If you can create content once a week for your blog website it will pay off. The posts you make should answer people’s questions about your business. While hopefully you are an expert in your field how often do you share your knowledge? I would bet if you were trying to sell your goods you would certainly be sharing what you know but most people think they shouldn’t share the knowledge because then your competition will know all your secrets, guess what they know it or they wouldn’t be in the business. But who doesn’t know your business is your potential customer. If you were searching for a web designer and you looked at two websites, one with great slogan and marketing based site, then one who SHOWED you what they know who do you trust first?

You can do research on what people are asking Google and write a story on that. Feel free to load it with good keywords that you discovered in the keyword/phase. Of course I am not saying keyword stuff your story, but selective wording goes back to grade school and will help your story get found. Each page on your site could be the answer to a google search.

Remember to write for human’s first and search engines second but you can be “smart”. Look at this one sentence “We have been in business for 24 years.” if you rewrite it to “Schloss web design has been in the website design business for 24 years in Denver Colorado.”
In that one sentence we have added your company name, category for business and location. That is not keyword stuffing but writing well for a website.

1) Don’t have a splash page – besides being so 1995 it is terribly annoying. You will lose a ton of traffic; statistics show the average user gives you ten seconds before clicking to another site. Make me wait… Bye

2) Frames – sorry has your web designer ever read information on frames. Search engines cannot read them you are asking the search engine robots and spiders to go look for content to follow and much like those people on the splash page search engines leave. Just say no

3) Avoid duplicate content – the search engines are much like teachers in 2012 they can check if you have used the same content and it’s up to them if they include you or ban both your sites. Worth it? I think not…

4) Flash – have you not heard of mobile devices and the sheer number of them. We go back to attention span in number one. If people want a movie let them go to YouTube. Don’t kid yourself any message you put into a flash piece will be lost they simply won’t stay.

5) Sound/music – just because you have a favorite song doesn’t mean it belongs in your business message. We all have favorite songs to me it’s like discussing your political views I don’t think that belongs in business unless you are in politics.

Google place pages are like a shortcut to higher search engine rankings. If you are not optimizing the page with a 100% business profile, images, hours then you are not really committed to getting found. These are free and most often will be on top for a search result, isn’t that what you wanted?

Google places pages are generated when someone does a search for your business category including your town or city in the search. For example: web design Denver. These pages are quite different than a custom URL you may have for a Facebook page, they are built on the fly and made up and served as the user searches. To find where to admin your page you need to login to google and you can then go to http://places.google.com which is the homepage for google places, if you are logged in and have a “Google Place” page you can edit and make changes here.
If you are unsure if you have claimed your businesses google place page login, google your type of business in your town and try to find your business. Once found click onto the page and you should see a “owner verified” tag on the top right. If you haven’t owner verified and it shows not verified click through these steps on how to verify your google places page.

If you need your questions answered on google places try this URL http://google.com/support/places There is also a great YouTube channel with video based instructions at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZan96KHOM.

Many people want to know how to get google to take photos of your business, so going to http://maps.google.com/help/maps/businessphotos. I think you will find your answer in lesson 7 but note… When google uses a photo of your business it is as if they are walking out your door not looking at it. So I recommend that you use the upload photos feature on your places page and upload one that looks AT your business.

A google favorite place is a business that google selects as a favorite place. Google sent out a “favorite places decal” for your business door or window. The decal has a QR code on it and it is something to not lose or put in a drawer, it’s really hard to get a replacement decal.

According to Google – “The list was determined based on the popularity of a business’ Google Places listing, as determined by how many times Google users looked for more information about a business, requested driving directions to get there, and more. Google users “decided” based on their actions, and we sent the decals.”

How do you get to be a google favorite place? You cannot request to become a Favorite Place, over 100,000 businesses were identified as Favorite Places by google, representing less than 1% of the 28 million U.S. businesses. Google believes that the standards for selecting businesses are as selective as or more selective than other companies which have run similar initiatives.

The businesses that are chosen to be a favorite place in google are based on popularity of your places page and to be considered a winner because they are not that common. Early in the beginning of google places many businesses that got chosen got higher SEO results so now everyone searches for a way to get one. It reminds me quite a bit like getting into a highly sought after college.

Try setting your sights onto getting chosen as a google place favorite page because in doing everything right you are setting yourself for more business with or without the sticker. Just as with quality content on your website you are doing what will help your business.

If you are wondering how often they send these out Google states “We may decide to periodically send out more decals to businesses that meet our criteria. We have not determined specific dates for additional mailings.”

What Can You Do To Send People to Your Places Page?
If you want to be considered as a favorite place if and when Google does send out more decals then the secret is to make sure lots of people go to your places page, leave reviews and stay awhile. So why not create a QR code sign for your business counter that drive them to it, send out the link to your page in an email and ask people to give you a review. They can only not do it right, but it never hurts to try.

Google place pages are dynamic and not branded with the words “google places” but those that know how to optimize and find them are way ahead of their competition. The ways people can find a google place page for your business is linked through the google map feature since they bulls eye the map with these results. You know, you have done a search and seen those little red map markers labeled with letters starting with A, B, C. These pages can be accessed through a google search on a mobile phone or computer through google maps on PC or phone Through a QR code that points to a specific page

If you want people to access your google place page try using a QR code on your advertising to make it easy for them to leave reviews.

Rich snippets made their introduction in the beginning of 2009 and yet it is still new to many web designers. As business owners we have so much to learn to stay on top of new technology, marketing, social media and new code like HTML 5. But rich snippets also known as micro data, micro formats and RDFA are little bits of code you add to a website that flags certain fields to alert the search engines of key pieces of information. They help display information within the actual SERP or “Search Engine Results Page”.

Some of the most common fields to highlight are name, company location, address, phone, recipes, products, events and people’s profiles.

Once you take the initial step to insert this code around those fields you won’t have to do anything else to get those fields to be highlighted in the search results. As we all struggle to get our clients found we need to take advantage of every little plus we can and adding Rich Snippets is worth your time to learn it and implement it.

“Your web pages have an underlying meaning that people understand when they read the web pages. But search engines have a limited understanding of what is being discussed on those pages. By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages—tags that say, “Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video”—you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way. Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, that allows you to do this. – quoted Schema.org”

There are three formats to get these rich snippets to appear on your webpage they are HTML 5 microdata, mircoformats, and RDFa. HTML 5 is the preferred format going forward so my advice is to focus on learning the key pieces to those tags and sell them to your clients. You can review the guidelines on http://schema.org, on this site you will see a quote that says,

Search engines including Bing, google and yahoo rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

SAMPLE OF MICRODATA

HTML ON PAGE

<div>My name is Tracy Schloss but I usually get called webette.
Here is my website home page
<a href="http://www.schloss.com">www.schloss.com</a>
I live in Denver, CO and work as a Web Designer at Schloss Web Services.
</div>

HTML MARKED UP WITH MICRODATA CODING

<div itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Person">
  My name is <span itemprop="name">Tracy Schloss</span>
  but I usually get called <span itemprop="nickname">webette</span>.
Here is my website home page
  <a href="http://www.schloss.com" itemprop="url">www.schloss.com</a>
  I live in Denver, CO and work as a
  <span itemprop="title">Web Designer</span>
  at <span itemprop="affiliation">Schloss Web Services. </span>.
</div>

SAMPLE OF MARKED UP USING MICROFORMATS

HTML ON PAGE

<div>
   <img src="www.schloss.com/tracyschloss.jpg" />
   <strong>Tracy Schloss</strong>
   Web Designer at Schloss Web Services
   765 Blue St
   Denver, CO 12345
</div> 

HTML MARKED UP WITH THE HCARD (PERSON) MICROFORMAT

<div>
   <img src="www.schloss.com/tracyschloss.jpg" />
   <strong>Tracy Schloss</strong>
   <span>Web Designer</span> at <span>Schloss Web Services</span>
   <span>
      <span>765 Blue St</span>
      <span>Denver</span>, <span">CO</span">
      <spanv12345</span">
   </span">
</div">

SAMPLE OF RDFa

HTML ON PAGE WITH RDFa

<div">
My name is Tracy Schloss but people call me Webette. Here is my website home page <a href="http://www.schloss.com"">www.schloss.com</a">.
I live in Denver, CO and work as a Web Designer at Schloss Web Services.
</div">

HTML MARKED UP WITH RDFa

<div xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#" typeof="v:Person">
  My name is <span property="v:name"">Tracy Schloss</spanv,
  but people call me <span property="v:nickname"">Webette</span>.
  Here is my website home page
  <a href="http://www.schloss.com" rel="v:url"">www.schloss.com</a>.
  I live in Denver, CO and work as a
  <span property="v:title"">Web Designer</span">
  at <span property="v:affiliation"">Schloss Web Design</span>.
</div">

There are so many other fields that you can flag for your clients. Event flags, People flags, school, goverment, restaurants, retail, sports, local business data. Review the full list below to see how you can intergrate these into your clients website.

Full list of Rich Snippets

After you insert them test your code with the google Rich Snippet testing took.
Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool

Twitter is called a micro-blogging platform and with that they have a character limit of 140. If you write a blog post and want to share that link on Twitter chances are the URLs are too long. If you have been watching Twitter and following thought leaders that interest you the links they post to go to their stories are all very short so they can write a brief sentence telling you about the story. Another new business that Twitter has helped create is the URL shortening services. Many have a free and paid version.

What is the difference and why do I need to pay for a service when there are free options out there. My reply is “it depends on how much you are interested in tracking where that click came from”.  I have some clients that just want to shorten the URL and post the tweet and get traffic to the article. Then there are the clients that are actively trying to monitor their efforts in social media and they review the amount of clicks that and from that one tweet. There is no wrong or right it really depends on how much time you invest into monitoring. Of course if you use Google Analytics you can track that you had clicks from Twitter but not that exact tweet. Do what works for you and you may find as you invest more time into Twitter that you may eventually pay to shorten that URL.

Http://tiny.cc
Tiny was one of the first URL shortening services and still pretty popular. Right on the front page you just put the URL of your article and hit the button and copy the new shortened URL. Easy right! The thing to note is they offer no tracking on the URL.

Http://bit.ly
This is the default URL shortened for Twitter and Tweetdeck. You can create an account and look at the number of clicks your URL is getting.

Http://ow.ly
If you use the HootSuite application you will have your URL shortened by them. You can track your clicks and within HootSuite you can schedule your Tweets. (but that is another post about using the tools of Twitter)

Of course there are probably dozens of additional options but these are the three big ones.

It is actually called a vanity search and so many people are surprised by what they see. If you have a LinkedIn profile, Twitter account or a Facebook page I would bet you they are on the first page of the results. Is your website on the first page? Due to the heavy traffic of the social giants they will show high but your goal should be to have your website on the list as well.
Another thing you should learn by doing this is all the other places you show up. Are those websites telling your story you want told? Are you able to edit any of these websites? Try to optimize the data on those sites if they are going to come up high for your name make sure any profile information points back to you and your website.

Learn all the sizes of everything Facebook. What size graphic can I put on my Facebook fan page sidebar? Look at our graphic to see all the sizes you will ever need.

Facebook Infographic

As a mother, I gave my children the gift of a name when they were born. As a web-professional, I gave them the gift of their dot-com names so when the time comes they can have their own place to post their schoolwork, share a resume or portfolio or create a professional website.

A domain name (www.yourkidsname.com) is real estate for the 21st century – and if you haven’t thought about buying your child’s name as a domain for them to use in the future, you should – before it’s too late!

A few facts

• There are approximately 50 million .com domains registered
• 90% of the world’s 90,000 surnames are already taken
• 85% of the words in Webster’s dictionary have been registered as domains
• Some domain names have been sold to companies for as much as $8million!

With the explosion of the internet, we’re simply running out of domain names – but it’s not too late! For less than the cost of a video game your child will quickly grow out of, you can buy a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for 10 years, sit on it until your child needs it or build a simple site and use it to give your child a permanent email address. What’s better — Tracy546379@hotmail.com or tracy@tracyschloss.com?

So how do you do it?

First, go to a domain name registration site like www.godaddy.com, www.register.com
or www.networksolutions.com.

Enter your child’s name into the search window to see if the .com domain is available. If not, try a dash between the first and last name – you may get lucky. Or choose another extension like .net, .biz, .info, or .us.

Once you’ve settled on the name and extension, choose a purchase plan that works best for you – you can choose to renew every year or buy a multi-year package. If you have a website to launch, great – the registration sites also offer hosting services and will walk you through the steps to get your site live on the web and your email address working.

If you don’t have a website now – no problem. It’s perfectly ok to “park” the domain until whenever you’re ready to upload a website. Once you’ve registered your name and paid the fee, the URL is yours to do with as you please.

Several times a year my family gets approached by someone wanting to buy our family domain name. So far we’ve said no … but buy your domain name today and you may find that you’re sitting on waterfront property.
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