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Search Engine Marketing Newsletter Spring 2011


Wednesday March 23, 2011

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In this Newsletter we discuss two recent Google news stories and also something that may be coming down the road from Google.

Google made the news recently with two stories – a change to its algorithm and also an explicit penalty imposed on the rankings of two large retailers. Judy Helfand has written an excellent piece on the Webconsuls’ blog that provides more information about Google, algorithms, and the penalties. The information given by Google about this change could be helpful to you for improving your rankings.

In its official blog, Google states that its goal – “to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible.” Last week’s change is intended to reduce the rankings for what Google considers to be low quality sites – sites with low valued added, sites that have copied content from other sites, and sites that just don’t provide useful information. As low quality sites are reduced in ranking, then higher quality sites should improve.

Webconsuls avoids the tactics that Google is trying to penalize. We have found that our clients have not been negatively affected by the change, and many have benefited by the improvement given to higher quality sites.

Google’s goal of providing relevant answers to queries is simple to state and helps provide a roadmap you can use to improve the results from your web site. First, and most importantly, is it clear that your web site provides content for relevant searches? Does your site accurately and fairly completely describe the products and/or services you offer and the geographical area you serve?

Once you are confident that your site completely and accurately describes your business and its products and services, then how would you rate its quality? Does it provide useful information? Is the content original or merely copied from another site?

In another story Google found that Overstock.com and J. C. Penney were using deceptive practices to boost their positioning and dropped their rankings. It is tempting for a small business to think that will not happen to them, but there is a Google experiment that may work its way into the actual rankings. Google’s web browser is called Chrome, and Chrome now has a feature that lets users block sites. Once a viewer block a site, then that viewer will not see it again. Google assumes that Chrome users are blocking low quality sites. While so far Google says that Chrome blocks are not in the rankings, it is something that could be used in the future.

In summary, Google has made changes to its algorithms. These changes are designed to penalize low quality sites and reward sites with original valuable content. Google has also penalized major retailers who were deceiving its system to boost their rankings. Google is also experimenting with other ways to detect low value sites. Google’s goal is to provide relevant answers to search queries. You should make sure that your site has original content that fully describes your business.

Dick, Dennis and Judy

Reading Time: 8 minutes
reviewing 2010Image via Wikipedia
Webconsuls’ 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter
If 2010 was nothing else, it was a fast year. It seems only yesterday Dick Fay and I were working on our 2009 Winter Newsletter and now here we are writing our 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter. We want to take a few minutes to: Thank our Webconsuls’ clients, introduce our newest clients, highlight some marketing and software ideas, suggest two resolutions for you and support our not-for-profit clients who assist children in need.
Thanking our clients…
Webconsuls and our team appreciates our clients. We learn from each and every client by optimizing their sites, designing new sites, building blogs, coaching our clients on new software and responding to their marketing needs. As you may know, we have clients across the United States (actually in 11 states) and in two foreign countries, representing industries from hospitality to law, health care to home maintenance, real estate to retail, sports and recreation to performing arts. There is never a dull day.
Introducing our clients who joined us in 2010…
We invite you to meet our new clients and visit their websites.
Highlighting some marketing and software suggestions…

 

We know the internet is fluid. It changes daily. We try to keep our clients abreast of these changes by writing this blog, researching our clients’ requests, providing news’ feeds on our website, and publishing our newsletter. Over the past few years we have blogged a lot about social media/Google/Twitter. We have built blogs for our clients, we have worked with our clients to establish their Facebook business page.  Additionally, over the past year…
  • Dick has been particularly active assisting our clients by adding shopping carts with either PayPal or Authorize.net functionality.
  • Dennis worked with clients to add a LIVEPerson feature for online customer engagement.
  • Malik, our lead designer and web developer, is also proficient in designing clients’ e-newsletters using Constant Contact and Vertical Response.
  • Keith, our PPC specialist, works closely with several of our PPC clients to utilize phone conversion optimization software.  
  • Alycia, our branding expert, has been focused on improving Client Web 2.0 and specific SEO-related enhancements.
Suggesting two resolutions for you…

 

The first is to start reading our Webconsuls’ blog on a regular basis.  As we said above, with our blog we communicate new information that we think is important to on-line marketing and social media.


The second is to start and maintain your own blog.  Our clients with blogs generally receive more traffic than clients in similar fields without them.  Blogger now allows you to easily monitor your blog stats.  A blog is easy and relatively inexpensive to create.  Routinely writing posts can be a challenge, but it can  be rewarding with more virtual exposure, traffic, and new business.  You might start by also reading some of our clients’ blogs like –  Delytes – A ‘green’ fine foods company  or Attorney Carilyn Ibsen’s blog  or Attorney Will Bruzzo’s blog.

Finally supporting our not-for-profit clients…

 

This year, as in years past, Webconsuls made a donation in honor of our clients to those not-for- profit clients who work to support children and families in need.

Olive Crest Homes and Services for Abused Children
Since 1973, Olive Crest has transformed the lives of over 50,000 abused, neglected, and at-risk children and their families.

The Promises Foundation Miriam’s House
The Promises Foundation is committed to restoring hope for families by creating a safe environment for mothers and their children to grow and develop the tools they require to live meaningful and self-sufficient lives.

The Forrest General Healthcare Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Forrest General Hospital. The foundation helps ensure that the hospital’s vision of C.A.R.E. becomes a reality for the 17 county region that the hospital serves. Initiatives include the Inpatient Hospice Home Project, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Renovation Project and the Spiritual Grounds at Pine Grove.

We wish you a healthy and prosperous New Year. Let us know if 2011 is the year you want to add some new features to your on-line marketing. We will be happy to discuss these opportunities and plan a strategy with you.

Sincerely,
Dennis, Dick and Judy

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Have you claimed your GOOGLE Place Page yet?  Remember when I talked about GOOGLE Local becoming GOOGLE Places? In September I wrote about how GOOGLE Places was upgraded to a TWO-WAY STREET.  Webconsuls subscribes to a number of SEO/SMO on-line newsletters and also makes SMO and SEO News Feeds available for our site users. One of our favorite newsletters is Planet Ocean’s Search Engine News and we read with interest their current article “Must Do List for November: Create, Claim, Improve Your Google Places Page.”  Here is a bit of what they have to say:

“Google has rolled out Place Search which is a whole new way of displaying search results. This combines the natural and the local search algorithms and completely eliminates the traditional 7 pack and integrating it within the top 7 results. This is huge! The new algorithm relies heavily on Place Pages and it’s clear that without a Place Page you may be left behind. Here’s a location specific search that shows exactly what’s changed:

google places

 

“One thing to notice is that all the top results had very complete place pages that included pictures, reviews, links etc. As time goes by the consequences of the changes to local search will become clearer. The one thing we can tell you right now is you MUST have a complete Places Page for your business or you WILL be left behind in local search! Regardless how completed or not your Place Page is – make sure it is as complete as possible before December. This is the advice you pay us to hear…do yourself a favor and listen.”

Ok, I am going to run through this information again.
 Follow these steps:

·         Go to  Google Places
·         Sign in with your business GMail address
·         On the new screen click on LIST YOUR BUSINESS
·         A new screen will appear and you will be asked to enter your non-toll-free phone number and then hit the button that says: Find Business Information
·         Your current business address will appear and you will click on EDIT to update your listing.
·         A new screen will appear where you will be allowed to give all of the pertinent information about your business.
·         At the end of this process, when you hit submit, GOOGLE is going to call you within seconds to give you and PIN number to activate your account.
·         It is very important that you be there to answer the non-toll-free number.  This is one of their ways of verification of business ownership.
 
You may be wondering why we just don’t take care of this for you.  We have found that this free Google service is better managed by the customer for a number of reasons. 
  1. Google frowns upon 3rd party management of these accounts, as we are not the business owner.
  2. While we could go in and perhaps enter all of the information correctly, we are not sitting at your phone to take the call from Google and to try to coordinate that with you or your employee can be very difficult.
  3. Now that Google Places allows the business owner to respond to REVIEWS (good and bad) you really need to manage and understand this tool.  We cannot respond for you.

Should you decide you need help with this, I would be happy to tutor you over the phone while you CLAIM YOUR PLACE and LIST YOUR BUSINESS.  Let me know if you have questions. 

Let’s make it a goal: Get your GOOGLE Place Page in Order!

 

parking sign
 Your Parking “PLACE” (Page) Awaits YOU!
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Did you know you can subscribe to our Webconsuls’ Blog? Simply go to any page of our website and look for the bright orange RSS button near the bottom of the left margin. Press it and go from there. Once you subscribe you will always know when we have a new post to read.

Do you know why you should subscribe to our blog? It is a resource for you to use as you promote your business with your website, your Facebook page, your Twitter account, and your business blog. In the last month our blog has covered the following topics:

Today Judy wrote a post “What I Learned from Julie and Julia”. She talks about how she came to build a personal blog and how our clients might enjoy this and use a personal blog as a training ground for their business blog.

Let us know what you think. Subscribe…it is FREE!

The Webconsuls Team

Reading Time: 8 minutes

This message is intended for Webconsuls’ clients that use BLOGGER

Many of you have already received an email from Blogger Support (blogger.com) regarding their intention to shut-down FTP (File Transfer Protocol) technical support. If you have not received this email or have not read the email, then you can see it in its entirety below.

Webconsuls is writing today to let you know we are aware of this “change of service” and we are working on an appropriate protocol to assure that the integrity of your blogging activities is maintained.

Important Updates to the E-mail Notice Below:

 

  • The migration tool was released only on draft.blogger the evening of March 3, 2010, as opposed to February 22, 2010.
  • The new deadline for BLOGGER FTP support is May 1, 2010, as opposed to March 26.2010.

For our clients that have a blog that is part of their website, we are reviewing each of your blogger account/profiles and will stay in touch with you with the steps we will be taking to complete this transition. Until we receive additional information from Blogger, we are unable to ascertain if there will be any fees associated with these changes.

In the meantime: Please do not attempt to use the MIGRATION Tool on your own.

Sincerely,
Webconsuls, LLC
Dick Fay, Dennis Helfand and Judy Helfand
____________________________________________________________

Dear FTP user:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog), and wanted to make sure you saw the announcement. We will be following up with more information via e-mail in the weeks ahead, and regularly updating a blog dedicated to this service shut-down here: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/.

The full text of the announcement at Blogger Buzz follows.

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing [1] Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Three years ago we launched Custom Domains [2] to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year’s post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP[3] and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you’re interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview[4] of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.

For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

  • We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
  • We will be providing a dedicated blog [5] and help documentation
  • Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.

Regards,
Rick Klau
Blogger Product Manager Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Reading Time: 17 minutes

The current economic downturn in the U.S. is hurting many clients. We think that you can not just wait for the storm to pass, but must work to survive in the rain. We also think that our clients who take a long view and who work hard now will be in the best shape when the economy recovers. Lastly, we think that the Internet is the most cost effective way to promote many businesses.

In this newsletter we discuss a free offer from Webconsuls, some ideas that may help your web site generate more business, and a case study of a site revision done with one of our clients, the Lodge at Moosehead Lake. We also highlight new clients well as the redesigns for some current clients.

A Free Offer From Webconsuls

We know that the text on many of our client’s sites is outdated. We also know that many of our clients have been very busy running their businesses and just have not had the time to review their sites and bring their text up to date. And we have had nominal charges for text revisions.

In this downturn you may be less busy and may have the time to review your site. We are suspending our charges for text updates on our clients’ web sites.

So go through your site, see what text needs to be changed, what can be enhanced. Do you have new testimonials to add? Prices to change? Services to add? Staff members to change?

Email your changes to Dick (dickfay@webconsuls.com), Judy (judy@webconsuls.com) or Dennis (dennis@webconsuls.com). We will review them and schedule the changes as soon as possible. If your change request is beyond just a text change, then we will discuss any possible charges before making the change.

Improve Your Web Site

Your web site can probably be enhanced. While we can not make major changes for free, we will try to do them as inexpensively as possible. Here are some ideas:

  1. Start and maintain a blog:  A blog is a relatively easy way for you to add content to your site and provide current information. Since the search engines love content, more relevant content could bring in more visitors and more visitors could be more business. Your blog is only limited by your creativity. A hospitality site may want to write about seasonal changes in the area, a lawyer may want to write about a successful resolution to a case or perhaps the implications of a major ruling. You could use a blog to mention special limited time pricing. Our experts can help you set up the blog and teach you how to maintain it. We provide an on-line tutorial for participating clients. The maintenance is easy and you might even find it to be fun.
  2. Add video to your site and/or youtube.com: The search engines are starting to integrate video results with their search results. So a video may provide more visitors and then more business. Visitors may also stay on your site longer to look at an interesting video and that could enhance your sites performance. There are relatively inexpensive video cameras that do a great job for web video. Our experts can discuss the process with you and get your started. Again you may find it to be easy and fun.
  3. Upgrade Your Website:Does your site reflect well on your business today? Does it reflect well on you? How does it compare to your competitors? A site that looked great in the past may be outdated today. So when you are reviewing your text, also review your look. We can not build new sites for free, but we can work with you to upgrade your look and we will do our best to keep the costs down. Another advantage to a redesign is your site may have built in a way that is considered old-fashioned today. The sites we build today take advantage of techniques that were not available a few years ago which do not change the look of the site but allow the site to load faster which makes it more “search engine friendly.”
  4. Get involved with Social Media: You have probably heard of the most popular social media sites, such as facebook and myspace. Once mainly associated with teen and young adults, these sites are now used by people of all ages. The social media sites are not used to directly market your business, but to reach people, make them aware of your business, and then they may make the people they reach aware as well. Some of the popular Social Media sites: LinkedIn: Facebook: Twitter:

A Case Study in Refreshing Your Website…

Lodge at Moosehead Lake Buying an existing business in today’s world also includes inheriting a web presence. On June 1, 2007, Linda and Dennis Bortis left the corporate environs and fulfilled a life-long dream by purchasing The Lodge at Moosehead Lake and becoming innkeepers. As if this change in lifestyle were not enough, what with learning a new trade and familiarizing oneself with this beautiful property, Linda and Dennis soon felt that their website did not do the property justice. But what to do?

When Linda and Dennis first contacted Webconsuls, we explained that the current site had been designed and built per the specifications of the previous owner/innkeeper. Our best advice was to take time to get to know the website, its contents, navigation, good features and not so good features. In other words, get comfortable with your new life and keep copious notes on how you want to enhance the site.

Over the past 20 months, Linda and Dennis have done just that. They prioritized their goals and learned the business of inn-keeping. As time went by, Linda sent us new text, new photos, had us create new pages and became a blogger. But in December 2008 Linda approached us with her vision of a redesign of her home page. Given the economic times we all now face, Linda and Dennis felt sure they could not and should not invest in a whole new website, but they could tell their story better. That is, they could offer their website visitors dramatic photos of both Moosehead Lake and the lodge. Linda also new she needed to make the home page a virtual invitation to “check out” the entire site.

The lesson here is that Webconsuls cannot run your business and we certainly cannot know every detail about your business. The relationship that Webconsuls seeks to have with their clients is one of mutual respect and coordinated effort to present your business in its best light. Linda and Dennis represent some of the best in understanding this symbiotic relationship. Here are a few helpful hints:

  • Really study your site, not just the text and photos, but the flow
  • Learn about how to reach new guests, like newsletters, press releases, join organizations and associations. Don’t be afraid to brag about your property.
  • Study your statistics and analytics
  • Learn how to take good photos and how to upload them in your Picasa account.
  • Obtain feedback from your guests or customers.

The new look and feel of the home page is dramatic. It took a while to get to this point with many phone calls, emails, documents, testing, but now Linda reports: “I’m getting a lot of great comments on my home page. The lodge was full for Valentine’s but one room and we had 38 for dinner – higher than any other special dining night since we got here.” This is all great news and while the website refresh was not free, it was affordable and obviously it is producing a good return on their investment (ROI).

New Clients

We welcome some new clients:

Affirmations is a private alcohol and drug abuse treatment center located in Scottsdale, Arizona that treats various addictions in a uniquely non-judgmental and affirming manner.

Agua Dulce is a women’s extended care facility whose program is designed to further strengthen recovery, minimize relapse potential, address lifestyle changes, and develop a complete aftercare plan.

Octopus Pool Cover Safety Frame is the only pool cover safety cover frame that securely fastens any safety cover without the need to drill rivets, bolts or anchors into the pool deck.

Synergy Group Services is a family/physician owned and operated drug and alcohol rehab center, located in beautiful West Palm Beach, Florida. Their caring physicians and trained rehab specialists provide the nurturing environment needed for effective addiction treatment.

Unity Recovery Center in Hobe Sound, Florida has an objective of providing the highest quality personalized drug and alcohol addiction treatment services available at an affordable price.

Hope by the Sea is a Southern California Drug Rehab center located in San Juan Capistrano that offers individualized treatment programs for drug rehab at reasonable cost because addiction and alcoholism affect everybody.

Wonderful Windows does window cleaning in Orange County California. They have told us : “In the first week of putting my new website online I received three new customers that can turn into regular business. Webconsuls rocks !!!”

Redesigned Sites

In addition to the Lodge at Moosehead Lake we have recently redesigned several client sites.

Lasting Recovery is San Diego’s Premier Intensive Outpatient Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. Lasting Recovery helps men and women interrupt the emotional turmoil and destructive pattern of alcohol and drug abuse. We assist individuals to reclaim their health, build self-esteem, heal their relationships and develop strong relapse prevention skills.

Sea Cliff Hale is a beautiful vacation home in Poipu on Kauai and perfect for large family vacations, family reunions, group golf getaways and or just a visit to paradise.

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Borrowing from a Ray Barone quote in an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond”: “I think I know one thing that can make this year all better…editing. When all is said and done we will only remember the good stuff. I think you’re gonna remember about 2008 what you want to remember.” And so today Webconsuls wants to wish all of our clients a healthy and joyous holiday season and take a few minutes to remind you about some of the “good stuff” that our clients and we have enjoyed this year. We hope you will enjoy the memories…

Client side…

UCLA Division of Interventional Neuroradilogy is featured on NBC Nightly News
On November 28, 2008, NBC Nightly News aired a segment that featured Dr. Gary Duckwiler as he discussed the new scan technology available to target aneurysms, allowing doctors to find the problems and fix them before they cause major problems. If you visit their site you can watch the NBC video.

Visions Adolescent Treatment Center featured on the Today Show
Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Chief Medical Editor for NBC News, talked with Matt Laurer on December 11, 2008, regarding “Teens Abusing Prescription Drugs”. This segment featured Visions Teen Adolescent Treatment Center, their Medical Director Dr. David Lewis and three Visions’ clients who are in recovery from prescription drug abuse. While the statistics on this problem are alarming, the segment offers valuable advice for parents and teens. You can view the video here.

Lodge at Moosehead Lake receives Four Star Diamond Award
In July 2008, Linda and Dennis Bortis, Lodge at Moosehead Lake innkeepers, were notified by the Automobile Club of America that once again their beautiful inn has been designated with the Four Star Diamond Award. According to AAA: “The 1,915 AAA Four Diamond Award winners include 1,159 lodgings and 756 restaurants throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Only 3.2 percent of the 60,000 AAA Diamond rated lodgings and restaurants received the prestigious designation.” This is the 14th year that the Lodge at Moosehead Lake has received this award and we offer our congratulations to Linda and Dennis.

Lou Ursone, Executive Director of Curtain Call, Inc, Awarded Fellowship
This past January “the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism (CCT) announced that Lou Ursone has been awarded the Elizabeth L. Mahaffey Arts Administration Fellowship for 2008, in recognition of his outstanding arts management abilities as executive director of Curtain Call, Inc., a community theater in Stamford. The annual Mahaffey Fellowship of $2,500 acknowledges the important role administrators play in Connecticut’s arts industry and is to be used for professional development activities. The fellowship is named in honor of Elizabeth Mahaffey, who contributed significantly to the development of arts administrators in the state during her 23-year career with the Commission.” Congratulations to Lou.

Leah Di Bernardo, chef and owner of Delyte’s Catering, featured in Press Enterprise Cooking Video Delyte’s Catering is located in the beautiful wine country of California’s Temecula Valley. Leah is an active member of “Slow Food” Nation and is the president of the Slow Food Temecula Valley. So it is not surprising that the Press Enterprise invited Leah to be featured on one of their cooking videos, “Chef Leah Di Bernardo cooks Chicken Cacciatore on Chinese black rice.”

And just in case you have not heard of the “Slow Food” movement, you can read Time Magazine’s Article, “Can Slow Food Feed the World?” to learn more.

Olive Crest, Homes and Services for Abused Children, Gets $1 Million Grant to Finish Coachella Center December 8, 2008, The Desert Sun reported that our client, Olive Crest, received long awaited funds to complete their Coachella Valley Children’s Center. This is good news for the children and for Olive Crest, an organization that has since 1973 provided loving care for over 40,000 children and families.

The good news stories continue: Seaward Inn will open for their 65th Season this coming spring; Susan Slaughter, FACHE, Director of Business Development at Pine Grove Behavioral Health Services, recently became a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the nation’s leading professional society for healthcare leaders and Pine Grove and Forrest General hosted a ceremony at the Pine Grove campus this past October to celebrate an inspiring project. Officials unveiled The Paul McMullan Circle of Healing Plaza and sculpture as a part of the Pine Grove Spiritual Grounds project, representing the organizations’ promise to positively affect lives; The Whalewalk Inn & Spa was featured in the August 2008 Travel and Leisure’s article about “The Best of Cape Cod”; and Cottonwood de Tucson received a mention in Showtime’s popular television series Weeds!

Webconsuls’ side…

Working with and for our clients over that past year has been both fulfilling and challenging for Webconsuls’ team. We strive to keep you abreast of new SEO and SMO ideas, teaching many of you about the efficacy of blogging about your business and even committing to post to our own blog on a daily basis. We hope you will take a few minutes to read our blog regularly, as we are sure you will find good tips and stories. We worked with many of you in redesigning your websites and we updated our website homepage to include a rotating “thumbnail” of new site designs. This rotation serves to give new exposure for many of you.

Some members of our team reached milestones in their own lives… Malik Moosa completed his BS Degree in Business Administration at California State University Long Beach in Spring 2008. His major course of study was Information Systems, E-Commerce Track. Malik began assisting Webconsuls in early 2006, by updating current web-sites and designing new sites for Webconsuls’ clients. Malik’s skill set includes, Macro-media Dreamweaver, Swish MAX, Advance HTML, DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Actionscript, MySQL Database, Adobe – Photoshop CS2, PageMaker 6, Illustrator 8, Premiere, and Acrobat. Malik also became engaged and plans an April 2009 wedding.

Keith Hansen our Pay Per Click specialist announced this month that he and his wife are expecting their first baby in April 2009. In the meantime, Keith continues to work closely with many of our clients guiding them through the every changing world of pay-per-click.

Looking ahead

2009 promises to be an interesting year for all of us. We look forward to working with you and we welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. We would love to hear from you when you have exciting and interesting news about your business. We will include this news in our Webconsuls’ blog.

Happy Holidays,
Dick, Dennis and Judy

Reading Time: 8 minutes

In this issue of the newsletter we discuss:

  • A service that helps you determine which ad campaign is producing phone calls. 
  • Our new clients 
  • A listing opportunity for innkeepers 
  • The new Apple iPhone 3G 
  • Dick Fay’s new office location 

Track Your Phone Calls!

Your website is optimized for your keywords, your Adwords are in place, banner ads have been placed on directory sites and phone calls are coming in. Which campaign is bringing in those phone calls? How can we measure the effectiveness of our web marketing efforts when potential clients follow up with a call?

In order to improve services for our clients and track phone leads generated from your internet marketing activities Webconsuls has contracted with a company to provide voice tracking services. We have found that customers often make their initial contact via the telephone. To insure progress is monitored and tracked our new service uses dynamically generated phone numbers and scripting technology to determine the origin of these incoming calls.

How could this help your company/business?

  • Track multiple ad campaigns and even specific keywords to measure effectiveness and fine-tune strategy. Simultaneously track results from your website, Adword campaigns, social media and even keywords to find out where your telephone leads are being generated. Our new service will have the capacity to determine if a call is coming from organic or paid search results and which keyword was used in the query. 
  • Monitor your incoming telephone activity Are telephone calls being answered promptly? At what times are your phones the busiest? By tracking these activities a more accurate picture of your business can be drawn. Staffing adjustments can be made to insure all your telephone leads are being optimally managed. Call logs can be exported into spreadsheet software for use by management for reconciling phone bills or other billing activities. 
  • Phone call Routing and Forwarding Routing and forwarding settings give administration a variety of options. Set up a rotation with your staff to receive incoming phone calls. Route calls according to day of week and business hours to insure phones are covered during business hours and outside of business hours. 

These are just some of the new solutions which we are now able to provide. To discuss these opportunities and how they can be utilized with your business please contact Dennis.

Welcome new clients 

Webconsuls L.L.C. would like to welcome aboard the following new clients.

  • Cottonwood de Tucson http://www.cottonwoodrecovery.com/ 
  • Pro-Garages
  • Advanced Center for Eating Disorders a division of WhitesideManor.com 
  • Law Offices of Bruce Richland http://brucerichland.com/ 
  • La Fuente Restaurant, Tucson, AZ http://www.lafuenterestaurant.com 
  • The Bluffs’ Homeowners Community Association, Newport Beach, CA http://www.bluffshoa.com 
  • Bow Creek Recovery, Idaho

Innkeepers Opportunity

If you own a bed and breakfast inn, you have an excellent opportunity to obtain a free listing on a new Directory “When We Bed and Breakfast” at: http://www.whenwebedandbreakfast.com/

The actual “Add Your Inn” web page is found at: http://www.whenwebedandbreakfast.com/bed_and_breakfast_add/inn_destination_select.jsp

Be among the first to register, as the inbound links are often used by Search Engines in Link Popularity measurements. This directory sorts and organizes each inn by a detailed list of amenities. To be sure that your amenities are listed correctly and completely we encourage all of our inn keepers to enter the information for their establishment.

New iPhones, have you thought about it?

July 11, 2008 the highly anticipated world release of the 3G iPhone happened. Here at Webconsuls we have found the iPhone to be a great business devise and Social Media Optimization tool. This second generation device has 3G connection speeds to ensure a fast connection for online browsing, uploading pictures and gathering email. The new iPhone has GPS built in to help you find your location, obtain directions, and be integrated into new iPhone applications. IMAP connection ensures that the email you opened, replied to and filed on the road via your iPhone is also filed in your home computer.

With the release of the new iPhones comes the iPhone 2.0 operating system. One of the upgrades with the new iPhone operating system is the capacity to download applications designed specifically for the iPhone. As this list of applications grows we will be testing and reporting on applications which may interest you. Darin has posted instructions for how to download iPhone Firmware for your iPhone on the Webconsuls Blog at http://www.webconsuls.com/blog/2008/07/install-iphone-20-fireware-today.html.

Dick Fay has new office location

This past month Dick Fay moved to Palos Verdes Estates. While his email, voice phone number and cell number remain the same, below you will see his new mailing address, office location and fax number:

W. Richard Fay
Webconsuls, LLC
1328 Granvia Altamira
Palos Verdes Estates, California 90274
(310) 378-8575 – voice
(424) 260-2179 – fax
(310) 809-8929 -cell
dickfay@webconsuls.com – email

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Webconsuls’ Blog:* “A web marketing, informational resource for Webconsuls’ clients”

Since Dick and Dennis formed Webconsuls in 1999, our basic premise has been that successful web marketing is a collaborative effort between the SEO / Internet marketing firm and the web site owner. That remains as true today as then. The most successful Internet marketers are informed, innovative and opportunistic. They always seem to know what is going on, what is available, what works, what to avoid and “what is going to be hot or trendy.” In short, they read, evaluate and observe.

As part of our social marketing “lift-off,” we posted a Webconsuls Blog. We hope that it becomes a valuable knowledge source for you. Here you will find an easy to use index, a list of contributors, previous post titles and a growing collection of content information is now available. There are links to articles and resources, videos, podcasts, how-to instructions and much more. Do you want to see your vacation property from space, learn how to have your property, along with images you choose, indexed on Google “Free?” Bookmark Webconsuls Blog. Using our “social buttons,” you can offer comments, offer feedback, post questions or requests, learn what others are doing. Almost assuredly, you will have an opportunity to keep your competition “wondering, defensive and apprehensive” about your next web innovation or marketing strategy. * Clients who participate in our Social Marketing Programs also have access to a “Webconsuls training blog,” from Darin and Lisa, containing outstanding “how to guides and tips. Keith Hansen, Pay-per-Click (PPC) Specialist joins Webconsuls: Many of you participate in PPC campaigns, most often through Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Those who do will know that during 2007, Yahoo has revamped its entire PPC Program; the result is that now, both Google and Yahoo offer very similar programs. PPC is a quick way to establish keywords on the major Engines and Directories. It is most effective when organic positioning for targeted keywords has not occurred. These bidding systems are sophisticated; for the novice, participation can be a very expensive lesson, with little or no return.

Over the past three years Dennis had been working with Keith Hansen, a Yahoo “Gold Level” management representative” assigned to Webconsuls. Yahoo provided Keith with extensive training in bidding systems, bidding theory, Campaign management, conversions and many other topics. He knows the Yahoo Search Marketing system well; given the similarities with Google, his expertise extends to Adwords and other systems as well. He is experienced and knows most “nuances and bidding strategies “from the inside.”

In June, Dennis learned that Keith left Yahoo to work on his own supporting commercial clients in setting up, administering and managing PPC Campaigns. After a few discussions, Keith has come on board with Webconsuls and he is now representing a number of our PPC Clients. Given his knowledge of this field, we believe that he will be a tremendous asset for our clients in this very competitive arena. If you have been considering PPC, now is your best window of opportunity. Contact Dennis, Dick or Judy for details. Domain Aging /Maturity: It appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weight to the age of a domain and disproportionately so. While Domain age can be used as a factor in determining how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites providing some great information and innovative ideas. Many newer sites were “downgraded” in the last Google update.

For those with relatively new Domains, registered in the past year or two, the quickest way to remove the “Google Sandbox” penalty is to target inbound links from highly ranked, relevant web sites. We believe that Webconsuls’ link popularity program has been one of those effective tools, as we have seen a number of sites with brand new Domains achieve excellent keyword ranking for target keywords rather quickly. Domain Hijacking and Copyright Takedown Notices: There has been a great deal of “Domain Hijacking” recently and the problem seems to be getting bigger. A number of our clients have experienced persons and firms (often through Nameking.com) buying up similar domain names and thereafter launching their own web sites. Subsequently, persons searching on the company name, more often than not, may land on the fictitious site. While there are no “absolutely foolproof” protections, the best way to thwart these attempts is to:

  • Purchase (for a minimum of five years and free-park) a variety of Domains relating to your name. For example, mycompany.com, should also consider registering the following: mycompany.org and /or mycompany.mobi
  • Register your Trademark /Servicemark with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO.com). Federal protections are always important. Webconsuls can assist you in both of these areas.
  • Use the Internet to learn about protections available to you or laws already on the books.

Unfortunately, there is no certainty that one will prevail and the legal fees can become prohibitive. If a person desperately needed to drop a competitor out of a top position, it could engage in a legal action that requires Google to drop the ranking “for a period of time,” based on copyright infringement. Here is where you can submit a copyright infringement notice to Google.

Recent Web Sites Designed:

TheatreZone Naples, FL theatrezone-florida.com
UCLA’s Division of Interventional Neuroradiology Westwood, CA aneurysm-stroke.com
Marco Polo Italian Eatery Newport Beach, CA Marcopolonewportbeach.com

New Clients: Lodge at Moosehead Lake Lodgeatmooseheadlake.com Dennis and Linda Bortis,

New Owners /Innkeepers, Greenville ME Whiteside Manor whitesidemanor.com Ron Vervick

Executive Director Fastrak Bail Bonds, Inc forbail.com Michael Fidelis, President Congratulations: Len and Alice Shiller stockbridgeinn.com The Inn at Stockbridge was selected by Kraft Foods’ Post Selects Cereal as the host location for its recently launched national sweepstakes: The Post Selects Bed and Breakfast Getaway. The sweepstakes features a 3-day/2-night Bed and Breakfast Getaway along with the opportunity to meet celebrity chef Sara Moulton and participate in an exclusive cooking demonstration. The sweepstakes runs through September 13, 2007 and is open to U.S. Residents who are 21 years of age or older. To find out more, visit www.PostSelectsSweepstakes.com or The Inn at Stockbridge website at www.stockbridgeinn.com.

Post Script… Lately we have talked to you about the latest ways to get new visitors to your site, like adding a blog or video to your site. So as we end this newsletter we invite you to read some of our clients’ blogs. By reading these blogs you get to learn more about the area, the owners, and even the services offered by our clients. So if you have a few spare minutes check out: www.lodgeatmooseheadlake.com/blog www.captainlordmansion.com/blog www.stockbridgeinn.com/blog www.visionsteen.com/blog www.morningsiderecovery.com/blog www.paradiserecovery.com/blog Videos of interest: Nationally known Dr. Daniel Headrick of Pacific Coast Recovery Center was interviewed by HBO Real Sports ~ “Playing with Pain”. And in closing, take a walk down memory lane and listen to Dennis playing the piano… http://webconsuls.com/blog/2007/07/dennis-helfand-broadway-and-film-piano.html

Talk to you soon,

Dick, Dennis, and Judy

Reading Time: 14 minutes

In this newsletter we discuss…

  • New designs or redesigns by Webconsuls 
  • Mobile Phones and hand held devices Blogs 
  • 508 Compliance 
  • Getting listed on Google Maps and Yahoo Local Search 

New Web Designs by Webconsuls

Over the past few months, Webconsuls has been working on new web designs or redesigns for a number of our clients. We invite you to view these sites. Morningside Recovery An addiction and recovery treatment center in Newport Beach, CA. Pacific Coast Recovery Center A 30 day hospital based program which includes medical detox and hospital inpatient chemical dependency and pain track, located South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach, CA Delytes Catering and Event Planning located in Temecula Valley, CA, serving Riverside and San Diego Counties. Your Best Look Michael Nelson, M.D. providing Lipotherapy and Mesotherapy, serving the greater Kansas City, MO area.Temecula Divorce Gina Famularo is a family law attorney practicing in Temecula, California.

Mobile Phones and Hand-Held Devices

Your web site may display beautifully on a PC, but how does it look on a mobile phone? You may be very surprised and a bit dismayed by the result! If you are curious, there is an easy test at: http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php

Simply access the URL shown above, select the type of device in the drop down and type in your URL without including the “www;” just the domain name.com/.net/.org, etc.

Fortunately, a solution is available. You can have Webconsuls design your site for mobile devices and use a specific “.Mobi,” top-level domain for the mobile site. “.Mobi” is dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices via the Mobile Web. Google Mobile and Yahoo Mobile’s OneSearch will undoubtedly grow in popularity, given the projected sales of hand-held and mobile devices. Current estimates are that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by 2008.

Several of our Clients are already moving ahead at this time to position themselves early in mobile advertising and / or marketing. These include Morningside Recovery, Visions Adolescent Treatment Center and Captain Lord Mansion. Several other clients have already requested quotes and are close to placing orders with us.

To view how well .Mobi works. via a Browser:
A. Open a Web Browser and access: http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php
B. Select Nokia or Sony Skin
C. Type in: “captainlord.mobi” or “morningsiderecovery.mobi.” or “visionsteen.mobi.” After the http://, it is best to omit the “www.”
D. Click on Submit and wait for the phone screen shown to load.
E. There is a thin gray scroll bar inside the phone display. To navigate, place the cursor on any of the dial numbers and click.

(The best approach of course is to actually use a mobile device for viewing).

Special features included in our .mobi design packages are auto-dialing your business’ phone number. Even better, the mobile device will automatically recognize the .mobi extension availability as well. Images can be displayed and links work quite well. Sites that attain a rating of 5 out of a possible 5 in design quality get into the .mobi Directory and all of our designs meet that rating. Call today for details!

Important Note: In case you didn’t know, Domain age is a huge factor to Google’s rankings. How long you’ve been around, how long you’ve had people link to your site, how old are the sites that link to you, what has your back link growth and history been, etc, etc…..it’s all about Time and Age Factors. In a small way, the age of a domain gives the appearance of longevity and therefore a higher relevancy score in Google. Our recommendation to all clients is that no matter your current .mobi intentions, you should have us register “yourdomainname.mobi” for 5 years, to immediately start “the aging clock.” Cost for five years, with free-parking is only $125.00.

Call or write us if you wish to have a .mobi site developed or if you want to purchase the .mobi domain extension.

Blogs

As mentioned in our press release sent to you earlier this month, Webconsuls is anxious to help our Clients benefit in a variety of Social Marketing Optimization (SMO) opportunity areas. One of its components is “Blogs” or Blogging. For the uninitiated (or for those in Dennis’ generation who know what a slide rule is), a Blog is an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. Why all the interest? A recent discussion by Site-Reference about benefits from Blogs (cut and pasted below) should “hone” your interest and attention:

  • Blogs are a great medium for your customers and prospects to get to know you and your services better. 
  • When you post information to a blog the blog software automates the process of updating your website with the new information and archiving old content; simplifying the chore of keeping your website fresh and relevant. 
  • Blogs can automatically announce (ping) to the world whenever new content is added. Again, this automated process simplifies the all-important (and normally time consuming) promotion process. 
  • Through the use of syndication methods your blog postings (writings) can be monitored easily by fans of your services/writing. 
  • Blogs provide a wonderful platform for readers to interact with you by leaving comments. 
  • Due to the highly social and interactive nature of blogs it is possible that links will begin to appear to your posts from other websites. This can increase your website’s link popularity and will only happen if you write engaging and source-worthy content. 

Call or write us to have a Blog added to your web site.

508 Compliance

Congratulations and kudos to Attorney Edna Deeb http://www.ednadeeblaw.com. Edna holds the distinction of being Webconsuls’ first Client to request, order and achieve overall accessibility compliance with regard to section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act.

Compliance is designing or modifying a web site to be usable by persons with visual or physical disabilities, often with the help of a screen reader device, captioning, etc. While not yet a requirement in most fields, (except government sites), this topic closely mirrors the more familiar ADA considerations and regulations. It is almost certain to become a consideration in new web site designs. Google already is testing “Accessible Web Search for the Visually Impaired.” A parallel benefit in achieving compliance is that many required enhancements also meet standard browser conformance (W3C) recommendations and therefore should help with traditional SEO and positioning rules.

Call or write us if you wish to have your site modified to be section 508 compliant.

How to List Your Business in Google Maps and Yahoo Local Search

Have you ever tried to search for your business in Google Maps or Yahoo Search? The easiest way to do this is to type in your business service or product and the name of the city and state where your business is located. What will be displayed on Google is “Local Business Results for…” and on Yahoo it will say “Local Results…” Did you find your business listing? You may find that if you type in the specific name of your business with the city and state, your listing will appear, but it may need to be updated with more details about your business. According to the Site Reference Newsletter, “Even if your business is done completely online, you may benefit from getting listed in Google Local or Yahoo’s local listings. People often feel more comfortable doing business with someone who is local; and potential customers may stumble across your business while searching for other things.”

We know that many of our clients are already listed in Google Maps and Yahoo Search, but for those of you who are not, we have found that this is one area of internet marketing where you need to register your own business. The reason for this is that both Google and Yahoo go through a security process to determine that you are a real business at that location. They either verify the information submitted by phoning your business or sending a postcard addressed to the business, which requires that you sign back into Google Maps or Yahoo Search and enter a PIN number.

As always, if you have additional questions, please feel free to call us and we will make every attempt to assist you with this value added feature.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In this issue read about

  • Changes at Yahoo 
  • Webconsuls Plans for its clients regarding Yahoo’s changes 
  • Maintaining your website 

Changes at Yahoo

Before addressing the changes, lets review how Yahoo was delivering search results. At the top under a “Sponsored Listing” heading, were results from Overture. Sites were listed according to their bid in Overture’s pay per click system. Then Yahoo listed, in a section labeled “Search Results”, results which it got from Google. Yahoo also maintained a directory that costs $299 per year for inclusion.

Late last year Yahoo purchased Overture (which had previously purchased Alta Vista and FAST) and Inktomi. We expect that these will become an inter-related family of search portals. Yahoo has replaced Google for their Search Results section with Yahoo’s version of an Inktomi search. This then will be the new Yahoo search engine, which will provide results for Yahoo, MSN, Overture (unpaid listings), Hot Bot, About and others.

Initially there will be a free submit option to get sites considered, which should work for small, stable, relatively simply constructed web sites. The free submit should replace Inktomi’s previous pay submit option.

For larger sites, with frequently changing content, Yahoo has announced Overture Site Match. This will be a paid submit service with a pay per click feature as well. It will not be a bid system, as the traditional Overture system, but a fixed pay per click based on site’s category. Yahoo says that sites in the Site Match will get no special consideration in ranking, however the content will be reviewed every 48 hours and all pages will be considered.

So in the future we expect Yahoo to continue to show Overture’s traditional pay per click results at the top as Sponsored listings and Yahoo new search engine results under Search Results. The listings in the Search Results will come from sites submitted under the free submit program and the Overture Site Match, ranked according to Yahoo’s methodology.

Webconsuls’ Plans

We will be monitoring all of our clients’ search results and regularly reviewing the literature. We will recommend and implement opportunities to improve rankings. We will recommend participation to those clients who would benefit from the Overture Site Match program.

Since the Site Match program will involve considerable effort on our part, there will be an administrative fee imposed.

Maintaining Your Web Site

In its important that you keep your web site up to date. Many of our clients like to vary their content and images to keep the site fresh. For us to make changes to your site, even small ones, requires time on our part. In some cases we outsource the work and have to pay for the changes.

We can not maintain sites without compensation for the time involved. Our basic rate in $75 per hour, with a $25 minimum. So if you send us a change for your site, expect to be billed. We will contact you if the work is expected to take over an hour.

Some of our larger clients pay us a monthly fee that includes web site design maintenance. Obviously this charge does not apply to them.

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Happy Holidays!

In this issue read about

  • No change in our rates 
  • Google Changes 
  • What you can do to help 

No Change in our rates

We have decided not to raise our rates at this time. We thank all of you for your confidence in us and are pleased that we can hold the line on our fees.

One step we took to reduce our workload was to reduce the number of search engines on which we report. This does not affect your positioning on the other engines. We just reduced the reports to the most important engines, which saves us time.

We are also redistributing some of our workload so some of you who were working with Dennis on your positioning may now work with Dick, and vice versa. You can be sure that the change will not impact the effort put into positioning your site.

Google Changes

As you may be aware, Google is constantly revising its methodology for ranking sites. Google made a major change in mid-November to reduce the rankings on certain search terms on sites that it determined to be “over optimized” for search engines. Some of our clients were affected. Google seems now to be modifying just what it did. We are regularly reviewing the literature, talking with other SEO professionals, and using our own experience to determine the proper next steps. If you must quickly obtain high rankings then a paid program on Overture and Google Adwords may be your best alternative. Please call Dennis or Dick for more information.

What you can do to help

The chances that your web site will be indexed by the search engines for a particular term are greatly enhanced if that term appears in the actual text on your web site. Frequently you get position reports from us that list the terms we are trying to position for you. You should look at this list and determine if there are other relevant terms that should be added, and any that can be dropped. For all terms that you want us to work on, please check your site and make sure that the term actually appears on the site. If is does not, try to find the best place for us to add the term or have your designer add the term to the site.

Wishing you a prosperous 2004

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Lycos:

As announced last month with the change in our Position report inclusions, we are continuing to allocate the bulk of our resources with only the most important search engines. Accordingly, we have discontinued the Lycos campaign and many of our clients will see this reflected change in a lower monthly statement.

Links:


Webconsuls cannot overstate the importance of developing a link popularity Program. If you are not focusing on this aspect of your business, we can almost guarantee you that much of your competition is and has been participating in links programs for some time. Search engines place great emphasis on analyzing how many links you have and the quality of those links. If you want to be found well positioned for various keywords, a link campaign is crucial. Webconsuls has many tools that can help you this area. If your site is hosted at Millennium Systems, a web company that supports .asp technology, we can even provide you with a “simple to use” template for adding links yourself. No knowledge of html or web design is needed. Just fill in a few lines and the link appears live on your web site. Contact Webconsuls for details.

Web Site Text Modifications and Updates:


Need to make simple changes to your web site? There is now an excellent software Program available (under $100.00) that will enable you to make text modifications, including, rates, dates, services available and other needed and regular changes to your site, in-house. It does not require any knowledge of web design! Clients who have tested this software for us “love it.” If several of you think it is something that will be useful, we can arrange a bulk purchase, saving you money. Let us know, as this can be a real cost-saver.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Position Reporting Changes

We are forced to reduce the number of search engines in our position report. The report programs consume search engine resources. The search engines have therefore made it more difficult for the report programs. We are responding by reducing our reports to the most important search engines.

Accordingly, we will report positions for the following four (4) engines:

  1. Google – The most important engine. Some of our clients are only concerned about Google. 
  2. Yahoo – (These results are also returned by Google; however, given the dominance of Yahoo and the fact that it recently bought Inktomi and Overture, we have determined to include it in our report). 
  3. MSN – (More of a stand alone-engine (tied to Inktomi), but dominant enough for inclusion). 
  4. AOL – Powered by Google. 

With regard to clients who participate in Pay-Per-Click programs like Overture, Looksmart, Google Adwords, etc., these engines have report menus that are far more detailed than the generic Position reports.

The other engines have much smaller market shares and we think that reporting on their positions is not worth the demand on our resources and on the engines.

Contacting Us

The best way to contact us is via Email. You can reach Dennis at dhelfand@webconsuls.com and Dick at dickfay@webconsuls.com. We check our email several times each day.

Sometimes it is necessary to talk directly with one of us. Remember we are on the West Coast. We are ready to take your calls at 8 am. Pacific Time.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

In this issue we discuss

  • The slowdown of Internet traffic caused by the latest virus attacks
  • Why Webconsuls is dropping FindWhat 
  • Changes at Overture 

EMAIL/INTERNET SLOWDOWN

If you are experiencing a marked decrease in web site traffic and e-mails, it is more than likely due to the Blaster Virus — also known as MSBlast or LoveSAN. You do not have to have the virus to be impacted. It has caused so much congestion on the Internet and networks that companies have to shut down computers to clean out the Worm. Earthlink and Adelphia report enormous strain on their systems, with many connectivity issues and e-mail problems. Be sure that you regularly update your virus Programs, ( i.e. Norton, Macafee, Firewalls like Zone Alarm, etc.) and run virus scans routinely.

FINDWHAT (Important Change – Please read)

Some of our clients have been subscribing to Findwhat.com for the past year or so. Webconsuls has been tracking results relative to other Pay-Per-Click engines, such as Overture and Google Adwords. While there was a great deal of hype associated with the introduction of Findwhat, we have not seen enough of an impact on web traffic and conversions to justify the costs and time involved.

Accordingly, Webconsuls will no longer participate and manage Findwhat programs. This means that when the current banks are depleted, we will cease adding funds and discontinuing our related third party bidding management software support. If you want to continue participation in Findwhat on your own, passwords are (and have been) available to you. However, our feeling at this point is that your money would be better spent in other Internet opportunity areas.

OVERTURE

During August, Overture Services introduced broader matching options for advertisers, to bring keyword ads to search queries without a specific match.

The two new matching options, Phrase Match and Broad Match, will serve up advertisers’ keyword listings, even when their search term is not entered exactly. In this way, Overture hopes to extend its paid listings to ever more searches. Overture will use Phrase and Broad Match listings to fill in when its database does not have regular Standard Match listings for terms. In addition, advertisers can rule out certain queries through listing excluded words. Advertisers can change their bids for each matching level.

The changes are rather involved and not always easy to follow. Over the past week, Webconsuls has updated it third-party bidding software to accommodate these changes. To become more familiar with the changes, there is a tutorial available at the following URL: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/index.jhtml, then click on “Match Type Tutorial”

Reading Time: 11 minutes

It has been a while since we have written our clients.

We are going to discuss promoting your site “off of the Internet,” basic search engine positioning and what you can do to help your site, some features you may want to add to your site, and review the pay per click situation. We also discuss changes to your site, a “spam fighter” program and another web site business that we run.

Off the Internet Promotion

We know that many of our clients do a great job of this, but have seen others that do not. You should review your business cards, brochures, point of sale advertising and other media that you use to promote your business. Do you include your URL (for example, www.webconsuls.com) in your promotion? Your potential customers may not even be aware of your web site.

Your Email is another source of potential advertising. Most email programs have a signature option that will be included in new Emails. You should have a signature file and it should include your URL.

Search Engine Positioning

Currently search engines rank web pages by they two R’s – Relevance and Reputation. Relevance is measured by the content on the page and the content on the pages linking to the page. Reputation is measured by the number of links to the page and quality of the links.

Notice how important it is to get links to your site. Most important is to get links from sites related to your site.

You should pursue all opportunities to get people to link your site. If you see sites that link to your competitors, then you should try to get them to link to you. If you are in an organization that lists its members on a web site, then your listing should link to your site.

We work on improving your relevance and reputation. We can only do so much and you can certainly help.

INKTOMI

Before a search engine can rank your site, it must know that it exists. Inktomi is an Internet database that indexes for many of the major search engines, i.e. MSN, Looksmart, HotBot, Looksmart and about 50 other Partners; it continues to be listed among the Internet’s most important Internet marketing resources. If you are not registered with Inktomi, you are probably already several steps behind your immediate competition. Annual registration is only $30.00 for a page and in many cases, it is only necessary to register your Home Page! Contact Dennis or Dick for information and get registered.

Features

We have developed some dynamic features that some of our clients have found very useful. We think you might want to consider them for your site.

Contact Form and Email List

We will either add a contact form to your site or enhance the one on the site to capture the contact information in a database. We will then give you the capability to send an email to everyone in the database. This will allow you to keep a record of those who filled out the contact form and can notify them of new products, pricing, or other changes in your business.

Dynamic Links Page

Many people will want you to reciprocate a link to you with a link to them. We don’t have the time to add links like this for our clients without charging a fee each time. We can add a Links Page to your site and give you the capability of adding the link.

Events Calendar of News Page

We will give you the ability to add and delete information about an event or news item related to your site. The cost to add these features depends somewhat on how your site is constructed. The minimum is $100 per feature. We can only add these features to sites hosted at Millennium. You should expect a $10 per month increase in your hosting fees from Millennium. For many clients these are small costs for what could be a great benefit. If you would like to see a demo on how these enhancements will add to your marketing reach, please contact Dennis or Dick and they can take you through a Demo.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click programs have several positive elements. They allow you to get listed quickly – and you only pay when someone clicks to your site. Overture is the best known and most successful Per Per Click Program (PPC), and also the most expensive. We think that our clients have received value from FindWhat, a less well known and less expensive program. Other popular opportunities, with PPC variations, exist with Google Adwords and Looksmart.com.

OVERTURE

Overture recently instituted a price increase, raising the required minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10.

All existing listings with bids between $0.05 and $0.09 will be “grand fathered” at their current max bid for the foreseeable future. Going forward, if you or we make any bid changes to these grand fathered listings, the new bid must be at least $0.10. However, anyone can continue to update titles, descriptions and URL’s for grand fathered listings without affecting the bids. All new listings must meet the $0.10 minimum bid.

Overture announced plans to acquire Alta Vista, a major Search Engine. The integration into Overture is expected to take several months and we will keep you posted on how this change will impact those of you that participate in either or both of Webconsuls’ Overture/Alta vista’s Internet marketing programs.

FINDWHAT

FindWhat.com will raise its minimum bid to $.05/click effective July 1, 2003.

Web Site Changes

We often get requests to make changes to our clients’ web site. Obviously we can not maintain sites without compensation. We charge $75 per hour. The minimum charge is $25.

Spam

We all get way too many junk emails. There are several spam fighting programs. We like one that can be found at http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/ There is a free 30 trial period. We have been on trial for months and have not been asked to pay anything. This product can only used with Microsoft Outlook.

Helfand-enterprises.com – Do you have a resort, Inn Motel, Cottage for sale? Did you know that Webconsuls operates a subsidiary company that markets hospitality properties for sale across North America, the Caribbean and most recently, our first property in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, South America? Check out . If you know of some one who is interested in selling a hospitality property or if you know of someone looking for an interesting and rewarding lifestyle career change, have them get in touch with us.

Reading Time: 14 minutes

To all Webconsuls’ clients:

During the past year, you have received occasional messages from us about individual Paid Engines, Pay-Per Click opportunities and the like. Almost every free search engine now has a Paid component, even if it is offered as an incentive to speed up indexing. The number of free Major Search Engines can now be counted on one hand. The overriding message is that the old search engines techniques that most of you are familiar with simply will not work in the ways they used to work and if one expects to be aggressive on the Internet (or simply to keep abreast of the competition), use of Paid Engines is now absolutely essential. If you are not involved to some degree in this new pay for performance arena, you are most likely slipping in overall positioning.

Accordingly, we are devoting this entire newsletter to the subject of Paid Engines, so that you will be in a better position to make informed decisions and be better able to budget expenses. The thing to keep in mind is that because many Paid engine registrations and administration are so time-consuming, there are really two components; namely the Paid Engine fees themselves and the associated administrative costs.

The Paid Engine programs can provide significant value. They are updated much more frequently than the free programs so you get much more rapid response. In addition the Search Engines have formed several partnerships, so one paid program can get your exposure on several engines.

The Paid Engines are not a panacea. You still need a presence on the free engines and your site much be developed for optimal placement as many of the Paid Engine programs enable your site to be reviewed but the ranking determined by traditional means.

There are currently four main types of Paid Engine programs. The first three are pretty straightforward.

  1. You to pay in order to have a person look at your site and determine if it should be listed on that engine. 
  2. You to pay a fee in order to have your site submitted to the computer program or robot that adds sites to the engine. Your site is re-reviewed periodically so changes can improve your ranking. 
  3. A paid listing for your site in a special section of the search engine results. 
  4. The more complicated is called Pay Per Click or PPC. Here you pay so much every time someone clicks on the link to your site. There may be a minimum bid per search term or a minimum amount per month. Generally the higher you bid the higher you rank, but even that is modified in some of the more complicated programs. 

Many of the search engines partner among themselves. A Paid Program for one engine can therefore help you with several others.

Here is a brief recap: *

Yahoo: www.yahoo.com
Commercial, non-adult sites- $325.00 annually, including administration. This is an example of the first type of Paid Engine program. The reviewer can decide not to list the site and you are out the $325. Yahoo is now considered to be the second most popular search engine.

Sponsor Listings Program: – The Sponsor Listings program allows commercial web sites already listed in the Yahoo! Directory to enhance their placement. Participating sites are featured in a “Sponsor Listings” module within the appropriate Yahoo! category, and are also highlighted in the regular alphabetic list of sites. Pricing and availability vary by category. Categories priced in the $25-$300 per month range are handled through an online subscription form. This is an example of the third type of Paid Engine program.

Google: www.google.com
Basic Submit: free

Adwords Program: Variation on a Pay-per Click system. The differentiating factor with the Adwords program is that we can set a daily maximum expenditure; so in essence, we can control the actual cost. However, if this maximum is set too low relative to the recommended bid level, in effect, the source of inquiries dries up way too quickly. Our initial sense is that the terms are fairly competitive. Partners include AOL, Lycos and Earthlink. The Adwords System is complicated to administer. Webconsuls will give you a quote if you are interested. Google is considered the most widely used search engine.

TEOMA– www.askjeeves.com, www.teoma.com

This engine indexes for Askjeeves.com and Direct Hit. Cost is $30.00 for 15 months and this includes administration fees. This is the second type of program and allows your site to get indexed by the TEOMA robot. We believe this program is cost effective for most of our customers.

Inktomi

A search engine that indexes for many Partner engines and accordingly, it is viewed by us as being extremely important. The cost is 30.00 per each web page registered, which includes administration. This is the second type of program and we recommend this program highly.

AltaVista www.altavista.com
8-12 week index wait-time: free
Rapid inclusion – $39.00 for 6 months
This is to get into the Alta Vista database.

In addition, Altavista also has a paid Program which (assuming availability of keywords desired) will guarantee a top position on their pages. Cost is about $22-$30 for each 1000 impressions. (An impression is defined as the page that appears when a key word is typed into the search box and the search made.) This program also is difficult to administer and Webconsuls will give you a quote if you desire.

Looksmart www.looksmart.com
Recently, they adopted a pay per click system which enables one to set a monthly dollar limit, at a set $.15/click. They allow 10 keywords as part of the basic program; additional words can be purchased.

Overture www.overture.com

The most aggressive pay per click Engine on the Internet, with partner sites that include Yahoo, Altavista, MSN, Lycos, IWON, Infospace C/Net and more. This pay per click bidding system implies that the more you bid, the higher you are positioned. There is also a minimum bid of 5 cents per click and a minimum charge of $20 per month. It is very important to be in the top 3 on Overture, because that will position the site respectively with their partner sites in a top 3 Position. For hotly contested keywords, bids ranging from $2.00-$8.00/click are not uncommon, although most terms are usually much more affordable. There is a small administration charge for Webconsuls to handle your Overture account. (We currently charge $100.00)

Other Pay Per Click Engines

A long list of Engines, including Ah-Ha.com, Spinks, 7 Search, Kanoodle, Bay 9, Findwhat.com. Relative to Overture.com, the bid costs required for top positioning are relatively low. So is the traffic to these engines! The nice feature of pay-per-click is that there is no cost unless and until someone clicks on the web site link as these do not have monthly minimums at this time. There is a small administration fee for Webconsuls to handle these accounts.

  • The rates and statements above are only intended to apply to sites being registered today (5/22/02). Sites registered previously may be grandfathered under other rules, fees and guidelines. Programs can and do change quickly, so the reviews are provided as a general overview. Contact us for specifics if you want to register with one or more Engines. 

Recommendation

Participation in any Paid Engine program needs to make good economic sense and therefore should be analyzed carefully. Webconsuls has a great deal of experience with many of these Programs and we should be viewed as an important resource before making any decisions.

We recommend the Inktomi Program, Alta Vista rapid inclusion, and Teoma as relatively low cost program that can get your site indexed rapidly. We also recommend Overture if the search terms are available for a cost effective bid. The other programs mentioned in this article should be considered by clients who wish to be more aggressive.

Handled correctly, Paid Engines offer opportunities to generate significant revenue dollars, derived from the ability to determine one’s own positioning. Learning to optimize this new opportunity arena can convert Paid Engines into vital new marketing tools for you, as opposed to their being an expensive marketing experiment or advertising failure. If you are not yet a participant, contact us so that we can recommend a Program to fit your budget and Internet objectives.

Reading Time: 10 minutes

In this issue

  • Changes at Yahoo 
  • Changes at Overture 
  • Annual Renewals at Inktomi 
  • 404 Pages 
  • Keyword based linking 
  • Unsolicited E-mail 
  • Our Approach 

Changes at Yahoo 

There is no such thing as free lunch, and on the Internet, expensive lunches are getting more expensive. Yahoo which at one time provided free listings for commercial sites, then charged a $199 one time fee, then raised that to $299 is now charging $299 annually for new listings. If you are already on Yahoo, GREAT, as you appear to be “grand fathered.”

Changes at Overture

Overture, the most successful pay per click system on the Internet, has announced same major changes to its listing practices. Overture is also the most difficult system for us to administer and these changes are going to make things even more difficult. The changes will be effective February 1st. Webconsuls will be advising its Overture clients as to any cost for us to make the changes now required by Overture. Some of you administer your own site on Overture and have probably received an E-mail about the changes.

The first change is that there the listing must link directly to the relevant page in your site. For example if your site sells six products and you have a home page and six product pages then a listing in Overture for one of the products must link directly to the product not to home page. This change will probably mean that we will have to revise many of the Overture listings.

The second change is on description quality. You will not be able to use words like “greatest” or “best” in the description. While some of our clients descriptions may need to be changed, this should not be a major problem.

The third change is that location specific sites may only bid on location specific terms. So a motel in Redondo Beach, California could bid on “Redondo Beach motel” but not “motel.” How this is going to work is a little unclear. If in fact you can deliver your product to wide geographic region than we would suggest you get wording to that effect on your site.

These changes go into effect February 1st. No one knows exactly how Overture will implement them. As we gain experience with the changes, we will pass along any advice that we can.

Annual Renewals at Inktomi

Many of our clients have signed up for the Inktomi submission service that has an annual fee and is now about one year old. Renewals are $25 per page. We recommend this service. If you have a large site you may want to have us register the more important pages to reduce the cost.

404 Pages

We have all tried to visit a specific page on a site and gotten the message – 404 Error, page not found. There are several causes – one is typing the page name incorrectly, another is that the page name was changed, or perhaps the page is no longer up at the site. One way to handle this problem is with custom 404 pages that redirect to the home page of the site. Unfortunately the set up of these custom 404 pages requires the cooperation of the hosting company. Fortunately Webconsuls is pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement with Millennium and Millennium will add custom 404 pages for our clients without charge. Webconsuls is developing custom pages for each client hosted at Millennium, also without charge.

We can not add these pages at sites not hosted at Millennium. If you would like to have your site moved to Millennium then give us a call.

Keyword Based Linking

Search engines are giving more importance to so-called “off-site factors” and incorporating new ways to measure those factors. One of the these is “link popularity.” Webconsuls has regularly recommended that its clients develop as many links to their site as possible. Now you can improve your link popularity by making sure that the link uses an important keyword phrase in its text. For example in the following – Web Site Development by Webconsuls – it is far better that the link be from the term “Web Site Development” rather than from the word Webconsuls.

Unsolicited e-mail’s

Many of our clients have forwarded unsolicited E-mail pitches to us. Usually they say something like “List your site on 3000 search engines.” We suggest that you ignore them. First of all there are not 3000 search engines worth submitting to. More importantly most of these operations are really trying to get a valid and working E-mail address which they will now sell 3000 or maybe 30,000 times.

Last year one of our clients received an unsolicited offer for a “free lunch” and lecture by an outfit called Galaxy Mall. We went along to observe. Their claims seemed impossible and their service expensive. Last week Dateline NBC ran a story exposing Galaxy Mall.

Many of our Overture clients have gotten E-Mails from firms that monitor Overture listings to find pricing gaps. We have looked into those services and found them to be expensive.

Our Approach

We believe that successful web sites are well designed and appeal to both viewers and search engines. The sites use HTML meta tags appropriately. The key pages of the site are submitted to major search engines on a periodic basis. Positioning is monitored. The most valuable paid search engine programs are utilized. Search engine literature is regularly reviewed. Adjustments are made as necessary.

Our clients help themselves by developing relevant keyword based links to their site, by publicizing their web site address whenever possible, and by registering with specific directories.

Richard Fay
Dennis Helfand

Reading Time: 9 minutes

As this eventful year 2001 winds down, Webconsuls wishes to thank you for your continued confidence in us. We expect that you have already seen beneficial results and anticipate that in the months to come your emphasis upon improving your firm’s web presence will continue.

In this edition of our newsletter we are going to discuss Link Popularity, Pay for Position engines, Virus Protection, and maintaining your domain name.

Link Popularity

We have written in the past about Link Popularity. We think this subject is so important to Search Engine Positioning, and may be somewhat misunderstood, that it bears frequent review.

Search engines are trying to list what they consider to be “important” sites. A key measure of “importance” is the number of other sites, especially sites with a similar theme, that link to the site in question.

You can find out how many sites the search engines “think” link to your site by using a tool available at “marketleap.com.” Go to this web page, type in your domain name, type in competitive web sites, select a category (optional) and start checking.

Here are some things you might try to improve your link popularity:

  • Concentrate on finding sites that are of a similar nature to yours and approach them about linking to you. Links from sites of the same theme as yours help to reinforce your theme and further help in boosting your search engine rankings. 
  • Download the “Google Page Rank Tool Bar” to determine which sites have a higher “reputation.” 
  • Create a link page listing all of the sites that you wish to link to you. By linking to the sites you are going to be contacting first, they will be more likely to link back to you when you contact them. 
  • One often overlooked trick is to find similar sites that use guest books and forums. If you can find these you will often be able to post a message and include your URL. 
  • Testimonials of products can also be a good way to get your URL out. Consider writing a testimonial of a product you’ve used. Include your name and URL at the bottom. Email the testimonial to the site owner. Site owner’s are ALWAYS looking for testimonials as it increases buyer confidence and most likely they will be happy to post your testimonial. 
  • Writing articles on your topic can also be a great way to get your URL out. Write an article and include your URL in the bio at the end of the article. 

Pay for Position Engines

Our reading and experience indicates that these types of engines are becoming increasingly important in overall search engine positioning. If you are not already using at least one in your web marketing portfolio, you are probably behind your competition. The good news is that you can catch up in a few days simply by getting registered.

Our preferences: Overture (formerly GoTo.com) followed by Findlink.com and then Sprinks.com. Each of these has partner agreements with major engines like AOL.com, Excite.com, About.com, Lycos.com and many more. You may have read that Yahoo is making changes, and one of them is to partner with Overture.

Contact Webconsuls to learn how easy these programs are to add to your Internet arsenal.

Virus Protection

Unfortunately several of our clients have been victimized by computer viruses. If your computer gets hit with a virus, you may face hours or days of work to get rid of the virus and restore your computer.

We recommend that your purchase, install and keep up to date one of the commercial virus protection programs. We do not recommend a particular program but suggest you check those sold by Norton http://www.norton.com, McAfee http://www.mcafee.com and Trend Micro Systems http://www.antivirus.com.

It is most important that you keep your virus protection program current as new viruses are detected frequently.

Your Domain Name

When your domain name was established someone, perhaps you, paid a fee to register that name for a period of time. They also registered a billing contact. When your domain name is about to expire, the billing contact is notified.

Perhaps the billing contact is an employee who has left your business or even yourself with a new address and E-Mail address. Then you might never get notified and your valuable domain name could expire.

You can check the information about your domain name by going to the Network Solutions web site http://www.netsol.com and clicking on the link to Who Is in the top black bar. At the Who Is page type in your domain name in the search box (our domain name is webconsuls.com). You should then see the information about domain name, including the contact information and when the record expires.

If you have any questions about the information, or how to change it, then please contact Network Solutions directly or search their web site for help. Changing this information can be time consuming and Webconsuls must charge its standard consulting fees if asked to help.

Hospitality Property Sales

Looking to sell or buy a country inn, a hotel, a B&B, a motel, cottages or a guesthouse? Know anyone in the market for these types of properties? Then by all means, check out our web site at http://www.helfand-enterprises.com.

Dick Fay Dennis Helfand Managing Partners, Webconsuls LLC

Reading Time: 13 minutes

We have decided to send you our newsletter more frequently. You can expect one about every month.

In this newsletter we are going to discuss:
• Something you can do to generate traffic to your web site.
• An opportunity for our clients in the travel, hospitality, recreation industry
• How you can help yourself and us
• Silver, Gold and Platinum Accounts
• Changing Web Site Hosts

Something You Can Do to Generate Traffic

Frequently our clients ask us how or what they can do to generate more traffic to their web site. We think the one thing, and maybe the best, is to get links to your site, especially links that are relevant to the theme of your site.

You should go to the web site of any local, trade, or professional organizations of which you are a member. Does that web site list, with links, the web sites of their members? If so, are you on the list with a link to your site?

As you spend time on the Internet you should be looking for any directories or specialized search engines that target the theme of your site. You should be looking for opportunities to get your site listed on these directories. Many of them are free, or only require that you link to them. Some are paid, and for those you need to do your evaluation of the economics.

Links to your site help in three ways

  1. Someone may click on the link and visit your site. Obviously if the themes of your site and site linking to you are similar, the more likely that it generate traffic. 
  2. Search engines track the number of sites linking to you. The theory is that the more links to you, the more important the site hence a higher ranking. 
  3. Search engine spiders crawl the Internet going from site to site and indexing web sites. Links to your site help drive the spiders to your site. 

An Opportunity For Our Travel, Hospitality, Recreation Business Clients

Centraltravelguide.com is a one-stop resource that provides consumers with an online national travel and vacation guide of information. We are delighted to announce a Partner Arrangement with Webconsuls, featuring a tailored program to provide special benefits to Webconsuls’ clients.

Although there are numerous “travel related” websites currently available on-line, Centraltravelguide.com sets itself apart by specializing in “a quick and easy searchable database” of information.

This content is free of the usual “banner” type of advertisements, pop-up windows, airfare offers, hotel discounts coupons and other travel related information that often interferes with a consumer’s informational needs.

The site is simply ‘sponsored’ by travel and vacation related websites. These sponsors are conveniently located in their corresponding area of the site. For example, our client, Magic Falls Rafting (www.magicfalls.com) is a sponsor of Centraltravelguide.com’s MAINE accommodations area, as well as its RAFTING section. With this system of sponsorship Magic Falls specifically targets those consumers applicable to their services.

Best of all there’s no cost to Magic Falls Rafting. All Magic Falls does is host a link to Central Travel Guide on their main index page. This linkage provides visitors of Magic Falls with a national database of information just clicks away. This type of co-sponsorship markets both Magic Falls Rafting and Central Travel Guide.

Centraltravelguide.com is in the process of building its network of sponsors. Besides sponsors in the vacation and travel industry, CTG is also visited by consumers from other websites outside the travel industry. Their database information is partnered with sites like Collegenews.com, a site that has received over 3 million hits annually for the past three years.

Central Travel Guide is like an online ‘inserted travel guide.’ Their database of information is currently available on 12 partner sites. The site, and it’s easily accessible database, was launched this past May and expects to fill up with partnerships quickly. For information on becoming a Sponsor, contact Webconsuls as soon as possible to ensure obtaining your State Sponsorship position.

How You Can Help Yourself and Us


Your web site was developed on a computer, probably by a designer, maybe one of our designers, maybe by yourself or a friend. In any case the site was transferred to what it called a Server where it is hosted on the Internet. So your designer has a copy and there is a copy on the server. When you hire Webconsuls for Web Site Marketing we download your site from the server, make critical changes for search engine placement, and put the site back on the Server. We also monitor the success of our work and may later make other changes to improve positioning.

Now let’s say you want to make a change to your site, maybe a modest change like changing a few images. If the designer works with the version on the designer’s computer and then uploads it to the Server, our important changes will be lost. It is therefore critical that you inform whoever is changing your site that they should work with the version on the Server so that they then start with the version that has our changes. You should also tell us that the site is being changed so that we make sure that our work has not been lost.

Redoing our work because someone else has destroyed it is not part of our arrangement with you. In the future we will charge for this work. Before starting we will tell you what has happened and provide an estimate at $75/hour.

Silver, Gold and Platinum Accounts


Our Silver Package is designed for small sites, those about 5 pages or less, that are not in extremely competitive categories. For these sites we make our changes to up to 5 pages and submit to the major search engines and directories. Quarterly we resubmit the key pages and send a position report to the client. We have recently raised the sign up fee for Silver Accounts to $475. The quarterly fee is $75.

The Gold Package is designed for larger sites in more competitive categories. For these sites we work on up to 9 key pages. We resubmit monthly and send the position report on a monthly basis as well. The sign up fee for Gold Accounts has been raised to $500. The quarterly fee remains at $100.

Platinum accounts are large sites in very competitive categories. These sites are custom quoted. The schedule for submissions and the position report is done on a case by case basis and we generally add pages designed by us for search engine placement.

Changing Web Site Hosts


It is sometime necessary to change your web site host. This can be a simple process or it can get very involved. A new host needs to be found, Internet records must be updated, your site needs to be uploaded to the new server, any server functions that your site uses need to be tested and perhaps redone, and email accounts may need to be reconfigured.

We have recently moved the Webconsuls web site to Millennium, a hosting company located in Southern California. As part of the move we will have to redo the area that processed credit cards on-line, so that functionality is currently down at our site.

We will work with you if you want to change your web site host. However we will need to charge if there is extensive work involved. Contact us and we can discuss.

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay, Managing Partners.