So, here’s a tip that’s so simple, many of us have forgotten it – I figured most people had already taken this precaution…but I found that not to be the case.

It is SO Simple, yet it may save you a lot of grief and lost sales. Ready?

• Create a 400 Error Redirect (through Apache or whatever web server you are using) if traffic doesn’t reach you in the manner you were expecting it to arrive.

It’s literally a precaution, in case things don’t turn out how you expected them to.  As I was researching a few blogs I clicked on an advertisement, not sure why – I was curious as to what they were selling I guess.

Here is the Ad I clicked on:

After clicking on this Ad that this company is paying for…guess what comes next?

A brilliant Sales page?

A phenomenally written blog post?

A corporate website with logos of their fancy clientelle?

NO! Here’s what I end up with

Not Found

The requested URL /jvsrc=BtoBlonline_Banners was not found on this server.

You’ve got to be kidding me….

You worked SO hard to put together your Internet Marketing campaign, you’ve got Ads rolling, you’ve got landing pages created, and in case someone ends up at a place you didn’t expect – you are going to lose that visitor because the URL got jacked up or a page was moved.

The fix is easy…so easy.  In your Apache settings or whatever Web Server you are using, you can setup a .htaccess redirect – if your web host supports it.

You can just put in a simple line like this into your .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

and create a notfound.html page for users to see instead of the 404 Not Found message.  At least then you haven’t lost them and you’ve gotten a 2nd chance.  Sometimes a 2nd chance is all you need to capture a lead.

Consider it…prepare for the unknown!  I’d love to hear from others on simple ways to dodge Murphy and make the most of your Web site or blog.

Comments?

I ran across a cool tool that I wanted to share with you guys:

It’s a little button you put on your site that someone can click on and share your site with their friends and colleagues.  Pretty easy to install as well.

Basic Features:

» Easy Bookmarking & Sharing
» Spreads Your Content
» Removes Clutter
» Fast and Reliable
» Easily Customizable
» For Websites and Blogs
» Completely Free
» Customizable (with your logo, service list, colors, etc.)

Get free statistics about how your content is shared and spread by your users:

» Most Popular Content
» Where Your Content is Sent
» Trends Over Time
» Geographic Breakdown

It’s easy enough for a beginnier and flexible enough for a pro.  Try it out.

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design – Application Development – SEO SMO SEM – Email Marketing

Search Engine Optimization is the process of gaining higher ranking in the result set of a Search Engine search.  Now for that to make sense, let’s do some defining of terms and processes.

Here’s the quick and dirty…

A Web site is born
You’ve just started a business and need to put your web site up.  Well, the first thing you will do is figure out your focus.  This usually comes from the products or services you sell, or the demographic of the clients you are servicing.

These are your keywords. Keywords define your site.  Now, sometimes keywords are setup in the META tags of a site, but sometimes the keywords are just generated from the content you’ve created.  Mostly likely, it’s the content that defines your site more so than the keywords.  Although, keywords are very important, so don’t neglect them.

A Search Engine finds out you exist
One way or another, A Search Engine will figure out you exist. You either submitted your site directly to an engine or you posted a comment in a blog with your URL…either way, the engine will see that there’s fresh meat out there and they will send their bots and spiders.

Bots and Spiders – no, that’s not my Halloween costume
Bots and Spiders are what Search Engines send through the Internet to scavenge your site.  These “Spiders” will “crawl the net” and index your content, and various other pieces of data.  They are the ones that check to see if content has been updated or not and will check your relevancy, etc.

Weights and Value
Each time a spider indexes your pages, they will rank you and provide a weight as to the value of your content.  This is the secret sauce for most Search Engines.  If you were to figure out what algorithms they use to figure out weights and value, you could trick them into putting you up top on any keyword you wanted.  It’s assumed that no one person at any company (Google, Yahoo, MSN), has that information; different departments share pieces of the algorithm so that it can’t be stolen.  In some cases, the Search Engine will also change this weighting system which may been after a change, that your site will jump up or drop down in rank just based on how they are looking at your site now.

A user is on the prowl
Now, we have a user on a Search Engine who puts in a keyword they are wanting to find a relevant site for. They type in their keywords and hit search, the Search Engine now goes through it’s database of indexed content and displays results for what they think is the most relevant web site to satisfy the users query.

This is based on data and content saved by the Spiders when they visited your site.

Now, the difference between SEO and SEM:

1. SEO is the process of making changes to your site so that the Spiders will give you a better weight and value based on what you’ve done internally. This means you’ll organically move up the Search Engine Results list.  When you think SEO, think slow, steady, and long-term.

2. SEM can sometimes include SEO, but mainly it’s the process of paying for clicks or “Pay Per Click (PPC)”, paid inclusion, or paid placement, where you are buying clicks. If you pay G
oogle, Yahoo, or MSN for a sponsored link…you’ll show up at the top or the right side but you’ll pay each time someone clicks on your link.

In some people’s definition, SEM can also mean Search Engine Marketer, which is a person or group that provides Search Engine Optimization (Organic), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, and other Internet Marketing Techniques.

Hopefully you learned something…we’d love to get your comments!

Cheers,

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design – Application Development – SEO SMO SEM – Email Marketing

I’m kidding…you actually want to be very selective when creating a title for each page of your web site.

1. It has to be relevant to the page…Make sure all of your pages do not have the same title tag.

2. It helps users distinguish between browser windows or tabs.

3. It may or may not help Search Engines determine what your site is about, the content will end up speaking for itself.

So here are a few guidlines:

1. Google.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

2. Yahoo.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

3. Ask.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

4. MSN.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

So, better to be safe than sorry…keep it at 66 characters or less.  Get your keywords in there but don’t stuff it like a turkey!

Most of us know about Google Analytics, it’s a piece of code you put into your site and then you can use Google’s free tool to track visitors, time on site, where the visitors are coming from, e-commerce funnels, etc.

It’s a great tool, it’s free, and it’s widely used.

Well, it seems like Yahoo! is putting together an offering as well…it’s a rebrand of IndexTools.

Here are a few screenshots, since it’s not publicly available yet:

Mozilla calls Firefox the safest web browser…

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/security/

So, how is open source safer than proprietary code?   Well, it all comes down to motive.

For example…Microsoft has a specific amount of resources they are willing to pull in to code Internet Explorer in order to make it cost-effective and keep ROI where they want it.  There is a limit to the number of programmers they can hire.  Now, that limit is very high and that programmer base is quite large, but there is still a limit.

Open source leverages desire.  Anyone can help code or help test, and they aren’t paid for it.  So, Mozilla can rally the same number of programmers but at a much lower cost.

So, what’s this about intent and motive?  Well, if you are volunteering your time, then you’ve bought into the vision.  If someone is paying you, maybe you bought in or maybe you just like the paycheck, who knows.

So by Mozilla’s statement, their browser rocks…check out their risk chart:

An independent study shows that, in 2006, IE users were vulnerable to online threats 78% of the time. Firefox users? Only 2%.

When are you at risk?

A few interesting features:

One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages. i.e. type in ‘neonrain’ and it will suggest neonrain.com or a search for ‘neonrain’

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.  No more lists, you can actually “see” a visualization of the web site.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.  Integrating the web as if it were an application installed on your machine.  With Google Gears, you can even run apps while being offline.

Dynamic Tabs
Drag tabs to change the order or pull a tab into it’s own window.

Crash Control
Run an application in it’s own “sandbox”, so that each application has it’s own safe area.  If one application crashes, it does not affect another tab.  Includes a Tab Task Manager to view resource usage by tab.

Incognito Mode
Stops the storage of cookies and sessions after the window is closed.

Simpler Downloads
Downloads appear in the status bar and you can drag them from there to your desktop.  Hmmm. Just like Firefox, what’s new here?

Instant Bookmarks
Click a star to create a bookmark, again…what’s new here?

For more details on Google Chrome, here is a video from their developers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGmO7Oximw8