One of the first questions I'm almost always asked is why I prefer blogs over old-style static (conventional) web sites? Potential clients especially want to know "What's in it for me?". To answer any of these questions, I think you really have to stand back and take a look at how the Internet has been changing over the years. Initially, web sites were a venue where information was displayed. You'd get a web developer (or even a designer), to create the code for your site, the content would be included and the site launched. It was a static environment, meaning the content was not changing. From time to time, a site would be redesigned and relaunched. In essence, these types of static sites were an online brochure. We can call them "static information sites". They were appealing for a few reasons, among them: They were cheaper than print media. A large audience was reached. Customized branding on the Internet, helped with marketing initiatives. These static informational sites were coded in a way where the code and the content were combined. This made it more difficult to exchange data. To illustrate this, and how the webscape has changed, please see the video below: As is evident in ...

One of the most common things I'm asked by new blog owners is "What do I do, what now?" It seems that much of this is borne out of the old fashioned concept that a web site is akin to an online version of your brochure. Think about this for a moment... Many of us have web sites that host page after page of static content (that is, content which never changes), yet we never give a thought that there's no incentive to revisit the site after the reader has seen it. (After all that would be like watching the same television program again, and again... It gets old and boring). So it seems when many of us move to blogging type sites, it's sometimes hard to mentally leap the barrier of "static" to dynamic (dynamic meaning content that changes). Blogs are something that engages your readers, they (blogs) facilitate two way communication between you and your readers (who, for business operators, are potential clients). All to often I notice new blog owners place some content on the blog and then sit and wait for traffic. Invariably I often get a message or phone call asking what can be done as ...

Are you receiving the amount of Google referred traffic you'd like? The answer is probably that you're not. When talking with clients, the subject of Google traffic and SEO is almost always raised. For new blogs (or web sites), garnering search engine traffic is understandably difficult. What can you do to improve your blog's SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? Below are some of the issues and activities that I have found most helpful. In retrospect, I'm posting them here as I find I often bring these up in (almost) daily discussions. Before we get to the good stuff, it's important to touch on some of the issues which negatively impact your SEO and resulting traffic. The following are issues I encounter almost all of the time (and mostly because the blog owner does not realize the following issues). Negative SEO Issues: Make sure you retain the services of a professional web hosting provider. If the server hosting your account is often unavailable, that means Googlebot also cannot access it. The more often this occurs, the less traffic will be referred to you (because your blog will not be as prominent in search results, as it could be). Don't participate in "keyword stuffing" when writing your ...

Well, it happened again, I had a major PC systems failure (Windows). My valuable business data (all of it)  was corrupt, my PC could not boot - I couldn't even download my email! But was I worried? No! Which is probably an unexpected answer when all your client records are destroyed, right? Well, there's a hook to this story, some time ago I touched on the subject of disaster recovery with an earlier post about saving your data when disaster strikes. In that post we explored the issue of software and hardware solutions. In my case I invested in an affordable network storage unit. It's a proactive solution because all my data is regularly duplicated (automatically - I don't have to do anything) to the network accessible storage unit. After reinstalling a robust operating system (this was my last remaining Windows based PC, now every PC is Linux - Including this one), all I had to do was copy the data back off the storage unit. It even had all my email, email settings, folders, calender, etc. (I was using Thunderbird as the email client as I found I could do much more with it than with other email clients - ...

Ever search for something in Google and found your content on another site? I have, often. One of the more damaging issues to your blog is when your copyrighted content is stolen and placed on another blog - and here's the kicker - the content on the other blog has a higher pagerank than yours and is ahead of you in the search results! Quite frankly that's terrible as it negatively impacts your blog. Not to mention the annoyance when you note that the blog stealing your content appears to be earning advertising revenue, with excessive ads plastered all around it. I've posted about this subject before in "How to Deter Scrapers and Hotlinkers", which discusses a bit more of the hands-on and some web based tools you can use to help protect your content. Many of us have may have read all sorts of articles and other blog posts that delve into the legalities, copyright laws, rights and so forth. That's not something I'm going to discuss as I think there's too much discussion (and not enough action). If not, just take a look on Google and you'll find a plethora of posts on the subject. The fact of the matter ...