VTWebProperties

One of the students in the last SEO course I was teaching at the Randolph Technical Career Center was sharing with a friend of hers some of what she was learning in my course and that fortuitous moment led to my meeting with Bruce McCarty. When I had my initial conversation with Coach Bruce, I was pretty impressed with his business model and also pretty quickly tuned into the biggest opportunity he had available to him and the biggest problems his website faced.

Bruce runs fund raisers – the kind where kids come home from school with catalogs of products to sell to their family and neighbors to raise money for their class, cheer leading squad, marching band or sports team. He has a website and was spending good money on AdWords advertising without the conversions that a well-targeted site would get. With this in mind we worked together to develop a plan to change things.

One of the primary fund raiser activities Bruce provides is pizza fundraising and it became apparent to us both that since he wanted to place special  focus on this singular fund raising activity, he ought to better position his web presence with a site that is dedicated to the subject matter. After selecting a keyword-rich domain name (PizzaKitFundraising.com) and discussing in detail the goals of the site, we set about to develop his new strategy.

The strategy includes:

• Creating landing pages for PPC ads which are highly targeted to the audiences most often looking for fund raising opportunities.
• Creating a blog where Bruce and his staff can share the success stories of others who have used his pizza kit fund raisers.
• Creating the site with best practices for search engine optimization so he stands the best chance at getting natural search engine rankings for the keywords he is now targeting with ads.
• Tying blog posts and site pages together so related articles show on the site pages.
• Using targeted images as well as text to visually connect with the target audience.

The primary goal of the new website is to deliver more forms being filled out – getting more people to contact Bruce to set up a fund raiser. I look forward to being able to come back here and report on the success of our strategy.

In the meantime Bruce and I have more websites to work on together…

No Comments | In: Website Launch | tags: PizzaKitFundraising.com, Website Launch. | #

I’m pleased as punch to say that VT Web Properties has been awarded an EcoSites award recognizing our carbon-neutral web development services.

If you are considering a new website, a website redesign or search engine optimization services I hope you’ll consider using our carbon-free web design services. The impact your website has on the environment is real. Everything from the design to deployment of your website has a carbon footprint. Working together with VT Web Properties assures that you can make splash online and a dent in your impact on the environment.

No Comments | In: Green Business | tags: carbon neutral, EcoAward. | #

There is a tendency when talking about social media (SM) to jump to thinking right away of the big two: Facebook and Twitter. But the landscape of social media is much bigger than that. There are numerous categories of social media that any website marketer should consider when deciding how to market their site – even if that website marketer is one person with a small business website.

Social Networks

The first batch of social media sites are the  social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. These are the three big guns in the genre and each has a distinct demographic that a savvy web marketer should be aware of. Social networks are sites where people network directly together. I know you, you know me, and we make a connection through the site, thereby allowing one another to read each others updates and share links, photos, videos and such.

LinkedIn is the place to connect with educated,  more affluent  decision makers and business owners – particularly if you are looking to make human resource connections. LinkedIn is not the place to build a fan base, but it is a good place to build a name for yourself among peers by utilizing Groups and giving good feedback and comments. Brand building is not the strong suit of LinkedIn unless you yourself are the brand.

Faecbook probably has more ink and pixels devoted to itself than any of the social media platforms except maybe Twitter (the darling of bloggers and press). Facebook provides enormous potential to the web marketer on several fronts. Although it has a strong history of youth demographics, the 35-54 and 55 + age categories are experiencing explosive growth with a doubling to tripling of members in these age brackets every six months. With targeted ad delivery on Facebook it is now perhaps the best SM for a campaign geared toward any specific age, gender or geography. Facebook Fan Pages can give your local business a chance to connect with natural social networks from the customers coming through your doors, and perhaps entice new ones to join as well. For the tech types the applications API and Facebook Connect provide some very rich opportunities to tie in to the platform directly.

For many folks MySpace is the “has been” player in SM, plagued by the sense that the site is a throwback to poorly designed websites of the early years of the web (think flashing hot pink banners and neon green backgrounds) and it is haunted by teenagers with very little content of value for most self-respecting adults. From a web marketing point of view there is still ample opportunity to reach a young targeted audience if you can stomach the site  itself.

Social News Sites

The second place marketers should consider when devising an online web marketing strategy is social news platforms like Digg, Reddit and Newsvine.  These sites act more or less in the same way: Users of the site submit content to categories. This content consists of a link to an outside source (think: the site/page you are marketing) along with a brief description of the link and files it in a category. Other users of the service vote on the content and as more votes are gathered the item can rise to the top of the heap, bringing in HUGE amounts of traffic if the article makes it to the home page.

The impact of a good showing on social news sites is not typically long-lived, but rather immense and short-lived. Many sites find themselves unprepared for the surge of traffic a good rank on Digg can bring, oftentimes bringing web servers to their knees. People are not stupid, so if you decide to seed social news sites with links to your own content know others may call you out for it. Being a good net citizen on social news sites means sharing links and stories that are of interest even when they are not promoting your brand, website or position.

Spend time at each news platform before deciding which seems a natural fit for you – they differ enough to make it well worth your while.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is the sharing of links to pages on the internet you find interesting, funny or important in some way. The two biggest platforms for social bookmarking include Delicious and StumbleUpon.  They act in similar ways by allowing members to bookmark pages and share those bookmarks both with friends on the networks and with larger audiences interested in the category of content being bookmarked. Delicious promotes bookmarks much like the social news sites, where popularity can promote a bookmark and bring substantial traffic. Delicious uses a free-form tagging method of classifying content while StumbleUpon categorizes interests with fixed  lists. Social bookmarking sites are a useful place to add your site pages so long as the content you offer is actually valuable in one way or another.

Social Wikis

Wikis are collaborative authoring platforms which allow community members to add or edit information on a particular subject. Wikipedia is the most well-know wiki and serves as prime example of the power of community created content. Wikipedia regularly shows up at or near the very top of search engine results for a vast array of searches due to the relevancy of the articles being offered by its’ members. From a website marketing perspective it is very difficult to gain links in Wikipedia. Most marketers avoid trying to build links in Wikipedia because those links are often removed by editors as being considered Spam. Unless you have a very authoritative site on a subject matter it is unlikely you will be linked to from Wikipedia.

If you happen to offer a lot of How-to content another social wiki site to consider is Wikihow, which is a good place to find and fill a niche subject with quality content and if appropriate link back to your site.

Social Q&A

Have a question? Someone, somewhere surely has an answer. Askiville and Yahoo! Answers are two examples of the social Q&A sites that fill the job description of people providing direct answers to direct questions. The marketing potential for these sites is based on giving good, informative and timely answers to questions being asked about subject matters you have an expertise in. Within the body of answers it is acceptable practice to provide links for finding more information.

Social Microblogging

The darling of the web these days is Twitter. Although it can take some getting used to, Twitter is a very good platform for connecting with people interested in what you have to say. The difficulty is in getting it said in 140 characters or less. Because of the nature of short statements, Twitter lends itself nicely to being a platform for building links to relevant content. If, for example, you have a keen interest in the State of Vermont then it makes sense to use your Twitter account to follow other people who talk about issues in Vermont or are from Vermont. Twitter is also a popular platform because they offer an API which allows developers to tie into the site and share Twitter feeds on their own sites. Building a following on Twitter is no easy business, but for those who manage it well the rewards can be a steady influx of traffic to sites you link to and a loyal following of people who want to follow you.

Conclusion

If you are serious about marketing your website then you owe it to yourself to investigate the many social avenues that are open to you. Social media has changed the game when it comes to who controls the message. No longer is a marketing message sent from a central location to be absorbed by the target audience, but rather the message is controlled by the audience. It is not worth pursuing a social media campaign if you are unable to let go of the notion that you will have control over what is said about your business. Instead, it is far more important to use the SM platforms to engage with, connect to and listen to your audience. Provide links to your valuable content, certainly, but know that a successful social media campaign is one that provides a conversation more than a statement.

No Comments | In: Social Media | tags: Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking, Social Media, StumbleUpon, Twitter. | #

Sometimes what a client wants is above and beyond the typical, and sometimes that is because the client has a business that is itself above and beyond the ordinary. This is the case with studio jeweler Dawn Russell who creates marvelous pieces of art inspired by nature.

Dawn came to VT Web Properties with a need to get her site built and live in a real hurry. Her online portfolio is an extremely important part of her image as she presents her work to museums, art galleries and shows around the country by pointing them to her website. When she approached VT Web Properties she was already beyond the deadline she had set for her site and frustrated by the lack of progress her previous web developer had made.

Taking the intricate design, VT Web Properties forged ahead with a plan to nail down the portfolio first so her most critical business need was met. After rebuilding  the database and administrative functions on the site, we then progressed on each page to complete the project as quickly as possible.

Among the technical challenges presented by the design were custom scrollbars, complex layouts and the need to maintain Analytics on the AJAX-heavy portfolio. We worked together to create a reflection of the  inspirations in nature that drive her fabulous  jewelry designs and came away with some inspirations of our own.

No Comments | In: Web Design, Website Launch | tags: Dawn Russell, jewelry, Website Launch. | #

If you are doing business in Vermont in a sustainable way, we want to know about you!

VT Web Properties has started a Fan Page on Facebook. Sign up as a fan of VT Web Properties and tell us about your business in Vermont and we will gladly add you to our list of green businesses in Vermont!

Post the details of your business on our Fan Page and we will add them to our Vermont Green Business Directory.

It’s very simple – add yours today!

No Comments | In: Green Business | tags: Facebook Fan Page, Green Business, Vermont. | #

Small Towns, Small Businesses

I live in a small town in Vermont. There are a few restaurants, a pharmacy, a handful of gas stations, a great bookstore and the usual assortment of small businesses you might expect in a place boasting a population of about 5,000. I like the pace of life here and I like supporting the small, independently owned brick and mortar businesses that my community depends on  – whether for books, a good cup of coffee or for that just-right gift from the corner boutique. I want my neighbors businesses to succeed and I want my community to thrive.

I am currently teaching a course on website marketing at the local tech center and I have a handful of students. One of those students has a well-established Vermont country store and restaurant in a nearby town (even smaller than mine).  She just recently started her website and is looking to connect with and grow her base of customers beyond the locals who know and love her establishment. Her situation has gotten me thinking a lot about what kind of online strategy makes sense for these small, local businesses.

A Three Part Strategy For Small Business

1. A Simple Business Card Website
2. A Presence on Twitter
3. A Facebook Fan Page
   

A Simple Business Card Website

My local boutique shop is not likely to sell their funky jewelry, unique clothing or scented candles online. They sell directly to their customers in an old-fashioned face-to-face and very human capacity. They don’t have a website. This in itself isn’t the end of the world, but if it’s getting to be near 5PM and I realize I need to pick up a gift I have to make a determined effort to find their phone number and call them to see if they are open late enough for me to drop in. As I write this post it is too late for me to actually check their hours by phone. Since they have no website I can’t actually find out the answer to this question until sometime tomorrow. If I were actually in need of knowing this information I might move onto a plan B, giving my business to someone else.

A very simple business card microsite with basic information such as hours of operation and contact information would suffice in situations like these. Coupling these business card sites with a local search placement service makes sense.

A Presence on Twitter

I admit that Twitter isn’t for everybody. It’s an odd platform to get used to, and many folks have a hard time conceiving of how they could use it to further their small business. Twitter is really more about personalities than marketing messages. The million people who follow David Pogue are following him - they are not following the New York Times (although I imagine many follow both). The point here is that as a small business owner who works in a community where you recognize the faces coming through your door and you know the names of many of them (if not all of them), Twitter provides a very simple mechanism to let them get to know you better. Twitter is about allowing your customers a glimpse into who you are as a person – to allow them a chance to broaden the sense of connection beyond a register receipt.

Some of the people I deal with remark that they have no clue what they would Tweet about. I think it just takes some practice. The folks who choose to follow you may hope to find simple messages about your business (announcing sales, etc.), but just remarking on simple things (”wow – this new CD by so-and-so we’re playing in the store is fabulous!”) is enough.

A Facebook Fan Page

The third part of the web strategy for small business involves Facebook. Fan pages on Facebook  have evolved over the last couple years to become a  really valuable way of connecting with your community. Fan pages are simple to set up and provide a place to post stories, links, announcements, videos and everything else you can think of relating to your business.

The real value, however, comes from that word “relating”. Because people can add themselves as Fans of your business, this becomes known to members of their social network, encouraging others to check you out. Facebook Fan pages give your business a unique opportunity to develop a voice, encourage feedback and build two-way relationships with your customers.

Small Businesses, Big Impacts

I like my small town. I like the small businesses that line the downtown and I like that I recognize so many of the faces I see – it has a big impact on my sense of well-being and my sense of belonging to a community. If you happen to run one of these small establishments know that there are many, many folks out there who would welcome having you join the social web. You might just discover that this simple three-step strategy can have a real impact on your business.

No Comments | In: Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media | tags: Facebook, local search, microsite, Small Business, Social Media, Twitter. | #

If you are looking to gain traction with search engines and wanting also to get people interested in your website topic visiting your site, it is imperative that you get inbound links to your website pages. This seems obvious, yet many website owners are unaware of exactly how important gaining links really is. Moreover, there are an even greater number of website owners who have no understanding of how to do this or why it is important to do it correctly.

Before we can start to think about getting that lovely link juice flowing to your website, you need to stand back for a moment and give your website an honest evaluation about the content you are offering. Is it original? Is it timely and informative? Is it easy to navigate to or does it take ten clicks to reach? Would you send a link to friend to check out the page if it were not your own website? Honest answers to these questions can help you refine existing content or add new content to your site.

There are two basic types of inbound links – natural and not-so-natural. Natural links are the ones that appear when somebody happens across your page and wants to share it with the world because they find the information useful in some way. Not-so-natural links are the ones that are either bought or solicited in some manner. Both are valid, but eventually your goal should be to have so much valuable content that natural links start to spring up around the web. These links will be rewarded by search engines with greater rankings for keywords on your pages.

Why do links matter? Because without them your website will be a very lonely place. Links tell search engines that others value your content. Links are the currency of the online world, the more links you have the more likely you are to have traffic and better serach results. Links bring home the bacon.

So how do you go about getting links? It starts with  understanding your own niche. Let’s say you have a business that sells specialty wine. You might consider creating content that discusses the origins of the grapes or the process used to make the wines. You might consider content that contains recipes for meals designed to compliment the wine or a page describing the different glasses used to drink wine from. You might create fan pages on Facebook or scan and create a collection of wine labels which could be of interest to graphic designers. Content can and should be greater than the name of the wine, the cost and a shopping cart – it should engage readers who are interested in specialty wine as a subject matter in order to gain inbound links to the content.

Once you have created a broad array of content about your subject then it becomes time to look for opportunities to ask for links. Many people maintain directories and resources which aim to be complete collections of sites about a particular subject. Start by looking for these resources and asking for links to your core content. Surely there are numerous directories of sites and blogs about wine.

Then begin to look a little further out – what goe sgood with wine? Cheese! So … start looking for opportunities to get links from resources on cheese making to a review on a wine matched perfectly. Use the page you have created about the art of pouring wine as an opportunity to get links from resources on etiquitte.

As you can see, it becomes possible to start building a community of related subjects linking to your content when you start looking beyond the immediate subject and start thinking about relationships your subject has to others.

Another method for gaining links is to become a contributor to other websites via comments, guest posts or reprint article distribution.  Look for a roundup of some good resources for this in a future post.

Getting links boils down to creating good content,  targeting  sites such as directories,  blogs and social media sites and asking them to link to your site. Be sure that when you ask, you have a resource worthy of linking to.

No Comments | In: Search Engine Optimization, Website Traffic | tags: Link Building, SEO. | #

Our method for web design starts with obtaining a clear understanding of the objectives of the website and how they relate to mission of your business or organization. This is not as clear-cut as it may at first seem, because often in the process of creating the specifications for the job early assumptions about the project turn out to be false and information that impacts design is often missing. We avoid these situations by assuming nothing about what you want from your website beyond best practices for its’ construction, usability and search engine optimization.

We start with defining what would make your project a success in your eyes. How will you measure the success of your website? Will it be measured in online sales, inbound email, an increase in web traffic, completed contact forms, user-generated content or something else entirely? When we have an understanding of your concept of success we have a guiding principle for the design process. Many of our clients define success on more than one level, and that’s fine. Getting at what is vital for your success should be the overarching goal as we move forward on your design.

We follow our understanding of your success with an in-depth look at your business process. Once we know what it is you do we now have a place from which to understand how your new (or newly redesigned) website should fit within your current business model and practices.

We look at your business model in order to develop our database structures. By getting to know you and your business we can better design our data structures to more closely represent the real-life details and relationships in your business. For example, if you sell widgets we will want to know all we can about the widgets you sell and what pieces of information are important to keep in data and to present on your site.

Once we have the database design (schema) created we can finally then look at what most people consider “design” – the look and feel, colors and fonts, layouts and theme of your new site. We’ll discuss this more in another blog post later.

Knowing you is the first step in our design process. If you want a web developer to get to know you, request a quote.

No Comments | In: Web Design | tags: database, design, success, website design, website redesign. | #

Many businesses have a sphere of influence that is based heavily on their geography. Consider your local restaurant, movie theatre or bookstore. How do these businesses use their online properties to grow business? The answer lies in local search. They are for the most part unlikely to compete with businesses even 50 miles away, while they stand to gain from having an online presence targeted at informing and attracting local customers and clients.

According to a 2007 Nielson survey 82% of respondents claim to use internet search engines for finding local business information. Allowing for multiple selections, half of respondents use online yellow pages (IYP) for the same purpose, while 65% use the printed phone books for the same purpose.

This means that on average a majority of people seeking information about local businesses first go to the web to find the information they seek. Yet it is the small businesses that least often have an internet presence. However, all is not lost for the small business without a website. Enter: Local Search results.

Taking my own hometown of Randolph, VT as an example, if you Google “cafe Randolph, VT” you will be presented with a handful of results including Google Local results presented as a map with markers:

The first result is a Dunkin Donuts (how that counts as a cafe is beyond me) while the other two represent businesses that do not have a website of their own. Nonetheless there exists an opportunity for these businesses to leverage Local Search and present information about their business to prospective customers.

By having a very simple website that includes hours of operation, directions, contact information and perhaps a paragraph or two about what the business offers, it is possible to capitalize on Local Search with a low barrier to entry. VT Web Properties offers the simple Business Card Websites for exactly this purpose.

For businesses which do have websites already Local Search is a great way to gain more exposure for your business.

So how does a business end up in these results and what about competitive geographies or categories of business? By including your business in as many IYP sites as possible and by working to gain inbound relevant links otherwise it is possible to move your site toward the top of Local Search results.

VT Web Properties maintains a list of forty five Local Search resources which we use to help position your business better. Of these a handful are paid-for-inclusion while the majority are free. To give your business a Local Search jumpstart visit our Local Search Services page and sign up to have us help get you in front of the 82% of folks looking for you online.

No Comments | In: Search Engine Optimization | tags: Internet Yellow Pages, local search, search services. | #

We’re pretty excited to be launching our new site which we believe better features some of the work we have done for our clients.  The process of redesigning our own website was much the same as the process we use for redesigning client websites as well:

1. Discover what information is vital to keep and create a plan to retain it.
2. Look at the site structure for opportunities to better express the vision of our client (in this case, ourselves).
3. Walk through every current page and determine if it serves its’ purpose well.
4. Create a  new design mock-up.
5. Code the new site.

Often times our redesign process aims to keep existing branding or theme rather than completely change what already exists. In the case of our website the redesign is evolutionary rather than than revolutionary. You can see the before and after images below where it is apparent we kept the general color scheme and navigation structure.

Website redesign is not rocket science, but it does require careful planning to make best use of the assets from the current site. Without this attention it is our experience that many developers and designers would rather simply start from scratch. Our method – our philosophy – is to avoid as much as possible recreating the wheel. It saves time and saves money to leverage what already exists as much as possible.

We’re glad you are here at our new site, and we look forward to working with you on your own redesign project!

No Comments | In: Web Design | tags: website redesign. | #