Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Welcome to the Internet Beacon blog. My name is Josh. The Internet Beacon is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm located in Finksburg, MD. SEO is a form of Internet Marketing. What we do is work with you to get your website among the top ranked results for select keywords related to your business. For a more detailed explanation, check out our SEO Answers page and our blog post on SEO.
Today I’d like to talk about avoiding SEO companies that promise the world. What I mean by this is someone who will tell you that they can get your website on the top ten results on Google inside of a week or two; or that they know the “secret” of SEO. The truth is SEO takes a lot of time and work if done properly. If not, you may have just thrown hundreds of dollars away. Here are three things to watch out for when choosing an SEO company.
1) The Promise
You’ve met with the young, fashionable director of SEO at “Marketing, Inc Corporation International” about doing SEO for your small business. He threw around a lot of cool buzzwords and told you that, for a small fee, your site will be the most popular location on the Internet. For the most part, this is obviously an attempt to get your money. Let me say this clearly, it is not possible to become, overnight, the hottest thing on the Internet. Thank this guy for his time and move on.
2) The Secret
The website you’ve discovered has finally “found the secret to SEO”. They can’t tell you how, but they have mastered this process. All they need is your money and they will make your site an Internet phenomenon. This is a lie. There is no secret to SEO. It is a process like anything else. Good SEO takes time and, only after that time, will results begin to surface.
3) The Quick Fix (That Lasts!)
Some SEO providers will tell you that all you need is their one time service to meet your SEO needs. After that, your site will never need updating to hold it’s place in the top ten. Again, this is false. A good SEO provider will be honest with you and let you know that, like most other services, it requires maintenance. An SEO company that tells you a quick fix can keep your site popular forever is lying to you. They are either willfully false or ignorant. Neither are characteristics you want in a business partner.
That’s all for this week. Hopefully you know a little more about how SEO works and can begin looking for a company to assist you. As always, feel free to check out our website for more information!
-Josh
InternetBeacon.com
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: Blog Hints, internet, search engine optimization, seo, site, time, website
Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | No Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
 Hey, everyone. It’s Josh from the Internet Beacon, again. We’re a Search Engine Optimization firm located in Finksburg, MD. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means that we work hard so that prospective clients and sales leads find your website before others. For a more detailed look at what we do, check out our page of SEO Answers here and a blog post here.
This week I’d like to talk to you about social networks. We’ve talked before about Facebook and how to use it for personal reasons. Now, let’s talk about how to use them to your business’ advantage. As most of you probably know, members of Facebook can be fans of various things. A great way to increase your business’ online presence is to set up a fan page for your company.
A “Fan Page” means that you create a page similar to a profile that talks about your company and provides links and information you think your clientele and leads would like to know. This is a great tool for keeping people up to date on corporate events or changes to the business. For example, you could announce that you’re giving away coupon codes to the first 20 people to send you a private message through Facebook. Or, a better example, might be to announce a raffle. All that is required is to be a fan and post something on the company’s wall. This will encourage participation on the community’s behalf as well as spread the word about your business!
From here, users of Facebook will be able to create a link to your company’s page from their personal page. This means that when their friends see what they are up to, they’ll notice that “John Smith is now a fan of The Internet Beacon”. Coincidentally, this is a step we have also taken. You can be our fan here. One thing to note here is that you can get a custom URL for your business, i.e. www.Facebook.com/YourBusiness once you’ve reached 25 fans. That’s all you need to get your business a permanent link in the Facebook hierarchy.
That’s all for this week. Hopefully you can take a look at Facebook and see where you can put it to work for you. Be sure to check back next week for more tips and advice!
-Josh
Internet Beacon
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: Blog Hints, Facebook, fan, internet, internetbeacon, search engine optimization, seo, social networks
Posted in Internet Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
 Hey, everyone! It’s Josh from the Internet Beacon. We’re a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm in Finksburg, MD. Our business focuses on getting your business’ name out there on the Internet. Essentially, we work so that popular search engines like Google or Yahoo are more likely to display your site when potential customers search for keywords related to your business.
This week I’d like to talk about Passwords. We all have them for various areas of our electronic lives. We all need them, and too often we are not as careful as we should be when choosing them. In choosing a password there are several things to consider.
An important part of choosing a password is the length. Certainly a lot of website give us guidelines when setting the password length, but they are often the minimum requirements. A good thing to keep in mind for password length is making them longer than 8 characters. This is because of the way that different operating systems interpret them. Without getting too technical, passwords are harder to break them if they are over 8 characters.
Another “best practice” is to include special characters and number in your passwords. This can turn something like “baseball” into b4s3ba!!”. Someone could easily guess your password if they know you well or your interests. However, simply knowing you like baseball will not be enough if you add in these steps. Someone could spend days trying to figure out the combination, and more often then not, they would be locked out before actually cracking your password.
Well, that’s all for this week. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how to keep your personal accounts a little safer online. If you have any questions, feel free to email me!
-Josh
Internet Beacon
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: password, passwords, search engine optimization, seo
Posted in Web Tips | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
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Hey, everyone. Josh here from the Internet Beacon. We’re a Search Engine Optimization firm located in Finksburg, Maryland. In my previous posts, I’ve talked a little bit about helpful tips for using your computer and the Internet in general. Today, I’d like to get into what we really do here at the Internet Beacon.
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The proper term for our business is SEO, meaning Search Engine Optimization. But what does that really mean? Well, our goal is to engineer your website so that when someone searches for a business that does what you do in your locality, your company will be among the first results. It’s one of many forms of Internet Marketing. At first, it can seem slightly complicated. Knowing the ins and outs of how search engines, like Google, come up with their results is part of our job. We do a lot of behind the scenes work to get the job done.
Part of getting the job done involves checking keyword density. Keyword density is exactly what it sounds like. We make sure that keywords related to your company, let’s say “roofing Maryland” if you are a roofing company, appear prominently on your site. Part of this task is also making sure that it works organically on your site. You would get nowhere by having a paragraph comprised solely of “roofing Maryland”. Search engines know shortcuts like that are cheap and you can actually get your site penalized!
That’s just part of what we do for you here at the Internet Beacon. There are a lot of other methods for getting your business out there, but I could go on for pages and pages about them. Suffice it to say we worry about this stuff so you don’t! Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll see you next week.
-Josh
Internet Beacon
Baltimore SEO
Maryland SEO
Tags: internet beacon, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, seo
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | 1 Comment »
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Hey, Josh here from the Internet Beacon. We are a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm located in Reisterstown, Maryland. What we do, SEO, is a subcategory of Internet Marketing. Similar to traditional advertising, SEO is all about getting your Brand out there. In this case, we´re working to get your website in front of customers through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. For more quick, useful information, check out our SEO Answers page, our SEO Glossary, and our blog posts on SEO.
