As one of Iowa's premier vacation destinations, Storm Lake is a small city with big sophistication.  Interested in merging three websites, the Storm Lake Chamber, Tourism and  Area Development came to Blue Compass to create the Storm Lake United website.  This reorganization is presented with a seasonal design concept, which adjusts to reflect the seasonal offerings of Storm Lake, Iowa.  With the importance to put the control into each Storm Lake United department, Blue Compass integrated their powerful Content Management System into a custom website design that showcases the local scenery.  Other functionality includes a community calendar, audience based news article system, and social media integration.

"It has been a pleasure for us at Storm Lake United to work with all of the staff at Blue Compass.  We knew our website was going to be a whole new challenge for any web company, but Blue Compass seemed to make it a very easy, pain-free process for everyone involved.  Whenever we had a question or concern, the staff at Blue Compass was never more than a phone call or email away.

One of our favorite features, is the content management system.  In the past, Storm Lake United has always had to go through the website provider to update the site; however, our staff can now update the website on our own, which was one of our biggest goals.  It is so easy to use, and it's a carefree process to update our site that is ever changing with up-to-date information.

Blue Compass has been very attentive to our wants and needs, listened to our concerns, and provided avenues on our website that make it very user friendly.  We couldn't be more pleased with the functionality of the website, and their creativeness exceeded all of our expectations.

We are proud to say that Blue Compass was our website designer, and we are very eager to continue working with them on future print and media design needs."

Kelli Berg | Marketing & Activities Director, Storm Lake United

You can check out the new site at www.visitstormlake.com!

Iowa's most listened to radio station has set up a great way for listeners to interact with their "talk-jockeys" and compete for a high score with the new Whack-a-Jock online game. 

Players can compete against Newsradio 1040 WHO personalities, and the world, with online leaderboards. If you place within the top 50 scores, enter your name for a place on the leaderboards... and see if you can beat our high score of 1,160 points! Players can also easily share the game with friends through Facebook, Twitter, and Email. 

"WHO Radio has had the opportunity to work with Blue Compass on two different applications for our website. Both were huge hits and traffic builders for WHO Radio. The level of creativity shown, along with the ability to deliver a superior product makes it easy for me to recommend Blue Compass. I look forward to seeing what they will come up with next."

Check it out at whackajock.com!

Wish your site was getting more visits? Tired of hardly showing up in Google? Looking for a way to get noticed online? One of the best ways to make you website rank higher in search engines is link building.

Link building is simply getting other websites to link to yours. The more links you get from websites, the more favorably Google, Bing, and Yahoo! will rank your website. Not all incoming links are equal, however - the higher the page rank of the site that links to you, the better. Quality, established websites are much more effective in impressing search engines than a small, rarely updated blogs.

Although very important, building links to your website can be extremely difficult and time consuming. Here are some of the top ways to link build:

10. Have a "link-exchange". Get a friendly website to link to yours while you link to theirs in exchange. Just remember that typically the more outgoing links a websites has, the less valuable each link is.

9. Be easy to link to. Fill your website with copy that is concise, easy-to-read, and informative. If you have interesting information on your website, others will be more inclined to link to it.

8. Target quality websites. Links from established websites are best - .gov .org and .edu sites are best as they are typically looked favorably upon by search engines.

7. Register with online directories. Also, search for online directories specific to your industry.

6. Stay away from bad websites. Any site linking to you that's seedy or has been associated with spam or viruses can negatively affect your rankings.

5. Submit your news,  blog articles and press releases to an industry news site.

4. Get local business links. Get links from your chamber of commerce, local business partners or vendors, or join Better Business Bureau.

3. Create a name for yourself. Establish a Wikipedia article on your company or business, join Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups. Each can provide a good link to your website.

2. Ensure that the text in your incoming links contains keywords that you want related to your business or organization. Search engines will associate these keywords with your website.

1. Have an attractive, easy-to-use, and informative website. The number one way to get people to link to your website is to have a website worth linking to. 

Learn more about how to get your website ranked higher with search engines here! 

Website analytics are a wonderful thing. They allow you to see who is visiting your website, where they are located, how long they stay, what pages they look at, and so much more. We help make sense of these stats in easy-to-read reports for many of our clients, so of course we also follow our own website performance.

A great stat to watch is "referring sites" (websites that link to your site) which can be a wonderful source of web traffic. Occasionally we notice visitors sent to us from a site like GolfShoppingGuide.com. Upon closer inspection, it's easy to see why: 

Many years ago, our website - Bluecompass.com - was actually "the premier electronic marketplace for resort accommodations," offering cabins, condos, inns, and other lodging options to vacationers. 

We aren't mistaken for a vacation company too often these days, but tracking our web stats cetainly leads to some interesting info. 

Learn more about how we can help you see who is coming to your website!