Frequently Asked Questions
What is Search Engine Marketing? Here Is Our Answer:
Search Engine Marketing is just advertising on the Internet—pure and simple—but unlike other forms of advertising such as radio, television, and print, this type of Internet Marketing is different, at least when it comes down to long term solutions. You can pay “X”, and you are guaranteed to get a commercial, or magazine ad placed in front of your customers. On the other hand, when it some to the Internet—you can’t do that. Ok, you can. Sort of, with a Pay Per Click campaign—but it is not the same thing. Only Organic Search Results appear all the time (and here is the rub—you can’t buy organic results with all the money in the world). Read More
When you advertise using Pay Per Click, there is no guarantee that the people who you want to see your ad will actually see it when they type in the appropriate keyword, or keyword phrase—only a high ranking Organic Result can guarantee that your domain name will appear on the page with every search. Why? Simple, unless you have an unlimited budget, your PPC ads will only appear some of the time. Other times, your competitors’ ads are being run and there is not enough room on the page to display your ad. Also, once your Pay Per Click budget has been depleted, you will no longer appear. So what can be done to assure that you will appear each and every time your potential clients search the keyword or keywords that are most important to you? Read More
Only Organic Rankings will deliver consistent, long-term results, and organic rankings result from effective Search Engine Optimization—called SEO for short. In layman’s terms, it is the job of your Internet marketing firm to “optimize” the keywords that you wish to rank for. Once they are “optimized”, the Search Engines are invited to take a look at the pages, and rank them. It is the final ranking (decided through an algorithm that takes numerous factors into account) that is the do or die for your company. This ranking decision determines who will show up first, and who will show up as number 3,344.
So why would one pay for a PPC, when they can get organic results for free—results that will stay there all the time unless that get outranked in the future? Read More
There are myriad reasons, and a comprehensive discussion of all of the factors is beyond the scope of this FAQ. Suffice it to say that each business sector is different, and also it depends on the resources that your company has available to dedicate to hiring a professional SEO company to optimize your site—as well as how much your competition is spending.
In order to get great organic rankings, you will need to have fresh, well-written, and authoritative content added to your website on an ongoing basis—as well as a programmer that maintains the code of the site in a format that is easy for Search Engines to read. Nothing is worse than having great content, lots of it, and a good online following on the social media networks, only to have you site penalized by Google for having sloppy code that was thrown up in a hurry by a careless or incompetent programmer.
Don’t let that happen to you. Set up a consultation with us, and we will go over every aspect of this structure as it applies to your business plan.
Which Search Engine is the largest? Does my Search Engine need to optimize for all Search Engines? Here Is Our Answer
Google is by far the largest, and most significant search engine for worldwide marketing. If your business is located in the United States, you will also want to rank well on Yahoo, Bing, and MSN.
You will want to rank well on all Search Engines. During your consultation, we will explain how the different search engines rank your site (because they are all different, and that can be good news for you, and bad news for your competition that has not hired an internet marketing firm, or has retained a lousy one) differently.
Why is Internet marketing so important? What do I need to do to get ranked on Page One?
You can probably answer that question on your own. How much time do you spend perusing second and third page results? Probably not much. Fourth page results and so on? Forget it. You might as well not even have a web site (other than for showing off your business to friends, family, and current clients).
If you are interested in securing new business, then you must rank well in today’s world of the “I have to find what I am looking for right now!”—kind of buyers.
Why do I need to hire someone to do my Search Engine marketing? Here Is Our Answer
There are a couple of very important reasons that most businesses who attempt to create, update, and maintain their own web sites do not fare well. It all sounds like a good idea at first. You are smart, computer literate, and not intimidated by the technical jargon that all of the Internet marketing companies have thrown at you.
Above all, you are motivated to succeed in your venture at all costs—so just how hard could it be? You can buy all the books at your local big box book store, and after a couple of weekends and long nights of studying and tinkering, you can be well on your way to creating your own website!
Let us let you in on a little secret…but you have to promise twenty times that you are not going to tell anybody. Ok? Promise. Ok.
It really isn’t that hard! There are no secrets. There are no gimmicks. Any intelligent, hard working student who ha access to the right resources can be writing catchy titles, and developing good websites full of keyword-rich content that is tagged and coded correctly. But—but, but, but. Even though there are no secrets (be warned: many companies will try to convince you there are) and no black magic involved—there are absolutely no shortcuts either.
Cranking out good SEO that will rank well takes a lot of time, and very strict attention to detail, and most importantly, the algorithms are always changing. In other words, Yahoo, Google, and the others change their minds on an annual basis about what they want to see, and what they will rank well.
Do you have the time, resources, and discipline to keep up with all of that? Unless you are making a living as an Internet marketer (or you are just a geek with no life and this is your hobby—just kidding), it is very unlikely. Read More
With that said, many of our new clients come to us after having done exactly this—they were certain they could do it on their own. They spent a lot of money on books, tutorials, hardware and software (like Adobe Dreamweaver), and invested hours and hours of diligent study with the best intentions, only to come up with a web site that looks like it was created by an elementary school kid for a science fair project.
Others come to us because they realized that, although that had the technical expertise to go it alone—they did not have the time it takes to continually update the site, write new content, and manage the all important link-building process that is a part of every site with high rankings.
At the end of the day, only you can know if you really have the time, patience, dedication, and expertise to do this yourself. Just remember, in order to be competitive, you will need a site that looks fantastic AND contains properly written code that is optimized for the Search Engines.
One with out the other is simply a waste of time and money—like buying a beautiful, fully restored classic Corvette chassis that stops traffic, only to put a go-kart engine under the hood.
Contact our office today, and let us put our expertise to work for you. We will create a website that looks like a million bucks, and runs like a champ under the hood as well. The consultation is free, and worth your time before you invest your time and money elsewhere.
Am I going to be required to sign a long term contract? Here Is Our Answer
Absolutely not! Long-term contracts epitomize all that is wrong with the Internet Marketing business today.
If you are not happy, we are not happy—period. Criddle & Co. issues statements monthly, and the payment for each month is due in full on the 1st day of the month, and past due on the 6th. You may discontinue your service at anytime. If you cancel on the 2nd day of the month, we will refund all of remaining days of the month.
See our Terms and Conditions for complete details on our Customer Satisfaction Assurance policy.
How much do your services cost? Here Is Our Answer
Our packages start at $495 for a basic website with ten pages or less, and $875 for sites with 10-20 pages. These prices are for the design and content placement only. In other words, you pick a design from our portfolio, and provide us with the photos and text (keywords) you wish to have included in the site.
We can host your site for you, or we can assist you in opening your own hosting account with Go Daddy, Register.com, or whomever you choose. We know that some businesses do not have large advertising budgets, and only need a basic site—in fact, our business started out that way…you can be confident that your site will receive the same attention to details as any other.
If we put our name on it, it has to look good—or we look bad—and that was unacceptable to Old Man Criddle, so it’s not going to happen.
Can you guarantee first page rankings?
We can guarantee first page PPC rankings. Anyone can. It is only a matter of paying for them.
We do not guarantee first page organic rankings—no ethical search engine marketing company can, since they cannot control how the search engines will rank your site. Beware of those claims.
Most companies promise first page rankings—but are only referring to PPC. Organic results take time.
If you need immediate fist page results--no problem. That is what PPC is for. We use PPC for new customers who either never had a website in the first place, or had a site that had no rankings—you know, the ones who rank 9,334 out of 115,000…
PPC can get you good results while we build your site and earn rankings in the organic results.
Normally, organic results for sites with no content / poor rankings takes six months in small markets, and up to a year in larger ones. Only though a consultation will we be able to give you an idea of where your site stands. But hey, that’s what consultations are for—so let’s talk.
