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SEO

You are here: Home / Archives for SEO

Reclaimed Lumber Company Chooses WSI for SEO

September 20, 2017 //  by Luke Middendorf

The Lumber Baron offers a variety of reclaimed lumber types – redwood, cedar, Douglas fir, and hardwood – available for purchase as is or freshly milled. The Lumber Baron has been in business since 1978 and is family owned and operated in the San Francisco Bay area.

Reclaimed Lumber Company Chooses WSI for SEO

In August, WSI was selected to implement a new SEO plan that included keyword research and creating new pages on their website directed at the top keywords. WSI focused on 5 keywords to increase The Lumber Baron’s rankings:

  1. Cedar Lumber for Sale – https://www.thelumberbaron.com/cedar-lumber-sale/
  2. Redwood Lumber for Sale – https://www.thelumberbaron.com/redwood-lumber-sale/
  3. Reclaimed Hardwoods for Sale – https://www.thelumberbaron.com/reclaimed-hardwoods-sale/
  4. Reclaimed Douglas Fir for Sale – https://www.thelumberbaron.com/reclaimed-douglas-fir-for-sale/
  5. Reclaimed Redwood for Sale – https://www.thelumberbaron.com/reclaimed-redwood-sale-2/

These new pages contain links to other pages on the site, thereby increasing the time visitors spend on the site and the number of pages they visit. Through Google Analytics, these metrics, as well as keyword integration, will continue to be monitored and tracked.

Additionally, WSI was tasked with increasing their online presence through social media and content marketing. We have also created offsite blogs for The Lumber Baron on WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr to help expand their brand and build greater awareness for their products.

About WSI Connect:

WSI Connect was founded to help local business grow and succeed with digital marketing.   We collaborate with our clients to understand their goals, key differentiators, values, and target markets. From there we develop and implement highly effective digital marketing strategies. Schedule a discovery call today to learn about how we can help your business grow.

Category: BlogTag: Digital Marketing, search engine optimization, SEO

How much should a business invest in SEO?

July 12, 2017 //  by Luke Middendorf

Whether you’re a small business owner, a large company executive or an attendee at one of the workshops that I teach for SCORE East Bay, one of the most common questions I hear is: How much should a business invest in SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of our core services, therefore we have a vested interest in selling SEO services.  However, in this article, I will do my best to focus SEO from a business owner’s perspective and try to be as unbiased as I possibly can.

There are 4 key questions a company should be able to answer before making a large SEO investment.

  1. What is your marketing budget? 
  2. Who are your target markets and top competitors?
  3. What are the different options available? (This section answers how much.)
  4. Who is the right consultant or agency?

Below I will guide you through each question.  However, there is one point I would like to make before we get started.  While SEO can be a very valuable way for a business to generate leads and grow their business, I do not recommend that a business owner attempt to master the SEO process.  As business owners, we often look outside our business to subject matter experts (accounting, taxes, insurance, legal advice, etc.) and the complexity of SEO is one of those expert areas.

Determine your Marketing Budget

Most business owners avoid or have given very little thought to a marketing budget.  Not determining your marketing budget is a huge mistake.  This step is crucial because it will help you set clear guidelines and develop a campaign that will generate a positive return on investment (ROI).  It also puts you in the driver’s seat when you are ready to start interviewing SEO agencies and allows you to make an apples-to-apples comparison when comparing proposals.

Depending on your industry, you should know the answer to these questions:

  • Which products or services do you want to promote?
  • What is the average profit margin of those products/services?
  • What is the lifetime value of your customer?
  • How much are you comfortable spending to acquire a new customer?
  • How many new customers do you want to acquire each month?

For example, if you are an individual chiropractor the service provided is typically an adjustment done once a month and the customer is billed $150 per month.  The profit margin is very high as there are few costs attached to the service.  The average client stays for 3.5 years thus the average lifetime value of the client is $6,300.  If you are willing to spend 10% of the lifetime value of your customer and establish an SEO campaign goal to acquire one new client each month, then your monthly SEO budget would be approximately $630.

Now you have data that you can use when interviewing an SEO consultant or agency.  There is a clear budget for them to work with and there are clear expectations for what the campaign needs to produce.  As long as the SEO campaign produces at least one new customer each month, then as a business owner will have a very good ROI.

Preliminary Market and Competitive Analysis

Think about who your customers are and how they would use a search engine such as Google or Bing to find the products or services that you provide.  If you own a daycare in Pleasanton, CA, then the parents looking for your services are probably going to search using terms such as “daycare”, “daycares near me”, or “daycare costs”.   Create a spreadsheet of the different terms that you think your customers would use.

From there just start searching for those keywords using Google.  Note the top competitors for each term and try to find your own website within the first two pages of search results.  Take a look at your competitors’ websites and make notes about the things that you think are helping them perform well.

The goal of this exercise is to help you begin to understand how your website currently performs against your competition.  If your website showed up in the first position for every search that you typed into Google, then you might already be optimized as well as can be done.  If your website was nowhere to be found, it’s going to take some work to enable it to generate leads.

Understand the Different Options Available

There are different options available to a business looking for SEO services.  Which one you chose depends heavily on your internal resources.

Retainer/Contract – A monthly retainer is the most common way to improve your SEO. You pay a set fee every month in return for a specific set of deliverables. These services usually include regular reports along with keyword analysis and implementation, link-building, and content creation. This option works well for businesses that have limited internal resources.  Some agencies will require a yearly contract, others will allow you to cancel with a 30-day notice.  At WSI Connect, we believe that we need to earn your business each month so we follow the 30-day cancellation model.  The vast majority of our clients are on a monthly retainer.

Project – This can be a good option if you have the internal resources that can handle content production, link building, and reporting and you just need specific technical SEO help.  Activities that would fall into this category would be SSL implementation, website performance improvements, or marketing automation setup.  We recently had a request to convert an HTML website to WordPress.  The client had enough internal resources to handle the other SEO activities so we utilized the project option.

Hourly – Be cautious when utilizing this option.  It should only be used when you are in need of one specific task.  Some agencies will require this option when implementations are very complex and it is difficult to give a clear estimate of the cost of the project.

What should you pay for your SEO investment?

We create our scope of work based on how difficult we believe it will be to help our clients rank for the keywords related to their core products or services.  The biggest factor is typically their competitors.  If some their competitors have very strong SEO strategies, it will inherently be more expensive to do effective SEO.

The costs below are based on a medium sized company with one website. Larger companies or those with more than one website should expect to pay more.

Retainer/Contract – $750 – $5,000 per month. The variation in cost is based on the scope of work and how quickly each aspect of the service is introduced.  Monthly deliverables would include content creation (blogs, whitepapers, eBooks), social media syndication, link-building (citations, data aggregators, industry blog submissions), and reporting (analytics, conversions, ROI).

Project – $1,000 – $20,000. There is a large range here because of the different amounts of services that could be delivered.  Since most of these are technical projects, it is especially important that you do your due diligence when vetting the agency that you are going to work with.

Hourly – $100 – $500 per hour.  Agencies will typically require a 4-hour minimum.  If their fees are at the higher end of the range, you are often better off requesting that they provide you with a project based quotation.

Identify the Right Consultant or Agency to work with

Now that you’ve determined your budget, performed preliminary competitive analysis, and understand the different options available, you are ready to start talking to vendors.

Here are a few things that the agency must know in order to build a specific proposal for your business:

  • Your goals for growth. The more specific and measurable your goals are, the easier it will be to define the scope of work.
  • Your most profitable products or services.
  • The type of buyer that makes the best kind of customer for your business.
  • Any current marketing campaigns.
  • Your top competitors.
  • If you want them to help build an ROI model, they will need to know your profit margins, average lifetime value of a customer, and current customer acquisition cost.

Communicate openly with the agencies that you are evaluating and expect them to do the same thing.  They should provide a clear plan that illustrates how their work will help your business achieve its goals.

Be cautious of agencies that have predetermined packages and pricing.  One size does not fit all when it comes to SEO or any type of marketing.  Predetermined packages are a way for agencies to maximize their short term profits.  Look for an agency that is interested in building a long-term relationship.

Lastly, be cautious of agencies that do business with your top competitors.  Ask them directly if they work with anyone in your industry and determine if they are a direct competitor.  For example, we have several clients in the self-storage business.  None of them are located near each other, so they don’t compete for the same customers.  This allows all of our clients to have the best SEO strategy and not worry about being second place.

Conclusion

SEO can be an extremely valuable lead generation tool for businesses.  It takes a lot of hard work and the right techniques before it can produce results.  With clear goals and the right consultant or agency, your business will flourish with a strong SEO campaign.

If you have any questions feel to give us a call to schedule a free consultation.

 

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Category: BlogTag: SEO

How To Leverage Your Google My Business Listing – 3 Checkpoints

December 6, 2016 //  by Tabitha Middendorf


Is your business’ listing on Google setup correctly?

When potential customers are searching locally on Google, your business shows up in a list of local results. If you haven’t set up your Google My Business (GMB) listing, you are missing a valuable opportunity to attract potential customers!   If you do have a GMB listing, you’ll want to make sure it is setup correctly and updated. 

Let’s dive in!


First, if you haven’t setup up GMB listing, set up your Google My Business Listing now. 

Checkpoint 1: Verify Your Listing and Information

When someone is searching or scrolling through local results, there is nothing more frustrating than finding a business with inaccurate information.  Inaccurate, old or outdated information turns away potential customers.  One of the very first things your business needs to do, should be to verify your Google My Business listing and confirm hours, website url, address, and contact numbers are correct and updated.

Checkpoint 2: Create posts

Help build trust and credibility by sharing new updates, events, offers and information on your products in Google My Business. Creating posts shows potential visitors that your business is more than a local listing.  It demonstrates that your business manages and follows its listing – actively!

Checkpoint 3: Respond to compliments and complaints

When a customer leaves a compliment or complaint, it is essential that your business is responsive in a timely manner.  Responding quickly to customer feedback shows that you care about the experience your customers have with your business. This article from Forbes provides great tips for how to respond to complaints.  Aside from responding as soon as possible, you should begin by apologizing regardless of who is at fault.  A “I’m sorry you had this experience…” sets the tone, that your business truly cares about its customers and the service it strives to provide.


People who use Google Search and Google Maps will now be able to discover more about your business the next time they are searching for it in their area.  By verifying your listing, ensuring your hours, address and website url are updated, implementing a call-to-action and responding to compliments and complaints you are well on your way towards attracting potential customers to your business.


Category: BlogTag: Google My Business, SEO

The Conco Companies Retain WSI for a Fourth Year of Comprehensive Digital Marketing Services

August 31, 2016 //  by Luke Middendorf

The Conco Companies are one of the USA’s largest commercial concrete contractors, and holders of the Guinness World Book of Records record for the largest continuous concrete mat pour, on the Wilshire Grand in LA scheduled to be completed in 2017.

WSI is one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the world, with over 1,000 offices in 81 countries.

Given the strength of our respective organizations it is only fitting that WSI and Conco have agreed to strengthen a mutually beneficial partnership that has dramatically improved Conco’s online presence and lead generation. First initiated in July 2013, the engagement initially focused solely on SEO, and has since blossomed into a comprehensive digital marketing service offering including: SEO, web development, e-mail marketing, social media marketing, PPC and mobile app development.

Over the last 12 month’s WSI has created a new responsive site leading to 23% growth in mobile traffic, added 49 pages of content to the site, created a new micro site for the Denver market, with a white paper lead capture feature, optimized the site for dozens of SEO terms and doubled nearly every social media metric.

Moving forward, WSI will continue to optimize Conco’s web presence through an increased focus on lead capture, an integrated concrete pump truck rental drive, a regional focus on the LA market, and some opportunistic SEO. The LA Section of the site has been expanded to encompass the following pages:

  • About
  • LA Contractors
  • LA Commercial Concrete
  • LA Pumping
  • LA Pumps
  • LA Concrete
  • LA Shotcrete
  • LA Construction
  • LA Reinforcing

Some of the notable projects that Conco has been involved with recently include the following:

970 Denny Way located in the South Lake Union neighborhood in Seattle, Washington

The redevelopment project is from the Holland Partner Group and is a blend of both modern and classic styles. Holland Construction is serving as the general contractor and the Seattle-based architectural firm of Weber Thompson designed the contemporary style building.

Conco successfully completed part of our concrete services when our crews poured 4,900 cubic yards of concrete last month to form the 15,300 square foot mat foundation. In addition to the concrete, the foundation required 1.3 million pounds of rebar. The pour was done over approximately 15 hours and the concrete was supplied by CalPortland.

350 Bush Street, San Francisco

The Conco Companies are providing concrete services for a new office building in downtown San Francisco located at 350 Bush Street. The new 20-story high-rise will have 18 floors of office space, one lobby level, and a roof terrace as well as a two-level subgrade parking structure. In addition as the office tower will incorporate the San Francisco Mining Exchange, a historic landmark, as its primary entrance, the project also includes the “Historic Renovation of San Francisco Mining Exchange Building.”

The Mark at 5th & Columbia Project

The Conco Companies are providing concrete services for The Mark, a 48-story high-rise tower in Seattle, WA that will consist of 528,000 sq. ft. of Class A+ office space, as well as a luxurious 189-room SLS hotel and spa. Conveniently located in the city’s central business district, the stunning beautifully designed tower will incorporate a wide range of “green” building features such as rain water management, photovoltaic glass and light pollution reduction. Scheduled for completion in April, 2017, the tower will bring to the area first-class office space that is highly divisible and offers 9’ 6” windows for natural light and spectacular views.

Conco and WSI are looking forward to a mutually beneficial relationship for many years to come.

Category: BlogTag: Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Website Design

Google Penguin 2.0: How Will It Impact Your Business?

June 19, 2013 //  by Luke Middendorf

According to Google, the Penguin 2.0 update will penalize websites that adopt black hat web marketing techniques to rank high on search engines. Penguin 2.0 will identify websites that purchase links, employ spam, publish bad content, create low quality backlinks, and adopt other such questionable online marketing practices. The previous Penguin updates were also aimed at catching black hat techniques such as these. Penguin 2.0 takes this stringency several steps further, and is a much more comprehensive update that will test websites on several parameters.

What can you do to avoid a drop in your ranking?

If you have built a backlinks profile that that goes against Google’s guidelines then your page ranking can drop significantly. Key areas you need to watch out for are listed below:

  • Low-quality inbound links will be given less weightage, so you need to improve the quality of your links or face Google’s wrath
  • Start auditing your backlinks to ensure that they are aligned to the new Google standards
  • Your content needs to have depth and demonstrate industry expertise
  • All advertorials and spam links across your website need to be eliminated
  • Avoid heavy usage of exact match anchor text links
  • Become an authority in your target market: Build your online authority by offering a wide variety of content types. Websites that provide visitors highly authoritative content are likely to rank higher. Companies that are dealing in niche areas and targeted markets have an advantage here. Provide fresh, high quality content on a regular basis.
  • Leverage social media: Post links to your content on Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media sites relevant to your business; market your content using the Like and Share features most social media sites offer, and most importantly, build a strong online network.
  • Avoid Keyword Misuse: Penguin 2.0 will enable Google Web crawlers to assess the anchor text being used to link to your website. Avoid using too many keywords as your anchor text. Google could misinterpret this as a black hat tactic and lower your rankings.
  • Earn your links: Penguin 2.0 will strictly penalize sites that buy backlinks. Create quality, authoritative content to earn links.

How to Benefit from Penguin 2.0?

SEO Moving Forward

If you are building a new website or revamping your existing one, don’t wait till the site is ready before you call in an SEO expert. Your website architecture is integral to the success of SEO. Involve an SEO expert right from the planning stage to maximize benefits. Additionally:

  • Ensure your information architecture is intuitive: Your information architecture is as important if not more so than the web technology you use in the backend. Don’t focus purely on the aesthetics of the website. Take usability into consideration while planning your information architecture.
  • Eliminate duplicate content: Don’t deploy the same content for related webpages. If you are running an online campaign, don’t reuse the content from a related product or service description page. Create fresh content for each new page you add to your website.
  • Plan your keyword strategy: Align your keyword strategy with the needs of your business. Analyse the websites of your competitors. Don’t overuse your keywords in your anchor texts but leverage them effectively.
  • Content is still king: Ensure that your web pages provide relevant information with all the necessary information a potential customer is likely to seek. Think human—if you were the buyer what information would you require to aid you in your decision making process? Make sure that information is available on your website.
  • Website search functionality: If you have a comprehensive website, offering information about multiple products and services, you need to provide your visitors an internal search function. Don’t expect users to spend time hunting for information on your website. But if they found interesting information on your website they are more likely to run a search query for related information. You can also leverage these insights on search patterns within your site to refine your keyword strategy.
  • Analyse, analyse, analyse: Create dashboards, pull out site visit details, check which keywords work best, identify pages that are most visited and list the pages with maximum bounce rates. Now analyze this data to fine-tune your content and keyword strategy so you can make it more effective in driving traffic to your website.

Contact WSI Connect to help you plan an effective SEO strategy and stay on the right side of the Google Zoo!

Category: BlogTag: Google, Google Penguin, Local Business Online, Local Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media Marketing

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About WSI Connect

WSI Connect was founded to help local businesses grow and succeed with digital marketing.   We collaborate with our clients to understand their goals, key differentiators, values, and target markets. From there we develop and implement highly effective digital marketing strategies.

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