This client needed better online marketing for their inventory. They are both a trailer and vehicle dealer and the online marketing for their trailers needed improvement. We separated and added a new domain for the trailer side of their business allowing for more specific marketing for their trailers. We were able to expand their relevant keywords and increase their lead generation for their trailers.

Why is natural search engine placement a top priority? It’s to save you money in the long run. Think about it. Why do you have a site? You have a website to increase business. If your site cannot be found, it is not increasing your business, no matter how great your site looks. If your website is built in flash with amazing graphics, or your content is embedded inside the graphics, you may have a great looking site that no one will see, because search engines can’t find it naturally.

If you’re looking to be found online feel free to ask us how.

Here’s my point. Say you have this beautiful site that the search engines can’t find because all of your content is embedded in your graphics. Now how do people find you? They find you by already knowing your business name or through your traditional marketing efforts of your website address. You pay to have your business cards printed with your web address; you pay to put ads that include your web address in the paper, in magazines, on TV, on radio, and other places; you pay for brochures that you then pay to mail to a mailing list that you’ve paid to receive, and the list goes on. You are paying and paying and you are working hard to get people to visit your website.

Whether you’re thinking of a new website, a site redesign, building leads, or campaign tracking, we can help.

Imagine this alternative…

Your website has been properly built and optimized for natural search engine placement. Joe Public, and many others just like him, is looking for the product or service that you provide. He types it into a web search and your site appears among the top 25 listings. He clicks on your site and reads about you, sees your terrific call to action and fills out the contact form to get more information from you. You now have a qualified lead from someone that is truly interested in being contacted by you. You didn’t have to work hard to get it because your site has been set up to do all the hard work for you. Doesn’t this sound more attractive than how hard you thought you had to work at getting customers?

Can you get better results from your website? Contact Suite171 today to learn more.

What makes us special?

We understand most businesses are looking for something affordable but also a return on their investment. Our service and support is 2nd to none, and like to build business relationships.

1. Where is my website placed in search engines?
2. Why can’t people find my business website?
3. Why don’t I receive leads from my website?

Click Image to Enlarge

We review our own placement in comparison to other like businesses in our industry, but our local placement hasn’t changed for a few years. Quite a few website design and search engine marketing businesses are located in North Dakota and if you do a search for the term “website design Fargo” you can get a better idea of where Suite 171 is indexed in search engines.

In general, we are geo locating our Google search and looking for results based off of searching a specific keyword and including a city, state, or general location. I would say seven out of ten internet searches will contain a specific location. In my professional opinion most people will search for a product or service locally, but some users may not geo locate a search term.

What is really remarkable when we search for just the term “website design” with no location, there are over 225 million listings. So, where we place worldwide? It’s interesting to see different results in specific search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Google, or MAC vs. PC, laptop and various desktop computers.

This is one example.

Google, Internet Explorer 8, Results 1 - 10 of about 225,000,000 for website design

Suite171.com is listed or indexed in Google on page three out of 225 million other indexed websites for the keywords “website design”. It looks like the search engine placement changes every third day but still remains between pages two or three.

Three steps to measure where your business is indexed in search engines.

1. Select a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing

2. Enter a two or three word term, keyword, or phrase you would expect visitors to search for. Meaning: how people would find you. Use something other than your business name because people will not always know who you are. In most cases they are looking for a product or service.

3. Add your city or state to the search term, keyword, or phrase. Also, try not to Geo locate your search.

You should evaluate the results. If you are on page one you are doing exceptional, but if you are unable to find your website you will need to update your website. Most people or businesses are concerned about where they are placed and see value in people contacting them to buy services or products through their website. On the other hand, some businesses haven’t realized they should be receiving sales leads.

Prior planning prevents poor performance, but how do you know if your campaigns work if you don’t track them? Ask yourself these questions.

1. What tools do you have in place to see the effectiveness of your print ads, radio ads, television ads, website, and other marketing vehicles?
2. Do you ask your customers how they found you?
3. Do you know if your website can be found easily or is it buried on page 25 in all search engines?
4. What marketing techniques work and what produces the best results?

How do you measure success? If you get one call from your radio ad, does this mean it’s a bust or a success? Every company or business owner asks if it’s spending the correct amount in one area, or should they be spending in other places. What it really boils down to is what are you spending and do you increase profitability from your efforts. Here are five basic things to consider before you start your marketing.

1. What is your budget and for what duration can you sustain the funding?
2. Identify your target market, demographics, and goals.
3. Identify what your business needs to call a campaign a success.
4. What it costs – What is your return on your investment? Is it worth the risk?
5. Eliminate risk. Don’t spend $20,000 on an old marketing tactic that never produces results.

The bottom line here is for you to get the maximum exposure, the most cost effective process, and eliminate overextending funds to marketing that does not work for you. Understand how you can be effective, and where your marketing dollars are going.

It’s important to manage every aspect of your marketing to profit and remain a player in your respective industry. In some cases when budgets get tight, businesses start cutting their marketing team or marketing funds without evaluating what they can do better and where they can reduce costs in the marketing process. Here are a few ways that you can save.

Cut out the middle man. If you working with a marketing firm you can save more than 20% by performing these tasks in house.

1. Media buying – Contact and deal directly with local newspapers, radio stations, and magazines.
2. Creative design and development – Do you need to pay $125/hr for design work and can you get the very same results for less?
3. Track your performance – Identify what works, and what doesn’t.
4. Evaluate & revise your goals and marketing plan.
5. Adapt to change. If you are missing a critical piece of marketing like a website get one designed correctly so it works as a marketing vehicle.

Cut spending where it’s needed and evaluate what works. Evaluate if your website is a brochure or a marketing tool, and if people can find your web site.

Just recently we saved a business thousands of dollars per month on Google Adwords by correctly redesigning their business website. We restructured their search engine placement, optimized their website, and implemented a search engine marketing plan that works. Currently this business website is found naturally on page one, and two of all major search engines, and they get 65% more leads from being visible to possible buyers.

We have a name for this - it’s reverse marketing. We take a current business website, give it an overhaul, and let the website actively market the business. The advantages are that the business doesn’t have to spend additional money just to get found online, and it integrates cross promotional material to drive traffic to an already successful tool.

Many people ask us if just adding keywords will help search engine placement. In short, the answer is maybe. Correct placement starts with the very basics of website design, how it’s coded, and if you have the right components. If you add oil to an already deficient vehicle will it help? It’s possible, but wouldn’t it be more helpful to fix the deficiencies so the vehicle has the potential to be more efficient first.

Fargo Marketing Tip: You should use correct business keywords to market a business website. For example, a marketing company should use the terms: marketing Fargo or Fargo marketing and possibly any related terms for keyword ranking. This is true for any industry but use specific keywords for whatever industry you are in to try to attract people to your niche market.

Natural Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is a process that aligns a website’s code and content with strategic keyword phrase targeting, ultimately assisting a search engine algorithm in understanding a website’s keyword focus. This means use keywords and focus on your local target market, niche market, or industry.

Fargo Internet Marketing Tip: First you need to get an up-to-date business website that is naturally search engine optimized, and naturally placed. Organic search engine optimization should always be the basic fundamentals when you design or redesign your site.

Link Building
The quality of the websites linking to your website is considered to be the single biggest influence of rankings in the search engines. You must carefully inventory any website link or back link by vertical/industry that match your website content.

Blog Linking or Blogging
The volume of other websites on the Internet that link to your website has a big impact on your search engine rankings. In addition, the ongoing growth rate of new websites linking to yours also plays a role. Working with bloggers is a great way to spread your message and better your search engine rankings.

Fargo Marketing Tip: Fargo Blogs are simple tricks to getting listed for any keyword, but sometimes lack credibility, usually maintained by an individual, and are quite anonymous. Some local businesses in Fargo are taking advantage of blogs which is great. If you are thinking about using a blog, use it in moderation and focus on your business.

Directory Listing
The Internet is comprised of thousands of free and fee-based web directories. Often, directories are one of the first things a web marketer will do to help increase website link popularity.

Fargo Marketing Tip: These are a dime a dozen, but could produce real results if you are in the correct one. We find directories like Dex, Yellow pages, AOL make promises to get you listed on page one of all search engines, but they promise everyone the same thing. Think about that…

Online Press Releases
Is your Fargo business growing? Press releases are the perfect way to spread the news about your business. Moreover, press releases represent a great way to go – get news and Fargo resource websites to link to your website. Online press releases are designed first and foremost to distribute news, but are great for placement, and getting the word out.

Contextual Marketing
1. Visual (eg banner) ads
2. Text ads (similar to Pay per Click)

Contextual advertising can be an effective way of reaching a target audience defined by the parameters you as an advertiser wish to set and can be a productive adjunct to a Pay per Click advertising campaign or a run of network banner campaign. Like Pay per Click, text based contextual ads are usually priced on a performance related cost per click basis. Typically both CPC and click through volumes are lower than pay per click search ads, however impressions may be much higher and the ads can be served in highly targeted locations.

Paid Search Engine Marketing
Increase sales and generate more leads through pay per click marketing. Our search engine placement services include competitor analysis, key phrase development, conversion tracking, and more.

Marketing takes a plan, a commercial takes a plan, a website takes planning, an ad campaign takes planning, and more times than not, clients come to me wanting something thrown together now that gets results now. You can’t plant a kernel of corn today and expect to harvest 90 acres overnight.

Farming is a good analogy for marketing. A farmer knows that in order to harvest 90 acres of corn, 90 acres needs to be planted… in prepared soil… at the right time… and with the right seed. For a successful marketing campaign, you have to have a very clear picture of your target audience and know what seeds to plant for them.

The biggest mistake businesses make in their marketing is to make their efforts too broad, too all encompassing. By not being specific in who you’re targeting this month, this year, in this issue, with this website, you’ll miss the whole audience.

People want to be marketed to specifically. I love the term I heard a marketing consultant say recently – permission marketing. When people give you permission to be marketed to, they’ve opened the door for you to sell them on why they need to buy from you. Permission marketing is marketing that a person wants to see, when they want to see it.

The best example of permission marketing is a web search. A person has decided they are looking for pineapple cupcakes and so they go to their computer to search the web for pineapple cupcakes in their city. A list of websites of companies that can provide pineapple cupcakes appears like magic. This consumer has just given a limited number of companies a chance to sell her something right now. I say limited because the first website she clicks on could be the winner, or she may click through a page or two of results before finding the right cupcake.

The built in bonus of permission marketing is that by opening your website the consumer has not only given you permission to market your cupcakes to her, but all of the rest of your products now have that same permission to wow her into buying something else from you too.

If the web is permission marketing, than the rest of your marketing efforts can be considered interruption marketing. You might be listening to music on the radio and then you are interrupted by advertisements. You might be reading a magazine article and then an ad interrupts your reading and the story continues on the back page. Traditional marketing principles hold that an ad needs to interrupt you 14 times before you’ll pay close attention to it and decide on whether its something you want to look into or not. How many customers would you need to gain in order to pay for 14 ads?

Permission marketing is a more efficient avenue to increase your customer base and is the way, not of the future, but the way of the world right now. There are so many newspapers disappearing every year as businesses realize that the web is a lucrative place to advertise and refocus their advertising dollars. I’ve watched magazines and newspapers that my clients place ads in shrink down to practically nothing. Before the web came along, the biggest wish of any business that spends money on marketing is that they magically could advertise only where his customers would pay attention to their ad. The web fits this profile exactly.

To find out more about creating a website that allows you a piece of the lucrative permission marketing world, call Suite 171 today at 701-478-5955 or email us at info@suite171.com.

This retail business needed better search engine results for their website. A common problem that we see with websites that have poor search engine results is that the business’ domain is redirected to a corporate website provided by a parent company. In order for this client’s domain to receive local search engine results, we built a website directly on that domain instead of redirecting to the corporate website. The new website included numerous pages targeting all of the keywords that this client needed to capture as much traffic as possible. They also needed a content management system to allow their staff to update the website as necessary.

This client needed to increase their online marketing to capture website traffic from multiple sources and across many target audience types. To attract more visitors, we incorporated a blog directly into the client’s website which allowed the website to increase its relevant keywords and gain more search traffic. We also added viral marketing to increase brand awareness though social networking sites and pop-culture sites like YouTube.

Tracking

Are you tracking your current marketing efforts for the Fargo area? Do you put advertisements in the newspaper, local magazines, radio or television? If so, how do you know those ads are working? Some businesses are very good at remembering to ask new customers where they heard about their business, however, most are not consistently tracking where their new customers are coming from. Online marketing is one effective way of tracking how a particular campaign is working.

Tracking your marketing campaigns can be done by creating a specialized website with a different domain from your normal site that is dedicated to the particular product or service that you are currently focusing on in your ads. You can create multiple mini websites or landing pages, each one aligning with one medium. For example, you are advertising a Wonder Widget and want to know which publication is giving you more bang for your buck. With publication Alpha you publish your website as www.wonderwidget.com and with publication Beta you publish www.wonderwidgetnow.com. Now you track how many hits you receive on each mini site over a given period of time. That will tell you how well your campaigns are doing.

Conversion

There is an old adage that says - a new customer will need to see your information 14 times before deciding to do business with you. There are also current statistics that say 85% of people between the ages of 16 and 65 will shop or pre-shop online. If your target market is in that age category, the web becomes a cost effective way of getting your customers to see your information frequently and compellingly. Most people do research toward new purchases online, even if they plan on going to the physical store to get the item or service.

When a potential customer is shopping for Widgets and checking online to see who carries them in their city, you want them to see your website explaining all about your widgets, where they are, how to get them, and how they will benefit from your widget versus Company B’s widget. With the right website, you can bypass the 14x rule by giving the customer, who is actively looking for widgets, the information they need in order to choose you – now.

Local people have a tendency to want to business locally. 85% of people in your local target market pre-shop online. If you’re not online with a site that can be found in a local web search, you’re missing out on more local business than you realize. If you want some straight answers on how your business can profit from local web marketing, call Suite 171 today at 701-478-5955.