Google Image Search
There’s some basic background information you need to know to fully understand how Google ranks images. Its image rankings are much more complex than typical website text, so that means it’s more difficult for Google to analyze and sort them all out into its rankings. However, there are a few key factors that it focuses on, which you can easily isolate and use to your advantage. If you’re wondering how to rank on Google images, focus on the following factors:

ALT Attribute
The way Google and the other images typically read an image file looks something like this for example:

<img src=”http://www.domainexample.com/image-file.jpg” alt=”Adcuda SEO”>

The text that’s entered in the alt= attribute, which in this case is “Adcuda SEO,” is sort of a tag for the image that shows up if the link is broken or the picture can’t load for whatever reason. The purpose is to describe the image, and Google reads that tag to get an idea of what the picture is.

Image Filename
At first glance, this factor doesn’t seem to hold much value – most image filenames are not very descriptive and Google has a limited amount of opportunity to get solid data on what the image is about. However, since the majority of images don’t do a good job of describing the content, taking the time to do so will definitely make your image stand out. Plus an additional use of your keyword never hurts.

Image Dimensions
This one’s pretty simple. If you’re reusing a common image or one that’s regularly shared, resizing helps make the image appear unique to Google. Otherwise it may view the image as duplicate content, which is never good from an SEO perspective.

Text Around Your Image
The text surrounding an image typically describes its content. Using keywords in the caption and the text in the immediate area around the image will give Google better context for figuring out what the image is about.

Traditional On-Page & Off-Page Factors
Other SEO factors still play a major role in the image ranking for your target keyword. That means the page containing your image should be well optimized using the same keywords. Off-page, the number of links and overall popularity of the page will also help the image rank. If Google values the site itself, that will translate just the same in the image search results.

Flickr
Flickr is one of the top dogs when it comes to social image sharing and searches in general, so if you’re optimizing your images, it makes sense to get involved here. Here’s the downside of ranking on Flickr – since it’s owned by Yahoo, Flickr images don’t show up in Google results very often. However, they dominate Yahoo images and also show up quite often on Bing. Flickr also offers additional opportunities from a social perspective to interact with potential customers and integrate your brand and message into your photographs. For example, if a clothing brand were to post and optimize “behind-the-scenes” pictures from a photo shoot, they could endear themselves to both current and potential clients. So how does Flickr rank photos? Its key factors are much more transparent than Google’s:

Photo Name
Regarding ranking on Flickr’s own internal search engine, simply having your target keyword in the photo title will help immensely.

Photo Tag
Photo tags work similarly to the titles, but give you more opportunity to be descriptive. Don’t just limit your tags to your keywords – include where the image was taken, who it was taken by, commentary on the style and whatever else might be relevant. Remember, we’re looking to completely utilize all the features Flickr provides.

Photo Description
Though not as relevant for ranking, photo descriptions are important for Flickr results in much the same way that meta tags are for websites. They provide the user with information about the picture within the results before it is even clicked. Use the description as a way to tell the user, ‘you’re headed in the right direction, check out this picture.’

First and foremost, the number one factor is support. How quickly does the company reply to help requests, and does the company offer 24/7 support services? Problems don’t always pop up during the normal nine to five work hours. One great way to ensure superior support services is to email the staff with a few questions before you purchase a plan and see how long it takes them to respond. If you’re left waiting too long, you can expect a similar wait when you really need their help.

Another important feature to consider when shopping for a web hosting provider is uptime. The more uptime they guarantee the better. The minimum standard these days is 99%. There are many technologies that allow the company to provide both high availability and reliability.

Unlimited web space is another perk that hosts use to rope in clients. Don't get me wrong, buying enough storage to allow for growth is a great idea. Just remember not to get lured into a bad plan with the promise of never-ending gigabytes of storage that you won’t use.

Data transfer is an area of concern for me personally because I’ve made the mistake of losing track of data transfers. In the end, I got hit with a huge bill. If you don’t pay attention, so could you.

Each web hosting company has different solutions and specialties. Don’t be afraid to do your research and evaluate the pros and cons before hiring a host.

Check out our short YouTube optimization video to learn how you can start your YouTube campaign and get some recognition.

Be sure to check back later in February when we’ll be hosting a Lunch & Learn on the benefits of online video marketing and discussing many more opportunities to get your business discovered.

Best Ever Medals are awarded to Google Places from the people who use Google’s HotPot,  one of the newest features Google offers – a recommendation engine for Places.

Google account holders automatically have HotPot.  The screen is a collection of Google Places with a number or ways to edit or filter it.  You can also use it to edit the Google Places you want to review including adding the Best Ever medal to the places you like best.  Be sure to use them wisely, each user is only allotted 10 metals.  (You can change who you’ve given medals to at any time, but you cannot currently award more than 10 medals total. This limit will make this rating more significant over time!)

So now I’m wondering, with all the changes Google Maps Places went through last year, and knowing that Google has been watching the checkin scene, what’s the next thing?

Also, this progression of new services also leads to some other points to contemplate:

• Is Google’s overwhelming attention to Local Search good or bad?
• Will the new “Best Ever” medals become a search signal to Google and will they affect rank?
• Should Google even be adding these kinds of features or should they stick with their core – Internet Search?
• When/if Google Checkin comes out, how will Google fare against companies like Foursquare and Facebook who are already actively engaged?
• Will Google loose in the long run by trying to be everything to everyone?

One thing is for sure, HotPot will be getting more attention now since Best Ever medals can only be awarded through the HotPot dashboard.  HotPot was introduced in the forth quarter of 2010 to a lukewarm response.  Perhaps Best Ever medals  are what’s needed to give this new feature some boost…

Hmmm, Google Boost…  Now what’s going on with that?

To be continued…

We invite you to join Adcuda Accounts Director Jennifer Hoyt for some free grub and our top ten tips on why you should be blogging. By the end you’ll not only have a full belly, but have moved past the excuses of not enough time or a small readership to understanding how blogging can help you grow your business.

Below you will find the archived footage of both the presentation and a question and answer session hosted by Adcuda Founder and President Casey Copeland.

Please feel free to begin by downloading the presentation here.

Thanks to everyone who attended the event in person and online! We hope to see you next time.

The Presentation: Hosted by Jennifer Hoyt (41:13)

Question and Answers: Hosted by Casey Copeland (13:15)

Here are some EASY and helpful tips to get you started.

1.First of all, the most important thing about a web site is the navigation. Basically a navigation bar features the most important links/pages on your web site.

It should be easy to find, it should be the prominent element of your design, and should stand out enough so it doesn’t get lost in the sea of content. People are very impatient on the web, and they will not hang around your site if they cannot find their way around your web site. The most common location of a navigation bar is across the top of your page, and users should NOT have to scroll down to find this main navigation. It is important to use OBVIOUS sections names – they should clearly state what lies behind them. Obscure, general words like “resources” and “tools” should be avoided, as they only lead to users clicking on multiple buttons to find that they are looking for. Be specific in your navigation link titles.

Remind users where they are also. Once a user clicks into a site section, it’s a good idea to remind them where they are by using a consistent method to highlight the section the visitor is in – such as change a color or appearance. If the site has more than one page for section, leave the button clickable so users can use it to get back to the main page of that area.

Here are some examples of clean and successful navigation bars:

2. Less is MORE
I have seen countless numbers of websites that have too many objects on them. Too many content areas, pictures and buttons can dramatically effect the amount of time a viewer is on your site. The viewer should not have ‘too many’ choices. A long list of options keeps the visitor from getting into the most important content areas on your site.

If you have a lot of information, consider using drop down menus and break everything off into sections. Be careful about too many separate navigation bars. These should be clearly defined too. If they aren’t, the viewer won’t know where to look or click. Portfolio web sites, for example, should be very simple.

Here are a few examples of some clean layouts:

3. Keep it consistent
Site navigation should appear in the SAME location on every page of a site every time. It should keep the same style, colors and type – this will allow the users to feel comfortable browsing it. If the navigation disappears on a page or changes colors, frustrated visitors are more likely to go elsewhere.

Every page should have the same sizes/colors/styles on the text. The links should be the same color throughout the whole web site, as well as style. The body text should be consistent on each page, and so on. Buttons are nice to keep consistent as well.

Being consistent throughout your site not only creates great branding to your company but it allows trust and comfort to your visitors when brewing through your web site.

Hopefully these tips will help you in creating your new small business web site.

1. Make it more than just a keyword. A name made up of two or more keywords is often the first thing that new business owners lean towards – and is usually not successful. They are easily forgotten, confused with other companies, and can lack interest – in other words, BORING.

For example, when you hear bestwidgets.com, betterwidgets.com, superiorwidgets.com and greatwidgets.com it is obvious than none of them stand out in a unique brand.

2. Make it sound different. The name you choose should sound like nothing else. Here is a bad example – Claris, Clarins, Claritin, and Claria. It’s hard to remember which names refers to software, line marketing, antihistamines or cosmetics. Even if you did remember it’s likely that you would associate all words in one category.

3. Verb Potential. Think ‘Xerox’ or ‘Google’. A generic pronounceable word that means nothing is the best launch for a brand to become unique. Words such as these develop their own verb. There isn’t a day where you hear someone say ‘google it!’ If you hear someone spending their time saying “[your name]-ing it” then you’ve got a promising brand name.

Kudos Brandbucket.com

Let’s start with the universal note taking app that is available on not only the iPad, but the iPhone, Android, desktops, in fact, just about anywhere you live electronically.  That would be Evernote.  This application can hold text notes, pdf’s, photos, business cards, recipes, well you get the idea. Once your note is saved it becomes not only accessible from anywhere, but it also becomes searchable, even the text within images if the image is clear enough. That feature is brought to you by the wondrous technology of Optical Character Recognition. Big words for a big job. Why do I bring that particular technology up you might ask, well we’ll get to that in a minute so stop being so impatient.

I truly find Evernote to be the most valuable application I’ve ever downloaded.  For me personally,  on the phone I take photos of receipts and have them uploaded and indexed.  On the desktop I save web pages that have code snippets I want to search through later.  Also, after a phone call I’ll pull up my client folder and type in a few notes for quick reference later.  On the iPad I store my meeting notes.

When I first started using the iPad for meeting notes I just typed them into Evernote directly with the on screen keyboard, but to be honest, I missed the actual act of writing things down in a pen to paper sort of way. So I tried to do just that, but quickly found I’m not much of a “writing with my fingers” sort of guy. After a quick internet search I found the perfect implement to simulate the real thing. A pogo sketch stylus. This little wonder has a special tip that functions superbly on capacitive screens like the one on the iPad. My only complaint is that I wish it was a tad bit thicker and had a little more heft to it, but thats just splitting hairs.

Armed with the pen, I needed the paper. Unfortunately, as of right now Evernote for the iPad does not take touch/pen type input directly into the note taking features of the app.  For that I had to look elsewhere.  After trying several different notepad style apps for the iPad I found my biggest problem was the multi touch functionality of the device.  I like to rest my palm on the surface when writing.  For pen input, that simply wasn’t working. But lo and behold after trying about 5 different solutions I found the one. Penultimate. Penultimate has an option for detecting your palm resting on the screen and ignores it. That leaves you free to write to your hearts content. Now this app isn’t without its shortcomings. Namely the lack of adjusting the pen tip size, but that is hardly enough of a barrier to dimish the usefulness of the app. In fact it’s really not much of a barrier at all in the great scheme of things.

So how does this fit into my Evernote workflow? Penultimate has a handy feature where you can email both a single written page, or an entire notebook. Evernote, in their great wisdom, happens to have issue each user an email address that allows you to email notes into your notebook. Voila, a hand written, searchable note is now accessible wherever I am. Did you catch that searchable part? Told you I’d get back to that character recognition stuff (if your handwriting is clean enough).

That’s my iPad note taking workflow. I think it’s pretty solid but if you think you can improve it, or if yours is just better, let me know below.

There are tons of categories incentives can fall through. Here are some types – hopefully from this list you can choose what may be a best fit for your company and consumers.

Material incentives: tangible rewards often monetary — wages, fringe benefits, patronage

Solidary incentives: intangible rewards from the act of association — sociability, status, identification

Purposive incentives: intangible rewards related to the goals of the organization — e.g., working on an election of a supported candidate

Bonuses -One of the most popular sales incentives is cash, and a great way to offer it is through incentive-based raffles. Use a chart to identify defined goals, and each time an employee achieves one of the goals she is given a raffle ticket. Hence, the more goals an employee reaches the more raffle tickets she receives and the better the chances are she will win.

Gifts – Offer the winning staff member a gift from your store’s merchandise, which could be a new flat-screen television or an all-expenses-paid vacation. They key is to ensure that your staff members all continually want to make a sale.

Promotions -When a position becomes available you can hold a sales incentive competition to award it to the highest seller. In this case, it’s best to run the competition for several months so you see who can sustain a high level of performance and deserves a position of more responsibility. Typically, these competitions are limited to a small group of employees.

It is important to understand how much incentives can affect your company – both positively and negatively. With this economy it might be tough to gain positive influence to your company by using incentives, so it is best to start mildly with an incentive to see how much influence it may gain. Keep reports of your progress.

When you want to attract new customers creating a mailing list is a nice option to promote your incentives. A newsletter is a wonderful incentive that allows your company to show off honesty, credibility and trust. These newsletters should mostly contain sales and coupons. Give people a reason to sign up – for some valuable information. Also, be sure to keep your content fresh, The biggest reason that people unsubscribe to newsletters is that they don’t feel the information is relevant to them any longer. A handy tip to get more exposure: keep your incentives personal. Keep track of your specific customers. If you have a large amount of customers who go in your store and only purchase outdoor items, offer an incentive that goes out to them only. Identify your target markets and keep them organized within your newsletter/email campaigns. Make them personal.

A free download is another great incentive to include on your web site, email marketing or newsletter. A free download means instant gratification and is perceived as a ‘must-have’ item. Make it valuable to your customers. Pay attention to your graphics as well. I personally like buttons that look ‘click-able’ or ‘touchable’ make sure you choose a nice graphic that has a nice ‘call to action’ mood to it. See don’t you just want to click it?

Kudos answers.com & rockstar affiliates

Take, for instance, the Batman movie series wisely ousting director Joel Schumacher and replacing him with Christopher Nolan.  Very good move, indeed.

And then there’s Yellow Bot.

Yellow Bot’s refreshing new spin on themselves has opened up new and improved ways for local businesses to connect with customers.

Reinventing yourself can be a great way to not only draw in new and old faces to your website, but by paying heed to Yellow Bot’s new design structure, you begin to notice a couple of subtle, yet possibly important ways for local business listings to say hello to consumer search:

1. Ease of Access: Right off the bat, Yellow Bot improves the one thing that escaped business owners from doing as soon as they got there: submission of business. Err, let me rephrase that: you could submit your business listing the whole time, it’s just for “user-friendly” experience, you kind of had to go Sherlock Holmes on the website before you could find the “Add Business Listing” icon.  Nowadays, there’s an icon at the bottom that’s big, blue and looking for you.
2. Speedy Exposure: Once you’ve claimed your business and added the proper information, Yellow Bot has always been very good about placing your listing up in a timely manner.  Only thing is, this time you’re the star of the show for a day.  By that I mean your newbie listing is given top-shelf treatment via any photos you’ve included.  You’re only given three picture slots, so make them as pleasing to the eye as possible, because the right picture just might turn in the lead you’ve been looking for.

Just like Google’s subtle change to their home page, the warm, inviting colors used by Yellow Bot make the site look appropriate for today’s web design pallets.  Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Yellow Bot lets you run rampant with your business listing, allows you to add numerous tags and such.

So go on, embrace change and get active with your business listing today!