From Chateau Montelena to Chateau Ste. Michelle, FINE has designed and developed winery websites for archetypes throughout the industry. When FINE acquired Big Daylight in 2011 and established a search engine marketing division, the immediate opportunity was to move beyond building glamorous online destinations and focus on directing traffic to them. We’ve learned much about how to best approach SEO and online marketing for wineries.

One of the first revelations – many wineries simply do not own results around their OWN BRAND online. This goes above and beyond the name of your winery, and extends to every type of wine and release date featured on your website. It’s not that you don’t want wine.com or snooth.com to mention your product, it’s that ranking more highly allows you to tell your story first, especially if you also sell your wines online. With that in mind, here’s a taste of some frequently asked wine and search questions:

What should I do about age verification?

When it comes to SEO, the home page is all-important. So what happens when you are required to slap an age-verification on your homepage? We certainly don’t want Google to think your site is about “You must be 21 years of age or older to enter. Please select your date of birth below.” Your homepage also must resolve at http://www.yourdomain.com, and not redirect to http://www.yourdomain.com/ageverification.

FINE has handled this by creating a clever pop-up screen that allows the user to enter their age, while still providing plenty of search-engine friendly content directly on the homepage. You can see this in action on several FINE websites, including this Napa Valley winery.

Do I need to create a unique page for every type of wine?

YES. Don’t make the mistake of listing various types of wine on one page, instead of creating a page for each type. It may be hard for your 2007 Chardonnay to position if you haven’t really devoted a page to it. Other online retailers selling your own wine (along with tons of others) could beat you!

But I put all my tasting notes in PDFs! It’s so much easier to link to all of these from one page!

You’re right. That is easier. But sometimes building a SEO-friendly site takes some time and elbow grease. We guarantee it will be worth your while to take that fabulous PDF content, put it in a real HTML page instead, and then also continue to offer PDFs for download and printing. Some SEOs might advise you to use robots.txt or other methods to block the PDFs from being indexed since they would be duplicate content to the main pages, but honestly, Google is smart enough to figure this out on their own.

I want to position on Napa Valley Winery. And also Napa Valley Wines. How do I do that? Give me the secret…
Honestly, that is going to be very hard. This is what we call a “Vanity Term”. It’s an instance where you are not only competing against other wineries, but information sites, tour sites, and even hotels.  It looks so attractive and shiny, but remember that every rose has its thorn. If you want to position on that term and currently are nowhere even in the top 30, be prepared envision someone working on this 8 hours a day for an indefinite amount of time, building content and links. Probably 2 people.

Instead of focusing on on vanity terms, we suggest you focus on keywords specific to YOU. You will find these terms in the long tail, and the long tail can bring you more traffic than any vanity term ever would. This superb chart and SEO article from SEOMoz (we encourage you to subscribe to this site) illustrates this in more depth:

I want more people to come for wine tastings, and perform better in local search.
Local search is one of the best places a winery can work to optimize your brand and website. See this separate article we wrote, all about Local SEO. Also, don’t forget the huge power of Online Reviews. Also consider linking to your Google Places page from the footer of your website.

Any other tips I should know about?
Be sure to give every page on your website a unique Title Tag and Meta Description Tag that contains important keywords while also sounding great for users. Ideally you will write these by hand yourself, but if not, then create intelligent rules that auto-populate tags to make them as descriptive as possible. Back to that 2007 Chardonnay – if you created a page for it, but didn’t optimize the title tag or description (which instead only say the name of your winery), you’ve really reduced overall relevance for that page.

Also, if you sell your wine online, be sure you have registered and submitted a Google Merchant Feed.

Of course, from URL structure to website navigation, there are a variety of other factors that encompass creating a search-friendly website. But for those who run winery websites, these considerations may help guide you toward the traffic you so richly deserve.

Fullscreen HTML5 Video
Yeah you heard me!

Top 6 HTML5 Trends in 2011
Mobile first, responsive design and offline caching, oh my!

Embedded Tweets
Copy/paste-able HTML for Twitter.

Facebook to Launch a Subscribe Button for Websites
“Publishers will be able to add the button to their websites, much like they do with the Twitter “follow” button today, allowing users one-click access to a person’s public updates.”

The Challenges of Working Remotely
Sam Brown discusses his person experience with working remotely.

A 404 Page with Class
Kudos to mint.com for helping Justin out.

Chrome Take Their Dev Tools to the Next Level (Again)
Paul Irish gives a tour of some of the new features.

They started in San Francisco 115 years ago. Since then, they’ve inspired what is now known as the craft brewing industry. Those who know them may know only of their signature brand, Anchor Steam. But Anchor Brewing is a brewcraft icon and innovator on many fronts, with legions of loyal fans. And their web and digital environment goes a long way to showing it as never before.

The Anchor Brewing Website
Like their beer, this site combines rich history and traditional process with some state of the art touches. Dramatic imagery from Anchor’s archives is used throughout. A drop-down “beer shelf” helps you navigate between beers using the bottles, a “Beer is Social” tab integrates to/from social media channels to make the brewery website a hub of activity. It’s all constructed using the latest technology brewcraft, some fancy javascript, which allows you to do things like navigate between images by pushing buttons or just scrolling.  A new blog is set to roll out in coming weeks, to house more history and brewcraft content than ever. Behind it all, a content management system helps keep the words and pictures fresh across the site and social media channels.

Social Media Management (Facebook, Twitter)
Anchor’s social media strategy has already tapped into significant latent demand. It turns out Anchor already has thousands of fans on Facebook that have been waiting patiently (on sites setup independently to celebrate Anchor Steam and Anchor Brewing) for Anchor to jump in. Anchor’s Facebook and Twitter presence inspired thousands of new followers in the first 2 weeks after their first ever post (“Anchor Brewing started in San Francisco 115 years ago. Then we started in social media 107 characters ago.”) Now, Anchor’s set to socialize with Anchor fans everywhere through both channels, and sharing a steady stream of FINE-generated Anchor updates and content including a calendar of new content and promotions. A new Facebook tab will be launching within a couple weeks.

In all, the Anchor digital presence is a significant step toward bringing this venerable brand to life online in multiple ways (with their distilling and corporate sites to follow). Put simply, it sets the standard for Anchor’s industry, just as they’ve always done with their products.

It’s safe to say that FINE knows and loves the wine industry, having done perhaps more custom winery sites than any company on earth.  It’s an interesting mix of the old – dusty bottles in a basement, wooden barrels made by hand, revered traditions – and the new – vineyard management with satellites, online marketing, the chemistry of oenology.  Squarely in the “new” camp comes a story (originally from The Guardian) that I recently came across about Greenbottle, a UK firm that is set to start selling a paper wine bottle.

Photo: Felix Clay

Certainly, there’s many questions to be answered.  Would this package allow the wine to age properly, for one.  But 10% of the the carbon footprint of a traditional glass bottle in manufacturing and shipping?  Compostable? And keeps the wine in pristine condition?   What’s not to love?

Regardless of the benefits of this new development in packaging, I think this story emphasizes something even more important – the real test is whether or not it takes hold with consumers.   Is it really that important to consumers to have their wine poured from glass, or is it matter of comfort and expectation?   Does a paper bottle make the wine seem like a commodity, rather than a premium product?   How can wineries (and their partners like FINE) help move the needle of consumer preference for a technology (glass bottles) that has been around nearly as long as people have been making wine?

As part of Music Hackday 2011, Hannah Donovan, Lindsay Eyink, and Matthew Ogle cobbled together (in less than 24 hours) this great little tool that pairs a drink with an artist. It works impressively well – and some of the results are hilarious:

LCD Soundsystem = one bottle of vodka, neat
Bob Dylan = 8oz. Sipsmith Gin, 8oz. Cough Syrup (really?)

Others are right on:

Townes Van Zandt = 1 bottle Miller High Life
Atlas Sound = 1 Brooklyn Lager

Check it out at http://www.drinkify.org

http://www.hyundai-veloster.eu/

Recently, several of the FINE family decided to stop shaving their upper lips, daring ridicule and a possible descent into madness.

Why would these brave souls do such a thing?  Once upon a time (think Tom Selleck during the Magnum P.I. years)  a bristly upper lip stood for something.  And now, they will again.  Our moustaches will become walking, talking billboards to raise awareness, understanding and funding for support of male health issues.

Let’s be honest. Men typically take a “put a bandage on it and get back out there” approach to their health.  But the statistics are shocking. For example:

- The average life expectancy for men is five years less than women (presently 77 years old compared to 82).

- 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime and 1 in 3 women will be.

- Evidence suggests that about a third of the 571,950 cancer deaths expected to occur will be related to obesity, physical inactivity, poor nutrition and thus could be prevented.

- 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.

Interested in learning more about Movember, men’s health in general, or how you can help?  Please visit our Mo’Space page:

http://mobro.co/finedesigngroup

And really, “I might look silly, but I’m growing this moustache for charity” is a much better ice-breaker than “Let’s talk about your prostate.”

Microsoft recently released this 6-minute, futuristic video that envisions the changing shape of technology in our lives. The video imagines a world in which touch screens and mobile devices pervade; acting as assistants, organizers, communicators, and more. It is at once ‘far out’ and not-that far off. Some nice interface graphics were created, and some really neat concepts are shown. If one thing is clear from this video, it is that the lovely (but certainly already overly-used) typeface Gotham will rule the world.

NETHACK – The greatest game you will ever play
A very cool single page site with effects, on one of the most addictive games.

Logos in CSS3 only
No images. No JS. Just CSS.

The Hubble Blew My Mind
Last night, around 8:30pm, I was sitting in my backyard with my 9 yr. old daughter, Maddie. We were looking at stars, trying to identify constellations, when one of them started moving…

The Picasso of …
On the anniversary of Picasso’s 130th birthday a list of Picasso cliches. Brought to you by the Picasso of Link Clipping.

Injustice for all: The Lou Reed/Metallica album
… It’s not really designed for people who like music. It sounds like what it is: an elderly misanthrope reciting paradoxical aphorisms over a collection of repetitive, adrenalized sludge licks.

Mobile apps must die!
Frog’s creative director Scott Jenson argues that mobile apps must die. He explains why the overall model of native apps is holding us back and that they shouldn’t be the default approach.

Walking in CSS3
A man walking in CSS3, that is all.

NewsBlur
A whole lot of information going on!

Think with Google
A place where innovators, experts and Google’s homegrown visionaries lend their insights and outlook on the digital future.

The great thing about Halloween is its power to make the most left-brained among us pause to celebrate the creative potential of costuming or carving a pumpkin. While you may cop out and go to the costume store to outfit yourself for the party, the pumpkin in particular is a tried and true call to creative action. We answered the call in our Portland office last week. There’s still time for you to express yourself in the pumpkin medium, too, whether for personal or professional reasons. We’ve supplied a few inspirational photos and links to get you started.

Start With Science Friday’s Inspirational Video.
If your brand needs advanced pumpkinometry, seek professional Maniac Pumpkin Carvers.

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