NetSprinter | SEO Optimization, PPC Advertising, Website Development blogs

Annual Website Clean Up - Third Quarter Content Audit

Lyena — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:22:51 +0000

Content is what attracts people to your website. Content is what impresses people into becoming your customers. Content is what you use to communicate your message to your audience. But you already knew that. Yet, often websites resemble and old closet where things collect, multiply and grow until we stare in horror at a big tangled mess. In order not to get to that point, it is a good idea to clean up your content at least once a year.

Your efforts in the last 6 months helped you focus on your company goals, vision, and priorities. You have an idea what your audience wants, you know how to attract them to the website and how to measure your progress. All that thanks to the SEO and PPC audits you did in the first quarter and the Analytics and Usability audits finished in the second quarter. Time to put your discoveries to good work and rock your Content Audit.

Annual Website Clean Up - Second Quarter

Lyena — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:37:55 +0000

Are you busy? Yeah, who isn't? There is always more to do than it is possible to do. The reality is that many tasks will remain undone. I often hear, "if I could only get out of the weeds..." or "I should have remembered to do that...". And you would have remembered to do that if you focused on priority tasks.

The reason you might be so busy is that you are doing busy work. Step back once in a while, evaluate your progress, see the big picture, visualize the path to your goal. When you do that, you can see clearly how the marketing pieces fit in your plan. Some tasks may have become outdated and you haven't noticed. Some issues might have become a priority while you were not looking. You need to stop what you are doing at least once a year, look at the forest and determine if all the trees belong there.

If you went through your PPC and SEO annual evaluation in the first quarter, you have a good understanding of where your efforts are and what needs to be done. You know what your goals are for both SEO and PPC and you have created projects and tasks to achive those goals. Now, how would you know if you are successful? That's right - look at your analytics. Therefore, next up - your annual analytics audit.

Annual Website Clean Up - First Quarter

Lyena — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:54:44 +0000

What comes to mind when you hear "spring cleaning"? I bet, not your website. You think of closets, windows, furniture and what you will have to move. You anticipate trash, donations, and stuff you will keep.

Websites are no different, however. Yet, it is not often that people think about spring cleaning a website. And they should. Evaluating your online performance once a year helps ensure that you maintain focus, your online presence is connected to your business goals, and all programs are current.

In a series of 4 posts I will share my recipe for website spring cleaning - what to check up on yearly. There is no need to do the cleanup all at once. Split the project in 4 parts and do one section each quarter.

These guidelines are by no means comprehensive. I covered the most important aspects of audits. If you have time for deeper inspections, I highly recommend you go for it.

The purpose of yearly evaluation is to step back and look at your marketing efforts with your business hat on. Is everything in your PPC, SEO, and website world in line with your business goals? When business changes happened, did they propagate to your website and your marketing strategies? Review your priorities and communicate them to your organization.

Website Redesign: Planning Process

Lyena — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:52:20 +0000

Yes, I heard you the first one hundred times. You hate your site. I know. What are you doing about it? Do you have a plan to make it better? Complaining about it will not get you anywhere. Having a redesign plan - will.

Plan. I can help you with that. I realize that you finally have had it. You want to erase everything and start over.

Before you do something drastic let's think rationally. Yes, your baby is ugly (thanks, Tim Ash for planting this in my head). However, it is too early to throw your baby away with the bath water.

Before you jump into redesigning your website, you need to plot your attack. You need to rely on your strong points and eliminate or improve your weak points. In other words, you need a website redesign plan.

I have a 3 step process for you to set you on the right track.

Online Reputation Management Tips

Lyena — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:05:09 +0000

I was invited to join a women's marketing organization. It is a group that helps female consultants to better their business through collaboration and lead exchange. I am not a fan of leads exchange, but I enjoy collaboration. If all the members are pros in their field, I am very eager to learn. Then, I will be on my way to becoming a Superwoman Marketer.

This group came highly recommended, so I immediately went to their website. Who wouldn't, right? I wanted to see what the organization is all about and how I can benefit from joining.

Good Customer Service - Keep Your New Customers

Lyena — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:44:12 +0000

I fired a vendor today. It broke my heart.

This vendor was a referral, comfortable they got the gig. I talked about requirements, about my goals and priorities for the job. I talked - they did not listen. Then I called, explained that it needs to be done differently. They agreed and stayed their course, following their process, leading to their result, not mine.

I tried to make it work. Finally, I had to pull the plug.

The reaction was a complete surprise. They did not see it coming. "Why didn't you say something if it was not done correctly?" they exclaimed. Well, I did, several times. Don't blame me. How unprofessional. I know, you are trying to excuse that you did not listen. Don't.

Didn't I talk about expectations and things not done right? Haven't I mentioned what I need done and what is important to me? Nothing changed. No concerns addressed. And in the end - shock at the fact that they lost a customer. They did not have to.

Why Nonprofits Fail

Lyena — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:02:04 +0000

I am sure there are many reasons why nonprofits fail. Lack of people who are willing to donate is definitely not one of them. Some nonprifits have quite the opposite problem - even if you want to donate to them online, you can't. One important reason why nonprofits fail is bad websites.

I am not talking about bad visual design. The problem is that nonprofits fail to treat their websites as revenue-generating machines that they can be. They fail to utilize the power of the Internet. Specifically, nonprofits fail to provide an easy way for people to support their cause, to give them money.

Here is what I mean. I spent hours today trying to donate money to an organization that supports small businesses. I had a list of candidates and I was visiting site after site and not donating. The only reason was that those nonprofit organizations failed to put "Donate" button on the website. How sad.

Essential Tools For Your Website

Lyena — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 21:37:16 +0000

Everyone has a website. Every business has a website. Many dogs have websites too.

How is your website doing? When was the last time you took its temperature? Updated its content? Hugged it for making you so much money?

For many people, especially small business owners, having a website is a chore. They have no time for it. Making changes is too complicated and time consuming. And if they get hacked - forget it! They wish they never had to deal with it.

It is possible that a lot of business owners do not feel they understand their website. They also rarely know how much money their website is making them, how much new business is a direct result of their online presence.

If you want to simplify your life, listen up. Use these tools once a month for reporting and as needed for updating. Track your success and fix problems quickly. Give your website some love and care. Then, watch it give back in ROI like you never seen before.

PPC or SEO?

Lyena — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:16:58 +0000

Last week I was consulting on search engine marketing efforts. After a brief audit of paid and organic marketing, it became clear that my client is using pay per click (PPC) to drive traffic to their home page. They thought that by buying clicks to home page they will improve their search engine ranking. My next step was to go back to basics and explain the difference between PPC and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

A couple of hour later, the SEM picture was clear. We had SEM strategy, goals, and targets for PPC and SEO separately. The client understood what the final result will be and expectations from each marketing channel.

When choosing between PPC and SEO, it is important to understand the differences. Each is used for different purpose, has different expectations, implementation, and tracking. I do recommend to implement both. However, if you have to choose between the two, consider the following.

Saving Time Tips - Efficient Reading

Lyena — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:05:22 +0000

There are 24 hours in a day. You have about 8 hours of discretionary time spent on family, driving, shopping, cooking, movies, friends, social media, and reading. Do you have time to read all the blogs you want to read and all the news you want to follow? I do. I used to spend about 4-5 hours a day reading. I condensed it to 2 hours a day and get the same result. I created a more efficient process of reading news. And I am going to share it with you today.

Here are the tools I use: Google Reader, iPhone, iPad, Flipboard app.

Flipboard for iPad Review

Lyena — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:55:10 +0000

I love to read. If I could, I would read every interesting blog post ever published. I realize it is impossible, but I still attempt to do it. Frequently I found myself drowning in articles. It was hard to prioritize what to read until I discovered Flipboard.

Flipboard for iPad - Your Timesaver

Flipboard is an iPad app that aggregates you Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Reader feeds. Flipboard's home page is a place where you bookmark your content. You can not only add your main feed but Twitter lists and Facebook groups. That way you can use a shortcut to get to the content you want.

Flipboard for iPad is a more visual way to read the articles your friends shared with you. The content is easy to share (with attribution to the original poster) and post between your social accounts. But most importantly, it is an incredible time-saver. I like Flipboard much more than competition (Zite, StumbleUpon for iPad, Iinstapaper, etc.) because of the very good integration with social accounts.

Picking The Right Tools

Lyena — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:00:23 +0000

There are several steps to any decision making. When picking a tool, you are faced with many choices. How can you do your research effectively and efficiently?

There are many articles, reviews, and general advice on what tools to use for your website, SEM, social campaigns, ROI tracking, etc. Some tools are more popular, some less. Opinions vary on usability, capability and usefulness of those tools. It is hard to keep up with emerging new applications and web apps, enhancements to the old tools, and tools that are no longer supported. To make it even more difficult, there are Firefox and Chrome add-ons, Excel plugins, Adobe Air desktop apps, and website based services. How do you pick the right tool for you?

In this post I will share with you my scientific process of picking tools. What makes it scientific is that I use Excel to make my decision. Tricky? Not at all. Here is how it works.

Website Optimization Process - Part 3. Measure.

Lyena — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 02:06:34 +0000

In In Part of Website Optimization Process we went through thinking process. In In Part 2 of Website Optimization Process we planned our revamping project. In Part 3 we measure. I am not going to discuss implementation. You have delegated the tasks, some of them you did yourself. You used your project management skills. I hope you got that part down. I would give your website 30 days to collect some data for you to analyze.

In this post, let's talk about measuring your efforts. You have installed Analytics, you have set up your website goals and you have assigned monetary value for each goal.

Website Optimization Process - Part 2. Strategy.

Lyena — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:48:40 +0000

In Part 1 of Website Optimization Process I went over initial steps of optimizing your website. You defined your audience and your message to that audience. You also took a quick look at your website statistics and learned where your traffic comes from, your main keywords, and checked your pay-per-click campaign performance. Next step is to plan your niche domination.

Before we go any further, I will try to convince you once more to hire a professional to help you optimize your website. Not only do we know the best practices, but we have tools, systems, and knowledge of how to efficiently make you more money. Search engines, social media sites, the whole landscape changes very quickly and it is hard for non-industry people to keep up. Just think about how many times Facebook changed their Terms of Use. Did you follow the changes? What about all the Google algorithm updates, like Panda?

Still not convinced? Oh, well. It was worth a try. Let's get down to plotting our optimization strategy.

Website Optimization Process - Part 1

Lyena — Mon, 16 May 2011 16:23:50 +0000

First Steps To Your Online Success

Website optimization is not Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is a part of website optimization, which also include conversion optimization and improving usability. I would add pay per click (PPC) effort to it as well. If all those components are successful, your website will be making you money.

A big stumbling block on the way to a better website is how much work it takes to do it. Many people struggle with where to start, what to tackle first and what to ignore. A company website is an important source of revenue but how to improve it quickly and noticeably? Where to dedicate limited resources? Where do you start?