There’s no place like home, and no place like Gilbert, Arizona. That’s why I love this town, and enjoy every minute that we can help small businesses grow here in our small town. Linwright Design offers flexible prices and discount packages to local Gilbert small businesses.

There’s also nothing like a small business owner. The amount of stresss, pressure, and emotional drama that a small business owner goes through on a daily basis is like no other. At Linwright Design, we understand the situations of small business owners, and have designed programs, consulting packages, and prices to suit the needs of Gilbert small business owners.

A very special discount will be given to any military member. As small town residents, we know better than most what it feels like to serve and have family members serve in the military.

I’m a small town girl. I was raised here in Gilbert, Arizona, graduated from Gilbert High School back when there were only two high schools in Gilbert and we rumbled like crazy, and got my BA from Arizona State University where I spent most of my time doing anything but school work until my very last semester. I love this place, and that’s why I love being able to help out the small businesses here make it through these rough economic times.

Every time I drive down Warner, past Recker on the way to my lil sis’ house, I remember the small town that Gilbert used to be. I remember learning how to drive a stick-shift out by William’s Air Force Base, and racing down the back-roads with a car full of basketball players. This is my small-town-USA, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. I left a few times, once after high school graduation and again a few months ago, but I’ve always come back realizing that there really is no place like home.

Web design for Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek and Apache Junction offers the opportunity for small businesses to add an extra layer of advertising to their marketing scheme. A small businesses web page has the potential to bring in not only local Arizona traffic, but national traffic as well. There are hundreds of ways to target your audience, whether you are looking only to bring in residents from your small-town-Arizona, or whether you want to play with the big boys and take on the national crowd. It’s all possible.

Breaking it down to its simplest form, this is what you can expect from Linwright Design. Below is an example of a search for flowers in Gilbert, Arizona. (flowers Gilbert Arizona). As you can see, Google provides a map of the area within the SERP (search engine results page), and there are 150,000 results. This means that if you want to rank without paying for it, you have to compete with 150,000 other websites for this search. The mapped area would be how you would target the local crowd, and the easiest way to do that is to simply register your website with Google local. See the diagram below for an overview of the SERP.

What I would suggest doing to target the local Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa, Queen Creek or Apache Junction area is to register with the local advertising sites. With Google it’s free to register your site. They will give you a call to verify your address and your business, and the rest is up to you. In order to rank well for Google local, it’s all about organic SEO (which basically means anything and everything that you do to get to the top without paying for it. AKA; link building campaign, content, blogging, social marketing).

If you have ever searched for batting cages in Gilbert, Arizona, you probably have come across Rip City Batting Cages, which is located at Freestone park. If you are considering doing a local marketing campaign for your small-town-Arizona area, take a look at these batting cages. They have completely saturated the SERPS. They almost have the entire first page of Google for this search term! Granted, there are only 43,000 competitors for batting cages in Gilbert, Arizona, which is a small number, but they have registered their site with every possible local firm.

It’s as simple as registering with City Search, User Instinct, Yelp, Yellowbot, Merchant Circle, Local Yahoo, Local Google, Insider Pages, and Yellow USA, among many other local platforms. Some of them are paid-per-advertising, some of them are completely free. But if you are considering building a website and marketing it towards local traffic, this would be the route to go.

On top of local SEO, Linwright Design would also integrate Facebook and Twitter into your website. In my personal opinion, it is almost pointless these days to build a website and not integrate social media into the mix somehow. Twitter and Facebook also allows you to engage your customers at a local level as well.

By using Twitter and Facebook you can target users who are from your local area. In every case, a person building a profile on these social networks will have to enter their home-town. If their hometown happens to be Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa, Queen Creek, or Apache Junction, then you add them to your list of followers and friends. It’s that simple, and that easy to let them know about upcoming promotions, specials, and local appreciation days.

Now, the actual web design is the best part. Designing a website for a small business involves taking inspiration from the business itself, the customers’ needs, and, of course, the area. In my opinion, how can you build a website about small-town-Arizona if you haven’t lived there for all of your life?

I won’t lie, I had to build a corporate website recently targeted to residents of Indiana. Now, I’ve never been to Indiana. I’m sure they’re proud of their Colts, but what else are they proud of? What would catch their attention? So, I did some research, found some pictures of Indiana, and tried to make it work. It’s difficult when you have to make a local website about a place that you’ve never been, but, of course, I made it work.

Building a website for a small business that targets the local traffic is one of my favorite things to do, especially for small-town-Arizona. Nearly everything about this state is beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoy creating a website to promote that as well as the small businesses and business-people behind the scenes.

Don’t forget to contact me for a free custom quote!

Tracking your social statistics is definitely not the easiest thing in the world. It’s tough to prove to a potential client that social media should always be a part of the package, and building a website without integrating any kind of social aspects is almost worthless. Well, ok, maybe not worthless, but an effective small business owner will more than likely see the potential in integrating some sort of social options to their websites.

Getting accurate and conclusive statistics regarding Facebook pageviews, Twitter clickthroughs, or simple blog visits is tougher than you might think. Sure, you can enlist Google Analytics, try bit.ly or su.pr, attempt PostRank, or jump on TweetStats, but if you were to compare all of those numbers to each other, they will never add up.

If your Twitter shortener (the platform that you use to shorten your links for Twitter’s 140 characters) says that you received 115 clicks from a certain link, your Google Analytics will no-doubt show far less than that for the amount of people that actually viewed the page. Sounds confusing, right? Here’s the visual.

See what I mean. I used to use bit.ly for my Twitter shortener, until the numbers really went haywire and didn’t match in the slightest to what the other analytics stats were saying. So, I did some research and decided to give su.pr a try. Su.pr is owned and operated by StumbleUpon, which gives your blog post an added boost. When you shorten the link, su.pr will automatically post it to StumbleUpon. I also heard that su.pr is more accurate than bit.ly because it weeds out the bots. But, as you can see from the visual above, it’s still hard to tell exactly which numbers are correct.

So, in some more research for accurate social media statistics I heard about PostRank, a brand new analytics program that combines Google Analytics with social tools like Twitter. It takes the numbers from Google Analytics, and from my  understanding, compares those numbers with the amount of interaction that happened on Twitter concurrent to a specific blog post. Than it takes the blog visits, combined with the Twitter conversations, and creates a interaction score.

Pretty sweet sounding, right? Well, after getting truly excited about something that might actually be accurate, I decided to give it a few weeks. As you can see below, it’s still not entirely accurate. Not only are the followers numbers off, the numbers pulled over from Google Analytics don’t always match up, nor does the amount of Twitter conversations or the social bookmarking stats.

I give PostRank a lot of credit, however, for attempting such a feat. Being able to accurately track social media numbers is incredibly crucial in this field, and finding a system that works will probably make millions for the creator. I’m still waiting for that day.

Until then, I simply use a variety of analytics including Google and su.pr. I continue to switch it up every couple of months to try and find the most accurate program, every time wishing that the perfect social analytics tool is out there. If anyone has any suggestions I’d love to hear them!

Update: As I was going through my feeds this morning, I came across an article from Social Media Today regarding this exact subject. This is the section that I found most interesting:

Unlike traditional forms of gathering consumer insight, online tools are often cheaper, based on much larger sample sizes, and are quicker to deliver results.  For the past few years the value of search engine marketing (SEM) are measured largely by ad impressions, page views and click through rates.  However, as internet users are more willing to input additional data online, companies are now looking to measure key metrics of engagement on a person-level.

According to a recent comScore and Starcom USA’s study on how U.S. Internet users click on display ads, “Only 8% of internet users now account for 85% of all clicks… The results underscore the notion that, for most display ad campaigns, the click-through is not the most appropriate metric for evaluating campaign performance. Rather, advertisers should consider evaluating campaigns based on their view-through impact.”

That’s just one of the examples that web analytics can be misleading.  It will continue to be challenging for marketers to abstract reliable data as social media adds another pile of data to the media measurement mix.  The future trend to measure more accurately will be to combine technical web analytics (server logs) with a sampling of user surveys (opt-in by visitors) that visits the site.  Although there will be sampling errors, it certainly beats making assumptions that doesn’t reflect real user behaviors.

Building An Easy To Navigate Website For Your Customers

Website design used to be about flashy techniques and in-your-face designs, but left little room for easy navigation or quality content. Times have changed, based mainly on the way that the search engines rank websites, and building an affective website no longer involves showing off some crazy flash techniques that no one else can either do or understand.

 Today, building an affective website for your customers is all about easy navigation, easy to find information, and quality content. Now, don’t get me wrong, there will always be a great element of unique design and flair to step you apart from the competition, but the greatest thing that you can give your customers in a website is easy navigation.

So, how do you do that? Well, it’s pretty simple….just keep it simple. Your ‘landing page,’ or the first page of your website that visitor land on, should be creative and uncomplicated. A customer, in most cases, already knows what they want. They already know what they’re looking for, which is why they found you. Now, all you need to do it show it to them.

If you are running a local flower shop, show them your best products and greatest deals right there on the front page. If you coach the local little league team and want to promote them, show their picture and their winning record on the landing page. Whatever it is that people are searching for, give it to them on the landing page. That is what they’re there for, and if you do not deliver you will have a huge bounce rate (the rate at which people leave you site immediately).

Sometimes web designers forget that not everyone understands websites like they do. I’m to blame for that on certain occasions, when my creativity gets a bit carried away. For example, the other day I was in a meeting with some ladies who sell health related products. Basically, they wanted nothing more than a very small website that would act as a ‘brochure.’ They wanted no marketing, nothing flashy, just something that they could put on their business cards and flyers to give customers another option.

Well, my mind began racing with all of the possibilities for their website. I started pointing out different design ideas, different marketing tactics, and many different social aspects that could be added to the site to make it more interactive. The ladies just looked at me and laughed.

“Listen hon, I just don’t have the time for that. I have no idea how any of that works, and it’s far too much going on. We just want to keep it simple,” one of them said.

For the rest of the meeting I reeled in all of my notions of social marketing and engagement, and kept it simple. Sometimes, nothing beats simplicity.

My point is this: whether you do make it engaging and interactive, featuring many different social aspects and marketing tactics, keep the main idea simple. Sure, you can do both at once. It is entirely possible to have a website that is simple, with the main message or product right there on the landing page, but also have a few social aspects integrated into the design in a professional and trouble-free way.

So, when you’re designing your website strictly for your customers, think about what they want, what they’re looking for, and how you can give that to them. Wordpress is a great tool for keeping things organized and simple, yet creative and beautiful.

Have a question about wordpress web design? Don’t hesitate to contact me, or look me up on Twitter (@LinwrightDesign) or Facebook.

How To Get Ranked On Bing

Bing might be new, and it might be a bit of an underdog right now standing up against the Goliath Google, but ranking on the first page of this resource will still get you plenty of traffic. While I’m still trying to figure out what works for Bing and what doesn’t, I’ve come to one resolute conclusion, which should come as no surprise. Quality content will get you on the first page of Bing.

Yesterday, I posted an article detailing the 5 simple steps to get to the top of Google in a few weeks. Google places a lot of emphasis on three things: quality content, links, and keywords. As I mentioned before, if your domain name happens to be debt program reviews, and your audience is searching for debt program reviews, you are in the money.

But, what if you want to rank on Bing and you don’t have a domain name that matches the keyword search? Simple, have quality content that does. My advice, do your research and find out what keywords your audience is using to find you or your product. Take those keywords and find some useful information that you can throw together utilizing them.

I always tell my clients to remember elementary school. Back in the day when you had your words of the week, and you had to write a paragraph or two including those words. Utilizing keywords for Bing, or any other search engine, is no different. Simply find one keyword, preferably a longtail phrase, and toss it into your content.

Back in the day, an SEO would tell you to saturate your article with that keyword, but today things have changed. There are Wordpress plugins that allow you to saturate your keyword and description information to where you don’t have to write the word 100 times in a 500 word article. That is definitely something that you don’t want to do. In a 500 page article, from my experience I’ve learned to toss in the word only a few times, maybe 3 to 5 times. It’s that simple.

Don’t forget to title your article using those keywords in the first word positions, and make sure your permalink uses those keywords. Another trick that Bing seems to appreciate is if you also take the headline and repeat it at the beginning of your article in bold. I did this not too long ago, and only because the title of the article was not as prominent as I wanted it to be so I repeated it in the article so people knew what they were reading.

If you are writing a single article to rank on Bing for a single phrase, then make sure that article is at least 500 words long. Most article submission sites will not even accept an article that is shorter (if you’re considering submitting to different sources). If you are hoping to rank your entire website for a specific term and don’t want to spend the time writing 500-plus articles every day, then I’d suggest writing 250-300 word articles twice a day. Bing, Google and everyone else still loves it when you keep your sites fresh. Plus, that gives you more of an opportunity to get your message out there.

And, as always, utilize social bookmarking to spread your article around the internet, and post to Twitter and Facebook. Every little thing helps.

If you have any questions or need some help with your small business marketing, feel free to contact me or look me up on Twitter at @LinwrightDesign.

Getting to the top of a Google SERP (search engine rankings page) is easier than many think. The key is really patient, resilience, and complete commitment. It’s one of those things that takes an incredibly degree of work, not hard work, just work. In my case, it takes great content and knowing where and how to disperse that content.

I’ve always said, and I will continue to always say that content is key. However, it always helps to hook up with some other bloggers or industry professionals for links. There are a few quick things that you must check-off your list before you can sit back and take a breather.

1. Keyword research: to get some great rankings on Google, you have got to choose a URL (domain name) that reflects exactly what people are searching for and what you are trying to sell. Whether it’s an idea, a product, or a service, having a domain name with those keywords in it can be a make or break deal. Many, many sites do not have keywords in their URL and still manage to rank exceedingly well. This is done through tireless work, but it definitely can be done. Using a keyword domain name is just a nice added boost to your SEO.
2. Easy to navigate: a website that is built with navigation and customer concerns in mind will always do better on Google. Ever go to a site and think, “how in the world is this site ranked number one?” Well, besides following all of these steps, it’s probably a sites that visitors find easy to maneuver through, and thus they will probably recommend it through social networks, link to it from social bookmarking, or add it to their own websites.
3. Quality content: this is the all time key to ranking well. This will get you back links, it will entice people to bookmark your site or blog, and it will persuade Google to push your site to the top. I’ve learned over the years that most search engines will reward quality content, and a lot of it.
4. Social aspects: quality content and an easy to navigate site will lead your visitors to recommend your website, to bookmark it, and to place it in the social realm. This is money in the bank. It’s less work for you if your visitors do the footwork, and it pays off hugely. However, it can be done manually. Every single time you post a blog, that blog should be bookmarked on many different social networks. If you have more than one account, bookmark it more than once, then bookmark your bookmarking account. The blog should also be posted directly to Tumblr, Posterous, Twitter and Facebook. This can be done with specific Worpress plugins, or by using Ping.fm.
5. Check keywords often: over time, keywords will change. Internet users will change the phrases they are searching for, even though they’ll be searching for the same thing they were looking for a few months ago. Everything changes, and you have to keep up with the game. Just because someone is searching for debt settlement today doesn’t mean in three months they won’t be searching for debt negotiation instead, though they mean the exact same thing. To stay on top of the keywords it’s imperative that you check Google Keyword Tools and Google Insights to see what words are trending. It’s also a good idea to set up Google Insights directly onto your Google homepage to monitor changing keywords every day.

Within two weeks, I was able to successfully rank a corporate website Number 2 on Google using the above techniques. If you can keep the content fresh and constantly flowing, and add some inbound, outbound, and backlinks to your work, you will rank every time.

From SEOMoz, we now have some new numbers! These numbers show just how many people around the world are using social media, what the most popular social sites are, and thus which ones your small business should be engaging in.

Ever heard of a gentleman by the name of Matt Hindman? Well, he’s a professor of political science at Arizona State University, my alma mater, who wrote a book earlier this year called “The Myth of Digital Democracy.” While I haven’t had a chance yet to pick this interesting point-of-view up, I have been following his blogs.

ASU Hindman takes some interesting views on social media and its impact on society and democracy. Basically, take everything that you’ve heard about social media opening up doors for community involvement on the internet, and toss it out the window. ASU Hindman says that social media has hurt democracy.

For example, here is one of his latest blog entries:

Most online news remains the product of print or TV or radio outlets, and new outlets like the Huffington Post and Politico and The Daily Beast have required millions in venture capital. Even political blogging, which is something of a special case, has become highly professionalized, with few new bloggers rising to prominence over the 2008 election cycle.

Moreover, just gaining “entry” doesn’t mean very much, if a broader class of entrants don’t really expand the pool of winners.  Any golfer able to win a regional qualifying tournament can gain entry into the U.S. Open, while other events (such as the Masters) are strictly invitational.  But cheesy Kevin Costner movies aside, the folks who win the U.S. Open are full-time pros, not guys who play a few rounds on the weekends.

One of his latest blogs is entitled “Social Media, So What?” So what….it hurts my heart, especially coming from a professor at Arizona State University. But, it doesn’t surprise me. Back when I went to ASU, social media was never a topic discussed in any journalism or mass communication courses. I’m probably aging myself with that comment.

ASU Hindman fails to see how social media brings people together, creates diversity and interaction, and nurtures creative ideas and conversation. The point isn’t being on top of the blogger pool, or garnering 5,000 followers on Twitter. The point is creating relationships. Any social media marketer will tell you that Twitter and Facebook is completely useless without developing relationships. Any business man will tell you that building his online presence takes complete adherence to customer needs and interactions. It’s all about bringing people together.

While ASU Hindman focuses more on political social media, political bloggers and campaign tactics online, he still doesn’t seem to understand that without social media Obama probably never would have been able to reach the younger crowd in the way that he did. It’s no different than Clinton using MTV to reach the kids when he was running, and it will be no different than the next president using the next big thing to reach our kids.

Call it what you want, but social media has produced relationships of all kinds, helped businesses survive during these rough economic times, helped a black man become president, and allowed millions to find a sense of community where they might not have been able to find it before.