Increase Your Website Traffic With Search Engine Optimization – Feb 15, 2012

Your website isn’t effective if it can’t be found by the major search engines. This class is essential for you to learn specifically what to change in order to improve your visibility in Google/Bing/Yahoo’s search result pages. Participants will learn SEO best practices to follow and have the opportunity to have their own websites critiqued during the session.

When & Where

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9 am- 12 PM
Location: Brookdale Community College,
765 Newman Spring Rd
Lincroft NJ 07738

Register

Register Online, or call 732-842-8685
Course Code: XBUSD 078 SW
Fee: $40.00

Instructor

Roland Reinhart
Marketing Consultant/President
Reinhart Marketing Group
http://ReinhartMarketing.com

Increase Your Website Traffic With Search Engine Optimization – Oct 12, 2011

Your website isn’t effective if it can’t be found by the major search engines. This workshop is essential for you to learn specifically what to change in order to improve your visibility in Google/Bing/Yahoo’s search result pages. Participants will learn SEO best practices to follow and have the opportunity to have their own websites critique during the session.

When & Where:
Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location: Brookdale Community College
765 Newman Springs Rd
Lincroft, NJ 07738

Fee & Course Code: $40, XBUSD 078 SE

Register: By Phone 732-224-2315 or Register Online

Instructor: Roland Reinhart, Reinhart Marketing

Increase Your Website Traffic With Search Engine Optimization – Oct 5, 2011

Your website isn’t effective if it can’t be found by the search engines. Whether you have a website already or intend to create a new one from scratch, this class is essential for you to understand how to improve your website visibility in the major search engines. Participants learn SEO best practices to follow and have the opportunity to have their own websites critiqued during the session.

Register Online:
Get complete info at http://www.sbdcrvcc.com/courses/general/
Or call: (908) 526-1200, ext. 8516
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
6:00-9:00pm
Course fee: $50
Held at Raritan Valley Community College @ Bridgewater

Instructor: Roland Reinhart
Marketing Consultant/President
Reinhart Marketing Group
http://ReinhartMarketing.com

Increase Your Website Traffic With Search Engine Optimization – July 12, 2011

Your website isn’t effective if it can’t be found by the major search engines. This class is essential for you to learn specifically what to change in order to improve your visibility in Google/Bing/Yahoo’s search result pages. Participants will learn SEO best practices to follow and have the opportunity to have their own websites critiqued during the session.

When & Where

Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 10 am -1 pm
Location: Brookdale Community College
Building MAN 206, Parking Lot # 5
765 Newman Spring Rd
Lincroft, NJ 07738

Limited Seating. Register Today!

Fee and Code: $40, XBUSD 078
Register By Phone: 732-224-2315 or Register Online

Instructor:

Roland Reinhart, Reinhart Marketing Group

Fall 2011 Classes

Join me for the following Fall 2011 classes at Raritan Valley Community College:

Get Found Online! An Introduction for Business Owners
Wed Sept 21, 2011, 6-9pm

Increase Your Website Traffic with Search Engine Optimization
Wed, Oct 5, 2011, 6-9pm

Drive Traffic to Your Website Using Search Engine Advertising – A Guide to Google AdWords & Google Analytics
Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 6-9pm

Creating Audio/Video Content For Your Website
Wed, Nov 2, 2011, 6-9pm

Register this summer at SBDCRVCC.com.

Combine Your Blog And Your Main Business Website

I’ve noticed that there are quite a few “website designers”* who are spreading poor advice around, due to their lack of knowledge and/or experience with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

They tell business owners to start writing a new blog without any sort of strategy in mind. It gets setup separately on some free blogging site like Blogger.com. The author write a few articles, gets frustrated and quits.

Why Add A Blog?

The purpose of publishing a business-related blog is to:

• Continually add new, useful, keyword-rich content to the website to help increase the chances of being found in search engine results.
• Demonstrate your subject matter expertise.
• Allow prospects to get a sense of your personality.

What Are They Doing Wrong?

• Failing to combine the new blog within the domain name of the existing business website.
• Failing to link from blog posts to pages within the business website.
• Failing to write blog posts without a keyword strategy.
• Driving people away from the business website via link to the blog hosted somewhere else.
• Not having any measurement tactics (website analytics) in place to understand where the visitor comes from, how they found the website, and what they look at.

If you have an established business website, absolutely integrated a new blog into it. Any qualified web developer would know how to make it seamlessly make it part of an existing website.

Hope you find this helpful. If you’ve had a bad experience, please add a comment below.
-Roland

*Note: Regarding the term “website designers”, this is a commonly used generic term that applies to someone who builds websites for a living. Their skills might be stronger in either technology or creative design.

Should You Respond To Link Exchange Requests?

Have you ever received an email like this?

From: linkmanager@somecompanyyouneverheardof.com
Subject: Link Exchange Request from Some Company You Never Heard Of
To: Webmaster

Hi,
I visited your site http://www.yourbusinesswebsite.com and found some interesting information. We think our visitors will benefit from your site’s content and we are interested in exchanging links with you.

Please consider listing us here: http://www.yourbusinesswebsite.com/resources/online-resources/ using the following link info:

Anchor text: GED
URL: http://www.somecompanyyouneverheardof.com/
Description: Find an alternative to the GED test at Company Virtual Schools.

Please send me the exact URL where I can find my link and send me your text link info so I can add your link to our site. We will post your link in the proper category of the resources page listed here: http://www.somecompanyyouneverheardof.com/resources/index.asp

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Regards,
Machelle
Some Company You Never Heard Of

As a marketing consultant, I’m frequently asked by clients, “how do I respond to this link exchange request email?” My advice is click the “Report Spam” button on your email application. You have no obligation to respond and really don’t need to waste your time pondering these reciprocal link requests.

It’s a common tactic sent blindly to addresses like info@, admin@, webmaster@, etc. I get a dozen of these requests a week. They are often automated and sent to thousands at a time. It’s rarely a personal message from a real person.

I know it seems hard to resist a “free” link. But the reality is that your website is not going to benefit from irrelevant reciprocal link requests because they don’t significantly help with rankings in the search engines.

What About Paying For Links?

Yikes, absolutely don’t do it! Even if you do the due diligence to determine the quality of the link sources and audit to ensure they’re implemented correctly, the risk is high that you will eventually get caught and penalized by the major search engines. Here’s an article that nicely explains why.

Are Any Link Requests Legitimate?

Quality, relevant, inbound links are one of many factors that help raise your visibility in the search engines. Therefore, the only type of link requests worth considering for your website should follow this criteria:

• If you actually know and trust them.
• You already have a relevant, working relationship.
• And most importantly … CfLT website visitors would benefit from the link.

I generally advise to create a blog post about a topic and within that article link to a specific related page on the other website. That way the content/context is relevant and more beneficial for the reader. The other party could do the same linking back to a page on your website.

Hope you find this helpful.
-Roland

How To Make An Effective Website

When hired to redesign a business website, I always ask the client what he/she thinks was wrong with the old one. Aside from looking outdated, the response usually is, “it didn’t work.” Obviously that’s a bit vague. So through more questioning, I try to specifically define what is of most value to the client, which factors into how to make an effective website.

“It Didn’t Work!”

It’s important to understand why someone believes that. The rationale will vary from person to person. It could be based on one or multiple factors, such as:

• No traffic.
• No lead generation.
• No sales.
• Poor communication.
• Old information.
• Wrong business strategy.
• Internal disagreements.

How Do We Make It Effective?

I work with my clients to think about the following:

• Define your goals and priorities for the website.
• Define the target audience(s) for the website.
• Determine an appropriate keyword strategy.
• Design for both humans and search engines.
• Plan for scalability.
• Plan how to drive traffic.
• Define specific metrics to measure success.
• Finally, always be testing!

All the above are critical to build an effective website. That way your team is on board and you can make informed decisions over time as you adapt your website to future changes in the market, trends and your business plan.

Hope you find this helpful.
-Roland

Flash Websites Are A Bad Choice For Small Businesses

I am frequently approached by business owners looking to build an updated (2nd or 3rd generation) version of their website. What surprises me are that the ones who have an old website entirely built in Adobe Flash are looking to build their next site entirely in Flash.

Should I Use Flash?

Sure some Flash sites can be cool, while others extremely tedious. But my professional recommendation is that you absolutely do not want your entire website to be built in Flash.

Why Not?

Think of a website entirely built in Flash as a self-contained movie file. Everything is stored inside. The search engine can’t crawl inside this movie file to see what keywords and amazing content you have. Therefore the search engines don’t know what to do with your listing. The outcome is you probably wont show up in the search results that you want your business to be found in.

Reasons Why Flash Websites Are A Bad Choice For Your Business

1. Flash is not search engine friendly. Although Adobe has made some strides to improve, it’s not there yet. It also is highly dependent on Flash designers having the proper skills/experience. There are some who simply do not care about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because it limits the creativity and “coolness” of what they can produce in Flash.
2. Fewer pages for search engines to index.
3. Flash is not viewable on hugely popular devices such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
4. Flash is not easy for you or your non-technical staff to update. Therefore you’ll be paying for every minor edit you want to make.

You Can’t Ignore The Importance Of Search Engines

Unless you have a massive marketing budget to promote your URL wherever your target audience spends their time, you really need to do everything you can to encourage the search engines to find and index your website. If you hinder the ability for the search engines to index you, you’ll definitely suffer from low visitor traffic, and likely spend more in the long term to compensate or fix it.

Using Flash The Right Way

You need a healthy number of web pages, built with a keyword strategy and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices in mind. Then use Flash sparingly as an aid, not a replacement for your primary content.

Don’t Forget The User Experience

Do you think your visitors using the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch will be impressed when they see a big blank space where your Flash content should appear? These devices have growing market share and should not be discounted.

Check out the numbers: Data Supporting Why To Avoid Flash On Your Website

While Flash can be a terrific a visual aid to demonstrate your product or service, you need to carefully consider the trade-offs. Don’t build your entire website within Flash. And never use it for your primary navigation.

Hope you find this information useful.
-Roland

Increase Your Website Traffic with Search Engine Optimization – Feb 23, 2011

Your website isn’t effective if it can’t be found by the search engines. Whether you have a website already or intend to create a new one from scratch, this class is essential for you to understand how to improve your website visibility in the major search engines. Participants learn SEO best practices to follow and have the opportunity to have their own websites critiqued during the session.

Register Online: http://www.sbdcrvcc.com/courses/
Or call: (908) 526-1200, ext. 8516

SB173
CRN 23948
Sect. 01
Wednesday February 23, 2011
6:00-9:00pm
Course fee: $50 ($35 tuition, plus fees)
Held at Raritan Valley Community College @ Bridgewater

Instructor: Roland Reinhart
Marketing Consultant/President
Reinhart Marketing Group
http://ReinhartMarketing.com

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