Here is a list of some of our most recent posts and findings in the world of Internet marketing.

1. On-site SEO is never an easy task unless you have a play by play book to follow.
2. Google Page Rank keeps hitting sites for paid links. Make sure your site doesn’t get smacked by practicing organic SEO.
3. It’s nice to be noticed but being stolen from never sits well with us.
4. Get the word out to your clients with targeted, personalized email marketing.

Small business owners can always use a helping hand. Keep checking back for more tips and resources that can generate more traffic and sales to your websites.

Another great milestone for Wildfire Productions! We recently completed a successful marketing campaign including a website and e-blast for the Coconut Point Hyatt in South Florida. The results were great and it proved to be a much more successful way to market your business than conventional print material. We will be working on this quarterly for the remainder of 07′.

We just wrapped up our most recent project with the launch of a second site for Allied Recycling in Fort Myers, Florida. Allied choose Wildfire to develop their new website after the success of our previous collaboration with them.

The Allied Site Services website features information on construction and demolition (C&D) containers, portable toilets, and other new products and services that complement the recycling solutions Allied is known for. With comprehensive programs designed to meet customer needs in an efficient and cost effective manner, Allied has built a reputation for superior service and value.

The decisions of a small business owner are endless. Small business owners have to wear every hat for the company and this can take away a lot of time that would be better devoted to company needs. I’ve written a series of posts that can help a lot of small business owners when it comes to their online presence.

Website Design Solutions for your Small Business

3 Ways to Find the Perfect Freelance Designer

Niche Marketing 101

These articles should give every business owner a decent understanding of what they can do to achieve a more substantial online identity.

It seems like there is a lot of negative feedback when it comes to website development and SEO companies. Every other client we speak to has something bad to say about the last company. We get very excited when we get one of these clients because it gives us the chance to blow them away. We know we are going to do a great job and we know the client is going to be excited about their new website. Here is a prime example:

You know the story of the Goldilocks? One bowl of porridge was too hot, one was too cold, and then one was just right. This analogy mirrors the experiences I had with website building companies until I was met the team from Wildfire productions. In this industry you often deal with way overpriced work, and on the other hand, lack of experienced work which will drag a project on forever. I dealt with both and was finally referred to Wildfire productions who had fair, competitive pricing and more importantly, excellent work that was carried out in a timely manner. Here is my webpage to prove it: Popoyo Rental.

- Chuck Jamison

Allied Recycling Inc. in Fort Myers Florida has decided to branch out and offer new services such as roll-off containers of various sizes as well as portable restrooms. Allied Recycling launched its first site just a few months ago and has already received a ton of traffic as well as ranking on page one of Google for a number of their keywords thanks to the website development of Wildfire.

But in all seriousness, Allied really does a great job with all of their Recycling Facilities in Southwest Florida and we are proud to have them as a client.

Wildfire Productions brings its SEO and design services to the people of Greenville, SC. Founding partner, Drew Stauffer has relocated to South Carolina is order to focus Wildfire’s attention on providing search engine optimization, high-end design, and development services to companies that normally do not have access to California design firms.

Quality website design and websites that adhere to W3C standards should not be location specific. All too often if you review the custom design of your local design firm, you will notice it lacks the “wow factor.” Wildfire Productions brings Southern California talent back to the grass roots where it all started from.

Wildfire recently took on a client that had a vacation rental house in Nicaragua. The client’s existing site was marketed towards surfers who were looking for those exotic breaks in far away lands. As you can tell from the screen shot below, surfers were the only target market they had thought of.

The old site did an ok job of promoting the property. It had one or two photos of the house, a few photos of the beach and surrounding breaks, brief contact info, and a handful of dead and broken links. However, the site was hampered by the limited marketing vision and with the development that I saw, if you didn’t know popoyorental.com, you weren’t going to find the site on any search engine. Even searching for the domain name wasn’t going to get you to the site. Overall, people weren’t contacting him to rent out the house so in that sense, the website was a failure. Chuck came to Wildfire because he was in the middle of doing a lot of renovations to the house and he really wanted to get it rented out so he could pay for his investment.

We had a few meetings with Chuck and really tackled his primary concerns. Because the original site was only targeting surfers, he was missing out on tons of traffic. In the process of the re-design we choose to expand the marketing focus to include surfers, families, tourists, and destination travelers.

DESIGN
The facelift from the old site to the new site was enough to make a world of difference before we even wrote any content. We organized the pertinent information in an easily digestible fashion so users could quickly navigate to what they needed to know about the house. We placed the navigation in a location that demanded attention as opposed to the old site where it was almost blending into the waves at the bottom of the page. Additionally, the new design made the amazing house and beautiful, natural surroundings a prominent feature to highlight the unique destination.

CONTENT
The old site has about 150 words site wide which is never going to get any attention from a search engine. After picking Chuck’s brain on everything we could think of, we developed search engine optimized content that would bring in traffic from all of our target markets. SEO, or search engine optimization, is one of the best elements to add to any site to put it in front of your viewers. People can’t rent out the house if they can’t find it.

Before the content just stated that there was a house in Nicaragua on the beach for rent, when in reality there was so much more to it. You can rent out the entire house, just the upstairs, or just the downstairs. We added numerous pictures of the building and surrounding area as well so users could really get an idea of what this house had to offer.

Popoyorental.com is now one the first page of Google, Yahoo, and MSN for many of their top keywords, and thanks to the informative, marketing-style copy, Chuck gets regular emails about renting the house.

DEVELOPMENT
By simply re-building the website with web standard code and giving it a strong foundation for the SEO content, we gave the site an increased chance to become indexed on all the major search engines. Proper development is more important than people think. You can build two sites that look exactly the same and one can greatly out perform the other simply because of superior development (code) techniques. The build of a website is the solid foundation you place your site on. You wouldn’t remodel a house on a cracked foundation, why put your business on one?

MARKETING
Chuck didn’t really hire us to market and promote his website, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to give him a great head start. After all, a successful website for him is a successful website for us. Considering that his old site wasn’t found on any search engine meant there were quite a few easy steps we could take that would greatly increase the exposure of his site to his audience.

The end result of Chuck’s new website was an extreme success. With the updated look and feel, content, development and marketing of his site, he gets at least an email every other day requesting rentals of the house, some requests are even a year and a half in advance.

Design and development are important steps in any advertising campaign. It is very easy to spot which projects were done by a professional and which ones weren’t. Your image portrays your company. Cheap image = cheap product. Many times your website is your first impression when users are reviewing your products or services. It’s best to put that first impression in the hands of people who know instead of trying to save a few bucks. It will be much less time consuming and much more cost effective to have it done right the first time rather than paying a reduced amount the first time around and then having to pay again to get it done right.

Brian Bielmann, one of Wildfire’s most prestigious clients, was recently featured in The Honolulu Advertiser. “Picture-perfect Profession” is an in-depth interview with Brian about a career path he loves.

“Sometimes I feel kinda guilty because I feel like all I’m doing for the planet is making pretty pictures[…]but in reality, I just love making pretty pictures. I can’t help it.”

Brian is Hawaii’s sole photographer to be featured in the Red Bull Illume Image Quest 2006, which is going on now in Aspen, Colorado. Three of his photos are being displayed in the international action and adventure sports photography competition, where first prize brings an Image of the Year Title and a $10,000 grand prize.

Brian’s photos are also featured at some of his various websites, including Brian Bielmann Wedding Photography and Your Surf Shot.

If you spend any amount of time researching ways to improve your rankings on search engines by now you have learned or at least heard of the benefits of submitting articles to directories. Submitting articles can be a very profitable way to gain one way inbound links. It might be somewhat tedious to submit your articles to multiple directories but the time I spend writing the article easily out weighs the time it takes to submit it each to each directory. I recently posted a list of many of the article directories that I use. Here are just a few:

• www.articlecity.com
• www.goarticles.com
• ezinearticles.com

Sometimes these directories really give you some nice props. I was recently searching around on Ask and I came across one of my articles. The name was slightly changed so I decided to check it out. Much to my surprise Webpronews went above and beyond. They had picked up one of my articles on usability that was circulating and they actually took the time to go to an interior page on my website, take a screen shot of a banner that included a picture of myself and added it to my article. Now you can read my article on “3 Steps to Usability” and make fun of my face at the same time. It’s a win win!