Archive for July, 2007

You launch a new small business website, and a year later you’re scratching your head wondering why the Brinks truck doesn’t show up each day with a delivery. Overall you are competing with billions of web pages for attention, and if you search Google for a generic phrase that describes what you do, you may be hard pressed to find your website listed anywhere in the top 50 pages. Anything less than pages 1 to 5 could mean you will never be found by new prospects.

Consider for a moment that Google is the dominant search engine and offers significant potential for driving traffic to your small business website. In addition, they offer free tools for small business website owners that deserve your attention. Visit the About Google Directory of Services to see the range of free promotional tools for consideration.

Will using these tools make you a Google insider and part of the Google family? No. A paid service like advertising with Google does not mean your website will be favored in search results. Favoritism would violate Google ethics and neutrality. However, these tools do provide valuable means of promoting your website if you take proactive steps to increase the importance of your website with topical fresh content added often.

In particular, review the section “For Website Owners” and check the links for Advertising, Business Solutions, Webmaster Central, and Submit your content to Google.

As just one example, some of my blog posts get traffic within hours of posting instead of days or weeks. You cannot launch your small business website and wait for the Brinks truck. A static site with stale content that does not change is like a dusty attic for a brick and mortar store. Attracting visitors including search engines requires new content added on a regular basis.

The Google tools can help. For advice on fresh content, you may want to download my free seo reports in pdf here to learn about free do-it-yourself methods to promote your small business website. There is no requirement for registration or revealing an email address. SEO, or search engine optimization, and keeping your site updated can make a significant difference in your online success.

When typing text content in HTML for your small business website, or any site, my advice is using the word “and” instead of the symbol “&” unless that is specifically part of the official name for your company. Certainly many attorney and other partner type company names will use ampersand.

The ampersand is a special reserved code character in HTML and must be coded as “&” to properly display on a page, and to avoid confusion. Otherwise, if you simply use the character “&” it will display on the page, however each occurence is an HTML code error.

The goal in any site should be zero, or near zero code errors. If you hand code your HTML you can eliminate each “&” error by following this advice. Using “and” instead of “&” will make your content more literal for readers and search engines, as well.

Soon after the launch of their new custom website, customer Adams Florida Services chose to have an optional custom integrated blog added to their online home. The custom blog matches the main site color scheme, and will provide advice for Orlando area lawn care, landscaping, and pressure washing services and tips for their visitors and clients throughout Central Florida.

Their first post promises future advice including before and after photographs to demonstrate the difference that professional lawn service and landscape design can do to enhance the look and value of residential and commercial property.

The new blogger custom template design features matching graphics to the main site, 12 major social bookmark service chicklets, and preloaded labels. Blog designs from the Small Business Resource Center include a 15 page tutorial with illustrated step by step instructions for creating posts and publishing.

Readers may be interested in learning about the search engine optimization value of blogging for small business website promotion and download the series of free pdf seo reports here.

Every small business owner wants page one results in the search engines. Beware who you trust selling maps to this pot of gold. Search engine optimization and page one results can be costly, and some consultants will take your money even when it’s impossible. Here’s another recent scenario from my email inbox with a lesson for small business owners.

After the launch of a vacation rental site and blog earlier this week, a new prospect in the same business with a villa to rent inquired about having me create a custom website. The main concern was making search engine page one results with a brand new site. Page one in search engines doesn’t happen overnight, so here is an excerpt from my emailed reply.

Your main concern, or expectation for page one results, cannot be promised based on just the website design. Here is an explanation:

There are designers who will take your money promising page one search results. Most are either liars or very expensive. Some are both. A search in Google for “Orlando vacation rental” returns 22 million results, so with 10 per page, there are 2.2 million pages in Google with that search phrase. Add “villas” to the end and it’s still 2 million pages of competition that you need to defeat in the battle of results. Perhaps, and just maybe, it can be done for yours. The investment is significant, so I urge caution dealing with any designer who makes a promise of page one, especially if they guarantee immediate results.

How sites are indexed by the search engines depends on confidential search algorithms that are tweaked and changed often. Algorithm changes can always be used to explain why efforts failed getting your website to page one. The lie ends when they explain why you are not entitled to a refund because the effort was made yet results were out of their control. I can cite clients who came to me after spending $1000′s for promises without being told how it would be done, and then they were left without recourse when seo and page one efforts failed.

Top results in any of the 3 major search engines are given to sites that are 1) online longer, 2) trusted sites, 3) authority sites, 4) larger sites, and 5) sites that add fresh content often. Anyone willing to take your money for a page one guarantee needs to explain how they will meet those 5 requirements. The age of your site cannot be accelerated, so immediate results are impossible because the first requirement of being “online longer” simply takes time.

Consider expectations when launching your first website. My designs are optimized for visitors and search engines, yet I never promise results beyond a favorable design. Too many other factors including items 1-5 above will affect how well and how soon your new website shines.

Page one in Google, Yahoo, and MSN can be done. It takes time and depends on more than the code in your new small business website. I have 100 screen shots of my site performance as evidence with Google page one for very generic phrases. You may want to download my series of free pdf reports for search engine optimization here to learn about the value of adding fresh content often to your small business website.

Finally, study the 5 points in the list above and consider how you will continue to promote your website after it’s online. Page one results are not dependent on just the code. If that’s your goal, be prepared to invest time and effort with do-it-yourself website promotion.

The truth about the secret of small business success online is there is no secret, and it is not really elusive. After receiving an inquiry for my opinion about an internet marketing opportunity for informational products, excerpts of the reply seemed appropriate for my small business readers. In effect my reply stated the “secret” should not be characterized as elusive because the key to success online is hard work, commit your life to what you offer, invest a lot of sweat equity including writing to promote, and perseverance.

If you are looking to expand into new income streams with an online business, especially handling informational products like ebooks, consider my reply to the question about the internet marketing opportunity. You may want to add planning to your overall strategy.

Tactical activity (day to day) in any business brings in revenue. The strategic activities (long term goals) are often the most painful because there’s no immediate return on investment, or ROI. Too many online entrepreneurs are looking for instant gratification with get rich quick schemes. These opportunities are rare and therefore elusive.

The investment in strategic time must be analyzed and perhaps adjusted constantly because if results appear minimal, most people give up and refocus on the tactical revenue generating tasks. They don’t realize the truth pointed out earlier “The secret is hard work, commit your life to what you offer, invest a lot of sweat equity including writing to promote, and perseverance.”

When planning your small business website and online business, you cannot be good at just one of these 4, or just 2-3. The elusive secret to success online is hard work, commitment, promotional effort, and perseverance. Don’t overlook planning.

The next free pdf download in my series of search engine optimization reports is available. Unlike some free reports, you do not have to register or provide an email address to download any of these free SEO advice reports.

Enjoy the “Article Writing Top Resources” PDF report and learn the process for submitting articles to article directories to gain backlinks to your website. This is #3 in the series of 6 Do-It-Yourself Website Promotion reports for small business owners.

Content includes bonus information with an overview of the SEO value of writing articles, a tutorial for overcoming writer’s block, plus a list of my Top 50 Article Directories.

Another custom website in xhtml with css launched this week for a holiday and vacation rental property management company, and their specialty is luxury private homes for short term rental near Orlando and the surrounding area. The website is interactive to allow convenient online reservations and secure payment options once guest requests are confirmed.

All of the rental villas are within minutes of Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and other major Central Florida tourist attractions. A photo gallery of each property displays key amenities with links to custom maps. The maps are specific to that villa with detailed turn-by-turn directions to Disney, Universal Studios, SeaWorld, and Kennedy Space Center.

Finally, the site includes an integrated blog with a custom blogger template and offers travel advice for Central Florida tourists. The owner is British born, and although many of the customers are from the United Kingdom, guests include USA and other international tourists, also.

I’ve written another published article with advice for small business owners and it contains pointers for ensuring control of your www domain name. View the full article entitled Out of Control WWW Domains to learn how two unwary website owners incorrectly thought they owned their domains.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

In both cases the client paid for their domain. In the first instance the registrar simply registered the new domain in their company name, not the client’s. In the more recent situation, my client bought a business and the previous owner did not take action to transfer the registrant information. Each relationship deteriorated to the point where the clients felt compelled to register another domain, and fortunately the productivity of each business site was insignificant, so the downside of letting it go was minimal.

Unhappier endings to hostile relationships have occurred. The article includes comments on a case that was out of control resulting in the website going offline, and the true owner could not regain control for more than a year. If you have any doubts about who controls your domain, you may want to read my article about WhoIs here.

Another custom designed website in xhtml with css was launched over the weekend for Adams Lawn Service of Davenport Florida. Adams provides lawn care, landscaping, and pressure washing services for your home or business in the Orlando Florida and surrounding communities including Kissimmee, St Cloud, Davenport, Lake Nona, Narcoossee, Orange County, Osceola County, and Polk County.

The site features an example of their lawn service fleet with a new truck and trailer on the home page. The positive first impression should help their credibility as a top service provider of residential and commercial services for your lawn care, landscape needs, and pressure washing. Unlike some companies, when you become an Adams customer no contract is required. You may view the Adams home service website here.

This latest custom website design complies with code standards per W3C for valid xhtml and css. In addition, the design meets accessiblity tests per WAI and Section 508 which means it provides easy access for persons with disabilities. Visitors may notice that some graphics on their website were featured earlier in design tutorials on this blog.

Do-it-yourself small business website designers are sometimes graphically challenged, and the pixel trash around logos or text in their GIF website graphics is not uncommon. This short tutorial for website design and online graphics is a lesson in overcoming that problem. There is an easy solution once you understand a technique called “error diffusion” for creating transparent graphics that blend into the background.

We’ve all seen examples of tiny jagged off color squares around the edge of logos or clipped photographs used for websites. First impressions are critical to keeping visitors interested in staying on your website. Taking care to create professional graphics without the pixelated trash may be the only difference between you and a competitor, and fixing the problem is not really difficult.

Here’s a portion of a customer’s logo done with and without error diffusion. Both graphics were created in Xara Xtreme which allows selecting error diffusion during the export to GIF process. The difference in quality is subtle yet obvious.

You will need a vector graphics software program. Some are expensive. Xara Xtreme is my choice for professional designs for print or online, and their program is perfect for novice designers or full time pros. The price starts at less than $100 and you may download a free 30 day trial of Xara Xtreme here. As your skills advance, you can use Xara to create animations and smooth flash graphics, also.

Error diffusion is an option for exporting graphics to GIF format that intentionally picks up a small amount of the background color so that the finished display is crisp and clear. The secret is placing the graphic over a block of color that will not be exported yet it is the same color as the background. This explains why the same logo shown above looks so much crisper when error diffusion is applied.

I recommend investing in a vector graphics program so you can create cleaner graphics to display online. The improved look in your website design could repay the modest software investment with just one decent sale of your products or service.