The ImageX Media Blog

Welcome to Our Blog

Linda Bustos — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

All of us at ImageX Media are excited to have finally launched our newly redesigned site this week along with this blog. We’re looking forward to connecting with many of you in the coming months as we start contributing a regular flow of articles and begin to interact with those who find value in what we have to say. We hope you’ll learn a thing or six & join the conversation!

By subscribing to our blog feed, you won’t simply stay in the loop about IXM news. In our blog you’ll also find timely articles on:

Web design
Web development
Drupal
Web usability and information architecture
Social media marketing for business
Internet marketing

Our articles will range from instructional/tips for non-techie business owners to discussions with industry insiders. You can choose your track to subscribe to based on your interests.

The easiest way to keep in touch with us is to subscribe to our blog via email or RSS feed. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, this video called RSS in Plain English will bring you up to speed.

We also want to take this opportunity to introduce you to the faces of Image X Media:

Alex J. Ventpap

Position: Web Designer/Flash Animator
Expertise: Graphic / Web Design and Flash Animation,
Blogs I Read: Smashing Magazine, Computer Luv, Giz Modo, Cool Hunter, Motion Grapher
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: I just don`t like the orange juice from starbucks
Favorite Pastime: Movies, read some books, apples and walk & take some picures
Childhood Hero: Space Ghost

Anne Ikeda

Position: Administrative Assistant
Expertise: Administration
Blogs I Read: PerezHilton.com (jk)
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Mocha Frapp (but only as an occasional indulgence)
Favorite Pastime: Traveling and eating good food.
Childhood Hero: Cookie Monster (“Me want cookie!!”)

Chris Geoghegan (Presently traveling in Europe)

Position: Project Manager
Expertise: CSS Theming, Programming, Drupal Development, Business Administration
Blogs I Read: My own blog
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: I like the orange juice
Childhood Hero: David Lee Roth
Favorite Pastime: Traveling with my lovely wife

Chris Hartman

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: CSS Theming, Graphic Design, PC Hardware
Blogs I Read: Digg, Engadget, LifeHacker, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Strawberry Frappuccino
Childhood Hero: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Favorite Pastime: Videogames, Racquetball, Golfing and Friends

Glenn Hilton

Position: President/Founder
Expertise: Creative Direction, Visionary, Human Resources
Blogs I Read: Canucks.com (does anything else truly matter?)
Favorite Starubucks Beverage: Extra Large Double Double (oops, that’s actually from Tim Hortons)
Favorite Pastime: Spending time with my fam, my dog Abby and my heaterfan
Childhood Hero: Christie Brinkley

Doug Gough

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: Drupal, Drupal Module Development, CSS and XHTML, Social Networking
Blogs I Read: Of First Importance
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Venti Earl Grey Vanilla Tea Misto
Childhood Hero: Sigurd the dragon slayer
Other interests: Playing my Stratocaster as loud and distorted as my roommates will let me.

Rick Vugteveen

Position: Sales Manager
Expertise: Drupal, CSS & XHTML, “Getting It”
Blogs I Read: Planet Drupal, Kottke, 456 Berea Street, Common Craft, Paul Stamatiou, Apophenia, Mac Rumors, Stereogum, Signal vs. Noise, 43folders, Desire to Inspire, BlackRimGlasses, The Wiire, etc…
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Anything with chocolate
Favorite Pastime: Road trips, Snowboarding, Friends & Family, Guitar
Childhood Hero: Pavel Bure

Robert Phillips

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: Drupal, Web Development, Drupal Module Development
Blogs I Read: Six Apart, Lifehacker
Favorite Starubucks Beverage: Not a coffee guy
Childhood Hero: Iron Man

Susan Villecroze

Position: Usability Expert/Information Architect
Expertise: User Experience Design, User Research, Information Architecture
Blogs I Read: Sitepoint, Digital Web Magazine, 456 Berea St, A List Apart Favorite
Starbucks Beverage: Marble Mocha Macchiato
Favorite Pastime: cooking, running, traveling, getting to know people
Childhood Hero: Didn’t have one

Tom James

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: Drupal module & theme development, HTML, CSS, PHP, jQuery
Blogs I Read: Facebook, Drupal, BBC, Mashable
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Wouldn’t touch the stuff
Favorite Pastime: Travel, exercise, sport, languages, music.
Childhood Hero: MacGyver

Joel Kitching

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: The Internets, Browsers, Codes, Photoshops
Blogs I Read: Reddit, Google News, The Daily WTF
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: If I must support the giant multinational corporation with ridiculously overpriced drinks, a chai tea latte.
Childhood Hero: Charlotte Diamond

Ten Ways To Clear Bad Press From Search Engines

Linda Bustos — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:47:14 -0500

What do you see when you search for your company or brand name? Is there anything on the first page of the search engine results that you wouldn’t be proud to display on your home page? Consumer review sites, blogs and forums have made it easy for anyone to say whatever they want about your company, whether they be disgruntled customers or competitors who like to play dirty.

If you’re in a situation where negative publicity is front and center in search results, there are ways you can reclaim search engine real estate for your corporate identity. Though you can’t make negative results disappear from the search engine indexes entirely, the following strategies can help them slip off the first few pages of search engine results.

1. Good Old Fashioned Networking

Even if you take none of the advice following in this article, the first thing you should do is contact the webmasters of the sites in question with a polite request for removal of negative comments. There’s a good chance they’ll be willing to co-operate. Note that, even if they do remove the listing, the cached pages may remain in the search engine indexes for some time. But users who click through the search engine results will land on a page with the comments removed.

Check out some of the sites that already have something good to say about you. Send them an appreciation note, and offer them a link back from your site. You could even create a special page called “Gary’s Garage On The Web” (if that’s the name of your business) or “Press Room”.

2. Tap Into the Power of Wiki

Wiki websites allow users not only to add their own content, but also edit pages. They get their name from the Hawaiian word “wiki wiki” meaning “rapidly”. There are many wiki pages like AboutUs.org and LoveToKnow.com that you can use to create content about your company. If your company name is “notable“enough (meaning there are objective third party sites that already have pages citing facts about your company), you might also be able to create a page in Wikipedia. This is easier if your company is publicly traded.

3. Raise Your Profile

Some websites like PR.com allow you to post your company’s profile. An annual fee might be required. It’s not easy to find these sites, but you may find some opportunities by searching your competitors’ names and discovering where they are listed.

4. Wet Your Pen

Articles can help you kill three birds with one stone. Not only can articles rank for your company name, they also build valuable backlinks to your site and position you as an expert in your field. You can use your company name in the resource box at the end of an article along with a link back to your site.

Using your company name in the article body gives it a better chance of ranking well. You can research potential sites to submit your article to by searching for one of your industry keywords in a search engine like this: “car mechanics” + “submit article”. Or submit it to various article directories like Article Alley.

5. Become A Socialite

Using social bookmark sites like Netvous and Del.icio.us is an easy way to quickly create a page that ranks for your name. You can create an account for yourself that bookmarks all of your positive press, and anything interesting on your website, such as articles or videos. Make sure you use your company name in the titles of the articles (even if they are not the real titles) and in the descriptions. Although this may seem to be “spamming” the bookmarking sites, it really is not, as the purpose is to create a page that ranks for your name, and there is no ethical reason why you should not be able to create an account that keeps track of all your company’s press. You are simply choosing to make the list public for those that may be interested.

The links themselves are not given much weight by search engines, but you have an opportunity to use your company name in the titles and descriptions of your bookmarks and photos. Make sure you make good use of the tagging feature, using general keywords as these will also begin to rank for your name. For example, Gary’s Garage should tag: “Garys Garage”, “garage”, “autobody”, “mechanic”, “mechanics”, “body shop”, “car” “auto body” and so on. When you are first starting out, the more popular tags will start appearing on pages 1-5 in Google. They will eventually drop off as Google finds and indexes your content as you get it out there on other websites.

6. Become A Lensmaster

A company blog is certain to rank well, and it’s easier than ever to create one with Squidoo.com. When you create a “lens” for your site, you can easily upload pictures and also make use of tags. Unlike other blogs, Squidoo won’t show the posting date, so your lens won’t look neglected if you ever stop posting. You can build your blog’s link popularity by submitting it to blog directories like LSBlogs and BlogHub, and linking to it from your site.

Once you’ve done that, why not drop some other lensmasters a line and exchange lensroll links (Squidoo’s answer to blogroll). This may be a tactic that is passee in search engine optimization link building, but remember that Squidoo is a community. So it’s not as much link building as networking. In my experience, Squidoo lensmasters are quite keen to cross-promote.

7. Broadcast Yourself

Do you have promo videos or other visual media about your site? Why not create a channel on YouTube?

8. Explore Shopping Engines

If you sell products online, consider listing them in comparison shopping sites, or “shopping engines” like Shopping.com, Bizrate or Nextag. If you are not ready to manage a new ecommerce channel for many products, you might consider listing one product in one engine to start.

9. Use Directories For Deep Links

Search engines still consider a page’s number of relevant backlinks to be a strong indicator of quality and relevance to a search term. Octopedia, WorldSiteIndex and Microsoft’s Small Business Directory are a few examples of solid directories that allow you to link to deeper pages of your own site, like your About Us page, to help raise their rankings for your company name.

10. Post An E-Help Wanted Sign

Leverage the strength of sites like Craigslist.org to post your company’s current job offerings. Make sure you use your company name first in the posting headline: “Gary’s Garage Now Hiring Junior Grease Monkeys”, for example. This will ensure the title tag for that page is optimized, which is very helpful for SEO. And make sure to describe your company in the ad, repeating your name three or four times.

Tracking Results

I strongly recommend setting up an account with Google Alerts (free) which monitors the top 50 results, or with Google Alert, a professional tracking system that will monitor the top 200 results for you for as little as $4.95/month. You will be notified daily when new references to your name have been found in Google – not only to see when your articles, profile pages, blog posts and so on get indexed, but also to keep on top of any new negative or positive references to your name outside of your own reputation management efforts.

How Long Will This Take?

Results may vary but they won’t come overnight. You will get out of your reputation management efforts what you put in. It could take anywhere from a few months to a year. Expect monitoring and tweaking your strategy to be a long-term activity. As new pages are being added daily to the Web, search results for your name can fluctuate daily, even hourly.

The danger with social media optimization for reputation management purposes is that whatever you create easily through social media sites can easily be re-created by users disgruntled with your company. Using sites like 43Things to quickly create a high ranking page using your name in the title bar for “Buy XYZ Product” can attract similar posts like “Boycott XYZ!!!”

Wrapping it Up

As the World Wide Web turns, you may come across new or different ways to help your cause, especially as social media sprockets keep creating new opportunities. If SEO’s not your bag, consider hiring a consulting firm skilled in copywriting and public relations. The key is to look at reputation management as a long term activity and to take advantage of all the options you have to keep the search engine results positive.

Search Engine Copywriting Tips for Business Owners

Linda Bustos — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:10:15 -0500

Do you write your own copy for your business website? Could you be doing it better? Many people have “heard somewhere” that “SEO” or search engine optimization” is important…but they’re not sure why, or how to go about it. And the thought of hiring a big fancy firm to take care of it for thousands of dollars makes them scared. Does this sound like you? Well take heart, if your site has existing copy, this article explains how you can make simple changes yourself that will help your site grab more targeted traffic from search engine rankings.

Optimizing for Keyword Phrases

Before you begin SEO copywriting, it’s important to understand that you want to optimize for keyword phrases rather than single words. Why? Trying to optimize for “restaurant”; is near impossible! If you are a Japanese restaurant, you would be competing with “fast-food restaurant”, “Italian restaurant”, “Greek restaurant”, “restaurant in Boston” et cetera.

You will have better success optimizing for longer phrases like:

“Japanese restaurant in Vancouver”
“Vancouver sushi restaurant”
“Vancouver Japanese restaurant”
“best Japanese food in Vancouver”

*“Vancouver sushi bar”

These terms will bring you better targeted traffic. People looking for Japanese restaurants in Vancouver will likely type in one of the above rather than “restaurant”.

If you offer services like “dog grooming”, you would also want to include variations like “pet grooming”, “groom your dog” and “dog groomer”. Not only does this make you relevant for the variations that users naturally type, but it will make your copywriting sound more natural than if you used “dog grooming” 10 times on one page.

Creating Specific Pages for 2 – 3 Keywords You want to optimize for all the important products and services you provide. However these may require their own detail pages. Trying to optimize the home page for everything you do or sell will not show the search engines what is specifically important on your page because it appears EVERYTHING is important! Try not to optimize for more than 2 or 3 separate phrases per page.

Another benefit of creating focused pages around products and services is you capture buyers in later buying stages. For example, if Mary types in: “blue widget XYZ replacement cartridge”, she knows exactly what she is looking for and is more likely to buy than someone who is looking for blue widgets.

Finding Keyword Phrases with Keyword Research

If you need keyword phrase ideas, go to the Google Keyword Sandbox tool at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Enter in your general keywords to get more suggestions, or enter in your URL under the “Site Related Keywords” tab to have the tool extract potential keywords based on your existing copy. You could also do this for a competitor’s site to glean from their SEO efforts.

To get a feel for search volume, select from the “Choose Data to Display” dropdown menu: “Global Search Volume Trends” to get an idea of what forms of your keywords are searched the most. For example, you might discover that search for“computer distributor” more than for “computer distribution”. You want to optimize for the highest search volume phrases more often.

Note that this tool is based on global search trends and has its limitations. Some niche phrases may be very important to your business even though their search volume is relatively low. “Harrison Hot Springs vacation” for example, would not be a high volume search term although it might be a profitable niche keyword for you.

Improving Existing Copy

If you are targeting “music lessons” you probably already have the words “lessons”, “piano”, “singing”, “violin”, “guitar” et cetera sprinkled throughout your site. You can easily start optimizing by turning the solo words into phrases:

Piano lessons, singing lessons, violin lessons, children’s piano lessons, adult singing classes, private singing training in Vancouver, beginner violin lessons, advanced guitar classes…

Using Punctuation Make sure to separate slashes like products/services into products and services or products / services. Search engine spiders ignore brackets, quotation marks and hyphens, so using them won’t hurt you.

FAQ optimization: If, for example, you sell headsets, you can use an FAQ page to use keywords.

Frequently Asked Questions About:

Corded Headsets
Binaural Headsets
WIFI Headsets
Bluetooth Headsets
Monaural Headsets

Not only can you use keywords in a reader-friendly way, the bullet points tell the search engines that these things are important on your page.

Local Keywords

If you have a specific city or region you would like to optimize for, try and include that word in your page titles as well as 2 – 3 times in the copy (for a page of 250 words).

Contextual Links

Contextual links are hyperlinks within your copy – also called “anchor text” This gives a bit more weight in search engines so it’s a good idea to name your external links to other sites with keyword phrases as well as hyperlinks to your own pages. Example:

Last week, I reviewed several karaoke bars (link to your review on another page of your site) in Vancouver. Far and away, my favorite is Kawasaki Sushi and Karaoke Bar (links to other site).

If it makes sense to do so, try and turn existing keywords into internal or external links.

Various Spellings

Even if 50% of searchers type “loose weight” you do not want to optimize for misspellings. There are cases where two forms of a word are correct. For example “birth mother” and “birthmother”. Try to optimize for both phrases but on different pages. That way you have a chance to be found for both phrases, but it won’t look like a mistake.

Checking your keyword frequency

http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

Use this tool if you want a quick count of the frequency and percentage of words on your page or a high ranking competitor’s. Though there is no magic formula for keyword frequency and percentage (density), this is useful to gauge approximately how many times you should include a on a page to rank well.

Is this all Greek to you?

Not every business owner has time to take on his or her own copywriting, nor does every company have the trained staff to do so. For this reason, many look to outsourcing search engine optimization, including copywriting, to Internet marketing consultants. If you don’t feel your organization has the resources to take on SEO copywriting in-house, you would benefit greatly from specialized expertise. An SEO professional can also help you identify the keywords you should be targeting using keyword popularity tools. Even if a consultant’s hourly rate is more than you value your own time, a professional can accomplish higher quality work in less time that it would take you, the end result of increased professionalism, search engine rankings and sales make it well worth the investment.

ImageX Designer Captures Silver at WorldSkills Competition

Anne Ikeda — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:37:55 -0600

ImageX Designer, Joel Kitching, has won a silver medal at this year’s WorldSkills competition, which was held in Japan. This is the latest prize for the young designer who has also been awarded a silver medal for a provincial skills competition in 2005 and gold medals in regional, provincial and national competitions in 2006.

Competitors at this year’s WorldSkills Competition were presented with the task of creating a database-driven website for WorldSkills alumni to keep in touch with each other. Joel’s quick analytical and coding skills and good eye for design helped him snag second place against 20 other top web designers from around the world.