blogging 102

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes The most ambitious Internet retailers, hoping to emulate the style and online influence of Amazon.com and other recognized brands, tend to aim for sprawling electronic retail websites that may look pretty but accomplish little else. If all the push is towards what appears on the front end instead of a concerted effort in choosing a reliable e-commerce solution from the get go, these decisions can ultimately impact the long-term success of any SEO campaign. Most Internet retailers opt to use an out of the box e-commerce solution, eliminating the need to build something more suitable from the ground up. Out of the box software, however, may lack some of the flexibility that is required to implement a robust SEO campaign. On the other hand, building a fully customized e-commerce platform can be outright expensive. In an ideal situation, you will want to look for something that is somewhere in between. To help you bridge the gap, we’ve identified four... 

Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes While professional SEO (search engine optimization) is becoming increasingly recognized as an extremely effective component of an overall marketing mix, the SEO industry itself is still very much in its infancy. Because SEO is a relatively new industry, many key decision makers are not even aware that professional SEO exists, or they simply believe that it could not work in their industries or with the existing marketing mix. This is not because these decision makers are ineffective or backward thinking, but rather because, in most companies, marketing efforts are focused upon activities that have already been proven effective as a part of the marketing mix (direct mail, print advertising, trade shows). Very often, the people who first recognize the potential benefits of professional SEO are not the key decision makers. They are the people on the front lines of the organization – the ones who deal with prospects and customers every day. However,... 

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes We often deal with clients that are planning to “revamp” their sites with Flash, with SEO having already generated tremendous gains in their sales. The thing that we most dread to hear is that they’ve hired an experienced “Flash designer” that will be taking their websites to the “next level.” Unfortunately, that “next level” is often the basement – at least in terms of SEO results. The bottom line here is that a site built entirely in Flash still faces huge obstacles. While there have been recent moves from Google and Yahoo! to try to index the content from combined Flash/SEO sites, those moves have not yet, from my experience, translated into SEO results or success (at least when compared to html sites). We should make a distinction here between embedded Flash and sites built entirely from Flash. For example, a site that contains Flash elements but still contains basic html elements will not... 

Reading time: 7 – 11 minutes Many companies are not aware of the different roles that various departments in their organization will fill when they begin to work with an outside SEO firm. What follows is a demonstration, in play form (bear with me), of which internal departments are involved in a typical SEO campaign and why. It also demonstrates some of the resistance that may be felt by those departments as well as what valuable contributions a company can make to help its SEO firm craft a successful campaign. The Players Sales - These folks are the front line of the organization. They know how prospects speak, and they are generally very useful when it comes to keyphrase suggestions. Most of the salespeople are out for themselves, but they will gladly participate in a joint initiative if it means that they will have more targeted leads. The Sales team has an uneasy relationship with Marketing and often questions exactly what it is that Marketing does, since they do not believe... 

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes When a company is considering embarking upon a search engine optimization campaign, the first discussion that normally is had is whether to take care of the campaign in house or to hire an outside SEO firm. Handling an SEO campaign in house is an attractive and popular option for many companies after all, the staff is already being paid to perform other functions, so the company might as well use its resources. In addition, a company may in fact have technically savvy people on staff that know at least a little bit about SEO, making the choice to take the campaign in house appear to be a no-brainer. But the real issue is how to compare the actual cost of an in-house campaign if you are expecting the same type of results that you would get with an outside SEO firm. In House or Outsourced – Consider Your Resources There are several basic assumptions that can be made about any company that is interested in SEO in general. First, the company likely...