I have a post in my drafts that I have never completed called “Companies that do not Understand the Internet”. In that post I was to outline my experience with companies that do not understand what the internet is really used for.
What these companies do not understand is that advertising it starting to turn more towards the internet as opposed to TV and Radio. These companies will hire a “Web Designer” to create a cool looking web site for them and expect that people will just show up. What they do not realize is that a web site is a marketing tool and thus is a small part of a marketing campaign.
Web designers do not produce marketing campaigns – this is what search marketing companies do.
I try my hand at search marketing at a small scale but I am a “recovering web designer” that only saw the light about a year ago and is still learning.
One company that does appear to well established in search marketing is DiscountClick. I was forwarded DiscountClick’s information from an associate of mine to check out to see if I would use their services if I had the need.
The first thing that I did was check out what their claims were. Unfortunately there are a lot of companies out there that claim to get you to the #1 position in Google in a matter of hours (I’m not kidding). DiscountClick is a little more realistic.
On their home page they claim that you could begin to see results within 2-4 WEEKS but most clients see results in 2-4 MONTHS. From what I know of Search Engine Optimization this claim is right on. The other guys that claim “hours” are talking about an Adwords account, DiscountClick is talking about real, natural, search engine results. These are the ones that you do not pay for every time someone clicks.
There is a big difference between designing a “pretty” web site and one that is going to be in the top search engine results. DiscountClick looks as though they understand that and can get you there, that is, if you are a company that understands the internet 😉 .
Technorati: DiscountClick, SEO, Web Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Design
Comments
2 responses to “DiscountClick – Search Engine Optimization Services – Done Right”
Dan, excellent points about design (“Form follows function” I always say). Curious as to what you might think of our blogs (blogs.move.com) 🙂 Just found you recently, btw, really interesting stuff, I’m trying to catch up!
Gary,
Thanks for stopping by.
I left a comment concerning your post – Homeless in Austin, and Everywhere Really – since I live here is Austin (see below about what happened to the comment).
Going over your blog it is nice and vibrant although the purpose of the blog is not exactly clear even after looking at the about page. It’s just that a large company blogging about Austin and other places is just a little different. The motivation is not clear. Blogs are generally designed to help people.
I do have a couple of concerns though –
1. I left a rather lengthy comment on the homeless story and after submitting it my comment did not show up (I did setup an account before I did the comment). It might be in moderation right now but how would I know – it looks lost on my end and your average user would not leave another comment after an experience like that.
2. I could not find my way home to the main page of the blog. I see a lot of links for move.com stuff but not he blog.
What I would do is move the move.com links to the upper right hand corner of the header and make them a little smaller. Then I would make a home button and take the about button and make those the same size of your existing navigation but move those to the bottom left of the header.
3. You have a category – “Uncategorized” – you do not want that. The homeless story was filed under “Uncategorized, Community Culture, Places”. Does not look good.
That is my 2 minute look at. I think with a couple tweaks and some clarification on motivation you could get a good reader base.