SEO stands for search engine optimization, a process designed to improve a site’s placement in the SERPs (search engine results page). SEO services are designed to enhance your web presence by increasing your website’s traffic through search engine ranking improvement. SEO a highly specialized service that can be done through an SEO Expert who will optimize your web pages, make them more attractive to potential customers, and increase the trust of your website with Google.

How much does SEO cost?

SEO fees will vary by provider and experience. Less experienced providers who may not implement Google’s best practices generally bill a few hundred dollars per month or less. Besides having a lack of experience, low-cost SEO providers typically cut corners in areas like link development which can leave a website prone to a Google penalty.

Besides experience, SEO cost vary by industry a market. That is because the level of competition can change drastically depending on what you do, and who you market to. For local businesses, legitimate SEO firms will charge no less than $500 per month. A national or international campaign will require a minimum budget of $2,500 to $5,000 month.

Is SEO a Cost?

Contrary to popular belief, SEO is an investment rather than a cost. A well tuned SEO campaign should not only pay for itself, it should give you a significant return on what your investing. If it’s not, it might be time to consider a new SEO.

How Long Does SEO Take?

The time it takes to see drastic improvement really depends on the condition of your website. Here are some things we look at when determining how long your SEO campaign should take to pay for itself, and more…

1. How long has your website been live?
2. Do you do any additional advertising?
3. Have you worked with an SEO before?
4. Are your backlinks toxic, or helpful?
5. Is your industry competitive?
6. What’s the gap to fill between your site and your biggest competitor?
7. How large is your target market? Is it one city, is it small, is it big, is it national or international?

All of these questions can help us better understand how and when your site will react to SEO.

According to Google, you should allow 4 to 12 months for your SEO to first implement improvements to your website, and see meaningful results from those efforts.

Here’s an example of a local SEO campaign that improved quickly. In less than a month, this client achieved the top 3 positions. This client had the following items in their favor:

1. The website (domain) was more than a year old
2. The client did not have prior SEO or toxic links
3. The clients market size was less than 300,000 people
4. The clients competitors didn’t have great SSEO

As you can see from Feb to March the site for tracked keywords improved in Google by 1,337 positions across 27 keywords. Most of these keywords landed #1 or #2 spots.

Your results can vary but hiring a qualified, and experienced SEO will help determine whether or not your website will rank quickly.

Myrtle Beach has been a thriving destination for vacationers for decades, but the success hasn’t always been without competition. Area resorts and destinations have long struggled to attract visitors from the growing competition. With more hotels, services, and vacation rentals than ever, Myrtle Beach tourism is beginning to see a new level of competition.

When creating your tourism marketing strategy, you’ll want to take all of these trends into consideration.

Many of the hotels and vacation rentals are located right on the beach itself, but there’s still plenty of space for your tourism marketing plan to succeed even if you’re not located oceanfront. One popular method is YouTube advertising. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. Millions of people use YouTube every day, so it’s an easy way to get your message out and bring in potential customers. It’s an ideal place to introduce your attraction to the public in a visually appealing way.

Even if your resort, attraction, or hotel is on YouTube, you should also consider utilizing the power of social media marketing to your arsenal of tools. Facebook and Instagram are two places that you want to be when promoting your resort or hotel. Use Facebook and Instagram to create promotions and announcements about local events and special activities.

You can also post pictures and videos of your activities for people to see and enjoy. Your resort may have a blog you can update visitors on the latest happenings, as well.

With more competition than ever and the uncertainty of COVID-19, it’s essential to have your tourism marketing strategy defined. Your website should be informative and provide guests with helpful information. There are many other ways to gain an advantage over other vacation destinations.

AAERO is a full-service tourism marketing and digital marketing agency that prides itself on creating a seamless client relationship. Our team of experts can handle any online marketing campaign, from social media optimization, YouTube SEO, Google Ads, Retargeting to Search Engine Optimization. 

AAERO specializes in creating website advertisements, press releases, and viral promotions to attract those searching for the perfect place to visit while on vacation.

AAERO was started in 2020 by Sean Michael and brings over 19 years of professional experience in destination, tourism marketing and has grown into one of the most trusted brands in Myrtle Beach. 

Services include website design, brand development, Search Engine Optimization, Public Relations, Online Reputation Management, Crisis Communications, and more.

AAERO strives to create an unforgettable experience for both visitors and clients alike. 

Feeling motivated? Give us a call today at 843-279-4558 

Digital marketing is the promotion of goods or services using digital technology through the internet, email, social networking, mobile devices, or any other digital platform. Unlike traditional marketing strategies like posters, television, and billboards, digital marketing is data-driven. Digital marketing focuses on how information is shared and who reads it.

Digital marketing strategy starts with a user experience, which is also called the brand experience. This includes knowing what the user intends to do in order to get the answer to his or her problem or question. A digital marketing strategy that does not address this basic need can be useless. For instance, if an advertiser places an ad on a website without providing clear intent for the visitor, the visitor will just close the browser window regardless of the offering.

A digital marketing strategy that addresses this user intent first is called personalization. By personalizing the ads, advertisers engage in a more meaningful, strategic way. This kind of targeting can be done through several techniques such as creating in-site surveys, providing customized content, and personalizing interactions between customers and brand representatives.

Another technique is native advertising. Native advertising enables brands to advertise in the native language of the target audience. This is very useful when targeting localized communities because they are more likely to be native speakers or consumers who can understand and execute the messages. An example of a native advertising campaign would be a campaign that includes a Spanish translation of the brand’s ads. This kind of marketing automation allows companies to provide real-world solutions to their audience.

Brands should also create digital campaigns through social media. This is commonly referred to as digital marketing or social media marketing. This tactic is often used by businesses that have established a strong online presence through social networks such as Facebook. Brands that utilize this platform must first determine their target audiences and focus their marketing campaigns accordingly. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Pinterest provide great opportunities for creatives to research the market and find commonalities with customers. They can then build campaigns that appeal to these consumers.

Branding campaigns can also be executed through social media strategy. The idea behind this strategy is to create a virtual conversation with the target audience. Brands can use the discussion to promote new products, establish partnerships, and even announce news regarding their company. These conversations can be beneficial because they lead consumers to the websites of the businesses. However, it is important to ensure that users involved in the conversation are interested in the product or service being promoted. This is where digital marketing can become very effective.

A digital marketing campaign can include inbound and outbound marketing. Inbound digital marketing campaigns include sending press releases, creating a blog, and participating in digital communities such as Facebook’s “Like” and Digg’s “Digg It!” Outbound digital marketing campaigns include creating a press release and distributing it through the mail, email, and social media channels. Both strategies allow the brand to reach its target audience but inbound campaigns tend to have a higher impact because they are more direct.

Brands that rely heavily on digital marketing should consider hiring professionals who specialize in this field. There are digital marketers who will create ads that match the company’s online identity. These professionals can create unique advertisements in all digital channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Moreover, digital marketers understand the importance of keywords and can design ads that are optimized for these keywords. By utilizing digital channels, brands can ensure that their campaigns are noticed and are successful.

The SEO scammers are at it again. This time, they’re tricking unsuspecting website owners into thinking their website is infringing upon the scammer’s trademark, specifically – images. 

Check out this email from Alice Eyman at The Watch Judge.

To the untrained eye, you might be thinking this request looks legit. In many cases, website owners have third parties putting content on their website and might not realize this is a scam designed to get a backlink (SEO credit) from the victim’s website to the scammers. 

Based on a quick backlink report via Ahrefs, it has become apparent how widespread this SEO link-building scam is. 

How do we know it’s a scam?

The first indication that this was a scam was the image creator’s name on Adobe Stock Images was different from Alice’s. Second, The Watch Judge has nothing to do with photography. The Watch Judge is a website that reviews watch products. After the end-user reads the watch review, the product listing from Amazon is presented, resulting in a commission to The Watch Judge should a purchase happen.

Links are a critical component of SEO. In this particular case, the links and content have skyrocketed The Watch Judge to 6,500 unique visitors per month from Google alone. 

We reached out to Amazon and Google for comment. At this time, we have not heard back but will update this post as we learn more. 

Several days ago, search engine optimization practitioners reported manual actions disappearing from Google Search Console accounts.

Google investigating missing manual actions by @rustybrick https://t.co/usokOq61uB pic.twitter.com/H03G9wc1lW

— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) November 19, 2020

Google’s Daniel Waisberg later replied that he was looking into it…

Looking into it…

— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 19, 2020

By Nov 23 the bug appears to be fixed.

Google issues a manual action (penalty) against a website when a human reviewer at Google has determined that a page or pages on a website are not compliant with Google’s webmaster quality guidelines. Google claims that most manual actions address attempts to manipulate their search index.

Over the years, Google has come under fire from the search engine optimization community for putting too much stock in both their human graders and algorithms abilities to decipher the difference between a negative SEO attack or a legitimate attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.

Regardless of your site has been hit with a manual action from your own efforts or from a negative SEO attack – you’re going to need to file a reconsideration request with Google.

Manual actions can happen for a variety of reasons. Earlier in the year we had a client get a manual action for allowing user generated spam through their website’s search function. Simply disallowing the search queries to create a static URL in the robots.txt file fixed the issue and the manual action was dropped within a few short weeks.

Three months ago a prospect came to us after receiving the manual action above:

“Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. These may be the result of buying links that pass PageRank or participating in link schemes…”

– Google

While the first example was pretty straight forward, the second scenario was much more complicated due to a lengthy, and aggressive negative SEO attack. Negative SEO attacks are something Google touts their ability to identify and claim SEOs shouldn’t have to worry about them.

When the Negative SEO case was referred to us we immediately went into action. During our review we found everything from money, branded, random and adult themed anchors to the tune of nearly a million links rolled out over a two year period.

After several weeks of review, we reached out to as many websites as we could to have the links removed, many had already found and removed the links. For the additional links we were unable to review we added to a very lengthy disavow and submitted our reconsideration request on August 17, 2020 which was 98 days ago.

Granted, our first disavow was pretty simple to solve and pre-COVID. The second manual action happened during COVID so we’re assuming Google might be behind from this.

On Tuesday, October 20, 2020, the Justice Department filed suite against Google for violating antitrust laws.

“Today, millions of Americans rely on the Internet and online platforms for their daily lives.  Competition in this industry is vitally important, which is why today’s challenge against Google — the gatekeeper of the Internet — for violating antitrust laws is a monumental case both for the Department of Justice and for the American people,” said Attorney General William Barr. “Since my confirmation, I have prioritized the Department’s review of online market-leading platforms to ensure that our technology industries remain competitive.  This lawsuit strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist.”

Attorney General William Barr

Search Engine Optimizers globally have praised the recent action brought forth by the Department of Justice and use cases like the one above as an example of how Google can ‘turn the lights off’ for a small business almost instantly for any reason at all.