F.A.Q.

Do you charge for additional consultations, beyond the initial one?
Yes. The initial phone consultation is provided free. If other consulting services are wanted, that’s one of our primary offerings, so we’re happy to do it for additional fees. This will depend on the client’s future goals for internet marketing and how much growth and help they are interested in pursuing.

Shouldn’t all your consultation time be free? After all, my business doesn’t get paid for being on the phone.
As internet marketing consultants, consulting is actually our core service. We provide a host of other services, and a lot of that is more hands on, of course. But in order to be effective at that, we need to minimize uncompensated phone time and remain profitable in our consulting too.

I’m a phone person. Can we mostly use the phone instead of e-mail?
You’ll get much more value working by e-mail, after your initial phone consultation. If you prefer to work by phone, then we can do that some of the time. We charge in flat rate hours in increments of 30minutes by phone. Also, if you choose to work by phone, keep in mind that the turnaround time for some of our work necessarily goes up. Time that we’re on the phone is time we’re not doing other work.

What’s to keep someone else in my area from contracting with you for the same services, and duplicating or nullifying my marketing?
Nothing keeps any of us from contracting with anyone else. However, it is NOT true that someone else’s marketing can nullify yours. And if you believe it is, you marketing will be ineffective. Competition happens. But they’re not going to duplicate your marketing strategy, because they can’t, even if they provide the exact same service as you. Their marketing differentiators are different, their content is different, and the owner of the site that maintains it is different. And if they lift content from your site, Google will bury them for duplicate content. One of the common misconceptions is that somehow internet marketing, because it has technical components, is an automated set it and forget it process that is duplicated from site to site, business to business, or that you slap it onto your site like a turbocharger. That’s not how it works, though all those bogus ads out there offering to “turbocharge” your SEO make it sound like that. If you were thinking you don’t *need* your own market differentiators, and that you won’t *need* to maintain your site, you actually do need to learn more about internet marketing. Because if you don’t do those things, your internet marketing and your web site won’t matter anyway.

How does one achieve top “push-pin” or balloon in Google Maps?
Google Maps ranks pushpins based on your business’ actual physical location in your google listing. What they do is take what they consider to be the center of whatever your town or city is – what Google considers the true center – that may be downtown, or it may be the exact center, etc. The ones that come up first are the ones physically located closest to the center for the search term. If you are in a suburb of Chicago, you might come up close to the top for searches including that suburb as a search term, but appear lower down for searches including the word Chicago. Chicago is a large city. If you are farther from what Google considers the center, you will likely come up lower than someone near the center. Nothing you or I will do (short of you physically relocating your business closer to that spot) will make your push pin come up higher in those map listings. This is not, therefore, usually a suitable area for concentration of search engine optimization efforts. Here’s a Market Moose Tip, though: rent a mailbox address closer to Google’s designated city center, and enter a 2nd location listing. Remember, Google verifies the address to complete the listing, so it needs to be able to receive mail.

I want to be first in Google search results, or at least on the first page:

It’s possible, but not overnight, unless you’re willing to pay for sponsored placement. Everyone wants first page. Everyone. You understand that. The demand for this is so high that services have sprung up claiming they have a “partnership” with Google (anyone can sign up for a “partnership” with Google – it’s free, and they don’t screen). These services usually offer to charge you a hefty fee to “guarantee” you will get that ranking. Claims like this inundate the SEO market and set false expectations – as though if you hire the right expert, this is something that can be promised. If you read the fine print a lot of those “SEO” people have, or read their lingo carefully, they’ll either exempt themselves, or they aren’t actually promising anything – they’re just creating excitement and interest. It’s highly possible to carve out a niche and get first page organic results in some areas. But first page organic results in all your search areas cannot be promised truthfully by anyone. No matter who tells you otherwise, no matter what their reputation is like, even if they have published a number of books and seminars, even if they know and are known by everyone. Think about this: as more and more of us are throwing away our phone books and using internet directories, who do you think dominates the first page of searches for most results? 1. Directory sites – sites that simply charge for listings for lots and lots of people that do what you do – including your competitors. 2. National sites that serve the entire US, have incredibly high page-ranking and traffic, and so also come up in your area. 3. Sites that have been around for a lot longer than you have and have achieved a steady traffic flow over time (Google pays attention to longevity – in fact, new sites or newly optimized sites are placed in a sandbox to watch their performance for a while), and sites that have purchased their domains for years at a time, not one year (Google pays attention to that, too – more years is usually better SEO), and sites that have keyword-rich domains and other search engine optimization features (that IS something you can act upon!). 4. Sites that have climbed the rankings over time, using a variety of techniques – not sites that did a few black hat tricks and expected to be there overnight. It just doesn’t work that way. The sooner we get past the mythology, the sooner we can get down to you climbing the rankings through techniques that really do work, and dominating search areas that matter. Keep in mind, you may be focusing on the least effective search results – why spend most of your effort on what produces the least useful contacts? There are some things we can do, quite often, to improve the likelihood of first page. But you shouldn’t give money to anyone who “guarantees” it – even if I manage to deliver the moon, promising it is really dishonest advertising.

Is there any way to compete with those mega-sites?
Yes. The most effective sites are ones that are dynamic, not static – that means sites with very frequent updates with original, relevant written content, especially in the most hotly-contested markets. If you’re competing for a little town, it’s a lot easier to do better. If you’re competing for popular areas, very frequent updates are one of the most important ways to climb the rankings. And that falls on you to maintain, though you can certainly partner with us to contribute. Also, don’t focus only on your web site. There are other ways to achieve prominent rankings without paid placement and without your web site being the only tool. So much of the SEO concentration is based on yesteryear’s web, not web 2.0. My advice is consult with us about your concerns, and we’ll work together toward your goals without making untenable promises.

Don’t some sites achieve overnight success?
Almost. Remember, there’s a sandbox for search engines to guard against new, fly-by-night sites. But you could get out of that sandbox pretty quickly – maybe even in 90 days, with the right techniques. A niche site can often do that. If you bought a domain for 10years up front called InstantBreastCancerCure.com and built a dynamic site (supports frequent updates), and updated it constantly (every day or every other day) with original, unique, relevant, search-engine-optimized content, you are likely, once past the sandbox, to come up on page one. Why? How many sites are competing for that search? Not many. For one thing, there’s no such thing as an instant breast cancer cure. So your competition is sparse at best. For another, you’re doing all the right things. You bought a keyword rich domain. You bought it for many years up front. And you are updating your site with fresh content continually – content that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the web (Google penalizes for duplicate content), is highly relevant to your desired search terms, and is search engine optimized by a professional to be attractive for search engines to index. But if you’re competing for a search term like San Antonio appraiser, you aren’t going to hit the front page overnight, if ever. The good news is that enough of us skip the initial “junk” listings (which are often those directories and national clearing houses) and go right for the first “real” listings we see. In other words, searchers are learning what’s on the other pages. I’ve been known to hit page 3 and ignore the first two pages right off the bat in some searches. The other good news is that search engine optimization is no longer the only way that sites are being found. In older days, it was just you and yahoo. Now, it’s you and Google and Yahoo and social networking – Facebook, Twitter, and social dig/bookmarking sites. The old days are gone – don’t throw all your eggs in one basket with just SEO.

How much do you charge?
Ask yourself, ‘for what, exactly?’ You really don’t want to work with someone who quotes you a price for something generic, without even looking at what you need. That’s like a remodeling company that quotes a job over the phone – I wouldn’t let them in the house. Your marketing is not an interchangeable product that real professionals can just slap onto your web site and you’re good to go, even if plenty of people sell it like that. In fact, some companies quote a really high price, and just figure in the loss from differing expectations, but we don’t want to work that way, either. We’ll consult with you to understand your goals and uncover your needs, but if you’re price shopping for something generic. we’re not the right bunch.

I found a guy to do it cheaper, do you match prices?
Not as a rule. Pro work that pays off in the long run has a price. There’s usually a reason for the cost difference. If you feel we’re too expensive, then we may not be the right provider. We think we deliver an incredibly high value, regardless of what the quote may be. If the other guy can really do what we do cheaper, you should go with it. But so far, we’ve never found that to be the case. In short, we cost more than the cheapest guy out there, but we add value in ways that most can’t at that price.

Why a Moose? The 2008 electoral race in the US more or less made it the year of the moose (one of the Vice Presidential candidates hunted moose), or the year of the bull (depending on your feelings on the matter). So the moose just seemed like a good mascot for the enterprise. Mooses (sic.) are vegetarians with compartmentalized stomachs. A Moose is either a bull or a cow. One refers to a “gang of moose”. Mooses are said to bark or bugle. Moose gangs or herds are dominated by one female. None of this is really relevant, but it is interesting.