By Blue Sky Chem-Dry March 19, 2013
Thank you for the connection. We wish you well in the years to come. ...read more
By EO Tan - The Premier Airbrush Tanning Company March 15, 2013
Joseph offers top notch service and products. If you are looking to get ahead in this competitive World Wide Web, then look no further. I have learned so much from him in the past year. One of his great attributes is he is really patient. I am a non-stop personality type and he deals with me with ease. That is a must for me if anyone can survive my personality. Easy to work with, kind, knowledgeable, and gets the job done! Thanks Joseph, Scott - EO Tan ...read more
By MagnoliaCooling March 15, 2013
Joseph really knows his stuff. Not only did he design a great web site for us he also gave us a lot of good information on how to improve our ranking with google ...read more
Nearly everyday, I'm approached by other business owners about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Even though I sell it as a service, I only do so if there is a real advantage to the client. So to clear up any mystery about the SEO process and where it fits in to your business, I'm just going to list some things I think every business should put into perspective in this changing business environment. First, this is not the business environment that existed during the housing bubble. Basically, there is not as much easy/extra money floating around. That money only existed because the economy was being loaded with cash by banks and other interests. What does this info have to do with SEO? Follow me through this and you will understand. Basically, a lot of businesses and jobs were created that never should have existed in the first place. This lead to a false perception in a lot of business owners about where their sales came from. You really have to consider this for your industry and discern if your sales came from an influx of buyers that had "extra" cash because they were riding the wave too. So, fast forward to now. Those extra businesses are gone now. The extra spending cash is gone now. People don't buy for the same reasons they used to. That's where business owners need to change their concepts of what their business is and how they promote their business. If you are still operating in the old paradigm and business is slow, then a number of steps should be taken. Because this is a blog post, and I am not a gifted blogger, I will give the concise steps here. SEO can help, but only to a degree. Ranking depends on your competition at the high level. Insurance companies will have a lot harder time ranking in the search engine than a managed care company. We are all pro's at our respective businesses. That's a big problem. We write things in a way that only someone else in our industry would understand. Your website is not about you. It is about your clients. It has to be written in THEIR language. All of your keyphrases and keywords should written in the way THEY search. If you have not changed your business model to fit this new paradigm, then your SEO will only work for the old paradigm, which doesn't exist anymore. I had a heavy equipment rental company that never had a website before this year. He hasn't had business in two months. Based on the analytics, there weren't really any frequent searches for companies like his in this area. So to get business quicker, I explained in more detail what I mentioned above so we can make adjustments to his business model. He was only renting equipment. I asked him why he wasn't selling equipment too. I had another client that buys this same equipment at an auction and sells it in Africa. I explained this and he is now on the same path. I told him to contact smaller equipment rental companies that do not have the equipment he has and let them know they don't have to refuse jobs anymore because they don't have the equipment, he could supply them. So he expanded his base. There are contracts available through Homeland Security. I put him in contact with people that are going through the process right now so they can show him the ropes. So, there is more to SEO than just making landing pages. SEO should take account the business model and open new opportunities. Not just the same opportunities as before. Is your website complete? If you have been paying for SEO and you do not have a Sitemap file, you are going to rank LOWER than everyone else that does. The sitemap does not appear on your website pages. It is actually a file that Google looks for that indexes your website. I can't tell you how many SEO projects I have taken over and that is missing. Get that in your website ASAP. Do you actually have keywords and keyphrases in your meta tags and in your page content that people or searching for or did you make them up yourself? If it is the latter, your rankings probably won't move much. I use the keywords that Google explicit says people are using. I show you how to do this too. Where does your business fit into this economy now? If you sell car insurance and you are still focusing on the individual person, why are you contacting companies with multiple employees and setting up company packages to create a cost savings? Then add that to your website and SEO it. Obamacare is going to strip a lot of money from companies next year and maybe you can help them offset the cost by showing them a savings with your service. In one example there is a fee that is going to cost companies a minimum of $63 per employee. That's easy math for savings. That article came out today in the Wall Street Journal. If your SEO company does not understand the business trends and does not help you expand into those, then you might be wasting money. I am urging all business owners to expand their business model to new areas. Add recurring billing type services. Not sure if you see the trend, but the majority of major business models are going to subscription based. Microsoft Office will be "rent-able". Adobe Creative Suite is rent-able. Most manufacturing is moving out of the country. There will be no housing bubble again. A lot of things will shift to subscription-based to create a revolving cash flow system in this country. That's why I'm mentioning it now so you have time to reinvent your business before it gets too bad for you. I tell this to all my clients and then I show them ideas. Social Media marketing only works for certain businesses. How do you know if it works for you? If people buy your product or service because it is trendy, and emotional decision, or they need someones opinion first, then get that type service. Otherwise, it won't help much. You can get a lot further with Google+ because it is a pseudo social media place. It actually is a search-based system. If you are not set up and exploiting that system, do it like yesterday. You are missing out. Then you can incorporate the other things I mentioned into it. Have a plan. Please do not throw money at SEO without a measurable plan. SEO may not always be successful. You need to have a cutoff point so you can switch sources if you cannot improvement. No one can guarantee placement for you. Google explicitly says this on their website. But, you can take advantage of your competition's weaknesses and make your website conform to the standards Google set forth. Yeah, there is Bing and Yahoo!, but they follow the same model and feed from Google anyway. Have a total business plan. Combine SEO with reinventing your business. You will open many new doors while everyone else is still fighting for a increasingly smaller piece of the pie. There is so much more I can say, but this post is getting a little long. I hope this can help improve business for everyone. Of course this can go into deeper detail by industry, but at least this can act as a guideline. SEO is good service to pay for, but it is so much more effective if the business can adapt too. Good luck and I hope this helps. ...read more
By PDM Web Solutions, Inc. March 14, 2013
We all want to make the best impression when promoting our business or meeting clients, especially if your business is just starting out. But time and time again, I see business cards with "auntiec@gmail.com" or "brendajoe@yahoo.com" from people selling insurance, accounting services, or any other professional business. If building a website is out of the budget, that's understandable. But owning a domain name that is representative of your business shouldn't be. Something as simple as "joe@proautosales.com" is more credible than "proautosales@hotmail.com". It's your identity. It has meaning to those that communicate with you. To keep expenses low, you can opt for an email only account through PDM Web Solutions, Inc. Your email is accessible anywhere on the web, through smart-phones, or even Outlook or Mac Mail. Call PDM Web Solutions, Inc. to get your professional email account set up today! ...read more
By PDM Web Solutions, Inc. February 04, 2011
One simple way to save a few extra bucks during the economic downturn is to reduce the cost of website hosting. We've received requests from several of our current and long term customers asking if we could reduce the cost of hosting because their website is important to their ability to attract customers. Naturally, we agreed because the whole premise of building websites is to gain more business and is and extremely powerful way to do so. If you are currently hosting your website elsewhere, we can reduce your cost of hosting by as much as 50%. Feel free to give us a call. In some cases, we can even move your website over for free. Providing solutions is not only part of our name, it's what we do. J.A. ...read more
By PDM Web Solutions, Inc. February 04, 2011
Most people become increasingly annoyed when having to endure a slow online connection. A cable Internet access is touted as one of the fastest available, but sometimes it has a lag. Increasing the speed of your Internet by cable access is an easy task to achieve. ...read more
Ethernet cables provide your computer with Internet connectivity. If you have run into a problem with your network or Internet connection, it is often a good idea to test your Ethernet cable. If the cable is faulty or installed incorrectly, it can negatively effect the connection to the Internet. ...read more
