Michael Bierut

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I was talking recently with a group of graphic designers. The subject was good work: not doing it, but how to get it accepted. Designers like to complain. We cast ourselves as embattled defenders of good taste and inventive ideas; arrayed against us are armies of insensitive clients, determined to thwart us, whose pigheadedness can only be defeated by dedication, cunning and guile.

We traded war stories for a while, but one seasoned designer in our midst was silent. We finally asked him what tricks he used to get good work done. “Well, I guess I’m lazy,” he said. “I just make sure all my clients are smart people with unique messages and good products. The rest is easy.”

The rest is easy. Looking back at the design work that led to Barack Obama’s historic victory in November 2008, I wonder if that was the trick. Although much has been made — rightly so — of the ingenious and adaptable “O” logo developed by Sol Sender’s team, Obama himself was his own best logo. Young, African-American, charismatic, change wasn’t just a message, it was the candidate’s very embodiment. When it was all said and done, Barack Obama was a smart guy with a unique message and a good product. And what designer wouldn’t wish for that in a client?

Selling change isn’t easy in a world that tends to prefer the comfort of the familiar. We all know what a revolution looks like: handmade signs, scrawled graffiti, the voice of the people. But Obama’s campaign was the opposite. Reportedly, the candidate resisted at first. “He did not initially like the campaign’s blue and white logo — intended to appear like a horizon, symbolizing hope and opportunity — saying he found it too polished and corporate,” reported the New York Times. But David Axelrod and his team prevailed. They must have known that the revolution, when it finally came, would have to be wrapped up in the most comprehensive corporate identity program the 21st century has yet seen. And it worked, as Designing Obama, the new book from Scott Thomas, Design Director of New Media for Obama for America, reveals.

Like every other graphic designer I know, I watched the live images of campaign rallies from Toledo to Topeka to Tallahassee with a growing feeling of awe. Obama’s oratorical skills were one thing. But the awe-inspiring part was the way all of the signs were faithfully, and beautifully, set in Hoefler and Frere-Jones’s typeface Gotham. “Trust me,” I told Newsweek back in February 2008. “I’ve done graphics for events — and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, ‘Oh, we ran out of signs, let’s do a batch in Arial.’” But it isn’t just strict standards and constant police work that keeps an organization on brand. It’s the mutual desire for everyone to have every part of the effort look like The Real Thing. At the height of the campaign, my daughter asked me if I could design a flyer for a friend’s Obama benefit party at a little bar in Hoboken, New Jersey. We took the text and reset it in Gotham, downloaded the O logo, and put it together in minutes. “Wow,” my daughter said. “It looks like Obama’s actually going to be there!” Exactly.

The same thing was happening all over the country. In a world where access to digital media and social networks is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, Obama 08 became the first Open Source political campaign. Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster — an icon that’s destined, if you ask me, to occupy the 2008 slot of any historical timeline drawn up a hundred years from now — sits at the top of an astonishingly vast collection of posters, websites, buttons, You Tube videos, and even pumpkins, some generated by professionals, some by ordinary citizens, all of whom motivated by the urge to create a sense that their candidate was actually going to be there.

Political operatives will study this campaign and its design program for years, trying to unlock its secrets. Many will copy it. But few will capture its magic. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? A good logo, consistent typography, get everyone to join in. They’ll have all the ingredients in place except the hardest one: the client. You need a smart person with a unique message and a good product. Then, like the fellow said, the rest is easy.

Direct Mail / Printing

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Domain | Web Hosting | SEO

Heavy Guerrilla offers complete web hosting, domain name, and search engine optimization products.

Internet Advertising

Google AdWords & Yahoo Search – We will work with you to create and manage a campaign that drives relevant, motivated prospects.

LocalAdLink – Local Web Advertising The most affordable way to be seen on the internet. LocalAdLink pushes your website out to all the major search engines, and social media sites for your local area.

Email Marketing

Constant Contact – The most affordable way to manage your email marketing. Send out preformatted marketing messages to your email database with one click. Contact our office and we’ll get you set up!

Did you know that if you don’t have a clearly defined, written marketing plan… you are wasting money?

For the most part your business runs very well.  You attract clients and provide a product or service as promised.  What you may not know is that your business as well as any company must have a well defined, written marketing plan.  Without one, you are constantly searching for the “marketing gimmick of the month”.  This not only confuses your target market, but also wastes an enormous amount of money.  I see this approach every single day, but the good news is that your competition is probably utilizing this method also.  Now’s your chance to capitalize on their weakness.

Maybe it seems like too much work, but our experience tells us that your marketing plan (foundation) should be what drives everything you do going forward.
A company or new product launch without a marketing plan and associated strategy is like building a house with no foundation.  Sure, you could frame the wooden structure directly on dirt, but throughout the entire building process you will be constantly trying and guessing how to make everything level and square.  Build a strong, level foundation and the rest of the process is easy.

Marketing is very much the same way.  Almost 80% of all businesses do not have a marketing plan which is the solid, level foundation from which to build your business.  They know they need to generate customers, but yet they continually try different strategies, different advertising methods, public relations, etc. etc.  Each week they try something different, each week their marketing efforts have a different message.  Their advertising doesn’t follow tried and true graphic design layouts.  They have their brother-in-law’s kid slap together a web site.  Their web site looks like a 2nd grader put it together… their print ads looking nothing like their web site, their business cards or anything else they have.  Oh sure, they are spending lots of money but they are not getting results.  No consistency in look, message, or product offering.  Most importantly, they have no idea who their ideal client is, and/or what to say if they did know who it was.

The companies that DO have a marketing plan?  The companies that DO know who their “Ideal Client” is?  Well you know who those companies are.  They are the ones that typically “rule-the-roost”!  They are the companies that everyone wants to work for and many times have secured the “lions-share” of the market that you compete in.

Tell your advertising salesperson “Thanks, but no thanks”!

You as well as most companies are bombarded by advertising sales people… right?  Everything from promotional products like pens, key-fobs and calendars to yellow page ads, newspaper ads, and direct-mail.  Lately there is a new breed of salespeople promising you first page listings on Google, Yahoo, and BING.  Ask yourself, “If I do purchase advertising from one of these vendors, What am I going to say in the ad?”  Most likely, the ad salesperson will come up with some slick slogan, headline, or some ad copy they put together and rush it to press so they can get their commission.  What do they know about your business?  What is your target market?  What is your remarkable difference that will compel new customers to flock to your front door?  If any advertising salesperson doesn’t ask you up front, “Do you have a marketing plan & strategy?”, then they are probably only interested in making a commission.  Never put the “Cart Before the Horse”!  And never buy advertising without your road map, your foundation, your marketing plan.

Our fee typically pays for itself.

Heavy Guerrilla not only brings value to your entire company, we typically pay for our services in the first 12 months.  How you may ask?  We are one of the Northwest’s few true marketing and advertising agencies.  We get at the root of your marketing problems and work with you to generate real, foundational strategies that not only have longevity, but truly differentiate your company from the competition!  We’re not driven to sell you advertising just to make a commission, we’re driven by ROI.

While the underlying foundation of our strategies utilize long held, tried and true marketing methods, we also incorporate unconventional tactics to drive new sales, create excitement, and manage your entire marketing process.

Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing (SEO / SEM)

When people hear about online marketing, they often think of two of the more popular methods that a company can use to enhance its visibility on the Web: organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.  Organic search engine optimization campaigns offer several distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising campaigns, as many recent studies have shown. What follows is a brief listing of some of the findings.

Propensity to Click

Study after study indicates people are less likely to click on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. For example, one study found that search users are up to six times more likely to click on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results, while an eye tracking study showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results. Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users click on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings.  And a 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and 78 percent of all respondents claim that they found the information they we searching for through sponsored links just 40 percent of the time.

Trust

Studies are beginning to indicate that the trust level for organic results is much higher than that of paid results, and that paid results are looked upon as a nuisance by some searchers. One study found that only 14 percent of searchers trust paid listings, and 29 percent report being “annoyed” by them.  Another study found that 66 percent of customers distrust paid ads.  Clearly, it’s not generally a good idea to upset potential customers before they even click on your link.

In an ideal world, you would use both SEO and Pay-Per-Click advertising strategically to maximize your site’s profile. However, budgetary constraints often make this impossible, and trying to do both on a limited budget or with minimal resources can result in neither campaign producing ideal results. In this case, it’s usually better to focus on one or the other. But which is best for you?

Pay-Per-Click Costs Rising

Pay-per-click costs are rising steadily. Between October 2004 and December 2005, average keyword prices rose from around $25 to just under $55.  And the cost of keywords can increase by as much as 100 percent during the holiday season.  These costs aren’t going unnoticed either; one study of problems experienced by U.S. companies found that 57 percent of respondents felt that their desired keywords were “too expensive,” while 51 percent expressed concern that they are overpaying for certain keywords.  On the other hand, when you outsource to an organic search engine optimization firm, your costs will likely remain more stable than the prices for pay-per-click advertising.

This document will also give you insight into our SEO / SEM strategies which have helped many websites to receive excellent rankings in organic search engines.  If at any point you have questions, please feel free to contact our SEO manager through email or IM mentioned below.

Contact:  Jerry Suhrstedt

Email:      jerrys@heavygu.com

About Us

We are a professionally managed, full-service, marketing and advertising agency located in Olympia, Washington.  One of our specialties is the field of Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing.  Our team is comprised of a national based team of 50 full time employees working on various SEO and SEM Projects serving right now more than 100 sites on the internet.

At Heavy Guerrilla we believe the most effective way of offering the some of the highest quality work in the search engine optimization industry is to keep up with the latest technological developments. We are a fluid and dynamic company that keeps abreast of current trends in order to remain one step ahead of the competition and to give our clients a continued reason to choose us to manage their Search Engine Optimization and Marketing. We learn from developing trends and assess their potential to help our customers.

SEO Process Flow

Below are the details of our SEO process & strategy:

On Page Optimization

• Before beginning SEO work, we measure how your site is currently performing. This phase helps us to understand strength and weakness of your site.
• Key phrase research and analysis – A Key Phrase is a combination of keywords that most appropriately define your product offerings and/or your area of operations. One of the most crucial steps in Search Engine Optimization is the process of Key Phrase Identification. We carry out a deep analysis of your products and offerings and then sort out the most appropriate key phrases. We consult with you and combine your ideas with current research in order to come up with a list of the most effective Key Phrases for your products. Then our SEO experts identify and finalize a set of target key phrases for your site’s search engine optimization.
• Target Pages – As with keywords, it is important to select the proper page within your site to be targeted for each keyword. After your approval of the suggested keywords, we analyze and find the most important pages of your site that we should target for optimizing for each keyword.
• Analytics Setup – Before making any changes in the website, we setup google analytics so that we can measure the results after completion of SEO work.
• Comparative Analysis – Competitors & Client Website – We don’t work without benchmarking. Our SEO experts analyze the top competitors of your site and compare it with all the aspects with your site. Here we check the various server related parameters like header status etc… along with the various website parameters like Number of indexed pages, Link Popularity, etc.
• Web Pages Analysis – Here we check all-important parameters of important pages of your website like site architecture & layout, Title tags, images, code to text ratio etc… This gives us the current standing of your site. We check all these figures throughout implementation of SEO and keep close watch on it.
• Meta tags & Header tags Optimization – After in-depth analysis of shortlisted keywords, results of comparative analysis & Web pages analysis we prepare the optimized title tag, description tag, keywords tag & header tags ( H1, H2 and H3) for all important pages of the site. A report is sent to you for confirmation.
• Content Creation (If Required) – “Content is the king” . Search engines like good and unique content in the website. Our copywriting team will analyze all important pages of your website to check if any page needs correction/addition/deletion in the text. If content changes are indicated, we will send you a report containing suggested changes.

SEO Implementation

After your approval of our above reports, we start implementing it on your website. It includes content optimization, title tag optimization, meta tags optimization, image optimization etc. If your website is static, we first implement it in dummy pages, send it to you, and after your approval we make the page live. If your site is dynamic, we make changes on the live site. It includes but is not limited to:

• Implementing Architectural changes if required
• Correcting the findings of comparative analysis
• Optimization of title tags, header tags, and other meta tags of important pages
• Optimizing internal linking structure
• Image optimization
• Content optimization according to finding of analysis
• Analysis & optimization of h1, h2, bold, a, table, alt etc.. tags as per meta tags optimization report
• Optimizing JavaScript and CSS codes
• Adjusting Code to Text Ratio as per the finding of analysis
• W3c Validation
• Off Page Optimization
• Off-page optimization (off-page SEO) are strategies for search engine optimization that are done off the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search engines for target keywords related to the page content. It includes:
• One Way Inbound Links – In bound links are one of the most important factors that guide your ranking. The more inbound links, the better your chance of getting ranked. We build one way links to your site with other related websites.
• Directory Submission – Here we submit your site various directories available on the net. These are the good source of getting inbound links.
• Submission to Dmoz Directory – DMOZ is the most reputed human-edited directory on web. They have very strict criteria for inclusion. We optimize the title & description of your site especially for DMOZ & submit it manually.

Social Media Optimization

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities, and community websites like digg.com, del.ico.us etc… Primarily, SMO focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO. It includes:

• Blog Setup – Search engine likes content and having a blog in the website is the best way to provide unique content to search engines. We set up a wordpress blog to your website and add articles written by our copywriters. This blog is also use for link baiting – an unique link building technique.
• Article Submissions to Directories – We create & optimize content rich articles of about 300 to 500 words & submit it to reputed article directories available on the net. These articles are submitted with 2-3 links to your website in the authors box. Article submissions not only give you one way links but also the visitors.
• Submission to Social Book Marking websites – Social bookmarking is one of the latest powerful SEO tools to promote your website. We submit your website to various high traffic community websites like digg.com, delicious.com, orkut.com etc. It not only helps in getting you better ranked in search engines, but also exposes your website to thousands of community members visiting these websites.
• Link Baiting – Link baiting means encouraging others to link to you. Legitimate linking brings you quality traffic. Here we create an unique blog post ( or you provide the content) related to your service or product and submit it to various bookmarking websites. It not only helps in getting you better ranked in search engines, but also exposes your blog posts to thousands of potential customers visiting these websites.
• Squidoo Lense creation & bookmarking. Squidoo.com is a reputed website where you can create your own page with link to your website (same as blog) called a lens (ex: http://www.squidoo.com/forex-currency-trading). This lens is then submitted to various high traffic social bookmarking websites. Squidoo lens’ helps to generate sales and huge traffic.

Suggested Service Details

• Number of targeted keywords 25 (15 Primary Keywords and 10 Secondary Keywords)
• Services: ON Page Optimization
• Keyword research and Analysis
• Doc type Analysis
• Optimization of title tags of all important pages
• Optimization of other meta tags (Description etc…)
• Optimization of header tags H1, H2, and H3
• Analysis of bold tag
• Optimizing JavaScript and CSS codes
• Optimization of non index able attributes like Frames
• Optimizing HTML Source Code
• Image optimization
• Hyperlink Optimization
• Optimizing internal linking structure (Navigation)
• Optimization of external Links
• Broken links analysis & correction
• W3c Validation ( for home page)*
• Creation & Optimization of HTML Site Map
• Creation, Optimization & Submission of Yahoo (TEXT) Site Map
• Creation, Optimization & Submission of Google (XML) Site Map
• Website architectural correction (if required)
• Content Optimization ( if required)
• Canonicalization error correction
• Blog Setup (Separately on WordPress.com)*
• Google Analytics Setup

OFF Page Optimization

• Link Building – 65 Nos.
• Directory Submissions ( including DMOZ.org) – 75 Nos.
• Search Engine Submissions – 100 Nos.
• Social Media Optimization
• Article Submission to Directories ( 3 FREE optimized articles) – 75 Nos.
• Submission to Social Book Marking websites – 75 Nos.
• Setting up Optimized BLOG(1 FREE blog post) * – 1 Nos.
• Link Baiting* – 75 Nos.
• Squidoo page creation (1 FREE lense with images) – 1 Nos.
• Squidoo Lense Submissions – 75 Nos.
• Comparative Analysis – Competitors & Client Website
• Google Page Rank
• Pages recognized by Search Engines (Google, Yahoo & BING)
• No. of Back links (Google & Yahoo)
• Header Status
• Code to Text Ratio
• W3C Validation
• Social Bookmarking Presence

* W3C validation depends upon your site structure. Validation will be done only if it is possible to do it without making major changes in the website structure.

*Canonicalization error correction is done in site hosted on LINUX server and your web host has provided you the access to .HTACCESS file.

*Blog installation will be done only if proper access to your site FTP and database is provided.

*Link Baiting is done with reference to Blog. Therefore Link Baiting service will be provided only if Blog is installed in your website.

Post SEO Monthly Maintenance

• Service Details
• Article Writing 1
• Link Building 25
• Directory Submissions 25
• Article Submission to directories 25
• Submission to Social Book Marking Websites 25
• Blog Posts 1
• Link Baiting 25
• Squidoo Lense Creation 1
• Squidoo Lense Submissions 25
• YouTube Video Creation & Submission 0
• Search Engine Ranking Report Weekly