Recently, the corporate consultants and leadership experts at the Riverstone Group interviewed GoEpps president, Michael Utley, about his insights as a leader in the field of online marketing.
Listen to the podcast “Your Leadership Story Podcast: Building A Business While Creating What You Love” at theriversidegroup.com.
Google's new search algorithm, Hummingbird, was launched this month to some concern. Traditionally, Internet users have typed in simple keywords or keyword phrases. For example, while looking for a local residential painting company, someone might have typed in the words “Nashville painting company.” In recent years, however, Internet users have begun to depend on search results for the majority of their questioning; therefore, more complex searches are being generated. Now, that same individual searches for “compare residential painting companies in Nashville, TN.”
Here at GoEpps, we are SEO experts with a knack for cost-saving techniques. In recent blog posts we've covered topics such as popular keywords and valuable content. Now that we’ve established that good SEO is valuable, let’s explore the cost effective ways to get started. Unfortunately, a lot of people have the misconceived idea that they will need to spend a lot of money to achieve good SEO. This is simply not true.
In recent blog posts, we’ve talked about social media, video production and split testing. All of these are tools for combining strategy with action to generate qualified leads.
Earlier this year, GoEpps started making preparations to move from Maryland to Nashville, Tenn. This move was inspired by a number of things and was confirmed by the advantages we knew we’d find in Tennessee. We’re now located in the eclectic and thriving neighborhood of East Nashville, and we’re motivated by the belief that East Nashville is the absolute best place to start a business.
Some words are simply better than others. Determining the best words and phrases for your page titles is tricky but important. It’s arguably the most essential element in determining quality Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is all about two things: it’s all about attracting more traffic and better qualified traffic to the website. This is done by using the words that people are actually using - not just the words that you think they’re using, or even the words that are standard to your industry.
In today’s market, your business absolutely needs to have a social media presence. These channels are crucial for the overall success of your brand; however, social media sites don’t generally drive new sales leads. It’s really difficult to use social media to push something new in front of people who aren’t really looking for something new.
So how can you use social media to generate more sales leads?
GoEpps is all about generating qualified leads for its customers, and one way that we do that is through online videos. After we started working with Wright Manufacturing we approached them with the idea of creating videos for the site. They were hesitant at first because of the misconception that manufacturers only do TV-quality commercials.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes things located on your website and things located outside of your website. This means that your marketing channels are just as important as your website.
We recently surpassed 50,000 views on our YouTube channel for Wright Manufacturing. A lot of our clients still think they should have some sort of giant, special server in their building to host the massive amount of videos they want to post. That’s still a question that I’m getting.
In 1999, Michael Epps Utley acted on an entrepreneurial impulse to create a new company and bought a 500-page book on HTML. Building websites soon grew into a larger mission to serve companies marketing themselves online. As the Web matured and diversified, Michael found that there were opportunities for doing things in a smarter way than the practices inherited from the traditional "Mad Men" advertising industry. And so GoEpps was born, inspired by two early influences in his life, his grandfather Ben T. Epps and father, Lloyd Utley.