One of our head marketing consultants, Roberto Turnone, had the privilege of attending the Winter Bash event last week with celebrity blogger Zack Taylor (www.ZackTaylor.ca).  Needless to say, Rob had an amazing time meeting celebrities, and promoting WebStar Multimedia.

You never know who you might meet at a social gathering, even at a trendy club / bar.  People you meet on the street, might choose to write about you (give you a one way link), refer you to someone else, or even hire you for their own project.  This is what I like to call ‘Social Search Engine Optimiation’ or simply, Social SEO.

Below are some key components to a proper web development outline.

1. Create a Site Map - List ALL your pages and sub pages.
2. Discuss all the features of your website - CMS, Ecommerce, Search functionality, Image Gallery, Flash, Message-board, Forum, Blog, etc.
3. List any specific colors and fonts that need to be used.
4. Give a brief overview of the company and the industry.
5. List any major competitors in your industry.
6. Provide a list of websites which you like and don’t like - give reasons.
7. List any other vital information which has not been listed above, but would nonetheless, help a developer complete the project on time, on budget, and leave you 100% satisfied.

Make sure to have a folder of all your design and content materials ready when moving forward with a project.  Attached with your web development outline should be any logos, images, publications, copy, testimonials, and anything else that is applicable to your website.

As business becomes more scarce in your industry, you need to fight for all the business that is available. This means, that not only should you not decrease you marketing budget, but in some cases, you need to increase your marketing efforts. You must establish a strong presence if you wish to have a legitimate chance of gaining more business and not loosing out to your competitors.

You can survive in a tough economy and budget your advertising dollars by optimizing your marketing campaigns. Try to eliminate unnecessary spending by dropping marketing programs that have not been producing a satisfactory ROI, and by allocating more money in to more successful projects.

The right combination of online and offline marketing is necessary for most businesses to succeed. Some ideas to consider when allocating a marketing budget during a recession include:

1. Avoiding expensive print advertising and focusing on a more cost efficient online marketing campaign.
2. Do as much free advertising as possible on social sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.); attend networking meetings; do a lot of word-of-mouth advertising; go door-to-door, etc.
3. Build relationships with affiliates, and create valuable partnerships which can help your business grow.

So don’t concentrate on reducing or eliminating your marketing efforts. Focus on optimizing your advertising expenditure so that your ROI is continuously improving. Analyze your results, and keep tweaking your marketing campaigns.

Probably the largest, most recognized and therefore most expensive directory out there for both print and online advertising. They now have Canada 411 and other directories which enhances their presence. Even though they are a valuable directory to be in, I wouldn’t go ahead and dump all my advertising dollars in this one. Only if your budget is big enough, they might be a viable option.

Alexa Ranking for www.yellowpages.ca is approximately: 5,500

Canpages

Their print portion is growing quite rapidly across the nation. Their online portion is quite unique. You can get a free online link throughout Canpages, without paying for an online listing. This is the only one of the 3 that gives you a free online link when you get your business in their online directory…so in terms of getting stuff for free, Canpages ranks number 1. They do offer a sponsored listing, which may or may not be worth it. I found that in some categories, the competition is so slim, that a regular free listing will do, especially if your company’s name is closer to the start of the alphabet.

Alexa Ranking for www.canpages.ca is approximately: 12,000

Goldbook

Probably weaker than Canpages in terms of their print distribution, but stronger in terms of their local online presence in southern Ontario. They were purchased by The Toronto Star, and are affiliated with many other local newspapers and search sites. You will find their search bar on www.thestar.com and many other local sites, which helps attract many users. Goldbook charges $25 for a listing, and $5 for every additional link. They create a content page for your business, which seems to be more search engine friendly compared to the short abbreviated listings in other directories.

Alexa Ranking for www.goldbook.ca is approximately: 65,000

Don’t rely on just one of theses directories. Ideally, if you can be in all 3, than you’ll be way ahead of the game. If you can’t afford that - start with the smallest package from one or two directories, and work your way to larger ads. Test the directory first, before you dump your whole advertising budget with one vendor.

You can arguably say that Dmoz is the best free directory on the net, and probably the most trusted. To check if your website has been included in the Dmoz directory swap your URL with ours in the following link: http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=webstarmultimedia.com.

As a Dmoz editor, I can say that the number one thing we look for when editing a website is the quality of the content. If your content is not original than you will have a hard time getting accepted in this directory.
Yahoo Directory Links

Yahoo Directory is one of the most important paid directories online, along with Business.com. To check if your company is listed, see the following link: http://search.yahoo.com/search?n=100&dups=1&p=linkdomain:www.webstarmultimedia.com++site:dir.yahoo.com

If your website is not listed, and you’re a non commercial site, than you can submit it for free. If it is a commercial site, you’re looking at $300US for inclusion.
Yahoo Inbound Links

Yahoo inbound links are a great way to monitor your link building progress. It’s also a great tool to see how your competitors are building links. When looking for new ways to build links, I often use the following tool to see who others have built links with: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webstarmultimedia.com&bwm=i&bwmf=s&bwmo=&fr2=seo-rd-se.
Who is

Who is tool from Domain Tools provides some potentially useful information about one’s URL and website. Check out: http://whois.domaintools.com/webstarmultimedia.com to find out about your own URL or someone else’s.

Ideally, you can still carry on traditional SEO strategies, but also incorporate new ones.  If you want to compete in tomorrow’s SEO world, than social SEO might be your best bet.  Social SEO can be defined as a method used to promote your site by creating awareness on social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Youtube or bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us and Digg.  Social media types include forums, blogs, message boards, wikis and pod casts. 

Anyway you can create a ‘buzz’ around your site, you are surely guaranteed to bring in traffic.  If you have good content, people will link to you.  You can even consider Social SEO as a form of link building.

Best way to start your Social SEO campaign is to register on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and create a company or website profile.  Add pictures, write descriptions and put links up to your website.  You can also register at bookmarking sites and ’tag’ your own website.

Just remember, the more profiles you have, the more you ‘tag’, the more traffic you will get…and ultimately, the higher your search engine ranks will be.   

Most search engines have some form of sponsored link programs.  The 3 most popular ones are Google Adwords, Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing), and MSN.  My personal favourite of course is Google Adwords.  As many are aware, Google gets the largest share of searches, so that’s one good reason to start your sponsored link campaign with them.  Other reasons include: they have a great adwords program, quick response team (good customer service), and they have an extensive help guide.  There are also a lot of resources out there to help you jump start your Google Adwords campaign.  One that is highly recognized in the industry is Perry Marshall’s Literature on Google Adwords.

Optimizing a sponsored link campaign is very important, in order to achieve the best results.  As a marketing company, if I was targeting multiple keyword phrases and all my adds looked like the one bellow, we would not be getting the desired results we were hoping for:

Ex. #1

WebStar Multimedia Inc.
Toronto Internet Marketing 
Online Services for GTA.

Instead, it would be smarter to target different keyword phrases, and optimize a separate ad for a particular group of keywords.  For example, if we wanted to target the phrase ‘Toronto internet marketing’, we might make an ad such as the one bellow:

Ex. #2

Toronto Internet Marketing
Web Design Services, SEO,
Copywriting & Much More.

If we were creating an add specifically for the keyword phrase ‘web design’, than our ad would probably look something like this:

Ex. #3

Web Design Company
Toronto Web Designers,
Flash, CMS & More…

By optimizing your campaign, you will surely increase your ROI.  Make sure that your also sending your users to the appropriate pages.  You should not be sending your online visitor to the same page every time.   You should have targeted pages that will convert your reader into a customer.  

At the end of the day, if all this is not for you, and you don’t have time to manage your own sponsored link campaign than you can always hire a company that knows what their doing!

What you will find is many ‘General Directories’ out there are loosing their significance.  General directories tend to produce little to no traffic whatsoever.  If you’re submitting your website to a general directory simply for ‘link juice’; don’t be mistaken – major search engines can acknowledge the fact that there is little relevance between your website and the general directory you submit to, and therefore putting very little weight on the link established.  There are a select few general directories that are still worth submitting to.  My top 3 include:

http://www.dmoz.org – Free submission (but probably the hardest directory to get in to), and most likely the most valuable directory link you can create.  If you get into this directory, you are also in Google’s Directory, since Google uses Dmoz results for their own directory.  

http://dir.yahoo.com – This paid submission directory has a recurring annual fee of approximately $300.  Yahoo directory provides a very trusted link and also generates  quite a bit of traffic.

http://botw.org – This paid submission directory has 2 options for payment.  You can either pay a recurring fee of approximately $100, or $250 for a one time fee.  This directory has been around the longest and boasts the fact that they only cater to the ‘best of the web’.  BOTW is a very trusted link according to the search engines.

If you are a business than you might want to look into http://www.business.com. This paid directory is very good for businesses in many industries.  It also has a pricy recurring fee, just like Yahoo!, but has a fair bit of traffic and also provides a trusted link.

The future of directory submissions and link building for search engine optimizers is in niche directories.  By submitting to a directory in your niche market, you are creating links that are much more related to your content and thus more trusted by the search engines.  Ultimately you can expect higher search engine rankings by creating fewer, more trusted links; as apposed to 10 times the amount of less important links.

For example, if you are a Canadian mortgage company you may want to look for mortgage directories or perhaps even real estate directories.  Another good option is to seek Canadian based directories where you can submit your website to.  All these directories would be highly relevant and would be more beneficial than submitting to spammy, general, low traffic directories.

There are a few good lists of directories out there.  One fantastic, but more general directory one is: http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/.  

In essence, stick with the top general directories, and search for the niche / relevant directories to submit to.  Directory listings should not be your only means of link building, but should be one of several means of building valuable one-way back links.

I started off like any other person curious about learning search engine optimization.  I Googled various terms like ‘SEO’, and was overwhelmed with millions of results.  Many sources seem to have repetitive information.  Sure you will also find a variety of perspectives - but who can you trust with your SEO knowledge? 

Over a period of time, I have researched various SEO resources and have developed a top 5 list.  This is not to say that these are the top resources for SEO necessarily…this just happens to be my favourite ones.  The below list is in no particular order:

1. www.seobook.com
2. www.bruceclay.com
3. www.seomoz.org
4. www.searchenginewatch.com
5. www.google.com/support/webmasters/   

I know the last one is a little ironic because it’s Google.  But hey, if anyone is going to tell you how you can market your website properly and rank well on the largest search engine in the world…than that person must be Google.

Creating a Sitemap

Whether your website is 4 pages or 4000 pages, you need to have a text-based sitemap.  It’s imperative that you have static links of all your pages directly on the sitemap.  If you’d like you can provide a short description of what each page is about right beside each static link.  This will allow users to find what their looking for more efficiently.  Having a sitemap also allows the search engines to easily spider your entire website and index all of your pages.

Consistent Design & Layout

When designing a new website make sure that each component is consistent throughout.  In most cases, a website will have a unique home page layout and inner page design.  The most important factor once again is consistency.  Make sure you have the same color scheme, font, text size and navigational menu throughout your site.  The last thing you want is a user to feel like he/she is going to another website when they click on a link that goes to one of your inner pages.

Navigation

The way you structure your website’s navigation will determine the level of ease your customers can access information.  If this crucial step is not done properly, you face the risk of loosing potential customers.  By providing various visual paths or links to inner pages, you ensure that people can easily find information throughout your site.  One excellent way to do this is through a menu, also known as a menu bar.  A detailed menu bar should be visible on each page on your website.  Most effective menu designs are created down the left side of the web page or across the top.  Since it might not be feasible to include your entire sitemap in the menu bar; pick your main categories / funnels to include.  A drop down menu can be created to include sub-categories within the menu bar.  Also try to avoid using too much flash or complicated java script for you menus.  It may appear to be visually appealing at first, but can just cause a great deal of confusion for your users.

Website Legibility

Make sure your website is legible. A website that can be easily understood, with a professional design layout will maximize your online sales potential.  Using dark text on a light background is the standard practice for creating legible text.  Split up content into short sections and use subheadings to highlight the major topics.  Organize your content with headings, bullet points and accentuate key areas with bold key-phrases.  By making your message clear you can count on users spending more time on your website, and ultimately converting into customers.

Check for Errors

Review your website on a regular basis for content, design and/or technical errors. Having a professional website with spelling and grammar mistakes can destroy the message that you are trying to convey to your audience.  Even if you are working with a professional content writing team – make sure different people are editing your content for grammar/spelling mistakes. 

We all know how frustrating it can be when we browse a site and end up clicking on dead links that lead nowhere. As new pages are created and/or deleted on the World Wide Web, it’s pretty common for a link to go bad.  Check your site for dead links on a regular basis.  Just type in Google “free broken link checker” and you will find plenty of them. Here is one free tool that will display the broken links within your site: www.dead-links.com.

A good way to avoid technical / design errors is to validate your code.  These days, users have many options when it comes to web browsers and this means that your website runs the risk of not displaying properly in one of them.  The best way to avoid this issue is to use validation tools to ensure your web pages are W3C and CSS compliant.  Visit: http://validator.w3.org/ and http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ to diagnose your site’s code. 

Contact Information

No matter what product or service you’re selling, if a prospective client has a hard time contacting you, than they will surely go to one of your competitors who are more easily accessible.  Make sure all your phone numbers are displayed on a contact page.  Sometimes, it’s a good idea to even have your phone number in the top header/banner of your page.  On your actual contact page, include all your phone numbers, addresses, emails, etc.  You can also have a contact form for users to fill out so they can get more information.  Some people prefer to be contacted by an agent, as apposed to calling in right away.  The more contact info you display, the more assessable you become to your users and the more reliable and trustworthy you appear to be.