An acronym for everything!

This flashback is one of my most popular articles in the beginning days of competitive SEO! Take a looksy…

Let us take a good look at acronyms in the industry! Search Engine Optimization(SEO), is a term thrown around a million times a day online. So many sites use old techniques that will get there rankings hurt or reversed with there hap-hazard web designs it frustrates me. I don’t want you to be one of them. In fact this article is aimed for creating SEEN web design projects. If you don’t use this anti-SEO (i.e. cloaking and doorway pages) and follow the following rules you can expect decent results with your web design. The basics for SEO are simple and should be used by all web designers and web design services (although that doesn’t mean they are always used):

1. Optimize your site with a high percentage of text relevant to the search terms you intend to go after.

2. Make sure all alt (alternate image tags) and title tags have relative descriptions including keywords.

3. Make sure your site meets current online standards and can be equally viewed among all browsers and operating machines. Even though some pages may still display correctly with incorrect HTML, it can hinder the way search engines will look at them, bringing the overall optimization of the page down.

4. Make sure all pages are under 800K (recommended for fast loading pages).

5. Submit (manually, by hand) to all major search engines, an automatically to lesser engines through (at least) a free search engine submission service or program.

Keeping these five rules in mind will help, however a serious look at other aspects will help even more in SEO. I will go into these aspects in more detail with articles to come at http://SEO-Marketing.LeviSolutions.com but this is a good start.

PPC, otherwise known as Pay Per Click advertising is found on numerous search engines and smaller ones alike. The two major players are Google and Overture (now own by Yahoo), however there are some other PPC engines that use a multiple of lesser engines and quality websites to offer there services. Some will give you a top ten ranking within your keyword searches while others have you bid for placement among there engines. A few simple rules to follow:

1. The content of your site must match the keywords bid on.

2. SELL! SELL! SELL! While traditional SEO focuses on how the search engines will view your page, this is your chance to engage the human customer! Traditional sales techniques work best here.

3. Will visits to your web pages convert into quality leads or actual sales? Make sure the cost of bidding will be recovered, plus some.

4. The more popular the search terms = the more expensive it will be. Keep this in mind and target populated terms with financial efficiency.

5. All of your keywords stand no chance whatsoever of being listed in the top ten positions on the major search engines. Organic top ten placements can be very expensive so this is your chance of competing with terms you don’t rank well with.

Make sure to have a relevant page for your search term. This is critical as we all know from browsing; if a site doesn’t fit the bill in the first three seconds we are more than happy to click that back button.

SEM = Structural Equation Modeling? NOPE! SEM = Search Engine Marketing? NOPE! SEM = Standard Error of Mean? Nope! While all of these are acronyms for SEM, there not the ones we care to discuss here in our brief overview of Search Engine Mechanics. Anything I say in this column may be outdated with the next big search engine “patch” so what I mean by SEM is simple: Keep Up! That’s right, by simply going by what you know, or an article written 8 months ago you will get lost or penalized in your attempts for effective online marketing. Search Engine mechanics is the mathematical art behind the algorithms of the popular, well producing engine online. To find out that a “Jagger Update” relinquishes all reciprocal links to your website in the eyes of the 75%+ that currently engage Google is huge. The mechanics of the currently used search engines is something to keep your eye on. While HTML doesn’t change much each year (comparatively), search engines do. Simply put: make sure you know what to do to get ranked in this ever evolving market!

-One last note: make sure you know what pages are visited and where users are spending there time. If you have a well visited page (found through your web stats) that isn’t receiving much time spent: GUESS WHERE YOU NEED A REWRITE!

This is meant to be, and should be a good start to all wanting high search engine ranking within there web design realm.

Choosing your domain based on branding.

When it comes to naming your URL it is important to be catchy, but is it more important to be relative? This is a question we all must face when we name our web site. Sometimes this is easy, for instance if you have a business names “Flowers-a-Plenty” then it’s a no brainer what you will name your site. At this point if www.flowers-a-plenty.com is not taken then of course this is the optimal decision. However, if your looking to start a flower business online is it very important to come up with a name that is both catchy and relevant? YES! Many of us don’t have the starting capital to make the brand name so we look for something that will be both specific for rankings, and catch the millions of web users attention. The name of your website will be something you have to live with, not just a page of hundreds that might end up on your site.

There are many names that just won’t be accessible or worthwhile for your online campaign. These are names that have already been taken or have an obvious conflict with current businesses. For instance, to name your new car dealership “Chevie” instead of the currently wide used name Chevy just isn’t gonna cut it if your truly want your name to stand out. While registering the name Chivie.com might be helpful in getting traffic off of misspellings during searching, its not a feasible name to use for your branding. There are many aspects that go into branding and naming your URL. We must look at advertisability, relevance and intractability. For instance to name your search engine marketing firm “Search Engine Marketing Firm” might be nice and relevant, what’s going to make you stand out from the rest? While there are obvious barriers here, the fact that names like these are likely to be registered, you must also consider how you are going to distinguish yourself from the competition. If you have a company that specializes in this area, then getting this name and forwarding it to your business web site might be the ideal solution, but it still might not be an ideal name for your company.

Some important points to look at:

Domain Name:

Your domain name will be the name of your web presence and is many times used for an effective online branding strategy. Choose a name that is unique, easy to remember and, if possible, highlights the type of products services you wish to portray. If however your budget allows, it is more important that your name be unique. If Google had gone with a name more relevant say, InternetCrawler.com would they be who they are today? If you have a selling point that out-smarts your competitors, you may add a word or two about it in the URL to take advantage of this unique portion of the branding strategy.

Logo:

When we think of windows operating system, we are reminded of its logo before everything else. Sometimes the logo will be the lasting memory in the eye of the visitor that makes you memorable, if so, then this is your unique take on the market.

Tips for branding your URL on the Web

Be Consistent:

Branding on the web would requires making sure you know your audience. You should be consistent in terms of your approach, your message and your treatment given to the viewers through and through.

Be Innovative:

Branding your URL is all about being innovative. Understand the likes and dislikes of your target audience before you begin to even think of ideas for branding yourself on the web.

Appeal to the Target Market:

Let me restate: Entire branding efforts should be focused on a SECTION of the consumer segment you wish to appeal to. Your brand should appeal to your customer and instill confidence with your viewership in which you are trying to promote to.

The web is unlike any other communications or marketing medium, your web presence is the one place where the entire identity of your company (its products, image, reputation and quality) are viewed in a matter of seconds and a few mouse clicks. Either the entire experience comes together or it doesn’t. For this reason alone it is important to make your brand worthwhile to the audience in which it is intended for.

In my particular instance, I have used the name Grapester.com to promote a web site about wine, offering knowledge, articles and insight on “How to Drink Grapes”. While Grapester is a catchy name, the slogan also makes the site more relative as the tag “How to Drink Grapes” is all throughout the website and is something that the visitors that come there will remember.

Remember: The brand of your presence online is a foundationalbuilding block that will stick with you throughout your online campaign and is not to be taken lightly!

Anyone can make a pretty website, but if no one ever visits it, whats the point?

Beyond Appearance: Every design has a “sales” potential. Think about it, why do some websites sell better than others? While every site needs to be visually attractive and pleasing to the eye, effectiveness of the web site to perform for the company is what the goal of the web site should be. The key to effective web design is to convert visitors of your web site into buyers of what ever your selling (products, information, ideas, etc.) Even though we always need to keep in mind important SEO and Marketing strategies when creating content rich pages, we ALWAYS need to keep the visitor in mind to “close the deal”.

Rule I. Sacrifice Beauty for Effectiveness: While we want the website to stand out on a visual level, we need to realize that there are many factors to making a website a success on the internet. Before we add a ton of great looking graphics we need to ask ourselves if this is hindering the overall effect we are trying to create with the viewer. Would we be better off using text links to allow for better site navigation and usability? Most times the answer is at least partially YES! Text not only makes the page load faster, it also allows non conventional web browsers to navigate the site more effectively. For instance, when a search engine “spiders” (crawls through) your site, it could care less about graphics and goes right for the text links.

Rule II. Less Is More: Unless a site is quick and easy to use it will be a barrier rather than an open invitation to users. Current usability standards suggest users spend on average less than 2 minutes on a website. The key to engaging visitors must therefore be simplicity over complexity. Keep in mind that when using the word “simplicity” I am not talking about getting rid of all of your content, in fact words are the lest amount of problems. All pages should still have over 250 words on them to properly get your point across and for SEO purposes. However less graphics, less flash and other memory hogs need to be reconsidered. That’s why you need to live by the axiom that less is more - less clutter, fewer barriers. Let’s look at a few ways to obtain the results of this axiom:

A) Make pages easy to read and engulf. It’s a well documented fact now amongst designers that people rarely read pages online - they “speed read”. Therefore, if the information they need is not easy to access they move on rapidly. Using easy navigation techniques like proper heading placement will allow users to access the information they find valuable from you faster. Proper use of white space and overall spacing should be a must in a webs design. Clearly differentiate thoughts with space and borders making accessibility priority.

B) Follow Standards: When it comes to labeling headings, tags and navigation links. It’s imperative to follow industry standards that have evolved on the internet. Not only will it bring a sense of familiarity to the user, but also comply with search engines and internet browsers.

C) Layout, Graphics and Colors: The web makes it easy for designers to do some amazing things with graphics and colors. The first portion of your site is similar to opening a letter sent in an envelope. When you remove the letter that is folded in three sections, you will see the top third of the page first. Designs with a dramatic color can make compelling choices for setting a mood, however reading on a computer screen demands contrast, otherwise the web viewer will be dizzied by vision fatigue. You do not want to irritate or tire your visitors in any way to keep them reading on or coming back. Striking graphics can be real eye-catching for viewers; however successful internet marketers are pretty much agree that you should avoid flash graphics as much as possible. Another important factor to consider is that not all colors are viewed the same way on all monitors, so here we revert to the KISS policy of keeping it simple.

D) Copy Basics: You may not realize this but many of the successful internet marketing businesses already figured out that design and layout of the website should be as much of a marketing decision as the ad copy on the website is. People feel comfortable with words. Words are found and analyzed by the search engines. Most importantly, words are what drive sales and build confidence among web users. This has been true in other forms of media long before the internet was born.

I will touch on all of these aspects and more in future articles, but this is a great starting point when embarking on your new web presence or a guide to recreating your current site.

Keep your online presence fresh!

Freshness needs to be a key ingredient to web presence as much as it needs to be a key ingredient of a good salad!

It’s important to keep your site fresh. What have you done for it lately? Design, fashions, search engines and almost every element of the internet changes (along with everything in this world). The same-ol-same-ol just doesn’t cut it in this world.

Axiom:

While we may love our current self, isn’t there always something we can improve on. For most of us (your kidding yourself if you say no) the answer is YES! Such is the case with our web site and online presence. Face it; even buildings need a redesign at some point. While leaving the same web design up for many years may be ok if business is good, even the best web presences can stand a makeover. I’m not suggesting that you start from the ground up, but since we all use templates (don’t we) sometimes redesign isn’t that much of a hassle. You may think WAIT; I paid big money for my design and SEO (search engine optimization) services, why would I change them. If it has been any long amount of time you can still keep the elements that work and modify the rest without an enormous headache. Not only will this give your current site a fresh look for old visitors, it make just kick start your creative process and give you new enthusiasm for new online conquests. All of those thoughts in the back of your head that you have had while looking over your current site for the past few years can now finally come to the forefront. Everybody likes a fresh look from time to time and can use one (hey, even bellbottoms went out of style)!

Keep What Works:

If some aspect of your website is a current hotspot or is very well received by the online community by all means don’t interrupt its success. Just make minor aesthetic modifications to the pages. However, find the trouble spots and fix them! By looking at the time spent on your well hit pages through proper SEM one can find out where your visitors spend the most time. When a page on your web design only receives brief time intervals, maybe it’s time to jazz it up. Current web statistics should play a role in redesign and modification to your web presence.

The Front Page:

Ah yes, the first page to your website. Your current front page (typically the page brought up when typing in the base URL for your web site) may be nice now, but this is your chance to be more eye-catching and still retain the same content and vision that currently works. When it comes to the web design look and feel, this is your major anchor. I’m not suggesting a redesign of your logo, navigation and overall content. You want to make sure you keep the site familiar, but addition is key. Add that flash design that will be create a more professional look (but don’t overdue it here), create an easier flow to the front end of your web design, and change the wording while saying the same thing!

Content Changes:

Make sure when you redesign the wording on your site that the key elements are met. You want to have your keywords displayed often and in various fashions (bolded, headlined, towards the top and linked) but feel free to mix it up a bit. Instead of your current blue on white text (as an example), reverse it! Make it white on blue and there will definitely be a change without going overboard. Try out a new font that is still web accessible but may look more professional than the standard Arial you have used for so many years. Also consider adding more content to what you already have. If you have had 10 industry specific articles for the past six months, make it 15 and bring attention to the new updates for your users.

Search Engines:

Search Engines tend to spider sites more often when sites change more often. This rule can help you get the attention of that googlebot spider to keep coming to your site.

Most importantly, have fun with it! That’s right; make it a place you want to check out as well. It’s amazing what can be done to spruce things up when one puts a little time and creativity into it.

Ever read an article named

This flashback article was revolutionary in it’s days when I first started out on the journey of becoming an SEO Guru. I brought it back because it’s nostalgic lesson is still true to form - “Content Is King”.

Adding quality content helps to increase your site’s traffic and gives people a reason to come back. There are numerous reason why adding content to your site is important and this article will discuss just why this is.

One of the most effective and most dependable ways to increase the amount of traffic to your website is to offer more quality content. I’m sure you have heard it said that on the Internet, content is king. Well, it’s true! There are numerous reason why adding content to your site is important and this article will discuss just why this is.

Getting away from the “business card website”: A lot of websites are simply avenues to allow a company to have a web presence and are essentially just a form of an online business card or brochure. This type of web site gives nothing to the viewer accept a short iformational about what the company does and how to contact them. To get new web viewers and to keep viewers coming back you need to give them a reason to, creating quality content frequently is just that reason.

The Benefits of Original Content: When creating your content remember that original is better! There are easy ways to add content that is specific to your site, but already found on the web through numerous online article repositories. While these are still good resources to use, using these alone will not benifit the overall goal of having original content. Search engines look at the the number of sites that have the exact same content as less of a factor when deciding there overall rankings. However: submitting a selected number of articles to such directories will help you get your information published on relevant sites specific to your keywords and industry. A sample online article repository is found at: articlecity.com

Making sure to include quality links: One important aspect of your site that factors into search engine’s view of your site is relevance. By containing links to relevant sites in your content, and your website overall, you will show the search engines exactly what your site is trying to accomplish and make your site more relevant for particular search queries. This is especially true when it comes to human edited directories you wish to be found in.

Ideas for Creating content for your site:

+ Industry specific news and relevant happenings makes great content ideas.

+ Product reviews make a great source of content and help introduce sellable items and services.

+ User forums are a great way to let the site viewers help you create related content for your website.

+ Company background information and company news are ways to generate more content and drive more traffic.

+ Create an article section on your website and include guest writers, articles from repositories, and always include your own unique articles as well.

+ RSS feeds are a great way to add constanly updating content to your website through every changing, industry specific news and events brought in by other sources. We will get into this method at a later date, in another posting.

Just remember one thing, the more content the better becasue Content Is King!

Todd  Levi  Browns  Company  is Reaching  New  Heights  & Leading  the  Industry  with Search  Engine  Optimization  and  as  Social  Media  Visionaries.

A great looking website in this competitive market place just isn’t enough. To achieve maximum ROI your business needs a web design with visibility! That’s why at H3B (a Fort Collins web design and internet marketing specialists company) we focus on SESMO™ to get your business the exposure you need for IN YOUR FACE RESULTS from your online marketing efforts. Search Engine Optimization paired with Social Media Optimization is an ultra new marketing strategy that takes search engine placement, social media networking and site optimization to the limits in getting the ultimate visibility for your website. It places viewer engagement to the forefront of your website design to ensure visiting prospects spend time exploring and interacting with your products and services. SESMO™ is about integrating your target markets social interest with how you as a company can satisfy their needs for products and services. Putting your customers interests first helps you achieve conversion of your website visitors to money paying customers. Otherwise you are just wasting your money.

Some of the more advanced features allow for program operators to close sales based on timing of customers needs and wants. This is the first step in truly optimizing your site for usability and site flow. Before, using clever tools like Google analytics, you could see important site metrics to show your where visitor are coming from, how long they stay and the pages that are exiting your site from. This style of basic statistic tracking is taken a whole step further with LeaDomination by telling you when a particular person, by name or company visits your site, emails you or your sales staff the minute some visits, providing your sales staff with the visitors email and phone number for immediate action based on timing!

Currently email marketing leaders in the industry like Constant COntact or vertical response, give great analytics for number of emails opened in a campaign, number of people that click on links from a email blast and more. Coupling the functionality of these types of staus quo metrics, LeaDomination takes it one step further by offering these same states, then coupling them with the site analytics to produce user created algorithms for fluid email cmapigning directly to the customer based on certain customer actions.

As this technology is just hitting the market we will be updating you on the impact it will have on Internet Marketing in the near future on socialMONTAGE. To get you started though, please check out http://leaDomination.com and register for the free inforamation and updates this unique opportuinity provides.

Features of LeaDomination include:

Feature-Rich and Simplicity-Focused

We’ve built the Net-Results service to meet your extensive marketing needs in an easy-to-use format. No matter what skill level or experience you have, Net-Results offers a feature-packed service that is user friendly and highly effective.

With Net-Results, you can:

• Know Who Hits Your Website
  Net-Results will identify not only who views your site, but how they arrive, every page they view, how long they stay, and every time they come back.
• Automate Your Follow-up Process
  Net-Results knows the interests of each prospect on your website. Automate your follow-up process and send the right email to the right prospect at the right time.
• Create Custom Filters to Segment your Contacts
  Define custom list filters including any number of states, countries, time zones, search terms, companies, behaviors, and more to target specific visitors based on the criteria you’ve selected.
• Set Alerts to Turn Visitors into Leads
  Site user behavior can indicate the eagerness of a prospect. Set custom triggers to receive notifications when a lead is hot so you can act on it immediately.
• Email Automated Reports to Your Sales Team
  Send and receive daily, weekly, or monthly reports detailing the activity of each prospect who meets criteria that you define, control, and can modify at any time.
• Launch Custom Email Marketing Campaigns
  Compose professional emails, select recipients, and automatically send one-time or ongoing email campaigns to targeted prospects who exhibit certain characteristics and behavior you define.

Look fpr more information in the upcoming weeks and at the beginning of 2009. Please contact Levi[at]H3bGroup[dot]com! Brown for more information on how you can get started and see dramatic increase in efficiency and return on investment in your online marketing efforts!

The next generation of optimization!

Search Engine Social Media optimization: SESMO

Why another acronym?
This concept is one which I coined in advent of all my customers not just wanting SEO anymore. Although over the past few years I have been integrating many “Social Media Marketing” tactics into my personal and client websites, I found that just calling it SEO (search engine optimization) wasn’t being fair to the new GIANT on the block: social media. Not only was it ok to just get search engine rankings, but with the world wide web usage statistics what the are today, we find that sites like Facebook have nearly 140 Million ACTIVE members that spend an average of 19 minutes a day on this medium (and that number is increasing all the time). So to be fair, ones product can find a substantial market even if they where never listed in one search engine. With Google, among others, still being very viable and used by most Internet users, a combination of both tactics is what is key to covering all bases in the realm of optimizing your site and strategy in todays competitive business market online.

There are several components that make up the web marketing strategies currently being used to achieve visibility on the Internet and allow for a successful return on investment (ROI) from web sites.

Let’s start with the basics of marketing, SESMO!
SESMO stands for “Search Engine, Social Marketing Optimization”. The pronunciation of this term is ‘seez-mo’. This is a strategy that the founders of the H3BGroup have been working on for years. Many of you have heard the term search engine optimization (SEO) as one of the main ways to prepare your web presence for ranking placement in the search engines. This has been the main way to get traffic to sites for years as most consumers find businesses through search engines. While search engines are still very widely used, this one angle approach doesn’t work anymore with the emergence of the social and community based sites in today’s internet age. Search Engine Optimization is still very relevant however as Google and Yahoo are still two of the most trafficked sites online.

Narrowing down the “SE” in SESMO.

Search Engines are based on algorithms comprise over 1,000 unique variables to determine where sites are ranked in their respective directories. These are based on “keywords” and “key phrases” that web surfers use to find information and ultimately the website that offer what they are searching for. Optimizing your site for the search engines is a science that has been built upon for the last nine years and is ever evolving as the search engine change algorithms to better serve their users. You will find many strategies, philosophies and practical applications of proper SEO within the walls of this site.

Social Marketing, the new frontier and the “SM” in SESMO.

Looking at past advertising vehicles we recognize the influence that radio had on our society. While radio still has an audience and is an important social media for us, television has impacted our society on a large scale by combining site, sound motion and emotion into one experience. In the same light while search engine optimization is important… SESMO is bringing about a whole new generation of media to everyone on the Internet. In today’s Internet marketing strategies businesses need to learn the call of a new generation - Gen C! Generation C stands for Community Marketing.

The fact is that Google has been the big player in directing where people go on the Internet for the past 5 years. We are seeing trends change dramatically nowadays with the advent of community driven sites starting to eat away at the reign of king Google as THE only place to get traffic and awarness.

Please enjoy this site. The entire site is built upon the startegy of this little phrase I coined “SESMO”. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line anytime.

Yours Truley: T. Levi Brown