Websites for Businesses

The Quest for Qualified Traffic Starts With the Fundamentals of SEO

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Qualified traffic.

Small business owners and startups who rely heavily on their website for sales all stress over how to get more of it. Oh, and they want it cheap. Quite the conundrum!

There are lots of ways to get more traffic. All involve some level of investment (either time or money). None involve some level of magic (unfortunately, because that would be kind of cool).

Success acquiring qualified traffic starts with getting the basics right first. And the basics don’t always involve hiring a super-expensive SEO firm that claims they are going to make you millions in 3 months (by the way if anyone tells you that, just hang up).

If your website can do all of the following, you’ll see more qualified traffic. And it won’t burn a huge hole in your wallet.

Read moreThe Quest for Qualified Traffic Starts With the Fundamentals of SEO

SEO Success Story: Getting More Organic Traffic By Addressing the Fundamentals

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Here’s a quick client success story in-the-making that I think is worth sharing with you: the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl is a client of ours. For you non-sports fans out there, the Holiday Bowl is one of the post-season bowl games held annually in college football (aside: it’s one of the best bowls year in and year out). We’ve had the pleasure of working with them for the last few years.

seo-successAfter last year’s game, the Holiday Bowl said they wanted more organic traffic for the 2009 game (being held at the end of December).  Although the site gets decent traffic all year long, it gets an overwhelming majority of its annual visitors in December (when the game is played).  So December is very important. It’s their entire year. The vent is once-a-year, so the better the webiste performs in that month, the higher they can charge for ad deals, partnerships, etc.

Read moreSEO Success Story: Getting More Organic Traffic By Addressing the Fundamentals

In SEO, There’s No Such Thing As A Guarantee

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I got an email today that I wanted to share with you loyal readers. The title was 1st Page Results Guaranteed. Now I never ever read emails that are obvious spam. Even though I knew the contents of this one would be garbage, I couldn’t resist.

Here’s what it said:
“Do you wish you could increase your online leads? Getting a GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING is easier and more cost-effective than you might think. We have helped a lot of businesses thrive in this market and we can help you! Simply hit reply and I’ll share with you the cost and the benefits. See you at the top!”

Have you seen an email like this one before? What about a claim on an SEO’s website similar to this? Or maybe you’ve been told something like this when you’ve met with a search engine optimization firm. If you have, hopefully you deleted it before picking up the phone. If you haven’t, you are lucky because guarantees like these seem to be everywhere.

If you have not seen or heard anything like this before, then I am going to give you a visual to keep in mind for when you do. I want you to associate the SEO guarantee with this picture:
guaranteed-seo

Read moreIn SEO, There’s No Such Thing As A Guarantee

Startups: Introduce Your Website to Search Before Launch

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I love working with startups. I’ve been a part of several (some successful, some not) and have been lucky to work with a bunch of startup or early-stage clients with Brand5. There’s always so much energy and optimism working with brand new companies. It’s a blast to help them out and watch them try to make it. In each situation, I learn incredibly valuable lessons that can be applied to future projects.

I want to touch on a common mistake that I see a lot of startups make when it comes to planning the launch of their website. Companies that have it in their marketing plan to rely on traffic from organic search (regardless of the expected percentage) fail to take into account search engine lead-time. As a result, there’s a gap between the launch of the site and the beginning signs of organic traffic.

Read moreStartups: Introduce Your Website to Search Before Launch