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Recently I received an email from a client asking me if we can offer the same guarantees that are included in an email they received.
You know the type of emails I’m talking about…the ones that say something like “guaranteed top positions in Google,” “guaranteed results,” “guaranteed SEO rankings.” Or perhaps they go so far as to say (as this one did) “guarantee that organic traffic and pageviews from search engines will increase,” that you’ll see “an increase in new site visitors from search engines” and “improved overall rankings for targeted keywords and phrases.”
As I replied to this client…
Seriously?
SEOs offering guarantees
... Continue Reading »Get the most out of your search and social media campaigns this year by taking inventory now and making these 13 actions part of your best practices.
1. Make measurement a priority in 2013. IIf you’re not able to track the ROI of your search campaigns (or worse yet, don’t know what ROI is or what your goals are), move this initiative to the top of your to-do list. It’s critical for your search team to be optimizing your campaign around the right products, keyword targets and metrics that move the needle for your business. Make sure your analytics are set
... Continue Reading »As the President (and “sales guy”) for a search engine optimization company, I feel uniquely qualified to answer the question “what is the price for search engine optimization services?"
I can tell you, from years of experience in the industry and thousands of sales calls under my belt, that you will find pricing all over the map. Within this post, I am not going to sell you on Vizion Interactive, but rather help site owners make sense as to why some people are selling search engine optimization services for $300 per month, while others charge a minimum of $20,000 per month.
I
... Continue Reading »I have an open-door policy. I want to hear from our employees and our clients on how we can do things better. Years ago an employee approached me and said, “You know what, Mark…I think – given the choice – it’s more important that a client is happy rather than if they get results.” At first I was quick to say, “heck no….results are the name of the game.” Then I thought about it…
If a client isn’t happy, then do results really matter? And if they aren’t happy but yet we are delivering results from our efforts, then our ability
... Continue Reading »The SEO Audit is a fundamental aspect of marketing your website. Like your annual physical, or a check-up at the doctor's office, this core SEO deliverable assesses the overall health of your website. Just like a doctor, your SEO team will assess your website's overall health, risks and provide prescriptions, advice and tips to treat weaknesses as well as recommendations for preventative care or maintenance. And, just like a visit to the doctor, sometimes you walk out of the office having heard something that you really didn't want to hear, but something that was absolutely necessary to hear.
When an SEO
... Continue Reading »Has it already been a month since SES NYC? What a fantastic show! It certainly did not disappoint, with four great days chock full of the latest and greatest in SEO and search marketing.
I had never been to an SES before, and looking back on the show, there were a lot of things about it that surprised me. Oddly, the thing that may have surprised me the most was the number of times I heard the term “content is king”. Between search engine reps, speakers, and attendees, the phrase kept getting tossed around the show, like a beach ball in
... Continue Reading »Google just rolled out a new program out to all AdWords users today that will allow advertisers to target ads at "users, based on their past interactions with your website." This new remarketing feature will have great results for advertisers when used properly.
So what exactly does this new retargeting feature do? According to Google:
"Let's say you are an online retailer who sells printers and TVs. You can show TV ads to those people who visited the TV section, and you can cross-sell, up-sell, and promote other relevant products: surround sound systems or DVD players, for example.
Here's
... Continue Reading »I’ve been reading a lot of negative things about Twitter lately and every article I read leads me to believe that the author really has not captured the true value of what Twitter brings to the table in regards to its power as a search tool. If set up properly Twitter can not only deliver instant and real time information, but it can drastically change the way you search for that information. Instead of a proactive search method, Twitter can deliver a passive way to collect information on the subjects that mean the most to you. Think of it as
... Continue Reading »Back in Dec 09, Google announced the integration of the real-time World Wide Web in their organic search results. Google told us that their goal is to strive to bring us "the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices" we "use to access it." They introduced real-time into the search results like this:
I would equate this move to Google Universal, where they algorithmically add news, images, blog results, music (if it's related to music), and video into the organic search results. Somehow, algorithmically, the Google search engine adds
... Continue Reading »I have written about the LeapFish search engine earlier, as you might recall. I am a fan of LeapFish, not only because LeapFish is the fastest search engine, but because I believe LeapFish is one search engine that might really have a chance of making it to the big-time. Further affirming this, LeapFish continues to grow its user base.
LeapFish anticipates that there will be more than 20 million searches in 2010 at their search engine. They have lately reported strong early adopter growth in 2009, and they have reached a 10,000 Alexa rank in one year.
So, if you are optimizing
... Continue Reading »This is Search Engine Optimization tip number 36 in my continuing series of Search Engine Optimization tips. All of these search engine optimization tips are meant to be specific in nature, they will not take that long to review, and are directly to the point. This search engine optimization tip has to do with removing a page or a specific URL from the Google search engine.
I'm not going to go into a great deal of explanation about why you would want to remove a page from Google, there are many reasons for doing that (which might include the fact that
... Continue Reading »Yahoo recently shut down their paid inclusion program referred to as Search Submit. What was Search Submit? Simply put, it was a way to include certain pages in their index and to influence the frequency of re-indexing your site. How does this affect you? It probably doesn't if you weren't participating in the program. If you were, you may want to pay close attention.
Some of the features of this paid inclusion program included the ability to create your own titles and descriptions to be displayed on Yahoo's search engine results page and even have enhanced listings that could draw in
... Continue Reading »Last month, there was a pretty important change in Google which allows them to provide in-depth, real time search. That is, Google launched the inclusion of Twitter results (and others) into the SERPS (search engine results pages). Yahoo has also announced that they are doing the same.
This isn’t happening for every single query. And, we’re trying to determine when it is that Google determines to pull these into the SERPs. Right now it looks like searches on news worthy searches and other large volume queries for large brands. The amount of recent news, Twitter, blog and other mentions seems to
... Continue Reading »I am pretty certain that after reading the title of this post that you thought about the speed of your site but couldn’t pin it to a precise number because it is a metric you never worry about. Well, it is time to start paying attention to this site metric, because it may be a factor in your rankings in Google in 2010.
Google recently announced a new experimental feature in Google Webmaster Tools that will allow you to see your average site load time. Google will analyze your site load time as compared to other sites on the Internet, using
... Continue Reading »Back in 2007, I wrote a post on TopSEOS.com in which I described my past experience in advertising with them and how I felt about the lack of transparency in their rankings of the "top seo firms".
I have waited, and waited, and waited for some firms that I respect - who participate in this - to push the folks at TopSEOs.com to be more up-front about how the lists are developed and paid for. And, if they can't get the people at TopSEOs.com to be more upfront about the fact that this is a "pay to play" marketing list and not
... Continue Reading »In what I would call a surprise move, Yahoo! is discontinuing the Yahoo! Shopping and outsourcing it to PriceGrabber. So, if you are currently using the Yahoo! Shopping API, I would start making plans to make sure that you're integrated with PriceGrabber or at least have taken the necessary steps to start getting your products on PriceGrabber.
As you may recall, Yahoo! Search is going to be powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine, Microsoft’s Bing will now be the search engine on all Yahoo sites. From what I can tell, though, I have not seen anything in the search deal that
... Continue Reading »The Problem
Online reputation management becomes vital when a potential customer searches for your company on a search engine only to find websites with negative information. There are many scenarios that would cause this to happen but it typically happens on review sites like Yelp, Epinion or Angie's List. It could also be on someone’s personal blog or forum or there could even be an entire site dedicated to your demise like PayPalSucks.com. Either way it’s not good and can be very damaging and financially devastating to your organization. I know without a shadow of a doubt when I have a
... Continue Reading »You've probably heard people talking about Twitter. It's all over the news, on the radio, and even on some television commercials: "follow us on Twitter", they say. Twitter is a popular social media web site that allows you to post "tweets" to those who follow you. It is a popular microblogging platform, and it even integrates with many mobile phones now, like the iPhone.
So, how do you set up a Twitter account? Here are the steps required in order to set up a Twitter account.
Promoting your blog with social media is a very powerful method of promotion. I would even venture to say it is the most vital method to ensure your blog will make it out to the sphere. There are many ways to promote your blog but in this article I’m going to concentrate on using social media. If you follow the method I’m going to outline below, you’re chances for success are going to be increased expedentially.
There are a few things to remember when you are working through these methods. First, if there is any opportunity to add HTML to a social media site, make sure
... Continue Reading »The SEO Horror Stories contest ended Oct 31, 2009
Earlier this month Vizion launched a spooky contest and is looking for your SEO Horror Stories.
In this case, the SEO Horror Story contest is looking for you to submit an SEO Horror Story - Mark Jackson explains it all very well here.
We’re looking for Search Engine Optimization Horror Stories - extreme examples of cases where Search Engine Optimization efforts have failed.
So, what will you get when you submit your SEO Horror Story? The first twenty submissions will receive a copy of “The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars” for
... Continue Reading »
