After you get yourself setup, you’ll need to select a theme or have one custom designed to match your website. You’ll also need to install a few plugins to make sure that your blog is functional for your SEM campaign. Here is my top 3 Wordpress plugins list:

1.       All In One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack allows you to optimize all of your meta data and URLs. It also sets you up with canonical redirects.

This should be the first plugin you install.

2.       Google Analytics for Wordpress

Obviously, you are going to want to track user activity, traffic, etc. This allows you to track your blog through Google Analytics.

3.       XML Sitemap Generator

This is an excellent plugin and works very well. It creates and updates your sitemap automatically so that you don’t have to.

All 3 of these plugns make your blogging experience so much better and allow for SEO best practice. There are a few other plugins that come highly recommended…if you are interested please email us and we will provide you with those plugins.

Top 3 Questions We Are Asked By Clients

In communicating with clients over the past 4 ½ years in the industry, I have been asked many questions about how SEO works. Many of which seem to be very common and I think you’d be surprised at how many of them are asked by nearly every client or potential client.

Here, I’ve listed the top 3 in hope of answering them before you have to ask.

1.       Can’t I just do it myself?

Yes. There is no question about it, you can absolutely do it yourself. You can find everything you would ever need to know about SEO on the internet for free. However, if you were to do SEO on your own, you would have to do the following.

A.       Set aside about 2 years of your life learning the ins and outs of SEO; SE friendly web-design, on-page optimization, off-page optimization, link building, blogging/vlogging, content optimization, social media marketing, etc. Also, in the process of learning the foundation of good SEO, you would have to stay on top of industry trends to make sure that your not doing anything to harm your websites success.

In addition to learning everything you need to know and staying on top of industry trends, you would have to actually execute all of the action items all by your lonesome. There is no possible way you would be able to run your business and execute an effective SEM campaign simultaneously without assistance.

2.       Why does it take so long to acquire high rankings?

This is an excellent question and probably the most common. The answer is very complex and there is really no simple way to answer it, however, I’ll give it a go anyways.

A.       Site Authority.

Site authority has a lot to do with how much the search engines trust your site. Just like in a human relationship, it takes time to build trust.

B.       Competition

In most cases, you are competing with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other web pages that are trying to achieve rankings for the same keyword. It takes time and a lot of effort to surpass well optimized competition…especially if they have been around and optimized longer than you have.

3.       Cant I just pay the Search Engines to rank my site better?

No. You can pay for pay per click ads, but you cannot pay for organic rankings.

Hopefully, this entry has been helpful. Enjoy your weekend!

Vlogging (video blogging) is an excellent tool for Social Media. If done correctly, it can help you tremendously. However, if done incorrectly, it can be a huge waste of time and sometimes even hurt your campaign. Here are a few tips to help you insure you’re getting the most out of your vlog campaign.

1.       Be funny…but not too funny

As with everything in life, moderation is the key. Make sure that you keep a humorous undercurrent in your video but don’t shoot yourself in the foot by over doing it.

You know when you go to a comedy show and the comedian is so not funny it makes you feel uncomfortable for him/her? Yeah, you don’t want to be that comedian.

2.       Useful information

People don’t want to watch you ramble about senseless topics and you don’t want to look like the person that talks just to hear yourself talk. So, make sure that you are offering useful information in your vlogs.

3.       Short and sweet

You want to keep people’s attention. If your videos are long, over indulgent and boring, people will not want to watch your videos. Get straight to the point with short, powerful jabs. If you keep it short, offer useful information and throw a few jokes (maybe even some sarcasm) you’re definitely on the right track to creating a successful vlog.

Please let us know if you have any questions or need any assistance with your vlog and have an awesome weekend!

Today's Manic Monday goes over 5 tactics to boost your results in the search engines. Watch this quick vlog and let us know if you need any assistance!

As with any industry, in the SEM arena we 2 kinds of companies:

A.      Honest, hard working, cutting edge

B.      Deceitful thieves

If you are someone that is not well versed in SEM/SEO terminology it can be very easy for people to use “woo woo” language to make things sound true and factual. Unfortunately, many people have been flim flammed by companies doing exactly this.

To give you the upper hand in conversations with SEO companies, ive comprised a list of the top 3 BS lies heard ‘round the industry.

1.       “We have an exclusive agreement with Google”

To which you reply: “I’ve heard, quite enough; good day sir!”. Any person or company that tells you they have an exclusive agreement with Google that allows them to get their clients site’s ranking higher is flat out lieing.

This is a very transparent sign of a BS company.

2.       “We can guarantee you an exact position in the organic rankings”

If you hear this, run as fast as your little legs will carry you in the opposite direction. The truth of the matter is that no one can guarantee exact rankings. What we can say is that we have a set of techniques that we can implement that will make your site much more likely to rank higher in the search engines. How high we can rank your site is contingent upon how many of those techniques we can implement with the allocated budget.

Certain niches are more competitive and will take much longer and require many more resources than a less competitive niche. Any SEM team that is worth a hoot can manage to get your site ranking very highly for an array of keywords; however, any team that is worth a hoot will also never guarantee you exact rankings.

3.       “We have a 30 day guarantee”

Again, run away if you hear this. No one can guarantee rankings within any time frame, let alone a 30 day timeline.

An honest statement would sound something like this:

“Based on the competition, and the overall analysis of where your site is now and how much work there is to do, we estimate you should see the desired rankings within __ to __ months.

I really hope this helps you out. Remember these things when negotiating your contract!

 In light of this weeks blog topic, im going to keep this entry short, sweet, and straight to the point. After all, that is one of the recommendations im going to give out today so I better follow my own advice, right?

1.       Short, Straight Jabs

In some writing arenas, like novels, being longwinded is the way to go. Not for blogging. When blogging, one of the most important things you can do is write a piece that is just long enough to offer all the details a reader is interested in but just short enough to keep the readers interest all the way through.

Include as much information as you can in as few words as you can.

2.       Treasure Map Formatting

People read online in a very different manner than they read books or magazines. When reading online, people scan over headlines to find something that sounds interesting to them. They read a little bit and then move on the next headline.

Much like I am doing in this blog, create a clean, easy to understand format with catchy titles for each new section. Do not, I repeat, do not clump all of your writing together in giant paragraphs with no descriptive headlines. That is the quickest way to turn a reader away online.

3.       Write For The Reader, Not For You

When it comes to internet marketing, its very easy to forget that you are not just writing to appease the search engines. If you are creating content strictly to gain rankings, it will show in your writing.

Make your best effort to write about things that your audience will value. The idea is to write entries that will make people want to keep revisiting your site and pass it on to their friends.

Like I said, short, sweet, and straight to the point! Enjoy the heck out of your weekend and don’t forget to tune into the second installment of Manic Mondays with Chelsea on Monday morning.

Watch our first video blog, Manic Mondays! We're going to start posting video entries on Monday mornings with industry news and updates that will give you a nice boost into the week. Let us know if you have any ideas or topics you want us to cover. Feedback is welcome!

The internet is filled with many directory resources. Many of them are a complete waste of time, money and can even potentially harm the success of your site. The search engines are constantly looking for the low quality, sneaky efforts of site owners to advance their websites.

I once had a conversation with an ex technology executive at IBM who is now involved with a small outside venture. We were talking about link building strategies and he said some things that (after some extensive research and investigation) were absolutely appalling to me. He was talking about a black hat technique called article spinning and he was also talking about mass directory submission.

After doing some extensive research of my own, Ive come to learn how incredibly detrimental techniques like these can be. I learned a valuable lesson from my interactions with this man: Age, experience and position does not mean

Solution: Always go for quality rather than quantity. Here is a list of the top 3 paid directories to submit your site to.

1.       www.dir.yahoo.com

The Yahoo Directory is one of the oldest and best directories on the web. It offers high authority and valuable links back to your site and can also drive a fair amount of traffic to your site.

The cost to submit to this directory is a onetime fee of $299.95.

2.       www.botw.org

Best of The Web Directory is a very high quality and high authority directory. Directories like this are an absolute must to submit your site to.

The fee for this directory is the same as Yahoo…onetime fee of $299.95.

3.       www.business.com

Business.com is a very well established and respected directory. It has been around for a very long time and holds a great deal of weight with the search engines.

The cost of inclusion for this directory is a onetime fee of $299.00

The benefit of submitting to directories is that you gain increased internet exposure, back links and an increase of relevant traffic.

We encourage all of our clients to submit to these directories in addition to www.dmoz.com and any high authority industry specific directories.

Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!