And as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are a lot of companies out there screaming about search engine marketing, search engine optimization, paid search, etc (just check your email junk folder). Unfortunately, most of the “information” you will find is pretty worthless – and some of it is absolutely wrong. Many of these “snake-oil” salespeople are using outdated or incorrect optimization methods.

Online marketing is competitive and requires a combination of marketing strategy, technical knowledge, skill, and experience. But too many web marketing consultants are focused on chasing search engine rankings. They fail to focus on the ultimate outcome: growing your professional reputation online.

My approach to SEO is to always ensure every page on you web site appeals to your prospects and clients first. And search engines come second. Remember this principle when a company comes to you yammering about SEO and how they will get you first page ranking.

Matt Cutts of Google opinion on web marketing

Here is a quote from Matt Cutts, one of those smart programmer dudes at Google:

“…my advice would be: rather than chasing search engines individually or (ugh) trying to make different pages/sites for different search engines, I’d work towards making a site so great that the search engines are working to try to make sure that they return your site. By chasing after a good user experience, you help ensure that you and the search engines are both working in the same direction. That’s much better than you chasing the search engines, which are in turn chasing what we think is best for users.”

Put You Customers First (not Google or Bing or Yahoo)

As Matt says, your ultimate goal should be to provide better results for your website visitors.

A high quantity of unqualified traffic does you no good if you have no potential customers. The point of your website is to act as a sales tool, right? Therefore, it is far, far better to get fewer visitors to your site who are highly qualified, responsive prospects. These are the people who will actually hire your company.

Kinesis designs websites that are user-friendly and compelling to search engines. It’s a holistic effort. This will always generate a greater return on investment than getting ranked number one for a couple keywords. We work to build a comprehensive website that has great design based on your professional brand. Our team showcases your knowledge, expertise, and experience. Then, we write great website copy that is anchored with smart keywords and implement your search-engine code.

So, the next time you find yourself obsessing over being number one in Google, think about how to be number one to the prospective clients that find you online. Focus on how you can make the content on your website even better for them. Over the long-term, this is a sustainable solution that will attract targeted leads, convert visitors into clients, and climb the search engine ranks over time.

“What is the ROI of Social Media?

and

“How do I measure the ROI of social media?”

And these are great questions that companies should be asking.

Unfortunately, there is no one answer. While we can certainly obtain some metrics through tools like Twitter Search and Google Analytics, some of social media is simply about building goodwill and nurturing relationships. Like the good old-fashioned golf game and the “Let’s Do Lunch” strategy, people like connecting with people.

That said, to start determining your ROI on social media, you must know your baseline and define your goals. (from Mashable): “As a standard formula, ROI is pretty basic, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value. In other words, if you invest $5 and get back $20, your ROI is (20 – 5) / 5 = 3 times your initial investment. In the financial sense, ROI is measured purely in the context of dollars and cents, however, the principles can really apply to any type of investment — monetary or not.”

“Having concrete goals and concrete baselines is crucial to calculating your return on investment. So before you set out to measure and monitor your social media returns, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to accomplish.”

“Once you have your goals defined, you need to gauge the baseline for your levels before starting or changing your social media strategy. For example, if your goal is to increase social media mentions of your company, in order to measure the ROI of any actions taken toward that goal, you need to know where you stand now. You can’t evaluate the ROI accurately without a baseline.”

“Although ROI ≠ metrics, traditional web metrics like traffic counts, number of comments, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc. are an important component when calculating your ROI.”

“The trick is to not rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up leading to. For instance, does your increase in website visitors correlate with higher sales? Are people that find your website from Twitter or Facebook then clicking on your product pages or going to the e-Commerce section of your site? That’s the sort of data you want to be able to look for.”

Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has put together another fabulous video that breaks down the staggering numbers of social media into an absorbent format. (See our post, The Social Media Revolution, for his first video.)

Social Media ROI

Click here to view the embedded video.

Erik writes,

While the video uses familiar nomenclature like ROI, many pieces of social media behave so differently than anything we have ever seen, that I prefer to use “What does or will success look like?” rather than “What’s the ROI?” After all, why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel?  Social media touches every facet of business and it should be viewed more as an extension of good business ethics.  Which, if done properly, will harvest sales down the line.

Social Media ROI Statistics

Here are some key statistics pulled from the ROI of Social Media Video:

1.  Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook and roughly a 1/3 of these are small businesses.

2.  Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.

3.  Vaynerchuk found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 Billboard = 300 new customers, $0 Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

4.  Lenovo was able to achieve cost savings by a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to community website for answers.

5.  Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper.  The estimated investment for this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value.  Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)

6.  BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker.

7.  Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter.

8.  Naked Pizza, a New Orleans Pizzeria that specializes in healthy pies, set a one day sales record using social media.  In fact 68% of their sales came from people “calling in from Twitter.”  And 85% of their new customers were from Twitter.  So, yes, social media does work for small businesses.

9.  Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  As a result of retweets, the Atlanta Chapter site received 11,000 visitors in 24 hours as a result of this initiative by ResponseMine Interactive.

10.  Intuit introduced “Live Community” into their TurboTax® products 2 years ago.  Due in part to the resulting word-of-mouth, they have seen unit sales increase +30% each year and have now integrated “Live Community” into their other products like QuickBooks, Quicken, etc.

11.  Software company Genius.com reports that 24% of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities.

12.  During Barack Obama’s rise to the White House, he garnered 5 million fans on social media and 5.4 million clicked on an “I voted for Obama” Facebook button.  Most importantly this resulted in three million online donors contributing $500 million in fundraising. An astounding 92% of the donations were in increments of less than $100.

13.  The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center witnessed a 9.5% increase in registrations by using social media.

14.  Web host provider Moonfruit more than recouped its $15,000 social media investment as their Website Traffic soared +300% while correspondingly sales increased +20%.

15.  eBay found that participants in online communities spend 54% more money.

16.  71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It.

Supporting articles:

Lee Oden, “Book Review: Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk,” Online Marketing Blog

Jan M. Rosen, “Be It Twittering or Blogging, It’s All About Marketing,” New York Times, 3/11/2009

Jon Swartz,  “More marketers use social networking to reach customers,” USA Today,  8/28/09

Let’s talk about your company’s social media strategy. Small investments in Internet Marketing lead to big ROI (as you can see): 503-922-2289

There are some companies that target seniors and Baby Boomers, but are still resisting an interactive online presence and participating in social media.

They may think, “Well my clients are mostly over 60 so they’re not very tech savvy.” Or, “Social media is for kids. My clients are older – they don’t use that stuff.”

However, this is a misperception. While there are still many Baby Boomers and seniors who are not using the Internet as voraciously as Generation Y, the numbers may surprise you.

Seniors Online

Individuals 65 and older still make up less than 10 percent of the active Internet universe. However, their numbers are on the rise. In the last five years, the number of seniors actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent, from 11.3 million active users in November 2004 to 17.5 million in November 2009. Among people 65+, the growth of women online in the last five years has outpaced the growth of men by 6 percentage points.

The largest percentage increase in Internet use since 2005 has been in the 70-to-75 age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey found that 45 percent of that age bracket is online, compared with 26 percent in 2005. Researching health information is the third most popular online activity with the most senior age group, after email and online search.

What’s more, many seniors find social networking exciting and enjoy finding online community. They’re creating their own blogs and, more often, connecting with family and friends by joining Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

“Social media are giving seniors a voice, and for a generation that has sometimes felt isolated and overlooked, that’s no small feat,” said Sarah Hoit, chief executive of My Way Village, which designs online social networks for older adults.

The No. 1 online destination for people over 65 in November 2009 was Google Search, with 10.3 million unique visitors. Windows Media Player and Facebook were No. 2 and No. 3, with 8.2 million and 7.9 million visitors, respectively. Interestingly, Facebook, which came in at No. 3, ranked No. 45 just a year ago among sites visited by senior citizens.

The trend has caught the attention of senior-living communities that have begun to introduce social media to residents. People who grew up with vacuum-tube radio sets are now learning how to befriend grandchildren and old classmates on Facebook and Classmates.com.

Retirement communities are also launching their own Facebook pages and posting videos on YouTube to appeal to the Boomer children of current or prospective residents. For example, Edgemere Senior Living has a Facebook page. Fan pages like this often include dozens of photos of recent activities at the communities. Visitors to the page can become “fans” and post comments. There are entire social networking sites devoted just to seniors such as the Over 60 Exchange, as well as dedicated website areas of organizations like the AARP that has added a forum called Online Communities.

Baby Boomers Online

Baby Boomers are a much bigger force on the Web. The research group, eMarketer, estimates that in 2009 Internet users ages 45 to 63 make up 28.8% of the total online population, or 57.4 million users.

A new report from Forrester Research also reveals some information that may be different than you thought: More than 60 percent of those in the Baby Boomer generational group actively consume socially created content like blogs, videos, podcasts, and forums. What’s more, the percentage of those participating is on the rise.

In 2007, the percentage of Boomers consuming social media was 46% for younger Boomers (ages 43 to 52) and 39% for older Boomers (ages 53 to 63). By 2008, those number increased to 67% and 62%, respectively.

The number of Boomers responding to content posted online, as opposed to just passively consuming it, is also going up. For example, the proportion of older Boomers responding to content doubled from 15% in 2007 to 34% in 2008. According to Forrester, this is now a percentage that’s high enough to target this group with a social application.

Here are some relevant statistics from eMarketer that you should know about the baby boomer generation:

• 74% use the Internet at least once a month
• younger Boomers outnumber older Boomers online 35.3 million to 21.4 million
• more Boomer women are Internet users than Boomer men
• 62% of households headed by someone age 50 or older had annual incomes of $75,000 or more, nearly 5% higher than in 2004
• 68% of Baby Boomer women trust online recommendations and rated information they heard in online conversations as credible

What do all of these numbers mean to you and your company? They mean that even if your target audience is Baby Boomers and/or seniors, you cannot ignore Internet marketing. You must ensure that your Web site is keeping pace with the trends, and that you should have a social media strategy in place including a blog and Facebook page, at the very least. And a Twitter and YouTube presence would also be beneficial to reaching your prospects.

My friend Bob (website designer and SEO junkie) just conducted a little experiment – he wanted to see if people responded to the word “webinar” or “online training” more often. Turns out it matters what words you use…simply changing “webinar” to “online training” boosted click-throughs by over 100%

What does this mean for your business? Well, several things:

• You need to understand how your audience thinks. It’s easy to get caught up in industry lingo and terminology, but communication sometimes means simplifying your message.
• You need to write your website pages to capitalize on search. Most of us know the importance of being “found” on Google. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to realize that being found means writing your site with terms that people actually look for.
• These rules apply to the real world. I have a client in the accounting field and she tells me that many of her customers come to her precisely because she DOESN’T talk like an accountant. Sure, she can talk depreciation schedules and exemptions, but most of the time, her choice of words center around things that business owners understand…like “Profitability”

I work with a lot of smart clients. They’re experts at what they do, and understand the nuances of their industries. They “get” that it’s important to have the knowedge, but that it’s just as important to make their communication of that knowledge understandable to their audience. Adapting their message creates a stronger bond with their clients, and ensures their position as trusted advisors.

However, there is a supplemental way that your customers can find you. It’s via a valuable tool provided by Google. It is easy to implement…and it’s free. Yet, it’s underutilized. Google Local Business Center will allow you to list your company when it is combined with a CITY name.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, don’t depend on Google Local for search traffic. I want to stress that there is no replacement for a search-engine friendly website with well-written content, meta description tags, keywords, h1 tags, etc. But if you are marketing your business to a local audience, Google Local is an easy-to-set-up potential source of website traffic that complements your other SEO and SEM efforts.

Here’s an example of how this works: We helped our client, Siskiyou Eye Center, set up their Google Local account. If you look at the picture below, you’ll see that their company and website comes up first under the search phrase “Ashland Oregon Eye Center.” It appears BEFORE the number one listed site in the Google organic search results. Pretty powerful, eh?

Here are the steps to get set up in the Local Business Center:

1. Go to Google Local Business Center

2. Sign in to Google (or Create a Google Account if you don’t have one).

4. Click “Add New Business”

5. Enter your business information including name, address, website URL, company description, and the categories that best describe your business (I walk you through this in my video).

6. Click “Next”

7. If it shows your business is already on there, click “claim listing”

8. If it’s not there, click “add listing.”

9. Then you can enter additional details such as hours or operation, photos, payment options, and videos.

10. Click submit

11. At this point, you will need to verify you business by phone (don’t bother with the postcard option since it takes weeks to receive it!). Make sure you use a phone number that you can answer because as soon as you click “Finish,” a Google computer will call you to give you a PIN number.

12.Enter the Google PIN number in your account to verify.

After you are verified, your info will appear on Google Maps. You can go back to the Local Business Center to edit your information or see how many people went to your listing (there are fantastic tracking graphs). You can even ask customers to go to your Local listing to add reviews.

So, click over to the Google Local Business Center and list your business. It’s not much work for a lot of exposure…and it will put you in front of 95% of your competitors.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.

If your business isn’t using Twitter yet, here’s two more reasons you should:

1) Google will be integrating Tweets into its search engine results. From the Google Blog:

“…we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.”

According to Google Watch, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, announced at the Web 2.0 Summit that  Twitter content will be integrated into Google’s search results page, so that fast-rising queries like Michael Jackson, Google Wave, will be surfaced in a Google One Box. The results will be ranked according to relevance.

2) Microsoft’s Bing has already begun to index Twitter posts. You can see Bing’s Beta effort at http://www.bing.com/Twitter.

Although Bing represents only 9% of the search engine market, this new weapon in its Internet search war with Google (65%) will give it an advantage in its ongoing attempts to lure traffic away from Google. And, until Google launches its Twitter platform, Bing is the best way outside of Twitter’s own website to find out what people are saying in real time through their Tweets.

Twitter allows users to post short, 140 character updates, on what they are doing. Users – or Tweeps – distribute quick thoughts, news, ideas, and links. Think of Twitter as “micro” blogging since each individual Tweet is like a very small blog post.

With the rapid growth of Twitter, more companies are exploring how they can best use it. Gartner Research has identified four primary ways that business organizations are leveraging Twitter:

• Direct: The company uses Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel. Much like an extension of their corporate blogs, companies Tweet about corporate accomplishments and distribute links to press releases and promotional Web sites.This method is probably the easiest way to get started, but typically won’t go over well in the Twitter culture. A series of self-serving, promotional Tweets will damage a company’s brand. Twitterers like a person touch, so work to build community. To see some examples of brands that “get” how to tweet and respond, check out how Ford, Sharpies, Starbucks, or Dell are using Twitter.

• Inbound Signaling: Twitter streams provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company. Search tools like search.twitter.com or the twhirl application can scan for references to particular company or product names.

• Indirect: The company’s employees use Twitter to enhance and extend their personal reputations, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation. Good Twitterers enhance their personal reputation by saying clever, interesting things, attracting many followers who go on to read their blogs. As people enhance their personal brands, some of this inevitably rubs off on their employers. Twitter provides a way of raising the profile of both individuals and the organizations they work for, which elevates these companies that want to be seen to employ influential leaders. (Be warned: this can backfire since negative Tweets by employees can hurt your brand).
  

• Internal: Employees use the platform to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them. It is crucial that employees understand the limitations of the platform and never discuss confidential matters, because as a seemingly innocuous Tweet about going to see a particular client can tip off a competitor. Other providers, such as Yammer and Present.ly, provide Twitter-like functions targeted at enterprise microblogging with more security and corporate control.

Here are a couple of resources to help your company get familiar with how other businesses do this:

• 16 Examples of Huge Brands Using Twitter for Business
• 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

So, jump on Twitter. Test it. See what new connections it brings to your business. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And now that both Bing and Google will be indexing Tweets, every time you use Twitter it creates another opportunity for people to discover your company brand.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.

Because the rules have changed – a LOT.

Let’s go back…oh, let’s say about 5 years or so.

And in this not-so-distant past, a company could simply call the newspaper or the radio and just run a few ads to get more business. Basically, you used to be able to spend your dollars to buy more audience. The more you spent, the more customers you would get. That’s why the big businesses stayed big.

But NOW, this throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach doesn’t work.

Because NOW, there’s Facebook and ezines and SEO and mobile and viral videos and applications and Twitter…and …and…and…

The way that our customers are looking for information is changing rapidly.

Therefore, marketing via social media is essential if you want your company to stay up with the trends.

Because today, people want to get excited. They want to engage in dialogues with the companies that they support. So, to thrive and grow you must use social media to create exciting ideas and to stimulate conversations and to build online brands with which people have passionate love affairs.

This is a really exciting shift for most companies and organizations. Because new marketing and social media has so many opportunities for small- to mid-sized business to get themselves KNOWN.

Social media allows every business to leverage huge numbers of people by creating online community and generating excitement around its brand.

If you are not using social media, then begin now. Because people are flocking to these online venues in huge numbers. And your business should be marketing itself where your prospects are spending time.

Below is a presentation that I gave recently to a group of marketing professionals explaining more about the power of social media (you can also click here to go to the presentation on SlideShare). I hope it gives you some ideas about ways you can take your brand to the next level:

Online Marketing: Employers Using Social Media to Screen and Report

10 Surprising Ways that Twitter Has Helped My Business…and Ideas On How it Can Help Yours Too

Small and Medium Businesses Are Not Using Web 2.0 for Marketing (Here’s Why They Should!)

Recent reports from the Nielson Company give more compelling reasons. According to Nielson, social networks and blogs are grabbing a bigger share of the Net. Stats show that Americans have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend at social networking and blog sites such as Facebook and MySpace from a year ago.

In August 2009, 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet was at social networking sites, up from 6 percent in August 2008. Advertising spending on social networking sites and blogs more than doubled despite the recession, going from about $49 million in August 2008 to about $108 million in August 2009.

Nielsen VP John Gibs says that “advertisers that want to connect with core fan bases, such as movie studios, are allocating more and more dollars to online communities like Facebook and MySpace, where they can engage in an ongoing dialog with their target market.”

And a LOT of people are spending at least a bit of time on social networking sites. Consumers are deeply engaged with them. Nielsen’s data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking website in the last year and that number grows every quarter.

Here are some interesting trends in how the big social media sites break out demographically (and which will affect your choices in how you leverage these sites for your marketing efforts):

• Facebook users have a largely upscale profile. The top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence were 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the those in the lower third.
• The bottom third segments related to affluence are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.
• Users of Facebook were also much more likely to use LinkedIn, a network geared towards business and professional networking, than those who use MySpace.
• The blogging and tweeting community at large isn’t necessarily more affluent, but bloggers and tweeters do live in more urban areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Let’s look at one more report from Nielsen. This one relates to traditional advertising. U.S. ad spending fell 15.4% in the first half of 2009, according to data released today by The Nielsen Company. A total of $56.9 billion was spent on advertising in the first six months of the year, more than $10.3 billion less than the same time period in 2008.

So, traditional ad dollars fell while social media ad dollars more than doubled. The big players are shifting the ad dollars because they are following the trends that consumers are setting. Mashable has a  great article listing some fantastic case studies citing examples of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media.

If you aren’t on the social media bandwagon yet, it’s time to hop aboard.

If you need help planning and implementing your social media campaign, call Kinesis for a free initial consultation at 503-922-2289.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.

This is important to remember in web design and also in website copywriting. If you don’t capture their attention and tell them exactly what you want them to do, then – CLICK – and they are on to the next website.

Your website’s job is to 1) compel people to stick around and 2) to motivate them to take an action. If your website is REALLY doing a great job, then 3) it also works to capture your visitors name and e-mail.

The key is to have useful information that’s easy to find, link redundancy, compelling calls to action, and a name capture mechanism. Let’s pull each of these apart to see why they will help your marketing:

• Useful information: In addition to an overview of your company, make sure that your copy tells people exactly how you can help them. Let them know about your core offerings and key differentiators. Tell them exactly why they should pick your company and ignore your competitors.You can also create content that makes your site “sticky.” This simply means that your Web site visitors want to stick around and return to look at your content. Create helpful content for your prospects and existing customers. Make it a resource that they can return to again and again.Position your company as a trusted adviser on your Web site. Blogs, articles, podcasts, and videos are all great ways to achieve this goal. Depending on your industry, you can also add design galleries and tools, calculators, product selector guides, and/or glossaries. Think about what your target audience could really use to help them, and then add this information to your Web site.

• Link Redundancy: When designing a website, it’s always a good idea to include link redundancy. This means that you have multiple links on your site for people to find information. You can include links in your navigation, in your body copy, in your footer, on your home page, and you can also have special boxes that call attention to areas of interest on your Web site.That may sound like overkill, but from a usability perspective it makes a lot of sense as long as the web designer isn’t cluttering up the page. Let me explain. Your various site visitors process information in different ways. You want to be able to impact as many people as possible and you want each type of user to quickly find the information they want so that you don’t lose them.The other reason is that people do NOT read a Web site like they read a book or magazine. Imagine instead someone driving down a street at about 35 miles an hour and reading a billboard. They don’t have time for much. Studies have shown that people tend to “scan and scroll” on a Web site. So, you want to catch their attention as they scan your Web site page.

• Calls to Action: According to a recent Neilsen Company study, the average user spends 56 seconds on a web page. This means that you do NOT want to make your visitor spend much time thinking about what to do next. Tell them exactly what they should do by using a call to action. A call to action starts with a verb and can include commands such as Click here, Purchase, Read this, Order now, Sign up, Call today, and so on. Calls to action increase your conversion rates.

• Name Capture Mechanism: People are in a hurry. They scan Web sites quickly. They don’t always make a decision right away. And, studies show it takes multiple touches with a prospect to convert them into a customer. So, armed with all of this information, it’s essential to create a name capture mechanism on your Web site.Make it simple and easy for a person to give you their contact info – A name and e-mail is all you need. Treat their contact info like currency. Your visitor is giving you something of great value. Offer them something of value in return such as a white paper, report, special video, audio recording, private blog, article bundle, etc. Provide your visitors with content that will help them solve a problem and showcase your company’s expertise.As a bonus, you can tell them that you will also sign them up for your free electronic newsletter. Send out this communication out on a regular basis. Make sure you are giving them valuable tips and information – not an ongoing sales pitch. This will not only keep your company on your prospect’s radar screen, but it will also position you as the trusted adviser. So, when they are ready to buy, your company is their number one choice.

If you overhaul your Web site to incorporate the tips I’ve listed in this post, you will create Web site stickiness, increase your sales conversions, and capture the names of prospects who have raised their hand to tell you they are interested in your company. You are building your online brand by developing an information hub that your prospects and customers can return to again and again. Your company becomes differentiated from your competitors and develops into an invaluable, trusted resource.

If you need help implementing any of these strategies, please call Kinesis at 503-922-2289.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.

I’m the person at Kinesis who typically optimizes the websites for our clients.

So, accordingly, I have a lot of opinions on SEO. There are too many “snake-oil” salespeople who are using outdated or incorrect optimization methods. And some so-called SEO companies are optimizing their clients’ websites using techniques that are unappealing to the visitors of the website – always a bad idea.

Every page on your site must appeal to your prospects and clients first. And search engines come second. Remember this principle when a company comes to you yammering about SEO and how they will get you first page ranking.

Your goal should not just be about getting a high quantity of traffic – this does you no good if you have no potential customers. The point of your website is to act as a sales tool, right? Therefore, it is far, far better to get fewer visitors to your site who are highly qualified, responsive prospects. These are the people who will actually hire your company.

Now let’s take a look at Meta Tags. This is one of the ways that the shysters will tell you they can optimize your site. I’ve created a video to help you see what I’m writing about.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MYTH: SEO is all about Meta Tags. Load a bunch of these magical meta tags into the code of your web pages and you’ll rocket to the top of the search engines.

TRUTH: Uh…no. Meta Tags are not the magic bullet to getting ranked well. They are valuable for giving some control over how the search engines describe a web page – but even this isn’t a given. Meta Tags are a component of your overall SEO strategy but they are a very small component compared to the content that is actually written on your site.

First of all, what is a Meta Tag? These tags are bits of information that is inserted into the <HEAD> area of your website. If you look at the code of a web page, here’s how meta tags appear:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>How to Groom Your Poodle, Dog Grooming Techniques<HEAD>
<META NAME=”description” content=”Tips and techniques to groom your poodle dog so it looks like a champion Best in Show”>
<META NAME=”keywords” content=”dogs, poodle, groom, grooming, show, tips, techniques, dog show”>
</HEAD>

The Title Tag isn’t really a Meta Tag, but this is the most important piece of the data in the <HEAD> area. The text you use in the Title Tag will appear at the top of a person’s browser window. It will also guide the search engines on how to rank your web page.

If you do nothing else as a result of this post, make sure all of your web pages have titles that are relevant to the content on each page. Use a few words that describe the page. You’ll see that I did that in my poodle grooming example above. On each page, change the Title Tag to describe what is on the page.

If geographical location is important to your business then definitely include it in your Title Tags. If you look at the Kinesis website, we get a large portion of our clients from Portland, Oregon. So, I’ve plugged that into the titles. By doing this, our website gets ranked very highly when people search for terms such as Portland web design and Portland graphic design.

Just putting relevant titles on all of your pages will put you ahead of at least 50% of your competitors.

The Meta Description Tag allows you to describe the content of your page. This influences the way that the search engines list your description…maybe. Lately, Google has been listing content from the page in addition to or instead of the description tag. But, for now, it’s worth plugging in to your Meta Tags.

The Meta Keywords Tag is no longer being used by Google because of its abuse by certain programmers, but Yahoo does suggest that they are still using them (although the company does not say how much weight they are giving them for rankings).  So it’s pretty easy to include keywords. It may be worth your time since search engine ranking research shows 64% of users conduct their searches using Google and 20% search using Yahoo. From there, 8% use Microsoft sites, 3.8% use Ask, and 3.4% use AOL.

If you have questions, please ask me in the comments section below. And, of course, Kinesis can help you optimize your website. Contact us for more details.