New Website, Karnes Electric

We are proud to present Karnes Electric website.  Another great website designed by Austin based Paddington Media.

The new website should be available next week.

Database Design

Did you know Paddington Media designs robust database applications. 

If you have a need for a database to be integrate with your existing website or need a new website designed that is more dynamic and data intensive, Paddington Media can help. 

If you have any questions or need assistance please contact us.

GISAlerts, Austin Lifestyle Magazine

Check out Paddington Media's GISAlerts ad in Austin Lifestyle Magazine (Page 10)

Introducing Toula Skiadas

from Restore Sanity Austin

Paddington Media Client

When Jon Stewart announced the Rally to Restore Sanity, I saw the opportunity to give a voice to the silent moderate majority who had enough of the current political environment.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t go to DC and was interested to see if anyone would be interested in a local Restore Sanity Rally. A few friends and I created a Facebook page Restore Sanity Austin and in a couple of days we were a few hundred strong, a week later a few thousand strong.

As part of Restore Sanity Austin, we created a non-profit here in Texas and so we can continue to giving the moderate majority a voice and place to meet. Most people get information from 20-second sound-bytes that can be misconstrued. Lately there has been so much craziness not to mention groups taking on extreme views on things. This rally is for the other 80-percent of people who want everyone to tone it down a notch; giving us a place where we can say we’ve have had enough.

It’s only been 3 or 4 weeks that we put this together. I’m impressed that we got it this far. We had the design already done. We sent Paddington Media the elements and they put it together quickly while keeping the vision we intended. It was exactly what we needed and wanted. Erica, Olga and all you guys really got what we were after.

Winston's Corner

Ever since I started the company out of my little one-room dog house, Paddington Media, (formerly Equitas Strategies) provided the highest level of website programming and design to our clients. However, sometimes our clients still need some technical assistance. Over the years, Paddington Media has helped many of our clients with different types of questions ranging from maintenance requests to Technical Support. In response to our client's needs, Paddington Media is now offering Technical Support Plans for our clients. Maintenance Plans are also available for those needing continued month-to-month assistance. The little doggy-server we were using in my backyard has also been upgraded to the Rackspace Cloud.

We’re starting to go over my old doggy files, conducting an audit of all accounts over 1 year old. Paddington Media has always offered one-year hosting to its clients but there are a few clients who have not been paying their hosting charges past the one-year mark. We are now evaluating all accounts and notifying website owners of their monthly hosting requirements where applicable. Monthly hosting averages $20.00 a month.

Paddington Media, Halloween Scare.

Every year in October a strange thing happens to Austinites.  They become fantasy figures, western bandidos and aliens from another world.  Here is just a sampling of some of the Paddington Media's team during these strange times.

Restore Sanity Austin, Satellite Rally

Local grassroots group “Restore Sanity Austin” announced a joint effort with Rock the Vote to organize a “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Texas.  Here is an article in the Texas Tribune (Group to Hold Satellite Sanity Rally in Austin)

Paddington Media is a proud sponsors of this event.    Paddington Media also built the http://www.restoresanityaustin.com/ website.

PrintGlobe

Paddington Media has won a contract with Austin based PrintGlobe, Inc. to be their technical support for on going maintenance and enhancement to their office/support software.

PrintGlobe specializes in promotional products, custom printing, business printing, flags, signs & banners and more.

SEO Tips, YouTube

Did you know that YouTube is the third largest search engine in North America?  Hundreds of thousands of searches are done daily on YouTube.

 

If you have video, hosting on YouTube is free.  It is an easy way to boost your SEO and website traffic.

 

You can also create "Channels".  Once a Channel is setup, visitors can subscribe to it. 

Automating Your Blogger Feed

Now that you have a new Blog using Google Blogger, it is time to multiply your efforts by submitting your blog entries to Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

Before you start, you should create a Facebook account, a Twitter account and a Digg account.

By taking these few steps, you will be multiplying your efforts and getting the word out.

The first thing you will need is your blogger sitemap.  The sitemap will be used when creating the automated feeds.

The following links will walk you through the process
Auto Digg your Blogger Posts
Auto Post to Facebook and Twitter using Dlvr.it

SEO Blogger Book, SEO & Blogger Tips

Paddington Media has a really nice blog called SEOBloggerBook.blogspot.com.  SEO Blogger Book shows you tips and tricks on SEO and Blogging.  If you have a Blogger blog, this is a must read website.

New Website, Restore Sanity Austin

We are proud to present Restore Sanity Austin website.  Another great website designed by Paddington Media.

Introducing Robert E. Jones

Introducing Robert Jones
Political Consultant



I work in the political sector and I recently became an investor in Paddington Media.


A professional message-driven presence online is as important as it is offline, like in TV or through messages sent through the mail.

Paddington Media is one of the most experienced firms in Texas helping candidates create that online presence and as the needs of the clients evolves, Paddington has adapted to meet the fast-paced needs of political campaigns. As in the case with Cheetah Vox and being able to integrate online communications with new SMS technologies along with traditional automated calls in one interface that is easy to use.

Campaigns need to be adaptive, Paddington’s Media Suite Pro gives campaigns the ability to manage their website in their own hands. Media Suite Pro gives candidates and their campaign managers the power to change the website at their leisure and to work within the weird hours that campaigns work allowing changes to be made overnight or over the weekend.

The evolution of the Media Suite Pro product into GIS Alerts is exciting. It’s so new many people haven’t wrapped their minds around it yet. The potential of the product will be exciting to see over the next 24 months and over the next election cycle in how politicians use the product effectively.

Two words. Speed kills. The ability to do proactive aggressive messaging, to build a crowd, contrast with your opponent and/or highlight an issue for constituents at the speeds provided by Cheetah Vox, gives you a competitive edge over your opponent.

GIS Alerts hits the fundamentals of winning campaigns, which is about building lists of voters, donors, activists and stakeholders. GIS Alerts can aggregate all of that information into one tool that is both visually-stimulating and provides a point of view that you can’t get in flat data fields. You get to see patterns and relationships between data points you wouldn’t otherwise see. GIS Alerts also allows you to act on those relationships by drawing a polygon. Sending communications to voters and donors that is fast & directed at the right audience at the right time, is an incredibly powerful tool.

It is clear that Paddington Media has demonstrates a level of innovation and flexibility to customize that is really hard to find especially in politics. This will serve the firm well in identifying the next big product and staying on the front end of the power curve.

Paddington Media, Blogger Sites

Can not afford a high end website?? No problem.  Austin based Paddington Media will create a Google Blogger based website design for you ($500-$1000).     

Professional Looking Blogger Based Websites

Rapid Targeted Alerts with Cheetah Vox

High-Speed Mass Communications System
www.cheetahvox.com

Cheetah Vox is a world-class communications system that is capable of blasting out phone messages, text messages and emails to thousands of recipients in a matter of seconds. This web-based platform is an efficient, cost-effective method for ensuring your message is delivered and received. You get a sure shot at reaching your most valuable customers directly through phone and Internet at blazing speed.

It's Efficient -- It's one of the quickest methods for blasting out time-sensitive messages to a large number of people

It's Convenient -- No hardware or software needed to install. The web-based system allows non-technical users to effortlessly log-on and navigate an easy-to-use interface.

It's Trackable -- It's an accurate measure of reachability. Track whether or not a message was successfully received and monitor email click-through rates.

It's Cost Effective -- You only pay for the number of people you reach. Your cost simply depends on the size of your distribution list.

Enterprise Edition

• Operates on a Secure, Dedicated Server
• Capable of Sending up to 500,000 Phone Messages per Hour
• Capable of Sending up to 4.3 Million Text Messages & Emails per Hour

Standard Edition

• Operates on a Secure, Shared Cloud Hosting Server
  
• Capable of Sending up to 50,000 Phone Messages per Hour
• Capable of Sending up to 500,000 Text Messages & Emails per Hour

What Our Clients Say:

"Paddington Media's Cheetah Vox is a reliable, effective marketing tool that was invaluable to my campaign. We were able to quickly reach over 10,000 potential voters in just a matter of minutes and also received a tracking report. We are so glad this type of technology is available right in our own backyard." - Amy Clark Meachum

Blogger Tip, A better Sitemap for Indexing

Google's Blogger has a sitemap called Atom.xml that people use to submit to search engines.  The problem is the default Atom.xml sitemap file only displays roughly 25 of the most recent pages of your blog.  This is bad if you want your whole blog indexed if you have more than 25 entries.

There is a solution, but it will require you to create multiple sitemaps with each sitemap containing roughly 500 entries.

In the following example 3 sitemaps are created and each sitemap will contain up to 500 blog entries.

http://name of blog.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
http://name of blog.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500
http://name of blog.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1001&max-results=500

If more sitemaps are needed just add 500 the index count (1501, 2001, ...)

SEO Tip, What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a technical marketing approach for improving your website's external search engine ranking based on targeted keyword terms, search engine optimization, paid ad placement. 

Paddington Media specializes in the SEM approach to boost and improve a website's overall ranking and improve placement on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Austin Website Design

Paddington Media is located in Austin Texas and we specialize in website design.  We recently started working with clients adding a Blogger component to there website.  We have found that by adding a Blogger component greatly enhances a companies footprint on the web and is a fantastic way to boost their overall SEO and website design strategy.
 
Through trial and error we have develop ways to drastically boost a companies SEO using the Blogger strategy. 

If you would like to find out more please call us at 512-494-8888 or contact us via our Paddington Media website.  We want to show you how adding Blogger will help you.

SEO Tip, META Keywords, META Description

There are 2 types of META tags, the first is the META Description and second is the META Keywords tag.  The META tags are special HTML Tags allowing search engines to catalog and categorize your Websites pages.

The META Description is what appears on the search results page.  If the description is too long, it'll be cropped off.  Try and keep the META Description under 150 characters (including spaces and dots).

The META Keywords are used by search engines to highlight what the important keywords are for a website or website's page.  Keywords should be listed separated by a comma between words or phrases.  Don't repeat the keywords too many times, otherwise crawlers will mark your site as a potential spammer.

SEO Tip, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you go on the Internet and can’t find your site, then it’s not doing what you want. A lot of folks use their website as a business card and for some that’s all it is. The only way to increase your traffic naturally is to start an SEO campaign, so when people do a search they can find it. And not just by the name of your company, it should by searchable for other key words like the services you provide.

We compared the websites we built with other sites. We found deficiencies and plenty of non-existent files like robots .txt and sitemap.html files. These last 2 files are absolutely necessary to optimize your website and we found most people didn’t have them.

We regularly rocketed our clients’ websites to the top of search engines but didn’t really fully apply our own expertise to ourselves. We found just looking at our own website that even we weren’t up to snuff on our SEO. So we decided to follow our own advice and start our own SEO Campaign.

It’s easy to do your own SEO but there’s a lot to it. It’s how you organize your page and how you structure your keywords with your content. Simply adding a list of key words isn’t necessarily going to help your ranking. Your keywords also need to match your content. You should also highlight keywords with header tags and title tags. All these combined help move your ranking up on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Another way to help your ranking is to have back-links linking from other sites back to your site. And if that website has a high ranking, it helps your SEO more than having one that has a low ranking. Here’s an example, you can have 50 websites link back to yours but maybe they have a ranking of 1 to 3 and that might not be as good as a having a single site linking back to you that has a ranking of 7. Higher rankings happen when you have good SEO so people can find you and good traffic.

We have a product called Media Suite Pro which is a CMS or Content Management System. Within Media Suite Pro, we created functionality for the end user to maximize their SEO. And we coded it in such a way that the end user doesn’t need to be a programmer. You can just go in and enter your their keywords and it’s coded for each particular page. It also adds a meta-description and schedules automatically how often a search engine should come back to the webpage to review it. Plus it assigns page priority and ranks each particular page on your website. Page priority in Media Suite Pro tells a search engine how important it is on your website. Priority rankings goes from 0 to 1. A page that is important is assigned a 0.9 or 1.0 and a page that is not as important is typically assigned a 0.5.

Typically a good SEO campaign takes about 2 to 3 weeks before you see any changes to your ranking. It’s a matter of the Search engines spiders or web-bots finding your website and their search engine algorithms re-ranking your site.

SEO Tip, Anchor Title

What is an Anchor Title?
An Anchor Title is the word or phrase (Tool Tip) that appears when you mouse over a link.  Anchor Titles are important for making your website more ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. 

Tip: When adding Anchor Titles, try to include some of your keywords. Make a decision as to which keywords you want to focus on for a particular page.  Be careful that your Anchor Title makes sense and doesn't look like a long list of keywords.

SEO Tip, Anchor Text

What is an Anchor Text?
An Anchor Text is the visible text of a hyperlink This is an Anchor Text.  Anchor Texts are important for targeting webpage keywords.  It allows search engines to identify the important words and links for your site.

Tip: When adding Anchor Text, try to include some of your keywords. Make a decision as to which keywords you want to focus on for a particular page.  Be careful that your Anchor Text makes sense and doesn't look like a long list of keywords.

Media Suite Pro, Content Management System

Website Content Management System

Take complete control over your website once it’s built. Media Suite Pro is a powerful, web-based Content Management System that equips you with all the tools needed to update web content, create new pages, track visitors, upload images and create links. It also allows you to maintain your online visibility by optimizing each web page so that every major search engine notices your site. Web management has never been easier and more efficient.

System Features: 

• Easy-to-Use Content Editor
• Fully-Templated Component System
• Automated Search Engine Optimization
• Contact Manager
• Admin Manager
• Basic Traffic Statistics 

For more information on Media Suite Pro, please contact us

Search Engine Optimization Special

Paddington Media is offering a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Special for $199.

 

We will examine your website and provide a list of recommendations on how to improve your SEO. 

 

Paddington Media specializes in the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  The goal of SEO is to increase a web site's traffic count by making the website more relevant and rank higher within search engine algorithms and organic search results.  Improving the internal and external factors, which influence page ranking is achievable by following SEO guidelines to increase page ranking.

 

The following is the list of SEO guidelines Paddington Media uses to get your website ranked higher, increase customer visibility and ensure better performance.

• Keep the Sitemap.xml file up to date
• Make sure to have a Robots.txt file
• Include relevant keywords in your Meta Keyword tags
• Include relevant descriptions in your Meta Description tags
• Include Title tags
• Include H1 tags
• Include Alt tags
• Include Anchor texts
• Check for Broken Links
• Increase Back-Links
• Use Silos and Hubs to improve website rich content
• Decrease Webpage Load Time
• Get Listed in Google Local Search
• Include Web Analytics

SEO Tip, Importance of a Sitemap

There are lots of SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a website's relevance score. One often overlooked file that should be included on your website is the Sitemap or Sitemap.xml file.

Why are Sitemaps Important? 

A Site Map (or Sitemap.xml file) is a list of website pages on your website that are accessible to crawlers or users. As the name implies, a Sitemap is just a map of your site. Sitemaps provide a roadmap allowing search engines an easy way to navigate websites. Sitemaps also inform search engines when new changes have occurred, how often they should come back, what the priority is and so on.

What do Sitemaps look like? 

Sitemap xml formats can be found at http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php

Generating and Submitting the Sitemap 

The steps to adding a Sitemap to a website are relatively simple.

• Generate the Sitemap - To Generate the Sitemap simply go to the following website http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
• Upload the Sitemap to the Website - To Upload the Sitemap you will need a FTP (File Transfer Protocal) program to upload the new Sitemap.xml file. A really good FTP program to use is http://filezilla-project.org/. The program is free and is very easy to use. You will also need to have the FTP User Name and Password for your website. The information will be used when connecting using the FTP program. The Sitemap should be placed in the root directory of the website. Once the Sitemap has been added, the last step is to notify the various search engines that a sitemap has been added to the website.
• Notify Search Engines  - You can use the http://www.sitemapwriter.com/notify.php to help submit your website to Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo.

Interview, CEO Brandon Burris

Why did you start building websites?

I’ve got a political science degree. My first internships were with politicians.  I started building websites because politicians found out I could program.

What is your definition of a website?

The basic mission of a website is to collect and disseminate information and provide a service, if there is a service to be offered.  Despite their differences, websites all have the same basic elements: content, sign-up forms, blogs, forums and eCommerce components.  You can take those same components and apply them to campaign sites or to regular business operations.

How have you seen websites change since you started Paddington Media?

When I first started I had a general understanding of what was standard for web development.  I quickly learned the importance of programming in ASP.Net.  Most recently the development of the server side and the development of client server interaction like AJAX has extended the internet past just document sharing.  So now-a-days, you can see a range of what the web has to offer through our own website examples from static sites with no dynamic server-side interaction, to fully interactive web-based telecommunications.

What is the future of the internet?

To tell you the truth, in my own opinion the internet will grow into the ultimate eCommerce solution.  It will eventually be where the majority of commerce will be from…

The Internet is fast becoming the commerce platform of choice.  Where I would like to take our part of the Internet is to expedite communication globally through communication networks worldwide.

On The Set of True Grit

Paddington Media enjoyed a little fun on the set of the 1969 western movie remake of True Grit.

New Website, Dr. Pamela Ryan

We are proud to present Dr. Pamela Ryan's website.  Another great website designed by Paddington Media.

New Website - Representative Jessica Farrar

We are proud to present Representative Jessica Farrar's website.  Another great website designed by Paddington Media.

New Website - Richards Electric

We are proud to present Richard's Electric.  Another great website designed by Paddington Media.

New Website - Third Coast Blue Water Outfitters

We are proud to present Third Coast Blue Water Outfitters.  Another great website designed by Paddington Media.