I was thinking what to do for this wonderful achievement and recently I have had several potential customers tell me that they want their blog to look like their site.

When I tell them that I can make it look like whatever they want, they tell me “but your blog doesn’t match your site!”

I decided not to be the plumber with the leaking pipes in his house or the body man driving a rusty car and spent the last couple of days redoing my entire site. You may have noticed that there were no other posts this week.

I wanted a clean look that had lots of whitespace to make the reading easier and navigation that was clear and easy to find and use. Once I decided on a new design WordPress makes it pretty easy change over. I only needed to change 4 files and all of the 599 pages change, but the regular site is 160 pages (plus a bunch that I dropped) and I had to change each one individually by hand.

You may be saying to yourself “isn’t that what external CSS style sheets are for?” changing all of your pages at once. Well the answer to that is yes and no.

My site was the first job I did when I started this business over two years ago. I have learned much about seo, css, web design and my style has changed quite a bit since then. It also was made in several “layers” at different times and originally I just threw in the blog as an afterthought. Because my blog has become such an important part of my site I wanted it to look like it fits right in and my old site design didn’t lend itself very well to a WordPress theme.

Most of what I’ve learned make the site look better and also make my job easier when it comes to many things including changing the design. So I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the source of all of my pages and any changes in the future should be much quicker and easier (famous last words).

I’ll be cleaning it up for a day or two, but please let me know what you think of the new look. I welcome any comments or suggestions.

Happy 600th Blog Post To Me

I have a page on my site with some of my favorite site designs that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of designs that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these site designs, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of the sites are not in English and I still know what they are about.

The newest one is called Tischlerei Klehn.

I think that you can tell that this site is for a carpentry, woodworking, construction company even if you can’t read the words.

I like the pencil on the notepad for navigation and the gallery of their work right up front.

The only thing that I’m not crazy about is the tan text on the brown background. It’s a bit hard to read.

Visit Tischlerei Klehn

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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

A game of airport (in)security. So true to life it’s very funny.
There are many games on this site, but this is one of my favorites.

Play Airport Security

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My last post on Viral Marketing was pretty well received so I thought I would follow it up.

You hear quite a bit about viral marketing in my business these days. Like the old shampoo commercial it used to be that “they told two friends and they told two friends and so on…”

What has happened lately is that the two friends that you told may be able to tell two thousand “friends” and so on…

Mass communication has never been easier. I read on a Search Engine Guide Blog post recently that of all online users

• 89% share by email
• 24% share business or personal finance info
• 63% share content at least once a week
• 25% share daily
• Only 5% won’t share at all

I’m not sure where these numbers came from, but if they are true it seems to me that if you can create something that people like that they will pass it around. Once that starts it can just keep getting bigger by leaps and bounds.

The big trick is to find something that speaks well about your brand that people will want to pass along. Have a look at your own inbox. Does anyone ever pass along a something that is obviously just an ad for a business? It rarely happens and when it does it is usually a funny video that can be enjoyed by someone who is not interested in what they have to offer.

Here’s what I have found to be the things that get passed around the most:

• Funny and entertaining – You need to be sure that any joke is at your expense. If you make fun of someone else (even a competitor) it will come back to haunt you.
• Educational – There are probably plenty of things that you can teach. Some free advice that can benefit most anyone.
• Warnings – These can be true or not. I would stay away from this one unless you relate it to the Educational type above. For example if home burglaries are on the rise and you offer an alarm system or some other deterrent. Be careful if you do this because an untrue warning or an extreme alarm could again be harmful to your campaign.

You want your company to be seen in a positive light without being too self promoting and that’s a fine line to walk.
To find out more about this see this article on the Search Engine Guide Blog by Diane Aull

Read – Unleashed Viral Marketing Workshop

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I have been a reader of many Craigslist feeds over the last couple of years to see what jobs are available in my field of endeavor. I have also written about several of the things I have observed.

Usually when a post is off topic or just plain spam it gets flagged pretty quickly by myself and other Craigslist users and that will keep the crap off of the list. Lately, though, I have been seeing more and more of the kind of junk that hasn’t been there before. It’s obviously spam and it’s showing up in many lists very quickly so I’m pretty sure it’s automated.

In the past it has been enough for the users to police the list by flagging and getting the bad posts removed. I have been seeing so much of it that it’s starting to be a real chore to flag all of these bads ads so I have been skipping many of them and I wonder how many legitimate users are doing the same or maybe just going away.

The ads seem to eventually be removed. Some quicker than others, but it seems to me like it’s taking longer than it used to. I wonder who will give up first?

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Many companies use Google Maps to provide a map of their physical location.

A good tool has just gotten much better as you are now able to embed YouTube videos into your map.

You can already have a description of your business and users are able to post reviews, but now it’s simple for anyone who has a Google Map of their location and have a video commercial as well. A free video commercial if done well can greatly benefit any business.

It’s all here in the Google LatLong blog. Be sure to see the example.

Have a look at YouTube videos on Google Maps

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I have a page on my site with some of my favorite site designs that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of designs that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these site designs, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of the sites are not in English and I still know what they are about.

The newest one is called Sign Solutions Services.

I am not normally a fan of black backgrounds because I think they usually look so 1996 and is a bit hard on the eyes. Modern designs have more white and rounded corners, but this site seems to make it work very well.

It may be that the slideshow right at the top of the first page gives it a more modern look. Flash used for the slideshow is not used for navigation. It’s in plain text which is best for SEO.

This site looks very nice. It tells you right away what they do and how they do it. Simple and elegant.

Visit Sign Solutions Services

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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

Interested in the current state of the planet? This Web site from the Discovery Channel shows a globe that presents multiple layers of information, including clouds, water vapor, and rainfall.

Visit Discovery Earth Live

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My post today is going to be more than a little off topic, because I went to an interesting “town hall” meeting about health care today. I myself am a diabetic and my wife, Nancy has MS so this is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart.

The meeting was sponsored by The National Health Council who are a group of at least 48 of the nation’s leading patient groups.

Their message was for people and families affected by disease and/or disability about what can be done to help the health care crisis in the United States. These groups are putting aside their individual agendas and working together to get a place at the discussions going on about the problem for those affected, the patients and their families.

I’m pretty lucky because we have health insurance, but even so some of the copays are huge. People are getting sicker and dying because they have to choose between health care or not eating. I hear stories almost every day from folks who have no where to turn when they get sick or have to jump through so many hoops that they can’t even find their way through the maze of paying for health care.

The politicians have their place, the health care companies have their place and the insurance companies have their place at the discussions, but who represents the voices of the over 100,000,000 people who are the ones who have the most invested in this issue? The answer is pretty simple and also pretty obvious. We are going to have to speak for ourselves!

It’s very easy for a politician (or anyone else for that matter) to simply say “I’m for good health care for all”, but that really means nothing. What is “good” and who exactly are “all”.

For now I’m asking everyone including you, but especially the presidential candidates, What exactly are you going to do to help us find a way out of this health care crisis? No song and dance, just an answer. Even if the answer is just a better way to look for an answer.

I’m going to ask this question over and over again, to ask you to do the same and to spread the word. Write to your legislators, the candidates and tell everyone that you know to do the same. Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unusual places, but one thing is for sure. We won’t get any answers if we don’t ask the question.

Visit The National Health Council

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Just in case you haven’t noticed I’m a big believer in making a site that is friendly to the search engines to read and follow. I have had people tell me that most visitors will come to your site through recommendations from friends, other sites or from print ads, but I think that most site owners that know anything about SEO will tell you that most of their traffic comes from search.

If you can get your site on the first page or even two for a competitive keyword search you can get thousands or even millions of visitors who are pretty well qualified because they are searching for what you have. Even if you get tons of visitors from other sources how can anyone turn their back on more? Especially since if you do it right it’s free!

How does this happen? Well if you have not read any of the other pages I have written about SEO or the millions of other web pages on the subject I advise you to start by going right to the horse’s mouth.

If you are interested in optimizing your site and haven’t yet subscribed to the official Google webmaster’s blog you should do that right now. There is so much good information there it’s hard to say where to start, but might I suggest first learning how the bots look at and read your pages.

Read First date with the Googlebot: Headers and compression

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