Category Archives: Internet

Ensuring your website loads without “www”

I’ve got a quick tip that you should implement TODAY as the first and best thing you can do to help your website in 2013.

In today’s web-savvy world more and more of us browse to a website excluding the ‘www’. i.e. just deconetwork.com instead of www.deconetwork.com.

However I have seen many cases where a website owner has not configured their website to load without the ‘www’ resulting in a ‘Page Not Found’ error. In many cases the site visitor may assume your website is down and browse off to your competitor. So it is CRITICAL you configure your website to work with and without the ‘www’.

Test your site

Load a browser and enter your website address without the ‘www’. If it fails to load contact your domain host and update your domain IP address or forwarding to ensure it works with and without the ‘www’.

Dan Howe, one of our ultra smart developers here at DecoNetwork (and soon to be blogger!) suggests using a redirect from your non-www to your www. This will yield the best results from an SEO perspective as opposed to having two domain names pointed to the same IP address. Many domain registrars/DNS hosts will allow this functionality (often referred to as domain aliasing).

Trust me. Your website and sales will thank you for it

Part two: Focus your website

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I have to admit that while I would like to think that I am a realist, really I am an optimist. I like to look at the positive side of things. I subscribe to the theory of “Field of Dreams” if you build it they will come. While that worked for Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) that really doesn’t work in real life, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Just because you create a website it is not a given that you will have a successful website. Your online business requires the same investment in time and energy that any other offline business. For the next couple of months I will be sharing from a sales point of view what it take to make a successful site.

Part two: Focus your website to your target

So last time we talked about determining who your actual customers are BEFORE you begin to design your website and tailoring it to their needs and wants. In this article I want to talk about how to focus your website. One of the biggest issues I see when people start their website is that there is no focus, no call to action, nothing to move the consumer to open their wallet or purse. Your website has to be a representation of your business in a self-serving way. In other words in retail store environment you can direct people to parts of the store you want them to see and products you want them to buy. You have to format your website with the same frame of mind. So let’s look at how we map out a successful website using this idea.

Make it look good

I can’t stress this enough: you have to have your site look good if you want to have people spend time on your site. If your customer base is conservative stay away from loud colors and college humor, if they are corporate keep the skulls and crossbones designs in the closet; if they teens put away the teddy bear logos and turn on the skulls and crossbones. Know your audience and make the products, artwork, backgrounds, text and images speak to them. There is no way you can be all these to all people. It is ok to cast a wide net but even a wide net has boundaries.

Whatever it is that you want to say you better say it fast

It is estimated that you have between 5-10 seconds to capture your visitor’s attention. This is a stark contrast to a retail store where if someone walks into your store chances are they will browse around or talk to an employee. They do this because they had to invest something to get to your store, their time and gas. So they very likely to spend at least a few minutes in your store. Your webstore is very different, with search engines like Google they can very quickly find what they are looking for so their investment is marginal. That is why you have to capture their attention quickly and give them reason to stay on your site.

Keep it above the Fold

The question then becomes “If I only have 5-10 seconds to capture my audience’s attention how do I best do that?” Great question! From my experience the most successful sites have good content above the fold that capture the audience’s attention and drive them to want to see more. The “fold” is considered the top portion of the website that the user sees before he or she has to scroll down. This is a great location to have a banner or promotion code or a saying that sparks the users interest and makes them want to scroll down to see more. In most cases a visitor to a website decides to hang around purely based on what they see on the first page they visit and above the fold. When a user leaves on this first page it’s called a bounce and can be reported in your Google Analytics as the “Bounce rate”.”

Leave gimmicks to the used car salesmen

Stay away from the gimmicky animations or the huge SALE! SALE! SALE! buttons, they are gimmicky and only distract the user. Keep your message sharp and focused, don’t overwhelm them with 50 products above the fold, keep it simple. I suggest using images that are high quality and possibly a coupon code for say Free Shipping on order over $25 (very easy to do in DecoNetwork).

Give your site a custom look

While there is no silver bullet in having a successful store there are several things you can do to attract potential clients and reduce your bounce rate. One of the most important in my opinion is have your site look unique. It has been my experience that those people that use cookie cutter templates from some of those other web hosting companies have marginal if any success with their site. The reason can be summed up in the following question “If your site looks exactly like a hundred other sites why would I buy from you?” As you know with DecoNetwork you have access to the CSS and HTML, use it! Create a masterpiece, something you are proud of, something that you will have a tear in your eye each time you talk about (it should give you the same feeling you had when you first laid eyes on your firstborn). Make it look special but above all make it unique and designed to appeal to your target market. If you are saying to yourself I like that idea but I don’t know where to begin doing this, not a problem we can help www.deconetwork.com/decocoach.

What can I expect in the weeks to come?

Stay tuned, I’ve got some very interesting topics I want to cover such as “I get a lot of visits to my site but not a lot of conversions. Why?” and “How do I drive better quality traffic to my site?”

Internet Explorer Security Warning: Microsoft Cautions On Zero-Day Browser Exploit

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Microsoft have warned of a recently discovered security flaw in their Internet Explorer browser that can potentially affect hundreds of millions of users.

According to Microsoft the bug can allow attackers to take control of the PC after visiting a malicious website. Being ‘zero-day’ the exploit takes advantage of a security vulnerability on the same day that the vulnerability becomes generally known, meaning zero days between discovery and the first attack.

Microsoft have released a temporary patch call ‘The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit‘ until a full patch can be released.

The German government has taken the unprecedented step of urging all its citizens to not use Internet Explorer. For speed and performance purposes we at DecoNetwork recommend other browsers such as Google Chrome or FireFox. Not only will your web browsing speed increase but you’ll also be able to enjoy visually rich websites as they were designed to be enjoyed as both Google Chrome and FireFox have better support for web standards and the ever emerging HTML5 and CSS3.

Why Logos With Hidden Meanings Work So Well

How to tell Google your website exists – Webmaster Tools and Links

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While the internet seems like a giant mysterious animal it’s actually quite logical once you understand a little how it works.

Many websites fail because of a lack of traffic. No visitors equals no sales. The frustrated website owner who invested all their time into setting up their website blames the site and declares the internet a waste of time.

Well, the owner is usually wrong in both cases.

First of all, it’s usually not the sites fault. Sure, the content could be bad, and the site could look horrible, but that’s the owners fault and not the site!

And secondly, the internet is not a waste of time. You just need to know how to use it.

In most cases the lack of visitors is simply down to the fact that no one knows the site even exists.

I call it the ‘build it and they will come’ syndrome. The internet is not magical. Google does not possess magic powers to randomly find websites. If you build a website people won’t just come.

Google usually finds sites through two different ways – Links and you telling Google your website exists.

The importance of links

Links are really important for two reasons.

It helps Google and other search engines find your site, and:
It tells Google and other search engines how good your website is.

The first is easy to explain. Take this image below. It is a section of the internet with a few existing websites in blue. Your new website is in orange and it sitting out there alone:

Kind of looks like a spider web right? Hmm… world wide w….

Some of these websites link to other websites, as indicated in red. Google sits in the middle and as people search for keywords it shows results of websites it knows. These red links are very important for Google. First of all, the Google website crawler which travels the internet looking for websites and content to add to its database travels from link to link between sites. Like a spider does crawling over a web between two tress. When it finds a new website it looks for all the links on this site and travels from that link to another site. In some cases this can take Google to a new website and this site will now be added to Google’s database.

At the same time Google records the number of sites that link to each other. If a website has a high number of other sites linking to it then Google assumes this website must be good, otherwise why else would the owner of the other site link to it? Therefore, it will rank this website higher in a search result and this is gold for a website owner.

So links are import for two reasons:

They help Google (and others) find your site
Most important of all, it tells Google your website is good. So good that others link to your website and its content. Again, pure gold for a website owner.

If your website is all alone, with no links from anyway (websites, Facebook, Twitter, etc) and you’ve never told Google you exist then Google probably won’t find you. Certainly your customers (or potential customers) won’t. You might be lucky and someone may mention your website on their own site, or talk about it on Twitter or a blog. But that may never happen and you will not benefit from the wonderful Google juice that will flow through links to your website.

As a website strategy you should be looking for as many websites to link to you as possible. Ask customer who are happy with your service to recommend you by linking to your website from their site. If your suppliers have a reseller directory then list your website on this. Links are very important so take them when you can.

However, the Google juice or love that flows between links is only really useful if a website links to you, but you don’t like to them. In other words, Google realise that a bunch of websites can all agree to link to each other in order to fool Google into believing your website is loved. So to prevent this Google won’t increase the search result ranking of two websites that link to each other. When it comes to Google love it’s really a one way street!

Tell Google you exist through Google Webmaster Tools

Besides finding you through links Google has a tool that lets you submit your website address to their service for consideration. It’s called Google Webmaster Tools and here is a quick introduction video from Google:

Google Webmaster Tools have several great services for website owners such as reporting crawler errors (problems Google found with your site), identifying search queries people are using to find your site, and how many of your websites URLs or pages Google knows.

But most important of all Google Webmaster Tools lets you submit you website directly to Google.

Add and verify a site:

Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
Click the Add a site button, and type the URL of the site you want to add. Make sure you type the entire URL, such as http://www.example.com/
Click Continue. The Site verification page opens.
Under the ‘Alternate methods’ tab select ‘HTML tag’
Select and copy the “<meta name=”google-site-verification”…” tag.
Log into you DecoNetwork website
Browse to Manage Store > Appearance > Customize Template HTML
Select the Create custom layout tab and check Override Default Layout.
Paste the “<meta name…” tag you copied above before before the </head> tag in your customer HTML. i.e.<meta name=”google-site-verification” content=”yourcodewillbehere” />
</head>
Click Update to save your changes.
Return to your Google Webmaster Central tab and click the red ‘Verify’ button to verify your HTML tag.

Hopefully you will see a big green tick and BINGO! Google now knows about your site and you can start monitoring your websites progress.

Good luck and remember while letting Google know your website exists is a great start, you still need to generate awesome content to ensure Google likes your site. And if you want Google to really love your site get those links!

Identify useful keywords for your website content

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While the keyword meta tag has join the likes of the dinosaurs, ‘keywords’ are still valid for your site but just not in the form of a meta tag. They are important in the general text of your site. When you are structuring content for your home page, product page or design page consider using keywords your customers may enter into Google. But, how do you know what keywords people are using in Google? Well, a simple tool provided by Google to identify useful keywords for their AdWords advertising product can also be used to help you identify different variations of keywords your customers might use to locate your product or service on the internet.

This tool shows you the number of times a keyword has been searched in Google for a particular region or globally for an average month. However, it also shows you alternate keyword ideas and their popularity.

Head to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and add a keyword of phrases in the form provided. Ensure you select the “Advanced Options and Filters” and choose the regions you want to limit you results for.

Try “t shirt” as an example. You will the number of times that keyword has been searched plus other suggestions such as “t-shirts”, “create t shirt” and “funny t shirts”.

Take note of the other three columns in this result:

Competition: refers to the number of Google AdWords using that keyword in their Google ad and varies from high to low. It does not relate to the number of websites using that keyword however you can make a fair assumption if they keyword is used in their ad it would also be used on their site.

Global Monthly Searches: refers to the average number of Google users that search that query globally for each month over a 12 month period.

Local Monthly Searches: refers to the average number of Google users that search that query within the local region you specified each month over a 12 month period.

Consider using some of these other variants of keywords within your site content. “T shirt” is a good example. The first time you use it use “t shirt” (the most common way its used by Google users) then other times you use this word use different versions such as “t-shirt”, “tee shirt” and “tshirt”.

BUT a word of warning : Avoid keyword stuffing, which according to Google “refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results.”

Source: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66358

Google has recently tweaked its search algorithm to detect websites that blatantly stuff their site with keywords.

What you see is not always what Google gets. Avoid the traps of image-rich websites

Test 1: Search your company web address in Google

Browse to www.google.com and enter you full website address in Google such as “www.yoursite.com”. Does it appear? Great! Google knows about you. But how much does Google really know about you?

I’m going to run a small test on an Australian embroidery company based in Melbourne whose website from a visual point of view appear to have a good website with nice content that may attract potential buyers. I contacted this company and they gave me permission to use their site but for the privacy of the company I will not disclose their website details and have blurred their company name and contact details.

As you can see the site has some nice content. It lists the products and services they offer (caps, t-shirts, polo’s, etc) plus has important selling points such as no minimums, quick turnaround and discounts for businesses. Why wouldn’t I use them? Well, I would if I could find them.

Doing a Google search for these terms in http://www.google.com.au (Google’s Australian website) turns up nothing. Try it yourself by searching for “embroidery service t-shirts”. Any of the websites you visit on that first page will not resemble the site above. Try searching for any other words on their site and again they will not appear.

So why?

There is a simple answer and it may surprise you. All the words on this site are not actual words. They are images. Pixles, dots of colors. And from Google’s perspective they mean nothing.

The site owner may still be able to attract users by advertising but that is a very expensive and narrow way to attract visitors. Once their daily limit is reached their website will vanish from view and their competitors will enjoy their absence in the search results.

Now let’s look at a site that has done it right. www.tshirt123.com

This DecoNetwork website has been designed for Google to love it as much as its Australian human visitors. It is visually rich, contains bright images that clearly show what the service offices, but also has rich text that Google will love. Its content and optimization has been designed to attract Australian visitors. Let’s put the site to the test.

Browse to www.google.com.au (Google’s Australian website) and enter “on demand printing hoodies”. Tshirt123 appears (at the time of writing this blog). Now search “custom t shirt printing”. Once again Tshirt123 appears. They appear because these keywords are actual text written on their page, and not just images.

Test 2: What does Google know about my site?

So you think you’ve done the right thing but you’re not too sure. There is a quick test you can do to test if Google knows anything about your site.

Visit www.google.com and enter your full website address. i.e. www.tshirt123.com

The website should appear as below:

Next mouse over next to the website title and two grey arrows will appear. Select this to review the preview of the site:

In the preview section you will see a link “Cached” next to the site URL. Select this to open a cached view of your website in Google’s database.

On the top far-right select the link “Text-only version”.

This will display the website in a form that Google understands – text!

Scroll down this page to experience you website as Google does. Any text on your site should appear as text on this on this page. Images will probably be missing. (though there are some tricks you can do to improve this).

Let’s go back to our first test case from Melbourne. I ran that same test on their website and this is what Google saw:

As you can see, not much at all. Only their email address, website address, and copyright statement can be seen as only these elements on their site was actual text.

All those juicing keywords used to describe their products, services and benefits are missing so this website would need to rely 100% on paid advertising to draw Google traffic to their website. Expensive and unnecessary.

Image ALT tags

While heavy use of images can pose the problem above, however you can help improve your sites SEO performance by using an image ALT tag in your HTML. An ALT tag provides alternative information for an image and is typically used when a user cannot, for whatever reason, see the image. Google will also index this alt tag and it can be used to help you sites SEO ranking.

However this said, Google’s Webmaster Tools guide recommends you “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.”

Source: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Work on real content for your site. Make as much of that content text on your site. Through the use of Google Fonts and other font services you can still make that text visual and appealing, but more importantly that text will help drive organic visitors to your website increasing you website traffic and reducing the reliance of paid advertising to draw traffic to your site.

Good luck and have fun!

Don’t spill your Google Juice. rel=”canonical”

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The term ‘Google Juice’ refers to the value (or love) Google gives your website based on a number of factors such as links and good, original content.

Many factors can have a negative effect on you Google juice such as poor content (of course) and duplicate content on multiple websites. A common cause of duplicate content from Google’s perspective is multiple domain names pointing to the one site. i.e.www.mysite.com, http://www.myothersite.com or even myothersite.com (without the www) all point to the one website and Google will index all URLs. Google see’s the content and knows they are the same. This is a problem for Google, as Google does not like to show duplicate content to its users so in some cases will rank the URLs lower.

As DecoNetwork provides you with your own domain name (i.e. yoursite.deco-apparel.com) you may have two active domain names on your site (yoursite.deco-apparel.com PLUS http://www.yoursite.com) therefore it is critical for you SEO that you attend to this problem.

The end result is you will have two URLS for your website. i.e.:

http://yoursite.deco-apparel.com/home/create_products/Promo_100_Cotton_Tee?n=81483

AND:

http://www.yoursite.com/home/create_products/Promo_100_Cotton_Tee?n=81483

There is a way around this by telling Google which is your primary and main URL by using the rel=”canonical” tag.

But don’t worry, as a DecoNetwork website owner you don’t need to do any coding! Simply follow these instructions:

Log into your DecoNetwork website
Browse to Manage Store > Store Settings > Add Store Domain Name
Under Existing store domains ensure your main URL (i.e. the http://www.yoursite.com one) is set as the primary domain name (Primary). If not select “Set as primary” next to the domain name.
Under Domain Settings check “Redirect to Primary Domain”.

This will ensure anyone (or thing such as a Google crawler) who browses to your non-primary domain will automatically be redirected to your main domain and therefore reduce the problem of duplicate content on duplicate websites!

The myth of “keywords” meta tag

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It’s a cold, dark night and you’ve sat down to write the perfect collection of keywords to use in your website’s <meta name=”keywords”> tag to work your way up that elusive and exclusive club of the first page of Google search results.

Well, I hate to burst your bubble but it would have been more constructive to watch re-runs of Bold and the Beautiful. When it comes to your page rank in Google <meta name=”keywords”> has zero affect!

Now the reason.

In the ‘old days’ a nasty group of websites used to stuff their <meta name=”keywords”> with keywords that were completely irrelevant to their site. You’d enter a search phrase in Google such as “cheap t-shirt printing” and then select a result to view only to be surprised that the website is not about t-shirts or printing, but rather something you’d really rather not see…

So Google decided to ignore this useless and highly misleading tag <meta name=”keywords”>.

Don’t worry, not all is lost! Take the keywords you once used in your <meta name=”keywords”> tag and create real text content on you website that contains these keywords.

Next is <meta name=”description”>. This is not used by Google to rank your website. In other words, if you enter “cheap t-shirt printing” in your <meta name=”description”> and someone types that in Google your website will not appear.

However Google will use the <meta name=”description”> as the website preview text if there is not enough actual text on your site. Unlike <meta name=”keywords”> which his essentially useless, <meta name=”description”> has some relevance but only for display purposes and again plays no part in actually improving you websites Google rank.

To modify your DecoNetwork websites <meta name=”description”> browse to Manage Store > Store Settings > General Settings and select the “Keywords” tab.

Finally, don’t take my word for it. Check out Google’s official announcement in September 2009:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Website title best practices

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A website title is important. It is typically the first thing a human sees when they see your websites listed in a Google search result. Therefore, you need to think about what makes the perfect title to attract the user’s attention.

There are many conflicting theories on what makes the best website page title but there are some logical rules you can follow.

Keep it short and sweet

A website title is not very long and the title length shown in Google is even shorter, so keep your website title to around 70 characters.

Keywords then brand

Here is where some people can disagree. Some claim it’s better to have your keywords listed in your title first then the brand name. i.e.:

“Custom T-Shirt Printing, Hoodies, Aprons, Sweatshirts – Sydney Australia | ACME Threads Promotional Apparel”

Compared to brand first i.e.:

“ACME Threads Promotional Apparel | Custom T-Shirt Printing, Hoodies, Aprons, Sweatshirts – Sydney Australia”

It may not make much difference for Google (though some argue it does) but it can make a difference for your potential website visitor.

Consider a person looking for custom t-shirt printing. Are they more than likely to type in Google “ACME Threads Promotional Apparel” or are they more likely to type “Custom T-Shirts Printing”? I reckon the second.

Therefore, don’t risk the chance that the keywords they actually type into Google might be at the end of your website title and possibly out of view in the Google search result.

The added advantage of including the keywords at the begging of you title is the chance they will be visible to the user in the Google search results. Any visible words in a website title or short description is highlighted bold therefore capturing the user attention even more.

Search term “Personalised printed t shirts”.

Results:

Notice the highlighted search terms in the Google search results?

Ensure your primary keywords are first (“Custom T-shirt Printing”) and secondary keywords next (“Hoodies, aprons, sweatshirts – Sydney Australia”) followed by your company name. i.e.

“Custom T-Shirt Printing, Hoodies, aprons, sweatshirts – Sydney Australia | ACME Threads Promotional Apparel”.

Your website title is important. Spend some time on it and always thing like a consumer.

DecoNetwork Blog

The ins and outs of owning a DecoNetwork website and selling online

Category Archives: Internet

Ensuring your website loads without “www”

Test your site