My name is Bradford and I am the CEO of F1rst Page Search Engine Optimization (f1rstpageseo.com). This company was started in order to fulfill my vision of providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant services that can provide excellent rates of return on advertising for small to medium businesses. After selling print media advertising (yellow pages) for years and from my own personal experience as a successful business person it became clear that the interests of small and medium size business owners were not being well served by yellow page and print media advertising. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) were producing verifiable results that surpassed traditional adverting media in every aspect of call generation, demographic reach, and customer retention and market penetration.
Background
I was an account executive at 2 major Yellow Pages companies from 2003 until 2009. “When I started in 2003 selling print advertising, yellow pages worked. There was no doubt in my mind that yellow pages worked very well for most of my clients. I knew this because I would sell them an ad during a printing cycle and come back next year to renew the advertising. Renewals were relatively easy because the advertisements in the book were responsible for the majority if not the entirety of clients presented to these companies. But while selling ads I would be asked constantly if our yellow page company also sold websites. At first I would say “That is not a service my company provides at this time.” I was a recreational website developer up to that point and had done websites for myself and friends. After about a year of saying no to scores of clients I decided to offer that service to prospects that I had sold yellow page advertising. This is where I began my career as a website developer. My education as a SEO specialist began when I started my first company Bay Area Synthetic Grass (www.bayareasyntheticgrass.com) and Precision Putting Greens (www.precisionputtinggreens.com).”
When Bradford started his 2nd company Bradford Medical Supply (BMS) (www.bradfordmedicalsupply.com) in 2007 and initiated and maintained the optimization for BMS website my career as an SEO expert began. I am considered a well respected salesperson and expert on the yellow page medium of advertising, internet advertising and an expert on the busubess, technical and practical aspects of search engine optimization and search engine marketing. I learned SEO and SEM the hard way; by spending revenue generated from my companies on Adwords, individual study, trial and error and self correcting practices.
#1 by Aurora Meadow on November 17th, 2009
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what is the difference between keywords and title words?
How can I find out how people are looking for my particular service?
I just started my site and am not sure why I am not getting more business.
#2 by Bradford on November 18th, 2009
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1. What is the difference between keywords and title words?
Keywords are words that your customers use to find your product or service through a search engine. Two or more keywords are called a phrase. In the early days of search engine results pages, (SERP’s) keywords were use by Google in their ranking algorithm to decide who were ranked higher. Back then essentially the more keywords you had in your site the higher, you were ranked. Google figured that out quickly and changed their algorithm and have been changing it ever since.
Title words are what you and everyone sees when they look at the individual tabs at the top of your browsers. While Google limits the number of these title words, they have gained in importance in search engine optimization and the subsequent SERP’s.
2. How can I find out how people are looking for my particular service?
Use the keyword tool. Perform a search on keyword tool on a search engine and it will come up. Put in a term or two that are germane to your business and it will give you back many keywords that you can use in your website to the eventual optimization.
3. I just started my site and am not sure why I am not getting more business.
That is a complicated question. There could be many reasons. I don’t want to ramble on and not be of any help you. If you could be a little more specific about your particular situation, it would be helpful.
#3 by Aurora Meadow on November 29th, 2009
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Sorry it took me so long to respond. When I said I am not getting more business from my website, part of it is I look for my site via Google and I am not even on page 5. Also when people call I ask how they found out about my business and it is usually a recommendation from another customer, but those are few and far between.
I have about 5 keywords on my website, the ones that were most germane to my business. What am I doing wrong?
#4 by Mark Bradford on December 2nd, 2009
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There could be a number of reasons you are not getting calls that lead to clients and business. They could be as simple as you not answering the phone and letting it go to voice mail or that your position in the rankings is not sufficient to engender the desired response.
One of the many objects of a good optimization is to have as many keyword phrases in your website that your client will try to find you. Stuff as many of these phrases in content that is informative and makes sense. This can be difficult to do but with practice and resolve, you can become proficient at it.
Better results usually always come back to good content that keeps your potential client attention. You have to have more than a list of products and services; one has to explain why your services are better than your competitors are. Try to present a case to your client why they should come to you.
#5 by Steve Gorman on December 3rd, 2009
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Where are you getting your keywords for my business from? How do you know which ones to use and which ones not to use?
#6 by Bradfordgray on December 3rd, 2009
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Mr. Gorman is one of my clients for http://www.f1rstpageseo.com. His website is http://www.gormanre.com. I began his optimization about a month ago. My direct response to him is given below.
1. Google Analytics – In GA there is a parameter called “Keywords” it is listed under the “traffic Sources on the left hand side of the page. This is a list of all of the keyword phrases used in searches in which your website appeared and was clicked on or selected. Currently since we have been finally keeping track of these phrase your website searches, those searches have sent 878 total visits using 127 keywords.
2. The Adwords Keyword Tool is a free tool that Google created so you can generate keywords and phrases for the Adwords. Obviously, this is in their best interests because the more keywords you use the more revenue they can generate with those keywords. I usually start with this tool to generate an initial list as a point of departure.
3. Instinct/Experience/Tools – I have software tools that show me how all of the phrases generated from the other sources are ranking w.r.t. your website. I know from experience and looking at the analytics for dozens of sites how people look for stuff on the internet. This experience has come over time and making lots of mistakes and missteps that now, you are the beneficiary. In addition, I have years of experience counseling small business on how they are found in the yellow pages.
#7 by Steve Gorman on December 5th, 2009
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I guess my main concern is that I may not be using an obvious keyword for my business. If you are looking at the keywords people used and found my website, what about the people who used other keywords and never made it to my website? Do you have a list of the keywords you are using that you could send to me?
#8 by Mark Bradford on December 5th, 2009
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Hi Steve,
Let us clear up a few things about the nature of searching on the internet. A good metaphor for the internet is that it is one big giant database of word and pictures. Let us concentrate on the words. Google created software tool that:
1.) Goes to every website in the world, takes a snapshot of all the info in that website and organizes it using proprietary algorithms.
2.) Creates a list of website ranked according to how many of the keywords and keywords phrases Google deems most relevant.
3.) Then makes that list available through the Google search engine.
If anyone searches for http://www.gormanre.com using the word “real”, your results will be specious. If you search for web site, using the phrase “real estate” your website is not relevant enough to break through the phalanx of sites that are more relevant than yours for that phrase “real estate”. Try searching for your web site using the phrase “real estate property management” your website is still not relevant enough to break through. If I am looking for “real estate property management” in the Google search engine, your website is not relevant enough (does not have enough of these keywords) and has an extremely low ranking (>500). My software lets me look 50 pages back and you were not there for that particular phrase.
Now if you perform the same search with “real estate property management Monterey” you are currently number five. Perform that search with any of your target areas and you will see you are very highly ranked except for Pebble Beach and Carmel consistently. The list I sent will give you some insight to the thoroughness of my methods.
I make these points to underscore that there are only a few keywords and combinations of the keywords that customers use to find you.
In my economics class in college, I learned about Say’s Law; which simply states “supply creates demand”. If you have a supply of something people will want what you have. Advertising directs people to the product or service that they demand at the exact time they need it. A full-page ad in the local yellow pages creates the maximum demand for the product in that medium. http://www.gormanre.com is creating the absolute maximum demand for your services at the exact time they need it through the medium of the internet.
My optimization of your web site focuses primarily on those two phrases “real estate” and “property management”. These key word phrases encompass 99% of ways people look for you both clients and tenants. If I optimize on those two phrases and permutations of those phrases your relevancy will increase along with your ranking. Content is critical in that Google rewards content that is most abundant and relevant. Your site is somewhat limited in its ability to add content abundantly. So my aim is to focus on strategically adding relevant keyword phrases through structural aspect of your site. Phase III will focus on the content for the remaining pages and keyword relevancy.
In short, we are not going to miss anyone that is looking for what you do in the area of your markets. Everyone who finds your site is a qualified buyer/seller/lease/renter. They are qualified by virtue of the search they perform to look for your service. My job is to make sure you can be seen ranked highly enough and in as many places possible for them to click on you.
#9 by Kerry on July 5th, 2010
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What is the best way to tell when I have had my page crawled?
#10 by Mark Bradford on July 6th, 2010
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Hi Kerry,
To crawl a website is simply a euphemism meaning “looking for or to find” new websites on the internet, count the pages and take other information that I can’t comment on, because nobody really knows what they do beside the engineers at Google. Google “crawls” for websites constantly. Since there were an estimated 47 million websites added in 2009 this is a gargantuan task. When you first place a website on line for the first time it doesn’t immediately appear in Google’s SERP’s; it must be crawled first then indexed. Indexing is a whole other subject.
The best way to tell if you site has been “crawled” is to have a Google webmaster Account. Google give you a key to place within your site so it shows up in you webmaster account.
Usually within 24 hours you will see evidence of being crawled in your webmaster account under the “Crawl Stats” section. This section shows the “Pages crawled per day, Kilobytes downloaded per day and the Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds).
It might take two or three weeks to come up in the search engine ranking pages.
When Google crawls your site daily they are essentially “checking you out”. They are looking to see among other things if you are adding sufficient content before they decide to give you site its ranking in their index.
#11 by Allen on July 7th, 2010
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What are the 5 most important elements in making a website highly optimized?
#12 by Bradford on July 7th, 2010
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1. Regular addition of Content
2. Ease of Website Navigation
3. Website Maintenance and Upkeep
4. Variation of Product and Services offered
5. Google Analytics