So you have a great website name, wonderful design, perhaps a blog, and a few pages of content – you’re ready to go! A quick glance at your analytics, however, shows that only a few people are reading your blog, and you’re pretty sure that the IP address that keeps on showing up is actually your mom.

On top of word of mouth promotion to your clients and building up content, creating a few pieces of link bait can bring in additional visitors as well as establish links to your site – something that, in the long run, will help with your site’s SEO.

While you’ll still have to do a little bit of promotion after creating any of these pieces, a quality piece of content will help you to get your website – or blog – to the place you want it to be traffic wise. And won’t your mom be so proud….

1. Top 10 Lists
   Whether it be a Top 7, Top 10, or Top 100, lists tend to be a fan favorite when it comes to earning back links. Lists can also earn you expertise status if packaged correctly and can be a start to a series to expand on in future blog posts. Take for instance Time’s list of 50 Best Websites in 2008 or Web Worker Daily’s list of 12 Free Tools for Online Collaboration. Make the list as silly or as serious as you want, but make it unique. Hair Salon? Top 10 Cuts for Fall. Law office? The Top 5 Craziest Lawsuits in History. Restaurant? Top 100 Things You Can Use a Fork for Other than Eating. Make it fun, make it unique, and make it interactive. A good discussion piece will bring in quality links for time to come.
2. Checklists
   A few minutes of keyword research shows that people regularly look for terms such as SEO Checklist or Travel Checklist. Create a quick checklist of items your clients and potential clients would find valuable, then PDF it or make an interactive html page that can easily be printed out. Examples of link worthy checklists include a travel agency that puts up a To Pack List and the magazine that puts up a wedding registry checklist.
3. Contest
   Any contest will bring in a few back links to your site, just make sure to make it something people want to enter. Have a product that you can give away? A service that you can offer for free? Heck, money always works, as do gift certificates. Just tie in the contest to your business somehow. You can also use the contest as a way to gather additional email address by allowing contest entrants to subscribe to your rss feed or newsletter sometime during registration. Check out these sites that increased readership just by having a contest.
4. Competition with another blogger
   Friends with another blogger in your industry? Suggest holding a competition, such as bloggers John Chow and Shoemoney did, that cross promotes both of your sites. Whether it be a competition to see who can write the most posts in a month, grow the most traffic, or even sell the most of a specific product, a friendly competition can earn you some links as well as promote your site to a target audience.
5. Calculators and Widgets
   Since web visitors are often in the research stage when they’re visiting your website, offering up a tool that allows them to answer questions on their own can draw in a variety of links to your site. A bank could put up a calculator that allows people to calculate interest or try something silly like this Web 2.0 URL generator. Visit Widget Box for already created widgets and calculators that might help to conjure up some ideas. Perhaps our developer could come up with a Top 10 List generator
6. Resource List
   Create a page on your site that lists out every quality resource you would recommend in your industry. Examples of resources could include free tools, magazines and blogs relevant to your industry, or case studies and white papers that would be valuable to clients. Check out Agency Tool’s Web Design Directory that lists out a plethora of web design resources, or this fun list of “National Days.”
7. Offer Something Free
   Free consultation, free fonts, free images – people like free. Whether you offer a free consultation, product/sample, or even a download of advice or tips, promote the free item as something unique and valuable that only you are offering. This online fax company offers up a free fax service for those who don’t (yet) need regular online faxing services and this software company offers up a free trial download of their quality control software. You can also offer up a free eBook, online tool, or even email address.
8. Review a product
   Review a product, brand, or website that is related to your industry then let those people know that you reviewed them. Have a grocery store? Review some of the latest foods out and give them a rating. Attend an industry conference or convention recently? Review the latest and greatest in new products or recap a speaker’s presentation. Become the CNET, PCMAG, or TechCrunch of your industry.
9. Capture a Round Up of News
   Do you have a list of websites or blogs related to your industry that you frequent on a daily or weekly basis? If so, your potential customers may be interested in learning about them. If you have a blog, a weekly or monthly round up of all the blogs or news articles in your industry that interested you can garner in quite a bit of attention. Check out YumSugar for a fun example of a round up of restaurant and food related posts.
10. Expose a Trend
    Have you noticed a new trend in your industry? Keep an eye out for clients that are asking for something out of the ordinary, products that are selling out quickly, or ideas that you think may take off eventually – trends do have to start somewhere. You can also pick out trends from industry publications that clients may not read or visit sites like Google Trends or Digg to discover items that people are talking about.

From You Can’t Touch This to a profound love for web analytics, MC Hammer has had quite a journey in life. But I have to admit his excitement about web analytics is well founded. Without numbers you won’t know how people are finding your site, where they’re going once they get there and about a thousand other juicy nuggets of information that, at the end of the day, can provide a lot of insight into your website’s operation and strategy.

Be sure to watch the video and if you’re feeling like maybe you haven’t been as excited about your site’s analytics as Hammer is about his, then its time to start.

In case you haven’t heard this week a new search engine named Cuil (pronounced “cool”) launched to much fanfare. In fact the amount of free publicity that they received as a suspected “Google killer” was unbelievable. In the first day it seemed like everyone was talking about them, but as the dust settled and people began trying the engine out the results weren’t so good.

Cuil’s search results are just nowhere near those of Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask. In fact, I bet some of the old school meta search engines may have better results. To top it off, Cuil has a bad habit of associating a random picture with a search result. In fact just today, Mark, one of our managing partners searched our brand name “Stone Interactive Group” on Cuil and noticed a seemingly random “Hell Cab” image listed next to our company’s search result.

Here’s a close up of the logo:

In case you were wondering, no we don’t moonlight under the moniker Hell Cab nor have we done any work for a company named Hell Cab. Cuil just thought it would be…cool?…to put it next to us.

So for now Cuil has a looong way to go, but it is kind of fun to search with and see what kind of bizarre stuff you can come up with.

Find anything weird on Cuil? Share it in the comments…

Just yesterday Google opened up a new services called Knol. The premise is quite simple, each knol on the site is a single, authoritative article on a specific topic. For Google, the idea is to build an information resource of a similar scale to that of Wikipedia. Whether or not Knol will be successful is yet to be seen, but if it is you can’t afford to miss out.

The beauty of Knol is that anyone can write their own knol on the subject of their choice and publish it. All you need is a Google account and enough time to slap together a half-decent few paragraphs on whatever you’re an expert on and go from there. In fact I just whipped together a quick Knol discussing how small businesses can use social media. I know, i know…not the prettiest thing ever, but projects that Google puts their weight behind tend to at least be moderately successful.

Basically, Knol is an easy way to show off your knowledge and getting in early definitely can’t hurt. I’m sure at some point they’re not going to want multiple articles on the same topics, so I suggest you knol (if that’s even a verb) now on a few broad topic in your industry, then toss in a little About the Author at the bottom and see what happens.

Going through a website redesign and build is a huge and exciting undertaking. It involves re-writing content, restructuring architecture, researching innovative technologies and implementing new business strategies. A timeline and budget are formed, and hopefully followed, and many countless hours of discussion and brainstorming are involved. When all is said and done, a beautifully designed, full of rich content, easy to navigate site is created and launched, and then we all live happily ever after.

Wouldn’t it be great if everything were just that simple? Unfortunately, we know that building and launching a new site is just the beginning. A website is only effective if a.) People go to it, and b.) People update it. Think of this new website as an arm in your organization that needs constant attention if it is to grow and prosper.

Your first post-launch task is to drive traffic to the site. This can be done in a number of different ways: word of mouth, send out traditional mailers/flyers, put your web address on EVERYTHING, create press releases, and/or hire a SEO (search engine optimization) firm to manage pay per click accounts and help with organic and other search ranking efforts.

The second task is assigning people in your organization to take care of keeping the site up to date and current. If a content management system is put in place, someone needs to be trained on usage and set aside the time to make continual updates. Other possible tasks might include fulfilling ecommerce orders, managing customer support, monitoring forums, and my favorite – creating blog posts.

Organizations that fail to do the above will risk wasting the huge effort they undertook from the beginning, and most likely see their website fade over time. It’s key to the evolution of a website to always promote it and to keep the content dynamic and fresh so that users continue to visit for years to come.

Yep that’s right, we’re on the hunt for a new Search Engine Marketing Specialist.

So, if you or someone you know are looking for an exciting new job and have some experience in search engine marketing (search engine optimization and/or pay-per-click) then we’d love to hear from you.

The more detailed job description can be found on our careers page as well as how best to get in touch with us.

As a side note, we’re also always on the lookout for interactive and web talent, so don’t be shy…if you’re looking then drop us a note, you never know what might come out of it.

In the SEO world there’s always A LOT of talk about links, and for the most part, rightfully so. Links continue to be a prime indicator of authority and relevance to search engines, which makes a proper link building strategy one of the pillars of a business’ search optimization success.

But its not all about links as David Mihm at blog, Mihmorandum, points out. In the blog post David keys in on Google’s local SEO algorithm and how links only seem to play a small part in determining relevance and instead, it is citations of your business that seem to truly drive high local search rankings.

Note: By “local search rankings” I’m referring to the placement ordering at http://maps.google.com when you click the “Find Businesses” link and type in the service that you offer and your location.

Ok, so what is a citation? A citation is simply a reference of your business on another website. At times these citations may be a link, but usually they are just a mention of your business name accompanied by your address and/or phone number. For the local rankings Google only seems to count citations on other local websites. Google is thinking that if other local websites are talking about your business then your business is more relevant than businesses that are not being talked about. A fairly basic concept, but quite eye-opening to see it actually in the works in Google’s local rankings.

I’m sure you can connect the dots from here, but for now it looks like increasing citations about your site from other local websites can make your business more visible in the local search engines. Easy places to start your quest might be your local chamber of commerce, local city guides (Yelp.com, Citysearch.com) and the Better Business Bureau.

Everyone knows that Google is the 800-pound gorilla amongst search engines, so much so that you’ll hear “google” being used as a verb in casual conversation. But even with Google’s search dominance there is still a significant portion of search activity happening on other engines.

According to Hitwise’s April 2008 search share numbers (see chart) Google has a firm grasp on the majority of search traffic with just over two-thirds of all searches being conducted on Google. However, their 67.9% share of searches also means that there are still 32.1% of searches happening somewhere else. From a search engine marketing standpoint this just means that it’s important to diversify your search engine marketing efforts across search engines.

At a minimum, at least target Google and Yahoo, combined they cover 88.18% of searches, and also cover a wider range of demographics since each engine tends to attract a different type of user. One other note, even though MSN and Ask.com have relatively low numbers, there still make be great ROI in targeting those engines, especially since many of your competitors will be ignoring them.

How unfair is this….
A prospective customer visits your website for the first time.
They notice that the site’s design feels a bit dated.
They notice that the website looks ’small’ on their monitor.
They notice that the copyright at the bottom of the page reads 2006.
And they recall that the last site they were on … your competitor … just seemed more professional.
Now, they’ve never met you.
They don’t know the high quality work that you provide.
They don’t know that your value is the best around.
They only know that your website left them feeling flat. Uninspired.
It’s not fair.
But it’s the way the world is working these days.
Your website truly is the hub for all of your marketing efforts.
Start there.

Where should my blog reside?
Most every time Stone sets up a client blog this question arises.
Should it be placed within the corporate website?
Should it be distanced from the corporate site?
Should it have its own look?
Domain name?
Should I use a service? Or software?
All good questions.

While action of most any sort is going to be more valuable than paralysis of analysis, the answers to these questions can most easily be answered by the business objectives associated with blogging in the first place.

A blog is one of the simplest ways to get fresh relevant content on a website and - from a search engine ranking perspective - having the blog reside within the same domain name and server can have a positive effect on SEO.

Many believe that a blog within a corporate site becomes a corporate blog … and, by definition, less edgy / interesting / genuine than a freestanding blog. The established corporate culture and reputation will affect the likelihood of that impression.

As far as using a blog service v. software, the services were originally setup to make it easy for everyone and anyone to blog. If you maintain a corporate site, it’s a safe bet to move forward with one of the open source blog software packages. Some of the popular blog packages have morphed into mini CMS platforms, complete with a list of 3rd party components. But all of them will include the expected list of features.

So when deciding where your blog should be located, ask yourself:
1. Are we doing this to improve search engine rankings? (within the site)
2. Are we doing this to position the organization as a thought leader? (within the site) Or are we doing this to position an individual or group as a thought leader? (separate location, design, name)
3. Are we doing this because top management won’t redesign the site and it’s fallen woefully behind the times? (whatever’s fastest)

Although recent media coverage within the online marketing space has been largely focused on Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo, an interesting effect of the bid has somewhat slipped under the radar. in an effort to fend off Microsoft’s bid Yahoo has begun seeking other strategic alternatives, one of which has been a test of outsourcing their paid search inventory to Google.

In fact, the test has already begun and, according the Wall Street Journal, initial results of the test have been positive from both Google and Yahoo’s perspective. The two parties will be continuing testing in the near future and then a longer term partnership may be on the horizon.

So what does a potential partnership between Google and Yahoo for the online marketer?

Well, first, if Yahoo does at some point transition their text advertising over to Google then there is tremendous upside to current AdWords customers with well-optimized accounts. The addition of Yahoo search sites to the AdWords network would immediately boost the number of people seeing their ads by around 20%.

Additionally, continued optimization efforts could solely be focus on a single account (AdWords) rather than needing to deal with two accounts and the nuances between the two. The only caveat to this would be that AdWords competition would surely become even more intense and only those with the expertise and budget will be able to truly reap any sustained benefits.

Discussion on the topic may be premature since a partnership would surely be subjected to scrutiny for anti-trust issues by the Justice Department, but it is worth keeping an eye on and definitely worth putting in a little effort on improving your AdWords account sooner than later.

Just this week we uncovered some eye-opening data on the value associated with orienting a user when they first arrive on a website. The data came from a recently signed client of ours. Their site, at the time, was buying pay-per-click traffic sent to internal pages, but these internal pages did little in the way of orienting a user. In an effort to do a better job of letting the user know that they had arrived at the right spot we added just a few simple elements to the landing pages.

First, and most importantly, we added a descriptive headline that closely (if not exactly) matched the PPC ads that the visitors were coming from. Second, we added a product picture that closely matched the PPC ads and finally we added a simple call-to-action that said something along the lines of “Browse our Product Selection.”

Nothing fancy at all, just enough information to assure visitors that they were in fact visiting the right website for what they’re looking for.

So what was the result of the changes?

Implementing the changes:

• Increased the number of product pages that visitors view by over 80%
• Increased the amount of time that visitors spend browsing the site by over 111%
• Reduced the number of visitors that leave before viewing any products by 37%

In total, those are great numbers for just a few quick changes to the internal pages of a site. Growing transactions on a site first requires building trust with visitors. Orienting site visitors is a simple yet powerful first step to build that level of trust.

If you don’t quite get what a blog is, how they work, or what their purpose is…here’s a quick video that should help explain a lot:

The video is a part of Common Craft’s Plain English series, breaks down complex Internet topics into simple explainations.

Social media as defined by Wikipedia is “any communications format where the users publish the content.” A simple definition, but not as simple of a process, especially for small businesses where time and resources are at a premium. To simplify the social media landscape just a bit, here are 9 simple ways for small businesses to leverage social media:

1. Have a Voice – The first step for any small business looking to tap into social media is to have a blog. A blog acts as your business’ voice on the Internet. It should be a place where employees can share thoughts, tips, news and anything else with the general public. Any business interested in starting a blog should give Wordpress a look first. MovableType is another worthy option.

2. Speak Up – In addition to running a blog, small businesses should actively be conversing on other industry blogs. The more conversations that your small business can be a part of, the better. If you’re not sure where to start just Google search for some industry-related phrase and the word ‘blog’…you’ll find at least a few.

3. Stumble and Digg for Blog Fodder – The easiest way to keep fresh content in your company’s blog is to find recent news stories in your industry and comment on them. StumbleUpon and Digg are both fantastic resources for finding stories that people are talking about. Pick a story and throw your hat in the ring…

4. Build Your Online Network – LinkedIn is the MySpace of the business world. Encourage employees to create profiles and invite clients to join their networks. Over time your company will build a substantial online presence and open up tons of new channels for client acquisition and finding new hires (see #7 for more on this). Depending on your business’ product or service, MySpace and Facebook may also make sense for online networking, but LinkedIn will provide the most benefit.

5. Answer Customer’s Questions – There’s no need to wait for a customer to approach you in order to answer their questions. Sites like Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers and 43 Things are filled with people looking for help, you just need to give them what they want…

6. Prove that You Are an Authority – Show off your business’ expertise in your field by creating high-quality, authoritative articles on sites like Wikipedia, Work.com and eHow.com. Not only will you be gaining exposure on other websites but you’ll also build a reputation as an authority in your field.

7. Find the Right Employees – The social web has opened the doors for communicating and finding new hires. Jobster, for example, takes the standard job search model (think Monster.com) and adds social aspects to beef up the overall job search experience. On the other end of the spectrum, Craigslist allows companies to add free, no frills job postings in a local market.

8. Create New Flavors of Content – The runaway success of YouTube and Flickr has created a tremendous opportunity for small businesses to show off their product offerings in new forms of media, namely videos and photos. Leveraging these two forms of media often requires a great deal of creativity, but also can have a big payoff.

9. Get Reviewed – If your current customers love you then you might as well let them tell your potential customers about their experience. Yelp, Yahoo Local and Google Local are your best bets for sites where people freely review and search for businesses.

For now those are probably the 9 easiest ways for small businesses to tap into social media but it seems like every day there’s a new idea out there so keep your eyes open for opportunities.

We had a new Professional Web Management client in the office yesterday for a kickoff meeting.  It’s an exciting business model with an exciting site.  Most exciting, though, was perhaps something they said at the conference table.  Something that all of our clients should be interested in.

While discussing website traffic and search engine rankings, the following was said … “A few years ago, our site was not found at all on Google or Yahoo.  We started blogging.  And now we’re on the first page of Google for two of the most important search phrases.  We force ourselves to blog almost every day.  It’s not easy, but for us blogging is like ‘turning on the lights in the store’.  Blogging results in good search rankings … and that leads to traffic and sales.”

Great to hear.

Its hard to pick up a business magazine and not see something about blogs. But what are the real advantages (and disadvantages) for a company to consider before deciding whether or not blogging is for them?

1. Visibility - Blogs are one of the simplest, most-effective means for adding new content to a website. Even if your company writes a blog post once a month, that’s 12 new pages of content that search engines can find. Bumping up the schedule to a weekly blog post would mean 52 high-quality, on-topic content pages added to your site per year. On top of the new content, search engines tend to favor websites that pro-actively add new and unique content to their site. And a blog does just that.
2. Credibility - Done properly, a blog can be a huge boost to your company’s credibility. Writing honest, thoughtful feedback on recent industry issues and news presents your company as an authority within the industry. By communicating the value of your company’s thoughts in your blog, you also are communicating the value of your products and services to your customers.
3. Conversation - Blogs inherently foster conversation with their conversational tone and frequent updates. In essence, your company is beginning a conversation with each blog post that you write. Then (hopefully) readers comment on the posts and the conversation begins. Creating this sort of natural exchange of thoughts and ideas with you customers is a rare opportunity to begin the conversation without needed to “sell” anything. Just let the conversation start…sales tend to follow.

On the flip side, the only real disadvantage to having a company blog is that it takes a great deal of time and effort. However, if you can’t find time to market your business then you probably won’t have a business for long, so get blogging.

Let’s take a moment to debunk the myth that META tags are important for search rankings. Once upon a time it was true and somehow entered the public’s consciousness, but they no longer have a significant impact on search rankings. Let take a deeper look…

When speaking of META tags there are primarily two that search optimization conversations are focused on: the keywords tag and the description tag.

Keywords Tag

In the mid-1990s the keywords tag was crucial to good search engine rankings. With the keywords meta tag, search engines were allowing website owners to specify which keywords their page was about. This led to widespread abuse and misuse of the keywords tag, which has led to much, much less importance of the tag on search rankings.

While there is no harm in setting up the keywords tag, there also is little to be gained. If any SEO firm or SEO “professional” tells you otherwise, turn and walk away.

Description Tag

In the same way that the keywords tag has been abused, the description tag has suffered a similar fate. Search engines just don’t weigh it heavily, if at all, any longer.

However, it is crucial to realize that the description tag is extremely important for getting people to click-through to your site from the search engine results. Few people outside of the Internet marketing community truly realize and take advantage of this.

Let’s have a look…

If you search on Google, you’ll notice that each result displayed has a blue line of text that also is the link, followed by two lines of text that are plucked straight from the description tag.

For example, if you search “stone ig” (our company name) in Google the results will look something like:

Then a quick look at our homepage’s source code reveals:

<meta name=”description” content=”Stone Interactive Group - Ann Arbor, Michigan based Professional Web Design, Development, Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing Services Company” >

The exact text from the page’s description tag appears in the search results.

By all means use this to your advantage and craft a description that speaks to what type of searchers you are looking for. By creating a description that stands out from your competitors you can very simply create a competitive advantage in search results.

Speaking of which…I think our site could use a description makeover.

In case you missed it, there was an interesting article in Sunday’s New York Times by Times reporter Saul Hansell who was recently granted access to one of the Google search quality team meetings. While a large part of what Saul heard was strictly off-the-record, there were some interesting revelations about the methods that Google uses to improve the quality of their search results.

Without getting into too much detail, a quick read-through of the article makes very clear that providing the most relevant and unique search results possible continues to be Google’s primary focus. Hansell revealed that Google’s search quality engineers make around a “half-dozen major and minor changes a week” to the search algorithm. These tweaks allow Google to make changes on an as-needed basis. Whenever an engineer detects that the results are skewed, a change is made, tested and the results improve.

The article also uncovers the Google ranking algorithm’s increasing complexity. Amit Singhal, Google’s search ranking manager, mentioned that the algorithm currently uses over 200 informational signals to determine how web pages should rank.  Some of the information is taken directly from web pages (text, images, links) while other information analyzes statistical trends to try to understand what exactly a search may be looking for. In total, the continuous quality improvements to Google’s search algorithm are exactly why Google is the most used search engine on the Internet.

The tweaks, informational signals and other topics from the article provide rare insight into the future of search engine optimization. In fact, without explicitly saying it, the article does point out that the single most important factor in search engine optimization. Providing unique and relevant content on your website.

Google’s search engineers are constantly tweaking and refining their software to find the best content for a particular search. If you aren’t actively creating some of the best content for your website’s topic then you aren’t optimizing for what Google is looking for.  After all, if you want your website to be found, you’ve got to make your site worth being found first.

To get listed correctly in the search engines each page of your site that you want listed needs to be optimized to the best of your ability. Since the keywords that you decide to target will be used throughout the optimization process choosing the right keywords is essential. If you choose the wrong keywords you will not be found in the search engines. If you are not found in the search engines how will anyone find your site?

Since the keywords you choose to optimize your pages with are so important we have put together some tips to help you make sure that you make the right choices. You should utilize these tips when selecting keywords for each page that you plan to submit to the search engines.

Think “specific keyword phrases” not “keywords”

Why? Due to the extreme amount of competition for general terms in the search engines, if your keyword phrases are too general it is very unlikely you will rank well in the search engines. You stand a far better chance to rank well for specific phrases where there is less competition. The resulting traffic, since it is more highly targeted, should also be much higher quality too!

Here’s an example for a site selling shoes:
Much Too General

• shoes
• men’s shoes
• women’s shoes

Much Better!

• imported italian shoes
• men’s leather penny loafers
• women’s aerobic sneakers

Try to think like your target audience

What would they search for when looking for the page you are optimizing? It is very easy to fall in the trap of coming up with a short list of what YOU would search for, but what about everyone else? They will not necessarily use the same keywords as you. You should try to come up with as many keyword phrases as you can think of that relate to the page you are optimizing. Try asking a few friends and family what they would search for when searching for a site like yours.

Check out your competition for ideas

Do a search using keywords that you already know you want to target and click through on the top sites that come up. Once on the site view the source HTML code and view the keywords they have in their meta tags - this should give you many more ideas! Make sure to only use keywords that relate to YOUR site or page. To view the HTML code simply click the ‘View’ at the top of your web browser then select ‘Source’, or ‘Page Source’.

Develop a list of keyword phrases

You should develop a list of keyword phrases, following the tips on this page, for each page that you optimize for the search engines.