http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog We share tips on search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, local search optimizing, and other tactics to improve your online presence. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:12:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/how-can-i-tell-seo-working http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/how-can-i-tell-seo-working#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:12:22 +0000 Taylor http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2785 Core Values. We recognize that one of the biggest challenges facing businesses is figuring out a way to evaluate if their SEO campaign is successful. Ultimately, the only factor that determines success is the bottom-line; like any investment, we do not think that our services are truly successful unless we can provide positive ROI.

At the same time, we recognize that SEO is a long-term investment, and it simply isn't possible to provide positive ROI right out of the gate. So with that in mind, we usually focus on three distinct indicators of SEO success:

Keyphrase Ranking Improvements
Non-Branded Organic Search Traffic
Conversions

At different stages of our campaigns, we tend to focus on these indicators to varying degrees. Because search engine rankings tend to improve relatively quickly to quality SEO, we can use rankings for individual keywords to measure our earliest efforts. Later on in the process, the additional data that trickles in over time allows us to evaluate success based on organic traffic and conversions.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/how-can-i-tell-seo-working/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-and-seo http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-and-seo#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:08:45 +0000 Lindsay http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2727 SEO is constantly evolving.  Just to prove my point, I originally started this blog post three weeks ago.  It dove into my hypothesis on the effects of social media on SEO and how Google was slowly changing the playing field.  And as soon as it was ready to publish, Google rolled out Google Search plus Your World (SPYW) and made my post, in a blink, outdated.

Social media is becoming a larger piece of the SEO puzzle.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, Google Search plus Your World incorporates personalized search results from its own social network among normal SERP results.  Depending on your search, results will now be preceded by links of your Google+ friend’s updates and photos (if you are even using Google+) that relate to your query.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-and-seo/feed 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/check-search-engine-rankings-100-certainty http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/check-search-engine-rankings-100-certainty#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:14:51 +0000 John-Henry http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2680 SEO process) and they are ecstatic because they are ranking #1 for just about every phrase we are targeting. Here at DTC, we're awesome at SEO - but no one is that good.

This usually happens because A) the client is logged in to their gmail account and Google is showing them personalized search results for their account, or B) The client has visited their site via Google on their computer and Google is personalizing results for that individual piece of hardware. If you are using your own computer to check your rankings, they are possibly tainted. The solution: use a different computer by way of proxy.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/check-search-engine-rankings-100-certainty/feed 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/long-page-one http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/long-page-one#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:55:09 +0000 George http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2641
You probably only really saw something like that in the movies…because it doesn’t really happen.

Besides the famous Babe Ruth moment where he called out his home run, professional baseball players aren’t arrogant enough to call their shot (even Barry Bonds).

The same concept applies to SEO and predicting how long it will take to rank for a keyword.

I do understand why someone would want to know how long it will take…if you’re paying good money for a service, you’d like to know when you’re going to see a return...this is by far the most popular question that we get asked by new prospects.

The problem is, like Baseball, SEO is not very precise.

You can make educated guesses based on current competition and market conditions, but predicting how long it will take to rank for a set of keywords is arrogant, if not downright stupid.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/long-page-one/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/seo-crisis-management-steps-site-loses-visibility http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/seo-crisis-management-steps-site-loses-visibility#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:21:09 +0000 Tim http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2650 You've been working on SEO for your site for months. You've done your research, and your site is perfectly optimized for high-volume, highly-relevant keyphrases. You've gone out of your way to make sure that everything you're doing is ethical and your site should be firmly in Google's good graces.

After a few months of diligent promotion, you've greatly improved your visibility, and your site's traffic and conversions have been exploding.

And then one day, without warning, it's all gone. For reasons you can't fathom, your site has dropped off from Google results like a rock. Your traffic disappears.

If you care about SEO, this is the stuff that nightmares are made of. But if you've been working in internet marketing long enough, and you've been around enough sites, chances are that you might have seen a similar situation. But there are plenty of causes for this terrifying prospect, so the most important thing is to take a deep breath, relax, and figure out the cause of the problem. While it is always possible that something bad has happened (such as your site being hacked), most of the time the problem will be much more inocuous.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/seo-crisis-management-steps-site-loses-visibility/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/conversion-source-attribution-game-changing-report-version-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/conversion-source-attribution-game-changing-report-version-google-analytics#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:23:56 +0000 Steven http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2593 Assisted Conversions report in the new version of GA has been particularly useful in identifying the true origin of a site’s conversions.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/conversion-source-attribution-game-changing-report-version-google-analytics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/local-search-optimization-important http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/local-search-optimization-important#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:30:42 +0000 Tim http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2546 Local Search Optimization has typically been ensuring that a business has a lot of visibility in Google Maps. A few years ago, all you really had to do was make sure that your company had an accurate, claimed listing for that service, and you could bank on getting seen whenever a user was looking for your type of company in your city. But in the past few years, there have been plenty of developments in the search world that have complicated things immensely. Foremost among these is the continued blurring of maps results and organic search results in Google results.

Over the past six months or so, we have been noticing that it's been increasingly difficult to separate local search from organic search. This trend first started happening with blended results, which appear when Google Places results are mixed in with other links in a Google search page. Blended results presented some problems--it was difficult to predict when a Places listing would appear before an organic link, for one. Yet at their heart, these were still local search results.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/local-search-optimization-important/feed 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/annotations-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/annotations-google-analytics#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:23:53 +0000 Steven http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2403 annotations within Google Analytics. As your website continues to develop, inevitable changes will occur - your traffic may increase or decrease, rankings in the SERPs may rise and fall, and in the end, determining the cause of such events is a quintessential piece of the puzzle. If you are able to identify sources of improvement, or in some cases regression, taking the necessary steps in creating the most efficient, well rounded internet marketing campaign possible becomes easier. Making improvements should always be a goal; the ever-changing nature of search engines forces us to constantly re-assess both time-proven and more recent, untested strategies that may help a website's performance. Knowing how to effectively utilize annotations can be quite helpful in that process.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/annotations-google-analytics/feed 2 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/trouble-with-google-product-search-and-robots http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/trouble-with-google-product-search-and-robots#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:00:40 +0000 Nathan http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2377 Robots.txt preventing image crawl]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/trouble-with-google-product-search-and-robots/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/salesman-website http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/salesman-website#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:49:12 +0000 John-Henry http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2211 SEO fulfills one main purpose: making an introduction. When a Google user searches for a generic keyword like "Chicago internet marketing firm" they are turning to Google to sort out all the possibly relevant websites on the web and rank them in an order of most authoritative to least. But just because a search engine user comes to your site via Google from a non-branded keyword doesn't mean they are going to become a customer or client. SEO only gets them in the front door; it's your website that has to sell them.

If you are trying to bring in business by ranking for generic keywords in Google you are relying on your website to be the initial point of contact for a potential lead or sale. You don't just need to have a website that is, "up to snuff," Your site needs to persuade the visitor to convert. A conversion is a predetermined goal of a website - it can be filling out a lead form, a download, a sale etc... and if you have a bad site there is a good chance your visitors aren't converting as much as they should be.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/salesman-website/feed 0