Internet Marketing Blog

Email & Web-Based Tools from Google

Michelle Harrington — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:02:43 +0000

I recently helped a client configure their domain-based email accounts to use Gmail instead of their website host email service. The client preferred to use Gmail (as many of their employees were already familiar with it from using it for their personal accounts) and the client liked the ability to manage their email user accounts in one easy-to-use control panel.

With a bit of configuration on the server side and some set up within Google “Apps” business account, we were able to point the email to Google’s servers and they are now using that service for all of their email accounts.

Some of the benefits of using Gmail’s email service is their 99.9% uptime guarantee, hugh storage limits, a full-featured and user-friendly email interface and the ability to sync with Outlook if desired. Another benefit is having online access to your inbox, including historical emails and folders. Google “Apps” offers a Free Standard Edition which is limited to 50 user accounts and a fee-based Premium Edition.

To learn more about Google “Apps” including web “apps” for Gmail, calendar, instant messaging (IM), documents, spreadsheets, presentations, sites and video - which help businesses and organizations improve collaboration and productivity go to: Google Apps.

If you’d like to watch a short video on the highlights of using GMail for your domain-based email accounts, click here.

The only downside I can see is that Google uses Gmail to serve up text ads in the sidebar when you click into an email message. The ads aren’t obnoxiously large or “in the way”, but they might “creep” you out at first, because you’ll find the ads relevant to the subject matter of the messages in your inbox. For some people, that’s just too invasive. For the rest, the benefits of this free, full-featured application hosted on Google’s infrastructure seems like a solid choice.

While I haven’t used Google Business “Apps” myself, I do use Gmail for a personal email account and have found it to be very user-friendly. If you are considering using Google “Apps”/Gmail for your business or organization you might want to try out Gmail for a personal account first, just to give it a “test drive”.

To sign up for Google “Apps” for your business or organization, click here.

Free Online Image Editing Software from Aviary.com

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:53:16 +0000

Don’t have the money to buy an expensive image editing program but want to be able to size, enhance and customize your photos? No problem, check out the nifty web-based image editing and vector art tools at Aviary.com.

From basic image retouching to complex effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. Plus Aviary.com offers a whole suite of other products for vector based art, special effects, choosing color palettes and more.

Aviary.com provides free video tutorials on how to use their free web-based tools so it’s a great way to learn something new and get your feet wet with image editing software if you’ve been intimidated by complicated, expensive software. I checked out some of their videos to see how their suite of web-based products works and it looks pretty straight forward and user-friendly.

This also looks like an easy and inexpensive way to introduce image editting software to kids, so I’m going to have my 13 year old daughter give the tools a “spin” to see what she can create using them. Will keep you posted…

Identifying Duplicate Content on the Web

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:50:25 +0000

Ever wonder if someone has stolen your website copy? Writing quality content for your website or hiring a professional to do it involves an investment of time and/or money and there’s nothing more irritating than having another website owner come along and copy it. Not to mention the fact that Google may penalize a site for having duplicate content if it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.

If you suspect that your website content has been stolen, you can use www.CopyScape.com to see if you have content that is considered duplicate and where the other instances of the copy is located.

If you find that your copy has been “hijacked” then by all means contact the website/business owner to advise them that your unique original content has been found on their site and ask them to immediately remove it. You can also claim ownership of the content and request removal of the other site from Google’s index by filing a DMCA request.

If you’ve got a website and you’ve considered just taking someone else’s content, think again - what you are doing is stealing and its not going to help you get noticed (favorably anyway) by the search engines. Building great website content is a long-term commitment and involves an investment but the payoffs are always worth it. So before pressing Ctrl+V (shortcut for paste) do the right thing and write your own website content.

Featured Project: Foris Vineyards

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:33:37 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new to the blog, I’ve been busy creating a new website for Foris Vineyards, a boutique vineyard and winery in Rogue Valley, Oregon.

The upgraded site design features a new vendor tools section with download capabilities of Foris images, fact sheets, shelf talkers and more. The new design was built around the existing shopping cart where customers can mail order their favorite wines and join the Foris wine club. The new site features some Flickr image galleries, Google maps, a flash slideshow, video and podcasts. The new CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) design is cross-broswer compatible and is W3C compliant.

If you want to see what the site looked like before the “make over” visit the archived site here.

How to Install the New Microsoft Word Viewer

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:53:30 +0000

If you haven’t wanted to upgrade to Microsoft’s newest version of Office software you’ve probably encountered the new version of Word’s documents’ (.docx file) from friends or co-workers. If you’d like to be able to view these files without having to upgrade your software, just download and install the Word viewer. Here’s how:

Download the Word Viewer Here

The Word Viewer, together with the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, allows you to open Word documents saved in the following formats:

Word Document (*.docx)
Word Macro-Enabled Document (*.docm)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Text (.txt)
Web Page formats (.htm, .html, .mht, .mhtml)
WordPerfect 5.x (.wpd)
WordPerfect 6.x (.doc, .wpd)
Works 6.0 (.wps)
Works 7.0 (.wps)
XML (.xml)

With Word Viewer and the Compatibility Pack, you can view, print, and copy document contents to another program. However, you cannot edit an open document, save a document, or create a new document. This download is a replacement for Word Viewer 2003 and all previous Word Viewer versions.

How To Use Google Insights

Michelle Harrington — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:31:31 +0000

If you haven’t heard, Google has a neat tool called Google Insights. Google Insights provides a comprehensive set of statistics based on search volume and patterns. You can compare seasonal trends, view regional interest and view related and “rising terms” (keywords which have risen in volume in your specified time parameters). This information can help you plan for demand, find the geographic locations of your customers, provide new keyword ideas for your website optimization efforts and Pay Per Click campaigns. The data provided is from 2004 to present. Check it out using your most coveted keyword and see what kind of insight you can gain from this nifty online tool.

Invest in Your Online Success

Michelle Harrington — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:54:08 +0000

I enjoyed this article by Stoney deGeyter about re-thinking our mindset when it comes to investing in web marketing. When your online marketing strategy is looked at as such - “marketing” and not simply as an IT or computer expense and is looked at as a long-term investment, you are setting yourself up for success.

Investing Online is an Investment to Your Success

What is an Ecofont?

Michelle Harrington — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:58:06 +0000

In the latest issue of “O” magazine I saw a note about a “Green” font that uses 20% less ink when printed. It suggested trading in “Arial” for the more eco-friendly “Ecofont” so I checked it out.

The picture illustrates how the Ecofont was created by omitting parts of the letter. At the shown size, this obviously is not very nice, but at a regular font size it is actually very usable. Naturally, the results vary depending on your software and the quality of your screen. The Ecofont works best in OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007. Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results.

The Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans, an Open Source letter, and is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

To learn more about the Ecofont or to download it for free, click here.

The Findability Formula by Heather Lutze

Michelle Harrington — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:48:20 +0000

Just finished a great book for anyone venturing into the world of Pay Per Click advertising. The Findability Formula by Heather Lutze is an easy read and not too technical but very helpful in understanding and navigating the Pay Per Click arena. You’ll find a step by step guide in determining your targeted keywords, writing ad copy and creating landing pages for your Pay Per Click campaigns. Heather offers up lots of great advice and tips for getting the most out of your PPC spend. The book focuses predominately on setting up a Google AdWords account, however once you’ve set up a successful campaign in Google you can import that information into the other search engine PPC programs on Yahoo! and MSN.

Click here to learn more or to purchase this helpful internet marketing book.

Stunning Images to Promote Your Hawaii Business

adam — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:36:58 +0000

Just a reminder for those of you who are members of the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, they offer a large image bank of beautiful images of Kauai (and all the other Hawaiian islands for that matter) to help its members promote Hawaii tourism businesses. The photos may be downloaded without cost from their online image library.

We all know that photos sell, so if your website is need of some updated photography be sure to check out the wide array of photos provided by the HVB.

If you are a HVB member, here’s the login URL:

http://hvcbkb.nmgstage.com/ImageLibrary/PublicLogin.jsp

If you aren’t a member of the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, call (808) 924-0230 for more information.