Esther C Kane » seo business

SEO Business Strategies For New Economy

eckweb — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:28:36 +0000

Well, stiumulus package or not, we’re all in for a very long haul in this economy. President Obama is right when he reports that we will be measuring this recovery in years, not months. So, brace yourselves!

But how? How do we brace ourselves? What can we do for our businesses and for our clients? Well, I’m no genius, believe me but I can share my humble ideas with you. I’d love to hear your ideas as well!

1) Be flexible – if your policy is to collect 50% at the beginning of a project and 50% at the end of the project (or whatever policy you currently have) – don’t turn down a client simply because they can’t meet that policy. Be flexible. Break it up into 3, 4, 5 or whatever payments are reasonable for you and your client. In the long run, you’ll usually win.

2) Give a little more – now is not the time to cut back on your services. Now is the time to add a little more. What are your competitors doing? Can you do that also? Can you do a little more? If a client is interviewing 3 SEO firms, they’re going to choose from a variety of factors but one of those factors will be the services the client can get for their money. Give them the best bang for the buck. You would want the same.

3) Become more visual – for many years SEO firms have worked in offices across the globe and been in contact with their clients via email and phone. But in today’s economy, the outreach of a friendly smile, handshake, whatever can be the deal breaker. So, put on your suit, put on your makeup and get yourself a video cam (if you don’t already have one) and encourage your clients to “see” you. They don’t have to have a video cam to do that, just a program like Skype (which is free). So, don’t be shy.

4) Encourage creativity – talk with your clients about new venues they can market. Just yesterday I was talking with a firm that was in the business of mailing lists. They recognize that they will have to eventually abandon that arena and move forward to email lists and other projects. Help your clients to see where their businesses may be years from now. SEO firms are great at seeking out trends – so share that information with your clients. They’ll appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

5) Group Discounts – if an individual business can’t afford your services, perhaps they can band together with one or 2 other similar businesses and you can offer them a discount. Keyword research can be shared which would cut down the cost. It’s not a perfect idea, but something like this may be viable.

So, what do you think?

Using Twitter In Business

eckweb — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:40:29 +0000

Using the microblogging tool, Twitter in business is something that many businesses across the world are searching to do. After all, it seems to be the hot trend of the moment and any smart business owner will want to take advantage of it, if they can. But, as I speak to clients across the globe many are trying to figure out how to use this twitter thing in their business? Here’s how we, at Eckweb Designs, Inc. do it.

1) Joining Twitter is incredibly easy, but the key is to continuously use it. If you post several times a day, that’s great, once a day, that’s good, once every other day, it’s okay, once every few days or more, not so good.

If your company has a 15 minute staff meeting every morning (I know most medical teams do this every day) – and you attend these meetings 100%, you will be UP on the news and events, etc. But if you attend only 75% or 50% of the time or even less, how “up to date” are you on the news of the business? How does that reflect on the amount of respect you get from the other team members?

I know, you’re not in business with the folks you connect with at Twitter, or are you? Just like any social media program, the concept is the same as any networking group you attend. Meet people, get to know them, allow them to get to know you, join discussions and showcase your expertise. Business will come to you, not because you’re selling but because you’re trusted.

2) When I first joined Twitter, I searched for others in the group who were also interested in SEO and Internet Marketing. I began following them. So, initially, I was following ALOT of people. But, every week, I would go through my list and remove the ones who weren’t contributing or the ones who simply were just using Twitter to let me know they were having a cheese sandwich for lunch (What do I care?).

What I ended up with were Twitterers who talk about business. They enlighten me to new articles, new publications, new tools. They share their thoughts and ideas about the work we all do and Twitter has basically ended up as my own personal daily newspaper.

For more information, here’s a great article on 50 ideas on Using Twitter For Business. I’m sure you’ll find lots of great information there.

It’s only been a couple of months but traffic is absolutely coming to my website from Twitter. Time will tell if the traffic converts into leads or sales. But, like any social media group (and any business networking group), it simply takes time to gain the trust of others.

So, go ahead, if you’re considering using twitter in your business, get started today.

Poor Economy Good For SEO?

eckweb — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:05:41 +0000

No doubt, if you’ve watched any television in the last month you’ve heard Gloom and Doom comments from just about every news station concerning the economy.

Comments range from “We’re in a recession.”, “Sectors are in recession.”, “We’re heading for a depression.”, “It’s not a matter of if, but when.”, etc!

So, how does a poor economy affect Search Engine Optimizers? I will have to say it depends on the service and the prices.

My company, Eckweb has always been geared towards small and home based businesses and because of that, we’ve always kept our prices as low as possible. Yes, we work long and hard and yes, we could make more money because our results are extremely good and the majority of our clients stay with us for many years. But, that isn’t our goal.

I base my comment on the last 2 months. The number of proposal requests we’ve received in the last 2 months has increased by 40% from the average. The number of new clients we’ve been getting has increased by 20% from the average.

This tells me that companies are searching for cost effective and result oriented search engine optimization services. That’s a sign of the economy worries.

So, I think that if SEO firms work their prices to help business owners they will do very well during this difficult economic time. It may be with us for quite a while.

What do you think?