Tip 1: Columns Dropping off page.

Problem: Columns of information are dropping off the page or rendering at the bottom of the page. Website Repair

Hosting $3.95, useless backups $19.95, a functional well-managed website priceless!

What is the REAL cost of website hosting? Wow, you cannot believe your luck when you find this great deal for website hosting only $3.95 per month, you add on daily backups for only $19.95 because we all know how important it is to have everything backed up. Upon switching to your "too good to be true" hosting company you have a simple question, after thirty minutes on hold you finally reach a customer service agent. You spend an additional thirty minutes explaining how your website was fine last week but now the website is returning 404 codes, page not found error. Page not found, where could your pages have gone? You have not made any changes. Perhaps the agent does not understand you because of your thick American accent, which is understandable right, so you speak very slowly. The customer service agent tells you to email EVERYTHING you just said to their support team. Now, you spend twenty-five minutes describing everything AGAIN in detail with dates, account numbers, domain names and error codes in an email to the hosting companies technical support team. You get a receipt from the hosting company acknowledging your support request and informing that for you can pay for expedited support, which turns out to be $150.00 an hour. An email arrives from Phil at technical support at 3:30 the following morning asking you to please recreate the issue and send them a screen shot in jpg format. Your website has been down now for at least three days when you receive an email responding to your screen shot asking you to describe your problem; apparently, it is not standard practice to document all telephone and email interactions. This time you are to describe each step you took to recreate the problem in detail. Oh, and do not forget to include dates, account numbers domain names and error codes with your response. Each email signed “Kindest Regards,” but at this point, you are not feeling any kindness. A prompt response arrives, only fifteen hours later, telling you to reinstall your content management system. You reinstall your open source content management system and after several hours of trial and error the website is finally up and running but the content is missing. One more time you start the process of contacting your hosting company and their response, sorry they do not offer technical support for the content management system that you installed through their control panel. For those of you that are not familiar with “open source,” it is a program designed and distributed free of charge but once you install the application you are on your own. Some open source applications have been extensively tested and have excellent knowledge databases to help troubleshoot technical issues others provide forums that you can submit questions to other users, not such a good resource when you are way over your head. Now one may ask why you did not simply have the hosting company restore the site from those wonderful daily backups. Turns out when they say daily backup, they mean that they will backup your website every working day, not exactly every day but what they consider daily, and each time overwrite the previous backup. Geniuses, you would not want those redundant backups lingering around taking up space on your unlimited hosting account. Remember, your website has been down for three days and just so happens that they have a backup from the day after you first contacted technical support. Finally, in order to get your website repaired you call a professional website repair company. Come to find out, the website repair company offers monthly packages that include free hosting, redundant backups, monthly audits and updates. Hosting $3.95, useless backups $19.95, a functional well-managed website priceless!

The Cost of Some Internet Marketing Techniques

One common website repair request we receive at Internet Market Consulting involves repairing website design errors and penalties caused by "Black Hat" Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing companies. 

 

 Outsourcing SEO Can Cost You Your Website   by Ward Tipton
If you are new to the world of SEO and SEM you may not know all of the actual subtleties involved but in all reality, if you are just going to hire someone to do your SEO work for you, you better know a whole lot more or you could suffer far worse than you ever would trying to do your own SEO work ... even without any real experience. Even if you hire an SEO Professional to promote your site, if they do anything that the search engines decide is unethical, your site will be banned and you will have no recourse, legal or otherwise to get it back in!
If you have already looked around the freelance sites, you may see all sorts of jobs people want done regarding SEO work. Somebody here needs ten PR5 or better one-way links to their site. Somebody over here wants 100 comments on DO Follow blogs. If none of that makes sense to you, you really do need to learn what it means whether you are going to promote your own websites or have someone else do it for you. Why?
If you do not learn about SEO your work could very easily get you banned from the Search Engines or decrease your rankings whether you do the work or not!
What? How? Huh?
The top search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms or the methods that they use to decide both your pages rank and its placement on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. A while back, three-way linking or Pyramid linking was all the rage but they quickly became more costly than effective. The basic idea was to provide mutually beneficial, one-way links by linking three sites rather than just two. Thus, instead of reciprocal links (which are still valued less) between Site A and Site B, there would be a link from Site A to Site B, a link from Site B to Site C and a final link from Site C to Site A.
This effectively provided all three websites with one-way links and increased the value of those links. It may have taken the search engine a while to figure out this tactic but figure it out they did and many of those sites were penalized in rank and placement while some were banned altogether. Many of the people doing this were Professional SEO Experts who were hired by people just like you. While some of the people simply lost page rank, some of them really did lose any ability to get their site indexed on the search engines at all.
Over 80% of all organic (free) traffic comes from the search engines!
Once your website has been banned, sandboxed or otherwise removed from the search engine indexes you may just as well shut that site down and build it from scratch. Google does not care what SEO Service you paid to promote your site. Bing does not care what SEO Company you paid to promote your site. Yahoo does not even care what SEO expert you hired; once your site is off the search engines, it is off until the search engines decide to let you back in. This can take years to accomplish and most likely will require more money invested than you will ever be able to get back from your investment.
These days, as in the example given above, many people are searching for SEO Experts that will give them all these one-way links. They will only want DO Follow links back to their site and even many of the SEO "Experts" think that this is a good thing! But guess what! Google is neither stupid nor idle and when it updates the algorithms, unnatural website growth patterns are going to be red-flagged first and then the search engines will begin the banning process again. With over ten billion websites indexed each of the major search engines, they really do not need your website to provide their users with viable alternatives.
So what is the answer?
The answer is actually very simple. If you are serious about your online business and want to succeed and stay in business for the long run, do not try to jump to the head of the pack right away. Organic growth is, as the name implies, natural growth. When you are advertising and promoting your site, do not seek to aim for only the high value targets but take on all of the possible targets.
When someone sees your link tagged on one of your comments on a No Follow site are they any less likely to click it than they would be on a Do Follow site? You can still get traffic, and while you may get more value on the search engines from a Do Follow site, you can still get traffic from a No Follow site and your growth will appear more natural to the Search Engines insuring that you do not have to worry about being banned or sandboxed.
If you only have one or two websites that you will never be making a lot of money from, learn about the SEO and do it yourself. Would you let someone you do not know come into a brick and mortar business you have built and let them market it and promote it however they see fit simply because you do not know how ... even though your lack of knowledge regarding the subject means that you cannot even be sure that they do either? You cannot run a business like that in the brick and mortar world and expect to be successful. Running a business on the Internet is no different.
If you own numerous websites or have valuable and profitable products that will allow for the costs, pay someone to do your SEO for you but be selective. If someone is promising you that they are only going to get you One-Way links on Do Follow Sites do you really think that this "unnatural" growth will go unobserved to the Search Engines? Do you really think that something so Unnatural is going to outrank a site with the same number of links but showing all organic growth or natural growth? Guess what! If you do not know anything about SEO, you need to learn ... especially if you are going to hire someone to do it for you! The cost of unnatural growth can literally kill your website.
Proper SEO goes far beyond just getting all the "good stuff" and throwing it together and thinking you will come out ahead of the game. Proper SEO efforts involve many different aspects, some of them more beneficial than the others but only beneficial if you have all of them together, the better with the not so good. Anything less is putting your online business venture on a path to failure. If you are business for the long run, take the good with the better and sooner than you think, your site will be one of the best ... and that means you own the Search Engines, they no longer own you all because you took some time to learn proper SEO techniques!

About the Author

Ward Tipton is a Professional Writer who provides highly specialized and quality informational product creation and online content for his clients. Ward recently opened Professional Writing Services for content creation and content distribution services.

Prosper While Others Fail

I always advise my clients beginning new businesses to be conservative and have reasonable expectations about the income potential their new venture. Traditionally, brick and mortar stores will not pull a profit for at least two years from opening. During difficult economic times, I recommend giving a business five years before expecting to pull a profit. Too many businesses cut marketing and promotional budgets to combat tough times, which is the worst possible cut back. During financial difficulties expect to work harder for less, but do not cut back on a company's most important expense, marketing and promotion. Putting more effort into promoting your business to new clients and remember to target clients left behind by failing businesses.

For more information read "Small Businesses and Hard Facts."

Find out how Internet Market Consulting can repair your website design to build Internet traffic, produce top search engine results and maximize website exposure.

Is Your Website Springing a Leak?

Today, I would like to share a fun and informative article written by Philippa Gamse. 


Imagine that you own a beautifully designed yacht. It looks great on the surface of the water, with superb lines, gleaming decks, a well-appointed galley… but you’re having real trouble getting out of the harbor and you can’t figure out why!

You investigate, and you find that beneath the surface your beautiful boat has a number of slow, silent, leaks. None of them are big enough to sink you on their own, so there’s no obvious immediate crisis – just a constant drain on your efficiency and your speed.

I’ve been reviewing Web traffic reports for over 10 years, and I believe that this analogy applies very well to almost all business websites. Very few sites are so terrible or have something so wrong with them that they’re clearly a disaster. Yet just about every site has some area where it’s quietly losing traffic, losing potential business or the opportunity to create relationships – or failing to attract visitors in the first place.

If you’re not regularly reviewing your traffic analysis, you can’t know for sure if your site is leak proof. In this article, I’ll show you a few of the most common areas where you can look for – and fix – those silent leaks.

1. Leaks in your Brand & Positioning

The excellent folks at MarketingExperiments online research laboratories have shown that clearly articulated and differentiating value propositions have a critical effect on Website conversion rates.  (The conversion rate is the measurement of visitors fulfilling your desired outcomes – which might include calling you, buying a product at your site, signing up for your newsletter or blog feed, etc.)  Your value proposition should be front and center on your home page. It should answer the classic question: “Why should we do business with you instead of your competition?”

Although this question isn’t a Web strategy issue in itself, it is one that many people struggle to answer. But the lack of a compelling opening message can be a major impediment to your online success.

How to check for this leak: Even if they don’t enter your site at the home page, most visitors who don’t know you will go there as the second page they look at to find out more about you and your business.  If visitors are taking a quick look at your home page and then immediately leaving, something is wrong. Your copy is failing to pique their curiosity or to answer their questions: “Can this company meet my needs?” and “Should I explore further?” You have a leak!

2. Leaks in Visitor Engagement

Popular theory says that you have 10 seconds to engage a visitor – i.e. convince them to stay on your site before they click away in search of something more interesting.

While I don’t believe that it’s quite that simple, there are some definite ways to get rid of visitors fast before they’ve had a chance to really check you out.  The best of these is probably the infamous splash page – the entry page to your site that your Web designer persuaded you to have because it “does cool stuff”. Hopefully there’s a “Skip Intro” button somewhere on the page!  In all my reviews of traffic reports I’ve seen a consistent leak of up to 30% of visitors leaving from this page alone – before they’ve ever seen who you are or what you offer.

How to check for this leak: Easy – look for the splash page in your traffic reports and see how many visitors exit at that point. If it’s more than a small percentage, you have a leak – take the page out today!

The other major area where you should watch for leaks in visitor engagement is in what are called “landing pages”. These are inside pages of your Website which turn out to be the first page that a visitor sees, usually because you have some well-indexed content that they’ve found in a search engine.

Here it’s absolutely critical to understand the visitor’s mindset. Each visitor is at your site looking for something specific, they may well have found you by accident, so they may have no idea who you are – and worse, no interest in you.

The first page that they see on your Website must engage them immediately in accordance with their needs, and it must have enough context to draw them into other areas, and to want to find out more about you. It’s not enough to give great information on this page – they’ll soak that up, and then leave.

How to check for this leak: Hopefully your traffic reports are sophisticated enough to show you which keywords bring visitors to each specific page of your site. This shows you each visitor’s “mindset”.

If visitors are leaving a page very quickly, then it probably isn’t satisfying their informational needs, so you should review the content.

If visitors are reading the page (your traffic reports should show the time spent at each page) and then leaving, you’ve given them what they wanted but failed to draw them into the rest of your site. This can be fixed with more compelling navigation and calls to action.

Either way, you have a leak!

3. Leaks in Directions & Outcomes

I’m constantly amazed by the number of Web pages that give great information and content – and then just end abruptly – perhaps with some navigation tabs if you’re lucky!

Steve Krug in his excellent book “Don’t Make Me Think!” describes how crucial it is to direct visitors to the next step that you want them to take. If you don’t do this, and rely on your visitors to figure this out for themselves, there’s a strong chance that they’ll make a different choice than the one you want – or they’ll leave your site altogether, creating leaks in your potential revenue stream.

Every page of your site needs strong calls to action that stand out visually and click directly to where the visitor can fulfill the outcome that you want (e.g. “buy now!”, “sign up for our newsletter / RSS feed”.) Pages can have more than one call to action, and there’s nothing wrong with repeating them on longer pages so that they’re always within eyeshot.

And by the way, “Back to top” is not a call to action!

How to check for this leak: If your traffic reports show this information, look at the paths that visitors take through your site – where do visitors go next from each page? If many of them are exiting the site and / or they fan out across many pages with no clear pattern or direction, you have a possible leak.

4. Leaks in your Credibility Building

MarketingExperiments research has also shown that powerful, specific, and authoritative testimonials can have a major impact on your site’s conversion rates.

Consider this statement: “Documented results show that just a few hours with [ expert ] can increase lead generation by 125%”. Imagine how much stronger that assertion would be if there were some examples of the “documented results” and some customer quotes to that effect.

However, including a page on your site called “What Customers Say” doesn’t do it – I can safely say that visitors don’t go to those pages. And it’s not just traffic reports that tell me this – whenever I ask a live audience “Would you click this link?” there’s always a resounding “No!”

How to check for this leak: This is a much more subtle leak to detect, but it’s an important one. The question here is whether you are potentially losing business because your site fails adequately to establish your value and credibility.

My recommended approach is to review your site for credibility-building content such as client lists, testimonials and case studies. You need to spread your testimonials through your site, using short one or two line excerpts that are relevant to the content of each page – whether it’s about a product or a service, or the value of subscribing to your newsletter or blog.

Make sure that all of this material is linked to from other pages so that it’s easily found by visitors. If you then experience an increase in calls, or in the quality of your leads, then you might have just fixed a leak!

© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites and other website problems. Would you like your own “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit http://websitesthatwin.com/leaky-boat-report.html for more information.

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Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites. Would you like your own “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit http://websitesthat win.com/leaky-

boat-report.html for more information.
© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.




This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com