Ethical SEO

Search engine optimization AKA SEO is a virtually unregulated. There really is no watch dog group to ensure small business owners don't get taken advantage of. This is why I have made this small list of practise's to watch out for.

1. Payment in full up front. (No reputable company will ever accept full payment up front for work that has not been performed yet).
2. No references. (Even though some small SEO companies are just starting off , they still have the burden of proof that they are professionals in their field and have paying clients who are willing to give a testimonials.)
3. Check out their company website. (Again reputable companies have professionally designed and coded sites them self's.)
4. Beware of fast talking salesman. (Build a relationship with the company you chooses to work with by starting off small with some basic marketing and then depending on the performance of that campaign move onto larger monthly contracts)

I hope this little bit of information helps you make a informed decision on who to contract your digital marketing to.

ML Lead Centric LLC

Consumers beware of fake video testimonials

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I have recently ran across several sites that are trying make a quick buck by scamming small business owners into buying staged video testimonials. People this is bad on so many levels, the first of which is it's a basic form of fraud. Secondly it make's it that much harder for real reputable business owners who have real customer video testimonials on their site to prove that they are not playing this underhanded and misleading game themselves. Here are a couple of ways to combat this problem. If you are utilizing video testimonials on your website. Make sure to give your potential customer as much information about the interviewed client as posable. Such as, show a first and last name and it dose not hurt to ask the testimonial client if it's okay for potential clients to contact them directly or through your business. Most happy costumers who are willing to give you a video testimonial will have absolutely no problem with this. Remember video testimonials if back linked correctly for your site can help create a strong reputation with search engines.   S.E.O is a huge part of running a successful business, just don’t allow yourself to cheat your customers to get there.

Mike Langmade,

Lead Centric LLC

Free websites: You get what you pay for.

Let me ask just one simple question.  Has any successful company ever got to where they are today by using free marketing services?  The answer is absolutely not!  So why do small business owners keep signing up for all of these free websites?  That answer is also very simple, they are lazy and greatly under informed about the products they are getting from these free site companies.  The only way these website freebee companies make there living is off of advertising there services on your site and getting back links to build there ranking.  Meanwhile companies with these free are getting negatively looked at by major search engines because of the linking to the free site provider, this in effect tells the crawlers form the search engines you are not legit.  All is not lost, if you fix this problem ASAP and find a reputable firm like Lead Centric our digital marking firm, we can get your site setup with it's own original domain name  and design in just days.  When it comes to business use my advise "if it's free than it's probably not for me".

How to generate organic leads

If you've been in business for more than one day, then you are probably no stranger to the daily website marking goon phone call promising you a first page on Google result for the low, low price of just $1,000, to $1,500 a month.  Now before everyone in the SEO business starts thrashing my blog, let me make it known there are plenty of great SEO companies out there and I have partnered on several projects with some of them. This is also an industry that happens to be flooded with hundreds of thousands of so called SEO companies that scam honest hard working business owners out of thousands of dollars a month.  Here are a couple of things to watch out for to make sure you don't get taken.  First of all make them show you proof of current customers that they have achieved similar goals to the ones they are promising you.  This should be very easy for a dependable reputable company.  Secondly remember the saying Rome was not built in a day, in this case you can't expect to get your company to become a top tier Google listing overnight.  Just as it takes years to build your business reputation it also takes years to organically achieve top tier search results.  A business can achieve this first page search results by hiring a reputable SEO firm but in most cases this can be very expensive and in our current business environment not feasible  by most small business owners.  What you as a business owner need to do is find a firm that is willing to work with you and educate you and your staff on how to build strong organic web based leads.  In this blog we will be doing just that, educating our customers on the process of building a strong website marketing plan, stay tuned. 

 by Mike Langmade on 11/18/12