Bad Dog Web Design

Everyday users of Facebook may not know of the many Applications available to them.

This is a great way to share Youtube videos using this user friendly Facebook Application http://apps.facebook.com/youtubebox

This is one of the many useful social networking applications on Facebook that I would encourage people to use to drive traffic to their website or blog. 

After allowing the application to run go back to your wall and add the tab to your wall navigation page.

Share and Enjoy!

Google Maps offers every local business the opportunity to rank on Google without the cost of Pay Per Click and a search engine optimization strategy.

The best thing about adding your site information to Google is that it’s absolutely free.

Google Maps listing show up at the top of the page increasing the traffic flow to your site by moving other organic listings down the page somewhat on Google.

The image below shows the results returned for Delaware Web Design.

Google map results

You can sign up here, add your listing (if it’s already listed you can claim it). Enter your company details, including your address, telephone, description, opening hours, payment terms and a few other things. Remember, the details, description and category of your business will be how people find you.
You can also add accompanying relevant images and video that can be hosted on www.youtube.com.

You can enter the categories associated with your business, if Google’s suggestion don’t fit your business then you enter your own.

You’ll have to verify your listing either by mail, txt or phone using a pin number that Google supplies.

That’s all there is to it.  Within a week or so you might be sitting  at the top of Google for a number of different local searches.

I wanted to write this because of a conversation I had with a friend the other day. I told him about a website I was developing for our class reunion and his first response was “let me know how much I need to kick in for the cost of the domain”.

I felt the need to explain that having a domain name is very inexpensive. This can range from $6.00 – $20.00 a year depending on where you buy or should I say “lease” your domain. I say lease because the domain name is paid by your yearly. If you stop paying for the domain it will become available for someone else.

When searching for a perspective domain name I use Net Solutions if I want to look up the availability of multiple websites or url searches. When you find an available domain name start shopping around. I could save a little time and tell you that Godaddy has good prices if you have a discount code. Normally I’ll just go to Google and enter the search “godaddy discount codes”. The number one hit is usually Fat Wallet.

Once you have a domain name you have to decide if you’re a “do it your self” kind of person or find a web designer to design and host your website. If you go the “do it yourself” path you’ll find prices and options will vary. If you want a website that will generate a lot of traffic you will probably want to stay away from a “shared server” and request a “dedicated server”. Most hosting prices are shown as shared server not dedicated servers. Do some research to find out what is best for you shared vs dedicated servers.

If you are going to have someone build your site for you please do some research. Normally a web designer will have a portfolio to look at, contact some clients to find out their satisfaction before going with someone you will regret doing business with.

A web designer will offer package pricing or an hourly rate that can range from $10.00 – $300.00 an hour or a web package starting at $199.99. If you pick a package deal don’t surprised by extra charges when you ask for items or services outside of the package you chose.

That being said, Bad Dog Web Design offers affordable websites  and design for the small to mid size businesses.  You will work directly with the person building your website and will be given a quote for work requested.  If that quote should change due to our customers wanting anything extra outside the initial quote you will be contact immediately so there will be no surprises on your final bill.

If you have any questions this subject please contact me kane@baddogwebdesign.com

If you have a website built chances are you want it to perform to get the best bang your buck.

When putting together content for your website site think about what you’re trying to sell and what you think your customers might be searching for? Junk filler content is exactly that.

Keywords

Probably the most crucial aspect of effective SEO copywriting is the density of your keywords. These are the keywords that you would expect people to type into Google when looking for the particular product or service you offer.

A paragraph should be written to incorporate these key words as early in the text as possible as search engines are more inclined to identify keywords that are placed near the top of a page.

Ideally, about 7% of your website copy should consist of your keywords. Never have more than 10% or search engines will punish your site for ‘spamming’ i.e. simply stuffing your copy with keywords.

Key Phrases

Search engine optimized copy is more likely to achieve good search engine ratings by creating key phrases than by single keywords. Key phrases are strings of words that people typically type into search engines.

A person searching for a ceramic mug or Ceramic Mugs is more likely to type Ceramic Mug i.e. two single key words then type “Ceramic Mug” with quotation marks to create a phrase; but you should cater for those who are savvy enough to specify the phrase.

Enter Ceramic Mugs into Google and it produces about 564,000 results.

However, “Ceramic Mugs” in quotation marks only returns 354,000 results, so by incorporating Ceramic Mugs into a proper sentence (without quotation marks) it is recognized by search engines as a genuine phrase.

The Bottom Line

If your website copy incorporates good SEO practice and is managed by a competent website designer, it will attract more visitors to your site and turn ‘hits’ into real business.

Ultimately, the golden rule for all website copy is that it must read well and that search engine optimization should not detract from the overall marketing message.

You’d be amazed how many folks still don’t understand how important link building is for high ranking in search engines, and in specific for Google. And, what are valid tactics for 2009, what things have changed?

Backlinks, or ‘incoming links’ are a critical part of your website’s ongoing visibility in search engine results. If you couple this with quality incoming links, you’ll likely see benefit (increased traffic) from people clicking as well.

The game has changed over the recent years. Now, you see the fast emergence of the “social web”, and new tactics such as social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, social news has to be learned. Still, reliance on traditional marketing and public relations is a must, more than ever.

To become and continue to be a leading website, more thought and care must go into developing ‘link bait’ – quality content, tools, widgets and similar – that may receive faster/better links from other websites back to you, with less ongoing work – links just keep coming!

Creating content is not enough – you must promote and drive users back to your site from many channels, which can include PPC (Pay Per Click), for example. Running a quick campaign using Paid Search to send visitors to your content bait is one of the creative ways to build awareness and traffic. Think about your target audience before starting any of this.

Things To Remember When Link Building:

1) Rich Keyword Use – in the anchor text. This is the recognized “blue underline” link that points back to you. Get keywords in there!

2) Trust and Authority – incoming links from other significant sites – to send powerful ‘link juice’ and to help elevate your site as another professional, trusted site amongst users and search engines.

3) Natural Link Acquisition – no massive, short and spiked build up of links, no bad link neighborhoods, but a carefully distributed effort amongst varied IP#’s – to show breadth of sites. No black hat approaches or spamming. Also, remember that sites that have more trust and years established online, can get away with more than newer sites.

Manually searching for these authority sites can take time, but professionals do it all the time. Since relevancy is key, try to stick within your marketplace, but don’t over-analyze either, mix it up.

You can submit to directories, use article marketing, and locate blogs for a wider distribution, and I recommend picking a few strategies to start. Don’t try to do too much, too fast.

Some Tools and Ideas:

a. Keyword link search builder – Linksearch – type in a keyword, and it will build Google search strings to speed up the processs.

b. Directories – you should consider Yahoo Directory, Business.com (B2B), Botw.org, Goguides and JoeAnt to start. If you find 20-40 directories of higher quality and related to your niche, that’s good. Try dmoz.org as well, but it will take a while. To find more, use ISEDB.

c. Social Media Sites. The ‘link juice’ is often excluded on sites in this marketplace, but can garner secondary links and certainly visibility and traffic for your brand. Look into Delicious, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn (B2B), Twitter to start.

Quality of links are important, and you should check to make sure links don’t have a “rel=nofollow”, robots.txt exclusion, or javascript redirect code applied. Check also the Google “cache” date – to make sure the page has been recently included, and spidered regularly. As a general guideline – anything page older than 30 days or more is less quality.

These simple tactics and steps should get you thinking about how you must change your link building game for 2009.

Article By Jon Rognerud.