Build- Think of your website as a company asset. In order to maximize value of your asset, you need to focus on content. The more information on your website, the better chance you have of being found through search engines and social networks. Give people a resource that they will use and visit often. Remember, it is not about you, it is about them. They don't care how cute your design is or how well your brand is represented. They come for your information.


 Engage- Start with the people you already know. These people could be customers, friends, employees - anyone you're already connected to. If they don't use it or see it as valuable, why would anyone else? Plus, these people will give you honest, unadulterated feedback on what they like and what they don't. Listen and don't overreact. These should be your biggest fans and if they are really blown away by the information on your website, they will be the ones to start spreading it.


Attract- Now that you have content and have proven that people will use it, you need to step out into the great big world of people you don't know. These people will come to you because you have information that THEY find valuable. Tip from Emily Post: be a good host/hostess. If all you do is talk about yourself, you'll be in a one-way conversation and you will be the only one hearing it. The good news is, there are many ways to reach people using search engines, social media and good 'ole word-of-mouth.

Manage- When you have your people talking and new people listening, watch what happens. Watch like a hawk! You will start to see how new content items affect traffic. You will find which referral sources send you the most traffic and what people are searching for when they find you. There are great tools that cost nothing to deliver this information. Don't keep it bottled up - share it with contributors, visitors and anyone that will listen. You will learn a lot from watching, sharing and listening. Then rinse and repeat.

LoudClick is built from a people perspective. It is a powerful technology with a minimal learning curve. People should focus on content, so we strive to make the technology easy enough to stay out of their way.

From a company perspective, LoudClick provides you a powerful platform for building a network of websites, content syndication, distributing applications and managing an army of dedicated users.

Some of the features to help you do this are:

• Automated Website Creation - White-labeled website building technology to create websites that allow your company to build websites fast for all your people. Perfect for franchises, direct sales, networks of consultants, individual stores or locations and any company that operates as a "hub and spoke" model.
  


• Easy Editing - Let your people focus on content. We built LoudClick to be easy and stay out of the way of creativity. If anyone gets stuck, support is only a click away from anywhere within LoudClick.
  
  
• Collaboration - Let others help you build your website - you decide who. We built in an invitation system allowing you to invite others to join you in building a website around your idea. All you need to do is enter an email address and press a button. Fast and easy.
  
  
• Multiple Websites - One account - all your websites. You can create all the websites you can dream up on one account. Your dashboard is always one click away so literally all your websites are one click away. Plus all the websites you are involved in (are a member of) are there too. 
  
  
• Get People Involved - You don't have to go it alone. LoudClick lets you secure content, determine who can contribute and even select administrators. LoudClick was built to let you choose who sees what and who does what on your website. Want to make a page viewable only by certain people? Easy. Want to select who can add content to your website? Simple. You can even determine who can administer the website with/for you.
  
  
• Shared Elements - Update one part of a website - automatically update multiple pages. A Shared Element is a portion of a web page that is displayed on multiple pages. One way we help you update a website easily is by offering Shared Elements. This allows you to make one change to a page that updates several other pages on your website without having to change each page manually.
  
  
• Message Center - Safe, secure and privacy-sensitive communication system. Makes contacting people less risky.
  
  
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools - Allows you access to make use of SEO tools such as Google Webmaster Tools. We provide safe access to insert Meta tags, keywords and descriptions - for the website and each page.
  
  
• Email Forms - Easy to build website forms allow visitors to contact you without exposing your email address.
  
  
• Widgets - You can add the latest widgets and other goodies to your website easily. Because you can decide how you want your website to be - you can add all the great widgets to enhance your website. LoudClick can handle code snippets from virtually anywhere - the possibilities are endless.
  
  
• Transfer Ownership - Transfer ownership of pages or entire websites to new owners.
  
  
• Help and Support - We want you to succeed. Our Help is designed to be helpful and our Support is second to none.
  
  
• Use your domain name - Have a domain already registered? We can tie your LoudClick website to it easily. We even allow multiple domains!
  
  
• RSS Feeds - RSS feeds of your websites and categories are automatically created as you build your website.
  
  
• Indexers - Our smart Indexers automatically build a listing of your pages. You can choose to display indexers by category, manually (you select what shows) or the entire website for an sitemap.
  
  
• Navigation that builds itself - The navigation of your website is automatically built when you create pages.
  
  
• Syndicated Content - create content once and syndicate it automatically to your network of websites.
  

We will get back to you quickly! That is a promise.

In the meantime, why don't you check out our blog? It is actually useful information - not your typical "company" blog.

Or you can check out our Manifesto, Philosophy, Methodology and/or read about our Technology.

You can also follow us on twitter @loudclick.

The times they are a-changin'...still. The effect the internet has had on all businesses is profound. It so futuristic, nothing is really new. Where we once had word-of-mouth, we now have social networks. The days of command and control have given way to 24/7 global distribution of all things digital. While many companies see this as a daunting challenge, we see opportunity. The opportunity is getting back to the basics. Putting it all out on the table and letting consumers, employees, shareholders and critics say what they will.

For companies to take full advantage of the opportunities that abound today, they need to think smaller, more personal and less corporate. It isn't about better corporate communications, it's about great companies having the guts to let their great people talk about, promote, challenge and redefine the company in a manner consistent with the brand.

Getting there is survival. We have all learned how to drive down the highway without reading the billboards, fast forward through the commercials, hang up on telemarketers and basically ignore mass media advertising.

What it takes now for your business is an honest recommendation and pride in being part of something greater than one's self. If your company believes it is truly great, then every day that passes without reforming relationships between people inside and out of your company is another day of lost market and mind share.

It's time to start making your web relationships resemble your people relationships. Customers don't have a relationship with your corporate headquarters; they have it with the barista, teller or bagger at the local stores - all providing reasons your customers like to interact with you.

The time is now to reform your company for modern times, you need a partner who is passionate about it, who lives there and can harness the sheer numbers of people to create relationships with your brand.

Build hundreds, no thousands, make that millions of websites that are microcosms of your company. Let people interact on the web the same way they do in real life...locally.

Do it in a way that allows people to participate in the conversation. Not just your communications department, but the person on the front lines, meeting the people or taking the calls. The people who hear the same problems over and over again. Let them create an asset for your company that will be with you long after they have moved on. Rather than issue policies prohibiting people from participating online - make it a requirement.

It's no coincidence that companies have come out of nowhere to have extraordinary value and similar valuations. When websites can challenge media conglomerates, when newspapers and magazines are filing bankruptcy and companies that are "too big to fail" fail, it's time to pay attention and implement some of these principles to change the value of your company.

We believe that bold moves are in order and we would be honored to work with great companies to help reshape their communication strategies for the next 100 years.

Software Engineer/Product Development

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Perfect happiness to me is being as rich as Bill Gates and have as much respect as Mother Teresa.

What is your greatest fear?
Heights and fear of being outdated.

most of these questions came from The Proust Questionnaire from Vanity Fair.

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Software Engineer/Product Development

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A family, a faith, a purpose, perfect health, lots of money and peace all around

What is your greatest fear?
Losing my mind when I get older would be a terrible thing for me.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I don't like my temper and how I tend to speak before I think

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Lying

Which living person do you most admire?
Brian Lara

What is your greatest extravagance?
None

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
cool

Which talent would you most like to have?
Too many.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Loudclick and GB

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
An Eagle. It looks great and it can fly high.

Where would you most like to live?
Hawaii

What is your most treasured possession?
My family and friends

What is your most marked characteristic?
My stubbornness, my ability to listen and give advice

What is your favorite website? (other than loudclick.net) :)
cnn.com, google.com

What is your favorite social network?
Facebook

What is your favorite software? (not web-based)
WinCalc and Notepad

Are you mad that Kristin made you take this quiz for your About page?
No

most of these questions came from The Proust Questionnaire from Vanity Fair .

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Once upon a time, marketing was about conversations between people in the physical marketplace. Today, the marketplace is online and people are having conversations online. Are you and your people involved in these conversations? 

LoudClick has marketing expertise and a powerful website-building system that...

• empowers your people by giving them a tool to be a voice for your company
  
  
• offers targeted/local websites built by your people
  
  
• controls your brand while allowing your people to have authentic conversations with customers/clients
  
  
• syndicates content across your network of websites
  
  
• helps your people broadcast your message throughout their social networks
  
  
• creates 100's/1000's/1,000,000's of paths into your company
  
  
• mirrors the relationships your people have with customers/clients in person - but online

If you really want to do online marketing - it needs to come from your people. Sterile corporate-sanitized content doesn't work - the human voice of your people does.

Make your company more human - let your humans do your marketing.
You and your people can build websites together...with LoudClick.

LATEST FROM THE BLOG

How big brands can use store websites to drive local marketing and sales

The Indexer Element is one of the coolest elements of LoudClick. We have made it even cooler.

What the Indexer Element does is create an Index (think the back of a book) of all the pages in a category. It can also index the whole website to create a sitemap.

The best part is Indexer Elements updates automatically. Set it up once and they do all the work after that.

The new Indexer features we just launched:

- Limit the number of pages that display (ex: Last 5 pages published)

- Exclude pages from showing in Indexers

- Choose to show page description or excerpt (which can include images and links)

- Kristin

p.s. There is an indexer below this post!

1. Visit your site as though for the first time - fix any errors you find.
   Look at your site through the eyes of someone who hasn't seen it before. This is a very important task for a site that has been around awhile but is equally important for a newly launched site as well. By going page by page you are able to see the little errors and omissions that were missed during previous reviews. Now fix 'em.
2. Update your Meta data.
   Make sure your Meta Title and Description are up to date and accurate. With the many changes a site owner can make through the year it's good to see if your Meta data accurately reflects your current message. Friendly note: don't obsess about Meta Keywords. Google has publicly acknowledged that their search algorithm ignores them - any benefit from spending a ton of time on them is minimal.
3. Review your links.
   Make sure all your links work as intended. This is particularly important if you have linked to an external source that you do not control - people move stuff all the time.
4. Submit a sitemap to search engines.
   If you haven't done this yet, now's the time to do it. Submitting a sitemap allows the search engine spiders to easily find all the pages of your website. If you have a LoudClick website, the sitemap link is easily located on the Website Manager > Properties tab. Just look for the Sitemap link (the URL will end in .xml). Submit this link to:
   Google: upload your sitemap link through Webmaster Tools (www.google.com/webmasters/tools)
   Bing: use the Bing Webmaster Center (http://www.bing.com/webmaster)
   Yahoo: Use Yahoo Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/)
5. Add Sharing tools to your blog posts.
   You've got a great asset in your website, now make it interactive with your visitors and offer a way for people to share it with their friends/colleagues. ShareThis (http://sharethis.com/) and Echo (http://js-kit.com/) offer easy to use sharing and comment scripts.
6. Add Alt and Title Tags to Images and Links.
   This will help others while helping you. How to do this was covered in our blogpost Searchable Content Part 2 - How To Make Search Engines See Images. Worth the read if I say so myself...
   

• you greet people with positive intent
• you listen intently
• you are cordial and positive at all times
• humor is applied with elegance and finesse
• you add to a conversation rather than being the center of it
  

1. Listen
   There are two components to listening: a) listen to what people are really saying when they post their thoughts -and - 2) know what people are saying about you or your company. The fastest way to figure out how to enter a space is to listen to the conversation prior to entering it. To do this, conduct a search for your company name on Twitter. Search for groups dedicated to your industry on Facebook and read every comment. Use a search engine to locate blogs that are talking about you or your product. Be willing to dig in and take the time to listen - it's vital.
2. Add to a conversation rather than being the center of it
   This follows listening as a very important social media skill. When posting comments, it's vitally important to add information that will benefit the conversation rather than attempting to steer it toward yourself. No one likes to maintain a relationship with people who only talk about themselves - that is a sure-fire strategy to losing your audience.
3. Be cordial and positive at all times - avoid being negative
   When posting anything online, use the adage "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." That's not to say you can't say anything negative ever - just be aware that over use of negativity turns people off and consequently away from hearing you.
4. Use humor appropriately
   Apply humor in a positive light without using dripping sarcasm. Did you know that the root of the word sarcasm is a Greek word meaning "to tear flesh"? That's why sarcasm can really sting and may not be an appropriate type of humor for business communication. Also, in a written medium, it is difficult for people to recognize you are trying to be funny - sarcasm often comes across as your actual thoughts. Instead, use self-depreciating and ironic humor that allows the reader the opportunity to know you are a real person and not someone who takes pleasure in ripping others to shreds.
5. Treat people the way you would like to be treated.
   This is more than just a way to live. I'm amazed at how responsive people are to being treated well. Here are a few ways to do it:
   
   • If someone posts a nice comment to one of your posts, acknowledge them (just say thank you and then shut up - this is about them, not you).
   • When you see a helpful post on another site, post a comment that encourages them.
   • If you see something posted that is not entirely accurate, use carefully chosen words in your response to convey the inaccuracy (I like to think the person is simple in need of education rather than thinking they are being cruel).
     
6. Follow through
   Always, always, always follow through with any promises you make. If someone asks a question, be sure to answer as quickly as you can. If you don't know the answer right away, respond that the question is a good one and you will need to research a bit to provide a good answer - then make damn sure you follow through with an answer.
   

• post high-quality content
• update your site frequently
• use only appropriate meta information (Title and Description are most important)
• insert context-appropriate links
• add title attribute and alt text to your links and images
• caption any video
  

1. Have a clear idea of why you are in the space.
   Facebook has a culture of its own and you should be aware of that before thinking it's just another broadcast of your branding strategy. Do some research and view others in the space - particularly in your industry -and set yourself apart by personalizing your presence. This means being cognizant of the social part of social media. You're trying to engage people - not talk at them.
2. Don't think of your Facebook fan page as your website.
   It is a distinctly different animal and must be nurtured as such. Try to think of your fan page as a distribution method for your core online marketing asset: your website. This leads to...
   
3. Have a plan to update your fan page on a regular basis.
   This includes adding appropriate material frequently. One great way to do this is to provide updates and links to your website when you add content there. Blogging on your website is another fantastic way to accomplish this. Just make sure that the information you are sharing is relevant and helpful to your "fans" - not just keyword stuffed crap.
4. Be aware: you don't really own your fan page so plan accordingly.
   As we've seen before, Facebook can make changes at will. Remember Beacon? Lots of companies poured money and other resources into development to take advantage of Beacon only to have Facebook pull the plug. Not saying that will happen with this deal, just be aware that you don't have ultimate control of the Facebook platform. To plan accordingly, remember that you DO ultimately control your website - make it the center of your online marketing plan.
   
5. Avoid automatically feeding your Tweets to your Facebook fan page.
   With Twitter soon to be indexed by Bing (as well as Google), it is wise to keep automatic feeds to a minimum. Sounds like more work for you but in the end it's worth it as the indexing will be done to more than one source which may lead to better search results.
   

1. Social Networks should be fun. They were built so people could connect to other people - the "social" component - a basic human need (yes it is). Making friends should be a fun process rather than a dreaded task. Tip: Think of entering the social network space as you would any social gathering you look forward to attending.
   
2. Be genuine. Nothing hurts you worse than being fake or attempting to be something you are not. Lying doesn't work - besides, it's too hard to remember who you told what.
3. It takes time. Yup. It does. Just like in the non-virtual (aka "real") world, you cannot realistically expect to connect to thousands of real people in a week - or a month - or even a year (well maybe in a year). We're talking about real, genuine people - not hacks or bots. It takes time to develop that many connections.
4. It takes some work. Not horrible, back-breaking work - but work nonetheless. Trying to take shortcuts will not result in genuine results. Plug away a bit at a time. When you look back, you will see that the work put in has resulted in a network you can be proud of and want to work in.
   

Links to Learn From - Week 2

How To Make Search Engines "See" Images (Non-Text Content)

Best Practice Filename: LoudClickHomepage.jpg Image of LoudClick.net Homepage

Not-so-best-practice Filename: screenshot.jpg

• Descriptive filename
• Text on the page describing the image
• Alt Text: "Image of Loudclick.net Homepage"
• Title Attribute: "Image of Loudclick.net Homepage"

One thing I love about Social Media is the good stuff gets promoted. Articles and blog posts that are helpful and informative get passed around. So here I am doing my part - passing on the good stuff to you.

I have amassed a wealth of articles that I refer to when I am stuck, can't remember how to do something, need inspiration or just need a good laugh.

I thought it would be helpful to begin posting some of those articles here. I am going to try to do this once a week, so subscribe to the RSS feed to get them delivered to you.

1. 45 Blog Post Ideas That Always Generate Buzz - from The Future Buzz

I am always looking for articles about creating content. I find that it is one of the hardest things for me to do. Here is a list of 45 - that should keep you busy for awhile!

Some of my favorite ideas from the article are:

- Answer ultra-specific questions or obscure problems in deeper ways than currently exist. The more specific you can get, the better.
- Post why someone popular is wrong, with facts or opinions backing it up.
- Create a series of posts unique to your site
- Write something to inspire/motivate your readers, especially if you don’t normally do that.

2. 7 Ways to Engage Readers of a Business Blog - from ProBlogger

Darren talks a lot about "Engaging" your readers. If you don't give something useful to the people who read your website - they will not subscribe or maybe they won't come back. I am guilty of it - I go to a site that is self-promoting crap - I don't go back.

Excerpt from the article:

People are busy, and in order to gain and keep readership as a blogger, you need to provide your readers with information that makes their lives better, easier, and less stressful. Business blogs are a unique case because the general subject matter tends to be a bit dry. It's up to you as the blogger to overcome that obstacle and provide the business information you are offering in a quick and easily digestible way.

How do you do that? Here are seven ways you can engage readers of your business blog and keep them coming back. Read More

3. How to Write Your "About Me" Page - from ProBlogger

Your About or About Me page will be one of the most popular pages on your website. People want to know who is behind the content they are reading. This article will help you put all the crucial information on the page.

4. Top 5 Ways To Screw Up When Using Social Media To Build Your Business - from SitePoint

The Visitor Overview provides information about the people who have visited your website. At the top of the page is another chart tracking the number of visitors for the past 30 days. Change the date range just as you would on the Dashboard.

The most important thing to remember with the Visitor Overview is that the term visitor is different from the term visit. A visitor is defined as actual unique people rather than the number of times they have visited. Yes, the same person can visit your site multiple times, thereby increasing your visit numbers but not your unique visitor numbers. The key thing to take away from this is that to truly know how many people are visiting your website, you need to know how many Absolute Unique Visitors have come to your website.

Other really cool things about the Visitor Overview is that it displays the number of pages the visitor has viewed (PageViews), an average per visitor (Average Pageviews), the percentage of visitors who have left immediately (Bounce Rate) and the percentage of visits that are from new visitors to your website (New Visits).

The coolest thing however - in my opinion - is the Time on Site results. This is the amount of time your users spend on your website and is part of what is known as "stickiness". I'll discuss stickiness in more detail in a future post but for now just keep in mind that the higher the Time on Site results the more time your visitor stays on your website - leading to greater stickiness. One rule of thumb I've heard is that any Time On Site over 30 seconds is a success. That means the average of all visits to a website has been over 30 seconds. Keep in mind, though, that Time on Site can be skewed by people coming to your website and then leaving their browser window open without ending the session. So while it is is a cool number to know, drill into the numbers to see if it is a trend or just a fluke. Time will tell.

Also on the Visitor Overview is Visitor Segmentation which allows you to see the Languages your website has been viewed in (this tracks the default language selection as defined by the user's browser), Network Locations (helpful in determining trends among users) as well as Browser Profiles (allowing you to customize your website to your users technical capabilities - things like Flash version, browser/operating system combination and screen resolutions most visitors use to access your website.)

Lastly, on the Visitor Overview you will see the Technical Profile of your visitors. This is a list of the prevalent Browsers your visitors use to access your site as well as their Connection Speed. Why is this important?

Browsers
Knowing which browser your visitors use to access your website may impact how you interact with them and what applications/plug-ins you offer (example: some applications/plug-ins don't work very well with Safari browsers - if you have a lot of users coming from Safari, you may want to re-think using that applications/plug-ins).

Connection Speed
Connection Speed is becoming less relevant with the expansion of broadband acceptance. However, if you find that you have a lot of dial-up users, you may want to avoid using a lot of video on your website (for example).

Visitor Overview: What you need to know
The Visitor Overview tells you if your traffic is coming from a few people visiting you many times or several people visiting once. It also allows you to see how sticky your website is (more on that in future posts) and what technical issues may be impacting your traffic.

The next post in the Google Analytics Series:
Part 3 - Map Overlay

Other posts include:
Part 1 - Dashboard
Part 4 - Traffic Sources Overview
Part 5 - Content Overview

-Paul

RSS. It's a buzzy term and lots of folks talk about it. For those people who don't know how it works, here's a primer.

RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication. It provides a way for you to distribute your frequently updated content - often called an RSS feed (or just feed).

Here's how it works in simple terms. You provide a subscription link to your RSS feed. People then subscribe to it. When you publish new content on your website, the RSS feed sends that new content to the subscriber's RSS reader. Now they can see your work without having to go to your website.

The strategic importance of RSS: it is highly effective at making your core audience loyal to your website and your content. This loyalty leads to people sharing your content through their own connections (using all the different social bookmarking, link sharing and other social networking tools that are out there). This sharing builds your traffic even though the person who started the sharing circle may not have come to your site at all to start it - they got the information they are sharing through your RSS feed.

RSS: What you need to know
RSS is a very important component to your website marketing strategy and should be high on your list to implement - particularly on your frequently updated content (blog, newsletters, articles, etc.).

- Paul

Google Analytics is one way to determine how people are finding and using your website. Many people use this free service yet do not know exactly what they are looking at. Google Analytics is a very powerful tool with lots of features. Consequently, this series of posts will concentrate not on every detail but on the features you will interact with frequently and those that provide you a basis to know how it can make your website successful.

Part One: Dashboard
Right out of the chute is the Dashboard - the first page that displays when you open your Google Analytics profile. On this page is a load of facts and figures and charts.

At the top of the page is a chart of the traffic numbers for the past 30 days. You can select a different time period by clicking on the date range in the right corner - this displays a calendar.

Below the chart is the Site Usage data. This is a snapshot of visitors and what they are doing on the site. The terms used on the page are fairly straight forward but some need a bit of explanation:

Visits: this is the number of times users have visited your site.

Pageviews: the number of pages that have been viewed. This will likely be higher than the total number of pages on your site (hopefully). Each view of a page is tracked separately - even those made by the same person.

Pages/Visit: the number of pageviews divided by the number of visits. This gives an average of how many pages are viewed during each visit. Not a hugely helpful number though.

Bounce Rate: a Bounce is when someone visits your site and then leaves immediately. We've all done it when we've ended up where we didn't want to be. This just tracks that activity. It also tells you if people are staying on your site. A low Bounce rate is a good thing.

Average Time on Site: The average length of time a user has spent on their visit to your site.

Percentage New Visitors: How many people have come to your site for the first time as a percentage of all visitors.

The rest of the Dashboard displays condensed reports of other user behaviors which will be covered in future entries to this series. They include Visitor Overview, Map Overlay, Traffic Sources Overview and Content Overview

Dashboard: What you need to know
Seeing your traffic and visitor numbers from a high level view helps you quickly track how well your website is performing. You can tell right away if something is going well (or not) just by seeing how your traffic is doing. You will need to drill into each area if you need more details to help determine a solution to slow traffic - unless that is what you expected in the first place.

The next post in the Google Analytics Series:
Part 2 - Visitor Overview.

Other posts include:
Part 3 - Map Overlay
Part 4 - Traffic Sources Overview
Part 5 - Content Overview

An informative overview posted on Times Online. This article gives you the basics, covers etiquette (ReTweets) and how to message others.

A must read for those who are new to Twitter.

Follow the link to read the article 
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5758076.ece

-Kristin

So you want to market your business on Facebook, the only question is do you use a page or a group?

Facebook Pages

Pages allow you to have a public profile on Facebook. You can share your business and/or products on your page. It is another tool to interact with your customers.

When your fans interact with your page, stories linking to your page appear in their News Feed thus enabling all their friends to see their interaction and creates word-of-mouth.

Facebook Groups

Groups allow you to great a group around interests and activities.

A Group has a wall for fans to interact and post messages and also has a discussion board. It is more simplified than a page.



If you are looking to use Facebook as a marketing tool, you are probably better off with a page because it allows for more customization and interactions with your customers.

If you are hosting an event - a group would be a good addition to your page.

Information from Addicott Web

- Kristin

1. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. You can find your sitemap in the Properties tab in the Website Manager. Copy the sitemap URL and submit it to Webmaster Tools.

2. Submit your URL to:
    - Google
    - Yahoo
    - MSN

3. Enter Meta Information for every page of your website and BE THROUGH! Title your page, add a description and enter keywords found in the page's content. Entering a keyword not in the content is useless. When deciding on keywords Google's Keyword Tool can be very helpful in comparing the keyword  that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

4. Add ALT Tags for any images you use in a page. You can do this easily by clicking on the image and at the bottom of the editor type in the keywords for the image in the ToolTip field.

5. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT - Without good content, none of the previous tips will do a thing to optimize your website for search engines. You need to write relevant content that will be informative and helpful for your users/clients/customers and create new content OFTEN!

- Kristin

What is Monitter?

It's a twitter monitor, it lets you "monitter" the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying. Cool huh?

Why would I use it?

You can use it to select up to three keywords to view what people are saying about those topics. You might find some new people to follow. It also allows you to keep an eye out for mentions about you or your business.

There is also a RSS feed.

- Kristin

Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services.

It allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web's social media landscape in real-time.

Search results are aggregated from numerous popular social media sources, including Google blog search, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Flickr, Digg, YouTube etc. and remixed as a single stream of information. The data is fresh, which means you can track conversations as they are happening in real-time.

In addition to web-based search results, Social Mention also features email alerts and personalized RSS feeds for automatic and instant updates.

Information from Social Mention

-Kristin

When talking about SEO, Google should be your first stop. They have many tools to help you optimize your website and get the best possible search engine results.

Webmaster Tools

Webmaster tools provides you with information how Google sees (indexes) your website. When you submit your URL to webmaster tools you are essentially telling Google your website is out there.

Quick Overview Webmaster Tools

- Submit a sitemap - In your LoudClick Website Properties is a sitemap. Once you submit that, every time you publish a page it tells Google your website has changed. It takes some time for them to index your website but you need to let them know you are out there.

- Find top Keywords that bring people to your website

Google Analytics

Google's analytics can help you analyze the traffic that your website receives. You will need to embed the analytics code in the footer of your LoudClick website in order for Google to receive the data. 

Quick Overview Google Analytics

- See how many visitors and  page views your website receives everyday. You can select various date ranges to see traffic trends over a period of time.

- Find out where your traffic is coming from.

- Keyword searches that bring people to your website.

Keyword Research Tool

Google's keywords tool helps you research keyword and keyword variations to use when optimizing your website. You can analyze the keywords by search volume or by the competition for that keyword, both of which are important to consider when deciding which keywords you should incorporate in your SEO efforts.

Information gathered from Addicott Web - click to read the full article.

- Kristin