So many business folks look at me like I have four heads when I inform them that in order to get their web site some visibility in the search engines that they will need to contribute to a blog or at the very least, add some content to their web site on a regular basis. Content is still king online and I wanted to share some personal insight as to why I feel that it is so very important….

Here are 6 reasons I bother to blog weekly:

- Google crawls my site rapidly and often. The more content that I create, the more Google wants to come back to my site and crawl it. The more it crawls my site, the more opportunities I have to edit / alter keywords, etc., to grab certain key rankings.

- Google indexes my content rapidly. I’ve written blog articles before that have been indexed IN google within 13 minutes flat. This means I can obviously get my message out quickly and be able to be relevant on trending topics. Again, Google has come to expect content from me, so it constantly is checking for new content.

- Ideas & Insight. The more content that I create, the more I’m forcing my mind to stay on top of my industry. This of course translates to being an authority in my field.

- Credibility. I’ve been invited to speak at countless conventions and associates because of my blogging. I’ve also been on local Orlando news channels frequently because they found a relevant blog article in Google and called my company.

- Newsletter Food. On Target sends out a weekly newsletter to our client base. Because I generate content for my blog, it auto-populates our newsletter and automatically sends it out weekly. I don’t have to create articles in multiple places.

- Social Media Feeder. Because of my blogging, a lot of my social media posts, etc., get automatically populated. I’m able to quickly disseminate my my insight across multiple platforms & now that Google loves to crawl social media outlets, I want those blog posts linked to from those outlets.

If you despise writing, hire someone. If you don’t have the time, pay someone who does have the time. If you really want your web site and it’s Internet marketing presence to grow, content is a hefty consideration that must be a part of your overall Internet Marketing plan. My team at On Target is all about quality, relevant and intelligent content creation.

Call us today to see how we can help your business gain and share it’s expertise on the Internet. In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. http://www.OnTargetWebSolutions.com

WordPress, once configured properly, can be a tremendous tool to help further your organic SEO efforts.  Here are a few core SEO plugins AND settings that your WordPress enabled web site needs to be using in order to thrive in the search engines:

Initial Configuration Tips

1.) Permalinks.
When you install WordPress right out of the box, you need to change the ‘permalink’ structure. The default permalink (site links) is a bit ugly and not conducive to an optimum SEO campaign: you can learn more about changing the default permalink settings at this link: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Permalinks_Screen

2.) Setup Ping Services.
Many web masters miss this, but you can alter and add ping services in WordPress so that each time you compose an article, it alerts news feeds, etc. Here’s a great link to help you alter this setting and get your brilliance out on the web quicker: http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services

3.) PRIVACY settings.
Sometimes, WordPress is installed with privacy enabled.  This means it blocks search engines from ever accessing your site.  This, of course, is NOT good for SEO.  You can double check your privacy settings in the settings control panel within WordPress. You want to allow search engines to crawl and index your web site.

Some Great Plugins:

1.) Google Analytics Plugin.
You need to know what’s happening with your web site visitors, you need a Google Analytics plugin.  This plugin allows you to simply drop your Google analytics code into a box and click the submit button.  WordPress does the rest. Take your pick of a Google Analytics plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=google+analytics&sort=

2.) Google Analytics Dashboard.
Want to see what’s happening with your web site traffic without having to go and login to Google? Install the Google Analytics Dashboard and get analytics information displayed right on your WordPress dashboard. Get the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard/

3.) Google XML Sitemap Generator.
Since you’ll be generating all sorts of blogging goodness, you’ll be adding pages and pages to your web site. The XML site map generator adds every new page of brilliance that you author to an XML document that gives search engines a running list of all new and existing content that you generate.  It’s important to note, you need to create a Google WebMaster account and submit your XML site map for maximum SEO efficiency. I prefer this particular plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

4.) All In One SEO Pack.
Each page and post of your WordPress site deserves a unique title tag and meta description.  WordPress does not allot for this out of the box, so the All In One SEO pack is a great tool for serious SEO Types.  The tool allows you to customize each tag on each new page and post that you create. This plugin is a MUST have. You can grab this plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

5.) Related Links.
One of the core strategies of any successful SEO campaign is a strong back linking and related content linking strategy.  Once you’ve composed a few hundred articles of brilliance, you’ll want your web site visitors and Google to be able to access other nuggets of wisdom that you’ve created.  This plugin lists all related articles to the one you’ve just composed making it easier for the end user to click, and it enables ease of use for search engines to crawl to the related articles. There are a few here that are great options: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=better+related+links&sort=

There are of course more SEO type plugins which we’ll share with you soon, but the ones listed above are critical in my humble opinion.

Need help with your SEO and Online presence? Give one of our SEO Experts a call today: In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. You can also fill out our quick contact form here: http://www.ontargetwebsolutions.com/contact/

“There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing.”
-  Ex Google CEO Chairman: Eric Schmidt

With so much information being added to the web on an hourly basis, how will your business stand a chance of getting found or solving people’s problems?  People are no doubt hungry for information, with over 31,000 searches done per second on the Internet, the real name of the game is being found in one of those searches.  Here’s a few quick tips on getting your web site found in Google, Bing or Yahoo.

- Publish or Perish.
Google in particular is hungry for content.  It scours the web seeking new and relevant information.  If your web site / blog continues to update, you’ve given Google a great reason to keep coming back.

- Be Relevant.
I’d encourage you to read an article relevant to your industry daily.  The more you can stay ahead of the curve and offer your two cents on a trending topic, the more people / prospects start seeing you as an industry expert.

- Keywords, Keywords, Keywords.
You need to know not only what your prospects are looking for, but what words they are using to find it.  Use a free keyword tool to check the search volume of particular keywords / key-phrases and incorporate those keywords into your content.

Lastly, I’d encourage you to be remarkable.  Be amazing.  Be bold, but not bold for the sake of being bold.  On the Internet, cream does rise to the top, so publishing a bunch of nonsense is not going to further your brand.

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Fox news in Orlando has officially named me their web go to ‘guru’. I’ve been very fortunate and very grateful to be able to offer expert advice and insight about social media and Internet marketing and here’s the neat thing. Fox found me because of SEO.  They did a Google search, called me, and BAM, I am their go to expert.

I honestly don’t say this to brag or showboat, I use this to illustrate a point…. Being an expert online and getting found because of it can bring your business to new levels, levels you’ve never imagined.  With over 31,000 searches performed online per second, it’s mission critical that we get your business found.  Found not just by your prospects, but by the media, or other like minded experts seeking your wisdom.

Here’s one of my latest appearances on Fox from last week discussing the recent social media craze about a new Target retail store product:

To found out how my company can help your company get found, please call me! In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. And hey, if you’re watching Fox News tonight in Orlando (WOFL) catch me discussing Google Flights, Google’s new airline flight search engines.

Does your business look good on camera? Do you have a commercial or perhaps your business was featured in the media? Do you have expert advice that you could share with your prospects / customers via video? If so, you need to be sharing them online. Ever since Google purchased YouTube years ago, they’ve been incorporating videos in the organic search engine results: See the screen shot below and note the videos of Tom on the Daily Buzz as well as Fox News incorporated into the results.

Here’s how to get your videos indexed in Google in five easy steps:

1.) Create your video
2.) Go to YouTube.com and create an account for your business.
3.) Upload your video to YouTube.com
4.) Add keyphrases / etc., to YouTube’s description area about your video (be sure that they are relevant to both the video and your company.)
5.) Grab the embed code from YouTube and paste that video into your web site as well.

I recommend creating a series of videos, maybe they are how to videos, maybe they are showing clients how to use your products and services easier. Be sure to make them compelling, professional and don’t forget a strong call to action.

With over 34,000 searches happening per second in Google alone, it’s imperative that your business has a well executed SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plan so that your brand, your products and your services are being found.

Some staggering search statistics:

• Google: 34,000 searches per second
• Yahoo: 3,200 searches per second
• Bing: 927 searches per second

Social Media statistics:

• Facebook status updates: 700 per second
• Twitter tweets: 600 per second
• Buzz posts: 55 per second

For those of you that may be interested, here’s what that 34,000 breaks down to even further : 2 million searches per minute; 121 million per hour; 3 billion per day; 88 billion per month, (figures rounded).  It’s that important to be found.

Need some help with your SEO and Social Media? Talk to the Orlando SEO experts today, give me call… In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886.

Is your SEO guy focused on how many clicks they can drive to your web site or how many Quality clicks they can drive to your web site?  A click is a click, a quality click is speaking to a client and addressing their needs.

A quality click comes from a quality prospect who typed in or addressed a particular problem in Google and landed on your web site because your site actually can solve that prospects problems. Obviously, the more problems that are solved, the more likely that website visitor is to buy your goods or services.  In the SEO world, quality trumps quantity all day long.

Take a look at some of the keywords / keyphrases that your SEO guy is optimizing your web site for:

- Do they make sense?
- Are they relevant to your products and services?
- Did they do the home work and send you a detailed Internet Marketing plan prior to beginning a campaign?
- Are the keywords the language that your prospects speak or the language that you as an insider speak?

The biggest foundation of any SEO campaign is knowing what your prospects are typing into a browser way before the first bit of copy is optimized.  If your business demands quality, your web site demands and deserves quality clicks.

Need help with your SEO campaign? Call me, in Orlando: 407-830-4550. Nationwide: 866-998-6886. If you liked this blog, you may also like my personal SEO blog .

“When it comes to search engine optimization, search engines will judge you by the company you keep – and rank you accordingly.”

- Rebecca Lieb, The Truth About Search Engine Optimization.

So many prospects come to me and want us to get them 12,342 inbound links to their web site with hopes that this will supercharge their SEO efforts and get them to rank as number 1 in Google.  Inbound links DO have a large impact on how Google judges your web site and subsequently, how it ranks or arranges your web site in the organic search engine results, however, the quality of those inbound links is far more important than the quantity of those inbound links.

It’s so important that if you do seek inbound links (which you should) that you carefully and selectively choose who that link will be from.  Consider the following pointers prior to launching a link building campaign for your web site:

- Be certain that the web sites you are requesting links from are relevant to your industry / products / services.
- Make certain that the web site isn’t shady, deceptive or sketchy.
- Ask yourself, would you be proud to associate with this particular web site?
- Check the Google Pagerank of the web site, it would be ideal to get links with PR4 web sites and above.
- Do a quick google search and make certain that you can find the domain in Google (assuring it’s not banned, etc.)

The most important factor with link building is relevancy.  Make certain that it’s a good fit for both parties and be prepared to offer reciprocal links back to their web site.  It’s the right thing to do and helps both parties thrive.

For more expert SEO advice, you may want to check out my other web site at http://www.TomJelneck.com

It doesn’t often pay to be cheap.  Especially when it comes to web hosting.  Part of Google’s ranking formula is the load time and speed of your site.  Also, if your web site seems to be on a hosting roller coaster, up, then down, up then down, etc., your search engine rankings could be suffering as well.  If Google comes to crawl your web site and nobody’s home, (site is down) then it’s off of your web site and on to the next for the Googlebot.

Slow speeds and downtime can be a direct effect of:

- Hosting companies jamming their shared servers FULL of web sites, the more sites on the box, the more taxing it is on the server to deliver the requested web site.

- Hacking attempts.  Trust me, hacking attempts are made daily on web hosts, if a hacker gets control of a server, they can wreak havoc on the web sites on that box.  If the hacker inserts malicious code into your web site, Google WILL typically display a message saying that visiting a web site could harm your computer.  Not good.

- Non updated software.  In order to stay ahead of hackers, your web site server needs to be updated regularly with the most current patches / software, etc..

- Slow and outdated equipment.  You don’t necessarily need the latest and the greatest, but, site load time and speed are also directly proportionate to the amount of memory and drive space that a web server has. From my experience, memory (RAM) on a server is one of the keys to a quick load. I recommend at least 4 megs of RAM.

- A poorly optimized web site.  This is not directly tied to the web host (unless they built your web site) but more to the designer.  If your web site is jammed full of HIGH res images, long movies, poorly written code, etc., the site will of course be much more prone to load slowly. The more optimized your web site is for speed, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

The bottom line is this.  The quality of your web hosting is an integral part of your online presence and can affect your search engine presence dramatically. Pay attention to how quickly your web site loads and be sure to let your host know of any issues you may encounter. The host could actually move your web site to a newer box, a box with less traffic, etc..

I heard something very disturbing from a client today.  A self entitled SEO Guru had infiltrated this organization by sending a crafty spam email message and finally nagging someone to death to take his call.  He proceeded to tell my client that you don’t need content to succeed online.  He told them they didn’t need to be writing, didn’t need to be paying my company to help optimize their web site and blogs, didn’t need to be adding any additional content, he suggested he could get them to be number in a few days. Quick and Easy, down and dirty. The magic pill of snake oil was not what this client needed and reading SEO for dummies doesn’t qualify anyone to be a guru.

I’ve been around the SEO block.  I’ve been doing this for many moons now, in fact, I’m dating myself, but I remember when we used to submit to Snap, Hotbot, Lycos, Alta-Vista, etc. I also remember when DMOZ or the open directory project would actually look at your directory suggestion and would actually include it in the directory in a month, not 3 years.  Through the years, one thing has stayed constant with search engines and will remain IMHO, content is king. Content is information, search engines seek information, content can be unique, search engines want unique, content can be relevant and cutting edge information, searchers want that, so search engines too, want that.

Anyone who tells you that all there is to SEO is meta tags, alt tags and some inbound links really doesn’t get it.  The gurus who guarantee you that you’ll be rich overnight using their online SEO guaranteed ranking system are laughing all the way to the bank.  True SEO is feeding people rich content, true SEO is not spamming the search engines, hiding copy, stealing someone else’s content, true SEO is making the Internet a better place and feeding your prospects.

Before you listen to a SEO ‘guru’ make sure you can find them in Google, Bing or Yahoo.  If they can’t practice what they preach, they don’t deserve any of your valuable time. Getting found is the name of the game today, don’t take a gamble on snake oil.

In a world filled with oodles of distractions, it’s becoming increasingly more and more difficult to focus. Focus on our products, focus on our customer service, focus on our core principles, and focus on our marketing.

When it comes to Internet marketing and SEO, focus is mission critical. Focusing on your core products and their descriptions, focus on your web site design and possible sales entry funnels, focus on your social media campaigns, etc..

One key mistake I see many organizations make, is trying to lead prospects into too many directions via the web. For example, if your law firm has a personal injury department and you also have a maritime law department, how can your web site focus on attracting the right audience effectively? One strategy would be to build a global type of ‘corporate landing page’ for the actual domain  (main site) and then bring personal injury clients to a very focused, very descriptive personal injury web site thats sole reason for existence is to sell personal injury representation, rinse and repeat for the maritime sector. Now, it’s important to add the fuel to the web site, have your legal experts generate relevant, helpful and insightful blog content on the respective sites. Focus.

This focus helps to accomplish the following:

- You are leading prospects directly to where they need to be, to where they can be educated on exactly what they are seeking.
- You are focusing on one core competency per web site, prospects will know you ‘specialize’ in that area of service or product.
- You are telling Google that this focus is what your business is a true expert at. The more expertise, the more Google associates that site with the very targeted search phrases that your prospects are using to find your products / services.
- You are NOT confusing people about who you are and what your identity is. Confusing people is never a really good sales strategy.

Before you hire a company to re-design your web site or create a new one, spend some time thinking about what you sell, who you sell to and how your web site can lead through your sales funnel, how can you ‘pull’ them into your world? A bit of web site planning can go a long way and can ultimately help your web designer achieve a work of art that performs and an SEO engine that Google will love.

If I can help your business, please call me, in Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. You can also visit us at www.OnTargetWebSolutions.com

Several years ago, I’m talking when Yahoo was hip and AskJeeves was happening, I went to work for a company that sold a unique water filtration product for aquariums. I was in charge of creating and promoting the web sites and loved the challenge every day of bringing a new product to a fanatical virutally un-tapped audience. The fanatical audience was aquarium enthusiasts, it began to amaze me how very passionate these people were about their stinky fish tanks. They wanted the cleanest water, the purest water, the toys to measure the water, etc.. It was a great niche that grew / exploded and became not only a controversy (that’s a story for a whole other blog…) but a major player in pure water.

Using SEO and the passion that others had around their aquariums, I was able to create an online destination that exploded and essentially became viral. It really was amazing.

Fast forward to this week. A good friend of mine and I were talking about what SEO can do for a company. He was sharing with me that I helped make someone 2 million dollars recently, that’s how very important it is. It turns out that the aquarium water filter company was recently sold for a cool 2 million bucks. I helped build that, I helped get that company found, I helped them get rich, that feels amazing.

That’s exactly what I want to help your business do: succeed, grow, thrive, explode.

If you’re ready to make it happen online, call my company:  In Orlando: call 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. www.OnTargetWebSolutions.com
Orlando SEO & Orlando Web Design.

Many of our clients have a legitimate concern when they hire us, they want to know when they can expect to see an increase in their overall Google rankings. Again, a very legitimate question and a reasonable question that any business owner should be asking.  Here’s the tough answer…. I don’t know.  I hate saying, but it’s true, I don’t know when Google will start showering your web site with love.  And here’s the other unfortunate TRUE answer in my industry: no one else knows either, other than Google.

I can tell you, from my personal experience, we start to typically see Google results for our clients within 90 days.  We’ve seen it a lot quicker on some, a lot longer on others, but the typical average is around 90 days. With that being said, there are ways to help get Google’s attention and hopefully expedite your web sites’ journey to the top.

Here are a few things that can help expedite the Google love:

1.) Get Blogging NOW.
- The sooner you start getting some rich content up on your web domain, the more Google will start to pay attention.  If your web site has been stagnant for many months or years, we need to let Google know your site still exists.

2.) XML Sitemap.
- An XML Sitemap can help expedite Google crawling freshly created pages, or freshly optimized pages.  This does not mean that you will rank higher, but it does mean that you are making it easier for Google to crawl your web site.

3.) SEO Tools
- SEO Tools.  If you are running a wordpress blog on your domain, make certain that your blog is pinging all of the important news sites.  The WordPress default is set to only ping one, but there are several more you can add: (learn more here: http://newestonthenet.com/how-to-set-up-the-wordpress-pinging-service-wordpress-tip-3/)

4.) Get Social.
- Google and Bing are paying much more attention to trending topics in Social media.  Getting your business active and posting URL’s back to your web site can also help catch Google’s attention.

The point here is, your web site needs to make some noise in order to get noticed.  Once Google is paying attention to your site, you can start fine tuning the keywords / title tags / copy / alt tags, etc. to watch those rankings climb.

As always, we’re here to help.  Call me, In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886. www.OnTargetWebSolutions.com

Ok, no, it’s not Thanksgiving time in Orlando yet, not even close as the mercury is hitting 96 degrees today. We need to talk about stuffing, not the delicious high carb kind, but stuffing keywords into your web site, into your blog posts or into your online press releases.  Example: I saw an SEO company put out a press release recently about a new product they were offering and I have to tell you, it was BARELY readable. It was so over-stuffed with keywords that it was complete nonsense for human beings. Press releases can be great Google food and can help your web site get some organic ranking love, but isn’t the ultimate goal here to get PEOPLE to read stuff and act upon it? Without the people, the search engine is pointless, so is your business.

I will note here, it is mission critical to SPRINKLE relevant keywords into your copy to assist with SEO, but that’s the key SPRINKLE. Your web copy needs to read like copy, not like a mish mashed pile of nonsense. Copy still needs to compel, sell and engage your audience AND entice Google all at the same time.

Here’s my advice to avoid over-stuffing your web site copy:

1.) Do Your Homework.
- Know what keywords are trending and popular amongst your target audience. Use  a free tool such as the Google Adwords keyword tool to see what words are actually being searched for.

2.) Compose Your Masterpiece.
- I would actually recommend that you write your copy WITHOUT putting keywords in first. Write it as you, let it flow. If you are focusing on using the right keywords, you’ll never get it written and it won’t sound anything like you.

3.) Sprinkle Away.
- AFTER you have written your work of art, take an hour or two away from it. Let it simmer down. Come back to it and seek logical opportunities to insert logical keywords.

4.) Read It Aloud.
- By reading your article out loud, you may catch something that doesn’t quite flow.

5.) Publish, Monitor & Evolve.
- Your writing will get better and better and attract more and more folks if you pay attention to what your audience is liking. If you don’t pay attention to your web site trends / analytics, it becomes next to impossible to know what your audience is wanting.

If my company can help your company, please call me: In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886.  To learn more about SEO, you may want to visit my personal blog: http://TomJelneck.com.

From time to time a client will change their domain name, whether it was from a company rename, a different branding opportunity or a new venture all together.  Oftentimes they will park or mirror the old domain name on top of the new one.  What can ultimately happen is that Google could possibly give more weight to the old domain name because it has been around the block a bit longer then the new newer domain.  So, basically, Google may rank the old domain better, thus outranking the newer domain in the search engines.  While this is not a catastrophic problem, it’s cleaner and more SEO friendly to use a 301 redirect.

The key difference between the two is this: Mirroring or parking a domain simply shows the new site if you’ve parked it on top of the new domain.  The URL doesn’t change to the new domain, so, viewers are seeing your old domain name within the browser window.  To avoid this domain name confusion all together AND to pass the old domain mojo on to the new domain, I suggest a 301 Redirect.  A 301 redirect is essentially a note to the search engine to tell it, Hey Google, Bing & Yahoo, this content should now be found on this shiny new domain.  Users who type in the old domain name are instantly redirected to the new domain.

Setting up a 301 is relatively simple, although, if you’re not comfortable messing with FTP, etc., I recommend you contact your hosting company for help. Otherwise, you can edit your .htacess file to include the following snippet of code on the OLD domain:

Redirect 301 /PATH_TO_REDIRECT
NEW_LOCATION_URI

Obviously, you’ll want to change the Path_To_redirect and New_location_URI to the appropriate parameters. This takes minutes to complete and should work instantly. Need more help with your SEO? Call me, In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886.

I was speaking with a prospect fairly recently who let me know that their web site SEO was just fine. Just fine indeed, they had jammed some keywords in their copy, they started a Facebook page, they had even written two blog posts already. They wrote those blog posts 1 year ago. They stuffed those keywords in 6 months ago. They have 3 people following them on their facebook page, they had not updated their web site in 6 months. The key question they had for me was, why isn’t my web site ranking in Google?

The answer is simple. They launched their web site and walked away. They may have gone through the right motions initially, but ultimately, they waited on Google to digest and instantly shower their web site with amazing organic SEO rankings. It didn’t happen.

Here are 3 things you MUST do to get Google’s attention.

1.) BLOG. 2 blogs will not cut it. 2 content and relevant blogs a week is more like it. Remember that Google is hungry for content. Feed it. It will keep coming back for more.

2.) PARTICIPATE, DON’T ANTICIPATE. The more active that you are online in forums, blogs, social media, etc., the more Google will take you seriously.

3.) WATCH & REACT. Pay very close attention to your web site analytics / stats. If you aren’t watching the keyword searches, bounce rates, inbound links, etc., you are missing out on opportunities for SEO and web site improvements.

What SEO really comes down to is this. Create and share useful and amazing content for people to digest. Google should be your second consideration.

Need help with your business SEO strategy? We need to talk. Call me, In Orlando: 407-830-4550, Nationwide: 866-998-6886.

When shopping for any SEO firm to optimize your web site, PLEASE steer clear of secretive practices.  If you can’t get a straight answer out of an SEO company on how they are going to help improve your organic search engine rankings, it’s time to shop for a different firm.

There is nothing secret about SEO, in fact, Google hands consumers information on how to get their web site to rank well: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291. Be sure to check out the PDF they have listed on that page as it gives a great roadmap to help you set your web site up for success in the search engines.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, especially to all of our loyal clients and partners.

My 7 year old daughter loves Harry Potter.  So much so, that she runs through the house with her Harry Potter magic wand and attempts to turn her little sister into a frog, a lizard, a siberian husky, etc.  I have noticed that she gets very frustrated when these spells don’t work and she has an excuse for why each spell did not work.  This reminds me a lot of the SEO gurus that send me an email at On Target Web Solutions letting me know that they could not find On Target Web Solutions in the search engines, but if I reply back, they can make it happen. With the wave of a wand and a cutesy spell, your web site can be ranked in the search engines nearly overnight, and wait, if the spell doesn’t work, they’ve got an answer why. What a whimsical world we live in.

The truth about SEO is this: it takes skill, it takes time, it takes persistence, it takes a grasp of the English language, it takes experience. Please, whatever you do as a business, do not hire an SEO firm that solicited you via email promising to get you found overnight. Also, beware of the $19.95 SEO package that will skyrocket you and your business to the top of the search engine rankings NOW, that too, is a hokey spell.  Lastly, the SEO cold call: there are many companies cold calling trying to sell unsuspecting business owners on Paid local search, my best advice here, do a quick Google search on their company and see if: A.) You can find them and B.) How many complaints are there about them.

In my next post, I’ll outline some helpful ways to shop for an SEO company.

If you know your web site needs help, call me today: In Orlando: 407-830-4550, or Nationwide: 866-998-6886.

So, we had a call in today (prospect) that wanted a new web site designed.  My sales team of course spent the time to explain SEO and how it needs to be married to your web design, etc., at which point the prospect exclaimed: “No, I don’t need any of that SEO, so you can take that out of the quote. My girlfriend Dabbles in SEO.”

Here’s what’s wrong with that statement: If you are going to spend thousands on a web design, do you really want someone who just DABBLES with SEO as a hobby or wouldn’t you be more comfortable knowing that you just hired true marketing experts who know, eat, sleep and breathe SEO?

I suppose to each his / her own, but when it comes to my company, I want to work with the best, not with dabblers or hobbyists.

I had a gentleman cold call me yesterday seeking employment.  He wants to be an SEO expert.  He explained to me how he got his copy of Dreamweaver (a web editing software) and Photoshop a few months back, so he’s ready to roll. Turns out he wanted to come be a part of our team.

What’s wrong with this picture?

First and foremost, he cold called me.  I hate being cold called.

Secondly: the fact that someone went out and purchased some software does not qualify them to be an SEO expert, a web design expert, an architect, a lawyer, candlestick maker, Indian chief, etc..  I’ve got all kinds of software, NONE of it helps me get your web site found.   My experience, my intuition, my team, my resourcefulness ALL help me get your web site found.

Don’t get me wrong, we all need tools to do our jobs more efficiently, but at the end of the day it’s about expertise, wisdom and the school of hard knocks.