Vizion Interactive http://www.vizioninteractive.com Search Engine Optimization Company Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:43:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 In SEO, A Picture Is Not Always Worth A Thousand Words http://www.vizioninteractive.com/in-seo-a-picture-is-not-always-worth-a-thousand-words/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/in-seo-a-picture-is-not-always-worth-a-thousand-words/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:20:13 +0000 Josh McCoy http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2419 I thought this post was necessary as I have had at least two clients this week come to me with the idea of ditching some of their text content in favor of a more image-based site. The problem is that it isn’t just this week, the insanity of the holidays or even the phase of the moon. I often hear clients mention that they would like to offer a more “user-friendly” site with many more images instead of provided the recommended amount of body copy, preferably 250+ on the homepage and 150+ on internal pages.

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I thought this post was necessary as I have had at least two clients this week come to me with the idea of ditching some of their text content in favor of a more image-based site. The problem is that it isn’t just this week, the insanity of the holidays or even the phase of the moon. I often hear clients mention that they would like to offer a more “user-friendly” site with many more images instead of provided the recommended amount of body copy, preferably 250+ on the homepage and 150+ on internal pages.
Usually once I have heard this remark to drop the copy, and after my blood pressure has come back down to normal, I reply with the comment, “sure, if a picture sells your product better that information on how your product or service is a solution for a site visitor then lets do it”. Ok, so maybe I don’t say that, but it would be pretty relevant for me to do so. The fact of the matter is, the site visitors viewing these organic landing pages are arriving due to your current ranking, something likely more attributed to your content more so than your images.
As the world turns and the average searchers attention span continues to dwindle it is no wonder that companies are worried about spawning interest in site visitors and avoiding an increase in bounce rates. This is what I consider “fighting the good fight”. After all, in this situation you are receiving traffic, apparently qualified traffic from organic search. Now you have to assess how they digest your content.
Within effective SEO, you will also consider usability… and then optimize that too! I could make this post ridiculously long with an exhaustive look at eye-tracking, call to action placement, A/B testing, etc. but we will keep it simple. Yes, us SEO’s do not want to give our text content up, but images are absolutely fine. In fact, image search has only become more important with the advancements in universal search results. For any webmaster or company begging to abandon their copy, you must create a perfect mix of both copy and images to maximize the conversion potential of targeted site pages.
To make sure both the SEO and the image-lover are happy the following is an example of how to make an effective text and image duo.
-Provide at least one paragraph of copy featuring the most important keywords relevant to the site page. Find or create another keyword relevant page on site and link to the page internally. A link should be placed within the first paragraph to this page with anchor text which is keyword relevant to the pages overall theme as well as to the adjacent images file-name and alternative tag.
-Include an image, file-named relevant to the keyword targets, ALT-tagged similarly as well.
-Additional body copy should be placed to reach an advised amount of internal page body copy. Continue to reinforce your keyword theme. This only helps the ability for the image to rank within image search as the image is surrounded with keyword relevant copy and link text.
-Repeat the alternation of copy and images. The important concept for SEO is to surround images with relevant keyword-rich body copy, practice proper image SEO best practices, but to also provide images throughout the copy to visitors to visually inform them of your products or services as well and entice interest.
-Key takeaways here are that you don’t want to have all your images at the top of the page as this may push content below the fold away from content hungry visitors and copy further away from crawling search engines. You also don’t want your images at the bottom of the page. This does not allow the images to gain the SEO value of being surrounding by keyword relevant copy and internal links, and if site users went through all the copy and are now down to the images, what was the point of including the images anyway?
Images and copy can live together, and a perfect mix work better than no images at all. However, be sure that you don’t sacrifice copy for images, chances are your visitors will be left yearning for a textual explanation of what you were visually trying to say.


I thought this post was necessary as I have had at least two clients this week come to me with the idea of ditching some of their text content in favor of a more image-based site. The problem is that it isn’t just this week, the insanity of the holidays or even the phase of the moon. I often hear clients mention that they would like to offer a more “user-friendly” site with many more images instead of providing the recommended amount of body copy, preferably 250+ on the homepage and 150+ on internal pages.

Body-Copy-SEOUsually once I have heard this remark to drop the copy, and after my blood pressure has come back down to normal, I reply with the comment, “sure, if a picture sells your product better that information on how your product or service is a solution for a site visitor then lets do it”. Ok, so maybe I don’t say that, but it would be pretty relevant for me to do so. The fact of the matter is, the site visitors viewing these organic landing pages are arriving due to your current ranking, something likely more attributed to your content more so than your images.

As the world turns and the average searchers attention span continues to dwindle it is no wonder that companies are worried about spawning interest in site visitors and avoiding an increase in bounce rates. This is what I consider “fighting the good fight”. After all, in this situation you are receiving traffic, apparently qualified traffic from organic search. Now you have to assess how they digest your content.

Within effective SEO, you will also consider usability… and then optimize that too! I could make this post ridiculously long with an exhaustive look at eye-tracking, call to action placement, A/B testing, etc. but we will keep it simple. Yes, us SEO’s do not want to give our text content up, but images are absolutely fine. In fact, image search has only become more important with the advancements in universal search results. For any webmaster or company begging to abandon their copy, you must create a perfect mix of both copy and images to maximize the conversion potential of targeted site pages.

how-to-use-copy

To make sure both the SEO and the image-lover are happy the following is an example of how to make an effective text and image duo.

-Provide at least one paragraph of copy featuring the most important keywords relevant to the site page. Find or create another keyword relevant page on site and link to the page internally. A link should be placed within the first paragraph to this page with anchor text which is keyword relevant to the pages overall theme as well as to the adjacent images file-name and alternative tag.

-Include an image, file-named relevant to the keyword targets, ALT-tagged similarly as well.

-Additional body copy should be placed to reach an advised amount of internal page body copy. Continue to reinforce your keyword theme. This only helps the ability for the image to rank within image search as the image is surrounded with keyword relevant copy and link text.

-Repeat the alternation of copy and images. The important concept for SEO is to surround images with relevant keyword-rich body copy, practice proper image SEO best practices, but to also provide images throughout the copy to visitors to visually inform them of your products or services as well and entice interest.

-Key takeaways here are that you don’t want to have all your images at the top of the page as this may push content below the fold away from content hungry visitors and copy further away from crawling search engines. You also don’t want your images at the bottom of the page. This does not allow the images to gain the SEO value of being surrounding by keyword relevant copy and internal links, and if site users went through all the copy and are now down to the images, what was the point of including the images anyway?

Images and copy can live together, and a perfect mix work better than no images at all. However, be sure that you don’t sacrifice copy for images, chances are your visitors will be left yearning for a textual explanation of what you were visually trying to say.

Still looking for something more? Explore our SEO opportunities, image and creative services or just get in touch with us!



]]> 0 Adwords Quality Score Determined- Even Before Activating the Keywords! http://www.vizioninteractive.com/adwords-quality-score-determined-even-before-activating-the-keywords/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/adwords-quality-score-determined-even-before-activating-the-keywords/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:34:42 +0000 John Carruthers http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2409 Have you ever gone through all the phases of setup with your Google campaigns- geo, bid amounts, daily budgets, etc. and then come to find that your Quality Score has already been assigned? This isn’t the way I originally pictured the Quality Score to work. It should gather data relative to your specific campaign/ adgroup/ keywords/ landing page and then assign a score, right?

One factor that I left out above is the CTR (click-through rate), as that’s one of the most important factors when Google is determining the Quality Score. This led to my curiousity as to why my leywords were assigned a Quality Score, even though they haven’t recieved any impressions yet. Here’s the key, and here’s how Google assigns a Quality Score (even before keyword activation). Historical data. Other advertisers have used these keywords before, and Google is able to take an estimate from their performance and assign it a ’starting score’. Being that each account performs differently and according to their own dynamics, chances are that you will not stick with this initial scoring. It is simply the first step to your Quality Score. So, lets say that you load your keywords and come to find that your starting [...]]]> Have you ever gone through all the phases of setup with your Google campaigns- geo, bid amounts, daily budgets, etc. and then come to find that your Quality Score has already been assigned? This isn’t the way I originally pictured the Quality Score to work. It should gather data relative to your specific campaign/ adgroup/ keywords/ landing page and then assign a score, right?

One factor that I left out above is the CTR (click-through rate), as that’s one of the most important factors when Google is determining the Quality Score. This led to my curiousity as to why my leywords were assigned a Quality Score, even though they haven’t recieved any impressions yet.
Here’s the key, and here’s how Google assigns a Quality Score (even before keyword activation). Historical data. Other advertisers have used these keywords before, and Google is able to take an estimate from their performance and assign it a ’starting score’. Being that each account performs differently and according to their own dynamics, chances are that you will not stick with this initial scoring. It is simply the first step to your Quality Score.
So, lets say that you load your keywords and come to find that your starting Quality Scores are pretty low. This can be useful information for you. Google is indicating that these keywords have been used in the past, and there wasn’t much success with them. Of course, this doesn’t mean to ’scrap’ them, it simply means to keep an eye on them. On the other hand, if you see that your keywords are starting off with high scoring, Google is indicating that these keywords have had good performance in the past. Focus on these to perform well, and you can even go so far as to seperate them into their own ad groups. It’s always a good idea to get your campaigns off to the best start possible!

One factor that I left out above is the CTR (click-through rate), as that’s one of the most important factors when Google is determining the Quality Score. This led to my curiosity as to why my keywords were assigned a Quality Score, even though they haven’t received any impressions yet.
Blog

Here’s the key, and here’s how Google assigns a Quality Score (even before keyword activation). Historical data. Other advertisers have used these keywords before, and Google is able to take an estimate from their performance and assign it a ’starting score’. Being that each account performs differently and according to their own dynamics, it’s likely that you will not stick with this initial scoring. It is simply the first step to your Quality Score.

So, lets say that you load your keywords and come to find that your starting Quality Scores are pretty low. This can be useful information for you. Google is indicating that these keywords have been used in the past, and there wasn’t much success with them. Of course, this doesn’t mean to ’scrap’ them, it simply means to keep an eye on them. On the other hand, if you see that your keywords are starting off with high scoring, Google is indicating that these keywords have had good performance in the past. Focus on these to perform well, and you can even go so far as to separate them into their own ad groups. It’s always a good idea to get your campaigns off to the best start possible!



]]> 2 How to Improve Your Company’s Image With Online Reputation Management http://www.vizioninteractive.com/how-to-improve-your-companys-image-with-online-reputation-management/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/how-to-improve-your-companys-image-with-online-reputation-management/#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:16:15 +0000 Zach Browne http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2401 by Zach Browne

The Problem

Online reputation management becomes vital when a potential customer searches for your company on a search engine only to find websites with negative information.  There are many scenarios that would cause this to happen but it typically happens on review sites like Yelp, Epinion or Angie’s List.  It could also be on someone’s personal blog or forum or there could even be an entire site dedicated to your demise like PayPalSucks.com.  Either way it’s not good and can be very damaging and financially devastating to your organization.  I know without a shadow of a doubt when I have a bad experience I tell a lot more people then when I have a good one.  I’m sure it goes the same statistically across the board.  The problem with a website telling about a bad experience is that it reaches thousands and thousands of people.  This can potentially cause one little issue that may not have been handled properly make a company look like crooks.

With that being said, most businesses don’t have any problem getting their corporate website to the number one position on Bing, Google, and Yahoo.  The problem comes about when negative content dominates the [...]]]> by Zach Browne

The Problem

Online reputation management becomes vital when a potential customer searches for your company on a search engine only to find websites with negative information.  There are many scenarios that would cause this to happen but it typically happens on review sites like Yelp, Epinion or Angie’s List.  It could also be on someone’s personal blog or forum or there could even be an entire site dedicated to your demise like PayPalSucks.com.  Either way it’s not good and can be very damaging and financially devastating to your organization.  I know without a shadow of a doubt when I have a bad experience I tell a lot more people then when I have a good one.  I’m sure it goes the same statistically across the board.  The problem with a website telling about a bad experience is that it reaches thousands and thousands of people.  This can potentially cause one little issue that may not have been handled properly make a company look like crooks.

With that being said, most businesses don’t have any problem getting their corporate website to the number one position on Bing, Google, and Yahoo.  The problem comes about when negative content dominates the rest of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) as well.  Even just showing up in one or two positions anywhere on the page can be harmful.  In these types of situations businesses require online reputation management to salvage their good name, increase traffic and visibility of their brand.

I’m not going to tell you this is going to be easy.  It’s going to take some learning, time, and patience for it to happen, but it’s much better than the alternative.  Imagine the search results page as a piece of virtual real estate your company needs to acquire.  It’s going to take a lot of planning and time to develop your real estate.  But if you don’t own your real estate, it will own you.

The Solution

Build up your company’s presence on the SERPs in a positive manner while pushing the negative content below the fold, or the part of the page not seen when the results are returned in your browser.  There are many ways to accomplish this but I believe the best way is by using social media, one page blog posts, and establishing relationships with press contacts.

The Strategy

Your strategy should be to reduce all negative results so they no longer show up on the top of the search engine results or the first page at all!

Here are the steps to accomplish this goal.

1.    Create and promote your company’s profile on several authoritative social media websites.
2.    Create a Wikipedia entry for your business.
3.    Create several one page blog posts for your company’s products and services (similar to PPC landing pages).
4.    Contact the press; bloggers, reporters, or journalists that could potentially write positive articles or stories about your organization.
5.    Promote your low ranked results on the SERPs by creating links to them from the social media profile pages created in step 1 & interlinking your social profiles, one page blog posts, and articles written about your company.

Online Reputation Management

Social Media

All profiles should at least include the following details:

1.    Your business name.
2.    Link to your company’s website or blog.
3.    If the option is there, add a short company bio.  It should be detailed and include links if possible.

There are many authoritative social networks that you can setup profiles with. This is a short list of sites I recommend that are crawled and updated often:

1.    Twitter – A must.  You absolutely need a Twitter account with your website link in your profile.  If you are active (and there are ways to automate this), this will show up before your company in some cases.
2.    Flickr – This site is very powerful.  Getting a link on here is as good as gold.  You can add HTML to the description; put a text link with your top keyword phrase here to your website.
3.    Facebook Page – Set up a Facebook Page for your business.  Add links, video, pictures and then invite everyone you know and all your former and current customers.  Having an active page will hit the search engines quick.
4.    Meetup – I don’t know why or how, but if you create a Meetup group it will show up on the search engines fairly quickly.
5.    LinkedIn – Another important one.  Create a group of all your customers.  Be active.
All these websites will show up quickly in the search engines provided you build up your profiles.  Spend some serious time adding friends and requesting the same and these websites will show up on the search engines and dominate the real estate on the SERPs.

Wikipedia

Create an entry on Wikipedia for your business and link to it and from it.

One Page Blog Posts

Go to the following websites and create blogs for your business. After you’ve created the blogs write a unique post on each blog about your products or services and the benefits of buying them. You could write about a particular customer’s experience, how your product or service positively affected someone’s life, or just a description of what your products or services are. The key here is to make sure you don’t replicate the work and write something worth reading. Write a unique article on each site.  Inside your blog post make sure to link to the social media profiles you have created in step 1 and your company website with anchor text.

1.    Wordpress
2.    Blogger
3.    LiveJournal
4.    Tumblr

Blogger and LiveJournal use search engine friendly URL’s, but Blogger includes the page title separated by dashes.  Because of this, Blogger may be a better blogging platform choice over LiveJournal if you have to choose between the two.  Wordpress and Tumblr are constantly spidered and provide a quick way to get links to show up on the search engines.

Press

Identify bloggers, reporters from newspapers, journalists or any other areas of the internet where there are writers that could potentially write something positive about your business. Initiate a relationship with them by re-tweeting their tweets, commenting on their blog posts, and writing them emails expressing how much some of their articles affected you.  Add a link to their website or blog to your website. After you’ve worked the relationship for a week or so and  established yourself as someone with more than just an email address, send them an email describing a new product, service, or something big that is happening at your company and ask them to write about it.  Make the email short and concise, don’t  ramble or it won’t get read.   A good place to find bloggers is Technorati, and a great place to find reporters is Journalism.net.

Building Links

Start linking between the social media profiles, one page blog posts, and any positive reviews you’ve obtained using anchor text where you can.  Anchor text is a hyperlink with your company’s name or top keyword phrase.  The blogs that you create are a great resource for building high quality links because they are crawled regularly and will show up fast on the search engines.  They also direct users and the search engines to other sites (social media) that rank well for your company’s top keyword phrases.  Link to the articles that you have written from the bloggers, reporters, and journalists you have contacted as well.

Interlinking between these websites is the key strategy to making this effort successful. The linking should include:

1.    Links from your social media profiles to your one page blog posts.
2.    Links from your one page blog posts to your social media profiles.
3.    Link to / from your Wikipedia company post and your company’s website.
4.    Links from your social media profiles to press articles.
5.    Links from your one page blog posts to your press articles.
6.    Links from your press articles to your company website.

Summary

Online reputation management is a vital part of your organization’s long term marketing plan and essential to owning the most precious real estate on the SERPs.   If you want to get rid of the negative information about your company it’s going to take time and effort.  Even if there is no negative information on the SERP’s, you should practice the methods I laid out on a regular basis. It is an excellent way to prevent the situation I described above to ever happen to begin with.  This method can yield results as fast as two weeks if you are dedicated to it. If you are not getting the results you desire, contact Vizion Interactive and we will be glad to assist you in your efforts.

]]> 2 Five Tips for Website Visitor Retention http://www.vizioninteractive.com/five-tips-for-website-visitor-retention/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/five-tips-for-website-visitor-retention/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:10:11 +0000 Josh McCoy http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2390 welcome-please-come-inWe all work hard enough in search marketing to get visitors to our sites.  To make these site visits beneficial, we want visitors to peruse our content, understand the offerings and calls to action, and to then convert. Sounds pretty easy, right? Well, I don’t usually write about the things that people are doing correctly.

]]> welcome-please-come-inWe all work hard enough in search marketing to get visitors to our sites and to our clients sites.  To make these site visits beneficial, we want visitors to peruse our content, understand the offerings and calls to action, and to then convert. Sounds pretty easy, right? Well, I don’t usually write about the things that people are doing correctly.

Information Architecture

One of the most often overlooked elements of a website is the information architecture, or how your content is structurally laid out. This is square one and if you are not on track then a redesign might be in the works. Think if your site’s information like a content roadmap. This will help you to properly form the navigation and sub-navigation of a site. It will help you to understand how and when to present content and how to funnel it into a transaction. In other words, don’t put the cart before the horse, structure your content so visitors will understand what they need to do. 

Navigational Link Text

Have ever been on a site and been completely enthralled by the navigational text “Products”? Me neither. From the main navigation down to the sub-navigation to the footer navigation you must not be vague in the naming of your links. If you want to compel site visitors to traverse your site, you have to tell them where to go. When possible, pair a relevant keyword with the current bland navigational link text. You will likely help the page and the linked page from an SEO standpoint and will likely see a jump in Time On Site in your analytics the next time you assess your visitors behavior.

Internal Linking

This tip takes from the fore mentioned link text naming conventions above but within a different site element. An important practice for SEO as well as for usability is the practice of linking to other internal site pages from text within page body copy. If you want to captivate a reader into visiting another related site page remember to link to targeted-keywords in the text relevant to the current keyword theme of the respective page. Your visitors are smarter than cattle, they don’t need the overly used “click here” link text that I see all too often. A few suggestions for helping your visitors find what they are looking for while also helping your SEO and visitor retention are, “We also recommend reading our ‘targeted keyword’ information” or “Not what you’re looking for? Try our page on ‘targeted keyword’”. This is a great way to offer one last chance to retain a visitor that may have before bounced from your site due to confusion or discontent of information.

Headings and Copy

You can write completely for the search engines and have killer rankings and no sales, or write solely for the people and have an envious conversion rate with minimal visibility. The perfect copywriting artist knows how to add enough keyword usage in the heading, subheadings and copy, specifically at beginning of the first paragraph to help on-page SEO. They also know that you have to provide quality information on how your offering can solve their need and what your product or service is about. With this said, when possible make sure that a heading is not solely a targeted keyword. In other words, add nouns to the heading such as “’targeted keyword’ source”, “’targeted keyword’ solution” or “The home of ‘targeted keyword’”. Ensure that you do the same in sub-headings. Use targeted keyword variations to mix things up. The last thing you want to convey is robotic text, if your visitor notices your keyword focus and not your message, then there is a problem.

My Biggest Pet Peeve

I run across this almost daily and when I do it makes me want to scream, webmasters who place links within content to external sites…that open in the same window! I am absolutely baffled that many people out there openly give their site visitors an invitation to leave their site. While it is a plus for credibility between the site and a visitor when you link to relevant information that is usually an even more trusted source, but please, make sure the link opens in a new window.

Some of these tips are no-brainers while others may take a little more time. Regardless, I urge you to get moving and I am willing to bet you will soon see a bounce rate decrease, time on site increase, and a boost in conversions!

Want to know more information on SEO, creative services, or how Vizion can help assess your site’s potential?

]]> 1 Bing Happenings… http://www.vizioninteractive.com/bing-happenings/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/bing-happenings/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:42:05 +0000 John Carruthers http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2385 Ever since Bings launch, I have used it some, and my experience with is has been pleasant. News reports state that it’s the fastest growing search engine. Currently, it only holds about 11% of the search marketing industry. Google is still at a whopping 65%- but Bings growth has averaged (month to month) about 20%. This is phenomenal.

Bing has put alot of focus on ‘Bing Travel’. A nice shortcut to finding great deals, which seemingly seems to simplify orbitz.com’s efforts. You can look for last minute deals, cheapest flights, you can even sign up to recieve the specified deals to your own email address. http://www.bing.com/travel/

Bings Visual Search offers a newer, innovative method of search You arrive at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch I clicked ‘politicians’. On the left, you see in the menu bar with other potential search terms you may want to see- visually. When I clicked ‘Presidents Cabinet’, there came pics of all the presidents cabinet complete with names. Clicking on one of these pics takes [...]]]> Ever since Bings launch, I have used it some, and my experience with is has been pleasant. News reports state that it’s the fastest growing search engine. Currently, it only holds about 11% of the search marketing industry. Google is still at a whopping 65%- but Bings growth has averaged (month to month) about 20%. This is phenomenal.

Bing has put alot of focus on ‘Bing Travel’. A nice shortcut to finding great deals, which seemingly seems to simplify orbitz.com’s efforts. You can look for last minute deals, cheapest flights, you can even sign up to recieve the specified deals to your own email address.
http://www.bing.com/travel/

Bings Visual Search offers a newer, innovative method of search
You arrive at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch
I clicked ‘politicians’. On the left, you see in the menu bar with other potential search terms you may want to see- visually. When I clicked ‘Presidents Cabinet’, there came pics of all the presidents cabinet complete with names. Clicking on one of these pics takes you to a search for that individual. So, musch like enjoying a book that is packed with pictures, it looks as though search is also turning this direction.

I have provided a visual walk-through if you would like to see how it works:
bing‘BingTweets’

This is definetely one area that Bing is ahead of Google. Trending Topics & general posts on Twitter are now contexted & appearing in real time on Bing. It looks as though it’s not on the main Bing search site (bing.com), but you’ve gotta start somewhere..
http://bingtweets.com/

These are just a few of the features, but this is by far the best efforts ever by MSN.

]]> 1 Landing Pages http://www.vizioninteractive.com/landing-pages/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/landing-pages/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:31:26 +0000 Brandy Eddings http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2381 One small change can have a very different effect. Even if it is just a change in font, color of background or the color of your submit/order button. Never be afraid to test out different pages.

]]> This week I got to analyze PPC landing pages with a client and I had an absolute blast. There were two pages that stuck out from the others. Both pages were very similar in content. One was a little more serious and had somewhat negative content as a deterrent for unqualified leads. The other page was more open and friendly. They both had the exact same call to action.

The interesting fact is that the page with the more negative content is outperforming the other page. The page designs are only slightly different; the negative page has bolded bullets. Always remember that the page you think will perform the best may not always be what your searching audience is looking for and sometimes the only difference is one slight change.

I had a client once that was getting tons of hits but no conversions. All we did was simply change out the stock picture on that page from a man on a phone to a woman on a phone and the lead forms poured in. One small change can have a very different effect. Even if it is just a change in font, color of background or the color of your submit/order button. Never be afraid to test out different pages.

]]> 2 How to Set Up a Twitter Account http://www.vizioninteractive.com/how-to-set-up-a-twitter-account/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/how-to-set-up-a-twitter-account/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:28:23 +0000 Bill Hartzer http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2369 twitter-logoYou’ve probably heard people talking about Twitter. It’s all over the news, on the radio, and even on some television commercials: “follow us on Twitter”, they say. Twitter is a popular social media web site that allows you to post “tweets” to those who follow you. It is a popular microblogging platform, and it even integrates with many mobile phones now, like the iPhone.

So, how do you set up a Twitter account? Here are the steps required in order to set up a Twitter account.

In order to set up the Twitter account, you will need to go to http://twitter.com/signup

create-twitter-account-1

On the signup page, enter your name and your preferred username. Enter the desired password, email address for the account, and the captcha code. Click on “create my account”. You will need to confirm the email address (they will send you a confirmation email). Once you have confirmed the email address, you can begin customizing the account.

create-twitter-account-2

Go to the https://twitter.com/account/settings to start customizing the account. At a minimum, Vizion Interactive suggests that [...]]]> twitter-logoYou’ve probably heard people talking about Twitter. It’s all over the news, on the radio, and even on some television commercials: “follow us on Twitter”, they say. Twitter is a popular social media web site that allows you to post “tweets” to those who follow you. It is a popular microblogging platform, and it even integrates with many mobile phones now, like the iPhone.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, how do you set up a Twitter account? Here are the steps required in order to set up a Twitter account.

  1. In order to set up the Twitter account, you will need to go to http://twitter.com/signup

    create-twitter-account-1

  2. On the signup page, enter your name and your preferred username.
  3. Enter the desired password, email address for the account, and the captcha code.
  4. Click on “create my account”.
  5. You will need to confirm the email address (they will send you a confirmation email).
  6. Once you have confirmed the email address, you can begin customizing the account.

    create-twitter-account-2

  7. Go to the https://twitter.com/account/settings to start customizing the account.
  8. At a minimum, Vizion Interactive suggests that you link back to your website on the “More Info URL:” section and add an “online bio” which should be a quick phrase that describes yourself; you could also enter your company’s “catch phrase” or slogan.

    create-twitter-account-3

  9. On the “Notices” tab, you may want to uncheck all of the checkboxes: this way you will not get any extra emails when people follow you or send you a direct message. This is totally up to you, although we do recommend unchecking all of the checkboxes on this tab.

create-twitter-account-4

10.  On the Picture tab you’ll need to upload an Avatar. This can be a small personal picture of you or it could be your company logo. People do like to follow real people on Twitter, to make it more “personal” in nature.

create-twitter-account-5

11.  On the Design page, you have a few options. You can customize your background or upload a background image. Vizion Interactive recommends customizing your Twitter background with a photo or company logo, as well as information about you or your company and some basic contact information. You may wish to include your website address here, as well (although it will not be clickable. More details on the background and customizing your background on Twitter is included below.

12.  On the Connections tab, this is where you have granted access to certain applications to access your account. Typically, you would see sites like Friendfeed.com, Facebook.com, Google, and other applications. Refollow and Wefollow are other popular applications that might be listed here on this tab. In this case, you have just set up your Twitter account so you probably won’t see anything listed here.

create-twitter-account-6

13.  You may wish to connect other social media networking services with your Twitter account. If, for example, you have a friendfeed.com account, you may wish to connect your Twitter account with Friendfeed. You can also connect your Facebook.com account, as well. There are lots of others, but for now Vizion Interactive recommends that you include Facebook and Friendfeed.

14.  Once you have created and customized your account, you may wish to start following people on Twitter. Click on the “Find People” link on the top right.

create-twitter-account-7

15.  On the “Find People” tab, you can search for people, you can find people on other networks (this is where you would import your email contacts), or you can use the Suggested Users tab to find other people. Vizion Interactive recommends that you first follow us (http://www.twitter.com/vizionweb) and perhaps others that are related to your business. You may have suppliers, coworkers, industry associations, and other contacts that you with to follow in your industry.

You may also look at who is following your strongest competitors: if someone is following your competitor then there’s a chance that they will follow you if you follow them. You don’t, of course, have to follow your competitors: you may wish to only follow those who are following your competitors.

Customizing Your Twitter Background

The background should be customized so that the background image and colors reflect the branding of Global Data Vault. There are several additional options for customization available, including a photoshop image template can be found here: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=twitter+backgrounds. There are reports from time to time that Twitter is not currently accepting new background images, so if a background cannot be uploaded then a solid color background can continue to be used. You may wish to coordinate these colors with your current website.

That’s it! Now you have set up your Twitter account, it’s now time to go start Tweeting.

]]> 0 5 Excellent Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Blog http://www.vizioninteractive.com/5-excellent-ways-to-use-social-media-to-promote-your-blog/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/5-excellent-ways-to-use-social-media-to-promote-your-blog/#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:38:19 +0000 Zach Browne http://www.vizioninteractive.com/5-excellent-ways-to-use-social-media-to-promote-your-blog/ by Zach Browne

Promoting your blog with social media is a very powerful method of promotion.  I would even venture to say it is the most vital method to ensure your blog will make it out to the sphere.  There are many ways to promote your blog but in this article I’m going to concentrate on using social media.  If you follow the method I’m going to outline below, you’re chances for success are going to be increased expedentially. 

There are a few things to remember when you are working through these methods.  First, if there is any opportunity to add HTML to a social media site, make sure to use your main keyword phrase, or the keyword phrase you want to rank highest for as anchor text.  If your top keyword is seo blogger, make sure to link to your blog with the phrase, not the actual hyperlink.  This is one way to ensure Google, Yahoo, and Bing know what type of blog you have and provide you with some rank.  Second, make sure you optimize all the images and video in your blog, again use the keyword phrase you want to rank highest for.  Third, use a resource box at the end of your posts to [...]]]> by Zach Browne

Promoting your blog with social media is a very powerful method of promotion.  I would even venture to say it is the most vital method to ensure your blog will make it out to the sphere.  There are many ways to promote your blog but in this article I’m going to concentrate on using social media.  If you follow the method I’m going to outline below, you’re chances for success are going to be increased expedentially. 

There are a few things to remember when you are working through these methods.  First, if there is any opportunity to add HTML to a social media site, make sure to use your main keyword phrase, or the keyword phrase you want to rank highest for as anchor text.  If your top keyword is seo blogger, make sure to link to your blog with the phrase, not the actual hyperlink.  This is one way to ensure Google, Yahoo, and Bing know what type of blog you have and provide you with some rank.  Second, make sure you optimize all the images and video in your blog, again use the keyword phrase you want to rank highest for.  Third, use a resource box at the end of your posts to ensure that if your blog post is scraped, a link back to your site will be scraped with it.

Now here are the methods.

Method 1 - Submit Your Post to Bookmarking Sites.  The first method is to submit your blog post to every social bookmarking site you can.  There are several tools to do this and I have provided a list you can use as well.  A simple search on Google for “Social Bookmarking Software” will help you get started.  The tools I’ve found to be the most useful are SocialMarker.com, SocialPoster.com, and OnlyWire.com, but there are many out there.  Unfortunately you’ll need to set up an account at each site, but they payoff is well worth the time.

Method 2 – Submit Content to Article Directories.  The most important thing to remeber when submitting content to article directories is that you CANNOT post the same content that is on your blog.   The search engines do not like duplicate content and will use their filter to add most of your posts to the supplemental results, giving you one accepted article in their index which equates to one link.  So take your blog articles and summarize them, write about your articles, or just plain write new, high quality content.  Something genuine and original.  I’ve always said “The Internet is like a good relationship, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.”  After you’ve written some content, make sure to use anchor text with your main keyword phrase in each new article pointing back to your site.  The most authoritative and active article directories in no specific order are GoArticles.com, EzineArticles.com, Zimbio.com, Gather.com, Squidoo.com, & HubPages.com.  You can also find a list of additional article directories here.

Method 3 – Submit to RSS Directories.  If you are using a blogging platform like Wordpress, you probably don’t need to do anything but type your blog address plus /feed/ on the end like http://domain.com/feed/, but if you don’t have an automatic feed, use FeedYes.com to create one.  The idea here is that there are hundreds of RSS search engines and directores out there and you want your feed to be on all of them.  Your blog articles always need to contain an anchor text link back to itself so when your content is syndicated, your link will be also.  So grab your feed and submit it to this list.

Method 4 – Make A Video and Post it To Video Sites.  Just about every blog post can be a video.  It could be an instructional video, a video about websites to find things on, or just your voice over on a presentation.  The most important thing here is that your video gets out to all the video sites and is optimized with your keywords and a hyperlink back to your blog.  Make sure you always add a 10 second shot of your blog address at the end or remain constant on the bottom of your video.  YouTube.com has not only become the largest video site, but it’s also one of the largest search engines as well.  Take some time to really update all the options on YouTube to the best of your ability.  If the video is good it will provide a steady stream of traffic to your site.  After you’ve created your video upload it to this list of sites.

Method 5 –  Get a Couple of High Quality, Authoritative Links to Your Blog.  The last but the best.  This one is by far the most effective method of ensuring a successful blog that ranks well.  Start a spreadsheet and search for authoritative blogs on Technorati.com.  In your columns you need to have the Blog Name, Author or Authors, Email Addresses, Twitter Username, Phone Numbers, and Status.  The goal here is to establish relationships with the top bloggers and through some hard work, get them to link to your blog.  One of the best strategies for doing this is to add them to your Twitter account and follow their tweets.  When they tweet something good retweet it and make a comment about how great the tweet was.  Do this for a few weeks and then send them an email and tell them that they have really inspired you and remind them that you have retweeted them several times. (Don’t do this if they have not, be sure to pick someone that does!).  In your email politely ask them if they mind linkiing to your blog.  Be sure to send them the exact page on their blog you want your link and what anchor text to use.  If you don’t here back send a follow up email and keep retweeting them.  You will know if you are getting anywhere.  After doing this with 10 or 20 authoritative blogs you will start getting some good links.  These links carry their weight in gold.  They are well worth the work.

In summary one of the best ways to promote your blog is through all the social media sites and tools available to you.  This process takes time, I’m not going to lie, but it’s all worth it at the end of the day.  It’s very easy to outsource this process through Odesk.com or Elance.com but that takes the fun out of it!  Good luck, until next time. 

]]> 1 Vizion Halloween Contest Ends in One Week! http://www.vizioninteractive.com/halloween-contest/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/halloween-contest/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:12:14 +0000 Mark Barrera http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2360 Earlier this month Vizion launched a spooky contest and is looking for your SEO Horror Stories.

In this case, the SEO Horror Story contest is looking for you to submit an SEO Horror Story -  Mark Jackson explains it all very well here.

SEO Horror Story Homepage

We’re looking for Search Engine Optimization Horror Stories – extreme examples of cases where Search Engine Optimization efforts have failed. 

So, what will you get when you submit your SEO Horror Story? The first twenty submissions will receive a copy of “The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars” for free. That book also comes with a three month membership to SearchEngineNews.com and access to the Planet Ocean “Site Strength Indicator tool”. If you take the time to submit your own SEO Horror Story and you’re one of the first 20 submissions, getting that book and access to the “Site Strength Indicator Tool” is definitely worth your time and effort. Planet Ocean does a great job at telling you everything you need to know and may even show you where your SEO efforts failed in the past, so you can correct [...]]]> Earlier this month Vizion launched a spooky contest and is looking for your SEO Horror Stories.

In this case, the SEO Horror Story contest is looking for you to submit an SEO Horror Story -  Mark Jackson explains it all very well here.

SEO Horror Story Homepage

We’re looking for Search Engine Optimization Horror Stories – extreme examples of cases where Search Engine Optimization efforts have failed. 

So, what will you get when you submit your SEO Horror Story? The first twenty submissions will receive a copy of “The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars” for free. That book also comes with a three month membership to SearchEngineNews.com and access to the Planet Ocean “Site Strength Indicator tool”. If you take the time to submit your own SEO Horror Story and you’re one of the first 20 submissions, getting that book and access to the “Site Strength Indicator Tool” is definitely worth your time and effort. Planet Ocean does a great job at telling you everything you need to know and may even show you where your SEO efforts failed in the past, so you can correct them.

There’s a lot more cool prizes up for grabs, including:
– 1 free year Raven Tools membership (worth $948)
– 6 months “Pro” account at SEMRush.com (worth $249.95) and 2 months account at SEOPivot.com (worth $296.78) for a total value of $546.73.
– 6 month subscription to Trackur Corporate (worth $528)
– 6 month subscription to SEOMoz Pro (worth $474)
– 3 month subscription to AdGooroo SEM Insight (also includes tools, worth $1197)
– 12 month “Standard Pack” subscription to Errorlytics (worth $179)
– Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2010 (worth $749)
– Two SEMPO Institute courses – Insider’s Guide to Search Marketing and Effective Search Marketing: Social Media (value $700)

Why all the cool prizes? Well, if you have an SEO Horror Story to tell, then you will definitely need one of these search engine optimization tools or access to the great SEO information that you can get. We are offering these prizes to help you further enhance your search engine optimization knowledge, what you need to know in order to analyze your own website, analyze your online competitors, and fix what needs fixing.

Who are the judges?
There are some pretty awesome people, SEO Insiders and Search Engine Optimization Experts, SEO Veterans, who are judging the contest:

Aaron Wall, SEO Book
Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, a dynamic website offering marketing tips and coverage of the search space, free SEO videos, and free SEO tools.

Andy Beal, Marketing Pilgrim
Andy Beal is an internationally-renowned consultant, author, and speaker specializing in online reputation management and internet marketing. He is the coauthor of Radically Transparent and CEO of Trackur.

Barry Schwartz, SE Roundtable
Barry Schwartz is the Editor of Search Engine Roundtable and President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm.

Brett Tabke, WebmasterWorld and Pubcon
Brett Tabke is the Founder and CEO of WebmasterWorld and chair of PubCon conferences.Tabke was a founding board member of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization).

Debra Mastaler, Alliance Link
Based in Williamsburg, Virginia, Debra Mastaler is President of Alliance-Link, an interactive marketing company focused on providing custom link building campaigns and link training.

Lee Odden, Top Rank Marketing
Lee Odden is CEO and founder of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing agency that provides search engine optimization, social media and business blog consulting services.

Mark Jackson, Vizion Interactive
Mark founded Vizion Interactive, Inc. in July of 2005.Mark is a frequent speaker at the Search Engine Strategies in New York, San Jose, Chicago and Toronto and Pubcon conferences in Las Vegas and Austin. He has written a regular column for Search Engine Watch since early 2007.

Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz
Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a leader in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources & community.

Stephen Mahaney, Planet Ocean
Stepehn Mahaney is the CEO & Founder of Planet Ocean Inc. the company that publishes SearchEngineNews.com and the award winning SEO Book, The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars, est 1997.

Ron Jones, SEMPO
Ron Jones is an Internet marketing consultant, trainer, and owner of Symetri Internet Marketing, which has provided strategic consulting and Internet marketing solutions for mid- to large-size companies since 1998. Prior to signing on as a Board member, Ron served on the SEMPO Institute Committee where he was one of the authors of Fundamentals and Advanced courses. He also served on the Marketing Committee and chaired the Event Subcommittee.


The rules:

  1. This must be a direct experience — no hearsay, no second- or third-hand stories
  2. No real or proper names of individuals or companies will be published
  3. You can be an SEO company — we’re primarily looking for stories from someone who had a horror story either trying to do SEO on their own, or had a bad experience with an SEO vendor but SEO companies can participate as well
  4. Vizion Interactive moderates/edits the blog and previews/approves all blog entries
  5. Prize winners are determined by SEO judges

So, if you think you have an SEO Horror Story that tops the rest, surf over to the SEO Horror Story website and make your submission. Contest entries need to be received by October 31, 2009 so submit yours soon!

]]> 0 How to Add Links to Your LinkedIn Profile http://www.vizioninteractive.com/how-to-add-links-to-your-linkedin-profile/ http://www.vizioninteractive.com/how-to-add-links-to-your-linkedin-profile/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:47:50 +0000 Bill Hartzer http://www.vizioninteractive.com/?p=2351 For Search Engine Optimization purposes, we need to continually get additional links to our web sites. In order to get more outgoing links to your web site from other trusted web sites, you might want to turn to a web site like LinkedIn. This site is an online networking tool that helps you discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Many of your employees might already be using LinkedIn as a networking tool. But they may not have links from their profiles to your web site.

By showing your employees (or adding your own links) to the LinkedIn profile, you can increase the number of links to your company’s web site. Here is how to add links to your LinkedIn profile. If you have not registered for LinkedIn, I suggest you do so now. If you do not have an account, you’ll need to register, confirm your email address, and start filling out your profile. For this simple task of adding links to your profile, I’m assuming that you already have a profile set up.

1. First, you need to log into Linkedin.

2. On the left side, you’ll see some links:

For Search Engine Optimization purposes, we need to continually get additional links to our web sites. In order to get more outgoing links to your web site from other trusted web sites, you might want to turn to a web site like LinkedIn. This site is an online networking tool that helps you discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Many of your employees might already be using LinkedIn as a networking tool. But they may not have links from their profiles to your web site.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By showing your employees (or adding your own links) to the LinkedIn profile, you can increase the number of links to your company’s web site. Here is how to add links to your LinkedIn profile. If you have not registered for LinkedIn, I suggest you do so now. If you do not have an account, you’ll need to register, confirm your email address, and start filling out your profile. For this simple task of adding links to your profile, I’m assuming that you already have a profile set up.

1. First, you need to log into Linkedin.

2. On the left side, you’ll see some links:

linkedin-1

3. Click on the Profile link as shown below:

linkedin-2

You should be seeing the “Edit My Profile” tab (not the “View My Profile” tab). This tab allows you to edit your profile.

4. Scroll down until you see the “Websites” link in the middle of the screen, as shown below:

linkedin-3

If you have already added web sites to your profile, you can click on the “Edit” link to edit each one, f necessary.

5. Click on the “Websites” link. You will then be brought to the “Additional Information” section, as shown below:

linkedin-4

6. Click on the “Edit” link there in order to add or edit the web sites you have listed in your profile. You are brought to the “Additional Information” page as shown below:

linkedin-5

There are three links that you can add to your LinkedIn Profile. I highly suggest that you fill out all of the links, using the appropriate “anchor text” or “keywords” that describe each link. If you do not have more than one web site, then you might consider linking to your web site’s home page and two additional web pages on your web site, such as an important product page or your company’s “About Us” web page. You might also consider adding links to your social media or social networking profiles on other social media web sites, such as Twitter.com.

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