How Do You Communicate?

How do you communicate with your employees, customers, potential customers, and past customers? Are the communications tools you use effective, professional and clear? Are they cost effective? Are they manpower intensive? Are they consistent? Good answers to these questions will make a difference in morale and sales.

Understanding Search Engines Generates Higher Web Rankings

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There's Marketing Gold All Around Your Business
Leverage Seminars, Videos, Commercials For Better Web Results

By Rick Vidallon, President, Visionefx
Rourk Public Relations’ Strategic Partner

Many companies have marketing gold laying around their office or hidden in their computers. These untapped assets can give you a leg up on the competition if marketed correctly.

Google wants to show its users more than text and photos, and it has successfully been rolling out a program called Universal Search that targets Blogs, News, Video and Images.

For the smart business owner, the days of posting only news releases, marketing content and still photos are over. You can now enhance your search engine results and potential client base by taking advantage of this new opportunity.

Go to the Google homepage and type in "Google headquarters."
You should see three photos at the top of the results page.

Now type in "Google datacenters." You should see a thumbnail photo of Matt Cutts, the Google-Guy. This is a thumbnail from his talks posted on Google Video.

Video Shows and Commercials
If you have a show, seminar, teaching session, marketing video, tradeshow video, TV commercial, instructional video, industrial video, safety video, educational video or webinar you should post it on any of the free, large video Web sites. These include:

Truveo Video Search

Google Video also Google Beta Upload Program for TV Stations

YouTube Broadcast Yourself

SoapBox Video (Beta Microsoft)

I'm not going to promise that your video is instantly going to start popping up in search results, but chances are it will. Especially when there are searches for more cryptic information.

Be sure to tag and title your video properly. For example, if you're uploading an instructional video about "Sexual harassment in the Workplace," make sure you include the title as such and a complete description of the video.

Convert Your PowerPoint to Video too!
Just about every company creates PowerPoint presentations. Convert these to video and upload them as well. If you have a PowerPoint about "The Impact of Unregulated Chinese Toothpaste in the US" chances are your PowerPoint will appear in the Google search results for this topic.

Multiple Stores, Businesses and Locations
Companies can also leverage there multiple locations. Google allows stores, companies and businesses to register their individual locations through Google Local. (Google Maps).

Google wants to capture, saturate and grow hyper accurate local results! So why not help them and tell about your locations across the US!
http://www.google.com/local/add

If you have more than 10 locations, Google will let you manage these from one spreadsheet.

Google is so serious about this program that they're paying independent contractors to visit local businesses, gather data and photographs of local businesses, and tell the business owners about Google Maps and Google Ad Words.

Photos, Images and Graphics
Google and other search engines, most noticeably Ask.com, show photos, images and graphics in their search results.

Go to Ask.com and type; Andy Warhol Work http://www.ask.com/web?q=Andy+Warhol+Work&search=&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir
Notice that there are three images at the top page that link to other Web sites.

The images in your Web site may start appearing in search results depending on the amount of imagery you use and its related search query. Here are some helpful hints to pass along to your webmaster.

1) Use keywords or key phrases in the image file name.
Example: < img src= "red_rubber_ball.jpg" >

2) Use the same keywords or key phrases in the ALT TAG.
Example: < ALT= "red_rubber_ball.jpg" >

3) Keep the image near the supporting content or text on the Web page.

4) Upload your images to popular photo sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket.

Adding videos, listings and images to your web site will give your business a competitive advantage as Universal Search grows and takes hold in all the popular search engines.

Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United States. Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or www.visionefx.net.