Support Pages Hints & Tips
Hints and Tips
Hints and Tips (21)
Web Hosting and website owners hints and tips.
Whether you’re spring cleaning or getting started on new projects for 2012, it’s worth reviewing existing WordPress sites and setting up new ones for success over the coming year. We’ve picked out some of the best WordPress security plugins to help you safeguard your website.
New years resolution, put your website on a diet
Written by AdministratorWe’re days into 2011, but it’s never too late to put your website on a diet! Making your website leaner and meaner can help you rank better in Google, keep your site secure and reduce the amount of space and bandwidth you use.
Going back to existing pages and code can be boring when you want to get ahead with fresh content, but reviewing your existing content is a necessary task which can even be inspiring once you get into it.
How to best word your Pay Per Click add campaigns, PPC
Written by AdministratorPrice or features?
The first thing to decide is whether your ad will be price-led or feature-led. If you’re confident you have a great price for a product, then a price-led ad can be extremely successful and is usually the better choice. If you know for sure that you have the cheapest price for that product, don’t be afraid to say so in your ad. ‘UK’s cheapest’ is a phrase that attracts attention and is historically very successful; just make sure you actually do have the cheapest or you’ll have a lot of disgruntled visitors!Mentioning exact prices can also work in your favour if you’re offering a low price as you’re likely to pick up customers who are doing specific price research and are closer to buying. Similarly, ‘In stock now’ and ‘Next day delivery’ often attract more clicks for physical products.
Feature-led ads are better for bespoke products and services (e.g. web design, gardening, baking), where you’re not offering something identical to your competitors. You may want to stress quality, or unique/unusual selling points (USPs). If you can, try to get across that your product/service has more features, or your website has a lot more to offer, which will pique people’s interest.
Google Adwords is a lot of hard work, and requires continual monitoring, testing, experimenting and checking if you want to avoid wasting money. Added to that, there are numerous different strategies to consider, plus keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing and staying on top of Google’s tweaks and updates. If you’re new to PPC it can be overwhelming, and even seasoned Adwords users can settle into a stale routine, so it’s important to keep motivated and ensure your campaigns stay fresh.
Below we’ve listed links to some of our favourite Google Adwords and PPC articles from around the web. You’ll probably find that the most effective approach is to pick out a handful of key points which can be applied to your specific campaign, and keep them to hand for testing over a considerable period of time.
What are you trying to achieve with your blog? It seems like a basic question, but unless you have specific aims and goals for your blog, then you’re limiting its potential. Even if you have a clear strategy for your blog, it’s worth revisiting this question from time to time to see how your views and goals have changed, and what progress you’ve made.
Although you may be able to answer the question ‘What are you trying to achieve with your blog?’ in one or two words (‘Sales’ or ‘Increased reputation’ being a couple that spring to mind), it’s worth brainstorming all the potential purposes and goals, for example:
• Increasing visitors
• Increasing visitor engagement
• Extending your web presence
• Enhancing your reputation/authority
• Providing a personal view of your business
• Informing your visitors (e.g. about company/industry news)
• Sales
• Attracting potential customers
• SEO
Once you’ve made your list, order it in terms of importance, and decide on one or two as primary goals, keeping the others as secondary. If you prefer, you can break it down further into ‘Essential’, ‘Important’, ‘Desirable’ and so on.
If your blog’s been running for a while, then try to work out what you’ve already achieved in these areas – it could be as specific as a percentage increase in visitors, or as vague as strongly positive comments. If you haven’t got any achievements for an area, just leave it blank. The next step is to consider how you achieved those successes – perhaps you got a lot of feedback on a particularly controversial blog entry, or maybe you benefited from increased sales on a persuasive or informative entry. If you begin to see a pattern with successful blog entries themed or styled in a particular way, then think about incorporating them more in the future.
If you have a new blog, or have blank spaces next to some of your goals, then have a think about methods you could employ. For example, if you’re having trouble getting visitors to interact with your blog, then set up an entry with a poll – it often generates more interest and takes less effort to vote than thinking of something to say and filling out a comment form. You could even take the opportunity to ask people what they do or don’t like about your blog entries via a couple of simple questions. It may be best to concentrate on just one or two goals from your list at the same time to get a clearer picture.
Even if you’re happy with your achievements, it’s better to keep things fresh and continue to generate ideas and test out new types of content. Whilst many people are fans of the ‘Don’t mess with what works’ strategy, a fresh approach can breathe new life into a tired blog, and you’ll never know if your new idea will do even better than the old one until you try.
Many bloggers hit writer’s block at some point, but armed with your list of aims and objectives, you can work out what types of content you need and then work towards specific titles. For example, if your blog has SEO as its primary purpose, then look at which keywords you’re focusing on and brainstorm ideas around those. If you’re providing a personal view of your business, then think about past events and revisit them with a new slant, and think about how to present upcoming news and events. For older blogs with thousands of entries, this is easier said than done. You might want to do a yearly summary of the most popular/valuable blog entries, and keep track of monthly stats to see which entries have been the most successful.
This exercise also has a secondary benefit – increasing your motivation to write blog entries. Company blogs are often abandoned, so being the exception to the rule can make you stand out in a competitive market. It’s important to set aside specific time to write blog entries rather than trying to slot them in randomly. Some people find it easier to write several at once and then schedule them to be automatically published when desired. One of the easiest ways to abandon your blog for weeks or months is to become disheartened by not having anything to write about, so always keep a list of ideas to hand and update them on a regular basis.
There are many sites offering a fee for finding you followers, but avoid these and stick to the free follower approach which will save you money, hassle and scams. At the end of the day, there’s no reason why you can’t build up your own base of relevant followers with a bit of time, and it’s far more rewarding.
Here are our top tips:
• Give people a reason to follow you. If you’re posting links to your
own good quality content and asking questions rather than tweeting about
what you had for breakfast or spamming, people are more likely to
follow you. High quality links and non-spammy tweets.
• Ask for advice and opinions. People always like to give their views and help out where they can, plus it means you’ll get new angles and new resources.
• Ask and answer questions. If someone’s posted something that you find interesting, engage with them and ask a question about it. People are more likely to reply to direct questions. In the same vein, if someone asks you something, use it as an opportunity to get involved with someone who’s interested in what you’re saying.
• Tweet regularly… People are more likely to drop inactive accounts, and websites such as UnTweeps allow users to cull those who haven’t updated recently. Additionally, if you have your latest tweets displayed on your blog, it makes your website look neglected as well.
• …but not too regularly. Remember some of your followers may only be following a few others, and if so their home feed will be less varied than those with thousands of followers. They’re much more likely to be swamped with your tweets. Spammers can easily be reported to Twitter, so try to get a good balance.
• Join directories. Don’t expect to see thousands of followers instantly, but joining directories such as WeFollow helps people find those interested in a particular field – great for building up a targeted follower base.
• Dedicate time to Twitter. Even a few minutes a day can prove valuable. Don’t expect your follower base to build itself – it will decline as people get bored and move on, unless you put regular effort in.
• Retweet quality links – selectively. If you’re got a targeted follower base, you’ll be seen as a good source of content. However, be selective about which links you pick and retweet from a varied selection of users rather than just the same few.
• Find your niche and be specific. With tons of information to sort through, Twitter can sometimes seem a bit too open. Find your niche, and get to know your neighbours. For example, if you’re in to design, make some free icons and link to them. Offer a relevant whitepaper or article. Interact with people in a similar field or your target customers rather than trying to engage with the whole of Twitter. This is a great way to build up a base of loyal, engaging followers.
• Tweets about Twitter. You’re guaranteed that people using Twitter are interested in Twitter, so Twitter-themed tweets unsurprisingly provide a good way to capture people’s interest. A controversial blog post or a new angle on tips can be good ways to get people talking and following.
• Add people to lists. People always like to be on lists such as ‘awesome-bloggers’ or ‘best-web-designers’, and it gives you a good opportunity to organise your Twitter account at the same time.
• Keywords aren’t just for SEO. Tweet using keywords relevant to your field, e.g. ‘blog’, ‘web design’ etc., which are more likely to attract relevant followers and retweeters tracking these terms. Hashtags can also be useful.
To get traffic from your Twitter account to your website you need:
• A strong follower base. You need lots of followers, but more importantly, relevant followers who are interested in the topic of your website and/or the services you offer. Refer back to the tips above for ways to build a targeted follower base.
• Catchy, original tweets. Use numbers and intriguing titles, and where possible leave enough characters left for others to retweet your messages.
• A solid reputation. You want to be known for delivering quality content and promoting valuable URLs. Quality content on your website is always attractive to Twitter followers, who will retweet your links and so help you promote your site. Each Twitter account has an associated Klout score, which is one method you can use to track your influence.
• The right mindset. Don’t use Twitter solely for sales marketing, or expect to get lots of direct conversions. Twitter, and most other social media, should be about engaging with customers and other valuable followers rather than an extra RSS feed or telling people you bought some new socks. Don’t think you’ve failed because you haven’t reached a certain number of clicks or hits. It’s about finding new contacts, building up your brand and providing a friendly ear. That’s not to say that other strategies don’t work, but you need to be clear from the start about what you want to achieve with Twitter and what steps you’re going to take to achieve this; changing your mind halfway through will just confuse everyone.
Drupal is one of the most popular and adaptable CMS programs
available, with thousands of modules, themes and plugins to extend and
alter its capabilities. We have collected 9 of the best free Drupal
themes for you to take a closer look at and use on a future project.
Drupal comes completely free with all our web hosting packages and can be installed in just one click.
If you know of any Drupal themes we haven’t showcased and you’d like to share (maybe one you have created?), leave a comment and we will add it to the list.
http://drupal.org/project/acquia_marina
http://drupal.org/project/ad_novus
http://drupal.org/project/colourise
http://drupal.org/project/magazeen
http://drupal.org/project/notechaos
http://drupal.org/project/abstract
http://drupal.org/project/orange
http://drupal.org/project/arclitetheme
http://drupal.org/project/twittish
If there are any classics we have missed, leave a comment below…
Dealing with email, Seven Tips on mail filing and archiving
Written by AdministratorDealing with email is always a problem. It is just so easy
to send and receive messages nowadays and this creates vast amounts of
information. What do you do with this? Well the short answer is archive archive
archive.
Your webmail has a 1GB filesize limit but your POP3 email box doesn’t. POP3 is also designed for downloading email and not really to keep email on the server. It is ALWAYS best to use an email client with a POP3 setup. This allows you to keep your server clean of emails and make sure you have backups. The main email clients are Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird (we recommend Thunderbird).
Seven Tips on mail filing and archiving
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