Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

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Do you hate customer service?

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

By Robert Lockard

You’re not alone if you do. Customer service has gotten a bad name in recent years, but customers are trying to fight back. According to a CNN article, entitled “Customer service ‘vigilantes’ target executives,” customers who receive poor customer service from a company are turning to social media to vent their frustrations and get service.

"No Whining" customer service signThe CNN article includes several funny and interesting stories of people’s attempts to get the attention of companies’ management in order to solve a problem. One person tweeted an executive on Twitter, while another person made a YouTube video and sent it to a company to get a response. Some people taped conversations with customer-service representatives and posted them online. This could be good or bad, depending on your level of customer service.

Do you want to do business with a company that seems to ignore your service requests or that takes too long to respond to your messages? Customers want to be respected. Companies depend on happy customers to stay in business. Word of mouth is more powerful than almost any other form of persuasive communication, so it’s essential to cultivate positive feelings in customers so they will react positively to your brand when speaking with family members and friends.

This topic harkens back to my discussion of earning online shoppers trust. We must be vigilant if we want our customers to use our services or buy our products.

I think it’s strange that any company could forget to take care of its customers, since they ought to be their central focus. Perhaps stress, limited resources and other factors can lead to poor customer service, but companies that make an effort to please their customers and work out problems kindly often live longer than companies that don’t.

The extra effort is worth it.

So do you hate customer service? Hopefully, if you’re in the ecommerce industry, you love it. Even more than that, your customers should love your customer service.

eHarbor, Inc. prides itself on strong customer service. If you call us or any of our affiliates, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by our high level of care and attention.

The photo of the whining sign is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of yummiec00kies.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO | 2 Comments »

Social media doesn’t equal SEO

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Social media is a great tool for businesses to communicate with customers. It gives marketers an opportunity to establish close contact with people in ways seemingly unthinkable until just a few years ago.

Winnie the Pooh and tiger too

Despite social media’s strengths, it should not be considered an end unto itself. Without other marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization, advertising, etc. a company’s efforts in social media could fall flat. A Brafton article entitled “Does social media increase SEO?” caught my interest and inspired this blog entry.

This is not the first time I’ve talked about social media and its effects on ecommerce in the eHarbor Blog. In one of my blog entries, I noted companies are increasing their spending on search engine marketing, despite the recession. In another, I point out companies are also reducing their social media spending slightly this year, after greatly expanding it over the last few years.

It seems like many businesses have learned the virtues of social media, but they are also prudent in their decisions to try to maximize return on investment. By getting to the top of search engines, companies can reach a wider number of Internet users than by using social media. Both are useful tools and should not be considered superior to the other. But it appears businesses are choosing the broader tool than the more personal one to help them through this recession.

In the Brafton article I mentioned above, Warren Cohen, CEO of SEO-focused Greenlight, said social media would probably not have a noticeable effect on SEO for a company’s website. SEO is built slowly by creating a search engine-friendly website, populating it with relevant content and building connections with similar websites.

A presence on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites is great and it can add to search-engine rankings, but it probably won’t have a significant impact.

Tried-and-true principles are your best options for getting to the top of Google, MSN and Yahoo. If you would like a more in-depth explanation of SEO and how to use it to your advantage, check out my blog entry “Search engine optimization at the drugstore” or my seven-part series on SEO tactics.

The photo of Winnie the Pooh and “Tigger” is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of JoshMcConnell.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 6 Comments »

Redesigned Magellan Commerce website online

Monday, April 6th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I get to fulfill my promise in my last blog post by writing about some of the great things happening at eHarbor, Inc. I’m excited!

Magellan Commerce, an eHarbor affiliate that was formed in May 2008, launched a completely redesigned and improved version of its website on Friday, April 3, 2009. It is quite an improvement, as you can see from the before-and-after screenshots below.

Original version of the Magellan Commerce website

Original version of the Magellan Commerce website

New version of the Magellan Commerce website

New version of the Magellan Commerce website

Magellan Commerce designs websites, corporate logos, business cards, letterheads and postcards and more for businesses and individuals. They also help companies top search engines with search engine optimization.

Remember the SEO series we finished a little while ago? The tactics we discussed in that series, such as simplifying URLs, optimizing images and improving anchor text, are among those Magellan Commerce uses for its clients.

I recommend checking out the redesigned Magellan Commerce website for yourself today! Feel free to also visit other eHarbor affiliates, like Real Estate Promoter, Submit Solution and Direct Home Find.

I look forward to sharing more positive ecommerce news like this soon.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

Good news: Ecommerce to grow through 2013

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Going along with my last eHarbor blog entry on the increase in spending on search engine optimization, this blog entry is on the positive future of the ecommerce industry.

Dog squished into car seat

According to an article from eMarketer, entitled “eMarketer Revises E-Commerce Forecast,” total sales of products online in the United States, excluding travel, totaled $133.6 billion in 2008. That was a 4.6-percent increase from 2007, despite the economic downturn plaguing most industries.

In 2009, when most people are worried about serious contractions because of low demand from consumers, ecommerce sales are expected to hold steady, dipping just 0.4 percent to $133.1 billion.

Even better, total ecommerce spending will grow about 10 percent or more from 2010 to 2013, possibly reaching $203.5 billion in 2013. That is definitely worth celebrating.

As more companies jump into the world of SEO and strive to position themselves online, the ecommerce industry is going to keep expanding. Plus, with consumers looking for deals and convenience in a tight marketplace, many are turning to online sources for goods they used to purchase at malls or regular retail stores.

This is a great time to jump online. I recommend checking out eHarbor, Inc.’s affiliates for help in designing and optimizing your website. These affiliates include: Submit Solution, Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter.

The photo of the dog in the car seat is from Flickr and it is the copyright of exfordy.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 9 Comments »

Bucking recession, ecommerce keeps growing

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Great news! The ecommerce industry isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. It’s actually growing in strength, despite the recession. What a pleasant surprise!

Surprised kittens

According to an article in Practical Ecommerce, entitled “Chart of the Week: Search Engine Marketing to Increase,” marketers in the United States are expected to spend $14.1 billion on search engine marketing in 2009. That’s a 16-percent increase from 2008’s $12.2 billion. If it continues to grow at this rate, the amount spent on search engine marketing in the United States could reach $23 billion in 2013.

Search engine marketing is made up of paid-search advertising, contextual advertising, paid inclusion, and search engine optimization. We just finished a series on SEO strategies. I recommend reading those blog entries, if you’d like more information.

You might remember my blog entry on the success of eHarbor, Inc. not long ago. I’m pleased to note this is not just an isolated incident, but an industry-wide one. As the economy sours, businesses are turning more to the Internet for new customers, and getting high placement on search engines, like Google, MSN and Yahoo, is a great way to get their attention.

Be sure to check out eHarbor, Inc.’s affiliates for help in designing and optimizing your websites. These affiliates include: Submit Solution, Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter.

The photo of the surprised kittens is from Flickr and it is the copyright of telachhe.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 12 Comments »

Step 7 to topping Google: Site promotion

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

As promised in my last blog entry, this is the seventh and final part of this series on strong search engine optimization strategies. We’ll close this series by discussing how to promote your website and get noticed by your target audience.

Misspelled Advanced Web Design sign

Don’t expect your website to become popular overnight. Traffic doesn’t come to your site just because you get your site ranked high on search engines for specific key terms. You need to provide services and content of interest to your audience, and you must get out there and share the good news about your site.

A great way to let people know about your services and website is to blog about them. Search engines love blogs because they are constantly being updated with fresh content, full of (hopefully) relevant links, and magnets for attention from the blogosphere, if you do them right.

For instance, I recently blogged about eHarbor’s creation of Squidoo lenses. We created Squidoo lenses for:

- eHarbor, Inc.

- Magellan Commerce

- Submit Solution

- Real Estate Promoter

Squidoo is a great tool for showing off your products, services, talents, knowledge or anything, really.

Social media sites are another great way to promote your website. Once you write a blog entry or fill your website with strong content, submit it to social media sites to get the word out.

Here are some of the sites eHarbor uses:

- Delicious

- Digg

- Diigo

- Propeller

- Reddit

- StumbleUpon

- Technorati

- Twitter

It’s also a good idea to add your business to Google’s Local Business Center. This allows you to show up on Google Map searches, and also to have a map of your company’s location next to your search result on Google.

Try not to get to excited or start spamming social media sites with news that isn’t particularly useful. Just be wise and moderate in your attempts to promote your website, and you should do fine.

Wow! This has been a fun series to write. I hope you enjoyed learning about Web page titles, optimizing images, simplifying URLs, improving website navigation, and including relevant anchor text with links.

We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about in the eHarbor Blog, so stick around. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on search engine optimization.

The photo of the misspelled “Advanced Web Design” sign is from Flickr and it is the copyright of agjimenez.

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Posted in SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

Step 6 to topping Google: Strong anchor text

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 6 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization tactics. You may notice that in many of my blog entries, I include links to past blog entries and other informative sites. I try to include appropriate text for each link in order to give you (and search engines) an idea of what information the link will contain. This Ship anchor in Greenock, Scotlandtext, known as anchor text, is another way to optimize your website for search engines.

Anchor text should be specific and closely related to the topic you are addressing. If you put in random links that are neither relevant to your content, nor descriptive of the information on the linked site, you are wasting your time. Links should be helpful to your website’s visitors, offering them additional information in a highly visible manner.

For instance, if I want to create a link to the Submit Solution website, I simply link the text “Submit Solution” to http://www.submitsolution.com. So when you see text that is blue, purple or red, you know that it links you to Submit Solution’s website or at least something related to Submit Solution (which, by the way, is a division of eHarbor, Inc.). As a bonus, search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN also use the anchor text to understand the relevance of that page to this one, potentially boosting your ranking.

Here are some good ideas to consider when choosing anchor text for your links:

- Keep your text short and descriptive. Brevity seems to be a common theme in this SEO series – like in my blog entry on optimizing images.

- Avoid generic terms like “Click here” or “article.” Those really don’t describe what the link is, and there are many other creative ways to anchor your links. Come to think of it, I mentioned avoiding generic terms in my blog entry on Web page titles, as well. It feels like we’re coming full-circle in this series.

- Don’t use the actual URL as the anchor text, unless you have a good reason. I used the URL of Submit Solution above simply as an illustration. You can also include a URL to promote your website, if it is new or poorly connected at the moment. You know, I think we discussed good URL practices earlier, as well.

- Make sure your links are easy to spot. If you use a style that makes links look just like regular text, people won’t be able to find them, and they won’t be much use.

By the way, including internal links to different parts of your website can help visitors navigate your website more freely and intuitively. Give it a shot, but don’t go overboard. Make sure the links are meaningful and add to the message of the page you are currently working on. Improving website navigation – that’s another topic we’ve covered before on the eHarbor Blog! Simply amazing.

This is the sixth part of this series. We started with a blog post on making content king, and we’ve covered a number of topics along the way. We’re coming close to the end of this series on strong SEO practices. We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about, as well. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The photo of the naval monument in Greenock, Scotland is from Flickr and it is the copyright of Bob the courier.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, Search Engines | 3 Comments »

Step 5 to topping Google: Website navigation

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 5 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization practices. Thanks for sticking with me through this fun little series. This is my 12th blog entry on the eHarbor Blog. I’ve had a lot of fun talking about eHarbor’s history, eHarbor’s future, and even several reasons to smile.

Disorganized garage in Tokyo, JapanWe started this series by talking about improving website content, and continued with a post on designing Web page titles and optimizing images. Now we’ll consider how best to organize websites to improve navigation for both search engines and customers.

You can choose a number of ways to organize your website content. Just make sure you’re consistent. Here are some good ideas to optimize your website navigation:

- Create a quick, intuitive navigation system. Allow visitors to click just once or twice from the homepage to find the specific information or services they’re seeking.

- Be careful not to link every page to every other page. This can cause confusion. Provide relevant links to other pages, but don’t go overboard.

- Stick with text-based links to navigate your site. Using Flash or drop-down menus can make it difficult for search engines to crawl through your site.

- Include a list of your main categories on the sidebar of each page. This can help visitors quickly browse through topics without having to return to the homepage often.

- Use well-designed URLs, as we discussed in the last blog entry in this SEO series. If people cut off part of your URL, try to make it so it will still lead them to part of your website. For instance, if you take this blog entry’s URL www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/02/03/what-eharbor-is-and-
why-it-matters-to-you and cut off the last part so you are left with www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/02, the link still works.

It’s also a good idea to include a sitemap on your website to boost usability to site visitors and visibility to search engines. There are two kinds of sitemaps that have two different functions: HTML sitemaps and XML Sitemaps. XML Sitemaps usually have a capital S to differentiate them from HTML sitemaps, so I’ll follow that rule.

An example of a sitemap can be found on the Real Estate Promoter website: www.realestatepromoter.com/index.php?base=site. This sitemap lists all of the main pages and their subcategories in a clear, concise manner. It is best to organize your website by subject matter, putting specific materials under appropriate categories. If you were selling real estate on your website, you could use something like this for your setup:

Homepage -> Properties for sale -> Waterfront homes, condos, rental units and other specific property types

HTML sitemaps are mainly designed for website visitors, not necessarily for Google, MSN, Yahoo or other search engines. Search engines can use them to understand the context of pages on your website, but they should be focused on helping your visitors find what they’re looking for if they get lost.

XML Sitemaps are much better at providing information about your site to search engines. You should consider using a Sitemap if:

- You recently created your site. Google often finds sites through links from one Web page to another, so new sites with no inbound links are almost invisible to it. A Sitemap allows search engines to find your website, even if it is relatively new.

- Your site has dynamic content like AJAX or Flash.

- Your site has a large number of archived pages that are not linked together.

A Sitemap gives search engines a great deal of information, including:

- How often your Web pages are updated with new content. Blogs and other content-dense sections of your website can gain more attention this way.

- Which pages are more important than others, in terms of hierarchy. Your homepage would have the highest ranking, while categories would be slightly below it, and materials under those categories would be a little lower. This helps search engines understand the context of Web pages, but it doesn’t affect a page’s search-engine ranking if it is ranked below other pages on the site.

If you would like a step-by-step walkthrough to help you set up a Sitemap for your website, check out Google’s Sitemap Generator script.

This is the fifth part of this series. We’re coming close to the end of this series on strong SEO practices. Check out the Submit Solution website for more ideas on building SEO on your website. We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about, as well. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The photo of the messy garage in Tokyo is from Flickr and it is the copyright of coccu.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

Step 4 to topping Google: Simplify URLs

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 4 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization practices. I took a little break in my last blog entry to talk about some fun things that make me smile. Let’s back to talking about important SEO tactics. We’ve talked about making content king on your website, adding concise Web page titles, and optimizing images on your site. Now we’ll talk about simplifying your Web pages’ URLs.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) movie posterTo start things off, it’s time once more for me to apply my love of movies to the discussion at hand. As Indiana Jones noted in a key scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), “Belloq’s staff is too long. They’re digging in the wrong place!” You’ve probably seen that movie, so you know that Indy’s nemesis had part of the instructions to build the staff of Ra, but because his staff was too long he was led to the wrong place in his search for the Ark of the Covenant.

All of this is highly applicable to URLs. If a URL is too long, it can be difficult for customers to remember and difficult for search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo to catalog. If Indy were a webmaster, he would probably have said, “Belloq’s URL is too long. They’re Digging in the wrong place!”

That might be a little silly, though.

Examples of long URLs that are poorly structured and hard to follow can be found at Mapquest and Google. On Mapquest, I looked up the mailing address of eHarbor, Inc. and it gave me this: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Orem&state=UT&address=13
23+N+Research+Way&zipcode=84097&cat=eHarbor%2C+Inc.#a/sea
rch/l::1323+Research+Way:Orem:UT:84097-6200:US:40.321124:-1
11.680809:address:Utah+County:1/m::15:40.324683:-111.679178:
0:::::/so:Eharbor+Inc:::r::25:::::/e.

Google searches are a little better. Here’s the URL of a search I did for eHarbor: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=
1G1GGLQ_ENUS311&=&q=eharbor&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f.

Now that’s a mouthful.

I don’t mean to slight Mapquest or Google. The purpose of their URLs isn’t necessarily to look pretty and get posted on websites. They exist solely to contain search parameters and show people what they’re looking up. However, in the world of ecommerce, keywords are essential, and you want your URLs to reflect that.

Here are some principles that can help you create strong URLs for your Web pages:

- Use a simple organization structure on your website. For instance, on the Magellan Commerce website, if you click on the “Features” tab, you will go to this URL: http://www.magellancommerce.com/features. Very simple. Just add a / to your main URL and include a word or phrase describing what is in that section. As you add content to sub-pages, you can simply add another / and additional words describing the content on those pages.

- Along with the first point, it’s better to use words than numbers in your URLs. Words are much more “friendly” to your site’s visitors and they help optimize your pages for search engines. Using “page 1” or seemingly random numbers and code to organize your URLs isn’t pretty and doesn’t help much with SEO.

- Don’t use too many keywords in your URLs. Be brief but descriptive about what people can expect to find on each Web page. No need for a whole lot of repetition.

- Only create one URL for each Web page. It’s possible to have multiple sub-domains and versions of a URL. For instance, you could have http://submitsolution.com and http://www.submitsolution.com go to two different sites. Choose one form of a URL, with or without www, and stick with it. Also, you’re better off only using lower-case letters in URLs, instead of mixing capital letters in.

This is the fourth part of this series. We’ll cover several other ways to achieve SEO in upcoming blog entries. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie poster is from Flickr and it is the copyright of MDH in Houston.

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Posted in Movies, SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

Step 3 to topping Google: Optimize your images

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 3 of our multi-part series on constructive search engine optimization practices.

In my last two blog entries, I discussed strong content writing and Web page titles as ways to build search engine optimization for your website. Today I’ll discuss optimizing images. Everyone loves a good image because it can add something special to your story and make a positive impression on readers. I like using them to add humor to my posts and visually describe what my post is about.

Three sleeping kittens

I’ll use the image above to illustrate good ways to optimize your images. By the way, I love cats, just like I love movies, and that’s why I’m using a picture of kittens. If you put your mouse over the image, you’ll see a caption pop up that says “Three kittens from the same litter snuggle together for a nap.” That is the image title or caption.

If you right-click the photo and hit the “Properties” button, you’ll find additional information that is used by search engines, like Google, MSN and Yahoo, to “see” what is in the images. Search engines are blind, so you have to spell out exactly what is contained in an image for them to notice it. One way I optimized this image for search engines is by providing alt text, which appears when the image does not load properly. This helps people who are unable to see the image to know exactly what it is, and it also helps search engines at the same time. By adding relevant, succinct alt text, like “Three sleeping kittens,” you are that much closer to optimizing your image.

The location of the file is www.eharborinc.com/blog/images/2009/0
2/sleeping_kittens.jpg. There are a number of lessons to learn from this file name and location. The file is in a specific folder that is meant only for eHarbor Blog photos. If every image’s file was located in a different place, it would be more difficult for search engines to go through and find them. It’s much better to have a good organizational system in place.

Most of the files we use in this blog are in JPEG format, but you can also use GIF, PNG or BMP to store your images. I find that JPEG is effective for my purposes, but each format has its own strengths and weaknesses, so you should pick and choose the format as your needs change. Also, keep the name short and simple. Don’t use generic names like “Image1.” I used “sleeping_kittens” because that pretty well describes the image.

This is the third part of this series. We’ll cover several other ways to achieve SEO in upcoming blog entries. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The photo of the kittens is from Flickr and it is the copyright of Gúnna.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Real Estate, SEO, Search Engines | 14 Comments »

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