Web Strategy

According to a report on search engine results from Forrester Research: "on the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index." Not only is video invaluable to getting your web presence better exposure in search engines, but video is the most compelling way to tell your story and inspire potential visitors.

Let's say you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. You want to get up to speed on the social media activity in your market, as fast as you can. Or perhaps you want to sell things to candlestick makers online, or you're a journalist writing a story about blogging butchers, or maybe you've got some kind of weird baking fetish or academic interest. Is there any way to ramp up your knowledge of these fields, fast, other than the "Google and wander" method? We think there is. Below you'll find step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry.

This fall, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt released the 2nd edition of their book Search Engine Marketing, Inc: Driving search traffic to your company's web site. The guide is 600+ pages and packed with practical, applicable information. I've worked my way through it once and now am heading back in to begin implementing some of their strategies.

Last year this time we posted about setting up a budget for your web strategy.. So, we decided to do the same this year. When we plan a web strategy for our clients it always includes a cost budget and time budget . Here's a generic version of our web strategy budget, including what 48Web budgets for our web strategy. This post turned out extremely long so we'll be releasing it in chunks - for easier reading. In this post we'll cover the hosting aspect of your web strategy.

As I mentioned last year - as well as on many posts since - analytics is a critical facet of your web strategy not only because it provides measurement, but it is one of the most valuable research tools you have at your disposal. Most people install analytics on their website and never look at the data again. There are many reasons for this. Some people don't have time and most just don't know what the data means.

Well, you can't specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from 'personalized search' or 'local results' that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. People see other results than you see with your ranking tools. And therefore you need Google Analytics to do the real ranking.

Luckily, you don't have to keep up with every detail. But there are some important SEO trends you should know about as we go further into 2009. I'll break the list down into two sections - Strategy and Tactics and Industry/Big Picture Trends - and then turn it over to you at the end.

Google will begin showing ads on Wednesday to people based on their previous online activities in a form of advertising known as behavioral targeting, which has been embraced by most of its competitors but has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and some members of Congress.