• Google Street View released in New Zealand
• Extend Your Website with Widgets
• Eastern Bay Broadband Survey
• Increase Productivity with Google Desktop
• XSLT - Universal Web Template Language in Waiting
• How to sell your House on TradeMe
• How to read your Web Statistics
• SEO for Marketers - Part #1
• How to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do?
• A strategy for better search engine rankings
• Accessibility Legislation is Coming
• Happy New Year
• Summer Reading
• Really Simple Syndication
• A Pinch & A Punch
• Klixo Technology

Google Street View released in New Zealand

Google Street view released in New Zealand

The release of Google Street View marks a new milestone for web applications. The web-app, which allows a Google Maps user to view virtual street scapes as if they were actually walking down the street, is probably the most complicated software application attempted on the net to date, performing feats that were previously only available in very high-end GIS software packages.

Street view combines Adobe Flash and the Google Maps API to display the panoramic views and works very well on my 3 year old laptop with a broadband connection.

The commercial benefits of Street View are already being demonstrated by Trade Me Property, where you can look up and down the street of a listed property as well as at pictures of the house itself.

If you have a Street View that you would like to display on your website, give us a call. As you can see below, showing a street view on your website is as easy as pasting into the Klixo Story Editor.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 05 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

Extend Your Website with Widgets

Extend your website with Widgets

We are so busy at Klixo all of the time that we rarely have time to talk about some of the great projects that we work on on a regular basis. One thing that we are getting really good at is extending the functionality of websites with great add-ins, APIs and widgets like Google Maps, Vianet and YouTube.

This is mostly due to having an awesome content management system, based on the worldwide standard XML language, which can be extended to work with any other system in the world that also supports XML.

Add Google Maps to your Site

Google Maps is a wonderful application that allows you to put your business or any other point of interest on the map. You can add a Google Map to your website easily by using the Story Editor in Klixo; have a look at one of our favourite sites Orange Motor Co for a good example of this.

Google Maps can be integrated to great effect when you start adding geographical information to your stories in Klixo. That's a bit of a mouthful but all it really involves is adding Longitude and Latitude information. See how "geocoding" has enabled some really great local mapping on Whakatane.info.

Vianet Accommodation Availability Calendars

We have been working with Vianet for a couple of years now and I really like their straight-forward approach to the accommodation availability and booking problem. Signing up with Vianet is free, and once you have done so you can easily add a fully featured booking and availability calendar to your website, once again by pasting some code into the Klixo Story Editor.

For more advanced uses of Vianet's system, have a look at this page on New Zealand Tramping Tracks, a great example of Vianet & Google Maps working together.

Whakatane's official information centre, Whakatane.com have also made it really easy for visitors to locate and book accommodation online using Google Maps and Vianet. Have a look at this Ohope accommodation guide as an example.

Whakatane.info have also added value to their business listings by combining Google Maps & Vianet, as demonstrated beautifully by the Pacific Coast Motor Lodge listing.

Finally, my personal favourite would have to be the official Opotiki Information Centre website, OpotikiNZ.com which combines great content, driving directions and availability calendars for the full visitor experience - see the Opotiki to Waihau Bay travel guide to see what I mean! In my opinion this is rich content at its best.

Add YouTube Video to your site

Finally a quick nod to YouTube who have made it so easy for websites to add video to their site and share it with the world. See how a Whakatane tourism business have used YouTube to demonstrate their dolphin swimming trips and get new customers on the Whales & Dolphin Watch Website. The beauty of this is that your video also shows up in searches on the YouTube website.

So if you are interested in extending your website with some great new functionality talk to Klixo, we are the Google Maps, Vianet and YouTube integration experts!

posted by Daniel Larsen, 28 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

Eastern Bay Broadband Survey

Eastern Bay Broadband Survey

The Eastern Bay Chamber of Commerce has launched an online survey to find out the needs of people in business and at home for Broadband services.

The survey came about after discussions with Environment Bay of Plenty Miles McConway and Chamber of Commerce President Gerard Casey on how the Chamber could support the Baybroadband application to improve capability and accessibility to broadband services in the Bay of Plenty.

A similar survey was completed in the Waikato and 800 people responded in seven days. The Eastern Bay Chamber of Commerce survey is available on line at this address: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7iOfKQFEjZ_2bUfrbkwbndvQ_3d_3d

posted by Daniel Larsen, 12 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

Increase Productivity with Google Desktop

Increase Productivity with Google Desktop

Recently the Klixo team downloaded Xobni, a great email analytics tool that gives you interesting stats on your email usage. The Xobni buzz has been and gone now, but the feature that endured for me was the search function. You can literally search every email you have ever sent or received in seconds, and that is very valuable to workplace productivity.

Many people file every email they receive in a collection of folders, categorised in a way that make sense to them. This is a natural, very human way of sorting large amounts of information (in this case, emails) but is not great for productivity. It is actually a more productive if you just file all of your emails in one of three folders (the trusted trio) and rely on a good search engine to find emails when you need to.

So after using Xobni for a while I was interested in finding a lightweight tool that could search all of my email, but without the bloat of the other cool features which were nice to have once in a while, but that I could live without. I also have a pretty old and slow laptop, and I don't have much RAM. Xobni often consumed more than 32MB which is a lot to spare on my poor old HP/Compaq nx6120.

So I installed and tested the latest version of Google Desktop, which is a "desktop" search engine; it searches the files and emails on your own PC. When Google Desktop first came out it was a bit of a dog in my opinion because it used so much resources (RAM & CPU) that I couldn't run it without it slowing down my PC. I was pleasantly surprised now (a few years later) to download version 5.8, which is a much slimmer offering, and I read that the developers at Google have put great effort into this version to keep it lightweight.

One trick to reducing RAM is to not activate the "Sidebar with gadgets" that allows you to run Google Gadgets in a sidebar (like Vista). It is an awesome feature, but resource hungry.

On my laptop GoogleDesktop.exe usually runs at about 8MB, which I can handle, and only consumes more RAM when it is doing something really important, like indexing or sorting results.

As well as indexing all important emails, Google Desktop also indexes most other documents on your PC, but not code files (by default) so you will have to install a plug-in for that. Once installed, you just tap the CTRL key twice at any time to popup a search box. Once you get in to the habit you will find your self double-tapping CTRL to open files, instead of using Windows Explorer, it is that quick.

Just a word of warning for first time installers, indexing your email and files can take many hours (mine indexed over two nights) so you may have a long wait until you can start reaping the benefits.

So in summary, if you use your PC for work, get a good desktop search engine so that you don't have to spend time trawling through email folders and windows explorer. There are some tricks to getting it working smoothly, so I have listed my suggestions below.

If you have any more tips, comment this!

Setup hints

• Don't run the Sidebar with gadgets (set "Display Mode" to None)
• If you are a developer, install Larry's Any Text File Indexer plugin so that your code files are indexed

posted by Daniel Larsen, 07 Nov 2008 | read 2 comments | comment | link

XSLT - Universal Web Template Language in Waiting

XSLT – Universal Web Template Language in Waiting

Earlier this year Anup Shah of OneNought.com wrote a brilliant blog titled “Why Use XSLT in Server Side Web Frameworks For Output Generation?” This is a great question and in this week’s blog I would like to add to the comments that Anup has made on this subject.

It’s time for framework developers to start taking the problem of HTML templates seriously. I don’t believe that back-end developers place enough importance or time and effort on HTML templates. In some frameworks they appear to be an afterthought, and are often just mash-ups of the developer’s language of choice and HTML.

A good HTML template language should be an open standard

I cannot think of any other template language that is a W3C standard apart from XSLT. What I love most about open standards is that they bring developers together. HTML is an open standard, and for reasons that I go into further below, any HTML template language should be as well.

A good HTML template language should be platform / language / framework agnostic

Platforms, languages and frameworks require an emotional investment by their users. “We love platform X because it is so easy to use” and so on. The aim of an HTML (web) developer is to write code oblivious of platforms, languages and frameworks. Back-end programmers must choose platforms and frameworks based on what is going to be the best solution for the problem at hand. But HTML developers should be able to tag along with that decision without having to re-skill or even consider the choice at all.

A good HTML template language should be portable

“What happens if your company goes under?”

“What happens if for one reason or another we decide we don’t want to use your company anymore?”

“What happens if our business outgrows Framework X and we need to use Framework Y?”

IT managers ask these sorts of questions all the time. If your framework uses a proprietary template language it means that when the client decides to upgrade their site, they are going to have to throw away work that they have paid for. This is not acceptable to most IT managers once they are made aware of these consequences.

A good HTML template language should work just like HTML

Notice that I have not said “should be easy to use”. Many programmers complain that XSLT is difficult to use. That may be true, but simple XSLT it is no more difficult to use than XHTML, and web developers have mastered that language and enjoy it. Furthermore, XHTML and XSLT both come from the same parent: XML. A simple XSLT template is semantically the same the XHTML it produces which makes it easy for web developers to learn.

XHTML and XSLT often have to be coded by hand to be optimised for the web and to acheive web standards compliance. Attempts at WYSIWYG editors have been a disaster and I cannot see a solution to this any time soon. Personally I enjoy coding HTML and XSLT by hand and find that method faster and more productive than using a WYSIWYG editor and cleaning up the code that it produces.

A good HTML template language should be extensible

I mean truly extensible. This term is thrown around a lot by CMS frameworks, but most proprietary template languages will run out of options for extensibility sooner or later.  What I dislike about proprietary, non-standard template languages is that it is like a developer woke up one morning and thought, “you know what? I think I’ll write a template language.”

What I love about XML/XSLT is that for decades now, the best brains in the world have collaborated, designed, debated, and approved a truly brilliant standard. It is extensible and therefore extremely versatile.

We use XSLT for emails (plaintext and html), generating CSVs, JavaScript and PDFs. I have used XSLT to transform XML into a proprietary label printer language for printing shoebox labels in a warehouse. And the beauty of XSLT is that it is intelligent enough to choose its own output type based on parameters passed to it, i.e. you can support multiple output types in the same template. This functionality is built-in to XSLT.

Summary

We have been using XSLT as the template language for the Klixo CMS for almost 5 years now and find it to be powerful, extensible and versatile. I train developers in XSLT without any problems; they have all grown to love it. Like most languages you can start with a very simple implementation that will get you by for most jobs, before digging deeper to explore the real power of the language.

We are currently working on an upgrade to our CMS software that will change the underlying data model quite drastically. Upgrading customers to the new model is not a problem because we can translate from the old schema to new using, you guessed it, XSLT. This means we don’t have to force our customers down a costly upgrade path to take advantage of new technology.

While we do provide template development in-house, our clients have the option of outsourcing template development to a third party because we are using an open-standard. This is a unique selling point for our software that wins us sales over our competitors, not because we have a proprietary system that is perceived to be better than others, but ironically because we are embracing open standards that our competitors do not.

In a way it would be easier and better in the long run if our competitors were using XSLT, because it would give our customers more options and make it less expensive for them to switch providers, based on the need of their organization at the time. At the end of the day, what is best for our customers is best for us!

• Read Anup Shah's article "Why Use XSLT in Server Side Web Frameworks For Output Generation?"

posted by Daniel Larsen, 18 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

How to sell your House on TradeMe

How to sell your House on TradeMe

1. Take as many good photos as Trade Me will allow. Include every room and your favourite bits of the garden and the view if there is one.
2. Make sure your house looks gorgeous ie bed made with matching stuff, flowers in strategic places, benches uncluttered. Remember this is their first 'walk - through'
3. Describe it like you LOVE it and don't want to leave.
4. Write a good description and follow up with a bullet point summary of best features.
5. Include what is in the vicinity - parks, schools, shops, etc.
6. Think about the small things that are important to you when looking for a house and assume other buyers want that too, eg bus stops outside the gate.
7. Answer every enquiry asap and treat them all like you really want them to be the buyers.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 06 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

How to read your Web Statistics

How to read your Web Statistics

Here a few tips on how to read web stats reporting tools like Google Analytics, Urchin and Webalizer.

Definitions

Visits or Sessions
Urchin uses the term "Sessions", most other systems use the term "Visits". Both terms mean the same thing. Every time a visitor visits your website, it is counted as one visit or session. If one visitor returns to your site three times in one day, it is counted as three visits.

Visitors or "Unique Visitors"
A visitor is an individual person. If one visitor returns to your site three times in one day, it is counted as one visitor.

Pages
Every time a page is viewed by one of your visitors, it is counted as a page.

Pages/Visit
This figure shows you how many pages each visitor views on average.

Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of visits where the visitor looked at one page, and left straight away.

Tips

• If you can set a Date Range (Google Analytics, Urchin), look at the month to (yesterday's) date. So if today is the 16th of September, set the date range for the 31 days from 16th of August to 15th of September. Why yesterday? Because today's stats have not been processsed yet, yesterday is the last full day of stats information.
• If it is difficult to set a Date Range, look at the last full month of Stats. So if today is the 16th of September, look at August's stats report.

Important Web Statistics for Small Business Websites

• Visits: Your visits should improve over time. You will see spikes or increases in visitors after an event, such as a promotion or email newsletter. Spikes in traffic could also be caused by an external event, like another busy site linking to your site, or Google improving your ranking, etc.
• Pages/Visit: Aim for a ratio of 3 or higher. This means that every visitor is viewing at least 3 pages on average (per visit). In general, the higher the ratio, the more satisfied a user is with the site - they are having a good look around, as opposed to backing out or going somewhere else.
• Hourly usage: Some stats reports (like Urchin and Webalizer) are able to show you what time(s) of the day your site is most busy. When you start to get a lot of visits each month, this will smooth out to a trend curve and you will see when most of your visitors are visiting your site. This is a good opportunity to tune your content to profile your visitors. What sort of mood will they be in? What will be happening around them? Are you promoting or detracting from that mood?
• Referrers / Referrals / Referring Sites: This is a list of all of the sites that link to your site and send (refer) visitors to your site. It is interesting and encouraging to see who else is linking to your site. It is also great for Search Engine Rankings.
• Search Strings / Search Terms / Keywords - These are the search terms that people enter when they are looking for you on Google (and other search engines). You can get some "wrong numbers", but these are great to see what the most popular (successful) keywords for your site. In Google Analytics, have a look at the Bounce Rate alongside each keyword. A high Bounce Rate indicates that the visitor arrived at your site and did not think that your website could help them in any way (they left straight away). How could you improve the content on your site to lower this Bounce Rate?

Other Notes

You can't get any personal information from these stats, like who they are or where they are. You can get a rough idea of what country and region they are from by their I.P addresses, but it is not a reliable indicator. Webaliser and Urchin will sometimes graph visitor country data using the IP Address method. Google Analytics has a great Map Overlay graph that is also based on IP address information.

Finally, don't forget the old saying, "there are lies, damn lies and statistics", so don't take everything you see in these reports as gospel. Use other forms of research, sales reports and customer feedback to back these numbers up. Use this information to build up a profile of your typical visitor...

Are you giving them what they want?

- Adapted from an article from daniel.larsen.net.nz

All Klixo Web Hosting packages come with Urchin Webstats version 5. We can also install tracking codes for Google Analytics into your website templates, and setup your Google Analytics account. Contact us for details.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 16 Sep 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

SEO for Marketers - Part #1

SEO for Marketers - Part #1

Search Engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing go hand in hand and I am getting more and more requests from people in Marketing roles for advice on SEO. The skills required to optimise a website for Search Engines are all marketing related skills. Despite popular belief, very few technical skills are required, and there are certainly no "secrets" to how Google ranks pages, the formula that Google uses is obvious and published on its own help pages (I have written about this before).

SEO in the real world

OK, we are going to write some web page copy about a footwear product called "Ugg Boot", a sheepskin boot famous in New Zealand and Australia for being incredibly comfortable and unfashionable at the same time. Recently the Ugg Boot has experienced a revival as "must have" teen brands like Billabong and Roxy have added trendy Ugg Boot products to their range.

So this presents an opportunity because as demand for ugg boots increases, customers are looking for opportunities to purchase the boots below retail price. My imaginary client is a sheepskin tannery who has manufactured high quality Ugg Boots for years and wants to feature this product on their website to generate enquiries that they will forward to the customer's nearest retailer.

I have been asked to write the copy for a web page promoting Ugg Boots. This is the process I take.

SEO As You Write

The real problem with SEO is that it is time consuming, especially if your are performing the work retrospectively. If you want to save time optimising your copy, do it as you write it.

• If you are marketing a service, the process is the same just a bit more difficult. For the purpose of this article I will use the term "product" for both services & products.

You will need: A Google Adwords Account, basic knowledge of how to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, a printer, a highlighter and a pen.

Step 1. Find the real root keyword for your product

Sum up your product in one short key phrase (1 or two words). Here are some examples:

• Ugg Boots = "Ugg Boots"
• Shopping Mall = "Retail Property"
• Seafood Wholesaler = "Seafood"
• Whakatane Backpackers = "Whakatane Accommodation"

Next, test your key phrase in the Keyword Tool. What this shows you is the keyword phrases that people are actually searching for (as opposed to what you think they are searching for). "Whakatane Backpackers" is a great example. A quick check in the Keyword tool reveals that there are exactly 0 searches for the term "Whakatane Backpackers" every month, wheras 880 searches every month for "Whakatane Accommodation". So the root keyword phrase for this product is "Whakatane Accommodation".

Using this tool allows you to evaluate keywords based on pure facts, as opposed to the emotion of gut feelings or instinct. As boring as pure data analysis may be to marketing creative types like you, it really is the secret to getting results on search engines, which are clinical, emotionless robots making decisions based purely on cold hard data.

Re-run the Keyword tool now on your root key phrase.

Step 2. Get the results into a Spreadsheet

OK, you should now have a list of key phrases, ordered by Average Monthly Searches (Descending) for your chosen country. Google will divide the results up into multiple sections. Now export each section as CSV (for Excel), and combine in to one Excel spreadsheet.

Next, sort all of the keyword phrases by average monthly searches descending. Now you will have a long list of potential key phrase candidates. Save a copy of this spreadsheet as a master.

• Here is what mine looks like. (XLS, 35KB)

Step 3. Ruthlessly narrow the list down to 20 keywords.

Starting with the first key phrase, work your way through the top key phrases evaluating for relevancy to your task at hand. If not relevant, delete that row and move on to the next one. This often means deleting really popular "broad" matches, which can be painful, so be ruthless!

Example. In my list, the first keyword phrase is "shoes", which while popular, is way too broad for my product and is saturated by competitors as well. So I have deleted it. I have also deleted "boot", "boots" and "footwear".

Delete any keyword phrases that you don't actually sell. As tempting as it is to try and attract anyone looking for anything remotely related to Ugg Boots to your website, it is a waste of time as customers will just leave your site in disgust after they have discovered that you don't actually sell what you are talking about on your website, and never come back. So, as much I would love my client to satisfy the glaring hole in the market for "crochet uggs" (12,100 searches in New Zealand per month and no advertisers!), my client does not make or sell them, so it is off the list.

Next, combine the phrases that obviously should be together. For example, in my list, women's uggs (#1) is really the same term as womens uggs (#20), so I will combine them at number one.

OK, now we have a list of 20 relevant keywords to use for the task at hand, writing search engine optimised copy for Ugg Boots. Print the list and get your highlighter ready.

• Here is what mine looks like now. (XLS, 33KB)

Next week, in part 2 of this Blog we start writing!

posted by Daniel Larsen, 08 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

How to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool

How to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool

The Keyword Tool is used to estimate the amount of searches for a given keyword in a month. It can also be used to recommend relevant Adwords keywords for your webpages. Follow the instructions below to login to Google Adwords and access this tool.

Create a Google Adwords Account

If you don't already have one, get a Google Adwords Account.

1. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/Login
2. Click "Start now >>"
3. Choose "Standard Edition" and click Continue
4. Follow the instructions in the sign-up wizard

Google will take you through the process of creating a new Google AdWords advertising camapign - Don't worry, this camapign will not be activated or visible to the public unless you enter your payment details (which you don't have to do now).

Log in to Google Adwords

If you have a Google AdWords account, or have just created one, log in now.

• https://adwords.google.com/select/Login

Load the Keyword Tool

1. Click on the "Campaign Management" tab
2. Click Tools
3. Click "Keyword Tool"

Running the Keyword Tool

If this is your first time using this tool, follow these guidelines:

Tailor results to New Zealand

If your target market is New Zealand, instruct Google to only show you search data for New Zealand.

1. Where it says "Results are tailored to English, United States", click Edit
2. Select "New Zealand" in the list of Countries

Enter a root Keyword

To begin with, choose the simplest, commonest, one or two word term that sums up your business, here are some examples:

• For a Podiatrist, enter "Podiatry"
• For a Helicopter Training course, enter "Helicopter Training"
• For a Wholesale Seafood company, enter "Seafood"

Analyse the Data

1. Click "Get keyword ideas" and wait a few seconds for Google to generate a report
2. When the results load, click on the "Approx Avg Search Volume" column. This will display the search terms in order, from most searched to least searched.

• The numbers in the Volume columns indicate approximately how many searches there were for the key phrases in the selected Country.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 23 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do?

I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do?

Phishing or Scam emails come in many forms, but most are cleverly disguised to get you to part with a username and password. These scams are becoming so clever now that it is almost impossible for all but a highly trained professional to distinguish between a scam and the real thing. So if think you may have been sucked in by one of these scams, here is what you should do.

• Change the password of the system that the scammer was posing as immediately (See choosing random passwords below)
• If you use the same or similar password for any of your internet banking accounts:
  • Change the password immediately
  • Monitor your statements for unusual or unauthorised transactions
  • Notify your Bank of any breach or unauthorised activity
• If you use the same or similar password for any other website or system, change the password immediately and report any unauthorised activity
• Make sure your email hosting account server has a good anti-spam system installed. Klixo's email accounts have an excellent Anti-spam system.
• Update your browser to the latest version and ensure that it includes an anti-phishing system. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 3 both have this functionality built in.
• Finally, review your personal password policy (more on this below)

How to avoid Phishing Scams in the first place

• Read these tips from Hubris.net
• Make sure your email hosting account server has a good anti-spam system installed. Klixo's email accounts have an excellent Anti-spam system.
• Update your browser to the latest version and ensure that it includes an anti-phishing system. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 3 both have this functionality built in.

Creating a Personal Password policy

Everyone should have a personal password policy that determines how you choose passwords and which passwords you use for which systems/websites. Here are some practical (but not fool-proof) tips:

• When you are setting or choosing a password, consider the risk involved in using the system. Ask yourself, if someone was able to break in using my username and password, what would the possible ramifications be? Risk can be measured by how much money you could potentially lose, or it can be measured in other ways, such as how embarrassing it could be for example. Some examples of risk evaluations could be:
  • Internet Banking - High Risk
  • Flickr Account - Low Risk
  • My Space Account - Low Risk
  • Laptop Login - High Risk
  • Company Intranet - Medium or High Risk
• Some security experts recommend that you choose a different password for every website/system that you log in to, but this is not always practical. Another (riskier) alternative is to choose a password for each risk profile. For example a low risk password, a medium risk password, and a high risk password.
• Choose a random password, a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols that will never be found in a dictionary of any kind. Use a random password generator to get a more secure password.

More reading

• Phishing / Identity Theft - Hubris Communications
• Secure Passwords Keep You Safer - Schneier on Security
• Real World Passwords - Schneier on Security (warning, contains profanity)

posted by Daniel Larsen, 09 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link

A strategy for better search engine rankings

A strategy for better search engine rankings for New Zealand small business websites

By Daniel Larsen, Manager, Klixo Website Management.

Introduction

This article focuses on improving the search engine ranking for your website and is specifically written for New Zealand based small business websites. This article does not include specific strategies for increasing the number of visitors to your site, but in most cases a better search engine ranking will increase the overall visitor traffic to your site.

How websites are ranked

Most website owners will type their business name into Google and see how close their website comes to the top of the list as an indication of their search engine ranking. But unfortunately this is not accurate because your customers may not always search for your exact business name, in fact they may often search for the type of business you are in or a product that you provide. For example, visitors who come to “www.larryscarparts.co.nz” may not have searched for “Larry’s Car Parts”. They may have searched for “cheap oil filter”. The two search terms are not relative – Larry’s website will rank differently in each search.

Klixo uses the Google PageRank to measure how websites are ranked in the eyes of the world’s most important Search Engine, Google. The Google PageRank is measured on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the lowest ranking and 10 being the highest. If you download and configure the Google Toolbar you can view the PageRank for your website as well as other websites.

If your website has a good Google PageRank, it will rank well in search results for relevant keywords every time. So any search engine optimisation strategy must make a better PageRank the priority. So here comes the obvious question…

What is the secret to getting a good Google PageRank?

The answer is… there is no secret. There are only two guaranteed ways to get a better PageRank and here they are, quoted straight from the Google Webmaster Guidelines:

1. “Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content”
2. “Have other relevant sites link to yours”

A useful, information-rich site

Content is king. If your website has lots of interesting and up-to-date content that is relevant to your business then your site is halfway to earning a good PageRank. The Klixo Website Manager allows you to log in and update your website anytime you like. This means you can update your site as soon as you have new information available.

Have other relevant sites link to yours

Now you must get other websites to link to yours, and this is crucial, you will not get a Google PageRank higher than 0 if no other website on the web will link to yours.

But a word of caution, it is not the quantity of websites that link to yours that Google considers, it is the quality. To impact on your PageRank any website that links to yours must be relevant to your business. A link from a website is particularly valuable if it has a higher PageRank than yours. So the best strategy is to seek out your suppliers, customers and peers and ask them to link to your site. You may offer to reciprocate with a link to their site.

For any new Klixo Website, the first link to the new site is from http://klixo.co.nz/ which is has a PageRank of 4 (at the time of writing this article), so that is a good start.

Web Business Directories are also excellent for providing quality, high ranking links to your website. Every new Klixo Website is automatically submitted to these free New Zealand web directories:

www.nzsearch.co.nz (PageRank = 6)
www.directorynz.co.nz (PageRank = 5)

I also highly recommend investing in a listing in these high profile NZ directories:

www.yellowpages.co.nz
If you have a business telephone line with Telecom then you will already have a listing on www.yellowpages.co.nz. You can enhance the listing with a link to your website for about $38 + GST per month. This is good value* as the Yellow Pages website has a Google PageRank of 7 (at the time of writing), so a link from www.yellowpages.co.nz to your website is good kudos in the eyes of Google and the other popular search engines.

I have been impressed with the work that Yellow Pages have put into their website over recent months, they have really cottoned on to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and have built keyword rich entry pages to attract even more visitors to their directory. Plus, just yesterday I noticed that every single listing has a zoom-able map with driving and walking directions to your business – very cool!

When you apply for the listing make sure you include some keywords in the description text for your listing. Have a look at Klixo’s listing for an example.

If you do not have a business line with Telecom you can still just call Yellow Pages to arrange the advertising. If you are a home-based business, make sure you register for the Home Business programme; it’s free, you still pay residential line rental, plus you get cheaper daytime calls and a free Yellow Pages listing.

www.ubd.co.nz
UBD are another online business directory, currently on a PageRank of 6. Their pricing and service is similar to Yellow Pages and they provide all sorts of options for how you want your listing to appear. At around $38 + GST per month, the basic listing with a link to your website is a good investment*. Once again, make sure you include your most important keywords in the description.

* Keep in mind that I recommend these products for their value as quality web links only. Don’t expect to start getting a lot of sales enquiries just because you are listed in the Yellow Pages or UBD.

Summary

An easy to use, content rich website that is recommended (by way of a link) by other content rich websites will always rank well in Google and the other major search engines. Klixo websites have the added advantage of belonging to a network of websites that are already have a good PageRank. Plus our Klixo Website Manager makes it easy for you to create new content for your website at any time.

Appendix: the major popular search engines

• Google: http://www.google.com/
• Yahoo! Search: http://search.yahoo.com/
• MSN Search: http://search.msn.com/

posted by Daniel Larsen, 03 Jan 2007 | 0 comments | comment | link

Accessibility Legislation is Coming

Accessibility legislation is coming

Europe has just passed legislation requiring all public website to be "Accessible" by 2010, and it is only a matter of time before the New Zealand Government do the same. Is your site ready for accessibility law?

What is Accessibility?

Accessibility is the ability of a website to be accessed and used by someone who has a disability, and the level of accessibility is regulated in the U.S.A, Australia, and now all of the European Union. Accessibility is also indirectly guaranteed under human rights laws, but many lawmakers see the internet age as an ideal opportunity to better include disabled people than they historically have in other areas of life.

How do I make my website accessible?

A well designed website will usually be accessible with very little work needed, but there are many pitfalls to avoid and a good web developer can help you with these. When designing a website make sure you specify accessibility as one of the key objectives of the design, and ensure that your designer or developer designs and tests the design using the accessibility tools that are available.

Here are some links to accessibility resources:

Developing with Web Standards - 456 Berea Street
http://www.456bereastreet.com/lab/developing_with_web_standards/accessibility/

Internet for all: EU ministers commit to an inclusive and barrier-free information society - Europa 
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/769&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

posted by Daniel Larsen, 01 Jul 2006 | 0 comments | comment | link

Happy New Year

happy new year!

We are back from a short but sweet summer holiday, refreshed, recharged and ready to get your website working for you. Here's how:

1. We treat your website as an asset
You wouldn't buy a photocopier if it didn't add value to your business would you? Why should a website be any different? Let us explain how your website can add value to your business. Then we will set realistic quantifiable objectives and achieve them.

2. We use newer, smarter technology to save you money
In the old days, if you wanted a 10 page website you would pay a web-designer $70/hour to painstakingly create each page by hand. Now we use template technology to so that your designer can spend his or her valuable time designing instead of replicating.

3. We only use the best
We only use the best designers, developers and servers for your precious website. If you are aiming for a New Zealand audience, we will host you on a web-server in New Zealand, not on a web server in the U.S pretending it is in New Zealand. This means faster, more responsive pages and better local service support that understands your market.

All of our website management packages include free business-hours phone support so that you can talk to a real person about your website when you need to.

The new year is a great time to take a fresh look at your website. 

- Daniel Larsen, Manager, Klixo Limited

Phone or email Klixo today for a free, no-obligation consultation.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 10 Jan 2006 | 0 comments | comment | link

Summer Reading

summer reading

Lying on the beach with your 3G enabled PDA? Or sipping on a soya latte in the Ground Zero hotspot? Check out some great summer reading from Klixo and friends...

Better search engine rankings for small business websites
Would you like your website to rank higher in search results on Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search? This article by Daniel Larsen explains how to get your site up in the ranks. Essential reading for website owners. Read on...

Splore '06
If you love music, art and camping then you had better make sure you have your tickets to Splore because they are selling fast (we know, we manage their website). The lineup includes underground hip-hop legend Talib Kweli as well as NZ faves Fat Freddy's Drop and Whakatane legends, Kora. Read on...

Tyree Robertson
Singer-songwriter Tyree Robertson's debut album is ideal summer listening for those lazy hazy days of summer. You can listen to sample tracks on Tyree's new website. Tyree is touring the South Island now, check for dates on the website. Read on...

Opotiki Packing and Coolstorage - OPAC
Got a few hectares going brown in the summer heat? Think green and gold for a managed agriculture investment by the Kiwifruit experts at OPAC. Read on...

Eatout Restaurant Guide
And when the sun goes down and the gas bottle has run out, head into town and ease that sun burn with a nice glass of red and a plate of something yummy from one of the great restaurants featured in the Eatout Restaurant Guide. Read on... 

posted by Daniel Larsen, 09 Jan 2006 | 0 comments | comment | link

Really Simple Syndication

really simple syndication

by Daniel Larsen

The New Zealand Herald have started syndicating their content using RSS. RSS is a worldwide technical standard for sharing content between web sites and users. Many people use "RSS News Readers" to subscribe to syndicated content from their favourite web sites like cartoons, new reports and horoscopes. But the real potential for this technology is when web sites start sharing content with other web sites.

Now that the NZ Herald have gone with RSS I am happy to declare the New Zealand web space has caught up with the U.S as far as content sharing technology goes, and now it is time to start exploiting the opportunities that this presents.

Did you know that Klixo's Web Site Manager allows you to put NZ Herald Headlines on the front page of your web site? Klixo is one of the few Content Management Systems (CMS) that allows you to do this as standard, because Klixo is an XML based CMS.

Talk to us about how RSS technology can enhance your web site.

Here are a few of the great RSS feeds that we have used on our web sites and that we rate highly:

New Zealand RSS Feeds:

The New Zealand Herald
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/info/rss/index.cfm

Radio New Zealand
http://www.radionz.co.nz/rss/

Google News New Zealand
http://news.google.co.nz/intl/en_nz/news_feed_terms.html

Radio 1XX Regional News Headlines
http://www.1xx.co.nz/rss/1xx_regional_news.xml

Other RSS Feeds:

BBC World News
Click Here

Wired News
http://www.wired.com/news/rss/

posted by Daniel Larsen, 16 Nov 2005 | 0 comments | comment | link

A Pinch & A Punch

a pinch and a punch

It's the first of the month!

Time to review your monthly web-stats report to see how well your web site is performing. A good web-stats report allows you to effectively measure your site's performance, what is working, what isn't, where your visitors are going - the results can be unexpected!

If your web site is hosted by Klixo, you will already have received instructions on how to access your web stats report. If your web site is hosted by another company, contact them to see how to access your reports.

There is a lot of information in a web-stats report and not all of it may be relevant to you. Here is an article from daniel.larsen.net.nz that attempts to explain the art of reading a web-stats report:

"Lies, Damn Lies, and Web Statistics"

If you find that you aren't quite getting the information that you would like from your report, it may be time to consider custom web-stats reporting. Klixo can develop a customised report especially for you that will give you a "better look" at the complex web-stats data.

Finally, if you think your web site should be performing better than it is "on paper", then talk to Klixo about ways of improving traffic flow through your site, and how to attract more visitors to your site with Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing.

Any questions? Simply reply to this email or contact Klixo Support using the contact details below and we will be happy to help.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 01 Jul 2005 | 0 comments | comment | link

Klixo Technology

klixo technology

do you want to be more productive?

Most business people want to be more productive. They want more customers or to produce more products and sell them. Since the invention of the wheel, new technology has always been the bringer of a more productive period for industry and humanity in general.

Klixo technology makes websites more productive - it is that simple. With a small investment in technology your website can do more and work harder for you, your business and you clients, freeing up your most precious resource: You!

Spend more time thinking and talking and less time doing and fixing by using technology to make your website more productive.

Use Klixo technology - systems that work.

posted by Daniel Larsen, 14 Nov 2004 | 0 comments | comment | link