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.

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:

1. Have three copies of EVERY important file (the original counts as one – so you need TWO more)
2. 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
3. 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….

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!

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:

1. 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.

2. 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!

When people find out I’m “into” twitter, some common questions come up:

• Why would anyone care what I had for breakfast? – Assuming that the only thing posted on twitter is useless information
• Is there any real value in twitter?

For me and for my business, the answer is a resounding YES to the second question.  I believe that there is indeed real value in twitter.

Today, I wanted to share just two very simple uses for twitter that I think you and your business use.

1.  Use Twitter To Drive Traffic To Your Site

Here is a graph of some of the recent traffic to my blog (as recorded by the FREE stats program: Google Analytics):

Notice the ups and downs on the graph?  Of course, they are impossible to miss.  The obvious question, when looking at this graph is “What caused the spikes”?

The answer: TWITTER!

Each of the spikes in traffic represent a day (or some times a couple of days) where I sent out just one tweet about a new blog post I had.  As a result of the single tweet (and a few kind re-tweet), my traffic for that day made a significant increase.

That’s a GREAT use for twitter!

Of course, any business or person has to be careful about always being self-serving.  If all you ever do on twitter is send out tweets hoping to lure people back to your own web site, then people will stop listening (following you).  But, if you tweet other useful information AND you tweet links to your own site, then people will visit.  If the content is interesting – they will come back!

I would suggest that this use makes it absolutely essential that your business has a blog.  Your business blog needs to be updated regularly (I’m shooting for once a week on my own – a new goal).  And, your business blog needs to have interesting content.  If you have a blog, and if you post regularly, and if you post about interesting content… then sending out regular tweets that link back to your blog WILL increase your traffic (and have some good effect on your Search Engine placement as well).

This alone should make twitter worth looking into.

2.  Use Twitter to Find People Talking About Your Business In Your Area

Wether or not you are on twitter, others are.  And, they are talking about all kinds of things.  Chances are they are talking about your business.  Wouldn’t  it be nice if there was a simple way to know every time someone within a 50 mile radius (or whatever area you work in) was asking questions about your business?  You could jump in, offer answers, offer resources, even offer a sale! Wouldn’t that be a great tool?

Of course, the tool absolutely does exist and it is called… twitter.  It’s a simple little feature built into twitter called TWITTER SEARCH.  Visit search.twitter.com and click on the “ADVANCED SEARCH” link on the right side of the search box.

In the Advanced Search area you can do some amazing things!  The thing we are focused on right now is search by PLACES.

Let’s make up a company.  Suppose you own ANTIQUES R US, located in Atlanta, GA.  And, you would like more people to know about your business.  So, what do you do?  Well, one great option is to use the Advanced Twitter Search to look for anyone talking about Antiques within 50 miles of Atlanta, GA.  Here’s what the Advanced Search might look like:

You can see here that ANTIQUES R US is update to search twitter for the word “Antiques” within a 50 mile radius of Atlanta, GA.  What would ANTIQUES R US find?  A lot.  Below are just two tweets form the last couple of days that may have been interesting to ANTIQUES R US:

Here is some who had the day to herself and visited one of ANTIQUES R US competitors – the Lakewood Antiques Market.  What if ANTIQUES R US had responded to her and said something like: “Glad you loved Lakewood.  If you liked them, you might enjoy us as well – mention this tweet for 10% off”.  Who knows, maybe the person would have showed up

Here’s another:

This person is looking for an Antiques place to visit in the Savannah area.  What is ANTIQUES R US had responded with a couple of excellent restaurants (close to the store, of course) and a personal invitation to visit the store?

Again, the conversation is already happening.  I promise – people are really talking about your business.  The question is whether or not you are going to join the conversation!

Advanced Twitter Search – by location – my second favorite use for  twitter.

Want to know more?  Have your own favorite uses for twitter?  Leave a comment and share your thought.  Or, contact EH Design & Consulting today, and we can talk about all the ways  Social Media can help your business!

Well, I ‘ve had some decent success, but I’ve still been struggling – at least lately – with getting on the very top of Google.  It seems like the last 2 – 3 months, I have been hovering at the very last entry on page one or the very first on page two.

But just today something very strange happened.  My site jumped to 2 or 3 on the first page.  Not sure exactly what changed.  But, it’s a good thing.

Also, my listing on Google Business now appears in the top few (like top 4 or 5).

So, if the Google ranking holds, I’ve now got number 2 on Google and number 3 on Bing – weird – I just went to check Bing and I’m now at number three.  I used to be number 1 on Bing.   Once again – what happened????

Anyway, I’m happy and I’ll keep looking at it.

As anyone reading this blog would know, I’ve been really interested in gaining Google ranking for the terms Fort Wayne Web Design and Fort Wayne Website Design.  So far, I’ve had a decent amount of success.  If you go to Yahoo or MSN  (both BING.COM, now), I rank 1,2 or 3 (it depends – on what? who knows?).  But, on Google, I only rank 11 – that means I am number 1 ON PAGE 2. I’ve been moving up and down quite a bit on Google.  I’ve been as high as number 5 and now as low as number 11.

I have a bunch of thoughts about why I’ve moved down lately.  Mostly, I think it has to do with some settings in my robots.txt file.  I was trying to avoid the infamous duplicate content penalty – a tricky problem with WordPress.  But, I think it did more harm than good.

So, the question is, what does all of this have to do with Caffeine?  Well, recently Google has been publicly talking about a major update to their website ranking algorithm.  They are calling “caffeine”.

Here’s a few bullet point about what Caffeine means to all of us who care about Search Engine Optimization:

• SPEED – rumor has it that the new update will speed up the search process a ton – but, I’m not sure who really cares.  I don’t know that we all complain that it takes too long to get the results.
• RELEVANCY – this is where it starts to get interesting.  Google is trying to create more relevant results.  But, the million dollar question is HOW?  What is changing to make more relevancy?
• WEIGHTING – it appears that some different things are being weighted higher.  It seems like Domain Authority and Domain Name exact matches are both being weighted higher.  Certain tags – like facebook and others, are being weighted higher, etc.

Want to know more?  Here’s a few resources to get you started:

• http://mashable.com/2009/08/14/google-caffeine-video/
• http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-new-version/
• BEST OF ALL – side by side comparison of OLD GOOGLE and NEW GOOGLE – http://www.comparecaffeine.com/

The first link from Mashable has a video interview with Matt Cutts.  Here it is embedded for your viewing pleasure:

I’ve been trying to optimize for the terms “FORT WAYNE WEB DESIGN” – just in case you are interested.

Well, I just started listening to a talk Matt Cutts given at the WordPress WordCamp event in San Francisco.

Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s webspam team.  So, his thought about SEO mean a TON.

Well, he gave a 45 minutes talk about SEO and WordPress.  Since I am totally into the topic, I thought you might be as well.

Here’s the talk:

Here’s the brief (very brief) run-down:

Suppose you have an iPhone, and it gets lost or stolen.  Using Apple’s new feature, you can log into your mobileMe platform and find out EXACTLY where that iPhone is.  You can even remotely “wipe” all the data from the phone.

The feature also works with the iPod touch for those of us stuck with Verizon Cell Phones.

Here’s a couple of notes:

1. You must have a mobileMe subscription – which I think it totally worth it for the sync features alone
2. The feature won’t be available until the new iPhone 3.0 OS is realeased on June 17
3. Obviously, the iPod Touch can only transmit its location over open Wi-Fi – so it’s not really that useful

I’ve included two screenshots from my mobileMe account below:

Mobile Me - Lost my iPhone Menu Item

MobileMe Lost My iPhone page

One of the local companies that I have been working with quite a bit lately is ServeNation.  Located in Fort Wayne, IN, ServeNation works nationally with non-profits to create a win-win-win fund raising solution.  They set up custom gift card stores for non-profits.  ServeNation is able to purchase the gift cards at a discounted rate from the vendors and then sell them at face value.  The non-profit and ServeNation are then able to split the profit.

Here’s an example (all the numbers are just made up).  Suppose you as a cusotmer want to buy a $10 Starbucks card.  You could go to Starbucks.com and buy the card from them.  The card would cost you $10 and you would get $10 of value from it.

However, suppose you go to ServeNation instead.  The card would still cost you $10 and you would still get $10 of value from it.  But, ServeNation, may have been able to buy that card for $9.50 from Starbucks.  So, now ServeNation and the non-profit you choose get to split the difference!  You win – you get your card and the same value.  Your non-profit wins in that it raises funds without any work.  And, ServeNation wins by making a profit.  Everyone wins.

I think it’s a great plan and it has been my privelage to work along side of them.

Some of the updates we’ve been working on lately:

• Look and Feel update – we worked with a graphic designer to come up with an updated look – it’s not completely done, but it’s close
• Updates and enhancements to the back end admin section – all kinds of changes
• Fixes and better performance for the main e-commerce section

The site is www.servenation.com.  Check it out and let me know your thoughts.