We were pleased to work with nTelos’ wireline division (that’s everything but wireless phones) to overhaul, organize and relaunch their website. Major sections of the site include a nifty Bundles page that opens like an accordion, a TV page with scrolling photo montages of their offerings, a Business page with an interactive Account Exec map, and a content management system that allows them to update the 70+ pages anytime they want. In several cases, we were able to efficiently reduce several pages accessed through click-upon-click, to a single page with dynamic and well-organized content. Click to see the nTelos website redesign.

In the last installment, I covered matching words and phrases on your website to those that a potential customer may use to search for your service or product. I also cleared up the mystery of meta tags. This month, the topic is tweaks that you can make in your HTML code for better optimization.

Let’s go back to how Google thinks. (Artificial intelligence, at your fingertips.) It wants to look at your page in the way a human reader might, so it can optimize the results that it provides to its human readers. One thing we instinctively look for when we read is a hierarchy of information.

And here’s how we think: Hey, look, there’s some big text at the top of the page. That must be what the page is about since it’s in the most prominent part of the page (outside of the navigation, presumably). I see lots of text below that, interrupted by some more prominent text. That must be the body of the page and some sub-headings that describe the section of text below. Oh, cool picture. What’s that all about? Oh, there’s a caption about the photo. Okay, now what’s this page about?

Does that sound familiar? At every point along the way where I’ve identified a piece of information on the page, there is an HTML tag – a bit of code at the beginning and end of a group of words  – that identifies the bit of text within it as an element with purpose. The heading at the top of the page is usually set off in the HTML code with H1 tags, like this:

   <h1>This is a heading</h1>

These tags, by convention, are used to create the visual hierarchy for the human reader. Google leverages that to read that content as a very important clue to the focus of the page.

   <h2>This is a subheading</h2>

Other tags in everyday use that are helpful to Google in categorizing your page’s content include body tags, paragraph tags, captions and alt tags for images and anchor text. Anchor text is of special note since it is the (often underlined) text that links a user from one page to the the next. This type of hypertext is foundational to the “web” of the internet. The nugget you need to know about that is that the text within the anchor tag is highly informative to Google about the page that it is linking to. So, instead of saying “Click here for information about antique toasters”, where “click here” is linked, you would want to link “antique toaster.” For example, “Learn more about antique toasters.”

There is a lot more to tell of this quest to collude with artificial intelligence but I’ll leave it at that for now. Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the strength of an exclusive portfolio of monoclonal antibodies, Indoor Biotechnologies has become the world leader in detection of indoor allergens. In addition to the antibodies, InBio developed a consumer product kit to detect household allergens. The kit consists of a dozen parts in a clear plastic clamshell. The challenge they brought to us was to make that clamshell sing. Visually speaking, of course.

The focus of most packaging – in fact, most commercial art – is to get one or two points across quickly and with gusto. When you get into thinking about an appropriate image to represent a product like this, there are a few options. One is to show the actual product. But, aside from the rare, few phenomenal products, it’s hard to give someone the warm fuzzies from a purely product-driven photo. Another option is to make a drive for the warm fuzzies with people photos. We took the people photo route and selected a photo with a mother, father and young child. Then, using additional graphics, focused the message down from the vague happy family feeling to a happy family enjoying their life free of dust allergens. The two “focusing” graphics were a small image of the product and a anti-dustmite image.

To assist in production of the actual product, the manufacturer had a 3D model of the pieces in the kit. We highlighted a small image of the product on the package cover (to balance the lifestyle photo with an image of what a customer would expect to get inside of the can’t-see-through-it-anymore package). And we used several other 3D images to illustrate the accompanying directions on the backside of the label.

We purchased several clamshell-packed products from the local hardware store to share some options with InBio and lead the discussion on how our inserted label would fold, which sides of the container would be left clear versus covered with the label insert, etc. Mockups from that point became much more instructive.

Moving backward somewhat before going forward, we also delved into the name for the product. Lots of words, parts of words, prefixes and suffixes were combined. I’ll spare you the details but the client settled on ventia: rapid allergen test for it’s allusion to the flowing of air. With the name in place and having been user tested at a national conference of allergists, we finalized the text size and the remaining items affected by the name to complete the packaging.

In the last installment, I covered basic search tactics  – how people type what they want to find. In a nutshell, more specific search terms yields more specific results. Your job is to match those specific terms on your site. And preferably in the order people type them in.

Words

Moving on, here’s the hierarchy of word arrangements you can have on your site, in order of impact.

1. having a user’s search terms in the same order that they put them in gives you top results

2. having the words still next to each other but in a different order

3. having all of the words but with non-search words in between them

4. having all of the words but with lots of non-search words in between them

5. having some of the words

6. having none of the words

You see that order is important, as is having the actual words.  The most important point you need to know about this: search engines try to match a user’s word or phrase with the words or phrases in your site. The closer the match, the better you’ll place in the search results.

Selecting Keywords

To get those words, brainstorm, check your competition and check online tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool. This will give you suggested, related keywords and phrases from which you can expand your list of terms as well as find the order of the words people most commonly use.

Meta Tags - Title

Everyone’s heard of them by now. They represent the hidden text on websites that help search engines find out what your site is about. The one that most powerfully affects your search results is the title meta tag. The reason being it’s the one that humans can read because it appears in the title bar of your web page. This is also the text that appears in search engines as the first line in the search results.

Meta Tags - Keywords

The keywords meta tag isn’t visible to the naked eye. Web programmers know that and can put anything they want in that space to exploit search engines. Of course, the search engines know that loophole too and, to protect their mission of only providing relevant results, often disregard the keywords. It’s a nice self-policing system that keeps people honest about what is on their website. Bottom line: make sure that the meta tags contain words that reflect the content on your website.

Meta Tags - Description

The description meta tag is useful as a summary that displays in search results, below the first line. The value of this area is higher than the keywords for two reasons – if there are words in your description that match words in the body of your page, search engines know it’s truthful and will likely publish it on their search results page. And once it’s published, the words that match a user’s search phrase are highlighted in a bold font, giving the user immediate gratification that they found a site with the exact words they were looking for. That practically guarantees a click through. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve for you.

After creating the logo and website for CHO, we jumped on the opportunity to broadcast the new face of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport. In a previous article I mentioned the demographic slicing we did to create a targeted marketing plan. The first stop in that plan was to create an ad series to run in local print media.

The philosophy of the marketing plan is to position CHO as a high-quality experience on your journey to the world. To that end, we leveraged imagery from destinations in a way that is more authentic than most instances in which stock photography is used. CHO really can get you to those places and has a rightful claim to the benefits they bestow. Specific events and destinations pull in specific demographics in CHO’s service market.

The ads are comprised of a headline on a dramatic nighttime image, and an information area to the right. Night photos – with their blurriness, many points of light, and heightened contrast – tend to feel more like a dream than reality. They provide the dreamy sizzle while the headline text cements the destination and the idea that amazing destinations and events are accessible through CHO.

Aside from our lofty goal of positioning CHO as a great experience, we addressed the real world issue of the perception that as a small local airport, CHO is less competitive on fares. We made it a point to include in each ad a mention of one of the many flights originating from CHO that are competitively priced. It’s important as a brand that represents quality that this tactic didn’t come across with a used-car lot appeal. We placed it as a gentle reminder to check CHO before you go, rather than a hard sell.

The series of six ads was formatted to run in several print media simultaneously. Despite a slowing economy, traffic was up at the airport 26% in May compared to last year.

SNL is one of the world’s biggest players in business and financial reporting. Locally, they are one of the area’s giants in terms of employers. With a 5-person recruiting team, one could surmise that they spend a lot of energy in getting the right people on board. They have about 400 employees in their Charlottesville office alone. So, in addition to quality candidates, they need a lot of them. SNL tapped Birch Studio to create a print ad series to help with their recruitment efforts.

Michael Latsko, Chief Talent Officer, offered this: “We are constantly seeking new talent and naturally want to hire the most qualified candidates for the job, but we wanted an advertising campaign that was visually appealing and highlighted some of the more unique aspects of working at SNL to appeal to the most qualified candidates who are also the best fit with our corporate culture.”

The main beneficiary of the ad series was the HR department, however, we wanted to access the institutional knowledge of the marketing department as well to ensure that we could improve upon any previous efforts and dovetail well with other formats SNL was pursuing. We met with the marketing folks to get their perspective on the target audience, what they’ve tried, and what was required vs optional in terms of content.

“While our previous advertising campaigns have promoted Place (Charlottesville), People (employee profiles) and Stability (20th anniversary),” said Rick Wilkes, Director of Marketing, “the new series developed by Birch Studio emphasizes Company Culture. The quirky headlines and imagery make these ads effective at doing what they’re designed to do: make readers stop, look at them and read the brief text that more directly talks about what’s really good about working at SNL and highlights the main benefits derived from an SNL career.”

Research revealed that the demographic SNL was seeking, primarily Generation Y, would have the most interest in the experience of the workplace rather than tangible benefits, promotions or prestige of the organization. Focusing on the culture of the company was a natural solution. We created proofs of two design concepts to determine the artistic direction of the ad series. In the end, they chose them both and we created two ad series with six installments each.

[ This is the first in a series of SEO articles.]

I led a workshop for the Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce a few months back and realized how many myths and questions there were about SEO. I want to dispel some myths and answer a few questions in the space of the next few editions of Fish Wrap.

The common wisdom is that you should put lots of keywords into your website’s metatags so the search engines can read them and send people to your site when they search for those terms. Well, this is not entirely true. The reason is that as you may know, you can put any darn word in there you want without a care for what the reader sees. Think of this from the search engine’s perspective. How many times will you use a search engine if you keep getting results that have nothing to do with what you’re searching for?

The bottom line in good search results is having accurate, specific keywords in places where people can read them, not just search engines. That means, primarily, in the body and title. Those contain bits of text that people read in their quest to fulfill their search for products, services and information. The search engine programmers know that those are two parts of the page that a site owner must be accurate with, lest they lose the customer that just landed on their site.

With that out of the way, first I’m going to cover how to search, because you need to know a few things about that to get the rest. Bonus: you’ll be able to use this in your daily life when you look up things online.

You can search for a word, a phrase, or an exact phrase. If you search for a word, you’ll get endless results with that word. If you search for a phrase, for example, apartment rental, you’ll get search results with those words in it. You may also find something with the phrase, “apartment rentals”. Or, “we specialize in apartment management for rental units. Or, “If you don’t have enough room in your apartment, come check out our rental storage units.”

These last two are not what you’re looking for since your really wanted to rent an apartment. The exact phrase search is the one you want to really narrow down your search. You get an exact phrase match by putting quotes around your phrase. This tells the search engines that you want those words together in that order. With quotes around your phrase, you will only get search results with that exact phrase you put into the search box.

Now to behave like a web surfer: Say you’re going to be looking for a place to live in Portland, Oregon. You want to start with apartment rentals. If you search for “apartment rentals” you’ll find millions of results, all over the world, so naturally you want to narrow your search by adding in the city. So you search for “apartment rentals, portland, oregon”. You’re guaranteed to find some relevant listings. But is that specific enough for your purposes? Maybe you want to start your search near where you work. So, you add your neighborhood to the search string. Your search may now look like this: “portland oregon arbor lodge apartment rentals”.

• portland oregon arbor lodge apartment rentals
yields about 7000 results

• portland oregon neighborhood arbor lodge apartment rentals
yields about 3760 results

• portland oregon neighborhood arbor lodge apartment rentals dsl
yields about 1,790 results

• portland oregon neighborhood arbor lodge apartment rentals dsl swimming pool
yields about 1,620 results

“portland oregon neighborhood arbor lodge apartment rentals dsl swimming pool” in quotes yields 0 results because no one has that exact phrase. If there were one, it would be the only one to show up. No competition!

As you can see, the more search terms you use, the more refined your search results will be. This is the challenging part – getting a really good match without mangling your copy so badly that it is meaningless to a human. Google and the others rely heavily on that fact that you need people to read the text on your site. Google’s primary advice on SEO is to make your site human-friendly. If you do that well, you can place higher in the search engines.

Note that even the order of the words matter. If you rearrange the order of the first query to “apartment rentals, portland, oregon, arbor lodge” you get about 6200 results. You can address this on your site by including variations on your main phrase.

Now, how does this affect your website? Simple: you need to put those words and phrases that people will be searching for in your site. Be as specific as you can be. I’ll talk about this more in the next article (or call Birch Studio for a consultation if you need help sooner).

Networking event and fundraiser for the Chesapeake Bioscience Educational Foundation (C-BEF)

We had a great an evening of networking with life science professionals, took a tour of Indoor Biotechnologies’ labs, viewed works by local artists, featuring artwork and sculptures by local artists from BozArt Gallery and University of Virginia. Moroccan and Mediterranean food was provided by Aromas Café. C-BEF is a charitable organization whose mission is to encourage young people to explore careers in innovative fields such as life sciences. Among other initiatives, C-BEF funds internships at eligible biotech companies through matching grants. www.c-bef.org.

Sponsored by: Birch Studio Graphics, Indoor Biotechnologies, Woods Rogers PLC, Diffusion Pharmaceuticals, Afton Scientific, Garris and Company, Klann Incorporated and PGxHealth.

The University of Virginia is pleased to award your firm a contract for Web Design, Development, and Programming Services in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Contract Opportunity issued April 16, 2009. The period of performance will be May 1, 2009 through April 30, 2012.

David Robinson will co-lead a workshop with Todd Tweedy, for the Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce on cost-effectively driving traffic to your website. Topics include search engine optimization (also called organic search), paid search, leveraging social media and email marketing.

Download a copy of the presentation on search engine optimization [10.8MB] here.