Louisville Kentucky SEO Consultant

I have noticed a trend lately that many of the so called ‘full service’ marketing agencies in town don’t offer Internet marketing as a service to their clients, and if they do, they don’t advertise it.

I couldn’t begin to count the number of marketing companies here in Louisville. There are more companies that claim to do marketing than car dealers selling junk on Dixie Hwy. at this point. I normally look these companies up myself when I can and see what services they offer when it comes to Internet marketing. Through my research I have found that about 96% of the marketing companies here in Louisville have no services for Internet marketing!

Out of the other 4%, only 1% have what I would call an effective, full time, experienced Internet marketing person(s) in shop. The other 3% simply outsource the work or hire a college freshman to do the dirty work on their internship ( learning on your dime ).

I think this is a problem because many people in Louisville still do not recognize the value of Internet marketing to their business. They do not understand online marketing so they don’t bother to research or get informed about it. They don’t understand that an optimized website could be a low cost, 24 hour salesperson that can reach worldwide customers and push their products to people that are actively looking for them.

Some Louisville marketing companies have been burned by ’snake oil SEO salesmen’ in the past who basically took their money and ran, but this should not discourage you from seeking out a true Louisville marketing professional that can work with you one on one and get you results you need.

If you work with a company that doesn’t offer Internet marketing services, you are literally leaving money on the table when it comes to advertising and marketing.

As a business owner, you owe it to yourself to partner with a Louisville marketing company / agency that can offer you true ‘full service’ marketing. There is no since in skipping such a valuable service that can also help you bring in revenue with offline ventures as well.

The next time you work with a Louisville marketing agency, make sure you select one that offers competent Internet marketing services and be sure to check their references too.

Often when local Louisville small business owners seek out a Louisville website design company, they end up unhappy and frustrated with the end result. Most of this is caused by trusting their wallet instead of trusting their ‘gut’ feelings. I want to walk you through some cases I have seen lately.

Most of the time, the person wanting a web site built finds out that their cousin, uncle, or neighbor is a ‘budding’ website designer and feels that they can trust this person to build their website for cheap. They also sometimes find someone who is in high school or new to the industry that was promoting their services on sites like rent-a-coder or elance and can only compete on price with their services since they are so new to the industry. The web site owner goes with someone that was low cost because they have no real industry experience and thinks that ‘everything will work itself out’ later in the process. Many times too, they just come across the first person they find in Google with no further research or questions about the service provider. All of the above examples will only give you headaches and trouble down the road.

The best way to find the Louisville website designer for you is to ask questions and use some simple common sense. I could not begin to tell you how many people come to me on a weekly basis to fix other peoples mistakes. This not only waste time and sales, but waste lots of money to have to clean up someones mistake.

I am not saying to skip ‘budding’ amateurs or to not save money by going with a more expensive Louisville web site design company, but I am sharing these tips below:

• Look at their portfolio of work.. do they even have a portfolio? Looking at their prior work will give you a sense if their style of design will fit what you want in a site and give you an idea of who they have worked with so you can get references.
• Talk to multiple designers. Talking to one person is not enough! I would call around and ask questions about your site and what the best solution is for you from different providers.
• Narrow down candidates based on options, not price. Look for the designers that offer the best options for you, not the cheapest price.
• Find a designer that can do more than design. Many times you will find you need some custom programming and/or Internet marketing for your project down the road. Having one provider for all of this is cheaper and less frustrating then with having multiple people work on the project at different times causing conflict.
• Go with your gut feeling. If one person/company feels like the right fit then go for it full steam ahead, but only after you have done your research.
• Find out who they partner with in town. Many times you will find that a person or company has multiple partnerships with other designers and programmers here in Louisville. It is likely that the person or company will outsource their work to these people. Finding out who is really doing the work on your site is important so you can research them.

Finding a Louisville web design company is like buying a car. You don’t just randomly pick one and show up at the dealership with cash in hand. You need to research what you really need, find out what company fits those needs, and get the best ‘bang for your buck’ based on your research. Don’t get stuck with a second rate designer that is cheap upfront as it will cost you more money down the road.

I would say that having a blog is about the best thing most people can do when trying to increase exposure to themselves online.

I talk about the importance of blogs almost every day while at work and most people think I am crazy for suggesting others to use blogs for Internet marketing.

Here are a few ways having a blog will help you gain exposure online:

• They help you quickly and easily add content to your site, and search engines love content.
• Most blogs are setup to be somewhat search engine optimized out of the box, so almost no work is needed for onsite optimization.
• Blogs help keep people that want your information up to date on what you may be offering or selling

I could go on and on about how blog software like Wordpress can do each of the following above and so much more, but the best thing you can do is actually download it from Wordpress.org, install it on your server, and give it a demo drive. If that is too much for you, sign up at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com for a free hosted blog.

I prefer the benefits of having my own blog installed on my own hosting account for MANY reasons that would keep me writing all night. I like to think of a blog as a separate mini website that is easily customizable and ready to help you get exposure to yourself out of the box.

If the reasons above are not enough to convince you to have a blog, then you will be a dead fish in water when your competitors read this post and give it a try.

I will never understand why companies in the city and state I live are so far behind in online marketing.

We have many… many companies here that are profitable and doing well and we have a very high quality of life in America’s 16th largest city. With that said, you would think more business owners would invest money into having an online presence and bring more exposure to themselves.

The sad truth is that they don’t. A large percentage of companies will simply not put aside funds to have a web site built. Those that do, will not invest into marketing their new presence online.

I think this is caused by several reasons:

• Not understanding the potential that online business can bring.
• Thinking that they do not have the cash to build and/or market a web site online.
• Believing that ‘if you build it, they will come’, with no work involved after building.
• Having a bad taste in their mouth about web design/marketing because they chose to have ’someone’s uncle’ or the cheapest person they could find build a terrible site for them last time and rip them off.
• Thinking that having a Myspace page, blogger account, or eBay store qualifies as a web site and that no marketing is needed for it.
• Feeling that they can ‘always do it tomorrow’.

For any reason why it goes on, none of them are valid. If you invest time and money into having a business, then you need to budget for marketing. If you don’t do this, then you will fail sooner or later. The time it takes to select the type of marketing you do is as crucial as picking the type of products/services you will have for sale within your business.

After 13 years of web development and online marketing, I would say that I see the same mistake over and over again that clients make before I consult with them on their search engine marketing projects.

This mistake ends up costing them on the average 40% more in consulting fees, work, and lost time ( which is lost sales ) than any other mistake they could make.

The mistake? Hiring a search engine marketing consultant after, or near the end, site completion.

Internet marketing needs to happen before anything else you do. Before you buy a domain, before you hire a designer/programmer, and before you pay anyone to do any work on your site at all.

Everything you do with your site can, and will, effect the ranking it has in search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK. I am not saying everything has to be 100% perfect SEO for your site to rank, but EVERY LITTLE thing you can do can help you rank better even if it is selecting the proper domain and hosting for your site.

Many of you may still be wondering what I am talking about, so here is an example.

I have a client that is an attorney that wanted a simple site built that could generate traffic for his business. Knowing that most attorneys can only practice within certain city and state limits, it would make since to focus all his traffic to his local community. Why try to build a site around the term ‘lawyer’ when he can not help people outside his practice area? It would make more since to target ‘Louisville Kentucky Attorney’ or ‘Kentucky DUI Lawyer’ then to focus on a broader term that would most likely generate traffic he could not convert.

One thing that could have helped him was buying a domain that focused on his core keywords and audience. Many people think that a domain does not help in rankings, but it does in so many ways that I would be willing to sit down one on one with someone and discuss it until I am blue in the face. Instead of buying a domain like ‘louisvillekyattorney.com’ ( which has his terms in the domain ), he bought a generic domain. I already hear people screaming ‘but who would remember such a name as louisvillekyattorney.com? That is not the point here!

Using a domain that has your target keywords in it helps build search engine rankings, plain and simple. Use that as your main domain for your site and if you are worried that people will not be able to remember it, but a shorter domain based around yourself like your name or something easy to remember and print that on your business cards and such. Have this shorter, more memorable domain, redirect to your main site with your keywords in it. Now people can type it in because they remember it, and still reach your main site while giving you all the extra push you can get for having keywords in your main domain.

This client also went with the cheapest hosting company he could find. Not only does his site never show up when visited ( because his host is always down ), but Google never gets a chance to fully index and rank his site, because it is never available to spider it. Not only that, but I found out his hosting company was hosting spammy porn sites along side this client of mine and had been labeled a ’spam host’ by Google. This caused a penalty to be put on the entire class C IP block, including my client.. hurting his chance to rank well in Google.

All in all, this client was very unhappy and felt that he wasted his money on Internet marketing for his site. The truth is, this client never properly planned out his site and wanted to do things his way instead of listening and consulting with a search engine marketing consulting first.

If you own a business, don’t you owe it to yourself to make sure you have everything working for you and not against you when it comes to making money online?