As part of your ongoing effort to increase your website’s visitors stats, it is important to include your business to Google Local. If anything, it helps your current customers find you quickly after typing your company name, but it is FREE! Be sure you include all of your locations.
Here is how:
Read the rest of this entry »
As promised in my previous post, I am including the code we use to cache our website. (I got this from a Google Group discussion.) Further explanation can be found from Google’s help page: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/caching.html.
Most web pages include resources that change infrequently, such as CSS files, image files, JavaScript files, and so on. These resources take time to download over the network, which increases the time it takes to load a web page. HTTP caching allows these resources to be saved, or cached, by a browser or proxy. Once a resource is cached, a browser or proxy can refer to the locally cached copy instead of having to download it again on subsequent visits to the web page. Thus caching is a double win: you reduce round-trip time by eliminating numerous HTTP requests for the required resources, and you substantially reduce the total payload size of the responses. Besides leading to a dramatic reduction in page load time for subsequent user visits, enabling caching can also significantly reduce the bandwidth and hosting costs for your site.
Basically, the .htaccess file is telling the bots to cache certain files at various times for returning visitors.
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0
<FilesMatch “.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$”>
ExpiresDefault A29030400
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch “.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$”>
ExpiresDefault A604800
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch “.(xml|txt|html|js|css)$”>
ExpiresDefault A7200
Header append Cache-Control “proxy-revalidate”
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch “.(php|cgi|pl|htm)$”>
ExpiresActive Off
Header set Cache-Control “private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform”
Header set Pragma “no-cache”
</FilesMatch>
Okay, as a web designer it goes beyond my comprehension but sometimes ugly website actually work. If you take a look at eBay, it’s not a very pretty site, or, the most obvious like Amazon. They are not “pretty” sites. In fact, I would say they are too busy and unfocused but they are functional which is the most important component of any website. Make it easy for your customers to find what they want, buy it or call you and move on.
Sometimes it’s not the design but the trust you evoke. Some ugly website scream, “Hey, I am a small business and couldn’t afford a big marketing firm. So I built it myself.” But if you are conveying that you are trustworthy by including phone numbers, addresses, your policies and make sure you site is easy to use, you can be sure that your customers will appreciate it and respond with loyalty.
Google understood this. It can barely call it self a web designed site as it is primarily made up of a logo, search box, and some small text. That’s it. It’s fast, easy, simple.
Lesson learned, don’t assume your website has to be filled with high-end graphics and animation. Just be sure it conveys your business in the best possible light and that your customers can quickly get what they need.
We use the 3 major search engine webmaster tools. We won’t hide this from you and don’t try assume that we’ve got special, secret gear. We use these tools because they are there for a reason but it means a bit of manual effort to review your website based on what the Search Engine see. Each SE has their own algorithm but they are useful.
From these pages, we register your website by uploading robots.txt and, if needed, a sitemap file. Below are the online tools that you can review yourself.
Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster
Some rules to get your website listed. Note: these are not steps to get listed the top 10 search results.
Other notable ideas:
There have been several times when I’ve (and I am sure many of you) been given an error that provides no explanation to doesn’t offer any solution. My solution? Google the error message.
Copy/paste or write the error message on a piece of paper and copy the message into the search box. You will see results from others that have had the same problem, and if you are lucky a solution.
Don’t see a solution? Try Google groups to see archived discussions that may relate to your problem.
If you are at all interested in making sure your customers can find you on the internet or on the road, make sure you remember your listing within Google Local. It is often overlooked but is still very important to your online marketing efforts. Beyond search engine strategies like pay-per-click, optimization, and off-line efforts, your listing in Google local can be quite helpful.
To the left is a screenshot of my Google Local listing when searching “web designers richmond tx.” Because I have two phone numbers listed I show twice.
Which brings me to my next reminder, take some time and check your Google Local listing. Then claim your listing by clicking the “Edit this Listing” at the footer of the detailed page. Follow the instructions to validate your listing using a mail post or phone call.
1. Google has the largest market share of U.S. based web searches at 64.49%
2. Yahoo is second with a market share of 21.65%
3. MSN is third with a market share of 7.42%
4. Ask is fourth with a market share of 4.76%
“Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending Oct. 27, 2007, Sept. 29, 2007, Oct. 28, 2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users.”
Source: Hitwise – Dominance continues with a six percent increase over last year.
Top 5 Search Engines in the United States (The Majors) by Rank
Our Twits© 2010 GlobalSpex, Inc.Privacy Policy|Terms of Service
