Why are links important?

Linking to relevant sites is extremely important to your overall SEO ranking. If you are a maker fly rods and you have other relevant pages that link to the term fly rods linking to you then this is a good link. Search engines will confirm that "Fly rods" are in fact in the title, description and body content of your page and reward the page with rankability.

Guaranteed SEO

When talking with comapanies, I often hear that "Your competitors will guarantee 1# placement of my web site." In many cases this is true. What companies will do is focus on hyper specific keywords such as "Medical Manufacturer in Plastow, New Hampshire". By putting in hyper specific geographies into a search querry, SEO companies have eliminated the competition, thus making it very easy to rank a company 1# for that search term. The problem is that the general public does not search for services or products with that level of specificity. So, before you sign up for that guaranteed placement, it is important to understand the methodology. When we work with companies we spend a great deal of time on key word research, focusing on important words and phrases for that client that have low competition and high search volume. By doing this we are able to gain good placement for relevent word and phrases that actually drive traffic to their site.

Managing your Pay Per Click Campaign is a Full time Job.

Running PPC (pay per click) campaigns used to be relatively simple. There were only a few variables that the user had control of; price, copy, and where the user would be directed when they clicked on an ad. Today, effectively managing pay-per-click campaigns is a full time job requiring a great deal of skill and tenacity on the part of the account holder. One of the biggest mistakes that we see in existing accounts is the complete lack of key words and phrases for a specific add group. It is important to expand your key words and phrases so that you can catch a potentially larger audience. Over time, the trick is to pause those words that are not converting into bonafied leads, while adding to those that do. By expanding your key word and phrases you will ultimitely find those that give you the best results for the lowest cost.

Changing Landscape of SEO

In the last few months we have been busy continually evoloving our SEM and SEO marketing techniques. Google and other search engines constantly evolve their ranking techniques. But their criteria will always be based on delivering relevant results to their clients. What this means to you is that to increase your ranking, you have to match relevant content to keywords that you can afford to invest in. The first key to success is to understand how Google defines relevance. Here are some tips…

Keywords must accurately describe your products and services. Overuse of keywords in content that is irrelevant is penalized

Additional relevant assets that support keywords are important, such as maps, videos, presentations

Back-linking to irrelevant or little-used sites is no longer effective
The second key to successful seo optimization and pay per click advertising is to select relevant keywords you can afford to invest in. With the goal of identifying keywords that you can “own” over time, our proprietary system correlates the number of daily searches to the number of competitors. The results are analyzed and ranked for relevance. Once chosen, keyword performance is tracked over time and changes made as necessary.

It isn’t easy to produce relevant content that is integrated throughout your website, PR, blog, e-collateral, demand generation campaigns, and newsletter, or published to forums and other websites. It’s not easy to evaluate keywords on an ongoing basis to determine effectiveness. Yet, when you commit to a long-term seo optimization and pay per click program and outsource its execution, it is far and away the most affordable demand generation tool you can use.

Maximize Your Website Investment with an Evolving Keyword Strategy

Maximize Your Website Investment with an Evolving Keyword Strategy

Are you getting the best return on your website investment? The answer is no if you’re not employing a keyword strategy that evolves as search engine search criteria evolve.
For keyword research, many SEO agencies use both the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and Google Keyword Analysis. But for effective optimization you have to do more.
Traditionally, to obtain higher rankings you'll use the best keywords you’ve researched in the title, in the meta-tags and in the body text of your web pages. Five years ago keywords were more about meta-tags and language within the site. Today those things are still important, but back end linking, where quality web sites link back to your website, is of increasing importance.
Now, search engines like Google constantly change their criteria for high ranking sites, which means your site needs to be continually optimized. Since you never know directly what changes a search engine has made, many agencies have trouble keeping on top of developments. It’s like playing chess where you don’t see the moves of your opponent, only the results of his actions.
When asked about what aspects of keyword research have changed in 2008, our development director Anoop Rohera says, ‘I think the high competition and awareness of SEO benefits have made keyword research even more prominent in the overall SEO process. People spend more time researching keywords and trying to get a niche market by bidding on low competitive keywords and attempting to get a search engine place in a short time.’
So what techniques help you gather the data you need to keep up with search engine changes and maximize your ranking? Rohera says, ‘You can search manually for a number of popular keywords; reviewing the website title bar, the code and content to see what keywords are being targeted, and then analyze those keywords to see how many people are searching for them on a daily basis.’
Rohera continues, ‘Google and other big search engines always change their search criteria, or randomly change them so no method is overused. By using proprietary analytics to continuously evaluate your search results, we help solve this problem.’
I believe that having a competent and professional SEO firm looking after your site is critical. Many SEO companies ‘chew and screw’. What I mean by this is that they make some quick changes and move on to the next client. Good SEO is an on-going process that evolves over time and takes input from others.
So, what are the biggest changes that are going to affect the world of SEO over the next year? Rohera says, ‘Traditionally, most people stuff keywords in the content to get higher rankings. Search engines will penalize you for this nowadays. Link exchange techniques are obsolete too; search engines are giving increased weight to one-way links from quality websites, directories or forums. I think this will grow in the coming year as well. Other than this Google has also started rolling out universal search which means a search query will not just get links, but also images, news, videos and maps.’

- Nate Tennant, Kirk Communications

Marketing Throughout the Organization

This past weekend my brother and I took our annual pilgrimage to Bangor, Maine to watch the Kenduskeag canoe race. http://www.kenduskeagstreamcanoerace.com/. As you enter the State of Maine you are greeted with the slogan "Maine, the Way Life Should Be". One thinks, this must be an idyllic place to live and work. Having grown up just outside of Bangor, Maine, I can tell you that it once was. The quality of life was terrific, no crime, beautiful scenery, relative low cost of living, and a fair amount of decent paying jobs. Back then, there was alot going on in Bangor, Maine. The paper industry was humming and even companies in the traditional manufacturing industries were doing well. Even Bangor International Airport had dozens of large jets, 727s, MD80s full of paying business travelers. Unfortunately since the late 80s, the State has continued to decline in per capita income and continues to loose its best educated young people. There just are not any jobs. Perhaps the state believes that "the way life should be" is living in abject poverty. If that is there definition of living the good life, then the state is doing a fantastic job of creating the reality they are promoting. Eventually tourist will be turned away by Maine's increasingly high taxes and costs which are passed on to tourists. Tourist driving the back roads of Maine will be greeted by dilapidated homes and failing farms. No matter how you look at it, this is depressing.

Driving through mid-central Maine today is depressing. Towns like Clinton, Unity and others are as bad as the poverty stricken areas of the Appalachian mountains in the south. One hundred years ago these areas were considered some of the best, most productive farming communities in the entire U.S. Along the coast towns such as Belfast and Camden look good, but certainly pail in comparison to the grandeur and wealth that these towns created in the past. Maine used to be one of the strongest, most robust economies in the nation. The state needs to do more in the way of radical tax reform to boost business and investment in new technology. Only then might the State be able to lay claim to the slogan "Maine, The Way Life Should be", ensuring that what they promote is in fact the reality on the ground.

Pipeline Wireless on the Move

We have been working with a new company, Pipeline Wireless. They came to us from one of our trusted friends. They are a medium sized start-up focused on local wireless access. A few months ago, we started a full public relations program for them that includes writting press releases, searching out editorial opportunities and aggressively pursing those opportunties for stories. In addition, our interactive team is also making changes to their website. We love clients like Pipeline Wireless because they have a great story to tell. Our senior Public Relations manager Jennifer Macpherson is heading up the account.

Another American Corporation doing Well

Today we launched another website "Andover Corporation". The site was designed by the in house staff and they did a phenomenal job in PHP. However, the website design was dated and required Kirk Communications to do a complete redesign. Working with their internal team, we came up with a new website design, and then after it was approved we coded the site. Because of their SEO rankings we chose to keep their PHP extensions as we didn't want to risk their SEO position. It was over 800 pages of content but we were able to stay within budget. We also added some features that allow for quicker updates to the webpages. The website can be viewed at www.andovercorp.com

Website Design

Well we added another website design client today to our roster. The client is in stealth mode, so we can't mention the name of the client here. Kirk Communications is working with the client to develop their entire identity package including their corporate brand logo, collateral and their website.

Kirk Communications is developing an innovative website for the client and optimizing the site for SEO. Kirk Communications is also doing some interface design for the client. We are excited to be working with new and innovative clients that appreciate the leading technology that we can bring to the table.

Arlington, Texas

I got a call the other day from our friends in Arlington, Texas http://www.arlington.org/, Fun Central. They, like many of our clients found us through Google. This next week they are attending a large tourism summit in New York City and they asked Kirk Communications to produce an interactive press kit in under a week! It is a tight request, but luckily our team of interactive developers were able to drop some tasks and work on this digital press kit.