Today I attended the “How to drive traffic to your website, and what to do when it gets there!” seminar at Wright State University and sponsored by the SBA and the Ohio Small Business Development Centers.
From the Dayton Daily News article, it is a “3-hour workshop presented commercially nationwide for $295” – which it turns out- isn’t true. “Dr. Jerry” said that that seminar was an all day seminar- but that he was going to speak faster for us so we would get the same info- just in a shorter period of time. If I made this claim, the Dayton Ad Club and the Better Business Bureau would be all over me.
There were almost 50 people in the room, and I did everything I could do not to say anything to correct some of the patently incorrect information that was given. My favorites were his explanations of how search works- mostly based on scores of keywords- which might have been fine 4 years ago- but is no where close to how page rank is established now. He claimed that links in weren’t important for building incoming traffic (my stats would say differently).
A woman asked about new entries to the web; “Do you get a better position when new” was totally wrong. He claimed that Google actually won’t index a new site for several days- and there is a “Sandbox effect” where a page will rise in rank over time. Google knows the web is changing daily- and that most of the time people are looking for the most recent information available. A perfect example of current topics rising to the top of search was within days of launch of the new Apple iPod nano, a kid blogged about how his broke- and Apple wouldn’t fix it. Not only was his site instantly a huge hit, it attracted so many other stories that a class action lawsuit was filed soon after and Apple changed its repair policy.
The list of things we cover in blogosopher would exceed the 21 page handout he provided- but, to briefly cover the most important things he didn’t talk about: Blogs, RSS, CSS, how to build online relationships, Open Source solutions, Static vs Active vs Live sites, web standards, accessibility standards, alt tags, how search is changing site design, mass e-mail management, how URL’s are largely irrelevant (his suggestion was to buy every URL variation, and extension including misspellings because they are cheap), how the web will change the way we do business even more so in the future. (more…)

The Web Credibility Project: Guidelines – Stanford University

Here are the researched and documented guidelines on how to make your site credible.

We have a saying at The Next Wave: Create Lust•Evoke Trust- in other words: have something people want, and make them trust you- it’s marketing in a tagline.

The most important part of staying at the top of search is to update your site often- which is one reason WordPress makes so much sense.

Let the Good Times Roll–by Guy Kawasaki: The Effective Emailer

So- you’ve been e-mailing for a long time- but, I hate to tell you- most of you suck at it.

Here are some guidelines from Guy Kawasaki- the former king of evangelism at Apple.

If you want the short version:

A good subject- ie. what the e-mail is about. No “Hi” or “no subject” – something like- “Follow up question on the seminar” or “The meeting on 3/4/06- agenda”

Quote the e-mail you are responding to. It always helps to have both sides of the conversation.

Have a signature- so people have your contact info- or better yet- use a vCard.

Most importantly- don’t forward anything with a cc list of people’s e-mails- Spammers love it when you send the mile long e-mail about how if you forward this e-mail Bill Gates will give you a Honda… and always bcc- if you must send things like this.

Best of all- check www.snopes.com before forwarding anything – so if it’s hogwash- you don’t look like an idiot.

With so many spam filters out there- the best way to get your e-mail through is to be an effective e-mailer- so read Guy’s post.