Need a Web Site You Can Maintain Yourself?

Blogs used to be a great way to help you add fresh content to your site and help increase your visibility. They used to be used in addition to your regular Web site. Advances in content management have blurred the lines between conventional sites and blogs. Blogging programs have evolved into the most powerful and flexible systems available.

WordPress is a leading 'blog' program and it's completely free! Check out these great features:

• You can create static pages and sections making it appear virtually the same as any other site.
• It's great for new Web site owners who want to manage their own sites WITHOUT learning HTML code.
• Easily allows you to take advantage of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) opportunities
• Material can be easily categorized allowing effortless structure. A more orderly site will perform better with the search engine spiders. Search engines are all about structure. :-)
• Categories let you effectively group relevant material together by creating URLs with anchor text (text that uses your keywords) and relevant internal links. This makes your site more easily crawled by the search engines.

Fresh Content
WordPress is specifically designed to handle the frequent creation of content. You can even create multiple updates (or posts) and schedule them to be published at a later date. So if you're inspired and get a bunch of content cranked out, you can schedule your blog to update automatically! This is great for vacations or times you are away from your office. Your site can continue to be updated with fresh content even though you're away. Making regular updates to your site will get it crawled more often.

Link Building
The nature of blogs and the blogging community lends itself to link trades more often than with a regular Web site. Other bloggers love to find related blogs to link to and recommend.

Social Interaction Via Comments
Commenting plays a big role in link sharing with other blogs. Being an active participant and commenting on others' blogs, naturally improves visibility. A feature I particularly like is the ability to turn off the comment option at the page level. So if there is a page where you don't want people to be able to comment, just turn off the option and it becomes a static page.

Viral 'Word-of-Mouth' with RSS
With a blog, RSS is automatic and built right in. With this feature, your blog can be included in blog directories and blog-specific search engines.

WordPress is another easy to use, affordable tool for the small business owner! It allows you to simplify your site maintenance and improvements. The beauty is that you will be able to more easily and quickly manage your site, spend less $'s on a Web master, have greater control, not have to wait on another person's schedule, and realize the savings over time.

If you have a hobby or a small site idea - why not give WordPress a try? Get started here.
To see an example of a site created using the free version of WordPress, visit PaulaBonelli.com.

Until next time - Ciao!

iPad and Android and Buzz - oh my!

Ever want to go back to the simpler days of lions and tigers and bears?! (Wizard of Oz). I sure do! Getting to the Emerald City would have been a piece of cake compared to keeping up with today's technological advances.

The lightning fast updates to technology get my head a-spinnin'. While I think most of these devices are REALLY COOL, I get exhausted thinking about how I'm going to get up-to-speed. Or if I want to. And just what should I choose from the menu of mobile and portable devices? And HOW CONNECTED DO I REALLY WANT TO BE?! Can I justify it for business? Cuz I sure can't for personal use.

OK so I'm ranting a bit, but it is overwhelming for this middle-aged gal. [That was hard to type "middle-aged" - I don't feel it but I suppose it's what I really am :-)]. I still haven't mastered everything my old Samsung phone can do.

If you are a techie and have and love these new devices - you have a ton of options that can streamline and simplify business across the places you are online. Android and iPhone have a TON of applications that can let you do just about anything from your mobile device. I'm a Google user and they have been keeping up quite nicely giving easy access to your advertising accounts, maintaining your social accounts, blogs, etc. right from your mobile. Now that's what I need so when I want to be away from my office, I can still keep up with my emails and even make posts to my blog, Twitter and Facebook account with one quick update. Pretty awesome!

Now I just have to fork over the $'s for a device that can do all this (anywhere from $100 to $300), then pay for the required data plan (an easy $30 or more extra each month to my current plan price), and then figure out how to use it to connect to all of these accounts. You can bet I'll screw it up - just like the other day when somehow my previous blog updates began spitting out one right after the other to all of you on my subscriber list! Grrr - that's the downside I'm not fond of. But you know what? I'm sure it's USER ERROR and NOT the technology!

I hope this finds you embracing the new technology just a little bit. I also hope you have a terrific day! As always, if there is a question you have, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. Leave me a comment here or reply to the email you received about this blog update.

Ciao, Paula

P.S. Here's additional links to the details of what iPad, Android and Buzz are if you're really interested! :-)
iPad - tablet-sized computing device, developed by Apple, meant for internet browsing, media consumption and light content creation
Android - Google software for mobile devices that includes an operating system and key applications and games for Android devices
Buzz - Google social networking and messaging tool designed to integrate into the email program, GMail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox.

Craft Email Messages That Get Response

MarketingSherpa has really been a good resource for me when it comes to optimizing Web site landing pages and emails. They conduct research among B-to-C and B-to-B businesses and share the results and trends. It's always very insightful!

Their latest research report shows how to optimize email response. Best of all, you can access The Five Best Ways to Optimize Email Response free!

If you learn by reading, you can download the PDF (electronic document; open and read online or save to your computer). If you prefer learning by listening, you can download the audio version. Or if you learn best by watching, you can view the webinar online.

I hope you find it useful in your email marketing campaigns.

What?! You aren't doing any kind of regular email marketing? Get started now! :-) It really is the best way to begin a conversation with a customer and to keep it going. Not everyone is ready to buy from you the first time they visit your store or Web site.

If you are just beginning and have a low volume of addresses, Vertical Response it your best bet - you can pay as you go and costs about 1.5 cents per email address. Get more information and sign up here: Vertical Response

If you need a more robust experience where you can set up a series of automatic response emails, check out AWeber.

For additional information about these 2 and one other email marketing solution, visit this page of my site: DIY Email Marketing

Ciao, Paula

Understanding Google's PageRank

First, let me start with the definition of PageRank (PR) according to Wikipedia...a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting...
The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, but the PageRank process has been patented to Stanford University, not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent.

Here's an elementary explanation of how Google determines your PR. (In reality, it's anything but elementary. Google doesn't fully share how they determine this.) A link from one page to another is a 'vote' for that page. But not all votes are equal. Votes from higher quality pages are weighed more heavily. Other factors in the ranking process include the relevance of keywords on a page and the actual traffic to the page among many other factors. Understanding the basics of PageRank is a part of a good link building campaign. But don't fixate on it, just use it to build a reputation for your site.

You can build good PR by getting quality links coming in to your site. Quality links means links from relevant, authoritative sites in your industry. This, in turn, "passes" authority to your site. Don't bother linking to any sites that are NOT related to what your site is about. They simply won't pass any authority, you will be wasting your time, and they could damage your reputation if they are a low quality site. Getting relevant, high quality, incoming links is one of the most affordable SEO methods at your disposal. It just takes some time. Don't try to get to a specific number, you just want to improve it.

Just like creating unique META data will help any page of your site get listed, each page in your site can obtain PR. Remember...the search engines index PAGES, not SITES. Link to the most relevant page of your site; not necessarily your home page. Ex. You have a gardening site that sells many gardening tools, has gardening information, etc. You find a good site that sells spades and you contact them for a link. You'll want their link to your site to go to a page that is as closely related to spades as possible...not a generic page that focuses on multiple products or unrelated information.

PR is ranked on a scale from 0 to 10.
Sites from 0 - 2 = newer site with few incoming links
Sites from 3 - 5 = more established site with more links
Sites ranked 6 and above = well established site with many high quality links
There are very few sites that have ranks from 7 - 10. They are usually large, highly trafficked sites with longevity in the search engines. Don't expect any PR for at least the first few months after a new site is launched. You have to 'play the game' for awhile before Google will assign a PR to your page, if at all.

Where do I find my site's PR?
There are many tools online; these are all free -
PRChecker.info
Free-Pagerank-Checker.com

I use a FireFox add-on called SearchStatus. With this add-on there is a toolbar added to my browser that shows the PageRank and Alexa Rank of the site I'm browsing. To find this add-on, go to "Tools/Add-ons" (when your browser is open) and search for it by name.

The Google toolbar also has a PageRank function you can enable. You can download it here: http://toolbar.google.com.

For those of you with bricks-and-mortar stores, consider linking to other business owner's sites in your local area, if you feel you have some of the same customers and can offer each others' customers value. It's a great way for local customers to find you.

Now you are armed with information [knowledge! and knowledge is power :-)], so go get some links!

Ciao for now, Paula

Who Will Have Access to Your Digital Data If You Die?

Believe me, I've really been thinking about this lately! My husband and I have been chatting about updating our will now that our children are grown. It's such a lot to think about and we need to add our digital data to the picture also.

I know many of you that follow this blog are also small businesses with either just a few employees or you are THE solo owner/operator. Who will be able to carry on if you are not around? We have and need passwords for EVERYTHING digital these days. And, if you are wise about protecting your digital footprint and identity, you DON'T have the same password for everything. PLEEEEAAASE tell me you don't! So, what happens if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Do you have a plan?

I've always been careful about giving sensitive client information to another person within the client's company should I become inaccessible. BUT, I haven't been good about seeing that my own digital data is located somewhere with instructions for someone to carry on. Yikes...passwords for absolutely everything I do will need to be recorded in a safe place - Web hosts, Web sites, email accounts, password-protected files on my computer, social media accounts, bank accounts - and the list goes on!

I'm not sure what the answer is for me yet, but you can read more about ways to accomplish this for your business at the Inc. Magazine Web site.
Passing on Your Digital Data