Category: Web Design

Posted on

Will a New Website Win You More Customers? You Bet!

Here’s the scenario: No leads, a five page website with very little content, in Google Analytics only company name variations searches appear in the statistics.

Solution: Here’s how you re mediate this type of online visibility problem.

  1. Create landing pages quickly that reflect your true nature and put your products in services in a concise and clear light. Start AdWords ASAP with a budget high enough to get placement and clicks. This will get you in the game and stop the slide while you work to fix your website problems and exposure.
  2. Install a blog now and get blogging. Even if you don’t have the website you want you will benefit from great content on your blog and can be building links and providing value.

You can have number 1 and 2 done and rolling in two or three days!

Then dig in deep and work on resolving the real problem, your website content and website. It can sometimes take two to four months for a new website so by blogging and doing AdWords you stop treading water and start getting leads to fund your new design and content building project.

Take the time to build out great content while you are selling and blogging. People will forgive a poor looking website if it has great content. But they won’t forgive a great website with poor content.

If the scenario in paragraph one is yours, don’t buy into the approach that everything has to be perfect and I have to be getting lead conversions from my website before I start promoting it. The truth is the quality of the people who are on your website right now may never convert as they really are not looking for your products and services. These visitors may even be potential employees or competitors, you need to caste a bigger net and start getting the exposure that WILL get you business now to fund the things you want to do.

Posted on

A Case Study on Using India to Create Your Website

I found this recent situation interesting and wanted to share it with you. A past blogging client told me that his SEO firm advised him that his website had been nailed with the Google Panda update and they could no longer help him. It turns out that when his website was built by a team in India that they simply grabbed content from other websites out on the web and pasted it into his pages.

When I ran CopyScape on a few of his products, I found many sites that had the same content. This kind of situation is not easy to fix. It will require time and money to buy new unique content. Although not every Indian web service firm will do this to you, if you are using an Indian firm learn from this lesson and assure and then verify that the content you have bought will do you good and not harm. The key is to trust but verify!

This client now has a 1,300 page nightmare to fix that may take thousands of dollars to fix the problem. He may be forced into promoting his website only using Google AdWords as there will be no way to ever garner organic placement in this new world of Google.

Placement on Google is based on the criteria that Google decides, you can’t buy it, but you can earn it by not taking short cuts and focusing on unique content and creating value for readers.

Posted on

Tips to Promote Your Website

In continuing with the last several blog posts on tips and tidbits, here are few of my top tips on how you can promote your website.

1. Promote your website with Google AdWords. If you need visibility and leads fast, Google AdWords is the best place to start. I recommend using AdWords for a boost right after you launch your website until you have enough impetus to garner organic placement and start generating activity on your own.

2. Make sure you are blogging. If you want to wean yourself off Google AdWords at some point, it is important to be actively involved in building unique informational content which over time will help you with organic placement and cause the natural building of inbound links.

3. Make sure you are building content on your website in addition to blogging. You’ll need more than blogging to garner placement. Consider doing articles smartly to get inbound links to your website. I don’t mean spin articles, but rather write thoughtful pieces that provide value.  Use social media to promote your articles, archive them on your website and place the articles on just a few article sites.

4. Use social media to promote your website, add value by not just talking about your own services, but make sure to work to create authority in all you do. Link to your site, your article pieces, and blogs as well as try to engage readers.

5.  Move into the wider world. Get active in your market sector on forums to tape into new ideas, thoughts, and share your expertise as well as learn from others. Share your website and yourself to get your name out there.

Posted on

Even HTML Websites Can Be Hacked – A Case Study

We all know that WordPress websites and blogsites can be hacked and can actually be targets for spammers, but did you know that regular websites can be targets too?

Here’s something I just saw recently that was very concerning to me.

A customer came to me recently and said that his daughter was reading his website and noticed a few funny words like biking in his kitchen spice selling website content. He asked me to take a look. This is what I found:

  • The stylesheet on the website had been changed to override all underlines and colors on the links.
  • Keyword dense anchor text had been scattered throughout the website and links to biking and travel sites inserted randomly in the content.

The links were were difficult to find in the content as one, there were not that many, and two link underlining had been turned off globally.

What is very concerning to me is that this was a silent attack, very subtle, small, and did not impact overall readability or appearance of the site. Most of all however was the site was just a five page regular HTML site.

This means that any website can be attacked for spammy purposes. The biggest key to identification is if link underlines are turned off and colored to match the rest of the text. Although this can be done for separate links and not globally, keeping an eye on your website big or small, HTML or WordPress is definitely now in order.