Girl Geek Speaks

All A-twitter About Twitter

2009-07-04T23:06:00.004-05:00

So, what is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where you have 140 characters to send a message to the Twittersphere answering the questions, "What Are You Doing?" You can invite friends, family and business partners to "follow" your posts. In return you can follow posts of others who are of interest to you. In some ways it's a quick way to take a pulse of your market.

Your tweet can be directed to all your followers or you can respond directly to someone who has sent you a tweet. You can tweet from you cellphone.

Business has taken Twitter to heart. There are many articles online about how to use Twitter for SEO and promoting your business.

The main guideline is to "tweet" (meaning to post) something on Twitter that's useful and relevant to your niche market. That way you begin to gather a following. In addition, you can load Twitter onto your Facebook, MySpace, and Blogger pages, as well as put a widget on your website. These will keep all your friends and followers on those websites up to date with your tweets.

To post links to websites with long URL's, you can use www.tinyurl.com to short them to post in your tweets.

What you do with Twitter is only limited by your imagination...oh, and the 140 characters.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Websites and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a FREE Initial Design Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Search Engine Optimization Software

2009-05-03T15:11:00.001-05:00

Do-It-Yourself SEO Software - Affordable Search Engine Optimization

For those of you who know how to update your website and want to optimize your pages yourself, I highly recommend purchasing the Internet Business Promoter software. This is an indispensable tool for search engine optimization (SEO).

The software will do

keyword research

ranking reports

suggest link partners

or semi-automatic submission to search engines and directories

More importantly, it will show you exactly what you need to do to and for your website to get it top rankings on search engines.
The company provides a money back guarantee. "Top 10 rankings or your money back."

Click here to learn more or purchase >> Internet Business Promoter

Annette Vaillancourt, Ph.D.

Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Websites and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget

1-877-866-4335 for a FREE intial web design or SEO consultation

Yahoo Local Search and Google Local Business Center

2009-04-18T18:57:00.003-05:00

Hi All,

If you haven't already, list your websites on http://local.yahoo.com and on Google Local Business Center (www.google.com/local/add). Search engines are displaying local searches more prominently in the search engine results pages (SERP's).

The listings are free and you can post a wide variety of information about your products and services on the listings.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget

List Your Site on Local Search Directories

2009-04-09T10:06:00.003-05:00

Hi All,

Local search in figuring more prominently in SERP's (search engine results pages), so, you need to list your website on Yahoo Local and Google Local Business Center. You will need a emails on each to create an account, so create a yahoo.com email and a gmail.com email first.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

SEO Tips for Beginners

2008-08-27T07:54:00.005-05:00

Diana,
After talking with Annette last night I ran across an article on search engine optimization for beginners and I thought it might be of interest to you as you venture into web design for clients.

Paul

Diana,
I agree with Paul ...that if you are designing websites for small businesses you should know something about search engine optimization. How the site is designed will have an effect on whether it will rank well in search engines. This may be more than you want to know, or more than you need if you're designing sites for small, regional companies that will not need to rank highly on search engines, though they would do well to get on the local search results.

For example, besides placement of the keywords in the meta tags and alt tags, the location of the keywords in the text on the actual page does play a small role. It's best to have the main keywords near the top of the page. The article is right about keyword frequency...not to overstuff the pages, but what happens out there in the real world is keyword frequency does matter, but only relative to the other websites that rank in the top 10 spots for that keyword. You have to do what they're doing. I have a piece of software that will tell me this. Oh, and each page needs a minimum amount of text on it so when the search engines spiders read it they can tell what the page is about. The minimum is between 250 and 500 words.

Also, all sites now need an xml site map, which is like a table of contents. That site map needs to be submitted to the search engines and updated if you change the title tags. You can get one made for free at www.xml-sitemaps.com then submit it to Google Webmaster Central. The site also needs to have plain text navigation, usually at the bottom of each page, because search engine spiders cannot read navigation buttons (which are images or Flash).

All images need to have "alt tag" for 2 reasons. They are required for browser compatibility and they are required for people who are blind (their computer reads the pages aloud to them and so they need to know there's a button there). Oh, and as far as images on a webpage, images are usually large and slow loading files, so always compress images before putting them on the page or keep the use of images to a few. If your page takes longer than 8 seconds to load on the slowest dial up modem, you lose about 80 percent of visitors....they won't wait.

I have made search engine optimization my area of expertise in the last few years and would disagree with the article Paul sent you on one point...that of inbound links. For high rankiings, depending on the keyword, getting quality, relevant inbound links is essential for high search engine rankings.

The other things that affect search engine rankings are the amount of traffic to the site, the age of the site, and the competitiveness of the keywords. I tell my clients not to expect their site to get high rankings until it's at least 3 months old. If they need to generate traffic right away, I recommend a Pay Per Click advertising program like Google AdWords.

Finally, what the article overlooks is that not all the client's desired keywords are something that people are searching, so when writing for the web, I help my clients select keywords that are being searched at a high frequency, so that the site will get traffic. There are alot of keyword selection tools available for free, like WordPot, WordTracker.

This is probably more than you need to know, but if you continue designing websites, clients will be asking you the next day after their site has gone live why they can't find it on Google (answer: it takes a few weeks for Google to find your site, then index it).

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

SEO Client Signs $50,000 in Businesss in 2 Weeks

2008-02-09T22:48:00.001-06:00

Okay, I have to brag on one of my clients, Florida Federal Criminal Defense Attorney, David J. Joffe. Due to his aggressive search engine optimization contract with Girl Geek Web Designs, he was signed on a ton of business in the last 2 weeks of January 2008. By my calculation is was about $50,000 in new cases.

Go, David!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Add Tags to Your Blog Posts, Images and Videos

2008-01-06T12:56:00.001-06:00

As you might know by now search engine optimization is a dynamic environment, as thing change periodically and new avenues of boosting rankings come into existence. Recently Google started including and ranking Blogs, Images and Videos in their search engine result pages (SERP's).

So make sure your web designer is adding alt-tags to all your images, and that you are tagging your blogs and videos with your most important keywords.

Thanks for reading!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Getting High Rankings in Google

2007-06-28T07:55:00.001-05:00

Dear Girl Geek,

I want you to optimize my website, so I will get high rankings in Google. How would you go about doing that?

Larry

Hi Larry,
My understanding is that you want your site to come up on the first page of organic search engine results on your desired keywords. The goal would be to have that happen on Google primarily, but also track rankings on Yahoo and MSN - the other main search engines. In addition, to get immediate traffic to your site you want to set up a PPC program through Google, which you may or may not want to continue once your site is ranking well in the organic results.

Note: Well established, relevant, busy sites with lots of links pointing to them get highly ranked in Google. So the strategy would be to draw alot of targetted traffic to your site via quality inbound links and referrals from search engines, social networking sites, blog postings, classified ads, and referral sites (such as Psychology Today, professional organizations, and educational sites). The site would be optimized for your desired keywords. The final strategy is to add fresh content to the site at least once a month to give search engines something new to rank and keep people interested in coming back to your site.

Here's what I'd need from you
1. Login information for your site, so we can upload changes and add a contact form

2. the age of your site - new sites take longer to get well ranked

3. a list of DESIRED keywords that you want your site to rank well on. You mentioned using WordTracker, so I'd like that list and any additional keywords you think someone looking for your services might use.

4. A list of any of the social networking sites your listed on, i.e. LinkedIn, Ryze, Zoom, Squidoo, Zandz, Digg, Merchant Circle, etc.

5. A list of all the domain names you have pointing to your site

6, a description of your niche...as detailed as you can, i.e., age, location, income, educational status, race, marital status, etc.

7. a list of links from any educational institutions you have been or are affiliated with, so we can ask them to link to your site

8. a list of professional organizations you are affiliated with for the same purpose.

In preparation for SEO and PPC set up, what I'd do is

1. Do a brief review of the site to make sure it's search engine ready and all browser compliant, i.e. check to make sure there's no funky code, no slow loading times and that the internal navigation is set up properly and the outbound links are relevant

2. run an inbound links report on your site and those of your 2 top competitors on each of your desired keywords, to generate a list of websites from which we can request links to your site.

3. create an xml site map for your site, so that all your internal pages can get indexed by the search engines

4. Set up Google Analytics and conversion tracking on your site, so we can monitor the progress and outcome of the SEO and PPC efforts

5. run a baseline ranking report for your desired keywords to see where you already rank in Google, Yahoo, MSN. I'd make a list of the top ranking sites on those keywords for later use in setting up the PPC program.

Setting up a PPC program

I usually have people start with Google AdWords because that's the search engine most 70% of people use.

For PPC, I'd
1. create a campaign structure by logical groupings, such as by topic or service specialty

2. create a list of phrase match, geo-targeted keywords with a traffic report and minimum bid recommedations. You can establish a monthlybudget that you want to spend. I can generate a recommended budget based on getting the most views possible.

3. Write a minimum of 2 ads per ad group with alternative wording, using your most important keyword in the ad title and body.

4. create a local business ad for each ad group, such that your ad appears with GoogleMaps attached, so people can see where you are located

5. add conversion tracking to see how well each keyword performs

6. set up regular reports to see how ad groups are performing

Ongoing SEO strategies

1. continue to slowly add relevant inboung links with high PageRank. If you add links too fast, Google gets suspicious.

2. add fresh content to your site regularly, probably via a blog. Google owns Blogger.com and so considers it a prime link into your site, especially if you continue to let them host it remotely.

3. post your site on local online classifieds, like Craigslist.

4. post your site on social networking sites

5. suggest you start posting comments to relevant blogs of possible referral sources. I can do some research and suggest some of those.

6. submit your site to specialty search engines or vortals, where applicable

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Organic Rankings vs. Pay Per Click

2007-05-02T10:26:00.001-05:00

Dear Girl Geek,
Optimization sounds like the answer to what we are seeking: a flow of people, but not an excessive number. I am curious about how that process gets conceptualized quantitatively--if it can be. How does one relate needs to some level (?) of optimization? There are questions for discussion especially if I am on the right track. How do we make optimization work for us? Key words? What else?
E

Dear E,
For optimization to work for you, I need to understand your goals and objectives, which I think I outlined in a previous email. How we make it work for you is a 3 step process 1) reworking/redesigning the site to make it more search engine "friendly), as well as incorporating new information you've discussed below (will you need help writing the new content?). 2) integrating selected keywords into your site (which I will work with you to develop) and 3) providing inbound links to your site that will both increase your rankings in search engines, but also drive targeted traffic to your site. These links will need to be relevant and ones that have a high ranking on search engines.

Keyword research is dependant upon the number of keywords you want the site to rank well for. I create a matrix showing the results of my research on desired keywords. I look at what you think your ideal clients would be searching to find you, then look to see if those phrases are actually being search and how much competition there is for those keywords. I look for obvious keywords and what I call "long tail" keywords...that are relevant, but not searched frequently. These types of keywords are used most often when someone is actually ready to make a purchase vs. just researching. For example, someone researching therapy services in the Miami area might type in "Therapists in Miami" just to see who's available. Someone who knows exactly what kind of therapist they seek might enter "Eating disorder treatment in Miami."

Getting quality inbound links is something that needs to proceed slowly over time, as Google gets suspicious when your site shows up with lots of new links all at once.

The best combination for generating more traffic is high rankings in the organic/natural search engine results combined with a PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising program. Here's how that works. PPC gets you immediately on the first page of results, but listed to the right in the "Sponsored Links" area, but you're paying to be there. It takes anywhere from 3-12 months to get high rankings in the regular/organic/natural search results, but once you're there, you're not paying for clicks into your website. If someone sees your site ranked highly in both, they are more likely to click on your site.I can discuss PPC's more with you if you like.

How I do the pricing on that depends on how aggressive you want the optimization to be. I would recommend at least a 3 month starter package because it will take that long to get results.

Yes, we can objectively measure the results of the optimization through Google Analytics. What we do is define a desired action site visitors will take and drop some code into the site to track if they are actually doing that. So if you're wanting to use the site to convert visitors to leads and the action is they email you via an online contact form, we track how many do that. Or if you want to track how many people request a white pager you post on your site, we can do that.

Hope this helps.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

FAKE "bills" for website domains

2007-03-25T13:38:00.001-05:00

Help Girl Geek!

We just got a bill for $89 for our domain name registration. I says it expires tomorrow. We don't want to lose our website. We've tried unsuccessfully to reach this company, List-Corp by phone and email. Should we pay this?
P

Hi P,

Absolutely NOT! IT IS A FAKE -- an advertisement/solicitation that fools many naive site owners, who don't read the fine print. They format their ADVERTISEMENT to look like a statement and then add urgency to it by saying your domain name is about to expire in a day or so.

I've gotten them from Domain Registry of America and others.

Again, I urge you to keep good records and to pay for your domain at least 5 years in advance so you don't lose it.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Choosing a File Extension for a Domain Name

2007-02-04T10:31:00.001-06:00

Dear Girl Geek,

What are the advantages over the different file extensions (.com, .net, .org, etc.) and how does one know which to use when choosing a domain name?

Thank you.
Pam

Hi Pam,

The file extensions are actually designated for certain types of websites. Obviously .com is the most popular one because it is familiar to everyone. Here's my understanding of the uses for each:

.com = commercial sites
.net = internet sites
.org = non-profit sites
.edu = educational institutions
.gov = government only sites
.ws = website
.tv = television related sites

So choosing a file extension kinda depends on what kind of site it will be referring to.

Hope this helps.
Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Moving My Site to a New Hosting Company

2007-01-05T18:44:00.001-06:00

Hi Girl Geek,
What's the best way to move my site from my current webhosting company to another without disrupting my website or interrupting my email? - S

Hi S,

Here's my understanding of the correct order of the process of SEAMLESSLY moving a site, pointing a domain at the new server, and transferring domains to a new registrar. At least this is how I've done it time and time again.

1. Your web designer should download and save your site from the old hosting service, then immediately upload it to your new hosting account as soon as that is establish and BEFORE the domain name servers (DNS) have been changed.

2. Your Web designer should then set up your email accounts on the new server.

I didn't know this, but you can have a site hosted on one server and the email hosted on another, if you want.

3. Only then the should the DNS (domain name server) change be initiated because when that process is complete it will simply point your domain at the new server, which has your site sitting there ready and waiting. The standard time it takes for this to occur is between 24-48 hours. I have had it happen even sooner. This way you can still get your email from the old server, then switch to the new server email options the day the tDNS propogate on the new server.

4. Finally, when everything is working and your site is tested at the new hosting company (making sure all your links work, pages load correctly and your email is working), then and only then would I request for your domain name to be transferred to the new registrar. Note: Moving a site to a new server/hosting company does NOT require transferring a domain name to a new registrar. That's the prerogative of the site owner. The only reason I do this for clients is so they get one bill and one customer service person to deal with if anything comes up about their website.

NOTE: , when your web designer sets up your email account on the new server, to reduce SPAM, which can never to totally eliminated, see if they offer a spam filter or spam assassin on your hosting package.

Sigh...one of the sad facts about having a live link to your email on a website is that you will get alot of SPAM and there's very little you can do about it. Recently I found that I have 5000+ spam emails sitting on the server clogging up my hosting account. Such is life on the web!

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Webpage Standards

2007-01-01T22:35:00.001-06:00

Hi - thank you for taking my question. I am a photographer but am just now learning how to use adobe photoshop to make a web page of my pics. It is asking me for a web page size - could you please tell me what the "standard," web page size and number of pixels per square inch should be.
Thankyou very much.
Pete

Hi Pete,The default webpage size is 800 pixels by 600 pixels with 72 dpi (dots per inch) resolution.
Hope this helps!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Blogging Directories

2006-11-18T21:38:00.001-06:00

If you have a blog and want people to know about it, you might want to list it in the following blog directories:

Blogs are great ways to get traffic back to your website.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Get Google to crawl meta tags

2006-11-02T19:46:00.001-06:00

Hi Annette,

I can't get Google to correctly crawl my meta tags.At least a month ago, I updated my meta tags on the following website: www.humorandwisdom.com as follows:

META name="title" content="Jokes and Riddles, Humor and Wisdom by Kuder.

META name="description" content="An organized and screened collection of jokes, riddles, puzzles, and lifestyle enhancing wisdom."

META name="keywords" content="Jokes and riddles, Joke, jokes, riddle, riddles, puns, Kuder, humor, wisdom, wealth, happiness, affirmation, affirmations, aphorism, aphorisms, rebus, rebuses, words of wisdom, positive affirmations, blonde jokes, blond jokes, Halloween jokes, Halloween riddles, Halloween humor, Christmas jokes, Christmas riddles, Christmas humor, jokes riddles, difficult riddles, hard riddles, answers to riddles, funny riddles, math riddles, logical riddles, funny puns, office humor."

When I put "humor and wisdom" into a Google search, it comes back with:
return to kuder's home page Jokes and Riddles, Humor and Wisdom by Kuder Click flag. Jokes The best of the best. Riddles The cream of the crop. Words of Wisdom Ditto! ...

The above are random words from my home page, but isn't what I submitted and isn't what I want my listing to say. Clicking on what Google cached, it reads:

This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.humorandwisdom.com/ as retrieved on Oct 17, 2006 11:59:35 GMT.G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. I have re-submitted my website a couple of times. How can I get Google to get my meta tags right? Also, Google isn't picking up the other key words I submitted.

Roger

Hi Roger,

That's because Google doesn't use the description metatag as what they display in the results. If you had "humor and wisdom" in your description tag, which you don't, it might display that, but not necessarily.

When you enter a keyword phrase in Google's search it crawls all the content of your homepage or entire site (depending on your robots follow tag). What is displays in the results is text around that phrase that appears in the content of your page. You don't have "humor and wisdom" in your text of the page either.

Also, you don't have the phrase "humor and wisdom" in your keyword tag. In fact, your doing that tag all wrong. You should NEVER use single words as keywords. You should always use 2-4 word phrases. Second, those phrases need to be in the text/content of the page too. Third, you should only have 2-4 keywords in that metatag, with the most important one first.

When you say Google isn't picking up the other keywords you "submitted" are you meaning the ones in your keyword tag? Not sure what you mean here. Google hardly pays attention to metatags other than the title tag. Other search engines might, but you have to do your tags correctly, as I've described above.

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Reputable Website Hosting

2006-11-02T09:16:00.001-06:00

Hi,

I am currently hosting my site with IX webhosting and am not too fond of the system - email sluggish and many functions not available as well as dragging teeth to make changes. Wanted to get a few suggestions about reliable hosting sites that some of you may use. Any info appreciate. Thanks - Have a good day!

Susan

Hi Susan,

I host 90% of my websites with www.TheDesignShoppe.com because they are high-tech/high touch. The fees are low, they throw in alot of "bells and whistles" for free, and the customer service is great. They own and maintain their own servers and have 99% up time. In the 7 years I've worked with them, they only had a server crash once and they had all their sites back up and running within 24 hours.

I want to throw in my two cents about GoDaddy and Network Solutions. Both have been reputed to have done disreputable things, some of which I've experienced directly. I've had great problems with both. For example, if you register a domain with GoDaddy, such as yourcompany.com, they will buy up all other versions of it, like yourcompany.net or .biz, and then try to sell it back to you at a higher rate. I've also had them "lock" accounts after I've made a purchase and give no reason other than "security" and not allow access to them again. Network Solutions is not a U.S. based company, so they are not subject to some of the laws affecting the internet. I've had a client get stung by one of their $99 promotions, then get billed $499 for it. I've tried to transfer domains from Network Solutions to another provider and they've been slow to release them.

I've also been told that if a hosting company hosts "adult" sites, that this can affect your websites' ability to get onto search engines, because the search engines may ban all sites coming from those servers. So, buyer beware!

More on this and other issues you need to know when building a website will be in my upcoming ebook. Watch for it.

Thank you for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Promoting my Website

2006-10-29T20:24:00.001-06:00

Hi Annette,
do you know how I can promote my web site to attract more visits besides what I put in the Meta tags and just sit and wait? I don't have much money so I can't spend hundreds of dollars on ads. Any help is appreciated,

Thanks. Loren

Hi Loren,
I assume you're talking about how to get traffic from search engines, since you mentioned metatags. Metatags are not that important anymore, except the title tag, that looks like this . That's the first and one of the most important places search engines look for keywords. What's most important is keyword-rich original content on your site.

There are 3 aspects to getting traffic from search engines, all of which require a book in themselves. First your site needs to be in the first 2 pages of the results for desirable and relevant keywords or few will ever find it. You have to carefully select your keywords and optimize your website pages for those. This is a time consuming process. Then you have to get other sites of link to your site. There are 3 ways to do this. One is to have compelling and interesting original content, so other site owners will naturally want to link to your site. Second is to request links from other sites. This has to be done carefully, so that you are getting relevant, quality links from busy sites. The third way is to pay for links.

I do search engine optimization and have been successful in getting sites within the top 20 results on relevant keywords.

For those with a small budget, I recommend PPC (Pay Per Click ads, as those get you seen immediately).

Hope this helps.
Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Website Feedback Form

2006-09-30T15:54:00.001-05:00

Hello Annette,
Is there any type of free web feed back form that I can use on my web site. The web site I have does have a from available but I doent' seem to want to repond to sending me and email that feedback has been received.

What I want is a form that visitors can submit and the form will come to me first before it is actually posted on my site. I have a guest book but I am trying to get a web form also.
Thank you, Martha

Hi Martha,
I'll bet what's happening is you haven't set your form up correctly. Sometimes because of your website hosting package, you have to make sure to route your form to an email that included your domain name, i.e. info@yourdomain.com.

Hope this helps.
Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Free Guestbook

2006-09-10T09:16:00.001-05:00

Hi Girl Geek,
Is there any type of free guest book that I can add to my web site that has the option of reviewing the guest book entires before they are posted to the web site? Thank you
Martha

Hi Martha,
You might try Bravenet.net for free guestbook. Beware, as guestbooks get spammed alot.

Otherwise, I'd suggest a blog. You can get a free one at http://www.blogger.com/ and set it up to moderate comments.

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Helpful Programs to have for Web Design

2006-09-04T13:15:00.001-05:00

Hi Annette,
I've just got started building my own website from scratch. Tried Dreamweaver, but it just took too long to learn. So I've decided to use CoolPage. It's a pretty basic, but quite easily understood web design program. My question is, what are the most popular or most crucial pieces of design software to have while building a very basic website. I'd like to have a shopping cart and newsletter on it. I've got Photoshop and a good little free button making program. What else would I need in terms of software. Nothing too fancy like flash or others. Just the essentials for a beginner website builder like myself.
Thanks
Rob

Hi Rob,
The other thing you will need is a way to compress images, as filesize usually is large and slows down page loading time. Photoshop does that when you tell it to. Click "save optimized for web."

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Friends Building Sites for Friends

2006-08-18T12:24:00.001-05:00

Hi:

My friend is running a restaurant. I would like to create a web page for them. But i have no experience. Can you tell me how can i begin and is it possible for customer order the food through the internet and them fax it to fax machine.

Thanks
Tat

Hi Tat,

Designing a website for a business takes each of the following skills and knowledge:

1. HTML coding or use of a WYSIWYG editor, like Dreamweaver or FrontPage
2. Knowledge of search engine marketing
3. Visual design and graphic skills
4. Adding features, like fax in orders
5. Excellent writing skills and knowing how people read websites, which is different than print
6. Designing navigation

Unless you have all of those skills, I would recommend you have your friend hire a professional web designer. Putting a "beginners" website online may create a bad impression of your friend's business and do more harm than good. About 50% of my business over the last 4 years has been fixing sites built by well intentioned friends.

I'm sorry, but I had to laugh at your message because your grammar made it sounds like you want to fax the food to a fax machine.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Preventing Spam to Website Email Addresses

2006-08-04T16:47:00.001-05:00

I Got 5000 + Emails in a Single Day!

I was thrilled when I saw my Outlook downloading emails one afternoon. Had I run some killer newsletter that was bring such a response? Had my search engine optimization hit the gold mine? But when it got to over 5000 emails, I began to get suspicious.

Sure enough, I was getting spam emails that had backed up and clogged up my hosting server since 2005. So, if you've every gotten feedback that people cannot reach you through your email on your website, you too might have this problem.

The solution, log in to your control panel of your web hosting company and clear your email box of spam at least once a month. Often your hosting company supplies some sort of Spamblocker that you can add to prevent this from happening, or a way to route spam into a :blackhole or bounce them back to the sender.

Another way to prevent getting a lot of spam from your website email address is to not list is as a text link. For example, instead of me putting Annette@GirlGeekWebDesigns.com, I'd put Annette AT GirlGeekWebDesigns DOT com. Or, you could create the @ symbol as an image file and use that. That would confound the spammers out phishing for emails.

If you post an email on your website, some spam is inevitable, but you can prevent alot of it.

Thanks for Asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Getting High Rankings in Search Engines

2006-08-04T16:26:00.001-05:00

Hi Girl Geek,

We have several big competitors in our primary market, and we are looking to make our website hit higher on google searches and generate more business. Can you help? How do we get started?

Name withheld

Hi,
Getting your website ranked well in search engines is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. When people ask me how to get a #1 ranking in search engines I have a list of questions I ask them.

1. What search engines do you want to be ranked well in?
2. What keywords are you wanting high rankings on?
3. Who's linking to your site already?
4. Are you using a Pay Per Click advertising program?
5. What sites do you consider your main competitors?

The first step I would take is a thorough review of your site to see:
1. Is is search engine compatible and browser friendly?
2. What keywords are already on your site?
3. What incoming links are driving traffic to your site?
4. Where does your rank in the desired search engines already?

Then depending on your goals and budget I would make recommendations that could be implemented in stages.

Whole books and conferences are held on this topic, so I'm just going to give the briefest of overviews. My goal is to give you enough information for you to know what's involved and so that you can ask intelligent questions when discussing this with an SEO company or even with your web designer who will need to know whether or not you plan to promote your site via search engines.

So here goes...

SEO is a complicated and ongoing art/science and needs to be reviewed at a bare minimum of every 3-6 months because the ranking formulas/algorithms used by the major search engines are changed frequently. Do not be mistaken: this is NOT an easy project, but it is do-able. To really do the job right you need an ongoing effort. It's almost a full time job, if you're serious about doing it right. And, there's no magic bullet, at least, not one I've heard of or tried.

SEO is also different depending on which search engine you're wanting to get ranked well in. If you're covered by the top 3, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, you've reached at least 90% of internet users. Each of these search engines attract different demographics and have different requirements for the site construction and keyword placement, so that's something to consider when trying to figure out where to put most of your effort.

Similarly, when you ask for better rankings it all depends on what search terms you're wanting good rankings on. SEO strategies also change over time, so your site needs to be reviewed for those periodically. Also, since the internet reindexes itself once a month, changes made today in your site might not result in changes in ranking for up to 30 days.

The two main strategies in SEO are keyword selection and placement and link strategies. Of course, the site has to be designed in such a way that it is not only compatible with the search engines, but that it loads quickly and displays correctly in all browsers. If your site takes longer than 8 seconds to load, it is estimated that you lose up to 80% of potential visitors.

Selection of appropriate keywords is essential. I use a 4 step process to determine appropriate keywords. 1) brainstorming all the keyword phrases that potential site visitor in your niche might us in a natural search 2) checking to see if those terms are being searched monthly at a high rate 3) checking the number of websites competing for that search term and 4) determining the relative cost for that keyword in the 3 major Pay Per Click programs. (You have to go through the same steps for PPC programs, so why not do them all at the same time?) Then you need to follow the guidelines of the search engines as to where to place the keywords within your site and at what frequency. These rules change over time, as people try to "fool" the search engines.

Link strategies are important for 2 reasons. Having outside sites link into your site drives targeted traffic to your site. Having multiple incoming links into your site also alerts the search engines that your site must be "important," so it is awarded a higher ranking if it is busy. So think, strategic alliance.

The best incoming links are natural links, which are unsolicited. You obtain these by having really useful content on your site, so that people will naturally want to link to your site.

The other strategy is to request links to your site from "relevant" websites. Determining "relevant" links is time consuming. The quality of the incoming link is more important that the quantity of links. You have to request links to your site, follow up and often give reciprocal links from your site as a "courtesy" to the linking site.

It seems now that a lot of sites are requesting payment for providing links to your site. That can run into some money. So I generally start out with the free links, then scrutinize the quality and traffic on the paid sites. Some of the ones I've looked at for my other client appear just to be people whose site exists for the sole purpose of bilking money out of naive site owners, who don't know a quality link from a hole in the ground.

About 6 years ago, I got a bid for SEO on my Geek website, and with the designers discount it was $1200 for 3 months. I didn't get specifics because that was outside of my budget at the time, but I've learned what questions to ask since then, because too many people have gotten ripped off because of fantastic claims by SEO companies. So beware of SEO companies that "guarantee a #1 ranking in search engines." What they might mean is they can get you a #1 ranking on an obscure search engine on 1 keyword for about a month. When you get a bid, get a detailed explanation of what you're getting for the money.

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Don't Lose Your Domain Name

2006-07-02T03:18:00.001-05:00

Hi All,
I can't believe it. One of my website clients forgot to renew his domain name, LakesideCounseling.com, and it was immediately snatched up by for resale, a company in D.C. called BuyDomains.com.

When I tried to get them to release it back to my client for the original $12 he probably paid for it, they told me they'd sell it back to him for the "current market value." They estimated the value at $1,888!!! They told me most expired domains go from between $2000 - $4000. Sheesh!

I've also seen some domain registrars buy every version of your domain name that you don't buy, to resell to you at a higher price later. (The registrars I've seen do this are GoDaddy.com andRegisterFly.com.) The registrar I've had no trouble with are Register.com or Enom.com.

So, here's my suggestions:

1. buy all versions of your domain name, i.e. .com, .net, .biz, .org if you have a unique business name and want to stop anyone else from using it or having to buy it later at a higher price. It's not that expensive.

2. Buy your domain names in 5-10 year blocks. It's often cheaper that way anyhow, since most domains register for $9 - $12 a year, and you may get a discount for buying over time.

3. Buy plurals of your domain names too for similar reasons. For example, I own both http://www.girlgeekwebdesigns.com/ and http://www.girlgeekwebdesign.com/ and have them both pointing to my site.

Again, it's not that expensive on the front end, and may save you $$$$ and heartache down the road when you're business name is well known.

Ask me anything!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ebook Coming Soon!

2006-06-25T11:11:00.003-05:00

To learn more about my soon-to-be-published ebook, Girl Geek Speak: Everything you Need to DECIDE and DO BEFORE Hiring a Web Designer, listen to the audio clip above.

I love technology!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free Initial Consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Website Security

2006-04-12T05:15:00.001-05:00

Dear Girl Geek,

I have a website that includes text, photos, links, downloadable pdf files, and a video. Are there any steps I can take to make sure that this website is secure? I want to make sure that nobody can purposely shut it down and that nobody can intentionally change the content.
Lisa

Hi Lisa,
This is not a web design question, but a web hosting question. Contact the company that you host your site with and ask them your security question.

All I know is that if you have a good password for logging into your hosting account and if you change it monthly the likelihood of someone hacking into your site to change content is lessened. I'm sure there's more to it than that, so contact someone who understands internet security.
Good luck and thanks for asking.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free initial consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Making Site Look More Professional on a Budget

2006-04-12T05:10:00.001-05:00

Hi Girl Geek,
I was thinking it might be wise to get a webdesigner to help me make my website look more professional and to make my store look more credible, but I don't have much money to spare. I don't think I could afford to pay someone per hour, or just that they'd make the code easy enough to read that I could make changes as needed. What do you think I should do? Also do you think highly of paypal.com as a means for a business shopping cart?
James

Hi James,

Even if you have a small budget, it's worth it to have a professional looking site. I'd be glad to look it over and give you some ideas of how to do this on a budget. You can buy inexpensive templates and build the site around that. Although it wouldn't be customized, there are some pretty good templates out there.

Yes, I use PayPal all the time for shopping carts and think very highly of it. It's cheap and it's secure, and it can do whatever most businesses need.

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free initial consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Marketing Self-Published Material

2006-04-03T13:16:00.002-05:00

Dear Girl Geek,
How does one get self published material seen? Web marketing is a mystery to me.
Tom

Hi Tom,

I'd be glad to answer your question! I'll need alittle more information first. When you say "self published" are you saying you have the book in a paper format or is it an ebook (electronic book)? What have you tried so far?

Either way the best way to get it seen is to identify who your prospective readers are first. Then develop a marketing plan directed at them. This is true for the web or any form of marketing. I'd start with getting the book or ebook on Amazon.com or ebay.com. If you have a website, I'd set up a PPC (pay per click) advertising program on either Google or Yahoo.

This is just a sample of the many ideas I do as part of my consultation services.
Let me know if you want to know more about my services or if you need a website.

Thanks for asking!
Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free initial consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: Manual search engine submission vs. automated software?

2006-03-14T21:06:00.001-06:00

Dear Girl Geek,

I have two websites and both of them need to be submitted to all of the search engines. Can you pls. give me a quote of what you would charge to do that? Also, what advantage would it be to have you do it rather than a service like submitnet.net? THANKS!
T. S.

Hi T,

I'd be glad to help. I have some questions first. (Hope I don't overwhelm you. Just because I know what I'm talking about, doesn't mean I can explain it so you do, but I'll try!)

1. Which of the hundreds of national and international search engines do you want to be listed on? Basically for the US you need to be on Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Netscape. That covers about 90-95% of the market.

2. How do you know you're not listed? Sometimes sites are listed but their site isn't ranked well, i.e., doesn't come up in the first 1-2 pages of search results.

For example, here's Google's guidelines for listing:"Google is a fully automated search engine that employs robots known as "spiders" to crawl the web and find sites for inclusion in the Google index. Since this process doesn't involve human editors, it's NOT necessary to submit your site to Google in order to be included in our index. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed aren't manually submitted for inclusion.We add thousands of new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, but you may submit your URL as well. Submission isn't necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large number of sites submitting URLs, it's likely that your pages will be found in an automatic crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO NOT add all submitted URLs to our index and cannot predict when or if they will appear."

3. The rule of thumb I've consistently heard is do manual submissions where necessary. I say "where necessary" because if your site is on a webhosting server, Google will pick it up within a month (unless there's some obvious design flaw or spam offense that gets it banned*). After Google picks it up, most other search engines will pick it up too.

Now directories are another matter and usually are edited by humans. The biggest and the widest known is the Open Directory Project with feeds such directories as Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others. You have to submit manually to them and then wait...and wait...and wait....as they have such a backlog. It's free, but you have to wait...and wait.....and wait.

Yahoo is technically also a directory and has a paid inclusion listing. Submitting your site to directories also needs to be manual because you have to hand select the appropriate category for site placement. Automated submission software, I don't know if submitted is one, doesn't do that for you.

4. The other advantage of having a human do it is that sometimes you have to enter a code in order to complete the submission. Automated submission software can't read the code. And, also, search engines sometimes won't list sites that are submitted via automatic submit software. They consider this spam.

So, I could run an analysis of both sites and see if and where you're listed and ranked on any and as many search engines you want. You'd have to tell me what keywords you want to check your ranking on.

I suspect it's ranking you really want, not listing, cuz if you've had these sites for awhile, they're probably listed. If it is ranking you want, then I would make some recommendations of ways to go that meets your needs and budget.

I need clarification on these points first.

If you want to schedule a call to talk to me about this (in case this is all "geek" to you), I'd be glad to.

*View this link to see Google's design, technical and content guidelines that might result in your site not being listed. http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html

Thanks for asking!

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs: Custom Web Design and SEO for Small Businesses on a Budget
Call for a Free initial consultation
1-877-866-4335

Ask Girl Geek: How Do I Get More Links to My Website?

2006-03-03T15:49:00.000-06:00

Hi Girl Geek,

How do I get links to my law firm's website?
D

Hi D,

As far as increasing links to your site, here's my understanding of how this works and ways to get links. Remember, all links are NOT created equal. You must request links from sites that are relevant to yours.

There's really no guaranteed or systematic way to do this that I know of, so you can select one or several strategies and see what happens.

First, if you site has interesting, useful, or newsworthy information, other sites may spontaneously link to yours. This is ideal.
Otherwise you have to create or ask for others to link to your site.

Ways to do that include:
1. Provide a "Link to Us" page at your website. On this page, provide suggested links to your site, include the HTML tag so people can just grab it and drop it into their site. If you write your own link, you can include important keywords in the link.

2. Register with search directories, like Yahoo ($299 submission fee) and the Open Directory project (www.dmoz.com.), local directories and regional directories, such as chamber of commerce, local attorney referral services, etc.

3. Contact professional association sites and ask them to provide a link to your site.

4. Contact companies or colleagues you do business with and ask them to provide a link to your site and you will to theirs. This is called Reciprocal Linking.

5. Submit to announcement sites, such as www.URLwire.com or send out press releases online at http://www.internetnewsbureau.com/ or http://www.free-press-release.com/submit/free-press-release.php or http://www.floridatoday.com/forms/services/release.htm

6. Find sites that are linking to your competitors and ask them to link to yours also.

7. Search for "keyword add URL" online and find sites that fit your business/industry and link there.

8. Contact email newsletters that your niche market might read and either advertise there or write an article for them, include your website in your byline.

9. Create a blog - post newsworthy comments on hot topics. Many blogs are read by search engines. Plus, if you link from your blog to your own site, you'll add another link.

10. Mention your site in online discussion groups, listserves, and blogs. Although you can't officially advertise in these, it can be part of your email signature.

11. Syndicate content from RSS feeds and blogs.12. Write articles for legal news sites, like http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20040114_marquis.html and include a link to your site.

13. Wait...eventually people will start linking to your site.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Help! My sites aren't getting any traffic.

2006-01-08T15:52:00.000-06:00

Hi Annette,
I've had two websites for over a year (built in Mambo - a popular content management system). I'm happy with my web designer, but don't know why my sites haven't gotten any traffic. Can you help?
K

Hi K,
If you are relying solely on search engine marketing to promote your website, there are 2 immediate problems that make your sites "unappetizing" to search engines. First is your domains are being redirected to the URL (domain name) within Mambo. Search engines don't like URL redirects, therefore your site might not be appearing on some of the major search engines.

Second, search engines do not rank websites built in Mambo (or other site builders, such as the highly advertised one available on Register.com) as high as they do sites built in html. If your site isn't found on the first 2 pages of the search engines, it might as well not be there.

That being said, since you already have a web designer that you are happy with and since I don't know Mambo, I would suggest you use me to do the keyword analysis of each page of your site, and go through a refinement of your keyword strategy for both Search Engine Optimization and PPC advertising. I will generate a report and recommendations that you can then give to your web designer to incorporate into your site. The report will review what keywords are already prominent on the pages of your site(s), suggest 2-3 keywords for each page and metatags that are relevant to your niche, actually being searched at a high level, and have "low" competition from other websites or other bidders on Yahoo's PPC program.

Also, as we discussed, if you have a clear description of your niche, you could also have me develop some other website promotion ideas particular to help you reach that niche.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How Can I get aweber.com to archive my newsletters on my website?

2006-01-08T15:48:00.000-06:00

Hi Annette,
I tried to put my December newsletter (on aweber.com) in the archive and was unsuccessful. I clicked on the web archive link but it doesn't come up when I try to reach it through the web site. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Angela

Hi Angela,
When you login to aweber and set up your newsletter you have to click the link way at the bottom where it says
Not published in RSS/XML feed or HTML archive, click to publish message. Then it will publish it and be able to be found on your site.

I just did that for you. Remember to do it each time.

Thanks for asking!

Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Can a Website Do for My Small Business?

2005-10-30T23:51:00.000-06:00

Hi Annette,

How do I know a website will benefit my small business?

Carol

Dear Carol,

The most common use small business owners have for the internet is to communicate with their current or prospective customers via email or to search for products and services they need for their businesses. I believe small businesses have YET to tap the amazing benefits of having an internet presences.

Some of the other ways small business might benefit from having a website are ....

to sell products or services online 24/7/365 via an e-commerce site
to give basic information about their business, i.e., location, products, hours, information about what they do and why someone should chose them over their competitors.
to prospect for clients...in other words to give people searching for their type of business enough information to prompt them to decide to do business with them...to call or come into the store.
to extend their reach to a wider or larger market ...regionally or nationally or worldwide
to set themselves and their businesses apart by being available online
to save money on direct mailing and advertising by doing it all on the web. When your business is on the web you're not only saving the cost of the ad, but postage, time to do printing and stuffing envelops, etc. Plus, your clients can interact with you via email or chat.
to communicate or interact with current or prospective customers via blogs, email newsletters, online questionnaires, chat
clients can post requests for bids via an online form
vendors can find your business and they can sell to you
post answers to frequently asked questions and serve a customer service function.
troubleshooting...to post diagrams or instructions for clients to download
process credit card payment
schedule appointments or reservations (such as for a doctor's office or for a hotel)
post testimonials
post photos of your products or showcase jobs
establish your expertise
to search for qualified employees to conduct customer satisfaction surveys
to do market research to see if there's enough interest in a new product or service to provide it
to open new markets

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Internet Marketing Consultation

2005-10-30T23:34:00.000-06:00

Hi Annette,
I wonder if you could let me know what services your web site promotion consultant provides, and what the cost would be?
Thanks.
JS

Hi JS,

Basically this service is about marketing to your targeted niche via the many options available via internet and through your website. There are a variety of ways to do that. Such a strategy would take into consideration your strengths, preferences, budget and timeframe. For example, many coaches/therapists are introverts, therefore they shy away from public speaking and networking, but they excel at writing and one on one interactions. Other coaches/therapists I've worked with have no time to write, so they may need help selecting other methods of establishing their expertise with their clientele. Perhaps posting an interview with you via audiopodium or having you schedule some online interactive chats would do the trick. There are many many ways to use the internet to promote any business.

We would start with a basic needs assessment, which may or may not include a thorough review of your website and your overall marketing strategy. I'd get to know your business goals, help you define and find your target market, then design a marketing strategy especially for your business and budget.

If your website is not drawing the business you want, we might need to do an analysis of the site, including reviewing your keyword strategy, marketing message, site statistics, current search engine rankings, and any other website promotion strategies you are using, such as Pay Per Click advertising. In other words we'd look to see how your current website is performing and determine ways to make it perform better. We'd also look at other marketing efforts and see how they work together synergistically.

Second, we'd also look at other promotion strategies specific to your business and designed for your niche. These might include a mix of traditional promotion strategies and innovative use of the internet.

My fee is $150/hour for this service. If there is enough interest in this, I would be willing to offer a group.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Help Me Get Traffic to My Coaching Website

2005-06-12T13:38:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,

I'm so frustrated that I'm sinking thousands into my website and not getting the kind of return on my investment I thought I would. Any suggestions?
D

Hi D,

I want you to know I'm behind your success as a coach. I'm not only a web designer. I want to see my clients succeed because when you do, I do as well.

Here's what I'd do, if I were in your shoes.

I'd get a mailing list of potential clients or companies together...If you want to work within a certain industry, there are ways to get the names, addresses, and email addresses of key personnel. I'd start by defining a narrow niche and saturate that first, then expand outwards to related niches.
I'd write a flurry of newsletters (bi-weekly or monthly) with very CONCRETE tips, not some of the "airy fairy" stuff I see some coaches write. I'd mine your expertise from your experience in business for this.
I'd send hard copies of all newsletters to key personnel from above, inviting them to subscribe to the electronic version.
I'd include either a testimonial or a sample coaching scenario in each newsletter, so readers can gauge your effectiveness and relevancy to what they are needing.
I'd do some FREE seminars for those key personnel, so they can get a feel for you, your expertise, and how you work.
I'd do an audiopodium and announce it on the newsletter, website, voice mail, and anywhere else you can.
I'd put all back issues of your newsletter on your website. Unfortunately, you have chosen an email management program for your newsletters that doesn't offer an archival feature. I'd fix that right away.
I'd look at your site stats to see if there's a way to find out where your site visitors are coming from and if you can contact them.
I'd give an incentive to your current coaching clients to refer others to you.
I'd find some busy coaching-related websites, such as IFC, MentorCoach, CoachU or any other coaching consortium and ask them to link to yours. This will drive targeted traffic to your site.
I'd subscribe to every major coaching referral service there is.
I'd network within my desired niche...out the wazoo!
I'd stop paying for marketing seminars for coaches and spend the money DOING marketing.
I'd start a blog.
More.......I'd have more, but my brain is empty for the moment!!

I was vacuuming (my house, not my brain) and came up with a few more ideas....

16. I'd start an online community, such as a discussion board or blog, focused on the needs of my niche.

17. I'd find the newsgroups my niche subscribes to and "lurk" there until I see what kind of issues they are concerned with. Then I'd start posting, but not "flaming" = advertising to the list. This is not allowed, but you can post a link to your website using your email signature.

18. I'd find a way to do a chat with your niche. For example, ivillage.com does featured chats for women. There are also free chat features you can add to your website and host your own topical chat.

20. I'd do an online survey or focus group to determine the needs of my niche and how to best meet them.

21. I'd cull through Chamber of Commerce websites to find possible leads for business coaching/life coaching (as we all know how stressed business owners are!)

22. I'd develop a "prospects" file (mine is now 2 inches thick) and touch base with those people regularly.

23. I'd get a toll-free phone number and use it in advertising to my niche. See www.CallWave.com.

24. I'd advertise my services in specialty magazines and trade journals my niche reads.

25. Okay, I'll stop at 25. That's a nice "round" number.

Thanks for Asking!

Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Are the Major Search Engines?

2005-06-06T02:25:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,
Which are the major search engines that I should be listed on?
J

Hi J,
Here is a list of the top search engines (not necessarily in any particular order)
Yahoo (www.yahoo.com)
Google (www.google.com)
Altavista (www.altavista.com)
Overture (www.overture.com)
LookSmart (www.looksmart.com)
Lycos (www.lycos.com)
AOL Search (www.aolsearch.com)
Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com)
Teoma (www.teoma.com)
Excite (www.excite.com)
Fast Search (www.fastsearch.com)
HotBot (www.hotbot.com)
MSN Search (www.msn.com)
Northern Light (www.northernlight.com)
ODP / DMOZ (www.dmoz.com)

Thanks for Asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Causes a 404 Error?

2005-06-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,

What's this message in my website stats that say 175 people got a "404 error" when trying to visit my website?

Deb

Hi Deb,
Again, I have to go to my trusty expert, Julie, from www.TheDesignShoppe.com. Here's what Julie said.

A 404 not found error could me a lot of things. Let's take me, for example. If someone visits my site and bookmarks a page named design.htm and I change that page a few months down the road and then they come back. It's now gone. It's a 404 error. You will get that for many things even images that were there at one time and now changed or removed from the site. This goes for the search engines too. There are SO many little search engines out there. Of course they don't have the big money to update like google or yahoo. So, they cache many pages of the site. Normally the index.htm stays that and not index.html or .shtml so you never have to worry about that not being found. It's the deeper pages in a site that get cached and then results in a 404. And, it could be as simple as someone typing in a url wrong to a page in her site.

We have custom 404 pages that can be done in her site. Just take her template with the nav and change the text to say "oops, page not found - look to the navigation and find the correct page you are looking for".

Thanks Julie!

And thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What Do You Know About KickStart?

2005-06-05T10:27:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,

What do you know about Kickstart? http://www.kickstartcart.com/
Ellen

Hi Ellen,

Looks like it's intended for ecommerce sites that are planning on selling alot of products. It has the features you mentioned, but if you're not going to sell alot of items you might be paying for more than you need.

It's got a 30 risk free trial, so I'd go with that to evaluate before you buy. You'd have to buy at least the Basic plan to get all the features you mentioned. It doesn't mention a set up or hosting fee. Seems expensive to me to have to pay an annual fee for their services, when you could have a shopping cart built from free open source code, integrate it with PayPal and not have monthly fees.

If you want autoresponders and a mailing list, you may already have the capacity on your current webhosting plan. I'd check that first.

If you want a mailing list, that's more sophisticated, i.e., in html look at www.ConstantComment.com or I use www.EzineDirector.com because it will allow you to layout your newsletter to look exactly like your website, plus it archives back issues and gives you stats on who reads your newsletter.

Thanks for Asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: A Good Webhosting Company

2005-06-05T08:20:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,

We're jumping back into newslettering again. Can you recommend a reliable, complete package that will send out newsletters, do shopping carts, autoresponders, and the like? We're looking at things like KickStart.

Once we get rolling, I'll email you to talk about updating the website.

Thanks,
Ellen

Hi Ellen,
I'm not familiar with KickStart. What is it?
If you're looking for a new webhosting company, I use www.theDesignShoppe.com all the time. You can host newsletters, autoresponders there. If you buy the right hosting package it will accommodate a shopping cart, but a shopping cart is a program that needs to be created. We build them from OSCommerce, a FREE open source resource.
See www.militaryscrapbooking.net.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How Can I Check To See If My Domain Name is Available?

2005-05-27T15:44:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,

I went to www.registerfly.com and found that www.myname.com is taken. I had registered that some time ago and allowed the registration to expire. Could that be the problem? What are my options here? Finding the documentation for my earlier registration could be a challenge.

R

Hi R,
Yes, that's the problem. You can either call the company you originally registered it with and pay a penalty fee to get it back or you can wait 30-90 days to buy it after it's freed up. Usually, if you register your personal name, no one else is likely to register it. Also, if you register a business name that includes an "LLC" in the domain name, that one is not likely to be purchased by anyone else either.

To check to see if your domain has expired, go to www.whois.com. I just looked at your personal name has not expired.

Thanks for asking,
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Adding Streaming Audio to a Website

2005-05-22T19:48:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

I had to ask Julie, my Geek expert from TheDesignShoppe.com, this one.

"How do you add Streaming Audio to a website?"
Irene

Here's Julie's answer:
Hi Annette.
Here's some good info on how to do it:
May 29, 2005 UPDATE: I just tried Julie's recommendations and when I tried to save the audio file in the FREE verstion of Real Producer, I found that it wouldn't do it and I'd have to upgrade to the $199.99 version. I'll bet it used to be free and functional and now it's not. Happens alot.

Adding streaming RealAudio/RealVideo site content

All sites can support RealMedia (RealAudio and RealVideo) files via HTTP streaming. Also known as "pseudo-streaming," HTTP streaming provides virtually unlimited streaming of RealAudio and RealVideo files over HTTP. Follow these simple instructions to add streaming RealMedia content to your web page:

Step 1: Create/convert sounds using RealEncoder

Create a .rm file using RealProducer. RealProducer can be obtained (free) from the RealAudio web site - www.real.com :

Use the RealProducer wizard to record or convert existing content into RealMedia (.rm) format.

Step 2: Create a text file

Use a standard text editor such as Notepad, and create a .ram file. The file should contain the following (case-sensitive) HTML line:

http://www.yourdomain.com/yourfile.rm

Note: The URL above must include the "http://" characters. For example: http://www.yourdomain.com/ourfile.rm would be appropriate, whereas pnm://www.yourdomain.com/ourfile.rm would not be.

Upload the .rm and .ram files to your account. Assuming you named the .rm file "yourfile.rm", the .ram file should be named "yourfile.ram", and should be located in the same directory. Make sure to upload the .rm file in binary mode and the .ram file in ASCII mode.

Step 3: Link

Link the .ram file to any image or text you specify on your page. When a visitor clicks on this link, the RealPlayer program starts. Upon spawning the player, the RealPlayer program reads the location of the RealAudio/RealVideo .rm file from the .ram file. The player then accesses and plays the file as it is being downloaded, in real time.

For more information, please visit the RealAudio site www.real.com

Putting Sound on your Web Site

There are a number of different type of sound files that can be put on web pages. Three of the more common sound files are .wav, .mid or(.midi), and au. files. One advantage to using a midi file is that midi files are much smaller and therefore it takes less time to download them. Midi files can only contain background (instrumental) music. Both au. files and .wav can contain any type of sounds (eg.,
vocal, background). However, .au and .wav files are much larger than midi files so it typically takes longer to download these files.

Hope this helps!
Annette

Updates on Blogging

2005-05-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

To learn the latest Blog-cabulary, Read this article
http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0505/news/blog_terms.html
Excerpt: Blogfeed - "syndication" of your blog for furthur distribution on the web
Ping - a system that notifies blog owners when someone posts a comment to their blog.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blog-tistic - according to InfoZine, 32 Million Americans read blogs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blog-istory http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0505/news/history_blogs.html
Excerpt: Since 2003 weblogs gained increasing notice for their role in breaking, shaping or spinning news stories
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Business Blogging is on the Rise according to Inc magazine
http://www.inc.com/criticalnews/articles/200504/blogs.html
Excerpt: --Business blogging consultants agree that it is yet to be proven that blogs are a good direct-response marketing tool, but they can be an excellent tool to build relationships and create brand equity as more Internet users see them as viable sources of information.
"Blogs can help in networking and creating industry contacts and business partners. They can also be excellent selling tools, particularly with affiliates," suggested Campbell.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to use blogging as a marketing tool http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/business/11474621.htm
Excerpt:
But for companies, blogs are an opportunity to tell clients and potential clients about your industry, products and services. And it doesn't matter how large or small your business is.
Blogs are a way to build an open relationship with customers, and make your company a resource on a particular subject. They're also good for spin.

Search engines love new content, and just putting a blog on your Web site could push your company to the top of someone's search results.

Ask Girl Geek: Domain Names

2005-05-20T12:57:00.000-05:00

Hi
I have a couple questions, 1. how much do you charge to find out if a domain name is available? And how much is domain name registration on an annual basis? 2. The website I have now if I decide to keep the domain name how does that work with the business that is currently hosting the site? Do they own it do I own it? How can I get it moved from them to you? I guess is the question and what is the cost for that. I looked at your fee structure and did not see this issue addressed there. Sorry if I missed it.
K

Hi K,

Thanks for asking! You can check yourself at www.whois.com to see if a domain is available. Domain registration is $12 a year with the company I use. If you want to transfer your current domain to another hosting company, it's just a matter of changing the DNS numbers. Or you can host the new site at the same hosting company if it is compatible with the software I use and has all the features needed for the new site.

Hope this helps!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Blogs?

2005-02-09T09:14:00.000-06:00

Hi Everyone,
I am support group leader for MCP 68 and this extraordinary group of coaches is having incredible discussions about coaching and business and the future. In last week's group, the question was raised about the comparative benefits of blogs and email newsletters.

Are there people in our community with experience using a blog? How effective is it? How much does it help increase trust levels towards the coach and increase name recognition? How would you compare it with the effectiveness of an email newsletter?

Janet

Hi Janet,I've used both blogs and email newsletters. Both are only pieces of software, so the question of how effective they are is more about how you use them and what you post in them. If you know what they can do, then you can decide which is best to suit your purposes.

The main difference in the ones I've used is with blogs people have know to go there when new content is posted, otherwise it's not in front of them like the regular publication of an email newsletter is. If you want "top of the mind phenomenon" and regular reminders I'd go for the email newsletter.

You can make blogs and email newsletters public, so that anyone can view them and you can set them both up to allow viewers to post comments, if you want that kind of interaction. The blogs I've seen all have automatic archives, so people can view past comments. I've mostly used blogs for my FAQ's page on my website and as an online journal to record ideas for the development of some groups. That one was not meant to be public, but may be useful and something I choose to share later.

I'd be glad to come to one of your support group calls to answer questions on this or any topic related to website if you like. Just give me about 2 week advanced notice so I can clear my schedule.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Why does Search Engine Optimization Cost so much?

2004-11-29T10:35:00.000-06:00

Hi M,

Search engine optimization is a huge and complex process. (Oh, if it were only as simple as putting in the keywords where FrontPage asks for them!)It's goal is to get your site ranked on the first page of as many search engines as possible, on the theory that 80% of traffic to your site comes from search engines (which personally I don't think applies to coaches, but hey...I don't have stats on that).

Getting ranked highly requires:
1. well selected keywords and high keyword frequency and knowing where to place those keywords in your website (not just your metatags)
2. Links back to your site from related businesses
3. Relevant and interesting content that changes at least once a month.

I bid 3 hours just to do the keyword selection. There's an article on my website that explains what I do, or how you could do it yourself. http://www.girlgeekwebdesigns.com/Newsletter15.htm

Most coaches don't have the time or the budget to do a full-search engine optimization, but they need well selected keywords for the Pay Per Click programs too. So I suggest doing at least that much. Last time I got a bid for search engine optimization from a company who does nothing but that (and this was with my web designer's discount) it was $1200 for only 3 months!

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Fix old site or scrap it and start over?

2004-10-16T08:43:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,

My name is D. I've been taking classes at MC for awhile and have a coaching practice. I have a website that isn't any good...pretty maybe but not effective. I think I'd like to have some feedback about changing. I see that you have an offer for free new website consideration. Would this apply here? I might want to go ahead with changes since I'm not happy with this one....I also spent way too much money and would like not to do that again....looking for a streamlined site and maybe new hosting. I think it's wrong...maybe not coachie enough...maybe not clear. I'd really like to know what you think is wrong...or right...by the way...I am not attached to it as "precious." I appreciate direct communication...I hope to hear from you.

I think I would like it if you could give me an estimate of the time it would take to fix it. I need to do this as inexpensively as possible, and if you could give me a ballpark idea it would help me make a decision.
Bests,
D

Hi D,

To scrap the whole thing and start anew, I would refer you to my fee structure on http://www.girlgeekwebdesigns.com/fees2.htm To"fix" what you have is hard to estimate, as I threw out alot of ideas and would have to have you select what you wanted done so I could estimate the time needed.

My experience has been that redesigns of an existing site are almost as expensive or sometimes more expensive than a new site. Most people don't seem to want to spend the money to get the site working properly, much less factor in the cost of promoting it properly. They're just discouraged with the lack of resulting sales and throw money at redesign without developing a website promotion strategy, hoping that making the site look or sound better will help.

One thing I've gleaned from building lots of sites for coaches is that coaches seem to expect the website to do all the marketing work for them and that the site alone wilI bring prospective clients. All they have to do is sit by the phone and wait for it to ring. Few coaches know how to do website promotion or understand that marketing individualized services online has more to do with relationship building (which can be done via the website).

A coaching website does NOT sell coaching services, as people in search of coaching services are not impulse buyers. Prospective clients need to get to know you in some fashion, either from your writing (newsletters/articles) or your speaking (free teleclasses, presentations, audiopodiums, streaming audio, etc.) Coaches tend to put a basic, very general brochure-type site online, never do anything to promote it, never write a newsletter and then get discouraged when no one comes to the site or calls them. Often their site and their coaching practice reflects a lack of focus and little knowledge of their niche's needs. The trick to marketing any business is to find a burning problem and offer a great or new way to solve it. Alot of coaches seem to offer a service they know or are comfortable with providing and hope that someone wants it.

I don't think you told me what your performance was on the site...in terms of how you're promoting it and how many visitors you're getting to it. That may be the problem rather than the overall design of the site (although I did note where design problems with the site may be losing people). I would rather look at the whole picture of what your needs are relative to the site than redesign your site and you still not get the results you want or expected.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Creating PDF files

2004-09-04T10:02:00.000-05:00

Annette,
I have no idea how to get my word document into a pdf file. Should I ask my webmaster to do that? Maybe he will know. Or is that something clickbank converts to when they do what they need to do? I guess I am just clueless on this matter. What do I need to know to get it into the most effective form?I would be happy to share anything I know (which is little) about e-books.
Rita

Hi Rita,
You can download a FREE pdf converter called PDF 995 Print Driver....lemme see where that's at....

http://www.pdf995.com/download.html

When you write your ebook in any other document form, all you do is go to "Print" (oddly enough) and instead of your usual printer, select PDF995 and it will save it as a PDF document! Ta da!

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: Marketing an ebook?

2004-08-02T10:59:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

I found this on IdeaMarketers' Newsletter. For those of you who have ebooks or are thinking of them, check this out.
http://www.1chapterfree.com/

"Authors: Showcase your books to an audience who enjoys reading! When you join our network, you may upload one chapter of as many of your books as you wish. Within our site you'll have an author profile and a page on each of your books which will link over to where people may purchase your book.
Not only are you featured here, but also a text link enabling people to download a chapter of one of your books will rotate on the top of the following sites in our network:
1ChapterFree.com
BuildEbooks.com
IdeaMarketers.com
LocateACoach.com
SheLovesGod.com
You might expect to pay up to $100/month for this type of advertising exposure on a high traffic network like this, but with 1ChapterFree, you get all this exposure for only $9.95/month! And you're not locked in for any amount of time. You may quit whenever you like!"

FYI,
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What are the advantages of a website over a print brochure

2004-06-14T12:18:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,
I am working on my brochure editing today...so nervous about making sure I have the "right" words for the brochure and web site...will review contract later today.
Debora

Hi Debora,

The good thing about a website is if the words aren't exactly "right" you can change them immediately with lower cost than a brochure. Writing for the web is a tad bit different than writing for print media: more bullet points, shorter paragraphs, skimmable stuff.

What I've done in the past with brochures is develop them using a text editor, then printed as many as I needed for an event or mailing, instead of going to a commercial printer and paying big bucks for 1000 only to find I have things I wanted to change later.

Best of luck on your tasks!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How to I get more traffic to my site?

2004-05-31T14:11:00.000-05:00

Hello Annette

I wanted to touch base with you about the possibility to doing a bit of work with you on my website. I'm happy with how it looks and functions (though need to update content a bit),but have not done the legwork to figure out how to make the most of it in terms of generating traffic. I keep telling myself I shouldn't need to hire someone to do this, but then I don't find time to do it. Hence the inquiry.

Sarah

Hi Sarah,

Do you have your webhosting username and password so that I could go look to see if you have site statistics that tell me how much traffic you're getting and from where? I'd also need the web address of your webhosting company. That's where I would start. Then I would look at what other website promotion strategies you are using. Most coaches don't have the time, much less the knowledge of successful internet marketing. Please call me and we'll talk in more depth about your needs.
Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How do I reduce image file size so my pages will load faster?

2004-05-31T14:08:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,
Infranview is quite good. However would you kindly tell me how to reduce the file or kb size of a picture. I see how to reduce or increase image size. I would be forever in your debt. Or something like that. If you can spare the time.
Oh yes, here's my newsletter.
Warm regards,
Fred

Hi Fred,

http://netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm

This will compress image file size and show you results before you decide which to use.
Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How do you work with your clients?

2004-05-26T21:48:00.000-05:00

Hi,
I would like to know how you work with your clients and perhaps some examples of websites you've done.
Debora

Hi Debora,

How I work with my clients consists of approximately a one hour FREE consult to determine your needs, after which I send you a no obligation bid which is good for 30 days. The price is quote you is the price you pay for the web design. There's no cost overruns. See http://www.girlgeekwebdesigns.com/Newsletter13.htm for the 10 questions you need to answer before hiring a web designer. I may ask you to send me links to other sites you like and tell me what you like about them, so I can incorporate those ideas into your site.

Then when we sign a contract I require a deposit of half of the bid up front to start working on your site. I start by designing the look, layout, and navigation of your site. I post that to the web on my server so you can look at it and give me feedback to get it just the way you want it. Your job is to provide me with the text for the site and any images, such as personal photos, logos or original artwork you want on the site. I will provide editorial feedback about your text as writing for the web is different than writing for print. In fact, check out my newsletter at http://www.girlgeekwebdesigns.com/Web_Design_Newsletter14.htm for "Writing Well for the Web." We may touch base on the phone a few times to clarification or questions or to set up things like ezines and hosting and PayPal, if you want that on your site.

Then we'll do site testing to make sure it all looks and works the way it's supposed to. When that's done, you make your final payment. I'll have you purchase hosting and I'll upload your site to the hosting company's server after that. Voila! You're online. Then you get 3 months of FREE minor corrections following the publication of your site.

You can see all my completed sites and some that are in progress by going to my website a clicking on portfolio. I also encourage you to read the testimonials there.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How can I put audio files on my website?

2004-05-24T19:40:00.000-05:00

If I have a voice download for a class that one can access on my website, will the dsl vs dial up take different amounts of times. If so, how do I check this out so I can warn the ones who might have to wait for the download to happen? Thanks! Rita

Girl Geek's Response
Hi Rita,
Sound files, like image files, are very large usually. I would put a note to people using dial up about the amount of time to download would be ___ number of minutes. You can tell how large the file is by looking at it on your computer or the server where you site is hosted (if you've uploaded it). If the file is longer than 3 minutes in listening length, you might want to look at streaming audio, rather than just having it as a file people can download from your site.

Another thing to think about is what kind of software your site visitors will need in order to listen to your audio file. Some audio players are free or already installed on most new computers, but others will have to be downloaded from the internet. Also, the file type would need to be compatible with what software the site visitors have on their computers.

A final thought is if you have a lengthy audio file, why not consider an audiopodium, where people can call in and listen to your class. Then you just list the phone number on the site for them to call in 24/7 to listen. You can get an audiopodium from MCPer Ed Shea in Chicago.

Hope this helps!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: How Can I resize photos to send by email

2004-05-23T21:48:00.000-05:00

Hi,

It's easiest to send image files that are 10k (kilobites) or less as email attachments. You can resize your photos, gifs or jpeg image files using almost any graphic editor.

A nice one that's available online for FREE is at www.irfanview.com. It also compresses image files, which will help your webpages load faster. The chief thing that slows down the loading of webpages is bloated image files.

Thanks for asking!
Annette

Ask Girl Geek: What about using Web Easy 5.0?

2004-05-23T12:59:00.000-05:00

Hi,
thank you for the search engine info. I would be interested in a future
conference call regarding websites/engines etc. I know that you do website design, I was wondering how it would work if I used a product to type in all my text etc and worked with you to add the spunk to the design. I purchsed web easy 5 and have not opened it yet, have you heard of it?
I registered a
domain with Open Door Coaching and am feeling the need to get the site up
and going. Others have said they've used "good daddy" or something like
that, what comments do you have?
Thanks for any input
Deborah

Ask Girl Geek: Help! Mac Graphic Artist vs. PC Web Designer

2004-05-23T09:25:00.000-05:00

Hi Annette,
I have a graphic designer who has designed several things for me, the latest being my website (which is not up yet). He does not actually post things to the web, however. Herein lies the problem. He works on a Mac (like many graphic designers), and he used Quark X-Press and Adobe Illustrator for the most part. I like what he has done.

I also have a Website designer who adapts and posts designs to the web. He works on a PC and uses Adobe Photoshop among other things (I'm not sure what else).

The Webpage designer cannot read the graphic designer's files in their original program form, and the various outputs that the graphic designer has been able to make available join all of the layers together, making it very difficult to manipulate anything. I want to avoid having the website designer (who is not a polished graphic designer) try to reconstitute everything "more or less" because I think that it will result in a lot of work for him as well as in a less polished product.

Do you know a way around this Mac-PC-Quark conundrum? Can Mac-Quark files be saved in a PC format, for example? Etc, etc.

Any words of wisdom would help. I'm too far down the track here to change the fundamental parameters or players.

Dear Help,
I edited out the rant my programmer gave about never using graphic designers who don't do web work. You're learning that the hard way.

Here's his suggestions. I'll forward more from the others as I get them.
-------------------------------------------------------------
It doesn't matter if it is on a Mac or not, Quark is an impossible
program to deal with in most of my experience.
It was not designed for web development, it was designed for print
publications, and is not easily portable.

The only thing I could suggest is that all files be converted to
Illustrator if possible.
It shouldn't matter at all if it is Mac or PC Illustrator... just as
long as in the Mac you click the box to save with "PC Friendly
Extensions".
From there you should be able to find a way to save with all layers
intact.
If you can save with all layers intact, A newer version of Photoshop
should be able to read the Illustrator file and layers.

Other than that I am afraid that you are left with taking actual
screenshots of the Quark files and just splicing them in Photoshop to
create the cuts that you need.

Thanks.

If needed and you can provide all of the Quark files I might be able to
find an copy and covert them somehow to a useable format for the web
guy.

Second Opinion:

I talked to another graphic designer with 20 years+ experience.

He echos some of what the other email said. Quark and Illustrator are software programs which do not save files that can be used on the web. They are the best program to use for PRINT design, but not website.

There may be some add-ins available for Quark to make the images web ready, but you'd have to find those on the web and there would be an expense to purchase those.

What your web designer is trying to do, to replicate the graphic as close as possible to what the graphic artist is doing, is the best solution.

Who's linking to your website and where do you rank in search engines

2004-05-21T20:25:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

You hear all the time...well, maybe YOU don't, but I do as a web designer, that link popularity and link relevancy help increase targeted traffic to your website and increase your ranking in search engines.

If you want to know how many other sites are linking to yours and in what search engines, here's a handy little tool.
http://www.freewebsubmission.com/link-popularity.html
Check out your site and that of you main competitors. Then talk to your web designer about optimizing your site for search engines.

Also, if you want to know if and where you're ranking in the search engines, go to
http://www.freewebsubmission.com/site-ranking.html
and enter your website name and the main keywords used on your site.

If all of this is gibberish to you and you want to learn more about optimizing your website for higher rankings in search engines, send me an email and I will notify you of my next Q & A conference call coming soon.

Or for a thorough analysis of why your site isn't performing as well as expected, sign up for my Well Website Check-Up service. You can learn more about that by sending a blank email to WellWebsite@girlgeekwebdesigns.com and you will get a list of all that's part of this service.

Annette Vaillancourt
Girl Geek Web Designs
Custom Websites for Small Businesses on a Budget
http://www.GirlGeekWebDesigns.com
(618) 529-5886