June 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Aweber Review – 33 Points To Consider Before Choosing An Email List Provider

Do you want to generate sales on autopilot?
Are you currently building an email list?
Are you following up on the people on your list?

Email Marketing $19/Month!

For many years I was told “the money is in the list” but never focused on it until I changed my thinking and placed an opt-in form on my website to get people to subscribe to my newsletter. Initially I chose a free autoresponder to manage my subscribers (since the first 1000 were free) but only found out later my emails were not getting delivered. I learned my lesson..”you get what you pay for.”
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Filed Under: Autoresponders, List Building Tagged With: ,
June 9, 2013 By 2 Comments

Free Web Hosting Guide: 33 Secrets You Probably Didn’t Know!

web hosting guide

Many website owners often make the mistake of deciding too quickly which company to host their website with. They don’t do their homework beforehand and pay the price later. This means they’ll have to find an alternative web host then transfer their files, databases, etc to the new one. No one wants to endure this kind of frustration as it takes the focus away from building your business.

This free web hosting guide will save you a ton of time and money when selecting a company to host or transfer your website. Here are the most important points to consider before laying out your cash:

PREPARATION

1. What are the goals of your website?
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June 3, 2013 By 3 Comments

Web Design Checklist: 55 Things Every Website Must Have

website design checklist

Over the years I’ve seen many website owners give up building an online business because their websites failed to meet their expectations. Perhaps they paid 1000s of dollars to get a a website designed but forgot to promote it because they thought the traffic would come automatically or thought the traffic methods they used would generate the desired results.

I decided to put together this document to so you can avoid the common mistakes entrepreneurs and small business owners make when designing and building their websites.

PREPARATION

1. Set Your Goals

Not setting goals is like trying to find your destination without a map or GPS. Write down the goals of your business on a piece of paper and display them in a place where you’ll constantly be reminded of them. They should consist of long term goals (ie make $5000/month so you can spend more time with your family) and short-term goals (ie monthly, weekly, daily). The purpose of short term goals is to achieve your long term ones.

Create a timeline for the planning, building and marketing of your site. Without doing this, procrastination may take over your goals. Decide how much money you want to spend to create your site and how much you will invest for its promotion.

Set a target date for what you want your site to achieve – you can always adjust it if you need to. Make a goal for how many visitors you will attract to your site.

What percentage of these will be actual sales?
When do you expect to make a profit?

Resources

Check out this video Web Design Checklist: Setting Goals

Website Goals
Website Goals – Part 2
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Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With:
May 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment

How To Storyboard A Video

storyboard video

When I first began creating videos for my business or for local clients I tried to do it without much planning. As you can imagine the results were abysmal because the videos came across as unprofessional and disorganized. Since then I’ve learned to storyboard each video which resulted in making better videos.

What is Storyboarding?
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Filed Under: Video Marketing Tagged With: ,
May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

YouTube Video Optimization: How To Optimize Your Title, Description and Tags

What are the correct locations to insert your keywords?

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Filed Under: Video Marketing Tagged With:
May 15, 2013 By

8 Steps To Protect Your WordPress Website From Hackers

protect wordpress from hackers

  • Has your WordPress website ever been hacked?
  • If so, did you have it backed up?
  • Is your current WordPress website secure from hackers?

Last year while on vacation at the beach my clients’ WordPress sites got hacked. The hackers substituted the home page with an offensive graphic. Nobody wants to receive phone calls or emails from angry clients while on vacation. Fortunately my web hosting provider kept backups of all the sites so I was able to restore them to their original state within a few hours.

The WordPress platform is currently used by 48% of the top blogs in the world. This means it’s becoming an increasingly popular target for hackers. No longer should you ever use WordPress as a content management system without first making it secure.

Here are 8 steps to protect your WordPress Website from hackers
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Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: ,
May 13, 2013 By

Top 12 Ways To Monetize Your Blog Even If You Haven’t Made One Cent…Yet

how to monetize your blog

  • What are the best places on your blog to monetize?
  • Which methods generate the most profits?
  • How do you implement these methods?

If you’re a professional blogger (or want to be one) you probably spend a lot of time creating new content on a regular basis. Perhaps you’ve made a little money from AdSense Ads however it’s not paying your bills and you certainly can’t quit your day job…yet. How then do you increase the revenue from your blog?

Let’s look at the 12 most effective ways to monetize your blog
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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , ,
May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

16 Ways To Promote YouTube Videos And Get More Traffic

reel marketing insider

If you don’t promote your YouTube videos you won’t attract viewers or generate any sales. Even though YouTube videos receive billions of views every day there a certain steps you need to take to siphon off some of that traffic.

Here Are 16 Ways To Promote YouTube Videos To Get More Traffic
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Filed Under: Video Marketing Tagged With: ,
May 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Mobile-Friendly Sites Convert Visitors Into Customers

mobile web design

  • Have you checked your stats to see how many visitors are accessing your site with a mobile phone?
  • Is your current site mobile-friendly?
  • Should you have a dedicated mobile site or utilize responsive web design?

When I search for a local business using my iPhone and the business website is not mobile friendly I leave right away because it takes too much time to view the information. For instance I have to constantly pinch, squeeze and scroll the screen to make the text large enough to read. Often I’m waiting for large images to upload as they slowly appear on the screen.

According to a Google study…

  • Nearly 75% of users prefer a mobile-friendly site
  • 96% of consumers say they’ve encountered sites that were clearly not designed for mobile devices.
  • 61% of users said that if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, they’d quickly move on to another site.
  • 79% of people who don’t like what they find on one site will go back and search for another site.
  • 50% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the website isn’t mobile-friendly.

Responsive Web Design or Dedicated Mobile Website…which is better?

What is Responsive Web Design?

This refers to a website that adapts to the viewing environment whether it is a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone

Benefits of Responsive Web Design

  • No need to develop a separate website for mobile users.
  • Google recommends responsive web design so they don’t have to crawl separate sites.
  • It takes less work because you only have to build one site.

What is a Dedicated Mobile Website?

This refers to building a separate site dedicated to mobile users. It can either reside on it’s own domain (.mobi) or be installed in a sub directory of the main site (ie domain.com/m/). When visitors access the main site they automatically get redirected to the mobile site.

Benefits of a Dedicated Mobile Website

Speed
Mobile users want to access information as fast as possible from anywhere at anytime. A dedicated mobile site contains less code and smaller images than responsive design sites.

Only serve relevant content
Responsive design sites display all the same information you would normally see on a desktop computer even if it’s irrelevant for the mobile user. For instance when making an appointment for your local dentist you only need the name, number and perhaps a map how to get there.

Example Case Study

Recently I created a new mobile design for a Real Estate Company in Baltimore Maryland. I chose not to utilize responsive web design because the owner said many customers use mobile phones to contact his business therefore a dedicated mobile site would provide a fast, user friendly way for customers to contact him.

Mobile-friendly Design
I decided to build a one page (screen) mobile website that included a:

  • Header graphic: This includes a captivating image with a prominent logo so mobile users would know immediately what company they are contacting.
  • Title: This explains exactly what the business is about.
  • Introductory paragraph: This primarily outlines the benefits of doing business with this company.
  • Touch to call: This displays a small phone graphic with the business telephone number.

I also built an html version of the site for customers searching for his business using their computers.

My recommendation

Take a look at your website statistics. Are many customers accessing your website from mobile devices? If so, are they quickly and easily able to find the most relevant information with your current design?

If your mobile customers don’t need to view all the information available from a responsive designed site consider creating a dedicated mobile site that only contains the absolute information they need.

Get a Mobile Website For Your Business
Contact Maryland Web Design to discuss your company’s goals, objectives and the specific needs of your target audience.

Related Articles

Top 7 Reasons to Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
Mobile Website Design – Before and After Case Study
Create Your Own Mobile Website In Minutes With a Free Online Builder
7 Ways To Create A Mobile Version Of Your Website

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: , ,
May 1, 2013 By

10 Ways To Get More Views On YouTube…Fast, Without Paying For Them

What’s the point of creating a YouTube video if no one watches it?
How do you increase the number of views to your videos for free?

YouTube videos receive billions of views each day so your job (should you decide to accept it) is to siphon off a small fraction of that traffic to your own videos. Once you know how to attract viewers to any video you can convert them into sales.

Here are 10 ways to get more views on YouTube…FAST

1. Optimize your video for YouTube and Google

If your video attains first page rankings on YouTube and/or Google it will automatically get more views based on the number of people searching on that keyword.

Here’s a brief optimization checklist:

  • Insert your main keyword phrase in the video file, title, description, tags and anchor text (text of links pointing back to your video).
  • Create a title that will captivate the attention of your visitors.
  • Repeat your title and include the full URL of your landing page at the beginning of your description
  • include the full content of your video in the description
  • Enter your main phrase plus related phrases in the tags
  • Upload a transcript of your video content
  • Embed the video on your blog and other related web properties to gain backlinks.

Read 12 Steps For Optimizing YouTube Videos

2. Announce your video on social media sites

After uploading your video announce it on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, Google+. The purpose of this is to build up a community of regular viewers.

3. Add annotations within your video

Ask viewers to share your video with their friends within your video by adding an annotation within the video. that says something like “Please share this video with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In.”

Read 10 Ways To Use YouTube Annotations To Increase Viewer Engagement

4. Write a blog post about your video

Write an article about the content in your video. Post the article to your blog and embed the video within your content.

5. Re-purpose your content

Convert your video content into a PDF file and submit it to document sharing sites such as Scribd, Slideshare, etc. This helps build backlinks which will increase your rankings.

6. Write a press release

Write a press release on one of the main points within your video then submit it to free press release sites such PR.com, PressExposure.com and PRLog.com.

Here’s a list of FREE Press Release Submission Sites

7. Interact with the YouTube Community

Comment on related videos on YouTube. These can be textual comments or video responses. Also subscribe to related channels so you stay abreast of the latest developments in your niche.

8. InVideo programming

This features your favorite video or channel across all of your videos. It displays a video thumbnail (a clickable link) within each video. I usually position it at the top right hand corner so it’s easy to see.

9. Create a custom thumbnail for each video

I always create a customized thumbnail instead of allowing YouTube to choose one they created. More people will watch the video if the thumbnail stands out in the search engines.

Example
Google “How To Create A YouTube Custom Thumbnail That Attracts More Viewers.” The first result displays the custom thumbnail I designed for this video.

10. Playlists

Playlists help increase video views across your YouTube channel by automatically playing another video or list of videos at the end of your video. This keeps viewers on your own channel (watching more of your own videos) instead of getting redirected to an unrelated video.

Read “The Complete Guide To YouTube Playlists”

Note: Avoid the temptation to buy YouTube views because Google can detect false views and may shut down your account.

Tip
Your video may not receive thousands of views immediately however they increase over time as more people discover your videos.

why video marketing

Filed Under: Video Marketing Tagged With: , , ,
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