Some interactive marketing agencies act high and mighty when it comes to taking on new clients. They turn away anyone without a six figure budget. Not NetSuccess. We know that some companies have trouble allocating funds to a marketing strategy they’ve never tried before. That’s why it’s important to find an agency who will review your website, listen to your budget restraints, and help you at least get started.

Regardless of the number of pages on your site, you don’t have to optimize every page at once. You can start with 20 pages and optimize them. Consider it a tester. If you’ve chosen a quality agency, they should be able to show you ROI within 6 months at a very reasonable price. Once you’ve seen how your SEO marketing dollars can convert, you’ll be ready to up your spend to optimize more of your site. Step by step, you’ll see that you’re gaining traffic and converting more visitors, and that equals success.

We know that not every company in today’s culture is perfectly branded. We know that your business may not be the elite provider of ____ service or product. You still have a quality product / service to sell, and increased exposure to your target audience is what you need. Whether you’re the leading home furniture manufacturer and distributor or a Dallas liposculpture clinic, you can benefit from some level of web site optimization.

If you have any questions about search marketing and optimization, let us know.

As mentioned recently on ReputationAdvisor.com, the online reputation management industry is on the verge of its tipping point (for an explanation of “tipping point”, see Macolm Gladwell’s book of the same name). Let’s take a quick look at the buildup.

Online usage increases.
As more people spend more time online  than watching television, the impact of the medium increases. Most businesses now rely on the Web on some level to advertise, inform, validate, and sell. But for the sake of this post, what’s being said and published online about you is more important than your level of web marketing.  Even if your website is a glorified business card with virtually no presence on Google, Yahoo, Ask, or Live Search, negative things can be published about you by competitors, ex-clients, ex-employees, ex-girlfriends, someone you offended, someone you ignored, and on and on. And whether you’ve spent much time and money on branding yourself or your company online, you can lose business and credibility by what others publish.

Example: Local Business
A local plumbing company barely has a website. It’s ugly, one-page, and gives no real information except phone, fax, and address. A disgruntled receptionist has a bad day and offends 1, 2, or 10 different people. One of those people is angry enough to go online and blog about how terrible the plumbing company is. Now that information is out there. Even if satisfied customers refer their friends to that plumbing company, those people may take a few minutes to do a quick Google search on the company name to find out more. If that negative blog post appears at the top of the search results, that plumbing company just lost business. Why would you call a possibly bad plumbing company when there are dozens more out there you’ve heard nothing negative about? Exactly. You wouldn’t.

Take it to the next level.
Now take that example and magnify it to a Fortune 500 level. You’re a big name corporation with millions of customers. How many people will be swayed against using your products or services based on the hundreds or thousands of accusations posted online against you? Can you afford to lose business and revenue because you have no current method of handling these crises?

Unless the term “profit” means nothing to your business, you can’t afford to not monitor and manage your online reputation. That’s why you need to come up with a plan and a budget for handling your online rep. Then comes the task of locating a respected reputation manager to handle your reputation with kid gloves day in and day out.

All of this will seem like a lot of unnecessary concern and expense to many business owners (mostly because denial is a comfortable place to live) until they become aware of their first crisis that could cost millions in revenue and branding. Many executives will hear about reputation management and recognize their own need, yet they will still choose to wait for the crisis to hit (hoping it happens years down the road).

Reputation Terrorism is the battlefield of tomorrow. Look for it. You’ll suddenly see companies severely crippled by negative online campaigns executed by clever opportunists posing as legitimate clients, customers, or employees. This is where the saying, “Information is power” is accepted as gospel truth.

The millions of blogs, forums, article publishers, and social media sites are a breeding ground of user generated content, written by the user for the user. What will the empowered users say about you?

Mashable announced yesterday that MySpace has followed in Facebook’s footsteps and opened the door to application development for the nation’s largest social networking site. While this move is not the least bit surprising, the implications are huge. We all knew that MySpace would have to do something to continue to compete with Facebook’s recent boom in popularity.

MySpace and Facebook have fractured the social networking community at large. It’s very much a Coke vs. Pepsi polarization (though in Texas it’s all about the Dr. Pepper). While many people have profiles on both, everyone I know prefers one over the other.

It will be interesting to see if MySpace’s popularity increases with the general public, or only with the gamers and marketers. The average joe won’t be the one developing new apps, obviously. If MySpace can rebound from the loss of “coolness” over the past two years, it will be tough for Facebook to compete. But if the people look at this as a wannabe move (a.k.a. poor imitation of Facebook), it will only reinforce the image of second-rate social networking that it has already earned.

The possibilities for marketers and advertisers, however, are worth exploring. Given the right image and support, a well-designed application or two could usher in a MySpace marketing renaissance. For all the difficulties people have had with privacy and pedophiles on MySpace, it has zipcode specific information on each member, and allows marketers to hone in on a target audience much more easily than Facebook does. Let’s face it: MySpace was built for marketing and promotion. Now the question remains as to whether that will be its strength or its undoing.

This is the fundamental question each business owner / marketing manager should ask themselves, and the sooner the better. Let’s start from the beginning and work our way forward.

What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It’s an online marketing approach aimed at drawing targeted visitors to your website.

What is a search engine?
You probably don’t call them search engines. Most people don’t, even though they use them every day. A search engine helps you find information. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, and Ask. Now it’s all beginning to make sense, I bet. Search engines are the most popular way people find information online. Without realizing it, we trust these search engines to show us the best websites and information when we type what we’re looking for into the search field and click “Search”.

What does SEO involve?
That’s a detailed question we’ll discuss in greater detail in future blog posts. The top level answer is that SEO involves professional analysis, tracking, strategy, and adjustments to help the pages of your website rank higher in search results. The higher a page ranks, the more traffic it will receive. And we know from years of experience that any time your page ranks lower than page three of search engine results, you gain virtually no qualified leads or sales. People have short attention spans and lack the patience required to read past page three (most don’t even look as far as page two). As you would with branding and product development, you should tailor your web marketing to appeal to your target audience. Part of reaching your target audience involves appearing on page one of Google, Yahoo, etc.

The Information Gathering Stage
If you’re reading this and all of this is news to you, you are likely in the information gathering stage of online marketing (i.e. not prepared to make well-informed spending decisions). If that’s the case, feel free to contact us through our website and request more information on SEO or any other service or need you may have. While gaining new business is good, we also want to educate our community. As more business owners and marketing managers are educated about the tremendous value to be had from search engine optimization, the more companies we can serve.

It’s been our experience that prospects in the information gathering stage rarely understand the value of SEO to the point of making a “purchase” decision. Other agencies make the mistake of attempting to hurry a prospective client through the information gathering and convert them into a client. Doing so usually establishes an unnecessarily tense situation. If you are not yet convinced of the value of SEO, please do more research before making a decision. Otherwise, you’ll likely end up with a sub-par SEO (i.e. someone whose bargain price point fit your understanding of the value of the service).

Once you’ve done your homework, you’ll see that SEO is crucial to the success of your online business. Let us know how we can help you learn what you need to know.

Rand Fishkin and SEOMoz started something a few years back that is now influencing the rest of the SEO world. Rand took a simple blog and turned it into a major resource of SEO/SEM information. He offered readers the incentive to comment often in order to earn authoritative status. After reaching a certain point of popularity, SEOMoz launched a paid membership side of the company. Not only can you read the daily posts on the SEOMoz blog, you gain unlimited access to SEOMoz exclusive tools and additional content for paid members only.

This is the year of following suit. Look at Jim Boykin. After years of establishing himself as a linking expert and offering a blog full of SEO tips and thoughts, Jim’s put together a paid member only resource at InternetMarketingNinjas.com.

I’m amazed that Jim of all people amassed this group of contributing experts. He doesn’t strike me as the social butterfly or mister popularity. InternetMarketingNinjas provides detailed videos of industry info and tips featuring experts like Aaron Wall, Andy Beal, Bill Slawski, Christine Churchill, Cameron Olthius, Jeremy Shoemaker, Jim Boykin, Jill Whalen, Lee Odden, Neil Patel, Todd Malicoat.

On top of the instructional videos, Boykin pulled his famous free tools off of WeBuildPages.com and they are now available only through the paid membership at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. I know some SEO companies depend heavily on those tools for their initial assessments of new clients.

For better or for worse, this is the model people seem to be following in the industry:
1) offer quality, free info and tools
2) get readers/users hooked
3) switch to a paid exclusive model.

As with every stage of web development, this model will be overused and abused by everyone looking to make a buck. In the long-term, you’ll see some people and companies switch back to a free open source model in an attempt to rebrand themselves as unselfish givers in a taker industry. You wait and watch for it. It’s going to happen.

We just wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We have some exciting things that planned for this upcoming year. New clients and projects are coming in, and we’re gearing up to go. The holiday season put us in the mood to celebrate and to share, so we decided to make a little Christmas wallpaper for all to have and share. Just in time for the Christmas season, we give you the 2007 Ben Jordan Santa. We know Christmas is just around the corner, but feel free to leave it up all year long.

Click on one of the links below to download your very own NetSuccess Christmas Wallpaper.

Wallpaper Sizes: 1600×1200 | 1280×1024 | 1024×768 | 800×600

Enjoy!

Long overdue, here we are, back in the blogging saddle again. Thanks for visiting the new blog. There is much to talk about, so check in as often as you can.

We want to provide some killer content for visitors and clients alike. Want to know more about what we do? You’ll get the skinny right here. Each new post will deliver tips, news, and learning opportunities for SEO, PPC, Web design, Web development, social media, reputation management and repair, and other interactive marketing topics. Plus, you’ll get to see the personal side of the office, as we lovingly nudge various team members to contribute on occasion.

You have questions. We have answers. If we don’t have the answer, we’ll find it for you. We’ve enjoyed great success because we help others succeed. Link love and info love… that’s what it’s all about.