“Socializing” with your website visitors works! A Bottom Line Income Increase from using Social Media

The words “conversion” and “conversation” seem very similar to me. Plus I have never experienced converting anyone from a lead to a client without having a conversation. So if you can give your website the ability to engage in “conversation” or a dialog with site visitors you should have more conversions and increased [...]

Free Blog Websites Cost You a Lot

Well over half the websites I come across can host their own free blog, but instead chose to use a different website like Blogspot, putting their best marketing content on a different business’ website. Be kind to yourself and your business, keep your best content on your own site. (Photographers particularly need to consider [...]

Measuring and Improving your Social Media Impact

As Web 2.0 evolves to returns the internet to its social media roots, albeit with great advancements, interconnectedness and opportunity, it is useful to try to get an idea how well you are doing. After all, the first step towards improving is measurement.
Fortunately Google has a tool, wouldn’t you know it . [...]

Google to add Twitter search engine service

Twitter posts indexed and ranked by search term relevancy. This is pretty strong and will make your micro-blogging activity on Twitter even more valuable.
From the ” Google Operating System” blog -
“Google prepares to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services like Twitter. Since it’s very easy to post updates and [...]

Contrast of a wedding photographer’s website changing from Flash to WordPress

This is just a simple comparison of a professional photographer client’s WordPress web/blog site that went live over the weekend, replacing their old Flash website.
Photographer – Lyrical Lens Photography
OLD SITE

The prior website platform was Flash, Big Black Bag, hosted on 1 and 1.
The cost of the site was $50 initial setup fee and then $200/annually
Website [...]

Links are now the votes of confidence in your website

My advice to people seeking to increase search page rank is to reduce focusing on the search engine and focus more on what your prospective clients would want. All the search engine tries to do is provide the pages with the greatest likelihood of what the searcher is seeking. If your site has lots [...]

Are you suffering from blogging fatigue

Do feel almost totally unmotivated to make another post to your blog? Does it seem like anything is better than blogging? Did you start blogging with enthusiasm and are now afraid that your blog is dieing?
There are a lot of thoughts about this and some time we all experience it to some degree. [...]

Upgrade your Blogger* blog to self-hosted WordPress – just $47 – This weekend only

*Offer is good not only for Blogger/Blogspot, but also TypePad, LiveJournal, BigFolio, SquareSpace, Xanga, and others … even WordPress.com. But only this weekend through Sunday night (Jan 4th) EXTENDED THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT, Jan 5th
I thought I was going to travel some this weekend, but the plans fell through. So I want to put the [...]

Why a blog makes a poor web/blogsite main page and a how a splash page is even worse.

Just a quick post. I wrote a longer post over on the Kertesz WordPress Web/Blogsite for Professionals site that explains in detail what a unique “property” your website’s main page is. Why a blog is not a very good main page for a full business web/blogsite. And a Flash splash page is worse. [...]

Blogging advice wrap-up

This is the final (for now) post on how to blog. Your website’s blog can make a huge difference in your on-line success, increasing your search engine result page rank, visitor traffic and presenting you as an expert in your field. Here are a few other helpful perspectives.
In his recent brief and [...]

Yet Another Blogging Resolution, use your blog for “look forward” marketing

I think too often we tend to look at the past when creating blog posts. For the New Year I will try to use my blogging to explore potentially emerging market segments.
What I mean is that blogs are supposed to be a dialog with our site visitors and too often we don’t risk advancing [...]

Another New Year’s Blogging Resolution, details details details

Be more explicit! Totally explicit!

As I look back through my search engine referrals and the terms that brought them, I repeatedly find that it is the details and specifics that are very important. So put all the details in the blog post.
In the “old days” (circa 1996) we used to use very [...]

A New Year’s Blogging Resolution

As I read through my own blogging, and that of other wedding professionals of all walks, I see that I/we need to makes some changes for the New Year.
PROMOTE YOURSELF! Use at least 10%-20% of your posts to:

Share your solutions.
Stress your benefits.
Promote your business.
Illustrate your work.
Demonstrate your dedication
Portray your professionalism.
Educate about your continuing education
Celebrate successes.
Quote [...]

What is a top search result showing worth to your business

What is it worth to your company to show up in the top search results for your type of services or products? Shouldn’t that be the primary goal of your website? Shouldn’t your website market you, rather than you having to market your website?
Many of us make decisions about our website without first [...]

WordPress Based Websites Dominate SEO Worldcup Challenge

Did you know that there is a large-scale SEO competition … until a few days ago neither did I. And after telling wedding professionals that our WordPress based websites would dramatically increase their search ranking I am happy, because now there are concrete results for what is the best website basis for excellent [...]

No way! That’s a blog?

It may not look like one, but at its heart it is … a blog/website. Take a look at the new “reskinned” website for The Agency at Think Like A Bride. New template, new colors, new site organization without needing to redo any content. Pretty. Easy.

While it offers all the innovation and [...]

Why should I care about this SEO stuff?

The most basic question is often the best question. And this is also a question that my brother-in-law asked.  My brother-in-law said after listening to a lot of words about SEO he still didn’t understand the value of it or why the proposed fees were so high. Might I help him understand?
To keep it [...]

Use your blog/website’s unique properties for search engine marketing

Many of us over look a unique power of a blog/website for search engine marketing.
In addition to Google, blogs and blog/websites have another type of search engine that can benefit your business. These search engines are dedicated blog search engines like Technorati.
And, just as it is beneficial to verify your website with Google, [...]

Another perspective on SEO for Wedding Photographers

This is one of the most accurate and complete discussions of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that I have read lately.
SEO Is Not Just For Wedding Photographers Anymore
Plus it mentions a number of helpful specific action points to improve most site’s search ranking.
(Although I do think he is a little optimistic on the likely possibility of [...]

Blogger or WordPress … that is the question. UPDATED

This weekend I transferred a number of Blogger blogs over to WordPress. A frequent comment was that if they had known more they would have begun their blog on WordPress. While it doesn’t really matter on what platform you begin your blog experience with, like a spoon or a fork … Blogger and [...]

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