by admin | Jul 22, 2015 | Reputation Management, Uncategorized
The Importance of Online Brand Reputation
Managing your online brand image is one of the most overlooked and most necessary parts of any business. What does managing your online brand reputation consist of? It’s gauging the public’s currently existing perception of your company, your product, your organization, and its purposefully directing mass perception of your brand via demographic analysis, a strong brand voice, and a clearly formulated mission statement. This isn’t something that comes naturally to most people. It takes the cumulative years of numerous individuals who have spent their lives in service to the public in order to competently gather and correctly analyze the sheer volume of data that will eventually yield the information that you’re looking for to better market your brand to the waiting public. What are a few things to look for in a company that’s offering to manage your online brand image?
Be sure they understand your vision.
Make certain that the company you choose to contract with fully understands the clear and concise vision that you have for your brand. Before you reach out to any marketing company, be sure that you’ve spent some time clarifying the online brand reputation that you’re striving for yourself.
They need to know your audience.
Obviously, demographics have been a factor in successful marketing for as long as advertising has existed. But with the advent of the Internet, niche marketing has taken on a new level of importance. Due to the data gathering tools available to marketing professionals, a competent company can isolate particular characteristics about your target demographic and zero in on a very specific – and sometimes untouched – corner of the marketplace that you can successfully exploit.
They should speak with your voice.
This goes hand in hand with understanding your brand vision. The company with which you finally contract should be able to successfully represent you to your potential clientele by speaking with your own voice. After copious demographic analyses, that voice can be crafted to meet the needs and the desires of your target consumer audience. Again, before a company can accurately manifest your brand vision, you need to spend some time deciding what exactly that constitutes. Is your brand voice hip and indifferent? Is it fun and carefree? Is it enthusiastic and warm? These are all things to consider prior to reaching out to any marketing company. The stronger your personal vision is for your particular brand, the more successfully a marketing company will be able to present it to the public.
by admin | Jul 15, 2015 | Baltimore SEO, Uncategorized
The benefits of Effective SEO by Virtual Surge, a Baltimore SEO Company.
Simply put, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In layman’s terms, it is a marketing technique that uses keywords to achieve high rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, etc. These search engines use what are called web crawlers (also called web spiders) to create an index of information on websites throughout the World Wide Web. There are two main types of SEO, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. There’s Organic SEO, which concentrates on web based operations, and what’s called Local SEO, which has more to do with a physical location, and there are also two subtypes of SEO – White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.
White Hat SEO – The “Good” SEO
White hat SEO is good SEO – you are using “white hat” tactics (in case you’re not familiar with my terminology, “white hat tactics” refers to using ethical practices to market your website, keeping your website free of hidden links and spyware, etc. All of these are tactics upon which Google will look favorably.) An example of White Hat SEO would be a company using a safe and secure website to market their services.
Black Hat SEO – The “Bad” SEO
Black hat SEO is bad SEO. Black hat SEO uses very questionable marketing tactics, such as overloading websites with keywords (this is referred to as keyword stuffing), creating false backlinks, and may even involve using spyware or malware to steal the personal information of those who visit the website, usually for the purpose of sending spam Emails, or for storing personal information. Google has been cracking down hard on websites that use Black Hat SEO tactics, ranging from taking their website off their search engine to going as far as blacklisting, and even imposing strong penalties upon the website in extreme circumstances.
Organic SEO – Mostly for Websites and Web-Based Businesses
Organic SEO uses generic keywords to locate websites on the Internet, and as such, it isn’t really effective for physical businesses unless they also have a web presence. Also, organic SEO doesn’t include customer reviews or maps telling you where the business can be found.
What this means for your website is that if these web crawlers find a nice variety of keywords having to do with the type of website you own, Google will index that information, and use that information to rank your website. For example, you could use the keywords “tropical fish tank”, “tropical fish”, and “tropical fish food” to gain visibility for a tropical fish store, just to give you a few ideas. However, as I mentioned before in the Black Hat SEO section of this article, you should NEVER over stuff your website with keywords, otherwise you may be flagged by Google for spam. Just limit yourself to a few keywords in the title, and sprinkle a few keywords, spaced widely apart, throughout your content. The idea of a good Organic SEO campaign is to rank on the first page of Google’s search results when you type in your keywords on their search engine. Websites that rank on the first page on Google tend to get a great deal of traffic, and the more traffic you get, the more potential customers your business will have.
It’s also important to note that although Organic SEO does have elements that are influenced by location, the information returned will not be tied to a physical location.
Local SEO – Good for Physical Businesses
Recently, Google has introduced new algorithms that can index locale-based keywords. For example, if you were to type something like “Auto Mechanics Detroit, MI”, you might get a listing of available auto mechanics in the Detroit area, along with a list of customer reviews and even a map showing the location of the business. This is one of the primary differences between Local SEO and Organic SEO. Instead of just crawling websites, Google’s new Venice algorithm will also scan a business’s Google Plus profile, public image sharing sites, and even online forums and social media sites where your business has been mentioned on the Internet! (In the marketing field, these are called web citations.) From this data, Google compiles information on not only your website, but data on your physical location and how customers view your business as well.
SEO has come a long way since Google first became a popular search engine. Not only can an effective SEO campaign done by an amazing Baltimore SEO company, make your business explode in popularity if used correctly and ethically, it can also create some rather decent PR for your business.
Reference Links
What is the difference between local SEO and traditional SEO?
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/crawler
http://www.brafton.com/news/google-closing-black-hat-seo-practices
by admin | Jul 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
A reputable SEO company will not only help your website rank in the first page of Google, but will also supply you with a periodic report on the performance of your website. As such, it is advisable to partner with the best professional SEO firm out there. Outlined in this article are some of the reasons why you should enlist the services Virtual Surge, a reputable Baltimore SEO Company.
- Expertise
You should understand that search engines are quite complex and secretive, especially when it comes to ranking websites. For that reason, generating good results on search engines requires expertise. As such, you should consider partnering with a professional SEO agency who really knows what they are doing. Make sure you thoroughly interrogate your prospect SEO Company before making that vital decision of hiring.
- You Will Save Time
It is true that the SEO Company you hire will take the full responsibility of managing your website. Since you hired a professional, you will be sure that everything is under control. Actually, you will have more time to undertake other tasks pertaining to your business. But if you hire an amateur, you will not have peace of mind since they are not knowledgeable in the field. So, always go for gurus in SEO.
- Up-to-date Website
What you should know is that search engines love websites with unique and fresh content. As such, the SEO Company you hire must ensure that your site has fresh content all the time. This is the only way to keep it up-to-date. Experts in SEO understand the importance of content in SEO, and therefore they ensure unique content is created by professional writers.
- High Traffic
If your website is well updated, it will most likely rank in the first page of Google. Then, obviously it is going to receive high traffic. Keep in mind that people spend longer time in websites that have new and interesting content. Also, visitors go to sites that are easy to navigate. So, your SEO agency must ensure that everything with your site is okay. That way, you will receive high traffic and most of the visitors will be converted into real customers, hence super-normal profits. Conclusion If you are hunting for a reputable Baltimore SEO Company, consider doing all of your research. Do not settle on the first company you come across during your search. Instead, you should dig deeper to find one that clearly outlines their strategies to help you achieve the best SEO results.
Managing your online brand image is one of the most overlooked and most necessary parts of any business. What does managing your online brand reputation consist of? It’s gauging the public’s currently existing perception of your company, your product, your organization, and its purposefully directing mass perception of your brand via demographic analysis, a strong brand voice, and a clearly formulated mission statement. This isn’t something that comes naturally to most people. It takes the cumulative years of numerous individuals who have spent their lives in service to the public in order to competently gather and correctly analyze the sheer volume of data that will eventually yield the information that you’re looking for to better market your brand to the waiting public. What are a few things to look for in a company that’s offering to manage your online brand image?
