FAQs

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) FAQs

• What is SEO? Search engine optimization is the process of editing a website’s structure, content and links in order to enable search engine spiders, or bots, to index it higher in relevance to specific search terms or keywords.
  
  
• Why is SEO important? Over 85% of searchers use search engines to find products and services, and SEO uses criteria to ensure you will have high rankings in search results. Top rankings produce more traffic, as statistics show that most users never scroll past the first three pages of search results. A properly implemented SEO campaign offers the best return on your investment by driving more traffic to your website, at no cost.
  
  
• How do you measure results? By testing, measuring, tweaking and testing again. There are several ways to measure results. If you sell directly online, then we can measure the traffic to your site and the number of customers before and after SEO. For manufacturers who sell through dealers, we can measure by conversions and the number of leads. Once you determine the goals or actions you want your visitors to perform (conversions), we will track and measure the results using our online leads tracking tool. This is an interactive reporting tool for your dealers to convey what happened to the lead. We then close the loop by determining which search engines, advertising, and PR is most cost effective in generating sales.
  
  
• Is SEO something my company can do internally? Yes, with the proper coach. We can work together as a team and provide recommendations that your marketing staff and web developer can implement.
  
  
• Do you offer search engine submission services? Yes. Once the optimization steps are taken, we will submit your website to all of the major search engines. We can also submit to directories, however additional fees are involved.
  
  
• How long does it take for my site to be indexed on search engines? It varies by search engine, but typically anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks.
  
  
• What are content recommendations? Writing and formatting your content in a way that will help the page appear relevant to the majority of search engine queries. We also want your content to be compelling in order to entice your visitor to self-identify, and will make content recommendations for subtle changes.
  
  
• Do you provide keyword suggestions? Yes, we will perform a complete analysis of your existing keywords and keyphrases and uncover those you may not be using.
  
  
• Do you work with my webmaster? Yes, we will need access to your web developer in order to customize our lead generation tracking tools. We also want to ensure all suggested meta tags are properly implemented within your website.
  
  
• Will you make design changes to my website? No, we are not web designers. We will provide recommendations on website content and navigability.
  
  
• Do you guarantee positioning? No. In the Google guidelines it states that no one can guarantee positioning, and it would be unethical for us to do so. However, we do guarantee your satisfaction with our services. See our guarantee for more information.
  
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Search Engine Marketing (SEM) FAQs:

• What is search engine marketing? Search engine marketing uses the internet to market your product or services through paid search, paid inclusion or banner ads.
  
  
• What is paid search advertising? Paid search is also known as pay-per-click advertising. Major search engines offer sponsored search results where your ad appears next to organic search results. An advertiser can essentially bid on keywords or keyphrases. You create a short, compelling ad utilizing the same keywords. The higher the bid and relevancy to the search term, the higher your ad will appear. You are only charged when your ad is “clicked”.
  
  
• How does paid search differ from natural search? Natural search results appear in rankings based on how relevant your site is to keywords. There is no charge, as search engines spider web pages and index the information. Paid search ads appear usually at the top and right hand side of the search engine results page, and are identified as sponsored search. When a visitor clicks on one of the sponsored search ads, the advertiser is charged the amount they bid, or the CPC (cost per click).
  
  
• How expensive is paid search? That depends on how high you want your ad to rank. For a highly competitive keyword, the price is much higher. Search engines do provide traffic estimators that help determine what you would need to bid to be in the top three positions. You can set a daily budget, and once it is reached, your ads will stop showing.
  
  
• What is a keyword? A keyword is the word or words people type into search engines to find information. Think of keywords as the terms that identify your products.
  
  
• Will you write my paid search ads? Yes. Paid search ads are short in nature (each line is restricted to a certain number of characters), so the ad needs to be written in order to weed out the non-relevant visitor (you don’t want to pay for a click for a visitor that will have no interest), and strike a chord with a potential customer.
  
  
• How do you track results from paid search? Each search engine provides the number of clicks as well as the clickthrough rate. We not only want to track the number of clicks per campaign or keyword, but what happened to those clicks once they landed on your site. We will track the number of paid search visitors that became conversions.
  
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Online Lead Generation FAQs:

• What is the quality of online leads? Online leads can be excellent leads. It’s important that a visitor who self-identifies (becomes a lead) does so in order to gain information on how your product can meet their needs. Gimmicks to generate a lead will create low-quality leads.
  
  
• How do we know which internet advertising technique produces the best leads? It is essential to use visitor tracking tools to identify the source of leads. The leads must then also be tracked to determine which leads become sales. By linking the two, we can determine which lead sources (pay-per-click ads, particular search engines, banner ads, print ads with website addresses, etc) provide the best return-on-investment in providing quality leads.
  
  
• What generates better leads, organic search or paid search? Both generate quality eads. Both bring traffic to your website. The quality of the lead will then be determined by your conversion techniques in getting the visitor to self-identify.
  
  
• How long does it take to start generating online leads? Lead generation is a combination of generating increased, qualified visitor traffic to your website, and then converting those visitors into qualified leads. The steps are to first create additional conversion opportunities for website visitors, then do pay-per-click advertising to generate immediate increased traffic along with search engine optimization to increase traffic over time.
  
  
• How expensive is it to generate online leads? As would be expected, the cost can vary based on how quickly you want to grow your leads and the number of leads you wish to generate. Creating additional conversion opportunities on your website is very inexpensive. Improving your organic search results is fairly inexpensive but requires ongoing work. Online and off-line advertising costs the most but can create dramatic results.
  
  
• How can our website be changed to generate online leads? The task is first to create additional conversion opportunities for current visitors. This usually requires a significant overhaul to the content, changing it from a product focused website to a solution and application focused website.
  
  
• How will you help us improve our lead generation? There are several stages: assessment of current lead generation, implementing additional website analytics if needed, additional website content, website navigation enhancement, search engine optimization, online advertising, tying all off-line advertising to the website, tracking leads, tracking sales from leads, and refining these efforts based on measured results.
  
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