Archive for March, 2009

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Protect your computer from April fools’ day virus

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I’ve never been a big fan of April fools’ day. Trying to make people look like fools for trusting what other people say isn’t a good way to build trust or add anything positive to the world. I much prefer helping people smile, rather than laughing at their mistakes. With this in mind, I would like to warn my fellow ecommerce enthusiasts about a potentially damaging computer virus set to strike on April 1, 2009.

Watch Out buttonI promised I would talk about the Conficker C virus in my last blog entry. I’m sorry to talk about such a depressing topic, but I hope talking about it will be helpful to you. I am indebted to the Yahoo Tech News Blog for their informative blog entry on this topic.

I first heard about this virus in late 2008 at the Brigham Young University library, where they had messages on computer desktops warning of the danger of transmitting a virulent worm via USB drives. An earlier version of Conficker was already spreading by tricking computer users into installing it onto a computer when the AutoRun message comes up after plugging in their USB drive. It infected 9 million computers with this strategy, and it might infect even more with the new strain.

Many computers might be affected with the current strain of Conficker without users even knowing about it because it is not scheduled to become active until April 1.

No one knows what will happen when Conficker C does become active.

It might be used to steal personal information, take control of computers, erase hard drives or otherwise cripple computers. Now is a good time to back up your files and try to minimize your exposure to this virus. You might want to run a free Microsoft safety scan of your computer to help detect and hopefully get rid of the Conficker C virus before it’s too late.

I hope you’ll have a happy April fools’ day and not get fooled by this disruptive and dangerous virus. The photo of the Watch Out button is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Salim Virji.

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Posted in Ecommerce | 2 Comments »

Celebration time at eHarbor, Inc.

Friday, March 27th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

It’s Friday, and eHarbor, Inc. is celebrating a successful start to 2009 by heading to the Thanksgiving Point Mega Plex in Lehi, Utah for a movie day – just as I mentioned in a blog entry last week. We’re closing up shop early and going to a 3 p.m. showing of a movie called “Knowing.”

Buenos Aires paper-filled sky

I love sharing enthusiasm and good news, especially when times are tough.

Can you believe this is the 20th blog entry I’ve written for the eHarbor Blog in the past two months? I’m having fun sharing ecommerce news and search engine optimization tips. Of course, sometimes I enjoy taking a moment to simply have a little fun every now and then, like today.

On Tuesday, March 31, 2009, the day before April Fools Day, I plan on posting a more serious blog entry about a potentially troublesome computer virus called Conficker C. Not exactly about ecommerce, but I think it’s good to be informed of things like this since we depend so much on computers for our businesses to succeed.

The photo of the papers falling in Buenos Aires, Argentina is from Flickr and it is the copyright of friendofdurutti.

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Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 3 Comments »

Good news: Ecommerce to grow through 2013

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Going along with my last eHarbor blog entry on the increase in spending on search engine optimization, this blog entry is on the positive future of the ecommerce industry.

Dog squished into car seat

According to an article from eMarketer, entitled “eMarketer Revises E-Commerce Forecast,” total sales of products online in the United States, excluding travel, totaled $133.6 billion in 2008. That was a 4.6-percent increase from 2007, despite the economic downturn plaguing most industries.

In 2009, when most people are worried about serious contractions because of low demand from consumers, ecommerce sales are expected to hold steady, dipping just 0.4 percent to $133.1 billion.

Even better, total ecommerce spending will grow about 10 percent or more from 2010 to 2013, possibly reaching $203.5 billion in 2013. That is definitely worth celebrating.

As more companies jump into the world of SEO and strive to position themselves online, the ecommerce industry is going to keep expanding. Plus, with consumers looking for deals and convenience in a tight marketplace, many are turning to online sources for goods they used to purchase at malls or regular retail stores.

This is a great time to jump online. I recommend checking out eHarbor, Inc.’s affiliates for help in designing and optimizing your website. These affiliates include: Submit Solution, Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter.

The photo of the dog in the car seat is from Flickr and it is the copyright of exfordy.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 9 Comments »

Bucking recession, ecommerce keeps growing

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Great news! The ecommerce industry isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. It’s actually growing in strength, despite the recession. What a pleasant surprise!

Surprised kittens

According to an article in Practical Ecommerce, entitled “Chart of the Week: Search Engine Marketing to Increase,” marketers in the United States are expected to spend $14.1 billion on search engine marketing in 2009. That’s a 16-percent increase from 2008’s $12.2 billion. If it continues to grow at this rate, the amount spent on search engine marketing in the United States could reach $23 billion in 2013.

Search engine marketing is made up of paid-search advertising, contextual advertising, paid inclusion, and search engine optimization. We just finished a series on SEO strategies. I recommend reading those blog entries, if you’d like more information.

You might remember my blog entry on the success of eHarbor, Inc. not long ago. I’m pleased to note this is not just an isolated incident, but an industry-wide one. As the economy sours, businesses are turning more to the Internet for new customers, and getting high placement on search engines, like Google, MSN and Yahoo, is a great way to get their attention.

Be sure to check out eHarbor, Inc.’s affiliates for help in designing and optimizing your websites. These affiliates include: Submit Solution, Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter.

The photo of the surprised kittens is from Flickr and it is the copyright of telachhe.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 12 Comments »

Step 7 to topping Google: Site promotion

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

As promised in my last blog entry, this is the seventh and final part of this series on strong search engine optimization strategies. We’ll close this series by discussing how to promote your website and get noticed by your target audience.

Misspelled Advanced Web Design sign

Don’t expect your website to become popular overnight. Traffic doesn’t come to your site just because you get your site ranked high on search engines for specific key terms. You need to provide services and content of interest to your audience, and you must get out there and share the good news about your site.

A great way to let people know about your services and website is to blog about them. Search engines love blogs because they are constantly being updated with fresh content, full of (hopefully) relevant links, and magnets for attention from the blogosphere, if you do them right.

For instance, I recently blogged about eHarbor’s creation of Squidoo lenses. We created Squidoo lenses for:

- eHarbor, Inc.

- Magellan Commerce

- Submit Solution

- Real Estate Promoter

Squidoo is a great tool for showing off your products, services, talents, knowledge or anything, really.

Social media sites are another great way to promote your website. Once you write a blog entry or fill your website with strong content, submit it to social media sites to get the word out.

Here are some of the sites eHarbor uses:

- Delicious

- Digg

- Diigo

- Propeller

- Reddit

- StumbleUpon

- Technorati

- Twitter

It’s also a good idea to add your business to Google’s Local Business Center. This allows you to show up on Google Map searches, and also to have a map of your company’s location next to your search result on Google.

Try not to get to excited or start spamming social media sites with news that isn’t particularly useful. Just be wise and moderate in your attempts to promote your website, and you should do fine.

Wow! This has been a fun series to write. I hope you enjoyed learning about Web page titles, optimizing images, simplifying URLs, improving website navigation, and including relevant anchor text with links.

We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about in the eHarbor Blog, so stick around. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on search engine optimization.

The photo of the misspelled “Advanced Web Design” sign is from Flickr and it is the copyright of agjimenez.

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Posted in SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

Movie night celebrates eHarbor, Inc. success

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I keep adding tidbits from movies to my blog entries to spice them up. I’ve mentioned several movies in my blog entries: “The Natural” (1984), “Pinocchio” (1940), “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), and “Back to the Future Part II” (1989).

This time I’ll focus solely on movies. Indulge me a little as I depart from ecommerce topics once again.

Knowing (2009) movie posterOn March 27, eHarbor, Inc. will treat its employees to a showing of a new movie called “Knowing.” That movie looks really interesting. eHarbor has been seeing exciting growth in 2009, despite tough spots in the U.S. economy, so this will be a fun reward for all of us who are making eHarbor’s success possible. eCommerce seems to be doing pretty well, under the circumstances. Don’t lose hope!

It’s still March, but it feels like summer with the kinds of movies coming out in theaters. “Watchmen” and “Monsters vs. Aliens” are two examples of movies with a summer feel. But both of these have March release dates. Hopefully, the real summer movies won’t disappoint, either.

My next blog entry will be the last in the search engine optimization series we’ve been covering for several weeks. There are plenty of other exciting topics to discuss, so stay tuned! The “Knowing” poster is the copyright of Summit Entertainment.

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Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 10 Comments »

Imperfect-but-good content in the Wall Street Journal

Friday, March 13th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

In my blog entry, entitled “5 reasons to smile today,” I mentioned an article on Copyblogger about writing with passion. I certainly put a lot of passion into my blog entry earlier this week when I pointed out lots of grammatical errors in a Wall Street Journal article. It might be fun to call attention to errors and try to help people improve, but I thought I’d take a minute to add a few caveats to my criticism.

Crowd surprised by falling waterJournalism is a thankless job. I was a reporter before and I can empathize with the stresses, deadlines and demands of that position. With news being published 24/7 and a pressing need to get news out as quickly as possible, spelling accuracy might not be the highest priority.

I’m actually quite impressed by the job authors John D. Stoll and Neil King Jr. did on the Wall Street Journal article “GM Auditors Raise Doubts on Auto Maker’s Viability.” They went out and got great interviews, and interpreted a lot of history and data in a short space. I wouldn’t really blame them for the lack of quality in their grammar. Editors should be responsible for quality assurance before throwing mistakes online for all the world to see.

To be fair, the Wall Street Journal fixed the mistakes in that article not too long after it was published. People in the media do a lot of things right, so I hate to just point out their mistakes. I say, keep up the good work – but be sure to use spellchecker.

I feel even better now than I did after writing my earlier post about the Wall Street Journal’s highly visible mistakes. Keep checking the eHarbor Blog for the down-low on ecommerce and great search engine optimization tactics. The photo of water about to splash people is from Flickr and it is the copyright of zmxncbv.com.

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Posted in Fun, Media | 4 Comments »

Step 6 to topping Google: Strong anchor text

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 6 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization tactics. You may notice that in many of my blog entries, I include links to past blog entries and other informative sites. I try to include appropriate text for each link in order to give you (and search engines) an idea of what information the link will contain. This Ship anchor in Greenock, Scotlandtext, known as anchor text, is another way to optimize your website for search engines.

Anchor text should be specific and closely related to the topic you are addressing. If you put in random links that are neither relevant to your content, nor descriptive of the information on the linked site, you are wasting your time. Links should be helpful to your website’s visitors, offering them additional information in a highly visible manner.

For instance, if I want to create a link to the Submit Solution website, I simply link the text “Submit Solution” to http://www.submitsolution.com. So when you see text that is blue, purple or red, you know that it links you to Submit Solution’s website or at least something related to Submit Solution (which, by the way, is a division of eHarbor, Inc.). As a bonus, search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN also use the anchor text to understand the relevance of that page to this one, potentially boosting your ranking.

Here are some good ideas to consider when choosing anchor text for your links:

- Keep your text short and descriptive. Brevity seems to be a common theme in this SEO series – like in my blog entry on optimizing images.

- Avoid generic terms like “Click here” or “article.” Those really don’t describe what the link is, and there are many other creative ways to anchor your links. Come to think of it, I mentioned avoiding generic terms in my blog entry on Web page titles, as well. It feels like we’re coming full-circle in this series.

- Don’t use the actual URL as the anchor text, unless you have a good reason. I used the URL of Submit Solution above simply as an illustration. You can also include a URL to promote your website, if it is new or poorly connected at the moment. You know, I think we discussed good URL practices earlier, as well.

- Make sure your links are easy to spot. If you use a style that makes links look just like regular text, people won’t be able to find them, and they won’t be much use.

By the way, including internal links to different parts of your website can help visitors navigate your website more freely and intuitively. Give it a shot, but don’t go overboard. Make sure the links are meaningful and add to the message of the page you are currently working on. Improving website navigation – that’s another topic we’ve covered before on the eHarbor Blog! Simply amazing.

This is the sixth part of this series. We started with a blog post on making content king, and we’ve covered a number of topics along the way. We’re coming close to the end of this series on strong SEO practices. We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about, as well. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The photo of the naval monument in Greenock, Scotland is from Flickr and it is the copyright of Bob the courier.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, Search Engines | 3 Comments »

Is your grammar better than The Wall Street Journal’s?

Monday, March 9th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I love reading news and blogs, but sometimes I can’t help wondering why on earth a piece got published in its flawed condition. I’m a natural editor, so when I’m reading I’m also critiquing and trying to understand what the author is really saying. When I notice improper grammar or simple spelling errors, I am pulled out of the story. Sometimes it gives me severe whiplash.

266-degree temperature reading

The reason I bring this up is because I read an article on Thursday, March 5, 2009 in The Wall Street Journal, entitled “GM Auditors Raise Doubts on Auto Maker’s Viability.” The article was so poorly written that I just had to start writing about it to get it out of my head and encourage others to learn from it.

Just look at these mistakes, with my commentary (in italics) beneath each one:

- The news sent GM sparked a deep drop in the company’s stock.
Sent GM sparked? It looks like they started one thought, but then came up with different wording and simply forgot to go back and edit it. They probably meant to say, “The news sparked a deep drop in the company’s stock.”

- “Our recurring losses form operations, stockholders’ deficits an dinability to generate sufficient cashflow to meet our obligations and sustain our operations raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern,” GM said it is annual 10K filing.
So many mistakes in one paragraph. This is the part that forced me to start writing. I’m amazed by all of the errors in here. Didn’t anyone notice these during the editing process? For instance, I’m not sure what an dinability is, but I do know what “and inability” means. Also, I had no idea that recurring losses form operations. How interesting.

- GM also said that expects to record a significant loss that could exceed $1 billion over the reorganization of Saab, its Swedish auto maker in bankruptcy protection.
So close.

- On Thursday, however, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told Deutschlandfunk radio that GM still hasn’t provided a plan that justifies government help for restructuring Opel. “What we have received so far is no basis for the government to make a decision,” Mr. Steinbrueck told the radio.
That last word makes it sound like Mr. Steinbrueck was talking to an actual radio. That’s a funny image, but it’s not quite what the authors meant to say. It would have been better to include “station” after radio or something like that.

You might remember my blog post on making content king on your website. In that post, I discussed grammatical errors in a New York Times article. Even respected publications like these can make serious errors that hurt their credibility. Be sure to edit your work before you publish it so that people can listen to what you have to say without focusing so much on the way you say it.

I’ll get back to writing about ecommerce and search engine optimization in my next blog post. I just had to get this off my chest. Whew! I feel much better now. The photo of the abnormally high temperature is from Flickr and it is the copyright of Sister72.

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Posted in Fun, Media, eHarbor | 4 Comments »

Step 5 to topping Google: Website navigation

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 5 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization practices. Thanks for sticking with me through this fun little series. This is my 12th blog entry on the eHarbor Blog. I’ve had a lot of fun talking about eHarbor’s history, eHarbor’s future, and even several reasons to smile.

Disorganized garage in Tokyo, JapanWe started this series by talking about improving website content, and continued with a post on designing Web page titles and optimizing images. Now we’ll consider how best to organize websites to improve navigation for both search engines and customers.

You can choose a number of ways to organize your website content. Just make sure you’re consistent. Here are some good ideas to optimize your website navigation:

- Create a quick, intuitive navigation system. Allow visitors to click just once or twice from the homepage to find the specific information or services they’re seeking.

- Be careful not to link every page to every other page. This can cause confusion. Provide relevant links to other pages, but don’t go overboard.

- Stick with text-based links to navigate your site. Using Flash or drop-down menus can make it difficult for search engines to crawl through your site.

- Include a list of your main categories on the sidebar of each page. This can help visitors quickly browse through topics without having to return to the homepage often.

- Use well-designed URLs, as we discussed in the last blog entry in this SEO series. If people cut off part of your URL, try to make it so it will still lead them to part of your website. For instance, if you take this blog entry’s URL www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/02/03/what-eharbor-is-and-
why-it-matters-to-you and cut off the last part so you are left with www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/02, the link still works.

It’s also a good idea to include a sitemap on your website to boost usability to site visitors and visibility to search engines. There are two kinds of sitemaps that have two different functions: HTML sitemaps and XML Sitemaps. XML Sitemaps usually have a capital S to differentiate them from HTML sitemaps, so I’ll follow that rule.

An example of a sitemap can be found on the Real Estate Promoter website: www.realestatepromoter.com/index.php?base=site. This sitemap lists all of the main pages and their subcategories in a clear, concise manner. It is best to organize your website by subject matter, putting specific materials under appropriate categories. If you were selling real estate on your website, you could use something like this for your setup:

Homepage -> Properties for sale -> Waterfront homes, condos, rental units and other specific property types

HTML sitemaps are mainly designed for website visitors, not necessarily for Google, MSN, Yahoo or other search engines. Search engines can use them to understand the context of pages on your website, but they should be focused on helping your visitors find what they’re looking for if they get lost.

XML Sitemaps are much better at providing information about your site to search engines. You should consider using a Sitemap if:

- You recently created your site. Google often finds sites through links from one Web page to another, so new sites with no inbound links are almost invisible to it. A Sitemap allows search engines to find your website, even if it is relatively new.

- Your site has dynamic content like AJAX or Flash.

- Your site has a large number of archived pages that are not linked together.

A Sitemap gives search engines a great deal of information, including:

- How often your Web pages are updated with new content. Blogs and other content-dense sections of your website can gain more attention this way.

- Which pages are more important than others, in terms of hierarchy. Your homepage would have the highest ranking, while categories would be slightly below it, and materials under those categories would be a little lower. This helps search engines understand the context of Web pages, but it doesn’t affect a page’s search-engine ranking if it is ranked below other pages on the site.

If you would like a step-by-step walkthrough to help you set up a Sitemap for your website, check out Google’s Sitemap Generator script.

This is the fifth part of this series. We’re coming close to the end of this series on strong SEO practices. Check out the Submit Solution website for more ideas on building SEO on your website. We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about, as well. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The photo of the messy garage in Tokyo is from Flickr and it is the copyright of coccu.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

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