Graphic Design and Website Design

As 2009 approaches search engine optimization strategies have increasingly incorporated social networks and media. The new (and improved) tread in SEO is about, “creating personal relationships with others”. The old fashion word of mouth, grass-roots doing business with friends mentality is back, and better than ever.

In the past, SEO stressed code, site structure and links. However today, SEO is changing. Optimizing is not only about good HTML, site structure, and links, but SEO now includes online social networks and the opportunities they provide. It is not about asking for business or clicking on Adsense links, it is about community and helping others first.

Networking is nothing new, only the medium has changed. For years businesses have joined clubs and organizations where they network and meet others in the community with similar interest. Today, the internet has it’s own set of clubs and organization that provide similar relationships, only online. There are a number of sites [Read more →]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Originally email marketing was used as an inexpensive sales tool businesses used to broadcast a sale or event. Today, email is still used as a tactic to broadcast products and sales to customers, but the smartest businesses have learned to leverage the benefits of email to improve customer satisfaction. As a result, these business are building and sustaining customers by increasing customer loyalty through brand awareness that is built on customer relationships based on satisfaction.

The new cornerstone of email is about communicating with the customer to improve customer satisfaction.

As email becomes more sophisticated, many businesses are taking advantage of the low cost associated with staying connected to the customer. This form of customer satisfaction is beyond asking the customer to take a survey. It is not about saving the customer money or product marketing. Using email to improve customer satisfaction can take on a number of forms. For example, a business can use email to effectively communicate the status of an existing order. It is about providing tracking numbers on shipments. Customer satisfaction is about sending a confirmation that a form submission was received and will be handled quickly. Customer loyalty is about providing contact information in case there are questions. Customer satisfaction is about targeting customer interest so the customer only receives information they requested. It is about providing one click, easy opt-out links in footers in emails.

This strategy means allocating resources toward communication. It does not include sending information about sales, or analyzing customer behavior. In this regard, customer satisfaction requires more than buying CRM software that analyzes the customer’s behavior; as described in an article posted by Erik Johnels, CRM Software is a Waste of Money. In his article Erik says,

Even though we know that the customer relationship is important to success; CRM software is sold and bought without this being much of an actually concern. This is why so many companies get the wrong results. They are looking for the quick measurable metric. Somewhere in that thinking, we forget that the customer was supposed to come first. Those who sell CRM software knows that the company is more interested in being able to measure success than in actually achieving it, you can see that in their sales pitches.

Communicating with the customer via email is an effective strategy to improving customer loyalty through satisfaction. The strategy does not focus on sales, but communication and relationships that will increase brand awareness that over time will increase sales.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

So what is Page Rank? This is a scale Google uses to measure the relative importance of your site. Google’s scale is a 1-10, with 10 being the best; but a rank of 3-5 is considered good. Page Rank will not get you traffic, but it is a tool to help evaluate a site’s potential to be ranked for your keywords phrases. Generally, page rank is established by:

1. Backlink campaign or Reciprocal link campaign .
2. Internal link structure.
3. Site structure.

So if a website is getting a decent page rank than the search engine optimization and search engine marketing campaign are working in unison. As a result website traffic will benefit from a continued effort. However, if a backlink campaign has been in place for 12 months and there is no PR it might be a signal that something is wrong. This might translate into lower website traffic.

Importantly, a site can be doing everything correctly (backlink, internal structure and site structure) and still not have a good PR. In this case, finding out why the PR is low might uncover valuable information that could lead to an improvement in some other area of the website. In the end this has the potential to improve the website’s traffic.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Title tags are one of the most important elements effecting what keywords your page will get ranked for. When you are optimizing for a title tag keep these points in mind:

1. Each title tag should be original and unique.
2. Use keywords and keyword phrases that people will be searching for.
3. Don’t use a lot of extemporaneous words like and or the.
4. If your title tag is for a product, put the product name in the tag.

For people looking into content management systems (CMS), make sure the developer, or existing CMS, gives you the ability to change the title tag. If the CMS does not let you change the title tag and search engine optimization (SEO) is important to you, find a CMS that does give you the option.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

A couple tips and information on getting your website in Google and Yahoo.

The first tip is really easy, just submit your website to Google and Yahoo. Here are two links to help you:

Free submission to Google - submit to Google

Free submission to Yahoo - submit to Yahoo!

2. The next tip is to submit a XML sitemap. This tip is more difficult [Read more →]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

There are a number of ways to promote your website online. From writing articles to having a website add a link back to your site. Outside of paid links and link farms, the more links back to your site the better. But, MAKE SURE TO VERY YOUR ANCHORED TEXT!

If you don’t vary your text links in the long run you could be doing more harm than good. When submitting multiple links over time make sure to vary your anchored text links. This will not only improve your ranking across multiple keywords, but it will also keep your site from looking “spammy” to Google. Or what I call “blitzing” a keyword.

Matt Cutts (Head of Google’s Spam Division) said about anchored text,

“…a sudden surge of external backlinks (often with the same anchor text) has the signature of unnatural linking … “

The does not mean you can not reuse a keyword phrase. Personally, I enforce certain keyword phrase, but I make sure they are not forced and relevant to the topic. If you keep them natural I don’t think you would have any problem. So if you have hundreds of links just don’t [Read more →]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The main feature associated with Google Suggest is a dynamically generated list that suggest keyword phrases and search strings in a drop down menu. The results of the list change as a user types in their keyword phrase, offering suggestions in accord with the topic. The purpose behind Google Suggest is to provide the user with alternate keyword phrases. The purpose is straight forward, but how the list is generated has spurred a lot of debate. Furthermore, there is a number called, “results”, displayed to the right of each suggestion. The meaning behind the “results” has generated many debates on what the term “results” means.

Arguably, to understand Google Suggest we have to know two things: what do the numbers associated with the “results” mean and how is Google generating the suggestions? First I will define what “results” mean:

the results are the number of competing web pages for that specific keyword phrase.

Next, how are the suggested phrases generated and how is the order determined?

Suggestions are determined by keyword popularity. The more popular a phrase, the higher on the list that phrase will be positioned.

This makes sense when a list is analyzed. If you open Google Suggest and start typing you will notice the “results” are not determining the suggested keyword positions. For example, if you start to type “website desi” (”desi is not a typo, I’m only entering a partial word), you will see “website designers” is listed second with 29,200,000 results. However, “website designs” is listed fifth with 49,900,000 results. So why are keyword phrases with lower “results” higher on the list?
[Read more →]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Search engine marketing (sem) is to promote your website or blog through different search engines and online promotions. Search engine optimization (seo) is a process to search engine marketing.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

When you install WordPress you should install it on a subdomain. The reason for installing on a subdomain is the search engines will consider your blog a separate site. As such, your links back to your website will be considered external links giving them more weight as links are considered.

When naming the subdomain make sure to [Read more →]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I want to start off with a quick tip on making a signature in a forum. If you belong to a forum you need to take advantage of the signature section. The most effective technique is to add a signature that links back to your website or blog (etc). While most people do this, they do not take full advantage of the linking ability. [Read more →]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites