class notes

2/24/2010

Jay discussed his plans to address the topic of Community Building in a future presentation and provided a reference to a previous presentation on that topic. A link to that presentation is included here for convenience.

We also made reference to the web site of a class member who has used the information from the class to significantly improve his performance on his site. His site deals with plastic polymer sales and recycling and the story of how he improved his performance is available for your reference. Other client success stories can be seen through links from the bottom of that page.

Managing Your Blog

The blog for this site, Internet Marketing Clinic, which is now in two parts as a result of the change in how Google will be handling its blogs, was used to illustrate our solution to addressing this problem. The old blog, which was created and maintained with Google Blogger, can be reached through links from the new blog, itemized in the post about the index to the blog. The important thing to note when reviewing this material is to observe how links were created on the new blog to keep the old information readily accessible from the new blog. Also, pay attention to the links from the old blog to the new blog.

Creating this linkage is something that has to be address prior to the date that Google converts to the new system, as the old blog will not be editable through a blogger interface once that conversion takes place. It will still be possible to go directly into the content using an html editor to make changes, but that is a much more involved process, and will likely not be very attractive. This puts a premium on thinking about how you will handle your conversion in advance of the change to make sure that you have configured your old material properly to coordinate with your new material.

Let me just make clear the reason for jumping through all these hoops to take care of this rather than just following Google's suggestion for reconfiguring your blog. Our objective is to keep the blog material on your domain name so that it is part of the content of your site. Following Google's suggestion will move all that content to their server from your server. It is our judgment that this is a serious disadvantage to that approach.

We are pursuing a strategy that will keep the material as part of our site, at the cost of that material becoming essentially "static" material from the conversion point forward. What we are attempting to do is keep all that old material available from the new blog by providing an index and links to it from the new. Adding links to the new blog in different posts in the future is easily done and can also serve to keep the content contributing to the strength of your site.

2/10/2010

Part of the discussion in tonight's class covers that same library research application mentioned in the January 27 session.

Another topic discussed is finding domain names for sale. The example used GoDaddy's site name auction to illustrate how to go about researching available names. The place to begin is at the Advanced Search option. Parameters can be set for a search here that specify what characters you want to have in the domain name by choosing the "contain" from the dropdown field, then entering the characters you want in the text field. Other options allow you to specify extensions, number of characters, type of auction, and price range, just to name a few. Making use of this application requires a little trial and error to focus in on what you are interested in within the domain names that are available. Other registrars have similar search functions for finding names that might serve for your domain.

When you find a few that look promising, another good tool for your evaluation is the Wayback machine. This is an Internet Archive that will allow you to see earlier versions of sites that you might be interested in. That presumes that the site was once active, which is the preferred type of domain name to purchase for a new site, but obviously means that you want to be sure that the site does not have any problems associated with it. There are no easy answers to how one makes that determination, but some things that you might see on earlier versions of a site can be clear warnings.

How one develops a site is a question that comes up often, and there are no easy answers to. Our current thinking (specifically oriented toward the small business site owner, who wants inexpensive solutions and may do a lot of the work) is that creating a site with a content management system is the best solution. The reason for this is that it takes away a lot of the technical requirements of creating a site in a traditional tool like Dreamweaver. It doesn't take them all away, but it can put a relatively unsophisticated owner of a site in a position to learn to supplement and manage his own site without incurring the out-of-pocket cost of having a developer engaged to create the site.

Our current recommendation is that you consider using Wordpress as your platform. There are still some technical issues to address, and some limitations, inherent in any content management system solution, but this software offers a good solution for the needs of most small businesses. There is a description of the setup process available that you can review to see if you feel comfortable with the technical requirements. If this seems like more than you can handle on your own, you can hire someone to install and set up the site for you, and provide some training to get you familiar with how to manage the site.

The advantage of taking this approach is that you are not dependent on the developer to continue maintaining your site. It is a not uncommon misperception of new site owners to think that one sets up a site and then has to do very little with it after that. An important concept to take away from our Internet Marketing Clinic is that operating a web site effectively for promoting your business is a continuing commitment. You can think of your web site as almost an organic thing that needs constant nurturing and caring for to make it really productive for your business.

1/27/2010

A posting from my blog about Keeping Blogs Alive is also a reference for this session.

During the class, reference was made to a success story with one participant's website that deals with plastic polymer resins. More information is available about the details of the site through the link, and, from there, you can get to the site itself.

There was also a question raised about how to get access to the business database at the Houston Public Library that was discussed in last week's presentation.
A great catalog is available through the Houston Public Library. You must have a current library card to access it, which is available at no cost, but you must go to a library to get the card.

Once you have a valid card, go to the Library web site and log in.

Begin with the menu bar at the top of the page and follow the links as shown:

research >> Business >> Business and Company Resource Center >> Advanced Search

At the last step, there are other choices available for how you search the database, but the Advanced Search provides you with very flexible options for finding exactly what you are interested in.

The database described above is slightly different from what was demonstrated in class previously. That information can be reached through this link (you will probably have to log in after selecting this link), or by making the selections

research >> Business >> ReferenceUSA (For Remote Users) >> U.S. Businesses

There is a huge amount of useful information at your fingertips, but it may take a little practice to feel comfortable with isolating the information you need. Dive right in, and Good Hunting!

9/23/09

Reports from several different software packages were used in the clinic to illustrate information that is useful for webmasters to obtain about a web site. More information about each of the packages can be found on their websites.

Netmechanic was run interactively to illustrate how the components on a web page could effect the load time of the page.
Optispider was used to catalog the characteristics of a site.
Web Position reports showed comparative rankings of a web site on a selected list of keyword phrases.
Another package from Axandra Software was planned to be presented, but was not due to time constraints. The report is available for viewing as a download. This report shows how various sites that rank on a particular keyword phrase can be compared to learn what elements of the pages might have contributed to the ranking that the pages obtained in the search.

6/10/09

Dick mentioned several sites in his presentation:

Keyword Research sites:

Example sites:

Download Google Toolbar

Keyword Density Analyzers:

Website Statistics:

8/14/08

Brian Armstrong mentioned several sites in his presentation. In keeping with our concept of making these links easily available to our participants. I list a few of the major links here:

12/5/07

During the class discussion, the topic of drop shipping products came up. Brian Nelson suggested three sites that businesses could use to arrange shipping for their products. The sites he suggested are: www.getloaded.com, www.directfreight.com, and www.internettruckstop.com. Brian also referred to an air freight site at www.forwardair.com.

There was no extended discussion of these sites the class, but they are worth a look for anyone who has significant shipping issues for their products.

Brian also brought up the use of video clips for selling product over the web. Searching Google for the phrase "40x60 party tent" will list his web posting on YouTube. As this is written, his listing was number four in the organic listings. After clicking on that link, a video will start and clicking on the link "About This Video" will display the text that is searchable for this listing

12/13/06

A new site that can be helpful for publishing information about your web site was introduced in the class. The site is a "Wiki" about websites and makes it easy to enter information about your site to tell the world more about what you want them to know. The site has its own robots that are searching the Internet independently to gather information about web sites, but the site allows you to set up a new site by directing that robot to crawl a site that you submit to create a brand new article.

I have created an article for my site (whose subject is "small business consulting") and subsequently edited it so that it reads differently from the information gathered by the robot. This process enables you to expand on the information that your web page title and description offer about your site (this is what the robot collects to create the article about your site.)

These wiki articles are now referenced in the information provided in a domain name search through the site whois.com, another handy source of information about web sites. Try this out by searching for your own domain name and see what information it provides about your site.

Another topic we have talked about recently in the class is the idea of purchasing existing domain names rather than brand new domain names in order to gain some advantage in dealing with the Google Sandbox. One place that you can shop for such names is in this catalog of domain names. Another extensive list is available through Netsol. Note that these links are offered as a convenience to our readers, not necessarily a reference!

12/6/06

Jeff Kaiser, one of our class members, shared some of his insights and perspectives on his business and how he is beginning to prepare for his next phase, moving into an internet business. Jeff has been in the sign and graphics business for 23 years and has run a successful business with up to 26 employees. In order to reduce his time away from home devoted to his business, and to improve his ability to manage his own time, he has concluded that he will use the information he is obtaining through our clinic to start an entirely new internet business. We wish him well in his new endeavor and will be following his progress over time. Jeff has promised to come back and report to us on what his experiences are and how he has applied the lessons he learned in our classes.

On Jay's advice, Jeff has acquired an existing domain name to start his new site. It is important that this name be checked out to determine that it has been indexed on the web and that it has not been blackballed. Two sites mentioned in the class help with this investigation. Information about a domain name can be discovered by entering the name in the search at Whois.sc, and earlier versions of the domain content can be seen archived on the Wayback Machine.

Jay discussed the importance of internal link structure to ranking, and mentioned that a new page on a site may take 3-6 months before the impact of internal links strengthens it enough to achieve the ranking that a well designed and executed page should earn. Patience is still a virtue!

Keyword density should now be targeted at 1.75%. This target has been lowered since August, so keep in contact to see the changes as search engines adjust what they consider optimal for this factor!

One of the class participants asked after the class how he could conveniently track his ranking performance on his site. We have covered such questions in the past, and I referred him to Digital Point Solutions, where he can establish an account at no charge and track his site performance. This website has a number of useful tools that we have used on different occasions.

3/8/2006

Hearing about the personal experience of a business owner who has used the techniques covered in our classes is very rewarding and informative. It puts the lessons we present in the clinic in a different and more meaningful light.

I was struck by several thoughts as Narmin made her presentation. The value of trying to think from the perspective of the prospect, the person using the search engine, when creating names for your products came through very clearly in her presentation. We have always talked about using keywords in captions and titles, but she stressed naming the products in terms that prospects might use to search for the products, and that made the point very concrete!

I also found it useful to hear about her persistence in staying with the plan to improve her site incrementally. She brought out the effort that goes into identifying a keyword phrase of importance, and working that into the site content effectively. She clearly understands that creating a powerful site is not an overnight process for most of us.

It was also interesting to hear first hand experience of being in the Google sandbox, and experiencing the reward of having done your work properly when the site comes out of the sandbox. Her site jumped from a ranking in the 60's to number 7 on one of her principal phrases, very suddenly after 14 months of lingering in the "might as well not be there" range of the rankings.

8/3/2005

Yahoo is making changes to its ranking algorithm at present, and your site may not appear at the same point in search results as you expect. To check on an alternative search server, using the Yahoo search, type "-asdf" in front of the search term you are experimenting with (leave a blank space between the "f" and the first word you are searching for). There is also some speculation that the new algorithm is changing the preferred keyword density ranking, but we have no confirmation of this as yet.

On all engines, freshness of the site is one of the more important variables for high ranking. Make sure that you add new content to your site to keep it fresh and interesting to your visitors (and the search engine spiders!) At the same time, too much new content can act to your detriment. Google, in particular, is suspicious of too much added content (or links) appearing too quickly and is likely to penalize your rankings. Add content on a regular and steady pace to avoid this problem.

CSS standards have been established that make style sheets a viable and attractive option for marketing

Two books recommended to me by a class member dealing with CSS are available from Amazon. See his comments on the August 8 posting about CSS.

professionals to use on their sites. Not only is more control available over formatting, but large savings in file size can be achieved by using style sheets instead of formatting content within the HTML code. The positioning capabilities provided within CSS also allow you to structure your html so as to have the more important content read first by the search engines, without altering the appearance of the page that is presented to the site visitor.

Database driven sites have potential problems being found by search engines because the database engine frequently generates url's containing special characters. A good discussion of how to avoid this problem has been found on another web site. A question was asked about where to find a list of the "forbidden" symbols, but I have not found a good source yet. Mail me if you have one!

The search engines are beginning to crawl pages with these symbols, so the situation is not as bad as it once was. However, url's containing these symbols may get placed in a "secondary" index, meaning that the pages will not rank as well as they might otherwise. Also, the search engine is discouraged from crawling pages containing these characters, with the result that fewer of your pages might get indexed. This is not what you want!

Google Site Map feature is a good way to assist Google in indexing all the pages on your site. This requires some preparation, but is well worth the effort to increase the number of pages that can be found in a Google search. You will have to create a Google login when you reach the setup page. A supplemental tool for creating the site map file can be found at johannesmueller. (Use of this site map tool is not expected to get you out of the Google sandbox any sooner!)

A great tool for checking backward links to your site is now available from uptimebot.com. When you see the results for a site you are interested in, remember that Google does not list links from pages with a page rank below "3". This will explain the lower number of back links that normally appear in the Google column of the report.

Another handy tool that was mentioned in this class was software to assist in cleaning up "dirty" html code. For more information, review the link to the tool description.

11/10/2004

MSN is launching its new search engine tomorrow! It may be previewed at this location.

Jay's teaching schedule in 2005 is expected to change to once a month, probably on the first Wednesday of each month. Our arrangements with UH SBDC have yet to be confirmed, and the schedule will be posted to the Internet Marketing Clinic page when it is set.

Based on some keyword ranking analysis that Jay obtained, it appears that Google has made some changes to its ranking algorithm that reflects a preference for about 800 words on a page, with a density of close to 2% for the keyword focus phrase. These tables may be reviewed in the attached Excel file.

Jay recommends participating in discussion groups as a means of maintaining contact with the community you are trying to serve, and a way to add value to your site from links that you can place in your postings. His preferred software for accessing these groups is from Forte Internet Software. Features of their products may be seen on their web site.

Internet Marketing Class Notes

Managing Your Blog

Keyword Research sites:

Example sites:

Keyword Density Analyzers:

Website Statistics: