The Net Impact Roadmap

Technology is always changing, and websites change with it. One of the emerging technologies that website owners must be aware of, especially now with the emergence of Apple’s iPhone, is mobile surfing.

Most regular websites that you find on the World Wide Web are not optimized for mobile phones and other associated devices, and the procedure of optimizing these websites is more than just a one-step process.

So why go mobile? Mobile users are growing at a rapid pace, and in doing so they are becoming a huge market that you could potentially be missing out on. Mobile users are capable of participating in many of the same activities that happen everyday on the “traditional” internet such as research, viewing multimedia, and even in some cases, commerce.

While the intricacies of making your website fully ready to go mobile would take a while to sift through, here are a couple initial steps you can take if you do decide to go mobile:

Register a .mobi domain name.

The .mobi domain name is not required to make an optimized mobile site, but it can be a good idea. You will likely have to make adjustments to the pages on your regular website in some way and post those adjusted pages elsewhere, and a new .mobi domain is a good place to make these changes public. The .mobi suffix is somewhat new, but it is quickly becoming popular with .mobi domain names selling for inordinate amounts of money already.

Simplify your website.

For mobile purposes, stating the words “simplify your website” is really an oversimplification, no pun intended. The process of simplifying your website for mobile phones is one that can be daunting and take a lot of time. There are some resources that can help make your website mobile-ready. Ready.mobi is an outstanding resource to test your website’s mobile surfing compliance, whether you have actually created your mobile website or not. Google Mobile Optimizer helps to simplify your design, or the design of any website for that matter, if you need help while searching on a mobile device. The actual process of simplifying your website includes making your page file sizes smaller, eliminating menus that are difficult to navigate for mobile users, getting rid of large graphics, and eradicating pop-ups within your page, as explained quite thoroughly in the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 Basic Guidelines. It is also a good idea to prevent your website from being spidered by browsers so that search engines such as Google don’t see duplicate content and penalize you for it.

Unfortunately, the fact is that various mobile devices will view web pages differently, even if the pages are optimized for going mobile. In the process of optimizing your website for going mobile, the goal is to make a website that looks sufficient on each device. This goal is hardly different than making sure that your real website looks good on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc., on the traditional internet.

It is important to keep in mind that mobile website optimization is not right for every website at this point. Plenty of websites provide little value in a mobile format. That is certainly not a knock on these websites. As the technology in mobile devices evolves and improves, more websites will find it necessary from a usability and financial standpoint to make the jump to true mobile accessibility.

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Design St. Louis.

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Q: My web site is on Page 1 in Google, but it is almost nowhere to be found in Yahoo! What have I done wrong?

A: The easy answer to this question is, “Why do you care?” After all, Yahoo! holds less than a quarter of the search engine market while Google has almost 60 percent, according to ComScore.

Q: But that market share in Yahoo! could still net significant revenue for my web site….

A: Good point. There are some things you can do to increase your Yahoo! ranking, if you really desire to make the effort.

Q: Where do I start?

A: Submitting your web site and sitemap to Yahoo! is a good start. Beyond that, there are paid strategies working directly with Yahoo! which could help. Yahoo! has paid entities associated with their search engines such as Yahoo! Directory. This solution can be pricey, and there is no guarantee that your web site will go to No. 1 with it. However, the general consensus is that the strategy can’t hurt, and for the relative investment it can be a low-risk strategy to help your traffic.

Q: Are there any other paid inclusion tactics from Yahoo?

A: I’m glad you asked. There does happen to be a fairly new Yahoo! feature called Search Submit Pro. This feature is rare since it allows you to purchase pay-per-click listings which appear among the organic search results. Using this feature ensures that pages which would otherwise not be included in the organic Yahoo! search are included, yet the results look the same as other Yahoo! search results. Of course, Yahoo! recommends a budget of $5,000 per month or 1000 URLs in order to participate.

Q: Without giving money to Yahoo!, is there another way to move up on the organic search?

A: Of course! Most of the methods involving Yahoo! organic search are similar to Google. For example, content is still king, links are still important, and the methods for optimizing particular pages are pretty much the same. However, the importance of linking seems to be lessened in Yahoo! compared to Google. In some cases, quantity seems to be stressed by the Yahoo! search engine more than quality compared with Google. Additionally, some on-page features that have been recommended for search since the beginning of time are still stressed by Yahoo! more so than Google, such as keyword meta tags.

Q: Doesn’t this strategy create a user experience that is less friendly than Google?

A: User experience is very much in the eye of the beholder. Still, simply based on the user stats and market share among search engines, Google’s user friendliness seems to be greater than Yahoo! Yahoo! generates much of its revenue with aspects that have absolutely nothing to do with search and little direct contact with technology interests such as games, chat rooms, and editorial content. Search is likely Yahoo’s largest priority, but they are able to make revenue and survive by other means.

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Design St. Louis.

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Return on investment is the most important factor when deciding on a marketing tactic for most internet companies.  There are so many different forms of internet marketing and places to spend your advertising dollar.  It can be a daunting task to choose what type of advertising (online or otherwise) to invest in and how much to put into your campaign.  No matter what type of advertising you choose, it all comes back to one thing: Return on investment.  After all, what is the purpose of advertising in the first place if you are losing money on it in the long term?

Calculating return on investment for your search engine marketing campaign is not an impossible task, and in fact it is easier to track than other forms of advertising such as various forms of media (television, radio, and print).  Unless you are forcing customers to visit by typing in a specific landing page URL and setting up a toll free number, it is very difficult to specifically track the actual effectiveness of those other forms of advertising as they relate to websites.  This is not to say that these other forms of advertising are ineffective or don’t have their place, but most forms of internet marketing simply provide a clearer picture of where your money is going and what it is doing for you.

One of the biggest advantages of internet marketing is its measurability – whether you are seeing how far you have moved up on the search engines or calculating your conversion rate on your products.  With the use of this information and knowledge of the lifetime value of each customer, a very precise calculation of return on investment can be completed.

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The big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask) have a stronghold on the industry, but there are some potential threats to those search engine giants to be aware of. One of which is del.icio.us.

It will be interesting to see if commerce or humor pages creep up in the bookmark rankings as del.icio.us continues to grow, but for now usefulness should be all the rage if you are interested in utilizing del.icio.us as a significant stream for visits and revenue. The current size of del.icio.us or lack thereof means that you should not spend too much time worrying about it, but it takes little time to actually setup an account and start bookmarking your own pages. In order to maximize your internet marketing efforts, you might as well give del.icio.us a try.

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Localized internet advertising is becoming more and more popular for small businesses, whether those businesses are internet based or otherwise.  Google AdWords allows for local searches, and YellowPages.com is becoming a more popular online medium for internet users and advertisers.   

Localized ads can be very valuable for the right industries.  Brick and mortar businesses and businesses that have both a virtual and local brick and mortar presence have a localized incentive with their advertising.  For example, a pizza restaurant in Chicago has a greater incentive to bid on advertising space for the phrase “pizza” from Chicagoan internet searchers than it does for the phrase on a worldwide scale.  The fact is that the majority of your business at a local brick-and-mortar store or retailer, unless you are a tourist site, will probably come from residents of your geographic area. 

This subject accentuates the growth of YellowPages.com and similar yellow pages web sites.  You might recognize the online yellow pages television commercials, and the ads have apparently been effective.  As SearchEngineWatch.com reports, the number of searches conducted on Internet Yellow Page sites increased by 27 percent, according to data from comScore and the Yellow Pages Association. 

Clearly, local internet search is catching on.  There are two major questions that can be asked as a result of the growth of local search:  

1)     Are old-fashioned paper phonebooks being replaced by the internet? 

2)     Is advertising in online phonebooks a viable route for both brick-and-mortar and virtual stores? 

The first question, in many ways, simply depends on advertising revenue of phonebooks, where most of their revenue is generated.  Even in that case, the revenue may not be a clear indication of the health of the phonebook industry since media advertising tends to fluctuate so rapidly no matter the market conditions of phonebooks or other forms of print media.  It is evident that far more people are using the internet to look up a phone number than they were 10 years ago between the development of the internet, mobile devices, and GPS systems that provide this information. 

This debate is somewhat similar to the debate over newspapers.  While there are no stats to defend this assessment, it is probably not a stretch to assume that phonebooks are more popular with the older crowd while online forms of phone number references are more popular with young people.  Also, there is something to be said for the convenience of phonebooks for those users still lacking handheld media devices. 

The second question depends more on the particular online phonebook and the type of business.  Different online phonebooks have different advertising programs and areas of advertising.  Yellowpages.com might be a better return on investment than SuperPages.com in one area, while SuperPages.com could be better for another area.  Each phone number reference website offers different advertising programs, and it is important to evaluate these programs before taking the plunge.   

As of this writing, YellowPages.com is the 30^th ranked website on the internet according to quantcast.  Obviously, these phone directory websites are very popular, and they are extremely viable options for your internet advertising dollar if you do your homework on the programs and spend wisely.

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Development St. Louis. 

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In the past, we have covered the reasons for starting an email newsletter.  Related to the email newsletter subject is the use and reasons to send out emails to your email list.  Many businesses start email lists in order to keep all of their web site visitors and customers in one email database, further keeping them informed about the company.  These emails are very important for business development, customer involvement, and public relations. Following an unscientific poll of The Net Impact team members, the following list is the top five reasons to send emails to your email list, in no particular order. 

1. Industry Changes Affecting Your Clients

If your industry best practices, legal issues or any other important items are changing, it can be important to keep your customers and clients informed of the changes.  Sending the information to your email list is an excellent way to keep your client base informed without putting forth too much effort.  It can also lead to further sales and long-term business for your company.   

2. Changes to Your Services, Products, and Prices

Keeping customers and clients aware of changes in your services is definitely worthwhile.  Obviously, if your customers are aware of changes in your business, they are more likely to buy than if they were unaware of such additions or changes.  This provides an excellent opportunity to sell your products to new or existing customers. 

3. Holiday Greetings and Promotions

If your products are seasonal or can be used as gifts, sending out promotions or holiday greetings is a great marketing move.  More and more people are buying gifts for the holiday season, and even online subscription services are becoming more popular for Holiday Season gift giving.  Either way, emails during the holidays are simply nice things to do in order to show your appreciation for your customers during the holidays. 

4. Newsletters

This entry needs very little introduction.  As stated previously, newsletters are excellent ways to generate revenue on your blog and connect with current and prospective customers.  For more information about e-newsletters, visit the previous newsletter blog. 

5. Price/Cost-Effective

The fact is that email is free, while there is a cost to “snail mail”.  Email still offers you the ability to transmit your message to the audience effectively, especially if your product is available online.  Many companies send out emails with announcements, coupons or offers that they would have sent through traditional mail five or 10 years ago.     

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Design St. Louis.

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Previously, we presented lists of internet marketing tools for beginners and advanced users.  Those tools are very helpful for anyone involved with web marketing, but web design enthusiasts also have plenty of great tools that deserve mention.  The following is a list of five web design tools for just about any webmaster. 

1. Automatic HTML to WordPress Conversion

Creating a WordPress design can be a daunting task if you don’t have design experience or PHP knowledge.  ThemesPress.com can make this process much easier.  Simply upload you web site’s images, HTML, CSS, make a few small edits and ThemePress will do the rest of the work for you.  ThemePress.com does charge $10 to use the template after you get a look at it, but considering how much time you would likely be saving, it is probably well worth the money. 

2. Firefox Web Developer Toolbar and IE Developer Toolbar

The Firefox Web Developer Toolbar and IE Developer Toolbar make any web designer’s life easier.  The toolbars allow you to view and edit CSS on the page, edit images, validate code, and much more.  Having the ability to view these page elements saves a great deal of time, and some of the tools included are even unique to the toolbars.  Keep in mind that there are some differences between the Firefox and IE Developer Toolbars, just as there are with the actual browsers. 

3. Code Converter

Need to convert code and want to save time in the process?  The Code2HTML converter saves you time by converting small bits of code into different languages.  The online tool is like an English to foreign language dictionary for webmasters. 

4. Validation Errors/ADA Compliance

This is actually two different web sites, but they exist for a similar purpose.  Validator.w3.org shows validation errors for any web site, allowing you to clean up any HTML errors present on your web site.  In addition, www.contentquality.com has an ADA Compliance tester that tells whether your web site is ADA compliant.  These are very important tools for any webmaster. 

5. W3 Schools

W3Schools.com is not actually a web design tool in the true sense of the word.  It is an extremely helpful resource for web designers.  The web site has tutorials and helpful resources for HTML, XHTML, CSS, and many other languages.  All of the information is well organized, and the tutorials and directions are easy to follow. 

For more great web design and development tools, visit http://mashable.com/2007/07/28/web-development.

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When choosing keywords, it is often difficult to determine which words you should focus on.  It is also difficult to determine how long each keyword phrase should be for your content.  Perhaps some new data will help. 

As SearchEngineWatch.com reports, research firm OneStat claims from their data that about 32 percent of searches are two words.  Three word searches come in second place with 27 percent of searches, followed by one word searches with 15.2 percent, four words with 14.8 percent and five words with 6.5 percent. 

So now it is time to make some two word keyword phrases to target and off you go, right?  That is not necessarily the case. 

Search engines find keyword phrases in your page titles, content, headings, and just about everywhere else content is present.  In the process of finding this content, search engines may find the two word phrase that the searcher typed into the search engine field from a three word search, the three words you searched for from a four word phrase and so on. 

So what is the point of mentioning these statistics?  While knowing what types of searches are most popular is important, you should not avoid targeting lengthier phrases just because they are not as popular. For example, if you were to target the phrase “popular professional baseball equipment,” you would also be targeting “professional baseball,” “baseball equipment,” “popular professional baseball,” and “professional baseball equipment” in the process.  This point can seem all too obvious, yet often in the process of choosing the right keywords to target search engine optimizers forget about this valuable point.

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Design St. Louis.

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We search engine optimization practitioners hate duplicate content.  For some, it is the bane of our existence.  Yet, we find it everywhere.   

The search engines are not fond of duplicate content and often filter it out.  Duplicate content goes well beyond plagiarism.  For example, many websites post identical content on several pages.  Other forms of duplicate content include posting identical news feeds that already exist and posting the same article that you wrote on two or more of your own websites. 

Since duplicate content is filtered, it is important at least in the case of webpages to adjust the content slightly.  While in many cases the duplicate content is accidental, some websites purposely post duplicate content and change the images or navigation menus.   

As mentioned previously, plagiarism is another issue altogether when it comes to duplicate content.  Often, websites automatically phish content - that is automatically take content from other web sites - in order to fill space and get the appropriate keywords for their Google Adsense ads.  Not only are these websites plagiarizing your content, but they could be hurting your search engine standing as a result of duplicate content. 

So how do you fight back?  There are several internet tools that will allow you to identify duplicate content.  One of the most popular tools is www.copyscape.com.  CopyScape is a simple search tool that scours the internet searching for duplicate content for whatever you type into the search engine.  This tool does a fair job of aiding in your quest to get rid of duplicate content. 

Of course, another simple way to make sure your content is not being duplicated is to type unique phrases from your content into search engines results.  Once in a while, you will be able to find duplicate content in the search engines.  At the very least, going through this type of search will allow you to monitor any reaction to your website.

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Development St. Louis. 

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The rumor going around the internet is that there are more than 100 million blogs floating about. Whether this number is correct or not, there are obviously a great number of blogs and a great number of bloggers, including yours truly.

Starting a blog in order to market your own web site is a common practice, but you also have a great opportunity to market your web site through other peoples’ blogs.

One of most powerful ways of marketing products in most industries is word of mouth. Think about how many times you have bought or used a product solely based upon the recommendations of others. No matter your relationship with these people, word of mouth tends to be a far more powerful persuasive tool than company sponsored advertising.

That is where the power of blogs comes in. Blogs tend to be more trusted sources of information than most forms of internet ads. Many blogs have regular readers that become loyal to the blogger and even equate the blogger’s credibility with the news media.

Marketers have an excellent opportunity to apply this trust to their own products by spreading their message through the blog community. By getting popular bloggers to promote and recommend your product, they are doing a huge service for your marketing efforts.

The question is how you go about getting bloggers to promote your products. The process is simple enough, as you merely need to contact bloggers and let them try your product. If the bloggers like your product then a good review and promotion will be the result. The risk in this process is minimal since bloggers are unlikely to provide negative public feedback involving your product.

This process can also work well for content. In addition to bloggers linking through your link bait efforts, it is becoming a more common practice for web sites to offer their content to bloggers in return for promotion. Blog interviews about your products and services are also fairly common among the more well-known bloggers that are better associated with media industries.

The bottom line: You can make the blog community work for you without much effort. It is an effective marketing strategy and something to try if you have not already.

Seth Trachtman is a Web Marketing Account Manager for The Net Impact Web Development St. Louis.

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