Search engine optimization (SEO) is like being a stockbroker: many people do it, but few do it well. Just as bad stockbrokers will waste your money, so will bad SEO firms. To avoid hiring an unprofessional organization, businesses need to recognize the undeniable signs of an SEO firm that will not deliver quality, sustained results:

Guarantee Immediate Results

Improving the search ranking for a website starts with analyzing its content and design—a process critical to developing proper strategy, and one that cannot be completed in forty-eight hours. A firm that promises significant results within forty-eight hours appeals to every marketing team, but is laughable to anyone who has a clear idea of how SEO really works.

Promising Fast Search Engine Ranking Improvement

Google did not become a superstar overnight; therefore the company knows your website has not attained rapid success either, so trying to fool a search engine can get you removed from SE rankings. Search engines only “crawl” websites periodically, so exceptional SEO practices will improve a website’s rankings through slow, methodical processes that take weeks, not days.

Supplying Bad Content

Content is king, but weak SEO content has two drawbacks: first, no one reads it; and second, it reflects poorly on the professionalism of the site. Firms that supply bad content often use offshore writers with poor English, or spinning software that recycles organic writing. Prior to hiring a firm, ask how it generates content.

Failing to Offer Lead Conversion Strategies

Many firms view high search rankings as the sole goal of SEO. Although raising a website’s rankings may be the initial goal, the real success comes from increasing conversion rates. Lead conversion is the lifeline for sales, and developing the best strategy can only come from a full-service SEO firm. Unless your website is delivering hot leads, the value of its search engine rankings is negligible.

Ignoring Social Media Pages

Firms that do not optimize social media ignore an entire generation and an important opportunity to direct traffic to your website. If your firm incorporates YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter into its business plan, optimizing these sites could significantly improve your sales leads.

Using Black Hat SEO Techniques

The dangers of implementing “black hat” optimization tactics for organic rankings are well known, but some firms still use these unsavory tactics to improve search rankings. Keyword stuffing, invisible text, link farming, doorway pages, and duplicating content across different domains could lead to search engines banning the website.

Offer One-time Fixes

Thriving businesses grow and change to meet market demands. SEO Firms that offer “one-off” SEO solutions only provide temporary solutions. Search engines often change their crawling strategies, and new avenues for optimization are always evolving as an ongoing process, not a one-time solution. In most cases, the results of one-off fixes do not last for long and do not address the challenges of ever-changing internet marketing.

Have SEO Firms Let You Down?

After working with a poor search engine optimization firm, some businesses become hesitant to pursue SEO. At Face Forward Media (FFM), we understand this reluctance. That is why we offer a free consultation where we explain proper SEO practices, the results it can achieve, and how different strategies meet different needs. We can often identify strategies your company is already performing, but might not be leveraging to its full potential.

In addition to specializing in SEO, we also specialize in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, social media optimization, web development, sales conversion, video production and online reputation management. To learn how our services can drive your business’ online sales, call us today for a free consultation.

Four important reasons to add a short video to your website:

1. Video will help you rise to the top of the search engines.

Statistically most people only click on the top two listings for any topic they search, so getting your website listed as high as possible is essential. Many search engines look for video as part of the criteria to rank. This means that if you have properly optimized your videos, they can be an essential part of driving more traffic to your website, which could mean more sales.

2. Grab and keep visitor’s interest

Face it – Video is more interesting than text. Most people would rather watch an exciting movie than read a book. Video helps your web site stand out from those that are less professional or boring, and encourages interactivity.

3. Ability to make information easy to understand

People don’t always want to be “sold to” all the time. Videos give you the chance to not only get your sales pitch across quickly, but tutorials and related educational information as well. By creating interesting information, you can keep customers on your site longer. By continually adding new information you can keep customers coming back for more, therefore familiarizing them with your product.

4. Video allows you to connect emotionally with the customer.

People buy from people they know. Video gives the customer the feeling that they know you – as well as your product – an emotion that turns into money in the bank.

According to Internet Retailer, an April 2010 report stated that consumers who watch product videos are 85% more likely to buy products compared to those who do not watch.

Having corporate web videos, sometimes called webmercials, should be part of a multi-pronged marketing solution – one that you will want to customize with your internet marketing consultant and will ideally contain social media campaigns, pay-per-click advertising, article promotion, blogging, and a strategy to convert more visitors into buyers.

Search engine marketing addresses web traffic, social media activity, click-through rates, and much more. All of these aspects of your online marketing strategy directly affect your conversion rate, and can be indicators of how well you are reaching your target audience. Make sure your website is appearing in the intended search engine results pages (SERPs), and targets potential customers with properly optimized title tags and meta descriptions. You must implement an effective SEO blueprint and keyword strategy to attract the RIGHT traffic to your website and bring in visitors who are looking to convert.

Conversion is all about engagement. Increase the amount of time a potential customer spends on your website by offering relevant, informative content that keeps the visitor engaged and looking for more. Videos, images, social media, and blogs about your products and services, as well as customer comments and reviews, are great methods for improving user interaction. Appeal to your target audience’s need for visual and emotional stimulation with the most effective combination of relevant, interesting images and motivational phrases that drive them to act.

The objective for increased conversion is obviously increased sales, revenue, and return-on-investment. With effective SEM campaigns and continuous content creation, conversion optimization leads to increased profitability. Discover the best online conversion strategy for your business with a customized blueprint from Face Forward Media. Contact us today for a full assessment from an SEM expert and find out how you can turn clicks into cash with a website properly optimized for conversion!

Google recently acquired Zagat, a highly accredited rating and review survey, consequently improving the value of local online marketing. This combination of the world’s most powerful search engine and “the creator of the world’s most influential and trusted customer reviews” will undoubtedly change the local online marketing strategy for millions of small businesses.

Zagat, with a 30-point rating scale, offers an easy and effective method for customers to share experiences and rate the best and worst restaurants, hotels, stores, movies, airlines, and local attractions all over the world. Zagat publishes these reviews in guidebook form, software, and on their subscription-based website, www.zagat.com.

With Google’s acquisition, local searches have been reprioritized, and website optimization has become even more important. Businesses with a verified location, conveying to Google and its users what they do and exactly where they are located, rise higher in the rankings than those without a specific address. With Zagat, not only is the location important, but the reviews associated with that particular location also boost the relevance and credibility of a business’s website, improving visibility in search results.

What does this mean for local businesses? Customer reviews are more important than ever before. It’s not enough to just close a sale anymore. To build a loyal customer base and improve credibility both on- and offline, word needs to spread about a business’s wonderful products, services, and employees through their most far-reaching resource: the Internet.

The difficult part is convincing your happy customer to go home and interact with your business online. Make it simple, and provide an incentive. Customers will always ask, “I’ve already got your product/service, so what else is in it for me? And how much time will it take?” Integrate a persuasive call-to-action into existing marketing material—flyers, cards, receipts, social media—create a deal exclusive to customers willing to share their experience with your company online; e.g. every customer that submits a Zagat review for your business will receive 10% off their next purchase.

Revisiting your online marketing and optimization strategy, we can help build your online presence in your local community, taking full advantage of the Google-Zagat marriage and optimizing your website to its full potential. For more information on the value of customer reviews and local online marketing, give us a call at 800-829-5240 for a free evaluation.

If you are looking for the most effective method for generating more web traffic, content creation is the way to go. Generating new content for your website is even more impactual than social media integration and link building, and often takes the most work. As you add content to your website, you are also adding very important keywords. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing value relevant keywords and reward sites with quality content by placing them higher on the results pages, improving your chances for increased web traffic and maximum exposure. By creating a consistent content creation strategy, you also let the search engines know that your website is active and maintaining that level of relevance, pushing you above your competitors in the rankings.

While content creation is arguably the best method for optimizing your website, it is also very tedious, and requires an experienced team of experts and knowledgeable writers with a keen focus on keyword integration. It’s all part of a customized marketing strategy, and must be tailored to the purpose of your website to stay relevant online. Face Forward Media employs professional SEO content writers who are trained specialists at producing impressive results. To improve your online marketing strategy with quality content creation, contact our team at info@faceforwardmedia.com or give us a call at (800) 829-5240 to schedule a full assessment.

In a 2010 report from Cisco, video traffic accounted for 30% of all Internet traffic, and that number is predicted to increase to 90% by the year 2013. Websites that use video are more likely to engage their targeted audience, experience higher traffic and conversion rates, and increase their brand loyalty. With over 3 billion videos being viewed on YouTube daily, and YouTube accounting for only 40% of all online video traffic, the estimated impact of video to the daily web-goer is staggering.

So why is video so successful? Why would people rather click on a video link to learn about a product than read about it, even if the time spent viewing the video is longer than reading the written description?

There are a myriad of reasons as to the success of online video in general, but for the purposes of time and length I’m going to focus on two: the idea of story, and the concept of the pictorial superiority effect (pictures).

We’ll start with the idea of story. The majority of communication in our daily lives is told in the form of stories: you wake up in the morning and tell your family about the strange dream you had last night, your boss tells you what went on during the conference call with a client, or you tell your coworker about how the guy in a fancy red sports car cut you off on your way to work. All of these are stories, and are common ways we process and store information. Stories contain large amounts of information divided up into pieces that our brains process as chunks of smaller units of information so that we can better perceive the event as a whole. This process is called event structure perception.

Stories involve many parts of the brain. They contain characters with whom we can relate and experiences that pull at our emotions. As an audience, doesn’t our interest sharpen when we hear a speaker say, “Let me tell you a story…” The words have a magical influence because of how our brains are wired to process information. Now, bring into play the fact that all videos are created to tell a story. They contain information in the form of characters, pictures, and words, and break them down into parts that our brains naturally take in with a beginning, middle, and end. Suddenly, the words “Click here to play” have the same magical quality as those of “Let me tell you a story.” Our attention is now hooked and our mind engaged.

Moving along to the second reason as to the success of online video is the concept of pictorial superiority effect, which refers to the fact that about half of our brain is given over to visual processing. This means that we are more likely to remember something that we have seen visually. When we read or listen to somebody talk, our mind processes words into meaning, and then into images. When you pause to think about it, we are visually processing the world around us nearly every second of the day. It is easy then to see why video has such an impact on our brain – it is talking directly to it!

So, when you combine the visual, sensory experience of picture, with the fundamental experience of a story, it is no wonder at how effective video has become as an internet marketing tool.

(For more information behind the “why” of web design see Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? by Susan M. Weinschenk)

How does video make that much of a difference? When someone becomes engaged in a video on a site, he or she has already invested a chunk of precious time and is unlikely to start the search process over again. So essentially, if you keep one watching for a few seconds longer, they are much more likely to just go ahead and buy what you are selling or simply follow up with your company.

In addition to driving traffic to a site and keeping viewers engaged in that site, videos also have a highly influential role in consumer’s decision making. In a recent study by Eccolo Media, data shows that viewers of video white papers are more attentive to the information they are consuming, which makes the message much more influential and that viewer much more valuable than one that is passively skimming written content. This study also revealed that 93% of viewers clicked on video files. 80% of these viewers indicated that the influence of the collateral was increased positively or very positively by watching the video opposed to simply reading the white papers. Who wouldn’t appreciate a little break in the monotony of one’s day while getting valuable information in an entertaining and easy to follow manner?

So, if you really want to keep up with the Joneses, a pretty website just doesn’t cut it anymore. Don’t worry, there is no need for a professionally produced feature film, so don’t start with the excuses as to why you can’t afford it and that you don’t have the equipment. You probably already have a webcam built into your computer, and if you don’t know how to use it, ask your 12-year-old! Unless you are actually selling videos, no one cares about the production value as much as they care about the message. Get your product out there with a simple demonstration, tell potential clients why you are different from your competitors, or simply introduce yourself to the millions of online video watchers. The rest will fall into place.

Website Design SEO: Increased Traffic through Higher Rankings

While there are many qualified development companies to select from, most do not have a thorough understanding of these marketing tactics. Those which are familiar often choose to leave it out of their layout process. This can reduce continuing internet presence for a company. Website design SEO processes involve including components to optimize traffic growth through increased search engine site rankings. Conversion, layout optimization, SEO friendly design, and highly efficient development are combined for the best possible company site. These qualities separate the online marketing of a company from the competition. Most businesses have recognized the benefits regarding certain aspects of this form of marketing, but may be missing out on the ones provided by an optimized website.

Many website design SEO factors have to be included for effective optimization. Keyword research is essential when building a site from the ground up, and is equally as important for existing content. A good service will determine business objectives, target customers, and then find keywords to coincide with them. These keywords are used during wire frame, sitemap, and page layout. Building them into the structure prevents major structural changes any time additional content is required. Navigation needs to be friendly so that search engines can easily follow the site. Load times do sometimes affect search engine rankings. Typically a consumer will evaluate a website in less than ten seconds. This means your company has a very small time frame to sell a product or idea. Content focused on the user along with proper keyword placement helps top search engines learn about the site. Social elements such as Twitter or Facebook have their own benefits, as we live in an age where social sites are the new communicative forum among internet users. Include welcoming URL’s, filenames, and an effective sitemap. There is far much more involved with website design SEO services than has been covered. A highly experienced company can ensure you get the best marketing possible for moving your website in a positive direction.

The statistical importance of a high page rank

According to researchers at Cornell University, 42% of search users click on the highest-ranked link in search engine results, compared to only 8% who click on the second highest-ranked link. The lower a link is listed, the less the percentage of people who click on it. According to a study by Jupiter Research, only 23% of search users access the second page of search results, and only 10% are willing click on results that list past the third page. For companies, this means that having a low page rank—or even a mediocre one—is almost like not having a website at all.

Using search engine optimization to improve page rank

When properly executed, SEO improves a website’s page rank by addressing factors that decide search results, particularly: the algorithms used by search engines to determine search results, the keywords used to search for a particular product or service, and which engines are preferred by the audience a company is targeting. By determining these things, SEO experts can optimize a website with the right keywords in order to dramatically improve its website search engine ranking.

From improving page rank to improving sales

Improving sales begins with improving page rank, but it doesn’t end there. For web sales to improve dramatically, a company’s website must be optimized to improve the performance of its web traffic in terms of sales conversion.

Improving sales conversion through website design could involve several elements, from leading website visitors to strategically placed calls to action, to implementing homepage videos that make critical impressions. But when the correct techniques are used for the right website, the results are indeed dramatic. According to research, 40% of SEO campaigns that calculate their ROI deliver returns that exceed 500%. And the longer SEO campaigns last, the longer the returns last.

The disparity between good and bad SEO techniques

That only 40% of SEO campaigns that calculate their ROI deliver dramatic returns may seem troublesome. What this statistic reveals, however, is not the ineffectiveness of SEO. Rather, it reveals the ineffectiveness of certain SEO techniques, often referred to as “black hat” techniques. Black hat campaigns are attractive for their cheap pricing, but their results are not sustained, and they can lead to a website being banned from a search engine. Three examples of black hat techniques used for webpage optimization are: link farming, keyword stuffing, and poorly spun articles that receive a low page ranking.

As one might expect, the antitheses of black hat techniques are “white hat” techniques, which are approved of and encouraged by search engines. When properly executed, these techniques are responsible for the dramatic returns companies receive from SEO campaigns.

Choosing the right SEO firm

Effective SEO campaigns are preceded by search engine marketing (SEM) research that focuses on three critical elements: market analysis of a company within its industry, competitive analysis of a company regarding its online competitors, and advanced keyword analysis. Firms that don’t perform SEM research often “throw in” SEO as a free service, or price it extremely low. But the results of such arrangements aren’t worth a company’s time or money. The website search engine ranking they create typically disappears within a matter of weeks, if not sooner.

When companies choose a firm that performs SEM research and offers a full range of SEO strategies, they can fully realize the most important advantages of e-commerce: the ability to reach customers worldwide, and the opportunity to dramatically increase sales.