Sturgeon Bay Visitor Center and Signalfire have completed the 2010 Exclusive Visitor’s Guide. This full color, 40-page guide to Sturgeon Bay, Door County is an incredible handbook for anyone traveling to the largest city in Door County. Full of helpful resources such as descriptions of romantic bed & breakfasts, family-friendly resorts, delicious restaurants, charming shops, cozy coffee shops, spectacular wineries and every little secret this warm community has to offer.

Signalfire has collaborated with the SBVC since 2006 to manage, design and produce this community guide, but the partnership goes much deeper. Beyond just the guide, Signalfire launched www.SturgeonBay.net in 2009—the over 300-page website encompassed individual pages for each member, seasonal changes to the design, calendars, online registration and payment for events, and an easy to use interface for maintaining the site.

Signalfire has also provided comprehensive social media management for SBVC for event promotion, brand listening and overall customer service. From multiple Facebook Fan Pages to event-themed Twitter accounts (even introducing Foursquare to Door County) Signalfire’s relationship with SBVC is on many levels and has brought many successes.

Signalfire brings a spectrum of services and expertise to the tourism and resort industries. Contact us today to learn how Signalfire can help.

Check out the full story at the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

What Does This Mean? In a Word—Everything.

For many years, clients and developers have always wondered what Google uses and what Google doesn’t. This posting changes everything. For one of the first times, Google tips their hand slightly at their process. While this may not be news to many hard-core SEO’ers, for the average small business owner—this is huge.

If Google isn’t using keyword metatags, are they useful? Yes and no. Some search engines may still use the laundry list of words and names crammed into the head tag section of a website. However, more and more search engines look to the content, the header tags and alt tags in the site. With search engines focusing on headers and alt tags, solid content is more important than ever.

One of the quickest growing axioms of web development is: “If you want to improve your website, improve your writing.” There’s good reason for it—search engines look at your content for keywords, terminology and other critical elements in weighing the performance of your site. Sloppy writing, writing with too little (or too much) jargon, or under-developing your site’s content suddenly proves hazardous.

A great way to improve your site during construction or during a redevelopment is to bring on a web copywriter. Have him or her review the content for keywords usage, for appropriate use of headers and for effective use of image tagging. Take the additional time to lay out a strategy for site architecture and content. The minimal cost addition may mean head and shoulders improvement in organic SEO performance.