Search Engine Marketing Local Mobile in Denver, Colorado was a blast. The following information is only a drop in the bucket from what was learned. See our previous post for live audio broadcasts of the first day.

1. There is a universal business listings repository initiative underway.
2. 70% of internet users perform local search, 68% used phone # to make their contact to the local business, 61% went on to purchase in-store
3. More people search for “keyword” + state name more than “keyword” + state abbreviation
4. Be careful of postal abbreviations (e.g. MASS, MA, OR, ORE, IL, ILL)
5. 92% of consumers research products online. 95% purchase in stores. Consumers will spend 10% more on electronics after adequate research. (more…)

These days being a Black Hat isn’t as highly frowned upon as it once was. Although any professional wants to separate himself from the negative connotation associated with “black hat” many SEO’s are coming out of the wood works in search of like minded individuals. This year the 11^th annual Black hat security conference will bring dollars, issues and a host of controversy. Being held in the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas the Black hat security conference will host two days worth of public sessions. Just the sheer size of the Caesars palace shows how popular the black hat methodologies are becoming. (more…)

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

When Henry Thoreau said this, he was living in a different era, an era in which the internet did not exist. For David Thoreau comprehending meta-data and link building would be impossible but he still realized an ultimate truth. That it is not true appearance that is significant, the way it is perceived by others is what truly counts. For search engine optimization, this is an important concept. In SEO, there is a lot that could be seen but it’s what is perceived that counts. It counts more that a website is perceived to be popular than if it really is or not. However, it seems that the opposite holds true for SEO as a career. Some perceive it in an unfavorable light, but there is a great opportunity for those who grab it. In reality, Search Engine Optimization is a viable profitable and opportunity rich career choice. (more…)

In late 2006, an article by Dave Pasternack titled “Troubled Times for SEO” describes the “staggering” “statistics” of a recent study published by Marketing Sherpa. This article has sparked a great deal of interest and debate on the topic of search engine optimization industry growth and the ultimate viability of the industry as a whole. While there is always room for debate, this article is an absurd oversimplification and an abuse of statistics, leading many to believe the article was written controversially as a source of link bait. Anyone who understands statistics realizes the fallibility inherent in them. The statistics for this 2000 person case study state that there was a growth of out sourced SEO work from 2004-2005 of 124% while in 2006 the growth halted to 6.7%. If this is true these numbers are interesting but indicative of an industry lull, I do not think so. The study methodology and the participants should be questioned (if there ever really was a study at all). However even if you ignore the fact that the study is questionable, they later go on the claim the SEO boats the highest ROI at 67.7%. (more…)

In the world of SEO there is a certain culture. And this techie, savvy culture likes to use their own words. There are times when two SEO professionals talking shop is like listening to an alien conversation. Some of this SEO vocabulary includes CPM, PPC, SEM, SEO, CPA, Linkbait, anchor text, blogroll, feed and of course, the main ones black hat and white hat. It is not important that you understand all of these terms unless you work in SEO however a few of them are very important. Black hat and White hat are important (more…)

Adapt or die. Like in life, in business in order to survive you must adapt and modify. In these times things change at such a rapid pace it seems tomorrows technology is here before we’ve had a chance to learn today’s technology. What used to be a simple chain of supply and demand has instead become an information war. Whoever can learn the most the quickest and apply it wins. On the internet there are many ways you can advertise your business. Only one is sustainable however and this is called Search Engine Optimization. This means that you make a website as relevant to your industry as possible in the hopes that when someone searches for your product or service they can find it and more specifically find you with ease.

There are several reasons why an internet business needs to optimize their website to (more…)

In a recent blog post by Josh Steimle, the CEO of MWI, he titled his entry “Why Websites Matter.” His opinion was right on as it relates to traditional thinking. Old school business tactics, associating value with weight or drivability and making foolish decisions because you have not read the latest rulebook, seem to be a dangerous trend. These businesses continue to short circuit their real potential by not knowing all of the facts.

Utah Web Services is in the Web Design and Search Engine Optimization business. We manage site operations for businesses both large and small in more than 10 states and Canada. (more…)

Utah Web Services and Utah SEO are pleased to announce a breakthrough offering for the little guy trying to make a difference on the Internet. This offering complete with both on-page optimization services as well as off-page marketing strategies is designed to be a bridge for any website owner needing to get his/her site found on National search engines.

The complete offering can be reviewed at Utah Web Search Engine Optimization and is available now for clients who wish to take advantage of it. As a company we are very pleased to be in a position to offer this inexpensive solution to so many of our clients that have been requesting something less expensive than our customary and very complete SEO services.

There seems to be a trend amongst some of our esteemed industry colleagues to come clean and fully disclose their operational experience and corporate financial statements. I am very puzzled at this decision since it seems to be completely elective and without any compelling benefit.

I perhaps look at the process of financial disclosure a bit differently than Josh at MWI or Rand at SEOmoz. When I was introduced to the team at Wiworks, Inc. some 9 years ago they were a stock traded company in Provo and I was a stock broker for Smith Barney in Salt Lake City, seemed like a good fit until their business started going south and I made the decision to protect my investment, sell my client list to my partner and take over the day to day operations of an Internet company.

What a nutty move that was at the time, as a public company we were compelled by the Securities and Exchange Commission to have a complete disclosure of all financials and business operations. Anything that was deemed a material event was required to be announced. This was so that any shareholder would be able to evaluate the quality of his or her investment and make a wise choice whether to hold the stock or not.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why any private organization would be so forthcoming. I applaud the move but question the logic or the benefit. In the Search Engine Optimization business we each seem to have our own specialty. We have clients that we have been successful in getting ranked highly and their businesses have benefited greatly by the increased exposure. None of us disclose the methods we deploy for our client’s or the strategies we are using for obvious reasons so I fail to see the reasoning of announcing everything else. Perhaps I am just too private.

The update to this story is that in order to survive financially, I sold the public shell to a California company and then bought the entire Internet operation back from them and took the company private. This process saved us about $130,000 a year in attorney fees alone and then another $65,000 for auditors, accountants, filing fees, writers and agents. I certainly have no interest in revisiting any procedures of the past. So for now folks don’t expect Wiworks, Inc. or any of our operational divisions to announce anything other than new clients and cities we are establishing operations in.

Good luck to all of you in this great market and SEO industry for 2007. You seem to do good business and provide clients with real and recognizable value. Especially to Joshua and Rand, professionals that we all look up to for their contribution to our search engine optimization world, whether or not their financial disclosures are real or fictitious as they wisely state, they are pretty smart guys.

A very wise man said recently

“You can be Wise and Happy or you can be Stupid and Miserable”

I have thought about these words for the past week in the context of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. It was brought home once again to me in a phone conversation with a referred prospect who was trying to compete with one of my current clients in the wholesale toy market. This prospect just could not figure out how in the world we were able to get our client and his direct competition ranked in the top 3 on Google for some very competitive and lucrative keywords.

In our conversation it became obvious that this was indeed a large International Importer of toys and novelties with an aggressive CEO who knew his business well. His remarks and questions were directed towards an online marketing strategy and Search Engine Optimization once we had fixed his current website and gotten his online ordering systems back in place. The challenge with this particular prospect was that he had a completely distorted perspective of the time and effort required to achieve top placement online. Like most site owners on the net he was oblivious to the reality of what it takes to get found on Google, Yahoo or even Live.com thinking it must be like installing software. You install and then turn it on to see great things happen. Hello McFly!! (You older guys will get that one.)

This California company will become an excellent client in time, but not until after some serious training and an extensive reality check occurs. As mentioned above this prospect had some delusional perspectives on how fast he could begin counting his money from increased online sales. Utah Web Services and our Search Engine Optimization division was contacted by this prospect after he had seen first hand what we had already done for another toy company and expected we could match those results for him to begin increasing his online sales immediately.

After a lengthy conversation and some education on search engine marketing it was decided that this client would be OK with starting a structured and well thought out deployment schedule and then working steady to achieve our objectives the RIGHT way or the White Hat SEO way. Compared to doing it the fast and foolish way by short circuiting the important steps required or the wrong way often called Black Hat SEO, unfortunately these shady marketeers seem to be spreading quickly on the Net as unsuspecting site owners are taken in by these chicken and shoddy players in the complex world of SEO.

Moral to this story is that just like losing weight; there is no miracle pill in the SEO business. Any company or marketer that tells you they can guarantee you the #1 position on Google is a liar. There are no guarantees in an industry that is constantly in motion unless you were the first guys to join the Google Billionaire Boys Club, namely Eric Schmidt or Sergey Brin who run it. There is no way to actually support a claim like this with the number of variables involved in obtasining a #1 listing. Unfortunately I have had clients try this snake oil approach for a bit until they realize the mkistake made and then come right back for us to clean up the mess their foolishness created.

Business owners - Proceed with caution in the search engine optimizatio world and remember to be wise and happy with your site performance and not stupid and miserable because you chose poorly the proper SEO team to represent you.