Triune Designs Blog: Web Design, Development, & Marketing

In one of next week’s blog posts, we are going to discuss how different social media suits different people. Come back next week to read more.

In honor of that upcoming post, I want to see what types of social media you use. Are you a hardcore blogger? Are you one of the cool kids hanging out in the Facebook community? Do you Twitter so much that you really do actually want to just tweet? Let us know in the poll below. And because it is the Christmas season, we are going to throw in an extra (gift) poll. Given all of the communities where you are a participant, what is your favorite social media medium?

I look forward to seeing your responses.

Where do you regularly participate?

Bonus Poll – What is your favorite social media medium?

Howdy to everyone out there in the TDI tribe (yes I am listening to Seth Godin’s book – review to come in another blog post).

NCIS & web marketing

A short while ago I wrote a blog article about how CBS and NCIS benefited from expanded marketing reach when they aired reruns on the USA Network. Today, I read a relevant article on MSN talking about how NCIS is indeed seeing an increase in viewership.

So, the first conclusion we can get from the MSN article is that my blog is now driving millions of people to CBS so they can watch NCIS – yes that is correct, we are sending millions of people to the show!

Okay, well probably not, but this article does reinforce my previous assertion that reach aids in marketing and exposure.

If you read the article, you will find that the MSN reporter is correct in many of his observations: yes, NCIS’ writing is good and yes, the humor makes the show very enjoyable. In fact the whole show is just good entertainment; however, the reporter overlooked how these millions of extra viewers are now finding the show to increase its numbers. As I mentioned above, one reason is reach.

In fact, I know of one person (me of course) that found NCIS through the extra marketing reach USA provided the show. How many others are like me? What do you do to help improve your marketing reach? Could you be doing more?

Photo courtesy of ~Merete

My little guy hanging out in the shower.

I was giving my two year old a bath, and as sometimes occurs, he urinated in the water. It was at the end of his bath anyway so I figured it was time for him to get out. As I was getting the towel I warned my little guy not to drink the water (as he frequently tries to do) because of the fact that he had just peed in it. Despite this warning he tried to drink the water forcing me to abruptly stop him.

So what does this have to do with web marketing? Well, I began to think of our clients and the advice we give them when incorporating a web marketing campaign (or known to us as Web 2.M). I have noticed that on occasion, our recommendations are not followed and our clients’ efforts are thus hindered.

So in an effort to bring about action, here are a few important reminders of marketing pitfalls to avoid (not listed in order of importance):

1. Avoid the gobbledygook – Think of gobbledygook as the cliche terms, jargon and other words that basically do nothing for your product but “make you sound very, very important.” And we all know how much we like those people who try to make themselves seem more (smarter, powerful, religious, popular, etc.)…just plain annoying. (And a big thank you to David Meerman Scott for searing the term gobbledygook into my brain.)

2. Avoid having a small, stagnant website – Essentially a small, stagnant website is just a like a billboard along the internet highway that you saw 50 miles ago, but even less effective. Having a constantly updated, fresh and growing website is what you need for a strong marketing campaign. Your fresh website is like having continuous good, juicy news about your company that the town crier and gossips cannot wait to talk about to everyone else.

3. Do Not Ignore Inbound Links – Inbound links are so vital to a good marketing strategy that you cannot ignore needing them. Google (yes, that Google) places such a high importance on inbound links that they actually incorporate them into their search engine ranking system. If you completely ignore inbound links you might as well save yourself some time and abandon any type of web marketing effort at all. For more information on that, check out Hubspot’s article on Google’s PageRank.

Avoid these web marketing pitfalls and you stand to help your marketing efforts exponentially over the course of time. Conversely, falling into these pitfalls is more like drinking the pee-filled bathwater after having been warned.

I know the feeling. You are doing your best to create a solid Web 2.0 marketing campaign. You are consistently writing your blog articles, you are utilizing the various social networks to spread the word about your company, and you are writing SEO-friendly news releases. However, in spite of all of that, you are not getting a lot of immediate responses. My advice to you is be patient. Unless your message is one of the few that go viral (where you see an immediate response that spreads quickly), these types of web marketing efforts are a slow building process. You will see the benefits of a good web marketing strategy over the long-term so do not lose heart initially.

With that in mind, I saw this great Dr Seuss-esque story in another marketing blog I read who actually found it on another company’s blog. The story is about a company’s frustration over their Web 2.0 marketing campaign and some hurdles they have had to overcome. Very funny and I may even read it to my two year old tonight.

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Happy reading!

Leo

Even though I am not proud to admit it, for a while, we were beaten at our own game…and by a non-web marketing company at that! The experience served as an important reminder of how important inbound links are in the world of search engine marketing. Before I go any further, let me set the stage.

One cannot ask for a better environment for testing one aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) than what we encountered. The search engine phrase we will be using in this case study, “triune designs” is pretty obscure, which means that very few competitors will be vying for the top spot. Our competitor (truly in name only) for this case study is Triune Designs. They are a boutique-clothing designer based out of France (Fr.; triune-designs.com). We are Triune Designs, a web-marketing firm based out of North Carolina (triunedesigns.com). Our names are exactly alike, which helps in using the aforementioned specific search engine phrase. Finally, we both purchased our domain name within the span of about six months. This is helpful in our analysis because it removes any advantage for either one of us based on age of the domain name. So far, everything is about as even as you can get in the real world, which allows us to truly study some of the more controllable aspects of SEO.

Triune Designs (USA)
Being knowledgeable of how websites and search engines work, we implemented the basic recommendations on how to optimize a site for the likes of Google and Yahoo. We added our keywords and company description to the meta tags and used “triune” and “designs” as many times as possible within good content. We also used textual-based navigation buttons to allow the search engines to see every page of our website. Finally, we utilized lightweight code to make it easier on the search engines to discern all of our content/keywords. Whether or not you understand what I just said, suffice it to say that we did the things that need to be done to better optimize a site for search engines.

Triune Designs (Fr.)

Meanwhile, our namesake’s mirror image across the ocean did not take advantage of the “hidden” meta tag keywords and they only had “triune” written a couple of times throughout their website. To make matters worse for them, out competitor used image-based navigation, which meant that search engines would only see the first page and nothing else (computers and search engine spiders cannot read images, so they get stuck on whatever page they first land on, which is usually the home page). I would not say all of this was wrong, but Triune’s (Fr.) programming did not help their cause with search engine optimization.

Shocking Results
What all of this means is that we should have had the major advantage and should have been listed first on most of the search engines. So, imagine my surprise when Triune Designs (Fr.) started being listed first! What was happening to cause such a coup? It turns out, they did something very simple, but effective: they utilized inbound links. Inbound links are links on other people’s websites that link to your website. Triune Designs (Fr.), in a major grassroots effort, basically got out there and spread the word in other people’s blogs, websites, and on social networking websites. In doing so, Triune got people talking about them and got others to add links to their website. In the span of about two or three months, they had over 100 links coming into their website. We were way behind them; we only had approximately two inbound links. The resulting effect was that our French clothing counterparts were listed first in just about all of the search engines when using the term “triune designs.”

I constantly tell each our clients about the importance of inbound links. Unfortunately, most of the time, our clients shrug this recommendation off. Going out and adding inbound links is not flashy and is seen by most as too much work for very little gain. However, this case study serves as a valuable and scary reminder of just how important inbound links can be in search engine optimization. If a clothing designer whose website was not set up for SEO can beat a web marketing firm whose site was, just by using inbound links, imagine what can happen if someone takes full advantage of almost all of the recommended techniques!! That would be a very powerful marketing tool, which would be hard to contend with.

Until next time…

Want to drive more traffic to your website? It is easy…just add another link in the chain.

At one point or another, most clients ask how they can drive more traffic to their website. As a good web marketing professional should, I provide a sizeable list of various ways to help increase traffic and to optimize their website for search engines. While all of the methods in that list are valuable and effective, I want to focus in on just one item for today’s discussion: in-links.

Search Engines
Links that point to your website (a.k.a. inbound links or in-links) are a very powerful way of increasing your chances of being listed higher on search engines. The Google’s and the Yahoo’s of the world see in-links as personal references from one website to another. This is similar to a person referring a friend or colleague to their “great dentist” or “a quaint little restaurant” that they have found.

The reason search engines place emphasis on in-links is because it is more difficult for a company to add links onto other’s websites. Different from other methods of advertising which are self-driven, a referral (or in-link) is almost solely dependent upon someone else giving their approval and permission.

Exposure
Another positive aspect of having a large number of in-links is increased exposure. Having your website address, company name and other company information on other’s websites increases your visibility. This is a great way of advertising for little cost. Think of in-links as little billboards along the internet highway…a great way to be seen.

Sounds great, but how do I do it
The first way of building in-links is to swap links with friends, partner/sister businesses, and other businesses you may interact with. According to Netcraft, as of April, 2008, there are over 165 million websites on the web. With that many websites around, there has to be someone you know who has a website and would be willing to add an in-link for your company. One thing to note, though, is the increased value of building in-links with websites of a similar nature. Even though having a link on other reputable websites is a good thing, having in-links on websites that are similar is best. A dentist swapping links with an orthodontist is better than a dentist swapping links with a florist because of the similarity of the first two websites. Both in-links are good to have, but one is better.

Another way of building in-links is to get yourself out there. Utilize networking (professional and social) websites. Facebook, MySpace, Xing, and LinkedIn are a few examples of networking sites that you can join to help build more in-links for your company’s/organization’s website. Adding your professional and company information to these networking sites not only assists with adding more inbound links, but they help provide potential exposure as well.

Participating in blogs and online discussions is yet another way of getting yourself out there. Find an industry-related blog or discussion and join in. Some blogs/discussions will allow you to enter your website address; but even if you are not able to do so, you are still getting your name out there. (In doing this, though, make sure you are really participating and not just spamming other’s websites. There is a difference and make sure you do it right.)

A third way of helping your website build inbound links is to have good content on your website. Writing useful, interesting, resourceful, and fresh content keeps people coming back again and again. Good content also makes your site interesting enough to entice others to reference it (in say a blog, for instance). A good example is Hubspot, an internet marketing company. They provide good information and resources related to search engine optimization and marketing. I might refer to them in another blog post or on one of my web pages because the information they provide is useful and interesting enough to me that I think it is worth linking to them. (Oh, by the way, in case you missed it I just gave Hubspot a quick in-link…good for them.)

The Big Finale
If you really desire to increase traffic to your website and you want to utilize some simple solutions, consider building your inbound links. They are a valuable commodity in today’s search engine web world.

A final thought, as important as links are in today’s search engine optimization, perhaps we should consider a new nickname for the Internet: the World Wide Chain-Link Fence. Ten years from now you will be able to say you heard it here first.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again at our next article.

–GIIHELSO–

Welcome to Triune Designs, Inc.’s marketing blog! This blog will be updated on a (mostly) weekly basis with articles/thoughts on topics ranging from print marketing and graphics design to internet-based marketing and strategies. We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoy writing them. Until the next time…