feed hat blog

This isn’t exactly news anymore, but it’s worth noting that two more reports this week confirm the idea that consumers tend to do their research online prior to buying offline/locally.

The first is a Kelsey Group study that indicates 97% of consumers use the Internet to research products or services in their local area. What specific online research tools do they use?

• 90% use search engines
• 48% use Internet Yellow Pages
• 42% use comparison shopping sites
• 24% use vertical sites

If consumers are starting the local buying process online, this reinforces the value of great local content, local SEO, and local visibility in general. In fact, according to the study, consumers use 7.9 different media sources for research when looking for local products and services. That speaks to the importance of being visible on a number of channels — your own site, your blog, Google Maps, Citysearch, important industry sites, and so forth. Diversity of presence makes a big difference.

The second report comes from local product search engine Milo.com in the form of a large infographic that breaks down the percent of online vs. offline buying in a number of industries. The conclusion, based on US Census data, is that less than 5% of retail sales happen online.

Advertisement: Try Site5 Web Hosting free for 30 days! 99.9% Uptime Guarantee and our customer’s love us!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Two More Studies Confirm: People Research Online, Buy Locally

Related posts:

1. Search Online, Buy Offline Has a Long Way To Go
2. Stats, stats, and more stats
3. MSN Studies Searcher Behavior

Read more here:
Two More Studies Confirm: People Research Online, Buy Locally

Earlier in the week we looked at the importance of ‘niches’ when it comes to building profitable blogs. Today I want to extend the topic and gives the process that I tend to use when working out if I want to start a new blog in a particular niche. I hope you find it helpful.

Many factors will come into play when it comes to choosing a niche to blog about – but the following are those that I tend to pay most attention to:

1. Your Interest in the Topic

I started out blogging on topics that interested me – but as I began to see the potential to make money from my blogs began to experiment with topics that I had less interest in but which I thought would be profitable.

What I discovered in creating these blogs that had potential for profit, yet which I had little interest in, was that I couldn’t really sustain them. I had little to say on the topics and when I did write something I suspect that those who read my content could tell that it was a topic that I was not passionate about. As a result the traffic did not come, I did not become known for the topic, nobody linked up and the blogs were far from profitable.

On the flipside of this – the blogs that I did have an interest in and a passion for have flourished. My interest in the topic is not the only factor that made them successful but I suspect it is a fairly important one that underlies much of the success and profit that I’ve had.

One question to ask yourself in choosing a niche is ‘What are YOU about?’ Choosing a topic that reflects you means you’ll be in a position to be able to find enough to write about and you’ll write it in a way that engages with the topic and your readers.

2. The Popularity of the Topic

You can have all the interest in the world around a topic but if nobody else shares your interest you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle to build a blog that gets much traffic.

This doesn’t mean you need to choose the most popular topics going around – in fact they may not be a wise choice due to the competition also targeting those niches – however you will want to choose a niche that has some level of demand for content.

There are many ways to do research on this whether topics are popular – here are three that I use:

1. Google Trends – do some searches on Google trends for keywords around your niches (and compare them) and you’ll see whether the topic you’ve chosen has been growing or shrinking and how it compares to other topics.
2. Market Samurai – I’ve written about the potential ofhttp://www.marketsamurai.com/c/problogger(affiliate link but it gives you a free trial)tool for optimising posts on your blog for SEO – but it is also a useful research tool in looking at the popularity of topics – particularly the module that allows you to assess how many searches are being done on different tools in Google.
3. Your Local News Stand – perhaps one of the simplest ways to look for popular topics is to head to a local news stand and look at what publications are being sold there. Not only look at the topics of magazines – but check out what is being written about as hot topics IN the magazines and you might find an emerging sub-niche to focus upon.

Ultimately you’re looking for topics that people are interested in, passionate about, want to learn more on and/or that people want to talk about and interact in a community around. There is an unlimited number of topics and ways to tap into them. Watch TV, talk to your friends, head to a local library, read a newspaper – see what people are into and you could just identify a topic worth exploring.

3. Competition

One of the factors that I see some bloggers failing to acknowledge in the choosing of a niche is how much competition (and how strong the competition is) in their potential niche.

The danger in choosing some popular niches is that you might be competing against some very powerful sites in those niches. While this isn’t always going to be a factor to stop you exploring a niche it should definitely be considered and it can perhaps help you to shape your niche to be something that will give you a competitive advantage.

There are a variety of ways of assessing the strength of competition in niches.

One of the simplest is to simply do some searches on Google to look at how many sites exist for keywords on your topic. This won’t give you an indication of the power of the competition – but it will give you some indication on the ’size’ of competition and it will identify some sites that you will want to be monitoring.

Market Samurai (mentioned above) is one tool that can take your analysis a little deeper. As highlighted in my recent optimising posts on your blog for SEO post it has a module that will not only show you how many competing sites there are but also how strong they are (around a number of factors). It’ll also identify what type of level you’ll need to get to in order to compete with them.

As you begin to assess your potential competition in a niche don’t be completely put off by niches with lots of strong competition. Instead as you analyse what other sites are doing look for opportunities in two areas:

• ways to differentiate yourself – as you look at other sites look for gaps in the topic that they’re not covering or things that perhaps you could do that might differentiate yourself. Perhaps there is a sub-niche that everyone is ignoring, perhaps they all ‘look’ the same, perhaps they all approach the topic in the same sort of ‘voice/style’. These things could be things to explore in offering an alternative to the established sites.
• ways to interact and leverage the competition – as you look at other sites look for places that you might be able to connect with, contribute to and leverage in the building of your own site. Perhaps the competition has the ability to submit guest posts or articles or perhaps they have a forum area for interaction. Find ways to be a genuine contributor to your competition and you might find ways to help build your own site indirectly.

4. Is the Topic Sustainable?

Another factor that I see some bloggers neglecting in the choosing of a niche is consideration of whether the topic is one that they’re able to sustain.

This partly relates to the interest and passion that the blogger has for the topic – but it also relates to the topic itself and whether it is dynamic enough to have content written about it on a regular basis.

• Will it be possible to keep new content flowing on this topic?
• If the blog will be a ‘news’ blog – is there enough news or developments happening on this topic to keep reporting on it?
• If the blog will be a ‘how to’ type blog – Is the topic deep enough to be able to come up with enough tutorials or tips?

A number simple exercises to help assess the sustainability of a blog (depending upon the type of blog you’ll be developing):

• Brainstorm topics – set aside 10 minutes to brainstorm topics for blog posts. Do you run out of ideas or are they flowing easily? This will give you an indication on how many posts you’ll be able to write.
• List ‘problems/needs’ of readers – if your blog will be a ‘how to’ type blog list off problems or needs that your potential readers might have that you could tackle.
• Google News – if your blog will be a ‘news’ type blog – check out Google News for your keywords and see how often news is breaking on the topic. Is there lots of news or is this a topic that only has occasional news breaking?
• List Products – if your blog will be a ‘product’ related blog – do some research into how many products there are in that category and how often new products are released.

Got the picture? Really it is about doing a little analysis of the topic to see if there is enough in it to keep producing new frequent and regular content. If there’s not enough – perhaps consider either another topic or a different format for your site (blogs tend to do best when they’re updated but you could create a more static site).

5. Is the Niche Profitable?

This won’t appeal to everyone as not all people want to monetize their blog but if it’s a goal to make money from your blog then you’ll want to assess the potential for profit before you start.

There are a few ways to get indications on whether a niche will be profitable – including:

• Google Ads – do a simple search on Google.com for your topic/keywords. Look at what ads Google is serving for those keywords over on the right side (or above the search results). Doing some analysis of these ads can be useful on a few fronts. For starters they’ll show you if any advertisers are actively targeting those keywords. This is handy to know if you’re planning on running AdSense on your blog. It will also be handy to check out who is advertising as they could be potential direct sponsors of your site. The other useful thing to note is whether any of the ads are for products that have affiliate opportunities as they could be products you could promote as an affiliate.
• AdWords Analysis – another related way to check on the value of a niche is to do some analysis of how much people are willing to pay as advertisers in the Google AdWords program. Just knowing there are advertisers is a healthy sign but they could all be just paying a cent or two to have their ads appear. Using the AdWords Keyword tool will give you a bit more of an indication of what people are paying to rank highest for their ads.
• Affiliate Products – speaking of affiliate products – do a little hunting around to see if you can find any products online that have affiliate promotions that you might be able to promote. Sometimes this is as simple as Googling ‘keyword affiliate product’ but other times you’ll want to check out affiliate networks like Commission Junction or PepperJam (aff) to see if they have any relevant products listed for your niche.
• Brainstorm Potential Products of Your Own – what could YOU sell directly to readers? As you’re pondering a niche it could be well worth while keeping in the back of your mind potential products that you might be able to develop to sell from your blog. These might include information products (e-books, training etc), membership areas (where people pay a monthly fee for extra teaching, community etc), personal services (coaching, speaking etc), a physical product relevant to your niche – or something else. More and more bloggers are turning to developing their own products as ways to monetize their blogs so keep this option in your mind from the beginning.
• What are others in the niche monetizing with? – one of the quickest ways to work out whether there is potential to monetize a niche is to check out what other sites are doing to make money on that topic. Check out the biggest sites first and look at whether they run advertising (and what sort), whether they’re promoting affiliate promotions, what kinds of products/services of their own they sell etc. You might find that you come up with a quick list of things to start monetizing your own site with very quickly by doing this.
• Market Samurai – I know that Iv’e mentioned Market Samurai already in this series but it’s a tool that also has a monetization module that allows you to look at the profitability of a niche. In fact there are a couple of tools within the Market Samurai system that are worth using when assessing the profitability of a niche. One is in the ‘keyword research’ module which gives you options to look at three factors including the Adwords value of the work, the SEO value and some assessment of whether people are searching with the intent of ‘buying’ or just surfing for ‘information on the keyword. The other module allows you to search for affiliate promotions relevant to your keywords (very handy).

6. What Else Do You Bring to the topic that You Can Leverage?

Previously when I’ve covered the topic of how to choose a blog niche I’ve stopped after exploring some of the above points. However there are almost always a number of other factors that individuals bring to certain topics that can make those niches more sensible choices.

I guess ultimately it comes down to looking at what you have at your fingertips that you will be able to leverage to help you get your blog up and running and working really well.

There are many factors that might come into play including:

• Expertise/Experience – you might be someone with years of experience in the industry which would give you a real head start in the creation of content and also building authority and profile in the niche.
• Contacts/Network – perhaps you already have some good contacts with other bloggers and web site owners in the niche that you’ll be able to leverage to help you promote your blog.
• Established Sites on Related Topics – maybe you already have another blog, newsletter list, website, forum or site on a related topic that you could use to help you launch your new blog.
• Repurpose-able Content – some people already have a lot of content written for other purposes that they can use as the basis for their new blog (for example I met one person recently who had been training in an area and who had already created hundreds of documents for offline use that could easily be used on a blog).

This list could quite easily go on and on. Essentially you need to do a bit of a SWOT analysis of the topic and see what strengths and opportunities that you uniquely have that will help you to get a leg up into this topic.

Sleep On It

My last advice on choosing a niche for your blog is to take your time and don’t act too hastily. While you don’t want the process to drag out too long – I look back on the 30 or so blogs that I’ve started over the years and wish I’d taken a little more time going through this process. I went through a phase where I impulsively started a series of blogs that I quickly knew were not right for me – if I’d only given the ideas a little time to breath I might have discovered before I started that perhaps there were better ways to use my time going forward.

So take your time – share what you come up with with a trusted friend or two – do a little research into the topic and then, when you’re ready and are in a good position to make a decision – ACT!

Also keep in mind that you might need to go through this process with a number of topics before you find one that fits for you. You’re unlikely to find a topic that fits all of the above criteria perfectly – but hopefully something will stand out to you a little to help you make an informed decision.

Questions for Discussion:

1. What other factors would you say come into play when choosing a niche?
2. If you already have a blog – what were the most important factors for you in choosing that niche?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Blog: How to Choose a Blog Niche [6 Tips]

Share This

Read more: 
How to Blog: How to Choose a Blog Niche [6 Tips]

Ok it’s most probably too early to tell but all the signals to me, is that it’s going be a long haul for Google. Today while hopping around sites I fell onto mashable, this thing that hit me was :ok the message is plain and simple to me Mashable really want you to BUZZ their [...]

Google Buzz success or failure? is a post from: Dave Naylor’s SEO Blog.

Related posts:

1. Digg just listen to your People
2. Social Media Consulting
3. Social Media Sites Life Expectancy

Read the original:
Google Buzz success or failure?

Last week on my Photography Tips site we published a guest post titled Three Lenses Every Photographer Should Own.

The author of the guest post emailed me a few days later amazed at amazing amount of comments left on the post. While the average post on dPS gets a reasonable amount of comments this post is climbing up towards 200.

Why did it do so well in engaging readers?

There are a few reasons. The guest poster didn’t really set out to do any of them – but stumbled upon one of the best ways to get readers interacting on a blog post:

1. He Expressed an Opinion – the post shares one persons opinion on which lenses each photographer should own. While the post itself did indicate that it was his own personal preference and that others would find other options more suited to their situations – whenever you express an opinion you’re going to get other people reacting with their own.
2. He Made a Claim – the title was key in generating this discussion. It made a claim that every photographer should own 3 lenses. I’m not sure how intentional this was but make this type of claim and you’ll almost always get a reaction because you’ll almost always have someone who doesn’t quite fit into what you’ve proposed – and they’ll want to tell you why. Write a post about ‘essentials’, or ‘the best’ or something ‘everyone’ should do – and you’ll generally get this type of response.
3. He Invited a Response – the post finished by asking others what they’d include in their ‘must own’ category of lenses. This is the perfect invitation for an ongoing discussion.
4. He Chose a Topic People Had Invested Heavily Into – the last thing I’d say about this topic is that he stumbled onto a topic for the post that readers had strong opinions about because they’d invested into the topic. Camera owners carefully research their lens purchases and put up considerable dollars to buy them. As a result they tend to feel quite strongly about their lenses and often feel the need to defend/explain their decisions.

Keep in mind that while when you write these types of posts you will almost always get a reaction from people that you need to be willing and ready to hear some strong opinions back – something that are not always easy to hear.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The BEST Way to Generate Lots of Comments on a Your Next Blog Post

Share This

Read more: 
The BEST Way to Generate Lots of Comments on a Your Next Blog Post

ChatRoulette (warning: this is often NSFW) is a site that has caused a lot of buzz over the last week or so.

It’s a webcam site where you login to chat with complete strangers – you are randomly matched with a stranger and you both have the opportunity to find a new person to chat with at anytime.

People tend to quickly click, click, click through the people that they find matched with them until they find someone that they find ‘interesting’. Unless you do something a little interesting, wacky or happen to be an amazingly beautiful person – you tend to get passed over very quickly.

While much has been written about ChatRoulette and whether it is offensive, dangerous and moral – as I was spending a few minutes on it earlier in the week (where I must have been having a bad hair day because I was ignored by 99.9% of people I was matched with) it struck me that what I was watching was a visual of how people increasingly use the web.

Click, click, click.

• They don’t stay till long – they’re always clicking
• They are always looking for the next best thing
• They only pause if they see something that is interesting, intriguing or completely relevant to them
• They are ruthless
• They are impulsive
• They will judge what they see within a split second of arriving on a site
• They rely upon instinct and first impressions

As bloggers – the reality is that people are making these kinds of calls about our blogs every day as they click through to them from different sources. The blank faces that you see scrolling past on ChatRoulette could be the faces of your readers – clicking onto your site, making a quick judgement about your site and what its worth and then in many cases moving on.

PS: after 3 minutes on ChatRoulette and being ignored by 100+ people I decided to experiment. I put on a clown wig, I stuck two CDs to my glasses and put on some 70’s disco music (hopefully no one took a screen shot of me doing this).

The rotation of people I was being matched with slowed down – one in 5 waved – one in 10 even chatted with me.

The take home lesson

• do something different
• be unique and original
• make people look twice
• snap people out of their ‘click click click’ stupor

Do this and you might just make people pause long enough to connect (or you could just make a fool of yourself).

Further Reading: The Power of Uniqueness – 19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Lessons for Bloggers from ChatRoulette

Share This

View original post here: 
Lessons for Bloggers from ChatRoulette

Over on Twitter last week @JapanNewbie asked me about how to get people viewing old posts on your blog once they drop off the front page. In this video I tackle the question with 5 suggestions including using:

• Best of Sections
• Autoresponders
• Related Links
• Best of Posts
• Repost Old Content

I’d love to hear your suggestions on how you drive people back to your older blog posts?

Related Reading:

• Updating Old Posts on Your Blog – how and why.
• Interlink Your Old Blog posts

Watch this video at full size on Youtube at How to Get People to Read Your Old Posts.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

5 Tips for Getting Readers Viewing Your Old Blog Posts

Share This

View post: 
5 Tips for Getting Readers Viewing Your Old Blog Posts

I’m learning to belly dance.

Okay, that’s totally overstating it. I’m wiggling to music in what is labeled a belly dancing class.

I’ve found that I enjoy the constant movement, manipulating my limbs and taking any excuse I can to be silly. But more fun than the belly dancing is the instructor.

She loves this stuff. Her eyes light up when she enters the room, her voice changes pitch, and she hops around throwing out euphemisms that make even the bravest people blush. She’s a complete fruit loop. And she’s loved for it. It’s her schtick.

Or, in marketing terms, it’s her personal brand.

Oh no, not another post about personal branding

We’ve been hearing about personal brands ad nauseum for the past year. Even if you’re not sure why you need one, you’re certain that you do. It’s like a 401k. Or a spouse.

The trouble is, most personal brands make everybody else want to jab forks straight into their eyes. They’re based on egos, false promises, and personalities so obnoxious that you’d never be friends with this person in real life.

But as my belly dancing instructor has taught me, you don’t have to build a personal brand on being an egomaniac. You can build your brand on simply being human. Or better yet, you can build your brand on being your favorite version of yourself.

How do you create a personal brand that will garner attention instead of hate? Here are some tips I’ve picked up from my experience on the Web.

And belly dancing.

Claim your niche

My belly dancing instructor doesn’t teach the hip hop class that takes place after her session. Nor does she teach the weekend kickboxing class. She’s limited herself to belly dancing because she knows that’s where she can offer the greatest value.

Trying to teach everything would undermine what she’s about and the tribe she’s looking to attract. She sticks to what she does better than anyone else.

Think niche. You can’t be known for everything. Pick what’s most important to what you do, break it down to its simplest core, and be it.

While Copyblogger has established itself as one of the Web’s top resources on content, Brian Clark has branded himself the master of headlines. It’s a tiny microcosm of the whole content creation space that he owns. It’s where he’s untouchable.

Create your character

Like I said, my instructor is a fruit loop. The moment you think you’ve seen everything, she ups the ridiculousness.

She tears her sweats so you can watch her legs curl, and refers to body parts in ways you wish you could erase from your mind. She knows who she needs to be to attract the right audience, and she plays up her quirks to do so. She builds a tribe that falls in love not only with her class, but with her. It becomes so that the class and brand are so intertwined that you can’t tell them apart.

Lots of people will tell you to “be yourself” in social media. I’d advise creating a persona that mixes who you are and who you want to be. This heightened version of yourself allows you to lose the performance anxiety and magnify the personality traits needed to attract the right people.

We fall in love with those who are brave enough to do what we think we can’t. As long as you’re basing your character off who you really are, you’ll be able to keep it authentic and still look great naked.

Treat people like humans

My instructor has been dancing for longer than I’ve been an adult. She’s trained in moves and styles that my stiff body can’t even comprehend.

But you wouldn’t know that by talking to her. She’s unassuming and talks to you like you’re old friends meeting up for coffee. And she keeps that tone even when instruction has begun. There’s no jargon to confuse us, no making things complicated so we feel dumb and she wouldn’t dare call herself an “expert” or a “guru.” She’s just someone who loves belly dancing and is excited about the opportunity to share it with us.

Finding your voice and using it to be relatable is what will make or break your personal brand. It’s what separates the brands we love from the brands we wish would die.

It’s all about your ability to talk to people in a genuine way and show them that you’re one of them. This is where most people get tripped up. We elevate ourselves thinking that it makes us more impressive and authoritative and that our audience will trust us more. Truthfully, all this does is alienate you from the people you’re trying to connect with.

Figure out what the real you sounds like, and then use that voice to be real with others. You can’t fake this.

Make your brand accessible

My instructor shows up to class early. She stays late. She takes questions in the middle of instruction and will show and re-show certain movements until you’ve nailed them. Her email address is publicly available so that students can email her with questions. She has an email newsletter to help us stay in contact with not only her, but one another.

She’s not teaching a class, she’s creating a community.

When you make your brand accessible, you help it grow beyond your niche. Become part of your community. Answer questions. Lift up those who are doing well. Share trusted information. Look for ways to extend your brand through blogging, guest postings [cough], email newsletters, and direct mail.

Everything that you put out should incorporate and promote your personal brand. The more people see you and your tribe, the more they’ll gravitate toward it. It’s social proof.

Your personal brand is you. It’s who you are, what you believe, and what you want to put out there to others.

Use the social tools available to be you as loudly as you can, while always offering a benefit to those around you. Your personal brand may be all about you, but it’s also about how you make others feel.

It’s emotional DNA, and what separates the personal brands we love from those we love to tear apart.

About the Author: Lisa Barone has the totally pompous title of Chief Branding Officer at SEO consulting firm Outspoken Media. She tries to make up for the title by blogging Important Stuff on the Outspoken Media blog and being amusing on Twitter at @lisabarone.

Originally posted here:
What Belly Dancing Taught Me about Personal Branding

Last week, my good friend Neil Patel made a post explaining why he would never live in a rich neighborhood. While I understood Neil’s main argument, I found the post quite amusing. It’s true that Neil does not live in a “rich neighborhood.” He lives in downtown Seattle in the private residences of the Hyatt Hotel. Downtown Seattle is a business district and not really a neighborhood. However, as business districts goes, downtown Seattle has to be the richest business district in all of Washington State. So while Neil may never live in a rich neighborhood, he has no problems living in a million dollar suite and taking advantage of all the amenities offered by the Hyatt.

I currently live in West Vancouver which happens to be the richest neighborhood in Canada. I’ve also lived in the Downtown Eastside, which is the poorest neighborhood in Canada. While I do have fond memories of the DTES, I much rather prefer my current neighborhood than my past one. As a rebuttal to Neil’s post, here’s why I live in a rich neighborhood.

Her Name Is Sally Chow

Every parents wants the best for their children. One of the main reasons we moved to West Vancouver was because of the school district. Generally speaking, the richer the neighborhood, the better the schools and West Vancouver has the highest ranked school district in the Province. They also have smaller class sizes and better equipments. Sending your child to the best school doesn’t guarantee they’ll succeed but it does mean they’ll get the best education possible and when it comes to Sally, I want give her every advantage available.

It’s Nice and Quiet Here

West Vancouver has no industrial zones and the commercial zone is limited to one main street call Marine Drive. Pretty much everything else is residential or recreational. The city has a bylaw preventing any business from operating 24 hours a day (the 7-11 has to close for a few minutes everyday) and there are no nightclubs, bars or casinos.

You might say that sounds extremely boring but the point is I live in West Van. I don’t party in West Van. If I’m feeling the need to get into trouble, downtown Vancouver is just short drive across the bridge. The situation is ideal. I live in nice quiet neighborhood that’s just a hop, skip and a jump from the action of downtown.

It’s Safer Here

Providing a safe environment for my family is extremely important to me. Rich neighborhoods generally have lower crime rate and West Vancouver is no exception. The city reported 2,265 criminal code offenses in 2008. By comparison, the city of Surrey had 45,655 criminal code offenses during the same period. When I walk down the streets of West Van, I’m pretty certain I won’t be the victim of a drive by shooting or mugging. I don’t feel the same way walking down the streets of Surrey.

The View Is Better

I think the above photo speaks for itself.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Have you ever noticed that successful people hang around other successful people? Birds of feather really do flock together. I’m comfortable living where I am because I can relate with the people down the street. My neighbors are mostly business owners and entrepreneurs. We have a lot in common. The networking and business opportunities are much better in West Van than the Downtown Eastside.

The power of association is extremely powerful in the way it dictates who you are and how much money you make. If you want to change yourself or you lifestyle, then quite often, it will require you to change the circle of people you associate with. In order to continue climbing the ladder of success, I make sure I associate with other successful people. I thought I was doing well when I was making $10,000 per month. Then I started associating with people like Shoemoney and Neil Patel. Now, I can’t imagine living on only $10K per month.

If you aspired to be more than what your friends want to achieve, then you’re going to have to find others at your level or above and start associating with them. It’s easier to find those people in a rich neighborhood like West Vancouver than a poor one like the DTES. Birds of feather flock together. Success breeds success. This is why the rich get richer. If you want to become rich, you need to hang where they hang. While Neil may say he’ll never live in a rich neighborhood, living in the Hyatt hotel isn’t exactly poor!

Below is a video by super Realtor Jason Soprovich explaining more about West Vancouver. Give him a shout if you’re looking to move here.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Read the original here:
Why I Live In a Rich Neighborhood

It may be possible that governmental web sites are at least as important, and in some cases more important that most of the other web sites online. They can provide information on when and where to vote, when and where laws are being made, when and where you can access elected and appointed officials, and information about possibly a large number of services that goverment may provide, from trash pickup and some utility services to police and fire and rescue information.

Sometimes you just really need to know how to get to City Hall, or to the Courthouse steps.

In many instances, a local government web site can provide a doorway into the history of a community, access to building codes and zoning laws, address and contact data for City Hall and other agencies, and other information that governs our lives. Being able to find that information can be very important.

On a personal note, I really enjoy exploring local history, and learning about local towns on the Web before visiting them in person. My interest has led to a project where I’m trying to find the web sites for different cities, counties, towns, and other area web sites in Virginia.

Ironically, as I started this project, I experienced a problem with my own Town’s website that has inspired me to catalog some of the bad practices that local government sites have followed, to help them fix some of the mistakes that they are making that make them less effective than they could be. I’m also looking forward to identifying some of the best practices that I see on local goverment web sites, and pointing them out so that other sites might learn from them.

Choose a Domain, and Stick to It

My town is a historical crossroads in the North-Western part of Virginia, close enough to Washington DC that some residents commute to the Nation’s Capital, and far enough away so that it still retains a fairly agricultural nature, with horse pastures, wineries, and farmland surrounding small suburban areas. It is located in a piedmont region, that is a set of foothills that separate the lower tidewater lands closer to the Atlantic Ocean from more mountainous terrain.

George Washington was a property owner in the area, and in his teens an early surveyor of property lines in the county. John Marshall grew up nearby, and became possibly the most important Supreme Court Justice of the United States, championing a “separate but equal” role of the Courts in US government. During the Civil War, the Town changed hands between the North and South a total of 67 times, and was described by the nickname “The Debatable Land.”

The town took its current name, Warrenton, exactly 200 years ago this year when it was incorporated, and is the County Seat of Fauquier County, home to court houses, and city and county government offices. It’s a small town that takes pride in its agricultural surroundings and the lack of industrial and developmental growth seen in areas to the northeast. But, it’s not foreign to the online world, and local government is increasingly using the Web to communicate with citizens of the region.

I recently tried to pay my water bill online through my Town’s web pages. The utility bill didn’t list the URL for my Town, so I searched at Google, found it, and clicked on a link to the site. Once there I saw an image with the text “MyTown click to login.” I had already registered with the site previously – it wasn’t the first time that I had paid my bill online.

I tried to login, believing that I had remembered my username and password correctly, and was given a screen that looked like I had successfully logged in. I clicked upon a link that would let me pay my bill, and was redirected back to a login screen. I tried logging in again, and received the same result. Undeterred, I tried again – and received the same result.

Uncertain about why I couldn’t get to the payment page, I clicked on a link to reset my password. I waited for an email, and in a short period of time received one that allowed me to change that password. I tried again, and still couldn’t pay my bill. I found a phone number on the site, and called. And got a message that the person I wanted to talk to was away from her desk. I left a message, and my call was returned within half an hour.

I was told that the problem I was experiencing was because I was trying to use the “.com” version of the Town’s web site, and that I needed to login from the “.gov” version of the site. I was tempted to ask at that point why there were two versions of the web site, but realized that the person I was talking to probably didn’t know.

I did ask if there was someone I could talk to about the problem I experienced, and was told that my best bet was to talk to the City Manager. I decided that I would write this blog post before I took that step, and then send a link to my City Manager, along with some information on how to use a redirect to point any other domains to just one working version of the site.

Why is there more than one version of the Town’s web site? The .com version of the site was ranking well in Google, and the .gov site wasn’t showing at all – likely filtered out of Google’s search results since it contained the same information as the other domain.

When I talked to the person who helped me, the problem was identified as me mistakenly using the wrong website. The problem was actually that there were at least two websites, and one didn’t work correctly. It’s a problem that shouldn’t have existed. The Town should have chosen one web address for the site that works, and redirected any other URLs for the site to that version. The URL for the site should have also been listed on the Town’s bill.

Because there were at least two sites, and because the correct one wasn’t listed on the bill, I ended up spending almost an hour paying a $14 bill, and wasted the time of someone at the Town who had to call me back to help me pay my bill.

I suspect that I’m not the only person who has experienced this problem.

Seriously, Pick a Domain and Stick to It

In collecting links to local government web sites, I searched for “virginia city web sites” on Google. The search results started off with a number of links to individual cities, some directory type sites that listed links to city sites, and an official page from the Commonwealth of Virginia listing Virginia Counties, Cities, and Towns.

The Commonwealth list made me wonder if there was really a need for me to collect addresses for local web sites. At least I wondered that until I started visiting some of the City sites and noticed that a number of the links brought me to old versions of City sites, or 404 “not found” pages.

How did I know that they were older versions?

They said so at the tops of their pages, and included a link to the “new” versions of their sites. Rather than using a permanent redirect to point to the new versions of their sites, they told me instead that their sites had “moved,” and I should update my bookmarks.

When they decided to change the web addresses for their sites, I guess the easiest way for them to let people know was to include some text at the tops of their pages that they had moved. Or to just remove the old site completely. Redirecting traffic to the new versions of the site would lead people directly to their new pages, but it was a step that many didn’t take.

A good practice when you change the address of your pages is to identify links to the old versions and change the links that you have control over to the new address. If there are some important links to your site, from sources such as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s web site, it doesn’t hurt to contact them and let them know about the new address as well. It’s a little like contacting the Post Office when you move to a new home.

Searching at the major search engines for new addresses for some of the missing towns hasn’t been very effective in leading me to the new addresses for their sites. Fortunately, some of the commercial directories that list towns and cities in Virginia do have some updated addresses, though they also list some old addresses for some local government sites as well.

Is this Really the Official Site?

When I visited some town sites, I wondered whether those pages were actually from the governments of the towns listed. Some towns used .com or .us top level domains instead of .gov. Some looked more like commercial sites linking to businesses in their communities rather than sites from the governments of those communities. Perhaps there should be some official registry of local government web sites, and some kind of “trust” seal that they could display identifying them as being official government sites.

On the Virginia Commonwealth page I linked to above is the following message:

Any community which does not currently have information included in this area easily can participate; simply send an e-mail request to webmaster@virginiainteractive.org and include the URL of any or all relevant sites with community information.

I think it’s great that the Commonwealth site allows local governments to “participate,” and list their sites. I’m wondering if it would be a better approach to require those local goverments to register an official URL when they put their sites online, and to provide an update when they change their address.

I’m also wondering why I don’t see town web sites listed in Google Maps when I search for towns in there. Perhaps Google is running into some of the same problems I am in associating town web sites with those towns. I may have to make a Google My maps map in the future listing the local government web sites that I find on a map of Virginia.

Conclusion

At this point, my research is still in the stage where I’m trying to find every local Virginia goverment web site that I can.

That research has been hindered by the fact that some of the sites have more than one domain name, others have new domains that are hard to find, some are just hard to find possibly because of a lack of links to them from anywhere else on the Web, and some are difficult to identify as official local government web sites once I do find them.

I’ve been reading a number of papers and pages and sites that provide best practices for government sites, as well as a number of others that identify some of the best of the government sites. I’ll likely be sharing many of those in future posts. I’ve created an SEO for Government category on this site to make it easier to find past and future posts involving government web sites. Some of those approaches could benefit sites of all kinds, and not just government pages.

One of the practices that appears in many recommendations is for a site to provide an easy way to contact the people who run it, so that they can make suggestions for improvements and changes, a way to share those suggestions with other visitors, and a place for feedback on the changes to be published. It would be nice to see more local government sites providing such opportunities.

I’m also interested in hearing from others about their local government web sites – the things they do right as well as the things that they do wrong. Please let me know in the comments below, or use my contact form. Thanks.