Tips for Writing a Press Release

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Paul

A press release is an excellent way to promote your business. You can submit it to loads of free press release websites to gain inbound links to your website. This is the main reason why I write them. You can also submit them to local newspapers and get some free exposure for your business.

But I run a small business, what could I possibly write a press release about?
You need a story, preferably an interesting one. You’re not aiming to get it published in The Times or Heat magazine so it doesn’t have to be world changing news or celebrity scandal. Here is a list of ideas:

  • A new company
  • A new product
  • A new service
  • A new member of staff
  • A new premises
  • A new Website
  • Survey/research results
  • Charity work/events

How to format your Press Release
Include the words ‘Press Release’ at the top of the page, make it stand out in a large, bold font. Follow this with the date in one of two formats:

  • 1st January 2010 – for immediate release
  • Embargoed until: 00:01 1st January 2010

Then include a heading, maybe a subheading and then your main text (split with further subheadings if necessary). After your main text add the word ‘Ends’ or ‘###’ centred on the page. Then you can add contact details and a brief profile of your company.

The Headline
The headline is a very important part of your press release. A good headline will draw your reader in, a bad one will make them click away (or turn the page). As it is a press release and not a sales letter the headline must encapsulate the story rather than sell your service. This is not a place for stating the benefits of your service. Keep it short, remove any words that don’t add value. If you’re not sure remove the word, read the headline, does it still make sense?
Here are some ideas for headlines:

  • Include survey findings ‘One in seven teenagers run a blog’
  • Summarise survey findings ‘Blogs more popular amongst teenagers than any other generation’
  • Be controversial ‘People in there thirties have no clue how to run a blog’

The Main Text
Have a neutral tone of voice, don’t write things like ‘I’m excited to announce…’ or ‘…with an exciting new…’, instead use a phrase like ‘…known for it’s excellence…’. Write in the third person: ‘Web Designer 500 is now offering a copywriting service to it’s customers’ rather ‘Here at Web Designer 500 we are offering a copywriting service’. Don’t include hype, stick to the facts. Read newspaper articles to get an idea of the style of writing. Aim for 10-16 words per sentence. Keep it short, remove any words/sentences that don’t help tell the story. Don’t make it into a sales pitch, if you do it’ll be obvious and not very interesting to read.
The opening paragraph is the most important as it draws the reader in. Include something that is likely to make them read on. For example outline the story, include the ‘who, what, when, where, why and how?’.

Posted in Copywriting, General, SEO | 1 Comment

Creating Mobile Websites

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Paul

In writing this post I’m assuming that you already have a website and want to increase your potential visitor base by offering a mobile optimised version of your website. Also it’s written assuming that you’ve already opted to build separate pages rather than using your server to provide your original content optimised for mobile.

Where to place your Mobile Website

The first decision to make is where to place your mobile content. The options are:

  1. Buy a new domain
  2. Create a sub-domain
  3. Place in a folder on existing domain

Although .mobi domains have been available for sometime now and seem ideal for hosting your mobile website I strongly recommend you do not take this option. Why? Well consider all that effort you have put into getting inbound links to your main website. All those hours spent commenting on forums, submitting to directories etc. this has all been done to provide link juice to that domain, to increase you PageRank. Well buy a new domain and it will have a PR of zero, zero link juice and will be brand new (another SEO negative).

It’s a very similar deal with sub-domains, but not as obvious. Consider all the sites hosted as sub-domains of wordpress.com, they all start with a PR of zero. Although a lot of the major websites (Flickr, Facebook and Wikipedia) have opted for a sub-domain I would highly discourage it in the name of SEO.

So what’s left? Yeah that’s right – the simplest and cheapest option – place it in a seperate folder. You may be thinking: but how will Google know its a mobile site and not just additional pages (containing duplicate content) for my main site? We’ll address that in the next few sections…

DOCTYPE for Mobile Website

According to Wikipedia there are three doctypes to choose from, I have opted for this one:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN"
"http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd">

Change your usual XHTML doctype for the one above on all your mobile pages.

Sitemaps for Mobile Websites

Mobile sites have a slightly different sitemap, Google provide the following example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:mobile="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0">
 <url>
  <loc>http://www.domain.com/mobile/index.htm</loc>
  <mobile:mobile/>
 </url>
</urlset>

Image Types for Mobile Websites

The IPhone does include PNG support, but it’s probably safer to avoid PNGs as not all other mobile devices do. So you’re limited to JPGs and GIFs, this is probably not an issue for most people. Personally I rarely use PNGs due to the gamma issues.

Try to keep images to a minimum, as most mobile phones have a limited bandwidth connection.

Page Width

Obviously a mobile website needs to be built for a screen with a much lower resolution. The wider the page the better the site will be displayed on a mobile device, but only if the screen width is greater than or equal to the page width. Having a page width too wide will cause visitors with a small screen resolution to have to side scroll. This is the main point of a mobile site, to avoid side scrolling. So deciding on a page width is not a decision I’d take lightly. Here is a list of mobile phone screen resolutions. Having reviewed the size of the screens available on current smart phones (November 2010) I would say there are two real options. To optimise for a screen width of 24opx or 320px. For the site that I’m currently building I’ve opted for a page width of 315px, to be optimum for a screen width of 320px (allowing a few pixels for the browser).

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Copywriting Tips – for your Website

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Paul
  • Imagine the person you’re writing for (your model customer) and write as if you are talking to them in person. What do they care about? Try to appeal to their emotions.
  • Try to keep the emphasis on the reader, instead of the writer: try to write you/your more than I/we/our/my
  • List all the points, ideas that you want to include in your text. Arrange them in a logical order and then expand on each one turning them into sentences or paragraphs.
  • Say what’s good about your product/service in the most informative, clearest and honest way.
  • Try not to be dull, add some excitement to your text.
  • Give you text a more personal feeling by the use of I, we, us, rather than your company name.
  • Tell stories within your text, including stories about past customers and the history of the business.
  • Include lots of sub-headings.
  • Be less formal, don’t use slang, but have a chatty approach, imagine you are talking to the visitor in person.
  • Aim for sentences with 10-12 words, it’s easier to read, which is what people expect online.
  • Use a casual writing style. Use small, simple words:
    • help rather than assist
    • about rather than with regard to
    • buy rather than purchase
    • find rather than locate
  • Give the reader a reason (or multiple reasons) to buy you product/service. Write about the benefits that the reader will get from your product/service. Sell benefits rather than features. For example consider the features and benefits of a car:

Features

  • Super fast 3.5 Litre Petrol Engine.
  • Antilock Braking System, helping you stop on the spot.
  • Run flat tyres, giving you 50 miles of travel following a flat tyre.

Benefits

  • Gets you where you want, in no time at all. No need to be embarrassingly left behind at the lights, ever again.
  • Make your journeys safer for you and your family, by being able to stop in time when that car in front of you slams on the brakes.
  • Get home safely when you get a flat, no need to change a tyre by the road or call out the AA.
Posted in General, Small Business Owners | 1 Comment

Search Engine and Web Browser Basics

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Paul

The difference between a URL and a search term.
This can sometimes be misunderstood. A URL is specific address to a website (or a given page on a website) whereas a search term is normally one or a series of words relating to the content on a website.

URL Examples

  • jessops.com
  • www.jessops.com
  • http://www.jessops.com
  • http://www.jessops.com/directory/digital-compact-cameras.aspx
  • http://www.jessops.com/?tduid=85d6481778e92fb64a04c262dac0f7e7

Search Term Examples

  • digital camera
  • cheap digital camera
  • sony snapshot
  • jessops cameras

So the difference between a URL and a Search Term are pretty obvious, but where some people go wrong is what they do with them both.

Search Engines and Browsers
So a search box is where you put your search term to query a search engine (so the examples below). When you use a search box your default search engine takes the term and queries it’s databases for the websites that  relate to that search term. If you put a URL into the search box the same process happens and often the search engine will precent you with a link to the site in the URL. The problem here is that the search engine can only return results containing websites that are in it’s databases, new or private websites will be missed out. Also when using a URL such as: http://www.jessops.com/directory/digital-compact-cameras.aspx the search engine results will not always return a link to that particular page. This is why it’s important that a URL does not go in a search box but instead the browser’s address bar. The reverse is true too. If you put a search term into a browser’s address bar you will normally be presented with a 404 error, (although this is not the case with FireFox as it detects a search term instead of a URL and queries your default search engine).

Safari Browser Address Bar - Search BoxesSafari Browser Address Bar - Search Boxes

FireFox Browser Address Bar - Search Boxes

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Using the .htaccess File to Make Dynamic URLs SEO Friendly

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Paul

Problem: A search engine crawler doesn’t like URLs such as:

http://www.showmefunny.com/quotes/program.php?program_id=123

It’s the query string that causes the problem (?program_id=123). Web pages with a query string are normally dynamic, changing dependent on the what is contained within the query string. A static URL such as:

http://www.somedomain.com/quotes/family-guy/

Is not only SEO/SE Crawler friendly but also far easier for humans to deal with.

Solution: The apache extension mod_rewrite, rewrites URLs on the fly allowing you to disguise a dynamic URL as a SEO friendly static URL. Here is an example of the code to place in your root .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^quotes/family-guy/$ quotes/program.php?program_id=1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

Now the Apache Server will return the data at:

http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/program.php?program_id=1

when a http request for:
http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/family-guy/ is received.

It is important to note that this is not a redirect, the browser address bar will not change, it will show:

http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/family-guy/

whilst viewing the content at:

http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/program.php?program_id=2.

The Code: Now let me dissect the code to explain what it is actually doing.

<IfModule module-name-here></IfModule>

The IfModule directive simply checks if a module is present. In this case we want to make sure that the mod_rewrite.c module is present so the script is surrounded by:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

</IfModule>

If the mod_rewrite.c module is not present then everything between the two tags is ignored.

RewriteEngine on

This doesn’t really need explaining, as the code suggests, it turns the RewriteEngine on.

RewriteRule ^request$ return [flag]

So the RewriteRule can be split into three different parts: request, return and flag.

Notice that the request is surrounded in ^ and $, ^ starts the string and $ terminates it. There is then a space, this space is important, it denotes the end of the request and the start of the return. There is then a another space followed by a opening [ and a closing ], these contain any flags, each separated by a ‘,’ comma.

The flags that are neccesary here are:

L – Last, denotes that this is the last RewriteRule to read if it is applicable. If you have multiple RewriteRules this denotes to the RewriteEngine to stop here and return the requested data.

QSA – Query String Append, allow an additional query string to be passed on to the requested file.

For example if the QSA flag is set, for the example above a request for the page: http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/family-guy/?test=1
Would return:

http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/program.php?program_id=1&test=1

Where as if it was not set:

http://www.showmefunny.co.uk/quotes/program.php?program_id=1

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Valuable Content

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Paul

What is valuable content?

Well, by content I’m talking about content on your website and by valuable I mean something people want to see, read, watch, interact with and most importantly share.

Why is it so important to have content that people want to share?

SEO, Search Engine Optimisation is primarily about inbound links, that’s right the search engines got wise about webmasters stuffing keywords into their sites and realised that if a website (and especially a reputable site) links to your website, you obviously have something worth linking to, something people want to see. So basically the more links your site has and the more reputable the sources of these links (other factors come into play too), the higher your site is ranked in SERPs, Search Engine Result Pages.

So the more you create and publish valuable content the more traffic you get from the search engines. Also you get traffic from the sites linking to you.

If you have a web site and are just using it to give a description and contact details of your company, contact your web designer and discuss any ideas that you have about your own valuable content. Your web designer should be able to:

  • Advise you on valuable content that your business can produce
  • Publish it on your website
  • or Produce a Content Management System so you can publish it
  • Inform you of ways to promote your valuable content
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Top Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Paul

1. Create valuable content, content that will generate incoming links, if you can do this the rest looks after itself.

2. Submit to the top directories, avoid the spammy ones.

3. Contribute to Forums and Blogs, this generates interest in your site and hopefully generates inbound links.

4. Spend time deciding on a keyword/keyword phrase for every page. I normally budget 5 hours for an average 10 page website.

5. Add keywords to Title Tags, H1 Tags in page content.

6. Avoid being penilased for SPAM.

7. Don’t waste internal links with ‘click here’ or ‘read more’, use a descriptive anchor text, preferable a keyword.

8. Include a different meta description for every page, preferably < 160 chars (including spaces).  This should be a well written sales pitch, rather than keyword heavy, as it’s normally what is displayed in SERPs.

9. Be patient, most changes will take months to take effect and reflect in SERPs.

10. Don’t waste valuable keyword real-estate by placing unnecessary text in Title Tags or H1 Tags.

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment

Photo Copyright Protection

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Paul

I’ve got a new client, a Professional Photographer, who wants a web site to use as a portfolio site and generate some business. He is concerned (and rightly so) that if he publishes his best photos online they will be stolen.

The purpose of a portfolio site is to show off the art work and so the images ideally want to be large and full quality. Taking advantage of modern, large screen sizes the site and images would ideally be 1000px wide, giving any copyright infringers a good size image to copy.

There are plenty of methods to help protect your intellectual property but are any of them solid and not too impeding on appearance?

Restrict Resolution of Photos – if you reduce the size/resolution of the images on your website then anyone stealing the images can only take that resolution (or less) of the image. For this to work it is vital that you resize/crop the photo before uploading it, rather than using html to reduce the size. But to really show off a high quality photo it does need to be the full size of a screen.

When restricting the resolution of a photo, you can add a close-up of a small section of the photo to show it’s true quality.

Note: In the text above I have used the terms resolution and size interchangeably because web browsers only have one resolution, 72 dpi. If you reduce the resolution of an image and maintain it’s size (or increase its size without increasing the resolution) you end up with a blocky appearance, which looks terrible.

Web Resolution

Full Resolution Image - 72dpi

Web Resolution Example

Half Resolution - Effectively 36dpi

Web Resolution Examples

1 Quarter Resolution - Effectively 18dpi

Visible Watermark – this involves placing a translucent image (normally your Company logo) over the photo rendering it useless to most individuals intending to steal it. A watermark can be added to a photo manually using image editing software (ie Photoshop) or automatically by a PHP script incorporated into a CMS. The major downside of this method is that it ruins the appearance of the site. Also the photo may still be of use to the copyright infringer as they may be interested in a portion of the image not covered by the watermark. Also on certain images a watermark can be removed using image editing software (ie Photoshop).

Watermark Example

Watermark Example

Often on a Photographer’s/Artist’s website elements of the site like nav-bars, text-boxes, copyright info etc. are placed over the image. Like the example below.

Copyright Infringement Example 1

When this is the case, such elements such elements are place over the image using HTML and CSS. However the elements can be placed straight onto the image prior to uploading, either manually or automatically by use of a CMS, resulting in an image like the example below.

Copyright Watermark

Doing this, prevents anyone from copying the image without the elements. Therefore this method places a watermark on the image without inhibiting the appearance of the site. But as you can see from the image above the best parts of the image are not covered by the watermark.

Invisible (Digital) Watermark - this method does not stop anybody from stealing your photos, but instead is a method of proving the image is yours. It is quite probable that if your photos are stolen and reused you would not know.

Stop Right Clicks on Site – the idea behind this method is to stop anyone from right clicking the image and selecting ‘copy image’ or ‘print image’. This can be done with some fairly basic JavaScript code. This method is essentially ineffective as there are other ways to steal the image such as print screen. It would have to be someone with very basic computer knowledge to not be able to work out a way around this method. Also this method stops anyone from using the other functions available from the menu. I recommend this method is not used.

Use of Flash to Display Images – Flash is a multimedia platform that allows you to incorporate animation, images, sound and interaction into a static website. When an image is viewed in a Flash movie, you cannot right click and copy the image. However the image displayed can be extracted using a screen dump. Therefore no more protection is afforded than stopping right clicks on a site. You can reduce the size of the image and allow the site visitor to zoom in and see the full detail of the image. Although a persistent copyright infringer could do a screen dump of each individual section of the zoomed image and piece them together using image editing software (ie Photoshop). Also there is software available that can be used to extract all the data from a Flash file (.swf) giving full access to your photos. Therefore the use of Flash is not an effective way of protecting your photos from copyright infringement.

Restrict Googlebot-Image – An easy method to find photos online, for anyone looking to steal copyright protected images is using Google’s vertical search for Images. You can stop Google from listing your photos on their image search result pages by adding the following code to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

Conclusion – At the moment there is no effective way of protecting photos that you publish on your website, unless you are willing to sacrifice the appearance of them. One consolation is that the law is on your side, there are numerous cases of copyright infringers settling out of court for reasonable sums of money. Adding a digital watermark may be valuable step if you need to prove the ownership of your photos.

If you allow the very real threat of copyright infringers to effect the quality of the images that you publish on your website you can lose out on business so it is a choice worth a lot of consideration.

I’m going to recommend that my client restricts the resolution of his images to that exactly necessary to be displayed online (approx 900px wide). Although this doesn’t stop individuals from steal his images at this resolution, the appearance of the site will not be hindered. I will also restrict the Googlebot-Image from crawling his photos. I will advise him to use some high-quality digital watermarking software. We will obviously display copyright information on the site, and will have to take the strict policy of prosecuting any copyright infringers.

I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has had experience with intellectual property theft…

Posted in General, Small Business Owners | 1 Comment