Presentation highlights include:

Content is King

1. What message do you want to communicate?
2. Define your area of expertise
3. What geographical area do you want to influence?
4. Develop value through unique content
5. Make your content shareable

Understanding Duplicate Content

1. Becoming the authoritative source
2. Duplicate content in regards to property listings
3. Develop unique content that is different than shared content in IDX feed
4. Include content centered around IPWs with links to property details page
5. Understanding Page Rank

Understanding the Search Demand Curve

1. Identify where you rank on your Fat Head, Chunky Middle and Long tail terms and develop a strategy for each
2. Capture more traffic from the tail
3. Understand what terms are converting into sales
4. Use SEO performances in your marketing efforts
5. Use search results to develop more unique content

Building Your Local Brand

1. What is the message we are trying to communicate about our brand?
2. How to use all the tools and resources we have at our disposal to build our local brand
   • -Website, offline networks, social sites, blog, etc.
3. Need to establish a plan for bringing our offline networks online
4. Use syndication outlets not only for your property listings,  but for other content as well- i.e. news, press releases, blogs, etc.
5. It’s important that you’re reaching the right people with your message

How to Write an Effective Blog

1. Choose a topic
2. Create an effective title
3. Think about the layout
4. Include unique content, keywords and links
5. Decide if multiple posts are necessary

By John Sable

blog.activewebsite.com

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It was a hard decision, one that I had not made until very late in the day.  But let’s face it, Dave Eggers doesn’t just set up a table in your local bookstore and start signing things every week.  I had formulated a strong argument, had presented it from an objective standpoint.

“The book signing is really close to the Athletic Club.” I explained.  “I’ll get there just as the second game is starting, all fresh and ready for battle!  It will work out great.”  Everyone had said the same thing – it’s cool, it’s alright, things come up.  They weren’t holding it against me.  I was hardly the first person to miss a game.

Still, I worried.  This week we would be facing a double header, both games against decidedly even matched teams.  The idea of two games in a row was mind-boggling – so far, just one game of dodgeball had been grueling.  The day after it was not unusual to have to grip your mouse a little differently as you compensate for the burning pain in you shoulder.  (My doctor has told me that this is caused by a build-up of ‘awesome’ in the muscle tissue, created by a gland that begins over-producing when our team hits the court.  It can be eased by stretching before the game, but judging by our current ranking, cannot not be stopped completely.)

I have never missed a game.  I feared how the dynamic would balance itself without me there, shouting vague instructions.  I now saw this activity as mission critical.  The entire night, spent sitting in wooden chairs, standing in line, waiting for event doors to open – I checked my phone again and again – 8:30, 8:45 . . . it was 9:05 by the time I left, only ten minutes before the second game was slated to begin.  As I pedaled my bike as quickly as a fixed gear would take me, my mind wandered to the unsettling possibilities my absence may have spurned.  I pictured myself walking into the still dodgeball court, just looming fog and stillness covering the empty expanse – not a sound, not a movement – but what is that?  There on the half court line lays Ben, struggling to move.

“Ben, what – what happened here?”  I try to sit him up, but he is too weak.

“They – they destroyed . . . everything . . .” he sputters.  “Why . . . why weren’t you here?”

I begin to pedal harder.  I reach the Athletic Club just as the game is supposed to start – I lock up my bike, assault the door and – the door handle will not twist.  Inside a guard sits reading a magazine.  I tap on the window.  She makes brief eye contact with me and shakes her head, pointing to a clock.  “I KNOW” I mouth through the window.  “MY TEAM NEEDS ME.  PLEASE LET ME IN.”  She just gives me an odd look.  “PLEASE.  I FEAR THE WORST.”  It is futile.  I pedal away slowly into the dark, misanthropic night.

“The first team didn’t even show up!” Ben announces with a high five as I enter the office the next morning.  I am glad to see that he is up and kicking.  The rest of the team seemed to be there too, almost eliminating the chances of anyone being killed or captured.

“Really?” I ask, overwhelmed with pride.  See, that’s good branding.  “What about the second team?”

“We lost.” Kassy admits.  “Close game though.”

“I knew it.” I lament.  “You were short on players, weren’t you?  I should have been there.”

“Not at all.” Kristal interjects.  “We’ve never had so many people.  Everyone brought their friends – Cody’s parents even came.  We practically had cheerleaders.”

I was in disbelief.  “People came just to watch us play?  Just to support us?”

“Not only that, we had so many subs, we had to rotate the teams so everyone could play.  It was the biggest turnout yet!”

Now, I’m not going to insult your intelligence here by insinuating that dodgeball is at all important.  Of all the things that you could put your effort into, it is probably the most laughable.  But I’m reminded of a quote from an old episode of The Twilight Zone, in which the ghostly Fats Brown explains the logic of billiards to a man playing him for his soul.  “Being good at pool is probably the least important thing in the world,” he tells the man, “but being the best at it, that’s a different thing entirely.”  I don’t think its any stretch to say this applies to, in all seriousness, everything; that if we don’t, however secretly, contend that we could be the best at what we’re doing – well then, what’s the point?  If life boiled down to a series of half-hearted completions, if everything we wanted sat on an eye-level shelf, then maybe an equivalent amount of effort would be in order.  But the fact that we are only now beginning to scrape the very depths of what we’re capable of, the very least of what we desire, this tells me that it is time to break out the step ladders and see what waits for us just out of reach.

Next week, my friends, will be no normal game.  For next week begins the single elimination tournament.  Our season is almost over, the dice have been cast – from now on we win, or we are done.  Forever.  I know that a loss and a win by forfeit may not feel like the best send off, but this week’s game has proven something bigger – that we are now participating in something much bigger than ourselves.  I’m reluctant to call it dodgeball.  The energy in the office is undeniable and completely unlike anything that should be pushed between cubicle walls, but then again, this has been an Active Website trademark since the day I started.  Let’s keep it that way, 1PXOFF.

Related Posts:

1 Pixel Off: Perseverance

1 Pixel Off: The Art of War

1 Pixel Off: Zen and the Art of Dodgeball

1 Pixel Off: The Comeback

1 Pixel Off Makes Their Debut
By Nick Anderson

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With new technologies in play, the Active Enterprise Network is stronger than ever. At Active Website, our clients are a part of our culture and we are proud to be working with such an innovative and talented group. This being said, we want to remind everyone to check out Active Newsroom for highlights of our achievements so far this year.

Read the following press releases for more information:

Turpin Real Estate Launches New Website on Enterprise Platform

Enterprise Network Members Gain Recognition for Excellence in Web Design

Milestone Realty Consultants Wins Award for Best Website by an Associate

Charles Reinhart Company Realtors Launches Redesigned Website

Make sure you’re on the lookout for more exciting news as we move forward into 2010!

By Amanda Stephan

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Luckily for you, there is. This week, Active Community wants to take a closer look at how to write a more effective blog. There are many reasons why people decide to begin blogging. For companies, blogging is a great tool for driving traffic to your site and increasing your search engine rankings. Blogging also gives you a unique opportunity to express yourself while engaging and interacting with your readers in a way that was previously unavailable.

However, if you don’t have a strategic plan of execution in place, then you run the risk of having used all your time and energy for nothing. The goal of any blog is not only to get the information out there on the web, but to get the information out on the web that people will want to read.

With millions of people already blogging, it’s important that you don’t get lost in the masses. By following some simple guidelines, you’ll have a better foundation for your blog that will hopefully help you attract more readers. In order to do this, we’ll be dissecting the blog how Blogging is Like a First Date that will be posted after this presentation. Watch our video to find out more!

Related Posts:

Blogging is Like a First Date

Active Community: Building Your Local Brand

Active Community: Understanding the Search Demand Curve

Active Community: Understanding Duplicate Content

By John Sable

blog.activewebsite.com

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Just like dating, there are rules we must follow when blogging in order to establish the foundation for a solid relationship. At Active Website, we work with Active Enterprise Network Members to ensure they’re getting the most out of their blogging experience. Most people go on a first date with certain expectations – the same is true for blog readers. By focusing on a few simple rules, Network Members can reach their followers in a way that will fill the needs of both parties – hopefully creating a lasting union. This post focuses on guidelines to follow when blogging as they relate to dating. For more information on how to write an effective blog, check out this week’s Active Community video presentation as well.

1. Only date one person at a time.

While there are definitely two schools of thought here, there is no denying that playing the field can lead to complications and get you in trouble. We need to remember this for our blogs as well. Your blog article should be narrowed and focused on one idea. People have short attention spans and won’t take the time to read a multi-page blog. If you focus on one topic, you’ll be able to go into more detail without losing their interest. For example, instead of focusing on the broad term real estate technology, go into detail on one specific aspect of it. It should be more about quality, not quantity. Read tip No. 5 for other ways to approach this.

2. First impressions are important.

When going on a date, people typically want to put their best foot forward. The same should be true for your blog. Research states that you only have 30 seconds to make a good impression. After that, people have already generated an opinion of you. So how do we create a good first impression? You reel them in with an intriguing title. The title is the first thing readers see, so you need to grab their attention right away. If you don’t, you’ll get stuck with the bill when your date sneaks out the back door before dinner was even served.

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3. Dress Appropriately.

Adding to tip No. 2, remember that your look says a lot about you. Your blog’s image has a lot of impact when it comes to engaging your reader. People don’t spend a lot of time reading through blogs, so you don’t want to muddy it up with a lot of text. Instead, find ways to break it up. Include section headers, graphs, images and pulled quotes to guide your readers through the blog. People are very visually oriented, so if you don’t have something to keep their attention, their minds will start to wander. And if they’re not engaged, they won’t bother reading your blog from start to finish.

4. Good Communication is Important.

Not only does your look say a lot about you, but what you say does too (shocking, I know). You want to find ways to communicate effectively, otherwise there is no point in blogging in the first place. You need to understand that this is a great avenue for establishing a voice. By creating unique content, including links and utilizing your top keywords, you’re going to become more desirable to search engines – setting the stage for a second date.

5. Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself.

As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to focus on only one topic per blog post. Just as you wouldn’t spill your entire life story on a first date, the same holds true for your blog. Instead, take your time and tell your story over a series of blog posts. This gives readers a reason to come back for more, which leads us into our last and final tip.

6. Be Patient and Don’t Rush the Relationship.

Asking someone to marry you on the first date or picking baby names over dinner is a sure fire way to end the night alone. You need to be patient and nurture the relationship before you jump into things. For your blog, don’t expect to gain a huge following right way. It’s more important that you have quality followers than quantity. Instead, use the time to find ways to market yourself to the people who are most likely to benefit from what you have to say. You’ll have much more of an impact if you take your time. Not to mention, research says that the more time you take to build a quality relationship, the more likely your chances of staying together.

Related Posts:

Active Community: How to Write an Effective Blog

The Importance of Telling a Story

By Amanda Stephan

blog.activewebsite.com

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Let’s talk a bit about perseverance.  If you’re unaware, the Enterprise Network launched the new site for Turpin Realtorsjust a few days ago.  That final week before a launch always has a unique quality I like to associate with visiting family for the holidays – it starts out exciting and fun, and quickly descends into lots of fighting, crying, death threats that are all accented by that feeling you get on a roller coaster as it crests the top and begins to rocket downhill.  But like every good family get-together, it ends with everyone hugging, apologizing, and thanking each other for everything they’ve done.

I’m probably not the first to tell you that Active Website has an interesting dynamic. As previously stated, I have the privilege of working with a huge array of wildly talented, deeply passionate people, and when it comes down to the deadline, not one of us is willing to give up until we’re willing to back our piece of the product with our very life.  That’s a kind of polite way of saying we’re all just a little bit mentally unstable.

Case in point – Kristal, dodgeball captain and Quality Assurance Extraordinaire, almost killed us on accident as she attempted to make a pot of coffee on our connected desk without looking away from her computer.  About this time, I was wandering the kitchen with our coffee pot, attempting to locate some already brewed coffee, or maybe just some beans and warm tap water. I would make it work.  Unsuccessful, I returned to find a steady stream of boiling hot coffee pooling itself on the warmer, the table, dripping off onto the carpet.

“Ahhh, that smells soooooo good.” Kristal comments, her focus unwavering as our notebooks begin to test their absorbency.

Why we need a coffee maker at our desk remains a mystery.  Seriously, there’s one like twenty feet away in the kitchen, plus an expresso maker in Cody’s office.  What’s probably a better question was why we were brewing coffee at 7 pm, or why, after watching everything on our desk melt into a warm brown puddle, we did not simply shrug and walk out of the office hoping that tomorrow might bring a more favorable outcome.

The answer was a one pixel border.

“Its off.” Kristal says.  “See?  There’s a one pixel space between it and the image.”

“It is not off.” I tell her.  “You are losing your mind.  We have been looking at this too long.  You don’t – oh man it is off.”  I lean in close to her monitor and measure the space with my thumbnail.  “It’s definitely off.”

We make a joint pilgrimage to Tyler’s desk on the dep floor – he is sunk deep in his chair, his hood pulled up as if this renders him invisible.  He has had a day no less taxing than ours and is sipping steadily from a to-go cup of coffee.

“You went on a coffee run without us?”  We are upset and disappointed.  We are at our wits end.  Tyler sees this and offers us a chair.

“What’s the matter bird?”  Tyler asks.

“Kristal tried to kill us.” I tell him.  “And now our desk is wet and there is still no coffee and I am hungry.  I am very hungry Tyler.”

Tyler always laughs in this warm, amiable manner, a way that will make you laugh if you weren’t already in the first place, even at the end of a long day when you’d rather someone be upset along with you than point out how silly we all look. We sat there, huddled around a computer pointing at this digital burr in our sock, this one little border that seems to be defining all programming logic with its nonsensical gap.  It’s days like this that we need that white flag, those matching jerseys, that remind us who’s on our side.

“Do not laugh at us.” Kristal warns.  “I’m not happy with it yet.”

“And well you shouldn’t be.” Tyler agrees.

Tyler is busy.  Tyler is always busy.  But he sets aside what he is doing and delves into this problem so it can get out on the morning push.  And when we come in the next day everything is fine and no one would know that only a few hours ago a group of rogue developers foiled a would-be assassination attempt on the quality we have fought so hard to defend.

Now dodgeballers.  This week we face a double header.  And not long after that, we face a tournament – or at least the first game of a tournament.  It is no stretch to say that our raggedy team has evolved quite quickly from a questionable joke. And I’m sure no one would blame us if we choked at the thought of serious competition and simply lost our first match.  But we are currently ranked 7th in the league.  We have, despite our origin, done well, very well, and have a very real chance of doing even better.  No one is going to make us. In fact, it is every other team’s job to stop us.  But I know us.  We are not ones prone to leaving a job unfinished.

Related Posts:

1 Pixel Off: The Art of War

1 Pixel Off: Zen and the Art of Dodgeball

1 Pixel Off: The Comeback

1 Pixel Off Makes Their Debut

By Nick Anderson

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For example, the early algorithms understood that a dog and a puppy were related and loosely synonymous. Additionally, the understanding was that the adjective boiling was related to heat. However, early implementations of search algorithms would return word association errors that resulted in the understanding that ‘hot dog’ was loosely related to the phrase ‘boiling puppy.’

Evidence of this context-aware artificial intelligence can be seen in modern engines when we run the query ‘hot dogs’ and examine the ‘Related Searches’ area (in Google, this is generally placed at the very bottom of the result page). Instead of having queries related to poached pooches, one is given ‘what are hot dogs made of’, ‘how to cook hot dogs’ and ‘ball park franks.’

Knowing the engines have this understanding, one can take on new tools in the content writing process that will increase article creation turnaround time, readability for the user and global relevance. For the following examples, we’ll be working on a hypothetical site for a real estate brokerage specializing in luxury real estate on Mars. The most effective terms will be ‘Martian homes’ and ‘Mars real estate.’

Direct Match
This is the usage most common to content-writing for SEO. Though it can have great benefit in ranking well for the query deemed most effective, overuse of the phrase will result in severe penalties across all engines. Both ‘Mars homes’ and ‘Mars real estate’ are direct matches for the most effective terms.

Proximity Match
Using a direct match can severely hurt readability in many cases and is a quick road to keyword stuffing (overuse). As an alternative (though less effective), having the words close together will have a positive effect and maintain the usefulness of an article for the user. As both ‘homes in the northern region of Mars’ and ‘real estate on Mars’ contain the selected terms and are contextually the same, these will improve the relevance for the targeted queries. Please note, ‘real estate near the Mars candy factory’ and ‘sitting at home with his dog, Mars’ will not help (the engines are smarter than that).

Semantic Match
When a phrase has an identical meaning, this can be used to get a strong relevance boost. Although not as effective as a direct match, using the phrase ‘Martian housing market’ is completely acceptable. This is particularly so if the flow of the sentence would be disrupted by use of ‘Mars real estate.’

Although using all three match types is acceptable, please don’t forget that your most powerful weapon for strong placement is still the direct match. To be safe, use direct and proximity matching once every other paragraph and avoid chaining keyword phrases together, but go wild with your semantic matches.

By Cody Snider

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Am I gushing?  I think I’m gushing a little bit.  For the first time I feel affinity with the effusive soccer moms, the lyrical little league dads, singing the unending refrains of this home run, that game-winning goal.  And much like them I refuse to shut up about it until I’ve told you the whole story.

Following my talk with Cody, I received an unexpected aid – early the next morning, Ben approached me at my desk.

“I talked to Cody.  You need to read this.” Ben extended to me a copy The Art of War, the classic battle strategy guide written over two thousand years ago by Sun Tzu.

“Really?” I asked him, “You think this will help?”

“I don’t know.  But that quote in your last blog was wrong.”  He tapped the cover.  “Sun Tzu, not Lao Tzu.”  Laughing, Ben disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared.  I began to thumb through the contents.

Sun Tzu separates conflicts of any nature into five basic elements – maybe one day we can really get into each aspect, but what I immediately focused on was Discipline.  Of the five, all of which are important (except for terrain – Sun Tzu fails to address the nuances of hardwood basketball courts), Discipline hits the hardest and recalls for me the most bad memories of last week.  The team we fought, they had discipline.  Exactly as the book states, they were organized in a regulated manner, ducking and diving, juggling balls back and forth like merciless harlequins.  They had chains of commands, battle orders, logisitics, DISCIPLINE!  “Who’s discipline is effective?” Sun Tzu asks me, and I know the answer – Not us.

Kassy’s office door is open, so I walk in and sit down.  She is used to this; as one of our Project Managers, I imagine she has between three and four hundred conversations per day, usually elicited by co-workers who simply walk in and begin talking, as if auditioning a monologue.  She never misses a beat though – it is not unusual to have a completely intelligible conversation while she answers emails with one hand on her Blackberry.  We are doing this now.

“Hey Nick, what’s up.”  she says.  “Here, have some of this chocolate.”  Without looking up from her phone, she holds a bar of chocolate in my general direction.  I break a piece off.  It is delicious.  “So what’s up?”

I explain our situation.  Granted, the last thing on Kassy’s mind Monday morning is dodgeball, but she too has felt the sting of our previous loss, and contemplates the loss.

“Well,” she explains, “To say we don’t have diligence isn’t true.  None of us are that bad at dodgeball.  Some of us are actually pretty good.  Just like you, the dep team, anyone here – you’re all very good at what you do.”

“Granted,” I agreed.  If you haven’t had the chance to see us work, we are pretty amazing.

“But what would you guys accomplish if me and Jen weren’t here?” she asks.  “I’m not just talking about filing tickets or dropping work in front you either.  I mean, making sure things get done.”  She narrows her eyes and glares deep into my soul, with that finish-the-project-today-or-die look, the one that haunts my dreams during go-lives.  “So what we need is someone to  make sure things get done on the dodgeball court.”

I nod.  Order from chaos.  The orchestration of our greatest abilities.  I close my eyes and begin to envision us, in dramatic choreography, catching balls, forming a phalanx, arms arched in impending throw -

“How’s that redesign ticket I sent you coming along?” Kassy asks.

I return to my desk.

Let’s face it, in an office as busy as ours, its hard to find time for planning.  Yet just like in dodgeball, making time for it is a must.  If Kassy were to let one project slide, it could quite easily snowball into a digital apocalypse.  Dodgeball works the same way – you’ll just be cruising along, doing everything right, when suddenly a strong player is eliminated  – you panic, you scramble to take his place – then you yourself are taken out by a wicked cross-court shot and then everyone is shaking, that’s two out in less than one minute, we are slowly being destroyed, oh Lady Dodgeball, WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO BE FORSAKEN BY YOUR FICKLE CHARM?!  Things escalate quickly, at least inside my head.

It was a little late in the week for creating our ultimate move – our Flying V if you will – but knowing we all had our own personal KnucklePuck, I knew that with the right amount of encouragement. We could fly.

This is how the yelling started.  I initially startled a few team members when I first hollered “CATCH THE BALL!” at them, team members who in turn quite naturally failed to perform this action the crazy man on the sidelines was shouting at them.  But after a few minutes they realized that I was not going to stop.  Now, the average dodgeball game does not really lend itself to the obsessed-coach personality, but I changed that quickly.  “THROW TOGETHER GUYS,” I encouraged tactfully.  There was Tyler and Chris, standing on opposite sides of the court, mindlessly aiming at random targets.  “HEY!  HEY!” I subtly hinted to them.  “BOTH OF YOU, GUY IN THE RED SHIRT!  ON THREE!”  A man in a Cardinals t-shirt looked at me, confused -  “THREE!” – and two balls struck him in one glorious crescendo.  It was just the beginning.  “CATCH THAT BALL!” I suggested.  It was suicidal advice, I knew, but on more than one occasion I watched as my team members face-planted themselves into the court to make a catch.  “GOOD SAVE!” I would yell, then “REALLY ARE YOU OK BECAUSE THAT SKIDDING SOUND YOUR FACE MADE WAS AWFUL.”

Let’s not kid ourselves here – I have no coaching abilities.  The majority of my “help” involved yelling increasingly vague phrases like “PLAY SMART!”, chants no doubt channeled subconsciously from my repressed memories of little league.  But after a while it didn’t matter what I yelled.  These guys didn’t need a coach, someone to hold their hand through the game – what they needed was encouragement!  A spirit-builder!  A – don’t say cheerleader, I was not a cheerleader.  What I was doing was far more dignified, would have been undermined by a skirt and bullhorn.  Because when it is your own team cheering you on, not some third-party coalition willing you to victory by proxy – that’s not encouragment, that’s management.  Kassy was right – real organization is more than making a list for someone or telling them what to do – when you’re in the trenches with them, fighting the same battle, the after-game high-fives will never feel more satisfying.

We lost the first two games.  We won the next, then lost again, a neck and neck to the seventh, and final game.  The opposing team was tired, I could see it.  In a little under half an hour our confidence had reached fever pitch, and we were all yelling like madmen – clapping, cheering – our opponents looked not only frightened, but a bit annoyed by our constructive candor.

For twenty minutes – which is over half as long as all the previous games combined – we clawed desperately at our quite evenly paired foes.  There was three of them, six of us – then six of them, three of us – until at last only three people remained on each side.  Cody, Kassy, my upstairs neighbor (she picked a really intense week to volunteer as a sub) – they circled the grounds in a intense fever as I shouted “EASY OUT!  EASY OUT!” – people had stopped running on the track upstairs and instead leaned over to view the event that clogged the gymnasium with palpable tension.  On three our team rushed the line, letting loose a stream of annihilation, a ball in each hand, until only one opposing team member remained – that guy in the Cardinals shirt.  He scrambled to collect the still-smoking balls from the ground, but it was too late – Cody revealed one last ball from behind his back.  Doubled over, the man, in a surprisingly un-strategic move, let go the only ball near him and held his arm in front of him like he was going to block a Haduken in Street Fighter.  It was fuitile.  Leaping (leaping, I say!) across the mid-court line, Cody threw the ball midair – a technically legal (and undeniably cool) move.  It struck.  It reverberated the room.  Cody’s Throw : Cardinals Guy :: Chicxulub : The Dinosaurs.

I guess that quote wasn’t the only thing I got wrong in my last blog.  And like I already said, that high-five . . . it was like a clap of thunder from Mount Olympus.  For a few minutes we jumped in slow motion while Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” played in the background.  Yes, we had won before, but not like this.

And so friends, I promise that whatever we did right this time, it will be repeated.  If I have to yell till I’m hoarse and embarrass each of us individually, then you best prepare some believable excuses for my mental state.  But I don’t think it will come to that.  We captured something real this week, 1PXOFF, and I think we’re posed to keep it.  Don’t stop believin’.

Related Posts:

1 Pixel Off: Zen and the Art of Dodgeball

Dodgeball Update: The Comeback

1 Pixel Off Makes Their Debut

By Nick Anderson

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In order to successfully build your brand, there are a few things you need to consider. First of all, you need to create an online presence. In today’s competitive market, what you say online is just as important – if not more – than what you say offline. In order to better position ourselves on the web, we need to take a closer look at our offline networks. This is a great resource to tap into, but is often times overlooked. Reach out to your local community groups, trade groups,etc. and bring these people online with you. It’s not just important to build a global online community -  it’s important that you’re communicating with the the right people.

To do this, we need to lay the foundation. How do you position your brand in order to bring awareness to your company? With so many tools at our disposal, we don’t lack the resources needed to get the job done. Through the local, regional and international groups we belong to, through social sites, our blog, etc. we can spread our message. Also keep in mind what syndication outlets you can utilize not only for your properties, but for your news content as well.

In this week’s video presentation, we take a closer look at how to incorporate all this into building our local brand while increasing the amount of quality traffic to your site. You may not have “Googled” yourself lately, but you can rest assured your customers have.

Related blogs:

Active Community: Key Components to a SEO Strategy

Active Community: Understanding the Search Demand Curve

Active Community: Understanding Duplicate Content

By John Sable

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The values being pulled are what we consider the baseline rank before regional and personalized value is applied to the results (which is what you and your clients see when using the web frontend to the search engines in question).

For Python developers:

This was developed using Python 2.4, but the imported packages should apply seamlessly to 2.4 or greater. Please leave notes and ideas below so we can modify this and get a better system for everyone.

import re
import sys
import pprint
import urllib, urllib2
import simplejson as json
 
class RankChecker:
 
    def __init__(self, keyword, domain):
        self.keyword = keyword
        self.RE_OBJ = re.compile(domain)
 
        self.YAHOO_APP_CODE = 'YOUR CODE'
        self.BING_APP_CODE = 'YOUR CODE'
 
    def __googleFlag__(self):
        self.URL_PREPEND = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q='
        self.URL_APPEND = ''
        self.ITER_NAME = 'start'
        self.ADDED_PARAMS = ['&safe=off','&rsz=large']
        self.ITER_FUNC = lambda x: x * 8
        self.LOOP_POINT = lambda x: x['responseData']['results']
        self.RESULT_NODE = 'url'
 
    def __yahooFlag__(self):
        self.URL_PREPEND = 'http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/'
        self.URL_APPEND = '?appid=' + urllib.quote(self.YAHOO_APP_CODE) + '&format=json'
        self.ITER_NAME = 'start'
        self.ADDED_PARAMS = ['&count=10']
        self.ITER_FUNC = lambda x: x * 10 + 1
        self.LOOP_POINT = lambda x: x['ysearchresponse']['resultset_web']
        self.RESULT_NODE = 'url'
 
    def __bingFlag__(self):
        self.URL_PREPEND = 'http://api.search.live.net/json.aspx?Appid=' + urllib.quote(self.BING_APP_CODE) + '&Sources=Web&query='
        self.URL_APPEND = ''
        self.ITER_NAME = 'Web.Offset'
        self.ADDED_PARAMS = ['&Web.Count=10']
        self.ITER_FUNC = lambda x: x * 10
        self.LOOP_POINT = lambda x: x['SearchResponse']['Web']['Results']
        self.RESULT_NODE = 'Url'
 
    def __retrieveLookup__(self, params):
        f = urllib2.urlopen(self.URL_PREPEND + urllib.quote(str(self.keyword)) + self.URL_APPEND + params)
        ret = self.LOOP_POINT(json.load(f))
        return ret
 
    def __findRank__(self):
        return [[idx + 1, i] for idx, i in enumerate(self.LOOKUP_STACK) if self.RE_OBJ.search(i)]
 
    def runLookup(self, flag):
        self.LOOKUP_STACK = list()
        if flag == 'y':
            self.__yahooFlag__()
        elif flag == 'g':
            self.__googleFlag__()
        elif flag == 'b':
            self.__bingFlag__()
        for i in range(0, 5):
            self.LOOKUP_STACK.extend([i[self.RESULT_NODE] for i in self.__retrieveLookup__('&' + self.ITER_NAME + '=' + str(self.ITER_FUNC(i)) + str().join(self.ADDED_PARAMS)) if i[self.RESULT_NODE]])
        return self.__findRank__()
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
 
    rankObj = RankChecker(sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2])
    print '\r\nGoogle:'
    pprint.pprint(rankObj.runLookup('g'))
    print '\r\nYahoo:'
    pprint.pprint(rankObj.runLookup('y'))
    print '\r\nBing:'
    pprint.pprint(rankObj.runLookup('b'))

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