The Forge

Elizabeth Blackburn © 2007 Micheline Pelletier

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of San Francisco was one of three scientists to receive the Nobel Prize today for her research on chromosomes.

This is not only huge news for the human species (her research on the enzyme Telomerase could be pivotal to stopping cancer and lengthening the human lifespan) but also for San Francisco, as she has been a long time researcher at UCSF’s department of biochemistry and physics.

I’d like to say to Dr. Blackburn:  Represent!  Why aren’t we as proud of locals like Dr. Blackburn as we are of our other San Francisco heroes like Joe Montana or Willie Mays? Although brilliant scientists may not agree, I’d like to think we would worship them ala that Intel Commercial featuring the ‘USB Co-Founder.’ Perhaps if our culture was more centered on making celebrities out of innovators we would see more funding going into pivotal research.

This isn’t the first time that UCSF has produced a winner: three past scientists, Stanley Prusiner, Harold Varmus and J. Michael Bishop have also won the Nobel Prize for their works.

Blackburn will be splitting the $1.4 million dollar prize with two others.  Hopefully after all her dedicated research she will use some of her prize to enjoy herself.   I recommend Cafe Maritime in the Marina district, if she’s a fan of seafood that is.

Our SEO and Marketing firm is based out of San Francisco’s Inner Sunset District.  Around The Forge ‘HQ’  is a plethora of tasty restaurants (Bistro 9, Park Chow, La Fonda), welcoming bars (Yancy’s Saloon), Dentists, Gyms, Hair Salons, Supplement Shops, Magic Stores  - you name it, the Inner Sunset has it.

Lately, walking around the neighborhood, I’ve seen many local business owners placing ads on buses, billboards, benches, newspapers, and magazines.   On the local TV stations I often find myself watching an infomercial or ‘paid-for’ segment to advertise for a local business.

Most of these local businesses have a web presences to some extent. They also have Yelp reviews that they have almost no control over which often appear higher in the search results than their own website (which they do have control over).

These small businesses need to realize that if they put a small portion of their local advertising budgets into basic SEO for their websites, it would be well worth the while.  Especially in a web-savvy city like San Francisco, where many potential customers are Googling terms like ‘Inner Sunset Bakery’ or ‘San Francisco Magic Store,’ the benefit to the business would be visible and immediate.

Going forward, I’d like to continue to analyze the cost/benefit ratio of traditional forms of ‘real-world’ local advertising vs.  local SEO projects.

We recently implemented a basic SEO campaign for our local Inner Sunset Kickboxing & Jiu Jitsu hotspot, Gym 445.   Gym 445 is a great place to get whipped into shape as well as learn a variety of martial arts, from muay thai kickboxing to brazilian jiu jitsu and MMA.  Head trainers Edge Brown, Bebe Etzler and Bret Bergmark are top notch.

Even though the monthly keyword traffic for ’san francisco kickboxing’ isn’t extraordinary, it is extra relevant.  In fact, when I first moved to the Inner Sunset, I initiated my search for a kickboxing gym by Googling those very words: ‘San Francisco Kickboxing.’  Sure, you get a bunch of yelp reviews, but I also often find myself clicking through the 1st and 2nd page results to see what else might be out there.

On our initial keword research it was very interesting to take a survey of the competitors for keywords like ‘San Francisco Kickboxing.’ Although many of the results were relevant for various obscure martial arts, they weren’t straight kickboxing gyms.

I think the same problem might occur for many other local establishments that aren’t utilizing the basics of SEO.  Almost every local business realizes that they need a website presence, but many still are overlooking SEO.  If more jump on board, hopefully some of those Google results will shape up too.

Welcome to the Forge, the official blog of Insight Forge.

Our team will be broadcasting / writing from the dense fog of San Francisco’s Inner Sunset, so forgive us if our posts suddenly take a turn toward the dark side of Internet Marketing (not black-hat SEO, but rather geeks dressed as Sith Lords).

Anyways… we’ll try to keep our posts here  informal as well as  informative.  We may at times stray off our primary topics of internet marketing, SEO, and advertising to discuss one of our favorite San Francisco bars, a trending internet meme, or whatever else is on our minds.

Essentially, we hope to make this a blog a bit different from the norm in marketing.

So stay on your toes and get ready, cause here we come.