In an era where technology advances at lightning speed and pop culture icons come and go nearly as fast, it’s amazing how resolutions continue to focus on the same themes. The wish to improve in certain areas seems nearly universal.

To get a countdown of the top ten New Year’s resolutions for 2012, check out this cool presentation by Empowered Presentations.

Which of these appear on your New Year’s resolution list? What resolutions of yours don’t appear on the list – and might in fact be unique to you?

From the top ten New Year’s resolutions list for 2012, it’s number 8 that resonates with us at The Search Guru: helping others in their dreams.

According to this presentation, only 3% of people ever reach their goals . . . wow. That’s not enough!

WebMD has a great article on reaching goals – and it’s not limited to health-related goals. So, we recommend that you read that article for useful insight.

If your goals include increasing online visibility, site traffic, sales and conversions – then consider The Search Guru as your search engine optimization consultant.

Take a look at the testimonials found on the left side of the home page – and these are just some of the clients who we have helped to reach their goals.

So, in 2012:

• Dream big
• Commit yourself to achieving that dream
• Choose The Search Guru as your search engine optimization consultant

It’s that time of year – the time for spring cleaning – and that concept applies, even when you’re searching for an organic search engine optimization company. Before choosing the best company for your needs:

1. Toss out emails from any company that guarantees #1 rankings in Google. There is no company that can guarantee that prize. And, if you’ve still got some emails in your inbox offering to submit your site to thousands of search engines – or to quickly get your site thousands of inbound links – toss those ones out, too.

2. If you talk to a search engine optimization company and their strategy includes cranking out large amounts of content that doesn’t provide much in-depth information, then you’ll want to remove that company from your list, as well. A recent Google algorithm change has downgraded the rankings of nearly 12% of URLs, pointing out that shallow content was a significant factor. Choose a search company that can support you in the creation of useful web content writing that isn’t found in multiple other places online.

3. If you are ready to contract for organic search engine optimization services, be sure to ask about how online reputation management fits into the overall strategy. It can be futile to push to boost rankings and targeted traffic if the first search engine results page listings that potential customers see about your company are unfair negative reviews. If a search company doesn’t have a solid plan for your online reputation management, scrub them from your list of possibilities.

We hope that you’ll contact The Search Guru to take advantage of a free 30-minute consultation about your organic search engine optimization needs!

The Search Guru can help you to create content that both your human site visitors and the search engine spiders love. Also ask us about effective online reputation management techniques that really work.

Here at The Search Guru we know how frustrating it can be when you’ve got a great product and/or service to offer, yet prospective customers just aren’t finding your site. Enter Tech Services!

The Search Guru SEO experts provide many technical services that can boost your rankings and targeted traffic – turning prospects into conversions and sales! Here are just a few of the products we offer:

• Complete Website Analysis The first step towards increasing targeted traffic is an in-depth website analysis. What obstacles are preventing searchers from finding your site rather than your competitors’ sites? This powerful tool is invaluable to your site’s success.
• Competitive Intelligence Review Similar to the Complete Website Analysis, our Competitive Intelligence Review examines your top two competing sites to determine what they’re doing right – gathering strategies you can capitalize on! – and what they’re doing wrong, to arm you with the knowledge you need to edge out the competition.
• Meta Tag Templates A necessity for large sites, this product ensures that all of your site’s pages will contain unique and compelling title tags and meta description tags. Meta tag template implementation lifts rankings and helps your site stand out in the search results to get the click!
• Page Templates Page templates give you the power to bake search engine optimization into your site’s existing structure, or to build an SEO-friendly site right from the start. Learn how to infuse your site with keyword optimization, employ proper use of H tags, and much more.

Take your site to the next level by requesting your FREE gift session from the SEO experts: The Search Guru Technical Services team!

You know the symptoms. Your website traffic is sluggish – and nothing that you’ve tried has boosted its health. At The Search Guru, our SEO experts have helped countless companies – many of them just like yours – diagnose what’s ailing their websites and then ramp up their effectiveness, through a combination of:

• a thorough, personalized website analysis, where we review the backend of your website, its content, keyword strategy, internal linking structure and more; our social media services team will also review the effectiveness of your social media strategy
• detailed recommendations for your site, based on the results of our website analysis, designed to increase targeted traffic, conversions and sales
• a competitive intelligence report on two of your fiercest online competitors, where we let you know what they’re doing wrong and what they’re doing right – from a technical perspective, a content and keyword perspective and a social media services perspective
• detailed recommendations for your site, based on the results of our competitive intelligence services, so that you can take advantage of the opportunities that they’re missing out on

Wondering how much information you’ll get from a website analysis from The Search Guru? You’ll find clear and actionable info, with sections focusing on:

• crawl status for search engine spiders
• index analysis and recommendations
• in-depth code review
• optimization tag review
• navigation assessment
• site visibility
• link popularity
• inclusion in major directories
• and much, much more

Contact us about our site analysis and competitive intelligence services today!

Find more helpful info about supercharging your website by subscribing to the FREE monthly e-newsletter by The Search Guru.

Sign up for the e-newsletter by the SEO experts and receive a free 14-page whitepaper. Each issue contains two articles chock full of tips and strategies to increase targeted traffic to your website – and boost sales – along with answers to commonly asked questions and more.

Let’s say that you sell 20 products online, with each one falling into one of two categories: Product Type A and Product Type B. You’ve created a unique page for each of your products, which is terrific, but what’s the next step?

The next step is to create a landing page for Product Type A, with links to each of the ten products in this category, and a landing page for Product Type B, with links to each of the ten products in that category.

This internal linking strategy will accomplish two goals:

• make it easier for human site visitors to find the products they need
• make it easier for the search engine spiders to index the content and return these URLs in response to relevant search queries

The goals of SEO copywriting are to draw targeted traffic to your web site and to make it easy for site visitors to make their purchases.

So, when deciding how to create a landing page for your site – let’s say for the Product Type A page, as an example – consider this basic formula:

• Organic SEO tip # 1: Use strong, category-level keyphrases about type A products in your title tag, main headlines, and text in the opening and closing paragraphs of your landing page
• Organic SEO tip # 2: Provide a compelling overview of your relevant type A products in your opening paragraph, describing general benefits to the end users
• Organic SEO tip # 3: In the middle part of the page, link to each one of the relevant type A products, providing site visitors with a brief description of the benefits of these products
• Organic SEO tip # 4: End this page with a persuasive paragraph that summarizes why site visitors need type A products now

Here are some landing page examples from The Search Guru site and from our clients:

• SEO services
• Skateboard protective gear
• Cosmetic dentistry

Contact The Search Guru for your organic landing page SEO copywriting services today!

Or, talk to us about specialized SEO copywriting training so that you can discover more about how to create a landing page for your company’s web site – or you can order the e-book that’s jam packed with SEO tips and strategies, The Search Guru’s Practical Guide to Successful Organic Search Engine Marketing.

Search engine marketing definition: SEM is the art and science of optimizing a site so that it earns more traffic from the search engines. A search engine is a website, such as Google.com, Yahoo.com or Live.com (MSN), that helps you find other websites. SEM arenas include:

• Organic or natural optimization : Practiced by addressing both internal and external elements of a website to make it and its contents highly relevant for search engines and human prospects. Typically, the higher a site ranks in the organic listings, the more prospects will see and visit that site.
• Paid placement or Pay Per Click Services (PPC) : An auction-based pricing model where advertisers bid on keywords their target markets are likely to use as search terms when looking for a product, service or information. With pay per click services, advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad to visit their website.
• Paid Inclusion : A product where the search engines charge fees to include a website or portion of a website in their search index, or inventory of websites. This paid inclusion product is provided by most search engine companies with the exception of Google.

Why do you need search engine marketing services?

• Over 9 billion searches were performed via search engines in the US in 2007.
• Nearly 80% of people searching for information online type phrases into a search engine’s search box. Google alone fields over 91 million searches – per day! How much of that traffic do you want?
• In approximately 50% of online searches, your prospect selects a company found on the first or second search engine results pages (SERPs). So, if your company is not found in the first 10 to 20 results, you’ve already lost out on at least 50% of your potential business – while your competitors, who are highly ranked, are enjoying a lion’s share of the traffic.
• Online sales are growing by at least 20% compared to the same time last year, with expectations of over $184 billion for 2008.
• Bottom line – when a prospect performs a search via a search engine, do they find you or a competitor? Search engine marketing services are your ticket to getting found.

How do you make search engine marketing services work for you?

Key elements for any successful effort with search engine marketing services include:

1. Keyphrase Research : To successfully drive targeted traffic to your web site, you and your customer must speak the exact same language. Keyphrase research uncovers the phrases your prospects are typing into the search boxes on search engines.
2. Copyediting / Copywriting : Once you’ve discovered the keyphrases that your prospects are using, then those keyphrases are worked into the text on your web pages in a way that will work for both the search engines and your human prospects.

• Popularity / Inbound Link Building Services : Solicit and earn valuable inbound links, as this is an indication to Google that your site is popular, relevant and valued by others, and use link building services to help the search engines understand better where your site fits into the web and what you offer.
• Buzz Marketing: Creating positive buzz about your company, executives and products will not only drive traffic and inbound links, but it will help to fill up the SERPs with positive items, pushing down any negative listings, and supporting your Online Reputation Management (ORM). It’s important to make sure that, when prospective partners, clients and customers search on your brand and key people and products, you put your best face forward – and buzz marketing can help you do just that.
• Best Practices Web Development & Architecture: Make sure your website is built in a way that makes it possible and easy for the search engines to quickly find, index and understand your content.
• Search Engine Marketing Reporting for Accountability: Conduct baseline then regular search engine marketing reporting, so that you can see the impact of the search engine marketing services and show positive ROI within your business.

And don’t forget… While it is critical to rank well with the search engines, you must never forget it is the human customer that matters – search engines don’t buy your products, services or click on your advertisements; people do. Search engine marketing services is an umbrella term for the myriad of strategies, tools and techniques that help you meet your business objectives and bring targeted visitors to your website. A personalized blend of search engine marketing services and strategies is necessary to achieve your online goals and overall business objectives.

Rebecca Koluder will be providing numerous search engine optimization services, including assisting TSG clients with their pay per click management (PPC management). She will also be providing written reports to clients that highlight the progress of their organic SEO campaigns.

Koluder has worked in the telecommunications field for the past ten years, focusing on project management, regulatory management and quality assurance, along with financial analysis and regulatory compliance. Most recently, she was a quality rater for Google.

Experienced Google Quality Rater

Overall, Koluder says, being a quality rater means that she supported the “high quality of the user experience with Google. Quality raters have the unique responsibility of being the ‘human intervention’ within Google search. We helped determine if web sites were using deceptive techniques to ‘fool the system’ to have their site displayed as a valid search result.”

“It was quite interesting,” she adds, “to see the variety of lengths some sites went to in order to attempt to fool the system. As the use of the Internet continues to grow, companies realize the increasing importance of a strong Internet presence and, unfortunately, some are willing to forgo best practices in order to achieve the desired search placement.”

Transition to Search Engine Optimization Company

Koluder made the decision to join the expert SEO team at The Search Guru in April 2008. She made that decision because, “as more and more people turn to the Internet for their information, it is increasingly important that companies use expert and ethical SEO techniques to optimize their sites’ performances, and utilize all of the white hat tools available in order to promote the goods and services offered.”

Her favorite part of the job is helping TSG meet the needs of our clients through ethical expert SEO practices.

More about Rebecca

“I have been married for nearly eight years, and we have two wonderful sons. I am a certified body sculpting instructor, and enjoy teaching classes, exploring with my family, and spending time outdoors. Our oldest son was born with a heart defect, and we have been actively involved with the American Heart Association to raise money for the awareness and treatment of Congenital Heart Defects.”

Welcome, Aboard!

Professional search engine optimization results: increase targeted traffic to your web site and ramp up online conversions.

Some people like to know the ins and outs of all the SEO techniques in a winning strategy, while others only want to hear about the results. Either approach is fine – but if you are in the second group, then take a look at our search engine optimization case studies. By checking out these success stories, you can see that the proof is in the pudding – and the cash is in our clients’ registers!

Search engine optimization case studies reveal the power of expert SEO tools and strategies.

An online retailer of office furniture saw an astounding 588% increase in online conversions and sales in just four months of working with The Search Guru. Maybe you want to read the specific strategy used or maybe you just want to hear the results:

• the retailer now has top-ten positions for more than 20 different, highly relevant keywords,
• visibility (number of pages) in the major search engines has increased 60%, giving the client more opportunities for traffic and their
• overall positioning in the major search engines has increased 307%.

Hard to argue with those professional search engine optimization results! We hate to see you kick yourself over a missed opportunity to increase targeted traffic to your web site and boost online conversions, so email us or call 440.306.2418 now and let’s get growing.

Professional SEO techniques guide potential customers to your web site and lift you above your online competition.

Think of professional search engine optimization as a modern day version of Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs as navigational tools. There are countless web sites out there and SEO experts make the trail between your potential customer’s needs and wants and your products and services as straight and clear cut as possible. Hansel used the tools available to him – breadcrumbs and white pebbles – while we use our own sets of tools, including:

• keyword research
• SEO copywriting
• link exchange management, including one way links and foundation niche directories
• and much more

Over the next few months, we’ll take the mystery out of these tools and keep you up to date with cutting edge SEO news.

Wait a minute! How can you compare professional SEO tools to Hansel’s breadcrumbs and white pebbles?

Good question! And, really, it’s simple:

• keyword research lets us know what words potential buyers use to find your product so
• these keywords let us know which verbal breadcrumbs to place on the web;
• effective SEO copywriting lets search engines such as Google see the breadcrumbs and
• boost your rankings on the search engine results pages so that
• the breadcrumb trails are readily visible to your customers
• while link exchange management increases the places where this path can be followed.

Call us at 440-306-2418 or email us today for more information about how your potential customers can find you.

Here’s why you need a professional search engine optimization company to drive targeted traffic to your website.

You’re so good at Internet searching that you’ve stopped thinking about how it works. By now, Googling is as familiar to you as flipping through the yellow pages – and, any time that you’ve become so proficient at a skill, it’s good to occasionally slow down and mull over the process.

An overwhelming percentage of people navigate the web for business reasons and an effective search engine company ramps up the odds that they’ll select your company.

Did you know that:

• more than 75% of web users count on search engines to find resources,
• with 70% of all e-commerce transactions occurring from an online search?

People (read: your potential customers!) are busy and at least half of them quickly narrow down their choices to the top organic search results, (those that appear on the first page or two of search engine results, rather than as a paid ad).

Rise above your online competition through professional SEO techniques.

Google, the most popular search engine by far, lists eight billion pages. A professional search engine optimization company helps your potential clients sift through them to find just the products and services that they need – and that you offer. In future postings, we’ll share just how professional SEO techniques, such as keyword research, directory submission and SEO copywriting, make that happen.