When it comes time to think about expanding your market outside your own country you’ll need to be doing a bit of “International SEO” but it can be pretty tricky to target multiple countries at once. Probably the best way to do it would be to have a different website, web address and hosting for each country to be targeted and possibly different language translations too (auto translation wont cut it with Google!) but that’s a huge amount of work. Here’s a few quick tips on how to do it more efficiently.

Your Web Address:

Buying a few international versions of your main domain name is a must if for no other reason than to protect your ‘trademark’ so to speak. Concentrate on the large English speaking markets (if you are an English speaking business of course!) like the UK (.co.uk),  US (.com) and Australia (.au).

Your Hosting:

You should purchase hosting that has an IP address located in the country whose market you want to target foremost or the country in which your business is located. The domain TLD take precedence over the hosting IP location here so for example you can target the UK effectively with a .co.uk address while hosting in the US. Hosting IP location can be checked at Whois.sc.

Google Webmaster Tools:

Sign up for webmaster tools and add each domain name remembering to set the Geographic Target in Configuration – Settings. Google will attempt to do this for you based on the domain TLD/Extension.

301 Redirects:

So as to have only one website to maintain and market, pick a web address/country as the main site/market and redirect all other domains to this via a 301 redirect. You can then market each individual address in the respective country, ie market the .co.uk on UK located websites etc..

Original Post - How to Target Multiple Countries Efficiently with Web Site SEO

I read up a little bit on how to build your own Chrome Extension then borrowed a few code snippets and the result is my very own Extension, built and published to the Chrome Webstore all in under an hour or so!

My extension simply adds a button on your Chrome toolbar that shows the last 10 posts from My Blog along with a search function at the top. Here’s how it looks in action:

You can get the extension from the official Chrome Webstore here.

Download the files that make up the extension here if you want to play around yourself.

Chrome Extensions and Apps can be published through your Webstore Developer Dashboard here.

Leon

Original Post - Reverb Studios Chrome Extension

Came across this handy reference guide for Photoshop CS6.

Print it out and stick it on your wall or desk!

Click the image for a hi-res version.

Original Post - Photoshop CS6 Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet

It seems that more and more businesses are happy to outsource management of their Social Media activities these days. I’ve always wondered how you might do that as a business, ie – how would a company outsider know what to write in posts and what to say in reply to queries etc. In short, how can someone outside your business know best how to represent it publicly?

Having talked to a few businesses who are doing it already I’ve realised it might be possible if the contracted company is briefed properly,  provided with the right content and the setup is regularly reviewed. Also, at times there can be a bit more to social networking than the average person can handle, for example, a lot of social media content these days is graphical or video based so those will need to be created or edited by a professional.

To that end if any of my clients feel they need help managing their Online Marketing/Social Media activities, I can help in the following areas:

• Facebook, Twitter, youTube, Linkedin, etc account setup,
• Copy Writing for the web (Re-write client content with SEO in mind),
• Graphic Design (Facebook Logos, Cover Photos, Post Photos, etc..),
• Video Screen Tutorials Recorded,
• Facebook Ad Campaigns,
• New Facebook Tabs,
• Facebook Photo Albums,
• Social Media mentoring.

Get in touch if you’d like to chat about any of this.

Leon

Original Post - Social Media Account & Online Marketing Management

I’ve had a few clients recently who sell physical products in their business and I presumed they would want to sell them online when they came to me looking for a website. When they said they’d rather not I was a little confused. One or two admitted they didn’t think they’d have the capacity or resources to deal with setting up payments, shipping stuff, etc but not much other info was forthcoming.

Not wanting to pry into the reasons too much I can only guess that businesses feel overwhelmed by either the costs they think might be involved or the amount of setup required to sell products online. Online sales are massive these days with more and more people getting comfortable with the notion of buying online. It seems odd to me that businesses would not want to tap into this potentially massive online market when it’s really not that hard to do so.

Here’s some factors to think about:

Costs

I suppose one of the main things that might put someone off selling online is the cost. Most people realise nowadays that you can get a basic brochure website fairly cheaply but maybe they think an online shop is a lot dearer. It can be of course if you’ve a ton of products and require some very advanced functionality but with the popularity of freely available (Open Source) Content Management Systems and E-Commerce systems, a basic online shop doesn’t have to cost the earth. My prices for new websites with an online shop module start at under €1,000 and if you’ve an existing website and just want to add shop functionality, it can cost much less. Tell me your budget and I’ll see what I can do if that’s still too dear for you.

Setup

There’s more work involved in building a website with an online shop of course but once it’s built, there’s no real effort involved in adding products and managing the whole thing. It’s no harder than adding blog/news posts to your site. The content management system will allow for easy addition of products and easy management of sales etc. The only other thing you might need to do is setup a Paypal account but that’s free and can be done in a matter or minutes. As your products sell, both you and your customer will be notified by email and the shop system will tell you who bought what, where they live for shipping and whether the payment has been received successfully or not.

What can you sell online?

You can sell a lot more than simple physical products online. My favourite thing to sell is “Digital” products where you don’t have to worry about tedious stuff like packaging and shipping. The customer checks out, pays and gets redirected to download a file! You can also sell things like Services, Rooms, Courses and almost anything else you can imagine. If you are a service based company like mine you can take simple digital payments via a form like the one I have on my own site ReverbStudios.ie/Payments/

Get in touch if you’d like help selling online.

Leon

Original Post - E-Commerce Web Design & Online Shops

I’ve always concentrated on just building websites and when I started out first it was nearly enough to just have a website. There were fewer sites around, less competition and more room for success but the internet is so crowded these days that you really need to work at getting your new site noticed and having it bring in revenue.

I’m hoping to move more into the “Performance” side of web design so if you feel you need help with any of the following for your existing website, give me a shout:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
• SEO Reports,
• Keyword Research,
• Competitor Research,
• Google Analytics,
• Sitemaps,
• Internet Marketing/Online Advertising,
• Social Media/Networking Integration,
• Blogging,
• Website Upgrades/Added Functionality,
• Content Management Systems (CMS),
• Email Marketing/Newsletter Systems,
• Viral Marketing (Image & Video),
• One to One Mentoring.

Leon

Original Post - How to Make Your Website Work Better

Review of the Gravity Forms WordPress Newsletter Extension from Tribulant

My favourite WordPress plugin development company Tribulant have recently added a number of extensions for their popular commercial plugins to extend their functionality and integrate with other well known WordPress plugins. One that caught my eye and one I’ve been using for a while now is the Gravity Forms extension for their excellent Newsletter plugin.

Basically it adds new options to the best WordPress Forms plugin, “Gravity Forms“, that allow you to add a Newsletter Subscription box to any form you create on your site. And I’ve added it to all of mine!

Here’s some features:

• Simple activation through the existing Newsletter Configuration screen,
• Seamless integration with the Gravity Form builder,
• Adds a “Newsletters” field under “Advanced Fields” in the Gravity Form builder (see below),
• Auto check option,
• Choose Mailing List option,
• Routing/Custom Field options to grab the Name and Email fields from the Gravity Form.

Here’s a screenshot of the settings screen:

Check out my Contact page to see it in action.

Get the extension from Tribulant.com now.

Leon

Rated 4/5 on Mar 29 2013

View more reviews in the Reviews Category

Original Post - Gravity Forms WordPress Newsletter Extension Review

A screen recording video I made recently on how to use some of the most common features in the WordPress CMS.

It covers: Writing a Post, writing a Page, Widgets, Plugins and basic SEO.

Please share.

Original Post - WordPress Video Manual & Tutorial For Beginners

I heard there were long awaited Android updates available for my Samsung Galaxy S2 but when I went into Settings – About Phone – Check for Update, there were none. Others with the same phone and on the same network got the updates fine so I’d no clue what was up. A quick call to 3 Tech support revealed that the update might be available via Samsung Kies so I went and downloaded that and tried in vain for nearly an hour to get the computer and phone to connect either via WiFi or USB.

It turned out you need to disable USB Debugging on the phone via Settings – Applications – Development – USB debugging. See below:

Doing that and restarting both Phone and PC, then connecting the phone to the PC via USB should start Kies on the phone automatically and allow Kies on the PC to connect to it and present the full suite of options, ie – Phone Backup, Sync, Firmware Update etc..

I managed to install Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean via Kies in the end.

Note: Turning off USB Debugging on the phone means you can’t connect it to the PC in USB mode unless you re-enable USB debugging again.

Original Post - Samsung Kies – Galaxy S2 Connection & Upgrade Problems Solved

A new charity website I donated my services to to promote the Bhakti Festival of Hope 29th June 2013, Co. Leitrim.

The festival is in aid of the Street Children of Kolkata.

Donations accepted on the Mycharity.ie page.

Live March 2013 – www.BhaktiFestofHope.com

Original Post - BHAKTI FESTIVAL OF HOPE