South Florida Web Marketing Blog

by Lee Smith

There are several ways to design a website, but I still do it the old fashion way – with a pen and paper.

The hardest part of web design is spending the time to lay things out. It may take a few sheets of paper to develop your thoughts, but the idea soon becomes clear.

First write the content

1. Create the story or the message you want to convey to your audience.
2. Write in a way that people can follow your thoughts.
3. Check your grammar and spelling – do your best
4. Always answer the Who, What, Where, Why, When and How about your product or service.
5. Bulletpoints can easily highlight and simply describe what you are trying to point out.

Create images that match

1. Read over your work once it is completed and you are satisfied. Now you can decide on what images come to mind when you read your work?
2. Those are the images you want to create or locate. If you are describing a product, take several high quality photographs and then select the best ones to use. Most cameras will take these shots in a very large format.
3. The images need to be reduced in size to fit the web page and optimized to reduce the actual file size so they load quickly.

Create an easy to read layout
Layout the page to use the white space to balance the message & graphics to draw your visitors to your message. Also include calls to action – asking what you want your visitors to do.

Take your time and think things out. You can always update and make changes because a website is a living breathing document that requires attention and fresh content.

Need a good way to solicit positive reviews from happy clients?

There are a few major places that you can obtain reviews:

1. http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=29654396&trk=tab_pro
   You request recommendation (- no reviews -)  from your Linkedin connections – simply ask people to write a recommendation for you.
2. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Smittys-Holdings-Inc/154571624609346?sk=wall
   Ask people to visit the page and click on the like button. Then they can post a testimonial or a favorable post of what you do.
3. Ask for Reviews and provide the link for people to post their reviews.

   http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=South+Florida+Website+Marketing&hl=en&cid=16711708823223917833

   http://local.yahoo.com/info-45850949-smitty-s-holdings-inc-search-engine-marketing-davie;_ylt=AkjW2qimp5rv.GOgAgWsKO2HNcIF;_ylv=3?csz=Fort+Lauderdale%2C+FL+33328

Each website can offer an opportunity to provide a source of new traffic and can help your rankings

From SearchEngineWatch.com

Bing failed to steal any more searches from Google in May 2011, halting eight straight months of search market share growth, according to the latest comScore figures. Here’s a look at comScore’s rankings, as well as search engine market share stats from Compete and Hitwise.

comScore

• Google search market share grew slightly to 65.5 percent (up from 65.4 percent in April).
• Yahoo held steady at 15.9 percent.
• Bing held steady at 14.1 percent.
• Ask dropped to 2.9 percent (down from 3 percent).
• AOL held steady at 1.5 percent.

The number of searches increased 5 percent compared to April, growing to 17 billion in May, up from 16.2 billion searches conducted in April. Google ranked first with 11.2 billion searches (up 5 percent vs. April); Yahoo had 2.7 billion searches (up 5 percent), Bing had 2.4 billion (up 4 percent), Ask Network had 502 million (up 2 percent), and AOL had 254 million (up 2 percent).

“Powered by” searches remained flat month-over-month, with Google powering 67.8 percent of all organic search results in May and Bing powering 26.5 percent of searches.

Compete

• Google search market share dropped slightly to 63.6 percent (down from 63.8 percent in April).
• Bing dropped to 17 percent (down from 17.1 percent in April).
• Yahoo grew to 14.6 percent (up from 14.1 percent).
• Ask dropped to 4 percent (down from 4.3 percent).
• AOL held steady at 0.8 percent.

Compete also noted a 2.5 percent increase in search query volume compared to April. Unique visitors to Compete’s top four search engines increased in May.

Although Google’s market share declined, queries on Google increased by 2.3 percent. And though Bing’s search share declined, Yahoo’s gains helped increase Bing-powered search to 31.6 percent (up from 31.2 percent in April).

Experian Hitwise

One note before looking at Hitwise’s stats: these stats are for searches for the four weeks ending June 11, 2011. Also, Hitwise didn’t put out an official news announcement comparing data to the prior four-week period. We plan to check with Hitwise to get this data and will update the post.

• Google: 67.95 percent
• Bing: 13.80 percent
• Yahoo: 13.63 percent
• Ask: 2.64 percent
• AOL: 1.38 percent

The five most visited sites from search engines in this period were Facebook (8.65 percent); YouTube (4.71 percent); Gmail (3.02 percent); Google (1.35 percent); and Wikipedia (1.20 percent). Facebook received the largest percentage of visits (10.79 percent), with Google in second (9.13 percent), and YouTube third (3.80 percent).

Save up to $500! Register now for SES San Francisco. In addition to high-level strategy, keynotes, an expo floor with 100+ companies, networking events, and parties, you don’t want to miss out on the latest trends and strategies during sessions on SEO, PPC management, social media, keyword research, local advertising, mobile engagement, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, online video, site optimization, usability, and more. Early bird rates expire July 22.

by Paul Ducklin on June 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Filed Under: Data loss, Featured, Malware, Privacy, Social networks, Vulnerability

WordPress just announced that the source code of three plugins for its popular blog-hosting software was maliciously modified.

Plugins consist of add-in modules which you install on your WordPress server in order to implement additional functionality, instead of writing all the needed code yourself

Read more:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/22/wordpress-plugins-trojanised-spotted-fixed/

According to WordPress, the modified plugins were Trojanised to include backdoors.

The features to check:
* If you run your own installation of the WordPress platform.
* You use one of these plugins: AddThis, WPtouch, or W3 Total Cache.
* You updated your installed copy of one of those plugins in the past 48 hours from wordpress.org.

By  Searchenginewatch.com

Google Panda 2.2 is looming to drop sometime soon, and with it, increasing levels of apprehension in the small business community on fears of further collateral damage to organic search traffic. As a speaker at SES Toronto this year, I had the distinct honor of accompanying Dave Davies, Thom Craver and Terry Van Horne on a panel to discuss the impact of Google Panda, and long-term strategies for SEO success.

Diversify Your Traffic

Much to my own amazement and to that of my peers on stage, many in attendance at SES Toronto felt that they received significantly more traffic from Google organic search than any other source, and that SEO traffic converted much better than other sources.

As a general rule of thumb, no more than 40 percent of your referred traffic should come from Google because any significant change is bound to have a negative impact on your bottom line. When you consider how long it can take to notice and recover from an SEO penalty for even small mistakes (such as server downtime, bad navigational links, forgotten redirects, etc.), putting all your eggs into one basket substantially increases your risk.

Normally I wouldn’t disagree with a large group at SES, but to say organic traffic converts better than other sources indicates that very few attendees are properly optimizing their paid search campaigns. Why? Paid search marketing has several distinct advantages over organic search traffic that should yield higher conversion:

• Product: Guaranteed exposure to only those products and services you want to promote in search results. Match keywords to exact product offerings and watch conversion skyrocket.
• Price: In this case, it’s not the price of the product or services offered, but the price your business pays for the traffic itself. Don’t forget to factor in all the time and effort invested into ranking for keywords in organic results, and how often changes may be required.
• Promotion: While you can change the content surrounding your products, you may not have the same amount of creative license to change that content as quickly for mainstay (SEO targeted) pages versus paid search landing pages, nor will you necessarily have control over which pages Google chooses to display in results pages for any given query.
• Place: Distribution of your product won’t change, but distribution of your product in organic SERPs may be highly elastic versus highly-controllable paid search campaigns.
• People: Perhaps the most important component is your inability to control and target behavioral cues in search queries using SEO. It doesn’t get much better than the complete control that multiple keyword match types, negative match keyword lists, and advanced query performance reporting affords a search marketer.

My final argument about why organic search traffic may not convert as well as other sources? Visitor intent.

Visitors coming from organic search results for the first time are extremely hard to convert, and it can take several repeat visits, if your content is good enough, to finally convert them sometime down the line.

Measure Success Using Actionable KPIs

I love data, but much of it is useless and not actionable. In terms of useless SEO metrics, here are a few:

• “Average position” and “Impressions” as provided by Google Webmaster Tools are useless metrics because Google varies position by geographic locale, personalized results (when logged in), and likely past-user behavior (not logged-in cookies).
• “Visits” and “Page Views” and even “Average Time Spent” as measured using analytics software aren’t as useless, unless used alone because webmasters have little control over how much traffic search engines send them.

The emphasis should be put on measuring actionable KPI’s segmented by traffic source such as bounce rate, micro and macro conversion rates, revenue, and visitor loyalty.

Want to get really sophisticated? Try testing out multi-source attribution and start assigning real dollar values to each one of your traffic sources touch points.

Build a Community

The group was decidedly split on the influence of social media on Google Panda, due in part to a tangent discussion on how Google might one day leverage social signals from Google +1. As it stands, Google currently uses Twitter’s “fire hose” feed and some signals from public pages on Facebook to influence rankings, the former weighing much more heavily in substantial, but short-lived SEO boost.

Google’s modus operandi seems to have always been to show up late to a party, build their own dance floor, and either win people over, or buy out their best competitor (YouTube, DoubleClick, Postini, Urchin, etc). In much the same respect, it will take time to see whether Google +1 gains enough momentum and critical mass to make a sizeable dent on the hundreds of other “favoriting” sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, to name a few.

Don’t look to social media to build links for SEO because the best links come from establishing earned media from a community of loyal brand ambassadors. Talk to your visitors and customers, engage communities, and start practicing the art of building personas. Through careful research, webmasters can hone into communities online that serve the best bang for their buck, and those might not be in any of the top social websites.

If you invest time into building a community, your business isn’t as likely to be as hard hit by changes to search algorithms such as Google Panda.

Fix Usability Problems

Never has the need to “write for humans” been clearer to webmasters. Google’s own webmaster guidelines, used language to fortify user experience above and beyond just a nice to have. Once again, it’s better to fix usability problems now and potentially increase business impact for factors within your control, before usability becomes a much stronger ranking signal on precious organic search traffic.

Author Quality Content

If it needed to be repeated: “content is king”…still.

Save up to $500! Register now for SES San Francisco. In addition to high-level strategy, keynotes, an expo floor with 100+ companies, networking events, and parties, you don’t want to miss out on the latest trends and strategies during sessions on SEO, PPC management, social media, keyword research, local advertising, mobile engagement, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, online video, site optimization, usability, and more. Early bird rates expire July 22.

from SEO Articles

As Google puts the squeeze on traditional ranking signals and subsequently, Search Engine Optimization tactics, the growing emphasis on social signals has many SEO practitioners getting more serious about social engagement.

While search marketing has been a key part of our consulting practice since 2001, our Online Marketing agency’s work with Public Relations and blogging since 2003 has helped us develop an appreciation of the influence and engagement outcomes possible with social media pretty quickly, vs. solely as a promotion channel for links. That sentiment is growing rapidly as of late with many traditional SEOs.

You too, may have noticed an increase in SEO practitioners (both agency and client side) singing the song of Content Marketing and Social Media. As this shift has occurred over the past few years, I’ve observed a series of phases of approach. According to your situation and market, your mileage may vary with these characterizations, but maybe you’ll see something familiar and get a clearer picture of where your SEO and Social Media integration is headed.

Phase 1: SEO With Social Profiles, Sharing Widgets Blogs

Many Search Engine Optimization pros started their social media adventures with bookmarking and news services like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Reddit.  Promoting content to these channels, especially through “power users” could inspire content to go hot, hit the home page and attract spikes of traffic. The increased exposure attracts more links and subscribers.

Social bookmarking services and profiles within social networking sites allow for users to include links back to their own websites creating a potential source of link traffic and light signal for search engines. Many of those links were subsequently made “nofollow”.  Such links are simply a matter of filling out forms and ultimately no more impactful than directory submissions.

Blogs are used to publish content in a more search engine friendly way than most CMS are capable of and commenting on other blogs provided great links until they too, were made “nofollow” by most bloggers and blog CMS.

Success is measured in SEO terms: links, rankings and traffic.

Phase 2: Social Media Optimization

Coined by Rohit Bhargava, SMO has had different meanings for different people.  Marketers develop the social profiles they’ve created into more robust sources of information with some building out of social networks. Developing social channels helps to create an audience to promote content to in the hopes of attracting links.

Blogs are often the hub to the social media spokes for optimized content promotion for traffic and link acquisition. Attention to building blog subscribers and email lists is stressed.  There’s an honest appreciation for creating useful content for specific audience segments and a developed skill in the art/science of content formats, types and writing headlines that inspire sharing.

Success is measured primarily as SEO outcomes like links, traffic and conversions. Social KPIs like fans, friends followers are monitored as well as basic engagement metrics like comments and interactions. But those metrics are more about “social proof” than social ROI.

Phase 3: Integrated Content, SEO Social Media Plan

By now,  SEOs are more likely to identify as Online Marketers and understand the key to a killer social SEO strategy is content.  Audience categorization becomes persona development which guides content marketing strategy.  The keyword research expertise from SEO is factored into Editorial Planning of web and social content.

While content is planned for certain outcomes with segments of the community, it’s an adaptable online marketing strategy that allows for opportunistic content marketing and social promotion based on social media monitoring and trends. Social media savvy isn’t just for Marketing and Public Relations, but as much of the organization as possible.

Anyone in a position to create content, engage with customers and prospects online has basic skills with search and social keyword glossaries, social search and social networking on behalf of the brand.

To maximize the relevance of the Content Marketing Plan, search keywords and social topics representative of customer interests are factored into scheduled editorial for web, social and mobile content.  Content creation and promotion is coordinated across functional areas like Advertising, Public Relations and Marketing as possible.

The findability of content is improved through keyword and social topic optimization. Social content that is easy to find through search can help grow the social network.  As the network grows, so does word of mouth for inherent promotion of useful content that attracts links, shares and comments. Those social signals can be gauged by Google in combination with other SEO ranking factors to improve search visibility of brand web properties.

It would be realistic to add other phases, but I’m trying to be more practical with this post. I think this approach of an adaptable, customer-centric and content focused strategy that leverages topic optimization for both search findability and social engagement is where many online marketers will find themselves sooner than later.

What do you think about these phases? Phase 3 is a tall order to fill and I think many marketers will see a blend as their reality. If you have an appreciation for the impact coordinated Social SEO Content can have, how would you characterize your organization’s approach?

I’ll be elaborating on these phases and more later this morning at OMS Minneapolis in a session called “Develop a Killer Social SEO Strategy“. I hope to see you there.

Comments

Written by Evan Gilbert, Software Engineer, +1 Button

When we introduced the +1 button in March, Google search took a small step in an important direction. Search results can be more helpful, and more personal, when recommendations from the people you trust are there to guide your way.

The +1 button can help publishers, too. As potential visitors see recommendations from their friends and contacts beneath your Google search results, you could see more, and better qualified, traffic coming from Google.

Since we announced +1, we’ve gotten lots of requests from Google search users and webmasters alike for +1 buttons in more places than just search results. That’s why today we’re making the +1 button available to sites across the web. Sometimes you want to recommend a web page after you’ve visited it. After all, how do you know you want to suggest that great article on Spanish tapas if you haven’t read it yet?

We’ve partnered with a few sites where you’ll see +1 buttons over the coming days:

You’ll also start to see +1 buttons on other Google properties such as Android Market, Blogger, Product Search and YouTube.

Adding +1 buttons to your pages is a great way to help your content stand out in Google search. By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search results and search ads could show up with +1 annotations more often, helping users see when your pages are most likely to be useful.

To get started, visit the +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central. You’ll be able to configure a small snippet of JavaScript and add it to the pages where you want +1 buttons to appear. You can pick from a few different button sizes and styles, so choose the +1 button that best matches your site’s layout.

In the common case, a press of the button +1’s the URL of the page it’s on. We recommend some easy ways to ensure this maps as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results.

If your site primarily caters to users outside of the US and Canada, you can install the +1 button code now; the +1 button is already supported in 44 languages. However, keep in mind that +1 annotations currently only appear for English search results on Google.com. We’re working on releasing +1 to searchers worldwide in the future.

If you have users who love your content (and we bet you do), encourage them to spread the word! Add the +1 button to help your site stand out with a personal recommendation right at the moment of decision, on Google search.

To stay current on updates to the +1 button large and small, please subscribe to the Google Publisher Buttons Announce Group. For advanced tips and tricks, check our Google Code site. Finally, if you have any questions about using the +1 button on your websites, feel free to drop by the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Evan Gilbert, Software Engineer, +1 Button