Jamison/McKay | Not Your Average Advertising Agency

Simply put, defensible traffic is web traffic web traffic obtained from sources that don’t necessarily include search engines like Yahoo! BING or Google. It’s the best type of traffic and at the same time it is the hardest type of traffic to build and obtain. If your site is truly defensible, you could exist if search engines went out of business tomorrow.

Let’s face it – anybody with a basic knowledge of PPC and a bank account can buy traffic. And if they’re willing to pay out the nose (or more out the nose than you), they can steal your PPC traffic by paying more per click. So the only way you can defend that traffic is to pay more per click. That cuts into your ROI. And that sucks.

So the question remains.  Where do we get defensible traffic? Well to name a few, you have social networking, niche link partnerships, RSS or newsletter subscribers, online communities such as forums or bulletin boards (e.g. Craigslist), traditional advertising, word of mouth promotion etc.

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Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the most misunderstood and misused words in the web marketing world today. SEO is the process of attempting to get your site naturally ranked on the first page on Google, Yahoo! and other major search engines for relevant keywords or phrases to your company.  The SEO game’s not getting any easier and the traditional forms of optimizing aren’t as effective as they once were. The truth is, that SEO is often a frustrating, fruitless and sometimes very costly endeavor. So What’s a company to do? The answer is simple: hire a company (like us) that knows how to create a site that’s programmed according to current web development standards, full of content that clearly communicates your business, product or service. Oh, we hear ALL THE TIME, “but there are companies out there that say we can get a #1 ranking.”  Oh there are LOTS of companies making that claim. And they’re scammers.

• Some companies offer “search engine submission.” If they do, they’re trying to con you. The concept of submitting websites to search engines is BS and hasn’t been needed since 1998. And those that claim to submit to 200 search engines?  Now they should be shot.
• Some companies guarantee #1 position because of their “long-standing relationship with Google.” The truth is that Google itself has a section on their website that states: “Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a “special relationship” with Google, or that claim to have a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.” Uh huh.
• Some companies pretend to optimize your website via a “Strategic Linking” plan. Instead, they guarantee a #1 rank because they pay for it by way of a PPC ad campaign. Oh you’ll be at the top of the search engine results page. But you’ll pay dearly for it. Sometimes 5 times as much!
• Now for the companies that send spam e-mails.  Uhm, they are a Search Engine Optimization Company. Their specialty is helping people promote their website, and gain a wider audience. So ask yourself this question: If they were really any good at what they do, would they really need to resort to spamming to get business?

Here is our first rule of thumb. It is simple. It is straightforward. And it is easy to understand: Never, ever, ever, EVER do business with an SEO company that makes the initial contact with you. There’s a ton of them out there. Just say no. Work with a quality company. Do research. Sniff out their BS claims such as the above. And if still you need help, give us a call.

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The title tag has been – and probably will always be – one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. This is because the title tag is the tag that is displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).  It’s the link that people click on, and also the tag that’s generally read by the visitor before they decide to visit. This your headline! Make it great, compelling and inviting.  Afterall, if your title tag isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter how well optimized your page is, it may not get that click.

We prefer to create title tags *after* the copy on the page has been written and optimized. This is so we can see how the copy integrated the keyword phrases into the content.  But that’s just us. We recommend you do some reading on writing good headlines. It definitely helps your SEO (search engine optimization) way  more than you think. Or even better. Contact us. We’ll do it for you!

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Google just announced a new site performance report in their Webmaster Tools control panel. With it, you get a swell overview of your site’s load speed and suggestions for making it faster. Oh, and so you know. They wouldn’t waste their time if it didn’t matter.

Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to happier visitors, increased user retention and activity, higher revenue and lower costs. If I had ten bucks for every time I told a client that site performance mattered in SEO …well, I wouldn’t be writing this blog – that’s for sure. So let me just say it again. In all caps. And in bold. SITE PERFORMANCE MATTERS IN SEO!!!

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When visiting a website, it’s so easy to click and save a photo you like, copy HTML coding because you like how something was done, or swipe content cause it was well written. The general (and false) notion is that anything on the Internet is public domain and may be used without permission from the creator/owner. This is false. Just cause you can copy it – don’t mean it’s yours.

Work published on the Internet is NOT automatically placed in the public domain, unless the material in question is created by the (i) federal government, (ii) if the copyright has expired or (iii) the copyright has been abandoned by the holder or (iv) the creator gives written permission on the website to steal whatever you want.

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Yep. Apparently Social media has overtaken Porn as the #1 activity on the web. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest. Pretty impressive. There’s a great video with fascinating info about social media on YouTube. Click here to check it out!

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We’ve been saying it for years. When it comes to online advertising (and most advertising for that matter) bigger doesn’t mean better. Better means better. An Eyeblaster study proves it. The results of the study show that an increase in ad size does not equal an increase in performance. The company found that for banner ads, where size is the main component of ad visibility, bigger is generally better. But rich media ads such as expandable banners and floating ads saw improved results from different creative, rather than larger size.

The article was posted on Business Week. Read more by clicking here.

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Nope. But she’s warming up.

It appears as if Bing’s rapid rise among web searchers may be over. The Microsoft (MSFT) product had picked up market share since launching in early June. Perhaps that had something to do with $100 million in advertising spent to promote it. Unfortunately, the momentum seems to have slowed more than a bit. In fact – it’s running in reverse as their market share has dropped a percent since August. Are we at Jamison/McKay surprised by this decline? Nope. There’s a reason why Google is king. Simply put – it works. And like a fine wine, keeps getting better with age.

Read more here: http://247wallst.com/2009/10/03/bing-starts-to-lose-market-share-googmsftyhoo/

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Once again, Jamison/McKay demonstrates our superior knowledge of web development and SEO tactics. Our most recent post has now been officially validated. Not that we were worried or anything. Cause we’s good at what we do. And we knew we was right. But it’s nice to be proven right. In writing.

Google just released a video on YouTube explaining once and for all that they do not use the “keywords” meta tag in their search results. While they do have an application that can match meta tags, it’s not part of the the public’s everyday searches at Google.com, nor part of how they rank pages. HA!

Check out the full article from MarketingVox here: http://www.marketingvox.com/google-we-dont-use-the-meta-keywords-tag-045108/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=mv&utm_medium=textlink

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Search engines don’t give much credibility to keyword meta tags anymore as pioneer search engine marketers frequently stuffed em with irrelevant keywords. Eventually search engine providers realized that information stored in meta elements, especially the keywords attribute, was often unreliable and misleading, and at worst, used to draw users into spam sites. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control, to some degree, how their web pages are described by some search engines.

The meta title, on the other hand, is important for increasing site’s rankings and the meta description is often picked up by the search engine to describe the link.

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