Current Issue | Newsletter Archive
Welcome to our 3rd E-Newsletter
Dear Subscriber,
Happy 2009!
Wow, it's 2009 already. Did you get everything accomplished in 2008 for your business? Don't worry, we're here to help.
We'll show you some really interesting and effective ways to grow your
business using the web as well as more traditional marketing and advertising
techniques.
We hope you enjoy our Third Issue. If there's anything you'd like to see
covered in future issues, drop us a line at cc@sonoradesignworks.com.
Regards,
Jim & Heidi Somers
Sonora DesignWorks
All the news that's fit to email!
Keeping in touch with your current clients is the number one way to
generate new business. And the easiest way to do this is by sending out
a periodic newsletter via email.
So, here are the steps:
- Sign up for Constant Contact (see the link below)
- Choose a template for your newsletter
- Add your logo and your business information
- Create a few brief articles that link back to your web site
- Add or import your client's email addresses and names
- Launch your first e-newsletter!
It's that easy! Well, almost...
The tough part is deciding what to put in the newsletter. The articles need to be short, to the point, and motivate the client to contact you to do more business.
If you need help, just give us a call. We can help you to:
- Create a custom template for your newsletter that matches the look of your web site
- Write compelling content that motivates clients to contact you
- Create landing pages for your web site that are linked to from the newsletter
- Design custom graphics for your newsletter
- Help you to use your newsletter to drive clients to your web site
Use Constant Contact to:
- Communicate with your most important assets-your current customers
- Email Marketing makes it quick, easy and affordable to connect with your customers
- Email Marketing: Build a better business through customer loyalty and referrals
- Build customer loyalty quickly and affordably with Email Marketing
Have you updated your web site lately?
Keeping your site fresh with new content is important. It's also a great way to keep the search engines happy! Keep these things in mind when reviewing your site:
- When did you last update the content on your site?
- Have you updated photo galleries with new images?
- Does you site have the newest version of your company logo on it?
- Do you have new or updated products or services to feature?
- Give us a call for more ideas on how to keep your site FRESH! 978-388-1716
A Recipe for Tasty Web Traffic.
a.k.a. SEO
The Internet is in essence the world’s largest library and search engines are the card catalogs. The main difference is that search engines will catalog much more information than Title, Author and Subject. Search engines are card catalogs that actually “read” entire books, in order to give you a better idea if the information they contain is exactly what you are searching for.
In other words, a card catalog can help you find a cookbook. A search engine can help you find a cookbook that contains a recipe for gluten-free apple pie crust. To be able to hold that type of information, a card catalog would take up the entire library.
Search engines do not want websites to attempt to manipulate their search results. They have gone to great pains to develop a system to determine which web pages should be included for particular search results, and therefore it’s understandable why they would take manipulation so seriously. Would you want someone you don’t know attempting to manipulate your website or make your visitors see content you didn’t intend them to see? It is rather ironic that the Google webmaster guidelines instruct us to “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines” because Google offers many tools whose primary use is to manipulate their search results. Perhaps Google uses these tools to keep better track of those who try to manipulate them. Chew on that for a little while…
That said, there are many factors that can greatly affect your position in search engines.
What we do
- Error-free, table-less code
Less code to content ratios mean more unique pages, which increase their value. No mistakes mean search engines can scan all of your content and pages.
- <div> <h1> <h2> <p> <ul> <li>
<span> & ‘alt’ tags
No clunky tables in your code, which means much faster download time, more consistency from page to page and more efficient updates.
- Meta-tags
Meta-tags are generally overrated, however unique relevant meta-tags can be just enough to give you an advantage. A major benefit to meta-tags is that, when used properly, they make your pages more unique, which increase their value. ‘Alt tags’ help search engines follow graphical navigation menus. We specialize in optimizing meta-tags and alt tags for database driven websites and shopping carts.
- Content & tools development
What sites do you trust? Why? What sites do you visit on a regular basis? Why? Applying the answers to these two ‘Why’ questions to your own website will make it more clear to you what you might do to attract customers.
Simply saying that you’re the best, newest or cheapest isn’t going to sell anything. You have to gain trust and give people a reason to return to your site in the future. That means you need to do more than tell about your company history, your products and services, your contact information, and an annoying Flash intro. Every business does at least those things, so no one is special for doing so.
For an example, we will consider a real estate brokerage website. Here are some content and tools that would attract customers and search engines alike: Mortgage rate calculators, moving tips, detailed community information, legal documents and government forms, tips for people trying to secure a loan, property listings delivered to email or cell phone, monthly newsletter, links to service providers such as multiple mortgage companies, appraisers, real estate lawyers, local utilities, and more.
- Link building campaigns
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORATANT FACTOR TO YOUR SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS.
Links to your site are like votes for your site. The more votes you have, the higher you will rank. The text that links to your site is the text that particular vote helps you show up on search engines for. Google will also scan your site more often if you have more incoming links. How do you get more incoming links? See the previous section called Content & tools development.
- Traffic & data analysis
In order to benchmark your current search engine rank we will need some data to evaluate. This data comes in the form of traffic reports and search engine ranking reports. These reports tell us how many people visit your site, where they come from and what they do when they are on your site. This data helps us understand where your site currently stands, what we need to do to improve your rankings, and what is or isn’t working.
What we don’t do
- Launch unfinished pages or sites
Coming soon or under construction messages only create more duplicate content on your site, which can keep it from ranking on search engines. If you don’t have content for a page, don’t have it in your site. You can always add a new page in when you have content for one.
- “Borrow” copy or other content from outside sources.
Since search engines reward unique content with higher search engine rankings, it makes no sense to copy and alter content from another site. How would you feel if you worked hard to write something and some other site used it as if they wrote it?
- Utilize black hat techniques
Hidden content and text, doorway pages and other deceptive tactics can get you banned from search engines. Therefore, we don’t work on websites that utilize these ‘black hat’ tactics.
- Say we’ll make you number 1
Don’t believe anyone who promises they will make your site number one on search engines. If they won’t back that up with a money back guarantee, they are either running a scam or are flat out lying…unless of course their name is Mr. Yahoo Google.
Recipe for SEO Success
Clear, pre-defined short and long term goals
Knowledge from relevant data
Error-free table-less coded website
Unique content and tools
Incoming links
The patience of a Buddhist monk
Directions
Using knowledge gleaned from data, combine goals, content and tools.
Place on the proverbial ‘back burner’ to cook.
Cook time
30 to 90 days. Cooking time allows incoming links to develop, and varies
from site to site. The wait may require the patience of a Buddhist monk.
Yields
Many incoming links, traffic from those links, more frequent scanning
from search engines, higher search engine positioning, more traffic
from search engines, higher Google PageRank and more data to use for
future search engine optimization.
Next Month...
Great Design! 
Now that you have thousands of people visiting your web site, what are
they seeing?
Does you site have fantastic content but looks like it was designed by
a second grader? (apologies to all the talented 7 year olds)
We'll show you what good design can do for your branding, overall appeal,
and how it can make or break your business.
Stay tuned...
Does your Website need an Extreme Makeover?
Is your website not performing and creating new sales but you're not sure why? Are you still using the same site your cousin did for you in college? Or worse yet, did you do it yourself using a free program? These days, a website is the first impression prospective buyers have of your business - so it pays to have a good one. Now you can get a FREE analysis of your current site - and how you can make it better - from Sonora DesignWorks.
