By Molly Albrecht | March 7, 2012

Pinterest helped me get dressed this morning.

As I contemplated whether or not my navy blue polka dot scarf could be paired with my navy, red and white plaid shirt, a thought crossed my mind. I could grab my laptop and jump on Pinterest!

As I typed in the familiar URL (www.pinterest.com), a familiar sense of excitement zipped through my body. The social media website popped onto my screen, displaying my personal page of pinboard collages. I couldn’t help but smile as I entered “plaid shirt polka dot scarf” into the Pinterest search box.

Dozens of images populated on my screen – images of women wearing every plaid and polka dot combination imaginable.

In one photograph, a woman had combined a plaid shirt and a polka dot scarf. For a funky twist on the trend, the scarf was tied in her hair. Perfect! I clicked on the image to pin it to my own page under my “Polka Dot Persuasion” pinboard – where I was collecting images of polka dot fashions.

I tossed my laptop aside, slipped into my flannel shirt, and wrapped the scarf around my head like a headband, tying a cute bow at the side. Thanks to Pinterest, I’d found a new fashion idea and a style that spoke to me.

Anyone who knows me is well aware that Pinterest has been my obsession recently. The site allows users to “pin” images, videos and links to create a virtual bulletin board of ideas. Once an item is pinned, everyone within a user’s network can view and comment on the pin, creating a dialogue of interaction.

This social network has become especially popular among brides who use the site to plan every last detail of their weddings, from hairstyle and dress ideas to potential reception and honeymoon sites. Friends and family members can provide feedback by “liking” the photos and commenting, or adding pins to offer more ideas.

Females ages 25-34 are the primary demographic on Pinterest, and the site is growing rapidly, with 11 million total visits per week.

Currently, Pinterest is an invitation-only site – but anyone who is already on the site can send a friend an invite. Or you can request an invite by signing up at www.pinterest.com. Once you have a Pinterest page, the site will automatically find your Facebook and Twitter friends who are already on Pinterest and connect you with them.

Besides fashion and wedding concepts, Pinterest is also being used for health and beauty ideas, vacation planning, recipe sharing, and gift wish lists. Many also use Pinterest to create boards of people, places and quotes that inspire them.

Artists can use Pinterest to upload a portfolio of their images. Businesses can use Pinterest in the same way. For example, an interior decorating business could link to images of its interior design work, as well as pin other popular home decorating and design trends. Businesses can benefit from having a presence on Pinterest. Not only can the business engage with its followers on Pinterest, but the social media site can provide referral traffic back to the business’ website.

I know that I’ll continue to scour Pinterest for fashion and beauty ideas – and it’s also fun to look at my friends’ collages to see what they like. Pinterest has me pinned – and I’m OK with that.

By Kyle McCabe | February 28, 2012

I still run into people who ask what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, or why it’s necessary or worth the investment. My reply typically involves a house in the desert or a car with no wheels, but I’ve covered that kind of thing here before. Today, let’s go straight to the source.

Yesterday Google announced a large batch of updates to it’s search engine, most of which were applied earlier in the month. Google has stated before they make updates nearly every day, and many of them seem to be simple tweaks and improvements, or part of a greater trial-and-error process.

A few of the announced changes are noteworthy, however.

Fresh Content

Fresh content has always been important to Google, as it is to those of us searching on the web. Quite often our searches relate to something time-sensitive, and seeing old, irrelevant content can be frustrating. Among the updates:

Disabling two old fresh query classifiers. [launch codename “Mango”, project codename “Freshness”] As search evolves and new signals and classifiers are applied to rank search results, sometimes old algorithms get outdated. This improvement disables two old classifiers related to query freshness.

Fresher images. [launch codename “tumeric”] We’ve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.

Improvements to freshness. [launch codename “iotfreshweb”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.

Though light on details, it’s clear to see Google cares about fresh content more than ever, and continues to refine it’s search algorithms to serve up fresh content more quickly more often.

What this means for your SEO strategy? You need more fresh content. Do you update your website often? Do you maintain a blog or news section? Are you using social media consistently? Do you post video content and update the images on your website regularly?

Local Search

Google continues to refine its system to improve local search:

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

It seems Google is working hard to serve up local results (on both a global and national level, as sometimes “local” can mean the country in which you reside) to its users in an organic way. I’m predicting “local optimization” will become less necessary, but there will always be best practices for ranking well in local results. Are you keeping up?

If you aren’t engaged in SEO at all, your website traffic is probably not what it could be. Since more website traffic tends to result in more conversions, some ongoing SEO effort is probably necessary.

By Molly Albrecht | February 23, 2012

You have decided that the time has finally come – the time to build a website for your business or organization.

While most people understand that having a web presence is important, few people realize the time and energy it takes to build a website – and particularly for that website to rise to the top of search engine results through a proven SEO/SEM strategy.

At RSA, we start with extensive keyword research for your individual web project, targeting phrases we anticipate will bring traffic to your website long before you select your domain.

Then, based on our keyword research, we’ll reserve your domain(s) and begin the content development phase. This phase is the work no one will even see – it includes extensive research, writing optimized text, as well as gathering images, videos, news, upcoming events and developing the story which makes your business or organization unique. Incorporating keywords into the content is a significant part of this phase.

We write customized title and meta tags using your unique set of keywords, which also helps to boost your site’s rankings in search results. To complete the process, we index your site with major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

From initial meetings with our hand-picked web team – until the time you receive the fully developed site – the process can take a considerable amount of time. What most clients don’t realize is that a large part of this process depends on the client’s willingness to collaborate with each member of our web team to expedite the site’s development. We’ll ask you to be involved in the process from Day 1, so you’ll need to pay close attention. This is a proven process for creating exceptional websites.

RSA has developed a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) which allows our customers to update their own websites; keep content and images fresh; update news and events; and add new pages – plus RSA can teach you how. And if you choose not to utilize the CMS feature on your website, RSA can help you update and maintain your site.

If you’ve never built a website before, you might also not know what to expect once your site is live. How long will it take for people to find it among a sea of other websites?

When you create your website with RSA, you will receive built-in search engine optimization. But in order to increase the chances that your website is found, it’s important to complement your web presence by integrating social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and/or LinkedIn. We can help you do this.

Our team can also develop a mobile version of your website – which will make your site more easily accessible for those browsing your site with their mobile devices – for a fraction of the original site cost. In part, a mobile website puts your products or services in the palm of your customers’ hands.

The best part about working with us at RSA is we know what we’re doing when it comes to the web – and we do it well.

By Kyle McCabe | December 5, 2011

A First Page of Google in every home!

Common sense strikes back, it seems, as I can’t swish and flick my SEO wand the last couple weeks without hitting someone who’s talking about being on the “first page of Google.”

The first page of Google. Right, yeah seems like common sense, doesn’t it. We all want to be there. “Get on the first page of Google in 30 days.” “First page of Google in two weeks.” “First page of Google 5 minutes ago…just sign here, step right up everyone’s a winner!”

It makes my soul hurt. Here’s the problem with all that: Google doesn’t have a “first page.” Read that one more time.

What people mean when they say “the first page of Google” is page one of search results for a particular query. But that’s one, single search phrase. It’s unique to that phrase. Conclusion: Google has as many first pages as it has search phrases submitted to its system. Where’s the “common” here?

So when someone says “page one of Google” or “the first page of Google,” ask them what specific search phrase they are referring to. Because I guarantee the guy offering to put your wizbang store on top isn’t going to be able to do it for the term “wizbangs.” It’s too general, too competitive. Try “purple wizbang cylinders” and then maybe you have a shot.

But that’s a completely different “first page,” isn’t it?

By Kyle McCabe | November 17, 2011

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Common sense isn’t.” I find this to be true more often than not.

In the case of SEO and keywords, many times it seems “common sense” needs to be ignored or thrown out the window entirely. Every person has their own perspective and their own ways of doing things. Search is no different. Ask 10 people to find a single product online, you’ll probably get 7 different keyword searches.

In fact, according to Google’s internal data at the time of this post, 16% of searches each day have never been submitted before.

So where is the “common” here? We all want to optimize our websites for search engines – that’s how we get found these days. Hell, I have clients telling me this now, so I’d say it’s probably common sense. But what does it mean?

What is optimization?

“Optimization” seems to have a reputation for being some magical voodoo concoction we apply to the web server, or a wand we can wave at our screens and Inquisio Optimus! Heh. Not likely, Potter.

Search engine optimization is a very focused, data-driven effort. Like a thin-beam flashlight in a dark room, you can’t focus everywhere at once. You need to find the most relevant area (keywords) to focus on, and then put them on your website in a way that makes sense.

But you can optimize for only so many keywords before you’ve diversified your website’s subject matter into search obscurity. But how do we know what keywords to focus on? It’s actually very simple.

How to Choose Keywords

There are two main figures to focus on here.

Traffic: we need to determine as best we can how much daily traffic a keyword gets. By this I mean to ask how many searches per day, on average, occur for this particular word or phrase?

Competition: we also need to find out how many other websites are indexed for this phrase. This is our competition.

Google has all this data, and they’ve generously shared it with us. Competition is easy, as you just type the term into the search field and see how many total results are returned. That’s your total competition.

To get an idea of average traffic, we use Google’s Keyword Tool (sign in for best results). So let’s say I do woodworking and I want to sell items on my website. I need people to find my website for woodworking related terms. So let’s see what Google has to say.

Woodworking gets a monthly average of 823,000 searches, so a daily average of about 27000. This is fantastic! So let’s look at the competition: 53,300,000. Oh. Alright, so our chances of being ranked well for this keyword…pretty much zero, unless we have millions to spend.

But I don’t just do “woodworking,” do I? How about “custom woodworking?” Google says 403 average daily searches and about 1,820,000 competitors. That’s pretty good search traffic, but the competition is still really stiff. But I don’t do all kinds of woodworking, I specialize in furniture.

For “custom wood furniture” we have 146 average daily searches with 173,000 competitors. Ah, here we are – this is a good keyword phrase. Decent daily traffic that will be relevant, and not too much competition. I have a good chance of being ranked well for this term, given the right effort and enough time.

But this is just one keyphrase – I’ll need a small list of different keywords and phrases for my site. Better get researching!

Onward, upward

So you see the “common sense” approach doesn’t always work. Just guessing about keywords and optimizing for “woodworking,” would disappoint. A strategy based on research, however, will eliminate the guesswork and afford a much better chance at success. Of course there are more factors than just traffic and competition, but this is the starting point.

So let’s get started.

By Ben Lippert | October 20, 2011

Do you manage a Facebook page for your business? Social media is a free way to stay in contact with your customers. (Most of which probably don’t visit your website very often.)

Facebook provides a great way to get people interacting with your business from a platform they’re already using on a daily basis. There is a method to managing your Facebook business page and we have a few tips that will help build your fan base and elicit interaction on posts.

Post relevant information
Your posts should be industry specific. If you sell computers, an example post could be details on the new Apple iOS 5 operating system. Not all posts need to contain information about your business but they should be applicable.

Poll your audience
Free tools like the “Questions” application allow you to survey people who “like” your page. If the question is a good one people are more likely to contribute and share the question on their own walls for more eyes to see.

Media adds depth
Adding a photo is rather simple and increases the likelihood that people will view your post. If you have several photos from an event or a conference you attended, create an album.

Pat yourself of the back
Use your Facebook page as a PR tool. Tell your fans about accomplishments and customer success stories. Did your business just win an award? Take a picture and put it online for everyone to see. Success instills customer confidence and customer confidence equals more business.

Have a contest
These contests don’t have to be formal. It could be as simple as saying, “the first 10 people to like this post will get a coupon for $5 off their next purchase.” If people know you are prone to offer deals they will be more likely to visit your page without being prompted.

Bonus tip: Try to use proper punctuation and spelling whenever possible. You should also avoid smiley faces and excessive exclamation points. It’s great to be excited but too much schmooze could make you look like a jerk.

By Kyle McCabe | September 22, 2011

Pissed off ghostwriter

Hiring a ghostwriter can be an attractive approach to social media, if you’re a business owner or marketer with little time on your hands to devote to keeping up with social updates on multiple platforms.

There can be some pitfalls to this approach, however – not the least of which is the perceived in-authenticity of the person who has someone else speak for them.

In the case of Mark Davidson, it would appear this morning that he’s been utilizing several ghost writers for his Twitter account, and one of them was just fired. The problem is this person still has access to Davidson’s account, with amusing results. For example:

And all the funny stuff that @markdavidson wrote, that was all me. The other 2 ghostwriters are really boring. Good luck, bro…

This situation taken on first look, the feeling I get (besides the ache in my gut from laughing) is that Davidson has been a little deceptive – or is it apathetic? While I understand the reason Ghostwriters might be used, knowing it still shifts my perspective to one of caution and distrust regarding this particular person. I have to wonder if this is true for all his followers.

Now I’ll admit, this could be a stunt. It could be fake. Maybe his account was hacked and someone is lying. Maybe he’s just having fun (in that case, well played, Mark). There’s no way to know at this point, but the lesson is clear: be careful when hiring ghostwriters – it could cause more problems than it solves.

What do you think?

By Amanda Simpson | September 20, 2011

This is how we feel about your mission statement.

Let’s be frank, here: mission statements are boring. No one reads them, no one cares.

Alright, “no one” is an exaggeration. There’s got to be someone out there who cares, otherwise people would stop publishing mission statements on their websites, right? So, do you have one on your website? It probably sucks.

Look, for most organizations the mission statement is not for the customers. It’s for the employees. It’s for you. It speaks to a vision you should all have and operate from. This keeps things moving smoothly in one direction, ensuring a consistently positive customer experience.

In this case, you wouldn’t put your mission statement on your website. It’s that simple! Frame it and put it in the conference room or break room for internal staff to see.

Admittedly, though – in some cases an organization’s mission statement is relevant to its customers and the public. Maybe that’s you. In that case, follow these guidelines to craft a mission statement that doesn’t suck:

Vague, generalized mission statements suck

Yours should be specific. A mission statement must be tailored to your organization’s specific purpose and goals, otherwise it’s useless. See this example of a completely useless mission statement (hit cancel on the popup).

Puffery in a mission statement sucks

Don’t fill your mission statement with buzz words that are vague and meaningless. Just get to the point and be clear about it. Test it on your employees – if they can’t specifically relate to your mission statement, then your customers can’t be expected to back you. See the above link for an example of “vague.”

Confusing mission statements suck

How many people were in on the development of your mission statement? Too many cooks in the kitchen can make the mission statement confusing. If your organization has a clear goal, make sure that is reflected in the mission statement. Otherwise it’s probably not ready for public viewing.

Boring mission statements…that’s right, they suck

Try asking strangers if your mission statement makes sense. Do they understand what it says? Is it memorable? Does it make them care or get them excited? If not, it needs work. Make sure your mission statement tells a story and sparks an interest among your customers, or it’s useless to you and them.

What do you think mission statements are worth? How do did you craft your mission statement? Share it in the comments!

–

Photo courtesy of gonzalomerat

By Ben Lippert | August 31, 2011

The web-based social media tool, Hootsuite, made some major changes to the freedom users have when updating their Facebook pages.

Hootsuite has always allowed you to schedule messages and post updates with Facebook in the past. However, the new features are like icing on the cake. They include the things you thought about when you would sit at your computer asking, “Why don’t they let me do this?”

Overview

Hootsuite lets you combine all your accounts from different social media platforms in one easy-to-read-and-update dashboard. This lets Joe Schmoe, or “X” company, update their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. accounts from one place, at the same time. It can be a real time-saving tool when you plan on being unavailable or will be out of the office for the day.

Updates

Most of the updates deal directly with Facebook accounts, but some are relevant to others.

For Facebook…

You can now upload photos directly to a group page, make comments and “like” items, which send directly to Facebook.

There is also the addition of location components that give you the choice to include your whereabouts.

A filtering system lets you search for topics within your page or from the rest of the internet.

Benefits

Hoosuite has always been beneficial because of the time it helps save. Now, with even more functionality, the tool lets you control more aspects of your social media sites from inside the application.

Listed above are just the main updates. There are many more technical features that we won’t get into right now.

Conclusion

If you or your business use social media, or want to start using it more effectively, give Hootsuite a try. As with any new technology, it will take some playing around with and getting used to, but you will quickly see the efficiency pay off.

By Kyle McCabe | August 26, 2011

hah

We just got added to the Alltop site, which is awesome. Apparently they’re letting just anyone in these days! I mean, nevermind that it took months of pleading and multiple bribes consisting of first-born children and/or large quantities of alcohol (note: we do not condone the use of children as currency).

In all seriousness, though, this is pretty cool! We’re all pretty excited to be included.

You can look up the RSA Blog in the marketing topic.