Last night I put on my "tech guru" hat again–you know, the one that covers up my receding hairline–and recorded a "travel" segment on 207, Maine’s evening news magazine.
You can watch it here w/Windows Media Player.
Here are the links to the resources we discussed…and a few that didn’t make the segment:
Last year we launched a Web site for St. Andrews Village at Boothbay Harbor, New England’s Premier Retirement Community.
This year we worked with St. Andrews to increase their community outreach and continue to improve communications and marketing with a new blog.
The blog keeps family members up-to-date with the daily going’s on at the Village, as well as providing good, quality content for people who may be considering a retirement community, for themselves or a loved one.
Recent topics include:
If you’d like to retire on the Maine coast, be sure to check out the St. Andrews Village Retirement Community Blog!
Yesterday I got an email asking about an article I wrote called "Tracking Conversions: Does Your Web Site Turn Suspects Into Prospects?"
I had talked about how to track Constant Contact subscriptions in Google Analytics…something difficult to do because the signup happens at Constant Contact’s site, not yours.
The trick is in adding a piece of code to the signup form. (The same holds true for any outgoing link.) Basically, you set up an imaginary directory for your outgoing links and GA tracks these clicks as if they were going to that imaginary directory.
For the Constant Contact example, your opening line might look like this:
<form name="ccoptin" action="http://ui.constantcontact.com/d.jsp"
target="_blank" method="post"
onsubmit="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/example.com’);">
If you’re using the older GA code it might look like this:
<form name="ccoptin" action="http://ui.constantcontact.com/d.jsp"
target="_blank" method="post"
onsubmit="urchinTracker(‘newsletter/subscription’);">
How do you know if you’re using the older or newer Google Analytics code? Find out here.
Learn more about tracking outbound links on your site at the GA help section.
We are currently looking for an experienced Web developer.
You have experience building Web sites with XHTML and CSS. You build sites using DreamWeaver, but you can also hand code to fine tune a site. You’ve worked in an office before and are comfortable working with customers.
You are organized and detail-oriented. You can follow directions, but you also take initiative and are comfortable sharing new ideas to help build a better product. Bonus points if you’re familiar with Joomla and WordPress.
Your duties will include building new sites, updating current sites, developing HTML email campaigns and business blogs, as well as light office duties.
At flyte you’ll find a fun, challenging, engaging workplace. You’ll be forced to learn new skills and grow as a developer.
If you’re up for a challenge, if you want to make an impact, if you want a full-time position with room to grow, flyte new media is looking for you.
Submit your resume and cover at our Web site. Please include examples of previous experience, references and when you can begin.
No telephone calls, please.
Rich Brooks
Maine Web Developer
For years there was an easy tell if a so-called search engine expert was a fraud. If they told a Web site owner they weren’t being found at the search engines because their meta-tags weren’t fully optimized I knew they hadn’t read anything on the subject since 1997.
Meta-tags are pieces of information that appear in the source code of a page, but don’t appear on the page itself. These tags–primarily the meta-keyword and meta-description tag–had been an important part of search optimization in the late 90′s, but were then ignored by the search engines because they were often stuffed with mis-leading words to attract more visitors.
As search engines matured they became much more interested in the content that appears on the page, not under it.
Still, there is reason to pay attention to the meta-tags, specifically the meta-description. Major search engines such as Google and Yahoo often use the meta-description on their search results page. This means that you have some control over the words that appear when one of your Web pages is pulled up as a result of a given search.
By crafting a compelling meta-description you may get a searcher to click on your link as opposed to that of a competitor. Carolyn Phillips also suggests putting calls-to-action and phone numbers in a meta-description tag to motivate searchers to click on that link or pick up the phone.
So, while it still seems like there’s little help meta-tags can offer to your search engine rankings, a well-written meta-description, coupled with a keyword-rich page title can drive more qualified leads to your Web site.
For more details on how search engines might display your meta-tags, check out 7 Ways Your Page May Be Described in the SERPs by Jill Whalen.
Today we begin the search for an inhouse search engine marketer. Carolyn Phillips, who had been handling the task with grace and talent is moving out west, so she’s transitioning into the role of independent contractor.
It was Carolyn’s passion for SEO that started us down this path. We had been outsourcing much of our SEO work to the talented folks over at HMG Search Marketing, but came to the realization that for us it was important to integrate SEO into our other Web marketing endeavors, such as email marketing, blogging, social media, analytics and designing Web sites that help clients convert more visitors into customers.
If you’ve got 1 – 3 years experience with search engine marketing, have strong copywriting skills, and are organized and detail-oriented, we’d like to hear from you.
You can learn more about flyte and the SEO position at our Web site, and apply there, too.
No phone calls, please.
I don’t regularly blog about our ProSites, our affordable Web sites for small businesses, but they don’t regularly feature photos of my children. (With parental permission…’natch.)
Do the math: Photos of blogger’s children = free promotion.
Actually, this job meant a little more to me than usual, because Children’s Time Child Care, a child care center in Scarborough, Maine, is where both of our daughters, Maya & Sophie, went for preschool.
I still remember the first day I dropped Maya off. We had Maya in another day care where I would often drop her off and they would drop her in the living room where the TV was on. My first day with Children’s Time when I brought Maya in, there was all this activity with giant building blocks. I turned to an older girl who was there and asked her what was going on.
"We’re building a boat…and an island!" she said, and went back to work.
I knew I was in the right place.
Marcie and Joe Welch, the owners, run a great center. The offer infant and toddler care as well as preschool care. In fact, Maya, who’s now in Kindergarten, still spends Tuesday afternoons and snow days there.
If you have a child in Scarborough, South Portland, or the surrounding area, and you’re looking for child care, give Marcie a call today: 207.883.1202.
BTW, Sophie’s the one in the pink-striped sweater in the 2nd photo, and Maya’s got the face paint on in the bottom photo.
This month’s issue of our email newsletter flyte log is entitled, How I Increased My Email Signup Rate by 5,000%…and How You Can, Too.
Hmmm…you’re thinking. I know Rich is terrible with math, so he probably moved a decimal point too far to the right. Or, maybe you’re thinking, I know Rich is a marketer, but I think this time he stretched the truth past the breaking point.
Well, math isn’t my strong suit, that’s true. And, I am a marketer and, according to Seth Godin, All Marketers Are Liars.
Yet, as far as my rudimentary math skills can tell, it’s true. We averaged 2 – 3 new subscribers a month before I tried the process I lay out in this month’s issue, and now we average 125 new subscribers a month. (Actually, it’s more. I was counting total subscriber base over a 12 month period, but that includes unsubscribes. Our new subscriber rate is even higher.)
But let’s be honest, you don’t care about my success rate, you want to know how to increase the number of subscribers to your email newsletter. If your email newsletter signup offers nothing more than "Join Our Mailing List," this month’s flyte log is for you.
To avoid missing any future issues, be sure to sign up now!
Short answer: very. No wait, scratch that: essential.
Developing a keyword-rich site and placing those keywords in the right spots is only half the battle. Getting quality incoming links is the other half.
Part of any search engine optimization program has to include a plan to get incoming links, whether from other Web sites, blogs (including your own), directories, or an article marketing plan.
For more on this, check out Is SEO Possible Without Inbound Links?
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