Lately, I have been seeing a lot of bloggers adding images to their posts. And if you are paying attention, you have probably noticed many more pictures on our blog too. Why? There are several very good reasons to add pictures to your blog and web design strategy:

1. Google and other search engines are doing a much better job of indexing images. The picture gives you one more hook for search.
2. Pictures attract the eye. As people scan your blog archive, they are drawn to the posts with an image.
3. Images can reinforce or expand the ideas presented in the blog post.

The trick is to pick the right image, something that is attractive and relevant. If you can’t find something which fits, you might have to create it yourself. You can go out and take a photo, or create a chart or graphic image.

Mark Smiciklas  of Intersection Consulting does this better then any other blog I have found lately. Although he doesn’t post often, each post on his blog is accompanied by a relevant, original meaningful image. Maybe that is why he doesn’t post as often.

The graphics themselves are so content rich, you almost don’t need the supporting text. For example, this image from a post on content strategy clearly delivers the idea that at the core of your strategy is the audience.

The clever arrangement of the interesting icons held my attention much longer than words alone.

Is it worth the effort to spend the time creating something this intricate? If it is well done, it will be shared over and over again. Images have tremendous viral potential.

Mark has built his contact information into the graphic, so everyone knows the source. I am linking to him from the image, and I hope you will go and check out his blog, because there are many, many more cool graphics on his site.

I am sure that not every graphic he has created has gone viral, but if one does, it pays off over and over again with a steady flow of new traffic to your website.

Marketing is a numbers game, and one of the most important numbers is the amount of traffic to your website. If you don’t have visitors, then you won’t have prospects. So the question is, how do you increase traffic?

Some companies turn to search engine optimization (SEO) professionals. These very smart, successful companies earn their living managing comprehensive SEO programs for clients. Using a complex process, they create a steady stream of content and links to improve the visibility of their clients sites on key search engines.

But what if you are a small business with little or no budget to pay an outside firm to manage your SEO. Can you still compete for search rankings? Absolutely! While you may not dominate nationally, for every keyword, there are a number of simple tactics you can apply which will significantly improve your rankings.

1. Blog, Blog, Blog – The steady stream of fresh, keyword rich content provides Google and other search engines new reasons to come back and index your site regularly.  It will attract links, and reasons for human visitors to return again and again.
2.  Create titles and tags for humans and search engines
   Short, catchy title tags, which pique the curiosity of the potential reader in the RSS feed or on social media are essential. However, search engines will also look for the title to include key words. I keep a list of key words near my computer, to remind me to include terms like “Indianapolis social media” in each blog post  (OK, so that was shameless). You can also use tools like Scribe,  Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see help you adjust your titles and posts
3. Share the Limelight with Guest Bloggers –  By offering spaces on your  blog for others to share their content, you win in several ways. First, everyone has their own friends, fans and followers. When they write a guest post, they will bring an audience of people who may not be familiar with your site.  Second, the mix of voices and content creates a more interesting experience for visitors.
4. Add Multimedia – Add pictures, video and audio clips to your site. The mix of media will appeal to different audiences. Interesting pictures, charts and graphs will often draw a reader in to a post. If you use images, be sure to take the time to label pictures correctly so they show up in search as well as your text.
5. Use Tags and Categories Wisely –  Consistently using the same tags and keywords to organize content will make it easier for search engines and humans to find what they are looking for. The more often the keywords appear (not all on one page), the more authority you begin to develop around that topic

Battling your way to the top of page one requires consistent effort. You won’t land there with one great post, but you can create a path to your business with a series of good ones.

Today, search engine optimization is a critical part of marketing. If you can’t get found on the Internet, you’re losing out on valuable chances to find customers. We were joined by Jenn Lisak of DK New Media, a local firm that specializes in new media, search engine optimization and digital marketing. We discussed how to can get started with SEO and start getting found on search engines.

About our guest:

On Business Notes from Roundpeg, we look at which posts are popular, what keywords drive traffic and where our traffic is coming from. I am continuously surprised that one post, Marketing Organization Chart, written three years ago this month, continues to drive traffic daily.  It was so popular, I built a series around the topic, but the nagging question remains: Why do we get so much traffic for this group of posts?

It seems search terms such as “marketing org chart,” “marketing organization chart” and “marketing organization charts” each generate thousands of searches each month.  These are competitive searches, with bidding for the key words averaging $4.00/click, and yet our blog posts are winning the organic searches for free, over and over again.

Is it our wonderful copy? While our the posts can often be found on page one or two of each search, it is the blog images that are really driving traffic.   Each post has an image that is appropriately named.  And Google returns images at the top of many searches.  Attractive, colorful and relevant, people select the image, and arrive at our blog.

We often think images are a nice extra feature in a blog post, giving visitors something to connect with as they scan the thumbnails of your blog.   What the marketing org chart taught us, is they are as important in the traffic equation as the key words in your meta tags.  If you are blogging to improve your SEO writing great content is only the first step.  Taking time to identify relevant keys words and tag your posts is the second piece.  The third is to include an image which will appeal to humans and search engines alike.

Oh, Google+. What are we going to do with you? You’re the awkward late party crasher who’s trying to horn in on the conversations and make everyone do things they really don’t want to do. Things were going so well–we’d reached equilibrium with the social media Big 3 (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn), and then you came along and had to reinvent the wheel.

As humans, we only have so much to say. The status quo social networks seemed to cover all the bases: Facebook for friends, family and informal interactions, LinkedIn for all things professional and Twitter for everything in between. What room does that leave for Google+? What were people dying to express but couldn’t with the tools in their arsenal? Judging by the mix of posts I’ve seen since Google+ launched, nothing. It’s being used as a Facebook/Tumblr hybrid, but why? It serves no larger purpose for the user. Because the system was of such little utility, I’ve been able to safely ignore Google+ since its launch in July.

Until now.

Google+ has rolled out its long promised, much delayed brand pages. And they’re sorely lacking. The page itself is almost indistinguishable from personal profiles, allows little room for customization save for a photo strip, doesn’t allow multiple administrators, has no analytics, forbids contests and is clunky and unintuitive to use.

But none of that matters. I immediately created a page for Roundpeg, and will for all of my clients in due course. Because Google holds all the cards and will ultimately get its way.

Google doesn’t care about creating a great social media platform. All that Google cares about is getting more data to run its search monster. And why pay Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn for access to all that sweet, sweet user data when it can simply create its own network where people will flock because of the ostensible search benefits. And there almost certainly will be search benefits to using Google+, antitrust lawsuits be damned.

Unfortunately, this is another case of sacrificing the authentic and real for the sake of a cold, emotionless algorithm. I’m not advising people to use Google+ because that’s where I think their customer is, or I think they can genuinely create great conversation and brand identity there. I’m advising them to use it because Google+ is where Google is, and you can’t ignore Google.

So go ahead. Give Roundpeg a +1, and help us feed the Google search monster.

I had the great pleasure of attending the Indianapolis American Marketing Association (AMA) October luncheon.  Jeb Banner, CEO of Indianapolis-based Smallbox, shared his insight on where SEO is going in a presentation titled, The Future of Search Engine Optimization is the Digital Brand Ecosystem.

According to Jeb, we are in the middle of a big shift where we are no longer in control of our brand. Our brand lives in a digital world where it is measured and weighted by Google and Bing. He explains that a digital ecosystem, like any ecosystem, sustains life by continuously replenishing the resources that make it successful. For a brand to sustain life in this world, it must do the following:

• Define its goals
• Refine its strategy
• Create valuable content
• Measure results

Here are some of the major takeaways from Jeb’s presentation, and how you can use them to build your own brand ecosystem:

• Tell Stories About Your Brand:  Content is what fuels a digital ecosystem, and search engines will reward you for social sharing of content. Use stories and examples to convey your messages and engage the reader.
• Give up the keys to your social media accounts: Search engines, hungry for a fresh source of content, are forcing companies to give up control of their brand to customers and employees
• Brands are created out of culture: Marketing is no longer about what’s your message, it’s about what’s your culture. . Jeb quotes Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, in saying “Your brand is a lagging indicator or your culture”. Marketing your brand is no longer about what your message is, its about what’s your culture. Have a systematic strategy for how your culture will define your brand’s digital ecosystem. Successful brands will let their personality come through. 
• Social media goes fast, what you say might not always stick, but the relationships will: Companies should publish and promote their brands message while interacting with the audience receiving it.

As small business owners look to improve their SEO, an emphasis on social media can help. Increase your search engine traffic by building your brand’s digital ecosystem online.

Most small business owners know if they want to be on the first page of a Google search for the most important key words you have to include the words in the text.  What they often forget is how important the title is to the social media equation.  Your page titles are an important part of your web design.

In a recent blog post, Michael Gray talks about the various ways improve the value of your title to both search engines and people.  He says:

The titles also should be enticing or interesting enough to make other people want to click and read them. They shouldn’t be stuffed with keywords or boring branding elements like your company name.

In addition to search engines your title should be designed to share well in the social environment.  While you have flexibility in Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ that is not the case with Twitter.  The 140 character limitations require you to carefully consider the length of your title.  Michael Says:

Anything you can do to make less work for the person who is sharing your content, decrease their ability to screw it up, and increase its chance of spreading is a good thing.

Choosing the right title is challenging.  You have to find a balance between something which will catch the attention of a reader, and including important key words.   Questions, “How to” and Lists seem to generate more interest.  Just remember a great title may bring readers to your blog, but it is your content which will keep them coming back.

Roundpeg, An Indianapolis web design company helps our clients create and distribute content through their website, social media and electronic newsletters.

Every small business owner who comes to Roundpeg for help with their web design project says the same thing.  After the site is built, will it be on page one of Google? I hate that simple question because the answer is never simple.  Google has more than 600 elements in their algorithm and they change all the time. And on top of  that, your competitors also effect your position in the rankings.  Every time they do something to move up, they make it harder for you to appear on page one.

So how do you achieve the elusive page one ranking? First, be realistic.  If you are in a very competitive category and you don’t have a large budget for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) activities, narrow your focus.  Roundpeg is a small company with a limited budget, it is unrealistic to think we would be on page one for terms like small business or marketing.  We can however dominate for the term Indianapolis Marketing  or small business Indianapolis.  In our case, geographic segmentation works.

But what if  you are not geographically constrained?  You can still narrow your focus by selecting specific niches, for example we could work on placing keywords such as small business marketing  or longer strings like small business marketing strategy.  There will be fewer searches each month, but you will have less competition for your key word position.  And people are being much more specific these days.  A research study conducted by Hitwise  indicates searchers are using four, five, six and even seven words in a search query to find more  specific results.

The added benefit of focusing on more specific keywords  is you have a higher chance of being considered a relevant result by a potential customer ready to make a purchase.

As we explain  this to clients, their next question is how much work will it take, and the answer is usually more than you think.   We recently tried an experiment and identified 6 terms we wanted to be found on page one of Google for.   We were pleased that for Small Business Indianapolis, Indianapolis Marketing  and Social Media Indianapolis  we were comfortably on page one.    I was surprised for the more niche term Marketing Strategy Indianapolis we were on page three and disappointed that we were so far back for Web Design Indianapolis and Graphic Design Indianapolis that you couldn’t find us.

We decided to focus our attention primarily on Web Design so we began to write more content (1 – 2 blog posts a week) specifically about web design.  We posted comments on forums and other web design discussion groups.  We actively shared content on social media.  We looked for directories and submitted links to our content.   We changed our SEO plug in from All in One to Yoast, and became more exact in our writing to improve SEO.

Did it work?  After eight weeks of almost daily activity, we can usually  found on the bottom of page two for Indianapolis Web Design.  We are close, but not done yet.  An interesting side benefit,  was the climb of our graphic design services, which can now be found on page three.  Why? Because we naturally talk about both services at the same time, so as we focus on one, we pull the other up. Also, as we increase traffic, it makes sense that some of  our visitors will look at a range of services we offer.

So what is next for us? We are testing Scribe SEO to see if we can learn how to be even more focused in our quest for the elusive page one.  Will it work?  Well you will be able to find out, by simply doing a Google search for the key words we have listed above.

Roundpeg, an Indianapolis marketing strategy company offers social media, web design and graphic design services.  We help small businesses become big businesses.

We’ve talked about nearly every visual aspect of the Roundpeg website’s evolution, from theme and font to color scheme, but it’s time to get to the good stuff: the words. Sure, sure, the look of a site is important, but it’s the words that bring it home.

The tone of the website has changed fairly drastically. When I first arrived, it was a fairly straight-forward site in terms of tone. The aesthetic of the site was fun and playful, but the words didn’t capture the Roundpeg spirit. The other main difference was that most of the content, and all of the testimonials, focused on Lorraine. The company was very different then, more like Lorraine and the Pegettes as her background singers than as the rounded, full company we are today.

Over the last year the blog has changed, as each of us has begun adding our voice, but the core site remained a bit stiff.  On the new site, we’re aiming for a tone that is more true to the Roundpeg we’ve become: playful, all serious when it comes to business–but irreverent when it comes to ourselves. We want the website to give you the same cozy feeling you get when you walk into our doors, grab a Diet Coke from the fridge, and have a cat jump into your lap.

Another major change to the site over the years has been the tagline. Check out the evolution:

• Solutions that Fit
• Every Business Deeds a Starting Point, and We’re It
• Marketing Services for Small Businesses
• Helping Small Businesses Become Big Businesses

No one designs a website to deliberately turn off clients, prospects, and search engines, but all too often that is the end result.  In this intimate workshop, we will review the most common mistakes web designers and small business owners make.  The working session will include general tactics and a review of your website.  We will evaluate: navigation, copy, animation, pictures, page titles, keywords, and much more.

Want to learn more? Join us for the next session of :  Why Prospects Hate Your Website. 

Wednesday, Aug. 3rd from 8:00 – 9 AM
Offices of  Trustpointe, 6666 E. 75th Street, North Indianapolis, IN

The session is limited to 8 people.

Reserve your place today!