Everyone talks about key words, and how you have to have content with the key words that will work to bring people to your website.

But so often we get the question about how to develop key words correctly. Sometimes people try to make it out to be like rocket science, but it’s not all that complicated in some respects.

Yes, you DO need to know what people are searching for on the internet in terms of the product you have, compared to your competition, which can be focused for maximum success, and that’s where people like us come in.

But a little light listening will help you also, not just on the internet but in all your forms of advertising.

What are your customers telling you that they are having trouble with? For instance, if you do HR work and a client tells you that their biggest problem is choosing the right candidate because their personalities change once they are hired compared to the interview, you would not use the key word ‘HR consulting’.

Think with the information you were told; what would this person search? Perhaps he would look on the internet to find: “how to hire the right person” or “how to hire the right personality.”

When you are writing copy, or advertisements, or content for a website, base it on what people need exactly, not a general term that could apply to anything in a broad subject.

Use this information to boost your content so that it attracts the clients that need what you have. And, call us too. We can help you with very targeted SEO work as well as content. 888.683.8181

Written by Wren Long

One of the best ways to get attention on the internet is to put your business in Google Places. Google is the most used internet search engine around the world. With Google Places, when someone is searching for a local business, your listing will show in relation to what is being searched.

The same service is offered on other search engines and you should register your business with them as well. But, for certain, go to www.google.com/places and sign up your business; it’s free. Keep your listing updated with new information as things change.

Written by Wren Long

Some of these website marketing tips may seem obvious, and yet we all run into what should not be done everyday on the internet:

• Too much sound or music can drive people away fast. Think with the type of site you have. If you are a musician, then music can be expected. If the type of business is selling financial advice – don’t have music.
• Hard to find information: If someone has to search through a site to find something that has been advertised, that’s not good. It must be easy to find through menus; or site specific search software; or visible linking. Make everything EASY for your viewer.
• Hard to read pages: there are multiple ways to make a page hard to read unfortunately. Page is too busy; wrong font style; font not big enough; font color on background color a bad match (like red font on dark blue background; images that are too big and load too slow, etc. etc.
• Perhaps the best way to make sure no one enters a site is a flash ‘front page’ that takes forever (in computer time) to load. People will leave sites due to waiting too long and then you never have the opportunity to make a “first impression”.
  • How to contact must be obvious. Put a phone number in the header or use a simple website “contact form” on a ‘contact us’ web page that shows in the menu line.
  • ALWAYS include a way to get back to the Home Page from every page.
  • ALWAYS check the speellingg on a wrebsote.
  • ALWAYS test your links. Take out any that do not work.
  • ALWAYS have your images on your own server – do not link to a picture from another website.
  • ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS use keywords in your website – those that apply to your product or your service. Place them at the top of pages and use them in content.
• Make changes to the web pages, however small, every couple of months. Search engines want to find new content and changes on sites. Update the website. Add a Blog. Keep it fresh.
• Shopping Cart? If you are selling products; consider adding a shopping cart. More and more people are purchasing over the web.

Okay, some of these are very obvious and rarely done on new websites. But, how about all those old websites out there that need updating? Have a look at your site if it was made back in the dark ages of internet time (about 3 years or more ago).

Written by Wren Long

Many people spend hours on the internet looking for information or suppliers or they want to save time by purchasing on the web.

But, it’s important to understand that the web has its own specific marketing rules and many businesses have not considered the following issues on their websites:

• You must keep your readers interests in mind when you write content or design a site.
• “Content is King” is said over and over and over. Well, it is the most important thing, both to a visitor as well as the search engines. But, too much content on one page is not good. The screen is small. People are busy. Make sure your information is in compact pieces.
• Make your most important information show “above the fold” (bottom of the visible screen). You can link within the site to full content pages with lots of data.
• Search engines will “like” a website because it has a lot of relevant information. Relevance is key to good search engine optimization; but more importantly it is key to your reader!
• The first time someone sees content on a page it should be short and catchy; using the marketing concept of “features and benefits”. Then if they choose to ‘read more’ they can go to the full page of information.
• Bad structure/design of a site, or hard-to-figure-out structure, is like stopping people before they get to start. Navigation should be made very easy with menu drop-downs.
• People don’t like pop-up windows. Period.

These are just a few marketing tips to think about when putting together a website. It’s a simple concept, really. We all follow the same “rules” of engagement. If it doesn’t interest the person they won’t engage in the activity. So, for instance, before you tell someone all about the goals and mission of your organization on your home page, ask yourself if they will really care about that or do they care about the price, quality or availability of your product or service?

Written by Wren Long

“Is your Website Backed-up?”

How many organizations backup their websites, or better yet how many companies even know if their website are backed-up. There are now a few companies that provide that services with the hosting responsibilities they take on for there clients. Web development is no longer just about putting up a website, particularly when you have databases involved located at the web-hosting site. This is common with Joomla, WordPress, JoomCart and other self contained platforms including self hosted shopping carts. These carts save a considerable amount of monthly leasing fees but require backups to be completed and moved off line.

Managers of some companies who are Wed-clients, those dollar conscious budget pinching, cost cutters are putting them selves and there companies and huge risk when the buy the $6.00/per month hosting saving $5.00 or $20.00 per month while risking their business future in doing so. What we see happening is Professional Hosting Companies offering a menu of services including web-site backup. These backups are scheduled to have the database backed-up more often that the general static pages. The database is where the transaction records are held for every purchase, new post, new comment, new twitter etc.etc. etc.. Each one of these transactions changes the database rendering the latest backup to a out of date status.

With that in mind the question “Is your Website Backed-up?” brings on a whole new meaning and level of importance.

Checkout Domain901 Website Backups

Written by Gerry Baldwin

Upset and Confusion

Recently I have come across a lot of confusion as to the relationship of Website Names (Domain Names) which become the Uniform Resource Locator otherwise know as the (URL) and the actual website itself. This confusion is most often due to some upset over “who owns my website name” and do I have control of it. This upset is generally caused by a current website owner wanting to make a change in regards to Hosting location (where on the internet your website resides) or wants to make a change in developers, the creator of your website. Sometimes the owner just wants to take over control of development and hosting. The problem is the person who registered it is generally the developer and does not want to give up the business.

There are a number of other considerations in this which I will cover in a later posts but for now lets look at how and what defines Names versus Hosting and my recommendations.

The WEBSITE NAME as an example may look like this when you register it mywebsite.com and like this www.mywebsite.com when it gets connected to your website and addressed on the internet. Your WEBSITE NAME can be registered under one or multiple extensions, such as .org .net .ca .us or anyone of a number of extensions depending on where your are focusing your interest in marketing or what part of the planet you live on.

What is the purpose of a website name?

There are two main purposes of a website name.

1. Provide a unique name for your website on the internet, like a company name so your site can be easily located (fairly obvious purpose).

2. In the background it provides the ability to point your WEBSITE NAME to the location where your website is being hosted, using DNS pointers. What are DNS pointers?

DNS Pointers

This is simply the Domain Name System used by the internet. Your website name is known as a Domain Name as in www.domain901.com is our domain name. But part of the DNS is the “NS” or named server, as in <=”" b=”"> this is how your website name gets pointed to the location of your website hosting, by using a “NS” or Naming a Server to go to. The actual input would look like this sample if you were pointing your Domain Name to our hosting location ns1.domain901.com and ns2.domain901.com there are always two or more “NS” named server involved. A location for this input is provided by each name registry company for each Domain Name you register just for the specific reason of attaching your WEBSITE NAME (DOMAIN NAME) to your actual website. There should not be any long complicated NAME SERVER. It is generally very short, simple and specific. Long and complicated means you are sharing hosting and unless this is a specific desire or need you should not be involved.

Each website hosting company has their own unique location on the internet as every website does, just their purpose on the internet is specific to hosting their clients websites such as yours.

As an example Domain901 Marketing Inc. manages a large number of website names not on our registry. We don’t own a registry, we use a very specialized company for that. We do point our clients Website Names to the specific web-hosting location specified by our clients. Some of our clients have their Website Names pointed to hosting managed by Domain901.com, but the location of the web-hosting is at a different location than the registry. Domain901 Marketing Inc. does not mix registration with hosting. Our hosting is very separate very secure and like our Domain Name Management our web-hosting supports auto renewal. So no one loses their Domain Name or the Hosting Contract. I have seen that happen more than once where some one says I can get web-hosting for $3.95 per month and when the first year goes by and there was no auto renew in place, their site is down losing business while management scrambles around trying to find who what when and where regarding the Domain Name for their business.

The important questions to ask are. Will the name be registered with a company on the Internet that is equipped to:

1. Check to see if the name combined with the extension you want to use is available.

2. Accept Payment from you to register that name and hold it in your name “or who ever registered” secure so it cannot be stolen.

3. Allow you to register it for more than 1 year which is a smart thing to do if you are intending to be in business for a extended period of time.

4. Allow to set the renewal for auto billing/auto renewal to ensure the name never lapses and gets picked up by some one else, and your name is gone or it costs a small fortune to get it back.

5. Allow you or your trusted adviser to point the name to the location where your website is being hosted. (This is where some users have the confusion and this is where the control of the name comes in.)

6. Allow for separate Name registration and Web-Site Hosting as stated earlier, I strongly recommend from experience do not Register the WEBSITE NAME where your website is being hosted.

7. Register with a trusted Name Registry and registered by yourself or through a very trustworthy company or person no one else.

The other big question is WHO IS MANAGING THE NAME AND THE HOSTING? If you are unsure you are living on the edge of a disaster!

Written by Gerry Baldwin

Are you a smaller company running your organization on opinion – or on real statistical data? Do you have a method of capturing statistical data easily?

Do you know how valuable Metrics can be to assist in running your business for such things as:

• Know immediately if sales are dropping off or getting better (and WHY)
• Find areas of the organization that are not producing enough or are not efficient
• Follow the progress of ANY changes made – and the result they have on your business thereafter
• And much, much more!

Capture the data – then find out how to make your business run better each month. This is the EASIEST way to run a business and not make mistakes. Don’t run on opinion – KNOW the answers.

Written by Wren Long

Just when you thought you had the whole cookie thing figured out and got confident that some mysterious corporation like Doubleclick could no longer track your movements on the net, like cooties, they are back. Let’s welcome our next contestant: the Flash Cookie!

I noticed something unusual while going through a privacy page today, and with a little bit of research via Google, here is what I discovered. Without trumpets or fanfare, without public announcement, and in most cases without any mention of this on their privacy page, a majority of websites have started to use a little-known feature of the common Adobe Flash Player plug-in to track user movements through the Internet. Adobe Flash can write files to your computer similar in nature to a cookie, a type of file called a Local Shared Object. These Super Cookies have been enhanced over what ordinary cookies can do.

They can be up to 100k in size or more, compared to 4k for a browser cookie;

• They never expire.
• The built-in privacy features in the browser are entirely unaware of their presence and they neither block nor delete them.
• They work across browsers, so that a site visited in Internet Explorer could track site visits made by Firefox, for example.
• They can (and do) resurrect browser cookies that the user deleted (e.g., you can set your browser to automatically delete all cookies when it exits, but the next time you start it up again — they’re baaaack!).
• They are capable of storing any information entered in a Flash-based form (e.g. names, passwords, credit card numbers), and any other site could be capable of reading them (not to overly alarm anyone – this is an unlikely scenario but is only mentioned to describe what is technically possible).

In addition, Adobe Flash Player has started to use a Peer-to-Peer file sharing model (like Bittorrent and various other file sharing services). What this means is that if you visit a particular website and its Flash content is downloaded to your computer (a YouTube video for example), that in future when another visitor views the same Flash content, rather than downloading all of that file from the website, the peer-to-peer technology will grab that file from your computer and the computer of other users that viewed that file. While this does not pose a security risk, it does use your upload bandwidth and computer resources without your consent. If you use your Internet connection for telephone service this will degrade voice quality, particularly for the other person (not so much for you, unless that other person has a Flash player serving files too). If your service provider has a monthly limit for uploads and downloads (and a lot of them hate peer-to-peer traffic) this could cause you problems.

If you want to see what Super Cookies exist on your computer right now, here are some directions for finding them. You need to find where user application data is stored on your PC (it varies by which version of Windows you are running). On Windows 2000, the path is typically C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\ and then any of the folders below that. Navigate down far enough until you see files with a “.sol” extension. That’s them. On Windows 7, the path is typically C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\MacroMedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\ and anything down from there. On Windows XP or Windows Vista – well, you can figure it out.

Do you see any folders for Clearspring or QuantCast? Those are two that will re-spawn regular browser cookies after they have been deleted.

For Mac users, I have no clue where they are put, but if you are using Flash Player, you can bet that you have them.

To access a control panel that lets you change the settings for Flash Player, visit this link: Flash Support

Firefox users can install an addon that can help manage Flash Cookie security and delete them automatically. You can find it here: Firefox Add-ons

I’m not going to explain every option for dealing with Flash Cookies, this is mainly just to raise awareness of their existence. To research further, search “Flash Cookies” on Google, that produces plenty of useful information. Start with the article on Wired.com, about third from the top in the Google search results.

Happy cookie crumbling,

Written by Walt Tarasoff