In this companion to the Sage Software Preferred Vendor webcast, Hall Web Services illustrates the key principles of SEO and how implementing them can help business web sites more effectively compete online

1. Way Beyond SEO:
Why Your Company Needs A
Web Strategy to Survive
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

2. Way Beyond SEO
Introduction
MAKING YOUR WEBSITE WORK FOR YOU
How do I get more leads out of my website?
If you’re like most Sage Software business ABOUT US
partners, this is the most important question you Hall Web Services is a Sage
have about your website. Maybe you’ve heard that Software Preferred Vendor
SEO will get you top rankings in the search who has been working with
engines, but you don’t really understand what Sage Business Partners for
SEO is or how it relates to your success. over seven years.
While the end goal is obvious — get more leads In that time, we’ve helped
many firms grow to become
through your website — the steps to get there
President’s and Chairman’s
often aren’t. Complicate the ever-changing nature club members, and establish
of the internet with web designers who don’t themselves as authorities in
understand search and search marketers who their region and specialty.
don’t understand code, and things are even
murkier. We offer a unique search-
optimized development
process combined with
In this guide, we’re going to approach the topic of
strategy-driven internet
SEO from the position of web strategy — the marketing.
fundamental process that will define how your site
is designed, optimized and marketed. Without a Hall is co-op debit approved for
plan and a destination, your site will never get both Web Design and SEO.
where you want it to be.
You can learn more about us
at www.hallme.com/sage
Specifically, we’ll cover:
Web Strategy - What it is and How to Build One
SEO - What it is and How to Spot It
Content and Maintenance - Keeping your Website Fresh
Linking - Expanding your Online Reputation
User Conversion - You Got Traffic, Now What?
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

3. Way Beyond SEO
Part 1: Web Strategy
WHAT IS A WEB STRATEGY?
Web Strategy: The plan to achieve certain goals with your website
by taking certain actions and then evaluating the results of those
actions.
Just like a business strategy, a web strategy is your roadmap to success. While
there are many components to a strategy, the strategy itself is what defines what
those components will be and how they will interrelate.
A web strategy is comprised of:
Goals - What you’re trying to achieve
Methods - How you will achieve your goals
Measurement - What you will use to measure whether you have achieved your
goals
Rather than being set in stone, a web strategy is an ever-evolving part of
your overall business strategy and competitive advantage.
Site usage analytics, web trends, and overall economic climate should
refine your strategy over time.
But for today, we’ll focus on building your web strategy for the first time.
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

4. Way Beyond SEO
Part 2: SEO
WHAT IS SEO?
SEO is the process of building your site so that it’s easy to understand by
people and search engines.
While specifics vary from one firm to another, when someone performs
“SEO” on your site, they implement a set of industry-accepted best
practices that dictates how website code is written and site files
structured.
The end result is that search engine spiders are able to index the pages
of your site and understand what they mean... and be found when users
search for terms related to you!
SEO makes your website
stand out in a crowd
What is a search engine spider?
A spider is a computer program, also called a “robot,” that continually
seeks out (“crawls”) new pages on the internet.
It follows links and interprets pages before adding them to its index.
When someone types in a search term, a complex algorithm then
determines how a site in its index will rank.
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

5. Way Beyond SEO
Part 2: SEO
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
When someone talks to you about SEO, here are some of the words they might use:
Keywords
The terms your customers use to search for you on the internet
Search Engine Friendly URLs
Naming pages on your site something intuitive, i.e. business-software.asp
Text Based Navigation
Using text, rather than graphics, to link to subpages
Proper Use of Heading Tags
To illustrate how
Using heading and subheading tags to structure content these principles
work in the real
Meta Data world, we’ll
compare two
Information seen by search engines but not by you — title tags,
description, keywords sites.
Alt Tags
Alternative info for images for search engines and the visually-impaired
Internal Linking
Linking to other pages in your site to reinforce what pages are about
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

6. Way Beyond SEO
Part 2: SEO
UNOPTIMIZED SITE - NOT JUST BAD, IT’S UGLY
Bad looks aren’t the only thing that can hold a site back -- this site also breaks a lot of
the fundamental rules of good SEO!
This example site has several key problems:
It uses a graphical navigation, which prevents search engines from indexing links on the
site and understanding where they go
A rather vague heading statement of “Welcome” doesn’t tell anyone what the page is
about,
Underneath the hood, you’d see that the code is a nightmare! Antiquated stat counters,
email buttons, and “weather bug” aren’t doing this site any favors, either.
This example was constructed from real sites we have helped improve!
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

7. Way Beyond SEO
Part 2: SEO
OPTIMIZED SITE - FORM FITS FUNCTION
The clean look and feel of this site is a reflection of much improved web code which
uses SEO best practices to define what it is about to both users and search engines.
While there are still graphics, they are used in measure and the navigation uses plain
text links that uses CSS for its styling.
RSS feeds for news and blogs keep the homepage content fresh, while greater
amounts of content, an informative heading tag, and good links to other pages on the site
all help search engines understand what this site is about.
Also note the address at the bottom, which helps validate a business in the eyes of
prospects and aids in local search directories.
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

8. Way Beyond SEO
Part 2: SEO
A WORD ON KEYWORDS
Keywords are words
users type into search
engines
You obviously want your site to come up at the top of search engines, but things
aren’t as easy as just doing some SEO and coming up at the top of “accounting
software.”
After all, your site is competing against millions of others.
That’s what makes targeting so important. You need to figure out which keywords your
customers are likely to type in AND that you’re likely to have a good shot of getting to the
top for. This is called keyword research.
For example, “accounting software” is extremely competitive, with major directories,
Wikipedia, and websites by market leaders like Sage Software dominating the top
results. There’s no way your small business will have the resources to compete side-by-
side with these market titans.
But maybe your customers are more likely to be searching for “accounting software West
Virginia.” People who are typing in the latter are also more likely to be based in the area
where you work, and your position there will establish you as the provider of choice.
And as lucrative as it may sound to have a #1 ranking for “accounting software,” if you’re
regionally-based or a specialized business, how many of those people are really going
to be strong potential customers? Coming to the top of targeted keywords, or what’s
called the “long tail,” is much more likely to generate good quality lead-generating traffic.
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

9. Way Beyond SEO
Part 3: Beyond SEO
CONTENT IS KEY
Keep it Fresh!
While SEO is all about how to present the content of your site in such a way that
search engines can understand it, it won’t do you much good if the content you’re
starting with doesn’t say very much.
While search engines are blind, they’re not completely dumb. Your content needs
to be consistent with the keywords you’re focusing on, and as original as possible.
There’s an old internet adage, Content is King, and there are two key reasons why
this remains very true:
Search engines favor fresh, original content, and will reward you with
better rankings for your site
Customers favor fresh, original content, and will reward your with better
sales through your site
Not every area of your site can be perfect — product descriptions, for, example, offer
little flexibility — but you can improve your chances of getting good rankings
by adding more original content relevant to the products you sell or industry you
service.
Some Good Content Ideas Are:
In-depth information about the advantages of working with your company
Articles relevant to the needs of your customers — i.e. improving workplace
efficiency, migrating from old systems, etc.
Customer testimonials and success stories
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

10. Way Beyond SEO
Part 3: Beyond SEO
KEEP THINGS IN MOTION
Alright, you know you need to keep things fresh, but your to-do list is longer than
the Boston Marathon already.
How do you keep up on the commitment without losing your mind?
This is where the web vendor you work with can make your life a lot easier.
We’re continually innovating pain-free ways to keep our customers sites up to
date, which are, of course, SEO friendly.
Some of these tools are:
Newsfeeds
Have a custom RSS feed on your homepage that pulls relevant
news related to your products and services. Install it once, and it
keeps your homepage updated forever!
Content Management System (CMS)
News area, press releases, or testimonials that can easily be
updated by anyone in the office with a Microsoft Word-like
interface. Update it with new employees, new offices, new
product lines or anything else you can think of.
Training/Events Calendars
Similar to the Content Management System, a Training/Events
Calendar lets someone easily add and edit dates on a
dynamically-created calendar. An integrated registration lets you
use it to enroll people in classroom and web-based training.
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

11. Way Beyond SEO
Part 3: Beyond SEO
LINKS - CONNECT YOUR SITE TO THE WORLD
The creators of Google were graduate students at Stanford when they devised a
method of ranking web sites in the same way that trust is established in academic
papers — if a work refers to another work, it is a vote of confidence in the cited work
and increases its reputation.
On the web, instead of referring in a bibliography, sites refer using links within the
content of the site. Links to a site indicate trust, and trusted sites have an edge
against less trusted sites in web rankings.
Generating inbound links to your site can be a challenge, but there are a few ways
you can work on building trust for your site:
List your site in Yahoo.com and Business.com, the two most important paid
directories.
Have any business partners you work with link to your site, providing a link in
turn from your site. Embed those links in paragraphs of text rather than creating a
“Links” page. If you must have a page with links on it, call it “Resources,” “Affiliates,”
“Partners” — anything other than “Links”!
Generate press releases and submit them to online PR services such as
prweb.com, newswiretoday.com and PRzoom.com. These services will provide
links to your site, and if someone likes your article they may link to it on their blog or
website.
Create profiles for your business on social media sites like LinkedIn and
Facebook. Use social bookmarking tools like Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon to
promote the most original and interesting pages on your site
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

12. Way Beyond SEO
Part 4: WAY Beyond SEO
USER CONVERSION - COMPLETING THE CYCLE
Of course, all the traffic in
the world won’t do you any
good if people don’t use
your site to become
customers!
There are several proven
methods to capture interest
and to steer curious surfers
towards becoming qualified leads.
For example:
Sign up for a Webinar
Download a Free Demo
Free Whitepapers
Free Consulting
What is it about your company that makes customers choose you
over competitors?
Knowing this will allow you to feature this advantage prominently on your site,
thread it through your copy, and make it a key point in your conversion
strategy.
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

13. Way Beyond SEO
Part 4: WAY Beyond SEO
CHART THE COURSE FOR YOUR SUCCESS!
If your site site is built strategically using all of the
best practice principles covered in this
whitepaper, we guarantee that you’ll see good
traffic, positive search rankings and leads
generated through your site.
But this is far from the end — it is only the end
of the beginning!
Once you have outlined your goals and
implemented the means to achieve them and the
tools to track that success, the next step is to
evaluate those results and refine your strategy to
achieve even more success.
Strategy-Driven Success:
Goal: Increased Rankings
Method: Optimized Site
Measurement: Increase in Rankings
Increased search rankings lead to great
traffic which in turn lead to greater leads —
success!
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage

14. Way Beyond SEO
Conclusion
NOW YOU KNOW - NOW KICK IT INTO GEAR!
What you can do TODAY to get started:
Define your short-term and long-term goals with your site
Brainstorm a list of keywords you think your customers might use
Look at your website and critique its SEO
Contact any business partners who aren’t linking to you and ask for one
Contact us! We’d love to talk with you about your site and how you
can use our expertise and your co-op debit funds to build the web
success you’ve always dreamed of.
“We’re seeing fantastic
1-877-HALL-WEB (425-5932) results! We never
support@hallme.com received a single lead
www.hallme.com/sage from our old Web site, and
now we’re getting about
You can also learn more about web five leads a month.”
marketing with ongoing tips and tricks at
our SEO Vision Blog and SEO Audio Darla Hamlin, Soft Trac,
Podcast LLC
Web Design and SEO
www.hallme.com/blog Customer
www.softtrac.com
Hall Web Services
P.O. Box 6877 Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB - www.hallme.com/sage