For those who don’t use them every day, search engines can sometimes be a frustrating mess. Ostensibly, it doesn’t take much to use a search engine. Type “www.google.com” into your browser and get crackin’. But sometimes your specific searches come up empty, leaving you unable to find what you came online looking for in the first place.

In the interest of helping some of those more inexperienced in the ways of true search, we at lifeBLUE decided to put together a brief primer on some of the basic ways you can improve your time navigating the search engines and more easily find the information you need. And, of course, if you’re interested in improving your company’s standing among the search engines, make sure to check out our SEO services.

Here are a just few helpful hints and basic facts. Seeing as we’re big St. Louis Cardinals fans here at lifeBLUE, we’ll use the keywords “baseball” and “Cardinals” as examples:

The Basics

-If you type in Baseball - you will get any web page that features the word baseball.

- Baseball and Cardinals - will give you pages that have baseball and Cardinals.

- Baseball or Cardinals - will give you pages that only have baseball with no mention of Cardinals or Cardinals with no mention of baseball.

- Baseball – Cardinals - this will give you a baseball pages devoid of the word Cardinals (Make sure when typing this into Google that the space is between the first word and the minus, since the first word is what you want to keep in your search).

- Baseball + Cardinals - this is the same as using the word “and” in the search.

-“Baseball Cardinals” - this will provide results that only feature the words Baseball Cardinals consecutively. This is good when you’re looking for a specific company, name or other item.

Restrictive Searches
-define: Baseball - this will give you the definition of baseball.
-phonebook: wang IL- will give you the listing for Wang in Illinois.
-bphonebook: wang IL- will give you the listings for businesses named Wang in Illinois.
-inurl: baseball - this one is pretty cool. This will give you a return of all sites that include baseball somewhere in the site’s URL.
-allinurl: Baseball Cardinals - this will give you a search that uses all the words you typed after the colon in the URL.
-related: lifeBLUE.com - gives a return on sites that are related to lifeBLUE.com
-info: lifeBLUE.com - provides all information available about the website.
-link: lifeBLUE.com - provides other sites that are linked to this website.

And those are just a few. There are dozens upon dozens of little tricks and devices you can use to amp up your Google searches. Here’s one last little trick for you. Did you know that Google is also a calculator?

Try it. Type in an addition problem in the search bar and hit search. Or ask it how many quarts are in 17 gallons (search “quarts in 17 gallons”). Google will generate the answer, without fail. Truly, it is all things to all people, the official one-stop shop of the Internet. Sounds like another American empire we know and love…

Now we just need the G-folks to figure out a way for us to simultaneously buy a toilet brush, some bananas and an oil change online.

It’s hard to narrow down a huge list to just a handful of helpful hints, but here we are. We at lifeBLUE are masters of the concise list. We’re also pretty talented when it comes to crafting a well-rounded online marketing campaign. We could write a book about successful strategies and techniques, but, instead, here’s a much more digestible snapshot of a few must-haves:

1. Search Engine Optimization

The old work horse, as it were. At its most basic of roots, this is the act of altering a website to help boost its visibility in the search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Ask. It entails a series of steps and possible avenues, as webmasters have to spend time thinking about what the search engine crawlers will find when they come snaking through. It’s also where things can get a bit complicated rather quickly, and where you need to start keeping up with the latest at each of the search engines. Each search engine crawler looks for different things, so you may rank well on one engine but lag on another. Although it’s a basic, foundational element of online marketing, it’s tried and true.

2. Usability Testing

Usability is quickly becoming one of the more important aspects of online marketing. Usability is simply how well your website caters to your customers. About 60 percent of all consumers who arrive at your website get lost. That means usability and navigability are extremely important for websites of all shapes and stripes.

3. Optimized Press Releases

More and more people are turning to news search engines to get a well-rounded and diverse take on the news of the day. Many of these high-traffic news engines, like Yahoo News and Google News, have become more popular than the big, traditional media outlets. With that backdrop, having a press release that ranks high on these search engines is an incredibly important part of an online marketing campaign. It’s only going to become more crucial as more and more media consumers turn to those engines for news, entertainment and analysis.

4. Business Blogging

Blogging is more popular and mainstream than ever before. It’s also being recognized as a vital tool by companies big and small.  Many are encouraging workers to blog on company-sponsored sites or even on their own personal weblogs, figuring that the only bad publicity is no publicity. We don’t completely endorse that old theory, but there’s more than a grain of truth in there. An entertaining or informative blog that offers readers something unique or worthwhile can draw a ton of new consumers and generate both links and buzz. All of those are darn near priceless.

While our SEO services do come with a price tag, our passionate and committed team works with businesses and budgets from all corners. We’re here to help you thrive.

The subject of today’s blog is business names and nomenclature.

We might as well start with ourselves: lifeBLUE Media. Did we pick it because it sounds cool? Well, partly, but also because it has meaning to us, it is marketable and it exemplifies what we do. To its founders, lifeBLUE is about being a leader and setting the standards in the industry. We seek to help shape our client’s visions from daydreams and paper into reality.

So, what are we getting at?

We often hear people remark that a large part of picking their business name is determined by their ability to purchase a website domain. That alone can be a tricky business in this age of domain squatting, like the Sooners in the Oklahoma land rush. If you limit one of the most crucial aspects of your business because of available domain names, you’re probably starting off on the wrong foot.

Your business name should personify some or all of the following: Your particular industry, your business model or your ideals and beliefs. If all else fails, shoot for something that’s simply catchy and marketable. Pick the business name first, and then worry about nailing down a domain name. Luckily, there are plenty of books and websites out there offering expert advice on the intricacies of picking a business name. But, at the same time, let’s not overthink it.

In the end, find something that feels right. It’s your business. At some point, we’re sure someone wondered about the viability of the name “Walmart.” The bottom line is, the staff at lifeBLUE is always willing to give its input based on our significant experience in the web industry, especially when you’re building a new business from the ground up.

That’s the start of one of the most popular questions we’re asked. So, we thought it might be useful to explain some common and relatively simple web marketing words:

Referrals - Referrals are the pathways that bring a user to your site. It is very important to know if your potential customer came from a website where you are ranking for keywords, or if they have come from a link that you have established on someone else’s website.

Hits - Hits are when a web server requests a file be brought to a specific web server. In truth, they’re pretty meaningless. They do not show you how many people actually conduct business on your website. Think of it this way: What’s the point of having 1 million hits on your site if no one does what you want them to do once they arrive?

Page view - This is when a single page has been requested to be loaded by someone visiting a site. On the web, this would happen when a “surfer” clicks on a link that directs them to a certain site. This can be very useful to the owner of the website, because now you can alter site and see if those changes bring back potential customers more often.

Visits - Visits are when a person views all the pages of your website, or when that person has been on your website for a select period of time, usually somewhere around thirty seconds. To go a step further, a unique visit means that you are counting each person who visits your website only once.

Relevance - Relevance is the importance placed on certain words within a website by the search engines, namely keywords, pages and websites. There are three different areas of relevance, according to search engines: Content, keyword and link relevance.

If you are just starting out with a SEO/SEM firm, these are some of the basic keywords you need to know. It’s either that, or keep nodding your head and pretending to know what those Search Enginer Marketers are blabbing about.