Search Engine Optimization Blog

“I had my site designed, they said they put keywords in it, but my law firm’s web site doesn’t show up on the first page of Google… why?” Unless your web site is designed by a designer at a search engine optimization company, they are not fully aware of what goes into an “optimized” web site. While its true, many companies that offer web design services specific for lawyers, do put keyphrases in your web site.

However, they are often times, not the right keywords. We recently completed a project for a divorce lawyer. The company that built the lawyer’s web site in fact used “divorce lawyer” and “divorce attorney” in his tags, titles, and so forth, but they didn’t include it with his closest metro area. The difference between being relevant to “divorce lawyer” and being relevant to (for example only) “Atlanta divorce lawyer” mans the difference in reaching your market or not.

Its important to not just have keywords on your web site but rather the right keywords on your web site. The beginning of any project, for us, starts with an analysis. We see how many people are searching for which keyphrases related to the law firm we are working for. Then, we pinpoint the top three most popular keyphrases and that’s where our resources go. Of course we can optimize for more terms than three, but our focus needs to be on popular keyphrases that will bring in more cases.

When having your web site designed its best to keep marketing in mind. Having a search engine optimization company with a talented designer will help with your ranking as well as your conversion of visitors to potential cases.

Get a Search Engine Optimization Quote: http://seoquote.seolawfirm.com

Get a New Web Design and Search Engine Optimization Quote: http://design.seolawfirm.com.

To learn more, visit http://www.seolawfirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306

Adviatech Corp., a search engine optimization company, launched their reputation management subsidiary this week after eighteen months of planning.

Reputation Management Three Wise Monkeys

The newest problem for businesses and individuals online has become their own behavior. Google has replaced traditional background checks and employer references for many human resource departments and consumers now ‘Google’ companies before working with them.

The problem exists when individuals and companies are judged for old news. Be it an embarrassing weekend for a partner in a law firm or a faulty product release which has now been repaired, these old news stories can prevent employment, new income, and overall destroy a reputation.

In 2007, guaranteed search engine optimization company, Adviatech Corp., began offering the online “name cleansing” service to a list of past criminals, acquitted suspects, and professionals who got public misdemeanors. They also began the planning of what is now, EBadPress, a subsidiary of Adviatech Corp.

While other online reputation management companies may use locks, safes, and other cliché symbolisms, Adviatech took a ‘wiser’ approach by using three wise monkeys. The EBadPress logo is made up of Kikazaru, the monkey that hears no evil, Iwazaru, the monkey that speaks no evil, and a mischievous Mizaru, the monkey which is supposed to be seeing no evil but instead, peaking with one eye at a laptop.

Monkeys Cleaning Name

The pictorial maxim is a symbol of Japanese wisdom often repeated as “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil”, a proverb reminding people to not be nosy, gossipy, or snoopy.

EBadPress releases new media to talk about current events for their clients which eventually become the first results in search engines. The search engines are more interested in fresh new content so the method of name cleansing is an ethical form of online reputation management.

EBadPress falls directly under the jurisdiction of Adviatech Corp., President and Co-Founder, C.P. Kazor. Kazor believes that other companies offering similar services are missing an important element in reputation management… secrecy.

Kazor explains, “When we begin a reputation management project, we keep that case secret. These other companies that talk about contacting web sites with legal notices and asking them to remove content are putting their clients at risk. If someone has an article on a web site that is deemed ‘negative press’ and a reputation management company writes the site owner a letter asking them to remove the story, the site owner is more than likely going to blog about the first amendment injustice thus creating more negative press on the web for the client. That is why, we work in the shadows.”

The EBadPress project was developed by both Adviatech Co-founders, President C.P. Kazor and Vice President, Jason Bland. Bland, will be overseeing many of the technical aspects of online reputation management. He too, strongly believes in privacy and secrecy when dealing with reputations and compares reputation management companies that don’t to someone hitting a beehive with a stick.

Bland explains, “If you have a beehive hanging on your door step and you take a stick, then knock it down, you are going to have a lot of angry bees swarming around. But if you apply a layer of smoke around the beehive, the problem can be peacefully remedied. If you contact a blog owner or site owner, you are asking for a lot of angry bees swarming the web to spread your bad news.”

The EBadPress confidentiality statement on EBadPress.com is the tightest in the industry. No other online reputation management expresses the same dedication to privacy and secrecy. While the names of clients are confidential, clients will, of course, be told how their reputations will be repaired and guaranteed only ethical search engine practices.

To learn more, call 1.800.998.6005 or visit http://www.ebadpress.com.

Tucked away in a business park in Tampa Florida resides a search engine optimization company gaining increased market share this year. While they do have signage in the office park registry, you won’t see any billboards, park benches, or newspaper ads in Tampa Florida for this SEO firm.

As you approach the front door which displays the appropriate suite number, you might think twice about whether or not you have the right address. The windows are darkly tinted and you can’t see in. After standing there for a moment, the door will unluck and someone will be there to greet you asking you to step in.

The walls are painted with calming Tuscany style coloring accented by dark wood framed art and a large antique style desk in the front office. Upon being asked to step into another office behind the second tinted glass window, you will be in another richly accented office sitting on a comfortable imported leather couch. Behind that desk sits Adviatech’s young Vice President, Jason Bland.

Bland, who worked side by side with Chris Kazor (President of American Marketing Management and Motivation Services, Inc.) to form Adviatech Corp., just four fiscal years ago, prefers Adviatech getting little attention, glamour, and notoriety in Tampa Florida in exchange for spending more time at his desk bringing in national clients.

Bland explains, “I don’t disregard the value of our local business community, in fact, we spend a lot of money each year hosting seminars in downtown Tampa and sponsoring events that attract our relevant market. However, we don’t have an active marketing strategy for our local market, you won’t see Adviatech representatives at business events and trade shows in the area because our market is national.”

Adviatech’s business style would clash with many of today’s “tech” oriented companies. Business attire in the office is generally Florida casual (on days when no meetings are happening in the office). However, when it comes to out of office meetings, professional business attire (not business casual) is mandated.

“What we are doing is very serious. Our core product is guaranteed search engine optimization, getting web sites to rank higher on Google for relevant terms using ethical, content based solutions for on site relevancy as well as link building.” Bland continues, “We give a money back guarantee to our approved clients that we’ll get them to page one. That means, we’re in this with our clients. We’re sharing the risk. Therefore, our local and national clients need to know they are working with a solid professional company.”

Adviatech’s guaranteed search engine optimization plans are primarily made for small to mid sized companies, law firms, and insurance agency’s. With Adviatech’s realistic, no hype, sales strategy, they guarantee the page one ranking based on their experience, keyphrase competitiveness, and openly admitting that it is a budgeted, calculated risk. They openly discredit SEO firms that say they have a “special relationship with Google” or know of “secret methods”.

Bland smiled as he explained, “My favorite question to answer is ‘what sort of secret tags are you going to be putting in our web site?’. I always reply with, you are paying us for our knowledge, expertise, the guaranteed consistency of our writers, editors, content submission team, and the support I’ll be providing personally most of the time. If you have any questions about what we’re doing, simply look at your contract as we clearly outline each aspect of search engine optimization.”

Adviatech’s viewpoint of the world being their local market has motivated them to start planning a United Kingdom presence to launch this year. They believe countries using the Euro or Pound are wise to outsource to a United States based search engine optimization company because of the cost savings due to the depreciating U.S. dollar.

A mixture of traditional professionalism, a new age global market mindset, and a realistic sales strategy has allowed Adviatech to complete four fiscal years, three of which (including the most recent) profitable.

Adviatech Vice President, Jason Bland, carries most of the responsibilities of Adviatech as business partner, Chris Kazor, builds Nusurance Corp., a two year old insurance agency with a business model built around today’s internet based insurance clientele.

To keep the businesses on track and develop new strategies for growth, Jason Bland will emerge from the Adviatech office, and Chris Kazor from his Nusurance office, a few times a week to meet in the office park’s court yard to enjoy Florida’s weather and a Tampa tradition, a hand rolled cigar from Ybor City.

To learn more, visit http://www.adviatech.com

If your firm is considering a guaranteed search engine optimization based marketing strategy, the question may come up, how long will it take to see results? This is a good question and certainly one worthy of discussion.

Search engine optimization means increasing the keyphrase density and relevance of your web site’s textual content and building inbound links (web sites linking to your web site). The first part, making your web site more relevant, should only take a couple of weeks. The link building, however, takes a little more time.

Once you have other web sites linking to your web site via blogs, articles, and press releases, Google has to reindex those third party web sites in order to see that they are now linking to you. The Google bot runs on its own schedule and is less than concerned with your goals so updated all of the web sites that are linking to you, could take some time.

With so many variables, it is hard to give a specific date that your web site will experience first page glory but we can estimate based on our past experience. Generally for metro regional terms (such as law firms ie: San Francisco Divorce Lawyer) it takes about 3-5 months to go from the never lands on to the first page. Statewide and nationwide terms take a little longer.

That’s not to say that is always the case. Some web sites have responded to our SEO changes and been ranked on the first page in just 3-6 weeks.

At first, you may think targeting bigger zones may bring in more business. However, aiming for a target bigger than your company, may simply add headaches.

If you are a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh North Carolina, you do not want to optimize for the term “North Carolina Bankruptcy Lawyer” unless you have satellite offices all across the state. Is somebody really going to drive four hours from Asheville to see you? Probably not.

So its best to stay in your city or neighboring cities if you have satellite offices. Now, in other industries like insurance, statewide optimization makes more sense because policies can be bound over the phone and do not require face-to-face meetings. However, with insurance, going nationwide may bring in business from states the agency is licensed to do business in.

If you start marketing outside of your realistic service zone, you will spend more time filtering useless phone calls and contact requests than working with good clients. It is best to find your local market and optimize for that. Target prospects are far more valuable than mass prospects.

Blogs are great ways to increase web traffic, business loyalty and can be a helpful tool in your search engine optimization effort. However, if you are using a third party blog service, you may not be getting the full benefit.

Blogs are everywhere. From the political to the informational, if you can think of a genre, chances are, you can find a blog focusing on it. So what is a blog? A portmanteau of the term “web log”, blogs basically allow users to interact with one another in an open platform. More simply stated, a blog is an easier to use and more search engine friendly version of the early 90’s perl based message boards.

Before you go running off and opening a blog on Blogger or another popular service, you should know that not all blogs are the same. There are two different benefits to your business that blogging can provide. The first is interacting on other blogs related to what you do. As entries and comments are posted, you can provide feedback based on your professional knowledge. This helps you network on a global level as other users will turn to you as an expert in your field.

The other method of blogging is managing your own blog. This is where you need to pay close attention. One of the most beneficial features of a blog is its simple ability to be syndicated to other web sites using RSS or XML feeds. If you are using a third party blog provider (a blog that is not hosted under your domain), the RSS or XML feeds will not be pulled from your site but rather the blog host’s web sites. In short, you will be missing out on relevant links to your web site.

Managing your own on site blog is a great way to get traffic to your site and increase your relevant link population. The key to making it work is consistency. Your blog should be updated every two to three days with useful information. Information should be useful rather than commercial. While you can occasionally post notices of sales or company information, your on site blog entries need to consist of relevant, useful information at least ninety percent of the time.

Unlike articles, blog entries can be just one or two paragraphs. As your blog’s population increases, you will be able to post new entries based on comments made by your users. Also, user comments are helpful in adding even more relevant content to your web site.

For more information on blogging and how it can help your search engine optimization campaign, contact a search engine optimization specialist.

If you do business online, does that really make you an internet company?

The market is changing and the internet is finding its way into every aspect of our life. In fact, many trade publications agree that by the year 2012, internet accessibility will be about as common and depended on as cellular phone connections. Little by little the internet is finding its way into coffee shops, your car, your T.V., and even in nature. Yes, many state parks across the country have free Wi-Fi (wireless internet) available in the camping and recreational areas.

Your business more than likely has a web site. If not, you need one. Unfortunately, many older businesses are hesitant to place their products and services online because they don’t want to become an “internet” company. It may sound somewhat ridiculous but many business owners really feel that doing business online will immediately brand them as an internet company or “one of those “dot-coms”.

Of course, being an internet company is nothing to be ashamed of. The king of the internet companies is of course Google Inc. Google Inc.’s market value is $140 Billion which is $15 Billion more than all of the companies traded in Indonesia. Yes, Google is worth more than Indonesia.

All of that aside, doing business online doesn’t immediately brand you as an internet company. If you advertise in a phone book, are you a phone book company? No. The internet is all about simplifying the way of which information is delivered. It also offers a unique perspective on marketing.

Radio, TV, and Newspaper media advertising is primarily about getting people to want or believe they need your product or service. However, the internet opens your company up to people that are already wanting, needing, or are sold on your product or service. Of course, being found is a matter of utilizing quality search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization on Ecommerce related web sites can be a little different than static web sites. However, other opportunities exist for shopping cart web sites.

Search engine optimization companies often see e-commerce (shopping cart) web sites as an obstacle to their search engine optimization platform. Shopping carts are generally template based and most content is pulled from the database.

Its not the typical static HTML web site that is seen in the SEO training text book, but is it really possible to optimize a shopping cart? Well, maybe.

Not all shopping carts are created equal. Most shopping carts written in ASP, PHP, or related languages, can be optimized within the limitations set forth by the program. All of them allow for content pages to be added to the site and some even allow for shopping cart exporting to an HTML format.

There you have it, you have content, link population ability, and opportunity for adding fresh content. But, we are just beginning.

Some problem languages for shopping carts include .cfm (Cold Fusion) and .mvc (Miva Merchant). Both file types are not easily indexed by the search engines so this should be considered before starting your shopping cart project. With that said, some search engine optimization companies may be able to work out a plan to work around your existing shopping cart.

Aside from search engine optimization, another great means of marketing exist for shopping cart owners. Online product placement. Getting your site listed on places like Shopping.com, Bizrate, KCove.com, and Froogle is simple and affordable. Froogle is a free service but your product feed must be updated every month. Other price comparison sites have initial deposits of $50-$200. These sites work on a pay per click platform which have set price per clicks for various categories.

Using price comparison web sites should not be done instead of search engine optimization but rather complimentary to your search engine optimization efforts. For more information, talk to your search engine optimization company.

Sometimes, a fresh look for your web site could mean new obstacles for your search engine optimization company. Here are some things to do and avoid.

As times change, designs need to change to keep your brand fresh and your company image modern. However, your web sites new look can cause trouble for your search engine optimization company.

Search engine optimization is primarily dependant on the textual content with your web site. Therefore, adding too many graphics or an excessive amount of Flash can often use up valuable space on your web site which could be better used on optimizable text.

Graphics

Using graphics to enhance your web site’s image is a much better method than using Flash animations. Graphics and images allow your search engine optimization company to add alternate text or image tags which contain descriptive keywords and keyphrases which can be read by the search engine’s robots.

When using graphics, try to avoid using images as buttons or links. When a textual link contains a keyword or keyphrase it helps increase the relevancy of the destination page. For example, a page in a web site about golf shoes will show more relevancy if the textual link to the page says “Golf Shoes”. When using buttons or images to link to the (in this example) “Golf Shoes” page, you lose that added relevancy.

Avoid using scanned brochures or flyers as full web pages. When you scan a brochure or flyer (unless in a compatible Adobe PDF file), the information and textual content within the flyer is nearly useless because the search engine will simply see one large image as it can’t scan the content within the image. However, PDF files are easily indexed by the search engine so they do add a valuable benefit to your web site.

Flash

Generally speaking, Flash is not a close friend of the search engine optimization specialist. Flash is often seen as wasted content because the search engines cannot read text within a Flash file and your SEO specialilst cannot place alternate text on a Flash file like they can a picture. Also, search engines cannot follow links from a Flash button. The Flash button dilemma is usually countered by a textual sitemap but two descriptive keyword enhanced links to a page is obviously better than one.

Flash does not have to be completely avoided in your design. Using an animated Flash header can add an attractive element to your web site and using Flash for animated demonstrations of a product or service can also be an effective sales practice. However, Flash should not be used in menu structures (because of the link following issues mentioned above) or used in substitution for static HTML pages for textual content.

Hosting

Hosting is an often ignored yet important piece of your search engine optimization. Using a content management system or online web editing service (ie: GoDaddy, Homestead, etc.) can possibly not give you the server access needed to use such third party scripts as link management programs, on site blogs, lead generation forms, and other valuable tools.

The most popular server environment is Linux. Your search engine optimization results will not discriminate whether you are using a Linux server or Windows server. The main benefit to a Linux server is its compatibility with PHP and mySQL databases. Most open source (freely distributed and freely modified) software is written in PHP and uses a mySQL database. So by having a compatible server environment like Linux, you may be able to utilize this software whereas you would otherwise have to purchase a license for similar Windows compatible software.

By following these few suggestions, your search engine optimization company will be able to easily and affectively optimize your web site for better search engine performance.

Choosing a search engine optimization company can be tiring. Here are a few tips to help insure that you are getting the best SEO specialist for the money.

Your web site is up, functional, and looks good. You stare at it with much satisfaction until you look at the stats. Suddenly it occurs to you…you need visitors. Not just any visitors will do, you really need targeted interested visitors. What better way is there than to hire a search engine optimization company?

Search engine optimization is not performed by search engine optimization specialists that hold the secrets protected by a mysterious society. Search engine optimization is all about relevance and quality. How relevant is your web site? Does it provide new, useful, quality content? Does anybody link to it? Why do people need to link to your site?

Relevancy is often determined by wordage. The first objective of your selected SEO company should be to optimize the content of your page. Simply speaking, they need to improve the density of the keywords and key phrases while assuring that the wordage is formatted properly and that the site does not appear to be “keyword spamming”.

Paragraphs will be altered (yet not removed), title tags improved, image tags added or modified, and user/robot navigation enhanced. From that time forward, links will be the name of the game.

Google puts heavy emphasis on links. It is their belief that a web site with more web sites linking to it will provide higher quality content. Usually, they are correct in this assumption. Therefore, your SEO should provide multiple ways to improve your link population. The best package will include a combination of link exchanges, article distribution, and press release distribution. Make sure they are sending your content to multiple locations and not only the locations they own.

Be ware of snake oil. If your search engine optimization company is proposing “propriety processes” they are full of (clear throat) creative substances. In short, there is no such thing. Search engine optimization is all about Relevant Content, Fresh Content, and Relevant Link Population. Anything beyond that is simply snake oil.

Now, certainly your search engine optimization company could use “proprietary software” (which our SEO firm does as well) but this is simply an application that the company custom built to simplify one of the techniques. To review, those techniques are improving the content relevancy, fresh content, and/or link population.

Deciding on a budget is also important. Unless your company is an upper small business (generates over $5 Million annually) or middle market/large company, you should expect to pay somewhere between $250.00-$3,500.00 a month depending on the competitiveness of your keywords, your site’s size, and other variables.

Up front cost can range from $1,500.00-$10,000.00. To decide whether or not its worth it for you, simply ask yourself if you can afford it and if the proposed service makes sense. If you don’t understand the SEO process, don’t pay until the search engine optimization company has clearly explained it.

Don’t buy into the short term guarantees. If someone promises you “next day number 1” or advocates falsehoods such as “we have a special relationship with the search engines” you can simply feed their proposal to your hungry shredder and shred away a lot of frustration. Avoid guarantees that are not backed by a refund. (Adviatech’s guaranteed search engine optimization is backed by a refund.)

Follow your gut, have realistic viewpoints, and check references. Always require disclosure of techniques and disregard all SEO companies that try to sell mysteries and snake oil. If you do this, you will enjoy a strong relationship with a good company that truly has the interest of your success at heart.