Website Management - It's not do-it-yourself if you're not doing it!

Anyone who runs their own business knows how hard it is to keep up with a myriad of day to day tasks that go along with business ownership.  When you’re juggling the responsibilities of being CEO, CMO and HR, chances are, your Internet presence is suffering.  Websites are no longer the simplistic online brochures that they were 15 years ago; they have evolved into full scale business solutions.  They are multi-functional tools that can be used to solve a variety of problems including those related to sales, marketing, logistics, customer service and public relations issues.  In the last decade, a number of free content management systems (CMS) developed to enable anyone to establish a marketing presence on the world wide web. The rising popularity of CMS such as WordPress®, Joomla® and Drupal® has led to a dramatic increase in the number of do-it-yourselfers -- especially small business owners who decide to take on the roles of web manager, search engine optimization expert and Internet marketer.   But, it’s not do-it-yourself if you’re not doing it. 

Forward-thinking entrepreneurs KNOW that a good web manager is worth their weight in gold, working with you to grow your Internet business presence while allowing you to focus on the other essential aspects of owning and running a business. Website managers open the door to success by maintaining your company image, directing sales traffic, managing consumer relations and promoting your virtual real estate.  The main focus of a website manager is to keep your website up-to-date and operating smoothly.  A well-maintained and marketed website will provide a steady stream of business.
Now that you know how a website manager can help you grow your business, it’s important to know what types of skills to look for in a website manager. An effective web manager will, at a minimum, offer the following website management services:

• Website maintenance & repair
• Internet marketing
• Search engine optimization
• Content management
• Email marketing campaign development & deployment
• Social media marketing & management
• Reputation Management

Not only should your website manager offer these services but they must know how to use them in the most effective ways to benefit your business RIGHT NOW.

Website Maintenance & Repair

One key aspect of locating the right website manager for your business is to ensure that they offer website maintenance services. This requires specialized skills, including in-depth knowledge of hypertext markup language (HTML), cascading style sheets (CSS) and Java to properly manage your website’s code and scripts.  All website browsers use HTML and CSS to render text and graphics and nearly all websites use some form of Java to program or control a websites’ functionality.  Today computers, mobile devices and smartphones use a multitude of Internet browsers.  Poorly written code or invalid programming can cause your site to fail to function on one or more browsers. As importantly, this issue can delay or prevent search engines from indexing your website. While research shows 76% of consumers use search engines to locate local goods and services, error riddled websites are rarely included in search results due to their poor quality.
Since website management is such a critical job, it’s important to be sure that your website manager has professional level skills.  There are two free tools that can help you evaluate the skills and expertise of a website manager or website management company.  You can use these tools to examine previous work samples and see firsthand how effectively they market their own website.
 
1.) Website Code Validation Tool – Click on the link and enter any URL address to check a web page for code errors. This tool will display the number of errors on the page. The goal of any website is to have 0 errors to ensure optimal functionality and search engine indexing.

2.) PageRank® checker – Enter a web address to see the ranking of any page. This rating is an indication of your online marketing reputation.  It’s also an indication of the online reputation of a potential web manager. You will want your website management provider to have a rank of 3 or above.

Search Engine Optimization

Understanding the nuances of search engine algorithms and optimizing websites properly is a mandatory skill for any website manager.
9 out of 10 Internet users in the United States say that Google is their preferred search engine.  Imagine having your site banned by Google. This can be the result of working with an inexperienced or overzealous website manager.  And, just because your site is completely developed and optimized when it’s launched, the work of a web manager is not finished. Web maintenance is an ongoing process. Your web manager must stay abreast of the many regular updates and changes required to keep the site properly optimized. This is crucial because if your customers and prospects cannot find you by using popular search engines, your business will be lost on the over-populated Internet.
Effective website management will help your website content rank higher in search engine results. This is especially important since 75% percent of searchers don’t scroll past the first page of search engine results.  Consumers pay the most attention to results displayed at the top of the search engine results page.  If your business doesn’t rank well in organic (unpaid) search results, or if a search yields negative or unflattering reviews for example, you’re losing a lot of potential customers looking for trustworthy, quality businesses like yours. A good web manager can help by creating informative, useful, and interesting content that contains relevant keywords ensuring your business is positioned well in search engine results.

Social Media Marketing & Management

To maximize the results of your website marketing strategy, focus your resources on the avenues with the highest return on investment for your business including a social media campaign. Are you a beauty supply company wasting valuable hours a week focusing on Twitter posts?  Perhaps you heard the latest buzz about Pinterest or Instagram so you devote a few hours a week to posting information about your building supply company.  Without social media management (SMM), however, you may actually be wasting your valuable time trying to attract the wrong audience.  A social media manager can help you to focus efforts on the best media platforms to bring the fastest return on investment for your business.
Reputation management is another key component of your social media strategy. Reputation management is something to think about before your business is negatively impacted -when orders dry up or your phones stop ringing.  You need to know what people are saying about your company in real time.  Monitoring social media can alert you when someone mentions you or your employees on popular sites like Yelp, Facebook or Twitter.  Staying abreast of what others are saying about your business puts you in the best position to respond in the most appropriate way to maintain your professional reputation. You may not always be able to recover the customer but you can absolutely prevent a reoccurrence.   
Businesses have a lot of options when it comes to website management.  Let IMC Website Management take care of  maintenance, repairs and promotion. We'll manage every aspect of your website including complicated upgrades, repairs and security. We don't stop there; we take care of getting the word out about your website by effectively marketing your site to search engines, directories and social media.

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© 2014 Internet Market Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

Search Engines, Directories and More - Oh My!

Search engines – webmasters and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals follow their guidelines for the highest possible rankings on them; paid search marketers pay to be featured on them; and users turn to them when they're searching for answers, information, or entertainment.

Search Engine Watch has been covering search engines since June 1997 and has watched the industry evolve to its current state. Over time, many search engines have come and gone, as users have spoken with their keyboards (and literally with their voices – thanks to voice search technology).

In recent years, search market share has remained mostly unchanged – for much of the world, it's Google followed by every other search engine (in the U.S. the "Big 5" search engines consist of Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL, which combine for hundreds of billions of searches every month). Meanwhile, many of the players have consolidated or have become footnotes in history.

What follows is an overview of today's major global search engines, with some history and explanation of why each one is important to webmasters, marketers, and users. We'll then review some of the top directories.

Major Search Engines

Google

Started in 1998 as a university project by Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google is now the dominant search engine by no small margin and that didn't evolve slowly.

In fact, in June of 1999 Netscape Search was updated and AOL/Netscape search began to be powered by Google bringing their search volume to approximately 3 million per day; huge for the time.

On June 26, 2000 Yahoo Selected Google to provide its organic search results (replacing Inktomi) with its impressive index of more than 25 million pages; again, huge for the time.

Google has since become synonymous with the word "search" and as most of us know, is often used in place of the word. Don't know the answer? Google it!

The continued strength of Google as a search provider is based on a large number of factors and won't be debated here, save to say, they have successfully provided the results people are looking for in a manner those searchers either enjoy or are comfortable enough with not to switch to a different provider.

Google continues to tweak their search algorithm multiple times per month and adjust the layout of their results to test for improved visitor experience and advertising revenue.

The majority of Google's revenue is derived from their AdWords and AdSense programs. In fact, advertising accounts for more than 95 percent of Google's earnings. If there is a weakness in the Google model this is it; they need to tweak their layout and results to promote the paid avenues of their offerings. This gives advantages to other engines who may have revenue generation strategies outside of search.

Bing

Bing was launched in May 2009 as a fundamental upgrade from Microsoft's previous efforts into search, MSN Search.

Since the launch of Bing, Microsoft's share of the search marketplace has more than doubled. Add to that the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo for Bing to power Yahoo's organic results and Bing powers over 25 percent of search.

With the Microsoft/Yahoo alliance also came the affect that Yahoo's paid search platform would be used to power both Yahoo and Bing's paid results. While this may not seem like a big deal on the surface, it is actually huge.

Where once business owners and marketers had to consider whether it was worth the hassle of managing both a Bing paid campaign (for the significantly lower traffic they yield over Google) and also make the same call on managing a Yahoo paid campaign – the two now are manageable in one convenient location, significantly reducing the time it takes to setup and manage.

This of course makes the cost for these campaigns less expensive and when you combine that with Bing's increased market-share then they're in a position to take some of the ad dollars from Google (or at least, gain some for themselves).

Yahoo
Yahoo is an interesting search engine and one which, until recently, I had a very hard time taking seriously.

Once upon a time Yahoo was a major leader in the search field but has been in decline, making bad decision after bad decision, announcing layoff round after layoff round and making what can only be described as one of the worst business decisions in history when they turned down a takeover from Microsoft valued at $33/share. Yahoo shares dove after that and have never been anywhere close since.

From that point, until 2012, it seemed that every piece of news from Yahoo was bad news, until July 16 when the announcement came that they had snagged Marissa Meyer from Google to become CEO. This was the first move they'd made in a long time and had people wondering if this might just be the breath of fresh air and change of direction that the company needed.

From reviews of all hires and selling key properties such as Alibaba to putting their own search technology back on the forefront; Yahoo has maintained its position as one of the top three search engines, despite not producing their own organic results.

Other Major Search Engines Around the Globe

Google dominates the U.S. and most of the world – but not everywhere. Yahoo and Bing have had about the same luck (zero) making a dent in Google's search market share on other continents, but a couple of search engines in other countries have managed to stay ahead of the Mountain View, California-based search engine. If you're from these countries or interested in marketing to them – pay attention.

Baidu
In China, Baidu is the major player with more than three of every four searches conducted on their engine.

To say Baidu blends organic with paid search is misleading, they use a hybrid approach wherein they have pay for performance (P4P) results (users bid to have their websites place at the top of what would appear to be the organic results).

In addition, Baidu offers PPC which, similar to AdWords, is displayed at the top or right of the standard results. One could argue that the existence of the PPC-like results further confuses the users clicking on the standard results area into believing they are organically generated.

While some investors consider Baidu to be overvalued as a stock, their earnings are consistently high. For companies looking to market into China, understanding Baidu is crucial.

Yandex
Yandex is the primary and most popular of all Russian-language search engines with significant market dominance in Russia.

On October 1, 2012, Yandex launched their own browser and mobile app to keep their position secure against Google, their only real competitor in the space.

Yandex's advantage in Russian seems to be based on an algorithm that performs much better in understanding the unique syntax used and integrating that into the consideration of what type of results the user is likely looking for (for example – is the search string a question or simply keyword entry).

Directories

Directories are an interesting topic. Do they carry weight? Can they hurt your rankings? Should you even bother? The answer here is yes, yes, and yes.

This section will mainly focus on general directories, but the end of this section does include a few tips on how to find niche directories (or even other general directories) and how to determine if they are worth getting a listing on.

Yahoo
The Yahoo Directory was started in 1994 under the name "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but in 1996 became Yahoo. At the time Yahoo was primarily a directory with search functionality and (interestingly) neither SEO nor Internet Marketing were even categories at the time.

Through the late 1990s Yahoo pushed to become a web portal and in 2000 even signed a deal with Google that would see Google power Yahoo's search functionality. Their focus at the time was to acquire users through acquisitions such as GeoCities (RIP), bringing more people into their portal and keeping them there. Unfortunately Yahoo! didn't have the same user loyalty that Apple does and the walled-garden approached failed as users Googled their way out of the Yahoo network of sites (ironically right on Yahoo's own properties).

All this said however, they still provide a solid directory (back to their roots). The cost is a non-refundable $299 review fee.

BOTW
Best Of The Web may be my favorite of the general directories due in no small part to the fact that they allow for a permanent listing. The directory was founded in 1994 as a listing of the best of the web (seems to be the year of directories) and actually gave out a series of awards (take a peek, it's interesting to see what types of things won back then). That lasted until 1998 at which time the site lay dormant until purchased in 2002 at which time it became a general web directory.

BOTW is a human edited directory. They will decline your listing if they don't like the site. A submission is $150 annually or $300 for a permanent listing.

DMOZ
No list of directories would be complete without DMOZ. DMOZ was founded in June 1998 as Gnuhoo. It was purchased by Netscape in October of the same year at which time it became The Open Directory Project. By April 2000 it had surpassed the Yahoo Directory in number of URLs in it's index and currently sits at about 5.2 million.

For those in the industry long enough to remember, DMOZ suffered a catastrophic failure in October of 2006 at which time they had to display a backup version of their directory. This wasn't remedied until December and new sites couldn't be suggested until January. This is the time when it seemingly became increasingly difficult to get a listing in DMOZ as any editors seemed to have found new things to do with their time.

It is still possible to get a listing in DMOZ. For the 10 minutes it takes, it's well worth the time and it's free to submit. (Tip: try to submit to a category that has an editor.)

Business.com
Business.com was started in 1999 as a search engine for business and corporations. They came close to bankruptcy during the dot-com bubble bursting but after major layoffs and restructuring they became profitable once more in 2003.

Business.com is focused on business-to-business resources (so take that into consideration when thinking about submitting. The cost is $299 per year and all submissions are reviewed manually.

As with Yahoo and BOTW, the fee is non-refundable if your site isn't accepted. You're paying for the review, not the link.

Honorable Mentions
Moving past the major players, there are also a number of other good general directories. These directories have all survived many updates including the Penguin and Panda rounds.

Remember, though, link building is about balance. You don't want to submit to a bunch of directories and consider your job done. A better strategy would be to bookmark this page, submit to a few and as you're building more links using different strategies, add a directory or two mixed in with the rest.

• Jayde – Submission is free.
• Ezilon – $69 annual fee of $199 permanent.
• Alive – $75 annual fee or $225 permanent.
• 01 Web Directory – Free submission option or $49 one-time for a guaranteed 3-day response time.
• Aviva – $50 annually or $150 permanent.
• SunStream – $29 annually or $49 permanent.
• GoGuides – $69 one time.

Again, this list only contains consistently solid general directories.

Directory Guidelines

You'll want to also look at niche directories (which may well hold more weight than any of the general directories above), but you need to be careful. There are many horrible directories out there.

Here are a few directory guidelines to follow that universally apply:

• Is the submission a guaranteed placement? If a directory will list you automatically (with or without a fee) then it's not an editorial link and either doesn't carry weight or likely won't in the near future. It should be avoided.
• Do they require a link back? If they do (even for their free listings when a paid is available), it probably should be avoided.
• Is their PageRank 3 or below? Yes, it's an old metric, but is still helpful to gauge general site health. A directory with a PageRank of 3 or less will, at best, pass virtually no weight; at worst, it'll cause you problems. Generally, you should only look at PageRank 3 directories in the case of niche directories; with general directories, don't even consider anything less than a 4.
• Common sense. Ah, the toughest one because our brains can trick us into seeing what we want to see. When you look at a directory (or any other link source for that matter) you have to ask yourself, "does it make sense that this link should pass weight to my site?" If you can honestly say "yes" to this then it's likely a good link.

A Final Warning

The saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket" comes into play here. Once again, directories can provide good and relevant links to your site (and hey, even some traffic) but a solid link profile contains variety.

Never put all your energies into one single link source. If you find a lot of great niche directories, put them all on a list and add a couple each month while you're engaged in other strategies to help remind Google that you're not a one-trick pony. You have good content liked by directory editors, bloggers, social media netizens, and others.

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by Dave DaviesSeptember 26, 2013

"Do No Evil" One SEO Consultants Frustration With Google

Ben Kemp, a search engine optimization consultant since 1997, illustrates his frustration with Google in an article recently appearing in SiteProNews. 

 In my humble opinion, the goal at Google is to convert ALL businesses into advertisers on their AdWords network, after all Google is a business whose bottom line is profit.  The question is at what point do we realize that Google is a giant monopoly...and take action.


*After 16 years of helping other businesses achieve a greater prominence for their websites, the past 2 years of insanity has given me pause to contemplate the future.

Clearly, Google is intent on rendering my chosen vocation irrelevant. The previous ability to attain decent rankings has been eroded as Google eats away at the foundations of SEO and progressively eliminates legitimate opportunities to be a “tall poppy” on the www.

Over the years, I’ve nurtured a great many websites for a number of wonderful clients in a broad cross-section of genres. Of those, none seem unaffected by Google’s erratic rampage since 2012. Like most serious SEO practitioners, I believed that Google’s underlying intentions were for the greater good. Like many others, I have worked hard towards understanding and promoting the gospel of St. Google, striving to meet the guideline revisions and the amended terms of service.

I am deeply and bitterly disappointed by the outcome of the past 2 years of changes.

There’s a growing awareness and consensus across the internet that we’re ALL being screwed, whichever side of the belief divide we stand. The game is getting harder and the penalties more severe. The self-appointed umpire keeps changing the rules to suit its own end-game and there is no sign of any respite on the horizon.

An early retirement holds an increasing attraction. I’m 60 next birthday, and growing orchids is beginning to seem like a far more rewarding and infinitely less stressful occupation than SEO!

Did The Devil Buy Google’s Soul?

Others have touched on the fair-mindedness of the early Google, and the democratic way it enabled mom and pop enterprises to flourish in a “Level Playing Field” environment. There was once a time when start-ups with some nous could easily outperform the big-budget corporate players. Working smarter allowed many new businesses to flourish into large-scale enterprises. Many people owe a lot of their success to that earlier, nicer Google – but now it is apparently time to pay the piper!

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” – Keyser Söze

The democracy and spirit of fair play has now completely gone and the Mammon-worshippers at Google HQ have apparently sold their souls and crossed over to the dark side. Not since the early days of America has a single entity wielded so much unchecked and unrestrained power over so many other businesses. Back then, it was national domination by a handful of wealthy, ruthless men. Now it is global domination of the information superhighway by a single ruthless toll collection company.

Clearly, the world is in dire need of a 21st century Theodore Roosevelt. I wonder what he would have to say on the ruthless manner in which Google has treated the businesses which have provided the content that allowed it to grow stronger.

Perhaps this quote has relevance? “No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expedience.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Basically, webmasters’ and site owners’ best efforts to abide by changes to new guidelines and comply with altered terms of service since 2012 have pretty much been a waste of time. The imperative of Google delivering a greater return to its shareholders has taken precedence over fairness and search quality.

The so-called quest for best possible SERPs results gave Google an initial moral advantage, whereby the Panda/Penguin nay-sayers got dissed as black-hat SEO’s suffering from sour grapes. Is there anyone left who really and truly believes that Google has any credibility left in their public statements about striving to give searchers the best possible results?

It looks more like Google deliberately, knowingly and with malice aforethought set out to construct a scenario where they could portray punishing “the evil-doers” as a means to legitimize the inevitable collateral damage to the general website population. Anyone who whines about it publicly is automatically assumed to be an evil, black-hat SEO, or an employer of the same ilk.

Has Google Annexed the Information Superhighway?

The question has kept popping up in my subconscious more frequently this year. It has been a catchy phrase I’ve been steadfastly resisting articulation of, but as year’s end nears with no end to the insanity in sight, I can no longer hold it within my breast.

Is Google the Anti-Christ of the Internet? Has it been residing amongst us since 1997, carefully preparing for its nefarious end-game of global domination? Infiltrating the internet in the guise of the oft-quoted “benevolent curator” and surreptitiously acquiring enormous wealth and vast international power in readiness for the day of revelation.

All the while slyly buying up, neutralizing or stifling its competitors while recruiting hordes of acolytes and fervent believers in its avowed cause. Finally, with all the exits blocked and the dissenters surrounded, it launches a carefully scripted strike against all those who either agree or disagree with its assumption of internet dictatorship.

If all of that seems a bit far-fetched, the reality for many internet businesses is that they’ve been carpet-bombed with incendiary algorithms without an opportunity to properly defend themselves. To many, it may seem like Google implemented an internet Pearl Harbour assault in 2012 and for the past two years we’ve all been taking hits, bandaging our wounds and trying to dodge the never-ending stream of logic-bombs. Google’s Disavow Tool is as much use as a leaky gas mask in a Syrian chemical strike, and the webmaster tools Incoming Links data as helpful as taking the proverbial knife to a gunfight.

Your business can be virtually eliminated overnight and you won’t ever really know why! Hell, you won’t even rate as a recorded KIA or MIA statistic, let alone have the opportunity to draw a weapon and mount a credible defence. Nor will you (or your site) be medivac’d out for attention. Remember how they CLOSED the Reconsideration Request option to all webmasters who have NOT been issued a Manual Penalty. I guess they got tired of listening to moans of agony from the grievously wounded…

That is not the sort of situation one expects in the free world. Whatever happened to “Do No Evil?” Did the CEO’s trip to North Korea inspire the new dictatorial approach to internet dominance?

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Repression of the Human Competitive Spirit?

Deliberate repression of effective competitive effort has been put in place across the search engine rankings industry. That’s the only explanation that makes sense in terms of Penguin. There were far better, easier and less combative options available to Google to deal with so-called link manipulation epidemic. Simply ignoring any that were deemed inappropriate would have avoided the generation of the vast ill-feeling and frustration worldwide towards Google. History shows that as soon as allegedly dodgy SEO techniques become totally ineffective, they quickly fall by the wayside. Hidden text, keyword stuffing and all those other little titbits that once helped are long gone!

• Competitiveness is the essence of being human
• Survival of the fittest is the underlying principle of evolution

Google has worked hard to eliminate opportunities to compete effectively against other sites.

Let us NOT forget that GOOGLE themselves created the importance of links to website ranking success with Page Rank!

An entire industry grew up around that all-important aspect of website rankings. Individual site owners were left with little choice about entering into link competition. If your main competitors are enjoying success at your expense, and it is clear their dominance is based on more/better links – what should you do? There were only ever two choices:

1. compete on equal terms
2. close your business down

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Retrospectively, a decade and a half after initiating the mission-critical linking imperative, Google set out to harshly punish all and sundry for their completely natural and genetically-programmed desire to do as well or better than others! We are human, therefore we compete!!!

Google has many times bragged about its ability to detect manipulative linking schemes. It chose to mete out punishments when it could have simply eliminated the effectiveness of the link schemes! Closure of loopholes is one thing, severe penalties for elements that are not completely within the owner’s control are another matter entirely.

• On-site content is a site owner’s sole realm and he or she can and should be held accountable for it.
• External links are clearly NOT within the full and total control of the site’s owner!

The current Google environment is unfair, unwarranted and clearly unnecessary – unless there’s an underlying game-plan in play that the average website owner is not a party to?

For the rest of this story, go to Site Pro News.

HTML 5 Standardization

HTML5 is all the talk. While many features are going to be great there is still so much work needed to provide standardization. I'm excited but with all of Google's algorithm updates, the constant flux in the quality of search engine results I am apprehensive that the www is going to be further splintered. Apple's Mobile operating system (iOS) and now Google's involvement in the creation of HTML5, not supporting many of the XHTML standard code the cost of quality website design with consistent website browser rendering is going to double if the Giants do not start working together.

Google Wars Heating Up!

Things are heating up between Google and Microsoft with the introduction of Bing, Microsoft's new search engine. The first assault, the introduction of Google Chrome, Google's first Internet browser, attempting to cut into Microsoft's Internet Explorer market. Microsoft has maintained a stronghold on Internet browser market for many years, it is estimated that 75% of Internet users browse the web with some version of Internet Explorer. Microsoft counters with Bing, successfully competing with Google's search engine and surpassing Yahoo, the second leading search engine, within the first month of it's public introduction. Now we hear that Yahoo has agreed to join forces with Microsoft to further weaken the search engine giant, Google, on the battle field. Google retaliates by announcing their newest weapon, Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system, competing with Microsoft's monster Windows OS.

How do Google Chrome users rate Google's new browser? Does Bing deliver quality search engine results? What impact will a FREE operating system, in the personal sector, have on computing in the future? Imagine the possibilities...