The Rochester Hills based award-winning experiential marketing firm EEI Global has formally unveiled its new corporate Web site, www.eeiglobal.com.

The new site reflects the company’s brand evolution in both its design and content. The firm, formerly known as Exhibit Enterprises, launched its EEI Global brand in the spring of 2008.

The Web site’s “Change Your Experience” interface allows visitors to quickly highlight and access company information, creative portfolio examples, and case studies that are most relevant to their business needs.

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(TransWorldNews)

Texas based SEO 1 Services has entered into a marketing agreement with Brazen, a Dallas Web Design company, to cooperate in SEO friendly web development. With the strategic alliance both firms are looking to broaden their target audience.

SEO web design has been by far one the most talked concept in web development in recent years. With millions of sites, and content spreading like wild fire in the internet, It is no secret to leading Brazen Web Design that the SEO approach is not only important but crucial in any marketing mix. In early 2007, Brazen Web Design hired SEO 1 Services to consult and train its junior staff to implement the latest SEO friendly e-commerce techniques.

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By Rajesh V. Tavakari

When promoting your e-commerce site you want to make sure visitors will want to return again. By ‘visitors’ we mean both humans, who are your potential customers, as well as search engines and directories.

Check Your Links
Web site promotion starts with a search engine spider indexing or cataloging your site by following the links from one page to another. Just as human visitors dislike a broken link, so do the spiders. If a link doesn’t work they’ll simply move onto the next page. No matter how sophisticated the search engine software is, it can’t index what it can’t find. Also remember that a spider won’t be able to follow a link that requires a form submission or JavaScript.

While considering the subject of links, if you’re using HTML and CSS on your site, make sure that both work properly. A certain minimum level of requirements must be met so that your pages will display correctly. It’s only if these are met that a spider can do its work. There are free facilities online that can check both of these for you.

Keep Your Pages Small
Most of us have heard the expression that size isn’t everything. This is also true when it comes to Web pages. People don’t like having to wait for a Web page to load. Search engine spiders may not fully index a page bigger than 150k in size. Remember that the size of a page doesn’t simply depend on the actual HTML file itself, but includes everything on the page such as images, banners etc.

If you have a lot of images on your pages, then either reduce the number of them, or use a program such as Macromedia Fireworks to optimize them for the Web. If the page has a big file size due to a massive amount of text, you should consider splitting the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and putting them on several pages. SEO Chat has a tool called “Page Size Lookup” which can tell you the size of your Web page.

What’s the Difference Between a Search Engine and a Directory?
People frequently use the term ‘search engine’ as a catch-all expression for anything they use to search the Web. They are different things though, and an understanding of the differences will help you promote your site successfully.

How Does a Search Engine Work?
Search engines use highly sophisticated software to search the web for new pages. It then automatically creates and updates their indexes. Whenever they find an active hyperlink, they will follow it and add that to the index and so on. These programs are generally referred to as ‘spiders.’

Normally, all this is totally automatic, but sometimes human intervention is involved. The spider will return periodically to the pages and check for updated content. Often there will be a delay between you uploading your page, and the spider finding it, unless you submit your URL directly to the search engine itself. You can submit a web URL to Google free of charge.

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by Dev Basu

1. The Kick Off Phone Call – The purpose of this call is to affirm your role as a supportive entity that complements the web designer’s work. The call with the client and his/her web designer will help set deadlines, process, and types of communication between the project’s stakeholders.

2. Setup A Wiki or Similar Collaboration Resource – Email isn’t necessarily the best way to manage a project, and it’s often much better to establish a central resource for sharing information, wireframes, checklisted SEO recommendations, and similar files. It’s important to keep the access open to the client if they wish to see how SEO is being integrated into the design process.

3. Schedule Regular Phone Calls – Email is great to get communication in and out fast, but not necessarily when you want anything actionable to happen. You can’t file a scheduled phone call away, and it forces both the SEO and web designer to focus project milestones so that deadlines are met.

4. Explain Your Recommendations – While some might think it’s not worth the extra time and effort in educating the web designer, I’ve found that putting some rationale in your recommendations can speed up the work flow. Baking SEO into the design process asks the designer to make changes into their existing work habits, and change isn’t always easy to accept.

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I empathize with business owners who get frustrated when faced with the task of creating or upgrading a company Web site. Let’s face it, the Web is in its relative infancy, and infants are notoriously temperamental. Worse yet, they tend to outgrow their clothes a bit too quickly.

On the Web, even great firms dedicated to delivering quality can be challenged to keep up. So where should the average business owner begin? As with any other marketing decision, one should have a plan that considers company objectives and return on investment. Here are three recommendations for ensuring your company’s success:

Define objectives

The primary reason Web sites fail is a lack of established goals. A successful project relies on clear, legitimate objectives. Typical goals might include generating Web or phone leads, decreasing support calls or facilitating your customers’ ordering process.

Specifying objectives increases the likelihood of success. Of course, fulfilling company objectives brings associated costs. A good firm will walk you through the process of understanding the costs and anticipated benefits related to various features, giving you information needed to help establish priorities and a reasonable budget.

Consider required skills

Content and marketing: Good content is the heart of a successful Web site. Consider whether you will need help with copy writing, photography, illustration or audio/video production. Furthermore, remember that your site’s content should reflect company objectives and be kept fresh through constant updates. A vendor’s expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) also should have a prominent place in your selection criteria. SEO is not a one-time effort, but rather an ongoing activity involving time and significant skill. Finally, ask potential vendors about e-mail marketing and how they approach this tool in relation to overall marketing objectives. While distinct from your Web site, properly constructed e-mail campaigns are effective tools that enhance your Web marketing efforts.

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Have you ever heard a search engine optimization (SEO) professional use the term user experience during a presentation, in an article or as part of a sales pitch? On the web, user experience (commonly abbreviated as UX or UE) is a term used to describe the overall perception, experience, and satisfaction that users have as a result of their interactions with a website.

Search engine optimization is all about the user experience, because the idea behind SEO is to get users to their desired information and destination(s) as quickly and easily as possible by using the users’ language (keywords). Searchers type in keywords at a commercial web search engine. Searchers’ expectations are validated in search results pages and, hopefully, after they click on links within those search results…a perfect, seamless user experience.

On the surface, an SEO professional’s presumed knowledge of user experience might sound impressive. However, if you do a little digging, you might discover that search professionals have their own preconceived notions as to what constitutes a positive user experience, notions that have little or nothing to do with users at all.

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Want to get your Web site to appear high up in the results when someone is looking for the kind of stuff you sell? There are two ways to appear when someone types in “keywords” into a search engine:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO) — designing and writing your Web site to naturally rank high in search engine results.

2. Search engine marketing (SEM) — paying for a listing adjacent to keywords that you choose.

SEO and SEM are increasingly important, as they drive highly motivated prospects directly to your Web site. Moreover, with SEM, you pay only for those who actually “click through” to your Web site, so it makes search engine advertising particularly attractive to small companies.

With both SEO and SEM, the most important step is to clearly identify which “keywords” searchers are likely to use when looking for the types of products, services, or content you offer. Then you must make sure you’ve “optimized” your site for those keywords by using them over and over throughout your site in your content, headlines, page names, additional Web pages and more.

If you want your site to appear high in results without paying for ads, choosing which keywords to use throughout your site is critical! Choose the most narrowly defined terms appropriate to your products, services or content.

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I’m sitting in a café up here in Inwood and I overhear three guys doing a deal. The customer is an architect or interior designer. He wants a new Web site so his customers can find his shop — online and off — and can see the construction companies and contractors he likes to work with. “Pictures are nice, but not necessary,” he says. The two guys at the table with him are local Web designers.

After the customer leaves, I ask one of the designers how’s business, since, you know, everything blew up. “Actually it’s very good,” he tells me. But I’m skeptical. How could it be? Everyone’s hurting. “Well, people are looking for cost-effective ways to market themselves and redesigning their Web site is a relatively cheap alternative,” says the designer.

It’s true: I think I heard them offer to do the job for the architect for something like $1,300.

“Also it’s its a one-time charge. Advertising only lasts for a certain amount of time and then you have to pay more.” The designer says another good business right now is search engine optimization (SEO), which is the polite way of describing the business of tweaking Web sites so they’ll appear higher in natural search results. This makes sense to me. Paying a one-time fee for a SEO re-vamp is probably a lot cheaper than paying for clicks each month. Maybe when cash is easier again, you’ll do both.

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By Jeffrey Smith

I know many businesses are a hesitant when they think about SEO Services, due to bad press or SEO companies who have given the industry a black eye. Just as in any industry, there are going to be a few bad eggs, but with the costs of SEO rising due to supply and demand and the competitive nature of online business.

SEO is more than just a passing fad, it’s a necessity for most companies today.

Internet marketing and web sales represent one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising in existence. Just keep in mind that It’s not the size of the organization, it’s the thoroughness of the specialist optimizing your site that is in question.

SEO is never a one and done scenario.

Once the process starts it may take months to achieve the desired effect (this is why the pricing is typically so high). The upside of course is that one your keywords are anchored in your industry, a steady influx of traffic is nearly guaranteed.

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