The service we use to send our newsletter is offering free leads - you may be interested in that so here's the link -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_50.shtml

Enjoy your Columbus Day!

What happened today in history - you can find out at the following link -

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/

Enjoy your weekend.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before - a good place to learn about recent changes in the SEO world can be found here -

http://www.seroundtable.com/

A nice article on Indexing and Ranking can be found here -

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3552906

Also if you didn't get a chance to check out the October issue of our Newsletter you can find it here.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz254-05oct.htm

An excellent article on competition and what it can mean for you -

http://www.businesslyceum.com/compete.html

It seems like that the states want in on income they may be loosing from taxes more details here -
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3552921

Enjoy your day.

A pretty nice "debate" on some useful things to include with SEO -

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16848

An excellent article on finding the right platform to run your ecommerce site can be found at the link below -

http://ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/building/article.php/3551461

Enjoy your weekend.

The war is over... maybe... you know the one where search engines say they index the "most" content. Details can be found at the following link -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3551586

We talked last week I think about being prepared for an emergency - so what if you have pets - this site may help you get them prepared as well.

http://www.hsus.org/hsus_field/hsus_disaster_center/disaster_preparedness_for_pets/

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend - DEMC had an informative ezine over the weekend which included an excellent one on Pay per clicks -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_41.shtml

Make sure you check out the other articles as well.

A nice tool to find out if you've been banned from Google -

http://123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

A nice list of video and audio downloads from business leaders - best thing no charge to download.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/av_speakers.html

Have a great weekend.

A nice search engine that will help you find out how you're doing for terms in multiple search engines - find out more here -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3550681

Fine tune your keyword research from Wordtracker with this free report -

http://www.wordtracker.com/keyword-research-guide.html

How big is Microsoft - pretty big -

http://www.rjdudley.com/blog/TheMassivenessOfMicrosoft.aspx

An interesting article about Blogs and will Google visit your site more often because of one.

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/does_googlebot_visit_more_often_because_of_my_blog.html

An excellent free report on keywords / finding the right keywords.

http://www.KeywordWorkshop.com

If you like crosswords / cryptograms then you'll enjoy this site -

http://oneacross.com/

Some good ideas on running your newsletter / email campaigns.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3076

Don't forget to send your estimated taxes in tomorrow ... Bah Humbug.

A great resource for disaster planning (for you and your business) can be found at the link below.

http://www.youngandsuccessful.com/newsletter/ys_weekly_090805/

We've talked some about usability in the past - you can find some good info at the following link -

http://webreference.com/authoring/design/usability/

Some good stuff there if you dig for it a bit.

If you like to keep on top of the latest trends I would highly recommend the following newsletter.

http://www.trendwatching.com/

A newsletter I look forward to getting.

Unfortunately when you have a disaster scammers come out of the wood work. The link below may help keep you safe (from scammers).

http://www.scambusters.org/hurricanekatrinascams.html

Have a wonderful weekend.

Couple of good links today -

1. Protect your computer - 8 good hints about keeping your computer safe.
http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/archives/20050907_eight_steps_to_system_security_2005.phtml

2. 20 things you can do to make sure your website is accessible.
http://devwebpro.com/devwebpro-39-20050825TheTop20ThingsYouCanDotoMakeYourWebsiteAccessible.html

It seems that Google did a PR / backlink update over the weekend - guess they didn't take the holiday off - some details on that can be found in the following forums.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7673
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31072.htm

The Sept. issue of our newsletter can be found at the following link -

Building business relationships, interesting newsletter stats and more.

We hope that you and your family had a wonderful holiday weekend.

A few good tidbits today - note we won't be posting tomorrow or Monday so enjoy your holiday - hug your family and have a bit of fun.

Are alt tags worth it -
http://www.searchengineguide.com/aws/2005/0830_aws1.html

An excellent guide to wordtracker - click save as since it is a pdf file.
http://tanny.com/keywords/keyword-research/Wordtracker-Guide.pdf

Earlier we said that Yahoo was going to be creating a service similar to AdSense - you get paid for your traffic. Their beta is open and details can be found here -

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/nl/aug05tu.php

Again enjoy your weekend.

Unless you've been living under a rock you've seen the devastation of Katrina - we have some clients down south that we haven't heard from yet. Please continue to keep them in your thoughts and prayers and if you want donate something as well.

http://www.redcross.org/

http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/

SE Conference Review -

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7257

Earning money with Adsense and others -

Tidbits -

There are more folks that pay publishers than Google.
Yahoo is in beta with something that will compete with Google.
A note from About on mixing up your ads.

Just a quick note today - say up a prayer for those that may face Katrina today or her remnants in the days ahead. Tomorrow we'll start working again on the SES conferences.

Have a great Monday.

Since the kiddies are back in school - it won't be long till they have to do research and reports. Google has a new search engine that may help them.

http://scholar.google.com/

So why do you think Google has made these changes... these are just some of my thoughts.

1) They are moving toward a "portal".
2) The more real estate they have - on your desk, when you search, your home page - the more "eyes" they have, the more advertising opportunities exist - although for now they say they won't. Recently they eexpanded the number of ads at the top of listings from two to three - there is only so much more they can do there .... unless they choose to fill up the whole page with paid ads . Don't ever forget ... they're in this to make money.

Have a good one.

Google has had a couple of big announcements recently:

1) They've revamped their desktop product -
Click Here

2) They have a new IM Product -
http://www.google.com/talk/

More details about it can be found here -
http://www.google.com/talk/about.html

So.... why do you think Google launched these products. I'll let you think about it for a bit and I'll give you my thoughts about it tomorrow.

We'll talk some this week about things gleaned from the last SES Conference.

First thing is about "mobile search". If you've not thought about it - now is the time to do it. Why because everyone has a cell phone - soon they will all be able to surf the web. Some details about research etc. can be found at the following link.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7254

Just a link to check out today - hopefully by next week I'll be feeling up to par.

It's about "good" writing and Google.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1874

I'm in the process of getting a cold.... achoo... wasn't going to post today but saw this in my inbox and got me to thinking.

http://photo.stamps.com

You can now put pictures on a stamp - they are a bit expensive but if you mail a lot of things for your business (advertising / etc.), it could make the difference of someone opening it and not. How much of a difference the only way you would find out would be to test it.

Just make sure that the only change on the envelope is the stamp.

Have a good one.

The latest SES conference has wrapped up - today we're going to give you some links to review - we'll talk a bit about each one this week as well as things for you to do... so for today just read them.

The links to the summaries are here -

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=7186

Whew... first week of school is over. I think we're all getting back in the swing of things. If you've been keeping up with things you should pat yourself on the back :o) Remember we're working on tweaks a little at a time - one tweak won't make much of a difference but together they amount to quite a bit.

Continue working on the project from yesterday - here's some info you may (or may not) be interested in.

Trump has a blog - hopefully my blog is not as boring.
http://donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com/

Lots and lots of cool stuff on "how things work".
http://science.howstuffworks.com/

Have a great weekend.

This project will probably take a couple of days -

1) Find your niche in this directory -

http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Directories/

Say my niche is paintball -

I would click sports -
Then paintball -

2) Visit each of the sites in that list
3) Request a link from each of those sites / add your site to their listings.

Today's optimization tweak is pretty easy - make sure that domains that you are promoting / marketing are renewed for at least 2 or 3 years. Why? When we spoke about Google's patent, one thing it does is allows them to check on things regarding your sites domain status - so domains with longer expiration dates will likely not be spam sites - will it help? It's hard to say. Will it hurt? No... so do it.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - I can't believe that school is getting ready to start. Since the next couple of days we'll be dealing with that - can't believe my daughter will be in the third grade - we'll resume posting on Weds.

Tell then enjoy 30 things you can do on the internet - some things I didn't even know about.

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,120784,00.asp

Got this in my inbox today - some interesting stuff on increasing your sales as people leave your site.

http://www.bizweb2000.com/gazette/

Some articles that you may find of use while you work on testing the pages in your site.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3524751

While you are working on testing your pages - this article was pretty interesting about Divurging results.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3524411

Have a great day.

Remember a while back I asked you to create an account for Google Ad Sense - divide your site into 4 or 5 sections - If you have 20 pages on your site - then it would be four pages to work on each day.

Now take the snippet of code and add them to your site - does the content for the ad reflect what you're optimizing the pages for. If not then ....

1) Tweak the title tag.
2) Add content to the page.
3) Tweak the product descriptions / names on the page.
4) Tweak the other meta tags.

Upload the page changes.

Refresh the page - does it reflect what you want now in the ads - if not tweak some more. If so delete the ads and go to the next page. Work on every page of your site. This will be your project for this week.

Have you finished all the steps this week - remember that they will all add up. So if not continue working on them. Today subscribe to a new newsletter that is in your niche. An easy way to find was is to type in "your niche newsletter" in Google. Have a great weekend.

Today you're going to make sure that all of your links actually point somewhere -- no dead ones.

If you have a bunch of links you can use the following tool to check them.

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Also you're going to add this to your "To Do" list to do monthly.

Also personally visit the links on your links page - any with a PR of zero - or that have changed their content remove them from your list.

Today you're going to create a marketing spreadsheet - we'll be expanding this some as we move forward - but today we'll make it simple.

1) Create the following headings across the top -

Date ~ Traffic (this can be page views / visits - doesn't matter just be consistent) ~ Orders (number of orders for the day) ~ $$ (value for the orders) ~ Profit (profit on those orders) ~ Subscribers ~ Current ~ New (Total subscribers to your newsletter, number of new subscribers for the day).

2) Daily start tracking these numbers.

Do you have your counter in place? If not make sure to check out yesterdays post.

Your homework today is if you don't have one - create a Google Adsense account - don't worry we won't be adding advertising to your site, but there will be a tool we'll be using in the near future.

You can create an account here -
https://www.google.com/adsense/

Then click on click here to apply - getting an account is super easy.

Make sure also to check at the adsense blog - save it in your bookmarks.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/

Before you embark on any major promotion campaign - you need to figure out where you are now. If you don't currently have a stats package then it is very important that you get one before you start.

Here is an excellent article on that subject -
http://1x.com/advisor/maher16.htm

So have you thought of some "baby steps" you can use to build your business. Next week we'll work on giving you some methods - some easy ways to build traffic - something that will take you five or ten minutes that you can do each day.

Till then have a great weekend.

If you think about it - almost every huge project starts with a single step. Example - building a house starts by digging a scope of dirt, laying a single brick etc. You can build your business is simple steps - instead of thinking of the large (impossible) end result - think of the simple / single steps.

If you contact one new person a day by the end of a year you'll have contacted 260 people in a year. If you get two new links for your site a day - by the end of the year you'll have 520 new links. If you saved $5.00 / day - by the end of the year you would have $1825.00.

Why not take a small step today.

An excellent article on adding the sitemap / xml to your site for Google's site maps.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/misc/xml-sitemap.htm

If you send a newsletter then you need to read the following article -

http://www.demc.com/newsletters/7_13_05.html

Whether you noticed it or not - Google updated their page rank - they did some tweaking to it, but as always just a couple of things to remember.

When you get a note to exchange links -

1) Would visitors to your site enjoy / benefit from the link - if not - trash can.
2) Visit the site - is the link to the links page on the index page of the site - if not - trash.
3) Check out their links page - would some links their benefit your user - are there any that are offensive - if so trash - if no benefits trash.

Have a good one.

So what did you learn from the article yesterday - here's what I learned.

1) People still search mostly for information on the web.
2) People are starting to use the internet more than the yellow pages.
3) Most people still can't distinguish between paid listings and organic listings.

So what can you do -

1) Include information / tutorials on your site. Include research / info keywords in your paid / organic listings.
2) If you use the yellow pages - think of transferring some of those funds to paid local search listings.
3) If you have the cash use both organic and paid listings.

If you want to waste some time this weekend - look no farther than here -
http://www.miniclip.com/Homepage.htm

Tim

An excellent article on how American's search -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3519361

Think of some ways you can take advantage of the findings - tomorrow I'll give you some of my thoughts.

Tim

An excellent article to review - particularly if you use Google Ads on your site and/or if you're trying to optimize your site for Google - which should be all of you...

http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter263.shtml

Vacation was a blast. Visiting the beach during hurricane season can be somewhat of an adventure. The worst part of course is getting back into the swing of things... which we're doing gradually.

If you use firefox then you definitely want to get the google tool bar plug in.

You can find that at the link below.

http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/

Till tomorrow have a great day.

I know I said we would work on details for getting the Google update working - I'm running a bit short on time getting ready for vacation and thunderstorms popping up in the middle of things.

So we'll regroup and resume posting on or about July 12th.

Till then enjoy your summer and remember to take some time to smell the roses.

Tim

I know I said we would work on details for getting the Google update working - I'm running a bit short on time getting ready for vacation and thunderstorms popping up in the middle of things.

So we'll regroup and resume posting on or about July 12th.

Till then enjoy your summer and remember to take some time to smell the roses.

Tim

So what exactly is the google site map service -

It basically tells Google when to spider your site.... who wouldn't want to be able to do that.
So you could get Google to crawl pages that are deep within your site - and / or let them know when you make changes to your site.

Either way it is a win win situation.

Tomorrow we'll talk more about creating the actual site map.

Happy Monday - hopefully you had a wonderful weekend.

This week is going to be short for us - no posts on Friday - no posts next week.

This week we're going to be talking about Google sitemaps - and overview is here -
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Don't stress about it - we'll go into a step by step process.

For now though make sure to create a Google account if you don't have one yet.

Special Deal -

Get a $100 gift from Sandals for purchasing this -
http://webmaster.sitesell.com/blitzpromotions.html

If you like art... or just want to take a some time off, then check out the Louvre.

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/alaune.jsp?bmLocale=en

Have a great weekend!!

If your site depends on Google News Service for some or all of your traffic then this might be of interest to you -

Long Link

So what does this mean - don't ever put all of your eggs in one basket.

First some informative threads on the Bourbon update -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=46557
http://toprank.blogspot.com/2005/06/googleguy-answers-google-bourbon.html
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29727-2-10.htm

The main thing I believe that Google did on this update was to remove things with duplicate content. You can find sites that may have your content by going here -

http://www.copyscape.com/

So what steps can you take -

1) Offers to provide you with "content" should be taken with a grain of salt - if they are sending it to you , then they will be sending it to hundreds of other folks as well.

2) If you write an article that is going to be an optimization page - put it on only one page - you may link to it from other pages, but don't send it out to others.

3) If you are sending it to others then realize the page won't be ranked well - but again put it on only one page within your sites.

4) If you have duplicate content within your sites work on making only one instance of the content - link that content from other places if you wish - delete the page where the dups were at.

Have a great day.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - this week we'll be working on continuing our discussions on the patent from Google - with some tidbits on what the recent Google update "Bourbon". We'll start talking about Bourbon tomorrow and go from there.

Enjoy your Monday.

An awesome speach by Steve Jobs can be found at the link below - some great tidbits on business and life -

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Enjoy your weekend!!

Before we left Google had an update - on one of the forums we frequent "Google Guy" gives some hints about the changes -

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29727-2-10.htm

You can click on his user profile and gain some useful information. The main thing is that as with algo changes most of them aren't done all at once - so wait for a bit before making any drastic changes.

Have a good one.

As you know anytime I go on a trip somewhere I try to learn something - so what did I learn from this trip?

My Grandfather made a big impact on a lot of people -

1) He called people on their birthdays and anniversarys - he had a huge book with names / dates and phone numbers (at least 300+ or so). Without fail on that special day you would get a phone call from him. The minister at the funeral asked how many had been called and of the 500 or so in attendance probably 3/4ths raised their hands.

2) He truly cared about young people - sports events, graduations, plays, youth group meetings, he was there. You could tell from the number of young people at the funeral that he had made a difference in a lot of their lives.

So what does this have to do with running your business. If you truly care about your customers they will know - and tell others.

Have a wonderful day!
Tim

You might have noticed we weren't around last week - we were out of town attending my Grandfather's funeral. It's piled up a bit around here but hopefully tomorrow we'll get back to our normal posting.

Tim

More info from -
http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

and the patent -

quote -

High scores are also assigned based on the amount of time a user spends on a page. But how can Google know how long you're browsing a page and whether or not you accessed it from your bookmarks? Now you know what things like My Search History and the Google Toolbar are really for (cue ominous-sounding music).

And what happens if people used to spend 30 seconds on average looking at a page, but now only spend an average of 5 seconds looking at that same page? You got it. Page score goes down.

end quote -

So how can you make them spend longer on the page -

Again -

1) Provide useful - updated information.
2) Explain things that may be obvious to you - ie how to use that uber fishing fly to catch more fish.
3) Offer tips on the use of the product.
4) Offer uses for the product that they might not have thought of.
5) Provide customer testimonials.

Tomorrows issue today -

Check out these funnies -

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2994

One other note my grandpa is very ill - they live in Oregon and one of his requests was for me to be part of his funeral. He has lived a rich full life, but they don't expect him to live for the next week or two.

This means that their could be some delay in blog postings. We plan on taking our laptop, but we will only be checking emails a couple of times a day. Please do keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Have a good weekend.

We continue with some clues from the patent -

Taken from -
http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

Traffic, Clicks and User data -

Quote -
The patent implies that Google is tracking not just how many clicks a search result is getting, but also what kind of traffic is going to the page in question. Higher relevance is awarded to pages that are accessed through browser bookmarks, for instance, since those pages are assumed to be more valuable to searchers.
End Quote -

So....

1. Make sure your site is interesting.
2. Make sure your let your visitor know that you make changes - so it is important to bookmark your site.
3. Give them instructions on how to book mark it.
4. Offer useful / relavent information besides just trying to sell something - such as....

Your selling jewelry - give them some useful tips on how to keep it clean, how to get it appraised, tips on storing it etc. The more useful information you give them the more likely they will be to bookmark it.

More info tomorrow.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - what was your score on the quiz?

Today feels like Monday so we're catching up - tomorrow we'll start working on continuing our discussion on the patent.

Till then enjoy your Tuesday!!

First hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend - we won't be posting on Monday but will resume on Tuesday.

If you have a chance - take the SEO Quiz -

http://www.socengine.com/seo/guide/seomoz-quiz.php

If we get a chance we'll do the same and post our scores on Tuesday as well.

Continuing our discussion on the patent - possible changes on the google algo.

Again taken from here - http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

RATE OF DOCUMENT CHANGE -

What helps :

Blog or News pages that change frequently.
Greater weight is given to changes in the title .... hmm.


What doesn't:

Changes to nav bars - navigation structure
Java / Ads etc.

The rate of change -

If you accelerate the rate of change you're given more credit - so monitor your competitors - note their rate of change if any.

Make it a goal to goal slow - say change every month or so - if your competition increases their rate of change then you do the same - to every couple of weeks.

So how can you take advantage of the changes / coming changes in the last lesson.

1) Make a list of your top ten or so competitors.

On your spreadsheet list -
1) Terms
2) What postion they are in Google.
3) Start monitoring the page changes - update when they changed / what changed.
4) Do this for a month or two.
5) Monitor their positions -

It may actually take more than a month or two to find a trend.

So what is an easy way to monitor page changes - you can find out more information from this site.

http://www.thegrid.org.uk/about/help/updates.shtml

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2178631

So what can we learn from that patent application -

Make sure to read the complete newsletter here -

http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

We'll just be adding our comments to the discussion -

Document Age:

First - think for a moment - which page do you think should rank higher.

1) A page that has been online a week.
2) A page that has been online for three years.

Note that I didn't say changed last week - but has been online a week.

Google obviously likes fresh / content. I agree with the article that probably in instances where newer topics are discussed that fresher pages may prevail -- but if your optimizing for fishing lures then older - fresh pages are key.

So take away things -

1) Old pages can be made fresh with content updates and getting fresh links to them from other sites. If you're still getting all the links to your home page it's time to mix things up.
2) If you redesign your site it is now even more important to keep the structure.

We'll talk more about the patent tomorrow.

Market position posted an excellent newsletter - please take a moment and review it -

http://www.marketposition.com/mp-0505.htm

Most important (and something we'll be discussing some tomorrow and Weds) is the patent application and what it may mean for your site.

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. We'll be taking some time off this week so we should be back to our regular posting schedule next week.

Have a good one.

Something to take a look at - A new take on tags and links - an interesting read.

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3503596

Have a great weekend.

Another aspect of preparing the garden is getting ready for the harvest. We'll talk first about a follow up plan -

Do you have a plan on contacting someone even if they don't order from you? Believe it or not some folks won't order the first time or the fifth or even the tenth.

You can find more information about creating a follow - up plan at the link below -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz185.htm

Tim

Have you had a chance to work on the worksheets from yesterday? I know that mainly it pertains to someone building a new site but it might help with an old one as well.

If you want a break try http://www.20q.net/

Continuing the website prep - take some time today and check out 12 Webdesign Decisions.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/12design.htm

Make sure to save it / print it out. We'll be discussing it more as the week progresses. For now just download / save it / read it / print it.

Have a good one.

Hopefully you had a chance to do yesterdays task.

This weekend do the following :

Get 5 - 10 volunteers to visit your website while you're watching them (not all at the same time of course).

Ask them to:

1) Order a specific product.
2) Contact you with an email.
3) Tell you what your normal shipping time is.
4) Order 3 additional products.
5) Ask them to sign up for your newsletter.

How did they do?

If you notice that all of your test subjects struggle with a certain task - you may want to think about making that task easier. Things that may be super simple to you - may be extremely difficult to someone visiting your site. Ask them for input on things they found hard, ways that you could improve your site.

For tomorrow - download and read the following .pdf on search engine optimization.

We'll discuss this in depth starting next week.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/presentations/organic-seo-itzone.pdf

So make sure you save it somewhere.

See you Monday. Don't forget to HUG your Mom this weekend.

First step in growing our garden is preparing the ground - after all you wouldn't just dump seeds on rocks and expect them to grow.

Garden #1

Make sure that your site is viewable using Firefox.

http://www.getfirefox.com/

Explorer has held the crown for many years - but Fire Fox is slowly but surely catching up. If you haven't viewed your site in Fire Fox make sure that you do.

A great new contest from Yahoo - you could win a million free impressions. Looks like entering the contest is pretty simple. The only requirement is that your business is small. You can find more details on the contest at the following link.

http://thinkbig.yahoo.com/

Hopefully this week we'll have a bit more time to post - last week was pretty wild - stormed quite a bit / busy etc. Today it feels like winter time again, but hopefully no storms this week.

Have a great Monday!!

No Seeds - No Business

Some people come to me and ask why isn't their business doing well on the net. After a few conversations I learn that they haven't done anything to promote / grow their business. For some reason they think that business will just magically appear. This of course couldn't be further from the truth. Without constantly planting seeds (promoting), your garden will not produce anything. Sure on occassion you may get a plant or two but you will never get a crop.

Tomorrow we'll start our conversations on preparing your garden.

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. Something weird happened here yesterday... it snowed. 70 -80 degrees during the week and then snowed some on the weekend. Some of it actually stuck on the grass and cars. No snow storms scheduled for this week but who knows.

Couple of notes to wrap up the week -

Congress is looking at extending the ban on internet taxes -
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3498991

A good blog for seo information -
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/

Have a great weekend.

How your business is like a garden.

For the next bit we're going to be using the analogy of your business as a garden. We're going to cover a variety of topics and hopefully as you relate it to a garden it may just make things clearer to you.

Here's an overview of the lessons.

Preparing your garden.
- tilling the soil
- what makes a garden grow
- choosing your seeds
- rouge plants
- watering your garden
- fertilizer anyone
- tracking growth
- harvesting your crops
- getting more from your harvest
- starting the process again

We hope you'll enjoy it - we'll start tomorrow with preparing your garden. Please note that each topic may take a couple of days to cover.

Have a good one.
Tim

This week.... if I can get this crazy thing to work we're going to talk about planting seeds. Spring has sprung and it's a perfect time to think about growing your business in terms of planting a garden. One thought to get you started. If you don't plant anything (advertise / promote) how can you expect anything to grow. Something to think about.

I really hate paying taxes... I don't guess that many people do. I give you permission to take the weekend off. My wife though has a good way of looking at it - she said it could be worse.... you could have not made any more. So I guess that is true, still I really don't like writing out the checks much. I guess the April 15th one makes it worse, because you pay the double whammy - taxes owed and the first ES form. So enjoy your weekend... you deserve it!!

So how do you make it easy for new customers to shop at your site -

1) Explain everything - then explain everything again. While shopping on the net is easy for you, this will be the first experience for them. Explain exactly how the process works. Explain what happens after they push a button.

2)Inspire confidence - even though they may not have shopped - I'm pretty certain that they have heard horror stories about the web. Make them feel secure - offer them an alternate means of ordering your products - the phone.

3) Explain what happens after the order - how long does it take the order to be processed, when will it be shipped etc.

4) Detail how you will communicate with them.

Have a good one.

I had someone ask me how that gas prices could relate to increases in web traffic. Here goes a simple but worthwhile explanation.

1. I live in a very small town - while we do have a Wal-Mart :o) - say I want something that isn't mass produced / but unique. Lets say I want a certain video game.

2. I now have a choice - I can drive two hours to the nearest "big" city that may have it - or I could buy it online. If I drive the four hours I'll spend an extra $20 or so dollars in gas. Online I find the game - same price as the store in the big city - shipping is four bucks.

I don't know about you but I would much rather save the $16 bucks. Next time I need to make the purchase I'll think about the video - how easy it was - didn't have to drive - came to the door - no traffic hassles - no big gas expenditure - so I buy something on the web again.

Once you do things a few times it starts to be a habit. So even if gas prices do come down after my happy experiences of buying on the web, I'm more likely to continue that.

Tomorrow we'll talks some about dealing with these first time buyers, to make their experience a pleasant one.

Hope your weekend went as planned. It was great here - for once it didn't rain and temps were in the 70's. In fact we had to turn on the AC. Have you noticed the price at the gas station lately - filling up your tank is getting a bit out of control. What isn't great for your car, may be great for your website. Personally I think this will increase web sales - where folks may have only visited your site around the holidays - they may actually come by more often for other purchases. Just something to think about.

Have a great Monday.

If you have a site that caters to kids - you may want to make sure your site is listed in the search engines that are at the following url - especially pay attention to those that are near the bottom of the page - starts with - "Other Children's Search Engines".

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156191

Have a great weekend.

I got another update on the Google Auto Link program. I don't really see much wrong about how they're doing things now... but what could happen in the future. Take a moment to check out the following article -

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/3490576

Pay particle attention to code you can add to your site to kill the auto link.

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/1562

Even if you don't have links to books - I think this move by Google definitely bears watching.

Someone asked about how we got rid of the spyware / viruses.

After trying various methods (and none of those working), I decided that it would be much easier just to reinstall xp - but this time to include service pack 2 - and to stay far far away from windows explorer.

1) I made sure all the important files were backed up - emails, code, programs I own that are downloads only, passwords etc. I backed all these up to an external hard drive. You don't want to back up settings etc., because these might have been compromised by the malware.
2) Check again to make sure you have everything. Don't forget your bookmarks, you may also want to include your address book.
3) Format the hard drive. There is a fast method - which I've found doesn't do the job, and a slow method.
4) Reinstall XP
5) Reinstall all the drivers and programs that came with the computer.
6) Install and update your virus protection / firewalls.
7) Install SP 2.
8) Download any additional windows updates.
9) Install your other programs and make sure they work.
10) Run a virus scan.
11) Take a break.
12) Setup your email.
13) Install Mozilla.

I have a slow internet connection - not by choice we just live in the boonies - the whole process took about six hours or so. I figure though that it was time well spent since my computer runs faster and the spyware doesn't take over things (knock on wood).

I had the leisure of planning my reinstall. Sometimes you won't have that luxury. Make sure if you haven't backed up things in a while that today (or this week) you do it.

Tim

Recently our computer got infected with some nasty spy ware. We have the the firewalls, blockers, etc., but for some reason we got them anyway. One of the first things I do when this happens to me is to check out what kind of windows processes are going on (by hitting ctl - alt - del with xp). Some of these processes I have no clue what exactly they are. Now you can find out what they are and what you may need to do to stop them.

http://www.processlibrary.com/

Just enter the process in the search box and you'll find out what the process is. They do sell a product - which I don't own yet which is supposed to remove some of the pesky ones.

Hopefully on the blogging forefront this week will go better than last (ie I couldn't post). If you didn't move your clocks ahead last weekend then you're late.... was kind of funny on Sunday I thought I woke up early till I logged on my computer and found that I hadn't. Have a great Monday.