eCarbonated - Jason Budowski Graphic and Web Design

Search Engine Optimization – Basics (part 1 of series)

2011-09-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization or SEO entails using a variety of tactics to improve the ranking of your website in search engines. Specifically, SEO is used to improve one’s standing in organic searches. In Google, when a term or keyword is searched, the very top results are paid (in a colored box) and are not considered organic as being placed here is only available as an advertisement. So the first organic listing will show up below these paid results.
The main concept that I would impress upon a beginner is that SEO is an ongoing game that requires continual improvement for a couple reasons. One reason is that the Internet is constantly evolving and another is that more and more content is added each minute to the Internet. Combined with how Google changes the rules for listing every so often, and you have a few reasons to make sure your efforts are continual.
A simple way to look at it is that you should be updating, editing, improving information about your business or products. This will allow you to tap into a broader range of keywords and hence search results, also it will generate new content keeping your audience loyal and returning to read more.
For larger clients who can afford it, there are a number of things to consider. A good place to start is creating a Press Room where a professional copywriter will draft content around specific keywords to the business and to each page (product or service). The main benefit is that you can focus on the task at hand and not have to try to figure out the SEO game. Other things to consider are:

Home page content edited daily or as close to daily as possible
Blogs, YouTube, other listing sites, and How-To sections should be regularly up kept
Review/comment features on pages and features for products and services
Promotions, promotional pages, and promotional giveaways
Email capture for updates and new product releases

For smaller clients some of the above is applicable to you but it may be a good idea to consider the following first. When I mentioned that SEO tactics are “free”, it means that they are available to everyone as a method with no cost to use; however, that does not take into consideration that inserting new tags, creating new pages, or setting up a Content Management System or a News section (like WordPress) will cost a production fee (usually by a designer).
For the smaller client a good place to start is in consideration of strategy. Use these questions as a check list to help determine the best course of action:

How much time do I have to spend each week/month towards an SEO Campaign?
How much of a budget can I allocate monthly towards an SEO Campaign?
What are my goals with creating an SEO campaign?

Depending on your answers you will have different courses of action. If you have little budget and modest goals, then you can create a blog and write about your business weekly, even if you don’t have the time to do it, finding extra time will be easier than finding extra money for a budget. You can create a facebook page and get people to go from FB to your blog. The only potentially difficult thing will be to create links from your website to your blog and FB page. If; however, you want expand your keyword list, additional pages on your website will be needed, which means a budget. As a starting point, if you have $50 a month as a sole-proprietor, then you can expect one of the following:

Draft of 2 to 3 pages for a new product / service.
Optimize 2 to 4 pages of existing content for SEO purposes (repeated keywords, optimize images, and listing your site in various search engines.
Help to determine goals and editing, or re-vamping your site with the help of Google Analytics or any other Web Statistics generator for your website.

I hope you enjoyed this basic outline for what Search Engine Optimization is. This is one of a series I will be created to help you learn and understand how SEO works, and how to get more hits. I have created multiple campaigns for people and businesses and I have over 9 years experience building sites and applications for the Web. Stay tuned for more!

Bounce Rate - Lowering your bounce rate is essential

2011-02-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning like most mornings with my dogs needing to go outside. So without my cup of coffee I slugged over to the back door and opened it up. I had slept well and forgot that the weather was ferocious. It had snowed all night and the temperature was below zero. As fast as I had opened the door I closed it. And this, friends of the Web, is happening to your website and it's called a Bounce Rate.

A Bounce Rate is when someone goes to a Web site, and almost instantly clicks the back button - they do it for any number or reasons ranging from: ugly design, wrong product, not a local service, or an accidental click on an Facebook ad... inevitably, your website will always get some, but the game is to get less and less.

If it hadn't been for my dogs giving me their convincing eyes - if you have dogs you know what I mean, I wouldn't have put on my boots, scarf, beanie and jacket and taken them outside. And with that I was outside and enjoying watching my dogs run around playing in the snow.

So how do you give your Web audience a similar "look" that encourages people to stay awhile while you let them know your site shouldn't be bounced on?

Here's a list of ways I get bounce rates lower for you:

Optimize the Web site so the right keywords are being listed with the search engines.
Geo targeting is important as small businesses need to be available to their local area and not hundreds of miles away. Search engines do a good job of knowing how to do this, but make sure you include your local area and neighborhoods in your website's appropriate tags.
Know your audience - a referral based business is not going to have the same keywords as a promotional page with advertisements, or store with multiple satellite locations.
Offer short informative bursts of data on your homepage that encourages people to click and learn more. Or a video.
Make sure the images you place on your homepage and with articles correspond with each other.
Use an analytics program to understand your Web site.

How do I know if I'm getting a high bounce rate? There are a number of free and easy to install analytics programs. I use Google Analytics which is a fifth generation analytics program and I think it does a great job helping me and my client understand what needs to be done to get better leads, and reduce bounce rates.

Now Google has literally hundreds of pages worth of information explaining their Analytics so this is a very basic introduction as to why I think it rocks. This image shows the Dashboard and specifically the overview page: Graph of hits per day, relevant numbers for a specific month (or any time frame GA has been installed), Number of visitors (different from hits), The map of where people are viewing from and the bottom circle graph show how people are finding you (search engines, direct traffic, ad campaign...), and last a list of pages that people most visit. You'll notice this page has a bounce rate of around 35%. This client originally had a bounce rate over 55% when we first started... (and that's bad, mmk)

This next image screenshot shows information relevant to a specific area, in this case my client located in the San Francisco East Bay Area of California. What's cool here is that I can see what the bounce rate is for each city. More specifically, San Francisco has a bounce rate higher than Berkeley which is good since that's more geo targeted. The question for me is to find out why people are looking up this client near LA? Most obvious answer is that someone with a similar name or business name is causing this. Like I said, a bounce rate is bound to happen it is just a matter of getting less and less.

Hope you enjoyed this article. I realize my analogy may not be perfect, but it really is below freezing outside and my dogs won't go outside without the pack leader... but what is a good leader if he doesn't listen to the furry family members and their little furry faces.

Listing with Search Engines - Basics

2010-07-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

First, I'd like to introduce a cool site/tool: http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test/index.php
This tool is a "spider test tool" which will show your source code as well as analyze it for all outbound links, common words and phrases (good for determining keywords if you don't already have them) and discovering if and which major search engines you are indexed with. You might be surprised at the results.

Basic guidelines.
Submitting with major search engines should be done with care. If your not sure, just post your web site once. A lead time will have to pass before your submission request is granted. If your site is brand new it could take months; however this lead time can and will vary. I don't recommend posting more frequently than every 6 weeks until you are listed. Once listed only submit your site when new pages or content is added. The lead time is less once you've been listed.

List of major search engines I post to:

Google (AOL uses Google for it's organic searches)
Yahoo
Microsoft (Bing, MSN)
Ask - does not have a free site submit like those above.

So how do I get listed with Ask.com?

Getting listed with Ask.com gets into a different area of Search Engine Optimization and Marketing. The best way I can recommend is having links from other sites that point to your site. This is the most tried and true way to get better rankings. Here is a short list of ways you can get links back to you:

Create an article and submit them to sites. This one is free: articleblotter.com
Link or banner exchanges. In some circles business that share customers and do not directly compete are referred to as 'power partners' - share banners and links with your power partner.
Advertise online to get people to recognize your site. While I can't advocate that spending money to just get hits is worth it for a small budget, it will work. This gets into the realm of Pay Per Click (PPC) or Pay Per Impression advertising... another article for another day...

Listing your site with the major search engines is only one component to a good SEO plan, and there are some that don't believe that submitting your site to with these major search engines is even worth the time. Their reasoning is that a search engine placement is dependent on many factors and a site submission may not work. I tend to think that at the very least it is worth your time, but should only be considered one of many factors.

Why Search Engine Listing a good idea.

Once you are listed, you will not need to list again until you make a change to a specific page or add new pages or content. Recently a client of eCarbonated changed her business phone number and needed the Google pages to reflect those changes. I changed the page content and meta data, then resubmitted her site to the search engines. The change was visible in Google within the week. Granted she was already listed with the search engines so it took a shortened lead time. I'd say that's worth the time invested and I'm sure my client would agree.

Social networking - time management

2010-07-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Your website is completed and optimized, and now your work has just begun... Social Networking is the next step and is a work in progress no matter how you look at it. While Wordpress and other content managers are a popular way to easily update and maintain your website without having to rely on html books or a web guy (like me), this is only the beginning. Social Networking is here to stay and is a great way to stay on your clients (and fans) radar. But this can be time consuming.

Social networking keeps your customer informed of who you are and why you rock. If you only have a facebook page (and not a Facebook business page), then you already are online reading friends posts, maybe playing Farmville, and following the pages you have become a fan of. Now add to this your business page, a separate persona from your personal page where you talk to your fans about your latest business updates. Don't forget Twitter! And people still use MySpace. Have you updated your Linked In page lately?

You see where I'm going with this. Fortunately, there are tools out there aimed at simplifying your social media posts into one location. These sites are in a new category of management software (Social Sprout calls it "Social Relationship Management" and most of these sites are free; some charge a fee for additional features.

If you finding you need help maximizing your social relationships, then consider one of these options:

The bottom line is to not let your marketing overwhelm you or detract from your main focus and primary job - which isn't reposting your daily activities to multiple websites.