Montreal Social Media

Lot of people seems to struggle when it’s time to hire an SEO. In fact, since the profession is not as well organised (in comparison of others) and because the process involves very technical issues, it becomes quite difficult to know exactly where to start in the process of hiring someone responsible of search engine optimization.

Why do you need an SEO?
Based on all the SEO requests that I’m receiving (way more than you would probably imagine) , I can say that while everyone wants to be on the top results of Google, only few have a very specific goal on mind when calling for SEO services. I would say that the identification of your needs would probably be the first logical thing to identify before calling anybody. Please remember that SEO should always be seen as part of a global marketing strategy. So what are you looking for exactly: more traffic? increase online sales? lead generation? getting people subscribe to your newsletter? There are many goals that we can achieve (sometimes more than one) but we still need to know how to measure your future success.

Do I need a consultant or a company?
What type of customer are you? Do you already have a marketing department? Who’s responsible of managing your website? Do you have a budget allowed to SEO? According to your previous answers you can select either a consultant or a company. Besides of the princing, the main differences are that a consultant will focus on SEO issues while companies will sometimes be able to provide a full range of services supporting the SEO effort.

Where do I start my selection of SEO prospects?

I would definitely start based on referrals and then go online. Few months ago I wrote a piece about Who cares about SEO Montreal, the article was an attemp to determine who was targeting that specific term on Google. A little bit later I’ve published another post on the same topic to update the exercise (in french that time). By taking a look at my results, I’ve quickly found out that the front page for SEO Montreal is still owned by the same people. Because I’ve used the 1st page of Google in the previous exercises, I’ll go with Scour.com this time because I like the fact that it merges the results from Google, Yahoo and MSN Live. So here’s the top 10 as of today:

1. Montreal SEO Company | NVI - www.nvisolutions.com
2. Agence de Référencement Montréal SEO Specialist http://cityseo.blogspot.com
3. Montreal Search Engine Optimization Company www.uniseo.com
4. SEO Search Engine Optimization Company SEO Expert www.searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca/
5. Search Engine Watch Forums : profile SEO Montreal http://montrealseo.ca
6. montrealseo.ca http://montrealseo.ca/
7. Gabriel Goldenberg - LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/seomontreal
8. Search Engine Optimization Montreal www.montrealseo.com
9. SEO Internet Marketing Company in Montreal | NVI - www.nvisolutions.com
10. seo montreal www.adviso.ca

Which questions to ask before hiring?
Many great posts has been made on what you should look for before hiring an internet marketing strategist. Please read Questions to Ask an SEO Before Hiring Them and this one from Entrepreneur.com on Hiring an SEO Consultant.

SEO Vendor Considerations (from SES San Jose Pannel How to Choose a Search Vendor)

1) Strong keyword research strategy. How will they determine KW’s you will show up for?
2) Strong copywriting and link building.
3) Optimization plan for organic pages.
4) Measure organic conversion and ROI.
5) Proven results. Ask about failure, success, and referrals.

Where to get further information concerning SEO in Montreal?
list of SEO people in Montreal: (please help me complete the list)
Adviso (blog)
Ressac Média (blog)
K3 Média (blog)
NVI (blog)
Skooiz (blog)
Gabriel Goldenberg (blog)
Uniseo
SEO Expert
Strategic Marketing Montreal (blog)
Onéroque (blog)
Eric Bailllargeon (blog)

As seen today on their website, Bell is taking the Beijing Olympic Games kick-off as an opportunity to launch its new national brand.

It didn’t take very long before a lot of people reacted to Bell’s move: there are already many very interesting comments in the feedback section of this Globe and Mail article. By reading some of these comments, such as ”Bell may be changing it’s names and ads, but if they don’t change their policies, it isn’t going to help them” or ”Changing brands doesn’t mean squat if they can’t improve their service offerings and customer support” or that one:” Improve your service and make the prices more reasonable and only then you can change the names to confuse the people”, the first thing that came up to my mind was this clip making fun of the whole advertising industry.

So you’re not selling the way you used to, maybe it’s time for a bigger logo, what about an extreme make over? According to Rick Seifeddine, Bell’s brand senior vice president, the new visual representation of the brand was an attempt to “really clean things up.” I guess they’ll have to review this whole document (PDF link to their branding guidelines).

Sympatico got killed

So besides the new logo, Bell is getting rid of Bell Express Vu and Sympatico brands to renamed them Bell TV and Bell Internet. It took apparently four marketing agencies to find out these names and to process the upcoming campaign. I have to confess that I feel a bit sad losing Sympatico because even if I’m no Bell fan, I’ve always loved Sympatico. I probably still have 2-3 boxes with old modems that they sent me, each time coming with really nice softwares to install IE when the only thing I really needed was a username/password. I also think (not sure) that they used to send me a monthly magazine back in the mid ‘90 with helpful listings of websites to visit, that was nice from them. I finally remember their partnership with MSN, which was probably one of their best move ever (no Microsoft fan here but I still can recognize that it was smart). So, RIP Sympatico, I can’t wait to see the new Bell Internet ads and logo, any suggestions on the font they should use?