Pelland Advertising Newsletter

June 3, 2008

Summer Is On It’s Way!

Welcome to the late Spring edition of the Pelland Advertising newsletter. I hope that you agree that this just might be our most informative newsletter ever. You will find valuable information about Google Alerts, Google Maps, Wikis, and site submission resources. Please let me know if you find any of this information particularly useful in conducting your day-to-day business, and feel free to suggest any topics which you would like to see covered in future installment of this newsletter.

Visit One of Our Newest Websites!

If you have a website which is more than a few years old, you may want to consider a relaunch. Keep in mind that many of the visitors to your site are repeat visitors who may be getting a bit tired of seeing the same old same old. Please take a few minutes to visit the new website which we built within the last two weeks for New Hampshire's Eastern Slope Camping Area, a total relaunch of the previous site which we had built back in 2001:

Click here to view the new website.

This new site for Eastern Slope includes a wider footprint and features like a new custom-designed logo, Flash animation on the Home page, interactive navigational buttons, a new site map, and Google interactive access maps. Behind the scenes, the site includes Google Analytics and a full range of SEO features. We could produce something similar for your business.

Remember that it is not necessary to be a big business to look like the best. It is the nature of the Internet to create a level playing field where any business has an opportunity to excel, and there is nothing that you can do to promote your business that is more cost-effective than an investment in your website. Unlike other forms of advertising, such as directory advertising which must be planned up to a year in advance, a new website has an immediate impact. If you contact us today, we can have your new site up and running in less than a month in most instances. Best of all, we know how to build websites which convert traffic into sales, in this case reservations.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts are one of the best ways to keep current on your own business, your competitors, or your industry. With free Google Alerts, you can be notified by e-mail once a day, once a week, or "as it happens" anytime a term is newly mentioned on any Web page or blog that is encountered by Google's robots. For example, you can create alerts for the name of your business, your web address, or your own name (as long as you don't have an extremely common name, like “John Smith”). If you have a campground or lodging establishment, for example, you need to keep informed of any posts involving your business that might appear on the various consumer review websites. With a simple Google Alert, you’ll know! Click here to get started.

More On Google Interactive Maps

In the last edition of this newsletter, I explained how Google Maps can be used on your website. They are fully customizable to fit any page layout, and users can pan, zoom in or out, and generate travel directions directly from any point of origin to your door. Best of all, Google will allow us to make changes to your Google Maps listing, including the addition of your Web address, keywords, a 200 word description … even up to 10 photos from your website!

Here’s how to do it. First, go to the Google Maps website: http://maps.google.com/. Then enter the name of your business in the search box. Hopefully, your business will appear as the sole entry in the search results. (If more than one listing appears for your business, you can request removal of any duplicates.) Click on that link to go to your map, then click on the “edit” and “claim your business” links in the information balloon which overlays your map. Choose the “edit my business information” option, then click “continue”. On this next page, you can correct your marker location or any of your listing information. You will be able to add your Web address, e-mail address, alternate phone numbers, and more ... including a 200 character description of your business. (Keep in mind that this will be one more inbound link to your website, which will show up in your Google Alerts and which will serve to enhance your organic search engine ranking!) On subsequent pages, you can add your business hours, types of payment that you accept, up to 10 photos, even a link to a YouTube video or an online coupon ... all for free! Once you are done, ask for a telephone validation, and the process will be complete as soon as you type your PIN number into your telephone keypad.

Would you like one of these maps on your website? We will replace your map with a Google interactive map AND make any necessary updates with Google (which you will need to confirm using a supplied PIN number in an automated telephone call), including the uploading of photos, for a one-time fee of only $100.00.

Wikis

Do you know what a wiki is? Perhaps you do not. According to Wikipedia (perhaps the grandest wiki of them all), a wiki is “a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.” The word “wiki” was derived from the Hawaiian word for “fast”, although it has also been suggested that wiki stands for “What I Know Is”.

Now, do you know that there are probably wikis for your business and its website? If not, you can create them very quickly and easily. Once again, this page will serve to not only potentially send traffic to your site but to enhance your site's search engine positioning. AboutUs is a site which “connects businesses and websites with each other and their customers using a wiki-based resource of millions of editable pages of information.” To review (and edit) your business listing, simply go to http://www.aboutus.org/, enter your Web URL (without the "www" prefit) in the search box, and click the “Find” button. You will probably be surprised to find a screen shot of your website's Home page appear, along with a title and description which have been harvested from the META tags on your site. After setting up an account (which takes all of a few seconds), you can subsequently login to edit any of the listing information which appears, including the entry of additional information and a list of related domains. If your site was not previously indexed, you will see it get indexed right before your eyes in real time. Pretty neat? Yes!

Site Submission Links

As soon as we find useful new links to promote your business and website, we add them to our Site Submission Links resource. This page is not linked from our website. You need to be an “insider” to know the address. Click here to access this valuable information.

Don’t Forget to Visit Our Blog!

Our blog, “Website Development for Small Businesses”, contains useful tips and the latest information which will be of interest to anyone who owns or maintains a website. Postings to date have covered Google Alerts, the Open Directory Project, keywords tags, how to avoid scams in the domain name registration business, and the pros and cons of sponsored search advertising. Here is the address:

blog.pelland.com

As always, I hope that you find these newsletters to be a helpful source of new ideas. If you find this information to be useful, please forward a copy to your friends and business associates so that they may subscribe. Thanks!.