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.

SEO, Keywords, and Common Sense is a post from: RSA Blog

Places

Did you know one in five Google searches is for local information? People of all ages now go online to look for details about local businesses and organizations. That’s why it’s so important for business owners to make sure they manage their web presence – one place to start is your Google Places listing. Are you listed? Have you “claimed” your listing? Updated it with correct phone numbers, addresses, websites, business hours, special deals and promotions, photographs and even videos?

Google creates basic Places pages for many businesses automatically, but the business owner has to “claim” and update it with complete information. Check if you already have a Places page by searching for your business name under Google maps, and clicking on your link when it shows up on the left. If there isn’t a listing for your business, you can create one. If one exists, you’ll have the option to claim it.

When claiming a business, you’ll need to choose a way to verify your listing. Google will either send you a postcard with a PIN number or call you with a PIN number; either way, you will need to type in your unique PIN to verify ownership and complete your Google Places listing.

Your Google Places page comes with a slew of benefits. Not only are the pages free, but they usually appear on the first page of local search results for your business. That’s because Google has given precedence to local searches, and this only helps your overall visibility.

Most importantly, your Google place page is interactive. Your URL, address and phone number are all right there, so a potential customer can go directly to your website, call your business, click on pictures of your business, see your location on a map, and get directions to travel there. All the information is in one place, which makes customers happy – and more likely to visit you.

Is Your Place on Google Places? is a post from: RSA Blog

website optimization...yes, it's just like this

To a web developer, website optimization* is a worthy goal all by itself. There’s a certain pride in managing to create a site with the fewest lines of code possible, only the most essential element ids and classes, a robust CSS file and nary an unnecessary <img> tag to be found. But this isn’t just web geeks trying to earn more points on our geek cards. There are also some practical advantages to website optimization, and choosing a good web designer will make sure you benefit from them.

Website optimization: Page Load Speed

Do you like waiting for a page to load? Does anybody? Several factors can add to page load times, from extra communication with the web server and lots of user-side scripting to plain ‘ol bloated code. But clean code reduces page load speed because the web browser simply has less to construct before showing you the page. If your web developer isn’t concerned with website optimization, they’re slowing this process down unnecessarily.

Furthermore, search engines know that a slow site negatively impact the user’s experience, so they are now grading on site speed and factoring that into their ranking algorithms. Everything you do to help your site load faster has built-in SEO benefits as well. Bonus!

Website optimization: Browser Issues and Maintenance

Ugly old code tends to make the site look different from browser to browser. Website optimization using tried and true coding methods, in my experience, leads to less surprises when it comes to browser testing. What looks beautiful in Firefox doesn’t always look the same in Internet Explorer, so the less opportunity you give IE to get it wrong, the better.

When it’s time to update a site after launch, the whole process slows way down if you have to dig through piles of code just to get to the content. Website optimization using clean, elegant code from the start means less development time, fewer browser issues and less maintenance after launch.

Website optimization: Bandwidth

“Sorry, this site has exceeded it’s bandwidth requirements.” Ewwww, no one likes to see that message. Granted, a few extraneous lines of code here and there are not going to cause major bandwidth issues, but if your site receives high traffic, each kilobyte adds up. Say a page currently weighs in at 60kb, and in reality, it should only come in at 30kb. A 50% savings each and every time the server loads that page is nothing to gloss over.

Website optimization can be accomplished in many ways, but I’ll save you the geektastic details. The important thing to remember is your site performs better the “lighter” and “cleaner” it is (read: optimized), and this is especially true when viewing on mobile devices where connection speeds may be slower and the user is getting charged by the amount of data transferred.

Summary

Not only does an older website probably need a fresh assessment over content and strategy, there’s also a good chance it could use an overhaul under the hood as well. While this may or may not affect how the site looks, it will for sure affect how the site feels. Users will notice improved performance, the server will be less bogged down and as a positive side effect, search engine visibility may improve.

One final note: the cleanest, most elegantly coded site in the world is still at the mercy of the server it sits on. If the web hosting provider isn’t up to par with its equipment, the site will suffer. Be sure to choose hosting carefully.

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Photo courtesy of Axion23

* Although loosely related, website optimization and SEO are different things.

Website optimization – it’s not just for geeks is a post from: RSA Blog

The RSA web development team has been hard at work creating highly optimized, effective websites. We have many exciting sites we’re currently working on:

• City of Huron
• Scotchman Metal Fabricating Solutions
• Dawes County Tourism
• Kelly’s Frozen Yogurt
• CD Hopkins Financial
• Bridges to Buttes By-Way
• Murphy’s Pub and Grill
• Knecht Home Center and Mead Lumber
• RCS Storage
• Lehman Trikes
• Casey Peterson and Associates
• Waste Connections of Denver
• Faith Veterinary Clinic
• Sioux Empire Fair
• Wyoming State Fair

Also, coming very soon to the web, fresh from our team’s creative fingers:

• South Dakota Farmers Union
• Powderhouse Lodge
• Radiant Systems
• International Metals

We are also excited to announce our newest service offering: mobile websites! We’ve been creating mobile sites since early 2010, and would now like to offer it as a standard service. RSA can produce the mobile version of your website, which usually contains fewer graphics and more text, quickly and inexpensively.

We’re currently working on mobile sites for the Ramada Tropics Resort, Des Moines, and Ramada Sioux Falls, having just completed our own mobile website.

We’re always developing new, effective solutions in our creative and interactive departments, and our business is always growing and evolving. We have our clients to thank for that. Keep up the good work, everyone, and thanks for your business!

- Tony

Inside RSA Web Production is a post from: RSA Blog

When the E*TRADE baby made his first appearance (Superbowl 2008), no one imagined he would become one of the most popular figures in advertising to date. Currently, he has over 30,000 Facebook fans and nearly 12,000 Twitter followers (not to mention Youtube views). Etrade.com even devotes an entire page just to display all 25 of the little guy’s commercials.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These days embedding video in websites is commonplace – so why aren’t you doing it? Here are 5 reasons you should.

1. Video is entertaining.

We love video. Look at how much time the average person spends watching TV and movies. Consider that a lot of people who surf the internet instead are watching video there! We love he movement, the activity, seeing and hearing other people. Video is engaging and can be a lot of fun, adding a lot of energy to otherwise still and silent websites.

2. Embedding video is a cost-effective marketing tactic.

Besides being entertaining, web videos are an extremely cost-effective marketing tool. It’s a lesson that many companies are starting to pay attention to—embedding video to attract new business. The process of developing web video is simpler than you think, and its benefits more than outweigh its cost.

Embedding video on the web can reach audiences beyond, and in addition to, television viewers. A company like E*TRADE can make a 30 second television commercial and then post it to YouTube. As the video becomes popular, people can find it online via search, watch it anytime, discuss it with others, share it with friends, embed it to their own blogs, upload it to Facebook, tweet about it, and on and on. The cost to E*TRADE for all this extra exposure? Nothing but a little time.

3. Web video is so easy!

YouTube is one of the easiest ways to embed your video—and it’s free! Businesses get their own channel to display multiple videos, and YouTube servers are designed specifically to host and stream video. Your standard web server isn’t, so you might end up spending a lot more time accommodating that kind of functionality and bandwidth directly on your website.

“If you have several videos on YouTube, they can be embedded as a set on your website,” explains Allan Emerson, designer and web developer at RSA. “Then, if you add a new video to the set on YouTube, it is automatically fed into the player on your website. You can even change the play order to ‘feature’ a different video in the first position if you want.”

4. Video helps with search engine optimization.

Embedding video in a website, especially through YouTube, has another important advantage—it helps search engine optimization (SEO). A video can be “tagged” with certain keywords that can help increases its presence in search results, and therefore bring more traffic to your site.

Further, when peolpe share your video through social media, or link to it from blogs and other websites, you not only get that traffic, but those backlinks to your website as well.

5. Embedding video offers a personal touch.

As our Video Production Manager Jack Sitch says, “Video is such a great addition to any website. It instantly allows you to make more of a personal connection and it can really provide a positive first impression.”

Whether your video is simply a welcome message, a brief introduction, or a specific demonstration of your work or products, it allows viewers to learn about your business. “Even more,” says Jack, “it’s a way to build trust and sincerity. Seeing a face and hearing a voice is the closest thing to making an introduction, as important as that first handshake in person.

Now what?

So how do you make the video in the first place? There are many DIY tools out there, from cheap cameras to free software, and some businesses prefer to go that way. Others use a video production studio or find an advertising agency that produces video for the web. It’s all a matter of what kind of quality you’re willing to publish. After all, the quality of work in any industry can be drastically improved by great tools and long experience.

As it happens, RSA has both. As a full-service marketing and advertising agency, we can handle every aspect of embedding video in a website, from the early planning stages to producing the video and formatting it for the web. RSA can do it all, and for less than you’d think.

“Planning is the most important step in any process,” Jack adds. “After that, we can develop a storyboard and script, line up props and talent, complete ad graphics as necessary, and produce your video in a matter of just days or weeks. The key is to know what goals you want to accomplish and what market the video needs to attract, which is why you want to develop a plan with a marketing professional first. If not RSA, we can sure recommend one for you.”

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5 Ways Embedding Video Helps You is a post from: RSA Blog

Search Engine Marketing... it's not voodoo

There’s still a lot of confusion out there about what a search engine marketing firm does – and doesn’t do – and I think this confusion is holding businesses back or causing people to waste a lot of money on false expectations.

Put simply, search engine marketing (SEM) is just what it says it is: marketing. It’s not search engine sales, or search engine lead generation, or search engine voodoo…it’s just marketing; bringing your products and services to market.

I can bring your product to someone who is searching for it (that’s the market). I can’t force them buy it, or contact you, or stop them from going to a competitor. We can take measures to influence these decisions, such as improving website usability, but SEM by itself does not do this.

This is why it’s so important to look at your web marketing efforts in a wholistic way: SEM works with site design and usability works with copywriting works with social communication. And it should all work together with your offline marketing efforts, as well.

Still confused? Tell me about it in the comments – I’ll answer any question you might have.

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Photo courtesy of me’nthedogs

Search Engine Marketing Voodoo is a post from: RSA Blog

Lego Ninja is serious about content strategy.

In the late ’90s content management systems (CMS) were rare. Those that did exist were either underdeveloped, by today’s standards, or just slightly customizable template systems (RIP Geocities).

Back then we hand-coded websites, for the most part, and clients had very little access to make updates to those websites. The internet gods looked upon this and saw that it was good. So, of course, they changed it.

Enter the CMS

These days you can’t throw a cat without hitting someone who wants full access to change their websites. It’s now common for clients to ask for a CMS-based website, and I can’t blame them. If you’re making a lot of changes to the site, it’s certainly more economical to do it yourself than pay someone else to.

But is it really as  simple as it sounds? That depends on a few things:

1. Do you know HTML? The CMS of today, though relatively well-developed and easy to use, still requires some level of web code knowledge to keep things together. It’s not drag-and-drop, at least not yet. Yes, you can bold text and change the colors – but creating page layouts or typography any more complex than a basic Word document takes a little more doing – usually in the “source” code of the CMS editor.

2. Do you have the time? Having access to make changes to your website might save you a few bucks, but it’s certainly not going to save you any time. Besides having to think about keeping the information on each page current (planning, researching), you also have to actually go in and make the changes yourself, troubleshoot issues that crop up while doing so, and maybe take care of the thousand other things you were already responsible for.

3. Do you have a plan? Remember Legos? I remember Legos. I played with those things until I was 15. They were awesome. I built all kinds of things: spaceships, battleships, castles, planes, trains, and time machines. I’ll admit it – sometimes I didn’t know what I was going to build when I started. Those masterpieces usually ended up looking like Frankenstein’s monster…but with more blocks.

But the ones I planned…they were *art*. And that’s the lesson here. If you don’t have a solid, ongoing plan for your website’s content, there’s no CMS in the world that’s going to make it work. It’ll be a mess, and a huge waste of time for you.

Here’s the truth: no CMS is going to allow someone with no web knowledge and a million other responsibilities to manage their website effectively. That’s not what it’s for. The CMS allows easier access to the content on a website. This does allow those with little knowledge of the web or code to make changes and updates to a website, but it isn’t – and was never meant to be – a substitute for a good content strategy and web developer.

Does your website have a CMS? How’s it working out?

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Photo courtesy of thrig

Content Management System Confusion is a post from: RSA Blog

...since sliced bread.

Q: I get a lot of clients asking me a number of variations of this question: “What’s the Next Big Thing?”

This is good! They’re interested, they’re anxious – they observed the boom of social media and they want to get in on the ground floor of whatever new craze comes along.

A: So here is the answer: it doesn’t matter. The corollary is that no one really knows for sure. Yes, you can speculate all day long – and people have – but the reality is no one knew Twitter was the Next Big Thing until it was.

Well I can tell you the Next Big Thing is data and communication implants, but it’s nothing more than wild speculation. Also, scary.

Among people who are reluctant to get involved in the web, social media, SEM, and mobile marketing, I get the sense they think they’ve already missed the boat, and so they ignore it. They’re waiting around for the Next Big Thing, instead.

Well yeah, you’re missing the boat. But guess what: Das Boot is a ferry – there’s always another chance to hop on and join the party on the other side. Stop waiting around for the Next Big Thing, because if you’re not already involved in This Big Thing, chances are you’ll completely miss the next one.

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Photo courtesy of cogdog

The Next Big Thing is a post from: RSA Blog

Me, in a bad dream last week:  “So, tell me why you want to be on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube?”

The phantom client:  “Because everyone else is.”

Still not using a plan? Time to wake up and smell the bacon.

Me: (Shuddering)

To be fair, we spend a lot of time talking about how important it is for businesses to have a social media presence, and a lot of people are ready to get on board, which makes us really happy. However, when we see a business with a lackluster fan page or a silent Twitter feed, it makes us sad.

Social media is seductive – it’s new, exciting, and a relatively cheap initial investment (in both dollars and manpower), requiring only that you choose a clever screen name and upload the perfect photo.

But then what?

Like everything else on the web, social media is a twisting, turning, ever-transforming thing, and you have to be prepared. It’s like having a baby, but with (hopefully) fewer dirty diapers: you need to nurture it, respond to any messes, and eventually help it grow up and do amazing things.

There are great opportunities to make social media work for you and your business, but it’s important to have a plan. Just like any other type of marketing, know what your ultimate goal is, then figure out who you’re going to talk to, what you’re going to say, and how often you’re going to say it.

Once you have that blueprint in hand, then you can jump in and start posting. Not only will strategy help your business use social media more successfully, but it will actually save tons of time and energy down the road – and keep me from having any more of those dreams.

If your business uses social media, are you operating from a plan, or just flying by the seat of your pants?

Banishing Social Media Nightmares is a post from: RSA Blog

The MacGyver of marketing.

As first-time home buyers, my fiancé and I have discovered that we are woefully unprepared for jobs that require a certain level of handiness. While I have a small (pink) toolkit that has been deemed unfit for manly use, his tools are limited to 1) a hammer, and 2) a Swiss Army knife. Apparently, that little knife is a miracle worker.

In the world of interactive marketing, we have our own pocket-size tool complete with screwdriver and bottle opener, à la social media. Social platforms are serious workhorses that give businesses an opportunity to connect with specific people who might be interested in products or services, learn about them, listen to feedback, stay informed, build the brand, and more.

While a lot of businesses have fully embraced the new frontier, there are still a few hold-outs who want to see concrete proof of the power of social media. For the remaining doubters, I’ve prepared a menu of tasty stats, broken down into fun-size bites:

• There are more than 400 million active users on Facebook. That’s more than the population of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada combined.
• Employees access Facebook more than any other website from work (sorry Robert!).
• Twitter’s 106 million users tweet an average of 55 million times per day – that’s 636 tweets per second.
• FourSquare, a location-based social network that’s barely a year old, recently added 100,000 users in 10 days, and is being hailed as ‘the next Twitter.’
• LinkedIn, a social network for professionals and businesses, has more than 65 million users.
• The most-viewed video on YouTube – Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” – has received more than 186 million plays in only four months.

Basically, if social media isn’t part of your current marketing strategy, you’re missing out on great opportunities to talk directly to potential customers. And if you think South Dakotans aren’t as social savvy as other parts of the U.S., think again:

• 1 in 3 South Dakotans is on Facebook, the highest per-capita usage in the country.

Social platforms are like the Swiss Army knife in your toolbox; they can do all kinds of amazing things, provided you know how to use them (stay tuned for more on that later this week). While there are still jobs that other tools work best for, it might be time to consider adding a combination scissors/wood-saw/fish-scaler to your marketing mix.

Marketing’s Swiss Army knife is a post from: RSA Blog