Dominate Your Local Market!

Two new WordPress videos have been posted to the videos page at OrangeCat.com.

Is Your WordPress Installation Up-to-Date? (3:22) takes a few minutes to show you how to determine if your WordPress blog is running the latest version. If not it shows you what to do about it.

Although WordPress has been fairly bullet-proof through it’s various versions, each new version introduces new features, fixes bugs and increases security over the previous version.

The same can be said for plugins. Older versions of plugins could have security issues that have been addressed in later versions. In order to run the latest versions of a plugin, you may have to be running the latest version of WordPress as well.

Having your WordPress website hacked could be more than just as inconvenience. If you have the Google Sitemaps plugin installed (and you should), it will report any changes made by a hacker as new content. You could then lose precious ranking if Google determines your site is now less relevant. It is much easier to keep ranking than to rebuild it.

If you are an OrangeCat client, you can subscribe to our updating service that keeps WordPress, themes and plugins current as part of a website maintenance program. That way you never have to worry about your WordPress being up-to-date.

WordPress Security: Delete Your Admin User (3:38) explains how having the default admin user on your blog may be a security risk and could increase your risk of being hacked.

Far too many WordPress blogs still use the admin user that was created during installation. If a hacker can be reasonably sure that the username for your blog’s admin area is “admin” they merely have to crack the password to gain access.

Since so many passwords are pretty weak, using terms such as “joe123″ or “marysblog” or the even worse “wordpress” or “password,” using software to repeatedly try different passwords (called a “brute force attack”) could uncover your password in short order.

All recent installations of WordPress on OrangeCat servers has included the Login Lockdown plugin that stops this kind attack by limiting he number of times a password can be tried before the login is disabled for a pre-determined amount of time.

Deleting the admin user and replacing it with a more secure username is one step you can take to thwart a brute force attack on your WordPress administration. This video walks you through the process.

If you would like us to change your WordPress admin user or install the Login Lockdown plugin, use the OrangeCat.net Services Page to submit a request. Pricing is available on our Services Page.

DailyBlogTips.com recently published an article on why you should remove the default “admin” user from your WordPress installation. You are most likely using the “admin” user that was installed by default when WordPress was set up.

DBT says “The problem with this is evident: if someone wanted to gain access to your blog, all he would need to do is to keep using the “admin” user name with a bunch of passwords combinations. This is called brute force attack, and with automated tools it works quite often.”

Read more »

You all know how powerful a well-conceived email marketing program can be. Forgot? I sometimes forget the details, too. According to the Direct Marketing Association, in 2008, email marketing returned and average $45.65 on each dollar spent. That’s an ROI (Return on Investment) of 4,565%! Can you think of any other marketing strategy for local businesses that offers that kind of return?

That is why you hear Internet Marketers repeat themselves over and over and over again – “The money is in the list.”

But here’s a little secret about that astonishing figure. It takes into account an average of ALL email marketing campaigns (except spamming, which has an historically abysmal rate of return). So it is a average of both good and bad campaigns. That means some folks are doing a lot better than the $45.65 average – and of course, some are doing worse.

How can you make sure that your email campaign is in the “doing better” group?

There are a few factors that come into play that can make your email marketing perform at it’s best. Here are a few:

1. Quality of the list – Do they want it?
2. Deliverability – Do they receive it?
3. Relevance – Do they read it?
4. Actionability – Do they respond to it?

Obviously, none of these questions have a simple “yes” or “no” answer. But the higher the percentage of “yesses” to each one, the higher the return on your investment will be.

PHPList is one application you may use to send emails to your prospects and customers. AutoResponse Plus is another. And aWeber is an online application service provider (ASP) that can host your email campaigns. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, which we will go over in depth in another post.

PHPList posts a PreFlight Checklist on some things you should do before sending emails that can help increase the deliverability rate of your messages (the percentage that actually make it to your customer’s email box).

Whether you are using PHPList or not, these tips apply to your email marketing program. So have a look at them and then check and be sure you are in compliance with them.

It could make the difference between being in the “above average” group or the “below average” one. And that difference can be measured in dollars and cents – YOUR dollars and cents.

This New York Times article talks about how small businesses, especially of the “mon-and-pop” variety are using Twitter as their primary marketing vehicle – often their ONLY marketing vehicle.

And why not? Twitter is free and easy to use. And they are in the process of building new tools to allow businesses to better se what their “tweets” are doing for them. A more comprehensive marketing plan would be advantageous in the long run, but Twitter is a great way to get started when the budget is slim.

Read more here »

Owning a small business in most towns means you rely on customers from surrounding towns and areas for a significant portion of your business. Back in the “Yellow Pages” days that meant spending a small fortune promoting your business in those areas.

Now, a business can use online marketing to reach potential customers in an expanded market in a very cost-effective manner… IF you follow a simple strategy.

You could build a web page that simply included the names of your target cities and a few keywords or phrases that you would like to rank highly for. And it just might work. I’ve used this technique and it got me into the top five for my keywords in a fairly competitive market. But the competition was weak.

That was then and this is now. The chances of success using that technique have shrunk. It may still get you into the top 20 in your chosen markets, but that is no longer good enough. You now need to give your business the best chance to rank highly for an array of keywords that potential customers are likely to use when searching for your product or service.

Keywords are not a guessing game. Starting with some logical basic keywords, we need to use effective tools to expand the selection of keywords that we start out with. Once we have a a list of actual keywords gleaned from logs of real users of our website, we add those to the mix.

“Mix” is undoubtedly the wrong word to use as the get the best effect on ranking each keyword or key word set needs it’s own web page. For example, if you were trying to rank highly for the the keyword “blue widget,” you would need a web page dedicated to that keyword set and not try to include “red widget” or “blue thingamajig.” You’ll get much better results if you create separate pages for each keyword set.

A web page designed for a single keyword set should also have a keyword-rich, filename, title and content. The content should offer information of value to visitors landing on it and should be created for real visitors, not search engine robots.

Here’s an example of a web page created for a single keyword set:

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And the resulting Google ranking:

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In these two images you can clearly see the advantage of having web pages that are optimized to BOTH a locality and a keyword set. Do not attempt to create pages like this that have similar content but simply redirect to another page. The content in meant for the search engine robots and will never be seen by visitors to the page. Those are called “doorway” pages. Google doesn’t like “doorway” pages as they contain no content of value to visitors and they will quickly eliminate them from their database – and possibly penalize your entire site.

So, if you want to market to different locations in your area, use a separate web page for each keyword set (product or service) and location (city, town, county, etc.). Just be sure that each page has content of value to a visitor and is optimized for the keyword set it is meant to promote.

Bestselling author Timothy Ferriss (The 4 Hour Workweek – #1 New York Times Best seller) delivers his presentation on effective blogging at WordCamp San Francisco 2009

Great information here for anyone starting a blog or wanting to improve their blogging skills.

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233 years ago, on a steamy summer day in Philadelphia, 56 men changed the course of human history, then went out for a drink. It is the courage of these individuals, who placed their value even before their lives that we celebrate today.

If you’ve never read their handiwork, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, here’s your chance. Take a few minutes and read it through. It is truly an amazing document.

Read more…

From Lindsey Olivares and Ringling College of Art and Design via Daily Motion – a little video to help make your day!