Jody Raines

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How To Develop An Online Brand

Online marketing strategyWhen it comes to being discovered online, the one part of your online presence that you “own” is your website.  Your website should be the cornerstone of your online strategy – the information contained is the beacon that customers can find when they look for you or your services.

But, your website is only a part of your online campaign for online branding. Granted, an optimized website is the most important component of your online marketing strategy, however even with the most glorious and well thought-out website, you may be missing huge opportunities to support your product, champion your brand and connect with your customers and prospects.

Social media marketing was a “buzzword” that we started to discuss a several years ago. You may also have heard the terminology “new marketing” or “online marketing” or even “inbound marketing”. The concept is to create an optimized online presence to help your customers find you and your business. A lot of the social media “guru’ types talked about “engagement” and there was much nodding of heads. But the reality is that there is very little engagement happening, even today, because so many companies have opted to run automated campaigns.

I’m not against all automation, but it just does not work for every organization in every situation. Especially in times of high national tension, when the focus is on an earthquake or superstorm, having an automated message about sunny skies is a real disconnect with your audience. The worst thing you can to is have your customers disengage, opt out, and disconnect. Now, those wonderful social channels have worked against you.

If I had to pick one word to describe the best practices for social media marketing, that word would be responsive. Not only are we striving for responsive design in websites, but we also should be responsive to our audience and to the societal and cultural changes around us. If you are responsive, you are creating content that is relevent and that has true appeal to your targeted customers.

A responsive website is one that fluidly re-conforms to the device it is being viewed on. Newer websites are being created that have this feature built in. Some of the older websites have both a desktop version and a mobile version. Without getting too technical, what you want to be sure to do is to present the version that is best viewed on the device that the viewer is using at the time they visit your site. It makes perfect sense, right?

One of my biggest frustrations is one of the news alert services that I use that sends me a link to an article that I want to read. When I click on the link, I’m taken to a general page that may or may not contain the article. Eventually, I stop clicking on the link and ignore the alert. I may even unsubscribe from the alert. This is no different than putting the wrong terminology or advertising or teaser to an article, then sending the reader to a site that is so general, they get turned off. Social media is an awesome tool to drive traffic to your site – just be sure that the link is truly the target of the tweet or Facebook post. Otherwise, you will lose customers.

When it comes to internet branding and social media optimization, the rules for marketing have changed, and without a social media presence, you will be a dinosaur. Customers are searching and researcing using the Internet. There is an entire generation that is growing up in a world where using Google is second nature to find answers. The changes that search engines have gone through are taken in stride, and adopted readily. To be sure that your online brand is being appropriately represented in today’s informational society means you have to be relevent and you have to be present. That includes social media. The old excuse that your customers don’t use social media is becoming tired and inaccurate. Your customers use social media, and they use it every day. They may be checking their email first thing in the morning, which includes their Facebook statuses and their friend’s updates. The way we communicate is much more fluid, more rapid and most likely, online.

Be aware of derogatory messages about your brand and be responsive. Don’t hide from critical reviews, but address them with equally positive reviews from your customers.

Social media marketing, is primarily social, and secondarily its media, and finally, it’s marketing. Keeping the appropriate perspective will go a long way to your successful online branding and internet marketing campaign.

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3 Key Tips For Internet Branding

Online branding agency, Jody RainesBranding is a business marketing campaign necessity.  Having a brand helps clients and prospects remember your company’s name and services and forms a comfortable association between your product and offer.  In an increasingly competitive market, utilizing branding techniques builds a dependable and trustworthy identity for your company, one that your customers and potential customers will rely upon when making a choice of product or service.

Understanding how to create a brand or identity utilizing Internet marketing strategy is important for businesses to compete in today’s new media marketplace.  While creating a website that proves well in the search engine rankings is great, it’s not the only mechanism or tool a marketer must have to build an effective marketing campaign that drives conversions.  Even the best seo will understand that if there is a disconnect between the keywords and the Internet presence,  you may have all the traffic to your site that you need, but conversions won’t happen.

I recently was asked to do SEO for a a company that was concerned because they are not getting sales.  An evaluation of the online assets revealed that the company’s website had good traffic, and they were ranking for keywords that were appropriate.  So, why weren’t they getting sales?  Frankly, it’s because the branding was a disconnect with the customer’s expectations.

If you are offering a product that is handcrafted and upscale, you should pick appropriate colors versus offering a product that’s popular and young.  With the handcrafted item, colors that are rich and luxurious like ivory and burgundy and sage would be appropriate.  With a youthful, popularly priced product, go for the brights.  In either case, the message and the look and feel should match to create a powerful brand message.
Here are 3 key aspects to branding in today’s marketing:

  1. Branding your website is the important first step. Understanding who your customer is and what their preferences are is important to identifying how to brand your website.  Especially if your color palette is inconsistent with customer expectations, you’ll find out pretty quickly that you’ve made a mistake.   Not only is color critical, it’s also important to create a user interface that reflects what your customer is searching for more than what you feel you want to present to the customer.  Having a website that’s all about “us” versus all about “you” is a common mistake. however having a unique graphic design, graphic logo, color theme and a smart targeted message will differentiate your company from the competition.
  2. Branding your Social Media is key to business engagement.  Recognizing your brand when connecting with social media reinforces your company message and identity.  Just having a Twitter account with the default icon is enough to inspire a lack of trust by potential customers.  You should brand all of your social media accounts to match the look and feel of your website consistently.  Facebook business pages, Google+ business pages and your Twitter profile are all part of a cultivated business brand that inspires trust and conveys branded messaging that is mutually reinforcing.  Utilizing social media also enables you to identify customer issues and react to them quickly – creating a rapport between you and your customers that wasn’t achievable before social media became a popular marketing tool.
  3. Branding your business blog is important for developing credibility and authority.  The difference between a blog and static pages on the website is that the blog is a great way to position yourself as a thought leader and build content dynamically for your website.  The blog is used to answer questions and pose helpful ideas as opposed to selling your product or service.  Branding your blog to complement your website is an important approach to creating a brand identity.  Branding your company blog helps to establish your your business’ reputation as a valuable source of information.

Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, your marketing strategy is important, and now with the power of Internet marketing, it’s critical that all components work in unison to build brand recognition.  What is your branding strategy?  Have you identified who your customer is and what their persona is?  How do you know that your marketing is working together to create a powerful brand?  Is it?

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Should You DIY Your Website? Tips For Better User Experience And Design

optimize your websiteA friend recently posted on Facebook that her new ‘business website’ has launched. She proudly asked for all of her friends to come and visit and share what they thought. The well-meaning friends who complimented her on the site fueled her enthusiastic response that she created the site herself using a free service. She then offered to ‘create’ websites for her friends who may need a website as well.

While well-intentioned and visible as a website, most small and micro businesses do not realize that there is a mountain of difference between having a website and having an effective website. Even in discussions with clients, I find that many otherwise savvy business people just don’t seem to understand the difference  of what constitutes an effective website versus having a brochure online.

If you simply want a place that you can point a prospect to in order to learn about what you do, and you do this by giving them the web address or URL, then by all means, save money and use a free service. For the most part, getting a website as a DIY project will save you money, and possibly time if you are working with an inexperienced or slow web designer. For businesses who have gone the budget website route (like my friend)  they have wound up with a site that was poorly thought through, has non indexible content and pages, and cannot be easily updated.

If you are hopeful to develop an effective website, and have prospects find your website online when searching for services you offer, this is not likely to happen with a DIY website.

The difference between a DIY website and one that is professionally produced are manifold. For example, a web designer will help you determine the navigation for your website. This is one of the most critical phases and will determine the “user interface” – in other words, the way that a visitor to your website will navigate to find what they need. A good web design can help the visitor find what they are looking for in the least amount of clicks. Web dev’s understand that too many clicks will result in a lost opportunity, particularly if the individual cannot find the information they are seeking.

Another problem with DIY websites is that they are not created with an eye to optimizing load time and images. Certainly pretty images look great, but if the image file is too large, it will increase load time, and if you’ve ever had to wait for a website to load, you understand that most people won’t! Check your “bounce” rate using Google Analytics and you will see that there are some pages that have high bounce rates. One reason could be that the page takes too long to load… Another reason is that the keywords that brought the reader to that page may be inconsistent with the content the prospect is seeking.

One of the most frequent issues I notice with DIY websites as well as with professionally created websites is the content. I recently visited with a business that supplies software as a service for the mortgage loan industry, and their website suffered from this affliction.  Most businesses tend to think of their business in terms of the ptoducts or services they offer. This is in stark contrast with their prospective customer’s motivation; Most customers think of the product or service in terms of how it meets their needs.   This is evident in the navigation, the content and will pervasively limite the appeal and results of “SEO” for the website. The problem is manifest in website navigation that is organized in terms that the business thinks makes sense, but is difficult or complex for customers to navigate to find what they want.

A good example that comes to mind is a sign company that I worked with. The owner of ths sign company was frustrated after working with many SEO companies, and spending a lot of money. His website was still buried and not coming up, plus his sales were not coming from the website. We took a look at the site, and the HOME page was so broad and general that it really did not do a good job of presenting anything. We discussed the types of businesses who are most profitable for him, and then reworked the navigation to appeal to the customer’s perspective. Upon re-launch of the site, he saw a huge improvement in inbound leads and business, and was so excited about the transformation of his online business that he became an “inbound marketing consultant” to help others learn what he felt was a winning strategy.

Another example is a small company that manufactures compartmentalized handbags. The bags are geared towards two different markets – they are oversized and help to organize a lot of items, so they are great as a designer diaperbag, and they are also terrific for the working woman executive to carry a notebook or tablet and other office essentials in fashion. The navigation did nothing to help these two audiences find the section that appealed to their needs because the navigation was organized by the colors of the product. Since the product could be used differently regardless of the color, women executives may have been turned off by the diaperbag images, and the mommy buyers could not relate to the business photos. The solution was to create a navigation that would divide the site by customer use and present the appropriate and compelling images and content for those audiences.

If you’ve ever searched for Homemade Dog Food recipes you may have found this next example client. When I first started talking with them, they had a website that was so technical I wasn’t sure what they were trying to sell. It turns out it was a supplement and recipes for a feeding system if you wanted to make homemade dog food. The product makes sense, but if you didn’t know what it was, it would have been difficult to acertain from the picture of a beautiful clean kitchen. The HOME page now features rotating graphics about the benefits of a great home-made diet from healthy glossy coats to renewed activity and vigor and directs prospects to free recipes that all explain the benefits of adding the nutrients in correct proportions…

If you are creating your own website, you may save a few bucks at the outset, but in the long run, if you are serious about your business, you will find that the value of having an inbound marketing professional’s insights can make the difference between having a website and having an effective website.

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Social Media Tips: How Much Time Should I Spend on Social Media?

Clients who have accepted the fact that Twitter and Facebook andsocial media marketing, how much time for social media Linkedin are great for business, have asked me how much time they should devote to social media marketing.  It’s a valid question, and one that has more than one answer.

It depends on what your goals are and what you hope to achieve.  Keep in mind that Google has admitted that social media clout is one of the ingredients in their search engine ranking formula, and having your message tweeted by others can briefly have your website listed as number one on Google.

The Internet is a dynamic environment and the old days of optimizing a website and then leaving it for a year just don’t work any longer.  We no longer can say the Internet is changing daily or even hourly –  the content is changing every second as more and more people add to the information that is available online.

If you are not adding your business or brand information to the mix, then it’s tantamount to everyone taking a step forward, and you are standing in the same place.  Even though you didn’t move, you wound up behind everyone else!

So, the first step to determining how much time you should spend on social media marketing is to determine what your goals should be.  What do you hope to achieve using social media?  Are you using social media as a broadcast device?  If so, I can already tell you, it doesn’t matter how much time you spend, you are using it wrong!

One of the things I look at when I evaluate how my client is using social media marketing – and this is a great way to determine whether that so-called “expert” really knows what he or she is doing – is to see if there is a broadcast mentality to what they are sharing, or whether there is true engagement.  I have seen these ‘experts’ with the same message sent multiple times. That’s enough to recognize that they obviously do not understand how to use social media and therefore, I wouldn’t waste any money or time investing in having them help set up a campaign.

Automated programs also are a waste of time.  That’s the same as calling and hoping to get a live person, and then become frustrated with not being able to reach a person. They can actually cause more harm than good in a social media program, and any ‘expert’ who is advocating automating should be burned at the stake!

So, how do you manage your social media and how much time should you invest?

Just as organic optimization takes time, so does your social media program. If done correctly, it will stand the test of time.  Just like “black hat” SEO techniques can have a short upsurge then have dire consequences, so can these ‘quick win’ social media plans.

So, with that being said, here is my recipe for a general social media program:

1. Post a blog at least once a week. Twice a week if possible.

2. Link your blog to your Facebook business page and Twitter and Linkedin profiles.

3. On a daily basis, check into Twitter and send out Tweets for fifteen minutes.  You can break that into three five minute intervals during the day.  You’d be surprised how much useful information you can obtain in those five minutes.

4. Post a question or observation on Facebook on a daily basis.  Ask for input or feedback on a topical issue.  Encourage interaction.  This may take another ten minutes.

5. Daily, review your Linkedin messages and respond. This may take another 5 minutes.

So, all told, excluding the time you took to write your blog, your entire social media program may take thirty minutes a day.  Of course you can spend more time if you’d like.

There are tools that can make monitoring your social media much easier, and we will address these tools in a  future post.

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How much time do you take for your social media program? Where do you focus your social media efforts?  Have you seen an increase in sales based upon your social media efforts?

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10 Tips For Choosing The Best Domain Name For Your Website

Selecting a domain name

Social Media Marketing is a great tool for optimizing your web presence. It’s all about getting discovered.

Whats in a name?

With so many new startup companies in need of a website, I am often asked what makes a good domain name.  There is no right or wrong answer, however there are some considerations that help make a good decision when selecting the URL.

The trials and tribulations of choosing a domain name.

One of the first tasks to determine what your domain name should be is to name the company.  Sometimes this helps select the domain name.  Sometimes it just creates another variable that should be considered.

How important is the domain name for SEO?  

It’s very important and affects brand, memorability as well as impact the website’s ability to soar quickly in the search engines.

10 Tips (Considerations) For Choosing The Domain Name:

1. Use keywords for search engine optimization

It’s a great exercise to do keyword research before picking a domain.  Keyword research is more than just making a list of words you ‘think’ customers may use… it’s an exercise that should be done with a keyword tool.  One free tool that’s great is Googles keyword tool, and another is the Google wonder wheel. Both of these suggest alternatives, and the Google keyword tool also gives an idea how many monthly searches are performed for each word or phrase.

2. Make it easy 

Don’t be too clever or over-think your domain name. If it’s easy to be confused you can bet your customers will be.  Spell things correctly.

3. Dot com first choice

Although there are many other options, .com is still the number one choice for a domain.  If the .com is not available, second choice is .net.  You may want to also buy additional domains to protect your name, such as .info, .co, .me, .us, .biz.  Remember that com is typically for a commercial entity, and .org is typically for an organization.

4. Consider the alphabet 

If you start your company name or your domain with a ‘Z’, don’t expect to come up first in an alphabetical listing.   If you want to come up first, you may want to start with a number, which will come up before any of the alphabet.  Of course, it’s not asa easy for customers to understand.  An example of considering the alphabet is AAA. or creating a domain such as 1-A.com.

5. Avoid Copyright

Especially when it comes to slogans or using a phrase or name that may already be copyrighted, it’s best to avoid using one of these for a domain name.

6. Avoid number for words, slang

It may seem cool or cute to use a letter instead of a word, but it gets lost in translation when sharing your domain name with someone.  If you insist on using ‘2’ instead of ‘to’ and ‘4’ instead of ‘for’ you may want to buy the domain with the number spelled out and 301 it to your domain.

7. Identifies what you do

Don’t try to hide what you do with a clever name.  The easier it is for a customer to identify that you can serve his or her needs, the better your Internet investment will be.  Coming up with a cool name for your company, like (www.sunsweptgroup.com) aka SunSwept Group, does not help customers to find you.

8. Pros and cons of hyphens

Hyphens are a great way to get a domain name that has already been taken without the hyphens, and the irony is that it does help search engines figure out what the words are in your domain.  The con is that it’s difficult to convey that you have hyphens in your domain name.  The pro is SEO.  If you can buy both the hyphenated as well as the non-hyphenated name, that’s your best option.

9. Singular or plural

Again, since domain names are relatively inexpensive, I’d suggest buying both the singular as well as the plural version of your domain, just in case someone types it into the search engines incorrectly.  For the small investment, it’s a simple solution.  You can direct the less desired name to the more desired url so they both ‘get you there’!

10. Branding, memorable, unique

Whatever you decide to use for your domain name, it has to be something that you are proud of and that you feel will represent your company and brand the way you want it to be perceived.  Names that sounds like everyone else tend to fade into the background.  The old days of acronyms and using letters just doesn’t seem to work as well in today’s environment of search engine optimization and being found.

FREE Website analysisWhether you elect to use your company name or be creative and use a unique spelling, it’s important to do so understanding the pros and cons, and making an educated decision.

What were some of the concerns you had when creating your domain? If you ignored the advice above, what was your rationale?  Please share your thoughts and comments.

WebMarCom is an Internet strategy and Web Marketing Communications Agency based in South Jersey and Philadelphia.

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Social Media Marketing And Your Online Brand

Jody Raines, social media tools

Social Media tools and your online brand

Your website is only a part of your online campaign for online branding. Granted,an optimized website is the most important component of your online marketing strategy, however even with the most glorious and well thought-out website, you may be missing huge opportunities to support your product, champion your brand and connect with your customers and prospects.

Social media marketing was a “buzzword” that we started to discuss a several years ago.   You may also have heard the terminology “new marketing” or “online marketing” or even “inbound marketing”.  The concept is to create an optimized online presence to help your customers find you and your business.  A lot of the social media “guru’ types talked about “engagement” and there was much nodding of heads.  But the reality is that there is very little engagement happening, even today, because so many companies have opted to run automated campaigns.

I’m not against all automation, but it just does not work for every organization in every situation. Especially in times of high national tension, when the focus is on an earthquake or superstorm, having an automated message about sunny skies is a real disconnect with your audience. The worst thing you can to is have your customers disengage, opt out, and disconnect.   Now, those wonderful social channels have worked against you.

If I had to pick one word to describe the best practices for social media marketing, that word would be responsive.  Not only are we striving for responsive design in websites, but we also should be responsive to our audience and to the societal and cultural changes around us.  If you are responsive, you are creating content that is relevant and that has true appeal to your targeted customers.

A responsive website is one that fluidly re-conforms to the device it is being viewed on.  Newer websites are being created that have this feature built in.  Some of the older websites have both a desktop version and a mobile version.  Without getting too technical, what you want to be sure to do is to present the version that is best viewed on the device that the viewer is using at the time they visit your site.  It makes perfect sense, right?

One of my biggest frustrations is one of the news alert services that I use that sends me a link to an article that I want to read.  When I click on the link, I’m taken to a general page that may or may not contain the article.   Eventually, I stop clicking on the link and ignore the alert.  I may even unsubscribe from the alert.  This is no different than putting the wrong terminology or advertising or teaser to an article, then sending the reader to a site that is so general, they get turned off. Social media is an awesome tool to drive traffic to your site – just be sure that the link is truly the target of the tweet or Facebook post.  Otherwise, you will lose customers.

When it comes to internet branding and social media optimization, the rules for marketing have changed, and without a social media presence, you will be a dinosaur.  Customers are searching and researching using the Internet. There is an entire generation that is growing up in a world where using Google is second nature to find answers.  The changes that search engines have gone through are taken in stride, and adopted readily.   To be sure that your online brand is being appropriately represented in today’s informational society means you have to be relevent and  you have to be present. That includes social media.   The old excuse that your customers don’t use social media is becoming tired and inaccurate.  Your customers use social media, and they use it every day. They may be checking their email first thing in the morning, which includes their Facebook statuses and their friend’s updates.  The way we communicate is much more fluid, more rapid and most likely, online.

Be aware of derogatory messages about your brand and be responsive.   Don’t hide from critical reviews, but address them with equally positive reviews from your customers.

Social media marketing, is first social, second media, and third marketing.  Keeping this in perspective will go a long way to your successful online branding and internet marketing campaign.

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Social Media Marketing Tips: How To Optimize Your Blog

Social media marketing and website optimization are dependentBlogging social media upon adding content on an ongoing basis. Business blogging is a part of social media marketing where you can add dynamic keyword-rich content to a website.  Assuming that the blog is part of the website, the blog can be a forum to express ideas, philosophies and share information.

Understanding the power of a blog includes making the commitment to use the blog in a way that it adds value to the website.  Simply having a blog that is dormant does not add interest or value.

Many businesses make the mistake of having a blog, but then underutilize it.  Here are three key blogging best practices that can help power your blog and help to optimize it’s value to your Internet marketing program and your website:

1. Blog often.

If you have a blog and you aren’t adding to it, it’s not really a blog.  Blogs are meant to be living, breathing and dynamic content for your website.  If you haven’t yet made the commitment, you really should blog at least once a week.  Obviously if you can blog more, then you have more opportunities to connect with a potential customer.

2. Use keywords.

If you write for your blog without considering keywords in your content, you are missing a huge opportunity.  Determing which keywords are effective and then weaving them into your articles can help your blog be discovered in Google searches.  Using the Google keyword tool is a free way to evaluate keywords.  Another trick is to use Google Analytics to evaluate how people are finding your website in order to focus on those topics.

3. Don’t sell.

Blogs add the  most value to the website, when they complement the site, but are not sales oriented.  Don’t make the mistake of using your blog just to pitch your products.  Share information, thoughts, lists, ideas on topics that could potentially be of interest to your customers. By sharing information, you position yourself as an expert and a go-to source.

If you follow these best practices for blogging, be sure to stick to them. Like starting an exercise program or a diet, it’s only as effective as your commitment.

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Redesigning The Home Page? 8 Common Website Mistakes To Avoid

Home page redesign, website redesignRedesigning the Website Homepage can result in greatly improved conversions when done well.  The first trick is finding a website designer who understands inbound marketing.    The process should begin with an evaluation of your existing online marketing campaign as well as your website to ensure that all  components work together in an effective and coordinated way.

What, you don’t have an online marketing strategy?  

The parts of an online campaign are critical to assuring your ongoing brand development and business success.  Not only is your website the foundation, it is also the most important asset because it is the one online asset that you have almost complete control over.  Unlike any social networking channel online, the website content is added or changed under your own direction.  Other than the search engine, such as Google, introducing new algorithms, your website is the mainstay of your online marketing program.   Even with those changes,  if you are following Google Best Practices, you will never be hurt by an algorithm change.

What’s wrong with the website?

If you don’t know how your website is performing, you won’t know how to fix it.  Without any analytics, you are operating in the dark.  Having a track record to improve gives you a benchmark.  If you don’t know what is going on with your site, if you have no clue how many visits you have on a monthly, daily, weekly basis, how will you know if your site is performing?  One fundamental mistake many web designers make is to look only at the aesthetics of the site without understanding whether it is effective.

If you don’t know anything about the types of visits you have, how many there are, what your bounce rate is  or why your visitors are leaving, you should absolutely install tracking to assure that you have this information.   Tracking can be done using Google Analytics, which is a wonderful (and free) tool, or can be accomplished by installing one of a number of software solutions including Moz (formerly SEOmoz), Hubspot, Raventools, etc.

Why Change The HOME Page Of Your Website?

The goal of a website redesign should be to improve your conversions.  That is the to improve the website in such a way as to appeal more appropriately to the audience who is interested in your services.  To do this, you will need to be able to be found, by the right prospects or potential customers for the right reasons.

Improving the design of your HOME page goes beyond the “look and feel” of the website.  It’s making the HOME page the doorway to the information that your customers are seeking.

Some companies decide to “redesign due organizational change”.  In the case of an aquisition or merger,  redesign may be necessary to re-brand the “new” emerging entity.   The HUGE mistake that is typically made is to hire a web development company to do a new website, and in the process they are blowing up both the pre-existing sites and starting from scratch.  The new site has no authority, no credibility and no inbound links.  The old URLs which may have been out there for years are sometimes discarded,  and are then available to be picked up by a offshore scavenger who will build a site to take advantage of whatever SEO juice is left, and then re-direct those visitors, potentially to your competition!   Why not salvage the domain, the goodwill, the existing “SEO juice”, to redirect to the newly branded website?   Apparently there are  “web designers” or “website developers” who do not have a clue what destruction they have done by creating the new, beautiful website, and as the business owner, you are relying upon their expertise.

Don’t make these mistakes.   Before moving to a new website design, be sure your web developer is following these best practices by avoiding these 8 website design or website redesign mistakes.  :

  1. Indexable content.  Having a beautiful website with complex graphic design may make the CEO very happy.  Unfortunately, many of the beautiful website designs are not created with SEO in mind.  If you see pictures that include words, this is not the same as a search engine sees it.  In fact, you can read ‘content’ that is a picture.  Search engines cannot.  I had one client who did not understand why her website was not ranking for her most important keyword until I pointed out to her that most of the instances of her keyword were in a graphic form.  Another new client came to me with a recently re-designed website that has zero authority.  The company had been around for over ten years, but in creating the new design, the principals had decided to use an acronym as the new URL.  Unfortunately, no one realized to redirect the old URL and no mention of the old company name was even on the page!  This certainly does not help clients find the website, but also, it just threw away all of the old sites authority.   The bottom line, make sure your website is indexible and that your keywords are content, not images.
  2. Keywords.   One of the most critical things that I work with for my clients are discovering the best keywords for their product or service.  By keywords, it’s important to forgo the jargon and figure out what words your customers and prospects use to find you.  Believe it or not, while it’s noble to assume that you can educate an audience to discovering what you mean when you have created or coined a new phrase… you probably do not have enough money in your marketing budget to make that make sense.  It makes marketing so much easier and organic to use the phrases your customer’s use to refer to what you do.  Also, ask your sales team what is imporatnt to your customers.  If you can address what a prospect is searching, you are more likely to show up in that prospect’s search results.  Ditch that jargon!
  3. Load time.  Beautiful images are nice, but if the file is too large, the site load time is longer.  Not only does Google penalize long load times, your customer is unlikely to hang out and wait to see the magnificence that your web designer has created.  Nope.  In this day and age of instant everything, we (your audience) want to see what we want to see when we want to see it.  We are not waiting. If your site takes too long to load because its too graphic heavy, we are on to your competitor’s site.  Don’t expect loyalty from a web search.
  4. Clean message. By clean message, what I mean is that your HOME page is not cluttered and confusing.  It should be clean.  In print advertising we used to refer to the ‘clean’ness as “white space”.  There is no need to create multiple images that fight for a viewer’s attention.  To the contrary, the site should have a clear idea before its created as to where the viewers eye should travel and what makes sense for that visual message.  If your site is too busy and disorganized, you are not sharing a clean message.
  5. Clear message.  Now that we have discussed the visual path, let’s make sure that the message that a visitor to our website can absorb.  Don’t make the message obtuse or too clever – if you do, your visitor will hop away to the next website just as quickly.  I worked with one client who insisted that they wanted their website to look like a whiteboard and they spent a lot of time and money to have the visual elements designed for that theme.  What was missing was the message of what they actually do.  They are a printing company, and if you dig, you can find that out.  Of course, that was a huge challenge to overcome by optimizing the content.  The message ideally should be obvious when someone lands on your site as to what you offer and what you do.  If it’s not, go back to the drawing board and rethink your concept. Don’t try to be overly cute. It just doesn’t work.
  6. Contact info.  One of the biggest mistakes I see is when contact information is buried in a website on the contact page. Sure, it’s a great place to have your contact information, but why not feature a good way to contact you on every page of your website.  One of the most effective websites I have worked on has a contact us box on everypage that is coded to indicate what page the lead came from.  This website has hundreds of leads on an ongoing basis.   Understanding that you should not make someone work through multiple clicks to get in touch is critical to conversions.
  7. Clear Call To Action.  So now your website can be discovered, you have a remarkable design that is indexible for the righ keywords, and traffic is through the roof!  You are still not done.  High traffic to your website does not necessarily correlate into business in your cash register.  You must build a clear, call-to-action that suggests what the next steps should be for your prospect.
  8. Branding.  Above all, keep in mind that every piece of your marketing campaign including your website should reflect appropriate branding messages.  Whether your brand is identifiable by color, font, graphic identity, cutting humor, be sure to be consistent across all platforms, including and especially your website.  If you have inconsistent collateral, you are wasting an opportunity to share and reinforce your branding identity.   By having all the pieces of the puzzle work in unison, you are reinforcing the message and increasing the potential for your message to be identified easily.   Use the same font, logo, colors and messaging across all social media platforms as well as your website, print collateral and any brochures or advertising that you do.  Keep the tone of all the collateral consistent as well and your marketing dollars will work harder for you.
What mistakes have you seen in website or homepage redesign?  Are you considering a refresh and would like some advise?  Give us a call or share your experience…

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SEO And Business Marketing – How To Optimize Your Website

Optimize website for search“How do I optimize my website for keywords and Google search?”

This is one of the most frequent questions I hear when I do public speaking on Internet marketing.

The falacy with optimizing for search is that “search” is not a customer.  While it’s great (and certainly an ego stroke) to rank high in the search engines for keyword phrases (that you think are important) the reality is that keyword searches are not necessarily synonymous with customers.

One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make with their websites is thinking that they can figure out what keywords their customers are going to use.  There are metrics that tell us what phrases and words are more popular than others… but this is not always the solution that we used to think it was.  Here’s a quick example.  We live in a area near Philadelphia, but really it’s South Jersey.  It can be referred to as the Delaware Valley which encompasses an area that could be construed to include the Philadelphia metro.  The reality is that customers don’t refer to themselves as living in the Delaware Valley, even though media does.  I had a customer who had a telecom business who insisted that was where their service area was.  It wasn’t until we started to divide the “Delaware Valley” into the smaller geographic areas, and referring to them as Montgomery County, Doylestown, Cherry Hill or Philly (versus Philadelphia) and using these phrases in our web content that we started to see results.  Zip codes are also important if you have a business that services a very distinct geography.

But optimizing for your customer is a different process than optimizing for search, although by doing the first, you will succeed at the second.

What do you need to know to optimize for your customer?  Well first, you need to know what your product is.  Not what your product is to you but what your product is for your customer.  A big mistake that many small business owners make it attempting to select their own keywords.  This is a mistake because you are referring to your products and what you do by the terminology you use, which may be inconsistent with what your customer calls it.

When describing what your offer is, it’s ok to use several ways to describe it.   There may be customers who refer to your product in different ways.  Where you don’t want to use different phrases or looks is when referring to your brand.  There is only one company that I know of that gets away with a ton of different treatments of its brand, and yet is incredibly recognizable, and that is Harley Davidson.  You see their logo played with in many different fonts, sizes and even colors.  If you had a marketing budget the size of Harley Davidson, you may want to play with your image that way, however, most companies pick a logo and brand identity, then reinforce it every where.  If you take out your business card, any brochures  you produce and put them in front of your computer screen, you logo should appear the same on all.

So, ask your customers – what is it that you are searching for when you look for what we sell.  You may be surprised.  Understanding what appeals to your current customers may not be what you thought you were selling.   I spoke with one gent who thought he sold office furniture… and he paid someone to optimize his website for terms related to office furniture.  That’s not what he was selling at all  – he sells office planning and he is experienced in putting together efficient space for a new office.  If you like the plan, he can spec and get excellent pricing on the office furniture, but he has no showroom and he is not competitive if you only want to buy a chair.

What is it you really do?  What is your competitive advantage. How can you stand out from the crowd and help your prospects find you?  That’s the real secret of search engine optimization. Once you understand why your customers want to work with you and do business with you, use their words to describe it, and you have a fairly strong foundation for building your SEO program.

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