Jay Seville of Wilmington Real Estate 4 U

ILM Marketing is pleased to announce that we’ve begun working with Jay Seville, an associate broker with Wilmington Real Estate 4U here in Wilmington. Jay contacted us in February about giving his Kure Beach real estate web site, Kure-Beach-Home.com a jump start. Jay recently moved down to Wilmington from Arlington, Virginia where he owns a real estate company called JustNewListings.com Realty. The team at JustNewListings.com Realty focuses on foreclosure listing in the State of Virginia. Since 2000, Jay has negotiated over $50,000,000 worth of contracts and achieved the RE/MAX Hall of Fame Club. The Club honors agents who earned more than $1 million in commissions over their time with the company and only about 16% of RE/MAX have earned that honor. You can find out a little more about Jay on his Naymz profile.

We’re no strangers to the real estate seo world as we have multiple active real estate clients in Wilmington and Charlotte and we’ve worked some other companies outside of North Carolina in the past. Plus, Nat used to be a real estate agent in Vermont before moving to Wilmington so he has a good understanding of what clients are hoping to achieve and the verbiage needed.

We also wanted to offer our congratulations to Jay and his wife who welcomed their seventh child into the world last month.

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ILM Marketing is a full service marketing and advertising agency with our roots firmly planted in internet marketing and search engine optimization.  Our original company, Wilmingon SEO & Marketing, Inc., started strictly as an SEO company and over the past five years, has grown in its service offerings to where we felt a rebranding was in order.  So we created ILM Marketing to better reflect our full range of online and offline marketing services.

Our background in SEO comes into play with all of our online projects – from web design and copywriting, to social media and email marketing.  We work closely with our clients to make sure we understand their business goals, messaging, and keyword targets.  From day 1, we craft all of our campaigns to align with client goals and targets.  If you’ve ever launched an SEO campaign for an existing website, you’ll know that the first thing that needs to happen is an overhaul of the website in terms of meta-data, on-page copy, image optimization, internal linking and analytics.  With ILM Marketing, you get all of that right from the very start.  And while search engine optimization is not an overnight process, you’ll have a giant head start in the right direction.

Our full suite of marketing and advertising solutions includes WordPress web design and hosting, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, image display ads, social media management, press release writing and submission, email marketing solutions, and live chat software.  We also help our clients manage offline advertising campaigns using radio, indoor advertising, and billboards.

In other big news for ILM Marketing, we recently announced the hiring of our new full time employee, Scott Edwards.  You can read all about Scott here: Scott Edwards Joins ILM Marketing.  Our other full time employee is Steph Medeiros, an ace copywriter with a background in journalism and freelance writing.  You can learn more about Scott, Steph and the three ILM Marketing partners – Nat Criss, Megan Criss, and Anna Platz – here: The ILM Marketing Team.

And finally, with a fresh rebranding and a growing company, ILM Marketing has moved its headquarters to an office in the historic Chandler’s Wharf building in downtown Wilmington, NC along the Cape Fear Riverfront.  The building features a mix of retail and office space and has proven to be a great fit for us.

In an ever evolving world of marketing, advertising, and media platforms, we are poised to change with the times and adapt to strategies that will best suit our clients.  We appreciate your interest and support and we look forward to an exciting future with ILM Marketing.

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Wilmington SEO is growing up and branching out!  Our focus has always been on search engine optimization and throughout our five years in business, we’ve delivered on our SEO work and continually added to our services to help our clients with all aspects of online marketing.  Our services now include SEO, pay-per-click advertising, image display ads, social media management, email marketing solutions, live chat software, WordPress web design, and hosting.  We’ve even moved offline to help our clients choose and manage radio ads, indoor advertising, and billboards.

To better reflect the diverse range of services we offer, Wilmington SEO is announcing a new name and a new website to go with it: ILM Marketing and www.marketingilm.com.

We are transitioning over to ILM Marketing this month and though we will continue to get correspondence at our Wilmington SEO email addresses, you will receive messages from us at our marketingilm.com emails.  We ask that you update your address books with our new emails as follows:

Nat Criss – nat.criss@marketingilm.com
Megan Criss – megan.criss@marketingilm.com
Anna Platz – anna.platz@marketingilm.com
Scott Edwards – scott.edwards@marketingilm.com

Scott Edwards of ILM Marketing

If you don’t recognize that last name on the list, let us introduce you to our new employee, Scott Edwards.  You can read all about him here: Scott Edwards Joins ILM Marketing.  Our other full time employee is Steph Medeiros who works her magic with copywriting and social media updates.  You can learn more about Steph and all of us here: About Us – ILM Marketing.

Along with all these exciting changes, we are also announcing our move to a new office in downtown Wilmington, NC.  Our office space is in Chandler’s Wharf along the Cape Fear Riverfront, a historic building featuring a mix of retail and business.

Steph Medeiros of ILM Marketing

We appreciate all your support over these years and look forward to working with you as ILM Marketing in the days, months, and years to come.  We welcome your comments and feedback regarding our rebranding and hope that you will  take advantage of the marketing and advertising services right for you.

Thank you!
Nat, Megan, Anna, Scott, and Steph

p.s. We’d love some new client testimonials if you feel like sharing:)

ILM Marketing’s new office in downtown Wilmington.

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Scott Edwards of ILM Marketing in Wilmington, North Carolina.

I want to introduce myself to ILM Marketing’s readers. I’m Scott Edwards and I’ve recently joined ILM Marketing in Wilmington, NC, as a Marketing Consultant. I’m excited to join Nat, Megan, Anna & Stephanie and learn from them as we help our amazing clients increase the ROI of their online marketing efforts.

I’ve hit the ground running; working on numerous accounts. It’s a fast paced environment and I’ve already been involved in SEO, PPC, content creation and website maintenance projects. My interest in online marketing began a few years ago but until now I’ve only been involved in personal projects. I originally met Nat and Megan at a local Meetup.com Internet Marketing Group that Megan helps lead. They were the first people I reached out to when I began my job search. Although they didn’t have an open position when I initially contacted them; they ultimately decided they wanted to grow the company. And here I am!

My background is in software engineering and sales in the defense and intelligence industry. Most recently, I worked for Northrup Grumman at Fort Bragg, NC and Centrifuge Systems in the Washington, DC area. I’m also a US Army veteran. My wife, Lisa and I have been married 17 years and we have two children, Katie and Nathan. An interesting fact; I’m the only native Wilmingtonian on our team.

ILM Marketing has a beautiful loft office in downtown Wilmington above the retail shops of Chandler’s Wharf; a historic brick warehouse (circa 1884). The large windows in our office overlook the scenic Cape Fear River.  Our location is convenient to numerous downtown cafe’s and restaurants. Come visit us!

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The Panda and Penguin updates that Google released earlier this year altered some SEO strategies especially in terms of link building and content marketing.  Google is primarily looking to reduce paid linking strategies, keyword stuffing, and low quality content written primarily for search engines.

While writing and publishing great content is still a priority for us – and maybe more so now – it’s where we publish the content and how we link back to the website we’re promoting that has become more challenging.

We’ve written earlier about Content Marketing in a Post Penguin World and Blogging Challenges and Strategies where we address the time and effort that must be invested in not only writing valuable and informative content, but in finding legitimate and worthy sources to publish the content.  Publishing and distribution sources are a big part of our shifting strategy as we move forward with SEO campaigns in 2012. Here are some of the areas we’re focusing on:

On-Site Content and Site Structure – SEO basics start with a well organized, informative site that covers relevant content in detail.  Our focus starts on-site with elements such as title and description meta-tags, keyword-optimized text, internal links, sitemaps, SEO-friendly URLs, good site architecture and adding Analytics and Webmaster Tools for tracking and measuring success.

Blogging – we’ve always been big on blogging for content marketing but we’re now looking for the best ways to push our content out to our intended audience.  We know it’s not enough to just create the information, but also to make sure it’s optimized for search AND to push it out through networking and social media channels.

Guest Blogging – this is an area we’ve become increasingly more focused on in our link building efforts.  Guest blogging is more time consuming in terms of finding publishers and also in creating a greater volume of unique content.

Press Releases – we are big fans of press releases for content marketing, linking, and branding.  However, the majority of free press release sites that still exist are generally not recommended.  We still use a few that seem to have held their value but we highly recommend using paid sites such as PRWeb that provide a greater wealth of distribution across legitimate and worthy websites.

Social Media – the relationship between SEO and social media is certainly not new but now more than ever, social media is an integral part of our SEO strategy.  We recommend twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest as platforms to reach your audience and establish your brand. We also recommend networking on Google Plus and establishing authorship between your profile and your blog or website to directly influence search engine results.

While there have been big changes in the SEO world this year, the basics remain the same.  What’s really changed is that Google is not rewarding free and easy links like with PR and article sites, spammy paid linking like with pay-per-posts and blogrolls, or repetitive, keyword-based anchor text.  So the basics of high quality content and linking remain, but it’s how we network, distribute, link, and publish that are our biggest changes moving forward.

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Wilmington SEO & Marketing, Inc  is pleased to announce that we’ve begun working with Wilmington based call center and answering service, CallNet Corp. CallNet first contacted us a couple months back about helping them grow their online presence through organic search and paid cpc traffic. They had previously been working with an overseas SEO and design firm and decided to shift directions.

CallNet Corp offers a variety of services including:

•  800# Web Order Entry, Fully web enabled
• Web Chat
• Reservation Scheduling
• Scripted Surveys
• Catalog Order Taking
• Seminar Registrations, and more.

They have clients from a wide range of industries including doctors, lawyers, real estate professionals, government agencies, educational organizations, and e-commerce companies. Basically, if you work in an industry where you need someone to help you answer the phone or chat with your customers 24X7, 365 days a year, these guys can likely help. They’ve worked with some large national clients such as the American Red Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield, GE, Coca-Cola, and Hertz. At the same time, they’re all about helping small businesses. From virtual receptionist services for plumbers and landscapers to taking and processing orders for a  niche e-commerce site, they’ve cover just about every area of customer support a business could need.

I met with Robert Senior at their offices in Lumina Station prior to starting our project work and the place has a great vibe (when you hear call center – great vibe is not necessarily your first thought). Their offices are very nice and quiet unlike many of the overseas phone calls I hear with my credit card company. Robert said that almost everyone works right here in Wilmington with a few representatives sprinkled at other locations. If we ever needed to outsource order-taking or call support, CallNet Corp would be the type of company I’d want to connect with.

My first question for Robert was along the lines of: “How can you compete with the overseas companies?” He shared with me some of the details of their operation and how they offer a “Best Price Guarantee” where they’ll beat the costs of any call center service. They even put their pricing on their site.

We’re excited about working with Robert and his team and we’ll keep you posted on some of the results along the way.

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Ever since Google rolled out it’s Penguin Update in late April 2012, SEOs have been dialing in their focus on quality content marketing and social sharing, particularly on the Google+ network.  Google is making it impossible for online marketers (or any Google users, really) to ignore their social sharing network so we’re learning to better use the network to leverage it’s power to help influence search results (see: Study: “Social Signals” Boost Organic Search Engine Rankings).

But – back to content marketing.  We know we need to focus on on-site content, blogging, guest blogging, and sharing our news with the world.  I recently came across this article that outlines ways we can plan and strategize our content so that people might actually read it and share it: 10 Ways to Get Your Content Marketing Strategy in Motion.  Creating a strategy by mining existing data and social signals makes it easier to figure out what you’re going to write about, why, and where you’re going to share it.

I also enjoyed this recent article about how to write for the web, for SEO, and for users.  It’s a great blueprint for anyone getting starting with writing for the web and a good check-in for those of us who are writing on a daily basis: Forget Reading! Web Content Is Meant To Be Skimmed.  This addresses ways we can satisfy all kinds of users – from those who won’t read a lick of content, to full-on readers, to skimmers.  Incorporating photos with captions as well as videos, links, bullet points, bold headers, and italicized phrases are all great strategies for writing for the web.

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From my experience and as far as I can tell, the Google AdWords Express advertising platform associated with Google Places (now Google+ Local) is a huge ripoff in terms of cost-per-click, performance, and ROI.

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What was (and still is for right now) a free opportunity to appear in Google’s shopping search results through the Google Merchant Center is about to transition over to a platform where merchants will have to pay to be listed.

While some (many?) merchants may not have experienced the benefit of free search traffic as a result of their merchant center product listings, others currently receive loads of free, highly targeted traffic from these shopping results.  When users type in a product related search query, Google has been integrating their own shopping results within the organic results under a title like “Shopping results for kids clothes,” as an example.  If you followed the Google Merchant Center instructions to a “t” and optimized your listings (but not over-optimized), you may have found yourself in the lucky position of being included as one of the three or four Shopping results on page 1.

This opportunity is set to change as Google will eliminate the free data feeds and instead charge merchants to be included.  It sounds like they’ll be using a a paid inclusion model where companies pay to be listed but are not guaranteed a top position for their keywords.  This may work in a similar way to the current Product Ads through AdWords that are affiliated with the products in a Google Merchant Center data feed.  My experience with Product Ads has been that the ads generate low cost-per-clicks and high conversion rates, probably due to the level of detail included in the ad (photo, price, title, description).  But I’ve only tested personally in limited markets.  I’m sure it differs depending on how competitive a market is.

This change to a paid inclusion model for Google Shopping results should take place by late 2012.  At that point, Product Ads will be phased out but Google suggests that getting those set up now (and they are offering incentives here: Limited Time Offer for Google Shopping) will be a good way to prepare for Google Shopping.

Resource: Google Product Search To Become Google Shopping, Use Pay-To-Play Model

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Google rolled out a huge change for local businesses who have claimed, managed, optimized, and gathered reviews for their Google Places listing to help appear in locally-targeted search results.  Now Google is using Google+ Local in place of Google Places.  However, you still manage the listing through the ‘old’ Google Places dashboard.  For now.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on this change because we have a number of clients who depend on their Google Places listing to appear at the top of search results.  Many of the listings have transitioned without a problem while others saw that their new page did not update with photos or video, even though they are there in the dashboard.

While looking into this issue and exploring the help center articles around this change, I noticed that there is very little guidance for business owners who need help managing their new Google + Local page.  All of the information that Google presents is aimed at the user interacting with business pages.  For instance, it is easier than ever for anyone to add new photos without the owner’s consent or approval.  We will have to be more vigilant about monitoring these pages for appropriate content and to stay on track with branding and messaging.

Another question that came up is whether Google will be merging existing Google + Pages for business with their corresponding  Google+ Local pages.  Right now, they’re 2 separate pages but they might be merged in the future.  A Google employee commented about this on a forum: “We know it’s not ideal right now, but we’re working to consolidate these pages into a single page where you guys can manage your presence across Google. ”

I wanted to share some good resources I found on the transition from Google Places to Google+ Local.  No one seems to have all the answers at this early stage but we’re trying!

It’s Finally Here: Chronicling the Plus-Places Merge
Google Plus Local Roundup
Google+ Local – Learn More Here (from a Google employee at Google Products Forum)
Google Official Announcement for Google+ Local

Let me know if you have any more good links on this topic that I should know about.  Thanks!

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