Mobile Web – Fad or Fact?

A recent Morgan Stanley study predicts that by 2020 most web browsing will be done on mobile devices and not on desktop PC’s.

Some web statistics have current traffic to the average website with as much at 58% coming from mobile devices.  The question becomes, do you believe in the growth of mobile device surfing options?  Do you find yourself using your mobile device to find a business, phone number or product?  Odds are if you do it,  so do your customers.

If you find this to be the case, then the next question is…is your website designed for the “mobile revolution?”  In my experience, the answer is probably not.  Here’s why:

Most websites are written for 800 x 600 screens to satisfy the average user who access websites via a 15/17 inch monitor.  Something very different than the experience the user is subject to on their mobile device.  The solution?  Employ technology so your website can detect when the user is accessing the site via their mobile device.  This way, your web page can be displayed with the same content, but in a format compatible with browsing on a smaller, mobile device.  With critical information like the company phone number and location, you can convert more mobile users into mobile buyers.

Check our your Google Analytics to see the number of mobile users on your site right now.  Need help getting more information and statistics from your website, give us a call.

Keywords – A Key Component to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Part I

In a number of my previous posts I used the term “keywords” and I did so for good reason – they play an absolutely critical role in all your online marketing efforts.  Yet, until you know what keywords are it’s pretty tough to incorporate them into a search engine optimization strategy, much less tactically employ them in a manner that will drive business to your door.  So let’s start by defining what keywords are…

In the simplest terms, keywords are words that people will use when searching for your products or services.  For example, a business in the Chicago area looking for accounting services may type the following phrase into a search engine: “Best Chicago Accounting Firm.” Each word in the phrase, “Best Chicago Accounting Firm” is a keyword.  Now clearly, if you’re our hypothetical Chicago Accounting Firm you wouldn’t use any of those keywords by themselves because it wouldn’t make sense.  No one is going to do a search using only one of those terms – at least not anyone looking for an accounting firm in the Chicago area.   So we use terms “Long-tail keyword” or “Short-tail keyword” to describe the type of keyword “phrase” we’re talking about.  True to the description of each term, Long-tail keywords are longer search phrases and Short-tail keywords are shorter phrases.  Each type of keyword traditionally provides different benefits, results, and traffic, but I’ll post more about keywords and how they directly relate to search engine optimization in my next post.  Stay tuned.

Online Marketing – What Matters the Most

Unlike other advertising mediums (magazine, yellow pages, radio, tv, etc.) the online world moves fast, often changing by the day.  It’s part of what makes online marketing so challenging and intriguing.  It also means that in order to succeed you have to be better than your competition.  So understanding what factors matter the most can make all the difference.  Here’s a quick list (and maybe a little recap from previous posts) of the things you should pay close attention to as you engage in your online marketing efforts:

• Keyword in your domain name – whether it’s your main site or a landing page having the proper keyword(s) in your domain name is critical.
• Age of domain – not much you can do about this, but it’s important to note that there’s value in the duration of time you’ve owned your domain name.
• Title of Web page – Pretty self explanatory here.
• H1 & H2 tags – Header tags, especially your H1 and H2 tags, should be properly worded and, ideally, specific to the keywords your targeting.
• Competition of the keywords – know your keywords and compete them intelligently.
• Keyword density – Articles you write, blog entries, pretty much all content can benefit from good keyword density.  In general, using a keyword 2 to 5 times in first 250 words of any content is a good rule to follow.
• Unique content – Content is king.  Nothing replaces quality, unique content.
• Frequency of updating – Search engines like change.  Keep it fresh and make them happy.
• Internal link structure – I’ll be posting more about the dynamics of website links in the future, but for now, ensure you have a logical link structure for your site.  And be careful not to create a link structure too deep.  No more than 3 layers deep if you can.

Next time, more about keywords – how to find them and what to do with them when you do.  Stay tuned.

Hosting Your Site for Optimal Optimization

So you’ve completed your site and now you’re ready to unleash it on the world.  Congratulations, if you used all the good design principles detailed in my previous posts, you’re probably a long way ahead of your competition. But now you need to put your site somewhere.  Your Internet service provider is a good option, right?  Hmmm….Well, if not your Internet service provider, certainly the firm that designed your site then, right?  Or how about just going to one of the large hosting companies?  The price is right and with the amount of sites they host they’ve got to be good at it.  The answer is a resounding “maybe.”  In short, a few simple factors are going to make all the difference.  Knowing these can make or break your online marketing and SEO efforts.

The good news is these factors are pretty simple: bandwidth, who-you’re-with, and location.

• Bandwidth – pretty simple stuff here.  Whoever hosts your site needs to have enough bandwidth to serve your site to all those who want to see it.  There aren’t really any “sure-thing” tests or tools you can use to verify this, but this information should be provided to you by your hosting company in your agreement. Verify data throughput maximums and check to see if there are any bandwidth guarantees.
• Who-you’re-with – this criteria may be the most important of them all.  Ultimately, the other sites hosted on the same server as you make a difference – both in terms of the server’s ability to deliver the site (too many sites can bog a server down) and even more importantly, the type of sites that are on the server.  Want to be hosted with pornography sites?  Probably not.  The sites your website “commiserates” with makes a difference.  Use this tool to check and see who you’re hosted with.  You might be very, very surprised.
• Location – the facts are that many of the largest hosting companies and data centers are located domestically in Florida and Texas.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if your business is located in or near either state (or if many of your customers are).  However, if you’re located quite a ways away from either of those locations and many of your clients/customers are local, this can make a difference in the time it takes for your site to load.  Is it likely to be a huge difference?  No, probably not.  But how many times have you waited 4 or 5 seconds for a site to load and gotten frustrated?  The fact is that even as ridiculous as a few seconds sounds, people don’t expect to wait so why make them?  Ultimately you want to drive people to your site and get them to become customers.  Hosting your site in a local data center may not be the answer, but then again if you have a quality data center near you it is probably worth looking into.

Ultimately, your decision on where to host your site can make a difference in how the search engines look at it and how quickly it loads for people.  Both should be considered very seriously. 

Next time we’ll talk about how to be better than your competition.  In the online world you don’t necessarily have to be good, you just have to be better than your competition.  Stay tuned.

Design Principles for Satisfying the Search Engines

Before I delve too deeply into the design principles that will help your site rank well, it is incredibly important to keep a few things in mind:

• Getting your site to rank prominently is not the end goal – or at least it shouldn’t be.  The end goal is to get people to contact you and ultimately, purchase your products or services.
• Accomplishing the bullet point above will only happen by executing a variety of online marketing activities well.
• Search engines read the text of your site.  To take a look at how a search engine might “read” your site you can use a tool like Lynx Viewer.

Okay, with those points duly noted, executing proper site design principles for the search engines is absolutely essential to getting quality ranking results for your site.  In short, good design can be overly-simplified in this way: it’s the way you label the different parts of your site. Let’s take a look at how to do it:

We can get into some advanced design principles in later posts, but for now, we’ll go through the following areas:

• Title Tags
• Header
• Body
• Alt Tags
• Meta (index, keywords

Title Tag – this is the text you see at the top of your browser when your site is up.  Naming this properly is exceptionally important.  It should be descriptive and focused.  Even better would be if it used terms people will use to search for your site.

Headers – Headers can generally be described as the titles of articles and other prominent text found within your site. There are different levels or categories of headers beginning with H1 headers (generally the first title on a page), going down to H6 and so on (less prominent headers).  All headers should be descriptive and specific to the pre-established goals of your site.  Your H1 headers in particular should be very specific to the keywords your targeting.

Body – this is the text of your site.  See my previous post about crafting quality copy for your site.

Alt Tags – Ever use pictures or other images on your site?  Of course you do.  Alt Tags provide the search engines an alternative method for displaying images in case those images don’t display properly.  Instead of naming your image something like “stock photo #5″, give it a name that is specific to the keywords you’re focusing on. 

Meta Tags – In general terms Meta Tags are simply user-defined terms or text assigned to different areas of your site.  Once upon a time, Meta Tags were the way to get your site ranked by the search engines.  Today, meta information is still important, but not nearly the way it once was. Most search engines look at the data, but the value of this data varies. 

One last note that is probably fairly obvious at this point: be very careful about the use of flash or other “web development tools” on your home page.  Often search engines won’t be able to “read” them properly thereby reducing or eliminating all your other optimization efforts.  Splash pages are almost always a bit no-no.

Okay…now that we’ve talked in detail about how to create your site, it’s important to discuss the platform and hosting variables that can make or break your optimization and marketing efforts.  That, next time.  Stay tuned.

Writing Good Website Copy for People and Writing Content for Search Engines

Writing good website copy is very different from many other types of writing, yet it is still something your 9^th grade English teacher could be proud of.  Sound confusing?  Then allow me to explain…

The single largest reason writing website copy is challenging is because, if done properly, you’re not just writing for people – you’re writing for the search engines, as well.  In essence, what this means is that you need to write clean, appealing, informative copy for people while simultaneously mentioning certain “key words” just the right amount of times that the search engines will also find it “appealing.” Unfortunately, like all writing, there is no magic formula.  Rather, you should base your writing on good principles – as they apply to both people and the search engines.

Writing Website Copy for People

This is the part your 9^th grade English teacher would approve of.  Simply put, no one cares to read sloppy, poorly punctuated, grammatically incorrect copy. Nor does anyone care to read copy that is boring, uninformative, or lacks creativity. So what constitutes good writing for people?  Of course, good writing is an incredibly subjective topic, however, I find most people agree with the following guidelines:

• Write cleanly, and stay on topic.  If you’re writing the text for your home page, don’t go on and on about one particular product or service.  Your home page is an introduction to your company.  Keep it that way.
• Use good grammar.
• Be informative.  Yes, we all want to sell our products and services, but writing that is informative provides value to the reader and it keeps them engaged – both of which are good for gaining the trust of the reader.
• Expose your industry knowledge.  Using industry terms without being confusing can display your expertise.
• Write creatively.  No one cares to read boring, mundane text.
• Easy on the sales pitch.  Remember, everyone wants to buy,  but no one wants to be sold.

Writing Website Copy for Search Engines

Search engines – especially Google – prefer a keyword ratio of 2% to 5%.  This means that before you write your first word, you should have an understanding of what keywords you want to focus on.  This is a post topic all by itself, however, in essence, these “keywords” are searchable terms likely to bring people to your site.  What products/services are people looking for that you provide?  What potential terms might they search by when looking for those products/services?  These questions should lead you to determining what keywords might be valuable.  Aside from the keywords, there are a few additional things you should be aware of:

• Don’t plagiarize.  Not only is it illegal, but you can get “blacklisted” by search engines for doing so.
• Don’t duplicate.  Using the same copy can dilute your web presence, but minor changes in text and reuse can be useful
• Write succinctly, preferably with good structure and/or logic
• Use keywords in groups they are likely to be searched like “IT Support Milwaukee” but also don’t be afraid to use it normally in a sentence like: “If you need quality IT support in the Milwaukee area contact ITP at 414-453-7100)
• Better yet use both methods above to work towards good keyword density

Okay, enough about website copy.  Next time… how to tag and label the pages of your site in a way the search engines love.  Stay tuned.

Good Website Design – Finding the right look and feel

Unlike writing good copy or utilizing quality programming principles, developing the “look and feel” of your site is highly subjective matter.   Consequently, a one size fits all approach isn’t possible – or advisable.  Rather, the graphics, font, menus, and other visually appealing characteristics of your site should be specific to your business, industry, and the goals you’ve set for the site.  As such, it’s impossible to provide highly specific advice on the best graphics or other visual aspects of your site.  However, I can offer some generally accepted design concepts and guidelines that you can use to base your design efforts upon…

·         People read websites like they read anything else – from left to right and from top to bottom.  Consequently, you want to keep this in mind as you plan the layout of your site.  Functionality, navigation, and menus are generally best placed on the left or across the top.  Important information is subject to the same considerations.

·         Of course colors are a big part of your site design.  The use of color is highly subjective, however, the best advice I can give you here is to use good ol’ fashioned common sense.  For example, red text on a black background is almost never visually appealing.  If you’re an environmental company, you probably want to consider using some green in your site.  If you’re a bakery you may want to consider using warmer brown and tan tones.  And so on. 

·         Font.  The font you use on your site is critically important to developing a quality website.  You’ll find varying opinions on which font is the best, but as long as it is easily readable, sized appropriately, and consistent across your site, you should be in good shape.  

·         Whitespace isn’t bad.  As is the case with printed materials, just because you have space on the page doesn’t mean that you should fill it all up.  Doing so will give your site a cluttered, claustrophobic feel.  Just ask Google.

·         Easy on the flash and other special effects.  These “effects” can be visually appealing, sure, but what about the 7^th time someone visits your site?  At that point they could probably do without the effects.    

Keep in mind that all the points above are general guidelines.  Ultimately, there’s bound to be a website somewhere that breaks the rules and still successfully performs its desired functions.  Yet, if you start with the ideas above in mind, you stand a good chance of ending up with a website the “feels” good to the viewer. 

Next post…good stuff about website copy.  Stay tuned.

Good Website Design – The Cornerstone to Your Online Markeing Efforts

The first and arguably most important aspect of your online marketing efforts is the design of your website. From an online marketing perspective, your site is the base of all your efforts. It is what you want to drive people to in order to learn about your business or, even better, encourage them to act upon what they see and call you. Without a well designed site, marketing the site will be far more difficult and, worse yet, people that do get to the site won’t be encouraged to contact you or purchase your products and/or services. The good news is the elements of quality design aren’t difficult to recognize and can be achieved by employing some basic principles. In essence, these quality site design principles can be broken down into 3 parts:
• The look and feel of the sight (graphics, functionality, colors, etc.)
• The information provided on the site (copy, videos, etc.)
• The “programming” of the site
Over the next few days, I’ll cover each aspect of good site design in more detail. Stay tuned.

How to Market Your Business Online

So it’s pretty obvious these days that advertising in the Yellow Pages and similar books is not the quality investment it once was. Equally obvious is the reason why…the Internet, of course. But marketing your business online is a very different game than simply deciding whether you want a quarter, half, or full page ad in the Yellow Pages. Numerous different variables play a role in the effectiveness of your efforts. Even more challenging, unlike the days of advertising in a book, the online market changes daily – sometimes even hourly. So exactly how do businesses effectively market themselves in this new, technology-driven world? In short, effective online marketing is a combination of website design, paid advertising activities (such as pay-per-click), directory management, social media marketing and others. Sounds confusing, right? In all fairness I suppose it is rather confusing. But the good news is it isn’t really that complicated once you understand the basics. Really. The other good news? Demystifying the online market is the subject for an upcoming series of posts I’m going to be doing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

First Social Media Round Table Video is Live!

Watch the first episode of the Social Media Forum discussion on social media issues. The first episode covers why businesses engage in social media and what some of the challeneges and drawbacks people face. Watch for more episodes as we cover the issues facing your social media campaigns.

http://smf.bz/ep1