My name is Maciej Fita and I am a Website Marketing Strategist at Brick Marketing. I speak to many new prospective search engine optimization clients everyday and I realize that when it comes time to make a purchase many consumers go through similar emotions. You start to ask yourself whether this is the right company to do business with or am I buying the right product to satisfy my need. Maybe I should do more research before moving forward? In the end it usually comes down to the same emotion, price. As times get stranger and budget cuts are on the horizon offshore purchases start to look a bit more appealing. But let’s think things through just a little before we make any rash decisions.

Let’s put it into perspective, you have a website built for X amount of dollars, your company relies on the traffic and visitors that come to your site to make purchases. You are about to take your website live with a URL that you have been saving and building for 8 years and you realize you have to do some marketing. Your website has matured nicely in the search engines and you take your search engine optimization to India where someone making $4 dollars per/hour tries to perform a link building campaign breaking every single one of Google’s rules to do it. 2 weeks later your website is pulled from the search engines or kindly placed on page 437. What do you do now? You panic and realize you have made great blunder. I have seen it happen first hand. That single decision could be the end of the beginning for many aspiring entrepreneurs.

Something’s in life make perfect business sense to outsource, sure. But some make absolutely no sense at all like people that chose to go overseas to third world countries to have a medical procedures done. Yes it’s cheaper but what happens when you get home things start to go wrong and you have no backup plan, you will probably go back to the U.S based doctor that gave you the first quote and beg and plead to have him fix you. By then it might just be too late. You could have just saved yourself many headaches by going through him or her in the first place. This same rule applies with Search Engine Optimization. How can you have someone research keywords and phrases that revolve around U.S culture and slang that are half way around the world and have never stepped on U.S soil. How is possible to have and understanding how properly optimize and develop a strategy utilizing keywords and phrases for a website selling handmade lamps in Albuquerque, New Mexico when you’re sitting in cubicle in India and English is your second language, at best.

Can you really put the trust of your company’s revenue in the hands of a company thousands of miles away? Does it make you feel better that you just saved some money but the livelihood of your company is at stake? If the deal is too good to be true it probably is. That company with the beautiful website promising top rankings for $49.95 you will be lucky if your website is still alive after the dust settles. How about communication? Will you be able to just pick up the phone and speak with your account manager in India and discuss in detail what is happening with your site? Or maybe you get a customer service rep who doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall. When things go wrong will they stand by their word to fix the problem or will they come up with excuses? These are all very important factors to think about when putting your company’s reputation and well-being on the line.

To read more about why it’s important to keep you search engine optimization strategies on U.S soil please read our article on the top 10 reasons to not outsource your search engine optimization efforts to India.

Definition:

[source - Wikipedia] A British slang term for a dandy, fop or pimp or weirdo (A strange or unusual person).
A British slang term for someone who does not pay their own way.
A British (verb) slang term for someone getting others to pay their own way, to ponce.

After looking at that definition, I think it is safe to assume that we have all come across individuals from all three when it comes to search engine optimization experts. The term weirdo comes to mind when I read some articles on search engine optimization or anything related to optimizing web pages.

The term expert is too loosely bandied about these days with every Tom, Dick and yes, Mary, claiming to be an expert. Read one paragraph from one of their articles and it quickly becomes apparent they know little on the topic.

My latest run in with a search engine optimization ‘expert’ was when one kindly left some comments on one of my personal blogs. “Your blog is excellent but the search enginn (sic) optimization is very bad.” That was the introductory comment.

There followed a series of emails that culminated in an offer to fix my blog for $500 and put my blog at number one in search engine rankings (my blog is only a PR3). Apparently my ‘Metta (sic)’ tags were not up to scratch and that I should ‘never link from your articles back into older articles’. At that stage I called him a ponce and left him thinking on that - I doubt he had the intelligence to even look it up.

The danger for the un-initiated of course is that they will simply be scammed and scammed badly with their sites often left worse off than before it had been ‘fixed’. Search engine optimization is no longer a job for amateurs. It can be done reasonably easy if you know what you are doing, it is just a matter of gaining that knowledge.

To filter out the quality and the ‘ponces’, do a little checking, ask a few questions and perhaps ask to see a few optimized sites. The one thing I do know, it is very rare that quality search optimization services will go out fishing for work - or should that read, phishing.

Hello, I am the sales manager here at Brick Marketing and to all the sales managers out there that deal with the public directly in the world of Search Engine Optimization and sales you can all understand where I am coming from when you read this.

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#1:
The last time I checked my name was Maciej Fita not Encyclopedia Britannica so I apologize if I cannot write your business model for you. It’s amazing how many phone calls I get where the attempt to bleed me dry for search engine optimization information is so obvious that I should change my job title to personal consultant and slap an “I work for free” sign on my forehead. Its unbelievable how many people out there think SEO should be the same price as a Starbucks latté? And we all know where those prices are going.

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#2:
You have spent an exuberant amount of money on a thousand plus page website, filled with content and video, but it kills you to optimize your site to get sales?

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#3:
When you call me and I ask you what the URL to your site is I don’t expect to hear papers shuffling for 45 seconds. If you answer me with a series of numbers dots and dashes you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your ink and purchase a new url, one preferably that doesn’t sound like a handful of spoons falling down a flight of stairs.

Non-April Fool’s SEO Joke#4:
How on earth can you possibly attempt to start an online business if you do not have a computer! Folks this is real. A potential new Search Engine Optimization client called me a few weeks ago and claimed she didn’t have a computer and she was not too familiar on how to use one but somehow this individual has an online travel business! Don’t make travel arrangements on that site unless you want to end up in Darfur sucking sand.

Final Non-April Fool’s SEO:
I realize that society is learning and baby boomers have finally found the on switch to their computer so I apologize if I am being harsh but you have to do some homework before starting an online business and for some people it obviously starts with the hardware. The internet is an amazing tool for communication but with its progression comes a learning curve that should not be approached lightly.

If you want to discuss this (along with your Search Engine Optimization needs :o) please feel free to give me a call at 877-295-0620.

Some WordPress bloggers, I’ve discovered, try to take their limited knowledge of HTML and apply it to their blogs. You can’t do that. The reason is real simple: You aren’t building a web page.

If you want to build web pages, that’s fine. Do it in a text editor and ftp it. WordPress was not designed for that. You can build really cool web pages in WordPress, but not in HTML. All you have to do is create a page and start typing. WordPress does the rest. That’s the beauty of the software program.

That said, there are some limited HTML code that you can use to enhance your blog posts. Even then, WordPress has tag icons that you can click on for most of them:

• b for bold
• i for italics
• link for hyperlink
• b-quote for block quote
• img for inserting an image from another place online
• ul for unordered list
• ol for ordered list
• li for list time
• more for creating jumps

All you have to do to use any of these icons is highlight the text you want it to apply to and click the icon. You’ll get bold text or a hyperlink, or whatever it was you were trying to create. Other tags you can use for which there are no buttons include:

• p align=”right” or “left” for text or images you want aligned and wrapped a certain way
• center is a tag you can use to center photos and text
• strike is a tag you can use to strike through certain words, like this
• u is the code for underlining a word

Beyond these, there are certain tag attributes that you can use as a part of your tag and code strategy. Title attributes, target=”new” for opening a link in a new page, height and width dimensions for graphics, and other similar attributes that you can add on to your tags are acceptable. You can even create tables as long as you don’t get too complex with your codes. But that’s about it. There aren’t a lot of other HTML options for you.

WordPress does not play well with CSS, Javascript, DIV tags, and other languages. Don’t even try it. You could screw up your templates and wreak havoc in other ways if you try to do too much coding. WordPress already has all the code it needs to translate your simple text into great web pages.

For more tips and rock solid information on writing and maintaining a blog, go visit Brick Marketing’s blog service page.

When it comes to e-commerce you need to select your SEO firm very carefully. There is perhaps no service more important to the success of your company online than SEO. Brick Marketing makes SEO simple and effective through a methodical process that is proven and continues to bring results for our clients. Some of the SEO services we offer include:

• SEO Strategy
• Keyword Research
• Meta Tag Copywriting
• Content SEO Recommendations
• Link Building Strategy

We will communicate with you every step of the way to ensure that you get the best possible SEO for your business. Whether you have an Internet-only business or you have a brick-and-mortar business that you are moving online, we will do everything we can do to ensure that your SEO is the most effective that it can be at an affordable price.

Our SEO packages are designed for any level or size of business. Whether you need a long term SEO strategy or you need a one-time SEO copywriting service, we give you 100% of our attention all the way through your project. Give Brick Marketing a call, or contact us through our website for more information

It’s been a busy month for Brick Marketing. Having entrenched ourselves as experts in search engine optimization and other Internet marketing topics, we decided to kick off several new blogs in October and November.

Since launching Online Publicity Journal on October 6, 2007, we’ve started four new blogs:

• Pay Per Click Journal
• Website Marketing Journal
• Web Marketing Journal
• Real Estate Marketing Journal

Pay Per Click Journal saw its first post on October 13, 2007 and so far has built up quite a following. Every day, we cover topics to keep our readers informed of the latest changes in the PPC industry and way they can maximize their profits in pay per click advertising. Some of the topics that have met with some popularity at PPC Journal include:

• Google AdWords
• Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Keyword Match Types
• Microsoft AdCenter
• PPC Bidding Strategies
• Keyword Research
• PPC Launch
• PPC Management

If you want to know how to improve your pay per click performance, check out Pay Per Click Journal.

Website Marketing Journal and Web Marketing Journal were both launched late in October, just days apart.

These two blogs may appear similar, but their focus is very different. Website Marketing Journal is written with the webmaster in mind. You have a website and you want to know how to market your website better. The topics we cover include:

• Website Branding
• Customer Management
• Lead Generation
• Local Advertising
• Content Development
• Website Marketing Tools
• Sales
• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization

The focus of Web Marketing Journal is primarily the individual who wants to sell product online, with or without a website. The beauty of doing business online is that you don’t need a website to be successful. With that in mind, Web Marketing Journal focuses on:

• Selling Through eBay
• Dropshipping
• eBook Publishing & Marketing
• eCommerce
• Online Payment Processing
• Shopping Carts
• Shopping Comparison
• Web Marketing
• Yahoo! Stores
• And much more

While you can make great money with a website, you don’t need a website to make money online. We show you how to be successful online with or without a website at Web Marketing Journal.

Finally, Real Estate Marketing Journal is just for real estate professionals who want to leverage the Internet to boost their businesses. Just about anything related to doing business online is discussed at this latest blog by Brick Marketing, and it’s all geared toward real estate professionals.

Brick Marketing understands what a business needs to succeed online. We’ve been involved in Internet marketing since 1995 and have many successes under our belt. Whether you need someone to ghostwrite a blog for you, write your website content, SEO existing pages on your website, or assist you with your search engine marketing campaigns, our knowledge and experience will help you go a long way. Our customers are satisfied with the results and we know you will be too. Just look at these testimonials from some of our happiest customers:

Brick Marketing and expert Nick Stamoulis have helped us achieve a high search engine ranking for our website in a very short period of time. They also write in our company blog every single day! We look forward to continue to work with them in the future.
Bryan Payne,
Embassy Digital

Brick Marketing really helped me get a foothold on my PPC campaigns. Their years of experience allow them to zero in on your problem and get your campaign back in focus. If your looking to take the first step into PPC, start with Brick Marketing to ensure a solid foundation.
Steve McCall,
iSight Technologies

We purchased the 5 Page SEO package and within 1 month our website now ranks in the top positions for many targeted keywords in Google, Yahoo, and MSN! We were pleased with the professional manner in which our website was evaluated and how the service was implemented quickly. We highly recommend your Search Engine Optimization service!
Susanna Lawson,
BigPockets.com

For more happy client testimonials, visit www.brickmarketing.com. We’re anxious to make your next Internet marketing campaign as successful as we’ve made our other clients’.