Indianapolis Web Design and Web Marketing

New release of the Authorize.Net Mobile Application

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:39:00 GMT

The New Authorize.Net® Mobile App

We are pleased to announce the release of the Authorize.Net Mobile Application, which allows you to securely accept payments from any location using an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. The mobile application is designed to help you increase your sales by providing another way to easily and securely accept payments using your existing Authorize.Net Payment Gateway account. The mobile application is available now as a free download from the Apple App Store or iTunes.

Tags: web design,web development,web marketing,ecommerce,mobile app

Category: eCommerce

Today’s SEO Trends

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:45:00 GMT

Social Media Optimization
Website Speed and On-Page SEO Activities
The Web Is Going Mobile
Online Videos
Personalized Search
Local Search

Tags: Indianapolis web design

Category: Web Marketing

Category: Search Engine Optimization

Category: Web Development

Effective On-Site SEO Practices

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:57:00 GMT

The following are a few recommended practices to optimize your webpages for the search engines. Of course we recommend using a professional firm like Narrow Gate Media for this but for educational purposes we wanted to share these points with our existing and hopefully new clients utilizing our sweet Edit On Site CMS.

A) Write your content for your page first without thinking about SEO. Think about your target market and what you want to communicate to them without worrying about keywords, yet. Since you are an expert in your industry and you know your customers, you will probably end up including keywords (in this stage) without thinking about it.

B) Now identify your target keywords that describe what the page is about. This is where you start thinking about optimization. Identify from your list of target keywords, any that best fit the pages content. If you find more that one keyword describes the page, try and use the one that has the greater search volume. If none of the keywords on your list are appropriate, you may need to do some further keyword research. If so, we recommend the Google AdWords Tool because it makes it quick and easy.

C) Create a Title Tag including the target keywords. This is probably the most important item when doing on-site SEO for the search engines and appears as a clickable link when your listing appears. We would suggest using the format below to make your tag ranks the best while being clickable. Keep it short; Google will not display anything past 69 characters. Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Site Name

D) Create a Meta Description that will convert. This description will not help influence your rankings in the search engines but it is a free ad for the page below your Title Tag on the results page. With that said, you should write copy that entices your audience to click on the link. Keep it short; Google will not display anything past 155 characters.

E) Add an H1 tag that includes the primary keyword target. Your H1 tag will show up as the primary headline on your page for your customers and will help the search engines rank the page appropriately.

F) Change your page copy, include your target keywords. Simply review your page copy and make sure to include the keyword(s) several times. Try and feature the keyword early in the copy and try not to be too aggressive by listing it too many times. You can be penalized for keyword “stuffing” so only include them a couple times on shorter pages and a few more on longer pages, but basically no more than what makes sense.

G) Italicize and Bold the primary keyword on your page copy. Use the primary keyword in bold and in italics at least once. More than once is not helpful unless for readability for your customers.

H) Add an image to the page then add an alt-tag to the image. Get an image that would work well with the copy of the page, place it in the body of the page and then assign an alt-tag to the image that exactly matches the keyword you are targeting. Even though the search engines can not see an image, they can read the alt-tag, so this can help.

There are more On-Site SEO items that we could list here but if you include these, you will probably be doing better than most of your competitors.

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Category: Web Marketing

Category: Search Engine Optimization

Web Design Issues for Clients Who Want To Make Millions Online

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:41:00 GMT

We often get requests for help in building a website solution for someone or some entity, not surprising since we are an Indianapolis web design and SEO company.

However, more often than you might think, the requests come with a need for a translator because many people simply don’t know what they want or how to ask for it. Obviously if you have never been involved in a web project before or you are not coming to us through professional business means, this is understandable.

The fact still remains, many times people are simply unrealistic in their expectations of what a website can and can not do, what it takes to be successful and how much it costs.

We continue to be surprised by the number of people that want to have the next Facebook or eBay site, or “you know, something simple and easy like Amazon.com”.

What many people don’t realize:

A) It’s more difficult to make money on the web than you might think. Turning a profit can be difficult, especially when your goals are high. Websites such as Facebook and Amazon took many years, hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) and a team of talented designers and programmers.

B) In many cases, the “entrepreneur” simply doesn’t know enough about the web and what it takes to start such a venture. We are not saying that people shouldn’t start up projects likes this because even Zuckerberg at one point started with nothing; we are simply saying that there are many websites online today that can be used as case studies and a plethora or information at your fingertips to do research.

C) That simply having the site built and up-and-running is not enough. Unfortunately, websites are not like the movie “The Field of Dreams”, just because you build it, doesn’t necessarily mean they will come. Unless you have a very large, well-known brand, the website will need marketing, and lots of it. Many have no understanding of what it takes to get people to a website and/or once they get them there, how to turn them into paying customers.

In dealing with this, many web design firms face a difficult decision. Do they take the clients money and build a site they know will be unsuccessful, or do they pass on the opportunity (and a sale) effectively shooting themselves in the foot? As professionals, Narrow Gate Media offers free consulting and may need to explain in a polite and professional manner, that, “based on our experience, in order to be successful with a web project like this, we believe it to require many more resources than you currently have…”. Otherwise, depending on the client and situation, we might simply tell them that we have to pass on the opportunity and/or that we need to “bow-out” of the bidding.

I know I often wonder how much this advice is worth and whether or not there is a more appropriate way for us and our colleagues to work this into our web design business model?

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Tags: Indianapolis web design,Indianapolis Web Site Design

Category: Web Design

Social Media - Handling Negative Comments

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:02:00 GMT

How do you handle negative comments or outright lies being posted about you or your company on social media platforms across the web? This is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. The root problem is that social media can’t really be "controlled".

The best defense is of course a good offense. Providing consistent company information and keeping engaged with your community can go a long way towards building and retaining loyalty even when you’re under attack.

But what happens when you are targeted by competitors, or a political group and the negative impacts begin to take on a life of their own?

The first rule is to remain cool. Don’t immediately respond and don’t try to stop the discussions all together.

Instead, read through the comments and take the necessary time to understand the issues being raised. Then research within and beyond your company to gather factual, accurate data about the situation. Honesty and accuracy are going to be your best weapons.

Once you have all of the facts it will be important to be transparent. Don’t defend your company, but offer information for those who want to learn more. You may want to create a special page on your website that includes this info along with other factual data and links to other sites like better business ratings, your company guide to business conduct, ethical practices statements, public financial records, etc.

If you discover there is some truth contained within the lies, admit any errors on the part of your company. Stress that the company wants to be receptive to their concerns and takes them seriously. Follow that up with the steps your company will take to deal with the issues to remedy the situation. Then keep your community informed regarding the progress.

Another option to counter false info about your company is to provide a special number or “hotline” that people can call for information. The goal of this is to merely provide open, factual information and allow your community to see that your company is committed to transparency.

Make certain that the reputations of your employees who are responsible for social media in your company are “spotless” both personally and professionally. You want your company represented by professionals who are honest and ethical. Anyone that doesn’t rise to this level of professionalism should be re-tasked to another area other than social media.

Always put your best face forward. You don’t want to give anyone ammunition they can use against you. Rely on your loyal customers and fans to help set the record straight. Know and develop strong relationships with your customers. Let them help you balance the playing field by posting related positive comments and links to information that addresses the facts of an issue. If they have a personal experience that contradicts the issue being raised encourage them to share it.

If negativity is high it might be a good time to add video testimonials to your website or a video that addresses current events affecting your company. This provides yet another way of providing disseminating information to the community indirectly without posting anything defensive on social platforms.

Some of the things you must avoid are postings that appear to be defensive, regardless of whether they are true or not.

Lastly, don’t even think about making negative comments about a company or person who posted negative comments about your organization. This will only start the “mud-slinging” that will only further hurt your company. It is non-productive and will not be received well. Also, do not pull your social media pages. But do track and use daily alerts so you can monitor comments and stay on top of all the chatter. If something negative is posted, deal with it quickly (after doing due diligence) to avoid it escalating into something big.
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Tags: indianapolis web marketing

Category: Web Marketing

6 Web Design Facts to Consider When Hiring a Designer

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:39:00 GMT

With many web designers in Indianapolis to choose from, it can be tough to figure out who you should hire. Here are some quick web design facts that you can consider when searching for the right firm.

Flash intros or entire flash websites
Flash animations are cool and eye-catching, unfortunately major search engines like Google and Yahoo can’t see it, read it or index it. They index text. This means flash is not search engine friendly, which can hinder your efforts to rank highly in the search engines. So make sure to use flash sparingly and only in certain instances, for example in the header of a page or within a page’s content area to draw attention to a particular item, but almost never just because “it will look cool”.

Optimized Pages
Stats show that most users will only wait a few seconds for the page to load. Furthermore, users will only wait up to 20 seconds for the whole page to load. If they load any slower than that, you can count on them leaving, hitting the back button, etc. Your site and its pages must have a good balance of graphics and text and must load quickly.

Usability
Research shows that users don’t actually read most websites; they simply skim over it. Visitors typically look around quickly to find what they are looking for. A good web designer knows this and designs pages accordingly, making sure links are underlined, large blocks of text are broke-up into bullet points, navigation is intuitive, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is critical for online success for most businesses today. If you are not utilizing it, you are probably being over-looked. Make sure your web design firm offers SEO as well as other web marketing services that will help get you listed on major search engines and get you in front of your customers.

W3C Compliance
The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C is an international standards organization for the World Wide Web. It is very important that your web designer codes your site with the latest standards in the industry.

Browser Compatibility
With the growth of the web, internet browser brands have also grown. Some of the most popular are Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari and Chrome. While Internet Explorer still remains the most popular, there are actually many (over a dozen) different browser options available. Each browser decodes your website slightly different. And though your website’s design may not be affected differently in most cases, sometimes your site could look or function a little different from one to another. With that said, make sure your Indianapolis website design firm develops their websites for the most common browser types and their latest versions.

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Tags: Indianapolis web design

Category: Web Design

Ways You Can Use Twitter to Promote Your Business

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:18:00 GMT

What do you do with a social media website with almost 200 million users and almost 70 million daily posts? I suggest you use it to promote your business.

Using Twitter for Website Traffic

After posting to your Blog or updating your website content, you should tweet about it. You’ll be glad you did because many users look for useful info on Twitter. However, don’t think you’re going to get thousands of visitors just by posting your website link. You need to do something more interesting like, “Top 5 ways to …”. Even though this won’t help your rankings in the search engines, it should provide some good traffic to your site.

Using Twitter for Link Building

First, you must build a large group of followers. Do this by following people who share your same interests and those in your industry. Many users will follow you back. Some will actually repurpose your content in their blogs, too. This is where the link building begins. You should also know that Google doesn’t index Twitter’s shortened URLs, they index the actual URL, so here lies another opportunity for more online link building and promotion.

And although I haven’t used it yet, I recently heard of a useful Twitter SEO tool called TweetMeme that supposedly lets you check the number of users that have posted tweets with a link to your site. TweetMeme is supposed to also let you know which of your posts have been picked up and re-tweeted.

Things to Remember

When implementing your Twitter strategies, it’s key to note that all your tweets should not just be about you and your products or services. This tends to turn people off and looks like spam. Try to be somewhat engaging and provide useful info, answer questions, post interesting facts and things like that.

Optimize Your Twitter Page

Create a relevant username. This can be effective because it is included in your pages’ URL and title tag. Create a relevant account name. Again, this is also a part of the page title. This should be different than your username. Promote your Twitter page. Build links to it. Put it on your website, other social networks, etc. Create your description carefully, choosing the copy and keywords specifically, keeping online promotion in mind.

Tweet Optimization

Optimizing your tweets will also help you in your efforts. A tweet's title tag is made up of the username of the account that is sending out the tweet and the first 30 characters of the tweet. Knowing this, try and remember to place the keywords you’re trying to promote in the post's first few words.

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Tags: indianapolis web marketing,Indianapolis seo

Category: Web Marketing

Category: Search Engine Optimization

What is a SERP?

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 09:18:00 GMT

If you have done research on search engine optimization and how SEO can help improve your website's performance, than you have undoubtedly come across the word SERP or SERP’s. If you are like most, you are probably curious as to what role this has in SEO.

Well, contrary to what some people think, SERP is not what you put on pancakes. It's actually an acronym for Search Engine Results Page. So a SERP is a page of results (list of links) that is generated after someone has gone to a search engine like Google and typed in a keyword phrase and then hit "enter". In the simplest terms, it’s the results page.

Since the goal of every SEO campaign is to have high rankings on the SERP’s, you now know why this term is so widely used.

Good luck on the SERP’s.

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Tags: indianapolis web marketing,Indianapolis seo

Category: Web Marketing

Category: Web Analytics

Category: Search Engine Optimization

Paid search increasingly important tool?

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:58:00 GMT

Karen Bannan recently posted a story that said that paid search marketing is up in a big way for technology marketers, according to a report from interactive marketing analytics company Covario Inc.

The report, Covario's “Q3 2010 Global Search Spending Analysis,” which aggregates about $300 million in paid search spending from a variety of consumer electronics and technology-related companies (including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp.), found that spending behind paid search advertising was up 19.8% in the third quarter of this year compared to the second. Year over year, paid search spending rose 46.8%. Meanwhile, cost per clicks (CPCs) rose 14%.

Some of the growth came from the fact that Bing's search engine, rather than Yahoo's, now powers Yahoo search results, said Craig Macdonald, senior VP-products and CMO at Covario. “Advertisers are increasing budgets because companies that may have had the No. 1 search spot on Yahoo now might be below the fold,” he said. In order to stay above the fold, tech companies are buying their way onto that first search results page, he said.

Another change: Google Instant, which provides searchers with dynamic search suggestions as they type. Since this process creates a drop-down box, it also pushes paid search options out front. “Before [Instant], if 100 people were searching, on average, 82 would click on organic and 18 would click on paid, but now only 78% are clicking on organic listings,” Macdonald said. “Google paid search is dominating the first page, and early indications are that marketers are looking to capitalize on this change.” This also affects organic search since, Macdonald said, it's no longer sufficient to be in positions four or five in natural search results. “You need to be right at the top, which is why optimization matters even more,” he said.

Not everyone is convinced that paid search is becoming more essential. “Overall, we see marketers looking for less competitive options than paid search and starting to shift dollars around a bit in order to find more efficient costs per click,” said Shar VanBoskirk, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research, adding that integration is key.

It's not enough to think about search marketing in the constraints of SEM or SEO, but as an overarching theme, since search now extends into social, display and mobile applications, she said. “For b2b marketers, this means the same smart planning they would employ for search marketing: Identifying who are your customers, what are they looking for and now where are they looking,” VanBoskirk said. “Then the strategy becomes, ‘How do I get found in any of the paths my users take when seeking information relevant to me?' rather than just ‘What paid search terms should I buy?' ”

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Tags: indianapolis web marketing,Indianapolis SEM,Indianapolis seo

Category: Web Marketing

Category: Search Engine Optimization

Category: Search Engine Marketing

How does SEO work?

Sales_at_NarrowGateMedia.com — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:55:00 GMT

Search queries, the words that users type in a search box of a search engine like Google, contain terms and phrases, for example "Indianapolis Web Design". These "keywords" help dictate what websites the search engines deem worthy of appearing in their results. The search engine displays the best suited results for your particular search based on the main functions they perform, which are “crawling”, building an index, determining relevancy & rankings and providing results.

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Tags: indianapolis web marketing,Indianapolis seo

Category: Web Marketing

Category: Search Engine Optimization