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Article by Nathaniel Gentry

Competing against other online businesses is never easy in a constantly changing market, but a Tampa Web marketing firm has recently introduced an innovative new SEO strategy that could give you a decided edge in the search engine wars.

Tampa, Florida is home base to Webhead Interactive, a marketing firm specializing in search engine optimization and Web marketing packages customized to each client’s needs. They’ve recently introduced an Internet marketing strategy they refer to as “Search Engine Suppression,” a marketing technique that takes a proactive stance in order to not only increase the rankings of their clients, but to diminish the impact that negative information can have on search results.

Web Marketing Through Online Reputation Management

Search engine suppression is part of Webhead Interactive’s overall dedication to managing each client’s online reputation. The Internet is a volatile marketing tool, and a company’s reputation can soar one week and take a nose dive the next if it isn’t handled properly. This Tampa Web marketing firm is dedicated to positioning their clients for maximum success in the search engines as well as helping provide a positive reputation with Web site visitors.

Search Engine Rankings Suppression (SERS) is a part of the company’s approach to Online Reputation Management, which encompasses a variety of techniques, including monitoring and responding to potentially negative blog posts, presenting positive content in a variety of forums and purchasing negative domains in order to establish and maintain client Web sites as leaders.

The purpose of SERS is to suppress the ranking of Web sites that are indirectly giving client sites a negative reputation while increasing the ranking of client sites at the same time. This inverse relationship provides clients of Webhead Interactive with added value for the same investment, increasing ROI significantly.

SERS – Moving Negative Posts, Not Attacking Them

The company does not post negative stories or use negative optimization. Instead, if a page that contains negative information that may hurt a client company is on the first page in searches, they will work to optimize similar sites so that they move up, pushing the offending page to a lower spot in the rankings and getting them off the first pages in search engine results. By doing this, Webhead Interactive gives client businesses the ability to minimize the negative impact of stories that may be indirectly related to their site.

For example, if an employee of your company is involved in legal trouble that has nothing to do with your company, it can still negatively impact your company if the story is big news on the Internet and each story mentions where he works. Guilt by association can seriously damage your company name even if it has nothing to do with the actual situation. Search engine rankings suppression can move your employee’s story down the rankings while moving other stories up, effectively diminishing or negating the impact of his story on your business.

SERS is a complex Web marketing tool that usually involves creating additional non-client Web sites, optimizing multiple sites that aren’t client owned and staying ahead of the Internet news media’s love of negative stories. Webhead Interactive has created outstanding results with their search engine rankings suppression system as part of an overall image enhancement package that can make your Tampa Web marketing efforts a true success.

About the Author

Leave your Tampa SEO business to us. We will do everything you need to get business leads online. Tampa search engine optimization is at your service anytime.

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Article by John Smith

Law firms are driven on new business and constantly seeking ways to set themselves apart from their competition. Law firm web marketing has become an effective way for firms and their individual attorneys to express specialties, skills and records of success to the viewer. The previous methods of advertising and marketing for law firms were generally typified by bland or kitschy television commercials, radio advertisements and print ads restricted to a biography blurb and photograph. The need for lawyers to handle different types of cases and legal counsel leads many to become specialists in a certain field or dynamic. Print ads and time-sensitive radio or television ads rarely go into great detail about the specialties of each attorney within a firm.

The public’s increasing fluency in using the internet as a resource for goods in services has led many companies to set-up their efforts online. Just as any successful business must keep up with the demands of their customer base, private industry firms and organizations face the same necessary adjustments. Law firm web marketing is effective for those looking to ramp up their client base and increase case load. A successful web marketing campaign can not only attract the eye of potential new customers but provide a great deal of information within a link or embedded video. Internet users adapted to the visual stimuli associated with online advertising are far less likely to procure business from an organization with a lengthy text advertisement. Attractive web marketing campaigns draw clients in without implying a laborious abundance of information.

Social networking has added a new dimension to web marketing and advertising campaigns. Law firms looking to implement a web marketing campaign can target social networking sites or blogs where participants commonly suffer from legal woes of a particular nature. There are many forums through which like-minded participants discuss or explain their situation and everyday lives. Placing a web marketing link where it will be viewed repeatedly by a changing group of people who all experience some of the same issues is an extremely effective way to drive new business.

Law firm web marketing is effective only when produced in a professional, functional manner. Law firms looking to integrate web marketing into any new or current campaign should seek the services of a specialist in the field. Although web marketing can prove very effective when conducted at high levels of quality, poorly run web marketing campaigns can actually drive potential customers away from a business or firm. When attempting to access an item linked to a firm, if the viewer runs into problems or glitches within the process, they will be less likely to try the same link again. Poor quality web marketing gives an impression of unprofessional service, something with which a law firm would never want to be affiliated.

About the Author

Law Intake, a subsidiary of JV Digital Media, is a leading provider of web design and SEO to law firms. To learn more about Law Intake, please visit our web site, http://www.lawfirmwebmarketing.com.

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But who’s growing your business while you’re busy tending to your clients’ needs? What are you doing to attract and maintain a steady stream of qualified, motivated prospects? How do you find and keep interesting clients who pay you what you’re worth? Like most professionals, you may not be able to answer those questions because the answer involves marketing.

Sure, referrals can be a decent source of new clients, but they’re only one approach in a system of balanced strategies for guaranteeing you’ll have many desirable clients for as long as you wish. It doesn’t matter how many referrals you get, if you don’t know how to build and extend the potential relationship that each referral represents.

As a Smart Person, you have lots of options at your disposal for attracting more clients to your firm. And they don’t have to include the expensive things that spring to mind when you say “marketing,” such as slick brochures, advertising, or direct mail.

However, your professional expertise alone will not differentiate you in a crowded marketplace?nor will it bring clients to you. You’ve got to let them know you exist and help them understand why you’re different ? why you are uniquely qualified to address their needs. This is called positioning. It takes some thoughtful, creative work to nail this first, most important step in attracting more clients.

Once you’ve determined your positioning, you have four more major steps that will bring clients to you and your firm: packaging, promotion, persuasion, and performance. Each step requires that you are able to communicate with your target client audience in a variety of ways that they can understand ? in their need-based language, not your expert language.

In a nutshell, here are some of your strategies for each major step to attract more clients:

Positioning: niche, specialty, specialness, reputation, unique competitive advantage, client-centered worldview, saying no, commitment, no Plan B, congruence, self knowledge, re-niche

Packaging: knowledge-sharing, articles, reports, surveys, web sites, slide decks, CDs/cassettes, videos, books, mini-books

Promotion: knowledge-sharing, speaking, writing, networking, referrals, newsletters, e-newsletters, letters, postcards, calls, teleclasses

Persuasion: listening, diagnosis, openness, curiosity, visioning, education, presentations, asking, recommending, assuring, sharing

Performance: competence, solutions, results, keep promises, manage expectations, intelligence, creativity, guarantees, thank you’s, commitment, walking the talk, innovation, persistence, integrity, generosity, alignment inside firm, staying in touch, management competence

Chances are, you’re on a learning curve in one or more of these major steps. Even if you’ve been in business for years and have built a successful firm, taking your practice to the next level means setting new metrics, ensuring your niche hasn’t grown stale, and learning new ways to reach that next stage in your firm’s growth or maturity.

For larger firms, maybe now it’s time to pay attention to how your firm delivers on your brand promise ? do principals, management, and staff really “walk the talk” of what you promise in the marketplace? Or are you, like many professional service firms, a cobbler whose children have no shoes?

Or perhaps you serve “internal clients” inside of a very large organization, and need support or buy-in for the services your department offers. You can put these principles and strategies to work for your work to get noticed, get invited, attract positive attention, and get buy-in.

So what’s a Smart Person to do to attract more clients? Here are some suggestions:

Raise the role of strategic marketing in your practice to a conscious level. Get it on the agenda and apply your smarts to it, just like you do with any other crucial aspect of your business.

Create a niche for your practice ? you cannot be all things to all people. However just because you enjoy working with a particular market or prefer a special approach, it doesn’t mean your target clients will. You need to understand the difference between a good niche and a bad niche, and strategize accordingly. Lynda Falkenstein’s NicheCraft is an excellent source of ideas.

Position yourself to others through their worldview, not yours. Instead of saying, “I’m a strategy consultant,” start with “I help (Fortune 500) companies (increase market share).” Obviously you’d tailor the statement to fit who you help and what problem you address, but you get the idea. For tons of information on how to get this right, Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing is the guru on what he calls creating an “audiologo.”

Develop a system of marketing strategies that both attracts new clients and helps you retain the ones you have. Start with the metrics of what you want to change or improve in your practice and tie the system to driving those metrics.

Develop an action plan that translates your marketing system into specific tasks, with real assignments, deliverables, and deadlines.

Commit to and put a system in place to keep you on track and motivated as you work through your plan. Build non-billable time into your business model dedicated to marketing. A rule of thumb is at least 20% of your firm’s time should be allocated to marketing.

Get expert help and resources for any of these suggestions, including implementation. For many professional service firms, this requires getting away for a day or two of focused thinking and discussion among key people. When you consider that stakes, it’s well worth the time and effort.

There are actually two more “p’s” in marketing. Intelligent, effective marketing requires a great deal of patience?and the ability to see this not as a series of transactions completed in a few weeks or even months, but as a relationship-building process with your current and future clients over time.

Marketing really is a life-skill and something to learn as one of your core competencies as an educated professional. Now that’s being smart!

References

Argyris, C. “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991.

Falkenstein, L. NicheCraft. New York: HarperCollins. 1996.

Middleton, R. “InfoGuru Marketing Manual.” Action Plan Marketing. 2002.