2006 Continues the SEO Trend...

With the ringing of the bells, dropping of the ball, and shooting off of fire works, 2006 is fast approaching. What does the New Year mean for search engine optimization and your website? A better, more functional Internet and search engine experience seems to be the talk of the town.

The big search engines want to make it easier for searches to find what they are looking for and ensure that when they do find it the site works. Not only are the search engines going to become more strict about this, but the visitors themselves will not put up with a poorly laid out, and non-functional site.

The Internet and websites in general have been gradually improving their look and functionality, but this year should see a much larger push in this direction. The days of tricking the search engines, and site visitors are long gone. Both the spiders and human visitors are becoming much more sophisticated, which will help to make the Internet a better place for everyone.

The big engines will never make it impossible to become number one, but they will make sure that your site actually belongs there. Just because you think you are the best most informative site on the web, doesn't mean Google, MSN or Yahoo! think that. Continue to update your site and build upon it just as you would your brick and mortar business.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

The Twelve Days of Google Christmas...

The Twelve Days of Christmas, Google Style

On the first day of Christmas, Google gave to me
an AdWords API.

On the second day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the third day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the fifth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the sixth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the seventh day of Christmas, Google gave to me
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the eighth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the ninth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the tenth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Content Bidding,
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Google gave to me
Froogle Local,
Content Bidding,
Google Base,
Blogger for Word,
Gmail Talk,
a Toolbar for Firefox,
Google Earth,
AdSense for Feeds,
Desktop Search,
Urchin Stats,
Toolbar 3
and an AdWords API.


(written by Kelena)
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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

The Do's and Don'ts of SEO...

Have you ever wondered if your SEO firm is doing what they should be? Well there are some basic guidelines (not rules) that for the most part any good SEO firm will suggest, or agree to...

Do's:
- Create a site that is user friendly.
- Structure your site to funnel visitors to the contact form.
- Enhance the content.
- Make updates and additions on a regular basis.
- Create easily readable copy.

Don'ts:
- Pack your site full of keywords.
- Buy links for the purpose of ranking higher.
- Write copy just for the search engines
- Put hidden text, tables, etc in your site.

This isn't the end all be all of SEO, but it should at least give you an understanding of what your SEO firm should and shouldn't be doing for you. Don't let them sell you a bag of goods with nothing inside because it can really hurt your business in the end.

Understand, get involved, and be a part of your website and the optimization. In the end it is your website and your business that is on the line, and playing ignorant won't cut it or help you.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

A Complete Marketing Package...

A website is an amazing tool. It has gone from being a nice add on to your marketing kit to the most important thing in the kit. But does that mean you should get rid of everything in your marketing budget? ABSOLUTLY NOT!

A website has become an online business structure, but in order to get people to go to that business you need to inform the masses. Print brochures, business cards, sell sheets, flyers, and postcards to name a few are all great ways to reinforce the need for people to visit your website.

Many people think that print is going to die and everyone is going to be completely internet based. Well let’s think back to when the computers really started to hit the masses. I believe the buzz phrase that was going around was "the paperless office"! I don't know about your business, but I know paperless isn't what I would call this one. In fact it could be argued that more paper then ever is being used.

The point is a full marketing kit will always have some form of print media in it. Yes there are still people who read magazines, who pickup newspapers, and trade journals. Just walk into your local bookstore and you can see the stacks and stacks of trade journals and magazines.

Don't sell your company short by not having some form of print media to advertise your company and promote the website.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

Organizing Your Website...

You would be surprised how many companies come in and tell us that they don't know how to organize their products or services. They just sell them, and have never really thought about creating groupings of products. Then we create their website and it does wonders not only for their website visitors but for their in house production and marketing as well.

Organizing your product line gives everyone a clear understanding of how your business and products is structured. A website visitor is going to either know the exact product they want or they are going to know what general "category" it falls into. For example, if you are selling springs the person might not know the exact spring they need but might know it falls under the extension spring category.

It all comes back to planning your site before you start building it. Make sure you know what areas of the site are going to be dedicated to what products and/or services. Don't mix and match the areas either. Make as clear a line as you possibly can and stick by it. If it doesn't work out then perhaps organizing them in a different way then you thought is the solution.

Don't rush into your website design and creation just because you are eager to get something on the web. It is almost better to have nothing then to have something that is going to confuse and aggravate your potential customers. Work with your website design team or company and let them know your thoughts, but also be open minded enough to hear what they suggest so the best possible solution can be obtained.

After all it is your website, your image, and your company that is being presented. You should do everything you can to make it the best possible site it can be, given the budget you are working within.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

The Importance of an Ongoing SEO Campaign...

Too many companies think that once they have their site optimized it is done and should never be touched again, or at least not for a very long time. The search engines however, are constantly changing the way they do things and rank sites. An SEO campaign should be ongoing.

A search engine optimization company should be willing to do a monthly maintenance and reporting service for you. How they report and what they report depends on the specific agency, but you should be able to see the results in some form or another. A good SEO won't give you some bogus guarantee of being number one and will show you a report whether it's outstanding or not so great.

The monthly maintenance does not necessarily mean that the SEO firm is going to change something on your site every month. It means that they will continually monitor your site and it's performance to do everything in their power to get you the best possible results from your SEO campaign. The ultimate goal for any SEO is to convert visitors to leads and in turn for the company to convert those leads to sales and returning customers.

A website is nothing without visitors and a company is nothing without converting those visitors to leads. There should be an open line of communication with the SEO firm and the company to see what results the campaign is bearing. If the SEO firm is able to effectively drive traffic to the site and ultimately to the contact form but the company isn't responding fast enough or doesn't know how to collect the inquiries from the contact form, then the campaign will be a flop. It's important for both parties to ask questions and tell each other what they are doing.

Although a site that is optimized one time and never touched again may initially do well (maybe even for a few months), over time it will begin to see a decrease in traffic and an overall slow down in business. SEO is not going away and can be the best thing that ever happened to your site if you are willing to work closely with the SEO firm and vise versa.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

Be The Authority...

Be the king of your industry. The internet allows for any business to be the biggest and best there is, it's just a matter of marketing yourself that way and standing behind what you are selling. Some times giving the perception that you are an authority in an industry is enough to make people start believing it.

Simple things like making sure your contact information is on your site. You would be surprised how many websites don't even have an email address or 800 numbers on their site. It infuriates visitors (well at least this visitor) to get to a site and want to get in touch with the company and not be able to. A contact form is great, but sometimes people do want to pick up the phone and talk to a live person, so let them.

Presenting yourself as the authority in your industry doesn't mean you have to lie either. Be up front about your company and your policies. People will respect the fact that you are willing to put it all out there for the public to see. A privacy policy and store policy in general is an important thing to have on your website. People want to know what you are going to do with the information you collect from them. They want to know if you are going to allow for returns, or are going to charge for shipping.

Another way to become the authority is to give your visitors information. Write some informative and clearly written articles about your industry or product/service. Build a library of articles that they can go through and read to see the vast information available in your given field. They will remember that you were willing to inform them, and they will return again and again.

Being the authority is simply knowing your industry, and giving people the information they need to trust you and your site.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

Build Your Site for Speed...

How fast does your page load? How quickly do your graphics take to come in? How long does it take for your audience to get the message? These are all factors in whether or not a person will stay at your site or leave without ever looking back.

Large bulky, overloaded websites that take minutes to load are never going to convert customers. The pages need to be designed in a way that will allow for the quickest possible load time. Test your websites and make changes if you are experiencing a long wait time.

Another area of speed is how quickly the message is being conveyed. Although content is king, the point to the message far exceeds the amount of content. No one wants to read novels on the web. Make your point right from the start and then go into the details. Don't make your home page the page where you tell the companies entire life story, leave that for the about or history page.

Reviewing your website statistics can help you to see what pages people are leaving from. There are several reasons as to why they would be leaving, but speed is one of the biggest issues. If a person has to wait on that page, they won't. You have an average of 5 to 10 seconds to grab their attention and get the information across so don't mess around.

Bold, blunt and to the point is the key. Give them enough depth to understand the product and/or service, but not so much that they need reading glassed by the time they are done. Understand your audience the web in general and your site will do more then you could ever imagine.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

The Contact Form...

A contact form on a website is a must have. Without it you are either telling people that you don't want to hear from them or that you are not technologically advanced enough to field a website inquiry. Neither of those two outlooks is in your companies favor.

It doesn't have to be a complicated drawn out form. It can be as simple as requesting the name, number, email and any comments. Those are four very simple and easy fields. But perhaps your business requires that they answer certain questions so you can field their inquiry correctly. A longer form can be a good thing, if used in the appropriate way.

Knowing your customers, and your industry can really help in telling you what kind of form your website visitors will fill out or not. If you are a beauty salon and have a form that has 82 questions on it, and asks for all their personal information including a social security number, chances are no one is going to fill it out. However if you offer a product that is very unique and you want to qualify a lead before you call them back then a lengthy form might be called for.

Remember, a website visitor is no different then you. Do you like to fill out a form that reminds you of your tax forms? Do you want to spend 15-20 minutes on a form on a website where you only wanted some general information? Keep these things in mind when you are either designing your forms or going over them with your web designer.

Another good technique when thinking of forms for your website is to consider multiple forms. Now I don't mean that you should go form crazy and have one on every page. Having a general contact form that only requires them to fill in their name, company and email address and then another form that is for more lengthy quotes, or inquires where the customer is definitely interested in your product or service is a great way to keep everyone happy.

Best of all, if you find that no one is filling out your form, you can always change it. Watching and understanding your website visitors and traffic is a great way to make the appropriate changes.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

Keep It Simple...

Keep It Simple and everyone knows the last part. But how true it is. Keeping things simple is an underrated approach to design in general. Everyone always wants all the newest and greatest bells and whistles. But what are they really doing for your end user?

A website is meant to convey a message and in most cases to sell a product or service. Unless that new feature that just came out for a website will give some value to your customer, why put it on there? Is it going to confuse your visitor? Is it going to send them away? These are all very real possibilities, and can destroy your online business in very little time.

Keeping it simple doesn't mean you can't have a very nice looking site. Take Dell for example. They have a great site that is for the most part extremely user friendly (I say for the most part, because every site could use an improvement or two). Easy to use navigation, combined with to the point text and descriptions.

Drop down menus, flash movies, JavaScript rollovers, flashing buttons, scrolling text, and more! But for what purpose? If your site is large enough to rationalize a drop down menu navigation then by all means use it. If you want to really grab a visitors attention and can use it sparingly, put a flash movie on there. But don't just use these features to be part of a trend, or to make your site "cutting edge". The end result will be frustrated visitors that may end up just leaving.

A good design company will work with you and advise you as to what should and shouldn't be done. But ultimately it is your site and you will dictate what happens. So be sure to really think about what features you are using and see whether or not they add any value to the site, or are just there for bragging rights!

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

A Focused Site...

How often do you go to a website thinking that they sell or provide one thing, but their site is telling you about everything else? A website needs to have focus. Without it, people will get lost, confused and down right irritated.

Creating a website is more then getting information up on the internet. It's about organizing the information that you or your client has about the product and presenting it in the clearest way possible. Don't talk about your mom's home made apple pie on a site that is supposed to be selling screwdrivers. The two are not related no matter what your mom cooks with to make the apple pie!

To take the focus one step further, you need to make sure that each page has a focus. Make each page a separate section, thought, idea, product, etc. Don't talk about four products on one page that have nothing to do with each other. Keep in mind that the home page is where this "rule" will not hold true. There will definitely be more then one thing happening on the home page, but that doesn't mean you can't have it focused and organized.

Too many times I've seen websites come in that want to have some search engine optimization done and they can't understand why their site isn't doing well. They have a lot of content, and it is written relatively well, and still no results. Then you take a look at the site and all that content is covered on less then 5-8 pages, and each page has information for 3 or 4 unrelated products. The search engines can't get a good idea of the theme of the pages. They need to know that if they send a person to that page that they will be presented with the information they wanted.

Too many people rush into building a website, concerned more about getting the information and site live then making sure it's functional. Organization is the key to a good website (patience, and time commitment also don't hurt!). If your site is unorganized it will without a doubt be unfocused.

Your website could be one of the most profitable investments you ever make. So why not take the time to make sure it has that chance? Put the time into organizing and working with the designers, to make sure the site is something you would be proud to show off, and know other people will be able to navigate and understand.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

8 Step Website Enhancing...

In the theme of building, enhancing and ensuring your website is up to par, I have found an article that gives 8 steps on how to really increase your sites effectiveness. I will give you the bullet point version with a quick one or two lines about each strategy.

1. Build It for Speed - There is no denying that in this day and age that people are in a hurry. You have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer's attention.

2. Target Your Market - Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers.

3. Focus the Site - Make certain your web site is focused on the goal of selling your product or service.

4. Build Credibility - The most professionally designed site won't sell if your customers don't believe in you.

5. Keep Navigation Simple - Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple and smooth navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors.

6. Keep It Consistent - Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design.

7. Make Your Site Interactive and Personalized - Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any questïons they might have pertaining to a product.

8. Content is King - Good content sells a product or service.


To read the full article you can go to www.sitepronews.com and do a search for "Eight Simple Steps For Enhancing Your Website" written by Alden Smith. Alden Smith is an award winning author who has been marketing on the internet for over 7 years.

The reason I presented an exerpt from this article is to show that everyone in the SEO industry is talking about content and site structure. It really is that important and can make or break your internet marketing strategy.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

Think of Tomorrow When Building Your Site Today...

So you are in the process of having the newest, best looking, most interactive website your company has ever had. Things are really looking good and the site looks like it is going to pull in customers left and right.

But wait, what happens 3 months down the road when you offer a new product line or service and you have to add a new section to your website? Is the design that you just had created expandable? Have the web designers considered that your company most likely will be growing?

Site architecture is a key part of developing a website. Just throwing together some pages in hopes to drive traffic to your site and sell your product, could hurt you down the road. What works today may not work tomorrow. You should constantly be thinking of what is coming in terms of your business plan.

A good website designer or firm will build a website that will allow you to add to the site as needed. I'm not saying adding new areas will be free, but the ability to expand will be there and will most likely save you a lot of time and money down the road.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now

-- Alan Lakein

Don't get stuck, plan your website from the start and make sure it includes a roadmap for future growth.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising

The Big SEO Secret Revealed!

Have you heard the news? Have you seen the headlines? The SEO secret has been revealed! What are SEO specialists to do? Does this mean everyone will have number one rankings now?

The secret is, everyone has always known the secret: CONTENT IS KING, and Quality Incoming Links. Is this all it takes to get to be number one? NO! These two things are indeed the "Big Secret" but they alone will not guarantee a top position in the search engines.

Anyone and everyone can learn about search engine optimization. There are forums upon forums that discuss this single subject. They tell you tricks that have worked for them, and techniques that saw work. But the problem with "tricks" and "techniques" that worked for a few people is that more often then not it involves some form of deceiving the search engines. Deceiving the search engines is a major no-no.

There is a reason that you are so successful at your business. You built it, learned all the ins and outs of the trade and work at it everyday. This is the same reason SEO firms are so successful at helping to improve online business through search engine optimization. We are constantly learning more and more about the practice everyday and SEO is our sole job. Too many people think that because they have a computer they can do the SEO, or build their own website, etc. Would you build an extension on your house if you weren't a carpenter just because you had some extra nails and boards lying around?

Let the experts do their jobs. Sure the answers are out there. Just like the answers are out there for every industry, if I really wanted I could find a whole guide on how to build a car. But when it comes down to it I will save time, money, aggravation and more by letting the experts do it.

So don't fall for the gimmicks from some "SEO Firms" that say they can guarantee you top spots. Or they know the "tricks" to improve your rankings. There are no tricks or gimmicks. It takes time and cooperative effort between the client and the SEO firm. You will need to give your input and expertise on your industry but the firm will do the brunt of the work.

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Posted by Vision Marketing
Search Engine Optimization - Website Design - Print Advertising