Build and publish your own CMS (content management system) 3-page website, with our help, in one day in our studio!

The “Build Your Own Website Bootcamp” is perfect for organizations and small businesses just starting out, or others who’ve been wanting a simple website they can manage themselves, but can’t afford a custom site at this time.

In the bootcamp, we’ll help you build your website, and teach you how to add more pages, images and everything else you’ll need to know to manage and optimize it yourself.

Since this is something new we’re trying out, we’re only taking a few applicants for this first bootcamp, to be held sometime at the end of January or early February.  If interested, click here, and we’ll send you more details.
Cost – $500.00.

At the bottom is a video we recorded and edited at a Do It Yourself Website Optimization Seminar we recently gave in Richmond for the Virginia Small Business Administration.  It’s a glimpse of what you can learn from our DIY workshop here locally in Williamsburg at Smellycat Productions in the Williamsburg Outlet Mall. Click Here to Sign Up for Our Next Workshop.

Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 6 – 8 p.m. in our studio in space 59 of the Williamsburg Outlet Mall, 6401 Richmond Road, Williamsburg VA 23188.  To reserve your seat, call us @ 757-250-3197, or email us by September 13, 2011.  Cost is $45, payable by check, Mastercard, Visa, Discover or PayPal . 

When most people hear the word “Panda” they either think of a cute black and white bear that “eats, shoots and leaves” or a big black and white bear with big teeth, but Google’s new Panda search engine is different. In this case, some businesses fear Google Panda, not because it’s a big bear with big teeth, but because if your website has not met Panda’s regulations, your site could get slammed or, in Google-speak, “Pandafied”.

Unfortunately for businesses, Google will not release exact regulations for Panda. However they did release some guidelines to follow to build a high-quality website. So, if you’ve been following their rules, then you should have nothing to worry about!

Google Panda uses Google’s new ranking algorithm, which takes in many different factors to determine a site’s ranking on its search engine. Google Panda looks at EVERYTHING to ensure Google only returns what it considers high quality websites in its SERPs (search engine results pages). Although the changes are not always noticed, Google is constantly tweaking its new ranking algorithm. From time-to-time Google performs a massive search engine update that can slam (“Pandafy”) your business’s website, and even completely remove it from its search engine.

PageRank of a website is important to search engines as well. PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is also another factor in producing a high-quality website. SEO can be tricky though. For instance, Google does not approve of “keyword stuffing”, a manipulative attempt to load a website with keywords in order to raise the site’s ranking in Google’s search engine. When adding keywords to content, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately.

Google’s goal with it’s new Panda update is “To give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible”. But is it working? Have you noticed an increase or decrease in your website ranking lately? If you’ve noticed an increase, good for you! If you’ve noticed a decrease, you’re site could have been “Pandafied”! Here’s some helpful tips to improve your ranking–or keep it:

1. Create well-written content and articles. If you’re not an expert on the topic, research reliable resources to glean the information you need–and remember to always cite your sources!

2. Create interesting and creative content and articles. Are pages on your site the sort of webpages you, yourself would want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

3. Use meta-data correctly. Sometimes you can “overdo it” when adding keywords. For example, when creating keywords, come up with as many high-ranking words that relate to your business or industry by using Google Adwords: Keyword tool. If keywords aren’t relevant to your website, don’t use them! And NEVER use your competitors’ names in your meta-data.

4. Avoid excessive ads and links to other websites unrelated to what your website is about. Excessive ads and irrelevant links are not only distracting and interfere with the main content and intent of a website, they are a surefire way to get it Pandafied!

How about it–do you think you’ve been Pandafied?  If so, let us know.  We’ll be happy to audit (check out) your website and give you some tips to get cool with Panda Rules!

What’s your website grade?

For those of you who would like to know how your website is performing, and what steps you can take to improve its performance and search engine ranking, go to websitegrader.com, a free website analysis tool, enter your website address, and click “Generate Report”.  The cool thing about this site, is you can also check out your competitions’ websites and see how they rank.

Google Places–location, location, location!

If you haven’t yet claimed your Google Places Map listing, you better do it quick.  Now, whenever you “Google” a type of business, say, “web design in Williamsburg VA”, the Local Business Results appear at the top, center, and can completely take up the page, which means those of you who might have once occupied the prime real estate of the first page of a Google search, now have been pushed to the second page–unless of course you have claimed and optimized your Google listing.  For more on this, click here.

Be ever “Alert” with your reputation

Want to know if someone’s trashing you online, or if you have a dissatisfied customer?  Sign up for Google Alerts.  It’s a free service in which you can set up email alerts for your business name, domain name, owner or CEO name as well as names of other high-profile employees and any trademarks or branded terms you have, like names of products or services you’ve created. When Google’s spiders encounter these terms as they crawl the web, Google emails you a notice, along with its URL.  If you find some bad reviews on you or your business, contact us and we’ll give you some pointers on how to combat them.

For more SEO tips and how-to’s, go to Google Webmaster Central, or come to one of our DIY SEO workshops!

2010 SCP highlights

Thanks for making 2010 a banner year for SCP!  In addition to the dozen+ workshops we gave on DIY SEO, Blogging for Beginners and Social Media, as well as the HUGE article on us in the Daily Press, we managed to squeeze out a few projects:

New websites

Food for Thought Restaurant, Fine Signs, Uncle Richie’s Roast Seasoning, CXAnalytics, Charlie’s Antiques, Beez Scooters, StayFold, Cason Custom Homes, Signature Stone

*New videos/animations

StayFold, Cason Custom Homes, Success in the Saddle exercise series, Sumitomo Corporation of America, Swank Motion Pictures Inc., VA Fashion Week, Virginia Enterprises Inc., Extinction Rising novel

*Note–we are presently upgrading all our videos into new, state-of-the-art players–we’ll have links to them for you in our next newsletter.

Upcoming Workshops

Admission – $45/person by check, cash or Paypal.  Seating limited.  Please email or call 757.250.3197 no later than the day before each workshop to reserve your seat.

Do-it-yourself SEO (search engine optimization)

January 13, 4 – 6 p.m.

January 27, 3 – 5 p.m.

Business blogging and social media for beginners

Laptop required for this workshop.

January 20, 3 – 5 p.m.

February 3, 3 – 5 p.m.

“Hi, I hope all is well. I am currently working on a story about why people multitask and what experts say about multitasking. Do you have any friends who say will have Facebook up, check e-mails, talk on the phone and watch TV all at once? Do you know anyone who you consider a heavy “multitasker,” if so, please let me know asap. E-mail laprayam@yahoo.com with the contact info (phone number, e-mail address, etc.)…. Thanks!”

How about it–any “uber” mutlitaskers out there?

Google LOVES blogs, because their content is always changing. A blog can really push your website higher in the rankings, but only if it’s part of your website, like ours is, as opposed to using a third party like WordPress.com to host it.

We prefer the WordPress blog publishing platform. It’s content management system (CMS) easy to use and offers tons of free customizable templates (themes), many of which come search engine optimized and equipped with RSS feeds and “Subscribe” features (conversion forms) that allow subscribers to receive automatic updates whenever you write new blog posts.

When you start a blog, don’t blog about your business. Write what would interest others, within the context of your industry. For instance, if you sell carpet, don’t blog about your carpets–blog about interior decorating and carpet care tips. If you do create a blog, make regular posts to keep the search engines coming back.  And don’t forget to use relevant keywords liberally!

Like blogs, if you create profiles on the popular social media sites for your business, you need to keep the content fresh to keep followers engaged. If you use a content “auto-poster” for your blog, such as ping.fm, whenever you write a blog post, a link to it will automatically post to your social media pages.

This is your chance to become an author, and promote your business or organization. If your article is informative, other websites may re-publish it, providing more inbound links to your website!

Add your blog to popular blog directories, following the same procedures we outlined in DIY Website Optimization, Step 5 – Inbound Links and Directories for adding your website to online directories.

Okay, fellow bloggers out there, what advice and tips have you??

The number one answer I get is, “because I need one”.

When I ask how they are measuring the numbers and types of visitors coming to their website, they have no idea what I am talking about.

When I ask them if they would like to have their website optimized so they will maintain (or get to) the first page position of a search, they invariably answer “My webmaster (or whoever) takes care of that”.

Oh really?  Not from what I’ve seen.  Almost every small (and large) business website I see is poorly, if at all, optimized.

90% of our business is a direct result of the on-page and off-page optimization of our website.  In short, because of how we designed our website and how we promote it on the Internet, people usually find us on the first page of Internet searches or “SERP’s” (Search Engine Results Page).  And when they find us, they perceive us as professionals because our website looks professional–which is more than I can say for those businesses who think their “webmaster takes care of that”.

A well-optimized website is keyword rich in its meta-data and content–and has lots of helpful, interesting and relevant content. It has hundreds of back links (inbound links) from high-ranking websites and online directories.  It engages readers and encourages visitation by interacting with the online community via a self-hosted blog and social media.

But getting (and staying) on the prime real estate of the first page of a SERP is only half the battle.  Remember–you are only one click away from your competition, so your website better look as professional as theirs does!  Otherwise, you run the risk of looking like a tumbledown shanty in the middle of a neighborhood of million-dollar homes.  And if you have done nothing with your website in the past few years, or have a static website that never changes, believe me–you ARE that shanty.

Tell us what you think, share your SEO knowledge and tips, and we will share ours so we can all become better at marketing our websites.

We would like your questions and like others to help answer those questions.

Let’s see what we can start.