<![CDATA[Silver Buckle Services | Equine Web Design and Marketing | Design for Equestrian Businesses | Web Design and Graphic Design for the Horse Industry

<![CDATA[Silver Buckle Services | Equine Web Design and Marketing | Design for Equestrian Businesses | Web Design and Graphic Design for the Horse Industry - Blog]]>Tue, 15 May 2012 22:06:49 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Is your website mobile friendly?]]>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:00:49 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2012/03/is-your-website-mobile-friendly.html

Did you know that over 10% of your website traffic visits come from a mobile device?

At Silver Buckle Services, we aim to stay ahead of the curve and stay current with the latest technologies available to provide to you. We're happy to announce that all our new websites made with Weebly are mobile optimized.

With our new Weebly website solutions, when someone visits your website from a mobile device, (Smart phones, iPhone or ipad or Android Tablet computers) they are automatically shown the mobile version of your website.

If you don't already have a Weebly website with us, we encourage you to contact us to upgrade your old site to this new system to provide the mobile friendly website capabilities to your website viewers. Last but not least, with our Weebly website solutions, you will be able to update the website yourself!

We also have mobile friendly e-commerce solutions available to our clients. If you want your on-line store to be accessible from Smartphones, ipads, iPhones or Android Tablet computers, contact us to learn more about our mobile store solutions.

]]><![CDATA[Like owning a horse, Marketing a horse-business requires a multi-level approach. Contributed by: Kasha Ford]]>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:35:38 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2012/01/like-owning-a-horse-marketing-a-horse-business-requires-a-multi-level-approach-contributed-by-kasha-ford.htmlNext time you take your horse out consider all that's required to keep him. In that one creature you have a multitude of chores, activities and expenses all rolled into a single package. Your horse requires, housing, veterinary & farrier care, feed, grooming, tack, transportation, training and more. Your horse-business is very much the same - only with a different set of chores, activities and expenses.

We had a prospective client contact us the other day lamenting that they weren't getting very much business AND they already had a website. Well, just "having" a website isn't enough. What are you doing to promote your website? How do you expect customers to find your website? Is your website set up in such a way that, if customers do find it, they're easily able to get to the information they need or are able to purchase what you're offering? Is there a need for what you're selling? You can't just "build it and hope they will come." Your website serves a specific purpose: to inform or educate, to refer, or to sell. It is only one part of your marketing strategy, or back to my horse analogy, just one item, albeit an important one, in your horse's tackroom.

Marketing a business requires a multi-level approach, you need to advertise and promote your site both in print and on-line. You need to promote your business in person at appropriate events, even if it's just a matter of a shirt on someone's back at a local horse show or event. In today's world it's necessary to promote your business in every way possible. Not just build a website and hope for the best. You have to reach and target your audience in every way possible.

When you acquired your first horse, you likely didn't run out and purchase everything you needed all at once. You probably started out with a few key items like feed, basic tack, modest housing and grooming supplies. Over time you added more specialty items and upgrades. Think about where you were the day you brought your first horse home and where you are today. Treat your business the same, start with core basics, but be sure to steadily add, change and upgrade from there:

Review your business to make sure there honestly is a need or desire for what you're offering, if not change your offering to meet today's demands.
Keep your website up to date, with both relevant information, appearance and use of technology.
Make sure search engines can easily find you. Adjust your key words, etc. as necessary.
Link with appropriate sources & partner with appropriate opportunities.
Budget to promote and advertise your site/business.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like help reviewing what you're doing. We'd be happy to make some suggestions to help you on your way to achieving your business goals.

]]><![CDATA[Thankful for all of you...]]>Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:18:34 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/11/thankful-for-all-of-you.htmlHere at Silver Buckle Services, we would like to thank all our loyal clients for their business and friendship over the years. We are so lucky to have the job of serving you with your websites, ads and marketing and would like to take a moment to thank you for it! We are living our dreams and working with the equine industry has been an incredibly rewarding experience. We get to help people start their equine businesses from the ground up and nothing can be better than empowering other people in the horse industry, especially helping women to achieve their goals.

We are giving a 15% off discount on all new projects in December to our existing clients. Give us a call to start your next project.

Author: Melissa Berschens

]]><![CDATA[Online stores - What it takes to sell online]]>Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:13:47 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/10/online-stores-what-it-takes-to-sell-online.html3rd party e-commerce solutions such as Volusion, Big Commerce, Pro Stores, Network Solutions, Yahoo Small Business, Shopify, Open Cart, 3D Cart, Tomato Cart, Zen Cart, Foxy Cart, have all the bells and whistles that you could imagine. We wanted to find a great e-commerce solution to offer our clients so we went on a mission to find the easiest shopping cart system out there. After months of free trials and testing, we have found a couple of great solutions for you.

Shoppe Pro Stores

1) Shoppe Pro ($12-$25 per month depending on level of service purchased)
Shoppe Pro is a women owned company and has what I call, Girl Power! It allows customization of the "do it yourself" template which will enable us to make your shopping cart site look fabulous. Entering categories and products is very easy and intuitive. Shoppe Pro is a great choice for our clients because it is easy to use and isn't overwhelming like some of the more major store solutions available. It has just what you need to sell online. Shoppe Pro has great customer support available by email or by phone. This system allows for adding in a multitude of products and product variations like color and size and adding images to the products is very easy.

Here is a picture of a product category page listing the products available in that category. Here, both descriptions, photos and price shows with the items in the category list. The category pages can be designed with unique header graphics as shown in the graphic below with the belts. They have documentation and tutorials available and best of all, we know how to set up the stores for you and are experienced with this already with previous clients so we do all the hard work of making it look pretty and you can enter the products on your end from the web. No software is required and no HTML knowledge is needed to manage your store.

Here is a picture of a product display page. Note the photo can click to enlarge and product item variations like size are shown. The system allows both Paypal and other credit card processors such as Link Point and Authorize.net. There is no free trial but at $12 to start, you can sign up and if you don't like it, they can cancel your account.

Here is a list of how to choose if Shoppe Pro is right for you:

You have many categories in your store like (Belts, Purses, Apparel).
You want a custom look for your store and category header images for each category.
You want web pages in your store, as well as store pages like (about us, shipping policy etc.

Wazala Stores

2) Wazala Store ($9.99 - $29.99 per month depending on how many products you have in your store)
Wazala is a very simplified e-commerce solution. You can insert it into an existing web page and it appears embedded in the page. It has a unique navigation system where you click on an arrow to slide to the right to view products and categories. It has only one look and feel that you can apply on either a white or black background.

The look is set for every page. The admin system is very simple to use to add products and categories and you can have multiple click to enlarge photos and options for your products like size and color. Wazala is simply one of the best carts I have worked with. The only downside is the look and feel and style of the cart is pre-set and you can not change it or the way it behaves. No software is required and no html knowledge is needed. Wazala has email only support, but they do get back to you fairly quickly. Wazala has a 15 day free risk trial.

Here is a list of how to choose if Wazala is right for you:

You have a website or hosting already and want to add a store onto it.
You don't mind a very simple (yet effective) approach to displaying your products.
You have Authorize.net or Paypal as your payment gateway (those are the only two it supports)

How you get started
Both solutions above are really good, they both have their different purposes and levels of complexity. If you aren't sure which one is best for you, let us know about your project plans and we can help you decide and tell you which would work best for your online store solution. Whether you have an existing store, or are starting fresh, Silver Buckle Services can set up your online store for you and get the ball rolling for you. We are Wazala affiliates so if you decide on that option, please sign up through our Wazala page to become a customer under our affiliation.

Here are some things you will need to have first before setting up a online store:

A standard Paypal account (they take 3% off your transaction and no monthly fees) or A Paypal Payments Pro account (they take 3% off your transaction fees, act as your merchant and gateway account provider and will process the cards and keep your user on your website rather than taking them over to paypal to checkout with a credit card.) They also have a $30 monthly fee and a SSL certificate is not required.
If you don't want to use Paypal as your merchant bank, you will need to acquire a merchant bank account a internet secure gateway account and SSL certificate. Each of these have monthly fees and transaction fees associated with them. We suggest using Paypal if you want to avoid all these fees. We suggest using Authorize.net as your gateway provider and merchant bank and SSL provider. An active SSL (Secure Socket Layer encryption) certificate is required if you do not use Paypal as your transaction provider.
There are three parts to an on-line transaction
     1) the system that collects the credit card information from the buyer
     2) the system that charges the credit card and encrypts the transaction securely
     3) the system that sends the money to your bank, Paypal does all three of these things in one account, if   you use something other than paypal, then you need to get providers for all three of these parts, 1) merchant bank account, 2) gateway account and 3) SSL certificate.
A list of your store categories
A list of your store products and descriptions and pricing and some kind of product number identification system to identify your products
A set of photos for each product
A monthly budget in mind for your e-commerce store project
A person to put in charge of interent sales, they will need to answer emails and manage the orders coming in to ensure that they are sent out in a timely manner.
A person put in charge of entering products and keeping the product information up to date. There is nothing more disappointing then going online to order a cool pair of jeans you think you have found, and then try to order them and find out they are no longer available. Keeping up your product information is really important.
A person in charge of the website and keeping the home page current with sales and specials and new information or products you have available. Keep it fresh!

How long does it take and how much do you charge to set them up?
Wazala Stores
With Wazala store, about 2-5 days depending on how many products you have $65 an hour, typically Wazala stores take about 5- 10 hours to set up ($325 to $650)

Shoppe Pro Stores
With Shoppe Pro store, about 2 weeks - the longest part is the design process, Silver Buckle Services will custom code your store design and make it have it's own background, left nav bar color and graphics and header graphics. We also will set up each web page for you and set up a general template theme for your entire store and website. Typically these projects run from $1200 to $2500 depending on the number of products and categories you have.

Why the difference in price?
Wazala's design is already preset, there is no designing work needed, the store is already set, we just set it up and enter in the products and categories and insert it into your existing website pages. With Shoppe Pro, we have to custom design and code a template for your site and incorporate that on each page and set up the categories and information for your site design on a per site basis. Typically there is more involved with a Shoppe Pro site.

Contact us to get started on your e-commerce project.

]]><![CDATA[Want a website you can update yourself?]]>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:16:49 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/09/want-a-website-you-can-update-yourself.htmlTime and time again, we are being asked by clients for websites that they can update themselves. Silver Buckle Services has been building websites for over 10 years and for 8 of those years, we have been building them by hand and completely manually. If clients wanted slide shows, drop down menus or photo galleries, we had to custom code them by hand. This is not only time consuming on our side but expensive on the client's pocket book. It used to be that if a client wanted to update the website themselves, they would have to buy expensive software and have to learn how to make updates and ftp files back and forth to the webserver. If a client wanted to do it themselves, it required quite a learning curve.

Thankfully, times have changed. In the last two years, we have been working with several web based content management system tools out on the market that allow users to maintain their own websites right from the web with no software on their computer. We have set up tools like Wordpress and Joomla for our clients that wanted to update their own sites. While these tools are powerful and flexible with free available plugins, they are not the easiest to work with. Many clients have become frustrated with the quirky behavior that these programs can exhibit.

Bailey's 8 Page website

On a mission to find a better solution!
We have been on a mission to find a better solution for our clients, lucky for you, we found it! We now have a easy to use web based system to offer clients and both Kasha and Melissa can set them up for you. Clients can not only add pages themselves, they can add their own drop down menus, and control the order of the menu items & menu titles. Adding photos, photo galleries (with click to enlarge features) and slide shows is a matter of dragging and dropping an element into the page and presto they appear! Clients can add paragraphs with photos and control the angle, border and size of the photo that appears. Some templates allow for custom headers graphics on each page and the client can add any photo they want to in the header and can write text on top of the photo. Videos and downloadable files also can be added easily. There are also elements for adding Google Maps, audio files and simple shopping buy now buttons.

My 12 year old daughter, Bailey wanted to learn what I do for work, she was very interested in building a website for her animal collection, did I mention we have a small farm in her room? I signed her up for a account with the new website system we offer and she was able to create a 8 page (Bailey's Farm) website to display her photos of her fishes, chickens, hermit crabs, horses, dogs and lizards with custom headers, slide show and photo gallery all by herself, without me teaching her anything. Trust me, if my 12 year old can do the updates, you can, is just that easy! If you aren't comfortable with doing your own updates, we can always do them for you. The beauty of this system is it is web based so we can log into it anytime and help you.

Silver Buckle Services is offering special website setup packages for the new system. We design the website to match your marketing materials and come up with a custom look and feel for you and enter in all your content and set up the pages. Then we let you do the updates from there. Contact us to get started!

Setup Pricing
Bronze package $295 - 3 basic pages site
Includes setup and design for a basic website. Includes up to 10 photos and graphic design for a cohesive look and feel for your site. Additional pages & features added are $65/hr.

Silver package $495 - 5 page basic site with slide shows & Photo Gallery
Includes setup and graphic design for 5 page site and up to 20 photos.
Additional pages & features added are $65/hr.

Gold package $995 - 10 page website
Includes setup and graphic design for 10 page site and slide show, photo gallery with up to 40 photos, downloadable forms, videos, web forms and maps.
Additional pages & features added are $65/hr.

Author: Melissa Berschens

]]><![CDATA[So, what are those funny looking barcode boxy things?]]>Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:16:50 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/09/so-what-are-those-funny-looking-barcode-boxy-things.htmlSubmitted by: Kasha Ford

Have you seen those funny square bar code boxes that seem to be showing up everywhere from CNN to fashion magazines, to a smattering finding their way into the horse world? They're called "QR Codes." QR Codes have been popular for many years in Japan and then made their way throughout Europe before landing here. Though they have been around for some time, they've only increased in popularity in the United States in the last couple of years.

QR Codes are fascinating! Codes are electronically generated via special software and can be printed in or on virtually anything flat(ish). QR codes are scanned by a special "app" that is typically downloaded free on most systems. These universal app's work over a number of tablet and smartphone platforms, and as would be expected, work particularly well on iPhone, Android and Blackberry phones. QR codes take the "scannee" to a specific message (e.g. Chaps on Sale at ChapsR'Us) on a voyage through cyber space straight to a particular website, to a Facebook/Twitter or other social media page, or (drum roll please) to Youtube video's or video's imbedded in websites.

Yeah, that's cool... so how does that help us horse people? It helps us immensely! Unfortunately we now live in an instant gratification society, QR Codes work right into that-marketing wise. These little codes can be placed on your next Stallion ad. Said ad can be put up at your next show or published in a mazine (either print or digital). Mare breeder comes by, see's your stallion ad/flyer, notices the code, scans it and is taken to voila: an amazing video of your horse. This is also a great tool on horse-for-sale-flyers. Take a potential buyer directly to your sale horse's video placed either on a website or, on Youtube itself. No more emailing back and forth or hunting for a link. As a trainer or clinician you can drive potential clients to a cool video of your last win, or your last clinic or fun event. For products and businesses it's a useful method to include coded messages about sales and make an ad more fun and interactive. And best yet, they can take a "scannee" directly to a "Buy Now" or Paypal button on your website. Talk about shortening the sales cycle!

Yeah, but are they reliable? These codes work surprisingly well. I have a Blackberry Torch and as a test all summer long I've been scanning every code I find on various platforms to see if they'll work for our market. So far, I'm glad to report I've had excellent results. I have scanned codes off my computer monitor, off my TV (it was dusty, too), off a t'shirt, glossy print brochures, newsprint ads, and last night off the back of a ketchup bottle during dinner. Bottom line, they work pretty darn good. I'm a believer.

If you're ready to start promoting that Stallion for next season, have a horse for sale, or want to offer an interactive experience in an upcoming ad or promotional campaign, consider adding QR Codes. Let us know if we can help you get started on a marketing project!
]]><![CDATA[So you have your own do it yourself website, now what?]]>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:23:03 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/07/so-you-have-your-own-do-it-yourself-website-now-what.htmlMany of our clients have requested do it yourself websites, where they can update their own photos and content. We collected a list of top 5 mistakes people make when updating their own websites and offer some tips to keep your site fresh and current, yet not spinning out of control.

1. Over use of font options. People go crazy with the new found formatting toolbars we have given them to update their sites making their text in a rainbow of colors ending up lookinglike last year's Christmas tree. Too many sizes of fonts, bolding, itallics and different styles of fonts make a site look busy and unorganized. Don't worry too much about your font being too small on the other person's end, you can't control the font size that a person chooses to keep their browser set to and their settings will override yours. Keep it simple, just use one font and one or two sizes and not more than two font colors. If you use too many, your site will quickly go from looking like a professional site, to looking like a amateur site. Can you see how this paragraph isn't as easy to read as the others?

2. Photos in various sizes and borders and styles. The new website tool we offer our clients has a variety of photo editing tools, you can crop a photo, add a border, choose a tilt option, even add a fade over a picture or give it a cute Polaroid look. Using too many of these styles on one website is a tell tale sign of a "do it yourselfer". Pick one style, one tilt, one border choice and stick with that for every photo you add. Don't go overboard, it just looks tacky. You can see below, I used three different photo effects, each by the themselves are cool, but together........ well, you get the picture!

3. Not enough text. Text is the most important thing on your website, it is what sets your site apart from the rest and it also is what search engines use to find and index your site and rank your site above or below others. We see people just putting up one paragraph on a page and it just isn't enough information to make it useful. We always suggest that you put yourself in your customer's shoes and think, what would they want to know about my business and how do I need to explain that to them. We also see clients who have websites that the text never changes on. This becomes the kiss of death for your clients and the search engine placement. Stale text is a no no! Use the blogging tool to keep your content fresh, it is so easy!

4. Photos too big. Sometimes when you take a photo off your camera, the files are HUGE. If you load those photos right up from your camera, to your computer, to your website with out resizing them, they will be very large files, taking both a long time to upload into the system, but also a long time for a user to download them and view on the other end when they view your website. We use Adobe Photoshop products to optimize images to smaller sizes suitable for the web before we load them onto our client's sites. We suggest if you are going to do it yourself, you get some kind of photo editor, like Adobe Photoshop Elements which isn't too expensive and use that to optimize your images before you load them into your websites. Having too big image files will be painful for both you and your website viewers.

5. Headers, headers headers. Header graphics can be really pretty if done correctly. The website tool we offer allows clients to update their own header files. Use this tool wisely, do not over do it and keep your style the same on every single page. If you use a header graphic with a type tool overlay, make sure the font you choose is the same on every header, make sure the border color and effect is the same on every one and you will have a fabulous looking site that you can change yourself.

After the dust settles on your new site, we are always there to help you just let us know if you need a any hand holding or help with updates. We are proud of our "do it yourselfers" and excited to share our new website solutions with all our clients. Give us a jingle if you want us to revamp your site so you can too be a "do it yourselfer".
Melissa Berschens

]]><![CDATA[Branding...and how it effects your Horse Business]]>Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:48:50 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/06/brandingand-how-it-effects-your-horse-business.htmlIf we look back at brands in their most basic terms as horse-enthusiasts, brands were used to identify groups of livestock from one another when pastured or moved collectively. Each ranch had it's own brand and each critter was stamped with it. As we all know, livestock branding continues to this day and in some cases, particular brands give added value to those animals bearing that ranches mark. Think of the horses that bear the King Ranch's brand. Those animals have a perceived added value, do they not? Product or business branding really isn't that different- it's putting your own unique stamp on the items or services you sell to identify them from the competition. Eventually, as your brand becomes better known, it will carry along with it certain identifyers, for example, you're reputation for customer service, product or service quality, pricing or even if you're environmentally friendly along with other factors that pertain to you or your business.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines branding as follows: "A brand is a customer experience represented by a collection of images and ideas; often, it refers to a symbol such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme." It's important that when you promote or advertise your business you not only develop a consistent look and feel by your choice of colors, fonts and images but also that you use those elements consistently. It's okay for your look to subtly evolve over time, but don't change the look completely too often. Their's definite equity in consistency. Humans are creatures of habit and don't take to change that readily-think of the Classic Coke fiasco of a few years back. The formula changed, then the packaging changed to accomodate the PR fallout from the perceived taste difference. All the same, Coke consumers were not pleased and I suspect product sales were effected.

The AMA goes on to state: "Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both directly relating to its use, and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary A brand often includes an explicit logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, sound which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.*"

It takes time and effort for a brand to develop and then ultimately readily recognized. It is not an overnight process. Budget for it and be prepared to stay in for the long haul. We say over and over visibility and consistency breeds credibilty--or in other words, you say something to the same crowd (YOUR demographic) often enough, eventually people will believe and respond to it.

There is definite value when a customer recognizes your look, maintain that look consistently throughout your marketing efforts. Let Melissa or I know if there is anything we can do to help with your business branding efforts either in print, online or via social media, only don't ask us to physically brand livestock....that's were we draw the line!

*Source: AMA, SEMPO and Wikipedia ]]><![CDATA[Search Engine Rankings - Do they really matter?]]>Thu, 26 May 2011 15:56:29 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/05/search-engine-rankings-do-they-really-matter.htmlAuthor: Melissa Berschens

Our Equine Industry clients ask how to get their site to rank higher in search engine results. It is hard to compete with the work that the big players like; www.horse.com, www.purina.com, www.apha.com, www.aqha.com are doing with search engines and there are many factors that get your search engine ranking so it helps to know the tricks of the trade.

Search Engine Ranking Factors:
1) length of time your site has been up compared to the competition
2) the amount of domain names tied to your site with keywords in domain names
3) the number of years you have your horse business domain name reserved out in the future
4) your keywords less than 10 words & how early they are used on the page, like at the top of the page
5) your description less than 200 characters
6) your title tag 10 - 60 characters
7) your content 5 - 20% - (all keywords/ total words) in natural language sentences
8) links to other websites
9) links to your site from other sites (link trading)
10) freshness of new content

These are the factors that rule your placement in the horse industry search engine rankings. No one - no company or SEO specialist, can configure you to rank better than someone else. What they can do is, take a look at your site content, key words and meta tags and compare those with what your competition is doing and make changes and suggestions and submit your site to the search engines but there is nothing they can actually do themselves that will make the site's ranking change. It is all a function of the search engines and they do the rankings based on the factors I outlined and how relative your content is based on the key words you are listing. Equine Marketing is a smaller world than say, Real Estate, your chances of improving your ranking by changing the items 1-10 above are much higher than if you were in the real estate market, simply because of the level of thousands of competing websites.

Here are some factors that will kill your rankings:
1) using invisible text to hide your key words throughout the page
2) duplicating keywords just like website, websites, websites for horses just for the sake of doing it to trick the search engines.
3) HTML code violations - bad code or page errors
4) Text presented in only graphic format - no text - if there is no text, there is nothing for the search engine to spider and index. We have this battle all the time, pretty vs functional....!

Silver Buckle Services has spent money on the ranking services of SEO specialists and not seen any difference in our stats. We have however, seen our website stats change radically when we do Constant Contact (e-newsletter) emailings to our clients with announcements or give aways or even when we use Facebook to talk about a service or when we write on our blog. So at Silver Buckle Services, we spend our time working on those things rather than improving our search engine results. Every client thinks that search engine placement - the higher the ranking the better. I disagree slightly simply because, I think people searching for horse related items take price, and quality more into effect when searching for an item than if it appeared first in the search engine results list. I don't necessarily buy from the first horse products company on the list, I search and look page to page and find what I am looking for, then find the best price, shipping options and quality of what I am looking to buy.

Here are some suggestions:
1) Spruce your home page design - make sure you are using your keywords in real sentences on your web pages

2) Check our keywords and your description on your webpage, make sure you are using the common language a user would use to search for you on your keywords and in your description.

3) Write more content about your equine store, products, or services. Create pages like a equine blog page where you just write about how to use the products, how to clean them, the best way to store them etc. The more natural language you use on your site using your key words in a real sentence, the better your site will rank in the search engines.

3) Use facebook and Constant Contact to spread the news about your articles you write.

4) buy more domain names that are displaying your keyword names like www.affordablehorseblankets.com instead of just getting your company name in your domain name. The more equestrian domains you have tied to your site, the more the search engines tie in your rankings. Example for SilverBuckleServices.com we could also have www.websitesforhorses.com or www.logosandmarketingforhorses.com and www.equinewebsitedesignservices.com

We can't say it enough ----- Content is KING!
Spending time to have good content on your business website is the single most improvement you can make for your business. It not only will help your clients and potential clients learn more about you, it will improve your search engine results in the process. Your website content should be appealing to your audience and written in easy to understand, natural language. When writing about your equestrian company, service or organization put yourself in their shoes, what would they want to know, what would be interesting to them and what would keep them coming back for more, that is the secret to a good website. Notice in throughout this equine marketing blog article, I did something tricky, I included the words, Horse Industry, Equine, Marketing, Horses, Equestrian several times in real sentences, without it being redundant. I also included outside links in the article, those outside links help rankings - this kind of writing is the writing you need to do to be successful in your rankings!

]]><![CDATA[Free E-Newsletter Setup Offer]]>Tue, 24 May 2011 09:49:25 -0800http://www.silverbuckleservices.com/1/post/2011/05/free-e-newsletter-setup-offer.html

The recent epidemic of the Equine EHV-1/EHM virus has brought to our attention the importance of quickly reaching people via email to effectively share information regarding the epidemic, show cancellation information, facility quarantines or updates on how to keep your horses safe. We have received emails from Veterinarians, Riding Facilities, Show Managers, Breed Clubs, and Organizations like the American Paint Horse Association and American Horse Council among others, who are helping to spread the news about their particular situation. During this epidemic, the technology of email mass communication via customer, member and contact lists has proven invaluable to get the word out to the horse community-and will hopefully keep horse owners better informed. This situation has had a tremendous impact on our already hard hit equine industry, it has affected all of us and has weighed heavy on our hearts-even more particularly for Silver Buckle Services as we reside and show in states that have affected horses. To help we would like to offer FREE e-newsletter setup and design for any Veterinarians, Facility owners, Show Managers, Horse Trainers, clubs or organizations who might benefit from utilizing a mass emailing system to report their particular situations or need to share news. Remember, reporting everything is okay is just as important as letting people know there is a problem. Silver Buckle Services would like to help reduce this potential epidemic along with any further repercussions from it.

In the case of an emergency, it is helpful to have lists of contacts handy to broadcast news. Silver Buckle Services will set up a contact database from your existing email lists and will design a template for you to keep your contacts informed. You can have separate lists of emails, for example: a list for boarders, a list of show contacts and a list of clients. You can send to all or just a selection of the lists. This includes a custom template so the emails that your contacts receive are nicely formatted with your logo and branding

The e-newsletter system sends out the emails from a separate server so it doesn't tie up your desktop email account while sending out to 100's of contacts and has reciprocity agreements with other servers (like yahoo, aol, msn, etc) to ensure that your emails are delivered and not relegated to "junk or spam" folders. Naturally all of your contacts would remain confidential and for your use exclusively.

The email database system has a low monthly fee through our preferred email newsletter provider.

Please contact us if you feel this would be a useful tool for your situation and would like to have us set something up. Also, please feel free to forward this offer to any of your colleagues or friends who you feel may benefit. The offer of FREE set up will be extended to them as well.

Best Regards;
Kasha & Melissa
Silver Buckle Services

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