How to Get High Google Rank

Fusionbox, the Denver web design company has a rule of thumb for getting high organic rank for our clients through search engine marketing. We believe that if it is good for the user, it's good for your search engine ranking.

Many Denver SEO companies make search engine marketing sound difficult and mysterious. It's not. Getting to the top of Google comes down to three key things: content, links and code.

Content - When you add useful, relevant content that includes your keywords, you are adding value to your user. Google will reward you by bringing you up in the search engines. Content is the most important aspect of SEO.

Links - The more relevant sites that are linking to you, the higher the rank. Inbound links from quality, relevant sites shows authority.

Code - The more standard and accessible your code is, the easier it is for Google to spider it. Create code that uses structural CSS and is W3C-compliant.

Fusionbox has worked with many Denver search engine marketing clients to help them increase their leads, sales, and donations by using the above best practices.

New Stats for Morris Animal Foundation

Today we reported the latest numbers for the Morris Animal Foundation. Since we launched the search engine friendly site, traffic has gone up 36%. That's just in one month since the launch. Here are other key stats:

• Traffic nearly tripled (up 171%) compared to this time last year

• Search Engine Visibility, Total Search Engine Traffic up 458.36% compared to this time last year (More traffic from this source indicates better organic rankings and higher ad click-through rates) and is up 51% compared to October

• Google Adwords Grant CTR Performance up 80% compared to last month. We achieved significant improvements through optimization of both keywords and ad copy in individual campaigns and as a result we more than doubled the amount of traffic from this source

Contact Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, to see how we can drive sales and leads through search engine marketing and usability improvements.

How We Increased Donations for a Non Profit in a Down Market

In June of this year, Fusionbox took over the management of the Morris Animal Foundation's site from Morris' ad agency. The Morris Animal Foundation funds research to protect, treat and cure animal disease. The agency was not getting results from a pay-per-click campaign that they launched. (CTR was .003%) This was just not the agency's expertise so they referred Morris to us.

Since we have been managing the site, traffic has increased by a whopping 50% over last year and continues to go up by an average of 10% a month. Donations in October were 15% higher than they were last year despite news about the economy.

Here's how we did it:

Our brilliant pay-per-click expert took the list of keywords that the agency had created and cut it down dramatically. That list had hundreds of keyword that were related to obscure animal diseases that were getting no search volume-- no clicks ever. We cut them out. Further, the list of keywords did not include donation-related keywords like, "saving animals", "donate to save animals", etc. Our SEO developed several different campaigns around the key performance indicators that we established with the client. (All of the KPIs tied to the non-profits mission and vision.) One of the campaigns was used to test different donation-related keywords with different messaging. The click-through rate started going up and up. As we monitored the campaign, we gathered data on what worked and what did not and kept refining the messaging and the keyword list. As of October, the click-through rate is at an impressive 1.78%.

One of our goals were to increase awareness with a younger generation. In order to do this, Fusionbox created a social media marketing campaign. The campaign included a Facebook cause and page, a YouTube channel, and a presence on MySpace. Influential bloggers also played a role by posting about the Morris cause and targeted advertising on Facebook rounded out the effort.

We still had one problem, though: organic search engine placement. The Morris site was ranking better for some keywords but our organic rank was not what we wanted it to be. The site that the original developers created used a content management system to control the whole site. (Warning to anyone looking to redo a site: Do not create a site that is 100% controlled by a CMS unless you can change titles and tags for EVERY page.) Because of the way the site was created, it was impossible to write metadata for every page.

So, what did we do? We recreated the entire site to be search-engine friendly from the start. Our strategy included:

Rewriting content to include keywords
Developing seo-friendly code
Creating titles and tags for every page
Developing internal links of keywords
Renaming pages with keywords
Optimizing digital assets
Creating content management for sections of the site that would change
Refreshing the website design to be more modern
Fixing usability issues in the navigation
Creating more calls-to-action to donate
Simplified the donation process
Creating measurable conversion goals

One of the most important aspects of the site was to redo all of the donation forms to measure our efforts. Our Search Engine Marketing team can now determine what keywords are converting best in order to use up our entire Google Grant. Our process has always been to design, measure and refine and now we could walk the talk

The site has been live for about a couple of weeks now and so far, the response is very good. It will take a few months to see the full impact of redoing the site in terms of organic search position, but we're very confident that donations will continue to go up as the economy tanks-- not an easy task.

Lessons learned:
Create your focused keyword list with your goals top of mind
Don't hire an ad agency to do an interactive agency's job. SEO, usability, and web design is a specialized field.
Combine paid, organic and social media tactics for maximum results.
Always design, measure and refine.

Hit me up if you want to discuss how we might help you. All this stuff works for businesses too. Now is the time to shift ad dollars away from traditional advertising to interactive.

Fusionbox Web Site Design and Development

Fusionbox Web Site Design and Development: "Search Marketing Boosts Brand Awareness"

Fusionbox is going on seven years as a Denver web design, Denver web development and Denver search engine marketing firm. When I tell people where I work, they almost always say they have heard of Fusionbox. This is true despite the fact that we have never done any traditional advertising. I'm convinced this is true because we dominate the organic rank for many of our keywords. And doing this creates brand awareness.

I spend quite a bit of time talking to clients about the tremendous return on investment that organic search engine marketing can bring. Most clients know that seo means getting to the top of Google, but not every client knows that a search engine marketing initiative can have the same benefits as a traditional PR campaign.

Here's a quote from Enquiro that illustrates this point:

"In a first-of-its-kind online study commissioned by Google, researchers discovered a significant correlation between companies in the top organic and sponsored ad placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent." - Enquiro Research - www.enquiro.com.

Contact Fusionbox to find out how internet marketing can spread your brand awareness and effect your bottom line.

Interactive Agencies are Getting all the New Business

Interactive agencies in Denver and elsewhere are taking business from traditional agencies because those they continue to struggle with their interactive services. We see it all the time. Many agencies are focused solely on design and don’t consider usability, search engine marketing or even conversion rates.

Case in point. We helped a Denver advertising agency cut up and program their site. I asked them what their goals were as they related to the new website design. They said they wanted to use the site as a lead generation tool. This was ironic since they had placed the “Contact Us” link at the very bottom left of the site in tiny font where no one would see it because they did not like “how it looked” in the top navigation.

Search Engine Marketing Builds Brand Awareness

Fusionbox is going on seven years as a Denver web design, web development and search engine marketing firm. When I tell people where I work, they almost always say they have heard of Fusionbox. This is true despite the fact that we have never done any traditional advertising. I'm convinced this is true because we dominate the organic rank for many of our keywords. And doing this creates brand awareness.

I spend quite a bit of time talking to clients about the tremendous return on investment that organic search engine marketing can bring. Most clients know that seo means getting to the top of Google, but not every client knows that a search engine marketing initiative can have the same benefits as a solid PR campaign.

So, how do we go about elevating a brand? We create online buzz. First, we make sure that our clients show up in the top organic ranking in Google. Take Adolfson & Peterson, a national construction company, for example. They aren't as big as some of their competitors, but they want to be, so we make sure that when users search for national construction companies, they show up with the big players. Once a potential client clicks through, they position themselves as being just as experienced as their competitors who might be bigger.

Next, we'll create what we call Thought Leadership. Adolfson & Peterson is a leader in green construction. Everyone at the company is aware of this, but most potential clients are not. We change perception by essentially launching an online PR campaign around this subject. We'll write and distribute content about Green building to blogs, industry publications, groups, and even social media outlets. Now, we have developed online buzz around one of A&P's key value propositions.

Then, we'll make sure that A&P is on all the directories, lists, and sites that cover the green building industry. We're not just building inbound links as most of our competitors are. Sure, we are helping positioning, but we are also creating brand awareness and controlling perception at the same time.

“In a first-of-its-kind online study commissioned by Google, researchers discovered a significant correlation between companies in the top organic and sponsored ad placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent. “ - Enquiro Research – www.enquiro.com.

Contact Fusionbox to find out how internet marketing can effect your bottom line.

Fusionbox Launches SEO Site

Since we are getting so much Internet Marketing business, we launched a site to share some of the success stories and resources about our services. Our Denver Internet Marketing clients have told me how valuable this information is because it describes search engine marketing techniques in laymen's terms.

Take a look at our SEO website and let us know what you think.

Fire Your SEO

Next month I'm teaching a seminar on search engine marketing at the Chamber of Commerce and how small businesses can take advantage of many free tools (including Blogger) to help boost their search engine ranking.

Many SEOs make search engine marketing seem technical, difficult, and ever-changing. It's really not so. It takes time, and some knowhow, but anyone can do at least part of it. You might not be able to optimize your code, but you can effect your ranking.

If you are interested in this Denver search engine marketing seminar, you can sign up here.

Stealing Content

For some reason today I decided to Google our website content to see if anyone had scraped or used our content. Well, it turns out that one of our Denver Web Design competitors has used our exact content from our services section for their service section. This competitor is even in Colorado. If they had edited our content just the littlest bit, I never would have known. I guess they were lazy and didn't think they would ever be found out. So now they'll be receiving a nice little letter from our attorney. Do yourself a favor and check your own content.

Organic Postioning Takes Work

We'ver been really busy at the Denver web design firm Fusionbox that I work for. I haven't been doing much search engine work and it shows. We've gone down from position 5 on organic search engine results to 8 or 10 in the last couple of weeks.

I always tell clients that search engine marketing takes work and maintenance. Now, I just need to follow my own advice. The Denver search engine marketing landscape is a competitive one. In order to stay at the top of our game, we need to work at not only adding content to our site, but by following the other techniques that we teach our own clients.