Website Promotion is not Voodoo

High Web Rank is trying to help me rank better for Chiropractor New Orleans with their 13,000 sites.

For a little background please see my Links Hog post.

Hello,

I was looking at websites under the keyword ‘ chiropractor new orleans ‘ and came across your website http://www.ifindsales.com/. I see that you’re ranked number 2 on page 15.

In I got this link by email from one of our clients (for Botox, San Francisco folks can’t go wrong with Dr. Roy Kim - yes, it’s a blatant link-drop) and it got me going on a pet peeve of mine:

Small Business owners giving up control over their own online destiny.

A company who’s domain is linkshog.com has been spamming my clients. Here’s why I call it spam versus just unsolicited email (I’m not averse to well done unsolicited email).

1. They clearly have no human review
2. The search phrases they call out are inappropriate
3. In a few instances they’ve been wrong (telling one of my “New Orleans Chiropractors” that he was in position 18 instead of position 4)

Internet marketing for plastic surgeons presents some interesting challenges. Surgical practices make a lot of money and are attractive targets. Unfortunately, more often than not, the results haven’t matched the promises.

Right when it came out I pointed to a recent article in the NY Times. This post is intended to clarify my thoughts in response.

Table of Contents

In this morning’s session at Small Business Marketing Unleashed Jennifer Laycock was talking about the value of ratings and reviews as a component of social media.

For those of you who don’t know, Search Engine Guide is putting on a show this week focused on small businesses: Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

Return on Investment Through Call Tracking

Since I’m clearly not going to get to the proposals I had on tap for tonight I thought I’d go ahead and document a recent client experience I’ve been talking to a few folks about.

I’ve told this story a few times recently in support of our use of call tracking numbers.

At the risk of repeating myself, Miriam of Solas Web Design in her SEO Igloo blog has been engaged for a few weeks in an investigation of Local SEO culminating with a series of interviews. Miriam was nice to include me and most recently asked me to respond to some questions from the comments on one of her recent posts.

Update:

If you’ve been contacted by SEO Matrix please give us a call.  We’ve learned that the way they prospect is by calling people who are spending money on online advertising.

Most of our clients come by referral.  We can help you too (and in most cases for much less than SEO Matrix).

A Case Study of Trusted Reviewers’ Impact on Google Maps Placement

David Mihm, a local SEO in Oakland CA recently pointed me to a post by Tim Coleman of Convert Offline who offers Search Engine Marketing help for small business entitled “Is Google Filtering Reviews or Reviewers”.

I live in New Orleans where people do occasionally rent a television for the big game.

It’s an event. No need to call consumer credit counseling.

If I’m renting my 17″ Sylvania that may be a problem.

Website promotion is the same. Rent or Own.

Ultimately you want to own.