When it comes to marketing your website you can choose from two primary vehicles, SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay-per-click). Both have their uses and there will be cases where it’s more beneficial to use one over the other and cases where both should be used. We’ll explain each method in detail and show some examples of how to best utilize each.

SEO (search engine optimization)

Search engine optimization is a technique where the pages in your website are modified in such a way to attempt to manipulate their placement in the search engine results. This is done using a combination of on page and off page optimization. When it comes to SEO there are some things you will need to know.

1.Content will need to be added to your website.
In order to achieve ranking for competitive keywords you will have to actually have content related to them available on your website. This includes the keyword itself.

2.This content will be visible to visitors.
Attempting to make content available to the search engines while hiding it from your visitors will put you at a high risk of being banned from the search engines all together. Contrary to what many people believe, there’s nothing that you can do to “hide the SEO work in the code.”

3.This content is based on keyword research.
Research is conducted to choose relevant keywords based on the number of times they are searched for each month. Some of the keyword phrases that will be presented to you may seem odd or grammatically incorrect but keep in mind, they are based on the actual searches entered into the search engines.

PPC (pay-per-click)

Pay-per-click is basically a form of advertising in which advertisers bid for the top spots in the search engine results. The number of PPC listings and how they are displayed varies by search engine. PPC allows you to determine what keywords will cause your ad to be displayed and to control your budget precisely.

How to determine which method to use and when to use it

PPC is very effective in generating instant exposure in highly competitive markets such as real estate, insurance or weight loss without a large up front investment. SEO is an excellent tool for delivering strong, long-term results and with a continued optimization program in place, future results will be gained progressively faster. You will generally want to use SEO by itself when you are targeting non-competitive keyword phrases, use both SEO and PPC together when targeting keywords that are average in competition, and use PPC by itself when targeting highly competitive keywords.

Wildfire Marketing Group’s founder, Jeremy L. Knauff, will be competing in the 2006 ING Miami Marathon (formerly known as The Miami Tropical Marathon) on Sunday, January 29, 2006.

On entering the marathon, Mr. Knauff says “I think people should try to challenge themselves whenever possible because it will help them realize that there is really very little that they can’t accomplish. Everyone has difficult things that they have to face in there lives regardless of their position or status. By engaging in constructive challenges they can lean how to deal with these things and even find new insight into themselves.”

You can find more information about the ING Miami Marathon at their website.

If you haven’t already experienced it yourself, then you’ve probably heard some of the horror stories about trying to find or work with a graphic designer. It can be difficult, time consuming and frustrating to say the least, but in all fairness it’s no different than any other profession. Think about how some people must feel when they have to work with some of your competitors.

You’ll want to evaluate some basic things first - things that are vital in any industry. Is your potential designer on time to meet with you? Do they treat your staff with respect or do they treat them they like they don’t matter? Did they do their homework before coming? Once you’ve nailed down the basics, your list of potential designers will probably be a lot smaller. Now you can start to look at some of the things that are more specific to our industry.

Presentation

Everything from how a designer dresses to how they package their sample work will tell you something about them. Take a look at their clothing but avoid basing your opinion on your personal fashion preferences. Instead, look at details that will tell you how much effort they put into their own appearance. Clean shoes are a great indication of someone that pays attention to details. Trimmed fingernails are another. You’ll also want to pay attention to whether the work presented in their portfolio is straight. Though these may seem like little details they will mean a lot in determining the attention to detail that your designer will take in your project.

Preparation

Did your designer run up to your office door chasing his wind blown papers across the parking lot or did he stride confidently to your door, materials in hand? Did he show up with a pen and notebook? This is important unless you want to spend a lot of time later reminding them many of the things that you’ve already told them. A designer that isn’t prepared for the initial meeting is not going to conduct day-to-day business any differently.

Point of view

Everyone has a different view of the world and it’s a given that those with a similar point of view will work better together. With that in mind, it’s important to find a designer that shares your beliefs. The advertising for your multi-million dollar SUV dealership will never achieve spectacular results as long as you are using a designer that believes that all corporations are big evil things bent on destroying society for a buck. If your designer doesn’t understand where you’re coming from they will never be able to tell your prospects.

Portfolio

This is really a classic case of “size doesn’t matter - it’s how you use it!” When considering designers you may be loosing out if you dismiss a designer because of a small portfolio. The designer that came by in a 3-piece suit with a three inch thick portfolio isn’t necessarily the one for the job. Maybe the girl that has no college degree and a portfolio with nine pages of work that she did at home is a better fit for you. The most important thing really is quality. The designer that brings everything may not be able to decide what to present and what not to present which could mean that they will have the same problem in delivering a clear message to your audience.

There is one more thing to consider when you choose a graphic designer - they know what you don’t when it comes to design. When you say “let’s add more colors” or “make the text bolder” there is usually a good reason that they’re rolling their eyes. We recommend that after you’ve done your homework and chosen a competent graphic designer you let them do their job. Graphic design is a lot more than just making something look nice. There are a lot of technical details that have scientific backing that you may not know about. In most cases it’s in your best interest to focus on what you are an expert in and let them focus on what they are an expert in. You will see far better results that way.

Reciprocal linking

While traditional link trading is beginning to require more effort to produce the same results as before, it?s not going to be disappearing anytime soon. Search engines have already been discounting reciprocal links when compared to one-way inbound links for quite some time, but they are now becoming more aggressive in attempting to reduce a web site owner?s ability to manipulate SERPs by simply trading links - even when they are from relevant sites.

Aside from the evolution of the search engines, we also have to contend with other site owners, some of whom are lacking in integrity and internet knowledge. Some feel the need to cheat their link partners out of the benefit that the link would have created by hiding it in a java script or an I-frame, removing any navigation to the page that the link appears on, adding the noindex,no follow tag, or even completely removing the link! While we can monitor our links with software, it is time consuming and uses resources (bandwidth, manpower, etc.) that could be better utilized elsewhere. The solution to this is to choose reputable and honest link partners related to your site in the first place.

Google?s patent became publicly available in March of this year (it was originally filed in 2003) and verified many of the widely held theories and even some of the less common theories. Many aspects of Google?s patent are related specifically to inbound links and their rate of development during the lifecycle of a website. For example, Google continually monitors the accumulation of inbound links for a particular site and compares that historical data to the site?s current accumulation to look for anomalies. If a site is found to have an increase or decrease beyond a certain threshold of their historical increase or decrease, the impact of their newer inbound links may be reduced. This is because breaking this threshold is often indicative of a site owner attempting to manipulate the search engine results. It?s important to note that this portion of Google?s algorithm also takes into account factors such as current topics of interest based on spikes in queries for a particular key phrase so as not to unfairly penalize legitimate sites that acquire a large number of links over a short period of time.

Several experiments that we have conducted have indicated (and now Google?s patent proves) that Google analyzes both the anchor text and the surrounding text to determine variance or lack thereof in the links pointing to a particular site. This enables them to discount the benefit that would be received from inbound links in cases where they have the same characteristics (i.e. same anchor text, same description, etc.) because they can be viewed as an attempt to manipulate the search engines since links that have developed naturally would not all be worded the same.

With that in mind, the most effective link building campaign both for immediate results and more importantly, long term results is one that generates a steadily increasing number of varying links. This ensures that the recipient site is not penalized due to a spike in inbound links, and that the longevity of the campaign is maintained because the site owner does not have to generate an unrealistic number of inbound links in the future to maintain the proper historical growth.
Google (and likely most other engines) can also utilize the IP of a site to partially determine the weight it will contribute when linked to another site. Oftentimes, sites with the same ?C? block in their IP will have a less significant impact even on other related sites as they are on the same server and therefore could potentially be a link farm rather than legitimate sites linking to other legitimate sites. Because of this it is not advantageous to host multiple sites for the purpose of interlinking them together. The minimal benefit that could be achieved does not outweigh the risk in being banned from the search engines.

One way linking

A more time and cost effective method of link building is to accumulate one way links, whether by purchasing them, by providing relevant content for other sites to post which contain a link back to your site, or just creating content that other site owners feel is worth linking to.

In purchasing links you need to be careful to choose relevant sites but also choose sites that offer the best chance for live traffic rather than focusing on just the SEO aspect of the inbound link. This will significantly increase your ROI. In purchasing relevant links it is also recommended that you avoid ROS or site wide links as they generally offer no benefit beyond what a single link from a site would provide but do have the potential to harm the recipient site.

Creating relevant content is beneficial to a site owner first of all because it creates a reason for visitors to stay at that particular site longer and thus increasing their likelihood of being converted into a customer. Secondly it provides the site owner with a means to generate additional exposure by posting the content to other related sites which will provide a link back to your site ? often with your choice of anchor text within the article. A tertiary benefit to developing relevant content is that other site owners finding the content useful will often link to it as a service to their visitors.

Outgoing RSS feeds

While many site owners are just beginning to utilize RSS feeds to offer fresh content on their sites, a handful of others are using RSS to generate additional exposure for their sites. RSS (really simple syndication) uses an XML file that contains info on the title, content, URL, and date which is parsed to an aggregator or web page.

Once the content is developed, an XML file is uploaded and the feed is syndicated, other site owners search for relevant RSS feeds, and then utilize a parser such as Magpie RSS (a server side php based parser) to display the feed on their site. The benefit to this scenario as a site owner is that you will acquire links with your choice of anchor text which can be changed as often as you like and these links will most often be displayed on extremely relevant sites and many times on the index page of these sites.

Search engine optimization is usually misunderstood by most people outside of the industry (and unfortunately, misunderstood by quite a few people in the industry as well). One of the biggest assumptions people make is that SEO works just like any other form of advertising - once you pay for it, it’s there. That’s not the case. Often times it can take six months or more to show results in the four major search engines (which collectively hold over 90% of the market). When a company or individual promises that they can deliver results faster, they are either lying or using techniques that the search engines consider spam. The latter puts you at a risk of being banned from the listings all together. Another misconception that a lot of people seem to have is that once their site has been optimized they are all set for life. Since the search engines are continually changing how they rank websites and your competition is always looking for ways to climb above you, what worked last year (or even last month) may not work anymore.

The best way to look at SEO is to compare it to exercise. When you first start, you won’t see any results - sometimes it can take several months of hard work to see even a small improvement. After a while you will start to see some moderate results, maybe you’ll shed some extra weight or tone up your muscles a bit. As you continue to put in the work the results will become obvious to others as well. Now, if you decide that you’re happy where you are and simply quit exercising you will not stay where you are - you will begin to fall behind again. SEO is no different.

If traffic to your website is important to your business then you should strongly consider professional search engine optimization services, but you should also have realistic expectations. You should take some time to talk to a few different companies before making a decision. Remember - no one can deliver results over night and a company that uses questionable techniques could easily get your website banned all together!

Each of the major search engines controls a different amount of the market. Below is the current market data.

Google/AOL: 51.8%
Yahoo: 20.9%
MSN: 13.6%
Ask Jeeves: 1.8%

Data current as of 3/05

A lot of people ask the question “How much is it going to cost to market my company?” The short answer is “It’s going to cost more than what it would cost to not market your company.” The question that you really should be asking is “How much is it going to cost in lost business opportunities if I don’t properly market my company?”

The fact of the matter is that good marketing is an investment. Sure, it will cost a certain amount of money, but when your marketing is done properly you will make far more money than you had spent. Plus, when you don’t take advantage of the opportunity to market your company, you make it even easier for your competitors to take business away from you!

A good marketing company should take the time in the beginning to learn as much as they can about your company and what you want to accomplish. If they start pitching you during the first meeting then they are more interested in filling their pockets than they are in helping your business grow.

So whether your budget is $500 or $500,000 get your message out there! When you see what it does for your bottom line you’ll really wish you had done it sooner.

We’ve added some of the marketing materials that we’ve developed for one of our clients, VSS Sleep Systems to our website.

VSS has been making some exciting innovations in the specialty bedding industry and has recently embarked on a partnership with the Hilton Garden Inn to provide a higher quality bed for HGI’s guests.

The Evolution Solution Express? is a 72-foot long, 67,000 pound, 26-foot wide mobile marketing vehicle currently trekking its way across the country-and offers the chance to win the Garden Sleep System? by VSS Sleep Systems? or the modified “Mirra”? chair by Herman Miller.

We’ve decided that we’ve spent enough time as the proverbial “cobbler’s kid” and needed a pair of shoes, so we finally launched our own website. Since we believe in keeping things fresh, you can expect our site to change frequently. If you dig around a bit you may even find a few hidden features here and there. Hope you enjoy it!