Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine

Optimization (SEO)

You know the results you want: Have your website and other Internet content found by your customers! Establish your Internet Presence. Details about the best path forward to implement this via SEO and SEM can be complex. Technivise is here to listen to what you want to accomplish, develop and approach with you, and make it happen! Read a bit more here about SEM and SEO, then give us a call. Related topics: Website Design, Branding ---

An approach to

website design - A

trust relationship

I’d rather be your trusted partner, making you successful and in control of your technology, rather than selling something you don’t need! • My focus and goal is your trust and success. • You should own and be in control all of your website and other services. o Don’t be held hostage – it is common out there to trap you into ongoing services you may not need. Don’t pay monthly for something that is already complete. • Participate as much or as little as makes sense for your own situation and interest. • Set your objectives, budget, or other goals and I’ll work to achieve them. • You should have no hidden costs. You should pick what recurring costs you need.

Many factors to consider for

website design -- Which matter for

your business?

From simple to complex, responsive designs, options for website are numerous. • What layout and design is best from your customers? How does it make you stand out from your competitors? • How much do you need to pay now and for ongoing support? • What elements of website design can you participate in to reduce cost? Can you provide images, textual content? Are there other team members we should use in a website project? • How does the website link into your other services like email, file transfer, eCommerce, scheduling, etc? • Do you want a control panel to easily review status of your website? Technivise can help you sort through all these and other options in considering a new or revised website. In addition, Technivise can provide temporary or long term site hosting and help by recommending and coordinating other providers for your website design. Technivise is able to handle simple to moderate website design for low-cost options you own, yet your best option may be to go with other website developers for some types of businesses. Some website providers and hosts are making website design easy for do-it-yourselfers. Large e-commerce sites or those with complex back-end databases may be best served by large system website developers. Establishing a website presence often times means that you are establishing your brand and branding approach. How are customers or visitors to your various Internet presences (website, social media, advertising, etc.) going to know it’s you? This often means you need a logo, identifiable name, a domain name that is easy to remember and relevant, a look and feel that attracts your intended customer. Technivise is experienced in various branding and marketing approaches and can help you establish your branding or work with other providers that develop branding. Establishing a website is not enough. You should consider taking control of website directories, listings, and establishing social media sites that match your branding. Certain sites will be more critical for some businesses than others. Those businesses that have a store front or office need to be found by customers on the road with cell phone apps. Listings catering to these users should be priority. Other businesses that have a virtual presence on the Internet may not need these sites. There are some services that look to do manage such things for you for high monthly fees that never stop and may yank your listings if you stop paying. Technivise can do this once so you control the listings and social media site. That way you can choose to let them sit idle at no cost, maintain them yourself, or hire out the maintenance to your choice of provider. Be in control! Whoever develops your website, you should understand who owns and controls the content. What if you wish to change content or the design? How much will that cost? What if you wish to take your design to another developer? Can you have all the content and files? Even if you get them, would they be useful? Are there recurring fees if you just let your site sit idle? Website maintenance of some type is often useful to maintain your site ranking, but make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. You should always consider that you should control your branding and Internet presence. That means owning and controlling your own domain names. It may also mean controlling your web hosting, and email hosting.

How much does a website cost

initially?

There is not an easy answer to website cost, but there are rules of thumb. Furthermore, a website should cost just enough to meet the objectives of your business, no more. Technivise can help you understand and weigh the options. Website cost should include everything you need to make it successful, such as: • content (text) about your service or product • Domain name • Your identity, business name, address, phone number, information about your company, • graphics, logo, pictures, branding identity, • Amount of customized design versus a template, • various forms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), directories, social media, etc. • Responsive design, Contact forms, maps, eCommerce, and other tools, • email accounts, web hosting, • etc. Differences in cost also include: • How much of the above you already have or will provide, • How involved you want to be or can be in the design, • How many itterations of your site you have with your designer. • Size of your site (number of pages), • etc. With all these factors, Technivise has seen websites that cost $400 to $10,000 with the typical cost being around $3000- $5000. The low end includes a very simple one-page website placeholder (more like a fact sheet) to get started including an email address. Typical websites have about 20 pages and include a mixture of content, pictures, and graphics you develop and that is developed by Technivise. Be careful considering off shore and lost-cost providers. They might do well in the growing global marketplace; however, they can also represent additional risk due to inexperience or distance. Prefer providers you can talk to, video conference with, and even better, meet in person.

How much does a website cost to

maintain?

Again, maintenance cost depends on the options you choose to meet your business needs. Technivise can help you understand and weigh the options that have the best return on investment for your business. Identify these costs up front and understand which are critical and which can be deferred when not important. Understand what kind of return on investment you want for your business from website maintenance. Website maintenance may depend on options such as: • Fixed costs (typically low) such as website and email hosting, domain name maintenance. • How aggressive you wish to be or must be on SEO and directories to maintain search engine placement and traffic to your website. • How often you collect analytics on your website to see how it is doing. • How often you update or add new content to your website. • How often you want to update or interact with your social media. • How much you choose to advertise on the Internet. • How much you choose to perform reputation management for online reviews. • How much dynamic content you have (Content Management Systems - CMS) from user postings, blogs, etc. • Etc. Technivise suggest that you budget maintenance costs for your website because there will be small fixed costs (about $200 to $300-plus per year). You probably want someone else performing at least some of the above or other related tasks so you don’t have to do so yourself. You may want to be hands- on and perform some of the above tasks yourself, or you may wish to have a provider do it all for you. What should you avoid? A new fad on the Internet are Directory placement services that charge about $100 per month or $1000 a year to maintain your directories. A problem is that they only maintain a fraction of all the directories that exist. A big shame is that once directories are populated, there is no more work or little work to maintain them. Why be hostage and pay ransom to such services when most of the work can be done once and not adjusted in the future? Some of these companies offer other SEO services, but do you want to be constantly engaged with them to get your money’s worth? At a minimum, Technivise suggests: • you revisit your website analytics every 3-6 months to measure how you are doing, then make SEO adjustments to your website based upon what you learn, and • you add content at least once a month in the form of advice, blog posting, or news items. Depending on your business type and competition on the Internet, you may need to do this more frequently (some markets may require monthly or weekly review). Cost for these website maintenance activities should be considered an investment, like advertising, in brining customers to your door and their level determined by your perceived return on investment. It is something keeping your primary Internet presence current and found by customers. Such costs also depend on how much time you invest in updating your own social media, directories, advertising, and website. We suggest a typical small business using a provider like budget $50-100 per month for monthly updates and then $250-1000 more a year for analytic assessments every 3-6 months and resulting SEO adjustments. Focus this work where it brings the best return. Consider this a budget, not a mandatory expense. If everything is working well and customers are finding you, then you may defer some or all of this investment. If things are not going well, then consider additional investment to remedy the problem. Such a choice is dependent upon how critical revenue from the Internet is to your business. Costs for Internet advertising is another beast that is complex and perilous. You can easily waste away money advertising on the Internet. Technivise can help explain the options.

Internet Marketing,

SEO, SEM

Having a website is not enough! It should work to meet your objectives. It must be found easily by customers through Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Therefore it is important to consider these activities because without it, your great website will not be as likely to be found by new customers. Unfortunately, Internet Marketing, SEO, and SEM can quickly seem complex. There are many providers of these services that make claims they cannot meet and that may quickly waste your money. Technivise looks at the big picture for what you want to accomplish and acts as an unbiased advisor. You should be informed about the decisions you will make and comfortable adjusting approach to gain new customers. This page covers some of the key topics for Internet Marketing, SEO, and SEM. If you’d prefer to discuss these topics or don’t want detail here, please call Technivise for assistance! Every discipline loves their own terminology. Let’s first demystify and define some of the terms you might hear… • Internet Marketing o An overall inclusive strategy and approach to be found on the Internet by your potential customers. This includes SEO and SEM as well as use of Social Media, blogging, etc. There are many social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more. • Social Media Marketing o Due to Social Media’s rise of importance, it is important consider how to reach customers there via free and paid methods. • SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) o One or more web pages presented to the user by the Search Engine. It’s best to be on the first page, but there is limited space on each page. • SEO (Search Engine Optimization) o Steps taken to have your website listed for free in SERPs for the search terms your customers would use. Because these listings cost you nothing, they are known as “organic.” SEO is performed on your website (on-site SEO) and around the internet (off-site SEO). • SEM (Search Engine Marketing) o Steps taken to have your website listed in SERPs primarily through paid advertising, but also use of SEO. Often one can pay per click to your website, per impression, or for placement in some paid web page that may or may not be a search engine. • SEP (Search Engine Placement) o A term not used as much lately, that focuses on specific placement of your listing in SERPs. You’d like to be placed in a location visible to the most potential customers. Similar to SEO.

Why do I need SEO or Internet

Marketing?

Establishing a website is not enough, you need SEO! Your potential customers will use a search or listing service to look for products and services. They will primarily use search engines like Google and Bing, with Google being the most dominant search engine. Some may use directory listings like their favorite white pages. Others may find you because a business directory comes up high in the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and they click on that first -- then search for you. For instance, the Avvo lawyer directory comes up high in searches for lawyers. If you’re not listed in these business directories, then you will miss some search traffic! So the easy answer is “yes,” but you quickly have more questions. How do you do it? How much is enough? How often is enough? Who do you get help from to do it? While there are common answers for all businesses, the real answers depend upon you and your business. Answers should be based upon your objectives. Before you begin, you may need other work in branding your business so you don’t waste money revising your efforts.

What are the most important

approaches for SEO?

There is not an easy answer which SEO approaches are the most important because they can change over time and there are many. They are primarily driven by the search engine’s rules and continually evolving approach to deliver better content to searchers and make more money. Here are a few current top aspects of SEO that is not complete: • On-site SEO o Great content specific to customer searches. o A responsive site that works for mobile customers. o Proper technical coding of your website. o Dynamic (changing) content. • Off-site SEO o Domain authority usually measured by the number of back-links to your site from other sites. o Creating a business listing on the search engine. o Consistent identity across the Internet in directories and other locations. There are so many more options for SEO not listed here that may make a difference for your business in relationship to your competitors. That is why there should be some strategy and analysis around your SEO before it is implemented.

What are SEO benefits and issues?

Benefits of SEO

A key benefit of SEO is that the search results are free. You don’t pay for each search results in which you’re listed. Your efforts are also generally longer-lasting and build up over time to add value to your site. So when you invest in SEO, that investment grows and continues to pay back. An example is content. If you consistently add new content in a blog or other means, your content grows over time.

Issues for SEO

One issue for SEO is that it takes time for the results to show up. It can take 2-6 months before you see results in higher rankings in search engines. SEO results are subject to fluctuation for many reasons. Your competitors are performing SEO and there is only so much space on the first search engine results page. When they invest in SEO, your website may drop in the rankings. Search engines can change the rules of results causing you to perform SEO again to match what they want to see.

What are benefits and issues in “pay

for placement” or advertisements in

Internet Marketing and SEM?

Paying for online advertising is being used by your competitors. This is what has driven Google’s wealth. You should evaluate if, when, and how you should consider paying for better placement on the Internet. You don’t have to take this approach initially, but it is good to consider in your overall strategy and plan. If you’re not in a rush, it is often a good idea to focus on SEO, and see if the long-term results are satisfactory or not.

Benefits of Internet Marketing and SEM

Paying for placement in SEM has a major benefit -- Immediate results. In SEM, you pay the search engine to show your advertisement for particular in search terms in specific areas of the country where you do business. This is great if you have a new website, are anxious for customers now, and need time for SEO to bring up your organic search rankings. Then perhaps om the future you can reduce your paid advertisements as your SEO results take hold. If you think more broadly, you can place your listing in a directory that shows up well in Google searches for your field. This is usually a fixed cost per year or by number of times your listing is shown (per impression). In this case, you’re paying the directory to send you leads and let them worry about showing up on the first page of a Google search. This is like outsourcing the complexity of advertising to that directory. Avvo and Justia directories for lawyers is an example. Another example might be YP.com, the yellow pages. You can also pay to advertise on social media in a way that your posts will show up more frequently on target customer’s news feeds. Another option of Internet Marketing for service providers is to register with on job referral sites in you industry. Customers enter their need, which is sent to multiple providers who pay to bid on the opportunity to work wtih that customer. This is fairly popular wtih various types of construction contractors on the Internet. All the varous types of Internet Marketing efforts you could take come down t the bottom line -- how much does it cost to obtain a new customer? Each may or may not fit your business model or perform up to your expectations.

Issues for Internet Marketing and SEM

The obvious issue is that this costs money, but that’s the point of paid marketing. A much bigger issue is that it is easy to waste money quickly with no results if you use the wrong pay-per-click or other campaign. It can be quite complex. In addition, pay-per-per click advertising is subject to attack by your competitors who may click purposefully on your ads to use up all your advertising budget until you don’t show up any longer. That’s a zero return on investment!