Indextree's Internet Marketing Blog» Business

Online Directories Are Making Money – Is Yours?

Lawrence Johnson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:01:20 +0000

Some online directories are making a lot of money, but not all; and those that don’t have only themselves to blame. A cursory review of independent publishers’ online directories reveals how their ambitions don’t necessarily align with their actions. So let’s focus on the four principal mistakes directories could avoid. Hopefully this is sufficient to quash the circular argument that goes like this: “since we cannot make money online why bother with improving our site”, when, in fact, they do all they can to impede their online success. More about that later. The four mistakes are: 1. Paying lip service to search engine-friendly structures 2. Not thinking about their users 3. Poor content 4. Assuming that they own “local”, really - what a missed opportunity! Related posts:

Turning Web Analytics Into A Money Making Machine

What’s Your Story & Why Should I buy from you?

Richard Horowitz — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:37:52 +0000

I spend most of my day on the internet for work or personal reasons. As I browse the internet I notice all these bad websites that we run across every day. Most of these websites are not bad looking but they provide no value to users.

The internet is your web based sales person. Would you ever let your sales person go to a meeting with potential clients in clothes that are five years old or that do not answer the phone when it rings? Then why are you allowing your website to be so poorly prepared to make a sale for you.

There are two important pieces that you need to think about for your website:

1. Content – Every page of your website should have its own theme. Just like a new chapter in a book provides you with new information, each page of your website should do the same. The thing to remember is that there are people at different stages of the buying cycle that visit your website, so you have to structure your website to accommodate them all. This can be done in numerous ways including brief summaries, imagery, videos, specs, CAD drawing and bulleted lists of features, benefits & applications. You don’t have to have all this information on one page it can be split across numerous pages to allow users to find the information that they are looking for. But you have to have that information on your website or people will move on.
2. Differentiators – Why should that person/company buy that product from you? What makes your product or your company better than any of your competitors? If you do not have this information on your website, then you are doing your company a disservice. This information can sometimes be more important than the product itself. Maybe your product or service is the cheapest or maybe you offer the best pre-sales and post-sales customer support. Whatever the reasons are, they should be on your website.

I can’t stress enough that your website is your 24/7 sales person but if you do not provide it with the information that you would provide to your sales people then you are just wasting your money with your website.

Design for Your Users

Own Your Own Domain

Richard Horowitz — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:25:12 +0000

This post is a warning post for all companies and website owners. Too many times I have run into clients that do not own their own domain name, website files and/or website content. Most of the time this occurs because these people do not know better and are taken advantage of by web design firms, web hosting firms, other providers or sometimes disgruntled former employees.

The fact is that your company should always own everything related to their website. The cost of a domain is $10 per year and when you buy the domain make sure it is in the company’s name and that more than 1 person has access to that domain. This way if someone leaves the company, the domain is still in the company’s control and they can just change the password.

If you outsource your website design, development or content make sure that you get full rights to the website content and files. Always get this in writing. The only time you do not get this control is for proprietary programming code that is part of your website. In that situation you can set up a licensing agreement for that proprietary programming code if you are no longer with that company.

The issue arises when these companies want to do work to their website including SEO or a website redesign, move to another hosting provider or just take back control of your domain or website. This other organization can hold your company hostage. They can make you stay with them or pay an exorbitant fee to gain back control of your domain or website.

I have dealt with clients that had former employees or partners who purchased the domain name for the company steal the domain name and not relinquish control unless they are paid a hefty sum. Or other times when you are changing web design firms and the current firm states that they own all the website files so the company is forced to start from scratch. Another scenario is when SEO firms optimize your website, but if you end the contract with them they remove all the work they did for you.

There should be no reason why you do not own everything related to your website.

Canonical Tag 2.0: Google To Add Cross Domain Support