The goal of every website owner is to be noticed.  You want to have a high page ranking so that you are recognized by the search engines and of course you want potential customers to find you before they see your competitors.  Here are a few simple ways to beef up your “get noticed” factor.

First you need a keyword heavy domain name.  You may think that just naming it your current business name is sufficient but in reality you have to prepare early on in this game to get ahead.  Your best bet is for you to purchase two domain names.  One is your business name which is printed on your business materials and a keyword domain name.  Your business name website then redirects you to the keyword domain.   Of course it has to be available and you may have to come up with a few before you find one that is available for purchasing and it has the keywords that work best for you.  You should use a keyword program that will generate you a (more…)

If you have been receiving our newsletter you know that every month we have been listing a handful of terms that you might hear or read but may not know exactly what they mean. Just doing our little part in helping clear up some of the confusion and mystery surrounding web design and website marketing. Well I am going to do a little recap and list a few more to round off the New Year.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
This is the act of altering a web site so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. In the past, has also been used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, though now the term search engine marketing itself has taken over for this.

CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount search engines charge advertisers for every click that sends a searcher to the advertiser’s web site. For an advertiser, CPC is the total cost for each click-through received when its ad is clicked on.

PR (Page Rank)
Google technology developed at Stanford University for placing importance on pages and web sites. At one point, PageRank (PR) was a major factor in rankings. Today it is one of hundreds of factors in the algorithm that determines a page’s rankings.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity)
To put it simply Wi-Fi is a local area network (LAN) that communicates via radio waves. A more detailed explanation is, it is the set of standards for wireless local area networks based on the specifications known as 802.11. It was originally developed for use by wireless devices and local networks. It is now used for Internet access as well. If you access the Internet wirelessly from your computer or personal digital assistant, chances are you are using some sort of Wi-Fi.

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Here are a few more new terms that will hopefully jump start you into the New Year knowing just a little bit more than you did before:

HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
The document format used on the Web. Web pages are built with HTML tags (codes) embedded in the text. HTML defines the page layout, fonts and graphic elements as well as the hypertext links to other documents on the Web.

ASP (Active Server Page)
A Web server technology from Microsoft that allows for the creation of dynamic, interactive sessions with the user. An ASP is a Web page that contains HTML and embedded programming code written in VBScript or Jscript.

IDK
I Don’t Know (keep brushing up on your vocabulary and you won’t need to use this one.)

JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
An ISO/ITU standard for compressing still images. Pronounced “jay-peg,” the JPEG format is very popular due to its variable compression range. JPEGs are not suitable for graphs, charts and explanatory illustrations because the text appears fuzzy, especially at low resolutions.

ROI (Return On Investment)
A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

It seems every year the Holiday Season begins even more early than the year before.  You are shopping for Halloween candy on one aisle and on the next is Christmas trees fully decorated.  I prefer to celebrate one holiday at a time but I have worked in retail and I understand their reasons behind it all.  They have so much Christmas merchandise to put out that they have to start early to get it all on the floor and out of their warehouse so more Christmas merchandise can be moved out to the floor. 

This can also be the problem on a website. You have so many ideas and items of merchandise to sell that sometimes you can get bogged down in the details.  You have gone halfway through your fiscal year (more…)

Customer satisfaction is the number one goal of any business.  It’s what you work toward and enjoy the afterglow of when you have accomplished your mission.  What you are hoping for is customer satisfaction to develop into customer loyalty.  Almost 40% of your satisfied customers will eventually do business with your competition.  Now, I know you are thinking “Well I still have over 50% coming back” but that thought may be costing you more than you think.  Attracting new customers can cost twice as much as keeping your existing customer base and that’s money you want in your profit margin not in your marketing losses.

What is it then you need to solve this problem?  You need to go beyond customer satisfaction and establish a rapport with you customers.  (more…)

Online marketing is the constant pursuit of the “golden ring” and the hope is not to spend too much money to make some money.  If you are attempting to do some online marketing without spending too much of your hard earned cash then here are a few ideas.

Reciprocal links, or backlinks, are basically you link to my website and I’ll link to yours.  You should do about five or ten of these a week.  Remember though (more…)