by Jonathan Marshall

Today the JTCG Blog features Manoj Jasra, current director of Internet Marketing Strategies at Shaw Communications Inc. Jasra discusses the importance of incorporating Google analytics into not only your search engine marketing campaign, but your entire website development strategy from the start. It’s VERY important to understand the correct way to use the statistics from your analytics reports to make decisions about your website. In today’s heavy digital lifestyle, these decisions will have a direct impact on your business. Check out what this seasoned SEO Professional has to say in the video below.

By Les Kollegian, Creative Director

I would say on average, we meet with two-three potential new clients a week. The range of businesses can be from start-ups to fortune 500 companies. Frankly, there are benefits to both types of businesses. For start-ups, it is the ability to create a brand and message from the ground up. We love that work! To an artist, it’s truly a blank canvas that we can attack with any medium. As well, it’s the ability to create a partnership. I always tell our new clients that we have a vested interest in building their business. If they make money, they will keep us working and in return, give money back to us. Let’s be honest… I LOVE what I do but I am not in this for my health. I want to build my business just like everyone else so one day I can relax and not work ALL THE TIME.

When we meet with larger companies or established businesses that are looking for a new look, web design or brand strategy, it’s a different job. We have to work with what current brand equity they have and in most cases, make suggestions for changes that will enhance the brand and create new perceptions without a radical change in overall design.

Okay…so let me get to my point. I know you’re waiting. Everyone who walks through our front door comes in for a reason. They were either referred to us by another business that had a project completed successfully by Jacob Tyler OR they found us on Google due to our stellar search engine optimization and like our portfolio. The bottom line is they believe we do great work and we can help them. However, it never ceases to amaze me how many of the executives and entrepreneurs I meet want an award winning campaign as quickly as possible (i.e., tomorrow) on an exceptionally tight budget. It doesn’t work like that. Both start-up businesses and large companies are culprits of this practice. Thus I always tell them… Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick Two. I am not trying to be arrogant when I say this and I ask them to turn it around as if I was their client. For example, if my client was a doctor and I needed surgery to save my life ASAP, would I ask him for a discount? Okay…that may be a little extraordinary of an example, but let’s make it easier to understand. If I ask someone for a service like installing new countertops and appliances in my kitchen that I need in time for an event that requires extra work and overtime, why would I get a discount? It’s my house so of course it has to be an excellent job and I am requesting that it be done fast, so it would be pushing the envelope to ask for it cheap… right?

I’ll sum this up as I think I am starting to babble and vent a little too much here. Here goes:

If your job needs to be done quickly and in a fashion that will impress whoever will be viewing the result, it will not be inexpensive (or cheap). We love to work quickly and create award winning projects, that’s for sure but we can’t give discounts in this situation.

If your job needs to be done inexpensively and very fast, there is a good chance it will not be as good as you may want as we won’t be able to put the research and resources into it to make it as successful as possible. Frankly, we only do this for “quick and dirty” projects to show proof of concept.

If your job needs to be an award winner on a tight budget, it’s not going to get done fast. Oh, we’ll get it done and it will be great, but we’ll have to do it on OUR time since our resources may be going to other projects with different priorities.

No project is too big or too small for our firm. We take on every task as if it was our most important project. When you work with us, think of how you would charge YOUR clients or customers and how you would want to be treated during any transaction.

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a certain service or product, use in order to gain a lot of exposure and better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are not the same. As suggested by the names, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, deals more with how a website is marketed to gain exposure in the different search engines available on the internet, while SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, deals with how the web creators develop and re-develop the content, quality and structure of their entire websites so that whenever an internet user types in a particular word in the search tab, their websites have a better chance of appearing on the first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

Now, to make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are more effective when used together. Since the main function of SEM is to gain more exposure for a website, the more common means for attraction are online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that can catch the eye of the internet user. SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click) and paid inclusion to further push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is also an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories if only to inform them of the website’s existence. All this is carried out to ensure the popularity of a website.

So how does SEO come together with SEM? Well, despite having all the advertisements provided by SEM, it is truly the SEO that allows the internet user to easily and conveniently find what he is looking for. Since the function of SEO is to gain a better ranking in the SERPS, the web creator has to constantly optimize his website in order to cater to the needs of the internet user and to make it easier for spiders or web crawlers to judge whether the website’s content is relevant to the word/s being searched. Optimization is not a simple and easy task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.) so as to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the internet user. Still, when done properly, not only does SEO help a website become more useful and therefore, more often visited by the internet user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s chances of gaining a better rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet users type in whenever they search for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an ad that is triggered by a particular word or context used by an internet user. Once a particular word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in the same way. The web creator inputs a particular Meta tag (or keyword) in his html that he believes many internet users will use when searching for information, information which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, it all boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator must be discerning enough to know what the internet users need and want, and at the same time he must have the real passion to inform and provide the internet users with the right service and product.

Search Engine Optimization San Diego

The never ending quest for web sites to rank higher and higher in search engine results pages has resulted in a corresponding development of entire careers that support this goal. For a number of years now, search engine marketing has been a viable career option for many thousands of people all over the world. In spite of its popularity however, there are many people who still do not know what search engine marketing is all about. Even those who have been doing it for many years may still not know all the techniques that make for highly effective search engine marketing.

If you are interested in starting a career in search engine marketing, or if you are already in the business and are looking for ways to increase and improve your current capabilities, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. The following tips will not only improve your web site’s presence in the various search engine results pages, they will also help make your web sites achieve a level of credibility that is so important in this age of bogus web sites that focus too much on search engine optimization at the expense of content. These are precisely the types of web pages will ultimately turn away the audiences that you are trying to draw in.

The most important thing that you should do is to make sure that your web sites conform to any standard requirements. Of all the millions of users on the Internet today, not everyone uses the same browser or even the same operating systems on their computers. Remember that search engine marketing is all about pulling in your audience and if your website cannot be viewed, that could be a potentially huge segment of your market that you are missing out on. The Internet audiences of today can be a very unforgiving lot, and if you cannot deliver the content that they seek when they need it, they will most likely just turn elsewhere. Make sure that every single image or block of text on your web site is viewable over a wide range of browsers and computer operating systems. The only way to do this is of course by testing them extensively before you place them online.

Stick to proven ethical techniques in your goal of attaining high search engine results page rankings. While utilizing methods such as link farms and keyword spamming will possibly get you favorable rankings at the outset, these techniques are frowned upon by search engines and your web sites will likely be booted off eventually. When you use traditional methods to get high search engine rankings, it may take much longer before you can see appreciable results-perhaps weeks or even months-but using them will give you the advantage of increasing your credibility and help give your web sites a reputation as a reliable authority in that particular field.

All the same, while traditional and time proven methods are the best way to go, you should also strive to keep updated on new techniques that keep your search engine marketing efforts current and competitive.

Spend a lot of time working on your copy. This aspect cannot be emphasized enough. Copy of course translates directly into content and that is after all what you are here to provide. For your particular target audience, make sure that you provide a number of different articles, all of them informative and relevant. Avoid resorting to fluff or content that relies heavily on keywords without offering much actual substance. A good rule of thumb is to have at least one 200 world article on each of your web site’s pages. This will give the various search engine spiders enough content to index.

It is important to choose a theme for your web site and stick to it. This means that every aspect of your web site should support the theme that you have chosen and reflect that theme adequately. This goes for elements such as your logo, your site design and even such things as color, which you may not have thought to focus on at all. Of course content is a key as we have already mentioned earlier, and the liberal use of effective and relevant keywords will go a long way in contributing to your web sites effectiveness.

Finally, the other side of the coin to your search engine marketing career is your client. At certain points in your career, you have to stop focusing on sales and acquiring new clients and instead keep your current client’s success in mind. Do everything you can possibly do in your power to help ensure the success of your clients and you just may end up building some long term business relationships in what will hopefully be a personally and financially rewarding search engine marketing career.