How to SEO Optimize WordPress Images

Have you ever wondered how to SEO Optimize your WordPress images? It is commonly understood that on-page SEO can be optimized through the proper use of image attributes for placing keywords, appropriate keyword density, the use of H1 and H2 tags, and decoration of keywords within your post content.

Tip:  SEO Optimize Images But Don’t Keyword Stuff!

The alt attribute is meant to be used as an alternative text if the image is not available and it is another location search engines to read your keywords.  It is bad practice to stuff keywords, however, so use this content area wisely.

Important Image Attributes to SEO Optimize

1. Image Name
2. Image Title
3. Image Alt Text
4. Image Link Text

Uploading and inserting images into your WordPress post is very easy to do. When images are added to a post, the software creates different sized images for use on your pages automatically. The default image link is the link to the image attachment page. From an SEO perspective, this is far less desirable than having that image link to your actual post.

WordPress Image Upload Features Can Help You SEO Optimize Content

Most blog owners upload an image and insert it into their post without giving it a second thought.  Unless you have investigated the advanced options available in the popup for adding images to your WordPress posts and understand how these options help you SEO Optimize your WordPress images, you are missing opportunities for keyword placement on your posts and pages.

With search engines demanding relevant content, it has become increasingly important to SEO Optimize all the elements possible in your posts and pages.  As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words. Don’t overlook these words by failing to utilize the full power of WordPress and image tags.

This short video tutorial will walk you through the process of assigning a name to your image that is related to the topic of your post as well as how to use the advanced features of WordPress to SEO Optimize your newly uploaded image for better on-page SEO.

 

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Are You Using Social Media Effectively?

I know I’ve been struggling with the best way to apply social media strategies to my business.  How about you?  Not only did Don Crowther deliver 5 content-packed videos with solid strategies for leveraging social media in any niche during his pre-launch, today (July 11, 2011) and Wednesday (July 13, 2011), he is over-delivering again by hosting 2 FULL DAYS (Over 12+ HOURS) of free content using LIVE streaming video.

I’m sure that thousands of people will be watching and interacting during this broadcast.  In fact, **Depending on when you are reading this, the show may already be LIVE right Now**  at this link.

Here is the line-up for Monday, June 11th, beginning at 5pm Eastern and running until 11:30pm:

Andy Jenkins
Mike Koenigs
Jeff Walker
Perry Marshall
Dan Hollings
Dan Thies
Leslie Rohde

The SPF Livecast is also going to Showcase TONS of Real-Life case-studies from people just like you and me  who are quietly (some not so quietly) leveraging Social Media in their niches to achieve their goals and profiting further by going on to become Social Media Consultants.

Here is a link to the LIVE broadcast again:
LIVE streaming Social Media Webinar Link

Since this free broadcast is LIVE Streaming video, the presenters will be taking YOUR questions, and responding to YOUR feedback LIVE as they go. Just put it on in the background if you can’t pay attention for SIX HOURS STRAIGHT.  (But we’re all masters of multi-tasking, aren’t we?  )

I honestly got so many great strategies for using social media more effectively from the pre-launch videos, I wouldn’t think of missing this event.  Even if those got past you, you’re bound to learn SOMETHING  from the 2 days of live streaming video that you can put to work for you immediately in your business.

I’m going to be there, for sure, and I hope you will join me.  See you at the the LiveCast!

Is Providing Relevant Content Important in Your SEO Strategy?

Is providing relevant content important to your SEO Strategy and business success?  With Google enforcing relevance and becoming more strict about content sources, the answer is an emphatic Yes. Your readers are seeking solutions when they set out on the search engines.  If your content comes up in search results and clicking through to your page results in not finding any pertinent information related to their search, your readers will move on to the next link in their search results.  It is very important to provide your readers with relevant content for anything that you publish online.

Relevant content gains high ranking regardless of its vintage.  Over time, the probability that older content will be rendered obsolete exists but reviewing and revisiting your pages and updating content is a task that a website owner has to assume periodically.  Note the word “review” – old content is not bad for search engine rankings unless it has totally lost its relevancy.  Making old content more relevant can contribute to higher ranking while simply removing or altering content can result in a drop in ranking.

When you have relevant content on your site, can leverage your organic traffic to cross sell affiliate products that you are using and get income from those referral sales.  Satisfied visitors will rarely refuse to do buy a product you are recommending if your post is relevant to their search query.  The mantra is give your customers what they want and, in return, your online credibility is enhanced and your business will steadily grow.  If you’ve defined too broad an audience for your content, you cannot hope to consistently deliver relevant content that will improve your site rankings for your chosen keywords.  Higher rankings translates to greater income potential from your website.

There is no secret about the fact that keywords  play a vital role in effective SEO content writing. The content has to be crafted in such a way that it is both keyword oriented for successful SEO and content relevance.   When designing a post, begin with an understanding of the keywords you wish to rank for.  Your posts must be optimized for both humans and spiders, which is a page-to-page consideration.  When keywords are applied correctly throughout your site, whether on existing pages or new pages, content can be written naturally and the keyword you are trying to rank for will not be noticed by your visitor.  The end result will be a robust site that targets dozens, if not hundreds, of keywords that are effectively optimized to bring in targeted traffic while still increasing sales.

Marketing your content can seem like a time-consuming and arduous task for small business owners who are beginning to build their online presence.   It is a necessary evil that cannot be avoided, however.  To reach your target market both locally and worldwide through search engines, you must employ small business SEO techniques.  Creating fresh relevant content and building backlinks to your pages is part of this process and this can eat up hours each day if you do not have the proper tools in your tool chest.

This is where Digi Traffic Multiplier can help you.  This plugin takes the principles of creating relevant content and automates the process so you are free to build your business with minimal intervention, once the plugin is setup.  It’s called Traffic Multiplication.  This means more business and increased sales for you!
Here are some of the features that you can use to your advantage:

1. Content generated by the software is targeted specifically for your visitors because it uses the keywords that your visitors are actually using to find relevant content in the first place, so it’s a guaranteed hit.  I’ve tried several plugins that promise similar things but, for the price and in consideration of the features, none compare to Digi Traffic Multiplier!
2. This WordPress plugin is fully compliant with Google’s latest algorithms.  The on-page SEO will attract Google’s attention and the targeted content with built-in avatars ensure that your post passes even a manual check.
3. On-page SEO is done automatically to every post so you won’t have to worry that you haven’t got it right and you can focus on building your business instead.

Many of the plugins that I use sell for over 4x the price of this elegant plugin.  I use it personally on several of my niche sites and I highly recommend that you take the time to investigate Digi Traffic Multiplier.

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Social Monkey Automates Building Backlinks for SEO!

Building backlinks to your pages is an essential part of SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) for two reasons. The first reason is that it helps your pages get indexed faster, which is very important because you want the search engines to find them as soon as possible and crawl them regularly. The second reason is that it helps your pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice. The more backlinks you have, the better. Period.

However, building backlinks can be a time-consuming, boring process and waiting to realize the results of your efforts can seem like watching paint dry. You can outsource the process to an agency and pay a lot of money… Or you can do it yourself with SocialMonkee!

SocialMonkee is an instant backlink builder that will help you with building backlinks, every day, FREE! All links are on unique C-Class IP addresses and domains. Imagine being able to create 25 unique backlinks every day, with the click of a button, FREE! Well, you can stop imagining…

So, 25 unique backlinks every day… That’s a total of 175 backlinks every week, 750 every month. If you upgrade for a one-time fee of $47USD, you will be able to build 100 uniques backlinks, 3 times a day! That’s a total of 2,100 backlinks every week, 9,000 every month! The good news is… you can get a Premium Account, FREE! All you need to do is to refer 12 members, and your account will automatically be upgraded. If you’re not really into referral marketing, you may upgrade right now for a low one-time fee.

Submitting a page to SocialMonkee via the members area takes under two minutes, but there’s an even faster way! They created a Firefox plugin that allows you to submit your page to up to 100 sites in just a few clicks, using nothing else than Firefox! If you have a Premium Account you will also get access to link reports and RSS feeds, which are great assets for building backlinks and getting them indexed fast. Submitting your RSS feeds to RSS submitters is actually a very important step in link building.

So what are you waiting for? Join SocialMonkee now while it’s still free!

http://budurl.com/SocialMonkey

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Where the Hell is Matt?

In these times of entrepreneurship and light-speed marketing, I’m frequently reviewing things that other people are doing online.  YouTube is a great place to locate innovative marketing techniques.  It is also a great place to wonder how people came up with their ideas but some things are better left unexplained … especially a video like this!

Make Your Business Fun!

Here is a video where Matt explains his business and how he has grown his ideas into something that not only is more fun but also is profitable. It is carrying a beneficial message to our world too.

Last weekend, I attended a reception for a well known nature photographer named Thomas Mangelsen.  He autographed my purchase with this message:

Dance while you can.  Scream when you must.

There is wisdom in those words, and Matt’s video and business plan reinforces them somehow.

Here is another favorite quote of mine by one of this world’s most famous writers, Mark Twain:

“Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like its heaven on earth.”

For those of you in the USA, have an awesome Thanksgiving.  For all my other readers, enjoy the day!

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Cyber Vandalism, Skype Hackers and Social Networks

Skype is an invaluable business building tool.  Not only does it allow you to conduct business internationally without incurring international long distance charges, it make is very easy to share large files and engage your customers in video chats when the need arises.

There is a dark side to Skype.  Hackers prey on naive online users.  Last year’s hacker game was to usurp an account and initiate contact with all confirmed contacts, inviting those people to accept files.  Even though I do not consider myself to be naive, I was duped into accepting and opening a file, in March 2009,  when a seemingly active client offered it to me.  When I lost access to my Skype account, I realized I had been hacked.  It took a few days to put everything back together and it was a real headache.

I haven’t accepted any spontaneously offered files or clicked on any uninvited links since that time, even if the offer is extended by a long-term contact on my list.

This year’s hacker game is to hijack an account and offer a link that  looks like a Skype link to all confirmed contacts in that account.  With a slight amount of scrutiny, it is obviously not a link you should follow.  The link will probably ask you to login to your Skype account, at which point the hacker has your credentials.  If you have a Skype subscription attached to your PayPal account, the hackers can run up huge expenses for you.  Skype takes no responsibility for this.  Neither does PayPal.

When my Skype account was hijacked in March 2009, I had no Skype subscriptions but friends of mine who were hacked by the hackers who hacked me were harmed financially.  A hacker’s sole intention is to steal something from you.  They are clever people and it is truly a shame that they have chosen to use their creative talent for malicious intent.

Safe computing and surfing is an old topic but its relevance is not stale.  It is comprised of more than running Spyware blockers and Antivirus software, especially if you are a member of any internet messaging application.

How to Avoid Skype Hackers!

Here are some steps you can take to be safe on Skype:

1. Whenever a friend offers you a picture or file, ask them what it is.  Try to engage them in a longer conversation so you can determine if the language they are using is native to them.  If you feel uneasy about it, ask if you can connect through voice to have them explain why you should accept the file.  A hacker will not be able to talk to you.
2. When you are asked to confirm a contact, ask the requestor how they found your ID.  If they can’t provide information that links to any sites or chats you have a membership in, decline the opportunity promptly.
3. When you are invited to click on a link unexpectedly, look at the link carefully first.  Here is the dialogue from a recent attempt to hijack my account today.  You will notice in the first line that English is not their native language.  By the way, THE LINK HAS BEEN DISABLED IN THIS POST!

[11:20:10 AM] MyFriend says: hi how are you,i send to you link please sign in ok and thanks  http://smii.host.sk/www.skype.com/?id=79826&lc=us
[11:23:04 AM] Marj Wyatt says: oh dear, hackers at work
[11:24:01 AM] Marj Wyatt says: more importantly, what sorts of idiots spend their days trying to wreak havoc on nice people?

I received no response to my inquiry, but I wasn’t really expecting one.  I admit to my brutality in my biting response but, frankly, it was a way to shut them down immediately.  I posted this thread here so you could see an example of a hacker’s link.  There will always be something after the domain name.

The first time I encountered this in Skype, I asked what the link was for.  The user at the other end kept repeating that it was “a surprise.”  I was polite with them and informed them that, if I wanted to access my Skype account, I would login through a browser and not through their link.  The abandoned their efforts.

Managing Your Online Life

Tools, like social networks and Skype, have made it easier to build business and promote products and services at a minimal cost.  They have also opened up a new channel for hackers.  Both Twitter and Facebook have been hacked repeatedly during the past year.  To the best of my understanding, it always starts with a malicious link.

Very early in my practice of conducting business online, I learned to set every profile that I have on social networks to approve comments manually so I could avoid the use of my pages as advertising space for others.  People who have a penchant for doing this have had the nerve to complain when I do not approve their posts with links to their list building tools or business opportunities.  Oh well…

New contacts on Skype are always advised that my accepting them is conditional and presumes that they will not promote every business opportunity they come across on the web via Skype broadcast tools.  When a confirmed Skype contact sends me a link to something that they are promoting, I always ask questions and remind them that I’m not looking for get rich quick schemes.  Not so long ago, one of my contacts decided to launch a group chat with the founders of one business, after I declined to enroll myself.  It was quite embarrassing for me.  I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings but I also did not like the feeling of being cajoled into joining yet another “worthless webinar”  so they could get a bonus.

The LinkedIn network uses a process for profile publications that begins with a request, from you, for the feedback.  It is very straight forward.  Additionally, LinkedIn uses associations like school or work to help people find friends.  It may take a little longer to build your social network there but at least you know who you are connecting with, which provides you with a reasonable expectation about how they will behave online.

I have also monitored my Twitter feeds carefully.  When a Twitter contact presents themselves as being uncouth or a Twitter Spammer, I will “unfriend” them so my Twitter feed isn’t cluttered with junk.  It is my feed, after all.  :)

With the caveat that I find the Facebook user interface unwieldy and may not have taken the time to figure it out, there doe not appear to be a setting for manually approving comments on my Facebook wall.  This is a bother because it enforces a need to go into your account and delete content that you do not want displayed.

Building Business Online

Skype, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are powerful business building tools when they are used appropriately.  Social manners should not be tossed out the window just because you are in an online relationship with your prospects and customers.  When you are respectful of your online contacts, you will attract more business contacts who are also respectful of you.

Have fun online, be careful, and be prosperous!

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Panning for Gold

While having fun with the grandkids the other day, we visited a place nearby that specializes in educating people about the California Gold Rush by providing an experiential tour of a mine on their property.  What does this have to do with Web Marketing and Branding, you might ask?  Read on….

The California Gold Rush created a lot of wealth.  So has the internet.  Not unlike internet properties, 49ers staked claims on mines, hoping the vein was rich.  The conditions were difficult, picking their way back into the mines and chiseling through rock by hand.  There were certain things that they looked for that provided direction about pursuit of a path.  The same is true of internet businesses.  It all relies on choosing the right “real estate” to begin with and doing the work necessary to extract the value of that space.

As the kids panned for gold in the trough that the owners of the ranch had set up, they each had different reactions.  One child in the group complained immediately, saying it was too hard, and sulked for a while.  Another “struck gold” right away, shouted out about their good fortune and continued to shriek every time they thought they had found another nugget.  The remainder of the group quietly found nuggets, washed them off and set them aside, and proceeded to look for more.

Where is the Online Mother Lode?

If you are not new to online business, you know exactly what a niche is and how important it is too.  If you are new, this is a term you need to understand.  I can’t tell you what is a profitable niche in a blog post but I can tell you there is a lot of material out there regarding choosing a niche.

In summary, a niche is an area of interest for consumers.  I will always recommend that people begin a business that is in line with their personal passions or hobbies.  While your passions may align with a profitable niche, it is equally possible that your highest area of interest is NOT what other people are looking for.  This should not dissuade you entirely but it will make penetration of that niche more work.  Equally possible is that a niche that you know people are looking for is also a niche that is saturated.  Specializing that niche may allow you to find a “vein” to follow to create online income.

There are free tools to use to explore possibilities but, as expected, digging for gold by hand requires a little more effort and time.  The external Google keyword research tool is a great place to start.  It may seem like a good idea to choose the niches with the most search volume.  Within reason, it is.  You need to be aware that searches with a lot of volume also have a lot of competition.  A good rule of thumb is to choose phrases that have monthly global search volumes between 1,000 and 15,000.

Once you think you’ve found a niche to exploit, continue your due diligence.  Use Google again to find out how many pages are there for you to compete with.  Take the term that appeals to you, place it in a Google search box in quotes, and submit your search.  This will return the number of pages with each word in your phrase in any order.  If you submit the search without the term in quotes, it will turn up the count for all the pages that have all of the words in your phrase anywhere on that page, whether together in a string or not.

From a reasonableness perspective, it is best to choose niches that have less than 100,000 competing pages online, so long as the supporting search volume is there.  This is a guideline only.  Persistence will get your pages elevated in search engine listings for more saturated niches.

For the expense, a great niche research tool is cleverly named Micro Niche Finder.  This tool allows you to analyze the strength of competition and computes the number of back links, which is a measure of how many links you will need to build to your site to allow it to rise above other listings for that term.

If you don’t want to learn at this level or purchase tools that would make it easier for you to conduct your own research, you can opt to work with someone who has knowledge of how to research a niche and choose good keyword phrases.  Use the convenient contact form to initiate a conversation with me.

What Tools Can You Use to Launch your Campaign?

It is hard to be in an online business without a website.  If the great keyword phrase you’ve found is an available domain name, grab it quick because you will need a website somewhere online to promote your niche.  With all of its built-in features and since my specialty is WordPress Website Design, it is the best software that I can recommend for your business website.

While you can start a free site using wordpress software at Wordress.com, my position has always been that it is far better to retain ownership of your content.  Besides, theme choices and add on open source software is limited at WordPress.com.  These limitations can impede your progress.

I’ve worked with people who operate on an assumption that a site hosted at WordPress.com will get more traffic.  WordPress.com is a high-traffic site but you must build interest in your page in order to have traffic.  Why do all of that SEO work on a site if you don’t own it?  Seems silly to me…

There are many free themes out there for you to use and, if you find a theme that is close to what you want, you don’t need any special technical skills to put up your own website.  Personally, I recommend taking a look at Studio Press themes.

Remember that owning a website does require you to know something about HTML.  Last year, Holly Powell and I conducted a couple of online webinars to teach people the nuances of choosing domain names, registering them, activating them on your chosen host, installing wordpress, and other things you might want to know to use the software.  I will be updating the training for the latest version of WordPress soon but you can follow this link for access to the 2009 Live Blog Training at no cost.  If you sign up for the newsletter there, you will find out more about new training modules as they become available. 

What Kind of Miner are You?

Let’s get back to the kids who were panning for gold.  Maybe you’ve already found your Mother Lode niche and are living your dream life.  But, if you haven’t, what kind of miner will you be when you locate your niche and the first online payment arrives?  Will you shout out your success for all to hear or will you use the knowledge you gained to find that niche to locate and develop another?

Happy mining!

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Good Website Design and Search Engine Optimization are not Mutually Exclusive

Website design is a process of function and aesthetics.  I’ve just completed a project where the desires of the graphic designer took precedence over search engine optimization and website performance.  I had only heard about these sorts of debates before and had never been involved in one.

The designer admitted they cared more about look and feel of the site than they did about its features and functions.  Ultimately being forced to defer to the graphic designer’s logic by putting a scroll box into a post, for the sake of aesthetics, enforced website design tactics that have not been popular since the late 1990’s.  Neither the project initiator nor the graphic designer seemed to care at all about search engine visibility, website performance, or the impact their design-based decisions were having upon the website design functionality or the user experience.  Regardless of my feelings about it, I did as I was instructed and delivered a site that has absolutely no SEO value, much to my chagrin.  I contributed my ideas and they were ignored.  What else was there for me to do? 

But, my position stands firm that graphic designer opinions should NEVER take precedence over website design performance, function, and search engine optimization.  I will augment this by saying that website design aesthetics and website functionality are not mutually exclusive goals.  With a little bit of understanding, beautiful graphic designs can be rendered to highly functional code that performs well and is also optimized for search engine visibility.

In my experience, graphics designers rarely have website design development or SEO skills.  I have the distinction of possessing wordpress website design, development and SEO skills, among other things, so this is not true of me.  My composite skill set is extremely rare, so I have been told.  Because it is important to my clients, I keep abreast of current online marketing tactics and website design and development trends so I can educate my customers and offer choices, should the need arise.  Of primary concern to me is overall website SEO and performance.  A properly designed website can garner organic traffic, especially if it uses the built-in features of a content management system like WordPress, and performance does not have to suffer if the developer knows what they are doing.

With the caveat that there are many people out there who know as much or more about this topic than me, I will share a little of what I know about these things in this post.   It is not all inclusive, for it would be impossible to encapsulate years of experience on such large subjects into a single post.

Why Should You Care about SEO?

A pretty website design pleases the eye, and aesthetics do matter, but your website SEO strategy can make the difference between a profitable website and a wasted expense.  If you are not doing your own development work, you have paid a professional website design developer real money in exchange for their time.  Viewing your website as a marketing asset should not be taken lightly.  With good planning, design, and a solid SEO strategy in mind from the onset, your website can become an extremely valuable tool that facilitates your business success.

Search Engine Optimization is not a huge mystery.  There are several sites with valuable and free content out there for people to study, if they are willing to invest the time and energy.  While each SEO “expert” seems to subscribe to their own philosophy, seach engine algorithms are based on math some factors are constants.

Generally speaking, there is on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  On-Page SEO is what you do with your website design and post content.  Off-Page SEO can be loosely defined as the linking strategies you employ to elevate your site’s authority on the internet.  Both are important, but the latter has very little to do with website design.

On Page SEO

Each page of your website is viewed individually by search engines.  Thus, it is possible for some of your pages to have a more elevated listing status in the search engines than others.  Content management systems, like WordPress, offer really cool SEO features like internal linking and frequent updates through RSS feeds and commenting features.  As a website design consultant, one of my functions is to help my clients choose rich keyword terms for categories.  While some Graphic Designers hold steadfastly to their belief that there still is a place for straight HTML websites, open source applications like WordPress, which is continually improving, make that belief all but obsolete.

Within a page, search engines are alerted by text styling tactics of using headings (H1 is best) or bold text to call attention to important content that contains the keywords you are pursuing.  Enabling WordPress plugins that permit you to specify relevant meta titles, descriptions, and post-specific keywords will assist with acquiring organic traffic and gaining better page listings and rankings.  Since I put up my first WordPress Website Design years ago, I’ve been using the All in One SEO plugin, although there are others out there.

Having a keyword rich domain name and page title goes miles toward a quick ranking.  Post titles and overall URL length matter.  The last time that I checked, search engines only read the first 256 characters of a URL.  This could have changed, so don’t quote me.  So, if you have a long domain name and a long page/post title, your effort in researching and placing keywords could be pointless.  WordPress setup defaults are not the best for creating links.  There are multiple opinions about what is the best way to customize the permalink structure.  In any case, finding ways to eliminate unimportant words and numbers from the link is the only way to go.

Off Page SEO

This is, in a nutshell, your linking strategy.  Over the years that I’ve been involved with website delivery, I’ve seen hundreds of offers for SEO automation tools that claim they can drive floods of traffic to your site by exploiting loopholes in search engine algorithms.  I’ve never taken that bait.  As for other tools that offer SEO link building assistance that is white hat, I’m skeptical that these products have delivered the results promised but I do confess to not having tried more than a handful of them.  In my humble opinion, high quality external links are earned through the time-consuming work of posting articles, providing high-quality responses in active forums, and building an online reputation for your site’s authority by offering sincere and relevant blog comments or appearing as a guest blogger on a high ranking site.

Freelancers offer SEO services of link building through article creation, blog commenting and forum posts.  I cannot compete with offshore service provider pricing so this is not a service that I offer.  I educate my customers on link building tactics and sometimes refer work out to colleagues.  There are article spinning tools that allow you to write one good article and spin it multiple ways so you can have unique content up on multiple sites.  As for automating blog comments, I don’t approve spam comments on my sites so why should I expect anyone else to do so?    Forums may seem like old news but there are some very busy forums with high authority on which I’ve been actively pursuing links back to a few of my sites.  Just ensure that you become active in a forum that is related to the main topic of your site if you choose this tactic for link building.

Website Design Performance Notes

If you are using images on your site, upload and reference them with keyword rich names.  Embedding keywords as alt text for your images is a important too because search engines can read it.  More and more frequently, websites are being found through image searches.  Although it makes a site or post more interesting, excessive use of images is discouraged because each call for that image results in another http request which can inhibit performance.

Pages that are designed entirely in flash are … well, flashy.  I truly admire the skills that flash programmers have honed but I have never recommended flash introductions when text and images will deliver the same message.  Opinions may vary but mine is that flash intros and pages are not good for SEO.  Additionally, flash is a client-side application that relies on the technology configuration of the viewer’s computer.  Most non-technical people are not as fastidious about PC maintenance and technology upgrades as I may be and no website design expert can write code to overcome that.  Hire the flash developer, by all means, but keep in mind that your multi-thousand dollar investment for flash programming may be lost on a portion of your potential audience who is frustrated by the fact that they see nothing on the page or it is taking too long to load.

When moving a site from HTML to a content management system, I frequently hear my clients say that the site seems slower.  That’s true.  It is, by comparison.  This has to do with PHP and database access speeds.  Website design architecture and code that works as optimally as possible is my responsibility, so I’m not abdicating entirely.  Recently, when this protest kept coming up, I set up the same site on two other hosting services so they could compare site performance.  It was a proverbial “no brainer” decision.  Their hosting service was the stumbling block.  Both A2 Hosting and JustHost eclipsed Network Solutions for page loads and video performance.

The use of CSS sprites improve website design performance because only one image is referenced.  I do not advocate for the use of image-based menus, however, because their use removes text from the pages and eliminates dynamic addition of navigation links.  This is best explained by example.  One of the features of WordPress is that it automatically adds new category links to menus without having to alter site code.  This translates to ease of use for my customers, once they’ve gotten a handle on the difference between pages, posts and categories.  With the exception of the site that I was recently asked to develop, all of my site navigation code has been pure CSS, clean and simple.  After working with a beautiful theme that used one image for all of its iconography and backgrounds, my custom theme designs will be making much more use of CSS sprites.

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Brand Revitalization

The importance of creating a brand that sticks in the minds of your target market is obvious to people in stable businesses.  When the market paradigm shifts or a part of a product line is discontinued, it has potential to kill the brand.  Campaigns to create and obtain market share for a new brand can be very expensive so leveraging the investment you’ve already made in your branding strategy  by implementing a brand revitalization strategy is economical and important, especially these days.

When Volkswagen introduced themselves in the USA in 1949, only 2 vehicles sold.  By the end of 1955, the manufacturer had firmly established their presence in the United States. I’m not sure if it was the marketing experts or the public who created the “slug a bug” attachment to the vehicle but I certainly remember playing the game with my sister in the back seat of our family car.  I also remember my mother complaining about the odd appearance of the VW Beetle.

 

 

Lately, Volkswagen has been weaving this childhood game into their brand revitalization campaign.  The inference of the new spin, however, is that the vehicle is moving so quickly that the onlooker who has been “slugged” didn’t see it.  This is brilliant!

A brand can be established using imagery, colors, sounds or words.  Most times, it is a combination of some or all of these things. If a brand becomes “stale” or the marketing message has gotten muddied by exterior influences, like competition or economic constraints, it may become necessary to pursue brand revitalization to elevate awareness and increase market share.  Clever tactics for brand revitalization  or stabilization are not accidents.

Whether your business is small or large, there are a series of rules that must be followed steps that must be followed to accomplish the task of brand revitalization.

Refocus

This step begins by evaluating the market that you are pursuing and redefining the purpose and goals of the company and the brand.  Every member of the organization must aspire that message in their work and the communication from the company to the market must consistently reiterate the new goals.

Your message should succinctly state that purpose and be easy for consumers to remember.  Consider the branding strategy that AT&T is currently using for their wireless campaigns.  They want consumers to know that, using their technology, anything is possible.  This is a good message.  It conveys freedom and choice, something that is dear to all our hearts.

Relevance

Since the promise of a brand is what leads to consumer interest and loyalty, it must clearly and accurately convey what consumers can expect to experience every time they choose your product or service and how that is different from the competition.

As a business owner or executive, you must decide where you want to be and how you will get there.  You must understand the criteria your market uses to make purchasing choices in your niche.   You must also have an awareness about why people are choosing your competition’s products or services over yours. If you’ve lost market share due to global factors, your task is to repurpose the brand so you can keep your product or service viable.

Reinvent

This is where action comes into play.  The active components of any market are people, product, price, place and promotion.

Revitalizing a brand must begin with the people INSIDE your organization.  Every member of the company must feel committed to the new branding strategy if you hope to influence future success.

Products and services are tangible evidence of the brand promise.  Reinventing a brand image involves innovation of your products and renovation of services that support it.  This requires investment of resources and  and the talent of your organization.

Consider the variances you have witnessed with everyday use products like skin care, laundry detergent, or toothpaste.  With the rise of economical concerns, laundry products began to promote the fact that you could wash more clothes with less detergent.  Personal care products,like toothpaste, introduced and now promote their ability to make your teeth whiter.  Neutrogena has recently introduced a brand revitalization campaign that reminds women that they trusted the product as teenagers and should continue to use it to keep their skin looking young.  This is very clever…

Pricing is part of this phase of brand revitalization.  If there is a way to re-package your product or service offerings in a way to grab more market share, you will have expanded your revenue stream without having to develop new products.  McDonald’s implemented this strategy with their Dollar Menu items.

Inclusive in this phase of brand revitalization is the promotion aspect.  Your brand’s “face” is its place.  Whether the product resides on a store shelf or online, each time it is found, it must be easily recognized.  Packaging, colors, images, and sounds are all part of what makes your brand image memorable.  Promoting and maintaining the non-verbal aspects of your brand image are important, especially in a global environment where language differs.

Results

It isn’t an obsession, exactly, but measuring results is a topic that you’ll find me referencing consistently.  The entire point of change is to realize progress and, if you are not measuring the results of your brand revitalization campaign, you have no way to see if your efforts are enhancing your bottom line.

If your organization has staff, ensure that they are engaged in the results orientation efforts.  Stress the importance of bringing the brand to life for your market, especially if your employees are “on the front lines” and dealing with your customers individually.

Rebuild Trust

Expanded access to information has heightened consumer awareness, and there are many reasons for them to feel distrustful.  Your brand must acknowledge the social imperatives that drive consumers during their purchase decisions.  Speak to their concerns about ecological matters, privacy concerns, or false claims.  Re-establish their confidence by engaging in local activities and events that are not profit oriented and by being open and honest about all of your business affairs.

Realize Globally

Distill your brand revitalization strategy to a single document that is capable of expanding globally.  Make this resource readily available to your staff and your customers, along with the desired goals of your brand revitalization strategies.  If you have a brick and mortars presence, clientele will see that you are walking your talk by the experience they have as they are interacting with you professionally.

Leadership Required

Creativity is essential, but  the new brand vision and positive momentum is a result of committed leaders who are capable of providing clear direction and maintaining priorities.  The brand message must be consistent, whether you are interacting with the board room,  investors, employees, or consumers.  Trust your instincts, by all means, but remember that you ARE the personification of the brand you seek to revitalize.

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SEO and Watching Paint Dry

We joke about watching paint dry when time seems to move too slowly but, believe it or not, this is an actual role for which people are paid.  Duties include touching the painted item to ensure that it is dry.  What does this have to do with businss and online income?  Read on…

Many people put up pretty websites and expect immediate results.  Very few people get what they desire, unless they have found a particular niche that is in demand and has not already been exploited or they have a well established and responsive list.

As a website consultant, I’ve always recommended beginning with the end in mind.  During initial meetings with any new client, I always inquire about their keywords and SEO strategy.  Of all the hundreds of sites that I’ve built, only one customer actually had a plan in place.  Statistically, those who did not embrace the idea that they needed to identify niche keywords and strategically pursue them experienced less than optimal results.

Once you’ve determined your SEO and linking strategy, you must set about the task of doing the work necessary to accomplish it.  This entails tactics that will build relevance based on keywords through on-site and off-site content.

Perhaps the best known method for getting links to your website is writing articles, adding a link to your signature in a forum, or commenting on blogs.  But, how do you know which sites have importance from Google’s point of view?  Michelle MacPherson recently released a free tool for monitoring top internet properties for your content and links.  I don’t know if it is still available but I’ve used it and it is very helpful.  The caveat is that each site has different rules so make sure you read the fine print when you register and begin to use them.

Lately, there has been a resurgence in using videos to promote your business or opportunity.  This isn’t big news.  Video marketing has been a great way to give voice to your brand for years and new video distribution channels are popping up every day.  Your videos need to go viral, for them to really provide benefit, and if you don’t use good keywords when posting the video, it is just “out there” waiting to be found.  Alternatively, and as I mentioned earlier, you can deploy it to your dedicated and responsive list.

Differentiating yourself online may be the biggest challenge you face.  Most of what I observe is a lot of emulation.  That isn’t a bad idea.  Heck!  It worked for me when I wanted to learn to sing like Joni Mitchell.    Still, emulating what everyone else is doing only makes you like everyone else.  Your market will choose to buy the offer, if it is something they want or need, and they will buy it from a link that appears in early in their search results.  Thus, if you have no SEO strategy, whether or not you’ve done your niche research homework, there will be a lot of people ahead of you in the pile.

Assuming that you’ve are now convinced that learning SEO and keyword research is important to your business success … online or offline … what can you do?  Well, you can begin by learning more about SEO and keyword research from an expert.  Dan Thies has availed a great ebook entitled Fast Start SEO which you can download at this link.  Dan Thies also offers a free membership where people aspiring to learn more, or those who are active in the arena already, can interact and swap ideas.  You can choose to outsource the task to someone who knows what they are doing, if you feel you have more important things to do,  but I imagine it will be hard to sift the wheat from the chaff  when interviewing potential outsourcing partners without any knowledge so learning something about how SEO is done is still advisable.

Building an online brand requires patience, dedication and belief.  Once you have your keywords and SEO strategy in place, all that remains to be done is to implement it.  However, waiting for the benefits you seek can be difficult if you are impatient.  Not much different than watching paint dry, I suppose.  But, if you’ve done your homework and selected a good niche and linking strategy, your results will come.

Tools help.  I use a product called Micro Niche Finder that is easy to understand and provides a lot of data very quickly.  If you don’t want to buy a product, you can also use Google’s free keyword research tool.

If you’d like to know how I can help you, please don’t hesitate to ask.  You can complete the contact form at www.VirtuallyMarj.com and I will certainly respond.  I’d love to learn more about your business and, if it feels right to us both, help you build your online brand!

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