Why You Must Give Your SEO Campaign Time

Last Updated: October 15, 2015

How long do you plan to keep your company in business? For the vast majority of business owners, the answer is something longer than 90 days. Why, then, are many business owners so reluctant to invest in online advertising for the long haul? If you want a long-lasting web presence that gets stronger and stronger as time goes on, then you must be patient as SEO builds. An SEO program may try your patience for the first 90 days, but the long-term ROI will be worth the wait.

Here’s why SEO requires your patience, and how your patience will pay off.

SEO = Building a Reputation

Why does SEO take at least three months to start generating results? It’s because SEO involves so much more than just building a website. As we’ve noted previously, SEO requires lots of repetition as you build your website’s reputation and establish its credibility with Google. This includes submitting your site to multiple tiers of directories in stages, updating your social media profile regularly, and performing other tasks that build your backlinks.
If you look at starting a new SEO campaign like starting a new business, it might make more sense: Opening a physical storefront is only the first step. You then have to get the word out about your business by announcing your arrival on the scene. You need to bring attention to your new business by holding a grand opening, sharing the news on Facebook, handing out business cards… Whatever it takes to get people to notice you. Then you can start expecting customers to roll in. It’s the same with an SEO campaign. Your advertiser needs to spend time putting your name online and demonstrating your legitimacy to Google before you can expect your phone to start ringing.
When all is said and done, the whole “grand opening” process for SEO campaigns usually takes at least three months.

Be the Tortoise, Not the Hare

While SEO may take a while to gain traction, it’s the only form of online advertising proven to go the distance. As your campaign gains momentum, its performance will grow until it doesn’t even resemble what it was like in those first few months.
To use another analogy, building an SEO campaign can be compared to building a house. During the initial stages of construction, you’ll have a fine-looking house from the outside, with four walls, a roof, and some windows. But when you open the door, you’ll see that the house is still uninhabitable, as the plumbing and electricity still need to be installed and the interior needs to be furnished.
Quitting your SEO campaign after the first four weeks because your website has been launched “without results” would be like deciding to move in to this uninhabitable house because it looks finished from the outside. You would soon realize you made a huge mistake by rushing it. However, if you’re patient for a few more weeks, you’ll have a cozy, fully functional home.
In the same way, if you stick it out with your SEO company for a little bit longer, you’ll have a high-performing advertising campaign that can start to generate leads from all different corners of the web. Best of all, once your site has established a solid reputation with Google, it’ll only require regular monitoring and occasional maintenance to keep going strong.

Stick With One SEO Provider

Whatever you do, don’t start working with another advertiser during this three-month waiting period in the hopes that it will speed up your wait time. It won’t. In fact, it could actually make you wait twice as long, considering the damage it would do to your Quality Score on Google. You’d make your advertiser’s job harder while making your campaign’s performance worse.

Make the Commitment. It’s Worth It.

When you put in the time and allow your SEO campaign to gain traction, you’ll be rewarded with prominence in local search results and a steady increase in leads. As time goes on and your website’s value becomes clearer to Google, your campaign’s performance will improve even more. Provided that your advertiser isn’t doing anything shady—like creating fake map listings or copying the same content for all of their sites—you should give your advertiser at least 90 days to work their magic. You’ll be glad you did.

Take a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Prospect Genius

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

When you hear us talk about SEO and lead generation, do you feel like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher go, “Wah wah-wah wah wah”? If you’re not someone who specializes in online advertising, it’s perfectly understandable to feel confused—and, frankly, a little bored—about what it is we do. However, it’s important to know a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes so you can appreciate exactly how our services are benefiting your web presence.
Here’s what you need to know.

We Amplify Your Existing Presence

There’s a good chance that you had already set up a Google My Business or Facebook account before joining our program. If that’s the case, you may be misled into thinking that any leads coming from Google or Facebook are a result of your existing presence instead of our work. It’s a logical assumption, but it’s incorrect.
Instead, local search optimization functions as a multifaceted machine, with a series of gears, levers, and wheels all working together to create the final output. The phone call or e-mail inquiry that came from your Google listing is actually a product of the search optimization machine. Your company information ranked well in Google’s local search results, thus leading the customer to contact you thanks to all of the behind-the-scenes work we did.
For proof, take a look at two examples of clients whose Google traffic skyrocketed after signing up with Prospect Genius.
Company A:

Company B:

As you can see, after signing up with us, these two clients saw huge increases in their views and clicks. That’s due to all the work we’re doing for your campaign. But what does that work entail, exactly?

We Build the Machine

Prospect Genius’s job is to design and build the local search optimization machine that powers your campaign. That means making sure each individual part works perfectly in addition to fitting all of those parts together seamlessly.

Here are the four main parts:

Google listing
On-page SEO
Citations
Inbound links and social signals

Google Listing

Local search rankings improve when your Google listing is thoroughly optimized and populated with lots of customer reviews. That’s why Prospect Genius optimizes every client’s listing and provides a handful of tools to help you increase your number of reviews.

On-Page SEO

To appeal to Google’s search algorithms, all of your website’s pages must be optimized. You must have valuable content that’s targeted at specific search terms and is generally informative. All of our LeadTrax™ sites are written and designed for on-page SEO to further boost your company’s rankings.

Citations

Citations refer to all of the instances in which your business name appears alongside your contact information (e.g. address and phone number), and they must be consistently accurate. Citations most often come from online directories and Internet yellow pages, but they may also occur in newspapers, magazines, local blogs, and social media posts. Many of Prospect Genius’s packages add your business info to numerous directories, ensuring accuracy across the board and driving up your citation score.

Inbound Links and Social Signals

Inbound links are links that exist on another website and link to a page on your website. They indicate that your page contains valuable information. Along the same lines, social signals are data points that tell Google how appealing your website is on a human level. If lots of people are sharing links to your website on social media, and your company’s social media account has lots of “Likes” or followers, then those valuable social signals will boost your local search ranking. That’s why Prospect Genius sets you up with Facebook and Twitter accounts (if you don’t already have them) and promotes you on social media.

It’s All About Synergy

Did you make it to the end of this post without your eyes glazing over? Good! Hopefully, you now have a much deeper understanding of what drives your campaign and keeps it successful.
With your cooperation, we’re able to create a uniform front to fortify your company’s online presence. We achieve substantial, organic results by creating a well-oiled machine that runs flawlessly. While your Google listing is significant, you can’t give all of the credit to a single cog.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions you may have.
Photo credit: Linda Buquet, localsearchforum.com

How to Slow Down in the Summer Without Losing Fall Business

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Summer is a time for family vacations, relaxing afternoons at the beach, and fun adventures with the kids. And when you own a business and make your own schedule, it’s easy to take as much time off as you want and enjoy every last ray of sunshine. However, if you plan to slow down during the summer months, you won’t be bringing in much revenue. That means you won’t want to be paying for things you don’t need, including certain online advertising services. At the same time, you don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize your business come fall.
Here are our recommendations for when you want to slow down in the summer and pick right back up once fall rolls around.

Do NOT Stop Your SEO

Even if you’re planning to take an entire month’s vacation, don’t stop your SEO. It’s not something you can just pause and resume. If you stop your SEO, all of your progress will be deconstructed and, when you want to restart your program, you’ll have to rebuild from the ground up. It may seem like you’re saving money by skipping a month’s payment, but you’ll actually cost yourself more money in the long run when your campaign loses momentum and you have to wait for it to ramp up again. If you want your fall season to start strong, you simply cannot afford to stop your campaign.
Look at it this way: If you were to go away for a month, would you sell your house and then re-purchase it when you returned? We’re betting no.

DO Pause Your PPC

While you can’t pause your SEO, you can feel free to have us pause your PPC campaign. Since you’re not going to be taking calls or booking jobs while you’re on vacation, there’s no need to pay for people to click on your ads. Once you’re back in the swing of things and ready to work, you can have our specialists resume your PPC campaign. The leads will start rolling in again in no time.
This doesn’t just apply to when you take an extended vacation, either. You can do this if you’re taking a weekend off or even if you’re just booked up for the next few days. We have a particularly astute client, Marvel Appliances Service in Miami, FL, who has this down to a science. He runs his PPC campaign during the week and then pauses it on the weekends when he’s all booked up and can’t handle any more calls. He saves money without sacrificing leads.
It’s kind of like turning off your air conditioning when you leave for the weekend.

DO Reroute Your Phone Number

Rerouting your phone number is super easy to do right from the Client Portal. If you’re spending quality time with your family at the beach one day, you can quickly set your calls to forward to e-mail or to a different phone number so that your cell phone isn’t ringing off the hook. Once you’re ready to take calls again, you can return to the Client Portal and set your phone number back the way it was. But don’t forget to follow up with all those calls you missed!
If you’ll be unavailable for an extended period of time, you can take this a step further by “renting” out your LeadTrax™ site to a local friend in the same industry as you. You would forward your incoming calls to their phone number, and they would pay you a small fee for those calls. It could be a great way to earn a little money while you’re away and help out a friend at the same time.

DO Change Your Voice Mail Greeting

Before you go on vacation for weeks at a time, be sure to change your voice mail greeting so your customers are aware of your availability. You can simply tell them the range of dates that you’ll be away and the date that you’ll be back in business. Giving them this information will ensure that they don’t feel ignored when their calls aren’t returned right away. If they’re existing, loyal customers, they’ll most likely wait for you to return. Prospects might even be willing to wait if they know you’re a reputable company and that you’re just on vacation for a short time.
This puts you in a great position for the fall because you won’t leave any former customers feeling spurned.

Remember to Follow Up

No matter what you decide to do while you’re away, following up with any missed calls is a must. Don’t make your prospects or current customers feel unimportant. The best way to ensure recurring business in the fall is to remind customers how much you value them. As soon as you get back from vacation, return their calls or reply to their e-mails and do your best to fit them into your schedule as soon as possible. While some of those leads might have moved on this time, they’ll remember your attentiveness and may very well call you again in the future.

READ THIS: "4 Things Most Leaders Don't Know About SEO"

Last Updated: June 11, 2015

By now, you’ve heard of the term “search engine optimization” (SEO for short), and at least recognize that there’s a lot of significance behind it. However, according to a recent article on Search Engine Land, there’s still a lot about SEO that business owners don’t know.

In his article, “4 Things Most Leaders Don’t Understand About SEO,” columnist Trond Lyngbø describes a major problem with business owners and SEO—mainly that they perceive SEO as a quick fix, an add-on, instead of the holistic approach to online marketing that it should be.
Here are the five most significant points from Lyngbø’s article:

SEO should be incorporated into every aspect of your marketing, including PPC.
Before you can begin creating optimized content, you must do your due-diligence and research your audience’s needs and interests. This way, you can attract your ideal prospects. Then, once they’ve visited your website, your content will demonstrate an understanding of why they need your product or service. This is what will grow your conversion rate.
In order to optimize your content and get the highest click-through rate, your company’s branding (i.e. messaging) must connect with what your prospects want to hear. In your advertising, you should be offering answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Lyngbø writes, “Your story becomes more interesting when you talk about what they are already interested in.”
But SEO means more than just targeting the right keywords and content. It also means structuring your website so that the code is search engine friendly, pages load efficiently, navigation is easy, and internal links are sound.
However, SEO is not a cure-all. You must have a good product at the center of your marketing. That’s not only because you want your customers to spread the good word, but also because customer reviews will soon become a crucial ranking factor: “[Google] wants its users to keep coming back, so it will ultimately strive to suggest only high quality products and services which their users will love.”

Read the full article for further details, and feel free to check out additional columns by Trond Lyngbø on Search Engine Land.

Have You Outgrown Your Current Advertising Package?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

There’s a common misconception floating around that the only way to change the direction of your advertising is to change advertisers.
Many clients don’t realize that it’s simple and easy to transition to a different advertising package within the Prospect Genius program. Instead, they uproot their entire campaign and start over from scratch, costing themselves a lot of time, money, and aggravation in the process. Completely changing providers when you want to move your advertising in a new direction is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why abandon your investment and start over the hard way when it’s much easier, faster, and more economical to use the services that are already available to you?
A lot of hardship can be avoided if you just talk to us about your new direction. Our experts can craft a whole new solution for you by adding or subtracting elements of your current program, thus helping you leverage the investment you’ve already made. Even if it turns out that you do have to take your business to a new provider, we can at least help make your transition smoother and less damaging. But either way, if you don’t let us guide you, you risk doing irreparable damage to your web presence and campaign.

Reasons for Switching Packages

There are countless reasons for wanting to make a change to your advertising package. Hopefully, your reasons have to do with the growth of your company and the new direction in which you’re headed.
For example, let’s say you first signed up with us in 2011. Back then, all we offered was SEO-based lead generation, which we now call our Core program. After four years of seeing steady SEO results, you now feel like your advertising has become static. You want to give your campaign a little shot in the arm by promoting seasonal specials. Why not add on our PPC package for a couple of months? Our content specialists could handle your paid advertising for a short time while maintaining your SEO, and then we could help you decide whether you should stick with it or change to something else.
Or, instead, let’s say you had your own website when you first enrolled in our PPC program and have enjoyed a significant amount of growth since then. Now you want to focus on growing your brand. In this case, adding our Remarketing service would be a great solution because it would enable us to use your existing PPC campaign to create broader brand awareness for your company.
Or maybe you were a fledgling business owner without the slightest hint of a web presence when you first signed up for our Core program. Now, you want to move past the modest LeadTrax™ site we built you and hire an expensive, professional designer to create a flashy site that reflects how far you’ve come. You could absolutely do that without having to sever ties with us. When you switch to our B.Y.O.S. (Bring Your Own Site) package, we would simply start performing SEO for your new-and-improved site, instead.
There are dozens more examples, but you get the idea: Switching programs is great for virtually any client, as long as it’s in the interest of growing or expanding your campaign.

How to Switch Packages

It may not seem like it, but this is the easy part. As we mentioned above, all you have to do is talk to us. If you’re feeling like your campaign is in need of a shakeup, let us know. At the end of the day, we want you to have the campaign that satisfies you the most. When you talk to us about your vision for your advertising’s future, we’ll apply our expertise and come up with a solution that will make your vision a reality.
If you want to stick with a holistic marketing package, you can choose between Starter, Core, and Premium. Moving from one to another is easy. Otherwise, if you just want to build on your existing advertising package, these are your add-on options:
Mountaineering Route. Goal Achievement Concept. Vector

Social Media Services
Local Search Services
Paid Search Services
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
- Remarketing

Alternative Options

What happens if you speak with us about your goals and we both realize that our partnership is no longer a good fit? Well, by letting us in on the discussion, you’ve at least made it possible for us to advise you and make sure you move in the right direction. We can make your transition to a new company as painless as possible, using products like CleanSlate to minimize the damage to your SEO.
Transitioning will be much smoother when you keep us in the loop. It’s in our best interest, as well as yours, to make sure everyone leaves the partnership on a pleasant note.

Conclusion: Keep an Ongoing Discussion

Communicating with us about your changing needs is vital to your marketing success. Whether you end up staying with us or moving on, it’s essential that you keep us informed and allow us to guide you in the right direction. Don’t make the mistake of making a hasty decision without an expert opinion. The future of your business is too valuable.

Prospect Genius

Why You Must Give Your SEO Campaign Time

SEO = Building a Reputation

Be the Tortoise, Not the Hare

Stick With One SEO Provider

Make the Commitment. It’s Worth It.

READ THIS: "4 Things Most Leaders Don't Know About SEO"

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