<![CDATA[Web site design for the new busines owner.]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm Freewebs <![CDATA[EXPERT ADVICE]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3953286  Web 2.0 for Web Marketing

Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.

Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book:

Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.

Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), del.icio.us (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The list is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.

So how can you harness some of this traffic?

1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.

For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes content sharing and content rating system websites specialize in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.

When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)

Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.

2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website

I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. Del.icio.us was one of the first and a very popular example of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important. Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.

Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that líst your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.

Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.

If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazëd at the kind of traffic you can generate.

3) Engage in the conversations and activities

When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites. In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.

Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.

Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.

4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content

If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a Wordpress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffíc.

5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website

First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog provides you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.

But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.

You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow and become more informative, thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.

The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.

]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3953286#topBox http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3953286 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:28:00 -0100 <![CDATA[What the experts say.]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3892682 Identify which products bring you the most overall profit, then put them in prime position on the page, by which we mean above the fold (that is, on the upper part of the page so the user doesn’t have to scroll down to see it), preferably on the left-hand side.

Headlines are extremely important. If your visitor doesn’t like the headline, they won’t read any further. A simple-yet-effective approach is to express your main message in a headline that:

i. is worded in terms of benefit to the customer, not in terms of product features,

ii. suggests that the person will get the results with ease,

iii. is believable (by containing some kind of proof), and

iv. is specific.

What you say is more important than how you say it . You’ll get the biggest improvements by changing the core message of your headline, rather than just tweaking the wording.

If you don’t know how to describe your product’s features in terms of benefits, carry out this exercise: imagine the customer is looking at your headline and asking “Why should I care about that?” The way you would answer their question is likely to be worded in terms of a benefit.

Struggling for a good headline? Adapt headlines from publications such as Cosmopolitan magazine, Reader’s Digest or MSN.com, who use formulaic headlines that have been proven to work again and again. Today MSN has “7 ADHD truths you may not know” as a headline. Replacing “ADHD” with your product name would give an instantly compelling headline

]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3892682#topBox http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3892682 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:59:00 -0100 <![CDATA[Advice from the experts.]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3892654 The best place to start is by identifying the weak links in your marketing funnel. Sketch out a brief overview of your marketing funnel, from advertising all the way through to closing the sale. This will include…

  • Your advertising
  • Your sales force
  • Your homepage
  • Your product pages
  • Your checkout pages
  • Your order confirmation page
  • Your call center staff
  • How the package is sent out

Getting your message straight before you start

For each page, make sure you know what all the “visitor intentions” are. For example, some visitors might be looking to make a purchase, some might be looking for customer support and others might be trying to apply for a job with you.

 

]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3892654#topBox http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3892654 Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:49:00 -0100 <![CDATA[News]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3852789 services to fill management “skill gaps” at companies dealing with transition or expansion.

Steve Finkelstein, a former partner at Deloitte & Touche, LLC, is one of four senior partners who founded Experience On Demand. The other senior partners are Michael D. Bentz, former president of a franchised auto dealership chain; Walter Bilgram, previously vice president of engineering & technology at Insituform Technologies Inc.; and Frank V. Danzo, previously an executive with Anheuser-Busch Cos., Inc. for 20 years.

Finkelstein said, “In addition to the expertise of our senior partners, Experience On Demand provides a team of 24 associate partners specializing in key aspects of management and professional business services. These specialties range from accounting and finance, to human resources, manufacturing and supply chain logistics, information systems, sales, marketing, product development, import/export, business law and other disciplines.

“Our firm’s business model is rooted in research, conducted at the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Business Administration, which reveals there is a talent gap at many organizations between entry-level managers and experienced executives leaving their jobs, resulting in a vacuum of capable management expertise,” Finkelstein said.

“We established Experience On Demand to fill those professional gaps on an interim basis at small and large companies anticipating change or dealing with new challenges, but which lack the crucial, executive talent to address the specific issues that they confront,” Finkelstein said.

Michael Bentz added, “Experience on Demand is a unique management consulting consortium. Our senior partners and associates provide dedicated, high-level professional skills and proven expertise on a part-time basis to help organizations manage special projects, address workload ‘peaks,’ plan for strategic change, and apply objective business management insight on an as-needed basis.”

Walter Bilgram said Experience On Demand is currently serving companies in consumer products, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and other industries.

“Each organization we serve seeks professional expertise on a focused, transitional basis to help the organization address challenging internal or external goals. In each case, one or more of our partners may be on assignment for several days or several weeks per month, until the project goals are met.”

Frank Danzo added, “We are very optimistic about Experience on Demand because this consulting consortium was established during a period of transition in the U.S. economy when many organizations are restructuring and, also, when many corporations and entrepreneurial firms are dealing with needs for strategic change and new business growth.

“Many employers today see the need to engage senior-level talent on a per-project basis, rather than hiring executive managers full-time, to deal with business issues they confront,” Danzo said.

“Experience On Demand’s value proposition is that we provide seasoned management and professional skills in many business disciplines, and apply those resources to strategically help client organizations in cost-effective ways,” Bentz said.

Experience On Demand offices are at Two CityPlace Drive, Suite 200, St. Louis, Missouri 63141. The firm’s motto is “The Right People, The Right Time, The Right Place.” For more information, see the web site www.experience-on-demand.com or call 314.812.4880.
]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3852789#topBox http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3852789 Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:39:00 -0100 <![CDATA[Google hints and tips]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3851262

 

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

When your site is ready:

  • Have other relevant sites link to yours.
  • Submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html.
  • Submit a Sitemap as part of our Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
  • Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.
  • Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Design and content guidelines

  • Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
  • Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
  • Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
  • Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
  • Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
  • Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
  • Check for broken links and correct HTML.
  • If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
  • Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Technical guidelines

  • Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
  • Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
  • Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
  • Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Webmaster Tools.
  • If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.
  • Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.

Quality guidelines

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

If you believe that another site is abusing Google's quality guidelines, please report that site at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport. Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms that recognize and block future spam attempts.

Quality guidelines - basic principles

  • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
  • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
  • Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
  • Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.

]]> http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3851262#topBox http://dsbh.webs.com/dsbhnewsandinfo.htm?blogentryid=3851262 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:34:00 -0100