Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Why Hall Web Services?
- What is SEO?
- What is Internet Marketing?
- Can You Review My Site for FREE Before I Decide?
- Can I Update My Site Myself to Save Money?
- How Are My Search Results & Page Rankings Reported?
- How Much Do Your Services Cost?
- I Just Had My Site Redesigned and It looks Great...So Why Do I Need Your Services?
- I Want Better Search Rankings but Can't Afford to Redesign My Site!
- Why Do My Page Rankings Change?
- I sell rare fish. Can you make me #1 for fish in Google?
- How Do we Get Started?
Why Hall Web Services?
Just about anyone can make you a website. What make Hall is different is that we partner with your business to make you successful.
What also makes us different is that we offer all of the services your website needs, such as slick web design, advanced application development, business-grade web hosting, and comprehensive internet marketing.
We maintain a tight staff-client ratio to ensure that you'll have the personal support you need when you need it, whether that's talking about how to grow your business online, analyzing your ongoing marketing campaigns or figuring out what's up with your email.
Our approach seems to work, as we have a 7-year client retention rate of 96%, were recently awarded a four-star Sage Software Preferred Vendor rating based on customer feedback and received a 85% Net Promoter score.
What is SEO?
SEO - or "Search Engine Optimization" - is the process of building your site so that it's easy to understand by people and search engines. While it varies from one firm to another, when a reputable firm performs "SEO" on your site, they implement a set of industry-accepted best practices that dictates how website code is written & site files structured.
SEO is often mistaken as being a catchall for web marketing. Surely once your site has "SEO," you'll be #1 in Google, right? Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that. SEO just makes your content as transparent as possible, you still need to have good content, strong inbound links and sufficent user traffic for your site to get Google's attention.
Luckily, success in organic search is one of our areas of expertise and we have an excellent track record for our customers.
What is Internet Marketing?
As mentioned above, SEO is only the beginning of "internet marketing." Internet marketing, or sometimes "Search Engine Marketing" (SEM) refers to everything done on behalf of your website(s) and business online.
A comprehensive internet marketing strategy includes diverse media channels, strategies, and efforts based on the goals of your website, the size of your business, and the demographic of your customers. Organic search is nearly always important, and a broad internet marketing campaign might include paid search advertising, social media marketing, link building, online PR, video marketing and frequent additions of good quality content.
With so much going on (and everything changing as much as it does), it's important to make sure you track results accurately so that you can make informed decisions about what to do next. We integrate analysis and reporting into every campaign we manage, and take it to the next level with our laser-targeted Actionable Analytics program.
Can You Review My Site for FREE Before I Decide?
Of course you can!
In fact, this is usually the first step -- we take a look at your website and give it our critique, while learning from you what you're trying to achieve and our suggestions on how we can work together to do it.
You can take a free site analysis now.
Can I Update My Site Myself to Save Money?
Well, it's very much your right to update your website yourself. Will you save money? Well, that depends on how you look at things.
Most of our clients don't know what semantic markup, META data, ASP or XML are, and don't really care to. They want a website that looks good and helps build their business, and want us to do our jobs to make sure that happens.
The idea that you'll save money by updating your own site is a false economy. First off, we make maintenance as easy as possible on you by guaranteeing 48 hours or free on most updates and real-time billing. Your update takes ten minutes, you're billed ten minutes. No hidden charges, ever.
While industry-standard software like Adobe Dreamweaver might make you think edits to your site are easy, you might not realize the incredible importance of every line on code on your website, and how altering a few of the wrong words can help to demolish the search rankings we've fought so far to get. You've got MS Word -- does that mean you're writing the next bestseller?
We do understand that certain things you'd like to frequently manage without professional assistance, and that's why we build powerful web content management software that allows you to add news, event dates, blog entries and more without adversely affecting your organic search marketing strategy.
As your partner to web success, we want to ensure that you're successful, and that we avoid throwing you into water over you're head. By managing your site professionally and using our content management software to its fullest, you'll ensure that your site continues to eclipse the competition month after month.
How Are My Search Results and Page Rankings Reported?
This is one of the characteristics of Hall that differentuates us from other SEO firms. As part of our partnership with our clients we provide in depth reporting to clients to show how their site stands on a quarterly basis. From that data we can adjust our strategy accordingly to better position your site every few months which is a great way to keep your rankings high with new content. Remember, the internet is ever changing and there are many factors out there that can affect your online profile. This is just one of the reasons clients partner with us and trust us to manage their sites long term so they don;t have to. While you concentrate on your own business tasks we'll concentrate on how your site is ranking and make recommendations to keep the site on course. Just part of the Hall total care package.
How Much Do Your Services Cost?
We do not offer cookie-cutter packages or promise "one size fits all" solutions. We believe that each client is unique as is their offerings & website goals thus we work closely with them to craft a method that is customized to meet their expectations within a budget. It is our policy to work with our clients to develop the most cost effective strategy possible. We never outsource which allows us 100% control over the project which eliminates any monetary surprises. There will never be hidden fees. If for any reason the project requires additional maintenance not outlined in our original proposal we will communicate any potential billing fees up front for approval before we proceed. Please take advantage of our FREE Site Analysis to get things started. All our services are 100% measurable so you are always able to justify your costs based on bottom line results.
I Just Had My Site Redesigned and It looks Great...So Why Do I Need Your Services?
Good question. After all, if a site looks good, it's practically ensured to be successful, right?
...Sorry.
Ask yourself these questions --
- Does my designer understand search engine spiders, indexing patterns and SEO best practices?
- Did my designer learn about me as a company, and how I am alike and different from competing businesses, before taking on the project?
- Do I feel comfortable that my designer will help me keep my site up to date, and give me recommendations on how to make the site better as the web changes?
- Will my designer be accountable six months from now if my site isn't successful?
If you had trouble answering any of these questions, or troubling answers, give us a call. 1-877-HALL-WEB.
I Want Better Search Rankings but Can't Afford to Redesign My Site!
But can you afford not to?
Businesses, especially small businesses, can fall into a dangerous trap of thinking that an investment in the web is only justified based on past experience. This preservationalist thinking is usually good for your bottom line, but not for a dynamic and ever-evolving medium with endless opportunity for growth.
Web marketing is also the most affordable form of marketing out there, based on market saturation, effectiveness of message and cold, hard stats. There's quite simply no better way to get your name out there than to get on the web, and we have yet to meet someone who didn't find their business profoundly transformed by a successful web campaign.
Think of it this way -- a conservative example says that a thousand people are out there looking for your product -- 2/3 of them online. Of those 600-odd people, they will search Google first, and click on one entry in the top ten. Say only 10% ultimately get to your site, and 10% of them convert into customers (again, very conservative). That's six new customers.
Now what if it's actually ten thousand people that are looking for your product, and what if we could increase that 10% clickthrough to just 15%, and that 10% we manage to double to 20%?
...It doesn't take much for the web to make a MASSIVE impact on your business, and the best way to get there is to start today.
Why Do My Page Rankings Change?
Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that "You can never step into same river twice." The web's kind of the same way.
Search engines are built to show the newest and most relevant information. That's it. The fundamental philosophy behind the web is that there is a continuous current of new information and that the most valuable information is that which is frequently visited, fresh, and talked about by other people.
For years you could almost effortlessly be #1 for any given keyword; nowadays, results for keywords, especially competitive ones, can change daily. Blogs are indexed in a matter of minutes and Google updates its algorithm more than once a week.
What this all means is that you shouldn't be surprised if your rankings change -- you should be more surprised if they don't. But with a concrete, comprehensive internet marketing plan at your back, they should continue to change for the better.
I sell rare fish. Can you make me #1 for fish in Google?
Well... there are a lot of fish in the sea :-).
Seriously, though, it's generally no advantage to your business to be #1 for keywords that are very vague, and putting all of your effort in getting there will drain you dry and leave you little to show for it.
The reason is that people search for "fish" are probably not interested in what you're selling. They could be children writing book reports, foreign language speakers learning about important fauna, or even slightly-confused jam band enthusiasts.
What's probably more likely to net your business some, er, "catch," is to be there for keywords that customers use to pre-qualify themselves. "Exotic fish supplies," "rare peruvian fish, "tropical fish breeder" are all MUCH better choices.
How Do we Get Started?
Our process is simple and effective. You can call us directly (1-877-425-5932) or take a moment to fill out out our FREE site analysis inquiry.
Our response is immediate - we'll analyze your site and make thoughtful recommendations based on our thorough review and send you our comments. A follow up meeting will get us moving as we talk to you further about your business, get to know your product or service offerings and identify your immediate competitors.
Our dedicated team will work with you through each phase so you will always be involved without ever being overwhelmed. We'll help develop a strategic plan customized for your business' goals on the webs and implement the changes you need to achieve success.
We guarantee all of our work.
If you're ready to talk about using the internet to generate leads, sell products or automate your sales process, then it's time to talk to Hall.
What's the next step? Start with a FREE site analysis to see how your site holds up!
Still thinking? Read some of our client success stories to learn about the real results our search-driven web development delivers for our clients.
