Posts Tagged ‘advice’

Listen Now Click right arrow | You may also Download the MP3 | Playtime 09:30 (min./sec.)

Listen now or download the pdf version of this PDF Report on Custom CMS Web Design “Truth Behind CUSTOM CMS Web Design Services”, subtitled: A Report on Real World CMS User Experience. This conversation between Jim and Roger Degerstrom, co-owners of Custom CMS Design, LLC, presents a major revelation about CMS Content Management Systems of web design.

Here’s a rough outline of the report:

• Explanation of Custom CMS Web Design Services
• SEO and Google Search Results Summary
• User Behavior and Content Management Systems
• SEO and Add Original Quality Content Often
• Truth Behind Custom CMS Web Design Services

The majority of owners launch a new cms site and promptly forget it rather than adding pages to their website. Utilizing the power of a CMS means following the advice to add original quality content often.

This truth became apparent after years of experience, and a solution to this weakness offers hope for site owners to maximize CMS performance. Download this custom CMS web design report in pdf, or open it in a new tab and then follow along as you listen.

Finally, consider our marketing tips and advice for your custom CMS web design. Call if any questions about how to maximize your cms website to help generate traffic and new business.

Another published article was syndicated earlier this week and published on several sites. Read the Great First Impression with Email article on eZineArticles.com. The advice is about using a direct email address that matches your domain on your website and web design instead of a free service address.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“When a person selects an email link on your commercial website to make an inquiry, the reply should be from an email address that matches your www domain. Besides having a web design that creates a sense of trust, that matching email shows sophistication, too.”

An example of what can go wrong is given with a real world experience from one of our clients. They used a free email account for all their business correspondence for years without incidence. Read the article to learn what happened to their reputation and credibility when their free email address was stolen in a phishing scam.

A new advice article is available to view online entitled Golden Rule Writing for the Web with an advanced tutorial on web copywriting.

Here’s an excerpt from the article.

Crafting quality business letters is more formal than making an online presentation to convince a website visitor to take a closer look at what you offer. With visitors having 1000′s if not millions of choices in Google search results, you have mere seconds to keep them on your website. This tutorial may help.

Follow the link above to the full article featured earlier today on the home page of EZineArticles.com. You may enjoy the creative methods used to brainstorm new ideas for effective content to keep visitors on your site longer as you learn the secret of the Golden Rule Writing for the Web.

The purpose of allowing blog comments is to let readers interact and provide advice or an opinion on the post topic. The first test for real comments is ask “Did they reply to a specific point made in MY post or could their comment fit any post on any blog including a brain surgeon?”.

With experience over a period of time new blog owners will learn to recognize real people from spammers.

Most spam includes generic compliments about your blog or website with links to an unrelated site. Spammers prefer being anonymous using fake names to hide their identity. Spammers often use free email services like gmail or yahoo which is another clue they’re hiding instead of looking to truly interact.

As unbelievable as it seems, spammers continue to send millions of junk emails every day yet only a small percentage actually make it through the gauntlet of anti spam measures at every level. Despite the high mortality blocking spam, there must be enough people who actually fall for spam tactics to make it worthwhile.

The spam assault is unlikely to change, so follow the test for battling blog spam advice here, and then use the search engines to learn more anti spam strategy.

Need stock photos? You may decide it’s better to pay after comparing no fee royalty free stock photographs to premium stock photo options for your web design. The same is true for brochures or other projects when you need artwork for print, as well. When choosing paid premium photos, expect higher license fees for exceptional quality work.

You may find links to over 500,000 free to use photographs in the photo directory on this site. For business use, perhaps 1 in 10 is suitable for commercial applications, yet the search can be even more time consuming when trying to find just the right shot for a given web design project. Reconsider paying if your time looking for truly free pix costs more in wasted time than the license when purchasing premium photos.

Important: Whether using free to use or premium paid stock photographs for your web design, the term royalty free does not mean free without restrictions. Respect copyright to avoid the risk of legal claims or perhaps search engine penalties. Yes, the robotic technology is here and being perfected to identify the origin of online graphics including photographs. This could mean site owners caught using photographs in violation of copyright.

Royalty free photos or other media means you do not pay recurring fees for permission to use them in your web design work. Even free to use photographs may have restrictions for other than personal use like public display or commercial work. Look for details when you shop and read the license. Some photo owners require written permission in advance or notice upon use, and some require publication of their name in credits when using their intellectual property.

Does a photo you want to use for your web design include an identifiable person? If so, you are required to obtain a model release or confirm that the site offering the royalty free photo has the release on file.

When you use royalty free stock photographs in web design or artwork for print including paid premium stock photo options, in most cases the free use is not transferrable. Just because you paid does not give you the unlimited rights to share with others including your clients, so don’t offer copies.

Depending on your budget, you can start with photos that are free to use in your web design or choose premium paid stock photograph options for extra high quality and a more favorable first impression.

While checking traffic stats today and following one referral search, we learned a website hosted on DreamHost servers had scraped 39 pages of content from the blog section of one of our websites. The response time was excellent from DreamHost in reply to the Copyright Claim and DMCA Takedown Request.

Graphics, photographs, and video were hotlinked to files on our hosting account, so the offending party added insult to injury by draining bandwidth as well as copying the xhtml code and blog text verbatim.

DreamHost autoreplied to the request in 3 minutes, and then a person emailed a reply within 2 hours to report the infringed content had been removed from their servers.

A big thank you to DreamHost for their prompt action, and to attorney Carolyn E. Wright who posted her tutorial and advice on Blackstar Rising entitled How to Send a DMCA Takedown Notice.

Fight back if you encounter copyright violations of your intellectual property, yet make sure to fully document facts as outlined in the post linked above. Keep in mind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA, is a United States law, so readers outside the USA may need a different approach to ensure compliance.

The secret to online success is still add original quality content often. You must optimize that content to attract search engines while keeping your focus on writing for your website visitors. The training materials provided with your custom cms web design give you the tools to achieve top rankings, yet the first mistake website owners make is thinking that getting Google page one will be easy.

From experience after reviewing dozens of custom cms web design project launches, 9 out of 10 site owners never add any new content. Custom cms website owners accept an initial launch with X number of pages and then neglect the dynamic potential.

As seen by search engines when left to collect dust, your stale website that never changes is unlikely to ever make top rankings.

Achieving Google page one is a goal without shortcuts. Don’t believe promises that state otherwise, especially for micro-sized small businesses who feel pressured because you cannot delegate the cms website updates.

Site owners get distracted with day to day tasks running their business, and managing their website suddenly takes a back seat. It is easy to drop site updates in favor of familiar activities that generate revenue immediately. Doing what put you in business is always more fun!

Having a CMS website is a good strategy. Letting it sit without adding fresh content is not. Need help? Contact us to learn how a budget for outsourcing site updates may be more affordable than you think.

Many owners go beyond their web design and matching blog content with a Twitter account for online business promotion without developing a brand awareness Twitter strategy. As in a custom cms web design or blog, site owners are encouraged to plan first before jumping into Twitter.

A new article by Custom CMS Design LLC owner Jim Degerstrom was published earlier today and is entitled “Danger Running Twitter on Autopilot” as featured on the Build Your Own Business article directory.

Here’s an excerpt from the article warning about automatic content feeds on Twitter:

You can tell an account holder is using a robot if their posting method is entirely API, Twitterfeed, or another RSS format. This means tweets are generated and put in queue to “drip feed” into their public timeline to show activity when in fact follower interaction is probably not being monitored.

Twitter is social media. The purpose is to socialize with your followers. The moment you choose efficiency over being personal, you dilute the value of being on Twitter. When people reply to an automated tweet or ask a question they won’t get an answer until a real person checks for replies.

Trust our team when it comes to advice about custom cms web design, blog design, search engine optimization, and Twitter strategy. View a list of Jim’s articles as a Build Your Own Business Top 25 Author out of 595 contributors, and then email us to begin discussing your brand awareness Twitter strategy.

An article written about CMS web design budget tips by owner Jim Degerstrom was published on EzineArticles.com earlier this month to help you evaluate designers and plan a new cms web design project.

As a side note, the EzineArticles platinum author mug shown at the left was a premium gift awarded to select authors by the EzineArticles directory owners in 2007 and is a collector’s item Jim uses every day. Yes, for coffee!

Website planning advice covers topics of web design budget, evaluating a designer, and future website growth. Here’s an excerpt from each of the 3 key tips:

1. Budget funds for as much quality as you can afford for the initial development and launch of your custom CMS web design.

2. Evaluate your options for a source to create the custom CMS web design based on their quality and experience.

3. Plan to add original quality content often to your new custom CMS web design to attract repeat visitors.

Follow the link to the full article entitled Custom CMS Web Design Budget to learn details about the advantages of choosing quality with an ongoing budget so your website continues to grow.

If you own or manage an older version of a WordPress driven website or blog, the team at WordPress warns you MUST upgrade to the most recent version v2.84 because of a SERIOUS security threat taking place now.

In the announcement WordPress warns readers to upgrade immediately before reading their complete post it is that serious. Consider this comment from the official WordPress post linked above about upgrading:

If you are using a WordPress version after 2.7, the nag screen on the WordPress Administration Panels will alert you to upgrade. If you are using an older version, upgrade now. Don’t know what version you are using? Without a nag screen to tell you to update, you’re using an old version. Checking the Administration Panels footer will help, but don’t waste time looking. Just update now!

For our clients who have a custom WordPress blog designed and managed by us, your blog is not affected! Rest assured your WordPress installation was already at v2.84 before this virus attack began. In addition, we use automatic dBase backups as added security to avoid any recovery problems if needed in the future.