So I haven’t had a chance to write much about SEO over the last few days as we’ve signed on 5 new clients! I however felt compelled to write today even though I’m exhausted and my brain is SEO Kingston MUSH.

One of the absolutely intoxicating things about working on a client’s campaign is the constant tinkering. I’m admittedly a tinkerer. I enjoy making something better by applying my craft, my thought, my discipline. I’m able to make something improve and provide greater value to its owner (my client). But here’s the crux of it. There’s never an end and I’m constantly tweaking. It’s a like a fractal with no end or a finish line that keeps moving just far enough out of reach. So I’m not crazy when I say…..

FirstPage’s homepage is about go through another major transformation, no less than 5 months into its birth. The reason is simple – I can make it better. In fact I believe I can make it significantly better. I think this will take us a solid 2 months to create, but I want end product to exemplify the power of Local SEO.

Local SEO is truly married to the future of business websites. In an increasingly competitive market, search engines are becoming the battle ground to reach new clients and provide greater value to existing ones. I believe I’m doing what any good business owner would do if they have an opportunity to help their business grow by choosing to be better.

I constantly comment about how inexact a science Kingston SEO can be and I was again reminded about this over the past week. On Tuesday, we attempted to play with some titles for a website to help in increasing rank for a specific term. To my shock and surprise our change actually dropped the page rankings off fairly dramatically.

So what happens next? Well, like any good science experiment you reverse your last change and you begin to analyze the data.

From what I can tell, it seems that the alteration not only caused a cascading structure issue, but it was simply too dramatic a change without the necessary content to back up such a claim. Though I’m not afraid to make mistakes because again, I realize the fickle nature of search algorithms, it doesn’t mean I like be wrong with a page I optimize. Kingston SEO or Local SEO can be extremely infuriating at times. SEO Kingston can be a humbling processess where doubts can quickly creep in and devastate the morale of the team. The key to any successful campaign is to remain even keel during the exciting highs and nauseating lows. I’m confident that we can reverse course and have another crack at the can. In the interim, we can prepare a better set of steps to implement the desired change and provide the necessary supporting content. Although we’ve set back our process by a couple weeks, it looks as though we’ve trimmed some backend campaign time by creating stronger content – a nice by product and a net difference of zero lost time.

Learn more about How SEO Works if you’re not sure how you can inject your business with new clients.

Kingston SEO can’t part water. It can’t turn water into wine. However, through metered hard work, Kingston SEO can get your business on the First Page of Google.

I was asked today by a client, “How much money are you going to make me?”
I responded, “It depends on staff.”

I was hoping to underline that our job as SEO professionals is to help businesses with their website goals. There’s no doubt that more traffic to your site creates greater exposure. But does exposure result in sales? This issue affects the entire SEO industry and I’m going to make it infinitely clear:

Delivering visitors doesn’t mean delivering profits.

It’s a two way street in that I can only control your web presence. I can’t control your staff and how they interact with new clients in person. I can’t control rude phone manners. Kingston SEO can’t control a lot of things.

Disjointed blog post? Yes. A little ‘ranty’? Yes.
I feel better.

Funny how things work out. Yesterday, I post this blog about PPC and some of my general concerns. Perhaps I used stronger language than ‘concern’ AND perhaps I used the term ‘waste’, but I do believe PPC has a specific purpose. The problem is that Kingston SEO industry (as well as the industry as whole) is often leading people down this path instead of a more broad and website SEO focused approach.

Anyway, today we signed up a new client because as he put it, “I’m tired of wasting money with Adwords. I’ve spent $20,000 and I have nothing to show for it”. This basically puts into perspective how adwords can be terribly misleading and ineffective to local businesses.

Not only do I provide SEO services, but I’m actually a small business owner as well. I look for opportunities to grow my business effectively, and efficiently. I try to find cost effective methods to give my agency a competitive advantage over other companies. So when I say Adwords/PPC is ineffective, I say this from BOTH an Kingston SEO standpoint AND as a business owner. I simply can’t justify the costs.

At one point in my entrepreneurial adventure with one of my first companies, I found that I was paying in EXCESS of $10,000 a YEAR on YellowPages advertising. Would I do that now? Absolutely not. Would I do it again if the circumstances were right? Absolutely. You see, YellowPages at that juncture was still the preferred method for consumers. So circumstances always dictate viability.

Does Adwords have a purpose. YES. Does it have a purpose locally? YES. Would I recommend it for the vast majority of small business owners I deal with? Absolutely NOT. Put your marketing investment into Kingston SEO if you’re trying to become dominate in your industry in Kingston. Not only will your profits increase because of increased traffic, but your website will have intrinsic domain value that can’t be found through paper advertising.

By following the link, you can learn more about our Kingston SEO Services.

It’s understandable that a large company looking to attract a national audience may require PPC management as reaching millions rather than thousands of new clients result in a much more competitive market. Any advantage could boost sales significantly so an investment in PPC is worth looking at.

However, as Google continues to refines Local SEO further, the value of PPC management locally continues to decrease.

When looking for a plumber, trade, or service in any given city, it’s clear that there is a limited amount of supply which is usually fairly proportional to the demand for that respective city.

Quick economics 101 side note: Classic economic theory dictates that if a city can support a thousand plumbers or any given number of businesses, then they probably would already exist – demand naturally brings supply into balance. That is, there’s only going to be enough businesses in that given region to support a healthy competitive balance. If there are too many plumbers and not enough demand, then many plumbing businesses will go out of business until the right amount of plumbers can be supported. If there are too little plumbing companies, then you’ll see more new companies entering the market to meet the demand.

You will not see thousands of plumbers available in Kingston, but instead you can only find a handful of quality businesses due to ‘natural business selection’. So from an SEO standpoint, a plumbing business is only competing with a few companies due to regional selection. When you compare the amount of money a PPC campaign would cost then compare it to what an SEO compaign would cost that doesn’t utilize PPC, you’ll quickly find that the value proposition of PPC is very poor. Why try to attract a PPC client, when for less money, you can rank on the First Page AND get that same client? Studies have shown that the majority (vast) simply ignore side and top panel adverts as they realize the true value of what they’re searching for falls squarely on the First Page of a Google.

Does this mean PPC has no value? Of course not. Google generates BILLIONS of dollars through PPC and there’s a clear specific use for this. But the truth of the matter is that PPC should only be used for SELECT cases whereas Website SEO can be used for virtually any campaign.

As I constantly monitor changes to Mr.Google and how he works his magic, I recently read this post here.

In this post, Google has tweaked their algorithm so that “freshness” would impact upto 35% of all searches (this translates to almost 3X what was impacted by Panda 1.0). Such a change to their code affects time-sensitive items such as “Breaking News” alerts or something that is being heavily trended on the net. I can’t really see the value as to how this affects local businesses as most of their content remain fairly static. Coupled with our focus on local searches, and it is apparent that this tweak only affects a very small part of our client base.

What fascinates me is that perhaps this increase in impact would allow black-hat methods to route general traffic to a website with local significance.

Here’s an example:

Say I have a blogging site that is commenting on “Breaking News” such as a royal wedding. If they were marrying today, I could probably blog about how beautiful the bride looks with links and images. Seeing that this would probably be a heavily trended item on the net, I might get some significant national exposure. However I could also then implant a link to a local gown maker who can similarly create such a dress. Although the topics are related, it’s clear from a national level that a bride would probably be better served to buy her dress locally and not from my client.

With any Google change, things get murkier before things get clear. Time will tell how significant (or insignificant) this most recent tweak will be.

For more information on how we can help your business, visit our SEO services page or packages page.

SEO Kingston. What does it mean? Well, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of ensuring a website’s goal of attracting new clients through search engines is achieved. Kingston, is simply the city I reside in. So SEO Kingston is simply the process of optimizing websites for those residing in Kingston so that clients can quickly and easily find them.

A really important concept businesses don’t seem to understand is that unlike the yellowpages, search engines reward websites that have quality content. This might seem overly simplistic, but content is the key to allowing clients to find you through search engines. What good is a website, if a client can’t find you? But more importantly, what good is a website if search engines (Google) don’t understand you?

We help businesses by properly building strong content that aligns with their website goals. In time, their website begins to rank gradually and climb up pages until they reach the summit (First Page). As we continue to help more clients navigate their way through the maze of SEO Kingston, we continue to build on our experiences and SEO techniques. With Google constantly changing their search mechanics, don’t you want a company who can confidently say they can get you to the First Page? We can do just that.

An update to Google Places has taken hold over the last week which in it of itself isn’t a big deal, but I guess my anxiety typically increases when Google tweaks things because it can domino in areas you never expected.

Of note, it seems that Google Places algorithm is now displaying defaulted Grey place icons that change to red on mouse over as well as some other cosmetic changes. But the alteration also appears to have had an immediate impact (and ironic) effect on SEO companies in Kingston. As it is my business to ‘watch’ keywords pertaining to SEO, a new website from the proverbial left field and has EXCLUSIVELY snatched the sole Google Place blended result.

Perhaps I need a new job.

See, told you, dominos.

Searching Engine Optimization (SEO) is like the classic tale between the tortise and the hare where the much slower tortise wins in a race where the hare was heavily favoured. The moral? Slow and steady win the race.

There are no shortcuts to SEO. No magic pill or silver bullet. Search Engine Optimization is a painstaking process that takes time and patience to get quality results. Like a marathon runner spending thousands of hours on the track or a sculpter shaping beauty from clay, we do this for love (It helps that we’re good at it too). Our talent and passion can help Kingston businesses grow.

Learn more about Kingston SEO services.

SEO professionals were abuzz with a recent update to Google’s search algorithm, Panda. Some of our clients received continued success whereas others experienced a drop in their rankings. Why did this happen?

As Google refines their searching processes, our job is to continue to monitor and refine our client’s respective campaigns. Although a drop may seem catastrophic, this behavior is very normal as SEO is an exact science. I typically relay the analogy of travelling on the 401 – Sometimes you’ll hit road work, bad weather, or even a accident, but the destination is the most important thing to keep in sight. Our search engine optimization techniques ensure you travel from point A-B with the least amount of turbulence and the greatest amount of return on your investment.

We get you ranked on the first page of Google. SEO Kingston