We are often asked "what are you" by potential clients, or "tell us what your company does." It's actually a very simple answer, and a very complex one at the same time. Many people in the industry are convinced that "interactive agency" was dreamed up by some enterprising web development and design firm to escape the perception of being "just another web design company" and actually be treated as a legitimate marketing firm. 

So many traditional advertising agencies are threaten by online and new media marketing firms for a very simple reason. Their advertiser ROI has been diminishing for years, and now clients are actively looking for smarter, more agile, and ultimately more cost effective marketing options. With a down economy, business owners cannot afford to make bad marketing decisions. A failed campaign could cost them hundreds of thousands, or even worse, put them out of business. 

This is not to say that traditional media doesn't work. It absolutely does, and we are big proponents of using mass media as an essential part of any marketing plan. However, without a powerful online and new media presence, it is guaranteed that customers are being lost and maximum return not being gained.

Just think about what you do as a consumer. You see an interesting commercial on TV, you make the decision to learn more, and immediately pull out your phone, laptop, iPad or hop over to your desktop and immediately Google that business or industry category. 

How often have you done exactly that, gone to the company's website, and instantly been turned off by a horrible website, or even worse, not been able to find one?

That has happened to all of us at some point, and we didn't just say "oh well, can't find them" we're now in the market for whatever product or service was advertised. So we go back to Google, which is just a click away, and go to the next company that offers what we're looking for. 

As an advertiser, this means your dollars just bought a competitor a lead....As much as you might like your competition personally, you surely don't want them taking your customers. In our opinion, a great website and search optimization really isn't an option anymore, is a business staple for survival in the new marketplace.

So, back to the point of this post "why build an interactive agency in St Louis"? At Ten Fast Feet Interactive, we feel that many of our peers in the interactive world have taken being "interactive agencies" to such an extreme they are as guilty as our traditional marketing counterparts. It's all online and new media all the time, without actually considering the benefits of integrated marketing campaigns that can get real results. That's what marketing companies are supposed to do. Get results for their clients and boost the bottom line. Not fight over personal fiefdoms and bad mouth the other side. 

St Louis is the perfect blend of size and opportunity. As a major metro, there is enough business to go around and hopefully we can carve out a niche for Ten Fast Feet. There is great opportunity here, as St Louis is not yet over populated with actually interactive agencies and countless wannabes. 

Our promise to clients is simple. If something works for you, we won't tell you to change it just to make more money ourselves. If something isn't a smart move for your particular business, we won't tell you it is just to make more money ourselves. We want you to be successful. If you win, we win. You tell your peers, they choose us to help grow their firms. It's just good business. 

If you want to learn more about how we can help your company grow, give us a call anytime. It's highly likely that we're working late just like you. So pick up the phone and call us!

We are less than one month into active SEO for "st louis web design" and are happy to report a jump from unranked on the first 100 pages of Google to #5 page 9. One of the beautiful things about semantic core optimization in other markets and nationally, is that we get monsterous "tag-a-long" affect when we being directly optimizing new markets. All hail SEO, and all hail St Louis Web Design!

Without a PR4 domain and that core credit, it would take so long to see real results that targeting new markets would not be a smart business growth model via SEO. However, since we know from experience that page 1 top 5 status in a market the size of St Louis, it's a given that business will come and therefore a smart growth plan.

Ten Fast Feet Interactive is on the move in St. Louis! We have successfully secured our first to web design projects just one month after opening our new office, in addition to building a working partnership with a leading St Louis based traditional advertising agency. We are now starting our search optimization efforts for web design st louis and st louis web design.

Our search dominance in the Nashville market enable our expansion, and we intend to follow the same model here. It sometimes amazes us how other professionals in our industry neglect ot secure their position in a market with ongoing SEO, and hopefully our rise through the search ranks here will follow the same trajectory as Nashville. 

To be straight foward about the purpose of this post, we've been stuck at #1 page 2 for "interactive agency" for a couple of weeks now, and we're hoping this post will put us over the edge onto page one. At the same time, this post will also explain a little bit about blogging for SEO credit, different ways it can benefit you, and dispel some of the rumors about it's overall value to your search rankings. Now for an obligatory interactive agency reference.

Many so called "experts" will pump potential clients up on blogging, and how by itself will put you on page one for all sorts of things. While there is some truth to this, specifically for long tail keyword strings, the real money makers are short tail strings like interactive agency, and you just aren't going to get onto page one without a whole host of off-site SEO techniques. 

It's generally easy to get ranked for long tail strings because nobody is actively optimizing for them. Simply put, if less than say 50 searches are being done a month for a particular keyword, then it's normally not worth while to actively optimize. ROI is important, and unless one conversion is worth hundreds or thousands, effort is better spend else where on high volume terms.

This is where blogging can come into play. If you title your post, and write your article with strategic use of the keyword string you want to optimize for, you can boost your on-site search credit while getting ranked for a long tail string. Obviously in this post we are actually targeting a short tail, but we are doing quite a bit of off-site for "interactive agency" and need every bit of competitive edge we can muster. 

An example of this at work would be our post titled "Why hire us for SEO". If you Google that string, you will see us at #1. In the 4 months following that post being indexed at #1, we have received an average of 12 visits a month from that keyword. It's highly targeted to a specific niche, but has only led to one sale, versus one of our sister sites being ranked #5 for "SEO Nashville", and receiving 200+ visits per month. That site has generated 4 new clients in just the last month.

To summarize, blogging can be very important for overall freshness of content on your website, without forcing you to change your core content. If you utilize a dynamic module which pulls in your blog title and intro text onto your homepage (or another page you are actively optimizing) you have a sneaky way to boost your keyword density and title tags with less risk of a keyword stuffing penalty.

If you notice, "interactive agency" was worked in the first paragraph twice, and only three times the rest of this post. After two more posts, this one will no longer be "featured" however the title and intro paragraph will still be pulled into the homepage. We will continue to get credit for those keyword mentions until the post is either deleted, or no longer needed.

All this to say, don't fall into the trap of "all I need to do is blog and I'll rank highly". It's an ancillary piece to a full SEO campaign and while important, is not the "be all, end all" that some try to represent. If you have any questions about search optimization, please don't hesitate to call. We will give you the straight scoop on how it all works, and why you should choose us for your SEO company.