Background

In the ‘old’ days of the internet there was definitely benefit in having blueshoes.com as your domain name if you sold (you guessed it) blue shoes. Search engines ranked you higher if your domain name matched a term someone searched for.

As you can imagine this was very easily rorted – someone owning blueshoes.com didn’t have to have a particularly useful or popular blue shoes website to come up at the top of the search results when people were looking for blue shoes (their website didn’t need to have anything to do with blue shoes). So people ran out and registered domain names related to their product or service. Many businesses created exact duplicates of their websites and launched them using these types of domains alongside their existing websites.

As search engines evolved and got better at giving people relevant results – in the early 200s -they tweaked the way they calculated their rankings and started paying little or no attention to the domain name. Google – who were starting to leave the older search engines eating their dust – then started penalising people for having duplicate content. Penalising as in drastically dropping the ranking for these sites or removing them from results altogether.

If you have more than one domain name and only one website

It’s fairly common for people to own and want to point more than one domain name to their website. Examples include businesses that have changed names or merged with another business and still want their old domain name to redirect to their new website or organisations that want to own the .com version of their country-specific (eg .com.au) domain.

As long as these extra domains are set up correctly using what’s called a 301 redirect – that tells search engines the old domain has been permanently redirected – they aren’t seen as duplicate content or penalised.

If you’re considering buying extra domains to help your SEO

Unless you have good reason to don’t buy extra domain names – they’re not going to help you rank higher on search engines. They can be complicated and expensive to set up correctly.

Unsure? You can always ask…

Donate and help Steve raise money for Movember »
(money goes to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, beyondblue and the Movember Foundation)

Day 7…

Day 14…

Day 21…

Day 28…

Day 38: The mo that wouldn’t die…

For many years unscrupulous organisations have been sending misleading invoices to people offering to take over managing their domain name or to register additional domain names they don’t need. It works like this…

1. They use a freely available lookup service (called a WHOIS) to find the names and addresses of domain name owners, including you
2. They create a nice professional looking invoice for either your domain name, or a domain name that’s very similar to yours (for example yoursite.net.au when you use yoursite.com.au)
3. …and pop it in the mail to you
4. You receive it and if you’re not careful you end up paying an inflated price for a domain name that you don’t need.

What to do if you receive an invoice for a domain name and you’re not sure if it’s legit

1. Check who the invoice is from (these companies are often called something legitimate sounding) and
2. Check if it’s actually for your domain name, not something similar (remember .com.au is different to .com)
3. Check the fine print (these often say things like ‘domain name available’ or ‘invitation to register’)
4. Contact whoever you registered your domain through (look it up), or contact us if you’re not sure. (If you can’t remember who your domain name is registered through write it down somewhere when you find out)

These are all large organisations with massive resources at their disposal and – we would assume – serious security regimes.

The lesson? If they can be compromised then so can you.

Here are some extremely simple things you can do to lessen the risk…

Use strong passwords

You’ve heard this before but I’ll say it again: the easiest way for someone to access your website (or email or Facebook or…)  is by guessing your password. Studies have shown that lots of people use ridiculously guessable passwords (with 12345 and 12456789 the most common, followed closely by people’s names). If your content management system’s password is one of these log in and change it now.

Keep passwords safe and and don’t save them on devices others can access

If you’re using a laptop, iPhone or mobile device to log in to things like your website admin area and you lose it will the next person who picks it up be able to log in? Be careful about getting your browser to save passwords unless you’re sure no-one else will be able to use them. (If saving passwords in your browser is important consider password protecting your entire computer or phone instead).

Keep software and content systems up to date

Most website hacks come about because of old, unsecure versions of software. If a potential security hole is found in content system software – like WordPress – an update is released. To be safe from hackers it’s important that your site runs the latest version of software. We offer extended warranties or maintenance agreements for our customers that will see us update WordPress when updates come out for a very reasonable fee. It may seem like a a pain or an extra cost to make sure this is done but this is the reality of the internet and compared to the alternative…

Make sure your website is with a good web host

A good host will

• make sure their server is secure and has the latest security patches
• keep regular backups of your site

It’s not something web hosts like to talk about but no matter how good your host is it is still possible that your site could be compromised. If someone gets your content system login details, for example, or an evil hacker works out a new way to exploit a commonly used website or hosting software that happens to be running on your site and tells all their evil hacker friends.

A good host means will be able to deal with issues quickly, restore a recent backup of your site, keep you posted and give you advice.

Feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss any of the above.

Contents

1. Directly linking from your website to your Facebook or Twitter page
2. Allowing others to share/like/tweet things on your website with their social media networks
3. Pushing feeds from your website onto your Facebook or Twitter account
4. Pulling feeds from your Facebook or Twitter account onto your website

1. Directly linking from your website to your Facebook or Twitter page

This is one of the simplest and most commonly used techniques across the web. We add a Find us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter button somewhere on your site (usually in the sidebar or the footer area) that links directly to your Facebook or Twitter page.

Nothing fancy going on here but you give your customers a super easy way to find your social media accounts.

Live examples: Enchanted Maze Garden (Facebook), St Kilda Boat Sales (Facebook and Twitter), GXY Search (Facebook and Twitter)

2. Allowing others to share/like/tweet things they see on your website with their social media friends

I’ve written about allowing people to share your content on their social networks before. Commons tools allow

Sharing
We put some Share tools (like the ones you see at the bottom of this post) onto your website that allow a visitor to share something they like with others in their social network. (If they’re not logged in to their chosen social network and they click on of these they’re prompted to do this).

Because Facebook and Twitter are the most prominent social networks people often just use the specific tools for these rather than the more generic Share tools. Such as…

Liking
A Facebook Like button adds the little thumb graphic and ‘Like’ to your content. When visitors click this on your site it’s added to their Facebook account as a ‘like’. (There’s a whole world of details about how these buttons work and what they show on your website depending on if you’re logged in to Facebook or not and/or whether any of your friends have ‘liked’ the same content but I’m not going there right now).

Tweeting
Very similar to Facebook’s Like. When a ‘Tweet’ button is clicked the content on your site as is posted as a tweet on the person’s Twitter account. Sometimes a count of the number of people who’ve clicked – similar to the number of ‘like’s – is shown. Easy.

Live examples: Our Living Coast (liking), Waldron Smith Management (sharing)

3. Pushing feeds from your website onto your Facebook or Twitter account

I’ve also written about automatically publishing content from your website or blog on your Facebook page before. This means that we set things up so that when you publish a new post or item on your site it will be automatically added to your

• Facebook page (as either a status update or a shared link), or
• Twitter account (as a tweet)

This makes it super easy to get your important content out to more than one place at once. It’s important to be careful using this technique – and indeed any business marketing through social networks – that you don’t end up overwhelming people with sheer volume of marketing-y content. It may also be better to update your social media accounts manually for a more personal touch.

Live example: Numbers Executive Recruitment (finance and accounting jobs posted on their website are automatically cross-posted to their Twitter account).

4. Pulling feeds from your Facebook or Twitter account onto your website

This is the opposite of the above. It means that a stream of content from your Facebook page or Twitter account is displayed on your website.

This is a great option if you have an active Facebook page or Twitter account, but not if you’ve dabbled but found it’s not really working for you (a Twitter stream that hasn’t been updated for two years can make you look a bit sad).

Live examples: AIMEX (Facebook page), St Kilda Boat Sales (Twitter)

Want to talk to us about integrating any of these into your website or for some advice on the best approach for you? Contact us.

Create an email signature that puts your contact details at the bottom of your emails.

Why?

At least once every day when I’m at work I read an email from someone, pick up the phone to call them and realise that I don’t have their phone number. It must be at the bottom of their email, right?

Well, as often as not, no. I then hang up the phone, dig through my contacts to find the number, call the person back and… by this stage more likely than not I forget what I was calling for.

A quick and very unscientific survey of my inbox right now shows about a 50/50 split between people who include their contact details on their emails and people who don’t. That’s crazy.

It’s so easy to create an email signature. Do it now!

How to create an email signature in Microsoft Outlook

1. Open Outlook
2. Choose Tools → Options
3. Choose the Mail Format tab then click the Signatures button
4. Make sure you’re on the E-mail Signature tab
5. Click the New button
6. Type a name (eg ‘work signature’ – this is just for your reference and won’t be seen by anyone else)
7. Click OK
8. In the big box type your signature (how you lay this out is up to you but I suggest as well as your name you include at least your phone number and website address)
9. Click OK
10. Click OK

How to create an email signature in Mail (Mac OS X)

1. Choose Mail → Preferences
2. Choose Signatures from the icons along the top
3. Click the + button at the bottom of the second column
4. In the centre column give your signature a name (eg ‘work signature’ – this is just for your reference and won’t be seen by anyone else)
5. In the right column type your signature (how you lay this out is up to you but I suggest as well as your name you include at least your phone number and website address)
6. Tick Place signature above quoted text
7. Close Preferences box

Of course there are lots of technical things you can do to make your signature look fancy, include pictures or marketing messages, but the most important thing is to have it.

The site has a forum, great information on living with less impact on the planet in the Sustainable Living Guide, information on the performance of the member councils and lots more. Check it out – ourlivingcoast.com.au.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Twitter is a great tool, if used in the appropriate context. We have several customers who use Twitter and/or have added Twitter feeds to their primary websites (see examples below) and see benefits from this.

However, for each of these there are truckloads of businesses who set up Twitter accounts because of the hype and then either

• don’t use them
• use them for a honeymoon period of a couple of weeks then lose interest, or
• post occasional updates that are completely irrelevant (going to the shop for a sandwich, hooray it’s Friday)

The Chaser team seized on this with glee when they started looking at politicians’ Twitter accounts on ABC TV’s Yes We Canberra leading up to the 2010 Australian federal election, as illlustrated in the short clip below.

When Twitter is useful for business

The organisations that get the most from Twitter are usually successful for at least one of the following reasons (illustrated with examples from some of our clients). If you fall into one of the categories below Twitter may well be useful for you. If not, I’d suggest you think hard about your strategy before committing.

You have a young audience

Are those youngsters ever offline?
For example: Gen Y and below Recruitment agency GXY Search tweet new jobs: twitter.com/gxysearch

You have a wealthy audience

Usually with both the latest gadgets and lots of leisure time on their hands.
For example: St Kilda Boat Sales provide regular updates on all things boating at to a large group of followers: twitter.com/thinkBoats

You have a tech-savvy audience

Of course those geeks are tweeting. They’ve been doing it since waaaay before you even heard of it.
For example: http://twitter.com/iTunesMusic (OK, you spotted it – iTunes isn’t really one of our clients. Right now).

You run an event that people attend

If the audience is right Twitter can be good to allow networking and a second level of discussion at conferences and events.
For example: Headspace kept people up to date before and during their recent International Youth Mental Health Conference: twitter.com/headspace_aus/, and participants discussed all things conference-related during and after the event at http://twitter.com/search?q=%23iymhc

You run an event that people might not attend but want real-time updates from

It’s undoubtably true that Twitter is probably the fastest way to get updates on something happening in real time.
For example: Sail Melbourne post realtime race updates during competition time.

And another thing to consider…

Time.

It seems almost standard these days that every new website launched has the ubiquitous Follow us on Twitter (and Join us on Facebook) buttons linking to associated accounts. These each have to be set up, styled and polished – the easy part. Then they have to be promoted and managed and posted to and have followers and friends sought and approved.

If you have a marketing person or team that’s all ok. If, like many small businesses, you don’t this can add up to huge amounts of time each week. You need to think about if this extra work is going to benefit your business.

For example if you regularly read 20 different blogs or sites you could subscribe to RSS feeds from each of these sites and then use a feedreader to easily check a digest of all new articles each day without having to visit all of the sites one by one.

Should I have an RSS feed from my website?

If you have a website and publish regular updates, like news or blog posts, you should offer your visitors the chance to subscribe to your website’s RSS feed.

How do I do this?

If we build you a website using WordPress you’ll automatically have an RSS feed from your site. The address of your feed will be http://www.yourdomainname.com/feed/. If you have different types or categories of content that you regularly update you can also offer people category-specific feeds.

For example the Go4 website’s main RSS feed is here: http://www.go4.com.au/feed/ – this shows alls new posts we add to our site. The RSS feed for our blog is available at http://www.go4.com.au/category/blog/feed/ and just includes items posted to our blog.

Easy.

How do people access RSS Feeds?

There are a couple of ways people subscribe to RSS Feeds.

RSS feed readers

Dedicated feed reader software like Feedreader (Windows) or NetNewsWire (Mac) or online tools like Google Reader or Bloglines pull all people’s subscribed feeds together and show summaries.

RSS feeds as Live Bookmarks in a web browser

Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer (7 or newer) web browsers let people subscribe to RSS feeds in their web browser as a special type of Bookmark or Favourite (sometimes called Live Bookmarks or Web Feeds).

…here’s our new website (bet you didn’t see that one coming).

Hope you like it. Of course the site runs on the spunky WordPress backend.

We’ve worked hard to try and build a clean and simple site and get to the point. So in that spirit, I’ll leave you to have a look around.