout the regional in all three sections of the search engine results pages, as well as in the largest social media network.  This will translate directly into more traffic to his website and increased revenue in a highly competitive market.  We are already beginning to see the early results of our work, with significant increases in website visitors from organic and paid search, as well as new long term clients.”

About Earth Guard Pest Services

 Earth Guard Pest Services is a leading pest management and extermination company based in Sacramento and serving the Sacramento Valley and foothills communities.  Using green chemicals and treatments, they offer a full suite of services to both commercial and residential clients. To learn more about Earth Guard Pest Services, contact Dave Picton  at 916-457-7605 or at contact@earthguardpest.com.   Their website can be found at www.earthguardpest.com .

About WSI MarketBuilders

WSI MarketBuilders provide Internet Marketing solutions that help small & medium-sized companies generate more leads, increase revenue, and reduce operating costs with business-class marketing websites, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay per Click Advertising (PPC), Social Media, Small & Local Business Solutions, Mobile Marketing, and Email Marketing. The team has played the role of trusted advisors to small and medium sized companies for over 20 years, helping them leverage technology-based solutions to grow revenues, increase operational efficiencies, and reduce costs.   For further information, contact Lou Unkeless at (916) 933-7414 or Lou@wsiMarketBuilders.com.  Their website can be found at www.wsiMarketBuilders.com.

Want to be the number one company on the Internet for your industry?
How do you improve your image for your millions of potential customers around the world?
Is there any gossip about your brand? Will this gossip affect your business organization?
Are you really free of risks and jeopardy?


With the swift expansion of the World Wide Web, there has been a growing attention to the image that a company projects. More interest is given to how you are handling your online image and your capacity to please customers.

It can be noted that with the Internet, it has become more and more difficult for companies to outstand themselves. With the immeasurable amount of information available for diverse business, customers get to chose from a variety of similar information sources. Moreover, online searchers usually chose from the first comings and will never wait. One should also note that consumers are very choosy and in case of any dissatisfaction, they will be immediately vocal.

Today, opinions are easily shared through the proliferation of networking sites, forums, blog sites, chatrooms and other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. These social media platforms are also being used by business organizations to connect with their clients and attract new potential clients. However, nothing prevents your company from being the target of a negative note. Social media can really affect the reputation of a company. The buzz may be good or bad, but a strategy to interact directly with customers on the Internet and to respond to their inquiries, is absolutely invaluable.

It is crucial to listen to what is being said online, even if it is negative. Listening creates the opportunity to take action and resolve internal problems or deal with malicious information, both of which can negatively influence a company’s brand image and reputation.

Download our latest whitepaper to learn more about Oline Reputation Management, or call us at (916) 933-7414.

One of the big challenges for business owners and decision makers today is understanding the different Search Engine Marketing techniques enough to be able to decide on where to invest their scarce marketing dollars to maximize ROI.  

In my conversations, the heart of the discussion seems to focus around Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Pay Per Click advertising (PPC).  Business needs, target market, product and service offerings, pricing and margins, and marketing budget all factor into the deciding which search engine marketing techniques are appropriate for the company, but the biggest challenge is to ensure they understand it is not an "either/or" decision. 

In many situations, the combination of SEO and PPC can have a synergistic effect on demand generation and revenue growth.  sion as to which technique is right for the company  which is the right combination of them to use to drive propsects to their business and increase revenue.   Below is a blog post from Jody Nimetz, Senior Search Marketing Strategist at Enquiro and can be found at http://ow.ly/2QEyS  .


SEO or SEM (PPC), organic vs. sponsored? Where should your online marketing budgets go? Well the answer is both. SEO and PPC can work very nicely together depending on where you are with your online marketing efforts. We came up with ten instances where SEO and PPC should be used together as an effective online marketing campaign.

1. Preparing for a Site Redesign - when planning a redesign and making sure that all of the SEO best practice are being put in place as you prepare to launch, you'll want to bolster your online campaign with sponsored efforts as you transition your site from the old site to the new. Once the SEO efforts kick in post launch, you can reduce your PPC spend and focus your sponsored efforts elsewhere.
   
2. Preparing to Launch a Microsite - Microsites allow you to try out a more targeted online strategy. For quick traffic generation to your new microsite, you'll want to utilize an well planned sponsored startegy. At the same time your SEO efforts can be geared towards a focus on long-tail, and less competitive keywords to drive additonal traffic to the microsite.
   
3. Launching a new Sub-Domain - Similar to launching a microsite, sponsored efforts can be used to direct traffic to the new sub-domain while an SEO strategy can be developed to obtain long term rankings for the sub-domain.
   
4. Launching a new Website - Anytime you launch a new website, you should have both an SEO and SEM strategy working together to help obtain traffic to your new web property. Initially your sponosred startegy might be the only means of driving traffic to your new site, until you can improve your visibility in the natural search results of the search engines.
   
5. Marketing Your Website on a Shoestring Budget - If you have a tight budget, you can focus efforts on SEO and compliment that with a smaller PPC strategy where you bid on phrases that are less expensive. You may want to focus your PPC spend for local search while you concentrate your SEO efforts for more genreal search engines rankings. As you develop content through SEO and on-page optimization the only cost you incur is time.
   
6. Company Mergers & Merging Web Properties - In the dynamic economic environment that we have experienced in recent years, it's not uncommon to see companies merge. Quite often startups are bought out and you are left with multiple web properties at your disposal. This is another great example of when you should be using SEO and PPC simultaneously to educate your target audience of your recent merger or acquisition. You may want to phase the old company out, as a resul you may want to move some content from that companies website to your own. Developing an SEO transition strategy that is backed up by a solid PPC strategy can be an effective way to educate your existing consumers as well as any new prospects who may be looking for your solution.
   
7. Releasing a New Product Line - PPC can be used in conjunction with SEO to promote your new product or solution line. Chances are that your new product name will be easy to rank for orgnically, backing that up with some non-branded traffic from sponsored efforts and you can quickly acheive some additional branded and non-branded traffic that will convert on your site with the proper type of messaging and promotion.
   
8. Online Reputation Management Camapaigns - Experienced some negative press? Use SEO and sponosred solutions to protect your brand in the online space. From an SEO point of view, you'll want to ensure that any negative organic listings are pushed to page two of the search results page, by optimizing your site for blended search, and leveraging social networks to dominant the SERP landscape. Furthermore you will want to protect your branded via PPC efforts so that negative or "questionable" listings do not appear within the sponsored results.
   
9. Entering New Markets - If your company is large enough to go global or is entering new regional markets, you might want to use SEO and PPC to target these geographic demographics. Depending on your expansion, you might want to try a GEO-targeted sponsored campaign, backed up with content development for organic rankings in the natural search results of the search engines.
   
10. Plateauing Search Engine Traffic - Seen your website traffic start to plateau? Maybe you need to modify or add a sponsored strategy to your SEO strategy or vice versa. Revisit both your SEO and PPC efforts and get creative with some new messaging to drive more traffic to your site.

While many companies are doing SEM or are developing SEO strategies, there are still a number that are not leveraging SEO and PPC efforts together. If your company is experiencing any of the ten issues above, you may want to establish a co-existing SEO and SEM strategy to ensure that you effectively intercept your target audience and that you continue to drive qualified traffic to your site. Search engine optimization and sponsored search marketing efforts can work together to provide you with optimal results. The more effective you become with your online marketing efforts, the less spend it will take to drive more business. While it takes time and is subject to the changing nature of the Internet, realizing when to use SEO and PPC together can return tremendous results.