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Search Engine OptimizationI got into search engine optimization (SEO) about two years ago and now my web design firm is becoming an SEO company. While my posts in this category have slowed due to having an SEO blog devoted to the subject, I still try to keep some fresh content here as well. SEO and Web Design DirectoriesJanuary 16, 2008MWI just launched a few more of our simple directories, namely Boston web design firms, Boston SEO Firms, and Utah SEO Firms.  Read Complete Entry
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Boston Search Engine OptimizationJanuary 1, 2008This post is purely an experiment in search engine optimization. Yes, I've talked about moving my business to Boston before, but it's starting to get more and more serious and I think we might actually make it this year. And if'n I do, that means optimizing my SEO firm's site for a new group of geographically related keywords centered around the keyword "boston". Read Complete Entry
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Fake Blogs as an SEO ToolOctober 11, 2007Apparently Utah SEO firm Vizad is setting up various blogs with "fake" content as part of their SEO methodology. That is, they set up a blog, make it look as thought it's some person, post all sorts of content related to their clients along with contextual links, and in this way build up incoming links for their clients. Read Complete Entry
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What's the Fastest You've Seen a Website Get a #1 Ranking in Google?September 26, 2007As of today I've seen in happen in five days. It's a brand new website on a brand new URL. The website has just a few pages of content. And yet if you search for "shoulder pain pump litigation" in Google you'll see it there, smiling away in the #1 organic search result. I've covered some of this in a post over at The Organic SEO but I figure there's probably not a lot of readership overlap and would like to get as many expert opinions on this as possible. Read Complete Entry
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Utah SEO, What's the State?September 25, 2007The last time I wrote about the state of the Utah SEO industry was in May of 2006, so it's probably time for an update, especially after all the activity going on just within the last month or two. There have been a number of Utah SEO firms that have popped up, along with a collection of blogs managed by SEO professionals who are either freelance SEO consultants or work for SEO firms in Utah. All in all, the search engine optimization landscape in Utah is starting to become more competitive, and that means there must be more demand in the marketplace. Read Complete Entry
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MyWebDesignCompany.com ContestMay 28, 2007If you could enter a contest for $500 simply by putting a link from your website to another website, and your chances of winning were roughly one in a hundred, would you take 30 seconds and do it? That's my latest experiment in linkbaiting (see My Web Design Company Contest on the MWI blog for complete details). If I get 20 or more links of any quality I'll consider the contest successful, but I'm hoping for something in the neighborhood of 100. Read Complete Entry
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What is Linkbaiting or Link Bait and Why Should I Care?January 22, 2007Linkbaiting, linkbait, link bait, or whatever your term of choice, is pretty much what it sounds like--putting out bait in the hopes of getting links. Here's an example: I just created a post on another blog called "If the 2008 Elections Were Based on SEO." While perhaps not the most fascinating piece of literature you've ever read, hopefully it's somewhat interesting. For some people it will be interested enough that they will link to it from their blog or website. Those links will provide two benefits to the website hosting the linkbait; first, the ranking of that website will improve, and second, the website will enjoy greater traffic being generated through those incoming links. Read Complete Entry
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SEO Forums at TheOrganicSEO.com Go LiveDecember 28, 2006If you're not into SEO you won't be interested in this post. But if you are, then well, you're in for a treat. The long-awaited SEO forums are finally up and running at http://forum.theorganicseo.com/. We've got tips, tools, and techniques forums on keyword research, link building, linkbait, and SEO tools. We've got forums on other disciplines that intersect with SEO like web design, CSS / XHTML, copywriting, and programming. And of course there's an area for industry chatter with events and conferences, tips for SEO firms and professionals, tips for SEO clients, and a forum for SEO jobs. Read Complete Entry
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SEO TrainingDecember 16, 2006Part of the service we will be offering at our subsidiary The SEO Consultants (the site is definitely under construction at the moment) is search engine optimization training. We've seen instances where companies hire an outside firm for a period of time, but then realize their need for SEO services is large enough that they want to hire one or more full-time employees, or they want an existing full-time employee to take over SEO efforts. In many cases the full-time employee has minimal SEO skills and therein lies the need for additional training. Our question is what format of training will be in greatest demand, and what's the price point? Read Complete Entry
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Common SEO MisconceptionsDecember 15, 2006You don't have to provide search engine optimization services very long before you start seeing that many, if not most, people have a slew of misconceptions about SEO. Inspired by Lee Odden's post on Five Myths About SEO I've created my own list of statements born out of misunderstandings about SEO as follows:
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SEO Reports and AnalyticsDecember 7, 2006We just met with a prospective SEO client yesterday. They've been using another Utah-based SEO firm who shall remain nameless. The client actually didn't want to tell us who they had been using, but we ended up finding out anyway in the course of doing research in preparation for our meeting. During the meeting we found out that the alleged SEO firm was not providing two things I would consider to be among the most basic of deliverables--monthly reports and an analytics tool. Read Complete Entry
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Utah SEO Company RankingsNovember 13, 2006I'm calling you out. You firms who claim to know something about Internet marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing--whatever you call it, and yet who haven't been able to get your own sites ranked in Google for any terms relevant to the profession. Richter7 - "We develop Internet marketing strategies..." Cogbox - "Put us to work if you need...site optimization, search optimization, organic search, search marketing..." Axis41 - "...we're highly skilled in search engine optimization..." Humaniz - "Moonshine 3.0 was recently released with the specific goal to improve search engine optimization for dynamic sites." Although these firms may have great capabilities in some areas, SEO does not appear to be one of them. Download this SEO ranking report and you'll see what I mean. Read Complete Entry
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SEO Survey ResultsOctober 16, 2006A few weeks ago I posted a link to a survey about search engine optimization with the incentive of one of those who filled out the survey being able to win an iPod Clip Shuffle. And the winner is Joel H. There's probably only one of you Joel, so I think you know who you are. Contact me Joel, unless you prefer I give the prize to someone else. If you would like to know more about the survey results, continue reading. Read Complete Entry
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How SEOmoz Pitches SEO ClientsOctober 10, 2006SEOmoz is a search engine optimization firm in Seattle, and I've recently subscribed to their seo blog. I've been impressed with the firm's openness to publish their pricing on their website, and this latest post Pitching an SEO Client is just one more example of how open they are to share their methodologies and internal thoughts. Read Complete Entry
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MWI's New SEO ServiceOctober 4, 2006I don't usually solicit comments with my blog posts, but this is one on which I would genuinely like to get your opinion. The more negative your opinion, the more you can poke holes, point out flaws, expose idiocy, the better. MWI will soon be launching a new SEO service. It's not that the service or results are different from anything out there, it's the way it's provided. We believe it will be a new, refreshing experience for some customers, but even more importantly it will make our SEO business highly scalable, not that that matters to customers so much. I'm going to describe how it would work for the customer, and what I would like from you is feedback on why it won't work, what would need to be changed, how we're missing something obvious, etc. Read Complete Entry
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Take a 6-Question SEO Survey, Win an iPod...MaybeOctober 3, 2006MWI is getting ready to launch a new service related to search engine optimization, and would appreciate your input. As an incentive we're giving away an iPod Clip Shuffle. Read Complete Entry
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TheOrganicSEO.com LaunchesSeptember 27, 2006MWI has officially launched a blog at TheOrganicSEO.com that is all about organic or "natural" search engine optimization. The site features articles with SEO advice, techniques, practices, etc., a news section covering the SEO industry, an SEO forum, and an SEO directory. The site is brand new so the content is sparse in places, and we don't have the forum up yet, but we'll get that all worked out as quickly as possible. You can subscribe to the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/organicseo for the articles and http://feeds.feedburner.com/organicseo-news for the news. Read Complete Entry
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Signs You Need to Switch SEO ProvidersSeptember 26, 2006I've started reading Andy Beal's SEO blog dubbed MarketingPilgrim lately and the guy seems to be on top of things. The latest good reading from his site was a piece titled "Signs You Need to Switch SEO Providers". There are several things I agree with Andy on. Allow me to share one and why I agree emphatically with it: "Insist the company explain the methods behind the madness." Read Complete Entry
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Search Engine Optimization PresentationAugust 3, 2006MWI is developing the identity and content for a subsidiary called The SEO Consultants. I've been working on an SEO presentation which I'd like to solicit feedback on. If you're interested/willing, click on the link, download the file, check it out, and let me know what you think. Is it too long, too short, boring, needs more detail, unclear, disorganized, etc. Any feedback would be appreciated. Read Complete Entry
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How SEO Professionals Trick YouJuly 26, 2006Have you ever been in the business of selling something, be it a product or service, and you've had to compete against someone else to get a deal, and you lose the deal? Nobody wins all the time. But later you find out that you lost the deal because the person/company you were competing against fed the customer a load of blue sky and empty promises while you chose to be honest, frank, and realistic. Read Complete Entry
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Real Estate Marketing OnlineJune 14, 2006If you are a home builder or a realtor then your business is selling houses. You're also somewhat uncomfortable around computers or people who talk about computers, and you know people are using the Internet to sell houses but you're not sure how they're doing it because every time someone sells you some new service to help you sell houses online it doesn't work as well as promised. How do I know this about you? Because four days ago I started looking for a townhouse in a certain city, and when I couldn't find anything online after 20 minutes of searching that showed me what I wanted to see, I decided to perform an experiment. Read Complete Entry
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Townhouse in Herriman UtahJune 10, 2006No, I am not selling a townhouse in the city of Herriman, Utah. I am researching the possibility of buying one. So why is it that after 20 minutes of searching Google, trying to find someone who is selling townhouses in Herriman, I haven't been able to find anything even close to information about what townhouses are for sale in the area? I believe this is a perfect example of how some industries are slow to catch on. From what I can see, it would be a piece of cake to optimize the website for whatever company is selling townhomes in Herriman which, if there are other people like me looking, would greatly increase the number of people who would find what they are looking for which would have at least some chance of increasing sales. Read Complete Entry
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The Difference Between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine OptimizationJune 3, 2006For many, there is confusion over what is meant by "search engine optimization" vs "search engine marketing." After all, if I'm optimizing my website so that it gets more traffic and I make more money, isn't that marketing using search engines? Read Complete Entry
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Utah SEO - Claims and Hype vs RealityMay 12, 2006If a firm states on their website that "we're highly skilled in search engine optimization" would you find it strange if their website doesn't rank well (if at all) in search engines nor does it appear that any attempt has been made to optimize their site for search engines? I regularly run reports using Web CEO to find out how my websites are ranking for various keywords. I can also run these reports for my competitors' websites to compare their rankings against my own website. In the case of running these reports for MWI one thing I've found interesting is how some of our competitors (ad agencies, web development firms and the like) make claims on their websites about how they offer search engine optimization services, and yet their own websites do not rank well in search engines nor do they appear to be trying to. Read Complete Entry
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SEO, Google, and Dashes or Hyphens vs UnderscoresMay 4, 2006In a recent post on the performance of MWI's search engine optimization page a commenter brought up the point that MWI's page has underscores in it vs dashes or hyphens, and that he had heard that dashes or hyphens are better for SEO than underscores. An article by SEO expert Matt Cutts from August 2005 supports that viewpoint with technical information to back it up. I have not done any scientific experiments to test this out, but a quick test seems to indicate that Google, although it may have cared in the past, does not currently discriminate between underscores and dashes except in that it will not match a search that has underscores in it for a filename or path that has dashes and vice versa as I detail below. Read Complete Entry
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Search Engine Optimization and Print Marketing = RiskyMay 2, 2006Sometimes you have to laugh at the thing you do that don't work out as planned. Case in point, MWI just ran an ad in Connect Magazine that says "MWI does search engine optmization. Go to Google and search for 'utah search engine optimization' and then come get a proposal from us." The idea is that people go to Google, do the search, are super impressed by MWI's #1 ranking for this term, click through to our search engine optimization page, and then hire us to run their SEO campaign. There's just one problem. When the ad was sent to Connect MWI had a #1 ranking, but by the time the ad came out in print we had dropped to #4 and one of our competitors was listed at #2. Whoops. Read Complete Entry
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Search Engine Optimization Whitepaper - 10 TipsApril 13, 2006I've revised my ten top search engine optimization tips and created a search engine optimization whitepaper for MWI's website. Full content available below. Read Complete Entry
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Unintended Consequences of Search Engine OptimizationMarch 28, 2006We always tell our clients that they can't rank #1 for every keyword or keyword combination they want. The opposite is true as well. You can't not rank for every keyword you don't want either. For example, here are some of the rankings my firm has that stump me at first until I start looking at the details: www.mwi.com ranks #2 in Google for "how to design a lake" - Since we're a web development/marketing firm, it's difficult to understand why we rank so well for such a keyword combination. Just think of all the people who actually do build lakes who would love to have that ranking. The reasons why MWI ranks so well for that particular phrase are as follows: 1. MWI's site ranks well in general due to a multitude of factors. 2. Our homepage includes the words "design" and "lake" in the title tag because we do design and we are located in Salt Lake City. 3. Our homepage also includes the word "design" at least two more times on the homepage as well as "lake" one more time. Read Complete Entry
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Refer a Client, Win a Free iPod. No, Really.February 24, 2006
Without further ado, I announce the MWI Free iPod SEO Referral Program. It's a simple program. You refer a client to MWI who signs up for our search engine optimization and/or search engine marketing (pay per click management) services for at least a 3-month commitment and we'll give you an iPod of your choice. How do you refer someone? Giving us a phone book and telling us to call everyone in it doesn't count. In order to win an iPod, you must either 1) introduce us to the client or 2) contact us to let us know they'll be calling (before they actually call). None of this stuff where we sign up a client and a month later you call us and say "Oh yeah, I referred them to you." You may have referred them, but tough, you've got to let us know before they contact us. So either tell them to tell us that you referred them to us, or send us an email and tell us that you referred someone and they should be contacting us soon. How much do our SEO/SEM services cost? They start at $500/month and go up from there depending on the details. Now there are some terms and conditions, but that's the program in a nutshell. Read on for the details, which are important if you want to qualify. Plus they're somewhat entertaining. Read Complete Entry
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SEO by Geographic LocationFebruary 21, 2006If you were searching for a search engine optimization (SEO) company what keyword search terms would you search for in a search engine? Could I use the word "search" once more? Most people feel more comfortable dealing with businesses that located within the same geographic area. This is because it facilitates face-to-face interaction, and there's something comforting about being able to tell a service provider "Don't mess with me, I know where you live." What geographic locales would you assume are producing the most interest in SEO firms and search engine optimization services? California? New York? Maybe you'd be surprised to find out. According to Overture's keyword selector tool, these are the ten most popular geographic terms accompanying the search term "seo" where the number on the left represen 3075 indianapolis seo Read Complete Entry
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Overture Keyword Selector ToolFebruary 17, 2006Need suggestions for keywords and you wish you knew what people were searching for? Yes, to anyone who's involved with SEO this is very basic, but for those starting out this is still a helpful tool. Simple go over to http://inventory.overture.com and type in a keyword. It will give you a list of keyword combinations that include your keyword along with the numbers of searches performed during the past month for those keywords. For example, type in "search engine optimization" and you get this list: Searches done in January 2006 And so forth... Read Complete Entry
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Search Engine Optimization SuccessI don't mean to brag, but search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the funnest things I've ever been involved with, and MWI is doing a fairly good job at it. I believe a SEO firm isn't worth much if they don't rank anywhere themselves, the same way a design firm isn't doing a good job if they can't do good self-promo work. As of this morning, MWI ranks in the #1 spot on Google for over 50 keywords or keyword combinations that we've identified as words that bring us business and we're on the first page of results for well over 100. Granted, most of these search terms include geographic parameters such as "utah" or "salt lake city" but it's still a challenge to become #1 and what's more, it's still fun. But we even rank high for some non-geographically limited terms, like "email company newsletter," "newsletter system," "web design firm," and "website content management firms." Read Complete Entry
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10 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Small BusinessesNovember 26, 2005As a small business owner you're already swamped with more things to do than you have time for, and yet whenever someone says they can tell you how to sell more, be more profitable, and generally make more money, you feel obligated to pay attention. You've got bills to pay, and anything that can help is welcome, as long as it really works. Unfortunately, much of what gets peddled as being extremely helpful is often just time consuming and useless. Well, here's something you don't have to pay for, and it will only take you five minutes to read. Once reading it, you can decide whether it's useful to you or not and either implement some of the suggestions here or leave them for another day. But if implemented, they may just help you make more money and pay those bills. Will no further ado, I give you my ten search engine optimization tips for small businesses. Read Complete Entry
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MovableType, Blogging, and Search Engine OptimizationNovember 4, 2005I like the MovableType platform for blogging, now that I've learned it. It sure was a pain to set up though. I wouldn't recommend it for people who aren't technically inclined. But now that I've learned it I can't use anything else because I've made this huge investment of time. Anyway, I just learned something new today that may be of assistance to others with regards to the MT system and search engine optimization. Read Complete Entry
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We'll be announcing this promotion officially through the MWI newsletter (yes, we're going to start sending it out again), but I figured why not get things started right now.