October 6, 2011 by Mary Killelea

This morning when I was sipping my coffee before I got started on client tasks I took a few minutes to look at our own Google analytics and see how we were doing based on some new marketing strategies we’ve implemented for ourselves. It was then that I came across in my keyword report people had found us by typing in “who is the best SEO in portland ” intrigued I opened up Google and did my own search for the same term. Here’s what I found….

I loved the results.. because it was Jeremy Morgan, my company Working Web Solutions and Greg Beddor owner of Webfu. I know both Greg and Jeremy and have a great deal of respect for both of them. Many years ago I think it might have been 11 now I applied to ad in Craigslist for a link building job with US Outdoor. It was thru that job post that I got to know and work for Greg Beddor. He in my mind was definitely the pioneer in the Portland market for SEO and he taught me a lot and really got me introduced to all the possibilities of online marketing.

Over the years Jeremy and I have crossed paths and I enjoy reading his blog http://www.jeremymorgan.com/. Technically he is so smart and so willing to help teach others to succeed in SEO and programming. Now don’t get me wrong there are a lot of other very talented and dedicated marketers in the Portland area but it sure was nice finding that the three of us showed up in the top results for the term: “who is the best SEO in Portland” I take great pleasure in ranking in the top three with these guys.

Being a business woman in Portland and owning my own company for over 10 years I have learned a lot and have pride in knowing we have helped businesses grow online. I try and share my pride in this with my daughters and hopefully am teaching them they can be or do anything they want to do, that hard work and dedication pays off and whether you get award recognition, have a fancy office downtown or work out of your home or not at the end of the day if you can help support your family and enjoy what you do life is good!

I think the secret to my success has been evolving with online marketing, adapting quickly with a wiliness to learn new things constantly and taking risks. Working Web Solutions is now offering Facebook business marketing and because of this our business is growing and serving a new niche.

I’m not sure where I see myself or my company in 10 more years but for now I enjoy all the possibilities of online marketing and helping other business succeed.

June 16, 2011 by Mary Killelea

Even though it’s been awhile I think it’s good to cover this again.. Google informed merchants using the service was shut down on April 29. Tags was an experiment which led to a similar local advertising product called Boost which appears do be doing much better, judging by how much it is now appearing in search results.

Boost ads are all of those blue-colored pushpins on Google Maps and in paid search results. Rather than linking to a website, an offer, or a menu, Boost highlights some listings information from Google Places such as an address or phone number. Boost is a “set it and forget it” service targets local businesses that have stopped using AdWords due to its relative complexity and the time required to manage ad campaigns, essentially re-creating a subscription-based model. A business just has to add Boost to their listing in Google Places, set up a monthly budget, and select relevant categories. Boost does the rest, advertising on Google and Google Maps. (You may have seen the blue pin at the top of a Google Map search? That’s a Boost ad.)

As of today’s post I have not experimented with YEXT tags yet but plan to soon so it’s a uncharted territory for me and up to you. For local businesses that like tags, they can still buy them across a dozen competing non-Google sites through Yext Tags.  A tag and customized message can be added to any local business listing on sites like Citysearch, Local.com, and SuperPages, Incidentally, Yext is planning on changing the name of this product to PowerListings.

Local Search is very hard to control but this is one thing you can do .. remember it is super important that your business listing (address and contact inf) be consistent when ever put out there on the web.

April 27, 2011 by Mary Killelea 

A wonderful way to help increase your local presence for your business is to create a presence for your business on yelp!

What is Yelp?  Yelp is a website that aims to connect people with great local businesses and Yelp Business Accounts allow businesses to share information with the Yelp Community. Simply put, it’s word of mouth — amplified.

10 tips to get you started on Yelp

1. Create your profile - This shows Yelp users who you are and where you’re located, etc. 

2. Unlock your Business Page - If you don’t know what that is or how to do it go watch this video from Yelp that shows how business owners can use the business tools.

3. Add an Event - If you’re a local business and you’re sponsoring a event share this with people on Yelp. Also promote these type of events on Facebook and Twitter.

4. Fill out your bio - Tell people about you and let them connect to you in away the competition doesn’t offer.

5. Choose a Custom URL for Your Yelp Profile - it’s another great opportunity for branding and for looking professional and current and it’s easier to remember.

6. Offer Specials & Discounts - Encourage people to check out your listing by offering special discounts, special events or limited time offers on your page. Consider a special discount if a customer says “I saw you on Yelp.”
Yelp recently rolled out check-in offers, similar to Foursquare this is great because when people checkin then it shows others where their friends are going and it’s likely they too will want to visit.

7. Recommend Other Businesses - Remember Social Media isn’t just about you.. share with others great businesses you love.

8. Respond to Reviews  - People love to see a business owner own up to mistakes or address concerns of their customers. Respond in a very nice and polite way and it will have a great impact.

10. Publish Your Reviews to Facebook and Twitter - Log into your Yelp account, click on the “My Account” button, and then follow the instructions in the “External Services” tab.

If you utilize this one tool you will start to see better traffic to your site - like any social media engage and respond to clients. They want a personal experience and Yelp is a great tool for connecting with customers.

 April 25, 2011 By Mary Killelea

Today I was reading a great article on Mobile SEO from Chris Silver Smith who writes for the the Locals Only column at Search Engine Land. Chris “Silver” Smith is director of optimization strategies for KeyRelevance.

Here are the highlights from his post on .

Optimizing for mobile is fairly simple. In fact, it’s so simple that it’s surprising that more companies are not delivering mobile-friendly versions of their pages.

To optimize for mobile search, try the following:

• Perform content negotiation when a user lands on your site — if their accept-header indicates a preference for a mobile flavor webpage, deliver the mobile version of your page to them.
• Google has a separate bot for crawling/indexing mobile versions of pages. So, you can deliver both a mobile version page up on the very same URL you’re using for the regular, full-blown HTML page, as long as you’re performing the content negotiation check on the backend.
• Google has identified a few different mobile-friendly languages which they support, so you’ll want to use one of them: XHTML Basic 1.1, XHTML MP 1.2, cHTML, or WML 1.3.
• Disclose that you have mobile-friendly pages outright. Googlebot-mobile will eventually discover them, but it could happen quicker if you generate a mobile sitemap and then notify Google through your Webmaster Tools account.
• Let smartphone users choose formats manually, if they wish. Provide a link from the regular page to the mobile version, and vice-versa so users can choose to switch.
• WordPress has some plugins that may handle delivering up mobile-friendly versions of blogs.
• Similar to WordPress and depending on your content management system, or the programming language used to develop your site, there could also be freeware programs, modules or libraries that would make it easiest to get your mobile version set up. Using off-the-shelf code may get you up and running quicker, and save you time.

March 14, 2011 By Mary Killelea

After reading a recent article by Nick Cobb from the Freelance Copywriter it inspired me to write this article. As he says when sites like Facebook and Twitter arrived on the scene not so long ago, they were viewed as a flash in the pants only being utilized by young kids and techno geeks. Social media marketing is now mainstream with fortune 500 companies investing thousands of marketing dollars on social media as part of their marketing mix. It’s undeniable of the potential FB, Twitter and other social media tools can have on your business growth.

Forward-thinking businesses that are utilizing these sites as promotional tools for their products and services see the value. This really is how social media marketing was born. An industry literally created for the purpose of maximizing these tools for your business.

As a result of this realization, the manner in which businesses communicate and interact with their customers has been completely transformed. And if you’re not utilizing FB and other social media tools as part of your business marketing mix you are missing out on a very valuable form of communication and brand building.

By signing up to these sites, you’ll be able to give your business greater exposure online, and post information about your products and services, offer discounts, share industry news, new product info and engage with your customers.

The goal is to post useful and high quality content that provides value for the reader, then more and more people will “follow” you (in Twitter’s case) or become a “friend” (on Facebook), which will help you to build positive, long-term relationships with customers who might not have previously found you. Studies show fans are more to buy your products or services than non fans.. so reach out and try and attract new fans!

Thru Facebook Custom Fan pages you can entice users to Like your page in a number of creative ways, you can offer videos, capture leads and offer ecommerce right on Facebook. Facebook Pages are being indexed in the search engines. The future of marketing is literally developing right in front of our eyes. This is a very EXCITING time, become a part of it …. there are no guarantees and it is somewhat unchartered territory, but for those that take a leap of faith and venture into the social marketing arena the rewards so out way the alternative.

http://www.facebook.com/webdesignandseo

December 20, 2011 Posted by Mary Killelea 

I was reading this article in Search Engine Journal  by Kristi Hines  and thought it was good enough to share even though 1-3 seem like they were relevant to 2010.

Five link building predictions for 2011  

1. Less use of keyword-based anchor text, more use of brand names.

With the recent penalization of sites possibly due to over-optimized anchor text, and the Mayday changes that led to brand dominance in search results, link building efforts will probably start to target brand / business names more than keyword anchor text.  This will also be especially helpful for online reputation management, as online review sites are moving up in importance as well.

2. Less focus on quantity, more focus on quality.

Google is working harder to weed out low quality sites which, in the process, will lead to the loss of links from these high volume sources.  Link building strategies should focus more on high quality, relevant linking opportunities so those links will go the distance.  Now the next question is, what will determine quality in the new year?

3. Less emphasis on PageRank, more emphasis on authority.

With the rumored death of PageRank due to the lack of updates in the last half of 2010, link valuation is turning to mozTrust, Domain Authority, and Page Authority.  I have already had clients preferring these metrics over PageRank, and I’m sure that the trend will continue.  Especially now that SEO tools are starting to incorporate mozRank and doing away with PageRank.

4. Less links to the homepage, more links to the content.

Let the link bait roar!  Content development and marketing is growing at a rapid rate, and along with it are the opportunities to build links to internal pages with amazing content instead of homepages or product pages.

5. Less concern about rankings, more concern about conversions.

More clients are starting to integrate analytics analysis into their SEO plans so instead of just getting a set number of links every month or being told that their rankings have moved from #5 to #4, they will want to hear that their conversions have increased for keywords that their clients have been searching for.  Because there is no ROI if you are building links to a keyword that has no commercial value.

Bonus one! Less need for dofollow, more need social mentions.

It’s no longer just a theory that social media is influencing search engines. Google and Bing both are considering social mentions as a part of their ranking algorithm, particularly Twitter and Facebook.  These links that used to be deemed worthless for SEO due to their nofollow value are now being counted for positive sentiment toward a brand or website.  It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that other nofollow authority sites like Wikipedia carry more weight than previously thought.

November 20, 2010 By Mary Killelea

 SearchFest 2011

Portland’s Premier Search Marketing Conference
When: Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Where: The Governor Hotel (866) 979-7660

No matter what level of SEO skills you have this is a great event to attened.  There are great speakers scheduled, you can network with other SEO folks and potentially meet folks in need of SEO work .

Topics include Advanced Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Universal Search, Analytics, Paid Search Marketing and many more.

View the Agenda 

If you would like you can Register Here

I’ll see ya there…  I look forward to meeting new faces in the Portland search  community.

November 18,  21010 by Mary Killelea

This week I read a great article by Brad Fallin who interviewed Rand Fiskin SEOmoz CEO and Co-Founder. SEOmoz blog is now one of the most populare search engine forums in the world with readers numbering in the tens of thousands every day. BusinessWeek listed Fiskin as one of the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 (Yep Under 30). Fiskin has written about SEO for the New York Times, Newsweek and in his book, The Art of SEO.

Like many in the late 90’s he had a struggling web design and development business but instead of scratching his head and letting his business dissolve he found that SEO could be the tool that could differenitate him from his competition. He was able to sell the value to his clients early on before people even knew what SEO was, which if you remember was a huge struggle for the industry at the beginning. After starting to offer SEO in 2020, then launching the SEOmoz blog in 2004 as a way of sharing his experiences, the site eventually grew into it’s own brand offering consulting until 2007. Now his model has grown into SEO software that very large to very small companies can take advantage of.

When asked what the most noticeable change in the SEO world is that he’s seen, his reponse didn’t surprise me. “SEO has become a much more accepted and standard for of web marketing. It’s  great to see organizations embrace SEO today like they never have before. ” Just in the past year he says he’s been able to speek  about SEO to the CTO of the United Nations, present ot hte group at the YCombinator event and even heard that the White House is doing some SEO! ”

His closing words of wisdom from the interview was “Don’t be discouraged - SEO is a slow, building process much of the time, but it’s the challenge and the obstacles that make it a competitive advantage for those who embrace it and do it well!”

I am happy to share I just saw that Rand Fiskin is gonna be one of the speakers at Search Fest 2011 discussing Advanced link building.

October 18, 2010 by Mary Killelea  

Google Webmaster Tools http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
What is it? Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google

Link building Task Creator http://www.lotusjump.com/
What is it? LotusJump is website marketing made easy. It combines years of experience in the SEO industry with smart programming to create a highly customized SEO Software that can help your website outrank your competition.   

LotusJump http://www.lotusjump.com/
What is it? SEO Software is an easy-to-use tool that tells you exactly what needs to be done to help increase your website rankings in Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other popular search engines. By analyzing your website and keywords, it creates highly customized tasks with easy-to-follow instructions to help you  market your website, saving you thousands of dollars over using conventional full-service marketing firms.

Search Ranking Reports http://searchenginereports.net/
What is it? Super-fast Bulk SERP Checker for Google, Yahoo, and The Bingers. Get search engine ranking reports free and instantly. Paste your keywords, specify domain.

SEO Software IBP http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/
What is it? Internet Business Promoter is a website promotion tool for search engine submission, optimization, ranking and more

SEM Rush http://www.semrush.com/ 
What is it? SEMRush.com was designed by the developers of SeoDigger and SeoQuake  for Google organic and AdWords keywords research.Authority Labs: http://authoritylabs.com/ 
What is it? AuthorityLabs is a simple rank monitoring service. We help people easily track and analyze their ranking performance on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Universal Business Listing https://www.ubl.org/index.aspx
What is it? UniversalBusinessListing.Org is a Directory Industry service that allows businesses to post their business listing once and have it posted to all major Online Yellow Pages, Search Engines, 411 Directories and other vertical industry Directories. The Universal Business Listings are a service of Name Dynamics, Inc.

Linkvana http://www.linkvana.com/  
What is it? LinkVana is a Next Generation linking service that takes your snippets of original & unique content that you control, that are relevant to your sites topics and automatically propagates your snippets across our large network
of Blogs. These snippets will have a link to any page you choose embedded within them.

Ravan Tools http://raventools.com/
What is it? The online software system helps customers quickly research, manage, monitor and report on SEO, email, social media and other internet marketing campaigns.

Posted May 18, 2010, by Mary Killelea 

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (PST)
Online Marketing Summit
The Online Marketing Summit (OMS) is coming to Portland on June 16! This is your chance to learn best practices and actionable strategies from the nation’s best online marketing professionals and practitioners from organizations like Intel, REI and Web Analytics Demystified. Connect with hundreds of your local marketing peers to learn, network and share ideas.

Learn all about NEW B2B and B2C case studies and social media integration tracks, unparalleled networking opportunities, and an exclusive Social Media and Content Marketing Workshop and Breakfast, brought to you by the Online Marketing Institute and the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative.

Online Marketing Summit
Full-Day Pass: $369 $314
15% discount good thru May 26. Use code EARLYBIRD
Social Media Workshop & Breakfast: $99

Registration & Pricing Details | View Portland Agenda