Archive for July, 2009
Hiring an SEO Consultant
Written by: Grayson Thrush
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can serve as the linchpin to your overall marketing plan for your business. Gone are the days when all you needed was an ad in the local phone book. The most efficient way to drive leads to your business is through Internet marketing. You need more than just a website, though.
A website that has not been optimized for search engine results pages (SERPs) will only serve as a digital business card. Nobody will find it unless they know about it and where to look. Your competition will quickly surpass such an outmoded approach. You need to hire a Denver SEO consultant to help get your website seen by those searching for the products and/or services that your business offers.
A competent SEO company will offer a full-service approach to Internet marketing, in order to ensure that your SEO campaign is in fact successful. You will need to start out by looking for a Denver SEO company on the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »
Why you Should Hire a Denver Internet Marketing Firm
Not everyone is going to be an expert at every aspect of Internet Marketing and Web Development. There are so many facets and niches within the industry, it takes a substantial amount of time and effort to stay abreast of the newest trends and techniques. So, when considering your Denver Internet Marketing plan, you want to take full advantage of the Web, and specific benefits that only experts can provide. Many different skills are required in order to integrate your business within the Internet so that you are fully visible and accessible to your target market. In order to achieve and maintain a significant Internet presence, it is crucial to hire a team of people capable of an array of Internet Marketing techniques.
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Denver Web Development is absolutely key in helping to produce awareness, traffic, and sales for your company or product. Just like traditional marketing campaigns, there are many specific skills required to be effective in your Denver Internet Marketing plan. These skills include but are not limited to link building, web design, Denver search-engine-optimization, HTML writing, blogging, and social networking. Techniques and trends are constantly changing as well, and it is important to utilize the experience and knowledge of a Denver SEO Firm or Internet Marketing Company.
It is important to set goals, and plan a complete strategy for building a valuable website and increasing the traffic to that website. In addition to a clear website with substantial, valid content, you need to drive the site to towards the top of search engine results for targeted keywords. This intricate, time-consuming process is called search-engine-optimization, or SEO. A good internet marketing company will also handle Denver SEO for your business. It is best to let experts execute SEO for you, because the ranking algorithms and industry trends are constantly evolving and changing. A Denver SEO Company will keep up with the pulse of the industry, staying on top of all the new tips and tricks.
Denver Internet Marketing is paramount to staying on the cutting edge of any industry. Create a strong, reliable Internet presence while at the same time being highly visible on local and global search engines. Customize your plan to cater to your target audience, increasing your chances for sales, leads, and referrals. The days of Yellow Pages are over, and you need to keep your business ahead of the curve by working with a Denver Internet Marketing Firm. No matter what your industry, help yourself and take the right step towards a successful future.
Choosing an SEO Company
Written by: Nick Hantge
Choosing an effective and reliable SEO company can be quite difficult, especially with the rise of its popularity and the vast amount of businesses offering SEO services in the past 2 years. Search Engine Optimization is one of the biggest investments you will make into establishing your companies online presence which makes it even more imperative you make the right choice when hiring an SEO company. It goes without saying that hiring the wrong SEO consultant will not only cost you a lot of money but it could also cost you your domain getting dropped or delisted by Google if the company breaks the rules and uses black hat tactics.
Here are some questions to ask to help you make the important decision of hiring the best SEO company for your company, business or website. Each SEO company has something special to offer so finding the right fit will help ensure a successful and pleasant SEO campaign.
How long have they been established? Along with most things in life, the longer you have been doing something; normally the better you are at it. When you try to market a website in the top search engines, you have to be able to adapt to the changes they are making in their algorithm and how they rank sites. If a company has been doing SEO for more than a few years they have had to deal with the changes made and should be able to show you how they’ve adapted.
If possible, take into account how long the SEO company has been established, the chances are if its been around for a few years they will be well up to date with the latest strategies and have a decent history and background.
Can they provide testimonials & recommendations? Any good company, regardless of the industry, should be able to provide a handful of testimonials and recommendations from their previous projects. Now remember they are going to give you their favorite customers if not friend’s phone numbers so it is important to ask these questions:
“How long did it take to see results on the search engines for your campaign”? Read the rest of this entry »
Enhance Your Denver SEO Campaign with a PR Strategy Online
Press Releases are a very important way to distinguish or differentiate your company in the public’s view of your company. Most companies already understand this strategy and in one way or another they have used press releases to make special announcements or they have responded to some event. Today, with the internet press releases can be used in a myriad of ways that will assist in your search engine optimization efforts.
So how can it be done? How do you compliment your Denver SEO campaign with press releases? The press release campaign online is very different than your standard press release through traditional print media sources. If I working on a press release in Denver, I would probably distribute the PR to all of the local papers of course and then issue a second wave of press releases to my local publications and neighborhood publications. None of these are really going to assist with my search engine optimization in Denver, although by making mention of my website inside the press release I would probably receive some “direct traffic” from the release. Direct traffic in this case would be short lived and not give a permanent back link into my website. So, to answer my questions in the beginning here, I would distribute my press releases online to services on the web that enable you to link the content in the press release to your website. By adding one or two useful links in the article to your website or URL’s within your website, you will be assisting your Google PageRank and overall linking strategy which will affect your keyword position in the leading search engines.
Using distribution services is important because these sources of news usually already have a high page rank. So when they release the press release, usually the article will start to show in the top of the search engines for the keyword that you targeted throughout the article. So for example, if we released a press release on “Denver Internet Marketing” and we submitted the release with this keyword to the major online PR services, our article might likely show up for this search term through the PR sites. If someone searches for this term online and finds the article before they find our site, it is likely that they will click on our site within the article or perhaps one of the hyperlinked key phrases inside the article. The nicest part of this press release is that it does not get thrown in the trash with the daily paper, it remains online pointing at our site for as long as the press release service keeps it up!
These online PR services can cost anything from $1 up to $315.00 and they all seem to offer different programs. What I mean is that some are enhanced for SEO purposes while some of the better performing services like prweb.com and prnewswire.com are a little more traditional with their services. Remember to follow Google’s guidelines when creating your press release, you will want to establish a release that has useful content and that is not stuffed with keywords. So a couple of examples of releases that might work for your business would be the announcement of a new location, a new service or product that your company is releasing or perhaps you are speaking at a tradeshow or industry event. Read the rest of this entry »
SEO Essentials: Link Building
One of the most crucial factors in optimizing your website for search engines, is the building of valuable links. When Google’s search algorithms index a site, they instantaneously compute the number of Web sites that link to your own site, and they calculate the value of each link respectively. This process is automatically performed literally millions of times each day. Search Engines believe that calculating links and taking into account such things as what each link says, along with the overall quality of the websites they come from, is an effective method of determining a sites presence or authority. Google ranks Web sites based on how prominent and dominant they are in their respective fields or markets. The absolute foundation of the Google search engine is to determine authority of sites, and to deliver the consumer the most relevant results.
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Basically, the more quality Web sites that link to your site, the better you will do in Google’s organic results. On the other hand, if you obtain only a few links, you will most certainly need to improve your presence in the eyes of Google. In order to optimize your site, you must learn how to effectively build links to your Web site so that the search engines will determine your site as an authority and rank it accordingly.
The very first step in effectively building links is to evaluate your existing competition. Whatever is working for your strongest competitors, can definitely work for you as well. In the beginning stages of link-building, your sights should be set on building a foundation for an effective Denver search engine optimization business plan. Seriously take a look at your competition and evaluate them so you know how to best spend the time necessary to rank higher and build up a strong Internet presence in your market.
Remember that not all links are created equally, so you should evaluate the quality of each potential link partner. By analyzing several link-quality factors, you can more effectively decide which links to focus on. The analyzation of llink quality will most certainly help give you direction in you Denver Internet marketing plans. By directing your attention to more quality links, you are more likely to be recognized by major search engines as a contributor of quality subject matter and content. You can save yourself a lot of time if you pursue the process of building quality links as opposed to a large quantity of links. You do not need thousands of links all over the Web to rank well with search engines. For optimal success, you should approach link building from the standpoint of quality over quantity.
Keyword Research and Its Importance
When a search engine scans your website, you want to be certain that specific keywords and keyword phrases are easily detected. This lets the search engine know what your website is about, and helps users find your website. In order to know what keywords a user might search for, you must be able to think like the customer. You also must perform an exhaustive keyword research process, as is done by Denver SEO.
Keyword research often relies heavily upon online tools such as Google Analytics. In doing so, you enter a word or phrase that describes what your site has to offer, and the research tool returns a list of words or phrases related to that description, in descending order of search popularity.
This research will let you know exactly what keywords you should be using in your meta tags, titles, headers, footers, etc. Don’t entirely ignore search terms that do not rank at the top of your research findings. Since Google will scan up to 500 characters in keyword tags, you should plan on using all 500 characters for best results. If the top terms only require 350 characters, for example, you should work your way down the list and fit as many terms into your tags as possible.
This delves into what some call “long-tail” keywords. The name is derived from how and where the terms would fall if plotted on a normal curve. The lower-ranked terms would form a “long-tail” along the descending curve. Typically, terms that fall beyond the second standard deviation will not be used, simply because the aforementioned 500 characters will be exhausted first.
As important as tags, alt-text, etc. are, diligent keyword research is at least as important. There is no useful purpose in adding random keywords to your website. You might get lucky once in a while and choose a popular one, but you will obtain results that are orders of magnitude more effective if you perform keyword research as described herein.
4 Steps to a Successful SEO plan
By: Cade Lee
Your Search Engine Optimization plan needs to be written down with attainable goals. Most companies that we speak with about search engine optimization in Denver do not have actual SEO plans written down. Many companies get online and have the best of intentions; all they know is that they want to get on the 1st page. They don’t know what getting on the 1st page of Google would do for them, but they know they want it. No matter what, they want to get on the 1st page. The problem with this is, they have not defined why they want to get on the 1st page, the keywords that they want to get on the 1st page for and often times they even lack the initial keyword research to make certain that the keywords they have selected are even worth focusing on.
Here are a couple of tips in developing an SEO plan that will produce results:
#1.) Set a Mission Statement: This is not huge and this plan should not take days, let’s make certain that we have a purpose though. Let’s start off with what you want to accomplish by bringing your website, blog or other property to the 1st page of Google.
#2.) Set attainable Milestones: Set attainable goals, such as “obtain a page 3 ranking for Denver SEO by week 8 of campaign” and “Obtain a page one ranking for main site www.thisisiniquitous.com for keyword Denver Internet Marketing by week 12″.
#3.) Set up a base of checklists that will help accomplish the milestones: Now you want to start planning your campaign, what steps are you going to complete in order to start advancing on the milestones you had set in the beginning. Make certain that define each action that you are to take with great detail so that there is no question what you should be working on every day, every week and month.
#4.) Actually execute the plan: A plan is a fantastic attempt in getting started and you are already ahead of 98% of your competition with a written plan. Execution is the next biggest obstacle to actually achieving the milestones set which then get you to the overall completion of your mission. We always recommend “an hour a day”, so when writing your checklist try and accommodate an hour per day for your search engine marketing campaign.
This SEO plan should only take you 2 hours maximum if you utilize the tools that we have explained in our previous posts. Once you have your SEO plan written down, the only thing left is execution. With this road map to success you are certain to actually make monumental changes to your presence online!
Denver Internet Marketing Tips
By: Cade Lee
Competing for a place online in Denver is not easy, but landing a 1st page position can jumpstart your business.
When it comes to having your own Denver home business, you know that you cannot just set up a website and expect to be flooded with hordes of hungry customers ready to spend money. You must market your business using both online and off-line marketing techniques. Marketing is probably the single most important way that you can reach those customers. Here are a couple simple tips to start marketing your home based business in Denver.
Use the Internet to your advantage. The Internet is an extremely powerful marketing tool and you can absolutely use it to generate business. The Internet is probably one of the most cost efficient methods that you can use in order to get a “jumpstart” for your Denver business. By utilizing search engine optimization strategies combined with e-mail campaigns, article marketing, blogging and forum marketing techniques you’ll be able to build an online reputation that will complement any one of your marketing efforts.
Using local keywords to market your Denver business. When you’re starting to approach your Internet marketing campaign, it is absolutely imperative that you start off by doing keyword research. We have already covered that topic and you can read more about completing keyword research here. When you are researching your keywords, you will want to make certain that you use localized keywords. So for example, in our business as search engine optimization professionals in Denver, we would not just use the keyword “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization“. Of course these are fantastic keywords and it would be fantastic to show up in the search engine results for these keywords as both of them get huge amounts of traffic. However, if I were just starting on a search engine optimization campaign it would make better sense for me to start with keywords that are less competitive and are more in tune with my demographic initially.
Since I live in Colorado, I would want to use keywords that apply to my business with local cities, counties and municipalities in my area. So for our example I might like to use a keyword such as “Denver SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization Denver” vs. my previous examples that did not include the local city in the key phrase. You also will want to optimize for keywords that include your name and the city or state as well. So in my case, “Cade Lee Denver” or “Cade Lee Colorado” for example.
Internet marketing in Denver is extremely competitive, and although there is minimal cost to marketing online you must make certain that you use a disciplined approach for your “Denver Internet marketing“. When I say this what I mean is that you must pay attention to your Internet marketing campaign daily, and invest some time into this campaign each and every day. With companies that we have consulted in the Denver area for search engine optimization, and coached, we always recommend that they spend in the neighborhood of one hour per day as a minimum for their Internet marketing campaigns. You’ll also want to make certain that you utilize all the possible resources that you can to learn search engine optimization. We will make more of those resources available throughout content and articles that we post on this blog.
If you are looking to get started in on your Denver Internet Marketing campaign and have some questions about where to start, or perhaps you would like an initial consultation and site review, please feel free to e-mail us at info@thisisiniquitous.com.
Your Website Is Not for You, Neither is the SEO
By: Cade Lee
It is almost impossible to not throw yourself into the design of your new website. When we were designing our brand-new website, we made some of the very same mistakes that we see clients make on an ongoing basis. We included aspects or features to the website that we really liked, and we forgot for a moment that our demographic or audience is business owners and business professionals. For us we are going to have to go back to the drawing board and redesign a completely brand-new website that focuses strictly on professionals, and their pain or needs for Internet marketing versus making it more fun and personal for us. I think it’s very easy to forget who you are designing a website for.
The same goes for search engine optimization, it is so often that we see customers suggest key phrases and keywords that definitely apply to their business; however, “John Q. Public” will probably not use the key phrases and keywords originally selected by the business owner. For example let’s take my industry, I am a professional search engine optimization expert in Denver, and I think that probably one of the most used search terms for customers that are looking for our services would be “Denver SEO“. When we talk with customers about how they found us online, we find that they very rarely come to us using that exact search term. For us the search term Denver SEO makes the most sense as we are in the business, and search engine optimization is most often referred to as “SEO”, so would that make the most sense that companies and marketing professionals in the Denver area would type in “Denver SEO”?
The fact is that most of these companies or individuals that are searching for search engine optimization and Denver do not use the keyword “Denver SEO”. When I look at the analytics for our project, most of the searchers that do come to our website are finding us through the search term “Denver SEO”, yet when I speak with customers that have found our website online and called us they have usually used a different key term or keyword phrase. Perhaps “Denver SEO” is so popular because it is our competitors that use this term, or maybe it is industry professionals that are involved in internet marketing. My point here is that the customers that are calling usually type in something much different like “Denver Interent Marketing Companies“. So although we are getting much traffic from obtaining a first page ranking for the keyword “Denver SEO”, we also have to consider other extrapolations of that keyword such as “Denver Seo company, Denver Seo firm, Denver Seo professional, Denver search engine Optimization Company, search engine optimization Denver, etc.”
The extrapolations or longer keyword phrases are usually much easier to obtain a page-one ranking than a one-word or two word key phrase. Using these variations of search terms in setting up your website will help you to avoid stuffing your pages with the same keywords and give you the ability to produce more content that is actually “useful”. Ultimately at the end of the day you are not producing the website for yourself or for Google, you are producing the website for the end-user. By developing content that is useful and has relevant keywords sprinkled throughout the content piece, you will obtain a lower bounce rate and a higher conversion rate from the website.
The video that I’ve included in this post is a short example of how to use keywords and keyword phrases throughout your blogging campaign that will complement your search engine optimization campaign.