Have a knack for graphic design? Well than have we got a contest for you! Vertical Measures is currently in the process of a website redesign and logo revamp. We like the basics of our design, but need to 2.0 it up. This of course will require a new logo. One of the key things we are looking for with our new logo is the integration of a pictoral mark. Pictoral marks are often utilized to define a brand with one specific image, like that of Apple and their chrome apple icon, or the panda in the WWF logo.
The contest details, on LogoTournament.com, provide you with specific information on exactly what we’re looking for. We’ll be integrating the new logo onto our site, social media profiles, company t-shirts, and more! We’ve already had a few entries, so hurry fast! The contest ends Monday August 31st!
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
Microformats are gaining popularity, and if you’re not using them, you should be. Google’s introduction of Rich Snippets in May 2009 is just another indication that microformats will continue to gain popularity. And as more sites make use of this structured content, small businesses can capitalize on the use of microformats to help feed relevant information about their business to other websites by using microformats.
What Are Microformats?
According to a microformats expert, microformats create structure for "content about people, organizations, companies and places." This is mostly in regard to contact information like name, address, telephone number, and email address. Microformats use class values to specify this information, and this allows spiders to extract meaning from that information. Although it’s a little more work since you have to add these class values to the information, the benefit is that machines like Google’s robots are able to easily extract very specific meaning from your content. For example, the picture below shows the search results for a local restaurant search. The rich snippet (extracted by the Googlebot from various microformat data) is circled in red.
The Benefits of Using Microformats?
There are many benefits of using microformats. The most direct application is for improving local search marketing. Benefits include:
Helps users and spiders discover and parse information about you, and your business or organization
Improves local search marketing efforts for local businesses interested in business directory listings in local search engines like Google Local, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, Yelp, Urban Spoon and others.
Improves the visibility of business reviews in relation to user searches for you, and your business or organization
Improves the visibility of local events in relation to user searches for you, and your business or organization
Contributes to the creation of the semantic web. As more people implement microformats, the more they’ll get used to help machines create relevant structure and meaning from the content and information we provide on websites.
How to Implement Microformats
The best way to implement microformats is to start using them to parse information about yourself on your website. Start with your contact page and create an hcard for your contact information. Next, implement microformats for any reviews or events listed on your website. Then, if you’re really excited about microformats, implement them whenever you mention another person, place, organization, or business on your website.
Don’t worry; if you don’t know much code, there are many microformat tools that can help generate the necessary code; all you have to do is copy and past it into your web page. Here are the specifics.
hcard creator – Use hcard format for people, businesses, places, and organizations.
The last thing to do is make sure to tell Google you want to be included in its grand microformats experiement.
Websites and Services Using Microformats
Many websites, social networks and other services are making use of microformats. Here are just a few:
Digg utilizes hcard format for profiles.
Eventful supports hcalendar for its events and hcard for its venues.
Facebook suports hcard for its profiles.
Twitter supports hcard and XFN.
Google maps supports hcard.
Yahoo local supports hcard, hreview and hcalendar.
Convinced yet? Confused? Microformats are just one of the many improvements that can be made to your website to improve your local search marketing. If you need help implementing this strategy, or just want to discuss your options for local search marketing, please contact us.
Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others are all the rage now. But what effect do they have on your search engine rankings? During this informative presentation by link building expert Arnie Kuenn, President of Vertical Measures, you’ll learn how you can significantly improve your search engine rankings using social media.
Please join us for this free webinar on September 2nd at 4:00pm EST/1:00pm PST.
Is your business included in local search results? If you’re a small business owner, you may be so busy building your business in the real world that you haven’t considered the importance of optimizing your website for local search. If you’re one of those business owners, you’re not alone. But it’s also important that you don’t underestimate the power of local search. As Google and Bing continue their quest to deliver relevant results for keyword searches, you and I are seeing more local results for broad searches with local intent. For example, just do a search for chinese food or chinese restaurant and this is what comes up in the #1 position for Google and Bing.
I’m sure you’ve seen listings like these. Do a search for other terms like plumber, dentist, doctor, and florist and you’ll see similar 10-pac results right at the top. What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re a small business owner and you haven’t optimized your website for local search, you’re behind the game. It’s not enough to rank well for keyword searches anymore. Your competitors can now bump you from your top ranking by dominating the local search results. There are many ranking factors involved in local search marketing. But don’t worry, I’m going to share 7 steps you can take to assure your business is included in local search results.
Check your local listings
First things first; let’s check some local listings to see if your small business is already listed, or if it is listed, let’s make sure your business information is accurate. This is a small list of the more important local search engines. Of course, there are lots of other niche local business directories, but we’re not going to focus on those right now. To check your local listings, enter your business name and zip code at these local searches:
Depending on how your results turned up for your searches, you’ll either want to add your business listing (if your business didn’t show up at all), or claim your business listing (if it showed up, but information was incorrect).
When you do, you’ll have access to various tools to promote your local business, including a blog, newsletter, networking with other local businesses, and the ability to add coupons to your local listing.
Of course, once your small business is included, there’s a lot more that can be done to improve your local search marketing. Once you’re included, there are multiple factors that can lead your business to inclusion in the 10-pac results on page one. Vertical Measures offers local search marketing services to help assure your website is represented among these, and other, local search engine results.
The need for real-time search is a growing issue for search engines like Google, and the former MSN search engine Live. MSN, in an attempt to address the issue, developed Bing creating a "decision engine" that claims to provide better results; I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials. We’ve all been anticipating the arrival of a new and improved Google to address the issues, and we may see it soon: Google Caffeine.
While Google’s Matt Cutts explicitly states the new update is not in anyway an attempt to compete with Bing, there is something to be said about the timing of the update (The Bing/Yahoo partnership was announced just two weeks ago). Google’s rolled out the Caffeine update, which engineers have been working on for several months claims Cutts. Initial testing by some experts shows faster search retrieval times, more search results, and better accuracy. There are a few quirks to be worked through, but in general the new engine seems to integrate some real-time search improvements.
Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.
Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.
Have a knack for graphic design? Well than have we got a contest for you! Vertical Measures is currently in the process of a website redesign and logo revamp. We like the basics of our design, but need to 2.0 it up. This of course will require a new logo. One of the key things we are looking for with our new logo is the integration of a pictoral mark. Pictoral marks are often utilized to define a brand with one specific image, like that of Apple and their chrome apple icon, or the panda in the WWF logo. 
