The Seaward Inn of Rockport, MA looks forward to turning 65!

Have you ever been to Rockport, MA? I have not, even though I lived in New England for 12 years. Amazing, isn't it? For 12 years I lived in New Hampshire, but my life as an innkeeper didn't allow for much leisure time to visit all of the beautiful spots that New England has to offer. But this summer I was able to get to know Rockport, MA and more particularly The Seaward Inn because innkeeper, Nancy Cameron-Gilsey (a Certified Social Worker!), requested that I help her update her website. You see Nancy has been a Webconsuls' client since November 2000; in fact The Seaward Inn is one of our oldest clients, both literally and figuratively. On May 7, 2009, The Seaward Inn will open for their 65th Season! This being Saturday morning I invite you to learn a little more about The Seaward and Rockport, MA.
It was 1945, well before Nancy's birth, when Nancy's parents first purchased the large home situated on five acres in Rockport, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. World War II had ended and Roger and Anne Cameron opened their home to summer guests. Rockport is a small town about 25 miles north of Boston and it sits on the tip of the Cape Ann Peninsula. Rockport is picturesque; in fact, Walt Disney Productions has listed Rockport Harbor as one of the ten most scenic places in the United States. Rockport is just a short drive from Gloucester, MA, which you will remember from the movie and book, The Perfect Storm (2000). And, yes, the cast and crew stayed at The Seaward during the filming of this fabulous movie. But I digress...back to the website update.
Nancy's site is not large, about 15 pages. It was designed many years ago, prior to Webconsuls being retained to do the search engine optimization(SEO) for the site. The site update started with a simple inquiry from Nancy about how to incorporate new photos and how to upgrade the information found on her "Area Attractions" page. I told Nancy I would review the site and then my research began in earnest. Since I love history, I found myself reading everything I could find about Rockport, Dogtown, Motif #1, and then I had long conversations with Nancy about all the famous guests that she and her family have welcomed to the inn. It was all so interesting.
As the weeks progressed, Nancy and I stayed in touch. She sent me the new photos, shared the history of the inn, and introduced me to her long time employee...Rose Marie Leal. Then one day Nancy and Rose told me about their latest adventure at The Seaward...their "Sunday Morning Live" series. Their Sunday Buffet by the Sea features live musical entertainment and it is open to the public. With this bit of information Rose and I went into high gear and a video was born, with the help of our Support Technician, Dan Helfand. You can enjoy the video here featuring images of The Seaward and the music of The Barbara & Al Boudreau Jazz Trio.



I look forward to visiting The Seaward Inn, touring Rockport, meeting Nancy and Rose in person. I am glad I had the chance to work on this project with them; it was a labor of love for them and became one for me. Having been an innkeeper and knowing what this life is like, I know that every decision you make is for your guests and Nancy and Rose work very hard to make every visitor feel welcomed. So, if you have never been to Rockport, why not put it on your short list? Remember, The Seaward is only open from May through October every year.
Tomorrow The Seaward Inn will close out their 2008 season, winter will come and go, and just as sure as the daffodils and crocus will bloom next spring, Nancy will be ready to welcome guests for their 65th season. I am sure her parents would be very proud.

Importance of W3C Validation

Most people don't understand the importance of having a website that is W3C Validated. Having your website validated can increase your listings on SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Its a great tool for SEO, it allows search engines to read through your website without coming across any errors.

W3C Validation is also important when it comes to software for people with disabilities. A W3C validated website allows those with disabilities such as the hearing impaired or vision impaired to browse through your website with ease. Allowing their software to read what images you have posted or maybe a description of a video you may have on a website so the hearing impaired can still follow the video.

Is your website validated? http://validator.w3.org/

Contact us today to see how Webconsuls can validate and optimize your website.

More than SEO

 

The Internet today offers several avenues for exposure beyond traditional Search Engine Optimization. Working in concert with a firm that has expertise in these avenues can increase visibility, search engine rankings, and business. These avenues are often considered part of Social Marketing.

One is to use the Internet to publish articles. You write the article and your web development company publishes it on a myriad of Internet sites. Well written and interesting articles can not only get wide circulation, but enhance your reputation as well.

A second way is to use blogs. The web development company would set up the blog and you regularly add content. Done correctly, the blog pages that you add would get wide and fast circulation.

You might consider adding video content to your site. Relatively inexpensive equipment is available to take acceptable videos. You may already have suitable equipment. Well done videos are interesting content which can be publicized them on the Internet. There is also much less competition for videos. For one client's main keyword there were over 750,000 pages indexed by Google, and less that 175 videos.

Webconsuls, LLC We are a web site development company with expertise and experience in designing and building web sites, in Search Engine Optimization, and in Social Marketing.

Webconsuls > SEO

Google's Matt Cutts Gives Tips to Small Business Owners

Link Based Algorithms and Competitive Marketing Niches

Google's ever changing algorithm, that mysterious secret combination of characteristics to convince the search engines that your site is in fact the best and most appropriate resource for the inquiry typed into Google's search.

In previous years search engine optimization experts would anguish over data and statistics trying to discern what keyword density was optimal, dashes or hyphens, strong or bold tags. These were the questions of the day. The algorithm would change as various techniques were exploited.

From the Site:
Why Google's Link Based Search Algorithms are Here to Stay

Let us look at just one small competitive niche for example. Say "Dallas Mortgage" for instance. This industry is fiercely competitive and right now there are several dozen mortgage brokers that are actually in Dallas trying to do a decent job of SEO to be ranked for this one (relatively small) niche. Now add to this the fact that Dallas is a major market and many companies in Houston, Austin, San Antone, etc that can underwrite a loan anywhere in the state are focusing on SEO for this one term as well. Lastly add the literally thousands of affiliate marketers that are working to build leads for companies like LowerMyBills.com, Ditech, etc who are also making mirror sites that optimize for this term and this one very small niche is persued by thousands of people.

To accomplish this goal some of these people are doing pure white hat (and getting owned by the way), some are doing varying levels of Gray to Black hat methods and some (affiliates mostly) are doing pure spam. To get a rank for this term you have to play by the Google rules and you must get links for it. Here is a news flash, no one is likely to give out links for "Dallas Mortgage" in the idealistic "democratic" way that Google suggests we get links. So to rank for this term you either directly create, negotiate, request, buy or beg links from quality sites.

Now to my idealist White Hat SEO brethren the solution is simple, just pull this link component out of the equation and judge sites on their content, what could be wrong with that? To anyone with an ability to think forward even a little bit the problem is like a oncoming train! Just go back to the fact that on site SEO is simple to accomplish, easy to learn and simplistic to teach. It only requires knowing and following standards, some very basic math and some skill with keyword research. So what scream the idealists!

Well what this means is all those thousands of people chasing "Dallas Mortgage" now will each create content with specific key word densities, proper tags, etc. Some will "win" for the moment and the loosers will just copy there techniques and try to do 1% better. Very soon the precise formula is determined and all the sites are using it and in a statistical tie with each other. Now also understand that with the exception of perhaps some of the "made for adSense" sites most of these sites will actually lead the visitor to a source for a Dallas Mortgage, they are not all junk as many would claim. Does this stalemate sound familiar? It should if you have been around a decade or more as it is very much how some of the first engines worked.

So what happened next? We needed a "tie breaker" some way to take two sites that both were quality from a code stand point, both had real sources of "dallas mortgage" information and both had a 2.5% (or whatever was in en vogue at the time) key word density for the term. What, short of a subjective and therefore flawed human review, was left for the search engines to use. Nothing but the infamous link. Why?

Beacause even though you can build your own links, even though you can buy them, even though you can build an entire series of sites just to pass link power around, some number of links will still be 100% beyond the control of the actual site owners. Right now we only have two choices in this. Human review or links as a component and humans can be bribed, wrong, bias, etc. Links at least use math and my friends, "math doesn't lie".

Do I think we have swung to far and links now have to much influence? Yes I do, I think it should be impossible for any page to rank for any term that is clearly not present on it at all. Yet Google "click here" and you find Adobe and if you Googled Miserable Failure in the past you found George Bush and Michale Moore (thanks to bloggers Google Bombing). Eventually Google had to hand job out those results for Bush and Moore because there were so many links nothing else would have made them go away.

I would have loved Google to simply have tinkered with things so that a word must be on a page. Sure keep the link portion but if I look for failure on Google I ain't looking for Bush or Moore (regardless of your opinion of either). What this leads us to though is a simple understanding, links are not going to stop pushing rankings for a very long time. Google may move to put more weight back into content, which I would welcome but links will be a driving force for a long time to come. I for one don't think removing them all together would create some sort of democratic internet eutopia, that others seem to believe it would.

What do you think? Is there to much weight on links? Would it be good if Google put more weight on content? Do you like things they way they are now? Or do you think I am wrong and TinPig is right and that Google should just stop using links to rank sites at all, if so how do we then break the 100 "ties" for a first page ranking?