Over the years I kind of have re-invented myself a few times. Working online on the Internet requires being on your toes quite a bit. If you think about it – the Internet today compared to what it was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago, it is completely different. In 2002 Facebook or Twitter or YouTube did not even exist. Imagine the Internet without these 3 companies today. I am not a heavy user of these 3 services/products, but these 3 companies are some of the most often visited websites on the Internet per day. Many people check their Facebook wall first thing in the morning – before even getting out of bed. If I am not mistaken, every minute per day users upload files to YouTube that match roughly 48 hours of actual content. And Twitter – well, Twitter as useless as it might appear to many people – Twitter has played major roles in the uprising of people requesting Freedom in many Arabian and African countries. It is certainly an amazing tool.

Net Services USA started out as a web hosting provider, but has evolved to become an information and content provider. Net Services USA owns over 100 domain names and has about half that many active websites. I have published several books under the Net Services USA umbrella and sold many thousand copies of these books – mainly in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. And while 2011 was the most difficult year for my business yet, I am very upbeat for 2012. I am working on new products and kind of are on my way on re-inventing myself one more time.

For me running a business is fun. It is challenging and it forces you to keep on learning every day. The moment you lean back and become lazy, your competition will bypass you and it will be very difficult to close the gap and to move ahead of the competition again. I like challenges and I like having my own business. I am looking forward to the next 10 years and having my own business. It will be an interesting ride and I am sure the way I am doing business today will be 100% different in 10 years from now.

Happy Birthday Net Services USA LLC

So, what is the content strategy I have in mind for 2012?

Content has to be exceptional good. You probably heard the phrase that content is king, but in 2011 this phrase has turned out to be no longer true. The new mantra is that great and exceptional content is king. In February Google started rolling out a recurring series of updates. Initially the update(s) were labeled as “Farmer Update” because Google started cleaning up its index from low quality content that can be found on so-called content farms. A content farm is a website that recycles content from other websites or that use low-quality content and then optimizes this content for search engines with the only goal to make money from advertising. These content farms did not provide really a great user experience. All these “farmers” wanted was to attract visitors through the search engine optimized content and then have the visitors leave – but through one of the advertisements. Read more about Panda here.

Now I have to say first that I do not consider my websites as content farms and while some of my websites make money for me through advertisement the main goal for me has always been to provide helpful information. However, the Panda Update has affected some of my websites quite a bit and I have lost some income and visitors accordingly. As an example I have a very large web hosting tutorial related website with over 400 pages of content (tutorials, web hosting reviews, etc.). That website has been referenced from many trusted sources (including DMOZ and Wikipedia) and it ranks well in certain areas, but since February I have lost 50% of my visitors due to Panda. Of course Google does not really tell you what is wrong with your website and so you have to read up on what the outcome of Panda has been for many other websites. Anyway, it is important to learn from what Google expects from a good website and to adjust as needed. Google is the main search engine followed by Bing. Bing has implemented similar filters, just not as harsh as Google + traffic from Bing is way lower.

What’s the perfect length of an article to rank well in search engines

About 2 months ago I started experimenting with my content. I write quite a few articles and blog postings per week and in the past it was sufficient have an article length of at least 400 words. 400 words seemed to have been the magic barrier for decent or good Google rankings. So, since then I started expanding first to 600 words minimum per article, then 800 words, and now I am experimenting with articles that go past 1,000 words in length. I am not sure that 1,000 words is the magical number, but I think the sweet spot is definitely 800 words per article or higher.

Writing such long articles requires a different approach to content. It is important to plan articles correctly because you do want to avoid that the quality of the article suffers by trying to extend the length of an article. While certain things can easily be described in 500 words, the same article might look weird and awkward if you expand that article to 1,000 words. Artificially stretching an article will not help you. So, articles need to grow in size and so the new approach to content requires a change.

How to increase the article length without being boring

My content goal for 2012 is to expand my content in such a way that the reader has no other choice to keep reading and reading. Not only is it a good thing for my search engine rankings to keep the visitor longer on my websites, but it also gives me the opportunity to further engage and to connect with the visitor. The more you are able to engage communication with the visitor, the higher the chances to turn a visitor into either a buyer or into a return visitor or into a visitor who sends his or her friends over. So, content needs to be structured well. If I was providing a Top 5 list of certain items I would now expand the list to Top 10 items. Another example would be to take an article from a high level view and turn it into a deep dive review about a certain topic.

Why do you need sub headers

Another important point to consider is how the article is laid out. Finding a good structure in regards to sub-headlines and paragraphs is important. Especially sub-headers can be a key to great success. I have to admit I have not been using sub-headers in articles as much as I probably could have. Now I want to use sub-headlines to further raise the interest of a reader. They also function as a map through the article. You probably know for yourself that many people will skim through an article first before they decide if it’s worth it to read the entire article. Sub-headlines will help to achieve that specific goal. Imagine a visitor skimming through the article and getting caught by sub headers that catch his or her interest. Now imagine the same article without sub headers – all the visitor sees are paragraphs of text – statistics show that most people will click away because it is too much effort to read all that stuff not knowing what one would really get from the article. If you look at this article, go back and only look at the sub headers. Do those sub headers help to make more visible what this article is about? I think they do.

Conclusion: In this article I talked about how important the quality of web content is to avoid ranking issues especially with Google. I also talked about what needs to change and how I am planning on implementing the necessary changes. If you have read the article all the way to the end you have read an article with over 1,100 words. You have read an article that has sub headers and you have read an article that is informative and helpful. It raises the question how your own existing content measures up and if you should consider a similar strategy. Let me know what you think. Please leave a comment below and maybe even share it on Facebook to see what friends and customers have to say about it.

WordPress uses plugins to increase the functionality and features. In this series of postings I am going to talk about WordPress plugins that will help you to provide a better visitor experience on your website and ultimately benefit from the effort accordingly. After all – happy website visitors are much more likely to turn into happy customers. Keep in mind that not every plugin is a good fit for every website. Please use proper judgement when deploying a new plugin and take time to fully understand the value it provides.

Sharebar – Social Media Slider Plugin

This social media related plugin is actually one of the reasons for this blog post. I was working on one of my existing websites and needed a better implementation with Social Media. After doing a little bit of research I decided to use this specific plugin on my website. This WordPress plugin allows your website visitors to select a social media platform they like to share your content or URL with friends. The plugin floats on either the right or left side of your website and makes it much easier for visitors to hit the appropriate share button. The plugin stays always visible even if the visitors scroll down on a page. This plugin is free of charge, but the developer is asking for donations if you like his work.

The Sharebar plugin is easy to install from the plugins page in your WordPress Dashboard. Once installed a new menu item for the Sharebar plugin is located in the settings section of your website.  Dashboard. From the Sharebar settings area you will be able to enable or disable certain social media options. Not every platform is really suiteable for every website. If your website has a more Internet-savvy audience it may make sense to turn on Stumbleupon or Digg, but if your user base is less technical Twitter and Facebook will most likely be sufficient. Accordingly make the appropriate changes on the Home tab for the settings. On the actual settings tab you can modify the layout options. You can decide if the Sharebar will float on the left or right side of your website and how far away it floats from the main content area. As an example in my specific case I changed the position settings to “40” for the left offset and “20” for the right offset. In my case this moved the Sharebar a bit away from the main content – making it more visible. More visible – so my thinking – makes it stick out and eventually increases the likelyhood that a visitor actually goes and shares my content with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Social Media is big and many businesses drive a lot of traffic through Social Media to their website. Content going viral is great for short-term traffic boosts. This particular plugin helps to increase the visibility of your website on several Social Media networks – including Twitter and Facebook. However, please keep in mind that your content needs to be outstanding and very high of quality to motivate visitors wanting it to share with friends. Average or low quality content will not trigger any shares or likes on Facebood – no matter how much you try to make the share option visible. But having a great looking website with awesome content can open the floodgates to traffic from social media websites. In a certain way this plugin can also help with search engine rankings, but I would not consider it a major part of it though.

How do you get this plugin?

In your WordPress Dashboard go to the plugins section and then click on “Add new”. Into the search field type “Sharebar” and then install the plugin when the search results show up. You can also check out the plugins page at WordPress.com for this plugin here.

So, how can a business break the spell of being invisible on search engines when it comes to local search?

It is important to understand that there is no quick fix, unless you go and pay for online ads like Google Adwords to show your business. While this is a great way to get new customers, it is also an expensive way to do so and requires planning and other efforts (landing page setup and optimization, tracking of keywords, etc.). A business could also throw money at the problem trying to gamble the search engine results, but sooner or later a search engine might catch up on these tactics and apply a penalty to the website rankings. That would be prohibitive in my opinion and there are definitely better ways of making this work.

If you can’t beat them, join them.

This statement is very true when it comes to local search engine optimization. Since listings like Google Places get priority when it comes to local search it is important for a business to be listed in Google places. Before doing any localized SEO work, setting up the local business profile (which is free by the way if you decide to do it yourself) is very important. If a business owner misses this step, things will be very difficult to turn around.  So, to setup your business with the free local business listings of all 3 major search engines you need to have quite some information handy.

• Business Name and Address (physical address, no P.O. Box)
• Business products and services
• Business Hours (Hint: Set it to 24/7 to make sure your listing is also shown to people who search for your business during off hours)
• Business Logo Image File
• Supporting content like video, product or service information, images
• Citations and existing review information
• Event Information

The more content a business is able to provide the better the long-term results will be. Once you have the information shown above it is time to get to work. You can find the 3 different local business portals of interest below:

http://www.bing.com/local/

http://local.yahoo.com/

http://www.google.com/places/

You will need to setup an account and preferably you want to use a matching email account for each site. So, Google prefers or requires a Gmail account and Microsoft as an example uses Hotmail or Windows Live accounts for obvious reasons. Setup an account and then start setting up your listing as good as you can. Your address will determine which city you will rank for. So, if your address is set to Highlands Ranch your chances to rank for Denver are fairly low. But your rankings for Highlands Ranch related searches will be very high accordingly. Try to combine your name with a keyword. As an example “John Doe / Highlands Ranch Real Estate” will rank better than “John Doe” when used as the business name.

Citations are another big ranking factor. What is a citation? A citation is when your business is mentioned somewhere else on the web by name and address – even if there is no active link to your website. An example for a citation could be the Yellow Pages listing that you maintained for years or your business name listed at the Chamber of Commerce website. Yelp or CitySearch are others worth mentioning. The more of these citations Google can find about you, the better for your local rankings. But once an account and a local business listing has been setup and configured the work is not done. You also need to plan for frequent updates to your overall profile. Posting events, changing product or service descriptions, posting new pictures or videos are items that need to be planned for.

Get Reviews

The next step is to increase the value of your Google Places listing, and Bing/Yahoo Local listings. An important part in the ranking system are customer reviews (often part of citations, too). It is important to ask your customers for an honest review on Google. Don’t try to game the system, because the guys at Google, Bing, or Yahoo are pretty smart and if a review looks staged and “unnatural” they will be able to tell fairly quickly and you are going to pay the bill by losing your rankings or never making it to the top at all.

There are many ways to improve your local online presence in search engines. Starting with optimizing your Google Places listing, and the Bing / Yahoo Local listings is an important step that can push your business higher up when it comes to online search. Believe it or not, most local listings have never been actively claimed and Google (just to mention) sometimes pulls data from other sources to show at least something. If that data is picked by Google, how do you know it is the best data? You don’t, and therefore it is very important to claim your local listing and to otpimize it.

What is website performance?

Having your website online is only one important step towards online success. The next thing to look at is how fast your website actually loads for visitors. Even in 2011 there are still a ton of users that use dial-up for their Internet access and a slow loading website is not going to make them happy. As a matter of fact, they might abandon your website before a page can even load. So, you need to ensure that your website performance is good. Images need to be resized and compressed for optimal performance. In addition your entire website should be compressed for better load times. If this does not tell you anything, contact your webmaster to find out more. You should also make sure that your web pages are not slowing down due to loading content or scripts that are hosted somewhere else, meaning being hosted out of your control. In many cases these outside factors can slow down your website.

Host your website close to your audience

When picking a web host make sure you pick one that offers data centers close to your audience. That web host in South Africa might be cheap, but if your audience is in North America this ain’t gonna work really. Why send your visitors across the Atlantic down South first?! That does not mean that you need to find a web host in your home town, but pick one that is in the same geographic area. So, if you are inside the United States then pick a web host with a data center in the US as well. Also, if you are serving mainly visitors in New York City, then it makes sense to find a web host on the East Coast and not to pick one on the West Coast in Los Angeles. If you are mainly serving customers in Denver, Colorado a web host in Chicago will work as good as one in Los Angeles. A web host in NYC might not be as good to choose from if you are more on the West side of the country.

The most important reason for a fast load website is ….

While the reasons described above are important, there is one more reason that is even more important. Search engines put a lot of emphasis on providing a good user experience and a fast loading website is part of this. If your website comes up fast for search engine users (and of course meets some other criteria, too), then search engines see that as a bonus and it might influence your overall search engine rankings. Website performance is one of over 200 signal Google uses to determine where your website should rank and so it is in your interest to provide a fast loading website.

See the screenshot that I took in a customer’s Google Webmaster Account today? That website loads slower than 87% of all other websites Google used to compare performance. This website is at the bottom of the list and this will definitely influence search engine rankings in one way or the other. I looked at the website and the website itself is in good shape in regards to code and image optimization and so in this case it clearly comes down to the web hosting this customer is using. The website is sitting on a server that is overloaded and the only alternative really is to move the website to a new web hosting provider. By moving the website to a faster provider or web hosting platform this customer will be able to improve the load times and therefore make the search engines happy again.

What does Google Webmaster Central get you?

• Find out how Google sees your website on the Internet.
• Find out what keywords Google associates with your website and how people are finding it.
• Receive important alerts from Google about your issues related to your website.
• Find incoming links to your website.
• Help Google to better index your website so that you rank better and can get more traffic.

By using the Google Webmaster account you can help Google to identify your website and rank it accordingly. One step to accomplish this is to submit a so-called sitemap that lists all pages on your website. A sitemap often helps Google to find all the pages on your website because – believe it or not – Google does not find all pages by default and a sitemap submission helps them to do so.

The other important parts you get out of your free Google Webmaster account is data. You can find out how often Google crawls your website, which keywords Google sees your website being ranked and searched for. This data is extremely useful to determine if your search engine optimization strategy is working or not. You can also see warnings in your Google Webmaster Central account. Let’s say your website is using WordPress as the content management system and your installation is outdated. Google will eventually display a warning about your site being outdated and tells you to upgrade. Or – god forbid – your website got hacked and is now hosting a dangerous virus. You might not see it right away, but Google will and they will tell you about it insight your Webmaster central account.

Getting your Google Webmaster account is totally free, but you will need a Google account (Gmail) to sign up. After signing up you are ready to go immediately and you can add your websites. When you add sites you need to verify that you are the owner of a website. Google provides several options to do so. You can either add a custom meta tag to your website (requires a code change) or you can upload a specific verification file that Google will call. The latter is my preferred method to get my websites verified. After a site has been added you need 48-72 hours of patience because Google will not display data right away. It will take them a little bit to collect data and to make it visible to you.

Go here to get your free Google Webmaster Central Account configured

I admit, I am offering the setup and creation of Facebook fan pages through my business (Net Services USA LLC) as well. Facebook can be a fun way to get marketing messages out and to connect with visitors and customers. But if you ask me to setup a fan page for your business I will ask certain questions about this project to make sure this endeavor is heading into the right direction. It is really important to determine why you would want a Facebook Fan Page in the first place. Do you need a fan page to better communicate and to better engage with your customers? What kind of content do you want to offer on your fan page?

Statistics show that in the beginning of having a business fan page on Facebook all is good and you connect with people, but over time the excitement disappears in many cases. Some companies are not updating their fan pages. Others are updating them too often and it looks kind of spammy. Other businesses have no idea of what to do with their fan page in the first place. And others heard it is good for Search Engine Optimization, but that is all they know. Some companies are offering games and coupons exclusively to Facebook visitors, but in general what might work for one business does not necessarily work for others. So, when putting up a fan page you need to have a strategy associated with it and you need to be able to commit resources accordingly.

What’s a good Facebook strategy?

One of the best Facebook strategies for businesses is to engage with customers and potential customers. Engaging means to actively communicate with the customers. So, let’s say you find a user on Facebook complaining about your product to friends. You could contact the user and start to discuss the issue and eventually provide a solution in public. Making things right to the customer is a great thing to do (if it’s a justified case of course) and building up a good reputation on Facebook definitely helps to spread the word (reputation management). Avoid engaging into heated discussions and fights. A public fight is never a good one, even if you are defending yourself against false allegations (exceptions apply, but whatever you do – stay calm and focused during the process – be professional). Don’t be too focused on generating sales through your Facebook page. It is better to really just be available and to have fun with visitors of your fan page. If you can establish a friendly and open environment, sales will follow. If you are pushing sales special after sales special the overall responsiveness will go down, your fan page will become boring. That type of behavior is also not engaging with the customer, it is more a one-way street communication channel and overall customers will turn away, because that is not what Facebook is about. You can also use Facebook to establish yourself as a likeable personality and completely ignore the business side of things (except for the design of your page). Just be yourself and have fun. By establishing yourself as described, people might come to you and inquire about your business and that puts you into a great position. All they see is You, not the business and that can be a huge advantage when they suddenly need services or products that you offer.

Using Facebook is another marketing channel that you are adding to your business. Keep in mind that any type of marketing requires time and resources and if you are short on either one you might want to hold off on it until the time is right. After all, you’re not setting up shop in a busy strip mall and then never finish the interior and open the doors, right!?

I can tell you that there are many ways to reduce your income from Google Adsense. It is amazing how much a small change can make Google Adsense ads less performing. Of course there are plenty of options how things can work the opposite direction as well. But it requires a lot of testing and it requires some balls to mess around with one of your top performing websites. You probably should not care about reduced income if you make only a few dollars per month, but if your Google Adsense income is significant a small change can mean a lot less coin being transferred your way with the next payment. Definitely make sure you play with different ad sizes and color variations and give each ad enough time to collect data so that you can make an informed decision.

While split testing the different ads it is also important how to position your ads on your website. The best performing ad position for me is above the article, but below the headline of that article. However, this is bad for the user experience in my opinion. It can actually happen that the user will never see the article they came for in the first place if they find an ad appealing and click on it. While that is great from a revenue perspective, it can have a big negative impact on your search engine rankings and you can jeopardize your good ranking for some short revenue. The Google Adsense team will tell you one thing, while the Google Search team will tell you otherwise. It is up to you to really find the thin line in the middle. In addition, I prefer to have visitors on my websites a little longer and not to lose them right away.

One way to compromise is to place the Google Adsense ads at the top of the article, but to let the text flow around the ads. It is not as intrusive compared to just placing the ads above the article. Overall it makes the pages look nicer, too. The user experience is better and in the end that is an important piece for me (and your search engine rankings). In addition to have the text flow around the Google ads I am also making sure that on my WordPress based websites the ads are only shown on the specific article pages and not on the home page. Here is a piece of code that you can use to accomplish just that. Just paste it into the location that represents the place where you want to display the Google ads. The screenshot above gives you a good view at how this will look like production.

 <div style=”float: left; margin: 5pt”><?php if(is_single()) { ?>Your Adsense Code Goes Here<?php } ?> </div>

By the way – the color combination for the ad block that you did not perform very well for me. I am using an Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of when I made changes to a specific ad and ad channel and then how the specific ad worked out in production. This testing process is called split testing and if you are trying to sell online should be something you do all the time.

I use the Genesis Framework (Studiopress) on most of my websites because it is SEO optimized right out of the box and it allows easy changes to WordPress through hooks. There are even some Genesis related WordPress plugins available so that you do not need any coding knowledge to customize your blog. I’ll put the code from above into the following Genesis Hook

genesis_before_post_content

Very easy to do split testing this way. One single change updates the Google Adsense ads on all your postings.

Disclaimer: Please note that the link to Studiopress is a so-called affiliate link and the fine folks of the FTC require me to disclose the fact that if you would buy Studiopress through this link that I will earn a small commission in return. I use StudioPress on many websites, as a matter of fact this very website here is using Studiopress. You can see that these are beautiful WordPress themes. I think it would be great option for your blog as well. Thank you for your understanding.

I’m always setting up new blogs and websites when I feel that there is an opportunity to increase my online revenue. Some of my websites are kind of “set it and forget it” and they bring home some bacon month after month without me doing much work on it. It is so easy to start a new website because you can literally set one up in a hour, but before you do so you will need to have a good domain name. For those of you that are aren’t quite sure what a domain name is, it’s one of those .com or .net URL’s you type in your web browser to visit websites on the Internet.

What Is Really Important For Domain Names?

I cannot stretch it enough, but it is super important to choose a good domain name right from the start. Too often I see those long winded domains with maybe 2 or 3 dashes – that’s a big No No anyway. An example would look like JackDalton-RealEstate-DenverColorado.com or coloradosooperdooperhomesforsale.com – don’t go there. Keep a domain name short and simple. It’s easy to remember for people, it will actually fit on your business card, and for brand building it is extremely important to have a short name. Long domain names are hard to remember, they look ugly, and it really shows the lack of effort you are putting into all of this.

Now, what do you do when all the obvious and good domain names are taken already? Be creative. Let’s say you are into real estate and you want a domain name that still shows that you do real estate, but if you combine it with your name or your city where you work it just looks ugly (if it is available at all). There are some tricks that get you going.

coloradoRealEstateservices.com             =     CREServices.com
FrontRangeAirConditioningSalesandRepair.com    =    FrontRangeAC.com
HighlandsRanchHomesforsale.com            =    HRHomeSales.com
RichardSmithRealEstate.com                =    RSRealEstate.com
FrankMitnickComputerRepair.com            =    FMAdvanced.com

Of course these are just some examples, but the main take away is to not use full words, but to rather use name initials or shorten words. Don’t insist to use a domain name that matches your entire business name. Don’t insist to have your own name within the actual domain name. If you still don’t find anything that you like or even those abbreviated names are not available, become really creative.

Cleanercarpetstoday.com = this domain name is descriptive and pretty much tells a reader exactly what they get.
DenverAC247.com = One abbreviation, some number and still very easy to understand and an extra marketing message, too.

When buying domain names you can go with large companies like GoDaddy or with smaller players. It does not make a big difference. However, the pricing should be in the same range when you compare the different services. So, do not pay $35 for a dot com domain name – the price should rather be more in the $11 to $15 range (depending on the vendor and if maybe a sale is going on). Very important: when the name gets registered, make sure it is in your name. Some web hosting providers get a little tricky and the ownership shows them accordingly. Not good. Get the name registered and then 24-48 hours later check that it shows the correct WHOIS information.

That’s all there is to know about selecting and registering a domain name.

Depending on the search you will see the Google map for your region with lots of dots for different businesses in that specific field. If you click on the small image you can see the larger version for a very generic Google search. There are several things to take notice about.

1) Google always suggests search terms while you type your search term into the search field. If you look at the screenshot you can see that my search term is generic, but that Google takes the geographic location of my IP address and makes the assumption that I am local to the Denver Metro Area and the suggestions show you the search term improved with city names. You can tell that Google thinks local.

2) The Google map on the right hand side of that screenshot is local – no doubt. Since I have yet to really tell Google where I am located they use the shotgun approach (still local) and present me all businesses related to my search term that Google has identified as local to the Denver Metro Area.

3) The paid ads are fairly generic. In case you do not know, the paid advertisements are the ones with the light pink-ish or red-ish background. 3 of these ads use a local identifier (2 x Denver, 1 x Englewood).

If you think about it, even this generic Google search returns localized results. This is a clear indicator that kind of gives you the direction Google is heading. Google puts a lot of emphasis on a positive user experience and they work hard to make sure that users have no reason to leave and try a different search engine. One of the steps Google is taking to reach this goal is the attempt to cut down the time the user needs to complete the search and to find what she was looking for. Google Instant as an example is the feature that dynamically updates your search results as you type your search term. The next part of this process is to determine if you are looking for generic information or if maybe you are looking for something that serves you better if Google provides localized search results. Initially you might be thinking that Google is guessing, but make no mistakes – those engineers in Mountain View are not guessing. Google collects data about every search a user does and they analyze the intent of the search. With their complicated and secret algorithms the Google Engineers are able to determine if your search has a local intent and they will deliver matching search results accordingly.

If you are providing services that are definitely local you should put appropriate efforts into place to make sure Google (and the other search engines as well) knows that your business is local to a specific geographic area. Only if you work towards that direction you move towards the top of search engine results related to your local area.