By request, I have included the slideshow I ran behind me during the presentation.  Good luck on your web projects and I hope we were able to give you some food for thought.

Hannush Presentation (PDF)

I have just the trick…and it wasn’t easy to discover.  I went through about 20 Google links before I finally found accurate information on how to pull this off.  Apparently, over the last year the requirements for a custom business URL (web address) for Facebook has dropped from 1000 fans to 100 fans to now 25 fans (as of April).

In a nutshell, here is what you need to do to claim your URL (facebook.com/yourcompanyname):

Make sure you are logged into your Facebook account.  Then go to http://www.facebook.com/username (yes, this exact address…not one related to your Facebook account…this is a general Facebook page for updating custom URL’s).

Don’t use the top box in yellow (see below)…this is where you set your personal profile URL.  Right below that it says “Set a Username for your Pages”…if you have multiple popular pages, you can set multiple URL’s.

Its that easy…at least when you know where to look.  Thanks to Facebook for making this so cryptic as usual!

Visit our Facebook business profile at http://www.facebook.com/hannushweb

But notice the screenshot of Google below. By announcing the new site launch in our blog, within two hours after the announcement, we were able to get the announcement indexed by Google under a search for “Gianni Panini, Biltmore.”

Of course, our ultimate goal is to get the Gianni Panini site winning under searches for Biltmore and Asheville. But it is unrealistic to expect instant Google results, without a lot of money and work.  Results in 2 hours is even more unrealistic…but now the company can get some recognition and there is a better chance someone can stumble into the site.

So keep on coming up with things to talk about and get those keywords out there.  Your blog can be an extra lifeline to product launches, events, and other timely updates.

Enjoy the new website and discover how Gianni can deliver fresh panini daily to your business.  Or enjoy a Cappuccino at their Biltmore Village location.  Good luck to our friends at Gianni’s on their new business. We are sure it will be the talk of the town.

Gianni Panini Profile and Website Link

Reid and Reid Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics in Hendersonville, NC was just one such client.  They had just launched their website in mid-June and they weren’t showing up at all in searches.

The first thing we have to do is educate the customer on how search engines like Google penalize new websites to protect the quality of their search results.  The expectation is, for the first six months to a year, your website will only have its home page (and maybe a couple extra pages) spidered by the search engines.  This greatly lowers your chance of being stumbled upon. In addition, because you don’t have many, if any relative links coming to your site from reputable sources, Google still doesn’t know if you are a real website or a spamming website.

Then once the expectation has been set, we then look at the variety of solutions that will get the customer’s site in front of the public the fastest (without using blackhat techniques) via the search engines.

With Reid and Reid it took a little review of the code of the website, looking at who would be searching for them and what they would be searching for, and then building their strength in both organic and local searches.

We are in the early days, but we already have the site moving quickly up the ladder.  For searches in Hendersonville, NC they come up in the Local Business Center at #1 or #2 and in many organic searches Reid and Reid can be found on page two of searches, where they weren’t found at all before we began our campaign.  There are ways to gain quicker results, but in this case, the client wanted to stay within budget.  They can expect results in 2-3 months rather than 6-12 months through this lower cost solution.

If you have a new website or are planning a new site, talk to us about how we can help you get listed in the search engines faster and Search Engine Marketing plans that could have you beating your competition in a fraction of the time.

While we are more than happy to help customers when needed, it is encouraging to know that our software was developed with such ease of use that the client needed little support in getting their site ready for launch (thus saving them money on the overall contract by not being dependent on us to upload their content).

Check out our portfolio listing on Charleston Stage. It links to the new site.  We think you’ll really like it. And if you own a theatre, ask us for a quote on moving our site to TheatreWizard.

We’ve all heard Facebook’s popularity, but many businesses are avoiding Twitter because they don’t know if its viable.  Here is a video that will give you a nice overview of Twitter’s success over the last 3 years.

From Edison Research, here are some points you’ll find out in this educational study on Twitter.

Twitter Usage in America 2010 from Tom Webster on Vimeo.

The rebranded Hannush Web is now online.

The first thing you’ll notice is our new logo.  A variation on the previous logo, this one establishes a bolder presence.  This is to coincide with our evolution into a bolder arena of web programming and development.

The next thing you’ll notice is a more simplistic design.  Gone are the long drawn out explanations of our services. We believe the best way to understand if our services are right for our potential customers is for them to talk with us about their projects and to see and experience our portfolio of work.

In addition, the black color of our site helps our designs pop more on the pages of our portfolio.  It is that work, after all, that is the important part of a web design company’s web site.

Over the last eight years we have moved from developing simply designed, easy-to-navigate websites to greatly enhanced customized projects.  And while we continue to grow our talents and focus in the world of programming, search engine marketing, and social media, we still hold on to our tradition of creating attractive, simple to use websites.

We look forward to introducing our new look over the next few months and engaging new customers with our same level of professional, timely customer service and communication.  We hope you enjoy the new website and we would love to have your feedback.

Sincerely,
Drew Hannush and the Hannush team.

Time to retool your website for Bing results?  Probably not yet, but as long as the advertising budget of Microsoft stays attuned, it continues to be something to watch.

eWeek article