You may or may not have noticed some changes made to Top Search Result's website.  My goal is to share with you what I changed on www.topsearchresult.ca and hopefully it will help you update your site too.  I could definitely go into more detail for why each change is important but kept it brief for reading enjoyment.

1. Website Appearance

Sometimes you don't realize how crappy your website looks until you change the look of it.  This happened to me.  I went for a "web 2.0" look.  What does that mean? Well I basically just took the design that was the simplest I could find and had a plain white background. Basically anything that resembles Facebook or Google pages.  To me that's "web 2.0".

Quite a difference in the old theme and the new one as you can see from the screenshot below. 

New:

Old:

Too bad I didn't have a screenshot of the website when I first designed it in 2007.  Wow it was bad. 

Implementation: Was relatively easy, I just changed my theme because I use a CMS (content management system).  Top Search Result uses Drupal but Wordpress is ideal for beginners although both are confusing if you're out of your element.  Don't know what I'm talking about then you should ask your webmaster.

2. Social Media

Another goal of my website was to leverage social media or social network marketing as much as possible.  Although I'm sure people aren't going to go nuts and start posting my site all over their Facebook, I'm at least going to give them every opportunity to let them do so if they wish. 

The first social networking aspect I addressed on Top Search Result was in regards to the two heavyweights: Facebook and Google. Both are looking to become the universal login across all websites.  I personally like this idea because I think it will make people more accountable for their comments, eliminate spam, and help people socialize on other sites.

Facebook Connect - when users leave a comment when connected, their Facebook picture will show up and it will allow them to post that they made a comment through the news feed on their wall.  This is a great tool for spreading your information virally. Confused? Check out the video and my comment at the end of the post.

Google Friend Connect - to be honest I'm not as familiar with the Google aspect as I am with Facebook.  I added the Socialbar (tool bar at top of site) because I wanted to clear up my sidebars but still have the function available to users.  Confused? Again check out the video. 

Same video on Youtube and Vimeo (see section 3.)

Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect Demo from Robert Dawson on Vimeo.

Implementation: Facebook is definitely more difficult to implement, at least for Drupal.  Google is pretty slick but I'm not as sold on their offerings.  Go figure.

Another social addition you will see at the end of the posts are social buttons.  If someone finds one of my posts/articles/videos interesting they can submit it to one of these social bookmarking/networking sites potentially creating a viral effect.  This can create a huge amount of traffic.  Be wary though of submitting your OWN pages as some might not find them as interesting as you do.  This is often how you get backlashes from the community.  See these buttons below  They are automatically inserted below every blog post so you'll see a working example at the end of this post.

Implementation: Easy. Just added a module/plugin. 

Feel free to test out these features on this site.  Leave a comment, invite some friends.

3. Video Video Video

I know whenever I'm on the internet, I search for the result with minimal writing and has a video.  This is especially true if I'm looking for "How To" guides.  Think of it as TV except people have searched for your content and aren't forced to be interrupted by commercials.  Most people won't read (that I know of) but they'll watch TV.  I'm actually an avid reader and I still prefer watching video on the computer. 

Top Search Result uses Youtube for our free videos as well as VIMEO for VIP videos available only to clients.  Basically I use Youtube for my free videos because it's the fastest way to spread the information.  Youtube is huge and you can get a lot of traffic if you know how to leverage it.  I use VIMEO for my private videos because it is higher quality and has better sharing policies (aka it will only be available where I want it to be available).  I have shown videos above in both Youtube and Vimeo so you can see the differences in quality.

Implementation: Easy if you know how to embed code onto your website.  Hard part is creating the video.

For screencasts I use Camtasia software which I think is great.  I'm still looking for a better camera and mic but I'm jumping on the video bandwagon headfirst.  I hope to have a video for every post I make.

Another advantage of using video heavily on your website besides catering to your followers is the fact that video search results are now showing up on Google search results.

Search result showing up on Google:

4. Contact Form - Call To Action

Making it as easy as possible for clients to contact me about services is  so I added a contact form on every page.  It is after all the whole point of any business website.  Sure it has increased my SPAM email but I do get quite a few inquiries through the contact form that just weren't coming through before.

Implementation: Fairly easy but usually will require html coding or various plugins/modules.

5. Social Again

So I cheated a bit to ensure I had a nice list of 5 for my post but social marketing is big enough to be mentioned twice in my opinion.  Look at the right of my website.  I have my MSN, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, RSS feeds. All things that allow anybody interested to communicate with me.  This is just the way things are done.  Clients love how they can just Skype me or IM me.  Of course I still have an email and phone but many customers prefer instantaneous interaction.  Blessing or a curse, you need to offer what they want.

Implementation: Fairly easy but usually will require html coding or various plugins/modules.