Michigan Blog - Featuring Michigan Shopping, Travel, Business & People

The landscape is changing and it needs your attention!

If you are a small business owner in Michigan ( or elsewhere ), the odds are ...a website was built for your company about eight years ago (on average) and then it was revamped about three years ago. If you did your homework and hired an internet savvy consultant or a web firm that understood a bit about meta tags and linking - then you probably have gotten a little bit of business from that website of yours. Nothing to call home about - but it probably nudged your business to profitability in one way or another.

But the landscape HAS changed and the leads are lessening because more and more of your competition has jumped on the bandwagon and built websites. The advent of Google ads and Yahoo ads and other small Pay per Click and Pay per Position opportunities have arose. Much traffic is now generated by social networks and organic search results are getting harder to obtain.

It was easier in the past - the steps were simple:

1. Build a website


2. Add meta tags, content and other on-page elements


3. Get a few links from directories


4. Whala! Success

Now the process is a bit more complicated and it is not clear what parts of the process will give you the biggest bang for the buck.

1. Build a dynamic website with continually changing content


2. Add the meta tags and on -page elements - but those have to be dynamic also


3. Add a blog to the website and update it every few days.


4. Create a PPC strategy and an affiliate strategy ( if applicable )


5. Add social bookmarking and sharing elements


6. Build a LinkedIn page for your company (and Facebook and MySpace)


7. Develop a reputation on the social networks in an ongoing fashion - don't forget Twitter and Plaxo and FriendFeed.


8. Add video content and more advance multimedia to capture your visitors attention


9. Add a KLM file to map your location and/or locations


10. Join directories like the Michigan Business Directory and make sure all of your online profiles are hooked up.


11. Syndicate your content using RSS


12. Create press releases on a regular basis and submit them to Free Press Release Services like MichiganPR.net


13. eCommerce businesses have to worry about all the social shopping sites like Kaboodle and ThisNext in addition to the above items


14. Product videos need to be created (if you sell or distribute or manufacture products)

The case for a full-time web designer, web marketer or at least IT professional is realized but not something you can afford. Where do you start?

First - get a blog installed on your website. Blogger offers easy to use tools and allows you to integrate the blog easily with your own website.

Second - set aside one hour each day (or evening) that you work exclusively on an online reputation plan. Create profiles in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and Plaxo to start.

Third - Get started on a PR strategy. Each month write a press release that announces the latest and greatest news about your company. Send these across the internet and even send them to your local paper

Start with the above three steps and it should give you the momentum to obtain more business from the Internet. Once it proves itself worthwhile - THEN you can hire a web developer or online marketer on a regular basis.

Happy ONLINE marketing!

Labels: Michigan Web Design, online reputation, social networking

DIY Web Page Design

There is a new tool that I recently came across that I would categorize as an online hidden gem.

Website Wizard is the name of the gem and you can be the judge of it's value. When I saw everything that was offered with this .. along with the price (which is basically as low as a standard hosting charge), I had to try it.

I signed up for a free trial for one of my new "idea websites" and was happily surprised that Website Wizard - Web Builder was everything that it claimed to be. Needless to say, I continued on with the package and I am considering moving a few of our other websites over to them.

Here is the lowdown on what it includes. (There are actually 3 different package levels .. all of them are low priced)

1. Website Wizard comes with a product called Visual Site Builder. It allows you to edit your pages with ease. It also comes with a professional Logo Creator software in case you do not have a logo for your new business yet (this in itself is a $300 value minimum).
2. Website Wizard also comes with website design tools and loads of beautiful and practical website templates.
3. Website Wizard comes with hundreds of stock photos to use in your website. No need to purchase images from Getty Images or Comstock!
4. Form Wizard for creating custom forms for your business.
   
   
5. Search engine submission and ranking tools

• Sitemap Wizard helps you boost your site’s SEO results.
  Quickly and easily create a Sitemap for your site, which will have the
  search engine spiders and robots crawling every nook and cranny!
• Link exchange tool to get new visitors (and of course build your Google Page Rank).
• Opt-In Builder - which is mailing list subscriber software to grow your list of eager subscribers.
• Mailout feature with Spam-check and Open-rate.
• Online newsletter publishing with Newsletter Templates.
• Eye-catching, sales-boosting Pop-up Wizard.
• Tracker Wizard generates reports on your ad campaigns

Best of all, they have a comprehensive 200 page User Guide that helps you along in getting your website going.

Website Wizard also offers rofessional phone & e-mail Customer Support.

You have NOTHING to lose, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

Labels: Michigan Web Design

Microsoft FrontPage Compatible Web Hosting

In Response to the questions that I received on yesterday's entry regarding Web Design, I wanted to clarify a few points.

A number of readers wanted to know how and why Meta Tags should be maintained externally. Here is a brief explanation using the PHP language as an example.

Take a look at a well established eCommerce website: Discount Aquarium & Fish Supplies and note that on each product page, the title of the product is in the title tag and is repeated through out the page content. This is not done manually. It is dynamically created and a non-technical website owner can easily manipulate the keyword density and SEO of a product page based on what he/she names the product. Does that make sense?

It is a well known advantage for a shopping cart or eCommerce Solution to use these techniques. Why wouldn't you use this successful technique on a B2B website or a small business website?

This is something that you cannot do with a static website, it can only be done with a scripting language like PHP or ASP. In addition, there is really no need to use a database, this type of optimization can run off of an Excel spreadsheet that is maintained by a non-technical person.

Hopefully that helps!

Windows Marketplace

Labels: Dynamic Websites, Michigan Web Design, Search Engine Optimization

Static or Dynamic Website? HTML, PHP or ASP? What about CSS

"What language should be used to develop our website" is a common question that I hear from new or established clients. It is common amongst marketing managers that have no background in programming languages and do not understand the differences in programming options. This article is targeted to help you make a decision on whether you should use HTML or a language like PHP or ASP to develop your website.

Websites are classified in three broad categories, the static websites, dynamic websites and dynamic websites that run off of a database (like Shopping Carts).

• Static web pages are created using html with the design and layout done using tables and graphics. A more advanced HTML programmer will use a combination of CSS and graphics to create the "look and feel" of the website.
• Dynamic websites are created using programming languages like PHP, ASP, ASP.net, JSP etc.
• Dynamic websites with databases also use mySQL, Access, SQL server or another database in addition to the programming languages.

Having a static website has its advantages. You do not have to be very technical these days to build a HTML website and beginners can successfully publish a website using HTML and an editor like Dreamweaver or Expression (previously called Frontpage). Server errors are rare in HTML websites. Whenever you want to add new content to your website, you would refer to the template page, add your content and your page is ready to be uploaded. If you needed to change a navigation element or other common element in your website, you would unfortunately have to change that element on every page.

Static websites typically work okay if your online presence is small. As mentioned above, maintaining the static pages for any small change like the style or navigation, which remains common across pages, becomes very difficult and time consuming. You would have to open each page, make the change and then upload the pages again to your web server. You are very limited in your ability to maintain the SEO (search engine optimization) aspects of your website also. The Meta tags are on each page and need to be manually changed.

Creating a dynamic website is more challenging but the result and maintainability you will achieve is well worth the effort.

Programming languages like PHP help you in creating dynamic web pages which enables you to maintain your web site content dynamically or at runtime. Developing a dynamic website opens up possibilities that are not available in static websites.

Some examples:

• Displaying web site content based on users demographics
• Tracking where the user came from using multiple techniques
• Displaying current time and date
• Allowing the Title tags and other SEO components to be managed in an external database or spreadsheet and ensuring that these tags are consistently displayed in the page content (more on this in my next article)
• Easily creating printer-friendly pages
• Allowing non-technical people within your organization to update your website
• Developing simple applications like Brochure pages that are dynamically created.

Once you decide that a dynamic web site is the right way to go, the next question is usually " what programming language should I use". The most common programming languages are ASP, PHP, CGI Perl, JSP and recently growing in popularity ASP.net. Each language has advantages and minor disadvantages.

PHP has a considerable learning curve, but it gives you access to a variety of open source applications that are free. PHP is supported on both Windows as well as Linux servers. Choosing a Linux environment with Apache server is the best option for PHP, but not the only option. Blog software is freely available, also.

ASP web sites have a much smaller learning curve - but they are restricted to IIS and the windows environment. Bill Gates doesn't give away anything free - so in his footsteps, most of the applications that are available for Microsoft technologies like ASP are paid applications. You would have to purchase licenses. For example it would be difficult to find blog software for ASP or an ASP.net website.

JSP has a huge learning curve - but provides all the features of Java. Java can provide you excellent features when it comes to server side programming. Java is much more expensive than PHP, also.

Database Options

PHP would normally be used with a MySQL database. ASP and ASP.net work well with databases like MS SQL Server or MS Access. ASP, ASP.net, MS SQL Server, MS access are all Microsoft technologies.A server host will usually charge a bit less for Linux hosting, than a comparable Windows hosting package.

The cost to develop a dynamic website is usually triple the cost of a static website.
Hopefully this answers all your questions.

Please use the comments if you have any further questions and I will answer promptly!!

Labels: Dynamic Websites, Michigan Web Design, PHP and MySql Programming Advantages