Building Websites

How To Make a Better Password

Fireworks in NYC Last week I was reading about a blogger's GoDaddy account got hacked and he was having problems getting the domains back. It made me wonder about what my password was on GoDaddy and since I set it up years ago I was amazed at how simple it was. It seemed that I was too busy to change it and since I have an automated password reminder thing I just never bothered updating the password. While I am referencing the GoDaddy drama this is an all too frequent issue lately

I also have friends and family that think having cat or dog as their password is a good idea so let this be a wake up call. Now I am sure there is better systems and more secure ways of doing passwords this is the way I usually go about it when I am making a password. If you feel like you can improve on this feel free to let me know in the comments.

I usually start with something I like and this is only an example of how I would do it. I don't use this password anywhere. Lets start off with the noun part of my password in this case I want to make it something I remember so I will use my favorite singer Billy Joel. I will use the word Joel but break it up around some numbers. In this case I will use the year he was born. So My starting password would be Jo1949el

Notice the first letter is a capital and it is always like that on the password I use simply to add a capital letter in there with the mix of numbers making it harder. Billy has had 33 top 40 hits. I will use 33 because it saves me time by just hitting the same key twice. My password would be Jo1949el33

Next I add a symbol to the end and this is usually the same key as the double number before it so it would add ## to it making the password 12 characters with a combination of a capital letter a word that is not a common steady word that hackers usually look up first as it is easy and more common and some characters at the end. I use the same symbol combination as the number so it saves me time because I just have to hit the shift key and stay on the same number for 4 strokes and hold the shift key down for the final two strokes. Final password would be Jo1949el33##

This is just a hypothetical password combo system that I use. It is easily adaptable for everyone to use adding their own favorite musician or even a sports team. Do you have something similar that you use.

Improve Average Time On Site

After my last post about Panda and Penguin updates and how to improve your site I got a lot of emails asking about how to improve average time on site and keep the user on your site longer. You can do this in a few ways, let me explain a few.

Add Video To Your Website

By adding video to your site the user will stay on your site and watch the videos. You can make a bunch of “How To” videos and keep the user on your site for a few minutes. If you can't make some videos you can find a video or two on YouTube and embed it into a post. Not exactly the way I would go about it but if you really needed to increase your time on site until you can make a video I will allow it until you get started making your own videos.

If you can't make a video or you are shy, write out a script and head to Fiverr.com, there are plenty of people that will do a video for you. You can also upload that video to YouTube and use it to drive traffic from YouTube to your website. If you click on my affiliate marketing page you will see the page starts with a 50 minute video. Any guesses what the average time on site is for that page?

Your “About Me” page is an excellent place to put a video and show your audience that you are a real person. People buy from people they trust and by them being able to meet you it helps build that trust 100% better.

Affiliate Summit West Session Slide Deck

I am still getting questions about my session “25 Ways to Improve Your Website” that I presented at Affiliate Summit West 2012 so I decided to share my slide deck from that. Below is the slides content in text form, it is a little tough to read so If you want to see the slide deck it is also below. You get bonus points if you spot the mistake.

1. 25 Ways To Improve Your Website Take Action Guide To Improve Your Website. Vinny O’Hare Vincent O’Hare Consulting

2. Who Am I – Spent 23 years in outdoor advertising industry. Started on the Internet in 1999 – EBay Powerseller. 2001 Started making content filled websites focusing on affiliate programs. 2009 Started affiliate managing and teaching. Co-host on AffiliateABC’s podcast.

3. What We Will Discuss – This presentation is set up to show 25 topics and break it down by three items for each topic. I call it first glance – second glance – third glance. Be prepared to write on your worksheet. All links in this presentation can be found at Vinnyohare.com/help

4. Your Website Now – Current Rankings! – Where are you now? Why so bad? – Are you doing something wrong? Competition – What are they ranking for? Before you start you have to take a good look at where you are now so you can judge your results. Google webmaster tools can show your average rankings for free. Don’t get caught up in stats.

5. Keywords – Do you have a keyword list? Are you sure you are using the right keywords? Keyword ideas – check your competitions. Free Tools – Google Keyword tool, Compete.com, Google Alerts, Soovle, YouTube Keyword Tool, Wordtracker.com has free sample. Chrome extensions SEO site tools, SEOquake. Paid Tools – Raventools.

6. Colors – Is your site welcoming? Can color blind people read your website? Do you have good font and font size? Dark gray fonts on gray backgrounds should be illegal! Just because you think your site “Looks Pretty” doesn’t mean others will like it or buy something.

7. Title Tag – Is your keyword mentioned? Under 70 characters long? Is your keyword near the front? Do a Google search on your keyword and see other titles and see what others are using and take notice what they are missing and what you can do better.

8. Meta Description Tag – Do you have one? Less than 150 characters. Keyword in beginning and a Call To Action or Curiosity near the end. Same as the title tag do a Google search and see what can be done better than the results that are showing.

9. Meta Keyword Tag – Do you have one? Less than three? Page should only have one focus on one keyword Most search engines ignore this tag – I still use one – It is optional. Most SEO’s will tell you to ignore this tag. Bing claims they use it to catch spammers.

10. Search Box – Do you have one? Is it above the fold? Does it work? There is a reason why 90% of ecommerce sites have them above the fold. You can’t read customers minds or intentions. If you are using Google analytics you can see what people are searching for and develop new pages based on those terms or freshen up old pages.

11. Logo – Do you have one? Is it any good? Does it link back to the homepage? Make sure your logo is optimized for faster loading and includes “alt tags” for Google image search results. Don’t be afraid to get constructive advice on your logo. Lesruba.com is who I use to design mine.

12. About Us Page – Do you have one? Is it personal? – Explain your POD (point of difference) Easily found on your site? The about us page is your chance to build trust with your readers. The page shouldn’t be all about you, it should be about how you are going to solve the customers problem. Great example Derek Halpern SocialTriggers.com about page.

13. Blog – Does your website have one? Structure – is it WordPress – Paid Theme? Are the permalinks set correctly? Blogs are good for interaction with customers. It also provides a fresh place for the search engines to spider. Make sure your blog has all the social media sharing buttons. Have others spread the word about your site.

14. Contact Us Page – Do you have one? Is the information correct? Methods of contact – phone- email etc. Let user know how long a response usually takes. Readers that choose to contact you want answers a.s.a.p. be available in many different ways. Use a contact form to avoid spam. Readers questions can become content on a FAQ page.

15. Privacy Policy – Do you have one? Does it have the correct info? Easily found in footer – Make it a no follow page. Yes you need one. You can find templates online to get you started serprank.com has a good one to get you started.

16. Trust – Does your site have it? Would you buy something from your website? Be honest with yourself. Always a job to improve it. Building trust is an ongoing thing. Would you trust your website with your credit card? Have a neighbor or a relative sit at your computer and go over your site and see their reaction.

17. Email Newsletter – Do you have one? Have an offer to encourage sign ups. Have an auto-responder series. Gets users back to your website. I use Aweber which sends out my blog post as a newsletter automatically. No need to write content just for a newsletter. You can use current content on your site in an auto-responder series. Use Twitter and Facebook to get people on to your list.

18. Navigation – Is it easy to find items? Is it helpful to visitors? Driving visitors to a trusted landing page. Have to make sure your navigation is spider-able. It is worthless if your navigation is not able to be crawled by the search engines.

19. Backlinks – Do you have any? Always have a plan to get more. Find competitors backlinks – get some from them. Blekko.com – Type in link:competitorswebsite.com Contact the websites that show up and try to get backlinks from them. Firefox extension – Quirk Search Status quirk.biz/searchstatus

20. Images – Does your site have any? Customers like them. Are they optimized for fast loading. Alt Text – Do you have them optimized? Free tool picnik.com for easy optimizing. They also have a chrome extension and a Firefox add on.

21. Videos – Do you have any? Make “How To” videos explaining solutions. Self hosted or YouTube or both. Videos build trust, users love them! Never have them auto play. You can make short videos featuring a solution to a problem. Have your videos transcribed. Speechpad.com

22. Landing Pages – Call to action. No other distractions. Quick checkout or wherever you want customers to go. Getting the user to your shopping cart or to the merchants site in the least amount of steps possible leads to the best results. No sidebars – No navigation – no leaks to other pages.

23. Internal Linking Site Structure – Link at least one page to every new page. Natural Flowing – Only link where it is needed or contribute to the existing page. Link to Right Pages To Help Consumer. If you are on WordPress there are plugins for this. Internal linking helps many things happen on your website. Time on site, bounce rate, spiders.

24. On Page Content Keyword Density – Keep in mind as you are writing. Keyword bolded on the page once. Usually in my headline. Keywords in the anchor text to product or landing page. I keep my keyword density under 3%, not a rule just always done it this way. I use it as a guide. Content is always quality! If it isn’t then it shouldn’t be on your website. If you suck at writing outsource it or take classes to become a better writer. Iwriter.com or Elance.com

25. Site Speed – What is your site speed? How can we improve it? What is holding us down? Google webmaster tools has page speed tools. Cheap hosting is not worth it. Gtmetrix.com great resource to see what is slowing down your site.

26. Blogs in Niche – Find similar niches. Leave a good comment. Nothing spammy! Look for backlinks for your site in other users comments. There are a lot of quality sites that can be found on quality comments. Contact them for a backlink or possibly a guest post on their blog. Use Google alerts with your keyword phrases. Instant results delivered to your inbox.

27. Forums – Find a similar niche – Competition there? Participate – Be helpful. Good signature with your social media urls. When you find a good forum become the expert there. I usually dedicate some time once a week to check forums for new post. As long as you are not spammy the forum admin will be happy to have you answering questions.

28. YouTube – Do you have an account? Build subscribers and friends = recurring visitors. Make helpful videos – “How To” videos are huge. Place a link in description to your website product page. Including the link with an https:// makes the link clickable for users. Leave comments on high ranking videos in your niche to gain subscribers.

29. Twitter – Do you have an account? Is a keyword in the bio? Are you interacting? Build followers in your niche or problem solving. Find someone influential in the niche and follow who they follow. If you have a local website follow the local news or radio station accounts. Get their followers to follow you! Be funny and informative. Use tools when you can to help get out your message. Examples: Hootsuite, Tweetdeck.

30. Facebook – Have an account? – 70 million+ people do. Set up a fan page? Put your url in the about section. Have Facebook contest. Builds fans and returning customers. Use a Facebook approved app. Use Facebook to get readers on to your email list so you can market them forever.

31. Google+ – Do you have an account? Set up a business page? Find the most popular person in your niche and see who they are following and follow them. Share good information and you will build a loyal following. Follow Chris Brogan and Trey Ratcliff. Findpeopleonplus.com – Great way to find others to follow.

32. Resources – Follow https://vinnyohare.com/help – All links in this presentation can be found here and more. Twitter.com/vinnyohare –

25 Ways To Improve Your Website

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Is Your Website Ready For Business

Last Saturday night we went to the new Resorts World casino at Aqueduct racetrack. The place was packed, there were six people waiting online at each slot machine waiting to play. We waited a half hour to get a players card and waited a half hour for reservations to the buffet. That was just for reservations, we then had to wait another half hour until it was time for our reservation.

The new casino is 3 floors but in a hurry to open they only have one floor open. It was an absolute horrible experience for us. Imagine waiting at a casino to lose your money? It was just insane, I am sure it will be much better when they open the other 2 floors but it got me thinking. When should you open your website to business.
[Read more…] about Is Your Website Ready For Business

Why Am I Starting To Speak in Public

I submitted a speaking proposal for Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. If you know me you probably know I am usually not one to speak at conferences. Besides the two Geekcast live sessions that I did I really haven't spoken at any of the conferences that I have attended. This is about to change for 2012.

What Changed My Mind

A couple of things changed my mind. Last summer I went to a conference and attended a session on making a profitable website. There was so much information that was either wrong or out of date that I couldn't contain myself. I just sat there shaking my head in disbelief as the speaker went through the presentation. I almost walked out but I was curious to what he was going to say next. I actually had my blood pressure rise during the session and felt myself getting madder every minute. The question and answer session was filled with really newbie questions and not only were they getting bad information during the session, they were getting it in the Q &A part as well. I felt bad for the newbies in the session and for the next few days I couldn't get the newbie questions out of my head.

Another thing that had me realize that it was time to speak was comments left by newbies. Whenever we record a podcast on affiliate marketing we get a bunch of questions that to me are second nature. I realize that people need this information and they either just don't know where to look or they just don't know where to go for it. I find myself time after time answering the same questions over and over again. There must be a place for this information and by public speaking and having it on video eventually there will be a place I can send newbies for information and help a lot more people improve their website in the process.

I Review A lot of Websites Everyday

As an affiliate manager I look at a lot of websites that apply to our programs and the quality of some of the websites are really bad. There are some free templates that people use that actually hurt their rankings or in some cases they get their websites banned without even knowing it. I am amazed that people make websites and expect to get traffic to it. There are at least 10 things that they could be doing better at first glance. Even worse they don't install any tracking at all so they have no idea what they are ranking for and where they can improve. I can tell that these same sites don't do any keyword research to see what people are actually searching for.

I put together a list of things I look at and presented it at the New York Affiliate Summit Meetup. We only got through 3/4 of the list because people were asking me questions. Some of the questions were really basic and I spent a lot of time on these questions instead of going through my list. When people asked me what site they could go to for more information I didn't even have one to give them since this information I learned years ago. One of the people at the meetup hired a local SEO company that basically took a lot of their money and messed up their site. It killed me when I got home and looked deeper into their site. I am putting together a page now that will eventually have every place I go to for this basic information. It will probably never be 100 done as things change fast online.

I speak to a lot of people in the affiliate marketing industry and once or twice a week I get asked why I don't speak in public about some of the stuff I know. I shared my list from the meetup with a few people and they asked me why I haven't spoken on this topic before. I get the “You are a fountain of information” at least once a week.

I like helping people and if I can do that by speaking to a crowded room then so be it.

Crazy Little Thing Called Value

So I am always working with the tv on in the background. I usually flip through the channels as I lose interest in things very quickly when it comes to watching the television. Tonight I am flipping through the channels and I end up on the Bio Channel where they are playing the Queen documentary “Days of our Lives”. I decide I will watch this for a bit as Queen had some cool songs from my youth.

They start going through all the songs and they start playing “Crazy little thing called love” and I say to myself “That would be a cool song to learn to play.” Since Debbie bought me a guitar for Christmas I have been trying to learn to play but sometimes I cheat and go online and find the chords and learn to play it, or at least try.

So I do a search for the “song title + chords” and I end up finding the chords and it looks pretty easy. I then go to YouTube and do a search and sure enough there is someone giving lessons on that song.

I poke around and watch the whole thing and put the tv on mute. Then I subscribe to the channel because the guy is pretty good and odds are I will need this video lesson again and again. I click on the url in the video description and it very quickly became to me that this is one of the best websites when it comes to selling a product.

The website is something that I would usually hate. I am a white background black text type of guy and this website broke that rule right out of the box. Yourguitarsage.com has very minimal approach but it all works. The only thing the guy has on the site is messages in a call to action format which is enticing you to buy his eBook. They sell an eBook on playing guitar the easy way. I click on it and it's only $10. The guy just gave me $10 worth of lessons in his YouTube video of course I am gonna buy his book. He gave me value and built trust at the same time. I didn't stop there as I see the other link is to his other eBook and that one is only $10. Where in the world are you gonna get lessons for $10 so I added both books to the cart.

NO Leaks On The Website

There is only 8 places on the site where I can go. The other links on the page are a FAQ, a links page, and email sign up, chords and a link to his YouTube videos. No real leaks unless you want to call the YouTube a leak. It really isn't as it serves as an “About me” page. It builds trust and as you watch a video or two you feel like you know the guy. This stuff cannot be faked, the guy shows his passion for teaching and it pops right out of the video.

There are no sidebars to get my attention and click off the site. I buy the eBook because #1 its cheap and #2 its quick and easy and they guy already built trust. All because I was flipping through my television channels. Take a lesson from this guy, don't clutter up your sidebars with junk. Build a good site with useful information that helps the end user. Now its off to practice my guitar.

Your Blog Can Move Mountains

We just got back from BlogWorld in Las Vegas and I must have talked to a 100 bloggers maybe more. Whenever I asked someone what they did they mostly said the same thing “I have a blog”. This became the norm until one lady who was almost the last one I met told me she had her own blog network focused in one niche and she had a plan to monetize it. I felt relieved and happy all at the same time.

She went on and explained her plan to me so well I knew this lady would succeed in implementing it. She had a passion for the niche, she knew who the big players are, she sized up the competition. She was well on her way to success. After talking to her for about 20 minutes or so it was refreshing to see someone with an actual plan. A big part of the plan was based on her and being herself and helping others with quality content.

Most of the other guys I talked to told me how their blog was different then everyone else and it will change the world. After all no one else was doing it (because it was a bad idea). You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a good blog and you don't have to move mountains to monetize one. You just have to have the right equipment.

You need to have a relevant blog with a slight twist that makes in interesting, useful and helpful to others. Find other blogs that can help you get the message out. Find a cheerleader that loves the blog and get them to write for you. Simple, simple, and simple. Yes some hard work is involved, especially when you get started but if you are prepared it will come much easier.

After BlogWorld we drove over to California and up the Pacific Coast Highway and besides the amazing view through the mountains I got to thinking about the guys that made the road. These guys had to move mountains to make these roads but they had the right equipment to do it. If you were starting your own road in the mountains you wouldn't do it by hand by one rock at a time. Why would you if you didn't have to.

How Truthful is Your Content

For years I didn't care about the content I was putting out on the web but that has changed. In the wild wild west days of the internet it wasn't uncommon to use some plr articles and spin them or worse (borrow) content off a website that you thought would be quality and rank well. My theory on that stuff changed many years ago as a quick fix really didn't rank anyway and was really worthless in the long run.

What really got me thinking about content was an episode that happened a few weeks ago that changed the quality of the content that I place online. We were in the emergency room after Debbie complained about having chest pains. Debbie's bed was placed very close to the nurses/doctors station and being the curious guy I am I was paying attention to them the whole time. Making sure Debbie was getting proper attention was the main thing but I couldn't help but watch the doctors and how they interacted with everyone.

After we were there for two hours they had a shift change and we got new doctors and nurses. In a way this was a good thing as the new doctor was much more hands on and seemed to have a better knowledge about Debbie's health. We were in the emergency room for about 4 hours when I told the doctor that Debbie had not eaten in a while and he pointed to the food cart and told me to take something for her. The choices were slim and all that they had was macaroni and cheese and a high fructose punch drink. Not exactly the breakfast of champions for anyone, especially people in the CHEST Pain area of the emergency room. Why this stuff is even in a hospital in the first place is beyond me. That's a post for another day though.

As we were there waiting for test results I was listening to the doctor and the nurse talking. The doctor was on his computer and reading a website. I didn't think much of it until the nurse asked him if he was going for a refresher and when she said that I turned and glanced at his computer screen. It looked like he was on a medical site and he told her he took his refresher a few months back but he was just reading up on some stuff. I looked at the site a little closer and determined it was an affiliate site, it had the default thesis wordpress theme so it was pretty easy to spot. It really got me thinking and at the time I was also a little pissed off. Here is the doctor that is treating Debbie and he is getting his advice from a website that probably isn't really accountable as a medical authority.

It wasn't until a few days later that I really thought about the content on the internet and who is really reading it. Most of the time you don't really think about who is reading your content. It could be a doctor, it could be a mechanic, it could be someone that is using your info as if it was the Bible.

I keep thinking that if Debbie had been diagnosed wrong my lawyers would be confiscating the doctors computer to find out what website he was reading and then going after the owners of the website. Sounds harsh but its the way I would probably go about things. What are your thoughts?

Finding Time

I am amazed at people when they say they have no time to do something. If something is working then you have to make time to do it.

The other day I was on a forum and people were complaining that they had no time to do things like twitter. This always gets me thinking about how people use or waste their time doing things that don't pay off at all.

I have a website that gets 56 percent of its traffic using Twitter. (Yes I know that's too much from one source). Out of this traffic 10 percent sign up for my free weekly newsletter. I market to this crowd over and over and it doesn't cost me a dime.

My time is valuable and I am sure yours is also. You need to start measuring how your roi is currently working and either do more of what works and less of what doesn't. The tough thing is being truthful with yourself when doing the measuring.

I hear people tell me they are using Facebook to promote their sites and that's great but playing farmville half of that time is a waste. That is not considered site promotion no matter which way you spin it. That time wasted could be used in a more productive manner.

Get honest with yourself for a few days and see where you can find time to be more productive. If you are on forums swap out some time you been wasting posting to worthless threads and do something you can track the results for.

Even Experts Make Mistakes

Changing a Domain Name

This past weekend I had to change a domain name for a website I have been using and building for a while now. As you know I have been working on an NASCAR website for the past 2 years. When I built the website I did step by step instructions on my forum. I figured it would be good to document it step by step so others could learn how I build a site.

What I thought was a good idea at the time turned out to be a mistake in the long run. This was the first website I had built without it being keyword filled in the domain. I tried to be cute with the domain name and it came back to bite me and become a hindrance so I decided to make the change now since the website will always be mine.

When it came time to make the site I was thinking it would be good to have a catchy name. I named the website AwesomeWreckage.com. I came up with this name by combining two of the songs by my favorite band The Dollyrots “Because I'm Awesome” and “Wreckage”. It seemed like a catchy name to me and since there are wrecks in NASCAR I figured I could work with this name.

This was a big mistake as people thought I was glorifying the wrecks in NASCAR by calling them awesome. This is not what my site was about at all. I wanted to build a site where NASCAR fans could get information and talk about the races with other fans, maybe share some pics or some BBQ recipes and such.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of getting press passes to a race. When we picked them up at the track a few people frowned upon the name when we mentioned the domain and a few kind of shied away from us. This to me was a sign that something had to be done. It was almost embarrassing to mention what website I was representing while I was sitting in the press box.

When we got home we applied for some press passes for other tracks and all were denied. When one of the tracks told us it was because of the domain name I knew it was a time for a change. I really knew it before this but being thick headed and didn't want to admit failure led me to think it was OK to keep the name. Then I thought about it again and came to my senses.

I wanted to have the word Awesome in the URL and something related to the fans also. I spent a few hours in Nameboy searching and then it hit me and Awesomeracefans.com was born.

This name has actually 2 keywords in it “race and fans”. It should have been the name from the start but once again my brain freeze prevailed.

On April 1st we started switching over all the content to the new domain. It went OK except I decided to ditch the forum section for now. It wasn't working right anyway so the clean install was a better option anyway.

The one thing that was lost that I feel bad about was the cool logos and banners that my friend Auggie made for the old site, he does outstanding work.

The reason I am making this post is to show you that even someone who knows what they are doing can make mistakes too. I will bet that in the long run the new site will double in comparison to what the old site was anyway.

My Hot Dog Theory

( I originally wrote this post about 4 or 5 years ago. When I redesigned this site I deleted a bunch of pages that I will be bringing back that still apply.)

What Is Vinny Talking About Now?

So you are wondering what does hot dogs have to do with making a website or affiliate marketing. Well after I explained my theory to a few people they told me I should write it down somewhere so that is what I am doing. If you are experienced at making websites you should know what a keyword list is. If you don't know then you should go find out what it is.

Just like every other website maker I know I have a keyword list that I get from either Wordtracker or one of my other places that I can't divulge due to competition. Well instead of making a page or pages based on each keyword on my list I expand the list to some things that one may ever search for daily but eventually they will. When that time comes my page will be either #1 thru 10 on the search engines. Now I don't play tricks with the engines because that is a waste of time. Build pages for the user and you will be better off in the search engines anyway.

Let me explain how and why this is called “My Hot Dog Theory”

Back when I was around 18 I had a job installing replacement windows, the job was ok but I had to travel all the way to New Jersey and that stunk. One of the strangest things that every happened to me came when I was working with the window company. One day we broke for lunch and we stopped at this hot dog truck on the side of the road. Although it was a regular hot dog truck they had tables and chairs and people on line waiting to get hot dogs. Being from New York City I had never saw such a thing, here we walk up to a cart and get a dirty water dog. There is no lines and no table and chairs.

As I got to the side of the hot dog truck to place my order I saw the strangest menu I had ever seen. They had over 300 varieties of items that you can get on a hot dog. The guy in front of me had string beans, cole slaw and cheddar cheese on his. They had all sorts of chili dogs but to the extreme if you know what I am talking about. I was so dumb founded by the guys order in front of me I ordered the same thing. Guess what It was great! They do great business because had repeat traffic and viral marketing due to having a variety. This is something that every website owner craves for.

Now that it is about 15 years later I am making websites and I start making my keyword list and the sites are coming along fine. As I am checking my website server logs I am finding that people are finding my sites using obscure terms. Now every site I make has a huge list of phrases that people may never search but if and when they do I am in place for that traffic. At some point someone somewhere will use a search term like “left handed hot dog” and guess what I will have the top spots across the web for it.

I seriously doubt that others will be making a list when making a site about hot dogs that includes left handed hot dog since that is not the way webmasters think. Guess what people do search for these things, join the parade and include some of my hot dog theory to your site. It can't hurt and it doesn't cost you a thing except for some time. The plus here is there is no competition plus some other terms from this page may make it into other search engines. You just never know!

There is a little bit more to this story but I have had your attention for about a minute or so and as you are reading this I will be making more pages. Not the data feed type crap that is out there but unique to the user and giving the user some valuable information about something like “Boston baked beans plastic casserole dish” or something similar.

Of course you have to make the page full of quality information and quality content. You can still get visitors to your site with the build it and they will come theory. You just have to know what the people are looking for in the first place.

Has Vinny lost his mind? Yep all the way to the bank. See some more of my traffic theories on my traffic building pages.

5 Mistakes Your Website is Making

I bet you can find at least five things that your website should be doing or doing better. Odds are you have built a site and you are getting some traffic but things are not exactly how you thought they would go. Well lets take a look at five things that may help you get better results. Some are so simple it may surprise you that you haven't thought of them on your own.

1) Does your site help the user solve a problem? This is either a yes or no. In this day and age the consumer is looking for an answer for their problem, if your product does that then explain it any way you can. This may be a video or a white paper or something of the sort. Give away the information so that the user remembers how helpful you were, they will end up telling people through word of mouth.

2) Do you know what your visitors are doing on your site? Odds are you think you do but you could be wrong. You need to get some sort of analytics set up and see how a user is navigating through your site. You may not even know what your most popular pages are,or even what your worst pages are. You may be focusing on the wrong things and wasting time.You also need to know how people are finding your site. Get a neighbor to sit down in front of a computer and put them on your site and see how they navigate it, it will not be what you thought. get a pen and paper and tell them to give you the honest truth.

3) Do you have an email newsletter? Getting traffic is hard enough so once you get a customer you should try and make them a returning customer. This saves you the worry of trying to rank in search engines and also decreases your advertising cost as you already have that customer. A lifetime customer is the best investment you can make for your site.

4) Do you have a FAQ page? Whenever you get an email asking questions about your site or product make that question into a line on your FAQ page as it will be looked for again on your site. Your answer will help others find you and use your services. It will also end up being keyword rich content that will attract the search engines and get you good long tail keywords.

5) Do you have trust pages? Every website needs to develop trust with the potential customer. Your site needs a page for privacy policy, contact us, terms of use, disclaimer, and let the customer know what you are doing with their information and what they can expect from your site.

I bet if you are not doing these things your site is not doing what you want it to do.

Lets Talk Trust

2009 was not the year of the elephant or year of the chicken it was the year of “Trust”. After getting Chris Brogans book “Trust Agents” I started to read it and as I was going along I felt as if he was talking about me and my websites. In a way he was, as most of my content websites are built around the readers and providing them with information that they can use.

By doing this I have built a trust over about 8 years on one of my better sites. I have an automotive site that was built over the years where people are sending me questions about their car and I answer it. I will Google for the answers (if I don't already know the answer) and then write a page so others that have the same problem don't have to send me an email.

Between all of this I ended up with a website that helps people with older models to get those hard to find parts. I have become an authority on this topic and usually when I send someone to an auto parts site they usually buy the parts as I am a trusted source.

If you are not building trust on your websites you are missing out big time. Now I get emails from readers saying thanks for the info and that they are forwarding my sites to others. Some of these readers belong to car clubs for my brand and they tell people by the hundreds about my site. Oops scratch that I meant OUR site. The website is all about them and their car.

What I did is ask people to send in pictures of their car and any info they want and I make them a web page. They bookmark it and send it to their friends. Why its all about “Trust”. You may hear webmasters say they want the consumer off their site asap and on to the merchants site but that doesn't always apply. I would rather get return visitors over and over again. My site visitor on average goes through 10-20 pages on my site. These visitors get to see the ads a lot more and take action. They come back and buy over and over. They enjoy the site and “Trust” me that I would never place any type of crap on the site just to make a buck.

I am now getting emails asking for when my next newsletter is coming out, I get 10 a week asking this and another 25-50 signing up for my newsletter every week. Why because I am a trusted source.

This past week OUR site was added to the main website for this car by the manufacturer. They linked up to us on their resources page as a trusted authority for people with older models. That doesn't happen without having a trust factor.

Newsletters : Connect With Your Audience

The other day I had a little conversation about newsletters, it amazes me that some people just don't want to connect to their web audience. They think the days of making a good website and relying on search engine rankings will make them money especially if they are making money this way now.

Sure you can rank well and make money but you need to look at the long term results. In this day and age you need to connect to your niche audience in any way you can. If you can connect to them on their chosen platform that is a home run. My chosen method is newsletters and Twitter.

On all my sites I have it set up where there is a newsletter sign up usually on the top of every page. Once a user signs up they usually get a newsletter to welcome them and then a few newsletters with helpful tips spread out for the first two weeks. Not a lot just a few so I am a reminder in their inbox. I cannot tell you how many times I get emails thanking me for these tips. After that every time I have a new post it also goes out as a newsletter.

You may be thinking this is a lot of work but it really isn't. I use Aweber to set it all up and that's it. A few auto responders and then the live blog broadcast tool makes it all come together. The thing that makes this all come together is passion. I know what you are thinking “Vinny what does passion have to do with it?” If you have a passion and convey that passion to your audience they will want to follow you and come back to your site often.

On one of my sites I have an amazing newsletter open rate. Every time I send out a newsletter I get about 140% open rate. That is off the hook and it took me a while to figure out what was happening. Not only do most of the readers on the list open the email when I send it out they also go back a few days later and open it again. Both times they end up on my site.

This has been going on for a few years and people are still signing up for the newsletters where I control how they come back to my site. No search engines involved with them coming back to my site. Sure they may be finding me initially using search engines but after that I control my site visitors. It takes time to build up a newsletter but it builds up over time. Slow and steady wins the race.

WordPress Hacked and Solution

Just checking a few of my WordPress sites and it seemed that two were hacked into. Didn't lose any data like other people have been reporting but working on upgrading them all.

You will notice the hack as it leaves a bunch of code in the permalinks. You can read more about it here as well as a solution. Journeyetc.com.

I discovered it as I went to make a new post and filled in the title of the post in the draft and it had a bunch of code added in the permalink structure. Just follow the instructions on the link above and hopefully all will be ok.

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