Few things here.  Keep in mind these factors are just my opinions based on my experience as a web designer. 

To start off, alot of people hear the website lingo of "optimization".  "You have to optimize your site for the keywords you want to rank on Google for..."  Just because your website is optimized does not by any means mean that you will rank high on Google.  You could have the most optimized website on the web and rank pretty low on the search engines.  Ranking high on search engines requires a number of things. 

First and foremost, in my opinion, is inbound links to your site.  Google counts up the number of links coming to your site and says, "Oh since this site has 10,000 links to it, it must be a pretty important site, we will put them up there at #1 or #2."  How do you get inbound links? There are numerous methods, but in my opinion the best way to get true inbound links is by providing quality information that people want to read.  It doesn't matter whether it's helpful information, gossip, news, etc.  If people find it helpful or interesting, they might post a link on their site linking to yours.  In my opinion, a blog is a great way to do this.  But, the blog has to be incorporated into your site.  It can't be a website of it's own because the inbound links would go to some other domain and Google wouldn't see them as one in the same.  Now, there are ways to get links to your sites that Google frowns upon such as what Google calls "link farms".  Link farms are websites that charge you to put a link on their website or other websites.  If Google catches you buying links, your website could be blacklisted and not appear in the search engines.

One side note about links is the quality of links that you get linking to your site.  Google actually rates your website believe it or not.  Your website has a rating of 3/10.  So if a higher rated website lets say a 9/10, link to your website, that link is worth more to Google than a link that's lets say 4/10.  No one knows the exact math, but 1 link with a rating of 9 or 10 may be worth 50 links of 3 or 4 quality.  Know what I mean?

Second, is traffic, which can come from any source... social networking sites, adwords, email marketing, etc.  Why traffic though? Because the more traffic you get, the more people that get to see your site, the more chances you have at getting people to link to your site and show others.  And the obvious reason, the more traffic, the more money you make.  But making money really doesn't contribute to SEO in any way heh.  So all in all, traffic helps everything, SEO & sales.  Because if Google sees a site that's getting 100,000 hits a month and there is a site that only has 1,000 hits ranked above it, Google will say, "Oh, well obviously this site is more important because it has 99,000 more visitors per month so we will bump them ahead of the other site." 

Third, is optimization.  When you do get ranked after getting enough links and traffic, you want to be ranked for the right keywords.  That's where optimization comes in.  You optimize your site so that you are ranking for the right keywords that you want to rank for.  This is a catch 22 though, the more people that search for a keyword on Google, the more competitive it is to climb the rankings.  So you have to really decide what keywords you really want to fight for.

One exception to these SEO factors is domain names.  If you go out to Google and type in "Cincinnati Golf Apparel" and there is a website called exactly that, "cincinnatigolfapparel.com" then typically you will see that site ranked higher than anything else regardless of links, traffic, and optimization.  That's not always the case, but you will see it majority of the time.

Hope this helps!

This is the subject that frustrates me the most out of all web design topics.  Some companies just refuse to either upgrade their 1990's website or get one all together.

I don't think business owners really realize how big of an impact a website has on their sales.  I'll list a few reasons below.

1.) When's the last time you picked up the yellow pages? I can actually remember the last time I picked up the yellow pages and that was 7 years ago! Stop advertising in the yellow pages if you are and get on Google!  Google is the new yellow pages.

2.) I can't tell you how many times I have heard something along the lines of "Well, let's not stay at x hotel because the website looks really crappy.  Oh, y hotel looks good, let's stay there!".  Congratulations x company, your losing business everyday because of your website.  Don't be that company.  That goes for all types of businesses too, not just hotels.  I actually see this happen a lot for restaurants as well.

All I'm saying is that you are hurting yourself more by NOT getting a website than you are by getting a website.  The internet is here to stay, are you?

We have come across this a few times now where clients have e-commerce stores and they use adwords, but they don't use the "conversion" functionality that is part of adwords...  A conversion is when a person comes onto your site through clicking an Adwords link, and they end up purchasing something on your site.  You converted an Adwords click to a purchase.  If you aren't tracking this, then how are you tracking Adwords' effectiveness? The answer is... you're not.

You track a conversion by simply setting up conversion tracking inside your Adwords account.  You go to the Reporting drop down and then select "conversions".  Once inside conversions, you simply hit "New Conversion" and walk through the guide.  Once you have a conversion set up, you take the code from the conversion and put that code on a page that your customers will see AFTER a sale.  Usually this is a thank you page or a confirmation page.  That way, when a person hits this page that came in through adwords, adwords knows to record this as a conversion or sale.

Once that's done, you obviously collect the data over the next month or so and then you can see which groups or keywords are effective and which ones aren't.  You can also see how much each keyword costs per conversion.  You may want to do away with the expensive ones that have high costs per conversion because that means not many people that are coming in through that keyword are making purchases.  It's completely up to you what changes you make, but this should shed some light on your Adwords' effectiveness.

First off, some may not even know what canonicalization is when referring to domains.  Canonicalization is to refer to a webpage consistantly by one URL.  For instance, http://www.cincinnatiwebdesign.com and http://cincinnatiwebdesign.com are two different URL's that lead to the same place.  So what's the correct URL or canonicalization to use for SEO?

The answer to that question is, it doesn't really matter which you use, but it's important that you pick one and use it CONSISTANTLY.  I'll explain why this is important.  Let's say you have 10 links pointing to http://www.cincinnatiwebdesign.com and 10 other links pointing to http://cincinnatiwebdesign.com.  Google sees that as 2 different URL's with 10 links each.  And of course, depending a little on Pagerank, a person with 20 links to 1 URL will rank higher than a person with 10 links.  Got it?

One last note, let's say you choose to have the www.yourdomain as the primary URL.  Well, you can redirect the http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com and Google will eventually see that as 1 URL and not 2, but this does take time depending on how fast Google indexes your site.

Lastly, remember also when linking to your homepage from within your own website to use http://www.yourdomain.com and NOT http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html.  Google will see those as 2 domains again and you will not get that internal link counted for your URL that you are using as your primary.

Hope that helps! Happy coding

Let's just start out by saying even I underestimated the power of links.

Do yourself a favor, what keyword do you want to be #1 on? Go out to Google or Yahoo and type in your keyword to find out where you are in comparison to everyone else.  Let's say you come back as #10 for "New York Hot Dogs" and you want to be #1.  Now, look at the #1 person on Google and copy that sites web address.  Now go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7zeeyStMVEoBHfnbl8kF?p=&y=Explore+URL&fr=sfp and type in "link:" + their site address.  So for instance it would look like "link:http://www.yourdomainhere.com" and hit enter. (make sure http is included)  Look at the number of results in the left hand column.  Now, hit back, and type in the URL of your web address.  More times than not, the person that is #1 will have more links coming into their site.  The only exception I have found is when the actual domain name is the keyword.  For instance if there was a website named www.newyorkhotdogs.com it will probably rank pretty high regardless of the amount of links.

Now, another thing to note is that if you have 5,000 incoming links to your site and the person that's ranked 1st on Google only has 4,000, there may be a few reasons for this.  First, perhaps your content is not optimized for the keyword you are trying to rank on.  Second, maybe the person that is 1st is linked by higher quality sites.  For instance if the New York Hot Dog #1 website has a link coming from The Wall Street Journal and you have a link coming from Joe Blow newspaper, Google will rank the Wall Street Journal linked site higher because it's a higher quality site.  You can tell what Google thinks of a site by looking at the "PageRank" google assigns to each page.  If you download the Google toolbar you can easily see this.  Google ranks a site from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, 1 the lowest.  So for instance a site like the Wall Street Journal is probably ranked above a 5 and the Joe Blow newspaper would be ranked a 1 or 2.  No one knows the exact math behind it, but what I am saying is that having 4,000 links that are ranked a 6 is a lot better than having 5,000 links ranked a 2.  Get my drift?

More to come soon.  Next I'll cover linking strategies.

We are starting to see a lot of business owners really hesitate to get into social marketing.  Well, I want to assure you that the risks of NOT getting into social marketing far outweigh the risks of getting into social marketing.  I listed a few reasons below of why your business should definitely get into social marketing.

First and foremost, since there is already a huge demand for social sites, of course search engine's will want a piece of all that information.  It's only a matter of time until Google and other major search engines start indexing social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Second, it's all about visibility.  The more people you get in front of, the more people will naturally find your site and your company.  It's the exact same thing as networking in person, just over the internet.  Giving a person a link or having them find a link to your website is the exact same thing as handing out a business card in my opinion.  It's free, it's convienant, and it's easy.  What are you waiting for?

Lastly, and this ties into visibility, but think about how people are finding companies these days.  First, in my opinion is word of mouth, I value anyone's personal referral for a business far more than finding anything on the internet.  I can't tell you how many times someone has said in an email something along the lines of, "Yeah, they are good people.  Here, check out their facebook page and give them a call".   Anything after the referral process in my mind is simply a Google search.  I don't look in the yellow pages, I don't call the operator, I go to Google and type in "Plumbers, Cincinnati OH 45205".  I first use the Google Local search to find the closest plumbers.  Are you on Google Local? I hope so!  Second, I look at their websites, does it look like a website that was made in 1980?  If so, I move on to the next one.  In my opinion, if a owner can't pay for a decent website, their company isn't a solid company and I don't want to do business with them.  You just have to think like a client or customer.  How are they finding you? That's my typical process for finding companies.  I would assume other people's would be similar to some extent, but everyone is different.

As I mentioned before, the risks of NOT getting involved in social marketing are far higher than getting involved.  Just think about it, if you aren't out there, your competitors probably are.  How many clients or customers are you going to give your competitors?

A Content Management System is simply a system that is used to manage the content of a website.

Ok, that definitely really doesn't tell us much, so let's break it down.

When someone says, "I want to be able to edit my own content on my own site and change it anytime I want", they are referring to a Content Management System (CMS).  You can edit font size, font color, add images, move stuff around, delete images, add links, and much much more.  CMS's come in all shapes and sizes with various price ranges.  So how do you know which one is right for you?

I always advise people to tread lightly when looking for a CMS.  Why?

You will be using this system pretty often (maybe multiple times a day) and these systems aren't exactly cheap.  Spend some time doing research, and I ALWAYS advise "test-driving" the system. You really won't know the full limitations and advantages for using 1 system versus another until you actually play around with them.

Also, a lot of people seem to have this thought in there head that it's exactly like editing things in microsoft word, well, it is to an extent. You have to realize that you aren't just changing words, you are changing website code (html code).  I won't get into the details of what happens behind the scenes, but sometimes what you want to see and change, and what is actually displayed, are two totally different things.  Sometimes the code just isn't translated correctly.  The bottom line is make sure the CMS fits your needs.  If you are expecting to be able to create new pages, add images, or change the menu structure, just make sure the CMS allows you to do this and that it's very easy to use.

 I hope this helps!

~Chris

We get asked a lot if advertising on our clients websites are a good idea.  So we decided to put a list together of the "Do's and Dont's" of website advertising.

As long as you keep your visitors to your site in mind while putting advertising on your site, you should be in good shape.  You DO NOT want to annoy your visitors.

Do Not create a "site intro" for advertising.  This will cause visitors to immediately leave your site.  In the website world, they say you have around 7-8 seconds to capture your visitors attention.  Well, if 5 of those seconds are for an intro to advertising, you can kiss those visitors good bye.

Do Not create popup advertisements.  These have been dying down recently and aren't as bad as they once were, but none the less, still a very bad idea.  This is the #1 way to make a visitor unhappy with your site and gaurentee they won't be back for another visit.

Do Not create audio ads on your website.  If users can't find the pause button within a second or two, they are going to leave the site just for one reason: to get rid of the sound.  You do not need any additional reasons to cause visitors to leave your site.

Do Not create in-line text ads.  There is nothing more annoying to me than when I am reading an article and using my cursor as a guide (which many people do) and happen to rollover a text hyperlink that causes a popup.  Popups have always been and will always be viewed in a negative sense.  Keep your site clean and easy to navigate and you will keep your visitors.

Now on to the "Do's" of website advertising.

Do ask local businesses if they would be interested in advertising on your site.  Now, you may be asked by these companies for traffic statistics.  This is normal.  Companies do not want to advertise on a site that only has 15 people visiting it a day.  So be sure to ask your web developer if he keeps the statistics and have them handy for the local businesses. 

Do have your (or their) graphic or web designer design the advertisement and be sure they look professional.  Businesses don't want to see a "text" advertisement for their company.  They want to see something professional that they will be proud of.  Also, at the same time, you want something that visitors will not mind seeing.  For example, take a look at most major league baseball team's sites.  Let's take www.reds.com for example.  As of today (8/27/09), they have 2 advertisements that you can't even notice at first glance.  One for StubHub and one for Shop.MLB.com.  They look like they just "flow" with the site.  You get the best of both worlds, you keep the visitors, and you make the businesses happy because it looks very professional.

Do keep the amount of advertisements on the site limited.  Too many advertisements really takes away from the site and pushes visitors away.  At some point, the visitor doesn't know what's an advertisement and what's the real content they want to find.  They will leave immediately for a more "cleaner" site.

-Chris

SEO - Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine such as Google. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

Why would you need SEO?

90% of all online traffic is achieved through the various search engines.  Not many people use the yellow pages anymore.  Pulling up Google and typing in "Plumbers 45205" is much faster and easier than flipping through hundreds of pages.  People value time much more in today's world than they did in the 1900's.  Therefore knowing how to generate traffic through Search Engine Optimization is almost the only way to get found on the internet.

If you have any questions about SEO, don't hesitate to ask.

-Chris