Nobody ever said running a business was easy. And if you represent one of the countless online businesses out there, you’ll likely agree strongly with that statement. There are certain hurdles that can feel like they’re impossible to tackle: securing a steady stream of new customers, for example. Advertising and promotion is one aspect of business that needs constant review and monitoring, and can be one of the most tiresome parts of running a company. As a way to secure a steady income, lots of online companies choose paid solutions like the Google Adwords program to bring new prospects to their website. This is generally a successful tactic; however it can get very pricey – making the line between profit and loss that little bit thinner. Thankfully, there are a few simple tweaks you can make to your website to free yourself of PPC solutions. Give your website an on-site SEO overhaul and you could reap the benefits in a few short weeks – freeing up income for other matters, and bringing new visitors to your site through natural, organic, search results.

Give your off-page optimisation a spring clean
When you first put your site together, you probably made sure that the SEO was carried out properly: metatags in the right places, titles written properly, and so on. Over time, you’ve probably added a good few pages to your site. As a natural result of day-to-day business, some of these pages may have been thrown together at the last minute, or rushed to meet a deadline. To make sure they’re working as hard as they can on search engines, you’ll need to check the source code on pages that match this description and double-check that they’re optimised properly. It’s amazing how many companies fail to keep their off-page SEO in check, and they could be losing out on lots of leads.
Spruce up your on-page content
If you’ve been tied to PPC solutions, you’ve probably got a huge list of keywords that relate to your product or service. If you’ve got Analytics info too, you’ll be even better placed to double-check the optimisation of your text content. Even if you think your wording is fine, go through each page and check the keyword densities for your key terms. Are you using headers and sub-headers properly? Essentially you want to confirm that Google and other search engines are detecting the right words and the right message from your site, and placing you correctly in their results. If you’re signed up to Google Webmaster Tools, the info there can be invaluable in checking on-page content.
Keep your site alive and kicking
The reason that so many sites seem to dominate the dizzy heights of search results is that they’re striking the perfect balance between SEO and update frequency. If Google indexes your site, then check again three months later and nothing’s changed, you run the risk of slipping in the rankings. One good way to combat this is to launch a blog on your site. Use the keyword research you already have and plan at least one post a week to keep your site alive and kicking. As a result, Google will visit you much more often and your site will rocket up the rankings. Don’t underestimate how useful a blog can be as an SEO tool, so if you don’t have one yet and you want to avoid paying for any more clicks – launch one now.
Patience is a virtue
Remember that running a business based solely on website hits from organic sources is a very tall order. The most likely scenario is that your organic visitors will allow you to reduce your Pay Per Click program use considerably. But even a 50% reduction in your PPC budget would make a huge difference to your company and your varying income streams. Also bear in mind that optimising your site for organic search is a long tail game, and requires a fair bit of patience. It will take some time to see results, so don’t be disheartened if your rankings stay the same for a while. Stick at it, and in time you too will be able to reduce your reliance on PPC solutions.

One of the most crucial part is very simple, yet often overlook and that’s keeping everything about your website info in order. I’ve seen this problem happen many times when taking on new clients who dealt with a previous web designer. Transitioning to a new web designer can be painless or complicated, depending on how well you’re prepared.

All web designers see this and most of us offer similar advice. In this month’s copy of Zoonews, Kathryn Presner shares the following tips:

Domain registration – be sure you are listed as the domain registrant (not your web designer!) and that the email address on file is an active account. If your web designer’s email is listed as a contact instead of yours, make sure you switch it over to your own email address before you cut ties with your old designer. This is extremely important. I’ve heard of business owners who lost control of their domain name because they failed to do it.

Hosting account – keep handy all relevant details, including the name of your hosting company, the URL of your web-based control panel, and its username and password. Know your FTP (file transfer protocol) credentials, including your FTP host name, login and password. This information will allow your new designer to access your web server and website files.

Logo – have an electronic version of your current logo on hand. It should ideally be in a vector format (like Adobe Illustrator or EPS) on a transparent background, to ensure the greatest design flexibility.

Graphics – retain electronic versions of any images such as stock photos that you may wish to reuse.

E-commerce – know the login details of all e-commerce accounts you may have, such as PayPal and shopping cart systems. Be sure you have access to the accounts, and that they’re registered in your name.

Keep on file in an easy-to-remember place all other information and documents related to your website. It’ll simplify your life – and that of your new web designer – more than you can imagine.

Kathryn Presner runs a web design company, Zoonini Web Services in Montreal. She’s also spoken at several WordCamps and is a moderator on the WordPress Support Forums.

When making changes to a static site, you’re web developer modifies the code of each HTML page. Changes on a WordPress site are done by modifying the content which is stored in a database. The WordPress templates, coded using PHP, then pulls the content dynamically from the database and displays the webpage.

Thus when planning your WordPress, you’ll need to make sure that your hosting provider offers the following:

• PHP version 4.3 or greater
• MySQL version 5 or greater

Any server that runs PHP and MySQL will do, but an Apache server is the most robust and has the most features for running a WordPress site. Some hosting provider will tell you that Microsoft based servers are perfectly fine, but please don’t listen to them. The set up is quite difficult and no fun at all.

Having installed hundreds of WordPress sites, I am happy to recommend the following hosting providers.

• Bluehost
• Dreamhost
• Media Temple
• Retrix
• Blacksun
• Webnames

These hosting providers all have very good WordPress support and great customer service.

Once you’ve set up your hosting, you’ll need to provide your web developer with the following:

• Access to your hosting provider control panel - This is needed to set up the database
• FTP access – This is needed to install the files on your server

Setting up a WordPress site is a bit more complicated than a static one, but with WordPress’s popularity, more and more hosting providers and making the necessary changes to offer full WordPress support.

I ran in to a very bizarre WordPress error this morning following a brand new installation on one of Blacksun‘s server. Certain area of the web admin turned up blank pages. I did a quick search on Google and thought that this error may be due to a wrong php.ini setting.

Looking at Blacksun’s website, I found the contact number to their technical support really fast, called, and was greeted by a human voice in less than 2 minutes. I explained the situation, she looked at the error files and confirmed my initial thought. Instead of putting me on hold and leaving me to talk to her manager, she simply took my contact details and told me to call back. Have you ever had technical support call you back? I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

No more than 20 minutes later, a voicemail was delivered to my phone. The error was fixed and my site is now working perfectly. That’s the best customer service I’ve encountered in a long time.

LocalDelicious.com is a new blog which aims to get the scoop on local food in and around the Lower Mainland. As more and more people try to eat locally produced goods, this blog aims to provide tips and advice on where to find the best markets, products, events and books.

More info about local food, recipes ideas and gardening can also be found by visiting the Edible Vancouver blog while the Earth To Table blog is a collaboration between chefs and farmers that promotes logical, sustainable, righteous, and above all, delicious food.

Not enough time to follow blogs… No worries, twitter is another great a way to get the lowdown on what’s going on in the food industry. You can follow three of these bloggers on twitter @LocalDelicious, @Edible Vancouver and @Earth_to_Table.

I usually get one or two unsolicited emails from companies in India advertising their services, so I thought I might see signs of this. I usually don’t pay attention to these emails other than take a look at the company’s portfolio and archive them. This trip being my first time in India, I wasn’t sure what to expect; big business parks, men in suits, laptops everywhere…? I saw numerous signs for computer classes, but no business parks or men in suits which would be dumb anyway, considering the weather. Most of the office buildings I saw were old and falling apart like the majority of Indian houses, temples and monuments, but perhaps I simply wasn’t in the right neighbourhoods or even the right cities.

During my short stay in Chennai, I read a piece in the Chennai Chronicle about how a group of twitter followers now get together on a regular basis to exchange ideas. I’ve also read and spoken to people who deal with Indian companies on a regular basis, so they must be around and India is most definitely booming and taking advantage of new technology.

I also came across a funny “businessman kit” in our Chennai hotel. I’m usually used to sewing kits and shower caps, but a businessman kit, that was new to me. On closer inspection,  I discovered that it contained a couple of paper clips, three rubber bands, a safety pin and a few pins…. Not sure what kind of businessman would need this.

Learn about what it takes to build a thriving brand through building an outstanding customer experience.
Inspired by John DiJulius, the king of world class customer experience.

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Raising money is tough, but the Web seems to be a pretty effective means. I’m just wrapping up the most wonderful book called “Three Cups of Tea“. At the end of the book, the authors lists how we can continue the work started by Greg Mortenson and how we can help. Of course spreading the word about the book and letting everyone know that they should read it is the best way, but visiting their website and the charitable organization’s website, are other ways to get further information. Additionally, by following the link on their website, all purchases of the book and all other Amazon purchases will generate 7% of proceeds to the Central Asia Institute. Kudos to Amazon!

Other organizations have made it quite easy for users to create profiles and raise money. Just a few weeks ago, a friend mentioned that he was participating in a 24 hour yoga relay to raise money for kids suffering from Aids and HIV. He simply sent an email, I clicked the link, inserted my credit card details, and now my name and contribution amount appears next to a thermometer on the charity site. Easy as pie.

My friend Karis, sent me an email just a few minutes ago telling me about the Animal Rescue not getting enough daily clicks on their website to get free food donated to rescued animals. I’m not sure logistically how this works, but simply by clicking the link, the site is able to raise money. This kind of button as been used on many charity sites.

These methods of raising money seem pretty good to me. Do we still need “telemarketers” calling us at home?

If you are collecting any type of information from your website, such as email for a newsletter or comments on your blog, then you should have a privacy policy in place. But what do you put in there?

Via a great post by Linda at Get Elastic, I found a privacy policy generator. Simply  enter your company details, answer questions by selecting radio buttons and checking off checkboxes that apply and voila. Your privacy policy in HTML or plain text is ready to go.

After a few minutes, this is the policy that was generated for Bluelime Media:

This is the web site of Bluelime Media.
Our postal address is
207-1238 Seymour Street
Vancouver

We can be reached via e-mail at info@bluelimemedia.com
or you can reach us by telephone at 604.561.6287
For each visitor to our Web page, our Web server automatically recognizes no information regarding the domain or e-mail address.
We collect the e-mail addresses of those who post messages to our bulletin board, the e-mail addresses of those who communicate with us via e-mail, no information on consumers who browse our Web page.
With respect to cookies: We do not set any cookies.
If you do not want to receive e-mail from us in the future, please let us know by sending us e-mail at the above address.
With respect to Ad Servers: We do not partner with or have special relationships with any ad server companies.

I don’t think that the wording is great and I think I would remove the info about ad servers. I’m not sure that it’s necessary, but this tool is a great start. Reading through all of the questions, it also made me think more about my website and how it is being used. It might also help your company if you do collect lots of information but aren’t sure if you should inform your users or not.

Websites have been around long enough that it’s easy to compare and see which ones make it easy to do business and which are causing their customers grief. Try it yourself. Go to a few sites you have never visited before and see how easy it is to locate specific information. Then go to a few of the rock star online retailers and see how they do the job.

There are a lot of rules to good online customer service. Here are a couple of my favourites.

1. First stop, create a site that is easy to use. And I don’t mean easy for you or your coder. I mean it needs to be dead easy for your site visitors to use. Frankly, even if you’re the one building it, your opinion doesn’t matter nearly as much as your prospective visitors’ needs do.
2. Make sure there is a way to contact your company available from the home page and every other page in the site. And don’t bury it in text at the bottom! Make it bright yellow if you have to, but make it stand out. Often this is done somewhere in the top right quadrant of the page and many site visitors look here first.
3. If you’re selling online, let people know the price before they input their personal information. Would you pull out your credit card and ring through a purchase before you know the price in a bricks and mortar store? Many site visitors will opt out of the selling process if they have to provide their personal data before seeing the full price of the product, including shipping.

In a nutshell, make it easy and you’re more likely to make the sale.