Advice My Clients Probably Won't Read

Does Your Site Look Good on Phones

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 17:49:05 +0000

Smart phones and tablet pcs, like Ipads, are where it’s at these days. And it just going to get worse (or better, depending on your point of view).

Ecommerce sites should be readable and usable in both. If you’re shopping cart isn’t mobile compatible and your site isn’t designed to fit the screen it’s on, you’ve just lost some folks who won’t have the patience to try to read your tiny print or to scroll too much or otherwise mess with a site that’s too hard to navigate.

Here’s a Google article that talks about the subject. Yes, it’s got some techy language, but even retailers who don’t know a jpg from a server, will benefit from reading it.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/responsive-design-harnessing-power-of.html

Are You Making Money on Your Site?

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:17:56 +0000

To use the jargon, are you monetizing your site? The most common way to monetize a site is to use Google Adsense to show Google ads on your website.

“But I don’t want people to leave my site or buy from other people” you might say. Trust me. It’s not likely to happen. Better yet, trust all those big companies who show Google ads on their websites.

And once you’ve set up an Adsense program, you can specifically exclude certain websites from showing ads on your site. So, you can “filter” out your competitors.

Google gives you lots of choice for the type of ads to show. You can choose those little text lists that I’m sure you’ve seen, or you can show banner ads with images or just text. If you look at www.reenactmenthq.com, you will see what I mean. On some of those pages, I show a column of text ads and on others (or maybe on the same page), I might have a Google ad with images.

Now, unless your site gets millions of visitors, you aren’t likely to get rich from including Adsense ads on your website. But if you could even earn $20/month (from people clicking on the ads) for the rest of your life – or your website’s life, and all you’ve invested is the time to set up the Adsense account and your time or mine adding the code to the website, isn’t that worth it?

I like revenue streams that I don’t have to worry about once they’re set up.

And if you’re still worried about losing sales, consider yourself as the typical website visitor. If you go to a website to consider buying something, do those Google ads really distract you or stop you from buying. In my experience, the answer is no. Even if I see something that looks interesting and I click on it, it doesn’t stop me from buying what I originally came for.

If you’re a client and want me to help you with this, give me a holler

More Clicks With Ads and Good Rankings

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:02:53 +0000

Interesting article about the value of ads even if you rank high organically for your search terms

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/impact-of-organic-ranking-on-ad-click.html

Wikimedia

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:21:08 +0000

If you use Wikimedia, have you considered contributing to it? Financial contributions are great, but you may also be able to contribute knowledge. I know that every one of my clients is an expert in some field and how nice it would be of you to spread the knowledge. Here’s how

Browser Safe Fonts

admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:18:00 +0000

Not all fonts are equal. And just because you have a font on your computer doesn’t mean I have it on mine. And if you create a document using a font my pc doesn’t have, it will show some other font. So, if you are editing your own website or creating a Word document for people to read via the web, consider this fact and opt for the most common fonts so everything looks more or less the way you intend.

Here’s a good reference to the most common fonts and it shows what similar fonts are called on a Windows machine versus a Mac.

http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

Domain Name Scan

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:37:49 +0000

I received this today and thought it was odd. Why should a company care whether some other company wants to buy a domain name like mine but with a different extension? Especially a company in China, a country not known for respecting copyrights and known for hacking computers to steal trade secrets?

So, if you get something like the following, just consign it to the trash bin!

Dear President & CEO,

This email is sent by CN Network Information Center LTD., which is a registration organization in China. Here we have something to confirm with you. We received a formal application on….

What’s Pinterest

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:30:11 +0000

Pinterest is sort of a visual Facebook. Think of it like a bulletin board in a town hall, or rather a lot of bulletin boards, each belonging to an individual. You create boards of interesting pictures (primarily) that you’ve run across online. You could have a board for your favorite hobby, or your favorite grandkids… I mean, your grandkids, or your favorite movie stars or cars or whatever.

One thing I like about the site is that they admit they aren’t generating revenue yet and are unsure how they will do that when it becomes necessary. For now, they are trying to build a base and see where it goes.

Here’s my first board.

Texas artists on a Pinterest board

Pinterest states that they prefer you not use a board entirely for self-promotion, which makes sense. That’s what websites and Facebook pages are for, but it certainly makes sense to have a board that tells a little about your business if you have one. Or maybe a board with some of your products and some complementary products from other companies. Keep in mind that when one visits Pinterest, clicking on any image will open the website from which the image was “pinned.”

Pinterest is easy to use. You have to ask to be invited. It took about 2 days for me to get asked to join, after I had asked for an invite. I don’t know what that’s about, unless they’re just trying to weed out ridiculous email addresses like some of the people who try to post on this blog.

You can also add a Pinterest badge to your website so that people can click to visit your boards. I think I’ll do that. Now.

Optimizing WordPress Sites

admin — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:36:53 +0000

I’m trying out this add-in for WordPress that helps you overcome the inherent WordPress deficiencies relative to search engine optimization, and, so far, I’m impressed.

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/#utm_source=wpadmin&utm_medium=sidebanner&utm_term=link&utm_campaign=wpseoplugin

And I guess you can tell I’ve been busy! It’s been so long since I posted because October to December are my busiest months of the year. And, personal note, during that same time, there is Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween (important to me), and 4 family birthdays. So I go nuts about now.

Google Adwords Phishing Attempt

admin — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:38:18 +0000

If you advertise on Google, read this please.

A client received an email that appeared to be from Google Adwords saying that her campaigns had been stopped and it had a link to follow so she could review the issues.

The link went to google-uki.com. I could easily see that since I have my email program set to display emails as plain text, not HTML. I searched for the message of the subject and found this

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=55788c79f07b2959&hl=en

Read the last paragraph of the first posting, which is from a Google employee. Great advice!

Stupid Spam of the day

admin — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:55:13 +0000

These people didn’t even try to hide their URL which obviously doesn’t go to Google.

Please update your primary and backup payment information,
even if you

plan to use the same information. Please follow the steps

below to update your payment information.

Your credit card will only be used and stored as part of
re-enabling your

account.

We will not display or share it without your permission.

1. Log in to your account at http://www .googlcnm .com/Select/login

2. Enter your new or updated payment information.

3. Click ‘Save Changes’ when you are finished.

NEVER click a link in an email unless you are absolutely sure that the sender is legitimate and, even then, it’s better to type in the address you want to go to. I get stuff from my bank and credit card company and never click the links in such emails. Instead, I go to their sites via my “Favorites” bookmark which I know is safe.

And, just as a reminder, if no one ever responded to spam, like buying some service that sounds really great, we wouldn’t get spam.