McKenzie-Thorpe

Link Building Tip.

Here’s one of the strategies I use to build links from other sites. It uses a combination of article writing and Google Alerts.

Step One: Write some articles.

Start writing articles and ideally make sure they are related in some way to your business.

I suggest you prepare at least a couple of articles. Don’t write them in Microsoft Word. Try to use something like Notepad. I’ll explain why in a minute.

When you have a couple of articles of about 400 to 700 words each, you should then submit them to the article submission sites.

Here are a couple of sites I use.

www.articlemarketer.com

www.ezinearticles.com

Article submission sites are great for getting your articles distributed around the web. Not only do they send articles onto other article distribution networks, but lots of website owners come to these sites for content to put onto their own websites.

When you submit your article to one of these submission sites, you are allowed to add an “About the Author” paragraph to go with your article. It is here that you put a link back to your website using whatever keyword phrase you are trying to optimise on.
To submit your article it is simply a case of copy and paste from your prewritten articles. I tend to have an “About the Author” paragraph already prepared to copy & paste as well.

Now the reason I suggested using Notepad for your articles is because when you copy from Word it tends to bring with it certain formatting issues and these can cause you article to be rejected by the submission sites. Notepad doesn’t have this problem.

Step Two: Find out who’s using your article.

By using Google Alerts you can set up alerts for each of your articles. You basically tell Google to alert you if it finds your phrase being used on the web. I tend to use the article name as the alert phrase if it is fairly unique. Otherwise try using a distinctive line from your article.

Whenever Google finds your alert phrase, it sends you an email with the web address of the site where it found it.

You can now check out this site. If you think it will give you good traffic or pass on good page rank, you can contact the website owner. As they already have one of your articles then they probably like your material so you can either offer more articles (with links of course!) or even point them to pages on your site that they should link to because the content would be of interest to their visitors.

So there you have it. One of my tips for building links back to your site.

By the way, you might just like to put your website name into Google Alerts as you’ll be surprised how many alerts that can generate and you can find many places mentioning your website.

More top tips for you soon.

Regards,

Mike Seddon

More Website Promotion Guides

available at KKSmarts.com

Tags: Web Design, Information by stevecas
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So you want to make your website perform. Is your website doing what you want it to do? Are your customer views satisfactory? Are the clicks on your website producing sales? Just sit back for a minute and I will attempt to help you with answers to all 3 of those questions.

So you have the nicest looking website on the net, spent a ton of money for great hosting and graphics but that means nothing if enough people are not seeing it. Now if you haven’t heard the term search engine optimisation then you are living in a cave somewhere and just got on the Internet today. Well your going to be inundated with gurus and rookies telling you to optimise like this and that but I guess you should know what it is first.

You want to make your website perform by making it friendly with the search engines. remember people will be looking for your website on such search engines as Google, Yahoo, and MSN and them alone have the ability and power to boost your business like you would have never believed. The trick is to get your sites optimised thus giving them a greater chance to appear higher in the search engines. That’s how you will make your website perform.
People are creatures of habit and what we have learned is that when people type their phrase into a search engine they will usually look at the first few websites they see. For the most part your customers will find what they are looking for on the first page. Besides that its proven that only 10% of people click on to page 2 of a search engine. So you want to optimise and get your website on to page one of the search engines.

Well having high rankings has a few things that are a must for good search engine rankings. You have to have a well built site. just throwing anything up there just wont cut it. However your website company should offer features to help you make this happen.

Now the next and very important thing is keywords. These are words that are used to track back to your business. You want to have these in your website in the proper way so that the search engines find them. this results in your customer typing in those words and getting sent to your website. Now you do want to use words that are relevant to your business. Using race cars if you are selling diapers is going to hurt you.

Now you really want to make your website perform. Two Words. Back links. These are very important. They are simply your link showing up on other peoples sites. When the search engines find your links on other peoples sites it highly boosts your popularity thus raising your search engine ranking.
I find the best thing to do is submit my site to directories. You seem to get tons of back links but also as your popularity goes up you start to see more customers from these links. Its important to research the directories you are using to make sure they are respected and please don’t try and submit your business site to an auto directory. Chances are you will be accused of spamming and that’s it you are done on that directory.

One other thing that the search engines love is seeing a site that is being constantly updated. Search engines are high on seeing new content so this will greatly boost your rankings. So what does all this mean? Well a boost in your website ranking is obviously going to move it higher in the search engines.

Now these are just a few methods to help make your website perform. There are many other factors to boosting your website performance in the search engines. Remember there is always someone else trying to get that first spot so you are going to have to be continually working on improving your website to get it to the top.

Tags: Information by stevecas
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Marketing consultant Jim Symcox outlines the importance of marketing strategy and highlights the dangers of not having a marketing strategy in place!

Peter Drucker famously described marketing in the context of the firm with: “Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost centre.”

He further defined marketing by saying: “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Many SME firms approach to marketing is often one of “we can’t afford to spend money on marketing we need sales!” And of course they’re right. And they’re also wrong. They’re right because without the lifeblood of sales a company drops dead.

And they’re wrong because without the ability to get to the right customers that marketing can provide there is a lot of wasted effort in all areas of the business, not just sales.

Wasted Effort Without Marketing

These are examples of the many areas of a firm at risk or fail through the lack of a suitable marketing strategy:

• Customer prospecting
• Product or service development
• Sales
• Accounting
• Advertising
• After sales service
• Ad hoc marketing

Customer Prospecting

Many firms begin with a big idea they believe people will buy. Research into whether people want the product or service the company intends offering may be minimal or even non-existent.

Without a properly defined market to aim at, the business is tempted to go after all prospects they can think of. This leads to sales staff wasting their time following up with leads that either never convert or are wrong for the product they offer.

Product or Service Development

Often in the course of business customers inform companies of features or benefits of their product, or their competitor’s products, that they like or dislike.

If the company simply includes every good idea into their service or product they may be creating a product that 1% of their customers finds “exactly” what they want but makes the other 99% of customers switch to another company because of the increased price to cover the development costs.

A company without a strategy for their product means all ideas are equal and there is no way to categorise them as helpful to their customer and prospect base.

Equally companies can innovate based on what they believe is the next product their market wants. Without some market research and test marketing they could end up spending money on wild goose chases that cost money rather than make money.

Sales

Without marketing, the sales team produce their own disparate letters, proposals and sales direction.

This is an ineffective use of time. Sales people should be out meeting prospects and customers as often as possible. They should be winning the sales with prospects they know are right for the business.

As sales staff come into the company they need training to understand the market they’re selling to and proven ways they can meet and sell to prospects in that market.

Without this sales staff are doomed to re-invent the wheel and create sub-optimal sales tools.

And of course without a marketing strategy and the tactics that follow the sales staff don’t know the best prospects to go for or the best ways to approach them to win the business.

Accounting

It may seem surprising that a lack of marketing affects the accounts function. But accounts hold the key company data about which marketing campaigns, which sales tools, even which sales people have been most effective.

If there is no strategy in place before sales begin, how do you know what data you need to keep analysing your sales effectiveness?

All the data may be held in the accounting system but there may be no way to retrieve it in a useful form to allow the company to analyse the best performing campaigns, tools and sales people.

Identifying great campaigns means you can repeat them, or modify them for a slightly different set of prospects. Identifying great sales tools mean you can concentrate on using and polishing those. Identifying great sales people allows you to analyse what they do so that other sales people can follow their methods.

Advertising

Companies without a marketing strategy are in danger of giving the wrong message, using the wrong media for their market, using a blanket approach to cover all bases, and not tracking lead performance against advertising

The result? Advertising is wasted on markets that have no interest in the company’s product or even that the right market doesn’t get the full message and consequently ignores the product.

After sales service

Companies which haven’t defined how they tackle customer service could lose out on their ability to make more sales through their after sales service.

A customer may ring up to check where they can buy spare parts, or because they misunderstood the manual. In the first example a marketing strategy guides whether the company offers spares. If not, what should they tell their customers to leave them with a positive view of the company?

If the manual is misunderstood is it possible that other customers may face the same misunderstanding? Is it worth editing the manual immediately, or is there another way the company can provide the information to the customer until the manual is edited and re-produced?

These decisions need to be made with regard to the strategic marketing direction of the company. Otherwise staff make their own decisions based on what they believe is right and which may cost the company money without benefit to the company, the customer or the future customers.

Ad-hoc Marketing

There are so many forms of marketing that SME companies use on an ad-hoc basis:

• Advertising
• Direct mail
• Email
• PR
• Referrals
• Telesales
• Web sites
• Yellow pages

Yet without a marketing strategy every one of these tactics could be:

• hitting the wrong target completely
• sending an inconsistent message
• not telling the whole story

At the end the company says, “that was a waste of time, we won’t do that again.”

Is Just More Marketing The Solution?

The short answer to that question is - No! Because using marketing tactics in isolation, as we’ve just noted, brings the risk that they’re completely ineffective.

About the author: Jim Symcox runs marketing consultancy Acorn Service.

Tags: Information by stevecas
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4 steps to protect your computer

Step 1. Keep your firewall turned on

What is a firewall?

A firewall helps protect your computer from hackers who might try to delete information, crash your computer, or even steal your passwords or credit card numbers. Make sure your firewall is always turned on.

How to turn on your firewall

How to choose a firewall

Learn more about firewalls for your operating system

Step 2. Keep your operating system up-to-date

What are operating system updates?

High priority updates are critical to the security and reliability of your computer. They offer the latest protection against malicious online activities. Microsoft provides new updates, as necessary, on the second Tuesday of the month.

How to update your operating system

Microsoft security updates: Frequently asked questions

Learn about using Microsoft Update

Go to Microsoft Update

Step 3. Use updated antivirus software

What is antivirus software?

Viruses and spyware are two kinds of usually malicious software that you need to protect your computer against. You need antivirus technology to help prevent viruses, and you need to keep it regularly updated.

How to get antivirus software

Get regular antivirus scanning with Windows Live OneCare

Get a free safety scan

Learn about viruses

Learn more about virus protection for your operating system

Step 4. Use updated antispyware technology

What is antispyware software?

Viruses and spyware are two kinds of usually malicious software that you need to protect your computer against. You need antispyware technology to help prevent spyware, and you need to keep it regularly updated.

Get antispyware technology

Use Windows Defender, free antispyware for Windows XP SP2

Learn about spyware

Learn more about spyware protection for your operating system

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Firewall Security, Security Updates, Antivirus & Antispyware Software

Tags: Internet Security, IT Solutions, Information by stevecas
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14 Things Not to Do in the Search Engine Optimization Process

You might have already read different articles about the most important aspects that the SEO (search engine optimization) process involves but maybe you haven’t found enough about the most relevant mistakes that sites do when trying to optimize for search engines. This article’s main aim is to emphasize what not to do when building a site and to persuade that a good content is not always enough in order to attract visitors and vice versa.
SEO is one of the most commonly known acronym when it comes to making a Web site work. More and more people realize that just having a bunch of HTML code cluttered in the form of Web pages, under the generic name of “Web site”, but with no optimization whatsoever, is simply not enough.
A non-optimized site will probably fail at its most important task: that of reaching particular segments of the market and attracting prospective customers that would be nearly impossible to get to by means of “traditional” methods.
It is now common knowledge that an optimized site gains visibility. Based on the keywords for which you optimize your Web site, you can get high ranks in the search pages. Good SEO can change the way a Web site is seen by both spiders and visitors. Well-applied SEO techniques will lead to a much better site in terms of relevance, value, and maintainability.
Search Engine Optimization Mistakes
Many take the optimization process much too lightly. There are particular aspects that do not enjoy so much attention, either from lack of professionalism, or simply because they are not taken into account as seriously as they should. But most of these aspects are the ones that make the difference between a well-optimized Web site and a Web site that will not rank well (or not as well as expected).
Some of the most common search engine optimization mistakes are:
1. Lack of valuable and targeted content
The information that you offer on your Web site must have value for your prospects. Remember that a Web page must contain a series of specific terms and keywords in order to rank well in the SERPs.
Search engines analyze the content and then decide if it is well targeted. If your site is irrelevant, both Web users and search engines will ignore it.
Also, mind your grammar and spelling. Visitors might be driven away from your site, as grammar and spelling mistakes signify, most of the time, carelessness and will influence dramatically the trust that prospects put in you and the information (also services/products) that you offer.
2. No keyword research
At the basis of optimization process stands a good understanding of the market that you are targeting, and of the needs that you are trying to meet. Starting from this, thorough research is necessary to find the exact keywords that will work for your target customers. Don’t just slap in your HTML code all the keywords that you can think of.
You may find out (the hard way) that you have optimized your site for the wrong ones. Keyword research and analysis is one “must do” to which great attention should be paid.
3. Improper content for the title tag
Given that the title of any Web page weighs heavily in establishing its relevance to the search engines and that only about 65 characters (including spaces) or less in the title will be taken into account by spiders, bad management of this element can have disastrous results.
The mildest of them is not being ranked for the most important keywords (which have not been read by spiders), while the worst would be getting the site banned for what is referred to as “keyword stuffing” (when trying to squeeze too many keywords inside the tag). Read also: Best Practices for Title Tags .
4. Keyword density in the description meta tag
When talking about meta description tags, it is a bad approach to try to gather all the possible keywords in it, but rather try to summarize the web site’s content. The description should be a concise and appealing in order to better catch the eye. At the same time, keywords should be present but not in a abundant repetitive way.
5. Not using the heading tags (h1, h2) properly
The major search engines usually look for the titles on Web pages. It is from these places that they get information about the contents of the pages. Therefore, it is very important to pay attention to how these headings are written and what keywords they contain. Actually, they should be written keeping in mind that they should contain the most relevant keywords.
6. Not making use of the alt tag for pictures
Pictures cannot be indexed by spiders, but alt tags can. Keep in mind that they can contain brief descriptions of the pictures that you use, and that they make good places to include relevant keywords.
7. Using images and/or animations instead of text
Search engines spiders only feed on text. Images or Flash animation that is used to enhance the look of a Web page lack the information that search engines need. Whatever is expressed by images cannot be grasped by spiders, and therefore is irrelevant to them. Even if there’s a lot of text within an image or Flash animation, it will be disregarded for the above-mentioned reasons. Find out more about this topic by reading an article about Flash and Search Engine Optimization Process.
8. Hiding text
Text can be hidden from viewers employing the same color as the background. But, while people cant’ see this text, spiders still can. Such a practice, meant to offer more keywords to the search engines, but without making the page content sound awkward to Web surfers, can lead to penalties.
9. Using framesets
Remember that many search engines do not understand frames. Search engine spiders find is difficult to crawl Web sites that have frames, and indexing is thus compromised. If you absolutely must use frames, then at least add a noframes tag and include keyword-rich text. Search engines can only read what is found between the noframes tags of a frame-based Web site.
10. Using JavaScript extensively
It is common practice nowadays to make a Web site look as attractive to customers as possible. For this purpose, JavaScript elements are used, mainly for navigation within the site. While practical and nice to look at, JavaScript elements that provide links towards other pages of the site are not read by search engines, and thus they are not able to reference them. Read also the article Effective SEO through good code structure
11. Failure to use CSS
CSS is a tool that can help you reduce the file size of your Web pages and the amount of time they need to load. You will also get a cleaner code, allowing you to focus more on the text that is fed to the search engine spiders, and also making it easier to modify. CSS is not to be neglected in the optimization process, as it improves the readability of your pages. We also recommend the article Advantages of Using CSS in SEO Campaigns
12. Page cloaking
This is a technique that is meant to differentiate between the pages that the spiders will crawl, and those that will be seen by people. Common practice is to cloak pages that are extremely rich in keywords, therefore much to the linking of search engine, but that the Web site’s owner decides not to show to its visitors, or even keep it hidden from the competition’s eyes. The problem is that search engines want to index the same pages that Web users will be able to see, so that they can reference those pages. If cloaking is detected, the Web site risks being banned altogether.
13. Using splash pages
Splash pages, with their big images or Flash animations, contain only a single link, and a redirection to another Web page. Some of the problems with Splash pages are that they lack text, therefore there are no keywords that can be read by search engines, they have only one outbound link and usually no inbound link from another page pointing towards it, and then there is the redirection, which most search engines don’t really appreciate and don’t index.
14. Exchanging links with banned or promiscuous sites
You should be very cautious about the sites with which you choose to exchange links (it’s better to avoid link exchange schemes). Don’t just do it in order for your site to be found everywhere the Web. Link exchange with banned/promiscuous sites is frowned upon. Mind you, it influences your credibility and may result in penalties for your site.
Conclusion
A Web site that has not undergone a SEO process is bound to fail at reaching the right clientele. Search engine optimization may not be an easy task, but it is well worth the effort.
Consider this article as a series of SEO tips about what not to do if you want your Web site to rank well in the SERPs. Be aware that a Web site must be persuasive enough to inspire confidence and credibility and to entice the customer to make a purchase.
All the elements of your site, be them images or text, must complement one another. Some research and a little bit of work will prevent you from making the above-mentioned search engine optimization mistakes (and maybe others too) and may make your way to success a lot smoother.

Tags: Information by stevecas
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Key Wording Your Web
Site With Natural Language
By Rusty Ford (c) 2007

Ever since the beginning of search engines there has been the discussion of key wording. Obviously your web page has to be about something and you want the search engine to reflect that in its results. In the early days of search engines you could put words or phrases anywhere on a page and show up in the results. People who just wanted traffíc would get a líst of the most popular used keywords and just put them on a page. The page could have been about toilets but show up in search results about Hollywood celebrities. In those days finding what you wanted was a daunting task. So the search engines started looking at natural language. Each year they have become more sophisticated about how they look at natural language.

The first thing they did was to stop looking at keyword meta tags. Too often people were putting keywords in that did not match their page. Next they started punishing people for putting strings of key words together, such as “baseball baseball baseball”. Next they paid attention to whether or not they were used in a sentence. Then they started evaluating the content of the page to see what it was about. By this time they were getting really accurate in their search results. But as long as there are search engines people will try to fool them. For the last couple of years search engine optimization people have promoted keyword stuffing. This is where you put the keyword in the text as often as you can fit it in.

A new generation of natural language algorithms has been developed by the major search engines to combat this. Now for the first time we are hearing the use of the term natural language. Now search engines look at the way that a term is used. They compare the use of the term in the context of how it is used. This example is a little extreme, but we have all seen pages written like this.

“I bought baseball cards for my friend the baseball card lover. He was so happy to get the baseball cards and he looked at baseball cards. Then he showed these baseball cards to all his friends that had baseball cards.”

This is an example of how the term baseball card was used outside of natural language. In natural language you would not refer to your friend as the baseball card lover. In later uses you would have used the term “them” to describe the baseball cards. The sentence would look like “He was so happy to get them that he took the time to look at each one”.

It is still important to get your keywords or keyword phrases on the page regularly. Care needs to be given on how they are used. It is important to have them in complete sentences and not in an abnormal place in the context of a paragraph. Here are some guidelines you might consider. No one knows the exact algorithms that the search engines use and they all have different ones. But, you can presume that they are based on the natural use of language so the following recommendations are based on basic grammar and the normal use of language. Here are some examples of natural use of key words.

1. It is natural to have your keywords in your title and description meta tags. These tell what your page is about and your page should be about the same thing as your keywords are.

2. It is natural to have your keywords in your heading tags. Heading tags should be used as chapter headings to different sections of a page.

3. It is natural to have your keywords in the first sentence.

4. It can be natural to have your keywords appear once in most paragraphs.

5. It can be natural to have your keywords appear more than once in a paragraph but not every paragraph. You need to make sure that it fits well and does not sound like it was just stuck in there.

Here are some examples of non-natural uses of keywords.

1. It is not natural to have your key words more than once in your title or description.

2. It is not natural to have your key words show up more than once in a sentence. There are times that this could be natural, but it would probably be better to make it into two sentences.

3. It is not natural for the same sentence to appear in several different paragraphs.

4. In a short paragraph, it is not natural for your keywords to show up more than twice. In a paragraph over 6 sentences long this may not hold true. (I publish health related web pages and read hundreds of health articles a month. There are times that I will see a term used 3 times in a long paragraph and almost nevër in a short one. 5. It is not natural to have keywords used back to back in a sentence. It is not typical to have one sentence end in a word and the next sentence to begin with it.

6. It is not natural to have every sentence begin with the same word or phrase.

Following these guidelines may help you with search engine positioning and it will definitely make your page more enjoyable for your visitors.

Tags: Information by stevecas
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McKenzie-Thorpe are supporting the campaign to bring back a cinema to Market Harborough.

The old Ritz cinema opened in 1939 on Northampton Road and was closed in 1978 when cinema attendance was low across the UK. As happened to many picture houses, the Ritz became a bingo hall. Most recently it became a Kwik Save store ? and is now sitting empty.

The current owners of the site want to demolish this historic building and put up flats on the land. The town has plenty of new buildings, plenty of flats ? what we want is it to be turned back into a cinema!

Since the Ritz was closed the towns? population has grown and cinema attendance has grown across the country with far more family friendly movies being released. People from Harborough have to drive 30 minutes to Kettering, Rugby, Northampton or Leicester to see the latest releases ? the town and surrounding villages are big enough to support a cinema BUT if we don?t act now the building will be knocked down.

The time is right for Harborough to have a cinema again!

How can you help? Sign up - Sign the petition and have your voice heard.

Look out - Keep an eye on the cinema blog ? they will keep you updated with any developments.

Help out ? if you feel strongly, get in touch and join us to stop this building being destroyed and support the return of a cinema to the town.

Write to the council; write to HFM and The Harborough Mail.

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If you have a loyal customer base, but haven’t used a regularly scheduled newsletter to communicate with then, then its time to develop a monthly newsletter. Electronic newsletters are a great way to share information, promote your products, and solicit feedback from your most important customers. If you want to develop effective newsletters, you’ll need to follow these seven proven tips for creating winning newsletters.

1. Choose a Theme.

The largest pitfall to developing an effective newsletter is the lack of a theme. When creating newsletters on a regular basis (ex: monthly), select a unique theme every month that appeals to your audience. Once you have identified a theme, be sure that your newsletter content focuses on that specific theme throughout its content. This creates a newsletter that is meaningful and positions your company as a meaningful source of information.

2. Allow for Easy Scanning.

If newsletter subscribers are unable to scan your newsletter, you stand a good chance of losing them. The first few seconds are your most important so make them count. Use big, bold headlines, and article descriptions, providing links to the full article or related content areas. By providing article introductions versus an entire article, you make it easier for readers to view your entire newsletter while allowing them to zero in on the content that has the greatest appeal.

3. Use Graphics.

Producing a newsletter that’s wall-to-wall text will not be able to keep the interest of even your most savvy reader. Interject graphics, product photos, pictures, and so on throughout your newsletter. This will break up those large blocks of content increase your newsletter’s appeal. Make sure your graphics include links to the articles or products they reference as Internet browsers tend to click on pictures or graphics presented online.

4. Include Product or Service Information.

Internet users are very comfortable with product promotion especially when receiving free information or content. They understand that advertising pays the bill and is common among electronic newsletters. So use this information to your advantage. In each newsletter, discuss a featured product or provide a special offer to your newsletter readers. Products or services that are closely aligned with the theme of your newsletter can be ideal. As a rule of thumb, keep the number of products you promote three or less.

5. Proof Your Work.

When creating an electronic newsletter, you should always check your work. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation should be perfect. When users find these types of errors, it signals a lack of care - causing doubt as to the amount of effort used when developing the content presented. The result could very well be an increase in those who unsubscribe or a reduction in overall click-through rates.

6. Be Viral.

Never assume that the person reading your newsletter signed up for it directly. In fact, you should encourage your readers to forward the newsletter to others who may be interested in the content you’re providing. Make your newsletter, and each volume of your newsletter, accessible via your website. Additionally, make it easy for new users to sign up through a link in each edition of your newsletter. When users forward a copy to a friend, they can easily subscribe.

7. Don’t Forget Can-SPAM.

In the footer of your newsletter, include your company name, address, and contact information. Inform users why they are receiving your newsletter and how than can unsubscribe. Honor all unsubscribe requests within the alloted 10 day requirement. By doing so you are meeting current standards and you’ll keep your newsletter subscription list clean.

These newsletter development tips can help you deliver a valuable newsletter that gets read and acted upon. Don’t be afraid to experiment and keep relevant content the main focal point of your newsletter. As your newsletters become more sophisticated don’t lose site of the basic principles. The tried and true is often the best way to be successful!

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. He has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media.

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While it’s true that “nobody’s perfect,” I think the same goes for small business web sites as well - no web site is absolutely perfect. Even the best of the best often have room for improvement!

But there are some basic web site mistakes that many small companies make that can end up hurting business instead of helping it. Do any of these mistakes show up on your web site?

- Not enough content.

Often, small businesses will put minimal information along with their contact information on their web sites and think that’s probably good enough. But today’s web visitors are looking for something more, and lots of good quality content is a great way to deliver value to your visitors and build credibility for your business.

- Old or outdated content.

If you want visitors and search engines to pay attention to your web site, you need to keep adding new content and updating the existing information on your web site regularly. If your site never changes, the search engines will ignore your site, and visitors will not have a reason to come back. It’s also unlikely that visitors will recommend your site to their friends and colleagues, too.

- Not being search engine friendly.

Speaking of search engines, what happens if a search engine spider visits your site, but can’t read your web pages? Nothing happens, and that’s a problem. If a search engine spider cannot read your web pages, it just moves on to the next site, and your information is completely ignored. Your web site must be search engine friendly in order to be included in the search engine databases.

- Not monitoring your site in the search engines.

Even if your web site is search engine friendly, there are constant changes going on with the search engines and also with your competitors. If you aren’t monitoring how your site is performing in the search engines, how will you know if these changes are affecting your rankings or if you are losing traffic? Monitoring your web site means that you can react to changes and take appropriate steps to make sure your site shows up in the search results and that web traffic keeps flowing.

- The site is built using Frames or Flash.

Not too many web sites still make this mistake, but there are still some small business web sites out there using one or both of these methods. Sites built with Frames or Flash intro pages cannot easily be read by the search engines, and web visitors typically hate using them as well. These are older web techniques that don’t reflect well on your business, they don’t perform well in the search engines, and today’s web visitors expect better.

Making your web site the best it can be is a very effective and affordable marketing option for most small businesses. Of all the other types of advertising and marketing that you do each year, your web site has the potential to be seen by more customers, can continue to promote your company perpetually through links, is always accessible to customers, and can instantly reflect changes and provide fresh information to draw people in.

Avoiding basic web site mistakes will help your site perform better, making it a “perfect” marketing strategy for your small business.

Lauren Hobson is the Editor of Biz Talk Newsletter and the Five Sparrows Marketing Blog from Five Sparrows, LLC. Read the most recent Five Sparrows articles on small business websites and marketing or subscribe at www.fivesparrows.com/biztalk.

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Why Truth and Credibility Must Necessarily Guide Marketing Strategy in an Era of Informed Skepticism

By Lynn Upshaw
Published: July 30, 2007

While marketers grapple with the usual challenges — competition, accountability, wrangling new technologies — perhaps they should be more concerned with a far more powerful phenomenon: informed skepticism. In a world where buyers are continuously in touch with other buyers and claims are publicly deconstructed by anyone and everyone, marketers’ toughest job may be to simply convince buyers that they speak the truth. In such a world, marketing integrity is not just a virtue; it is a driver of choice.

This is a very thought provoking article and you can read the full article here

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