If You Use White Hat SEO, You Should Be Fine, But Still Check Your Ranking 

Just when you thought you were safe from Google updates, along comes another beast in Google Penguin. A few months ago we did an article outlining how you can protect yourself from Google Panda. Google actually released another update, Panda 3.5, just before, but it was the Penguin update on April 24th that has really caused waves in the Internet community.

How This Affects Your SEO

This newest search engine optimization update is predicted to affect a smaller amount of queries than Panda, but has still caused problems for some sites. The forums are a-buzz with talk of job and income losses, giving a rather bleak outlook and making Google look like the bad guy. Otherwise known as the WebSpam update, Penguin focused on penalizing those using spam and black hat SEO tactics such as cloaking, link schemes and general keyword stuffing. As much as we can’t help hearing from those that were hit, there were some winners with this update as well. It’s important to follow the rules.

SEO Points to Remember:

• Quality. Focus on quality content that readers will want to share, rather than strictly writing for the search engines.
• Unique Content. Make sure your content is unique, not duplicated.
• Rankings Fluctuate. Don’t put all your marketing tactics in one basket. Relying strictly on Google search to make your site successful may not work.  Always have a back-up strategy, so that if there is another update and you get hit (even accidentally), it won’t matter as much.

What You Can Do to Your Site

If your site has been hit with the Google Penguin update, there are a few steps you can take. First, look at your site honestly to see if there is something you could do better. If you believe you have been penalized incorrectly, you can submit a reconsideration request to Google.

WSI (We Simplify the Internet) has been providing all size businesses with results-oriented internet and digital marketing strategies since the mid-90's. So don't hesitate to call the best in the business (at least we think so!). 

If you’re worried about your rankings and how to get your site found, and you're in the Madison and Mount Horeb Wisconsin area and would like to sit down and discuss these issues, you should contact WSI or give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

You probably receive at least one or two emails each day that end up in your spam folder, or unfortunately "sneak" past your spam filter and end up in you regular inbox, from so-called "SEO Experts" touting their search engine optimization expertise and guaranteeing you first place positioning in Google's search results. RUN, don't WALK, from these scammers.

Often times the language in those emails is written in poorly written English, which can be a dead giveaway right there that they are from some over the border country crooning your hard earned marketing dollars. Also watch out for the reputable web development firms and traditional marketing agencies in the area who also claim to be experts in search engine optimization and digital marketing, but they really have no training, experience or certifications to substantiate those statements.

Kimberly Nichols, a well-respected colleague of mine with her own WSI office up in Quebec, Canada, recently wrote one of the better articles on “SEO Guarantee Scams and How to Avoid Them” that I’ve read in a long while.

Unfortunately not all Digital Marketers have your best interest in mind. They typically come in several flavors: skilled, certified and highly trained digital marketing experts, then web developers who typically come with excellent graphic design skills but are not trained in "online marketing" techniques, and finally those with knowledge on how to "fool" the search engines and who get companies in trouble and even on the wrong side of the search engine gods by using their "black-hat" techniques.

Case in point is an article recently published by another esteemed colleague from the WSI network, Chuck Bankoff, who wrote: “Don’t let the “S” in SEO stand for Sucker” which details how an actual client was intentionally misled by a classic “bait-and-switch” with his keywords. The company in question provided results they could easily guarantee simply by making long tail keyword phrases even longer in the monthly analytics reports so they could meet their guarantee.

Legitimate Digital Marketing Experts will educate you as to what their strategy is, and not pull any punches as to what you can and can’t reasonably expect. Naturally you should expect a keyword placement report on a regular basis, but understand that is only part of the equation. It shows progress that the SEO Company should be using for themselves to show trends and progress, not absolutes. More to the point would be the actual analytics reports showing actual traffic and what keywords drove the traffic and where it came from.

Keyword selection should address 4 components:

1. Relevance: Are the phrases that are targeted actually relevant to your business…or just easy to obtain?
2. Popularity: Are the keyword phrases that are being targeted actually searched on in sufficient volume to drive sales.
3. Acceptable levels of competition: Is there a reasonable expectation that first page rankings are obtainable? This is where a legitimate “long tail keyword” strategy comes into play.
4. Monetization: Can you actually make money and grow your business by driving consumers to your website by targeting those phrases? Remember, the objective is increased business, not just more traffic.

Do yourself a favor and read Kimberly’s article. And as she says at the end of that article: “If it looks too good to be true…”

If you are looking to increase the visibility of your brand in the online environment, you should research and locate a certified SEO expert who has been in the business for several years, and can show results from past work they have performed for other clients. Don't be afraid to ask about their training and credentials!

WSI (We Simplify the Internet) has been providing all size businesses with results-oriented internet and digital marketing strategies since the mid-90's. So don't hesitate to call the best in the business (at least we think so!). 

If you're in the Madison and Mount Horeb Wisconsin area and would like to sit down and discuss your online objectives, you should contact WSI or give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

 Search Marketing Partner Checklist

Now that you’ve made the decision to market your business via search engine advertising,

you need to find the best partner, one that can answer YES to all of these questions.

 

Do you put my ads on all search engines without giving preference to your own directory?	WSI Local AdWorks is publisher agnostic, reaching over 98%* of the places people search online. We put your ads on ALL the leading search engines, including Google®, Yahoo!®, Bing™, and Ask®, and many specialized local directories like Local.com®, YellowBot℠, Insider Pages™ and more. Then we dynamically shift your budget to the sites that perform the best.
Do you offer display advertising on the web’s top sites to build my brand?	WSI Local AdWorks offers the broadest range of locally targeted display advertising in the industry with over 20 Display media bundles comprised of the web’s top sites plus a myriad of individual sites such as Facebook, MySpace™ (Fox), and Kelley Blue Book®. Our network of media properties reaches an estimated 90% of the total online audience in the U.S.
Do you offer re-targeting to bring consumers back to my website?	WSI Local AdWorks offers a unique Remarketing feature that remembers consumers who visit your website and later displays your ad on other sites they visit across the web. This reinforces your brand and recaptures interest in your services after they’ve left your site.
Do you provide a local representative to consult with me in person?	WSI Local AdWorks is built on the foundation of local relationships with customers. You work directly with your local Internet Consultant (IC) who meets with you face-to-face to determine your goals, set up your campaign, update you on performance and bring you new solutions to grow your business.
Do you have a team of certified specialists to manage and optimize my campaign?	WSI Internet Consultants are backed by a team of over 100 technology and campaign management experts with certifications from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft® who oversee every aspect of your campaign from provisioning through optimization to ensure the best results.
Will you help me with my online reputation?	WSI Internet Consultants help you assess your reputation on major search engines, directories and review sites such as Google Maps™, Yelp® and more, then create a plan to promote positive reviews.
Do you build my budget based on the unique number of searches for my services?	WSI Internet Consultants create a custom budget for your business based on the number of searches for your services in your target geographic area, the estimated click-through rate for your keywords, and the average cost-per-click on the search engines.
Do you offer real-time reporting with details on conversions including calls, emails, and web forms?	The WSI Local AdWorks platform provides 24/7 online reports with granular details on your true conversions—phone calls, emails, web forms, coupon downloads and more— all of which show the ROI for your campaign.
Do you optimize my campaign daily based on conversions across all keywords on every search engine?	WSI Local AdWorks uses patent-pending technology to optimize your campaign twice daily based on conversions (phone calls, emails, web events) —not clicks—generated across all keywords and search engines.  We squeeze more performance out of your budget with every adjustment.
Have you run thousands of campaigns for local businesses?	The WSI Local AdWorks platform has run over 400,000 search campaigns for local businesses like yours since 2004 and we are currently managing over 55,000,000 keywords for our advertisers. We leverage this vast experience and proprietary data to setup and optimize your campaign for best results.
Do you offer additional services such as organic search engine optimization, social media marketing,  content marketing or landing page conversion optimization to help build my business?	WSI Internet Consultants have advanced certifications and can help assess your website and  entire online environment in order  to identify opportunities for improvement. We offer you a broad array of solutions including a new website or  landing page, organic SEO, fully managed  social media marketing program and eye-catching graphic design for banner ads among  other services.

If you are in the market for a paid search advertising partner, don't hesitate to call the best in the business. We've been managing successful advanced pay-per-click campaigns since 2004, and offer services suitable for small to large-size companies.

Owners of all size businesses should have a digital marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the internet and digital online environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities, you should contact WSI since we have been helping all size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies since the mid-90's.

If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

One of the debates we hear most frequently is whether search engine marketing – both in terms of organic search engine optimization and paid search advertising – are truly more effective and efficient than other forms of marketing are. In other words, do they really give you your money's worth, or is a good ranking on Google similar to a decent ad in the Yellow Pages?

Our answer would be that search engine marketing isn't just more efficient… it's a lot more efficient. In fact, it can bring you better customers, at a lower cost, than just about any other marketing or promotional medium.

Here are just a few of the quick reasons why:

Search engine marketing allows you to catch the right people. Some types of media, like television advertisements, can reach hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people once. But how many of those are interested in what you sell, and how much of that advertising is wasted? By limiting your messages to the people who are actively looking for them, and costing you money only when they click on your ads, the major search engines allow you to market much more efficiently than would be possible elsewhere.

Search engine marketing lets you catch them at the right time. Not only do search engines put you in front of potential customers, they only do it at a moment when they are actively looking for your solutions. No other advertising or promotional platform can help you reach buyers with such precision, which is why the return on investment you get from search engine marketing is hard to match.

Search engine marketing lets you target your message... and change it in an instant. Likewise, when you're trying to find customers through search engines, you have the option of defining customer groups as tightly as you'd like. In some cases, it might make sense to have the same offer for everyone; in others, you want your ads to change along with certain words, phrases, locations, or customer types. Search engine marketing gives you the flexibility for either.

Likewise, if you have ever tried to change your Yellow Pages description, ongoing newspaper ad, or TV spot, then you already know that shifting your message – much less testing different approaches – can be difficult. With search engine marketing, however, you can decide to take your marketing campaigns in a new direction in minutes.

Search engine marketing is scalable. And finally, search engine marketing lets you go as big or small as you want. You aren't tied into expensive, long-term contracts, and you have the option of expanding a successful campaign in the blink of an eye. Given that your business is changing all the time, doesn't it make sense to try the one marketing medium that can shift right along with it?

Owners of all size businesses should have a search engine marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the digital marketing environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies since the mid-90's.

If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

There are a number of reasons that otherwise successful companies don't invest in a good search engine optimization plan. Some are worried they don't have the budget, or that the market is too competitive; others might've tried it years ago, but didn't get the results they were looking for.

Regardless of the reason, however, if you haven't been actively trying to reach the best spots on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your most important keywords, the time to get started is right now.

Why? Because having a strong search engine ranking can literally mean the difference between having thousands of new customers find out about your business every week and watching those same buyers go elsewhere. What's more, high-level SEO tools – like optimized web pages, blog posts, article and press releases, photos, videos, and other digital assets – don't just help you improve your search engine ranking, but enhance the rest of your online marketing, too, by expanding your brand visibility across the web. The more assets you optimize for the right keywords, the more virtual real estate your brand takes up across the web, and the more visible your company becomes for those keyword searches.

In order to realize these benefits for your company, though, it's important that you point your search engine optimization efforts in the right direction. Often, that means investing some of your hard-earned money in your future success.

It's understandable that so many business owners want to cut down on search engine optimization costs, but hiring one of those SEO "companies" that spam you from time to time isn't going to get the job done. You need a professional search engine optimization team, not a fly-by-night operation that's more interested in your money than your success. This is especially important when you consider that the questionable tactics that many of the low-end providers use tend to work for a few weeks or months… only to have your site permanently blacklisted by the major search engines later.

So how do you find the right search engine optimization partner? There are several ways to go about it. The first is to look for the right set of qualifications and certifications. For instance, where have they received their training? A professional SEO consultant will have attended training such as that offered by the Search Engine Academy, which teaches professional-grade SEO tactics. In addition, they should be a member of professionally recognized organizations such as SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization). Does your search engine specialist necessarily need to have those exact credentials? Maybe not, but it can help you find someone who is serious about their craft, and the future of your business.

Another way you can check out a potential SEO provider is by looking at the feedback they've received from other customers. If dozens of businesses like yours are willing to say they're happy with the service and value they’ve received, then there's a good chance you have found someone who will go the extra mile to help you bring in new business. So ask for testimonials or the address of their online customer review page. It’s not only important to find out if they have the necessary digital marketing skills and experience, it is also important to know how their customers feel about “service after the sale”.

Search engine optimization is too important to your company's online marketing success to ignore, or to trust to a firm that doesn't have the right background or experience. A high-quality search engine marketing campaign can do wonders for your bottom line, so get started with the right partner today.

Owners of all size businesses should have a search engine marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the digital marketing environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies since the mid-90's.

If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

 Following is a list of the hot trends going on in the digital marketing industry which business's are subscribing to today. WSI is a full-service provider of digital marketing tools and techniques, and can help businesses of all sizes with any of these opportunities: 

1. Mobile Websites. With the growth of the smart phone technology, all businesses should have a mobile version of their website and it needs to be optimized like a regular website so that it is highly visible to the search engines for your important keywords.


2. Mobile Advertising. Same as paid marketing or pay-per-click, only these textual ads are only displayed when the searcher is using a mobile device, and are linked to specific pages on your mobile website.


3. Mobile Text Messaging. Similar to sending out email newsletters, people are able to “opt-in” to your mobile text messaging campaign to receive information from you about special product promotions, event notifications, coupon downloads, and other opportunities that are only available via their mobile device. You have complete control of your campaigns through the broadcasting tool that we provide.
     
4. 5-star Online Customer Reviews. Putting these on a website and integrating them on to your business Facebook page is a great way to increase conversions. Site visitors are able to visually see how well a company is servicing their customers, and then more quickly make a decision to become a new customer. According to a study, 88% of all online reviews in the U.S. are positive ones, and 70% of consumers trust other consumers opinions, while only 27% trust what the experts have to say.
    
5. Blog posting, article and press release syndication. Integrating a blog with a business’s website does two things. First, it is a great way to communicate with existing or potential customers. Second, the search engines consider it fresh content, and will visit and index more areas of your website because of that. Many of my clients use our professional copywriting service, letting us write the blog posts, post them to the business blog, and then submit them to several online article or press release directories where they will also be picked up by other websites and search engines, and syndicated across the internet. We also hook up the business blog with your Facebook business page if one exists where the post can also syndicate across the social networks.
     
6. Search Engine Marketing. Paid search or pay-per-click advertising and organic search engine optimization is still the number one technique for drawing geo-targeted traffic to a business’s website:
   
   
   1. Organic search engine optimization includes on-page and off-page techniques. Detailed documents that explain what is all included will be provided upon request.
   
   
   2. Pay-per-click targeted search engine advertising is the largest advertising mechanism in the world. Advertising can be locally, regionally or nationally targeted.
             
   
   
7. Display Advertising & Remarketing – A “push” form of advertising also known as “banner” advertising. Your banner ad is displayed on other websites who have opted in to Google’s (or other search engine’s) affiliate program. You pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. Remarketing is a technique where your ads are displayed when people who have previously visited your website through your pay per click campaign visit an affiliate’s website. These ads can be static photo images, or include audio and video.


8. Microsites – small 2-3 page websites organically optimized for specific geographical areas. Great method for local targeting. For example, an auto repair shop may want to target people living in Madison, Fitchburg, Middleton, and Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. It is very difficult to optimize the main website for each of those locations, so the best method is to optimize the main site for the primary target area, and then create microsites and optimize those for the other locations.


9. Click to Call – Conversion tactic used successfully to convert website visitors into leads. Visitors simply click on an image displayed on your website, and the system then connects them to your business. Call lists can be set up so that calls follow the list, and then go to a recorded voice mail if nobody answers.


10. Groupon – Discount online selling to specific geographically targeted audiences, Groupon is the fastest growing company in the world. You negotiate a discounted price with Groupon who then sells your product via broadcast emails they send to their subscribers on a daily basis, and then they collect payment, keep their fee, and then write you a check for the balance.
    
    
11. Email Marketing – Monthly or quarterly newsletters, event notifications, special promotions, etc. This is a great way to stay in touch and nurture existing customers, as well as market to potential clients who subscribe to the newsletter through the business’s website. We offer a full-service option through WSI Integrated Ad Solutions (Inbox 360) as well as services through our partnership with Constant Contact.
    
    
12. Social Media Marketing. This is used in two ways. First, it is a great way to stay or get in touch with existing or potential customers, to monitor what they might be saying about your business, and be a part of that conversation. Second, the social media networks are a good place to market to potential customers without trying to sell them on your business. Use of Facebook and LinkedIn ads, additional pay-per-click advertising methods, are growing quickly. We offer social media services including the very basic setup to a fully managed social marketing strategy.
    

Owners of all size businesses should have an online marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the online environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities or have us review your existing online plan, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies for many years. If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Five minutes. That's roughly the amount of time it takes for an online marketing partner or search engine optimization specialist to recommend that a small business launch a blog to go with their new website. There's a good reason that this advice has become to the web design industry what brushing your teeth and eating an apple a day is to everyone else: It's a great way to bring some fresh attention to your business on the Internet, and to keep the search engines interested in your website as well!

Unfortunately, a lot of companies – both large and small – are going about it the wrong way.

Why? Because too many blogs feature content and articles that are keyword-rich, but also completely generic. In other words, they use a whole lot of words to essentially say nothing. To get real marketing value out of your posts, you have to attract customer interest. That means concentrating on topics that matter to your readers, and going beyond the standard pleasantries of "we work hard" or "we have lower prices" to keep them coming back.

To help you out, here are a few quick ideas for turning your blog into something more than a placeholder for keywords:

Do less writing and more listening. Is there something that most of your buyers have on their mind? If so, make that topic a focus of your blog for a while. Tapping into what's already hot can be a great way to attract web traffic, especially if you can lend a new or different perspective.

Get ahead of the curve. On the same note, you can probably anticipate what your customers are likely to be discussing weeks or months from now. If you see a hot topic coming (and it isn’t confidential), be the first one to bring it up and explain it thoroughly.

Ask for opinions. Good blogging isn't always about what you think, but about what your customers have to say as well. Use your company's blog as a place to bring up interesting topics and watch the responses come in. You won't just get great feedback about your blogging business, but you might even come up with some strong ideas for future posts.

Don't be afraid of controversy. There's nothing wrong with taking an unconventional view, so long as you can back it up with some observations or statistics. Two words of caution apply, however: Don't stir up trouble just for the sake of starting arguments, and stay away from hot button topics like religion or politics unless they happen to coincide with your business – it's not worth it to anger existing and potential buyers.

Turn a great idea into a series. There's no rule that says you have to give away everything you know all at once. If you have a juicy topic that you can write about in detail, why not turn it into a series? Doing so will keep your blog stocked for weeks to come, and give readers a reason to come back time and time again.

Remember the keywords! I mentioned earlier that blogs shouldn't be all about keywords and meaningless information. But don't get me wrong, embedding the right keywords in your blog is still very important because the search engines are going to see your blog as another page on your website, and they are going to index it based on the theme of the blog post. This is just one more way to increase your brand visibility across the web.

And finally, keep the search engines happy. Always remember that what search engines are looking for is fresh, relevant content to share with their customers, who are the folks searching for information through their search engines. Posting to your blog on at least a weekly basis is going to bring those search engines to your web site more frequently, and your business will end up getting listed on the search engine results pages more often than your competitors who aren't yet in the "blogosphere". 

A lot of business owners still aren't blogging because they aren't aware of all of the benefits their business would gain by having one. Or they think that it will just take too much of their time. But the benefits far outweigh those issues. So get out there and start blogging!

You should consider integrating a blog and blog posting process with your website. If you're not quite sure where to start, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally integrated website blogs for many years. If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Years ago, the FDA established a pyramid of foods to remind Americans that they should be eating a mix of fruits, vegetables, grains, etc. And although much of that seems like plain old common sense today, there are times when it's good to be reminded that we all need a little bit of variety if we're going to keep performing at our best

In today's Internet marketing environment, the same could be said of your website. Your website needs a healthy diet if it's going to grow and become more profitable. Here are a few of the things you need to be feeding it on a regular basis:

Interesting, search engine friendly content to attract links and traffic. When it comes to web marketing, there just aren't any substitutes for fresh, interesting content. Why do you think it is that we offer so much free advice on this blog? Besides the fact that it lets us do a good deed and help out business owners in need now and again, it's also a great way to show the major search engines – not to mention our clients – that we've got lots of new ideas to share. Do that often enough, and you're bound to earn a better ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Pay per click advertising to occupy sponsored listing slots. Numerous studies have shown that potential customers who are serious about buying tend to click on search engine advertisements much more frequently than other users do. In fact, they often look to those listings first, since they know they are likely to link directly to the products and information they're trying to find. For that reason, it's a good idea to feed your website a steady helping of paid traffic. Move some of that print ad budget over to online advertising for a few months and try it out. It's not always as cost-effective as organic search engine optimization is in the long-term, but it can keep serious buyers visiting your site every day, and it is much more cost effective than direct mail, newspaper and magazine ads, Yellow Pages, and other traditional advertising.

Social media posts to deepen customer relationships. Not everything on the Internet is about finding new customers; you can often do pretty well just by taking care of the ones you have now. Remember that as you establish and develop networks on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While you may not be able to sell to them as aggressively as you would if you were to sell to one on your company's product pages, you can go a long way toward deepening the relationship you have with them, with the aim of turning them into even better customers over time.
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Looking For A Turn-Key Solution To Manage Your Online Reputation & Leverage Social Media?

 

There are two things business owners and marketing managers need to know about promoting their companies over the Internet: First, that it's now the number one place that customers look for products, recommendations, and even business-to-business vendors. The second thing they have to understand is that there isn't any single way to reach those potential buyers.

For years, companies could find a steady source of new revenue simply by optimizing their sites for the major search engines, executing and refining a profitable pay per click advertising campaign, or circulating articles and press releases that brought attention to their websites. Those are all still good ideas, of course, but none of them is strong enough, on its own, to succeed anymore. The web has simply become too competitive.

That's easy enough to understand, but it doesn't make your job any simpler. There was hardly enough time to add regular posts to the company blog before, and now with trends like social media, online video marketing and  mobile marketing taking up more attention, the whole task of promoting your company online can seem like too much work to even attempt.

There are other alternatives to burying your head in the sand, however. With WSI's ReachCast service, it's becoming easier than ever for organizations of any size to add new, high-quality content every week, and in all the areas that matter most. By solidifying your marketing message and spreading it in a variety of ways, we have found a simple and efficient solution for the business that wants to do it all but doesn't have the time or budget.

Here are just a few of the things you get with WSI ReachCast:

• Submissions and updates to a specialized blog created just for your business, plus to all the major search engines, social media sites and local business directories. No more filling out forms or going through complicated verification checks. We will take care of all of that for you, ensuring that your company gets listed everywhere it needs to.

• Content that's more than keywords. Anyone can generate a set of boring articles, social updates, and online videos. ReachCast gives you access to top tier creative teams that devise the kind of content that puts your business in the right light to get spread around your industry on its own. In fact, our base package includes professional copy writing and syndication of 8 articles per month.

• Online reputation monitoring and management. What are customers, competitors, and vendors saying about you? Watching the web for any accurate and fraudulent information is important in this day and age when a single bad review, showing up in search engine results, can cost you hundreds of future sales. And guess what, with the WSI ReachCast service, we not only monitor your online customer reputation, we also make you aware of any negative comments, and we re-promote the positive ones!

• Comprehensive social media marketing. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube already have hundreds of millions of members, and they are gaining steam every day. There's never been a better time to start creating and strengthening relationships via social media sites. With WSI Reach Cast, we create and help you manage your presence on these social media sites.

If you're tired of watching opportunities to take advantage of Internet marketing go by, try WSI's ReachCast today. It's a great way to make sure that new customers can find you online, and that they hear the right things when they do find you.

Call us today at (866) 531-1686, or submit our request form.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

What Comes First, Web Design or an Online Marketing Plan?

Very frequently, we have new clients come to us because – usually after studying a competitor's website – they have decided that it's time for their company to have a new website. There aren't many things the new website can't do for your company, and dozens of ways it can boost your profits, online or off. Still, a lot of these folks have it all backward...

That's because your online marketing plan is the most important piece of your Internet success. You should have one in place even before you start the design of your company's new website.

Although that's not the way a lot of people handle things, it makes sense when you stop to think about it. Ultimately, the goal of your company's website should be to attract more customers. Sometimes, as part of that process, you find that a new or upgraded design makes sense, but why begin with anything other than the aim of finding more business? By focusing your efforts on what matters most to your company, it becomes much easier to decide what kind of website you need, which features you should pay for, etc.

Here are a few ideas you should keep in mind while you start this process:

Even great websites need customers. In order to turn visitors into customers, you have to have a steady flow of visitors to start with. Make sure that search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing are all integrated in your online vision. Otherwise, you could end up with the masterpiece that's never seen by anyone.

What works for some other business may or may not work as well for you. Trying to copy a competitor can be dangerous, and taking advice from a well-meaning friend or colleague can sometimes be just as bad. Think of each idea you hear as it relates to your own company. Different strategies work differently across industries, so take what works for you and discard the rest.

There's one question that matters for every tool, feature, and application you consider. That question is: "How will this help me earn more money, or pay less than I'm paying now?" If it can’t do one of those two things, then why is it worth anything to your company? There might be very rare situations where you'd consider investing in something that won't show a clear return on investment, but throw in too many of them and you have the prescription for a few headaches, a lot of lost profits, and more than a little bit of regret.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255