Posts Tagged ‘Submit Solution’

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Submit Solution receives tasty website launch party

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

By Robert Lockard

The new Submit Solution website is quite amazing, isn’t it? If you haven’t checked it out, be sure to visit www.submitsolution.com right now to see all the great Web design, SEO and other services we provide there.

In fact, Submit Solution’s new website is so cool that we actually held a launch party in its honor on Monday, September 21, 2009. Alyssa Udall and Britnee Nguyen, the other two writers on the four ecommerce blogs on Submit Solution, and I planned a company-wide get-together in which we enjoyed refreshments and gave out prizes. The refreshments were made up of drinks, as well as orange and white donuts, which were shaped like the new Submit Solution logo. See for yourself.

Submit Solution logo made of donuts

Submit Solution logo

That S-shaped group of donuts was one of my favorite parts of the celebration. After that, we held a fun scavenger hunt. Employees had to search the Submit Solution website for clues to lead them to prizes cleverly hidden throughout our eHarbor, Inc. office. We hid clues on Submitsolution.com in the site’s blog tags, image titles and in the text of Web pages.

The prizes people could win by finding and unscrambling the clues included toys, candy bars, eHarbor mugs and Bigler Bucks, which we affectionately named for Oliver Bigler, the CEO and cofounder of eHarbor, Inc. We use Bigler Bucks to buy company products, like pens, mugs and shirts. Our employees enjoyed this friendly competition. Most of them are used to playing foosball, so this scavenger hunt was quite tame in comparison.

You can read more about this website’s great features in my blog entry, “Submit Solution launches updated website with new design features.”

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Posted in Fun, Web Design, eHarbor | 1 Comment »

Simple is better in Web design

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

In honor of Submit Solution’s newly redesigned website, I will talk about four Web-design strategies you can use to make your website look more pleasing and hold viewers’ attention longer. These strategies come from a blog post on the Think Vitamin Blog, entitled, “How to Make Your Web Design Stand out from the Crowd.”

Spider webThe first strategy is not to be afraid of empty space in your Web design. On news sites, like CNN, you won’t find a bit of open space; all of it is taken up with headlines, graphics and numbers. That is useful for people looking to cram as much useful information as possible into a confined space. But it can feel cluttered and overwhelming on ecommerce websites that are selling products and services.

Giving viewers space to breathe can create a relaxed atmosphere on your website. We’re already bombarded with information, so it is refreshing to find a website with some elbowroom.

You can find the rest of the steps in a blog entry on the new Web Design Blog on Submit Solution on October 5. The new Submit Solution website is now online, and it will get most of the Internet marketing blog entries from now on, while the eHarbor Blog will mostly be about topics related to eHarbor, Inc.

The photo of the spider web is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of dann solo.

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Posted in Web Design | 1 Comment »

What to do before you hire a Web designer

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Do you feel lost when it comes to Web design? You don’t need to be an expert on HTML, Ruby or other programming languages to end up with an effective design for your ecommerce website. You can use Magellan Commerce’s custom-design services to handle the actual design part.

Blue dogBut there are several steps you can take before you go to the experts to make sure your site does precisely what you want it to. These steps come from an Examiner article entitled, “Website design starter plan for clients.” That article has horrible spelling and grammar, but it has a few good ideas I want to share, so I’ll cut its author a little slack.

Anyway, here are two of the steps you should take before requesting help from a Web designer:

1. Look at what your competitors are doing. Plagiarism is illegal, but finding good practices and Web-design ideas is perfectly legal. This will give you a good starting point to see which elements of a website you would like to use in your own. Try to stick to general ideas, such as navigation, structure and what subjects are covered in the text.

2. Once you have an idea of what others are doing, start mapping out your website’s outline. Start with the main pages, such as home, services, products, about us, etc. Then add subpages under the main pages to build on more specific topics. Fill in as much detail as you can about what information and messages you want those pages to contain. This will help the designers be more precise in meeting your needs.

You can find the rest of the steps in a blog entry on the new Web Design Blog on Submit Solution. The new Submit Solution website is now online, and it will get most of the Internet marketing blog entries from now on, while the eHarbor Blog will mostly be about topics related to eHarbor, Inc.

The photo of the blue dog is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of lepiaf.geo.

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Posted in Web Design | No Comments »

Submit Solution launches new website with design services

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Submit Solution, an Internet-marketing company, just released an advanced new version of its website, submitsolution.com. The updated site now includes two new services – custom Web and logo design – as well as four ecommerce blogs and free search-engine submission, in addition to its search engine optimization and paid-search packages.

Submit Solution is already an expert at getting qualified traffic to clients’ websites via SEO and PPC campaigns. By adding custom website design and logo design to its services, Submit Solution can now help turn a higher number of site visitors into customers.

Submitsolution.com has a more user-friendly design, allowing visitors to quickly navigate its Web pages. The site boasts free search-engine submission, as well as four new blogs focusing on SEO, PPC, social media and Web design, respectively. It also provides additional Internet-marketing tools, definitions of ecommerce terms and FAQs to help newcomers learn the ins and outs of Internet marketing.

“The new Submit Solution website helps potential clients understand both the intricacies of a successful search-engine marketing plan and what we can do to help,” said Oliver Bigler, chief executive officer and founder of Submit Solution. “Internet newbies can often be drowned in a sea of conflicting information. Our website helps clients navigate their way toward information and services that fit their needs best.”

For 14 years, Submit Solution has worked in the Internet-marketing industry. Its SEO packages were recently updated to add social-media posting and inbound linking to its traditional tactics of optimizing site content, such as adding Meta tags. Other new or improved services include:

- Website designSubmit Solution logo

- Logo design

- Paid-search advertising

- Competitive analysis

- Website consulting

This launch of Submit Solution’s new website makes this the second week in a row in which we’ve introduced an innovative product or service. Be sure to check out my blog entry on Magellan Commerce’s new online merchant service: “Magellan Commerce the 1st to offer ecommerce and merchant services.”

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Posted in Web Design, eHarbor | No Comments »

Is Facebook dying?

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Is Facebook starting to die? That’s the topic of an astonishing New York Times article, entitled “Facebook Exodus.” Author Virginia Heffernan starts by pointing out:

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing – some of them ostentatiously.

Telluride, Colorado ghost town

I’ve written about Facebook several times in the eHarbor Blog, usually noting its strength and rapid growth. Along with Twitter, it is leading the social-media revolution – or fad – that could change search engines and other aspects of the Internet. This article grabbed my attention and demanded I discuss it.

You should definitely check out the New York Times article because it tells five stories about individuals who left Facebook for a variety of reasons. They are all quite compelling. One felt his privacy was violated by Facebook, and another felt she was wasting too much time on the website.

The feelings of privacy violation are completely understandable, and perhaps even unavoidable. Facebook is a social network so its information is not meant to be completely private. Perhaps people’s concerns are just the result of their own carelessness in posting too much information or not studying the rules to keep it hidden. Or maybe it’s a combination of shifting, hidden or hard-to-understand rules, as well as people’s decisions not to read the fine print.

The last paragraph in the New York Times article sums it all up nicely:

Is Facebook doomed to someday become an online ghost town, run by zombie users who never update their pages and packs of marketers picking at the corpses of social circles they once hoped to exploit? Sad, if so. Though maybe fated, like the demise of a college clique.

You can find the rest of this blog entry on the new Social Media Blog on Submit Solution when it is published. The new Submit Solution redesign is almost ready, and it will get most of our Internet marketing blog entries from now on, while the eHarbor Blog will mostly be about eHarbor, Inc.

The photo of the ghost town near Telluride, Colo. is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of Rob Lee.

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Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

Social media can’t replace blogs

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I read a provocative post from the Blog Bloke a while ago that I’d like to comment on. The post is entitled, “8 Twitter tips to promote your blog.” In it, the author responds to the argument that Twitter and other social media are replacing blogs and that we should drive traffic to Twitter instead of to our blogs and ecommerce websites.

History of blogs

He points out the many flaws with that idea in his blog entry. I would like to focus on two of them.

The first point I would like to focus on is, as the Blog Bloke puts it, “If you are a marketer trying to make money you will want your Twitter followers to visit your blog and click on your ads.”

To quote Lex Luthor, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Companies can post links to deals and special offers on their Twitter accounts, but those links always go to one of their corporate websites or landing pages. Nothing is bought or sold on Twitter, itself. Social media is an excellent part of Internet marketing, but it is not a replacement for the many other tools, such as paid search, SEO and blogging.

You can find the rest of this blog entry on the new Social Media Blog on Submit Solution when it is published. The new Submit Solution redesign is almost ready, and it will get most of our Internet marketing blog entries from now on, while the eHarbor Blog will mostly be about eHarbor, Inc.

The comic of the history of blogging is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of stefan2904.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Social Media | No Comments »

How to get inbound links

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

This is a follow-up to my previous blog entry, “I link, therefore I am… on top of Google.” I’m talking about what I learned at Webmarketing123’s August 5, 2009 Webinar, “Advanced SEO Webinar: Linking Best Practices.” Without further ado, I’ll return to where I left off.

Fingers touching light

Unless a website is cached or saved by search engines on a regular basis, the links found on it won’t count toward the search engine optimization of the sites it links to. That explains why Google can’t keep up with Twitter and other social-media sites, as I discussed in an earlier eHarbor Blog entry. It’s trying to take a snapshot of websites that change multiple times every second.

Returning to caches, I learned a cool trick at the Webinar that I would like to share. If you want to know if a Web page is cached by Google, all you have to do is type “cache:www.thesitename.com” into a Google search and it will tell you.

The big question is how do you get inbound links? After you’ve gone through and added great content that is relevant to your keywords, you can start using the following sources to get inbound links:

- Directories

- Paid Listings

- Article Syndications

- Blogs

- News Releases

We’re starting a new blog on the newly redesigned Submit Solution website, which will debut soon. We’ll be transferring our ecommerce and Internet marketing articles from the eHarbor Blog to that one soon. You can find the rest of this blog entry there after it debuts.

The photo of the fingers touching light is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of littledan77.

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Posted in SEO, Search Engines | No Comments »

I link, therefore I am… on top of Google

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I enjoy Webmarketing123’s free Webinars on Internet marketing. I always learn a lot from them, and I try to apply what I learn. Today, I’ll talk about what I learned at their August 5, 2009 Webinar, “Advanced SEO Webinar: Linking Best Practices.”

Confusing keyboard arrows

The five things a website needs to get ranked on the first page of Google results are:

1. Keywords – The search terms you want people to type into a search engine in order to find your Web page.

2. Site Content – You need to use your chosen keywords in your website’s text to show search engines your site is relevant to those topics.

3. Meta Content – You don’t usually see this content, but it must be there in the backend of your site and in your Web page titles.

4. URLs – Include important keywords in your URLs. For example, it is better to have a URL like www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/07/17/is-twitter-overhyped, which includes the date and headline keywords, than something like www.eharborinc.com/blog/post-81. The second URL gives no clue as to what it contains, while the first one gives a much better idea of the page’s subject matter.

5. Inbound Links – These are links (or votes) from other websites to your site. Search engines look at both the number and quality of the links you receive from other sites.

We’re starting a new blog on the newly redesigned Submit Solution website, which will debut soon. We’ll be shifting attention from the eHarbor Blog to that one soon. You can find the rest of this blog entry there. Stay tuned!

The photo of the confusing keyboard arrows is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of jeremyfoo.

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Posted in SEO, Web Design | 4 Comments »

Twitter tutors tweeters

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Have you heard all about how useful Twitter is in building your business, but you have no idea how to get started “tweeting”? You’re not alone, and Twitter is trying to help you learn the ropes with a new Twitter user guide.

Squirrel reachingI found out about this new guide in a Houston Business Journal article, entitled “Twitter launches business guide, search widget.” Apparently Twitter noticed many people and businesses would open Twitter accounts, post for a while and then abandon them because they either weren’t seeing results or they didn’t know what they’re supposed to do to with them. This new guide should hopefully reverse that trend.

If you go to Twitter’s guide you’ll find information on how to get started, new vocabulary terms, best practices and case studies on companies that have successfully used Twitter to increase their revenue.

You can find the rest of this blog entry on the new Social Media Blog on Submit Solution when it is published. The new design of Submit Solution is almost ready, and it will get most of our Internet marketing blog entries from now on, while the eHarbor Blog will mostly be about eHarbor, Inc.-related topics.

The photo of the squirrel reaching is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of snappybex.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Social Media | No Comments »

Done right, SEO and PPC deliver tasty results

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

The unattainable goal for many search campaigns is the ever-elusive melding of PPC and SEO tactics for bigger and better top-line results. Theoretically, the two should go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwichThat’s how Herndon Hasty starts his superb Search Engine Watch article, “Of PPC and PBJ: Combining PPC and SEO Effectively, Part 1.” His comparisons of search engine optimization to peanut butter and pay-per-click advertising to jelly are apt, and they work well through the article.

We’re starting a new blog on the newly redesigned Submit Solution website, which will soon be launched. We’ll be shifting attention from the eHarbor Blog to that one. You can find the rest of this blog entry there when it comes out. Stay tuned!

The photo of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of jacky_oh_yeah.

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Posted in Pay-Per-Click, SEO, Social Media | No Comments »

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