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Effective Strategic Digital Marketing

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Year end web site clean up tips

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As 2007 draws to a close, here are some tips for end of the year “clean up” web site duties.

1) Check your error logs. Your error logs will show you what files have been requested and not found. This provides a “short cut” for you to find pages that have been deleted or renamed in your web site that people are seeking.

2) Make certain your web site has an XML sitemap, a.k.a.Google site maps. They’re known as Google Sitemaps because Google was the first to require this map of your web site in the XML format. Now MSN, Yahoo and other search engines use them to navigate your site as well. If you already have a site map, be sure it’s current. If you created your site map manually then you’ll need to do so with every page you add to your site. The end of the year is a great time to make sure your site map is up to date. (Reason #532 why I ADORE self hosted Word Press blogs…. the google sitemap plug in does this type of “web clean up” automatically!)

3) While you’re rooting around in your root file, make sure your robots.txt file is up to date as well. The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. While your XML Sitemap provides a road map so the search engines can find the pages within your site, the robots.txt file provides a map for what the search engine bots can, and cannot index. (It’s important to note that not ALL robots “obey” the instructions in this file.)

4) What are your web site goals for 2008? Set up a plan for your web site for the coming year. Want to increase visitors? Increase sales? Both? Now is the time to lay out a plan for the upcoming year.

5) Once you have your goals laid out for 2008, take a look at your current web site. Does is have all the tools needed for web success? Do you have a newsletter that you send out at least monthly? Do you have a “legal bribe” to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter?

If your goals include more traffic and more articles to promote your business, you might want to consider launching a blog either in addition to or in place of your current HTML web site. Blogs are basically content management systems making it easy to update your web site without having to learn HTML, FTP or other “web master” tools.

You’re only paranoid if they’re NOT out to get you

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A.K.A: A healthy level of distrust is essential when living/working on the web

I’ve often joked with clients that what is sometimes perceived as my “highly paranoid” level of distrust is merely the result of over a decade of living and working on the web. (I follow that comment with, “You’re only paranoid if they’re NOT really out to get you!”)

Unfortunately, graphic designer David Airey, who maintains a popular blog on graphic design learned the hard way that on the web, there are a LOT of reasons to be paranoid, especially when promoting your business via the web.

Reading his saga reminded me of my most recent conversation in which a client was “amused” by my perceived paranoia.  Several weeks ago, the son of a blog client of mine contacted me…. asking for the log in information to his mother’s new blog. She had spoken to me of her son who was studying “computers” at the University of Michigan and I knew she had charged him with creating a quiz for her blog. However, when I got an email from someone claiming to be her son, I apologized and said that the request for the information HAD to come from her and that information would ONLY be sent to her. While I was sure that he was who he said he was, I really couldn’t send him her log in information.

He was understanding, as was she… but it was one of those moments when I realized how much “innocence” I have lost over the past decade. As I sub-titled this post… a healthy level of distrust is ESSENTIAL when living and working on the web.

Blogs are INCREDIBLE marketing tools for the web. Because of David’s blog’s success, his web presence became a target of criminals who exploited the trust of David’s web hosting provider. I doubt the criminal responsible would have bothered to transfer his domain name (and pay for privacy) if his blog were operating in relative obscurity.

Plan for the worst and expect the best.   David learned and shared with us the trials and tribulations of not only using free email as his administrative contact, but also the trials of hosting your site with an inexperienced (a.k.a. trusting) host.   See, David registered his domain name as part of his hosting package, which is where his problems began.

I could go on with more client horror stories surrounding domain names registered “for free” as a part of the hosting package, but that’s another post! Thanks David for sharing your saga with your blog.  Education is the key to making the web a less friendly place for criminals.

Make like a scout and be prepared….

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Last month, as I was writing the content for my monthly newsletter, I saw an opportunity for a colleague of mine.

I met John when he began working with a web client of mine on my client’s PR campaign. It was a wonderful experience. While John is a Havard grad and I’m only a Manchester College alum, we both are preaching the same message from different pulpits. John preaches his message and guides clients to garner what he calls “earned media coverage.” I, on the other hand, preach my message of targeting your audience via paid media coverage and the web.

In the meantime, I have ANOTHER client who is doing everything “right” in her quest for achieving “I’ll be a guest on Oprah some day.” Her efforts are in STARK contrast to the small business owner who contacted me a couple of months ago. While my client is making a significant investment in not only money but also time in preparing her marketing materials, this wanna be Oprah guest was adamantly opposed to spending more than the tiniest portion of time AND money to achieve her goal.

So, I wrote a newsletter about my observations on the subject. “Do your marketing goals include appearing on Oprah“. Because, I have had clients who have “broken through” and been featured on nationally televised shows and each of those clients have told me it was their professional appearing web site PLUS that web site’s search engine friendliness that got the ball rolling for them. [Read more…] about Make like a scout and be prepared….

I made a choice (Windows) and I’m sticking with it…

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OK… I confess… I’m a Windows user. 

Long, long, long ago, I had to make a choice as to which operating system I was going to use to run my business computer.  The year was 1994 and I had to decide whether I was going to buy a Mac or a PC.  At the time, Mac owned the design market and Microsoft owned the business end user market.  So I made my choice and committed to the uncool, nerdy old white dude in the Apple ads:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAUlK8_2VE[/youtube]

Yeah… I know.  Hindsight is 20/20 as they say and after 13 years, at least it’s the devil I know.

Last December (on the 31st) I hastily purchased a PC to replace my dying Toshiba notebook.  It was an HP (an EXPENSIVE HP… it was $1500…just so you don’t think it was a cheapy “Walmart special”) that Cnet had given a stamp of approval by giving it an 8 out of 10. 

All I can say is, at LEAST it didn’t come with Vista.  That’s the only way my ownership of this shiny gray turd of a computer could have been made worse.  [Read more…] about I made a choice (Windows) and I’m sticking with it…

Trust is not transitive

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Andy Beard is asking his RSS subscribers… “Do you trust my advice?”   Andy asks because he’s been checking the “follow through” on his promotion of other people’s products and has been disappointed in the final figures.

The very first comment to the post went along the lines of “Yes, I trust you… but just because I trust you doesn’t mean I trust this other guy.”

BINGO!

keys to successAndy uses RSS to communicate with his blog readers.  The other resource uses email.

I know that I am MUCH more likely to subscribe to a site’s RSS feed than I am to sign up for an email list.  Why?  Because I know I have CONTROL over the RSS…  I simply remove it from my iGoogle and it’s gone.

Email, on the other hand, is forever.  Once I’ve subscribed to your list… how do I know you’ll honor my unsubscribe request?  (This is truly a TRUST issue.)

Case in point, I signed up for an email list and then unsubscribed.  I didn’t receive emails for a few weeks but now, suddenly, they are starting to come in again from this source.  HELLO!?!?!  I unsubscribed!!!  Why am I hearing from you again?

Why did I unsubscribe from the newsletter?  Well, because the information provided didn’t live up to the “hype”.  They broke a fragile new trust by not delivering what they promised.  As a result, I unsubscribed from the newsletter.  Surprise, surprise…. they’ve broken their promise yet again.  The best predictor of future behavior once again is past behavior.

Trust is a slippery critter.  It’s tough to earn and easy to lose. 

Just this morning, I had a “difficult” conversation via email with a client.  Had I not established a trusting relationship with her, my “advice” could have been viewed as self serving, even though it was not given with my needs in mind but rather her future.  My client wanted to take a “break” from blogging and was going to take down her web site for 6-8 months, relaunching it next year.

My reply was along the lines of “ACK!  Leave your blog up!  You’ve got a PR of 3, a decent Alexa ranking after less than 6 months of blogging!  Don’t take it down because you can’t continue to post every day!!!”

It would have been easy for her to think I simply didn’t want to lose her hosting business.   That wasn’t the case, but I knew it could appear that way.  I was relieved to read her response.  Instead of seeing it as a “sales” tactic,  this was part of her reply:

I trust what you say. You have been nothing but honest and helpful for me.

WHEW!!!!  

I’m the daughter of a car dealer… and sometimes I come across, well, like I grew up with a car dealer as a father.  I had to “sell” and “close” all the time.  I grew up believing that “No is simply the customer asking for more information.  I was relieved that I had built up enough trust with this client that she could see that leaving her blog up was in HER best interests, not mine.

In other words, I had earned her trust.  It’s something I don’t take lightly.   When you earn someone’s trust, you shouldn’t take it lightly either.