Webacom Web News

Corporate Identity/Reputation - Search Engines

2007-08-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Have you googled your name or your business? Many consumers are using this powerful method to find out what kind of reputation an individual or a business has on or off line.

You can simply type the persons name or company or both. You can also add a word like "complaint" with the search word. It's amazing what you can find, BUT be aware the comments are not always true, however if there are a lot of complaints it could be an indication of what type of person or company you are considering working with.

Check yourself using your own name and business and see the results.

If you are a corporation you should have a Blog to allow people to tell you what they really think about your company. When you look at what was required years ago like hiring a marketing company to call your clients and get feedback was often time consuming and costly. You are able to get feedback quickly and efficiently.

Many corporations are concerned with public access to comment on any given company due to negative comments. If you use the Blog correctly though you can respond to any comments showing you are proactive about dealing with a complaint. This can actually help your company.

You can use your Blog to get ideas as well, perhaps new products or services. Either way a Blog can be crucial to your reputation.

Some corporations need help with negative feedback and search rankings showing less than flatering subjects about your company. New services are available to help you keep your reputation untarnished.

We have only covered a few subjects concerning this very important subject and we ask if you would like to see services offered to protect your business and/or a seminar to educate you about what you can do.

Looking forward to your comments. J

Google Revealed!

2005-08-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

Most of us have heard of "Google," but what is it and how can it benefit my business? Google, a popular search engine, is a tool for finding resources on the Internet. It uses technology known as “spidering” to scan web pages for instances of keywords. As well as information, you can also locate products, services, news, maps, and images.

Google was originally a Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who first met in 1995. On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. opened its doors. Google has become the largest search engine in the world offering the most relevant search results. Google reported record revenues of $1.38 billion for the quarter ending June 30, 2005, up 98% from last year.

Google Toolbar: This allows users to search outside of Google’s home page and displays important website information such as page rank and back links. A free download is available at www.toolbar.google.com.

Google Page Rank: Google Page Rank (or PR) is simply an indication of the number of websites that link to one another ranging from 0 to 10. Is Google Page Rank important to your business? Well, it is a good indicator of how important Google considers your site to be.

Getting Listed: A manual site submission may be made at www.google.com/addurl. Multiple submissions won't improve the likelihood of your site being added or accelerate the process.

How do you get top rankings for your keywords?

· Target Marketing: In order to raise your ranking, target more than one keyword. For instance, if you sell computers, you should NOT optimize your site for the keyword "computer" as it’s too competitive. Try keyphrases like “computer repair” or “computer networking.”

· Content: Sites that contain multiple pages related to a specific topic increase the likelihood of being 'found'. The more educational information the better, try creating a “Newsletter” page that is updated monthly with articles related to your industry.

· Linking Strategy: Also known as a popularity contest, link building is and should always be an essential part of the process. All search engines find new documents by following links. Google values links more than any other search engine and the more the better. Try surfing the web to find relevant websites and request reciprocal links.

By using the proper strategies, you will find that Google is a very powerful sales tool.

Website Confusion – What’s a Hit?

2004-07-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

Website Confusion – What’s a Hit?

Facts About Website Hits, Visitors and Page Views
Based on reading many articles in newspapers, advertisements and hearing from salespeople we constantly see the use of the term “hits” relevant to how well a website performs. The reality is many people do not understand what this means and as a result the general public is lead to believe that “hits” is a huge factor with any given website. This is totally misleading and were hoping to educate the general public as to what’s important and what’s not.

The Real Definition Of Hit Is...
A record of every file sent to a browser by a Web server. Note: we didn't say every page sent...we said every file sent.

Every image in a page is a separate file. When a visitor looks at a page (i.e. a page view), they may see numerous images, graphics, pictures etc. and generate multiple hits.

For example, if you have a page with 10 pictures, then a request to a server to view that page generates 11 hits (10 for the pictures, and one for the html file). A page view can contain hundreds of hits. This is the reason that we measure page views and not hits.

Another example is if you loaded a Web page with 999,999 tiny graphics under a headline, and had one site visitor last month, your site would have had one million hits. Hits are not a reliable way to measure website traffic.

Additionally, there is a high potential for confusion here, because there are two types of 'hits'. The hits we are discussing in this article are the hits recorded by log files, and interpreted by log analysis. A second type of 'hits' are counted and displayed by a simple hit counter. Hit counters record one hit for every time a webpage is viewed, also problematic because it does not distinguish unique visitors.

Considerations – What Information Should You Use
Don’t ask your web agency how many hits your website is getting; it’s useless.

To better understand the general interest in your site, start by asking for the number of "unique visitors." The only downside to this statistic is that it measures people who arrived at a page on your Web site--that's it. They could have landed and left within seconds, but they're still unique visitors. In other words, you could have 100,000 unique visitors and still have no site interest.

That's why it's better to know the number of unique visitors and the average number of page views per visitor. That is far more meaningful than "hits" or "unique visitors" alone.

Whenever an organization wishes to print website statistics it should always be “unique visitors” and “page views”. If a website receives 1000 visitors per month and shows 4000 page views the average visitor is looking at four pages. This is what really counts.

As you can appreciate most of the general public is led to believe that “hits” is actually visitors and it’s simply not true. There are some people/companies that are deceptive when advertising their website traffic stating well over 1 million hits or what have you. This is simply not right and the general public needs to know. My guess is most are being honest and simply don’t know the difference and that’s why we felt this was important to share.

Sincerely, Jay Somerville, President, Webacom Media Corp.