Building Better Websites

My Top Alternative Song Choices from 2011

2011-12-15T19:17:42Z

I have a friend that says all the time “there is just no good music right now”, but he loves Adele. I agree, that Adele is very talented. And I think that he probably gets this perception from the fact that terrestrial radio is just plain terrible. I gladly pay for Sirius/XM because of the great playlists of new music on there. My favorite station is Alt Nation, which plays plays adult alternative music.

So here (after the jump) is my list of favorite songs that were in my favorites playlist from this past year.

Miike Snow (yes, his name has two “i”s) – Sylvia (the whole Miike Snow album is good)
Miike Snow – Animal
Sad Brad Smith – Help Yourself (not from this year, but still a fave)
Young the Giant – Cough Syrup (the whole album is good)
Young the Giant – Strings
Cold War Kids – Louder than Ever (again, whole album)
Cold War Kids – Mine is Yours
Cults – Go Outside
Foster the People – Helena Beat
Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks (overplayed now)
MGMT – Time to Pretend
The Black Keys – Next Girl
The Features – From Now On (only available on the new twilight soundtrack, which is good)
Jem – Save Me
Givers – Up Up Up
Grouplove – Colours
Grouplove – Tongue Tied
Coconut Records – West Coast
The Airborne Toxic Event – Changing
The Big Pink – Dominos
Broken Bells – The High Road (whole album is decent)
Broken Bells – The Ghost Inside
Broken Bells – Mongrel Heart
Cage The Elephant – Aberdeen
Death Cab For Cutie – Stay Young, Go Dancing
Company of Thieves - Death of Communication
Yeasayer – Ambling Alp
The Bravery – This is Not The End
AWOL Nation – Sail
Joy Formidable – Whirring
Two Door Cinema Club – Something Good Can Work
Two Door Cinema Club – What You Know
Peter BJorn & John – Second Chance

Magento Ecommerce and 50 Below users are getting sued for patent violations

2011-12-07T19:57:38Z

A loyal customer of mine today told me about a big story that is affecting thousands of ecommerce store owners that are running Magento Ecommerce software (a free, open source solution) and other ecommerce systems. There is a company called Kelora Systems that is suing ecommerce store owners for a patent violation. As you can imagine, this has Magento Ecommerce users scrambling. The patent involves how product searches are done on ecommerce websites.

In one lawsuit filed by Kelora, they are suing large corporations too.These large corporations include; Target Corporation , OfficeMax Inc. , Shopko Stores Operating Co., LLC , Briggs & Stratton Corporation , National Business Furniture, LLC , Rockler Companies, Inc. , 1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. , PC Connection, Inc. , Mason Companies, Inc. , Amazon.com, Inc. , Dell, Inc. , Office Depot, Inc. , Newegg Inc. , Costco Wholesale Corporation , Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. and Circuitcity.Com Inc.

Powersports websites that use the 50 Below system are also getting demand letters for $37,000 – $50,000 for patent infringements. 50 Below has responded by telling website owners that “they own their site and they should call an attorney” according to members of the Facebook Group for the Powersports Industry. If that is true, that is a poor way to handle it.

If you are looking for an alternative to ecommerce systems that put your business at risk, call Delaware.net for a quote for an ecommerce system that you can rely on. We build high performance online stores that include social media integration, SEO, content management systems, email newsletter systems, vehicle inventory management, and more.

Google blocking referring URLs with SSL

2011-10-19T15:05:46Z

This is bad news for SEO and analytics, as it will be impossible to see what words your visitors searched on in Google when they leave Google results and come to your website. Google is doing this to “protect privacy”, but my feeling is that they are doing this so that you will only be able to get their referring analytical data from their analytics products, or perhaps if you pay them for the data. For now, the data will be blocked.

http://searchengineland.com/google-to-begin-encrypting-searches-outbound-clicks-by-default-97435

Google Analytics to Offer Real-Time Traffic Stats

2011-09-30T16:16:22Z

Google just announced that they are going to provide REAL-TIME stats showing users on your website.

details here:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html

This is LONG overdue and it is great news for website owners because you won’t have to use a separate tool to view who is live on your site. I am sure that it won’t include real-time chat functionality with your web users, so you will still have to use a real-time chat client if you want that functionality for now. There are a couple of real-time chat clients that we use to interact with clients in real-time when they are on one of our websites, and this is a valuable tool as well because you can see new prospects and also competitors as they use your website.

It is about time that Google added new functionality to Google Analytics to make it relevant again. It has always felt as just a gateway drug to purchasing adwords, so adding this functionality is great news.

Since the feature is not rolled out officially, you can pre-register on their site to get access to it quickly. You will need to be the administrator on your analytics account to gain access. The form to sign up is in the Google blog post.

Just rode the 2011 ZX-10R

2011-06-01T19:59:37Z

My initial impression review of the 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10r

One of my passions in life, beyond building websites and running my Internet company, is motorcycles. I’ve been an avid motorcyclist since I was 18 years old, and today I ride on the racetrack, I teach MSF courses at the DMV, I sometimes teach at the Dover Air Force Base, and I also now am certified to teach Riders Edge classes at Mike’s Famous Harley Davidson dealerships. I decided that my blog should be about more of my passions than just web design, so I will enter news, reviews, tips and info on motorcycling that may benefit my friends that ride. My first motocycle-related post will be about the 2011 ZX-10R, a bike that is near the top of the supersport class this year.

I stopped into Diamond Motor Sports in Dover, Delaware to spend my lunch hour checking out the latest bikes that they have, and to talk to the staff at the dealership about some new products. While I was there, they offered to let me take the ZX-10R out for a test drive. Diamond usually doesn’t allow test rides of brand new superbikes by just anyone. I’m lucky because they know that I teach the advanced sportbike classes for MSF, and I have also done some track days at New Jersey Motorsports Park with Stew, the dealership manager. So with a big smile, I took the new black ZX-10R with the optional race ABS out for a quick spin.

Click below for the full story….

The new 2011 ZX-10R

My old 2004 ZX-10R
I used to own a 2004 ZX-10R, which was the first year that Kawasaki created a modern literbike for the track that was deadly serious. It was a fearsome motorcycle that (after my modifications) laid down 163HP at the rear tire, and it weighed just over 400lbs. It had a very short wheelbase (swingarm was too short), so it would wheelie everywhere. And the engine was so powerful that it had two major hits of power that happened at about 7,000RPM and also at 10,000RPM. This was a serious problem when you were exiting a corner and getting on the gas, because it would want to spin the rear tire and spit you off. The transmission on that ’04 model was also VERY notchy, and it would come out of 4th gear on its own from time to time when ridden very hard. The driveline lash of the 2004 was also something I will never forget, because going on long rides that involved heavy traffic meant that I would be riding a bucking bronco from stoplight to stoplight. That 2004 ZX-10R was a complete handful to ride, and it demanded your full attention all the time or you would get thrown off. I loved it. But I am glad I had not yet gotten serious about track riding at the time that I owned it. One of my online friends took his to the track and ended up with many rods in his hip and his legs. The 2004 was not for the beginning rider. It was a total expert bike that was still a challenge to ride. Kawasaki made the subsequent models longer, heavier, and less powerful. The new 2011 bike is a total redesign from the ground-up to get Kawi back to the razor edge.

The 2004 ZX-10R

My current bike is a 2008 CBR1000RR that is totally setup for the track by Speedwerks, the best local speed shop here in Delaware. The CBR has a full Akrapovic exhaust, a Traxxion Dynamics fork kit with gas cartridges that sells for $2500. It has a K-Tech rear shock on it that sells for $1700. I has a power commander V, with auto-tune and quick shifter. It is a badass track bike. So I have my current bike’s performance and suspension fresh in my mind, and also lots of mileage on the ’04 ZX-10R to compare them both to this new ZX-10R. Roadracing World magazine just did a review of the BMW S1000RR and compared it against the new ZX-10R and the CBR1000RR. The 2011 ZX-10R won. This is a big deal, because the new S1000RR is the top dog superbike for the last two years with the most raw power and top speed available. Here is the cover of the magazine:

So, how does she ride? The answer will probably surprise you as much as it surprised me.

Ergonomics:

The bike looks low and long compared to my CBR1000RR because of the long nose, but the CBR is a very tall and short bike to begin with, which adds to the feeling of this bike being longer. But it isn’t really longer, that is just an illusion. The bar reach and overall feel of the ergos are very nice. I didn’t feel any unwanted weight on my wrists because I am used to supersport bikes and it just felt very natural to me. Most of the top sportbikes are now all very close in ergonomics, so there wasn’t anything that stood out here.

The transmission – best I have ever ridden

The thing that stood out right away that had me saying “wow” in my helmet was not the power, electronics, handling or anything like that. It was the TRANSMISSION. All that nasty notchy feeling of the 2004 was completely gone. Gear shifts were short-throw, positive clicks that went right into gear with little effort. Kawasaki engineers must have spent a lot of time undercutting the gears and designing this transmission to be the best one out there – and it is. The bike shifts better than my CBR1000RR, which is saying a LOT and this is a huge compliment. Hondas have always been known for their smooth shifting transmissions and Kawasakis have been known for their strong motors and notchy transmissions. This transmission is other worldly and I can’t say enough about it. I was stunned at how good it is. It was a disappointment to go back to the CBR and shift it compared to this bike.

Driveline Lash

All of that terrible slop in the drivetrain that plagued by 2004 was COMPLETELY gone. Some of that might be the fact that it was prepped with the chain that is setup just a little too taught (because they stretch and the bike is new), but the transmission gear slop and the rear wheel cush drive slop is not there. It is simply built much better than the 2004. Shifting in traffic was more enjoyable that it is on my CBR. I also forgot how nice it is to have that “positive neutral finder” feature that Kawi has on all their sportbikes – you click her down into 1st gear, and then a hard pull up won’t go past neutral into 2nd. It just goes right into neutral, which is great.

The power

The bike is very strong, and I had it into triple digits pretty quickly on a deserted back road to see what she could do. The delivery of the power is very different from other bikes that I have riden. The power delivery is so flat, and so linear, that it is almost boring. If a 180HP superbike’s power can be called “boring”, that is a pretty bold statement. So let me clarify that statement.. There is no “hit” with the power. It is a steady climb that pulls predictably hard and reliably all the way up to redline. And guess what? When you are shopping for a bike for the track, that is EXACTLY what you want. You want to be able to roll on the throttle leaving turns without upsetting the chassis or introducing too much wheelspin. I had the power mode set to “F” for full power, but there are two other modes for low and medium power that are useful in wet conditions.

Traction Control

One of the coolest features of this bike is a race-oriented traction control system that can potentially let you spin the rear tire a bit leaving turns, without as much worry of high-siding yourself into the weeds. I had the traction control set to “1″, which is the least amount of traction control you can set it for without turning the TC off entirely. I didn’t have a chance to push it to the point where I could feel it kick in. Perhaps if I get a chance to ride this bike on the track I will be able to say more about the TC, but I would have to buy it first.

The handling

Another major leap forward. The geometry of the front of the bike is extremely well developed. The bars are very neutral and there is little to no bar pressure required to change directions. It actually flicks from side to side faster and with less effort than my CBR. It is pretty dramatic, and I think part of that has to do with the fact that the ZX-10R has been prepped with street pressures in the tires (35-36psi), whereas my CBR is setup with about 30psi rear and 32 front for agressive riding. That little bit of a pressure change can make a big difference in turn-in feel, but the neutral bar pressure and speed at which it flicks from side to side are incredible. So the feel of countersteering through a fast turn was effortless and a joy.

Uncorking the Genie

It isn’t fair to compare the roll-on midrange power of my current CBR to the ZX-10R because my CBR has a full race exhaust, PCV, and auto-tune with an oxygen sensor. However, it is clear that the potential for this new ZX-10R bike is truly immense, when you consider that an updated fuel map and a slip-on pipe will yield as much as 18 additional horsepower. You can read about that here: http://blogs.superstreetbike.com/6731637/motorcycle-reviews/2011-kawasaki-zx-10r/index.html. There are reports of 2011 ZX-10Rs on the various Ninja forums online stating that they are achieving 200HP at the rear wheel without major engine modifications.

Conclusion

With advanced electronics that include wheelie control, traction control, three power modes, with race ABS brakes, with its 180HP and fantastic transmission, the razor sharp handling, and the overall platform for building an amazing track weapon, this bike is extremely impressive. The price is also very competitive when compared with the BMW S1000RR, Ducati 1098SE, the Aprilia RSV4, the KTM RC8R, and other top superbikes. Kawasaki’s world superbike team has a paultry budget when compared to companies such as Honda and BMW, so race results only tell part of the story. This motorcycle represents a major leap for Kawasaki and also the technology of the top superbikes in its class. A big thank you to Diamond Motor Sports for trusting me with a test ride on this beautiful bike.

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Proof that copying content will kill your site

2011-02-08T04:44:48Z

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So Google just came out and said that they are more actively punishing websites that copy website content from other websites: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/algorithm-change-launched/

I’ve long advised my clients against copying content from other websites. This practice, known as “blanding”, makes your website content appear as content that Google has already seen before. A best practice has been to always write your own website content. But people are either too lazy, or too busy, to set aside time to write new website content. We’ve known that this blanded content could hurt your website’s search engine performance for some time. Now it is going to hurt it even more, and this is probably a good thing overall for website owners and those who write their own content. It will also be very bad for those who cheat and copy articles and other content for use on their website. Syndicated sites are now going to be more vulnerable as well.

More after the jump.

At Delaware.Net, my website development firm, We have been able to directly measure the effects in recent years of how websites that are updated regularly – namely blogs, act like traffic magnets for Google. Unfortunately, this has made blogging programs such as WordPress gain quite a bit of fame for the very modest features that they possess. True content management systems are still a much better solution for managing websites. We’ve also seen WordPress become a HUGE hacking target, and I will cover that in an upcoming post.

If frequent content updates to websites with unique well-written content make them come up higher in Google, then it makes sense to assume that websites that aren’t updated should drop in the Google search engine result pages (SERPs). When we let our websites go without content updates, and also our blogs, we see a direct drop in traffiic. Likewise, when we add new content to our sites (we have 8 websites), the inbound traffic from search engines jumps dramatically. We have passed this information on to customers, who understand that they need to keep their sites updated.

This news from Google is quite interesting, because they are admitting that is possible for websites that that copy website content to somehow come up higher than the original author’s website. Scary stuff. I am glad they are closing whatever loophole has been exploited. As companies look to outside firms to help them with social media, blogs, copy writing, and content management, the lesson here is to make sure that those outside firms aren’t re-posting content across multiple websites. If you hire employees in-house to help with marketing, it is becoming increasingly important to hire the candidates that have superior writing skills, all other factors being equal. And make sure that they aren’t stealing content.

I know a CPA firm locally that signed up for article content for their email newsletter. They didn’t have time to write their own tax tips, so they subscribed to a service that created a newsletter that they could put their name on. They used that same content as news articles on their website. With this new change to Google’s algorithm, that content will actually harm their website, because the content will be on MANY websites.

When I talk about syndicated websites, and how they are at risk, here is what I mean. Imagine you are an auto dealership owner, or a real estate broker. Those industries have hundreds of turn-key website solutions that are marketed to them daily. It is possible for them to turn-key a website, and have the template-based design company give them content. These websites that are using content across multiple websites are “syndicated”. A car dealership that came to us for help recently had a syndicated website that never got significant traffic from Google. By giving them a custom design, helping them write their own unique articles, content, and tips, they saw a huge spike in traffic from Google. But alas, it is hard for many companies to keep that going. That is why they need a relationship with a professional website design firm that will meet with them regularly to test their website’s performance. That is what I do for a living.

Lessons from this article:

Always write your own content for your website.
Never steal articles or content from other websites.
If you wish to share content that you find online, link to the original article and write your content to go along with it.
When hiring employees, start to judge how well the employee can write business articles and content. Just as doctors need to have articles published in medical journals to gain respect, the same is true of other professions posting articles online. Any company could take better advantage of their expertise by publishing articles online.
Create a schedule to keep your content fresh and current.
Meet with your design firm for a performance checkup every three months.
Never settle for a syndicated template website with syndicated content, because it won’t perform well on Google.
Get a quote from Delaware.net to make your website high performance.

$6000 for Simple Website Updates?

2011-02-02T12:50:24Z

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Some straight talk about the costs of updating your website…

Delaware.Net, my company, won a website development project for an insurance company in New Jersey, and we are very excited to get the project. The new client told us a story that we unfortunately hear way too often, about a website design company that they were using that quoted them an outrageous price for pretty much standard website content updates. Imagine getting a quote for $6000 to add a couple of pages to your website, and some new graphics on the home page.

More after the jump…

It may sound ridiculous, but there were many small web design shops that got away with this behavior before the economic collapse in 2008. Some apparently still try to get away with this tactic of charging as much as they possibly can get away with, but we don’t play games like that with our quotes. We had clients that came to us from other web companies back in the pre 2008 era that had spent $18,000 for a simple ecommerce website that had only 10 products in it. We have never gouged customers like that, and I know in my heart that our transparency, hard work, innovation, and business ethics are some of the reasons why we are growing in a down economy and the other guys are shrinking.

The truth is, that you can use just about any popular Content Management System (CMS) and avoid over paying for your website updates. But you need to make sure that you are choosing a system that has a low overall cost of ownership as well or you can also get burned. You have a lot of CMS options to choose from today. There are some VERY basic CMS solutions, and some very advanced ones. The trade-off is that the more powerful CMS solutions tend to be too complicated for the average user to use. I use WordPress for this blog, because it is very good at one thing – blogs.

Can you use WordPress to build a huge website with lots of features? Sure. But it will require custom programming, plugins, and more work. The problem there is that programmers are expensive and slow.One you have to hire a programmer to build something custom for you, you are also paying them for debugging and maintenance, which gets expensive in a hurry. We have seen other customers that have spent over $10,000 to customize WordPress to build a business application for their business, only to have it break and fail. One such client moved to our CMS and we had their lead capture system working on our Team-Logic CRM sales system in a day. That is a ton of programming cost saved, and their site is rock-solid because the system was already built, debugged, and tested. We empower customers to fire those expensive programmers, and get their websites working for them right away.

So the lesson here is that the initial advantage of WordPress being open source and free is quickly overwhelmed by the programming and upkeep expense if you want it to do more with it than it was designed to do. The same is true with some of the other free CMS solutions out there. Need a simple blog? Use WordPress. I do. Need something to power your complete website? Then ask me for a demo of our CMS.

For only about $1500, we were able to take this insurance company’s large website and move it to our CMS in a few days. That cost includes CMS installation, migrating of the client’s content, and live training to show the client how to use all of the features of our CMS. So within a week or two, this client can now manage their website on their own, and they gain dozens of applications, search engine optimization, and social networking features for their website that they didn’t have before. That is an incredible value that will not only save this company thousands of dollars a year in website management fees, but it will also make their website come up higher in Google and gain the, new clients. Instead of buying into the “open source is free and cheap” myth, they will have a site that is more reliable, and that gets free feature upgrades by us every month.

The feature upgrades that we add to our system for free each month are one of the advantages of our CMS that I don’t think we market well enough. And that is something we will try to change in 2011. For example, as we roll out exciting new features like mobile applications, and other neat features I can’t talk about yet, all of our customers will get those updates for free. None of the small web design shops that uses Joomla/WordPress/Drupal do that. With us, your website evolves. With them, your website will need an upgrade every two years. That costs money that has to be factored into your overall cost of ownership of your website. We also offer free phone support for our CMS, where the other guys charge $130 per hour to train your staff. Again, you have to look at all of the costs when you choose a web design company.

Our CMS not only runs websites for small businesses, but it was designed to handle enterprise-level security and performance needs. That is one of the reasons why we have so many municipalities that are choosing us for web design and CMS solutions. The municipal web design market is one of our most successful vertical markets that we are investing in for 2011. And all of those large city website projects that we build make our platform that much better, and those new features trickle down to the smallest of CMS clients.

If you have questions about how to better manage your website, call me. You can call my office at 888-432-7965. My extension is 100. I’ll take a look at your website, run some reports on it, give you some free recommendations that you can use right away to make your website perform better.

Since this is my last post for 2010, I wish you a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2011.

Driving traffic to your website

2010-11-24T04:30:47Z

Probably the most common question that web site owners ask, is how to get additional traffic to their websites. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) used to be the only way to make this happen. Today, however, SEO is just one of several tools that you will need in your strategy to increase traffic.

Article after the jump

Here is a great article from Inc. Magazine, that gives the basics on a strategy to increase your website traffic: http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/10/how-to-drive-more-traffic-to-your-website.html

This article is obviously high-level, but we can assist companies with putting all of these strategies to work for your business.

Remember, however, that traffic alone doesn’t equate to sales. I’ve seen companies that pay Google for traffic and drive tons of traffic to their websites, without a plan for getting clients to purchase. This is a sloppy way to market and it wastes a lot of money. My point is this – focus on making sure that your website has a good design, is easy to use, is regularly updated, and gives your customers what they are looking for first. Then implement a strategy using social media, blogs, SEO, and all that things that make up a true marketing strategy.

Read the article. It is a good one.

SEO Realities (Funny Video)

2010-11-10T20:45:07Z

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A lot of business owners tend to get the wrong idea about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how it can help their websites. Years ago, when every web page in your site was built by hand, your web developer had a dramatic impact on the search engine performance of your website. But today, the complete opposite is generally true – Content Management Systems (CMS) tend to have fantastic optimization for search engines BUILT-IN. This puts more of the burdon and responsibility of search engine performance on the website owner/author, and less on people actually coding up your website.

More details after the jump

Can more be done beyond writing good content to help your site’s traffic? Aren’t there little secret tweaks that can be done to your site’s code to make it come up higher in Google and other search engines? Well, sure. But it doesn’t work like it did in the past. Years ago, you could focus on a dozen or so key strategies to optimize a website for search engines. But those key elements (i.e. page titles, heading tags, link titling, sitemaps, etc) are now just considered best practices, and are generally built-into the CMS that your site runs on. So it then becomes a garbage-in = garbage-out type of thing in regards to your content’s quality, uniqueness, and frequency of updates. Choosing the right mix of keywords, using analytics, and managing content in a more proactive way are crucial to your website’s performance, yet most companies are too lazy to do this work.

There ARE other things that can be done to help SEO, but they are tedious, take a lot of work, and may still not make your website come up higher. Why? Because instead of a dozen main things that Google and other engines look at, they are now looking at HUNDREDS of aspects of your pages, including traffic, age, inbound links, page speed, and off-page SEO factors that a small business owner can’t easily change. What is the easiest way to hit all of those attributes at once? Write good content. There is a lot more to it, but it isn’t just keywords any more. We tell our customers all of the secrets to help with this.

But business owners don’t want to hear that there isn’t some magical SEO trick. In their mind, there MUST be a magic silver bullet that will make their website come up high in Google results. All they need to do is find the right developer to make that happen. This myth is the reason why there are countless search engine optimization, search engine marketing, campaign management, and other firms out there that will take your money, promise the world, and they won’t back their services up with guarantees of any kind. It is simple supply and demand. And from time to time, these firms call us to work on their client’s websites, and in 5 minutes we can tell that they don’t know much at all about SEO. They are simply selling hype. And people are buying it, so they churn through their dissatisfied customers with no end in sight.

Mark my words, as we move from the Information Age (relying on geeks) to the Participation Age (creating your own voice online with content), search engines will continue to show “live” results for websites that have a pulse. So your website beterr be “alive”. Also, just because you might get some traffic with a higher search engine result, that doesn’t MAKE PEOPLE BUY. You still need a well-designed website that has the necessary design features and applications that help people to use your website. It takes time, management of the site, analytics, and a strategy.

We are great at SEO. It is built into all of our applications. But instead of looking for a keyword strategy that might get you a few more hits, we would rather help you to design an online marketing plant that will get you more SALES. Sales beats HITS any day of the week.

Mortgage Salespeople and the Web

2010-10-08T17:31:02Z

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I recently got this email from a mortgage broker salesperson that wants to build a website to generate mortgage leads:

“I want to design my own web site so I can be on the major search engines and have the ability to have realtors put their listings on my site. I hope to generate leads on a consistant basis. I am working on a limited budget to get started. I have some quotes from national web designers but would like to deal with a local Delaware company.”

My response is after the jump

Mortgage brokers and Realtors have to be very careful in how they interact. If they are not careful, they could be breaking federal rules that protect the public in how Realtors are compensated by mortgage brokers. I will break down this inquiry so that it might help other mortgage brokers that wish to use the web to generate leads.

“I want to design my own web site so I can be on the major search engines”

Do you want to design it yourself? Or do you want a design firm to design it for you? I am sure he means that he needs someone to design it for him. The next part of the sentence highlights the major problem with how the public perceives how search engines work. They assume that the web designer is the sole person responsible for making the website come up high in search engines. This was once true, but now it is only 50% (or less) true. The building of the website and entering content from the get-go can be done using understood Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, but all websites require ongoing content updates to be successful in organic search engine results. The problem is, most website owners won’t add content to their websites after they are built, so they will drop like a rock in Google after they are launched. “Being Found” on search engines isn’t the same thing as ranking high, and ranking high takes time and commitment from the website owner after the site launches. The good news is that our CMS is fantastic at SEO. So if you have a decent amount of content to get started, your site should get found and perform well.

“and have the ability to have realtors put their listings on my site.”

It is easy to use our Content Management System to add real estate listings to a website. In fact, we have a pretty neat module in our CMS that we call the “Listing App” that can be used for rentals, commercial, farms and land, residential, and apartment listings. It works great. But again, there are problems with the goal stated above. Realtors WON’T spend the time to place listings onto a new website that has zero traffic. Especially one that doesn’t rank in Google anywhere. And one that doesn’t already have a bunch of homes in it. Expecting Realtors to log into a ghost town website and spend time logging in, uploading photos, etc. is just not going to happen. Part of the reason is because in most real estate offices, there is an office manager or full-time employee that puts all of their listings into the local MLS system. Try asking that employee to go to a NEW website and add listings a third or fourth time on top of what they are already doing – good luck with that. Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this goal would be to go to public MLS sites (there are many) and find the URLs to the homes that you want to market. You could have the Realtors send you the MLS number of the home in question, and you could do the rest. But do you have that kind of time?

“I hope to generate leads on a consistant basis.”

Good goal. Leads will come when the website has traffic. Traffic doesn’t come by adding keywords to a shell of a website. The website will need significant content. Content that is unique. Content that is updated regularly. The site will need inbound links from other websites. Google tracks how websites link to each other, and without any inbound links, your site won’t appear popular or important to Google. Saying that you want to generate leads is the same thing as an overwheight person saying “I want to lose weight”. It is a good goal. A good web designer would be like a personal trainer in that regard. If you show up and do the work with us, you will get the leads. But if you just buy a gym membership, or in this case a basic small website, and you don’t put in the work, you won’t get the results you seek.

“I am working on a limited budget to get started.”

Surprise, surprise. These are words that no web design firm wants to hear. However, with recent advances in CMS technology, it is possible to get a website online in several days, while still having the same advanced CMS that we use to build massive websites for large organizations. So you are in luck here. But you will still need to spend some time learning to manage your site, no matter what solution you choose.

“I have some quotes from national web designers but would like to deal with a local Delaware company.”

This is very nice to see. We have a lot of local customers, and we like to do business locally when we can as well. We also have customers from across the country, but it all adds up. I would guess that based on your inquiry, most of your quotes will come from companies using templates on top of free CMS software. You will get a template site that won’t scale like our solution will. I’d be happy to help you succeed online, but keep in mind that mortgage brokers are not allowed to compensate Realtors for leads, as this is a federal law. As a licensed Delaware Realtor, that is something that I know a little bit about. I doubt that you will find another web design company owner locally that also has a real estate license.

My goal is to win new business, but also educate potential customers so that they understand the risks and demands that are required to be successful online.

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Been Busy!

2010-09-30T18:23:32Z

We are building website projects for quite a few new clients. We recently won website projects for municipalities in 4 different states, and things are going well. I have several articles that I am finishing up to post to the blog soon.

Here are some of the topics I am working on:
- 50 tips for planning your website project.
- Content strategies for website projects.
- Planning your online store

Google Changes Search Algorithm – You’ve Been Warned

2010-07-19T20:30:40Z

Your search engine ranking for your website is about to change – again. And this time, most business owners are going to get a piece of bad news that I have been warning about for a long time now. This Wednesday, Google launched a new search algorithm, called Caffeine, and they masked this by simultaneously launching a new feature that lets you add a background image to the Google homepage – whoopee. This change to Google is a huge fricken deal. I’ll explain why after the jump.

What I have been warning customers about is that standard search engine optimization (SEO) as we all know it will start to go away in favor of real-time, updated content in your website that is constantly added on a regular basis. In other words, you won’t be able to add keywords to your website and wait to come up high anymore – it won’t work. I ‘ve been preaching to customers and at networking events for some time that we are “leaving the information age, and that we are entering the participation age”. This was the topic of my Ignite Sussex presentation a couple of months ago – that business owners need to consider who in their organization makes up the voice of the company’s heart and soul, and then pass them the microphone and let them talk to the world. Without telling your company’s story, you won’t have an easy time competing in today’s social-driven marketplace.

Even Google is feeling the social heat, where real-time news and information sources like Twitter, Facebook pages, and countless other online sources are competing to be the most timely source for certain information. So now, we have Caffeine. Caffeine, is Google’s new secret sauce that helps them index a staggering amount of web pages simultaneously, so that they are updating Google search results with a much higher frequency. This means that new content will enter Google faster, and older content will leave Googles top search results faster.

This is very good news for some, and very bad news for a lot of business owners.

Most business owners that I meet have a very hard time believing that there aren’t some secret magical tricks to coming up high in search engines. They believe that if certain words are organized and linked just so in their site in just the right way, that they will dominate search results. It is true that this is how it worked for many years, but with search results becoming more real-time, it will be impossible to constantly pay a search engine marketing company to tweak your site. And lets be honest, “tweaking”your site will NEVER be as good as adding genuine, well-written content on a regular basis, that people will want to link to.

Truth is, SEO, and the search engine marketing companies that peddle their wares, have offered questionable value recently, because adding keywords to your website isn’t adding value. It isn’t adding a soul to your site. It isn’t making people come back to your site again and again. SEO doesn’t make someone trust you, OR your website. Also, if you get people to your site because of SEO alone, but the site isn’t designed well, doesn’t have decent content, is confusing to use, doesn’t look trustworthy, or has a multitude of other issues with it, NO ONE WILL BUY FROM IT! But we see people time and time again that spend hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars per month (really) just to boost traffic to an under-performing website. That is madness, stupidity, and a waste of money. Sites like this one that have a link at the bottom to every local city and town name are just trying to game the system to get traffic from Google. Hopefully, we will see an end to this spammy strategy in the future. To me, someone who knows what he is looking at, it makes your company look sleazy. And I am not alone – as web users become more and more savvy, they can recognize a site loaded with keywords as a desperate attempt to gain traffic.

I say good riddance to SEO. SEO is becoming automatic. This latest move by Google proves that this is where things are headed. Want to know what to do to take advantage of this? Simple. Hire better writers. If you interview two prospective employees with equal credentials, hire the one who is a better writer. To me that applies to any position that involves use of a computer. This is a REAL problem that honestly shocks me when I see it. I’m talking about the number of people I meet that couldn’t write a simple business letter or article unless you held a gun to their head. Even then they probably couldn’t do it. Those people…. the ones that can’t write and produce content… Those are the people and the companies that should be scared about this new social marketing economy. This economy, this public, and now search engines too, are demanding that you show your best stuff. That you prove that you are an expert. You can’t cheat with keywords and hope to milk the Google cow for money.

How big is this change with Google? Its huge. And its magnitude will sink in slowly as the rules for website “optimization” are again thrown out the window. I think it is time that companies start to think about their own marketing voice optimization. This news about Google is GREAT NEWS for companies like mine. Why? Because more people will soon realize that they need MULTIPLE PEOPLE in their companies working on their website content instead of just the IT guy or marketing person. THAT is how you will need to compete. To have multiple people in your company editing your website content safely, you will need a solid Content Management System (CMS), like ours.

I remember how companies didn’t want to give their employees Internet access just 10 years ago. “They will all surf the web all day!” And that was a valid concern back then. Today, we can’t imagine doing business without almost all employees having broadband. We depend on the Internet. And now, the Internet is demanding that you give something back to be noticed. You can’t hide behind that old, tired brochure website. You had better have good writers, AND good content, AND a Facebook page, AND a high-performance website, AND a blog, AND a twitter account, AND a good source of information to get noticed. Or else you won’t get noticed anymore.