Frequently Asked Questions

SEO (search engine optimization) is a broad term that describes the practice of optimizing websites so they are more likely to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant search terms. Different from paid advertising, SEO organically grows your business’s online presence. It focuses on increasing the quality and quantity of traffic from organic search results.

SEO is important to your online marketing efforts for many reasons. For example, effective SEO services can:

• Organically improve your firm or business’s online visibility
• Create and increase your brand awareness to an online audience
• Strengthen your business’s reputation
• Target a unique audience for your business goals

There is no black and white answer to this question. SEO is a competitive process. What this means is that your progress depends upon many factors, including the competition in your area. If you have a lot of competitors, and if those competitors have well-optimized and established sites, then it may generally take longer to see results.

There is one very important rule about SEO that you should remember: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Any SEO campaign for a business, regardless of the business’s location, takes patience. This is true whether you hire MediaSmack or another digital marketing company.

MediaSmack is transparent with its clients. Each month, our SEO team sends you a report on your campaign’s progress. In the report, you will see metrics that include site traffic, keyword rankings, phone calls, leads and conversions. We make sure to summarize the report so it is easy for you to understand. While we hope to only share good news, we do tell you when we lose ground somewhere, and we let you know our plans to take corrective action. It’s important to keep evolving. These reports are easy to read and interpret, but you are always free to ask us questions about our efforts.

A backlink is literally a link from another website that links back to your website. A backlink is basically an endorsement of your site. The more endorsements that you have, the more credibility you have with Google. However, you do want backlinks from high authority, trustworthy websites. Backlinks from spammy sites can actually hurt your website’s credibility.

A strong backlink profile is important for your digital marketing campaign for many reasons, including, but not limited to:

• It builds up your website’s authority. If your site has a high number of credible backlinks that are relevant to your business, Google and other search engines may recognize your site as authoritative. The more authoritative your website, the more likely you are to outrank your competitors.
• It can increase your website visibility and rankings. Backlinks help to increase your brand awareness to a larger audience. Additionally, if a lot of high authority websites are pointing back to the content on your website, the content may start to rank higher on Google.
• It increases the referral traffic to your website. Google tracks traffic from outside websites, like Yelp, as referral traffic. This referral traffic can potentially turn into new clients for your firm or business.

Our team uses Moz, a well-known SEO software tool as part of our clients’ strategies. Moz developed a “domain authority” score that correlates with how search engines view your website’s ability to rank for search terms. The domain authority score is a comparative metric. A good or bad score depends on your competitors. You want to maintain a higher score than your competitors, and link building is one part of the equation for improving your site’s domain authority score.

MediaSmack does not disclose its full list of backlink sources. This is our “secret sauce” as you say. We do have a master list that is continuously monitored and updated. We focus on high-authority backlinks that are relevant to our clients’ campaigns. Example domains where we may build listings for you include:

• Bing Places
• Merchant Circle
• ShowMeLocal
• Lawyerland

Absolutely. We use several tools to perform technical site audits. Agency Analytics, SEMRush and Screaming Frog are three tools we use to ensure your website meets the proper technical specifications for SEO best practices. These tools can help us spot issues such as broken links, missing alt text on images, long meta titles and long meta descriptions. So, yes, absolutely. We are happy to put together an audit to show you what is going well (and not so well) with your current strategy.

Pay-per-click advertising is a type of internet marketing in which you place an ad on Google or another website, and you pay a fee each time your ad is clicked. Literally, you pay per each click. Basically, you are buying leads to your website. Once a user clicks on your ad, he or she is directed to a landing page on your website.

What are the benefits of PPC marketing?

There are many benefits of successful paid search marketing campaigns, such as pay-per-click. A few of these benefits include:

• You reach your target audience. PPC allows you control over who sees your ads. You can hone in on users who are more likely to convert into clients or customers.
• You get fast results that are easy to measure. Unlike SEO, which can take months to see a solid footing, PPC can quickly increase your audience and drive measurable leads to your website.
• PPC generally pays for itself. When the cost for each ad click is less than the amount of sales that are generated from conversions, you have a cost-effective return on your investment.

MediaSmack is transparent with its pay-per-click campaign management and reporting. Each month, our PPC team sends you a report on your campaign’s progress. These reports contain important information that include top geographic areas, search terms, click-through-rate and conversions. These PPC reports are easy to interpret, but you are always free to ask us questions too.

Our team monitors and optimizes your ad campaigns to ensure your ads are placed in front of your target audience. We add negative keywords to your campaigns to align your ads with your target audience and goals. Negative keywords are search terms that we exclude from your campaign. This means your ads will not be placed in front of users that search for these terms.

LSAs are a recent advertisement option from Google. A Local Services Ad is an ad that appears at the very top of Google search results. Search users can use them to find and directly book appointments with local businesses in their area.

LSAs are different from PPC ads in that you do not pay for each click. You pay per lead. A user has to call your business or direct message you before Google charges you.

The organic reach of Facebook business pages is becoming more and more restricted, making it beneficial to utilize Facebook ads to boost visibility on social media and reach potential clients. Ad targeting on Facebook is more specific that any other type of social media platform. In addition to targeting a user’s general demographics, you can even target a user’s specific interests and life events.