You've come to the conclusion that your website isn't what you want it to be - now what?

It's been a long and unfruitful relationship. It's just not working out and the time has come to say goodbye to your old, clunky, non-performing website. That conclusion may have been easily drawn, but making sure that your money is well spent on a website redesign can seem like a daunting task. Here are a few things to consider when redesigning your business's website:

When is the best time to think about a website redesign?

The short answer is not during your peak season. It takes time to work through a good website's design. I'm not just speaking about the aesthetic portion of the site, but the nuts and bolts of the site. You will need time to work with your web designer to formulate a plan of action.

You only get one chance to pick your fan page name.

Presently, Facebook’s rule is to only allow a fan page to be named once. They don’t allow the page owner to change the name later on, and for good reason. Simply put, they don’t want users to “like” something that can be changed after the fact by the page owner; so you get one chance to come up with a creative name that will get your brand seen. Hopefully this will change at some point, however, as it stands now, you get one shot at it.

As more and more businesses and brands sign up for Facebook pages, the landscape is becoming exponentially more crowded in your namespace. Unless you are a world-renowned brand or celebrity, you stand a good chance at getting lost in the crowd. Here are a few things to thing about before naming your page:

Questions to ask yourself or your web designer to ensure your website is as secure as possible.

I have to be honest; there is no 100% foolproof way to secure even a simple website. It’s said that website security is only as strong as its weakest link and there are many links in the chain along the way; Hosting, Code Quality, Developers, You and anyone else involved - all play a key role in your website’s security.

This guide is written for the do-it-yourself business website owner, but can be used as a list of facts that your website developer should be able to talk to you about with regard to their processes in developing and maintaining your website.

If you are just starting out with a new website and a new domain, there are three critical things that you, as a business owner need to know to ensure that you are always in control of your website, its name and the hosting account where the files are stored:

Don't Panic, It's not the End of the World!

So, one day you decide to Google your business name and lo and behold, there you see, clear as day, a disgruntled customer complaining about something down right insane. Your pulse quickens, you feel a bit defensive and you start to type up a nasty rebuttal telling them it's all their fault for coming to your business in the first place.

WHOA! Hold the phone (or keyboard as the case may be)... bad idea.

No matter how you try and justify your rebuttal, you are in essence telling potential customers that if they don't like the service provided -- you could care less.

Writing a heated reply to a negative review may or may not be your first reaction, but I can honestly say that all to often, it is this defensive instinct that causes a business to have a negative online perception for many, many years. That's right, just one negative backlash can in essence give off bad ju-ju to your potential clients for a very long time. You see, search engines have a long memory - they are quick to remember and very slow to forget. A search engine's job is to gather as much data on the internet as possible and cache it (or store in it's databanks) as quickly as possible; all of this data is stored across many thousands of servers and kept there until the cached page literally falls off the face of the internet. So, very likely, this one negative review has the potential to show in search engines and across many websites for, well, ever.

Negative Perceptions Live a Long, Healthy Life Online

A few days ago, I was in my hometown visiting when a friend of mine asked me about a restaurant that used to be down the street. Because I couldn't remember the new location, we "Googled" it. Instantly we were bombarded by negative reviews of the establishment via several different sites. So much so, that even I was a little bit taken aback at the number of negative reviews and their penetration throughout the first page of Google.

I had to then try and convince my friend that the establishment was always clean, with good food and fast service. Alas, she would hear nothing of it. In the end, the online reviews won her trust over that of a close friend! My feelings a bit hurt, we laughed it off and went out to eat at another restaurant down the street.

Upon returning to the office, I decided to do some investigative work around this business and their reputation issue.

Large Websites Aren't a Hacker's Sole Target.

There are really many reasons why a hacker might attempt to gain access to a small business website, however, most times there is something to be gained by hacking them in the form of cold, hard, cash. While there are some hackers that do it just to say "Look at how l33t I am", most are doing it as a way to make money. 

If you're thinking, "I just have a small website with some information about my business - why would a hacker have any interest in my site?" The answer is actually pretty simple: Hackers have interest in any site that can be accessed online. Even low-traffic, or micro-niche sites are a target. While dynamic sites and popular content management systems are at a higher risk than static sites, there are many variables server-side that could put you at risk.

Here are a few reasons why your site might get hacked and the general level of severity associated with the type of hack:

Are you listed in Google Places?

1. Click on "More info" in the bubble that shows your business name or next to your name on the left side of the screen


2. In the upper right click on the link that says "Business Owner?" (Note: If you don't see that link, someone has already claimed your listing)


3. Select an option to edit your listing and Google will call you to verify the listing's ownership

It's Possible that Facebook Will Compete with Google in the Near Future.

Google as we know it today is the search engine leader. However, back in 1998 they were a small start up with a few crazy ideas; People laughed, critics scoffed and today, 12 years later, Google is synonymous with search a fact in which no one can argue.

Google has one real competitor today and that is Facebook. The platform that started out as "just another social network" quickly overpowered the leader in the space (MySpace) and hasn't stopped growing. Today Facebook traffic is second only to Google; and someday soon, they may just be first.

How is that possible?

This week at Facebook's f8 conference, amidst a slew of product launch announcements, the buzz was all about the many different product releases on the horizon, all of which will bring traffic through Facebook in one way or another.

Businesses May Have to Pay to Have an Identity on Facebook.

Facebook promises they will never charge a fee for its basic use according to the Facebook FAQ and an interview with Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Keep in mind the fact, that in order to be profitable, Facebook needs users and ALOT of them to turn a profit via their main revenue streams: Advertising and Applications. Charging its user base would certainly cause Facebook to lose more in ad/app revenue that it would gain in the small amount of people wiling to pay. It was in fact only last year in September, after reaching the 300 million user milestone that Facebook broke even for the first time and was considered a viable business.

Knowing the Difference Between Link Types is a Good Start to Building Links

It is often said that incoming, one way, permanent, contextual text links with proper anchor text are seen as the highest value when it comes to SERPS (Ranking within the page searchers see after they’ve entered their query into the search box). But boy, is that a mouth full! So here I will describe what some of the most popular link building terms mean in a practical manner:

Inbound Link (IBL): A link that comes from another site to yours

Outbound Link (OBL): A link pointing away from your website to another website

Reciprocal Link: A linking relationship or trade whereas two sites link to one another.

Permanent Link: A link that generally remains on a website for the life of the domain or ownership thereof.

Global Link: A link that appears on each page of the site, generally in a navigation area or footer. These links also appear on blog side-bars and blog-rolls.

And how can I use long-tail search to my benefit?

The term Long tail search was derived by an article written some time ago in wired magazine. The theory behind the term is that the amount of revenue generated via the quantity of less popular obscure searches vs. the amount of top tier searches can be far greater. 

Because I do quite a bit of work with real estate websites I will use the real estate vertical as an example, however this applies across all verticals:

Many real estate websites optimize for "top-tier" keywords like "real estate" or "homes for sale" and don't realize that it takes a whole lot more than just optimization to get a site to rank in Google for these terms. Many sites don't take into consideration the amount of traffic that comes from searches outside of that generic query space. Many times a site can be optimized for long-tail phrases without much effort beyond writing a quality article for your target audience.

Anchor text has been an SEO buzzword for a while. But what is it?

In short: Anchor text is the text that you click on to activate and follow a hyperlink to another web page or another web site.

An Example: Real Estate

Search engines use anchor text in the link to assign relevance. As search engine algorithms have gotten more advanced, they can also tell if the text surrounding the anchor text is relevant to A. the link itself and B. the destination page that the text links to. In other words: A search engine can detect if a link is so far off topic that there is no relevance and assign it a lower value than a link that is surrounded by related text and linking to. This practice came about recently as blogs became more popular and link spammers used blog comment boxes to spam useless comments laden with anchored links.

The new Issuu.com website is so awesome I think I cried when I discovered it.

Issuu is a website that allows you to upload several pdf’s and form a sleek online Flash based book that you can actually flip through. Being that I am an graphic artist and owner of a magazine myself, I had tried doing this myself some time ago before I found the Issuu website; The result was not pretty. I had to go through seemingly endless steps to get all of the PDFs cropped correctly and converted to flash. The files had to be within certain size restraints before they were uploaded as well and when dealing with print-ready PDFs this process got seriously tedious and I was sick of doing it by the time I manually converted my second book to Flash. I gave up by the 5th release of my magazine and was fed-up with spending hours converting PDFs to a Flash based book manually.