Have you noticed? The advent of Facebook and other social networking sites has created a whole new brand of etiquette dilemmas. I was out with the WS team the other night, and it turned out we’d all experienced these new social situations (most of them a bit junior high in nature).

• Someone I know befriended a good girlfriend of mine. I’m on her profile picture, so he knows I’m on Facebook, but he didn’t “friend” me. Do I assume he doesn’t want to be friends? Do I “friend” him?
• Tagging photos is a popular Facebook feature. What if someone tags everyone in the photo except you? Being tagged in photos “boosts” your profile, so could someone be sabotaging you by leaving you out?
• More seriously, someone I know was inadvertently “outted” on his Facebook wall. With family not in on his secret, this was extremely traumatic!
• What about someone you met once at a party (whom you never expect to see again) “friending” you? Shouldn’t there be a statute of limitation on Facebook Friendship? Even creepier is someone you’ve never met who “friends” you.
• Some applications have a mind of their own. After simply opening an application, a WS team member realized that notifications had been sent to many of her contacts saying she had selected them as her most attractive friends. Friends that received this included a co-worker, former boss and a priest, but not her husband!
• My favorite kind of faux pas has to do with a Facebook application called Pokey, in which you have to feed your virtual dog to keep it healthy. A team member was asked to feed someone’s virtual dog while they were out of town. Isn’t that crossing some kind of line?

Have you witnessed a Facebook faux pas that we haven’t mentioned? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

The idea of developing a website is often overwhelming for our clients. The good news is that we’ve ironed out a process that works really well for both us and for our clients.

It all comes down to completing one part of the project before starting the next. It sounds simple, but here’s what it looks like in action.

1. The first step to making it a pain-free process is in the proposal. We do our homework on competitors to gauge how high the bar is and to confirm we’re on the right track with our recommendations. Being specific with examples and ideas in the proposal helps us avoid any he said/she said later.
2. Once the proposal is approved, we build a timeline. I hear so many horror stories from clients about their web development firms overpromising and under-delivering. I think it all stems from not doing a correct specification and from not having a proper timeline.
3. Next, we have a kickoff meeting, usually by phone since we work with clients all over the world. The whole Wright Strategies gang attends to hear your hopes and dreams for your website “straight from the horse’s mouth.”
4. Then we get down to business. We write a content document that will include every word on your website and design and finalize a homepage.
5. Once we have content and a basic design, the rest is generally smooth sailing. We design another key page (or pages) from your website so you can get a feel for how your website will look.
6. Finally, we have a little break while the programming team gets busy making it all tick. We do internal testing, release it to you for testing and then launch!

It is a lot of steps, but they are almost the same for every project. And after doing this for 13 years, we’ve found that this is the most efficient way to build you a fabulous website.

Today we're finishing our series on keys to a higher Google ranking with the following three tips: 

Send Press Releases
If you think about it, releasing a press release online is genius. It is exactly what you want to say, on someone else’s site, linking back to you! The secret to press releases working for you is to do them frequently and make sure they include your target keywords. Send them out over Internet PR wires, which are cheaper than PR newswire for less important releases. If your management sees PR as primarily offline (print), retrain them! People under thirty aren’t reading your print article.

Share with Blogs
The popularity of blogging has given rise to a whole new form of PR. Go find people who are blogging about relevant topics, and include them on your releases. Because bloggers tend to be informal, sometimes just giving them a “sneak peek” a day or two ahead of your consumer email is spot on. Again, frequency, relevancy and relationship building are key.

Make a Video
There is a new-ish video camera called The Flip (www.theflip.com) that some are calling the iPod for video. It’s simple to use, and I think it will help continue the revolution of video on the web. More and more, Google will integrate video into its results. So you’ll want to rank high on videos too. Just make sure they are properly tagged with keywords, for optimal ranking. Consider putting up a tagged “trailer” on YouTube, which links to the video on your site.

Continuing with yesterday's topic, here are two more simple ways that you can increase your natural Google ranking. 

Develop Natural Content
Google rankings are also based in part on the amount of relevant content found on a website. Keyword rich, relevant and unique content will help your website gradually gain higher rankings on Google. Some ways to build natural content include forums, blogs, customer testimonials, case studies, news and articles (about your company or industry).

Evaluate Your Title Tags
The biggest “on page” factor to getting a good Google ranking is with your title tag. Put your keyword first in the title, not your company name. If your company name is in your URL, you’ll most likely rank first for that anyway. So make your title say “KEYWORD, brought to you by COMPANY,” which gives you a 20-30% keyword density that is optimal for titles. And vary them up between pages.

Click here to read the final part of this post. 

Looking for ways to rank higher among search engine results? Let’s be honest. We’re talking about Google, which now accounts for 68% of all searches – even higher in most places overseas. There are many facets to the Google algorithm. For the rest of the week we are sharing some simple ideas you can implement to increase your natural Google ranking.

Research Keywords That Get Leads
One of my least favorite calls is from a client saying they are number one on a totally obscure keyword! (And they often paid a shyster a lot of money to get it.) Then through research we find that the searches for that term are dismal.

Make sure you’re optimizing for the right terms. (WordTracker is a great tool.) If you’re doing analytics or PPC, make sure you’re optimizing for the words that not only get searches, but that actually get leads! It’s almost worth a PPC campaign testing various elements to get this info.

Build Links
Approximately 80% of what Google uses to determine how they rank you is “off page,” meaning factors that aren’t even related to the content on your website! The more quality websites that link back to your website the better. Getting links to your website is a great way to boost your Google ranking.

Research your competitors, finding out who links to their websites, and try to get links to your website from those sources. But make sure the sites linking to yours are high quality, relevant and use your keywords in their links if possible. If you buy traditional media, insist that they throw in an online link as a part of the deal. This costs them little and is a huge boon to your rankings.

The biggest thing you can do is have a good story that makes people want to link to you. Then tell people about it! What’s in a good story? Be funny! Newsy! A great resource! Controversial! Just get it out there!

Click here to read the second part of this post.