Archive for May, 2007

Another custom website designed in XHTML with CSS has launched for Sunstate Patios in Davenport, FL. An integrated matching blog was included in the design for a familiar look throughout the website. View their patio furniture blog here.

Sunstate Patios manufactures and distributes custom pvc outdoor patio furniture in their Central Florida factory and showroom with direct sale to customers including wholesale and retail dealers.

Products include patio sets in pvc, aluminum, and wicker as well as accessory furniture with stands, chaises, chairs, lounge chairs, umbrellas, and a very wide selection of fabrics for patio furniture cushions.

After investing 100 plus hours creating and tweaking a new blogger template for my commercial site, custom blogger template design services are now available. The goal was matching the graphics and color scheme so visitors moving from my blog to the main site and back would see very little difference in the overall look. Here’s another good example with the Mannion Custom Painting blog.

Small business customers who have read the first two free PDFs in my series of search engine optimization reports pressured me to get blog information documented sooner than “later this year”. I selectively chose a few clients to create custom new blogger templates with matching graphics before this announcement making the service available for all.

Here’s some of what you get:

1. a custom new blogger template with matching graphics
2. a 15 page personalized blogger tutorial in PDF format
3. registration, installation and testing of your blog
4. registration and account setup with promotional services
5. promotional tools and advice for blog and ping
6. social bookmarking code, registration, and graphics
7. preprogrammed labels to sort posts by categories
8. a list of copy and paste tags for creating new posts

Please note that my free SEO report series including Google Page One in Just 9 Months are based on my experience from May 2006 to February 2007. The custom blogger templates are only available for the new Blogger or old because those are the only ones I’ve used. Other brands such as WordPress or TypePad may be considered for custom matching graphics. Just ask.

Join the fight against Spam. Here’s how small business owners can help, and it only takes 1 minute. I was getting fed up after I received identical email multiple times in one day from different Gmail addresses, and each was UCE or Unsolicited Commercial Email, asking for reciprocal links. Following my first impulse to report this to Google, who owns and provides the Gmail service, I learned that both Gmail addresses were fake, or spoofed. Here’s my advice on how to report UCE Spam.

If you own a small business in the USA, the Federal Trade Commission will investigate complaints of UCE. To report, all you must do is open the suspicious email and click “forward” and enter spam@uce.gov as the forwarding address, and then click “send” to submit your email to the FTC. You may want to read the FTC’s Privacy Policy for assurance your identity will remain anonymous. If you are uncomfortable sending by email, you may complete the FTC complaint form online through their secure and encrypted site.

In the example above, Google was innocent. The spammers used a technique called “spoofing” in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, and masked their real identity using special coding to avoid tracing. Commercial email solicitations to unknown parties where no existing business relationship exists, must include an unsubscribe option to opt-out of receiving future mailings, also. The identical messages I received from different addresses did not.

Is someone sending junk mail to your small business? Use the FTC forwarding email to report violations. Note: If you have an existing business relationship with a company the rules are different. While it is legal to send email to known business contacts, your email message may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Read this related article that I wrote in August 2006 entitled Don’t Ignore Legal Obligations of The CAN-SPAM Act to learn the provisions of commercial email you receive, or send.

A custom blogger template was created for Commercial Door and Access, Inc. of Palm Bay Florida, and this addition to their main website was launched earlier today. The advantage of custom matching graphics for the header and footer, plus similar navigation, is integration of the blog with the main site for a familiar look.

The above snapshot is smaller than actual size and shows the first post at Commercial Door and Access who provide sales and installation of commercial doors and hardware, plus handicap and automatic doors and gates.