SEO company Philadelphia

Is Pay Per Click worth it? You betcha!

by Internet Advertising

Here at DanMatt Media, one of our primary service lines is Pay Per Click marketing, often referred to as SEM or Google Adwords.  Pay Per Click is a highly-targetable and very useful form of advertising.  Though it is more expensive to run a Pay Per Click campaign than say an SEO campaign, there are decided advantages to it.

If you look at a standard Google search query (for example, “Denver dentist”), you will often see 3 or 4 paid search ads at the very top of the page.  They are designated by a green “Ad” icon next to them.  These are the Pay Per Click ads, and there is a reason why they are at the very top of the page, and why they are likely the first thing you will see.  Google doesn’t make any money on SEO (organic search) but they make a whole lot of money on Adwords campaigns.  Every time someone clicks on those ads, Google receives a fee for the click.  As such, Google has a vested interest in having those ads seen by as many relevant people as possible, which is why they are at the very top of the page (there are also typically paid search ads at the bottom of the page as well, with the organic SEO ads sandwiched in the middle).

Pay Per Click campaigns can easily be three, five, ten, or more times as expensive as SEO campaigns.  The reason for that is that you (the client) are paying every time someone clicks on your ads.  That isn’t the case with SEO campaigns, which do not charge per click.  But while Pay Per Click campaigns are more expensive, they tend to produce a lot more leads (usually phone calls or website form submissions) and they drive those leads much more quickly.  The reason for this is simple.  With Pay Per Click, we can position your ad at the very top of page 1 of Google on the first day of your campaign.  If your budget allows for it, you can literally have the top ranked ad in your industry and geographical area.  That is not the case with SEO, which can take many months to achieve a page 1 ranking, let alone a # 1 ranking (and that may never happen).

So the real question isn’t whether Pay Per Click is worth it.  It is.  The real question for clients to consider is how quickly you need to see results (new leads), and what you are willing to invest each month to obtain those results.  Ideally, a client’s marketing budget should include several facets of digital media buying, including both Pay Per Click and SEO.  But when we get the sense that a prospective client is looking for results right away, we almost always recommend the SEM channel.

 

best seo company Denver

The differences between local and national SEO

by Internet Advertising

DanMatt Media has all types of SEO clients.  Some are small companies that only service a single metro area, and some are large companies that service the entire country, and even other countries overseas.  Some sell local services, and some are eCommerce clients that sell their products nationwide.

As nice as it would be to have a single SEO solution for all of them, it just doesn’t work that way.  The goal of any SEO campaign is to have your organic ads pop-up as close to the # 1 spot (on page 1) of Google as possible, for the keywords that are most important to your business.  But the ways that you go about that vary by industry, budget, and geographical scale.

Local SEO campaigns are limited in scope (geography) and typically by budget.  Most are small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) that service a single metro area, or perhaps a smaller state.  Typically these clients benefit by focusing on ranking well for a smaller number of keywords, by utilizing geo-targeted keywords (ex. Denver plumber), and by obtaining top placement/listings on sites like Google My Business and Yelp.  They are typically much more budget-conscious than large companies, and they scrutinize their results carefully each month.

For local SEO, we tend to focus our efforts on obtaining great rankings in the local map section of Google, top placement for their geo-targeted keywords, and of course on developing a robust local citation program.  Owing to the reduced budgets with smaller, locally-focused businesses, this can sometimes take more time, but this strategy proves very effective within 12 months of account inception, and often much quicker than that.

On the other hand, national SEO campaigns tend to be run for larger companies, with bigger budgets and a need for greater keyword coverage.  Rather than focusing on their top 10 – 20 keywords, we often find that these clients can require coverage for 50, 100, or even 1,000 keywords, especially if their business model is an eCommerce site where customers can purchase products directly from the website.  Local map optimization is not a factor, and typically geo-targeted keywords are not nearly as important.  We spend a lot more time on custom back-linking and guest/offsite blogging for our larger, national SEO clients, and their larger and more robust budgets allow us to do so.  Typically they see results much faster than smaller, local clients do, but given enough time we can usually obtain great rankings for anyone, regardless of their budget or their geographical service area.

The one thing this post does not address are the unique methodologies we employ to create fully customized, ROI-positive campaigns.  For that, you’ll need to sign up with us for our SEO services!

 

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Yikes! New cars are crazy expensive these days.

by Internet Advertising

Is it me, or has anyone else noticed how expensive new cars and trucks have gotten?  According to a study done by USA Today, the average price of a new car in the US is now almost $35,000.  That price has been steadily increasing by more than 2% year-in and year-out for quite some time now.  So why have new cars become so expensive to buy?

There are several likely reasons why this has happened.  For starters, the economy is better now than it was between 2007 and 2011, which means more people are buying automobiles.  When demand goes up, supply goes down, and the price increases follow suit.  Though the FED has raised interest rates this year, they remain historically low, and that encourages people to borrow money for big purchases like automobiles.  It’s simple economics.

Another reason that vehicle prices have increased is that more expensive luxury items are now being offered on automobiles across the entire price spectrum.  It used to be that goodies like navigation systems, heated and ventilated seats, HID headlights, adaptive cruise control, and parking assist were only to be found on expensive luxury models.  But you can now obtain those cool gadgets on entry level cars and trucks, for an additional fee of course.  And all those premium upgrades drive up the cost of the new vehicle.

My car is 10 years old and has 120,000 miles on it.  To be honest it has more wrong with it than right with it.  But with the cost of buying a new car going up every year, and the damage my kids do to the backseat and doors, I think I’ll hold onto it for as long as I can.

 

marketing agency Denver

Do you travel for work?

by Internet AdvertisingTravel

I’ll be honest.  I’m not much of a fan of business travel.

Fortunately I don’t have to travel all that much for work.  I might do 5-6 work trips a year, and those usually entail visiting our company headquarters in the DC area and meeting with new clients in-person (which I very much enjoy).  I’ll occasionally travel to a trade show, but work travel isn’t a huge part of my job.  Most of what I do is over the phone and on the computer, and that’s a good thing, because traveling these days is a real mess.

Flying is terrible, with 17 inch wide seats (and every one of them is taken), travelers attempting to cram huge bags into the overhead bins to avoid paying baggage fees, long lines in the security area, and of course the ubiquitous delays (my flight out to Washington DC this week was an hour late, due to mechanical issues).  The TSA defines incompetence, and even the nicest hotels are still just hotels.  Nothing beats the comforts of home.

But business travel is very much a reality for a lot of people.  My wife travels at least once a month, and sometimes twice a month, for her job (she’s in marketing for a large food company).  Consultants are often gone Monday through Thursday of every single week when they’re on a project.  I don’t know how they do it, especially when you have young children.  It’s tough being gone that much.

We’re fortunate to live at a time when technology has made the world much smaller.  Smartphones, the internet, and video conferencing have all diminished the need for business travel, and by and large I think that’s a good thing.  Some business travel cannot be avoided, but for the most part it is entirely possible to work with clients and vendors all over the world without actually having to meet with them face-to-face.

Maybe if I could score a few first class upgrades my outlook on business travel would change…

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Great golf in Colorado

by Internet Advertising

Colorado may not be the state you think of when you’re talking about great golf courses.  In my opinion the states with the best collection of golf courses (in order) are New York, California, and Illinois.  But that doesn’t mean that Colorado doesn’t have great golf courses to choose from.

Compared to the states above I would say that Colorado is a little weak in the private course category, but there are still many good options.  In Denver metro, iconic Cherry Hills Country Club (which has hosted several US Opens, PGA Championships, the US Amateur and the BMW Championship) reigns supreme.  A solid front nine and a very good back nine make this the gem of the Denver area.  Denver Country Club, located just a few miles from Cherry Hills, is a wonderful, old, tree-lined course steeped in history and tradition.  A little south of Denver lies Castle Pines Golf Club, which in this author’s opinion is the finest golf course in the state.  Castle Pines hosted the PGA Tour’s International Event for 21 years, has the best design/layout in the state, and a majestic view on just about every tee (the photo above is the par 3 11th hole, check out that view!).  The conditioning is superb, and the staff could not more friendly or helpful.  Colorado Golf Club, which has already hosted a Champions Tour major, is another strong pick.

In the mountains, Country Club of the Rockies and Red Sky Ranch (both near Vail) are the finest private options in the high country.  Both offer superb conditions and magnificent views of the surrounding peaks.  Unfortunately, every single one of the private clubs I just listed are very expensive (initiation fees often run into the 6 figures, with monthly dues around $1,000 per month) and are very difficult to get into, but if you have the opportunity to play any of them as a guest (or the contacts and money to join), you won’t be disappointed.

It’s on the public course side where Colorado golf really shines.  In my opinion, the best public course in the state is the East course at the Broadmoor Resort, in Colorado Springs.  The East course has hosted several USGA national championships, and is a classic Donald Ross design.  It’s expensive at around $250 per round, but well worth the price.  Inverness Resort and Omni Interlocken Resort offer superb conditioning and a higher-end daily fee experience (typically north of $100 per round, and both offer annual memberships to the public as well).  For more affordable options check out Riverdale Dunes, Bear Dance, and The Ridge at Castle Pines North.  All offer good conditions, nice design features, and greens fees under $65 per round.

In the high country, there are many great public golf options.  Breckenridge Golf Club, the River Course at Keystone Ranch, and Pole Creek are all excellent daily fee choices.  For higher-end options, you can play at Red Sky Ranch if you are staying in one of the club’s preferred hotels, and The Raven at Three Peaks offers outstanding conditions and scenery.

If you’re looking for surprisingly good golf courses, check out Colorado.  You’ll love it here.  And remember, thanks to the thin air the ball flies a lot further and straighter out here, which makes any round more enjoyable.

washington dc search engine optimization

Are you an attorney looking for more calls? We can help you!

by Internet Advertising

We speak with a lot of prospective clients in the legal industry.  Family and divorce lawyers, criminal defense and personal injury attorneys, etc.  Most of them have the same problem; they’re not getting enough business out of their online marketing efforts.

Many of these attorneys have tried SEO in the past, and it didn’t work for them.  It didn’t produce enough (sometimes any) phone call leads, and the law firm lost money on the SEO campaign.  We run SEO campaigns for attorneys too, and we do a great job, but there are very few spots on page 1 of Google.  If you’re not on page 1, you’re nowhere to be found, and it can take a very long time to obtain page 1 placement in these highly competitive industries.

If SEO wasn’t the culprit, perhaps they signed up with an attorney-focused marketing company, such as Avvo, Justia, or Martindale-Hubbell.  They pay these companies thousands of dollars every month for new business, but it almost never works out.  The reason for that is simple.  These websites have hundreds, even thousands, of competing attorneys on the same pages, in the same practice areas, and in the same metro regions.  There is literally no way to differentiate one attorney or law firm from another, so it’s luck of the draw if visitors call you versus one of your competitors.  You’re entrusting your marketing budget to chance.  That’s where our SEM solution comes in…

SEM, or pay per click, is a GREAT way for attorneys to grow their businesses.  In last month’s blog post I highlighted the differences between SEO and SEM, and in an effort to make our SEM services more affordable to attorneys, we have created some very attractive entry-level price points.  Depending on the type of law you practice and the areas you serve, we can run an entry-level SEM campaign for as little as $2,500 per month.  That gives you top of page 1 placement on Google (when your ad is shown), and unlike with SEO, there is no waiting for the results to start coming in.  You WILL receive targeted clicks, and likely new phone calls leads, in month 1.

So if you are an attorney looking to expand and grow your practice, give our SEM solution a try.  We have a decade of experience running these types of campaigns for attorneys, and with our new entry-level pricing solution almost any law firm can afford our expert digital marketing services.  What are you waiting for?

SEO company Philadelphia

How can we help you? The short and sweet version.

by Internet Advertising

Unfortunately we are not Southwest Airlines or Apple, and neither are our clients.  By that I mean that we can’t sit back and wait for customers to come to us.  Sure huge companies like Southwest and Apple advertise (though sadly not with us), but they can rely on their enormous brand recognition and market share to augment their media buying strategy.  We cannot, and neither can our clients.

When either myself or our staff are speaking with a prospective client, we try and show them exactly how we can help them in as short and sweet a manner as possible.  They’re busy people, and their time is precious.  They want to know what we can do for them, and why we’re different than the 10 other digital marketing agencies they’ve spoken with this week.

We can always point to intangibles like great customer service and no longterm contracts.  Indeed we do offer our clients both of those benefits, but what we really offer is the knowledge and expertise required to put your business in a position to be successful.  On the paid search (SEM) side of things, it means that we create keyword lists, ad groups, and ad copy that will generate not only a lot of exposure, but the right kind of exposure (meaning the potential customers who are interested in the products or services that you offer).

On the SEO side of things, it means that we actively drive customers to our client’s websites and phone lines via our off-site services, rather than simply optimizing their website and sitting back, hoping that customers will find them.  And on the print side of things, it means that we create stunning and evocative display ads, placed in the most relevant markets, to send our clients the customers they need to continually grow their businesses.

In essence, when you partner with DanMatt Media, you’re gaining access to our decades of experience in the online and offline worlds.  You’re gaining access to the strategy and execution that can take your local or national company to the next level.  And most importantly, we won’t waste your time.

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Saving for retirement

by Internet Advertising

For whatever reason I woke up this morning thinking about retirement.  Maybe it all started as a wonderful dream (being retired and perpetually on the golf course), but by the time I was in the shower I began thinking about my 401K account balance and my average rate of return.  At that point, I knew I wasn’t in the middle of a wonderful dream any longer…

Like a lot of people our age, my wife and I are trying our best to sock away as much of our hard-earned paychecks as we can for retirement.  It’s not easy, what with taxes, daycare bills, mortgages, college savings, etc eating up a large chunk of our income.  I did a little research this morning and found that almost 50% of all American adults have nothing saved for retirement.  Many that do have retirement savings accounts are woefully underfunded, and that includes younger earners in their 20s as well as older earners who are rapidly approaching the age of retirement.

Those stats are pretty scary, and unfortunately very common in our country today.  Many Americans in their 30s and 40s are counting on social security to be their main source of income during their golden years.  The problem with that is that social security was never designed to be a retiree’s main source of income, and as a result the program itself is vastly underfunded.  In fact, by the time people my age retire, there may well be nothing left in social security for us to collect.  If that’s the case, it would be the largest ponzi scheme in history (think about it, you pay into it every two weeks for your entire working life, and then never collect a dime once you retire).

So what’s the answer to these retirement woes?  My financial advisor has a pretty good outlook on it.  He recommends that you look at your retirement savings like any other bill you have each month.  In other words, it has to be paid in-full and on-time, just like everything else.  The best way to do that is to set up an auto withdraw to your 401K or retirement account from each and every paycheck.  By doing so, you never forget to transfer that savings over, and you learn to live without it as a part of your discretionary income.

But that’s the easy part.  The hard part is learning to live below your means, so that you can afford to pay yourself every two weeks for retirement.  That’s not so easy to do.  We live in a country that rewards instant gratification.  There is always something shiny and new to buy.  The “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality is always out there, and we all have unexpected bills that pop up from time to time (medical bills, car repairs, etc).  But if we can all learn to live below our means and fund our retirement accounts every pay period, we may well be able to turn things around.

Just don’t cut out the advertising budget…

marketing agency Denver

Metrics and stats

by Internet Advertising

I field a lot of questions from potential and current SEM and SEO clients about metrics and stats.  Specifically, what stats do you/we track to measure whether a marketing campaign is working.  Well, that depends on which side of the aisle you are on.

From our end, the stats we look at are the ones that are under our control.  Specifically, that means your keyword rankings for either the paid ads section of Google (SEM) or the organic listings (SEO).  Obviously we want to place our clients in a position to be successful, which means we want them ranked on the first page of Google for the keywords that are important to their business.  It stands to reason that the more visible a client’s ad is, the more exposure and phone calls they will receive.

We also look at metrics such as clicks, page views, session duration, and bounce rate, but those numbers can be misleading.  For example, if you have a million page views on your website in the last month, but 99% of them were from spammy individuals, then you really have nothing.  If you have a couple hundred thousand clicks in the last 30 days, but they are all from foreign countries (and you only service customers in the US), then what have you gained?  Not much.

Of course the metric that means the most to our clients is ROI.  They need to earn more from their SEM or SEO campaign than they are spending on it.  Typically that means phone calls from potential clients who are actively seeking their products and services.  While that stat is of course important to us, it is unfortunately not under our control.  Our job is to place our clients in a position to be successful, but we cannot force people to do business with them, even if they see their ad on the first page of Google.  As such, we tend to focus more on the metrics that we can control, although we do realize that in the end what our clients are seeking is increased revenue.

ROI can be a difficult metric to measure, but we’re confident that our innovative, best-practices approach to online marketing is a good fit for most of the people who are seeking our services.

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Yep, we offer web design services too…

by Internet Advertising

Lately we seem to be receiving a lot of inquiries regarding web design services.  Businesses seem to be interested in updating and improving their online presence of late, and that’s a good thing.

To be clear, DanMatt Media is not a web design agency, and we have no plans to become one.  We are first and foremost an advertising and marketing company, focusing heavily on areas such as SEO, SEM (paid search), print advertising, and market research panel and survey recruitment.  But long ago we recognized that in order to be able to offer our clients the best SEO and SEM services in the country, we would have to add the ability to update their websites, convert them to WordPress, add mobile friendly themes, and improve their user experience.

As such, we now offer all of the web design services listed above.  We do require that our web design clients sign up with us for SEO or SEM prior to any work being done, and in doing so we are able to offer these customers a large discount on their web design work, because we know we are going to be partners in their new marketing efforts.  If you think about it, it’s a win-win for everyone.  DanMatt Media will handle all the web design and digital marketing work you require, and in return, you receive not only a great new website, but also a properly designed and executed SEO and/or SEM campaign, and all for a lot less money than you would pay elsewhere.  Sounds pretty good, right?

If you’ve been looking to spruce up your site, or convert it to a mobile-friendly theme, in addition to beginning an SEO or paid search campaign, give us a call or send us a website inquiry.  Chances are, we can help you.