Category: Web Design

Posted on

Do Spin Off Websites Help You Organically

I have tested this concept myself for a full year. My main website is here www.McCordWeb.com. I created a spin off site just on the topic of custom web design and our templated Quick Launch web design services here www.McCordWebDesign.com.

For a year I monitored placement and trying out several search engine optimization techniques.  What I have found is that my spin off site has never really quite gotten the placement that I thought it would even though it was very focused and on topic. I was careful to not have duplicate content for the site so as to rule out that issue as a factor for organic placement.

Here’s a real world search example:

on www.Google.com search for custom web design Maryland. My main website is #1 out of 304,000. My spin off site is #80 out of 100 results. Although this is an incredibly small sample, when client’s come to me to say let’s do a two page spin off site – like a doorway page, I simply will not do it. It is far better to develop and work on making your main website the best it can be than to fragment your message and try to scam the organic results. Clearly my own test proves that a spin off site, no matter how optimized will not beat your original main well-developed website.

Posted on

Put Testimonials and Ratings to Work for You

The first time you visit a website for a firm that you are considering purchasing products or services from, you will typically check to see if they have reviews or testimonials. This is a great place to see what others who have worked with the firm have said about their experience.

Testimonials are worth their weight in gold when it comes to establishing consumer confidence in your product or abilities. I strongly recommend that every business work hard to solicit testimonies from existing and past clients. I routinely hear from clients, “what if someone says something bad what should I do?” My first response is, if the comment is bad wouldn’t you want to know about it so you could fix the problem and then change how you are doing something to be better?

Here is an example of a 4.5 star rating comment we received that we posted on our website as we felt that the testimony created legitimacy for the other 5 star ratings on the page for our writing service.

“The quality has slowly improved over time as our writer has gained experience with the topic. Our suggestions and criticism were taken well and understood perfectly. Some of the articles are quite inspired, and the embedded YouTube videos and images really make the blog stand out. Overall, it’s really better than I expected.  I will be using your service for another project/website very soon.”

Although this testimony appears possibly not glowing look carefully it addresses that we took criticism and improved to cater to the customer’s needs that they are already considering using our services for other projects. By not editing the comment, we give legitimacy to other 5 star comments on the same page.

“I’ve had a wonderful experience with you. I am really excited to check out my new blog postings. They have helped my sites search engine rankings within 2 weeks. I love how organized you are and how efficient your system is set up. I feel very taken care of and I don’t feel that I have to worry about much.”

Remember however, when it comes to testimonies, you are choosing to show them on your website or not. If you get a bad comment, I would contact the customer immediately to work actively to repair the problem and relationship. I would not place a negative comment on my own website. Sometimes a comment after the resolution of a problem can be even more valuable to your business.

That being said, if you sanitize your comments and edit wording, the comments you place on your website appear fake. For me, I post customer testimonies warts and all. When I post a testimony that is not a perfect score of five stars it gives legitimacy to the other ratings on the page. I will however never publish on my own site a negative rating that hurts confidence in my abilities. That being said I have never gotten a negative rating from a clients – I work very closely with them and work hard to provide exceptional service. I use my rating system as a double check of my service to make sure I am staying on course and focused on my customer’s needs.

You can view all our ratings pages here to get an idea of how you may want to use ratings for your own website:

Blog Writing Ratings

Google AdWords Service Ratings

Web Design Service Ratings

Posted on

Robo Spam Can You Do Anything to Stop It?

You’ve seen it the gobbledy gook on the form that comes to your inbox from your website contact form. There is literally no way to stop this new generation of spam short of introducing a captcha field on your contact form. 

A captcha field is one of those auto generated boxes filled with a combination of letters jumbled together. Only people can read them not spam robots, so they defeat the use of your online contact form by robo spammers. One of the biggest issues that real users have with sites that use captcha is that sometimes the letters and numbers are not easily readable and can create problems especially for those that are visually disabled. Case in point is the captcha used on many Google pages. If you can read it let me know. Worse yet is the audio link that tells you what the captcha says. The speaker has a very heavy Indian accent which makes understanding what the letters and number are impossible.

The bottom line is this is you use a contact form on your website, you will probably get robo spam. It is not an issue of a poor web host or a problem with your spam filter, it is simply the new generation of spam that gets to you because it uses your website’s contact form script to send you the spam thereby getting past ISP filters.

Posted on

What to Know About Moving Your Website to a New Web Host

Moving to a new web host is never easy. In fact it can be downright hard and fraught with problems depending on the type of technology that your website is using behind the scenes. You should never feel that your website files are held hostage by your web host, but it is important to consider moving to a new host only to solve serious problems.

When Should You Consider Moving to a New Web Host?

Image of web hosting servers powering your website.Many of the reasons I have heard why a client wants to change web hosts typically have to do with issues that are truthfully not the original web host’s fault. Here are a few tips when you should consider moving and when you should not.

You should move to a new web host if…

  • Your IP address block is linked to a blacklisted spammer and all of your mail is blocked literally shutting down your business.
  • If your web host does not offer the technology that you really need to run your website. For example if your host does not have Windows servers and your brand new website is all done in .asp, you will have to move.
  • If your website or e-commerce store has suffered significant service outages due to either high server load and the use of older technology by your host and they cannot accommodate your website traffic.
  • If your website has been taken down by a virus spread from another user on your shared server because your host did not have the proper security or firewalls in place causing your website files to be trashed.

You should NOT move to a new web host if…

  • If you have had a spam problem in your inboxes. Unfortunately poor mailbox management is not your host’s problem, but is rather an issue that you are not attending to that is impacting your mail delivery. You will continue to have these same problems where ever you go. You should change your procedures and not your host.
  • If you think you can save money on hosting fees. You may eat up any savings from the money to bring your website or e-commerce store back online. Make sure to read the rest of this article for why.
  • You have had one incident of poor customer service. Be patient when you have a problem, get another service rep to help you and try to be courteous in helping them to help you. There can always be a one time incident where someone (you or them) has simply had a bad day and not reacted well. Give support another go before you decide you must move.

Cautions About Moving Web Hosts

If you have decided that you absolutely must move to a new web host please be aware that you cannot simply set up a new account and upload your website files and everything will just magically work. In fact everything will break when you move to a new web host!

Database connections, if you have them for e-commerce, as well as the database itself will need to be reset up and the new connection code syntax embedded in all pages when you move to a new web host. Contact forms will need to be scripted again using the new hosts scripting and cgi-bin address, PHP websites will need to have PHP re-enabled and possibly PHP.ini settings updated on the new host to make the site work, and of course all email accounts will need to be set up again and passwords added.

Moving to a new web host is highly complicated for many sites. Even for a simple HTML website, new contact form scripting, and time to set up email accounts and then update the settings on your computers to be able to download your mail again takes time and creates an expense.

In fact, you may find that to move your site will cost you more in expenses for set up, reconfiguration and down time than you had ever even expected. If you feel that you really must move make sure that you are carefully analyzing what the costs actually will be.

Our Top Picks For Web Hosts

We have two recommendations for hosts and use both of them for our business websites and so have real world experience with both. Our top preferred host is Hostway. The majority of our business clients as well as our largest website (500+ pages), are hosted by Hostway. I like Hostway as their control panel is intuitive, easy for clients to use without my involvement, online performance is excellent, and they offer Urchin website statistics.

Our second choice is Network Solutions. (Get a free domain with annual hosting.) For some clients this may be the preferred solution however the control panel, and email application is more difficult to use and I do not consider their control panel intuitive. Unfortunately, they do not provide a good website statistics analytics package. However, they do have a WordPress auto installer that makes setting up a WordPress blog super easy and integrates easily onto your server. I have found website database integration to be more problematic at Network Solutions.

The bottom line is when it comes to wanting to change web hosts, make sure you are changing for the right reason and that you are selecting a new host that will be a better long term choice than your previous one.