Category: Internet

Beginner’s Guide to SEO

I’ve been surprised lately about the widely different ideas that customers bring to the table about what SEO is. Search Engine Optimization is, in a nutshell getting your site optimized for the search engines.

One of the first things I ask clients is where they’ve used the key words they think they’re targeting on their site. And I’m often met with a long blank stare. Oh, yeah. If you want to be ranked for a key word or key phrase, you have to use that key phrase on your site. Upon reflection it is obvious but not quite so obvious that you need to actually use the key phrases in the content of your site.

Once you’ve made sure you’ve included key phrases in the content, you can also make sure that you’ve included alt text for each image on your site. Yes, each and every image should have alt text and the alt text is a ripe opportunity to use your key phrases.

Another easy step is to use the key phrases in the title tag of the site. I explained this in a previous post on Title Tags for Web Sites but it is often overlooked. Don’t use tags like Welcome or About Us. Instead use titles that help both visitors and search engines understand what your site is about.

???? ??? ????Hyperlink key phrases to other pages. One of the things that search engines really like is to see what text is used to hyperlink to other pages. Instead of linking Click Here to the page with more content, use More information on how to sell books on Amazon (if you help people sell books on Amazon) or Handle your dental needs in one visit (if you are a Dental office offering Oral Sedation Dentistry).

SEO isn’t as difficult as some might make it seem but it does take time and it does take staying abreast of the latest trends and techniques. If you’re not sure how to proceed, call EduCyber at 303-268-2245 for assistance.

SHARE THIS:

Three Concerns about E-Newsletters

OK, I just posted five reasons you SHOULD have an e-newsletter, now let’s look at three things you need to take into account as you start writing your e-newsletters:

  1. Junk Email filters. There is a lot of email out there. And a lot of that email is automatically generated junk that you don’t want to read. The unfortunate point is that a good email newsletter site like AWeber.com or Constant Contact.com is also an automatically generated email that can caught in a filter. We use Aweber and we get a spam assassin score BEFORE we send so we know how likely it is to get filtered out.
  2. Information Overload. How many emails do YOU get every day? I get over a hundred, not including the junk that gets filtered out. Even then I’ve got an overload of information and should probably unsubscribe from half a dozen newsletters. But they’re really good when I take the time to read them. So remember that your reader is likely overloaded and that leads to the next concern:
  3. Competition for Attention. Like I said, I get over 100 emails a day. So your e-newsletter is competing for my attention with every other item in my inbox. And of course I’m likely distracted by who’s IM’ing me or what the latest tweet from Twitter is as well. One key issue to deal with here is to make sure your subject line leaps off the screen in a way the engages the reader from the start.

These concerns aren’t insurmountable but you should be aware of them so that you can prepare to make your newsletter stand head and shoulders above the rest.икони

SHARE THIS:

Five Reasons to Use an Email Newsletter

Putting a newsletter into email is easy.  Reaching people that want to be reached by you is so easy it feels thrilling! Really it does! Give it a try. Here are five reasons you should try it if you aren’t already:

  1. Low cost distribution: Sending out a hard copy newsletter can cost anywhere from $0.42 to $10.00 depending on how much work and postage you put into it. An email can be sent for nothing or next to nothing.
  2. Less focus on formatting: Instead of having to make the content fit the available space, you can just focus on writing good content.
  3. Ease of distribution: You don’t have to spend time folding and stuffing envelopes nor do you have to lick stamps and take it to the post office. Simply click send when it looks right and off it goes.
  4. Easy to post to your web site: Once you’ve taken the time to write good content, you should always post it on your web site so the Search Engines can index your content. In the same way you should always archive your newsletters on your site to keep that good content available.
  5. Easy to link your newsletter to your web site. For most folks, getting people to visit their web site is their goal. If someone visits the web site, they are more likely to make a purchase so why not put the first three paragraphs of your nine paragraph article in the newsletter with a Continue Reading link that goes to your web site?

So get off your backside and start writing. And start getting permission from people to send them your newsletter.

SHARE THIS:

Search Engines and URLs

Search engines from Google to Accona (yes, there’s a search engine called Accona) to Yahoo like to look at the URLs on your site. So you should pay attention to what is happening with your URLs. But let’s start at the beginning. What is a URL (sometimes pronounced U – R – L and sometimes pronounced like the name Earl)?

www.educyber.com/edunotes-blog/index.php is a URL. It is what appears at the top of your web browser when you are on a web site. www.educyber.com/edunotes-blog is another URL from our site. One thing to note is that for most sites, either index.htm or index.php will be a default page that shows up if you don’t type a file name. So www.educyber.com/edunotes-blog/ is the same as www.educyber.com/edunotes-blog/index.php.

So now that we know what a URL is, let’s take a look at how it can help you. As mentioned above, index.htm or index.php will be a default page that you need to have. After that you can name a page anything you want. You do NOT want to name a page index2.php or indexb.php. That tells you nothing at all about the content of your page.

Telling the search engines and your web site visitors about the content of the page helps them to understand what they will find on the page. This information is much more useful to the search engines than to visitors but then you’re more likely to get visitors if the search engines understand you.

Now let’s take another look at the EduCyber site for an example of what I’m talking about. Our navigation bar has a link that says Web Site Design. If you click that link, you go to this page: www.educyber.com/web/design.php. Notice that you’re in a folder called WEB and on a page called DESIGN.PHP. Those two pieces of information help search engines understand that is what the page is called.

As a final example, take a look at the URL in your browser as you read this blog. The last part of it reads /search-engines-and-urls/ which is also the title of this post. That helps to tell  the search engines what this blog post is all about.

The moral of the story is to use meaningful file names and paths when you create web pages and web sites.

SHARE THIS:

An Email Address By Any Other Letter

Shakespeare may have said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but who would have imagined that email address starting with any other letter would get less spam?

Say what? A researcher in England discovered that, for real email addresses, those beginning with less common letters receive less spam. So that means that if your name is Mike Xanowitz, you might want to have your email address as xanowitzm@mydomain.com instead of mxanowitz@mydomain.com. M’s, you see, get more spam than X’s.

This is just one study but the results feel right to me. Think about it another way. mike@mydomain.com sounds pretty general, even if mydomain.com isn’t so well known. xanowitz@mydomain.com on the otherhand is pretty specific. So if I were trying to send unsolicited commercial messages (otherwise known as spam) to this domain, I might get lucky and guess that mike@ is a valid email address. But unless I know Mike personally and know how to spell his last name, I’m unlikely to simply guess at xanowitz@ and be right.

Does it mean anything to you? Perhaps not if you already have an established email. If however you’re in the process of creating a new email address, consider a lesser used first letter such as x, y or z for your email address.

SHARE THIS:

Title Tags for Web Pages

One of the things that many people overlook when creating their web site is coming up with good title tags.

First let me make sure we are on the same page. A title tag is the title of the page that appears at the very top of the browser window. For example, if you visit www.microsoft.com, you’ll probably see “Microsoft Corporation – Mozilla Firefox” or “Microsoft Corporation – Internet Explorer”, depending on your choice of web browser.

Now for Microsoft, that might be all you need. But for us little guys, we need to let the world know what it is that we do. Visit EduCyber.com and you’ll see the title “Denver Web Site Design, Internet Marketing, Web Hosting, Denver Search Engine Optimization.” Note that the name of the company doesn’t appear in the title. Instead we have let people know what it is that we do here at EduCyber.com.

Also, if you click on a link, such as the link to this blog, you’ll see that the blog page has a different title. The title here is “Search Engine Tips, Internet Marketing and Web Design: EduCyber blog”. Yes we have used the company name but notice that it doesn’t come first. Also note that every page on your web site should have a different title.

It appears, from a brief visit around the web site that a lot of companies want their site to be ranked high for “Welcome!”. You can often find Welcome in the title of web pages as well as having it be the first word of text on the main page of the web site. Do a search at Google for Welcome and see what I’m talking about.

What should you do? Write a list (10 – 50) of key phrases that you should be ranked for. Choose the two or three most important ones for the title of the main page. Look at the various pages of your site and craft a different title for each from your key phrases. Then do a search. Are you listed? If not wait a week and try again. This isn’t the end all to Search Engine Optimization but it can be one factor to help you get listed.

SHARE THIS:

Web Site Usability Testing

Have you ever tested your web site to see if it actually works? We’ve seen some beautifully designed web sites that just don’t work. This goes back, in part to my last blog on having a Call to Action on each page. But it also goes beyond that. Once you have a call, you have to determine if people can actually accomplish it.

A couple of years ago, we decided that since we want people to call us, we should move our phone number from being buried in the footer of the page up to shouting it in the header. Within a week I had confirmation from a new customer that having the phone number up high and large helped us land the job. That’s mean by web site usability testing. Can people actually do what you want them to do?

We ran a Pay Per Click campaign for a customer for awhile. He wasn’t getting the desired results (more sales as it is an ecommerce site). We were getting him more clicks to the correct page but when we looked at the page, we saw that the “Buy Now” button was way down on the page, after a long list of products. People – CUSTOMERS – weren’t buying because they couldn’t figure out how to do so.

A great way to think about web site usability testing is Steve Krug’s favorite line: “Don’t Make Me Think!”. If visitors to your web site have to think, they’ll likely go away. If, on the other hand, the next step is obvious, they’ll likely take it.

So take a minute and go through your site, or better yet, get a real live customer to go through your site. Ask them if it makes sense to do whatever it is that you want them to do. If you want a real professional look at your web site, we can conduct a usability test but you can do a lot of testing on your own.

SHARE THIS:

Create a Call to Action

We build a lot of web sites. We also rebuild a lot of web sites. And I can tell you that a lot of web sites don’t have a clear focus. A well-designed web site needs to have a clearly defined call to action for each and every page.

There might be several different calls to action on a site. Perhaps on the main page the call to action is to simply click a given link to learn more about a specific service or product. For interior pages of a web site, one of the most common mistakes I hear from web site owners is “The goal of this page is to inform or educate the visitor”. That, in itself, isn’t a bad goal but there still must be a call to action after the educating has been done. A simple “to learn more, call us at 555 555-5555” then gives the visitor something concrete to do after they’ve been informed.

You’ve seen or heard good calls to action on TV and radio. Call now. Operators are standing by. Call in the next 20 minutes for a special discount. Visit us on the web at . . . All of these are calls to action. For ecommerce web sites, the calls are much clearer. Add to Cart, Buy Now, Checkout, Details, etc.

You can have a variety of different calls depending on the purpose and scope of the site and of the individual page. Some good calls to action include:

  • Request to call
  • Add to cart / Buy now
  • Fill out this form
  • Email us
  • Complete a survey
  • Create a registration
  • Provide your info in order to be entered in a drawing
  • Become a member and we’ll give you more information

As you can see, there are many choices and ways you can craft your call to action. Go back and take a look at your web site. Do you have a clear call to action on each page?

SHARE THIS:

Make Your Site the Centerpiece

One of the most unusual aspects of a company having a web site is that the site can be a great marketing tool for the business but that site needs its own marketing plan (which should dovetail with a bigger company marketing campaign).

If you set your web site as the centerpiece of your marketing, there are a few simple steps you should take to make sure you get the most from it:

  1. Print it on EVERYTHING. Every piece of printed material that your company generates should have your web address (URL) on it. This includes:
    • Brochures
    • Business Cards
    • Letterhead

      • and even:

      • Invoices
      • Proposals
      • Contracts
    • Let people hear it. If a caller is sent to voicemail, make sure they know they can also contact you on the web at www.yourdomain.com. If your phone system lets you control what people hear while on hold, make sure your message comes out there and that it mentions your web site.
    • Another easy to take step that is too often overlooked is your email signature. Every email program lets you have an automatic email signature. Make sure you include your web site address in the signature.

    These are just three easy steps you can use to help you market your web site.

    SHARE THIS:

    Stay Organized and Stay Productive

    We’ve been giving and receiving Outlook training this week and it hit me how important it is to stay focused with productivity tools of which Outlook continues to be one of our most important. In an office environment, using Outlook as the front end to an exchange server gives lots of opportunities for sharing schedules, assigning tasks, sharing calendars, and storing emails in public folders so that others in the company can easily access the same information.

    Outlook 2007 is a powerful tool whether in a business environment with Exchange server or as a standalone program. The search component in particular is powerful. I have on my Outlook Favorites the search folders Unread Mail and For Followup. You can also add particular category searches that help you to stay connected and keep moving forward. The To-Do bar on the right side of the screen is a handy tool that you can expand or hide to meet your needs but when expanded shows your upcoming schedule and flagged emails.

    Another productivity tool that I use in conjunction with Outlook is Jott. I’ve written about Jott previously but it is a great time saver if you’re out and about a lot. I can call Jott to send myself emails, ask for reminders that will come to my phone and email, or send an email to anyone in my address book. Yes, from my phone. So when I’m driving down the road and remember that I need to confirm an appointment via email, I can call (using my hands free bluetooth device of course) and tell Jott to send an email to Ted, letting him know that I’ll be at the breakfast meeting on Friday and Ted will get the email.

    Between Outlook, Exchange and Jott, I manage to stay organized and on top of my schedule and keep my productivity high.

    SHARE THIS:

    We are proud members of many community organizations and chambers. See Our Community Involvement.

    ©1998-2024 EduCyber - All rights reserved. | 4251 Kipling Street, Suite 340 Wheat Ridge, CO 80033 USA | info@educyber.com