The Whole Greater Than the Sum of the Parts

Over the past 2 months, H2 SEO is been primarily dedicated to a new venture involving the best the local region has to offer in web development, hosting and overall customer service. The purpose of this joint venture was to create a top notch firm with the ability to design, develop and promote the best of breed applications for businesses wanting to shine on the internet.

OK, so?

The new company is called Topsail Publishing, Inc. which brings together a number of well known news writers from the Topsail Island region along with staff from Beacon Webs, Topsail Internet Cafe and more. Each of these companies has developed a reputation for top rated customer service in their respective fields.

One of the very first projects for Topsail Publishing has been the new news site Topsail Island Info. The new site is already ranking quite well on MSN for a variety of phrases including Topsail Island, Topsail Island Real Estate and many others. With over 200 people visiting the site on several days, there are a number of businesses taking a new look at marketing on the site as well as getting the Topsail Publishing group to develop a site for them.

Recently, Topsail Publishing has added a new events calendar and working to implement classifieds to compliment the other advertising opportunities already available. The overall design of the site makes each of the primary pages a "mini portal" containing: articles, links, calendar events, etc. for each major topic covered. These topics include the towns, sports, real estate and more.

Considering how quickly this has all occured, the upcoming "face lift" slated for the beginning to middle of December should prove quite interesting to see. Stay tuned here or visit the Topsail Island Info site to see for yourself.

Setting the Gold Standard in Link Promotion

Coastal Gold hires H2 SEO for Search Engine Optimization and Link Building services

Coastal Gold (http://www.coastalgold.com/) has hired H2 SEO to perform the services of Search Engine Optimization and Link Building to enhance their business by placing them on the first page of the major search engines.

Realizing that before a business can be profitable online, people must find it, the management of Coastal Gold decided to work with the Wilmington SEO that had demonstrated the ability to rise above the competition. Being that Coastal Gold deals in high quality precious metals, they wanted to maintain the "gold standard" on the web.

Coastal Gold is a premier scrap gold buyer. When you want to sell scrap gold or any other precious metals, contact Coastal Gold. They are the professionals that will handle your request no matter how large or small with the customer service for which they are noted.

Sometimes Adsense Just Makes Sense

After all the email you receive with all the false promises as well as the overexaggerated sales hype on TV and radio, it is difficult not to be put off regarding the marketing of business websites especially when it comes to profit potential.

Being a professional SEO, I decided to perform a little test of my own to determine how a brand new site could become profitable and what timeframe for this achievement is within reason. Of course, I wanted to make this profitable for me as well.

Rather than develop some laboratory experiment that would provide results that others might find difficult to repeat, I set out a plan to build rather basic websites using topics I was already familiar with and include Google Adsense advertisements on each to allow visitors to click on the ads which causes me to get paid on a monthly basis (provided the revenue exceeds $100 US at some point).

Google Adsense Websites for My Test

The 2 sites I created were Seafood Plus Info at http://www.seafoodplus.info/ and Topsail Island Info at http://www.topsail-island.info/. Each of these sites were created with a "standard" look and feel using PHP coding that uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the new Google Sitemap Protocol.

Being that I wanted the sites to gain recognition and usage quickly, I wanted the largest of the major search engines, Google, to find each site and index all of their pages quickly. The Google Sitemap Protocol, which is still in beta testing, enables that to happen.

Results So Far...

Not to violate the Google terms of service for participation within the program, I will not disclose exact amounts of revenue. Instead I will provide results in relation to other expenses involved in creation and maintenance of a "standard" business website.

Thus far, the Seafood Plus Info site has already paid back the full amount expended to register the domain and host the site for a year. This occurred within the first 4 months online!

As for the Topsail Island Info site, it has already started getting revenue within the first 9 days of being online (from date of registering the domain and purchasing hosting)!

This is rather amazing as so many other web design and SEO "professionals" say it should take 6-9 months to see results. Oh well...

What Does All of This Mean?

To me this means that link building, my favorite form of website promotion, is still quite effective on the major search engines. It also means that through careful consideration and proper planning, a business website can be developed to become profitable in a reasonable period of time. Similar to running a storefront business, online business does take time and effort.

The rewards can be outstanding!

Google Adwords Helps Pay the Bills

A little over two months ago, my wife and I decided to create a website focused on Seafood including how-to handle and prepare as well as recipes. Like so many others with an idea for a new website, we wanted to find a means to financially support the site while providing quality content for users to enjoy without having to pay.

Along Comes Google Adwords

For those not familiar, Google offers many services beyond just the search engine. Adwords is the service available to those who want to purchase online pay-per-click advertising to obtaining visitors searching for your product or service. Unlike organic results, pay-per-click is quick to begin bringing leads and quick to drop off when your account runs out of funds.

Adsense is the display side to Adwords. For those who have a website and want to build revenue by "selling" advertising space, Adsense can be an option. Adsense uses the content of your site to determine what ads to display that were purchased through Adwords. As a website owner/manager, you have the option to filter out unwanted ads (e.g. competition, those you just do not like, etc.). If there are no relevant paid ads as determined by Google after the filter, public service ads can be displayed.

Example site: Seafood Plus Info

The site my wife and I created has the Google Adsense ads along the right side of the pages as well as categories on the bottom. To see how this can work or to learn more about both Adwords and Adsense by Google, please visit the links from this page.

There may be something in it for you!

Need a Referral?

Ever wonder how so many businesses do so well?

Ever wonder why so many people recommend shopping at one place over another?

Getting a good reputation in business has long been the key for brick-and-mortar retailers through the years. Word of mouth advertising is generally the most sought after form of marketing for the local neighborhood store. Can the same be true online?

The internet works very similar to the real world in many ways. When people want to learn about the better places to live, work or play, they often start with looking it up on the web. Over 85% of American internet users begin with a search engine to start the process. So how does this relate to referrals?

Google is considered by most experts to be the largest and most often used search engine in the world. Most expert search engine optimizers ("SEOs") acknowledge that you cannot get to the first page of Google's Search Engine Ranking Positions ("SERPs") without quality and volume of inbound links to your site. These inbound links are, in essence, referrals from other websites such as: news, directories, search engines and site related to your subject matter (hopefully!).

Obtaining these "referrals" from other quality sites is very similar to getting a word of mouth referral in the "real world". The better the quality of the referral, the better it is received. The more often you hear or see the referral, the more it sticks with you. The same holds true for getting the inbound links and their relationship to your SERPs on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.

Of course, there are more elements to make the referrals do the most for you but, that is another topic which we can discuss later. For more about online referrals or about SEO and Link Building, please visit http://myncseo.com today!

Online Businesses Need to Prepare for Christmas

We have all heard "the early bird gets the worm" and "a stitch in time saves nine". These sayings point to the fact that getting prepared and being in front of your competition makes a significant impact on our sales. The same holds true to online marketing.

It never seems to fail. Every year businesses talk about how important the Christmas shopping season is to their profits and yet, these same businesses find it less important to prepare in the mid to late summer. Early August is the prime time to get started working on the marketing projects for your business website so they may be in place and effective when you need them most.

Marketing Timeline

Let's back into the schedule issues related to marketing your business on the web. First, most businesses realize that the day after Thanksgiving Holiday is the biggest retail shopping day of the year. With business websites, this can begin even the actual holiday itself or slightly before so we can use this as our rough target date that the promotion must be completed not later than.

It is generally recognized that Google is the largest and most used search engine in the world. In the SEO business we also know that it often takes two (2) full cycles of updates for the search engine giant to get your search engine ranking positions ("SERPs") to be in place. Each of these updates takes approximately 4-6 weeks which puts us needing 8-12 weeks before the Thanksgiving Holiday deadline to have all links in place and ready for Google along with the other search engines.

September 15 - September 29

Our schedule now has up needing to have all the SEO of the business website completed, all the links pointing to our website on other websites, directories, search engines and news publications completed and fully functioning. This means that we cannot still be waiting for other webmasters to put our links in place or someone to take another 4-6 weeks to decide to place the link in their directory. Doing so would cost our SERPs dramatically when we need them most.

August 1 through September 15

As you can now see, this only leaves us approximately 6 - 8 weeks to work on the SEO of the site, build links and get everything ready to improve your business website sales during the Christmas shopping season. That is approximately the same amount of time many businesses state it takes to ship you a single product!

Don't Delay!!!

If you want to improve your Christmas season sales, do not wait another day. Whether you choose to go with SEO and Link building through H2 SEO or any other website marketing firm, now is the time to get started. Waiting any longer can be a very costly prospect indeed!

10 Best Resources for CSS by Mark Daoust

The 10 Best Resources for CSS

By Mark Daoust (c) 2005
reprinted with permission from Mark Daoust

If you have been paying attention, you certainly have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is. If you have not yet jumped on the CSS bandwagon, you may want to consider doing so immediately.

CSS has many different benefits for website owners. The most obvious is the pure, raw design capabilities CSS brings to websites. CSS can control everything from the size of your font to the very layout of your page. A site designed with proper HTML and CSS can avoid incorporating almost any design elements into the actual HTML. This means a website owner can change the entire look of their whole site without changing a single HTML page. For owners of sites with dynamic content or sites that have a lot of content (blogs, forums, stores, etc), this becomes a huge time saver.

CSS also allows a website owner to build their HTML in a nice, logical order. Often when using tables to layout a website, the HTML that powers the website is not laid out in a logical order (this is referred to as the 'code flow'). This can hurt website owners in two ways. The first, and more important way, is to recognize that not everyone who uses the Internet is viewing your website
through a visual browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. There are a whole group of people who are viewing websites using web readers and other tools which rely on well-organized code. Secondly, a well-organized website can actually help your search engine rankings. When a spider discovers a page that is well organized and not filled with a lot of extra HTML code, it can determine more accurately and quickly what that page is really about. Let's face it, we all
want to help the spiders, right?

It is in the spirit of CSS that this article is written. There are hundreds of websites offering CSS tutorials, CSS examples, competitions, and showcases. There may be some that we are not aware of which are not displayed hëre, and if so, we encourage you to let us know in the Site Reference Forums.

With that said, we must offer a word of warning before going to any of these websites. These sites can become very addicting if you enjoy web design in the slightest way. Some of these sites link to literally hundreds of other sites which will catch your interest.

Now that the warning has been issued, we present to you a list of our favorite CSS websites.

CSSZenGarden

If you have any doubts over how powerful CSS really is, then you need to visit CSS Zen Garden. CSS Zen Garden is a display of the power and beauty of CSS. The concept is simple: see how many ways designers can take the exact same HTML code and produce completely different looking pages. As you browse through the various designs, you will find that the only thing changing the way each page looks is the CSS file. The HTML is exactly the same.

CSS Zen Garden is a great showcase of creativity and technical expertise. It is also important to point out that CSS Zen Garden does not use any tables for their layout. Everything is done in pure, simple HTML and CSS.

The Web Developer's Network

Any of the sites that make our favorites list are certainly listed on this extensive resource page. Be warned, this page has so many resources listed it is easy to get lost for hours exploring them. Some of the resources are just fun to explore while others offer some very practical advice on practical matters.

The page is not limited to CSS resources, but also delves into areas of good website design and creativity, along with anything else you could possibly want for your design needs. Our only criticism of this site is that it might be too extensive to find a specific tutorial or help guide.

Official Cascading Style Sheets
Level 2 Specification

This is the place where it all starts if you want to learn CSS. Hëre you will find the official documentation on how to use CSS and what CSS is used for. Many novice website owners are scared away from this site because it is written in very technical language and they fear that they will not be able to understand it. If you feel this way, be careful not to sell yourself short. The
specifications are actually much easier if you know how to read them.

When going over this document, keep in mind a few things. First, CSS was built for more than just the Internet. CSS can be used in print media and broadcast media as well. So when you are reading some of the instructions in the official manual you may find some aspects that do not apply to what you are doing. Secondly, do not worry if you do not understand a certain chapter or bit
of information. The trick to learning CSS is to get a basic understanding of it first, then practice, then go back and re-read what you have already read (things will make a bit more sense this time around), then practice, then go back and re-read again, and so on. Every time you practice what you learned and go back to re-read some of the specifications, it will make more and more sense
to you.

As a point of reference, if you want to just go over the most important chapters in the manual, be sure to read these chapters: Chapters 8-12, 14-18, and 4-6.

CSS from the
Ground Up

Ok, so you have tried the official manual and it is just too difficult to understand. That is fine. There is a lot of information included in the manual, and they certainly do not work at entertaining you with the manual. If you want a bare bones tutorial on CSS, the people from Web Page Design for Designers have put together a pretty good basic tutorial which should get you started on your
first CSS pages.

Listamatic

One thing you will learn as you begin to work with CSS powered layouts is that lists are extremely powerful tools. Lists are a vital part of building a website with good code flow. Getting lists to appear correctly in different browsers, or to appear in new, original ways, however, can be quite challenging.

Listamatic offers several examples of lists that use simple CSS. The examples cover nearly everything that you could possibly hope to achieve from an HTML list. Of course, if you are working with a nested list, they have examples of those as well.

CSSVault

This site offers a little bit of everything. They offer a great gallery for you to stop by and gawk at, as well as a number of resources on everything from lists to building layouts that do not use tables. Definitely a good overall resource on CSS.

CSS Layout Techniques

No CSS guide would be complete if we did not address the issue of building a layout that does not use tables. This is certainly the most challenging aspect of CSS, learning how to build a nice layout. The people over at Glish.com have put together examples of several different types of layouts. They may not offer every layout you could possibly use, but looking over their guides will
certainly help you learn different techniques to learning how to layout your page.

Ruthsarian
Layouts

There really cannot be enough resources on how to work with layouts using CSS. Ruthsarian Layouts offers several very good examples of popular layouts.

PositionIsEverything

And yet again, we offer another site dedicated to learning layouts and the little quirks that each browser brings into your CSS design. This site may just have the most information on position with CSS than any other site.

StyleGala

This is another site that goes a bit beyond CSS and into some other aspects of design, but still offers so much to learn from that it is highly worth putting in your favorites file. Included in this site is an impressive gallery, some forums, a collection of bullets that you can use on your site (where has this been for the past several years?), and a great collection of resources.

Using These Resources to Learn

Whether you are a code junkie or are a person who relies on FrontPage to do all of your design, moving in the direction of CSS and properly formatted HTML is the future of the Internet. For many, beginning the process of learning CSS may seem like a useless and overly-difficult venture. However, if you are responsible for the look and feel of your website you should begin to explore
this technology which is being used more and more.

The best way to learn CSS is to start using it. Experiment with different parts of CSS. Try and accomplish different tricks that you have nevër done before. If you have nevër created a page without tables, try and do so today. If you have nevër worked with a list to format it in a completely different manner, experiment with that. Browse through some of the sites in the many different gallerïes offered to us and get inspired. Use these sites and these resources to imagine what your website could look like.

Your website is your salës pitch to your visitors. When they arrive at your website, it should be your goal to present to them the best looking page you can possibly provide. A well designed page will provide your users with the comfort that you are invested in your business, and you will be invested in them as a customer and visitor.

The Internet is a rapidly changing environment, with new technology and new tools being made available to enhance your site every day, and thus enhance your visitor's experience. It is your responsibility to make sure that your website sells, and that requires using the modern and powerful technologies that are available to us.

About The Author
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference and TowerSearch.

Sneads Ferry booming these days

Sneads Ferry booming these days

Reprinted with permission The Daily News - Jacksonville, NC
July 18,2005
JOE MILLER DAILY NEWS STAFF

SNEADS FERRY - For about 200 years, Carl Duff's family has made Sneads Ferry home. So it seemed logical when Duff opened Tom Dooley's Cafe and General Store on N.C. 210 last year.
Duff, 48, remembers growing up in the 1960s, when his father operated one of only two stores in the area.

"You felt like you were a long ways from anywhere," Duff said.
But that's not the case anymore. The once tiny fishing village of Sneads Ferry is reeling in more and more residents and businesses. Builders are constructing new homes at a fever pitch as people want to reside next to the water. The Four Corners area, at the intersection of N.C. 172 and 210, is increasingly becoming the business hub with a mix of stores, restaurants and even a topless club.

Yes, Sneads Ferry is growing up, and rapidly - nearly matching a similar boom on nearby Topsail Island.

"You got subdivisions that are going to be retirement homes, and you also got there along Highway 210 leading to the beach, there's a lot of commercial development supporting the beach," said Onslow County land use administrator Angie Manning. "North Topsail Beach is predominantly residential, so those people that are staying on the beach will come to the Sneads Ferry area for the (businesses)."

Local real estate brokers said demand for land is high, which is driving the price way up.
"You've got a doubling in the price of land because of all the builders that have come in," said Richard Baker, president of Treasure Realty. Baker estimates home sales are up 400 percent in the last two years.

He said new homes in the area typically go for $185,000 to $275,000.
One reason for the residential boom: Troops stationed at Camp Lejeune are moving into Sneads Ferry, a community without city government or an infrastructure.

"Our officers and captains wanting to be near the beach are paying to be on our waterfront properties," Baker said, noting proximity to Jacksonville and Wilmington is part of Sneads Ferry's appeal.

"It is the last developable waterfront area on the coast that's got major road access," he said.
With more residents come more businesses. People don't have to travel to Jacksonville or Wilmington to do the bulk of their shopping like they did decades ago.

You can buy groceries at Food Lion, eat a sandwich at Subway and fill your gas tank all at or near Four Corners - an area largely vacant more than a decade ago.

"Basically, the center of Sneads Ferry is starting to move away from down here by the water and out that way," said Mike Gallagher, chief of the Sneads Ferry Volunteer Fire Department.
The rampant growth concerns Gallagher. He said about 600 lots are being added to the fire department's coverage area, which is in an unincorporated section of the county.

"I don't know how I'm going to service them," Gallagher said. "At the funding we're getting right now, I do not see how we're going to provide the level of services that we provide right now."
Gallagher said his department gets about $64,000 per year from the county with the rest from private donations. He said if funding doesn't improve, the department's fire prevention program may have to be cut.

"We cannot stop putting out fires, so we have to save money other places," he said. "The county's going to have to decide what level of fire protection they want."
Business in the area isn't limited to strip development. Several "mom and pop" stores line N.C. 172.

Dean and Jean Hudson grew up in Sneads Ferry and came back two years ago from Virginia. They opened up Sea Witch Antiques.

Jean Hudson said their business has grown tremendously, especially in 2005.

"A lot of new people are coming in here every day looking for houses and property, places to live, and we're getting a lot of that business," she said. "We get people from all over, not just the United States, but the world."

Dean Hudson said Sneads Ferry is appealing to a lot of people because it is a neat community.
"It's near the water," he said. "It's a great vacation place. It's a great place to live all year long."

Contact staff writer Joe Miller at jmiller@freedomenc.com or at 353-1171, Ext. 236.

A Matter Of Perspective

A Matter Of Perspective

Reading and learning about history has long been a favorite pasttime of mine. I believe understanding how people have succeeded, and failed, in the past can assist in future successes. It is through these eyes that I look around following the celebration of this country's (United States of America) 230 years of freedom and see a slightly different perspective.

Beautiful Downtown Sneads Ferry

Let me begin by saying that I now live in a wonderful small community along the eastern coast of North Carolina. When speaking with new acquaintances, I often state that I live in "beautiful downtown" Sneads Ferry. For those not familiar with the immediate area, it is an unknown small town with little to be recognized. Once known as "trailer trash" and poor shimper families by nearby communities, Sneads Ferry has quickly begun to grow both by new residential dwellings and businesses. More recently, it has become an area where people from around the world are moving to and spending well over ten (10) times the amount for property as it sold less than five (5) years ago. Buildings are going up faster than ever before and the result is changing the perspective of other localities and their view of our little town.

Topsail Island

It has been said that Topsail Island earned its name as tradeships passed by carrying their cargo and looked for the top mast (e.g. top sail) of lurking pirate ships hidden behind the island. This could easily be considered a rather sad thing to be known for from a marketing perspective. Instead, Topsail Island has changed through the years as few would have ever considered.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy took over the island and began a joint venture with Johns Hopkins University known as Operation Bumblebee. Operation Bumblebee was the beginning of the United States Government space program. Many "improvements" were added to the island including: an arsenal center for the assembly and storage of rockets, launching pads, and concrete observation towers were built throughout the island to monitor the experimental launchings. All in all, over 200 rocket launchings took place on the island between 1946 and 1948. When the testing program was dismantled, the government sold the island to the public with many of the original military structures in place and still standing today. From 1948 until just a few years ago, time drifted by for Topsail Island with people building houses as vacation homes primarily. Then the boom began!

Within the last five (5) years the prices for property and homes on Topsail Island have, pardon the pun, skyrocketed. Property than once sold for as little as $100 per acre is now selling as even smaller lots for $1,000,000 and up. There are now multiple houses on the island selling for over the $1,000,000 price point and some approaching $2 million. There are a number of homes already built and still more being built on parts of the island never even considered before due to erosion and hurricanes.

It's safe to say the perspective of people regarding Topsail Island has dramatically changed over the years!

Getting back to my original thought on perspective...

4th of July Fireworks at Camp LeJeune

During the celebration of our country's independance and the remembrance of our freedom from tyranny on Camp LeJeune, I notice a young United States Marine family that seems to symbolize so much. The mother is a civilian, dad is the marine and their young daughter who looks at this world with the innocent "rose colored glass" eyes of youth as it should be. In our conversations, I learned that dad has always been stationed somewhere else in the world during other 4th of July celebrations and this is his first time to spend it with wife and child at home in North Carolina. Braving this "sea of bodies" and listening to the orchestra was an event to be taken in and enjoyed for them due to the sacrafices by so many throughout the years.

As I watched, listened and waited for the upcoming spectactular fireworks presentation it sank in that this was the place to be for this celebration. Remembering and acknowledging those who protect us is something I feel is befitting of one granted the freedoms we share. Throughout history from the days of the Roman empire, to British imperialization and even within American history and the enslavement of africans, people have been without the freedoms that so many take for granted today.

No matter how you feel about the politics of our leaders, the freedoms we share were often earned by the lives of men and women through very trying times. The sacrifices of those in the military, their families and so many others is very precious. Taking the time to remember and say thanks, not just during the 4th of July but, throughout the year is something we can all do. No, it's not just placing a "We support our troups" sticker on a business to get military personnel to shop within. It's being genuine to those who have been so genuine in the face of conflict on our behalf.

Yes, I have new perspective and, hopefully, you do as well.

To each of you who faithfully serve this country and those who have done so before you:

Thanks for all you do. It is appreciated.

Seafood Plus Info Project by H2 SEO

Over the past several months there have been a number of changes in the Search Engine Optimization world. Not to be left behind, the staff of H2 SEO have been working on a special project which is nearing completion at Seafood Plus Info http://www.seafoodplus.info.

This project has been near and dear to the hearts of the H2 SEO staff since it involves the things we love so much ... seafood, the beach and seafood recipes! Let us not forget those tasty morsels such as: crabs, cooking shrimp, and of course the flounder recipes for summer flounder and winter flounder.

Didn't know there were the two different varieties? Check out the flounder species page to learn much more including flounder gigging!

This project is not quite complete and like most great recipes, we can't serve it until it's time. That will be soon so you may want to go ahead and set the table!

PS: For those of you who have a great family recipe for seafood, please feel free to send it to the Seafood Plus Info website at sp-inquiry@seafoodplus.info. They would love to get your recipes online and give you full credit. Please include what info you would like placed in a byline for the recipe.

Sea Witch Antiques: New Look, New Feel, New Host

Sea Witch Antiques has been recognized as the North Carolina antiques dealer with great prices and even better service for quite some time. From the moment you walk into the store and are greeted with either fresh brewed coffee or hot chocolate, you quickly realize this is like no other antiques and collectibles shop.

Wanting to continue that respect for their customers, the management of Sea Witch Antiques has totally revamped their online presence at http://seawitchantiques.com to improve your ability to find exactly what you want either by manufacturer or by category/subcategory. Of course, there is the standard search tool for those who want to enter a keyword or phrase but, the new layout has been hailed by many as much improved over the old site as well as those of their online competitors.

Now many antiques and collectibles shops say they sell online while speaking about Ebay or other online auction sites. Some even sell as stores within larger sites such as Tias, Ruby Lane or Curioscape.

These are nice places and we recommend you visiting them but, customers have suggested that having an online shop that makes finding your specific product easier to find and purchase is what they need. Having a nice looking site with top quality security and support helps build the confidence they need to make the purchase decisions easier. Add the respect and confidence many now have with the staff of Sea Witch Antiques and you come to realize the success they have had both online and in their retail location.

Examples:

• Antique clocks
• Antique cookie jars
• Bavaria china
• Candlewick glass
• Depression glass
• Dresden figurines
• Fenton glass
• Fiesta dinnerware
• Fitz and Floyd
• Flow blue
• Fostoria
• Heisey glass
• Homer Laughlin
• Hull pottery
• Johnson Brothers china
• Lenox china
• McCoy pottery
• Oil lamps
• Toby jugs
• Van Briggle pottery

As you can see, there are plenty of name brands along with categories and subcategories to choose from to fit most any taste in fine quality antiques and collectibles. Come see what all the fuss is about by visiting Sea Witch Antiques either online or in their retail store. We would love to see or hear your feedback both positive and negative. The management at Sea Witch Antiques feels that through listening and responding customer service improves.

Welcome to Herring's Outdoor Sports

The staff of H2 SEO would very much like to say welcome to Herring's Outdoor Sports as one of our newest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and link building customers.

For those of you not familiar with Herring's Outdoor Sports, they specialize in:

• beach apparel,
• fishing kayaks wilderness systems,
• life is good apparel,
• rugged shark shoes , and
• tilley endurables.

Herring's has long been a key business for tourist and locals of the Topsail Island region and more recently has become an online source for sporting enthusiast wanting the finest in name brand outdoor sporting gear.

Those who frequent the towns on Topsail Island: North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach are often very demanding. This is why Herring's Outdoor Sports thrives while others come and go on the island. They are just as demanding as their clients. If it isn't good enough to withstand the daily rigors of their cleints, it isn't good enough to sell in their store or online!

Herring's stand for quality and great service. Just ask anyone who has ever had the pleasure of shopping with them or better yet, experience it for yourself!

Make 2005 Your Best Year Ever Online!

This is the time of year when many business owners and managers decide to either "redesign" their business website or create a new one to gain more sales. The general thought seems to be that everybody is doing it so I must do the same to keep up. Keep in mind, this must be what the Dodo bird thinks before falling over the edge following his predecessors!

Slap happy Websites

Long gone are the days when 'build it and they will come' worked towards improving your bottom line. In this day and time there is much more competition along with more knowledgeable shoppers online. To gain the confidence of these savvy shoppers, a business website must effectively deal with their needs and expectations. To do less causes them to leave faster than you could ask "what happened?".

Would you only spend 30 minutes redesigning your print advertising?

Of course not! The reasons are obvious. Customers look to your printed materials (e.g. brochures, newspaper and magazine ads, billboards, etc.) to learn about your products and services. Their decisions based on this marketing help determine whether you are profitable or starve!

These printed pieces are designed to generate a response that causes people to perform a particular act such as: visit your location, call your phone, send a letter, etc. Taking the time to improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaign is a must to get ahead of the crowd.

First impressions: Shoppers are not dumb!

There has long been a trend by big business to treat customers as idiots. This sounds harsh but, when you look at the facts it is quite accurate. Take a look at American television advertising and notice how products are promoted. From talking animals to cartoons, many TV ads are little more than feel good along with here is our company or product name. Add to this the shopping cycles created by large retailers by their timely actions such as:

• Raising the majority of product prices just before Christmas while advertising just a few 'teasers' to get customers.


• Raising the price of roses just before Valentine's Day.


• Selling inferior products that are designed to break down in a short time causing the shopper to "need" another one in a short time span.

In my opinion, the repeated actions of these businesses has led to the 'web generation' performing much more research and being less tolerant of the 'retail babble'. These shoppers learn the details about their purchases and are much better prepared to invest the money into the products and services they desire. This has been very well demonstrated in the Real Estate markets around the United States.

Web Marketing: Niche versus 'Be All'

With so many businesses competing online, it is impossible to be everything to everybody (e.g. a 'Be All'). Specializing in a particular 'niche' gives the opportunity to be more in depth regarding knowledge, options and relationships to other products and services. Demonstrating this helps build customer confidence and loyalty both online and in person. Add honesty, integrity and diligence makes for a very competitive business!

Online searchers are specific

When people visit the web, it is no secret that the vast majority go to the major search engines like Google and Yahoo! to find the specific information he or she desires. Depending on which online research study you prefer, performing a search and then selecting a generic result link accounts for well over half of all visits generated from the search engines. Searches these days are often 2 and 3 word phrases (over 55% combined) causing the results to be very niche oriented. This is extremely important if you want to reach these searchers and convert their actions to sales!

Satisfy the Angels, Appease the Devils

There are generally two (2) major categories that shoppers can be classified.

1. Angels
   Customers who are more interested in the relationship between the business and the shopper. Angels generally boost profits and often become repeat customers.


2. Devils
   Customers who make a purchase, often return products, obtain coupons and
   pinch pennies to the point where they spend much more time than money. Devils are the type of customers who will return a product to get their money back only to buy the discounted open box later.

If you have been in business long, you may have many more characteristics for these 2 categories than stated above. In any case, having more angels than devils can be the significant factor in true profitability. With this in mind, it is easier to understand why marketing the lowest price results in higher numbers (e.g. visits, hits, etc.) as well as more devils. These devils turn around and kill your profits by the activities described above and can lead you to the 'poor farm' quickly!

The remainder of this article will help describe how to get more angels and fewer devils to improve your bottom line for you business website and your business overall.

Website Marketing without the SPAM

If you have spent any time sending and receiving email, you are probably well aware of the frustrations SPAM causes. The major search engines are just as aware of the frustrations online searchers feel due to the search engine spamming they received from webmasters and promoters over these past few years.

What is search engine spamming?

In the 'early days' of the internet and search engines, adding META tags (e.g. description, keywords, etc.) to each page caused the search engines to list you for the keyword phrases listed there. This was almost completely done away with by the major search engines when many webmasters tried to 'trick' the search engines by placing the same phrases multiple times in the tags as well as adding phrases that were not included elsewhere on the page nor even the entire website at all!

Many webmasters and designers incorrectly still believe this to be an effective technique with Google and Yahoo! when, in fact, this practice is virtually useless for them. Keyword phrases within META tags are still used by many lesser search engines and directories although not so much on the major search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - What it does and what it doesn't do

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of improving the content (e.g. graphics, text, underlying code, etc.) to better your ranking for the search engines thus making it easier for online searchers to find your site. Often Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is used interchangeably with SEO. A better definition is that used within the SEMPO glossary:

Search Engine Marketing:
The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be
improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a
combination of these and other search engine-related activities.

SEO is not specifically link building although good SEO does include proper text and coding tags for internal linking. To carry your website to the next level of search engine rankings, it is better to look into Link Building and Link Popularity.

Link Building (e.g. increase number of inbound links pointing to your website) involves trading links with other websites (reciprocal linking or 3 way linking) as well as 1 way linking (ex. publish an article on other websites with links back to your own) leading to improved Link Popularity. Considering how much relevance search engines give to link building along with the value of the page where each of those links exist, it is little wonder how popular link trading has become.

Understand that link building only addresses bringing visitors to your website. It does not include converting those visitors to sales nor keeping those visitors at your site for an extended period of time. At H2 SEO we like to relate this similar to bringing people to the doorstep of a business. It's up to the webmaster to convert sales, or in our example up to the store personnel to transact the business.

Earlier I mentioned about the value of the page with the inbound link exists. This value can be measured as related to the Google search engine via Google PageRank (PR). An example of Google PR can be viewed by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/. Some professional SEO's insist the toolbar lags a bit behind the "true PR" of the page. Understand the PR is page by page of the website. Just because the "home page" has a high PR value does not mean subordinate pages will have similar.

Website Design and Hosting play a significant role once a visitor reaches your site. If inbound links bring people to your doorstep, site design and hosting give them the impression on whether to stay or click away. Professionalism in your website says a great deal about who you are and what type of business you are to those online. Don't underestimate the importance of quality including look, feel and especially spelling. Typographical errors become quite annoying to those reading your site and say a lot about who and what you are.

Hosting can easily determine the speed and uptime of your website. Poor hosting can cause a great design to become invisible to online searchers. Cheap hosting may seem like a great deal at the time of purchase but, when people don't stay or even visit you because of site downtime and/or other hosting problems, is it worth it?

Great content leads to action. Having the right copy which can invoke visitors to take action is a primary key for any business website. Think about it. Having great link popularity which brings visitors along with awesome graphics and animation may seem really great at first. Without the visitor taking action such as filling out a form or purchasing something, all of your investment of time and money could go completely down the proverbial drain. Spend the time to get the right text on your website and it may pay back great dividends.

Automated content can include RSS newsfeeds, weather stickys, and various other tools to keep people visiting your site to learn the latest news and more. Keeping these people coming back gives you more and more opportunities to show them why it is important to do business with you. Not bad for free investments and usually low maintenance. Even when some of these are not free, consider the direct and indirect impact each online tool has towards your overall online business objectives. You might be surprised what can drive your visitors to take the exact actions you desire!

As you can see, there are many factors involved in online business and SEO these days. Factoring in that the major search engines are constantly evolving to handle the needs of their customers, you quickly realize the value of professional SEO services. For more info please feel free to visit or call on H2 SEO anytime.