Expression Web Giveaway – A marketing idea to copy

December 24, 2009 By 1 Comment

Sometimes we stumble upon marketing ideas in unexpected places.  Even if they are in no way involved in our own industry, they can be molded and used within our business.  I get lots of marketing emails from lots of people trying to sell me something, but my email yesterday contained one that caught my attention enough to read rather than to just hit the delete key.

Many of us create our own websites using either FrontPage, Dreamweaver, or Expression Web.  Pat Geary and Tina Clarke, owners of the website www.frontpage-to-expression.com , provide a wealth of information for FrontPage users who want to migrate to Expression Web.  If you have any interest in learning how to use Expression Web to create a website, this site is one that you should visit.

But back to this marketing idea. . . the two ladies have created a giveaway with prizes that any user (or potential user) of Expression Web would love to win.  All you have to do is write about the giveaway on Facebook, a blog, etc. and let them know about it.  Some lucky writers will be the lucky winners of the great prizes. 

This is my entry because I would love to win any of the awards but also because I think they provide outstanding information to anyone interested in the program.  I’ve made it a practice to never recommend something that I wouldn’t use myself and this is not an exception.

Now that I’ve encouraged you to enter that giveaway, let me also suggest how you might use a similar idea to market your own business.  People love FREE.  They love the opportunity to win something.  And they rarely hesitate to enter their name in a contest that is giving away something they want.  But what makes this marketing technique different is that you have to tell others about their product if you want to win it.  In other words, you give to receive. 

Some gift basket companies have a monthly drawing for a free gift basket in order to collect email addresses.  Why not make those entering your contest work a little bit for it?  Enter their names in your drawing if they mention your business on Facebook or write something about you in an ezine or newsletter or blog.  That giveaway gift basket (and you could make it even more enticing by adding a few other simple prizes) then provides a return on your investment.  And isn’t this what marketing is all about?

So go check out their giveaway at Expression Web Giveaway and create your own marketing campaign.

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Using Microsoft Word to create text for your web pages?

August 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Are you creating text in Microsoft Word and then copying and pasting it into a web page?  If so, don’t.  And here is the reason why.

Microsoft Word creates all sorts of formatting clutter in the source code of your page.  And that is not good.  It’s easy enough to get around the problem.  Some html creating programs have a Word-cleaning tool built in that you can use.  But I’ve found it much easier to just create the text in wordpad and then copy that text onto the webpage.

You want as little formatting clutter as possible in your source code.  This is just one simple way to cut down on it.

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Website Pirates Strike Again!!

July 29, 2009 By 2 Comments

They’re out there…waiting…and, then they strike!  It’s those website pirates striking again.  I first wrote about them on this blog at Website Pirates.  They had copied my whole website, including my photo and identifying information twice.  Well, they struck again — two more times.  And, I’ve just discovered a fifth crook!

In case you’ve noticed and wondered why my posts have been sparse, the reason is those d*%$ pirates have also stolen my time.  This has happened four different times now, with four different hosting companies.  I suspect the person, who appears to be from China, is responsible for all four raids. 

I’m writing about it to share what to do if this happens to you. There are several different ways to determine if your site has been hijacked.  The website www.copyscape.com  allows you to type in the url for a page on your website and it will show you any sites that have the same page.  Or you can type any unique text from your site into google and see what other sites have the same text.

Then you need to find out who the hosting company is and send that company a letter that meets specific requirements.  This is called a DMCAA letter.  Just google DMCA and you’ll find sample letters.  The hosting company is required to remove the site if it is copied once they receive the DMCA letter.

Three of the hosting companies that I contacted worked with me, even telling me what info I had neglected to include in the DMCA letter.  One, however, dreamhost.com  (located in California) was a different story.  My opinion is that they didn’t want to let go of the money they were receiving from the fraudulent company in China.  They made it extremely difficult to get the site removed–even telling me that just because my copyright info was on the homepage of the site didn’t mean that I owned the copyright on the other pages (even though there is copyright information on each and every page of the site.)  They also told me that I had to hire a copyright lawyer to get the site removed.  Not a good hosting company and not a very ethical one either, in my opinion!

Hopefully, you will never be highjacked by these crooks.  But if you are, there is something you can do about it as long as the hosting company is in the U.S.  If it is in another country, most don’t respect any laws.  And your primary action will need to be contacting google and the other search engines.

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SEO Myths

July 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

I think you may be surprised by some of the SEO myths reported by our Guest Blogger, Laura Wheeler of Firelight Business Enterprises. REID ON for more from Laura. . .

1. Pages can “leak” pagerank. A misinterpretation of a statement by Google lead to this myth. It was really only perpetuated by people who thought that writing an SEO book was the key to getting rich quick (unfortunately they rarely knew enough about it to get it right!). There were enough of those though, that this myth is regularly ressurected, even though pagerank isn’t that valuable a marker anymore.

2. More content is better. Wrong. More content is just more content. More GOOD content IS better. If it ain’t good, it is just debris.

3. Articles help you promote better. Not unless they are GOOD articles. There are so many bad ones out there that even mediocre articles are a waste of time. They’ve gotta be original, and they’ve gotta be good.

4. Keyword tags matter. Not anymore. Don’t bother with these they’ll just waste your time and risk doing more harm than good.

5. Start with keyword research. Start with COMMON SENSE. That will get you further, with less effort, than any amount of research will. Research is only good AFTER you’ve done everything you can with common sense.

6. You have to be on the first page of Google to get any traffic. Absolutely NOT true! This is so badly misunderstood that even fairly popular SEO “gurus” think it is true, or like to say so because it gets them more money. Fact is, you don’t even have to be on the first 10 pages for your top keywords to get found, and to make a boodle. There are plenty of backdoor tactics that get you traffic without first page placement. This is so important, we’ll explain it all in our next issue.

7. Bold the keywords on your page. No, don’t. Bold the words you want people to pay attention to, and bold the thoughts that are most important. That is how you are SUPPOSED to use bolding.

8. Keyword density matters. No, content matters. Good, understandable text that explains what you are trying to say, and explains it well. Keywords happen naturally from that, without even trying. And the keyword patterns look so natural to a search engine that you never have to calculate the percentages.

9. Search engines don’t read words in domain names unless they are separated by a dash. We’ve proven that in fact, they do! Search engines will interpret words in the domain name, based on the words in the copy. If there are similar words in the domain name, they’ll pick them up and rank you for them whether or not there are dashes to separate them. This isn’t theory, we’ve proven it.

10. Search engines can now read Flash. No, they can’t. Google recently acquired the technology from Adobe to read it, but it has not yet been fully implemented. Further, when they CAN read Flash, they will only be able to read text that was entered into the animation as text, not text that is part of an image. So the ability to read Flash will depend on how the animation is constructed, and the value will vary from site to site. There has also been no word on whether or not they’ll delay reading it to reduce the load on the bots – reading Flash is VERY time intensive for the bots.

11. Search engines index plain HTML sites better than they index dynamic sites. NOT true. As a rule, search engines are just as capable of crawling and indexing a content management or shopping cart system. Years ago there was a difference, but this has not been an issue for many years. This is only an issue with badly coded sites, or with excessive use of Flash.

12. SEO is hard/easy. It isn’t really either. It is more a matter of understanding what really matters. Once you understand that, it takes work to create what matters. But it isn’t really hard to understand what matters – it is people! Help people understand what you have, in a way that appeals to them, and in a way that search engines can read. Everything else is just implementation.

Laura Wheeler and her husband Kevin own Firelight Web Enterprises in Wyoming. We like to feature articles from Laura periodically as we consider her one of the experts that can be trusted.

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Go Back In Time – How Has Your Website Evolved?

July 11, 2009 By 2 Comments

Have you ever wanted to see what your website looked like a few years ago?  Or how about seeing how your competitor’s website has changed through the years?

You can.  Many people do not realize that many (but not all) websites are archived and can be accessed to see how they looked at various times throughout the year.  Photos that have been removed from the web are frequently not shown but the text is.

Check this out with your own website and see how far you have come since its inception.  Simply go to http://www.archive.org/index.php and type in the url for the site you wish to check.  You’ll be shown the dates that the site was archived.  Click on the date and you’ll see the archived site.

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Save Money on Website Hosting with Add-on Domains

July 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Do you have more than one website?  Want to add a blog with its own domain name?  Want to create several niche websites? 

Website hosting isn’t expensive.  As a matter of fact, there are hosting companies that are downright cheap.  But the best deal of all is the hosting company that will allow you to host multiple domains with one account and pay one low price.

I operate multiple domains.  And except for one domain, which includes my shopping cart and costs me $14.95 per month, all my other domains are hosted at one hosting company for a price of $7.95 per month.  The number of domains that I can add for this one low price is unlimited.

How does this work?  My hosting company’s cpanel (actually the administration page for my hosting panel) has a section called “add on domains”.  When I click on that, I can add a domain which will appear as it’s own url.  There’s even a short tutorial that explains exactly how to do it.

Once you have the domain added, you will need to have the company that registered your domain name change the nameservers to point to your hosting company. 

And the company that I use and highly recommend is:  Hostgator.  Click on Hostgator  and check it out.  It’s inexpensive.  It’s easy to use.  And I never recommend a company that I don’t use myself.

And, for another reason to use this hosting company.  If you want to have a blog, Hostgator has Fantasico which is one fo the easiest ways possible to add wordpress to a website.

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The Secret to Being Listed on Page 1 of Google

June 26, 2009 By 2 Comments

Looking for an easy, fast way to be listed on the first page of Google? Here’s the secret!

The answer is Google Local Business Listings.  If you have a storefront, a homebased business, or even an internet business that has people searching for gift baskets to be delivered in your town, you’re missing a big opportunity if you’re not listed in Google Local.

Not only is your listing shown on the first page of Google but it is usually shown before the organic listings that you’ve worked so hard to get.  For example, if someone searches for gift baskets + Flagstaff, AZ, my website is listed as #1 on page one.  But above that are the “paid ads” (which most savvy web shoppers people don’t bother to click on because they are ads) followed by a list of local businesses that Google finds most revelant.

In many ways, these listings are even better than regular listings because users get more than just a link to your website. They also get your phone number, a map of your location and an additional link to find out more about your business.  You can even include photos of your gift baskets (although they are hard to size properly) and videos. 

To get your business listed, simply go to www.google.com/local/add and get started.  Most of the other search engines including the new one “Bing” has local listings as well.

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Before You Sell or Recycle Your Computer

June 18, 2009 By 1 Comment

Greg Lamb wrote an interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor that should make all of us stop and think before selling or recycling a computer.  In a recent research project, the research team bought 300 used machines from several sources including ebay.  They found that about one-third of them still contained personal or business data on the hard drives.  This was even true of computers recycled by large corporations, hospitals, anhd government service providers. 

The biggest mistake that we can make is to assume that all the files are gone on the hard drive once they’re put in the trash bin and deleted.  The truth is that the “actual data remains intact on the hard drive. There are programs designed to find this data and easily recreate the original information.”

To really erase all the data from a hard drive, you have two choices

  • Totally destroy the hard rvie with a hammer
  • Using software

Two things that don’t work are formatting or partitioning the hard drive which just moves the data around even though Windows warns you that it will be erased.  “There are several free programs that will do a good job of erasing a hard drive,” the article continues. One is an open-source program at www.dban.org.  Two programs that can be purchased are DriveScrubber and Lavasoft’s FileShredder.

Identity thief is more prevalent than ever.  You can help prevent theft of your information by taking the necessary precautions before you sell or recycle that old computer.

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Is Internet Progress Overrated?

June 15, 2009 By 1 Comment
computer-user

computer-userHas progress on the internet taken us to a better place?  Has it helped us grow our business?  Are all the new-fangled opportunities for “social networking”, videos, and streaming javascript worth the time and effort involved in using them?

I’d say “yes” and “no”.  The internet has provided us the opportunity to operate a business model that can compete with the big corporate giants that are able to outspend and outemploy more than we ever could.  The internet allows us to expand outside our local market and sell to people all over the country–or even around the world, if that is our goal.  Yes, the internet has definitely helped us grow our businesses.

Social networking and all the other new-fangled ideas, such as blinking pictures, videos, podcasts, flash pages, streaming javascript (which allows us to have constantly changing photos or text on our site) are another story however.  They’re cool! They’re neat!  They’re fun! But do they really increase traffic and sales conversions?

My answer is a resounding NO!  That is why, even though we have the knowledge and capability to do so, we don’t incorporate most of these new techniques in the websites that we own and seriously want to convert.  And the reason is simple.  These are gimmicks that are intended to make a website look “professional”, “up-to-date” and “cool” .  But, in reality, except for the “under 30 age crowd” (which are only a very small minority of my customers), most customers dislike them.  And, unless they are incorporated very carefully by someone who understands search engine spiders very well, most search engines dislike them even more.

Many users of the web are technically-challenged.  That’s true of even many of our gift basket company owners.  They don’t understand all this new-fangled stuff and prefer to avoid it.  But it’s all too easy for a webmaster, who enjoys adding this type of glitz to a shopping website, to convince you that it’s the thing to have if you want to be “up-to-date”.  But what is much more important is how does it help you convert visitors to buyers?  Does it make more money for you?

If used correctly and you have the time to spend on it, social media  has its place and can help to a degree.  Social media doesn’t yet come close to competing with search or email in terms of effectiveness. But marketers are still asking themselves whether that is because social media is ineffective or simply because, despite the hype, a huge percentage of people online aren’t actively or regularly engaged with social media sites and channels. 

By social media, I’m referring to Facebook, My Space, Linked In, Twitter and the many others out there.  These social networking sites can be used to promote your business.  I use them for that purpose.  But they are just a tool and are not nearly as effective as other means of driving traffic to your website.  There are ways to automatically post your blog posts on your Facebook wall and as a Twitter.  But you have to understand how they work and how best to use them.  And learning that takes more of those precious minutes.

Forums and Blogging are two other forms of social networking that can be very effective.

How much time do you have to spend on all these sites?  When I asked the members of my Gift Basket Network what their biggest problem was, the most frequent answer was “Not enough time in the day to do everything that needed to be done for their business”.  Add to “not enough time” such activities as posting “I’m going to my son’s ballgame tonight” on your wall on Facebook or “Today is a beautiful day.  Just don’t have time to enjoy it” as a Twitter post and what do you have?  Not more traffic to your website, that’s for sure.  You’ve just deducted precious minutes from those hours that were already filled with your “have to do” list. 

Blogging, posting on related blogs, and posting in forums can help build your business…once again, only if used correctly.  A blog, that is built specifically to drive traffic and is properly optimized, is a fast, effective, and efficient way to communicate with your customers and prospects  — just as I am communicating with you.  It can make you “real” to those customers and help them to get to know you as a person.  It can also be used to sell products if done right.  But you need to know the techniques necessary to do it.  Posting on blogs, that are related to your website and have good search engine visibility, can help your own website’s seach engine optimization by providing valuable links to your site.  And you don’t have to have any technical savvy to do that.

Forums that are related to your industry can’t be beat for effective communication with others in the industry.  In the gift basket industry, there are a number of them that you can participate in.  You need to be selective and use those that are used by others who have information to share.  But, as with anything, you must give in order to receive.  Just signing into a forum, reading what others have shared, and signing out is not enough.  You need to contribute as well if you hope to receive that info you must have when the time comes and you’re desperate for an anwer to a question.

Post Foods ran a Shredded Wheat ad recently that asked this very question about progress and answered the question with:
 
” Honestly, what thanks do we owe progress?  We’re up to our necks in landfill, down to the wire on resources, and climate change is out to get us — or at best leave us with a nsasty sunburn.  Historically, civilizations are destroyed by progress.  Just ask the Pharaohs…”

And, just as the ad went on to say, “That’s why at Post Shredded Wheat, we put the “no” in innovation”, we, as owners of Gift Basket Network have also said “no”.

I created Gift Basket Network about six years ago.  One person (me).  One ingredient (professional gift basket company owners that wanted more traffic to their websites).  One website.  It was simple to navigate.  No add-ons or plug-ins.  Heck, it was even built in basic html and optimized following the severe requirements of the search engines.  We didn’t give it a fancy name or a lot of glitz.   Our market was not the gift basket company owner.  Our market, at that time and still is, the potential customer who is ready and willing to buy a gift or gift basket and is just looking for a place to do it.

We market to the gift basket company owners in other ways.  One of these was in the form of Gift Retailers Network after we had clearly established Gift Basket Network  one of the top gift basket directories on the web.  This blog that you are reading right now is another way that we market to you.  It is our way of demonstrating to you that combining the tried-and-true methods of internet marketing with a few carefully selected “social networking” methods is using progress to build your business. 

Does it work? History has proven it to be true so far.  But time will tell.

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25 Easy Tips for Creating Happy Website Visitors

May 29, 2009 By 2 Comments

Is your website attracting traffic but no sales?  Do you wonder what you can do to make those potential customers stay at your site instead of clicking on to the next one? 

As the owner of giftbasketnetwork.com, my directory can send you potential customers that are ready and willing to buy.  But it’s up to you and your website to convince those customers that you’re the company they want to buy from.  Here are 25 easy tips for creating happy website visitors.

  1. Make sure your site loads quickly.  Use your photo program to reduce the pixels in all your photos and graphics.  Photoshop Elements will do this automatically for you if you click “save for web”.  Other photo programs should have the same capability.
  2. Provide easy-to-find contact information on every page of your site.  People need to know that you are real and can be reached in case there is a question or a problem. 
  3. Send an e-mail to customers to confirm that you received their order and then a follow-up one with tracking information when the order ships.
  4. Answer all emails from your customers quickly.  If you have an online business, you need to check emails at least two to three times daily.
  5. E-mail your customers around two weeks after they receive their product and thank them once again for ordering from you and ask if you can do anything else for them.  This is a good time to send a discount offer for their next order. 
  6. Don’t make them log in before they can checkout. Customers, including me, hate that.  This is one of the most frequent reasons for abandoning an order that has been placed in a shopping cart. 
  7. Use a type size that is no smaller than 10 points.  Some of us are getting to be old geezers and can’t see as well.  Others sit slouched in their chair several feet away from the monitor.
  8. Make sure your photos are ones that will sell your product.  I find all too many gift basket photos on the web that look like someone just stuck some stuff in an empty basket.  Or that have a huge piece of cello wrapped around the gift and tied with a pull bow.  Pull bows are not the enemy.  I use them on low-cost gifts.  It’s the total presentation that makes the difference.  Also gifts wrapped in cello usually do not photograph well.
  9. Make your products easy to find.  Navigation that is clear and direct as well as categories that make sense are important.  Home pages that have the product link simply say “catalog” or “products” or “gift baskets” invite the customer to click to another site.
  10. Write clear accurate descriptions.  Don’t keep the customer guessing.  Many of us don’t use specific brands, using a more generic term such as gourmet cookies instead, because our product inventory changes and varies throughout the year.  Most customers seem to accept that but if you are using the exact same product all the time, specify what it is.  If you have chocolates listed as part of the gift and you substitute something else in the summer, say so.
  11. Tell people who you are on your website.  An About Us page is ideal for this.  Customers trust people they know and the only way they can get to know you is if you don’t hide who you are.  All too many “Who We Are” pages are so generic that you may as well not even include it.  For an example of an about us page, see “Who Is Behind Gift Basket Owners” on this site.
  12. Give your customers all the pricing information up-front. Don’t hide the shipping cost until the end of the process. Let the customer see the shipping cost as early as possible in the checkout process. 
  13. Use dark text on a light background on your website.  Those dark backgrounds may make you look creative but they’re hard to read.
  14. Make sure your shopping cart is secure.   Your customers won’t thank you for security. But they’ll  hate you if you let someone make off with their credit card info.
  15. Keep your website  simple.  Flashing pictures, slide shows, music, and flash entry pages (those pages that say click here to enter the site) are real turnoffs.  Think of your customer and your budget.  Customers look for gifts while sitting at their desk at work.  They will click away as fast as possible if they hear music when they open your site.
  16. Words are powerful.  Be careful of what you say and how you say it on the website as well as in your emails. You’ll win more business.
  17. Offer ways to stay connected. Let folks sign up for an e-mail newsletter or subscribe to a latest news feed (or a special deals feed).  You’d be surprised how many folks appreciate that sort of thing.
  18. Don’t be sneaky. See that ‘Register for our newsletter’ checkbox in your information request form? Is it checked by default? Change it to unchecked. That’s not a decision your customers want made for them.
  19. Make them feel special. Give past customers a special deal just for being a customer. Too often we work like mad trying to create new business while ignoring our old customers.
  20. Don’t stereotype and never assume that your target audience is a niche demographic.  That golf bag gift that you are offering just for men may be the perfect gift for a woman golfer.  And women can be junk food junkies as much as men are.
  21. Be descriptive in your page’s title tag and headline.  This is what most search engines show and will determine whether they click to your site or go down to the next one.
  22. Write content that can be easily scanned.   Write for your customers — not for the search engines.  Use bullets and short paragraphs to  break up the page. Have no more than 14 words on a line.  Many gift basket websites have long paragraphs at the bottom of the page filled with links.  These are obviously written in order to increase links within the site and to increase keyword density.  Or how about the “We deliver to” with a list of every state in the Union and even some major cities thrown in for emphasis. Seach engine spiders are aware of these “cutesy” ploys and mark you down for it.
  23. Make sure that your site looks good, not only in the latest version of Internet Explorer, but also in Firefox which is becoming a popular browser.  Others that are used by many people are Opera and Safari.  Different browers show your site differently in many cases.
  24. Check for errors and fix them. Your server logs every kind of error thrown by your site: Review the list periodically.
  25. Always think like the customer.  Think about what makes you abandon a website when you are ordering online.  Put your own ego aside and create your site so that it intrigues rather than turns off that potential customer.
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