Friday, February 5th, 2010
My apologies to Stanley Kubrick.
I was talking with a potential client the other day. They had been referred by someone else, so I asked if they had seen my web site. They replied “Yes, and you’re not going to get me to blog!”
I understand how much some people hate to write blog posts, people like me, for instance.
We all need to get past that.
The advantages of write blog posts on a regular schedule are huge. I know. I know. You don’t have time and you’re not a good writer and you have nothing to say and blah, blah, blah.
I don’t want to hear it. If you want to have any success at this stuff, you need to have a blog and you need to write on a regular schedule.
Google loves a “regularly updated” web site. You get points for not being stale. If someone is taking the time to update a site, it must be more valuable than one that’s not been touched in years. I love to blog.
If you have 5 posts written, publish one a day for 5 days instead of 5 all on one day. Google loves that too. I love to blog.
Google will come back and crawl your site more often if you publish more often. If nothing changes for a week at a time, why should they come back any sooner than that? I love to blog.
Every time you publish a new post, your blogging software creates a new page with that post on it. More pages equals more authority for your site. I love to blog.
On every one of those new blog post pages, you have a menu that links back to pages on your own site. More pages have more menu links that increases the number of internal links that your site has. I love to blog.
Every time you publish a new blog post, there are more words on your site. If those words are your keywords that you are trying hard to rank high for, then you will rank higher for them. More words equals higher rank for those words. I love to blog.
Every blog post that is interesting will draw in links from other people who are interested in it. More external links is good for search engine ranking. I love to blog.
There are probably other good reasons to write blog posts, but these are all I can think of off the top of my head on a rainy Friday afternoon.
Did you get my point? I love to blog! You should love it too.
Posted in SEO |
Friday, December 25th, 2009
It’s possible to sell crafts or art on the Internet without being slimy about it. You don’t have to “hard sell” anyone. All you have to do is tell people about how cool your stuff is. Tell a story about it. Help people understand why your stuff is as cool as it really is.
You’re not lying. You’re telling the truth and helping people get happy. How can that be bad?
People who want to sell their art, or their crafts, or anything that they created with love and care, should read this article.
Desdemona
Whenever you create objects by hand, the thing to remember is that it’s not the object you’re selling at the end of the day… it’s the stories behind the object. What’s important isn’t the object, but the process. And there’s nothing better than a blog for documenting this process. A lot of creators learn in school about the importance of process, but when it comes to their web presence or to the business side of their work, they seem to forget this.
The object you create (the product) is a symbol of the process (the story) that went into its making. And it’s that story that’s really the important part. You might think the aesthetics of the object itself are the most important, but they’re not, simply because taste is so subjective.
How to Document the Creative Process on your Blog
On the one hand, what I’m about to tell you is really simple. Absurdly simple. What’s hard about it is remembering to do it in the first place. You have to have a “documentary” mindset. Here’s the thing: you don’t know what others will find valuable, so just document and let others sort it out for you. This isn’t complicated:
Take pictures as you work through a piece, and take notes about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what is the story behind that.
Shoot video in the same vein. Better yet, if you can get someone else to hold the camera and ask questions, the better. Otherwise, get tripod.
Make a time-lapse video of you working on the piece (setting it to some appropriate music is a nice touch).
Write about what you’re going through, thinking, and feeling as create a piece.
Tell the stories of where everything comes from in a piece, especially the sourcing of materials and ideas.
Read the entire article at:
http://remarkablogger.com/2009/12/22/artist-blogging-101
Posted in marketing |
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
I stumbled upon this advice on “how do I get more readers for my blog?” and thought it was worth passing on.
Businesses should blog. The search engines love it and your readers love it. It’s hard to start out without many readers, but if you follow this advice, you’ll soon have readers.
The trick is figuring out what to give them.
Stuff Christians Like
“How do I get more readers for my blog?”
That’s a great question, it’s just the wrong one to ask first.
Want to know the right question to ask first when you find yourself with a blog and a hope that people will read it? Want to know the secret that I start every day on Stuff Christians Like with? It’s pretty simple.
Don’t ask “How do I get more readers for my blog?”
Ask instead,
“How can I give more to readers?”
The distinction is subtle, but I think it’s an important one. At the simplest level, a blog is just a gift exchange. People you may never meet from countries you may never visit, show up at your blog and give you the most precious resource they temporarily have in their hands – time. Whether it’s 30 seconds or 3 minutes, they offer you something really special, minutes of their day that they will never get back.
In return, you give them something.
Read the entire article at:
http://stuffchristianslike.net/2009/12/1-secret-ive-learned-about-blogging/
Posted in marketing |
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Seth always seems to be in front of the people that seem to be changing the world. He brought together 70 people to share ideas on how we can turn things around, how you can turn things around and they contributed to this free ebook.
If you want to do business in 2010, if you want to be inspired in your own life, then you need to read this.
DOWNLOAD HERE
Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.
Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth the effort.
Read the entire article at:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29
Here’s an excerpt.
G E N E R O S I T Y
When the economy tanks, it’s natural to think of yourself first. You have a family to feed a mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be the order of business.
It turns out that the connected economy doesn’t respect this natural instinct. Instead, we’re rewarded for being generous. Generous with our time and money but most important generous with our art.
If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved.
In a digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs.
If you make a difference, you also make a connection. You interact with people who want to be interacted with and you make changes that people respect and yearn for.
Art can’t happen without someone who seeks to make a difference. This is your art, it’s what you do. You touch people or projects and change them for the better. This year, you’ll certainly find that the more you give the more you get.
Seth Godin is a blogger and speaker. His new book, Linchpin, comes out in January.
Posted in business |
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Get an Evergreen for Your Blog This Holiday Season
If you want more traffic to your web site, you need to write posts that last a long time, that people can point at and come back to, over and over again.
These kinds of posts should be about what your site is about. They should show your expertise on the subject. They should be the kinds of posts that are so valuable, so informative or entertaining or insightful, that people will want to read them for years to come.
If you could write THE definitive guide or explanation to the subject of your site, there will be links and tweets and traffic.
Think about what your subject is, what keyword you want to be know for, and write a really good post about it.
You’ll see the traffic.
The evergreens we admire for their longevity
The most obvious way is to write about a topic that never gets old. These are cornerstone reference posts, like ‘10 Ways to Build a Better Blog.’ These posts are evergreen simply because people always need that information.
The good news is that evergreen reference posts are pretty straightforward to write. Do a step-by-step summary of how to do something from start to finish, and you’ve got yourself an evergreen post.
They’re also good for defining something that’s often mis-defined. For example, I have posts bookmarked in my ‘Evergreens’ folder on “What Marketing Really Is.” And I refer back to them often, because marketing is a slippery subject.
There are downsides to these types of evergreen posts. You’re up against a lot of competition, for one. There are already thousands of evergreen posts on building a better blog or providing better customer service. There’s probably an evergreen post on 10 Ways to Do Absolutely Any Topic Imaginable.
If you want your evergreen post to be the one that gets bookmarked, you’d better make it really, really good.
Which brings us to the second downside: Evergreen posts often require much more work than your standard post. You’ll probably wind up putting in at least 5 hours — and probably more like 15 — making sure everything is well-written, entertaining, compelling, and that you didn’t make any mistakes.
You might also be putting some extra hours into in-depth research if your evergreen post is on a topic that’s difficult to understand.
Read the entire article at:
http://feeds.copyblogger.com/~r/Copyblogger/~3/0GUusIszMsk/
Posted in web traffic |
Monday, October 19th, 2009
He nails the secrets to making your blog effective for reaching new customers, but as he says, the details are up to you. Read the entire article. Good stuff for small businesses.
Attract Customers Like Magic to Your Business Blog
Business blogs are often described as a way to reach customers, but it’s not true. Blogging does not help your business reach new customers.
It is the exact opposite which is true.
A business blog is a way for your customers reach you.
This is much more than a clever switching around of words. We have an entirely different dynamic at work, here. Understanding this dynamic makes a significant difference in how business owners understand the online customer acquisition process, set their marketing goals, and create the objectives to reach those goals. These must happen in order to attract customers, engage them, sell to them, and keep them.
“How do I reach customers with my blog?” is not the right question. Instead, ask, “How do I make my blog easy for customers to reach?
This leads us backwards to a preceding question: How are my customers looking for me, now?
And so the fun begins!
Your customers aren’t looking for you, precisely. They don’t know you exist, yet. They don’t know your name or your brand. All they know is they have a need or a problem, and they want answers. They’re looking for information to help them make a decision. They’re looking for trustworthy, authoritative information.
How do you make your blog the most attractive, most easily found “answer?” I’ve identified two major strategies:
Be everywhere your customers are, so they have a greater chance of running into you.
Have the most trusted, authoritative answers to their biggest questions.
How do we make these things happen?
Read the entire article at:
http://remarkablogger.com/2009/10/13/attract-customers-to-business-blog/
Posted in marketing |
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
This is a great article on some common SEO problems, but I want to point out two of them in particular. Write it and forget it is one that I wish I could solve easily. It seems that there’s a common idea that SEO is something that you can sprinkle on at the end and then it’s good to go, that you never have to touch the site again. Wrong. The site must be updated at least once a week and more often is better.
This is not a spatula. This is a ramp of people falling into a pit. Look again.
Only looking at ego phrases are also an easy pit to fall into. You know that THIS phrase is the one that everyone should be looking for, but in reality, everyone doesn’t know as much as you do and they search for what they think is the right phrase.
I’m constantly surprised when reading reports on traffic for related keywords. There are always phrases and keywords with what I think is way too much traffic. Don’t people understand the best way to search? Well, no they don’t. You have to look at what people ACTUALLY search for and optimize for that. It doesn’t matter what goodness and truth is. It doesn’t matter what you know is the right way to search. It only matters what THEY actually search for.
by Jolina
2. Write It & Forget It
Website content is not a ‘set and forget’ project. Rather, web content should be treated as a living organism which needs ongoing care and nourishment (read new content).
A ‘set and forget’ mentality when it comes to web content will only keep you successful for so long. Eventually, competitors catch onto to the benefits of SEO as well and if they are creating new content they are likely to trump you for target keyword phrases.
4. Focus on Ego Phrases
Some clients make the mistake of hanging success of the entire program on what we call ‘ego phrases’. i.e. wanting to rank for a particular phrase because they think it is important, not because data predicts it will drive traffic
Read the entire article at:
http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/09/seo-pitfalls/#comments
Posted in SEO |
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
I’m doing some research into what the best way to sell handmade and unique products online. I’m hoping that everyone wants me to build them a web site, but I’m afraid that Etsy and other similar sites have advantages that a single site doesn’t have.
Do You Use Etsy To Sell Handmade or Unique Products Online?
The fully owned individual site also has advantages that the large sites can’t match. What works best? What is a waste of time?
If you would be interested in answering some questions, here’s what I’d like to know. Feel free to skip any that you don’t want to answer. If you want to copy and paste these into an email and send them to me that way, please do so. You can also use the Contact page.
Depending on the responses I get, I may group the results and report only the composite information, or I may want to publish individual responses if they are interesting and valuable.
I may have follow up questions, based on your responses. I promise to not do anything with your name and email that you don’t give me permission to so. It’s just so that I can follow up with you.
Please tell me if you give me permission to publish your responses in my blog, either with or without your name. I can link to your Etsy store if you want me to. Entirely up to you.
Thank you very much for your time and patience.
1. How long have you been selling things on Etsy?
2. Have you tried selling any place other than Etsy, online or in person?
3. What venue works the best for you and why?
4. What tips do you have for people who want to sell on Etsy? What is the best way to sell there?
5. How technical would you rate yourself, on a scale of afraid of computers to building your own web site?
6. What do you like the most about Etsy?
7. What do you like least about Etsy? (You knew that was coming.)
8. Any advice about things to watch out for when selling on line?
9. Have you ever tried using your own web site? Did it work? Why? Why not?
10. Any advice for a person just setting out to sell their own handmade products?
11. Any other stories, advice, or comments that you’d like to make?
Posted in sell on internet |
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
I’ve written up a page on Untangling The Web. As I thought about how it fits in with what I’m trying to do, my wife suggested that I make it brand and put all of my ideas into that bucket. Great idea.
I want to train people who are not experts
The idea is that I want to train people who are not experts in how to promote their business on the web. I am almost finished with a book about SEO. I will rewrite my Web Site Starter Kit book to make it more appropriate. I see videos and more pages of information coming. I’ll start to publish the newsletter every week, with valuable tips on how to do things, I want to dump out my brain so everyone can, well, maybe that’s a bad analogy. You know what I mean though.
The first step in that quest is the new design of the site. The blog is now on the home page, where you can see that I’m writing about good stuff, so people will be more likely to stay around and read more. That’s the plan, anyway.
I wrote a page describing the concept. I put on my sales copy hat and wrote what I thought was a pretty good page, describing what to expect and how it will benefit you. Here’s a quote and a link. Go read the rest of it and subscribe to the newsletter.
Untangling The Web – Training
With every new change in technology, comes the rise and fall of businesses as they try to adapt, from railroads to airplanes, from buggies to cars.
Today is no different. It’s adapt or die.
Many people who own a small business know that they should “do something” about the Internet, that there is a huge opportunity out there somewhere, but they are not quite sure how to do it, much less do it efficiently, and if that they miss that opportunity, it might mean the end of their business.
The biggest issue that we heard from small business owners, and everyone else, for that matter, is that they don’t understand this stuff. No one has the time to find and distill all of the information. They do research and the technical information that they find is too complex, too difficult to understand. They are afraid and overwhelmed by it all. It’s frustrating.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.walton.com/untangling-the-web-training
Posted in sell on internet |
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Wow. Things got busy and my Wordpress blog gets forgotten. I think I’m back. I’ll try to make up for lost time. The weather has been in the 80s for the last week or so, so I may have been a bit distracted.
Knocked Off The Horse
In the last week, I’ve also been busy with, and learned a lot from, clients and would be clients, about what people want, what they know, what they don’t know, and what they need. I’ll go into depth on some of these later, but I’m shocked, SHOCKED! I say, that there are actually people in the world who don’t have the same knowledge and beliefs and understanding that I do.
People don’t seem to understand that Wordpress is free and powerful. I am an old school, hand coder, who would rather do it all myself, so I can have total control, but I cranked out a complete web site, including a custom design, including an image gallery, and including all the fixin’s, in two hours. That’s two hours folks, to build a site that would have taken me two weeks in the old days.
Wordpress rocks. No way around it. Wordpress just freakin’ rocks.
It also seems that SEO is the buzz of the day. Either people want it or they don’t know yet that they want it. I’m finding that the common thread, with everyone that I talk to, is that they just don’t know much about how to effectively do SEO, even though it’s relatively easy.
A client told me this morning, after I gave them an outline of what to do, that it’s not hard to do, they just didn’t know what needed to be done. It’s like I gave them the map and now they are driving the car across the country.
I’ll be talking more about Wordpress SEO and SEO in general. It is really not difficult, once you get a few ideas figured out. I’m surprised that people charge so much for it, but it does give results and most people are not doing anything, so it’s easy to beat most other sites out there.
Posted in web site build |
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 web host |
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
My wife went through the draft with her pen and marked it all up. Anything that she didn’t understand is being rewritten. Some of my organization wasn’t clear, so I’m making that a little clearer. We want to make Web Site Starter Kit the best it can be, which means clear, concise communication.
They haven’t quite released Wordpress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.
Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.
Posted in web site build |
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 free |
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
Now we begin to actually do something. Maybe you should go to the bathroom now to think about what we’ve talked about. This next part might be too exciting and I don’t want to be responsible for any accidents.
Go to the web page at http://www.wordpress.com. If you go to the “.org” one, that’s where you get the stuff to do it all yourself. You’re too cheap for that, so make sure you go to the “.com” site. They’re the “host it for me for free” site.
See where it says “Express Yourself. Start a Blog”? We’re going to trick them and not start a blog, although they are all the rage. We just want an easy to use, free web site. Now, see that big button that says “Sign Up Now? That’s what you click next.
Posted in web site build |
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 marketing |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Seth Godin, as always, is correct about the way to make money on the Internet. This is as important to small business owners, churches, bloggers, and wanna-be millionaires. Look at your organization and figure out how to connect people. Connect you and your customers, your customers with each other. He’s got examples. Do this now.
Seth’s Blog: How to make money using the Internet
The essence is this: connect.
Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.
The essence is this: connect.
Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.
- Connect advertisers to people who want to be advertised to.
- Connect job hunters with jobs.
- Connect information seekers with information.
- Connect teams to each other.
- Connect those seeking similar.
- Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
- Connect people who are proximate geographically.
- Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
- Connect like-minded people into a movement.
- Connect people buying with people who are selling.
Some examples? I think it’s worth delineating these so you can see that the opportunity can be big, if that’s your taste, or small if you don’t want to invest heavily just yet.
Read the entire article at Seth’s Blog: How to make money using the Internet
Posted in marketing |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Note: This is for people who already own a business, but don’t have a web site. This is not about how to blog your way to millions. It’s not about how to create the next Digg or FaceBook. This will tell you how to get your business on the web for free. That’s it. Don’t come whining to me if you expected something else.
Are you broke? Or are you just cheap? You just want a web site for your small business, but all you can pay is attention? Then listen up.
It’s really possible that you can create a web site for your business for free. It’s not going to be the prettiest. It’s not going to have some of the features that you’d expect in site that you paid for, but it’s going to work really well, give you all of the functionality that you need to put your site in the top rankings of the search engines, allow your vistors to find the information they want, and make it easy for them to give you their money. Best of all, it’s going to be absolutely free. It will not cost you a dime.
Before we walk through how to do that, let me tell you that there are better ways to build small business web sites. This process will get you a good web site, but it’s possible to get a great website for just a little bit of money. Since you’re reading this, we’ll only talk about the free stuff. After you see how cool the free stuff is, you’ll want more, so come back and read my other stuff about getting a small business web site for cheap, instead of free.
Posted in web site build |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Note: This is for people who already own a business, but don’t have a web site. This is not about how to blog your way to millions. It’s not about how to create the next Digg or FaceBook. This will tell you how to get your business on the web for free. That’s it. Don’t come whining to me if you expected something else.
Are you broke? Or are you just cheap? You just want a web site for your small business, but all you can pay is attention? Then listen up.
It’s really possible that you can create a web site for your business for free. It’s not going to be the prettiest. It’s not going to have some of the features that you’d expect in site that you paid for, but it’s going to work really well, give you all of the functionality that you need to put your site in the top rankings of the search engines, allow your vistors to find the information they want, and make it easy for them to give you their money. Best of all, it’s going to be absolutely free. It will not cost you a dime.
Before we walk through how to do that, let me tell you that there are better ways to build small business web sites. This process will get you a good web site, but it’s possible to get a great website for just a little bit of money. Since you’re reading this, we’ll only talk about the free stuff. After you see how cool the free stuff is, you’ll want more, so come back and read my other stuff about getting a small business web site for cheap, instead of free.
Posted in web site build |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
While it’s true that video can increase traffic to your web site, and is generally a wonderful thing, please, please, please make sure that you don’t make it start it playing as soon as someone loads the page. Please let me watch it if I want to or ignore it if I must. Nothing is more irritating than having sounds start coming from your computer when you didn’t expect it. It’s like walking up to a stranger on the sidewalk and shouting at them. It’s just rude.
Supercharge Your Web Site with Video | The Small Business Blog by Rieva Lesonsky
All smart entrepreneurs know that in order to compete today you need a robust Web presence. But not everyone has yet embraced online video, which (according to many Web gurus) can increase your site’s traffic and boost your sales. To learn more, I talked to Benjamin Wayne, president and CEO of Fliqz.com, a company that helps small and mid-sized businesses integrate video on their Web sites.
Supercharge Your Web Site with Video
Benjamin Wayne: Video can help businesses in three ways: drive increased traffic, drive more interactivity and page views, and drive increased [sales] conversion.
Lesonsky: Let’s talk about boosting traffic. What are the best ways to do this?
Wayne: The three primary ways are through site placement, search engine syndication, and viral propagation. When you add video to your site, consider using the home page, your galleries, and calls to action. Video on the home page will attract clicks from more than 50 percent of your users, and can be a great tool to draw visitors deeper into the site. The videos should be instructional in nature, or include a message from your company that provides an immersive introduction for new visitors.
Galleries are another good way to draw users into the site and encourage deeper interaction. Make sure that [videos within your product] galleries have a means to drive viewers back to a specific product or to purchase, and keep the videos short to encourage high completion rates. Finally, combine videos with a call to action. Videos are incredibly effective in driving user conversion [to sales], and should be featured prominently next to products as a means of driving purchase behavior.
Read the entire article at Supercharge Your Web Site with Video | The Small Business Blog
Posted in content |
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 web site build |
