Tag Archives: Sites

How to Build and Drive Website Traffic

Posted on by

Probably the single biggest question about building websites I get is how to drive traffic. I’m not saying it’s the most important part, but it’s definitely key. Content is king, sure, but if you don’t have traffic, you could be pouring your heart out to a wall. Really what every website wants is quality, converting, long-lasting traffic in high volumes.

There are essentially four ways to drive to your website, which are: search engines, direct traffic, referral links, and your ‘list’. I’m going to teach you how each of those things work on an intermediate level and what their value is compared to the others. I’ll be covering some of the more detailed finer points of these traffic sources in the future. This is basically a primer for what is to come.

Continue reading →

Google Image Swirl Makes Finding the Perfect Image Easier

Posted on by

Check out this great new tool from Google: Google Image Swirl.

Basically what it does is allows you to dial in images based on how close they are to the last image you selected.  For instance, you can search for cats and keep selecting cats until you find the exact one you’re looking for.  They take image properties into account, such as color and face composition.  I could be crazy, but it also looked like it was pulling out expressions.  Here’s an image of my experiment with cats:

Zac Johnson did a great writeup on how this is relevant to you and your Facebook ad campaigns.  I think it’s also relevant to the many other ad platforms as well.

Project BETA: New England Landmark Realty

Posted on by

New Website

I just finished the private beta for the New England Landmark Realty website.  Here it is:

New New England Landmark Realty Website

This will be going up at www.newenglandlandmarkrealty.com eventually, but not until after we get enough feedback.

Some of the new features include:

  • indexed and indexable MLS listings from both NNEREN and VREIN MLS IDX databases,
  • MUCH better SEO,
  • new design with slide show,

  • Old Website

    featured properties,

  • NELR property virtual tours and slide show movies,
  • back end analytics so they can actually see how the website is working.

Anyways, head over there and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Review: The Shoemoney System is Meh for Advanced Users.

Posted on by

I’ve been checking out the Shoemoney System for the last few days, and I haven’t learned anything that I didn’t already know.  I’m hoping that it ramps up soon though.  The videos are basic basic basic, but I’m sure he’s just leveling the playing field for other users.

The sales letter when you first sign up seemed long and annoying.  Why not just do a buy button at the top?  I knew I wanted to try it, but still had to sift through all of that stuff.

The videos and coupons that he advertises are released slowly over time, so you can’t just buy a month, watch and download everything and then cancel (shucks).

It looks like the only complete content is the old podcasts that Jeremy did as Net Income and The ShoeMoney Show on Webmaster Radio, but I’ve heard all of those already.  It would have been cool if the did the work to edit them down into something more to the point.

I also haven’t been impressed by the promise that the first 100 signups for the system get a special bonus, but it’s been like a week and a half and we still don’t know who we hare.  I’m fairly sure I’m in the first 100, because I signed up in 3 minutes, but who knows.

Unfortunately, content is released so slowly that I don’t really have much to say.  One of the videos everyone can watch, because it’s public, and the other three are about things I know very well: setting up a Google account, what affiliate marketing is, and setting up a ClickBank account.

I also noticed that many of the users complained about the same things in the week 1 webinar, so I don’t feel completely alone with this.

My conclusion?  I’ll give it a little more time before I completely judge…

The Internet – A Small Town in Cyberspace

Posted on by
Internet Cafe

Users at an internet cafe in China

The internet is a community like any other town in the world.  It has people, transportation, communication, media, and many other features of actual cities and towns.  The people that spend their time working and playing online have developed relationships with others in a way that people become friends in real life (I hate saying “in real life” too, because despite some arguments The Internet IS “real life”.  It just takes place in a different locale – anyways, I digress).

Transportation

Google is the backbone of Internet transportation, serving as the largest central hub for directing traffic.  There are other modes of transportation such as MSN, Yahoo, or the once defunct, rising once again Ask.com.  Unlike our physical world, we can transport ourselves directly to a new address.

We can also move fluidly from one website to another – each link becoming a road, moving away from where we were last.  I suppose some peoples’ goal would be to get as many roads leading to their house or place of business.  Others may even charge a toll to use their roads (subscription services).

Friends & Communication

The amazing thing about this new world is that the barrier for entry to communicate is extremely low.  Anyone can get their 15 minutes of fame by creating the next most popular viral video.  We can build relationships with people that we have never met in person before.  People even work for businesses from the other side of the world without ever setting foot in their physical offices.

We can build, maintain, and document our relationships with others on our websites, through Facebook, or through a much lesser known standard: XFN.  Sharing information with friends in our community is extremely easy – and almost overwhelming at times.  Many people blog, and those blogs can be aggregated to one place through RSS, putting so much information at our fingertips.

We talk through chat, web conferencing, and internet telephony like Skype.  Any person can stand at their podium on streaming sites like USTREAM or Justin.tv and talk to their viewers, not unlike a person standing at a podium in Central Park.  People can even get together for a quick soccer game in our virtual community.

Media

The new newspaper is Twitter and the new televisions are YouTube and Hulu.  Social media is adding new dimensions to media and news is being reported and shared at alarming speeds.  I find it amazing how quickly an Amber Alert can permeate Twitter even if it’s fake.

It’s interesting to see how traditional media is still having trouble keeping up and people that can adapt are taking advantage of that gap.  Internet performance marketers all over the world are stepping up and representing huge corporations and usurping advertising dollars from the traditional power houses.  This new media is so enticing for business, because compensation is based entirely on performance – much like 100% commission sales people.  No, it’s not like that.  It is that.  Businesses ALWAYS have an unlimited budget for positive returns on ROI.

So what other ways does the Internet seem like a small town to you?  or a big town?

Project: Toolerific.com

Posted on by

I just threw this website together for my own use like a year ago.  Right now there are the three most common tools I use.  I couldn’t really think of anything else that I would have used, but the three tools are:

  • Creating MD5 Hashes,
  • Whois Lookups, and
  • Public IP Address Checking

I use it all the time, so I thought I’d tell you about it.

Geeks are Sexy

Posted on by

talk_nerdySo, I caught this post by msdanielle and found another site – Geeks are Sexy . net with a post about 12 reasons why a geek is going to steal your girl.  Both posts were great reads, and reminded me of some other cool shirts I’ve seen over time.  I love the website thinkgeek.com.  They have some pretty awesome shirts.

I know geeks and nerds are different, but “geek” doesn’t fit the joke for the shirt on the right.

I also remembered that show: Beat the Geeks.

Saving Bandwidth with Google Ajax Libraries API

Posted on by

The News

I first heard about the new Google AJAX Libraries API from Jeremy Schoemaker’s blog.  He mentions using it to reduce WordPress bandwidth, but really it can be used to reduce bandwidth in most AJAX based web development environments.

The Exciting Part

I persoanlly use prototype the most, and I’m extremely excited that I can use their libraries instead of uploading my own for each site.  I’m especially excited that calling specific version numbers is possible.  This makes upgrading a code set extremely simple, especially if you call the code version as a variable at the beginning of your code.

Realistically your javascript code is probably one of the lightest weight parts of your code, but every little bit helps, especially if you’re serving a large amount of users every month.

Optional Settings

Script Compression

I think one of the greatest optional settings for all of the scripts you can load is compression.  It’s not available for all of the APIs, but it is for most.  What it does is remove all of the whitespace from the API to reduce file size for the end user – increasing speed.  If you mix that with something like the javascript compiling on Google Chrome and you’ll have lightning fast AJAX applications.

No CSS

You can optionally remove the CSS from the scripts you’re remotly loading, which allows you to do one of three things: load the default CSS, load your own CSS, or not load the CSS at all.

Resources

WordPress.org: Google AJAX Libraries API Plugin – This plugin uses the GALA whereever possible in your WordPress installation.

Google AJAX APIs Blog – This is a great place to go if this really iterests you and you’ll be using this code regularly.  They’re always adding new scripts to the API, so if you don’t see the one you want yet, keep an eye on their blog.

Google Sites Leaves me Bored AND Confused

Posted on by

Overview

Google Sites is a product recently released by Google to create a place for colleagues to collaborate. I think it is meant to work something like a cross between Microsoft’s ultra complex SharePoint, and MySpace. The idea is to give users flexible control over their sites look and feel, while making it easy for users with out development or design skills to launch a functional work space. Once the site is created, users can collaborate in that “space.”

Joining

This is pretty straight forward. Just navigate to the Google Sites main page and set up an account. Your organization will need to be a member – using Google Apps. This can be a bit of a hassle if you aren’t the admin for your organization. I think this is Google’s way to combat the lash back from IT staff.

Setting Up a New Site

From the Dashboard, just click “Create New Site,” and you’ll be prompted for some basic information like: a site name, category, and description. You can also set who you’d like to collaborate with and pick a pre-defined theme from a rather bland selection of pre-made templates. When you’re done playing with these options, click “Create Site.” Your new site is online!

Using Your Site

Now that your site has been created, you can start using it. A nice place to start is with the “Edit Page” button just above the default “Home” page. This converts the whole page to a text area and title bar that are editable. You can place whatever content you want in there now, with standard options like bold, italics, underlines, links, bullets, etc. Click save when you’re done, and the page is published. You also have the option of attaching files and leaving comments.

Just next to the “Edit” button is a “Create New Page” button. This is where you can create new pages and add them the the “parent -> child” tree that the site is built on. Just below this area is the navigation menu, with a conveniently available site map, which is dynamically built, based on the pages you’ve created.

Tweaking Your Site

Really dialing in your site is where the fun begins. In the top right of your browser window, you can click “Site settings” and be taken to a page where you can edit site sharing settings, the appearance, and “other stuff.” The most interesting part is the appearance settings, where you can modify things like colors, fonts, and background images for different sections of the page. You can also modify your theme or site elements here.

Site elements are like widgets on the left bar next to the main content on your pages. Right now, there are only a few site elements, but I would imagine that they would add more as popularity grows. It may become something like the “widgets” for iGoogle (which by the way, I love).

The real meat of the Appearance section is “Colors and Fonts.” This is where you can upload your own background images and change colors for your theme create your own custom theme. I tried fairly successfully to recreate the look and feel of this site. One thing Google Sites does a lot better than a lot of other sites I’ve seen is the style manager. What one would usually use CSS styling for is in a nice GUI. For instance, adding a background image in the top left that doesn’t repeat involves just uploading the image, selecting vertical, horizontal, and repeat settings from drop downs, and hitting save. It’s done. That will probably make a lot of users that don’t know CSS quite happy.

“Other Stuff” is where you change things like your title, categories, and description. Oh, and you can delete the whole site here too.

My Thoughts

I’m quite underwhelmed by Google Sites. Products like WordPress seem to be much better. Although I’ve never used it, Blogger seems like a much better alternative if you’re looking for a Google product. That being said, this is an extremely new offering, and I’m sure it will get dialed in a lot better. Maybe the should have tagged it with “beta” for a couple years, like Gmail. This is also free. I find it hard to give something free a bad review, because your ROI is divided by zero. Im interested to see where this goes in the future.

I also felt like there should be more. That feeling just kind of confused me the whole way through. I think it may have just been so simple it was hard. Maybe I’m just dumb. :-)

What do you think about it?