Building world-class Search Engine Optimization expertise

A new blog to promote its online marketing expertise has been launched by IdeaStar Inc., a Cleveland area full-service Web development company.

The blog, spinfield.com, has two purposes. One is to educate and entertain clients, potential clients and others in the marketplace. The other purpose is to demonstrate how a good blog is run.

“We have compelling content and interesting perspectives on the latest trends in online marketing,” Jim Fisher, IdeaStar president, said. “It’s a good opportunity to engage in a conversation with the marketplace.”

Plenty of hardcore programming involving RSS feeds and interconnectivity to the global blogosphere are included in the site. “The views we present on the Spinfield blog will immediately become part of the global conversation on those subjects,” Jim said. Content is provided by 14 members of IdeaStar. The goal is to post at least two articles, podcasts, or vidcasts per day.

So take a look. Leave comments. Subscribe to the blog. We hope you’ll find something interesting.

After 10 years of flourishing as a web development and marketing firm, we’ve done something seemingly irrational to the majority of our employees and the community at large.  No, we’re not closing our doors.  It’s even more drastic: we’re changing our web address to a three letter domain, www.tkg.com.

Despite working faithfully over the last decade to build our brand, reputation and search engine rankings through our domain, we decided to make the switch because of the simplicity, ease of recognition, and increased branding possibilities of a three letter domain.  Plus, the new domain will eliminate the countless misspellings of the name Karcher.

“We’re thinking of it as a 10^th anniversary present to ourselves,” said Geoff Karcher, TKG president. “We’ve been watching this domain for a long time, and when the opportunity to obtain it came along, it was just too good to pass up, despite the short-term challenges it presents for our search engine optimization team.”

Geoff’s referring to the fact that, by switching to a new domain, we have to rebuild most of our coveted rankings in Google and other search engines.  “This is a major undertaking that will put our skills to the test to maintain all we have established in the last decade, but we can handle it,” he added.

In typical TKG style, however, we’re planning to make this as fun and educational as possible.  Over the next few months, we’ll be documenting the impact of the domain change on a new blog located at www.tkg.com/tkgseoblog.  We hope the blog will become the most comprehensive case study available on the topic and serve as a guide to businesses who may be considering a similar move.

The old domain, www.thekarchergroup.com, will continue to function, redirecting visitors to www.tkg.com.

Well since no one else had grabbed the horse by the reigns I was playing around in LinkedIn today and decided that it was high time that ClevelandSEO had it’s own Professional Group in that social space. Since LinkedIn is a big professional space anyways it only makes sense that we should be able to wear our badges with pride, and now you can.

If you have an account with LinkedIn and are a member of Cleveland SEO, you are officially invited to Join the Cleveland SEO group there. Doing so will associate you with other members of Cleveland SEO as well as place the handy Cleveland SEO logo in your Group and Affiliations section of your profile.

Now, LinkedIn requires approval for members into the group and in order to make this process as smooth as possible, I have taken everyone from the mailing list and added that name and email address into a pre-approved list for the group. If you’re lucky enough to have your LinkedIn account and your Cleveland SEO account contain the same information, all you need to do is join the group and you should be a pre-approved member.

If you’re not quite that lucky, no fear, just join the group anyways and you will then be manually approved.
The easiest way to join the group is to view someone’s profile who is already in the group. In this instance, I’ll use myself as a guinea pig…

1. Go to the Greg Habermann LinkedIn Profile.
2. At the bottom you’ll see my Groups. Click on the ClevelandSEO logo
3. You will see a brief description and a chance to join the Group. Click Join!

That’s it! If you have any questions or concerns, let me know and I’ll do my best to take care of them.

SageRock.com is hiring a full-time web marketing associate to assist our Paid Media and SEO specialists in overall web marketing campaigns for clients. Responsibilities include market research, strategy planning, html and CSS code modification, Paid Search Account setup, ROI management, and more.

Job Responsibilities:

Assist Paid Media and SEO specialists with:

o Competition, phrase, market research
o Management of day-to-day client relationships
o Operating management tools to maintain ROI goals
o Writing / Designing ads and landing pages
o Modifying websites for SEO
o Monitoring, measuring, and reporting metrics to clients
o Developing and managing Social Media promotions

Skills and Experience:

o Bachelor’s degree in applicable field
o Proficiency with HTML, Excel, and CSS
o Strong organizational and analytical skills, plus ability to manage simultaneous projects and demanding deadlines

Excellent benefits package includes generous vacation; flex time; medical, dental and disability insurance; simple IRA matching. Come work in a collaborative, enriching environment in an exciting, fast-paced industry.

Please contact Jenilee with resume and cover letter at: jenilee@sagerock.com

Check out what it’s like to work at SageRock

The Karcher Group is excited to hold our next “Search Engine Marketing Made Simple” seminar & workshop at the University of Akron on Friday, April 25th. 

Held in the brand new, state-of-the-art (and very cool) Taylor Institute for Direct Marketing, this seminar will be interactive, informative and fun!  We love lots of discussion and questions from the audience. We limit the SEO class size to 30 people so that you can get one-on-one instruction.  And, we feed you lunch.

You’ll leave with a list of real-world, actionable strategies you can start working on right away.

• Get one-on-one time in a small group setting
• Get advice from recognized SEO industry experts
• Take home actionable ideas you can implement right away
• Learn SEO basics without breaking the bank
• Have your site evaluated during our optional workshop at the end of the day

Drop by The Karcher Group to get all the details.  Save an extra $50 as a Cleveland SEO reader with the discount code “seminar1″.

Whether you’ve committed yourself to handle SEO internally or plan to outsource to a qualified SEO services firm, you’ll want to become familiar with the necessities of SEO copywriting. 

Without a good SEO copywriting strategy, most sites fail in their quest for higher search engine rankings.

To help with the process, Angela Charles, president of Cleveland SEO member company Pilot Fish in Akron, Ohio, has developed a comprehensive list of SEO copywriting tips.