Old City Web Services

Under the Umbrella of SEO

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5 Things You Need to Know about Search Engine Optimization

If it seems like we talk about search engine optimization (SEO) a lot, it’s because it has quickly become a key factor in creating a successful marketing campaign. Odds are that by now you’ve heard of SEO and have an idea of what it is, but there are still some questions on your mind. We want to provide you with a little bit more information about how you can put the search engines to work for your business, with a little help from Old City Web Services.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is NOT the same as Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Consider the difference between SEO and SEM as the same difference between having the newspaper write an article about your business versus paying for an advertisement in the same newspaper. Both methods will reach the same audience, but people will perceive them differently.

2. Search engines are changing constantly.

The algorithms that each of the three major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo!) use to determine search results are constantly being updated. Why? Because some websites “spam” the search engines by flooding them with massive amounts of content and keywords to give themselves top ranking even though they don’t provide any relevant information

3. Inbound links act as votes in your favor.

Websites that offer a link to your website from theirs act as “votes” for your business in the eyes of a search engine. But beware, not all “voters” were created equal.  So-called “link farms” that offer to add you to their list of links are seen as “spam” in the eyes of the search engines. Stay clear of those and look instead for legitimate businesses that already have excellent rankings and offer traffic that would be relevant to your website.

4. Extra domain names can help if you have extra content.

Your domain name carries a lot of weight with the search engines. However, having multiple domains that “point” to your website do not offer an added advantage. The search engines will only catalog the content of your website with its permanent domain. If you want to put extra domains to good use, create a single page (called a “splash” page) with unique content (slightly different from what is on your website) and provide a link to your main domain. This will put the extra pages into the search engine databases while also acting as a traffic funnel to your website.

5. Specific titles can make your pictures and videos count.

Search engine databases can only process text information. So in order to make sure that the pictures and videos on your website are picked up by the search engine crawlers, make sure that you title the picture or video files with a unique description (like “st augustine sunset”) instead of generic letters and numbers (like “DSC2939383”). Where possible, add captions as well to provide additional content.

Start increasing your search engine traffic right now.

Old City Web Services can offer search engine advice and assistance tailored to meet your business’ needs. Our staff includes a dedicated SEO Specialist who keeps up with all the latest search trends so that your business can stay on top of the competition. Call or e-mail us today to schedule a free consultation.

–   Old City Web Services

Your customers will be outside this summer, can your website go with them?

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As the weather continues to improve in St. Augustine, more and more people are going to be outside enjoying all that the city has to offer, which means they will need information on the go. If your website doesn’t make it easy for them to find your location, hours and other important details while surfing on a mobile device, you’re going to lose business.

We want to help you get that business with a simple mobile website. We offer two affordable options for converting your existing website to mobile. Both options will automatically detect whether or not a visitor is using a mobile device and send them to the appropriate site. There’s no need for additional domains or any additional content.

Send us an email or give us a call at 904-867-4112 so that your website can get outside and start recruiting business for you.

Do you really need a mobile site?

When it comes to the rise in mobile website traffic, you don’t have to take our word for it. Google Analytics can provide statistics on exactly how many visitors to your website are using mobile devices. For example, we can tell you that mobile traffic on our web portal OldCity.com has increased 37.79% in the last 30 days. Of the 87,696 visits OldCity.com has received since February 27th, exactly 9,145 of those visits came from mobile devices.

If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, call us and we can install it for you free of charge. You’ll be able to access the statistics and judge for yourself what kind of mobile traffic you receive. You can also use Google Analytics to track online advertising campaigns, measure your search engine rankings and find out more about the visitors to your website (i.e. geographical location, browser type, etc.).

Call or e-mail us and we can have Google Analytics added to your website in less than 24 hours. Let the statistics tell you where to invest money in your website.

–  Old City Web Services

Let your business bloom with eCommerce

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Expand your reach with online sales.

Whether you have a large retail store or just a handful of products to sell from home, our eCommerce system can give you the tools to sell your merchandise safely and securely online.

This comprehensive website is rich with features to make your life simpler including:

  • Optional box for displaying featured products.
  • Automated display of best selling items.
  • Searchable inventory by keyword, title or description.
  • Optional discount coupon codes and gift certificates.
  • Secure payment via an online payment gateway.
  • Real-time USPS, FedEx and UPS shipping quotes
  • Customizable tax calculation.
  • Password-protected administrative access.
  • Control the cart from anywhere in the world using your web browser.
  • Anti-Fraud module validates customer’s address during checkout.

Make instant updates to website content.

In addition to all of the above features, your eCommerce system also gives you the ability to make real-time changes to your website content and product inventory from any computer with Internet access. From the administrative side of your website you can also track your sales and monitor site traffic to see where you can improve on your customer conversion rates.

Rely on us for in house service and support.

The most important feature included in our eCommerce system is the technical support and assistance provided by our staff. Every eCommerce package at Old City Web Services includes one-on-one training in how to use the system, along with tutorial materials created by our experienced staff. We’re also on call to answer your questions any time between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.

See one of our eCommerce sites in action!

Visit one of these websites to see examples of eCommerce sites built by Old City Web Services:

Get started on your eCommerce site today by giving us a call 904-867-4112 or sending us an email (letusmarketyou@oldcity.com).

Let us send our traffic to you!

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Seasonal traffic is on the rise in St. Augustine.

We spent some time downtown this past weekend enjoying the St. Patrick’s parade and other festivities (visit our Facebook page to see the pictures) and we noticed something…St. Augustine is getting crowded!

We’ve also noticed a continued rise in our traffic on OldCity.com, indicating that more and more people are planning visits to St. Augustine or scoping out information on the go. We’re up to 88,909 visits over the last 30 days, which means we’re getting an average of almost 3,000 visitors to the site every day.

St. Augustine Bayfront
Visitors stroll along the St. Augustine Bayfront during a weekend in March 2011.

We want to send that traffic to you!

Now is the perfect time to put together a seasonal advertisement on OldCity.com. Choose from a three or six month contract to put your business in front of St. Augustine visitors through the spring and summer. We can design a button or banner ad for you or help you write an expanded listing that will grab people’s attention.

No other web portal in Northeast Florida offers the statistics AND the personal service that Old City does. We’re proud of our town and we feel that every member of our local business community is important.

To help you get started, we’ve put together some ideas for seasonal advertisements your business could put on OldCity.com:

  • Seasonal Events: Do you have a special event coming up at your business? Advertise it to the public with a banner ad on our Calendar page. This Calendar is the fourth most popular page on OldCity.com with 17,551 visits in the last 30 days. A recent advertiser for an upcoming festival in St. Augustine received over 500 clicks in 14 days leading up to their event!
  • St. Augustine After Hours: We’ve noticed a growing interest  from our visitors in what St. Augustine has to offer after dark including special tours, bars, nightclubs and restaurants. If your business has a lot to offer guests seeking nightlife entertainment, consider an expanded listing on our Nightlife page.
  • Cross promotional advertisements: If you’ve combined with other local businesses to create package deals for lodging, dining and attractions in town, talk to your colleagues about advertising that package on OldCity.com. You can place your advertisement on multiple pages to cover all the categories that your package covers and attract even more business than a singular ad, plus you can split the cost with your fellow businesses!
  • Facebook Advertisements: Instead of sending people to your website, consider creating an advertisement that sends them to your Facebook page where they can post comments and photos about your business. Encourage visitors to leave reviews and click the “Like” button so that your future updates on Facebook will be automatically added to their daily news feed.

Your advertisement could be live on OldCity.com in less than 24 hours!

Our professional graphic designers can create your button and banner ads for you, or our professional copy writers can script your expanded listing to attract visitors. Our in house team works quickly and can have your advertisement on the web less than 24 hours after you sign your contract so you can start receiving clicks immediately.

Call us and get started right now!

Spring forward with your website changes.

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Saturday, March 13th is the day to get your spring chores out of the way—turn your clocks forward for Daylight Savings, check the batteries in your smoke detector, and update your website!

Your customers want to know what’s new at your place of business and we can help you get the word out. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to determine what updates you can make to your website:

  • Will you change your hours for spring/summer tourism traffic?
  • Do you have a new spring line of products or services?
  • Are you offering discounts to spring break travelers?
  • Is there a calendar on your website without any current events listed?
  • Do you have upcoming events you would like to promote on your website?
  • Are there any weekly specials you offer such as buy one/get one promotions or discounts on certain days of the week?
  • For restaurants, do you have any seasonal dishes to add or remove from your menu?

Most simple text and photo changes take less than a half hour for our designers to complete, which means you could have an updated website for less than $50 and just a few minutes of your time.

Call us today and we’ll get started on making your changes!

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Facebook now offers business pages without a personal profile.

Great news from the land of social media! Facebook has finally updated their fan pages so that businesses can start their own fan page without having to create a personal Facebook account. Now you connect with your clients where they spend the majority of their time—right on Facebook! Give us a call to find out how we can set up a Facebook page for your business.

Give your website a mobile advantage.

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Mobile web browsing is changing the way the world views websites—including yours.

Everywhere we go now we see people on cell phones, iPads and iPods connecting to the outside world from park benches and restaurant booths. With more and more of your web traffic coming from visitors on mobile devices, now is the perfect time to capture people on the go with a mobile website.

To understand what makes a mobile website different from a standard website, we’ve put together a quick list of the biggest differences between the two:

Smaller Screen Size: Most standard websites are built to display well on a widescreen computer monitor, which means that they have to be dramatically reduced in size to fit on the screen of a mobile device. This can make the text on your website difficult to read and can cause other display issues that make your website hard to navigate.

No Flash Animation: If your website features a lot of moving parts such as slideshows and other Flash elements, most mobile devices will not properly display your website. Instead of your slideshow or other element, some devices will display plain text or a link, while others will display nothing at all. This is especially problematic if your navigation buttons were created with flash.

Simple Information Structure: Users on mobile devices are typically looking for specific information they need on the go such as menu, products, business hours, phone number and directions. Mobile sites therefore tend to have much less content than a standard website so that users can easily find the information they are looking for without having to scroll through multiple pages of text.

Old City Web Services offers mobile solutions.

We have the technology to create a quick and easy mobile version of your website. With the use of a content management system, we can install a plug-in to create a mobile website for your business. The plug-in will automatically detect mobile device users and send them to the mobile site while users on a traditional desktop or laptop will still see your standard website. You don’t have to do a thing, we can handle the entire transition for you, just give us a call or send us an e-mail to get started.

It’s no surprise – the key to marketing is to advertise!

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While many business owners feel that they have a choice in marketing OR advertising, the truth is that the two must work together in order to maximize the return on your investments. While print advertisements on billboards, phone books and newspapers have dominated the market in the past, the Internet is now the premium advertising solution for your business.

At the beginning of the month, we talked about finding your target market before you begin any marketing campaign. Now is a great time to use that research to determine where you should spend your advertising dollars. If your market is locals and visitors to St. Augustine, the best place to advertise your business is on OldCity.com.

Here are just a few of the benefits you can receive from an OldCity.com advertisement:

– Measure the return on your investment with monthly hit reports. You don’t have to take our word that your OldCity.com ad is bringing traffic to your site. Each month, we provide every advertising customer with statistics that show exactly how many people have clicked on your advertisement each day of the month.

– Change your advertisement to reflect seasonal specials and limited offers. Gone are the days of running the same boring print ad for an entire year. With online advertising you have the flexibility to make changes to your advertisements or choose to run them during a specific part of the year. Modify your OldCity.com ad once a quarter to advertise holiday deals, spring break specials, summer savings and fall discounts.

– Reap the rewards of OldCity.com’s top search engine rankings. Because users are more apt to click on organic search engine results instead of paid search engine advertisements, we’ve spent almost a decade establishing OldCity.com as one of the top organic results for some of the most popular St. Augustine terms on the web. Search Google for Saint Augustine, St. Augustine, FL; Saint Augustine, FL; St. Augustine Attractions; St. Augustine Dining or St. Augustine Wedding and see who comes up first out of the millions of results for each of those terms. Not only does that maximize the exposure for your advertisement, just having a link from a site with a high page rank like OldCity.com can increase your own page rank with Google and the other search engines.

– Experience personal customer service and assistance. Every advertiser on OldCity.com receives the same one-on-one attention provided to all Old City Web Services customer. Our experienced staff can recommend the best place on OldCity.com for your advertisement to maximize your online exposure. We can also assist you with an eye-catching advertisement design and professional text for your expanded listing.

Call or e-mail us to bring more traffic to your business with an advertisement on OldCity.com. We offer a variety of advertising options to fit your needs and budget including expanded listings, buttons and banners. Mention Ratepoint and we’ll give you a button free for 30 days so that you can see what the power of OldCity.com can do for your business.

Hire your own marketing workforce for $25 per month.

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Generate leads, referrals and new clients for your business.

We have a new solution to share with you that will create more business for you without a lot of time or effort. We have partnered with a company called Ratepoint who offers affordable packages designed to provide small businesses with the right tools to manage e-mail marketing, online surveys, social marketing and business reviews. Ratepoint’s tools are so easy to use, but so valuable to small businesses that it feels like hiring an entire marketing department for just $25 per month.

Some of the benefits your business will receive from Ratepoint include:

  • Customize professionally designed templates with a few clicks. Select from themes suited to different business industries, holidays and more to give your e-mails an eye-catching design your customers will appreciate. You can also import existing contacts and manage new contacts with Ratepoint. Separate your clients into groups to test different marketing strategies and new products, or use the groups to provide special discounts to repeat customers.
  • Don’t make guesses about what your customers want, ask them! Using the customizable e-mail survey feature on Ratepoint, you can collect valuable feedback from your customers. Ask them to review their interaction with your business or what services they would like to see in the future.  Your survey can be as short or as long as you like—you pick the questions and the answers, then you sit back and wait for the results!
  • Have questions? No problem! Just like the personal, one-on-one attention you receive at Old City Web Services, Ratepoint matches each customer with a friendly account representative. Not only do you have the name of someone to contact with questions about the program, you have a direct phone number and e-mail where you can reach him or her during business hours. No 800 numbers, no generic customer service e-mails, just one person who can help you get the most out of your Ratepoint experience.

We love working with Ratepoint and we know that you will, too! Get started today with a 30 day free trial. Once we get you signed up, we can connect you with your personal Ratepoint representative who can walk you through all the features the program has to offer. Because we have extensive experience using Ratepoint as well, you can also call us for coaching on how to get the most out of the program.

Call (904.829.2772) or e-mail us today to put Ratepoint to work for you!

– Old City Web Services

Market your business to success.

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In 2011, it’s not enough to simply have a website for your business. Companies of all sizes are competing for your customer base and if you’re not staying in the mix with all the latest marketing tools, your business will get left in the dust.

We’ve put together some essentials you need to know in order to rise above your competition and push your business to success. In addition to the general tips below, Old City Web Services can also give you a one-on-one evaluation with specifics on what you can do to improve your business through marketing.

Call us if you would like to schedule an evaluation of your business. Old City Web Services offers all the tools of a big city marketing firm with a small town, personal touch.

Marketing 101: What you need to know about marketing your business.

1. Identify your target market.

Who is the ideal customer for your product or service? Are they soccer moms or young bachelors? Business professionals or college students? Knowing who is most likely to purchase your product or service will tell you in turn where to spend your marketing dollars. For example, if your target market is under the age of 30, social media will be critical for your business plan. But if your target market is business professionals, your focus should be making your website easy to navigate from a mobile device such as an iPhone or Blackberry.

2. Use multiple marketing tools.

A successful marketing campaign uses one consistent message across multiple marketing tools to reach your customer base from different angles. Funnel customers to your door by driving traffic to your website from brochures/rack cards, e-mail campaigns, online advertising and social media. Every piece of the puzzle should carry your brand colors, logo and feel to build familiarity with your customers.

3. Analyze the results.

Use website statistics and other measurements to determine what works for your business and what doesn’t. We can show you how to use Google Analytics to find out who is visiting your website, when they visit and most importantly, where they find your website (i.e. search engines, online advertisements, etc.). We can also help you add special codes to your print advertisements to measure the response you receive from a specific ad.

Old City Web Services can assist you with all of the services listed above. Over the next four weeks, we will provide you with more information about each of our key marketing services and how you can put them to work for your business.

See our work
Call us: 904-867-4112
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We are Old City Web Services. We make it easy for small businesses to thrive online. Whether you need a professional website, help attracting more customers, or a fresh new look for your brand, we’ve got you covered. With over 20 years of experience, we specialize in simple, affordable solutions that work for businesses like yours. Let us handle the tech so you can focus on what you do best—running your business.

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