TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR SEO DESTINY...WITH LOCAL SEVENS 

Local Sevens is the SEO sister to Webtreepro. It's a key component to making your online presence known and your attractively designed website visible! A business that does not show up in search results may as well exist in the furthest reaches of the desert, miles from civilization and certainly absent from the minds of prospective customers. 

You may have spent some time in the Webtreepro SEO center, targeting the optimization capabilities built in your site layout. This robust set of modifiers makes the most of your on-page presence. For a fully comprehensive off-page strategy, Local Sevens takes the reins.

Sit back, relax and let us drive your website to the top of search engine results. Ensure local search success where no one has to trudge through miles of virtual sand to make your acquaintance. 

www.localsevens.com

CASTING OUT TO SEO

Your website is finally finished! You think, "This will do the trick! It’s time to sit back and watch the traffic (and profits) roll in!” Well ... not quite yet. Just having a website to promote your company isn’t going to help you rake in the profits or land you a spot in the coveted Google "top seven search” results.  Search engines are evolving everyday to provide you the best and most relevant search results; keeping up with the ever changing search process would benefit you!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complicated process but not difficult to master. This article will give you an idea of the importance of optimizing your site to increase your chances of appearing on higher ranking search results. That’s a good thing!

AT SEA WITH CRUISE HOLIDAYS 

As we near Thanksgiving, we at Webtreepro have a lot to be thankful for -- our colleagues, our families, and a truly wonderful cadre of clients.

Last week, we had the opportunity to attend the annual convention of one of our franchise customers, Cruise Holidays. And not just any convention -- this one was at sea! We joined the group in San Diego (home of our headquarters) and boarded the Radiance of the Seas for a five-night cruise to Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The opportunity to be with a large group of our users and a great ship to sunny destinations is reason to be extra thankful. As a Minnesotan, escaping the cold for a week was a huge bonus!

At the meeting, we were able to spend significant time chatting directly with our client's customers -- what a great opportunity to really learn what they like about Webtreepro, as well as what they struggle with. As business owners, they don't have all day long to "play" with their websites, yet despite that time constraint, they've done some amazing work in short order. We saw some excellent landing pages and even some online "sign-up-to-cruise" forms that were comprehensive and friendly to site visitors.

For our part, we got to "show-off" a bit and introduce them to all the neat little SEO features that they can easily engage to improve their local search rankings. In fact, we conducted five workshop sessions on that topic. We're doing a follow-up online meeting next week so we can spend a bit more time teaching the details as well as catch up with those folks that couldn't make the meeting.

We also taught a number of them how to embed video and even some pretty cool photo-walls using albums on Flickr, and a slick plug-in from CoolIris. It was truly wonderful to see the "Wow, that was easy -- I can't believe I did that myself " reaction. Getting a customer excited about taking a cruise is a lot easier with pictures and widgets that put them "on the ship."

One thing that was a big hit was the ability to put a weather widget on a landing page for a specific cruise, showing the current weather conditions. I can tell you on this gloomy, chilly day in Minnesota, if I was looking a cruise to St. Thomas and saw that is was a sunny 84 Fahrenheit, I might be motivated to action!

Of course, everyone was interested in video, and whether they've posted to YouTube or a commercial service like Screencast, we were able to show them how it takes about a minute to embed videos into their site.

The best part of all is getting a handle on what we can do to further enhance Webtreepro. We have lots of our own ideas but hearing from day-to-day end users is invaluable. Plus, selfishly, it's nice to be valued for what we do, and to get that recognition first-hand is really engergizing.

PREPPING YOUR SITE FOR SEO

The Webtreepro franchise website builder is a web-based franchise website development tool that offers the ability to easily search engine optimize franchise websites, both corporate and local, while allowing the local site to customize content pertinent to its location. 

These SEO tools include:

• Automatic creation of search engine friendly URL and page structure. Directory names reflect the page path as well as the content in the page.
• Site Navigation is automatically built as you add pages. In addition, moving or reorganizing the site is simplified by using a tree view. A breadcrumb widget is also available to help navigate the site.
• A sitemap is automatically created for submission to search engines.
• All internal linking is fully consistent and follows the same pattern.
• Alternative text is easily added to images and links.
• Images are stored in their own directory.
• Title Tags (page names) are clear and customizable.
•  Label content as headings, where appropriate, using the content editor.
• Easily name pages (title tags), add descriptions of the pages, and keywords.
• A robust set of reports help the site owners understand the what, where, when, why and how of the traffic to each website.

These tools, however, have no value unless website content is compelling and well-constructed. Although Webtreepro can’t write the content for you, it does offer a superb, simple-to-use on page content editor.

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