Wouldn’t you like to get this report on your website’s performance once a month?

If you were a client of mr-seo.com, you’d already be receiving a report just like this one, month after month, allowing you to see – in detail – just how well your website is performing. How well it’s doing in regard to search engine position. How effectively your keyword choices are working to drive traffic to your site. How your visitors are browsing your site, page by page.

You’d be able to track your site’s performance – what’s working, what isn’t. When you needed to know how well that costly new pay-per-click campaign you launched was working, you’d have hard numbers right at hand.

If you’re looking for someone to help you keep your company website on track – not just through SEO, but for every aspect of its performance, using the latest diagnostic tools available – the tech-savvy web marketers here at mr-seo.com are ready to help.

But we know better than anyone that SEO companies are as plentiful as autumn leaves in a New England forest. So, how do you make an informed choice?

Six questions to ask your SEO company (BEFORE you hire them!):

What’s your history?

Today, an “SEO company” may be nothing more than a computer-savvy high school sophomore who bought $40 worth of “SEO for dummies” books on Amazon and set up a website. A credentials check is a definite must. (We’ve been intimately involved in internet marketing since.)

What services do you offer besides SEO?

Search engine optimization is a crucially important factor in optimizing your website – but it’s by no means the “magic bullet” that will impact your bottom line all by itself.

At mr-seo.com, we provide our clients with a full range of web marketing services, including site analysis, pay-per-click marketing, targeted email campaigns, and other state-of-the-art traffic generators.

Exactly what will you do for me – and how?

If you ask this question and get no answer other than a lot of mumbling about “trade secrets” issues, walk away. You have a right to know – in detail – what your money will be buying, and how your new partners will go about it.

Likewise, if all you get as a response is some vague talk about optimizing page titles, meta tags, and getting you a couple of links from directories, you’re caught in a time warp. What may have worked ‘way back in 2002 simply isn’t going to ring the bell in today’s hyper-competitive environment.

What tools do you use?

 Here are a few phrases to throw around: viral marketing strategies, video marketing, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, Flash optimization, Web 2.0 Social Networking Sites, content submission. If all they get you is a blank stare, it’s time to head for the door.  At mr-seo.com, we know that having an array of tools and techniques like these in our quiver can make the difference between getting a top position in the rankings and settling for #20.  (If you’re wondering, the top position  gets an average of 90.7% of the clicks, while position #20 gets 0.072%.)

Who are your clients?

Any respectable SEO firm should be happy to provide you with a list of their clients. If you recognize some of them, you’ve most likely found a company that is going to get you the most for your investment.

(Some of our clients are listed at the bottom of this page.)

How can I monitor your performance?

Will you have any opportunity to see quantitative analysis of results? How will you be able to track the company’s efforts to improve your site’s performance? We’ve already shown you a sample of the exhaustive monthly analysis we supply to our clients so they can judge the results of our efforts for themselves.

Ready to start measuring your website’s performance? – The first step is on us!

Are You Helping Your Prospects – Or Just Annoying Them?

The main problem with traditional advertising messages is that they’re designed to interrupt whatever you happen to be doing. If you’re watching TV, you’re not interested in endless commercials. If you’re reading a magazine, you want to see the articles – not page after page of boring advertisements. Imagine that you’re having dinner with your family after a long work day, enjoying a great meal in the company of your loved ones, when the phone rings “Hello, Mr. Smith? I would like to offer you long-distance calls at a discounted price, blah blah blah…” You hang up, furious. Why do these people think they have the right to interrupt your dinner to sell you stuff you don’t even need? Now, imagine that it’s the last day of the month and you get your phone bill. Your  long-distance charges are outrageous. You decide it’s time to switch vendors. You go online and search for “long-distance phone company”. You click on the first result. The website looks professional. You call them and a very nice lady helps you figure out what plan you need and takes your order. Who did you buy from? The company that annoyed you by trying to sell you something you didn’t request? Or the company that showed up first when you were searching on Google? As a business person, which company would you rather own?  Search Engine Marketing: The Marketing Method with the Highest ROI Search engine marketing is not only more effective than other promotion methods – it’s also more affordable. Recent studies performed by Marketing Sherpa, the largest online marketing consulting firm in America, showed that a first position on the search engines can reach as many people as a 30-second Super Bowl ad… and twice as many as a one-page ad in the New York Times. Now, unless your company name is “Microsoft”, or “Budweiser”, you can’t afford a Super Bowl ad. But you can afford to have your website at the top of a Google Search.   According to Marketing Sherpa, search engine marketing is the #1 promotion method for reaching the greatest number of qualified prospects at the lowest possible cost. (If you’re a business owner, and the idea of “great prospects knocking on your door for very low cost” doesn’t get you excited, please have someone check your pulse!) Here’s an even more revealing statistic: In 79% of all the sales that American companies make it’s the customer who finds the company not the other way around. Think about it: your prospects will find your company first, at the very moment they’re looking for what you sell. How could it get any better than that?  The Mr. SEO Advantage   Nowadays, SEO companies are easier to find than supermarkets. So how can you find the perfect one for you. Choose a Company that Can See the Big Picture Most SEM firms are very good at search engine optimization, but don’t know much about Internet marketing in general. There are two main problems with this. Traffic without conversions means nothing. You want sales, not just traffic. The second problem is that SEO or Pay Per Click might not be right for you other promotion tactics may be more appropriate. But if all a company offers are SEO and Pay Per Click services, they might try to sell you those even when you really need something else. At Mr. SEO we know it’s not just about first page rankings it’s about increasing your profits.   Make Certain They Use the Latest Techniques Make the companies you’re interviewing spell out exactly what they’re going to do for you, and how. If they duck the question mumbling something about “trade secrets”, take your money and run. If you’re paying for something, you deserve to know what you’re buying. If all they can talk about are optimizing page titles, fiddling with metatags, and getting you a couple of directory links, they’re an “old-school” SEO firm. Their techniques worked great  in 2002!  These days you’ll need a lot more than that to be first on Google. At Mr. SEO we use viral marketing strategies, video marketing, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, Flash optimization, Web 2.0 Social Networking Sites, Content Submission, and an array of other highly sophisticated (and often amazing!) techniques that can make the difference between getting position 1 and settling for  position 20.  (In case you’re wondering, position 1 gets 90.7% of the clicks, while position 20 gets 0.072% on average).     Some of Our Clients:    Why Some Companies DON’T do SEO   After a number of years in this business, we’ve discovered why some companies still don’t do search engine marketing. Here are some of the most common reasons: “It Doesn’t Work!” We’ve heard this one time and time again. But the funny thing is, every time we do it’s from someone who hasn’t even tried it! Now think about this: Microsoft does SEO, WalMart does SEO, Mercedes-Benz does SEO, and over 475 of the Fortune 500 companies do SEO. Is it possible that all these companies waste money every single month in something that just doesn’t work? “I Can Do SEO Myself” Sure you can. But if you fractured a hip, would you go to a doctor to take care of it or would you try to perform the surgery yourself? Wouldn’t you rather have a lawyer representing you in court than trying to defend yourself? Why would you take 3 years to learn SEO from trial and error, risking your own business, instead of hiring a professional team to take care of it for you? “It’s too Much Work” If you think that, you’re right. Professional SEO is a lot of work. The good news is that we do it, not you. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Just read the monthly reports we send you, and watch your search engine positions improve every single week. “It’s Not the Right Moment” We beg to differ. The moment hasn’t ever been better! Whenever there’s an economic crisis, businesses start to panic. And the first thing they do is reduce their marketing budget. Let’s see if we have this straight: They’re worried about losing sales, so they start by cutting their marketing budget! Does this make sense to you? During bad times, your competitors hide. That’s exactly when you have a perfect opportunity to stand out. You can capture a much larger market share a lot more easily. “I can’t Afford Doing SEO” This is our personal favorite. Let us ask you another question. If somebody offered to give you $2 for every $1 that you give him, how many of these transactions would you be willing to make? As many as you could, right? Same thing happens with SEO. People who don’t want to invest in SEO think of it as an expense, not an investment. If you buy a nicer desk for yourself, buy your secretary flowers, or throw a big launch party to impress your employees, that’s an expense. It’s money that will not come back. But if you are investing money that will come back to you multiplied by five, are you sure you can’t afford it? Can you afford not to do it?   Case Study  866MyMajor.com February of 2007 Traffic Sources: Mostly Pay per Click Conversions: 83 per month. Issue: The majority of the incoming traffic was non-targeted (as a result of being non-organic) with a bounce rate of 96.44% and an average time on site of less than 10 seconds.       What We Did We optimized the site through extensive keyword research, added content, improved meta data and the addition of a CSS dropdown menu to get more Page Rank to what were tier three pages and beyond. We also generated incoming links through article creation and syndication, blog posts and social bookmarking. The client no longer pays for traffic generation or lead development outside of SEO services.     October of 2007 Traffic Sources: Mostly Organic (SEO). Conversions: 178 per month. The client’s traffic is now majority organic (note miniscule pie chart) and aided by the much more reasonable bounce rate of 43% and an average time on site of 2:42. Goal conversions are up substantially from the period when the client was paying for traffic, and the rankings will continue to rise as more link building measures are instituted. For the first 4 months, we primarily focused on the on-site optimization as the client had an abundance of pages with little to no optimization whatsoever. Results were predictably slow in the first few months, but setting up realistic expectations and maintaining positive communication with the client throughout the process assured them that they were taking the necessary steps toward improved organic performance. This client, with minimal maintenance and further link-building, will continue to perform at this level or higher as a result of the SEO investment. What they offer (educational leads) is virtually unaffected by seasonal performance and the number of organic leads per month has steadily climbed to the point that paying for traffic is no longer necessary. Our goal for the client is to provide enough targeted traffic to generate in excess of 250 organic leads by this time next year. Addendum: This client averaged over 250 goal conversions as of February 2008.   So, What’s Next?   After a number of years in this business, we’ve discovered why some companies still don’t do search engine marketing. Here are some of the most common reasons: By now you’re probably really excited about all the new business you can get by being first in your category on Google. Don’t wait any longer every day that goes by without your business at the very top of the most used search engines in the world is costing you missed opportunities.. Please fill out the form below; if we feel we’ll be a good match, we’ll put together a custom proposal for you, along with a plan of action to take your business to the top of Google and help you achieve the financial success you deserve.