Keyword Rich Content Is King in Search Engine Optimization

 Psst.  Want to know a secret?  You’ll get more traffic to your Web site if you have great keyword-rich content on your Web site.  (If your Web site was built with  content management tools like our EasyRemoteAdmin(TM) (ERA) tools, then you can change your content without incurring any outside costs.)

 O.K., that might not seem like much of a secret to some of you, but I bet if you analyze the Web sites of your top ten competitors you will find that the majority of them could improve their search engine rankings by changing their content so that it’s more keyword rich.

 In marketing, most everyone agrees and recognizes that “content is king.”  With this knowledge, you do need to keep in mind a favorite phrase from my esteemed colleague, Chad Fagg, who says “Remember, people don’t like to read on the Web.”  That doesn’t necessarily mean that your site should be all pictures and video, but rather that you need to write your content in a Web-friendly format.

 So, what does this typically mean to your Web site?

•  First of all, you need to have great content on your Web site.  It should be a resource for the information that people want to learn about your product or services.
• Your content is best provided in a Web-readable format, which often is in short paragraphs, bullet point copy and images or videos of your product.
• *Your content should be compelling for the Web site visitor to want to interact with you, either by signing up for your eNewsletter or providing you with their contact information through your Contact us or registration forms.

Once you have those basic tenants in place, you need to analyze your content to ‘take it a step further.’

•  Review your content.  Does it include keyword rich terms in the page text, meaning the terms that someone might use on a search engine when they are looking for your product?  For example, if you’re a new homebuilder in Memphis, do you use those words on your site?  If you sell citrus gift baskets, are you using those words in the text on your Web pages?
• Does your content offer the visitor easy ways to stay in touch with you by becoming a fan of your Facebook business page? Following you on Twitter? Signing up for a subscription to your blog?
• Does your Web site content seem current?  Does it include your current promotions or events? 

We’ve been building Web sites since 1995 (which is several lifetimes in Internet years) and while we take great pride in building a Web site that is easy to use and follows good Web site best practices, we know that the real secret to a successful Web site includes having great content.  Content is king, and your Web site is the castle.

Want to learn more about how to get better search engine rankings, sign up for our upcoming Webinar to be held on Thursday, 1/28 at 1 p.m. Estern entitled “Secrets for Utilizing Local Search Sites and Directories to drive traffic to your site.” For more information about the Web site development, search engine marketing or social networking tools that we offer, please contact us at 321-309-6900 or become our fan at www.Facebook.com/BlueTangerineSolutions; follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/BTSMarie; or subscribe to our weekly blog at http://thejuice.bluetangerinesolutions.com.

Social networking has changed the way we communicate.  The world has become ’smaller’ and communication is ‘real time’ and ‘personal’ even with strangers.  This is exciting to us, since we’re long-term players in the industry that has changed the world.  (Yes, we’ve been building Web sites since 1995, when most people weren’t sure if they really needed a Web site.)

As of this writing, the big players in social networking include these sites that you’re probably using or have heard of:

• Facebook.com  (become a fan of ours at Facebook.com/BlueTangerineSolutions.com)
• Youtube.com (check out our BlueTangerineTV channel)
• Twitter.com (become a fan at Twitter.com/BTSMarie)
• Myspace.com (join us at MySpace.com/BlueTangerineSolutions)
• LinkedIn.com (Linkedin.com/in/GregBray)

There are dozens of new sites, however, that are growing in popularity and many promise to be the next ‘big thing.’  Here are a few that you  might or may not already be using.

• Flickr.com – It’s a great photo sharing site and worth looking into if your business sells a product where it’s beneficial to see photos of it.  For example, if you sell new homes or citrus gift baskets, then you should consider posting your product shots here.  If you sell computer memory, it might not be the best use of your time.
• Digg.com – Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.  Content is  voted on by the members/users, rather than paid Editors.
• Yelp.com – This site is for ‘real people to provide real reviews’ and it’s based on a geographic area. If you run a business with local customers, you should check to see what they’re saying about you.
• FourSquare.com – Foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. You can earn points and badges and even become the ‘Mayor’ of a local establishment. I like the concept of tying in frequent customer rewards on your smartphone, and predict we’ll see more of this site.
• Xanga.com – This site is a blogging community.  It started as a site for sharing book and music reviews and now has over 40 million users worldwide.  If you want to see what other people are saying or to share your thoughts in an online blog, then sign up to become a Xangan.
• Kaboodle.com – Kaboodle is the largest and fastest growing social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products.
• FriendFeed.com – This is a great site to manage all of your other sites. It lets you tie into your Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. accounts and to see people’s responses to your updates – in real time.
• Tribe.net – This is an interesting site whose purpose is to unite people within their local geographic community. You can meet locals who share similar interests or those with information you might want such as to help you find a great apartment deal or local jobs.  At this time, it’s growing and works well if you’re in a major U.S. city.

Obviously these are just a few of the many social networking sites available to you.  Please let us know of any other social networking sites that you think have the potential to become ‘the next Facebook’ or to make it into the top five (or even the top ten) list.

Social networking has significantly changed the way that people communicate, which has ultimately caused businesses to change how they do business.  They need to be aware of what their customers and competitors are saying about them online, and they should be on the lookout for new business prospects.  Fortunately, there are some wonderful tools to help.

One of our favorites is a useful online service called SocialOomph.com (formerly known as TweetLater.com)  that will scan all Twitter updates and then send you a list of those tweets that have your specific “keywords” in them.  You can sign up for multiple keywords, such as your own Twitter ID, your company name and any terms related to your business. 

For example, I receive daily reports that list when our company name (Blue Tangerine Solutions) is mentioned in a Tweet, as well as several keywords related to the vertical markets that we service.  You’ll want to include mis-spellings and abbreviations, to make sure you don’t miss anything, and that’s how I’ve learned that a LOT of people like the color combination of blue and tangerine.

SocialOomph.com will do more than just provide you with reports, as it’s a great tool to schedule tweets, set up your automated direct messages and even set up automatic ‘follow’ or ‘unfollow’ rules for your account.  Check it out at www.SocialOomph.com.

Another useful tool is Google Alerts.  This tool will send eMail updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.  You can set up Google alerts to keep tabs on your company’s name, industry news, competitors, etc.  It will let you customize the alerts to the frequency of notification (daily, as-it-happens, weekly) as well as to identify the source such as all news articles, blog articles, Web articles or a comprehensive search that encompasses each type.  It takes about one minute to set it up, and the benefits are huge.   

We love both of the tools mentioned above because they offer free reporting services that can be automatically pushed to you via eMail.  What other tools have you used to monitor your brand online?  Please share your favorites with us.

I found this fascinating quote today on Rick Storlie’s Blog:

The Only Thing That Matters is What Consumers (i.e. the market) Feel is Important Enough to Pay for.nhsalescoach.com, “Green is for Idiots!” Part II- The Green Marketing Answers Home Builders Have Been Looking For… | nhsalescoach.com, Dec 2009

You should read the whole article.  While this article is dedicated toward the residential homebuilding industry, the message is important to ALL marketers.  It’s critical to “put yourself in your customer’s shoes.” 

Use your Web site to promote what your audience wants to learn about, rather than what you want to ‘tell them.’  We run into this so often, where a client might want a Web site link that has a title/label of something that means a lot to their internal company (such as ‘Our Collections’) but it truly doesn’t mean much to their visitors.  While it’s great to first conduct a ‘focus group’ to gather opinions on your Web site navigation link names, you also can use the Google Analytics ’site overlay’ tool to see just how many people are clicking on each of your top-level navigation links.  Then, you can use your research results to be proactive and improve your Web site navigation (if needed), to ensure that your Web site is the best business tool possible.

For more information about the article mentioned above, visit http://www.nhsalescoach.com/ and sign up for our next ASK THE EXPERTS Webinar when we will talk with Rick Storlie on February 9th, 2010 at 1:00 pm Eastern (12 noon Central).

What a decade!  Our company, Blue Tangerine Solutions, has been building Web sites since 1995, so we’ve been incredibly grateful for the constant technology improvements that have happened over the past ten years because they have made our jobs more interesting.  (To think, I remember some clients early on who actually questioned whether they would really “need one of those Web sites.”)

It’s hard to limit these Web site advancements to just ten, and we welcome your recommendations for the list.  Is it too strong to say that the following technology improvements and Web sites have made a significant impact on the world?  Probably not, as these Internet tools have most certainly changed the way we live and do business.  So, in no particular order, here are our top ten Internet technologies/sites of the decade:

1. Increased bandwidth: Remember the early days when we were excited to have 2800 baud dial up access into our homes?  We were patient as we waited for pictures to download to the Web pages.  Then, everything changed as we have increased broadband bandwidth so that we can now use our Internet to watch videos on just about every topic imaginable.
2. Online Video:  Yes, this goes hand in hand with the increased bandwidth.  Video has become incredibly popular because it’s a wonderful way to entertain or to showcase a business’ product or service.  It’s created a brand new industry (think YouTube and similar sites) and done wonders for the advancement of video capture devices.
3. eCommerce and Online Shopping: For the past several years, each holiday season has resulted in fewer trips ‘to the Mall’ because we can order just about everything we want online through sites like Amazon.com.  Online shopping has created thousands of new businesses and made so many brick-and-mortar stores change the way that they do business. 
4. Online Classifieds (like Craigslist):  Think about how easy it is to sell or buy pre-owned goods, or to conduct a job search online.  In the 90’s, you couldn’t easily find job openings across the nation . . . and you couldn’t easily post an ad to sell that collector’s Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe poster that you longer needed… and you couldn’t easily post an ad indicating that you are a collector of well, let’s say – Andy Warhol art.  The online classified sites on the Internet have made the world so much smaller/closer.
5. Search sites like Google and Yahoo:  We’d be nowhere without incredible search sites like Google and Yahoo.  These sites have done an incredible job of indexing an unbelievable amount of information and they are constantly improving the methods on how they help us sort through the Web.  While there are many sites trying to improve search, the true winners of this past decade were definitely Google and Yahoo.  (They are so mainstream that the word “Google” has now become a verb, as in ‘If you don’t believe me, ‘Google it.’)
6. Social Network Sites:  Social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the most popular sites worldwide.  They have changed the way we live and certainly made the world a smaller place.  Who needs to attend their class reunion when they are in touch with everyone on Facebook? Do you really need to send out holiday cards when everyone you know is viewing your regular posts on Facebook? Isn’t it wonderful to be a potential employer and to be able to get a glimpse into your prospective employee’s personal life by visiting their Facebook page.   There’s no doubt that Facebook and other social network sites have changed the way that we live and also the way that companies do business.
7. Blogs: In addition to the social network sits, blogs are one of the biggest advancements in this past decade as they have changed the way people and businesses communicate.  A blog gives a person a platform to share their ‘thoughts’ and for a business to show its ‘personality.’  They offer the opportunity to reach a worldwide audience as you stand on your soap box and share your latest comments.
8. SmartPhones: Remember when your mobile phone was big and bulky and you could only use it to make phone calls? This decade introduced the smartphone that is a rolodex, calendar, eMail tool, camera and oh yes, a phone too.  We’ve given hand therapists more business thanks to texting and psycho therapists have found a new issue to deal with for those people who are addicted to their phones.
9. Online Collaboration and Webinars: We started our “Ask the Experts” Webinar program a few years ago because we were looking for a way to ‘give back’ to our clients by bringing them closer to industry experts, through the use of technology.  Our goal was to create a program where the Speakers could share their expertise without having to leave their office, and the attendees didn’t have to travel or pay to attend costly seminars or trade shows.  The program has been a huge success because of technology like GoToWebinar(TM).  This type of technology has increased the speed in which business is conducted by eliminating travel time and costs and allowing for group viewing and review of business materials.  Just as cell phones changed the way we did business in the 1990’s (because we were all of a sudden accountable from any location), the online meeting tools have further changed the way business is done.

We’ve left room for one more Internet technological advancement to be added to our “Top Ten” list, and welcome your input.  Let us know what you think of the items listed above, and whether there are any additional advancements that you feel are worthy to be on this list. 

The 2000 – 2009 decade can certainly be called “The Decade of the Internet!”

Social networking is now “mainstream” enough that the Federal Trade Comission (FTC) has published its final guides regarding endorsements and testimonials.  Part of the updated guides is related to how bloggers portray endorsements and testimonials.

The full article can be viewed online, and we thought you would want to see this particular excerpt that describes their guidelines on how a blogger must disclose information related to its endorsements or testimonials.

The following paragraph was copied from the guideline article at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm:
“The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.”

So, how does that make you feel?  As a blogger, are you comfortable sharing information on any material connections that you receive?  As a reader, is it comforting to know that the endorsement or testimonial is either self-motivated or that there might be some type of material gain by the ‘endorser?’  We invite you to share your thoughts on the subject.

Our team at Blue Tangerine Solutions has so many reasons to be thankful this holiday season. 

• We’re grateful to all of our new and long-term clients for working with us to be their Internet partner, to ensure that they are maximizing the power of the Internet to improve their businesses. 
• We’re grateful that we are completing our 15th year in the business, and that our transition from being “eCalton” to being “Blue Tangerine Solutions” has been an easy and smooth success.
• We’re grateful to be able to offer our team a great work environment so that over half of our staff has been with the company for over ten years!  In our industry, longevity breeds efficiency and success.
• We’re grateful that the economy seems to be improving and that we’re able to help our clients to survive these tough times.
• We’re grateful that our “Ask the Experts” Webinar program has become such a big hit over the past two years, and we’re thankful for all of the “regular” and the “new” attendees and presenters. 
• We’re grateful to our business partners, family and friends who support our professional choices.

 
These are many of the sources for which we are thankful this holiday.  Please visit our “Thanksgiving-Source.com” Web site for “your source for all things Thanksgiving” and to try your hand at our online Terrence Turkey game.  (We promise, no turkeys were injured in the making of the game.)

How about you?  Are you experiencing an “attitude of gratitude” this Thanksgiving season?  Please share your thoughts and stories with us.

 
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Ten Reasons Why Your Organization Should Use a Managed Services Provider rather than a Break/Fix computer services company

Has this happened to you?

You have critical billing information on one PC, and you’ve been planning to back up the data but haven’t gotten to it yet – and then it crashes!  Is all of your data lost?  How are you going to send out the monthly invoices tomorrow? . . .Or, maybe it’s not as bad as a crash but instead your PC catches a nasty computer virus that causes it to run at a snail’s pace, making your work take twice as long as normal.  Everything is taking too long, from printing to opening a file to saving your work.

 What can you do other than call your local computer fix-it company, and then pay them to take as long as needed to get your computer/network back up?  Meanwhile, you’re losing productivity and loss of billable time with each hour that you’re paying them for their time.  It’s an ugly, unexpected expense – yet it can be avoided.

 There is a better solution! 

 In addition to being a Web site development and hosting company since 1995, Blue Tangerine Solutions is a “managed services provider (MSP).”  This means that we act as a pro-active outsource IT department and monitor your PCs and networks to keep them virus free, up to date on software upgrades and security patches and we can alert you (in advance) if a hard drive is near failure, to prevent un-necessary downtime and unplanned expenses.

 Here’s how it works.  Select a contract term, based on your specific needs, and within your monthly fee you will receive:  

1. Unlimited Tech Support during business hours
2. Computer and Server patch management – Keeps your computers and servers up to date with current patches
3. Network Security Audits – Making sure you network is secure on a regular basis, so your critical data isn’t compromised and that it is available!
4. Firewall Management – Making sure your firewall application is up to date
5. Monitored backup services, both onsite and offsite available, down to desktop level if needed
6. Free labor on all software upgrades
7. Free Quarterly Technology reviews to make sure your technology is working for you, not against you
8. Preventative Network Maintenance – We try and solve the issue before it becomes a problem
9. Vendor Liaison – we work with all your vendors that touch the network to have a cohesive picture of your network and to make sure the all is operating as it should
10. One monthly, budget-friendly fee.  No unexpected charges for breakdowns, we work as your “inside Network Engineer.”  With our monthly fee we are incented to maintain your network as efficiently as possible because we do not get paid additional labor fees if your systems start to fail.  This means we are committed to work hard to keep your network up and running with as few problems as possible.

 Prices start at $20/month, per computer.

 Call Rob Hill today for a free, no-obligation network audit!  321-309-6900 x 314 or visit us online at www.BlueTangerineSolutions.com.

Since over 80% of purchases are made after doing some type of online research, we all know that it is critical to have a good Web site.  However, having a “good” Web site isn’t really enough, because you also need to drive qualified traffic to the site.  (After all, what good is your Web site if no one sees it.)

There are several ways to drive traffic to your Web site, from improving your organic (natural) search engine rankings to creating Internet marketing programs such as pay-per-click programs, link building, online advertising, etc. 

When we build a Web site for our clients, our goal is to create a very useful business tool.  The site needs to be one that provides information, creates and manages prospects/leads and helps with the sales process.  It’s also necessary to drive qualified visitors to your site, and in our upcoming “Ask the Experts” Webinar program from Blue Tangerine Solutions, we are going to share several techniques that you can do to improve your Web site traffic.  We’ll share tips that can be done immediately and some that are a longer process — leading you to positive results.

Please join us on Tuesday, 11/10/2009 when our company President, Greg Bray, will provide a Webinar presentation entitled “Seven Quick and Easy Tips to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings (driving more traffic to your Web site)” at 1:00 pm Eastern time.  Register today at www.BlueTangerineSolutions.com/Webinars.

This is a ‘don’t miss’ Webinar event for anyone involved in the success of their company’s Web site.  Please forward this with your co-workers and colleagues.

For more information about our “Ask the Experts” Webinar program, please visit us at www.BlueTangerineSolutions.com/Webinars.  If you have a topic that you’d like us to present or if you would like to be a speaker, please contact Marie at Marie.OBrien@BlueTangerineSolutions.com.

If you’re a small or medium-sized homebuilder, you will no doubt find the new Values that Matter program to be very interesting.  The program was created by Al Trellis, Richard Elkman and Jerry Gloss.  The concept is that today’s homebuyer is now shopping based on a core set of values: 

1. Sustainability
2. Affordability
3. Family / Lifestyle
4. Aesthetics
5. Functionality

The “Values that Matter” network program will provide builders with a complete marketing and positioning package, exclusive to their geographic area.  The program includes home plans, marketing materials and support to benefit from the new designs, economies of scale, branded selling techniques and a broad-based marketing program to support their sales efforts.

To learn more, visit them online today at www.ValuesThatMatter.com or visit our ASK THE EXPERTS  On-Demand Webinar library to listen to the recorded Webinar program where we interviewed Expert Al Trellis.