I’ve been following various SEO’s now for a couple of months to stay up to date with what’s going on in the industry. I’ve even mad a couple of SEO friends that live out of state. Online marketing is complex but definitely a concept that can be grasped with hard work and dedication. It take times to build relationships versus just trying to build links. It takes time to do proper keyword research and to make sure that your on-page SEO is up to par. Instead of always looking for a shortcut why not give the search engines what they want. A great resource they can share with their end-users. From the view of a searcher it does get annoying when you are looking for something on Google and get stuck with a horrible search result that have spammed their way to the first page. I personally think that if you are doing the right things on your website like writing good content, building your social media profile, and staying involved in your industry then good rankings will come.

I’ve heard over and over that search, as we know it, is moving towards brands. I’ve always been an advocate of brands and how important branding is for businesses. Hopefully this will help filter out some of the horrible websites that have only ranked in the SERP’s due to keyword loaded domain names.

The Inbound Marketing Title Fight

One of the new terms that has been in the mix lately is Inbound Marketing. This is suppose to be the next term to replace SEO. Inbound Marketing consist of blogs, videos, PR, email, SEO, Social Networks, etc. I don’t understand how the term Inbound Marketing can replace SEO or how SEO can evolve into Inbound Marketing when SEO is a part of Inbound Marketing. I don’t know if the term SEO will ever go away because there will always be some sort of optimization for the search engines. A more appropriate term would be Online marketing or even using Internet marketing to describe the every day duties of the “evolved SEO”. That’s just my opinion though

Check out this map of Denver Colorado:

They also launched a product for GMAIL called GMAIL TAP where instead of using your keypad you can send messages using Morse Code lol.

Pretty Funny Google and April Fools Day to you all.

We are based in the metro Denver Area and handle a decent workload of Denver web design. I wanted to take some time to talk about how an effective web design can help Denver businesses.

Web Presence is important

It is important to have a physical business address and a phone number where your clients can reach you, right? Well it is equally important for Denver businesses to have a presence on the web. There are around 17.1 billion searches completed per month so if you don’t think it is important to be on the Internet maybe you should think again. As technology moves forward and there are going to be more people using the internet. More people searching for local businesses. More people trying to type in the name of your business to see if they can find an online representation of the services that you offer.

In the mid 90′s it was important to have a business card and it still is quite important today. The difference is that you need to have a website address on that card. A website is an extension of your business and provides your clients with a way to not only find out more information but to gain trust. With that being said don’t go running to just to put up any website. You need to put some thought and consideration into the kind of design you want, what your competitors are doing, and how you want your customers to view your business.

As a Denver web design company we always tell our clients that if you want your business to have a good image then it is important that your website reflects that.

You can see an example of how Sitelinks looks in a search result below:

Ok so what do I need to do?

To see if your site is eligible you need to login your Google Adwords account and click on the opportunities tab. Google will give you a personalized estimate including the cost if you use Sitelinks and the impact on clicks. This information will be based on your last week’s campaign stats.

You can see a screenshot below of how the new Sitelinks tab looks.

Conclusion

Google Sitelinks is a great addition to Adwords. It will allow Adwords Accounts that qualify to give a litte more information about their ad and help direct traffic to the content that is most important / relavant.

Some neat things you can do with Google Custom Search are:

• Include one or more websites to be searched, or even specific webpages
• Host the search box and results on your own website, blending them with your theme
• Customize the look and feel of the Google Custom Search results to match your site

Why would I want to add Google Custom Search to my WordPress Website / Blog?

As soon as you get a good amount of content on your WordPress site you will start to notice the default built-in search just isn’t very smart. It just doesn’t return the best results for what your visitors may be searching for. If the built-search can’t do the job right then let’s find a candidate that can and none better than Google Search, the best search engine ever written!

Google Custom Search Plans & Pricing

Before we get started let’s discuss a few options that Google Custom Search offers and the options that we are going to choose for this article. GCS has a few different plans you can sign up for. We are going to sign up for the (free) standard plan. The difference between their standard plan (free) and their site search (which starts at $100 per year) is the ads. Ads are optional on the “site search plan” which would be important for a company website so your visitors aren’t distracted by your competition. On the other hand, with site search you can make money from the ads (AdSense For Search program) which might be a nice option for a blog owner.

Let’s get started

Ok it’s time to setup your Google Custom Search. First go to the Google Custom Search website (click here Google Custom Search Engine). Once you have arrived, click on the blue button that says “Create a Custom Search Engine”. This will take you to a sign in page if you aren’t already signed in to your google account (of course with google services you need to have a google account, Gmail, etc.).

After you have signed in you will see the page shown in the image below. We have taken the liberty to fill out the options so you have a better understanding of what goes where.

As you can see in the image above you need to fill out the name of your search engine, a description, the site(s) you want to search, and choose the search edition you want to use. After you have filled out all of this information you can click the next button.

The next page you see will allow you to choose and customize a style for the search. You can also customize the CSS code that Google gives you when we integrate the search.

Notice the search bar at the bottom. This is how your search bar will look and you can actually type in a search to see how the results will be displayed. For the purpose of this article we are just going to select the default style and click next.

On the next page you will be able to get the code for your Google Custom Search but we aren’t done just yet. Here is how the screen looks.

This code is fine if you want the search bar and search results on the same page but that is not what we are trying to accomplish. We want the search engine to be site wide ( at the top of the page or in a sidebar ) and the search results to have their own page.

To do this you need to click on the link  under the Next steps heading that says “Change the look and feel”. This is page you will see.

Under choose layout you need click on the Two page option. This allows us to have the search bar on one page  After you have selected the Two page option click “Save & Get code”.

Two important thing to notice here. First where it says specify the URL you need to put the URL where you search results page will be located. Second where it says specify the query paramater change the “q” to “s” as WordPress natively uses “s” for searches. The first set of code is what we are going to use for the search box.The second set of code is what we are going to use for the search results page.

Now we are all done with the setup on the Google side. Time to dive into WordPress and integrate the code.

Time for Integration

Let’s take care of the search box first. Take the first set of code and paste it either in your header.php file, your sidebar.php file, or even in a text widget to place in the sidebar (easiest). After you have the search box displaying just the way you want you can move to handling how the results will be displayed.

Now let’s take care of the search results page. Some people create a WordPress page called Search Results which is easy to do. You would just click on new page. Title the page “Search Results and in the content editor click on HTML and paste the second block of code Google Custom Search gives you. If you do choose this option you need to update the URL you specified for the results to appear on Google Custom Search to say “http://myawesomewebsite.com/search-results”.

The second way to do this is to change a page in your theme titled search.php. This is the file that WordPress uses natively to display search results. This option will be the most natural integration even thought it does require a little more work. If you do choose this option you need to update the URL you specified for the results to appear on Google Custom Search to say “http://myawesomewebsite.com”. If this page is already created in your theme you can use the built in editor WordPress gives you by clicking on Appearance and then Editor. If not you have to log in via FTP and use a text editor.

search.php

Simply paste the code between the header and footer in the have__posts loop and you’re all done. Now you can search on any page of your site, and be taken to a dedicated search results page where the results will be displayed. The results will be real Google search results and only limited to your domain. Mission Accomplished!

It’s not hard at all to set up “Pretty URLS” and you can have Pretty URLS in no time. In addition to the URL look downright sexy, search engines consider the path of these link’s relevant which can lead to better search engine results.

So How Does It Work?

The answer is Permalinks. Permalinks can be found under the setting tab from your WordPress admin interface. Permalinks make all of the magic happen with the way your URLS get displayed. It does this by creating virtual URLS on the server and then handles directing those URLS to your actual pages.

So let’s get started!

Log into your WordPress admin interface. You can find this interface at http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin.  Once you have logged in click on settings and then click on Permalinks (WordPress 3.3.1).

Here is a screenshot of how that page looks.

We have chosen the custom option which is generally the best for SEO.  Click on “Custom Structure” and insert:
/%category%/%postname%

We don’t include the trailing slash by preference. Click here to see  googles view on the trailing slash.

After you have picked your Permalink setting click the “Save Changes” button on the screen and Voila!

ATTENTION:

If WordPress gives you an error saying it does not have access to update the Permalink structure then you need fix the permissions on a file called “.htaccess”.

To do this, log in to your website via FTP or SSH and first check to see if the .htaccess even exists in your web root. You should see other files like wp-config.php here. If the file is already there you’ll need to set its permissiton to 666 through the context menu of your ftp client with an option called “permissions” or “chmod”. If the file is not there , no worries — you need to create a blank version of the file using a text editor and upload that to your main web directory also making sure the permissions are 666.

After this is finished refresh your WordPress admin page.

Below is a screenshot of the page you see after you click on “Create A Page”.

What is new with the Timeline format for Pages

There are some new things happening with the timeline format.

• There is a new admin panel for your page.
• You can have a cover photo for your page just like your personal timeline.
• There is now a messages features for Pages which allows people who like your page to send you a message. You can turn this off if you want.
• Since the format has changed there is not an option for a default tab. This means everyone that created custom Facebook Pages will not be able to use them as a landing page going forward.

Here is how the Facebook Page looks for Creative Citrus.

How do I get the new Facebook Page with this Timeline feature

If you haven’t checked you page recently you can visit you page and there will be some options that appear talking about the new Timeline Pages. You can actually choose to publish your page so people can see the new timeline format now.

Click here to check out the Creative Citrus Fan Page live.

When we first started out we used Basecamp as our project management tool. Things were good, simple but good. Then one day we realized that we were’t getting what we needed out of Basecamp. It was fine to use to get an overview of a project but if you want the details then it isn’t a viable solution. Having a great project management tool helps you keep the project organized and being organized is vital to the success of any project.

Here goes 10 reasons why we switched to Teamwork:

1. They Listen to you
   We have had conversations with Peter and Daniel over at Teamwork and these guys are past amazing. It feels good to know you can send an email with a question or feedback and get a personal response. On a 1 – 10 they would rank awesome in the customer service department.
2. Custom Domains
   Teamwork allowed us to customize our domain name so we went from creativecitrus.basecamphq.com to pm.creativecitrus.com. This feature alone would have been enough for us to switch!! It is very simple for our clients to remember and it’s easy on the fingers.
3. Privacy
   Teamwork allows you tons of privacy options. You can create todo,s messages, etc. and control if just your company, certain individuals, or everyone can see them.
4. Statuses
   Now you don’t have to worry about what your team are doing if you have people working remotely. Users can update their status or you can send them a request to update their status.
5. Priority
   You can set priorities for every task  which is handy when you have a million deadlines to meet.
6. Reporting
   There is reporting for almost anything you can think of. With an easy export to PDF button you can have a project report or time report at your fingertips in seconds.
7. Customization
   In addition to custom domains you can also customize the entire look and feel of the user interface giving you complete control over brand consistency.
8. Project Charts
   Project Charts are a neat feature that allow you to see all of the projects you have with start and end dates. This is a definite must have for any project management software.
9. Project Settings
   There are a ton of project settings that you can change. You can also control which tabs users can see for that project and set project announcements that show up on that projects page.
10. Pricing
    While Basecamp starts off at $20, Teamwork’s most affordable plan is just $12. They even have a free option if you only have 1 project and allows you to get use to their software.

Conclusion:

Overall Teamwork is just awesome from their software to their customer service. If you have a project coming up definitely check out their software.

In the diagram below (1) would be the main link and (2) would be the site links.

When Do I Get Sitelinks?

Only Google knows when your website will get sitelinks as you do not have any control over this. If you do not get them right away there is nothing to worry about. Google will add your sitelinks when they think it is appropriate.

Tips to get Sitelinks

Now off the easy part. Well there isn’t really an easy way to get Google sitelinks but there are somethings you can do to put your website in the best position to receive them.

Here goes a few tips that will get you started in the right direction towards sitelink heaven.

1. SEO on the Home Page
   SEO on the home page can be one of the most important factors for achieving sitelinks. If you don’t have a good title, good meta description, etc. then it is possible you won’t get sitelinks. For our clients  Wordpress projects we like to use the WordPress SEO plugin to make sure these are taken care of.
2. The Structure of your website
   We can all agree that sitelinks show what Google believes to be the most important pages on your website. It is important that Google understands your website structure and which pages are important. Using a sitemap to visualize your website can be extremely helpful. We use the tool Mockflow to create an initial sitemap and organize pages. If your website talks about red, blue , and yellow widgets then it would make to have everything talking about red widgets under the red widgets page.
3. Clear Navigation
   Your navigations need to tell people and Google about your website. This is definitely a good way to tell Google about your content topics allowing them to create sitelinks for your website. It is also good to try and keep important pages in your sites main navigation.
4. On-Page SEO for Blog Posts and Pages
   Yes the home page is one of the most important pages for SEO. It is also important that every page and posts on your website has good SEO too. Go the extra mile and write a good title for that new page you created. Make sure that you wrote a meta description.
5. Promote your Popular Pages
   Links, links, links! We hear this all the time to get back links to help with your sites SEO. Well try building back links for your important pages and promote them as well. While this strategy can help for sitelinks it will also help you increase your rankings in the search engines.

From Google: At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future. There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks. For example, for your site’s internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition.

Practice good SEO, use clear navigation, and link internally to important pages and you will be on your way to success.

If you’ve ever searched for something on Google.com, you’ve probably already been exposed to Google Places. You can tell that Google Places has kicked in when you see a map on the side bar and in the main a set of 7 local listings. These listings show up when you include a city or region with your search ie “Denver Bail Bonds”.

Recent changes in the Google Search engine have placed a great deal of emphasis on these “Local Listings”. Local listing can even push the “organic” listings lower on the same page.

The following screenshot is of a local search conducted in Google.

How does Google Determine Local Search Rankings?

Creating a listing on Google Places isn’t enough to rank in the top 7. If you take your Internet marketing seriously then it is critical that your listing is getting as much
traffic as possible. If you want to make this happen then you need to understand the 3 major factors used by Google to determine your listing’s rankings.

The 3 factors are:

• Detailed Information
• Distance from City Center
• Citations & Reviews

Tune in to our next blog article to learn about these factors in detail and how you can rank higher for Local Search in Google Places. We will also cover completing your Google Places business profile, Strategy, Visible Consistency, and Micro-formats / Microdata.