What is WordPress?

WordPress is an open source CMS (content management system) first released in May 2003 as a blogging platform. Since then WordPress has evolved to become the feature rich CMS it is today, powering more than 200 million websites worldwide. It is currently one of the most actively developed open source projects in the world with new features, templates and plug-ins appearing daily. What is a CMS? Conventionally a website was comprised of raw HTML, css and image files hosted on a web server and delivered to end users. What a CMS does is allows a user to create pages without having to know HTML or use a FTP client to manage those files. To the business owner this means not having an “IT” person on staff and not paying a web design firm each time you need to make additions or edits. Generally if a person can use Microsoft Word, they can add or edit content in a WordPress website.

WordPress is not the only CMS available as Free Open Source Software (FOSS) but there are some good reasons why small businesses should use WordPress over other alternatives. These reasons will be covered in depth later.

• Free Open Source Software (FOSS)
• Good documentation
• Easy to use
• Lots of plugins
• LAMP Powered (supported by many web hosting companies)
• Search Engine Optimization
• Templates
• Blog/News

Free Open Source Software (FOSS)

While open source software is a broad topic, small business owners always appreciate FOSS. While zero cost is a great selling point, another added bonus of being open source is the fact that it can be altered to suit your needs. Should you find a feature that WordPress does not provide, simply find a knowledgeable PHP developer and have them build what is desired. Many paid applications do not allow this or often make modifications difficult, which translates into higher development costs.

Good Documentation

WordPress is one of the best documented pieces of software available today regardless of price. For the end user, there are well-written “getting started” and “working with WordPress” guides on the WordPress website that provide a review of the basics. There are literally thousands of WordPress tutorials on YouTube documenting various aspects of website management. Any decent designer or web developer should provide you with half an hour or more of training when they deliver a WordPress site, and it is always a good idea to make sure this is included in the project bid. WordPress developer documentation is also very good, which means that a decent web developer should be able to do things faster versus other systems should there be need for custom development, again resulting in lower costs.

Ease of use

WordPress is considered by many to be one of the simplest, most strait-forward CMS systems to use. Powering 200 million plus websites, the WordPress team has had a great deal of input from people when it comes to layout. There are even plug-ins that allow end users to customize the layout of the website administration screens. WordPress also allows the user to log in and edit pages simply by navigating to the page and selecting “edit”. An admin system that is laid out well is critical to ease of use and WordPress does it better than just about any other CMS available.

LAMP Powered

(supported by many web hosting companies)

WordPress runs in a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server environment. It can also run in a windows server environment (called WAMP) but LAMP is the most common server environment for WordPress deployment. All components of the LAMP are also FOSS, which generally makes it more affordable to hosting companies as they do not have to pay for the software and in turn makes hosting cheaper for the client. There are literally thousands of web hosting companies today, and many have the ability to install WordPress through a management console or will do it at the customers request. For users who are not tech savvy it is generally best to find a web developer to get WordPress properly installed, configured and customized. There are many web development companies that work with WordPress on a regular basis so finding one should not be difficult. WordPress is also easy to migrate making it easy to get away from a host if they raise hosting rates to unreasonable levels.

Lots of plugins

Plug-ins are small packages created to extend the functionality of WordPress. Remember the iPhone commercial where they say “there’s an app for that?” WordPress obeys the same extension philosophy, but may be better because its licensing is not restrictive as Apple’s.

Some plug-ins are simply designed to make your life easier. An excellent example of this would be the Google Analytics Dashboard plug-in. Instead of having to log in to Google Analytics to check your website stats, simply install and set up this plug-in and you can view your stats from the WordPress dashboard.

Some plug-ins can provide value to your users. Let’s say your website is related to real estate. The Real Estate Chart of the Day plug-in shows up-to-date data on mortgage rate trends, unemployment rate, housing market index, new home sales and other useful data. All of the data is presented in an easy to understand graph. This is just one example of many plug-ins tailored to specific types of business.

A whole article could be written on plug-ins by themselves. The main thing to take away here is they can provide many options to a business owner that would likely be out of budget if custom built by a web developer. They can make your site stand out. They can make managing your website easier. They are really just a set of tools to meet your needs and wants and WordPress has more of these “tools” than any other CMS on the market.

Search Engine Optimization

You can have the greatest website in the world but that is of little value if people can’t find it. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing help people find what they are looking for on the Internet. Search engines are constantly “crawling” various websites to find new pages and catalog what those pages are “about”. When a user searches for a particular keyword phrase, the search engine will return websites that it determined are relative to that phrase. As a business owner, letting search engines know what your website is “about” is critical to making the investment in a website a good one. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a lot of work but WordPress can help make the SEO process easier. With plugins like “All in One SEO Pack” and “Google Analytics” even the novice user can do things to help people find their website on search engines with the help of WordPress.

Templates

Templates are what change the look and layout of a WordPress site. The template you use for your website could be a pre-made web design template purchased from a template vendor like TemplateMonster.com, or it could be a custom-designed template built from scratch. A custom template will increase the total cost of a website due to the amount of graphic design and HTML labor involved, but will give your website a more unique appearance. It is often not necessary to create a custom template because there are literally thousands of free and paid templates available for WordPress. When working on a tight budget, using a paid or free template can help save money while still delivering an attractive, professional website. Even if you have budgeted for a custom design, you might find a template that is exactly what you want. Just keep in mind that if you use a free or paid template, there could be other sites online using the same template. If having a unique design is a requirement, a custom template will probably be your only option.

Blog/News section

When most people think of a blog, they think of simple website with a chronological listing of entries with the most recent items listed first. While this is a good standard definition of a blog, don’t assume that a blog is too minimal to deliver business content. Depending on the goods or services you offer, a blog can be a great way to keep your potential customers up to date. If the word blog has a stigma associated with it, just think of it as a news section. A blog could be used to let people know about upcoming events, deals you have recently closed, new products or all three. While keeping potential customers up to date is good, a blog/news section serves another crucial purpose. Google loves sites that are regularly updated. If you put a website online and don’t touch it for a year, Google will think “not much going on with this website” and “we should probably stop crawling it so often”. Making regular updates via a blog/news section can be a valuable tool to assist with search engine optimization.

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A Atlanta ecommerce company.

Not owning your domain name

Hands down, this is the most common and costly mistake business owners make. When starting the process of building a new website, the first step is usually finding a domain. The domain is the “address” where your website will reside at on the internet. It is getting harder and harder to find a good domain name and good ones are valuable. Once an available domain name has been decided upon, create an account at any registrar you like. There are many out there with companies like godaddy or network solutions being the main providers. After you have an account in your name with your contact information, purchase the domain. I would recommend buying at least two years years registration and choosing the auto-renew option.

You now own and control your domain, with control being the key point here. If you are working with a web design firm that “purchased the domain for you”, demand that it be transferred to your account before moving forward with the project. As the business owner, you should have complete control over your domain. This does mean you will need to keep up with it’s registration and make sure it does not expire. There are many reasons why you should own and control your domain, but I feel it’s better to explain what can happen when someone else has control over it. Here are just some the bad things that can and do happen to many business owners when they let a third party have control over a domain. Keep in mind all of these can happen at the start of a project or 10 years down the road.

A dispute over money – There are too many possible reasons a dispute over money can arise to list, but it happens often and the last thing you want is someone holding your domain hostage. If a third party that wants money has control over your domain they can take your website down until you pay them and refuse to transfer it to you or anyone else. This can often start a legal battle and legal battles are never cheap. If you have control of your domain name, you at least have the option to walk away with your domain and use another company or person’s services.

A host or developer does not want to lose you as a customer – You could be getting price gouged and find another host or developer who has more reasonable rates. If the person or company doing the price gouging has control over the domain, they can and often do make it as hard to get away from them as possible. It could also be that you are just not pleased with their service. Once again, they can make it difficult and/or costly for you to take your business elsewhere. If you have control over your domain, you can simply find another company to work with and change the DNS servers or DNS settings to the new host without ever needing to deal with the company you are getting away from.

Not using a content management system

A content management system or CMS does just that; it manages your content. Not so long ago having a website meant that you had to have a web developer code the website files in HTML or any number of computer languages that output HTML and upload those files to a web server. When changes needed to be made, they were made to the files and uploaded over the old ones by a person knowledgeable in HTML or the programing language used. A CMS eliminates the need for having a web developer to make simple updates, add pages or change other information.

A CMS will allow the average person to log in to their website and make the needed changes using WYSIWYG editor. A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is basically a word processor that will take text and format the needed HTML code to make it display as you see it. Most WYSIWYG editors also have a GUI (graphical user interface) for uploading images and inserting them into the content. Some editors have even more advanced features like the ability to insert videos and photo galleries. WYSIWYG editors are a great tool allowing people without knowledge of HTML the ability to make changes to content. Like any tool however, training in how it is used is always a good idea. For those adept in HTML, a CMS can still make the job of managing a website less time consuming.

The only potential downside of building a website in a CMS is additional up-front cost. The cost can vary a great deal depending on requirements but in most cases is recovered in the long term by not having to pay a web developer for regular website maintenance and changes. There can be many other advantages depending on the particular CMS used and there are plenty of options. There are both paid and free open source CMS systems available today but generally open source will be the most attractive solution to most business owners simply because many open source CMS’s are free.

Used by over 12% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular CMS in use today. WordPress currently has 11,421 available plug-ins that do everything from add shopping cart functionality to helping with search engine optimization. To the owner of the website this means that if there is an available plug-in that provides a needed feature, it can save a great deal of money since you won’t have to pay developers to write it. Should you need something tailored to fit your specific need, there are plenty of developers available that can build custom plug-ins for you. Also WordPress is open source as are most of it’s plug-ins.

The bottom line here is that the initial cost of setting up a CMS is easily outweighed by:

• Long term cost savings
• Flexibility
• The ability to make changes quickly from any computer with an Internet connection
• The amount of powerful plugins available

Failing to allow for training in your website budget

If you are a business owner and seeking a web design firm or web developer to get your website off the ground, it’s probably safe to say you can’t do it yourself and you don’t have a person with the skills in house. You will most likely be spending a decent sum of money on your new website and you will want to get as much as possible out of it. When considering bids for the project ensure training time is allotted and expect to pay for that time.

If you expect to be making edits to your website yourself, make sure you participate in the training. If you will not be responsible for website edits, make sure the person that will be making edits to your site receives training. With the wide array of shopping carts and content management systems available today there is no good reason why the average person can’t manage most aspects of their website with proper instruction. Knowing how to manage your own website can save you substantial money on routine updates.

Not geting *ALL* of your website’s source files

Downloading the files off the server should be done periodically. Your developer or web designer should provide you with an FTP user name and password. This will allow you to connect to the server by way of an FTP client to download your site files for backup. There are many free FTP clients available for download but I recommend Filezilla. Do keep in mind that you also have the ability to do a lot of damage with a FTP client, including deleting all of the files on the server. If you need help with using an FTP client, your designer or developer should have no problems giving you a brief training session.

The files that reside on the server are important but there are other important files that are often overlooked. If you have a designer create a custom design for your site, chances are they did it in Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks or Flash (or all three). The formats used by these tools are PSD (.psd), PNG (.png) and Flash (.fla) respectively. Should you ever need a different designer to make changes, having the original “source” files will save him/her substantial time, and you large amounts of money. Another file type that commonly gets overlooked is a svg or ai file. If you have a logo designed for your company or website, you should always get an svg file or ai file of the logo. The svg file format will allow the logo to be made any size without resolution loss. This will come in handy for banners, brochures and just about any other form of print materials you can imagine.

If you have a shopping cart or content management system, chances are that you have a database associated with it. Think of that database as the storage mechanism for all of the products or in the case of a CMS, all the pages you have entered. Needless to say, you will want to keep regular backups of your database. Ask your developer how you can make backups yourself on a regular basis. They should have no problem providing a method for you to make regular database backups on your own.

Hands down though, the most commonly overlooked and most important file is the .fla file. If you have a flash object in your website you will need the fla file to edit it. I have lost count of how many clients have called needing work done on a flash object that they don’t have fla file for. Most of them don’t understand why you need an fla file to make changes to a swf. The best way I can explain it is that, the swf is created using the fla file. Let’s say there is a link inside of a flash element that needs to be changed. You are no longer in contact with the person who actually made the swf and have found a new flash developer to work on it. He/she will need to open the fla file, make the edit and then export it as a swf. If the fla file is not available the whole thing has to be remade. Flash objects can be very time consuming to make depending on their complexity and having an entire element remade because a small part of it needs to be changed can be expensive… so get the fla files.

Now that you know what files you should keep copies of, let’s cover how to keep them. When you actually launch your website, you should take all of the files related to it and burn them to compact disc for storage. Because compact discs are cheap, there is no good reason not to make 2 or more copies. Keep one copy at home and the other at the office. Also take those same files you burned to disk and save them on two or more computers. Now you have redundant copies of all the files related to your website and if needed can restore your website. After this initial backup it would be a good idea to do monthly database backups and quarterly FTP backups.

Confusing “wants” with “needs” (Overreaching)

It’s human nature to want more. When working with a web development company and/or designer it should be no different. That being said, you should have a clear budget and determining what needs to be done inside that budget is crucial to building a successful website. What you need from your website should be realistic an attainable. For example, a restaurant would likely need a map showing how to get to their location(s), a menu that’s available for customers, the hours of operation, a method to contact the restaurant, and a way for people with mobile devices to be able to access all of this information. These are all reasonable needs that should have no problems being met at a modest budget. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if customers could place orders from their mobile devices and have the orders show up on the restaurant’s computer system? Sure it would! You should know, however, that other restaurants who have applications like this have spent large sums of money developing their systems. For them a large expenditure makes sense, because they may have hundreds of locations to spread the cost between. If you have only one or two locations chances are that this will have to fall into the category of a “want”, as the amount spent on development would not likely be recovered with a small number of stores.

This does not mean that you should not discuss wants with the developer. In the example of the application for mobile devices it could be possible that the developer says “we can not provide that functionality within your budget but we might be able to have an online form send orders via text messages to manager’s cell phones.” Would this be as good as integration with an point of sale system? No, but it might be as close as you should get, given a limited budget.

Knowing what budget you are working with is crucial, and you should share that number with your web design firm as soon as possible. A good developer or designer will get your basic goals and provide a rough estimate. If this rough estimate is within what you are willing to spend then you should move to nail down a more precise price. After a few revisions you should have a solid, fixed-price proposal. Stay away from contracts based on estimates. You should get a proposal before signing a contract not an estimate. It is common for a fly by night web company to give an estimate, agree to a contract and come back saying “we were under on our estimate, we will need more money to finish the job”. When you get a proposal and commit to a contract based on the proposal, the amount quoted should not change unless the scope of work changes.

It should be clearly understood by both the client and the developer what exactly is included in the scope of work. It is unfair for a web design firm to change their price without a client requested increase in the scope of work, and it is equally unfair for a client to try to increase the scope of work agreed upon without agreeing to an appropriate increase in price. Before signing any contract, make sure that you (the client) are paying half of the total cost up front with the other half due on completion of the project. If the project is large there should be clear milestones set for when payments are expected and they should be in line with the amount of work done. Never under any circumstances agree to pay the whole sum up front. Any reasonable designer/developer should have no problems with a payment plan based on results delivered. This will ensure you get something for your money, and the developer gets something for his work and both parties walk away happy.

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A Atlanta website optimization company.

When ESI came to us, they were generally happy with their website design, but wanted to migrate their website from the proprietary content management system on which it was currently running.  In addition to upgrading their content management system, ESI wanted to increase traffic to their website for certain keyword phrases through better search engine optimization.

Updated Homepage

In order to better present some of ESI’s key services, we updated the home page web design to include a “slide show” that advances automatically.

ESI home page web design

To allow new and returning customers to quickly locate address and contact information for the business, we added contact information in a prominent place on the home page directly under the ESI logo.  To keep content on the home page fresh, we added a recent news feed to the right side of the page, and added quick links to some of ESI’s key services in the featured services section at the bottom of the home page.

Internal pages were designed to match the previous web design:

ESI internal web site design

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A search engine optimization company in Atlanta.

Hill Kertscher & Wharton (HKW) is an Atlanta law firm concentrating in civil litigation, intellectual property, employment law and business transactions. The firm was founded in 1999 and has built long term relationships with a diverse clientele that includes private individuals, small businesses, mid-size and Fortune 500 companies.

Here is a look at their new homepage web design:

HKW Law Home Page (click to zoom)

The new hkw-law.com website offers HKW a way to tell potential and existing customers a little about the firm. It also provides them with a tool to show potential customers what kinds of services they have to offer.  The lawyers section lists the attorneys in the firm along with vcards links so site visitors can easily add HWK team members to their Outlook contacts.

Attorney Listing w/vcards (click to zoom)

"About Us" Page (click to zoom)

After their custom design was complete and the entire site was built we then provided them with basic homepage Search Engine Optimization. This kind of SEO will help search engines better catalog their website in the future.

Look over the site and let us know what you think at http://www.hkw-law.com/

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A Atlanta website maintenance company.

Atlanta Boutiques is an online directory that provides information about the top boutique stores in the Atlanta metro area.  Visitors to atlantaboutiques.com can search for boutiques by selecting one or more neighborhoods in the Atlanta metro area.  Users can also narrow their boutique search by selecting particular types of items that they wish to shop for and get results containing only boutiques that offer that merchandise.  Apart from its useful search feature, Atlanta Boutiques also includes a blog that lists upcoming boutique events and specials, promotions and coupons currently being offered by member boutiques.

Atlantaboutiques.com includes social media integration like a rolling feed of the latest tweets from Atlanta Boutiques’ twitter feed.  Atlanta Boutiques chose our basic search engine optimization package to ensure basic SEO compatibility – Despite selecting our basic package, Atlantaboutiques.com is still on the first page of Google results for their top search phrase “Atlanta boutiques” – Congratulations Atlanta Boutiques!  This is a great accomplishment for a brand new site.

The following image is an example of the Atlanta boutiques web design:

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A Atlanta search engine optimization company.

Why an eReader?

I am a software engineer and entrepreneur managing a web design and search engine optimization company in Atlanta.  I am also involved in an open source application security software startup and I am considering going back to get an MBA (while still running both businesses, of course) to fill in some of the gaps in business knowledge clearly not covered by my engineering degree.  Add to this a more than healthy interest in politics, and you get a widely varied melange of reading topics.

Traditionally, I have read mostly technical books as my primary interest was extending my technical skills and learning about constantly evolving software technologies.  A few years back, I broadened my reading list to include some classic fiction (re-reading JRR Tolkien prior to watching the LOTR trilogy) and lots of political biographies and strategy books.  Now, I’m reading a lot of business books (entrepreneurship, marketing, econ, etc.) and I expect to read even more books of this type in the near future.

Because of my very poor attention span (undiagnosed ADD, I’m sure) and because I find repetitive motion very boring, I do a good bit of reading on the elliptical machine at they gym where I am a captive audience.  It’s a real challenge to balance books of various sizes on the small ledge on most exercise equipment and turning pages is really a pain, so I’ve wanted to move to an eReader.  Add the positive environmental impact of fewer trees being cut down, less fossil fuel burned to deliver traditional books, and the generally lower cost of books in the electronic format, and I’m sold.

The eReader Contenders

Though there are lots of eReaders on the market, I narrowed the field to this short list:

• Amazon Kindle 2 ($259)
• Sony PRS-600 ($269)
• Barnes & Noble Nook ($259)
• Apple iPad ($499-$829)

	Amazon Kindle 2 ($259) Amazon is now a part of the “old guard” in eReaders and they clearly have ample experience as a book retailer.  At $259, the Kindle’s price is quite fair, but Amazon’s philosophy of proprietary lockdown with regard to their eBooks requires total commitment to Amazon as your sole content provider.  Despite the fact that Amazon is the 800lb. gorilla of online book retail, the number of available titles is limited due to the fact that they don’t support the ePub format and must rely solely on conversion of various titles to their proprietary eBook format (a format that other readers will likely never support). Pros: Amazon selection WiFi and 3G Connectivity with wireless purchasing and software upgrades Viziplex eInk Screen Software reader for PC, Mac and iPhone Cons: Proprietary Amazon eBook format, vendor lock-in Fixed keyboard Pay-per-document fee when reading office documents Cannot share books Black/white screen
	Sony PRS-600 ($269) Like Amazon, Sony has been in the eReader business for years, and the consumer electronics business longer than most of the other vendors have existed.  The PRS-600 has an eInk display like the Kindle and Nook, but adds a touch-sensitive screen for more intuitive navigation.  The downside of the touch screen is a slight reduction in readability, and a slight increase in glare and fingerprints. Pros: Viziplex eInk Touch screen Expandable memory (Memory Stick, SD) Cons: Clumsy sync software Lack of wireless/online purchasing Black/white screen
	Barnes & Noble Nook ($259) The Nook is offered at a price equal to that of the Kindle 2, and it comes with WiFi and 3G connectivity like the Kindle.  The Nook has a non-touch Viziplex eInk screen and is based on Google’s Android operating system.  The Nook can read eBooks in the open ePub format and for the first time allows the loaning of books purchased through the Barnes & Noble online book store to friends.  The Nook also includes a nifty color touch screen with soft keyboard in the place of the Kindle 2’s fixed keyboard allowing for greater flexibility and customization based on future software updates. Pros: Best book selection (over 1M books in B&N bookstore + free books in ePub format) WiFi and 3G Connectivity with wireless purchasing and software upgrades Viziplex eInk Screen Color touchscreen and soft keyboard Software reader for PC, Mac and iPhone User-replaceable battery Expandable memory (SD) Cons: Soft keyboard navigation confusing at first Main screen black and white
	iPad ($499-829) The iPad is by far the most powerful and sexy unit in this lineup.  It includes a beautiful color screen with LED backlight, a much more powerful processor than other eReaders, and lets you run all of the software from Apple’s App Store.  Straddling the territory between eReader and notebook computer, the iPad is truly a revolutionary device.  Still, if you only want to read books and don’t have an unlimited budget, the iPad is serious overkill in terms of cost and capability. Pros: WiFi and 3G Connectivity with online purchasing Color touch screen Compatibility with Apple app store applications Cons: Cost 3G connectivity requires extra-cost monthly data plan Battery life (compared to other eReaders)

The verdict…Barnes & Noble Nook

After reviewing all of the pros and cons, I decided to commit to the Nook.

I liked the slim form factor of the Kindle 2, but I really hated the vendor lock-in, lack of open ePub support, and pay-per-document fees.  I liked the intuitive touch screen of the Sony, but I didn’t like the lack of wireless purchasing, the sync software and the reduced readability of the eInk display due to the touch screen.  The iPad is an impressive product with far more capabilities than any other eReader.  Still the iPad is not yet available and the price premium over the other units was substantial (almost twice the price for the base unit.)  To enable wireless purchases when not in range of WiFi, you must purchase a more expensive unit with 3G and sign up for a 3G data plan at an added monthly cost.

The Nook gives me a great online book store with many available titles, but also includes access to the many free titles available from Google Books, public libraries, and other sources supporting the ePub format.  I like the crisp eInk display for extended reading, and the included 3G and WiFi connectivity is very convenient, indeed.  The addition of the color touch display and soft keyboard made for a nice compromise between the iPad and Kindle 2, and allows for some customization of features through future software updates.  I’m sure as the Nook matures, the software will become faster, easier to use, and will include some new features.

I’ll be receiving the Nook tomorrow, and will update this story with more impressions after gaining some extended hands-on experience with the unit.

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A Atlanta website maintenance company.

What to Spend on SEO?

As many businesses enter 2010 and struggle to dig themselves out of the economic chaos of the last two years (the last ten years if you have a web design business), we have noticed a significant uptick in questionable claims and outright scams.  Consumer-focused scams targeting individuals looking for mortgage restructuring assistance and fake charities are perhaps the most insidious, but there are plenty of predators looking for business prey, too.

In our industry, one of the most sought-after and least understood services, search engine marketing, is a source of much spin and deceit.  To help small businesses seeking a little help in understanding the wild, exciting, and often false claims made by some unethical competition in the marketplace, we have assembled a list of search engine optimization myths we have heard, along with what we think when we hear these claims.

Search Engine Marketing Terminology

First, we need to define a couple of terms:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is the process of “tuning” the content of a website for relevance and developing a site’s backlinks to improve its significance to improve “organic” (not paid) search engine rankings
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Paid advertisements like Google Adwords, allowing auction-style bidding for listings that are generally displayed at the top and on the right side of search results pages
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – The process of reaching potential customers and clients through all visibility efforts that impact Search Engine rankings
• PageRank – Google’s proprietary metric (and associated algorithms) for measuring the importance of a web page
• Backlink - A link from another web page to a page on your website

Outrageous SEO Claims

Now, on to the wild and crazy world of SEO spin…

What they Say: We can guarantee you number one rankings on Google
What they Mean #1: We don’t really know how Google works, and we hope you don’t either

Any search engine optimization company that offers a guarantee should be avoided, period.  There is no crying in baseball, and there are no guarantees in search engine optimization.

What they Mean#2: We can make you #1 on keyword phrases that nobody ever searches for

It’s probably pretty easy to get a #1 ranking on “Norwegian yak’s milk suspenders” – Nobody ever searched for it (and nobody ever will unless they read this article)

What they Say: We can maintain your current Pay-Per-Click rankings while reducing your current Pay-Per-Click budget
What they Mean: We don’t know how to do basic math, but we will a get some of your money for a few months until you figure that out.

One of the beautiful things about Pay-Per-Click is that it is simple and immediate.  The bad news is that there are not really any cost-saving measures when comparing the same keyword phrases apples to apples.  If the top bid on a keyword phrase is $3.50, and you’re willing to pay more than $3.50, you can buy the first place listing (at least until someone else outbids you).  Under no circumstances can you get better rankings in paid listings by paying less.

What they Say: You don’t have to pay for backlinks – There are plenty of free links out there
What they Mean: I will list your website on the Opera Lover’s Forum.  It won’t help your rankings much, but it’s free!

The fact is that there are a handful of places that you can get free backlinks that are quite good (DMOZ, for example, if there is actually someone moderating the category you want to list in), but the reality is that many directory sites with a high PageRank require you to pay, usually on a recurring basis, for listing.  This can be worthwhile, but needs to be factored in to your overall SEM budget.

What they Say: We can get your website top rankings with our $29.95 monthly service
What they Mean: We hope $29.95 is a small enough fee that you won’t mind paying it even if your rankings don’t improve.

$29.95 may be a small price to pay for the peace of mind that you’re doing “something” with your Search Engine Marketing, but we prefer to analyze the value of what you pay and what you get in return.  If you pay any amount of money and get nothing in return, it’s a poor value.  There *are* some services that can be a part of an effective search engine marketing campaign, but certainly not the whole enchilada (probably just the guacamole).  Our monthly charges go to pay an actual human being to think about how to improve your rankings and make it happen – The charge is related to the number of hours that person spends on your site.  Simple, huh?

What they Say: We can increase your search engine rankings – No changes to your website required!
What they Mean: We don’t know how search engines work, but we know the idea of something for nothing is hard for some people to pass up – In fact, we’re counting on it

In some rare cases, we have found a customer whose website is well-optimized (good content, page titles, meta tags, intra-site linking, etc.)  Actually, strike that – We have never found a customer with a well-optimized website before engaging an SEO firm.  The primary reason for this is that you don’t know how to optimize until you know which phrases to optimize for.  You don’t know which phrases to optimize for until you do research.  You don’t do keyphrase research until you hire an search engine optimization company.  So, if you’re talking to a search engine marketing firm about improving your rankings your site is almost certainly not optimized yet.

What they Say: We get our Google Adwords cheaper because we buy in bulk
What they Mean: We are pretty sure you don’t know how Adwords works, but we can set your Adwords budget lower so you will see your listings appear in the same place at the beginning of the month and think we told you the truth

This is a pretty new scam that we just heard about today.  There is, of course, such a thing as an Adwords voucher, often offered by Google to people who create new accounts with certain vendors Google has a relationship with.  These vouchers are only valid for new accounts, so if you already have a campaign set up, they will be of little use to you.  As for “bulk purchasing” of Adwords…Think of it this way:  Do you know anyone who would sell you a dollar for 50¢?  I didn’t think so – Google won’t do it either.

This feed brought to you by Innoshare.com – A Atlanta web design firm.

But, I found this and it is hands down the best explanation I have seen yet!
The Social Media Manager is my Hero! “DRINKS FOR EVERYBODY!”

Read the Full Article at the Link Below:
http://www.outandaboutmarketing.com/2009/10/how-to-measure-social-media/

We organized the new site to focus on three key areas:

• Packages with Up-Front Pricing
• Core Services (website design, search engine optimization, email newsletters, business hosting, etc.)
• Customer Case Studies

Core Services

Since our last major web design update, we have added some new services, and have gotten better at delivering others.  We wanted to make sure that our services were prominently presented on every page so that new customers could always find a concise list of what we do, and existing customers would be reminded of our capabilities every time they visit our site.

Packages with Up-Front Pricing

Over the years, we have done a good job of giving our customers a fair price on the services we provide, and we feel our value has only gotten better in recent months.  Despite being very competitive on price compared to other Atlanta web design firms, we realized were forcing customers to call us before giving them any idea of how much our services would cost.  In our experience, if you have to ask how much something costs, you can’t afford it.  To address this problem, we published several pre-priced packages representing our most popular services to give customers an idea of what they can get at different price points.

Customer Case Studies

As our current customers already know, we focus on full-service website design and web hosting for small business.  We pride ourselves on giving customers a single point of contact for a variety of services so that our customers don’t have to pull out their Rolodex and call several vendors when they have a new project or a problem.  If you aren’t yet an InnoShare customer and want to know what some current customers are doing, look for the “featured projects” list at the bottom of each page of our website, or visit the customer lists at the top right of each service page.

We hope you enjoy the new web site, and look forward to helping you create a new look for your website, too.

- The InnoShare Team

Click Here to Launch Site >

New Website

Events Page