Friday, June 27, 2008

Where does your website rank in Google?

Marketing tips for Professional Organizers in Canada.

To find how your website ranks in the most popular search engine, Google:

1. Go to google.com

2. Type "professional organizers" bc canada in the search box.

3. Click on Google Search button.

1. You will see the 1st and 2nd listings are for the Professional Organizers in Canada website:

POC BC - Professional Organizers in Canada
Get to know the BC chapter of POC - Professional Organizers in Canada.
www.organizersincanada.com/chapters/index.php?ishow=1&chap_id=3

2. Kudos to goodriddance.ca for having the number 3 spot on Google.com
Here's the listing:

clutter, de-clutter, Professional Organizer - Vancouver, BC
CanadaGood Riddance - Professional Organizers - Vancouver BC Canada, Professional Organizing Solutions. De-cluttering your house, One Room At A Time ...
www.goodriddance.ca/ - 19k - Cached - Similar pages

3. And my blog comes up number 4 and 5! Your blog could be here!

Web Design Secrets: Searching blogs for Professional Organizers in ...
professional organizers bc canada with no quotes and came up with nada to do with professional organizing. Then I put quotes around the phrase "professional ...
seascapewebdesign.blogspot.com/2008/06/ok.html - 43k - Cached - Similar pages


Contact Katy@seascapewebdesign.com or visit SeascapeWebDesign.com today to get your blog or website listed in Google's Top Ten!

Thursday, June 19, 2008

What is a Blog?

I recently attended a workshop on Blogging for Business given by Mhairi Petrovic on June 17th.

One of the attendees piped up: What does a blog look like? I imagine little comment balloons popping up when someone makes a comment on a blog.

(By the way, that's a great visual idea - having comments pop up in balloons when commenting on blogs.)

That is a very good question. What does a blog look like?

Most definitions say a blog is an online diary or journal. Sort of but not quite. Does anyone want the whole world to read what's in your private diary? I think not. They forget to add a very important qualifier to their definition of blog. It's a very public online journal. More like a column in a newspaper. I like this definition found on blogger.com:

A blog is a website. (It looks like a webpage.)
It's a website where you write stuff on an ongoing basis.
New stuff shows up on top so your visitors can read what's new right away.


And blogs are more interactive than the normal website. Visitors can comment on each blog entry and add their opinion or facts thereby creating a discussion rather than just a static webpage. And the blog poster can respond to the comments and the visitor can respond again. So then we have a conversation. This builds community.

If you're new to blogging, a good place to start is at http://www.blogger.com. This blog is built on blogger.com. It's free to sign up and start a blog. They have a tour explaining the features of the blog. And you can restrict you views your blog. If you're a bit shy at first, you can show your blog only to your friends and family. And then later on you can show it to the world.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

How to customize your blogger.com blog

I am learning how to customize my new blog. I clicked on Customize button on the upper right hand corner. I clicked on the Edit link for the title area. After searching blogsearch.google.com for other blogs with the name, Web Design Secrets, I decided to change my blog name. Too many cheesey network marketing sites with that name.

Tip: Do a search on http://blogsearch.google.com for the name of your blog to see if any other blogs have the same name.

You can always change your blog name to something else. But it helps your audience to find you when you are consistent with the name of your blog.

I figured out how to add my company logo to my new blog header. I created an image with Adobe Photoshop that incorporated my logo and the new name of my blog. I clicked on Customize and then on the Edit link in the header. This is where you can customize your blog title, description and image. So I replaced the text blog title with a customized blogger header featuring my company logo and the new blog name. Don't you think it looks great?!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Notes for Professional Organizers BC Canada

NEWS FLASH!!!

Turns out my blog is now visible on the Internet! 15 minutes ago I searched Google, Yahoo and MSN and my blog was no where to be found. My blog was still a well kept secret. But now since I have posted several entries, I am now listed on Google.

And if you search for this phrase on blogsearch.google.com:

"professional organizers" canada

you will find my blog entries come up in the top 10. How cool is that!

Note to professional organizers: Use the keyword phrase: "Professional Organizers" in your blog entry title and blog entry content to be found by your potential customers.


When you are conducting searches to find out where you rank in blogsearch.google.com, be sure to put quotes around your key phrase and then add BC, Canada to focus your searches to your area.

Tip: To find out how your blog ranks for the keyword phrase: "professional organizers" canada

Go to: http://blogsearch.google.com/ and type in the following phrase including the quotes:

"professional organizers" canada

To narrow your search to BC, type this phrase including the quotes:

"professional organizers" bc canada

Searching blogs for Professional Organizers in Canada

OK. I found that I needed to be more specific in my choice of search phrases for the blog search engines. I went to http://www.bloglines.com/ and searched for this phrase:

professional organizers bc canada

with no quotes and came up with nada to do with professional organizing.

Then I put quotes around the phrase "professional organizing" since we want to find instances of these two words together. And I took out bc and broadened my search to Canada.

And I hit pay dirt!

I found this blog where a professional organizer had attended the Vancouver Professional Organizers Conference in Vancouver. And she wrote in her blog all about it.
http://community.icontact.com/p/simply_organized_life/newsletters/simply_organized_life_newsletter/posts/your-simply-organized-life-december-2007-stop-catalogs

Searching for Professional Organizers in Canada Blogs

I went to http://blogsearch.google.com/ and searched for this phrase:

professional organizers bc canada

The results were few and far between.

The first is a link to a blog called Sea Bass Fishing. This blogger reviews websites in various industries. He has one page for Organizing Review. There are 4 website reviews. See them here:
http://segabassfishing523.miblogen.com/2008/06/04/organizing-review/

The next entry looks promising but it turned out to be a broken link.
National Association Of Professional Organizers
26 Mar 2008 by aleedean National Association Of Professional Organizers National Association Of Professional Organizers National Association Of Professional Organizers . National Association Of Professional Organizers said he had hitherto covered the heavens, ...
National Association Of Professional Organizers - http://journals.aol.com/aleedean/National-Assoc...

This is a great niche market for Professional Organizers to start blogging. Be the first to get noticed as an expert in your field.

Blogging for Business: Step One

Step One: Getting Acquainted

Choose a topic you are interested in. Acquaint yourself with the blogosphere using blog search engines to search for your topic, then spend some time reading and getting acquainted:

Here is a list of blog search engines. Go to these links and type in the topic you would like to learn about.

Technorati:
http://www.technorati.com/ - indexed over 112 blogs

Ice Rocket:
http://www.icerocket.com/

Google:
http://blogsearch.google.com/

Bloglines -
http://www.bloglines.com/

This entry on Blogging for Business belongs to Mhairi Petrovic at
http://www.out-smarts.com/

More steps to follow.

Nope. My blog is not found on Google, Yahoo or MSN. So for now, I'm safe from prying eyes. I can blog in secret.

I want to put my company logo on the header. I wonder if that's an option. Consistent branding across your website is very important.

In my expert opinion, it's best to have a blog that matches your website. So it looks just like another page on your website. This way your visitors do NOT leave your website when they go to visit your blog. You want to keep your visitors on your website as long as possible.
I know, I know... I'm advertising to prospective clients that THE next best thing to promote your business online is ... hear the drum roll ... to start your very own blog ... when I myself, the expert web designer doesn't have one. What! no blog? how could you? Blog feels left out when you don't have one. :-)

Well, there are so many questions to answer when starting a blog. The very first question they asked me on Blogspot.com is What is the title for your blog? I don't know. What would make a good title? I picked Web Design Secrets for my title back in March 2007. But now I think it's lame. And I'm still looking for blogs that are written by web designers and web marketing experts that I can look to for examples. I wasn't even sure where to look.

But just tonight, I was fortunate to attend an excellent presentation by Mhairi Petrovic of Out-Smarts.com. She told us how she started blogging incognito on myspace.com just to try it out and vent some of her frustrations. Then after this under cover experiment went well and she found she enjoyed venting and ranting anonymously she decided to start a blog for business. And she's gotten business from her blog. So it's working! Blogs do work!!!

That's really good advice. To start one for practice and see how you like it. I haven't told anyone about this blog so I don't think anyone has seen it. so let's see if it has been picked up by any search engines.

Sayonara! See you later!