Domaining, Online Business and Web Development Link Roundup for June

Domaining, Online Business and Web Development Link Roundup for June

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Another month brings another big collection of resources related to branding, domaining, online business, marketing, web development and SEO. I’m always on the lookout for educational and inspiring articles and editorials that can help better myself as an online entrepreneur. And, of course, I am eager to share what I have learned with adsense97779 blog readers.

I have categorized and selected choice updates from the month of June in today’s link roundup.

Most of these links are also shared on the DotSauce Facebook page.

Branding & Domain Names

Each month it seems the domain name industry is featured in the mainstream media more and more. With ICANN’s approval of the new generic TLD space this month, I am confident this trend will continue. I found these headlines and resources particularly interesting.

Online Business

I’ve been pleased to read many informative and inspiring articles from respected entrepreneurs and industry leaders this month.

Web Development & SEO

Nearly a dozen great articles on SEO have been featured this month. The industry is evolving rapidly; optimizing for site performance, social engagement and producing quality content are becoming increasingly important to become an authority site.

Marketing & Social Media

These articles can help get you on the right path towards social media success. Get updated on the latest trends and social marketing techniques.

You’re welcome to retweet any of these links to your own following or share the entire link roundup. Have a great holiday weekend!

5 online marketing strategies for small business that work

Online marketing strategies are no different than traditional marketing strategies when it comes to goals and purpose. Both types aim to increase brand awareness and find more customers for the particular company.

Online marketing or digital marketing as it is more widely known, has a number of components that cover every aspect of online promotion from content creation to delivery and sales. These components can be combined together and form 5 basic strategies that can be used by any type of online business to get more traffic and customers online.

1. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the first online marketing strategy you can use and it has two major components. First is SEO (Search engine optimization) and second is PSA (Paid Search Advertising). In simple words SEO will help you get more organic visits from search engines for free while PSA can get you visits from search traffic but you will have to pay for them.

What is your goal with SEM? Your goal with SEM is clear: get more visits from search engines either from organic search or through carefully designed and targeted PPC campaigns.

How: To get more visits from search engines you need to make sure that your website is optimized for search. Things like your page titles, descriptions, web page speed, Google authorship, design and structure, incoming links, content freshness, ALT text for images and many more are important.

Best tool for SEO?

I use a number of tools to build organic traffic to my websites but this one is my favorite keyword tool. I use it for SEO, keyword research and rank tracking.

Finding profitable keywords you can actually rank has never been easier

Click here

Tools: There are many SEO guidelines you can follow and although each rule is important on its own, if you apply a number of rules together, that would produce better results.  You can use these 2 articles (5 on page SEO techniques and SEO tips for beginners) to guide you through the process and once you are done, you can perform an SEO Audit of your website to ensure that it is in good shape before continuing with the rest of the online marketing strategies.

Tip: When you make changes to your website to improve SEO, these changes will not be immediately taken into account by Google or other search engines. You have to be patient and monitor your pages for improvements in their ranking through google webmaster tools (search queries report).

2. Mobile Marketing

Normally after search engine marketing you can expect to find social media marketing or content marketing as the next online marketing strategy for small businesses but the increase in the number of mobile searches raises the importance of mobile marketing. As stated by Google, mobile marketing isn’t an option but it’s an imperative for every business. Some recent statistics about mobile usage re-enforce this statement:

mobile-statistics

What is your goal with mobile marketing? To provide your users with the best possible experience when browsing your website using their mobile devices.

How: How can you achieve the ‘best possible experience’? First you need to make sure that your website looks good and usable when viewed through a mobile browser i.e. you need to have a mobile friendly version of your website. Second, you can also offer your users native apps to download (from the itunes store, Google play, amazon store, windows store) and install on their devices.

Tools: If you are using wordpress you can easily create a mobile friendly version by either changing to a responsive theme or by using a plugin. I am using wp-touch pro on this website and I am very happy with the results.

If you are not using wordpress you can use services like dudamobile or conduit to create mobile friendly versions of your website.

Make sure that you understand the difference between a mobile friendly version of your website and a native app. A native app is different than a mobile website and you need to hire a mobile developer to build an application for the specific platform.  For example if you want to create an application for your website and have this application published on the Apple Store then you need to hire an apple developer to code the application and prepare it for submission to itunes.

Hint: We also offer mobile development services at very competitive prices so contact us to discuss your next mobile project together.

3. Content marketing

Content marketing is the heart of every digital marketing campaign. Once you have a good foundation (that’s search engine marketing) and a good delivery platform that can cover all your user needs (that’s mobile marketing) then the next step is to take all actions needed to create content that rocks!

Content is what will create loyal visitors, comments, social media shares and most important of all sales.

What is your goal with content marketing? To put it simply, your goal is to create high quality content that your readers want to read and try to convince readers to become customers or execute a call-to-action process (register to a newsletter, follow on social media, vote for a poll etc.).

How: Before even creating content, whether it is an article, a video, a table or image, try to think how that particular content will benefit your readers or customers. Don’t just create and publish content for the sake of keeping a publishing schedule or to satisfy your desire to have something to publish.

In the past this technique of publishing mass amounts of content to trick search engines used to work but not anymore. It is more important to have less published pages but with good content rather than lots of published pages with low quality content.

4. Social Media marketing

Social media marketing is naturally the next marketing strategy for your business. You managed to have in your hands great content (from the previous strategy) so now it’s time to spread the word out and the best way to do that is through a well-designed social media marketing strategy.

What is your goal with social media marketing?  Your social media campaigns should serve two purposes. First is to gain as many targeted followers so that your content and brand gets as much attention possible and second to get visits from social networks that will eventually convert into customers.

How: You need to establish a good presence in all major social networks (Facebook, google+, twitter, Pinterest) by sharing useful related content on a regular basis and by engaging with people interested in your website, products or brand. Have a look at these 3 articles to get started: 10 social media marketing tips for beginners, social media mistakes to avoid, how to get more followers on facebook.

I know that it’s not an easy process to follow and it is rather time consuming to run campaigns on many networks at the same time but this is how online marketing works for small businesses these days and you have to do it too.

The good news is that social media traffic does convert (despite the initial believes a few years back that visitors from social media don’t become customers) and if you don’t have the time or knowledge to manage your social media presence, there are professionals (see our seo packages for small business for more details) that can do it for you.

5. Local SEO strategy

Since we are talking about small businesses, I thought that it is more appropriate to have local SEO listed as a separate strategy because it is very important for them. Local SEO is a must for every company that has a physical address. Whether you are a doctor or florist, a mechanic or retailer, local seo can help you find more customers online.

What is your goal from local seo? The goal from local seo is more than clear: to get high rankings for searches related to your area. When people search for long tail keywords with the addition of location in the query (for example: “divorce lawyers in las vegas”) you want your website to be listed in the top positions.

How: There is no straightforward answer for that, as with any other SEO related question. What you can do is follow Google seo best practices to ensure that Google will not penalize you for trying to cheat on their algorithm and optimize your website for local SEO.

Think outside the box

While the 5 online marketing strategies explained above are great and can generate fantastic results, you need to also think outside of the box for even better results. For example besides search engines, mobiles and social media what are some other ways to increase traffic coming to your small business website? To be more precise here are some ideas that worked for some of my clients:

Chrome web store: Registering your website as a web app in the chrome store can generate an additional flow of quality traffic coming to your site. I have used this method many times and the results are very good.

Slideshare.net: For some niches slideshare is a great way to get traffic or even leads.

Direct Advertising on other websites: Besides running PPC campaigns on Adwords and Facebook you can also try to ‘rent’ advertising space per month or other related websites. You can easily find related websites in your niche that offer advertising and contact the webmasters directly and ask for their rates. It will cost you less than PPC and with proper tracking you can evaluate the results and ROI.

Guest posting on high traffic websites: Guest posting for traffic (and not for links) is a good way to increase your online reputation but also gain traffic from other websites. If the website you are guest posting on has a good social media presence then the benefits are even more.

Conclusion

Small businesses can succeed online if they follow proven techniques and practices. When you build your website the first thing that you should look at is search engine optimization. Once you get this right then you need to enhance your delivery channels by going mobile. After that you need to revisit your content strategy and ensure that you have content that matters and makes sense. Next in line is social media marketing that will help you to push your content to the world.

Advantages of responsive design for online businesses

There are many advantages of responsive design for website owners and these have to do with SEO, reaching a larger audience and staying in synch with the latest trends in web design.

If you are an online business owner or webmaster looking for ways to keep your website and business on top of the competition, expand your reach, increase your conversion rates and keep your users happy then getting a responsive website should be your top priority.

What is responsive design?

For those that are not familiar with the term ‘responsive web design’, the simplest definition I can give is that a responsive web site is optimized for viewing (i.e. looks good) on different types of devices, screens and resolutions. In other words the design adapts to the available viewing space offering the user with a nice experience without having to move left and right with a scroll bar or zoom-in, zoom out in order to read the text or view an image.

To give you a real example, try to view the article you are reading now on a desktop or laptop, android tablet, ipad or smartphone. Try to turn the devices to landscape/portrait mode and observe how the design adapts to the screen size and resolution.

What is not a responsive design? A website that looks exactly the same on mobile as it looks on the desktop (but in smaller size) is not a responsive design. With a responsive design you can read, navigate and interact with a website on the device of your choice without having to zoom in or out.

Best tool for SEO?

I use a number of tools to build organic traffic to my websites but this one is my favorite keyword tool. I use it for SEO, keyword research and rank tracking.

Finding profitable keywords you can actually rank has never been easier

Click here

It’s the latest trend in web design

Big companies lead the way when it comes to web design trends and responsive web sites are at the moment on the top of their list. Check out some very nice responsive websites from well-known companies:

http://www.microsoft.com

http://www.adobe.com

https://www.reliablesoft.net :)

http://www.thenextweb.com/

http://techcrunch.com/

Do you need responsive design?

I will explain below why responsive design is a must for every modern website or online business but as Joshua Steimle mentioned in a Forbes article: Getting a responsive website should be your number one online goal unless you don’t depend on your website to stay in business or you have no competitors.

What is the difference between a mobile website and a responsive website?

Many people tend to confuse a mobile friendly website with a responsive website but that’s not exactly the same. A mobile friendly website looks good on mobile devices but may not look so good on devices with bigger resolutions.

In the majority of the cases, there is the desktop version of a website and then there are dedicated pages (usually on an m.subdomain) optimized for mobile which are different from those shown on the desktop.

While these websites look good on the desktop and mobile, if you view them on other resolutions the user experience is not so good.

With responsive websites there is only one set of pages (and one set of code) for a website and what is changing is the way those pages adapt in the different devices.

Let me give you a couple of examples to understand the difference of having a mobile friendly website and a responsive website:

1)      WebMd.com

Webmd has a mobile friendly version but not a responsive website. Click on the images below to see that it looks great on the desktop and mobile but not so good when you view it on a different resolution.

Desktop Version

Mobile Friendly Version

Other resolutions

2)      techcrunch.com

TechCrunch has a responsive website. Click on the images below to see how beautiful it adapts to all sizes and resolutions.

Desktop Version

Mobile Friendly Version

Responsive Version

The easiest way to tell if a website is responsive is to change your browser width and see how it looks. If the design adapts well and the website still looks good then it is responsive. You can of course use online tools like this one that can help you test your websites on different devices/resolutions.

Is a responsive website the same as the native apps you can install on your iPhone or android?

Please note a mobile friendly version is not the same as native apps that can be installed on Android and iPhones. If you are not sure about the difference read this article: mobile website vs native app

Advantages of responsive design for website owners

So now that is clear what a responsive website is and what it is not, let’s see what are the advantages of having a responsive website for your business and how to justify the investment needed to turn your non-responsive website into responsive.

1)      Reach more audience

There are many studies that came out since early last year (2013) showing the dramatic rise in the number of people who use their mobiles and tablets for all their online activities (social networking, shopping, researching, searching google etc).

Two of these studies are published by Google (here and here) with some very interesting findings, the most important are noted below and summarized in this custom infographic:

Appearing on smartphones is critical for local businesses. 94% of smartphone users look for local information on their phone and 84% take action as a result, such as making a purchase or contacting the business.

77% of users have researched a product or service on their device, and 46% of smartphone users have made a purchase on their phone

67% of people start shopping on one device and continue to another

65% of sequential shopping occasions are started on a smartphone

34% of people turn to the screen that’s closest when looking for information.

What does this mean for businesses? If you don’t offer your users or potential customers a good experience on the device of their choice, you may lose visitors or customers. On the other hand, if you make sure that the experience they will have on the various devices is good, you are more likely to retain them as visitors and later convert them to customers.

2)      Your customers are already mobile, stay in touch with them

Most probably if you check your analytics, you will find out that already 10% – 30% of your visitors are coming from mobile/tablets and if you are not offering them a user friendly version you are losing customers.

So, the added advantage of going responsive is that it will enable you to keep in touch with your customers and engage with them on every possible occasion.

3)      You have one website to maintain and one set of code

As mentioned above, the beauty of having a responsive website versus a mobile friendly version is that you only need to maintain one set of code, one set of pages for your website so any changes or new functionality you offer to the desktop version are automatically available on mobile as well.

4)      SEO benefits from responsive design

There has been a long discussion in the SEO industry about responsive website and SEO. Some people say that it’s good for SEO, others believe that a responsive website is not the best solution for all businesses while Google is saying that having a responsive website is the recommended configuration for creating smartphone optimized websites.

In my opinion a responsive web site is good for SEO because:

You have content published only once so there is no risk of getting into duplicate content issues

Any efforts you put on SEO for your desktop version are ‘automatically’ applicable for mobile as well

You are offering your mobile users an optimized version so you are more likely to rank higher on mobile search

It is recommended by Google – Although that does not mean that they will favour this method over the others, they do suggest that having a responsive website is the best practice.

5)      Increase conversions and earnings from ads

By going from a mobile friendly version to a responsive website you are more likely to increase conversions or earnings from ads.

Migrating 3 AdSense websites to responsive design resulted in 20-30% increase in AdSense earnings compared to mobile friendly versions.

Details of these case studies will be published in the next few weeks (so stay tuned) but the increase in AdSense is a clear indication that responsive websites increase conversions as well.

Data from our clients who are selling products online, support the above statement and this is also something we will publish with more details soon.

In the meantime, you can also read how these 14 brands increased their conversion rates by going responsive.

6)      Stay in front of the competition

It’s becoming an industry standard so by staying in synch you are a step closer to your competitors (or ahead if they are not following a responsive design).

7)      You are preparing now for the future

The future of the web is mobile and it is estimated that by 2017 more than 5 billion people will use mobile phones. These are numbers and figures you cannot ignore and if you are not convinced that a responsive website can help your business now, it will certainly do in the next few years.

8)      Offer a consistent design across all devices

A responsive website can help you maintain a consistent design across devices rather than serving your users with a different set of pages for each type of device that may have a different look’n’feel.

How can you make a website responsive?

It is not the purpose of this article to go into the technical details on how to make a responsive website but I can give you some guidelines and examples on what we have done for other clients.

Websites can be designed responsive from the beginning or can be converted into responsive later.

There are 2 ways to make a responsive website:

1)      Use a responsive theme – if you are using wordpress there are a number of ready-made themes that are also responsive so you can buy one out of the shelf and use it.

2)      Transform your existing website and theme into responsive design.

3)      Create a custom design from scratch that it’s also responsive.

We have converted many non-responsive websites to responsive, some examples are shown below:

http://www.turnaroundanxiety.com/

http://www.caloriesecrets.net/

http://www.compradivisas.com/

The nice thing about migrating from non-responsive to responsive is that the desktop version stays the same. The look n feel of the desktop website does not change in any way so you don’t have to worry that a responsive design will break your website’s theme.

So far and from our experience it is possible for almost any type of website (especially wordpress websites) to be made responsive.

How much does it cost?

If you planning to use a pre-made responsive theme then the difference in price compared to non-responsive themes is not important.

If you are designing your website from scratch then the responsive design may cost you 10% more than a non-responsive website (of course this depends on the actual design).

If you want to migrate your existing website to responsive then this may cost from a few hundreds to a few thousand dollars depending on the complexity and setup of your website.

If you want to find out how much will it cost to make your website responsive, contact us and give us more details about your website and we can sent you a quote.

Are there any disadvantages from responsive design?

No technology or design methodology is perfect and responsive web design is not an exception to this rule. Nevertheless it should be noted that the advantages are far more important than the disadvantages. In my opinion the most important disadvantages of responsive design are:

Not suitable for complex websites that use specific mobile functions – for example if a website uses cameras, GPS or other mobile functions then a mobile friendly website may be more appropriate than a responsive website.

If not done correctly, can slow down the mobile version of a website – when making a responsive website you should always have in mind that it should load as fast as possible on mobiles and should only show items that the mobile browser can display. If these rules are broken then the results will be opposite.

Responsive web sites do not work on Internet Explorer 8 and below.

Conclusion

A responsive website design is a must for all types of websites. Whether you are selling products online, promoting your services or running ads a responsive design can help you increase your traffic, make more conversion or earn more from your ads. Almost all websites can be made responsive, the cost depends on the complexity of website and platform that it is build.

You can contact us today to give you an estimate on how much it will cost you to make your website responsive and benefit from the advantages explained above.

5 reasons you are not making any money online

Although it is possible to make money online, a lot of bloggers or small business owners fail to do so. What usually happens is that they try for a couple of months without getting any decent results, they get disappointed and they quit. The main reason of not making money online is because you think is easy and when you realise that it is a lot of work, you get bored and give up.

I am working online for 13 years (since 2000) and based on my experience I can assure you that it is possible to make a lot of money online but it also requires a LOT of patience and hard work. I am going to give you some ideas at the end of the article on a few ways that can make you money, but for starters let’s see why you have not yet managed to find the way.

1. You don’t get enough traffic to your website or blog

To make money you need traffic, this is how the online business model works. If you are selling a high converting product you can make money with only a few visitors per day but if you want to make money from advertising you need a few thousands per day. Without traffic do not expect to make any money online.

When we talk about traffic, in the minds of many people Google is the only way but this is not true. There are many sources of Internet traffic you can use to meet your monetary targets but you need to know where to find them.

2. Your website/blog is too young

Don’t believe in everything you read about making money online. There is no magic way to make thousands in a few months and there is no magic way to make money without doing a lot of hard work. This also means that if you just started a web site or blog you will not make money any time soon unless of course you created an exceptional product or website.

Best tool for SEO?

I use a number of tools to build organic traffic to my websites but this one is my favorite keyword tool. I use it for SEO, keyword research and rank tracking.

Finding profitable keywords you can actually rank has never been easier

Click here

I am working online for the last 13 years and from my experience you need at least one year of hard work before making any decent amount of money either from AdSense, affiliate programs or selling your own product.

3. You don’t practice good SEO

SEO is important for many reasons and if you believe that you can succeed online without following good SEO practices then you are wrong. Everything starts with SEO and I am not referring only to keyword analysis or content marketing but to the bigger picture which includes understanding your customers and using SEO to give them what they want. The majority of webmasters still make mistakes with SEO despite the plethora of information about proven techniques that work.

4. You are not patient enough

They say that ‘patience is a virtue’ and when it comes to working online and expecting to make money from it, is more than true. To help you understand how important is to be patient, take into account the following examples:

It may take 3-4 months before you start getting any organic traffic from Google or Bing

It may take a few months until you build a decent number of Facebook and twitter followers

It may take months until you get your first RSS subscriber or comment in your blog

The bottom line is that you need to aim for long term success and forget about any short term temporary results.

5. You created your blog/website for the sole purpose of making money online

Creating a website for the sole purpose of making money online is a thing of the past. 5 years ago you could create a number of blogger sites, publish a few posts, build tens of incoming links and make money through Adsense, Amazon affiliate stores or other affiliate promotions. It was a model that worked for a couple of years and some people who were clever and fast enough to understand this, made enough money.

This model does no longer work. You cannot start a website for the sole purpose of adding Adsense or promoting a particular product or anything similar to this. Your website or blog needs to have a purpose which goes beyond making money. You need to create something that adds value to the user by offering good content, free services and incentives for the user to come and visit your web site again and again.

When you do that persistently for a number of months, money will follow. I know that it is difficult to understand this especially if you are a beginner to the online world, but take my word for it there are no shortcuts or overnight tricks.

So, how can you make money online?

I don’t want to pass the message that it is impossible to make money online, because it is far from truth.  To close this post with a positive message here are some tested ways to make money – if you manage to combine some of these methods together then you can make a living online as well!

Creating a website in a niche you are really passionate about – You create a high quality web site with good content that offers value to your readers. After some time you have enough readers and daily visits and you make money through Google Adsense.

Writing a book about a topic you know very well and publishing it on Amazon (kindle book) – This method does not require a web site (although it’s better to have one) but it is a good way to make money online. I wrote a book too!

Create a mobile application and upload it to Google Play, Apple Store, Windows Store and Amazon App Store.  The application can be either free and gain from advertising or paid. To make money from advertising you need to have many downloads (at least 200,000) and many active users. To sell you application you need to have a good marketing plan. The competition is so great and without a marketing strategy it will be very difficult to make a decent amount of sales.

Sell your services online – If you have the necessary skills you can sell your services online. This is not limited to IT or SEO or Internet Marketing. Check out peopleperhour.com and odesk.com to see examples of services offered and wanted.  Speaking of online services you can check out our SEO audit services and our SEO packages.

These are the four main methods I have used successfully over the years and made a living online. If you search more on the topic you will find other methods like selling on ebay or amazon, running an online shop, drop shipping etc. I am sure that these methods work too provided that you stay away from ‘get rich overnight’ methods.

My best advice is to find out what is more suitable to your abilities (either technical or educational), study about it, find out what others are doing, make a plan and don’t escape from it until you get the results you want.