The folks over at Tradebank (the nation’s best barter exchange) took on a fairly daunting task earlier this year. Tradebank, which is based just outside of Atlanta, has independently owned regional offices across the US and Canada. Over the past several years some of these offices started their own websites, with varying degrees of success (and quality). So to help these individuals, each with their own ideas of what a site should do and how it should look, Tradebank created a system that not only allows each of these offices to create their own look but also shares the data that each site creates across the entire system. There are a number of benefits to this:

1. A centralized support system: As all of the offices use the same website administration system it is much easier for Tradebank to support the entire system. And since everyone utilizes the same interface, ideas and techniques can be shared between the offices.
2. Data sharing: The system was designed so that content created by one office can be used by other offices in the system. This reduces the duplication of effort that was happening across the system.
3. One step upgrades: When a new feature is introduced to the system it is available to all the sites in the system. Again, this reduces duplication and opens up new ideas to the entire group.
4. All the social networking links were built as well. Each office now has their own Twitter and Facebook pages so that clients in their region can keep track of each individual office instead of being blasted by updates from all the offices.

Often times when sites for a large company are created like this you will find that they all look the same with only some changes in text or logos. Not so with the system built for Tradebank. This system is highly customizable so that each office can be extremely creative in their designs and content. Take a look…

Tradebank of Greenville:

Tradebank of Charlotte:

Tradebank of Orlando:

There are many more examples, but you can check those out over at the Tradebank website. As you can see though, each office has been able to create their own look, even though the administration system is the same.

This system has helped Tradebank manage the different sites from one location saving them time and effort (and thus money) while giving all of their independent barter exchange owners an advantage over their competition. Stay tuned for even more updates to this system and the individual barter sites.

Here’s another FANTASTIC tool to help your site get better rankings and be easier for your visitors to navigate.

How does it work? Well, I’m glad you asked.

The Keyword Linking tool enables you to automatically link to a URL for a given keyword or phrase, much like sites like Wikipedia do. Every time a keyword occurs in a post on your site, the Keyword Linking tool automatically generates a link to the page you define. This is huge for building pagerank within your own site.

How to use it:

1. Login to your site admin panel.
2. Look for the “Keyword Linking” option under the “Posts” menu on the left side of the screen. Click on that link…
   
3. The instructions are very straightforward.
   
   All you have to do is enter the Keyword that you want to use into the “Keyword” field, the link that you want that keyword to go to into the “URL” field, and click “Save”. There are some “fancy” options there too, just in case you’re feeling froggy, but the basics will get you started.
4. Post-specific links: You can override the global keyword settings in each post. See the bottom of your “Post” page for the same type of form with the same options for “special” linking on that post only.

Note that these links can be internal to your site, or external links to other sites. If you’re linking offsite though, make use of the “Use Nofollow” option to only send pagerank to sites you intend to.

Happy Linking!

An exercise in online marketing…

Your Comprehensive Online Source for Information About Warts and Other Skin Conditions!

Wart.NET is a basic informational website concerning a slightly bizzare, yet fairly common, topic.

The challenge of the project is to utilize content and SEO techniques to increase the rankings. Once the site has the rankings they are looking for then an affiliate program will be put in place to provide a product to treat the conditions the site discusses.

The interesting thing about this project is that the site owner is simply using rankings to drive traffic to a product site that they don’t control. They are simply a sales point for that other site. When a visitor purchases a product a commision is paid to the site owner. They never touch the product or the money. They just get paid when their site generates a sale. It’s brilliant.

The site owners drive traffic to their site using standard SEO techiques as well as complex viral marketing efforts.

Custom design, familiar features

Often clients come to us with a website that they already have designed. Clients that have a marketing firm already working for them will sometimes already have a fantasticly “designed” site that only needs to be implemented.

And of course, often times a graphic designer will have little or no knowlegde regarding HTML design (the code that makes all this stuff work), much less have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization.

Again, this is where we can help. We can take your site design and add it to our content control and SEO system. There are usually a few minor changes that have to be made to the layout, just because of the way the web actually works.

With The Yellow House, we had a great design that they had spent a lot of time developing. The challenge here was that it was designed more like a print brochure than a website. And it was no small challenge.

In the end though we produced a website that was about as close to their original design as could be, yet was also integrated into the content control system. This gives the client a solid foundation to build additional content and features upon.

Enabling the client to control their content.

Sometimes clients just need a little nudge in the right direction. With The Swallow we took an existing design that the client had and placed it into our content management system. This enables the client to maintain control of almost all aspects of their site design, and the content it contains, while enabling us to continue to manage the optimization functions in the site.

As the client becomes more comfortable with the management software we can add even more functions and features. This process continues over and over again, with the client becoming more capable of managing their own site without being overwhelmed by the tools at hand.