Even though I own a Search Engine Optimization (SEO), web and marketing company, you would be surprised how many emails or visits I have with people trying to sell me websites with the pitch of being able to show me my “Website Grade”. I cannot help but laugh. Not the “LOL” laugh but the “LMFAO” laugh….

Are people really going around selling websites based on an online website grader? The answer is yes and the explanation for which I’m not completely sure. In an effort to understand this more clearly, I did some research and found that most companies that do this are not media or web companies. They are companies that are trying to break into the industry by building cheap sites at exorbitant costs. In a recent article I posted I stated that most companies out there that try to sell web design, or what they claim is web design, either outsource your work out

of state or out of the country. Why? Because it is cheaper to outsource than to have an in-house designer. Some of these companies that do the websites in-house just charge you an insane amount of money and use online web-based website building platforms that don’t work. Website companies will use these Website Graders as selling tools figuring that most sites will get a low score and jump on the fact that the sales person is promising their customers a higher grade. Would you trust a gas station that was advertising web design, or a pizza place that was advertising SEO? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Let the professionals handle what their profession is.

Do the graders really work? Are they a fit for most companies out there?

I think not. One thing I do is a lot of research. My research in this case tells me more are against this then for it. Some website graders take a good amount of points off if you do not have a Twitter accoun Really? Fewer points for not being on Twitter? I can see a restaurant, bar, actor or entertainer (to name few) being on Twitter but is this really what a website should be based on? Shouldn’t it be based on more than being on one social media network? Think about it is someone really going to follow a dentist or chiropractor on twitter to see whose teeth they pulled or backs they cracked? Im not saying that in a negative way but I can think of ten things off the top of my head to do for those types of clients that will boost SEO and visits than putting them on twitter.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these website graders can help provide you with a better understanding of what to improve, but should not be something you live by and go about designing or upgrading your site or marketing structure on. Some ways to help improve your place on the World Wide Web: Look at where and what you want to improve; Track your current stats on the site; Define some search terms you want to add; Work on your page structure and branding of the site.

True Story: A little over a year ago I built a website for a client. The client went from spending $12,000/Year on web, SEO, Pay Per Click, etc. I took their online marketing plan and set them up with a number of different tactics to save them a few bucks; SEO, better design, better page structure, online local profiles, and maps. By the next year they saved 50% of what they were spending with other online advertising. Their SEO and marketing on search engines was doing amazing in all of the keywords they wanted. When I ran a test on some website graders the client scored a 56%. 56%? With his tracking report he was reaching well over 50% of the hits he was getting with his old plan. So does that mean his website is bad? Absolutely not.

I know there are many website grading and website ranking tools out there. All of them have a great amount of useful information which helps you in evaluating some information on your website and in some cases even give you a web score, SEO advice and more. But all of these are just tools and in no way a solution towards fixing or upgrading anything on your site. It has been known and proven that some of these website graders will not tell you some of the most important SEO tactics that will help boost your SEO and visits.

Here is an interesting paragraph I found online: “So let’s play worst case scenario, someone with a website who just discovered SEO finds a website grader, runs it on their website and gets a “good score”. They figure their website is good enough and leaves things alone. Chances are that a person won’t have the luxury of defensible traffic that engadget does, and could really use the extra traffic that SEO can bring to the party.”

True Fact: People have gone mad…

Contact Shoreline Media Marketing. Your Media Solutions Provider. We will audit your sites, SEO, Marketing Structure and more to help see what is best for you.

Shoreline Media Marketing takes control of that for you. With the proper marketing package not only to we market your site, Social Media Sites, Blogs, and more but we also get your business up on all major business listings on search engines. There is a lot more that just entering your information and calling it a day. Shoreline Media has the tools and knowledge to help enhance not one of your listings but all of your listings on all search engines.

Google Local and Google Maps
Once of the most successful and popular business listings on the Internet. Google Local and Google Maps allows webmasters and others to go on and create profiles for there clients as well as for their businesses. Shoreline Media mastered the knowledge and needs of what your business can do on these listings. We have taken the steps to be sure that all of our customers are enhanced on Google Local and Google Maps with the proper:

• Business Information
• Map Listing
• Profile Images
• Logos
• Categories
  and much more

We know the tips and tricks to utilize these listings to help bring your web more traffic as well as more foot traffic into your business by having you business address, directions, and phone number easily visibile  to anyone looking for it. Each business listing on Google is in fact a giant ‘cluster’ of information that we get from a few different places: Yellow Pages, for example, as well as other third-party providers. However, the basic information that you submit through Google Places is the information that we trust the most. This means that it will appear instead of any basic information that we get from anywhere else. To make sure the basic information you submit is accurate, Google will ask you to verify it first by entering a PIN that will be sent to either your business address or phone number. On top of all of that there are certian areas that Shoreline Media can edit and publish information to to enhance that listing for you. You can add other information to your listing too — such as a description of your business, for example, as well as photos, reviews, or information about hours and parking costs — that will also appear above similar information from other providers.

New & Improved Bing

Bing, like Google is a Search Engine from Microsoft. Also like Google Bing has created an area that webmasters and developers can go on and create special listings for there business or there clients. Bing took a few steps forward with there listings and provide a few more extra  perks with theirs. Bing gives you not only a listing but also QR codes for your listing, a Mobile link so customers can see your listings on any mobile device, and a few more. Shoreline Media has the key tools and the knowledge to enhance your listings even further. Contact us today and see how we can help you.

Take a look at the images below to get an idea of what some of these enhanced listings offer.

These are only a few that we manage and help enhance for your business. Shoreline Media Specializes in not only Web Design, SEO, SEM, and more but also helps manage all listings to be sure your business is available and open 24/7 even with the 9-5 work day. Contact Shoreline Media today  to see how we can help your business thrive on the Internet.

The Powerful Benefits of Blogging and your Business.

Blogging is an efficient connecting and interacting tool, which makes extensive use of different Internet attributes. It is largely used by advertisers for marketing purposes as well as business owners on there websites.

Knowledge sharing and management is the most important benefit of blogging. Apart from this, other advantages include self-marketing, community building, Business Marketing, better customer service, interactive journalism and/or articles pertaining to your business, social reforms and better communication techniques. Below are just some key benefits of Blogging and how it can help your business. Contact Shoreline Media Marketing to see how we can incorporate your powerful blog right into your website.

Benefits of Blog Posts:

Connectivity: It is an efficient and cost-effective technique to advertise the business facts and expertise, since it builds connectivity to a larger community. This is extremely helpful for small businesses, who cannot invest funds in marketing their products or services in certain areas. Having a website with your own built in blog can help you be your own advertising agent.

Direct Communication: It provides a direct source of communication with customers, who feel free to address their ideas, queries or experiences regarding a particular commodity. With that producers get an overview of different opinions and can accordingly make necessary changes in the production process.

Real Time: Blogging enables on-the-spot debates and discussions. It is not necessary to wait for the next day to read details in a newspaper. Advertisers make instant modifications and update the readers regarding any significant changes. Restaurants can change there menus on the go, Firms can change there prices anytime anywhere they want, etc.

Read More On The Powerful Benefits of Blogging and your Business >>

Keeping your website updated and fresh is a great start to the great keys of SEO. Updating new offers, coupons, products, content, whatever it is it shows google that your site is out there and updated. For most business out there this comes to be a challenge.

You have a great website, its updated, and you have content to drive the customers there. Now its time to market the site either on the web or in other areas. One big marketing tool which is becoming very popular is QR Codes. They are little black boxes that look like th image to the left. If you have a scanner on your cell phone you can scan these images and it will direct you to an ad, a website, or anything else pertaining to your business.

How can you use QR codes to benefit search marketing?

QR Codes can be used on any print that you do such as Magazines, Newspapers, Ads, Coupons, and more. They can scan the code image and be directed right to that page or ad. They can also be used on your website. If you add them to your website, the search engines will see that your pages have changed, and that you are updating pages. The search engine will see a new image and index it accordingly. At some point soon, the search engines will likely recognize QR codes and possibly index the content in them.

Large or small businesses can and should use these QR Codes. Add them to any print advertising, flyers, posters, invites, TV ads etc containing:

• Product details
• Contact details
• Offer details
• Event details
• Competition details
• A coupon
• Twitter, Facebook, MySpace IDs
• A link to your YouTube video

If you have a scanner on your phone you can scan the image above and see how it works.

Be sure to have your QR Code on all that you advertise including your website.

Search engine optimization is complicated for a reason. Search engines do not want people figuring out how they function or how they work to rank websites. If everybody knew how they worked then people would manipulate them to reach the top of the search engine. Well, the truth it that people do know how search engines work and they do use tactics that try and wiggle there way to the top without really adding content to the site or using any real time or energy to make the site useful.

Search engines update there algorithms all the time because they know people figure out how they work so they have to change constantly. Despite this fact, people will always be able to outsmart there systems. The most important thing as that you remember what is important for a website. Why do you go to a website? Does it offer entertainment? Does it inform you about a topic that you are researching? Does it sell something you are looking for? These are the basic reasons why people go to websites and this is what you want to keep in mind.

This may surprise you but if you create a website that people will go to, you will have a good chance at beating your competition in search engine ranking. This is due to the fact that you will have many pages full of information that people and search engines love. All of this will help you increase your search engines ranking for your key words.

Another problem arises; there are many sites that know this and probably have created enough content on there site to satisfy the needs of everyone looking for there specialty. This is it get difficult. They are getting all the hits for there key words and you think you can come in and take away from there traffic. I will help you do this in a few simple steps that start with good content.

This is why you have to create many pages of good unique content. People love content and so do search engines. Creating more content will keep people coming back to see what you have written. If they like what they see over and over again, they will keep coming back.

How does this help your search engines ranking? This goes into on site SEO, which means the steps you take to optimize your website from the inside out. Every page of content will be indexed by search engines and each one will have its own title and tags. This is important to get searches for key words you want. The URL will also be very long because it will be an inner page of your website and it will have a very long string. You will be amazed at the traffic you will get from phrases that you have no idea existed.

You also have to think about how you link the pages together. Creating links have and will always be the way you increase your sites search engine ranking. For this reason you want to make sure your site is linked together well using good anchor text. If each page links to the other page or to the home page using key words that you want to optimize for, your site will gain ranking. If you get other websites to link to your inner pages, your other pages will share the page rank they gain with your home page.

Your website will become more valuable and it will get more traffic. Since you have all of the good content on your site, your visitors will be coming back again and again. All of your visitors will revisit your website. Your old visitors will come back often and your new visitors will come back again and again increasing your traffic from month to month.

Each business listing on Google is in fact a giant ‘cluster’ of information that we get from a few different places: Yellow Pages, for example, as well as other third-party providers. However, the basic information that you submit through Google Places is the information that we trust the most. This means that it will appear instead of any basic information that we get from anywhere else. To make sure the basic information you submit is accurate, we’ll ask you to verify it first by entering a PIN that will be sent to either your business address or phone number.

You can add other information to your listing too — such as a description of your business, for example, as well as photos, reviews, or information about hours and parking costs — that will also appear above similar information from other providers.

Some Benefits of Google Places

More people search for businesses online than anywhere else, so it’s important to make sure your business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps. With Google Places, creating a great listing takes just a few minutes and doesn’t cost a thing. Reach millions of Google users, quickly and for free, with Google Places.

Edit your listing and speak for yourself

Your business probably already shows up on Google, but you should still verify your listing and make sure its details are accurate and thorough. Your improvements will start appearing as soon as you verify them through Google Places. A top feature with Google Local and Google maps is the category setting. You can choose up to 5 search categories for your business with your google profile. You can also add markers on your map to show exactly where your business is located. This listing can change anytime your information changes. Just like your website designed by us, Just log in from any computer and update.

Practical and easy to manage
Your Google listing is an easy way to maintain an online presence even if you don’t have a website. You can visit Google Places anytime to edit your information or see how many people have seen and clicked on your listing.

Premium options, all for free
Make your listing really shine with photos and videos; custom categories like your service area, brands you sell and how to find parking; and coupons to encourage customers to make a first-time or repeat purchase.

Francine had a website done a while back where the designer up and left with most of her content and images for her products as well as the access to her files.

Once we launched her new site we then started on her marketing package by pushing some Professional Press Releases out concentrating on a lot of her products and her new website.

One of the major keywords Francine wanted to come up as with her site and her Press was Venetian Jewelry, Homemade Venetian Jewelry, NJ Venetian Jewelry, etc… So we got to work and started working on a marketing concept that would best fit what she wanted for her website and what would draw new customers to her site.

By the first hour the Professional Press Release was written and posted Les Bijoux was at the top off major search engines including Google, and Yahoo with the simple search term “Homemade Venetian Glass Jewelry”

“Joe along with Web Solutions NJ and Shoreline Media have been amazing and wonderful to work with! Extremely knowledgeable and responsive! My website looks fabulous and all thanks to Joe!”
~ Francine Girimonte, Les Bijoux Boutique, www.LesBijouxBoutique.com

“This is my second Testimonial on Joe Sernio and Web Solutions NJ. Joe was recommended to me by a friend. When I met Joe, I was truly in a dilemma. The web designer I was using just disappeared into thin air and left me in a bind! Joe came to my rescue. Not only was he extremely helpful and very knowledgeable, but he understood my needs and worked with me regarding costs. He made several suggestions, all of which made a great deal of difference to the look of the site and the functionality! The website is so professional looking now and easy for me to access, make changes and do updates! Joe was truly a God send. I am thrilled with the new website and highly recommend Joe as he is reliable and conscientious!” ~ Francine Girimonte, President, Les Bijoux, LLC

Rather than me sit here and write on how i can help your site, or build you a better site, or have your site marketed the right way. I want to show you some results. Results that had visitors to some of these sites within and hour of using some of Shorelines marketing ideas. I’m going to give you two examples on some of our techniques.

Les Bijoux Boutique Hits #1 on Google In Minutes!!

Shoreline Media / Marketing has re-designed the site of Les Bijoux Boutique. Les Bijoux Boutique is owned by Francine Girimonte who makes homemade Venetian Glass Jewelry.

Francine had a website done a while back where the designer up and left with most of her content and images for her products as well as the access to her files.

Once we launched her new site we then started on her marketing package by pushing some Professional Press Releases out concentrating on a lot of her products and her new website.

One of the major keywords Francine wanted to come up as with her site and her Press was Venetian Jewelry, Homemade Venetian Jewelry, NJ Venetian Jewelry, etc… So we got to work and started working on a marketing concept that would best fit what she wanted for her website and what would draw new customers to her site.

By the first hour the Professional Press Release was written and posted Les Bijoux was at the top off major search engines including Google, and Yahoo with the simple search term “Homemade Venetian Glass Jewelry”

Colonial Nursery, Monmouth County

Dan from Colonial Nursery wasn’t to happy with his website. He had the same issues most people have after paying a ridiculous amount for a fancy flash website. The site doesn’t search, There are no keywords, The pages are titles wrong, Can’t access any of the files,

images, etc.. He wanted something that functioned and worked for his business. Something where people can go on and get what they want, sign up for lists, leave comments, read blogs,

download coupons… So we gave him just that. Along with all of that we helped him out with Shoreline Media’s Micro-site Strategy and Press Release Package.

We set him up with a small Micro-Site with all info linking to his main site and optimized for specific keywords. We then added a Professional Press Release linking back to his main site. Within about an hour of the Press Release being released it had 39 hits and was the 2nd on the 1st page of google. We then tied that into his site under his Press Release section which also helps with the page rank.

Orange Skye Day Spa, Red Bank

When Orange Skye Day & Wellness Spa first came to us it was the same story i hate hearing. There website was not searching, they did not have access to any of there files, words were misspelled, images were in the wrong places, the contact forms were not working, the site was full of broken links, nothing was tagged, and much more. Worse of all they could not get in touch with the developer, another common problem people face with some sites.

We helped Orange Skye build a website complete with Blogs, Comment Forms, Specials, Galleries, Google Tools, Maps, Micro-Sites, and much more. Not only that but now the spa can log on whenever they want and edit anything they want.

Once the site was done we started the marketing phase with them. The first press release we added to her package was for a mothers day event at the spa. The Press Release was linked directly to her site which was then linked to an entire package page on her site. The Release wound up getting 245 hits the first few weeks and coming up on top of google along with her website. There Press Releases after that did extremely well averaging well over 100′s of hits for each release resulting in driving traffic directly to there website.

This traffic can be generated from Professional Press Releases and our Micro-Site Strategy. Be sure that your website is working the way you want it to work. A website is like a car or even as crazy sounding as an animal. It needs attention, it needs to be tuned up and maintained from time to time.

I saw this article online on the New Media Profit Path website and wanted to share this. Why WordPress is the ideal platform for small business websites.

Easy to Use
The first reason why WordPress is such a great web publishing platform for small business is that it is easy to use. WordPress was designed to be easy to use for people of modest technical means. Which is to say, you don’t need to be a mega-geek to manage your website with WordPress. Once it is set up, average users can add content easily. This can include text, images, audio, video, or just about anything else you can think of.

Basically I tell people, if you can use one of the web based email systems like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail then you pretty much have all the technical skills you need to run your WordPress site. That said, there still can be some technical know-how required to get things set up for maximum performance.
But once everything is set up correctly, adding content and managing the site day-to-day is very simple. Much more so than with other website platforms out there.

By the way, this is doubly true if the person who manages your website content changes regularly. I got a call just yesterday from someone who just inherited updating a website for an organization and they were stuck because the website was hand coded in Dreamweaver. If it had been built on WordPress in the first place taking over would have been a simple affair.

Powerful SEO
WordPress has pretty good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) right out of the box. Then when you configure some settings, add in a great premium theme like Genesis or Headway, or add a solid SEO plugin like the All-in-One SEO Pack or the Platinum SEO Pack you’ve got everything you need to rapidly climb up to the front page of Google for your keywords.

Of course, if you are intimidated by what it takes to have good SEO you can simply subscribe to the Scribe SEO service. They make improving your SEO as easy as clicking the mouse. They even offer a great little free SEO e-book so you can learn the basics of good SEO.
With all the options available to you, WordPress makes powerful SEO a breeze!

Dynamic Content
Since its roots are as a blogging platform WordPress makes creating sites with dynamic content easy-peasy. Uploading images, adding audio and embedding videos is simple as can be.
Plus WordPress has a built in commenting system so you have built in interactivity. That coupled with the ease with which you can add blog posts and other content makes it easy for you to produce a dynamic website that keeps people coming back time and time again.

Inexpensive

Anyone can download the software for free at WordPress.org. It doesn’t get any less expensive than that! Sure it takes a little expertise to get things set up correctly so that you get the most from your WordPress site. The good news is there are tons of WordPress designers and developers out there so it’s possible to find the expertise you need at almost any price point.

For a small business that’s just getting started and is on a tight budget, WordPress makes it possible to have a powerful website that can compete head on with sites from much larger companies. That way the business can see a much bigger return on their web marketing resources than when going with many other platforms.

Powerful Social Media Tool
The WordPress Plugin Directory has over 10,000 plugins to add functionality and features to the core WordPress capabilities. Over 250 of them help you add Social Functions to your website.
With all those plugins you have options to integrate your site with your pollination points out on all sorts of social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Flickr, or even Last.FM.

So as you can see, WordPress makes an ideal platform for small business websites.