Local SEO in Portland
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a website and other online presences (like your Google my business, or social media pages) to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines (like Google, Bing, Yahoo, or increasingly DuckDuckGo). There are many simple pieces that we look at as an SEO agency when taking on a new client, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is technically structured in a way that search engines understand, and other times it’s a complete overhaul of your web presence, which is why we work with every client to assemble an SEO plan that’s uniquely effective, but not one-size-fits-all.
How hard is doing your own SEO?
The individual steps and procedures for SEO are mind-bogglingly simple, and you can find countless resources online for taking these steps yourself to grow your business. Should you do it yourself? Of course! For a small business starting out with limited resources, hiring a SEO agency in Portland or anywhere else isn’t on the radar, which is why reading a few how-to’s and watching a few SEO tutorials will really help get you started with the basics. Depending on your area and business type, it also might be all you need to rank your website sufficiently. The tricky part is the time involved in doing these tasks, such as SEO copy writing, managing business listings, writing blogs, and adjusting website content and back-end code continuously. When we charge our SEO clients for our services, it translates directly to the hours we spend on these tasks, as well as our combined SEO knowledge we continuously strive to improve to best serve them. So if you’re reading this and are not sure if you can do your own SEO, just try it! Search YouTube for ‘SEO Tutorials’ to start, and get your feet wet a little with all the basic tactics a SEO agency will be using. There will of course be times when one of the many hats you wear as a small business owner in Portland, can’t be SEO and you must focus on running your business. That’s where chatting with an SEO agency like M2P Marketing has great value, and we would be more than happy to see if we can help.
How to advertise on Google (AdWords) to get traffic and leads
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and advertising. It encompasses both SEO and other targeted demographic marketing tools, such as AdWords, link-backs, digital page take-overs, and other forms of web-based marketing. M2P Marketing also employs our own proprietary Transit Advertising platform MOSS to drive traffic to our client’s websites and landing pages to deliver a competitive edge not found anywhere else.
SEO/SEM isn’t just about building search engine-friendly websites. It’s about making your site better for people too. A well-crafted, SEO-structured website allows for search engines to find your website quicker and furthermore, send clients and potential customers to the right place quickly and efficiently. Writing for SEO is concise and targeted, making information easier to process and increasing sales through having a more direct message. At M2P Marketing, we’ll craft a website and a marketing plan that will optimize your entire online presence.
2017 Localized Organic Ranking Factors
Source: Moz.com
How does SEO/SEM work?
It’s all about relevancy and popularity. If you think of the internet as a giant subway, each individual page of content is one stop in a huge transit system. A search engine, then, is something of a scheduler, or a route controller: it seeks hints from your text about where you want to go and compares it to the actual stops on its giant map. SEO optimization is a method of selecting keywords to get those giant search engine’s attention. Entire content is rewritten to guarantee the maximum use of key words and phrases to help guide that train to where it wants to go.
It’d be a bit too simple if it was just the title of the station or it’s summary. Search Engines these days can tell whether the information is actually useful by comparing content to keyword, as well as determine popularity. Search engines typically assume that the more popular a site, page, or document, the more valuable the information it contains must be. This assumption has proven fairly successful in terms of user satisfaction with search results. Popularity and relevance aren’t determined manually. Instead, the engines employ mathematical equations (algorithms) to sort the wheat from the chaff (relevance), and then to rank the wheat in order of quality (popularity).
These algorithms often comprise hundreds of variables. We think about them so you don’t have to.
How much does SEO cost?
While we have several packages that we offer our clients, we firmly believe that every client doesn’t need the same cookie cutter plan. The time we spend to build and optimize one business’s website may dramatically differ from another, which is why we chat with every client first to see if we can develop a pricing structure that’s both effective and affordable. We offer our own website hosting for our client’s, as well as numerous other marketing services such as Text Message marketing, Graphic Design, Email Marketing automation and many others that we consider together with the client to find a strategy and price that fits. Have a quick chat with us when your ready to talk, and we can go over your website (or plans for one) to see if we can help.
