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September 24th, 2007
Have you ever tried viewing a certain page on a website and instead got the dreaded “404 Not Found” error message? Chances are that you glanced at the URL to check for any typos and then, if none were found, you left the site with a grumble.
Chances are that some of your website’s visitors are doing the same thing. You are losing the visitor and perhaps a potential sale. Also, an unhappy user is not likely to become a repeat visitor.
So why let the life blood of your site (your users, of course) leave unhappy? Instead of presenting them with the standard “The requested page [url] cannot be found…”, give them something helpful.
Benefits of a custom 404 page
- Capture mistyped URLs – see the common URL typos for your site how you can act upon it, like creating a redirect to the appropriate page.
- Find outdated links – sometimes it is hard to keep track of which links are no longer in use when your site becomes large. This is an easy way to do that.
- Increase traffic – keep that visitor on your site instead of losing them to the next search result in Google.
- Provides you another opportunity to push some offer to the user, like downloading your free ebook if you have one, linking them to an affiliate offer that they may be interested in, or prompting them to subscribe to your RSS feed or newsletter.
What should be on it?
- State clearly that they have arrived at an invalid page. Display to them what the invalid URL was.
- Include your site’s main menu with a clear link to your home page.
- Include a link to your contact page how the user can inform you or ask you about the missing page.
- If your site has a search function, include it. If not, consider including a Google site search box.
How to make a custom 404 page
- Create a page called error404.php, or name it anything that you wish. The file name doesn’t matter, but it’s good practice to include “4o4″ in the name.
- Add this line in your .htaccess file: ErrorDocument 404 /error404.php
If you don’t know how to create a .htaccess file you can learn more about them here.
This is another simple technique to boost the usability of your site that you really have no reason not to do. So go do it!
Posted in Usability & Accessibility | 3 Comments »
September 22nd, 2007
Thomas Jefferson once said this. I’m sure everyone has heard it before, just like I’m sure that most people have also violated it on more than one occasion.
I know I have.
Tomorrow never comes. Because “tomorrow” is always just one day away, and what can just one more day hurt?
The answer is a lot. Think of this in terms of your work on your website. Here is one thing that I catch myself doing all the time – I come across a good article that would be beneficial for me to read and I bookmark it into my “To Read” category. A month later, it is still sitting in there. Often times I will never get around to reading it.
So what am I missing out on? Who knows, and that is the problem. It could be something that would give me great insight into promoting my website, adding a new feature, or building revenue. What’s the worst that could happen? You spend ten minutes reading something that you already knew.
What’s the best thing? You increase your website’s traffic, profit, usability, or any number of other things. How many of you would prefer to double your traffic and income in a year’s time instead of half a year’s time? Seems like a pretty obvious answer to that question, right? Well you’re not going to reach your goals by putting off your research and testing. Finding material that will help you grow your website does not do you any good. Reading it does.
Looking through my list of “To Read”, I just found articles on how to improve your SEO, investing tips, a list of 17 “must have” plugins for WordPress, niche research techniques, and a couple of “how to”’s written by people who have “made it”. Sounds like some pretty good stuff, but currently it is doing me no use.
Trust me, I know – simple concept, but hard to follow. Here are a few tips that might help you, however:
- Print out the article. Read it during your lunch break or as you are stuck in traffic (but never while actually driving! Knowledge doesn’t do you any good when you’re dead.)
- Write down a specific time of the day when you will have time to read it, and then stick to that time.
- Bargain with yourself – do whatever you want to on the web for ten minutes, then take the next ten minutes reading the article. Repeat if needed.
- Just read it! Seriously, though – just read it.
Remember – you have to make it happen. No one is going to be keeping you to a schedule. You have to have the dedication to be your own boss. People don’t just get lucky and strike gold on the web, they work long and hard, and most importantly, they don’t procrastinate!
Posted in Motivation | 2 Comments »
September 21st, 2007
Hello everyone! A lot has been going on since AbstractPromotion.com launched last week. It’s been great! I thank everyone who has visited and given me feedback on this site. Anyways, I have a couple of updates that I would like to share.
First of all, I am working on a new design – something less bland, something that stands out from all the other blogs. I’m not quite sure when this will be done, but it should not take too long.
Second, regarding my posting schedule: I will post a new article every other day (promise). In between those days I may post blurbs regarding interesting industry happenings, breaking news relating to promotion/web, coupons, etc..
Third, if you have any comments, feedback, constructive criticism, etc on this site I would love to hear it! You can email me at nbakewell [at] gmail.com.
That’s it for now. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I talk about how tomorrow never comes.
Posted in AbstractPromotion.com | 4 Comments »
September 20th, 2007
How well do you know your own site?
If you’re answer is anything other than “like the palm of my hand”, you should immediately go and learn every aspect of your website – after you finish reading this article, of course ;)
Webmasters set up a new site, install a nice template and make some modifications to it for a more unique feel, and then start writing content. But not all of them give their site a full “test drive”, and end up missing something important – I know this because it happened to me on this very site.
Why is it important to test drive your site? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Usability & Accessibility | No Comments »
September 19th, 2007
I’ve never actually run a newsletter/ezine campaign, but since doing so involves some pretty interesting and unique promotion techniques, I keep up to date on what people are trying out who do. So I was reading some tips on how to increase your subscribers, and came across a gold nugget – simple, easy, yet extremely effective.
Dun dun dun…
A popup!
Kind of anti-climatic, isn’t it? But think about it – a user is browsing around your site when they click on a link that triggers a small popup that prompts you to enter your email address, give a few concise reasons as to why they would want to. The user has an option to subscribe or to “never show this to me again”, which would set a cookie or use some other technique to make sure that that user is not displayed the popup again.
A fellow webmaster implemented this and said he saw an immediate 500% increase in his subscribers.
The best way to learn exactly what I am talking about is to see it in action. Check out Sitepoint.com and browse around a few links, and you should see this technique used.
Food for thought: maybe this would work for RSS subscriptions also?
Posted in Promotion Techniques | 4 Comments »
September 18th, 2007
Let’s take a moment and look at the headline. Your headline is like a promise to the user stating what they will get out of reading the article. It is also the attention grabber and will either spark the user’s interest, thus resulting in them reading the article, or will not intrigue them enough to bother reading past it.
With this being said, you can start to understand why writing a good headline is so important. When a potential reader is browsing through the list of newly submitted articles on Digg, for example, your headline is all you get to convince that person to click-through to your site. That’s the first part – getting the reader. Now you have to keep the reader, and this is done by fulfilling the promise made by your headline. This is why it is common practice among experienced bloggers to write their headline first and mold the article around it – although this may seem wrong and opposite of what you would think, give it a try. More on that later, though.
So this is all well and great, you’re thinking, but you still haven’t told me how to write headlines like a pro, just why they are important. Touche, I say to you! And here is where my lie is exposed…I am not going to teach you how. Rather, I will link you to where I learned from. So check out 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work, courtesy of Copyblogger.com. Read it, learn from it, implement it! You’ll be amazed when you see the difference an attractive headline makes when trying to get traffic through Digg and other social bookmarking sites.
Subscribe to AbstractPromotion today!
Posted in Promotion Techniques | 8 Comments »
September 17th, 2007
What’s one thing everyone tells you to always do when you start a new blog? Submit it to blog directories, duh! Well, the folks over at SponsoredReviews.com have compiled probably one of the best blog directories list, including page rank and Alexa rank statistics in their listings. Check out the list and start getting those backlinks!
Posted in Resources | 6 Comments »
September 16th, 2007
This statement is extreme and not entirely true, but consider it for a moment. What is one of the most important aspects of of becoming successful? Good branding. Making an image for yourself that stands out from the crowd. A favicon is a 16px by 16px image that helps to do just this. So, if you don’t have a favicon or don’t even know what one is, or you do but are not really what its use is, read on.
A favicon, as I stated above, is a 16px by 16px .gif or .png image of your designing. It’s the little picture you see right before a website’s URL in your browser. For example, if you look at the address of this site, you will notice a small, blue image with “aP” written inside of it. Nothing fancy, just the first letters of my website’s name. But it’s something unique to my website. Key word, unique. So why are favicons so important? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Promotion Techniques | 3 Comments »
September 15th, 2007
Here is a common question among new webmasters: if I want to change my domain name, how do I keep my positions in the search engines? You can’t. You have to start from scratch.
Just kidding. The fix is fairly simple, though I do warn you – you may lose a little ranking for a while, but it shouldn’t be anything major. What you want to do is set up a permanent (301) domain redirect, such that if someone visited your old domain at oldDomain.com/folder/page.html, they would automatically be forwarded to newDomain.com/folder/page.html. Same idea with the search engines – when the bots crawl your site, they will be redirected by this 301 which tells them that the redirect is permanent and that they should update their databases accordingly.
So how do you do this? Easy as eating pie! But maybe not quite as fun…anyways, I digress. It’s just three simple lines of code to put into your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?old-domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Obviously changing the domain names to their appropriate values.
Viola! Done. However, it may take a while for you to see the domain change in search results.
Posted in Question / Answer, SEO | 2 Comments »
September 14th, 2007
One of the recent crazes these days is StumbleUpon, a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that lets you “find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.” It’s become so big that The Wall Street Journal and BBC World News have published articles on it. And us webmasters are starting to learn on how to exploit it.
Trading stumbles is a simple, easy process. You get a bunch of people to visit your site, click “I Like It!” on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and write a quick, favorable review for you, and you do the same for them. This increases the likelihood that others of the thousands who use StumbleUpon will randomly stumble across your website, thus increasing your traffic – since the more “Likes” your site has the more likely StumbleUpon is to show it to other users.
Seems pretty innocent, right? There are even a few “official” sites out there to facilitate the trade of stumbles. With this in mind, I went around the internet on a quest to find out if trading stumbles could get you in trouble. Here is what I found… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Promotion Techniques | No Comments »
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