Martin T. Birdsall, COO of SEMGeeks.com

How to Spot BAD SEO Services

2011-07-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

For years now, individuals and corporations alike have been looking for easy ways to compose better quality content while optimizing their Web pages. When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), one truth is everlasting...the landscape is continually changing. And often, when it changes, the resulting shift in rankings can be seismic.

SEO is routinely cited by marketers as one of the most effective tactics for generating leads or sales from your website. But while most marketers understand the importance of SEO, many see the process as a highly technical, almost mysterious discipline that’s best left in the hands of experts. SEO can be complicated at times, and that’s why companies often outsource their SEO to trained professionals.

With thousands of SEO firms, how can you tell the good from the bad? Below, are ten signs that can signal that an SEO firm is not worth the money.

Making promises that are too good to be true
Using "black hat" SEO techniques
Targeting the wrong keywords
Employing shoddy linking schemes
Promising to list your site in hundreds of online directories
Redesigning your site or creating new pages without 301 redirects
Focusing on metadata instead of on-page SEO
Creating bad content
Driving irrelevant traffic
Offering a one-time fixes with no ongoing maintenance

Re-Marketing: Rediscovering the Art of Selling

2011-06-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

Today, companies face a different set of supply chain challenges; among them are rising pressure from global competition, consumer expectations, and increasingly complex patterns of customer demand. Therefore, with the risk of the supply chain increasing...preparedness to meet those challenges are crucial. Even after researching products on their own, various customers still enter websites undecided about what to buy. For retailers, that's an opportunity! Retailers once focused intensely on clinching sales once customers entered a website, yet recently, the industry has been missing opportunities to make sales. New technologies, extensive retailer Web sites, and mobile-shopping tools have separated customers from sales associates.

Numerous retailers assume that customers enter a website for purely transactional purposes... they know what they want and just need to buy it. However, SEMGeeks.com research indicates that as many as 40% of customers remain open to persuasion once they enter a website.

Remarketing allows us to show ads to users who have previously visited your website as they browse the Web. When we use remarketing, we tag pages of your site that correspond to certain services/prodcuts you offer.

Re-Marketing is Very Effective and Consists of Only 3 Steps:

Your Ad Appears on a 3rd Party Site Targeted To Your Demographics.
A "cookie" is placed on their browser, which causes your next Re-Marketing Ad to show up on any 3rd party sites that user visits after.
When the user goes to other sites that have Advertising through Google...Your Re-Marketing Ad will show up enticing them further...

For example, you could add a “basketball” tag on all of the pages where basketball's are sold. We can then create an AdWords campaign to show highly relevant messages (such as ads displaying a special offer on basketball's) to people who have visited these pages as they browse sites across the Google Display Network.

Social Mediasphere

2011-06-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

The goal of social marketing optimization is twofold. The first objective is to drive targeted traffic to your website, accompanied by branding your services and reputation across the web. This process is similar to traditional search engine marketing for the major search engines, but modified and tailored for social networks. Secondly, when done correctly, social marketing provides a strong foundation of your business services to current, past and future clients. Some industry veterans have called social network marketing the new word of mouth and it has proven to be extremely effective for increasing profitability and for branding efforts.

This is when you enjoy that elusive year round goal - growth!

The term “social media” is being used more and more nowadays, causing a slight misunderstanding of the true definition. Building brand awareness through social commerce is not the same as leveraging and harnessing the platform to sell products and services directly, a strategy that offers tremendous potential for any business that has an online presence these days. Facebook is by far the largest and most lucrative network on which to deploy such a strategy, and several viable options exist for today’s business's.

Life After Google

2009-04-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

Many venture capitalists and entrepreneurs these days are looking for the next big hit in search engines, as trying to out-Google Google is virtually impossible. Nevertheless, there is life after Google – though the increasing numbers of search alternatives popping up around the globe are careful not to take Google head on.

Yet, potential competitors are busy developing new ways of finding information and hunting down the investors they need to support them.

According to MoneyTree, more than 50 new search companies raised $300 million in venture financing last year

With three quarters of all search traffic, Google might seem invincible. Below are a few search engines for you to keep an eye on:

ChaCha.com (routes questions to its "guides" via text or instant message)
Cuil.com (indexes three times as many sites as the competition and uses only relevance, not a page-rank algorithm, to sort its results)
Gist.com (monitors your inbox and retrieves the latest news from and about your contacts, functioning as a nexus between e-mail providers, social networks and traditional media
Kosmix.com (pulls content from more than 10,000 sources, determining relevant content on the fly and offering a well-rounded take across a vast taxonomy of subjects)
Like.com (once a facial recognition tool, it is now a visual search engine for shopping soft goods like shoes, watches and clothes)
Powerset.com (uses natural language processing to index Web sites based on meaning rather than keywords)
Twitter.com (an opinion search, that taps into the collective intelligence of thousands of real-time broadcasts sent every minute)
Wolframalpha.com (a computational search, allowing users to calculate answers from terabytes of curated data across a broad group of topics.)
Zillow.com (gives users a deep dive into local real estate markets)

Various businesses may sense an opening, since Google searches continue to get longer – particularly with users hoping to find more detailed niche data by using vast amounts of search terms.

Pricing In An Inflationary Downturn

2009-03-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

As excess capacity, decreasing demand, and greater price sensitivity all conspire to drive down prices – getting pricing right is always a difficult challenge in an economic downturn. While in many recessions as business activity slows; the cost of raw materials, as well as the cost to serve the customer tends to stabilize and even decrease. Therefore, decreases in downstream prices are at least partially offset by lower upstream costs. However, weaker demand from the end user makes it difficult to maintain prices, yet considerably more volatile and higher input costs denote that businesses wedged in the middle are being attacked from equal ends.

Particularly within an unusual recession, businesses need to manage the profitability of individual transactions and customers with greater precision. It is also imperative to develop richer insights into their customers’ continual price sensitivities and overall changing needs. Therefore, understanding more clearly the microeconomics that shape their own industries and those of their suppliers.

With that goal in mind, below are strategies aimed at maintaining the best balance possible between sales volume and profit margins in the current challenging environment.

Watch for sudden shifts in price structure
Monitor customer-level profitability
Adjust to changing customer needs
Update price sensitivity research
Monitor your industry’s microeconomics
Study your suppliers

Business Technology Trends

2009-02-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

When a downturn is present, there is an undeniable certainty to its impact on Information Technology (IT). Declining earnings tend to place remarkable pressure on IT funds within most sectors. Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) tend to be called on to seek out other cost reduction opportunities, renegotiate contracts, downsize organizations, and rationalize projects.

A lot has been altered since the last downturn: e-commerce has moved to the core of the day to day operations, employees make greater use of tech based productivity tools, businesses have automated more processes, and technology resources are bigger. In 2009, new implications for business technology may provide a combination of cost pressures and IT organizations that are larger, leaner, and more vital to company goals.

Numerous businesses have millions, while some even billions of dollars locked up in their IT departments. In a global economy where capital is at a premium, many CFO’s may want to use IT assets as a force to generate money. With that goal in mind, below are some strategies you might want to consider:

Place favorable vendor financing at the core of hardware and software purchasing decisions, as various companies in heavy industry do when they buy industrial equipment.
Sell and lease back hard assets, such as data center facilities, etc.
Assign outsourcing deals that include a bigger financing aspect; such as having IT service providers make a large up front payment in return for higher margins over the course of a contract.

It is my belief that any profit driven Chief Information Officer (CIO) will need to provide senior executives with practical ideas on how to optimize currency – particularly if they plan to overcome this hurdle.

Raise, Stay, or Fold on your Companies Marketing Budgets during a Downturn?

2009-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have heard, read, and seen all types of reasons as to why a company should not slash marketing and advertising budgets during a recession. Many of us know this to be valid from the outcomes and observations of those who have and have not in times of prior recessions. However, the majority of verbal data that is received comes from individuals like me and yet on the surface it all may seem to be self serving.

In an ideal world, all businesses that go into an economic downturn would be led by executives who could depict on their encounters of prior recessions to guide their company through the present one. However, it is usually a high stakes effort to develop accurate strategic plans, particularly in a recession. A wrong theory about the timing, scale, and pace of growth may slow improvement during positive times yet could be fatal now.

I feel that the current economic downturn would not affect marketing and advertising budgets; as the majority of individuals are increasing their companies marketing spend, while only a hand full are decreasing their businesses budget across the board. Particularly within a taxing economy, messaging, channels and positioning need to be reviewed, examined and if warranted… refined. With that objective in mind, below are strategies and tactics you may want to consider for your company when re-evaluating channel allocations.

Devote more time and resources to refining and growing possible opportunities within your current loyal client base
Seek growth opportunities within vertical markets
Address customer pain points: employee productivity improvements, fuel and transportation costs, higher raw materials costs
Strengthen your online presentation and presence through website optimization, so that the live prospects who are looking can find you if you have not found them first
And of course, whatever channels, the money has to come from somewhere. Less print? More direct mail? Fewer trade shows? More online investment?

As I tend to see many individuals who play the poker game of life with their company by staying, raising or folding on their marketing and advertising initiatives during preceding recessions – we learn that businesses that do not slash their marketing spend during a recession tend to grow faster.

Preserving the Customer Experience

2009-02-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

For numerous companies, a costly and often common response to tough economic times is to cut back on customer service. However, if a company thoroughly manages their customer experience, they can save money while sustaining quality. The recent challenges within the economy are positioning consumer business such as retailers, banks, and airlines in the difficult situation of cutting back on the service levels that their patrons have come to count on in prior years.

Therefore, it is not surprising that I believe compromising service levels is a mistake. It is necessary for companies to make investments within customer service, as the pressure on costs and revenues increase. One solution is for a company to learn to invest in the drivers of customer satisfaction while reducing wasteful spending.

In order for a company to find these savings, it requires precision in customer experience analytics. This may include:

The matching of survey responses to actual behavior
The collection of customer level data
Statistical analysis that separates the level between association and causation

The individual in charge of the customer experience needs to have the courage to raise these questions. Mature firms that acquire the necessary knowledge of what matters most to their clientele should abolish the investments that do not produce a viable source of income, while financing the ones that do. This will make your company thrive and in turn, you may find yourself with less competition when the economy returns to equilibrium.

Improving a Companies Talent Pool

2009-01-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

An economic decline may offer intelligent companies an opportunity to upgrade the talent of their employees. Recessions leave companies’ talent tactics in jeopardy. By accentuating talent in cost cutting efforts, companies can wisely increase the value proposition they present to potential and current employees, thus situating themselves accordingly for expansion once financial surroundings get better.

By using cost cutting efforts as an opening to revamp professions so that they may become more appealing for the individuals undertaking them, companies may then maintain their appeal to external and internal talent. There are three things that may contribute to an employee’s satisfaction:

Span of control
Degree of independence
A jobs level of responsibility

Redesigning an employee’s role and responsibility may help to improve cross functional alignment, thus increasing productivity and workplace satisfaction for many staff members. These initiatives tend to thrive when companies focus on reinventing jobs and maintaining talent upon the commencement of downsizing efforts. However, companies need to cautiously watch their employee development and training programs. This provides individuals with the aptitude required to conduct their revamped roles and yet still maintains productivity and workplace morale.

Implications of external reputation and internal culture of cost cutting need to be taken into consideration by companies that are reducing their staff. Even though some brands are resilient, it is often very complicated restoring brand strength once the public perception has been tarnished. A well built company brand is imperative for businesses as they commence upon recruitment, while cutting workforce costs.

To ensure a companies competitiveness and profitability, cost cutting during a recession is often crucial. This provides businesses with a chance to improve talent, while keeping existing employees. In efforts to safeguard your company’s culture, you may need to reinvest a percentage of the capital generated from cost cutting.

How to Grow Internationally

2009-01-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

Today’s unique market environment presents an overwhelming fusion of severe stock market volatility, great uncertainty, negative growth and tight credit. Yet, various companies are finding it more difficult to expand organically, particularly as businesses are seeking to cut expenditures and consumers are being weighed down by debt.

Capitalist businesses are becoming progressively more international in scope, with partners, customers, and operations situated throughout the globe. Numerous companies seeking growth should do so by expanding geographically, as Asia, Europe, and Latin America are key locations. Diversification is a key asset and trade is power!

As attractive as the opportunities may be within global markets, it is crucial for companies to cultivate a successful strategy prior to embarking upon new geographies. I strongly believe in order to be an exuberant, passionate CEO, you must possess discipline. The sensibility of business and artistic must be on an even keel, and that is not an easy feet to achieve in today’s corporate world.

With that goal in mind, here are some strategies you might want to consider:

Consider acquisitions to grow market share
Take advantage of newly available talent
Evaluate your resources and capital allocations
Pay closer attention to your customers
Do not assume debt financing is unavailable
View profits as your most reliable source of capital

Uncertain times may also allow for very well managed businesses to profit from the upset in the workforce, competitive behavior, and current markets. However, once the recession has run its course, these businesses may emerge better equipped to benefit as stronger competitors. Leadership is the key variable here.

Senior executives who think alike in terms of the principles which guide there decision making and allocate a common strategic view of their companies, are further likely to effectively navigate volatile markets. Although, successful executives do not hesitate to make tough decisions regarding products, services, or employees - they often consult amongst their colleagues (whether they are advisors, investors, or board members).

Consumers Expectations from Companies

2009-01-26T09:42:00.000-08:00

For a business to win the confidence of the public, they must obtain an enhanced understanding of purchaser expectations and perceptions regarding corporate social responsibility.

Customers are more likely to trust some companies more so than others... that is just the nature of the business. Numerous consumers presume larger corporations (whether global or not) to address certain social issues, such as health care in third world countries and global warming. However, their views can differ considerably depending on their particular topography and related industry. If a company is going to win the publics general level of trust, they need to construct a more profound awareness of what customers expect and think of them – so in turn they may develop a custom tailored line of attack accordingly.

Many times companies perform inadequately in addressing the below issues:

The transparency about business practices and the risks of products and services
The development of socially and environmentally responsible products and services
The price and accessibility of products
The pay of senior management
The political influence and profit levels

These issues are rated as only somewhat important. Nevertheless, these topics are strongly correlated with the public’s general level of trust and consequently might prompt consumers to distrust those that may get them wrong.

COO Martin Birdsall On The Issues

2009-01-23T12:51:00.000-08:00

Thank you for visiting my blog. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and my blog that is supportive of the services within www.SEMGeeks.com.

With the economy and job creation being the main focal point in everyone’s psyche right now, it is fitting that my first blogging is on workforce development and skills training. I believe it is critically important to empower workers with the skills necessary to thrive in our increasingly tech-centric culture. I have seen the impact that job training can have on the lives of countless individuals through our efforts with society based training efforts around the world, and I believe that workforce development is a time sensitive component.

When SEMGeeks.com was founded as a professional Marketing and Advertising services firm, Innovative Search Engine Marketing and Development was a trivial product within a niche industry outside the public eye. Nowadays, with technology in everything from land, air and sea – information technology affects all individuals and all facets of society.

Throughout the years we have used a multitude of communications vehicles to share our positions on a variety of subjects. I have launched this blog to open yet another, more direct line of interaction that will enable us to succinctly and promptly provide our viewpoint on the pressing technology matters of the day. I do not want this to be a one-way conversation. I would like to create a transparent dialogue with you, our readers. Moreover, I would like to improve our contribution in discussions that propel policy making at international, national and local levels.

Within the coming months ahead, we will pay particular attention to the next wave in the computing transformation and its ability to use the influence of the internet in new ways to improve choice for governments, businesses and consumers. I will share my views on how this computing innovation can accelerate economic growth by facilitating individuals and companies to increase job creation, collaboration and productivity.

I encourage you to share your thoughts and suggestions, and I look forward to hearing your feedback on this blog, as well as our other product specific blogs. For additional literature or to follow a particular service, please refer to the list below of our many industry related blogs.