Posts Tagged 'search engines'

Jackie’s story in her own words

Posted by Jocelyn Mozak on April 9, 2013

Born and raised in Portland, Oregon Jackie Hooper is a public speaker, author and creator of www.wouldhavesaid.com, a place where she posts letters written from anyone to anyone and portray a variety of emotions. She released a collection of those letters in book-form called, “The Things You Would Have Said”.

Jackie loves to help people find their voice. She’s drawn to those who feel unsure about where they stand or what they have to offer, helping them recognize and believe that they matter, discovering their strengths, and believing in themselves, especially when it comes to their role in relationships.

WordPress.COM: Great for personal blogs, not for business

Jackie’s WordPress Story, in her own words.
I tried to make a website on my own using the free WordPress.com blogging service. Unfortunately, after spending a lot of time trying to figure it out I realized that what I actually needed for my business was a website with an integrated blog, not just a free blog. I needed the ability to customize the look of my site, to optimize it for SEO, and to be able to integrate any plugins I needed; WordPress.com was just not going to cut it.

I started looking around for a website designer and found Jocelyn’s website. I contacted her, and immediately knew that she was a really good fit for me.

Mozak Design: Empowering the client

Jocelyn is a wonderful teacher. At some points I was frustrated, but in a good way. I would ask her a question and in addition to answering my question she would make me a video or send me a link on how to do it. She said to me once that she wants to empower her clients to do this on their own. This was huge – to learn how to do all these things myself. It’s great that she’s excited to teach others how to do these things for themselves. She even made a page with all the video tutorials so I can go back to them if I do ever forget something she said. Especially with the kind of learner I am, her walking me through the process on video was a huge help. I now feel that I really am able to manage and update my site when I need to.

Coaching and looking at the big picture

What I really loved about Jocelyn was that she helped me with my website. She was a really great sounding board and coach. I came to her saying that I wanted her to replicate the site I had created on WordPress.com but on my own hosting where I could completely control the SEO and design. If I had just gone to someone else and said “Please just replicate this site”, they would have done it without question and then I wouldn’t have been happy with the end result. Jocelyn guided me through the process pointing out where my initial design would and would not serve me in the search engines. To me, website coaching she did was as important, if not more important than the actual website design work she did.

The website I had made was a picture of me in the center with a little tab at the top. I had seen a website like this and I was trying to be artsy with it. When we talked on our first call, the insight she provided was invaluable. The homepage, she explained, is key to search engine optimization and to visitor engagement. While a graphic might be nice, if you make your visitor have to click just to be able to get to a page with information you run the risk of losing them because you are making them work too hard to learn about your services.

She started asking me big picture questions like, “what’s your goal with this, what do you want clients to see right away?” I think just talking through it all made me realize I didn’t just want a giant picture of me on the front but I needed to provide some content. So in a really subtle way, she said the way I was doing it was ok and then did a great job leading me in the direction I wanted to go. I feel that every question I had, she really gave me great answers and guidance.

Throughout the process, we joked because we both emailed each other tons of times back and forth and that was exactly what I needed. She gave such great attention to me and she would respond so quickly either with an email or gave me a call. In moments where I felt frazzled she would work right there with me and didn’t make me wait around.-

Would I recommend Mozak Design?

Absolutely!

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Squidoo – It’s Truly Amazing!

Posted in: Increase Traffic to your Website

Posted by Jocelyn Mozak on April 1, 2013

Increase web traffic

There are numerous websites that allow you to create a web-page for any topic under the sun. One among them is Squidoo.com. It is a fairly recent site, created by Seth Godin, a marketing expert. The site is greatly popular among internet users for driving traffic to their own sites; in other words, it is a great marketing tool.

Squidoo web pages are known as ‘lenses’. Anyone can create a Squidoo lense. For this, you need not be a technical wizard, as you can have a lense of your own in three easy steps. The best part is that you can include all kinds of modules to make a site that is interactive and keeps your visitors involved.

Here are some examples of what you can include in your lense to SEO your small business:

Creating Text Blocks enables you to make blog entries or post your articles.
Setting up an interactive poll will keep your visitors involved in your business.
You can keep your lense updated and active by allowing the visitors to give their comments. You may ask them to link their own lense to yours.

The best part of Squidoo is that it has the capability to drive appropriate traffic to your website, which in turn translates to large volume sales. Besides, you can also provide links to products sold on eBay, Amazon and other product vending sites. What’s more, you earn a commission for any sale that has taken place from these links! And mind you, Squidoo.com is completely free!

Search engines like Google usually top rank long tail keyword phrases at Squidoo. You can thus create a network of lenses on Squidoo to target keyword phrases that will direct the search engines to your site. It is always a good practice to include some readable and informative content in the lense in order to target the visitors to your main site.

However, if the lense for your particular keyword is already in existence, you may need to get it transferred or purchase it. This is an ideal situation for you because you are getting a readymade lense without making any effort.

The early bird small businesses users of Squidoo.com are already earning the benefits. You can do it too. Since search engine optimization or SEO is the backbone of internet businesses, each relevant keyword phrase can have a squidoo lense devoted to it.

Have specific internet marketing questions?
Post your question below or email us.

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Craigslist – Advertising for Free!

Posted in: Increase Traffic to your Website

Posted by Jocelyn Mozak on October 27, 2012

Craigslist is one of the most popular websites on the Internet and presents you with a great marketing opportunity for your small business.

The Internet has provided the world with a huge marketplace where people can advertise and market their goods or services. Craigslist is a website that allows users to sell anything from furniture to real estate. It is a listing of classified ads that include job placements, personal ads, ads for home supplies, ads for pet food, ads for website designs for small business, etc. Craigslist is a flea market that is online and used by millions all over the world.

People who visit Craigslist are looking for something that they want to purchase.

If you advertise some product or service that suits their interest, you are bound to have an increased traffic to your website that converts to sales. For instance, a web design company based in Portland may advertise their services in Craigslist to expand their business worldwide.

Since the Craigslist site is conveniently divided into regions, it is very easy to place your ads in the city or country of your choice. Your ads will be displayed on the site for 45 days, but after that you can re-list them if you so desire.

Craigslist ads are given top rankings by search engines, especially Google.

So, expect an increased flow of traffic to your site within a week of posting your ad at Craigslist. SEO web design for your web page ensures a good ranking at search engine listings. Make use of the same SEO techniques to design your ad by using the relevant keywords to ensure top-ranked listings.

There are a number of websites that allow you to post free ads. Posting ads at sites like Yahoo Classifieds, Backpage, Highland Classifieds or USFreeads will also help to increase traffic to your site. However, the volume of traffic generated through Craigslist posting is much higher than any of the other free classifieds sites available. This is the reason that Craigslist is so popular among net surfers.

Go ahead, read another post then head over to Craigslist. Come back and share your results with us!

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Fixing WordPress’ default “ugly” urls

Posted in: Increase Traffic to your Website, WordPress Plugins In Review

Posted by Jocelyn Mozak on October 24, 2012

The default WordPress setting for a permalink is colloquially referred to as “ugly”.

The link will contain the post ID, which is a string of nonsense numbers that only make sense to a computer. You can change this so that the actual title of the post displays in the permalink, which carries with it several benefits.

To change this, you can do it manually or use a plug-in. Pretty Permalinks is a popular plug-in for this.

You can change your permalinks to a more logical format, such as one that displays the date and the post name.

The benefits of this are myriad.

First and foremost, it makes it more intuitive for users who want to link your posts. If they’re not sure if they’re putting up the right permalink, they can tell just buy looking, which is impossible with the post ID numbers.
This also has benefits for search engine optimization. If you use keywords in your posts, it ensures that those keywords are repeated in the URL and that, in turn, helps the search engines to understand what the post is actually about. This simple fix makes your blog more intelligible to search engines and users at the same time and can make it much easier to sort through your posts when you need to.

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Why You Need Google XML Sitemaps

Posted in: Increase Traffic to your Website, WordPress Plugins In Review

Posted by Jocelyn Mozak on October 3, 2012

Google XML Sitemaps creates a map of your site that makes it easy for search engine crawlers to find their way around your site and to index all of your content.

It also has the important function of notifying the search engines every time you make an update to your site. This is vital to SEO. The search engines tend to be much more interested in sites that regularly update their content with useful information for readers.

So if you invested the time in writing new content, this plugin will guarantee you get every ounce of SEO credit!

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