Author: Nancy McCord

Nancy McCord is the President and resident blogger for McCord Web Services LLC. She has been providing global web services since 2001. She is a web designer, search engine marketing professional, and search engine and blog expert. She lives in Maryland just south of the Washington DC metro area.
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Trying Something New on Ad Landing Pages

Sometimes a customer just simply wants to do a test to see if something will work before they go whole hog. Here is one case study for Pinnacle Executive Center you may find interesting.

This client leases virtual office space in the Bethesda and Rockville areas outside of Washington DC. Now by virtual I mean 100 to 300 square foot mini-offices. But these offices have a special twist, they are deluxe and have reception service, copy center, conference rooms, and even concierge services. That means get your errands and dry cleaning done for you while you are working.

The client did not want to invest in a full blown optimized website and had already purchased a nice online Flash brochure, plus they were testing a Google AdWords program to see if any or all of it would work to drive leases.

What we did was to do a mini site optimization for the Flash page, scroll to the bottom of the landing page linked into my blog post title and you will see what I mean. You can right click to view source and review the meta tags as well. I tried to create some keyword density for them on a Flash site that had no text as he was hoping to get some organic placement as well.

In addition we are using this same page as a Google AdWords landing page, looking for a good quality score based again on a mini-optimization. I’ll let you know how it performs over the next several weeks. It should be an interesting test!

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Blogging For the Big Bucks???

You hear it all the time, this blog is making thousands of dollars. On my side I hear how can I make money on my blog, I am hoping to make six figures.

Now you may want to comment from your own experience, but from what I have seen blogging is fun and can be profitable as a ghost blogging provider for other websites, but I have not seen any blogs raking in the cash to the tune of six figures.

I do know that a well-trafficked blog can make a decent or at least respectable income from AdSense or really rather the “products” that Google offers as in my case, but I think you really need to be in the “stratosphere” of popularity to be making enough income that you would want to quit your day job and blog full time.

For my part I blog for search engine benefits and for the authority that blogging gives to my website and my business. Blogging is just one of the overall techniques that I use for improving and maintaining my own business’ organic placement. I have made money from my blog, but not enough to really be a major income flow. So if you are blogging for money, well think again – ‘taint going to happen – blog because you love it or because you can see the organic benefit.

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The New World of Web Visibility for New Websites

You just can’t do the same old thing anymore – get your website out and hope that someone visits. You just have to more now to be visible on the Web.

In addition to building a great website that is search engine friendly you need to prepare it for search engines and really push to get your initial exposure. Here are some of the things that we advocate to help get your new website visible and in the Google index quickly.

  1. Make sure to do a Google Sitemap and Yahoo URLlist. You want to make sure that when the spider comes they will spider everything.
  2. Make sure to use the free webmaster tools to register your site on Google, MSN, and Yahoo Engine. I don’t recommend that you pay $299 for Yahoo Directory listing unless you have other issues where this may be needed.
  3. Register with Google Local with a free business listing.
  4. Create a My Space site as well as one for Facebook and LinkedIn. Sounds foolish? Well I have to say that one big problem for new sites is getting Google to pick them up and put them in the index. We have found that the Sitemap helps, but that the site doesn’t actually make it into the Google index (even thought the Google bot has been by) until you have one or two links to your brand spanking new website. These services will provide the links you need to get indexed on Google fast.
  5. Post your website link in some of the blogs on your topic or forums. Some sites will not allow you to do this and I certainly do not advocate being carried away here, but you are trying here to get a few links to your new site so that the search engines will take notice.

From my side as a professional, I am definitely seeing the difference when we follow these steps in regards to how quickly I will be able to find a new site for Google searches. Try it and you’ll be convinced that this is truly a very smart yet simple strategy.

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I love this Blog, Blog Tutorials

If you are like me, you have your own favorite blogs that you watch, ones that you check every day and that resonate with you. Well here is one of mine, The Blog Tutorials – http://www.blog-tutorials.com/. I think that the site owner truly has his or her finger on the pulse of bloggers and professional bloggers. No I don’t agree with everything written, but the point of view and new ideas is refreshing and gets my vote for sure for one to watch on a regular basis.

If you are a pro blogger or just trying to become one, I recommend checking out this blog. The titles are well written, content good, and wealth of new ideas excellent.