Getting indexed…

So you just finished creating your wonderful site, all the sweat, tears and hard work put into the design, the content, the mood of the site so now what…? Do you just sit back and wait? Definitely not. Once you know the site is optimized  and you have done some testing, then the next step is to let Google and Bing know you are here. Don’t just wait for them to find you.

  1. Sign yourself up with a Google and Bing account, and then sign up with Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
  2. Set yourself up an XML site map – you can use free tools like, http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
  3. You will have to follow the instructions for site verification. See screen shots below to give you an idea.
  4. If you wish to submit to Yahoo, you also must have a Yahoo ID.
  5. You can then within the webmaster tools, submit your site. Though if you have done the xml site map properly, this will give enough information to the search engines to pick up your site. Make sure to go back and review your webmaster tools, as they give you tons of good information to help you to continue to tweak your optimization, content, broken links etc.
Google Webmaster Dashboard

Google Search Console – Webmaster Dashboard

Need to verify site

Google Webmaster verification

Bing Webmaster Tool

Bing Webmaster Tool

Yahoo Explorer Tool

Yahoo Explorer Tool

For more information, I will be speaking at the Company of Women, Toronto Breakfast networking group on February 8th. See www.companyofwomen.ca to register. If you are unable to attend, I provide 1 hour slot Skype consultations. My Skype ID is insitecreations. As well will be holding other public seminars or one-on-one training sessions. Feel free to contact me if interested in signing up to learn more.

Getting ready for Soup, Salad & Solutions…

You are probably wondering what the heck does this have to do with web stuff? Well, tonight I am off to be a guest “expert” to sit at the dinner tables as Company of Women guests and members rotate around during their courses, to sit at the table and ask me questions related to web site design, planning, solutions etc. This is a great opportunity for me to share my knowledge and experience in this field, and to meet some amazing women business owners who are all eager to develop their professional development and networking skills. Company of Women is in its 8th year of service, with well over 460 members and 6 chapters. I have been a member of this organization since its’ inception and have been very pleased with its offerings. I personally like attending the smaller group functions as it is nice to have more small group gathering discussions, and yet, the bigger events always have quite unique and interesting presenters.  I look forward to this evening, and if you would like to hear more about why I like this group, feel free to drop me a line jemma@onlinesitedevelopment.com.

Optimizing your blog for success

I came across this video and thought of sharing this video with you as you embark another year of planning out your blog messages to your readers:

Interview with Duane Forrester, http://youtu.be/2sQrdP4Dk4U

Optimizing Your Blog for Success

Click on link for video

His message is, “Without passion, a blog cannot become established as an authority or sustain readers. Forrester believes a lack of passion is the “biggest killer for most blogs out there.” He goes on to say that if a blog does not have passion, it will run out of steam before it can reach success.

Passion results in value, which leads to loyal readers. When businesses and people enforce these practices, the readers will go on to share this valuable information socially and produce links, which will establish the blog as a resource.”

So as you move forward into the new year, make sure to dig deep into your heart and bring forth the passionate nature of your business messages into your writing.

Web Tools to take you into 2011

This post is sourced from Larry Chase’s email newsletter 12/13/2010, discussing tools that we can use to help our business. I checked out a few of them and I wanted to share with you some that will help with your marketing efforts over the holiday season.

I know you will have lots of time between decking the halls, baking up a storm, and getting ready for good ole St. Nick to cuddle up on your couch and do some social network marketing research on all your favourite topics. The first one 48ers is a social networking research search tool that will collect all the real time results of conversations containing that filtered search. If you want to know what people are talking about regarding your subject area, just type in the query, or add #subject, or @subject. It will quickly show you relevant results, with visible icons of source and how recent it was posted.

Social Networking Search Tool for Market research

Another real-time search tool called Topsy is a more comprehensive search tool for Twitter searches.

Topsy gives you both a basic Google-style, one-line search field or an advanced option that allows you to specify or exclude terms or impose time limits.

Some suggested uses:

  • Research trending topics related to your PPC keywords.
  • Find out what people are saying about your company products or service.
  • Track down your most influential Twitterers.

Real time search tool - Topsy

Real time search results help you to see what people are talking about with respect to your subject area. You can review trending topics and many links lead you to ample information. Remember to participate – not only to read these posts, but to become engaged with the conversation. Share your expertise and input. This will position you as an influencer or leader in the field as well provide you with opportunities to learn. Don’t be shy, nor be outlandishly in your face attitude; remember it is just like social networking in person, mind your p’s and q’s.

If you would like to learn more of Larry’s wise advice on marketing practices, join him on twitter, http://twitter.com/LarryChaseWDFM

Looking at the Future of Search

Check out this video from Web Pro News – discussion on the future of search, on browser, mobiles

Highlights:

  • much more competitive to the marketplace with Bing on Google’s heels
  • more interaction with the search experience, especially with mobile – more voice interaction
  • location, preferences, history and social signals will all help in narrowing your search
  • offline and television brands typically didn’t have a presence on the web, now most of them are now on line, so news has been diversified and vertical channel of access – Fandango for movie, book search on Amazon vs. just using Google. Therefore vertical search engines growing incredibly fast
  • local compete with big brands
  • mobile search 1 in 5 searches and growing, have impact on query curve
  • people using more apps than browser on the phone

HTML & WYSIWYG Tutorial

HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language

WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get editor

For some of my clients who are using a content management application or WordPress, there are times when you will need to use HTML rather than the visual mode of a WYSIWYG.

Some common challenges that need to be considered are the following:

1. Copying and pasting document content from Word or PowerPoint or Adobe PDF, Excel

a.       Challenge: spacing or font formatting that seems to have been brought over from source document.

b.      Solution: always copy and paste source material into NOTEPAD and then re-copy and paste into your WYSIWYG editor.

2.       When either copying source material in, or writing directly into the editor

a.       Challenge: Sometimes extra line spacing occurs when you don’t want it to.

b.      Solution: You may need to look at the HTML source to see if an extra <p> or <br> was added. Please note, a full carriage return [enter], it will give you a <p> paragraph break, whereas, if you hold down the [shift key] and [enter] it will give you a <br> line break.

3. Bullets – ordered and unordered

a.       Challenge: When putting in ordered bullets, sometimes the numbers won’t line up properly especially when there are 2, 3, level of bullets.

b.      Solution: Add all the text before putting in the bullets, make sure where there are supposed to be bullets, you have a full carriage return between each one, then highlight this list, and then apply the bullet icon.

All HTML tags need an open and close tag, for example <tag>information goes here</tag>

Tag Purpose Examples
<p></p> paragraph
<br> or </br> Line break
<ol> </ol> Ordered List (1, 2, 3, I, ii, iii) <OL > or <OL> or <OL > or <OL >
<ul> </ul> Unordered List (bullet formats) Or <UL > for square bullet
<li> </li> bullet
<i> </i> Italic
<em> </em> emphasized
<table> </table> Insert a table
<strong> </strong> Bold
<b> </b> Bold
<tr> </tr> Insert a table row
<td> </td> Insert a table cell
<span> </span> Attribute, formatting style
<span>
<div> </div> container <div>
<tr align=”center”></tr> Align table row center
<tr align=”left”></tr> Align table row left
<tr align=”right”></tr> Align table row right
<a href=””> </a> link <a href=”/membership-benefits” title=””>Benefits</a>
<img src=””> image <img src=”http://www.ydomain.ca/images/89/newlogo.jpg” alt=”keyword” title=”keyword phrase” width=”280″ height=”210″ />
<h1> </h1> Header 1 Largest heading
<h2> </h2> Header 2
<h3> </h3> Header 3
<h4> </h4> Header 4
<h5> </h5> Header 5
<h6> </h6> Header 6 Smallest heading
&nbsp; Non-breaking space Good for indenting
Copyright
Trademark
Registered
Less Than
Greater Than
Ampersand
Quote
Apostrophe
Cent
Euro
One quarter
One half
Three quarters
Degrees
Larger middle dot
©

®
<
>
&


¢

¼
½
¾
°
&copy;
&#153;
&reg; or &#174;
&lt;
&gt;
&amp;
&quot;
&#39;
&#162;
&euro; or &#8364;
&#188;
&#189;
&#190;
&#176;
&#149;
<title> </title> title

An element that has an opening and closing tag is referred to as a container element because anything contained between these tags are affected by the element.

Closing Tags cannot be placed just anywhere. Use the “Last In = First Out” principle or “LIFO”. That is, the “Last” tag “In” must be the “First” tag “Out”. Another way of stating this is that the last tag activated must be the first tag terminated. An example of a correct sequence of tags is:

<tag1><tag2> statements </tag2></tag1>

So when you look at the code, you don’t have to get too scared off,  just reference this table to see what those tags mean. When in doubt, just give Jemma a call, 416-451-2063