About
MY PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND:
NEWS FLASH JUNE 2008 MARIN COUNTY CALIFORNIA
I’ve spent the greater part of the past two years as a senior consultant, manager and technologist at WebSight Design, Inc., a world class web design and development company headquartered in Sausalito, California. In recent months, my role as senior manager for search engine optimization and internet marketing just took off like wildfire… More and more clients were coming to us needing superior SEO, PPC and email marketing solutions. And oddly enough, each time a client was in a position to have us perform high end SEO, my ability to get them onto the first page of Google was proven successful over and over…
However over the past several months, I had also been bombarded by small and mid-size business owners needing search engine optimization, yet at the same time couldn’t otherwise afford WebSight Design’s professional services rates. And it crushed me. I mean, I’ve always been a champion of the little guy – in fact, though I’ve had the honor to manage world class web sites for such entities as Weight Watchers International, Starkist Tuna, American Heart Association and countless Fortune 1000 clients, 90% of all my work has been in helping small and mid-size business owners.
So the inevitable has happened.
I made the decision to step down as WSD’s senior project manager, so that I may devote my life’s work to helping that little guy. So beginning in July of this year, I’m now the owner of Hey Dude, Where’s My Site? – a boutique search engine optimization and Internet marketing services company. I will continue to provide my services to WebSight Design – they’re the best professional services web company in the San Francisco bay area. Except I’ll only be doing so part time, as an outside consultant. And I’m now free to make my skills, experience, and expert consulting solutions available to companies that couldn’t affort WSD, yet who just as much as anyone, deserve an opportunity to compete in the digital economy…
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My experience in search engine optimization and search engine marketing goes back to the very earliest days of the World Wide Web as a marketing medium – a time when Lycos was a brand new offering, and search engines / search directories were a brand new concept. While most of the people, companies and firms claiming to offer SEO services and SEM services nowadays are 80% hype and 20% snow-job (read that 100% scam), I’ve got a proven track record of success in helping web clients achieve results in search engine positioning.
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Over the years, I have managed web solutions for over 750 companies.
From the smallest of mom and pop corner store up to and including such notable organizations as Macy’s, Gottshalks, Princess Cruises, Weight Watchers International, Mechanic’s Bank, Publishers ClearingHouse, New York Business To Business Yellow Pages, Fortunoffs, USWeb/CKS, H.J. Heinz (Starkist Tuna /Kibbles n’ Bits, etc.), and many other fortune 1000 sized corporations. Before joining the WSD team, as an independent consultant, I was routinely contracted to provide my web expertise to web design firms across the United States, as well as PR firms and ad agencies, including Hill and Knowlton, and Porter Novelli, two of the largest agencies in the world.
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REASONS FOR SUCCESS
One of the primary reasons for my success is my ability to step into the shoes of my clients and their clients or customers. Being able to understand the needs of a site owner while grasping the perspective of the site visitor is critical to managing a solution that really does achieve the goals planned. Having this information isn’t enough though – because there’s always going to be competition for visitors, and competition for conversion of those visitors into sales. With that knowledge, having the willingness to see what the real competition is doing to achieve their success, makes for a formidable strategy.
I’ve used this approach right from the beginning of my career in January 1995, as the creator of the first Real Estate web site in the state of California to showcase a Real Estate company’s entire listing database online1 at a time when there were only a handful of Real Estate web sites, none of which had entire property listing databases.
When I was contracted to create that site, the very first thing I did was research what others were doing – both what they were doing right AND what they were doing wrong. Not just from a technology perspective. It was vital for me to understand how traditional Real Estate business took place, and to visualize what a potential home buyer or home seller thinks when they are shopping for a Realtor®.
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BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER – THE FOUNDATION OF A SUCCESSFUL SEARCH MARKETING STRATEGY
With the understanding of a web visitor’s mind-set, you can do a much better job at choosing the best keyword phrases appropriate for your web site. Key words are the starting point for everything an SEO or SEM consultant does to establish or improve search engine rankings.
Having the right keyword phrases in your mind, in addition to properly seeding those throughout your web site’s under-the-hood page elements, you can do a better job at editing the content of your site, ensuring that those key words and phrases are seeded liberally enough through the entire visitor experience from a search ranking position perspective.
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SO WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THIS WEB SITE?
This web site, http://searchmarketingwisdom.com, is my platform for sharing the most fundamental truths, insights, tips and tools for search engine optimization and search engine marketing services. Whether you are a fledgling web design firm looking to be able to offer SEO and SEM solutions to your handful of clients, or you are a web site owner who might not otherwise be able to afford the rates that truly professional SEO and SEM services providers charge, it’s my hope to help you find the answers you need to cut through the hype, demystify the jargon, and empower you to getting started or getting your web site to the next level in your efforts to compete in today’s global economy.
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GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE RESULTS AT GOOGLE (not really)
Sure, there are many companies and individuals offering, or at least claiming to offer “guaranteed” first page placement results at the top search engines for what seems like an awfully great bargain basement price. Yet every single professional you ask, whether they be in the search marketing consulting business, (such as this great SEO basics article at SearchEngineLand.com) or even a state Attorney General (read this article for example). We’ll all tell you that it’s impossible to guarantee organic placement on search engines.
Even the search engines themselves warn of this “too good to be true” trap. (See Google’s own search ranking support page).
What it DOES take, for most industries, markets and service offerings, is work. With that work, based on a solid proven strategy, you can get serious results – and sometimes that can mean 1st position, or at least be on the 1st page of results, though there are too many fundamental realities at play for it to be a guarantee in every situation.
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SEARCH RANKING OBSTACLES – THE REALITY
Let’s say you sell widgets. You’re a small or mid-size business owner. Maybe you have a store-front, maybe you don’t. Either way, are you the ONLY source for widgets on earth? Probably not.
So how many competitors do you have? And how many companies provide the raw materials that go into those widgets you sell?
And how many people who have previously bought widgets in the past have become experts in how to do things with those widgets that you never thought possible, or the manufacturer hadn’t considered?
And how many training courses exist where a student can learn how to make widgets?
Now – when you add all of those up – every one of those competitors, suppliers, end-users and training courses is potentially going to have a web site – or at least a great many of them are.
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So in this scenario, let’s say you have 50 competitors spread around the world. And there are 10 suppliers. And lets say there are five courses where people can learn how to make widgets, another five courses where people can learn how to sell widgets, and ten people who have found a unique way to use them that wasn’t originally thought of by any of the above. That’s 50+10+5+10=75.
Seventy five web sites that you’re directly competing with for that one product. But the search engines only display 10 results per page. So how can the “Guaranteed placement” companies actually guarantee that YOU will be found on the first page of search results?
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Well, there are many techniques that someone can employ to get you on the first page. Some of them are known abuses of the search engine algorithms, and might get you listed for a day or a week before you get banned. Some of them include having your web site listed in the sponsored pay-per-click area, and NOT the organic natural search listings. Some are nothing more than scams to get your money, and for you to never get results, or a refund.
In that above scenario however, I gave a very basic and overly-simplified list of 75 possible competitors for top placement. In reality, you don’t just offer widgets. You offer indoor widgets, outdoor widgets, waterproof widgets, unbreakable widgets, and mobile widgets. Not to mention the whole line of gadgets, thingamabobs, whatsits, and doohickies you also sell. In fact, you have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of products. Or maybe you don’t sell products at all, but you sell services. Real Estate buyer or seller services, Legal advice, counseling or representation, consulting, or any one of a thousand other services.
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And you don’t just compete for search engine results with 75 other web sites. You are up against thousands, tens or even hundreds of thousands of other web sites all scrambling to come up on that first page of results at Google or Yahoo or MSN. Like that college student who wrote their thesis on the face of the industry – YOUR industry in today’s global economy, and who posted that five hundred page thesis online, which means that just one person was responsible for adding 500 pages into the search engine index – every page having the same exact keywords and keyword phrases that YOU have on YOUR site.
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SO WHAT’S THE ULTIMATE ANSWER?
Time, patience, and a willingness to understand that nothing is impossible to achieve, given the proper combination of time, energy and resources. You get results based on how much time you (or somebody you hire or contract) devote to the SEO process. You see results improve when you have the patience to apply the principles, wait, watch, adjust and experiment over time. You ensure better results by implementing or tapping the best resources available.
This web site is meant to be just one resource – that’s ultimately a gateway to helping you actually achieve major success in your quest to show up high enough in the search engine rankings that you’ll then hopefully attract enough visitors to your web site, who will, hopefully, in turn, become customers or clients.
I don’t offer magic pills, or secrets that nobody else knows about. I do offer honest, real-world proven facts, with a great deal of personal saltiness that hopefully you’ll find reading what i communicate to be interesting enough, compelling enough for you to really absorb, take in, and learn from what you find here.
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Footnotes
1 The first web site I ever created, in January of 1995, was for Thunderbird Real Estate, in Capitola, California. Thunderbird still maintains a successful web presence to this day, though the site has been redesigned and re-vamped countless times over the years as technology and the web evolve. While I personally have not participated in that process in over a decade, I stand proud of the role I played in helping Thunderbird’s team establish themselves in Internet history. Together, we were pioneers on the frontier of a new marketing medium.
