Since it went live in September of 2010, MountainViewTire.com has generated 218% more phone calls to unique, web-only numbers and 100% more online appointments.
In addition to a properly built website, one of the keys to online success is treating your site as a living, breathing member of your marketing team. Designing and building the site are only the first steps. To acheive long-term goals, your website must be regularly updated with new, relevant content that appeals to both your target audience and search engine spiders. We also suggest growing your web presence by creating other types of online content that lead surfers back to your site.
Ready for a better website? Call WebArt at 866/473-9000.
We love helping people grow their companies, but every now and then we get the chance to work on a project that just plain helps people.
We were proud to be part of the team that created HelpSaveTheNextGirl.com. That's a website born of a mother’s and father’s anguish over their murdered child.
Morgan Harrington was a 20-year old Virginia Tech student from Roanoke, Virginia who was abducted on October 17, 2009 following a Metallica concert on the University of Virginia campus. Her body was found three months later on a farm eight miles away. As of the date of this post, Morgan’s killer has not been found.
Her family funneled their immense pain and frustration into an ongoing effort to help other young people avoid the same fate. HelpSaveTheNextGirl.com serves as a portal to other online resources that provide information on missing children and adults, as well as updates on Morgan's case and her family.
The Harringtons worked with our friends at B2C Enterprises and SAKinterMedia to give this project life in remembrance of the life that was taken from them far too early and violently. Since the website went live it's attracted national attention, including a mention on Metallica’s Facebook page that generated more than 34,400 likes, more than 1,500 comments, and just as many shares.
As Morgan’s father, Dan, said, “We know we cannot bring our daughter back, but, moving forward, perhaps we can help save the next girl by strengthening awareness and heightening the vigilance of individuals and communities nationwide.”
The Harringtons are off to a good start.
*****
Watch the video we created for Morgan and her family.
Part of our strategy for helping clients achieve success online has always involved the frequent creation and posting of original content, and it seems the mainstream media is catching on.
Yahoo and ABC News have partnered to create an original video series that will hopefully “address the major challenges both entities face as web users increasingly get their news from niche sites” online.
As noted by Yahoo Americas head Ross Levinsohn, “The value created around premium content is not something that can be replicated.”
To ensure your own success online, turn your website into a resource for your audience. Frequently posting new content that’s relevant to your customers will encourage repeat visits to your site and position your company’s products and services in the top your audience’s minds. And mixing up the mediums between written, audio, and video will create a dynamic experience for your users.
There’s a very good reason to make sure there are no typos or misspellings in your online content: they can cost you serious money!
Online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe of England’s “Just Say Please Group” measured the revenue-per-visitor for one of his company’s websites. He found that the revenue doubled after a spelling error on the site was corrected.
"If you project this across the whole of Internet retail, then millions of [dollars] worth of business are probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes," said Duncombe for a BBC article.
Another point: Errors in your online content - whether on your website, your social media postings, email newsletters, etc. - eat away at your legitimacy. Visitors who spot them may question your professionalism and your commitment to doing accurate, detailed work.
Sure, mistakes can happen, but remember that attracting online traffic is tough enough with a perfect website. Don’t invite suspicion, damage your brand and lose money by taking a lax approach to spelling and grammar.
Three years ago, Coca-Cola began testing their new Freestyle machine, a soda fountain to rule all others.
With 125 different beverages on tap, including soft drinks, sports drinks and more, this fountain will change the way consumers experience Coca-Cola products and force further innovation in the beverage industry.
But that’s not all it does.
This digital delivery system will also change the way Coca-Cola markets their products. It sends usage data back to the number crunchers at headquarters. The data reveal interesting insights, such as the popularity of Caffeine-free Diet Coke after 3pm. This type of knowledge will help Coca-Cola decide what time of day to air radio and TV spots about Diet Coke, where to sell certain products, and much, much more.
In the Ad Age article “Coca-Cola's Futuristic Soda Fountain to Get 2012 Ad Push,” Gene Farrell, VP-general manager for Coca-Cola Freestyle said, “It's mind-boggling, from a marketer's perspective. I don't think we'll really understand the total value for a few more years."
But that’s the way it is with analytics. We can glean new insights every day that will help us work smarter and more efficiently.
We learn what works in our email marketing by testing different offers and subject lines and reviewing the data. We figure out that a specific word combination gives us a boost in search engine rankings. We discover that our website sees more traffic throughout the month if we add new blog posts on a weekly basis.
If you’re not tracking and analyzing your website's performance, your email campaigns, or your social media programs, you should be. How else will you be able to identify what’s working and what’s not?
Brad Timofeev, WebArt's Technical Marketing Coordinator, has been certified by Google as an Analytics Qualified Individual. This means that Google officially recognizes Brad as proficient in the use of their Google Analytics.
Analytics is a service that generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic. It’s used to track visitors from all referring sources, including search engines, email marketing, display advertising, pay-per-click advertisements, and digital collateral, such as links within PDF documents.
Google's website notes that “Analytics is a very powerful tool in the hands of knowledgeable users. Qualified users can be effective at leveraging Google Analytics within their organizations and at helping others to do the same.”
"We already knew that Brad is great at helping our clients' websites to be more effective," said Jerry Brown, President of BusinessVoice, WebArt's parent company. "This recogniton from Google is further proof."
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the process of increasing the likelihood a web page will be found via Internet search engines - used to be all about adding specific keywords and phrases to a page as many times as possible. According to the theory, the more often the keyword was used, the higher the page was likely to rank.
This approach led to long paragraphs of extremely repetitive copy written only to attract search engine spiders, not for human consumption or understanding. But now, according to CopyBlogger.com, almost 85% of what determines how a web page ranks in a search engine is actually based on factors other than keywords and phrases.
This doesn’t mean that incorporating keywords within website copy isn’t important; it’s just that SEO involves more now, like the authority of your domain, what web surfers think about your content, links leading to and from your website, and the relevance of your content.
To optimize a site these days, you’ll need to write compelling content, share your information through social media platforms, link your site to others, establish yourself as an authority within your industry or market, and earn the trust of your visitors.
Providing quality content that gives readers tips, how-to hints, and other information.
Including videos, links and social media feeds on your website that help keep your pages fresh and new, whether you’re changing your site’s written content or not.
Writing easy-to-read copy that includes subheadings and bulleted lists.
Successful SEO requires an ongoing commitment. If you don’t have the time, skills or resources to take on the job yourself, have a qualified website marketing company do it for you.
From likes on Facebook to brand mentions on Twitter, social media can boost your search engine rankings.
It’s no secret that if people aren’t talking about you, you aren’t relevant, but this is especially true online where search engines use social chatter as a part of their ranking algorithm.
But it isn’t enough to merely have a Facebook page or a Twitter account where you promote yourself to no one.
You have to engage an audience and interact with them. It’s your audience who shares your content beyond your wall or your feed with their networks, and it’s that sharing that determines how relevant you are.
But don’t just take my word for it. Jonathan Lawoyin wrote in an article at Marketing Profs that “getting real SEO results these days requires not only a technically optimized website and relevant inbound links, but also a strong, vibrant Web presence that supports your overall brand.”
He also recommends using keywords and historical data in social spaces to drive content development and take advantage of seasonal trends.
So, take to your social pages, share relevant content, and stay engaged with your audience and you’ll likely see ranking dividends improve.
We’re very happy to announce that Tim Eckel has joined the WebArt and BusinessVoice teams. Tim will be responsible for the technical builds of websites and, of course, taking out his own trash.
Tim has a degree from the University of Toledo in Computer Science. Most recently he owned his own company. He also spent many years with Kronos in Novi, Michigan. And I guess he did some babysitting as a teen.
Tim’s name is an anagram for Celk Mite, a microscopic parasite of the Arctic Celk Moose, which is totally ironic because a good 30% of the materials in our servers are made from the antlers of the Celk Moose. And I did three semesters of undergrad work at UT’s Arctic campus. AND I love the taste of moose. I know, right?
Tim brings with him a vast knowledge of computer programming languages: PHP, SQL, HTML, JavaScript, Visual Studio, ASP.NET, C++, Pascal and REXX. He also speaks conversational Yiddish. He has worked on systems from Windows, Unix and Linux, to FreeBSD Mac and IBM Mainframes.
Despite the heavy influence of computers on his life, Tim actually met a girl once. They got married and live happily with their two children, R2D2 and C3PO Eckel.
Ever since he first boing-boing-boinged his way into our hearts last summer, the Tengagan Mouth Harp Man has sorta' become WebArt's unofficial mascot. (Our official mascot, of course, is Ava, the very attractive red pepper pictured at left, who, if office gossip is to be believed, is kinda' into me.)
Thursday night, Mouth Harp Man took another step toward earning his own parking spot and 36 square inches of prime shelf space in the staff refrigerator when he won a Silver Addy Award for us at the 2011 Addy Awards ceremony. That's an annual shindig thrown by the Ad Club of Toledo.
You can check out some of the evening's highlights in this short video produced by our parent company, BusinessVoice. The Tengagan Mouth Harp Man does not make an appearance in that video, but you may be able to see him soon in your hometown. The cat is always on the road. And yeah, he totes that axe in a tiny little gig bag.
If you manage a “Fan Page” on Facebook, you may have noticed the big box at the top asking you to upgrade your page. And you may have asked yourself, “What is this upgrade going to do for me besides change the look of my page."
Well, there’s one great advantage the upgrade brings that may change how you use your page. Just as you as an individual Facebook member can “like” a company’s fan page, fan pages can now like other companies’ fan pages. This means that, as a Facebook fan page manager, you can reach out on behalf of your brand - “as” the brand, not your personal Facebook identity - and get more interactive with related brands.
(If you want to “become” your brand, log into your administrator account. In the top right-hand corner of the page, look for a link that begins with words “Use Facebook as [fan page name].” Click on the link and you can navigate and explore Facebook as your fan page, rather than your personal page.)
All the fan pages your page “likes” have fans of their own. By interacting with pages related or complementary to your company or industry, you can strengthen your brand and extend your influence within the massive Facebook community. You can use your fan page to actively network and spread your brand’s message, rather than just hoping your fans will like and reply to your page’s content.
How You Should - and Shouldn’t - Use Your Facebook Fan Page
1. “Like” all the fan pages relating to your industry, location, partner companies and other elements that relate to your fan page.
2. Your page now has its own news feed, supplied by the other fan pages you like. Monitor your news feed on a daily basis.
3. Build recognition of your fan page by interacting with other fan pages you “like.” If another fan page posts interesting content that relates to what your company does, post a reply “as” your fan page, rather than “as” your personal page.
4. Share personalized information on your “liked” pages that relates to both your fan page and theirs. Don’t just add a link to your new blog post, for instance, without providing an explanation as to why it may be important to the other brand and its followers.
5. Don’t spam other pages.
6. Don’t brag. Avoid over-promoting your company on another brand’s page. And unless you have a reciprocal agreement with another page’s manager, don’t provide coupons or promote specials in your posts on other pages.
If you’re about to write copy for your new website, you may be struggling with how to make it appealing to your two distinct audiences: 1) your human customers and 2) the search engines that rank your site based on how relative your keywords are to the words and phrases those humans type in a search box.
You know you have to incorporate each web page’s keyword into the copy in order to get found. But how frequently? If you don’t use the keyword or phrase enough your page won’t place high in search engines. Use the keyword or phrase too often and not only could you be penalized by search engines for “keyword stuffing,” but your copy may turn off human visitors and cause them to leave your site shortly after they arrive.
Our suggestion: Shoot for a keyword density of 1%. In other words, use your keyword or phrase once for every 100 words of copy. If your page is 600 words long, use the keyword six times. And don’t forget to use the keyword in your page title or sub-title.
Another tip: If you’re working with a key phrase that’s longer or doesn’t fit comfortably into human-friendly copy, remember that you can use “keyword families.” For instance, if your key phrase is “southern California tire dealers,” you can use every conceivable form of that phrase and still get “credit” from the search engines for having used a key phrase. (Examples: Southern California Tire Dealers, Southern California Tire Dealer, Southern California, California, tire dealers, tire dealer, tires, tire.) That gives you a lot more options as a writer for human eyes.
I love fonts. Inspired by the look of hand-drawn headlines in 1940's print advertising as much as by the rock concert posters of the late 1960s, I've always taken great joy in lettering signs and flyers. And I'm always fascinated when talented artists take the 26 letters of the alphabet - all firmly established in their recognizable forms - and treat them in new and expressive ways.
Brian Canning is a 30-year veteran of the automotive repair industry who now serves as a business analyst, leadership and management coach, and team leader. He works with tire and repair shop owners from across the country.
In his excellent article “SEO as a Cure for the Common Cold” (SearchAutoParts.com), Canning writes about the automotive repair world’s need for search engine optimization and includes explicit warnings against “doing it yourself.”
His thoughts mesh perfectly with our approach at WebArt: We take care of every aspect of the ongoing marketing and search engine optimization of your website so you can concentrate on what you do best. And, yes, to maximize the success of your website, the effort needs to be ongoing. As Canning alludes to, that near-constant attention to their website is a commitment most companies can’t make internally. But when it’s done well by professionals, SEO is an investment for which “your bottom line will thank you again and again and again.”
If you’re responsible for the marketing of a chain of tire stores or automotive service centers, take a few minutes to read this slightly abridged version.
*****
Writing from the perspective of what I see out there in the tire and automotive repair worlds as it relates to return on investment in the broad industry and to the state of leadership in the individual stores, I am concerned by the deceptive and reckless claims being made by many in the marketing and consulting industries that search engine optimization (SEO) will do everything but fertilize your lawn and cure the common cold.
This, while creating a tidal wave of customers clamoring to our doors. Most of the owners and managers I have talked to over the past many years are dying for that plug and play solution to their perceived car count and marketing challenges. Many of them are discovering that this great tool can certainly have a positive impact, but just like every other tactic or strategy, search engine optimization only works as part of a broader marketing plan.
It only works if we are willing to put in the time, money and consistent effort to launch it in the right way and then only if we are prepared to dedicate time to its execution every month. Most of the owners and managers I talk to are reluctant or unable to put in the time and discover much too late that the panacea of search engine optimization does not exist, or more precisely, does not exist unless they are able to commit themselves to the effort. This sounds an awful lot like work to me.
Don’t get me wrong: there is not a more important marketing tool out there than SEO. It is all about being visible to our customers or potential customers and that is obviously an important undertaking. Doing it half way will leave you no better off than when you started down this path and don’t forget the thousands of dollars you could potentially spend in the effort. What? Nobody mentioned to you that making yourself visible on the Internet through search engine optimization costs money? Well, yeah, potentially a lot of money!
Before I launch into the role of search engine optimization in our automotive lives, I want to set the table and discuss the challenge facing most tire and repair shops and why efforts toward more cars and more visibility may fall short of the lofty expectations we have set in launching this effort. The vast majority of the shop owners and managers I talk to insist that they need more cars. In the overwhelming majority of cases they simply need to do a better job with the cars they are currently seeing. By this I mean that they have to develop and live by a profit structure that allows them to generate reasonable profit margins and reasonable profit dollars on the parts that they sell, on the labor that they sell and on the tires that they sell.
And we have to find ways to make our shops more productive. Productivity in the automotive world is depressingly low. Not because we have bad technicians, but because as an industry we set very low expectations for production and reinforce this planned mediocrity by setting up pay plans that reward and encourage attendance over production (“A warm body is better than no body.”) and quality work over a balance between quality work and reasonable production times (“Joe never ever has a comeback because he takes his time to make sure it’s done right”). To these we add procedures that control shop flow but hinder production. It is not illegal to be productive and profitable, at least not in most states. If you are having trouble getting cars out now, SEO is not your most immediate need.
I am not aware of any other industry so loath to make a reasonable profit as the automotive repair industry. While our doctors and plumbers and coffee shops routinely put 20% and 30% net operating profit on the bottom line, most independent tire and automotive repair shops in the U.S. lag far behind, with net profit numbers averaging somewhere around 5.5%. Pricing structure and productivity are both culprits here and adding more cars, without addressing these, will take a significant business challenge and make it much worse.
Search engine optimization is nothing more or less than assuring that we are very visible to anyone out in the broad world looking online for the types of repairs and services that we provide. “Online” being the operative word here, it being important to note that this is how most among us shop, hunt for a house, try to find a mate and communicate with the rest of the world. SEO makes us very visible to the buying public by putting us where consumers are looking.
Having said that and knowing how taxed most shop owners and managers are for time, my suggestion is that you explore all that search engine optimization could do for you, all the ways that it could highlight and make your operation more visible and find somebody accomplished to do it for you. It is so important and crucial to your long-term viability and so demanding of a thorough and consistent effort, my strong suggestion would be to spend some time searching out who is successful at it in your market and in your sector of the industry and negotiate a comprehensive plan that matches their ability with your immediate and your long-term needs. Search engine optimization is one of those things that is best left to the professionals.
Now, so I don’t feel guilty about not presenting you with a 52-step process toward search engine optimization, I would direct you toward your favorite search engine and have you type in ‘SEO’. Within seconds you will have access to every tip and strategy known to man. I am still going to tell you to find somebody qualified to do it for you. Not all of this is rocket science and looking at the various steps and strategies, you are going to be sorely tempted to do it yourself.
Please take my advice: please remember how important this is and how busy you are and find a successful professional to do it for you. Your car count and your bottom line will thank you again and again and again. Your time will be much better spent improving shop flow and your counter operation to handle the anticipated increased volume.
The days of that big yellow book are long gone and, in truth, the process and rationale behind search engine optimization is nothing more than acknowledging that most of us search online for purchases we would make and the services we would buy. SEO is making ourselves visible to those looking for the automotive repair and maintenance services that we provide and doing this in such a way as to stand out on the various search engines in use by the consumers in our home market.
SEO is not magic. By itself it is not likely to make an appreciable difference. However, combined with CRM (customer relationship management), a great retention marketing plan and your willingness to finally take on a leadership role within your organization, you can take several large steps forward and assure the viability of your shop.
Organizational optimization as a precursor to search engine optimization is not nearly as exciting as a plug and play solution. Somewhere beyond the exaggerated claims you will likely discover a very important and very useful tool. And like any tool, if used correctly it can simplify your life and improve your results.
Warning: Do not take to SEO if you have low blood pressure. Do not over consume alcohol while attempting SEO. If you have an inclination toward taking on search engine optimization that lasts for more than four hours, contact an SEO professional immediately as this may cause permanent organizational injury.
We were honored for our creation of the website for EMB Designs and our own new website, WebArt.com. We also took home awards for the WebArt Identity Package and the Online Videos we produced as a humorous self-promotion tool.
Our parent company, BusinessVoice, also won a Merit Award and two Crystal Awards of Excellence.
We're very happy to announce that WebArt has won a 2011 Gold 
We love helping people grow their companies, but every now and then we get the chance to work on a project that just plain helps people.
Part of our strategy for helping clients achieve success online has always involved the frequent creation and posting of original content, and it seems the mainstream media is catching on.
There’s a very good reason to make sure there are no typos or misspellings in your online content: they can cost you serious money!
Three years ago, Coca-Cola began testing their new Freestyle machine, a soda fountain to rule all others.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the process of increasing the likelihood a web page will be found via Internet search engines - used to be all about adding specific keywords and phrases to a page as many times as possible. According to the theory, the more often the keyword was used, the higher the page was likely to rank.
From likes on Facebook to brand mentions on Twitter, social media can boost your search engine rankings.
We’re very happy to announce that Tim Eckel has joined the WebArt and 
Ever since he first boing-boing-boinged his way into our hearts last summer, the 
If you manage a 
If you’re about to write copy for your new website, you may be struggling with how to make it appealing to your two distinct audiences: 1) your human customers and 2) the search engines that rank your site based on how relative your keywords are to the words and phrases those humans type in a search box. 
I love fonts. Inspired by the look of hand-drawn headlines in 1940's print advertising as much as by the rock concert posters of the late 1960s, I've always taken great joy in lettering signs and flyers. And I'm always fascinated when talented artists take the 26 letters of the alphabet - all firmly established in their recognizable forms - and treat them in new and expressive ways.
Brian Canning
The WebArt team earned four Merit Awards of Achievement at the 
