Central Mass Web Design received some great press recently from the Telegram and Gazette. Click here to read the article

• -Make it a .com if you can
• -Keep it short
• -Keep it relevant
• -Keep it memorable
• -Never search the main domain places unless you are prepared to buy at that time
• -Always get the misspellings and .net versions if you can
• -Ask for help if you don’t know how to manage the domain (it can be tricky)
• -Expectations on getting help (what people typically charge to assist with your domain)

Find a domain here

It goes without saying that it cost less to sell something to a current customer than it does to acquire a new customer. Most business owners don’t know that actual cost of acquisition for a new client, but they always worry about losing one when they get them. This is why customer service is so important. I believe that an educated customer is a happy customer and a happy customer is still a customer.

The pudding….is your website. You have to continually think of your site as a 24/7 employee that is well worth the investment. However, is your employee producing? The proof as I say is in the pudding (or should I say the stats). Check your statistical information that comes with your web hosting account (no idea what this is? Email me and I will help you understand it). Take an overall look at your traffic. Then formulate a worthwhile newsletter, special, educational piece and email it out using constant contact. Then wait 3 days and check your stats again….BOOM! Major stat increase. Clearly there are keys to getting this increase. You need to have email addresses that matter (people that care to read or receive your newsletters) and you need to have something to offer them or you will quickly see your emails become ineffective.
Establish and email list….send worthwhile emails….monitor results…you should find it very fruitful.

Did you know that you can actually talk to someone at google. They don’t really publicize this too much but they do offer a live chat option (no phone calls). To talk to someone at Google, regarding your advertising, click the link below…
Google Live Chat

Matt Ward has been asked to speak to small business owners in the greater North Central Mass area during their monthly SB2 meeting. In May of 2008 he spoke to small business owners at the Royal Plaza Trade Center in Fitchburg and focused on how to get a website and what to do with it. The January 2009 topic is yet to be determined, however it will focus on marketing in general and the use of the web.

If you are interested in learning more about SB2, please contact the North Central Mass Chamber of Commerce for more information. You do not have to be a member of this group to participate and all SB2 events are free to attend.

To learn more about Central Mass Web Design and their products and services, you can call 978-632-5300.

To improve your page names, you first need to determine what the page has for a focus. The content and title should clearly indicate this to you. Now, review the page name in address bar of your web browser. Is the page name similar to the content? Does it give you a sense as to how close the content will be to the subject of the page? A page name of abc.html is not nearly as good as dog-treats-for-your-pet.html if your content is related to the type of dog treats you can feed your pet, or other treats you might give to your dog. Abc.html should be modified. To do this, on most sites, you simply copy the page, paste it again, and rename the file. Then you upload the new page to your site. Now you need to link the new page from all the other pages that point to abc.html. One point I want to make and be clear on, do not remove the abc.html file. You may be getting rankings and traffic from search engines delivering users to this page. You should eventually remove it but you first need to redirect the traffic going to the abc.html page to the newly named page. To do this you need to utilize something called a 301 redirect. This will direct the search engines to update their page from abc.html to the newly named page. Once you do the 301 redirect, you can remove abc.html

I wrote this article for Construction Business Owner in February of 2008 and though I would share it with you today.

There was a time when the only way a company received business was by referrals from neighbors or friends. And while this is still a good way to build your business and get qualified leads, the Internet is slowly becoming a vital marketing tool for the industry. More and more people are turning to the Internet to find everything from goods and services to qualified contractors.

A website is now expected in today’s market. If you do not have one already, now is the time to find a reputable website design company to get your business onto the web. But once you’re there, how do people find you? That’s a whole different approach.

Search engine optimization (SEO)—receiving high rankings in search engines—is not only essential to customers finding your website, but is also something you’ll need to maintain on a regular basis. Everyday, countless websites are launched and updated. That alone contributes to your overall ranking in search engines such as Google. If you’re spending any amount of resources on your Internet strategy or relying on your website to generate leads, you must put time into building traffic.

The web has become an integral part of any company’s marketing and public relations strategy. However, many businesses—small and large—are unaware of the cost-effective strategies they can implement to increase the overall effectiveness of their site, build traffic and convert that traffic into qualified prospects.

A ranking report will tell you where your website ranks in various search engines. Any reputable website design or development firm can run a ranking report for you ranging from $25 to $150, depending on the firm. It’s a good practice to run these once a month. You’ll get an idea of your overall ranking, and you’ll also see where you rank against your competitors.

From there, you can now craft a plan for your SEO strategy. You can hire a SEO firm, but if that is not in your budget, there are a number of things you can do to up your ranking.

1. Add Fresh Content Regularly
The first thing to pay attention to is the overall nurturing and feeding of the company website. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN love fresh content. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you are adding fresh content at least once a month. One easy way is to post company press releases or informational articles on your site. You should even consider creating an entire newsroom. Another great way is to start and maintain a blog. I know what you’re saying. Everyone is telling you to start a blog. But they can’t really give you a good reason, right? Search engines love blogs. In fact, a blog posting can boost your page ranking quicker than a traditional website update. It’s that simple an answer.

2. Create Appropriate Web Page Titles
Make sure you have a unique title for each page. The blue bar at the top of your browser is your title. For instance, if you are a contractor in Boston, instead of using your company name, try something such as “Construction Firm Boston.”

3. Build Inbound Links
Inbound links, those that are posted on other websites directly affect your search engine ranking. There are many low-cost and even free ways to build your inbound links. You can post press releases and articles on free PR sites. Many of these sites are free and some charge a small fee. You can post contact information on industry sites particular to your field, and you can ask your vendors to post a link to your site.

4. Write Search Engine Friendly Content
They way in which you write copy for your website will be key in driving traffic to your site. For example: If I run a construction company based just outside of Boston, I would incorporate that into my homepage. “ABC Contractors is an experienced construction company based just outside of Boston.” People searching for a contractor in Boston will ultimately find your page in the search engines because you’ve placed common search terms on your site.

Using the Internet as a true marketing tool takes time. Be patient, flexible and adjust your strategy when necessary to ensure you are hitting your target and converting hits into dollars.

How are Meta tags used by search engines?
This is an excerpt from Wikipedia “Meta elements provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site.

They have been the focus of a field of marketing research known as search engine optimization (SEO), where different methods are explored to provide a user’s site with a higher ranking on search engines. In the mid to late 1990s, search engines were reliant on meta data to correctly classify a webpage and webmasters quickly learned the commercial significance of having the right meta element, as it frequently led to a high ranking in the search engines” and thus, high traffic to the website.

As search engine traffic achieved greater significance in online marketing plans, consultants were brought in who were well versed in how search engines perceive a website. These consultants used a variety of techniques (legitimate and otherwise) to improve ranking for their clients.

Meta elements have significantly less effect on search engine results pages today than they did in the 1990s and their utility has decreased dramatically as search engine robots have become more sophisticated. This is due in part to the nearly infinite re-occurrence (keyword stuffing) of meta elements and/or to attempts by unscrupulous website placement consultants to manipulate (spamdexing) or otherwise circumvent search engine ranking algorithms.

While search engine optimization can improve search engine ranking, consumers of such services should be careful to employ only reputable providers. Given the extraordinary competition and technological craftsmanship required for top search engine placement, the implication of the term “search engine optimization” has deteriorated over the last decade. Where it once implied bringing a website to the top of a search engine’s results page, for the average consumer it now implies a relationship with keyword spamming or optimizing a site’s internal search engine for improved performance.

Major search engine robots are more likely to quantify such extant factors as the volume of incoming links from related websites, quantity and quality of content, technical precision of source code, spelling, functional v. broken hyperlinks, volume and consistency of searches and/or viewer traffic, time within website, page views, revisits, click-throughs, technical user-features, uniqueness, redundancy, relevance, advertising revenue yield, freshness, geography, language and other intrinsic characteristics.”

1. The facts…
2. -Many web companies will still input meta tags because they don’t know any better, they actually think it helps.
3. -Clients are commonly mistaken about the value of meta tags
4. -We will put in meta tags for clients not necessarily because they work, but mainly because clients want them in there and will talk about it until they are put in.

1. The reality
2. -We can make a website without meta tags rank higher than one with meta tags

1. The Action
2. -If you want us to check for Meta tags or to add more to your site, just call us at 978-632-5300.