USA Today’s Jefferson Graham recently did a video segment on Google by interviewing Google’s Matt Cutts for their Tech Talk section. The video is great to get a base understanding of Google’s search results and and search engine optimization basics.

The biggest takeaways I found:

+ It’s tough to be found for a term being searched if that text isn’t on your website somehere, listen to Matt’s example for a San Diego Chiropractor.

+ The importance of title tags and meta desciption tags, not only for Google in understanding the page, but for users deciding on what search results to click on.

+ Blogs! Blogs are a great way to acquire inbound links and put out engaging and valuable content. Hello small businesses!?!?!

+ Submit your site map, or have your web person or firm do it for you. It’s an easy way to get Google to crawl your site and index pages.

Make sure you check out the video.

Side note to USA Today Tech Talk: Put your videos into a player that others can embed to better promote you on their blogs and websites. Be a bit more social!

Email marketing is such a powerful and affordable tool, but I’m still surprised at how many small businesses fail to utilize it.  Many businesses I talk to just seem to be overwhelmed with content ideas for what they can do with an email marketing program.  With our email marketing services, we not only give a business a custom email design, an easy to use creation and management tool … we develop ideas.

This first installment of email marketing ideas is aimed at a small retail business that might be selling books, clothes, home decor, antiques, specialty items and so forth.  In the future I will be releasing other ideas for different types of businesses.

Idea #1 - Build a bigger list of emails!  Try give-aways, coupons or other rewards for joining your e-club or list.  Permission based email marketing is all about getting that email address, so test different rewards that help you gather email addresses and build your list.

Idea #2 -  Partner with a local band/music group that has a CD out or an upcoming show.  Promote them in your e-letter or e-offer and give away their CD or tickets to an upcoming show with a purchase.  You will need to find a group in line with your audience/target but it spices up your offer and they’ll love the intro to your audience.

Idea #3 - Find a community group or non-profit to partner with.  Donating a percentage of that month’s or a certain day’s sales to a local group is not only goodwill but good business.  They in turn will promote you and you give customers added incentive to buy with you.

Idea #4 - Use your e-letter to promote an “Our Treat” offer.  Let the coffee shop, bakery or ice cream shop next door or down the block give you coupons for a free coffee, pastrie or ice cream cone that you can place in every bag at purchase.  The partner business loves that you promote them and your customers love a free treat.

Idea #5 -  Set-up a “Power Hour”.  Advertise a specific hour that has super savings, a raffle or another promotion that can’t be ignored.  Promotions that have time frames add that additional motivation to shop and buy.  The best part is that only your email list customers find out about this special hour.

Well, there you have five email marketing ideas for a small retail business.  Maybe give one a try or mix a few together to see what it can do for you.  Feel free to share any additional ideas you may have or have tried.

With tonight’s NBA Draft looming I thought I would morph it a bit into the search engine optimization world. If I had to draft a team of SEO pieces to work together as a team to achieve search ranking greatness, here is what I would draft for my five SEO starters.

1. Point Guard - Keyword Research: As the point guard is often the floor general taking care of handling and passing the ball to all of the team, the keyword research tool is this key cog. Without targeting the right terms, you are just turning the ball over. Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and many free tools are out there, draft yours and put it to use.

2. Shooting Guard - Valuable Content: You depend on your shooting guard to make those open looks and produce offense and points and your web content is no different. Creating content for your website that is unique, valuable and well structured is your best SEO offense. Put to use ideas like real examples of how your company can help specific situations or clients, exact capabilities or outlining your process. Stop with the fluff and deliver real stuff.

3. Small Forward - Metadata Elements: Just as many a small forward is a well rounded player with a bit more size, metadata is multi skilled and versatile. Your page title is the most important of this triple threat player. It’s relevant in your ranking as well as what the searcher sees in the results to click. A great page title can go a long way. Utilize the meta description tag to support the title tag and find the right call to action. While the meta description won’t help your rank, it will increase your clicks. Last is meta tags, which all I will say is complete these for each page, but limit yourself to 5 to 8 relevant ones and don’t over do it … they matter little.

4. Power Forward - Proper Structure: While many debate just how much proper page and content structure bring to the SEO process, I take value in it. The power forward does just that, brings the muscle. I see proper structure of a site, page and it’s content strengthening the content and value. Use of H tags, list items, image alts and other structural elements bulks up your website and ensures your proper elements won’t be slighted.

5. Center - Link Building: The NBA draft is always about 7 footers … as they say you can’t teach height. It’s the reason the last 30 years of drafts have only seen 1 guard taken #1 ( Allen Iverson in 1996) . Link building is the center of your SEO team. Don’t forget that internal links on your site also matter, so don’t ignore your own pages and content. Some of link building is straight forward, where other areas require ideas and creativity.

There you have the basics of my SEO draft. I hope that I have drafted better than our local T-Wolves seem to do every year since we plucked KG so long ago. I’ll be happy with OJ Mayo, unless the miracle of Rose or Beasley fall to us.

Do you have someone else you’d draft ahead of my five? A sleeper SEO pick? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Colorado monogrammed gifts retailer, little dreamers, has big ideas for their new e-commerce website that went LIVE last week. Business owners Nicole and Paula sought a better web design to brand their unique monogrammed baby gifts and more and they needed it powered by an easy to use content management system and e-commerce solution. Five’s custom web design coupled with the SMC was just the right solution.

Some of the project details for this e-commerce website were:

• Custom web design
• SMC for content & e-commerce management
• Enhanced product detail page visuals, details & options
• Layered item option selections for monogram options
• Payment gateway integration with PayPal Pro
• Search engine optimization & SEO friendly URLs
• Email marketing integration & web analytics
• Project, usability & e-commerce consulting

The complexity of the monogram options definitely gave us a challenge (great work Josh and Travis) that led to a longer production schedule then expected, but the final outcome more than makes up for it. Many times during the process and content entry phases, little dreamer’s commented on the ease of use the SMC offers and their excitement over launching the new design. We’re excited to see how our work impacts their business too.

See the new little dreamers website for yourself, maybe even get a unique monogrammed gift for someone you know and if you are looking for a fabulous e-commerce web design, give Five a shout!

It was after watching a video on Twitter Marketing 101 posted on Doug Karr’s blog that I finally signed up for Twitter. I had probably made it to Twitter.com numerous times after reading other blog posts or print articles on Twitter, but for some reason I held off on getting involved. Looking back I compare it to late 2006 when I finally started business blogging after sitting on the sidelines (for far too long). Now 30 days into Tweeting, I have put out 73 tweets, the last one on writing this blog post. I’m following 41 people and in turn being followed by 34.

What Was My Hesitation To Start On Twitter?
I thought there couldn’t be enough value in short thoughts, randomly in the day. I couldn’t wrap myself around the benefits and use of the technology, mostly because I didn’t even give it a try. I thought that online interaction couldn’t get any better than a blog post and comment string. I was wrong.

“Finally signing up for twitter and tracking peeps down”
Yup, that was my first Tweet. With that first update I starting to search out people already using Twitter and I started to understand the value. Foremost for me in the beginning, Twitter was going to be access to some great minds in web design, Internet marketing and all that other web stuff I love. Finally I looked at what I could “buy” by being on Twitter instead of what I could “sell”. I could suddenly see what intrigued Lee Odden, where Ted Murphy was pitching Social Spark ( I heart Rockstartup.com), what conference Rand Fishkin is speaking at or even the random humor of Aaron Mentele and Ed Kohler. I was eavesdropping on great Internet minds, thanks to their sharing via Twitter.

Participating In The Conversation
I remember when starting to blog, the pressure I felt to make “valuable” comments on all these great blogs and posts I was reading. The fear of saying something basic (or stupid) to these great web minds often lead me to not participate. Then I decided I would never get anything out of sitting on the sidelines and that these great minds would probably still interact with my takes even if they weren’t earth shattering. They did.

I learned even more because I jumped in the game. That same thing has applied to Twitter. The first few days I thought I had to tweet some great information, break some great news or hype a blog post first. Then I remembered my blogging experience and I just went with what I was really doing and being myself. Turns out I have things to offer without being an A-list. Now the tweets come easy, without pressure and I get more out of it. I enjoy it.

The Benefits Of Twitter So Far
The biggest benefit has been the access to the intelligent and savvy minds of industry experts as I touched on. What a great source to get a better pulse of what they are plugged into … or what they just ordered for lunch.

Another benefit has been finding other peers out there locally in Minneapolis and in other areas of the country doing what I do and being equally talented at it. Rick Brooks of Flyte New Media, Teddy Garcia of Cyber Media Marketing, August Ash Web Design here in MN and of course knowing even more on Paul Jahn’s local search thoughts. Being in the industry that has the biggest users of Twitter is a benefit. If I was into pottery or cooking, I doubt I would have access to so many respected and experienced folks.

Getting put onto news or industry articles quickly has been another benefit. People like Matt McGee, Chris Winfield and Jennifer Laycock put me onto some great info well before I would ever find it through blogs … and maybe I wouldn’t even find it at all.

I’ve been baited and hooked on Twitter as well. Just last week PRmoxie of Sterling Cross Communications mentioned a new business publication in Minneapolis she was just added to and when I asked her how to get in on it … she let me know a good PR person (like herself of course) could make that happen. A sales pitch on Twitter! That tweet did get me thinking of when the timing will be right to utilize her services. Without following her on Twitter, that wouldn’t have happened.

So What’s Next?
It certainly has been an eye opening month for me on Twitter. I haven’t even touched on the many other business or marketing uses of Twitter and the accompanying tools others have created. I’ll be posting more on that down the road. I’m looking forward to tapping in to more great minds, access to industry information and learning. I’m interested to see what my threshold is for following, can I possibly follow 100 people and still get great value? 200?

I will be using Twitter to launch and promote an internal web project for Five Technology later this month and I can’t wait to see the results. Lastly I’m curious to see what it will take to gain more of my own audience and followers.

Will mainstream media and attention push more small business owners and management, especially in the Minnesota area, to join Twitter to follow a great small business web design and Internet marketing mind? I hope so and they (and you now!) can follow me by visiting Twitter.com/AaronWeiche.

It’s not hard to imagine the same growth and acceptance blogs have seen in the mainstream this past year hitting Twitter. But even if that doesn’t happen, I have already found the value of Twitter for me, in just 30 days.