You have an invisible website, Well 90% of the web is invisible. It may be indexed but nobody is seeing the sites. Statistics tell us that 83% of the webs traffic comes from search engines.
Statistics also tell us that if your site is not on the front page of the search engines 86% of that traffic will never see your website. If you are not even on page two 99.4% of the search engine traffic will ignore your website.
I yesterday had to deal with MWEB on behalf of a client. A simple request was sent in, We need the A records for the domain changed as the website will be hosted by me. This client has fixed IP servers for their mail. In order not to screw up the system we opted to “redirect” the webserver from MWEB to us.
Funny Advert starring Pieter Dirk Uys as Evita
I have a total dislike for sploggers and spammers. Now I had an interesting visit today from a lady with a pretty nice blog if you took the time to find it from the sales page that she wanted a backlink to. In general I have no problem with sales pages, I have a few out there myself at times.
But I have an objection to my bandwidth and blog being used as an advertising forum. I link back with no follow links to those who comment regularly. Every time I set up a site for someone, I use the same plugins I do on my own site to share that link love.
Starting with Lucias Linky Love that allows me to set an arbitrary amount of comments before they become followed links. But here is the thing, I guard my link love very jealously. I will not link to bad sites, I will not link to sales pages and most of all I will not link to splogs.
In fact I think the worst is splogs, They are even worse than those stupid russian pornographers that don’t get beyond aksimet. They seem to think that if they post there links to wankme.ru on every post I will eventually allow them. Well here’s the thing Aksimet puts you straight in the bin.
Sploggers however not only steal your content, they get you to link back to them via your pingback. It behooves you to check who is giving you pingbacks. Check out their blog or site and make sure that you are not assisting an Ed Dale 30 day challenge graduate to rank better than you for your own work.
Telling the difference between a splog and a blog is fairly simple. A splog will have your content, a link back and no added conversation. A blogger may have quoted some of your info in order to prove a point in their own argument.
Rest assured that any comment that has a link on it, will be visited by me before I will allow you a link. Once I know you, I am less strict about some things. But becoming a regular contributor on this blog does get you the link love you desire.
This series of articles that I will be doing over the coming weeks will discuss Market Research. We will be showing you how to evaluate the potential of your website. In this series we will show you the importance of knowing your target market and how to take advantage of the internet to meet them. Following this series will help you evaluate whether your market is saturated or difficult to compete in. It will help you decide whether a website will be an investment or a drain on your finances.
Basing your strategy on a solid foundation is important. Having a website that allows you control is an immediate bonus. As with any marketing strategy it is important to know and understand your target market. Being a fundi in your industry is not enough. You need to know how your clients are going to find you. You need an understanding of the clients thought processes and a knowledge of the keywords they are most likely to use. Having dynamite keyword phrases thet get no search requests is meaningless. The target we are aiming for is keywords actually used by potential clients.
Finding the keyword phrases for success
Are you talking to your clients daily? Why not just ask them how they would find you. By asking your clients directly you will find out whether people looking for you are going to use technical or laymens terms. You will find out if they are looking for specific brand names or specific products. All this will give you ammunition to create a marketing campaign that works. What it will also tell you is where to spend your advertising buck.
Ten questions for your research
- Do you use the internet to research products?
- If so how often do you make buying decisions based on internet research?
- What keywords would you have used to find information about the product you are buying today?
- What other sources would you have tried for information?
- What category would you search in the yellow pages to find this product or service?
- Have you seen my competitors website?
- What were your thoughts about the site?
- Have you visited our website?
- Please critique that for me
- What would you like to see on my website?
Getting the answers to these questions can save months of useless optimisation. When you started your business you probably sat down with friends, relatives and even some strangers about the needs of your target market. The Internet should be viewed as an always available sales representative. If the salesperson meets the needs of the client, they will buy. If the salesperson fails at meeting the needs they will buy elsewhere.
In the next article we will make use of this data to evaluate the probable success of a website using the keywords and phrases your clients have supplied. Take the data above and find ten keywords or keyword phrases,(don’t ignore the yellow pages category), to test for usage on the internet. In the next article we will check competition levels on those phrases, We will investigate the phrases for actual search engine query usage. In effect we will be evaluating the competition and the demand for those phrases.
Hands up if you have a website and it’s not working for you.
Author: GuyMcLaren | Category: InternetIt is estimated that up to 70% of websites are invisible. What these websites have in common is that the search engines do not know that they exist. Google, Yahoo and MSN are the big 3 search engines but Google gets more traffic than Yahoo, MSN and all the other smaller search engines do together. 70% of search engine traffic is from Google.
So you spent money on a website and you have yet to see a return on your investment. Shall we start by checking if your site is invisible or just hidden. It’s really easy. Go to Google and type in site:yoursitename.co.za and see what results you get. If your site does not appear at all, it’s invisible. If it appears congratulations your site has been indexed.
Having an indexed site is great, It means you have less work to do than if your site is invisible but it may also not be that good. Next lets search for one of the brandnames on your website, like for instance “Rubicon Retirement home”. You will note that the number one position on Google is for a site called retirementstyle.co.za. They are not invisible or hidden because I can find this site using “Nelspruit Retirement Village”, “Mpumalangs retirement” and Nelspruit “Aftree oord.”
But I search for Laeveld Bou and I find a lot of sites that mention Laeveld Bou, notably the top one is lowveldnet.co.za. http://lowveldnet.co.za is a site where you can advertise your lowveld based business for free complete with backlinks to your own website. Just go to the site and select the add your listing free link. Laeveld bou’s own website is invisible. I did the first test as well.
I checked site:lambsonshire.co.za and found the website. I searched for Lambsons hire and found Lambsons at number one. I then searched for “tool hire” “plant hire” and “compactor hire” and they were not in the first ten pages for any of those terms. This site is not invisible but is hidden for one of their main search terms.
Not knowing much about the Lambsons Hire website I am guessing that they may get the odd search engine result for people who know the company name, but their competitors are cleaning up. Is this the case for your business?
1. In the past weeks 80% of videos accessed at you tube have given me the dreaded Video is not available message. Unless You tube remove the videos and leave all the metadata, those damned videos exist. I spent yesterday trying to access a video I know exists. Ed Dale said so. I gave up in disgust.
2. YouTube allows a max upload of 10 minutes or 10 MB, Zoopy allows 100mb and no time limit. Isn’t that awesome?
3. YouTube crashes on at least 50% of the occasions that I upload. Zoopy has not crashed yet despite a 70mb upload.
4. The Zoopy interface is much cleaner
5. Zoopy does not give me the message that the Video is not available
6. My Inputs remain on the front page of Zoopy for longer
7. Zoopy has Blogs, Podcasts, Videos and Photos all in one place.
8. Zoopy is a South African creation, just like me.
9. Did I mention the problems at YouTube
Driving around Nelspruit I see Nelspruit Estate Agents getting desperate. Forests of Nelspruit Estate Agents For Sale boards are defacing the sidewalks all over Nelspruit. I thought there was a law preventing more than 3 FOR SALE boards per property in Nelspruit.
I regularly see houses with up to 8 FOR SALE boards placed there by desperate Nelspruit Estate Agents. It seems that the Estate Agents in Nelspruit suffer from the delusion that the law is not applicable to them. But not only that they are damaging the Sellers ability to get a reasonable price for their property.
A forest of Estate Agency boards make it look like the seller is desperate. It also creates the impression that the Estate Agents operating on the property are only concerned with the publicity the For Sale signs generate.
It is not in the clients interest at all, yet the Estate Agents code of conduct specifically enjoins Estate Agents to always do what is in the best interests of their client.
Guy McLaren is a qualified, non practicing Estate Agent who has written a book, SELL YOUR OWN HOUSE WITHOUT AN ESTATE AGENT AND SAVE R 1000’s
Caxtons have entered into an agreement with an Australian Company to supply them with a forum. I fail to see why South African businesses are not good enough. As I understand it WOMF supplies Caxtons with many localised domains like lowveld.womf.com.
They then in turn advertise this as a blog site when, the only similarity between WOMF and a blog is that the content is user generated. This site is even more backward than the Mweb blogs where I occassionaly still leave a rant.
You cannot add pictures, you cannot link, you can type thats it. The site is worse than a web 1.0 style forum. In most forums you can add images at the very least. Anybody from the lowveld that wants a real blog, talk to me. I will show you how
