Tag: ppc

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SEO in a nutshell (really oversimplified)

There are certain things that can be done to increase your chances at showing up for certain search words and phrases. HOWEVER, no matter what is done to increase those chances, we do not have control over the search engines.

If you absolutely MUST show up for a certain search phrase, I would recommend PPC (Pay per click) using Google AdWords, Bing ads and Yahoo Advertising.

However if people are not even searching for xyz (description of your product/service and any related terms) then you still need to find other ways to increase demand. Send samples to bloggers, advertise in traditional media, go to trade shows (the list goes on.)

This is oversimplified but hopefully will help you grasp larger seo and marketing concepts that require this base knowledge. SEO is not a quick fix. Neither is building a website.

Related: SEO / SEM / PPC

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We’ve been receiving a lot of sales calls from companies that say they can “guarantee front page placement on Google, Yahoo, & Bing.” In your opinion, is this something necessary and worth considering?

Quick summary on the people calling and offering guarantees for search engine placement:

  • No one can give a 100% guarantee on placement in search engines like google, bing and yahoo because people outside of these companies can’t control the search engine’s algorithm. And people within these companies are not allowed to offer these services.
  • You CAN do things to increase probability that you will be placed on the first page for certain words or phrases. BUT you don’t want to go overboard because there are things that will increase your rank but at the cost of customers. Where you place doesn’t matter if you aren’t getting business from the additional site traffic because your site looks bad as a result.
  • The only way to guarantee 100% is to use PPC (pay per click) advertising with the search engines. These are the ads that are on the top and right sides of the search result pages.

Other things that could go wrong: they use techniques that will get you ranked higher but when caught by the search engines, your site will be removed from search results entirely (black hat seo techniques.) And in my opinion even worse than that is if they don’t know what they are doing and open up security holes for your site or server.

Back to your question at hand “is this something necessary and worth considering?”: The short answer is no. Typically companies calling you and claiming they offer a 100% guarantee that they can get your site into 1st position are flat out scams. Even more likely if they are claiming this without knowing what words or phrases you want to be on the first page of results for.

It is better to start with content creation and making modifications to existing content. Fascination Design does offer a more comprehensive SEO review and PPC campaign management. We are also willing to work with a reputable outside firm in this area.

Quick tip: if your business has a physical location, be sure to check out Google Places and add your business there.