eMarketSouth Central

Ok, so you have a fabulous website (because we made it for you) and you are getting a lot of traffic. But how well are you letting your potential customers get to know you?

A growing trend on websites is to include profiles of key executives and personnel. This allows your potential customer to put a face with a name when they call or email you. It also may help you to connect with a customer that may be on the fence about choosing you over a competitor. For example, if you include your alma mater in your profile, you may attract former classmates or other alumni. (I should caution sports fanatics about listing their favorite teams: nothing sparks more passion and controversy than sports rivals.)

Your profile can be as long or as short as you want, but the idea is to put yourself out there for the visitors. You also have an added bonus: profiles may help your SEO. That’s right. Adding content to your site is always a good thing, and think of all the keywords your profile may contain, such as schools, business associations, certifications, trainings, awards, etc.

Recently, Coastal Pet Rescue re-vamped their Leadership Team page to allow each team member to have their own page with biography and Curriculum Vitae. Visitors now see the list of each team member, their title and job description and may click a link to learn more about that individual. CPR chose to do this to build credibility for the organization and demonstrate the diverse skills and talents of the leadership team.

Now that you’ve decided you want a profile, what do you do next? I highly recommend making an outline and bullet points. Use titles such as education, certifications and training, awards, and family. Once you have your outline, then you can begin to put information together. Remember to write concisely and try to avoid run on sentences. And whatever you do, don’t forget the spelling and grammar checks. Have someone proof read your profiles before making them public. After all, you want to make the best impression possible to your potential clients.

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It seems like we just got through wondering about Fay, now we have Hanna, Ike and Josephine out in the Atlantic. It doesn’t look like we’ll have a boring September, to say the least.

Chatham Emergency Management Agency has started issuing releases regarding Hurricane Hanna and her impact on coastal Georgia. At this time, CEMA is in Operating Condition (OPCON) 4, the Monitoring Phase as defined by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. OPCON 4 is the first stage in advanced readiness. What this means to the rest of us is to start taking inventory of our hurricane storm plans. Some actions you can take:

• Monitor local media for updates
• Make sure your gas tank is full
• Secure important documents in a water-proof container and have in one place
• Take photos and videos of your home, posessions, and anything else you might need for insurance purposes
• Check that you have plenty of water and non-perishable food
• Check and replenish first aid supplies
• Make sure you have immediate access to flashlights and battery-powered radio and extra batteries
• Secure outdoor lawn furniture and loose objects
• Have cash on hand to use if power goes out

I spent most of yesterday making arrangements to move pets from our rescue further inland. I can’t tell you how difficult that was to try and get boarding set up. One kennel said no, another told us they would call us Wednesday afternoon if they hadn’t already booked everything else. As a rescue reliant upon foster homes, I don’t have the luxury of waiting until an hour or two before a storm hits to make decisions. I have to account for our pets so our foster parents can take care of their own families.

Presently, I am anticipating riding out the storm unless given an order to leave. I have my gas tank filled, extra cash on hand, checked my first aid supplies, bought extra bags of dog food and gallons of water yesterday, stocked up on non-perishable food for myself, and bought extra batteries for my flashlights. I even went and purchased an American Red Cross AM/FM/Weather radio that also has a cell phone charger to make things a little easier when power goes out. Now all that’s left for me to do is to teach at least one of the dogs to play cards so we have something to do.

In all honesty, we too often take for granted a storm is going to miss us. With hurricanes, their paths are a best guess by meteorologists and their computers, and always just that: a guess. Mother Nature has been known to throw curve balls from time to time (remember the St. Patrick’s blackout?), so it is better to prepare now than fall victim to her whims later.

For information on how you can prepare, visit our hurricane and evacuation information site, CoastalStorms.com.

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While this is not a new term, it certainly is hard for many people to get a grasp on an actual definition. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but what is it exactly?

SEO essentially means making your site search engine-friendly. It sounds simple, but actually involves quite a bit of legwork. Good SEO means your site not only reads well to the engines, but also your customers.

Some basic components of SEO include:

• Domain Name
• Title Tags
• Meta Tags (description and keywords)
• Keyword-rich content
• Regularly-updated content
• Sitemaps
• Links from other websites to yours

With SEO, content is the key. Think about your product and the types of phrases your customers might use if they were searching for a product similar to yours. Make sure these phrases appear throughout your page. Additionally, make sure your website is updated regularly so engines will see changes.

SEO can be a very daunting task. On average, you should spend at least an hour a day checking out your website, updating content, checking your searches and traffic. We understand this can be very time consuming, so eMarketSouth created an SEO package just for our customers. Email us or give us a call today at 912-356-1140 to find out how we can help boost your site’s SEO.

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