In a previous post, we listed the four things that influence your Boise website search ranking:

1. Terms used on the page.
2. “Context” terms used throughout the website.
3. Traffic to the site from links or keyword searches.
4. Your site’s overall performance.

This article lists four ways that you can improve that ranking. Creating new website content, adding SER terms to the content you already have, improving links, and improving your site’s search engine friendliness are some of the key things you can do to give your site the best chance at a high ranking.

1. Create new content based on high ranking and low competition keywords.

As a large part of boosting rankings involves having focused content on high ranking and low competition keywords, you should make sure you have some really solid content on these terms.

Not only do you want to write articles based on keywords, you want to focus on long-tail SER niche terms. These longer keywords are low-competition terms that have a high ranking. That means a lot of people are searching these terms, but no one is writing a lot of articles about them or paying for ads for them.

While I make sure I reach a certain number of specific keywords, an article focused on a keyword will naturally involve the right words. For more of a guide on how to write content using SER or SEO, check out my Guide to Writing SEO Website Content (Quick note: SER refers to the research we do to find the right keywords for your site. SEO refers to the process of putting those keywords into your website content).

2. Optimize already existing content with context terms.

If you already have a lot of content on your website, good for you! That gives you a great base for boosting your rankings by adding keywords to existing content. Go through the articles that you already have and add keywords to the content, titles, and menus. Once again, your content is focused on your field, and your keywords are also focused on your field, so fitting in keywords shouldn’t be unnatural. They should fit right in without looking unusual or lowering the quality of your content.

Choose “context” terms for titles, menus, and description tags for the best context base for your site. Not sure which terms are context? The chart below can explain a little bit about how we organize our keywords. Still not sure you understand? Call our office! We’d love to explain the difference between keywords to you.

3. Get more traffic to your site.

There are so many ways to get more traffic to your Boise website that I made its own blog post. While that post has a more detailed description of each of these suggestions, here is what you can do to get more traffic to your site:

1. Connect your social network sites , like Facebook, to your site.
2. Improve links and backlinks.
3. Try out paid search ads.
4. Invest in a Take Back campaign.
5. Get links from other reputable websites.
6. List your website on all your offline sources.

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4. Make sure your site is search engine friendly.

Investing in some really great Boise web design is one of the most basic things you can do to boost your rankings. If your site isn’t search engine friendly (meaning search engine crawlers can’t easily go through it and find keywords), it doesn’t matter how wonderful your website content is—the search engines can’t find it!

The first thing you need to do is look how your site operates. Is your content imbedded in images or videos? Does your site take a long time to load? Do you have a lot of plugins or advanced features? All these things are problems to a search engine.

Instead, take content that is in an image and change it into actual text so that it still matches your style but is written into the document so that search engine crawlers can easily find it. The nice thing about simplifying your site for search engine friendliness is that it also makes your site more accessible to readers. When your site is simplified or less dynamic, it will load better and faster on more browsers and on mobile phones as well.

Your site will experience the best boost if you put your energies in a mixture of these suggestions, instead of just taking on one. Start with simplifying your site for search engine crawlers, and then begin peppering your site with great context terms and writing some solid articles.

Wondering what other guides we offer? Take a look at our How to Blog Site Guide and How to Write SEO Website Content guides as well!

Connect your social media to your site. Do you have a Facebook and Twitter account? Post links to your site about new articles. Just having this form of communication is a great way to get people to look at your site. Other social media sites can boost your traffic with links, such as  StumbleUpon, Reddit, or similar sites that link back to your article.

Improve links and backlinks. You should optimize all links with keywords. The names, titles, and locations of links can and should include keywords. Likewise, if a link to your site is in the middle of a paragraph or on a profile page, optimize that content with SER search terms, too.

Paid search ads. This is the paid ad that people can click on when they search for a keyword related to your site. While this isn’t as great as a great article or a good back link, it does give your site a boost.

Improve links on other sites with a Take Back Campaign. A Take Back campaign means taking back the conversation. It focuses on websites that have ratings, rankings, or directories of companies in your field.

As an example on what a Take Back Campaign would mean, consider if you are a plumber: There are a bunch of “rate and rank” sites for plumbers and other service professionals. Pro 119 has a list of all the online places where your company would be listed. We then go to these sites and create a description of your business that includes all the SER keywords that would boost your Boise website. This gives your company better representation on these websites, in addition to giving you better traffic with a great keyword connection.

Get links from another reputable Idaho website.  It helps to get your website listed on reputable websites like Wikipedia and Ehow. Use your connections as well by writing a guest post on another blog site or Boise website with a link back to your site. Be careful with this, however. Don’t create website content just for content, spread over random pages that have nothing to do with your website but that link back to it. You need quality backlinks from reputable sites, not nonsense content. Many companies have tried to trick Google with low quality content and links, and it never works.

List your website on offline sources. This includes putting your company’s web address on letterhead, on a billboard, or even on saying it on a radio campaign. Many people turn to a company’s website first when they want information. Take every opportunity to give your web address.

These six suggestions will put your Boise website in the best position for getting more traffic, and in turn raising your search engine rankings. For more ways to boost your rankings, check out my previous article, Four Steps to Increasing your Website Search Ranking.

1. Terms used on the page. These are the SER keywords that you write whole articles on. Search Engines will look at the terms you used in website content and see how they interact with each other and with the content around them. Not only should these be good keywords for an SEO company, they must also make sense in terms of the content around them. No keyword stuffing!
2. Terms used throughout the entire Boise website. While search engines like Google look at words within individual pages for some rankings, they also look at the collection of keywords throughout the entire Idaho web design. These keywords provide context. They can be mixed into menus, headers, descriptions, and more.
3. Traffic to the site. This is especially beneficial when you get traffic related to your keywords. There are mainly two ways to get traffic related to keywords:
   1. Keyword searches. For example, people search “Boise website design,” and then click on the Pro 119 website. This traffic is an important factor.
   2. Backlinks. For example, a reputable website that we have done work for posts a link that reads, “Boise website design provided by Pro 119 Marketing,” and this whole phrase is a link to the Pro 119 site. By tying our SER keyword (Boise website design) to our company name, and creating a link out of this, it creates a very valuable form of traffic.
   3. Overall performance of your website. While the terms you use and the traffic you get is important, it is equally important to have a site that functions well. The bottom line: The simpler your layout is, the easier search engines can find your content.

Content buried in flash, video, or pictures is not content that is accessible. A page that is very dynamic (meaning little content is actually in script instead of in a program or in a database) is also harder for a search engine to rank.  Similarly, the longer it takes for a page to load, the less likely a search engine can crawl it well. That is why we like to use the term “search engine friendliness.” It simply means that we want to make your site as simple for search engines to read as possible.

After a thinking about this weeks topic, I decided to throw in a code script.  This script has to do with adding a menu or additional menu to your WordPress site.  The theme that we currently use for Pro 119 Marketing is an older theme that is extremely edited and so we don’t have certain current options.  So if we want to include those options on our website, we either have to change the code each time or look for scripts.  That’s where this script comes in.

I was wanting to change a couple menu options at the top of our page, and sometimes that can be a daunting task, depending on who edited it last.  I pulled up the header page and started looking for the line I needed.  After finding it, I thought to myself, there has to be an easier way to do this and remembered that most of the websites we put up today, with WordPress, have the option to change that top menu.  So I went in search for the script.  I came across Lorraine Nepomuceno‘s blog that told me everything I needed to know.  I am going to use the same code snippet she did, I’ll just try to explain it a bit further for begginers.  Wordpress, as always, did an incredible job when adding this feature to themes.  You can add as many manus you want with this feature.  You can even add them to a particular page or post template, if you choose.  So here’s what you need to do to get started.  First, sign in to your self-hosted WordPress site.  Go to Appearance > Editor.  Once you arrive, depending on your theme, you should see a Theme Functions file.  Click on that file and scroll to the very bottom. You will see something like

?>

at the very end of the file. You will want to insert the following code before the

?>

This is the code you will want to insert

add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );

function register_my_menus() {
register_nav_menus(
array(
'custom-menu-1' => __( 'Custom Menu 1' ),
'custom-menu-2' => __( 'Custom Menu 2' )
)
);
}

This particular code adds an action to your theme, telling your theme to add two new munes. These menus are called Customer Menu 1 and Custom Menu 2. If you want to add more than two menus to your theme, you will just add a “,” after the

'custom-menu-2' => __( 'Custom Menu 2' )

start a new line and then add

'custom-menu-3' => __( 'Custom Menu 3' )

This goes for as all menus you add. You can add as many as you would like.  You can always go back and add more if you like too.  I am going to stick with two for now.

The next part is a little more tricky if you are a beginner.  You will want to find out where you want to put your menu and add the following code:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => 'custom-menu-1' ) ); ?>

If you already have a menu hard coded, I would recommend commenting it out, rather than just deleting it. For our menu, the styling worked out perfectly and we didn’t have to change a thing. But I have had clients where it changes almost everything. You can place this in the header, footer, sidebar, page or post template. Really, it doesn’t matter. You can then go to Appearance > Menus and add new menus, select where you want to put them.  In the example on the left, the manus are named Header 1 and Header 2.  You add a new menu, add in whatever pages, categories and/or custom links you want and you can then select that newly created manu name in the menu spot in which you would like it to go.  Pretty neat, huh?   If you are unsure where to put:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => 'custom-menu-1' ) ); ?>

you can always put it somewhere, see where it shows up and then move it if you are un happy with it.  We also do this for a living, so if you need help, please contact us and we’ll see what we can do.  Hope this helps for everyone, and thanks again Lorraine Nepomuceno for a great script.

Rely on Metatags. While search engines created metatags to help websites with site optimization, users quickly abused it. It was made so that people could tell Google what their page was about. However, users instead stuffed these metatags with pages and pages of keywords that may or may not actually relate to their site. Now Google either ignores metatags or even penalizes a site for them if they contain too many words.

Hide content full of keywords. Back at the beginning of search engine optimization, people would “hide” content. This happened several ways: writing text and then sliding it all the way over to the left so that is not visible on the screen but still in the site’s php script, writing text in extremely small print, or writing text in the same color of the background. These hidden keywords would boost a site’s search ranking even though it actually had little to offer for those who searched those keywords. It was frustrating for those using search engines and for those who run search engines. However, Google knows when there is hidden text in a website and actually penalizes these websites. Google won’t be tricked!

Write content for the sake of content, and stuff them with unrelated keywords. In an earlier day of SEO, company marketers would hire people to quickly write articles and add unrelated keywords to them. These companies would create a host of “fake” websites—websites that solely existed to generate content that could be filled with keywords. They were fluff articles that contained no value as content on their own—they were content for the sake of content. There are several reasons this no longer works:

First, because the goal was all on quantity and not on quality, the writing was extremely poor, even incoherent. Readers were frustrated, and so were search engines. Now, search engines check grammar and sentence structure as an indicator of this fluff content. If content is written poorly, it will not rank as well.

Secondly, these same websites would stuff completely unrelated keywords into the content. An article on parenting would link to an online gambling site, while the next article would link to a loan site. Search engines did a couple of things to make sure they weren’t tricked by this anymore. First, they now penalize a site if it often links to unrelated websites with a poor reputation. Secondly, they penalize a site if the content is “stuffed” with a keyword (such as saying “online gambling reviews” ten times in a short article about parenting).

Create links for the sake of links. Just as people created content for the sake of content, they also created links for the sake of links. This would either happen by hiding links within a website to other unrelated websites, or by setting up links to a website from fake Twitter accounts. It doesn’t work, however. While links do help with site optimization, they have to be quality links from an authentic and related website.

The bottom line is that all these tricks tried to outsmart Google and failed. Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, comprised of some of the smartest people in the world. Don’t try to find a loophole. Instead, write good content.

Writing Good Website Content

That is what we do believe in doing with SER marketing and Boise web design: writing good content. Instead of trying to trick Google, we write high-quality content that will benefit the reader and that naturally includes the SER terms people are looking for. There are still certainly things to know when writing SEO content—such as how to make your website is the most readable for search engine crawlers—but we believe the best thing you can do to raise your search ranking is to write interesting and useful content. Wondering what you need to know about writing good content for SEO? Check out my How to Write SEO Website Content, or read our To Do list for increasing your website’s search ranking.

This is such a promising website content package because it allows you to say exactly what you want to say (without the time and effort!). For a 300-500 word article, the interview may only take 15 minutes long. Longer interviews and articles are great for content that is more technical or specialized as well.

Spencer’s How to Create a Blog Site article is a perfect example of this. For this project, I asked Spencer to walk me through the step-by-step process of beginning a blog site. We talked on the phone for 30 to 40 minutes, and then I took my notes from the meeting and turned it into a polished 1,600+ word article. Given Spencer’s expertise in Idaho web design, Boise web development, PHP development, and SER marketing, this blog was full of expert advice I may not have been able to replicate, even with hours of research. My expertise in content writing, however, helped him communicate clearly and provide the proper information. I asked for more specific examples when I thought I needed them, and I asked for him to clarify something when I didn’t understand.

Reasons to Choose an Interview Article

There are two reasons this is such a great idea:

You have the control to say what you want. For Spencer, it meant laying out exactly what he wanted to say about Boise website design, but it only took a half hour. I did the rest of the work. And not only did Spencer get to say what he wanted, I took the material and organized it for the best readability while adding the proper SER terms. High-quality writing takes time and energy that many people don’t have. By creating interview-based articles, we give you the control to write what you want with the quality you want.

You can talk about a specialized subject. Not only can you write about what is on your mind, you can write about complex matters in an extremely readable way. This is where I can be especially helpful. Because I am not an expert in your field, I know what you need to clarify—I know what is confusing. I can then ask you the right questions so that I fully understand the topic and can then relay the information in clear laymen’s terms for your readers. If your reader is more of an expert like yourself, you can help me know what needs to be explained and what doesn’t. I will ask you, “Will your readers know what you are talking about when you mention ___?” And you can tell me yes or no.

As a simple example of how I can help you clarify complex things, I asked Spencer to clarify to me what exactly Google Analytics does for search marketing, Internet SEO content writing, and Boise website design. While Spencer may not have taken the time to delve into this, explaining more about Google Analytics helped readers see the benefits of analysis for Boise SEO and SER marketing.

With Spencer’s experience and knowledge and my organization and writing skills, we created a great article. Do you have some article ideas waiting to be completed? I love learning about new things and can’t wait to start the content writing process with you!

Pro 119 Marketing is passionate about educating Boise Local Businesses about everything web marketing. During these free events we spend time face to face with each attendee to explore where their current web marketing efforts are and what’s next. Some events have a limit of 10 attendees per workshop, register at the bottom of this page!

Upcoming Events

May 3rd @3pm-5pm- Held at the Pro 119 offices in the Alaska Building downtown. 1020 W Main St. Suite #101. First Thursday Social Media Local Business Workshop- This event hosted by Pro 119 Marketing, has a maximum attendance of 10 registered attendees. Register by sending email to Local@pro119marketing.com or visiting the sign up form at the bottom of this page. This is a face-to-face workshop providing free professional consulting for your social media marketing needs, questions, and concerns. Refreshments will be provided. See you there!

May 7th @ 6:30-8:30pm - Timberline High School – Boise Community Education Course: USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS.  Come find out what all the hype around Social Media is about, and how you can use social media marketing to actually grow your business. Register for this class here.

May 20th @ 6:30-8:30pm – Timberline High School – WEB AND SOCIAL MARKETING FOR MARKETERS AND PROFESSIONALS. Business owners, marketers and professionals – come learn about integrated marketing and a 7-phase process to grow your business with a local marketing team! There is a lot at stake when trying to market your business or organization online, especially with social media and new media like smart-phones. Learn a process that will allow you to tackle any new marketing avenue, no matter what the challenges! This information will help you work the process into your business so you are constantly aware of new opportunities and can stay ahead of the curve! Finally, learn how to make all of the facets of web marketing work together, creating a boost to your overall web presence and goals. Register here.

June 7th @ 3pm-5pm- Pro 119 Offices -First Thursday Event – Lay of the Land Workshop – This First Thursday Event has room for 10 Registered Attendees. Register at the bottom of this page now to grab a spot or email Local@pro119marketing.com. This workshop will focus on getting the “Lay of the Land” for your business and your web marketing efforts. We will provide face-to-face professional consulting to help you understand where you are now, and where you could go next by examining your goals and strategy for the three Web Marketing prongs of Websites, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. You will walk away from this workshop with a plan to bring your web presence to a new level.

June 21st @ 3pm-5pm-  Pro 119 Offices – Lay of the Land Workshop -This event has room for 10 Registered Attendees. Register at the bottom of this page now to grab a spot or email Local@pro119marketing.com. This workshop will focus on getting the “Lay of the Land” for your business and your web marketing efforts. We will provide face-to-face professional consulting to help you understand where you are now, and where you could go next by examining your goals and strategy for the three Web Marketing prongs of Websites, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. You will walk away from this workshop with a plan to bring your web presence to a new level.

To find the Pro 119 Offices in the Alaska Building, enter the main entrance  and see the elevator ahead of you. Head down the hallway to the right behind the elevator. We are the last door on the right as you head down this hallway on the first floor. Suite #101. 

Pro 119 Marketing is a team of professional web communication consultants, web developers, designers, advertisers, and content creators, that focus on the three prongs of Site, Search and Social. We develop creative solutions for web marketing initiatives of all kinds, big or small, and specialize in producing cutting edge strategies and  implementations that are not only powerful but possible for our clients.

Visit our Website at www.pro119marketing.com for more info about us and please use our free resources provided there.

• We believe that you should always KNOW before you DO in web marketing. The repeated maturing process that we use to approach any web initiative is: Listen, Plan, and Implement.
• Our Secret Sauce is the Integrated Approach, which allows Websites, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media Channels to integrate with each-other, and  become more powerful holistically than the sum of each singular channel working independently.
• We have a unique 7 phase process that allows any business to build a strong Integrated Web Marketing Presence.

To Learn more about our unique and proven approach attend a workshop, contact us, or visit www.pro119marketing.com to register.

A Culture of the Full Self

Creating a continually growing company begins with the idea of a culture of the full self. One core idea of our company is that we believe that the business should be an outgrowth of who the people are. Pro 119 Marketing should let us discover our passion, and then let this passion shine in the business. This allows for a few things:

• Workers can set their own schedule and have the freedom to work on what they are passionate about.
• As they communicate their passions and strengths, we can then create business opportunities for the company out of those. This might even mean supporting an employee in their own separate business endeavor, or creating a family of businesses or branches of the same business.

The flip side of this working environment is that all workers must answer to themselves. If something isn’t working or an error happened, employees must take personal responsibility. They won’t lose their job, but they have to be admit it so that the whole team can benefit from it.

We want our business to be an outgrowth of our people. We want to create a human working environment, a culture of the full self—the good and the bad.

Culture of Opportunism—Action and Vision

We are always on the lookout for great opportunities for Pro 119, for our clients, and for our employees.

Opportunism with our Clients

In previous posts, we talked about how we don’t believe in a competition strategy that has a closed mindset. We believe that we can give information away about how to do our job, and there will still be unlimited opportunities for us from people who would rather pay for our work. By sharing information we believe we will be creating more opportunities for lots of companies in the Treasure Valley, and elsewhere, including our own.

Employees Building Their Own Future

While we believe that there are many opportunities for our business, we also believe there are many opportunities for our workers. Part of the job description of every employee is to make and seize opportunities, whether that is a new client, a new service, or a new idea to promote and manage our business.

Working towards a manager mindset is one of the clearest ways we want our employees to build their own future. For me, that means I will train myself to become an expert in my field and  will focus on teaching others my expertise. A lot of companies farm out articles, but we can make sure that our services are the best, both now and later.

Beat the Referee

Tony Dungy used to say that the goal of a game is to win by so much that a bad call from the referee doesn’t decide whether we win or lose. We want to win by enough to be absolutely sure in the opportunities we take.

An example of this is the mobile application project we are creating. We saw an opportunity and seized it. Not only was there enough of a market for us to add a branch of our business, but we turned it into its own entity. We also noticed an opportunity for a customer, recommending that they pay attention to this new social media called “Pinterest” —that was six months before Pinterest exploded onto the scene and started making news and breaking records.

Culture of Wise Innovation

Many think of wisdom as a closed and conservative man who warns against staying out too late. However, we follow a different model for wisdom. David in the Bible relied on men who “understood the times” and “knew what Israel should do (1 Chr 12:32).” They were often the first to act when the time was right, seeing changes in their society. Instead of a closed and cautious nature, these men not only had wisdom but were decisive. They were an interesting contrast. They knew when it was time to change and they were quick to change.

Like them, we want to be wise and agile. We want to understand the times and be quick, innovative, and creative to change when we need to.

By creating a company culture, Pro 119 Marketing has been able to expand in our employee base in addition to our interests and expertise. This culture helped create a vibrant working environment where we truly believe our employees can become their best, both professionally and individually.

Do you have a small business that could benefit from one of the cultures or programs we have listed in this four-post series? Or do you have any questions about a particular part of our company culture? Contact us to learn about our web marketing and consulting services, how your company can build a culture, or how you can join the Pro 119 team. If you missed part of this series, read Culture of Communication, Culture of Investing, and read about how paying attention to culture can help a business like yours.

The integrated Lay of the Land Retainers provide a great opportunity for those who want a simple solution that will completely take care of a comprehensive web marketing effort on a monthly basis. We will drive your Site, Search, and Social channels, work with your team, consult, research, monitor, and produce on a monthly basis. By listening and planning monthly we will be able to constantly find new opportunities, plan and strategize to capitalize on them, and then implement the initiatives.

Listen, Plan, Implement on all 3 Channels Every Month!

Our Integrated Lay of the Land packages cover all three channels at once. Retainers are based on how many hours per month we spend working on your three dimensional web marketing efforts. Like having an entire creative web marketing agency under your own roof on call every month. Try it. You’ll like it.

Select a Retainer Package- Listen, Plan, Implement on all 3 Channels Every Month!

By creating a culture of investing, we aim to provide the best, most complete work to our clients and our community.

A Culture of Teaching

As posted in an earlier blog, we believe in the power of teaching. A good professional is not just one who can do their job well and efficiently. We are looking for teachers within the business to business marketplace: people who  not only love to give people a great product, but who also love to explain to others why it is a great product and why they would prefer it over other products. This involves taking the time to explain and teach, even if it doesn’t pay.

Not only are we looking for professionals who work this way, we also value giving our employees the freedom and environment where they can function this way. We believe that doing good always pays off, one way or another. Pro teaches free classes through Boise Community Ed, holds First Thursday workshops, and is often open to share good information.

A Culture of Relationship

Creating a culture of relationship means we form strong relationships not only with our employees but also with our clients.

In Matthew 5:40-41, Jesus talks about turning a transaction into a relationship. He says, “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” This refers to how a Roman soldier could force any person to carry their pack for one mile. That was the law. Jesus tells his followers that they should continue, carrying the pack for another mile.
For our business, we view the first mile as the transaction—this is what the contract says, this is what we are required to do. The second mile is the relationship. This is taking the time to not only take care of business, but to also get to know the person we are working with so that we can create that relationship.

This attitude of relationship is natural to our company because we believe that what we do is truly the best there is; it is more than a transaction. We are investing in our clients through a teaching mindset and a relationship mindset.

A Culture of Finishing Touches

Just as we want to go the extra mile by forming a strong relationship with our clients, we also want to go the extra mile in the work that we provide.

Our goal is to “clear the path” for our clients. That means whatever you buy from us, whether the lowest budget item or the most complex marketing sales strategy package, it will be the very best version of what we have agreed upon. In practice, that means we strive to create Idaho web design and Boise website designs that will work well with Facebook, or that will work on all browsers. Almost all of our products include followup—we check in later to make sure that what we recommended works. And we NEVER sell cookie-cutter products—instead, we take the time to ask, “What will work well in your business and industry?”

The bottom line of our culture of finishing touches is to create user-friendly, easy, and useful products.

As our culture of communication focuses on how our company works within our Boise office, our culture of investing focuses on how our company works outside of our office with other companies and clients within the business to business marketplace. Next, read about a culture of self-employment—how personal responsibility makes Pro 119 Boise’s most trustworthy marketing company.

We are excited to share our expertise with you! What would you like to know more about? Contact us to learn about integrated web marketing, or to learn about joining our team.

We have already talked about our culture of communication and how this culture benefits the company and the members of the Pro team. The second element of the Pro 119 Marketing culture is a culture of investing.

By creating a culture of investing, we aim to provide the best, most complete work to our clients and our community.

A Culture of Teaching

As posted in an earlier blog, we believe in the power of teaching. A good professional is not just one who can do their job well and efficiently. We are looking for teachers within the business to business marketplace: people who not only love to give people a great product, but who also love to explain to others why it is a great product and why they would prefer it over other products. This involves taking the time to explain and teach, even if it doesn’t pay.

Not only are we looking for professionals who work this way, we also value giving our employees the freedom and environment where they can function this way. We believe that doing good always pays off, one way or another. Pro teaches free classes through Boise Community Ed, holds First Thursday workshops, and is often open to share good information.

A Culture of Relationship

Creating a culture of relationship means we form strong relationships not only with our employees but also with our clients.

In Matthew 5:40-41, Jesus talks about turning a transaction into a relationship. He says, “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” This refers to how a Roman soldier could force any person to carry their pack for one mile. That was the law. Jesus tells his followers that they should continue, carrying the pack for another mile.
For our business, we view the first mile as the transaction—this is what the contract says, this is what we are required to do. The second mile is the relationship. This is taking the time to not only take care of business, but to also get to know the person we are working with so that we can create that relationship.

This attitude of relationship is natural to our company because we believe that what we do is truly the best there is; it is more than a transaction. We are investing in our clients through a teaching mindset and a relationship mindset.

A Culture of Finishing Touches

Just as we want to go the extra mile by forming a strong relationship with our clients, we also want to go the extra mile in the work that we provide.

Our goal is to “clear the path” for our clients. That means whatever you buy from us, whether the lowest budget item or the most complex marketing sales strategy package, it will be the very best version of what we have agreed upon. In practice, that means we strive to create Boise website design that will work well with Facebook, or that will work on all browsers. Almost all of our products include follow up—we check in later to make sure that what we recommended works. And we NEVER sell cookie-cutter products—instead, we take the time to ask, “What will work well in your business and industry?”

The bottom line of our culture of finishing touches is to create user-friendly, easy, and useful products.

As our culture of communication focuses on how our company works within our Boise office, our culture of investing focuses on how our company works outside of our office with other companies and clients within the business to business marketplace. Next, read about a culture of self-employment—how personal responsibility makes Pro 119 Boise’s most trustworthy marketing company.

We are excited to share our expertise with you! What would you like to know more about? Contact us to learn about integrated web marketing, or to learn about joining our team.

A culture of communication includes more than just the idea that we are open with each other; we want to be social with each other as well. Our goal is to do away with the idea that we have one face at work and another at home.  Our focus on communication includes a culture of family, community, and openness.

A Culture of Family

There are two reasons we believe in a culture of family:

First, we should not have to separate our lives from work, where we are no longer allowed to be human (and being human entails relationships, mistakes, and unexpected events). We don’t like the phrase “just business.” This isn’t just business. This is our lives.

Secondly, a culture of family encourages a united team, one that is willing to work and fight for each other because of the strong relationships there.

For example, when Tony Dungy won the Super Bowl with the Colts in 2007, he later said that this team was the fourth most talented of the seven teams he had coached with the Colts, but they were the most united. There were strong relationships within the team, and that is how they won.

Who are you most willing to take a day off and help move? A total stranger, or a family member? By creating a culture of family, we work not only from the obligation of our job but also out of our desire to help our coworkers.

A Culture of Community – A Powerful Thing

We believe that everything is better with the power of community. In a community there is accountability, support, and encouragement, and not only in regards to work.

Support for Personal Goals

One of the ways that we have seen the benefits of a community mindset is our incentive program. We offer several goal options every month. This includes a finance goal, a diet goal, or an exercise goal, among others. When we reach our goal for two weeks, we are entered into a drawing for a gift card.

Not only does this support us in our personal goals, it also creates an environment for accountability and encouragement. As Nick, Jamie, and I have chosen the exercise goal this month, I have been encouraged by them to keep going, regardless of how much I hate exercising!

A Give-and-Take Relationship

On top of creating support for personal health, a culture of community doesn’t assume that we must modify our personal life to fit our job. This culture asks, ““What do you need to make this work?”

That means I can move my work hours around to fit my schedule in addition to modifying my personal life to fit my job. The two work together to create a productive and positive environment. For me, that means I have the freedom to work on SEO website content management from home (all the way in Chicago!) when the rest of the Pro 119 Marketing team is marketing and consulting at an office in Boise. It also means that I can push my hours later in the day because that is what best matches my husband’s schedule. With a give-and-take mindset, wages and hours aren’t set according to market price or what is normal in the business to business marketplace; they are set on what best works for me.

Freedom to Admit Mistakes

Finally, a culture of communication means we can be honest about how we are doing. We know that we can admit a mistake and will not get fired for it. Instead, the team can learn from it. Communication about fears, doubts, and feelings can be shared so that the whole team is on the same page. Not only is this allowed, it is encouraged.

A Culture of Openness – Communication, Not Marketing

Finally, a culture of communication also means a culture of openness. This expands outside our office walls into how we communicate with others and what we offer to our clients.

No Hidden Information

Proverbs 17:19 says, “Whoever builds a high gate invites destruction.” We interpret this to mean that the higher a city builds its walls, the stronger the army will be that comes against them. To a city with no walls, however, everyone is a friend.

This is the approach Pro 119 Marketing takes; we want to collaborate. We do not hide our expertise or our information from others until they pay for it. In fact, we only believe in creating quality and helpful information about SER, php and app development, and Idaho web design, even if it means benefiting our competition by giving away information for free. Catch Pro 119 teaching classes through Boise Community Ed, through our First Thursday events, and other free workshops and consulting, aimed at our core value of “increasing the overall amount of good communication that happens in the world.”

Providing Real Value

We also believe in giving real value to our customers. Marketing has a connotation with persuasion or trickery—tricking consumers into buying our product. That is not the approach we want to take.  Our goal is communication. By providing clear business to business communication about your company or endeavor, we believe that we are giving something of value to you and to the consumer.

A culture of communication means creating a family and community mindset within the company, where we are willing to work for each other on the basis of our relationship, not on the basis of our job description. Adding a mindset of community to this creates a supportive atmosphere where we can encourage each others’ personal goals and manage a schedule that works for our unique situation.

Finally a culture of communication means creating a mindset of openness outside of our company walls with clients and consumers as well. As we share information about web marketing, we aim to give those we work with something of real value that communicates who they are as a company or organization.

This Blog is about Pro 119’s first company value of Communication. Read about our second values of Investment and Self-Employment to learn more about what makes Pro 119 tick. You can also read our About page to hear more about our passion for serving and growing Boise, or you can Contact Us to start your Site, Search or Social Marketing, or to learn about joining our culture.