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Does your website work?

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Sure your website is online and running, but does it work?

In our opinion, a website should be doing one of two things (if not both): make you money by generating leads, or save you money by making your operations more efficient. When looking at your website with these two components in mind, is your website working? Our philosophy is to make your website an investment; not an expense.

Making you money: Lead generation is the name of the game. Whether you are using Organic SEO to move your website to the first page of search results or whether you are implementing a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign, the key objective is to attract qualified leads. Once you have the lead, your website needs to be structured in such a way that will help convert the lead into a sale or, at the very least, qualify them further into a hot lead.

In addition, if you have considered implementing a “drip marketing” campaign, it’s important to have a strategy that will build-up your “prospects” database that will enable you to provide education-based marketing techniques such as frequent newsletters, whitepapers, and auto-responders.

Saving you money: If you were able to save time by becoming more efficient in your operations, resulting in higher profits and greater savings, would you do it? Many people would, some wouldn’t, but a lot of them don’t know how. If you manage the operations of your business using spreadsheets or off-the-shelf commercial software, we can help you become more efficient by create a web application that is tailor-made for your business. Imagine how nice life would be if you could manage your entire operations online, in a centralized location, and have the ability to instantly track and report on various projects/jobs/tasks.

If you would like to learn more about any of the topics discussed, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We want to make sure that you are well-informed of all of the capabilities a website can bring to your business. Most importantly, we want to make sure that you have a website that works.

Posted in Oracast News, Search Engine Marketing, Web Design | Comments Off

Why does my website need SEO?

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. To understand why your website needs some level of SEO, one has to realize that the majority of web traffic is driven by commercial search engines like Google. The question you have to ask your self is: Do I want potential customers to find my website on search engines? In most cases the answer is yes.

If your website cannot be found by search engines, potential customers won’t be able to find you, and you will end up missing out on the incredible opportunities available to you through search engines. So where to begin? Much like building a house, it takes careful planning and a strong foundation. The same holds true for web design and search engine optimization. The foundation in this case: keywords.

Researching the right keywords for your website is critical to the success of your online strategy. Through best practice optimization techniques, searchers will be able to find your website when they enter the keywords that your website is optimized for; ideally on the first page but that depends on the competitiveness of your industry (among other things). On the flip side, if your website does not employ any SEO, the searchers will find your competitors.

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Google Algorithm Change Promotes Freshness

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Google recently announced that they have made further changes to their search algorithms to provide “fresher” results. In addition, they claim that this change will impact 35% of searches. What type of searches does it impact? Google says:

Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.

Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.

Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

Posted in Oracast News, Search Engine Marketing, Search Trends | Comments Off

How to get a high quality website

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

What counts as a high quality website? Google recently changed their algorithms to help people find “high quality” websites by reducing the ranking of websites that have low-quality content.

Of course, we aren’t disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don’t want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google’s mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we’ve been looking at the issue:

Would you trust the information presented in this article?

Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research or original analysis?

And the list goes on. Another important quote from the same article talks about how low-quality content on your website can impact the whole website’s ranking.

One other specific piece of guidance we’ve offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.

Search Engine Optimization is a major component of your website strategy and should be taken seriously. Competing for top ranking positions in your industry is similar to a horse race; you and your competitors are jockeying for position. Are you winning the race? Having a high-quality web design will greatly help your ability to become one of the top ranked companies in your industry.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Trends | Comments Off

How to launch a website redesign without hurting search rankings and traffic

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

A lot of companies are choosing to redesign their website without understanding the impact it may have on their search engine visibility. We have seen companies implement a website redesign only to see their hard-earned search engine rank disappear. How would this scenario impact your business? To some it will result in a loss of traffic, but to others it could result in a loss of revenue. The good news is, with proper planning, you can avoid this scenario and position your redesign for success.

Besides the obvious website redesign objectives, such as a new look and feel, new features, etc, it is critical to ensure that your new website is ready for search engines in order to:

retain your current online visibility
set the stage for even better visibility in the future

When your company decides to undertake a website redesign, think of it as a huge opportunity to optimize the website for search engines. Many web design companies out there do not understand the SEO implications of a website redesign; therefore knowing the risks will save you a lot of post-launch headaches. Incorporating SEO into your redesign planning process is critical to achieving success.

The key message here is that if you are planning a website redesign, use it as an opportunity to optimize the new website for search engines, from the beginning! Make sure that the web design company you choose has a time-tested process and knows what they are doing.

If you are thinking about a website redesign and have questions or need help, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Design | Comments Off

Future Of Search: Quality of Websites Is On The Rise

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Julian Grainger, An Expert in the SEO field says it best. “Google’s future is moving toward modeling human opinion. (PR) Page-Rank was a voting system for websites by websites. Now we are moving to a popularity system. Power to the people.”

SEO MOZ conducted their annual study of the 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors polling 132 professionals in the industry on their thoughts of present and future of Search Engine Optimization. Over the pages of this document, you’ll see segmentation of the search ranking algorithm into various components like “page-specific, link-level features,” or “domain-level, keyword-agnostic features.”

In the section labeled “Predictions & Opinions > Future of Search” listed this chart:

If you work your way from the top down, the biggest factor on your websites performance and placement will be determined by the quality of content and the value perceived by its users. Right from the horses mouth, The quality of a website is primarily a makeup of 2 things. Design Concepts & uniqueness compared to others in your industry & superior content & information to your competition. If your site is trusted by users and giving them a great experience then your ranking should be strong.

The next 2 factors are linked directly how your business is bridging social media outlets. Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter. The graphic below shows the social metric influence values from a page level. For the average person, If you don’t have Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn pointing to your site, It will become website suicide very soon.

Is there still value in the “old ways” of domain & meta manipulation, for the short term, sure. But Google seems to be recognizing the flaws and anything Google does, Yahoo & Bing follow suit. Domain strategy will be a thing of the past very soon & it is our job as Search Engine Professionals to ensure your business is ahead of the curve. Call us today for a free consultation.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media Marketing
Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Trends, Social Media Marketing | Comments Off

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