Week of 2008-07-03 Hi Everyone, If you are in the U.S.A., Happy 4th of July weekend! And if you aren't in the U.S.A. I hope you have a wonderful weekend as well. :-) I'll see you next week.
Featuring: Jennifer Laycock, Stoney deGeyter, Diane Aull, Debra Mastaler, Paul Jahn, Manoj Jasra, David Wallace, Sage Lewis, Mack Collier, Karri Flatla, Jackie Baker, Ross Dunn, Scott Allen and Diana Adams. Site Clinic: Navigation Usability Can Make Or Break Your Websiteby Jackie BakerWhen it comes to the front end of a website, there are two primary areas that can make or break your online success ... your content and your navigation. SmallShipCruises.com is a very useful site offering a large selection of cruises with a variety of destinations, themes, ship types, and deals. Unfortunately, the current navigation poses some major hindrances for both search engines and visitors.... Stop Wasting Your ALT Attributes and Make them Work for Youby Stoney deGeyterWhen providing SEO advice on the topic of website design, we often warn against placing important content into images. This is because search engines can't read images like a person can. To them, an image with text is just an image. So we rely on ALT attributes to convey proper meaning. ALT text is an important aspect of both usability and SEO. Here's how to do them properly. 4 Tips to Making Your Proprietary CMS Search Friendlyby Manoj JasraThere are often cases where a business will choose to develop a custom content management system (CMS) rather than buying something off the shelf. The key to a developing a good CMS is to first understand the purpose of your website (requirements) and secondly to design the framework (database, business logic, GUI) to support it. There are also some fundamental SEO related guidelines you should build into your proprietary CMS if you hope to rank well in the search engines.... Grab Your Profile Link Before Some Jerk Doesby Debra MastalerOnline, reputation is everything. It drives you professionally, personally and algorithmically. Have a good reputation and your efforts will be rewarded through growth and customer loyalty. Develop a bad one and you'll spend precious time and resources trying to recover lost market share. While it's impossible to monitor every venue open to public opinion, you can work to protect your reputation by registering your known brand/name with as many social media, forums, and discussion sites as you can, especially the popular ones in your niche.... Puppy's Picks for 07/02/08by Jennifer LaycockA round up of what Jennifer read and found interesting today on the web. From new data on offline conversion rates to social media via newspapers, check out four posts Jen thought you need to read. More People Share WOM Offline, But Does That Make Offline Stronger?by Jennifer LaycockAlmost anytime I talk about viral marketing, the subject of offline word of mouth verses online word of mouth comes up. People ask questions like which is more powerful, which has more potential and which leads to higher conversions and purchases. The truth is, it depends on the campaign and the product. Still, two new sets of data have been released about word of mouth marketing that are worth looking at. Are You Ready to Outsource to a Search Engine Optimization Company?by Scott BureshSo, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you've finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you've been talking to for months. The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and it should be just a matter of time before you start seeing a huge uptick in business. Right? How to Fix the Bloated (Tables and HTML) Code that is Jacking Up Your SEOby Stoney deGeyterYesterday I discussed code bloat by looking at how we can move style sheets and JavaScripts off the page in order to clean the coding up quite a bit. I this third post about cleaning up bloated code I wanted to address Tables and other typical causes of bloated HTML. How to Fix the Bloated (CSS and JavaScript) Code that is Jacking Up Your SEOby Stoney deGeyterI started a conversation about how code bloat can effect your site's performance with the search engines. This post maps some specific types of code bloat and very briefly--and non-technically--show you how you can eliminate the bloat to improve your pages performance for both visitors and search engines. How Well Do You Know Your Blog's Traffic?by Mack CollierCan you tell someone how many visitors your blog gets every day? Do you know how many people access your blog via a feed on a daily basis? If so, great, but that's only the surface of understanding your blog's traffic. Puppy's Picks for 07/01/08by Jennifer LaycockA round up of what Jennifer thought was worth sharing today. From the latest numbers on how much businesses spend on search marketing each year to the need to dig deep in analytics to simple reminders of why social media matters, Jen offers up half a dozen articles worth your time. Don't Miss the Post Conference Twitter Networking Effectby Jennifer LaycockI think more people are beginning to understand the value of using Twitter during conferences to keep up with the conversation around the event and for meeting people at the show, but I think a lot of people are still failing to grasp the benefits of tying every day Twitter use to post-show networking. After attending Podcamp Ohio this past weekend, I'm reminded of just how useful Twitter is AFTER the show. Puppy's Picks 06/30/08by Jennifer LaycockA round up of what Jennifer thought was worth sharing today. From her first "Plurkshop" to social media espionage to a couple different viewpoints of creating online content, Jen offers up half a dozen articles worth your time. Local Search Interview with Hanan Lifshitz, CEO of Paloreby Paul JahnIt was just over a year ago when I chatted with Hanan Lifshitz of Palore for the first time. We've spoken a number of times since then, and he and the Palore team have done some great things in providing local business data. I'm very happy that Hanan has agreed to do an online interview. Five Sites You Can Use To Grow Your Blogby Mack CollierThink all you have to do is create great content, and readers will beat a path to your blogging front door? Think again. One of the best ways to grow your blog, is by participating on other social sites. Website Architecture Questions Answered, Part VIIIby Stoney deGeyterHere is another round of questions submitted to me during a Website Architecture webinar I gave a couple months back. I wasn't able to answer most of these questions before or during the presentation so I've been answering them in this Q&A series. This post covers questions regarding session IDs, repetitive vs. duplicate content, robots.txt files, navigation text, and maintaining link juice after a site re-design. Let's get to it.... The Value of 50 Sphinnsby Manoj JasraSphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others. If you're an Internet marketer with a blog you will quickly understand that the referrals your get from Sphinn are very often more qualified than ones from Digg or Reddit.... Attend the Free Webinar from Googleby Manoj JasraGoogle is planning on offering a free webinar on July 8th covering 3 of its most useful products: Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer and Google Webmaster Tools. This trio of tools is key to the success of any business. Analytics, Landing Page & A/B testing and website configuration for organic insight are an absolute must even if you don't use Google products.... Return to the Top of this Page 
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In response to... More People Share WOM Offline, But Does That Make Offline Stronger?This is great info Jennifer. After years running a small business in a metro area and tracking call data for chiropractic offices across the US, value can be found in both types of evangelists. Someone like yourself represents someone of great value in a business like mine. You have the ability to spread the message far and wide, and can be a great ally to many a small business owner. On the other hand, you work from home, which in my years of experience, is not the typical profile for the WOM mega referrer. Those people are hair stylists, office workers (especially secretarial), bartenders, and others that communicate with large numbers of local people frequently. A blend of the 2 qualities (interacting with lots of local people face-face and someone who is active online) can do wonders for many a small business owner. Take care of all your clients as if they possessed these qualities (put service first) and you may be amazed by the new business that rolls in. Michael Dorausch Return to the Top of this Page 
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SMALL BUSINESS ISSUESCompeting With Big Box StoresSEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION The Three Steps Of Search Engine Optimization Just A Drop In The Bucket How Many Hours Per DayPAY PER CLICK What Impact Will The Yahoo/Google Arrangement HaveONLINE MARKETING Comparing Google Analytics vs Host Stats Ebook Marketing How Do Web 2.0 Companies Make MoneyWEBSITE DEVELOPMENT Best Shopping Cart To UseCOMPUTER SOFTWARE Best Media PlayerPREVIOUS WEEK Small Business Forum Update For June 22, 2008 (If you like our search engine news, you'll love our small business news.) Return to the Top of this Page
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