As someone who does not come from the world of code, I am not the person you would want to pick  for fixing all of your website errors. At least you’d think I’m not the person you want. The really great thing about website validators is the fact that they tell you exactly what is wrong with the code behind your website and how to fix it. They make it so easy that literally anyone can fix validation errors, whether you know what you’re doing or live in the dark.

So, let’s take a little trip down validation lane…

Validate Your Website

The first step is to get your website validated. Enter your website (http://example.com) in the appropriate field and click the Check button to get your results.  Sadly, Upsmack.com has one error:

Scrolling down the page shows me that I have a no attribute error on line 105, column 54. There’s also a nifty explanation of the error and suggestions for fixing it. If you don’t know what you’re doing, this can be a daunting task.  Not so fast!

The website validation tool is telling me I have an attribute error that I need to fix. The first thing I do as someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing is just Google the error. There is no attribute target explains pretty easily that the target attribute was removed because it was decided to be not cool to force your visitors to open a new browser window if clicking a link. Remove  the option,  resolve the problem. Makes sense to me.

So I’ve got a target attribute tag on my site somewhere that needs to be destroyed. What now?

Go To The Source

You’ve figured out that there’s an error. You’ve figured out what the problem is and how to remove it. Now you just have to find it and remove it. The next step now is to visit the website you validated. Right-click on a text portion of the page and select “View Source.” This should bring up another browser window populated with the code that makes up your website.

If you’re using FireFox, you can click the Edit drop down and then select Find. Plug-in the line of text that includes your error. In my case it’s:

<a rel=”nofollow”  target=”_blank” href=”http://digg.com/submit?ph

With the click of a button I’m brought to the exact location of my error. You can maximize the page to get a better look at where the error is living in your code. In the beginning it may be a little tricky to figure out where the error actually lives in your website, but have a little patience and you’ll find it. My error happens to be from the Sociable Plug-In that desperately wants to open a new window when visitors try to promote my article. I went into the Settings tab for the Plug-In and sure enough, there’s a setting that allows me to force links to open in a new window. I unchecked that option to disable the feature. Let’s see what happens when  I run Upsmack.com through the validator again:

Really, thank you. No applause necessary. This didn’t take very long for me to complete and I don’t even know what I’m doing. Now go find a website and run it through the validator. Let me know how many errors it comes up with. I think you’ll be pretty surprised to find just how many websites aren’t WC3 Compliant.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://upsmack.com/web-hosting-design/fixing-validation-errors/feed/ 0 http://upsmack.com/ecommerce/how-to-get-what-you-want/ http://upsmack.com/ecommerce/how-to-get-what-you-want/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:01:49 +0000 Nathan http://upsmack.com/?p=819

I  was reading an insightful article the other day about who should shoulder the responsibility when the client fails to heed the wise words of the Search Marketing Consultant. The SEO Blame Game doesn’t stop at SEO, however. Regardless which department you’re in, or what your responsibilities are in a given day, you always stand a chance of your advice not being heard. It definitely sucks for consultants who put a lot of time and effort into finding the right ways to promote a business, only to have the client not listen and send your entire strategy into a tail spin. It also sucks to not be listened to when you’re the customer service manager, lead developer, technical support representative or even office manager. We all have some really great ideas that are going to have to go through a lot to be listened to.

Having your ideas heard really isn’t as difficult as it may seem. You’ve got to make sure your idea is sound and your will strong. Voice your opinion where possible, but don’t shout others down in order to get that coveted position in the spotlight. When your client or boss doesn’t initially like your idea, don’t shelf it. Change it. Instead of offering the entire meal, just pull off a little piece and give that scrap to them.

What’s a Scrap?

When you’ve got a nice big complex strategy for making a process more efficient such as training, every-day procedures or otherwise, your boss might find it a bit hard to swallow. Keep in mind that everything is a negotiation so when your boss says no to your idea, they really just want you to show it to them in a different angle, under a different light. In other words, smaller bites may work:

• Find one aspect of your strategy that’s easy to implement and won’t have a very big impact
• Identify some metrics having to do with the above strategy and find a way to collect statistics
• After a period of time (week, month, quarter), put that data together into a report and show it to your boss

If you’ve done your homework and your idea was indeed a good one, then your report should reflect that. In virtually every scenario where I’ve done this, I have almost always been given the go-ahead to expand the strategy for broader scope.

Many business owners are successful for a variety of reasons. Some have been conservative when they’ve needed it most while others are risk-takers and are only really making money when they’re putting it all on the table. Regardless, business owners aren’t the only one’s in the company with ideas that need to be acted upon. If your idea is good, you owe it to yourself and your company to let it be heard and acted upon as well.

So why was I there? From where I was sitting it looked like they had everything well in hand. My friend brought up the not-yet-activated campaigns on his laptop and we took a look. He and his group did a lot of things really well. I was impressed with how well their campaign “first draft” had turned out, which made it a lot easier to point out some simple but important factors that would influence the performance of the campaigns. These are pretty basic to a seasoned internet marketer but they’re things anyone can miss in the course of a project. The easiest mistake you can make is to look over something or forget about it.

Keyword Matching Options

Turns out you can use the same keyword in four different ways. That’s hard for some people to wrap their brains around but if you do your research and do some testing of your own, you should be able to find that firm grasp. When you do, you’re going to be able to fine-tune your keyword lists to separate the irrelevant visitors from the converters.

Make your Creative Compete

One well written ad is really nice, but you should always be testing an ad against a different version to see which gets a higher click-through-rate and also to measure conversions. That little ad you cooked up is the first impression a lot of potential buyers are going to have of your website and your product or service. You can always, always do better and you should always be searching for a more successful ad. You can take some creative license here and mix it up in your pitch. That’s why they call it creative, after all.

PPC Poaching At Its Finest

If it isn’t enforced intellectual property, then there’s nothing wrong with bidding on the brand name of your competition. Why not do it? The bid amounts are usually pretty low for brand-related search terms and believe it or not, much of your competition probably isn’t doing it. This gives you a greater chance of being seen. I have never run a brand-focused campaign with a 100% click-through-rate, so those clicks are going somewhere. Probably to my competition. You may as well return the favor.

I hope my friend and his campaign do well in the 2010 Google Online Marketing Challenge and I’m looking forward to following the progress. Don’t worry though, I’ll be sure to update you all!

But here’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Since bad sales usually go on for quite a while before ultimately bringing a business to its’ knees, someone in the company must have known about this failure in production. This just begs the question, why does it continue?
Some managers prefer to do nothing and await the inevitable while others put in the work to identify and resolve critical problems within the company.

Your Search Marketing Kung Fu is Weak!

There are an awful lot of websites out there and if you’re not ranking where you need to be for those key search terms you rely on, you’re going to receive a lot less exposure and a lot fewer chances to convert customers. Since you’re not ranking well in Search Engines, your web pages probably aren’t all that relevant to your topic to begin with which can present a real problem for your visitors in terms of finding what they need.

If your website is having problems getting enough traffic to stay afloat, put some effort into it or consider outsourcing. Search Marketing is important to the visibility of a website, and visibility is everything.

Don’t Kill The Bunny

Is your Sales and Customer Service force good? Are they trained? Tolerant? Patient? Understanding? If your staff is composed of complainy, arrogant or self-centered agents, then you’re simply going to lose out on missed opportunities for sales. Be there for your customer, be understanding to their needs. Be knowledgeable about the products and services you provide, and be informative on the process. Reassure your customers, instill a sense of trust.

Being as accessible as possible is important in any industry or medium. Especially in Ecommerce, the ability to contact a technical support, sales or customer service representative is paramount. Display that phone number on every page of your website. Start a forum related to your products so that customers have a community to go to for answers. If you’re not using online chat for Ecommerce, then you should at least check it out to see how it can take the load off of phone calls and provide a new dynamic to assisting customers with difficult-to-find documentation or other web pages.

Just Face It. Your Products Suck.

If your staff kicks ass and you’re landing at the top of every search engine results page then you may have to consider the worst case. Your products just aren’t that great. Maybe it seemed a lot better on paper, maybe the market dropped out from under you. Maybe it’s just not the right time. Go back to the drawing board and improve the product or service you’ve got or find an in somewhere else.

The deeper you dig into your data and the behavior of your staff, the more you will find that can be fixed. If you want to stay in business, seriously consider fixing the problems in your business. Customers are a fickle bunch and they’re not going to wait around for you to drag yourself into the arena when there’s plenty of other companies working to win their trust, and their revenue.

As a freelance Search Marketing Consultant I have the ability to do as much or as little work as I want for a client. I can be selective in deciding which projects I take, and I can name my price. It’s a great way to build my resume of experience and with special regard to Search Marketing, it gives me a unique opportunity to work in a number of different niche’s, and get that client relationship experience that agencies love so much.

Did I mention the money? My full time job is definitely a livable salary and I’m not exactly hurting for money, but in these interesting economic times it never hurts to be able to put a little extra away, just in case. Even a semi-active freelance programmer, search marketer or anything else should make what amounts to a nice little nest egg within a year. At the very least the money is a good compensation to help bridge those gaps you may have in the budget your full time gig allows you to have.

Oh, and here’s the best part. I actually love Search Marketing. I can’t get enough of the stuff. I love reading about Paid Search, exploring new link building strategies, finding better ways to fine-tune my search engine optimization techniques, everything. So, even if I wasn’t managing a series of paid search campaigns for a client or creating new content for a plastic surgeon’s website, I would be doing this stuff for myself. The only thing better about this freelance thing is the fact that I really am getting paid to do what I love.

It’s not hard to get into freelance work. Just sign up to a freelance site like oDesk, Elance or crowdSPRING, complete your profile, take the appropriate tests and put yourself on the market. Most of my offers came the fastest from oDesk but I found the projects on Elance to pay more. Of course, you can always go it alone if you want, finding work through word-of-mouth or advertising through a blog. Hell, I just got a part-time ongoing freelance gig for a company on the other side of the country, just by sending them an email and asking.

In my previous post, I took an Ecommerce approach to Premium Business Directory and concluded that it is an attractive choice when determining who to pay for directory listings. This online business directory has a clean design, easy navigation and a wealth of information at the fingertips of the visitor. Absolutely worth the money from the standpoint of an Ecommerce Manager or website owner such as myself.
In the second installment of our web directory review, we are going to focus on the Search Marketing angle. The Ecommerce Manager might be happy to see the wealth of information available to the visitor, and the visitor may love the fact that they can watch a video, get caught up on your blogs, check your location in the world and even send you an email. But how does Premium Business Directory hold up in the Search Marketing arena?

The Search Marketing Angle

Those of us in the Search Marketing industry are absolutely concerned with things like cost and usability. More important to our particular function however is whether this directory works. Does it just look like a nice website with navigation that makes sense? What’s under the hood? Rather than putting the Premium Business Directory through the Upsmack ringer, I’m going to see how it stacks up against Aaron Wall’s Quality Signals to look at when considering an online paid web directory. This is by no means an end-all-be-all checklist but it should provide some very good insight as to whether you’re wasting your money.

1. How Does it Rank? I conducted a SERP report (manual, thank you) for 30 search terms targeted by Premium Business Directory and also relevant search terms as suggested by my partner in crime, The Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Unfortunately I didn’t find any page in the first 30 results of any of those searches. If the online business directory can’t be found in Google search results, then how in the world is it going to drive traffic to your website?
2. Do They Sell Direct Links? Yes! Premium Busines Directory provides a profile for every subscribing client with a variety of links that can lead back to your website and not only drive traffic, but also send link juice your way.
3. When Was it Last Indexed? Of the 119 total cached pages in Google, the page that went the longest without being touched by Googles golden hand was last indexed on January 26, a mere three weeks from this post. That said, the majority of pages have last been indexed Febuary 9 or later. Not too shabby.
4. What is the Quality Ratio? With the exception of a few sections in the Professional Services category, most of the categories are empty and offer absolutely nothing to visitors or search engines. On top of that, the currently low number of subscribers are likely a majority like myself who received a free subscription for writing a review about the service. Of course this can change as the Premium Business Directory gains exposure in the future. For now, however, things aren’t looking so good on the Quality Ratio front.
5. What is the Ad Ratio? The website is composed of clients who have paid monetarily for the service, and clients who have paid in attention via the web such as this review. I will say there isn’t a lick of advertising on the site which is great, but it makes sense when you consider the business model is geared toward paid subscriptions and not an advertising model.
6. Do They Sell Sitewide Outbound Links? I haven’t seen any links that don’t lead to another page on the directory, or from a business listing page to the business listed website. Nice work!
7. Is It Decrepit? Frankly, there aren’t enough pages with content for the Premium Business Directory to be decrepit. I can say that all of the links worked, and there weren’t any dead links that I found. That’s a big plus in my book and it matters to search engines like Google too.
8. Does it Have Unique Content? It’s up to businesses to provide the content and it’s a toss-up as to whether those businesses choose to provide duplicate content or create original content that can cater to the traffic driving through Premium Business Directory. I think the arrangement of information is sufficient to keep things fresh, and so the unique content issue should not be a problem. When there’s more content, that is.
9. Is It Relevant To My Site? Absolutely, this directory would be relevant to my website. Since I focus on Ecommerce and Search Marketing, the Professional Services category is exactly what I’m looking for. I’m personally pleased with my particular categories and rank 4th at the lowest. This, again, is evidence of how few listings live on this directory for the time being.

So What’s the Verdict?

All in all I think Premium Business Directory has a solid foundation based on organization, design and usability. What the new business directory lacks is content (listings) and an attention to detail with regard to their Search Marketing strategy. It’s important to consider the domain was created in November of 2009 and according to my contacts with the directory, the launch took place about 2 weeks ago which was very recent, and they’re likely in the process of building reputation. This means two things:

• You can pay for a service that may or may not ever pay you back
• You can buy in to a service that, when grown, will repay you with steady web traffic and precious link juice

I think Premium Business Directory can survive and make a good impact if they follow through on their Search-Friendly listing formats, and perhaps extend that to their own Search Marketing strategy. Flesh out those title tags, add some unique, quality content to your category pages. Keep trading those subscriptions for listings until you have enough to get those clients without the incentive, and when you do, keep your outbound links per page low!

I’ll look forward to tracking the progress of Premium Business Directory and while I think they’re not out of the woods yet, I do believe if they pull through they can be a reputable, dependable and powerful online business profile directory. Good luck guys! I’m pulling for you!

If you have decided  you want to subscribe to their service, feel free to use the Promo code UPSMACK50 when registering for your account to receive 50% off of the regular subscription prices listed above. This goes for all three available package levels. The offer is expiring at the end of March so get to it!

Premium Business Directory is one of the latest in a long line of business-related web directories composed of profile listings from paying customers who want to see their websites represented in a place where someone might go to find a specific type of business or service. I’ve always had serious concerns with online directories since I easily find what I want on Google. That said, online directories can be a benefit to those who use them in addition to the sweet link juice their external links can provide.

Since Premium Business Directory prides themselves to be “as SEO-friendly as they are consumer-friendly,” I think I’m going to slice this review up into a couple of different sections. Since I am both an Ecommerce Manager and a Search Marketer, I’m going to look at it from both perspectives. This could be interesting…

The Ecommerce Angle

Premium Business Directory has clean, fast-loading and easy-to-navigate interface. It’s like plenty of other online directories of course, and isn’t exploding with hyperlinks which gives it a less cluttered, more professional look. The navigation is simple enough; click to drill down to your targeted industry until you find your listings.

Creating your listing is a strict and organized process that I found very easy to understand. I filled out information on virtually everything you could think of like Logo & Company Info, Contact & Location, Business Hours, Product Information, Blog & Social Networks, Testimonials, Press Releases and more. As an Ecommerce manager, I think Premium Business Directory has done a great job of leaving no stone unturned. I can’t think of a single thing I’d like on my listing that you can’t make possible, and in fact opted out of a number of the options simply because I wasn’t set up for them. Better to have a gun and not need it, right?

One of the reasons I have such a range of freedoms for my listing is because I have the SEO Premium package. There are a total of three packages, all made up of the various features:

The SEO Premium is priced at $4.49/mo. and includes 3 Category selections, Front Page link rotation, a Custom Subdomain, a Custom URL, Blog and Social Networks information, YouTube Video URL, Company Info, Business Hours, Product Information, Service Information, Contact Information, 4 Testimonials and up to 6 Press Releases. This is all the bells and whistles, people.

The Marketers Special is priced at $2.49/mo. and includes 2 Category selections, Front Page link rotation, a Custom URL, Blog and Social Networks information, Company Info, Business Hours, Product Information, Service Information, Contact Information, 2 Testimonials and up to 3 Press Releases.

The Basic Listing is priced at $1.49/mo. and includes 1 Category selection, Company Info, Business Hours, Product Information, Service Information and Contact Information.

While the higher priced packages obviously give you more to work with, even the basic listing will give you what you need to get a decent presence in the Premium Business Directory. From an Ecommerce standpoint, this seems like a well-organized directory that contains relevant listings, and could be a great choice for anyone who wants to promote their website and be in total control of how their information is presented.

Take a look at the Upsmack Premium Business Directory listing I created while writing this review. I have to say it’s the best looking listing I’ve seen in a web directory both because of how clean and uncluttered the information is presented and also because of the sheer information you can get about a business from these listings without having to leave the page. Well done!

A little bit later I’ll release part 2 of my Premium Business Directory review where I’ll leave behind the experience from an Ecommerce standpoint and delve into the mind of a Search Engine Marketer. The listing may look good, but will it be indexed? Will it rank? Will it really drive traffic to your website?

Oh, I almost forgot. If you already know you want to subscribe to their service and don’t care about the conclusion of my review, feel free to use the Promo code UPSMACK50 when registering for your account to receive 50% off of the regular subscription prices listed above. This goes for all three available package levels. The offer is expiring at the end of March so don’t drag your feet!

Why Do You Need a Custom Twitter Background?

There are lots of different reasons you might want to customize  your Twitter profile, but one of the most useful motivations is raising brand awareness. Taking advantage of all the non-white white space is absolutely essential and anyone with a sense of design will know that immediately upon viewing their own profile. Following are some industries or people who may find a special Twitter background very useful:

• Local Restaurants on Twitter should absolutely have a custom image that displays important information such as the location, email and telephone contact information, hours of operation and the daily specials, depending on whether you want to rotate or modify your background image on a daily basis.
• Ecommerce Websites on Twitter would do well to create their own custom background images that display their logo, contact information and links to important pages such as support, new products, popular products and more. Users are unable to click these links inside the browser but if they’re short and clear, the URL can be entered into the browser instead.
• Branding Yourself is much more common now in the age of social media networking. Everyone has something to pimp, something to sell, or some advice to convey to their audience. As one person, it’s important for you to put your best foot forward. Your Twitter background can double as a sort of business card that shows your image, contact info, website or blog or what ever other important information your audience needs to know.

How Can I Make My Own Twitter Background?

If you really don’t know the first thing about operating a graphics program and have hit a wall with regard to brainstorming a simple design, you can always pay someone to make you a custom Twitter profile background. TwitterStyle is just one service that offers basic and custom designs and although I haven’t tried it, I’ve seen some examples of their work and it looks like they give you options so that you get the most for your money.

If you’re like me and you’d rather just make it yourself, you can do it quickly and easily. You could put the extra work in to design a full background that will span the entire Twitter page, but you’ll need to take some time to make sure your creative shows up and isn’t blocked by the existing content sections on your profile page. The easier way is to design a sort of side bar that will only populate the left portion of the page. Here are some of the more important things to consider:

• Graphics Software is pretty important when you’re designing a graphic to be used online. I know that seems obvious but you’d be surprised what goes right over the collective head of the Internet. Whether you’re using Paint or one of the powerful and extremely useful paid products like Photoshop Elements 8, you’ll want to be sure you can create a graphic.
• Screen Resolution can be an issue when you’re designing a graphic that depends on pre-existing objects on a page. You don’t want your LinkedIn web URL running off behind your tweet feed, nor do you want your graphic so crushed and narrow that the text isn’t even readable. 96% of all browsers on the Internet today have a display resolution of 1024 x 768 so you’re safe if you design based on that resolution. That remaining 4% will just have to deal with it.
• The Right Information is paramount to hooking those browsers of your Twitter profile and turning them into your loyal following. Make sure the information you’re providing in your profile background is pertinent to the message you convey, and make sure that your contact information is visible, readable, and correct!
• Color Coordinate your background image so that it falls in line with your background color. If your Twitter background is set to white, then you should probably set your image to white as well. This way you can make the image as small as you like so as not to burden the page load time of your profile.

The above information will definitely put you on the right track to creating a Twitter background image that can reach out and hook your page visitors and turn them into followers. My custom Twitter profile image is just 310 x 360 pixels but those dimensions can easily be tweaked to suit your creative desires. Good luck, and send any inspired custom Twitter profile backgrounds this way!

One of the big issuess amongst the Twitter elite is the debate over whether it is better to be followed by many, or to be followed by few. The argument goes something like this…

Lots of Twitter Followers is Good!

This camp believes having a large amount of Twitter followers is a good thing because it gives your voice an opportunity to be heard by a greater audience. The greater the following, the wider the audience, the more exposure you or your cause will likely receive as a result. It makes sense, really. Then what’s the problem?

A large Twitter following definitely is good in the sense that you have a much greater audience with which to work. However, it’s very likely that a significant chunk of your followers haven’t given much thought to following you, and aren’t really going to care about what you have to say. You may think you’re Pete Cashmore, but you might actually be more like that crazy guy near Times Square, preaching about the End of Days.

Twitter is About Quality, Not Quantity

This is a more refined approach to Twitter where you focus on having a high-quality list of hand-picked followers, people you know are going to care about what you’re saying. Targeting your followers take a lot more time and effort than accepting all takers, and you’ll likely spend a lot of time weeding out those Twits who wreak of spam, bot, or any other unsavory quality or purpose you don’t want to be involved with. You can still amass a lot of Twitter followers with this more detailed approach but you should plan to spend more time making sure your followers are on the up-and-up.

Don’t get me wrong, you can have success on Twitter no matter which way you decide to go. I will say that the first approach to gaining followers on Twitter, the sort of catch-all approach, usually results in you having a lot of followers since people sometimes unfollow you if you don’t return the favor by a certain deadline. I personally think this really takes a lot of the fun out of Twitter and it also serves to destroy whatever followers feed you’ve got set up. At the end of the day, however, both methods are acceptable and it really just comes down to what kind of Twit you want to be.

Streaming video has been made possible in recent years due to advances in computers, making way for companies to reach their audience in completely new and different ways. Online video has been extremely effective in a number of angles:

• Product Demonstrations can be documented in real-time under real circumstances and made available to the masses, making it possible good products to get noticed on a global scale.
• Video Tutorials make it easy to show users how to perform a range of tasks in software applications from installation, to normal and advanced use, and even trouble shooting.
• Behind-The-Scenes videos are great for promoting restaurant cooking techniques or weekly recipes while bars and nightclubs can release highlights for certain nights or events to showcase the very best they have to offer.
• Viral Videos are like a pirates gold to website owners, and their original intent can vary. If a video of yours goes viral, you could be in store for huge amounts of business and new revenue.

Now that you know what types of video you can utilize to promote your business online, you need to know how. The most important factor is making sure you have the means to actually make a video. Lots of cell phones can record video today but the quality isn’t often as good as it could be with a digital recorder. Get your hands on one of these if you’re shooting an online video. If you’re doing a tutorial of a software product, or demonstrating how to complete a task on the computer, then finding a good screen recording software is paramount. CamStudio offers a decent open source option, and GoView seems to have a versatile online alternative that I’m interesting in getting more into.

If you’re a perfect shot, then you don’t need to worry about editing your video. If you’re like the rest of us, however, then finding some good video editing software might be a point of attention. You may not need the Rolls Royce of movie makers, and even Windows Movie Maker might work out just fine for you.

Once you have your video, all you need to do is upload it to your website or one of the many other video hosts out there. I personally think YouTube is easily the most effective and can say it refers a significant chunk of sales to websites I have been affiliated with, and on a consistent basis! If you can spend some time building a video library to showcase the best things about your products, business or staff, then you will absolutely see the reward translate to increased sales.