Archive for July, 2009
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Here is some good advice about how to build links, or more accurately, when to build links. Check out their chart on the original page.
3 Common Link Building Strategies
Spiky – If the spikes are associated with news and viral marketing then that is not a big problem, but if they are sorta bought links, low quality links, etc. then this is sorta the worst way to do it.
Linear – Not as bad as spiky…but not as good as geometric. this is where a webmaster tries to build the same number of links each month.
Geometric – This is where link building starts off slow, but then keeps getting better each month.
If a website is a real website that is generally a useful utility and did not do any viral marketing this would be the most natural profile of how to build links
The reason links keep building faster is that exposure breeds more exposure and if the site is genuinely useful and original some people will link to it even without you asking. This phenomenon can be described through understanding cumulative advantage and self-reinforcing authority.
Plus as you build a useful site and do some social networking it builds social capital that can be leveraged when doing future promotions of featured content.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.seobook.com/link-growth-profile
Posted in SEO |
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
I don’t think I was clear in the post below about one part of the process.
The goal in high school was to get the friends of the people you wanted to like you to like you first. Then they would get those people to like you too.
Don’t go after the target first. Go after the friends of the target.
You want to get links from people who link to your competitors, not so much directly from your competitors. That wouldn’t be bad. It would actually be great, but not as easy to do.
Use Site Explorer to explore your competitors in-bound links. Find out who links to them, then make efforts to get them to link to you also. If they like what your competitors have, they should like what you have also.
This is a flanking attack instead of the frontal attack, and by “attack”, I mean “love”.
Methods to get people to link to you include: linking to them, commenting on their site, writing posts about them that link to them, and possibly emailing them. Make it real. Make it personal. Make it valuable for them. You be nice and, generally, they’ll be nice back.
Hope the clears things up a bit.
Posted in SEO |
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
Go to that web page at Yahoo. You probably have to log in with your Yahoo ID. Make one up if you have to because this page is more powerful than any other for getting links to your site.
Here’s how to build traffic to your site. The strategy is to find out who is getting the traffic for your keywords now, essentially, your competitors. Next, find out who is linking to them. Last, get those people to link to you too.
Step One
Do a search for the keyword that you want to be found for. If there are a few variations, try them all. Note who comes up on the front page. By “note”, I mean actually write them down on a piece of paper or write them into a text file. You want to know their name and their URL. Do this for all of the keywords and review who comes up the most.
Step Two
Use the Site Explorer at Yahoo to find out who is linking to them. Their could be thousands of links and you may not want to write them all down. You can export the first thousand results to a TSV file.
Type in their URL. Browse through their inbound links. Make sure that the settings at the top of the page are for “From All Pages” and to “Entire Site”. That’s all links from anywhere out there to anywhere on the site.
Now, you’ll have to use some thought while you review these links. How many are there? Are there ways to group them? Are there a lot on a few sites or a few from a lot of sites? Are they from his cousin or from real web sites? Browse through them all, trying to see if there’s any sense of order to them. Click on a few links to see where they are located in the remote site. Are they in a sidebar of a site with thousands of pages generating thousands of links from one site?
Step Three
Do you remember in high school when you wanted to be friends with the cool kids, but you weren't cool?
Do you remember in high school when you wanted to be friends with the cool kids, but you weren’t cool, so you had to figure out a way to get them to like you? That’s kind of what we’re doing next.
First, you have to find out who these people are. Whoever put a link to your competitor’s site is now a target for friendship. You want to find out why they put that link there. What are they interested in? What is their point of view? Do they have a blog? Is there any way to comment on their site? Do they publish a lot of content? Are they really one of the cool kids or are they posers?
Now, if they blog, read some of their posts and leave a comment, agreeing or disagreeing or adding some information. You don’t want to be obvious. You don’t want to come off as needy or desperate like you did in high school. You want to be cool too, so act cool. Have a conversation with them somehow. Post a few more comments over the next week.
You might want to write down a list of “high value targets”, which would be sites that probably will link to you because they seem to like the same stuff that you do.
Write a blog post on your site that mentions them and link to them. If you both use Wordpress, you might get a “pingback” link on their site.
Be methodical about who you leave comments on and how often, not too many and not too often, but consistently and appropriately. As you leave comments, they will check out your site and might leave comments back on yours. That’s a budding friendship. Nuture it. This is more about social skills than about technical skills.
As you comment and get comments back, you might send an email directly and start a conversation about something. Follow whatever you find and work it. Get to know people. Build that relationship. Link to them from your site. Ask them for a link exchange. They might do it without asking.
Woah! Dude! Did you just see what happened there? Friendship, conversation, social interaction, relationship, and INBOUND LINKS!
As you build up friendships, relationships, you are helping them and they are helping you. SEO loves the links. It seems to be the most powerful factor for gaining search results page ranking.
So, go use Site Explorer to target people to be your friends and build those links, social links, as well as web page links.
Posted in SEO |
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Interesting history of a very cool place to sell your stuff.
In June 2005, Etsy, still based in Mr. Kalin’s Fort Greene apartment, went live. It caught on almost immediately. Today the company boasts a quarter of a million crafters selling 3.8 million listed items to 2.3 million registered members. On an average day, the firm’s 65 employees process nearly 25,000 orders and collect a fee of 3.5% of the selling price. Last year, Etsy had $87.5 million in gross merchandise sales—more than triple 2007’s $26 million.
“Rob’s empowered people to sell the things they make and to earn a living by cutting out the middleman,” says Brooklyn–based clothing designer Chanel Kennebrew, who has been selling on etsy.com for two years.
Etsy today is a place where the public can buy directly from artisans, and where sellers can purchase materials from crafts suppliers. In addition, Etsy users can communicate through forums and live chats, as well as via Etsy’s offline crafts events and workshops.
Read the entire article at:
http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/small_business_awards/profiles/2009/210
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
I’ve had three clients in the last week have problem with not having control of their web sites.
I get a call from a guy who has no idea about anything technical. He has trouble sending email. He tells me that he had his computer guy, who does technical support on setting up his computers in his office, build him a web site.
First, what person is better qualified to build a web site than the guy who knows how to plug in CAT5 cables and configure NAT IPs? Why not have your auto mechanic cook you dinner or have the chef at the restaurant fix your transmission? OK. I’m done. I feel better now.
He says that if she doesn't pay by next week, he'll take the site down, essentially stealing the site and holding it for ransom.
This guy builds him a web site, controls his domain name registration and then never returns calls or answers email. He wants to make changes, but has no idea how or what to do. The site is on some guy’s server and is essentially stolen from him. He calls me.
The next client has paid to have a site built. The developer says that Wordpress is the way to go and she’s sold on WP. (I am too. Great choice!) The developer then gets down to a few days before the site must be up and says “Because of the short time frame, we built it in something else and we can’t build it in WP. You’ll have to spend $200 to buy software to do updates to it now.”
What? He said WP is best and she agrees, then he waits until the last minute and says she owes more money to do something else. Wow. Of course, he’s got the password to her registrar account. He says that if she doesn’t pay by next week, he’ll take the site down, essentially stealing the site and holding it for ransom. She calls me.
The last one is actually a friend of mine that I built a site for a while back. She just got a 501c3 tax thing for her organization, so now she wants to ramp up the efforts on it. She lives a little ways away, so she emails me and asks me if she could have the password or whatever, because they had a meeting and she has an intern now and they want to “work on the web site”.
Well, I’ll be happy to support her any way I can because I believe in her cause, so I ask her what she means by “work on the web site”. She had no idea. She has no idea what it takes to build a web site. What it should look like or what it should contain. Domain name? What’s that? I could essentially steal her web site if I wanted to.
What do all of these people have in common? People could steal their web sites. Why can people steal their web sites? Ignorance. It’s like each of these clients left the front door open on their homes with a sign that said “Come on in and take what you want!”
Each of these clients did not understand or know what it takes to build a site or what the developer was doing or not doing. They just trusted the developer to do the right thing. Usually, that’s what happens, but you should still keep an eye on things and understand what’s going on.
What you need to know so that you don’t lose your web site:
1. The email address for the “administrative contact” on the domain name registration controls who owns the domain name. If it’s not you, then change it now.
2. UserID and password to the domain name registrar’s site controls the information about the domain name. With that information, anyone can steal your domain name. Yes, it’s easier for the developer to figure out the configuration stuff that’s in there, but you need to know what he’s doing. Don’t give it to anyone you don’t trust and change your password after they’re done. Check what they did.
3. Name Servers – In the DNS system, the registrar control what name servers are the authority and the name servers control the actual domain name to IP address relationship. If your domain name registrar calls out my name server, I have control over where that domain name points. I can change it with a few clicks.
The universe looks to the registrar. The registrar points at a name server. The name server points at a web server.
4. Web Host – The site itself is really a bunch of files sitting on a web server or web host somewhere. It’s just a computer, but it responds to requests for web pages. It may interact with a database to create the site. WP does.
You may not get access to the web server itself. There are some security issues with handing out access to the server. You should get a copy of all of the files on the server. If there’s a database, you should have a way to backup the data inside that database.
If you are using WP, then you want a copy of all of the files in the “theme” for your site. You also want a plug in named “wp-db-backup”. You want to set that to email you a copy of all of the tables inside your database every day. With the theme files and the database back up, I can reconstruct your WP web site on any other web server.
Education is your best friend here. You can get ripped off by a dishonest auto mechanic if you don’t know what he’s doing. You can get ripped off by a dishonest doctor if you don’t know what he’s doing. You can get ripped off by a dishonest (or lazy) web developer if you don’t know what he’s doing.
Ask questions. Try hard to understand. Read about stuff. Follow the precautions listed above. Don’t let anyone steal your web site!
Posted in development |
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
It’s always nice to have happy clients. I’ve really enjoyed working with Deborah on her project. She’s so excited to learn new things that it’s really fun to help her along. I’m proud of the work we did on her site, including the ecommerce pages. She’s one of the “good clients” that I enjoy so much.
Thank you Deborah, for the kind words.
-c
PS – No, I didn’t ask her to write this. She’s just that kind of a person.
Mermaid and the Wizard
Sea Glass is my passion and he gets it.
I have had sage advice from key people but the most help has come from my Wizard. Who is he you ask. His name is Conrad Walton. Wizard Conrad is responsible for getting my website off the ground. Prior to our meeting I could send emails and do a little on Publisher, that’s it. With Conrad’s help I’m making my way into a Techno Babe.
Not only is Conrad masterful at web building he is also brilliant and very savvy in building business. Sea Glass is my passion and he gets it.
Have you thought about starting a business and don’t know how to begin? Is building a website just way too much to even think about? Get in touch with the Wizard.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.mermaidspurseseaglass.com/mermaids-purse/2009.07.09/mermaid-and-the-wizard.html
Posted in other |
Monday, July 6th, 2009
I have built and worked on many ecommerce sites for larger companies in the past. I’ve slogged through enough transaction files and credit card verification protocols that I decided that I never wanted to go back. Inventory management, product categorization, and fraud. Ecommerce carries a load of issues to deal with and I just thought it was too much work.
Can’t I just blog instead?
ecommerce
But…, and there’s always a but, in order for Mermaid’s Purse to sell jewelry on the web, she needed an ecommerce system. So I set about finding one. Since I’m a WordPress fan boy, I searched to see what was available that worked with it.
WordPress
is what I found. It’s plug in that works within WP to add the product pages and create a store with a checkout process. I installed it and activated it and started to figure out how it worked.
Payment Options
Out of the box, it’s free and does a bunch of great stuff that works really well for a basic store. But, do I want a basic store? Of course not. I immediately started playing with their themes to customize the look and feel of our store. They wanted $35 for a “gold” package that added some features that we wanted like “grid view” and “multiple images”.
Small price to pay, so I bought those. They seemed to work well. As I was working away on version 3.6.12, they released 3.7 Beta 4. I wanted to see how that would work, and it didn’t very well. I spent half a day figuring out the differences. Yeah, it was beta. What do I expect?
Sea Glass
Documentation for the whole thing is horrible on their site. I spent another $35 for a manual that one of the developers, or somebody, wrote. It consisted of a lot of tips and tricks that actually helped. Oh, except that they don’t work on the latest version.
The 3.7 upgrade changed the way a few things work, including the gold package. After some searching, they told me to re-download the gold files and put them in a different place. After following the directions, it all started to work again. The theme system is entirely different than the earlier versions.
The 3.7 does bring some cool new features and makes a lot of little things easier. It’s worth the upgrade. It does still have some bugs and the response in the forum is not exciting. I’m sure they will get around to fixing it sooner or later.
Do I recommend it? Yes, I do, with some cautions. Documentation is horrible. Don’t buy the “Bible” that they advertise. Not worth the money. Spend more time in the forums and you’ll find your answers instead. Also, wait until they get 3.7 released in final form. I think it’ll be great when it’s solid.
Pottery
It was all working pretty well, so I asked Deborah if it was OK to make it live. She said yes. I’m not confident that I understand all of the processes involved in making a purchase, nor that everything will work right, but we’ll watch it and see what happens. Customer service needs to be king here, so we’ll go out of our way to make sure that people are happy.
Deborah was so excited to see that she had a real store, live and working on the web. She can finally sell her sea glass jewelry there. Her husband had butterflies in his stomach. He said that it was like having light bulbs in the sign for a while, but now someone plugged it it and they were turned on and working.
Check out her store and buy something. If you see anything broken, let me know. If you like what you see, tell a friend. If you want your own store, I can do that for you.
Posted in business |
Saturday, July 4th, 2009
I’ve been thinking for a while about what I want to do with my life, to make money. I’ve been reading all about how to make money at home in your spare time. Just buy my ebook and you’ll have it made. As I try different things, it’s been getting clearer to me what I’m really good at and how I can best fulfill people’s needs.
I’m a web developer. I build web sites. Web sites help small businesses succeed when they’re done right. There’s a whole bucket of marketing mixed in with building web sites. That part is fascinating to me. How, and why, do people buy things? As much as I love building web sites, I love building businesses more.
My wife, who is always right, said I should use a client or two as examples of what I can do for a small company, so I did. The journey of Flower Art and Mermaid’s Purse are documented below, and will continue to be documented here, as a result.
That is the beginning of my independence movement.
As I worked with Deborah on getting her business off the ground, I was really drawn to the excitement and motivation that she had. She has already sent a couple other of her friends to me to have me help with their web sites and with their businesses.
That is the beginning of my independence movement.
I want to help people who work at home, making things, following their passions, to get something up on the web to sell their stuff. I want to help them on that journey. I want to help them on their way to independence, and gain my own independence as we go. There seems to be a lot of people who would love to do something like this, but they are afraid or not sure what to do next or how to get started. Everyone has great ideas. The hard part is doing it, making it happen. I can tell you how to do the magic trick. The hard part is getting on stage and wowing the crowd.
Today is Independence Day in America. It’s also the day that I commit to helping people who make things in their homes, build that into a business, selling things on the net and getting their own independence through that process.
We may pay their taxes, but they’ll never take our freedom.
Posted in business |
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
We got the shopping cart plug in working on the sea glass web site and she’s uploading photos and descriptions of her products as fast as she can.
Ear rings
Instead of going to friends and people she knows, or even to people that she meets at a street fair face to face and will probably never see again, these might get sold to people she’ll never meet or know anything more than their shipping address. These precious, delicate objects of love and affection that have been made with love, are going out into the cold, hard, cruel world, all alone, and will never be seen again.
I say she should keep them all then. Oh, wait. That’s not it.
Mermaid's Hair Bracelet
You can’t make the world a better place without going out into it and being a part of it. You can’t win if you don’t play the game. A harbor is built to keep ships safe, but that’s not… blah, blah, blah. You know the cliches.
It’s great to stay home and be safe and warm, but this is about making the world a better place and that takes a bit of risk, a bit of random chance.
Posted in business |
