Safeguarding Your Reputation

An internet presence in today’s marketplace is essential in keeping up with one’s competitors and a necessary tool in expanding your market share on a global scale. The majority of successful businesses have a strong and loyal customer base both on the net and in their brick and mortar venues. In the “old days” keeping your customers happy was relatively easy since you or your staff were able to take care of their needs and concerns in person. With clients physically visiting a place of business, owners were able to make sure they and their staff provided great service and were able to deal with complaints quickly and efficiently.  By following these simple measures, owners were able to build and maintain a strong and healthy professional reputation.

With the introduction of the internet, protecting your reputation has become more complicated. It is no longer enough to ensure that the customers who visit your storefront are happy. You may never know that an online customer was unhappy with your product or service until they post a negative comment or blog on a social network site which can quickly spread like wildfire. When someone tries to sabotage your reputation by placing slanderous or other negative articles and/or posts on the internet, it is more than just your online reputation that is in jeopardy.

How Good Is Your Reputation?

You’ve worked hard over the years to build a solid reputation with clients in you local community and are now ready to put your business on the net in the hopes of expanding your market share. It’s one thing for clients who have gotten to know you and your business in person to stay loyal even in the face of occasional diversity. It is completely different when a total stranger who may know nothing about you decides to post malicious and unfounded rumors about you on the internet. This type of slander can spread like wildfire and go viral in no time. Along with the tremendous advantages that the internet offers businesses of all sizes, the chance to go global comes with its share of risks. By the time a company realizes what is happening, the ability to stop this process can be extremely difficult, not to mention very costly.

Understanding how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) works along with what it can and cannot do is important in helping you make the best decision when choosing an SEO service provider. From a consumer’s point of view, a search engine is a tool that allows people to find the information or product they are looking for. They simply enter key words or phrases that relate to what they want and the search engine displays the most pertinent pages for viewing. From the website owner’s perspective, they want their site to come up at the top of page one when anyone is searching for a product, service or information related to their business.

All search engines have their own “scoring system” to determine how relevant each site is and where its place should be in the queue when a search is performed.  This method of analyzing and scoring a website is known as an algorithm and is based on a mathematical formula. Every search is given a score and the higher the score, the higher the page or website will be in the queue. Search engine algorithms are looking for specific factors to determine what a site’s score will be. It is these specific pieces of information that algorithms need to make their calculations which means that knowing what some of these factors are must be considered when web sites are being analyzed. All search engines have their own value systems in determining the relevance of a website or page. Some of the factors that a search engine algorithm looks at include alt tags, meta tags and keyword relevance but the most important one is content.

Advantages of SEO over SEM

Many companies are still unclear of the precise differences between an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and an SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaign. They are however very clear on what their objectives are when it comes to their website and what they expect it to do for their business. Although the goal of any company website is to increase public visibility and traffic, it can only be considered a success if that increase in traffic is converted into sales while maintaining a healthy ROI (Return on Investment).

The primary purpose of an SEM campaign is to advertise your business and target a specific market in order to increase traffic to your site. These goals are generally achieved through a variety of methods which may include:

• PPC (Pay Per Click) – this type of text based ad is typically written by the advertiser who then chooses a bid amount that they are willing to pay when the ad is clicked through.  Generally speaking, the ranking will increase according to the amount of the bid.
• Pay-for Inclusion – This option can be very tempting to business owners as SEM providers generally guarantee that your site will be indexed by search engines in short order.