I admit it.  I’m addicted to caffeine.  Once, in college, I even shot a video that included an IV drip from a coffee pot.  Living in the Pacific Northwest where there is a coffee stand on every other block (or at least it feels that way in some towns), you can’t help but be addicted to some form of caffeine.  But the Caffeine that I’m here to write about is Google’s new search technology.

For those who have been watching the Search Engine Optimization world lately, you already know that Google’s new search algorithm, Caffeine, went officially live on June 7th.  Partially released last September, it wasn’t until early May that the full promise of Caffeine hit.  The changes Google brought forth with this new search technology devastate some sites that were optimized using old tricks that no longer work.

Google yourself; search by your company name, by the terms you think your customers may type in to find you, and see if you’ve been affected.

Now that the dust is settling on Google’s changes, it’s time to take a look at the new Google Index, its new rules and top listings.  Here is what Google considers important in your sites:

• Fast Loading - delays of even a half of a second can have a negative effect on your site.  Visitor satisfaction will decrease, users will spend less time on your site and will return less frequently.  The trick is to not sacrifice quality for speed.  Smaller images would be key rather than using lesser quality images.
• Quality Over Relevancy - Long tail keywords were often relevant but lacked quality.  Having more incoming links and better matching specific search queries are what Google is looking for.
• Meta data is back – Google is using meta data description information for the descriptions in the search indexes. A quality description is once again an asset.  Keywords…not so much, but some.
• Social Media - While you can ask users to re-tweet or share your content to help give your ranking a boost.  Remember, an aggressive social media strategy does not replace a well designed and optimized web site.  Together, however, you have a powerful machine.
• Standard SEO Applies – The emphasis on the above is still small when compared to the SEO basics.  Build strong incoming links, produce unique content and optimize pages, videos and images.  Content is still the most important of all of these.

At beachdog.com, our SEO approach, for most clients, continues to be ‘white hat conservative‘.  We strive to apply standard SEO basics to help our customers generate longer-term ‘organic’ placement within search engines.  By focusing on our clients’ marketing goals, we make recommendations on how to best organize their online presence to remain competitive in the dog-eat-dog world of search.  Now, more than ever, is apparent that quality content, both visual and textual, delivered in an efficient manner, is more important to search ranking than fancy tricks that often drive customers away with increased load times or distracting images.

We’re offering some special pricing right now for clients who would like us to:

• Analyze what Caffeine means to their site(s)
• Make recommendations for improvement
• Make those improvements

As always, we like to meet you where you want to be met; we’ll be happy to teach you, guide you, or do it for you, at your discretion.  If you’re interested in learning more, zap me a note at karl@beachdog.com, or call on Code Puppy Ethan: ethan@beachdog.com or phone either of us: 360-642-4431.

Our fellow Web Hound, Blair, is working up some social marketing packages and plans for you.  Watch this blog for details soon.  With solid ‘white hat conservative’ SEO, a well-designed and functioning site and social networking, miracles happen!

~Karl

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Caffeinated SEO

Let’s give ‘em something to talk about… how about a brand new website?!

Blair, Keleigh, and Karl collaborated with Lost Roo owners, Helen and Mark Johnson, to build a unique website for their newly open restaurant. Helen specifically requested a design that really “POPS!” …and what pops more than a jumping roo? Keleigh used her boundless graphic design skills to create an animated splash page. Blair and Karl built the rest of the website in Wordpress, using plenty of our own custom images.

This site is a terrific example of how business owners can turn a simple blog into all-purpose website. Helen and Mark will continue to post periodically… and in return, they will obtain valuable feedback from customers! Welcome to the social media revolution!

Hop on in to take a peek at their location/hours, the latest menu, and even a special dedication to their surf-loving Aussie Shepards!

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The Lost Website!

Why?
Instead of using several independent databases we will be moving to a system that uses only one centralized database. This will significantly improve the rate at which spam is detected because the software will have a greater sampling of messages to analyze and be able to use that information to better detect spam.

It could take several days or weeks for the system to re-train appropriately, but we do not anticipate it taking that long for most users. The system will continue to improve at detecting spam once it has additional time to analyze and tag more inbound spam.

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Mail (Spam) Changes

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Renew Your Domains NOW. Don’t Wait and Pay More!

The Breakers hotel in Long Beach has been doing a lot of remodeling over the past several years and we were able to give them custom door plates to match their clean look.  Engraved plastic is actually pretty inexpensive, whether you need key fobs, name badges, door plates like these, or larger signs.  We can get most colors of plastic and turnaround is only about a week once you approve the art.  Stop by and browse samples!

The Breakers also ordered some custom pens recently for a special campaign.  They turned out really well, and match the specs we were given about as perfectly as one could hope.  Even better, we found a pen that met the specs at a really great price.

Don’t you just love happy endings?

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Engraved Plastic & Custom Pens

This project is a great example of how quickly we can get things done when everyone does their homework promptly.  We met with Terri on a Tuesday and Blair had her site all but finished Thursday afternoon.  Terri still needed to send us some text and photos, which she did, and that same day, the site was ready to go live.

Our team has plans for improvements down the road, but the Park was able to get their online presence going before the busy summer season made it impossible for Terri to even think about planning a website.  And it was super-affordable, to boot!

Meanwhile, Keleigh re-drew the Park’s logo, as the original art had been lost and they were also in need of some business cards.  Bundling this project with the website made it easy for us to create all the logo art files at once, which made it less expensive for the Park.

Congratulations on your new site, CranberryRVPark.com!

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Cranberry RV Park

The decals are clear, with a white imprint that reads from the outside of a window when the removable decal is placed on the inside.  Stop by the Café & Store and you might just talk them out of one.

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Knit Happens!

WordPress is a top-notch publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.  It is used for blogs about your dog and Fortune 500 companies alike.  We like it for many of our clients because:

• It allows you to make easy updates to your site without waiting, or paying for, web developers like us
• It’s simple; if you can use Microsoft Word – you can edit your WordPress site
• Because it is Open Source, the program is free, not going anywhere, and has thousands of programmers contributing to make it better
• It makes it easy for us to make your site mobile-friendly
• It makes it easy for us (inexpensive for you) to add a variety of functions to your site

WordPress has a new version (3.0) being released near the end of June.  There are quite a few exciting features but what we’re most excited about are some of the technical improvements “under the hood”. These improvements allow us to create even more impressive and complex sites.  Previously, when the team met with a new client, they determined if WordPress was a good fit or if they needed a more custom back end solution.  Much of the time, more custom meant a lot more expensive because it required a fair amount of high-end coding time.  Now, with this latest version, we can handle much more complexity, offer lower costs and keep Wordpress’s ease of use. Thats quite the trifecta!

Already have Wordpress? If you would like to chat to someone about what Wordpress 3.0 can be used to take your site to the next level — give me a woof!  360-642-4431  or ethan@beachdog.com

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WordPress 3.0 – A Sneak Peak

Ethan’s first assignment with us was to bend the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0 into submission.  I’m delighted to report that the combination of this new release of WordPress, along with Ethan’s skill, adds quite a number of fun tools to our box.  Look for lots more information on this in the coming weeks, starting with a post from Ethan later today.

If you’ve not met Blair and her trusty sidekick, Ollie, or Ethan and his muse, Humphrey, stop in and say hello!  They’re both available to you during our normal business hours of 9-5, Monday through Thursday (before and after hours, Fridays, weekends and holidays we leash everyone to desks and feed the Web Hounds kibble for code).

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Welcome Code Puppy Ethan Seifert!

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Memorial Monday