Thursday 31 July 2008

Keep your content fresh for more traffic

Search engines and visitors love fresh content. By keeping your website updated you can keep both happy and therefore bring more traffic to your website.

Why is this the case? Well very few good websites sit still. There are new findings to report, further information to add, corrections to make to the copy etc. Many top websites grow over time as further information is added to them.

Visitors are more likely to return to sites that are maintained. Think through your own list of sites that you look at often - forums, news sites etc. If shops never add new stock then where's the interest to return to browse latest ranges?

Search engines look for these updates and expect them. If they don't see them then the site is thought to be unmaintained and drops in the rankings. A well maintained site on the other hand can climb with time.

But there is a balance. Over doing changes can be as bad, if not worse, than no changes. I've seen sites putting up random blocks of text on every visit. This doesn't trick the search engines - they see through it. There needs to be a balance between stability and additions to the site.

This can be as simple as a regularly updated news feature. Have a news page and list latest headlines on the home page. This acts not only as a link in from the home page to the news items - making it easier for all concerned to find the new pages, but it also means that the fresh content is shown on the home page. The news can be a mixture of news about your business and about news that affects the area that your business works in. For example, on comparemortgagerates.co.uk I try to add relevant financial news a couple of times per month.

If you are running a shop then keep the stock updated. As new lines arrive add them to your ranges on your website. This keeps the pages displaying the stock ranges fresh and adds new pages in the form of stock descriptions.

Even if you do not carry stock and maybe your company news isn't that exciting and neither is the business news in your area of expertise, there are still ways of producing fresh content. Maybe you are holding events that could be reported on? Publishing a photo with a caption on a regular basis seems to provide fresh content for the search engines and the people attending the event can be told that the photos will be published, which might attract them onto the site. If the pictures are good they will shoe friends and colleagues - just make sure that your site name is printed onto that photograph so everyone knows where it came from!

Even just a photo gallery of visitors or a diary of what's going on can be of interest to visitors and search engines. If you can think of original material to put on the site on a regular basis then it can be of help to the site's traffic.

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Advertise your website in your shop

Here's a simple way of driving in traffic to your website for next to free - advertise it in your shop (or other outlet). But amazingly many people forget or simply choose to ignore this simple idea thinking that it is not necessary, because the people are in the shop already.

But what when you are closed, or they want to see if you carry certain products before making a trip out? Or maybe they want to print out your menu? What about publicising special offers and keeping their interest in your services? If they are more aware of your website, they are more likely to find it and show it to friends and maybe return to you.

Keeping the website name in your customers' eyes is important. Simply adding the website address to a shopfront facia can be enough for a starter. That way, people driving past when you are closed, seeing an offer in the window can look it up when they get home. They might be more likely to remember the offer if they noticed that you had a website address shown outside.

And the shop front sign is not the only place to display the website address. Buy from any of the main highstreet shops and you can almost guarantee that they will display their website address on the receipt. How much would it cost you to change your receipts to show the URL?

Maybe try adding the website URL to price labels next time you are getting them printed, or to menus, leaflets or anything else that you hand out. If you are not a shop, for example a solicitor, then there are still plenty of avenues to explore. Letterheads, compliment slips, business cards and the likes can all be printed to include your website address.

If people are visting you as customers then make sure that they go away knowing your website's address. If they don't, then it's going to be a lot more difficult for them to find your website and return as a customer through it.

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Run a mailing list

Sending a newsletter to a mailing list is an excellent, and typically free or low cost, method of promoting a website. A newsletter, or e-zine, can be used to encourage loyal and not so loyal customers to return to your website or even your outlet. You can use a newsletter to advertise new stock, clearance items, special offers and the likes.

There are considerations when sending a newsletter to ensure that you stay within acceptable guidelines and don't fall foul of anti spamming measures. A newsletter should only be sent to people who have signed up for it and they should be able to opt out easily.

This also means checking that people really have opted into the newsletter, else you can fall foul to pranksters signing up their friends. The usual method for control here is 'double opt-in'. With this technique, the person signs up on your website for the newsletter by providing their email address. You then send them an email with a link and only when they have clicked on this link are they included in the list.

Likewise, it is accepted practice that all emails should have an opt-out link so that people no longer wishing to receive offers can quickly and easily opt out.

Sending newsletters can also be a tricky subject. Many people like to blast out the email from their own PC - but there are limited options here and all can get you into trouble. The first is to email all of the recipients directly with one email. But this displays every email address to all recipients and doesn't look professional.

Hiding the email addresses by putting them all in tbe BCc field does improve the situation, but many people will not read emails where the to account is 'undisclosed recipients' and likewise, some email services and spam blockers are more likely to delete such emails. It is very rare to receive an email where the BCc field is used for its intended purpose - it is usually an indication of spam.

The next step is to individually email every recipient, but on a large list this can take a long time. Also, by sending so many identical emails, whether sent individually or using either of the two above methods, either your own ISP or the mail services receiving the emails could notice the large amount of traffic and suspect you of spam. At best your newsletter is not received, at worst your email account is closed down.

So what's the answer? Well there are plenty of mailing list providers out there offering varying services. Depending on the features that you require, you might be able to use a free service for lists with even a good number of subscribers. These services deal with sending the emails, opt-ins, opt-outs and everything else and even enable you to sned HTML based emails for extra special looks.

But what is the point behind a mailing list? Well, the people signing up have visited your site or business and are wanting to know more about you. They are showing an interest in your services. You don't need to contact them often, in fact weekly newsletters could be far too much and scare subscribers off. Just email them a newsletter every couple of months. Maybe whenever you can a large number of new ranges or want to tell people about the latest special offers. Unless you have a very large mailing list then the chances are you will be able to find and use a free mailing list provider, so all that a newsletter is costing you is your time to create the newsletter and set it up.

If sending it is free and it generates more purchases or customers, what could be a better form of advertising?

Monday 28 July 2008

20 website marketing ideas

I've been asked to put together a series of marketing ideas for my web design customers - ways in which they can drive more custom through their websites. After a quick scribble down I came up with 20 basic ideas that anyone can use to market their site, so here starts the list.

With a little further information they will be passed onto my customers - just adding details as to how we can help them implement the ideas. It's my sales guy's idea and he's hoping that some customers come back to ask us to help them run some of them.

And I'm putting these into practice myself! Not only am I publishing them here first, but after a small rework they will also be submitted to article directories - spreading my ideas whilst hoping to get links back to these pages! Why publish them here first and then rework slightly - to make sure the search engines get the content here and then don't punish me with the duplicate content filter! So that's 5, 6 and 11 (below) sorted in one sweep!

In no particular order, and certainly not the order I'll tackle them in here, here's the list of ideas I'll work through. Knowing me, by the time I've finished it will be 21, 22 or more ideas...

1. Pay Per Click

2. PopUnders

3. Expired Domain Traffic


4. Link Building

5. Fresh Content

6. Forums

7. Blogs

8. Video Clips

9. Google Maps

10. Email Signatures

11. Articles

12. Advertise name in shop / on literature

13. Run up newsletter


14. Paid Directories

15. Free Directories

16. Fliers

17. Word of Mouth

18. Give aways / promotional items

19. Affiliate Marketing

20. Magazine Adverts / Printed Adverts

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Watch what you ask!

You can easily get into tricky situations sometimes. Take, for example, when a customer has emailed a set of photographs for you to use in building their site. Most of them go into the photo gallery, but maybe one or two get dotted around every page in key positions - making sure that the site looks special to that customer.

You choose your photos carefully, try a couple of different shots in the positions you are thinking of and make your choice. You probably chose based partly on colour matching, or match the colour palette of the site to the chosen photograph.

And then you pass the completed sample over to the customer. The list of changes comes back, along with 'please change the photo on the side to the one of...'. You know instantly it's not going to work, but can you say that?

So, you cut, crop, manipulate and whatever to prepare the photo for its position. Then along with the rest of the changes the next draft goes back to the customer. And what's the response - "That photograph doesn't look as good there as the first one - what can you do to make it look better?"

What can you do? What can you say? You can't exactly say "Well, I chose better than you!", but that's the answer to their question. It might be that changing the site's colour scheme will help it match, but there's usually an amount of experience that straight away gives you that gut feeling as to which photographs will work in key positions, and which just won't. And it's unfortunate when the customer chooses a photograph not based on cold, hard, technicalities, but on their own emotions of which photograph means the most to them.

But that's the world we live in. It doesn't matter that the favoured picture won't mean anything to their visitors, it's their site and they want to see that picture for a reason. So just get on with it!

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Link exchange maintenance

What should you be doing to check you link exchanges and how often should you be doing it? If you are already running a link exchange program, my answer will probably frighten you!

Personally, based on my experience with search engines, I believe that you should be checking link exchanges every week! More often than this is probably a little bit of overkill, but less often, especially by much, and you will find that a lot of the people you thought you were exchanging links with have gone away.

On a weekly basis you should check that every site that you have agreed to link with is still linking back to you. Any sites that have removed their links need checking. Email them to ask them to replace the link and if they don't then remove the from your pages link. It's no benefit to you to be linking to them from your directory, it may even hinder your efforts. This is why weekly checks are important.

Whenever there is a Google page rank update, have a look through the page ranks of those sites linking to you and check that they all still have a page rank. Any that don't need further investigation.

It could just be that the links page is too new or too well buried to have a page rank. If it's cached in Google then it's probably OK. But if a links page has been showing your link for a couple of months and it's still not cached, then you need to check that you aren't being tricked.

First, have a look around the site and make sure that you can find your way to the links page. Then, have a nose at the robots.txt file - does that block their links directory? Lastly, take a look at the path of pages from the home page to the links directory. Does page rank suddenly vanish? If so, check that page hasn't been blocked somewhere.

It's also important when using a links directory tool to make sure that people haven't changed their links to inappropriate sites and that sites that you are linking to still exist, as sites that you are happy to link to. You don't want to be proudly linking to a family friendly site only to find that someone has bought the URL and put up an adult site!

So, on a weekly basis, be checking that your link backs still exist. Plus, every few months, see which link back pages don't have a page rank and investigate them.

Monday 21 July 2008

What to look for in a link exchange

Link exchanging can reap rewards by giving you more 'link popularity' and increasing your search engine ranking. But not all links are equal. What should you be looking out for?

Firstly, links from pages with higher page ranks are normally better. But it could just be that the page is new and soon enough it will have a high page rank. So what is important?

Well, the link must be 'visible' to search engines. There are various ways that other sites could have unintentionally, or intentionally, made your link not visible to the search engines. This is because it is believed that it is favourable to have links pointing in from sites that you do not link to. So here are some warning signs to look for.

The first, and a very simple one, is there is a command that can be inserted into a link to tell search engines to ignore the link. If you see rel="nofollow" in a link then search engines will not follow that link - so it's not worth while accepting that link exchange.

Slightly more involved is that the page could be blocked from search engines. This can be because the links to that page include rel="nofollow" or that the robots.txt file blocks the page from the search engines. How can you check for this?

Actually, it's quite simple. Just search on your favourite search engine to see if the page is there. If it is, then you know it's not being blocked. You can check by searching on a unique piece of text; by clicking on the 'cached version' button on the Google Toolbar (if you have it installed) or by searching using the 'site:' command. Unfortunately, these methods tell you that nothing is blocking the page, but failure to find the page is cached doesn't mean it is blocked. It could just be too new.

The next trick to check for is whether the version presented to search engines is the same as you are seeing. Again, look at what a search engine has cached and make sure that your link is in place.

Another important check is that the link isn't using javascripts or redirects. It should point directly to your site, not to another file or page and definitely not to a counter. A lot of sites put the link through a counter to track clicks. This is fine if you are exchanging for traffic, but not if you are exchanging for popularity.

The last check I'll mention is that 'framed' pages are frequently not properly dealt with by search engines. If your link is not on the actual page but in a frame, then it's almost certain that the link isn't visible to search engines - and won't count.

So, check that the link page is cached; that on that cached site your link is shown in basic HTML and that it is not blocked. And then the link should count for you!

Sunday 20 July 2008

Link building for popularity

Most link building these days is not to attract visitors, but to build 'link popularity' within the search engines.

With links for link popularity, it is accepted, even normal, to offer links through a dedicated links directory. The usual format is one site owner puts up a link to another and then sends a request. But what is it all about?

In short, search engines measure the 'importance' of a site and even pages within a site by the number of links pointing to that site or page. The more links there are, the more important that page is. And the more important the pages are that give those links, the more important again that page is.

So the idea is to find sites that will link to your own site in return for a link back. Then search engines will see these links and start to rate you more highly.

This requires a large number of link exchanges. You need to be requesting potentially tens per week to allow for that fact that many won't respond and to keep this up week in, week out. It's the gradual growth in inbound links that the search engines want to see.

The easiest way to manage the links of your behalf is usually through an off the shelf link exchange directory. Using one with plenty of the required tools can really help you and means that when people come to you to request an exchange the process can take place automatically.

You as the person in charge of links building then go out hunting for sites to exchange links with. You review the other person's site to find if they have requirements for how their link should appear and then add such a link to your directory. Once this is complete, you then email the other site's owner, telling them where their link can be found on your website and asking them to put a link to your website onto their website. Hopefully, they get back to you to confirm this has been done.

Give them a week and if they haven't replied then remind them. If they still haven't replied after another week, then it might be best to remove the link, possibly with a friendly reminder to them of the missed opportunity.

Link building for popularity is all about getting plenty of links in from other sites.

Saturday 19 July 2008

Link building for more traffic

Building links between websites has a few different meanings. Here I'm going to start off by looking at how it started and how the search engines would like to see all links - as 'genuine' links built for traffic, not to trick search engines.

With this method of link building, links are exchanged purely on the understanding that by having links on each others' site there's a good chance that your visitors might find the other site's link interesting and visit the site, and vice versa.

It's all about finding sites that share mutual interests, similar visitors etc and putting up small links in the hope that you add interest to each site. By adding your link to the other person's site, their visitors should see the link and think that your site could give them more of what they are interested in. Maybe the other site is a hobby site and you are offering a price comparison for related products. So their visitors might be interested in your site for that reason. Or maybe you are offering more information on certain pages of theirs.

What you need to do is to find sites that share an interest or themes and put a link from your site to their website. Then approach the other site and ask them for a link back. This type of linking can be a bit harder to plan and arrange as you really want the link to be on a proper 'content' page rather than a links directory page - it should be somewhere that visitors will see it. For this reason, you also need to be placing your link to them on a content page. Now, this can be any content page of your site or a dedicated 'you might like to visit' sort of page.

If you are really keen for links, there's always the option of paying for link placement on another site. You would need to approach the owner and ask how much for a link from a certain page would cost.

Another method of gaining links for traffic, and one I have often used successfully, is by getting your site listed on "top sites" pages. This usually entails putting a link to the top site website onto your pages and the number of clicks is counted. But, especially for hobby orientated websites, this can bring tons of traffic as lots of people are searching for more sites to read about.

In summary, in link building for traffic you really want to place a link from a content page on your site to another site whilst they place a text, or banner, link on a content page back to you.

Friday 18 July 2008

Keeping content fresh to improve your search engine position.

What steps are needed to ensure that your site betters its current search engine position and maybe even gets to the top of the search engine listings? There are plenty of tricks and tips you can try for yourself.

The first and foremost is putting in plenty of unique, fresh content. This can be done in various ways and depends on your site and its content.

If you are a shopping site, then you will no doubt have a catalogue of products to sell. By loading these products and having a page per product, you create a large site. By then continuing to update these products, your site is seen as fresh. This can be as simple as adding new products on a weekly basis, or just going into the products and updating their descriptions a little on a weekly basis.

Maybe review your product texts and make sure that each one is at least 100 words, or 200 words. More importantly, make sure that you have not copied the text from any other sites as this is a huge killer - search engines will see it's 'duplicate content' and may not even list your pages.

Another trick is to feature a product or few products on the home page - a product of the week sort of feature. Set a day and once a week change the product or products and in doing so you are keeping the home page updated.

If you don't have the luxury of a product catalogue, then there are still ways of keeping the site fresh. An on-site blog to which you post a couple of times per week allows for a growing site and new, fresh content. On a similar vein, you can have a latest news section - either a page or a set of pages. Either of these can be worked so that some of the content appears on the home page to keep it fresh.

And a further idea is a forum. If you have regular visitors to the site they might like to participate in a forum. Every time they write a post they are adding to your site's material.

So why is this important? Well, the more content you have the more pages and more possible combinations of keywords are on your site. By having lots of extra text there are more chances of someone finding your site.

Also, by keeping your content updated, search engines see that the website is being maintained and should rate your site higher. They calculate that the site is not getting stale and full of old, outdated, information. Also, with forums, blogs, offers and the likes, real visitors are more interested in coming back to the site to see what you have to offer.

So keep adding content - it creates a lot more opportunities for people to find text on your site and it keeps the search engines interested.

Thursday 17 July 2008

Don't just buy a website and expect it to work.

Many people expect that because they pay for a professional to build their website that they can pass a list of favourite keywords, or that the designer will produce a suitable list, and that the new website will automatically be top of Google and get them loads of traffic.

And this, for just a few hundred pounds. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. My sales guy thought of a "brilliant idea" (if only he'd put it to me, first). He'd happened tp be given the contact details of a local 'SEO expert'. So he thought, if I can build the sites but not get them to the top of Google then why not pass the customers to the SEO expert for the next stage. He'll do anything for a commission!

So he spoke to the guy and started telling him his story. The guy stopped him in his tracks. The budget we build a site for wouldn't even buy a couple of weeks' worth of SEO optimisation from this guy.

And that's the problem. Some customers are expecting bargain basement sites, with every bell and whistle going. You don't walk into a Mercedes showroom with the cash for a Smart car and expect to drive out in their top of the range sports car for the same price.

I told him that I'm not saying I can't do the SEO - just not for the prices he secures. If you want a site for a few hundred quid then I'll give you a good looking site, but it won't be a site that I can spend hours on every week getting it and keeping it at the top of Google. But I can give you the tools to do it yourself. So what's needed? I'll look at that over the coming days.

Tuesday 15 July 2008

If you don't market, it won't sell

It's always a shame when an existing customer closes a website because it's not working - even more so when the reason for its failure is lack of marketing. And ironic when the owner is actually working for the IT side of the marketing department for a large company!

It happens all of the time. People see the internet as some 'get rich quick' solution. Think of an idea, get a site built, cash the cheques. If only it were that simple!

I won't detail the full idea here, but it was based around affiliate selling and I've seen other (successful) sites working on the same principals. The shame is, but for a small adsense budget, building to some flyers left at relevant events and then magazine adverts when the site is really flying, the site should have worked well.

It's one of those ideas that I'd wished I'd had a couple of years back - when work was quiet and I had time to invest in building, and marketing, my own ideas. Now I'm just too busy building sites for customers!

Give it 6 months and get some of my other little personal website projects pushed on a little, and there may be time for me to tackle something similar - with a clear conscience that the customer is no longer trying to do the same and I'm not stealing her idea.

Saturday 12 July 2008

When you need a site quickly, throw some insults

I think I need a new sales guy (are you reading this P??)! Working as hard as possible to get him a rushed site live, whilst also trying to get him another site live at the same time (that I was only given a couple of days' notice from getting instructions to going live) and trying to get him other changes out, and he tries a new tactic.

Insults. After emailing me stupid unrelated questions for 90 minutes and getting me to change parts of the screen, change them again and then put them back again, he throws at me 'you computer programmers are far more slapdash'.

Nice, inspirational talk. Just because I told him (again, 2nd time in 90 minutes) that if the customer takes and loads pictures that are a mixture of landscape, square and portrait format, then they will appear different proportions on the screen.

He's making out that retailers want things doing properly, I just throw things together. Actually, when we're up against deadlines and the magazine advert started running 5 days ago, then I think that getting something live is important. Personally, I'd have waited on agreeing the magazine advert until after the site was nearly ready. I wouldn't have advetised it and then told the designer when I needed it for.

Who's the slapdash one there?

I just wish he'd get on with his job and maybe collect some cash. Another 3 emails from him - they are waiting until this afternoon. I've got plenty of work to do without answering him!

Friday 11 July 2008

Translations galore

On the same night, two customers passed me translations for their sites. The first was a Turkish translation for a site currently being built whilst the second was a French translation for a site I built about 9 months ago. This is to be an entirely stand alone site, and I've been expecting the translation for 6 months.

I did have one customer mention that he'd like to provide a Polish translation for a page or two on his rentals website. So could be more to come.

Translations do have practical problems that are different in each case. Do you run an entirely separate site, or a sub site, or just offer a page or two of alternate content in the appropriate languages?

The answer isn't a hard and fast 'this way' - it depends on the site. For the 2 that passed be translations over night, for the French site we are definitely running a separate URL. For the Turkish, it will be either a sub site or at the very least separate pages. There's too much inter linking of the pages (video clips, images uploaded) than are shared to make managing 2 sites easy.

Thursday 10 July 2008

I need the site live now, and oh...

Yes, the saga of the site that 'must be live in 7 days' gets better. Actually, they got the date of the magazine advert wrong, they needed it live that day! But we've had to continue aiming for the end of this week.

Except, the customer is now adding more complications into the project. For example - "What do we do when there aren't enough products in a sub category? Can you fill the page with something else?"

The obvious answer is not to have such 'elite' sub categories. Easy and simple answer. At this stage in the project, when they are desperate to go live (and before that they need to load products) then I really don't think it's time to start adding complications such as adding a random number of space fillers.

I blame the account manager for letting go of the reigns, yet again. Every project he does this and doesn't keep the customer focused on getting the site live for the same day that the advertising is going live. He seems to think that every question is a chance of making more cash, although the price stays fixed, so no idea what he's on.

Hopefully with time I'll teach him the right ways, but when time is not on my side and he's asking silly questions, the answers he gets are brief, to the point and probably not the sort of answers he is expecting!

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Popunders - Waste of time???

Well, I'm very disappointed in the popunders campaign I tested. Very disappointed.

I had hoped for a little success, but near enough nothing. Not even my money back, which at the cost of the traffic, is very surprising. I suppose it's my old answer - if it was that easy, these guys wouldn't be selling the traffic they would be putting up their own affiliate pages and earning the commissions themselves.

I didn't think at first that all of the adverts had been used. Looking at Google, the special page I'd created had only been shown 2,106 times (in a campaign of 5,000) popunders. And some of those were me viewing the page. So I was surprised to logon to the provider's stats and see that all 5,000 had been delived in about 2½ days.

So far, no sign of any commissions earned and hardly a click generated. 1 click through the Google adsense scheme got me back about 2% of my outlay. Not worth bothering with.

And looking at the huge variation in the number of displays of each advert, from 1962 to 2119 displays across adverts from one network, most screens are being closed before they even open.

There were around 10 clicks to the advertisers - so there's still a remote chance of commission. But I'm not keeping up any hope!

Tuesday 8 July 2008

Listed again in Google

Not sure what was going on when I noticed that my home page had vanished from Google, but the CompareMortgageRates home page is back on the 6th page of the search results. Now I've got to work at moving it up!

I was looking at the site and I noticed that all links to the home page state the website address, not index.html. This could be very useful - it should mean that changing the page to a PHP page isn't as painful. At the very least, I don't need to change every page. At best, Google will still page rank it the same...

Why do I want to change it from HTML to PHP? Quite simple - I've introduced a news feature, a bit like a blog. Ideally, I'd like to include the latest news snippets onto the site's home page, but I can't do that in HTML, without having to manually update the home pagee each time. And I'll never manage that! Unfortunately, my hosts don't allow me to change the htaccess file to treat HTML as PHP.

What I intend to do, with time, is to just display the first paragraph of each recent news item on the home page, leading to the page with the full news item on it. This not only helps to build up a large network of pages but also helps to keep the home page fresh and constantly updated. What else must I do to regain my page 1 listing of last summer!

Monday 7 July 2008

Testing Popunders

One of my customers swears by popunders. I know the site he used to buy them from - I recommended him to use them. But I know he's now using someone else. Maybe I should have asked him where he's using now before I tried a campaign!

I set up a page on my mortgages website full of car insurance banners - the company I'm buying the popunders from have a car insurance category, so I thought "great match".

I set up a campaign with my "old favourite" supplier and it's kicked off. Early days, but I've been looking at my affiliate stats....

There's been around 250 displays of some of the adverts, but some of the adverts have only shown aroun 230 displays. So these have probably suffered the recipients closing down the page before it's finished loading.

To be honest, with the cost of the popunders I only need to achieve 1 sale from the 5,000 popunders I've bought. I thought if I could get 0.1% success rate then I'd be pleased, but with 250 impressions and not even 1 click yet, that's very much in doubt! My very optimisitic 1conversion rate is very much in doubt!

I'll post back another day when the campaign is over, here's hoping I get at least my cash back!

Sunday 6 July 2008

A complete fall from grace?

Well, I noticed that the traffic on my Compare Mortgage Rates website was down so I took a look at its position on my favourite keywords - "Compare Mortgage Rates". Up until late October 2007 my site was first or second in google on this term. Sometime in mid Octover it dropped from favour and the home page has hovered between pages 5, 6 and 7 of Google for those terms since then.

But today, it's vanished! Compeltely gone. Not there. No where to be found! The page is still cached - a copy taken 7 days ago, so not sure what has happened or for how long it's been vanished.

Around page 15 of the results I did find the Mortgage Products page, so the site hasn't been dropped. And I was surprised that the page did appear in the results anyway.

WHat do I think is wrong? Well, I've negelected the site recently. Prior to its October fall I was putting news on weekly, at least. Not I've only put news on once last month and we're almost a week into this month.

I'm the first to shout that websites need plenty of content to stay up top, so why don't I listen?

Well, I'm moving my mortgage news blog to the site itself - I've written a custom blog to do this for someone else so I might as well also use it!

Here's hoping my preaching works - with my sales guy unable to collect cash (where do I get them?) I need an income from somewhere!

Saturday 5 July 2008

I don't always like my sites...

I wish I could say that 100% of the sites that I've produced I'm proud of. OK, the early sites were nothing compared to what I do now, but even if I could say that 100% of the sites in the last 12 months I'm proud of would be a good thing.

Problem is, I'm not. There are 2 or 3 that I'd rather hide and not have my name against than put on my portfolio. There's probably a handful more also from the last 12 months that aren't what I would consider my best work.

Why do I do that? Why give customers what I'm not proud of - in fact sites that embarass me?

Quite simply - they have been so involved in the design process that I've not been able to steer them around to what I think looks good. They have passed me sample sites that look cheap and colour schemes that just don't work together. Take the site that has a different colour scheme on every page - it's disgusting. But the customer insisted on it - in fact she has a CMS to enable her to change the individual page colours and that's what she has set them to. The present colours are nothing to do with me.

Why's this on my mind? Well 2 new pieces of work this week have both brought this home. The first provided links to two websites they really love. One of these, their favourite, looks like a child has produced it! Over use of mis-matching colours. Too many fancy tricks here and there and the rating of the site shows it.

For the second the customer has approved the sample, saying that he "loves it". My comments, after passing the sample to his account manager, was that it was produced to spec but I didn't think the colours were quite there. It's almost good, just not enough colours and the wrong shades where they are there - there's a lot of pale blue everywhere and little contrast.

But, in all my work the customer is always right. Just so long as 3 months down the line they don't return asking why they have a horrible looking site!

Friday 4 July 2008

I need the site live - in 7 days

Now a request such as "I need the site live in 7 days - I've paid for the advertising in a national magazine" isn't necessarily a problem. Work with your web designer; answer emails and phone calls; tell him (or her) what you want and generally get on with the project and as long as there aren't huge complications then it shouldn't be a problem.

But when the project has stumbled along for 3 months already and the customer has changed their mind several times not only about the look and colour scheme but also the content, then the task starts to get more difficult.

Then when I hand over draft versions of the page and I hear nothing back for 2 working days (and still waiting) then the task is becoming more complicated - we have to be live this time next week and I have to build the database still and the customer has to load the products...

Also, ask for "That thing that Amazon does with other products". Erm, what? 2 days later the answer comes back "You know, show products people also bought". Not a problem, usually, but the clock is ticking and we still haven't had an agreement on what the pages will look like. 3 months in and I'm still producing new versions. At least there haven't been any major re-writes for a week.

Hopefully, one of the variations of buttons on show will be satisfactory, else it's back to the drawing board for them. To be honest, I don't like any of the buttons I've been given to work with - but if the customer loves them then so be it.

Thursday 3 July 2008

June Benchmark

Should be starting to see some results soon, if I'm going to see any! So comparing against the May benchmark.

First, the bookings. Up this month to 6 bookings, with 4 confirmed, bringing in £65.28. This compares well to the 1 of 4 worth £26 in May, but not as good as April, which had 5 of 7, worth £90.48.

How are the traffic levels? Well, they were up on both sites - 5,146 and 1,927 on the changed site. That's about 90% more traffic on the changed site against not quite 5% on the unchanged site.

The earnings - $181.74 and $24.46 - just over 7.5% up on the unchanged site - good - but down by 30% on the changed site - very disappointing with the traffic levels up so much.

My only consolation is the hope that a lot of the extra traffic is because the site has generated more interest in its link exchange - so hopefully there will be lot's more inbound links and the site will become more popular.

Because, between the 2 sites, an income of under £170 isn't that great!

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Trademark Infringement Investigation

I received an email with the subject "Trademark Infringement Investigation" last night. At first I was just about to bin it - I don't ever remember receiving a digitally signed email before and thought it was spam!

I eventually clicked on the 'continue' button and read the email. One part states 'This notice is being sent to you as a courtesy to inform you that a fraudulent business impersonator may have involved you in the unlawful act of Trademark infringement, as we feel you may be unaware that the use of our Trademark and Trade-names was not authorized.'

Erm, what? It continues: 'Please, remove any and all of our Trademarks and/or Trade-names, which are the exclusive property of Emerald Passport, Inc., from every web property (e.g. websites, PPC ads, link exchange, etc.) that you own and/or operate and kindly provide us with information as to how you came to use our Trademark as a link advertisement on your website (e.g. copy of a request to partner with you using our Trademark/Trade-names, name of link exchange provider, method by which you were contacted: email, telephone call, etc.)'. So what dreadful act had I taken part in to infringe the trademark of this company (if, indeed, it is infringement - I'm no legal expert)?

I'd accepted a link exchange! The link was probably accepted when I first set up the site - in early 2006. Maybe even before that. And they are demanding that I tell them where I got the link exchange from. I think that would be fairly obvious - the affiliate or reseller that I was linking to.

My question quite simply is - is sending threatening legal demands via email the most efficient way of dealing with this problem? Surely it would be more efficient to tell their affiliates / resellers to sort their act in the first place. I suppose that if some have arranged hundreds, or thousands, of link exchanges, some might not have the documentation to follow up and request the changes. But why ask me to potentially break the Data Protection Act and pass my exchange's contact details? If it's a link to their affiliate's site - do they not know who the affiliate was?

I looked on the link exchange directory and there were at least another 3 or 4 sites using similar anchor text, so they must have quite a task on their hands. I was just amazed they found the page - what search engine actually has that ancient page cached?

Tuesday 1 July 2008

A Turkish Translation

Quite an interesting twist on a new site that I'm building - it's going to be my first site that has a foreign version. I've built the English version of the site and now I've got to pull together all of the phrases used and get the customer to provide the translations for me.

How will I do the other language? I've not decided yet how I will handle the dual languages. On the surface, a copy of the site with everything translated seems easiest, but that means duplicate pages. The alternative is to set a cookie that swaps the text to Turkish if set.

Either way is simple, but I'm coming around to the first way as being easier to run - the button with the Turkish flag will just link to the home page of the Turkish version and vice versa. Now, is that done as a subdomain or a sub directory???

Another customer mentioned months ago about having a Polish translation for his potential rentors, but that would just be a page. And another has talked about French and Spanish translations of her website - but that was months back that she was talking about getting a friend to write the translations and I've not heard back. Maybe I should ask her about the progress.

Anyway, multi-lingual websites seems to be a popular feature at the moment.