Too many organizations genuinely believe that having a blog in place and frequently updating it is enough. It’s a good start, but there’s something more that separates adequate blogs from the ones that get promoted by readers.

Where good blogging takes time and attention, great blogging requires both of those as well as a copious supply of creativity. Brainstorming the first possible blog posts may be fun, and even easy. But what happens when that initial material has been covered? What happens when the novelty and excitement of your new blog has worn off?
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Proximity Matters
We’ve recognized that a really good web design and/or SEO firm will be capable and authentic. Those are big criteria for a web developer, to be sure. What else is important, though?

Well, we think it makes a big difference when your web design firm can be local, and even better if your search engine marketer lives and works in your geographic area. When the people behind your website and online marketing share the same space as your customers, they can produce intuitively great results.
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In the first entry of this series we talked about a web design firm needing to be capable, and what that looks like in this field. Today, we’re building on that tenet a little further. On top of being capable, we’re convinced that your web designer should be real.
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One of our goals at August Ash, a Minneapolis web design firm, is to help educate companies in the Twin Cities and around the nation in regard to their online marketing campaigns. Starting with the earliest decisions, leading up to the site’s launch, and continuing long after with ongoing Internet marketing strategy, AAI desires to see businesses succeed on the Web.

With that in mind, we’re featuring a short blog series in which we’ll be spotlighting a few of the most important qualities to look for in a web design or Internet marketing firm.
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Why pay for traffic in search engines’ paid listings, if you can achieve high organic rank - the gift that keeps on giving with traffic, leads, and sales?

First, to digress a bit and to speak to an area near and dear to our hearts, high organic rank isn’t really free anymore.

With more and more business turning to online marketing, and in large part to search engine marketing, the competition for the first few listings of the search engine results is only growing. The sites ranking at the top of the results for competitive terms are paying in some way - either directly paying a search engine optimization/marketing company or paying with their own time and resources.
See our blog post “Search Engine Optimization: Not As Exciting As Magic” for much more on this topic.

But, now on to our main point:
Why would you need paid search advertising once you’ve achieved high organic search engine rank?
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Yesterday, the Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) announced its winners of the 2009 Excellence in Marketing and Communications competition. The contest, an annual event since 1990, rewards airports around the country based on the criteria of how well their marketing and communications efforts reflect on airports, flying, and the stakeholders.

Among the competition’s nearly 250 entries overall, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (part of MAC) ranked second for websites.

Earlier this year, August Ash launched the brand new, redesigned website for MSP. The new website features a cleaner, simpler appearance, with an assortment of real-time tools to assist visitors.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport will be recognized at the ACI-NA 18th Annual Conference & Exhibition in October for its honor. August Ash is honored by the opportunity to partner with the Metropolitan Airports Commission. Congratulations on your latest accomplishment, MAC!