32
Simple Steps I.T. Relationology How to use Artificially Intelligent Websites to Propel Your Business Michael Anderle President - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com (C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 1

10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

  • Upload
    others

  • View
    0

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

! Simple Steps I.T.

RelationologyHow to use Artificially Intelligent Websites to Propel Your Business

Michael AnderlePresident - Simple Steps I.T.www.SimpleStepsIT.com

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 1

Page 2: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Table of Contents

Automated Marketing Support! 3

Artificially Intelligent Websites #1 – Foundations! 5

Building an Artificially Intelligent Website #2 – Hosting! 8

Building an Artificially Intelligent Website – Part 3 – Installation! 10

Create an Artificially Intelligent Website #4 – Plan your Menu! 12

Create an Artificially Intelligent Website #5 – What is a Page?! 15

Artificially Intelligent Website #6 – What is a Post! 18

Artificially Intelligent Websites #7 – Search Engines! 23

Artificially Intelligent Websites #8 – Email Marketing! 25

Artificially Intelligent Websites #9 – Backups! 28

Artificially Intelligent Websites #10 – Relationships! 30

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 2

Page 3: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Automated Marketing SupportThe 5 second description of an Artificially Intelligent Website

An Artificially Intelligent Website is the blending of a regular set of website

tools and additional automated marketing and administrative support

functionality. (There is the 5 seconds … here comes the 1 minute

explanation).

So, for example, when you create your post from your computer, iPad,

iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and

connections built in to immediately update your Twitter account, Facebook

page and LinkedIn profile.

The next step your website performs for you is to automatically update

Google and Bing – performing needed services to speed up your organic

searching tasks.

Either once or twice a day, some administration functionality automatically

backs up your database, code, support files and everything you need to

replace your website and sends it ‘offsite’.

Once a week, or once a month, an email is sent out automatically from your

posts to those subscribers interested in receiving updates without you

spending more time and effort to put it together.

To finalize I have two lists of responsibility. The first list is what you are

required to do, the second list is what your website is required to do. If you

are doing (or not even accomplishing) items in the second list, it is time you

think about moving to the future.

Your Responsibility:

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 3

Page 4: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

• Write a post

The Websites Responsibility:

• Update Twitter Account

• Update Facebook Account

• Update LinkedIn

• Create Email from weekly Posts

• Back up website daily

• Copy backup offsite daily

• Create sitemap.xml file for search engines

• Notify Google of new sitemap.xml

• Notify Bing of new sitemap.xml

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 4

Page 5: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Artificially Intelligent Websites #1 – Foundations

The Jetson’s cartoon promised us a utopian future, one where we only had

to touch a button to have so many functions and services done for us.

Unfortunately, technology has provided us a way to do so much more, with

less time and across many more areas of knowledge however; it causes us

to have to do so many more smaller and dissimilar tasks to get our jobs

done.

The best tools (from either the future, or the past) are simple to use, easy to

understand and work effectively to save us time and effort.

For websites, the core tool we need to make creating, updating and editing a

website is a Content Management System (CMS).

Enterprise ready CMS tools came together to allow those with less technical

expertise, and more content knowledge to create the content without

needing to know the technical software. These tools (10 years ago) cost

well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now, the most popular Content Management Systems are free.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 5

Page 6: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

You can look at Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, WordPress and others. All of

these systems will help you create a compelling website, without having to

learn how to integrate static HTML, database connectivity and SQL query

requests.

You will want to know that the CMS you choose is freely extendable, easy to

use, supported by a significant user base (or larger company), has many

themes or is easily skinnable (to change the look of your website) and offers

some sort of easy way to add functionality.

I have chosen to use WordPress for all of our clients websites. From the

easy to learn and use interface, admin support, huge theme repository and

active 3rd party plug-ins activity WordPress is a powerful and fully mature

CMS today.

With a little over 11.4 million active installations, and over 28,000 extra

downloads daily, WordPress (now at version 3.01) has become one of the

top (if not the top) CMS in use today.

Not only for smaller and mid-sized companies, WordPress is used by world

class companies for some of their web needs including: UPS, Coca-Cola,

Harvard University, People Magazine, GE and the United States Navy.

In order to create an Artificially Intelligent Website, the foundation is a

powerful and easy to use Content Management System.

This tool allows our clients to create more content to drive more

opportunities in Social, Search Engine and eMail Marketing simultaneously

without hiring costly I.T. staff or huge graphic budgets for their websites.

The website should be about creating relevant conversations with new and

existing clients. When your website integrates with Twitter, Facebook,

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 6

Page 7: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Linked In, Google and Bing to promote your latest post, you have effectively

supercharged your marketing, increased your sales options and decreased

your time and effort.

All of this while needing the same amount of knowledge as using Microsoft

Word.

Consider implementing an Artificially Intelligent Website to bring the power

and opportunities back to your marketing and sales people. Get those on

the front line empowered to drive your company to the next level.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 7

Page 8: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Building an Artificially Intelligent Website #2 – Hosting

The last article in this series about creating an Artificially Intelligent Website

discussed the benefits of selecting a Content Management System for your

web marketing activity.

In this article, I will discuss the engine which powers (or supplies power) to

your Content Management System with the right server, operating system,

services (email, ftp) and database connectivity.

While you can purchase a server, install the Operating System (Windows

Server, Linux, or Mac OSX Server – Snow Leopard) and setup the services,

pay for the Internet connectivity (and worry about the Internet connectivity

redundancy) and electricity. I wouldn’t suggest doing this.

In today’s economy, the benefit of hosting your own server (with the

included headaches) is not a fiscally good idea. If you need more

capabilities than you get with shared hosting and are considering a

virtualized server option, you might consider looking into the Mac-Mini as a

server.

However; hosting yourself is a bigger discussion for another time. Today,

we are discussing automating your marketing and sales and procuring

hosting for your website using a third party.

In our last post, I discussed using WordPress as the CMS of choice to move

your company along when creating an artificially intelligent website.

Although WordPress is free (meaning, no license costs), you still have to

make sure that it is installed properly. If you do a little research before you

pick out your hosting provider, you should be able to install and setup

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 8

Page 9: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

WordPress using provided scripts which could have you running WordPress

in a matter of a few minutes with all of your hair intact.

WordPress requires PHP (a web scripting language) and MySQL (a database

server solution) to be installed and running in order to operate. The right

hosting provider (frankly, if they do not have this capability they are not a

‘right’ hosting provider) will have these abilities already installed and running

for you.

I recommend Hos tGator (www.Hos tGator . com) o r B lueHos t

(www.BlueHost.com) for hosting needs. While I personally supply hosting

for my students, I will often have my larger clients procure their own

business account with HostGator directly. If necessary, I call HostGator on

behalf of my clients to solve technical issues.

With this setup, you will have your email services, web servers, ftp services

and significant options available to load other software (such as vTiger for

Sales CRM) for the same monthly fee.

When you add their excellent customer support (based here in the USA),

HostGator has proven to be a dependable partner for web and email hosting.

One word of warning. I do not recommend using the same company to host

your website and be the registrar for the company domain name. The

reason for this is if you choose to move your hosting, or have an issue with

the hosting for any reason, you can easily use the Registrar to point to a

new web hosting company be be back online quickly and easily. This way,

no one hosting company (no matter how good they are) will ever be able to

limit your options and take your website out of business.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 9

Page 10: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Building an Artificially Intelligent Website – Part 3 – Installation

One of the biggest concerns most individuals not familiar with web servers,

databases and Content Management Systems is the learning, training and

frustration when installing software.

Fortunately, when you host with a qualified and supportive provider (read

the last Building an Artificially Intelligent Website segment here), you can be

literally minutes away from a stress free install experience.

Most hosting providers (at least Linux webservers) provide an administration

interface called cPanel to handle your email, ftp, subdomain and other

services setup needs.

If you look ‘down’ the list, you will find an option to click on a button called

“Fantastico”. Upon clicking this link, you will be giving a practical Christmas

list of Open Source options to install for your company.

One of those options will (or should) be WordPress.

From this interface, you will be just a few answers away from installing

WordPress for your company.

There are a few items to consider which could trip you up, however; they

are not esoteric requests which confuse easily.

The first item to consider is what domain you are going to connect this

WordPress install with.

Typically, you will be given a selection of domains and subdomains you have

created for your company with cPanel at this point. Every one of these

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 10

Page 11: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

choices have already been associated with a folder on your server (or should

have been).

You have the option of creating the installation in the main directory for the

domain / subdomain choice (by leaving the next option blank) or selecting a

subdirectory (new or existing).

For most clients, their main directory is where WordPress is installed.

However; for example, one of my clients has an existing website in their

main directory and wanted the new features of a blog. Here, I created a new

folder to instal l WordPress into, and pointed the subdomain

“blog.WebsiteName.com” to this folder.

Once you are past these two selections, the next five have to do with giving

your website a name, a tagline, an admin username and admin password

and where you want to send the setup email (I highly recommend you do

this). At a minimum, write down the username and password you just

created!

Sit back for the 5-10 seconds that the script takes to setup WordPress and

you are done. Total time for most installs I do this way takes less than 1

minute. Plan on maybe 3-5 minutes for your first time.

If you make a mistake (for instance, installing in a wrong directory),

Fantastico allow to you to easily delete the installation and start fresh.

So, with the right services provided with your hosting solution, your

installation experience can be overcome without having to learn a new

profession.

Now, with a hosting provider selected, a content management system

selected and installed, next segment we discuss your first planning step.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 11

Page 12: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Create an Artificially Intelligent Website #4 – Plan your Menu

So far, we have talked about the following in our previous three articles:

1) Using WordPress as the foundation for your Artificially Intelligent Website

2) Using a qualified and competent Hosting provider to make your life easier

with less headaches, and support when they happen (it is, after all,

technology).

3) Using cPanel, and Fantastico, to quickly and easily install WordPress on

your website.

For this segment, I am going to ask you to step away from your computer

and do a little thinking about the structure of your website.

Two areas which slow website implementations

There are two pieces which slow down most web implementations. The first

has to do with how the website will look, the second has to do with the

content of the website and how to organize the content (the menu).

In this segment, we are discussing the website menu structure. Effectively,

thinking how your clients, customers or prospects will interact with your

website.

Your website has a purpose, generally for profit generating companies this

has to do with supporting sales and support services. I.E., show me the

money!

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 12

Page 13: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

For others, it might be to help reduce support calls by giving the clients a

place to help themselves quickly and easily get the information they need

without calling your offices.

Whether for these, or other reasons, your website needs to have it’s content

easy to find and easy to consume. There needs to be an simple call to

action placed on the front page when you are ready to push your marketing

and sales effort and compelling and fresh content to encourage prospects to

come back and sample your website again. After all, research shows that it

takes an average of 7-8 contacts to move a prospect to a client.

When you are thinking about creating a menu, think about how you want a

particular type of client to get to your information internally. If you are

targeting an information seeker, then make sure that your information is

clearly organized and easy to find – don’t make them search through months

of content (posts) to find the gems they might rave about to their friends or

co-workers.

For example, look up YARPP (Yet Another Relevant Post Plugin) to

automatically find similar posts and encourage your readers to see other

content on your website.

When you have an Artificially Intelligent Website, you are creating a system

to automate your efforts. For example, if someone was browsing your

products, you would want a service person to show them additionally related

products if they are in your store, right? Well, YARPP (and similar plugins)

do the same function for your content, automatically.

Think not only about your main menu (usually underneath or on top of your

header), but also about side menu’s and the integrated links within your

website. Always encourage the wonderful curiosity of prospects to get to

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 13

Page 14: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

know your services and prospects … and you … better by pointing them to

your website’s information.

When your website creates a compelling draw for prospects, you have a

better chance of being ‘top of mind’ when they have a problem or

opportunity you can solve. Furthermore, the prospect has become more

comfortable with your company by learning valuable information in your field

of expertise. Hopefully, the prospect has learned they can trust your

direction and has overcome some of the beginning sales issues when your

brand is unknown and untried.

Since the point of your website is to deliver information (whether sales,

support, marketing etc.) you need to have a defined path for the viewer

through the website. When their is a logical flow to your website, the

prospect is more likely to look around since their frustration has not been

triggered causing them to just go back to Google and try again.

If you would like to understand more about how your website is used by

viewers, consider installing Google Analytics (free) to get objective

information regarding what pages are viewed on your website.

Finally, remember some of the basics that prospects will need when seeing

your website. Always include a ‘Contact Us’ page for example. Make sure a

client never has difficulty figuring out how to get in touch with you to

purchase or hire your companies services and products.

Your website must have compelling information to be beneficial to a

prospect, however; if they cannot easily figure out how to locate the

information they will just go to another website. Protect against this by

doing some early planning on your menu structure and links which draw the

prospects into and through your website.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 14

Page 15: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Create an Artificially Intelligent Website #5 – What is a Page?

Artificially Intelligent Website – Pages

We discussed in our last segment about taking the time to think through the

menu structure, the flow, of how to encourage the use of the content you

have placed on the website. From the content you create a relevant reason

for the prospect to interact with you online.

The file most websites are familiar with is the ‘page’. The page is simply

the location and information served up to the prospect when they click on a

link whether from your menu, a hyperlink within your website, or from a link

located on a different website (Google, eMail, etc.).

Now, in WordPress as the foundation for your website, there is often

confusion between what a Page is, and what a Post is and how they are

different.

Pages are the basic, do not change information about your company,

products and services. Example pages include:

• Home

• About Us

• Contact Us

• Products

• Services

• Our Team

• Our Vision

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 15

Page 16: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

When you create a page, you are expecting that page to stay relevant the

life of your website.

You could, for example, change information on a page (you might change

contact information on your Contact Us page), but you will almost always

need the information on your website.

Often, you will direct individuals to your Home page which has a defined

layout when building a business website. For blogs, they most often will

show their posts (the next article) on the home page because what they are

writing about most recently is the most relevant information they have to

deliver. This isn’t true for a business website.

For a business website, consider the following aspects when designing what

to place on your Home page:

• Branding

• Call to Action

• Contact Information

• Keep in Touch actions (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Email signups)

• Most recent posts showing (keeps new content rolling through your

homepage)

• Video options

• Market Updates (for example, for a mortgage company, the most

recent Mortgage Loan Rates)

• Links to other areas on the website (Products, Services, Support

FAQ’s)

Each of your pages should have a purpose which include:

• Creating excitement about your products or services

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 16

Page 17: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

• Educating your clients about your market

• Providing information to reduce anxiety when a prospect wants to

learn more about your company and what their risk is buying your

products and services

• Creating lead information from prospects and delivering the

information to sales people for follow up

• Reducing support calls by placing frequently asked questions online

Finally, always remember some of the basics when planning pages which

include a nice layout (easy to read), good SEO habits which include good

titles, page names, paragraph headings and content key phrases and always

have a way for an interested prospect to contact you from that page.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 17

Page 18: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Artificially Intelligent Website #6 – What is a Post

BUILD A WEBSITE, AND THEY WILL COME…

Well, that is what a lot of people in business believe, anyway.

Unfortunately, without advertising (either offline, online (PPC, ads etc) or

organic search hits your website will NOT be found.

While it is true that Google, Bing (and Yahoo) and others are trying to crawl

the web to find as much content as possible, if they do not find out about

your site (through links from other websites, or site submission), your

website will not be in their database. You want as much content (links)

located in the major search engines as possible. One of the best ways to

accomplish this, is to write articles on your website (blog posts).

In this article, we are going to discuss what Posts are, how they are different

from Pages, what to think about when writing them and SEO (search engine

optimization) features.

What is a Post

A post, also called a “blog post” or web article, is a short to medium length

(300-700 words) discussion on some subject.

For many bloggers, the subject might be whatever their thoughts on the

latest trends in fashion, their children, politics or whatever muse hits them.

For businesses, your post should be relevant to your company, industry or

subject your clients and customers find compelling, insightful and / or

interesting.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 18

Page 19: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

All Posts have a title, an image (preferably) and the content which can be

created in WordPress under the menu selection “Posts > Add New” on the

left hand side.

WordPress has a great WYSIWYG editor built in. Use this feature from

within any browser or use any of the many apps on smart phones, iPad, and

computers. Due to the many applications available, there is freedom to

work from any place and at any time.

How is a Post different from a Page?

When we discussed Pages in our last article here, one creates a Page almost

identically as one creates a Post.

This confuses many people since there doesn’t seem to be a difference how

they are created, so how are they different?

Well, Posts are effectively date stamped ordered by their date descending

and created more often than Pages. As mentioned before, Pages are for

static – long term information. As you write more posts, your earlier efforts

get pushed ‘down’ the list, your most recent post stays at the top of the list,

typically.

However; your goal is to allow clients, customers and prospects to

understand more about your company, people, beliefs (both professional and

altruistic), capabilities etc. To accomplish this, you engage people into

conversations and posts facilitate these conversations.

There have been studies that people need to be touched on average 7 times

before a sale occurs, through the use of Posts, you can make this happen

more quickly, effectively and efficiently.

What to think when Writing a Post

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 19

Page 20: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

First, you need to be interested and knowledgeable about the subject.

Unless you are a very creative fiction writer, your readers will know when

you are faking your interest and have no clue what you are writing about.

Second, pay attention to sphellng and punkuation. It will seriously draw

aware from the readers experience if you are consistently misspelling words

or have incorrect punctuation in your posts.

WordPress has a built-in spell checker, make sure you use it.

Third, if you have no ideas what to talk about spend a little time with

Google’s Search Keyword tool (www.Google.com/sktool). Type in a one or

two word phrase which is relevant to your industry and then see what people

are searching for. The higher the search count, the more interest people

have in the subject.

For example, one of my clients (home loan industry) typed in “mortgage”

and found that most people were searching for “mortgage calculators” by

almost 4 times more than the next most searched phrase.

SEO Suggestions

When you write an article, if you are working to get your article ranked

higher on search engines there are basic items you need to be aware of that

help.

1. Title – Your title (and keyphrase in your title) is very important. Make

sure your title has a phrase which also connects with the content in the body

of your post.

2. Post filename – WordPress allows you to change the filename of the post.

Make sure that your phrase you are looking to promote is in your filename.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 20

Page 21: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

3. Content – Your content needs to promote both the phrase you are looking

to have people find your post with, and ‘near phrases’. What this means, is

do not spam your post with the exact same phrase too many times as

Google will score you lower for this. If you would like to understand how to

write effectively, load Scribe (www.ScribeSEO.com) into your WordPress and

use the free 10 checkups to give you a better understanding. Also, they

have a great white paper on how to write, as well.

4. Write for People – Write for a person to read and understand, but be

aware of how to tweak the parts for Search Engine Friendliness.

5. Submit to Google immediately – install and use the Google XML Sitemap

plugin. This tool is one of the most important pieces in an Artificially

Intelligent Website to integrate with Search Engine Optimizations.

6. Be Consistent – Don’t write four articles in one week, and then nothing for

three weeks. It would be better to write four articles and use WordPress’s

ability to publish the articles at a later date (say two a week) than push all

four out in one day, and nothing for two weeks. This is also a benefit with

Search Engines, as well.

Hopefully, this post has helped you grasp some of the differences and

benefits of writing Posts. I work with my clients in the beginning to just get

accustomed to writing posts consistently. Let the Artificially Intelligent

Website handle all of the rest (Search Engine submission, Email distribution,

Twittering / Facebook / Social).

If you get on a standard 3′sh posts a week, in just 3 short months you will

have created 40 new pages of content, submitted new Sitemap.XML pages

40 times to Google, Bing and Yahoo, created and delivered 12-13 new

weekly emails and minimally Twittered 40 times about your company.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 21

Page 22: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

All of this when you just write 3 posts a week.

Consider it fishing with forty new lines of bait, instead of just one.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 22

Page 23: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Artificially Intelligent Websites #7 – Search Engines

In this article, I am going to discuss a couple of the basics about Search

Engines and how to make sure your post can be found in Google within

minutes of publishing.

Previously, I discussed creating a foundation on a Content Management

System (WordPress) in order to both simplify building a website, and using

the powerful authoring tools included.

One of the additional benefits which come with a good CMS, is the ability to

add additional functionality others have made available (and tested) easily

into your website. We will use this capability to add a specific plugin below.

There are three components to think about when working to have a high-

ranking page for a certain key phrase in Google:

1) Your Pages: Title, Filename, Content

2) Once published, your sitemap.xml file updated with Google and Bing

(Yahoo) notified of the new update

3) Backlinks from websites (the higher ranked those are, the better) pointed

back to your page(s).

The first two components you can work on easily, the last is a little more

difficult to accomplish and I will save for another discussion later.

First, when you decide what the post / page is about, make sure you use the

phrase customers would likely use to locate your content as part of your

title, your filename (Permalink in WordPress) and at least for 1-2% of your

content. (Check out my post on Google and ScribeSEO for more details)

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 23

Page 24: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Second, make sure that you have Google XML Sitemap Plugin installed and

working correctly. Here is a link to the Plugin website: http://

www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-

generator/

When you have implemented the tactics described above, the post / page

has a substantially higher opportunity to be found by new clients and

customers quicker and more often than before.

Unfortunately, in order to get really high Page Ranking, you have more effort

ahead of you (find out more about how to get into Google here)

To truly get into the Organic Results (those results which are not Paid Per

Click (PPC)) in an efficient way takes effort, knowledge, a little luck and

good content. There are many programs which you can subscribe to in an

effort to shortcut the time and work needed to be in the top results with

little effort on your side. Many are highly questionable.

However; just be aware that Google makes their money on creating relevant

results for their users. If you decide to try and ‘game’ the system through

your own, or other methods which are shady consider that you risk Google

finding out about it, and purging your pages from their directory.

Hopefully, this overview and the links provided (especially go to the

ScribeSEO.com website for their in-depth article on SEO) will move you

forward with your search engine efforts.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 24

Page 25: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Artificially Intelligent Websites #8 – Email Marketing

Artificially Intelligent Websites and your Email Efforts

In this article, I am going to discuss Email Marketing a major component of

Artificially Intelligent Websites.

Social Marketing (Twitter and Facebook for example) are the buzz right now

for companies, however; there are many more users of email than social

media outlets and that will continue to be true into the near future.

In fact, I went to a recent event where Chris Brogan (known as a Social

Networking Guru) was speaking and he mentioned that more people

received an email from a brand over Twitter by almost a 6 to 1 margin, and

almost 15 to 1 margin over Facebook.

Email is still very, very relevant.

With an Artificially Intelligent Website, you can have your (email) cake, and

eat it too!

Email and RSS Syndication

RSS is Really Simple Syndication. Effectively, it is a way to publish your

content to be consumed by other vehicles (such as RSS readers, or services

which use your RSS feed).

Why should you care? Well, because with the power of RSS and MailChimp,

you can pretty much automate your email list administration and delivery.

Each week, without any additional effort on your part you can send an email

of blurbs about each of your new articles to anyone on your email list.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 25

Page 26: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

One of the vehicles which drove more efficient marketing in the last 15 years

is email distribution.

One of the biggest problems with the Internet these days is a glut of email.

However; just like direct mail, there will always be those who prefer this

marketing vehicle to receive your information. It does not take much to

automate this process (nor much money) and the value of a qualified email

list is almost equivalent to money in the bank.

Check out MailChimp, you will find one of their services will pull a RSS feed

from your website and aggregate the information into an email and send it

to your list (RSS Template campaign).

So, if you stay the course by publishing 2 to 3 times a week you can

effectively “email” this content to your list once a week automatically. You

don’t have to setup new software, you don’t have to dream up new content,

you won’t have to spend any time each week building a newsletter once you

have built your RSS template.

The cost? You can try it out free for less than 1000 names (and they will put

a MailChimp plug (not horrible) in the bottom of the email). If you do not

want their plug, you can start with their service up to 2,500 names and be

charged $30.00 a month. See the website for other rates.

One nice feature is that you pay by the names, not the quantity of emails.

So if you have 2,000 names and you mail 4 times a month you are still only

charged $30.00.

When you use a quality email service (Mailchimp, Constant Contact etc.) the

service handles CAN-SPAM compliance issues which you must be aware of

for you stay on the ‘right’ side of the law. CAN-SPAM is a legal requirement

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 26

Page 27: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

which could cause fines if you do not handle the rules correctly. Find out

more about CAN-SPAM by clicking on this link.

Artificially Intelligent Websites and Analytics

Typically, I explain to my new clients that in the near future, we will discuss

ways that they can review their success to date, and then work to improve

those results.

When you have a Mailchimp account, you can be assured that your email

campaigns will give you an easy to understand overview of the campaign

results (emails sent, emails delivered, emails opened) but also has the

capability to allow you to dive into deeper analytics when you are ready.

In order to help your company test different ideas, Mailchimp offers A/B

testing functionality.

With so many benefits and low risk by using Mailchimp the service deserves

further review to include it in your marketing efforts.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 27

Page 28: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Artificially Intelligent Websites #9 – Backups

Don’t Leave Your Office Without a good Backup

In this article I will discuss backing up your Artificially Intelligent Website.

Admittedly, backups not only lack sexiness (they aren’t capturing new

business) they are usually a complete pain to accomplish as well.

WordPress is comprised a two very important areas which you need to be

aware of when you backup information. The first area is the content you

write which is the HTML (text) you generally see on the pages and posts

inside your website.

However; the pictures, images, plugins, themes and basically any multi-

media assets you add to your website are not stored in the database. So if

the MySQL database is the only item backed up, you will be significantly

short of a full restore if your server goes down.

iThemes and BackupBuddy

Fortunately, there is a plug-in you can use to capture all of your information

from iThemes.

They have a product, BackupBuddy, which can be installed in your website

and setup to not only backup your website, compress the files to one easier

to manage file but also FTP that file off of your website to a different location

to truly be assured you will not loose the incredible investment of time and

effort.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 28

Page 29: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

While there are a few items you have to adjust to get the program running

the effort is pretty small compared to the ongoing automated assistance and

insurance against a total loss the software provides.

Take a look into the service, the cost of the program is a very minor amount

compared to the risk of time and effort to rebuild your website and

potentially lost opportunities if your website isn’t available.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 29

Page 30: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Artificially Intelligent Websites #10 – Relationships

An Artificially Intelligent Website is all about the Relationship

This final article about creating an Artificially Intelligent Website is focused

on the relationship not the technology.

I wrote the following back in article #4:

When your website creates a compelling draw for prospects, you have a

better chance of being ‘top of mind’ when they have a problem or

opportunity you can solve. Furthermore, the prospect has become more

comfortable with your company by learning valuable information in your field

of expertise. Hopefully, the prospect has learned they can trust your

direction and has overcome some of the beginning sales issues when your

brand is unknown and untried.

People don’t buy from websites

Remember always that people do not buy from websites, they buy from the

company (or group) which created the website. Your company is striving to

become relevant to your prospects. Relevance can be created in a multitude

of ways, but one of the most compelling is to create a relationship with

someone, first.

We buy from those we like. The ability of your team to promote a

relationship with a prospect and client through your website is one of the

defining attributes of a successful implementation. This is more important,

actually, than what CMS you choose, hosting provider or even how

successful your SEO has become.

If, at the end of the day, someone finds the website but comes away feeling

that there is no relationship, you have lost that opportunity.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 30

Page 31: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

Themes

Certainly, one of the big opportunities to start creating a presence with your

website is how it looks. For those who are not aware, WordPress (and the

other major content management systems) have themes or skins to change

the look of your website to a professional look easily and (sometimes)

cheaply or even free.

Remember, dress for success.

I talk more about themes and how to find them in my post on “Free

WordPress Themes”.

It is about Character, Engagement and Value

First, create a compelling value for your client(s) to seek your website. Are

they looking for entertainment? Information? Tips & Tricks? Give your

readers value for their time and effort in order to engagement them more

than a one-time fly by of your website.

The stats on the Simple Steps IT website at the time of this article are pretty

compelling. I have a 1.09% Bounce rate, a 6.92 Pages/Visit count and

52.17 % New Visits statistic.

Basically, it boils down to almost no one comes to my website and

immediately leaves, they read almost 7 pages each time they come, and a

little over half of all visitors are new to the website.

I discern that my effort to create compelling and useful articles are a huge

reason for these statistics (taken from Google Analytics on October 24,

2010).

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 31

Page 32: 10 Steps on Building an Artificially Intelligent Website · iPhone, Android, Blackberry or email, your website has the functionality and connections built in to immediately update

When a person finishes reading almost 7 articles, they will pretty much know

where I stand on technology and marketing (most likely). They have

listened to my side of the conversation and have gotten to know me through

my writing.

If we should meet (to move forward with a project) there will be no need for

me to explain much of anything, which shortens my sales cycle and the

ability to create rapport has been greatly enhanced.

Finally – Make Sure they can Contact You

At the end of the day, you need to drive more business. Make sure you look

through your website and that you have not created a difficult process to

contact you. I realize it seems obvious, but I would rather waste a few

words at the end of this article than just one of you making that mistake!

This Is It

Well, this is it. This is the last article in our series on creating an Artificially

Intelligent Website. By now, you should know all of the basic components

which you need to review and implement in order to move your marketing

forward automatically.

(C) 2010 - Simple Steps I.T. www.SimpleStepsIT.com 32