Maine Built Power Boats and Sailing Yachts: A Factory Tour

Yesterday I headed up to Raymond, Maine on Sebago Lake to meet with folks from Sabre Yachts and Back Cove Yachts. Back Cove makes beautiful power yachts and Sabre makes both power yachts and sailing yachts.

The topic was reinvigorating Sabre Yacht's Blog and Back Cove Yacht's blog to reflect the passion both companies have for yachting. We also discussed the new social networking sites that flyte recently developed for each company to build community within each owner group. Each social networking site (built on the Ning platform) is by invite only; a place where owners can post photos and videos, share stories, pose questions to Sabre and Back Cove staff, and make plans to hook up in different ports of call.

Damn, I'm jealous.

Anyway, it was a great meeting, and I got another tour of Sabre's manufacturing floor (I got a tour when we first started working with Sabre a few years back.) Bentley Collins, who showed me around, showed me a physical mockup of a new model they're developing. It's pretty cool walking through a plywood model of a boat yet to be built. It gives the developers and designers an opportunity to walk through the yachts, see how the angles work, if there's enough headroom, etc.

I was a little surprised that so much of their business these days is in motor yachts as opposed to sailing yachts. That's been the trend for quite a few years now, but I thought with the high price of gas and diesel, there may be renewed interest in sailing.

I also got to see the guys spraying on the resins into the boat hull, and Bentley explained a new method they'll be employing soon which will result in stronger hulls and less fumes.

In the front of Sabre's offices was the first yacht they ever built. It's had a couple of owners, but they were recently able to buy it back. (Most businesses just tack the first dollar they ever made to the wall, but I guess it's different when you make beautiful yachts.)

There are additional photos from the factory floor and of the Sabre team loading up a motor yacht for delivery to a dealer on flyte's flickr page.

It's always great to see so many Mainers at work in manufacturing, a sector of our economy that has been shrinking each and every year. Sabre Yachts and Back Cove Yachts should be commended for continuing to keep manufacturing jobs here in Maine.

Rich Brooks
Working in Maine

ServiceMaster of Greater Bridgeport, CT: Disaster Restoration

Earlier this week flyte launched a site for ServiceMaster of Greater Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Now, I hope you never have a need of their disaster restoration services, but if you ever do have damage from fire, water or mold, (and, if you live in Great Bridgeport, CT), you'll know just who to call.

ServiceMaster works with homeowners, businesses and insurance agents to get that mess cleaned up as quickly as possible. They're also publishing a free email newsletter for additional marketing under the title Industry INsights.

Besides disaster restoration, they also offer Heavy Cleaning Services, something that might just get the grape jelly out of our living room rug, but not likely out of the DVD player. That thing's toast.

Rich Brooks
Small Business Web Design

CrazyEgg is Crazy Good News for Web Site Owners

I've been using CrazyEgg, a tool that helps site owners get a better understanding of how visitors are using their Web sites.

CrazyEgg using tracking software to see where visitors are clicking on your Web site. What makes this a step above Site Overlay through Google Analytics, is that GA only tracks links. CrazyEgg tracks all clicks on a given page. Further, it breaks down those links in a few different ways.

To get started with CrazyEgg you can sign up for a free account which will allow you to track up to four pages. You'll need to add a piece of javascript to the pages you want to track.

CrazyEgg offers four views including Overlay, List, Heatmap and Confetti.

Overlay: You'll see different color-coded symbols by the links on the page you're analyzing giving you an immediate impression of what links are hot and which are not.

By clicking on any of these symbols you open up a window with more detailed information on how many people clicked on the link, and also the referrers that sent the visitors your way.

List: Provides a laundry list of all the clicks that took place on your page and organizes them by popularity. You can further export this list to Excel or other spreadsheet program.

Heatmap: The heatmap view gives you a visual overview of where people clicked on your site. What I found interesting from this view (and Overlay) was how many people visited our Contact page or signed up for our email newsletter at the bottom of the home page.

I didn't expect to have anyone want to contact us before checking out the site, and I've always felt the email signup was buried, and that we were getting signups because of the email bait we offer. (That was significantly more popular, but it was nice to see some people just wanted to sign up for our email newsletter.)

Confetti: This fun view shows you EXACTLY where visitors clicked, and allows you to color coordinate the report based on the top 15 referrers, the top 15 search terms, operating systems, browsers, window size and even time to click.

It's interesting to run a test and see how people are interacting with your home page. You may find certain links you consider important are completely ignored, while others are getting a lot more play. Based on the reports you may (as I did) rework parts of the page to increase signups or get people to call you.

It's also interesting to see whether people are clicking on images or text calls-to-action. I was also fascinated to see people clicking on images that weren't links at all. I'm not sure if these were accidental or not, but it does get you thinking about how different people will act differently at your site.

There are--of course--paid levels of CrazyEgg for site owners needing to run more reports at once, but almost any entrepreneur can benefit from the free trial version. CrazyEgg is a great addition to Google Analytics as you strive to better understand your visitors and build a more effective Web strategy.

Rich Brooks
Web Marketer  

Are Yahoo, MSN & Ask Just Ghosts in the Machine?

comScore released its search engine rankings last week. Google was up almost 2% while the other "big" players--Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL & Ask--were all down by a little less than a point each.

In fact, the search engine pie is beginning to look a lot like a friend from the 80's:

Or, displayed another way:

Via SE Roundtable.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Are You Skewing Your Own Google Results?

When you do a search on Google the results may differ based on whether you're logged in or not. This is because Google may be personalizing the results based on previous performance.

I ran a few searches while logged in at Google on Firefox and I ran a few on Safari (where I wasn't.) Here are some results:

Keyword: "flyte"
Logged In: flyte.biz #6, flyteblog.com #4
Logged Out: flyte.biz #3, flyteblog.com #5

Keyword: "maine web design"
Logged In: flyte.biz #5, flyteblog.com n/a
Logged Out: flyte.biz #5, flyteblog.com n/a

So, looks like a mixed bag. Sometimes Google served up different results, sometimes they were the same. If you think you're doing particularly well (or poorly) on a given keyword, you might want to do a reality check by logging out and trying again.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Welcome, Nicki!

We're very excited to announce a new member of the flyte crew, in a new position here at flyte.

Nicki Hicks is our new search engine marketer. Nicki recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration with a focus in marketing and advertising.

She's earning her black belt in search engine marketing and currently practices two-fisted, bare knuckled optimization techniques guaranteed to knock your competition off the first page of Google.* Yet, she still  knows how to accessorize, even from a young age.

Check out our flyte crew page to learn more about Nicki.

Rich Brooks
Maine-Based Search Engine Optimization

*Crazy-assed guarantees like that will not be honored.

Wind Power and Sustainable, Alternative Energy

Last Friday MEBSR -- Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility -- put on our 15th Annual Sustainable Business Conference. The plan was to take all the audio and handouts and make them available to all of our members as a benefit of membership.

However, after hearing Governor Angus King's eye-opening keynote about alternative energy and the importance of wind power in the mix of energy sources, we (the board) decided that we needed to make the download available to everyone, whether they were members or not.

Given the current price of gas, the state of the economy, and our reliance on energy from people who "don't really like us all that much," I'd argue is essential for everyone--whether you lean left or right--to download this keynote, pop it into your iPod, and give it a listen during your commute or while at the gym. It will open your eyes.

Download the Angus King Keynote Now! MP3, 26.5MB, 57:53.

There's still a lot of great content for member-ears only, such as Peter Vigue's dynamic keynote "Sustainable Business in Maine: The Link to Global Competitiveness", and more coming soon. So, if you're not yet a member of MEBSR, learn more about the benefits of joining.

Rich Brooks
Sustainable Business Owner

Non-Profit Marketing Plans & Non-Profit Newsletters

Recently flyte launched a new Web site/blog for the good folks over at The Marketing Source. The site is called NonProfitMarketingFix.com, and is chock-full of tips and resources focused exclusively on non-profit marketers.

The site has three major sections. The first is dedicated to non-profit marketing plans. Here marketers can find free tools, purchase tip sheets, and even sign up for one-on-one help.

Since so many non-profits rely on low-cost, high-return newsletters, the second section includes free advice and paid tools for improving non-profit newsletters.

The last section is a non-profit marketing blog. In the blog, Katie and Allison weigh in on such topics as Manage Your Brand or Your Donors Will Do It For You and Cutting the Jargon to improve communication.

Flyte designed and built this site on WordPress, the open-source blogging platform and content management system. With this, The Marketing Source can update their own content, create new blog posts, and add new pages without having to rely on an outside source.

If you're in charge of marketing for your non-profit, be sure to check out Non-Profit Marketing Fix. If you're looking to take control of the content of your Web site, and are curious about adding a blog to your marketing mix, contact flyte today.

Rich Brooks
WordPress Developer

Getting Out of Google: Removing Yourself from the Search Engines

Most people I talk to want more search engine visibility, not less. Still, every once in a while I get a request to remove an unflattering result in Google. Here's some advice on how to get it done:

The best first step is to remove the reference on the originating Web page. If you don't, there's a very good chance that the result will reappear even after you get it removed.

If you are the site owner or the Web master of the site in question, that's pretty easy. If the site is owned by someone else though it's a different situation. Hopefully the site owner is an understanding soul and will help you out. However, if the bad result is at TripAdvisor or epinions or another review site, you may just be out of luck. I've heard stories of hotel owners that got a bad review pulled from TripAdvisor, but only after they had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reviewer had mixed up the name of the hotel and meant to slam a different hotel in the area.

Once the offending information has been removed you can wait until Google's bots return to the page and update their index. Soon enough, that info will disappear from Google's index and thus the resulting search results for your name or business.

However, if soon enough isn't soon enough you can speed up the process. Visit Google's Webpage Removal Request Tool and choose New Removal Request.

You'll chose one of three choices here to describe your request:

• Information or image that appears in the Google search results.
• Outdated or "dead" link in the Google search results that returns a 404 (not found) or 410 (gone) error.
• Inappropriate webpage or image that appears in our SafeSearch filtered results. What is SafeSearch?

Chances are you want the first option. Select it and hit next. Again you have three choices.

• The site owner has removed this page/image or blocked it from being indexed by using robots.txt or meta tags. Learn more
• The site owner has modified this page so that it no longer contains the information or image that concerns me. Learn more
• I've been unable to work with the site owner, but the information appearing in the search results is one of the following:
  • My social security or government ID number
  • My bank account or credit card number
  • An image of my signature
  • Your full name or the name of your business appearing on an adult content site that's spamming Google's search results.

Choose the option that best represents your situation, but I'm going to assume we're talking about the first two options. In that case you enter in the offending URL on the next screen and supposedly Google moves on this faster.

Warning: This will actually remove the URL from Google's results for 90 days, so it may have unfortunate SEO repercussions, at least in the short run.

How much faster this will get your result out of the Google index is hard to say. When I tried calling Google (650.253.0000) and got to support for removing a URL from Google's cache, I got similar info to the Web site, except that they actually sent me to the wrong page.

Rich Brooks
Search Engine Invisibility

Good Example of Bad Comment Spam for SEO

Here's a comment someone just tried to leave on our blog:

A new comment from "seo specialist" was received on the post "Search
Engine Friendliness vs. Search Engine Optimization" of the weblog
"flyte blog: web marketing strategies for small business".

http://www.flyteblog.com/flyte/2008/04/search-engine-f.html#comments

Comment:
--------
I am a seo specialist of firm. And interested in information on this
topic.
Very it is sorry that more frequent than all it appears not
high-quality. But it does not behave to this information.
I am glad each time when find useful material for me.
Thank you.

Commenter name: seo specialist
Commenter email: xanika.seo@gmail.com
Commenter URL:
http://www.iksanika.com/services/internet_intranet/seo_search_engine_optimization.html
IP address: 81.30.81.200
Authentication: None

Wow. There's so much wrong here it hurts my head.

• There's no search engine benefit to the URL listed because almost every blogging platform includes a nofollow tag on commenter's URLs.
• They list their name as "seo specialist." That inspires confidence...I mean, if their parents named them seo specialist it's almost like they knew something important was going to come of it.
• The grammar is so bad that I can't imagine anyone actually hiring this person to write their copy for search engines.

So what's the benefit?

Update: They just resubmitted the comment to the same post again, verbatim. I guess what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity.

Rich Brooks
Says Comment Spam is Bad for You