History of Search Engine Optimization as a Profession

In today’s digital age, businesses recognize the importance of a strong online presence. As a result, the demand for skilled professionals in the field of SEO has skyrocketed. According to Lore (you can Google this), in 1997, the manager of Jefferson Starship supposedly became upset because the band’s official website did not appear as the 1^st link when a user searched for “Jefferson Starship.” Whether it’s true or not, it is important to look back at the evolution of search to understand how a job sector grew from simple internet directory listings.

The Evolution of Internet Search

Internet search has a longer history starting with the development of Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos in 1994. Yahoo, for instance, began as a traditional web directory of interesting sites, and in 1995, it developed a search engine that provided users with the best websites that have been approved by editors. During that time, webmasters had to manually submit their websites to Yahoo in order to be included. One year later, Sergey Brin and Larry Page created a new link-based search engine that based rankings on the relevancy of inbound links, the idea being that more “important” webpages are more likely to acquire more links to them. In 1998, the duo launched Google, which later served as an answer to the growing problem of spam and relevancy among the other search engines. 

image from: https://seoagentura.lv/en/what-is-seo/

During the late 90s, search engines had to rely on webmasters to accurately portray their websites through good and relevant content, an accurate URL structure, and inbound and external links (this is where the sub-industry of link building started), which set the groundwork for SEO’s formative years. From 2000-2003, optimizing a website meant updating meta tags and modifying keywords in an attempt to improve a website’s results. Some webmasters began manipulating their use of keywords to increase the likelihood that their website would rank higher than others. Finding that the practice worked, they continued using it until Google’s Guidelines classified the practice of keyword stuffing under “irrelevant keywords.” In 2003, Google had its first major update with Florida. This update addressed keyword stuffing and these other black hat practices:

• Keyword stuffing
• Multiple sites under the same brand name
• Invisible text
• Hidden link tactics

Google began rolling out more and more algorithm changes over the years, now making thousands each year. Some of the algorithm updates are relatively small, but there are instances where the updates can make a significant impact on the search engine results pages. As Google has dominated the search space, they use algorithm updates to improve their product by supplying the best experience for their users. To that end, it became crucial for all websites to be actively supported and optimized to remain relevant to Google’s users. As this need developed, a new profession appeared to address the growing demands for SEO services and expertise. 

Understanding Dagmar Marketing 

One of the leading players in this domain is Dagmar Marketing, a renowned digital marketing agency specializing in delivering exceptional SEO services to clients across various industries. Dagmar Marketing is an award-winning agency with a mission to empower businesses through data-driven digital marketing strategies. With a sharp focus on content and technical SEO, Dagmar helps its clients achieve higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), increased website traffic, and, ultimately, more conversions and revenue.

A Note From Our Writer: I joined Dagmar Marketing as an SEO Account Manager at the beginning of July. I was a Senior SEO Specialist at a large agency and was looking for a new position with a digital marketing agency that approaches search engine optimization with a holistic strategy that includes content and technical SEO to drive higher rankings and conversions. Joining Dagmar Marketing was driven by my desire to join a digital marketing company that not only shares my passion for SEO, but has a track record of success. I spoke with three other SEO agencies. Not only did my Dagmar Marketing align most closely with my SEO strategy, but they also have the resources and expertise to set clients up for success from day one. 

The post The Journey to Becoming an SEO Account Manager appeared first on DAGMAR.

“What impresses me most is that we earned this award while converting the company to 100% virtual, dealing with COVID shutdowns, and fighting large companies for top-tier talent,” said Chris Gregory, Founder and Chief Strategist at Dagmar Marketing. “It’s a testament to our team and culture that we could maintain any growth trajectory, let alone win an award as prestigious as the Inc. 5000.”

We’re very grateful to be listed in the top 5000, and we recognize we’ll always be winners to our clients who understand the value we provide and view us as trailblazers who are ahead of the game.

Whether you rank in the top 500 or the top 5000, landing a position in the Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Companies in America is one of the highest honors a private business can receive, and this recognition is truly worth celebrating.  

To view the entire list of honorees from Inc. 5000 in 2023, please visit https://www.inc.com/inc5000/2023.

The post Dagmar Marketing Ranks No. 4217 on the 2023 Inc. 5000 appeared first on DAGMAR.

Dagmar ranked as one of the top three companies in the Extra Small category (consisting of 10-24 employees) for the Marketing & Advertising industry. Continue reading to learn more about the Jacksonville Business Journal and how Dagmar earned its spot on the list.

Exception Defined

The Jacksonville Business Journal’s Best Places to Work list ranks local businesses based on the level of satisfaction reported by its employees. Once a company has been nominated, a 30-question survey is issued to measure how happy its employees are. Based on their responses, companies are scored and ranked accordingly.   

“Our agency is a great place to work not only in Jacksonville, but anywhere. We keep our promise to both clients and employees and we’re passionate about doing the best work we can do. No matter the role or job title, everyone on our team has a voice and is treated with respect. 

At Dagmar Marketing, we support each other, value every contribution, and foster a positive environment where great achievements are recognized and rewarded.”

Chris gregory, founder – Chief strategist

How Dagmar Marketing Became One of the Best Places to Work in Jacksonville 

For over 10 years and counting, Dagmar Marketing has been on a mission to provide accountability, attention to detail, and complete transparency to each of its clients. Our Jacksonville SEO and digital marketing agency serves over 25 industries (and growing!) and we pride ourselves on being customer-centric and results-driven. 

Another category where Dagmar exceeds expectations is with its employees. Between offering a great work-life balance and flexible working hours, to complete transparency and respect for each member of the team, employees at Dagmar have proven to be highly satisfied with their work environment.   

What Our Employees Are Saying

A flexible, professional agency	A fantastic company that cares about its employees	Amazing group of people going amazing places
“Dagmar has a solid team of professionals, a flexible remote working environment, and a respectful culture. Overall, the best place I have worked.”	“Dagmar Marketing offers remote work, flexible hours, solid pay, bonuses, and great people.”	“I searched long and hard to find a good marketing company that cares about its employees. Chris, the owner, is one of the most knowledgeable SEO Strategists I’ve run into and he is a great boss to work for.”

What Being One of the Best Places to Work in Jacksonville Means for Dagmar Marketing 

Happy employees can mean a high retention rate and a higher quality in the work that a company can produce, overall. According to a study conducted by the Social Market Foundation, happy employees are up to 20 percent more productive than employees that are unhappy. 

When both employees and clients are satisfied, that can translate into a great reputation online and offline, powerful employer branding, solid word-of-mouth, and a series of 5-star reviews that can help distinguish a company from competitors in the area.   

Celebrate with us as we reap the rewards of doing great things for our clients and setting a positive example for businesses in the Jacksonville community. 

The post Dagmar Marketing Celebrates Its Recognition as One of the Best Places to Work in Jacksonville! appeared first on DAGMAR.

As a solution, many businesses are adding chat boxes to their websites. But not all chat boxes are created equal. From auto-responses to 100-percent-live agents, there are many factors that must be considered before taking a plunge into the world of chat boxes.

Keep reading to see if Dagmar Marketing’s chat service will be the best solution for you.

Powerful Features Designed to Increase Leads

Chat boxes provided by Dagmar Marketing are powered by Apex and equipped with features that:

• Enable visitors to connect with your business via the Google Search & Maps App
• Incorporate SMS Text-to-Chat on your website and AdWords ads
• Capture lead information before visitors leave your site with Exit-Pop-Up
• Integrate with Facebook Messenger via convenient call-to-action buttons

The Benefits of Adding a Chat Box to Your Website

You may be wondering what the benefits of an online chat box are. Beyond increasing customer interactions, our chat service is highly effective and can positively impact your business in several ways, such as:

24/7 Live Chat Support ​​

Never miss another lead again. Our chat service offers the around-the-clock support needed to create a thriving business that can benefit you and your customers alike.

Boost Conversion Rate

There’s a direct correlation between your response time and customer engagement. In fact, studies have shown that simply by adding a chat box to your website, you can increase your conversion rate by 45 percent or more. This is due to many factors, such as convenience, satisfying a customer’s need for acknowledgement, providing an indication of great customer service, and more.

Hassle-Free Communication

Most customers are in search of a quick and simple way to reach out to a company. With virtually no wait time, our online chat support is easily accessible and puts the needs of your customers first by enabling them to speak with a live agent immediately. In addition, our live chat representative can connect a website user to your preferred department via phone. This is a great way to help maximize customer conversions.

Low-Cost Alternative

An online chat box costs more than 50 percent less than phone calls, making them a more affordable and effective option for businesses of all sizes. In comparison to other chat services on the market like Engage (which can be very costly), our solution is modestly priced–starting at less than $25 per lead.

Give and Get The Support You Need

Making a decision that’s best for your business and your clients is a win-win. Chat support from Dagmar Marketing can make it easier for busy companies like yours to remain competitive by keeping up with the latest technological advances and providing exceptional customer service–even after the doors of your business have closed.

If you are an existing client, please speak with your project manager for more information.

The post Chat Support: The Key to Maximizing Customer Conversions appeared first on DAGMAR.

How to Help Local Businesses During the Pandemic

One thing that came clearly into focus this year was how much we all depend on one another, both individually and as communities. Companies in every type of industry took a hit, not least of all the small businesses in our own neighborhoods. In addition to making a concerted effort to buy from locally owned, independent businesses, there’s one more simple thing we can do to help them survive: Boost them online. This post gives you some tips on how to do that.

What to Know About Google’s New Core Update

Our standard position on Google’s frequent algorithm updates is don’t spend all of your time chasing them—just maintain solid SEO practices to avoid suffering huge fluctuations in your rankings. This is good advice, but you still have to take a few minutes to be sure you understand the potential effects of major updates, such as the core update on May 4 of this year.

Localized Social Media Marketing Success: Lessons for Small Businesses

No matter what type of business you’re in, if you have multiple brick-and-mortar locations in various areas, each one should be treated as a standalone business for purposes of effective SEO and overall digital marketing. To a customer, that one location in their neighborhood is a single business, and that’s how they’ll go about finding it online. Even if you don’t have multiple locations, this post on localized social marketing has plenty of takeaways for grabbing more opportunities to promote your business by engaging with customers across social media channels.

Our Top 10 Tips for Better Local SEO

Eighty-eight percent of local business searches lead to a phone call or visit to a business within 24 hours. If you’re not taking advantage of the power of local SEO to make sure you rank highly on search engine results pages, you may be leaving money on the table. This quick list distills the local SEO fundamentals that increase your visibility to local consumers.

How to Conduct Your Own Quick Local SEO Audit

Local SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it marketing tool. Getting the most from every dollar you spend on it requires regular checkups to make sure there aren’t any gaps in your plan or spots that need tweaking, whether those result from not having implemented everything you need from the beginning or from changes in Google’s ranking factors that you may have not been aware of. We put together a list of quick local SEO audit tasks to give your online presence a tune-up.

5 Tips: How to Create the Best Lawyer PPC Landing Pages

Our law firm clients are becoming almost as savvy about law firm SEO and digital marketing as they are about the law! They know their next clients are searching online for an attorney and that the competition online is fierce. One of the strategies we see law firms turning to in increasing numbers is pay-per-click advertising, which is a super-power for the firms doing it right. And doing it right means paying close attention to each part of a PPC campaign, particularly landing pages. While this post speaks to lawyers, you’ll find some good tips for best-practice landing page development no matter what type of services or products you sell.

Pest Control Marketing: Content Ideas for Your Blog

The demand for pest control services is growing, but so is the number of service providers as everyone from landscapers and home improvement contractors add pest control as a sideline. As with so many other types of service-based businesses, prospective customers are likely to engage with the companies at the top of search engine results pages, and content is one of (if not the) most important elements of a high-performing, long-term and sustainable local pest control SEO strategy. The problem? Small business owners such as those in pest control probably don’t have content publishing on their resumes. The solution? Our post on blog content ideas is a good start. 

Looking ahead

After a year that held changes with a scope that no one could have predicted, it’s a bit bold to try to predict what’s to come in 2021. One thing we think we can count on, though, is the continuation of the trend to move more of what we do online. Work, school, meetings, shopping, family and social interactions—things to do are getting done digitally in all kinds of new ways. We’ll keep doing all we can to make the most of digital tools for our company, our clients, our families, and our communities. If we can help you do that, too, just let us know. 

The post 2020 Blog Post Roundup appeared first on DAGMAR.

DAGMAR FOR THE WIN!

Thanks to our hard-working team, we just brought home the top honor for the 2019 Best Overall SEM Initiative in Search Engine Land’s Landy Award competition. Each year, the awards recognize the search industry’s most outstanding agencies, individuals and campaigns.

We’re very proud to be among the  2019 Search Engine Land Award winners for our work on behalf of Inman-Murphy Pest Control. Our award submission tells the story of how even modest investments in PPC can yield substantial improvements in conversion rates, impression share, cost per conversion and much more. The 2019 award joins our 2016 award for Best Local SEO initiative on our virtual shelf.

This year’s award ceremony was held in Seattle, a city we are always happy to find an excuse to visit. Thanks again to everyone on the DAGMAR team for helping us make this award-winning journey!

The post DAGMAR MARKETING WINS 2019 SEARCH ENGINE LAND AWARD appeared first on DAGMAR.

We won for our work on behalf of Turner Pest Control, which is having a banner year for growth. DAGMAR has achieved some great results for Turner, including an average of nearly 200 new leads per month, 29 first-page rankings, and an increase of 287 percent in mobile device conversions—through our pest control SEO and PPC strategies.

DAGMAR Marketing is the first digital marketing agency in Florida to win a Landy Award in the Best Local SEO Initiative category. The Landys were created to recognize excellence in organic and paid search marketing and are open to agencies and marketing practitioners around the world. The awards are judged by a panel of experts from industry leaders, including Google and Bing.

Joe and I accepted the award in New York, but it truly belongs to everyone on the DAGMAR team. Thanks for all of your hard work!

The post A Great Win for DAGMAR at the 2016 Landy Awards appeared first on DAGMAR.