Houston Web Video On Location

We just finished our first on location video shoot for a local Houston Interior Designer. You can check out her video on Kitchen Remodeling below:

Contact us if you are in the Houston Texas area and would like us to create a video for you.

How To Get Links To Your Web Site

In a previous post about Search Engine optimization (SEO) I mentioned that link building (getting links from other sites to your website) is the biggest factor that affects your Search Engine rankings. So that leads you to the question:

How Do I get Links To My Website?

Well, the good news is that there are many ways to get links to your site, the bad news is that there are many ways to get links to your site. There are so many ways to get links to your site that a person can seriously get overwhelmed. A few years ago I wrote a post called “101 FREE Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic” most of those methods involved getting links to your website. The truth of the matter is that there are more than 101 ways to build links to your site! So where do you start?

Well, first of all I recommend that people find 2-3 methods of building links to their site and focus on those. It’s easy to get caught up in always trying out the latest and greatest methods of link building, BUT then you never get really good at any of the methods. So, here is a list of some of the methods we use in our business to get links to websites. They work and they are fairly easy to implement. Unless you are in an unbelievably competitive market using just 2-3 of these methods will really help increase your traffic and your website’s search engine rankings.

1. Directory Submissions
There are many people in the SEO/Internet marketing world who for the last 7 years have been claiming that directory submissions don’t help you get traffic and don’t help your rankings. However, for that entire time I have been using directory submissions to get websites ranked and it’s still working for me. Directory submissions are an easy way to get related links to your website that will help your site rank higher in the Search Engines.

2. Article Marketing
Article marketing is my personal favorite way of getting links to a website. Article marketing is essentially the process of writing articles related to your website and allowing other people to reprint them on their website provided that your by-line remains intact and that they link to your website from the article.

The by-line of your article should have the name of the article, your name, a short description of the article, reprint information, and a link to your website. After you write the article you submit it to what are known as article directories. These article directories will display your article and allow other people to reprint them on their websites. This can lead to a lot of links to your website.

3. Video Marketing

With video marketing you come up with a video message or slideshow, then create the video and then post it to video sharing sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Google Videos, etc. It’s a pretty simple process and can result in a lot of traffic and links to your site. Not to mention Google tends to rank videos high in the Search engine rankings for some terms, so not only can you get links but your videos may rank for some of the search terms you want people to use to find your site.

4. Social Bookmarking
One way your company can get more links is through social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites are sites where people post articles that are voted on by other users of the site. Two of the most well known players in the social bookmarking arena are Digg.com and Delicious.com. The social bookmarking site that brings the most traffic to my sites is Stumbleupon. Stumbleupon is easy to use and once you start getting stumbleupon friends to vote for your articles you will start seeing a steady stream of new traffic from the site, not mention links.

5. Link Exchanges
Much like directories some people claim that link exchanges don’t help you get higher Search Engine rankings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Link exchanges with other websites still works to increase a website’s rankings. In fact, if you have a blog and you can find 10 other quality blogs in a related industry to trade blog roll (links on every page of the blog) with you, in most cases you will be on the road to top 10 rankings in no time. Now on the downside you have to spend a lot of time keeping track of whether or not people still link to your site and managing the requests you will get from people wanting to trade links with you. So it is time consuming on an ongoing basis, BUT it does work.

The bottom line

There are many ways to build links to a website. Become a master of a few of those methods and you will be on your way to dominating the Search Engines. If you need help then contact us at (832) 497-1610 or by email at info @ mantywebdeisgns.com and we can help you create a marketing plan, teach you how to do it yourself or we can do it for you.

Google Maps Update To Work Better For Home Based Businesses And Services

Google maps has been testing out adding the capability for home based businesses to no longer have to list their home as their address and to let service based businesses show up for a service area rather than only showing up for the location of their business office. When these changes go live it will be great news for service businesses and home based businesses.

Specifically, what does this mean for your business? Currently, if your business address is your home address, you have no choice but to enter that as your location, which means your home address shows up when anyone searches for your business. Clearly, this is less than ideal. If this update goes live, then you will have the choice to not show the business address and, instead, list areas served or the number of miles from your location that you serve.

This will also be helpful for service businesses who go to a customers’ location, instead of having customers come to them. For example, if you are a plumber, then you will now be able to say that you serve Tomball, Cypress, Spring and The Woodlands, instead of just showing up for your location in Tomball. This is an issue that comes up regularly when signing up clients for local search.

You can learn more about the potential changes, including viewing screenshots of what the new interface will look like, by clicking here.

We are really excited about what this could mean for our clients, and we will be sure to let you know when Google goes live with the feature.

Think Facebook Doesn’t Matter?

A lot of business owners like to think that Facebook isn’t really important to their business. Isn’t that just a place to play Farmville and Mafia Wars? Does any serious business really take place there? Is it really necessary to my business?

This piece of news may change the way you look at Facebook. Last week Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited website on the internet. So, if you think you can ignore Facebook, does that mean you think you can ignore Google? Visitors to Google are still growing– up 9%. But visitors to Facebook were up… wait for it… 185%!

So, what does that mean for your business? There are a few things you should absolutely be doing.

Make sure your business has a fan page

Even if you have a personal page (which is better than nothing), you should really still have a fan page. It’s not that hard. Once you’ve set up the page, invite all your friends, colleagues and customers to become fans. Don’t have time or inclination to do that? Check out our services page for our social networking package.

Use Events

You can use Events to run specials, not just to run events. Having a March Madness sale? Create an event. It will automatically promote on your Facebook page. And when your fans RSVP, this information goes on their wall, going out to all of their friends, serving as an instantaneous promotion tool.

Post Regularly

It doesn’t have to be profound. Integrate Facebook with your company blog. Or your Twitter account. Send public thank yous to clients or employees. Give your clients hints for how to better utilize your services. Give them hints to make their lives easier. Post inspirational quotes sometimes. You don’t have to post every single day, but you should aim for at least once a week. Set aside 15 minutes a week (at least) to work on your social networking.

Obviously there’s a lot more you could do with Facebook. This is just the bare minimum. But it’s something every business can and should do to take advantage of the rising number of Facebook visitors.

Why Search Engine Rankings Matter

You may have noticed we haven’t written a blog post in a few weeks. Once every two years we write an Olympics blog– one for the Winter Olympics and one for the Summer Olympics (this one hasn’t yet undergone a facelift– look for that soon). For a couple of weeks every two years, every spare moment is spent watching and writing about the Olympics. What does that have to do with your Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? Keep reading, and I’ll let you know.

In the current age of Pay Per Click, it can become easy to ask– does it matter where I rank? After all with the right PPC manager, I can appear on the front page any day I want. That may be true and, certainly, given enough money you can buy a spot in the Sponsored Ads.

However, PPC cannot buy you authority. People who know those are sponsored ads know that you paid to be placed there and that it has nothing to do with the quality of your site. Sometimes that may not matter. It depends whose attention you’re trying to attract.

Ranking for Olympic related terms is, as you can imagine, challenging. When we wrote our first Olympics blog– 2006TurinOlympics.com, it ranked in the top three for the phrase 2006 Turin Olympics. Not only did this lead to a huge amount of traffic, over 200,000 page impressions for the month of February in 2006, but it also lead to being quoted in the Washington Post.

Of course, then we had the domain working for us. But after the Turin Olympics, we decided to create the ongoing winter and summer Olympics blogs. That meant we would no longer be attempting to rank for a specific Olympics, but for the more general (and, therefore, more difficult) terms winter Olympics and summer Olympics. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we ran into a problem with our ranking. While we ranked well early on, our site completely disappeared the day of the Opening Ceremony and didn’t reappear for over half of the Olympics.

We were concerned we were going to have the same result with this winter’s Olympic blog. Sure enough, when we started out, our rankings were pretty low and so was our traffic. Once we started adding content, though, we were able to rise to 12th in the rankings for “winter Olympics” and to maintain a number 1 ranking for “winter Olympics news”– not bad considering five of the top ten positions were held by the official IOC site, the official Vancouver site, and NBC’s Olympics site. As our rankings rose, so did our traffic. And, apparently, so did our profile and authority in the eyes of others.

During the second week of the Olympics, we were contacted by a representative of the public relations firm running Proctor and Gamble’s Olympics campaign. Would we be interested in interviewing a couple of the women from the U.S. women’s hockey team? Um, sure. That resulted in this post about Jenny Potter.

When Sherry (my co-writer for the blog) emailed our contact to say thanks, she offered to set up another interview. That resulted in this interview with Kristy Yamaguchi. Not bad for a couple of “amateurs” writing an Olympics blog.

So, what’s my point? I know that the pr firm rep found us through the search engines. She didn’t pick a random company who was paying for sponsored links. She picked a website that ranked well for the terms she was searching. Our ranking gave us automatic authority in the eyes of others. In turn, that gave us the opportunity to conduct a couple of interviews that allowed us to create some unique content that will allow us to gain even more traffic. I hope you can see how this could be a good thing for your business.

Even if you’re not trying to conduct interviews or writing a blog on your website (although if you’re not, we really must talk), a top ranking for your keywords WILL promote you as an expert. If you’re searching for Houston widgets, which company are you going to do business with? The one ranked number one or even number four? Or the one ranked twentieth? Whether you, personally, think your ranking should make a difference in your potential customers’ eyes, it does.

Am I saying Pay Per Click is bad and that no one should go that route? Certainly not! More traffic is more traffic and a well-designed PPC campaign can be especially helpful as you’re building your organic search ranking or if you’re in a really competitive niche. But PPC will not help demonstrate that you’re an expert. Natural search results just might.

The Basics Of Search Engine Optimization And Why It’s Still Important

With the huge growth of Social Media sites some people are claiming that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no longer important. Those people are SO WRONG!

One of the reasons that Search Engine marketing will continue to be important for a long time is that all traffic is not created equal. With social media traffic you have a lot of people who are coming to your site looking for something interesting to read. On the other hand, people using Search Engines to find your website are often people searching for answers to their problems, specific products and services. In other words, they are much more likely to buy the products and services you are offering.

Now, that we have established that Search Engine traffic is important, what are the main things you can do to get more Search Traffic?

To keep things simple, I am going to give you an overview of the three most important factors in Search Engine optimization.

1. Choosing Keywords

Keywords are words that people use to find your website. Keywords are the words entered into the search field of a Search Engine to search for website pages related to or including those words. For example, if you are looking for blue shoes, you would type “blue shoes” into a Search Engine and find websites related to “blue shoes”.

The phrase “blue shoes” is called a keyword phrase. To increase your Search Engine traffic you should choose a 1-3 word keyword phrase for each individual page of your website. You also should choose two or three keyword phrases that constitute the overall theme of your website. There are many methods that can be used to choose keywords, but we won’t go into all of them here. Choosing the right keywords is one of the biggest keys to running a successful Search Engine Optimization campaign.

Google provides a really good free tool that you can use to research keywords with:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

There are MANY other keyword research tools you can use; the best ones you have to pay for. I am not going to go over all your choices here because that would take too much time. I recommend checking out Allan Gardyne’s site keyword workshop for a detailed look at most of the choices out there.

2. Title Tags – On Page factors /HTML SEO

On page SEO can be a little more tricky than off page SEO. From what I have observed, Yahoo®, and Bing® give more weight to on page SEO than Google® does. However, like I have said before the Search Engines constantly adjust their algorithms, so don’t worry too much about which factors are stronger than others and make your best effort at taking as many factors as you can into consideration when creating your pages.

The bottom line is that having good on page optimization will help your site get ranked well in the Search Engines, but be careful not to over-optimize as some Search Engines might penalize keyword SPAM (repeating keywords everywhere possible in what appears to be a very unnatural way).

The most important on page factor is the title tag.

The TITLE Tag is an HTML tag that is located in between the <head> and </head> tags in the HTML code for your site. The text in between the <title> and </title> title tags is the title text. It is displayed by the browser in the Title Bar at the top of your browser (see image below):

The TITLE makes a big difference in where your page ranks in the Search Engines for a given keyword phrase.

The title tag should be relatively short. Most Search Engine experts say you should keep your title tag between 6 and 12 words and under 80 characters. However, I believe that shorter tags 1-5 words can be equally as effective, if not more effective in some cases (especially if you are only targeting one short keyword phrase for that page). Too many words will dilute the effectiveness of having keywords in your title, so limiting your title text to 12 words or less is a good guideline to follow.

Your Title tag should contain the keywords you would like people to use to find that page. Take one of my old websites for example:

http://websitepromotionbook.com.

Look at the Title tag for the main page. You can do this by either viewing the source or looking at the text in the very top left hand corner of the browser window.

To view source code for a page in Internet Explorer:
1.Click on the top pulldown menu “View”.
2.Scroll down and click on the menu item “Source”.

When I wrote this book the Title tag said “affordable website promotion, increase website traffic”.

The keywords that I was targeting on the main page of this website to rank high for were:

1.“affordable website promotion”
2.“website promotion”
3.“increase website traffic”

These keywords appeared in the title tag for the home page. In most Search Engines the keywords at the beginning of the title tag contain more weight than the keywords at the end of the title tag. This means they are considered more important in the Search Engines eyes. For this reason, you should consider putting your main keywords first in the title tag. I could have put something like the “Great ebook by George Manty” in the title tag.

However, none of my targeted keywords appear in the title, which does not help the Search Engines know that my website is about affordable website promotion and increasing website traffic. In fact, a really good way to look at on page Search Engine optimization is that you are helping the Search Engines understand what your website is about. That is why you need to put your main keywords in your Title tag. You need to let the Search Engines know what this page is about.

3. Links Are King

In the world of Internet marketing it is often said that “content is king” and while content is extremely important with Search engine optimization, links are more important. In fact…

THE single most important factor that affects your Search Engine Ranking in Google®, Bing and Yahoo is inbound LINKS pointing to your website.

In general, the more quality, related links that point to your website the higher your website’s Search Engine ranking will be for the keywords that people use to link to your website. While some Search Engines don’t place as much weight on links, the three major Search Engines (Google®, Bing®, and Yahoo®) do place a significant amount of weight on inbound links.

The reason for this is that Google and other Search Engines rank websites based on the number of websites that link to them. One of the Google algorithms that does this is the Page Rank algorithm. Basically, the Page Rank algorithm calculates the number and quality of all incoming links to a website.

Each link to your website is viewed as a ‘vote’ for it. For example, I just went and checked Yahoo® for the number of links from other websites to mantywebdesigns.com using the following command:

linkdomain:mantywebdesigns.com -site:mantywebdesigns.com

The Yahoo® command above lists all the web pages that the Yahoo® Search Engine thinks links to this website, not including links on this site. The result today was 2,640 sites.

According to the Google® Page Rank® algorithm this is equivalent to 2,640 votes for our website. However, all these votes are not created equal. Each link to this site is given different weight. A link from a web page with more links, is more important than links from websites with less links. Also, links from “related” sites count as more votes than links from non-related sites. For instance, if you run a Houston Plumbing company, then links from a houston directory or links from a home repair site are given more votes than links from a site about hummingbirds. This is good to keep in mind when you are getting links to your site. In fact, I have found that related links are often more important then links from high page rank sites. So, get as many links as you can from related sources.

There is more to LINKING then just getting links from powerful related websites. Not everyone realizes this, but the text that others use to link to your site is extremely important (especially to Google®). Let me explain…

The text that a person clicks on to get your site is called the “anchor text”. By default “anchor text” is blue text with an underline. Search Engines consider anchor text very important. In fact, the number of links to your site and the anchor text used to link to your site predominantly determine what keywords your site will rank highest for in Google®. If you don’t do any other SEO work on your website do this one thing:

Place the keywords your web page is targeting in the anchor text that you ask others to use to link to your website with!

While you can’t always control what anchor text other people use to link to you site, when you do have an opportunity to choose the anchor text, use your main keywords in the anchor text.

Back when I started in Internet Marketing, all you had to do to rank high in the Search Engines was to exchange links with other webmasters and have them link to your site with the keywords you wanted to rank high for. That technique doesn’t work as well anymore.

Search Engines have gotten smarter over the years. A few years ago, the Search Engines started to detect if people were using the same exact text to link to your site over and over again. The Search Engines determined that this technique was easy to spot as an “unnatural” link pattern. In other words, when websites get links without asking for them, the links usually are done using a variety of anchor text. Some of the most common links used are “click here”, the full URL (ie. http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/), and the website or page name. Due to this fact, the Search Engines started to lower the ranking of sites that had too many links with the same anchor text linking to them.

That is why when you trade links, buy links, and interlink your sites you should be sure to vary the anchor text between AT LEAST 2 keyword phrases (preferably more).

For example on my son’s website that’s about dinosaurs for kids, I might have people link to it using the following anchor text variations:

“Dinosaurs for kids”
“Dinosaur Toys”
“Dinosaur Games”

Another method might be to include the same keywords in your anchor text, but to use different variations of that text. For instance, for our dinosaur site, if we were targeting the keyword phrase “dinosaur for kids” we might use the following three anchor text links (all of which include the words, “dinosaur”, “for”, and “kids”):

“Dinosaur website for kids”
“Dinosaur for kids”
“Dinosaur Time Machine for kids”

Either method is a good method of varying the text you ask for in your reciprocal links. Search Engines are always changing, but at the moment it is very important to vary your anchor text (especially for Google).

In Summary, The 3 Most Important Keys to Successful Search Engine Optimization are:

1. Finding Good Keywords

2. Using the Keywords in your Title Tags

3. Getting Links To Your Site That Use Your Target Keywords As Anchor Text

If you need help doing this, then click here to fill out our free website analysis form and we’ll be in touch with you.

What Super Bowl Commercial Had The Best Marketing Message?

Every year during the Super Bowl, millions of people get excited not only about the game, but also about the commercials. This year was no exception. Of all the Super Bowl Commercials you saw, which did you think had the best marketing message? Which one got across their message the best? Which one made you want to buy or use their product?

For me, Google’s video did it:

The video tells a story, all the while showing you the power of using their product. What do you think, did anyone beat Google?

The Most Popular Twitter Tools And Why They Are So Popular

When it became clear that Twitter is a bona fide phenomenon, everyone jumped on the bandwagon to come up with all sorts of tools and applications. There are so many out there to choose from, wading through them can be quite a job in itself. One of the first things many new to Twitter complain about is that once you begin following and being followed, response can be overwhelming. So, many tools focus on organization and filtering. Others are time savers that let you make the most of Twitter without having to constantly be on it. To help you out, here are a few of the most popular Twitter tools and the cool things they can do for you and your business.

Tweetdeck is a kind of overall organizer that connects you with contacts over Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. With the browser you can create groups, filter tweets, and keep up with favorite subjects. The easy to navigate screens spread everything out in front of you so you can reply, direct message, retweet, add to favorites, etc.

Twhirl ranks almost as high on popularity lists as Tweetdeck, but also allows you to manage more than one account within one application. For those with multiple businesses, blogs, or just want to keep a private and a public account, this is for you.

Tweepler is a tool that helps you organize your followers and decide if you want to follow them back, or just ignore them. It gives you helpful stats about followers and generally streamlines the decision making process.

Twitpic allows you to post pictures on Twitter. You can post via your phone, their API, or the Internet. Useful for both social and business activity, this application pretty much speaks for itself. After all, a tweet is a maximum of 140 characters, and a picture is worth a thousand words!

Twitoria helps get rid of clutter by scanning your account to see who has been inactive for certain periods of time. It can also help you track down spammers.

Twitpay lets you give and receive payments via your Paypal account. It makes payments incredibly easy and mobile, no need to use your desktop or laptop.

Twitter to WP/ WP to Twitter; great for bloggers, Twitter to WP posts your tweets on the sidebar of your WordPress blog. WP to Twitter sends an automatic update when you post something new on your blog.

Twit(url)y tracks the urls that are currently being twittered about. Use this site to see who’s got the most talked about sites and what’s on the minds of Twitter users. It tells you who has the most active tweets in real time.

MrTweet calls itself “your personal networking assistant.” Use it to find which conversations are most important and relevant to you. It can help you track your relationships discover new networking opportunities.

These are just a small slice of the incredible tools available to make your Twitter account work harder for you. Adding just a few of the applications to the already powerful Twitter can make the difference between just doing well, and having huge success online.

What’s Your Story?

What story does your website tell your customers? Is it a hard luck story of a business that hasn’t undergone a revision in ten years? Is it a story about a cutting edge company that’s up on the latest trends? Your website’s appearance certainly DOES tell a story, but today I want to talk about a different kind of storytelling.

Today’s customer will go out of their way to avoid “advertising”. On the television, we fast forward through commercials. On the computer, we employ pop up blockers. So, how do you get your message out there to a population that is putting their hands over their ears and singing “la, la, la”?

There’s good news because everybody likes a good story. Blendtec has really tapped into people’s desire for a good story with their “Will it Blend?” series of videos. Originally, they just blended things like marbles, but now they’ve started blending brand name items, so that they advertise Blendtec, as well as the company that makes the item their blending (that’s smart marketing!).

So, how can you use storytelling on your website?

First, you can write about your company’s story. Make good use of that “About Me” or “About Us” space. Don’t just give the bare minimum details. Tell us a tale.

Is this a third generation family business started in Grandaddy’s basement? Did your parents go without to send you to college so that you could fulfill your dream? Did you leave a high paying corporate job to strike out on your own, braving the entrepreneurial waters? Don’t have a tale? DON’T make one up!!! Find another place on your website to practice storytelling.

Tell us an anecdote about your customers. First person, we call these testimonials. But you can tell stories about your clients third person, as well (you’ll probably want to make sure these are positive and don’t use names or identifying details without permission).

Let’s say you have a car repair business, and you helped someone get home to their family for Thanksgiving by staying late the night before the holiday. That’s a good story! It tells something about the lengths you’re willing to go to, your commitment to your customers and, if told right, it should make for an interesting read.

Educate your visitors. Tell them an interesting tidbit of history about your area of expertise. Coffee companies do this a lot. They tell you about why different roasts are different. They give you the history of coffee. They manage to increase your enjoyment of their product (and convince you of their expert status) by telling you more about something you may have been drinking for years.

One caveat– do make sure your educational information is interesting. If you can’t figure out how to make your writing interesting, hire someone who’s an expert. It will be money well-spent. Just because it’s educational does NOT mean that it’s automatically storytelling.

Finally, you can experiment with using something other than the written word to tell your story. Whether it’s videos or pictures, today’s audience is very visually oriented.

Show them pictures of that before and after renovation. Give a video tour of your manufacturing facility. If you’re really creative (or are willing to hire someone really creative), you can create a cliffhanger serial about an employee or pretend client that changes on a regular basis and keeps visitors coming back for more.

This is just a small taste of the possibilities for storytelling on your website. Take a look at your site and see where it could benefit from a bit of a story.

Think Social Media is a Fad?

Think that social media is a flash in the pan that will pass, and you’ll just “hunker down” until it passes you by? Or that social networking is nice for teens but has nothing to do with your business? Watch this quick video and let us know if you still feel that way.

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