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An SEO Case Study – Family Care Center

Posted by Eric on April 22, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Search Engine Optimization in Fort Wayne

The topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) is one of huge interest. In short, it is the process of getting a web site to rank higher in search engine results. Particularly, it is focused on getting a particular site to appear high in google.

Here at EH Design & Consulting, we’ve been working with many companies on the process of SEO. And, I thought it would be interesting to give a case study of sorts – AN IN PROGRESS story.

Just recently, we started working with the Family Care Center. The Family Care Center is a Christian Counseling organization located on the North East side of Fort Wayne. The Executive Director of the center, Denny Howard, contacted us at EH Design & Consulting, hoping to get his web site to appear higher in google search results.

So, we began the process of working with him. Here are some of the steps we followed and some of the preliminary results:

STEP 1: Identify Keywords

Often times, this can be the most difficult part of the journey – deciding on exactly what you expect and want people to type in to find you.

For Family Care Center, we came up with the following terms:

Christian Counseling Fort Wayne
Marriage Counseling Fort Wayne
Christian Counselor Fort Wayne
Marriage Counselor Fort Wayne

Originally, the client had include the word “OF’ and “IN” – i.e Christian Counseling IN fort Wayne / Christian Counseling OF Fort Wayne.

But, we realized the these words are commonly called STOP WORDS – meaning that Google almost always ignores these words (there are a few exceptions).

After deciding on these terms, we did a little more research and learned the the terms “Christian Counseling Fort Wayne” and “Marriage Counseling Fort Wayne” we much more commonly used terms on Google. Together, there are over 300 searches a month for these two terms. While not a huge audience on a national scale, to be able to capture even a majority of these searches would be a huge win for Family Care Center.

STEP 2: Benchmark Current Rankings

After having identified some of the critical keywords for Family Care Center, our next step was to evaluate their current search engine rankings. Typically, we try to create benchmarks on three major search engines:

Google – with approximately 85% of the search engine market
Bing – with approximately 4% of the search engine market
Yahoo – with approximately 7% of the search engine market

We created some benchmarks for Family Care Center. In this particular it wasn’t difficult. Family Care Center did not appear in the top 10 pages on any of the three search engines.

So, our benchmarks were that Family Care Center’s site was non-existant on the search engines. Nowhere to go but up, right?

STEP 3: On Page Changes

Now that e have keywords addressed and have benchmarked our current standings, it is time to make some changes. The first step in this case was to begin with “on page” changes.

This involves updating things such at the TITLE tag (what appears in the blue bar for Internet Explorer), META tags, H1 tags, etc.

These are changes you can see. Changes to content.

So, for Family Care Center – we updated all the title to be keyword rich titles – unique titles that included all their keywords.

In addition, we went through each page and added keyword rich H1 tags, Meta tags (stuff you don’t see and not terribly important – but still worth the time).

Also, we went through images and checked things such as ALT tags and TITLE tags to make sure they were keyword rich as well.

STEP 4: Create Links

After making updates to on page items, the next phase of Search Engine Optimization involves creating links to the Family Care’s web site. Google sees every incoming link as a “vote” from that website that Family Care’s site is “important”. The important you are, the higher you appear.

For Family Care Center, we submitted them to numerous directories, created links on our own site, added links on facebook, google local, and other places. This phase is often (and in this case is) an ongoing phase. New links are created on a regular basis.

STEP 5: Wait 20-30 Days and Evaluate

Once on page factors are updated and links have been created, it’s now time to wait for Google (and others) to re-index and then evaluate.

In Family Care’s case, we waited about 20 days and then did a new evaluation (just a week ago).

The new results were MUCH more impressive:

Google – bottom of page 1 (Number 10)
Bing – top of page 1 (Number 3)
Yahoo – top of page 1 (Number 1)

Not a bad result

STEP 6: Repeat

The sixth and final step is to repeat. We do further on page updates (tweak our titles, update images, rename directories to be more SEO friendly), create more incoming links, etc.

After all this SEO, the real question becomes – can we measure the payoff? DO we have new leads, new contacts, new appointments, etc.?

Interested, want to know more? CONTACT US at EH Design & Consulting to learn more.

3-2-1 BACKUP!

Posted by Eric on April 2, 2010 | No Comments »

While not a very exciting topic, lately, I’ve been thinking about the importance of backing up our data.

Why, you ask? Well, we had a power outage at my house while our family PC was being used. Apparently, the power outage happened as the hard disk was in use and the result was that some of the files on the hard disk became corrupted.

Luckily, I had a backup and could restore the files. But, that made me think more about the importance of backing up our data.

Now, most of you know that I’m not a hardware guy. I don’t spend my time working on computer hardware. I spend my time designing web-sites and writing code for web-sites.

But, this is just too important not to take a few minutes to mention it here.

For the last year or so, I’ve been employing a backup strategy I learned from others called 3-2-1 BACKUP!

Here’s what each part means:

Have three copies of EVERY important file (the original counts as one – so you need TWO more)
Have copies on TWO DIFFERENT mediums – so if you have files on a hard drive, that counts as one. Then you need files saved on something else – perhaps a DVD or CD
Have one copy off-site – this way, if you have a physical disaster (fire, flood, etc.) you have a copy of important files available.

Before I explain each one in more detail, let me add in here a note about the importance of backing up our on-line life as well. I wrote a post a while ago talking about what I do to backup things like flickr, facebook, google docs, etc. Read the post here.

OK, here’s a brief run down on each step:

HAVE THREE COPIES OF EVERY IMPORTANT FILE

We can count the original file as copy number one. But, if we want to be safe, you need to more copies. Let’s assume that you back up your computer to an external hard drive (as I do). This now counts as copy number two. But, it only counts as copy number two if you DO NOT delete the original. If you delete the original, the “backup” now becomes copy number 1. You need three copies of every file. So you have the files on your hard drive (number 1) and copies on an external hard drive (number 2). Now, you need to figure out where you will store copy number 3 (keep reading).

HAVE TWO DIFFERENT MEDIUMS

This means you store your backups on two different things. You backup up to a hard drive (medium #1) and to a DVD (medium #2). This is important because hard drives can and do fail. So do CD’s and DVD’s. By having two different mediums you drastically lessen the risk of any one medium failing.

HAVE ONE COPY OFF SITE

In my opinion this is one of the most overlooked parts of backup. There’s a sad, but instructive story about the great movie director Francis Ford Coppola losing years and years of photos and scripts and notes when thieves stole his computer and his backup drive (read the story here). If he had backed up his data off site, he still would have lost his computer and his backup drive. But, he would have been able to restore his data from the off site location.

For me, I use a service called carbonite (carbonite.com). For around $60.00 per year, I can backup an unlimited amount of data off site. It’s a great service and is incredibly simple to set up. There’s many other services similar to carbonite. But, I haven’t used them.

So, there you have it. 3-2-1 Backup. Maybe someone reading will be saved a ton of trouble by implementing a few ideas here….

Using Rss Feeds To Find New Leads!

Posted by Eric on March 13, 2010 | No Comments »

If you spend any time listening to all the newest and latest buzz words on the internet, then you’ve probably heard the term RSS. It started cropping up a lot more regularly a few years ago and made a lot of noise. But, as with many things, interest in RSS has sort of died down. You just don’t hear about it much anymore. As a matter of fact, most people don’t really know what it is.

But, I’m convinced that the proper use of RSS feeds can be a great way to find new business leads! Let me explain.

First of all, let’s explain just what RSS is and the problem that it solves.

Suppose I have interest in several different topics – such as Web Design, E-Commerce, and Social Networking. And, I want to know all the latest news on these topics. How would I go about getting this information? Well, one answer would be to repeatedly visit various web sites that have news and information about these topics – checking if anything new has been posted. But, the problem is that this can get very, very tedious and very time consuming. The second option is to hope that these websites have a NOTIFY ME of updates option – meaning I would get an e-mail whenever something new has been posted. Now this might sound like a good idea, but the problem here is that most of us are regularly bombarded with e-mail. And, the thought of getting new e-mails every time a change has happened on all the web sites is not a good thought.

The solution? Use RSS Feeds. RSS Feed look a lot like your inbox – but they are separate. And, they are a GREAT way to know when you have a new item.

Here a snapshot of my current RSS Feeds:

As you can see, I have 6 current feeds I am monitoring. And, whenever a new item is added, I see that number – the same way I see an unread message. It’s an awesome way to keep on track of things.

For those of you using MS Outlook, here a screen shot of what RSS Feeds look like in Outlook.

For me, I use RSS Feeds to stay on top of many different issues. But, there are two core types of RSS Feeds I find myself using all the time:

1. TWITTER SEARCH

I always have at least one twitter search RSS feed being monitored. For me, I go to search.twitter.com and search for something of interest – such as Web Design – then limit it to within 50 or 100 miles of my locations. Then hit submit. Twitter will deliver a result page for me of everyone who has mentioned “Web Design” in a tweet that is within a 50 or 100 mile radius of me. This is obviously extremely useful. But, what is even more useful is to save this search as an RSS Feed. This way, any time a new tweet appears in my area, mentioning my key term, it will show up in my RSS Feed, just as a new message would show up in my inbox. Within minutes, I’ll know that someone in the area talked about my keyword – and, now I can join in the conversation.

2. GOOGLE ALERTS

Google Alerts are an amazing way to stay on top of terms that are of interest to you. You simply visit google.com/alerts and set up a google alert.

For example, you can set up an alert so that you will be notified every tim eGoogle finds a new page about “web design”. Now instead of being sent an e-mail (which just clutters up my inbox), I choose to save the alert as an RSS Feed – essentially creating a new inbox ONLY for these google alert items.

So, my RSS Feed for “Fort Wayne Web Design” looks something like this:

There’s a LOT of other creative ways to make RSS Feeds work for you. Have questions? Comments? Thoughts? Leave a comment or contact us today!

Taking Control of Your Own Personal Brand, step 1

Posted by Eric on January 28, 2010 | No Comments »

In our increasingly complex and fast-paced world, creating your own “personal’ or “corporate” brand has become more and more critical. According to an article by Fast Company, taking control of your own personal brand is a critical priority:

It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

– The Brand Called You, Fast Company

So, understanding that both personal and corporate branding are critical tasks for all of us, how do we go about creating and maintaining a brand?

In this post, I want to suggest just one simple step, a first step we can all do to start taking control of our personal or corporate brands.

That task is simply to take control of your name. Whether it is your own personal name or your corporate name – maintaining control over your name is critical. I want to suggest two simple task you can do to help control your own name:

1. Register your domain name – with every popular ending

Suppose your name is John Smith. I would suggest immediately going to a domain name registrar (I use 000domains.com) and registering your name with as many possible endings as you can. So, for our example, I would immediately purchase johnsmith.com, johnsmith,net, johnsmith.org, johnsmith.tv, johnsmith.me, johnsmith.mobi, johnsmith.biz.

While the domain names aren’t free (they run between $15 and $30 per year), it’s a lot cheaper to buy them ALL now than to try and buy them later from a reseller, or, worse yet, to try and repair the damage when someone buys the same name as you with a different ending and puts up an offensive web-site.

So, take the time and buy ALL your names now – by the way – I own designedbyeh.com, designedbyeh.net, designedbyeh.org, designedbyeh.biz, designedbyeh.tv, and designedbyeh.mobi. Right now, all these domains simply re-direct to the same web-site: www.designedbyeh.com.

2. Register your name on EVERY social networking site you can

Whether you use them or not, you should register your name on as many social networking sites as you can. Now, before you start to freak out and think – “I don’t use these social sites – I don’t even know what they are.” That’s not the point… YET. The point here is to simply secure your name in as many places as you possibly can. And, it’s not as hard as you might think.

I suggest two services to help you with this:

NameChk – www.namechk.comThis site is simple to use. Simply enter your desired name (username) into the text box at the top of the page and click on the “CHK” button. The site will automatically check if this name is available on 145 social sites and let you know the results.
For example, here’s a screenshot of the results when I did a Name Check for “ehdesign”:

The red sites are sites where I have already registered “ehdesign”, while the green sites are sites where it is still available. As you can see from the screenshot, I have already registered the name on many of the sites. A few are typically reported incorrect (about 6 were on this example). But, a service like this provides a GREAT starting place. Just reserving your name, so that no one else does, is a GREAT way to be ready for personal or corporate branding.
KnowEm – www.knowem.com
KnowEm can be a lot more advanced – it will look through more sites – grouped by cateogries such as entertainment, business, blogging, etc. – AND even register your name for you (although you have to pay for this service – usually around $100).

So, are you in control of your own personal or corporate brand? If not, maybe these two step are two easy steps to get you started. While there’s a LOT more you could do with your own personal brand – including adding real content to all the site you registered in step 2 above – these two steps are a great starting point.

Ready to go deeper? Want to know more? Want to find out other ways EH Design & Consulting can help you? Contact us today for more inforamtion!

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