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The Three Most Important SEO Factors by Click Z

by RgDesign (rgrauphics) on Feb.09, 2010, under SEO Tips

Article writen by Sage Lewis @ Click Z.com. Read the full article here.

Factor 1: Use Your Key Phrase in Your Title

This is, by far, the most important thing you can do for SEO.

You can find the key phrases you want to target using a key phrase tool like the Google Keyword Tool or WordStream Free Keyword Tool.

Target one primary key phrase per page. Each page of your site should have a unique title.

For this example, let’s pretend we’re optimizing a site that sells craft supplies. The three primary key phrases we’ll target are: “art craft supplies,” “kid craft supplies,” and “paper craft supplies.”

Our imaginary site happens to have pages for each of these three topics. So, three possible titles for each of these pages could be:

“Huge Selection of Art Craft Supplies at ABC Crafts”
“ABC Crafts – Really Fun and Unique Kid Craft Supplies“
“Extensive Paper Craft Supplies at ABC Crafts”

Use each phrase exactly as it appears in the key phrase research. Don’t make “supplies” singular. Don’t leave out a word like “crafts.” You will have a much higher likelihood of SEO success using the phrase exactly as it appeared in the research.

Factor 2: Use the Target Key Phrase in the Body Copy

As SEO evolved, optimizers found every conceivable way of stuffing key phrases in pages so that search spiders could see them but people couldn’t. Eventually the search engines basically said that if visitors can’t see the content, we’re not interested in seeing (or ranking) the content.

Putting key phrases in image ALT tags or comment tags does little good. Never try to hide content as tiny text at the bottom of the page or by making it the same color as the background. These tricks are easily detectable and could cause you a lot of trouble.

Bonus tip: When I consult with a company on SEO, they consistently make one mistake. They don’t stay focused.

They start strong in their title with their target key phrase. But then they don’t stay as focused in the body content.

Use the exact key phrase you chose consistently through the copy of the page.

How often should you use the phrase? As often as makes sense for the reader. Don’t go overboard, but definitely don’t be shy either. Use the exact phrase, versus a synonym of the phrase, whenever you can.

Factor 3: Cross Link Your Pages Using the Target Key Phrases

In our example, we have three pages:

http://example.com/art-craft-supplies.html
http://example.com/kid-craft-supplies.html
http://example.com/paper-craft-supplies.html

On our “Art Craft Supplies” page, we might link to our “Kid Craft Supplies” page, saying something like this: “We also have a big selection of art craft supplies for kids. Check out our <a href=”http://example.com/kid-craft-supplies.html”>kid craft supplies here</a>.” See how our target key phrase was used exactly here?

Cross linking your pages with the text of the hyperlink referencing the page will help significantly raise the importance of that page.

None of these tips are revolutionary, but they definitely make a big difference. You’ll make huge strides in the search engine rankings in no time!

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How to use Twitter, Facebook, and forums to reach customers

by RgDesign (rgrauphics) on Jan.28, 2010, under SEO Tips

Reach Your Customers While Social Media Peaks

By Tessa Wegert, ClickZ, Jan 28, 2010

When it comes to using social media, several issues typically motivate digital marketers to give it a whirl. They can’t ignore the numbers — the more than 80 percent of U.S. consumers who Forrester Research says use social media on a monthly basis, and the more than 50 percent of adults aged 35 to 44 who now actively participate in social networks.

Digital marketers are also attracted to the ability of social media to incite conversations between customers and brands that can improve loyalty. Examples abound of brands that have effectively harnessed social media to strengthen their relationship with their customers.

Regardless of their motivation, marketers never forget their bottom line, and that often takes the form of product sales. There’s some new information about the impact of social media on online shopping habits that’s bound to be of interest to everyone dabbling in this space.

The results of a research study conducted by Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide offer some useful insights into the relationship between social media and the consumer online shopping experience. Above all, it found that Internet shoppers employ social media in order to gather information about brands and products from other consumers. This differs from the way they interact with advertising delivered by way of other media like television, print, and radio; they rely on these more traditional channels to “form their own impressions and analysis.” In fact, 39 percent of Internet shoppers who tap social media “strongly agree” that they can learn a lot about a brand by reviewing the opinions of their online peers.

Additionally, the survey found that social media is a part of the consumer shopping experience throughout the online purchasing cycle, as opposed to mostly at the beginning (like TV and print) or at the end (like in-store promotions). Not all consumers are actively participating in social media by posting reviews of their own — just one in four make such contributions — but they put stock in what’s being said about the products and services that interest them at numerous stages of their decision making process.

BusinessWeek last year reported on a survey that seems to support these claims, at least as they relate to teens. In the study, conducted by social networking site myYearbook, 81 percent of respondents said they’d received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site. And 74 percent of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision.

Hopefully this behavior factored into your social media marketing plan during the development phase. If it didn’t, it isn’t too late to make a few strategic adjustments to better serve your customers as they seek to engage with your brand online.

Facebook

Many brands launched their Facebook Pages when doing so was trendy and lacking a presence on the site was taboo. If little consideration was given to how these pages play in the purchasing process at the time, and yours looks more like a print ad than anything else, infuse it with some new life. Post status updates that invite your fans to take part in a conversation, and ask them to share their positive experiences for others to see.

Given the inclination of Facebook users both to offer and receive purchasing advice through the site, it also makes sense to post coupons and specials that can easily be shared with family and friends.

Twitter

Using Twitter as an avenue to disseminate dry product information is a mistake. Users aren’t following you to learn more about your products; they have access to your site and countless consumer reviews for that. Instead, be proactive by seeking out tweets about your brand and responding to engage current and potential customers (read: shoppers). Bring the conversation to your Twitter page, where existing followers (and everyone who sees your feed on your brand site, Facebook Page, or display ads) can watch.

Also, be particularly conscious of where consumers are in the purchasing cycle when you respond to their comments; an opportunity might exist to offer genuine help in the way of coupons, discounts, or advice on where to make their purchase.

Forums, Message Boards, and Consumer Review Sites

This is where the majority of shopping-related conversations are taking place, and where many consumers are forming their opinions of your brand. Keep a close watch on what the influencers are saying, and respond as quickly as possible. This can both demonstrate your dedication to solving customer gripes, and show your gratitude for positive product feedback.

What’s written on these sites often lives on in perpetuity. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to make your presence and opinions known, exhibit your commitment to your customers, and display your confidence in your products.

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Calvary South Denver Site

New Site Launched!

by RgDesign (rgrauphics) on Jan.26, 2010, under RG Design Talk

Friday Jan 22nd, 2010 in collaboration with Ekklesia 360 Content Management System launched the NEW Calvary South Denver website. Check out the new Calvary Site and let me know what you think.

I want to start out by saying what a pleasure it was to work with Ekklesia 360 and Monk Development. I have spent some time within a few content management systems and this is by far the most user friendly system I have had a chance to work with. The ability to easily add pages, update content, add graphics all within the admin side of the site was phenomenal! The learning curve is low for the novice user to pickup and start using.

The support team that I worked with were absolute top notch professionals, from the sales staff to the development team! The team at Monk Development were prompt in returning emails and phone calls. When informed about an issue that arose, within minutes the issue was solved or a phone call / email was sent stating they were looking into the issue.

Hats off to the Team at Ekklesia 360 and Monk Development!

Thank You!

=========================================

This project took an estimated 2 months of work, from the first phone calls to the day of launch, when we pushing the new DNS servers to point to the new content. This was an absolute blessing to work with the staff at CSD. I had so much fun uploading content, building graphics, updating page layout and more. This is by far the largest project we have taken on and the many steps it takes to go from nothing to this is amazing. What a learning experience for us to have. Working with Ekklesia 360, Monk Development and Calvary South Denver Staff and coordinating that many people was so much fun.

The site still has a ways to go to become the tool Calvary plans to use to reach its community. But they are heading in the right direction to do this!

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13 Tactics to Make Social Media Work Harder by Click Z

by RgDesign (rgrauphics) on Jan.25, 2010, under SEO Tips

Article written on Jan 25th, 2010 by Heidi Cohen @ ClickZ. Read the full article here.

With last year’s exponential growth of Facebook and Twitter, marketers accept that social media is a requisite element of any integrated marketing strategy. But social media is new and in some ways different from traditional media. The challenge is leveraging social media effectively to build your prospect list and customer base, drive sales, and develop customer advocates.

While marketers intuitively understand this, many need to use some fresh tactics to help build a social media marketing plan that achieves these goals. Here are 13 actionable tactics:

Understand how and why members of your target market use social media. As with any marketing plan, it’s critical to know your target audience so you can develop properly tailored content and communications to meet their needs. Here are three factors to consider to better understand why they participate in social media:
1. People want to connect with people who have similar interests to socialize.
2. People are looking to expand their network of relationships, especially in situations where they need a personal referral.
3. People use social media as a search filter to get input from trusted sources.
Develop content that meets consumers’ needs and interests. This should go beyond just broadcasting some offer. You should limit promotions to one out of 12 messages at most. Specifically, provide information that fulfills customers’ and social media participants’ needs. Remember, with social media, your audience is broader than your target market. Consider the following types of content and information:
1. Provides product support and/or how-to information. This is particularly useful to encourage purchase (for example, recipes) or to provide additional instructions for post-purchase.
2. Relates to consumers’ hobbies and personal interests. Also, consider targeted communities like Ravelry and Dogster.
3. Provides humor, because everyone likes to be entertained.
4. Acts as a communication channel to aggregate relevant news, announce meetings, etc.
Use a variety of forms of content and understand the role that each plays in social media. A combination of time specific and evergreen information is necessary. Some types of social media drive people to your Web site and your other social media pages. Among the different formats to consider are articles, commentary (including comments, reviews, discussions, and tweets), blog posts, photos, audio, video, presentations, and Webinars.
Enable social media participants to share content. This applies to the content on your Web site and third-party social media sites, as well as your other communications and collateral. Remember, information is currency in their relationships.
Support and promote consumer-generated content. This should be across a wide range of venues, including consumer comments, reviews, and discussions on community sites and bulletin boards; and vehicles like TripAdvisor, Yahoo Answers, and LinkedIn.
Integrate product information into your content/story. This is necessary for readers to find your product. Make your products part of your story. It’s important that your Web site and purchase pages are optimized so visitors can share, save information, and purchase.
Leverage social media’s ability to serve as a search function. In part, Twitter’s time on site is low relative to sites like Facebook because it acts like a search engine by sending readers to other sites and content.
Use content in social media to help build organic search optimization. Provide keyword rich content and links to other areas of your Web site and offer related information. This is particularly important with the introduction of real-time search results.
Listen to, interact with, and recognize consumers. They want to be heard and acknowledged. They want human interaction, not an automated communication.
Provide immediacy and nimbly react to events as they unfold. For example, people mobilized and donated to Haitian causes within minutes of the recent earthquake. The key is to make your communications relevant on an individual basis and to enable smaller contributions.
Participate in social media with a human voice and a personal story. This refers back to “The Cluetrain Manifesto.”
Encourage employees to participate in social media. Trust them to build relationships outside of the traditional channels of sales, support, and service. Develop guidelines to empower employees and give them appropriate training. This gives your company a real human face and builds cohesion both internally and externally.
Track relevant conversations, responses, customer relationships, and sales across social media forums. Also, measure specific initiatives to determine which ones are most effective for your offering and customer base. Use these results to help modify and refine your tactics.

Overall, it’s important for marketers to know that social media is not one specific campaign or set of initiatives. It requires a change in mindset that demands ongoing commitment and reaches across your entire organization. The creative use of social media is critical to ensure that your marketing continues to be in tune with the needs of today’s consumers.

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Social Media Checklist for Small and Medium Size Businesses

by RgDesign (rgrauphics) on Dec.15, 2009, under SEO Tips

Original article by ClickZ.com written by Heidi Cohen

As a member of the (Heidi Cohen) SES Chicago Social Media Checklist panel last week, it was striking to hear from so many small and medium-sized businesses wrestling with developing a viable social media marketing strategy. Small and medium-sized businesses often have more limited resources, both personnel and budgets, than large companies, so they’re looking to build more cost-effective sales streams. With the goals of raising awareness, expanding market share, and improving customer loyalty, it’s critical to be creative in how your business engages and participates in the social media arena.

Nine Questions to Ask When Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Small and medium-sized businesses tend to be so focused on keeping their businesses going that it can be difficult to brainstorm on ways to leverage the dynamic social media environment. Here are nine questions to help you think about your business in ways that enable you to maximize your social media marketing efforts.

Does your business tap into people’s passions and/or hobbies? With hobbies and special interests, customers may make different spending tradeoffs, particularly with “staycations,” where customers look for local activities. From a social media marketing perspective, this translates to ways that people can share their hobbies and special interests using photographs, videos, and blogs. For example, I suggested that a tea purveyor in the SES audience create a Flickr account to show off unusual teapots people collect, and invite the public to participate in this community.
Can your business show off its work? While this tends to focus on visual portrayals, like photographs and video, it can also include audio and text. Sharing photographs and videos helps businesses where prospects perceive there are high risks. For example, beauty salons and tailors can show before and after photographs. Remember to get patrons’ permission or offer a free bonus to incent customers to participate. Flickr contains many bakeries showing off their finished product’s visual beauty.
Can you give prospects information they find useful? Think broadly to help customers use your product. For example, a food specialty shop’s blog may describe new foods with recipes and menus to use them. A resale shop can use a blog to show how to make wardrobes and living areas snazzy using its current product.
Can you extend your expertise to a broader audience? This can work very well for professionals like lawyers and accountants. Leverage videos, presentations, and Webinars giving how-to tips to explain wills or budgeting.
Does your business provide reasons for people to gather? In a virtually connected world, give people a reason to congregate in person. This may drive additional revenues. Examples include wine tastings for local wine shops and cooking classes for food specialty shops and/or restaurants. Use Meetup.com to organize the community and post comments. Where appropriate, add a Flickr page to gather related photographs.
Can your business disseminate fun or related information via social media? Think in terms of bite size chunks of content. This information doesn’t need to be your business’s main focus. For example, a massage therapist can create a Twitter stream and blog for meditations to put people in a more serene state of mind.
Are there targeted or niche communities where your prospects and customers naturally congregate? If so, set up a group in this social media site. For example, yarn shops participate and socialize on Ravelry, a knitting community.
Do major blogs cover your business’s area of expertise? If so, actively comment and add to the conversation. Offer to create guest posts to share your knowledge and broaden your audience. This means adding real value to the conversation.
Does your offering lend itself to creating a small online community and/or bulletin board? For example, many religious organizations leverage Yahoo Groups to communicate with members. These interactions can move online and offline.

Seven Tips to Extend Social Media Marketing Efforts

As a small or medium-sized business, it’s important to think about how to extend your social media efforts and to integrate these initiatives into your ongoing marketing plans. (For more information on developing an online marketing strategy, click here.) Here are seven tips to help you:

Listen before you participate. While social media can help small and medium-sized businesses appear bigger than they are, it’s critical not to promote, promote, promote.
Monitor what’s being said about your business. This includes a variety of social media offerings including blogs, review sites like Yelp and niche communities, and discussion groups.
Integrate social media efforts offline. Provide retail prospects with a similar experience through an old-fashioned bulletin board with photographs or handouts containing how-to information.
Promote social media efforts online and offline. Include your Web site, e-mailings, direct mail, local advertising, in-store postings, flyers, business cards, and correspondence.
Socialize social media marketing. Ask visitors, prospects, and customers to visit your social media installations and share their experiences. Don’t overlook traditional ways to extend your business such as local events like Rotary and local sports teams such as Little League.
Create a content strategy. (For additional insights on content strategy, click here.) Develop an editorial calendar for content creation to ensure that you don’t get stuck thinking of what to write, especially when using Twitter and blogs where customers expect regular servings of information.
Make content search-friendly. Use relevant search keywords and tags and add text to photographs and video to aid findability.

Measuring the Results of Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Since many small and medium-sized businesses don’t spend lots of time using fancy metrics, here are the main factors to keep your business on track.

Revenues. Have sales increased? It’s important to note that it may take time to build up a social media following.
Expenses. Track actual costs as well as the time involved in participating in social media marketing.
Prospects and customers. Track the number of people who are engaging with your social media efforts. Often, there’s a 90 percent readers/viewers, 9 percent commenters, and 1 percent active content creators breakout.
Feedback. Monitor the type, amount, and quality of feedback you’re receiving.

Remember there are many ways to engage your business in social media. Consider the options and test what works best for your offering.

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Twitter… and SEO with Google.com

by RgDesign (rgrauphics) on Nov.09, 2009, under SEO Tips, Tech News

This article was written by Julie Batten at ClickZ.com.

If you are thinking that twittering is not useful you might want to rethink it. Google and Twitter have come to agreement about what is now going to be indexed.

Read the original article by Julie here at ClickZ.com. SEO for Twitter Content

The major search engines have a history of evolving their indexing capabilities to keep up with new types of digital content. First it was HTML text, then blog content, then multimedia files like videos, and more recently it was flash content. Now the search engines are indexing another type of content — tweets!

That’s right, for those of you who haven’t heard, it’s official – Google has reached an agreement with Twitter to show tweets in their search results. While previously, Twitter profile pages may have been surfacing in the listings, now individual tweets can show up as a unique listing.

So, what does that mean for marketers? Well, just like when new types of content have been added to the search indexes in the past and we’ve had to adapt our strategies to optimize for this new content, we’re going to have to do the same for tweets.

Question: How do you get your tweets in organic listings?

Answer: With this agreement only being announced a few weeks ago (October 21), there isn’t a ton of data on what works and what doesn’t from an SEO (define) perspective. As anyone that has done SEO before knows, there’s a lot of trial and error to determine what works when it comes to influencing organic positioning. That said, there are many thoughts on how marketers can both optimize their tweets, as well as leverage Twitter from a larger perspective to improve overall SEO results.

First of all, keep in mind that no matter what type of content — whether it’s a tweet from two hours ago or a PDF from two years ago — Google and the other search engines are looking for relevancy and authority.

Question: So how do you gain relevancy and authority within your Twitter profile and your tweets?

Answer: According to most perspectives I found on the Web, you can basically approach optimization for Twitter the same way as other SEO initiatives. Namely, you should ensure you are using your desired keywords in all Twitter profile page and tweet content, that you build up followers (which count as in-bound links), generate in-bound links via other sources to improve the authority of your profile, and encourage others to share (retweet) your Twitter content. Hashtags are generally considered similar to keyword meta-data — probably not closely considered by the search engine in terms of rankings, but they need to be employed when creating tweets nonetheless.

Here are some useful articles I came across on the topic:

Foreseeing the importance of SEO for Twitter well before this agreement was reached, Mike Dobbs from Mashableoffers several SEO tips for Twitter, including:

Choose a relevant handle (username) and account name.
Ensure you create a keyword-rich bio.
Make sure your tweets are keyword-rich and have a prioritized sequence of keywords.
Provide backlinks to your content using URL shortening services such as TinyURL.

Writing very recently, Jason Nyback on Ezinearticles.com corroborates some of Dobbs’ tips. He also suggests optimizing your Twitter profile description for target keywords and attempting to use those keywords in tweets. He recommends undertaking specific “link building” activities for your Twitter profile — just like you would with your site — by undertaking article submission or similar approaches. Finally, he stresses the importance of attracting more followers to improve the authority of your page.

Another recent article by Todd Lucier from TourismKeys.ca substantiates the claim that more followers will help, but he also maintains that relevancy is just as, if not more, important than quantity. Having a handful of followers in your industry/category and fewer retweets is more valuable than thousands of irrelevant followers. Just like any other content, Google uses these linkages to better understand what your content is all about and categorize (index) it appropriately. Lucier also points out that the golden rule of search — creating content that is valuable to your audience — applies to Twitter.

All of these findings come as no surprise — the same approaches and tactics that work for “regular” SEO can more or less be adapted to the Twitter environment. The medium may have changed, but the strategies, for the most part, haven’t.

That said, over the coming months we will hopefully see some case studies emerge that will provide further insight into more discrete tactics that can be undertaken. Until then, enhancing the relevancy and authority of your Twitter profile and posts will no doubt help your position in the search engine results.

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New Construction Site Is Up

by Daisy on Nov.05, 2009, under RG Design Talk

Check out the new site we just launched!

http://www.utewca.com

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