3 reasons to archive past newsletters on your website

1. Fresh content for the search engines. Posting your monthly or quarterly newsletters to your website is a great way to consistently add new content to your website. Chances are your newsletter is loaded with your industry specific keywords so each newsletter you post is content the search engines can find.

2. Show your visitors what they are signing up for. The archived newsletters show new potential subscribers exactly what they are signing up for. They can see the frequency of the newsletters and won’t be afraid they will get an email from you every day if they sign up. (Hint: make sure your opt in form is easily accessible from the archive to remind new subscribers to sign up!)

3. Reach a bigger audience. Your email newsletters have the opportunity to be viewed by more than just the people on your list. They can be seen by anyone who visits your site.

Is your web site designed for you or your customer?

One of my many hats over the years has been that of a web designer. When the Internet began to boom, I was focused on the “wow” factor and designed with only one question in mind – does it look good?

Obviously this was a very inexperienced perspective at the time. Over the years, marketing experience superseded design, and I quickly learned that what I like is of little benefit to perspective customers. It’s what they like that matters.

Fact is, there are many great, well-designed sites out there – knockouts to behold.
But just because they’re well-designed, it doesn’t mean they’ll generate any results.

The following questions are important to keep in mind when creating a web site :

• Is your message (objective) clear?
• Is the site easy to navigate and consistent from page to page?
• Is the color scheme appropriate for your industry and in-line with your branding?
• Is there enough white space?
• Is the font size appropriate for your audience?
• Is your contact information easy to access within all pages of your site?
• Is your site dynamic (easily able to keep fresh)?
• Does your site load quickly?
• Is your content relevant to your audience?
• Are your topics easily distinguishable?
  • Subheads
  • Bulleted lists
  • Highlighted keywords
  • Short paragraphs
• Does your site work across multiple browsers, platforms and devices?
• Is your site search engine friendly?
• Last but not least, does your site have a clear call to action?

For more information or a free consultation regarding your website, please contact us.

We’ll give your customers an eyeful, plus a reason to act.

Jennie Quimbita

3 Tips for choosing a Search Engine Friendly Content Management System

Not  all Content Management Systems (CMS) are created equally.  There are so many options available it is important to carefully evaluate the features you need before making a decision.  If Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important factor for you, here are three features to consider when choosing a CMS system for your website.

1. Search Engine Friendly URLs – make sure you can specify the URLs for each one of your pages and be sure to include your keywords in the URL.
For example:
Use keyword specific URLs like:

http://www.ocflightcenter.com/flight-school/private-pilot-certificate.php

instead of generic URLs like

http://www.ocflightcenter.com/index.php?pageid=105

2. Meta Tags – make sure you have the ability to modify your title, description and keyword tags for each page of your site.  The title tag is an extremely important element for SEO and is seen by users on Search Engine Results Pages as well as in the visitor’s browser.  Keyword tags are not as important to search engines as they used to be, but they are a good practice because writing these tags will force you to define what your keywords are and will help you keep them in mind when writing content for your site.

3. Link Text – link text is another important element for SEO. Make sure you can easily create and edit links throughout the content of your site – including the navigational links visitors use to browse your site. Use relevant keywords in your links instead of generic words like “Click Here.”

Client News: Orange County Flight Center Launches New Website

We are very proud to announce that OCFlightcenter.com has been completed and launched. The goal of this website is to generate awareness of all the services offered under the OCFC umbrella – everything from flight training, aircraft rentals, aircraft sales and maintenance. All of these services exist under one roof in Orange County.

Q2 began with re-branding Orange County Flight Center’s print marketing materials and reinforced it online. The new site includes flash animations, a content management system to allow OCFC to manage the content throughout many sections of the website, integration with their scheduling software, integration with their email marketing software and search engine optimization.

Visit the new site at www.OCFlightCenter.com.

How to Use Google Alerts to Track Your Online Marketing

Google Alerts are a great tool for tracking your online marketing campaigns. They let you know what content Google is finding. Additionally, they can provide insight into what content is not being found (because you will not see this type of content in your Google Alerts) so you can adjust your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts accordingly.

What does a Google Alert track?
You can track content that Google has found including:
1. Blogs – Google should pick up posts from your own blog as well as posts from other bloggers who are talking about your company, products and services. (Tip: If Google is not picking up your blog posts you will need to optimize them for your keywords.)
2. Press Releases and News Stories – When you send out a press release, it can be picked up by news feeds all over the internet. Google alerts allow you to see the scope of the exposure you are getting. (Tip: If your press releases are not getting picked up by Google, make sure they are optimized for your keywords.)
3. Website Content – Whether you are optimizing pages of your own site for search engines or you are actively seeking in bound links to your site, Google will let you know when it finds new content.

What keywords should I track?
At a minimum, you should be tracking:
1. Your company name
2. Your product or service names
3. Your personal name (if relevant)
4. Your competitor company and/or product names

To sign up for Google Alerts, visit:
http://www.google.com/alerts

For more information on the types of Google Alerts available, visit:
http://www.google.com/support/alerts/bin/static.py?page=faq.html&hl=en

Dawn Chiu (DQ)

How To Measure Your Website Traffic

Most web hosts today offer web traffic reports as part of your hosting package. Contact your host today if you don’t know where to find these reports. Web traffic reports are a critical part of every marketing campaign – both online and offline. In addition to telling you how many people visited your site, traffic reports can tell you how visitors found your site and how they are using it when they get there.

How many site visitors do you get in a month?

It is important to look at the number of visitors instead of the number of hits. The number of hits represents all files loaded by your website and includes pages, images and other files. The number of visitors will tell you how many people viewed your site. Most traffic reports will break this down further to tell you how many of these visitors were repeating visitors.

Monthly Web Traffic

You should also be able to see a graph of traffic over time. Most peaks in traffic will be credited to a marketing/advertising campaign you executed – whether it was an electronic newsletter that went out, a tradeshow/event you attended, a direct mail campaign that was sent out, an advertisement you ran in a magazine, etc.

Website Statistics

How are visitors finding your site?

Good web traffic reports will show you how visitors are finding your site. This information can be found in the “Referrers”, “Search Engines”, “Search Terms/Phrases” section of your report.

Referrers are other sites that link to your site. For example, Q2 Interactive Marketing and Design is a member of NAWBO Orange County and we have a listing in their member directory. When someone clicks on the link in our NAWBO listing to arrive at the Q2 website, it shows up as a referrer on our web traffic reports. This is a great tool for tracking the effectiveness of your directory listings.

There should also be a section in your traffic reports that tells you which search engines are sending you traffic. You can see if your traffic is mostly coming from Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL or any of the other search engines. In addition to the name of the search engine, you can see the actual search terms and phrases visitors are typing in to find your site.

How are visitors using your site when they get there?

The reports will show you which pages get the most views. Some reports will go further to show you exit pages (the last page someone viewed on your site) and paths visitors took through your site.

If your website is not generating business it is important to determine if you aren’t getting much traffic or if your website is just not converting visitors to customers. If you are getting a lot of traffic, but not a lot of customers from that traffic, it may indicate that visitors can’t find the information they are looking for or your call to action is not clear.

Dawn Chiu (DQ)

Don’t get locked out of your website!

Often times the company that designs and develops your website will register your domain and setup your hosting package for you. While this can be of great service to you, make sure they are listing you as a contact on the accounts and providing you with all usernames and passwords.

What happens if your consultant moves and you are no longer in contact? Or if you are working with a web company that goes out of business?

If you are not listed as a contact on the accounts, you will not be able to access them without going through a long process to prove your identity and ownership of the site should you need it.

Here are 4 things you need to know about your website to make sure you have full control over it

1. Your username and password for your domain registrar. As long as you are listed as a contact on the account you should be able to request this information at any time. To see who is listed on your domain, you can do a “who is” lookup on any domain registrar’s site. Network Solutions and GoDaddy are 2 of the popular domain name registrars. You need this information if you are ever going to change hosts. You will have to login and change the DNS with your registrar in order to move your site to another host.
2. Where is your website hosted? Ideally, you will have FTP information (host, username, and password) to the web server your website is on. This information can also be requested at any time as long as you are a contact on the account that is setup with the hosting company. The “who is” lookup may tell you who your host is if you are unsure. You need this information to make any changes to your site or to copy the files to a new host.
3. If your website uses a database, you will need to know the username and password. You want to make sure you can get into the database to make any changes in the future or if you need to move your site to a different host for any reason.
4. The administrator username/password to manage your email addresses. Most hosts now offer a web based email administration as part of your hosting package. This will allow you to add/modify/delete email accounts as necessary. This is important to have if you are changing hosts so you can make sure you setup all email accounts with the new host. If you don’t setup the new accounts, you may stop receiving email!

Dawn Chiu (DQ)