Case studies are a powerful tool for business.

A good case study is basically a testimonial coupled with an explanation of what you do.  If you are a service business, or in a business-to-business industry, it can be difficult to convey to prospects what they will get and how they will benefit from being your customer.

It’s About Presentation

Our SEO marketing services are somewhat intangible, and as an Internet-based service it can be hard to illustrate to someone who has never had an experience with SEO marketing before. So when we meet business owners, we lead with case studies. We show them the result of what our work can do for them by painting a clear picture of the success we have had in the past. Then, we answer any questions they may have while trying not to overwhelm them with too much information all at once.

The Content of a Case Study

A case study is usually a description of the work you did for a certain client and the results it achieved.  As you outline the case study, ask yourself these questions:

• What was the customer’s situation when they came to you?
• What was the customer’s goal?
• What result did you achieve for them?
• How did you get to that result, or what kind of services did you provide?

The Format of a Case Study

When adding a section for portfolio examples to your website, think about special details that will make the content engaging and represent your company in the best light. Some websites keep it brief – answer those few questions and limit the text to keep the page short. Others will elaborate with a lot of detail about the process their client went through, exactly what their team did, and a lot of end results. This might be effective, too. Personally, I could see a nice synergy between a short case study overview page, with some bold charts or photos, and a link to a longer blog about that whole journey.

Imagine pictures of your staff working on-site with the client, pictures of the client’s happy face, illustrations or charts that compare the results to where the client was six month before.  All of these things could be a great engaging piece of blog content that gives an intimate and impressive look inside your company.

A great lead or closure to the case study overview is a personal quote from the client. This has even more impact paired with a great photo of the customer who gave the quote. This takes a bit of coordination and approval from your client. Don’t just suddenly post pictures and names without consulting your client first. If the quote has a “wow” factor and conveys a testimonial, it’s probably best to make it part of the front-facing info in the case study – a big bold font at the top or maybe in the column beside the overview information. This quote is part of the results people are looking for, to validate your product.

A Better Understanding of Your Business

I talk to a lot of business owners that offer a great product or service, but it takes a while to explain what they do and who their target audience really is. They do well in face-to-face meetings because they can show demonstrations. By adding a couple of case studies to their website, they can translate part of that demonstration. They can also answer those “who, what, when, where” questions and paint a picture of what types of customers they have had – and could have more of. Many people are visual thinkers, and once they have an example their brain can efficiently start thinking about broader possibilities.

Keywords change in strength and effectiveness every month. Whether it’s a rise or fall, it can seem like a hassle to work keywords and generate SEO into text worth reading on a site.

Simply scattering keywords like buckshot onto a page can generate some attention, but it’s not the kind people can appreciate or even tolerate.  In fact, keyword heavy content with no quality can attract negative attention that results in bad consequences from search engines.

In other words, we could litter our pages with phrases like “Austin web design,” “Austin web design company,” and “SEO company Austin” to try and create strong SEO content. That would be a waste of time if these phrases were randomly scattered throughout pages without any tangible meaning or effect.

It’s important to remember that your website is a formal representation of you and your company. By throwing around as many keywords as you possibly can, the information, personality, and therefore affect that your site could have gets lost in this desperate reach for attention online.

Start with a Message that Matters

Anybody can write online, but it takes a certain amount of skill, practice, and  revision to really get the most out of your online presence. Some of that skill should derive from your own business – the subject of your expertise.

In regard to keywords, their accessibility and affect on a visitor, your pages can often become bogged down and noticeably sloppy when you’re trying to write just for keywords. Though SEO and keyword rankings are vital to a successful online campaign, it’s essential to write with purpose.

Whether it’s describing your core business on the home page, discussing awards you’ve received or specific services you provide, tailoring the written material with a focus on the purpose of the message will make your site more accessible and enjoyable for the reader.

Figure out what you want to say, what you want people to know about you and your business then revise and edit the material to see if any keywords are appropriate and coherent with the message.

Editing with Style & Getting Perspective

Have someone read you’re writing if you plan on putting it online. Between grammar, spelling, and other typos, we can often become caught up within the context of a piece, and then not notice these kind of significant pitfalls in our writing.

Working with someone who is familiar with the business you’re involved in, or has an extensive knowledge of rhetoric and literacy, is a step towards creating a strong website worth the public’s interest and time.

Any opaque phrases will be questioned by the editor and will allow you to make the proper changes and revise the piece into something worthwhile.

Even a person outside of your industry can make a great editor for your content.  This could give you good insight from an “unbiased” perspective and possibly some feedback from someone who represents your customer’s perspective – who might not be an expert on your business at all.

MeetUp.com, the popular and rapidly growing community for group gatherings, updated their design tools in April 2013.

Many of us participate in business related events on Meetup to network with area professionals, meet like-minded experts and connect with our communities.  It can also be quite fun to help manage a Meetup. Meetup provides a strong platform with well-organized tools for scheduling, promoting and managing group meetings of various types.

Enhancing the Look of Your Meetup Page

With the basics, Meetup offers a few color choices and font styles to personalize your group’s page.  But as you search through a few of the group pages,  you may start to see some of the same page styles, with generic looking titles and background colors.  Some groups are popular and actively updated with pictures and new events, but the template-look of the page does not reflect the “brand” and energy of the group.  For Meetup groups that are associated with an established organization or business, it is best to brand the Meetup page similar to your website design.

New Tools

Meetup launched slight changes to it’s “Appearance” tools in April 2013.  Formerly, there was an Appearance section under Group Settings where you could adjust some settings.  Now, you can find a separate tab for “Edit appearance” under the Group tools menu tab.

After selecting Edit appearance, three new options will appear at the bottom of the screen.  I didn’t notice them at first, since they are located so differently than the former GUI.

Creating and Adding a Banner Image

Prepare a logo or nicely branded banner graphic using something like Photoshop or from your other graphic design media. Save is as a .jpg and .png file.  Make sure it includes your group’s name so it is bold and clear for new visitors to read.  This banner will end up replacing the default text title at the top of your page.

Make sure you are logged in as an admin of your Meetup page. Click on the Banner image option at the bottom of your Meetup page.

Upload your new image, and wait a few seconds for the preview to load.  If it looks satisfactory, click the Keep it or Save button.

Background Design

Meetup offers a few simple color and pattern options in their templates, but wouldn’t it be nice to customize that with photos, logos, or other special colorful patterns?  Since Meetups are often centered around local communities, how about a beautiful photo of your city or a great shot of the venue where you meet?  You will want to prepare a fairly large image so that it can easily peek around the sides of the page content.

Again, while logged in to access the Edit appearance tools, click on the Background image option.  A similar Upload an image option will appear.  Upload your new background image.  Once uploaded, you can also adjust the image to be tiled (repeated) or stretched or centered, to fine tune it’s display.

Keeping Up Appearances

Now that the design of your group page is embellished, don’t forget to keep the content regularly updated.  The most successful pages are regularly updated with photos, ratings, new events and comments. This keeps the curent members engaged in the group and also increases the exposure of that page in search results on Meetup.com.

Encourage your members to take and post photos to the Meetup group after events.  Meetup.com has a great system of sending automated reminders to members asking for event ratings and comments.  This is an ideal time for participation.

We can all recognize ‘good’ blogs when we see them, but we might not instantly know why we consider some blogs to be better than others. In general, there are two things that make a blog ‘good,’ or worth reading: interesting or educational topics and easy to understand writing.

When hunting for a good read, users typically search for an author or company with shared interests or concerns, and then they delve into the material. Readers immediately judge a blog by its content, language and length to decide whether it’s worth reading or not. While personal opinion and taste play a part, topic and brevity are still key to hooking your readers. Sometimes bloggers will let SEO concerns rule their blog-writing habits, but remember that readers don’t want to wade through a sea of keywords to get to the point. Likewise, very long, very laborious writing will turn off readers. Follow our tips to make your blog work for you, and not the other way around.

Content Before Keywords

When Truman Capote, author of the phenomenal non-fiction crime drama In Cold Blood, was asked about Jack Kerouac’s success and popularity he said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Though some people may disagree with Capote’s opinion on the Beat generation’s foremost author, bloggers and writers everywhere can still learn from what he said.

Blogs are usually used as either a tool to gain business or a platform for people to write about their personal lives and passions. Business owners especially should keep in mind that people want to be captivated by the blogs they read too. SEO is a very important part of making your site visible to the world, and including keywords on your site is a crucial part of SEO. However, don’t go overboard with the keywords. Articles should have keywords in them, but they should not distract from the message. Posting well-written blogs a few times each week will actually do more to help your keyword rankings and search engine visibility than posting poorly-written posts over flowing with keywords once a month. Stay true to your company’s values and make your blogs interesting for readers; the keywords will come naturally.

Keep It Simple

This isn’t Ulysses and certainly not many of us are on the writing level of James Joyce, so why bore your readers with lengthy, complex posts? Though it may be tempting to rant and shoot off like a blogging bottle rocket, remember that the audience is there to learn something or explore an idea further. Also remember that the audience has a short attention span; anything over 800 words (unless you’re writing for an academic blog or journal) is a bit lengthy and can lose some readers in light of length alone. If you want the message to be clear and worth your readers’ attention, then you must revise and revise again until the message is concise and easy to understand.

Remember, keep posts to the point, write clearly and on topic, don’t focus solely on keywords, and post often. These tips can help keep readers on your site longer and more often.

“Mobile-friendly” is a buzz word lately with businesses.  Small businesses want to know how to easily develop an attractive mobile website. If you have a WordPress-based website, updating your web design with mobile friendliness may be easier than you think.

WordPress software is easily customized using “themes”.  Your website has some type of theme designed around the WordPress framework to give it a unique look with your own branding, font styles, and layouts.

You can actually design several different themes that are stored as options in your WordPress installation.  Some website owners may switch their theme to a different one after a while to give it an updated look (please note that switching to a different primary theme can be more involved in order to retain certain content and settings, so I am not suggesting you jump the gun on this).

By creating a secondary theme designed with alternative css and code that is better fit to a small mobile device, you can give your mobile users a better web experience.  WordPress can be programmed to serve up the mobile theme when it detects that a visitor is using a certain small mobile device.

What kind of features might a mobile design have?

Your website’s “desktop” version will be displayed to other users with larger screens and standard desktop computers, while visitors with small screens on a smart phone will see a design specially fit to be legible and easy to navigate.

Features for better mobile navigation may include an enlarged or simplified menu, buttons that are larger and easier for a finger to select, text in slightly larger fonts, and layouts that are more vertical.

Initiating the switch

There are simple plugins available for WordPress to achieve the “switching” function between the 2 themes.  After creating your custom WordPress mobile theme, you can update a few settings to tell the program which theme to display on various mobile devices. (Your mobile design theme can be stored in the same theme folder as your “main” theme, but should have a unique name.)

How does adding a mobile theme help with efficiency?

With this theme switching method, you aren’t required to manage two separate websites with double the content.  You can manage one website efficiently and still cater to different audiences.

Over the years, I have had a lot of conversations about e-commerce.  Most of these conversations start out with a merchant (a business trying to sell something) expressing a desire to sell online, but having no grasp of where to start.  They just know they want to sell products.

So then we start talking about features.

Features they saw on other websites, features their competitors have, features that are used by their industry, marketing features, management features.

Here are some of the top features I find most merchants desire to have in their website:

Customer Registration

Merchants want to know who their customers are and they want the opportunity to follow up with those shoppers.  Registration during checkout is a standard feature these days, and we don’t work with any shopping cart that does not offer it.  But some carts will also have options to offer both “Guest checkout” and account registration.  While I have found that businesses may have different situations that would require them to offer some guest checkout options, others decided it wasn’t worth “losing” that precious customer data (and the more controlled customer experience) to offer the guest checkout option.  More businesses are choosing to direct 100% of their shoppers toward “creating an account” during checkout.

Wish List

People are visual and like to browse.  But they aren’t always ready to buy at that moment.  It would be a shame to “lose” that potential customer just because they don’t have their wallet with them when they are browsing products on their iPad, so merchants want a way to retain their attention.  By offering a “wish list” or “favorites” feature, the shopper can save that product they were eyeing and easily come back to purchase it.  Plus, since a wish list typically requires an account registration, the merchant now has the visitors info in a database for follow up.  If that person does not buy after a certain amount of time, the merchant’s sales force could reach out to try to convert the sale.  A couple of shopping carts come with this feature built-in, but most require an add-on module or plugin to fulfill it.

Recommended Products (Cross-selling)

This is a feature made popular by major retail sites such as Amazon with their powerful suggested content strategy.  Many modern e-commerce sites include a small section on individual product pages, cart pages, or checkout pages to try and upsell or cross-sell the shopper into buying “just one more thing”.  In most cases, the products in this section are somehow related.  Sometimes the module for handling this is manually configured by the merchant in their admin tools – to specify a blue bracelet being related to a blue necklace.  But sometimes, with more sophisticated technology, the system can learn to auto-suggest other products based on what other customers have purchased (order history or trends from pages they visited).  In some shopping carts like Magento, cross-selling is a built-in feature, but in many carts you need at least a basic module.

Sale Pricing and Coupons

Who doesn’t love a good sale?  There are actually many different creative ways you can promote a special.  In some e-commerce software, there is just a basic coupon code tool where the merchant can make unique coupon codes for a certain percentage off or a certain dollar amount off from the order.  Other programs go beyond that by allowing the merchant to create scheduled sale pricing for individual products, categories of products, or the entire catalog.

Multiple Categories

This should be a standard feature in most e-commerce programs.  But in some carts like UberCart (Drupal), it is more arduous to create multiple tier categories than it should be.  Merchants want to be sure their customers can find the products that interest them almost immediately, and they often recognize that not all customers think the same way. This means that allowing a product to “belong” to more than one category is useful.  A jewelry store can offer the same item under a category like Rings, a designer’s name or brand name, and a material category like “Emeralds”.  Some shopping carts like Zen Cart  and Magento handle this well, allowing the merchant to assign a product to several categories and subcategories.

Information is a very valuable commodity.

The information age has created a world where almost all the knowledge of mankind is only a Google/Wikipedia search away. What do you do with all this information? Answer: Enter the age of Connectivity!

The number of people you influence can change the game overnight. Imagine this scenario: Two actors of equal pedigree are being considered for the same part. The producers do a simple search on the web to discover that one of them has amassed a very large following of fans via the social web. If this actor says, “I’m in a movie and you should see the amazing effect,” they can get people to purchase a ticket and see the movie. This really appeals to producers and they choose the actor with an active online presence.

What does this mean for your profession or business? The time has come for professionals (lawyers, accountants, realtors, etc) and business owners to wake up to the fact that they can no longer ignore this shift in our modern culture. They need to develop the skills required to build their own fan following. It’s time for YOU to develop those same skills. Your consumer is online, shouldn’t you be?

Who’s responsible for your community?

First, let’s start with you. How would you rank yourself on a scale of 1-10 when it comes to how effective you manage your own social media channels (1 = “What’s Social Media?”)? No matter where you are on the spectrum, you want to progress along to whatever level you feel the most comfortable.

You could ignore it. You could get your 17 year old niece to manage your social media accounts. You could pay hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars every month to some company and still not really know what they are doing and how it’s relevant to your businesses growth. Or, you could do what smart business owners and professionals have already discovered; It pays to learn these skills on your own. Not just DO social, but develop the skills to BE social in a way that grows a genuine audience of fans.

Many have argued that social media is not really free, there is a “time cost.” You have to take the time to learn what to do and how to apply it, but you also need to take the time to actually do the work. Wouldn’t you love to be able to manage any channel you want without it feeling like a burden? What if you could have an unlimited number of consumers reading about you and your company? Well, now you can! If you CHOOSE TO DO IT!

About the Author:

Joey McGirr has been social online since 1997 when he first discovered AOL chat rooms. McGirr Enterprises was established in 2010. They provide social media education, consultation, facilitation and management services from their Cedar Park, TX office.

http://mcgirrenterprises.com/webinar  |  Twitter: @joeymcgirr

A strong web presence can do wonders for any business. From attracting new customers to keeping loyal ones up-to-date on new or improved products and services, an online marketing plan can serve as a major expediter to delivering quality information and customer service.

However, business owners do not always have the time to maintain a rigorous SEO campaign on their own. To boost rankings and search engine visibility, we recommend consulting a web design, development, and SEO marketing company. Unless you are already a whiz at online marketing, it may be more trouble than it’s worth to try to play catch-up now; leave it to the professionals.

The Facts

In the US, over 77% of people are active online. That’s roughly 240 million users who could be looking for a business just like yours to serve them reliably and efficiently. In light of the massive web presence of businesspeople and potential customers, it is increasingly important to make sure your site is visible. Worldwide, Google alone answers more than one billion search queries every day! Of those one billion searches, 15% are brand new and have never been searched before. So even if your company is in a niche market or just starting out, people are searching the Internet for new things every day. Make sure they can find you and your services or products.

Limits of SEO

SEO is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. However, writing page after page of keyword rich content can become monotonous; you don’t want to sacrifice quality writing for a few extra keywords. Hiring a professional SEO company can be very beneficial because these pros are experts at writing effectively for SEO while maintaining a company’s personality. Be careful, though; some companies do not offer custom SEO services. Make sure you go with a company that will provide personalized analysis, recommendations and content for your individual website.

Adding a keyword here-and-there as well as bombarding your pages with keywords will hurt more than help your business. Generating quality SEO intense material takes more time, research, and dedication than one would expect. Since keywords change and their effect fluctuates as the months go by, it’s important to have an SEO marketing provider who will monitor these changes and adapt to them promptly. While you focus on your business and honing your skills, the last thing on your mind is what keywords were strongest last month and which SEO-friendly words need more focus and appearance. This process takes up much time and research so it may be in the business owner’s best interest to hire a web consulting and SEO marketing company to assist you in generating relevant keywords to get the most out of your online presence.

What to Do Now?

There are many SEO providers to choose from these days. When debating which company to hire, be on the look out for:

1. Custom analysis and recommendations

2. Quality content provided by the company’s writing staff

3. In-depth reporting and constant communication

4. Personalized solutions for your business

Don’t put your company’s success into the hands of just any web company. Make sure you choose a quality provider who will work with you to deliver the best results.

It seems like lately, many companies and non-profit organizations are rebranding.  The rebranding effort often includes a completely new domain name.

When you say it out loud, changing a name seems simple.  But when it comes to websites, a domain name change could have major impact on your website’s accessibility and search engine marketing (SEO).  It is important to have a cautious plan with your technology team, including your web developer.

Important steps to replacing your website’s domain name.

1. Keep the former domain active, at least for a while.  Plan to keep the old domain registered and “pointed” to the website, so you will not lose traffic during the transition process.  After over a decade of changing our brand name, we still have customers who find us through our original incorporated domain presence.  It would be a shame to add confusion to your visitors by simply letting the old domain name go offline.

2. Register and prepare the new domain settings.  The new domain name must have the appropriate DNS settings to be ready to direct to your new website.  This may be as simple as updating the nameservers in the domain registrar records, or it might be more complicated if you need to direct separate email services to other servers.  Consult your IT professionals for these settings, and remember any change to a domain name takes at least a few hours (sometimes 24 to 48 hours) to propagate through the Internet – it is not instant!

3. Ask your web host to set up the 2 domains with your account.  Depending how you updated your DNS settings in step 2, you may need to setup the former domain name as a “pointer” to the site while changes your primary account domain to the new domain name.  This usually involves a small bit of action from your web host to recognize the 2 names appropriate in their server network.

4. Update the website links and coding to reflect the new domain.  This usually happens on launch day, but your developer might want to make back ups of the site and prepare some steps before hand.  If you have a WordPress website, this process is more than just clicking a few buttons or entering one setting; it involves making url replacements in the database and finding any old links with the former domain still mentioned.  This can be a delicate process, and the developer must usually make back ups of the database, files and notations about widgets and other settings.  Some e-commerce programs also have a delicate procedure for this, while some software is less involved.  Be sympathetic that your web development team will need to have some manual involvement to get this done smoothly.

5. Test.  When the website is relaunched, visit the site and test each page and as many links as possible.  Alert your web developer if anything is missing or formatted strangely. Sometimes a few items get lost in the shuffle and just need some more manual tweaks.

6. Promote.  Now it is safe to announce the name change to all of your beautiful customers and supporters.

But wait…there’s more!

If you have an e-commerce website, you probably have a payment section that requires an SSL certificate.  If you are changing the primary domain name setup of your web hosting account, you will need to purchase and install a new SSL certificate with that domain name also.  This takes time (at least a day or two) so coordinate with your web host.

There has been a lot of talk about Java in the news lately; the US Department of Homeland Security issued a statement to tell people to uninstall or disable the plugin from their computers to protect themselves from a security break in the system. But before you go disabling everything with ‘java’ in the name, take a minute to learn a little more about this technology. Java is the software that was affected by the security breach, not JavaScript.

What is Java?

Java, also known as Java VM or Java Applet, is a cross-platform programming language that allows web developers to write code that can be read by PCs, Macs, Unix and Linux computers without having to be translated. It’s one of the most popular programming languages because of this feature. Many websites use Java and require users to download plugins to run their site’s programs. The plugins act like apps for each site’s unique program.

Many bank and gaming sites, for example, require users to install a software plug-in to run their programs. Other sites like gotomeeting.com, webex.com and join.me.com also require Java plug-ins. This is the Java that may be susceptible to hackers, and this is what was recommended to disable in your browser.

How to Disable Java in:

• Chrome: Open Chrome, type chrome://plugins in the location bar. Find Java, click Disable under the name

• Firefox: Open Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons (or just Add-ons). Click the Plugins tab. Click the Java plugin(s) and click disable.

• Internet Explorer: Open IE, go to Tools. Click Manage Plugins. Show all items. Disable Java Plugin.

• Safari: Open Safari, click the Safari menu and go to Preferences. Click the Security tab and uncheck the box next to Enable Java.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a scripting language that programmers use to create dynamic websites and dynamic features on websites. JavaScript and Java use some similar names in their language, but the two are otherwise unrelated and have very different functions.

If you disable JavaScript on your computer, you will have problems. It is a very common programming language, and without it you will not be able to view many websites properly.

Should I Be Really Worried?

As of January 14, Oracle released a statement saying that they have patched Java, so users of the plugin don’t need to worry anymore. Other sources continue to say be cautious. We recommend the same, for now, until Oracle has definitely fixed the problem. Stay tuned for more updates.