Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
Friday, January 2nd, 2009
If you ever have a link that says “Skip Intro”, then you need to remove the page that contains that link. There’s no question or debate about this. The ONLY time I would ever do that is if you are promoting a video game or a movie. The only time ever.
Have you ever heard anyone tell you about a really cool splash page?
What good does it do if your website has the most beautiful web pages ever designed, but it doesn’t convince people to engage with your organization?
They don’t happen as much as they used to, but there are still websites out there that are more of an art project than effective promotion tool.
I’ve seen some splash pages that were a just monument to the web designers Flash and CSS skills. Designers love this stuff, but it’s the users that you need to worry about. Have you ever heard anyone tell you about a really cool splash page that they saw?
Regardless of your designer’s technical prowess or if the pressure is coming from some management above you, resist the temptation to use a splash page.
Just say no.
Posted in SEO, Web Site Starter Kit, content, design, development, marketing, promotion, small business website | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
Who needs ‘em?
I do remember one year that I sat down and thought through some goals I had for my life. At New Years, I sat down and wrote them out and formalized them. There were only 3 or 4 and they were very specific and attainable.
During that year, I actually remembered those goals and started to make decisions based on them. Should I do this or that? This lines up with the goal and that would be a lot of fun, but doesn’t line up with the goal.
I kept track and measured myself during the year. Nothing hard core, but I was aware of exactly where I was on the quest.
What do you want to achieve?
At the end of the year, I had done really well on them all. I was shocked at how well I had done. I thought I had stumbled across a new way to make my life everything I ever wanted it to be.
I create even more goals for the next year. I had charts and graphs for the entire upcoming year. I had a manila folder. I was set. This new year was going to be great.
About 3 months into the second year, I realized that I had no idea what those detailed goals really were for each step along the way. I couldn’t remember the details. At 6 months, I had given up on all of them. Quit. Done.
At the end of the year, I hadn’t accomplished anything. I was still were I started and completely distracted by other things.
What do you want to achieve? Pick a couple goals. Make them simple. Make them measurable. Then go accomplish them.
What are your goals for the upcoming year? Leave a comment.
Posted in SEO, business development, management, marketing, promotion, small business website, web traffic | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
Douglas at Hostgator actually looks for people talking about his company. This is the kind of proactive research that you should be doing for your company. You need to search Google and Technorati to see what people are saying about you on a regular basis.
Look at his response. Leads with a compliment, addresses the concern, and follows with a positive statement. Also notice that he gets a link to his site in the comment he left (good for SEO). If it was just comments spam, I wouldn’t have approved it. Since it was a meaningful comment, it’s approved and he got the link.
I wish I could comment as well as Douglas! The dude is a professional. I’m happy to give him the extra links.
I’ve been promoting PowWeb, since they are who I’m happy with, but perhaps it’s time to stroll on down to Hostgator and check them out.
Quoting from How To Use The “Suckage Ratio” | Web Design and Developement for Small Business
I wish I could comment as well as Douglas!
By Douglas - HostGator.com on Dec 29, 2008 | Reply | Edit
I’m glad to see that you utilize a ratio (most posts like these just use the flat out number of results), but am disappointed to see that HostGator had the highest “suckage ratio.”
With that in mind, though, our customer service is still amongst the best in the industry and is continually improving. We also invest a lot of time and resources into reaching out to customers that have any trouble (we have an extremely strong presence on the Twitter and regularly reach out to bloggers). And the CEO of the company is also personally available to customers who ask (this is not a gimmick and actually does happen).
Hopefully our reaching out will help demonstrate our commitment to customer service excellence. If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to send me an email.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.walton.com/2008/12/22/how-to-use-the-suckage-ratio-to-pick-companies-and-products.html#comments
Posted in SEO, business development, content, domain name, free, marketing, promotion, web host | No Comments »
Monday, December 29th, 2008
It looks like there will be some valuable articles on WordPress SEO over at Remarkablogger. Since I’m such an advocate of WordPress and SEO, I’ll be interested to see what he has to say. He usually have some good information that I can learn from.
Quoting from About WordPress SEO
Why WordPress SEO is Separate from Blog SEO or “Regular” SEO
WordPress SEO needs to be its own thing because of all the unique factors a blogger needs to understand when applying basic SEO principles to a WordPress blog. For example, many of the common points of standard SEO advice have to be translated into how to specifically do them for WordPress SEO. Things like:
Title tags
File names
Headings
Redirects
Meta tags
Robots exclusion
This Ain’t the Old Days Anymore
Back in the day, web pages were edited by hand, and you had to know HTML, and, for some of this stuff, a little scripting. How is today’s blogger going to accomplish the above without any editing of HTML or scripting?
WordPress. With WordPress, about the most technical thing you need to know is how to install a theme or a plugin (and with the advent of WordPress 2.7, even plugins have become super-easy). There are plugins for WordPress SEO. Problem is, that’s not quite enough. You have to know what to do with them in order to really improve your search rankings. And in order to do that, you have to know SEO.
Read the entire article at http://michaelmartine.com/2008/12/28/wordpress-seo/
Posted in SEO, Wordpress, content, marketing, promotion, small business website, web traffic | No Comments »
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
WOW! THIS is what using the Internet is about. Here is an organization that advocates spending less money on Christmas and giving more. This is what Christmas is all about.
This is what Christmas is all about.
Now, look closely. Their web site is hosted on wordpress.com, a free hosting service. This is what I advocate you do in my Web Site Starter Kit book. Look at the domain name of the site.
This organization has a free web site that looks great, works great, and has great results.
Yes, they did lobby displays and other, more traditional marketing efforts also, but the free web site was part of it.
Merry Christmas. Spend time, not money.
news: Back to the basics at Christmas
How did the movement generate such a massive response?
Church leadership sowed the seeds several months earlier. Beginning in October, the congregation, including children, repeatedly heard the Advent Conspiracy’s call to “spend less, give more, worship fully and love all.” Officials added a blog to the church Web site (adventconspiracy.wordpress.com) and created a lobby storyboard where churchgoers could share ideas on how to give creative gifts of time and relationship.
Read the entire article at news: Back to the basics at Christmas
Posted in Free Small Business Web Site, SEO, Web Site Starter Kit, church, content, development, domain name, free, marketing, promotion, web host | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Just a reminder that what you put on your site will be forever available. Hardware wears out, but data is forever. Apparently Rick Warren’s church changed their web site in the midst of criticism, but Google remembers the old version in its’ cache.
Rick Warren pulls anti-gay language from his Web site (John Aravosis/AMERICAblog News) - Examiner.com
So Rick Warren pulled the anti-gay language from his church Web site. The site used to explicitly ban gays from membership in the church. — Now the offending language is gone, but you can still find the anti-gay language via Google’s cache.
Read the entire article at Rick Warren pulls anti-gay language from his Web site (John Aravosis/AMERICAblog News) - Examiner.com
Apparently Rick Warren's church changed their web site in the midst of criticism, but Google remembers the old version in its' cache.
I firmly believe that you should stand up for what you believe in and not back down in the face of confrontation. It makes you look bad. Be who you are.
We don’t know if this was a staff person acting on their own to polish the web site or if it was a directive from Rick himself. That question points out that the owner or head of an organization should be aware of what goes on the web site.
Mistakes happen. Change occur. A leader can’t always be aware of what is going on in the organization. When something like this happens, you better come out and explain it right away. The truth will always come out (except about the Kennedy assassination…)
People will always forgive if you tell them the truth. They will never forgive a cover up. Compare Nixon with Clinton.
I worked with a designer once who was playing around and used monkey heads instead of human heads on some presentation comps that were to be presented to a client. It was a joke and he would change them before the presentation. You know what happened.
A developer was coding a site once and had some external links on it. He didn’t know exactly what the correct URL was, so, as a place marker, he added the tag as <a href=”xxx”>. When the client reviewed the site, they clicked on one of those links.
What does your browser do when you don’t complete a URL? It adds a “www.” to the beginning and a “.com” to the end and tries to go there. What do you suppose the client saw on the site at “www.xxx.com”?
Posted in SEO, content, promotion, web traffic | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
She doesn’t mention the idea of using search terms, your keywords in your URL. That’s the best way to get found for those search terms.
Choose the Best Name for Your Business Web Site | The Small Business Blog
Some business owners get caught in the trap of thinking their business name and their domain name have to match. They don’t. Schultz advises you think of your potential URL as more than just a name, but as a descriptive call to action as well. And, he adds, think locally. For example, a plumber might choose as his or her URL “BestPlumberOnWestside.com.”
Think of your potential URL as more than just a name, but as a descriptive call to action as well.
Once you buy your domain, your job isn’t over. Remember that your URL is your Internet identity. Use it as your e-mail address. Schultz advises that your domain name appear on your business cards, in your e-mail signature, and on all your marketing materials and other business collateral. And spread the word. Get registered on all the search directories, social networking sites, and rating sites like Yelp or Angie’s List. Ask your customers to go to the various rating sites and rate their experiences with your business.
Domain names are cheap enough that you can buy one whenever you get a good idea, years before you actually start the business. I own around two dozen URLs. Some may never see the light of day, but I have high hopes for a few of them.
No more excuses. Coming up with a domain name is fun, easy, and inexpensive. How many business activities can you say that about?
Read the entire article at Choose the Best Name for Your Business Web Site | The Small Business Blog
Posted in DNS, SEO, domain name, free, marketing, promotion, small business website | No Comments »
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Web Site Starter Kit First Draft is done!
I need to go back through it all and review it, but the basic idea of using Wordpress.com to set up a free web site is a good one. I have all kinds of tips and tricks to make that the best possible web site you can get, including SEO and promotion of the site.
As an example, I created a free site aimed at 3 keywords. Within 3 weeks of creating it, it was number 3 in the search results for those keywords in Google. That shocked even me. This SEO stuff really works.
Of course, now that I’ve written it all out, Wordpress is releasing a new version and the admin interface is very different. It’s in production on wordpress.com, but the downloadable version is not available yet. It should be any day now.
When it is available, I’ll go do screenshots and the book will be ready to sell. It will be aimed at small businesses, really small ones, and in addition to background on general good web site ideas, it will have a “free” and a “cheap” method for creating web sites.
It should be all done and ready to go by next week.
Posted in Free Small Business Web Site, SEO, Web Site Starter Kit, content, design, development, domain name, free, marketing, promotion, small business website, web host, web traffic | No Comments »
Thursday, December 4th, 2008
You should be aware of how your web site is doing out there in the real world. Google published a page with search tricks on it. It can do magic tricks. Very useful stuff out there. The whole page is located at:
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
The two that I want to point out are:
link: Find linked pages, i.e., show pages that point to the URL.
site: Search only one website or domain.
link:websitestarterkit.com
If you want to know who’s pointing at your site, where your incoming links are coming in from, search for “link:www.yourdomain.com”, without the quotes, of course. This will return all of the pages on all of the sites that have a link to your site.
If you want to know who's pointing at your site, where your incoming links are coming in from
You should go look at them and check what exactly they are using for the “link text”. That’s the actual text that a user will click to follow the link. You will be rated higher for the keywords in that link text.
You can ask the owners of those sites to change the text and maybe they will, if that will help you out for specific keywords. As much as you get good points for them using keywords, you also get bad points if all of the link text is identical. That make you look like you’ve automated it. There needs to be a certain organic-ness to the text so Google knows that there are real people putting them in.
site:websitestarterkit.com
The next good search is “site:” followed by your domain name. (No space after the colon, by the way.) This search will list all of the pages that Google has indexed from your site. Any URL for a page that starts with your domain name.
This is how you can be sure that Google has indexed all of the pages in your site. Check the “cache date” if they list that. You might be able to tell how often they spider your site. If you are a good blogger and post something new every day and you publish an XML site map for them, which is easy to do in Wordpress, then they will probably be looking at your site often.
Posted in SEO, domain name, free, promotion, small business website, web traffic | No Comments »
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
All local business should have these 4 things on every page for people and search engines to read. Most sites these days are built on templates, so it’s easy to put in a footer or side bar containing all of these essential elements. All of these should be in text so that search engines can easily read them.
Your business name, a description of what you do, where you do it, who you do it for.
1. Your business name, a description of what you do, where you do it, who you do it for. Be short and to the point. They have other pages on the site for in depth information if they want more detailed information. This is for people to know at a glance what they are looking at.
2. Your address, phone number and email address. Be sure to put all of this information in full, including the street address, city, state and zip code. Put the area code with the phone number.
3. Hours that your business is open.
4. A list of cities you serve. If someone searches for the type of business that you have plus the city name, they can find it in the search engines.
Posted in SEO, content, marketing, promotion | No Comments »
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Local search is getting huge. These are places that you can get listed to help establish you local listing on-line presence.
Each of these listings will bring you traffic.
Each of these listings will bring you traffic, since no one uses the phone book any more. Each should be pretty self explanatory. Some offer paid features as well as free listings.
- www.dmoz.org
- local.botw.org
- advertise.local.com/
- listings.yellowpages.com/
- selfenroll.citysearch.com/
- www.google.com/local/add
- www.localeze.com/manage/
- list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm
- www.dexsearchmarketing.com/
- botw.org/top/Regional/United_States/
- searchmarketing.yahoo.com/local/business.php
- my.superpages.com/spweb/products/business-listing
- Friends, Family, Partnerships with websites. Ask if they would be willing to swap links with your website to help promote both of your businesses.
Posted in SEO, free, marketing, small business website, web traffic | No Comments »
Monday, November 24th, 2008
#1: Your Small Business Needs a Website - This may sound obvious, but I am still quite amazed at the amount of small businesses that don’t have even a basic website. More people use the Internet to look up information about local information and that includes your business. When your mother doesn’t use the phone book any more, you know it’s time for a web site. Follow the Free Small Business Web Site guide to create a good one for free.
When your mother doesn't use the phone book any more, you know it's time for a web site.
- This should be obvious, but given the fact that a large percentage of small businesses don’t have websites, an even larger percent don’t have blogs. I know you don’t want to write something every day, that you’re a horrible writer, and no one cares anyway. The search engines care. They rank web sites that are updated regularly higher than static ones.
People do care and they do read your stuff. They want to get an idea of who you are, what your values are, and if you can be trusted or not. Write a little bit often and you’ll make everyone happy.
#3 Make It EASY to Contact Your Business - If people aren’t using the phonebook any more, then they are coming to your website to find out where you are, what time you’re open and what your phone number is. Put this information on every page in a sidebar or at least the footer. If people try to contact you by going to your website and can’t find that information, you have just lost a customer. I can hear the money falling out of your pockets right now.
#4 Claim and Update Your Google Local Listing - Google gathers information about your business and puts it in the local listings. It might be, and probably is, wrong or outdated. Go to http://www.google.com/local/add and add your company information if it’s not there or correct it if it is. People looking for local businesses based on location will go to your competition if you are not there.
I’ve also heard of people changing the information on their competition (you) to their contact info. You look for Jack’s Plumbing, but Joes’s plumbing has changed the phone number for Jack’s to his own phone number at Joe’s. You want Jack, but Joe gets the call and you don’t know Jack.
Posted in SEO, content, marketing, small business website | No Comments »
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
I use Wordpresss for all of the sites I build, except the very specialized ones. Here’s an article that backs me up. I’ve used all of the editors and other CMSs and I think Wordpress is the most versatile and easy to use. If you want to keep your site updated regularly, and who doesn’t?, then you should be using Wordpress. I’m not sure you should ever pay for a theme, since they can all be customized, but it might work best for you.
WordPress - It’s Not Just for Bloggers Anymore - Premium WordPress Themes | How to Start, Build and Promote Your Online Business
Wordpress is the most versatile and easy to use.
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Premium WordPress Themes
I’ve been a webmaster for over 12 years. And in that time I’ve used just about every HTML editor, CMS and page generator that was ever released.
Today, I use WordPress to develop 99.5 percent of the website projects I work on. The SEO, Web 2.0 and content management features make it so easy to deploy and market websites there’s really no need to use anything else. Almost anything you could want from a website can be easily plugged into WordPress.
With WordPress you can edit your website from any computer with an Internet connection. Change and add content, navigation, interactive features or even modify the design of the entire site in a matter of minutes. You can do it on a Mac, a PC or even a Linux box. It doesn’t matter because it’s all done over the web.
No more hassling with expensive software and updates. Everything you need is built in.
You’ll notice I’m using the word “websites” and not “blogs”.
“But I thought WordPress was blogging software?” you ask.
It is blogging software. Arguably the best blogging platform in the known universe. But, it can also be used as a robust content management system with or without blogging features enabled.
Imagine being able to give your secretary or assistant the login to your WordPress site and him being able to update content, add pages and upload photos in less time than it takes you to go to Starbucks and back.
Do you know how many hours I’ve spent training administrative assistants and church secretaries on how to use Dream Weaver or Front Page to update their websites? More than I care to remember. The sad fact is that most of those sites were never really kept up-to-date and therefore never really lived up to their full potential.
Read the entire article at WordPress - It’s Not Just for Bloggers Anymore - Premium WordPress Themes | How to Start, Build and Promote Your Online Business
Posted in SEO, development, free, small business website | No Comments »
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Here are the first three reasons that your small business really should have a blog of some sort. I know you want a normal “brochureware” site, but posting good content regularly is magic in terms of traffic and people finding out about your small business. Static pages are so 1998.
Six Reasons Why Blogs Are So Good for SEO - flyte blog: web marketing strategies for small business
Posting good content regularly is magic in terms of traffic.
1. Blogs are all about content. Search engines love content. They don’t love Flash, and they’re still struggling with photos and video, but they absolutely get content.
2. Blogs have text-based navigation. Search engines have an easier time with text based (vs. image based) navigation because it’s more transparent. Search engines for a while now have told us that they want sites to serve up the same information/experience to a search engine bot as to a person.
3. Blogs offer lots of links. If search engines feast on words, they travel on links. Blogs are often a good place to find new content on the Web.
Read the entire article at Six Reasons Why Blogs Are So Good for SEO - flyte blog: web marketing strategies for small business
Posted in SEO, small business website | No Comments »
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Do you want a web site, but don’t know where to start? You’re smart, but don’t have the information you need? That’s why I wrote the Web Site Starter Kit.
I've created a new site for the Web Site Starter Kit.
It will be an eBook that will walk you through everything you need to know to get a web site up and running, which is why I named it the
Web Site Starter Kit. It is written for people who know they need a web site, but don’t know the first thing about how to get one or manage it once it’s there. The
Web Site Starter Kit will tell you the technical background if you want to know the details, but it will also tell you the quick and dirty method.
Web Site Starter Kit will outline the step by step tasks you need to do to make a great site happen quickly and cheaply.
If you are trying to start a web site, build a web site, this will help. If you already have a web site, this will also give you a checklist of things to make it better.
We’ll talk about SEO, search engine optimization. That the general term for all the little things that you can do for free to get your site up higher in the search engine results pages. Build traffic to your site from the search engines. Web Site Starter Kit will give you all this information and more.
Posted in SEO, design, development, domain name, marketing, small business website, web host | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
There are a lot of business owners out there who have a vague feeling that they should have a web site, but don’t want to learn anything about it or spend any money on it. Maybe times are tough, but marketing is the only way that business will get any better.
Here are the steps it takes to create a GOOD small business web site for FREE.
If you have a small business, and I mean like less than 5 people or less, then here are the steps it takes to create a GOOD small business web site for FREE. This will get you a real live, working site, that does the basics of what a business site needs to do.
It’s possible to do a GREAT site if you spent a little money on it. I am going to constantly berate you for being cheap through out this FREE process. Spend a little and get a lot. I figure that you’ll build the GOOD, FREE site now, realize just how effective it is and want to make it better. Then you’ll come crawling back to me, all crying like a baby, asking me to take you back and show you how to make a GREAT CHEAP site to replace your GOOD FREE site.
You go read the posts below. I’ll wait here.
Posted in Free Small Business Web Site, SEO, content, design, development, domain name, free, marketing, small business website, web host | No Comments »
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Here is some great ideas about how to get your web site noticed. Using keywords is critical and know where and how to use them will make your site successful.
Putting Your Keywords & Content to the Best Use | Caroline Middlebrook
When starting a niche site, the first step is usually keyword research and then a large majority of the time is spent on content creation and the process seems simple enough - pick profitable keywords to target then write content that targets those keywords but hold on just a moment… there’s more to think about.
Where Are Keywords Used?
Most people don’t really stop to think about where they will use their keywords. They simply identify keywords that they want to rank for and then pimp out their site SEO-wise to try and target that keyword as effectively as possible. But stopping to think about where you use your keywords will reveal the kinds of content you need to create, and where you don’t need content at all.
Your Website Content
This is the most obvious place where you will use your keywords - on your site itself.
Actually, that last statement is not quite true. Go to Google and type in “twitter tactics”. Depending on where in the world you are, the site http://www.twittertactics.com/ ranks very highly for this keyword and yet it is a completely empty WordPress default blog that was created and then abandoned. The only place where the keyword has been used is in the URL and the title of the site. There isn’t even a post that targets it. However, this keyword is probably not a competitive one so this doesn’t often happen!
Article (Marketing) Content
The next new posts in this project will discuss the backlink strategies that I am using for my niche sites and article marketing is one of them. Now there are two ways in which you can benefit from an article:
The backlink you place in the article or resource box
Traffic that comes from the article itself
To utilise the first strategy, you just need to write pretty much any old article that is related to your site and then insert a link back to your site in the resource box. There is nothing to say that you have to target any particular keywords in the article itself because the important part is the backlink for which you will use appropriate anchor text.
However this is only one way to benefit from articles and is really a bit of a wasted potential if that is all you do. Josh Spaulding in his Article Marketing Domination book advocates writing an article that is going to draw in traffic to the article itself and a portion of those people will click through to your link so this way not only do you benefit from the backlink, but from the traffic itself.
There are two ways in which you can approach the process of writing a highly-trafficked article. One way is to once again abandon all keywords and simply write the most compelling article headline you can think of and hope that its listing in the directory will be enough. However if you are in a competitive niche it can be tricky to really stand out from the crowd amongst hundreds of other articles. The other strategy is to utilise the ranking power of the directory and target low competition phrases in the article itself.
When doing your competition research I am sure that you will have seen on many occasions an article from EZine Articles ranking in the top 10 in the serps. Google loves EA, probably a lot more than your site and if you wrote that same article for your website, your EA article would probably out-rank your site article. By utilising the power of popular directories you can target keywords that the directory can rank for and then drive traffic that way.
Read the entire article at Putting Your Keywords & Content to the Best Use | Caroline Middlebrook
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
You should use keywords in page titles. The title tag is different from a Meta tag. Whatever text one places in the title tag will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as for example Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or OPERA.
Search Results Pages, Your Bread and Butter
One of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page is the actual text you use in the title tag. In addition, all major search engines will use your title tag as the title of your page in your listings.
Each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content may draw traffic to each individual page.
The unique combination of these words and phrases and content will draw customers using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.
The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first build their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site.
It is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. You should consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will do better in the search engine listings.
Posted in SEO, small business website | No Comments »
