Well, calm your fears and worries because a website properly optimized for Web 2.0 can and will make money. The concept behind Web 2.0 is simple enough. The internet is entering a period of increased interactivity. Small business website design is now built and optimized around users taking an active role in building, defining, and even moderating the content and direction of the site.

The short, short version is basically this: All of those people who visit the internet everyday now add their own feedback, content, and videos to the majority of the most popular sites online.

Taking a step back for a second, you realize that this isn’t exactly a ground breaking idea. After all, blogs, forums, and networking sites have been around since the beginning of the internet and their reputation of interaction and user contribution has long been known.

What makes Web 2.0 different now than before is the shift in focus rather than in actual technology. Popular websites like MySpace and Facebook brought this concept of social Web interactivity to forefront of daily internet users, instead of just dating sites and focused discussion groups, no offense WOW fans. The average user now has their very own voice and face, hence the idea of a new focus in website design and small business search engine marketing.

So the last thing you, as a savvy small business owner looking to get involved in ecommerce, should do is allow yourself to be intimidated by all the hype of Web 2.0. It doesn’t take any expensive new software or programs. Nor do you need to completely overhaul your marketing mentality to find success in the midst of this new social media optimization movement.

What you need to go is jump in and get involved. Your customers, the ones you communicate and do business with over the internet, expect greater access to your business and increased input in how your marketing plan is run, so it’s only natural that your business incorporates this Web 2.0 interactivity into its daily activities.

The real results of Web 2.0 hype is improved customer relations, readily available market data, and new and exciting ways to promote your business’s products and services. This new era represents a leap in the human consciousness more than it does an advance in Internet technology and Mystic Liquid wants to be there to help you make that jump.

Contact us to get started with your very own small business search engine optimization and social media optimization campaign today.

]]> http://www.mysticliquid.com/seo/the-progress-of-web-20-and-your-business/feed/ 0 http://www.mysticliquid.com/sem/music-and-band-website-design-101/ http://www.mysticliquid.com/sem/music-and-band-website-design-101/#comments Thu, 29 May 2008 22:20:14 +0000 admin http://www.mysticliquid.com/?p=569 I had a musician friend approach me the other day about creating a web presence for his band. I thought about it and came up with a bunch of great ideas that could really help him put his music on the map. It started me thinking about the massive and ever expanding market of music and band websites that could utilize SEO and PPC to profit from the internet.

We have all heard about the many viral marketing campaigns that Snow Patrol and other unsigned bands used to create buzz using the internet, but what if you are just starting out and want to make a splash in the scene? I took on the project and begin to find some great resources for links and many social networking sites that could be very useful to spread the word about this new site.

The question comes down to what are some major components that need to be a part of an effective band or music site? I would have to think that a bio, contact, and a song page are the most important. After that you could go after pictures or even the video side of the industry. This can be accomplished through Youtube and some other social video sites. After that you can use the integration of a media player to play some songs while protecting them from scrapers.

Once you have the fans it comes down to keeping them. This can be done in variety of ways in today’s web 2.0 world. Mobile updates, Skype, RSS feeds from blog and even the old standby of emailing can be used to update your fans and visitors to your site of upcoming events and gigs.

The number one rule that we found while developing this band website was that the user must come first. That means that the experience and usability is key to developing a loyal fan base for years to come. Make sure you check your website in all the major browsers. This will ensure that the overall experience is the same for all that come to your site. Once the site is ready to go now is the time to spread the word.

This can be done on many of the social sites like Myspace and Facebook, but make sure that your website has a bookmark feature so that people can link to your site which will help in the SEO of the site. Also try and get links on the websites of the bars and clubs that you play. This will help with a better overall link structure. By interacting with your fans through the social sites and building traffic you can then use your analytics to judge if you need to optimize some other pages on the site. This brings us to the last point which is how to monetize your band website.

Traditionally this is done through merchandise sales. Not to worry if you do not have the coin to buy hundreds of t-shirts and merchandise with your logo on it. There is a website that will allow you to offer merchandise while keeping your overhead low. One such site is CafePress.com. There are many more site like them on the net with different deals and such, so spend the time and do the research. Once you have the merchandise next is the shopping cart. Find a reliable and integrated platform with unique landing pages. This will help in the online marketing of your band and products.

After several weeks of learning the ins and outs of the band and music website industry, we are proud to say that our friend’s website is starting to gain some fans and even seeing some sales.

PPC is an approach where a marketer bids on specific keywords that are tied to specific ads. These ads appear when any of the keywords are searched. You do not pay for this type of advertising unless an ad is clicked on. This approach allows businesses to bid against each other and compete for better ad position. SEO is the approach where improvements are actually made to improve the richness of web sites content in relation to specific keywords with the intention to improve its quality score in the eyes of search engine spiders.

So, which approach will best meet the needs of your businesses online marketing efforts?

Cost Effectiveness
Marketing efforts are an expense. That has to be taken into consideration when deciding which of these two strategies will yield the best return on investment. Many industry studies have found that SEO does indeed deliver a greater return on investment then PPC campaigns over long periods of time.

This is true because with SEO the cost is based on the maintenance efforts and not the cost per click biding structure. That is due to SEO being based on organic search listings. Most top search engines want to maintain their integrity and provide searchers with objective non-biased information related to the end users search. In other words the natural search will continue to be the search engines main objective and can only be reached through SEO because this section of real estate is not for sale.

Time Efficentency
In the modern business environment, performance is judged on a short term scale. Quarterly earning reports and projections can have drastic impact on a businesses stock price. When it comes to choosing an internet marketing strategy, PPC is far more time efficient than SEO.

PPC ads start to show on search engines instantly while the effects of SEO are more of a long term process. This allow a marketer to test and isolate what combination of keywords, landing pages, and ads perform best and focus on them while at the same time eliminating what is not working.

No matter if the purpose of the web site is to increase and capture sales or leads the benefits of PPC can be measured in almost real time from when the campaign is launched.

Best Of Both Worlds
The best strategy for an entrepreneur to consider when entering the world of internet marketing is to take advantage of what both PPC and SEO has to offer. By applying both strategies you can be assured that your target market will find you. This approach can also give you the needed upper hand in today’s ultra competitive market place.

Use both to gain more exposure on search engines and take up more valuable advertising real estate. The end result will be more traffic and ultimately more sales.

· Go deep – There is nothing that the search engine spiders like more than deep linking. Try to have as much links as possible coming in to nearly all of your pages. Doing so tells the search engines that your site has lots of relevant content on it and other sites feel the same way since they are linking to it. If a site only has links coming into its homepage, the search engines think your site has little content and therefore little value for their results pages. There is also the chance they will determine that your links were generated by spammy automation rather than by the value of your site and penalize your site.

· Go bold – Use html tags like <b> </b> around some of your more important keywords on each page. Don’t go crazy and have every single one of your keywords bold. A few times splashed into your on-site content will not only show the spiders your keywords but also grab the attention of that ever important user.

· Robots take the first exit – If there is no getting around using image links in your navigation bar, you better also include the use of text links. Make sure they show up first in the source code. The search engine robots will follow the first link they find and not follow any other additional links to that same page.

· Link titles – Links need to have titles, as well. This helps users know where you are sending them, but there are also instances of the search engines using this in their algorithms to figure the relevancy for a page.

· Anchor text – You need anchor text in links but try not to overdo it. It isn’t good in the eyes of the search engines if all of your inbound links look the same and point to the same page. It sounds off some alarm bells because it like automation and spam, things search engines really don’t like too much. Try using your URL sometimes, company name other times, “or just changing up the anchor text into different variations of the phrase.

· Write articles – Show off your writing skills for some free publicity. Here is where hiring someone to do content generation becomes important. Article exchanges are a little link exchanges, only that you are writing an article for someone else’s website in exchange for a link. Write an article on search engine optimization services with a link back to your site at the end of it. You both make out. You get a link and the other site gets some fresh relevant content.

· Use several domains – It might be worth the time and effort to use multiple domains if you have several topics with enough information that could each support its own website. Search engines usually will only list one page per domain on any given search, and there is a good chance your website’s information might deserve two. Secondly, directories normally accept only home pages. With the use of multiple domains, you can get more directory listings.

· Site map – All relevant websites need a site map, especially if you want to be taken seriously by the search engines. A site map should be linked to from every page on the site. This helps the search engine spiders index every page with just two clicks, particularly the deeper pages not normally indexed at all.
There are many more steps in the process of search engine optimization. Every aspect of it needs to be broken down and looked at dependent on the needs of the individual site you work on. There are always details to comb over and changes to be made. Hopefully, these above mentioned tips can help you get started in improving your rankings.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised with how you’re your link building campaign will work from a simple blog. Bloggers are quite charitable when it comes to building natural links. They gladly and commonly link to other websites in the same market sphere as them. They not only link from their blog links list, but more importantly, they link from within the post itself adding relevancy and value in the eyes of the search engines and a visitor. As one of the leading website design companies in Scranton, we are always willing to link to other industry bloggers such as LougneLizard or PMG Web Design

All links hold value for the search engines. Just that, some simply provide more net benefit than others. Good links from good websites are good for your website. Bad links from shady websites is bad. Try getting reciprocal links, between similarly themed blogs and websites. Stay away from linking to and from entirely unrelated sites and blogs. While, they can offer some value; it is often times very little.

As you are writing your newest blog post, link to other interesting blog posts. After all, the power of blogging is in part due to linking. Here are some other reasons why you need to start a blog on your website:

· Link Juice

o Most people that run blogs link to other people’s blogs and websites from their own home page. This can be a good thing or it can be a bad one. The benefit of linking to someone’s blog home page is that it normally has a good to very good PageRank according to Google. The disadvantage is like many other links pages, transferred PageRank is divided among the numerous blogs and traditional websites when linked to it.

o If the link-sending page is relevant for the subject matter or topic the receiving page will be awarded extra value from that link. This is very often the case with blogs and is actually quite common. Bloggers tend to link to other blogs and websites that share their themes and subject matter. While they are in the same market niche, they work together for relevancy in the search engine rankings instead of against one another where no one wins.

o Stick with links that are subject-relevant. Acquiring links from websites outside of your subject matter will pass some link value but a very little amount to mean anything. For example, if your website is an authority of search engine marketing, you should not be linking to other websites selling sneakers. Instead, link to on-topic websites that deal with search engine optimization or affiliate websites.

· Anchor Text

o Linking from your blog provides you a great way to link with keyword relevant anchor text. As you write your blog post, you can add and drop links throughout the text of it. As you link, your text and lines of sentences become natural looking anchor text for the keywords you are trying to rank for.

o Your link gets an added boost in relevancy by being surrounded by very theme relevant content, containing important keyword phrases. The textual content of your anchor text guarantees that the sending page is theme relevant.

Starting a blog is a great idea to help to elevate you website’s ranking in searches for your most important keywords. By doing so, your blog will find itself atop the search engine results pages through your blog. It really is a great tool for any company interested in search engine marketing or search engine optimization services.