How and When to Leave Blog Comments

When we get a new client, we often compare the internet to a foreign country. It truly is its own culture, and building a web site there (aka a storefront) is like setting up business in a foreign country. Even though most of what you do will be in English (for most of my readers - their native language) it is still foreign. We like to think of ourselves as tour guides who will help you not only enjoy your trip, but actually want to enjoy it as a second home!

In that spirit, today's blog post is a little etiquette lesson in how to "act like a local." I (a person with web in my DNA) find it amazing and informative that CC Chapman can get a ton of response from a Podcamp lecture just by asking people to go leave a comment on a blog. It appears that people are confused about how to do this, when to do this, why to do this, and so forth. Just like blogging a lot of people face that daunting question: What on earth will I say? So let me be your friendly tour guide.

Let's make it stupid simple. I like stupid simple. I think hard on complex things most days and being able to "dumb it down" is something I really appreciate!

When to Comment

• Anytime you have an opinion to add to a conversation.
• When you want to promote your products and services (Just don't be crass about it. Add something of value to the conversation.)
• When someone has featured you on their page or site. (If you know about it or your blog software can track inbound links, this is VERY easy). I consider it one of the top ten blogger "miss manners" recommendations. This one is probably the most neglected, yet in my world, the most important.
• Timing can be important, especially if you are tracking A-list bloggers. Our former client, Mary Schmidt took to blogging really well and paid attention to when well-known excellence author Tom Peters would typically post a new blog. Mary made sure she was available to be one of the first commenters. It helped her get noticed and become a key influencer in Mr. Peters popular blog discussions. And yes, it has helped her build her consulting business,

What to Comment

• See above for initial instructions.
• Add your opinion - especially if it is against the flow. Life is not black and white - virtually every conversation is well-served by a range of perspectives.
• Details baby, details. The more specific you can be, the better. Cite examples, give props to others, share your experience. It's all good.

Why to Comment

• Because your point of view is just as relevant as anyone else's.
• Because it is a great way to build your personal or company brand.
• Because it creates inbound links to your site, which helps the search engines rank your site higher.

How to Comment

• There is always a place for your name. You can put anything you want in there! It is what will be displayed on the blog. Some people consider this a personal banding opportunity, and you can say, "Roxanne Darling" or "Nerd Queen" or even enter Rox of beachwalks.tv. Like all things, you can be savvy or you can be obnoxious, and all points in between. As my little 2-year old friend Kaile is learning to do, "make good choices."
• Email: you will be required to enter an email address. If the software is set up correctly, your email address will never be displayed. It is to sort you from the spammers. If you do not enter a URL (see next item) some blog software will show your email. As a precaution, always enter a URL! (if you don't have a web site, you can always link to another web site - a cause you support or CNN or whatever. Best to have your own site of course.)
• URL: Universal Resource Locator, aka your web site address. Be sure to link to individual pages on your web site when that is more appropriate to the discussion at hand. Just navigate to that page on your site, copy the page address, and then enter that into the "URL" field as you are leaving your comment. UPDATE: Consider also linking to you social network pages, like Twitter or your LinkedIn Profile or even your Flickr page if that is your primary home on the web.

Site ReLaunch: Coffee Kids

Coffee Kids has been our client for almost a decade. As a nonprofit, they help coffee-growing families learn new skills and develop sustainable lifestyles, as the coffee industry suffers from a glut of over-production that keeps income low to the first line of coffee workers - those who cultivate and pick the beans. It's not an easy story to tell when you and I are used to paying four bucks for a grandé latté. They depend on their web site as the key communication tool.

Their site has been due for an upgrade for years, but time and money constraints have meant the web site has been on the back burner. Years ago we set them up to collect online payments and also use Contribute software to edit their pages. It was a good tool at that time, but had out-grown its usefulness. It had many limitations and required a software license on each computer that was being used to make updates, not to mention training.

Their new site uses Expression Engine software, which is our favorite enterprise content management system. It is highly flexible from a programmers point of view, very easy to work in from an editor's point of view (right in the browser - no extra software required), and very easy to control multi-user access from an administrator's point of view. With just 1.5 hours of training, the staff was busy adding new Businesses to their searchable database, uploading photos, and blogging in both English and Spanish! Click on the thumbnail graphics to see full size screenshots, then follow the numbers for a detailed analysis below.

Home Page Before	Home Page After

A Few Home Page Highlights
1 Toolbar	Old site: no search. New site: full search plus CSS tools to easily let the user change font size. Donate and Contact are easily found on every single page.
2 High Impact Headline	Old Site: lots going on, no real focal point, a lot of reading required to get your attention. New Site: Wow - color, font size, and brevity all work to stop the visitor and create an emotional connection via a powerful statement of fact.
3 Time-sensitive Call to Action	Via a PHP script, we pull the date in (like a lot of sites do) but we integrate it into the message of the page. It is then immediately followed by three strong actions. Surely one of them will speak to you! This is an editable area, so the client can include as many as they want at any given time. A special link style was created to give this call to action even more prominence and draw users into the site. We are especially proud of the features added to their Business Members database, and pages that encourage people to visit their donors, tell a friend about the local businesses, and support special programs offered by donors. By helping Coffee Kids help their donors, the web site strengthens the donor partnerships.
4 Use Flickr to Manage Photos	Why build a private cumbersome photo gallery when they can join the Flickr community? One of the original (and still one of the best) social applications, it allows for easy upload of pictures, tagging of pictures, creating and belonging to groups, and a little script here automatically feeds in new pictures to the home page. Not only does it help Coffee Kids easily manage their many compelling pictures, it helps them network with others over at Flickr, finding new supporters.
5 Embedded Video Message	Coffee Kids wants to explore using video - which is very hot right now. Because video is much harder to create, we decided to try placing a short intro message on the home page as a way to start. However, this high impact placement can be converted later to a video blog post if desired. We like to build the bones first and then let the site's function and content grow organically over time.
6 A Blog	It's my opinion that you just aren't serious about communicating with your audience if you don't have a blog. Like many companies (and non-profits especially) they had concerns. "We've never done this." "What if people leave bad comments?" "It takes too much time." But luckily and ideally, they now have a staff member, Kyle Freund, who is leading the challenge to provide support and coaching inside the organization. Coffee Kids is also rare in having a multilingual blog—perfect because so much of their work takes place in Central and South America. We've also coded simple buttons in the admin so editors can easily add accented Spanish characters without learning the code.

Donate Page Before	Donate Page After

Making Donations Count
1 Easy to Sort Donor Groups	Old site: one long cumbersome donation page. New site: separate pages for individuals and businesses, because Coffee Kids really has unique messages and requests for each group. The generic donation information is clearly displayed on a separate page, easily accessible to both groups.
2 Custom PayPal Programming	Old Site - default PayPal button functionality. New Site - custom programming for a cleaner, more flexible user interface. We also added the option for gift donations, thereby removing yet one more barrier to give. By continuing to use PayPal, Coffee Kids can leverage the very low transaction fees and very wide user base without incurring custom shopping cart software expense.
3 Colorful clear graphics	The entire look of the site is more modern, easy to navigate, and user-friendly. The submit buttons include help messaging to make the donation process even easier.
4 Multiple Donation Choices	The new configuration allows for different amounts for individuals and business, and allows each group to make a one-time or recurring donation. The layout clearly sorts the two, instead of having them all lumped together as on the old site. This allows for a simple, deliberative process for their donors which means fewer clean ups by office staff for mistaken donations.
5 Interactive Donate button	Every inside page of the site has this bold Donate button, that rolls over to red and answers the "Want to Donate?" question with, "Your gift really helps." A smart strategy and simple programming makes for a high impact conversation with site visitors.

With all this lean CSS design, re-thinking of the content strategy to use social apps wherever possible, and the inclusion of a blog, search engines love this site! And the possibilities for expanding further into social media and community building are amazing.

I Wanna Be #1 on Google!

We hear this a lot. And it’s a worthy goal. But do you know what it really takes to get there? Here are some of the considerations for getting high rankings on Google.

Preliminary Note: You don't have to go through Google to get places on the internet.

We've observed a lot of people go to Google, then type in their own web site and wait for Google to bring it up. Then they click through to go the web site. Some newbie web users think you have to go through Google to get anywhere on the Internet. Others have not grown comfortable with the address bar in the web browser window. Sometimes we audaciously suggest typing in the web site address directly and saving it as favorite for a one-click visit in the future. More than once we've heard, "No, I like going to Google." I must say we don't understand this, but we've observed it too many times to pretend it is not a real behavior.

Having valid, quality links to your site is the most important thing you can do to get good rankings on Google.

h3. Search Engine Primer: How do I get in a search engine?

Each search engine has robots and spiders that are software programs crawling the web. They follow links from web page to web page and then index or file what they find into massive databases. You want to build your site so that it is accessible to these automated programs. And you want to build your private web areas so they are not accessible to these programs.

There are over 8 billion pages on the internet.

A July 2000 Cyveillance' study estimates that the Internet is growing at a rate of more than 7 million pages per day.

It takes time after your site has launched before the bots and spiders will find you and store you in their databases. Be patient! Or go directly to Google to submit your site.

First: How do you want to be found on Google?

Google is a search engine. You type one or more words into the search bar and Google returns any number of guesses for what it thinks you want. Those words you type in are called "search terms" and/or "keywords." Some search terms are incredibly competitive, as there are many businesses who want to be number one for that phrase.

Think about "home mortgage." Then think about how many web sites are in the business of selling home mortgages. Then think about the budget some of them have to pay to get top rankings on Google. Depending on your search term and the size of your business, it may not be realistic to expect top rankings for very generic, very competitive search terms.

Second: What search terms are within your reach for top rankings?

All is not lost! You can aim to be found by your company name, especially when combined with a local search. Let's say "ABC Home Mortgage" and "Albuquerque." Those are more specific, and would be a much better search query if say, someone heard you speak at Rotary and wanted to check you out, but did not have a business card or did not know your web site address.

You'll want to have your company name mentioned in real text on your home page and you'll want to have your City and State and/or geographic service area also listed in the home page text.

Third: What if that still isn't working?

Google is an incredibly competitive space. Even when you do things "right," you may not make it on the first few pages. It may be you have a common name in a crowded space. It may mean your site is too small to get noticed. It may mean the structure of your site prevents Google from easily finding you. It may mean your site is too new for Google to have found you yet and placed you in its database.

Fourth: What are the most important things for you to do to get on Google?

• Make sure your site structure is inviting to the search engines. You can listen to our podcast on the topic here.
• Aim for at least 50 pages on your site. Content is king and the more you have, the more the search engines will pay attention to you. The more current the content, the better. The more specific the content, the better.
• Be sure to list your company name, your keywords, and your geographic location on the home page.
• Look at your site statistics and see what search terms people are using at Google to get to your site. Then be sure to add those phrases to your web site content. Obviously, you have to get some history on your site before this tip will be useful.
• Generate high quality links to your site from other sites. This is easy of you start commenting on related blogs and web sites, write articles about your specialty for other web sites, and ask others in your industry to mention you on their web sites. Having valid, quality links to your site is the most important thing you can do to get good rankings on Google. If enough people link to you, you can have very few pages and break a lot of the other rules because Google looks at what other people value when deciding how to rank you.
• Update your site so it is using the newest Web 2.0 software, enabling your site to "ping" other sites when you post new content. You can learn more in this podcast.
• Register your site with Technorati and consider adding Technorati tags to your pages, as I have done at the end of this post.

When You're Ready For Professional Help

We've helped many companies get top 3 listings on Google and Yahoo for very competitive search terms. You can read more here about our services.

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Use Site Structure for Better Search Engine Results

Problem:
Not being found is a particular problem with sites that are built all in Flash, or that have a lot of images and not a lot of HTML text. You may see words, but the search engine robots won’t if they are actually images. Be sure that you can select specific words with your cursor to be sure your content is readable by the search engines.

Solutions:

1. Have a descriptive page title that starts with your company name and can then be followed with other key descriptors, such as location, industry, and/or key services. This title is the one that shows up in the title bar at the top of your browser window. You will need access to the "code" of your pages to change the page title information. It's good practice to pay attention to your page titles. Plus, the title is what shows up in a visitor's Favorites list - so make it easy for them to know who you are.

1. Have at least 100 words of HTML text as high up on the page as possible. Listen to how we helped our client, www.herecomestheguide.com get a consistent top 3 position for a very competitive search term, "California wedding locations." Be sure to include your company name and your geographical location. Local search is becoming hotter and hotter...but we'll discuss that in a future BizzyCast!

1. Use the title tag and the alt tag if you have a lot of flash or images on your web pages. Be sure to include your company name! Don't just say title="company logo" but instead say title="My Company logo." Or go even further with something like title="My Company logo call us for professional web services in Hawaii, New Mexico, and California." It's invisible unless the user rolls over the image, so it's a great way to extend your messaging.

Want help? We offer you at least two choices. One, we recommend hiring us for a Web Site Analysis. We'll look at your rankings and your site structure to see how you can improve your search results. Two, you can hire us for Online Marketing services.

It takes more time to write useful title tags for every image and search engine-friendly page content, but that's one of the things we think you should expect when hiring a professional web developer.

To hear more on this topic, listen to our BizzyCast!

Click Fraud and the Search Engines

It seemed like such a good idea. Choose the best search terms that fit your business, bid on them at Google, then pay only when a user clicks on your link and comes to your web site. Until your competition finds your link and runs up your account. Costing you wasted money. Keeping customers away from your web site.

Unfortunately, as of yet there is no way to prevent strangers from clicking on your pay-per-click links.

The problem is gaining more attention though, as the size of the industry increases.

You can read more in this AP articel dated February 15, 2005:
Click Fraud Looms as Search-Engine Threat

Key points:

Click fraud may represent as much as 10-20% of pay-per-click transactions, which is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Search engines themselves are getting scammed. Seen all those blogs and sites with Google AdSense on them? Google delivers text ads to match the content on the page. The site gets paid for the clicks that come from it. But at least Google has the technical and financial resources to detect the fraud and bring charges. Your typical small business does not.

Click fraud is even being outsourced! Some companies are hiring overseas workers to sit at computers and click their competitors' paid links.

The price of keywords has only gone up. The article reports that the current rate for what you might think is a very obscure term—mesothelioma—is $51 per click. What is mesothelioma? The type of cancer that is related to asbestos contamination.

Our Position

We have generally stayed away from pay-per-click advertising, due to the uncertainty, and our general skepticism of untargeted advertising. We love the internet, but that doesn't mean we love everything about it. We'd rather see your effort go into quality content, a well-designed site, and generating substantial cross-linking.