Shaping the Urban Century

April 19, 2012 - Tonight the Center City Partners will be hosting The Vision Awards Sponsored by Presbyterian Healthcare and Wells Fargo. The event is put together to honor, recognize, and celebrate the contributions of individuals, businesses, and organization that have made the Center City a more vibrant urban core.  Jim Rodgers, Chairman & President of Duke Energy is among those who will be receiving honors tonight. Owner & CCO, Jason Ramsey will be attending the event tonight, as well as Annetta Foard of the Community Building Initiative.

The Vision Awards will be held in the Crown Ballroom at the Charlotte Convention Center, 501 South College Street. The event will be filled with many surprises and unusual twists, as can be expected from a CCCP event. CGR Creative is honored to be a aligned with such a great group of organizations. The building, strengthening, and progression of our Charlotte is something that we hold very dear to our heart.

Site Structure Must Be Step One

I have seen many sites lately that lack direction. Websites that are not built with proper on-page SEO generally are the king of mediocre. In this I mean the sites have a lot of information and content but lack a format that breaks it into topical pages and sections.

These sites generally are established businesses with sites that possess a good amount of link juice and natural reputation in Google’s eyes, but at the same time haven’t given Google what it needs on each page to rank top 10. You can count on good content and good links to your site to get you to the top, or you can make the changes to maximize that chance. It’s just common sense that if you have a person search “What’s new in blue widgets?”, even the #1 blue widget site online may be at page 3 if 20 other sites have addressed this topic specifically.

So you are selling Blue Widgets in Atlanta.

·Are you writing about them on every page? (Too many?)

·Did you take your top 10 keyword list and make sure each one has a page specifically addressing it?

·Did you do the obvious, like make sure your heading and title tags line up with each page’s intended keyword?

·Did you pick a target page to represent each variation of  keyword specifically?

·Does your homepage identify your target regions?

·Did you include other commonly searched usages, like “How much are blue widgets"?

·Did you include comparison phrasings, like “Why Blue Widgets are better than Red Widgets”?

·Did you include pages to target your competitions customer base, (Blue Widgets Jacksonville?) without diluting your own website’s region?

·Did you build a social following and social footprint for your website with RSS feeds and account?

·Did you make sure to section your site off by region you serve so you can build links to each section with the proper city name keywords?

·Did you make sure to move your best converting keywords to the homepage where they have the most juice?

·Did you eliminate links that have useless terms in the ALT tags or anchor text, like “click here” and “learn more”?

·Did you eliminate repetitive sidebar content, like feeds and welcome messages that appear on every page and reduce the originality of every page?

·Did you utilize a Q/A section so you can rank on page one for people typing product questions?

If you don’t have all of these thoughts in mind when you first lay your site out, you may be playing from behind for the next 10 years to the guys who did.

This list is about half complete of the checklist a site designed by CGR Creative will keep in mind for your project. If a single sale pays our cost as Charlotte SEO’s for your business, and you are confident you can convert the leads you receive from being on page one. This is a no-brainer to pursue for your business.

Todd Kron
Online Marketing Director
CGR Creative

Charlotte Defensive Search Marketing

What is Defensive Search marketing?

Defensive SEO is the process of filling the top 20 spots for your name with positive items about your business and you mission towards your clients. This process includes:

·       Producing public pages highlighting a professionals skill set, contributions, what their philosophy is and anything else we can create that presents and highlights positive things.

·       We continue to flood their name with these items to occupy as many top 10-20 spots as possible.

·       We create pages, blogs, Blogspot, Wordpress Free blogs, Tumblr accounts, guest books and anything online to create as many results with positive references as possible. This keeps anything negative from getting an easy ride to page 1 and becoming damaging.

·       We also monitor and add review sites and local search reviews if there is any reason to. By maintaining high reviews on all review sites we protect the star rating of your business as it shows in the form of bright yellow stars next to your name in searches every day.

What happens when someone gets bad press to land on page 1 of google?

·       We would provide or repost the good reviews to drive it down the page and always keep ALL you review sites at 4+ stars.

·       We would seek out other review sites, large Q/A sites like Yahoo Answers or use public forums like craigslist or city-data to write about your company and get your name above them to drive them off page #1. With about 86% of users choosing to click on page one of Google and this negative publicity will not damage you livelihood.

·       Contact the website to get it removed.

·       Comment beneath it in response to show good customer service and explain the view of the company.

What makes this so valuable to a local business?

You are currently working hard to build your rank. Search positioning gets all of the publicity and is the goal of any business that is online. You need to also pay attention to what to do when they do find you. Any established business or business that has long-term plans and goals needs to understand that a lot of their business will not see their website first.

With the growing numbers of review sites, public forums, and rising blog ownership the chances that you won’t get to state your case to clients is going up as well. We all know the sayings about first impressions, and this is how you control all sources of those first impressions. A good plan means accounting for all sources of clientele to your business. You need to control the top 10 spots for your name and your business reputation at all times. **86% of all searches end on page one of Google, so to control those spots for your name and livelihood is imperative. 

Being proactive is the only way to be sure that you get to decide how you are seen by online searchers and shoppers; it is as important where you are located in searches to decide what they read when they do find you.

And what they don’t read when you are busy doing your job.

** http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049695/Top-Google-Result-Gets-36.4-of-Clicks-Study

by: Todd Kron

Charlotte Reputation Defense

What is reputation defense?

Reputation defense is the monitoring, control, and improvement of a person, professional, brand, or company’s name on the internet through the eyes of their prospective customers.

Reputation defense involves monitoring social media accounts for the company. It also means monitoring the search terms that are often referring customers to the company on social media and search engines.

A large part of the modern local search involves monitoring review sites on your behalf. Sites like Yelp, Google, Yellowpages.com, YP, Superpages.com, and Yahoo all provide reviews with very little protection for the business owner.

A bad review on here will be highly visible and can damage your business without you knowing it exists. Business owners are at risk of bad press without a chance to respond in many cases. This is why we watch all avenues and make sure a response and a resolution or removal happens fast every time.

Examples of Reputation Defense:

For a local restaurant we would monitor the review sites, monitor sites like city-data, city based search sites, food review blogs and websites, tripadvisor.com, and mentions of the restaurant by name in newspapers and blog searches. We would monitor social media for customers commenting on the quality, cleanliness, or service, as well as anything with your name or market mentioned.

In the case of bad reviews, comments about staff or service, or other issues, we would reply to the comments, report the bad press to the site owners and put higher positioned good comments and reviews above them to drown them out for a quick fix.

We could also use the company’s loyal customers on Facebook and twitter as a tool by encouraging them with social posts to go to that page and share their good experiences to drown out the bad.

If your company has a newsletter, we could call on that to drive traffic to the review website and provide dozens of great reviews in a matter of days.

Reputation defense has become a mainstream industry, and in professional fields it is even more prominent, where bad publicity can hurt for years if someone is spiteful or has a billing issue and decides to rant about it online. Doctors, lawyers, and high-end professionals cannot risk the professional reputation they spent years achieving.

A public page can last for years; it is important to address it quickly and either get it resolved or get it removed.

Negative posts on a lot of social or public sites can go to page one very fast on sites like yahoo answers, review sites, BBB, complaint report sites, and other sites that rank very well and update very quickly. This is the reason having constant monitoring is important.

A business owner can go months without seeing the bad publicity and in that time could lose hundreds of customers due to the angry comments of one bad experience online.

One other way we lessen this bad news, if or when it happens, is through defensive search marketing.

by: Todd Kron

Spring Cleaning

In case you didn't realize, Mother Nature has decided to skip winter this year and jump right into spring. While I begin to put my sweaters up and take out my shorts from where I buried them months ago, it is time to start thinking about some spring-cleaning. Sure you can clean out the house, garage, or your closet, but it might also be time for your website to have a good cleaning as well.  Out with the old, in with the new, and all that jazz. Below is a quick list of some things you can do this spring to give your website a boost. 

Simple is Usually Better

The days of slamming as much content, images, and gifs onto one page as possible are dead (and should never have occurred). When a webpage is too cluttered with small text and moving images you burden your viewers with an information overload. This won’t lead to a better spread of information but will increase the likelihood that viewers of your site will miss what it is you are actually trying to get across. So go check out your website. If you are still using gifs, huge blocks of small text, or if you are still using a black background and white text, it might be time to give your website a good cleaning.

Embrace Social Media

The best way to reach potential clients or customers now lies in the ability to spread your message via social media outlets. Yes, your site might currently take advantage of Facebook and Twitter (and if not I highly recommend you change this), but there are now so many more options that you can use to draw people to your website.  Flikr, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, Yelp, Foursquare, and LinkedIn all have advantages in drawing attention to both your website and product you are offering. If you do not take advantage of social media, you are going to be left behind, if you haven’t been already.

Content is Important

No matter how pretty your site is, or how important the information is that you are offering, if no one can find your site, all of that information is just sitting there, collecting theoretical internet dust.  Making sure your copy is Search Engine Optimized is a must if you want people to be able to find you on Google. The trick is to start local. You are not going to be able to capture the Google search “Pizza”, not after a couple months, not after a couple years. It is better to first try to capture searches such as “Denver Pizza” or “Asian Style Deep Dish Pizza”. Once you start to build up rank on more specific key words, then you can start to go bold and go for more targeted keywords.

So it is time to freshen up your website for the long spring ahead of us, and if you need help, give us a call, we would love to help. (Sorry, CGR Creative only does website and advertising work; we won't come clean up your garage).  

Charlotte Chamber of Commerce Quarterly Meeting

Julio Colmenares will be attending the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce Quarterly Meeting today at 3:45 at the CPCC Central Campus. He will be a part of a panel discussing business in these tough economic times. We are proud of the role we play with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce and with the Community Building Initiative. With the strength we give to these organizations, we help to improve the quality of life in Charlotte and the surrounding area. 


By Embra King

Quit While You're Ahead

By: Embra King

                                      

Do you know of the Geico Gecko? Of course you do they have been beating that company mascot to death ever since his introduction in 1999. He has even had a couple accent changes since his debut. I know you know the Geico Cavemen pitch that has been on since 2005. You know--the one that is so bad now that you almost feel embarrassed for them. Now I am all for fun creative advertising, but these things should have expiration dates, and for Geico’s two longest running adds, I think it is time to let them rest. It is a good thing when a company knows when enough is enough, to bow out while the going is good. At once I thought that Geico’s gecko and caveman pitches where playful and fun; now I cringe every time I see one of their ads. It is like someone who was fun to hangout with for short periods of time, when all of a sudden they started showing up to parties uninvited and sat in the corner not talking to anyone, periodically shouting nonsense to remind everyone that he is still in the room. 

But now for my point. This past week Target unexpectedly announced it was parting ways with advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy. For several years now the firm had been creating fun, 15-second commercials that depict little life moments, highlighting a single product at the end. The ability to deliver 150 compact, playful, and sometimes downright hilarious commercials in only about a year and a half is impressive, but what is more impressive is that each is very well done, with none that really stand out as being bad.  When Target’s VP was asked why they split with W+K he had this to say, “Leave really good work before it’s time to leave”.  I think Gieco needs to take a page from the Target playbook and retire the gecko and caveman before someone thinks that a TV show based on their commercials is a good idea…