We’re delighted to announce the arrival of this year’s Official Program for the Washington State International Kite Festival (WSIKF). We gave it a bit of a facelift this year and would love to hear your thoughts so we can make it even better in 2011.

Like most of the events produced here on the Long Beach Peninsula, WSIKF is 100% volunteer driven.  Still, the organization manages to stay in the black while producing a stellar week of events, including guests from around the world.

You can download a copy of this year’s program now, or pick one up at the Long Beach Peninsula Visitors Bureau, the Kite Museum, or the event’s information booth during the festival.

When you see someone wearing an official WSIKF ID badge, shake their hand and tell them THANK YOU for volunteering their time and talent. They don’t hear it enough!

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

SandSations Sand Sculpture Competition in Long Beach not only got a new Chair of the event this year, it got a new logo, brochure, website, and added three days of activities!

Chair Becky Johnson developed a logo for the event and designed this year’s brochure.  We took care of the printing (we’ve got the best color tri-fold pricing around, gang!) and then Keleigh used Becky’s brochure as a base for designing a website for the event. Here’s a little peek into our process:

• Ethan took the design and, quick as a dog can lick a dish, turned it into a WordPress-based shell of a site.
• Intern David (who left us last week and whom we already miss terribly) ported the event information from its pages on funbeach.com into the new site’s database.
• Keleigh went behind David, re-purposing elements and information, adding photos from prior years, and, in general, organizing the facts for a user-friendly presentation.
• Meanwhile, Keith did some research on long-tail key phrases for the site, which Ethan and Keleigh then ran through our proprietary process known as “Site Wide Level I Search Engine Optimization”, so the site should come up with a solid, organic, search result.
• While that magic was taking place, Wendy, Sue and Keith were clicking through things in general, looking for errors, points of confusion or any other items we could improve.
• Finally, it all came to the inevitable crescendo known as site launch!

That’s when we told Becky we had started work on her site.  Long Beach Merchants Association Event Chairs are volunteers here on the Peninsula, so we try to help them out when we can, and not add work to their oh-so-full-and-unpaid platters.  Becky’s just about done giving the site her thorough once-over so we can make requested changes.  In a few short weeks, it will be time to change all the information for 2011!

Take a look.  We’re pleased, and hope you are, too.

We’ve done a fair number of site overhauls recently where the goal was to make significant functional changes without affecting the look and feel of the site more than we had to.  Sometimes, the brand is working but the site owner is ready to step it up a notch in terms of technology.  That’s the case with Pelicano Restaurant:

Jeff and Shelly wanted to be able to easily edit the site themselves, and poise themselves for additional marketing flexibility, but were still really happy with the site they co-designed with Keleigh and Sabrina as the restaurant opened.  They think it looks a lot different now, testimony to their attention to detail.  The best compliment we’ve received is no comment at all; even the Pelicano customers who are quick to remind us that a menu posting is a day late have been silent.  Is it possible they don’t see the difference?  We hope so!

We helped Lewis and Clark Historical Association, the group behind the bookstore at Fort Clatsop, put their inventory online a number of years ago, but weren’t ready to dive into online transactions.  When you’re a private entity working within a National Park, things aren’t quite as simple as they are in the non-governmental arena.  Going through a new design process at the same time made time line prohibitive AND they were happy with the basic design, so we kept it!

Goodwinds recently purchased Avia Sport, leaving them with half a dozen domains, two shopping carts, a blog and a small handful of essentially non-functioning sites.  Most of these online resources were diluting the market more than feeding one another.  Principals Roger Holeman and Amelia Cook had a long talk with Keleigh about the direction of the company and the three made a plan for how to best leverage online resources for the long haul.

What you see above is the Goodwinds Blog, which got a new header and sales tools in its sidebar that lead back to the Goodwinds e-commerce site, which gets its new, similar header very soon.  The Avia sites will soon re-launch with a similar look that is designed to transition customers with Avia brand recognition to Goodwinds.  It’s a bit of a complex tumble of dominoes–and a lot of fun to watch it roll out as expected.

It has been an absolute delight to work with the Lewis & Clark National Park Association, which runs the bookstore in Fort Clatsop, the main visitor center of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Parks.  Not only do I love, love, LOVE the park itself, the people that work there are pretty spectacular.

If you’ve not been to the Park in awhile, take the time to make a visit.  Personally, my favorite days are summer, when the Fort Replica fills with the sights and sounds of a turn-of-the-century working camp and, in winter, when trails are quiet and imaginations can run rampant with what it was really like to winter over there in 1805-1806.

Lewis & Clark National Park Association is a private non-profit organization which supports educational activities at Fort Clatsop and offers an incredible depth and breadth of Lewis & Clark memorabilia and educational items in their on-site bookstore, as well as online.  They’re a hard-working lot that always has a smile, a can-do attitude, and a passion for history and the park itself.

Consider using our latest brochure for the group, to join and support the educational activities at Fort Clatsop, which you can pick up at the book store, or here at beachdog.com.  As I type, hundreds of schoolchildren are finishing up ranger-led field trips, a Youth Nature Writing Contest has just concluded, Nature Adventure Camp is about to put smiles on kids’ faces, and these are just a few of the many events and programs in store.  This is top-notch, family-fun, educational entertainment, folks.  And it is right here in our own back yard.

Enjoy!

~Keleigh