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When facing the decision on how to spend your marketing dollars on internet-based marketing, there may be many questions you have about how to best allocate those monies to ensure the most profitable use of your internet marketing budget. In this Frequently Asked Questions page, we offer answers to some concerns that perhaps you have had or are having regarding search engine optimization and its benefits to your profit margin. As always, if you have questions that have not been answered here, please Contact Us and we will be more than happy to help you out.

What can you do for me?
I can't afford any extra marketing dollars. Why should I try to squeeze this in?
What exactly IS website marketing?
First I'm told I really need a website …now you're telling me I have to market it?
Can you guarantee my website will be ranked in the top 10?
Which search engines do you submit me to?
Why should I use your website marketing service when I can get a program to do it for me?
Why should I use your website marketing service when I can do it myself?
What's so special about your marketing service?
How long will it take before I get results?
How long of a commitment do you require?
What's the incentive to sign with you rather than another firm?
What exactly IS search engine optimization?
What is paid inclusion?
What does "indexing" mean?
How does a search engine index my website?
Why doesn't just submitting to the search engines work?
What are my responsibilities as an SEO client?
What about my confidentiality?
I use an outside company for my website hosting. Is that okay?
What does SagePost need from me, in terms of website access?
How will I know if we're making progress?
Can I just BUY top placement on the search engines?
Should I pay for a website submission service?



What can you do for me?

Technically, SagePost, Inc. has two business units: Website Marketing and Technical Services. Since we're only concerned about how your website will benefit from website marketing, that's what we'll discuss here. The services offered by the Website Marketing department include:

• Copywriting,


• Current website analysis,


• Search engine optimization,


• Search engine submission,


• Monitor your website's ranking with the search engines,


• Adjustment as needed to maintain or receive better positioning,


• Visitor tracking,


• Reporting on ranking status and visitor activity, and


• Website hosting is available for no charge to those clients that use our website marketing service.

• Ok, we'll start with COPYWRITING. SagePost, Inc. can author the general content of your website. We can help you get your message to your audience in the best manner using the language your target market will understand. SagePost, Inc. also takes on free-lance copywriting jobs if one of our clients needs a bio written or perhaps a press release or additional marketing materials.


• CURRENT WEBSITE ANALYSIS means we look at two things: your website as is and your competition's websites. We evaluate the pros and cons of your current website and we contrast them to those of your competition. We also perform benchmarking reports that show us the amount of visitor traffic you are currently sustaining, and what your current rankings are with the various search engines. With this information we can help you rise above your competition with an increase in your new clients due to better ranking with the search engines.


• SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) is also known as SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING. This is the meat of what SagePost, Inc.'s Website Marketing department does for customers.
  
  
  1. Current Copy Evaluation: We first look at all the current content copy of your website. We determine and adjust the copy as needed to better "load" your website for words and key phrases that search engines will pick up and use to rank your website. Generally, the better "loaded" an individual HTML page is, the better it will rank when users search for one of the key phrases.
  
  
  2. Current Link Evaluation: Next, we determine which other websites are currently linking to your website. These could be associations in which you are a member, current clients that note you as a vendor on their website, or special publications that you have been mentioned in and l inked to. There are any number of reasons your website may be linked to from another. Links to your website are GOOD. We like links. After our evaluation, we will determine if there are any additional organizations or businesses that could potentially link to your website. We will contact them and request them to do so.


• SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION is the process for actually letting the search engines and directories know about your website. It is sitting down at the computer, going to the search engine website and submitting the appropriate URL, and yes, there are appropriate pages to submit. There are a couple of issues that need to be discussed at this point. The actual task of submission is easy. It's the strategizing beforehand that is most difficult.
  
  
  1. Free Submission versus Paid Inclusions: In years past, most of the search engines allowed, and wanted, organizations and businesses to submit their websites. Today, many of the search engines and directories are partnering together. Some now require submissions for a fee. Those submissions are called Paid Inclusions. Now, there's a difference between Paid Sponsorships and Paid Inclusions. Paid Inclusions are simply that… you pay a fee to submit your URL to be included on that search engine's index. Paid Sponsorships are tactics for a website advertising program, not URL submission. That being said, there are still a few search engines and directories that will allow for free submission.
  
  
  2. Hand Submission versus Robot Submission: SagePost, Inc. will handle all the URL submissions for you. We will take the time to HAND SUBMIT to the larger search engines. Many internet marketing companies will claim to submit to hundreds, if not thousands of search engines. To do this they use bots, or robots which are special programs designed to go out to the search engines and submit your website. These programs save humans oodles of time, in theory. The problem is bots take up bandwidth and the search engines don't care for that. Thus, in the world of intelligent programs, the search engine programs are catching on. It is well documented that many of the search engines will actually BAN an organization's website if they detect it has been submitted by a robot. In addition, 80% of all the web's searches are submitted on the 3 largest search engines. Do you really need to be listed in the other hundreds - a benefit the robot submission companies hype?



• WEBSITE MONITORING As with any good strategy, analysis comes first, then development, and finally monitoring. SagePost, Inc. will utilize reporting software to help our staff help your website stay in the top positions that it has achieved with optimization. If perhaps we detect a decline of your website's ranking with a search engine, we will take action. There may be several reasons for the slump including such inescapables as the search engine changing the way it indexes and ranks websites, or other websites are loading their content with more key phrases. Once we have determined the reason, we can get going to remedy the situation. Likewise, if we detect an increase in the rankings, we know we're doing things correctly and we're on the right track for your target market. Part of monitoring your website is tracking visitors.



• VISITOR TRACKING We want to know how many unique visitors your website has each day. We want to know which hours are busiest for your website and which are the least busy. The same goes for weekday: busy, not busy. We want to know how long visitors stay at your website, what website they came from. Two of the most important reasons we track website visitors are:
  
  1. We want to know which page or pages most of your visitors enter your website. Is it your first page, usually index.html? Or could it be a page that someone has linked to from their website? Or is it a different page altogether?
  
  
  2. We also want to know which pages most of the visitors exit. This information is useful as we can change the page to draw the customer back in for a closer look at your offering.
  
  
  All these questions can be answered by tracking your visitors and their activities while at your website.

Any idea how many people turn to the internet first to find services in their area? Do you think the yellow pages phonebook is the first place people turn to get information? Not likely anymore. People prefer to gather information from a website at their convenience rather than being limited to calling only during business hours. Telephone inquiries often end in voice mail, a busy signal, or even a receptionist saying, "The person you want is not in today." What about those new potentials who hang up in frustration? Surely many of those potential customers do not try to call back and end up purchasing from one of your competitors who has an informative website. In the Information-hungry world we now live in, many people expect to get what they need from websites. They rely on it. It saves them time and effort -and money. No more hassle getting passed from one person to the next. No more hassle of waiting on hold for extended periods of time. No more dealing with inadequately trained employees. The information is there, at their fingertips, and they go to that first.

The definition of WEBSITE MARKETING as SagePost, Inc. sees it is quite simply, marketing your website to the public, specifically through the search engines. It is our job to bring the new online customers to you. We will optimize your website so that the search engines will index and rank your website high on results pages. The results pages are those that are returned when a potential client searches for businesses like yours. Our goal is to optimize your site well enough for it to come up in the top ten.

The beauty is YOU don't have to put any more effort into your website. That's OUR job. And, in a way, a website does market itself if it is well written and draws many links. Eventually, after you submit the first URL, it will find it's own place amongst the search engines . . . over time. The search engines aren't swift about re-indexing a website. It's a logistical problem, as there are thousands of websites being submitted daily to each search engine. However, there is hope. Part of the optimizing company's (SagePost, Inc.) job is to expedite the search engine's spider into indexing any new content or development.

A spider is 'Internet Speak' for a program that search engines use to go through your website. Think of it in terms of it "crawling" around, gathering information. It analyzes your content and HTML code to determine how to best rank your website, page by page. Indexing is the gathering of information. As a spider crawls through your website, it also indexes it.

No one can guarantee top 10 ranking unless they are optimizing for very obscure key phrases or deceiving you by using Sponsored Links instead of natural ranking. However, SagePost, Inc. does guarantee that we will complete a first class optimization of your website and adjust as necessary to get your site placed as high as possible. SagePost, Inc. guarantees to NEVER scam you by using Sponsored Links, that all rankings are achieved naturally through optimization techniques. Sponsored Links are effective in a client's advertising campaign. But that's advertising, not optimization.

There are 25 different search engines and directories in which SagePost, Inc. prefers to submit clients. These are the Top 25 search engines and directories utilized by most Internet search users. These include: Google, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Search, OpenDirectory, Lycos, AskJeeves, AllTheWeb, Excite, and many more. Some of which require paid inclusion, others are free of charge.

Do you turn to only a program to write your marketing materials for you? Does the program edit itself? Do you only use a program to sell your offerings to your customers? Think of it in a bigger, more dramatic sense. Do you have a program diagnose and treat your illness?? Do you have a program cut your hair?? I hope not. Why? Because there is a margin of error that only human intervention can predict and eliminate. A robot program can submit many times - many, many, many times faster than a human, but the critical margin of error is if the search engine's program will detect submission by a 'bot (it most likely will). You will be gambling with getting your website banned from the search engine or directory. Are you ready to take that chance? We at SagePost, Inc. are here to work for you. Once we have an agreement, we will take the hassle of marketing your website from you, allowing you to focus on your core business. Meanwhile, we will begin our reconditioning of the website into the money making, new customer getting vehicle your website is meant to be. We will be there step by step. For you.

You are an expert in your field. We are experts in ours. You can learn SEO, but it takes time and practice and even longer time to see your results on some search engines. So, sure, you can do it yourself…but why would you want to when your time is worth so much more doing what you're good at and leaving the rest to us?

SagePost, Inc. is a small business. We understand the trials and hassles that entrepreneurs face. Many other search engine marketing companies focus on larger companies and price their services accordingly. We have found that smaller businesses need search engine marketing as well, and we offer it at a investment charge modern entrepreneurs can accept. Price is just a small portion of what sets SagePost, Inc. apart from our competitors. We do our best to mentally take ownership of the client's website, treating it as if it were our own. This style has proven itself time and time again, as we put more effort into optimization and copywriting than most other SEOs with smaller clientele.

Wow, that's a hard one to answer as the answers vary. Some search engines can take a month or more before indexing your website after it has been submitted. Others take even longer, sometimes close to six months! However, there are fast inclusion programs that will get the spider to index your website within a few days. And I bet you've already guessed that these services cost. Considering the wait for an engine to index on its own, or the paid "come and get it", we often recommend paying for inclusion to get seen by new potential customers in less than a week.

SagePost, Inc. requires a minimum commitment of 6 months. This allows both the client and SagePost employees to see how effectiveness of the optimization and monitoring processes.

The SagePost, Inc. Referral Awards Program. We offer a finder's fee. For any signing client you refer to SagePost, Inc., we will pay you 15% of their paid invoice up to the required six month period. How's that for incentive?

• Provide us with accurate information about your business and your products and services, as they change. Add us to any mailing lists that you may have for your printed materials, such as brochures and catalogs.


• Keep us informed about you and your company's membership in any trade organizations, or community and charitable works.


• Are you published? If you, your company, or your key personnel publish articles in trade journals, press releases, newspapers, magazines, etc. - or if you have any personnel serve as guest speakers at conferences, please keep us informed. If you do grant interviews, please ask the interviewer if they can include your web address in their article, or in the footnotes.


• Provide your website's address in ALL of your organizations printed materials: Business cards, stationary, invoices, brochures, etc.


• When prospects and customers choose to communicate with you electronically - either though email, or through your website, it is of utmost importance to stay on top of that communication. Reply promptly, even if it is just to say that you are researching their question.


• Be willing to provide us with a basic overview of your industry, your competitors, and your market position.


• Ask your customers how they found you. It is very important to keep tabs on how your customers are finding you. This enables us to better track which placements, advertising, and key word focus is providing the best return-on-investment.

SagePost understands its clients and potential clients need for confidentiality with their trade secrets, strategies and other proprietary information. We can provide you with a signed confidentiality agreement, which is a standard part of our engagement contract. In addition, we are willing to sign any reasonable contract that your company may already use for this purpose.

That is certainly okay. Though SagePost can provide that service as part of our SEO services, it is not our primary focus. We understand that there are reasons why you might want to keep your hosting elsewhere, and we don't want to "lock in" any of our customers to our services. We can work with your hosting provider, and any designers or technical resources that you may utilize for developing your website.

If you were referred to SagePost by one of our web design affiliates who currently provides hosting for you, then we recommend that you stay with them for hosting.

• We need to know the IP addresses, and/or ISP that your internal staff and website developers use when accessing the site. This is so that we may exclude these addresses from counting in your monthly statistics. The easiest way to provide this is by sending us an email with the subject line "Exclude my IP" from each of the computers that you would like to exclude.


• We need to have on-demand access to your site's log files - both the access log, and the error log, if applicable. Your log should be in NCSA "combined" format - including the HTTP referer. We need to know what type and version of webserver is being used to host your site.


• We need to have reasonable access for modifying your website's content on a regular basis. Though we will not change your message or design without your consent and approval, we may need to adjust the content, composition, grammar, style, and keyword usage of certain pages. We may also need to create variant copies of some of your pages, each utilizing slightly different verbiage. Our preference is that you provide us with our own login ID and password to your web hosting account (if you use a hosting provider other than SagePost). Protocols such as SSH, SCP, and SFTP are preferable, because they are encrypted. If that is not available, then we can use FTP.


• We may suggest changes to your server's configuration. In many cases we can do this simply by accessing setup files with your hosting provider. In some cases we may need to deal with your provider directly. In these cases, we only ask that you give us contact information for your provider, and make any appropriate introductions and/or provide us with your written permission to request changes on your behalf.


• If your website was originally designed or developed by an outside company, please provide us with any documentation and/or style guides that they may have provided you.


• After we have achieved some success with marketing your website, we would appreciate if you would allow us to place a link to the SagePost website somewhere within your site - either within a "links" page, or on the "credits" page. If your website already lists in the fine print who the designer was, we would like to place our link with equal billing to theirs. This link will be kept small and unobtrusive so as not to distract your visitors. How long does it take to get my site optimized? When should I start the process? You should have started 3 months ago! Unlike when we started in 1996, we now find that getting your website indexed by the major search engines is a slow and frustrating process - not necessarily in terms of man-hours, but in terms of the waiting. These days, you either wait, or pay a lot of money, or pay a lot of money AND wait. SagePost believes that we have found the optimum balance of pay-for-play and free submissions that will achieve your results in the most cost-effective, yet expedient way. You should expect to see some of the major search engines indexing your site within 3 months, and in most cases all of the major search engines by the 6th month. Keep in mind that this process may vary greatly depending on the industry and niche to which you are trying to market. Mass-marketed consumer items generally require much more effort, whereas business-to-business and geographically targeted enterprises will see better results with less effort.

If your marketing copy is on-target, you will know because your bottom line will increase. However, this is only an ancillary goal of SEO. SEO seeks to market your website, which then needs to market your product or service. Though we hope to accomplish both, there are some technical measures that will be taken each month during our agreement that should put forth in very objective terms our successes or failures. We will provide several monthly reports:

• Traffic analysis (link to example here)


• Key Word Rankings with top search engines for your search terms


• Submission Report


• Uptime Report - know about service outages


• Advertising results - impressions and/or clickthroughs


• Error report - know about problems with your site.


• Broken links.

Not generally. You can often buy sponsorships, which may list your site at the top of the page, or alongside search results. However, depending on the key words that you want to buy, be prepared to spend some money. Also keep in mind that any search engine that simply sells top placement would find itself falling out of favor with its users because the users might tend to find the search results less relevant. The best way to attain top placement in today's SEO environment is to provide quality relevant content targeted to the reader, instead of the search engine.

In some cases, such as with Yahoo, there is a annual pay-to-review fee that simply guarantees that your page will be reviewed by a human editor to determine whether your site can be listed. There is no guarantee that your site would be listed - even after paying the fee.

Definitely not. It may do more harm than good. These companies have built automated submission programs, AKA "robots" or "bots" that submit your site using the free submission links found at most search engines. This is something that you could do yourself for free, but is covered by SagePost as part of our service to you. Though these services may advertise submission to "hundreds" of search engines, the truth is that only a handful of search engines are worth your time and effort. Because of their tendency to abuse the system, many search engines have put policies into effect that may actually cause your site to be de-listed if it over-submitted - a practice called "spamming the index".