Google announced another update to its search algorithm that will impact 35% of Web searches.  The change is related to its prior “Caffeine” update which deals with providing more real-time and relevant search results.  Hot topics, breaking news and other new and relevant information is what Google will be looking for in its latest update.

Google actually makes around 500 algorithm changes each year, and online marketing experts are always working to keep pace.  Let’s get back to basics and delve into SEO and how it affects your business.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is Search Engine Optimization and is the process of tuning your website to be found by search engines based on specific keywords.  The ability to research and identify targeted keywords and injecting those keywords strategically throughout your website is a challenge, but a challenge worth taking.

These Numbers Cannot Be Ignored:

Source: Nielsen Media Research, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Online marketing is becoming a necessity for marketing your business.  This will continue to change with the increase in mobile and tablet technology.  

Professional SEO involves “saturating” your website content with a certain percentage of keywords located in key areas throughout your text.  If you have too many keywords in relation to the number of words in your text, you can be penalized by the search engines and even black-listed.  If you have too few, a search engine may not show your website in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) for your keywords.  You also need to inject keywords into the URLs of your website pages, Title tags, Alt tag descriptions, navigation structure, inbound and outbound links.  You should optimize your sitemap.xml file to exclude pages that you do NOT want to show in the SERPS; an example is a Terms & Conditions page.

Link-Building for SEO

Beyond SEO, you need to build your presence through professional Link-Building.  Link-Building is the process of building links to your website.  Link Building is not specifically for increased traffic.  It is to build higher rankings for your website – which should yield more traffic if the keywords were chosen properly.  As with anything, there are good and bad link-building practices.  Unfortunately, many Link-Building companies sell you based on the number of links they create rather than the quality of those links.  There is still debate in the industry but many studies show the quality of the links are more important than the quantity, and we agree.

A simple example is this:  Let’s say you have a link to your website on JoeShmosSite.com, and another link to your website on Forbes.com.  Which link do you think will hold more “credibility”?  Google looks at the PR (Page Rank) of the website that has a link to your website and will give more “points” to your website if you are linked on a popular and credible website, which would help your rankings.

Moving from position 2000 to 200 to 2 in Google will certainly increase your traffic and lead potential.  But make no mistake; this is not an easy feat.  Professional Link-Building can include RSS SEO Mashing, High-PR Linking, Daily Drip Linking and other techniques.

These are just two techniques for online marketing.  Of course, you have Social Media, Blogs, Press Releases, Newsletters, Display & Text Ad Networks, Affiliate Programs and more.  The key is to track your analytics and identify which techniques are working the best for you.  With all this marketing exposure, the conversation rate of your website is also critical.  There is not much value in having a tremendous amount of traffic to your website with no conversions.  Again, it comes down to quality.

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eSavV Technologies, a RI Based Web & Mobile Software Technology Firm, Partners with United Nations Affiliate

IREO (Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization) announces its official partnership with eSavV Technologies to promote awareness of the environmental issues facing our planet via new technology solutions

Lincoln, RI, October 20, 2011 – eSavV is committed to quality web, mobile and software products and services and is also committed to corporate social responsibility.  For this reason, eSavV has been chosen as the technology and media consultant firm to United Nations affiliate, IREO.

IREO’s initiatives are not for the faint of heart.  They are a progressive organization promoting awareness for the pressing environmental issues facing our planet and are executing initiatives to practice what they preach.  They recently signed a joint venture to develop a 3,000 acre sustainable agricultural community in Haiti and are supporting the development of Waste-to-Energy power plants in Latin America.  There is much more this great organization is doing and eSavV will be there to support these initiatives via web and possibly mobile technology.

eSavV will be providing guidance to IREO for how it can leverage various technology outlets to promote its mission and initiatives to gain worldwide recognition and support.  The first step eSavV took was to redesign IREO’s website application (www.ireoigo.org).  Michael D. Croft, CEO of eSavV Technologies explains, “The redesign included behavior-based design changes.  Behavior-based design is the study of human behavior and how people react to various styles, colors and images on a website.  With the important messaging IREO is looking to convey to its website visitors, this type of design is paramount to invoke actionable behavior.  The psychology behind the design was that of positive reinforcement, rather than ‘dooms-day’ scare tactics.  It sends the message that work needs to be done, however, success can be achieved with the right people, direction and support.”

Michael explains why he partnered with IREO.  “I feel if everyone were to contribute just a little towards environmental sustainability, we could achieve a tremendous amount of benefit to our generation and future generations.  I don’t believe we have an option.  If we don’t contribute now, the ramifications will manifest quickly and our precious resources will be gone and you know the saying; you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

Michael is using his company’s technology resources to develop a sophisticated website application, an advanced web ‘portal’ and an online marketing campaign to help IREO spread its message.

“This is one of my contributions to show my appreciation for our planet and its resources.  It makes me feel good that we can be a part of such an important global cause and help support such an incredible organization like IREO.”

Michael is not only leveraging his company resources to support IREO and its mission, he is also using his own personal time to learn more about the issues surrounding corporate sustainability.  He is currently attending Harvard University for a course on corporate sustainability.  “To support an organization like IREO, it is important to not only understand the technology, but to also understand the business.  Without a strong understanding of the business, it would be difficult to maximize a technology solution for that business.  We cannot be experts for all our client’s businesses so we work with the people who are, fostering our collaborative efforts to yield the highest returns.”

Michael D. Croft

President / CEO

eSavV Technologies

www.eSavV.com

TF: 888-316-6303

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One topic that is still fairly misunderstood by small businesses is SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  SEO is not easy and if it were, then we would probably not have the unemployment rate we have and just about everyone would be able to startup a web company and make a lot of money.  It is clearly not that simple.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of “optimizing” your website to be found by people searching for your services using search engines.  Consider there are currently an estimated 250 million websites and 14 billion indexed web pages.  That’s a lot of competition.  You may not be competing with all of those websites or pages, but the fact is it is becoming much more challenging, and costly, to rank well in the search engines.

The reason it is so important to rank well in the search engines is due to the fact that web users typically choose listings on the first or second pages in the search results.  An estimated 84% of users click links on the first page and the majority of the remaining users do not go past page 3.

One common misconception is to type your company name in the search engines and see that you rank on the top of the first page and think this is a good ranking.  If you are very well branded and most potential clients know your name, then this may work fine for you.  The key for most is to rank for specific keywords or keyphrases that describe your business offerings.

The challenge is to have your website rank well for keywords or keyphrases that describe your business.  The more competitive the keyword or keyphrase, the more challenging and costly to rank for that search term.  Identifying the right keywords and phrases is a challenge in itself.  You ideally want a keyword or phrase that has a good volume of search traffic and low competition.  This is not an easy thing to find.  There are some formulas you can use to identify the value of a keyword or keyphrase.  These formulas are just a gauge and some argue they are obsolete.  However, I feel they are still a good indicator and should be considered.  The formulas do have varying implementations and so depending on how you implement the formula can provide very different results.  I will not get into the details of those formulas here but you can research further on them.  They are called KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) and KOI (Keyword Opportunity Index).

Once the keywords or keyphrases have been identified, you will need to infuse these throughout your website.  They should be used in your main content, title tags, meta descriptions, image descriptions (alt tags), URL’s for pages, inbound and outbound links, sitemap.xml and even the folder structure that the web files are stored and accessed via the URL’s.  You need to be cautious to not saturate the content too much as it will be deemed “keyword stuffing” and could hurt your rankings.  Many other best-practices surround each of these components and are beyond the scope of this blog.

Link-building is the process of creating relevant inbound links to your website from external websites, directories, blogs, social sites, bookmarking sites and more.  The concept is simple, but the process is fairly complex.  If your website is a popular website (determined by search traffic) then it can be assumed that it would be referenced in other websites and discussed in blogs and posted in social media and bookmarking sites across the Internet.  Link-building helps expedite this process.  The technique targets your top keywords or keyphrases and injects links strategically in the aforementioned websites and directories.  They should be included in relevant sites and also prominent sites with a higher PR (Page Rank).  Link-building is more about quality than quantity.  Most companies just spin links that go to thousands of websites and directories but those sites and directories have no affiliation to your business and have very low PR – meaning those sites are not high traffic or credible websites so there is little to no benefit to having a link to your website there.

The key is to have spatial link-building that simulates real link propagation and includes websites and directories relevant to your business with a higher PR and credibility.  Each of these links acts as a “vote” for your website and the more credible and relevant votes you have, the more credible and relevant your website looks to the search engines and you can be pushed to the top of the search results heap.

Other considerations are blogs, press releases, videos and podcasts.  These create natural links that will increase your Internet presence and credibility and traffic.  You must continue to monitor your website via analytics. 

You cannot monetize what you cannot measure and many businesses do not evaluate their website analytics and are missing out on huge opportunities for increased traffic and conversion.  Conversion is the idea of a website visitor actually taking action on your website.  Again, this is not an easy feat and an understanding of human behavior and key design implementations and interaction patterns are a must.

All of these concepts are part of Search Engine Optimization.  Pricing varies based on your expectations for rank and the competitiveness of your keywords.  If you want your website to be ranked in the top 3 for a very competitive keyword across the world, this would be a much more massive undertaking than ranking your business on the first or second page for a low competition keyword in a single town.  This is where the customization must happen and the pricing will vary significantly.

Due to the very complex and custom nature of SEO, eSavV has introduced “Expectation Pricing”.  This pricing structure is based on the aforementioned items and is a completely custom solution which is a must for serious ROI.  Learn more at our website:  www.eSavV.com

Michael D. Croft

President / CEO

eSavV Technologies

www.eSavV.com

Expert Website Development, Mobile Apps, Software, Internet Marketing

TF: 888-316-6303

CELL: 401-524-7574

michael@eSavV.com

Corporate Office:

640 George Washington Hwy, Lincoln RI 02865

BIO: linkedin.com/in/michaeldavidcroft

"eSavV is one of America’s world class technology solutions providers. They offer unmatched expertise and customer service. United Nations affiliate IREO is a proud partner.”  -Robson Mello, Secretary-General, Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization

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Recently, our company was featured in a business magazine for some of our work on mobile applications.  I had the privilege to speak at an event to discuss the article in more detail in front of a sold-out crowd.  After my speech, many people had new ideas and questions regarding mobile applications in the context of their business.  I wanted to clarify a few things about mobile application considerations for your business in this blog.

I first want to discuss SOA – Service Oriented Architecture.  This is probably not something you have heard in the context of mobile applications.  However, this is a key component to a mobile application for a serious business.  SOA is a software architecture that is developed to hold functionality for your business.  This functionality can then be leveraged by a mobile device.  SOA is not just for mobile devices, but I will focus on SOA in the context of mobile applications in this article.  Let’s say you have an inventory management system.  This system has been a part of your business for some time, but you would like to leverage some of those inventory functions on a mobile application.  How do you get that inventory information from your existing systems to a mobile app?  The answer is SOA.

The SOA “layer” can sit between the mobile application and your existing business software systems.  It will act as a interpreter and transmitter of information to and from the mobile application and your business systems; in this example, your inventory system.  SOA acts as an interpreter because your inventory system does not know how to “speak” to a mobile application.  Your mobile application does not know how to “speak” to your inventory system.  The SOA layer is designed to facilitate this interpretation and to send requests from the mobile application to the inventory system and vice-versa.

The benefits of SOA go far beyond mobile applications.  Any core business functions can be extrapolated from existing systems and “wrapped” into a service.  The name Service Oriented Architecture means that your business functions can be created to act as a “service” – a function that can be used by other business functions, devices and interfaces.  You can connect a website, smart-phone app, tablet app and even other systems to the SOA.  This allows communication between systems and devices and fosters greater efficiency for business processes.  If you would like more information on SOA contact eSavV Technologies at 888-316-6303 or email us at operations@eSavV.com.

About the author:

Michael Croft is President and CEO of eSavV Technologies and has 14 years professional experience in the software and computer science industry.  He holds a B.S. in computer science and is a certified software solutions architect and has been a business analyst, technical liaison, software engineer, team lead and mentor to organizations of all sizes.  He is a technology consultant to United Nations affiliates and is currently attending Harvard University for his MBA.

eSavV Technologies

www.eSavV.com

888-316-6303

operations@eSavV.com

640 George Washington Highway, Lincoln, RI 02865

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Incorporating videos into your website can improve your online marketing success.

The methods and mediums we use to reach our audience may have changed but the goals remain the same; grab attention, engage the audience, and build relationships to grow your business. With the internet being a leading source of information for customers it is important to understand how to use video to optimize your message and your online marketing campaign’s effectiveness.

YouTube, the video sharing website, is currently ranked as the 3^rd most visited website on the internet.  150 years of YouTube videos are watched every day and every minute more than 500 tweets contain YouTube links. More videos are uploaded to YouTube every 60 days than were produced by the 3 major U.S. television networks in 60 years!  I think you get the picture! 

Videos capture attention, provide a more personal interaction, and deliver new information quickly and easily.  It is all about engaging the visitors on your site and making their visit as enjoyable and simple as possible. 

Behavior based web designs work to influence, persuade, build trust, and trigger emotion in our visitors which then prompts them to take action. A video works in much the same way. To a visitor it is the closest online medium to a face to face interaction. A video allows you to demonstrate to your audience that you understand their needs, wants, and concerns.  A well-developed video can use images and sound to trigger an emotional response, build trust, and deliver an easily understood message that will persuade the viewer to take action.

Other benefits videos are that they can be viral, build brand recognition, and drive more traffic to your site.  Since Google included video into its search, websites that contain videos have received a notable advantage in SEO.  The search engines are constantly crawling your website and they will index your video with your content, which will improve your rankings for the appropriate keywords.

Check out our new website development video at http://www.esavv.com/web-design-company.php

Michael D. Croft

President / CEO

eSavV Technologies

www.eSavV.com

BIO: www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldavidcroft

Toll Free: 888-316-6303

Posted via email from eSavV Technologies Blog

Posted via email from eSavV Technologies Blog

 This year the IRS set the standard mileage rates used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business purposes at $0.51 per mile. But before you can deduct your business mileage you must first keep track of it.

eSavV created the Green Miles mobile application to help business travelers do just that. This iPhone mobile application is GPS-based and automatically tracks the mileage as you travel. This mobile app is fast and simple, and only requires you to complete 3 easy steps:

1. simply enter your destination and select “start tracking”

1. once you have reached your destination they click “stop tracking”

1. then you can either save or email your trip summary.

The new 3.0 version of the Green Miles mobile application allows you to select a date range for the trips you would like to access and you can email multiple mileage tracking trips at once as well as save the trips to your phone.

Another feature of the Green Miles mobile app is that it is multi-threaded. This means you can have this app running in the background while still tracking your mileage as you make phone calls or use the other applications on your iPhone.

The Green Miles mobile app also automatically sets the date and time for the beginning and end of your trip, tracks in miles or kilometers, allows you to delete and edit trips, as well as search saved trips and the app supports ‪iOS 3+ and iOS 4 phones.

eSavV is dedicated to helping businesses thrive on a small-business budget and for that reason this mobile application is now available for free at the app store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/green-miles/id407971822?mt=8# This app is a very useful tool for anyone who is looking to track their mileage and receive tax incentives for those miles. This is just one of the many ways eSavV is helping businesses run more efficiently.

eSavV Technologies

Websites. Mobile Apps. SEO & SMO. Software.

Phone: 888-316-6303

www.eSavV.com

Posted via email from eSavV Technologies Blog

Developing a great website is the first step to launching a great internet marketing campaign.

We know that more companies are focusing their marketing efforts online and we know that internet marketing allows you to reach a larger, yet more targeted audience as well as achieve more measurable results. However, what you may not know is that you first need to focus your attention on building a website that will maximize your desired internet marketing results.

Before you launch your online marketing campaign you must first develop an optimized website that includes:

1.            Proper URL’s for pages

2.            Proper titles on each page

3.            Original content with keyword saturation

4.            Site map

5.            Blog

6.            Robot.txt

7.            Targeted landing pages for link building

1.)    In order to create optimized URL’s, the page names and paths that take you to the pages on your website should be structured in a particular way and should also include keywords.  For example, if you have a service for “Dry Cleaning”, your URL path might be: www.someWebsite.com/drycleaning-services/drycleaning

2.)    Each page should also have a proper title which is one of the languages used to create your website.  There are different levels of titles in web design code such as H1, H2, H3, H4 etc.  Each page should only have a single H1 title tag with proper keyword saturation.  Then, follow the H1 tag with organized H2, H3 titles for sub-topics under the main title.

3.)    Your website content should be written for your target audience and not for search engines. However, be sure to include keywords for your product or service but take caution not to include too many as it may get you penalized.  There is debate in the industry on the impact of keyword density – but we maintain the importance of content on key pages to hold a keyword density balance.

4.)    Internet marketing is about building a network online and a site map is a key component that helps search engine crawlers traverse your website to find content and index it properly. With a site map Google and other search engines can find web pages that they otherwise may not have. The more information the search engines can find about your business, the more visible your internet marketing campaign will be.

5.)    Another factor for internet marketing is the incorporation of a blog on your website.  Fresh content should be added while still being conscious of keyword saturation.  Once you have published a new blog, be sure to update your site map.

6.)    Include Robot.txt on your website. Robot.txt is a file that tells the search engines which pages to index and which to ignore. Some pages such as "Terms of Use" should not be indexed by the search engines. This is vital to your internet marketing campaign because it helps crawlers understand how you want your website indexed and found by searchers. 

7.)    Your website should be developed with landing pages in mind to support another component of internet marketing called link-building.  Link-building is the art of creating your online network via other websites and directories.  A back-link is a link that points “back” to your website.  The more quality back-links you have, the larger your online network and the more targeted traffic will visit your website.  Link-building is art more than science.  The quality of the back-links is imperative and the PR (page rank) means a lot for a quality back-link.  Social Graphs are another linking style that includes your social networks to help improve your rankings.

Without a strong website foundation much of your internet marketing efforts could be wasted.  Internet marketing, web marketing, online marketing, search engine optimization, social media optimization and link-building are all techniques (and some are just different phrases for the same concept) that will help build your rankings.

Yes, there is a lot that goes into professional internet marketing and eSavV Technologies keeps up with the very latest search engine updates and techniques to get your website ranking where it should be to bring targeted traffic.  Once you are getting targeted traffic, the next step becomes managing your conversion ratio, and that is a topic for another blog!

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eSavV Technologies is now a proud partner and media and technology consultant to the Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization (IREO)

IREO is taking actions to promote the use of alternative sources of energy worldwide. Their efforts will work to combat the issues of global warming, high fuel cost crises, depleting fossil fuels, and environmental diminution.

The IREO is working to create sustainable design and development of buildings and communities that will benefit the “quadruple bottom line”: people, culture, planet, and profit. The IREO is also educating communities on best practices and skills development for environmental sustainability.

eSavV can proudly say that our partnership with the IREO allows us to aid in the fight for a sustainable future. eSavV is the technology and media consultant to the IREO and is working to market and grow the organization via website development, web marketing and social media so IREO’s efforts are even more widespread and influential.

Our team at eSavV has been hard at work to create a functional, user-friendly and custom website for the IREO that is soon to be released. The web design was created using advanced behavior-based technology that will generate a strong conversion ratio. We used heat map analysis, eye tracking, and web analytics to ensure IREO will capitalize on the traffic to their website. This website application will be visited most often by world leaders, politicians, and celebrities which made for an interesting task of designing a website that caters to such a diverse audience.

We are also working to develop and foster their online marketing strategy. Because we understand that website design, web applications, and web marketing work best when they work together.

eSavV Technologies

Websites. Mobile Apps. SEO & SMO. Software.

Phone: 888-316-6303

www.eSavV.com

Posted via email from eSavV Technologies Blog