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Below is our recent interview with Mike Hanbery, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Webolutions:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Webolutions?
A: We help visionary businesses to thrive through innovative and creative marketing strategies. We are a Google Partner with over 24 years of website and digital marketing experience and thousands of website launches under our belt. It’s simply not possible to find anyone who has been doing this longer, or with ROI tracking systems providing such clear and constant visibility to growing your bottom line.
Q: FitSmallBusiness named Webolutions a Top SEO Consulting Firms for 2019. What makes you a top SEO firm?
A: Thanks for mentioning that. Yes, we were also named the Top SEO Company in the US last year by 10SEOs, and we’ve been recognized as an SEO Leader by the Internet Marketing Association.
In our business, it’s easier to sell a website, and then talk about SEO strategies. This minimizes the upfront education and the costs behind the website-build project. Unfortunately, this approach also vastly reduces a client’s opportunity to successfully have their website rank well on the search engines every day thereafter. We reverse-engineer the SEO opportunity directly into the project, so your website is built, in part, around a data-driven SEO strategy.
We don’t believe in long-term contracts and you shouldn’t either. Our clients get ROI-focused accounting of their program’s performance on regular, usually monthly, calls with their in-house SEO expert. All programs are 100% adjustable month-to-month.
Our client relationships last because they are built on results, transparency and systems that put us on the same side of the table.
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Q: What makes you better?
A: First, our company culture. We take a values-driven approach to recruitment and leadership development. Compared to typical agencies, our highs and lows are less extreme because we place high value on our culture and on hiring and keeping people who share our commitment to accountability and client success. You win; we win.
Second, we listen. All our systems — brand strategy development, for content marketing, our 83-point checklist for website creation, you name it — are interactive and crafted to each of our clients’ unique business models, budgets, internal capabilities, market opportunities, etc. You are not a template. You don’t fit into a pre-made box. You own your brand. Some agencies insist on control. It’s your company, your brand and your results. You’re in charge. We’re on your team to bring out your very best.
Third, everything we do — from every recommendation we make, to every task we perform — is focused on performance and focused on your business goals. When we recommend a budget shift, a strategy adjustment or investment in a new tool, it’s because the data points to positive ROI.
Finally — although there’s more — we don’t have to sell you a particular suite of services. For example, if you go to an SEO company and ask them if you need SEO, they only have one answer, right? For us, we might tell you that based on the search volume or competition for relevant terms, you’ll be upside down on an investment in an SEO program, in which case we can still be successful together — we just need to fire different arrows out of our quiver.
Q: What kinds of services do you provide to your clients?
A: Let’s see…we’ve talked about brand strategy, website design and web development, SEO and ROI tracking. We’ve mentioned that we’re a Google Partner, which as you probably know means we’re experts in digital advertising. We help with content development, content marketing, social media and graphic design, including logo development. We also round out the marketing and sales efforts with certified in-house experts in CRM and marketing automation.
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So, we build your website to be positioned optimally on organic search engine returns and to convert website visitors to leads, and then we integrate systems to maximize your prospect’s velocity through your sales funnel and your close rate. For e-commerce websites, that becomes ease of purchase. Either way, establishing that new relationship and making that first sale is the hardest thing to do in business, so we help you maximize the value of that relationship, such as through retention and referral.
Q: How is online marketing changing?
A: We are implementing strategies to help our clients take advantage of voice search and exploring ROI-centric systems for incorporating AI in your website. Contextual avenues are providing better value for digital advertisers. We are increasingly successful with employing technical SEO solutions like schema, aka microdata.
Google will increasingly alter the results it presents to Internet users to be more like how things work in real life. For example, being good at “white hat” SEO is very much like being a good tax accountant. You operate within the rules, and frequently walk on the margins — maybe even pound or stomp on them — to minimize your risk and maximize your return. So, there are hundreds of little things you do to market your website to this faceless digital algorithmic equation. But in the human world, nothing works like that. Referrals from your neighbors are based on personal experiences and what they know about you. Google took big strides in this several years ago when they effectively killed the link building business and forced you to earn your placements through quality content, good reviews and such. That game continues to evolve, and it always will.
We’ll also continue to see shifts from communications via Internet social media to mobile apps. If you’re looking for a social network on which to keep an eye, I suggest NextDoor.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Webolutions has always focused on the future of the website design and development industry. This is imperative to ensure we are guiding our clients toward the best ideas and solutions in Web Design and Web Development.
One area we are actively interested in is mobile. Every mobile user has a direct GPS connection. Based on this information, their online experience can be tailored specifically for them. As systems are developed to utilize this information, Webolutions will continue to see localization playing a larger role in web development and the associated programming.
In addition to mobile engagement, we’ve also taken an active look at voice search. It’s estimated that by 2020, up to 50% of all web searches will be voice search We are already building tools to help take advantage of this fundamental consumer behavioral shift.
As we continue to share more of our personal information, and the online experience becomes more personalized though connected systems, a more personalized website experience will become expected. Web design and development of business websites will need to incorporate and utilize this information to mirror this type of highly personal interaction.
What’s also next for Webolutions’ future? Augmented reality! In the blended world of reality and instant information via virtual screens or information located wherever the visitor may choose, the way we interact with website will change completely. Imagine wearing a lightweight device and motioning with your hand to pull up a screen anywhere you choose and then using gestures and your voice to find information. We’re excited to see how this will play out and how people will interact with websites.
Watching all these trends and seeing how this story unfolds will be truly interesting.
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