Before I begin writing this article, I have to brag just a little. My website here at thisismyurl.com has a Google PageRank of 5, as does my website at getawaygraphics.com but Chris’s website (which I reviewed yestaurday) has a Google PageRank of 6 … that completely destroyed my ego. He’s killing me, it’s like that scene where Annie totally destroys Obi Wan, it simple shouldn’t have happened. So why did it?
Simple, his kungfu was better than mine.
Actually it’s a lot more complicated than that but not by much. First, to truly understand why bavotasan.com is a higher ranking, we should first understand some of the mechanics. Google PageRank (as we’ve talked about before) is just one measure of a web site’s success but it’s a critical one. It measures how much Google believes your website is worth and in the process, how much value they give to it. A high PR value means a better placement in the results, so getting a high PR is the first step to getting a great SEO value.
Getting a PR of 0 is easy, everybody starts with one. Getting a one is still fairly simple, a two is what most should aim for, a three means Google has faith in you, four means you’re pretty impressive, five … you’re on fire and six? Now six is something you should envy. It means that you’re heads and tails above the rest, so how do you get a PageRank of six?
Step one … have a website people care to read. I’m always impressed with how great the content on Chris’s website is. It’s not just good, it’s great. He takes the time to research his posts, he puts a lot of effort into it and in the end he works hard. That’s the first step, make sure the content you write is worth writing.
Step two … get people to link to you. On this step, Chris is a master. My website has ~216 people linking to it (you can always see it here) but bavotasan.com …. 5,370 people link to his website! That’s right … Chris has over 5,000 more people linking to his website than I do, so it’s no wonder that he’s kicking my butt with a PageRank of 6 vs. my PageRank of 5.
So, the secret to successful online marketing?
1) Write things people want to read
2) Get people to link to your great content
3) … there’s got to be more right?
Well … as for #3, I want to hear from you so here’s my idea …
Win a Free iPodChris’s website (http://www.bavotasan.com) is one that I truly love, it’s a great site with a lot of useful information but that’s not why he’s kicking my butt so here’s my challenge to all of you.
Write a post on your blog and tell me why Chris’s website is kicking my PageRank ass and I’ll enter your name to win an iPod, it doesn’t even have to be purple. I’ll order a brand new iPod Nano from Apple’s website and ship it anywhere in the US or Canada for one lucky winner.
Include a link to this article as well as at least one article on Chris’s website and leave me a comment below with a link to your submission. Posts must be submitted prior to October 31st and will be tallied between the 1st and 15th of November, you can enter multiple times from different domains but there’s only one iPod to give away. If you’d prefer to email me your link, feel free.
A lot of the time, people think this type of post is a joke or a scam but it’s not. Ashley Morgan of Upstart Blogger is giving away a free MacBook Air. There’s no real trick to the promo, simply link to his contest (here) and you can win it.
Why would he give away a MacBook Air?
Actually he could have picked anything to give away but the MacBook Air is sexy, it’s sleek and it’s amazingly cool. It’s also a valuable giveaway which will attract far more interest than say a free pencil but I guess the real question is why … why would a successful blogger like Ashley give away something as valuable as a MacBook? Wouldn’t it cost him a lot?
Yes. Simply put, giving away a MacBook Air will cost him a lot but cost it seems is a funny thing. As long as he gets back more than he give out, is there really a cost? Need that explained a bit more?
The cost to Ashley is fixed, he’s giving away a MacBook Air which according to Apple has a cost of $1499.
Ashley is trading links from websites such as mine to his posting at http://www.upstartblogger.com/link-to-me-and-grab-a-free-macbook-air. Every time I link from my blog to Ashley’s blog it acts as a vote from my website (PageRank 5) to Ashley’s. This does two things:
In short, the offer is a calculated risk which all business people can learn from.
If AR+AS is greater than C, it’s not actually costing him anything. So, as long as AR (Advertising Revenue) plus AS (Advertising Savings) is greater than C (Cost) he’s going to make a profit through the placement of ads and the money he saves by not having to buy links to his website.
I’ve been spending a lot more time in the “real world” this summer and enjoying the sun which has given me a new appreciation for why I spend some much time in the air conditioned bliss of my office but more to the point, I’ve been reading a lot of great books (they’re like PDF’s but made with vegetable dye and flat trees).
So far, I’ve reread the great Don’t Make me Think, A Non Designers Design Book and of course the classic All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin. I’ve also got a pile of great books from Guerrilla Marketing to Secret Formulas to plow throw before the summer’s done.
In the mean time, if you have a suggestion for some great marketing reads why not post them below?
Back when I was a young(ish) pup doing design work in Toronto, I made a lot of bonehead decisions. Most, but not all I came to regret later on and looking back, here are some things that I wish I could tell myself:
Back in 1998 the big technology was HTML, Flash scripting and Perl but as the Internet began to really take off I was introduced to hundreds of options including several new flavors of HTML, multiple new programming languages (PHP, ASP etc) and new technologies weekly. While it served me well to understand most of these, it was a waste of time to try to follow most of them.
My advice to myself: Stop trying to master multiple technologies. Instead, focus on one and keep your eyes open for signs that it’s time to learn more after you’ve mastered the first.
I appreciate that this is advice every ‘generation’ tries to give to the next but in my case, I really wish somebody had pointed this out to me. Not because those older then me know anything (especially about the web) but because … everybody likes to be listened to.
My advice to myself: Take advise from those who offer it and try to learn as much as you can so that you don’t have to repeat others mistakes.
No, not plastics … the Internet. Well, I did that (as you can tell) but the advice is still sound. More to the point, never be afraid to predict what the future might hold and prepare yourself for it. Luck it appears isn’t random, those who are ready when opportunity knocks are often the ones we later consider “lucky”.
My advice to myself: Invest in the future, live in the present and learn from the past.
People send you work when you’re competent and charismatic, companies never send you work. I wish I’d known this sooner but apparently, business decisions are made by people based on a number of factors including how well they like you, the quality of your work and how punctual you are.
My advice to myself: Be good like a waiter … get it to them on time, make it look great and keep a smile on your face.
In my life I’ve learnt more from failure then I ever did in school. Don’t be afraid to fail, don’t be afraid to fall down and certainly don’t be afraid to look like a fool. Taking chances is how you get ahead in life and the more chances you’re successful at, the further ahead you’ll be.
My advice to myself: Relax, learn, retry.
(where’d I get the awesome photo? Huge thanks to Sara Petagna!)
Well it’s been a little while since I uploaded a new theme but as before, this one is fully optimized and ready to help you community or non-profit group show up in the Google rankings.
The theme design has been created as a basic, no thrills piece which can be easily added upon for most community groups, churches and non-profit organizations which are seeking an easy way to get their website online.
I’ve included a lot of Search Engine Optimization tricks in this theme by default.
Watching a Google AdSense Webinar is a little like studying for a physics exam that’s being marked by Einstein, there’s a lot to catch and also a lot that you can miss so it’s wonderful that they post the video to YouTube as well so that we can rewatch it.
There’s an interesting article I was liked to over technews.com about Google AdSense publishers and their privacy settings, spoiler alert … most people have not updated their privacy policies. Here’s a hint to everybody … privacy policies are mandatory for all AdSense websites and Google can refuse to issue payments ( or terminate publishers for not updating) if you’re not meeting your TOS’s. (I’d better go check mine …)
Speaking of AdSense, I gotta say that I absolutely loved reading Do You Want To Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue? today. There’s a lot of content on the web dedicated to how to make money using the AdSense etc. but this is a pretty simple little piece, well written and easy to follow for people who are either just starting out or maybe need a refresher. You might also want to give Adsense Good or Bad?, Do You Want To Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue? and 6 Easy Ways to Increase your Adsense Revenue a read while you’re at it.
Today’s been a pretty busy day, so I haven’t been able to read as much as I’d have liked but if you’re looking for more help with AdSense, check out the AdSense Optimization Webinar.
Depending on the purpose of your website (What’s Your Revenue Model?) you should anticipate an investment of roughly 10% of the cost to develop the website each month in maintain it. Since small business owners often misvalue their time, let’s assume for this argument that your time is worth at least $20 per hour.
That means that in order for your website to succeed, if you spent $1000 to create your website (or 50 hours) you should be spending a minimum of five hours per month dedicated to your websites success.
Obviously this varies depending on the type of site that you’re running but I would say small business owners should plan to spend at least five hours a month on their website performing some fairly basic functions:
In the case of websites which operate exclusively online (ie there is no retail or business to support), maintaining the website should be a full time job.
These are two of my absolute favorite people in the world to photograph with, neither are professionals but both make the experience such a blast. These photos came out of an afternoon shoot, nothing was planned in depth but it turned out to be a great day.
I no longer pursue photography as a career (or even part of my career) but I do still offer some clients product photography as a service and I maintain lighting, lens etc for doing a lot of hobby work. My portfolio is online at http://modelmayhem.com
Since the new year I’ve been working with Mark Reese, a photographer based in Florida to build a new website portfolio for his work. Mark wanted his photo gallery to be easy to manage, fast for visitors and he wanted it to be something that he could maintain and manage himself.
I choose to use a very easy to use tool called WordPress as the content manager for his new website, it’s fast and easy to learn with a lot of great online documentation and a wonderfully supportive community. It also happens to be a tool that I know very well, so I felt comfortable offering it to Mark.
His photography website is designed to be used by photographers interested in displaying images, as opposed to running a photo business.
It’s an original, custom WordPress theme which doesn’t use any of the available gallery plugins to ensure compatibility. The website has a rich SEO base for organic online marketing, easy to use navigation and a very clean design used to highlight his pieces. As with most of my sites, it’s hosted with BlueHost.
What do you think? Do you know any photographers that you’d recommend me to? Are there other great photography websites built in WordPress you’d like to share?
It’s important for a non technical administrator to be able to diagnose server related problems in WordPress but also rapidly retrieve feedback regarding their web server. This simple plugin adds an option to an adminstrator’s Tools menu which displays standard phpinfo() feedback details to the user.
This a very simple script, designed to help the non technical user get immediate feedback about their blog.
It’s very easy to run a phpinfo() session without running a plugin and I can already hear a lot of people pointed out that this is a little like swatting a fly with a bulldozer but recently I’ve been working with a lot of charities and not-for-profits who lack in-house technical support and the simple process of running a phpinfo() query was daunting.
For those of you who want to run this as a page rather than a plugin, you can upload a php script to your website with the following code:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
Once you upload the code, simply access the page via the URL. On the other hand, if what I just typed made no sense what-so-ever …
How You Can Help
I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.
Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.
WordPress is a popular website publishing tool used by millions of website owners around the world. It’s one of those great, free tools that’s helped change the way the Internet is powered but what a lot of small business owner’s don’t know is that WordPress can look truly amazing. It’s not limited to a boring blog template and in fact there are thousands of great designs people can download and install for free.
The fund raising tool is a true WordPress plug-in, testing with WordPress 2.7 and fully functional. It features:
The new interface allows uses to set both the current amount (what has been raised) as well as the target amount (what you want to raise). The script automatically generates the ten steps in between and displays them for the user.
The plugin auto detects if the money_format() function is present and will use it automatically if found, otherwise it will display the currency using the number format function automatically.
To display the current amount of money raised (in currently format) place the following code in your theme:
<?php echo show_ourprogress();?>
For a graphical version (by default the thermometer), include the following code:
<?php show_ourprogress_graphic();?>
The plugin can be downloaded from the official WordPress repository:
How You Can Help
I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.
Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.
One of the great things about living here in Fredericton is that I have the opportunity to work with wonderful groups such as the Stan Cassidy Foundation to deliver strong, professional websites for meaningful projects.
The Foundation has helped raise money for Stan’s dream of building a world class center for rehabilitation. My job on this project, other than helping with the usual technology support and training was to put together a fund raising website for the organization capable of accepting online donations and effectively communicating the programs objectives to the public.
The resulting website was a success and one of my first uses of WordPress as a content management solution, which allowed staff at the foundation to provide constant updates to the site.
Soon, the website will be replaced with a new, better version but I wanted to ensure it made it into my portfolio here on thisismyrl.com to highlight not just the great creative skills of people like Pierre Allain who’s wonderful logo and layout work was used as a basis for the design but also to highlight the fact that charities and fund raising organizations can create effective, attractive and professional websites with little effort if they find the right team of people to work with.
One of the key things we wanted to do with this website is communicate the cause but also allow online fund raising, a lot of the people who benefit from the centre come from hours away and couldn’t make it to the big events, so helping them to help us was key.
As soon as I have the new website ready to launch, I’ll be sure to let you all know!
Before I forget, let me also thank Norah Mallory for project managing and spearheading this project. Luckily for her, I’m back on the juice (coffee that is) so I’m ready to go. :)
