I was reading an article the other day about what to look for in a Search Engine Optimization Specialist. I found the paragraph below interesting :

“Most so-called Search Engine Optimization Specialists are people who slap keywords and keyword phrases inside of HTML tags without considering an overall online marketing strategy. On the other hand, there are people who can write for the search engines, analyze site statistics, have a thorough knowledge of spider-friendly HTML, have considerable experience with SEO in multiple industries, and stay up-to-date on search engine happenings. These are the true search engine experts.”

At first I took offense to the initial sentence thinking. “Hey, that is not true about me!” Then I continued to read and calmed down and thought “OK, that’s much better.”

So I guess working at DDA, a search engine marketing company, has turned me into a search engine expert. Working with websites in varying industries, from medical to plastic injection molding, means that each websites needs its own focused optimization. I do not just slap keywords into the meta tags, thank you very much, but rather integrate them into all meta tags, content development, and focus each page on each word specifically. And you could say that 12 years could be looked at as “considerable experience.”

At DDA, we stay ahead of the game on search engine happenings and are truly search engine optimization and marketing experts.

With a staff of degreed copywriters, DDA has the unique ability to write custom content to help optimize your website for search engines. One of the many copywriting services we offer are press releases and news articles. Why should you care about these often overlooked services? Here is how custom articles and press releases can help your website in search engine optimization:

• Promotion. Best of all, these articles and press releases offer free promotion for your company or website. It can tell the world the various services you offer or just help explain your company. Either way, it is additional quality content that can link back to your website.
• Back links. News sites are one of the easiest ways to gain direct links from other sites. Not only does Google rank you higher based on the amount of quality back links your site has, but it also likes when the website receives a constant, ongoing series of back links.
• Relevance. Not only does the article provide your site with additional content to use, but it also makes your site much more relevant to the present time. If you submit multiple articles, to constant movement of updates and news releases will show Internet users that your company is relevant to today’s fast-paced environments.

There are many ways articles and news feeds can help improve your website. Let DDA and its experienced team of copywriter’s help promote you with the full variety of services we offer.

I am by nature long winded. What takes others four words to say, probably takes me 25, and I will repeat myself. As a writer though, redundancy and wordiness need to be left behind.

At DDA, writing copy, specifically for websites, oftentimes means writing search engine optimized content. As I know my fellow writers have already covered, SEO content requires a lot more than just punching in keywords here and there. We need to create upwards of 30 to 40 professional and knowledgeable pages — and on a few occasions a lot more — of content targeting specific keywords, written specifically to the intended audience, with accompanying paragraphs and additional optimized content.

As with anything else, you need to be as concise as possible. People have short attention spans and regardless if they’re reading a brochure, watching a video, or looking at a tradeshow banner, the message has to be clear and to the point.

This holds true for content development for highly optimized websites that we are designing and developing.  While we target literally hundreds of keywords, the writers go to great pains to guarantee that every single one of those keywords is integrated correctly and concisely just as we would for any other content we are writing.

By keeping it concise and to the point, we are engaging visitors and keeping them interested, while at the same time achieving optimal search engine rankings.

At DDA, we have a staff of degreed writers, a video production crew, graphic designers, photographers, programmers, a search engine marketing team, and more to help make your product amazing. However, we also encourage plenty of client feedback along the way so that we can provide you with something you’re happy with. For example, during video production, we will send you a draft of the script, allow you to respond with any feedback, and update the script as often as necessary to ensure we are giving the right, effective message. At the same time, the video team will provide you with design concepts, video clips, and anything else to receive some feedback and improve. So while we can manage any project from start to finish, a large part of the process involves you, the client.

The reason we encourage our clients to provide as much feedback as possible is so that all the appropriate changes can be made in the early stages of the project. Because video or custom programming can take a good amount of time, it is essential for everyone to properly plan before time is spent on the bulk of the project so that we do not run into issues that will further complicate matters. If, for instance, the scope of a programming project is changed after the original has been created, it will take additional time for our programmers to go back to make the necessary changes. This will obviously push the budgets and delay the final product, which is what we do not want to do. With the proper planning and client approval at different stages of development, we can eliminate these last minute changes to meet your deadlines in a timely and cost-effective manner.

At DDA, everything we work on is completely custom and fresh to every client we work with. We do not offer cookie cutter designs and certainly do no limit our clients to one or two standard templates. Whether you’re interest in video production, graphic design, or even fresh content, DDA can take on your project and provide you with a completely new and innovative approach.

Not only that, but we pride ourselves on creating well-integrated marketing campaigns and efforts. When it comes to video, DDA has always embraced video and attempts to integrate it with website designs. While this certainly is not a necessity, we find that video provides an extremely unique user experience. Of course, if you’re website can draw more visitors than the competition, you’ll have great success - and video is just one of the many ways we hope to do that. Additionally, we offer search engine optimization that has been proven to promote websites to the top rankings of the major search engines. With so many unique services, it’s no wonder so many people turn to DDA for all their marketing and advertising needs.

This weekend I  spent time trying to control the many patches of enthusiastic weeds everywhere I looked in our yard. The magical thing about weeds is that they mimic the perennials they share space with effortlessly. It always amazes me that even with my practiced eye I can  yank out some prized plant. And so it goes, a pretty newcomer that is really a noxious weed, wild grasses competing with wilting daffodils for attention. You have to take the time to root out only the invasive newcomer and then the weedy grasses, and leave the daffodils to slowly return to their dormant state until next Spring. 

I learn a lot about business and people and working with potential clients from our yard. One recurring lesson is that things are never as they seem. As a full-service advertising agency, we have to work in layers. Our business development people have to distinguish between the “weedy” prospects and the serious searchers looking for the right agency to do their marketing and promotional projects, our writers have to know the specs of a project so they can budget their time accordingly and not eat into graphic design or programming time. Crystal, who wears a production coordinator hat among other hats, has to watch closely so we make deadlines.

We go through these steps over and over again throughout the week, in every DDA department and it never becomes routine. WHY? Probably because there are too many variables. There is the Dynamic Digital team and the client’s team. There are financial considerations, there are real and artificially imposed deadlines, there are days when one project coordinator has to do double duty. Many a Tuesday it feels like we just get started,  look up at a clock and realize lunch hour has passed unnoticed there is that much on our To Do list. The crucial observation in all this is that not a day goes by that we don’t meet the challenges before us with energy and enthusiasm. A well run company with its unique culture is very much like a well tended garden, healthy, thriving and  forward bound in spite of the weeds.     

At DDA, a graphic design company, we are lucky enough to work a four-day work week. So after today our week is half over. I woke up in a great mood today, maybe it’s the gorgeous weather, hearing my favorite song on the radio on my way in, or the fact that I was able to zipper up with ease pants that didn’t fit me last year!

Whatever it was, I am happy as can be. Coming into work as a Search Engine Optimization specialist means everyday brings something new. Each website in our SureThing Optimization Program, whether designed by DDA or not, is unique and needs its own focused optimization.

From search engine and directory submissions to meta tag enhancement, we cover all bases when optimizing a website. Using our keyword research and content development services, each of our client’s websites have the necessary components to achieve higher rankings in the major search engines. Our own website statistics show that we have 1698 terms with 1st place rankings on Google.

When I tell people that I work 10 hour days, their eyes tend to get a little larger in disbelief. Of course I add that I work 4 days a week and that puts them more at ease, but they still usually have something to say about my 10 hour days. As an artist, I find nothing terribly wrong with 10 hour days because art, in general, is very demanding of time. (The 1.5-2 hours of commute is another story however.) I had 6 hour long classes in college and sometimes that wasn’t enough to really get into the assignments.

DDA’s design team usually creates 2-3 website comps that we show to the client. These 2-3 designs can take anywhere from 3-6 hours to lay out, depending on how involved the site is. And that time is not including the finished version of the site design, the time it takes to slice the custom tailored template specifically for web build out purposes, putting together an html version of the design with working roll overs and the final build out of the pages. And all of this isn’t including the writer’s content/optimization writing or proofing time, the video department’s time to create flash or video based work for the site (if any) and the programmer’s time to do all the coding for the site.

We at Dynamic Digital Advertising can have any number of websites, at various stages, being made at once. If you estimate each site at 25-30 hours, multiply that by (let’s just say) 4 sites you have 100-120 hours of just website work. (Not including the sell sheet, logo, brochure, newsletter and postcard designs we designers need to lay out within the same time frame.) And usually all of our clients want everything ‘yesterday’. So 10 hour days don’t sound bad at all. They tend to go pretty quickly and miraculously everything seems to always get done.

While customized job training programs are nothing new to DDA, we have decided to create a new branch known as DDA Corporate and Medical Training (CMT). We have always created quality training materials including videos, CMEs, and online testing, and soon there will be a website dedicated to this so that anyone can easily find our ever-growing list of available services. The team here at DDA has spent time planning and creating this newest branch of advertising and the writers have been writing highly search engine optimized content.

The big benefit to DDA providing job training solutions is that we already offer so many different services in-house, including video production, graphic design, programming, and content development. All these services can be used in a variety of ways to create engaging and effective training methods. When you’ve got the support of an advertising agency that manages to offer everything under one-roof, there’s limitless possibilities for any project you need.

Look for DDA CMT coming soon!

At DDA, we’ve often been asked by potential clients, “what happens if I don’t like the _____” (video production, print design, website design, or any other of DDA’s services can be inserted here). And the response is fairly simple, here at DDA we always try to get feedback from the Client at multiple points throughout the project, so you will always have input and end with a great product. For instance, if we’re doing some trade show graphics our designers will come up with a few design concepts and we send them to the Client to review. At this point we leave it to the clients to decide what they like and what they don’t like about the concepts. If they fall in love with a specific design, that’s great. But if they like different aspects about different designs and want to see some more based on their feedback, that’s great too! From whatever feedback we are provided we apply it to the concept designs and come up with some more finalized designs. Again, the Client is given the opportunity to provide any and all feedback. This process is repeated as necessary until a final design is created. This process remains true to website designs, video productions, copywriting, print designs, and everything else.

Depending on the tastes of the Client, this process can be quick or take a little more time. Either way, you can rest assured that whatever we create for you, you will be happy with the end product. This is truly one area where DDA exceeds, not only in giving Clients a custom-created product, but also giving great customer service and catering to your needs.