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I’m Back From Russia!

Well I am finally back, cured of jet lag, and ready to go. I loved Russia and the river cruise. The people are very open and friendly and the countryside is beautiful. Fortunately I did not have much trouble with the smoke issue as I left Moscow and headed to St. Petersburg before the smoke was really a problem. However the heat is a totally different story!

I particularly loved St. Petersburg and would definitely go back there to visit. I have to say after having toured a bunch of palaces that I can see why the general population rebelled. The opulent lifestyle of the royal and extended court were unbelievable at the expense of the peasants. I think I might have been on the side of the rebellion as well.

I have inserted one of my photos from the beautiful Katherine’s Palace so you can see one of my most favorite places outside of St. Petersburg.

For an easier way to tour Russia than by bus and a new hotel every night, I would recommend a river cruise. My stateroom was like a nice room at the Sheraton. But best of all was the interesting and diverse global company of travelers that made cruising and touring a real delight.

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Is Your Website a “One Night Stand”?

Nancy McCord will be back blogging on Monday. This article is one of her reprints.

Do visitors hit your home page and stay less than 10 seconds? Do your visitors rarely return for a second visit? Is your your home page bounce rate over 90%? If so, you may really need some help to improve stickiness and your visitor’s web experience. Your website may be one of the Web’s “one night stands” — never good enough for the “second date” or return visit.

Put your website to work for you by concentrating on providing great informational content. If your website is just about you and your services, and does not provide any interesting, conversation building content, you are missing the boat when it comes to what moves customers to contact you. You will never get the “second date” or sales call from a client or prospect when your focus is not on them, meeting their needs, and working to exceed their expectations.

It used to be that a website was like a brochure, but now we have gotten jaded by the “Web experience”. We want, crave, and demand interaction. Every website needs to engage visitors into conversation. Set the stage to become the authority for your clients and prospects and be their ”go-to person” with excellent content and transparency of what you do and how you do it using your website as your platform.

Don’t fall into the rut of being a one visit website. Break out and become the voice of your industry and watch your business grow!

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Five Website Killers

Nancy McCord is almost back from Russia. This article is one of her previously published pieces.

There are many things that you can do to benefit your website, but have you thought about the things that can kill your website? Here are my five top website killers – things you clearly should stay clear of doing to get good organic search engine placement and impress viewers.

  1. Don’t build your website all in Flash. It looks cool, but search engines cannot catalog the information contained in .swf files or for that matter .flv files. Google has just announced in early August that it is working with Adobe to try to rectify this problem, but that doesn’t help you now.
  2. Don’t ever steal your content from another website. You need unique content, don’t scrape someone else’s site. Not only will Google penalize you for duplicate content but you may get sued for copyright infringement. You can’t use the content even if you give credit – that’s still infringing.
  3. Don’t test your website in Firefox. If you don’t check, you won’t know and you really should. Firefox is an important browser and the browser of choice for nearly 25% of the browsing readers. If you don’t look good in IE AND Firefox, you may alienate a large part of your readers.
  4. Don’t make your web page layout too big. Although there are actually still some people surfing the web with 800 by 600 pixel resolution, the bulk of people are at 1024 pixels wide and larger. For my own site, still nearly 30% of my viewers are at 1024 pixels wide. Make sure you have website statistics that track this and then make sure to design your site to accommodate this important segment and not alienate viewers by having scroll bars at the bottom for 1024 pixel resolution viewers.
  5. Don’t use webmaster tools. Google, Yahoo and MSN have webmaster tools, make sure you are using them so you will know how the various search engines see your website. If you have problems, these tools can be invaluable in order to diagnose problems.
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How Many Blog Posts Should You Show on Your Front Page?

Yes that is right Nancy McCord is still in Russia. This is one of her previously published articles. She is back on August 16.

This is an interesting topic for blog owners and I have changed my own mind on this point over the years.

It used to be with most of our client blogs on Blogger, we set the blog to show 30 posts on the home page. Now with most of our clients using WordPress and many more home page options, we recommend having five blog posts on your home page.

I have seen some blogs where they just show one blog post on the home page or some that show three, but I personally like showing five blog posts.

If you have WordPress, you can even select to have a static page for the entry page of your blog and I have even seen some blogs where they simply show categories and snippets of posts like a magazine portal page. There are many flavors of what you should use for your home page.

Darren at ProBlogger did a review of this topic and I thought that the comments written in by other bloggers were very good. Here is the vote on the number in a nutshell.

Two Posts 1 Blogger

Three Posts 4 Bloggers

Four Posts 3 Bloggers

Five Posts 13 Bloggers

Six Posts 3 Bloggers

Seven Posts 1 Blogger

Ten Posts 6 Bloggers

More Than 10 Posts 2 Bloggers (1 had snippets the other had 35 posts)

So the consensus seems to match my thoughts five blog posts on the home page seems about right.