Internet Marketing and Website Promotion

Doug Ausbury - Intrapromote LLC.

September 12, 2008

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Doug Ausbury, CEO of Intrapromote, discusses his experiences with SEO and where it is taking us.How do you develop your skills in this continuously changing environment?

There are several ways I try to keep my skills fresh. I would say the biggest contributor is the actual hands-on, day in and day out, work of directing SEO campaigns for multiple companies. In my opinion, nothing will help you develop and polish your skills more than being in the trenches every single day with clients.

As a co-owner of Intrapromote, one of the things I learned right away was to find the best possible people and then get out of their way. I’m incredibly proud and humbled by the smart, savvy individuals on our team. I’m confident that everyone working at Intrapromote would agree that a major way we all stay fresh is by simply working with each other. There’s a cross-pollination affect that helps us all stay on the cutting edge.

I would also add that while it is definitely true that the world of Search Engine Marketing is constantly changing, I believe that there are some foundational things, especially about Search Engine Optimization, that have not changed that much over the last 10 years. Staying true to some of these core, foundational concepts of best practices SEO has played a significant role in the success of Intrapromote.”


Please provide us with your biography.
Tell us about your background and your role in the company.


Biography – About Doug Ausbury, Co-Founder & CEO, Intrapromote LLC

If there were an award for career path diversity on the road to business ownership, Doug Ausbury would definitely be a top contender.

The laid back Ausbury grins and says, “My parents were entrepreneurs and built a multi-million dollar business while I was in junior high and high school. It may be genetic, but I am one of those people who always knew they would have their own business. It took ten years, but looking back now, I can see how each of those stepping stones – the jobs, the sideline businesses, the exhaustion and frustration -- were part of the necessary fuel burned on Intrapromote’s launch pad. I was blessed in that my eventual business partner, John Lustina, was paying similar dues prior to us teaming up for Intrapromote’s successful launch in July 1999.

Doug’s 20 years of management and marketing experience began in 1988 as General Manager of a Mystery Shopping firm. “Fresh out of college, I was able to step into a significant management role with a small local business and also learn the tenets of providing extraordinary customer service.” In 1990, Doug joined a team of physicians and entrepreneurs to launch a Midwestern chain of men’s health clinics. “This was an excellent stepping stone for me to work with a small group of creative, savvy and smart business people and get a feel for starting a business from scratch. At the same time, I was also able to learn first-hand many of the reasons why most young companies fail.”

It was in 1992 that Doug and his wife Kim, driven to replace Kim\\\\\\\'s income so she could be a stay-at-home mom, launched their first Internet business on the side. During the mid-90’s, Doug was also quickly forging a successful career with the Sisters Of Mercy Health System as a Regional Family Practice Administrator. “There was no doubt I was on the health care management fast track," he remembers, "but every free minute I had, I was online digging and learning ... I knew that the Internet was where I wanted to hang my hat."

As the Internet started to spread its wings, Doug launched another successful online direct sales business, then joined an Internet health portal as Marketing Director, moving on to produce its e-commerce division. He also successfully launched Silver City Media, a web production and consulting firm.

Today, you\\\\\\\'ll find Doug involved in multiple tasks at Intrapromote, from working with major client campaigns to supervising day-to-day operations to interaction with prospective clients. As Intrapromote\\\\\\\'s Co-Founder, his thorough exploration of a site\\\\\\\'s search engine potential and comprehensive proposal system are responsible for attracting many of Intrapromote’s long-term clientele.

Doug holds a B.S. in Marketing Management from Missouri State University and resides near Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, Kim, and their two boys, Grant and Collin.


Where do you see your firm in the next 5 years?

When asked where he sees Intrapromote in the next 5 years, Doug reflects and then replies, “What is most pleasing to me about our first 8 years is our retention rate. I see retention rate from both a client and staff perspective and understand how both are intertwined. Our future is extremely bright as we continue to grow our team and suite of services, add new client partners and continue our relationship with our long-term established clients.”


What are your main services?

* Search Engine Optimization
* Paid Search Management (Pay Per Click)
* Online Press Optimization
* Link Building
* Search Engine Reputation Management
* Comprehensive Site & Competitor Analysis
* On-Site SEO Seminars
* RSS Feed Optimization
* International SEO


According to you, what are the most important questions a potential customer should ask a company before choosing a vendor like you?
“Back in the early days, it was much easier to seek and find a Search Engine Marketing company simply because we were one of just a few in operation. Interestingly enough, many of the questions you should ask a potential SEM partner company today are still the same. We find that most inquiring companies ask more questions about our services than about us and I think that’s a mistake. With all the companies now offering SEM services, the ‘who’ is just as important as the ‘how’.”

Questions About The SEM Company:

1. Tenure: How long have you been in business? How long have you been offering and performing SEO services?
2. Clientele: What types of clients do you currently work with? Can I talk with some of them? Can you show me examples of improved search engine placement and search traffic performance for a site in the same or similar vertical as mine? What is your client retention rate? How many clients do you have with active current campaigns today that have been with you for more than 1, 3 and 5 years?
3. Are you experts in specific industries or vertical niches?
4. Who makes up the team that will work on our SEO campaign and will you provide me with a seasoned, dedicated campaign director that not only directs our campaign, but will also be personally working on it? How often can I consult with my campaign director?
5. If I have questions, what is the process of getting answers and how long should I expect to wait before I hear back from my campaign director?
6. Is my company a good fit to work with your firm?
7. What are the next steps I need to take to get the process started?
8. Do you offer flexible campaigns for small, medium, or large businesses with varying marketing budgets? Do you have a set-up fee?

Questions About the SEM Company’s Services:

9. What do you consider the main goals of the campaign?
10. How does keyword research fit into your SEO process?
11. Will you conduct a full site analysis of our site prior to the campaign to evaluate how search-engine-friendly our site is?
12. Do you offer guaranteed search engine rankings?
13. Changes To Our Site: Will your company be writing all necessary code and content recommendations and who will manage the implementation on our site pages? What happens to the code and content should our company stop using your services? How flexible will you need us to be to make changes to our site to help improve its performance at search engines and increase traffic?
14. When should we expect to see the first results from the campaign?
15. Link Building: Do you have a web site linking methodology for both internal site links and external, third-party links? What is your approach to building links and what are your thoughts on quantity versus quality? Will you submit my site to top tier paid directories? Will the links you gain for my site be one-way or reciprocal links? What happens to the links in the event our companies stop working together? Do you include advanced link building strategies including XML sitemap generation?
16. What are your opinions in regards to “Best Practices” for SEO? Do you utilize “Black Hat” SEO techniques for your clients?
17. Reporting: What type of performance reports will you provide us and how often? Do you report on search engine placements, search traffic, conversions, revenue, etc.? Web site analytics reporting will you provide to us? Will you provide consulting to explain what the data means and how it affects our marketing objectives?
18. Based on the goals of my site, along with SEO, what other SEM services would you recommend?


What makes your firm different from other companies competing in your industry?


Tenure & Experience:
Approaching 10 years in the SEM industry, we’re one of the oldest, pure SEM companies with expertise in many industries and niches.

Client Retention:
Because of our results and consultative style, we have many active clients that have been with us for over 5 years.

Clients:
Our greatest pride is our client list that features brands and companies that have trusted us to help them improve the performance of their web sites at search engines. Ask us what our clients say about us, or better yet, ask them.

Best Practices:
We are 100% commitment to best practices. We will not recommend techniques that risk client domains being penalized by search engines.

Consultative Style:
Our Campaign Directors and staff are highly consultative and good communicators. We are consultants, not entry level staffers running cookie-cutter campaigns. Whether we\\\\\\\'re doing SEO, Link Building, Paid Search, etc., our clients can learn as much as they desire during our campaigns.

Goals:
We understand the real reason for SEO is to get the right people to your site and to increase conversions. We care about the specific goals for your site and stay focused on these goals throughout your campaign.

Linking Strategy:
Our Architecture of Agreement(tm) linking strategy.
In order to improve search engine placements, increase site traffic, and convert more visitors, your web site needs relevant, quality internal and external links.
We refer to our Linking Methodology as building an Architecture of Agreement™ both from within your site and from outside your site. When executed properly, our methodology increases both the internal link relevancy and external link relevancy of your site.

Search Synergy:
We understand the knowledge gained in an SEO campaign empowers conversions and ROI within a Paid Search campaign and vice versa. Search behavior in both campaigns can reflect one another and allow us to react accordingly and immediately by making any necessary adjustments to either campaign.

Flexibility:
We do not force clients into annual contracts.

Team:
Intrapromote does not revolve around one person. When you work with us, you are working with a team of experts in SEO, Link Building, etc.


What do you see as the future of the industry? What will be the challenges and do you expect any drastic changes?

“In many ways, the future of the search marketing industry is no different from its past: For the foreseeable future, we plan to help our clients ensure that their content is visible to interested users, primarily through the conduit of search engines. This is no different from when we started in 1999, and we don\\\\\\\'t see any significant changes on the horizon.

The specifics will change, of course, as they always do. Years ago, we had CMS systems churning out three-variable dynamic strings and search engines that choked on them. Today, engines can consume three variables just fine, but now some complex systems create URLs with 10 or more variables. So we see many of the same things year after year, and all that changes is the scale. With processing power comes great complexity.

With search engines, it\\\\\\\'s very important to separate the real potential of algorithmic and user-interface changes from the news hype that accompanies them. You need only look back a few years to see what I mean. The introduction of paid ads to a SERP meant the end of the industry as we knew it. More recently, Google rolled out personalized search results, which some warned would be cataclysmic for the SEO industry. But clearly they weren\\\\\\\'t; they\\\\\\\'ve barely made a ripple. So while the engines\\\\\\\' dev cycles work at a lightning pace, it\\\\\\\'s balanced by user behavior that\\\\\\\'s a bit more glacial.

The critical issue is that online searching isn\\\\\\\'t going anywhere. In a relatively short time, that behavior has become fixed in Internet society. Our challenge continues to be working with clients with the goal of extracting every bit of industry knowledge they possess and making sure it arrives on the web site. And it needs to be in a format that\\\\\\\'s visible to engines and palatable to users.

Going forward, we see several gradual changes that are likely. First is the continued adoption of SEO by companies at a greater rate. This will make virtually every niche extremely competitive, and companies will be pushed more than ever to generate powerful, consumer-oriented content.

As engines become better at indexing all sorts of media and file formats (and roll them into interfaces as they\\\\\\\'ve done with Ask 3D or Google Universal Search), companies will need guidance on whether to venture into these new media avenues, or whether they should apply their core competencies in more traditional directions. Our job is to analyze the risk and benefits, and help them decide on a balance that focuses on performance but doesn\\\\\\\'t pull them too far out of their comfort zone.”


What are some of the myths in your field?

SEO is done once, then you sit back and enjoy the fruits forever. “Running a successful SEO campaign is not like launching a missile. It\\\\\\\'s more like driving a car. You see you\\\\\\\'re starting to veer to the shoulder, and you compensate. You make turns when necessary. When we explain upfront to a client that during a campaign, we\\\\\\\'re going to work, then observe, then work again if the results aren\\\\\\\'t what we want, most understand it, and it paves the way for a smooth relationship. Often, people think SEO is a two-party vacuum -- the client site and the engine. They don\\\\\\\'t typically realize that their competitors are also working hard, and that every time the client moves up a spot, someone else moves down -- and typically isn\\\\\\\'t too happy about it.”

Flash (or AJAX, or any technique) is universally bad. “Upon starting a campaign, we\\\\\\\'re often greeted by some pretty hostile and defensive IT and design departments. They\\\\\\\'ve read article after article about how a certain technique spells certain SEO death, and they assume we\\\\\\\'re going to preach the same doom-and-gloom sermon and tell them their techniques are forbidden. Certainly, we have our coding preferences, but we\\\\\\\'re not here to dictate look, feel, or overall visual design. Instead, we work very hard to suggest changes to supplement existing site techniques, not replace them. We study all sorts of sites, and we can cite examples of Flash pages that lead their industry with almost no text on the page. So balance is critical. What you lack with one SEO factor you need to make up with others.”

Search engines love blogs. This really isn\\\\\\\'t a myth as much as it is a misapplication of cause and effect. What search engines love is content in its best forms: unique, frequently updated, easy to link to (and from), and easy to access from the root domain. It\\\\\\\'s merely a coincidence that most blogging platforms meet many of these criteria with minimal tweaking. To say that certain content performs better than other content because it\\\\\\\'s on a blog is like saying that certain people have lower blood pressure than other people because they frequently park near the fitness center. This misses the bigger picture. Search engines loved news sites long before blogs became popular, because well optimized news sites have the same characteristics. The difference today is that content platforms enable this type of site much more readily than they did 10 or even 5 years ago.