They are a manufacturer of all-natural fig bars that are cholesterol-free, dairy free, kosher fuel for life’s journeys. Beyond that the little fig bars are just plain tasty!

When we first met with the whole team there was just a framework of a design and a little roughed in copy. We were able to work with the whole team to develop a website that really brought forth the best the brand has to offer. The idea was to keep the site simple and add in advanced features in later phases. The first phase came out great and the entire team is very pleased with it.

We look forward to developing a deeper relationship with the entire team at Nature’s Bakery as we continue to grow their online presence.

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The TMBA wanted to create a more robust web presence. Previously their content was part of the Washoe County website and they were looking to brand themselves as their own entity and set up their own website. After meeting with the group we decided the best thing for them was a WordPress website with BuddyPress. BuddyPress would allow visitors to connect in a way that had not been possible. Registered users can now post messages to the site, comment on others’ messages and participate in the forum discussions. This has created a whole new community of bicycling activists that have a place to connect and share their stories. In the future we will look to add even more robust features like a mileage log and personalized stats on how each person has helped offset their carbon footprint.

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This year we won a Silver ADDY for the LakeRidgeGolf.com website. The website was in a category that showcased some of the very best web design in the region by some of the most talented local agencies. Some of the sites in our category were KNPB, City of Sparks, RSCVA, and Durham Ranch. In the end the independent judges gave us all Silver awards.

Thank you to everyone who was involved in this project including; Scott Rieckens of Capo Creative, Becky Wishart and Gary Brafford of LakeRidge Golf Course. We could not have done it without the participation of everyone involved.

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We received a Silver award for the iMetabolic.com website design. We’re very thankful to everyone who participated in the project including; Stan Byers of Stan Can Design, Dr. Kent Sasse, Erin Wallace, Mark Conte, and Tracy Visher.  We could not have done it without everyone’s feedback and participation.

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After being in business for over a decade they thought it was time for a new look for their aging website as well as a new logo to represent the company. After speaking with Robert it was very clear they wanted to target a more sophisticated audience with higher value vehicles to donate. They also wanted to capitalize on the green aspect of their industry. After all they are recycling older vehicles, whether that means refurbishing them and giving them a new life or scrapping them so the parts can be recycled. They also wanted to present themselves as an honest and trustworthy company due to the amount of fraud in their industry. They felt their old website was not doing that. In that regard, we made sure to incorporate customer testimonials from their many years in business and highlight them on every page of the website.

The new site is much more search engine friendly than their previous site. It utilizes Word Press as the content management system and incorporates several plugins to extend functionality. The “Auctions” page uses a custom plugin to allow them to upload a CSV file of their auction list and display it on the page in a clean and consistent manner. There is also a custom write panel for the “Charities” page to allow them to add, remove, and reorder the charities they work with. The new site is much easier for them to manage themselves and should last them several years. Enjoy the screenshots below and be sure to check out All Bay Vehicle Donations.

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Target Your Pages for One Keyword

First off you should target the content on your pages for one keyword and 1-3 variations of that keyword depending upon the amount of content you have on each page. If you have 300 words of content I would use the primary keyword and one or two variations. If you have 600+ words of content then you can use 3 variations of your keyword. Make sure you stay very tightly focused on your targeted keyword. If you find yourself wandering in your content then you should probably create another page to talk about that topic and use another keyword on that page.

The Hidden Content Users Do Not See, but Search Engines Do

There are some areas of your website that your visitors do not see all that often, but the search engines use this content in their results pages. This content is called meta data. This content is found in the head of a web page and looks like this:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
    <title>Reno SEO, Web Design, Internet Marketing, PPC Advertising</title>
</head>

This meta data, called the page title and meta description should include your targeted keyword. This can be tricky because your title should only be 60 characters long and your description should be under 160 characters. You can make them longer than these values, but the search engines will only display the data in the character count listed above.

For your title, use your keyword as close to the front of the content as you possibly can. Try to make this as compelling as possible for users as well as search engines.

For your description, again use your keyword towards the front of the content and then one or two variations in the rest of the content. Try to use complete sentences here and make them compelling. When users see this content on a search engine results page you want them to be compelled to click on your listing and go to your website. This is pretty much the only time users will see this content.

Content and Links

We also want to use your keyword and the variations of it in your content. This includes the headers, paragraphs, and lists that make up the bulk of your content.

The code for headers look like this:

<h1>This is my primary page header</h1>
<h2>This is my secondary page header</h2>

I’m not going to tell you to use your keyword X number of times in your content. Just write naturally, for your users, and the keywords should place themselves. Look for generalizations of your company’s offerings and replace words like “product” or “service” with more direct phrases that include your keyword. For my site I might replace “service” with “web design service” or “SEO service”.

You should also use your keywords inside the link text that takes users to other pages on your website. These links could/should be in your content and also in navigation blocks in the sidebar or across the top of your page. If you have a page on your site that talks about Blue Widgets then your link text could be something like “View Our Blue Widgets”. This uses your keyword, but it also has a call-to-action in it. It tells users they can click on those words to view your blue widgets.

That’s the basics of creating good, search engine optimized content for your website that incorporates your keywords. You are now are your way to marketing your website! If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment below. Next time I will discuss how to target local or location specific searches.

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While this may work for some businesses, others don’t have the appetite or the budget to throw money at Google, Yahoo! or Bing every month. However, there is a way to leverage PPC, even for just a short time, to test keywords and copywriting to see what is really going to drive visitors to your site. On last week’s Web Marketing Wednesday we discussed selecting keywords and how often times business owners do not use the same phrases as their customer base. We also went through some other ways to discover keywords. Before we spend several months changing the website in order to incorporate those keywords we came up with, we probably should test them to see if they are really going to drive traffic and conversions.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for an Adwords account with Google. After you sign up you’ll want to set up a campaign. There are a couple settings during the sign up process you want to make sure you get correct in order to get the most from this test. The first one is under “Location and Languages”. If you are only serving a particular city or metro area, like a restaurant, make sure you select that option. If you are selling online or shipping products nationally then select that option. This will limit your ads to showing only to visitors in that area. Next you want to select the networks you want your ads to show up on. For now we only want these ads to show on the Google search engine results pages so we will select that option.

Next you want to set your daily budget. I recommend running this test for a minimum of 2 weeks. One month would be ideal. So set your budget wisely. We want it to be high enough to get enough data from the test, but not so high that you are uncomfortable with it. Lastly, under Advanced Settings pick a start date and end date.

Now that you have a campaign you will be prompted to write at least one text ad and then input all those keywords you have gathered up. Make sure you select as many of the suggested keywords as you think apply. The idea here is to get a wide range of keywords. Save your campaign and get ready to start tracking information.

Over time your ad will begin receiving clicks and the information will show up in Google Adwords. Here are the key performance indicators you want to look at – Clicks, Impressions, and Quality Score.

Clicks - If your ad is well written and targeted then you should get a lot of clicks on the ad. These are real visitors clicking through to your website.

Impressions - If you see a large number of impressions for your ad then you have a popular keyword that people are searching for a lot. This is good. If you don’t see a lot of clicks on this keyword then it could mean your ad is not very well targeted.

Quality Score – This is a score Google gives your ad based on your keyword selection, ad copywriting and relevance to the landing page the ad leads visitors to. If you have a poor quality score it could mean Google doesn’t think your ad and/or your website is very targeted to the keyword you have chosen. Try rewriting your ad before you discard this keyword.

After your test is over take a look at the information provided in Adwords. You will want to pick out the keywords that had a high number of clicks, high number of impressions and a good quality score. Once you have these keywords that you know will drive traffic to your website you can start marketing your site around these words and phrases. At this point you could remove these keywords from your campaign, add some more in and run the test again. This can be replicated as many times as you feel is necessary until you have a batch of keywords you can use across your website to target visitors that are searching for these terms.

This is a very basic introduction to PPC Advertising, but it should be enough to get you started. If you have questions, leave a comment below. Make sure to join me next week when I talk about how to use these keywords in your website.

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How to Choose Keywords

A lot of business owners do not know how to define their products or services with the correct keywords potential customers might be using to describe their business. Often times the way an organization or business owner discusses their industry is vastly different than how their customers talk about their industry. It is a classic case where the owner is too close to the product to make informed decisions regarding what words they should target with their website. That is not to say they shouldn’t be involved in the process, but they also need to listen to outside influences.

There are many ways to go about developing content and keywords to use as a basis for our rankings tests. Some of the techniques I recommend to clients are listed below.

1. Poll Current Customers – Pick your top five customers and ask them what words or phrases they would use to describe your business. If you have to, bribe them with a Starbucks gift card or a small discount on their next order for their valuable time.
2. Ask New Customers – Ask new customers that call or come in how they heard about your business. Get the method they used to find you. If they used a search engine ask them kindly, what phrase they used to get to your website.
3. Study Analytics – Study your Analytics to see what words people are using to find your website. You can find this information underneath Traffic Sources.
4. Use Keyword Tools – Use FREE keyword tools like the Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, and the SEOBook Keyword Tool. I could go through a whole post on choosing keywords, but you want to use words that have more traffic than others. Use the phrases you gathered from the techniques above to expand your search options.
5. Look at Competitors’ Sites – Look at the competition’s website(s) and content, especially those that rank well already.
6. Take Input From Other Sources – Talk to your employees, get input from friends and family. Even consider hiring an SEO specialist to help you with your keyword research.

Study Your Rankings

Once you have defined your keywords start tracking your current rankings. This will give you a baseline for your improvement and web marketing. Over the course of time if you make improvements to your website and they result in higher rankings that drive more traffic to your website then you know you are on the right path to reaching your goals. If better rankings do not result in an increase in traffic from search engines, you know you have not chosen very good keywords and you’ll need to start over. Use the tools below to study your rankings.

1. Google Webmaster Tools – Google will give you some information in their Webmaster Tools. Take this information with a grain of salt. It may not be complete and it may not always be as accurate as other tools.
2. Use ExactFactor’s Free Report – ExactFactor offers a free weekly report you can set up that shows you where you rank for keywords. Don’t obsess if your rankings fluctuate from week to week, this is common. However if you see a huge drop in rankings one week and it stays that way for a few more weeks then you should be concerned, a little.
3. If you can afford it, get a subscription to Raven SEO Tools. It may be overkill for the general business owner, but their reporting is fantastic. You can even compare rankings with your competitors. If you don’t want to buy a subscription, try to find an SEO specialist that uses it and see if they can charge you a small fee to get the reports – I happen to know a guy.

The main thing to remember is not to obsess over the rankings. Use them to understand how they can impact your end goal. We will revisit this subject in the future because there is a whole lot more to talk about, but this will get you started. Join me next week for another Web Marketing Wednesday where I discuss using Google Adwords or Pay-Per-Click Marketing as a test environment for keywords and marketing campaigns.

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Set Measurable Goals

Most businesses set goals in every aspect of their operations. They set goals like sell 1,000 units this month, do $100,000 in business this quarter or reduce operation costs by 20% this year. The two things these goals have in common is that they are measurable and they have a timeframe. You would be able to tell if you sold 1,000 units this month, did $100,000 in business this quarter or reduced operation costs by 20% this year.

I talk with lots of business owners who tell me they want to increase traffic to their site or convert more visitors into leads. These are poor goals because they are abstract, lack the ability to be measured and a timeframe. When you set goals for your website they should be things like increase traffic by 10% month after month or increase our ecommerce conversion rate to 2.5% this year. Each website is unique and presents its own challenges and opportunities. So each website will have its own goals. It wouldn’t make much sense to set a goal of increasing your web sales if your website is a blog. Likewise increasing your RSS subscribers probably would not be a good goal for an online store.

So remember to set goals for your website, make sure they are measurable and make sure they have a timeframe.

Key Performance Indicators

On our way to our goals there are other items we should be measuring and tracking to see if we are improving our website’s performance. Of course we need a system to be able to measure these indicators. This is accomplished through installing an analytics program on the website. There are many analytics programs out there. You can read about some of them here and here. Probably the most well-known application for tracking your website’s performance is Google Analytics. Of course if you can afford it I recommend Omniture.

As with our goals we discussed earlier, our key performance indicators or KPIs will be unique for each website. On some websites it is important for people to spend lots of time on the site or visit many pages. On other sites it is all about the number of visitors per month. By comparing your KPIs to your website’s goals you get an understanding of well it performs with your visitors. So you need to think like your visitors and envision how you want them to use your website in order to analyze your KPIs and determine if you are getting closer to your goals.

For example if you run a photoblog you update several times per day you probably do not care about the length of time people spend on a page. If you think like a visitor you will see that most people will not spend a long time evaluating your photographs. They will simply go to the page, quickly view the image and then move on. Time on page might not be an important KPI, but the number of pages they visit per session would be the KPI to look at.

Here is another example. If your website provides content in a specialized niche you want your visitors to read that content, so the important KPI to analyze is the time on site for each visit. If your time on site drops you know that your content is not engaging your visitors and you probably will not reach your goal of increasing the number of visitors to your site. On the flip side, if your time on site increases you know you are engaging your visitors with what they are searching for and you’ll be one step closer to reaching your goal. Read more about KPIs on the Search Engine Journal.

You should now be ready to set your web marketing goals and after installing an analytics program you should be able to find the KPIs that are important to your site. Join me next week for another Web Marketing Wednesday when I discuss one KPI in particular – search engine rankings and the tools you can use to analyze them.

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Myth #1 – I have a website for my business. That’s good enough. People will find it.

HALF-TRUTH: As I state on my search engine optimization page, the mantra for the web should be; build it and they won’t come. Today your website is competing with hundreds of thousands of other websites. Even for local searches, also called location based queries, you probably have a few thousand other websites that show up when people search for general terms related to your industry.

Now if people search for your business name then yes, they will probably end up finding your website. However, the number of people searching for your business name specifically is probably a fraction of a percent of the number of people searching for general terms related to your industry. Don’t you want some of that action?

Myth #2 – My website has been up for a number of years. Doesn’t it have more credibility that way? Won’t it show up in the search results because of the that?

HALF-TRUTH: It has been proven that age of your domain does play a factor in where your website ranks with the search engines. However, that does not mean because your domain is old the search engines will give it more credibility than other sites. Older sites can inherit some barriers that prevent them from ranking well. This is especially true if your website has not been updated in a long time. Search engines like fresh, new and relevant content.

The Answer to Why

So now that we have dispelled these myths, let’s get back to the question of why. As with regular business, your website also needs to be promoted and the concepts that you use to promote all other aspects of your business are the same online as they are in your physical location. You probably pay for advertising in some form (yellow pages, TV ads, radio ads, etc.), you probably already network with other businesses and business people in your industry and outside of it and you probably rely on some referral business from friends and family or past customers.

All of these activities can be done online to market your website and they should be a continuation of your other marketing efforts. Telling people (websites) about your business (website) is the way to build a successful business website that is an extension of your physical location and other marketing efforts.

So what is a successful website? Join me next week when I cover key performance indicators (KPIs) and determining goals.

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