Archive for May, 2007

How Nerdy Am I?

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Pierre has cheekily asked how nerdy I am? Happily I’m lightly nerdy - I suspect my recent acquisition of my Mac has increased my coolness. Here’s my score:
I am nerdier than 40% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to find out!

So my turn to test the nerdiness of friends. First off is Bill Slawski, he also recently acquired a Mac so I suspect he’ll be fine. ;) I’ll also give a nod to Adrian Lee who doesn’t like his Mac…

Referrals. Are All Your Eggs in One Basket?

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

The local Yellow Pages is running a radio campaign to promote advertising in the Yellow Pages. In one spot they use a business owner to talk about how successful his Yellow Pages ad is. In it he states that over 80% of his traffic comes from his Yellow Pages ad. 80%! Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

I’m sure the Yellow Pages loves this figure but as a business owner I’d be worried if such a large percentage of my enquiries came from the one source. It’s the same argument you’ll read online about relying on Google for all your traffic.

When marketing your business you should be focusing on promoting your business in a variety of ways both online and off. This will ensure that your referrals come from many sources including search engines, word of mouth, newsletter promotions, Yellow Pages and so forth. Apart from widening your net this ensures that should you receive a drop in traffic from one source you’ll take comfort knowing you have plenty of others to keep those referrals coming in. If you don’t you’ll like that Yellow Pages campaign from a while ago “Not Happy Jan“.

Goodbye Bill, Hello Steve!

Monday, May 21st, 2007

I did it, I finally did it. I switched from PC to Mac. Whoo hoo!

It was my husband, Raoul, who actually made it happen. He surprised me last Thursday with a 20″ iMac. What a husband, and no he’s definitely not available. ;)

Besides looking funky as it’s such a sweet machine to use. There is a learning curve and some basic tasks take a bit to figure but then Windows was my OS for 12+ years. Give me another week and I’ll be a Mac native I reckon.

If you’ve considered making the switch this may help you decide.

So thanks Raoul, you’re the best…after my iMac of course. ;)

Utterly Shameless Self Promotion

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

I’ve just had an article published in My Business - an Australian business magazine. The article is called Building a Website on a Budget. It’s a printed publication but I do have a PDF version you can read. Let me know what you think of it. The deadline for the next one is this Friday - eek!

John Scott on Link Building in 2007

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

John Scott over at V7N is one of the smartest internet marketers I know. He has just written an excellent post, John Scott on Link Building, which is a must read for anyone interested in driving targeted traffic to their website.

There’s a ton of gems but here’s a few:

You see, Google is still running link based algorithms. Google, however, wants to count links which were meant to be legitimate “votes” for a web page. Google does not want to count links as votes if those links were placed on a web page for monetary reward, or as spam.

Links remain the most important part of any search engine marketing campaign. Links are SEO. The difference between link building in 2002 and link building in 2007 is that the search engines are better equipped to evaluate those links, and this forces website owners to up their game.

Nice post John!

Kim Krause Berg Talks SEO and Usability

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

My friend, Kim has a great video interview out talking about SEO and Usability. Kim is a great proponent on ensuring a website is usable once a visitor lands there. As she says there’s no point in being number 1 in the search engines if visitors can’t find what they’re looking for on your site.

Kim also talks a little about the start of Cre8asite Forums, my home away from home. It’s a great interview and well worth a look.