1- Google Adwords FREE Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2

Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas and check search volume. Simply enter a few descriptive words or phrases that relate to the topic you are addressing and click “Get Keyword Ideas”.  With the default settings, this tool will give you many more suggestions for other words and phrases that actual searchers have used when looking for what you have to offer.  It also gives the “Local” and “Global” volume for searches done on Google in the previous month for each of your keywords.  “Local” refers to the country which you have chosen to view search results from as keywords and their usage can vary greatly throughout the world.  If your target audience is mainly in one specific country or on more of a global scale, you may want to change the settings for your search area.  This is found just above the search box on the left-hand side of the screen and, by default, is set to “Results are tailored to English, United States” If you click on the word “Edit”, you can change the specific language and region that you want your search results returned for.  As I mentioned, this tool specifically gives results based on searches done using Google, but since they have 70% of search volume online today, chances are that your audience is using them!

2- Google Insights: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

Once you have narrowed down a list of keywords that you like, this tool can really shed some further light on which keywords are being used in the specific areas that you are targeting.   With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. See examples of how you can use Google Insights for Search.   I suggest using the “Filters” and change the country to be specific to your target audience along with the time range of the results your looking for.

These 2 keyword tools used in co-ordination with each other will give you an advantage over your competitors online.  Watch these two learning videos on Youtube to get to know how to use them then give them each a try with a list of your business’s keywords.  It will be amazing what you find out!

Check out these videos to walk you through using each of them.  Remember to search Youtube for learning videos.  It is a great FREE resource:

1 - YouTube Video - Learn to use Google Keywords Tool

2 - YouTube Video - Learn to use Google Insights Tool

So once again, say it with me “SEO is having my website built better so Google will love me more”.  -heehee-  This is 100% true!

There are many various little things that a website is up against to to get these SEO standards working for them.   There are basics and some that are more complex and time consuming, but a basic fact exists that no one knows exactly how search engines rank a website.  Because if everyone knew, then everyone would be top ranked, and that isn’t possible now is it?   There are however techniques that prove themselves to work for websites success.  Another problem is that most of the time your web-designer won’t do it and may not even know about these SEO tricks and leave you at a disadvantage to being found by your customers.  So why would the web designer do this 90% of the time?  Because being an SEO expert and a web designer are two different career paths and both entail a lot of knowledge to incorporate to get one website working correctly.  It is a sad truth that exists, but you can be armed with knowledge so when you do want to have a good SEO website that you can ask the right questions to the web designer or company to gauge if they know how to do it and hold them to that level.  And if they don’t, well..  Next in line, please.

I hope this helped you understand why SEO can help your website business online. Because if your website isn’t bringing you any emails or extra business, well.. What’s the point?  Your website should be working as hard as you do on your business and if it is built correctly with Search Engine Optimization standards, then you should see a return on your investment which we take very seriously at Grey and Bruce County based GEMINI Marketing.  PLease leave a comment and share your thoughts or questions below by clicking on “Post a Comment”.

This leads to what is so great in my opinion for local businesses right now.  Basically, you have an invisible license plate when you go on the internet with your computer.  This is called your IP. Think of it like an “Internet Plate” for your computer that you drive around the internet with. This is why websites that you visit know things about you, like where you are from and what sort of operating system you are using along with how many times you visit.   So what is Google doing with your IP now?  They are giving results based on your location!   Before, if you searched for a term like “car repair”, you would get results simply based on who markets themselves the best online and their location could be any where in the world.   Now, Google is incorporating where you, the searcher, are in the world to show you relevant local results.   So, in essence, if you are in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and search for “car repair”, you will get results from local “car repair” websites in your search results.   In my opinion, this is great for local business and may eliminate the need for expensive advertising in local Yellow Pages.   It’s now easier than ever to rank high on Google for local business terms!

So, what I recommend is to make sure your website has local keywords within the Meta tags, content, and H1 and H2 tags asap! Let us know if your local company website needs some fixing up to be better aimed at your local market.  Then you can get more qualified traffic contacting you for your services.   Thanks Google for local search!

ps ~ quick tip: You should submit your website to Google local business Maps online so your target market searchers can find you in Google local searches.

1- I first create two separate databases, one for each Content Management Systems then install the primary package in the root directory, usually of which is Joomla as it is much more easily expandable then Wordpress (Bold Statement). This will link Joomla to the first database.

2- Then I create a sub folder called “blog” or “Blog” in the root directory (good SEO technique - watch Google Rep: Matt Cutts Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers)and then instal Wordpress within it and link it up to the 2nd database.

3- Next step is actually a long one with making both CMS template look the same or at least similar which is another tutorial all together. I’d recommend you outsource to make life easier and pay someone to help with this if you don’t have the internal talent, to get both templates done (Try Guru.com to find a good company or person, very reasonable talent there).

4- Once both packages are looking the same and sometimes I wait to the very end for the clients, I make a single login page that they can either choose to update their website or their blog. Have a look a the diagram below to see the structure.

My main reason for all this is to give the power of driving traffic to a website to my clients which Google loves Fresh content and everyone knows blogs are the key. This will give you such a wide range of possibilities to give your clients a real online presence with their website that will take a lot to outgrow. This in turn has your clients happy, and therefor you can be happy and possibly get more referrals. Oh, ever thought of offering learning packages also for your clients so that can learn about how to use all this technology? We have and they love it!

So now you know a simple way to help your clients. Drop me a comment or question if you get lost or have any problems.

SEF / Search Engine Friendliness

- SEF can be described as everything the web designer and web programmer does to your website to make it FRIENDLY (easy) for search engines to find and rank. Some of these things could include having links made of text instead of images, building your site with CSS instead of tables so the page has less code and more relevant content, having correct tags like H1, H2, ALT, XHTML, etc, a proper XML sitemap, circular navigational architecture, and even proper URLs like ‘/aboutus.html’ instead of ‘/$%-something/index.php’. SEF also deals with usability for your website’s visitors to navigate your site intuitively. This is all done in the development and building stage of your site.

SEO / Search Engine Optimization

- This is the most often used and most misunderstood term that gets name-dropped every time a client is being pitched for a web contract. Many people talk as though SEO is a mish-mashed combination of both SEF and SEO and still only know half of what either one is! SEO actually has its roots in marketing
and is a monthly/yearly ongoing job. One of the things connected with SEO is KEYWORD TRACKING which is finding the most highly searched keywords on the net for your industry and target market (we use www.wordtracker.com; there is a monthly fee but you can try it out free for 1 week -hint!-). These keywords should then be used to ensure the links on your website have the highest search value and to monitor keyword density on each page of your website’s content. For example, Google likes a website to have around 4% keywords on a page. So if you want to get ranked for the term “restaurants owen sound“, you should have that term appear 4 times on your page, assuming there are 100 words total within the page content. Using keywords more often than that can be interpreted as “keyword stuffing”, and can actually harm your search engine rankings.
So, anyone who tells you that they will give you an SEO’d website for the low start-up design fee for your website is either not being truthful or, more likely, is simply uneducated in the industry. If a company tells you, however, that they will give you a Search Engine Friendly website and make your website ‘SEO ready’ …then they probably know what they are talking about which will make it much easier when you go to incorporate SEO marketing techniques.

SEM / Search Engine Marketing

-I would describe this just as it reads; marketing online. One of the things you can have done or do yourself is to submit your website URL (www.yourwebsite.com) to search engines like Google, MSN Live and Yahoo. You can also submit your URL to directories, write comments on other websites that talk about your topic to share in online communities, start social networking 2.0 accounts like on Facebook or Youtube, and start promoting your own community to drive the traffic to you. You can also create a newsletter that you email out to your client lists to keep them informed of your business’s happenings, along with using RSS feeds to push your content out into the net. At the very least, you can pay for Google Adwords or for a company to submit your URL to thousands of websites on the net. There are many more techniques but this is why we recommend that you find an online marketer to promote you, like us!

So, to wrap up, here is the best analogy I made up recently to explain SEF, SEO, and SEM. Its like this, the 18-wheeler, big rig that is carrying your website to your audience and search engines is Search Engine Marketing (SEM), the Search Engine Friendliness (SEF) is the frame of your house and how it is built to weather the storm of moving over the net and (SEO) is the content within the house that makes it valuable to search engines.

So, let’s get the word out there and help other business owners know that the term “if you build it they will come” is over. And that the new phrase is ” If you build it, you have to build it right and market the thing properly online” -hahaha-.

Did you know that there are companies that just do SEO and SEM and that’s it? And they can charge hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars a month to do so… it’s that big of a job but it produces results! As my grandfather once told me “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance!“.

1. What is the purpose of your website?
In business, it could be one of these 3 types:

* the brochure site
* the lead generator site
* the online shop
* the community site

The brochure website is an online support to your offline marketing. You will refer to it in your ads, because you pay for ads by the square inch, and acres are cheap on the internet. You will refer to it in your Yellow Pages ads, your business cards and your brochures. An online presence will give you a credibility that your competitors without a website (getting fewer every day) don’t have. But in the end it is just an online version of a tri-fold a printer might do for you. There is nothing wrong with a brochure site, if this is all you want in your marketing plan.

The next step up is a lead generator site. Unlike a brochure site, you want it to generate business on its own. You want people to find your site while browsing on the internet, and having seen your site, feel compelled to call or email you. After that contact is made, hopefully a sale will follow.  The third option is that your website is a storefront where visitors to your site can actually purchase products and services. In other words, after finding your site, and viewing your content, they are compelled to “click here” to make a purchase.  The Forth option is a community based website where visitors come to interact and engage with content and other users within a variety of topics.  Facebook & LinkedIn are great examples of this.  Even a good forum based site will do the trick to get this going but you need to provide regular updates to content and site users which is a full time job.  There is a fifth type of website- the vanity site. But financial rewards are rarely connected to this type of site.  Of course a website may be a mixture of these types, but unless you have defined your website business model, the purpose of your website, it will be a waste of time.

2. How will people find your site?
You already know there are 4 billion sites, so the likelihood that a buyer will find it by chance are somewhat remote. And if you calculated the cost per lead on that basis, you would never build such a site. Your business website exists only for one purpose, to make you money- irrespective of the business model. It must pay its way. So if no-one visited your site, why would you pay for it to exist?
Therefore, you must have a strategy to ensure people know your site exists and that there is a reason they should visit it. How can you do that? There are two basic strategies, offline and online.  An offline strategy is based on all your offline marketing- ie advertising, public relations, networking and cold calling. In every case you would refer leads to your website where they can find out more about what you can do for them, and why they should choose you. Your website would build on your offline promotions giving further details of your service, educating your customer and creating credibility for your business.

An online strategy will be built around visibility. The key elements of this are:

* Search Engine Optimization
* A strategy to get links to your website
* Online advertising

3. What are you going to do to make visitors linger at your site?
The average website visit is 68 seconds. How many widgets do you expect to sell in that time? You must have a strategy to make people linger at your site, get to know you and see the value you can give them.

The three secrets for making people linger are CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!

To get visitors to stay, you need to give them information that they want. This will not be information about you (at least not on the home page). Your goal should be to educate your visitor. Give them information they will not get elsewhere on how to solve the problem that caused them to search for you in the first place. If you website is just sales hype, your visitors will be gone in a lot less than 68 seconds.

4. What do you want visitors to do once they are at your site?
Many would say- “Buy lots of stuff from me.” Well, in your dreams! Most people will not buy from you, or call you on the first visit to your site. They don’t know you (unless an offline relationship has been established). And unless you are selling a commodity, that is the same on every site- eg CD’s, and you are competing on price, you need to be able to establish a relationship. To do this, you need to give visitors a reason to give you a way to stay in contact. This could be by way of a newsletter, or through a free download of information requiring their email details. When you do this, it is essential you provide an unsubscribe option, because otherwise you will be spamming. And there are no rich spammers (although I believe there are rich people selling spam technology).

5. How are you going to get people to come back to your site?
On average, four out of five website visitors will never come to a website. And if they only stay 68 seconds, it’s going to take you several lifetimes to become an internet millionaire. To get people to come back you need to do several things:

* Have sufficient quantity and quality of content, that the visitor will bookmark your site to come back for more
* Continually add to and change the content to make visitors want to come back
* Provide special offers to your subscribers that will encourage them to revisit your website

If your website never changes, why would anyone want to come back?

6. How are you monitoring going to monitor the results of your website?
No-one can guarantee what is going to work for you. Therefore you have to measure your statistics. A good web host will provide you with a statistics package that will tell you how many visitors you have had, when they visited, how they found you and what they did at your site. When you make an offer, make a change to your site, or undertake some marketing campaign, whether online or offline, check the response on your statistics, and the conversions that you have achieved on your site. Do controlled experiments. Don’t change too many things at one time, because you will never know what caused the change. Find out what works, and what doesn’t. And when you find a good thing, stick to it!

7. Are you really going to trust your 10 year old nephew to do all this?
You may not be using your 10 year old nephew; you may be using a graphics design company instead. But don’t confuse determining your website business model and marketing strategy with the color and movement of your website graphics. As a general rule of thumb, the flashier the website, the worse it is commercially. (Check out eBay and Amazon- how flashy are their sites? But is there a clear business strategy?) You will need someone to do the html/CSS programming, but almost certainly, someone who is good at that will not be good at everything else. A website is just another marketing tool. Like a brochure.

I hope this helps many realize they must refine their marketing and business plans for there business website.

What is a “blog”?

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:

• A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
• An archive of older articles.
• A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
• A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
• One or more FEEDS like RSS, Atom or FEEDBURNER (our favorite)

For some, blogs are strictly vanity projects as they ramble on about their daily observations to family and friends. For others, blogs take on a deeper meaning. Blogs can be used to make political statements, promote products, provide research information, and give tutorials. If there’s a subject that interests you, there’s a good chance someone’s writing a blog about it.

Everyone’s jumping on the blogging bandwagon. Blogs written by politicians, musicians, novelists, sports figures, newscasters and other notable figures have been spotted. Because of this, blogs have also been the center of controversy. Since one can write about anything in a blog, complaints about others are commonplace. In many blogs, names are named. There have also been issues with employees writing about their place of employment in blogs and getting fired. Though you can write what you want in a blog, you’re not exempt from the repercussions. Anyone who makes a controversial statement had best be well prepared to back it up.

Blogs have become so mainstream that the word “blog” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2004. It has even become a category on the hit television game show, Jeopardy. Families now use blogs to keep in touch and teachers assign blogs as writing assignments. “Newsweek” magazine even recommends a few notable blogs each week to its readers.

It appears that blogging is here to stay. Why not start your own blog?

If you are curious about starting your own BLOG, contact us for a qoute or look into some of these links to educate yourself how to get it going yourself ( ALSO: to get your blog properly sending out data to the internet to drive traffic, look into “SEO Wordpress” on Google):

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fA9zsIl4XU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePX_UUqrVno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUDM4q7utGQ

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Tool 1 - Alexa Sparky Toolbar (FREE DOWNLOAD FOR FIREFOX)

Sparky is a free FireFox browser plugin that accompanies you as you surf, providing useful information about the sites you visit without interrupting your Web browsing. Learn about Web sites Traffic Trend information.  Get detailed traffic information including Reach and Rank.  Surf more efficiently with Related Links for each page.

You can download here: http://www.alexa.com/site/download/
Learn more about it here: http://www.alexa.com/site/download/quicktour?show=
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Tool 2 - Page Rank Toolbar ( FREE DOWNLOAD FOR FIREFOX)

The Live PageRank Score gives you the current PageRank value in the Google and is displayed in the toolbar of firefox in the bottom right. Google updates its internal PageRank value continuously as the web changes and their database is updated. Only once every third month or so this value is exported to be displayed in the Google Toolbar and shows you what Google ranks your website between 1 and 10.    A few example values: www.yahoo.com has a PageRank of 9, www.google.com has a PageRank of 10, www.microsoft.com has a PageRank of 9 and www.redcross.org has a PageRank of 8.  The basics of this is between 1 and 3 your just starting out.  Between 4 and 6 you have something to offer the internet of value.  And beween 7 and 10 your a major player online.  Remember this is all with a grain of salt as some people don’t practice getting their websites ranked well.

You can download it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2007
Learn more about it here: http://livepr.raketforskning.com/
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These 2 ADD-ON tools for FIREFOX will help your business have some sort of gauge online towards competitors and who you may want to do a link exchange program with to up your traffic.   Read the LEARN MORE ABOUT IT HERE pages if you want to understand more about these tools.