Most Frequently Asked Questions

• What will Neostead Internet Marketing do for us?

  We will create, redesign, optimize and promote your website with the latest tools and techniques to generate the most interest and drive the most business.

  We will do whatever it takes within the guidelines of SEO best practices and your budget to build and/or optimize your website to achieve the best possible visibility for your target keywords and phrases on Goggle, Bing (formally MSN) and Yahoo!.  We can also set up and integrate your social media pages for Facebook, Twitters, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.  If you also desire to employ Google Adwords, we can handle that for you as well. If all you need is a high-quality website that is optimized and ready to promote from in-house, we can do that too.

• What makes Neostead websites so good?

  We lovingly build each website with the latest version of WordPress software, widgets and plugins.

  While WordPress is not the only web platform out there, we believe it is by far one of the best anywhere. They are responsive, user-friendly and easy for our customers to edit and modify.  Built-in features include automatic notification to search engines for new posts and pages, functional and useful plugins and widgets to do a multitude of tasks, and social media tools galore. And top of everything else just mentioned, Google clearly LOVES WordPress websites.

• What about iPhones, iPads, tablets, etc.?

  We can build mobile-friendly versions of your website to leverage the features of mobile devices.

  While not all website clients will require mobile compatibility (i.e., a global industrial company who sells storage silos) some do. Depending on your requirements, we can use HTML5 or similar design methods to deliver mobile versions of your website. These detect the type of device being used to view your website and then delivers the appropriate version.

• Why is SEO or search engine optimization important?

  Search engine optimization simply implies that your website is configured in such a way as to gain the most visibility possible from the various search engines and directories used to present your business to the public.

  Websites have two audiences. The first is the human visitor, and the other is the search engine robot or spider. These are programs that crawl the Internet looking for good, relevant information. If your website is poorly designed (as most are) with dirty, extraneous code, the spiders will have trouble extracting the actual content. SEO employs a strict methodology whereby the website is presented in a format most friendly to the spiders to maximize the site’s content, hence maximizing the site’s search engine visibility.

• When is it best to employ SEO?

  Immediately. In fact, your site should be built with SEO as the guideline used for design and development at every step.

  The best time to incorporate SEO is during the development phase of your website. This assures that all elements critical to optimization become the fabric of the site’s makeup. Further, by incorporating SEO during development, you save yourself the added expense of having to go back and correct the problems. Depending on the size of your website, this can become quite costly. So choose an SEO web design that meets W3C standards, is built using CSS, contains little Flash, contains properly written syntax – and most importantly, creates a great first impression. Most web design firms have portfolios that will allow you to see their work.

• How soon will I see results?

  The fact is, once your website is optimized, the results are instantaneous. The time it takes to leverage this performance and gain top rankings, however, is based on a multitude of factors – not the least of which is hard work and commitment.

  Ranking your website depends on many factors. Namely – the keywords chosen, the amount of competition in a given industry, the age of the domain, the amount of preliminary work needed to either build a new site or to modify an existing one, onsite optimization, offsite optimization… and the list goes on. But to summarize the timeframe in a nutshell, it can take anywhere from 30 to 60 days for a low-competition market segment, to well over a year for a highly competitive market to achieve top, page-1 listings. It’s imperative to understand at the outset that, SEO is NOT a magic bullet. Results are achieved over the course of time and a lot of work. Is it rocket science? Not at all. But it does require time and a commitment.

  In the interim of achieving top listings for the most competitive keywords, however, efforts are also focused on “low hanging fruit.” That is to say, a carefully researched collection of other less competitive keywords (LSI / synonyms) and keyword phrases are targeted that, collectively can generate as much traffic as the primary keywords… and sometimes even more!

  PPC, unlike SEO, can deliver results almost instantaneously. This is “paid” or “sponsored” advertising and can be used in conjunction with the overall SEO/SEM campaign. It requires a daily “spend budget” where bids are placed for keywords. When the daily budget runs out – the ads stop rotating until the following day when the daily budget is “reset.” The major difference is that PPC buys “rented” positions, while SEO’s objective is to “own” the positions naturally.

• What if my site is already online and in need of repair?

  Some under-performing sites can indeed be optimized – but some are much better served by being sent to the proverbial scrap heap where they belong!

  Let’s be honest. A vast majority of websites online today are so poorly designed that attempting to “fix” them would be an exercise in futility. Worse yet, “fixing” some could cost more in time and resources than simply replacing it with a new one. But the answer is ‘yes,’ a site can be optimized from virtually any phase. The only caveat to this – at least as far as we are concerned – are sites built exclusive with Adobe Flash. These sites are notoriously unfriendly to search engines and require far more work than we are willing to charge for. That being said – we will replace these and NOT optimize them. In summary, some level of optimization is better than none at all. But again, it may be worth considering comparing the cost of optimizing a broken site with replacing it with an entirely new SEO site.

• What part does the actual content play?

  Content is King when it comes to building and promoting a quality website.

  The value of quality content cannot be overstated. It is the most important component of every successful website. In the past, the old saying that “content is king” was entirely true. Nowadays, however, the truth is that “unique content is king.” In fact, this is what is being presented to the search engines. SEO merely increases the odds that it will be found and indexed. Good, clear, and concise website copy, therefore, is an investment well worth the cost. Together with good SEO, unique content that can’t be found anywhere else on the Internet will put you ahead of the search engine game. See Copywriting Services for further details.

• Are there any guarantees that my website will be #1?

  The short answer is “no.” And if anyone claims otherwise, run for the hills!

  Know at the outset that no one controls Google except Google. However, one we thing is very clear and should serve as a warning, and that is no one can guarantee a specific position. (See what Google has to say about SEOs who guarantee placement). Unlike traditional media where you speak with an advertising representative and negotiate a page placement in a magazine, newspaper, or television schedule, no one controls the search engines in this capacity. A good SEO firm knows what the search engines are looking for and then delivers precisely that; and delivers it in an ethical manner in 100% accordance with defined standards and parameters.

  Having said this, however, some SEOs may at times make their own guarantees that specify certain improvements or enhancements based on prior experience. For example, an SEO may under certain campaigns, guarantee a page-1 position for a predetermined number of select keywords. If this promise is not kept within the a specified amount of time, the work would continue until the objective has been met. The rule of thumb is to practice discretion and understand the terms of the guarantee.  Specifically, know and agree at the outset what the keywords used in the guarantee are.  For example, it would be quite simple to rank a website for “blue poka-dot shoes with green stripes.” But obviously, this would be on no value – unless of course you sold this item.

• How do I get started?

  Press a button and get a quote.

  Simply contact us using the Get a Quote form and give us some information about your project. We will then get back to you with further details and to discuss your needs.

• Are there other good SEO firms in Houston?

  Yes. There are.

  We can comfortably endorse a few others. Contact us for more details.