Website Design Blog | Graticle.com » search engine optimization

How To Sign Up For A Facebook Fan Page

Shawn — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:39:54 +0000

In this video I explain what a Facebook page is, and how to sign up. The video is quick (under 4 minutes) and straight to the point. Enjoy!

The transcription of the video is below.

Hey everyone, it’s Shawn from Graticle Design. Today, I wanted to go over with you how to sign up for a Facebook page. In case you don’t already know how to. It’s actually different than what you’d see here where it says sign up its free, anyone can join. That’s actually a personal page. You want to click the Create a page for a celebrity, banner, or business — reason being it’s against Facebook guidelines otherwise, and they don’t want you to sign up for a business through a personal account because they don’t want you spamming everyone. So they give you the option to get a Facebook Page which is actually beneficial to you. This is because with a personal page you have a cap on a your friend’s list of five thousand people. On the other hand, for business having a personal page, you can have as many friends you’d like. And if you do go ahead and use a personal account for your business and Facebook finds out about it later, all of the work and reputation you built up during that time period is all gone. You will have to start completely over.

So let’s go ahead and create a page for your business. You have a couple options, we’re to go to local businesses, in particular, automotive. Go ahead and pick your category here. And enter the business name here, I am going to type in Bob’s Automotive. I don’t know in this business and I’m going to delete this right after I’m finished. Enter in the captcha and if you are authorized to do so, type your name there. So click Create A Page. If you do not already have a Facebook account this is where they are going to want you to create one. You can create one and if you don’t want a personal account created, you can go to Settings or Google it to learn how to make your profile completely private so no one can ever find it. I do recommend just creating one and networking with your friends and you’d be surprised that a lot of friends are already on there.

You are now going to be faced with a blank page, and this is where you get to edit everything. It’s really self explanatory as the entire Facebook website is. You can edit things such as your website, company overview, mission statement, when you opened, and features.

Thank you.

Do you have any comments or suggestions? If so, leave a comment below!

How To Autoplay Your Youtube Video

Shawn — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:22:49 +0000

This tutorial is going to show you how to place a YouTube video on your own website or blog, and also how to make it automatically play when your site loads. The reason you might want to auto play a video on your website are for various reasons. One being, the number of your YouTube plays on YouTube will increase, giving you a better position. Rather than waiting for someone to play your video online, you have a view every time someone visits your website.

So for the first step is finding the YouTube video that you are looking for.

Once, you know this you need to copy and paste the Embeded code given to you shown in the screenshot below.

YouTube Embeded Code

When you first copy and paste your code to your website, this is the code that you are given.

Notice in the code above I have highlighted the everything in the embed tags. This is the code that you are going to keep in order to auto play your video. You can go ahead and delete the rest.

The next step after you have cleaned up the code, is to add &autoplay=1 to the end of the embed source url (embed src) as shown below.

Not as bad as you thought I’m sure. Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Google Caffeine Search

Shawn — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:13:02 +0000

So Google has allowed anyone to access their newest project, Google Caffeine. If you haven’t heard about Caffeine yet, it’s Google’s project to increase “size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions” of their current search engine, according to Google’s Official Webmaster Central Blog. This is huge for consumers, now being able to get what they want from this search engine giant at even quicker speeds (as if you knew it was slow before).

When searching graticle, I achieved a .19 second decrease in search and 2,300 less search results — hoping none of those were ours

Before Google Caffeine

After Google Caffeine

You have to give Google credit, I don’t remember complaining about the speed or the accuracy of my searches, yet they still improve. That’s respectful.

Go check out Google Caffeine and give it a test yourself: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

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What do you think about Google’s project? Do you see negative effects coming from this?

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Shawn — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:40:16 +0000

Here is a short list of search engine optimization tips, allowing you to further the SEO of your current website. These are to the point, allowing you to get your way into SEO quickly.

1. Meta Tags

Include your keyword or keyword phrase that you are optimizing for in the title of your webpage. This is between the tags “< title >” and “< /title >” (without spaces).

Also include your keyword or keyword phrase in your meta description tag and your meta keywords tag, respectively < meta name=”description” > & < meta name=”keywords” >.

2. H1 & H2 Tags

On every page of your website you need to have at least one < h1 > tag, and one < h2 > tag. The search engines analyze an h1 tag as being the topic of the page, while the h2 the subtopic. Again, include your keyword or category keyword in these header tags.

3. Keyword Density

For the keyword that you are focusing on, on a particular page, you need to make sure the density is somewhere around 10%. For example 10 out of every 100 words is in relation to your keyword or keyword phrase. You can check the keyword density of your website at Ranks.nl.

4. Anchor Text

For links on your webpage (especially internal links), make sure to include your keyword or keyword phrase. (ie. “Our Web Design Services” not “Click here”).

5. Images

For images, don’t forget the alt tag which allows the search engine to know what a picture is. Here is an alt tag example: < img src =”images/graticle.jpg” alt =”Website Design Logo” >. Again, don’t overdue it, only use relevant information — this is also how people with viewing disabilities or otherwise know what your pictures are.

6. New Content

Keep your website updated regularly as you can do this by adding a blog to your website. This not only allows you to have a better ranking, but also connects you with your customer base at the same time.

7. Linking From Other Websites

A great way to earn credibility through a search engine is having a well established website link to yours. This show the search engines that your website is more important than the website that has none.

Remember, this is not a magic bullet, it is a constant effort to increase your rankings in the search engines. So keep updating, editing, and creating fresh content and slowly but surely, your rankings will increase.

Social Media Marketing and Your Company

Shawn — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:25:12 +0000

Recently I have had numerous conversations with business owners that haven’t grasped the social media marketing arena (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) yet. As Social Media is a “newer” area, which has its techniques and strategies that can help you and your customers, it needs focused attention. If you are saying “I’ve heard of Twitter before…” these videos are for you, showing you the importance of these applications.

Also, notice how Perry mentions people that state they don’t have enough time for these mediums, don’t fall into that category — make time.

Ed Dale is a genius when it comes to online marketing — take notes, follow his advice, and it will pay off for you and your customers.

I hope you enjoy the videos. Leave some feedback as we’d love to hear from you!

Twitter Tips

Google Local Business Center Tips

Shawn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:52:04 +0000

When optimizing your website for the search engines, sometimes details get ignored — one being the Google LBC (Local Business Center). Some businesses either don’t know how to post their business on the LBC (www.google.com/local/add), or have already seen their business listed when searching (sometimes Google does this automatically when it finds a business through online listings) and they don’t think much of it. Well we are here to let you know that you need to put more energy than you think into your business listing, as there are tricks (just like anything else) to get you higher on the list.

1. Pay Attention To Your Name

Rather than just posting your company name, try to insert a keyword(s) into your name as well. For instance, if you sell computers, rather than listing your company name as Johnny’s, list it as Johnny’s Computers. This not only lets Google know that you are relevant (besides your tags), but also lets the person browsing know that you at least have something to do with computers. This will help you stand out from your competition, while still being ethical.

2. Domain Name

When you list your domain name, rather than listing as http://www.graticle.com or www.graticle.com — list your website as Graticle.com. This will help you maintain your “brand,” while becoming more clear for someone looking at your domain name. You can find some great information for listings on Adwords (which is very similar) in Perry Marshall’s book Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords.

3. Phone Number

Your phone number should be local as people browsing your website tend to gravitate towards local businesses — depending on your industry. Sometimes when Google automatically enters your business on it’s LBC, it might find your information from an old listing in YellowPages.com that you forgot to update. So your company might not have a phone number listed, or even worse, your previous phone number.

4. City Center

Although no one (besides Google’s engineers) knows the excact procedure how the LBC or any Google listing system works — but this tip has a lot of weight. If your company’s site is optimized to a certain location, your address to that city center is crucial. Now we won’t give you a way around this, but just know that this factor is crucial — so keep it in mind if you have an opportunity to move to another location, or even if you are just starting out. Again, remember it’s more than one factor that plays into their equations — so if you can’t get any closer, don’t sweat it.

5. Forms of Payment

This is another factor that Google will not automatically insert for you — if they have entered your company into the LBC. Hopefully your company already accepts payments for any medium used, so listing these on the LBC will help give your customers confidence in your company. If you only accept checks, it would also be a good idea to let your customers know this up front.

6. Hours of Operation

Again not something Google will automate. Regardless of the hours that you list your company open, make sure you stick to them.

That sums up the tips for the LBC for now. Also, don’t forget to add to the rest of your listing including Tags, Description, Coupon, Picture, and Video — anything to set yourself apart from your competition and you will do great.

*Enter your business into the Google Local Business Center here: