Marty Dickinson

Article / Updated 07-07-2022

In web marketing, it’s important to make sure your site is visible. Checking your robots.txt file and meta robots tags is a good place to start. Errors with these can make your site invisible to visitors. Check your robots.txt file Go to www.<i>yoursiteaddress</i>.com/robots.txt . You might get a Page Not Found error. That’s okay for your purposes: A no robots.txt file means you’re not placing any broad limits on what search engines can and can’t index on your site. You might also see something like this: User-agent: * Disallow: /blog.htm This file is called the robots.txt file. It tells search engine crawlers, also known as robots, what to do when they visit your website. In this example, it’s telling all search engines to ignore the blog.htm page. All other pages are searchable. If you want to become a robots.txt geek, visit the Web Robots Page. You can find out everything you ever wanted to know about guiding robots around your site. What you don’t want to see in your robots.txt file is this: Disallow: / This line tells a visiting search engine crawler to ignore every page on your website. A developer may add this line when he is building the site to prevent search engines from crawling it while it’s under construction. If it is left there by accident, your site is invisible to search engines. If your robots.txt file has any Disallow commands in it, check with your webmaster or developer to make sure that a reason exists. Disallow can be used to hide pages that change a lot, hide duplicate content, or keep search engines out of stuff you just don’t want them crawling. Just make sure that you’re not accidentally hiding content they should see. Check for meta robots tags Using the meta robots tag is another way to hide pages from search engines. Go to any page on your website and view the source code. You don’t want to see <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> If the meta robots tag is there, and it contains noindex , nofollow , or both, remove it. You have valid reasons to use this tag: You might want a search engine to ignore this page because it’s a duplicate; you might feel the information on the page is inappropriate for search results; or the developer might have hidden the page during development. If you don’t know the reason, delete the tag. Do not trust your developer to remove the meta robots tag. When he builds your site, he’s working hard, writing code so fast that his fingers smoke. Forgetting to remove that one little line of code is easy when you’re facing a tough deadline and still have 4,000 lines of code to write. Remind your developer!

Article / Updated 03-30-2017

Netvibes can be a useful tool to web marketers and you should start by setting up a homepage. If you like a slightly more polished interface, want more customization options, or aren’t comfortable using Google because of privacy concerns (some folks just aren’t), Netvibes is an excellent choice. Setting up a Netvibes homepage takes only five steps: In your web browser, go to Netvibes and sign in or create an account. The basic option works well for your purposes. Enter a topic you’d like to track. Now you’ve got a Dashboard, but it isn’t assigned to an account. To set up your account, click the Sign Up in the upper-right corner. Enter your account information, or sign in using Facebook. Follow the activation instructions for e-mail activation or via Facebook. You’re logged in to your new account. In Netvibes, you have two pages: your public page and your private page. When you first sign up, your public page is turned off. If you turn it on, just be careful that you don’t put any widgets you don’t want anyone else to see on your public page. You’re now ready to start adding widgets that display RSS feeds and other content.

Article / Updated 03-23-2017

Duplicate content should be avoided in web marketing and Google provides a tool for detecting the repeated information. Nothing hurts a search engine’s quest for relevant content as much as finding the exact same words on two different pages. Duplication is bad for these reasons: Duplication used to be another tactic used to fool the search engines. Webmasters would take one website and replicate it across many different domains, linking them all together. That would fool early search engines into seeing many relevant sites interlinked, and therefore cause the engines to artificially inflate rankings. You don’t want to risk being associated with this tactic — penalties are rare but severe. Duplicate content creates confusion. If a search engine finds the same content on two pages of one site, or two pages on two different sites, it has to basically guess which page should be ranked. Having duplicate words also makes it hard for a search engine to decide which page should be ranked. Other webmasters who link to your content might link to either version. All links to your site are votes. If half of all webmasters link to one page on your site and the other half link to the duplicate, you’ve split your vote and lose authority. Most of the time, duplication is an accident. It’s created by inconsistent linking, bad pagination scripts, or other sloppy website-building practices. Google says that it can handle duplicate content for you. It’s true — Google will often remove duplicates from its index, and it doesn’t penalize you for it. The problem is, though, that Google still has to spend time crawling all of that duplicate stuff. That wastes what’s known as crawl budget, and that hurts your SEO. You can find duplicate content on and off your website by using search engines. To do so, follow these steps: Go to Google and type site:www.yoursiteaddress.com. (Type your actual website address.) Doing this shows all pages from your site that are currently in the Google index. Click through all the result pages. If you get to a message that reads In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar. . ., you have pages that Google considers duplicates. Click Repeat the Search with the Omitted Results Included. The additional pages are your duplicates. You can also find duplicate content with a more basic search. Copy one sentence from somewhere on your website. Make sure that it’s not a sentence that others are likely to use. On Google, search for that sentence, in quotations marks. Google returns all pages in its index that include those words, in that order. This lets you find other sites that have copied your writing as well as pages on your own website that are duplicates of each other. No matter how hard you try, you can never create a site that is 100 percent duplication free — it’s impossible. The important thing is to make sure that you don’t duplicate entire pages or sets of pages from one page to the next or, even worse, one website to another.

Article / Updated 02-09-2017

In mobile marketing, a request for an opt-in is called an opt-in call to action. You can place an opt-in call to action in any traditional, new, and mobile media channel, including the following: Television Print Radio Point-of-sale displays Face-to-face encounters Outdoor advertising A web or mobile Internet site An e-mail A customer-care call Online advertising A dialog pop-up setting in a downloadable application How to dial and press Dialing and pressing is all about using the voice channel of the mobile phone. You can encourage people to call a phone number by asking them to “Dial 1-800-XXX-XXXX to experience the sounds of the movie” or “Call 408-XXX-XXXX to listen in on the game,” for example. You don’t have to answer the calls yourself; you can use an IVR system to ask the caller to make selections. Selection options in an IVR session could be “Press 1 to receive a ringtone,” “Press 2 to get your last five transactions,” or “Press 3 to get the movie listings sent to your phone.” How to use text Texting simply means sending and replying to a standard alphanumeric or multimedia message. You can place the call to action in traditional, new, and mobile media by saying something like “Text win to 12345 to enter the sweepstakes.” You can also obtain a mobile subscriber’s opt-in via texting. Mobile marketing programs and any other programs that use text messaging (such as IVR, Internet, mobile Internet, or applications) must use a CSC to address and route text or multimedia message traffic. How to snap and scan Snapping and scanning means taking a picture and scanning a bar code — nearly every phone today has a camera on it. The camera is a wonderful tool for gathering opt-ins. You can instruct audience members to take a picture of an object — a soft-drink can, a magazine ad, or others that have clearly defined edges — then instruct them to use a scanning application or e-mail/text the picture to your mobile marketing program. When your program receives a picture, it processes the picture and opts the subscriber in to your program. How to submit Another great way to invite someone into your mobile marketing program is to present a form on an Internet page or a mobile Internet page, or in an installed application. Dial an abbreviated code Two companies — Zoove under the brand StarStar and Single Touch — have developed two alternative opt-in channels; they invite you to place calls prefaced with ** and ##. Zoove’s method uses the star (*) key on the mobile phone. A mobile subscriber on the Sprint network, for example, can press **267 — that is, **AOL — and the Send/Talk button on his phone (typically, the green button). In return, an AOL promotional mobile Internet site is sent to the phone. Single Touch’s solution works the same way but uses the pound (#) key instead. Both services are still limited in their deployment across wireless carriers, but you can see the possibilities of these methods of opt-in. How to execute opt-ins To leverage text messaging, you need to be familiar with two important text-messaging opt-in classifications: Mobile originated (MO): A mobile subscriber composes (originates) a message on her phone and sends it to you. Mobile terminated (MT): A message goes from an application provider’s service to a mobile phone, so the message ends (terminates) on the phone. How to execute a single opt-in In a single opt-in, someone sends in an MO and you send an MT back confirming the opt-in. For subscription alerts or ongoing programs, very few carriers support single opt-ins. Mostly, this process is used for one-time interactions; when the initial interaction is done, no future interactions will occur. How to execute a double opt-in A double opt-in is typically used to gather an individual’s confirmation. The flow is straightforward: The user opts in to the program. The mobile marketing application responds with a text message that asks for confirmation (“Reply y to 12345,” for example). The user sends the confirmation. The mobile marketing application processes the request and sends back a welcome message (such as “Thank you. You’re now in the group. To opt out, reply stop, or for help, reply help”). How to execute a multistep opt-in You use multistep opt-in when you want to challenge consumers with additional questions before they can participate in your program. For example, you may ask users for their ages if you’re running a program suitable only for users 17 and older. After a user responds to the additional challenges, the interaction may end, or you may follow up by triggering a double opt-in to get expressed consent for future marketing.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-27-2016

Web marketing encompasses a wide range of electronic means to get your product in front of potential customers. Market your product through your business's website, through other people's websites, in their e-mail, or on their phones — nearly everywhere. Market your goods and services effectively by using tools like such as strong SEO terms and pay per click, and by analyzing your marketing campaign every day.

Step by Step / Updated 03-27-2016

As a web marketer, finding “dead” pages will help keep your site running properly. Your site may have pages search engines never seem to find. Those pages may be buried deep in your site navigation, or you may have search roadblocks that shut out the search robots. Whatever the case, dead pages are missed opportunities. Ideally, every page on your site has value, and every page on your site gets indexed. Finding dead pages is the first step to getting dead pages back into the index. Here’s a quick way to do it:

Step by Step / Updated 03-27-2016

Most web marketing reporting tools don’t show referrer data front and center on the main dashboard. You need to drill down to find and retrieve it. Using Google Analytics as an example, the following walks you through the steps of finding your referring sites and introduces the common metrics you see along with those sites. Although the following steps focus on Google Analytics, you can use these basic steps to work with most reporting tools. To find your referrals, follow these steps:

Step by Step / Updated 03-27-2016

MSN adCenter can be a useful tool for web marketers. After you gain experience, you may want to adjust your keyword list. When you created your account, you may have chosen to accept the default options when you entered your initial keyword list. If you did, the match type was broad and the maximum CPC was applied to all keywords in that ad group. You can always go back and set separate bids for specific keywords or change the overall maximum CPC. You can enable incremental bidding and target users by gender or age by increasing your bid when MSN detects a user in your desired demographic (age, gender, or time of day). To adjust your keyword list or use the incremental bidding tool, follow these steps:

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Pay per click (PPC) is a popular web marketing tool: You place an ad on a website, pay the site owner for each click-through (that is, every visitor who clicks through to your site), and enjoy the exposure. Like everything else, PPC has its own jargon, which the following list can help you sort through: ad group: Where and how your ads and keyword lists are organized. campaign: Where your ad groups are organized; budgets for spending are set; and other settings are made, such as geography, frequency, and networks. CPC (cost per click): The amount you pay each time your ad is clicked. CTR (click-through rate): The percentage of how many times your ad was clicked, divided by how many times it was shown. destination URL: The address of the web page that your ads go to. display URL: The web address displayed in your PPC ad. impressions: How many times your ad was shown. keyword: The words and phrases you select to bid on. match type: Determines how specifically you want the search engine to match a searcher's query to your keyword list. The types are broad, phrase, exact, negative, and modified broad. maximum CPC: The dollar amount you set that you are willing to pay for each time your ad is clicked.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Search engine optimization, or SEO, makes the most of web marketing by attracting Internet browsers to your website. By marketing with strong SEO, you expose your product to loads of potential customers. To ensure that shoppers who are looking for what you're selling can actually find your website; consider these search engine optimization tools and techniques: Point all homepage links to http://www.siteaddress.com/. Make all headings actual headings, enclosed in tags. Make sure every page has a relevant title META tag. Don't require registration for any content on your site. Search engines can't complete forms, so registration forms hide your site. Make sure you can navigate to every page of your site using regular links. Don't obsess about keywords! You'll get far more mileage from clear, relevant content.