Archive for Search Engine Optimization

Small Business Website Gets a Face Lift

By Lisa · Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Sometimes just a little botox will do it. But in this case, our client’s website was overdue for a complete face lift. Touchstone Sports launched their website in 2005, featuring their sports memorabilia products to Vancouver retailers and restaurants. It was created in (much like many websites of its era) Front Page. Needless to say, this website needed a bit of a ‘freshening up’ so to speak. So, the web design team at Stand Out Online recently gave Touchstone’s website an overhaul- building it within WordPress and optimizing it for search engines. TouchStoneSports.com now features a full online catalogue so that their purchasers can scout out the hottest sports memorabilia prior to making an order. The best part about their new website is that they can maintain it completely on their own! They can upload new products with the click of a button and their website automatically puts the new memorabilia item on its appropriate page. It doesn’t get better than that! Oh- actually, maybe it does. TouchStoneSports.com is completely iPad and iPhone compatible and they are already getting more calls than with their old website. We think you’ll agree that TouchStoneSports.com looks 10 years younger with her new nip and tuck!

small business web design before small business web design after
Before After
(click the above website thumbnails to enlarge)
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Categories : Search Engine Optimization, Small Businesses, Stand Out Online Marketing Inc., Website Design
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Google Places Pages Are More Important Than Ever For Small Businesses

By Lisa · Comments (0)
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Did you hear!? Google introduced their new ‘Place Search’ recently. With over 20% of searches on Google related to location, what does this mean for small businesses? Our take on it is that it is now more important than ever to not only have a Google Places page, but it is also extremely important to optimize it, and link to your website.

Google Places for Small BusinessGoogle’s local ‘Places’ pages have been given more prominence in Google’s results, which in turn is drastically changing the way the organic search results are displayed. This is most likely a result of Google’s constant movement towards delivering the most relevant results to their users. Yay, Google we say!

The Google Places results will now be front-and-center when Google determines that a local search is being conducted. If not, the Google user can still use the ‘Places’ link that appears in the left-hand panel of the search results. The ‘Place’ search marks pins on a map for the given location by grouping together the search results. The map is now appearing on the right-hand side of the results page, where traditionally the 4th to 6th sponsored links appeared- now the right-column sponsored links are moving down.

Did you know!? Google Places allows you to upload your business logo, specify your hours, methods of payment and even add specials and promotions on a monthly basis. You can even embed videos, showcase photos and more. If you aren’t on Google Places, you may have an ‘unclaimed’ listing and you may even have reviews from your customers! Get on Google and check it out today- claim our listing and start using the restructured ‘Places’ pages to your small business’ advantage! The best part? It’s FREE- you just have to take the time to set it up. Or, if you are a Stand Out Online customer- we will set one up for you included with most packages.

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Categories : Google, Search Engine Optimization, Small Businesses

5 Reasons Why WordPress Rocks for Small Business Web Design

By Lisa · Comments (0)
Friday, October 8th, 2010

We’ve talked a lot about our love for WordPress, but we haven’t elaborated as to why it is far better than all the typical offerings pitched to small businesses as a website solution (products from Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, YellowPages.ca and others). It’s the tool that many of the Pros use and there are many good reasons for that. Here are five:

  1. wordpress for small businesGet Found!

    WordPress provides good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. Google loves WordPress websites!

  2. Easy Updates!

    It is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML.  There is no need to learn a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver! Do you have to pay your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer – once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily edit your pages using a simple rich text editor. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can update your website. It’s that easy.

  3. Combine Your Website & Blog!

    It can be a web site, a blog or both. Having a blog on your website not only adds additional content for your customers, it also helps to boost your search engine ranking- and it can be built right in to your website! No need to have a separate blog!

  4. It’s Free!

    It really is free! It is called ‘Open Source’ software and it is available to anyone who wants to use it. If you need design and set up help- For less than $500, you can get a custom-designed web site and blog for what you’d pay a designer or programmer $2000-$5000 for!

  5. It’s Customizable!

    Infinite design and feature customization. Because it is open source software, thousands of programmers create plugins for it every day. That means you can expand your website and blog easily by installing any plugin that suits you!

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Categories : Search Engine Optimization, Small Businesses, Website Design, WordPress
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Google is the New Yellow Pages

By Lisa · Comments (2)
Saturday, September 11th, 2010

A hot topic over the past 12 months has been the future of Yellow Pages. What will happen to Yellow Pages in 5 years? Ten years? Is Yellow Pages dying? With their recent logo adjustment to remove the printed book and simplify to just walking fingers, it is clear that Yellow Pages is adjusting it’s approach in order to keep its advertisers and its users alike and switch to a online and print focus instead of their primarily print-focused perspective of the past.

That said, 80% of Canadians are online, and while Yellow Pages claims that 16 million Canadians use their network every month,  82% of all Google Searches are looking for local results as well. That’s some seriously tough competition.

google vs yellowpagesI decided to do a little digging on this topic as I’ve got one client who gets great ranking on Google and also does some decent Google AdWords advertising every month as well. He has also got a lot of eggs in Yellow Pages basket, but for this experiment I am looking only at his online Yellow Pages advertising. My recent number crunching concluded this:

  • His Yellow Pages advertising brought visitors to his website at a cost of around $7.50 each and accounted for 2% of his website’s traffic.
  • His Google Advertising brought visitors to his website at a cost of around $1.80 each and accounted for 35% of his website’s traffic.
  • Google Organic results brought visitors to his website at no cost and accounted for 40% of his website’s traffic.

That means that in total, Google brought my client 75% of his website’s traffic! Amazing.

After digging up these results it was amazing to me how successful Google is at bringing traffic to websites. That is what they do best. Deliver relevant results to their end users. In fact, Google is the highest traffic-driver for all websites that we host.

So in conclusion, Google is the rock and Yellow Pages walking fingers are the scissors. I think you know what happens next.

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Categories : Google, Search Engine Optimization
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