Justin Smith » Apogee Results - The Online Marketing Authority

Keyword Research-Necessity or Nuisance?

Posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2012 by Justin Smith

Keyword Research: Necessity or Nuisance?

- How are people searching for the products and services you offer?

- What is the competition like for sellers in your industry?

- Are they even searching for your product or service?

In order to know how to reach your target audience, you will need to get your hands dirty and do a little digging around.

Keyword Research and the Health of Your SEO Campaign

Keyword research is the investigation of various keywords and phrases that businesses and consumers use to search the internet. Search Engine Optimizers use this information to help decide the best keyterms to target, which will then enable them to gain higher rankings in search results, leading to higher conversion rates across the board.

I like to think of keyword research as being the foundation of any successful SEO campaign. When researching different keyterms that you may choose to include in your campaign, it is important to look at numerous metrics to help decide which keyterms will help you reach your goal(s). If you aren’t aware of the way that people are searching for the products and services you are offering, how are you ever going to reach that target audience? Good, solid keyword research is a must in the development of a successful SEO campaign.

A few things to look at (including but definitely not limited to):

- Keywords: Which keywords are people using to search for your product?

- Global and Local Search Volume: How many people are searching for what you’re offering?

- Cost-Per-Click Data: How much are people willing to pay to advertise for specific keywords?

- Level of Competition: How hard is it going to be for you to obtain top rankings in SERPs?

A couple of tools available to help with your keyword research:

- Google Adwords

- SEOmoz

- Search Engines:

Google
Bing
Yahoo
etc.

Whether you’re a company just getting off the ground or an established company having a hard time getting your customers to convert, keyword research is a vital step in the development of an SEO campaign. Make sure that you have your audience targeted and that you know how to reach them. You will not gain their business if you are not visible to your target audience.

For more information on how Apogee can help you and your business succeed, please contact one of our sales representatives today!

Reputation Management: Using SEO to Defeat a Negative Reputation

Posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 by Justin Smith

In today’s day and age, reputation can make or break a business. With information so readily available online, it is essential to keep an eye on what people are saying about your business. Hopefully it’s easy for you and your business alike to keep up a positive reputation, but sometimes getting a bad review, unkind words from a disgruntled customer, or exaggerated claims from an ex-employee are inevitable. In the event that this happens to you or your business, don’t you worry, that’s where reputation management comes in! There are ways to get your positive citations to outweigh the negative.

Using search engine optimization to combat a negative citation can be costly and time consuming, but in the scheme of things, getting negative listings off of search results can be far more valuable than the money spent on a reputation management campaign. The same techniques that Search Engine Optimizers use to get their clients higher rankings in search engines can also be used to push negative citations further down in search results.

Areas of Focus:

Shelf space

Increasing the amount of shelf space you rank for a certain key term can help push negative listings down

Linkbuilding

Linkbuilding can be used to increase the rank of search results that you want to appear in SERPs

Blogging

Blogging efforts can be implemented to get people talking about you and your business in the positive manner you want them to.

Press Releases

If you have the chance to brag about the wonderful things that your company is doing, DO IT!

Social Media

Use social media to get people talking about your business

Implementing these techniques into a reputation management campaign can greatly increase your chance of success. Don’t let harsh words get you down. Defeat negative citations with SEO!