Web Site Development

Over the last few weeks I’ve met several small business owners who share the same problem: they don’t have full control and access to their business Internet domain registration.

In one case my client is the person who registered his domain name, but when he moved, failed to update his postal and email addresses listed under his account. Because it was a city-to-city move, he also changed Internet service providers, so his old email address expired. An email is the 1st choice for communication for any registration-related issues, so keep that current at all times, perhaps even use a Gmail or Yahoo! account for that.

Another client I’m helping had a different situation: he originally hired someone else to build his web site, and although the web designer registered the domain in my client’s name, it was done within the designer’s web hosting account, so my client didn’t have full access to his domain.

Here are the 5 tips on dealing with web developers:

1. Check your developer’s online “rating” by using this independent web site grading tool. You’re looking at a number that’s higher than 80, but above 90 would be better.
2. Visit Alexa.com and install their FireFox Extension (you’re not using Internet Explorer I hope :-) this tool will give you an idea how much traffic your web developer’s site is getting. Serious web sites have a rating of less than 1,000,000. If a site has an Alexa rating of 1,000,000 this means there are 1 million other web sites that have more traffic, so this is a relative number — and the lower the better.
3. Finally, check the site for Google Page Rank. You can to that easily by installing the Google Toolbar. PR goes from 0 to 10, the higher the better. Small business sites will typically have a rank of 0-2, so you’re looking for 3 and higher. (just in case you’re wondering, this blog site has PR2 which is pretty good for a site that was launched barely 2 months ago)
4. Next, you can check your small web developer on Linkedin. This professional social networking community has high standards for endorsements and recommendations, so you should check the person’s Linkedin profile, specifically the number of recommendations received, but also the type of recommendations, as the work performed may not align with your own needs.
5. Finally, pick a solid domain registrar and hosting company. I like to recommend BeaverWebHosting.com, which is a GoDaddy reseller, so you get the same world-class products and services, but you can also get personalized advice (for advice, simply call me :-) Once piece od advice, never call the hosting company directly as they’ll try to sell you services and products you may think you need and may sound tempting, but are largely unnecessary.

Click here to learn what makes a good web site, what additional tools you need to make an online presence an effective marketing tool, please come to one of my monthly seminars. Ask me how you can save 20% on tuition.

Today, March 1st, was designated WordPress Plugin Donation Day.

WordPress is the best blogging platform available, and one of the things that makes it so awesome as a tool for developing rich web sites are the plugins. If there’s anything you need you blog site to do and it’s not available in the base WordPress system, there’s a good chance that there’s a plugin available to extend the usability of WP for you.

Best of all, both WordPress itself and most of the plugins are FREE. Thousands of developers donate their time for fame and glory developing these little — and not so little — chunks of code to make our lives easier, so today is the day to give some love back.

I just donated to:

• Jodi Diehl for her WP-Testimonials plugin which helps me manage a few dozen testimonials I received from clients. Thanks Jodi!
• Arne Brachhold for Google XML Sitemaps plugin which, for example, alerts Google and other search engines as soon as I publish a new blog post.
• Michael Torbert for his WP Security Admin Tools and All in One SEO Pack plugins. The SEO plugin lets me control one of the most important aspects of creating a web page.

If you donate to your favourite plugin developer, please tweet about it using the #wppdd hash tag, and/or comment on this blog post.

I can’t say enough about how much lighter I feel knowing that Boris has my back for my website and my ezine updates. His constant thirst for self learning makes me count on him on a continuous basis because he always has something new to teach me. I have recommended Boris to many of my clients and will confidently and happily do so in the future without hesitation.

Boris’ Top qualities: Great Results, Good Value, High Integrity

Grace Attard
Founder of the e-Spot™

Note: This testimonial was originally published as a recommendation on Linkedin

Please leave your own comment – Thanks!

I decided at the last minute to attend Boris’ latest email marketing workshop and I am extremely glad I did. The 4 hour session was filled with tons of valuable internet based information including how to improve your web search rankings and of course how to enhance your business sales through email marketing.

This was the best value for money seminar I have attended in many years.
A great seminar, Boris!

Dennis Heathcote
Co-President at D&K Imports Inc.
DandKimports.com

Note: This testimonial was originally published as a recommendation on Linkedin

If you ever attended one of my seminars, please leave your own comment – Thanks!

Boris’s seminar was filled with incredible, usable information on how to make my business more visible on the web. His deep understanding of the inner workings of the web and email is apparent and his presentation is very interactive. This seminar is a must for anyone who is interested in learning internet/email best practices and how to maximize this effective marketing medium.

Boris’ Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Expert

Nelson Martins
General Manager at DiPaolo CNC Retrofit Ltd
DiPaoloCNC.com

Note: This testimonial was originally published as a recommendation on Linkedin

If you ever attended one of my seminars, please leave your own comment – Thanks!

Did you know that 70% of all sales now start as research on the Internet – are your ideal clients finding you?

Invest 3 hours and I guarantee I will teach you how to:

	Attract Contacts (Generate Leads) creating a powerful online presence what makes a good web site: basics of design, layout and content search engines: basics of SEO or how to build a Google-friendly site web site is not enough – what else you need online attracting visitors (contacts) with relevant and useful content blogging article writing participating in online forums, etc. online networking (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter) entice visitors to sign up to receive more information about you and your services or products with discount coupons special reports or whitepapers on your topic of expertise regularly published email newsletters how to integrate all your online efforts
	Build Relationships (or, How to Get Prospects to Know, Like and Trust You) follow up with automated and semi-automated messages, delivering your expertise via email create communities, followers and friends engage with your audience in a meaningful conversation once they know, like and trust you they’ll be ready for the final step
	Close Deals (or, How to Convert “Friends” to “Raving Fans”) use gentle email marketing tactics to introduce your services or products to your contacts close deals on line or off line – depending on your business model finally reach your business goals in 2009 – regardless of the state of the economy

Please visit the Contacts to Clients page to learn more and to register.

I must admit I was a reluctant blogger. I knew if I started a blog I would have to publish on it regularly, and being already busy with publishing my award-winning ezine and working with clients, I thought I’d never be able to keep up.

Good thing I found the time!

Now I not only love it, but I recommend it to all my business contacts and especially my clients. As an Email Marketing Coach I love email marketing, which still delivers a great rate of return on investment, but I’m the first to say: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! If you’re a solo professional, or small business owner, you must publish an email newsletter, have an auto-responder, write on your blog, have a Facebook profile, do live business networking, etc.

Here are just three reasons why I love blogging:

1. It allows me to reach a much wider audience than by just publishing an email newsletter. Blogs have built-in features that basically “push” my content to search engines and blog directories. This would be hard, if not impossible, to accomplish by a “web 1.0″ web site. My blog site now allows me to reach out to my audience in 3 different ways: using RSS, RSS feed delivered by email, and via ezine subscription. This enables my audience to get my articles the way they prefer.

2. Deciding to build my new web site using WordPress, enabled me to create what I call a blog site: a combination of a static, web 1.0 web site, with the power and versatility of the Web 2.0 blog. My blog site is now search engine optimized, and every time I hit “Publish”, soon after, Google, Yahoo! and dozens of other services get “pinged” and my content gets indexed immediately.

3. Having a blog has also enabled me to attract the right type of prospects. Before starting a blog, my whole web presence was a 1-page “squeeze page.” It served its purpose well — it created a lot of subscribers to my e-newsletter — but after a while I realized that I wanted to attract a different type of prospect, one who’d like to get to know me a little bit before considering hiring me. A visitor to my blog site can now read my articles which build my credibility, so I don’t have to “sell” my self, my content does it for me.

Finally, blogging makes it really easy and fun to connect with other great professionals in the wider blogosphere.

Here are five people I’d like to see write a quick blog post on this topic:

Charmaine Idzerda
Sandy McMullen
Dr. Kiya L. Immergluck
Grace Yvonne Attard
Cheryl Scoffield

I invite YOU, the reader, too, to share here by commenting or on your own blog! Please send me the link if you post on your own blog. BTW, this whole thing started on TypePad.com – get the “official” guidelines.

Thank you Patsi Krakoff, for inspiring me to write this entry.

If you have a domain registered in Canada (this very likely happens in other countries as well) you may receive a letter in the mail, such as this one shown here, informing you that your domain name registration will soon expire, and that you should renew it as soon as possible.

Be very careful – it may be a scam. This letter usually looks very official. It may list the domain or domains you have registered, along with their expiry dates. On the surface the letter looks like it’s coming from your domain registrar, but upon closer inspection you realize that this is in fact a letter from a domain registrar with whom you have no prior relationship. The letter is from a competing registrar trying to trick you in transferring your domain registration to them.

Although in most cases the registrar may be a genuine business, most likely the prices offered are much higher than the regular price you’d pay to your original registrar.

Why is this happening? You may not be aware of the fact that your name and postal address are publicly available from your domain registrar, and unscrupulous companies may abuse this system by sending you offers which in most cases are not in your best interest to pursue.

In Canada, due to the recent changes to the dot-ca WHOIS search tool, if you registered a domain as a private citizen your contact information is kept private, however, if you registered as a business, then your postal address and possibly other information, such as your name and telephone number may be available for “harvesting.”

Keep an eye on and protect your important business assets: your domain names. My personal recommendation for domain registration is 1&1 who offer free “private” registration, which is usually an additional fee of at least $10 annually per domain with other reputable registrars such as GoDaddy.com and NetFirms.com. A private registration hides all of your information from public view.

There’s an interesting discussion on the BlogSquad’s blog about how domains are handled by TypePad vs. WordPress.

A TypePad link to Denise’s blogpost “Tom Antion Reveals The Secrets of HIS Success to The Blog Squad” is http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reve.html

On a WordPress blog this would be

http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html

Now, which link has more keywords?

tom-antion-reve.html <-- this truncated post title
or
tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html <-- the full title

And, btw, you can edit these links, if you wish, to get rid of extra words such as "to, and, the" etc.

Another example, from my own blogsite
http://www.yourezinecoach.com/2008/how-to-make-money-with-email-marketing-send-email-promotions.html is also the permalink to this blog post.

On TypePad permalinks are in the form of: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/145459/32319900

Ask yourself this: do I want to build links to TypePad and building their Google Page Rank, or my own domain?

I don’t like dealing in absolutes, so I won’t say WP is better than TP, but in this particular area it shines.

What do you think?

P.S.
By commenting on this blogpost, I accidentally discovered another weak spot in TypePad, and it has to do with displaying long links in posts. Take a look at how long URLs are displayed here, in my post, then compare the same in TypePad.

The word “blog” itself comes from “web log”, so “blog” for short. Ever since Google acquired Blogger in 2003, this medium has been on the rise. Today even companies such as General Motors run blogs. Here are five reasons why you should have a blog for your small business or professional practice:

• Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing about your experiences on a particular topic, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts to provide useful information. This will establish you as an expert; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs.
• Search engines love blogs. Because blog pages change very frequently, are content-rich, and easy to index, search engines just love to gobble them up. For example, if you noticed that your web site search engine rankings are slipping, this is most likely because the contents of your web site hasn’t changed in a long while. Search engines love fresh, new content, and by its nature, blogs are the epitome of freshness. To make the most of this, host your blog on your own domain, and use WordPress, or a similar blog system to run it.
• Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get a presence on the web is through blogging. If you can type and click a mouse, you can blog. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, describe new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. No knowledge of HTML is necessary, but will certainly come in handy to get some of the more advanced features set up.
• Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturates our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, untainted by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience.
• Blogging costs nothing. You don’t need to have any software, buy web hosting, register a domain, like you do for your web site. Any opportunity get something for free is definitely a bonus, especially to businesses that are starting up. You can start blogging for free at WordPress.com, although, to get the most benefit from your blog I recommend hosting your own WordPress-based blog.