I get asked all the time, “How do I pick the right SEO firm to help with my website’s organic search?”.

The answer: when comparing search firms, find out who did their homework. A reputable SEO company will not only look at your site,  they will fully examine the competitive landscape.

Why is competition so important when all you care about is fixing what’s wrong with your website? Because it’s what the websites ranked higher than yours are doing (or not doing) that determine how much work needs to be done.

Keep this in mind: getting your site optimized is often the easy part. Closing the gap between your site and the competition is where the hard work begins.

Here are 4 factors you need to make sure a search firm has considered in their proposal to you:

1. The number of search results per keyword. The more results, the higher the competition. The higher the competition, the longer it will take to make headway.

2. Domain age – older sites usually have more content and more links. If you’re industry has 10 websites with domains all older than 8 years old, that will require a lot more work than an industry with domains all created in the last 12 months.

3. Inbound links – the higher a competitor’s page rank, the more quality inbound links pointing to their site. How many more quality links do your competitors have? 10? 100? 5,000? Accumulating links take time and effort. The more links required, the more work it will take to catch up. Remember, there are no quick fixes!

4. Quality and consistency of content – do your competitors have a blog? Do they look like they have a plan to regularly churn out quality content? If so, your website has to not only catch up (build a lot of pages and get a lot of links) but it will have to, at some point, grab some eyeballs from your established competitors.

If you are a business owner considering investing in improving your organic search results, make sure the firm you hire has properly assessed your competition. If they haven’t, chances are they don’t know how much effort it will take to get better results.

I’m always amazed at business owners who doubt leveraging the awesome the power of video for their website. Although I experience it less these days, I still talk to enough doubting business owners to make me believe the world is not yet as convinced as it should be. Video is the future, if not the present, people!

In fact, I’m sort of embarrassed this blog is in text, not video, but bear with me. I’ll get there eventually.

When someone gets to your website, you have only a few precious seconds to convince them that A) your service is worth buying and B) more importantly, they should buy from you. If your website is loaded with novels of text that someone has to read in order to understand what your business is all about, forget it. No one will read it. You need to shorten your pitch by doing things like showing people via video the value of your product or service.

Today I came across  another great example of  a business leveraging the power of video. Surprisingly, it was done by a bank! Banks aren’t usually known for using social media effectively.

Here’s why this video is so great:

1.  Within 2-3 minutes, you know exactly how the product works AND that it’s ridiculously simple.

2.  USAA took something that might make some people apprehensive (mobile deposits) and used actual customers to ease any potential fears or hesitations about complexity or security. This is brilliant. What’s more powerful than seeing real people make those deposits in only a few seconds?

3. Existing USAA customers will undoubtedly see this app as a value-add while people that aren’t customers might reconsider.

You can’t watch that video and not think that the service is very cool and a complete no-brainer.  Want proof? According to USAA’s Twitter account, $1.5 million has already been deposited using this new app in just three days.

If your website is not using video to help sell your products or services, start thinking about it right away. And if you need help coming up with a video content plan, let us know.

If you have other good examples of videos being used on websites you use, include a link in the comment section.

I’ve said this before, but these days practically every business owner I meet wants to talk about SEO.

Most of the time, the conversation is spent talking about their pain. Either they are frustrated with a current provider that’s not producing, or they have recently come to the realization that their website’s performance in search engines is lacking and they need help. And they need help fast.

Inevitably, the conversation will turn to our approach to search engine optimization. It’s a great question. People want to know what it is we do to get results. I always tell them that we didn’t write the book on SEO. And our methods are hardly a secret. At the end of the day, we follow a proven method that utilizes white hat technologies. In other words, we don’t cheat.

So the answer is a mix of experience, ethical practices, and hard work. All of that usually equals  success.

You can read more about our process. There’s an overview on our website.

A lot of business owners know they need help with search engine optimization, but they don’t know where to start.  The good news is that there are a ton of search engine optimization companies out there looking for clients.

A valuable way for both sides to feel each other out are free evaluations, just like the one we offer to potential clients.

A lot of companies with search engine optimization services will offer such an analysis to try and soften the sales process (because understanding the ins-and-outs of SEO can be difficult for biz owners)  and win your business.  My advice is to take them up on their offer. Where else can you get something for free?

The real value is the learning you get from it. The best SEO firms will give you a very clear snapshot of your current search situation and tell you how they think it can be fixed. Not only will you learn something about SEO, but you’ll get a good sense of the company’s ability to deliver.

I’ve seen many free SEO evaluations. A large percentage of them don’t do a good job of giving business owners a justification for their costs. Frankly, that’s probably because that search firm doesn’t know what they are doing.

So, if you are just warming up to the idea of hiring an SEO expert, do yourself a favor and take some search engine optimization companies up on their free offer. You’ll learn a lot about your website’s search engine needs and it will help you choose the right partner for your business.

We got a really nice letter from Rudy Castruita, President of the San Diego Bowl Game Association, thanking us for our work developing new websites for the Holiday Bowl and Poinsettia Bowl.

Here’s a small excerpt from the letter:
“Your creativity and professional approach to our new websites is greatly appreciated,” said Castruita. “You helped bring our organization to the next level with premiere Bowl websites. Your hard work is greatly appreciated.”

Both Bowl games (held in December) were a huge success. Check out some of these numbers provided by the San Diego Bowl Game Association:

• The Holiday Bowl played in front of their third largest crowd in history (64,020 fans).
• The Holiday Bowl was the second most watched game on the ESPN schedule, reaching over 4.2 million households.
• The Poinsettia Bowl had their best attendance ever with 39,129 fans.
• TV ratings for the Poinsettia Bowl increased by more than 38% compared to 2006.

It’s always a great feeling to be appreciated by our clients. We loved working on the two Bowl websites. The fact that the committee is so pleased is a testament to our team’s proven strategy: this business is all about being dedicated to hard work and service.

Have you ever noticed how much guys talk about numbers?

A lot of us often talk about on-base percentage, seeding in the NCAA tournament, games out of first place, scores in relation to par, the over/under, ROI, stock quotes, market cap and on and on. Our obsession with sports and finances has made a lot of us predisposed to a love of stats. Don’t believe me? Just check out how much fantasy sports content is out there.

I am as bad as the next guy. I love stats. That’s why I truly enjoy website analytics. For those of you who don’t know about website analytics, it’s how user behavior on websites is measured.

For example, analytics will help you determine the following about your website:

• number of visitors, borken down by hour, day, month, year
• number of pages those visitors are viewing
• where traffic is coming from
• what pages users are visiting on a site
• how much time users spend on a site
• how frequently they visit
• and so much more.

Get the point?

Analytics is all numbers, charts, graphs-updating all day long. In other words, it’s a dream for a lot of guys who already enjoy stats.

I was reminded of man’s natural affinity for analytics when one of our clients called the other day. This client is great (as are all of the companies and people Brand5 is lucky enough to work with). He is a huge sports fan and a baseball junkie in particular.

At the end of last year, we installed an analytics program for his website. Since then he has been obsessed with logging in to check out the latest numbers on his site’s traffic. He really enjoys picking apart the different categories and interpreting user bahavior.

Beyond the numbers, this client understands the true value of analytics and how it makes his business better.

He told me a story about how just last week he closed a huge deal thanks to his Brand5 analytics program. He was tracking which potential clients-out of all the ones he had recently pitched-had been on his website (something easily trackable through analytics).

My client saw that one company in particular had recently spent a lot of time on his site. He interpreted this as interest in his services. He correctly followed-up with them and won the business.

Instead of sitting in his office wondering if his sales pitch had had any effect, analytics had given our client clear evidence that this company had taken his call-to-action to heart and visited his site. Instead, the company is swithcing more and more of their bsuiness to my client.

That’s just another example of the power of analytics. It’s a must for all companies, and all guys who love stats.