If you do design work, you’ve probably been in a situation where you had a raster image, like a jpeg or png file, that you needed in a vector format. Maybe it’s a logo where a client wanted to make a large banner or sign but no longer had the original vector files. Regardless, if it’s something you may need to significantly enlarge without losing resolution, it needs to be a vector file.

Following is a pretty simple 6 step process for converting your raster image to a vector file. These instructions are specific to Adobe CS5 but the functionality is pretty much the same for all the recent version of Adobe Creative Suite. We’re using images from a recent client logo we designed to illustrate the process.

Step 1: Clean it Up In Photoshop

Depending on the size or resolution, you may need to do a little cleanup or enhancement on your image in Photoshop before you try and convert it. It’s probably a good idea to enlarge any really small files so they’re at least 2-3 inches wide or tall (depending on the image orientation). It may also make sense to clean and smooth the edges if the image was poor quality or low resolution. When you’re done with this, simply save the touched up image as a 300 DPI jpeg or png file using the “Save As” option in your “File” menu.

Step 2: Import Into Illustrator and Open Live Trace

To get started in Illustrator, simply select the image you saved and open it with Adobe Illustrator. Once your file is open, simply click on the image using your “Selection Tool”. Once the image is selected, move your cursor up and click “Object” from the menu bar so the drop down appears then scroll down to “Live Trace” and you’ll see “Tracing Options” from the additional menu. It should look something like this.

Step 3: Set Tracing Options and Trace

Once you select “Tracing Options” from the menu options a new box will open up that will allow you to set your tracing options and preview the traced image. Be sure to make the proper selection for black and white or color and adjust your other settings accordingly. It’s important to keep in mind that the number of colors you use to trace the image can have a pretty significant impact on the crispness and clarity of the image. For this reason, you’ll want to click the “Preview” option (see button on right side of the box in the image below) and preview several color options to get the best clarity. Once you find the one you want, just click the “Trace” button on the top right and Illustrator will do the rest.

 Step 4: Proceed to Live Paint

If you’re going to want to make changes to any of the vector paths or colors in the image, you’ll need to do a “Live Paint” as well. You can easily do this by making sure the image is selected using your “Selection Tool” and then clicking “Object” on the menu bar again. This time you scroll down and hover over “Live Paint” to expand the menu. It should look something like the image below.

Since the default options are usually all you’ll need, you can probably skip any additional settings and just click the “Make” option on the menu. Again, Illustrator will complete the process.

Step 5: Delete Background Fill

Once the “Live Paint” is completed, you can delete any background color (usually white) so all that remains is the image itself. To do this, select your “Lasso Tool” as shown in the image below.

Using your “Lasso Tool”, select a small piece of the background fill and complete a lasso circle to highlight the background area. This should give you a result something like this image.

Once you have the area highlighted, just click the “Delete” button on your keyboard. You can repeat this process, as needed, if you have several unconnected areas of background fill.

Step 6: Save File and Exit

As far as the conversion process goes, that’s it! Since you’ve fully converted the file you can now re-size it or edit colors as required. You can also export it or save it to a variety of file types. At the very least, you’ll want to save it as an ai or eps file so you can edit it however you want in the future as a vector file.

Need a New Website?

If you’ve been thinking about whether or not it’s time to invest in a new website for your business then you probably already know the answer is yes. If you’re still not sure, though, here are ten easy ways to tell that you probably need a new website.

10 Things That Say a New Website is Needed

1)      You Don’t Have One – It doesn’t really matter if you’re active on every type of social media site there is, you need your own website. Unless it’s something you own, you could be blocked, banned, hijacked or deleted at the whim of someone else. Move into the 21^st century and get yourself a shiny new website.

2)      Your website traffic is low and/or dropping – While traffic volume is relative, even local and small business sites should be able to easily generate 20-30 visits daily with a properly built and optimized website. If you’re seeing fewer visits than that you should consider an upgrade.

3)      You can’t update any parts of your website yourself – One of the biggest benefits to SEO is new content and frequent updates. We’ve found that many clients are more likely to perform updates if they can log in and do it themselves.

4)      Your website doesn’t feature a blog – A blog is good idea for the SEO benefits mentioned in point two as well as the fact that you can use a blog to let customers and prospects learn more about you and develop a comfortable relationship. In short, blog equals more traffic.

5)      Your website isn’t mobile friendly – With the explosive growth in smart phone and tablet ownership and usage, a responsive website that’s mobile friendly is a must. Not having one means you may be missing as much as 60-70% of your potential customer base.

6)      You can’t integrate your social media presence – Social media is huge and it’s here to stay. If you can’t properly integrate your social media presence with your website presence you’re missing out on a tremendous source of potential business opportunity.

7)      All your competitors have better websites – This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you look like you’re not as good as your competition then that’s probably what you’ll be.

8)      The information on your current site is outdated – If you’re still displaying old products, services, prices, contact information, etc., you definitely need to consider a new website. Not only can you update what you have now but you can build a site to make it easier to update in the future.

9)      Your pages take too long to load – With technology advancements over the past few years there’s no good reason every page on your website shouldn’t load in less than a couple seconds. People don’t want to wait for pages to load. If you make them, they’ll leave.

10)   You have a hard time finding your own website on Google – Search engines have become increasingly intelligent over the past few years and your website technology needs to keep pace. If you have trouble finding your site (and you’re looking for it), do you really think anyone else is likely to find it?

No Better Marketing Investment

Just because it’s a great investment doesn’t mean it has to be a really expensive project. You don’t need to pay $10,000 to get a really nice, professional, modern website that looks great and is easy to update. When weighing the cost versus the benefits, there’s probably no better investment for your marketing dollars than a new website.

So What’s a Good Click-Through Rate?

Since this is the next, and most obvious, question, we’re always ready with some answers. The first answer is that a good CTR is heavily dependent on a number of factors. Assuming most factors are generally equal, though, we can provide the following insight on targeted CTR for some of the most common online advertising options.

Search Ads

Location: Search Engines (Google, Bing, etc.) 

Media Type: Text

Primary Target: B2C

Good CTR: 3% to 6% 

Display Ads

Location: Display Networks (e.g. Google) or any website 

Media Type: Image

Primary Target: B2C

Good CTR: 1% to 4% 

Facebook Ads

Location: Facebook 

Media Type: Image and Text

Primary Target: B2C

Good CTR: .1% to 1.5% 

Twitter Ads

Location: Twitter 

Media Type: Text (promoted Tweets)

Primary Target: B2C

Good CTR: 2% to 4% 

Linked In Ads

Location: Linked In 

Media Type: Image and Text

Primary Target: B2B

Good CTR: .03% to .1% 

Improving Your Advertising CTR

Here are a few factors that can have a significant impact on your advertising CTR.

• Ad Targeting
• Ad Copy and Keywords
• Ad Creative
• Type of Offer
• Industry Competition
• B2B vs. B2C Audience

With that said, there are a number of additional factors that can affect your CTR and describing them in detail is probably a good topic for another article.

An important aspect of any Trade Marketing Operational Plan is defining who, within your organization, will interact with your customers. This is a component of your Trade Coverage Plan and ensures that the appropriate level of resources is dedicated to each customer and customer type. Another benefit of defining Customer Touch Points is eliminating inefficiency and overlap in your customer coverage.

Customer Contacts Beyond Sales

There are many ways in which your organization interacts with customers. While Sales is the most obvious customer contact resource, they are certainly not the only touch point. To get the most out of your selling resources, it’s helpful to take a proactive view on customer interaction and strategically define who, when and how other departments and roles should interact with customers.

Customer Touch Points Defined

Following are a few common examples of Customer Touch Points and their definitions within a Trade Marketing hierarchy.

• Sales Representative – Dedicated salespeople who make physical visits to a defined customer base. These are generally field-based and are the primary face of the company to the bulk of your customer base.
• Events Staff – People assigned to staff trade events such as seminars, training events and trade shows. They may be a shared or dedicated resource and can be internal or external.
• Customer Service – Generally a dedicated, centralized resource whose primary contact with customers is not in person but through electronic means such as phone, fax and email. They generally manage things like orders, billing inquiries, basic product or service question and delivery details.
• Technical Support – Generally a dedicated resource whose primary function is to provide more detailed or technical information on your products or services. Their interaction with customers is most often via electronic means but may include physical visits depending on your structure and the complexity of your products and services.
• Telesales/Telemarketing – Generally a dedicated, centralized resource whose primary function is to actively contact customers based on specific campaigns or customer criteria. Contact is almost exclusively through electronic means such as phone, fax and email.
• Website/Social Media – Generally a centralized resource whose contact with customers takes place through online media resources such as your website contact forms and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Failure to Plan is a Plan to Fail

Your company, like any other team, will perform better if your individual team members understand their roles. Defining Customer Touch Points and their roles within your Trade Coverage Plan doesn’t need to be complex to be effective. Unless your resources are unlimited, and no company has that luxury, a simple but solid plan will help you interact effectively with your trade partners while maintaining consistency and alignment throughout the relevant departments.

As consumers, we’ve developed something of a resistance to advertising. There’s so much of it out there that we tune a lot of it out. For brands, this has resulted in more creative and outrageous attempts to break into consumer consciousness that often overlook the main goals of quality advertising. In a perfect brand world, a consumer should walk away from exposure to one of their ads being able to answer the following three questions.

1. What’s the Brand?
2. What’s the Message?
3. Why should I care? 

Since achieving this result is often difficult, it’s important to be disciplined in your advertising and creative process to ensure your advertising dollars are spent efficiently and effectively. Here are a few of the fundamentals we employ to make sure our clients get the most out of their advertising campaigns.

Be Brand Memorable

It doesn’t matter how cute or funny your ad is if they can’t remember your brand or your message. Your advertising is there to inform consumers about your brand. Entertainment, while sometimes helpful, should be secondary. Don’t get too caught up in having the funniest and most creative ad. If consumers take nothing from your ad other than a strong and generally favorable impression of your brand then you’ve achieved some degree of success.

Emphasize Your Differences

People don’t buy brands because they’re like other brands. They buy brands for their perceived differences or unique qualities. Don’t waste your time or money on listing all the attributes of your brand. Instead, focus on the 2-3 key attributes that make your brand unique and attractive to your target audience.

Say What You Mean

In most cases, the art of subtlety is lost in the advertising realm. Consumers aren’t likely to pay enough attention to pick up on vague points. If you want your message understood, be direct and specific in how you communicate it. We’re not saying you can’t be creative because creativity can be useful and appealing. We are saying you shouldn’t sacrifice clarity for creativity, though.

But Don’t Try to Say too Much

Consumers rarely read or listen to an ad in its entirety. You have about 3-5 seconds to catch their attention and maybe 10-15 seconds more once you get it. Regardless of the medium, keep your words to a minimum and your message clear and concise. Advertising isn’t a conversation. It’s the one-sided dissemination of information. If you catch their attention early you might just keep it for a little while.

Be Relevant

Even if they remember your brand and your message, they aren’t going to act on it unless you make it relevant to them. Effective advertising will help them connect to your brand and give them a reason to want it. Your advertising message should focus heavily on those attributes that are going to appeal to your targeted consumers.

Make Your Ads Sell

Whether print, TV or online, the ad isn’t doing much good for the company or brand if it doesn’t drive a desired behavior. Usually that desired behavior is to buy your products or services. While we recognize the value of advertising in building brand awareness, this shouldn’t overshadow the primary goal of selling more products and services. If your ads don’t sell, get some new ads.

The Most Important Goal of Advertising

At the end of the day, all the words and creativity and pretty pictures don’t mean a thing if all you get out of it are some advertising awards. The only advertising awards you should be concerned about winning are the ones that show up in your company financial statement. They’re called profits.

The Importance of SEO

One of the most efficient ways you can spend resources to grow awareness of your small business is to invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We manage SEO for a number of our clients but also have the occasional client that wants to invest the money elsewhere or simply doesn’t have the money to spend. This is when we strongly encourage them not to do without SEO and, if they don’t want to pay for it, they should consider doing it themselves.

Don’t Let Fear Get in the Way

Generally, there is some initial uncertainty and concern about doing things incorrectly that could damage their online presence and reputation. While this is a very real concern, there’s no reason small business owners can’t do their own SEO provided they follow a few basic steps. With a reasonable investment of time, any small business owner should be able to manage some basic SEO for their business without spending a dime.

Do-It-Yourself SEO Tips

Here are some of the basics we generally recommend before you consider doing your own SEO.

• Learn a Few of the Basics – If you’re going to do your own SEO, learn of few of the basic things about SEO to help you avoid any major mishaps. There are plenty of online resources you can use to learn some good ways to get started and we’re happy to provide input.
• Teach Yourself a Little Coding – You don’t need to be a web development expert but a little coding knowledge is necessary to do SEO. If you have a basic html website, you’ll need to know some html to properly setup your meta tags and descriptions. Even if you have a CMS website like WordPress, a little html knowledge may be necessary to make full use of plugins and widgets.
• Do Some Keyword Research – Spend some time looking at key competitors and evaluating your own goals to determine your desired keyword targets. There are also plenty of free online resources to help you evaluate the best keywords to meet your search objectives.
• Do Some Website Housecleaning First – Before you think about Off-Site SEO, make sure your website is in order from an On-Site SEO perspective. Depending on the size and complexity of your site, it’s best to set aside 8-12 hours for this.
• Brush Up On Your Writing Skills – Possibly the best thing you can do for SEO is to keep your website content fresh and dynamic. Set aside 2-3 hours per week to make sure you continue to create and publish fresh, relevant content to your website.
• Consistently Build Backlinks – Content alone isn’t enough if nobody knows about it. If you spend 3-4 3-4 hours per week building backlinks to your website naturally you will see growth in your traffic and rankings and shouldn’t suffer any adverse effects from Google.
• Take Advantage of Analytic Tools – It’s absolutely essential that you continue to monitor your website presence and profile to be sure you’re making headway. At a minimum, you should setup a free Google account for your business and make use of Google+, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools.

SEO is Worth the Effort

The time you spend learning and then doing your own SEO is well worth the effort. As consumers continue to evolve to predominantly online search, you’re certain to see some type of return on your investment. If you stick with the basics it’s unlikely that you’ll run into any major difficulties. If you do, you can always give us a call and we’ll help get you through them.

Revenge of the Black and White SEO Critters

If you spend any time in the internet world and have even the most basic understanding of SEO, you’ve probably been affected by recent Google Panda and Penguin algorithm updates. A number of Chicken Littles are even running around and clucking about SEO being dead and link building being a thing of the past. Give it a rest already!

First of all, if you weren’t trying to aggressively manipulate your links and rankings you probably suffered very little if at all. We actually gained traffic and did not have a single client website that was adversely affected by the recent updates. That’s not to say we don’t engage in any SEO activities (we do) or that we plan to stop any time soon (we don’t). The reality is, if you look like you’re trying to game the system, Google will probably assume you are and you’ll eventually pay the price.

The Natural Way to Build Links

Even in a post-Penguin world it makes sense to continue to build links that can benefit your website’s ranking factors. The key is to do it in ways that appear natural and not to draw undue attention to your activities. The best way to appear natural is, of course, to be natural and engage in building links in such a way as you would do it to gain legitimate, relevant traffic and customers. Here are a few of the ways we engage in legitimate link building that haven’t failed us yet.

1. Social Sharing – If you have useful website content (and if you don’t…start creating it), it’s only natural that you’d be out there sharing it on social media. If you’re not using social media to help share your content, crawl out from under the rock you’ve been living under and get busy sharing. Pick no more than the best 1 or 2 options for your type of business and get busy.
2. Press Releases – If you have legitimate news about your company or brand, press releases are a great way to share the news as well as generate links to your website. If done well, press releases generate lasting links that will deliver qualified referrals to your website for many months.
3. Directory Submissions – These have developed a pretty poor reputation over the past few years but that’s mostly because they were a big piece of the problem when it came to gaming the search engines. You should definitely avoid the link farms and generic, pay-through-the-nose directories. You should definitely use the ones that are free, or very affordable, and are relevant to your business. For example, we design websites so it is useful and only makes sense that we should be listed on web design directories.
4. Guest Blogging – If you’re running a blog, guest blogging remains a good opportunity to build legitimate links. It’s a mistake to overdo this (unless you have unlimited time) but a few well-placed articles on relevant, high traffic sites is still beneficial. Again, make sure they are relevant to your type of business and the website is reputable.
5. Follow vs. No-Follow Links – If you’re building links naturally it only stands to reason that some of them would be No-Follow links. They may not be worth as much as Follow links but they’re worth having if only to balance out and legitimize your entire group of links. Keep growing both kinds if you want to look natural and do it gradually rather than in large chunks.
6. Vary Your Anchor Text – Where possible, you should try to make sure your anchor text varies among your key phrases. If all your anchor text is exactly the same this is a pretty clear signal that your links did not occur naturally and is like waving a big red flag that says “Google smack me down”.
7. Internal Linking – These are often overlooked and that’s a big mistake. Your own internal links are the one group of links over which you have total control. Not only will good internal linking help keep your bounce rate down, they also allow you the ability to vary your anchor text significantly and focus on the content you value the most. If you don’t act like your content is important, why would Google think it is?

Don’t Forget the Fresh Content

If you keep adding fresh, new, unique content to your website and share it through the methods noted above, links will just start building on their own. Content Marketing, or Inbound Marketing, isn’t a quick fix but good SEO never is. You often hear the saying “Content is King” and it’s definitely an important aspect of any SEO platform.  It’s always easier to build links through sharing if you actually have something worth sharing.

I recently read an article by Brian Millar on Fastco Design about Why Branding Is An Artifact Of The Past. In the article he was basically making the case that traditional branding no longer makes sense, nor is it effective, in today’s digital age. He gave examples of companies like Google and General Motors and Apple to try and make his argument and the argument primarily hinged on a few key assumptions that I’ll paraphrase.

Key Assumptions

1. Consumers won’t value things because we tell them they should.
2. Brand Marketing research and Brand Equity models are flawed.
3. Social and other Digital Media make it easier for consumers to have a voice about your brand.

What Is Branding?

To put it simply, he is dead wrong and is misguided by a very narrow and inaccurate understanding of branding. This is exactly the kind of thing that used to drive me crazy when I dealt with agencies and the primary reason I founded one. Branding isn’t outward communication that you use to fool consumers into believing your brand is what they want. Branding is actually putting in the effort to find out what they want and then living up to it. Brand Communication is just the process of letting them know.

Good Branding is Pervasive and Eternal

The problem with most “agencies” and “marketing consultants” is that they’ve never had to actually live with the brand, day in and day out, over an extended period of time. Walk a few miles, or years, with your consumers and you gain a much more expansive understanding of the nature of good branding. Good branding is actually living and breathing the principles of your brand from sourcing to manufacturing to pricing to advertising to customer service to everything else. Branding isn’t who you say you are. It’s who you actually are.

You Never Could Fool Consumers for Long

The idea that Digital and Social Media means you can’t fool consumers anymore is a fallacy. You never could fool them for very long and that shouldn’t be the goal. Good brands always knew this and bad brands found it out through their eventual failures. The Brand Communication process has always been more complex than just a monologue from Brand to Consumer. Consumers have always been talking to one another. Digital Media just provides the means for it to happen faster and wider and for the Brand to have more visibility of it than ever before.

Branding is More Important Than Ever

That’s right! I’m arguing the exact opposite of Mr. Millar. In the age of Digital Media, the variety, volume and speed of consumer interaction makes good branding more important than ever before. There are now many more ways to communicate and fewer ways to hide your mistakes. This makes it essential to have your entire organization aligned behind a consistent branding proposition. I’ve lived on both the company side and the agency side and the one universal truth I’ve learned is this. Branding fails at the company level, for a few common reasons, when you break your branding pact with your consumers. The backlash in reduced sales and media backlash is just them telling you they know what you did.

Each brand grows and evolves throughout its life and needs to be properly managed and nourished to make sure it stays healthy. Even healthy brands can quickly lose momentum when treated poorly or neglected. Unfortunately, many of us do great harm to our brands despite our good intentions.

I’ve had the opportunity to manage brands in multiple industries and at various stages of the brand life cycle. This experience has included established brands that were number one in market share to freshly launched startup brands. Regardless of size or age or industry, they all needed proper nurturing to become healthy and grow.

Even Good Intentions Can End Badly

It’s possible that external events can cause damage to the brand, but there’s often little we can do to protect against that other than damage control after the fact. Even if you make all the right moves with your brand, unforeseen events may still occur that are beyond your control. Since it does us no good to dwell on those things we can’t control, we’ll focus on the things we can control. Brand Management, or mismanagement, is something we can control and is the point of this discussion.

In my experience, most of the harm we do to our brands is the direct result of the decisions we make and the actions we take. While the abuse we sometimes cause may be unintended, it is generally not accidental. Following is a quick breakdown of what I consider to be the three most common ways we abuse our brands despite very good intentions.

Branding Mistake #1: Narcissism

Quite simply, this is when we, as marketers, attempt to make our brand a reflection of our own desires. Here’s a newsflash for you. It isn’t about you! The single most important role for any manager of brands is to serve as the voice of the consumer within your company. This means you need to set your personal wants and needs aside and focus on satisfying those of the consumer.

I’ve encountered this at every company I ‘ve worked with and with many people both inside and outside marketing. My favorite response when I encountered this was a pointed reminder of the role of brand management. It went something like “What you like doesn’t matter…we focus on what our consumers like”. Any company unwilling to adhere to this approach with their brands will eventually have some very weak brands.

Branding Mistake #2: Everything to Everyone

Our brand is a great brand. If we water down the brand attributes that strongly define it as belonging to a particular segment it can appeal to everyone, right? Wrong. Your brand is what it is and the attributes that clearly differentiate your brand from the competition are strengths. It’s rare that a strong brand can have universal appeal.

I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that, if you focus on everything, you’ve focused on nothing. If you want a brand that is built to last, it is absolutely essential that you remain disciplined in your brand positioning. This means you appeal strongly to the target consumer base and you accept that this means your realistic market potential has its limitations. Even the biggest brands have to live with this if they’re going to survive.

Branding Mistake #3: Handyman Special

This may be the worst of the bunch and I’d estimate it’s the most common. This is the death of your brand through excessive tinkering. I’m guessing most of you have seen this. You have a healthy brand experiencing steady, organic growth and you have some turnover on your brand team. Then a new guy comes in and he’s god’s gift to marketing and decides it’s time to change your brand strategy.

Big mistake. A brand strategy is a long term plan. While it’s healthy to periodically evaluate your plan and refresh your tactics, you don’t change your strategy if your brand is healthy. I don’t care if you change out your brand managers every six months. You don’t change your strategy to match. You’re much better off to maintain consistent implementation of a good strategy than to keep changing in pursuit of the perfect strategy.

It’s About Discipline

This is by no means a full list of all the ways we abuse our brands and just knowing what they are won’t guarantee that you avoid them. At the end of the day, brand management success will be much more dependent on remaining disciplined in your brand plan than on brilliant innovation. I know big, radical change is fun and sexy but it’s not the key to long term success.  Your brand team, like any other team, should be well versed in the fundamentals of brand management and kept within the boundaries those fundamentals provide.

Good On-Site SEO is Still Important

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has been around for quite a while and the tactics continue to evolve for both On-Site and Off-Site SEO. A lot of the basics of On-Site SEO, though, have remained relatively unchanged and continue to be very important if you want to garner your fair share of organic search traffic. Following is our quick ten step checklist to help you manage your On-Site SEO like a pro.

10 Step On-Site SEO Checklist

• Pick a Strong Domain Name: Choose a domain name that is as short as possible and is relevant to your website content and, if it’s important, location. This is the first place to get started on the practice of making every keyword count.
• Keep Your URLs Short and Simple: Our rule for URLs is the shorter and simpler the better. Limit your words, skip the symbols (other than hyphens) and use relevant, detailed keywords.
• Make Meta Tags Relevant and Unique: These aren’t as important as they once were, but they still have some value. Try to keep your meta titles and meta descriptions very specific to your website content and don’t bother keyword stuffing as it’s only counter-productive.
• Limit Your Clicks: We generally follow a 3 Click Rule. In short, you shouldn’t need to click more than three times to get to any page on your site. Wider is better than deeper.
• Use Your H1 andH2 Tags: The text in your H1 and H2 tags may be the most important words on your website pages. These are how you tell the search engines what your site is really about and what’s important so definitely use them but don’t abuse them.
• Use Internal Links: While this may seem to contradict the previous point it actually supports it. It’s a good idea to embed internal links to other relevant pages of your website throughout your website content (not just in the menu). Don’t overdo it but it just stands to reason that search engines might find your pages more important if you demonstrate that they are to you as well.
• Get Your Keywords in Your Content: If you want to get found in search for the right reasons it definitely helps to have plenty of the right keywords in your content. If it seems overdone it probably is so make sure your website copy seems natural to the reader but get your keywords in there. Get a Google account and track your keyword density at Webmaster Central to make sure it’s where you want it.
• Tag Your Images: If you properly title and tag your images they add value to organic search. The title tag is what will show up when someone hovers over that image. If for some reason the image doesn’t load, or your visitor is using an assistive device to view your page, the alternate text tag is the text they’ll see in place of your image. These are searchable and are a good way to help search engines understand what your website is about.
• Don’t Forget Your Site Map: The easier your site is to crawl the more likely it is you’ll rank well in search. An XML Site Map makes your site more transparent to search engines and there are plenty of sites on the web to help you create one if you don’t know how.
• Keep the Content Coming: Don’t let your website content get stale. If you want people, and search bots, to keep coming back, you need to give them a reason to. We recommend doing content updates at least monthly and more often is better.

Understanding Your SEO

That’s pretty much the basics you need to be aware of in setting up your website for optimal search engine visibility. If you’re interested in the full-fledged Google version, you can always reference their downloadable Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. If you have specific questions, feel free to comment or shoot us an email and we’ll be happy to help.