Feel free to drop by to kennyHarperDesign.com for more info on me and my work as well. That site is currently being updated as well.

I’m also in the process of networking and making connections with agencies, design shops, web shops, graphic designers, web designers, copywriters, photographers and social media strategists.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about me and discuss what opportunities we may have to network together drop me a line at kenny@keytheory.

I’m focusing on:

• Web Design
• Digital Strategy
• FaceBook Development

Also if you haven’t liked http://facebook.com/keytheory do it. It’s going to be getting a major update as well.

And THANK YOU, for all those who’ve supported me and help me get to this step in my career.

Here are several pitfalls and ways to get around them.

1. Not doing your homework or having a strategy.
   This is a sure fire way to fail, if you don’t know what goals you’re trying to achieve then you are most likely not going to reach them. You need to figure out the goals for your site and develop your site around those goals.
2. Taking the cheap route
   Some people try to save money or time buy going with a plug and play template or having their friend’s son build them a web site. IF you really want to get a return on investment, make an investment. Would you want someone to put on a roof on your house for $100? Probably not that’d be scary, same is for web just because you can’t see the difference a professional can and so can your results. No need to spend top dollar but find someone with reasonable rates and be willing to make an investment into your company if you expect others to.
3. There is no absolute perfect.
   Too many people fall for this one; trying to get everything completely perfect before moving to the next stage. Don’t get me wrong you should have the major wrinkles ironed out but no need to be perfect your site can changed. It is not set in stone. You can launch the site and continue to refine and add to it as time goes on.

Navigational Searches

Navigation search is when someone knows where they want to to, for example a particular web site. They’ll search for it and will most likely easily find it if they entered in the right search terms.

Example, if someone where searching for me they could type in “Kenny Harper”, they’d find me in the top results but there would be a couple other Kenny Harpers to sort through.

If they were to type “Kenny Harper Jacksonville” my personal site “kennyharperdesign.com” pops up top. And they effectively used the search engine for navigation.

Informational Searches

One could also use a search engine to find information about a particular product, service or topic. If someone wants to find out more about Twitter for instance they could enter “what is twitter for?”, “how to use twitter for business”, “what obsesses people to tweet?” each would provide different results but the point is they’d find information about a topic and not be going to a pre-determined  destination.

Transactional Searches

I believe we’re all familiar with these types of searches. When we know what we want and we’re just looking for a place to get it. People may search for “i-phone”, “smart phone”, “new i-phone touch” and are looking to find a place to buy a particular product. They may be also just looking for information about the product as well.

How to use trends in peoples searches in optimizing a web site.

Keeping these different ways people search in mind when optimizing a site is important. You can add pages and optimize them differently to have a better chance to meet people’s desired result in the SERPs.

Other key things to keep in mind.

I’ll go in to it more in a later post but keep in mind that general terms are going to be very competitive and you shouldn’t base your SEO campaign on terms such as “tv repair” the competition will blow you away. Better to optimize for something more long-tail (specific) ex: “Jacksonville tv repair 32202″. You’d be better off to put your efforts in the more specific search term. You could rank good for that term and get more results overall.

• Web Based Sales – Selling products on-line / E-commerce
• Offline Sales – Selling products but on stores or through traditional retail
• Generating Leads – Getting new business or possible customers
• Market Awareness – Letting consumers know about a particular product or service
• Informative or Entertaining – Just for the sake of sharing info or entertainment with others
• Influential or Persuasion – Trying to influence a person to lean towards a new direction, product or stance

These different types can overlap and be mixed up but realizing what type of site you’re dealing with can make a big difference to how you go about designing the site, marketing it or optimizing it for search engines.

I see KeyTheory.com falls into the Generating Leads, Market Awareness, and Informative categories and will keep that in mind when planning out the rest of the site.

Below outlines five core processes / steps to design a web site:

Define

• Discover
• Plan
• Clarify

Structure

• Content Plan
• Structure Site
• Structure Pages
• Strategic Planning

Design

• Create
• Review & Refine
• Complete

Develop

• Pre-Production – Set up for success
• Production – Build
• Post Production – Q/A

Measure

• Launch
• Clean up
• Maintain
• Measure and Analyze

Why social media is a must for businesses of all sizes.

Not every business needs a Twitter or Linked In account necessarily. There are definitely different strokes for different folks but unless you are set with the amount of business you currently have and don’t mind losing any I’d advise at least having a digital presence, your competitors probably will.

Social Media allows businesses to:

• Engage with their customers
• Research what people are saying about their business
• Gain insight on where their industry is going
• Network with others in their industry
• Gain loyalty with clients

Having the social media outlets is just the beginning.

You can have a YouTube and Twitter account and be using them but if you have no strategy you may not be using them as effectively as you could. Why bother putting more time or money into it? Because you’ll gain more followers and have more loyalty if you give people a reason to return or to share with their contacts. The potential is endless. Some people have shared a link of a video with a few friends and the link goes viral and gets thousands of viewers with in a few hours. Most efforts will not go viral but no effort is a great way to fail.

Here’s a cool slideshow showing you how you can measure your ROI with social media.

Below I’m linking some sites that I currently use frequently and some site stats.

Top 10 helpful sites for marketing business online and tracking results.

1. Google Analytics: Site Statistics & More

   A free tool by Google to check site stats. You can see who came to your site, from where, how they clicked through your site, how long they were on each page and much more. My site stats have tapered off since I’ve neglected to update my site in quite awhile.

2. Quantcast: Monitoring Demographics

   Quantcast is a free tool to get demographic data about your site’s audience. Combined with G.A. you can see trends in people’s viewing behavior, see what’s working and what’s not and for who.

3. Facebook: Social Networking

   I recently created a Facebook page and currently have 52 fans. Not many but you’ve got to start somewhere. Facebook is a great tool to connect with people in your industry, business partners and potential customers.

4. Twitter: Micro-Blogging

   Although I didn’t get it at first, now I understand the business benefits of using a tool like Twitter. You can follow topics you’re interested in, connect with others in your field, see what people are saying about your company and just keep people up to date on what your up to in 140 characters.

5. YouTube:

   With YouTube you can have your own channel and share your message with the masses for nothing. I started a YouTube channel a while back but didn’t make any posts on it at first… now how silly is that. So recently I’ve posted up some test videos to get my feet wet. And now I’m planning out some cool videos that I will put together that should be much better and hopefully yield better results.

6. LinkedIn: Professional Networking

   Linked in is a really good site for professionally connecting with others and marketing yourself. You basically upload your information and connect with others in your industry. You can receive referrals as well as make them. I’ve started to work my linked in account a bit more recently. At the very least it’s helping me remember peoples names.

7. Delicious: Access your bookmarks from anywhere

   Delicious is the site you need to set up your account but once you have your account you can download a Delicious browser toolbar for FireFox (my preferred browser) and make bookmarks to your account. You can access them from any computer, import your current bookmarks, view other people’s bookmarks and so much more. If you like keeping track of good sites, use delicious.

8. Digg: Keeping up to date & self promotion

   Digg is a great place to be inspired, keep up to date with trends and news. The best content is voted to popularity by anyone uses Digg. You can also submit your own content to Digg and get some good exposure. You must keep in mind that nobody wants spam. I have Dugg a few things but haven’t submitted anything… as of yet.

9. Stumble Upon: Discover the best of the web in less time

   Instead of blindly surfing through the internet wouldn’t it be better to look at stuff that peers found worthy. Choose a topic that interests you and start stumbling into new things. Go places you would probably have never gone to prior.

10. Web Site Grader: Grade your site and make improvements

    Quite a handy tool provided by HubSpot. Enter your site and see how it ranks. It will give you tips to how to improve your score and get better search engine ranks.

Well these are just a few of the sites that I currently use in regards to marketing myself online. Now that I have an idea of where I currently am I will define some goals and monitor my progress.