Starting a Blog: Advice

I just started blogging. I've been looking around for advice, checking out other blogs, getting advice, reading other blogs, marketing, etc. I just had a good friend ask me what he should do first. Here's what I told him.

To start a blog, there's a few you might want to look into first.

http://www.typepad.com/ (not free)
http://wordpress.com/ (I think it's free)
http://www.blogger.com (Free, the one I am using)

You might want to look around and read other blogs and see who is publishing them. They each have different setups and templates and stuff, but are basically the same.

Blogger is owned by google and they made it really easy.

Oh, title your blog as descriptively as you can. Good blogs have good titles.

(My other blog, "Stories From Papi" is probably not a good blog title).

Then go here:

http://www.feedburner.com and Burn your feed. I think you have to add some code in the html of the blog template, but it's not hard, you just have to find a specific piece of code, and then copy and paste code from one place to another. It's explained really well.

Feedburner is a place to get widgets and stuff that you can add to your blog, like a "subscribe to this blog" chicklet and others. You can also view stats for your blog using feedburner. It's a great site. Loads of stuff.

Then here:

http://technorati.com/

Technorati is sort of a directory for blogs. You can check stats here too, again, you might have to paste code into your template, but it's explained really well when you have to do it. They offer a variety of add-ons for your blog as well.

Then, I've been reading this blog:

copyblogger.com

It's really been helpful.

Really, I started by looking at other blogs and see what they are doing. Where are they placing their archive? How important is the "About" section? How long should each post be? How many links should I put on my "Blogroll"? How many "FeedFlares" or "Subscribe" buttons or "logos" should Iput on my blog? I googled "Blog Mistakes" That was helpful.

Be prepared, that unless you market your blog, it won't get seen for a while.

I've only started really. I've been writing the blog since middle of feb, but only this month started promoting it, just because I didn't have much written into it. Now it's a little bigger.

Still, I only have about 5 subscribers a day. That's pretty good for starters, well, it's suprising me anyway.

The more you write, the more readers you'll get.

Hope that helps

Choosing a Server (Part 1)

I'm not going to attempt to explain everything there is to know about purchasing or leasing a server, but I'll let you know some of the things I know for sure, at least in my experience.

I never thought I'd end up running a server. I had always bought hosting service from someone who knew what they were doing. Well, I decided that since I could make money on reselling hosting, great, I'd try it.

Here's my first piece of advice.

What kind of a deal should I expect?
Well, $80 a month for 80Gb sounds great, but it's not. This is usually a sign of a company trying to get all the business it can, but they can not run a business on this kind of practice. I know this from experience. I was leasing a server for that amount, and well, almost a year into our business relationship, the company sold all of it's assets and unplugged the machines, put them on a truck and drove them from California to New Jersey...without telling any of their customers.

Well, the next few days I spent trying to convince my clients that I still had the info, but I had to wait to see if the servers were going to come up when they finally got to New Jersey. I lost some clients.

Well, after a week and not a word from the company (managed.com by the way which got bought by Web Host Plus) I had to get another server. I spent some time on a forum where people in the same boat as me were talking about what they had heard or not heard and what they were doing about it. Many of those servers never came up again. Mine never did.

I went to a server review website(hostsearch.com) and chose PowerVPS. I bought a Linux server and began setting it up.

Their basic server cost is $40 per month for 10Gb (that is a good price by the way). They have been stable and reliable with great support, and believe me, I had a bunch of support questions. They never made me feel like an idiot for not knowing the answer to my own question (which I have experienced in many places and times with other server and hosting support).

There are a bunch of server companies out there, just be careful about who you choose. You can tell quite a bit starting with their price scheme. Next do a google search using a query like: "managed.com problem" or "powervps.com review".

Next time I think I'll talk about choosing either a Linux machine or a Windows machine.

Registering Your Domain

Domain registration is not difficult, and it could be a fun challenge. It could even direct what the name of your new business ends up being.

For example, for my wife’s company “dogonawall.com”, we actually named the business according to what we found to be available as a domain name. Other domains we were considering were “sitstaypaint.com”, “foreverpet.com”, “petportraits.com,” etc. It was interesting to see what was available, and ultimately, what our competition was using. (In fact, a year later, we found that someone had bought "dogonTHEwall.com").

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the address you want is not available. In that case, my suggestion is to not be tempted to use a “dash (-)” or an “underscore (_)”. Just remember that you’ll have to tell customers your address, many times over the phone, and you’ll want it to be easy to remember, and if at all possible, easily spelled so you don’t have to spell it each time. I have to spell mine (goycodesign.com) all the time, so I’m not taking my own advice here.

In the past, I have used companies like yahoo.com, 000domains.com and godaddy.com, but there are many, and they all offer the basically same thing. Expect to pay somewhere between $5 to $15 a year depending on what specials they are running. A cost above that is too high.

My personal opinion: yahoo.com is not the most expensive or the cheapest, but definitely easiest to use. 000domains.com is more expensive, but definitely the most professional. godaddy.com is inexpensive, but also very easy to get lost on the site, and the buttons you need are downplayed by buttons that look like the regular buttons, but in fact, are buttons that are adding options to your shopping cart without you knowing until you see your total. Their advertising techniques are not my favorite either, but they are cheap).

Granted, some companies offer hosting at the same time, but don’t pay $30 for a domain name. Yahoo.com pretty consistently offers domains for $9.95, which is not bad, and their control panel is easy to navigate.

When you register (or renew) your domain, consider doing it for 3 or more years. There are a few reasons why I say that:

* You won’t have the hassle of having to get renewal notices each year.
* Many times you get a discount for purchasing more than one year at a time.
* Your site will be viewed by search engines as “more legit.”

Google.com recently revealed their intentions to making it harder for spam sites to clutter up search engine results. They have stated that their research shows spammer sites will buy a domain for a year, use it for their short lived criminal and fraudulent activities, and then let it lapse. On the other hand, companies who are in it for the long haul, or are committed to making their business work, are registering their domains for years (3+) at a time.

It makes sense doesn’t it? It’s one of those things that make me like google.com even more.

Returning Visitors

In an earlier article, I mentioned that the more you change the content on your home page, the more your site will be “indexed”. Well, here’s what I do:

I write articles every once in a while and publish them on the site. I then take a blurb or description of the article and add it to my home page with a link to the article. I do this as often as I write an article, which may be every couple of weeks.

I also update the site by adding a link to a new flash game I’ve just finished with a small thumbnail of the game on the homepage.

As well, I change out the design in the “featured design” section with a new design, and I add any new desktop wallpapers I’ve created (which includes a "watermark" with my website address on it).

All these things keep my site fresh for the search engines, but more importantly, it keeps it fresh for visitors returning to read new articles, download a new wallpaper or just play a new game.

You are the expert in your field. You know what your customers need as far as information goes, and so, you might as well be the place they go to get that information.

These readers will send others to your site, and that’s the best vote of confidence...word of mouth.

The more information you can include on your site, the more returnability you create, the more potential sales you enjoy.

Internet Terms

Alt Tag: An HTML attribute that indicates alternative text on a web page. It will display when a visitor does not want to view images, or can not view them.

Backlink: A link coming from one site to another.

Bandwidth: The limit on the amount of data that can be transfered through the hosting server within a month.

Banner Fatigue: This happens when the user has seen a banner advertisement so many times that they no longer notice it.

Blog: An online journal. The name is derived from the name “weblog”. Basically a log of activities or information found, etc.

Cache: This is the location where information is stored so that when the site is viewed again, the information does not need to be retreived from the originating source. It speeds things up.

DNS: Domain Name Server. Basically a database of internet names addresses. Works directly with IPs.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language. The language that is used by web browsers to read what is on the page. (ie. hello will make a bold Hello.

Inbound Link: Incoming links from other web pages to yous.

Indexing: The action of downloading, recording and analyzing keywords in a website by a search engine crawler.

IP Address: Internet Protocol. It’s the number assigned to an internet-connected computer. It’s needed to communicate across the internet.

Link Polularity: The measurement of how many sites link to a specific site on the internet.

Meta Description: Used in the HTML of a site to describe the contents of the site in a brief statement. Some search engines use this in their results page, while others use a snippet including the keywords that were used for searching.

Meta Keywords: Used in the HTML of a site to describe the contents of the site in words separated by a comma. The best amount to use is 170 characters, otherwise, you will dilute your keyword strength.

Name Server: This translates the domain name into an IP address, otherwise, you would have to type in something like http://69.65.102.137. The name servers look like this: NS1.GOYCODESIGN.COM and NS2.GOYCODESIGN.COM.

PageRank: Used by Google.com to assign a ranking system to pages. The proprietary algorithm uses the numbers 1-10. The algorithm is calculated depending on how sites are linked to one another. An inbound link with a high PageRank benefits the site linked to.

Traffic: The volume of visitors to a website.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator. It’s the addressing system used by the internet. Basically, it’s the path to the server where a site is located.

Viral Marketing: When a marketing device (message) becomes so popular, users voluntarily pass it on to others.

Visitors: A real visitor to a website. A fake visitor is a robot or crawler from a search engine. Visits are recorded by IP addresses. If a user visits your site a second time within a 24 hour period, the server will count that visitor as one unique visitor. Unique visitors is what you want to know when analysing your traffic. This is what will sell when advertisers buy space on your site.

Index Frequency

Index frequency is what google.com calls “how often your site is checked to see if it’s changed.”

The best way to get the search engines to see your site is to have other sites link to yours. This is called “link popularity”. You can actually check how many sites are linked to yours by going to google.com and typing in “link:” in front of your address in the search bar (i.e.link:www.yoursite.com).

Another way that search engines rank your pages is by checking it against the last time it was indexed. The more often you change the content, the more often it will come back and check.

My suggestion is to change something on the home page as often as possible. Maybe a news item, maybe an article you’ve written about something that will benefit your customers, maybe announcing a new store, maybe a link to this week’s special offer or coupon.

The more your site changes, the more it is viewed as “up-to-date” and “fresh”. The point is to get your customers will come back to your site as often as possible, so offering often-changing information they can use, is a really good idea. The more they come back, the more they’ll be apt to use your service or purchase your product, the more they’ll tell others to go to your site.

Link Popularity

Link polularity is a search engine term for how many sites are linked to your site. Search engines will find your site more often, and see your site as more relevant, and it will get you lsited higher on the search results page. Their crawlers will be searching one site, following all the links, and find your site linked to it, and so, index your site again, giving you a higher page rank.

So, the more the better, but some sites have more weight than others.

For example, if you get a site like pixelgirlpresents.com to link to your site, that’s good. It’s a fairly small site, but weekly readership is high. This site in particular displays original illustrated desktop wallpapers for download. This site has about 1,580 sites linking to it on the web. Their pagerank is 6/10.

Now, let’s say you get someone like foxnews.com to link to you site because of a story or something. They have about 65,500 sites linking to theirs. They have a pagerank of 8/10.

A page with many backlinks will get a higher pagerank than one with none or just a few.

I’ve read this in a few places now, but it still may be a rumor: It might be true that search engines will drop sites off their index if there are not one or more links coming in to the website.

Rumor or not, It’s a good idea to strive for, and not that difficult.

Check this out: Go to google.com and in the search box, type this in: link:www.yoursite.com (replacing "yoursite" with your site url). This is how to figure out how many sites are linking to your site.

Getting sites to link to yours is as easy as asking. You can trade links (you put a link to their site on yours and vise versa), you can buy ad space on their site, you can even get an article written about you in the local paper and if they have an online version, maybe they will link to your site from the article.

You may be able to write articles for other websites and ask that you are allowed to put a link to your site in the article, or in the "by-line".

There are many ways to do this, and the more the better.

Should I use Flash in my website design?

Using Flash Elements ...
Macromedia Flash is a tool that can be used on your website for animation, navigation, games, sounds, advertising, forms and even database integration.

You’ve seen it, it’s usually animations with the more smooth text effects, like fading in or sliding across the screen. It’s also totally capable of interactivity. Users can click, drag, type in, etc.

My advice is to use it as elements on the site, rather than the site as a whole. It can in fact be used to create the whole site, but search engines are not able to read keywords from flash elements.

There are limitations to using Flash on your site, so you’ll need to consider some things before using it:

* What I’ve found is that approximately 85% of web users have the Flash Plug-in installed on their machine, and browsers all ship with it already installed, but that means that some will not be able to see the flash content. On the other hand, it is just a click away to download and install the plug-in, so it really depends on your audience, and if they are willing to take a few moments to click a couple more times.
* Flash usage means that there may be some download time added to your site. Larger flash movies should always have a “PreLoader” added to it. A PreLoader is a mechanism that displays a very low weight graphic or text while waiting for the rest of the movie to load. If you know your audience is mostly on dial-up, then you should probably not include a large flash movie as part of your presentation.

For example, on my site, I've used flash at the top of the page to display my glasses, when you put your mouse over them, text begins to scroll in the lenses. It's really not something distracting, but something fun I thought a few people might find. And it's used as a graphic element, not for navigation or displaying something important like a discount coupon.

Don't get me wrong, I love flash. I use it to create slide shows, banners, advertisements and games. Just not whole sites.

Search Engine Optimization

The Deceptive SEO ...
An SEO is a Search Engine Optimizer. These companies offer ways to make your website work faster and be seen by search engines better. Some are good, some are bad.

The good ones
These will help write copy, optimize graphics and suggest things like: using text for navigation instead of images, or adding “alt tags” to graphics, or suggesting relevant sites to link to. They will advise you on site architecture and navigation and be able to tell you what you can do to make your site better using keywords, a site map, and links from other sites.

The bad ones
These guys may find you by sending you a spam email. That’s not a good start. They might even guarantee a top spot on google.com. That’s impossible to guarantee. In fact, things change every day, so it would be difficult for them to guarantee anything.

They might claim they have a special relationship with google.com, but they don’t. No one does. Google has stated this plainly.

If you ask questions, you should get answers. Many companies will be secretive and not let you know what they are going to do. This is not acceptable business practice. Some of the activities performed by SEOs will reflect negatively on your site, and could get you banned from search engines altogether.

Ultimately, I believe search engine optimization should be done by your designer and/or webmaster. If that’s not possible, be careful.

The term to use is "organic" Search Engine Optimization. This basically means using honest ways of marketing your site. (great article on this subject)

A few years ago, webmasters were writing keywords over and over on their home page and coloring them the same color as their page background color (so the visitor could not see it). This is bad practice and will get you banned.

Tips on how to fight SPAM

Well, first thing, don’t reply to unsolicited emails. Don’t click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the page.

By clicking the unsubscribe link, you are telling the spammer that your email address is “live”, and that will report back to them to be added to their list.

Best thing to do is report the email as spam. Most email applications have the ability to report emails as spam. Look for a “this is spam” button, and click it when you’ve got a spam email.

Spammers send out millions of emails a day, and the more people reporting them, the more trouble they will have in the future.

How did they get your email address? The most common way (97%) is spammers search the internet at public forums, chats, profiles, etc. and find them that way. Something you can do to stop that is instead of writing “jorge@goycodesign.com”, write “jorge at goycodesign dot com.”

The thing is, these spammers are smart, and they’ll figure that one out at some point too.

I've found that if you actually "opted in" (signed up) to receive emails or newsletters from reputable websites, that the unsubscribe link actually does what it's supposed to do. It's just the unsolicited ones that you shouldn't trust.

Just be careful where you post your address.

Importance of Keywords

Keywords are as important as anything else; although search engines all have their own way of checking for relevance on your site.

There is a way for you to add keywords to the code in your site; it’s called “meta keywords.” But the thing that search engines look at is the rest of the text on the site. If your keywords are all about one thing and your site content is about a whole thing altogether, the search engines won’t like it, in fact, they might even ban you from their search results.

On the other hand, if your site’s content and the keywords are in sync, then all is good.

Another thing I do when I’m designing sites is to have the navigation links be text rather than graphics. Search engines can’t see the text in a graphic, but links are considered text, which add to the keyword count.

The title of the page is also a place that should be considered important as well. This is the text that search engines display in the results pages, and it’s also what the browsers use as the bookmark text.

My suggestion is to use your company name and a concise sentence describing your service or products. (i.e. GoycoDesign | Web and Print - Design and Production).

“Alt tags” are another way to add keywords to your site. An “alt tag” is an html tag you can add to an image. They are primarily used for disability access, but they pop up after a few seconds if you hover over an image.

Here's what meta keywords in your page code looks like:

...meta name="keywords" content="web, design, print, graphic, production, execution, support,"...

You can "right-click" in the middle of a web page and a menu pops up. Choose "View Source Code", and you should see it at the top of the page. Some sites don't use them, but most do.