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Q&A: How do you get your website to appear on the first page, at the top, of a Google search?

April 3, 2009 // Posted in browser, business, computers, development, forum, marketing, web, website  |  No Comments

Q&A: How do you get your website to appear on the first page, at the top, of a Google search?

Question:
How do you get your website to appear on the first page, at the top, of a Google search?

Answer:
Short answer, you don’t. Most people when they think of searching will type in something very broad and very generic like “karate” or “training” or even a little more precise like “self defense” and see millions of results. Trying to tackle that amount of competition for the top spot is really a losing battle, unless you have very deep pockets. A better approach, and one that has a better chance of being successful for you is to focus your attention on specific search phrases.

For example, many of my martial arts clients are in the Western New York area. They aren’t looking for someone in London England to hit their site, but for someone in the WNY area. So, a smart searcher will type in something like “Buffalo martial arts” (which results in 3 of my clients, and 5 of my sites on the 1st page) or “wny martial arts” (4 sites, 1 client on page 1), or “wny karate” (3 sites 1st page). Typing in something like “modern arnis seminar training” has 2 of my clients on the 1st page. Another example is “natural resource consulting” which has 1 of my clients on the 1st page of results.

It’s important to think in terms of search phrases when you optimize your site, and focus on those. A combination of proper key words, solid descriptions, and appropriate text will greatly enhance your chances for high placement. Also, be certain all of your images are captioned using ALT tags. Those are an often overlooked place for extra optimization.

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Bob Hubbard, is the CEO of SilverStar WebDesigns Inc. and an Administrator at MartialTalk.com and KenpoTalk.com. He can be reached through those sites.

Q&A: How do you get people to volunteer work for your money-making on-line business without complaint and with consistent, quality performance?

March 27, 2009 // Posted in advertising, business, development, forum, internet, marketing, promotion, web, website  |  No Comments

Q&A: How do you get people to volunteer work for your money-making on-line business without complaint and with consistent, quality performance?

Question:
How do you get people to volunteer work for your money-making on-line business without complaint and with consistent, quality performance?

Answer:
My experience has shown that when people care about something, they will often put in the time to make it a success. Convention presenters have known this for years, and are often run by volunteer staffs in the hundreds, all working towards a common goal of a successful and entertaining event. Many of the same reasons apply when looking for staff for online communities. Treat your people right, stand behind them, give them guidance so that they know what is expected of them, and train them in how to do their job well. Don’t treat them like slaves, or free help. Let them know when they are doing well, and show the your gratitude. A little appreciation shown can go a long way towards keeping god people happy. All of that however is useless, unless you have a purpose for which they will put in the time and effort. Make your enterprise one that people can feel a part of, that they can feel ownership of, and a part of, and you will find good people willing to help you build your dreams, together.

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Bob Hubbard, is the CEO of SilverStar WebDesigns Inc. and an Administrator at MartialTalk.com and KenpoTalk.com. He can be reached through those sites.

Q&A: How fancy and how big should your opening page be?

March 20, 2009 // Posted in browser, business, computers, development, internet, marketing, web, website  |  No Comments

Q&A: How fancy and how big should your opening page be?

Question:
How fancy and how big should your opening page be?

Answer:
There are several different views on this. Some will recommend long and wordy, others hort an terse, others flashy, others simple. My suggestion is to tailor the page toward your goals for the site.

I recomend using a couple of graphics, 2-3 paragraphs of good descriptive text, loaded with strong keywords for the search engines to latch onto. This gives you a good starting point. You can add more paragraphs, but be mindful of how many graphics you place. Each one adds to the overall size of your main page, and slows down it’s loading, especially for dialup users. A slow page detracts from the user experience.

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Bob Hubbard, is the CEO of SilverStar WebDesigns Inc. and an Administrator at MartialTalk.com and KenpoTalk.com. He can be reached through those sites.

3 Basic Features Every Web Site Should Have By Bob Hubbard

March 9, 2009 // Posted in advertising, business, development, marketing, promotion, web, website  |  No Comments

3 Basic Features Every Web Site Should Have
By Bob Hubbard

Look around the Internet, look at 100 different websites, and you’ll find 100 different mixes of features. No two sites are exactly alike. Nor should they be, for each site has a unique purpose. But there are some features that every site should have. In this article, I will introduce you to XX of them.

#1 Every site should have a copyright statement.
While US Law states that a work is copyrighted at creation, there are a significant number of people online today who are sadly ignorant of the law, and who believe if it isn’t marked, it’s free to use as they wish. By including a well formatted copyright statement, you will stop some people, and have better chances should you ever need to go the legal route.

At the minimum, use something like this : “Copyright © YEAR – NAME – All Rights Reserved.” Where YEAR is the current year, and NAME is your name, or the name of your organization.

#2 Make sure there is a complete address, and phone number.
Too often I’ll run into a site that assumes that the visitor knows where they are. They list a street address, but no city, or no state. They say things like “We’re located in the Widget Mall”, yet Google shows 15 different “Widget Malls” around the world. They list a phone number, but no area code, forcing you to guess, or do more research and hope for the best. Use a complete address and phone number to maximize contact.

#3 Check all your pages for a working TITLE Tag.
Ever been to “Unknown”? It’s a common website. Estimates are that anywhere from a third to half the web page out there re using the default title tag. Make sure yours identifies your site, and gives a little bit of a description on what’s on that page. Don’t just say “About Bob”. Bob who? Where am I? Why should I care about Bob? “About Bob Hubbard, Owner of SilverStar WebDesigns Inc., a web site design and hosting company specializing in affordable solutions for martial artists.” Is a much better title tag.

There are a lot more features that a web site should have, but to me these are 3 of the most important ones. Of course, proper proof reading of all of your site’s content and testing of email addresses and links, while not specifically features, are also crucial.

Use these tips, and you’ll see a better return on your web site investment.

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Bob Hubbard is an administrator of the popular martial arts portal site MartialTalk.com and president of SilverStar WebDesigns inc., a web site design and hosting company specializing in affordable solutions for martial artists. Bob can be reached at webmaster@martialtalk.com
Article Copyright © 2009 – Bob Hubbard – All Rights Reserved. This article may be reproduced provided all text, the author bio and these terms are kept intact.

Tip Of The Week : Your Website Doesn’t Close The Sale, You Do!

December 31, 2008 // Posted in advertising, development, internet, marketing, website  |  No Comments

Your Website Doesn’t Close The Sale, You Do!

People send hundreds of thousands of dollars on fancy, feature rich, deep content websites, then wonder why they are poor. The truth is, while a website can do a lot of things, it can’t close the sale.

People still prefer to deal with other people, and a website is no substitute for the human touch. Prompt follow up and follow through by live people still is what makes a business a success.

Use your website as one of the tools in your sales kit, but make sure you add the human touch. Prompt reply, good service, and great communications are what’s needed to succeed today.

- Bob

Tip Of The Week : Follow Up and Close More Sales!

December 24, 2008 // Posted in advertising, business, marketing, promotion, sales  |  No Comments

Poor Follow Up Leads to Poor You!

If you want to shock your prospects, follow up with them the same day, or better yet within an hour of receiving their inquiry! Doing so will put a very good impresion in place with them. When you do this, you’ll often hear them proclaim you’re the first to reply, and they’ll be impressed.

Doing this can help you close 30-50% more sales than your competition who puts things off for days or weeks.

- Bob

Tip Of The Week : Leave it to the Experts

December 17, 2008 // Posted in advertising, business, internet, marketing, website  |  No Comments

Leave it to the Experts

I often hear from prospects and clients that they are considering doing it themselves, or handing it over to a student or junior family member. ‘IT” is a lot of things. Design of their site, upkeep, marketing, etc.

The problem with this is, while it might be short-term cheaper, it can cost you more over the long haul.

For example, if the septic system in your back yard caves in, you could call your buddies, shore it up with plywood and cover it in dirt. Eventually however, you’ll end up knee deep in, well, you know. For something serious like this you call the professionals.

Why would you trust the marketing of your business with someone who is just learning? Unless you have the experience and training, you should leave your website design and marketing to the experts. They can guide you around the pitfalls and traps, and free up your time to do what you are good at, which is the business.

Take off a few hats, and leave it to the experts.

- Bob

Staying On Top of your Website for a Successful Site.

December 15, 2008 // Posted in development, internet, marketing, promotion, website  |  No Comments

Staying On Top of your Website for a Successful Site.
By Bob Hubbard

Business websites can be both complex and simple. Managing one, is both easy and hard, depending on what you are doing with it.

A simple, flyer site requires little regular upkeep. Pop in every couple of months, make sure everything is up to date, and forget about it until next time. But treating your website like it’s merely a big phone book ad, ignores the great potential and benefits it can provide your business. The ability to change it on the fly, to update it at will, offers you a great deal more potential and greater rewards than a “update once a year” solution like the phone book.

When I talk to my clients about keeping their websites updated, I often suggest they keep a running “to do” list on their computer, and add things to it as they think of them. This is sent to me monthly for me to schedule and perform. Other times, I recommend they simply email me their changes, and I’ll queue them up for once a week or once a month to maximize my efficiency and minimize their costs.

You need to take time to look at your competitions web sites. After all, you check out their locations, their offerings, their phone book ads and other advertising. Be sure to look at what they are doing on the Internet as well. Take careful note of when they were last updated, what features they have, and how easy or hard it is to navigate through their site.

Schedule time each month, or week, to look at your own site. If you list contact information, is it current? Hours of Operation? Are they accurate? Do you list specials or events or other time-sensitive information? Be sure to update that as well. How many times do you come across a site that is listing things from years ago as happening in the future? Does that give you confidence that they are on the ball in other areas of their business?

To do this, you need a reliable web master to help keep you running at peak performance. All the plans, organization or ideas are useless if they never get to your website. Webmasters aren’t created equally.There are good and there are bad ones.

If you can never get in touch with them, if updates are always days or weeks late, never done, or regularly done wrong, you need to find a new webmaster.

A good webmaster will keep you posted on your sites update status, inform you of when updates are performed, notify you of any delays, as well as offer suggestions to improve the site and it’s performance.

To ensure you are getting the best, you have to check your site. If you send in your updates on Monday, and the following Monday you have heard nothing and nothing has been done to the site, you may want to pick up the phone and call them. Reviewing the timelyess and qualty of your webmaster is vital. Provide them feedback so that they can help you better. Be clear in indicating when you need work done, if anything is a rush job, if certain things should be emphasized or changed. Clarity of communications is vital in having a successful working relationship with your web expert.

Regularly checking other sites an your own, working with your web master, and being clear on what you expect and when you expect it done is vital to success online today.

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Bob Hubbard is an administrator of the popular martial arts portal site MartialTalk.com and president of SilverStar WebDesigns inc., a web site design and hosting company specializing in affordable solutions for martial artists. Bob can be reached at webmaster@martialtalk.com
Article Copyright © 2008 – Bob Hubbard – All Rights Reserved.
This article may be reproduced provided all text, the author bio and these terms are kept intact.

Tip Of The Week : Don’t Ask For Email if You’re Not Going To Answer It!

December 10, 2008 // Posted in advertising, internet, marketing  |  No Comments

Don’t Ask For Email if You’re Not Going To Answer It!

Has this ever happened to you? You visit a website, you click the “Contact Me” link and send in your inquiry, only to never get a reply? Have you ever then after a few days or weeks called them and gotten the “Oh I never check that” remark?

How’d that make you feel? Like maybe they didn’t care? Or that they weren’t really professional?

Why would you purposefully ignore contact from someone who is interested in putting cash into your pocket?

If you aren’t going to read it, stop asking for it. All you do is hurt your business.
Take your email address off, and put up a phone number and ask them to call you instead. Don’t ask for it and leave them in limbo wondering what’s going on.

–Bob

Benefits of Computers For The Martial Arts Industry – Part 1 of 3 By Bob Hubbard

November 17, 2008 // Posted in business, computers, marketing, martialarts  |  No Comments

Benefits of Computers For The Martial Arts Industry – Part 1 of 3
By Bob Hubbard

Today in the opening years of the 21st century, computers are everywhere. They are in our cars, our stores, our phones and our home appliances. To exist in the business world of the 21st century, we need to understand the benefits that their use can provide our businesses. There are two main benefits to using computers today.

Benefit #1: They can help organize the chaos of modern life.

You’ve seen them. The walls full of sticky notes, the piles of paperwork on the desk, stacks of business cards, half done “todo” lists, and other assorted cluttered time stealers.

Proper use of a computer can organize this chaos and save you hours of time each week.

  • Contacts can be organized into an easily searchable list; thereby avoiding stacks of easily lost or misfiled index or business cards.
  • “ToDo” lists can be sorted, redone, reorganized, and worked from, all in seconds, compared to standard paper based systems.
  • Scheduled appointments can be setup to automatically remind you about them, saving you from having to remember to check the paper planner in your drawer or on your wall that’s half hidden by sticky notes.
  • Financial information can be quickly, securely and easily accessed, updated and maintained avoiding keeping track of paper registers and old fashioned accounting ledgers.
  • Student information can be easily tracked, including contact information, special needs, attendance history, payment records, and promotions.
  • Personal and Business expenses can be tracked allowing a more efficient means of financial planning.
  • And many more.

Benefit #2: The can save you both time and money.

How many times have you thrown out old business cards, flyers, brochures or other paperwork? How much time do you spend doing paperwork each day rather than teaching or training? Have you ever needed 1 more flyer, or ran short of business cards during an event at your school? How much time do you spend tracking down paperwork needed each day or filing the days paperwork? Properly used, computers can save you time, and we all know time is money.

  • Student attendance can be tracked quickly on a computer, replacing or improving the efficiency of old paper based systems of index cards, time cards, or similar.
  • Student payments can be quickly checked, letting you know before class who hasn’t paid that month, thereby improving your payment speed.
  • Rather than spend a lot of money on flyers at a print shop, you can print smaller quantities of flyers as needed, saving you money and helping the environment by cutting back on paper waste.
  • You can quickly print out a few business cards as needed, even have several different ones using affordable off the shelf card stock that works in almost every printer.
  • Using certain tools that either come with a computer or can be affordably added, you can plan out your day, week, month, and even year, increasing the efficiency of your use of time.

Computers are a valuable tool today, in both our personal and professional lives. To use them correctly and efficiently however, requires that we know how to use them correctly. In today’s ever changing world, that means we must regularly improve our knowledge and skills, just as we seek to keep our skills on the mat top notch.

In order to get the most from your computer, there are a few basic skills you must have, and several advanced ones that will be of great benefit. Both you as a school owner, and one or more of your staff should have these basic skills.

Join us next week for part 2, understanding your computer.

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Bob Hubbard is an administrator of the popular martial arts portal site MartialTalk.com and president of SilverStar WebDesigns inc., a web site design and hosting company specializing in affordable solutions for martial artists. Bob can be reached at webmaster@martialtalk.com
Article Copyright © 2008 – Bob Hubbard – All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction Without Written Permission of Author.

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