Creating your Contact List

So, you are about to create the organ that for your business eternity, will be your lifeline. Your heart if you will. Is there a method to this madness? Absolutely. With all of the Social Networking tools available to you in today's market, Contacts are a must. Many people ask me the same question over and over again. "Can't I just dump them in all of the networks, wait until they respond to me and then just forget them until I need them again?" Sure you can. Just like many of us do with our physical heart. Don't exercise it, keep putting the wrong things in your diet, destroy your arteries, valves, and whatever else comes with not taking care of your lifeline.

How many of you have outlook contacts with no photos of your contact? Do it! You will be so surprised at how you think more of your contacts and how they become more personal to you. Someone may email you from awhile back, seeing the photo will spark memories which in turn will allow you to promote better customer service.

How about LinkedIn? LinkedIn has some very innovative ideas when it comes to connecting. You can really up the score if you can learn how to look into the minds of the people you want to connect with. What does that mean? Say you really want to connect with this really awesome interior decorator. You tried for weeks and still can't get the connection. Maybe the decorator just doesn't visit his/her LinkedIn that much or maybe they don't see the importance of connecting with you. Tackle some of their connections. Many people on LinkedIn will connect with anyone. If you get the connections, the interior designer may connect with you just because your connected with some of his/her connections. Just like invitations to a party back in your hey days. It is human nature....we just have to find the right avenue to attack what we want.

Facebook is just like LinkedIn basically. I can't tell you how many times I get a message from someone saying...."I am not sure how we are friends, maybe we have met before, but anyway, I am looking for someone to run my online campaigns. Can we talk? hmmm..Well of course we can.

Use your contacts actively. Even if it just to say hi.

Congratulations on the opening of the Traverse City, Michigan Area

iWebLogic had been looking at Traverse City for awhile now. We were trying to understand how our internet services would fit in the area and how we bring a positive affect on the entire community. Traverse City and surrounding areas have top-notch tourist attractions and have amazing views of beautiful scenery. We looking forward in serving the small businesses that call Traverse City home. Visit our site for further information on our services.
Traverse City Web Design with iWebLogic

Firefox Freezing Up?

A few months ago I waled into my office and realized my firefox had updated. This sort of gives me an uneasy feeling. Everytime I have an update, I am usually spending time getting used to the new look, feel, or functionality. For a developer that really starts to get old. Found this article and thought I would share it. Really helps.

http://www.technogadge.com/how-to-stop-firefox-plugin-container-exe-process/

Social Media Marketing for the "Do-It-Yourselfers"

IwebLogic Web Deisgn

1. Find the audience; understand their behaviors, preferences, methods of publishing, and sharing. Most companies that are involved with the social media connection to their customers, get a good sense of where to start. Many companies are ahead of the game by tracking their audience via social media monitoring. Watching for keywords, conversations and influencers.

2. Define your objectives. Objectives are often driven by marketing or sales, and SEO has long been directly accountable to substantial improvements in web sales. Social media is not direct marketing though, so different objectives and measurements apply. The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search. It is attraction sales at it's best. Social content can boost links to website content, improving search traffic and online sales.

3. Establish a game plan. The game plan for reaching objectives in a combined SEO and social media effort will often focus on content and interaction, since it is content that people discover and share. Whether a keyword-focused strategy for reaching goals means publishing new content or creating an opportunity for consumer-generated content, it must involve proactive promotion and easy sharing amongst members of the community.

4. Create a tactical mix. The tactical mix for a social media marketing effort is based on doing the homework of finding where the desired audience spends its time interacting with and sharing content. Whatever the tactical mix is, it’s an investment in time and relationships – not a short term “link dump” to promote optimized link bait. Much of the content creation and promotion for a social media marketing effort happens within the tactical mix and, of course, that means optimizing content for keywords.

Whether content is created by marketers as part of a social destination like a niche community or a promotion vehicle such as an interactive ad, keyword glossaries become useful for writing headlines, deciding on anchor text for links and outreach activities like blogger relations.

5. Measure your goals. Goals measurement should roll up to the specific objectives, both direct and indirect. Leveraging both social media monitoring services as well as web analytics can provide marketers with the insight to improve results. Radian6 and Webtrends have recently announced a partnership that will bring web analytics and social media analytics together all in one interface. In the meantime, marketers can use specific measurement tools to monitor the effect of their social web participation as well as the search engine performance of SEO efforts.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) for the "Do-It-Yourselfers"

A serious challenge to professional web designers as well as all you “Do-It-Yourselfers” is making your website relevant to your product and/or service. Google controls over 90% of search traffic alone, but let’s not forget about Bing and others. Having said that, if we just focus on the basic principles of Search Engine Optimization, we can help grow our web-site. The search engine optimization tools that we at iWebLogic use have many different aspects and we really dial into hundreds of avenues when dealing with Search Engine Optimization. There is one constant scenario we look at, and that is the Basic Principles of Search Engine Optimization. Without starting with these principles set in place, Search Engine Optimization campaigns would have a very low success rate.

Here are 9 things, a checklist if you will, for you to learn, perform, or just insure that your web-site designer has been implementing is his/her campaign.

1. Add Google Analytics to each page

Be careful, you can really get overwhelmed with all of the website tracking variables in the application. Just for basic use though, it is pretty simple to understand. The program will show you number of website visits, website pages visited, how long a viewer stayed on a particular web page, and many other things, such as keyword usage, Search Engine sources used, etc..

2. Reduce Code Jibberish

Google stays on the prowl for relevant and unique website content. JavaScript and CSS in the HTML code make it harder for them to find it. All scripts and CSS files should be added as external files to reduce the time it takes for search engine spiders to find the actual content as well as reducing the code-to-content ratio. Remember that excessive code not only slows the page’s loading time, but it also increases the possibility of coding errors that, whilst they may have no direct impact on the site’s SEO, may still cause difficulty for the search engine spiders. This is more for you to insure your developer understands or if you are tackling building a site yourself.

3. Add a blog

Adding a blog to any site gives your clients the opportunity to add fresh content easily and regularly. Search engines love fresh content and if you encourage your client to update the blog on at least a weekly basis, or hopefully even more regularly, you will be giving them a distinct SEO advantage. You can explain to your client that blogs naturally attract search engine traffic and they can take advantage of this by not only adding content as often as possible, but to allow visitors to ask questions or leave comments.
The interactivity of the blog also adds value to the site and can also increase the likelihood of potential customers social bookmarking it and sharing it their social networks, but remember to look out for spam comments and to remove anything that looks like duplicate content.
Blogs also increase the size of the website over time and this can provide a major SEO benefit in the form of an increase in website authority and a higher number of pages to leverage with internal links.

4. Make each page unique

Google ranks the relevance of each website according to the content it contains, and is always seeking relevant content not contained anywhere else on the Internet. This means that the content of every page needs to be completely different not just from any other site on the Web, but also any other page on the same site. This raises the issue of duplicate content, the dread of all site owners.
Put simply, if you publish any content that appears somewhere else on the Internet, you run the risk of being ignored by search engines because the algorithm will be looking for content that sets your site apart.
Unique content removes any such impediments from your site and your design standards will support your clients’ SEO. It is also worthwhile pointing out that wherever you include snippets of information contained on other pages within the site to tempt the visitor to follow the link, you run the risk of being penalised for duplicate content. So be careful of the wording used in the snippets so that it provides a summary without repeating any of the words actually used.

5. Use meta description tags

META Description tags are what appear in the search engine results pages – they give the web surfer an overview of what the site is about. Put your marketer’s hat on and write a description that convinces visitors to click on the result. This is your site’s first opportunity to attract visitors, so it’s vital that you give your client the best chance of standing out from the other results.
Remember, Google also uses meta description tags to differentiate web pages (although not as much as title tags) so you also need to be careful to describe each page differently to avoid any duplicate content issues. Including free offers, guarantees and a phone number can improve the click through rate on your clients’ SEO ranking.
Make sure to limit the description tags to 160 characters in length, including spaces.

6. Remove repetitive wording from the website layout

It’s worth repeating again that unique content is vital to the success of any site’s SEO. When designing a website layout for a client it is tempting to include information such as copyright text, contact details and maybe even company mottos on every page of the site. If there is not enough unique content on every page then you run the risk of your client’s site being penalised for duplicate content. That’s why it’s important to remove such repetitive wording from the website layout so that the true informational content of the site is not diluted in any way.

7. Add footer links to every page

Linking between web pages using plain text links, with the target SEO keywords in the anchor text, can provide a significant boost to your clients’ SEO rankings. The problem is that most good website designs use graphical, JavaScript or Flash navigation that don’t use anchor text. If this is the case, you can use footer links to link between your pages, with the keywords you want to rank for within the anchor text of the links.

8. Create a separate web page for each keyword or keyword phrase

The best way for a website to rank for a particular keyword phrase is to create a web page targeted to that phrase with the keywords in the TITLE tag, META description tags, body copy and URL. This means that it is critically important to create a separate web page for each product or service that the client sells, as well as category pages if they are needed. A dedicated page for each product or service will also ensure a good user experience as they will land directly on this page from the search engine results, making it much easier for them to buy online or submit a form for more information.

9. Use keyword rich title tags on each page

TITLE tags appear in the title bar of the browser and are one of the factors used by search engines to determine the content of your page. Rather than including the company name in the TITLE tag, use the keywords that your client wants to rank for. This will give your client a solid advantage for ranking in the search engines. Make sure to limit the TITLE tags to 60 characters in length, including spaces, so that the full text of the title tags appears in the search engine rankings and doesn’t get cut-off by Google.
By integrating all of the above suggestions into each of your website design projects, you will give your clients the best possible chance of generating sales and profits from search engine rankings.

We wish you Great Success! For any other questions about the above tips or our services....

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How to register a Domain

Registering a domain name builds your credibility on the Internet. Use domain names to support your business and assist in creating a dynamic online presence. Your domain name establishes your online identity and increases branding, marketing and communication opportunities. Register multiple domain names to:

Keep your competition from registering a domain name that draws customers away from you.
Promote the products and services you offer.
Drive more traffic to your website.
Enjoy more opportunities to market to — and be listed on — search engines.
Create distinct advertising strategies to reach different target markets.
Provide customers more ways to find you on the Internet.
Capture common misspellings of your domain name, instead of sending visitors to an error page.
Protect your brand and online identity from unsavory parties.

To get started, check to see if the domain name you want is available. If available, register the domain name for a period of time you specify during the checkout process.
Checking a Domain Name's Availability

Go to our Home Page.
In the Domain Name Search field, enter the domain name you want to register, and then select the domain name extension from the list.
Click GO.

If the domain name you requested is already registered, we provide available alternatives. For example, you might be able to select a .info or .ws domain extension, rather than .com. Or you could register www.coolexample.info instead of www.coolexample.com.

If the domain name is available, follow the instructions to complete the checkout process. Be sure to include valid contact information for each contact. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the governing body for domain names, requires valid contact information (registrant, technical, billing, and administrative). If you enter false information, your domain name can be canceled.

Your contact information is public and accessible through the Whois database at most registrars. However, you can protect your privacy by registering your domain name with us using our private domain name registration services.

Am I stuck with my Hosting Company?

No!
You can change your hosting company anytime. Of course the companies aren't going to make it easy but you are entitled to have your domain, hosting, and anything else you pay your hard earned money for, where you want it. I personally, like webn8.com
They make it incredibly easy for you to transfer you domain, here.

Don't pay an incredible amount of money for domains either. Shop around, find a good deal, If you aren't sure, send me an email and I will direct you to some fair venues.

Email me Customer Service