Many companies are cutting back on print advertising and questioning the return on investment for print directories, with more and more searches being performed online. Search Engine experts, Optymise, are offering Christchurch website owners a special online marketing package to help them through these difficult times.

Hot PJ have worked with Optymise before so we know the quality of their work. Their offer will save you $1499 on the initial set up – that’s the work they need do to make your site search friendly in the first instance. You’ll only pay for monthly site maintenance, which is from $300 per month, depending on the size of your website, the industry sector you operate in and the amount of competition.

• To find out more, contact the Optymise team on 377-0803 or visit their website.

Website hosting – Free Site Transfer

If you have been unhappy with your current website hosting provider but have been too worried about how to change, OpenHost are offering free transfers for new accounts within 30 days of sign-up, which will not only save you the worry of switching, but will also save you money.

OpenHost will transfer for free your:

• Domain name registrations
• Web site files
• Databases
• Advanced features such as cron jobs and SSL

We’ve been using OpenHost for a while now. We chose their service because not only is OpenHost a New Zealand based company, but also their service is guaranteed:

• 14 Day full money-back
• Up to 300% account credit for downtime
• Fast technical support

To find out more about this offer and how to transfer your site, click on the OpenHost banner below.

If you make the switch, use the following referral code: http://www.openhost.co.nz/ref/14591

One of my favourite views was looking out onto the Venetian Gothic facade of the Guthrey Centre, (built originally as shops and offices for John Anderson of Anderson’s Foundary) as the setting sun warmed the red bricks. For a moment I could fool myself into thinking I was somewhere in Italy.

We wanted to do something to commemorate these losses and so joined together with Christchurch Writer, Helen Solomons to create www.lostchristchurch.co.nz

Helen has a remarkable talent for building stories around the many wonderful old photos of Christchurch we have found in repositories around New Zealand and overseas, enriching them with personal stories about the people who occupied the buildings that most of us took for granted.

We’ve uncovered some fascinating stories… my particular favourites being the story of Allen McLean, a wealthy bachelor owner of ‘Holly Lea’, our first and largest wooden mansion on Manchester Street, who left a substantial estate at this death in 1907 of over £500,000 generously distributed amongst his extended family of nieces and nephews, as well as to friends, staff and charity.

I was surprised to read that donkeys were a regular feature on Sumner Beach in “The Edwardian Seaside of Sumner” and chucked over the bathers who were described as being ‘like a lot of pigs’ by the New Brighton Mayor,  as they sunbathed on New Brighton beach in “Bathing Machines and Indecent Swimming Atire”.

We’ve created the site so that anyone with personal stories and memories of old Christchurch can also contribute them, as well as read other stories and reminisce.

• Follow Lost Christchurch updates on Facebook.
• Visit the website www.lostchristchurch.co.nz

There are ways to prevent this. If you are running a WordPress site, then check out “My site was hacked” on the Worpress Codex, which contains some sage advise for protecting yourself as well as what to do if you are one of the unfortunate victims of this type of unscrupulous behaviour.

A couple of regular housekeeping tasks will help minimise risk:

• Keep a regular eye on your site. You’d never leave your car parked in town for months on end without checking if it had been stolen or broken in to, so do the same for your site.
• Always keep regular back ups of your site files
• Update your CMS software regularly

and if you are hacked… stay calm. Get in touch with your developer and/or host company, as in most cases it can be fixed.

• Site contains mostly images and the menu systems are built in Flash or Javascript

Flash and Javascript are not crawlable. Html text content and links are the ‘food’ of search engine spiders, without these they can not navigate your site. If I’m using Javascript menus, I always make sure I have a plain text html menu on the site as well, maybe in the footer, and/or a site map.

• Broken site links and an unclear hierarchy of site pages.

These not only annoy and confuse website visitors, but also search engine crawlers. On that subject, equally annoying for site visitors is underlined text which is not a link. Never underline text unless you are using it as a link.

• Renaming site pages and not installing a redirect

Often when a site is redesigned, the content gets shifted around and placed on new pages. There is nothing wrong with this if it improves or updates the content, but it can mean that crawlers and regular site visitors can no longer find the content they are looking for. To prevent this loss of traffic, add what is called a 301 redirect from the old page url to the new.

And while you are at it, ensure that you have a redirect from the http:// and the http://www versions of your site (assuming they are both the same site), otherwise search engines like Google see these as two separate sites, and you’ll risk watering down your rankings.

• Errors in the site’s robots.txt file

This file is viewed by crawlers to see what parts of the site are blocked from being indexed. Perhaps it contains some errors preventing crawlers from accessing parts of your site.

• Using frame web design

Frames have long been an issue for search engines and thankfully sites that have used frames have almost disappeared. This method results in every page with the same URL so they are not able to be bookmarked by users or crawled by search engines. If your site still uses frames… shame on you, it is long overdue for a complete rebuild.

• Make sure your site code is clean

Excessive or invalid code can improve the site visitor’ and the search engine crawlers’ experience!

Dymanic URLs were often considered something else that hampered search engines from crawling a site. These are sites where the page URL changes, and happens with sites that are managed through a database. They contain characters like ? = & and can look like this: http://www.sitename.co.nz/product.php?categoryid=1&productid=09 Google has said in the past that they doesn’t see these as a big issue (Dynamic URLs vs Static URLs) , an opinion that caused a lot of controversy amongst website developers. As a website user, I prefer URLs I can understand, as they help me to know I am in the right place and appear more trustworthy. For this reason alone I change all dynamic URLs to something logical.

• To learn more about search engine optimisation (SEO), sign up for a free lesson with Search Engine College.
• I don’t think ‘Search Marketing Standard’ is available in NZ magazine stores, but you can subscribe to Search Marketing Standard

He nails it on the head from the outset with his statement:

“Put simply: if your content isn’t good enough to attract good, natural links, it doesn’t matter how “optimized” that content is.”

What he is referring to is attracting quality links to a site in order to help your search rankings. This can be hard to achieve, and you won’t help anyone if your site is full of advertising hype.

One sure strategy is to write good quality content that people want to read, and will in turn naturally attract links without you having to ask for them. So ditch all the overused meaningless adjectives about being ‘the best’, ‘cutting edge’, ‘truly unique’, and having ‘the best price’, ‘free quotes’, ‘top quality’ … and engage with people in the same way you like to be engaged.

Check out the 100 overused marketing words and phrases and the annual list of banished words put out by Lake Superior University, with one notable omission, my 11 year old daughter’s favourite: “that is so random!”

You can download your copy of the report from the Scribe website.

Like most things that sound too good to be true, they generally are – or come with sufficient ‘fish hooks’ that their value ends up being far less than you first think.

Such claims are often directed at unsuspecting clients to try and trick them into a sale. See our blog post “Watch out! Unscrupulous search marketing companies on the hunt for gullible clients”

SEO companies who guarantee top 10 results should be viewed with care. They don’t control the search engines so how is it that they can make such a guarantee?

Make sure you read the small print – you may find the guarantee doesn’t actually amount to anything of value. For instance, the company may actually only:

• guarantee top 10 results in some obscure search engines rather than Google and Bing/Yahoo.
• guarantee a top 10 result for the client’s company or brand name rather than the keywords that people are actually using to search for your product or service.
• seek out keyword phrases that are not popular and no one uses, – that ultimately won’t bring visitors to your site
• use ‘Pay per Click’ ads or Google Adwords to place the site on page 1 of the search engines. This essentially involves buying keywords – or paying for them every time someone clicks on your ‘ad’.

The process to enable your web site to rank well in popular search engines takes time – time to set up and time to maintain.

Be cautious of anyone offering ‘quick fixes’ who isn’t being upfront with their process and the costs. Make sure you are clear about how you can pull out of any agreement if you aren’t happy with what they are doing.

We’ll leave the last word on ranking guarantees to Google:  “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

Thanks to Search Engine experts, Kalena Jordan and Micky Stuivenberg of the Search Engine College for providing this info.

Briefly, this is how an online sale works when buying product. Purchasing a service wouldn’t usually have the delivery component, but can roughly follow the same process:

1. Shopper selects product for purchase and it goes into a virtual shopping cart.
2. When they’ve finished, shopper proceeds to ‘check out’ where they enter their address details or log-in if they have an account with the seller (which automates this process).
3. ‘Check out’ recalculates purchase costs adding in shipping and any relevant taxes.
4. Shopper is taken to a secure ‘gateway’ to enter in their credit card details. Most often this is a third party provider who charges a fee per transaction (based on a percentage). They will also usually charge a fee to set up this facility for the site, and an ongoing fee for providing this service (secure hosting, certificate, etc).
5. The shopper is sent confirmation that their payment has gone through and a copy of the order via email. The seller receives the payment into their bank account and delivers the product to the shopper.

Scenario One:

The above process, because it interfaces with a bank and a gateway payment system, will require the seller to become a credit card merchant with their bank. There will be fees paid to both the bank and the gateway provider for their services; usually a one-off set up fee, a percentage per transaction, and any ongoing service fees. This means the ticket is clipped twice before the seller gets their money.

The seller will also need to pay for the system to be integrated, the costs of which will vary depending on which solutions are being used. Certain banks prefer certain gateway systems, and its best to find a developer with experience in the relevant system to minimise cost and hassle. Also some systems are easier to deal with than others -for instance I’ve found the BNZ BuyLine solution particularly user-unfriendly. They don’t supply a developers manual which means it is very unclear throughout the process what needs to be done. It also makes it impossible for developers who aren’t familiar with the system to price for integrating it.

Links:
Here is a website page which lists the main NZ Banks and their payment gateway solutions:

Scenario Two:

There is a variation on Scenario One where the services of the gateway and bank are combined into one. This means the seller doesn’t have to become a credit card merchant. These are services like Paypal, Worldpay, Paymate, flo2cash, etc.

They handle the entire transaction, from a credit card or debit card, and deposit the money into the account the seller has with them. Some have requirements about how much money must be in your account before withdrawals can be made, and when it can be withdrawn, etc. So the downside is that sellers don’t always get access to their money as quickly as the bank, and it has to be transferred out to use it outside this payment system.

However these solutions can be a lot easier to integrate, and are ideally suited to lower volumes of transactions, or small sites wanting to ‘test the water’ without shelling out large set-up and ongoing costs. Many of them also offer multiple ways of taking payment, including sending invoices, direct debit, etc.

Summary:

There are a number of factors to consider when deciding if, and who you will use when it comes to payment systems. Some may be dictated by who you bank with, some come down to personal preferences, i.e preferring a NZ based solution, preferring not to pay high initial fees, or wanting your money straight away, etc,

The best way to decide which solution is best for you is to short list the options and review each. Some solution providers will supply you with a free shopping cart, payment buttons to use on your website, and various other widgets you can use on your site to assist the purchase process. Check out if they supply a demo of how it works from the shoppers point of view, as well as the sellers, and make sure they provide a developers manual explaining how the system is to be integrated.

Which ever method you choose, make sure you also have a robust website to start with. No point building on unstable foundations.

Additional links:

• ANZ eGate
• ASB Payment Express
• National Bank BuyPoint
• BNZ Buyline Direct
• Westpac Hosted Plus

In an earlier post I talked about how to set up your profile in Google Maps. But what happens if someone has beaten you to it?

We’ve had a few clients who have discovered there are already listings in Google Maps for their business and they don’t know how they got there, who added them and, most importantly, how they can access and change them.

You may still be able to claim and edit the listing

Click on the ‘more info’ link next to the listing as it appears in Google Maps.  Log in using your Google account info (or set one up first), edit the listing from the ‘edit this place’ link and Google will review the changes before deciding to make them public.

You can also click on the ‘Business owner?’ link and follow the prompts to add, edit or suspend the listing.

This will require validation* to ensure you are the rightful owner of the listing, but will help to protect your listing from being changed by someone unauthorised. This is all part of ‘claiming your listing’, and the most important step you can take.

Google sends a letter containing a PIN and activation instructions to the business address associated with the listing. After you validate the listing, you may edit your Google Maps listing at any time.

Extra help

I have to admit to finding the whole process less than straightforward so if you experience the same frustration when trying to remove or edit a wrong listing, you aren’t alone.  I couldn’t find any clear path to reclaim a listing once someone else has already done so.

Google does provide a forum and here is a particularly good post that will answer many common concerns about hijacked, merged or duplicate listings.

Other common issues:

I don’t know my password:

With most it is just a case of requesting a password change. If you can identify the email address that was used to log in (and for many businesses they will have one that is used for most generic communications) then just go to:

• • Google.co.nz and click the ‘sign in’ link at top right
  • Click the ‘Can’t access your account?’ link at the bottom of the sign in pane
  • Click, ‘I forgot my password’ and follow the steps from there.

You’ll be sent an email and you’ll have 1 hour from the time it was sent to reset your password. If you miss that hour you will have to do the process again. This is a Google security measure.

I forgot my username:

Do the same process as above, but click the ‘I forgot my username’ button and follow Google’s prompts.

This month Google announced a new index system which they’ve called ‘Caffeine’. This promises faster delivery of ‘relevant’ content than it did in the past, particularly when it comes to new content.

Search engines have always loved new content

If you write a blog, you may have noticed how quickly the content of a new post is indexed by search engines when compared to static website content.

This new indexing system turbo-charges the speed at which new website content appears in Google search engine result pages (or SERPs). It is now even more important to ensure your website content (the words) is kept fresh.

Spending large sums of money on a pretty site, with content that doesn’t change, is not a winning strategy if you want to attract visitors to your site on an ongoing basis.

Sure, some content remains relevant long term, and making changes for change’s sake is not something I’d be wasting my time on. But adding relevant new content to your site is time well spent.

If you have a content management system and you aren’t using it, you are wasting a valuable tool

If you already produce a printed or emailed newsletter, make sure you are regularly adding the content from those to your site.

Here’s some more ideas for adding new content and attracting new site visitors: Attracting visitors to your site

And if you don’t have a CMS…

If you don’t have the facility to easily update content, even if it is through our site developer, then its time to review your website and your solution provider.

Think of your site as ageing in dog (or cat) years. A site that you launched 3 years ago is actually like a 21 year old in technology years! Are you still working on a computer bought 21 years ago?

Talk to us now about how you can improve the performance of your site. Phone Abbie or Wendy on (03) 374 9929.

• businesses
• schools
• clubs
• not-for-profits

If you haven’t yet discovered ‘Google Places’ then read on to find out how easy it is to profile your business or organisation in Google even when you haven’t got a website.

What is Google Places?

According to Google, more people (about 87%) use online search to find local information than any other media.

One in every five Google searches is related in some way to location. To ensure their search results are relevant, Google has put a lot of effort into developing tools like Google Maps to help searchers find what they are looking for.

To set up your listing in Google Maps you use Google Places. Once you’ve verified your listing, Google will rank your listing based on its relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance and other factors. You may have noted Google map listings appear near the top of the search results.

There is no way to buy a better ranking as you can do with Google Adwords, however I did notice that after I updated Hot PJ’s listing in Google Places with more images, the next day we had jumped up four places in rankings for a specific keyword phrase.

Here’s how you claim your ‘Place’ on Google Maps

1. Visit Google.com/Places and Sign up for a Google Account
   This will give you access to heaps of other useful Google tools – more on those in coming newsletters.Google recommends using an email address that you don’t mind sharing with others or passing along, in case you want to transfer your listing to someone else.
2. Log in and click “add a new business”
3. Start your listing by profiling your business, school, organisation or club
   Enter into the preset fields your contact information, a 200 character description of what it is you do, and choose a category to describe the sector you are in. You will be prompted to select a category which may not fit your business or organisation as well as you hoped. While you must choose one of the categories, you can also add an extra four others of your own making.

   Google takes the location details you input and plots your location on the map. You can change the marker location if it isn’t accurate. The link to do this is under the map.

4. Enter more specific information:
   • are you location based or serve others at their locations?
   • hours of operation
   • payment options (if applicable)
   • Add up to 10 photos
   • Add up to 5 YouTube videos

Plus any other additional info in a series of fields. For instance I used this space to list Hot PJ’s Twitter address, blog, plus info on where to park for free when visiting us, and the offer of our free 45 minute marketing ‘Think Tank’.

In the photo gallery I uploaded a selection of work we have completed for clients. They display as thumbnails which, when clicked, enlarge. This is a great place to show your products, key personnel, photos of your location, your logo, etc.

For best results upload square images no bigger than 1mb and 1024 x 1024 pixels. Unfortunately you can’t seem to specify the order your images will appear.Adding video is easy, just cut and paste the link from www.youtube.com

5. Verify your listing
   Every listing must have a mailing address. This is the physical address where mail can be sent to your business or organisation. To verify this Google will send a text message to a cellphone or a postcard to your mailing address. The text message will be something like this: “Use the following pin to verify your Google Places listing for yourusername: 12345″

   Only after your listing is verified, will it will appear in Google. This can take up to 12 hours.You can then log in the dashboard to see statistics on how many times your listing has been displayed during a search in Google. You can also add coupons to your listing too, as a way to attract interest and customers.