I just wanted to drop a line to remind you of two upcoming seminars for small businesses. One is free and the other costs just $50, but you will get pounds and pounds of value from both seminars. I promise!

The first seminar - the free one - will take place on September 15, 2008 at Latuff’s Pizza in Menneapolis, Minnesota. This is our monthly Biz Bloggers Meet-Up Group. It’s a free event but we will collect $4 from everyone for the pizza. The location for Latuff’s is 11333 Hwy 55 in Minneapolis. We’ll be sharing tips on how to make the most out of your business blog and networking. For more information and to RSVP go to http://blog.meetup.com/409/. We meet at 5:30 p.m.

The $50 seminar will take place the next day - September 16, 2008 - at Byerlys Community Center Ridgedale. We meet at 6 p.m. In this seminar I’ll talk about search engine optimization and how to use a blog to attract new business by targeting it toward search engines. In other words, can you really achieve high rankings with a blog? The community center is located at 13081 Ridgedale Drive in Minnetonka. For more information, go to SocialWebTraining. See you there!

One way to make the user experience better for users of your website is to customize your 404 error page.

The 404 error page is that pesky page users get when they type in the wrong URL or click a broken link. They were looking for something and didn’t find it. The default for most 404 error pages is a white background with the words “Not Found” scrawled across it. It’s not attractive.

You can customize your 404 error page to help your users find what they are looking for. Here are a few tips to help you do that better:

• Design your 404 error page to look like the rest of your website
• Include your navigation bar on the 404 page
• On some page of your website you can ask your visitors, “Did you mean …” then offer a selection of links close to the URL that they typed in
• Include a site search box
• Add a sitemap to your 404 page
• Use the 404 widget

Webmaster Central now has a widget to help you customize your 404 error page better. You can only use it, though, if your 404 error page is already customized. You can’t use it on the generic 404 page.

The 404 widget adds the following information on your customized 404 error page:

• a link to the parent subdirectory
• a sitemap webpage
• site search query suggestions and search box

The idea is to help your visitors find what they are looking for. Your 404 widget provides essential tools to help you do that. It’s a great tool provided by Google Webmaster Central.

Templates are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can build a website fast using a template and make it look the way you want it to look with no problems. But not all templates are created equal.

The one thing to look out for when you use a template is the source code. You want to make sure the template is easily crawled by the search engines. Otherwise, it won’t matter at all how attractive your website is.

A good template should be written with html, not Flash, and not primarily in Javascript. CSS and php are OK, but in my experience they work better as support rather than primary code. I’ve seen good templates based on tables, though you get a lot more code with tables than you do with CSS and that will increase your code-to-text ratio. Still, if you are building a local website where the competition is slim then that won’t matter much. In a more competitive field you might opt for the CSS over the tables.

The best way to use a template, however, is to modify it for your own purposes. You might take a template and use it exactly as it is, but I’d recommend altering it whenever possible for several reasons:

1. You don’t want your website looking like everyone else’s. While it is highly unlikely that two people in the same industry will pick the exact same template and make their sites look just alike, it is possible. Take the extra step to prevent that by altering your template somewhat.
2. A modified template is more unique. You will undoubtedly have special needs that will have to be considered. Altering a template to meet those needs will make your life on the Web much easier.
3. You learn more. When building your website, you don’t learn anything by taking a template and using it as it is. You’ll learn a lot more about coding if you practice and the best practice is on a template where the code is already laid out for you, but you have the option to modify it. That way, if you screw something up you can alway go back to the original version and start over.
4. SEO. This is the most important thing. Not all templates are SEO-friendly. You want yours to be. By modifying the code, if your template doesn’t start out search engine friendly then you can make it search engine friendly with the right modifications.

That’s it. Have fun with your new web template.

Should your domain name be your brick and mortar business name? Many businesses, when they go online to build their first website and start marketing, will assume that their business name should be their domain name. But not necessarily.

Let’s say you own a lumber company named Jack’s located in Denver, Colorado. All the locals simply know it as Jack’s and when they are ready to go buy lumber they just say, “I’m heading on over to Jack’s.” Do you want your website domain name to be Jacks.com?

Chances are, that’s already taken. But you may be tempted to find other variations of the word Jack’s that fit with lumber. The obvious would be jackslumber.com. If it’s not taken then it could be the best bet for you; but what if it is taken? What then?

It’s much more important to have a domain name with your most important keyword in it. In other words, if you had a choice to have a domain name with the word “Jack” in it versus a domain name with the word “lumber” in it then you’d be better off with using “lumber.” The reason is because you want to rank for your important keyword as much as you can and as high in the rankings as you can. While the domain name is not the most important part of your web rankings calculation, the search engines do consider domain name. It’s just one of the criteria that they look at.

Therefore, when coming up with a domain name for your company, try to find one that best represents your company brand and that uses your most important keyword. It’s OK even to create a separate brand online that will serve as an extension of your off line business.

Need links? Here are three link building techniques that work like a charm:

• Directory Submissions - You can’t get by online without directory submissions. We’ll find all the right directories for your niche and submit your site to those, plus you’ll get a site submission to every general directory we can find. Great links.
• Relevant Links From Sites Like Yours - There is no better place to start your link building campaign that with sites just like yours. All you have to do is ask. You might have to link to them in return, but that’s OK. You are looking for traffic. And other sites like yours is a good place to get it.
• A Blog - A blog can get you inbound links in one of two ways. Put the blog on your website and write every day. Trackback to other blogs on the same topic and you’ll get links to your site from theirs. Plus, many bloggers will write about topics you cover and link back to you. The other way to make a blog work for you is to put it on a separate domain name and link to your website from the blog every day. By being on a separate IP block and on a separate domain name, the search engines won’t care if it is owned by the same person. It’s relevant and it links. That’s all that matters.
• Article Marketing - Write frequent articles and submit them to article directories. When those articles are picked up by publishers then you’ll be building links to your website.
• Social Bookmarking - Traffic building on steroids. Get your blog or website known by more people in a shorter period of time. Some social bookmarking sites will actually give you link juice.

So what are you waiting for? Start your link building today.

I think there is a bit of confusion among new Internet marketers about what constitutes a good keyword phrase. Many new marketers will perform their keyword research then use every phrase that is offered as related by whatever tool they are using. It doesn’t matter which tool you use for your research - they will all return keyword phrases that make no logical sense. It’s your job to turn those phrases into something meaningful.

Here’s an example of what I mean. This marketer is obviously targeting the phrase “online advertising internet marketing online businesses” as it is repeated verbatim several times throughout the blog post. Can you tell me what that phrase means?

If your keyword research tool returns something of this nature as a suggestion for related keywords, take that phrase and massage it into something that makes sense. Don’t just use it because your keyword research tool suggested it.

As a general rule, don’t use any keyword phrase that repeats a word. The redundant use of “online” in this phrase is useless. The search engines will likely view it as spam and your pages won’t rank well. Secondly, choose one synonymous phrase and stick with it. “Internet marketing” and “online advertising” mean almost the same thing. Not exactly, but they are close enough that you should focus on one and let the other drop. If both phrases are important to you then write one blog post or web page that focuses on one of the phrases and another that focuses on the other. Don’t combine them. Your watering down your phrases when you do that.

Thirdly, do a little more digging on the research. Do that many people really search for “online advertising internet marketing online businesses”? I really doubt that people are searching for that exact phrase. If they are then they probably aren’t finding a lot of information because savvy marketers use phrases that actually make sense. Remember, you are writing for humans and if humans can’t make sense of your content then they aren’t going to buy what you are selling so give extra thought to how you use your keyword phrases.

When 73% of Internet users first start their research online, it pays to spend some time ranking well in the search engines. If you don’t then you don’t exist.

That’s why I’ve put together a new workshop to address the needs of small business owners who are just now trying to take their business online. The title of the workshop is The 7 Things You Can Do to Make Google Fall in Love with Your Website. In addition that workshop, I’ve a great bonus: How to Turn Your Business Blog into a Search Engine Magnet.

The beginning of your Internet marketing should be your own website. In my workshop I’ll tell you how to go about optimizing your website so that it can be found by people searching for your products online. The topics I’ll cover in depth in this workshop are:

• Search Engine Optimization – what is it?
• Why Search Engine Optimization is critical to your online success
• The 7 things you can do to make Google fall in love with your website
• Blogging – what it is and why you should care
• How to launch your own business blog – the right way
• How to use your business blog as a search engine magnet

In this workshop I’ll cover everything you need to know to make your website the best that it can be and to rank well in the search engines. The cost is a measly $50 and you can register online by going to www.SocialWebTraining.com. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering what date it will be, look for us on September 16, 2008 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. See you there!

Michael Martine says generalists are better than specialists, and makes a convincing case. Has this ever happened to you?

Take SEO (search engine optimization) and web design, for example. You hire an SEO specialist after you hired a web designer who you thought knew everything about web design. In your mind, you lumped in a bunch of stuff in with “web design” that your web designer was clueless about.

After all, a web design specialist does not study SEO. He or she studies web design, and that’s it. You later find out you have zero SEO, and you’re ticked off. Now you hire yet another specialist who is going to do all kinds of changes to your site and other things you don’t understand. if this stuff had been done as part of the original design, you would have saved thousands of dollars.

Of course, he’s making a sales case for himself, but his point is right on. There are many times when it is good to hire a specialist and that’s exactly what you need. But if you are just starting out in business, or you are just making your first foray into Internet marketing, which is new territory for many small business owners, then what you really need is a guide, a generalist who knows how to get around in the field. There is more than one reason for this.

Michael pointed out of the reasons, which is the ignorance of specialists regarding other specialists specialties. But sometimes it’s not even ignorance. It could be differences of opinion.

You’ll run into some specialists who do things one way and another specialist who does things another way. Neither way is wrong, they’re just different, but they don’t go well together. You need someone who can reconcile the differences, someone who can analyze your situation and determine which direction is the best way to go - and sometimes that direction is between the paths of the two specialists.

What it all boils down to is directorship. Who’s going to run the program? Can you? Do you know enough about the different specialties of online marketing to direct the show and not end up lost? Most small business owners can’t do that. That’s why they need someone who can communicate across specialties to steer their business in the right direction. A director can tell the web designer not to include certain code, or to place it in an external file when it needs to be, based on the SEOs recommendation. Then she can convince the SEO not to be so adamant about the use of image files like Flash because in small doses and appropriate optimization techniques those elements can be implemented successfully. Your director doesn’t have to do the work; she just has to know how it should be done so that she can direct those who will do it. And if that’s the kind of expertise you need to steer your business in the right direction as you make the transition online, well then I’m your girl. And the best part is, I’m knowledgeable of online marketing and traditional marketing so I can help you integrate the two. Ready?

Page load time is a very important SEO factor that many new webmasters overlook. It can affect your PPC quality score, your search rank, your PageRank, and ultimately how much traffic you get to your site, which affects your conversions and your ROI. That’s pretty important, right?

I highly recommend that you test your page load time every now and then. I recently found a good tool that lets you do that. It’s a pretty useful tool that I found easy and simple to use and I went to SEO Chat to compare their tool, but I found out that they don’t have a page load time analyzer. Instead, they have a code-to-text ratio tester, which is useful also, but not the same thing. In fact, your code-to-text ratio does affect your load time, but that’s not all that affects it.

Other things that can affect your page load time include:

• Big files like Flash and multimedia files
• Lots of graphic images
• Image backgrounds
• Javascript code
• An abundance of CSS files
• Slow server

Many of the items that increase your page load time can be placed in external files on your server and referenced in your HTML. It would do your site good to have it tested for page load time and get your weaknesses fixed.

I can’t believe an article in SEO News actually recommends these three strategies:

• Hire a blog reviewer
• Write articles
• Use a link triangle

The only one of these strategies is even valid any more is article writing. Hiring a blog reviewer is only half valid, but only if you do it the right way. HINT: Going through a service like Pay Per Post is not the right way.

Google, just last year, killed the three-way linking strategy at the same time they started penalizing website networks. You can still get away with it for a short time, but you’ll eventually be reported by your competition and the link juice will be retracted. Why bother?

Google has also penalized websites that use services like Pay Per Post. And if you advertise on your blog that you are a Pay Per Post reviewer, you can really expect to be penalized. So what’s the right way? Do it discreetly. A few clues:

1. Don’t advertise on your properties that you provide blog reviews
2. Operate in full disclosure; let your readers know it’s a paid review and be honest about your opinions
3. Don’t sell link juice as a part of your review; use the nofollow tag and make the primary benefit of the review a mention by name on your blog and access to your traffic

Selling review space is OK as long as you do it honestly and ethically. Trying to trick the search engines or selling links isn’t going to help you or the websites you review. If you are thinking of buying a review for links, do not advertise that you’ve done it and only use reviewers who don’t advertise the fact that they do it. Otherwise, you’ll never see the link benefit you are buying or, if you do, it won’t last long.

You’re much better writing articles and marketing them for links. It’s legitimate, recognized, and effective.