Federal agencies need small businesses to contract out for goods and services, and mid and large-tier organizations are looking to small business partners for strategic contract wins. The playing field has widened yet so has competition. How can small businesses become known entities in the new Federal contracting environment?

Government contractors can leverage their online communications – from website design, to online branding, to content marketing, to social media to search engine optimization to mobile-friendly technology – to promote their goods and services to government agency and prime contractor partners.

In this series, we will explore the increasingly important role web presence plays in winning government business.

First, Get Found – Search Engine Optimization

inQbation has advanced mastery skills of search engine optimization (SEO).   Google, “DC SEO experts,” and you will see inQbation.com on top.   The most important element of SEO is selecting and using the right keywords.  Often, we will observe that the language and terminology that organizations use may or may not be the same as those that its target audience uses.

If an organization wants their site to rank high on search engines and be found by its intended target audience, it is imperative that representatives of the target audience be interviewed in a non-leading way to identify their natural online search behavior.  We need to use the key words that our target audience might use, not the internal technical or clinical language that we might use, to find the type of content that we have on our site.

We have observed and identified the 5 most important elements of search engine optimization.  Most websites that apply these elements tend to rank very well across all search engines.  Those that do not apply these elements often struggle with their SEO.  These are the most import elements of SEO:

1.       Choose the right keywords – those that your target audience my use

2.       Inject unique keyword phrases (3-5 words) into page title tags

3.       Inject important keyword phrases into page headings

4.       Use important key words in link text and navigation links

5.       Weave important keywords into the URLs and directory path

Our SEO strategy includes a well-rounded, holistic approach that encompasses:

• Crawlability – because search engines need to crawl your site to index it
• Credibility – because search engines prefer to deliver credible results
• Content – because your site’s content must be relevant to a search query
• Code – because search engines read your source code and meta tags
• Conversation – because search engines monitor social media
• Competition – because it’s easier to rank for less competitive keyword phrases
• Conversion – because it’s about getting qualified clients, not just gross traffic
• Compliance – because valid HTML, CSS, and 508 code helps search engine.

Find out how your website scores, for free!

Email results@inQbation.com for a free assessment of your website  presence.  At no cost to you, we will use professional  tools to grade your findability, and give you your score and supporting metrics.

1″Savvy contractors to capitalize on 2012 spending trends.” http://www.legalnews.com/detroit/1177583/. Detroit Legal News. 17 January 2012. Web.

2 Matthew Weigelt. “Agencies that miss small-biz goals could face penalties.” http://fcw.com/articles/2012/01/25/small-business-goal-reduced-budget-penalty.aspx. 25 January 2012. Federal Computer Week. Web.

Indeed, many now view the snail mail as an inconvenience, delivering nothing more than junk mail. In a recent NPR interview, Steve Shiver, founder of Doxo (a company that helps consumers manage bills and documents online), stated “I had an epiphany one day when I went to my mail box and it was shoved full of junk mail and there’s only two or three important things I needed in all of this three of four pounds of paper. I generally want my government services focused on things that are really both efficient and valuable to me as a citizen. And what’s unfortunately happened incrementally over the years is a greater and greater proportion of physical mail is junk.”

What does this mean for businesses?

Considering that most of the “junk mail” delivered by the USPS is advertising for businesses, sales fliers, etc., many of which is time-sensitive, businesses will simply have to adapt to the changes that the Internet has wrought, or face the consequences. It isn’t practical to send these materials out through FedEx or UPS, yet these are obviously an integral part of building and promoting your business.

Already, many are predicting that the proposed changes to the USPS, which will be implemented as early as next April, will have a negative impact on small businesses and mail-oriented businesses such as Netflix. “It’s less of a disaster than it would have been ten years ago, but it’ll be a cash flow crunch for some companies,” Todd McCracken, president and chief executive of the National Small Business Association, told The Associated Press.  “It’ll be longer to get your invoice, and longer to get a check back.”

What can businesses do to stay competitive?

Simply put, businesses must learn everything they can about the Internet, and how to use it to their advantage. Here are five things that every business must do in order to adapt to these changes:

1. Learn everything you can about white hat SEO tactics. Many mistakenly believe that Search Engine Optimization is unethical, and should be avoided altogether. However, when done in an ethical manner, SEO can be incredibly effective.  Learn about keywords, relevant content, and so forth, and your website will flourish as a result.
2. Google has released many algorithmic updates, in order to weed out spammy sites and ensure better search results. The Panda Update, for example, gives Google the ability to read online content at a 10^th grade level, and was responsible for the demotion of several well-known websites in search rankings. Rather than being intimidated by these algorithm updates, learn as much as you can in order to use them to your benefit. Keep your content relevant and current at all times, and Google will reward you accordingly.
3. Experiment with online advertising, marketing and sales methods. Email marketing is the easiest way to target a specific demographic, without wasting money on paper and postage. Alternately, sites such as Facebook and Google offer different advertising options that can be used in lieu of mass mailings. Finally, there are several sites out there that offer coupons and deals to customers, making sales fliers a thing of the past.
4. Use social media to your advantage! As with all other Internet-related topics, sites like Facebook and Twitter were once thought to be only appropriate for keeping in touch with family friends, but now they can be used to promote your business. Retweet business-related items, or start a Facebook page for your business and encourage your customers to check-in in order to spread the word to their friends. With a little extra effort, you can increase your online presence exponentially, and your business will thrive as a result.
5. Start a blog, and write about all aspects of your company. You will not only gain customers as people discover your site, but you will also meet other business owners and learn what they are doing to remain competitive in the ever-changing market. Networking will always be beneficial, whether it is done online or in person, so why not take every possible opportunity to do just that?

Many view the changes with the USPS as a bad thing, but they are proof of what happens to a business that is unwilling or unable to change and adapt to technological advances. Rather than taking the risk of fading away into oblivion, stay up to date with everything and be a step ahead whenever possible. In doing this, you will be assured that your business will continue to grow.

For many companies, their online marketing efforts need a shot in the arm as they head into the New Year, but the question for many is how to go about it. How can they improve their online marketing techniques without spending lots of money and time and effort? Can it be done or is it just whistling in the wind?

If you have found your company’s online marketing goals struggling over this last year, or if you’re in the process of starting a business and want to know how to get off on the right foot with online marketing, there are ways to go about it.

Among them are:

• Review your content – This is the first and most important step. What have you been giving your customers and potential customers over the last year? Has it been quality marketing content or just stuff to fill space and seem up to date? Have your marketing efforts been consistent or on an as-needed basis? What are you doing or not doing as compared to the competition? Finally, would you go to your company’s Web site and find the information informative if you did not work there? These are important facets to consider during your review, a review that should include an outsider or two who will give unbiased feedback;
• Review your keyword targets – Whether you are an expert with keywords and links or not, they play a large role in helping drive search engines to your site. If your keywords are not attractive enough, your site will be the lesser for it. Compile a list of keywords for your present content and those that will relate to upcoming content, allowing you to better sell your company product/s and/or services. If you come across any keywords for which you don’t have a large deal of content for to date, add those subjects to your content calendar so you can incorporate them into your initiatives;
• Review your site visitors – It is important if you are not already doing so to review who is coming to your site, when they are coming, where they are visiting from and most importantly, why they are landing there. Too many companies do not invest the necessary time into deciphering their Web site analytics, leaving them with a whole bunch of numbers and no rhyme or reason for them. Delve into the analytics on why your site traffic is what it is and make the most of them. Understand why some pages and topics are getting hit upon more than others. Find out why some portions of your site are not obtaining much interest so that you can go about addressing that issue;
• Review your techniques for feedback – Assuming you have somewhere on your site where customers and other parties can provide feedback, take the time to review those responses. Why are some people addressing you with concerns and/or complaints? How are you responding to such issues? Are you responding in the first place or just ignoring the matter? If you are responding, are you doing it in a timely fashion? Feedback from customers is critical in today’s Internet age, so don’t brush it off as something that can be done at a later time;
• Review your content strategy – To some not aware, they may think that content simply means writing a few paragraphs here and there and sticking it on your company’s Web site. Trust me that could not be farther from the truth. Your company’s online content strategy should include myriad of items including a blog, audio and video offerings, podcasts, social media and more. Social media is a key one given how engrossed much of the world is today with sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and others. Your social media efforts allow you to engage the public in conversation that hopefully leads them to or back to your site. The key here is to stay engaged in social media on a regular basis so that you remain relevant and up to speed on what is going on;
• Review the competition – Take the time to see what your competitors have been doing with online marketing. Did they appear to increase, decrease or keep their efforts relatively similar in 2011 compared to prior years? Give a look to see what techniques they are using to entice visitors to come to their site and view content, specifically, are they doing something or things that you are not? While you don’t want to copy the competition, you do want to know what they are up to.

While improving your online marketing efforts will not be done overnight, they can be done over time.

With the New Year just weeks away, now is the time to review your 2011 online marketing production, see where it succeeded and failed, and determine how 2012 can bring you a better return on your investment (ROI).

How relevant are the two, you ask? Comscore has the statistics:

2011 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2010
Non-Travel (Retail) Spending
Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore, Inc.

“For the holiday season-to-date, $12.7 billion has been spent online, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Black Friday (November 25) saw $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26-percent increase versus Black Friday 2010. Thanksgiving Day (November 24), while traditionally a lighter day for online holiday spending, achieved a strong 18-percent increase to $479 million.”

More senior retail executives may have needed a medical alarm when counting revenues from this past Thanksgiving Day weekend.

It is the SEO’s job to take a business and place it as high as possible within relevant search terms and at no time of the year is that more important than when people are burning up the Internet searching for online-retailers offering products at incredibly deep discounts. This is when the chips fall and SEOs see whether their efforts stack up.

Branded keywords are essential in giving retailers an edge over the competition. With millions of searches taking place for millions of items over the course of the four-day weekend, each link counts when it comes to setting a product or brand apart. Keywords and keyword phrases should highlight specific qualities of items or services they are trying to promote so that searchers find exactly what they want quickly.

SEO needs to be ready to handle searches that range in specificity from [electronics deals] to [Harmon Kardon 7.1 receiver deals]. Of course, some specific searches will remain nebulous and SEOs won’t be able to guess what search terms will be entered exactly, but keyword research tools and information from past Cyber Mondays offer insight as to how people search and what they look for. Extensive keyword research will go a long way to helping SEOs predict what phrases to build for long before Thanksgiving.

Another essential strategy is tracking customers. Remarketing technology gets better by the day and it is becoming easier to recognize shopping patterns and tendencies from the data available. It’s the same data that retailers and eTailers use when launching e-mail marketing campaigns that drive revenue numbers into the billions. Discover how people are shopping with regard to organic search, harness that data and leverage it to your advantage.

Over the past five years, retailers have been playing with the idea of opening stores earlier to see what kind of fiscal impact it would make and those numbers are finally in. The takeaway: opening earlier almost guarantees more customers coming through the door. Online retailers took note and extended their deal hours on both ends, reaching into Thanksgiving Day and the week after the holiday. This predictably bolstered numbers, but also gave keywords more time to work their magic.

The writing is on the wall. As we move away from physical retail and digital sales take precedent in the future, SEO will only become more integral to the process. More than one billion dollars was spent on Cyber Monday 2011. SEO stands to gain a large piece of that pie by utilizing the techniques heretofore mentioned.

In a previous life (read: last month), users could enter in search queries linking words with a ‘+’ operator and Google would only return results for that particular phrase, i.e. verbatim. In October, some users noticed that they began phasing it out. Speculation suggested that it was because of Google+, Google’s bourgeoning social network, and future plans to have +profiles be indexed by the search engine.

Now, rather than enter special characters into the search bar, users will be able to open the Search Options menu on Google and select ‘verbatim.’ All searches in this mode will reflect only the words you search for and not keyword phrases and similar terms i.e. returning results for “video games” when you search [Mario].

While this will likely help streamline specific searches for users, how will it affect keywords and those dependent on the research thereof?

Probably not very much.

Verbatim searches are only used in very specific, even rare cases. There are those who wish to bypass the sometimes-bloated results by searching for a specific query verbatim, but this usually applies to people who recall a specific word order or phrase from a book or magazine article they’d like to find. I’ve used verbatim search to find websites so old that they’ve fallen into Google search oblivion and require a verbatim search to pull them from the mire of page 20 results and up to the top five pages.

Most of the time, people will be using general search in order to cast a wide net to view all their options. This is true of online shopping (comparing retailers, prices, etc.) and most other activity. The fact remains that Google adding a Verbatim search will affect keyword hits and research almost minimally, because it’s really just an updated version of a service that’s been in Google since the beginning.

So if anyone told you to watch out for your site rankings after this, file it under false alarm. Tech types and SEOs can’t really be blamed for being a bit antsy about Google’s moves lately.

The company has made a number of tweaks to its algorithm lately that have made the jobs of SEOs more difficult, including removing keyword data from Analytics, which obfuscated the most important metric of keyword research. The “freshness” update shook things up, but turned out to be something of a non-issue for many sites.

Sometimes it’s hard to find the right tools in our sheds. Our toolsheds may be very spacious, admitting of many shadows in whose perimeter tools are falling all over each other. The job of a search engine is to make order out of chaos, and Google Verbatim is a tool that will effectively cut away the chaff of the Internet, leaving the user with more targeted results, bereft of Google’s routine tinkering.

All said, it’s a good deal for everyone!

Joseph writes this article on behalf of Sears and other trusted brands. In his free time he enjoys keeping up with the latest developments in search engine marketing, SEO, and social media.

One that business leaders should not take lightly is how to get a better return on investment (ROI) in 2012, especially given how many companies have struggled this year to turn a constant profit.

Get the Most Out of Your Company’s Site

With that being the case, one of the most important areas to zero in on in the New Year is making sure your company’s Web site is giving you the most bang for your dollar. If it isn’t, take the time to determine why that is and what you plan on doing about it.

A company Web site is not only your window to the world, but it also allows you to communicate with both present and potential customers in a real-time format. If you have been lax in doing so, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to speak to individuals who already likely have some degree of interest in your company.

If you’re feeling like your business is missing out on some great opportunities due to the company’s lackluster Web site, then keep these factors in mind:

• More than just visibility – Even though visibility by itself is the top factor in bringing traffic to company Web sites, things such as monitoring rankings, numbers, having a bug-free site and using social media are just as important over the long term;
• Are you dealing with bugs? – In the event your company Web site is continuously having issues, you need to set a goal of correcting those issues sooner rather than later. Simply put, you will lose and not likely reacquire people who come to your URL if they are finding the site challenging to surf;
• Register and understand your metrics – While we live in an informational society, many individuals at times get bogged down by all the data available to them. One key area of data that must be understood, however, is Web site analytics. There is little or no sense of having and maintaining a company Web site if you are not paying attention to who is visiting it, why they come, when they visit, what they are searching for etc. Make sure you employ analytical tools to measure and understand the numbers on a daily basis;
• Engage in social media – Despite having a Web site presence, you would be surprised how many companies, companies of all different shapes and sizes, do not employ a sound social media campaign or one at all for that matter. Taking part in social media means using sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more to carry on conversations with consumers. You can use sites like Twitter and Facebook for instance to tweet information out from industry-related studies, provide deal and discounts for consumers, and promote the company. Social media is also important in answering questions and concerns and solving client problems. To say social media is just a fad that will come and go is going against just about all analysis that shows it is here to say for a long time to come. Lastly, being engaged in social media assists you in obtaining more traffic, improving your online rankings at the same time;
• Improve your company’s Web site positioning – We live in a statistical lover’s world, so why should you and your business be any different? That being said, it is very important that your company’s Web site achieve as high a search engine rating as possible. With Google being the best-known search engine, there are means by which to improve your search ranking. They include: Having fresh content, offering strong keywords and links, seeking reciprocal links, not running duplicate copy and continuously spamming others, and being able to handle customer concerns and inquiries among other inquiries.

With the New Year coming, along with the opportunity to take your company’s Web site to a new level in 2012, make the time to review the positive and negative aspects of your site.

By not doing so, you are making a resolution to potentially miss out on some worthwhile business over the coming 12 months.

Google periodically crawls your website, and indexes the information contained therein. Thanks to their constantly updated algorithm, Google’s spiders can currently read at a 10^th grade level, which means they know what they are reading – whether it was put there for the specific purpose of raising your website in search rankings, or whether it is valid and relevant, and therefore worthy of raising your website’s ranking.

Keywords Are Important

One way to make your presence known in the various search engines is by understanding the importance of keywords and how they work. In a nutshell, keywords are words or phrases that sum up what you have to offer consumers. In other words, if someone were looking for something and chooses to use a search engine, they will type in a word or phrase in order to find their desired destination. It is up to each individual company to decide which keywords to target, based upon research of factors like traffic for different keywords.

Take, for example, a company that caters to Chicago tourists. The average tourist won’t know specific names or places to search for. Instead, they’ll opt for more general searches such as “what to do in Chicago“, or “places to visit in Chicago”. Consequently, a Chicago tourist website has to take this into consideration when selecting which keywords to target.

There Is a Time to Be Specific

Specificity is important at times, though. Co-occurrence terms are a way to be location-specific without the risk of looking like spam. For those who are not SEO-savvy, go to Google and type in a search request. After the results show up, scroll down to the bottom of the first page, and you will see a list of words and phrases that are related to your search. These are called co-occurrence terms, and are invaluable when considering keywords and overall relevancy because the search engine considers them synonymous with your keyword.

To use the Chicago example, in addition to using general keywords, co-occurrence terms include terms like “Chi-Town”, “Millennium Park”, and other phrases that are unique to the area/subject you are writing about. This reinforces to the Google crawlers that you are really writing about something to do with Chicago.

Let’s Not Forget Relevancy

This word has been mentioned several times in this article, and for good reason. Due to the advanced nature of Google’s algorithm, they can tell quality content from spam. Companies that are more concerned with stuffing their site with keywords will eventually be penalized by Google. By taking the time and effort to create content that’s well-written and relevant, you can avoid this pitfall and continue to rise in search rankings.

The Internet has literally placed the world at our fingertips, and this creates new opportunities and challenges for marketing. With a little creativity, and a full understanding of how to use online marketing to your advantage, you will start to notice an increase in traffic to your site, and your business will flourish as a result. Take your time and get it right, and you can’t go wrong.

Experts in the field of SEO and search engine marketing are getting better everyday at driving valuable traffic to clients’ websites. It is amazing how much work is put into getting new visitors to visit the companies that provide them with the goods and services they need online. But wait! Why is it such a challenge to convert those new visits into sales leads? And why are bounce rates so hard to get down?

The answer is simple. Visitors aren’t finding what they are looking for, so they move on.

The typical response to this phenomena is to look at site architecture, call to action, and how many levels a user has to “drill down” before they find relevant content. It seems reasonable to think that by tweaking all these things we can achieve a better response. And to a certain extent, there are always details that can be improved upon. But the one that is most often overlooked, and for good reason (it’s hard to do well), is the internal site search function.

To most, the search box represents a last resort for finding information. The vast majority of internal search solutions are ones that come, prepackaged, with the most popular CMSs (eg. Joomla, Word Press, etc.). These search solutions are inadequate for the volume of information that is stored on most modern websites. The results they produce are often irrelevant, and that’s if you are lucky and it doesn’t give you the old “There were no matches to your search” message, leading to an almost immediate “exit”. Furthermore, they don’t have powerful features that give site-owners/webmasters control of the algorithm or “widgets” that display related searches, top searches, or recent searches.

There are options available from bigger companies that  do a good  job of providing results. However, they require tons of work to configure correctly, and constant maintenance. This can be expensive and still leave visitors frustrated by irrelevant or duplicate results. Also, the level of support offered for these services is relatively low because it isn’t part of their core business. When working with a smaller company, more personalized attention is provided, the solutions give site owners/webmasters more control of the results (handy for promotions etc.) and all questions and issues are addressed quickly and professionally.

The alternative to using a third party service, is to buy servers, install software, and hire search experts to set up and maintain a search engine. While having the advantage of total control of the search engine, it is very expensive and creates additional layers of complexity to the IT systems a company uses to create and maintain their web presence.

So what?

Well, experts in the field of search have noted a real need for quality, feature rich on-site search solutions that are easy to deploy, integrate seamlessly into any design, support multiple websites (blogs, wiki, news, etc…), and give site owners control over the way their content is indexed and ranked. Companies such as Ivinco Ltd. have developed an on-site search solution (Website Search) delivered on a software as a service SaaS model, creating a cost effective and powerful solution.

Innovative solutions that answer the call for a better full-text search solution.

For companies:
The most important advantage is to enable powerful search function without adding any additional complexity to their web system. Solutions that are very simple to configure and don’t require investment in hardware, complex software installations, or additional costs associated with training and maintenance.

In addition, these site-search applications allow site-owners to control the results by giving priority to pages they want to have display for certain keywords. They can also control which pages they wish to maintain private and which to include in the index. Another unique capability, is the use of widgets such as “Related” and “Top Searches”, which enables users to discover relevant content and new products.  There are also great benefits to  SEO efforts, as relevant content is “brought to the surface” through the on-site index making it easier for crawlers from major search engines to find relevant content.

For users:
Site visitors benefit from a strong search feature as it simplifies the way they find the information that is important to them. Widgets also enhance the users experience by providing discovery tools that help users find related information and new products/services they may be interested in. The vast majority of information is found through making search queries on-line through the major search engines, but users just aren’t used to finding what they want with on-site search. Well, those days have vanished into the past with the emergence of these simple and yet powerful enhancements.

The users experience is enhanced by many features such as: highly relevant results, spelling correction, auto-completion suggestions, faceted search filters, speedy, and a simple interface that fits perfectly in the design of the website.

For developers:
Website Search allows web developers to include a quality search engine to their clients websites without having to “reinvent the wheel”. Setting up a quality search engine from scratch is no simple task and can take lots of time and resources. Using a SaaS search solution also drives down the costs because there is no need to purchase specialized hardware or perform complex software installations saving developers both time and money.

The bottom line:

The  experience delivered by websites is in the spotlight of executives of companies large and small. A tremendous amount of money is currently being invested in driving traffic to websites and each time a visitor bounces, it makes the next one more expensive. Adding powerful search capability gives users a better experience, which leads to increased sales and more customer loyalty.

Ivinco Ltd, experts in the field of search engine development with years of experience consulting and making significant contributions to open source projects such as MySQL, are the creators of a powerful SaaS on-site search engine called Website Search. It can be evaluated, free of charge, to show how it can reduce costs, and increase revenues through more sales and customer loyalty. Enhancing a website with on-site search reduces the cost of acquiring new business, Website Search is the perfect solution.

For more information, please visit: http://getwebsitesearch.com