It’s that time of the year again where we find ourselves in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. There’s decorations to hang, shopping to do, and a million other things on our plate and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all. I regret that I have to remind myself why we celebrate at this time of the year…
The story of
Christmas is about more than presents, and shepherds and wise men and a manger. While spending time with family and friends is one of my favorite aspects of this season, it’s about more than even that.
We set aside December the 25th each year as a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago in a little town called Bethlehem. Historically speaking, there has not been another person to walk on this Earth to have such a great impact on our world. Spiritually speaking, this little baby Jesus began his journey here on Earth
as God in the flesh – A journey that would lead the creator of the universe to a
cross in Calvary to pay an awful price and die, despite no wrongdoing of his own.
Here is how it is recorded in the Bible in Luke chapter 2, versus 1-11:
Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph
also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the
city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house
and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child.
While they were there, the days were completed for her to give
birth. And
she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and
laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. In
the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and
keeping watch over their flock by night. And
an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the
Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the
angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good
news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the
city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
This year, take a moment to contemplate what Christmas means for you.
This holiday is about celebrating the one gift that we
all were given. A gift that was free, but was not
without cost. An innocent man, God’s one and only son, was put to
death as payment for the sins of the world. For your sin and for mine – so that we may not incur the punishment that we all rightly deserve. And that is certainly worthy of celebrating.
Merry Christmas, and may you be blessed during this holiday, and throughout 2010!
One critical element of planning for a link building campaign or to do some competitive analysis is to find out how many incoming links you have to your (or a competitor’s) website and what those links are. There are a ton of great resources out there that help you do this. Here are three free ones that we have found to be very useful.
When it comes to designing a good website, I always think of the book "Don’t Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It’s an oldie, but a "goodie." As a web developer, we are always faced with the battle between usability and aesthetics. Not to say that you can’t have both, but they are often at odds with one another. Throw in the need for a website to be search engine optimized and you get even more complexity. Here’s the thing to keep in mind: USABILITY SHOULD ALWAYS WIN.
Why, you may ask? Although it is critical for a website to be found on the internet, and the look of a website can leave a serious impression on a user, having a website that will get your visitors where you want them to go as quickly and easily as possible should be your goal when (re)designing a website. Take a look at a few very successful, yet very simple sites, Google and Craigslist. Both look like they were designed by a middle schooler in 1992, and yet, their simplicity is why they succeed. Both sites make it undeniably simple to do what you should be doing on them.
Sometimes we have to "coach" clients that insist that a website design must contain a 3D spinning logo, long Flash animation or absolutely zero text, but they also tell us that ranking on a search engine is critical to their business. Don’t get me wrong…all of those elements do have their place occasionally, but often the people asking for them don’t have a clear purpose in mind. So, we create what we call a "Predesign" for all of our clients that gives them a wire-frame look at how their site would be organized, based on the client’s initial feedback and the research that we have done in their industry. We use a tool called Basalmiq that makes it super simple to throw together a mock-up. While, it’s certainly not the most robust layout tool, and it’s interface is a bit clunky, it gets the job done quickly and it’s hand drawn look makes it very obvious to our clients that we are not tackling aesthetics with these mock-ups.
Think with Purpose
A website should be structured so that once you identify the 3 things that 75% of all of your visitors will be looking for, make those things very painfully obvious to get to. If you want your clients to fill out a contact form…ask them to do so on your home page, but don’t pop up a window that obstructs the view of the rest of the page that will really annoy someone just looking for your phone number. If you have a lot of information on your site, make a search box easy to find. If you have a really hot product, feature it on the home page. If you want to establish credibility, feature some testimonials or association links. But the critical thing to remember is every element on the home page (and every other page, for that matter) should have a specific purpose…and that purpose is 98% of the time NOT to entertain the visitor with a cool presentation. And don’t even think about using a "splash page" with just your logo on it that clicks through to your home page. That just introduces an extra layer of clicking to get to your site and almost begs them to go somewhere else because they won’t find what they are looking for here.
Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, but the main idea here is to think about WHY you are doing what you are doing with your website, and preferably do that before you get into the aesthetics of how it will look. It’s tempting to jump right into that, and we often get asked for proposals where we give an aesthetic look for a site….but without any data on who will be using the site, why they would be there and what services or products they need to sell, etc.
So the next time you are ready to update your site…think before you shell out the big bucks….or at least hire an expert to think for you. And TRUST them.
I often get asked questions like "If I only could do one thing on my
site to make it be better optimized for search engines, what would it
be?" Well, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is the 3 most
important tags that you need to address on your pages in order to be
properly indexed by search engines…
1) The Title Tag
The title tag is the text that appears at the VERY top of a search window and it’s used when a page is bookmarked.
Since the title tag is not on the web page itself and many people pay it no attention this is a great place to use keywords that may look strange elsewhere. However, resist the urge to stuff too many key phrases in here. The more you use, the less weight they have, and you run the risk of looking spammy to Google, so choose wisely! Use our SEO Meta Tag Tool to make sure you don’t go overboard. Make sure that EVERY page on your website has a unique page title.
2) Header Tags
Header tags, similar to title tags, are what tell search engines what that page is about. The header tag that holds the most weight in a search engine’s eyes is H1 and there should only be one of them per page. There can be multiple H2, H3, H4, etc. tags per page, however. It is important that you really use the header tags and not just a font, div or span tag with a CSS class telling it to be big and bold. Search engines don’t look at CSS, so identifying a title as such in the code to search engines is critical. You can always use the H1 tag to style with CSS anyway. Again, every page should have a unique H1 tag.Here is what a header tag looks like when you view the page source in your browser:
3) Meta Description
The Meta description tag is completely hidden from people visiting your site, and it actually does not help your page rank any higher in search engines at all. So why is it number three in the list? While the meta tag doesn’t help a page appear in search engine results, it does determine WHAT shows up in search engine results. So put things in your meta description tag that would make someone want to click on your listing over your competitor right next to you. This is NOT the place to load up on key phrases and limit yourself to around one good sentence. Notice it will also show your title tag here as well.
I hate that in the hustle and bustle of operating a business we often miss the opportunity to announce the launch of one of our client’s new websites, but today Element Analytical, an engineering analysis, investigation, and inspection solutions company located in Knightdale launched their new website, which sports a clean look, easy-to-use content management system, and a news area to post updates on their industry. One of the owners happens to be a good friend of mine, so check out their new site and tell them how much you like it!
As you may know, there is a certain number of characters you should optimally shoot for for each of these fields, and yes, we know that the meta keyword tag is virtually useless for SEO anymore, but we felt it was best to include that while we were at it
Just put in your information, keeping an eye on the counter to stay out of the red, and when you’re done hit the "Generate Code" button and get the HTML to put into your site. It’s that easy. Check it out!
One of the aspects of link building that we tackle for our clients is making sure that they are effectively using social media apps like Facebook and Twitter. These are the two really hot social media apps right now and not getting up to speed on these fabulous services can be a detriment to the success to your business. One of the things I hear a lot is "Those things will never impact my business" and I cringe a little, because the people usually saying that know very little about what these websites actually do. I’m not saying that these sites or any social media is going to double every business’s revenue every time, but it could…and it’s free to use, so why not at least give it a try? Once you know what these services are capable of, I’d be suprised if you don’t see the value in it for your company. Here is a basic description of what these services are and a few reasons why all business owners should be in the know regarding the two currently most popular social media sites out there.
Facebook for Business
Facebook is a website that lets you connect to friends by entering the high school and college you attended and finding other people that may have been in your class. You can also enter tons of other information about yourself like where you work, what church you attend, movies you like, etc. and that helps other people to find you and request to be a "friend" of yours. When you become a friend with someone, any updates they post on their account will show up to you when you log in, so you’ll see if they uploaded a new photo from their vacation in Tahiti or if they’ve posted a status update saying they are "on their way to an internet marketing workshop." There are also functions that allow you to post notes (which are similar to blogs), photos, videos, events and even other 3rd party applications that let you play games, rate movies, identify all of the places you’ve ever travelled to and much, much more. Every aspect is centered around other people following what you do on Facebook and commenting on it. For example, if you updated your status saying that you are a Twitter addict, one of your friends may reply and welcome you to the club 😉
One important aspect of Facebook is that you can create causes, groups, and more importantly "fan pages" for a company or organization that allows other people to become a your "fan." This is a good way to get more exposure for your business, share information about your company and interact on a more personal level with your clients or customers.
Twitter for Business
Twitter, in my opinion, is a very simple way for people to get a taste of how social media can affect your business. Twitter is, by definition, a "micro blog." That essentially means it is a way to share very short thoughts with other people. It could be a recommendation of a company, or movie, website or it could be a reply to a post that someone else has made (which is called a "ReTweet.") Blogging can be a very valuable way to build your online presence and establish your authority in your industry but many people are intimidated by the thought if writing a daily, or even weekly article. The great thing about Twitter is you are limited to 140 characters, so all rules of grammar (okay, maybe not ALL ) are thrown out the window in favor of brevity and it requires MUCH less of a time commitment.
One of the more powerful aspects of Twitter is that people can search for relevant tweets and find people. So if you "Tweet" about a new special that you are offering at your business, someone may be searching on Twitter and find your post and then decide to start following you. Just like becoming a friend of someone on Facebook, when you follow someone on Twitter, it means you will see their posts when you log in, so you can keep up with what they have to say, and they will then see your posts from that point on as well. This is very powerful for a business owner as you can follow other experts in your industry and grow your knowledge (not to mention more personally connect you with anyone in the world – even the President), but it also establishes you as an expert as well. The key thing to remember is to keep your personal posts to a minimum and try to remain focused on your industry, if you want to keep the attention of your followers. Chances are, they started following you to find out more about your industry expertise than what you had to eat for lunch 🙂 Read our article on Twitter for more information.
Great, Why Should I Care?
One interesting development of how people have responded to the increasing popularity of social media is they now check these sites when determining who they want to do business with. Having a Facebook fan page for your business with a ton of fans and positive reviews speaks a wealth about who you are and many people tend to trust this non-biased feedback over brand identity alone. So this means that you need to be careful to put your best foot forward when you post on any social media site, because they are public, afterall.
Be polite, be relevant and keep it short and sweet.
If you plan to use Twitter for a great deal of personal updates, great! BUT, create a separate account for you personally that is separate from your business account so you can create a distinction and allow people to follow what they are most interested in – you personally or you professionally.
Another thing to be wary of is that there are people out there that use these social media apps for sending junk or solicitations. So it is best to get email notifications when new people follow you or become your friend and check them out to make sure you approve their association with you. And if you don’t like what you see, simply block them.
In conclusion, these tools are only as good as you make them. If you do not use them, they won’t help you. But if you do use it, it’s important that you keep up with your friends or followers and make sure that you are protecting your brand and actively participating with them. There are a lot of ways to burn your time on the internet, and these two can definitely fit that bill, but as long as you use these with a purpose in mind, you can build your business. Also, you can’t keep up with every social media site out there effectively, so pick a few to stick with. These two mentioned in this article are good ones to start with, and if you are feeling particularly spunky, another good social media site to check out for your business is LinkedIn.
There are two things to look for to see if a link TO your website from another website is sending you Pagerank value to boost your position in search engines. Both methods keep search engines from following that link. However, keep in mind that even though a link may not pass Pagerank, no link is a bad one (unless maybe it’s a link from an unscruptulus source), as it can still still drive a live person to your site. Most social media sites use one of these two methods, so they do not provide true links back to your site which improves your ranking in search engines (Links back to your site improve your ranking in search engines – Read more here), BUT there is still value because people can see the link and if they like what they see when they visit, they may elect to manually link to your site themselves or socially bookmark it which shares it with their friends and increases your exposure.
NoFollow – View the source of the website you are on. If you use a
web browser that allows "View Selection Source", like Firefox, that
makes this easier. If you use Firefox, highlight the link back to your
site and right-click and select "View Selection Source." You’ll see
some HTML code, but you want to look for something that looks like:
rel="nofollow"
This tag tells search engines to not follow that link, although people can still click on it.
Redirects – Many sites will use redirects to avoid passing Pagerank
to your link. You can identify that by turning on the "Status" bar at
the bottom of your browser if not already on (Look in menu "View –>
Status Bar") and then hover your mouse over the link on the page
without clicking on it, look in that bottom status bar to see where the
link points to. If the site is redirecting, you’ll see something like:
What this effectively does is links to themselves with a parameter
telling their site to then forward to your site. Again, search engines
will not see the redirect to you and instead just sees a link to the
site linking to you.
The story of
) are thrown out the window in favor of brevity and it requires MUCH less of a time commitment.