Adster Creative

Adster Creative's Downtown Edmonton Video Shoot and iPad Giveaway

Adster Creative — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:54:56 -0500

On Thursday May 24 (weather permitting) the Adster crew will be heading to Jasper Ave in beautiful downtown Edmonton to quiz, interview and chat with the general public on their views of advertising, web design and Google.

Our Education Video Series over the past few months has been detailing why 'we' think Online Advertising is important, however we'd like to hear from our customers, and what they think of this whole 'Internet Thing'. We'll be roaming the streets, handing our marketing schwag and chatting with the good people of Edmonton!
Not only that, but we'll be entering anyone who participates in the video interview or likes our Facebook Page into our iPad giveaway.

To qualify you must either 'like' our Facebook page, between May 24 & June 30th 2012 or, partake in our video interview!

Some of the questions we'll ask are:

Do you know what SEO stands for?
What do you think is the most effective form of Advertising?
Would a visually appealing website instill more confidence in you as a buyer?
How often do you use Google?

So if you're free on Thursday May 24 - join us downtown for some fun, sun and maybe, just maybe we'll treat you to a Fat Franks Hot Dog!

SEO Wars: Episode V - Google Penguin Update Strikes Back

Adster Creative — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:54:04 -0500

Uh-OHHHHH, one of the engineers over at Google didn't get pre-screening tickets to the Avengers and hit the 'Destroy Everything' button in the GooglePlex.

Ok, what the heck is going on?

Unless you're just about to reach level 80 in Call of Duty and haven't left your basement in a few weeks, I'm sure you've heard about Google's new kick off, kick butt update called 'Penguin'. Basically Google is on a search and destroy mission - seeking out websites that are up to no good. The scary thing is, it appears that Google doesn't really care if the results in their search engine took a turn for the worse (at least for the time being) - they just want to prove who's boss and make sure that everyone is playing by their rules.

Some areas that the Google Penguin update are monitoring, and ultimately penalizing websites for include the following:

Cloaking
Keyword Stuffing & Over Optimization
Associations with Link Farms
Junk and/or Duplicate Content
Heavy use of Anchor Text

I was affected by the Penguin update - Is there hope for me?

Fear not my friends! All is not lost as the big "G" is giving you a chance to redeem yourself. For starters, play nice, clean up your site and pray to the Google Gods. Chances are, they will re-evaluate your situation. Keep in mind that anyone who has been penalized by the update has a chance for their site to get re-indexed and ultimately obtain their old rankings back. Here's what Matt Cutts (head of Google Web Spam) had to say about this:

"If your site is affected by an algorithm, for the most part if you change your site whatever the characteristics are that are flagging or triggering or causing us to think that you might have keyword stuffing or whatever, if you change your site, then after we've re-crawled and re-indexed the page, and some period after that after when we've re-processed that in our algorithms, for the most part, your site should be able to pop back up or increase in its rankings.

Soooooo .... basically Matt - you're telling us there's a chance. Well, you know what they say, "50% of the time it works every time" so why not take a chance eh?

Anyway, to finish off. We all knew this day was coming. The era of crappy websites and shady SEO tactics are coming to a close. If you think that thin content and back links from herbal remedy websites will get you the results you want, I'm afraid your mistaken.

Grammar Gumbo Anyone? Why Content Truly is King!

Adster Creative — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:11:46 -0500

You’ve stepped out for a bite, and you’ve got your heart set on some yummy salad and pasta at the new bistro that just opened down the street. It’s a busy night, the cooks are new, and somehow the salad gets all mixed up in the pasta. There’s meat sauce all over the romaine, and croutons are floating around in the Bolognese. “So what awreddy?” your waiter says. “You ordered salad and pasta. Enn you gottit. Now pay da bill.” You cross this bistro off your list.

Nobody would do this, right? But in fact, in the wonderful world of business writing, it happens all the time. Business prose is too often uninteresting, unappetizing, full of spelling and grammatical errors, and all mixed up. In short, it’s a big stewy mess.

When it comes to information, there’s always a pattern. Ideas naturally fall into categories, like “What do you do? How do you do it? Who do you do it for? How does it work? Why buy from you? Why is it good for your clients?” It’s the job of the professional writer to develop the unique questions that are pertinent to your business, and, in the course of asking and answering questions like this, additional relevant and important material is often uncovered. Developing patterns for the information structure, and then delivering the information in an organized manner, helps the reader enormously to quickly grasp what the heck you’re talking about.

This process of discovering and organizing patterns of information becomes even more important when you’re writing for the web.

Best practices for web writing include the adage of “one concept per page”. Readers don’t read on the web, they skim, and it’s easier to grasp and digest (there’s that salad and pasta again) discrete, well-organized and bite-sized chunks of information than stuff that’s all mixed up. When readers get confused, they leave, and they might not come back.

In addition to overall patterns, there’s always a hierarchy of information, too. Some information is vital. Some is important but less so. Some is interesting but not important. And some stuff is just, well, disposable. It’s the job of the professional writer to sort it all out and organize it in a way that makes sense and explains your business in the best possible way.

Web design lends itself extremely well to information hierarchy. Vital information appears in the main body, less important stuff is relegated to sidebars, and interesting stuff might end up being accessed through a link. In the best of design, content and visual organization are inextricably connected—thinking about design means thinking about content, and vice versa. That’s why it is such an excellent idea to include the professional content developer (read, “Writer”) early in the project, because the structural design and the content can be developed in tandem.

The truth of the matter is, you can have a gorgeous web site, you can have a tricked-out logo, and you can have SEO that is leading all the right potential buyers to you. But when they get there, if your prose is poor, it’s going to reflect badly on your business. Discovering the pattern and sorting the stuff out into bundles, sifting through for the gems, discarding the less important bits, and making you shine—this is stuff that professional writers do all the time.

PPC Advertising and Google Adwords for Small Business

Adster Creative — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:48:47 -0500

Most business owners have heard about 'Google Adwords' in their online travels. But is PPC Advertising a good fit for your small business? If you need a fast, effective, targeted, and controllable way to put yourself in front of qualified prospects, then Pay-per-click may be exactly what you're looking for. In this video, Dave introduces PPC and the Google Adwords platform

Video Transcription -

Hi there, Dave Forster with Adster Creative. In our last video we were talking about Search Engine Optimization and how the end goal with SEO was to place your website in the search engines in front of prospects and convert them into customers.

In today's video we are going to talk about pay per click advertising. In pay per click advertising the goal is much the same as it is with SEO, we want to put your website in front of new prospects and convert them into customers, however the way we do that with PPC is a little bit different.

Now get ready for it - with pay per click advertising you only PAY if somebody CLICKS your ad. This is a pretty exciting concept because with pay per click advertising you bypass all of these organic results down here and you show up on the first page right up here at the top or maybe even along the side. The concept of pay per click advertising is very exciting and in my personal experience there really is no other advertising platform like Google AdWords where you can get this immediate result and powerful return on investment. Pay Per Click is literally the greatest thing to happen to online marketing that I've ever been witness to.

I'm not saying that because Google is taking us out and buying us drinks, or providing us with endless schwag and cool goodies. I'm not saying that because Google gives us 100 dollar free coupons to give to potential new customers. Ultimately - it's not like Google is standing here with a gun pointed at my head telling you that AdWords is really the only choice when it comes to paid advertising online ...

So, when we talk about Google AdWords - in all honesty I am a big of the AdWords platform. The reason why I am such a fan, especially when it comes to small and local business is 4 fold.

With Pay Per Click advertising the results are immediate. As soon as we build a campaign your Ads start running right away at the top of Google and only for particular keywords of your choosing and only to the audience you really want to be marketing to.

Number 2 which of course is targeting. Your ads are targeted to your potential customers and ONLY to your potential customers.

Number 3 - AdWords and Pay Per Click Advertising is controllable. You set how much you want to pay per click and you decide how much you want to spend per day, or per week or per month.

Finally - Google AdWords and pay per click advertising is measurable. What we mean here, is that we can get into detailed analysis on these paid clicks that are coming into your website and we can gauge how effective the clicks are and if these clicks are converting into customers and which clicks we don't maybe want to bid on.

When we talk about measurable website traffic we are of course talking about Analytics and ROI tracking and that of course is going to lead into our next video on an introduction to Website Analytics and ROI Tracking - we'll see you back here soon.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics for Local and Small Business

Adster Creative — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:32:36 -0500

SEO for Local is big business - and is arguably the single most important element to lasting success online. But what is it? Why do you need it? And why on earth are there Horizontal Blinds in this video!? Find out here in Episode 5 of Adster's Educational Video Series where Dave runs you through 'Real World' SEO and the 3 essentials to achieving effective results for your Small Business:

Video Transcription -

Hi there – Dave Forster with Adster Creative. If you’ve been following our video services so far, you’ve heard an expression come up over and over again. And, that is Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is one of my favorite things to do at Adster, and I think the reason is that SEO is really connected to all the different elements of online marketing. It has to do with design, programming and is a really interconnected mechanism that’s really a balance of art and science.

Today we’re going to talk about search engine optimization for local business. Before we get into the three key points for SEO, we’ll do a technical definition of what search engine optimization is.

SEO basically is optimizing website content and structure to make your website easier for search engines to determine who you are and what you do, and rank you on their search engine.

Real world example: let’s say that I’m in Edmonton and I am looking for some new window coverings for my house. I go and I type in Edmonton window coverings and – Hey! Look it who it is! It’s Andrews Window Company right at the top of Google. So, I contact Andrews Window Company to have them come to my house and install some beautiful blinds. I pay them some money and he goes on his merry way and that is how search engine optimization works in the real world. Wow. Compelling.

Okay, obviously there’s a lot more going on with SEO than snapping fingers and having them appear magically. Let’s talk about the three things that are actually involved in Local SEO.

Number One is Fundamental Signals. What we’re talking about here is communicating to Google clearly the name of your business, your address, your phone number, and the types of products or services that you want to offer. It’s amazing how many websites make it difficult for Google to figure out what it is your website is about. Through SEO we make it easy for the search engine to find out who you are and what you do.

Number Two is User Experience. Now, user experience is something that has been increasing in importance in SEO. When we talk about user experience, let’s just go ahead and say that you’ve been able to get your website ranked maybe number two or even number one for Google. Now, when somebody looks at the listing of search results, what are they seeing there? The information that displays in the search results -- are people actually going to click on that? Are you displaying a clear and concise message that encourages visitors to want to click on that search result? Let’s say that they’ve actually clicked on it and now they are inside of your website. What are they doing inside there? Did they take one look at your site and bounce right back to the search results? Are they viewing multiple pages of content? Are they staying on your site and really engaging in your message? User experience is one of the growing fundamentally important things with local SEO.

Number Three is Popularity and Social Reach. We’ve met with all kinds of clients who believe that their product or service is better than all of their competitors, and I’m certainly not going to dispute them on that, but popularity in the real world and online are a little different. They’re growing more connected all the time. Popularity and Social Reach refer to things like, are people discussing your business online? Are they happy with your services and are they posting reviews on sites like Yelp, Google Places, or even Facebook or Twitter? How engaged are you with your customers online? And, in addition to that, your popularity in the offline world. But, online are other important websites linking to your website? Are they talking about you? Are you where you need to be in these important websites? So, popularity and Social reach is very, very important as well.

This search engine optimization thing sounds great; unfortunately, SEO is a time intensive mechanism that requires careful planning and strategy for it to pay off. So, you say, Dave, that’s well and good, but I want to be on top of Google today. I want to be on Google by the end of this video. Can it be done?

Actually, it can. And that’s going to lead into our next video on Pay Per Click Advertising and Google Adwords. We’ll see you back here soon.

Honey, I shrunk the Website Traffic...with 25 cent articles!

Adster Creative — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:36:50 -0500

Business is burgeoning, and you’ve decided it’s time to step up your marketing game. You’re now in hot pursuit of the ultimate PWS. Translation? The Powerhouse Web Site. Your criteria are simple: it’s gotta be gorgeous, it’s gotta blow your competition out of the water, and it’s gotta be easy for your clients and prospective customers to find you. When somebody Googles "Joe's Widget Shop", there you are, in a nanosecond, right at the top of the first page.

But, just how to get the job done? You’ve wisely said Thanks-But-No-Really to your friend’s 8 year-old kid who builds web sites in between Sesame Street reruns, and you’ve rejected those one-size-fits-all template solutions. You’re a smart cookie, you’ve done your research, and you’ve made the single most inspired decision in your quest for the PWS. You’ve selected us - Adster Creative - as your vendor.

Why Adster? Because you know we can do ALL that stuff: drop-dead dynamite design, search engine optimization (SEO), social network integration, Google Ad placement, and a lot more. We’ll build you a web site that does the job, brilliantly.

Now, get ready for another piece of advice from Adster.

Here it is: Do yourself a huge favour, and include a professional writer in your budget. Seriously.

Effective web sites are as much about excellent content as they are about the design and technical aspects. After all, your web site’s entire raison d’être is to disseminate information about your business, right? Writing web copy that describes, compels and sells may sound like an easy thing to do, but there’s that old line, which is famous for a reason: It’s Not As Easy As It Looks. We recommend a pro’.

Professional writers are information architects. They see the forest AND the trees. They’re curious creatures who love to find out all about your business and what makes it tick, and—believe us when we tell you—they’ll ask you questions you never even thought to ask. With fresh perspective, a trained approach, and an eye on both you and your audience, they will discover and showcase the elements of your business that really set you apart.

A good writer amplifies the design process too, by suggesting overall structure and hierarchies of information. As an added bonus, a professional writer can spot a dangling modifier, and actually knows how to spell, where to put the commas, and when a sentence is a fragment (which is sometimes okay), all of which is very good for your credibility.

You’ve got to ask yourself: do you want your PWS to include writing that is boring, poorly organized, and unfocused?

We think not.

In your pursuit of the Powerhouse Web Site, you need a professional writer as much as you need talented designers and technical wizards. Let’s have a conversation about what all those words in your web site are going to say and how they’re going to get there. We know some darn good writers, and they’re part of our team for a reason.

My 'friend' can build me a website. Why should we hire you guys?

Adster Creative — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:53:32 -0500

As any design agency who's been around for a while can tell you, it's the objection heard 'round the world - "Why should I hire you guys my (insert - friend, uncle, dad, brother, sister, cousin, dog, foreign outsourced agency) can build me a website for only xxx dollars?"

First off let me say hey, I like your friend (even though I've never met him/her nor do I know if this friend you speak of actually exists) but let's be realistic - why give your hard earned money to your 'friend' when you can help pay for Adster's new 'Luxury Wing' complete with water fountain, pinball machines, massage chairs, a giant marble sculpture of myself and maybe, MAYBE even a washroom.

All jokes aside, I'm confident that your designer friend, developer dude or web ninja has the skills and internet pedigree to build you the website you want. However what your friend MAY be lacking is the experience to build the website you NEED.

Well ... technically speaking ....

Does your friend know anything about having a crawlable sitemap, proper meta keywords, descriptions and titles? Do they know how to build a robots.txt file, KML sitemap or rich snippet code for your businesses phone number, address and official business name? How about adding content? Did your 'Uncle' set you up with a content management system? If so what kind? Do you know what it does and how it's intended to be used?

If you've been following our Education Video Series (if you haven't been - shame on you) you will have seen Dave (airbrushed to the nines) discussing that having a website is only half the battle and that building the 'right' website, or at least the 'right' website in Google's eyes, is what's most important.

The ethics of, uh... err... business?

To all friends, uncles, grandfathers and friends of friends - we apologize. It isn't our mission nor do we intend to take away from the 'family business'. We just want to work on a level playing field and make sure we're delivering on all fronts - even if that means stepping on a few toes.

As I said before it's time to shake things up so if you wanna get things done the RIGHT way - give us a call (I'm just playing Battlefield 3 anyways)

Time to shake things up - Adster Site Builder 2012

Adster Creative — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:57:35 -0500

Over the past few years we've developed some pretty sweet cutting edge technology, made some great friends and have met with some of the industries best and brightest. In the past 2 years some of my key takeaways have been influenced by our competitors, our colleagues and most importantly: our clients.

While we would love to sell every one of our customers a 10 thousand dollar custom designed website with all the latest bells and whistles; HTML 5, CSS3 and a CMS system built from the ground up tailor made to their every want and need; the reality is - many local businesses don't have the budget for it.

Growing Pains ...

With an extensive background in sales - my gut instinct was to drop our prices to suit their budget, however I/we soon realized this wasn't fair to our company or even our clients. After thinking long and hard and weighing the pro's and con's we came up with the penultimate solution.

Instead of turning these 'potential' clients away or turning into one of those 'Fly-by-night Template Web Design companies' we decided to really listen to our customers. The ultimate goal here at Adster is to create a web 'presence' for our clients and bring them new business and prospects with their newly created internet reach.

Adster Site Builder ... 2012 ... hopefully :P

The question still remains: How are we going to build the Star Ship on a poor Storm Trooper salary ? Well heck, DEVELOP a product that empowers us to build our clients kick-butt websites that fit their budget.

Our Site Builder is still Pre-Alpha at the moment but this bad boy is going to be a one of a kind, top-tier product putting those other so called 'website builders' to shame. Stay tuned for more info!

Managing Your Website Content with a CMS

Adster Creative — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:53:59 -0500

There are dozen's of reasons why you as a small Business Owner may want to update or add information on your website. In this video, Dave with Adster shows how the Right Content Management System (CMS) can make it easy, and some of the important features a CMS for small local businesses *must* have.

Video Transcription

Hi there, Dave Forster with Adster Creative - and today we're going to talk about giving you as a business owner the POWER to edit your own website content.

In our last video we established that part of having the right website meant giving you - the business owner control over your website content. That is accomplished via software that is referred to in the 'nerd community' as a content management system. A content management system or CMS is really just a fancy way of saying software that allows a non technical user the ability to update or change information online.

If you've ever used Facebook or ever been inside of an email account you've actually used a form of a Content Management System. As far as a CMS goes for small business, a content management system is going to let you do a variety of very important things.

A website CMS is going to allow you to do things like: Add or edit pictures. It's going to let you change add or modify your business hours. It's going to allow you to add or edit staff profiles. You can even blog, add articles, create content - create information. Finally you can add or edit links - link to other websites and encourage other websites to link back to you.

In order for you to manage your website content efficiently you're going to want a CMS that's purpose built for local business. Not mentioning any names *cough* FLEX CMS - there are other certain Content Management Systems that are better at doing this than others. The really good ones actually also are going to have a very heavy SEO (Search Engine Optimization) bias.

Speaking of SEO - that's going to lead us into our next video - search engine optimization for local business. We'll see you back here soon.

Building the 'Right' Website for your Small Business

Adster Creative — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:09:45 -0500

With any luck, we (and more importantly, your customers) have been able to convince you that having a website is pretty much 'essential' these days. However, make no mistake - not all websites are created equal. But how much should you spend? Should you build it yourself? In this video, Dave covers some critical 'must have's' when building the 'right' website for your Small Business.

Video Transcription

Hi there, Dave Forster with Adster Creative. In our last video we established that having a website is pretty much essential for business's these days, however in this video - we're going to talk about 'Building the 'right' website'.

Over the years the team at Adster has been involved in the creation of 100's of different websites and in that time we've come to establish a pretty clear idea in what's involved in building the right website.

Number 1 on our list is your Website's Content. What your website says about your business is crucial. Your website content needs to have a clear purpose and concise call to action. What do you want your site visitors to do? Do you want them to call you? Do you want them to fill out some information about themselves? Do you want them to get know a little more about what you do? Remember; content is king right from the mouth of Google

Number 2 - Visual Appeal . These days having a professionally designed and professional looking website that instills confidence and trust is absolutely essential You want your visitors to feel comfortable on your website.

Number 3 - Fundamental SEO. SEO could stem into a whole other series of videos - and it will - but for building the right website, fundamental SEO means communicating to search engines very clearly a couple of very important things, namely the name of your business, your companies phone number, your geographical location and other fundamentals like the exact nature of the types of products and services you offer. Fundamental SEO literally separates the men from the boys in the world of Google

Number 4 - Speed and Usability. This is another factor that is increasing in importance with having the right website. Having a website that loads quickly and is easy to use and understand for your visitors is absolutely crucial.

Number 5 - Control of your Content. As a business owner you want to be able to access certain areas of your website and update its content. You want to be able to add specials or promotions or you may want to update staff profiles. Having control over your website content is very-very important.

Now - how you control that content is also pretty important and of course that's going to lead into our next video on Website Content Management Systems.

We'll see you back here soon.