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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
It’s All in a Domain Name

I volunteered to be the Vice President of Public Relations for our Toastmasters club, Professionally Speaking and yesterday was our first Officers training session. For anyone who doesn’t know about Toastmasters, it’s a club that teaches, not only overcoming the fear of public speaking, but it gives you leadership skills and helps to improve upon your self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. Mike Swartz says, “Check ‘em out.”

During the training session, I announced our club and website, www.professionallyspeakingtoastmasters.org. “Wow” said a couple other members. I knew the “Wow” was because of the incredibly long web address.

When selecting a domain name for your organization, there are two important considerations you should be aware of (I wish I knew these before we selected our domain, mjswebsolutions.com).

  1. Use the “Radio Test”

    2. If you had to announce your website address over the radio, would people understand it or would you have to explain it.

    During our first phone call to 2nd Insight, I was told to check out their website. I typed secondinsight.com instead of 2ndinsight.com and got nothing. They explained to me I had to type 2-n-d-insight.com. I informed them of the “Radio Test” and we immediately created two secondary domains - secondinsight.com and secondinsite.com - so others wouldn’t get confused.

  2. Use Targeted Keywords

    3. If you can, select a domain name that has your targeted keywords in it.

    Before building a website for alamedachurch.org, we changed the domain name from fpcalameda.org to alamedachurch.org. We included two important keywords most people would search on when locating a church: “alameda” and “church”. Now when searching “alameda church” into Google, they’re listed as #3.

    (Note: If you separate your keywords with a dash, i.e. alameda-church, Google and other search engines recognize this as two words. This is why the alameda-chuch.org site comes up before alamedachurch.org. But using a dash will not help in your radio test though because you’ll have to explain the dash.)

When selecting a domain name for your organization, remember the “radio test” and try using your prominent, targeted keywords. Both will increase and drive traffic to your website.

’til next time.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 10:33 am

Comments: None | Filed under: Web Marketing


Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Always Be on High Receive

If you’re any kind of regular to this blog (and I hope you are), you may have noticed I haven’t written anything for about two weeks. I have a very good excuse…I was on vacation in France and Amsterdam. It was a great time to get away, relax and enjoy a completely new environment.

Anyhoo…

On Monday, July 19, I attended the Alameda Unified School District Website Advisory Panel meeting. (The AUSD is looking at specialized options for maintaining websites for both the district and each school). During the meeting I listened to presentations from 4 specialized educational web development companies and provided my comments and suggestions to the panel on which solutions I thought were best.

I took this opportunity to learn and study how each web company presented their services and how I could learn from each and what I could do to improve upon my own presentations, proposals and processes.

Learning and observing others is also good before developing a website. Before you even think about designing a new website, research other websites, particularly your competitor’s websites, and ask the questions: What characteristics of this site would I like to incorporate into my own? What are they doing better or worse? Why I like/dislike the website? What could I do differently?

Don’t just listen…observe. Always be on high receive and always be looking to improve upon your own business practices.

‘til next time.

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 10:19 am

Comments: None | Filed under: Web Design


Friday, July 2, 2004
Microsoft Internet Explorer No More

I just read two stories – back to back – about two new virus attacks when using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser.

The latest virus attack using Internet Explorer happens when you’re visiting a website; a small program, without your knowledge, downloads onto your computer and snatches your banking password.

I just got done reading about another virus that infects user’s computers who only use Internet Explorer.

The magnitude of these new viruses is huge - you don’t have to click on an attachment to launch these viruses. All you have to do is go to a website, using Microsoft Internet Explorer, and – boom - you’re infected.

There is an effort online about informing Internet Explorer users to switch to an alternative browser.

I couldn’t agree more.

This has got to stop – I can’t afford to be hit with another virus.

Switch to Another Web Browser

At MJS Web Solutions we have to test our websites using different versions and types of web browsers. I was using Internet Explorer for convenience sake, but there is no convenience when a virus hits. Internet Explorer is now for testing purposes only.

I’ve switched to Opera 7.51. Opera has a free version with minimal ads or a paid version without ads. It’s easy to install, contains email, chat, Google search and a tabbed surfing environment. I was able to import my Favorites with ease also.

Other browsers to check out are Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox - a slim-down version of Mozilla. Mozilla is based on the once, very popular, Netscape program.

I’m sick and tired of hearing about the vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and the easiness I have of getting a virus from using it.

I’m suggesting to everyone to switch browsers until Microsoft can satisfactorily say Internet Explorer is secure. (I’m unsure when or if that’ll happen).

I cannot afford to use Internet Explorer anymore. Neither can you.

P.S. I just received an email (11:06 PM PST) with the Subject, “Feds Warn Against Microsoft’s Browser”. It’s that serious.

Mike Swartz says, “Check it out.”

Posted by: Michael Swartz at 1:02 am

Comments: None | Filed under: Web General


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