MH1 Web Design Blog

by Mike Hallaron
MH1 Web Design and Hallaron PR

Why use a domain redirect?

There are many reasons to redirect your website URLs. 

1. If web pages have moved but their old URLs are still saved in customers bookmarks or among the search engine indexes. Without redirection, their visits will lead to a 404 Error Page.
2. If you own several different extensions of your business URL, such as… .com, .net, .biz, etc… set a redirect for each domain to the main website.
3. Perhaps you have different websites for each division of your company. Each division may have its own individual domain name.

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by Ed Rivis, www.leavehteminthedust.com

Some people have lost a tonne of money by incorrectly configuring their Cost per Click, Daily Budget, and myriad of other Google Adwords account settings.

Something as innocuous as a decimal point accidentally typed in the wrong position has cost some advertisers dearly because like the majority they didn’t think to check their account regularly.

Check your Google Adwords account as often as possible. Most business owners I know delegate this task – but even so just a few minutes a day and even the most stressed business owner can monitor their account.

When you’re logged in you can quickly see how much money your current advertising is costing. If it’s more than you’re happy with then it can all be paused at a single click, from which point nobody can see your adverts until you choose to start them running again.

If you fail to check your account daily, if you leave it too long then you may get a nasty shock when you do eventually return to check expenditure! Don’t make that mistake.

What should you check?

1) CPC: How much you pay Google every time someone clicks any of your adverts.

I recommend you check that daily or as often as possible to make sure that (a) it’s been entered correctly – no costly typos and that (b) it’s set at an optimum in terms of positioning your adverts.

2) CTR: How many times your adverts are being clicked.

Click fraud is a nasty hazard if you use Google Adwords.

Basically it means other people – but not your prospective customers or clients – deliberately click your Adwords adverts in an attempt to ratchet your charges.

By monitoring your account regularly you get to see that type of activity sooner rather than later and do something about it.

3) The average position of your text adverts in relation to your competitors.

If your adverts are displaying too high (in say the top 3 positions on the first page of Google) then your almost certainly paying too much per click. (See point 1 above.)

Position numbers around 6 to 8 (ideally 7) has been shown in most cases to be optimum.

By appearing lower down the page you get a much better return on your Google Adwords spend. Less traffic, but more sales per visitor to your site resulting in a much better profit margin.

There are more things to check but those are important metrics to keep an eye on to start with. Google Adwords comes with a report centre where you can automatically schedule to have the above information emailed to you.

Why not create a daily report emailed to you or your delegated staff member so it’s not forgotten?

If your web site needs a fresh injection of heavy traffic (more people who visit) then Google Adwords is a fantastic and cost effective method… but keep a very close eye on it or you could lose your shirt!

Ed Rivis recorded more than 4 hours of live ‘on-screen screen footage’ in his Google Adwords online advertising home-study course. It shows exactly how to create, enhance and optimise ‘killer’ Google Adwords marketing campaigns.
Visit: http://www.GoogleAdWordsVoyeur.com

by Chris Crum, WebProNews

All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like Google and Bing’s deals with Twitter and Facebook. You can see it in Yahoo’s new Twitter tab for news results. You can see it in Google’s Social Search lab. Really you can see it in everyday search results.

A lot of Internet users spend a great deal of their time socializing or using social media sites in one way or another, whether that is to connect with others or simply to obtain information. Information is a key component of social media that often takes a backseat to communication in discussion of social media tools.

The fact of the matter is that more and more people are getting more and more of their information from social sites. That could be in the form of following a news publication on Twitter, following company updates on a blog or a Facebook page, or something as simple as a friend sharing a link.

Given that people are getting more info from social media sites, of course search engines want a piece of that, because their whole reason for existence is naturally to help users find what they are looking for on the web.

So, it stands to reason that if you want people to find information that you are producing, it can help a great deal to publish information and participate in conversations on social media sites. Never mind that users of those particular sites will have access to it. The general public will as well by way of search, regardless of whether or not they are a part of any particular community.

In an interview with WebProNews, Vanessa Fox, who used to work for Google, talked about reasons that businesses should be thinking about social media with regards to search. It’s about visibility. If you are having discussions out there about relevant topics, they could appear in search results not only in real-time search, but further down the road as well.

In other words, if you have a conversation with a peer on Twitter about some topic related to your niche, there is a good chance the resulting tweets of that conversation could appear in search results for that topic on Google, even a year from now, if that tweet happens to be relevant enough. That’s just an example (note: it’s hard to say at this point, just how tweets will impact search once the Google-Twitter deal starts showing results).

There are a variety of ways in which a social campaign can contribute to your performance in search engines, regardless of what these recent deals might produce. Like Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing recently discussed with WebProNews, you can optimize your social content.

The web went blog crazy a few years back. Marketers found out that blogs were great for achieving search engine visibility because of the content and links that can come from them. It’s not that different with social media now. The web has largely moved into a social media-heavy phase, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Search engines obviously know this and care about it.

As Fox says in her interview, it’s getting to the point where more businesses are starting to realize that they need to be involved with social media. However, surveys still frequently suggest that many are reluctant, and even if they do engage to some extent, they are still holding back, and not reaching the potential they could be. You know search is important to marketing on the web. Really, it’s important to marketing, period. If you operate on the web or off, your customers are on still online, as Fox noted. Social media is growing increasingly important to search. And search is only one aspect of online marketing. There are many more benefits to social media than that.http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/20/if-you-care-about-search-you-must-care-about-social-media

The real definition of Search Engine Optimization

In the SEO business, we make a lot of fuss about keywords: A typical, well-engineered search engine campaign begins by defining the keywords you feel will most likely generate traffic to your site. Getting the highest possible rank for 10, 20 or 100 keywords you define in advance becomes the primary goal.

This is not the right approach. The top priority of sound search engine optimization practice should be optimization.

Why? Because a successful search engine campaign will bring you useful traffic from keywords you never consider.

A quick example: One of our clients gave us a list of 30 keywords and said ‘we want a top ten listing on Google for all of these keywords’. Their other goal was to increase site traffic from search engines by at least 50%. We spent several weeks helping them optimize their site’s HTML: We removed javascript-generated navigation and other HTML code that prevented search engines from crawling the entire site. We also helped them write additional site content, and began an ongoing link popularity campaign.

The result? Top 10 rankings in only 10 out of the 30 keywords they requested. Sounds like a failure. But their site traffic from major search engines increased by over 150%. That’s triple the desired result, and all from relevant keywords.

Our client’s traffic increased because their site provided easy access for search engine spiders to all of its content. That meant a far richer content pool for the search engines to use when ranking their site, and far broader, stronger coverage for keywords. They got top-ten rankings for thirty-plus keywords they hadn’t even considered, but were highly relevant traffic generators.

Good keyword mining is important, because it finds the keywords that generate traffic, and helps you cull the non-starters. But you never know where your traffic might come from. So make sure that your web site presents the best possible profile to the spiders or ‘bots’ that Google, Alta Vista and other major search engines send to index and rank your site. Optimize, optimize, optimize:

1. Make sure that all HTML on your site complies with relevant standards. Pay careful attention to the W3C accessibility standards – by bringing your site into line with that document, you can optimize your HTML and offer the best possible site for surfers using assistive devices, in one swoop.

2. Watch your site traffic logs at least as much as you watch your search engine rank. If traffic from search engines and relevant keywords is increasing, but you’re not getting top ranking for the specific keywords you selected, don’t worry. Your campaign is working.

3. One caveat: Don’t completely neglect keywords, and don’t totally ignore search engine rank. You may be missing big potential traffic generators. And you might be able to improve your rank by adding new, relevant content to your site.

I’m not saying SEO professionals and their clients should abandon keyword mining and selection. Make sure you’re targeting the right topics. Then turn your efforts to HTML code optimization. You’ll get better results, and save yourself a lot of frustration.

Ian Lurie is an Internet marketer in Seattle, WA. He started his web design and marketing firm, Portent Interactive, in 1995. Portent offers complete Internet marketing support, including search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, and web design and development. Recent projects include SEO and production for www.princesslodges.com, SEO, marketing strategy, design and production for www.dessy.com, and, on the more whimsical side, frida.filmateria.com. Ian has a law degree from UCLA and has successfully avoided practicing law for almost ten years.

When the housing market tanked late last year with the contraction of US credit markets, custom home builder Philip Ware (www.philiplanehomes.com) quickly found himself in a quandry. Still involved in day-to-day operations of his highend custom home building business just north of Houston, the slow market pushed him into another, unexpected direction.

Ware started another company based on one of his passions, devoting time, sweat and some personal savings. Texas Trikes (www.texastrikes.net) is a niche motorcyle company that converts Harley-Davidsons, Hondas, and other big bikes into shiny, powerful three-wheelers called “Trikes” in the motocycling community. From experience, Ware knew an effective business website that could be found in Google and other search engines would be an integral part of his marketing effort.

“Good business websites have helped us build clientele and attract new customers in the past and the relative cost to print advertising and other media makes it a no-brainer,” explained Ware. “People expect you to have a website today. It’s a fact of doing business. Customers are looking for my trike conversion kits and services online and I need a nice, well-thought out, informative website to bring in these prospects.”

Ware had worked with MH1 Web Design of The Woodlands, Texas on previous home building websites and marketing over the years. So, with a relatively small budget and simple plan in mind, Ware contacted MH1 owner Mike Hallaron to develop a simple, clean brochure-style website. Advanced features were not necessary and could be added down the road.

“Working with MH1 is easy because we work one-on-one and the customer service is very personal and responsive. They quickly took my concept and some initial graphics and developed a simple brochure-style website.” MH1 owner Mike Hallaron helped Ware refine keywords and create effective meta tags and text that would serve the balance between human visitors reading the site and search engine crawlers scouring the Texas Trikes content for ranking purposes. It took some hard work and late hours but the resulting site is simple to navigate, easy to read, and filled with photos of real trike samples.

“Our goal was to produce a website that ranks highly in the search engines under our desired keywords and urged visitors to call or email to learn more. If we can help generate interested leads for our web design customers than we have done our job,” said Hallaron.

The outlook for Texas Trikes is already very bright even though Ware’s hobby-turned business is only a few months old. As far as his new website goes, the proof is in the pudding.

Ware claims, “If you search for “trike conversion dealer” on Google, Yahoo, Ask, or Bing, we are the first listing to come up!  I am getting sales leads from Minnesota, Massachusetts, California, Canada, Ireland, and beyond.  Now I have to turn these pricing requests into sales!”

 That’s what he calls results.