Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Website and Your Business

Hot marketing tips to light up your holiday season and boost your online business’ profitability over the next several weeks.

 

 

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Host 1:                        00:00               Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                         00:31               Hello everyone. Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence. Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online marketers of every shape and size. Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a website, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions. As you know, we are right smack in the middle of the 2018 holiday season. Some of you have already begun your holiday marketing campaigns for the shopping rush, or at least you should have begun by now if you want those efforts to result in more traffic to your website. But if not, don’t worry. There’s still time to rev things up for the rest of this 4th quarter, so let’s jump right into it. Today, we’ve got a couple of hot marketing tips to light up your holiday season and boost your online business’ profitability over the next several weeks.

Host 2:                         01:19               Here we go. Holiday Marketing Tip #1: Go Big on Longtail Keywords. Now if you’ve been hanging around the internet marketing world the past couple of years – and I know you have, or you wouldn’t even be here right now – then you’ve probably heard a handful of edgy marketers crying from the rooftops that keywords are dead. Those guys always make me laugh. Keywords are definitely not dead, and using keywords properly is one of the best SEO tactics you can use to bring organic search traffic to your website. As long as people keep using words to ask Google to find stuff, then using those same words on your website or blog is going to be a good idea. It’s a no-brainer. But you do have to be smart about your keyword usage. I have two general rules for you relating to this longtail keywords tip. Rule #1 is to go after longtail keywords instead of those big, juicy header keywords that appear to get all the traffic.

Host 2:                         02:11               The thing is, those keywords are already included in your longtails, so by targeting the longtail you’re also targeting the shorter terms by default. So, go for the low-hanging fruit. You’ll get a lot more traffic that way. Rule #2 is that you should never be a slave to your keywords. And what I mean is that you need to give yourself a little leeway and think like a human rather than just trying to game the search engines. Here’s an example. For this podcast right here,

Tips For A Speedy Website

If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, it may be time to make some improvements for a better customer experience.

 

 

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Host 1:                        00:00               Podcasting from Southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                         00:32               Hello everyone. Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence. Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size. Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions. Today we are going to talk about page load speed.  Once you have designed and published your website, you want to drive traffic to your content.  You most definitely want to maximize your page load speed, so your content loads quickly, and your visitors don’t get bored and click out. Most people have a need for speed today and would not consider continuing to browse through the rest of the site if the first page loads too slowly. It’s well known that fast page load speed increases visitor engagement, conversion rates, customer retention, and boosts sales.

Host 2:                         01:26               The stats are clear. An Aberdeen Group research study found that for every 1 second delay in page load speed, customer satisfaction gets reduced by 16%, page views by 11% and conversion rates by 7%. If your pages take a long time to load, it can frustrate visitors and force them to look for alternatives without even seeing what you have to offer. Slow page load speed can really kill your bottom line even if you are not an e-commerce company. And if keeping a potential customer on your site isn’t incentive enough to for you to speed up your site then consider this: Google and Bing love fast sites too and rank them higher in search results.  Often times we hear people ask ‘how fast should a website load?’ Page load speed is measured in seconds or milliseconds. According to Google’s Site Performance for Webmasters video, 2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, they aim for under a half second. So, you are looking at a website load speed of 500 milliseconds to 2 seconds at most and four seconds for smartphone users.

Host 2:                         02:35               The page load speed time for a web site also depends on many components are on the actual page and the bandwidth/routing data pathways, from the remote host to your Internet Service Provider and finally to your device. The weight or size of everything on the page that needs to be transferred from text, images, HTML code and database information to multimedia files affects how qui...

How To Secure Your Ecommerce Site From Hackers

Top tips for securing an ecommerce site in order to build consumer confidence and minimize the risk of data breaches.

 

 

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Host 1:                                  00:00                     Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                                  00:31                     Hello everyone.  Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence.  Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size.  Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions.  Shopping online offers a convenient alternative to the traditional shopping experience. Virtual ecommerce popularity has skyrocketed over the last few years so much that online transactions are now an integral part of our lives. But there are vulnerabilities associated with online businesses too. When people shop online they share their sensitive financial information and if the website is not secure then chances of data breach are high. In fact, the online retail industry has suffered from a number of high-profile incidents involving security breaches over the years. Ecommerce businesses must adhere to PCI DSS rules,

Host 2:                                  01:29                     that’s the security standards governing all payment card data-handling activities. But your business should also put in place additional best practices to prevent Ecommerce fraud and safeguard the integrity of customer data. In this podcast, we will run through some tips for securing an Ecommerce site in order to build consumer confidence and minimize the risk of data breaches. Start with a secure ecommerce platform: A safe platform is the foundation for securing an ecommerce site. There are many open source and proprietary Ecommerce platforms available today, but two-thirds of all online stores use either Magento or WordPress WooCommerce primarily because of their extensive security features. No matter which platform you choose, make sure there are security features in place such as SSL for security, safe checkout page, automatic logout, session timeout and your server should maintain proper PCI compliance.  Run PCI scans on your server and fix all vulnerabilities.

Host 2:                                  02:27                     Next, implement and update SSL certificates:  It is vital for Ecommerce websites to establish secure connectivity and encrypt communications between the end-user systems and your website.  SSL certificate is the de facto standard when it comes to authenticating the identity of your business and encrypting the data while at store and...

Final Checklist Before Launching A Website

7 important to checks to perform before launching a website.

 

 

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Speaker 1:                   00:00               Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Speaker 2:                   00:31               Hello everyone.  Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence.  Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size.  Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions.  While launching a website isn’t as complicated as launching a space shuttle, there is still a number of people working together creatively, such as the web designer, copywriter, developer and project manager, to ensure that everything looks good and also functions smoothly, The team has spent months building your website and it is finally ready to be launched into the world – yay!! But before you do that- have you run through all the final checks? It doesn’t bode well for your company, if major flaws are discovered in your website after the launch because you are likely to lose out on potential customers.

Speaker 2:                   01:22               In today’s podcast we will go over the final check list of things you should double-check on before the launch of your website. First, Proofread Website Content- Nowadays it is easy to make copy changes quickly with a content management system, but you really don’t want to launch your site with even the smallest spelling or grammatical error. This is sure to put your customers off. It is best to proof read the content on all your web pages before launching a website and also make sure that all phone numbers, addresses and contact information are correct and current. Second, Check Links- During the design phase, you might have included buttons or menu items but then forgot to link them correctly.  Before launching a website, go over your main navigation, footer navigation, linked buttons and images, social links to make sure all the links actually go to the correct place.

Speaker 2:                   02:11               None of the links should be broken and the links should ideally open in another tab, if they are redirecting visitors to another website. Next, Perform a Functionality Check- You don’t want traffic landing on a website that isn’t functioning properly so it is essential to really test any forms on your website, such as contact forms, email subscriptions, etc. Before launching a website, send test emails from your forms to confirm that they are working properly and being received by the right personnel. Make sure that the email opt-in for your newsletter is also wor...

Listening To Customers

Online tools that are essential that every company should use when listening to customers.

 

 

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Host 1:                                  00:00                     Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                                  00:30                     Hello everyone. Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence. Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size. Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions. My name is Lisa Maier and I am the CEO at DirectiveGroup, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses dominate their market. First up, I want to thank Lunarpages for inviting us back to speak to you. As you have heard me say before, our marketing agency has had a long and trusted partnership with Lunarpages for many, many years so it is an absolute pleasure to be here as a guest speaker. In previous podcast episodes, we talked about the importance of customer feedback and online reviews.  But what we haven’t yet done is speak about how to get this all-important feedback.

Host 2:                                  01:30                     We all know that you can have the best digital marketing plan, outstanding products and unbelievable prices, yet without customers, you will still end up in a not-so-good place. While listening to your customers takes time, it may actually save you time in the long run. We all want to be heard, and our customers are no different.  Did you know that 71 percent of customers who feel that you have listened to them are likely to recommend your company to their friends, and they are more likely to post positive reviews online? As you already know, reviews can be a huge boost to your digital marketing results as over 88 percent of people trust reviews they read online as much as if a personal friend was making the recommendation.

Host 2:                                  02:31                     Now that is astonishing. That means nine out of 10 people will read an online review and we’ll take the information they review just as they would take it from a personal friend. That’s huge. In fact, at our digital agency, we have seen online review capture programs have a dramatically positive effect for businesses and we’ve talked about that in previous podcasts. Today, we’d like to talk about some online tools that you can use to better listen to your customers. Let’s start with a really good one. Chat windows. Chat windows are great tools for listening to your customers because they are extremely efficient and they’re there when...

How Often Should You Update Your Website?

4 website updates that should be part of every marketing plan.

 

 

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Host 1:                                  00:00                     Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                                  00:31                     Hello everyone.  Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence.  Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size.  Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions.  I would bet that you’ve heard that you need to replace your old mattress every 8 years. The average car needs new tires every 30,000 to 50,000 miles. You should give your home a coat of fresh paint every 10-15 years to keep it looking good. But what about your digital property- your website? Surely website updates should be an integral part of any business’s digital marketing plan. Keep listening to this podcast, if you want to know how often you should update your website and how to you know if your site needs a massive overhaul.

Host 2:                                  01:23                     You can’t just create a beautifully designed website, upload it and forget about it. Technology, design, and user experience keeps changing. The line of products or services you are offering to your customers might change over time. In order to remain fresh and top-of-mind to your customers, your website must reflect those changes. Updating your website also gives you the chance to address and fix any problems that may be costing you potential customers. So, when should you be updating your website? While there is no set timeline for this, every website requires a major redesign with completely new copy and new content at least every five years to stay in step with advances in design and technology. And updating your website, specifically to improve its readability and performance in keeping with SEO best practices, should be a more regular affair. First let me quickly touch on what regular website updates are required.

Host 2:                                  02:20                     Website audits.  Your website is the hub of interaction between your business and the customers and fans of your brand, so you need to implement regular audits of your website once every 1-2 months, to see whether it is fulfilling the goals you want it to achieve.  Also, use sophisticated analytics tools to find out how people use the site, what causes friction, and what they want. Identify problem areas such as broken links, slow loading pages, pop up ads, duplicate content, etc. that need fixing early on. Next,

White Hat Strategies

White hat SEO takes a lot of effort.  Here are some white hat link building strategies for growing businesses.

 

 

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Host 1:                                      00:00                       Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                                      00:31                       Hello everyone.  Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence.  Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size.  Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions.  Your business needs to be visible to search engines to direct organic traffic to your site. While SEO has evolved over the years, link building remains an important part of Search Engine Optimization. For that you need to work with authoritative websites, with a relevant audience to link to your own site. But let’s be honest, not all web links are the same. Google has devalued low quality and spammy link building in its Penguin and Panda algorithms but generating natural, quality backlinks to make your domain a trustworthy and authoritative source of information still remains a primary consideration in its current ranking algorithm.

Host 2:                                      01:33                       Online marketers know that white-hat SEO takes a lot of effort and there are no shortcuts to building natural links. During today’s podcast episode we will review different white-hat link building strategies.  Let’s get started.  Before you start your link building campaign, be sure you’re going into it with the right mindset. Link building should satisfy the needs of your target audience.  You want links on your site that your target audience will find valuable. You can avoid traps and black-hat strategies if you start with a white-hat link building mentality.  With the new Google algorithms in place simply broadcasting backlinks from different resources and channels online will not do. Sites that value the likes and dislikes of their target audience and provides content according to their needs are most likely to be rewarded by Google in rankings. Putting in a little effort in market research and assessing audience desires will help meet user intent better.

Host 2:                                      02:28                       Once you know what your target audiences is looking for in their search queries, you can focus on creating linkable assets, be it content, images, resources, etc, for your website keeping your audience in mind. Starting a blog on your site makes it easy to adopt backlinks and interlinks in the content,

All About Ecommerce

The idea of having to build an online store from scratch can be terrifying for some, especially when you are not a “techy”.  This podcast explores many of the Software as a Service and off the shelf solutions which make it easy to start selling online straight away.

 

 

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Host 1: 00:00 Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2: 00:31 Hello everyone.  Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence.  Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size.  Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions.  As I am sure you would image, most people prefer shopping online.  In fact, 1 in 6 U.S dollars gets spent online. By selling online, retailers have access to a bigger market than they could ever reach with just a brick and mortar business. And it is a level playing field so even smaller retailers can compete with the big guys. If you haven’t already, be sure to listen to episode 5 of our podcast, the first in our three part series on ‘Building an Online Presence,’ where we make a business case for maintaining an online presence.

Host 2: 01:23 In today’s episode, we are going to focus solely on Ecommerce sites and how to set up your website for selling products. Many local retail shops and DIY craft makers use marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Overstock.com, eCrater, Webstore.com or Etsy to start selling online and never step beyond these platforms. While they can grow your brand and give you easy access to a large potential customer base, there are seller fees and other charges that eat into your profit margins and your interaction with customers is limited. Your business growth and profitability might be stunted in the long-term, if you don’t take on the challenge of setting up and launching your own Ecommerce website online. The idea of having to build an online store from scratch can be terrifying for some, especially when you are not a “techy” but there are many Software as a Service  (known as SaaS) and off the shelf solutions which make it easy to start selling online straight away.

Host 2: 02:19 For any Ecommerce project to succeed, you do need to plan ahead, have a proper strategy and set up a well-designed website. Let’s talk about some of the key steps you need to take to take your brand new Ecommerce website from the drawing board to fully functional. The four critical things you need to start an online store are a domain name, an Ecommerce platform, a web host and a SSL certificate. Start with a domain name ideal for your online store. This is the online address where shoppers can find your site.

How Web Hosting Impacts SEO

Web hosting has a direct impact on SEO. This podcast episode will explore how the two go together like peanut butter and jelly.

 

 

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Speaker 1:                           00:00                     Podcasting from Southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Speaker 2:                           00:30                     Hi everyone. Welcome to On the Net where it’s all about your online presence. Thank you for joining us. This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers, and online businesses of every shape and size. Whether you’re new to buying web hosting or you’ve been running a website for a really long time, this podcast will be able to answer it your most burning questions. My name is Lisa Maier and I’m the CEO of DirectiveGroup. We’re a digital marketing agency that helps businesses dominate their market. First up, I want to thank Lunarpages for inviting us back to speak to you. As you’ve heard me say before, our marketing agency has had a long and trusted partnership with Lunarpages for many, many years, so it’s really a pleasure to be here as a guest speaker. Not many people associate search engine rankings with our web hosting provider, whereas in reality, SEO and web hosting are quite closely linked.

Speaker 2:                           01:30                     Think peanut butter and Jelly. In today’s podcast episode, I’m going to talk about the top three ways web hosting impacts SEO. The modern online marketplace is really crowded and it’s really growing fast. Business owners want to try every trick in the book to get their website noticed and to get a leg up on the competition and that makes a lot of sense. So they spend a lot of time and a lot of money making their site looking visually appealing and user friendly to attract new customers. And both of these are really good ideas, but if the website does not get found easily on the search engine results page, that’s as much as flushing money down the toilet. So, this is where search engine optimization known as SEO comes into play. SEO helps you to improve the ranking of your website and to generate more traffic, so when I talk about SEO, I don’t just mean the back end technical work such as featured snippets, sitemaps, mobile, first index robots, dot text files, things like that, and I don’t really mean just the content on the front end and I don’t mean just link building.

Speaker 2:                           02:42                     These are all essential elements and they really all need to be optimized for good organic performance of your site, but the most important starting point, which is often overlooked is the quality of your web hosting.

Performing Market Research On A Budget

Conducting market research can give you better insight into your market, and help you create new products, features, promotions and pricing aimed at fulfilling their needs.

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Host 1:                                  00:00                     Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages.  We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era.  From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2:                                  00:31                     Hello everyone. Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence.  Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online business of every shape and size.  Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a web site, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions.  To start and run a successful business, you really need to know the marketplace you operate in and what your competitors are doing. If you don’t have psychic powers to read your customer’s minds, then you do have to fall back on market research to learn what your potential and existing audience wants, and what you can do to earn their trust and business. Whether you realize it or not, you are in all likelihood continually running market research informally. Every time you talk to a customer about what they want or discuss business with a supplier,

Host 2:                                  01:22                     you are in fact conducting market research. But you also need more formal market research to keep your business growing and also to retain loyal customers. Conducting market research can give you better insight into your market, and help you create new products, features, promotions and pricing aimed at fulfilling their needs. Proper market research should guide your business’s marketing plan and determine the essential details of each variable. We are not talking of complicated statistical models, massive surveys and international focus groups run by market research firms or big budgets here. Even though market research can seem intimidating and hard to pull off on a small business budget there are lots of creative research tactics in every marketer’s toolkit from research surveys and questionnaires to focus groups, phone interviews, competitive intelligence, and structured interviews. But first you must plan your research goals so that you know the kind of data you need to collect and also to find out what your future marketing materials should be.

Host 2:                                  02:21                     Then you need to determine the type of market research method you want to focus on. There are two broad types of market research- primary and secondary. Let’s look deeper into primary research. Primary or original research involves conducting research by yourself or someone contracted by you...