1. You can update your Blog/Website yourself
2. Your blog becomes your central repository for all articles, news items, announcements and events. It’s database driven, so it’s searchable.
3. “Search-friendliness” is built into the blog.
4. Blogs are easy ways to add depth to your web site; Each blog post is indexed as a page in search engines. (just Google NJAWBO Blogging Event)
5. Your blog post title can automatically be displayed as a tweet in your Twitter account.
6. It’s easy to integrate multi-media in posts – Slideshows from Flickr; YouTube Video.
7. Your blog can be linked from your Linkedin account.
8. Drive traffic to your website/blog by including the link on a Facebook update.
9. Your blog demonstrates your expertise- good for attracting press.
10. With a blog you’ll be cool, hip, and you can now call yourself a blogger.

Resources:

• Wordpress.org   Free open source software for integrating a blog into a web site or building a standalone blog. Self hosted (company.com/company_blog); you’ll need your webmaster to accomplish this.
• Wordpress.com  Free open source hosted blogging solution not on your domain (company.wordpress.com).
• Blogger.com  Free Google hosted blogging solution not on your domain.
• Montclair Adult School; www.adultschool.org Registration begins Feb 1, 2010;  Web Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs & Small Business March 23, 2010;  Planning an Effective Web Presence for Entrepreneurs & Small Business; 2 sessions March 2, 2010 and March 9, 2010

See our web site for more informtion about BZA’s Ecommerce and Online Store Design Solutions

BZA designed a site that lets their high graphics corrugated boxes take center stage. The comprehensive site has a Markets Served section containing eight animated slide shows for each market. Photography used throughout the site consistently reinforces the quality of their work. Any prospect visiting the site will quickly find that many Fortune 500 hard goods, food, and beverage companies entrust their brand to Accurate Box.
BZA also integrated a company video into the web site. The company video, complete with player controls, downloads quickly from a video streaming server.
Through BZA’s search marketing and optimization effort Accurate Box has been able to increase their search engine traffic significantly since the web site launch. They have been able to expand their geographic reach by increasing their visibility in search results for their targeted keywords and phrases.
Accurate Box wanted to be able to update their site content to keep the site current. In order to accomplish this BZA provided a content management solution so Accurate Box can update their web site without any technical knowledge. The site is located at http://www.accuratebox.com

BZA provided creative direction for the product photo shoot, copy writing, editing, and online marketing services. The site also has a sample request form that facilitates the process of capturing leads into a database. According to Joe Flynn, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Paradigm Packaging he claims “I feel like we put another sales person on the road.” In the future BZA will be developing and integrating an application that will allow users to search for plastic bottles by material, style, neck finish, use, etc. or combinations of each. The site can be visited at http://www.paradigmpackaging.com/.

Many of the unemployed today are reinventing themselves and starting up businesses. One of the most important tasks a business owner must consider, second to selecting a company name, is the selection of their domain name. Brands are greatly affected by the ability of the company to obtain the matching domain name. If a company builds a brand around a name to which it does not own the domain name, it can end up directing traffic to another domain owner’s site. If it is a competitor, this surely would be problematic.

As you list your potential choices, determine how the name will be interpreted in both writing and in speech. Two or three word domains can easily be read in more than one way. A good domain name should require little or no explanation when verbalized. In other words when you tell someone your web site address and they ask, “is 2 spelled to
or two”? or “is it the number 2?”. Having to offer an explanation adds an unnecessary level of confusion and will guarantee that your domain name will be difficult to remember.

Numbers should be avoided and so should phonetic letters; i.e. “fone” for “phone”, “magik” or “Magic”. Also avoid homophones like “sweet” and “suite”. Avoid hyphens; i.e. www.my-company-store.com.

When you search domains during the purchasing process you’ll see the many extensions (.com, .biz, .info, .us) that are available. Domain registrars will always show you the “3rd rate” names like .biz, .us, .info etc. They want to increase the amount of your order by encouraging you to sign up for those names. Do resist for the mere fact that the business world thinks in .com and that’s the way it is. So stick with .com under all circumstances.

Keep your name as short as possible. Remember you domain will be reflected in your email address. If the name is longer but yet easy to remember and spell than that should be acceptable.

And once you register your domain, do put up a placeholder or a splash page until your web site is ready. The experts claim domain name longevity is a factor in search ranking. Now that is another whole topic.

graphic design company and logo design firm by category. Get listed under Graphic Design | Web Design | Logo Design | Art and Photography | Animation | Programming | Flash Design | Design Awards | Web Hosting. Also try with Country | City

Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! `I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?‘ she said aloud. `I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think–‘ (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) `–yes, that‘s about the right distance–but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?’ (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Excerpt from ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll

Such is the world of search engines. As your site travels the mysterious road of site optimization, with the insight below, you‘ll be armed with a few ‘grand words’ so maybe YOU‘LL know where you are going.

We are going to discuss several factors search engines (SE‘s) use when ranking your site. These are URLs, text, links, popularity, submission and HTML code.

To begin to understand these factors one has to remember that the goal of a search engine is to display the most relevant sites first. SE‘s use a complex site of algorithms. These algorithms calculate the best matches. What makes this art and science even more challenging is that the algorithms are kept secret and often change when work arounds (methods that get through the algorithms) are discovered. For example, in the early days, webmasters would stuff keywords into their pages by add text that matched background color.

Below are the factors to consider:

URL
-If possible do use keywords as part of your domain name
-Purchase other extensions to protect your name and your brand
-Create page name that a relevant to page content; for example www.bza.com/web_design.html better than bza.com/wd.html

TEXT
-Content is king
-Your site should be filled with relevant and keyword content
-Organized content- with heads and subheads
-Write articles, white papers, commentary, news, blogs, write about your keyword subject
-Naturally expand content with good keywords
-Change content often; SE‘s will visitor when they see new content
-Avoid; doorway pages, write content just for SEO, machine generated pages; small text, text that matches the background, keyword stuffing
-Don‘t repeat content
-Don‘t put keywords in graphic images; SE‘s can‘t read graphics
-To find keywords and phrases relevant to web sites used Yahoo Search Suggestion Tool , Google‘s Keyword Tool , WorkTracker Microsoft Ad Center
-Add geocentric terms to target local areas.
-Blogs- with content related to the web site; link back to the web site

HYPERLINKS
-Linking to relavant content within your site. Takes advantage of crawling as well as keyword
-Every page must be linked… No dead ends
-Find out what pages are indexed in Google by searching site:http://www.yoursite.com

POPULARITY
-Measured in two ways; Most frequently clicked link for keyword search on the site and inbound links
-Related to your content- makes you an authority
-Purchased listing/links from reputable sites
-Do not participate in non related link exchanges or link farms
-Inbound links from popular sites, .edu, .gov adds value to your rank
-Press release links like PRWEB.com
-Who links to you now? Go to Google and search link:http://www.yoursite.com

SUBMISSION
-Do submit your site only once. Google, Yahoo Search,
-Don‘t used any automatic program, submit each page, or more than once,
-Submit to directory, DMOZ and Yahoo
-Organizations, listing plus industry directories

META CODE and HTML
-First 100 lines on code; have the most influence
-Meta Tags are not a magic bullet; Meta Tags are the page title, description (12 to 24 words) and keywords
-Your page title is the single most important factor… should be 6 to 12 words; each page -should have a descriptive and unique page title.

Not to be forgotten
-Don‘t use Flash for an entire web site
-Get rid of Frames; old technology, search engines can‘t index and follow frames