Google Adwords can be an *AMAZINGLY* powerful and affordable way to grow your business. Or you can waste an enormous amount of money for very little return. It takes a while to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
I have been using Google Adwords for many years and I’ve learned all the hard lessons already. I currently manage around $1500/month in ad spending on my sites at Ridebooker.com and Salmonboats.ca and I’m seeing significant results in both traffic and sales. Continue reading
Long Tail Search & Web Analytics
I’ve been watching my Google Analytics statics lately and I’m amazed at the amount of traffic that Google sends my way. The funny thing is, a lot of my traffic comes from people who are entering some pretty detailed and obscure search terms that match up with one of my blog posts. These detailed searches are often called the long tail of search.
Not surprisingly, my site doesn’t rank very well if you search Google on “FreeBSD” since there are tons of high ranking sites that deal with FreeBSD. However, if you type “FreeBSD Consulting in Calgary” I currently come up in the #1 and #2 positions.
If you type “mac os x” in Google I wouldn’t have a prayer of ranking well in Google. However, type “gparted mac os x” and I come up #3 as a result of this post.
If you type “ltsp” I don’t show up at all. However, I come up #1 with “ltsp linux thin client” as a result of this post.
The Good News
I get between 50 and 100 people per day who visit my site as a result of doing a Google search using terms that I’ve talked about in my blog. You don’t have to rank well for super popular search terms in order to generate Google traffic!
The Really Good News
People that are typing detailed queries into Google are looking for specific information. In many cases, these people are looking to solve a problem or make a purchase.
For example, somebody that is searching on “Linux” in Google is looking for some pretty generic information. If my site were to rank well, and they clicked on my link, they’d probably be pretty disappointed in the results. There are a LOT of sites that are much better sources of information on Linux.
However, if somebody were to type “Linux Consulting in Calgary” (I currently show up in the #3 spot) then they would probably be quite pleased with the results. Linux consulting is one of the things that I do and I am in Calgary. The odds of that person contacting me are pretty good because I’m what they were looking for!
Attention Small Business: Get Blogging!
Here’s the thing about my business blog: I post about what I do on a daily basis and the things that interest me. The posts contain all sorts of keywords and phrases that people who might want to hire me are typing into Google every day. The more posts I make, the more pages I have that contain relevant, rich, meaty key terms that Google loves. Every time I post an article I increase the odds of a potential customer finding me in the search engines and that is never a bad thing…
If your goal is to generate business via the search engines, a business blog is a GREAT way to participate in the the long tail of search and start generating web traffic that is highly predisposed to becoming your next customer.
A great collection of tips for running FreeBSD under VMware ESX and VMware Server. Point #3 is particularly helpful with ensuring that the clock inside the virtual machine stays synchronized with the host operating system.
File this link away if you deal with FreeBSD under VMware.
Microsoft Windows ousted at California school district
As far as I’m concerned, Linux thin clients are a no-brainer for education, non-profits, and many businesses. The costs associated with purchasing, maintaining, and administering Windows based PCs is prohibitive even with the heavy discounts from Microsoft.
Add it up and the school is looking at an IT budget that is easily $200K per year. Not cheap, especially for schools that are always trying to cut costs.
Schools, non-profits, and businesses that move to a Linux thin client infrastructure can easily cut their IT spending by 25-50%. Not only do the costs go down, but the performance and user satisfaction increases because the students and staff are now longer dealing with slow, unreliable, virus-ridden, computers. Linux thin clients are fast and reliable.
Like I said, in my mind it’s a no-brainer. What do you think?
Looking Good On The Ski Hill
Back in high school I used to go skiing with a guy whose motto was “If you look good, you are good”. The ironic part was this: he was one of the best skiers on the mountain and he wore these ski pants that were held together with a couple of rolls of duck tape. His comment was really directed at guys who were dressed to the nines, looked great in the lift line, but completely fell apart as soon as they got off the chair lift.
I was laughing about this with a friend today and it got me thinking about perception and reality on the internet.
Looking Good On The Internet
The internet is a very unforgiving place. People come to your website and often know absolutely nothing about your business, competency level, history, customer base or reputation. However, they quickly jump to conclusions based on one thing: graphic design. Continue reading
There are a limited number of words that you can put in the key search engine optimization (SEO) spots on the your site (i.e. title tags, headings, sub-headings, etc.). If you’re looking to maximize your traffic from the search engines then you need to do research to determine which words will give you the best “bang for your buck”.
I’ve had several conversations with clients over the last week regarding the importance of keyword research when performing SEO on a website. The whole idea of keyword research seems a bit funny doesn’t it? I mean, its your site and you know your customers, right? You probably think you know what people are going to type into Google when they are looking for your products and/or services.
As it turns out, if you did some keyword research you might be really surprised what your potential customers are typing into Google!
I just read a great overview on keyword research which seems to cover all the bases. If you own a website that relies on the search engines to generate traffic (most sites) then give it a read and you’ll be up to speed on what keyword research is, how it works, and why you should do it for your site.
Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research By Lisa Barone
http://www.osdir.com/Article9746.phtml
The South African Cabinet today announced that it had approved a free and open source strategy and that government would migrate its current software to free and open source software.
At a Cabinet media briefing government said that it had “approved a policy and strategy for the implementation of free and open source software (FOSS) in government.
If an entire government can embrace open source software then I’m guessing the average business probably can too?
How many governments need to adopt open source software before the business community takes note?
I had a discussion with a client recently about MS Exchange licensing. He had a quote from Microsoft and I almost dropped the phone when he told me how much a rollout for 200 people was going to cost him. Suffice to say, it was not dissimilar from what I make on an annual basis.
Stop the insanity.
I often hear the argument that its difficult to find IT people with open source experience. Speaking as an IT guy, we’re a pretty resourceful bunch. The whole IT gig is about being able to read manuals, search Google, and leverage forums, mailing lists, and social networks to solve problems.
If the business worlds starts demanding open source experience then the work force will respond.
I’ve been running ASSP at a client site for Just over a month and I’m really impressed. It was easy to configure and has been quite effective at blocking SPAM.
The nicest feature of ASSP is the way that the Bayes filter trains itself without requiring much in the way of human intervention. I have had to spend some time manually combing the logs for false positives (right at the beginning), but it really hasn’t been too bad.
Auto-Whitelisting
All recipients on outbound emails are automatically whitelisted (nice feature!) and a copy of every email is placed in the “HAM” folder for training the Bayes filter. It really hasn’t taken long for the filter to stockpile a large number of SPAM and HAM and this has really improved the situation for the users.
Conclusion
If you are evaluating anti-SPAM solutions for your network then I suggest you evaluate ASSP before dropping big bucks on a proprietary solution. There really isn’t much point in spending thousands of dollars on a commercial product when ASSP is free, easy to configure and effective.
I like it.
If you run a small business that services local clients then listen up!
When your potential clients hit Google to look for products and services they are almost always going to search using a geographic location and the name of the product/service.
When you put your pages together, you MUST take into account what people are going to be typing when they search for your products/services.
Example Searches
So WHY do so many small businesses neglect to have their geographic location in their page titles, body text, and footer? This is mind boggling. Yet I see it every day.
How on earth are people going to find you in Google if the name of the region that you service isn’t featured prominently on every single page on your website?
So what does a good page title look like?
See the difference? Now go fix your website! Every single page should have your location in the page title, body text, and the page footer to maximize your chances of being found by your potential customers.
Many email administrators prefer to filter inbound email using Postfix running on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or some other UNIX platform before relaying it to an internal Microsoft Exchange server. This strategy allows administrators to take advantage of the flexibility of Postfix and a wide variety of open source SPAM filtering solutions like Spamassassin, Amavisd-new, ClamAV, and a host of other open source solutions.
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