Ever since the internet became mainstream, small businesses have struggled to get their information out there.  Each and every step of the way, small businesses have been one step behind other companies.  Limited budgets kept companies from effectively getting the word out about their products and services.  Numerous things have kept them from succeeding using the web including, lack of time, lack of knowledge or lack of reliable support.  Any one of these items could bring a business to a halt, and unfortunately many companies have combined more than one of these causes to truly stymie your online presence.

A New Day Has Dawned

Nearly 7 years ago the web based software that would eventually become WordPress was born.  Over the past 7 years the platform that was originally developed to run blogs has morphed into a powerful solution fully capable of running most small business web sites. WordPress is a fully functional software that separates your web site html & design from the actual content.  That separation allows businesses to easily update the information on their web site, without knowing a bit of code.  I think the team at WordPress says it best:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.  WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as full content management system and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes, WordPress is limited only by your imagination. (And tech chops.)

Your Web Site, Now An Actual Resource

One of the top reasons we’re recommending small businesses use WordPress is their updating system.  Content on a site run on WordPress can be performed from anywhere.  Any computer or smart phone with internet access can be used to update a WordPress based web site.

Along with easy updates, WordPress is easy to optimize for search engines, simple to connect to social media sites, and can build a community within itself.  While not perfect for every web site, it’s a great foundation for the majority of the small business web sites on the web today.

A Partner to Get Your Web Moving with WordPress!

WordPress is an awesome tool, and one that can take a businesses online presence to a level they’ve never dreamed of.  Unfortunately, there is a fair amount of work involved in moving a current web site over to the WordPress environment.  That’s where we come in.  We’ll help you review your current online presence, discuss your wishes and dreams, develop concrete goals for your new web site, build your new site, and support you once everything is up and running.  What more could you ask for?  Have questions?  Interested in discussing this in more depth?  Contact Us to discuss using WordPress to run your small business web site.  Conversions start at just $599.00!

As a small business owner, you may want to have multiple people responsible for updating the content on your web site.  When adding these users, you’ll want to define what role they are to take as a user and contributor to your business web site.  WordPress has 5 Roles that a user can be assigned out of the box.  There is an ability to add new roles and functions in wordpress, but right now, we’ll simply define the roles available on a new installation of WordPress.

The 5 Roles and Capabilities are:

• Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor – Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
• Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber – Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive news letters, etc.

At a minimum, each and every site setup to utilize WordPress will have an administrator.  Based on your needs, you can add multiple users to your site to fill the roles needed.

For Example:

Lets say that you would like to have a business blog with the business owner providing the information.  However, you’d like for any content this person writes be reviewed for grammatical errors before posting.  You would assign them the role of Contributor.  This way they can add content to the site, but it must be approved before it can go live.  The individual that you would want to review those articles, and approve them for posting would be assigned the role of Editor.  This way they can review the article, make any changes needed, and publish the article to go live.

Now that we understand the roles that are available to us, lets go ahead and see how we add a user.  First, you’ll want to login to your web site, and click on the Add New link under the users section of the left menu.

Add User

Once you are on the Add New User page, you see will see a form with some basic information that needs to be completed.  The information includes:

• Username (required)
• First Name
• Last Name
• Email (required)
• Web Site
• Password (required twice)
• Send Password Option – Click the Check Box to confirm emailing of the password to the new user.
• Role

Add User Form

Complete the fields, select the role, and click Add User.  That’s it.  You’ve added a new user to your website.  Pretty easy and straight forward.

Directory 101

Once you’ve worked on a clean, and solid web site, one built on standards, it’s time to start marketing your site. One of the best ways to begin a marketing campaign is to get your company listed in as many authoritative directories as possible.

First, lets discuss what directories are and why they are important to your web site’s overall success. Web directories are a collection of web site links categorized by type of site. Some of the most popular web directories includes Yahoo Directories and DMOZ. While this is no where near a comprehensive list of web directories, these are two of the most important web directories to get your site listed in. Now that you have a very basic idea of what a directory is, we’ll walk you through a few questions that will help you understand directories, what they can do for you, and how to get listed in them.

Why is it important to get your site listed in directories?

This is our first question, and obviously the most important. As a business person, your first goal with your web site is to get a quality design, effective for capturing customers. Once your site is polished and ready to go, then your goal is get it noticed. Web directories are great ways to accomplish this. By having a reputable site such as a quality web directory link to your site the value of your site is increased many times. Many search engines use Web Directories as the basis for their overall search results. Google for instance prefers to see that sites in it’s database are linked from DMOZ, and Yahoo uses it’s own Yahoo Directory as preferred sites in it’s search results. The more sites and directories linking to your web site, the higher your value in the world, and the better your site will perform in both direct visitors and visitors that find your site through a search engine.

How do I find directories and what should I be looking for?

The best way to find directories is actually to figure out the type of Directory you are looking for, then search for those in either DMOZ, Google, or Yahoo Directory. What you’re looking for depends on the type of company you run. If you are a local flower shop, you’ll want to see if you can find directories that focus on your specific state, or city. If you are an international firm with 30,000 employees, then you’ll want to focus on more general directories that will represent you across the world.

You can also search web sites like webproworld.com for directory lists, and follow up with those as well.

How do I get listed in the directories?

It’s actually quite simple to get listed in most directories. Once you have your list of sites, visit each one and follow their instructions for getting listed. Most directories will want a few pieces of information and I would recommend having these prepared when you sit down to list our site in the directories you’ve found.

These are the items they are likely to look for:

• Site Title
• Description of Site and Company
• Contact Person
• Contact Email
• Web URL

By preparing these in advance, you can control the quality of these responses and keep the responses uniform as you are submitting to many different directories.

Some directories are free, but realize that many directories now charge for inclusion in their directory. For example DMOZ is free, but takes a while to get listed, while Yahoo Charges but you are listed within 7 days.

What to do next!

Now that you are listed in the directories, your next step is to get linked to from other web sites.

Validation is your friend

erhaps in your searches you’ve heard about using standards based design, being able to develop a site to work across most browser platforms, and in a perfect world across many mediums as well. Your web site should be built using the latest standards and the best coding possible, so that visitors to your site will see a clean, professional design, that will look the same no matter which browser they might be using. Also, users with handicaps should also be able to use your site, without limitation.

What standards are out there?

There are three key aspects that you’ll want to ensure are done correctly. First, is the basic coding of your page. The best type of code to utilize at this time is XHTML and is at Version 1.1 currently. You’ll notice that each page on this site is fully compliant with this standard. Next will be your CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. This feature works with XHTML to dictate layout and visual design, and as you can see, all of our style sheets are fully validated as well. Finally, and becoming much more important as design tools get more complex is what is known as the Web Accessibility Initiative. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. This is the final, and in our opinion one of the most important initiatives that are becoming main stream in the Web Design World.

Why is it important?

You may be asking yourself why this is important. Now more than ever, people use the internet to find companies or resources to help them solve a problem. If your web site doesn’t work in a particular browser, or if your site cannot be viewed by a blind person, you could be limiting your market of customers, and giving a poor impression to those that do visit your site.

If your organization receives federal funds, then you must create a site that is Section 508 compliant, or you risk losing those funds. While the threat of losing federal funding can be concerning, it should be most important to your company that you not alienate any possible visitor of your site and make your web site just as accessible as your store or office.

What is validation?

To check your whether your site is using valid code, simply visit W3C HTML Validator to validate your HTML code, and visit W3C CSS Validator to validate your CSS coding. By validating your web site code, you can be sure that your site is using compliant HTML and CSS to provide a consistent look and feel across all browsers. Validation checks your site code against the standards that have been developed by W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium.

Can it improve my web sites’ performance?

Now, after all this talk of why, and how, the final question is whether proper code can improve site performance. The answer is a resounding yes!! By using proper validated code your site will load faster, and with greater ease in your web browser. This final piece is a great reason on it’s own to create a site with Validated Code. Faster loading pages, a clean look and design, and a completely accessible site will allow your company to move forward quickly and efficiently as your take your web site ahead with your business.

Now What?

In our next article, we’ll discuss Search Engine Optimization, and what you can do to build a site that will respond well in all search engines.

Generate More Leads

Many companies are looking for ways to generate more leads, and more business while staying within their marketing and advertising budgets. There are numerous ways you can spend your marketing budget, including the Yellow Pages, Local newspapers, radio ads, tv ads, billboards and many more. Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t have the budgets to brand their company across those mediums.

PPC Offers Great Potential

Pay Per Click campaigns are marketing campaigns that you only pay for visitors coming to your site. Pay per click campaigns allow your ad to be seen thousands of times, and you only pay for those that click on your ad and visit your web site. This allows marketers to taylor a message to a specific audience and set the price their willing to pay for each visitor to your site. Obviously, this can be a great way to advertise, but with clicks running anywhere from 5 cents to fifty dollars, it can be a very expensive and costly avenue if you are driving unqualified marketers to your site.

Do it yourself or Outsource?

One key question once you’ve started marketing your web site is whether you should manage your campaigns or outsource your campaign to an experienced professional. There are millions of keyword combinations and there are millions of companies competing for those same keywords. Finding keywords and phrases for your business, and then writing the ads to drive traffic to your site can be a very time consuming process for someone that is not familiar with the process. While managing your campaign yourself allows you complete control over the ads, outsourcing your campaign management can allow you the services of an expert, and reduce the amount of time you must set aside to manage your marketing efforts. Time that you can use to grow your business while you can rest assured your PPC campaigns are being managed as effectively as possible.

Tricks and tips

While it’s hard to believe, depending on the industry your in, some keywords can run as high as $10, $20 or even $50 a click. Finding quality keywords and phrases can allow you to get great results without breaking your budget. First tier keywords will demand high dollars to get high placements. Finding alternate more specific phrases is the key to getting traffic on a budget. This is an ongoing process that you’ll want to incorporate into your site optimization services.

PPC works, if done right

Marketing your business in the search engines using PPC techniques can be effective, if it’s done properly. Contact us to find out how we can help you launch an effective marketing campaign.

Getting to know the AdWords system

Just getting started using PPC? Then you should check out Google’s AdWords, with it’s ad performance bonus and overwhelming market, it’s by far the first search engine you should utilize to market your company through PPC ads.

Market Dominance

Google owns over 42% of the overall search market. Their search and google content network reaches up to 80% of internet users in some form or fashion. With this type of market reach, it is obvious why you should market your company using the Google AdWords network. The real question is how to use it, and how to make the most of your marketing budget with AdWords.

AdWords Basics

The first step is understanding where your ads can be seen. There is Google’s search network, which shows their ad based on relevant searches done through a search engine. The other option is Google’s content network. Ads on the content network can range from high quality informational sites, to very low quality scraper sites simply built for ad production. Google does allow you to select the sites you’d like your content ads to show on allowing you to limit your ads production on poorer content sites.

Ad Types

There are three types of Ads that Google allows you to create. Each has it’s own benefit and depending on your goals, each can be utilized to increase sales, and improve your overall business image.

• Text Based Ad
• Image Ad
• Local Business Ad

The Text Based Ad is the most common ad in the Google network, and you are sure to have seen it in some form or fashion on both Google’s search engine and on a Google Content partner site. With four total lines of text, it is a simple and basic ad, aimed at people searching using the keywords you have decided upon. These ads will be seen across the top and right hand side of Google’s search results, and will be noted in those areas with the words “Sponsored Links”. When getting started with Google’s PPC system, this will be the ad that you will utilize the majority of the time.

The second group of ads are the Image Based Ads, these are mostly seen within Google’s content network, and come in all shapes and sizes and can range from basic graphics ads to full blow interactive flash ads, and are distributed to sites based on your campaign and keyword settings.

The final, and newest ad is the Local Business Ad, if you are a local dry cleaner with 5 locations around Maryland, you can setup these ads to show when someone local to your area searches for a dry cleaner. These are a very popular ads for companies with physical locations servicing the general retail community.

Those are the three types of ads that you can setup within Google’s AdWords Campaigns, now lets take a look at the factors that you control when you setup an ad.

Campaigns & Ads

Google allows you to setup various ad campaigns to separate out who you’d like to market to, and what products or pages you are marketing to them. Once you’ve signed up for an AdWords account, and made your initial funding deposit of $5, then you can get starting making campaigns and ads. The first step is to define a campaign. We’ll stick with the assumption that your company is a dry cleaner. You may have a few different markets that you’ll want to campaign for. When selecting how you want to setup your ads and campaigns, you’ll want to sit down and plan out your objectives. Lets say that you have three groups you want to aim your ad words. Men, Women, and Businesses. The first step you’ll want to do is setup a campaign. We’ll make the first campaign men. You decide how much you want to spend daily for this campaign, it can be as little as $2 a day to $100,000.00 a day, your budget is your limit on what you can spend. Now, once you’ve defined your campaign, you’ll want to setup your ads.

Setting Up An Ad

We’ll work through the basics of setting up a Text Based Ad as this is the most popular and most likely ad you will use when you start a Google AdWords campaign. Under your “Men’s Campaign” you’ll start by setting up an ad, lets say your first one is for Dry cleaning Suits. You’ll want to make your ads as specific as possible, so you are only seen by your target audience, and only pay for clicks that could result in business. The first step is you’ll write your ad. The first line of your ad is your “header” this is the most eye catching part of your ad and you’ll want to make it stand out. Perhaps you run a special on suits, 3 suits dry cleaned for the price of 2. You’re header can only be 25 characters so you’ll want to write something catchy, such as “Suits 3 for the price of 2″, or you may want to list your business and location “Laurel, MD Dry cleaning”. The key here is to create something that will intrigue people to read and click on your ad. The next two lines of your ad are for your ad copy, and can contain more information about your offer. The final line is for the URL that you’d like displayed with your ad. We could go into quite a bit more detail about how to write your ad, and what keywords to use, but we’ll save that for a future article.

Picking Keywords

Once you have your ad written, then you’ll want to select keywords. Google’s AdWords software walks you through this process, and can pick out keywords from your web site or allow you to type in your own. Then, Google will allow you to get an idea of the number of searches done for those keywords within the geographical area you’ve selected. You can narrow your ads to a city / region or expand them to be seen by the entire world. You want to find keywords that get searched, but you can limit your cost per click, depending on the keyword and market, you might be able to bid for as little as $.04 per click to as much as $10, $20 or even more per click. As you can see, if you only have a few hundred to spend on your campaign, the wrong keywords can cost you quick. We recommend working with a Partner familiar with the Google AdWords network who also has the tools and resources to find keywords that will generate business without breaking the bank.

Going Live

Now that you’ve created your campaign, written your ad, selected your keyword, and where you want your ad shown, Google asks you to check everything and then your ad goes live, typically within 5-10 minutes. Depending on the type of business you are in, and what keywords you are aiming your ad at, your ad may need to be reviewed before going live and Google typically reviews those ads within a 24 hour period, sometimes it takes a little longer, sometimes it takes a little less. Once approved, your ad is up and you’re in business.

Coming Up

In the new few weeks, we’ll be putting up articles about tracking your ads, tracking performance of your ads and getting an idea of how they are profitable. We will also show you other avenues of getting your web site noticed and seen by the world.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

One of the hottest phrases in the web world right now is Search Engine Optimization. If your company has a web site, and you have not had it evaluated for it’s performance in the search engines, then you are missing out on potential business. In this article we’ll give you some basic ideas of what Search Engine Optimization is, why it is important for your web site, who should do it, and what you should do once you’re done reading this article.

Lets first take a look at what Search Engine Optimization is, and by doing that, we can see how a search engine might value your site over another. In it’s most basic sense, SEO is the process of tuning a web site so that it is perceived as important to the search engines, for keywords or phrases that are specific to the site. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, that tweaks and tunes a web site, as the site changes, and as search engines tune how they identify a quality web site for a specific search.

Search Engine Optimization can take the form of content addition, renaming of pages, changing the site layout and structure, optimizing page titles, and the meta keyword and description tags in the HTML. All of these items take time, and a knowledgeable eye to achieve optimal placement in the search engines.

To sum it up, SEO is the process of optimizing a web site, for search engine results.

Why is SEO important?

Free Advertising.

Search engine results, are completely free listings, that define the authorities on a subject. While some search results are not always perfect, many of the top ten sites listed in most search engines are valuable, relevant sites, likely to have the information you are looking for. Getting your site in the top 10 can result in hundreds if not thousands of visitors coming to your site on a daily, weekly, or yearly basis. All of these visitors are achieved without paying the search engines a penny. So, an effectively optimized site, can mean a large increase in visitors and in turn increased business.

Relevant Visitors.

People visiting your site from a natural search result are most likely very relevant visitors seeking specific information about the products or services you offer. By properly tuning your site to receive visitors looking for your products, you can feel confident that the visitors coming to your web site are interested in what you have to offer. By paying for a listing on a site, or by paying for traffic that other services offer, you may or may not be getting relevant traffic.

Credibility.

Finally, and what we feel is most important is that sites listed in the top 10 of the search engines are given a higher credibility by those in the industry, and by those search for your type of business. People will perceive that your company must be an expert if Google, or Yahoo, or MSN says you are most relevant to the term they searched for. This increased credibility will allow you to more easily convert these visitors into customers, as long as your web site is designed to convert these visitors into customers.

Can I do it myself ?

Many people look into SEO and think that it is something that can be handled within their company, that a member of their staff can learn the tricks and such, and effectively build a site optimized for the search engines. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Web Design, and more important effective design for search engines is a profession, just as Doctors, Lawyers, and Accountants are professions. You wouldn’t trust a lawyer to perform open heart surgery, and in the same token, you shouldn’t trust your sales guy to learn how to build a web site that will convey your message to site visitors, and be optimized for the search engines.

There are many reputable firms that can help your business build a web site that will perform well in the search engines, and capture business from those that visit the site. The next question of course is, what will it cost?

What will it cost?

This is the area where there can be quite a bit of variation depending on the type of service offered, and the time frame that the services will be completed in. There are three key things that you’ll want to know before you get started in getting quotes. The first is whether you will need a completely new web site, or if your site simply needs a tune up. The second is the competitiveness of the keywords and phrases that you are seeking results for. The third and final concern is the size of your site, and the scope of changes need.

Overall, a firm should quote you a specified list of services, with a very exact price for each service. Be aware that SEO services can range from as little as $2-3,000.00 to as much as $50-100,000.00 depending on the site and overall services needed.

When requesting a quote for services, have the company review your current site and provide you a detailed plan of what they would do to optimize your site, and what assurances they have in place for their work. Be careful of placement promises, anyone promising you a #1 spot on Google is someone to be watchful of.

Always get a written quote, and always make sure that the services they will offer are outlined very specifically. Get references, and review other sites they have done work for. If you don’t feel comfortable with a proposal, don’t be afraid to get a second or third quote from other firms in your area.

Now What?

In our next article, we’ll discuss Search Engine Optimization in more depth, and what you can do to build a site that will respond well in all search engines.

What Does It All Mean?

Learning all the latest terms and acronyms and how they affect your web plans can be a daunting task. We’ll take a few minutes to give you a web 101 when it comes to Search Engines, Web Site Marketing, and web optimization.

Lets take a look at the basics of your web site and what you should expect from your web site. With the expansion of search engines, and their incorporation into the daily lives of most americans, companies are realizing the importance of optimizing their sites to perform for them. There are three key categories that companies need to understand to effectively market their web site in the search engines.

1. Title and Meta Tags

Each and every web page on your site should have a title, and meta tags that give search engines the details of your page. Your title should be like the title of a book, or a newspaper article. Short, concise and effective. You’ll want to include words that define exactly what is on this page. Once you have a high quality title tag, you’ll also want to ensure your meta tags are complete. At minimum, you should ensure that you include the description and keywords tags. Search engines use these three tags as the “introduction” of your page. There are tools that can be used to understand what keywords to use and how to write these tags, but it takes time and dedication to learn how to do this effectively.

2. High Quality Content

Have you ever picked up a magazine with a great catch line on the cover to be sorely disappointed by the article or pictures inside? Or perhaps you visited a link in a search engine and it didn’t contain any information you were looking for? To guard against visitors being disappointed in your site, and to improve your overall value to search engines, you must ensure that your site contains useful and relevant information. No matter what business you are in, make sure that you have information on the products and services you offer. Put time and energy into developing articles, tips and how to’s for your visitors. Write articles for your local chamber of commerce web site or newsletter.

3. In Bound Links from Industry Sites

The final piece to building a quality site is to get relevant sites to link to yours. You can do this by finding business directories, blogs, news sites and other industry related web sites. If these sites include links to your high quality content, search engines look at these as validation of the importance of your business. Work with local partners and companies you do business with to help build these links into your web site.

By completing these three items within your web site, you’ll be well on the way to successful optimization of your web site. Your companies web site is a living and dynamic entity always requiring updating and addition of information to keep it current and of value to it’s visitors.

Quality Design = Quality Results

Web site design is an art, one that combines a great look with solid content to create a site that portrays a companies image and message. Many designers today do not understand that a site is not about flash, and sparkle and look. The final key to a corporate web site is effectiveness. That’s the only true judge of how well a site is designed.

What a Site Should Contain

- Well laid out with easy to understand navigation.
- Visually appealing.
- Quality content that effectively conveys the corporate message.
- Encourages visitors to engage with the company.

What defines quality?

A quality web site is one designed to effectively convey the desired message across all mediums, no matter access speed, browser type or computer platform. A web site must load quickly, be easy to navigate, have current and informative content, engage the visitor, and allow for conversion of each and every visitor.

How is this achieved?

By using the latest design standards including Cascading Style Sheets to control layout and XHTML code, clean easy to use sites can be created. Most important to achieving your design goals is to utilize clean effective code, built to work across browsers. By ensuring your site is cross-browser friendly, you’ll know that your web site will operate as you expect it to no matter if someone is using Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox or even Safari on a Mac.

Make sure that your web designer is focused on providing high quality design, built to work in all settings and is designed to captivate your audience.