Lately we have been talking to a lot of companies about how to get more bang for their buck from their website.  One of the easiest ways to do this (assuming your website is in a state that you actually WANT to drive traffic to it) is some simple SEO.  In doing a brief overview of many, many websites, there has been one thread that is so overwhelmingly pervasive, that I wanted to share it here.  That is the issue of URL structure.

If you want to make sure that people find what you have on your site, make the URL tell them what it is.  For example, if you have a recipe for Pecan Pie, don’t put it on your http://www.mycompany.com/daily_recipe location.  Put it on http://www.mycompany.com/recipe/pecan_pie.  Have an article on improving battery life?  Put in in a URL that has improve_battery_life as part of it and you will see far more hits.  It’s amazing how easy this is to do, and yet it is by far the most common mistake I have seen on sites.

The Utah Social Media Developers Garage will be tonight, December 11, at 7pm at our office in Draper, Utah. Jesse Stay has lined up Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, who will speak on how Amazon AWS is being used in Social environments. After Jeff’s talk, there will be a round-table discussion with topics such as Google’s OpenSocial, Facebook, and other Social Media.

We would like to thank Jesse and his consulting company SNAPlic8 for putting this event together, and Bungee Labs for providing the food.

We hope to see you there!

Okay, so you’re going to have to forgive me for tooting my own horn here, but I am awfully excited.  As many of you who know me well know, although we are increasingly involved in the community here in Utah, we also are extremely active in Nevada as well.  So the fact that yesterday the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada announced Twelve Horses as the “2007 Technology Company of the Year” had me pretty jazzed.

Other exciting news: We are moving at the end of this month out to Draper.  Our office size space will be roughly doubling, which should be nice.  We’ll be sure to have you all out for an “office warming” party.

Want to learn about one simple SEO strategy that takes only about five minutes to implement and will have a very positive result in search engine rankings? If this interests you then get ready to change the footer on your website.

The footer on most websites usually contains a copyright statement and occasionally links. Several websites have a two-line footer where one line is devoted to links and the second one contains the copyright. Adding a company one sentence description to your footer is an easy way to develop one SEO strategy that is simple and doesn’t take much time. Here is an example to clarify:

Old footer: © 2007 Twelve Horses

Newer SEO Friendly Footer: © Copyright 2007 Twelve Horses - A Web Design, Development & Search Engine Optimization Company in Reno & Utah

It generally is better when you have the text footer (non-link footer) fit within one line. Here are some key issues that this new style of the footer accomplishes:

1. Our website or company is focused on providing web design, web development, SEO or search engine optimization, email marketing, and social marketing services to our clients. Since that is a long list of services sometimes you may have to pick and choose what you can fit on one line. The above example makes sure that every page on the website contains the keyword phrases of ‘web design, development, and search engine optimization’. This helps the search engines realize that this website is related to those keywords since they appear on every web page. This strategy helps search engines know what services you provide as well as doing the same for human website visitors. If a web visitor can’t determine what the website is about they general do one of two options: either leave or look in the footer for an ‘about us’ link. Having this information in the footer ensures that if they do look at the footer they will know what the website is about without having to go to another page.

2. The above example also contains ‘Reno and Utah’ in the footer. Twelve Horses has headquarters in Reno, Nevada with another main branch in Salt Lake City, Utah. Having these terms in the footer lets search engines know what geographic area our company provides web services in. You may question why the footer contains Reno, a city, and Utah, a state. Through a keyword analysis we discovered that people in Salt Lake City generally search for ‘utah [keyword]‘ rather than ’salt lake city [keyword]‘, possibly because Salt Lake City is too long to type and “Utah” only has one major metropolitan area which is the Wasatch front. Since Nevada contains several metropolitan areas such as Reno, Las Vegas, etc. which are distant from each other users tend to search by city. Through keyword research we discovered people in Nevada are more likely to type in the major metropolitan area they are near instead of ‘Nevada [keyword]‘. As with the services we provide, this also provides web visitors the geographic area our company is based in by looking at the footer.

3. This simple and effective SEO strategy should only take 5 to 10 minutes to implement on your website and will have a very positive effective on your SEO campaign when comparing it to the investment of time that is required.
If you enjoyed this SEO strategy tip and would like us to post more please let us know and we will be happy to share our knowledge with you.

What do people find when they look for you? You would hope that they find you. Heck, you would hope that they find you even when they don’t know they’re looking for you… that you match their needs. You would be surprised how often, and how badly this can be out of whack.

I met a with a company just last week… and of course, before the meeting I do a little homework on them. The matches I find? I found a company that had its assets frozen due to illegal activities. The company was a different company entirely. But at first blush it wasn’t clear.

That’s why I am so excited to be able to announce the following (for the full details on our SEO/SEM expansion in Utah click here):

Salt Lake City, Utah (August 20, 2007) Twelve Horses is actively expanding its search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) division. The most recent addition is veteran search engine marketing expert, Eric Morgan who has more than eight years of web experience accelerating businesses’ search engine rankings and website traffic.

One of the most important aspects of marketing for a business is building your brand.  Making sure that when people think about your products or services, that the appropriate mental, and even emotional tie-ins pop into their minds.

When discussing branding however, it is important to also recognize the value of “personal branding” and how closely tied it is to corporate branding.  So much of business is based on relationships.  How many of the companies that you deal with deal with you because of who you are, not just because of who your company is?

In building your personal brand, Social tools, social networking sites, social marketing, and the like can be of huge value.  But if you’re not careful they can also be a huge waste of time.  Twitter may be great for the types of relationships you maintain, or it could just be a nuisance.  The same can be said of MySpace, Facebook (although with the API for Facebook now we should be seeing some really interesting things develop), and a plethora of others (heck, there are even applications now that let you drag and drop components to create your own social networking applications in just minutes.)

A couple of social applications that have gain a lot of traction with business professionals, but are just lacking in too many features for the more aggressive social networker are Plaxo and Linked-In.  Linked in is great for finding people, and leveraging personal networks to find skill-sets and ask some questions.  Plaxo is nice for keeping my address book up to date.  But these ponies are going to have to learn some new tricks to stay relevant in comparison to the newer, cooler tools out there.

Enter Plaxo Pulse.  I read a wonderful, very detailed writeup today about Pulse.  It looks like Plaxo has made some real strides forward:

•  Allows you to store information about the contacts, rather than just what they provide (unlike linked-in)
• Categories (Family, Friends, Co-workers, People to keep track of so I can avoid them, etc)
• Can sync with your linked in data
• Ability to comment on other people’s updates “congrats on the promotion,” etc.

And lots, lots more.  Go read the full post by Dan Sweet to see even more exciting features, as well as a few short comings you should be aware of.

Twitter is a great medium for sending free SMS (mobile text) messages. For those reading this not involved in the mobile industry, SMS is expensive, both in terms of cost, and time to set up.

We here at TwelveHorses.com consult to businesses about mobile messaging, Twitter, and how to integrate with these technologies. Here are some ideas that we’ve seen, and some that we’ve pitched to clients.

In your Restaurant, you have a “For coupons and info, send Follow MyRestaurant to 40404 from your cell phone” Then on Tuesday evenings about 5:30, when things are slow around dinner time, you Tweet “Free desert with dinner tonight if you mention this coupon.” In this respect, you hit all your interested customers, right at the dinner hour, wherever they are.

You’re a ski resort. You want to inform your skiers at the time they specify when fresh powder has reached x inches deep. To facilitate this, you build an application to send mobile messages to your interested skiers when snow reaches a certain depth. They sign up to follow your ski resort’s twitter with their phone, and you use the Twitter API to send them direct messages at the time they specify when the fresh snow is the depth they want.

You’re an online auction company, and you want to send out tweets for items that are undervalued 30 minutes before the auction ends to drive up prices. You integrate the Twitter API with your application to send those alerts out as public tweets, and invite people to join that twitter for killer deals.

You’re an airline. You have flights that have known empty seats. You integrate with the Twitter API to send out tweets 4 hours before a flight with empty seats and the heavily discounted price you’re willing to sell those seats for.

You’re a stock broker. You want to very quickly inform your clients about great stock deals. You have them sign up to follow your tweet, and as deals come through that you think they need to know about, you tweet them, and your clients receive the results.

You want to generate buzz about a new TV show on network XYZ. You announce prior to the show how to sign up for the show’s Twitter, and during the show, you have the director tweet the inside scoop on what’s really happening, almost like a directors commentary, but live with the broadcast of the show.

Really, the possibilities like this are endless, and can be tuned to your specific business model.

With Twitter, your message gets to the customer wherever they are, and with information that they want to know.

Clint Goudie-Nice
Architect / Senior Software Engineer

There has been a titanic amount of buzz around Facebook and it’s new API. Some people love it, others pshaw it; but one thing is true… everyone is watching what becomes of it.

Phil Burns is hosting Utah Facebook Developers Garage, and we here at Twelve Horses are exited to be Sponsors for this upcoming event!

The location will be Noah’s, 644 N. 2000 W. Lindon, on Thursday, Aug 9th at 6:00 pm. Here’s a map to the location.

From Phil:

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If you’re interested in meeting with other Utah people interested in exploring programming and business opportunities in Facebook, please join our group on Facebook. Also, if you’re planning on coming to this Thursday’s meeting, please RSVP on Facebook here.
The only admission for Thursday is to bring a bag of snacks or soda for the open-food table for all to share. Hope to see you there!

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I like the commercials being put out by Apple. I like them well enough that I watch them rather than changing channels. I’m not in the market for a Mac. But due to the fact that I am willing to watch their commercials, it is more likely that I will hear something at some point that is compelling to me.

So how do you ensure that I hear a message about your product when I need to? By being sure that I am willing to listen to your message even when I don’t need it.

Want to know some sites that I read regularly, and derive value from? Well, let me through out some of the less obvious ones:
Jason Alba at Jibber Jobber

Rob Merrill at UtahTechJobs

Yahoo

There are lots of others, but I wanted to throw these three out. Looking at these you might ask yourself why I am interested in help finding a job… I’m not. But that’s the key… I am reading the sites because I derive value and enjoyment from them… even though I am not in the market for their products or services. Both Jibber Jobber and Utah Tech Jobs talk about relationships, and their importance, and say it in unique ways that resonate.

What about Yahoo? Everyone is all about Google now. Don’t get me wrong, I love google, and I use Google… but everyone now and then I like to search on Yahoo because it shows me other cool stuff. I derive other value than just searching.

That’s the key to keep people coming back again and again. Sure, you want them to hear you or see you when they are looking for exactly the value proposition that you are calling out. But give them more than that. Build relationships with people, even if they are not your target. One day they might be, or they might know someone who is.

This is true in every industry. If you develop materials use to build buildings, then put on free events once or twice a year where local builders can come and hear all of the cool news tips/tricks/products about building. Make it an event that people will want to come to even if they are not in the market for your product. Give them value and they will keep coming back. Then, they will already be there, and know you when they are in the market for what you offer.

Marketing need to do more than just shove their value points down my throat. They need to make me smile, or think. Otherwise I have already hit another webpage, deleted the email, or changed channels.

I Just HAD to pass along this tidbit from the main Twelve Horses Blog:

This hilarious parody, entitled “The Couple”, pokes fun at the disconnect that currently exists between traditional advertising and today’s consumers.

There is definitely a need for change within the industry as advertisers continue to view their audience as a statistic or dollar opportunity instead of forging meaningful relationships that will benefit all those involved.

“You’re saying you love me but you’re not behaving like you love me. It’s not genuine.”

The world needs more genuine advertising.