Web development, design, and site optimization

So are you always toying with new things to try and boost your traffic with little if any results? I don’t even know why I ask you this question, because I already know the answer for 95% of you.  Myself I have tried many, many tactics. Many were dumb ideas in hindsight and saw no return. A few though have in fact succeeded. Which falls right in line with some advice which appears to be universally shared amongst knowledgeable SEO professionals I have met over the years. If you stay persistent and toss up as many ideas as possible, your bound to hit one or two that work once and a while. Much like a baseball player who is considered good at what he does if he succeeds only 1/3 of the time.

Without much doubt, the most successful method of increasing traffic to my blog has been through the use of Social Media. I have been using a combination of Twitter.com, Facebook.com, and most recently EzineArticles.com.

*A word of caution, I strongly recommend you have a solid site content wise before you head down this path. Driving traffic to your site is useless unless you have compelling content to keep them there and keep them coming back.

1. Twitter.com - When I first started using twitter I simply followed people whom I already knew. This worked ok for a while. However I then got an idea on how I could leverage this as more of a tool to drive traffic. I did two things. First I used Twitterfeed.com to automatically post headlines of my latest blog posts to Twitter. Second I went out and scoped some famous “techie” twitter folk with lots of followers, I then started to add myself as a follower of as many of these followers as possible. The direct result is that I got many, many reciprocal follows. Best of all these are people who enjoy the type of material that I blog about.

Now on a daily basis my followers increase. Today I have 687 followers. I engage in conversation with them, I comment on their blogs if they have them, I also have setup link exchanges with some of them. all in all this is the biggest driver of traffic to my website.

2. Facebook.com - Within Facebook I have setup an RSS application that automatically shows my blog feed in my profile. That way anyone who visits my profile, can see my latest posts. This is limited to my immediate Facebook friends, about 334 in total.

In addition to this I have just setup a Facebook Fan Page where users can become a fan of DropTheMike and also can view the RSS feed there and meet other fans.

3. EzineArticles.com - This was recommended to me by a friend in the SEO business. I write and submit articles (minimum 250 words) which are posted to the site in an appropriate category. Site visitors can then read and re-distribute. The great thing is that you can embed links back to your site or blog.

Since doing these 3 items My traffic has been consistently going up and up. One benchmark I like to use is Alexa.com. Before starting these tree tactics I was around the 1 million traffic rank mark. As of today I am nearing 600,000.

Previous notable post on social media:

building-personal-brand-within-the-social-media-landscape/

online-marketing-budgeting-what-next/

entrecardcom/ (I am testing this again)

Have you ever heard of Blackle.com? It is a custom version of Google.com. A custom version built to be more energy efficient. Energy efficient? Yes, by having the site be nearly complete black instead of white, your monitor uses less power. When you think of how many millions of people use Google, the savings must be huge!

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: “Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time”.

Have a look at our energy saving tips page for ideas on steps you can take to save energy.

There are a lot of great web sites about saving energy and being more environmentally friendly. They are full of great tips covering the little things that we can all do to make a difference today. Try Blackling “energy saving tips” or visit one of the many great blogs dedicated to environmental awareness.

Firefox is always expanding its market share. They have a loyal following of which I am one. I have come across  a lot of “Get Firefox” type buttons and ads that loyal users post on their sites. While not anything officially sanctioned the below really got my attention.

Now I thought I would try my best to keep this from being a fluff post and thought I would actually post substantial information that informs while you enjoy the view.

Get Firefox Now

An important part of your ability to make your website or blog a success is having metrics by which to measure yourself against. There are numerous services out there that allow you to do this. Some may or may not be better than others. In my opinion that is not important. What is important is that you find one you like and stick with it. That way each time you check out a report and compare it against your previous results you are comparing apples with apples. The important thing is that you see growth in the numbers.

I use two analytics programs. Both kick back slightly different results. One, is Google Analytics. The second is AWstats, which is installed on my server by my hosting company. It is relatively standard across all hosting companies. I will dicuss the features of the Google solution in the future.

AWstats uses the server logs to put together its data for you.

AWStats will show you the following information:

* Number of visits, and number of unique visitors,
* Visits duration and last visits,
* Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits,
* Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week),
* Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection),
* Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list,
* Most viewed, entry and exit pages,
* Files type,
* Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate),
* OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected),
* Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version (Web, Wap, Media browsers: 97 browsers, more than 450 if using browsers_phone.pm library file),
* Visits of robots (319 robots detected),
* Worms attacks (5 worm’s families),
* Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc…),
* HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, …),
* Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose,
* Number of times your site is “added to favourites bookmarks”.
* Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
* Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page).
* Cluster report for load balanced servers ratio.

The Internet is overwhelming. Getting yourself a web presence for either your personal hobbies or your business can be even more overwhelming. Especially if you are like most small business owners who already have too much on their plate to learn all of the ins and outs.

A few months ago, Register.com launched its Learning Center to help its customers and potential new customers navigate their way into a successful online presence. if you have not had a chance to read through the articles, do yourself a favor and drop by. Feel free to read the advice and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Here is one example of an article posted to the Learning Center:

Choosing the right domain name for your business

Now that you’ve done all the research, come up with a marketing strategy, and have design in mind for your website, all that’s left is to do a Domain round-up (search for the domain name you want) and pick a domain name. Although that sounds easy to do, it must be a name that everyone will remember and associate with your business. Adding to the challenge is the fact that as more and more businesses build websites, it has become increasingly difficult to find a clever URL that is not already taken. The bottom line is: it is still possible to get a great domain name - you just need to be creative! Here are some tips to help:

• Use short, easy to remember keywords that describe your business. The website’s name should reflect your company’s name, describe the services and/or products provided, or describe what’s sold. Keep the name as simple as possible, so customers can remember it. Typically the best names are usually the key words of the name of the company. For example, a pet store that calls itself Posh Pets would want the URL Poshpets.com.
• If you are a US-based business, keep the name in English. For example, some people won’t connect that you design and sell chairs with chaise.com.
• Personalize your name by geography or come up with a synonym. If two companies are using the same name, try to differentiate your website from theirs. For example, PoshPets.com might be located in Chicago, but yours is located in New York City. Try PoshPetsNYC.com.
• Can’t register it under “.com” - try the other extensions. Such as .biz, .net, .org. The extension at the end of your domain name is called a Top Level Domain (TLD). Although .com TLD’s are always top of mind, others are gaining popularity and may offer more availability for the domain name you desire.
• Try the secondary market to purchase pre-registered domains. As the supply of new (un-registered) domains decreases, there is a growing demand to purchase domains that have been already registered but are not in use - so don’t abandon hope yet! You can search for available ‘premium domains’ at many domain registrars. But the caveat, once again, is price. Purchasing a pre-registered domain name can cost anywhere from $100 to over $1 million, depending on the quality of the name.

Don’t use symbols. Your domain name needs to be at least two characters long, and can’t contain symbols, such as $ # or @. For example, if your business provides tracking services for the stock market you’re not allowed to use $tocks.com.

If your company name is taken, go to WhoIs to find out who has registered it - maybe they will sell the registration to you. You can find registered users of the domain you desire by searching the WhoIs database but beware - some domain name owners might ask a higher than expected premium for a highly desirable name.

Watch your expiration dates! A domain name isn’t forever and needs to be renewed. Be careful not to accidentally allow your domain name to expire, and have it become available for registration by others. Add your expiration date to multiple calendars so that you don’t forget to renew the very key to your online business - your domain name.