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Get it in an instant!

Posted by Eric on September 10, 2010 | No Comments »

Maybe you’ve heard some of the buzz lately… Google has introduced a new feature – GOOGLE INSTANT. In case you haven’t seen it already, here’s the deal…

Here’s a normal Google search page:

fort wayne web deisgn Screen shot 2010 09 10 at 9.02.37 AM Get it in an instant!

Nothing special here, right? Well, that is until I start to type – then something really interesting happens. As soon as I type ONE LETTER, the page changes and I start to get search results. Google guesses what I am about to type in, and returns an ever changing search result with each and every letter typed.

For example, for me, I type in the word “fort”. Here’s what happened automatically:

fort wayne web deisgn Screen shot 2010 09 10 at 9.02.51 AM Get it in an instant!

Based upon my four keystrokes, Google guessed that I wanted information about Fort Wayne. I didn’t hit enter or return. The search results just appeared instantly (hence the clever name, huh?).

So, besides being cool and fun, what does this mean for you and I?

Search continues to get personal – increasingly more and more often there is no single Google result for a particular search. If I lived in Fort Worth, Texas, do you think Google would still suggest Fort Wayne, IN when I type the word Fort? Do you think it would show results for Fort Wayne? Of course not. It would show results for Fort Worth, Texas. Search results increasingly vary. They change based on your location, your history, your likes, your dislikes – all of which Google often knows about you.
Search Engine Optimization is changing – Typically Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about getting a particular site to appear high on Google for a particular search term. But, if everybody gets a different result on Google how can I possibly optimize? Increasingly this is the problem presented in SEO. While there are still many terms that don’t aren’t very dynamic (meaning they return the same results regardless), I believe that this will continue to change. Simply put there is no longer a Google first page result. When asked – “Does your site appear on page 1 of Google for term X”, the answer will be – “It depends” – it depends on where you live, what your history is, what you like and don’t like…
The Number of Search Terms will Decrease – While I’m not totally sure about this, I think that Google Instant will help push us all to the middle. When Google gives us results, I think we’ll start to suffice – thinking that the results we see are “GOOD ENOUGH”. We’ll click on something that comes up and hope for the best. Rather than crafting a very specific search term, we’ll start typing, see some general results and click – hoping for the best. Again, while I’m not sure about the result here, this could very easily mean that niche companies get pushed more and more to the sidelines while the bigger players simply grow bigger.
For example, if I type in the letters “ORG” I instantly get the results for organic gardening. But perhaps I was hoping to find “ORGANIC TOMATO FERTILIZER” – but, when Organic Gardening comes up, I think that it is close enough and I click. While I might find something of use, the problem is that the niche players can easily get squeezed out.

One last thing. Looking for some keyboard shortcuts for using Google Instant – Gina Tripani at Fast Company has a great Google Instant guide – http://www.fastcompany.com/1687662/google-instant-how-to-use

What do you think? Is Google Instant a big deal or just a shiny trinket? Leave a comment and let me know.

An SEO Case Study – Family Care Center

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

fort wayne web deisgn seo blocks 300x231 An SEO Case Study Family Care Center

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: