Tag: Tips

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Make Sure You Don’t Get Locked Out of Your Own Business

I see this all the time, it is not uncommon at all. A business person buys an existing business, several months or years down the road they want to solve problems with organic placement and find out that they have no access to the important tools that control their online presence.

For any business owner considering buying an existing business, these are the things you should demand before the final payment for your new business changes hands. Then verify that they have been done before you sign over the last check.

  1. Domain name registration should be transferred to you.
  2. You should have the admin URL, login, and password for your domain control panel. Verify this! Make sure that if you needed to change your domain name servers you have access to do so. This allows you to change web hosts when you want without hassle.
  3. Your web hosting should be in your name and you should have administrative rights to the account and know how to login so you can set up new email accounts, and change passwords to lock old owners out.
  4. You should be an administrator on your business’ Google AdWords account. If the old business owner used his email address to set up the account, he or she needs to relinquish this email account to you or have Google AdWords change it to yours before you make your last payment to them. Don’t be satisfied with anything less than administrative rights.
  5. You should be an administrator on your Google Analytics account. Once you are an administrator, you can remove all old business owners and account managers from accessing your Google Analytics account. Don’t be satisfied with anything but administrative privileges. If the original business owner cannot do this for some reason, ask to be made a standard user so you can see the traffic, but demand that before you exchange final payment that a new Google Analytics account be set up with you as administrator and the new Google Analytics tracking code be installed on the website at their expense. This will allow you access to the old stats but full control moving forward. Demand that the old account remain in place for a minimum of two years.

You will never have more leverage to get what you want than before you make your final payment or before you pen your final signature to a contract. I have seen a number of instances when new owners simply did not know to make these changes and we have had to re-mediate them at expense to the new business owner. Be smart, be careful, and make sure you are not locked out of some of the most important tools to grow your new business. You should be in control not the old owner or an old account manager.

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When It Comes To SEO Services Be An Educated Consumer

Just because you receive an email from a firm saying your website is poorly placed organically or has supposed SEO issues does not mean that you have to take action. First off, I have a high ranking on Google on many of my services, and nearly all of my business comes in via my organic placement efforts, and I still get these letters!

If you do decide to work with an SEO firm, that is fine, just make sure that you are getting what you pay for and are an educated consumer about what they say they can do. Here is just one case study that should help you to be aware that you need to be careful, aware, and vigilant when you are shelling out your hard earned cash for SEO services.

Fees: Six months expense for a local business for SEO services $400 a month or $2,400 already spent

Services: SEO work plus articles to garner inbound links.

Review: After six months of service Google shows the site as having 223 links. Many of the links are from link farms or off-topic locations. As comparison we did a report for one of our long time blogging clients the same day we looked at this other client’s results, our client had 70,000 links. A different client we also reviewed for links had 11,000 links just from on-domain blogging. 223 links for $2,400 is not a lot of links. When challenged by the client, the SEO firm said typically they get results in regards to links in the ninth month. My analysis of this is that I have seen it take 90 days for links to happen and start building with an article program, but my next question would be let me see some of these articles and where are they syndicated. You may get better overall performance with your on-domain blogging efforts as our own clicnts have than with poorly written articles that may actually give you a black eye with consumers if they are not up to snuff.

Services: Website work for SEO – installed Google Analytics, created sitemaps…

Review: Yes these are all good things and should be done, but as a consumer you need to know that in many cases, and certainly in this one, Google Analytics was installed via a WordPress plug-in that took less than 12 minutes to install and once installed Analytics code appeared on all pages. WordPress will build a sitemap without your involvement once you install a plug-in. Don’t let SEO firms bill you big money for these things. Yes, they are important, yes they should be done, but when the report comes to you stating that these things took hours to do and were labor intensive, know that this is simply not true in most cases and certainly not if a WordPress plug-in is used to do the work or code installed in a footer include.

Services: Add keyword dense image alt tags and link title tags to website.

Review: Yes these things may be extra ways to capitalize on SEO, but did you know that most browsers now do not show an alt tag on mouse over. The information is only shown if you use a title tag. If you are paying for these things, go to your own home page and right click “view source” do a control + F to find title or alt. Is there even anything there? In my case study situation,  the SEO firm said that this was one of the things they had done. After six month of payment, at least the home page should reflect these items, and there was not a single keyword dense alt tag or link title tag on the page. With the home page being crucial for SEO placement, one needs to wonder why this is on the supplied services list and not visible on the home page of all places!

Services: Increase website traffic

Review: The case study client thought that the Google Analytics report showed good traffic. They were pleased with 250 visitors in a 30 day period. This is about 9 visitors a day! Good grief, that is awful traffic for having spent six months of $400 a month. This money would have been better spent on Google AdWords to drive qualified immediate sale generating traffic.

Our case study client has gotten in fairly deep with an expenditure of $2,400 that really has not given them much of anything. There are surely some SEO firms who will deliver what they say they will and are, but you as an educated consumer need to be aware of what you are paying for and confirm that you are getting it. In this most recent case the client did not get value for a $2,400 of expenditures with their SEO firm. Make sure you are not being charged for things you are not receiving.

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CHMOD Server Setting For Improved Security

If you need to keep your blog secure or just want to make sure you are doing the most to keep website hackers at bay, you’ll want to review these Apache server settings to keep your content and website safe.

CHMOD Explained
“CHMOD is a UNIX term for a server operation to set or change the mode of the file access permissions. When executed, the command can change file system modes of files and directories. The modes include permissions and special modes.”

If you click into the CHMOD Server Permissions website linked above you will be able to read what permissions should be used for which cases.

As a rule of thumb typical website pages should be a CHMOD of 644. Your blog’s wp-config.php file should be 600 or 660 to keep secure. The bottom-line on CHMOD is that using your FTP agent you can right click on any file or directory and change the file or access permissions. Make sure before you start changing things that you review CHMOD Explained and keep track of what you have changed so if need be you can revert back to a prior setting if needed.

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Want to Check Your Backlinks Here is an Easy Tool

If you are concerned about organic search placement, then you need to keep an eye on your website’s backlinks or more commonly known as inbound links. I’ve found an easy to use free tool that allows you to check your link numbers quickly and even review links that are follow and nofollow. The tool is called the Open Site Explorer and can give you a snapshot picture of link on the Web being pointed back to a page or domain.

As you review your statistics and numbers you may wonder what a nofollow or follow link are. A nofollow link is one that a search engine robot will not be following to discover your site. You receive no search engine “juice” from this link. You may still get site traffic, but no organic placement benefit. On the other had follow links are goldmines. That means that the search spider will follow the link all the way to your website from the original website. You may get an authority rank benefit as well as a link number benefit that may raise your own organic search placement. Follow links are good as long as they are from legitimate non-spammy sources.

Try the tool out for yourself and see what you think. I think it is pretty cool!

I am not receiving any compensation for writing this blog post from the site owner. I just found the tool, like it, and wanted to let you know about it.