Archive for May, 2009
Friday, May 29th, 2009
And it makes it clear to businesses that if you are still driving around a 1994 Web site that it’s starting to look as old and crusty as a 1994 car is about now. Executives understand this. It’s a rare executive who drives an old car around. Most like to have the latest expensive car to get to work in.
Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.
Driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often.
Scoble has some other things to say about how the web is changing everyday, but this concept, the idea that having an old web site is like driving an old car hit me. Talking about the year makes more sense to people. It’s easier to understand than “Web 2.0″ or whatever. There are a lot of things changing out there, every day, and it’s hard to keep up with it all. People who are not aware of the daily grinding of the web aren’t keeping up with the details and I don’t expect them too.
The concept that it might change every year makes sense though. We don’t all drive the most expensive or the latest model car, but we are at least aware that some people have “nice” cars and other people drive “beaters”. They change slowly, over the years, from “nice” to “beater, just like your web site.
Old cars break down more often. They aren’t as reliable as new ones. When we’re talking about web sites for your business, old cars look bad and give a bad impression of your business. They don’t do all the things that people are expecting them to do. Features that other sites have, are missing. People see your site that was designed in 2002 and think that maybe your food isn’t quite as fresh as it should be or your bathrooms aren’t quite as clean as they should be or your service won’t really be up to the standard that they are looking for.
Have you noticed your web site recently? Is it a 1994 model? Would you like to trade it in on a newer 2009 model with tire pressure sensors, hands free calling, and turn by turn navigation?
Send me an email and I’ll show you’ve available. We’ll get you driving off the lot today, in a brand new web site that everyone will admire.
Read the entire article at:
http://scobleizer.com/2009/05/29/kara-is-wrong-about-2010web/#comments
Posted in business |
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
I’m riding my bike at the beach today, like I do multiple times a week, and the parking lot where I park is filled up with TV crew trucks. I find a new place to park and go do my bike ride. I pass them all set up on the beach with the big lights and reflectors and useless people standing around watching. As I come back past them, I hear a couple big, military helicopters coming.
When does this ever happen?
I stop and watch the large, loud helicopters fly past the crew shooting the commercial on the beach where I always ride and I think to myself, “when does this ever happen?”.
To get noticed in this world, you need to stand out and be unique. If I were selling you marketing, I’d say you need a USP, or unique sales position. What makes you unique? Why should anyone notice you?
Are you special, just like everyone else? or are you special, just like you?
Why do people notice you?
Why do you want them to?
Posted in marketing |
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Go read these rules. They are correct for any one person, but more importantly for any small or local business that wants to make their way in the world of the Internet. They were true in 1994 and they are true today. Wise, wise advice.
by Aliza Sherman
Respect the Spirit of the ‘Net.
2. Listen. In the ’90s, the Golden Rule of posting to a Usenet Newsgroup or other online community was to listen first before speaking. Listening thoughtfully gives you a better sense of not only what people are saying but also how they are feeling. In virtual spaces where there are no visual cues, good listening skills become a powerful asset. Listening also helps you map out your current social media footprint and measure your marketing campaigns over time. The key to successful social media marketing is listening.
3. Add Value. Enter any online conversation with the aim of adding value. Before posting a message as a new participant in a forum, ask yourself: How is this providing value to the conversation? To the community? In some circles, talking about your product or service can be considered valuable, but in most, it is unwelcome and intrusive.
4. Respond. From the early days of setting up the first web presences for clients such as Origins and Dr. Atkins, my company outlined the importance of timely responses to any feedback or queries generated from those sites. The burden of response can be great, but it can be lessened by using the right tools and crowdsourcing answers. A quick response is more important than ever, and thanks to search tools, alert apps and other services, it is possible to achieve. Don’t be a dam in a conversation flow.
Read the entire article at:
http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/05/26/10-golden-rules-of-social-media/
Posted in marketing |
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Google has provided a way for you to manage how your business appears on Google Maps. You should use this tool so that your business is information is complete and accurate. It’s free and easy to use.
Why would you want to turn down free advertising?
Why would you want to turn down free advertising?
Each business listing in Google Maps is in fact a giant ‘cluster’ of information that we get from a few different places: Yellow Pages, for example, as well as other third-party providers. However, the basic information that you submit through the Local Business Center is the information that we trust the most. This means that it will appear instead of any basic information that we get from anywhere else. To make sure the basic information you submit is accurate, we’ll ask you to verify it first by contacting you at your business address or phone number.
You can add other information to your listing too — such as a description of your business, for example, as well as photos, reviews, or information about hours and parking costs — that will also appear above similar information from other providers.
Read the entire article at:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=21029&utm_source=fyiagencynews&utm_medium=blog
Posted in free |
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Ultimateworkathomedads.com commented on an article, so I checked out his site. Looks like he has a bunch of good advice. This article is near and dear to my heart. Go read it.
I recently had someone ask me to make some changes to a site that were completely irrelevant to their business. They had no time to write the sale copy for it, and wouldn’t let me write it, but they did want me to spend my time making some ambiguous graphic changes to it. They wanted it to “pop” more and make it greener.
Don't get distracted by shiny objects, even if they are embedded objects.
I wanted to talk about setting up a mailing list to gather prospects. They said they didn’t know what to write in the response emails. I said they need to have me do some SEO so people would find the site. They wanted to go over the wording, even though they had no time to write anything better.
I had another recent client tell me that they didn’t want any SEO at all. This site was not aimed at surfers as much as it was a back up to sales people in the field who could give out the URL and support their claims. Different business model than I’m used to, but absolutely correct for their business.
It’s best to focus on why you have a site, then only work towards those goals. Don’t get distracted by shiny objects, even if they are embedded objects. You need to gather email addresses, make a sales pitch, get people to call, or whatever you want to accomplish. Focus, focus, focus.
Let’s make it work, people. – Tim Gunn
Website Design – Beauty or Business?
What is the purpose of YOUR website?
* Are you attracting art lovers to see how great your site looks OR are you creating a business?
* Do you use lots of images and flash or do you focus on guiding the visitor to leave his or her name and email address so that you can build your business?
* Are you so creative in the look of the site that people forget why they found you and what they are doing on your site?
Is your site lost in Google’s shuffle or does the coding of your site enhance the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) automatically?
Are you asking the viewer to do several things while visiting your site and then they get confused (A confused mind always says NO) or do you have ONE purpose for your site?
Read the entire article at:
http://ultimateworkathomedads.com/gold/archives/1126
Posted in design |
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Recently, we had a 4.7 earthquake. The epicenter was 4 miles from my house and 8 miles deep. I was working quietly on my computer in my office, while my lovely wife was watching TV in the bedroom. When it happened, I heard a scream from the bedroom and then saw my wife run through my office on her way out the front door and into the front yard. 
Southern California has it's own earthquake page, you know.
Of course, I was much more rational in my reaction. I updated my Facebook status while the house was still shaking.
The next thing I did was check the earthquake map on the web. Southern California has it’s own earthquake page, you know. It wasn’t there yet. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. There it was! It reported it as a 5.0 and later changed it to 4.7.
Then I joined my wife on the front yard where she was meeting new friends who also ran out of their homes
The point? You need to be immediate and important with your information on the net. Be the source. Have what people are looking for right now. If you are the place to go to get it, then people will go there. If you sell widgets, make a directory of all the sources of widgets and people will come to you first.
Own it.
Posted in content |
Monday, May 18th, 2009
In doing research and testing to find out what works and what doesn’t in SEO, one concept keeps coming up. It’s very straight forward. It makes sense. It’s easy to do. Well, maybe not easy, but it’s not complicated. It’s simple.
You’ll hear a lot about off site optimization, and getting links to your site really is most effective way to increase your page rank. But it’s difficult.
The best and simplest way to SEO your web site is to put more content on it and link all of those pages together using your keywords.
I’ve heard about LSI and how it doesn’t work because Google doesn’t really use it. I then heard about the term “
referential integrity seo” and it makes sense. It basically means that all of the pages in your site refer to all the other pages inside your site. That might be over simplified, but it’s the general concept as I understand it.
The one fact that everyone seems to agree on, and what has multiple benefits for SEO, is a lot of content. If you have a lot of content, then:
1. You can link all of that content together and Google sees those links.
2. There’s a higher chance that you’ll have good stuff and someone will link to it.
3. Google seems to rank sites with lots of content higher than smaller sites.
If you write great content, that helps, but it almost seems that quantity is more important than quality. Google counts words and links and pages. It can’t tell if you are a great writer or not.
The best and simplest way to SEO your web site is to put more content on it and link all of those pages together using your keywords. It works.
Posted in SEO |
Monday, May 18th, 2009
Last Friday night, we were driving down PCH and passed a bus going the other way. It was half full of older people, mostly with gray hair. The destination at the top of the front of the bus read “NOWHERE”. I hope it was a party bus and not a comment on their lives.
On a day trip, we drove by the Lake Casitas Campground. Inside the fence of the campground, located next to the lake, was a “water park”, complete with water slide. Let’s get closer to nature by sliding down a fiberglass tube in chlorinated water.
On Main Street in my small town, there’s been a vegetarian restaurant open for a few years. There was never very many people in it. We drove by last night and it’s got a new owner who serves BBQ. There were a ton of people. Give the people what they want and you’ll make money.
Posted in other |
Monday, May 18th, 2009
I own the site at www.survivor.com. I make some money from advertising and try to create as much content as I can by linking to other people who also talk about the show.
Last night was the finale, which really hits my servers hard, so I stay close and baby sit them to make sure they keep working OK. There’s a peak of traffic during the show, then the next day, everyone stops by and reads all about what happened the night before. The finale and the day after are the two biggest days of the year.
Last night, JT won over his best friend, Stephan. The warrior beat the wizard.
Last night, JT won over his best friend, Stephan. The warrior beat the wizard. They worked together for the whole game, from day 3 and made it to the very end together.
You need to listen to the interview I did with Coach. He was the season stand out for his “over the top” behavior and abundant arrogance. Everyone hated him and we all love to hate someone.
I want to point out the if you search for “survivor” in Google, survivor.com is the second listing, behind the official CBS site. I’ve worked long and hard at that and no other fan site has beat me for that competitive keyword.
Last night, JT won with one tribal council. He made a million dollars in an instant for the work he did over 39 days.
SEO isn’t like that. It’s a new battle everyday. You can be on a trend and do well over time, but it’s still a daily battle. It takes a long time of doing the right thing, over and over again, to make it to the top, and then someone else can come along and take it away from you anytime, if you don’t watch it.
I wish we could all win a million dollars in one day. With SEO, we can get the million, but it will take a while. Slow and steady for the long haul will be successful, but you never really “win” and you never really “lose”.
It’s a process that never ends.
Posted in SEO |
Monday, May 18th, 2009
My wife and I got to take a day off, so we drove up the coast to Carpenteria to check out antique stores (of course). The night before we left, like a good web developers wife, she checked Google for a list of antique stores in the town. We were going on a Monday, which is a popular day for them to be closed. She wanted to check to be sure they were open.
First issue that she had was that not all of the listings for web pages from the shops themselves. There were a lot of yellow pages and local directories kinds of listings. From those, she got to most of the shop’s web pages. Hello? Why would your own web site not be listed first for YOUR BUSINESS? Why? I can’t comprehend.
Victoria took this photo of an actual sign.
We're sorry you will be open too.
So, after digging through all of the random listings to get to the shop web sites, she checks their hours. Of the first 10 shops, how many do you think had their hours listed? You know, like “We’re open every day from 10am to 5pm”. Something like that. Was that hard to type? Did it take you a long time to read?
OK, out of 10 shops, there were exactly none of them that listed their hours. None. Zero. No one.
Un-freakin-believable.
This is like paying for a listing in the yellow pages and not putting your phone number in. Please, if nothing else, please put your hours into your web site. Probably next to your contact information that you have on every page is a good place to do that. What? You don’t have contact info on every page?
Sigh.
Of course, I’ve been guilty of this as many times as I’ve seen other people do it. It’s easy to forget the basics. Ask yourself, why do you want a web site? What do you expect it to do for you? Then, how will it do it?
If you want customers to come into your store, then you need the address, phone, and hours on the site. If you want to make money from advertising, then you need to have the advertising HTML tags in the site.
It’s all really simple, but easy to forget. This is our reminder.
Posted in marketing |
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
I was just doing some research about SEO, search engine optimization, and learned that the lowly robots.txt can help your efforts.
You do have a robots.txt file, correct? That’s the text file that tells the nice robots where they can and can’t go on your site. It’s easy to create in a text editor, that is, not MS Word, but something like TextPad.
Here’s the one I just updated for this site: www.walton.com/robots.txt.
The text file that tells the nice robots where they can and can't go on your site.
You can use it to disallow search engines, the robots, from indexing files that you specify. I learned that it’s a good idea to disallow images, zip files, pdf files, swf or Flash files, as well as directories that contain your javascript and stylesheets.
Javascript and the Stylesheets (.css files) should be used externally and stored in a separate folder. Use an “include” statement in your web pages to link to them. This will also cut down on the amount of code you have stuffed into that poor web page. Google cares about “code to content” ratio and you could be penalized for too much “stuff” that isn’t content.
You would also put your images and other files in specific folders, just as a housekeeping task. Keep the place organized.
Disallow the robots from indexing those folders. It’ll save time and keep you from possible indexing errors. You want the robots to concentrate on your “money pages” and not on all these extra files.
The bad robots do exactly what they are told not to do.
See how easy and accessible that file is? That’s so they can get at it easily. That also means that your competition and hackers can get at it.
Don’t use it to hide sensitive folders or people will know right where to look for it. Be aware that as much as the “good” robots do as they are told, the “bad” robots do exactly what they are told not to do. Just be careful.
If you tell the robots where to go, they will be happier, your content will be indexed better, and you will have better results on the search engine results pages. As long as the robots don’t rise up and take over the world, we’ll be fine.
Posted in SEO |
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
This has nothing to do with small business web sites or SEO, except for finding the hotel we stayed at and using Yelp to find places to eat and maybe, well, maybe this does have to do with small business web sites.
The Hotel
Who could use toilet paper like this?
Last Sunday was our 23rd wedding anniversary. We drove up to Santa Barbara for a romantic interlude. I picked the hotel from Google maps, based on ratings. I’ve never liked going to new hotels because they never quite meet your expectations. This one had 4.5 stars so I hoped for the best. Their
web site looked good and I’ve been known to disregard a business strictly base on their web site design.
We stayed 2 blocks from the beach, at Harbor House Inn which looked like it was built as a bunch of studio apartments in the 20′s. It could have gone either way, but when we walked into our room, we were surprised to see it had 10 foot ceilings, fresh paint, a full kitchen and a great bathroom. This place was great. We completely recommend it with no reservations, I mean, you should get a reservation if you’re coming here, but we really loved the place. We have a new favorite place to stay. The little folded ends on the toilet paper deserved a photo. We were going to save it, but in the middle of the night, I, um, didn’t.
Places To Eat
Joe's Cafe after dark
We had lunch at our favorite place in Santa Barbara,
Stella Mares. It’s so romantic, we drove here for Valentines Day. If you are ever near Santa Barbara, you need to eat at this place. It’s casual and romantic and has great food and it’s the first place I had
absinthe.
For dinner, we threw the dice and picked Joe’s Cafe. Notice how they don’t have a web site that comes up on the first page when you search for them? Why is that? The food was pretty good and the service was pretty good. I’d agree with the 4 star rating. Nothing to complain about and we had a good time. Cool sign any way.
Drive
We went for a drive, ended up down some cool roads outside of Lompoc. We love Lompoc. It’s a strange little city that grows flowers and has weird shops. It’s also home to the best food ever. Jalama Beach Cafe has the best hamburger in the world. Kobe beef and bacon. What else do you need? I can not say enough good things about this place. Great wine, great staff, great food. Nothing is bad here. You should take the time to drive here to eat. It’s that good. We’ve done a day drive just for this place. Yeah, it’s 2 and a half hours from home, but it’s worth it.
The best roads are like this.
We explored the roads outside of town and found some very cool places. One road was one lane wide and had flowers six feet high on both sides. There were some crazy birds flying in the sky with 3 foot wingspans. We sat and watched them for a while, looking over the flowers and listening to their calls. Life is good.
We stopped at Gaviota State Beach on the way back. Very cool little hidden away beach. Also worth a visit. There’s a creek that empties out into the ocean here, under the railroad bridge, high above.
Antiques
Getting wet at Gaviota State Beach
We all know that the only reason to go anywhere, is to look at and acquire antiques. Victoria did her share of that while I sat in the truck and watched videos on my iPhone about SEO and I learned a bunch of cool new tips to try out. She had one more antique store to go check out and when we got there it was closed. Did I mention that we live in an Arts and Crafts house built in 1916? and that we love old fixtures and stuff for the house?
As we drove around the corner, there was a long, white kitchen sink laying in the street, on a hand cart, next to a white plumber’s van.
We wanted that sink.
I pulled over and Victoria went to find the owner to see if they would part with it. We’ve paid good money in the past for stuff like this.
As I was waiting for her, I slowly realized that this was not a sink, but a urinal. Hmmm… I figure it’s at least worth something for scrap metal… Victoria found the guy, but she didn’t want a urinal. I’ve had a much closer personal relationship with urinals, so I urged her to get it. The guy was going to throw it away.
Dargen's Irish Pub in Santa Barbara
It came out of an Irish pub where they wanted to get rid of it because too many people were throwing up in it and clogging it up. The plumber suggested a garbage disposal in the bottom to fix that, but now it was laying in the street, awaiting its fate. I backed the truck up and in a few minutes, it was ours. You have to admit, this was a huge romantic gesture.
If anyone wants to buy an old, used, 6 foot long urinal from an Irish Pub, send me an email. If not, then it’s going to end up as a potting table in our backyard, or a sink in our backyard, or a fishpond in our backyard, or maybe as a urinal in our backyard. Who knows?
Posted in other |
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
We knocked out a quick and dirty web site for a friend of my wife’s yesterday. She gathers sea glass from our local beaches and make jewelry out of it. There’s some really beautiful stuff that she’s got for sale.
Sea glass jewelry has been around for as long as we have been making glass.
We did a basic installation of WordPress on her web host. We threw a basic template together, grabbing some images that we had. There’s not a lot of polish on it, but it still looks really nice, (I think, anyway.)
We haven’t even done any SEO on it yet. She needed it up by this morning because she’s selling at a fair today and was handing out information sheets with the URL on it. I quit working on it and went to bed when it was done enough for people to look at. We’ll polish it up a bit later.
This build would be less than the $900 per my Web Design and Development page. We still have a bit of work to do, so this would have been cheaper.
Go check out her jewelry.
I hope you’ll find my products to be a welcome addition of adornment that will inspire the mystical and historical. Sea glass jewelry has been around for as long as we have been making glass. Cleopatra wore glass as jewelry. Often when I’m making a piece I imagine if this would be favored by the famous Egyptian Queen.
Read the entire article at:
www.mermaidspurseseaglass.com
Posted in web site build |
Friday, May 1st, 2009
You how I was bragging the other day about how all this web development stuff was child’s play for me? About how I’ve been doing it since 1994?
Well, pride goes before the fail.
Well, pride goes before the fail.
When I pushed the new site design live, I was so excited. I had polished it for days to get it looking just right. I was so proud. I put it out there for the world to see and what happens? I get guest published the next day in
ChurchCrunch! More traffic! I was just so relieved that I had the shiny new site ready for all the new visitors.
I checked Google Analytics the next day. (You do have Analytics set up, don’t you?) My traffic went down! What happened? I watched for another day and traffic was still down! Something must be happening, but what?
Then it hit me.
I forgot to put the Analytics tags into my new template files.
I was so worried about how the buttons looked and cross platform testing that I forgot the basics.
When you ever publish a new site, go over the checklist and make sure that you didn’t forget the basic stuff. I’ll try to get together and publish a good checklist for pre-launch web sites in another post.
Now, I’ll just sit quietly in the corner.
Posted in statistics |
