In May of 2010, Small Box was approached by IndyLift, Inc. for help improving search engine ranking and overall visibility for the IndyLift website.  The following is a summary of the IndyLift Case Study which outlines our process and the results achieved.

IndyLift, Inc. is a local Indianapolis forklift dealer, providing material handling equipment, parts, repairs and services.  As seasoned and established experts in the material handling industry, IndyLift focuses on offering personal, high quality service and care.

However, before coming to Small Box, the IndyLift website did not incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques and as a result suffered from poor search engine visibility and only ranked moderately for a small number of keywords.

After a consultation with IndyLift, we were able to identify two goals for the IndyLift website;

1. Increase organic search visibility
2. Increase local maps visibility.

After determining these goals, we then embarked on a 5-phase strategy to meet those goals;

1. Keyword research
2. SEO Audit
3. On-site optimization
4. Off-site optimization
5. Local listing optimization

A few weeks after completing the implementation of our SEO strategy, IndyLift began to see substantial improvement in both organic search rankings and local map inserts.  IndyLift now holds the top position in the Google map insert for ‘indianapolis forklifts’ and two of the top three organic positions.  Anyone searching for forklifts in Indianapolis will find IndyLift quite hard to miss.

To learn more about our process and results for IndyLift, Inc., download the full IndyLift Case Study.

Recent conversations with some friends about what I “do” at work sparked this idea.  As I’ve been thinking about these conversations, I’ve started to realize that when I launch into an explanation of what I do, more often than not I start to describe what I like to do.  Granted, there’s still a lot more for me to learn, but there’s something exciting about the process of learning and developing a skill while simultaneously discovering what you like about it.

I’ve always liked words.  I chose to study English over music in college because I figured I’d have a better chance making a living using that knowledge (cue laughter – because nobody actually uses their english degree).  Welcomingly, the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) find their roots in words.  One of the first things we do for an SEO client is begin with keyword research.  This is on my list of favorite tasks.  Keywords are exactly what they say they are – key words.  So if a client wants to reach page one on a Google search, they need to know what words people out there are using to search for their product.

For example, lets say you own a hair salon in Indianapolis.  You need to find the keywords that most people use when searching for places to get a haircut.  Is it “hair salon”?  Is it “best barbershop”?  Perhaps, but it’s also important to consider what people expect to find when they enter keywords in a search and if your service meets that expectation.  If your salon is a upscale luxury salon you would not want to target keywords like “best barbershop” or “cheap haircuts,” the resulting traffic would not find what they were looking for and therefore not visit your salon.  What I do is sit down and figure out what keywords are best for your website.  I look at what you offer, where you offer it and who you offer it to and then basically try to solve a word puzzle – putting together different words and word combinations to find the most common search terms, and then choosing which ones fit and describe you best.  The end result is a list of keywords and corresponding data that tells me what keywords you should target on your website.

Of course, this is only one small step of many in the process of optimizing a website.  And I’m not sure I could even comprehensively list and describe every factor or step.  There’s writing title tags (the words in the grey bar on your browser), writing descriptions, press releases and ad copy.  There’s creating listings in Google Maps and other search engines and hunting down respectable directories for more listings.  There’s link-building and social bookmarking and tweaking little things on the website pages to make sure all the little details match exactly.

But what I like about SEO, what I find myself saying when responding to that inevitable question “what do you do at work?” is that the best thing about SEO is – it’s an exploration, it’s an evolution, it’s always changing.  Even the tasks that tend to drag a bit are always made fresh with a new client because the puzzle is different.  Crossword puzzles never get old because everyday the same newspaper square is transformed into an entirely different puzzle, with different clues and different words.  The same is true for SEO, every client presents a new riddle to unwind.

And I can’t help but to think, that maybe I’m actually getting to use that useless degree of mine after all.

If your business has a physical location where customers can walk in and conduct transactions, you probably already know about the power of Google Local. But April 20th brought the switch from Google Local to Google Places. What does it mean for your business?

If you are doing everything correctly, probably everything will continue to work as normal. But what if you have never really completely implemented your local search optimization? How do you know if you require professional Local SEO Services?

Here is a checklist to make sure your local customers can find you:

step 1 – Search for your service. Most services will show local results complete with map and other important information. If you are not there you might need professional local search services.

step 2 – Search for your competitors. If they appear ahead of you, then you are losing business. Small Box SEO can definitely help with that.

step 3 – Assess your PPC. If you are spending money each month for clicks, and not converting those clicks to paying customers, then Small Box can improve your results, or help you replace that traffic with better converting organic results.

step 4 – Search for your company on a mobile device. Mobile technology is driving business. If mobile devices are sending people to the wrong location, then you have lost a customer. Small Box executes your local strategy completely, with zero problems for you.

step 5 – Understand your audience by viewing your statistics. Your audience is telling you important things about your site. Are you listening?

It makes a lot of sense for any business to try and manage as much as possible in house. But when it comes to connecting locally in your community, why leave loose ends? The businesses that have 100 % of their profile complete are going to win the battle for Local SEO.

Don’t take chances, Contact Small Box in Austin at 512-850-4819 or Indianapolis at 317-254-0932.

Small Box is pleased to announce that our new office in Austin Texas is now open for business. Since 2006 Small Box has been providing custom web solutions for businesses and non profit organizations in Indianapolis.

Now Small Box is taking the same great design and technology to a new level. Austin Texas is different from anywhere else. There is a big focus on Social Networking. There are many entrepreneurs and business startups looking for venture capital.

Our goal is to be a one stop shop for anyone looking to have a great looking site on the first page of the search engines. Call PJ Christie at 512-850-4819.

Follow our special Twitter feed @smallboxaustin for local insights including SXSW.

The following is a walkthrough of recommended best practices to optimize webpages for search engine rankings. Obviously we recommend using a professional seo agency like Small Box or our friends at Slingshot SEO to do this for your website but in the spirit of transparency and education we wanted to post this 8 step process for our existing and potential clients to use when they are updating their websites using our nifty Small Box CMS!

Step 1: Write the content for the new page and forget about SEO

Write for you intended audience and don’t worry about keywords yet. You’ll address them in the next step. For now, just concentrate on writing effective page copy. Because you know your industry and your audience, more often than not, you’ll wind up using valuable keywords without even trying.

Once your page copy is complete, publish it to the site via the CMS.

Step 2: Identify target keywords that capture what the page is about.

Now you can start thinking about SEO. Review the keyword research document and identify any keywords that capture what the page is about. Often more than one keyword will capture what the page is about. In such cases it’s usually preferable to use the keyword that has greater search volume.

No keyword research document can ever be 100% complete, so there will inevitably be cases where none of the keywords in the document capture what the page is about. In these circumstances you’ll need to do a bit of on-the-spot keyword research. Google has a tool that makes this quick and easy, so it’s a good idea to do some on-the-spot keyword research, even if there are promising keywords in the keyword research document.

Here’s how to use the Google tool:

• In a web browser, go to the new page you just created (make sure you go to the page on the “front end” of the site – not the “back end” via the CMS).
• In a separate tab or new window of your web browser goto the Google AdWords Tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Click on the radio button next to “Website content”
• From the address bar of your web browser copy the URL of the new page on your site and paste it into the Google AdWords Tool
• ·Do NOT check the box to include other pages on your site linked from this URL
• Click on the “Get keyword ideas” button.
• After the results are collected change the “Match Type” from Broad to Exact in the drop down menu.

Once you’ve identified some keyword possibilities, pick 1 keyword to be your primary keyword target. As a rule of thumb, you usually want to have the keyword with the highest search volume as your primary keyword target. However, don’t forget the user intent behind the keyword. People type in keywords because they are trying to find something. Will you page copy provide what they are looking for? If not, you may be better off targeting a keyword with lower search volume and better user-intent.

You can also indentify 1-2 keywords to be secondary keyword targets. Sometimes the secondary keywords are variations of the primary keyword. For example, [design build] and [design and build] are not the same keyword even though they might mean the same thing and have the same user intent when they’re typed into a search engine. Since [design build] has more search volume it’s the better candidate for the primary target and [design and build] would make a very good secondary target. Plural and singular of the same term are also separte keywords and should be treated in a similar manner. Secondary keyword targets can also include different terms that are related to the same idea.

Step 3: Compose a Title Tag that includes the target keywords

The Title Tag is the single most important on-site factor that influences search engine rankings. It is also becomes the clickable headline of you listing when it appears in the search engine. Use the following format to compose Title Tags that are both “clickable” and maximize the page’s ability to rank well:

Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Site Name

Since you will be limiting yourself to at most 3 keyword targets, you don’t need to worry about keyword stuffing or excessively long Title Tags. Try to keep your Title Tags less than 69 characters because Google does not display anything in the Title Tag past the 69^th character.

Step 4: Compose a Meta Description that is clickable

The Meta Description does NOT influence search engine rankings. However, it is the free “ad copy” for your page that the search engines display beneath the Title Tag on the results pages. So, you want to write a Meta Description that “sells the click” and entices people to click on your listing. The following format will usually accomplish this:

[Site/Company] is/has/does [products/services/things covered on the page]. [One or two benefits]

Try to keep your meta descriptions less than 155 characters. Google won’t display anything past the 155^th character.

Step 5: Add an H1 tag that includes the primary keyword target

The H1 tag shows up as the primary headline of the page. For your human visitors it will be seen as the headline of the page. It also is factor that the search engines use to determine rankings, so the H1 tag should include the primary keyword once. For both usability and SEO reasons you do not want to keyword stuff the H1 tag, so you do not need to worry about including secondary keywords in the H1 tag. Also, for SEO reasons do not make the H1 tag just the primary keyword. Instead you want an H1 tag that uses the primary keyword as part of a slightly longer title.

Step 6: Tweak page copy to include instances of the target keyword(s)

Review the page copy and make sure it uses the target keywords multiple times. Try to feature the keywords in the first few words (50-100, but hopefully even sooner) of the page’s text content. Don’t be overly aggressive and “keyword stuff” your page copy – it could result in an over-optimization penalty. So long as you follow this simple rule of thumb you’ll be fine: “2-3X on short pages, 4-6X on longer ones and never more than makes sense in the context of the copy.”

Step 7: Bold and Italicize the primary keyword target in the page copy

Try to use the primary keyword target at least once in bold and at least once in italics. This carries a minor amount of SEO weight and this can be skipped if it does not make sense in the context of the copy. There is no added SEO benefit from bolding or italicizing more than once, so do so only if it makes the copy more readable your audience.

Step 8: Add an image to the body with an optimized alt-tag

Find an image related to your primary keyword to add to the main body of the page. Pick an image that will appeal to your human audience because the search engines can’t see images. The search engines rely on the image file name and the piece of code called the alt-tag. Make the image filename exactly match the primary keyword target. If your keyword is more than one word long, use dashes to replace spaces in the filename. Make the alt tag exactly match the primary keyword target.

We could definitely add several more steps but if you follow these then you will be well on your way to having a website that is well optimized for search engines.

When I talk to clients I have found these three things really resonate- A website needs to be easy to find in search engines, easy for visitors to use and easy to update. It would be hard to say one of these items is more or less important than the other.

4 years when I first started building websites all my clients wanted them to “look good”. There was very little awareness of search engine traffic, Content Management Systems and even less awareness of the importance of user testing. Basically they wanted a brochure website. I’ve noticed a big shift in the last year. Businesses and organizations I talk to are more focused on ease of use and discovery.

So let’s break it down:

Easy To Find: what good is a website that no-one can find in search engines? Very little. A modern website needs to be built from the ground up to be search engine friendly. This means site architecture, keyword research and implementation. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is serious stuff. You do it right and the world is knocking on your door. You do it wrong, or more often not at all!, and your business can wither and die.

Easy To Use: now that you’ve got people to your website does it convert? Do they know what to do? Consider this, if your site has a 1% conversion rate you can either work to increase that rate to 2% through user testing and changes or work to double your traffic via search engines, email etc. They both have the same outcome. Guess which one is easier? A “beautiful” website is a fine thing but it is meaningless if it doesn’t convert.

Easy To Update: this is probably the number one complaint that I hear from clients. “I can’t update my %&$* site! I have to pay the Web company to do it, it takes forever, costs too much.” Back in the late 90s and early 2000s many sites were built without a Content Management System (CMS).

Is your website easy to find, easy to use and easy to update? If not then it’s time for a real website that will actively grow your business.

There’s been an overwhelming amount of love for Twitter this year, but Larry King might be single handedly responsible for starting my disenchantment with the most recent installment of the seemingly annual progression of the latest and greatest social media wunderkinds.  To be fair, my disenchantment began a few months ago, but a tweet a few days ago (2:58PM on July 26 to be exact) from Larry King’s official Twitter account (@kingsthings) sealed the deal:

Larry, I’ve got some news for you. For at least three reasons Twitter is the absolutely, positively WRONG medium to use for finding out why a Marathon is 26.2 miles.

First off, Larry, it demonstrates what we’ve kinda been suspecting all along – namely that you’re a no-talent, hack who’s risen to your station through merely the arbitrary caprice of fortune.  The standard answer to this question is pretty much conventional wisdom. I’ve taught middle school kids that could answer it.

Second, Larry, you can actually get your answer faster by using this crazy, new technology called a search engine. I’m sure this whole Internet thing is probably brand new to you and has to be pretty confusing (in fact, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that you’ve got some ghost writer Tweeting on your behalf to solicit the questions for your interview with Colin Powell that you’re unable to prepare on your own). But just in case you actually do get on the Internet someday, I created a demonstration of how this new-fangled thing called a “search engine” can help you find answers to life’s persistent questions.  Just CLICK HERE to see how it works!  Then, to get your answer click on the blue, underlined text at the top of the page that says “Marathon – Wikipedia the free encyclopedia”.

Third, Larry, the answer is actually more nuanced than you might think at first blush. Turns out that the distance from Marathon to Athens is shorter than 26.2 miles.  Turns out that primary historical sources disagree about whehter or not the first “Marathon runner” ran before or after the battle of Marathon.  Turns out that the 26.2 mile distance was the result of a series of last-minute changes made to the first modern marathon route established for the 1908 Olympics in London.  Maybe you knew that the standard answer wasn’t 100% accurate (I doubt it). But even if I stretch my imagination beyond the comprehensible and give you this benefit of the doubt, the fact still remains that crowd sourcing via your celebrity Twitter account is the least effective and most time consuming way to actually get your answer.  Just take a look at the overwhelming volume of responses your question generated by CLICKING HERE. You’ll notice something pretty quickly: a lot of people know some version of the standard answer, but nobody agrees on the more nuanced details.  If you’re really into crowd sourcing your answer, you should just cut to the chase and go to Wikipedia where the crowd sourcing has already been done for you.  Plus, Wikipedia has at least a modicum of editing that’s gone into their content.

Which brings me back to how Larry King finally brought about my disenchantment with Twitter.  In short, Twitter has become filled with crap and wading through all that crap takes more time and effort than regular people should have to put into it.  It takes a considerable investment of one’s time to follow Jeb’s advice about having a meaningful online converstaion and craft your Twitter network to a manageable level so that it’s actually useful and doesn’t become a ridiculous time sink.  What we need first and foremost in an answer is “correctness”. I have yet to find a better way to get “correctness” than by identifying an authority that can be trusted.  It’s way too easy to present the appearance of authoritativeness on the web without actually being an authority.  Just look at all the self-proclaimed authorities who wound up giving Larry a technically incorrect answer to his question.  Finding an authority is hard work (even off line).  Crowd sourcing via Twitter doesn’t get you any closer to an authoritative answer.  It just compounds the problem (especially when you use a celebrity account).  I know it’s tempting to think that crowd sourcing via Twitter is the way to go when it’s been so successful for Wikipedia, but Twitter just doesn’t work like Wikipedia.

I used to think that Twitter was pretty cool and pretty useful before the proliferation of celebrity accounts from the likes of Larry, Oprah and Martha.  So it looks like I am now beating Jeb to the punch in writing his next latest-social-media-fad-jumps-the-shark-blog-post.   Why is it that all these social media sites go through the same cycle of explosive growth that eventually brings about their demise? I suspect it’s because no one’s figured out a really good way to make the hard work of identifying authorities become easy. Finding an answer “that works” by playing a numbers game through social media sites can work OK for a while so long as the numbers stay fairly small.  However, once they reach their critical mass these social media fads just implode. Plus, playing the social media numbers games just skirts the fact that the answer is by no means guaranteed to be authoritative.  In attempting to make finding an authority easy, Twitter seems to have thrown their lot in with the celebrities. Or have the celebrities high-jacked Twitter?  Either way, that celebrities have made a good thing bad should be pretty self-evident.  I hate to say it but it seems that counting backlinks and other artificial “signs of trust” like the search engine algorithms do is the best thing we’ve got going so far.

So, Google don’t be worried by Jeb’s post that opined whether Twitter is a Google-slayer.  It isn’t and it won’t be.  In fact, it’ll probably be something our kids and grandkids reference when making fun of our generation.  I can already hear my daughter incredulously asking her friends, “Can you believe our parents spent their time at work reading ghost writers typing ‘In da house ATL!!!’ on some rapper’s Twitter account?”.

And if you’re wondering, yes, I probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  So feel free to flame me in the comments below for being so hard on the beloved institutions like Larry King and Twitter. But be forewarned: I’ll probably be just as snarky in my responses as I am now.

Seth Godin writes

It’s a good question, here’s how I would answer:

The web seems really complicated but not to me. I just see it as a series of decisions that require particular expertise to do correctly. The best decision is the one that makes the next one seem more apparent. There is never going to be one person who is right about everything all the time. What’s important in doing a web site, or marketing strategy, or making any series of decisions is to make each one as close to right as you can so the next one is clearer.

We do that by first and foremost attracting the top talent in the region. Then we challenge them to do more, to understand the implications of these important decisions. Then we provide what we hope to be the top level of customer service for our clients.

The results are clear to me, some are big and some are small. I take a small amount of pride in knowing that we are growing while other web companies are going out of business or shrinking. But what I take the most pride above all is the relationships that I have built with those in the box with me, and the way we extend it to our clients. Of the huge number of sites we have helped produce, 99% of them are still online exactly as we launched them.

Key to our growth is the way we have extended our services beyond designing and programming websites. It is a complete array of services our clients need, and some they don’t. That’s the real Small Box difference right there, whatever people think they know about us, there is more.

Lately I have been shown time and again how important small, seemingly meaningless changes can have a dramatic impact on a website.

I was on a panel recently discussing e-commerce with several local experts on the topic- Brandon Corbin from Sigma Micro, Jon Arnold from Tuitive Group, Kyle Lacy from Brandswag and Jeremy Dearringer from Slingshot SEO. To be honest I was probably the least knowledgeable of the group on this particular subject so it was a learning experience for me as much as the audience.

One of the most striking take-aways for me was how important small changes to a website can have such dramatic ROI. For instance, increasing the size of the search bar, having multiple value propositions throughout the site (Free Shipping! etc), modest design changes to a product page, using “cart” not “basket”, etc. All these items have been proven by multiple studies to result in a serious impact on sales. Sometimes the difference was millions of dollars per month depending on the site!

I just came across this blog via Twitter, thanks to @donschindler, and it reinforced my growing awareness. It’s also a book that you can buy on Amazon, etc.

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Let me boil down what I’m taking away from all this:

• Don’t assume. That’s the starting point. Stop working from assumptions that have no basis in facts. Stop thinking about how much work you put into your website to get where you are now. Be willing and open to completely re-thinking your project or website. Chances are you won’t have to scrap everything but come into the review process with an open mind.
• User tests. Find out what people are really doing, what walls they are hitting and why they aren’t filling out the form, making the purchase, etc. Determine where the issues are before you start trying to fix them. This requires user surveys/tests, watching analytics closely, reviewing what the competition is doing, etc.
• Herd mentality. We, meaning humans, are still very much interested in being part of the herd. For instance use “Other users also liked these items” instead of “We recommend these other items”. The first sounds like the cool thing to do the second sounds like a sales pitch.
• Fewer choices, more answers. People think they want choices but they don’t. They want answers. Focus on answering questions that you know your users have based on testing and analytics. Anticipate what the user wants and they will be more likely to convert.
• Tweak and repeat. Once you find something that works, tweak it, improve on it and then repeat that methodology to other weak areas.

Here’s a Search Engine tip that many businesses don’t know about but should. It’s really, really easy to have a nice Google Local listing for your business. Also, these local listings often show up above the normal organic listings. Here’s the thing, it’s much easier to get to the top of your Google Local listings than the top of the normal listings. Check out the screenshot below. (click on the image to see the live search, results may differ depending on whether you are logged in or not located in Indianapolis, etc)
Note how our client Antique Helper Auctions is at the top of the Local Business results and then #2 for the organic listings that start below.

Now there are some “tricks” to getting a top local listing but the Google Local listings run on a different algorithm than the normal listings. It is widely agreed that the Local listings are much less competitive since you are only competing against your local competition. Why does this matter? Look below at the results for the search “auctions”. Google knows I’m coming from Indianapolis by my IP address (I wasn’t logged in to my Google account for these screenshots btw) so it gives me local results mixed in with general results. It knows what I want is probably a local service. Most services have a mostly local customer base.

Have you created your Google Local account for your business? If not, do it today, it’s free, easy and will definitely result in business coming your way. Getting to the top of the local and organic listings won’t happen overnight. But we can help….

Sign up for Google Local