However, there is a supplemental way that your customers ... read more]]> At Kinesis, we optimize many of our clients’ websites. This helps them get found when their potential customers enter specific search terms. Search Engine Optimization (SEO ) is very important component to help your site rank well. We strongly recommend it to our clients.

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.

And a website design and new logo are very powerful tools to drive business to ... read more]]> Many clients initially call Kinesis because they want a website design or a new logo. Often their motivation is because they are losing market share or their word-of-mouth referrals have gone down or their competition has stepped up their marketing.

And a website design and new logo are very powerful tools to drive business to your company. But, on their own, will not create long-term, sustainable growth for their company.

For this, it takes the comprehensive power of branding.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To meet their business growth goals and increase their revenue, Kinesis takes our clients through a process to create a comprehensive marketing and branding strategy. It starts with an assessment and industry/competitor research. From there, we create our branding recommendations. These are action steps that our clients take to communicate their brand to their target audience.

A strong branding and marketing strategy is an investment that will pay dividends for years to come.

And so that we’re all on the same page, when I say brand, I mean the emotional connection that your customers have with you. It’s their immediate recognition of your logo, website, and other marketing materials. It’s their fierce loyalty to your company. It’s the ease with which your customers can spread the word.

Let me give you the perfect example of brilliant branding. Apple. Think about the Mac users you know. Now go to a couple of them and casually suggest that they switch to a PC. Then stand back a little.

Listen to them rant. Watch them turn all red in the face. Smell the angry sweat. And feel the waves of indignation.

Now that’s the power of effective branding.

As information continues to bombard us and consumers face infinite choices, services and products quickly become indistinguishable commodities. A strong brand is what will make your company stand out in a very, very crowded marketplace.

Strengthen your brand to powerfully communicate your company’s value. People ultimately make their buying decisions based on emotions, not logic. So you want your brand to powerfully connect with them on an emotional level.

The best brands are memorable, authentic, meaningful, differentiated, sustainable, and recognizable. So make sure your company carefully orchestrates its marketing to impact your customers and prospects across many different touchpoints from your logo to your website to your brochure. Over time, they will develop powerful loyalty to your brand, which will enhance sales, customer retention, and word-of-mouth referrals.

Take Away Point: Good brands build powerful companies. Ineffective brands undermine success.

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 ... read more]]>

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.

Shawn embraces the Inbox Zero principle. I, on the other hand, cling to my e-mails “in some weird buddhist way” as Merlin Mann puts it.Can’t help it. I’m a reforming packrat. Reform is sloooow.

Merlin says, “Once you’ve mined the gold out of your e-mail, it’s ... read more]]> This post is dedicated to my business partner, Shawn Busse.

Shawn embraces the Inbox Zero principle. I, on the other hand, cling to my e-mails “in some weird buddhist way” as Merlin Mann puts it.Can’t help it. I’m a reforming packrat. Reform is sloooow.

Merlin says, “Once you’ve mined the gold out of your e-mail, it’s a dead skeletal husk and you should throw it away.”

Yes, Merlin.

Are you like me and hang on to every e-mail you’ve ever received? Listen to Merlin Mann’s talk. Better yet, make your whole team listen to it. He IS Merlin Mann after all.

Click here to view the embedded video.