Staying up-to-date with business and marketing trends is critical to any company, but especially in an industry like weddings where most marketing happens online these days. But information doesn’t just fall from the sky, it means we have to do some homework. Finding time to learn something new everyday might not fit into your schedule, but carving out an hour or so a few days a week should be a priority, after all your clients expect you stay current with today’s trends.
Keeping current with wedding trends is probably easy as you know where and how to find that information, but what about search engine marketing trends? Or Search Engine Optimization tactics? Or web design best practices?
To start, you’ll need a RSS reader account. I’ll suggest using Google Reader as it’s free and easy to setup. Below are a few of the websites I follow regularly:
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Page titles are essential to your web pages for a several reasons, which include SEO and usability. Page titles are one of the first items that search engine spiders crawl when indexing your site, so page titles need to be relevant to the content on that page. Additionally, that page title appears in search engine results so if you want click throughs, it needs to be relevant. Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal details 7 criteria for effective page titles that are good to keep in mind when building or updating your website:
- page title should be short and concise (unless you want it’s broken at the end);
- each page title should be unique and the unique part should go first (if a visitor keeps several tabs from the same open, he should clearly see what each tab is about);
- it should be catchy (to communicate an effective message);
- page title should conform to the page purpose (e.g. calling to action or informational);
- page title should be based on your keywords (for Googlebot to understand what the page is about);
- page title should be focused (don’t try to include all your keywords in the title the home page);
- page title should be semantically correct (Google is likely to apply some kind of semantic analysis to titles to make sure they are not spammy).
A new report was released by The Pew Internet & American Life Project indicating that people are using online search almost as much as email. The study of 2251 adults (18+) reports that 49% are searching daily compared to 60% using email daily.
While email is still one of the most cost effective means of marketing to potential clients, and will remain so for the forseeable future, reports like this remind us that it can’t be our only marketing tactic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts should be a component of your marketing plan now, as should the use of social media (Facebook, Myspace, Digg, etc). This report is a friendly reminder that finding new clients takes a variety of activities. At WeddingWire, we make sure each individual vendors’ storefront is search engine friendly to maximize your exposure to those searching via Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others to give your listing maximum exposure.
If you’re looking for tips on updating your site to make it more search engine friendly I’ll soon be posting regularly on items to think about. In the meantime to get you started, here’s a few great resources on the web. Some of the websites and blogs you can find in my Google Reader include:
There’s lots of sites out there to find information on SEO tactics and using the web to your advantage as well. As most brides will start their research on the web somewhere
Such a simple phrase with such possibilities. When was the last time you submitted any news or a webpage to Digg.com? For those not familiar, Digg is one of the largest social media sites consisting solely of user generated content. Using Digg can be a great way to create new links to your website (links are a big piece of the search engine optimization game). If you have a blog, Digg your blog content with social bookmarks (like at the beginning or end of the post) and be sure to add a description about the submission. However, do NOT copy the first few lines of your article into the description. Duplicate content is not advised.
Additionally, your visitors can also Digg your posts right on your blog using Digg Tools if you’re feeling fancy (or want your webmaster to do it).
Remember, content is still most important so be sure to give your visitors something to Digg.
Try Digg by selecting the button below this link that matches the “Digg Guy” in this post.