RedCode Articles

SEO in a Nutshell Part 1: On-page SEO

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:00:00 GMT

How to Drive Free Traffic from the Search Engines

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Use Testimonials for Effortless Selling

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

It's often not what you can do, but who you know.

That old adage is more true than people realize. I've never, ever landed a job without knowing someone, or knowing someone who knows someone. Having a friend prop the proverbial door open allows you to get your foot in the door. People would rather work with someone they trust over someone they don't know; even when the other person has more credentials!

Testimonials build trust

One way you can build trust with your customers over the internet is show them the people who have worked with you in the past and had a good experience. Just as referrals are the best leads, testimonials allow your readers to put themselves in the shoes who has gone before them. It's easier to make a decision to follow someone else than to pioneer your own path. Your customers would feel much more comfortable buying what you're selling if they can see how it's worked out for others who were once in their shoes.

Testimonials build credibility

Having other people talk positively about you on your website is like having your references on your resume displayed for all to see. When your readers see that you have helped others, they see that you can do what you say you can do, which also makes them more comfortable working with you.

Testimonials are often an afterthought with most companies when they're making a website, but it will definitely help increase your online sales.

Testimonials: the more, the merrier

When it comes to testimonials, you just can't have enough; there's no such thing as too many testimonials. Be careful not to shove your testimonials in your reader's face, but don't be shy about it either. I recommend showing the most recent 3-5 testimonials with a link to go to a page to view more if your reader likes. Let others brag about you, but don't be obnoxious about it.

What is the Best Website Content?

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

You may have a beautiful website that showcases who you are, your company, and it's products and services, but let's be honest. Your customers don't really care that much about your company's products and services unless it's useful and beneficial to them. These kinds of websites are called "brochure sites" because they have a list of products and features, their location, and maybe some pricing here and there, but they're not too interested in updating their website often and so, they leave it be.

While there's nothing wrong with brochure sites, they're often the least visited and read on the internet. The reason for this is because people are looking for specific information right away when they browse the internet. Since brochure sites are not updated very often and usually don't answer most of the reader's questions, they tend to look elsewhere.

So, what's the best kind of content to have on your website? The answer is simple, and you may not have considered it:

Editorial-style articles are the best kind of website content.

Editorial-style websites are read often because they are updated frequently and provide answers to the questions that people are looking for. In fact, you're reading an editorial-style article right now!

One of the best ways to add the editorial element to your website (and increase traffic) is by adding a blog and updating it regularly. At the very least, it should be updated once a week. One of my clients was told by his old web hosting company not to bother with blogging; that it would be a waste of time. After I consulted with him, he incorporated a blog to his website and updates it as much as he can (he's probably the most excited photographer I've ever seen). After about 3 or 4 months of blogging, he's enjoying lots and lots of web traffic and has increased his search ranking with Google. In fact, his blog helps him show up multiple times on Google!

A word of warning though; this does require a time investment. Many companies have people that update their websites by doing this very thing.

If you would like more information, or would like to incorporate a blog on to your website, please send a message on the contact page.

How to choose a domain name for your website

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:00:00 GMT

What's in a domain name? Well, a lot and not much at the same time. Domain names are cheap and are being bought up by the thousands every day. It's always a good idea to get whatever domain name you want for your website as quick as you can before anyone else snatches it up. But how do you know what domain name to buy? You may want to consider the following things:

Choose something people will remember

Often times, people will hear your domain name, but they won't be near a computer until later. If your domain name isn't easy enough to remember that you can't recall it by the time you go to type it, you may have a problem.

This is the perfect segue for...

Choose something people will be able to spell

This is also the reason why you wouldn't want to name your business the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Emporium of Delectable Accoutrements". Can you imagine someone attempting to type "supercalifragilisticexpialidociouesemporiumofdelectableaccoutrements.com" in to their browser window? Yeah, try that some time. One of my clients, Nelson Sanderson, changed his domain name to "nelsonsanders.com" because he realized that enough people were misspelling his name to warrant the change. The object of the game is to keep it as simple as possible.

When you have the option, go for .com over any other ending

Do you know what the difference is between whitehouse.com and whitehouse.gov? If you don't know, please don't go to whitehouse.com because it's the largest pornography site on the internet. The reason why it's the biggest site is because people get confused when trying to visit the website for the White House (you know, the one with the President of the United States). Because all government websites end with the .gov, people who don't know any better go to whitehouse.com thinking they'll find information about the presidency. Often times, if a search engine is trying to decide between two domains to rank higher, example.com or example.net, the search engine will go with the one that ends in .com simply because it assumes that the site has been around longer and is therefore more relevant.

Choose something that describes what you do and possibly your location

What do I mean by this? Well, let's say you're the average Joe who sells doodads from your brick-and-mortar store "Joe's Doodads" in Atlanta. You might think the best domain to choose would be "joesdoodads.com" or "doodadsbyjoe.com" and while there's technically nothing wrong with either of those domain names, someone else with the domain name "doodadsinatlanta.com" or "atlantadoodads.com" will rank higher in search engines. Even though the domain name does not contain the name of the business, the fact that it has a term that people will search for lends to its rank in search engines. Think about the last time you searched online for a florist in your hometown; what terms did you search for? The idea is to include the words in the domain that you think a searcher my use to find you.

Register more than one domain name

Domain names are so cheap, you probably shouldn't worry too much about selecting one over another anyway. Most businesses own tens, if not hundreds, of domain names. The reason for this is to cover as many of their bases as possible. If you own the domain name, "newyorklawyers.com" it would be wise to also own "newyorkcitylawyers.com" as well as the misspelled "newyorklayers.com" and have all 3 point to the same place. This way, if your visitors type in the wrong address or misspell it, they still end up at the right place.

Some places where you can register your domain name:

GoDaddy.com

www.GoDaddy.com

1&1.com

1&1 Internet, Inc.

RedCodeHost.com

www.redcodehost.com

How to build a website for cheap

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:00:00 GMT

When you want to build a website, you have 2 options. You can either:

Do it yourself
Pay someone else

This is true with most things in life. If you're a mechanic, you're more likely to change your own oil versus pay someone else to do it for you. But, if you're like most people, you'll have to pay someone else. If you're looking to get a website for cheap, chances are that you are probably going to have to do it yourself. Thankfully, there are websites that you can go to that help you create your own website for under $40 per month (and a lot of times, for a lot less!).

Some of your options include:

1&1 My Website

1&1 My Website is quick, easy to manage, and allows you to edit your own websites on the fly. 1&1 My Website lets you customize the look and design of your own site in addition to hosting and domain registration; all without any programming knowledge required. My favorite part is that you can even build your own web forms so that people can contact you with their questions and feedback—which is also great for building leads.

If you plan to sell things through your website, they also have a hosting solution for you. Their lowest eShops plan is currently only $11.99 per month with a 50 product maximum, which should be more that enough for most start-ups.

1&1 Internet, Inc.

1&1 eShops

GoDaddy Website Tonight

GoDaddy has become an internet powerhouse for 2 big reasons: negative publicity over their superbowl ads and their low-priced hosting plans.

What 2 big reasons were you thinking?

GoDaddy offers Website Tonight which allows you to create your own website using templates and some pre-built sites. The great thing about Website Tonight is that you can create and customize your own sites without any programming knowledge required. Some of the features of Website Tonight include blog creation, image galleries, and guestbooks.

My main gripe about Website Tonight is that it has a small icon at the bottom of your website that says that it was created with Website Tonight (which may project an unprofessional opinion of your site to some, but we'll talk about that in a little bit)

GoDaddy.com

RedCode Web Services

RedCode Web Services also offers the Website Tonight option, the exact same service as GoDaddy, and we can even help you set it up for $100 (in addition, we'll get rid of the Website Tonight badge for you). This is a good option if you don't really know what you're doing and you're not sure what you want, but you have a good idea of what you want your website to do.

RedCode Web Services Website Tonight

Get a 5-Page Website for $599.95

RedCode Web Services also offers to build you a complete 5-page website—from the graphics to the web copy writing—for only $599.95. If you shop around, I'm sure you'll find that that's a really good deal. You just tell us what you want and we'll do the rest, sending you the work for your approval along the way.

And that's how you get a website for cheap.

5 Ways to Make Money from Your Website

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:00:00 GMT

When setting up your online business, you may not have considered all the ways that your website can work for you. Here are the 5 main ways that you can take advantage of the internet and it doesn't matter if your company is large or small.

1. Advertisements

Advertising is probably the easiest way to set up your site to make money. It requires very little from your audience–they don't have to buy anything for you to make money in some cases.

The drawback to advertising is you generally have to get a lot of hits for it to be worth your while. Many websites have advertisements that merely serve to offset the cost of hosting the site.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is when you have to apply to promote a product or service to others. Typically, these are products or services that you yourself use. In my case, I only recommend products that I myself have bought and been pleased with; I would never recommend a product that I felt didn't help me in some way.

Affiliate Marketing is also a way for you to be honest and open with your customers; which will resonate so much better with your audience in the long run.

3. Selling Products

This one seems straight forward. Set up an online store to sell your doodads, whether they be physical products or digital downloads.

If you are going to sell physical products–shoes for example–you'll have to make sure everything is kosher with sales tax, shipping providers, and have a system for returns and refunds.

If you are more interested in selling digital downloads.

4. Paid Membership Subscriptions

Charging for paid memberships and subscriptions is a great way to make sure that you are getting steady monthly income from your customers. The trick is to retain the value in their mind once they've decided to sign up.

5. Hosting/Promoting Offline Events

I happen to run a lot of 5k and 10k races. This kind of event would fit in this category if you have a website where people can sign up and register or purchase tickets for the event.

If your business holds contests or convention, this can be a good way of making money. The first downside is that you are asking for a lot of participation from your audience (buying a ticket and being able to make the trip if they live far away).

Secondly, you have to price the tickets in order to make a profit. Events should be cost efficient to be done right. If you skimp on the spending, you won't throw an event that people will want to go to. You want to spend just enough to make it a good event, with plenty of curbside appeal and with the right attractions.

5 Tips for Writing Web Copy

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Here are the top 5 ways you can get more people to read your website:

Use bulleted or numbered lists to summarize content
Highlight words by using bold and italics to draw attention to key information
Write meaningful subheadings
Only present one idea per paragraph
Put the most important information first

Why is it this way? Well, the reality may surprise you.

People simply don't read on the internet.

They scan. Rather than carefully reading whatever is on the screen slowly and carefully, your visitors' eyes are darting around looking for their information right away. Computer screens have conditioned us to find the information that we're looking for and not much else. Simply put, writing for the internet is very different from writing for print. With print, the reader can turn and hold the material while readers on the computer can only scroll and drag content around through a virtual interface.

For more information about this topic, I recommend reading Web Copy That Sells

5 Useful jQuery Plugins

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:00 GMT

jQuery is a Javascript library that you can add to your site to make it more fun to interact with. If you want user interface animations like slideshows, tooltips, and accordions, then jQuery is the best way to go about implementing it.

While researching for this article, I found lists that were 20+ items long, but many of the plugins listed did the same thing or didn't work, so I thought I'd provide the most useful plugins instead. Here are 5 jQuery plugins that you can use to help you add interactivity to your site.

jQuery UI

This one is first because it's most useful. jQuery UI is an official plugin release from the jQuery community and it's featured on their site. Visit the jQuery website to download jQuery UI and implement it into your site.

Colorbox

Colorbox is a lightweight jQuery plugin that is for photo gallery slideshows. These are the kind that you click on an image to see a larger version and then you can usually page through the album, looking at each picture, while the pictures fade in and out (or a number of other effects). Check it out.

Superfish

Superfish will handle a lot of your user navigation problems by providing you with a slick navigation system. You might think that jQuery UI would address this function, but Superfish does a great job of allowing you to easily create a cool drop-down menu. Try it out.

Cycle

The most popular function for jQuery to do is image slideshows. Probably half of the plugins out there solve this issue in one way or another. Cycle Plugin does this in a way that makes the site seem more alive by automatically transitioning pictures on your site without you clicking on them. It's a good way of presenting a lot of information to your customers in an appealing fashion. Go to the plugin's website to see a demo and try it out.

Real-Time Form Validation

When your customers are filling out your web form, it's good to let them know if they made a mistake before they get angry that your form isn't working, or doesn't seem to be working. This plugin will let them know exactly what's going on while they're entering their information into the form. You can get the plugin here.