Entries Tagged as 'Search Engine Optimization'

Bloggers Rule the World

Well, maybe that’s not completely true, but read a number of blogs and you might start to see the power they hold. In a lunch lecture I attended yesterday, the speaker, who owns her own PR firm, admitted that bloggers are evil creatures, often causing havoc for her clients. In her examples, the content related to bloggers who obtained privileged information and made speculations or started rumors on their blogs. But therein is why she has a job in the first place.

If you are concerned about your company’s information leaking to the public, you should be sure to guard it and have complete trust in those who share such information. On the other hand, using your blog to purposefully share information to the public in a timely manner can be a very proactive measure.

At the recent BlogSavannah UnCon, speaker Josh Hallett spoke about the problem Sony had by creating a fake blog where two of its team members pretended to be game players that started a blog to convince family and friends to give them a new PSP for Christmas. The public quickly caught on and called them out, as did the media. Sony came back with a revamped blog, under Hallett’s direction, which now provides communication directly between Sony and its PlayStation fans.

But what is it about bloggers that make them so evil? Well, maybe evil isn’t the right word… perhaps they simply require that companies be more accountable for their actions. Information via the Internet is viral, and while you may not always see comments on a specific blog, you can bet people have read them. (Feel free to review my post from November about Spirit Airlines - the ultimate “OOPS” case study.)

So what are people saying about you? Make Google your best friend. Type in your company name and take a look. Spend some time on Technorati. If something strikes you, see what you could do that might make the situation better. Then take a look at what people are saying about your competition. Those are probably issues to you as well. Don’t start your blog to be a PR response - it needs to be a conversation with your customers, and they will be able to immediately notice if you have someone else writing or some ulterior purposes behind your posts.

Tags: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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Social Networking Sites Are Bridging the Generation Gap

I can remember when my mom and dad and their friends would call me for computer help on a regular basis. My favorite story was my junior year of college when my mom called me to come home to Tybee because the sound was broken. I drove over an hour from my apartment in Statesboro just to turn on the speaker. But they have evolved and now each have their own laptop. Mom doesn’t call me as much for help, but I still wish I could get her to give up AOL.

My parents aren’t the only Internet users on Social Security (but let’s hope Mom’s not reading this blog today or I’m in trouble for revealing her age). This afternoon, as I sat down to check out my favorite sites, I found I had a new friend request on my MySpace page, with a message: “Hi Lisa. I know your mom and dad from the Shrine.” Yes, MySpace has managed to rake in other generations into their world. In fact, an article from late 2006 revealed that more than half of MySpace users are over 35, and about 11% were over 55.

But MySpace isn’t the only area of the net attracting Golden Agers. Photosharing websites such as Flickr and Picasa are becoming favorites, allowing travelers to share in the adventures from the road. While my parents were traveling this winter, I received a weekly email to their photo galleries to show off the fun they were having in the Florida Keys and Everglades.

So as more web-based social networking sites develop and evolve, we can expect the 55+ demographics to increase. Now, if I could just get my aunt to add Snopes.com to her favorite sites to visit, maybe I could reduce my inbox waste by 50%.

Tags: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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Oh, the Places You’ll Go When Sitemaps are Your Guide

Growing up, many of us learned lessons from our readings of Dr. Seuss. But who knew we could take those lessons online?

“You can steer yourself
any direction you choose…
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

A sitemap can be just as good guidance as the words of Dr. Seuss. When a site has so many pages and links, it is often hard for the visitor to find information or know exactly where to look. When we redesigned Coastal Pet Rescue last year, we threw out their navigation that had drop down menus. Instead, we created six category pages with new links and information on each of those pages to guide visitors to the links they needed.

With more than 100 pages of information, how could visitors be expected to see everything or even remember where they found information on a previous visit? So we created a special sitemap page just for Coastal Pet Rescue’s visitors. Here, we have categorized links to every page on the site we want the visitors to see. We place a link to the site map in the top of the design that is on every page of the site to give visitors an as easy way as possible to navigate our website.

As Coastal Pet Rescue is on TV and in the media quite a bit, people often hear tidbits of information and go to the website to learn more. For that reason, we implemented a search box both on their home page and on their sitemap page. The search box is customized to search all of their websites:

The idea is to make information as accessible to your visitors as possible. If there is information buried on your website that you want people to be able to see, then make sure you have a link to it from the home page.

But using a sitemap isn’t just good for your visitors, it’s also a great way to help search engines index the pages on your site. Search engines like text links, and having a page on your site that has text linking to all your other pages only helps. So even if you don’t want it for your visitors, consider creating a simple one and having it linked at the very bottom of your page. After all, bringing traffic to your site is a good thing, so the spiders will reward you for making their job easier.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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