by Mary Killelea, Dec. 8, 2009 

The Criteria the search engines use to rank pages can be categorized into two groups:

On page factors:  You control this

Off site factors:  This is where a internet marketing strategy is crucial

Onsite SEO:

Factors:

• Title Tag
• Words on your page
• Domain Name
• HTML design
• URLS

Offsite SEO:

Factors:

• Incoming Links
• Anchor text links
• Page rank of sites
• Authority Sites

Your marketing mix should consist of both .. first your onsite has to be addressed and then off site has strategies need to be implemented.

– Call for a quote 503-997-6935

by Mary Killelea Dec 8, 2009

1. Decide on the one search phrase you want your page to rank for.
2. Title your page with a variation of the phrase you want it to rank for.
3. Create a headline on your page that re-enforces the title of your page
4. Write your page content for consumers, but do also keep in mind it’s important to give the search engines what they need to rank you correctly for the terms you are targeting, so use the key word term phrases you are targeting in your content.
5. Create links to your page using link text that contains variation of your search phrase.
6. Get external links to your page that also use variations of your search phrase.
7. Continue to do this through out your site on each and ever page, targeting a unique key word phrase on each of the pages.

Good Luck!

by Mary Killelea Dec 3, 2009  

With the incredible high user base, expect more Facebook changes to come…

Here is a excerpt from a recent letter to facebook users that Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook wrote,

 ”Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.”

Read the complete letter here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=190423927130

by Mary Killelea November 8, 2009 Portland Web Design

Here is a list of 13 great sites/tools that are FREE to help you with online market research. Be smart and do your market research.

1. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2. http://www.google.com/trends
3. http://www.google.com/insights/search/
4. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
5. http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions 
6. http://technorati.com/search
7. http://www.google.com/alerts
8. http://www.spyfu.com/
9. http://www.nichewatch.com/
10. http://pulse.ebay.com/
11. http://new-pulse.ebay.com/
12. http://www.amazon.com/
13. http://www.shopping.com/top_searches

by Mary Killelea November 6, 2009

One of the first steps in having an online business or web site  is choosing the URL. The URL is the web address that someone types in when going to  a website. The URL you use for your business is important and you should definately put some thought into it. 

 The URL you use should have your most important keywords in it.  Here is an example of what you not to do www.maryjos.com  where instead if I was a cupcake shop owner I should try and register a domain that has my business keyword in it and  a URL that is more descriptive of my business like: www.cupcakeshop.com

If your business is already established it’s still smart to be selective and mindful when choosing a domain and try to incorporate a keyword that your are targeting in your domain name.

Take these things into consideration when selecting a domain name:

1. Is it easy to remember
2. Are you incorporating your keywords in it?
3. Does it properly reflect your business?

Another SEO Tip would be to tell you to name your additional web pages with keywords that your are targeting. An example of this  would be instead of  cupcakes1.html you might title it chocolate-cup-cakes.html or birthday-cup-cakes.html … you get the idea, be mindful of your keywords when creating your site. It will pay off I promise.

I will leave you with a really good tip that could save you hundreds of frustrating hours.  You must check to see if your domain has ever been used by someone else. If your brand new domain name was used for spam or unethical internet practices, it will be extremely difficult to get it indexed in the major search engines. Before purchasing a domain always check http://www.archive.org and see if it has ever been owned before and if it has, take a look at the archives to see if the person who owned it ever did unethical stuff.

by Mary Killelea November 3, 2009  

Did you know?

• 80% of users scan pages (users don’t read every word) - Lesson: Write for your audience and the medium in which you are delivering your message
• Only 10% of people look at the web page below the fold. - Lesson: put your most important info on the top half of your page.
• Users decide to stay or leave your page within 10-15 seconds - Lesson Make a good first impression and give them something good to keep them interested in staying on your site. (make your site sticky)

It’s important to have goals when creating your site:

 Company goals

• know your company mission & vision
• Is your goal Business to Consumer (B2C)  or Business to Business (B2B)

Define your website goals

• do you want to increase sales?
• do you want to build a list of leads?
• do you want lots of traffic?
• do you want to sell a service, product, share news or entertain?
• what valuable web content will you share? white papers, ebook, blog articles, videos

 Provide value for your customers

• figure out how you are gonna make your site sticky
• what can you offer your visitors that your competitors can’t or aren’t
• what are the benefits of your services, products,news or entertainment ?

Know which type of site you you should have to best suit your business goals.

• static website
• dynamic website
• content management site
• eCommerce site
• flash website

Website Must haves:

• professional, non distracting design, use a natural palette of colors, create a strong contrast between a pages background and it’s text, use an average of 3 different colors consistently throughout your site 
• call to action
• formatting - write for your audience and the medium
• easy clean and clear navigation
• strong enticing headlines (utilizing keywords)
• rich interesting copy
• current up to date info (never out of date info)
• your page must load quickly
• contact info
• contact form
• no pop ups
• no frames
• avoid distracting bells and whistles

Great resources for choosing colors for your site:

http://www.2createawebsite.com/design/color-psychology.html
http://www.avangate.com/articles/color-web-site_59.html

Great resource for designing the perfect “call to action button”
http://www.leemunroe.com/web-design-trends-call-to-action-signup-download-buttons/

• color, location, language, size, and margins

by Mary Killelea October 28, 2009

Just like having a website it doesn’t matter if you have the coolest website or fan page you can’t expect people to just find you without putting in some effort .. you have to MARKET your business online. So here are some great tips on how to increase traffic to your fan page.Now this should go without saying but for those just getting into it.. REMEMBER is it very important to communicate regularly with the people who are interested in your company. Engage with them, respond and acknowledge them when they take the time to make a comment or to say hi.   If you are real and show them respect they will be more likely to share your business with their friends.

by Mary Killelea October 19, 2009

Let me begin with DON’T PARTICIPATE IN SPAM!  There are people out there that may try and lure you with empty promises or enticements that seem to good to be true. Stay away from them.

The simple explanation of spam is it’s a tactic of manipulation vs. optimization.  It’s deception vs. marketing

As an internet marketer your goal should be to create a successful online business that stands the test of time and is of high value to your clients and to the overall web.

Terms worth defining: 

White Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices -  are ethical search engine friendly and adopted techniques and tactics that help your site get noticed by the Search Engines for the terms you are targeting. 

 Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices - are unethical techniques and tactics that are highly frowned upon by the search engines. Deception is the intent of any one using black hat techniques like backdoors, cloaking, and other tricks to optimize sites.

Remember the search engines employ hundreds of scientist and have numerous resources to combat those that are developing spam techniques or participating in black hat techniques.

Avoid  Content spamming and Link spamming and play by the rules when optimizing your site. You will win in the long run.

For those looking at hiring someone to do your SEO avoid anyone who practices any black hat techniques they will only damage your online reputation.

by Mary Killelea October 19, 2009 

• Search Engines don’t store web pages, - they index the text on those pages
• Search Engines don’t search the web - they search only some within their index - so if you are not in their index you are not going to appear in their search results.
• Search engines don’t read a page and decide what it should rank for at all - they receive a search query and rank the pages that match that query - this means that a single page can rank for multiple terms (this matters when creating your keyword strategies)

by Mary Killelea, September 14, 2009

You can now tag friends & Pages in status updates on Facebook Ex: tag your friend in your post. To tag Mary, start the post with @Mary (a drop down menu will appear so you can select which Mary - This is nice because if you use twitter you have to hope you remembered thier name correctly this feature helps you by providing choices.)

 Here’s how it works: when writing a status update in the publisher, users can tag connections by using the “@” symbol, just like on Twitter. Facebook pops up a dropdown menu that allows users to select any friend, Page, group, or event. When a friend, Page, etc, is tagged, that shows up on their wall. When you’re tagged, a notification is sent to you as well, and you can remove tags of yourself in others’ posts.

 What is great is that Facebook is enabling status tagging for all of a user’s Facebook connections – not just friends, but Pages, groups, and events as well. This means Page managers will now have a great new resource for tracking comments and feedback about their brand or business. Up until now, brands have been able to track posts and comments made on their Facebook Page directly by fans, as well as search public comments made by Facebook users through Facebook’s new real time search.

As of today, all @ tags will appear on the wall of the Page as well, even though users never visited the Page. The same applies to event and group administrators as well. That’s a big deal for Page administrators hoping to gain more insight into how they’re being talked about inside Facebook.