Small business owners sometimes overlook press releases backlinks in an SEO campaign mainly because not many small business owners have heard of them or understand how they can be of benefit. Press release web sites are just news release sites that operate online and despite their traditional offline definition, you don’t necessarily need to submit any breaking news like you may see on the front page of the news paper. This is because people often think of sensational stories located on the first page, when in fact almost all of the news paper is significantly less sensational. Most of it merely describes fairly ordinary activities. As one aspect of developing your small business' online brand, press releases may well improve general awareness about your company, which is what SEO is becoming about.
Here are some suggestions you may use to be able to generate press release content:
* New products or services
* Industry developments
* New employees
* Community involvement stories
* How you are staying competitive
* Run a holiday sale
* Run a webinar
* Start a podcast
* Implement new machinery or techniques
* Customer referral program
* Tour of your business
* Improving employee benefits
* Patent applications or awards
In most cases you are able to include what's referred to as a contextual backlink. Contextual backlinks an important aspect of your SEO and are characterized by being surrounded by terms or language related to your industry. Utilize your main keyword as the text of the link. Before selecting a press release service, ensure they enable you to include contextual backlinks.
Examples of Press Release Services:
* http://www.free-press-release.com
* http://www.i-newswire.com
* http://www.pr.com/press-releases
* http://www.prlog.org
* http://www.ecommwire.com
* http://www.1888pressrelease.com
* http://www.pressreleasepoint.com
* http://www.addpr.com
* http://www.ecommwire.com
* http://www.theopenpress.com
A key thing to take note of is that you shouldn’t submit the identical article to all the sites. Instead you could submit unique articles to each PR provider. One of many ways it is possible to speed up your press release submissions is for you to take one particular post and spin it into many different articles, and subsequently submit each spun article to a separate press release site.
A further thing to consider is the actual development of the press release itself. Some services do this within the base services. Some will perform it for an extra fee. Some others will require that you send a fully-written press release. Since this affects the charge, you will need to research this aspect.
Retain a record of all of your press release URL's so that you will be able to reference them later on.
Remember, if you are contemplating SEO your primary consideration is to give thought to your reader and growing your internet brand, creating awareness regarding your company and services while doing so in a way that makes it much easier for the search engines to comprehend how the services that your business provides are matched to the types of searches that individuals are making. Search engine optimization isn't about any type of trickery; it's about making things easier for the search engines and simply being purposeful instead of throwing information out there and hoping they will be able to connect the dots for you. Press releases are no different in this regard; they're really simply another kind of content marketing. An SEO company (visit now) will most likely be able to help you with getting the most benefit from a press release with special consideration given to improving your brand.
Friday, September 25, 2015
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Avoid Doing These 4 Things with Your Website Design
As a business owner, it's important to remember you only have a couple of seconds - literally - to get your visitor's attention in a good way, or they will click Back and you won't see them again. First impressions are incredibly important in determining whether your website convinces someone to take a closer look, and, ultimately, call you. There are a few things, though, that are just killers in terms of making an immediately negative impression. What you have to realize is that it doesn't matter how good the rest of your website is, or how good your services are, if you fail this first test with your visitor.
In terms of what makes a "good" website design, that's a subject for many books since there is, in fact, a lot of research behind what design strategies and components convert visitors into callers. That's not my subject today, though. Today, I'm talking about some specific things that you should avoid. If you have any of these things in your own website, you should definitely take some sort of immediate action to do something about it.
1. Auto-Play Music
Don't have your website set to automatically start playing any sort of audio as soon as someone lands on it, unless the entire page is either about music itself, or it's a landing page with a video as the main feature. Otherwise, anything with an audio component should not be activated unless the user chooses to activate it. As a whole, people tend to have a negative reaction to such automatic background music because it's seen as an unwanted intrusion. Furthermore, there's the distinct possibility that whatever music you like, your visitor won't. It's one thing to have a professional relationship with your website visitors, but that doesn't mean making them listen to your favorite song every time they come to your website. It's also unnecessary bandwidth usage for mobile users and slows things down while the music file is transferred.
2. Tiny/Large Font Sizes
Your website should be pleasing to the eye, and either tiny or unnecessarily large fonts are sure to ruin not only the aesthetic quality of your website, but the actual usability. If the font is so big that they have to lean back in order to take it in, then it's too big. Conversely, keep in mind that just because you can read tiny text just fine, that doesn't mean that your visitors can. Always remember that your website is there to represent your business in the best possible way to potential clients/customers, and not everyone can read tiny text easily. You want them to have a good experience with your website right off the bat, because they are going to extrapolate from that experience what the rest of their relationship with you is likely to be like.
3. Pop-Ups
Although there are cases where pop-up windows can serve a useful purpose, such as letting a shopper know they still have items in their shopping cart they may have forgotten about, if you are running a small local business then pop-up windows are something you should avoid. They just tend to annoy most people. If someone is looking for either a landscaper, or a restaurant to go out to dinner, people want to feel like they are in control of their online shopping experience, and annoying them with a pop-up window is a sure way to give them a not-so-great experience with you right off the bat. As a general rule, don't do it.
Why might you use pop up windows? As I mentioned, one scenario is to let visitors know they still have items in their shopping cart. Another potential use is to offer the visitor a discount when they are about to leave your website without having contacted you. If they took the trouble to look at your website, but then leave, maybe they simply aren't convinced yet that you're the right vendor. Giving them an unannounced discount offer can sometimes tip people over the edge into deciding to buy from. You have to be careful, though, if you are serving a local area around you, because you aren't just talking about random internet shoppers browsing through your website. You're talking about the same potential customer base, over and over again, so I do not generally recommend any sort of pop-up strategy in this situation.
4. Glaring Colors
Don't use a lot of glaring or high-contrast colors. Your website should have a nice overall aesthetic flow, be easy on the eyes, and make it very easy for a visitor to quickly scan through your site and naturally have their eyes fall right onto your Call to Action (CTA), whether it's a Call Now button, contact form, etc. Your CTA needs to 'pop' to catch their eye, but if you use a lot of strong colors everywhere else, it will be a lot more difficult for your CTA to do so. I'm starting to cross over into some very technical aspects of neuroscience and how the brain works, which isn't really the purpose of this article, so just remember to be careful in your use of strong or contrasting colors. It's very easy to use too much.
In closing, remember that you only have a couple of seconds to get a visitor's attention and convince them to stick around a little longer and see what you have to offer. You can easily ruin that first impression with autoplay audio files, tiny text, pop-up windows, and glaring colors. If you need help fixing any of these things, visit me right over here.
In terms of what makes a "good" website design, that's a subject for many books since there is, in fact, a lot of research behind what design strategies and components convert visitors into callers. That's not my subject today, though. Today, I'm talking about some specific things that you should avoid. If you have any of these things in your own website, you should definitely take some sort of immediate action to do something about it.
1. Auto-Play Music
Don't have your website set to automatically start playing any sort of audio as soon as someone lands on it, unless the entire page is either about music itself, or it's a landing page with a video as the main feature. Otherwise, anything with an audio component should not be activated unless the user chooses to activate it. As a whole, people tend to have a negative reaction to such automatic background music because it's seen as an unwanted intrusion. Furthermore, there's the distinct possibility that whatever music you like, your visitor won't. It's one thing to have a professional relationship with your website visitors, but that doesn't mean making them listen to your favorite song every time they come to your website. It's also unnecessary bandwidth usage for mobile users and slows things down while the music file is transferred.
2. Tiny/Large Font Sizes
Your website should be pleasing to the eye, and either tiny or unnecessarily large fonts are sure to ruin not only the aesthetic quality of your website, but the actual usability. If the font is so big that they have to lean back in order to take it in, then it's too big. Conversely, keep in mind that just because you can read tiny text just fine, that doesn't mean that your visitors can. Always remember that your website is there to represent your business in the best possible way to potential clients/customers, and not everyone can read tiny text easily. You want them to have a good experience with your website right off the bat, because they are going to extrapolate from that experience what the rest of their relationship with you is likely to be like.
3. Pop-Ups
Although there are cases where pop-up windows can serve a useful purpose, such as letting a shopper know they still have items in their shopping cart they may have forgotten about, if you are running a small local business then pop-up windows are something you should avoid. They just tend to annoy most people. If someone is looking for either a landscaper, or a restaurant to go out to dinner, people want to feel like they are in control of their online shopping experience, and annoying them with a pop-up window is a sure way to give them a not-so-great experience with you right off the bat. As a general rule, don't do it.
Why might you use pop up windows? As I mentioned, one scenario is to let visitors know they still have items in their shopping cart. Another potential use is to offer the visitor a discount when they are about to leave your website without having contacted you. If they took the trouble to look at your website, but then leave, maybe they simply aren't convinced yet that you're the right vendor. Giving them an unannounced discount offer can sometimes tip people over the edge into deciding to buy from. You have to be careful, though, if you are serving a local area around you, because you aren't just talking about random internet shoppers browsing through your website. You're talking about the same potential customer base, over and over again, so I do not generally recommend any sort of pop-up strategy in this situation.
4. Glaring Colors
Don't use a lot of glaring or high-contrast colors. Your website should have a nice overall aesthetic flow, be easy on the eyes, and make it very easy for a visitor to quickly scan through your site and naturally have their eyes fall right onto your Call to Action (CTA), whether it's a Call Now button, contact form, etc. Your CTA needs to 'pop' to catch their eye, but if you use a lot of strong colors everywhere else, it will be a lot more difficult for your CTA to do so. I'm starting to cross over into some very technical aspects of neuroscience and how the brain works, which isn't really the purpose of this article, so just remember to be careful in your use of strong or contrasting colors. It's very easy to use too much.
In closing, remember that you only have a couple of seconds to get a visitor's attention and convince them to stick around a little longer and see what you have to offer. You can easily ruin that first impression with autoplay audio files, tiny text, pop-up windows, and glaring colors. If you need help fixing any of these things, visit me right over here.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Be Legit & Pass Inspection
If you want your business website to both reach and stay on the coveted Page 1 of Google for your particular keywords, one of the things you need to know is that you'll probably be inspected by an actual human working for Google at some point once you make it there, so they can be sure that the site they're promoting high up is legitimate, offering information and/or services that people are really going to want. And with the top 3 spots getting 80% of the clicks, and 90% all staying on Page 1, the last thing you want to do is fail to pass inspection once you get there. Google wants to be sure people aren't just using a bunch of spam or other forms of trickery to get themselves ranked - and I think we can all agree that it's in everyone's best interest as consumers for them to do this. What that means for your business is making sure your website has the 'right stuff.'
Here are a few things to consider:
1. You need to look like a real business. While this may seem obvious enough, unfortunately there are so many people trying to make a buck through less than scrupulous means that you need to be sure your website looks like it represents a real, honest business. A few things to consider including are:
* A physical address, and possibly a Google map of your location
* Mailing address
* Telephone contacts
* Special awards, certifications, accreditations, etc.
2. Have a nice, well-organized website that's easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye. Be sure to include a privacy policy, about, and contact page, and give some thought to how you organize your site so it doesn't look like it was hastily thrown together.
3. Include customer reviews and/or testimonials, but remember that you may not have the right to just take them off of places like Google or Yelp.
4. Don't clutter your website with so many sales ads that it looks like your website content is just "filler" and the real purpose of the site is your ads. That doesn't mean you can't have ads, but they should not be the dominant focus of the site. Consider whether your site would be useful to people if the ads were removed.
5. Don't cram keywords into every nook and cranny. While keywords are important so that Google can correctly determine how your website is related to searches, you don't want to over-do it. Your website can up looking like one big spammy concoction designed to trick Google rather than make sense to visitors. Everything should make sense from a human point of view.
6. If you don't mind the work involved and dealing with spam etc., consider permitting and encouraging people to actively engaged in conversations with you on your website, and especially include social sharing in such case. This shows that you're a real person offering real services. It's also a terrific way to grow your brand, since if people ask you questions, you can take that as an opportunity to create and post new content in response, both solving their issue for them while creating new quality content at the same time.
In summary, remember that if you make it onto Page 1, Google is going to have an actual person come look at your website. They want to be sure that you're a real business offering quality services and content - i.e. that you actually *deserve* to be on Page 1. The main key to passing this evaluation is just to always keep your reader in mind. Spend less time worrying about Google and more time worrying about the people who will visit your site. If you design for the end-user in mind and ask yourself what would a visitor to your website want to know about you then you'll probably be okay.
If you need me to take a look at your site and talk about protecting your ranking, contact me over at my website.
Here are a few things to consider:
1. You need to look like a real business. While this may seem obvious enough, unfortunately there are so many people trying to make a buck through less than scrupulous means that you need to be sure your website looks like it represents a real, honest business. A few things to consider including are:
* A physical address, and possibly a Google map of your location
* Mailing address
* Telephone contacts
* Special awards, certifications, accreditations, etc.
2. Have a nice, well-organized website that's easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye. Be sure to include a privacy policy, about, and contact page, and give some thought to how you organize your site so it doesn't look like it was hastily thrown together.
3. Include customer reviews and/or testimonials, but remember that you may not have the right to just take them off of places like Google or Yelp.
4. Don't clutter your website with so many sales ads that it looks like your website content is just "filler" and the real purpose of the site is your ads. That doesn't mean you can't have ads, but they should not be the dominant focus of the site. Consider whether your site would be useful to people if the ads were removed.
5. Don't cram keywords into every nook and cranny. While keywords are important so that Google can correctly determine how your website is related to searches, you don't want to over-do it. Your website can up looking like one big spammy concoction designed to trick Google rather than make sense to visitors. Everything should make sense from a human point of view.
6. If you don't mind the work involved and dealing with spam etc., consider permitting and encouraging people to actively engaged in conversations with you on your website, and especially include social sharing in such case. This shows that you're a real person offering real services. It's also a terrific way to grow your brand, since if people ask you questions, you can take that as an opportunity to create and post new content in response, both solving their issue for them while creating new quality content at the same time.
In summary, remember that if you make it onto Page 1, Google is going to have an actual person come look at your website. They want to be sure that you're a real business offering quality services and content - i.e. that you actually *deserve* to be on Page 1. The main key to passing this evaluation is just to always keep your reader in mind. Spend less time worrying about Google and more time worrying about the people who will visit your site. If you design for the end-user in mind and ask yourself what would a visitor to your website want to know about you then you'll probably be okay.
If you need me to take a look at your site and talk about protecting your ranking, contact me over at my website.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Tell Them How You Can Help
As a business owner, you know your business inside and out. In fact, your products and services, and how they can potentially help people, are things you know so well that you probably don't give them much thought. When it comes to your website, though, it's important to realize that what may seem obvious to you may not be so obvious to someone who visits you online.
People come to your website with some type of life situation. Whether they've just moved, or are about to move, they're getting married, going out to dinner, or a plumbing fixture just broke, they want to know whether your business has the answer to their life situation. They don't just want information about your products and services. They want to know if you're the kind of vendor who's going to be able to do what they need done, when they need it, in the way they need it done. Your story as a vendor needs to match up to their story as a person to get them to call or contact you. And it's not just information they are scrutinizing; people are evaluating other signals about your company in order to determine whether you are the KIND of vendor they want in their life - and those decisions are made in a fraction of a second when they land on your website.
You convey these messages to your website visitors in several different ways that all need to work together. It isn't just one thing; it all of the individual things, both each on its own, and how they all work together, in order to convey the right message. Let's walk through some of these things.
As soon as new site visitors arrive at your website the first thing they need to know, before anything else, is what you do, and you convey this in two primary ways.
PAGE TITLE
Your page title doesn't just say who you are; it tells people what you do. For example, you wouldn't want to just say "Raleigh UCM, LLC". Instead, you go with something like, "Raleigh UCM LLC - Custom Home Builder". Always use plain English rather than any industry technical terms, unless your normal customer is highly technical and knowledgeable in your field and that's who you primarily market to.
Your title is very important to the search engines in determining your search ranking for different terms, so it needs to both have proper SEO quality while also engaging a visitor's interest. This is part art and part science to put them together.
IMAGES
You want an image on your website to quickly capture the essence of what you can do for your customers, or how you can help them. In practice, I see this done several ways, but I recommend some of them over others. Let's walk through them, and I'll explain my thoughts about each.
1. The End Result. This type of images displays the end result that you give your customers, whether it's a beautiful lawn, a gorgeous house, or delicious mouth-watering food. This is my #1 top recommendation for the first picture that a visitor to your website should see.
2. The Emergency. Sometimes people have a real crisis on their hands, such as an exploding faucet. A picture that captures the essence of their disaster can help convey that you're the right one to help. A picture of this sort also needs to be accompanied by language that speaks to your being able to address it and restore peace and order back to their life.
3. The Work. This type of picture conveys someone actually doing the type of work you perform. I think these type of pictures are very useful in parts of your website, but I wouldn't make it the very thing your visitor sees. The last thing you want to do is show them a bunch of pictures that will create angst over their house being turned into a disaster zone, even if it's just temporary while you're doing the job. That's because you aren't selling work; you're selling results. Save pictures of this sort for interior pages where you talk about your work processes, and accompany them by re-assuring language.
TAGLINE
Your tagline helps convey what you're about - the mission or character of your company. What makes a good tagline is a little beyond the scope of this article, but it can make a difference in the mind of your website visitor. It also has SEO value.
MAIN HEADING
You want to quickly convey the essence of what you have to offer. This is one of the first things that's going to catch their eye, so it's important real estate on your website. You want it to resonate with them enough to make them want to read more about you.
TEXT CONTENT
Just as the point of the main heading is to capture your visitor's interest and prompt them to read a bit further, the same thing is true of the very first sentence - and paragraph - on any of your pages. A bit of mystery or intrigue can work, depending on your website and services, but you need to simultaneously provoke their curiosity while creating resonance between your story and theirs. In other words, you need to sell them on the idea that you can help, and get them to read further.
The biggest trick to engaging content is not talking about all the technical details of your services, equipment, or capabilities. You want to have such information available, but you don't want to stick it in their faces. Rather, you want to talk about results and how what you can do can help with the story of their life. For example, if you're a wedding planner, they don't just want a cake and a dress. They want a smooth, peaceful and well-coordinated wedding experience. This exact same idea applies to any other trade or service.
CONCLUSION
I outlined above a few considerations for a small business owner on content for their website. Most people decide in less than a second whether or not they want to read any further into your website based on whether the things they see and read are what they're looking for. You have to tie all of the pieces together so that you can capture your visitor's interest enough to get them to call or contact you. I tried to give you some solid principles to go by, but there's a lot more to it than I layed out in this article. If you aren't getting the results you need from your website, it might be time to get help.
People come to your website with some type of life situation. Whether they've just moved, or are about to move, they're getting married, going out to dinner, or a plumbing fixture just broke, they want to know whether your business has the answer to their life situation. They don't just want information about your products and services. They want to know if you're the kind of vendor who's going to be able to do what they need done, when they need it, in the way they need it done. Your story as a vendor needs to match up to their story as a person to get them to call or contact you. And it's not just information they are scrutinizing; people are evaluating other signals about your company in order to determine whether you are the KIND of vendor they want in their life - and those decisions are made in a fraction of a second when they land on your website.
You convey these messages to your website visitors in several different ways that all need to work together. It isn't just one thing; it all of the individual things, both each on its own, and how they all work together, in order to convey the right message. Let's walk through some of these things.
As soon as new site visitors arrive at your website the first thing they need to know, before anything else, is what you do, and you convey this in two primary ways.
PAGE TITLE
Your page title doesn't just say who you are; it tells people what you do. For example, you wouldn't want to just say "Raleigh UCM, LLC". Instead, you go with something like, "Raleigh UCM LLC - Custom Home Builder". Always use plain English rather than any industry technical terms, unless your normal customer is highly technical and knowledgeable in your field and that's who you primarily market to.
Your title is very important to the search engines in determining your search ranking for different terms, so it needs to both have proper SEO quality while also engaging a visitor's interest. This is part art and part science to put them together.
IMAGES
You want an image on your website to quickly capture the essence of what you can do for your customers, or how you can help them. In practice, I see this done several ways, but I recommend some of them over others. Let's walk through them, and I'll explain my thoughts about each.
1. The End Result. This type of images displays the end result that you give your customers, whether it's a beautiful lawn, a gorgeous house, or delicious mouth-watering food. This is my #1 top recommendation for the first picture that a visitor to your website should see.
2. The Emergency. Sometimes people have a real crisis on their hands, such as an exploding faucet. A picture that captures the essence of their disaster can help convey that you're the right one to help. A picture of this sort also needs to be accompanied by language that speaks to your being able to address it and restore peace and order back to their life.
3. The Work. This type of picture conveys someone actually doing the type of work you perform. I think these type of pictures are very useful in parts of your website, but I wouldn't make it the very thing your visitor sees. The last thing you want to do is show them a bunch of pictures that will create angst over their house being turned into a disaster zone, even if it's just temporary while you're doing the job. That's because you aren't selling work; you're selling results. Save pictures of this sort for interior pages where you talk about your work processes, and accompany them by re-assuring language.
TAGLINE
Your tagline helps convey what you're about - the mission or character of your company. What makes a good tagline is a little beyond the scope of this article, but it can make a difference in the mind of your website visitor. It also has SEO value.
MAIN HEADING
You want to quickly convey the essence of what you have to offer. This is one of the first things that's going to catch their eye, so it's important real estate on your website. You want it to resonate with them enough to make them want to read more about you.
TEXT CONTENT
Just as the point of the main heading is to capture your visitor's interest and prompt them to read a bit further, the same thing is true of the very first sentence - and paragraph - on any of your pages. A bit of mystery or intrigue can work, depending on your website and services, but you need to simultaneously provoke their curiosity while creating resonance between your story and theirs. In other words, you need to sell them on the idea that you can help, and get them to read further.
The biggest trick to engaging content is not talking about all the technical details of your services, equipment, or capabilities. You want to have such information available, but you don't want to stick it in their faces. Rather, you want to talk about results and how what you can do can help with the story of their life. For example, if you're a wedding planner, they don't just want a cake and a dress. They want a smooth, peaceful and well-coordinated wedding experience. This exact same idea applies to any other trade or service.
CONCLUSION
I outlined above a few considerations for a small business owner on content for their website. Most people decide in less than a second whether or not they want to read any further into your website based on whether the things they see and read are what they're looking for. You have to tie all of the pieces together so that you can capture your visitor's interest enough to get them to call or contact you. I tried to give you some solid principles to go by, but there's a lot more to it than I layed out in this article. If you aren't getting the results you need from your website, it might be time to get help.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Mobile Websites (Part 3)
This is the third and final part of a mini-series about mobile series, to help small business owners understand some of their choices.
Equally important, it will improve your online search visibility and rankings, which is important because a great website that nobody ever sees isn’t doing you much good.
It’s also a great opportunity to give your website a makeover, modernize things, and maybe include some newer, higher resolution photos that better showcase your work. This will demonstrate to your viewers that you keep up with the times.
Also, while you may or may not engage in social media much yourself, many people do, so with a nice site this can be free advertising for you when people Share, Like, or Re-Tweet your page.
Regardless, there are many benefits to having a mobile app for your business:
As for what this means for your small business and search engines, one thing we know for sure is that they will continue to constantly make changes in their search algorithms – although I’ll stop short of calling them improvements, since people who’s search ratings change may or may not consider them improvements. What we do know with certainty is that we can continue to see more changes, more often. Consequently, it’s important to stay up to date with what Google is doing because what we do know for a fact is that they penalize you if you don’t.
The world of mobility will continue to change, and for a small business this will mean a big competitive advantage for small businesses that embrace these changes early since they will enjoy improved online rankings, while those who delay may see their rank suffer as a result. This can be a difficult landscape for a small business owner to navigate on their own, since they may not have the time needed to keep up with what’s really important. In fact that’s the reason for my business model of partnership.
Things to Consider
The size of your visitor’s screen is something you need to consider when you think about the layout and content of your website. What they see when they first land needs to resonate with your typical viewer. With the much larger screen that a desktop has, you have more places to put more things, such as sales advertisements or seasonal specials. With a mobile device, you have fewer places to put things, but you still need to be able to quickly qualify yourself to the viewer that you’re who they’re looking for.Checklist for Your Mobile Friendly Site
Run through this quick checklist on your own website by viewing your website on your smartphone, and ask yourself these questions. You don’t have to be scientific – just be honest about your own reactions.- Did your website load quickly?
- Is the nature of your website clear?
- Can you easily read the text?
- Can you navigate easily?
- Is there a clear call to action?
- What sort of user experience rating would you give it?
- If it wasn’t your own website, would you come back?
- Can you easily click on any links?
- Are things spaced well?
Equally important, it will improve your online search visibility and rankings, which is important because a great website that nobody ever sees isn’t doing you much good.
It’s also a great opportunity to give your website a makeover, modernize things, and maybe include some newer, higher resolution photos that better showcase your work. This will demonstrate to your viewers that you keep up with the times.
Also, while you may or may not engage in social media much yourself, many people do, so with a nice site this can be free advertising for you when people Share, Like, or Re-Tweet your page.
What About Mobile Apps?
Don’t overlook mobile applications, usually simply called Apps. Some companies are embracing them as the ideal way to engage mobile users because you have very precise control over the experience. Some people speculate that at some point in the future, all mobile website interaction will be with apps, but this is likely many years in the future because it would require uniform standards that are unlikely to emerge between device and operating system manufacturers anytime soon.Regardless, there are many benefits to having a mobile app for your business:
- Ease of use. The typical rules for app stores are more likely to ensure a good user experience than may be the case with a mobile website, since there are no rules about mobile websites. Programmers can code websites to do whatever they want, with or without good forethought and quality assurance – which could be the reason why many plugins aren’t that well rated. Mobile apps are more likely to be easy for your user to engage with.
- Apps can provide additional functionality that your mobile website may not be able to achieve. Facebook is a great example of this.
- Credibility. Having an app can increase your perceived level of credibility and professionalism, as long as the rest of the stage has been set correctly. It can’t necessarily fix other problems, but it might be the thing that puts users over the top for choosing you over another vendor.
- With time being one of our most valuable resources, an App can make your audience appreciative by streamlining common activities they might do in connection with your business, such as making payments, online ordering, and scheduling appointments.
- Real-time engagement. With an app, you can perform message push notifications to users, which can be a huge business boost by letting them know about unannounced specials. Examples might include discounts on a home service that’s booked within the next 72 hours, or perhaps an evening special at a restaurant.
What Lies Ahead
The mobile world is constantly evolving as people seek new ways of making their lives easier and maintaining social connections in ways they might not otherwise have had the time for. The latest smart-watch that we’ve all seen on television is a great example of mobility being taken to even greater levels as technology experts find ways to make common tasks easier.As for what this means for your small business and search engines, one thing we know for sure is that they will continue to constantly make changes in their search algorithms – although I’ll stop short of calling them improvements, since people who’s search ratings change may or may not consider them improvements. What we do know with certainty is that we can continue to see more changes, more often. Consequently, it’s important to stay up to date with what Google is doing because what we do know for a fact is that they penalize you if you don’t.
The world of mobility will continue to change, and for a small business this will mean a big competitive advantage for small businesses that embrace these changes early since they will enjoy improved online rankings, while those who delay may see their rank suffer as a result. This can be a difficult landscape for a small business owner to navigate on their own, since they may not have the time needed to keep up with what’s really important. In fact that’s the reason for my business model of partnership.
Conclusion
I see, unfortunately, lots of people advertising they’ll design a website dirt-cheap, but what so many people end up with is what I described early on in this article series: a website that might seem nice at first but doesn’t actually serve your business as your #1 sales machine. If you need help, please contact me.Monday, September 7, 2015
Getting Your Website Responsive
In the last article, I revealed that I think the best option for most small businesses is to use a good Responsive Theme. If you have an older HTML website, you could convert your HTML site to a responsive HTML design, but I will warn you that from my own personal testing, I was not happy with how they behaved. More specifically, the way the ones that I used worked is that the mobile screen was not horizontally “fixed” the way it should have been and would slide left or right – at times you would think that it ought to be locked in place. So, at present, HTML responsive layouts get a big thumbs down from me. If I happen to find some I like that work the way they ought to, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, if you are stuck on HTML for some reason, I would lean toward dynamic serving with a completely separate set of pages. Done right, such pages can have a very "app-like" feel to them.
If you’re using WordPress, which most small businesses really ought to be doing these days, then you have tons of options. As a bit of an aside, one of the main reasons for using WordPress is that you can add and remove things from your, including new posts, blog content, plugins, additional capabilities, etc. without a big development cost. And since Google very strongly favors websites that show growth and development, you can see how maintaining a competitive advantage over time will be easier if your website has the right stuff under the hood to help you do that.
So, if you’re on WordPress, your best choice is to move to a Responsive theme. There are about a million of them, though. I’ll share some places where they can be found, and then I’ll tell you my own preferences.
Here are some top theme providers that are currently mobile responsive:
The second thing to consider is that, in many of those places, the developers come and go, and the support for their themes may go with them, leaving your website with buggy code that nobody is ever going to fix.
I am personally quite picky about the themes I use, because I want to be sure that both myself, and especially my customers, can count on having active support for a long time to come. For most sites, I either use Divi by Elegant Themes, which can do practically anything you might dream up, or one of a couple of proprietary themes along with Visual Composer, the go-to industry standard for custom layouts.
HandHeld Mobile Plugin by Elegant Themes lets you create a separate mobile-friendly version of your existing site. This plugin comes straight from the manufacturer, so it does not have a rating on WordPress.org.
Jetpack helps site owners by giving you the mobile-friendly features of hosted wordpress.com with your self-hosted site.
WPTouch is a plugin solution that will allow you to create a separate, mobile-friendly version of your website. Your desktop site will stay unchanged. When visitors view your site from any mobile device, your website will display a different theme that you configure. You can select from various themes that the plugin offers. Currently rate 3.5 out of 5 stars.
WP Mobile Detector, works similarly, allowing you to select from different themes and create your mobile friendly website. This plugin only has 3.4 out of 5 stars.
Device Theme Switcher is a more complex plugin that allows you to even give a different version to not only phones, but tablets. This gives you quite a bit of flexibility and more granular control, which may sound nice, but with complexity comes cost. Although the plugin is highly rated with a full 5-stars, most small businesses that I work with are cost-conscious, so I would not tend to go this route. Although the plugin seems quite nice, I have concerns about the longevity of support since there is only a single developer who has no other plugins. We can only hope that since he seems to be doing good work that he'll survive the test of time.
The thing to be cautious about with plugins is the same issue as with themes themselves. Developers come and go, so you want to use mainstream, major brand plugins so you can be reasonably assured that they’re going to be likely to continue providing support. The other main issue is that you may not be able to brand your website for a consistent viewing experience. In general, I do not recommend the route of plugins to accomplish a mobile website due to both reliability and support concerns I have. Is it easy to install it, charge a client money, and then walk away? Sure. But I can’t begin to tell you how many websites I’ve run into where a website developer installed a cool plugin that seemed a good idea at the time, but when I’m in there fixing things, the plugins are badly out of date with bugs but the person who wrote them is nowhere to be found, leaving the client to have to pay for me to move them onto something more reliable. If you are going to use a plugin, I would lean toward Elegant Theme’s HandHeld Mobile since you will likely get more consistent support over time.
We’ll continue talking about responsive website design next time; until then feel free to contact me if you have any questions at DunnTek web design.
If you’re using WordPress, which most small businesses really ought to be doing these days, then you have tons of options. As a bit of an aside, one of the main reasons for using WordPress is that you can add and remove things from your, including new posts, blog content, plugins, additional capabilities, etc. without a big development cost. And since Google very strongly favors websites that show growth and development, you can see how maintaining a competitive advantage over time will be easier if your website has the right stuff under the hood to help you do that.
So, if you’re on WordPress, your best choice is to move to a Responsive theme. There are about a million of them, though. I’ll share some places where they can be found, and then I’ll tell you my own preferences.
Here are some top theme providers that are currently mobile responsive:
- Thrive Themes - http://thrivethemes.com/
- Studio Press Themes – http://my.studiopress.com/responsive-wordpress-themes/
- Theme Forest - http://themeforest.net/collections/3226617-responsive-wordpress-themes Theme Forest also has designs for HTML and Joomla based sites.
- Elegant Themes are a very popular choice, with over 20 Wordpress responsive themes available including their most amazing work, Divi. http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/category/responsive/
- If you are looking for free themes, here’s a list of 30 designs. http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/30-free-responsive-and-stunning-wordpress-themes/
- Then there are the themes from Wordpress here: https://theme.wordpress.com/themes/features/responsive-layout/
The second thing to consider is that, in many of those places, the developers come and go, and the support for their themes may go with them, leaving your website with buggy code that nobody is ever going to fix.
I am personally quite picky about the themes I use, because I want to be sure that both myself, and especially my customers, can count on having active support for a long time to come. For most sites, I either use Divi by Elegant Themes, which can do practically anything you might dream up, or one of a couple of proprietary themes along with Visual Composer, the go-to industry standard for custom layouts.
Keeping Your Current Theme
With WordPress, you can use one of several plugins to create a separate mobile version of your website right from within WordPress itself. I don’t recommend this approach for anybody that I typically work with, but there are certainly instances where it might make sense as a short-term measure just to get you back into compliance with Google while you then work on fixing the bigger problem with your website design.HandHeld Mobile Plugin by Elegant Themes lets you create a separate mobile-friendly version of your existing site. This plugin comes straight from the manufacturer, so it does not have a rating on WordPress.org.
Jetpack helps site owners by giving you the mobile-friendly features of hosted wordpress.com with your self-hosted site.
WPTouch is a plugin solution that will allow you to create a separate, mobile-friendly version of your website. Your desktop site will stay unchanged. When visitors view your site from any mobile device, your website will display a different theme that you configure. You can select from various themes that the plugin offers. Currently rate 3.5 out of 5 stars.
WP Mobile Detector, works similarly, allowing you to select from different themes and create your mobile friendly website. This plugin only has 3.4 out of 5 stars.
Device Theme Switcher is a more complex plugin that allows you to even give a different version to not only phones, but tablets. This gives you quite a bit of flexibility and more granular control, which may sound nice, but with complexity comes cost. Although the plugin is highly rated with a full 5-stars, most small businesses that I work with are cost-conscious, so I would not tend to go this route. Although the plugin seems quite nice, I have concerns about the longevity of support since there is only a single developer who has no other plugins. We can only hope that since he seems to be doing good work that he'll survive the test of time.
The thing to be cautious about with plugins is the same issue as with themes themselves. Developers come and go, so you want to use mainstream, major brand plugins so you can be reasonably assured that they’re going to be likely to continue providing support. The other main issue is that you may not be able to brand your website for a consistent viewing experience. In general, I do not recommend the route of plugins to accomplish a mobile website due to both reliability and support concerns I have. Is it easy to install it, charge a client money, and then walk away? Sure. But I can’t begin to tell you how many websites I’ve run into where a website developer installed a cool plugin that seemed a good idea at the time, but when I’m in there fixing things, the plugins are badly out of date with bugs but the person who wrote them is nowhere to be found, leaving the client to have to pay for me to move them onto something more reliable. If you are going to use a plugin, I would lean toward Elegant Theme’s HandHeld Mobile since you will likely get more consistent support over time.
We’ll continue talking about responsive website design next time; until then feel free to contact me if you have any questions at DunnTek web design.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Types of Mobile Website Design
You really have three choices when it comes to an approach for your website’s mobile version. From a Google perspective, neither is necessarily any better than the others just from the standpoint of gaining their favor. However, each does have both its advantages and disadvantages. I’m going to walk through these three choices, and then tell you which approach I generally recommend and explain why.
One advantage of a responsive design is that you have a built-in consistent look and feel to your website, regardless of how your visitor choose to visit it. This feeling of familiarity and comfort is a factor in website conversion. Additionally, since you only have to maintain one website, your overall cost will probably be lower than other options.
The downside to a responsive design is that you may be showing visitors more than they needed. For example, if you consider the scenarios in which a person is likely to visit your website and think through what they really want to know about you if they are using their phone to look you up, do they really want to read all of your articles and detailed explanations? Maybe, maybe not. Plus, all of that content has to load on their device.
The two main advantages of this approach are that you don’t have to make much modification to your existing website, and achieving a highly-optimized mobile viewing experience with streamlined or summarized content and less options for the viewer, so they are more strongly directed to a particular outcome, ex. calling you, as opposed to other things they might do on the desktop version of your website such as read PDF's or special reports you may have.
The disadvantages include having to now main two different websites, and the attempt to tailor content for mobile viewers may leave your existing customers in a flux since they are used to looking for certain things in certain places, but now you’ve gone and moved things around on them which can be frustrating for your existing customers. Additionally, since you have two websites, you need some technology to decide which version you’re going to serve up to your user, and that technology may or may not work the way that you really want it to – a situation which is becoming more problematic as newer smartphones emerge on the market with extremely high-resolution displays. You also carry additional cost associated with maintaining more web pages.
The advantages are essential the same as dynamic page serving, in that you can deliver a highly mobile-optimized experience for your user with summarized content and simple navigation. Sometimes the term “web app” is used to describe this type of website, in that it functions almost more like an app on your smart phone rather than looking like a web page. In some cases it is cheaper to launch a new “web app” than to convert your website to a mobile responsive design, so some business owners may see it as a short-term cost avoidance so they don’t have to redesign their whole website.
The reality is that any cost-savings is very short-lived, because you’re going to be paying additional hosting and maintenance costs, plus you have all the same disadvantages as dynamic page serving.
1. It maintains a consistent look and feel for your website;
2. Lowest overall cost;
3. Most future-proof as device resolutions change;
4. Less headaches with having to deal with multiple websites.
So there you have it – my general recommendation for most small business owners is a responsive website design. That said, there may be cases where one of the other options is a better choice for your particular situation, so feel free to contact me on my website at http://dunntek.com/webdesign/ and we can talk through which option might be best for you.
We’ll continue the discussion about mobile websites in the next article.
Responsive Website Design
Perhaps the most common approach, a responsive website design is one which automatically adjusts the size and position of different components of your website based on the visitor’s device. Some of the things that a responsive website may do include changing the font size, displaying smaller pictures and videos, spacing links further apart so they are easier to tap, and re-ordering the content so it fits well onto the screen and flows well as you can then scroll down to see the same content as if you were on a regular desktop PC, but it’s been re-formatted so you can now see it easily on your smartphone or table.One advantage of a responsive design is that you have a built-in consistent look and feel to your website, regardless of how your visitor choose to visit it. This feeling of familiarity and comfort is a factor in website conversion. Additionally, since you only have to maintain one website, your overall cost will probably be lower than other options.
The downside to a responsive design is that you may be showing visitors more than they needed. For example, if you consider the scenarios in which a person is likely to visit your website and think through what they really want to know about you if they are using their phone to look you up, do they really want to read all of your articles and detailed explanations? Maybe, maybe not. Plus, all of that content has to load on their device.
Dynamic Page Serving
This approach to a mobile website will redirect mobile users to a different URL if they are on a mobile device. The methods for making this determination vary, but the most common result that you may recognize is visitors being sent to a “m.” version of the website. In this scenario, you essentially built a duplicate version of your website, including some pages while leaving others out, and tailoring the content of those pages to better suit mobile viewers.The two main advantages of this approach are that you don’t have to make much modification to your existing website, and achieving a highly-optimized mobile viewing experience with streamlined or summarized content and less options for the viewer, so they are more strongly directed to a particular outcome, ex. calling you, as opposed to other things they might do on the desktop version of your website such as read PDF's or special reports you may have.
The disadvantages include having to now main two different websites, and the attempt to tailor content for mobile viewers may leave your existing customers in a flux since they are used to looking for certain things in certain places, but now you’ve gone and moved things around on them which can be frustrating for your existing customers. Additionally, since you have two websites, you need some technology to decide which version you’re going to serve up to your user, and that technology may or may not work the way that you really want it to – a situation which is becoming more problematic as newer smartphones emerge on the market with extremely high-resolution displays. You also carry additional cost associated with maintaining more web pages.
Different Mobile URL
In this scenario, mobile visitors are sent to a completely different URL where your mobile website is housed.The advantages are essential the same as dynamic page serving, in that you can deliver a highly mobile-optimized experience for your user with summarized content and simple navigation. Sometimes the term “web app” is used to describe this type of website, in that it functions almost more like an app on your smart phone rather than looking like a web page. In some cases it is cheaper to launch a new “web app” than to convert your website to a mobile responsive design, so some business owners may see it as a short-term cost avoidance so they don’t have to redesign their whole website.
The reality is that any cost-savings is very short-lived, because you’re going to be paying additional hosting and maintenance costs, plus you have all the same disadvantages as dynamic page serving.
Summary
You have three primary choices for how to approach the mobile website for your business, and I’ve done all three. First you have the responsive design, which maintains a common look and feel regardless of how someone access your website. This is what I do the most of. Second, you have dynamic page serving. I’ve hand-coded custom HTML websites in this format for some clients. Finally, you have what I call the “web app” which is essentially a completely separate website. I’ve done these as well. Overall, I steer most small businesses toward a responsive design because:1. It maintains a consistent look and feel for your website;
2. Lowest overall cost;
3. Most future-proof as device resolutions change;
4. Less headaches with having to deal with multiple websites.
So there you have it – my general recommendation for most small business owners is a responsive website design. That said, there may be cases where one of the other options is a better choice for your particular situation, so feel free to contact me on my website at http://dunntek.com/webdesign/ and we can talk through which option might be best for you.
We’ll continue the discussion about mobile websites in the next article.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Why Your Small Business Needs a Mobile Website
If you want to get more customers online, then you probably know that it’s important to comply with search engine requirements about the things they want to see on your website. If you don’t follow their rules, you’ll find yourself gone from their listings. That means people aren’t going to be calling you as much. What this means for a small business owner is that you can’t just create a website and forget about it; you have to keep up with these changing requirements by Google. Just like a house requires maintenance and upkeep over time, fixing and replacing things, painting, and regular yard maintenance, so does your website.
Over the years, the volume of online searches conducted from mobile devices has exceeded 50%, meaning that now well over half of all searches are being made primarily from smart phones. This is particularly true with online shopping specifically; if your shopping cart isn’t mobile friendly it’s estimated that you can be losing 30% of your potential sales on that item alone. But the main point here is that when people search on their phones for a local service provider, much of the time they aren’t idly cruising the web. Rather, when people use their phones to conduct a search for a local service provider, they’re usually doing so with an intent to buy. Think about that. Most of the time when people are using their phone to search for a plumber, they’re going to call one for service. If you’re a plumber and you don’t have a mobile website, you’re now letting all that traffic just pass right by you.
Back in April, Google instituted changes in their search algorithm. Whether or not you have a mobile-friendly website design is now part of what people see when they search from a mobile phone. If you think about it, it makes sense. People on mobile phones would rather see a mobile-friendly site that’s easy to navigate, than one with tiny text or where they have to pinch and zoom to find their way around. This means that if your website isn’t mobile friendly, you’re going to get less calls.
If you don’t know whether or not your website design complies with the latest requirements, go to Google’s online testing tool, type in your website address, and it will tell you:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly
How Online Searching Has Changed
One of the factors to consider about your local marketing is the manner in which searching has changed. For example, once upon a time, you might make a search like one of these:
Pizza + Chicago
Plumbers in Seattle
However with the rise of location-detection technology, that isn’t really needed most of the time anymore. Search engines can detect where you are, and deliver results that are determined to be nearby based on your location. That assumes, of course, that your device supports location detection and that you have enabled it for your web browser.
Understanding Mobile Users
The first thing you need to do is think like a mobile user and put yourself in their shoes. One common scenario is a person doing some quick shopping, in which case they want a simple, streamlined buying process without a bunch of steps, so it’s fast and easy to buy. But for a small local business, the more important scenario is when they just had a major plumbing disaster and need someone NOW. They want to do a quick search, see top-rated professionals, and be able to do a quick tap to call. People want things to be quick and easy. If your website isn’t set up so it’s just a matter of a click or two for them to either call or contact you, they’re going to call someone else. If you’re a restaurant, your exact location with a map link and your menu should be easy to use. (Tip for restaurants: Include pricing on your online menu, and allow online ordering for pickup customers.)
With over a billion people now browsing the Internet from a mobile device, the simple fact of having a mobile website means you should see an increase in traffic. Conversely, not having one means your traffic will go down.
This is the first article in a series. Next time, we’ll discuss some of the different types of mobile websites that are available. As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact me at Web Design Raleigh NC
Over the years, the volume of online searches conducted from mobile devices has exceeded 50%, meaning that now well over half of all searches are being made primarily from smart phones. This is particularly true with online shopping specifically; if your shopping cart isn’t mobile friendly it’s estimated that you can be losing 30% of your potential sales on that item alone. But the main point here is that when people search on their phones for a local service provider, much of the time they aren’t idly cruising the web. Rather, when people use their phones to conduct a search for a local service provider, they’re usually doing so with an intent to buy. Think about that. Most of the time when people are using their phone to search for a plumber, they’re going to call one for service. If you’re a plumber and you don’t have a mobile website, you’re now letting all that traffic just pass right by you.
Back in April, Google instituted changes in their search algorithm. Whether or not you have a mobile-friendly website design is now part of what people see when they search from a mobile phone. If you think about it, it makes sense. People on mobile phones would rather see a mobile-friendly site that’s easy to navigate, than one with tiny text or where they have to pinch and zoom to find their way around. This means that if your website isn’t mobile friendly, you’re going to get less calls.
If you don’t know whether or not your website design complies with the latest requirements, go to Google’s online testing tool, type in your website address, and it will tell you:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly
How Online Searching Has Changed
One of the factors to consider about your local marketing is the manner in which searching has changed. For example, once upon a time, you might make a search like one of these:
Pizza + Chicago
Plumbers in Seattle
However with the rise of location-detection technology, that isn’t really needed most of the time anymore. Search engines can detect where you are, and deliver results that are determined to be nearby based on your location. That assumes, of course, that your device supports location detection and that you have enabled it for your web browser.
Understanding Mobile Users
The first thing you need to do is think like a mobile user and put yourself in their shoes. One common scenario is a person doing some quick shopping, in which case they want a simple, streamlined buying process without a bunch of steps, so it’s fast and easy to buy. But for a small local business, the more important scenario is when they just had a major plumbing disaster and need someone NOW. They want to do a quick search, see top-rated professionals, and be able to do a quick tap to call. People want things to be quick and easy. If your website isn’t set up so it’s just a matter of a click or two for them to either call or contact you, they’re going to call someone else. If you’re a restaurant, your exact location with a map link and your menu should be easy to use. (Tip for restaurants: Include pricing on your online menu, and allow online ordering for pickup customers.)
With over a billion people now browsing the Internet from a mobile device, the simple fact of having a mobile website means you should see an increase in traffic. Conversely, not having one means your traffic will go down.
This is the first article in a series. Next time, we’ll discuss some of the different types of mobile websites that are available. As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact me at Web Design Raleigh NC
Friday, September 4, 2015
Creating Content for Your Website or Blog
It happens to all of us. You're either trying to write the text for a page on your website, or write a blog article. Maybe you've allocated a special time and sit down with a cup of tea or a hot cup of coffee. Then you log onto your computer, put your fingers to the keyboard, and… nothing. The fountain of words that normally flows forth seems to have dried up into nothingness. You've got writer's block.
Here are a few tips that can help when you find yourself in this situation.
1. Take something complicated, and simplify it. Just think about how many times you may have wanted to learn something, but didn't have the hours needed to read a complicated manual. Think about who your readers are, and, knowing that, identify something that they are likely to want to be able to do, but may have never been properly instructed about. You can also draw inspiration for this type of article from a recent customer interaction (but be careful not to get into any details about that. You don’t want your customer getting mad at you.) When you begin, getting people’s initial interest with an eye-catching fact is always good.
Example: If you wanted to talk about proper shoveling technique, you could start with a statistic about how many injuries occur each year while using a shovel. Now turn this into a problem statement: You need to know how to shovel correctly in order to avoid hurting yourself or someone else.
Next, map out the series of high level steps involved in performing whatever the task is. For example, first picking the right shovel for the task. Calling for utility locates. Ensuring a safe work area. You get the idea.
A general sort of high level format that works well in many situations is:
- Explain the problem and why it’s important to learn to do the task correctly
- Defining the actual task and reason for doing it
- Advantages and disadvantages of doing it yourself (it’s always a mix!)
- Preparing for the job
- Choosing the right tool for the job
- Getting the tool – buying, renting, borrowing – explain any special economics
- Ensuring safety
- Performing the task (Stage 1)
- Performing the task (Stage 2)
- Performing the task (Stage 3 etc.)
- Assessing & refining
- Cleaning up
- Storing your tools properly
Then, once you have the overall structure right, go back and fill in the details.
2. Compare the pro’s and con’s of two different choices. For example, you might compare granite and marble countertops, or two different types of grass for a North Carolina lawn and how each does in the different regions with differing soil types. You know a lot about these things; this is just taking something that you already know and putting a different spin on it that people will actually benefit from reading. Just be careful not to name any actual products or brands, since that might get you into legal trouble.
3. If you favor a particular brand that you sell, and you have the legal rights to do so, perform a case study in which you talk about how and why that brand was the perfect fit for a particular situation that you encountered. In doing a case study, tell the story of the person that you did work for and demonstrate how the product made a difference in their life.
4. Read the news. Get ideas from local and national news, as well as any industry trade publications.
5. Follow other bloggers just to get an idea about what’s interesting enough not just to write about, but to see what sort of topics get people engaged.
6. Review a product or service, but again, you need to research and understand any legal implications.
7. Look through the table of contents of related books online just to get ideas for the structure of an article or post. Don’t plagiarize, but looking at what other people are writing about will very often cause an idea to pop into your head out of nowhere. It works extremely well!
I hope that gives you some ideas on different ways of coming up with things to write about for your website or blog. If you need help with managed website content solutions, contact me on my website at http://dunntek.com.
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Preparing for Your Website
As you prepare to launch a new website, there is some prep work you should do. I’m going to walk you through some hands-on things you need to actually do, and some things for you to think about, to help you make the most of your time and end up with a great website.
COMPETITION ANALYSIS
One of the first things you should do is some online research of your own. Go to Google and search for your business-related keywords. An example might be “tree service Charlotte”.
Now, go study the top 5-10 websites. Find out what services they provide, the type of information they have online, how their website is organized, etc. Keep in mind, just because a lot of them are doing something doesn’t mean they are really doing it right, but the first page of Google is always a great place to use a reference, since they’re obviously doing something better than most.
QUESTIONS
Next, try to work through some of these questions. Takes notes, since this will help your website developer later.
- What things are they missing from their websites?
- What can I do better than they did on their websites?
- What services do I offer that they don’t?
- Why should someone choose me?
- What are my advantages over other companies?
- Are those advantage related to a specific market segment?
- What is my brand message?
- Is my quality higher? If so, what, specifically, make it that way?
- Am I cheaper? If so, how do I still deliver a great result for my customers?
- Who is my ideal customer? Think in terms of age, demographics, location, etc.
- What matters most to that person?
- Time? Money? Or Quality?
- What kind of language does my ideal customer use?
That’s just a short primer on how to differentiate yourself, but should give you more than a little to think about. It all plays into what sort of message you convey on your website. Once you identify your ideal customer, it’s a lot easier to put together content that resonates with them. If your message is that you’re the economy provider, everything should reflect that. If you cater to high-end clients, again, your language, pictures and video should be something that’s going to make them feel right at home with you.
INVENTORY YOUR SERVICES
Make an inventory of all your products and services, and then break each one down on a separate piece of paper and write down as many details as you can think of. Then, go back and see if there are any logical groupings to your services.
Your website designer should be able to help you group them in a way that’s going to use good language that search engines will like. My recommendation is to follow their lead on how to structure things for best search engine results. You may have to make a trade-off between using language that you just personally like, and what’s going to get your website rated higher, so you need to decide which is more important to you.
CONTENT PAGES
Now that you’ve both answered some of your branding questions about who you are as a company, and taken an inventory of your services, you can now put these together to write your content pages. This is where you take the nitty gritty details about different aspects of your service, and explain how your business delivers those things with your unique value proposition, using language that’s going to resonate with your ideal customer.
PICTURES
Old pictures may not be sufficient in this day and age, but I run into people with tiny little pictures they want to look good online – and sometimes there’s just no magic I can do with a tiny little pic. Get all your digital pictures together. You are going to want pictures that are at least 1600x900, and that’s a bare minimum. The reason for this is that your designer needs to be able to chop them down to size for different purposes throughout your site, so they need a good sized picture to start with. If they happen to be much bigger, don’t worry about trying to downsize them yourself.
Now, organize your pictures into folders that relate to your services. This will help you figure out which of your services that you do not have any pictures for. Often, stock photographs can be found and used, but it’s always better to showcase your own work if you can.
If you don’t have suitable photographs, see if you can take pictures of some of your recent work with a digital camera. Pick a time of day with good, bright sunny lighting in that location, and be mindful about how you frame the pic – i.e. how close you are, what’s in the picture, things getting cut off, etc. Remember you cannot use other company’s trademarks in your business website, so try to eliminate any such things from the picture before you take it.
MARKETING TIP
Your website may be the very first time someone forms an opinion about your company. The most important thing about a website is for people to see it and immediately get a sense that you're the right company to help them.
Remember, though, that if you are a small local business, you are most likely not selling to anyone and everyone. That is not to say that you wouldn’t do so, but rather that there’s probably a certain demographic that is most likely to do business with you. The better you can identify who your customers are, and the typical “life story” for them at the time they are going to be visiting you online, the better you can do at tailoring the language on your pages so that your story about your business just naturally meshes right into their own life story, and they see you as someone who understands what they need.
If you need help figuring out how to tailor your website to better suit your target audience, drop by my website and connect with me there.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Why's It's Important to Customize Error Pages
How many changes have you made to the structure of your website? 10? 100? Maybe a lot more? Over time as your site grows, this number will increase, especially if it's a dynamic site like WordPress or other CMS.
Now, how often have you typed the wrong thing by accident when entering code? It happens all the time, no matter how careful you are – and we’ve come to the point that a lot of people rely on spell-checking. But those programs just make sure it’s a real word, not necessarily whether it’s the right word for the context. And if you’re creating an entire website, is it realistic to think you are going to catch ever single such possible error yourself? You certainly hope to, by going through the website, but there’s always a chance you’re going to miss something that leads to a link not working correctly.
When that happens, and someone clicks on that broken link, they are sent instead to an error page – most commonly with a 404 error. We’ve all seen this page before; it lets you know that the server can’t find what you wanted. This will make the user think that you aren’t keeping your website up to date, but even worse, there’s no way for them to tell you about it. So you have no idea about this problem.
Hosting providers now very often take advantage of this and actually make money off it. I know this might surprise you, but it’s true. If you have not created your own error page, then they have the server set up to send *your* website visitor to an error page that advertises *their* services. Now why would you want to give them free advertising on your real estate like that? You may be surprised to hear that’s a 7-figure industry.
How can you not only stop them from stealing way your website visitors and recapture that potentially lost traffic? It turns out to be quite simple, but you need to be a bit technical to do it.
With most web hosting providers, you can at least partially customize some aspects of the server configuration. I’m going to show you how to do this for Apache, which is the most common web server software in the world. You can also do this with IIS or other web server software; you’ll just have to look up the exact details.
First, you need to develop an HTML template page your error pages. To maintain consistency with the user so they still feel like they are on the same website, you want it to look similar to your main pages. You may not be able to make it exactly the same; the important thing is that it clearly belongs to you.
Next, you will need to decide what content to display on the page. You should let your visitors know that they have stumbled across a dead link, but you also want to provide a streamlined method for them to find their way back to your site. I recommend using the appropriate error message in the page title and at the beginning of the page using h1 tags. You should append a description of the error message to your page title and display this description using h2 tags in your page.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
</body>
</html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
</body>
</html>
Now you need to provide a easy "one-click" path to your website. This can be accomplished using a simple text link in the page footer.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
To return to the [Company Name] homepage, click <a
href="http://yourdomain.com">here</a>. </body>
</html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
To return to the [Company Name] homepage, click <a
href="http://yourdomain.com">here</a>. </body>
</html>
Now, upload your template as error404.html to your website's root directory (usually public_html).
To get this new template to be displayed whenever a website visitor tries to access a non-existing page by clicking on a bad link, you just need to create or modify your a .htaccess file, using your favorite plain text editor, put this line into it, and then put the file in the root directory (usually public_html) of your website. Most of the time, you will probably already have an .htaccess file.
ErrorDocument 404 http://yourdomain.com/error404.html
(WARNING: Only experts should ever try to change their .htaccess! You can end up taking your site down completely.)
Now you just repeat this process for each type of error that you want to provide a custom page for. Adjust the filename and ErrorDocument statements appropriately for each error page. To gather a complete list of server response codes, search Google™ for "Apache error codes". (Adjust as needed for your server software.)
If you are using WordPress specifically, one of the best ways to accomplish a good 404 error page is to first make a backup copy of your old 404.php, make a copy of your index.php file, name it 404.php, edit the guts of the file to get rid of any normal content and instead supply special text for your user. This will give you 100% consistent branding for the page, so your user is less alarmed when they see it, while asking them to let you know about it. Now, you might be thinking, why don’t I just have the system notify me when someone hits that page? The reason you would not want to have this page notify you ever time somebody hits is that, although you may not know it, web robots are crawling through website all day long, and you’d be getting tons of pointless emails.
As you can see, this process is extremely simple and only takes about five minutes. If you are good with HTML and you have a Google AdSense™ account and other affiliate accounts, you can easily customize your template to include your AdSense™ search box and your affiliate links.
If you need something special on your error pages, let me know.
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