What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

We have a guest blogger this month with detailed information about SEO. An essential tool for anyone marketing on the internet today. Erica Darcy is an SEO consultant with experience working with small, mid-size and large companies including fortune 500 corporations.

She has great things to say!

You've spent time and money developing a website for your business, now you're wondering where all those new customers you should be getting are.

Why can't you find your site on Google, Yahoo or MSN?

Why is your competitor's site showing up and not yours?

No, it's not magic or some sort of trick. It's a process called search engine optimization or SEO.

What is search engine optimization?
SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (also called organic) search results for targeted keywords. What this means is if your website is a community for dog lovers, like dogster.com, when you search for “dog community site”on Google, Yahoo or another search engine you would want to see dogster.com at or near the top of the results.

The higher up in the search results, the more traffic a site will receive. The top three results receive the most traffic and it decreases as you go further down the page. Very few searchers will go beyond the second or third page of results.

SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

How does it work?
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users.

Basically, SEO works by focusing on creating a good site both for your visitors and for the search engines.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other school of thought on SEO. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and usually remove them.

Using black hat techniques can get your site banned from the search engines. It may work for the short term, but it's not a sustainable model. It's not easy to get a site re-indexed after it has been banned. I've had new clients who have come to me after being banned, and it took months to clean up the site and to get re indexed.

How do I get started?
SEO works best when it is included from the very beginning. Before you design the site, before a single line of HTML gets written you need to research your keywords. These will be the basis of everything for the site. SEO when it is built into a new site is more cost effective then when doing it as an afterthought.

If you have an existing site, not to worry, there are plenty of things you can do to improve your site too. You start in the same place as well – researching your keywords.

When is the SEO done?
Never. SEO is a continual process of optimizing, measuring and seeing what works best for your unique site. Just like your website should be updated from time to time, your SEO needs to be measured and re-evaluated. The search engines change the way they index results frequently, so your site needs to change as well.

Am I guaranteed results?
No. there is no way to guarantee a site will rank in a certain position in the natural or organic results. No reputable consultant or company will ever guarantee results. That disclaimer being said, you should see improvements within 3-6 months of starting a SEO campaign.

Many Thanks to Erica Darcy for this informative post. She can be reached at

emhdarcy@gmail.com

http://mhvtheater.blogspot.com
http://thefrequentbookworm.blogspot.com

The power of graphic design

A great article on the power of graphic design sent to me by Paul Rapp, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property law. The International Herald Tribune's Alice Rawsthorn says:
"When it comes to choosing the best-designed U.S. presidential candidate, there's only one contender - Obama."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/04/arts/design7.php?page=1

Email Marketing Best Practices

Just found this. Thought it would be helpful to everyone. Become an email marketing communications expert! It offers design, compliance, delivery, tracking, strategy, list management tips. Check out http://www.emaillabs.com/best-practices/

Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce Brand Unveiling

It's official. Yesterday morning at the Rhinebeck Area Chamber of Commerce's breakfast, Susan Utter and Nadine Robbins, unveiled the new chamber brand. Susan offered her insight on the process and introduced Nadine, who described in more detail the creative process and its application to all marketing communications.

Below is an animation of the corporate image presentation. In April, Namaro will have a section of their enewsletter devoted to the new chamber brand and will go into more detail about the process from concept to the unveiling. Keep an eye out for it!

April newsletter

In next month’s issue, we are going to explore Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO. It’s the first step in creating an effective website.

Our guest blogger, Erica Darcy, an SEO consultant with experience working with small, mid-size and large companies including fortune 500 corporations will offer some insight into this misunderstood field and offer sound advice.

Some of the topics will include strategy, keywords, no-nos, and submission to search engines and why there are no guarantees on results.

If you missed the Chamber breakfast, we will review the Rhinebeck Chamber of Commerce brand in more detail.

Namaro does more with less

Thanks to all of you who have filled out the survey (now closed)

So we would offer this advice. The time is now for all of us to reconsider our approaches to marketing and design. We can be smarter and do more with less by taking advantage of the web and its ability to reach more customers for a fraction of the cost. That is one of the goals of this blog which is to do research, apply it to our workflow and tell you all about it.

At Namaro, we continue to update our website based on our SEO strategy. We have developed a new campaign to target customers who want brighter corporate identity ideas with more impact and less cost. Look for it in the next few months. We are also working on a huge print catalog for Canon and researching the cost savings of going online and abandoning print.

Look for the new Rhinebeck Chamber of Commerce brand to be launched next Wednesday 3/26 at the Chamber’s breakfast meeting. Call the chamber to register and come on by to check it out. 845-876-5094.

We just finished a package design sales promotion for Verbatim in North Carolina. We came up with the concept “Verbatim, Safety in Numbers” to attract sales people to carry Verbatim products. It also ties into the fact that their products are the best in the world at keeping personal digital assets safe.

The lighter side: Let’s party!

So you are planning a party for clients or friends. You’re a bit overwhelmed and could use some help in planning with a little bit of humor to lighten up your stress. Try evite.com. Top ten reasons you should use this site:

1. Your assistant has her own party to plan
2. So you won’t forget to invite your boss
3. So you will forget to invite your boss
4. Use their booze calculator to estimate your friends’ drinking habits
5. You’ll never run out of alcohol
6. It will help you remember to hide incriminating evidence
7. To make sure you know someone at the party
8. You can be the host(ess) with the most(est)
9. To make sure that you don’t lose the to-do list
10. To make sure that your significant other doesn’t lose the list

Make sure to hide the turkey when Nadine comes to the party. Cheers!