Resellers often ask how to come up with a recommended budget for clients for a wide array of marketing services, and how to fit SEO/SEM into the mix.  The answer isn't an easy one, because you have to take into account many different factors when making a recommendation that's best for your client.  

 

Generally, I recommend developing an overall marketing budget and carving out pieces of the pie based on the client's needs.  Ad agencies spend a lot of time on marketing plan development and budget determinations.  For our work in particular, there are a ton of variables.  For example, if the client sells 100 products, you have potentially huge Paid Search and SEO projects based on that alone. Search Engine Optimization also has a lot of variables.  Where is the client ranked now for their top keywords?  Where do they want to be ranked (page 1, top three, #1 overall) for each?  Are they in a competitive market?  How optimized is the site already?  Each of these factors, among others, helps determine the amount of time you need to spend on SEO.  Otherwise, you're almost arbitrarily assigning a budget.  

 

Click here to read more...

The popularity of Google+ has been slow out of the gate, but Google appears to be promoting its own cause with large companies.

Google's new Direct Connect feature allows users to go directly to a company's Google+ page just by typing a plus ("+") symbol after the company's brand (e.g., toyota+). Google, through its own algorithm, decides which companies qulaify for this feature via Google's own algorithm.