Websites

No matter how many ads I see for one-click websites on TV, quality isn’t possible with a 3 click process. Websites are not simply drag and drop, click and you’re done, unless something has gone horribly wrong. It’s the first, primary, and likely most important of the ways you will interact with your customer base. Do it right.

What Does Too Much SEO Look Like?

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There is such a thing as too much SEO, and this article covers my personal pet peeves – no one wants to visit sites with this particular problem: When Websites Don’t Provide What The Say They Will – By Jill Whalen Also covered, pages that technically drone on about the subject but don’t answer the …

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Actual Steps for Online Stores to Advertising with Google Product Search Listings

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Note – if any of the below seems like too much work, I’ll happily do it for you. That’s my job.
1. Make sure your shopping cart is generating a good Google Product Feed.
I can’t provide detailed instructions without knowing which cart you use. Most of the better carts include the Google product feed without additional cost.
By “good” I mean that the feed will be your ad copy, so look it over. Make sure that your ads do a good job getting people to understand what the product is in detail, and provide selling points. They should do that in any case, as these product listings pull from the same data your customers see when they’re thisclose to buying.

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Why Code Validity?

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Nearly every single time I recommend cleaning up the code on a website, the response I get back is: “But Why? I hear it doesn’t matter.”

My question is, where did you hear this? From someone who writes sloppy code, perhaps?

It is easier to write invalid code – that’s all it has going for it. The average WYSIWYG editor makes such websites at a mile a minute.  (What You See Is What You Get – Programs like Dreamweaver, which are used to build websites visually but do not require that you look at the code to do so.)  Even if they are invalid in code, these sites look pretty and that is all that usually matters to people.  Standards seem pesky to deal with when you can build a site which gives every appearance (visually) of being fine, despite the messy code.

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Four Local Marketing Misconceptions

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I run into clients who won’t build up their local search presence, despite that they offer a local service or sell products locally. Here is what they often say to me.
1. I need to have my website up first.
Variations on this theme; My website’s too general for me to be in local search. My website needs to be fixed up first. I’m not sure what to do first… shouldn’t I have a website first? But I don’t need a website, I get customers without one. Et cetera.
You don’t need a website to be in local search.

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Facebook’s New WordPress Integration Plugin

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You can see it integrated into this blog, at the bottom of this page. Facebook’s official WordPress integration plugin [note: website changes since this post]. Like many others out there, it requires developing a Facebook app, linking your Facebook page to the plugin and setting a huge variety of settings, but unlike some others it …

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Authenticity

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If you can fake it, you’ve got it made… Just kidding. In reality, it is the key to a good social media campaign. If you want to be popular in social media, find your MESSAGE, find a campaign that links that message to your product, and put your authentic voice behind it. Of course, first …

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Going Mobile – Why It’s Being Pushed On You

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Google is urging people to make their sites accessible from mobile devices and to optimize around mobile. This makes sense for a lot of reasons – firstly people often browse to your map, read your promotional emails, or access your website only on their phones. I’ve seen a huge surge in the last six months …

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Wombat Zone

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I love doing the whole webmaster thing. Does anyone else remember when your company spellchecker used to correct the word “webmaster” to “wombats” if you weren’t careful? Or have I been doing this whole internet thing too long? I remember when the amazing buzz words were things like “file sharing” and “get answers in minutes, …

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