Archive for the ‘Action List for the Netpreneur’ Category

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Action List: Get fast, quality hosting

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

web-server

Popular web sites often have faster server response times compared to smaller unimportant sites.  Search engines often index more pages from these quicker sites and give them prominence over slow sites.

Do you think that Google will allow a ’slug’ website to occupy a top ranking in its search engine results?  Not likely.  That’s why it’s important to host your website on a fast server – not to mention the fact that most ‘real’ visitors will be turned off by your website if it is too slow.

The best bet is to go for a dedicated server hosting plan – but they’re quite expensive if you have been used to paying for shared hosting.  Most dedicated servers cost $400+ per month.

If that’s too expensive for you, there are plenty of shared hosting providers out there and most of them are very inexpensive – the trick is to find one with good, local customer support (in my experience most data centres are offshore, but some have local call centres).  Look for a service that has phone support as well as email support, because it’s important that you are able to talk to a human when an emergency occurs (ie. your site goes down).

Another consideration is that websites hosted offshore will use IP addresses of the home country and this may impact on search engine rankings.  There is evidence to suggest that websites hosted overseas will not be given as much credence in the target country as those websites hosted locally.  For example, if my website was targeted at the Australian market, but it was hosted in the United States (regardless of whether I use a .com.au domain or not), then Google may not give me the level of importance (and hence the high rankings) that my website deserves in local search results on Google.com.au. 

A further reason for caution when using shared hosting providers is that they use shared IP addresses, lumping your website in with a bunch of other sites hosted on the same server – over which you have no control.  Again, there is evidence to suggest that shared IPs may impact on search engine rankings.  If your website shares an IP with a blacklisted website in Google, then your credibility may be reduced in the eyes of Google.

I use Canberra-based company AussieHQ for my hosting and I have found their products and service to be impeccable.  Their help desk response times are lightning fast.  I felt compelled to move all of my hosting to a dedicated server with AussieHQ after a website mishap in a PlanetDomain data centre in the US  (a number of servers caught fire).  Until that time, I was relatively happy with PlanetDomain because they offer local telephone support and their shared hosting plans represent good value.

Ultimately, you choice of host will impact upon your search engine penetration, so choose wisely.

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Action List: Secure your name on social networking sites

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

It’s a good practice to secure your ‘name’ on the plethora of social networking sites on the web, if only to deny others from securing the name first.

The other day I tried to secure the username ‘boomerangbooks’ on MySpace, only to find that it has been taken already by a small bricks and mortar bookstore by the same name in Texas, USA.  Doh!  Not that I was intending to use the MySpace account anyway….but it did teach me a lesson and gave me an idea for a post!

At the very least, I recommend that you get out there and secure your name on the most popular services quicksmart - namely Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  If you have the time, then you might consider doing same for those listed on the Wikipedia list of social networking sites.   And here’s another list of niche social networking sites for you to sign up to as well.

Ultimately, it may be worthwhile signing up to these sites for the SEO value alone: because many of them allow you to specify your website or blog URL on a profile page, which in turn is indexed by the search engines.

It won’t be physically possible to maintain an updated profile on every site, but Ping.fm is a good tool for ’syndicating’ your updates and blog posts to all of your social networking accounts at once.

A prediction: the growing popularity of Twitter and the ability to register multiple names/any name that you wish on that site will result in major stinks in the coming months….in the meantime, make sure you snap up the account names that will be useful for your business.

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Action List: Speed up page loading

Friday, February 13th, 2009

speed

The speed at which your web pages load should be one of your top priorities as a netpreneur.  We live in the world of pressing time constraints, infinite choice and instant gratification – if your website is slow, then people will leave in droves.  And it’s also likely that your website will be penalised by the search engines.

Whilst technology is advancing rapidly and our broadband connections are getting faster and faster (unless of course you live in Australia!), people’s expectations, too, are increasing.  Most people expect instantaneous connection times and lightning-fast page loads.  Any lag in time will almost certainly result in the visitor cancelling their session with you and heading off to another website on the internet – most likely a competitor.

How do I know if my site is fast or not?  You can use Firebug http://getfirebug.com/ to identify and monitor speed issues with your site.  SEO software iBusinessPromoter also provides information about your page loading speed.

So how can you speed up your website:

- Use the right image format.  Make sure that photo images use the JPG format, whilst GIF is used for images with solid colours, like graphs and charts.

- Resize your images.  Make sure that your images are correctly scaled to the size that they appear, rather than have a large image render within smaller dimensions.  This will reduce the size of the image considerably and result in a faster download time.

- Lose the Flash.  See my earlier post about Flash animations.  They look nice, but they will slow down your site (and impact upon your search engine optimisation too)

- Keep other multimedia and dynamic elements to a minimum.  Go easy on the animations and sound, and reduce the widgets that draw content from off-site sources.

- Use optimised CSS.  Cascading Style Sheets allow you to control all page styles from a separate text file.  The use of CSS removes the need for duplicate styling tags throughout your HTML and thus reduces the size of your files.  CSS has the added advantage of permitting universal changes without having to edit multiple style tags – change the one style in your CSS stylesheet and it is reflected throughout your site. 

- Move Javascript and other inline code to separate files.  If your website uses lots of javascript or embedded code, it might be possible to move this code to a separate file and call on it from the parent HTML page.  This can help greatly with search engine optimsation because it removes extraneous, unindexable content from your HTML files.

- Use AJAX.  A new technology, AJAX stands for ‘asynchronous javascript and XML’ – it enables a website to display dynamic content without refreshing the entire page.

- Use ‘Loading’ prompts where speed cannot be improved.  Sometimes it is necessary for your website to ‘think’ – ie. when it is drawing information from a database or via an XML link.  In this situation, it’s a good idea to tell the user that the page is loading via a pop-up box or similar.

- Use cached pages for dynamic websites.  You might consider ‘caching’ regularly accessed pages, rather than have them reconstitute from your database each time they are called.

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Action List: Just do it

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

nike-swoosh

Just do it.  That famous tagline from Nike.  It will go down in history as one of the most recognised and oft-quoted taglines of all.  And it is a mantra that I am trying to adopt in my business. 

Netpreneurs should sticky tape this little mantra across the top of their computer monitors and gaze at it every time they feel compelled to check their statistics for the twelfth time that day or get sidetracked from their ‘core’ activities.

Procrastination, distraction, non-core activities and a lack of focus truly are the enemy of the netpreneur.

I have written elsewhere in this blog that it is sometimes good to get sidetracked, to go off on tangents and to explore – but only SOMETIMES.  Not all the time.

It is necessary to be disciplined – give yourself 30 minutes for this sort of dreamy stuff and then focus back on the activities that will build and improve your business. 

The best business people are those who use are able to isolate the things that are ‘core’ and who concentrate on this things at the expense of routine and peripheral activities.  Whilst some of us are prone to procrastination and delay, the successful netpreneurs live by the mantra ‘just do it’.

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Action List: Avoid duplicate content

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Search engines exist to provide users with the most relevant information quickly. That’s why it’s in the interests of Google and co. to filter out content which is duplicated elsewhere on the internet. The search engines will only display one instance of each piece of content, and will ignore other instances of that same content.

It’s important then that you a) only display original content that is not replicated elsewhere on the internet, or b) optimise your site so that it is chosen as the most authoritative source (if you do happen to publish content that is replicated elsewhere).

A point to note – the content doesn’t need to be identical for it to be excluded from Google. The search engines know when content has been altered slightly in an attempt to dupe them!

Also, if you publish various versions of the same content on your site (eg regular view, mobile view, text format, print version), then the search engines might penalise you – use the NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX metatag to ‘hide’ certain versions of content from the search engines, because this duplicate content could be seen as an attempt to manipulate the search engines.

If you do use syndicated content, then you need to be optimised for the search engines to make sure that you are ‘the one’ that appears in search results – most importantly, you need to have quality back links from other authoritative and thematically-similar websites.

The best bet is to create your own quality, unique content – but be aware that your content may be republished without your permission elsewhere on the web in an attempt to improve search engine results…this eventuality will be the subject of another post at a later time.

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Action List: Give them something for free

Monday, February 9th, 2009

free-stuff

One thing that will attract customers to your website is free stuff.  Everybody likes to get something for nix. 

You should consider offering something on your site for free – for example, a white paper, an electronic book, free reports, forms or templates.  This will help to attract prospective customers to your website and to help build your mailing list.

Here’s some free stuff that I provide on my company website: http://www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au/goodies-useful-docs-templates.html.  I am getting some good traffic to this page, as people go in search of CV templates, interview proformas and small business templates.

Here are some tips for providing free content:

- Make sure that the free stuff is good stuff – there’s no point providing something that is not good quality.  The free stuff needs to be representative of the quality of your business and help build your credibility in the eyes of  prospective customers.

- It is important that the free stuff is good, but you shouldn’t give away your entire suite of intellectual property for free!  Your free stuff should be a taster, prompting the recipient to engage in further business with your organisation.  For example, you might offer a free PDF containing a single chapter of a book you have written - if the recipient enjoys reading the free chapter, then it is likely that they will want to purchase the entire book.

- Ensure that your free stuff contains appropriate copyright notices and links back to your business, so that readers who have been forwarded your document know where it emanates from and can get in contact with you.  It should also be in an uneditable format – ie. PDF instead of MS Word – so that the content is not easily stolen and rebranded (this is a real problem on the web today).

- You should try and capture the prospect’s contact details prior to giving them access to the free stuff – for example, you might only give a person access to a free report once they have filled out an online form that provides you with their email address details.  This interaction enables you to market to the prospect at a later time via an email newsletter or a follow up phone call  (it’s a good idea to expressly state what you intend to do with the contact details on the subscription page, in accordance with privacy guidelines)

- Do a follow up with all recipients, preferably by telephone.  The fact that the prospect has downloaded a free document or tool from your website ensures that your call is not ‘cold’ – you have a context in which your phone conversation can take place, making it easier to determine whether the prospect is interested in further engagement with your organisation.  At the very least, you can ask the prospect whether they enjoyed the free product and whether they have any suggestions for improving it.

- Many people use the search term ‘free’ in their search engine queries – make sure that your pages and documents are search engine optimised for this work.  For example, if you are offering a ‘free CV template’, then consider having a separate HTML page optimised for this search term combination.  That way, you are likely to attract many more people to your site.

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Action List: Live by the mantra – ‘content is king’

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

content

You have probably heard the mantra ‘content is king’ is web circles. Well, nothing is truer than these three little words on the web. If you publish interesting, quality content on your website, then the search engines will reward you with high rankings.  It’s as simple as that.

Search engines exist for one purpose – to deliver their users the most relevant, authoritative content quickly, in response to the user’s specified search criteria. That’s why Google, Yahoo and MSN have become huge money making machines – they sift out all the rubbish and provide you with the path to enlightenment within milliseconds. Remember when you had to go to the library to find out stuff? Search engines have changed all that.

It follows then that content that is a) unique b) true c) detailed and d) sought after will eventually find its way to the top of the search engine results pages.

Whilst other SEO strategies, such as inbound linking and keyword tweaking, are important (and shouldn’t be neglected), they are subordinate to the requirement to publish quality content.

There are people out there that will try and convince you otherwise, but ‘content is king’. Everything else is incidental on the web.

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Action List: Start a Footy Tipping Comp

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

footy-tipping

Now this strategy won’t work for every website, but I think that starting a football tipping competition could work wonders for some online businesses.

I thought it was appropriate to raise this as a possibility, given that the AFL and NRL football season is not too far away…and I was prompted to do so by an email this week from FootyTips.com.au - here’s the text:

The Footy season is almost here – use footy tipping as a powerful marketing tool

Drive traffic to your website and build client relationships in a fun interactive way, with your own branded footy tipping competition.

The footy season is almost here – and now is the time to start planning your footy tipping marketing solution to promote your products and/or services.

How can footy tipping help your business?

  • Drive regular traffic to your website
  • Provides opportunities to promote your products
  • Establish and build an email database
  • Interact and build strong client relationships

Now, you can administer your own tipping competition manually, if you wish.  But, in my book,  that’s far too onerous.  It’s best to use an existing online tipping system, like FootyTips.com.au.

FootyTips.com.au offers branded solutions from around $6,000, but if you’re a small business that can’t afford this amount, you can simply set up an unbranded competition on the FootyTips.com.au website for free. 

So, who would benefit from a football tipping competition?  Localised and community websites, distinctly Australian websites, and sites that sell products to a demographic that aligns or overlaps with a football demographic (eg sports books, beer mugs)

A printing house, The Printing Hub,  here in Adelaide runs a footy tipping comp each year.  The face of their business is Brownlow Medallist and ex-Hawthorn player John Platten, so they create a good deal of interest in their tipping comp by having him involved.  As a customer, I receive a short, weekly email from John with information about the tipping comp – who’s leading the charge, who tipped poorly, etc. – a good little marketing strategy that keeps The Printing Hub at top of mind.

Some tips for your tipping comp:

  • Don’t leave it too late – you need to be recruiting people now for your tipping comp.  One or two weeks before the season starts is not enough lead time to recruit a decent pool of tippers.
  • Offer a worthwhile prize – a $1000 prize will attract lots of new prospects to your website as word of mouth spreads.
  • Consider offering weekly prizes as this gives you a reason to keep in contact with the tippers throughout the season, and an excuse to send out a regular email newsletter.  It also encourages those who do poorly in the first few rounds of the football season to continue tipping each week, because they still have a chance of winning something.  Offering a prize for last place will also help.
  • Actively promote your competition on your website’s home page, in email newsletters and via social networking websites.
  • Make sure that you put some metrics in place  so that you can get some idea of the value of the competition to your business – eg. measure the clickthroughs from the footy tipping site to your own site using a unique URL.  Be aware that there are many ‘compers’ out there who join hundreds of competitions and rarely transact with the host business.  If you use the unbranded version of FootyTips.com.au, then you will attract these people, as it is possible to enter multiple tipping competitions simultaneously via the FootyTips.com.au website.

Happy tipping!

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Action List: Check out how many of your pages are indexed by Google

Friday, January 30th, 2009

google

It is important to know which pages the search engines have indexed on your site.  Not only does it allow you to tweak your TITLE tags, page copy and metadata, but it also gives you an indication of how your search engine optimisation efforts are going over time and how good your competitors are at SEO too.

To see how many of your pages are indexed in Google, type the following into Google Search:

site:your URL

A search using site:www.boomerangbooks.com returns 7510 results.  My competitors, Dymocks, have over 149,000 results, so I have some work to do.

As you can see, it’s also a useful tool for checking up on your competitors.

Here are some other operators that you can use in Google to obtain information about your listings:

  • link:<URL> – provides a list of websites that link to your website.
  • cache:<URL> – the cached image of the website that is currently on file at Google.
  • info:<URL> – the information that Google currently holds about the website.
  • related:<URL> – pages that are similar to your website.

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Action List: Carry business cards

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

business-card

Although you might be an internet entrepreneur who lives much of his/her life online, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever interact with people in the ‘real world’ (and I encourage you to get out there and speak to ‘real people’).  When you do, it’s important that you have a good quality business card to hand over.

Business cards are relatively inexpensive and you won’t need thousands of them – in fact, I have about 7-8 boxes of old business cards from previous jobs in a storage box at home that I never got round to giving out…I’m sure you do too.   It seems that a minimum print run is never below 500!

It’s important that your card is well designed, is in keeping with the online nature of your business (ie. not staid and boring, as many business cards are), and mirrors the graphical elements that make up your website. Remember that branding needs to be uniform throughout your collateral – business cards, website, email signatures, advertisements, flyers, etc.

What ever you do – don’t opt for a templated business card – get one custom designed (try elance for inexpensive designers).  Templated business cards look tacky and unprofessional.

The card should contain all of the necessary contact details and your website URL. If it’s appropriate to your business, consider including your Instant Messaging ID (eg. Skype, ICQ or MSN Messenger), as well as the standard telephone, fax, email and postal details.  You might even consider adding your IDs for other networking sites, such as LinkedIn or Twitter, if you do business via these channels.

For printing, I recommend using a local printer.  There are services online that provide printed business cards – like Vistaprint – but it’s not possible to gauge the quality of the print job beforehand – again, business cards printed on poor quality card look unprofessional.   If you deal with a local printer you can request proofs of the work before having the entire print run done.  That said, Vistaprint and others are good for small print runs of promotional material (eg Christmas cards).

When receiving business cards from others, always make notes about the individual on the back of the card, so that you don’t forget who they are – particularly if you are attending a networking event and you are meeting lots of different people. If appropriate, send a follow up email several days after meeting the person. This can often be a great source of business leads. Store all contact details in Microsoft Outlook or an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and try to link to the person on LinkedIn. 

I use a combination of LinkedIn, Outlook and Interspire’s Email Marketer, instead of maintaining a physical card file of every business card I’ve ever collected.

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