Executive Summary - This paper is one of two White Papers that discuss our Strategic Website Optimization™ [SWO™] process [Steps 1-8 in our graphic, our Integrated Campaign Marketing Optimization™ [ICMO™] process [Steps 9-16], and the “Web Analytic” tools we install on your site to “fine tune’ your Web Design and organic SEO campaigns [Steps 17 and 18]. We consider good Web Design a prerequisite for high ROI Campaigns and recommend you align [tune-up] your Web Design prior to launching any Campaign. In this paper we discuss the underlying importance of a solid SEO program which can eventually lead you to competitive advantage when your product or service rises to the first organic SERP or at least to the Top Ten on Google’s first SERP. This is the second white paper in our series.

It discusses Steps 9-18 with an emphasis on our ICM Optimization™ process. We refer the reader to the companion paper in this series for a discussion of the 18 steps in our integrated Strategic Website Optimization™ process [Steps 1-8] Web Design Services with a Strategic Twist - A White Paper] and our SEO Optimization Services discussed in this white paper] The reader can also learn more about any of the deliverables we provide as “work product” along the way, by clicking on any link in the graphic above OR by referring to a written discussion of the 18 steps provided at this link.

Our Goal is to Work Ourselves Out

of a Job - Unlike an old school ad agency or media service, we don't bill you as a percent of what you spend, because there would be a disincentive for us to be efficient since we'd be tempted to not try to reduce your media spending to zero. Rather, we invoice you at our flat hourly rates for the mix of interdisciplinary services that you need - with an eye toward working ourselves out of a job as fast as we can. In this way we can help you get to the "promised land" of first organic SERP rank [for your targeted high value keywords] before your competitors.

Achieving competitive advantage for your product or service by using [Integrated Campaign Marketing (ICM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) [also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or just "search marketing"], and Web 2.0 social marketing is what we’re all about. But unlike any other marketing services vendor, what we do is completely different. This is because we add a "strategic marketing twist" up front to make sure you get to where you ultimately want to be – free advertising from a first page SERP rank without any PPC expense. As long as you stay in the "Top Ten" you'll have the permanent competitive advantage of a lower "ad/sales ratio."

Getting to the "Promised Land" with SEO Optimization Services - Also unlike any other marketing services vendor, we start SEO Optimization and Integrated Campaign Marketing Optimization™ [ICMO] by making sure you're your Website design is correct. Although many marketers don't want to redo something they have already spent money on, we don't think you can achieve your ultimate goal of first organic SERP rank [for your strategic keywords] unless you have designed your campaigns with this in mind. So following steps 1-8 in the above graphic [i.e., our SWO™ process] will help you get to the "promised land" of first organic SERP rank for your targeted high value keywords, leaving your competitors having to continue to pay for search engine advertising, or remain obscure on the Internet. In more simple words – we help you reach the "promised land" of high organic SERP rank for the high-search-volume keywords we help you choose in step #6 [i.e., keyword selection for your Website copy] and in step #13 [i.e., strategic keyword selection for your Online Campaign].

A good SEO Example is the keyword -"SEO" Just imagine that [like us] you too are a marketing services vendor targeting the keyword -"SEO" and its 1,000,000 monthly searches [on Google alone] per average month. You would quickly find out that [according to Google's AdWord Keyword tool], if would cost you about $3.88 PER CLICK to be in the 1-3 position of sponsored links [for a PPC campaign] for the keyword "SEO". You would then see that you as an advertiser could spend a lot of money on PPC ads and never have enough to reach the first organic SERP rank because it would cost $3,880,000 a month to be on the first page [as a "Sponsored Link"] for just one month. Although Google would be very happy – you probably wouldn't. As this example makes clear, our process takes longer and costs more up front but we get you to the "promised land" of SEO [for your strategic keywords] much faster. So why not let us take you through our 18-step SWO™ and ICMO™ processes shown in the Graphic to your right?

We "Copy Write" Your HTML Tags First – Unique in the industry, the first copywriting we do for you is to write your HTML tags for each landing page on your site. This is because the Title Tag becomes the headline for your Organic SEO listing and the Description Tag becomes the body copy. Don’t worry, writing your HTML Tags is a lot like writing your Headline and Body Copy for your Google Text Ad [which is another reason we advise our clients to start with a PPC campaign]. The only difference is the Title and Description Tags are free and the Headline and Body Copy cost money. In other words we go back and make sure your Web Design is a good compliment to your campaign investment and is in alignment with your ultimate goal of eliminating pay per click advertising (PPC) expense. Of course we hope that [in the case of a "makeover"], your Web Design is correct so we won't have to redo your page copy and HTML tags before we write your online ad copy OR [accordingly] your offline ad copy.

Our Campaign Optimization Process – The process in the graphic on this page, defines our Integrated Campaign Marketing Optimization™ [ICMO™] process which we believe is a necessary prerequisite to Strategic Website Optimization™. Just like you can't get a graduate degree without undergrad prerequisites, we believe you're wasting time and money if you don't have the pre-requisite Strategic Website Optimization pieces of the puzzle [Steps 1-8 discuss the Web Design] in place first. For those readers interested in "Web Analytics" technical topics of page tags vs log files, cookies, pdf files, funnel page views, and aligning PPC and SEO clicks, Brian Clifton [the Founder of Urchin Software that later became Google Analytics] has written a great article with 10 common sense recommendations for Web analytics accuracy.

Our SEO and PPC Processes Will Help You Get There – Like for Web Design, everybody has a different definition for SEO, since no one really knows HOW the Yahoo or Google algorithms determine who gets first page SERP rank organically. From our experience however, we've found it's a mix of five key ingredients. We also view SEO as one of the critical ingredients in Integrated Campaign Management [ICM], As you might imagine we have developed a process called ICM optimization™ [ICMO™] that staffs builds and executes entire integrated marketing campaigns around our 18-step Web Design and SEO process. If you'd like to read an informative paper on ICMO™ please click here. If you haven't clicked the link to our ICMO™ paper, a preview to how our five Key SEO Tips are critical to ICM are listed below.

• Design your site's navigation [Table Structures For Top Search Engine Positioning]
• Write your HTML tags which are the same or similar to your PPC text ads so that they target your strategic keywords for each landing page.
• Write your Website page copy and define your internal linking strategy and your external linking strategy to use all the keywords in your strategic keyword basket, while getting the highest quality external [non-reciprocal] links for each landing page and beating your competitors with more total back-links.
• For "new sites" or "site makeover", lead off with an effective PPC campaign to generate traffic and cause Google crawlers to visit your site frequently
• Supercharge traffic with "high value" back links, word of mouth [and other social] marketing AND importantly - on-line transaction processing [OLTP] system such as B2B, B2C shopping carts or online reservation system which the Google organic SEO algorithms [reportedly] assign high value.
• Continue with Web 2.0 [social] marketing [i.e., videos, blogs, "tweets," twits, "word of mouth," and relationship marketing, predictive intelligence programming, user generated content, user generated media, etc]

Of course we can help you with all this if you contact us.

A ‘Campaign Optimization Coaching” Service for "Do-It-Yourselfers" - For e-marketers and campaign managers desiring to learn from us and drive our processes in-house, we offer a "Campaign Optimization Coaching Service” that is designed for the “do-it-yourselfer” or budget-constrained marketer. This service uses the same clear documents, templates, processes on our Website and the sample deliverables that can be downloaded from the links on the captions in the graphic above. When you think about it, in today’s Web-centric environment, designing a campaign and Website is tantamount to writing and implementing a business plan. Everything has to gel and flow together from strategy to targeting to operations and finance. In fact, when you look at our front-end Website Service processes [#1-8]; and our Campaign Optimization Service processes [ processes [#9-18], these are the same 18-steps we use for our Business Planning Service. We do this because we think that Web Design and Campaign Optimization are a fundamental basis of the Marketing Plan section of your Business Plan and should be considered from the start.

Add an Online Booking Systems and Online Shopping to Boost eCommerce Sales - Did you know that over 60% of hotel bookings are now online and it is believed that there is a large opportunity for many markets to install an online booking system. Likewise, there is a shift to online shopping as Amazon and others have so visibly proven. So not only are IT integration and eCommerce important, but eCommerce & SEO are important also.

Integrate Your Marketing Automation and IT - We can also help you align your IT systems and business processes in a way that orders and bookings not only happen online, but also feed your marketing automation systems. In this way you can achieve cutting-edge Customer Resource Management [CRM] with [a strategic selection of] SalesForce.com plug-ins by meshing your CRM systems with your Enterprise Content Management [ECM], Business Process Management [BPM] and Government Regulatory and Compliance [GRC] systems. In fact we’ve written a 94 page paper for IBM on this topic that you can download by clicking here.