Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Here are the top 5 factors, out of 24, that are important for SEO on a page. These were ranked by their panel of experts (people smarter than me.) Click through to read the whole list. The whole site is filled with great information.
1. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
66% very high importance
8% moderate consensus
2. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag
63% high importance
11.3% light consensus
3. Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name (e.g. keyword.com)
60% high importance
11.2% light consensus
4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag
49% moderate importance
10.2% light consensus
5. Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text on the Page
47% moderate importance
13% moderate contention
One tip to take away from this is when you are using WordPress and the “All in one SEO” plug in, the default for all of the titles is: “%blog_title% | %post_title%”. Change that to “%post_title% | %blog_title%” to get those keywords closer to the beginning of the title.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#on-page-keyword-specific-ranking-factors
Posted in SEO |
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
This article, excerpted below, lists 13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.
All of them are valid.
The biggest cost of WordPress is the time it takes you to create a site and make it what you want it to be. The biggest downside to using a free service is lack of control.
I suggest that you try out a free site, (after all, it’s free), and learn the ropes.
When you are ready for a “real” web site, then get your own web host and install WordPress. You can point everything on the free site at the new site.
With your very own web site, you have complete control of everything! Sell stuff! Publish what you want. Make it professional and compete with other businesses. Rock the world.
Final thoughts.
13 reasons why you should NOT have a free wordpress.com web site.
If you already have a free WordPress site, and it is your only blog/website, I suggest one of two things. 1) Buy a domain, install wordpress and start fresh. You can always direct people to your new blog from your old blog, or 2) Export all your content from your free site into a paid site, then you’ll have everything in one place. The sooner you do this the better in my opinion.
That said, blogging communities are great and should not be ignored. Having a free blog within a blogging community however, is very different than having a website all your own. Of all the free blogging communities around, I like Tumblr the best. Here is a list of some of the most popular blogging communities.
WordPress is a blog application found at WordPress.org
Wordpress is free to use. It’s called open source.
Wordpress is awesome. Smart people use it.
Wordpress.com is a place to be part of a blogging community.
A free WordPress blog doesn’t make sense as your only blog.
A free WordPress blog is a great way to learn the ropes.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.socialmediatherapy.com/2009/07/03/a-free-wordpress-blog-can-really-cost-you/
Posted in Wordpress |
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
I will attempt to explain how to convert an existing site into WordPress. I wrote previously about converting a client’s site from old school tables to a CSS based WordPress theme at http://www.flowerart.biz. I think this should work for Frontpage based sites as well as DreamWeaver or any other site that is reasonably coded, that is, if you “saved as HTML” from MS Word, you’re on your own.
A lot of people are looking for this information, so I figure I should expand on it and tell you exactly what I did and how you can convert any existing web site into a WordPress themed site too.
How To Convert An Existing Site To WordPress
The concept of a theme is that it will be the framework, the common template, that all of your content will be displayed inside of. Normally, you will use the same look and feel, the same template, on all of your pages. This usually contains the header, the sidebars, the footer, and the content goes in the middle and changes from page to page. We’ll want to take the existing HTML files and slice them up into WordPress theme files, with a dynamic place in the middle to put all of the content.
Text Edit
Did I mention that you need a text editor to make WordPress theme files? MS Word will not work. You MUST be able edit the files and save them as “text” files. They can not be formatted in any way. On Windows, look for WordPad. On a Mac, look for TextEdit. Do not make them RTF, or Rich Text Format. Just save the files as simple old text.
Quick shout out for BBEdit on a Mac. The ultimate text editor and if you’re going to be doing this, worth every penny. It does not suck. Says so right on the box.
Set Up Dev
Before we get any farther, you’ll need a development installation of WordPress that you can play with and break. It can’t share the database with an existing installation, or the theme you pick here will be the theme that the existing site will get at the same time.
If you do not have an installation of WordPress yet, install it and we’ll just play with it until we’re happy with the new theme. No one is looking. No one cares. Feel free to break it all you want.
If you do have an existing installation, you need to make another installation. It’s easy, but pay attention. You will have the existing site in your top level. You’ll probably have a “wordpress” folder with all of the files in it, in that top level. Make a copy, or upload a new copy, of WordPress right next to that folder. Name the new folder “dev”. You will now have the existing Worpress in “wordpress” and the new one right next to it, named “dev”.
Take the existing wp-config.php file and download it to your hard drive, where you can edit it. Open it up and look for the line that says ” $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; “. That “wp_” is the prefix for all of the tables in the database that WordPress uses. We don’t want to create a new database. We want to create new tables inside the existing database. We leave everything else in this file alone, but we change the “wp_” to “dev_”. Our new installation will see that and go create a new set of tables, all with names beginning with “dev_”.
Upload that wp-config.php file and upload it to our new “dev” installation. It should be next to all of the other “wp-”folders, at the top level.
Now, we’ll let WordPress do it’s thing. This is where the WordPress is so much better than any other Content Management System out there. We’ll finish the installation using your web browser.
Go to the home page of the new “dev” WordPress installation. If you have a previous installation, type in that URL, followed by /dev/, which is the folder that we put the dev WordPress. If this is a new installation, then you can go to the new home page. You should be looking at a new installation page that says “welcome”. You need to fill in the Name of the new site and your email address.
Click on the Install WordPress button. Wait for a really long time while WordPress goes out and updates the database and installs all of the information that it needs. This might take up 10 seconds on a slow day.
You will be looking at a Success! page. The user name is “admin” and the password is some totally obscure random string. Log into the new site and look around. You now have a development site that we can install themes on and break if we want to.
Lift and Separate
We want to go back to looking at the existing site that you want to convert. We want to lift the HTML from it and separate it into WordPress theme files.
The basic task is to separate out the “theme” elements from the “content” elements. If you have a stack of HTML files on your server and you’re not sure how they all work, download them and look at them in a text editor.
You need to have some background in HTML to know what you are looking at. You’re going to have to read the HTML and figure out what it is doing. You’ll see a lot of stuff at the top, in the <head> section. The next should be the header area, all the stuff at the top. Somewhere down after that, will be what looks like content, the actual writing.
Your task, and this is the hardest part, is to figure out exactly where the “top” stuff stops and the “content” stuff starts. It could be a table cell. It could be a <div> tag. You need to find that point.
In the simplest form, there’s a bunch of HTML, then there’s content, then there’s a bunch more HTML. The goal is to slice that HTML into files named “header.php”, “sidebar.php”, “footer.php”, and most importantly, “index.php”. There could be others, but we’ll talk about that later.
Slice off the top stuff and put it in the “header.php” file. Figure out where the side bar stuff might come and copy it into that. You don’t really need a sidebar file if you don’t want to have one or you might want a couple, using sidebar-right.php and sidebar-left.php. You’ll have to go through your code and look at the layout of the page.
Take the bottom stuff and put it in the footer.php. You saw that coming, didn’t you?
You’re left with the content. You need to create an “index.php” file. At the top, you want to have the tag <?php get_header(); ?>. At the bottom, you want to have the <?php get_footer(); ?> tag. You can put your sidebars in where you want them, before or after the content, for left or right.
In the middle of the index page, you want to put in the magic PHP tags that display the content. Open up the default theme index.php file and look at it. Copy everything starting at the <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> tag down to the <?php endif; ?> tag. You’ll get a bunch of “class=entry” and “php_content()” tags.
Save all of these files into a new theme folder. You’re doing all of this on your hard drive. Name the new theme whatever you want. “MyNewTheme” sounds great. Copy the style sheet from the default theme into your new theme folder. If you already have a style sheet from your original site, use that instead.
Open the .css style sheet file. You want to have the new name so that it shows up in the Appearance page in WordPress. At the top of the file, you need to have at least “/* Theme Name: MyNewTheme */”. The slash and asterisk means that it’s “commented out” so that it doesn’t interfere with the style sheet. Don’t use the quotes, just the slashes and asterisks. Look at the default theme style sheet or the codex for more info. This is minimum.
Upload and Look
Upload your theme folder to the “wp-content” themes folder, next to the default and classic themes. Go to your Themes page in WordPress admin and see if your theme is there. If it is, select it and activate it. Hold your breathe and “View Site”.
Did it work? Did it break? If you have horrible text that displays PHP error messages, read what they say and try to figure out where the error is. It’s probably a missing closing tag or a missing semi-colon. I hate those.
Did it display something, but it’s all out of whack? You need to play with the style sheets and the theme files to get it to display correctly.
Fix it
The simplest situation here is that you copied the code straight out of the original files and plopped it in here and it all works.
The issues could be style sheets, missing code, or badly written HTML. The more you change from original, the more you need to know what you are doing.
Pages
After you get it working and looking right, you want to create new pages for each page in the new site. Just create them and put some gibberish for now. You just want a place holder. Make sure that the menu points to the right places. Menus will be the next issue.
Existing Pages
If you have pages that you just don’t want to convert, you can put them into the Worpdress top folder, so that they act like normal pages. In my example, all of the portfolio pages are still hard coded PHP files. http://www.flowerart.biz/portfolio/ I needed to make sure the menus work, but those are hard coded pages. They are not visible in WordPress, but they are visible to the user. Read “Put A WordPress Menu In An External Page” to see how I made the menus dynamic on a hard coded page.
Menus
If you want to have dynamic menus, where pages are added to the menu when you create the pages, then you need to read through the codex about menu tags and their attributes. It’s possible to cut out the hard coded HTML menu that you had and replace it with a dynamic one. See where to cut out the old one and replace it with the new tags.
Different Templates
If you have different templates for different pages, you need to know what the differences are. If you need to create a new template for each page, you can do that. Go into each old HTML file, cut out the “contents” and replace it per the directions above. Now, create a new file that will act like that specific page’s index.php file. I like to name them all starting with “template_”, so you might have template_aboutus.php.
These new template pages need to have all of the tags of the others, header() and footer() and that stuff. It’s possible to have a template page that is entirely custom HTML and not even use the content() tags. You won’t be able to edit it, but it’ll show up on the site and be managed like other pages.
Each one of these new template pages needs to have the commented out lines at the top of the file that has the name in this format: “/* Template Name: About Us */”, again, without the quotes.
Upload this new file to the theme folder, next to the index.php file. Go back to the page that needs to use this template. On the right, there’s a “Template” drop down menu that should now list all of the template files that contain that “Template Name:” line in them. Select the one you want to use for that page and update.
Go look at it. You will have to customize and fix each template to make sure it works with the pages that you want.
Final Touches
You will have to go through each page and make sure that the menus work and that they look right. You can use the default theme as a guide. You can look up specific problems in the codex or the forums or you can ask me.
From here on out, it will be stylesheets and php tags to get it to look and work right. If you have a specific problem, let me know in the comments below and we can walk through it.
Posted in Wordpress |
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 |
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 |
Monday, January 12th, 2009
I ran into an old friend recently. The usual questions were asked about what’s happened in the 20 years since we’ve seen each other. Yes, I do web sites.
They said they were about to update their web site. Their spouse had created it and they wanted to add some features and update the look. I suggested that they use WordPress. I sounded like the fan boy that I am.
They were pleasant, but said they already had hosting with GoDaddy and they would just use the web blog application that they provided as part of the hosting package. They had heard of WordPress and that it was good, but they would use what they had.
I continued on about how cool WordPress is. They were very nice, but had decided that they didn’t want to pay anything extra when they already had a blogging application included in their hosting package.
I checked it out on my own GoDaddy account. It sucked! It had a tenth of the functionality and the interface was horrible.
Did I mention that it's free?
I told them again that they should use WordPress. I told them that it is free. You can install it anywhere. It’s got features, and blah blah blah, and IT’S FREE!
Oh. That’s quite different. It’s free you say? You don’t have to buy it?
No! It’s FREE. You can download it, install it, pick a theme, put in some plug ins and have a complete, professional web site FOR FREE.
They said they would check it out. They thanked me profusely. Told me that I had motivated them to get going on their web site.
I have no idea if they will do anything on it at all, but I guess I was shocked that not everyone has the same understanding and knowledge and beliefs that I do. Silly me.
People seem to think that to get cool software, you have to spend money. If you don’t spend money, then you can have cool software. People can’t wrap their heads around the whole “open source” thing.
If you happen to not be aware, WordPress is free. There is no cost. You can download it and install it on any web server that’s running MySQL and Apache (which is almost every web server these days). You can control all aspects of it. You can build your own theme if you want. You can do anything with it.
Did I mention that it’s free?
Posted in Wordpress |
Saturday, January 10th, 2009
This is an amazing plug in. I wish I had known about it a couple years ago. It would have saved me a bunch of time and effort. Check it out.
Quoting from WordPress Sermons Plugin :: 4:14 evangelical christian theology blog
The Sermon Browser WordPress Plugin allows churches to simply upload sermons to their WordPress website, where they can be searched, listened to, and downloaded. It is easy to use with comprehensive help and tutorials. Features include:
1. Sermons can be searched by topic, preacher, bible passage or date.
2. Full podcasting capabilities, including custom podcasts for individual users.
3. Sermons uploaded in mp3 format can be played directly on your website using the 1PixelOut Audio Player.
4. An optional sidebar widget displays sermons on all of your posts or pages.
5. Embed videos from sites such as YouTube or Google Video.
6. Other file types can also be uploaded, including PDF, Powerpoint, Word, text and RTF. Multiple files can be attached to single sermons.
7. The full Bible text of the passage being preached on can be included on each sermon page (seven different versions, including ESV).
8. Files can be uploaded to your own site through the browser or via FTP. Alternatively you can use other free audio hosting sites such as Odeo.
9. Powerful templating function allows complete customisation to complement the look of your site.
10. Simple statistics show how often each sermon has been listened to.
11. Compatible with WordPress MU.
12. Extensive help and tutorial screencasts.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.4-14.org.uk/wordpress-plugins/sermon-browser
Posted in church |
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
There’s a new product out today, from Remarkablogger, that will teach you about WordPress SEO. I will have a review of it up on the site as soon as I can.
Posted in SEO |
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Half of all churches in America today do NOT have a web site. Half! What excuse is there for that? This article below is quoting a Duke University survey to make the point that the church has caught up with the times, that only a fifth of them had a web site in 1998. But the glass is not half full here. It’s half empty.
If you are involved with a church that does not have a web site, I can show you how to get one for free, using WordPress.com. All it takes is a little initiative on your part and you can have a web site. You don’t need a $300 site. You don’t need a $500 site. You can have a free web site for your church. Go to www.worpdress.com and follow the instructions.
Do it now. For the children.
Quoting from The Church In 2009 – KYPost.com
Close to half of the churches offer Web pages.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.kypost.com/content/middleblue3/story/The-Church-In-2009/o3oMerab5E2upfPeBvDqdg.cspx
Posted in church |
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 |
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Argh! Of course, after I’ve written the directions on how to use WordPress, they come out with a new version, version 2.7, and changed the entire interface, so I have to rewrite the “how to” sections, with new screenshots, so they actually match what it really is like now.
More work for me. Better book for you. The book should be available to buy in the next few days also. I still need to run it through some reviews to make sure it’ll be as good as I think it should be.
The new admin interface is much better and easier to use. I like it a lot and I’m glad it happened now and not after I started to sell Web Site Starter Kit. I’d hate to have angry customers.
If you sign up for a free account at WordPress.com today, you’ll get to use the latest version. If you download it to use on your own “cheap” web host, then you’ll get the old version. Version 2.7 for download should be updated in the next few days.
Posted in web site build |
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 web site build |
Friday, December 5th, 2008
Many small business owners will use their old generic email address when doing business, even after they’ve spent money to buy a domain name. Sending an email to someone with a HotMail, Yahoo, or Gmail domain name is a sure sign that you don’t know what you are doing, that you are second rate, that you are not professional.
You should set up addresses like support@ and sales@ and information@, just to look professional.
Make sure that the web host that is hosting your web site can do email also. All of them should be able to. It’s not that hard. Take the time to go in a get it set up. Find out what the host name is there and set up the account.
Set up your email application to log into that account, then use it to send and receive email.
You should also have a “catch all” account that will probably get filled with spam, but you’ll also get those emails with misspelled email addresses that you might otherwise miss.
You should set up addresses like “support@” and “sales@” and “information@”, just to look professional. You, or someone, should be able to log in and send and receive email at each of your custom addresses.
Also, don’t let any address lay dormant. Make sure that someone is logging into every account, every 10 minutes. “I sent you an email last week. Did you get it?” is not the question you want to hear.
Posted in web host |
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 |
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Stores seeking sales on Web :: PostStar.com
Locally, Paul O’Donnell, owner of Celtic Treasures in Saratoga Springs, saw an influx of orders Monday thanks to a free shipping offer.
“UPS came in with a big hand truck to carry it all out,” he said.
Online since 1996, Celtic Treasures has established an online presence and customer database that would make many small businesses drool. O’Donnell’s store appears on the first page of a Google search for “Irish gifts,” which he called “priceless” and chalked up to longevity.
Celtic Treasures in Saratoga Springs
While the Cyber Monday phenomenon is largely absent from Main Street, online stores are becoming a popular way for local merchants to reach out to their existing customer base, and sometimes beyond.
In Glens Falls, SensibiliTeas owner Donnalynn Milford said a Web site has allowed her to send teas, herbs and spices all over the world. And when gas prices exceeded $4 per gallon, she noticed that customers from Chestertown and North Creek were ordering online, too.
“It was cheaper for me to send it to them, than (for them) to drive down and get it,” Milford said.
For most small businesses, a functional Web site is as good as a second storefront, said Todd Shimkus, president and CEO of the Adirondack Regional Chambers of Commerce.
“The primary benefit for a local small business, irregardless of where you are, is it gives you a chance to compete with those larger operations who are trying to draw business away,” Shimkus said.
Merchants with a unique, specialized product often have an easier time attracting an online audience.
Read the entire article at Stores seeking sales on Web :: PostStar.com
Posted in marketing |
Monday, December 1st, 2008
Here is the web guy at the NYT saying that their main costs for their web site is the manpower to build it. The software is cheap. The hardware is cheap. That’s basically the approach I take in the Website Starter Kit. Use WordPress, which is free, and buy space on a cheap web host. Use their hardware for less than $10 a month.
The main cost to build a web site is the manpower to build it.
You be the labor. You do it yourself and save a ton of money. Using these tools, it won’t be that hard to do.
In my experience, even the building of the site is easy. The real time suck is politics. The meetings between marketing and well, marketing, seemed to drag out every decision. They needed to be sure everything was just right before we could move ahead. When you can tell a developer to “do it this way”, they can knock it out quickly. When you ask a marketing person which way they want it, have a seat and wait.
Don’t fall into this same trap. Just get the site up and out the door. When you build custom stuff, it will take a bit to make changes, but using WordPress, it’s easy. Make all of the changes you want.
Make a decision. Make it happen. Bam. You’re done.
Old Media Interview: Aron Pilhofer, interactive guru, editor at The New York Times | Old Media, New Tricks
Everything we use is free and open-source… The cost here isn’t software, or even hardware, which is relatively cheap these days… The price most … organizations (and it’s not just small ones) seem reluctant to pay is for people…
Read the entire article at Old Media Interview: Aron Pilhofer, interactive guru, editor at The New York Times | Old Media, New Tricks
Posted in web site build |
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 marketing |
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 |
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
One reason that I want the primary focus of my business to be helping people build their own web sites instead of building sites for them is that everyone needs to embrace their own web site. We should know what is the content and update it regularly.
Embrace your site!
I can’t stress enough that you should be personally involved in your web site. You would always keep a copy of the keys to your front door. You would always have access to your bank account. You should always be involved with, control, and manage your own web site.
Don’t pay people like me to build you a site so that you can forget it and get on with the important parts of your business. The web site IS an important part of your business and you need to treat it that way if you are going to be successful.
Web wise: Startup company’s website- Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times
So whether it is a small-time business setup or a larger brick and mortar entity you are launching, a website is like the screwdriver in a toolbox that you really can’t do without. Says Rajeev Karwal, CEO and founder of Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions, “Internet domains are the most cost-effective method of getting your message across to a huge audience.
In fact, it is a very personal way of connecting with them. Unfortunately, only one or two percent of small companies use their websites effectively today.” There are quite a few reasons: low connectivity, low awareness and a tendency to “outsource and forget” what is treated as a necessary evil. Also, a website is not just a one-time investment of time or money—it demands constant attention and upgradation. But as these entrepreneurs prove, an attractive and well-tended website can be a key pillar of success and growth.
Read the entire article at Web wise: Startup company’s website- Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times
Posted in web site build |
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 marketing |
