Technology is in a perpetual state of improvement and re-invention in order to stay ahead of the competition. The world of social media is no different. Since 2004, social networking giant, Facebook, has dominated the landscape by keeping over 700 million users connected.

Though Facebook’s relevance and presence in the social media market is more strongly felt than any other, the sheer magnitude of this iconic site has begun to diminish the original exclusivity that it was born from.

This has created a dilemma for some users. As in real life, you may be friends with many people, but you do not want to share every conversation, photo, video, or memory with all of them. The same can be said for social networking world as well.

Enter Google+. In an attempt to cater to those needs, Google  launched a trial version of its new social networking site. The  main feature that distinguishes Google+ is “Circles”. Circles allow the user to allocate friends into groups for a limited sharing experience so that not everyone sees every comment, photo, or video that you to share.

Another new feature on Google+ that will help differentiate itself from Facebook
is “Sparks”. Sparks is linked to Google’s search engine and after telling Sparks what you are interested in (by typing in information like you would for a Google search) it  streams information to you and the people within your circle based upon common interests.  Sparks provides results for products, events, or anything that one has shown interest in. These results can in turn be easily shared with others in their Circle.

The combination of these two features seem to further enhance the necessity for your site to have strong SEO capabilities. Since Sparks is connected to Google’s search engine, page rank especially on Google, would obviously be an important factor, but it may not be the entire story.

In a recent article by Barry Schwartz, he noted that he had spoken with Dewitt Clinton of Google on this very topic. Here is the response he received in regard to how Sparks results will be generated, “Still very much in flux and being further expanded and tuned….but this is very early still.”

Since it is still in the test phase only time will tell how valuable of a resource this will be, but one thing that is evident is the necessity for your site to be visible on search engines especially in an age where search results will not only be sought out by the consumer, but also suggested to them based on their searches, interests, and needs as well.

We recently welcomed a special guest to the WEBii office – who wanted to learn about custom web design and maintaining a professional website. Doug Keating, of Structural Environments came by to conduct a video interview with Jacqueline Sinex, Project Manager at WEBii.

Check out the video interview below. You’ll learn about WEBii, get advice on website development and design, and understand why it’s important for a business to have a website.

WEBii and Structural Environments are both in the business of building – though, we build websites, and they build sustainable, environmentally-friendly homes and offices. Connect with Structural Environments online to learn more about their services. You can view other videos on their website or YouTube Channel.

We recently wrote about The Value of SEO Campaigns, and how you may want to consider starting a SEO campaign if you want an edge on your competition. After all, approximately 60% of search engine users click on a link that is listed on the first page. Meaning, unless your site is listed near the top of the search results, your chances of generating traffic and business are significantly less than your competitors.

So, how can you stand out among the competition and improve your ranking with SEO? The answer is keywords.

According to SEOMoz, keywords are

“fundamental to the search process–they are the building blocks of language and of search. In fact, the entire science of information retrieval…is based on keywords.”

From an Internet user (or consumer) perspective, keywords are the terms and phrases entered into a search engine to find information. For example, a consumer might enter “specialty landscaping Austin” (known as a keyphrase) into Google to find a local landscaping service. From a web developer (or business owner) perspective, keywords are the terms and phrases implemented throughout a website and utilized in an SEO campaign to help the search engine crawlers find a website. Basically, properly implementing keywords helps to make sure that when users search “specialty landscaping Austin,” your website related to that subject appears high in the search results list.

The keywords you decide to use for your campaign do not appear out of nowhere. A strong keyword list is built from keyword research. The first step in keyword research is understanding your audience. Who do you want to find your website? People in different audience segments may perform searches in different ways. For example, if your website is a database of job openings for engineers, you will want to take into consideration that job applicants and employers will be searching different terms, i.e. “engineering job listings” vs. “post engineering jobs.” Another aspect of keyword research involves understanding your competition. What keywords does your competition rank highly for? How can you tailor keywords, or make keywords more specific to separate yourself from the competition. Finally, it’s also useful to evaluate the search volume of the keywords you are considering. Are your proposed keywords actually being searched for? Are there atleast more than 50 searches a month?

Your research will help you build a strong list of keywords. Keywords tailored to your audience(s), keywords that help you set your website apart from the competition, and keywords that are actually being searched by users.

The keyword research phase of your SEO campaign is on-going, and the success of your  SEO campaign depends greatly on monitoring successful keywords, and removing unsuccessful keywords from your list. Your keyword list is dynamic. Once it is created, it should be updated to reflect changes in the SEO campaign.

In one SEO campaign, 53% (red) of the site traffic came from search engine visitors.

The other day as I was browsing the internet, I came across some very interesting statistics about the effectiveness of SEO campaigns. According to various articles that I had read online, approximately 60% of search engine users click on a link that is on the first page. Meaning, unless your site is listed on that front page, your chances of generating traffic and business are significantly less than your competitors.

Along with this, statistics showed that people placed the their reliance on choosing a site based upon whether or not it was listed as a paid advertisement. 77% chose organic site listings over paid listing. This again further validates the importance of having your site naturally show up on the front page of search engines as opposed to simply paying for it.

What this means to you. In order to get an edge on your competition, you may want to strongly consider starting an SEO campaign. Here at Webii, we are proud to offer our services. Using tools such as Social Media, Blogs, Tags and Links, we will help make your site more visible and as a result generate more business.

Some of our clients are noticing immediate results in the first month of their campaigns. Here are some actual Visibility Statistics from one of our client’s report. The Chart below show’s how many listings they had in those positions on a search engine. It depends upon the search engine settings, but generally there are about 10 listings per page.

As you can see, in just the first month of service their visibility is growing significantly. If you are thinking about making that next big jump to make others more aware and knowledgeable about your business, give us a call today. We will be happy to speak with you about the right options for you.

At the end of every November, my fall road racing season winds down.  After 6 months of training for a championships race, my body needs to take a couple of weeks for active recovery. Not only is this recovery important for adaptation to the thousands of miles of work put in, but it also serves as a time of analysis and planning for the future. By keeping records of my training, racing, and nutrition, I can see what type of training works and how I can improve.

Every December I begin the planning for my spring season. I start by setting attainable goals based upon last year’s performances. From there, I build a training schedule that will help me to track my performance and growth along the way. Without proper planning days, weeks, and even months in advance, I know that the likelihood of achieving success is minimal.

Like athletic endeavors, the business world operates best when properly planned and monitored. You can’t make the proper decisions to advance and strengthen your business without having clear, definable goals and a plan to obtain them.

One avenue that you may consider this year for improving your business could be through your website. Would you like your site to be more visible on the web so that it’s easier for customers to find? Do you think that your site needs an updated look to stay contemporary, competitive, and attractive to those who may see it? Set your goals and make a plan.

Maybe obtaining more business through your website should be in your 2011 overall strategic plan. We would be happy to help you out with anything from an SEO campaign, to site design, to adding an e-commerce option. Whatever it may be, give us a call or shoot us an email and we will be happy to accommodate your needs.

Happy 2011 from WEBii

You may not know it but you see the results of the META title and description tags every time you use a search engine.  The title and short description that is displayed on the Search Engine Results Page (or SERP) is actually taken directly from the META tags coded into your site.

META tags are a part of the underlying HTML code that makes up your website. They provide search engines with important information about your site such as page titles, descriptions, and keywords. Unfortunately, properly optimized META tags are often overlooked as many people are unsure of what benefit they provide.

The above example shows the Search Engine Result for the Google Translate page. Notice that they included a relevant description of the page in the title as well as a brief description of what the page offers.

The key with these META tags is to think of them as your billboard on the Search Engine Results Page. The META Title is the headline that grabs peoples attention and the META Description is the short summary that draws them in.

Here are a few tips for working with your own META title and META description tags:

META Title:

• Give each page a unique title
• Make sure the title is relevant to the content on the page
• For maximum compatibility with all search engine make sure your META title is no more than 65 characters
• Think of this as the heading to your “billboard” on the Search Engine Results Page. Try to make the title enticing to the searcher.

META Description:

• Give each page a unique description
• Make sure your META description is relevant to the page and is enticing to searchers
• For maximum compatibility with all search engine make sure your META title is no more than 155 characters
• Think of this as a short advertisement. Engage the searcher with action words.

Did you know that you can stop Google from indexing certain pages in your website? You can, with a certain tool called “robots.txt”

Robots.txt , as you might have already guessed, is a text file that you can put on your website that will direct programs that crawl the web (web crawling bots) and give them certain directions. If you had a page that you didn’t want any web crawler to access, you could command web crawlers not to index it.

Let’s say you were running a personal website for MC Hammer, and you had a webpage concerning his finances that you didn’t want any search engines to crawl. Here’s what you would do:

1) Create a file called robots.txt in the root directory of your website. If you had www.mchammer.com <http://www.mchammer.com>, the link would look like http://www.mchammer.com/robots.txt

2). If you were trying to block web crawler access to “seenBetterDays.html” The contents of this file will look like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /seenBetterDays.html

If the file was in a subdirectory, if would look like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /subdirectoryname/seenBetterDays.html

The asterisk after User-agent denotes that this rule applies to all robots, not just Google, yahoo, or any one robot specifically.
If you wanted to disclude the entire subdirectory, it would look like this.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /subdirectoryname/

This will block web crawler access to all files within /subdirectory name/ . If you wanted to disallow access to the entire subdirectory, except for the file “exception.html,”, you would put this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /subdirectory name/
Allow: /subdirectory name/exception.html

Finally, if you decided that you’ve had enough of the internets and all its pervasive indexing and searching, you would put in this content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This basically means no robot will ever visit www.mchammer.com <http://www.mchammer.com> again, until you remove the file.

There are many, many, many more uses for robots.txt, but we’ve covered the basics in this article, so that if you have a certain webpage or group of webpages that you don’t want to be crawled, you can just include a file and keep your information a little bit more private.

Simple is good, but beware of oversimplifying. A homepage needs to be more than just one picture of your product with an “enter” link. Gone are the 1990′s. You need to design your homepage for 2 audiences – your visitors (humans) and the search engines (robots). Here are some tips:

• Include a brief yet specific text introduction of what your business does.
• Include at least 1 important call to action (phone number, special offer sign up, buy now link)
• Include a testimonial from your customer.
• Include a few very strong photos that compliment your copy (photos of your products, your customers, or great stock photos).
• Include a bulleted list of your key products/services.
• Include links to all other key pages in your web site.
• Make sure your logo and company name or slogan is very prominent.

Your homepage needs to capture the attention of a person in only a few seconds, and encourage them to DO something (call to action) which leads to closed business.  This page also needs to have enough text information on it for search engines to actually read and understand what the website is about.

What tools do you use to evaluate your sites SEO?

Hopefully by now you know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for increasing your site rank with search engines.

When trying to increase your site ranking and boost your SEO it is important that you have a clear sense of your rankings so you can determine if your methods have been successful.

The SEO for Firefox add-on allows instant access to voluminous amounts of SEO related data. It can show your sites rankings with Google, Alexa, Yahoo, Digg, Twitter, and many more.

Easy access to this information allows you to properly evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and gives you the data needed to fine-tune your approach.

Add SEO for Firefox to your SEO toolbox by visiting their site: SEO for Firefox

We often field questions about search engines and how a small business with limited budget can drive traffic to their web site. Most people want to know, what can they do themselves, without hiring anyone, without spending much money. There are probably hundreds of details in that response, but here are the basics of what I say:

If you have even a few hundred dollars, you will get a much better ROI if you hire a true consultant in SEM and/or SEO. Get a comprehensive proposal with proven results from the consultant, and try to hire a company that really knows search. Personally I think it’s better to hire a company that specializes in search marketing specifically, instead of a company that does both that and web site development; but others would argue with me. Then hook the SE consultant up with your web site designer to have everyone playing for the same team.

If you want to do something helpful with your own in-house resources, write. Write a lot. Manage a regular blog, add industry related articles to your web site, submit “expert columns” to other publications, ask an assistant or intern to write articles and “tips of the day” for you. Participate in forums or help sites that relate to your expertise. Submit short tips and blurbs on networking web sites. Participate in newsgroups. Update your profile on other community web sites a lot, write some little blogs there (if you have a myspace page for your music business, perhaps).

If your employees have web sites, make sure they are selling you. Remember that anyone working for you has a potential reputation influence on your company. If your employee has a personal myspace or facebook page, check it for anything that might be unappealing to you or your customers and prospects, and possibly ask those employees to use the “private” setting to prevent open public viewing of all that information. If you have employees who participate in other web site communities, forums, and networking sites, try to encourage them to approach it in a professional manner with links back to your company web site and use those opportunities as sales pitches.