Sunday, January 31st, 2010
The photo has nothing to do with small business web sites, but I had to put it in here somewhere. I came home from running errands the other day and, as I approached my house, I saw this accident. My house is probably 100 yards from this scene.
Not sure what happened, but the Toyota was fishtailing, a witness said, and hit the side of the parked white Isuzu. I’m still trying to figure out the skid marks. The driver’s side wasn’t scratched, but why would roll over on the passenger side? Can we blame it on the floor mat?
Posted in other |
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
This is amazing. This is exactly what I can do and want to do for small businesses.
Quoting from BuzzMachine The local ad opportunity (and the danger of losing it)
The promise of local ad support for news will come only if a new population of very small businesses can be served in new and effective ways – before Google beats everybody else to it. That’s apparent in the results of Webvisible and Nielsen surveys reported by MediaPost (via Marketeting Pilgrim and Frank Thinking), which show that local marketers are leaving newspapers and the yellow pages but are still dissatisfied with – and don’t pay enough attention to – internet marketing. Factoids:
* 42 percent of small businesses say they use the local paper less and 23 percent use yellow pages less – while 43 percent use search engines more.
* “Though 63% of consumers and small business owners turn to the internet first for information about local companies and 82% use search engines to do so, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online.”
* “Only 9% are satisfied with their online marketing efforts.”
* Mediapost found a disconnect in how small-business owners act as business people and marketers vs. how they act as consumers. That is, as consumers, they use and are satisfied with the internet and search to find other local businesses, but as marketers themselves, they use online less.
In these stats lies a big – but fleeting – opportunity: serving local businesses by helping them use online well. By this, I don’t mean doing what local newspapers have been doing: trying to sell them display or directory ads, just as they did in papers but in a new medium. Instead, I mean redefining what it means to help them succeed online. This might mean helping them place ads smartly on Google with good SEO (see Fred Wilson’s tweet out of our New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY). It might mean finding was to help local businesses interact more meaningfully with their own communities. It might mean enabling armies of citizen sales people – neighbors who really know their local businesses – to serve and sell those advertisers. It might mean providing tools to help local businesses create better (more informative, more SEOed) online presences and providing them data to show them their return on investment. I might mean finding other means to efficiently sell local businesses (can phone rooms ever work?). And so on…..
The assumptions I so often hear about local advertising – it doesn’t work; it doesn’t pay enough; small businesses are ignorant – need to be updated. The assumption that most needs to be updated is that a business needs an ad. It may need other tools to be found in search and to reach the right people and to improve relationships with them. All that may count as marketing, but not necessarily with an old ad in a new medium.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/02/16/the-local-ad-opportunity-and-the-danger-of-losing-it/#comments
Posted in marketing |
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
I did some research on my new client, his site, and his industry. He has, or had, a web site built by someone else. I did some checking around to see where we stand before we begin. Here’s what I did.
Using the “SEO For Firefox” plug in and the Google Toolbar in Firefox, I found out that it’s been around for about 6 months. That will help us get out of the Google sandbox.
by NeilsPhotography
Using the “links:” search term in Google, where you type in “links:www.domainname.com”, you can find out how many other sites out there are linking to you. These are your “incoming links”. This one has 10 at the moment. That’s a cool place to start from.
It’s got a page tank of 0. That means there’s opportunity to improvement here! It’s got a good solid base, with a little history and some links to it, so when we start to optimize it, it should really respond.
This is much better than starting from a brand new domain name and new site, with no incoming links. Google doesn’t like those newbies. They could be spammers or child abusers or some kind of perverts.
Just like in the real world, they want to get to know you a bit before they trust you. It’s all about the reputation. Now that this site has been at the party for a little while, it’s time to make sure our hair looks good, that we don’t have bad breath, and there’s no food spilled on our shirt. Then we can walk over and introduce ourself to the host of the party, Google.com.
Posted in SEO |
Friday, January 30th, 2009
It’s really easy to believe that everyone else is like you. They aren’t.
Everyone tends to do it. It takes a conscious effort to not do it. I mean, you are a rational person. You believe everything you believe and think everything that you think. Why wouldn’t everyone else think and believe the same way? What are they? Morons?
It's really easy to believe that everyone else is like you. They aren't.
As you grow up, you begin to realize that not everyone else is like you. There are other people in the room and they might think, believe, and feel differently than you do. Bigots never grow up.
When you are designing your site and writing your content, do it from the users point of view, not your own. They are the ones that you have created this magnificent new web site for, so honor them by talking in their language and answering their questions and meeting their needs.
The first step to do this is to define just who they are. Once you have them defined, forget everyone else. If you want to sell video games, your site will look much different then if you want to sell medical equipment.
It might be helpful to write down your definition of your users and tape it to your monitor, where you can remember them while you’re writing.
Their words, their needs, their solutions. That’s what you need to focus on.
Posted in content |
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
SEO should be free.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. How much it costs will depend on how optimized you want it to be. Nothing in SEO costs any money, only time. You should learn what the techniques are and then you should do them your self.
SEO just wants to be free.
Don't pay for it.
A friend just told me recently “I have many people that do SEO for me already”. Really? He’s a friend, so I won’t tear him apart for that too much, but his site is found for the one thing that he’s interested in and it’s not found for his main products. I looked.
The first thing that you must do, MUST do, is to pick some keywords or phrases that you want to rank highly for. The best way to do this is to think about it from your users point of view. What problem are they trying to solve when they come to your site. Why should they be there? Wedding Flowers? Car Repair? Pizza? a TV Show? What are those words that they will type into Google to find you?
It’s good to get one main phrase that you was to own. That phrase will go everywhere on your site, so many times that’s annoying.
Now you need to pick 3-5 more phrases that you want to do well for. Maybe you won’t own these, but you still want traffic from them.
Remember, these phrases must be from the user’s point of view, not yours. You might think that you sell “water treatment systems”, but your users want to buy “water softeners”. You might think that you sell “hand made, one of a kind, jewelry”, but I’m looking for a “woman birthday gift”. You might think you sell “woman’s action wear”, but my wife’s looking for “woman sports clothes”.
Now that that has rolled around in your head for a while, you can write down the phrases that you want to rank well for and the one that you want to own.
Next, you can scatter those phrases around your site and ask for links from other sites. Make your title on every page contain that main phrase. Leave comments on other sites using those phrases. Do all of the other SEO stuff that you can find on the Internet and that I’ll talk about later.
SEO just wants to be free. Don’t pay for it.
Posted in SEO |
Monday, January 26th, 2009
WordPress is free.
I saw an article recently listing 10 free web site building tools. Most of them take a while to figure out. They won’t all let you do what you want to do. None were expandable to your own site if you ever wanted to take the next step, from “free” to “owning your own”.
The biggest cost is time.
It made me think about what the real costs of a web platform are. The biggest cost is time. How long does it take you to learn how to work it and make it do what you want it to do? How much is it going to frustrate you and make you figure out how to do something simple?
In my experience with WordPress, and I’m coming at this from a developer point of view, it’s much easier and intuitive to learn to use WordPress than with any other platform out there. When I build a site for a client using WordPress, it’s much easier to train them and get them up to speed on WordPress than other systems that I’ve tried.
Let’s look at the cost it would take to put a wordpress site on your own server and run it for a year. Domain name is $10. Don’t pay more than that for a domain name. Hosting packages can be had for less than $80 a year. Call the whole thing $100 for a year of hosting your own site.
If you use a good host, they would have an auto install version of WordPress. Click, click, bang. It’s set up. Play with a theme. Spend too much time looking on line for a theme. Download, install. Play with plug ins. Download, install. Write a few posts. Create a few pages. Change the layout a bit. Call it 8 hours total, from start to having your own blog on line, working, with your own theme and content. You have added the plug-ins that you wanted, the theme that you wanted, the layout, the content, the menu. All of it is exactly what you want.
The cost in time is really because you have TOO MANY options. If you can be satisfied with what comes out of the box, then a WordPress site can be set up in 20 minutes.
Compare that to another free host. Set up is quick and easy. Pick a theme. There are 20. Write a post. Change the layout? No. Can’t do that. Put the menu on the other side? No. Can’t do that. You want to post video? No. Can’t do that either. Podcast? Special functionality? Nope. None of that.
You’ve spent the same 8 hours trying to do stuff and not being able to that you would have on WordPress. It’s $100 cheaper and maybe that’s the difference for you. It doesn’t look quite like you want it to and it doesn’t have quite the right functionality. It’s harder to use and takes longer to post than WordPress. If it takes 3 minutes longer and you make 20 posts, that’s an hour. How many posts in a year?
This reminds me of the difference between Windows and a Mac. The Mac costs a bit more to start, but lasts twice a long, lets you work twice as fast, and makes it easier to do anything you want. Which is a better deal? How much is your time worth? How much money do you have?
It’s all up to you, but if you have $100 to spend on a web site for a year, spend it and build a WordPress site. You’ll thank me at the end of the year.
Posted in Wordpress |
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
I was walking a client through his Analytics stats yesterday, explaining what each page, each section meant. I asked him if he ever looked at these since we set them up. He looks at them as much as you do, which is never.
What traffic are you missing?
He didn’t connect the value of what these numbers and charts mean to how he can improve his site and make more money with it, as well as make it a better experience for his users.
As we drilled into the content part of it, I saw that no one, as in not one person, was looking through his portfolio pages. I realized that these pages have a smaller menu over to the side that people could easily miss.
Also, when I redesigned his site by bringing it into WordPress (of course), the top, main menu now has a different look and action than the original small portfolio menu. I used to just put a glow around the highlighted menu item and now I was doing the whole colored div background, which is much more apparent.
Now we have a menu that looks and functions differently and no one who ever clicks on them. HHHmmmm. What to do?
Next step, I put in the same style menu as the top, so they highlight the same. That should improve the click on those. We’ll be watching his stats to see what happens.
Read your Analytics pages today. What traffic are you missing?
Posted in statistics |
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
I’m offended by the “greasy hair” stereotype, but other than that, this article has some true things to say. I came from the web development world, where a budget of $30,000 was average. I worked at a company that developed a web site and sold it for $580 million bucks.
You don’t need that. From the article: ” Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page.” That’s what I advocate, a simple, professional web site for FREE!.
Quoting from Small Business – We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Web Sites By Gene Marks
Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page.
A Vested Interest in the Debate
When was the last time I visited the site for the corner Exxon guy or the sub shop across from my office? To see the price of gas? To get nutrition info on ham on rye?
If you search the Web you’ll find lots of people writing about how small business owners must have a Web site. Dig a little further and guess what? Many of the people shouting how absolutely critical it is for a small business to have a Web site are — drum roll, please — in the business of helping small businesses create Web sites. Surprise! Despite what all the business experts — including the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing classes — may say, Web sites are not an absolute necessity.
Good business owners invest wisely and for the most return. They’re not in business to run a site just because it’s cool or hip. Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page. Let the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing, greasy-haired geeks suck their fees from someone else.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=013001HJPXZ6&page=3&full_skip=1
Posted in marketing |
Monday, January 5th, 2009
In the recent debate on how evil Network Solutions is, I neglected to give you the non-evil alternatives.
JumpDomain Whois
The easiest thing to do is go to an old registrar that quit answering my emails so I moved all of my domain names away from them. They had non-existant customer support, so I’m sure they won’t mind us using their tools.
https://domains.jumpdomain.com/whois/whois.cgi
Go to the URL above and put in your domain name. Hit Submit Query. It will also return all of the DNS info. Bookmark that page. I use it all the time. It’s by far the easiest and fastest way to look up available domain names without getting into trouble.
Whois?
First, if you are a Mac user (and I won’t get into that religious debate now), if you go into your utilities folder, there is an application called “Network Utility”. If you open that up, you’ll see all of the tools listed across the top. Click on “Whois”.
You can type in the domain name you want to check on and click on the “Whois” button. It will return all of the DNS info for that domain name or it will say “No match for…” the domain name you are looking for.
Terminal Whois on a Mac
If you are brave, you can open the Terminal application and type in “whois” followed by the domain name. That will also give you the DNS info.
Posted in DNS |
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action
Here Are 3 Easy “Calls to Action” to Convert More Website Traffic into Sales on the About Us, Media and Contact Us Pages
1. On the “About Us” page, after your bio, add a powerful client testimonial praising your expertise and your measurable and specific impact on the client’s bottom line. Then add the line “Ready for these kinds of results in your organization? Click here to get started now!” (This links to the contact page).
This call to action, in fact, can be used for any page that does not have an obvious next step.
2. Your “Media” page should not just be a collage of logos. It should contain short videos of your TV appearances, audio clips of your radio interviews or featured-expert interviews on teleseminars. It should also include links to the articles where you were quoted or links to your articles that got published on the top websites. Let the world see what a sought-after, in-demand expert you really are.
With that being said, a simple, but effective call to action would be, “Sarah B. Marketer looks forward to being the featured expert on your next program. To schedule her appearance right now click here.” (This links to the Contact page.)
3. The Contact page, by definition, is a call to action. It needs to take your visitor by the hand and lead them through the next step.
It should not just be a page that displays your mailing address, phone number, and main corporate e-mail. Rather, it should lead with a paragraph that congratulates the reader for their decision to take action. Then, it should explain the process for getting in touch with you. It should also describe what someone should expect once they contact you.
Next, guide them through a simple web form that asks specific questions. This way you can do your homework and present prospects with a specific response and action plan. Make sure to keep this form as brief as possible, and only ask questions that directly inform how you and your visitor would do business together in the near future.
Having a web form, rather than just a link to your e-mail address, guides your visitor to take a specific action. This raises their level of commitment to you and increases your chances that they will buy from you.
Bottom line: Make sure that every page on your website provides a roadmap for your visitor with a specific call to action. This is the only way your prospects will reach the destination that you prepared for them. And, it’s the only way you will increase your website sales conversions.
Read the entire article at SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources » Blog Archive » How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action
Posted in marketing |
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 |
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
Now that you have all of your pages, which has created all of your menus, and are filled with all of your content, what else do you want the site to do?
All of the fancy features that you want your site to do can be added using “plug ins”. Each plug in adds one bit of functionality. You can see all of them on the WordPress site here. www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
To install a plug in, you need to copy the plug in files to the plug in directory in your WordPress installation. That’s located at /top_directory/wp-content/plugins/. You’ll probably
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Posted in web site build |
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
There are some things that a small business web site should have to establish credibility and not look stupid. You should make it easy for people to contact you. Yes, even your phone number. Being able to call up and get a real person, even if all you can say is “Sorry, I’m busy right now, but I’ll get back to you” really means a lot to your customers.
Having your physical address really helps also. If you want to go all out, put on a photo of your shop if you have one. I’ll be very confident if I can see that someone has a real shop that way. Of course, you could go to Flickr or Google Images and find some slick office building and call it your World Headquarters, but, well, that would be stupid. If you want people to trust you and come back for more, don’t lie to them. Didn’t you learn that in third grade?
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
I’ve put up a link under my short bio over there on the right. Put up a new head shot while I was there. If you click on the button, it’ll pop up a window and you can ask me anything you want to know about small business web sites. I’ll answer it as soon as I can. I want to build some traffic to the site, so I thought I’d put that possibility out there for you.
If you have any questions about small business web sites, web hosts, HTML, design, development, management, WordPress, or anything at all, go ahead and send me the question. We’ll see just how much I really do know. You can also leave a comment below, if you want to do it that way. Either way should work.
Thanks!
Posted in web site build |
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 web site build |
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
WordPress is a system that allows you to manage your content. You might call it a content management system, or CMS, but only if you cared about this stuff. It’s a system built on a bunch of files that talk to a database. Sorry if that’s too technical for you. There are a bunch of people working on it, making it better. Because you, or someone who cares, can see what those files have in them, it’s called “open source”, where the “source” of the system, the files, is “open”.
Wordpress is a system that allows you to manage your content.
It’s possible to go to http://www.wordpress.org and download the whole bucket of files and install them on your own web server. If you were a programmer or a developer, you could change them and do whatever you wanted to with them.
So, if you spent all of your time to build this really cool new CMS thing, but you just give it away to everyone for free, how would you ever make any money from it? If you’re smart, you create a hosting company that lets people use it for themselves and then charges those people for add on special features. This means that you can get a free web site using WordPress for your very own small business. You’ve heard the phrase “The first one’s free”? It’s like that.
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
The downside to this is that you only have the ability to make it do what they let you do. If you wanted to spend money on this, you could have the ability to do whatever you felt like. Sorry, getting off track again. They only allow you to use one of their approved themes and their approved plug ins. But remember, it’s free, so don’t whine too much. We’ll figure out a way around most of the limitations any way. Follow me.
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
We need to know what we want to accomplish. What is the goal here? You have a business. You want more customers. How do customers find you? Search engines. “Google” has become a verb. How do they use a search engine? They type in a words and hit enter. Those words, those “keywords”, are critical to your success.
What is the goal here?
You first need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. What does your company do? How would you describe your company?
You also need to know that you have competition. You are probably other companies out there that do the same, or similar things. They also have web sites for those very same keywords that you want to be found for.
As you search for more keywords at one time, you will narrow the results. Let’s pretend that you have a car repair shop in Torrance, CA that specializes on transmissions. If you search for “auto” you’ll get 1 trillion, 280 million results. If you search for “auto repair”, that narrows it down to 22 million results. Dude. That’s still too many. You don’t want to compete against everyone in the country.
Let’s try “auto repair torrance”. That’s better. There are only 226,000 results for those terms. Not all of those are repair shops. Some of those are on Torrance Blvd. in another city. Some of those are blog posts by some guy, sitting in his underware, complaining about the work some shop did to his Corolla. We can do this.
Let’s decide that these are the keywords that we’re going to try to optimize for, “auto repair torrance”. Another acronym to make you feel smart; “SEO” means search engine optimization. It also means “spend a lot of money” if you pay someone to do it for you. You’re going to do this yourself.
Posted in web site build |
