Wikipedia in an effort to combat posting spam changed all of their links to “nofollow”. What that means is that search engines will no longer apply any page rankings from the Wikipedia site to the linked site. Whether the spiders follow those links or not is not known for sure.
Does that mean it’s not worth getting your site mentioned on Wikipedia? Absolutely not! One of my customers (All American Roadside Assistance) has several links from Wikipedia to their site. If you check the logs almost all of the visitors to their site from Wikipedia will either buy or add to their favorites (which means they will probably be back).
Also many other websites will use content from Wikipedia as reference on their sites and there is a good discussion on Small Business SEM about whether those links also carry the “nofollow” tag.
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
If you have an email address you have gotten one from the so-called Nigerian Email Scammers. They are about to die or they need your help in smuggling $23.4 million dollars (US) out of their country and need your help. I got a good one when I was trying to sell my old car on Craigslist.
Some people are fighting back. Take for example Mike Berry (aka Shiver Metimbers) who has written a book on his exploits (”Greetings in Jesus Name! The Scambaiter Letters”).
Note: This is a very dangerous game to play and I would advise not to try this yourself, but it’s hilarious to read about.
I am always on the lookout for good ideas to market my small business.
One of the first thing that I advise my clients is to start a mailing list. When I first started this business all I had was a list of names of people that I had kept in touch with through e-mails. My family was mostly across the country, so I started writing weekly e-mails describing the exploits of my over 30 (now over 40) hockey team.
Over the years I have added names from all walks of life and work to my address book. When I realized I was going to start a business I wanted to try to contact all of them and start a friendly conversation to tell them about my business. I also included some of them in on my hockey updates and others just occasionally sharing some good information just to keep in touch. I also attached a small signature file to every email asking people to visit my site. This has helped me get several referrals. You never know who will pass on your email.
Keep in mind that your own mailing list is ALWAYS your most valuable marketing tool. These people are your friends who are inclined to listen to you. Don’t abuse this privilege.
No matter what form of marketing that you are using the most important thing to do is to test the results. Maybe you could tweak your signature file a bit or vary what you are sending to who, but you need to know what is working so you can do more and what is not working so you can stop wasting your limited resources.
Craig Valine has a good article on his site called “Marketing Insanity: Stop the Madness!” he has some good thoughts on the matter.
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good, and are clear and easy to use. They don’t use Flash at all or use it only when necessary and never for navigation. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Cole Sweeton. Cole is an artist and his site is laid out inside a blog. I really like the look of this site, how the navigation tabs flip up and down and how his picture overhangs the main content. Although this does present a problem on his blog page where it covers a few entries, but that could be fixed.
I think that this is just a good looking artsy site.
Today I’m meeting with a potential new customer. This is a group of people who are divided on whether they need a site or not. A couple of them are pushing hard to have one and they have asked me to speak to them today.
Rather than giving them the hard sell and telling them how their group’s survival depends on them getting a site up, I believe that the best way to help them is to find out what they hope to accomplish. This group of people probably have in mind something that they want their organization to do even if they are not sure how a website can help. I need to be able to find out exactly what it is that they want to accomplish and to show them how a site will improve the odds of getting that done.
Most people that I speak to about this want to know about SEO and how to get a million visitors from the search engines, but a search engine is not going to join your group or buy anything that you have to sell so you need to make sure that your site speaks to people first.
On A List Apart site there is an article by by Sharon Lee called “Human-to-Human Design”. It’s a good example of just exactly needs to be done to make a site successful.
It seems like there is always something new out there that wants to hurt or take over your computer. I don’t usually give virus warnings, but I am going to mention a virus named “peachy” because it’s the first time a virus has been found in a PDF file. If you get an email with a PDF file attached, be sure you know who sent it to you AND make sure they actually sent it intentionally, because peachy sends itself out from an infected computer without the user knowing it. The attachments can have many random names. Right now you have to have Adobe Acrobat installed, not just the free Reader, for your computer to become infected. I’m sure that will eventually change, too.
Virus experts say the risk is low right now, but it’s just one more new thing to worry about. You can learn more about it here:
PDF Virus Factoid
I found an article called “15 Free Security Programs That Work” by Preston Gralla. He covers some good basic tools like virus protection, firewalls, spyware tools, and clean-up tools. They are all free and he reviews them all.
We went to my brother-in-law’s cabin for a day and a half. It’s up in the mountains by 7Springs.
It’s “rustic” to say the least (no running water), but it has a cool stream to float down.
It’s pretty cool, but the water is always very cold.
Cook over an open fire. S’mores! Watch the fire burn out instead of TV.
Nice!
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Ever wanted to run one of those rides at Disney. Here’s your chance to open the doors, load the elevators and run some of the best rides in the park. It is addicting.
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good, and are clear and easy to use. They don’t use Flash at all or use it only when necessary and never for navigation. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Tutorials Garden. I really like the way this site looks, not to mention the great content. The large space between the content, the shadows, the rounded corners and the tableless design.
Being a big supporter of Open Source Projects and with all of the hoopla around the iPhone these days I thought I would give my small bit of publicity to the Openmoko.org Portal Site.
OpenMoko is an Open Source project to create the world’s first free mobile phone operating system. It is designed to “Free Your Phone” rather than lock you in to one vendor with long, rigid, and unreasonable contract.
OpenMoko is not ready for Prime Time yet, but like many other Open Source projects it growing much faster than it’s proprietary counterparts and there is at least one phone that it works well on. The Neo1973 is the first phone designed to run OpenMoko. It is manufactured by FIC who instigated the OpenMoko project, but once this project gains a little momentum there will be many more.
You can stand in line and wait for an iPhone, but I’m going to wait for what I believe will be a very short time for OpenMoko to come of age. I am certain that I will have made the right decision.
