Some ideas from SEP’s blog post include cleaning up your subject categories, finding and repairing broken links, remove widgets and plugins that are outdated, and update your copyright notice.

The one thing I suggest we all do is take an objective look at our sites, and de-uglify them as much as possible.

What? De-uglify is not a word? Sure it is! Well, it is now anyway.

If you’ve added lots of widgets and such that ended up turning your pristine site into a mishmash of ugliness, be bold, be daring, and rip 90% of those uglifying widgets right out of there!

If you’ve used a layout or color scheme that looks like it was created in 1995 for a geocities site, consider updating it to a new, fresh layout with colors that don’t cause people to run screaming, “my eyes, my eyes!”.

Cleaning up your site accomplishes a lot of things in one go. It helps keep visitors on your site. It creates a better user experience which will likely lead to better conversions, more traffic, links, buzz, etc.

So let’s all participate tomorrow in Blog and Site Spring Cleaning Day. Who’s with me???!!!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: pristine site, search engine, web property
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There are probably just as many opinions about what constitutes good website design as there are people on the internet. There are, however, a number of factors that have been proven to make or break a website. If your website is guilty of just a few, it can have a dramatic impact on your business. Fortunately, most of them are relatively easy to correct, but in many cases, the right choice is often contrary to popular opinion because of peoples’ misunderstanding of the internet.

Spend some time studying these six common website design mistakes and see how many you’re guilty of. Then, invest the time to correct them and you’ll find that your website begins to perform better almost immediately.

Not testing on multiple browsers

You probably use Internet Explorer, like most people do, but a significant portion of your website visitors may be using another browser, such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera. Also, your visitors may have a variety different screen resolution and graphics capabilities. This means a website that displays perfectly on your computer may not on another computer, which is why it’s so important that you test your website to ensure that it displays and functions properly in most major browsers.

Using splash pages or flash intros

When a visitor arrives, they shouldn’t have to click anything to enter your website. Splash pages can turn an otherwise amazing website into a poor website faster than you can click the back button, and flash intros are even worse. Both of these things came about from arrogant designers who decided that showcasing their ability to use a particular piece of software was more important than providing what their visitors were looking for, and unfortunately the phenomenon became fairly common.

The argument in their favor is often something along the lines of ‘Our flash intro gives us a chance to present a mini commercial to each and every website visitor.’ This argument is flawed though, because by the time that they have arrived on your website, they are looking for specific information – not your commercial. Forcing it on them will only encourage them to leave, usually moving on to your next competitor.

Not breaking text into manageable chunks

It’s said that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The same logic applies for presenting website copy. Staring at a computer monitor is difficult work for the human eye, and digesting large portions of text can be tough for even the most focused visitor. You can overcome these challenges by breaking your text into smaller, manageable chunks, utilizing headings, subheadings, lists and images. You should also keep the width of your text within a reasonable limit. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be for your visitors to read.

Omitting contact information

A surprising number of companies fail to provide any way to contact them on their website other than through a contact form. This falls into the same category as those annoying automated phone menus. Sure, you’ll save some time and money since you won’t have to talk to all those bothersome people who want to talk to you, but you’re forgetting something important. Those ‘bothersome’ people are actually potential clients who want to buy what you’re selling!

You may filter out some riff raff when you don’t provide your contact information, but you’ll also turn away a lot of potential business. People want that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing that they’re dealing with a real-life company rather than some fictional Nigerian prince who is willing to transfer his fortune to their bank account. They are looking for a stable company that they can trust and if they know that they can pick up the phone and reach someone, or even stop by your office if they are nearby, you will have a rock-solid foundation.

Putting branding before the user

There is no question that branding is an important, if not critical aspect of marketing, but some companies take it too far, causing a negative impact. I would generally agree that the title tag on your home page should contain your company name, but that shouldn’t continue throughout your entire website. Aside from diluting your search engine optimization campaign, having your company name in the title tag of your internal pages will make them less attractive to potential visitors when presented with a list of search results. Think about it like this; if someone searches for ‘blue plutonium widgets,’ do you think they will be more likely to click on a listing in the search results with the title ‘Blue Plutonium Widgets – $9.99′ or one with the title ‘Acme Widget Company?’

Omitting pricing information

The outdated mentality of only revealing pricing information to prospects on the phone or face to face seems to have made its way onto the Internet. While there are valid reasons to justify the practice, it is counterproductive to your business. When people use the Internet to find information, they expect to find that information without having to call someone. Does this mean that some of your competitors may learn what your prices are? Certainly, but they can get that information even if you don’t make it available online by posing as a potential client. Not all companies can list their prices; for example, while we have a number of standardized prices available, a lot of the marketing work that we do is developed on a case by case basis. Most companies, however, can.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Acme Widget Company, bank account, Internet Explorer, Jeremy Knauff, prince, search engine, search engine optimization campaign, search results, WildFire Marketing Group
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Let’s say you are an expert in mountain biking. No, you didn’t take courses in biking, and you never owned a bicycle factory. You simply have been an avid mountain biker over the last 10 years, and that experience has led you to an understanding of the sport that enables you to be considered an expert. You know much about great trails, bike safety, which bikes are best under which conditions, etc. You get questioned often about the topic, as young enthusiasts want your advice.

Now, you decide you want to spread your knowledge worldwide, so you set up a web site to do so. You’ve done your homework, you’ve made the site search engine friendly, you’ve obtained some nice backlinks to the site, and you’ve begun to see some traffic trickling in. You’ve decided that what you really need is to be recognized as an expert, so you tackle the following tasks:

• The “be everywhere” task, in which you participate in as many relevant online mountain biking communities as possible. During this task, you strive to be as helpful as possible, answering questions freely, and being generous with your time in giving advice and tips.
• The “get published” task, in which you write articles for syndication, write guest posts on outdoor enthusiasts blogs, blog frequently on your own blog, and even get published in a few offline publications, such as local newspapers and magazines.
• The “have your voice heard” task, in which you become a guest on podcast stations, and eventually even do guest spots at your local radio station.
• The “have your face seen” task, in which your head shot is your avatar, and that avatar becomes associated with your name in all the places you visit.

After a few months, you realize that you’ve got a pretty solid base of “proof” that you are indeed an expert in mountain biking. You’ve built up a nice collection of articles, blog posts, podcast interviews, etc. that all point to you as being an authority in the topic. The only people who haven’t yet heard of you are the ones you want recognition from the most – the Influencers.

The Influencers are the A-list bloggers, the well-known journalists, and the highly respected publications that reach the masses. If even one Influencer claims you are one of the world’s foremost mountain biking authorities, you can rest assured that it won’t be long before EVERYONE thinks that of you. At that point, every journalist and blogger who has a story about mountain biking will be wanting your comments, your opinions, and your quotes for their stories. And each of those influencers will likely call you an expert, or an authority, or a guru as well. But what if you haven’t been able to get that one Influencer to get the ball rolling? What do you do?

Get their attention (which doesn’t translate into becoming a pest, btw). You can make contact with them, offering your assistance to them in some way. (By giving of yourself to them, rather than asking something OF them, you become an asset and not a liability). You should be doing this whenever it makes sense to do so (again, always keeping in mind that you do NOT want to be a pest or a stalker). There are probably hundreds of influencers you can contact, so you don’t need to make a pest of yourself with any particular one. Make sure that a link to your site or blog is always in your email correspondence with these Influencers. They are curious just like you and I. At least a few of them will certainly click your link just to find out more about you. Simple curiosity can bring you right smack onto their radar. If your correspondence was helpful to them in any way, rather than asking something from them, there’s a very good chance that they will be drawn towards wanting to know more about you.

While you are attempting to get someone’s attention, you should be creating a path that leads straight to you. You see, when a journalist has a story to write about mountain biking, he will probably do the same thing you or I would do if we needed information about a topic we were not already knowledgeable about. We would google it. That journalist might even go so far as to search for “mountain biking expert”, or “mountain biking authority” or “mountain biking guru”. What if your name showed up in the top 10 search results for any of those phrases? How much would you bet that journalist would be trying to find a way to contact you to get your thoughts on his story angle?

You see, you can begin working towards being recognized as a guru in the search results long before the Influencers recognize it. Did your cousin win the local bike rally after you gave him a few pointers? How many social networks does your cousin spend his time in every day? What if he were to link to your site in each of those communities, using “Mountain Biking Guru” as the link text? Did you help your boss decide which bike to buy for his kid for Christmas? Could you persuade your boss to have his kid mention your name when he blogs about how cool his new bike is … using “Dave is an expert in mountain biking” as the link text perhaps? See where I’m going with this? In many areas, it wouldn’t take much to turn a few links into a top 10 ranking for “your specialty guru”.

Now, whether you’ve managed to get the attention of an Influencer or not, you’ll at least get their attention when they google for the experts in your field.

Let’s sum this up:

1. Recognize that you are an expert in whatever you are an expert in.
2. Spread your expertise far and wide using the various tasks described above.
3. Attempt to get the attention of an Influencer (without making a pest out of yourself).
4. Work towards a top 10 ranking for “your topic guru”, “your topic expert”, or “your topic authority”.

We’ve almost come to the final chapter in our journey towards positioning ourselves as authorities within in our niches. There is one final step that you should take, and we’ll cover that next time. Until then, make a list of the top 20 Influencers in your field and begin your journey to Guru-ness.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authority, Christmas, expert, guru, journalist, online mountain biking communities, search engine, search results, site search engine, social networks
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I use Zuula 100% of the time as my web search engine, but I also love it for image search as well. And now that they’ve added even more image engines to the list, it’s great! Want me to prove to you that you shouldn’t be relying on just one image search engine? Ok!

The first thing you’ll notice about Zuula’s image search is that there are 10 engines all nicely laid out in tabs, so you can quickly click from one to another. Here’s a reduced screenshot of the 10 tabs (hard to read, I know, but it had to be reduced to fit).

The tabs listed are Google, Yahoo, MSN, Pixsy, Flickr, Stockxchng, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, and Exalead. (I’ve arranged the tabs in the order I preferred – you can rearrange your tabs in any order you want).

Now let’s say you’d only searched on Google for the term “daylilies”. This is what you’d see.

Not very exciting, and very likely, not what you were looking for. Now scan down the screenshots of what each of the other search engines found for the term “daylilies”. Look at what you would have missed out on seeing if you hadn’t used Zuula to search!

And THAT’S why you shouldn’t limit your searching to just one search engine.

*just a little search tip o’ the day from me to you

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, image search, image search engine, little search tip, search engine, search engines, web search engine, Yahoo
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Online success will almost always be more easily achieved if you master the art of the explanation. Whether you are selling information or selling toothpicks online, explanations are very often a necessary part of the informational flow. If you can help someone understand something, in simple, clear terms, without making that person feel demeaned, you will have gained a happy reader, user, or client. You will have established your authority of the subject and proven that you care enough about others to share your knowledge with them. In return, you will gain a loyal following, and very likely, increased income.

So, what is the art of the explanation? Explanations need to be easy to understand, clear and precise. Although I highly recommend using pictures when appropriate, I suggest you practice the art of explaining by only using words at first. This will force to you learn how to vividly describe a process so that the reader can “see” it, even without pictures.

My challenge to you is to practice the art of explaining by describing the process of something you’ve done recently in as clear and simple a manner as you can. If you are explaining the process of changing the oil in your car, list the tools needed and the steps required to go from start to finish. Try to imagine someone who knows nothing about the workings of a car is reading your explanation. Will they get it? Could they take your instructions and successfully change the oil?

Test it and see. Give your explanation to a few different people. Ask them if they understand it. Find out what is confusing to them. Use that information to make the explanation even simpler and more understandable. This process of taking just one activity, breaking it down into clear, simple steps, and then refining it from user input will go a long way in teaching you the art of the explanation.

Take the knowledge you gain from this exercise, and apply it to some process related to your site’s topic. Sell kitchen faucets? Explain how to replace an old faucet with one of your new hi-tech ones. Blog about horses? Explain how to muck a stall or groom a horse. (Hopefully, I used appropriate terminology there. I know nothing about horses. Care to explain it to me? )

Once you have content that clearly explains a concept or activity on your site, there is a very good chance that you can easily gain traffic to that content. Let interested people know about the explanations you provide via social networks, forums, etc., and you could quickly find your site gaining traffic, links, and search engine rankings. But it all starts with great content, and in the case of the “how-to”, the art of the explanation. Get that right, and everything else follows.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: explanation, how-to, oil, Online success, search engine, search engine rankings, social networks, tutorial
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

1. Organic search engine traffic – This is the granddaddy of all traffic. Visitors who arrive at your site from a search they’ve conducted are extremely targeted. This is what SEOs live for – high search engine rankings for popular phrases related to your niche. Bonus points if the great rankings are on Google, as that sends far more traffic than others. Don’t make the mistake of concentrating solely on search engine traffic however. If you lose your rankings, and you have no other sources of traffic, your site’s traffic will be devastated.
2. Sponsored search engine traffic (PPC) – Second best is the traffic obtained from visitors clicking on sponsored listings from those same search engines. Essentially, you get all the same benefits as above, but there’s one difference. You have to pay for this traffic. The major search engines have made it a bit more complicated to play the PPC (pay per click) game. No longer is it as simple as “the biggest spenders get the top listings”. You can be very successful with this method, and the fact that you have more control over placement is a big draw. Keep in mind, however, that without experience, you may end up spending a bundle of cash on PPC systems such as Google’s Adwords without reaping any profits.
3. Referrals from other sites – This could come in several forms. Other sites may simply link to you because they like your site, or you may have chosen to purchase advertising (either as a link or a banner ad) on others’ sites. Either way, if a highly-trafficked sites in your niche recommend your site, there’s a good chance that you’ll receive nicely targeted traffic from those sites.
4. Participation in forums/communities – If you participate in forums and communities related to your niche, you can build up an element of trust. That trust helps send others community participants to your site via any links that you’ve listed in your signatures or profile pages. This may not send large quantities of traffic, but it will probably be traffic that has a strong bond with you. Those visitors may then go on to either link to your site or recommend your site in other ways.
5. Guest blogging – Like the community participation above, guest blogging helps build up others’ trust in you, and your name becomes well known. This in turn builds up your personal brand, and you become more recognizable. At some point, people will know who you are, and that almost always translates into more site traffic. Obviously, you should be creating quality posts on others’ blogs if you hope to succeed with this method of traffic generation and increase blog traffic.
6. Social networking – Traffic from social networks such as Digg and Stumbleupon, or social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, or popular video sites such as Youtube, can be huge. However, the traffic comes in spikes, usually only lasts for a few hours or at most a few days, and the visitors rarely stick around. These visitors may not be very targeted, or they may just not be all that interested in what you have to offer. Nevertheless, you may get some much-needed attention (buzz) or a few nice links, so social networking traffic is worth getting. It’s just not worth as much as the factors mentioned above, in my opinion.
7. Article marketing / Directory submissions – Submitting your site to directories or writing articles that will be syndicated via article marketing sites are both useful for obtaining a few links to your sites, and perhaps a handful of visitors. You won’t see much direct traffic from these sources, so put this a bit lower on your list of things to do. It’s not a bad idea, and it can be useful for link building purposes, but it’s just not highly useful.
8. Purchasing traffic packages and traffic exchange programs – In general, you should avoid these, and I only include this in the list so that I can warn you about them. If you are tempted to “buy millions of visitors for only $99″ or whatever the offer is, ask yourself if you enjoy throwing money away. These types of programs may or may not send you traffic, but the traffic they do send will likely either be fake or it will consist of visitors who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in your site. You will be wasting money. Likewise, traffic exchange packages usually consist of webmasters visiting each others sites, just to obtain more traffic for their own sites. Again, they aren’t interested in your site at all. They only want to increase their own traffic, which won’t be useful traffic for them either.

I’m sure there are other traffic sources, but those are the ones that I receive the most traffic from. If you know of any other great sources, please share in the comments below.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article marketing, directory submissions, forums, Google, guest blogging, high search engine rankings, Organic search engine traffic, search engine, search engine traffic, search engines, SEOs, social networking, social networking traffic, social networks, sources of site traffic, traffic exchange, Youtube
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Search for: (obviously, you’ll want to substitute “your topic” with whatever word or phrase fits your niche)

your topic + forum
your topic + message board
your topic + chat
your topic + community
your topic + network
your topic + blog
your topic + expert

The last two (your topic + blog and your topic + expert) are good ways to find the leaders of your niche, so that you can possibly interact with them on a one-on-one basis.

Whether you choose a couple of forums, or several expert blogs as your starting points, you’ll want to join in on the conversations. Make intelligent, well-thought out comments. Participate often. Defer to the old-timers for the time being, but begin to establish yourself as a knowledgeable peer. DON’T spam the boards or blogs with your advertising. Simply join the conversation, and let your signature or comment URL do the advertising for you. Be respectful and friendly, and if for some reason, one community ends up not being right for you, find another.

By joining in the conversation, you are acquiring contacts that you can leverage later, as well as simply letting others know that an intelligent, knowledgeable person has a site they might be interested in. Again, you don’t have to shove that information in anyone’s face. Just by participating, they will know.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: commenting, contacts, conversations, favorite search engine, networking, niche communities, search engine, search terms, social networks
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Chris Hartwell, of New Orleans Internet Marketing, said:

I tell everybody I know, if you’re interested in anything, start a website on it. Let me help you with it. Just put something out there, and sooner or later, if you work on it a little bit, it will make some money for you.

He then goes on to say:

The fact is, advertisers need relevant space to advertise.

He is absolutely correct. Even if you aren’t exactly sure what you are doing, or what you should be doing, get it started. You can work out the kinks later, but the sooner you have a presence on the net, the sooner it will be a presence that has monetary value.

Buy a domain name, purchase hosting, install WordPress, and establish yourself as an Internet Entity. * You can dress it up with a nicely designed theme, and worry about content and monetization later. But the sooner you have an actual site, the sooner it can begin the aging process. (Hint: In general, the older a site is, the more value it has).

One last thing: After you’ve created your site, you’ll need at least one link to it, so that the search engines can discover it. Once the search engines discover it, they mark that discovery date as the “birthdate” of your site. If you create your site today, but the search engines don’t know about it for a couple of years, they won’t show it as being a nice, 2-year-old aged site. The quickest way to get links is to submit your brand new blog to blog directories. We can discuss those in detail later, but for now, if you just run a search on your favorite search engine for the phrase “blog directory”, you should find plenty to submit to.

So, as Nike would say, Just Do It!

*

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: actual site, aged site, Chris Hartwell, favorite search engine, Internet Entity, Internet Marketing, Internet Presence ASAP This morning, Internet travels, Nike, search engine, search engines
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Need a free stock photo? Free … meaning you don’t have to pay anyone cold, hard cash for its use? Look no further. I’ve compiled my top 10 list of favorite stock photo sites that don’t cost you anything. Make sure you read any terms of usage, however, as you may need to attribute its source via a link or mention.

EveryStockPhoto – Excellent place for searching multiple sites for just the right pic. It also includes some nice social aspects allowing everyone to rate and tag photos. I’ll be using this one a lot from now on.

Morgue Files – Don’t be turned off by the name of this one. It refers to the name that newspapers gave to the storage area where they kept files, old stories, photos, etc. In any case, this site offers some really nice photos.

Stock Xchng is a very popular user-contributed source of photos. Definitely bookmark it.

Image*After – Has a nice collection of photos and textures, with good search functionality.
***

Photogen – Nice collection of good quality photos.
***

Free Digital Photos – Good quality photos for free, although their best quality pics come with a charge.
***

NOAA Photo Library – This is just one example of the many photos you can use for free from the US Government sites. You’ll find more listed at the directory at the bottom of this list. This batch contains some amazing oceanic and atmospheric photos.
***

BurningWell – Not the prettiest site in the bunch, but so what? It’s got what you need – free use photos.
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Backgrounds Archive – Pretty photos. Big photos. Pretty and big photos. What more can I say?
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PD Photo – Lots of travel and country-specific photos, along with some more general categories too.
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Public Domain Photos – Claims to be the largest collection of public domain photos. It also has clip art.
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WP Clipart – Speaking of clip art this site has lots of clip art to choose from, with some photos as well.
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Uncle Sam’s Photos – As promised up above, this is a nice directory listing more of the U.S. Government’s repositories of free to use photos.

***

And yes, I know there are more than 10 in the list. Consider it lagniappe. If you can’t find the image you need from one of the above places, it just might not exist! Good luck, and happy photo hunting!

Affiliate Marketing Tip

Using attractive or attention-getting photos can mean the difference between making an affiliate sale or not. If you are promoting an affiliate product, make sure you show as many pictures of the product as possible. It also never hurts to add additional pics, such as the ones you’ll find at the sites listed above, that help the user envision how great his or her life will be once the product is purchased. Look for happy, smiling faces, and beautiful nature pics. These can enhance your promo article or blog post.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 81 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bob Nolin, clip art, free pics, free stock photos, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA Photo Library, photos, pics, prettiest site, search engine, search functionality, stock photos, ultimate search engine, US Government
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

The first was a vertical search engine for recipes called FoodieView that runs a search against multiple recipe sites. Through it, I then discovered this truly easy empanada recipe that I will try next week. I printed it out and then realized that I can also add the recipe to an online cookbook at the site (which is RecipeZaar.com). I like that idea, so I registered as a user and plan to really use this site a lot. I think it will help me deal with my cooking chores that I hate.

If you are as cooking-challenged as I am, check my RecipeZaar member page every now and then. I’ll post recipes there that I can handle (which means you can too) when I find them. (Don’t look at my member page right now because it’s brand new and empty. But I’ll get some things up there eventually, trust me).

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foodieview, online cookbook, recipes, recipezaar, search engine
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