As standard we install the DB backup plugin and set this to email a database backup weekly.

This backup is vital in restoring your website / blog should some unforeseen disaster happen.

Obviously, we don’t expect disaster to strike and we make provisions for our own backups. This is administered by the company(s) that we use for hosting and is done weekly.

Although we feel secure in this knowledge we think it is always good to have a second independent backup and that is why we set our WordPress websites to email a backup.

What is this backup file?

The file that arrives in your email is a zip’d archive containing a database of your posts, pages, comments and more.

If you only had this file you could restore all of your pages / posts, however, none of the design elements are included in this backup. This kind of back up would be much, much larger.

Full back up

A full back up, i.e. one that would enable you to restore or move your website requires a full copy of the websites graphics, pages, photos, media content etc.

This requires a big download from the server and would be large compared to the database backup.

This download along with your database form your complete website.

Now, ideally you should never need to use this but in my opinion it is a good insurance policy to have this on DVD. This way if an unforeseen disaster occurred you have a copy of your website.

If you are updating and adding posts with pictures / media content on a regular basis you may consider having the backup repeated every few months as your website grows.

As a service to our clients we offer a full website backup delivered on a physical medium such as a DVD or memory stick. Prices start at £60 +vat. Get in touch for more information.

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If you run an online business and are interested in free or cheap ways to help you operate your virtual business have a look at our top 5

Keepass – Free

We all know how many usernames and passwords we have to keep track of nowadays. It can be a nightmare to remember them all. Just do as I do and never lose or forget a password again. Keepass is a little program that is free and open source.

It stores and protects all of your passwords with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the Twofish algorithm to encrypt its password databases. Both of these ciphers are regarded as being very secure and AES is apparently used by the U.S. Federal Governments National Security Agency (NSA) for protecting top secret information.

http://keepass.info/

Carbonite – Cheap

Don’t risk losing your data, especially if you use a laptop. What if your hard drive fails, your laptop gets dropped etc. Can you retrieve your data easily? Carbonite is an easy backup solution that backups to the cloud using encryption to protect your data. The program runs in the background and is very easy to use. You just set it and forget it. It is also only about £42 per year for unlimited backup. This is an insurance policy worth having.

http://www.carbonite.com/

Dropbox – Free Option

Dropbox is great if you work on multiple machines or in multiple locations. Transferring work onto a data stick and having multiple versions in several places can get very confusing. Dropbox solves this by creating a folder that backs up to the cloud into your account. You can then install Dropbox on your other machine(s) and it will automatically synchronise all of your dropbox folders. Anything you add or update in your dropbox folder gets added or updated in your online dropbox and then gets updated on your other machines. What’s more it happens automatically. It’s easy and has a free account that gives 2GB storage.

http://www.dropbox.com/

OpenOffice – Free

Don’t fancy spending on Microsoft Office? No problem, Open Office is an open source version that offers a great alternative. While it is not identical to Office it does all of the same things, albeit slightly different to use. It offers all of the usual stuff such as spreadsheets, word processing, presentations etc. and it exports / saves in all major formats.

http://www.openoffice.org/

GIMP – Free

Gimp is an open source free graphics editor. It is a little on the advanced side if you have only ever used Microsoft Paint, however, if you are interested in getting into creating your own web graphics this would be the software to master. It is free and is said to be as good as many of the high-end graphics packages such as Photoshop. Not only that, there are loads of tutorials for it on YouTube.

http://www.gimp.org/

With this small collection of tools you have your data and passwords all safe and secure, you have nailed multi-location working and have all the documentation and graphics software you will ever need. Check them out and feel free to leave comments or links to tools you rate highly.

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We know the feeling, this used to be us. Thankfully, we are now experienced webmasters and can cut through the hype.

What is the answer for newcomers to web promotion?

It is difficult out there. You can easily go down the wrong path or worst still an expensive wrong path. People may have good intentions, but bad advice can be expensive and waste your valuable time if it does not improve your web position.

Our Thoughts

Some time ago we started work on our online marketing course, but found that many people did not really have the time to complete the lessons. While it is good to know the techniques and theory of SEO most people care little about the detail and rather just get the results. Right?

Stepping it down

Over the next few months we are restructuring our course to break it down into a step by step, hour by hour approach.

We are ditching the background and theory and offering one hour activity packs aimed at giving people the bricks and mortar of good SEO. We aim to get you moving forward on the web with small one hour action packs.

If you are interested in finding out more get in touch and please leave your comments below. Tell us how we can help you.

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Using photographs and images in your blog posts can really help you stand out and get noticed. It is a fact that people are drawn into content that has a visual aspect. Solid text is less likely to be read if not accompanied by an intriguing image. Additionally, photos can help you in the search engines – see article: SEO Tip: Optimize your Images for Search

So, here are some resources for free and paid for images. With the quality and abundance of free images and photos there is no reason for not using images in your blog posts. The following video covers photo and image resources available and below the video you will find a list of links to them.

In my experience, the paid for ones are usually better quality and there is more choice, however, the free photos are really great too if you are prepared to do a little searching.

Feel free to share this post using the Share/Bookmark link at the bottom of this post and it would be great to read your comments about your image and photo resources.

Links

Paid for: -

• Fotolia
• Istock

Blogging Tool for Finding Free Images

• zemanta

Free Stock Photo Websites

The following links are free photography libraries mainly sourced from Photoshop Support. It may be worth looking there too incase they update their list.

• StockXCNHG
• morgueFile
• StockVault
• Unprofound
• Pixel Perfect Digital
• Free Range Stock
• Image*After
• Free Stock Photos
• Photo Rogue
• ImageBase
• Abstract Influence
• Cepolina Photos
• Woophy
• Geek Philosopher
• Free Pixels
• Images
• Foto
• Photos Bank
• Photo
• Packs
• Media GOO
• Texture Warehouse

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Thinking about creating a video, but don’t have a camcorder, video editing software or the time to shoot a video? Well, you don’t have to, at least not with Animoto.

Animoto is an online video slideshow service that allows you to combine photos, short video clips and music to create professional looking videos. I am definitely a big fan of Animoto… and it just seems to get better and better in terms of development and quality of the video production.

It’s free to create short 30-second videos, but I definitelty recommend purchasing a pro-membership if you are a business and going to be creating a lot of videos. These days, video should be a serious consideration for any business wanting to market themselves online.

With Animoto, you could have your first of many videos online sooner than you think. It’s a fast, easy and fun way of creating professional quality videos online. Go ahead and give it a go!.. Here is an example video published by our sister company Media Music Now, who provide video producers with royalty free music, voice overs and audio production services.

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Many local business owners may not consider online marketing as a high priority when it comes to their business. Or they may have thought about it but don’t know where to start. Well, these days with more and more people searching for products and services on the Internet, online marketing has never been as important to local businesses.

For me, the days of flicking through the Yellow Pages or Thompson Local to find local services is a distant memory, simply because the speed and accessibility of the Internet makes it so much quicker and easier to find local businesses online that provide the products and services I am looking for.

It surprises me though that here are still local businesses that don’t see the business potential of marketing themselves online, especially when you think about the potential revenue opportunity that could be available to them if they developed an online presence; all those potential clients and customers searching for products and services they sell. It is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.

Don’t just take my word for it, download the report below to learn more about creating an online presence and how this could help your business to attract more clients and potentially generate more revenue.

PDF Download: A Must Read Internet Business Report for Local Traders

Please feel free to share this ebook with friends and colleagues who might benefit from this information.

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Now, I am no expert on article marketing, but our website has definitely benefited in a small but steady way from a small flow of clickthroughs and linkbacks over the years as a result of submitting some of our pre-written articles. I get better returns from other forms of marketing so would not personally spend long on this, however, you might want to try it.

Simply submit some of your pre-written work into some of the top article databases and monitor the results for yourself. Whether it is beneficial will depend on your industry sector and article subject so it may be more beneficial for you than me.

When I say pre-written, I mean we wrote them and put them on our own blogs first until they were indexed. This is important in my view as Google knows where the article originated from and gives that location the higher weight in terms of search engine ranking.

You can check to see if an article has been indexed by copying a line of your article text into Google… for example… here is a line from a recent article on our Media Music Now blog … “For a few months, I have been hearing about the Dr Who adventure game”. (you need to use the quotes)

It shows my article on the first page, so it is now safe to put into article directories.

I had thought about compiling a list for you, but then found this list, which is pretty good so I decided to link to it.

http://www.fridaytrafficreport.com/top-21-the-best-article-directory-list/

This only scratches the surface, but it is a good starting point without being overwhelmed.

Although I rate this list, I have never used a syndication service as it suggests as I know Google prefer natural methods. On that basis automatic syndication is not something I have used.

Good luck, and feel free to share this post and your results.

P.S. If you are doing this, I assume you have a website that you own to link back to? If not, get in touch with us

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This is a step by step guide on how to go about registering your own domain name. I use GoDaddy for purchasing .com domains so for the purpose of this post, I am using them as the domain registrar.

1. Firstly, you should know the domain name that that you would like to register. For tips on choosing a domain name, you may want to read my article Ten Tips for Choosing Your Domain Name
2. Go to GoDaddy.com or another official domain registrar online
3. Start your domain search by typing it in the search box. You should have alternatives ready if your first choice is not available
4. Once you have an available domain, add it to your cart and continue to registration. You will also be asked to register an account if you don’t already have one.
5. During the registration process you will be presented with lots of different options to add on to your domain purchase, and unless you really want any of these, just skip past them and continue to the checkout page. Also, the registration period may default to 2 or 5 years for example, but you can use the drop-down option to select a 1 year registration in most cases.
6. At this stage, review your order and choose your preferred payment option. With GoDaddy you can pay by PayPal or credit / debit card.

Don’t leave it too long before registering your domain, even if you don’t intend to use it straight away, it is better to register it now than lose it to anyone else, especially if it’s your business name. At about £6-10 for a year’s registration, it’s worth making the small investment to secure a good name for your website.

If your business trades only in the United Kingdom, you may prefer a .co.uk domain. I usually register UK domains at SimplyNames.com (minmum 2 year registration). However, should both the .com and .co.uk be available, I would recommend purchasing both to avoid losing one or the other.

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When using images for your website’s content and any posts or articles you publish, it is important to make the most out of your images by optimizing them for search. This presents you with another opportunity of being found in a search engine’s image search. Below are some key points to action when adding images to your website.

• Images for web content should ideally be in .jpg format and not be too large in size. The smaller the file size the better.
• Descibe what the image is in its filename, rather than leave it as random letters and numbers. For example, do not leave the filename as jjj3794.jpg or whatever the sequence may be, instead, create a filename that describes the image.
• Seperate each word in the filename with a hyphen e.g describe-what-the-image-is.jpg
• Depending on the keywords you are tageting for the website page, post or article, use relevant and related keywords when naming your image and describing it in its alt text. Also, remember to be descriptive and not just list your keywords.

Following these points will further help optimize your website and allow your image content to be found in search engines. Also, it doesn’t take long to implement these as you go and is a worthwhile SEO habit to develop.

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In previous posts, I have metioned the Google Keyword Tool a few times and how this is a free keyword tool service that you can use to research keywords / phrases in your marketplace. Well, Google have given it a new look. The old tool is still available via the link ‘Previous Interface’ in the right hand corner while it is gradually phased out in favour of the new Google Keyword Tool. You can see the difference between the two looks below.

New Google Keyword Tool

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Screen shot of the new look Google Keyword Tool interface

Please feel free to leave any comments about the new look tool over the old one.

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