Join us for our Website Design and Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals Seminar Series.  We teach you the basics and show you the tools that industry professionals use daily.  We let you in behind the curtain!

We are breaking out this jam packed 3 hour seminar into several pieces:

3 Easy steps to increase conversions

• 3 Things Never to Do
• 3 Things you should Always Do

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals:

• How do Search Engines work and how can I create a plan of attack to get exposure and drive up sales?
• 10 steps to a successful Search Engine Optimization campaign!

Social Media Use:

• Social Network opportunities, am I missing the boat or should I let it sail off?
• What’s really important in the Social Media world?
• 2 Fundamental steps to creating trust and driving revenue with Social Media

Who should come?

Business owners, Marketing Professionals, and Anyone who wants that extra bit of knowledge to put in their toolbelt to help get a business more exposure using the Internet.  More Business = More money!

Claim your seat NOW for the Website Design and SEO Fundamentals Seminar scheduled for Friday 9/11/2009 at 9am MST in Westminster, CO.

Seats are extremely limited!  Claim your seat now….  Website Design and SEO Fundamentals Seminar

Every small business has questions on how to market their business online as well as how much to spend and best practices on measuring ROI. MSNBC had a great clip on this very topic:

Okay, that title was a bit harsh!  Not ALL PR companies have their head stuck in the sand…quite a few are evolving and growing.  We’ve seen this lately through business closures.  Several PR firms are closing their doors because they didn’t adapt to a changing market – even though they thought they had.

One big gap that still remains is PR companies focusing solely on Adwords and sponsored links (pay-per-click) without any On-page SEO or Inbound Marketing initiatives – this is an expensive recipe for failure.

How does pay-per-click work?

Let’s think about how Adwords and Sponsored links work.  Essentially, you are bidding on specific keywords.  As long as you bid high enough, your ad and web site link will show up wherever the Search Engine is serving ads (SERP or Ad delivery networks).  Each time a user clicks on your ad, you pay your bid amount.  The Search Engine decides when to show your ad, how often, and in what order.

There are a few inherent problems with basing your whole marketing strategy on this:

1. You don’t control the Search Engine.  They choose when and were your ad will show up and how much you will pay for the click or impression.  Yes, you choose a limit, but ultimately the Search Engine still has control.

2. You can estimate how much to bid, but you can’t be 100% sure how high you need to bid to take the top spot.

3. If your business plan is based on Pay-Per-Click, then any competitor old or new just has to out bid you in order to take your spot. You can be de-throned and lose a lot of traffic if you are relying just on sponsored links.  This is assuming your web site and product are mediocre.

4. If you did not spend enough time figuring out what keywords to target, then you  may just be throwing all of your money down the toilet.  Pay-per-click assumes you know your market and you know what keywords to target.  If you are targeting the wrong words, you may be wasting your marketing dollars because you  may get traffic, but no conversions or sales.

5. Even worse is letting the Search Engine decide what keywords best suite you.  With Google this is called Broad Match. It takes your list of keywords and then makes an assumption to related terms.  If you targeted the keywords “dog biscuits” and you used broad match, then Google may also show your ad for someone searching for “dog kennel cough” – they both deal with dogs, but someone looking up kennel cough may not be looking for dog biscuits and those marketing dollars were most likely just wasted.

So, what’s the missing key?

Do use pay-per-click, it’s a good way to supplement gaps in Search Engine Coverage, get visibility for new product launches, or even help you with keyword discovery.

Don’t plan your whole marketing campaign on pay-per-click.  Make sure you are looking at on-page SEO and off-page SEO – that’s what you’ll need for long-term sustained growth.

We’ve met some great Search Engine Optimization milestones for our Denver and National clients in 2008 through various Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing strategies.  But, we do not intend to rest on our laurels!!

In our never ending quest to improve our strategies and tactics to help our clients climb the Search Engine Result Page (SERP), we are heading out to California to attend Search Engine Marketing Expo West!

Now, before you just assume we will be on a sun-filled vacation, know that we’ll be stuck (hapilly) in the Santa Clara Convention Center pretty much every day this week from 8am to 10pm.  We are glad to do this as it helps us stay ahead of our competition and keep our Search Engine Marketing tactics sharp and effective.

A few of the companies that we will be meeting with and listening to are:

It should be a great conference and we are already excited about some of the new things we can try out as soon as we get back!

Make sure you contact us to see how we can help your business scale the Search Engine Ladder.

With 2009 just hours away, there’s hope, expectation, and reservation in the air.

A few thoughts: 2009 will be the year of…

The self-employed

There is one key attribute to success that most do not realize.  Everyone is self-employed.  Whether you work for a corporation or have your own freelance company…you are essentially self-employed.

If you work for a company as an employee and get a W2 at the end of the year, you are still in theory a one person company and your product is…you.  Your time, your creativity, and your talent…that’s what you get paid for.

In 2009, I believe we will see people take more responsibility for their own progress and careers.  Instead of leaning on job security – which is a mind game anyway – we will lean towards independently looking towards progressing ourselves.  You are your own boss…even if you have to answer to someone.

Through this realization, we will see people branch out into other areas.  You no longer have 1 job…you may open up a side business selling info products, freelancing, blogging – who knows.

2009 will be the year of the self-employed.

Shifting priorities

As retirement accounts dry up, loans are called, and credit lines are reduced we need to optimize and adapt for the better.  What were priorities in 2007 and 2008 will change this year.

From families and businesses paying off their debt and re-structuring their expenses to save more to real estate investors going crazy over bargains to be had.

From workaholics spending more time with their families to students finding new ways to pay for school so they don’t have to borrow.

From parents taking back control of their retirement by not relying on extremely leveraged institutions for help to college savings accounts being started for new born babies.

2009 will be the year of shifting priorities.

Inbound Marketing

As marketing morphs into consumer interaction and corporate execs become transparent a new way of reaching your audience is taking hold.  Inbound Marketing is the process of building your brand and evoking consumer loyalty through communication, relationships, and an equally satisfying need to make our world a better place.

Utilizing Search Engine Optimization, Brand Marketing, Social Media, and overall Reputation management; start-ups will compete with giants by creating communities for niche markets and taking over market share through quality products/services and Inbound Marketing.  If you build it correctly, they will come.

2009 will be the year of Inbound Marketing.

Personal Branding

In line with being self-employed, the personal brand comes into play.  No longer do consumers only care about the product or service, they now care about the people behind the curtain.  With so many companies faltering in 2008 it becomes increasingly important to put your money towards the leadership behind a cause.

With the transparency that social media networks bring to executives, personal brand will play a big role in consumer confidence.  This is extremely apparent when you look at Apple and Steve Jobs…then the challenge is how do you pass on “your brand” to the company yet still take it with you when the time comes.

2009 will be the year of Personal Branding

Twitter Emergence

Many people are confused by how to monetize or even utilize social media networks.  Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or twitter, they are confused.  And rightly so…these applications have a feature set but it’s up to the users to determine how that feature set is used.

In 2009, I see twitter emerging to a mass audience.  Whether they know how to use it or not, twitter offers something the other networks are not geared towards..the ability to find and connect with strangers of like mind.  Networking and building, this is where I see twitter exploding.

2009 will be the year of twitter emergence.

On a side note, if you are interested in a really cool twitter showcase coming in January ‘09 – follow me @arifgan – details to come early Jan…seriously, you don’t want to miss this one.

Now, on to you…our readers are clever, creative, and determined so let’s hear it…

2009 will be the year of?

So, here’s a tip that’s so simple, many of us have forgotten it – I figured most people had already taken this precaution…but I found that not to be the case.

It is SO Simple, yet it may save you a lot of grief and lost sales. Ready?

• Create a 400 Error Redirect (through Apache or whatever web server you are using) if traffic doesn’t reach you in the manner you were expecting it to arrive.

It’s literally a precaution, in case things don’t turn out how you expected them to.  As I was researching a few blogs I clicked on an advertisement, not sure why – I was curious as to what they were selling I guess.

Here is the Ad I clicked on:

After clicking on this Ad that this company is paying for…guess what comes next?

A brilliant Sales page?

A phenomenally written blog post?

A corporate website with logos of their fancy clientelle?

NO! Here’s what I end up with

Not Found

The requested URL /jvsrc=BtoBlonline_Banners was not found on this server.

You’ve got to be kidding me….

You worked SO hard to put together your Internet Marketing campaign, you’ve got Ads rolling, you’ve got landing pages created, and in case someone ends up at a place you didn’t expect – you are going to lose that visitor because the URL got jacked up or a page was moved.

The fix is easy…so easy.  In your Apache settings or whatever Web Server you are using, you can setup a .htaccess redirect – if your web host supports it.

You can just put in a simple line like this into your .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

and create a notfound.html page for users to see instead of the 404 Not Found message.  At least then you haven’t lost them and you’ve gotten a 2nd chance.  Sometimes a 2nd chance is all you need to capture a lead.

Consider it…prepare for the unknown!  I’d love to hear from others on simple ways to dodge Murphy and make the most of your Web site or blog.

Comments?

A piece of interesting data so you can see how Search Engines interact with one another.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of gaining higher ranking in the result set of a Search Engine search.  Now for that to make sense, let’s do some defining of terms and processes.

Here’s the quick and dirty…

A Web site is born
You’ve just started a business and need to put your web site up.  Well, the first thing you will do is figure out your focus.  This usually comes from the products or services you sell, or the demographic of the clients you are servicing.

These are your keywords. Keywords define your site.  Now, sometimes keywords are setup in the META tags of a site, but sometimes the keywords are just generated from the content you’ve created.  Mostly likely, it’s the content that defines your site more so than the keywords.  Although, keywords are very important, so don’t neglect them.

A Search Engine finds out you exist
One way or another, A Search Engine will figure out you exist. You either submitted your site directly to an engine or you posted a comment in a blog with your URL…either way, the engine will see that there’s fresh meat out there and they will send their bots and spiders.

Bots and Spiders – no, that’s not my Halloween costume
Bots and Spiders are what Search Engines send through the Internet to scavenge your site.  These “Spiders” will “crawl the net” and index your content, and various other pieces of data.  They are the ones that check to see if content has been updated or not and will check your relevancy, etc.

Weights and Value
Each time a spider indexes your pages, they will rank you and provide a weight as to the value of your content.  This is the secret sauce for most Search Engines.  If you were to figure out what algorithms they use to figure out weights and value, you could trick them into putting you up top on any keyword you wanted.  It’s assumed that no one person at any company (Google, Yahoo, MSN), has that information; different departments share pieces of the algorithm so that it can’t be stolen.  In some cases, the Search Engine will also change this weighting system which may been after a change, that your site will jump up or drop down in rank just based on how they are looking at your site now.

A user is on the prowl
Now, we have a user on a Search Engine who puts in a keyword they are wanting to find a relevant site for. They type in their keywords and hit search, the Search Engine now goes through it’s database of indexed content and displays results for what they think is the most relevant web site to satisfy the users query.

This is based on data and content saved by the Spiders when they visited your site.

Now, the difference between SEO and SEM:

1. SEO is the process of making changes to your site so that the Spiders will give you a better weight and value based on what you’ve done internally. This means you’ll organically move up the Search Engine Results list.  When you think SEO, think slow, steady, and long-term.

2. SEM can sometimes include SEO, but mainly it’s the process of paying for clicks or “Pay Per Click (PPC)”, paid inclusion, or paid placement, where you are buying clicks. If you pay G
oogle, Yahoo, or MSN for a sponsored link…you’ll show up at the top or the right side but you’ll pay each time someone clicks on your link.

In some people’s definition, SEM can also mean Search Engine Marketer, which is a person or group that provides Search Engine Optimization (Organic), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, and other Internet Marketing Techniques.

Hopefully you learned something…we’d love to get your comments!

Cheers,

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design – Application Development – SEO SMO SEM – Email Marketing

I’m kidding…you actually want to be very selective when creating a title for each page of your web site.

1. It has to be relevant to the page…Make sure all of your pages do not have the same title tag.

2. It helps users distinguish between browser windows or tabs.

3. It may or may not help Search Engines determine what your site is about, the content will end up speaking for itself.

So here are a few guidlines:

1. Google.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

2. Yahoo.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

3. Ask.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

4. MSN.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

So, better to be safe than sorry…keep it at 66 characters or less.  Get your keywords in there but don’t stuff it like a turkey!

This may be obvious but it’s usually missed when developing content or putting together your initial website framework.  Here are 5 Elements to Optimizing your Global Navigation links:

1. Every link on your site holds some weight.

Think about it this way:

- If you link to an external site, you are casting a “vote” for that site….stating to the Search Engine that you value this site you are linking to.

- If you are linking internally, you are telling the Search Engines what your site is about.  The link itself adds to the relativity of your site.

Here is an example:

If you own a company that sells dress shoes or a company that sells horse shoes – you have 2 very different businesses. Hopefully

Now, on your Global navigation that shows up on every single page, if both businesses linked to their product page and the link in the Global navigation said, “Shoes”…well, Google and Yahoo would have to use different methods to figure out what type of shoes you were talking about.

But, if your links said, “Dress Shoes” or “Horse Shoes”, respectively.  That gives Google a much better idea of what your site is about and the link relevancy goes up because you provided better details about what you are selling.

Don’t make it any harder for the Search Engines to figure out what your site is about!

2. Make sure to include all of your important pages in your Global navigation.

Let’s pretend that in your Global Navigation you have a link called “About Us”, and that link is on every single page because it’s in the Global Navigation.  Now, after some time, you’ve posted enough articles that your indexed pages hits 200 pages.  You now have 200 pages each with a link to the About Us page.

In your Global Navigation you didn’t link to your main products, instead you put up some banner image that links to the individual product pages – you have 10 or so products.  And for the sake of the example, let’s say that you split up the links to your products evenly.  So, each page links to one of your products and they rotate…page 1 links to product 1, page 2 links to product 2, etc.  200 pages, 10 products…split evenly gives each product 20 pages linking to it.

By that example…with the same 200 pages indexed, you now have 20 pages pointing to each product.  Yet, you have 200 pointing to your About Us page.

What’s more important?  Unless you are a non-profit, the product is important!

3. Using dropdown menus?  Use a hybrid script…

Some dropdown scripts hide the actual navigation links in a Javascript file or a Flash file.  Search engines can’t read those and if that’s the only way you are linking to your important pages, you’ve just blinded the search engine from crawling through your site using links.

Look for hybrid scripts that use CSS with Javascript so that the links are coded in CSS.  Those can be read and followed by Search Engines.  You can do the same thing with Flash.

Tip: Use a text browser or turn OFF Javascript and Flash in your browser, then browse your site…if your links do not show up, you have a problem!

4. Using Images for your navigation?

Make sure you use Alt Attributes (Alt Tags) so that the search engine knows what your link is about.  Even though a search engine can follow the link, it won’t know what you feel is relevant about the link.  Therefore, if using images in your navigation, use some of your keywords to help guide the Search Engine to know where you are sending it.

Again, let’s make it easier for the engines as well as for people…usually content built for people works well for engines too.

5. Architecture is good but a yarn ball is bad.

When creating Global Navigation links, it’s good to plan out what’s really important.  And in most cases it’s good to interconnect your pages, BUT…there is an exception, isnt there always?  Don’t just link everything together for the sake of linking everything together.  You should have a method for the madness.

Example:

if you have a site that sells car parts and the first thing the user does is searches by Make and Model, say it’s an Audi A6…if you were to show all parts available for the A6, that’s great!  But if you created links on the same page to parts for a BMW M3, you are now diluting your relevancy.  That page may have ranked great for Audi parts, but you just messed it up by diluting your relevancy and adding BMW parts listed on the same page, that page is no longer as relevant for “Audi parts”, but it may be for “Audi and BMW parts”.

Keep that in mind and best of luck with your rank!

Note: This article was first posted on 10/20/2008 and updated on 11/10/2008.