1. 5 Skills Marketing Employees Must Have – Tired of hiring “Marketing” people that say they are “experts”? I know I am. Here are 5 skills to check out right from the first meeting to see if they even know how to do the job!

2. 4 Things to Consider When Creating a Business Logo – Four things to really consider as you put a window into your company with your logo!

3. 2 LinkedIn Networking Tips You Should Be Aware Of – With the popularity of LinkedIn, few of us really understand how powerful of a tool this social network can be in finding opportunities. Here are just two more great ideas for using LinkedIn.

4. Top 10 Facebook Pages And Why They Are Successful- This article examines 10 of the top Facebook pages from brands you’ll likely recognize. Regardless of the size of your business, you’ll discover great ideas that will help you take your Facebook experience to the next level.

5. 10+ SEO Bots & What You Need to Know – Finally some sense about all of the “bots” out there that are looking at your website.

Our Po!nt: Enjoy! We would like to hear about some of your favorite websites that you run across so we can share them here.

Our Po!nt: Where does the “why” show up in the products your make or the services you provide. Share with us your WHY, we’d like to hear about it.

With Google’s and other major search engines new Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)  system to index content, its even more important to have the right content on each web page within your website.  Basically the contents of a webpage are being crawled by a search engine and the most common words and phrases are collected and identified as the keywords for the page. The new LSI system looks for synonyms related to the title of your page. For example, if the title of your page was “Fishing Lures”, the search engine would expect to find words relating to that subject in the content of the page as well, i.e. “crankbait”, “texas rig”, “Rat-L-Trap”, “Gulp” and “fishing trip”.  As you can see it is even more important to make sure that your content is even more remarkable.

Never Underestimate Remarkable Content

SEO strategy has always denoted that great importance is placed on the page title and words encased in heading tags, especially the bold header at the top of the page (commonly referred to as the H1 tag). Words and phrases within the content that are bolded or italicized are also given a greater importance. But you should be aware of the use of LSI, as it can affect what keywords your website is ranked for.

By also making sure your page contains synonyms, the search engine recognizes that your page is actually about the subject title and will place greater importance on the page. You may well already use good keyword techniques and add a few secondary keywords into your content, but the rest of the content should also be littered with synonyms to convince search engines the value of your content.  The side effect of all of this is the remarkable content people love about your website.

A Response to Keyword-Stuffing

Latent Semantic Indexing came as a direct reaction to people trying to cheat search engines by cramming Meta keyword tags full of hundreds of keywords, Meta description full of more keywords, and page content full of nothing more than random keywords and no subject-related material or worthwhile content.

Search engines, like Google, appreciate good content, and encouraging people to add good content helps keep the high-ranked listings relevant. Although producing good content will not guarantee you first page rankings, it could improve your quality score.

How to Befriend LSI

Latent Semantic Indexing is not rocket science, it is simple common sense. Here are some simple guidelines:

1. If your page title is Learn to Play Tennis, make sure your article is about tennis.
2. Do not overuse your keywords in the content. It could look like keyword stuffing and the search engines may red flag you.
3. Never use Article Spinning Software – it spits out unreadable garble.
4. If you outsource your content, choose a quality source.
5. Check Google Webmaster Tools and see what keywords your pages are ranking for.

Latent Semantic Indexing is not a trick. You should bear it in mind when adding content to a web page, but do not get paranoid about it. The chances are if you provide quality, relevant content you will never have to worry about falling foul of and LSI checks.

Our Po!nt: I thinx we complain to much!

1. Why and How To Develop Great Ideas – If you are creative, like us, ideas are constantly flying around. Often times to the distraction of the focus of the business. Constantly chasing a moving target puts you in a tail spin quickly. Next time you get what you think may be the next best idea download the attached work sheet in this blog post to make sure.

2. 5 Lead Generation Tools: Just in Time for 2011 Planning – Most companies don’t even have a lead generation plan to keep the flow of opportunities flowing. Here is a great starting point.

3. Consumers Focus on Savings, Not Sprees – Here is some information that if you are selling consumer products you need to take note of. The theory of pent up demand may really not be true.

4. Facebook Marketing: There’s More to it Than Just Your Fan Count – Facebook now taking over the #1 activity on the Internet, beating out pornography, as a business owner you need to take a hard look at it if you don’t already have a Facebook page.

5. 5 Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch – These are the sort of things that can put your next website redesign over the top!!

Our Po!nt: Enjoy! We welcome any additions you may of found this week as well.

Our Po!nt: Wow! Who would of thought something that is now the #1 activity on the Internet would make us break out in song and dance. Enjoy!!

1. The 4 Hottest Social Media Marketing Trends Explained – If nothing else you need to be aware of the sort of trends that are starting to show traction in the online market place.

2. Aviary Screen Capture – The best screen capture tool in the world! Ever wanted to take a screen shot of part of a web page, the entire screen, or even the entire web page below the fold? You can now! This FireFox browser plug in is amazing! Thanks to Evan on our team for sharing this real treasure.

3. Checklist: How to start a business Blog! – The fact is that web sites with a blog received 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than those that didn’t have a blog. Does it make sense to start a blog for your website? You bet! Here is a great starting point.

4. 5 Tips For Email Delivery – These are the basics in making sure your email marketing campaigns get delivered.

5. 4 Ways News Releases Boost SEO – We have been preaching for years about the benefits of using News Releases to boost not only your exposure, but your SEO rankings as well. Here are four simple ways to do that right now! Really, I mean now.

Our Po!nt: Enjoy! We welcome any additions you may of found this week as well.

Our Po!nt: You just never know where you will get schooled about marketing. Keep your eyes and ears open!

It is inevitable that one day you will be faced with the dilemma of either continuing to revive and patch your site, or a complete re-design. One key factor to keep in mind while pondering this situation is that while the coding and design behind your site may be depreciated; you are not necessarily starting over from scratch.

As web developers we have a large step forward when faced with an existing site as opposed to a new startup concept. Here are just a few examples of valuable items that can be salvaged even when the code cannot:

· We can evaluate the performance and learn what has been working and what has not.

· The information architecture which is the storyline behind the website can be used to influence the new site.

· Content such as propaganda about the company and product descriptions have already been developed.

· A lot of marketing campaigns and search engine optimization will continue on into the new site.

· Client information such as names, emails, and phone numbers.

· Business processes, workflows, and algorithms that define your company.

· Color schemes, logos, and design influences.

The examples listed above are a very large portion of the web development process. Another added benefit is actually what you are leaving behind:

· Potential security flaws that have been addressed in updated versions or entirely new software.

· The inability to integrate advances in technology because the existing infrastructure will not handle it.

· Unreliable operation of the site and unpredictable events that can arise after a lot of maintenance and “hot-fixes”.

· Increased costs to maintain, upgrade, and support legacy technology.

A complete redesign of a website should not be viewed as loosing what you have already paid for, but as an opportunity to refine and improve upon your technique.