The list of speakers looks rather impressive, and don’t worry if you don’t recognize their names, just look at their titles and the companies they work for. If they don’t have experience in modern media, then who would?

Jacob Blackstock – CEO, Creative Director and Lead Designer, Bitstrips
Richard Bernstein – S.V.P. Managing Director, Arc Worldwide, A Leo Burnett Company
Lisa Charters – SVP Director Digital, Random House of Canada Limited
Colleen DeCourcy – Former Chief Digital Officer for TBWA Worldwide
Douglas Edwards – CEO, ES3
Sabrina Geremia – Head of Agency Relations, Google Canada
Gavin McGarry – President, Jumpwire Media
James Milward – Secret Location
Siobhan O’Flynn – PhD, Transmedia Consultant, Narrative Now
Steve Pratt – Director CBC Radio 3, CBC Radio 3
Chris Van Noy – Chief Strategist, Akamai
Pete Watson – Senior Business Development Manager: Consumer Partners, Research In Motion Limited (RIM) / BlackBerry

I’ve been invited to the event to cover it, and will be publishing posts on a variety of different blogs thanks to the friendships I’ve made over the years. I will hopefully give those unable to attend a good rundown of all that is happening. Check back here the night of the event, as well as the day after.

And if you are interested in attending, you don’t have much time left, so jump over to the Cross Media TO website, and purchase your tickets today!

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I have to stop buying domains, but I really enjoy acquiring new names. They give me ideas, most of which I’ll never find time to utilize, but all are fun to consider.

I have always thought of myself as an idea person. I am good at coming up with ideas for solutions to problems, or to create new sites.

I don’t think of myself as a domainer, but I definitely own more than my fair share of domain names at this point.

Anyone else suffer this exciting, and potentially expensive “disease”?

Sea Winds of Sea Isle is a website that focuses on a very particular business in a very particular geo-locality. It’s not your ordinary website, and therefore requires a very unique approach with branding, online marketing and visitor conversion.

A good friend of mine, Ryan Caldwell, has recently been put in charge of their online marketing efforts. His main concern is that despite higher traffic then their competitors, the site seems to be lagging in conversions. He was looking for someone to bounce some thoughts and ideas off of, and contacted me to give him an in-depth overview of where the site stands, and what changes or ideas I would make.

After some great back and forth, here is what I have come up with.

History

The site, being only six months old,has the disadvantage of not being well-aged. The search engines place a lot of value in the age of a site. In fact, most websites start off with a major search handicap for the first 9-12 months of their existence. The young age is definitely an obstacle that requires extensive work in order to compete against other, older websites in the same real estate and online rental market. Don’t be fooled by the fact that this is a relatively small niche. Sometimes small niches in valuable local markets are the toughest nuts to crack and worth the most long term value.

As the web ages and the barrier for entry decreases, the number of people competing in any given market is going to grow with time. This is especially true in the real estate industry since most everyone now realizes that the web is the perfect tool for real estate agents to market their business.

Local Search and Citations

One of the reasons that small, regional niches can be tough online industries to compete in is that search engines like Google use different methodologies for determining geo-relevance. Rather than simply looking at the raw strength of a website, they look for what are called “citations” – references around the web which contain some or all of the following information

A – Business Name
B – Business Address
C – Business Phone
D – Business Website

By tracking “citations” search engines can then group websites together which belong to the same general geo-location. The most important sites for any location are going to be the ones with the most citations in the most relevant places.

So what are the most relevant places? Read on.

Directory Submissions

Ryan has done many great things relating to citations in promoting the site, and is already seeing very positive search rankings. He has submitted the site to a few high quality, editorially reviewed, paid directories like Yahoo, GoGuides, Skaffe, Business.com and JoeAnt. These directories, because they involve reviews, are known to be more authoritative and contain less spam. Because of this, they are more effective for search engine optimization and promotion and count as powerful regional citations.

Of course, there are still many other directories, many free options that could also have a positive effect, and while this project might not be accepted to the Open Directory Project, it never hurts to spend the time submitting.

You can find a number of hard working people willing to take the time to craft free directory submissions on a number of forums around the web for a fairly low cost. I would start with a smaller number of them focused on the niche, somewhere in the fifty to one hundred submission range, in order to both get the best result, and not cause any negative factors with regards to how search engines see your site. You’ll want to come up with as many custom descriptions, variations on titles if possible, and potential tags so that each submission is somewhat unique.

Content

Ryan has also helped make sure a number of content pages have been created related to the site, again increasing the number of geographical citations of the local business on the web. From a blog running WordPress with thirteen posts, to the various focused pages on the site that people expect like local information, contact information and related property information, the site isn’t really hurting for content. I have seen many single page sites do well in the search engines, and while that isn’t the rule, a massive amount of content isn’t always needed to rank well, especially for local search.

I would suggest more content on the site as there doesn’t seem to be enough marketing and sales page type material outside of the blog.

Images

The images are so small on the front page of the site, and there aren’t any larger images elsewhere. With a beach location, images can sell more than words. While this isn’t usually considered directly related to search results and rankings, larger images, given proper alt and title attributes can draw people in from Google Image search that might be looking to find a beach location to rent during the summer. Good images can increase traffic, and they have the secondary effect of helping sell a product such as real estate or rentals.

Keywords

Right now, Ryan says that they are most interested in generating leads via the “sea isle city rentals” search. Which, after a quick check, only gets 5,400 searches per month on average in Google. It also has a mid-level amount of advertising competition. If they were to focus on what might be considered a slightly less focused search of “sea isle rentals” they’d open themselves up to 8,100 average searches per month and have slightly less advertiser competition.

I can’t say yet which search would convert better, and if at all possible, the site should take time and work towards optimizing for both phrases. I also think that in the blog, and on the pages of the site, the key phrases could be peppered around here and there, increasing the likelihood of ranking for those phrases. It is currently rare to see “sea isle city rentals” on any of the main content pages of the site, and even on many of the blog posts.

Basic SEO Concerns

Ask anyone what they need to focus on when they talk about search engine optimization, and they will say the basics include header title, meta keywords, meta description, content headers, and lastly bolded text. On this site, the headers are done nicely, but the meta keywords and description are only on the home page. Also, while the content headers (the H1’s, H2’s, H3’s) are optimized nicely on some pages, they aren’t focused properly on all pages. The “Our Agents” page could be better served by being “Sea Winds of Sea Isle Real Estate Agents” as it would be much better for SEO and more descriptive. Never use “our”, “that”, “these” if you can avoid it, as they don’t properly describe anything to search engines.

Statistics

Currently, Sea Winds of Sea Isle is ranking amazingly for having been around only for six months. For their chosen phrase of “sea isle city rentals”, the site is ranked first in Microsoft’s Live.com, 43rd in Google, and 26th in Yahoo!.

For the “sea isle rentals” search, they currently rank 13th in Google, 8th in Yahoo!, and 2nd in Live.com. It looks as though with a little work, they could easily take a top three spot on all three major search engines for this phrase.

The site’s main page currently has a Google PageRank of 4, which is actually quite good for such a region-specific topic, especially when taking the site age into account. While this has no direct relation to search engine results, it is an indicator of a healthy site. The site’s Alexa ranking is surprisingly better than nearly all of its competitors.

Compete also has information on Sea Winds of Sea Isle, and shows that while traffic dropped substantially in December 2008, it is back on the rise in January as people prepare for their summer vacations. November was its highest tracked month on Compete with an estimated unique visitor count of 1,100, or one fifth the total average potential “sea isle city rentals” search visitors from Google.

Design

Ryan told me that the main issue with the site is conversion rate. And when it comes to conversion rate, nothing is more important than the layout and design of the site. This is where I think the site stands to improve the most and increase it’s overall conversions.

Colours – While the header image looks pretty decent, and the colours fit the message of the site, they have little variety, and don’t flow well together. Also it appears that links, other than the main navigation are missing any styling at all. This makes the site look at little unprofessional to me.

Typography – I am not a fan of using one font for an entire site. With the headers, navigation, and body text all the same font, it looks really basic, and not thought out. Headers could use a serif font, while body text reads better when it is sans-serif.

Overall Professionalism – Here is probably the biggest issue with the entire site, the overall design professionalism is lacking. Not only does the design change, depending on what page you are looking at, but it looks basic, reminding me of designs from years ago. Without a very professional facing design, I find it highly unlikely that potential customers will take the site as seriously as they should, and the design is, in my mind, limiting the number of potential sales.

Some issues include the navigation that moves from the sidebar on the home page to under the main header graphic on all other pages, the missing blog link on all pages other than the home page, the stylistically different home page versus the local information and our agents page. If you add the design of the blog to this, then you get something that is just nearly impossible to connect together visually, with even the header graphic not remaining entirely the same from page to page.

Validation – With the site only two simple errors away from completely validating, someone should take a quick minute and replace the “&” characters with the html code “& amp;”. This will make the site valid, which is never a bad thing. While this may not help search engine results, I believe it an important indicator of the quality and professionalism of a site.

Blog

Not having the blog be connected to each part of the site, and look similar is a mistake. Also, the blog is currently on a sub-domain, which some search engines consider a separate site. I think the blog would be better able to perform its function if it was tied into the site better, in both design, and URL structure [Ryan tells me that he wanted to run WordPress but the site is running on a Microsoft server and thus the subdomain was necessary to run WordPress on a separate server]. Also, I don’t think having it being a “blog” is a smart marketing move, as the average consumer still doesn’t identify with a blog. So links from the site, to the blog should be called something else. I’d prefer it be given a name that is keyword rich like “Sea Isle City Views”.

The blog should also be updated to the latest version of WordPress, and some form of SEO plugin should either be added, or the theme customized in such a way that it does better with regards to search engine optimization.

Also, this is another perfect place for images. And the blog could use some posts under the “link bait” or “resource bait” categories. Given that this is about real estate, a post on “the most beautiful properties on the shore” might be a great way to get people interested in the area, and could gain some back links from tourism, property rental, and vacation websites.

Calls to Action

When you see a great piece of marketing, they tell you what to do. With Sea Winds of Sea Isle, there are very few places where I feel compelled to complete an action. The text surrounding listings should give me many opportunities to contact an agent and work in sales text that sounds more active. Something along the lines of “rent your summer home today!” or “this property could be gone tomorrow, please click here to contact us now!”

The site design can also go a long way towards improving the calls to action: big, bold, colorful buttons work like a charm.

To see an example of a site, one of their competitors, with excellent calls to action throughout check out Sea Isle Realty at http://www.seaislerealty.com/

Sitemap

I thought when I clicked on sitemap in the footer, I was going to get a search engine approved sitemap, but instead, was transported to a page that listed the main pages on the site. This is a horrible way to do a sitemap as it doesn’t list the various blog posts, or other information, and since it isn’t the XML sitemap that is search engine approved, I have a feeling that this extra page is doing very little for the site. While it might be convenient for larger sites, I don’t think that a sitemap page such as this is required here, and the Sea Winds of Sea Isle site would be better served with a true XML sitemap that featured the various blog posts being created.

Overall Thoughts

While ranking well, this site has a long way to go. The biggest issue is conversions. The whole point of this site is to take interested people from finding the site, to buying a house or rental. The lack of professionalism in design, information organization, and cohesion might be turning off otherwise ready-to-buy customers. The site could use more content, but that is a secondary concern after the design, and is only needed to further work towards the goals of the site: ranking well for very focused searches that are likely to convert to sales. Calls to action, inspiration regarding the location, images to evoke an emotional response are all content oriented concerns that should be addressed.

One of the most frustrating parts of online marketing is when you have a good amount of focused traffic, but still get little to no conversions or sales. With some polishing of the design, some link-worthy content, and better integration of the blog into the core site, Sea Winds of Sea Isle should be able to draw in a larger percentage of qualified search visitors, and hopefully sell some more beautiful beach front properties.

Want an Assessment of Your Site?

If you would like a similar assessment on your own blog or website, please contact me today for a quote. Site Critiques start at only $99!

I listen to music through Last.fm. I watch video podcasts and television shows on a variety of sites. I play EvE Online, an online massively multiplayer game. My entertainment is almost completely online.

I communicate through instant messaging, Skype, Twitter and my blogs. I e-mail through Gmail. My tools for communication are completely online.

I work completely online, writing blog posts, editing WordPress installations, and promoting what I have written on various social media websites. My income, which pays the mortgage, is completely online.

It leaves very little of my life that isn’t connected to the Internet in some way. Without it, I feel disconnected from my entertainment, my communication tools, and my work.

I wonder how many other people are so dependent on the Internet that they feel as I do and what that really means about society, as I am sure this will only become more common as Internet becomes more ubiquitous. How do you feel when you are disconnected from the Internet? Does it bother you at all, or do you enjoy your time offline?

I then registered for an account and gave it my best go at really using it. I wondered if it would be as addictive as people had said, but I found it to be distracting and fairly useless. People told me I was using it wrong. They said I wasn’t following enough people, nor the right people, and that I should be using a desktop client to keep up to date on what others were saying, and publishing my own thoughts.

I tried following more people. I tried to follow celebrities, people with lots of followers, names that I recognized, people that ran sites that I recognized, and even people in my local area, and it did become more compelling to use. I was interacting with hundreds of people, and even started to use my large base of followers to help me promote my articles in the social media scene.

Just like others, I asked politely for people to give a thumbs up on StumbleUpon if they enjoyed what I had written, and it helped bring in some traffic, but I started to feel overwhelmed.

I downloaded and installed various software onto my laptop that would allow me to organize information better, and interact with Twitter in a more efficient way, but I found it quickly becoming a time sink. I was distracted too often, trying to keep up on what hundreds of people were doing, and many of them were pushing out ten or twenty messages a day.

I quickly removed the software, and realized that I should only interact with Twitter when I had the time, or if I needed to publish something, and I started to feel better about my interactions with the site, but as weeks passed, I felt like I was missing something, and recently, I clued into what it was. I was missing out on hundreds of updates from all sorts of people. Some of them were important ones from my friends or people that I respected. A few were even business related, and could have lead to money making opportunities for me.

I realized then that I was following too many people. I couldn’t have conversations with my friends that I only connect to on Twitter because their updates were being pushed off the front page so quickly that I never even noticed them.

It is with that realization, that I have decided to create a new Twitter account that will be paired with this site. I will only follow around fifty people, and hopefully create deeper connections with all of them.

The big question I have now will be how that will effect everything that I have done. I have built up over five hundred followers on my old account, while I have five on my new one. Will people move over and follow me, knowing that I won’t follow most of them back?

Of course there are many more questions that will also come up over time, and I don’t know if this was the smartest move in terms of branding, but I do know that doing this will help bring back some enjoyment to my Twitter experience.

If you are interested in following me on Twitter, please check out my BrandingDavid account.

Personally, I am very interested in what happens with the American economy, as it is strongly tied to the Canadian economy, and the economies of many nations around the world. While China is jokingly said to produce everything, the majority of the media content that I consume comes from the United States.

Economic shifts tie in strongly with being a web worker because advertising dollars are usually the first things to be reduced as belt tightening happens within a company, and a large percentage of the revenue being moved around online today to pay my own, and many other peoples, wages is directly related to advertising sales.

As a web worker, I feel as though we are in the height of the conference and events scene in my industry, with many companies spending thousands of dollars for a small booth at these events, and dozens of sponsors spending an arm and a leg to have their logo adorn the promotional materials and session halls. Will these events dry up as the economy shifts, advertising revenue slows, and bloggers pay is continually reduced for bloggers, freelance designers and other web workers?

Despite being a positive person and a bit of an idealist, I find the current outlook to be fairly bleak.

I hope that as the economy shifts, more businesses will realize that the web is an inexpensive way of reaching a wider audience, and so, as certain advertisers leave the table, or reduce their spending online, a new group of businesses will throw their money, in a cautious but substantial way, into advertising online and at conferences, events and trade shows.

How does a diminished American economy effect your bottom line? How will it effect the way you work, live, and network with your peers? If you are a speaker or consultant, how will it effect you in the short term?

Things are definitely changing, and more now than nearly any time in history, it may be time for both businesses, consultants and employees alike to evolve and adapt or struggle.