December 2009 Newsletter

The year is quickly coming to an end, it is time to enjoy the Holidays and work on strategies for 2010. 2009 was a good year for the Internet, usage increased everywhere and more and more companies are shifting marketing efforts to the web. If you don't yet have a website or have a website that is not achieving results, you are likely missing out on business.

VBWebSites is a Virginia Web Design Company and the reason our focus is Virginia is we know and understand virginia. Knowing Virginia regions, we are able to help our Virginia Clients that focus on their immediate service areas. We are not limited to Virginia by any means, just have a greater understanding of Virginia.

We pay attention to search trends and are able to better position our clients websites to effectively reach the clientele they seek. You may be asking yourself if a website would help you, take a look at Google Trends. Search for the service you provide and then you can further analyze. Through Google trends, if we search "website design" we can see what areas are searching "website design". This can significantly help our actual marketing efforts. Go search your services @ Google Trends.

VBWebsites comes up with unique solutions tailored to our clients needs. We provide our clients with the tools to be able to manage their sites respectively through our Custom Content Management Systems (CMS) and Solutions. We pay attention to detail and deliver unprecedented and modern technologies that help our clients achieve results.

When the conversation turns to web design, we hope you remember VBWebSites.net

Find out what you are up against on the web

When a client comes to VBWebSites seeking a re-design and optimization, we first start off by analyzing what they currently have. Then we look at page content and organization of the site. We further analyze their target keywords and phrases.

After we gather the keywords and phrases, I then go out and check the competition. Many people aren't aware on how to do this so I am going to tell you.

Lets take this key phrase for example at Google: how to come up in search engine or Click Here (by the way, as of today, VBWebSites holds 1st place!). Now, depending on where you are you may see slightly different results. Google has many many servers around the world and it takes time for all the servers to catch up with each other. Anyway, for me, The keyphrase how to come up in search engine is showing Results 1 - 10 of about 70,800,000. Now I know if i want to market "how to come up in search engine" then I am competing against about 70 million websites.  Go test your keywords / key phrases and see where you are in the results and most importantly see what you are competing against.

Seems like a hard task, right? We didn't even mean to do that and that's what makes it so much cooler. I noticed people were searching that exact term by analyzing my traffic reports, to the tune of about 1600 searches this week.

After you have a website setup correctly and setup tracking you too will see a trend of keywords and keypharses you never even thought about.

If your company is lacking a great website with logical search engine optimization, let VBWebSites help. Get a Quote

I have a ton of tips and tricks under my belt and will share them from time to time so follow this blog and follow us on facebook. After reading this, remember the most important factor in SEO, write clear "off the hip" content. You don't have to get very technical, just tell it like it is. Then look at your content and revise it a bit throwing in a few key words and key phrases. It takes time to prosper on the web.

Top 10 - Good SEO Tricks

Here's the top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tricks


#10 - Use keywords in your URL's. Words that people use to find you in a search engine. These words help your site rank for those key words. Example: yourdomain.com/your-service/
#9 - Use a descriptive Domain Name - Be certain that people know what you do by looking at your domain.
#8 - Use logical and simple Navigation - The search engines must find your internal pages to rank them.
#7 - Create Theme based Pages - based on keywords you select
#6 - Use tags and meta tags correctly - Search engines can use meta data to better understand the page. Title, Description, Keywords. Dont confuse the search engines. Don't overuse.
#5 - Use keyword rich anchor text - Example, Dont use the word link when linking to your page. Link to your page by using the keyword for the page that its heading to.
#4 - target good effective keywords - Understand your potential search - what words do customers use?
#3 - Create Good Original Content - Unique content, don't copy!
#2 - Linking, Linking, Linking - Inbound, Outbound, Internal. It's very important. Google built itself with link analysis. Anywhere you can link from helps.
#1 - Know what you are actually up against - Don't think about beating the engines. Write good content and you will prevail.

Get a quote for your website design and optimization.

Why doesn’t your site come up in search engines?

Many people believe that because you have a website, you should automatically come up in the search engines. The truth is, it takes month for your new site to get indexed. For this reason you should never change your URL after you have already established a website, instead, forward your new URL to your old URL; this way you will not risk losing valuable indexing and your customers won’t know the difference.

So, how does one get indexed? Well, this simple question has a complex answer. It is important to understand that all search engines have one goal: They want to provide their users with relevant content for every search term or keyword phrase entered. Each engine uses constantly changing algorithms to configure the relevance of your site.

This may seem daunting, but if you concentrate on great content you are sure to get indexed and increase your page ranking over time. The more content you have, the more likely you are to establish a higher page ranking. A great way to add content on a regular basis is to have a blog that is hosted on your site’s server. We have used both Blogger and Word Press and have experienced good results with both.

Inbound links are another way to increase your page ranking. You may consider opening an E-bay store and linking back to your own site. Every time someone features you on their site – they should link back to you as well. Think of this as footprints leading back to your site. The more you have the more likely you are to get noticed.

Ask your web master to add title tags to each of your site’s pages - these should be the most relevant keyword phrases and also describe each page effectively. The use of ALT, description and meta tags are also ways you can utilize your most relevant keywords throughout your site (though these are not highly valued any longer). For more on keyword phrases and site tags, read What are keywords and why do I need them?

MSN, Yahoo and Google are the most competitive search engines and each one places varying significance on different aspects of your site.

Google uses a page ranking system called PageRank – you can check your page rank at Alexa. It is likely that your site will first come up in MSN, Yahoo, and then Google – respectively; assuming you have diligently added relevant content and keyword phrases to your site.

Keep in mind, the longer your site is active, the more weight your site carries with search engines, so have patience. Add fresh content often and remember to ask for back links to your site.