Splash Omnimedia Blog:

Search engine marketing isn’t rocket science, but it may be more than you want to take on by yourself.

Here are 10 tips you need right now to make sure your website’s got a fighting chance:

1. Give the search engines what they want and need to be able to identify what your site is all about. They won’t send traffic to sites they can’t trust to be a good match with what searchers want to see.
2. Do your keyword research. Don’t just guess. By doing keyword research, you’ll discover exactly how people go searching for what your business offers. This makes it easier to help these people find you, even if they don’t know your name.
3. Use and optimize images on your website. Great images not only help your visitors to connect with your content, they also do good things for traffic rates.
4. Publish high-quality content that uses your keywords wisely. Don’t stuff keywords into every nook and cranny – place them where the search engines expect to find them.
5. Publish great content frequently. A newly revealed priority for Google is content freshness. Gone are the days when you could publish a website, neglect it for years, and expect it to deliver new customers to your doorstep.
6. Don’t ignore social media. Done correctly, social media can send waves of highly-targeted buyers your way.
7. Get into Google Places. You might be surprised how many businesses ignore this excellent traffic source. Have you claimed your listing yet?
8. Never try to trick Google. It won’t work. You’ll pay the price. There are no short-cuts, no magic wands.
9. If someone promises certain results… “I’ll get you to the top spot on Google in 3.7 minutes!” Run.
10. Either stay on top of all the changes in search engine marketing best practices, or find a consultant who will do it for you. To succeed online, you’ll need to invest either your time or your money if you want good results.

Search engine marketing is all about doing the right things at the right time in the right way to get the right kind of attention from Google. If you’d rather pull your own teeth out than try to stay on top of this gargantuan task, have a conversation with the team at Splash – we can help.

When Google speaks, your search engine optimization consultant listens… then translates so actual humans can understand.

If it’s Tuesday, Google must have changed the rules for how your business can succeed online. Like the tides, Google’s algorithm which determines where your website appears on the search engine results pages is always changing. It doesn’t help that website owners are essentially playing with a somewhat benevolent adversary who refuses to disclose all the rules of the game.

You could spend all day every day trying to make sense of the latest developments on your own, or you could choose to have a life, run a business, and actually even sleep on occasion. To do that, you need to find a search engine optimization consultant you can trust to do the job right and to distill the massive quantity of geek-speak into just the basics of what a real person actually needs to know.

Here’s one bit of news you can use right now to better your position on Google – ultimately creating more traffic for your website.

Google’s paying attention to how often you add text to your site. The quality AND quantity of that text are crucial. Your text should:

• Be well-written.
• Be relevant to the products or services your business provides.
• Engage the people who find your site to stay and read more.
• Offer them valuable information to help them know, like, and trust you.

If you’re looking for solid advice from a search engine optimization consultant, now’s the time to contact the team at Splash.

You’ve probably heard of SEO; is a search engine marketing company the same thing?

Search engine optimization is all about making Google and the other search engines love your website and send traffic your way as people search for the products and services you offer. Search engine marketing is more about strategy – using SEO to make the search engines like your site while simultaneously making your site one actual humans will be able to find easily and love when they do find it.

A search engine marketing company helps you orchestrate the entire experience of your prospective customer – from understanding how your prospects search online to what makes them likely to choose your site over other options, and finally what is most likely to help them know, like, and trust you based on your website.

Reputable search engine marketing company experts stay on top of best practices in SEO, website design, and online marketing to make sure your site yields a positive return on investment as quickly as possible. They don’t take short-cuts that ultimately lead to being penalized by the search engines. They don’t just build you a good-looking site and wish you good luck in getting traffic.

The experts at Splash are the search engine marketing company you’ll feel confident entrusting your business to – just contact us and ask for references from our very happy customers.

Local search engine marketing makes your business bloom all year long

Bet you didn’t know that tomorrow is Peach Blossom Day. Long about now, even with a relatively mild winter here at Splash’s headquarters in Lexington, SC, we’re ready for any sign of Spring. So we’re celebrating.

If you own a business and are looking into local search engine marketing as a way to build your online presence and make it easy for new customers to find you, you may want to take a look at your calendar for inspiration.

Depending on your industry, more than likely you can find a holiday or event you could use for marketing nearly every day, no matter what day it is. Look for holidays throughout the year that you could tie into your business by offering a discount to your customers, running a contest that gets people talking about your business, or contributing to a cause in your community.

Once you identify a couple of holidays, events, and milestones to use each month for your business, decide how you’ll celebrate. Before and after the event, be sure to publicize your promotion with press releases, articles, and blog posts. By following this process several times throughout the year, you’ll get excellent local search engine marketing results and positive exposure in your community.

Curious about how local search engine marketing could help your business blossom? Click here to request a proposal from the experts at Splash.

Choose the right firm, and SEO consulting is an investment – choose a hack, and it’s a good way to end up invisible online

If you’re like most business owners, you get solicited on a daily basis by SEO firms guaranteeing you a top spot on Google. If you check your email spam folder, you might even find you’re getting these pitches on an hourly basis.

Like realtors and mortgage brokers in the height of the real estate bubble, SEO consulting seems to be the next “everyone’s doing it” profession.

You’re hearing a lot about SEO, and you probably have questions:

 

Q: Is SEO really necessary?
A: Only if you want to build an effective online presence for your business.

Q: Can’t you just take SEO on as a do-it-yourself project?
A: Only if you’re okay with risking a complete waste of your time and efforts – or worse, risking doing it wrong and being penalized with invisibility by Google and the other search engines.

Q: How much should I pay for SEO consulting?
A: Expert SEO consulting should result in a highly positive return on your investment. There’s often a ramping up period of a few months, but from the time your website starts getting traction, you should soon see results that make this investment a no-brainer.

All that really matters is getting your phone ringing and your door swinging. The whole goal of investing in SEO consulting is not just getting traffic – it’s making it easy for new qualified visitors to find you online when they need you, then become your customers.

Is Splash’s SEO consulting team a good fit for your needs? Contact us to request a free consultation, and find out.

If you own a business website, there’s just one thing you need to know about SEO web design.

If you haven't noticed, Google’s taking over the world. Google is the boss when it comes to your business website. There’s no way to trick Google, no way to take a short-cut and end up where you want to be. The only way your business will get the results you want online is to do things the way Google wants it done.

That’s where SEO web design comes in. SEO web design is all about creating a website that answer’s Google’s request for quality and relevance with nothing but, “Yes Sir!” The end results of building a site this way:

• Google will love your site and send traffic your way.
• That traffic will love what they see when they reach your site because it’ll look and feel and read in a way that makes them confident you can help with what they need.
• Those website visitors will become your customers.

They say people buy from people they know, like, and trust. Solid SEO web design extends your reach and makes you visible, credible, and likable to your new customers – the perfect online representation of your business.

No doubt your business gets daily solicitations from firms all over the world promising to get your business into the top spot on Google. Contact the SEO web design experts at Splash now, and win favor with Google by doing the right things the right way.

Build it and they will come. Wouldn’t it be nice if that was how it worked in business? You can offer the best service in the world at the best prices, but if people don’t know your brand then you won’t make a single sale. To solve this issue, marketers focus many efforts towards increasing brand awareness and driving traffic both online and to brick-and-mortar stores.

Sometimes businesses have the opposite problem; they are doing everything right to bring customers in but just can’t seem to convert that website traffic into sales. Creating an effective SEO or social media strategy will bring potential customers to your site, but converting those visitors to loyal customers takes much more than impressive traffic numbers.  For maximum benefit from online marketing, you need to maximize both traffic and conversion rates (see picture below).

Why SEO and branding need each other

Branding is the whole experience. For search engine optimization to result in conversions (sales), you need to consider how all aspects of marketing work together to create synergy for a more successful whole. An SEO strategy is much more effective and has greater chance for success when incorporated into the overall branding strategy.

SEO and branding work together to create a feedback loop that will take your business to the top.

How branding improves SEO

• Increase website conversion rates. As you differentiate your brand and position your company directly in front of your target market online, your search engine referral traffic will be more likely to convert as searchers find exactly what they are looking for on your website.
• Increase click-through-rate. Having a strong and well-known brand will increase the power of your SEO efforts by influencing a higher click through rate as searchers recognize brand authority.

How SEO improves branding

• Increase brand reach and awareness. As rankings increase for a diverse set of industry related keywords, your brand name will be in front of more potential customers that are already looking for a business just like yours.
• Increase brand loyalty and credibility. Repetition is key. Showing up in as many places on the web as possible creates a sense of authority in your niche that will improve both the loyalty and credibility of your brand to potential customers.

Does your marketing mix work together to help your company grow larger than the sum of its parts? Or does your business throw strategies at the wall hoping for something to stick? Contact us for a free marketing consultation to learn how we can help you blend your marketing ‘ingredients’ into a perfect medley.

In traditional marketing there are two main focuses – tailoring your products and message to your target market and promoting that message.  On-page optimization is where you design your message around your target market and off-page optimization is where you promote that message.

Generally speaking, SEO can be compared to a car when it comes to on and off page optimization.  On page optimization is like the engine and off-page is like the fuel.  If you have an extremely efficient engine (on-page) then you need less fuel (off-page) to reach your destination.

 

On-Page

On page techniques include everything from the coding of the website to the keywords that are used on the page itself.  Here are a few techniques used for on-page optimization:

 

• Optimizing page titles, heading tags, URLs, and sometimes domain names.
• Optimizing web copy with keywords and correct formatting.
• Image optimization – reducing the image file size without sacrificing quality.  It is also important to use the right keywords in the alt tags and the file names.
• Video optimization – reducing the video size and incorporating the right keywords in the code.
• Internal linking – linking from your web pages to other pages within your site to maximize pagerank flow and spreading link juice.
• Including the address and contact information on every page of your website.

 

Off-page

Off page techniques includes all kinds of tactics that take place outside of the code and text on your website.  Here are a few techniques used for off-page optimization:

 

• Linkbuilding – building relevant and powerful links from other sites and directories to your website.
• Guest blogging – networking in the blogosphere with similar companies or related industries.  This is good for link building, referral traffic, and building trust as a thought leader.
• Citation building – similar to link building but with a local focus.
• Directory submissions – including your website on relevant directories for both referral traffic and SEO.
• CRM – here is where SEO and SMM overlap.  Customer relationship management is an important part of general branding but is also good for SEO if you can achieve many positive reviews on sites like yelp, YP.com, and more.
• Off-site content marketing – using websites like prweb.com, ezinearticles.com, squidoo, and others to promote your content to generate links, referral traffic, and once again establishing trust as a thought leader.

These are just a few of the techniques and strategies used for on-page and off-page optimization. There are many more that all contribute to the overall performance of your SEO campaign.  Contact us today for a free marketing proposal on how we can help improve your bottom line.

There are so many different synonyms and buzzwords in online marketing that knowing what is what can be difficult.  This glossary is designed for the layperson who is considering an investment in online marketing.

 

• Search Engine Marketing – Also known as SEM, search engine marketing is the broad category of gaining exposure and traffic through search engines with advertisements and organic search.
• Search Engine Optimization – Also known as SEO, search engine optimization is a part of SEM that focuses on generating local and organic traffic as opposed to paid traffic.
• Pay Per Click – Also known as PPC, pay per click advertising is a type of SEM that focuses on paying for advertising space on search engines based on target keywords.
• Keywords - Sounds simple enough, but keywords in online marketing refer to the words that people use to search for products, services, and answers.
• Social Media Marketing – Also known as SMM, social media marketing is leveraging social platforms like facebook, digg, twitter, linkedin, and many others to promote brand awareness and improve customer relationships.
• Viral Marketing – Viral marketing has always existed as word of mouth marketing but has taken on a new face with the rise of the internet.  The internet and social media specifically have provided great platforms to spread word of mouth like never before.
• Inbound Marketing – Inbound marketing is another term for online marketing that is used to differentiate between traditional tactics like direct mail and contemporary tactics like SMM, SEO, and PPC.  The main difference is that instead of ‘pushing’ your message onto potential customers, inbound marketing focuses on showing up exactly where customers are already looking for your type of business.
• Content Marketing – Content marketing refers to creating useful infographics, white papers, blogs, and other types of content in order to establish your company as a “thought-leader” in your industry.
• Linkbuilding – Linkbuilding is one of the most important factors that search engines consider when ranking a website.  It is the act of creating a network of links online from reputable and relevant sites in your industry to boost search engine rankings.
• Linkbaiting – Linkbaiting is kind of a hybrid between linkbuilding and content marketing.  It is the practice of creating content or resources that other people will link to.  Great content, with the right promotion, can generate a ton of links and boost search engine rankings.
• SERPs – SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page and is used commonly to determine the success of an SEO campaign.

While this is not an exhaustive list of online marketing terms, it is a good start to get an idea of the many tactics and strategies used to promote a business online.  Contact us today for a free marketing proposal on how we can help improve your bottom line. 

Many online marketing and SEO agencies will have you believe that offline or traditional marketing is dead, and that you should focus all of you efforts and budget online.  This is just simply not true.  While online marketing is a core distribution channel that should not be ignored, the strategic implementation of both methods creates powerful synergy.  

The focus has shifted is all, making online marketing more and more relevant to modern businesses.  Here are a few ways that you can integrate your off-line and on-line marketing efforts for maximum exposure and interaction:

1. Use QR codes on print materials – A quick response (QR) code is a small crypted box with a pattern that regular smart phone cameras can scan.  These are great to put on business cards, brochures, or even on the packaging of your products.  Depending on the placement and the goals of the code, you can link to a youtube video, automatically add a contact to your phone, or link to a landing page with special coupons or deals.  With tools like google analytics, QR codes give you a way to track the effectiveness of print advertising more efficiently.  


2. Turn off-line traffic into on-line traffic – Websites offer a low stress way for potential customers to learn more about your company and the products that you offer without having to deal with pushy salespeople.  Make sure that your website is on everything that your brand name is on.  That way, customers can always find your website and visit it on their own time when they are ready to take the next step through the buying cycle.


3. Keyword research – There are two great ways that keyword research for SEO and PPC can improve your offline marketing efforts; by giving you an idea of how consumers define your niche and by showing you how often certain products and services are searched for online.  With this valuable intel, you can improve your print copy and find better metrics to determine seasonal products based on search volume statistics throughout the year.


4. Competitive research – If you are effectively marketing your business online, then you have gathered all kinds of juicy competitive data.  This data is largely used to improve and tweak your online efforts, but it can also be used in creative ways to improve offline methods.  The website acts as a one stop shop for all of the information you could need about a competitor like products offered, pricing, positioning, and even what markets they are trying to target.

So how can a company balance the various marketing tactics in a way that is both complimentary and budget friendly?  Contact Splash Omnimedia today for a free consultation and proposal that will focus on maximizing your return on investment through the strategic implementation of the right marketing channels for your business.  Contact us today for a free marketing proposal on how we can help improve your bottom line.