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Can you believe this!
Last week I was delivered one of several Yellow Books I get each year. I was somewhat amazed at what was delivered. The Yellow Book has always been one of the largest books delivered in the area — and to my amazement it was almost half the size of 
last year’s.
last year’s.
What’s going on with the Yellow Book? Do you recall, back in November of last year, I talked about promoting your business yesterday and today? (If not, click the link and read it) I wrote back in November that the yellow book used to be one of the best places to market your business and that in the future things would change. WOW! I was right. The evidence of this year’s Yellow Book shows us that marketing your business is changing – and fast!
Internet Marketing is the way of the future. Google, Bing and Yahoo are evolving into a living and breathing directory where information changes in a blink of your eye. They allow people to find information anywhere in the world; but primarily focusing on local business, along with offering so much to business with websites. Now even the yellow books have to rely on Google, Bing and Yahoo to survive; offering the same tools that are available to every business owner.
Have You Been I-Framed?
When we started our website development business back in 1999 there were only a handful of web developers in the area. By mid 2008, the growth of website developers increased tremendously. The prices for designing and developing a website ranged anywhere from $99.00 to over $10,000.00.
Competition was at its highest. It also brought in some very questionable practices by some of the website designers and developers. Ever since the vast growth we have had numerous businesses come to us and ask us “what is wrong with our website?” or “my webmaster will not return my calls”. The next most common statement we hear over and over again… “We paid them so much money to build our website and now we don’t have the monies to fix it — can you help us?”
The majority of business owners don’t know where to start or what is involved in having a website. This lack of knowledge opens the door for unscrupulous practices which usually leads to unpleasant results. It is VITAL that every business owner knows what is involved in building any type of website whether it’s a small 1 page calling card website to large websites with several hundred pages.
I have a business friend that just launched a beautiful new website. She used the company that developed her original site… this company literally framed her website. They built the website on a different hosting company then where the website was being hosted, then used i-frames (inline frame – an HTML document being inserted into another HTML page) to publish the website with their hosting company. The problem with this technique is, search engines will not be able to see the content of the website. The result of this practice is the website will not place very high within the search engines.
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It’s a Tragedy…
After doing some research we have found that about 40% of businesses in the US don’t have a website. Further research revealed that 50% of those 40% didn’t have the money in their budget to have a professional website developed… Continue reading
To Splash…or Not to Splash
I’m sure you have seen a splash page. It’s the home page of a website that has no words – just graphics. Most of the times splash pages are laid out to grab the eye, with the link “Enter the Site”. I have to give kudos to some of the graphic artists that design some of the splash pages I’ve seen. Their talent shines as they are able to bring out the branding of the company they did the work for. Continue reading
Are You a CopyCat?
We frequently get asked the question “Is the content on my website copyrighted”. The answer: There are things in your website that falls under the copyright protection laws. However, before you go and accuse someone of copyright violations – consult an attorney.
Yes, your content can fall under Copyright Laws.You spent a lot of time writing content for your website for the purpose of promoting your products and/or services – you may have even hired a copywriter to help you develop your content…only to find that someone just copied your content and placed it on their website as theirs. The natural progression of feelings is you first become very angry that someone stole your hard work and tried to pass it off as their own…then as time passes you say to yourself, “Man, I must have really done a great job, that someone else copied what I did”. The 2nd feeling doesn’t lessen the fact of what the copycat did.
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Artificial Intelligence! Google?
What is artificial intelligence?
It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable. ~ John McCarthy
Is Google developing their search engine to be some type of artificial intelligence that can predict what you are searching for? What’s next – talking to your computer and telling it what you are looking for? If you were a “Trekkie” (Star Trek fan), that’s what they did all the time! Some of the things that they did on that show are things we are using today, in some form or another. Was Gene Rodenberry ahead of his time?
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Do Know How Your Website is Performing?
Not knowing if your website is working for you is like not knowing how much money you have in the bank.
A Website Analytics program collects data and reports a multitude of things which are important in making your website work for you.
Here is a list of a few things that website analytics will tell you:
Are you above the fold?
Google, Bing, and Yahoo are continuing to make changes in the way a search is interpreted to bring back their result. There are more companies’ website not showing up in the SERPs due to these changes that are being made. Continue reading
Website Hits vs Page Views
This is NOT a true picture of the traffic pattern to your website.
There are some web designers and SEO companies that will show you only the hits on your website. They use this tactic to make sure that what they did for you looks GREAT. They fail to show you the true picture of what your website is doing, by showing you the page views and the return and new visitors.
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White Hat vs Black Hat SEO
When it comes to setting up SEO for your website there are several techniques, some are good and some are not so good. Google, Bing and Yahoo have all laid out guidelines for the SEO companies to follow. The companies that adhere to the search engine guidelines are called White Hats, where as the companies that try to manipulate the guidelines and apply questionable techniques are called Black Hats Continue reading
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