Charity Calendars

Watching Buyer Beware on RTE tonight and interested to see that companies are still using these traditional forms of advertising to promote their businesses, but also saddened to see that companies are exploiting those one who still are. Not every one doing charity calendars, but one company especially who has taken peoples money for advertising space and it turns out that the company are dodgy and the customer has got zero return for investment for the advertising spend they used. I could go on about how there are always more ads than actual practical space for the calender dates and that you can’t use it.

Anyway.

No matter what industry you are in you have to be aware that there are companies out there who will rip you off when it comes to advertising or even getting listed on a web directory for example. Our area of expertise is the Internet. We get many calls all the time from concerned companies who have received an invoice for getting listed in the world web directory or World business Register

€995 per year, 3 year listing!

And its a contract that the company would have signed making them agree to pay €995 per year to get their website listed in some obscure European directory that will bring them in no business. Is it a scam? Well in theory they are offering a service, but i personally think its a scam. In fact we write about it regularly, as we hear so many complaints from companies not under standing if it is the renewal notice for their domain name or from the irish domain registry etc. The program researches for Buyer Beware called our office when they were researching an item about these online scams and we were able to discuss that issue and let them know how were were trying to combat against these online scams.

If you are truly interesting in promoting your business I have to recommend using the latest form of marketing . . . . The Internet. We at Cada Media Ltd are a well established website design and web marketing company based in Gorey and supplying our services and expertise nationwide for the past 10 years. Give myself Dave Jordan a call of you would like to start a campaign to get you company or business noticed.

Well done to the producers of Buyer Beware for promoting this scam.

I was at a business meeting this morning and I allowed give a quick presentation about the Internet and so I talked about an interesting part of the web industry called “Link Building” as part of a Search Engine Optimisation campaign. I started by trying to make a similarity of a link on a website to a verbal referral from a business colleague.

The more of my business colleagues that let their friends and staff know that we have worked on their website the more people who are likely to let others know about ourselves. In Internet terms, it’s whereby you, your website address to be exact is named on another website. So if you are a garage repair service and you are members of SIMI. Do they list you as a member? By doing so they telling Google and the world that you are related to them in a business sense. Search engines count these “Links” and use it as part of their Algorithm to judge the benefit of your website to the world.

If your site is informative about your products and services, if it’s up to date, and is the best documentation that the search engine can find, then your sites “Page Rank” is increased.

How to get people to link to you?

Some companies will try to tell you they can do it for you and indeed they may be able to get you a few links, but are the links of any good. Good links I would suggest are from relevant and respected sites. Dodgy sites that are “Link Farms” (sites that could have a 1000 links on one page) are not recommended. Using these types of links can often be categorised a Black Hat* tricks by search engines

* Black Hat methods of SEO are sneaky tricks like, putting your key phrase in white text at the top of the page to add extra key phrases.

Sites that are respected by search engines are generally sites that you yourself would recommend, Use a spoonful of cop on when choosing sites to get linked from. Getting back to that Car garage, if he was offered a link from a Circus website, do you think that link would be of any use. . . . Me Neither. . .  I doubt Google would too.

So, I would recommend that you contact your suppliers in your industry and ask them to put a link to your website from their website. I could try to do it but they are more likely to do it for you rather than a stranger these days. Once that is in place make sure you put a link from your website back to them. This is called a reciprocal link.

To start a Link Building Campaign for your business today contact Dave Jordan of Cada Media Ltd, Tel: 053 9430748

We have just got in an email from a clients asking for advice on the renewal of her domain name. An american company emailed her and asked her to review her domain name and if she would like to renew it then she could click on the link provided to renew.

Transfer Away!!!

In actual fact what the company was asking was that they take over as the billing contact for her domain name. There is definately confusion out there and Internet Domain Name companies using these sneeky tacktics just make it more confusing for business owners.

I would recommend that anyone who get an email asking for information about their domain name give me a call and I will be able to tell you if it’s real (as in that you domain is about toi expire with tyour current registrar) or if it’s another company looking to poach your domain to their billing system.

Just letting you know as we see this nealy every week.

Dave Jordan – Cada Media Ltd 053-9430748

We get asked about how much does it cost to set up a website and why get a company involved as many people see that there are Free online tools to set up a website, in the video i try to explain the difference.

Why use a Newsletter for your business?

This another one of the frequently asked questions we get asked about how to use the Internet for business.  A email newsletter is a fast, efficient, cheap method of communicating with your clients.

You don’t even need a website!

There are many types of newsletter systems available both as hosted (on your own website) or as stand alone applications hosted on someone else’s website. Here are a few links to get you started.

• www.newsweaver.ie
• www.toddle.com
• www.constantcontact.com

We offer our own hosted versions on our clients website that have no monthly bills, you simply type up the newsletter and send. The system takes care of the legal issues like having an unsubscribe option etc. Note our systems wont charge you a monthly fee or won’t charge you per email.

Remember these types of systems will give you great stats, they will let you know who looked at the newletter, what part of it they clicked on to return to your website and much more.

To find out how a newsletter email system can help your business, call Dave or Roz on 053 9430748

How to get to the top of Google.

This again comes up week after week as inquiries ask about Domain Names and Search Engines. Today a guy was asking if he registered a certain domain name will he come up first in Google, rather than register his own company name.

The Answer is. . .

Maybe!

People under estimate the power of a search engine and the whole science behind it. Many assume its total fluke or chance to get listed in Google. It’s not. It’s hard work, experience and quality content.  How did you find this article? Most likely you searched for a certain term and a search engine return this as a possible answer.

I always suggest to clients to register a few domain names to cover your bases. About 6 years ago it was very important to have a good generic domain name lets say www.electricity.ie or www.estateagent.ie and Google would return them higher than others. But since then search engines have looked less at the domain and rather concentrated on the “Content” . They want to return a website that answered the persons question. They are always changing the methods in which they rank websites.

Changing their algorithm.

I have been harping on for the past six months about how “Google” for instance is changing the ways its is ranking website. One of the main reasons would seem to be that they are keeping up with technology and as new technology rolls out online they too must keep in touch and make sure they are able to read and index the new content, Flash animation, images and video to mention a few.

We have a number of inquiries at the moment and they all have registered nice names, good generic, easy to remember name. But one thing that they all assume is that they will automatically get listed No 1 in Google because they bought a domain.

It’s like buying a spanner and assuming that you will win the Formula 1 in Monaco next year. I’m not saying in out of the question, I’m just saying that it’s a bit of a long shot.

When you register a domain it is the first step in creating a successful online business. To see how we can help you get to the top of the search engine of your choice call me, Dave Jordan today to find out more.

I promise I won’t rant for too long!

Content, Content,  Content.

We had an inquiry today (you know you are “T”!) asking for a website with an into page with flash animation and maybe some soft music. This is available to everyone but I had to steer the conversation around to a few questions that soon answered if she really wanted a flash intro page with soft music etc

• Who are you target market?
  • How old are they?
  • Men or women?
  • Irish?
  • European?
  • USA?
• What is the website for?
  • Information
  • Sales Leads
• What time are they online?
  • Mostly evening
  • online in work

The list of questions goes on and on, but our answer is, why are you putting another hurdle in front of someone who has been looking for your services or products.

Get to the point and give them the info, they will appreciate it and use your business!

Have a good weekend

Dave

Blogging for business . . What does it mean?

This is a common questions these days as we see headlines in the Sunday Business Post “Computers in business” section explaining to us that “Blogs” are old and “Bebo” is the new way forward.

Well basically a blog is a style of website that the owner can update themselves and publish news or events or anything online using their own computer and Internet connection.

Blogs are user friendly.

A Web Log is easy to update and it is a less formal way of communicating to your customers or potential clients. It is still a “website” but just a less formal one. It is primarily used for publishing articles as in news stories and so it therefore lends itself to writing articles or as we call them “posts” to our news website under different categories.

In the blog I “post” stories on different topics as they arise. So if we have new news about how google is changing its algorythm, then I put the news into a category called “Google” and all related news snippets will go in there.

Blogging for Business, means that businesses can write articles about their own chosen fields explaining about the services they offer or the products they sell.

The are many consultants available in Ireland who will explain and teach how to use a blog for business uses and we are one of them! We are looking for comanies who are interested in reaching out to their clients and starting a conversation with them about theur products think a blog might me one way to reach them.

Convert your Admin Staff to your Marketing Staff?

One example I have been saying to customers recently is to use their existing admin staff to create more online content. Give us your staff for two days and we will convert them into “Bloggers” We will teach them how to write a blog, why write something, what to write, when to write it, etc

For more information about Blogging for Business call myself Dave Jordan on 053 9430748

This is a common issues with websites, trying to keep them fresh, you can look at the following

1. Read your website and each page to see if it makes sense to you as , a newbie or as an experienced user looking for information. Do you cater for both
2. Make sure you have good meta tags on every page, the description and keywords match each page.
3. Look at your competitors sites and see if they have something you may have overlooked.
4. Check other search engines to see how you rank try www.google.co.uk and search for your products and services there for example if you cater for the UK market.
5. Are you linked from enough sites, are their suppliers who should have a link to you? Link building is very important, get all of them to link to you.
6. Start a Social Media Networking campaign, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc for your business
7. Get involved in posting articles on forums say on Boards.ie etc

This is just a sample of how you can keep your site and information online about your business fresh for more call Dave Jordan on 053 9430748

Someone has taken my website?

Someone is advertising on my website?

These are all everyday questions we hear these days as many companies are cutting back on their costs for running their businesses and choosing to maybe not renew their website address.

But I bought the domain name. . . . .

This too is often heard as companies wonder how someone has the audacity to buy the domain they already own. The Internet is not like “land” or “Property” you don’t own a domain name for ever, you register it for a period of time, usually one year at a time. Your web design company should contact you each year and let you know that it is up for “Renewal“. This means that the years registrations fees will be paid and your website address will be kept in your name.

What if you don’t renew or you forget to renew it?

Well the sad truth about is that it will probably be registered by another company within a few days if not the next day.  We have heard about 5 stories in the past week of companies who have forgotten for renew their domain name and that their website address is now registered to another company.

What does loosing a domain name really mean?

Here are a few things to consider about loosing your domain name.

1. Change your Headed Paper
2. Change your Business cards
3. Change your Compliments Slips
4. Change your Advertising signage
5. Change your Vehicle signage
6. Change your Email addresses
7. Change your Answering Machines messages
8. Change your Logo
9. Change all links pointing to your website
10. Get a New Website Designed
11. Ask Golden Pages to take back every book and change your advert?
12. Ask Google not to show the old website address?
13. Start your link building campaign again.
14. Basically start your business from scratch!

And all of this because you are trying to save a few Euro, Well in fact as you can see from the above list you are actually deciding to spend thousands.

So why am I telling you all of this, basically to try to help companies understand the importance of their website to their business. Building a successful business in a recession is all about being smart. Be Smart with your money, your work hard for it, spend it wisely.

For more informatin about Renewing your Domain Names, Contact Dave Jordan today on 053-9430748

1 or 2 page website for my business oh and I need it to be No 1 in Google.

This is one of the most frequent inquiries we get to our offices. Often we are asked to give a quotation for developing a 1 or 2 page website for a company as they want to keep the development costs down.

This is often because a “Web Designer” has said that they charge per page for designing a website, but in fact they have missed the bigger picture. Creating a small website is fine, but please remember you will get back exactly what you put into it. One page will not get you get you No 1 In search engines. It’s just not possible.

We have talked about this issue many times and every year it comes up again and again. We have created 1 page websites (many years ago) and we know from experience that they don’t get found. We often say to clients it would be the same as getting 1 flyer printer and nailing it to a tree in the amazon. You can image the footfall that flyer would gain. None.

So the point to this rant is, do your research, put together an informative website that search engines will actually want to display to people.

Have a search for something that interests you in a search engine, then go to the last page of the search results. . . . . That’s where the “One Page Websites” Live and that’s how important the search engines thinks your business is to it’s readers.

Just trying to help if you are in the process of setting up a website for your business. For less rant and more inforamtion call me “Dave” on 053-9430748 for more.

Where do I get good content for website?

We are just after receiving a few emails from a new client who has been busy putting together content for their website. One issue that I must bring to peoples attention is that we strongly suggest not using Google Image Search to source content for your site. You can not simply grab, copy an image from there and use it on your website.

Many people assume that they can grab an image from an Australian website and use it on their website and no one will notice. Well there are programs known as “bots” basically little search programs that will trawl the Internet looking for images. Google uses one to find images for their Google Image Search function.

These image bots will read all the websites in the world in a matter of days and be able to see who is using who’s images on their site. After that the data is then used in a legal action against your company.

Take Photo’s yourself!

or get a professional photographer to take the photo’s for you. These can then be used in brochures, web sites and all your marketing material. Companies can also buy your photos online on many of the stock photography website available, namely http://www.istockphoto.com or http://www.shutterstock.com/

Take the Internet seriously, other companies do.

Dave

Spam is on the rise.

We have had a number of telephone calls about the high level of spam that clients and others are receiving in the new year. As the global ecomomy slows companies are using more and more email to get their point across, so expect more of this in 2009.

We have spam filters on our servers and can help your business get rid of this huge staff time wasting animal.

Call Dave on 053-9430748 for more.

What are Content Management Systems?

A Content Management System is a program/software installed on your website that allows you to access and update your site through your Internet browser. You can add content from anywhere in the world. There is no need of any prior content management experience and you do not need to understand <HTML> code.

Content Management can be used to manage simple business brochure style website, portal or directory and also an ecommerce online shop website.

To Sumarise if you get a content management system, your site is ready for expansion in the future as it is built on a powerful base.

We have a number of requests to get a content managed system (C.M.S). This is a website whereby the client is able to log in and update and write content, new pages on their own website. Thus keeping it up to date and fresh. This is now becoming the standard style of website that businesses today.

CMS websites are great idea, but a few things must be taken into consideration when you are looking into getting a website of this style as opposed to a “static brochure website” whereby the pages are created in a format that can only be edited by either a web designer of a kid with good web knowledge.

Content management is about being able to edit content, but its a lot more that that it actually allows you to edit the whole site, the menu system, the layout, the colours, the design, everything!

Now here’s the But. . . this is all great but a few factors we would suggest would be required in getting involved in this.

• Time
• Creativity
• Experience in Desk Top Publishing or Graphic Design and Layout.
• E.C.D.L

Time: Being able to change a websites content is wonderful and really puts power in the owners hands. That’s of course if the user assigns time to the project and we have found that the more time the users give to their website management the more they will benefit from this tool. And that’s all this is, a tool to editing the site, so depending on how you use it will depend on the results.

Creativity: Say you edit the text and insert only a few words about a topic. The search engines will see that this is all you know about the topic. Don’t keep this knowledge in your head, put it on the site. Write about your chosen topic and remember you are not writing a book, Think of it as a magazine, you need to understand you reader and the time they have to scan down through you content.

Layout and Design: Ok so now you have the time, you’ve inserted the content. How does it look? Does it look like a long back and white page or have you used indents, bullet points, italic, bold, remember you online users scan down through the content so grab their attention and highlight words for them.

ECDL: These types of courses are great to give the user an understanding of the methods that can be involved. But do note that content management is not MS Word, Its a thousand time more. We think of it like comparing MS Word and MS Excel to Content Management and An Accounting System.

If you post an invoice on an accounting system you can not just click “back” and start again, you have to insert a credit note to minus the invoice. Its a little more structured but there is method and reason for this.

Content management systems are similar to this as you can’t just click back, they are online applications that need to be closed properly otherwise you lock a document. And once the document or page is locked it may not be accessible to edit by another editor. A Desktop application like Word etc can close and you can open it again it may have tried to so an auto-save.

So to sum up, think about your design skills, your time and your typesetting skills.