One of the most common questions I get from people with small business websites (especially blogs) is “what should I write about?” They know that one of the keys to a successful website is to include lots of high-value content, but struggle to find ideas for new topics. Well, here’s a way to get some great ideas. It’s free, the answers are only a couple of clicks away and they use a nice thing called ‘time on site’… Why is This Useful? If you own a s... Read Full Story

I sat through a deeply technical presentation today and got the chance to experience what it’s like being completely confused by some technology. It didn’t help that the presenter was unable to speak the letter ’s’ and every time the letter appeared in a word she just left a gap! It set me thinking about the challenge of helping you, my reader, to understand all this technology that I talk about in small business website design. I try to position all my writing at the ... Read Full Story

Have you created your small business website design so that you can easily update it, or, is this a pain to do? Here’s a couple more questions: Do you have to talk to a web designer before you can add a new page? Even if you can write code yourself, have you made it easy to create a new page, using templates and a separate CSS file, or even better, some kind of content management system? The best websites grow over time and gradually get more and more useful content on them. This keep... Read Full Story

I’ve collected all of my posts on Vacation Rental Website Design into one handy PDF document. You can download it here in exchange for an email address (I’ll also send you a few extra tips, and any updates that I create in the future). I think this is a nice way to read all of these posts, and it saves you looking back through my site. Print out the guide and you’ve got a free book for the shelf! Read Full Story

I’ve been helping out a few people recently with their small business websites and running through the checks from Website Stress Test with them. One question that keeps coming up is whether the overall website score means anything. How important is it? It’s important, but not as important as the scores for each of the individual checks. The checks take you through all the major aspects of your site, such as keywords, URL, title tags, backlinks and the number of pages. Each check ... Read Full Story

As you launch into building your own small business website you’re probably faced with a dilemma. On one hand you need to create a website that’s unique, highlights your key business differences, includes all those functions and pages that you need and hopefully provides an interesting experience for your readers. On the other hand you probably don’t have the resources to do everything: code your own HTML create and adjust the CSS style add nice multimedia such as videos an... Read Full Story

It might seem like a strange question. You’ve built your small business website to help promote your business, increase sales and educate your customers, right? This is a pretty hefty list of things for your website to do. You probably need to be a little less ambitious with your website goals. Let’s make things a bit easier. You should define one or more goals that are more manageable, specific and measurable (ever heard of SMART goals?) What’s the role of your website? Is ... Read Full Story

Is Twitter the answer for those missing bookings for your vacation rental? Maybe, but you need to use the right approach. Now I’m not going to go on here about how you started using Twitter and immediately got sick of hearing about what people ate for breakfast. I’m assuming (hoping?) you’ve got over this stage already. People join Twitter because they’ve seen other people using it. It’s a great story and this is certainly true around vacation rental owners. Once... Read Full Story

There’s been a flurry of news and activity on the net about Facebook and URLs, but in case you’ve missed it or think you’ve missed the boat, read on. Facebook announced recently the option of registering a unique URL for your account. This gives you a unique and readable URL for your Facebook profile page, like this: http://www.facebook.com/drrichard …which is much nicer than the old version. If you are already a Facebook user, you can register yours now. You’ll... Read Full Story

Three words long, right? I read this on a forum the other day and this got me thinking. Are people really that confused about long tails when choosing their website keywords? OK, so what about ‘apple store locator’, or ‘bmw financial services’, or ‘american idol 2009′? They all have 3 words too, so are they long tail keywords? I’m [...] Read Full Story