Search Engine Marketing Blog

There comes a time when it’s a good idea to step back, take a deep breath, and take a long hard look at common sense business practices. Online marketing partners should be chosen with the same practical business principles used to choose more traditional business partners, with the added elements of technical expertise and internet marketing experience.

With the current economy what it is and the need to make sure every marketing dollar counts, it becomes even more important to shop value rather than the low bid. Choosing the lowest bidder can often be a very expensive decision. On the flip side, the highest price tag does not guarantee outstanding results. Following I have outlined 10 basic elements to evaluate when deciding on a search engine optimization and marketing service. Be practical, do your research, and remember that value for your marketing dollar and return on investment should always be the main focus of your search!

10 Things to Look for When Choosing your SEO

1. A commitment to Ethical SEO and business practices (no black hat or tricky practices).

2. An excellent client reference base, testimonials, and case studies.

3. A record of solid, lasting results and outstanding service.

4. Custom search engine marketing solutions for each unique client.

5. An attitude of partnership with the client for the long term. (Invested in your success)

6. Cutting edge industry tools, knowledge, and talent. Always up-to-date and learning more about the industry.

7. An experienced team of professionals: programmers, web designers, copy writers, SEO specialists, branding experts.

8. Outstanding client communications and education.

9. A commitment to excellence in all products and services.

10. A company base of solid, good sense business and marketing principles.

When you know what you are looking for in a search engine optimization company, it does not take long to uncover who the quality is and who to pass by. Integrity can be sensed in a portfolio, pride in product, thoughtful responses, and your own gut feeling for what a particular marketing company is all about.

To discuss a search engine optimization strategy with a company dedicated to Excellence in everything we do, give the Digital Surgeons a call at (203) 672-6201 or fill out our convenient website form. One of our SEO consultants will contact you promptly. We specialize in web design and search engine marketing for New York, Connecticut and the rest of the U.S.

In this article I will cover the importance of good website design and the process to streamline the creation and create success for any website project.

It starts with an idea—not with a technology:

In today’s internet obsessed world, far too many people are becoming more focused on the latest and greatest Web2.0 buzzwords than on the fundamental purpose of the website. Whether that purpose is to provide information or allow for the purchase of a product or service, there is a main purpose for the site and that needs to be identified.

Building the Blueprint: How to Plan your Website

CONCEPTING AND WIREFRAMING:

Creating a website is not that far removed from other traditional marketing campaigns in that a thorough initial analysis is crucial to the overall success of the project.

Simple sketches to identify your information flow and user interface become the building blocks of how you will position yourself online.

The website design should be based on the content, not the other way around. If you look into any successful website online their structure and information architecture surely have had a good amount of planning and research.

Having an understanding of this concept, you should blueprint your website with the following elements in mind:

· Objective: What are you trying to do with this website? It’s crucial you identify your objectives and goals in order to determine the direction the site will take.

· Competitive Analysis: Understanding what your competition is doing will help you compile a knowledge base that can be used in strengthening your brand and creating a differentiation that will help you compete in your market. Marketing professionals will sometimes refer back to Marketing 101 and talk about S.W.O.T analysis.

A SWOT analysis is a strategy used to quickly evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or business venture. Using the SWOT principals when doing your competition analysis is again, Marketing 101.

· Vocabulary and Message: Who are you trying to communicate with? Is your message being heard by the audience you are trying to reach? This is where graphic design and fundamental marketing concepts matter. You have approximately 8 seconds to captivate your audience before they grow tired and leave a page. Website visitors that leave your website in 8 seconds or less are considered a “bounce”. It is reported that the average bounce rate is close to 50%. Websites that heavily exceed this number are in drastic need of attention. When you are creating a website always keep in mind that the content you are delivering on any page within the site will be a determining factor as to how long the user stays on the page.

Sitemap & Wireframes: After gaining a solid understanding of your message, it is important to lay out the roadmap of how your information will flow throughout the website. A wireframe is the roadmap of your website and defines how visitors travel throughout the site. To reduce clutter and streamline usability, be sure that your navigation and site flow is consistent with good navigation and usability practices.

Wireframes also start to show “classifications” on a website. As users of the World Wide Web and interfaces on a daily basis, information architecture exists all around you.

o Lexicon Classifications: A Lexicon is simply a complex way of describing labeling systems and classifications. The lexicon breaks up a website into various sections and labels the sections with popular verbiage such as “Resources” and “Support”. These are functions of the various navigation systems, but these labels also help define and segment various pieces of information.

o Organizational Classifications: This is how the website’s information is presented to the user with respect to organization. For example, how various navigation elements are grouped together.

o Search: These tools, similar to how Google would search the web for content, give the user the ability to search the website and the various content within the website.

o Navigation: This is how we help users move through the content, digging deeper into the site as they visit the content areas of their choice.

· Look & Feel: Despite popular belief, having Photoshop or Dreamweaver installed doesn’t make someone a graphic artist or user interface designer. Having the “dorm-room” designer build your website can have a profound negative effect on your bottom line. Granted, you can cut costs by working with template-based solutions or hiring an inexperienced web developer, but this is not the route to take if you are serious about your website and the success of your business. Identifying the look and feel that will send the proper message to your target audience will have a direct effect on how visitors will respond to the website.

· Content: Have you ever visited a website and clicked on a number of things only to find the famous “Under Construction” message? Content, or should I say lack thereof, is one of the main reasons a site fails or never gets completed. You can have the best concept and layout in the world, but if there is no quality content to place into the site, at the end of the day, all you are left with is dead air.

From Paper to Web: Transforming your Blueprint into a Live Web Site.

Graphic Design and Website Page Creation:

Once you have created the blueprint of where you are going to take the website, you now have the necessary pieces to get started on the Concept Phase.

Depending on the designer, a number of applications may be utilized to compile the website design concepts. The most popular software suite by far used for website design concepts is the Adobe Creative Suite which contains applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. In addition to this application, many users still use Macromedia/Adobe’s Fireworks for website layouts.

By using a combination of the content and information presented in the above wireframes you can now start to compile how the website will look and feel.

Generally speaking, it is best to finalize the look and feel aspects of your website before spending time and resources on having it programmed. Design concepts that will play a big role in your website creation include traditional design composition elements such as point, line, form, texture, color, and type.

Keeping in mind these various elements will ensure the end result of your website possesses the needed attributes to deliver your message in a clear and concise manner. A clearly defined website message will result in a lower bounce rate and more people actually seeing and reading your website.

The Importance of Color in Successful Website Design

The use of color in website design has a profound impact on the website viewer experience. Colors affect people in a deep psychological, and often completely subconscious, manner and have the power to make the website experience overwhelmingly positive or negative. Most professionals recommend choosing up to five colors and using them consistently throughout the website.

Color choices provoke different responses for different people. The color palette of your website should consider the age group, gender, and culture of your intended audience, while also reflecting the emotional response you wish to stimulate in the potential customer. Certain colors have the tendency to create calm, excitement, happiness, or distaste, again depending upon who the website user is.

Another major factor in website color scheme is readability. The choice of background and type color should contrast well for readability without being harsh and glaring to the eye. Color can also be used to make certain phrases stand out within your site content or to indicate links within the text. Following are some color choice basics to consider when planning the palette of your website.

Color Choice Fundamentals

Use colors from nature. Using forest greens, sea blues, and the reds and yellows of flowers and fall leaves is much more alluring to viewers than harsh colors not seen in the natural world (such as shocking pink, electric blue, and neon green).

Color preference differs from men to women. Men prefer blue and orange while women are drawn to reds and yellows. Women also are capable of perceiving a much broader spectrum of colors and sense subtle shade variations much more easily.

Viewer age plays a role in color choice. Young adults and teens are often excited by bright, vibrant colors and contrast. Older people tend to be more interested in websites that have more conservative color schemes such as blues, grays, and browns, without glaring contrasts that can tire the eye.

Culture & nationality affect response to colors. In the United States and most European cultures, the color White symbolizes purity and marriage. However, in Japan and China white is a color of bad luck and red is the traditional color of new brides. If your website is aimed at attracting international customers, make sure to research the cultural color beliefs of your target audience.

The universal safe color. Blue seems to be a universally safe choice among different cultures, ages, and genders, evoking good feelings of peace and calm for most everyone.

Choose background and text colors for good contrast and readability. The best choice for readability is a white background with black text. Other good choices include gray or black backgrounds with a well contrasting text color. Avoid harsh contrasts such as red and green or blue and yellow, which have been shown to cause eye fatigue.

Keep in mind the most common meanings & emotions associated with color. Although different people react differently to colors, there are some very common meanings and emotions associated with certain colors. See below for a few examples:

Red: Excitement, power, passion, or anger.

Yellow: Joy, happiness, light

Blue: Cool, peace, trustworthiness, loyalty, or sadness

Black: Sophistication, mystery, or evil

Green: Life, nature, health, wealth

Consider website viewers with color perception problems. The most common form of color-blindness, most commonly seen in men, is blue-green colorblindness, where a person cannot differentiate between these two colors when they are next to each other. A blue background with green text will be completely unreadable to this person.

Stock Photography and Gathering Photography:

Obviously, using completely custom photography is ideal, but let’s face it, who has the time or the budget to always do that? Below I have outlined a few of my personal favorite sources for graphics and photography:

· STOCK XCHNG

o www.sxc.hu/ this massive gallery online has many high quality stock photos for non commercial usage. You can also purchase credits online for this.

· ISTOCKPHOTO

o http://istockphoto.com/index.php Great website for member-generated royalty free images. You can purchase these images by credits and they are relatively inexpensive at around $1.00 per image

· SHUTTERSTOCK

o http://www.shutterstock.com/ A subscription based website for downloading stock photos.

· GETTYIMAGES

o Great website with a massive database and the ability to custom search. A drawback for some people can be that many of these photos are rights-managed, meaning the license costs can get to be pretty expensive for smaller projects.

To the Chopping Block we Go: Transforming your Graphic Design into a Working Website.

The first step of coding a website is deciding upon the programming language to be used. The web developer will use different programming languages depending upon the features and abilities the website needs to accomplish its goals. Most promotional websites are best coded in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is very search engine friendly and flexible. When an ecommerce shopping cart, an interactive event calendar, or content management system is needed, you will need to use a server-side programming language such as PHP or ASP.

In almost all cases, avoid creating a website from a pre-packaged templated website building program. The vast majority of these programs, many featuring shopping carts, are not search engine friendly and the code is messy and extraneous. Additionally, the website builder has little access to the actual code of the site, limiting options for further development. The website software company usually will not allow outside developers to make changes to their website creation program and can charge very high fees for necessary upgrades or modifications to the website.

Why Custom Design is the Smart Choice

Choosing an experienced website design professional, proficient in multiple aspects of web design and ecommerce development, to build a custom website from scratch could be the best business investment you ever make. This ensures that your website will be built to reflect your company’s goals and your client’s needs and desires from the ground up.

A professional website developer should also ensure that your site meets the stringent standards of the W3C (World Wide Web consortium) and follows industry best practices to ensure smooth, efficient function and a good reception by the major search engines. Well structured websites are designed to be scalable, so that when upgrades or additional product lines are added the site can easily adapt to accommodate the growth of the company.

Based upon conversations, design questionnaires, and additional sources of information, a professional website designer will present design concepts, also called a ‘mock up’ of the website for your approval and feedback. Based upon that feedback, the designer will make revisions to your specifications. Usually a round or two of revisions occurs before the final website creation is ready for launch live on the web. A reliable website design agency will perform all kinds of testing on different platforms to ensure the site functions efficiently and looks great from all the major browsers.

Proper Page Names are Essential

The proper taxonomy (naming structure) of your website pages is essential to identify to the search engines what that page is all about. When creating a website, the individual page names should clearly label the purpose of the page and use your industry’s most important keyword phrases whenever possible.

Most templated website building programs generate automatic page names (URL’s) that involve series of numbers and symbols that are highly un-search engine friendly and do not identify the page is any logical manner to the viewer. The majority of templated programs do not allow the user to rename the pages individually.

Page Taxonomy Examples:

When a website is custom built from the ground up, the designer will name each page in a manner that reflects the products or services on the page and is easily indexed by Google and the other major search engines. For example:

Correct Page Naming: www.Digitalsurgeons.com/Ecommercewebsites.php clearly defines that this page is about building ecommerce websites.

Poor Page Naming: A page with the naming structure of: www.kidsclothing/series?123/x4 tells the search engines absolutely nothing and the page will never be properly indexed for the correct category of product.

When you create a new website, everything that goes into the process is meant to tell both the customer and search engines what your business is all about.

Building the Titles and Meta Data: Another Way to Tell the World What it’s All About

Once the website developer has built the framework of the website navigation and pages, the strategic fields of your new site should be developed to further reflect what your business is all about. These fields include title tags, meta descriptions, and meta keyword tags, as well as several other strategic areas that can further identify your site to the search engines and to clients.

Each page of a website has its own set of titles and meta tags and these should all be developed individually to reflect the purpose and content of the page. Repeating the same title and keywords throughout every page of the website is ineffective and can actually harm your chances of doing well in the search engine listings.

Keyword Stuffing is Notthe Answer

When the idea of search engine optimization was new, some web developers got into the bad habit of stuffing as many keywords as possible into the strategic fields of sites. I still see it today when I look at a prospective client’s website source code and notice a block of keywords half a page long! Cramming huge lists of keywords into the title, description, or keyword tag is just one way that some people still practice ‘keyword stuffing’.

Google and the other search engines now penalize websites that use this practice to try to bump up their search engine rankings. The practice is now completely ineffective and can result in getting your website dropped down or banned from the search engine listings.

Correct Meta Data Development is an Art & Science

Experienced search engine optimization and web development professionals are skilled at analyzing what the search engines are looking to see in a title tag or description. Rules can change frequently and can differ among the types of websites the search engine is looking at (ecommerce, promotional, etc.). Your web designer or SEO expert will develop your title and meta data fields based on a careful review of what is happening online and with competing sites and determining what the search engines are favoring. Just as in life, there is no one magic formula for optimizing your site.

Put the Customer First: Never sacrifice readability and accuracy for the chance to get a couple more keywords in the mix. The client always comes first when creating your website, while keeping the search engines firmly in mind. Balance is the key and a good rule of thumb is to include two or three of the most pertinent keywords in your title and description tags. Also, use exact phrase matches when listing keywords in your keyword tag.

Building a Website Founded on Industry Best Practices

The W3C

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has published standards for good website design and HTML validation that have become widely accepted everywhere. Websites that meet these guidelines are much, much more likely to do well in the search engines. These practices also look out for the user in encouraging efficient, user friendly website coding practices. Good tools are available free online for analyzing sites to see if they meet validation and finding out what specific issues exist. The W3C standards also make it easier for HTML programmers from all over to interpret coding and work with existing site programming.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

Google’s set of webmaster guidelines are a great place to start when you want to find out what Google wants to see in a website. These recommendations cover areas such as using sitemaps, correct text link development, naming conventions, and encourage website builders to develop sites with the end-user always as the primary focus of the endeavor.

Google strongly encourages creating a website rich in good quality information with a logical structure and user-friendly navigation. All of their more recent algorithm changes are aimed at making a better quality experience for the user.

Pulling it all Together

An excellent website designer will always be researching industry best practices and working to stay on the cutting edge of web development. Working with an agency that delivers great website development skills with high power search engine optimization abilities makes for a powerful combination for your business.

The overriding message of this article is the importance of creating a solid website foundation for your online business from the ground up by designing with the customer as the focus and the search engines always in mind. Keeping practical website design principles in mind and planning thoroughly will put you and your new website on the road to online success. Our SEO Consulting and Website Design team has all the components for a successful online marketing mix

The team at Digital Surgeons encourages your questions and ideas. Call us at (203) 672-6201 or visit our site at www.Digitalsurgeons.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

New, and sometimes even experienced, business owners may feel tempted to hire someone they know or a ‘friend of a friend’ to build their website. Companies need to see their websites as the online showcase of their business. For Ecommerce ventures, the website becomes the essential online store.

The one-man freelance designer may seem like a good idea at the time. Initial pricing is often much lower than with a professional web design house. The one-man show may profess to being an expert in every aspect of web development and search engine marketing and offer a quicker deadline than the web agency did. Businesses may like the feeling of working with a ‘friend of a friend’ or the owner’s cousin. In most cases, the realities of working with the ‘dorm room designer’ are quite different.

Following are several advantages of working with a professional ct website design and marketing agency versus the basement web professional:

A Team of experienced Web Designers each with a wide range of skills and their own particular talent niches are available to bring their talents to many projects. Graphic artists, website programmers, flash developers, ecommerce designers SEO experts, and professional copy writers. Agencies have the resources to acquire the top talent in the industry. The Dorm Room Designer may claim expertise in all areas, but logic decrees this is just not likely.

Increased Man-power Resources: More design professionals to allocate jobs to gets the job moving on schedule. Professional project management systems also keep design projects on task for the intended delivery date. The Dorm Room Designer is by definition a ‘one man show’.

Custom Web Design/Tailored to the Target Audience: Doing the research, looking at the big picture of who, what, how, and why and building a custom website that looks at every aspect of doing business online in each unique industry. This takes an experienced team of both marketing and web development professionals to get the job done correctly.

Quality Assurance: Professional web design firms conduct extensive testing on all major browsers and in every important situation. Proofing and editing is ongoing throughout the project. Good agencies make a commitment to keep current with industry best practices, technical innovations, and the most effective methods of website promotion.

Full Spectrum of Marketing Agency Services: Many good agencies combine both web design and search engine marketing services. These two fields are interlinked so closely that it just makes good business sense. Once a custom site is created, the agency works to drive substantial high-quality traffic to the site. SEO, media buying, and social networking are some of the many marketing tactics a quality web agency will use to help clients gain success online. It is hard to imagine the lone designer bringing all of these skills to the table.

Experts in ‘Branding’ A good web marketing and design team is expert in building a website presence from the ground up that will convey the mission and philosophy of a business, and make sure the target customer gets the message loud and clear. ‘Branding’ takes skill, experience, and an instinctive eye for what consumers want that not everyone can deliver.

Making the Website Vision a Reality:

Commitment to Excellence: Unlike the ‘Dorm Room Designer’, the great agencies are not looking to make a quick buck or just playing with the idea of becoming IT professionals. Digital Surgeons is home to an established and committed group of industry professionals who love nothing better than unraveling the mysteries of the search engines and the consumer mind, and putting that information to work for our clients. We provide CT web design services of unparalleled performance.

Every website we build and marketing campaign we perform is geared to completely outperform expectations and become something we can proudly showcase as our own. Digital Surgeons works to make sure the job is done right, on time, and if any problems occur, we take care of them quickly and efficiently. If we don’t think we can help your business be more successful, we will not take the project. Will that happen with the ‘dorm room designer?

For more information about Digital Surgeons or to start working on a new website or search engine marketing plan today, call our Connecticut web design and marketing professionals at (203) 672-6201 or fill out our convenient website contact form.

On March 7th, 2008 our client Sir Drake Clothing was seen on the “Happy Hour” segment of Fox Business News. Founders Topper Luciani and Scott Caputo discussed the process that has led to the success of the Sir Drake clothing line.

The young entrepreneurs formed the company while still in college with the goal to create a polo shirt that was edgy yet rooted in tradition. Sir Drake is about the paradox of the modern man – willing to follow the rules of fashion yet actively seeking to express an individual sense of style.

The focal point of this philosophy are the 8 original Sir Drake icons (or logos) embroidered on their polos, with each having special meaning. Instead of the traditonal gator logo we all have come to know, Sir Drake’s icons include their flying pig symbolizing the drive to “achieve the impossible” and the airplane that signifies “no boundaries”

Digital Surgeons helped Sir Drake in marketing their vision by creating their website at www.Sirdrakeclothing.com, a highly innovative design with ecommerce platform and interactive flash elements that delivers a high conversion to sale ratio. For more details about the web development project visit the Sir Drake Client Case study on the Digital Surgeons website.

The Fox Business piece talked about the trials and tribulations Sir Drake experienced in using foreign manufacturers, including run-ins with poor quality, waterlogged shipments, and late deliveries. They have become strong proponents of the ‘Made in the USA’ movement after finding that the quality of both workmanship and communications is far superior to the alternative.

The Sir Drake clothing line can be found in many retail locations now and online at www.sirdrakeclothing.com. In marketing the website, the founders emphasized good old-fashioned persistence and knocking on every door for opportunity. They also have experienced much success through social network marketing and search engine marketing strategies.

The Digital Surgeons crew is pleased to be a part of this business success story and we wish our friends at Sir Drake Clothing a lifetime of growing prosperity. For more information on building online success, contact us at (203) 672-6201 or via our website form.

Digital Surgeons has just released to the online public our latest white paper entitled The Blueprint for Online Success: Understanding the Fundamentals of Website Design. In this comprehensive article Pete Sena II, Chief Technical Officer and founding partner of Digital Surgeons LLC, offers real-world advice on building a website that delivers lasting success.

This article emphasizes the importance of careful research and planning when creating any website venture. From the ground up, successful web sites are custom built with the target audience in mind with elements that appeal to the ideal client. The goal is to grab and hold the attention of potential customers and deliver a website experience that is interesting, easy to navigate, and delivers what the visitor is looking for.

Readers will access practical design principles about website structure, colors and fonts, customer demographic differences, and search engine friendly coding considerations. Find out about the pitfalls of using cheap templated website building programs and the profound advantages of custom website development.

Both promotional and ecommerce website businesses will benefit from the insights in this article. This is valuable information that can guide new online businesses to solid, lasting success.

The Blueprint for Online Success: Understanding the Fundamentals of Website Design covers all the basics of creating a powerful website that attracts both customers and the search engines. Peter Sena II can be reached for questions and ideas at (203) 672-6201 or Pete@digitalsurgeons.com.

Coming soon in March the Entrepreneurial Women’s Network of Connecticut (EWN) will be hosting a new workshop on the most effective practices in internet marketing for Connecticut businesses. The most recent trends in New Media strategies will be discussed by a panel of Web 2.0 experts with plenty of opportunities to explore the subjects of blogging, social network marketing, podcasts, and the best ways to utilize these and more tactics to make your business thrive online.

This is practical, real world marketing advice that can make an incredible difference in the success of both new and established companies. Here are the details of this important workshop:

When: March 26th, 2008
8:15am – 11:15am

Register: http://www.ewn-ct.org/morning_wk_0308.htm
Members: $20 Non-members: $25

Panelists who work in the Connecticut internet marketing arena will share with you there most valuable insights. Andrew DiFiore will be discussing the mysteries of Viral Marketing and Web 2.0. Our own Peter Sena will deliver his experience with social network marketing and using the best online marketing mixes for your business. Other panelists will discuss email marketing, web analytics, and much more.

For guests this workshop will:

1. Offer an understanding and definition of new internet marketing strategies and how they can be used to promote your business.

2. Provide Key resources to help you get started with your plan.

3. Provide a practical discussion on the costs involved in building these new strategies into your business marketing plan.

4. Identify common mistakes and ways to avoid them.

5. Help you determine which internet marketing strategies are right for your company.

This New Media workshop is expected to fill up quickly and space may be limited. Be sure to sign up now at the website link provided above. The EWN of CT and Digital Surgeons looks forward to seeing you at the workshop.

For more information on the latest in CT search engine marketing and rich media strategies that yield substantial results, give Digital Surgeons a call at (203) 672-6201, contact us via our website form, or come talk with us at the EWN March Morning Workshop.

Is anyone else in the search engine marketing business surprised and baffled that the word “SEO” still seems to invoke instant defense mechanisms in business owners and marketing VIPs? Even with a world of published statistics that clearly demonstrate that the online public trusts organic search engine listings far more than pay per click ads, a large number of businesses continue to invest a highly disproportional amount of the marketing budget in sponsored advertisements rather than quality search strategies.

Frequently I and my colleagues ask people how they search for something online. Do they pay attention to the little paid ads to the right of the results? In almost every case the response is that the pay per clicks ads are ignored and that attention is only given to the first page of search engine listings. Only about 2-4% of searchers ever click on the sponsored pay per click ads, while the vast majority of online consumers, over 85%, gravitate solely to the natural search engine results.

In almost every situation, the most valuable asset for an internet business is high rankings in the natural search engine results for the keyword phrases that are most important for that industry. Combine great search engine positioning with a quality website that is built for the target audience and you have a winning combination. This makes an incredible foundation for building business success on the internet.

Search engine optimization just makes good business success. Build a website with a good structure, great content, relevant links, and with the customer always in mind! The details of this process can best be delegated to an experienced SEO professional. If businesses can lower the wall of resistance long enough to listen, research, and consider the common sense aspects of SEO, they will profit enormously. A website should be found where customers are looking for services and products, and 85% of the time, they are looking in the organic search engine results.

Unfortunately, many business owners and managers have experienced the disappointments and wastes of less than effective SEO companies that promise what they can not deliver. Many have tried to take advantage of $49.95 per month plans that promise the world and deliver next to nothing. For some reason, in the world of SEO, website owners continue to believe they can compete online and become prominent in their industries for little or no money. With any other traditional marketing strategy this does not seem to be the case.

With good research into potential search engine optimization companies and a foundation of knowledge to base decisions on, businesses can find a reliable SEO company to help them reach their goals and receive an excellent return on their investment. The time and research that goes into choosing an SEO expert for your company is well worth the effort. Optimizing your website takes some time (6 to 12 months) but the rewards can be enormous. Traffic and sales can increase for the long term in a way that almost no other marketing vehicle can produce.

Pay per click bid management is an important marketing strategy when used in balance with other methods and for the correct circumstances. Other search engine marketing tactics such as media buying and social networking can also be quite fruitful and our agency helps clients in these arenas as well. An excellent search marketing campaign becomes the foundation businesses can rely on for the long-term and then can enhance with other strategies when the time is right. The most intelligent move is to make an allocation for search engine optimization in the marketing budget as the first priority of business.

For more information about custom SEO strategies that make sense for your business or for your clients, give Digital Surgeons a call at (203) 672-6201 or contact us via our convenient website form. We look forward to working with you towards unparalleled success.

New York City is an important hub in the dynamic arena of search engine marketing and creative online advertising. To compete in the New York marketing arena requires a team of top marketing and programming experts that consistently deliver Excellence with every client venture. Digital Surgeons delivers the internet marketing expertise necessary to compete with the biggest marketing firms NY has to offer.

Two new and informative pages have been added to our website to detail our New York search engine optimization and marketing tools and talent. Our offices are central to the New York market allowing our team to strategize with tristate clients face-to-face on all kinds of dynamic search engine marketing projects.

Visit our new web pages to learn more about how Digital Surgeons delivers SEO New York style. Find out more about our many web development and online marketing offerings custom designed for each venture to bring unparalleled success.

• Search Engine Optimization
• Media Planning & Buying Strategies
• Award-Winning Website Design
• Ecommerce Development
• Flash Multimedia Presentations
• Pay per Click Campaign Management
• Social Network Marketing
• Conversion Analysis & Enhancement
• Professional Copy Writing
• Facebook Applications

Each online business endeavor is unique and should be treated so. Each of our search engine optimization NY strategies is tailored to fit the goals, needs, and budget of the individual client and his industry. Our industry-leading programmers love nothing better than unraveling the latest Google algorithms to find out what makes them tick and how to make our clients’ websites very popular with the major search engines.

For truly effective New York search engine marketing plans, give the Digital Surgeons team a call at (203) 672-6201 or contact us via our convenient website form.

Digital Surgeons continues to add more valuable information to our website experience with the addition of three new pages detailing our extensive SEO Outsourcing services. Our search engine marketing and web development professionals provide cost-effective web design and search engine optimization outsourcing solutions for design companies, marketing agencies, and high-tech access firms in the New York tristate area and across the nation. It is our goal to provide outstanding solutions while keeping within client budget parameters and time frames.

Digital Surgeons has worked with many large and medium-sized marketing, advertising, graphic design, and consulting agencies to provide design, marketing, and SEO vendor services for every size project. We work in both behind the scenes (white label) capacity, or in open partnership with your company to bring SEO success and new possibilities to your client’s internet marketing strategy.

The advantages of working with Digital Surgeons for SEO outsourcing and web design services are many:

Additional Services for Your Clients
Increased Manpower & Talent
Cutting Edge Industry Experience
Tailored, Unique Client Solutions
Cost Savings & Increased Value per Marketing Dollar

Our large and talented team includes professional flash developers, SEO experts, copy writers, and award winning website designers. Visit our new SEO Tristate page for a look at the search engine marketing solutions we tailor for our New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut partners. For an insightful look at what to look for and what to look out for in your quest for the right SEO partner, check out our Good vs. Bad SEO page for some very useful suggestions.

For exceptional search engine optimization, marketing, and web design outsourcing, please give us a call at (203) 672-6201 or contact us via our convenient website form. We look forward to building a successful partnership with your business for the long-term.

The Digital Surgeons development team has been working hard at upgrading www.Digitalsurgeons.com with even more useful in-depth industry information for our clients and those looking to learn how to make their business thrive online. Our new Media Planning and Buying page is rich with information about the media buying process and how the search engine marketing experts at Digital Surgeons create tremendous success in media buying for our clients.

Creating a truly effective online media buying campaign takes research, planning, and a solid idea of who the target audience is. The media planning and buying process involves a number of logical steps:

• Determining the target audience and what gets their attention.
• Researching the best internet destinations and strategies for reaching this audience.
• Negotiating for and buying ad space from selected sites at the best value for the client’s marketing dollar.
• Design and Creation of advertisements and rich media targeted at the ideal market.
• Collecting and interpreting data collected about consumer response to the advertising campaign and adjusting strategies accordingly.

Media buying agencies are not all cut from the same cloth. Digital Surgeons will work with you to gain an understanding of who your target audience is. Once identified, our media buying campaigns will include targeting that audience by geographic area, demographic profile, behavior tendencies, and a number of other factors. Our media planning, graphic design and flash development team brings to life:

• Continuous ‘ticker tape’ type streaming ads
• Interactive banner advertisements
• Streaming video and audio
• Flash ads that respond when moused over
• Interactive mini games
• Online infomercials

The search engine marketing possibilities are vast and Digital Surgeons loves the challenge of an innovative, custom media buying and design project. Our professional team targets the ideal market audience, researches the best possible sites for reaching them, builds a cost-effective media buying plan with these online destinations, and creates online advertisements and rich media designed specifically to reach your market demographic. We continually gather data, track, and test our media buying strategies to make sure our clients are getting the best possible value for their budget.

For more information or to get started on a powerful online media buying campaign, call our media planning professionals at (203) 672-6201 or contact us via our convenient website form. We look forward to partnering with you on a dynamic and successful campaign.