Twitter. Let’s talk about it.

I’m sure you hear about Twitter all the time. That’s because about 9 people register a twitter account every second.

When you think of the term “Social Media”, it is undoubtable that Twitter comes to mind. It’s undeniably a mainstay in popular culture.

Is your business a part of that culture?

If your business isn’t utilizing Twitter, you are taking opportunity and vigorously throwing it out the window. Why? Think of it this way, hundreds of millions of people are already excited to be part of the Twitter community. So for you, Twitter is a free and easy way to reach out to literally hundreds of millions of potential clients.

The best part about Twitter, is that not only are tons of people already plugged in, but many of those people are also using Twitter throughout the day. If someone has a smart phone, then they also have the ability to tweet and read tweets at any moment- and yes, they will. Sure, this can lead to superfluous posts revolving around topics such as the caliber of a recently consumed burrito, or any kind of cat related humor. But Twitter doesn’t just need to be used as a tool for wallowing in tedious minutiae. If used in the right way, Twitter has a lot to offer business owners.

Think of Twitter as a miniature blog. Each tweet is a concise 160 character blog post that holds a compact power of it’s own. Everyone is busy these days, and not everyone has time to read an in depth blog post – but anyone can take 5 seconds to read a tweet.

And, to emphasize again, they will.

This means that a message sent via tweet is going to effectively register with your followers. Imagine the power of being able to instantly alert loyal clientele about a flash sale, a new product, or a giveaway contest!

You can think of a Tweet as an online “elevator pitch.” You’ve got a couple sentences to gain the interest and attention of potential clients. A successful tweet can bring past clients back into your activity sphere and perk the virtual “ears” of new prospects.

So what are you waiting for? It’s free, easy, fun, effective…there’s no downside. Happy tweeting!

Photo by Nicole Nelson

Using the right quality image in your website matters. The average time someone will spend on a webpage is just under a minute. This means that on every webpage you have less than a minute to explain a concept to a prospective client.

You have to make your words count. Reading takes time. And in today’s age of instant satisfaction, your average prospect probably doesn’t want to read a novel about your product or service.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

That’s what they say isn’t it. Well it’s a cliché for a reason – because it’s true.

A quality image speaks volumes about what you do, and it only takes a split second for someone to comprehend. There is no way to be more succinct and to the point than just showing the client what you do. In this sense, a quality image can be just as important as well written content.

I said a quality image. The photographs on your website are what your prospective clients will remember you for. Make it count- having a camera on your smart phone, does not make you a photographer. Do yourself a favor and work with a professional.

A professional photographer much like a web designer specialize in what they do, just like you. So when you’re looking to put images on the virtual flag of your business, you need to do the same thing: go to a specialist. A professional photographer knows all there is to know about how to present a subject in an artful, affecting way. That is their specialty. They understand lighting, composition, post processing, propping, styling, and everything else that makes up a powerful photograph.

So, when your clients come to your website, they see your unique vision, translated in an instant through artistic, well crafted images and supported through earnest, succinct text.

I can guarantee that when you use professional photographs on your website you will see the difference – and your clients will too.

Photo by Nicole Nelson Photography.

First, what is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) are techniques to help your website rank high in organic search results.

This is important for your business because people use search engines everyday in order to find products and services. If your business website isn’t indexed (found) by Google, you are potentially missing out on new business. Now It’s not difficult to get your website to index. However, getting your website to rank high for specific product/services keywords is the difficult part.

We’ll go over some basic SEO practices, then later more advance techniques. That can improve your website’s ability to rank higher in search engines and potentially bring you more customers.

Here are 6 techniques you can do yourself if your running a WordPress website.

1) Website Content

Content is King, you want to write content that your target audience will find valuable and engaging. Every page in your website should have a headline that grabs the reader’s attention, this is also where you can include a couple keywords. Within the content body make sure to include a h1 heading, bold keyword text and an internal link to another page within your website that covers your keyword.

2) URL Permalink Structure

Permalink Structure for WordPress

The actual structure of your website URL can have an impact on the search engines and also makes it easy for the user to reference the page later. In WordPress you can activate this by going to the back-end of your website, under settings click on Permalinks. You set to custom and write /%category%/%postname%/ this will make your links search engine friendly.

Adding ALT Tag in WordPress

3) Pictures

Pictures are great way to break up sections of text, and they also can serve as an opportunity to communicate with search engines. Since search engines cannot tell what a picture is, they look for the name of the image and the ALT tag to figure out what the image is. Naming your pictures is important.  For example, ,,santa-barbara-seo.jpg‟ is much more useful than „pic355.jpg‟. Search engines also look for Alt tags, which are short texts of code that allow you to tag and name each photo on your site. So name your picture then add your picture in WordPress, you’ll then be asked to include a title, alt and caption for the image.

4) Title Tags & Meta Tags

Title Tag in Browsers

Title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high rankings. Title tag is HTML code that gives the title of the webpage at the top bar of your Web browser. It’s also the blue link that the search engines show when they list your webpage on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Title tags max out at 75 characters, so choose your words wisely. If your WordPress theme doesn’t have a way to manually insert a title tag, meta tag and keywords you can install the All in One SEO plugin.

Title & Meta Tag in SERP

The META description tag describes your site’s content, giving search engines’ spiders an accurate summary filled with multiple keywords. The META description tag should contain multiple keywords organized in a logical sentence. The meta description is limited to 150 characters.

Example of Anchor Text

5) Internal Linking

HTML Example of Anchor Text

Internal linking is when you reference and link to other content within in your own website.
Using anchor text is recommended when linking to another page. When anchor text is used, it implies that the page you are linking to is about the keyword or phrase you use as your anchor.
Anchor text is the clickable text that links to the page you desire. All search engines give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages.

6) Body text

This is the content your customers will actually see when visiting your website.

These are general rules that everyone should follow:
Make sure your main page have your main keywords. It has a higher chance of being indexed than your other pages, and it will be the only page indexed by some engines. Some engines rank a page high if it has at least 100 words, so make that your minimum. Directories include pages based on the quality of their content, so make sure your pages aren’t simply lists of keywords.
The H1, H2…H6 tags are given special relevancy weight, and you should plan to integrate your keywords into your heading. You don’t have to go extreme, just use one H1 for your most important keyword and two H2′s – one for each of your secondary keyword phrases.
Bolding and italicizing your keywords at least once doesn’t hurt and actually gives you a very small boost (recommended, but don’t go bolding every keyword on the page)
When creating your content pages, keep the following four concepts in mind: Keyword prominence, proximity, density and frequency.

1. Keyword prominence – the best place to place keywords in the text is at the top of each page, preferably the main page. The closer your keywords are to the start of the page or the start of a sentence, the better. This concept is known as “keyword prominence.” You’ll frequently see it used to describe search engines’ algorithms. Some engines also say the bottom of the page should contain keywords as well. Here is an example how search engines see your page.
2. Keyword Proximity - some engines, such as Google, use the concept of “keyword proximity” as part of their ranking formulas. As suggested by the name, “keyword proximity” means the how close keywords are to each other. Put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear. Here’s an example: We have been selling weight loss products for over 3 years. In this case if someone should look for “weight loss products”, the sentence will rank higher because its keywords are closer to each other.
3. Keyword Frequency - is a measure of the number of times keywords occur within a page’s text. It’s tied to the concept of keyword density. Search engines want to see more than one repetition of a keyword in your text to make sure it’s not an isolated case. The recommended repetition is 3-7 times.
4. Keyword Density - the final point on visible text is keyword density. Simply stated, keyword density is the number of occurrences of a keyword divided by the total word count. For this, I try to keep my initial density to between 1-7%. However, this number may have to change depending on the level of competition.

Phi Web Studio has helped many Santa Barbara small businesses with excellent Web Design services. View our recommendations on Linkedin

Contact us we can analyze your website for free and give suggestions you can implement yourself or hire us to make sure the job is done right.