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Web
Tip #11: The Web is constantly evolving and changing, and its very nature ignites ingenuity, creativity and new ways to get things done. There is a steady stream of fresh top-notch knowledge to be had just by reading one thing a day. There are new ways to teach people online, communicate with them, help them, sell to them, or learn from them. If you own or run a website that is vital to your success, you need to continually teach yourself new things regarding Web design, Web marketing and programming. You need to keep with the fast pace world of the Internet. Now, you have taken a fantastic first step by subscribing to The Net Gazette (but I may be a little biased). Unfortunately, our gazette only comes once ever other month or so. Therefore, it would be worth it for you to establish a network of websites that you regularly visit and learn from. Step 1: Create a folder in your Favorites or Bookmarks called 'Web Learning' or whatever you want. Step 2: Visit each of the sites below and bookmark them all by adding them to your newly created Favorites or Bookmarks folder. Step 3: Do regular searches on MSN, Google, Alta Vista and Yahoo Search to find new websites, blogs or forums that you can add to this folder. Eventually you will have a great little collection of invaluable content to help you grow as a Web business person, which will in turn will help you grow your business.
Get a much more complete list of webmaster and Web business resources.
Starting somewhere between September 22 and November 17, 2005, Google launched a major update to their search algorithm which shook up the search engine optimization (SEO) community and millions of website rankings. The update has been called Jagger and seems to be finished. Read more about it in the last issue of The Net Gazette. What this means for everyday website owners and operators is that the keywords that people used to find your site with in Google may not be producing as many visits any more because the Jagger changes caused your rankings to plummet. Of course many people have seen their rankings stay the same or improve in Jagger's aftermath too. If your site's rankings have decreased, what can be done to get back to where you were or better in the post-Jagger Google world? As the image of Mick above implies, there are still a lot of questions, but there are some beginnings of answers as well. Since this update was rolled out over months and in three distinct phases, it has been much more difficult to determine what factors have been given more weight or less. For instance, IBL (inbound links to your site) have always been important to achieve high rankings in Google. But there are many different kinds of IBL's. Link trades, where you have my link on your site and I have your link on my site may be less valuable than a one-way link to your site. This has been the case for a while, but is the importance of each changed now since Jagger? Probably. I don't know all the answers, and I don't think anyone knows all the answers save the people at the 'plex (short for Google-plex). What are some theories? Here are some of the top ones, but I am not saying they are necessarily true or false. They are ideas I have read online, which I spend hours each day doing, or some of our own hard-earned observations using the large network of clients' websites in many different industries. Read the following with a grain of salt, which is always a good idea when reading articles about SEO or Jagger. Things That Could Possibly HELP You More In Jagger's Aftermath
Things That Could Possibly Not Help You Anymore, or May Even HURT You More In Jagger's Aftermath
Again, I don't think anyone outside Google knows which of these factors above are true or false, and how each one affects a given keyword phrase's ranking. In fact, that's the idea. Google doesn't want people 'gaming' their system. There are so many variables that need to be considered that it is very difficult to figure out which ones affect what. So, what do you do now if your site's ranking have dropped since Jagger? If your site was ranking well in the Google SERP's (search engine ranking position) before Jagger, then it was nowhere to be found right after Jagger hit, and your site has still not bounced back at all now, then you probably tripped a filter, got penalized or even banned. You may have duplicate content on another site, or someone copied a lot of your content, or you may have canonical issue (where yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com are considered two different sites by Google causing it to look like duplicate content). You may have hidden text, or keyword stuffed your pages or any number of other things. Some say that Google updates have happened before around the same time of year, and many sites that tanked then came back after the first of the year. I do not know if this is true, we'll just have to wait and see. Interestingly, most of our clients' sites either stayed the same or improved after Jagger. Our own company site improved. But unfortunately, some of our other clients saw some decreases in their rankings right after Jagger, and have since rebounded, but not at quite the same pre-Jagger levels. Here's what we did for them:
We tried to look at the overall link development strategy, the value of their site, and the quality of the site, both the content quality and the html quality. A clean, simple, fast-loading site with natural links pointing to it from a variety of other related websites, some .org's and .edu's, others from trusted authority sites, and many from small related websites, that adds fresh and unique content daily will rank well in Google over time and won't be affected by any update, including Jagger. The best way for you to learn what to do in Jagger's aftermath is to read articles like this, participate in forums that discuss these topics, and most importantly, by experimenting with your own sites to see what works. This takes time and patience. So does building quality sites that have things to offer and that subsequently get natural links. But it's worth it.
Here's the goal: You regularly send out relevant and anticipated email newsletters to your ever-growing list. You have a form on your website that asks people to sign up for your email newsletter. When someone signs up, they give you their name and email address and they receive a few automatic emails that you previously crafted while they wait for their first newsletter edition. You have a database that stores each person's email address and you have a way to send out regular emails to them all, including html newsletters. You watch the list grow over time. Here are the benefits:
There are two distinct, but equally important aspects of an email newsletter that need to be addressed for you to accomplish the goal above. First, you need the infrastructure and functionality to make all this happen, such as a database, an html form, a method for sending out emails in quantity and so forth. Second, you need the content that will be in each newsletter. The Needed Infrastructure & Functionality for an Email NewsletterDoes getting the infrastructure sound difficult? Does it sound like you have to know a lot about programming? Neither is true. This wheel doesn't need to be re-invented. There are a number of websites that offer paid services that provide the entire infrastructure for you. The cost is a fraction of the cost if you were to develop the infrastructure yourself. Two good examples of this service are Constant Contact and Aweber. I prefer Aweber and find its interface intuitive and easy to use. Using a browser I can log in to my Aweber account and create text or html email auto-responder messages for people to receive when they visit our site or sign up for our e-zine. I can create a simple html form that asks for people's name and email as well. In fact, the html code for the form is created for me and all I have to do is cut and paste it into my site. Each person's information is stored in a database on Aweber's servers. I can manage my leads list in my browser and sort by different ways. It also allows me to see how many of my autoresonders have been sent already. And every email that we send out has a personalized first name greeting. There is a place I can manage my messages, whether they are regular emails to part of the list or a newsletter that's sent to the entire list. And there is a place where I can enter my messages, edit them, check to see if they will trip any sp@m filters, and finally send them all out at once by one click. The Needed Quality Content for an Email NewsletterIt is not good enough to just have the infrastructure. You need something that makes people want to accept and read your newsletters over and over again. Your newsletter ought to be related to your website and organization. Every person and organization has valuable and unique knowledge and experience to offer others. And you'd be surprised at how many people want your unique knowledge. Sharing this knowledge and experience with your existing and potential customers is what the Web is all about. People use the Web for getting information. So make your newsletters about various aspects of your business or organization, and make them educational, so that your readers come away with more useful information. So if you're a Web design firm, write about Web design in your newsletters. If you're a small local bookstore, write about how to become an author, or how to start a local bookstore. If you're a financial advisor, write about how people can make sound investments. If you're a furniture builder and seller, write about how to fix up old pieces of furniture on your own or how to decorate your house using furniture. Newsletters that are just extended advertisements don't cut it. If your newsletter has only announcements of new or improved products or services, or specials that you're running, then you're missing the boat. Newsletters that contain useful, relevant and anticipated information for your readers is what to aspire to. You want to give away ideas and concepts for free that can be used to help improve some aspect of your reader's lives. Most often, your readers don't care about you or your company or your specific products or deals, they only care about what you can do for them. If they take the time to open your email newsletter and read it, it better provide them with some real value or they won't bother again and your list will not grow, but eventually wither away into oblivion. In return for providing useful, ordinal content, you develop a constantly growing list of loyal readers who will spread the word that you are an authority in your field. Your readers may eventually buy from you if they haven't already. And you can use your list to occasionally sell your products or services, but do this very sparingly. Finally, you can use your list to learn more about your customers and site visitors. You can ask the people on your list to fill out an online survey, but be sure to offer them an incentive for their time. If you don't know any programming or HTML but want to send out a regular newsletter, you can use Aweber to create text-only messages. If you want to send out slick HTML email newsletters, then either learn html and design (which is obviously time-consuming, but certainly possible), or hire a Web firm to do it for you. I would also suggest hiring a firm to help you with writing the content as well. But as you can see, you don't need much to get an email newsletter going. If you can regularly create quality content, just sign up for an online service like Aweber and away you go. An internal customer email list is a very valuable asset for any organization. Handle it with loving care. Never sell or rent your list to anyone, try to offer value in your writing, and don't overuse it as an advertisement medium. By the way, you signed up for this newsletter using an Aweber form, and we used Aweber to send it out. Good luck and happy e-zining! 
Till
next time, - Jason
To learn more about these subjects or if you have a need for e-marketing, design or programming services, please visit www.oakwebworks.com.
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