What should you do? Is this a good idea?  Is it a scam?  What in the world do you get out of a link exchange?

First, the why: this is an old tactic used since the 90′s to try to promote a website – an early Internet marketing technique.  With today’s SEO, building links to your website (links from other websites that bring traffic to yours) is an important element.   But be wary of invitations to exchange links.

Here are my basic recommendations:

• If the email sounds canned, it probably is.  A lot of “Internet spammers” use automated programs to send thousands of these invites to any site they can find.  And sometimes the sites offering a link to you are not incredibly legitimate or note worthy.
• If you do not know or love the website offering the link, it probably isn’t worth considering.  In fact, that website might even be a competitor.
• If you do know and love the website, or if they are respected in your industry or well known to have high traffic (let’s say the official Pizza Hut website offered you a link), consider it.
• Instead of exchanging links with a website you don’t know (a cold invite) why not link to sites that belong to companies you do actually partner with and refer with?
• If you do accept a link exchange with any site, make sure the link is present on their website before you add one to your site.  And check back somewhat regularly to ensure they keep your link on their website. (If they roll it off in a few weeks – take the link you posted down. It’s only fair.)

Is this kind of email always a bad idea? Well, no.

There are still some legitimate, committed webmasters who manually select particular websites (maybe related to similar subjects or industries) to personally invite to link build with.  There might be some good efforts here and maybe their own website really is well-ranked or has some decent traffic.  (A link on a higher ranked website could have more weight and bring you some “SEO juice”.)

In most cases, you can ignore and delete an email you receive to post a link to someone’s website.  There are other ways to build quality legitimate links to your own website and gain traffic – including writing and guest writing blogs, articles, and press releases.

You can also leave helpful comments on other blogs that you read.  Feel free to leave comments here, but no spammy stuff of course!

Though it is a useful resource, if you don’t know how to configure your email settings on your Ipad or Iphone, then that leaves you without a very valuable weapon in your business arsenal.

Fortunately for you,  WEBii offer both video and screen shot tutorials for how to configure your Idevices to receive emails from your WEBii email accounts.

You can check out our Ipad tutorial video, as well as our other webtutorials by clicking here.

Our support page also offers screen shots to go along with the video tutorial and you can view them here.

We hope that this helps, and if you need further assistance, we are always happy to help.

The same goes for SEO activity. Focusing content on key words or referencing current events along with your business, can direct traffic to your website. Having knowledge of what keywords will help your business’s web presence grow is a great start.

If you were to go to a search engine and type in a word relevant to your company’s industry and the area you are located, is your site in one of the top three spots, or even on the first page? If not, you may want to consider asking yourself what are they doing that I am not?

More likely than not, they are better utilizing SEO. One tool that may help garner better results is by starting and maintaining a blog. Blogs are effective on two fronts, not only do they generate traffic if they are keyword rich, but they also grant your customers a glimpse into your business, personality, and ideas. 

Even though search engines ultimately determine where your site is ranked, remember that they are not the ones who support your business. Always keep in touch with customers, old and new, so that you will grow on and offline.

A great way to get in touch with Webii is through our Facebook page @ http://www.facebook.com/webiinet. ‘Like’ us today!

If you have any questions regarding SEO, we will be happy to answer them and provide a free evaluation and proposal for your website!

Looking to increase traffic to your business? Well, Summer is over and school is back in session meaning a gargantuan amount of opportunity to appeal to a massive audience for your business through social networking websites. While Twitter and Google+ present great opportunities for reaching your customers directly, Facebook is still king when it comes to social networking. Establishing and maintaining your own Facebook page will lure and inform more consumers about your business. While Facebook should not be your only outlet to customers, it is a great way to attract the interest of new clients from all walks of life. With the collegiate back in session, students are looking for your business to deviate the stress of being back in the grind of school/work.

Why market to college students through Facebook? istrategylabs.com concocted a report about the growth of users on Facebook from 2010-2011. The most significant statistic is the growth in college students (or those who network through their university’s title), an influx of about 234% (from 3.5 million to 11.7 million). If this trend continues, Facebook can become a frontier for your business. College students are the fastest growing users on social networking sites which yields a plethora of potential customers/clients for the remainder of this year and beyond.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ present an infinite amount of opportunity for your business to connect directly to customers old and new. These sites are constantly growing, adding hundreds to thousands of new members per day making it a prime opportunity for businesses willing to keep up appearances. Promote towards the college student by updating your status (or “tweeting”) regularly about news regarding something new at the company. This is also a prime venue for advertisement. With the “like” feature on Facebook and the “reTweet” on Twitter , customers are able to publicly show their interest in your business. Once they do this, your business can be seen by all their friends, a kind of “word-of-mouth” scenario. Since the average Facebook user has around 130 friends and most people check their profile daily, your business can expand significantly through a simple “like.” If social networking seems daunting, just think of it as an email with personality and watch your profile flourish.

You can still manage other “blogs” on separate websites, which will help with your link building strategy (good organic SEO).

A house, but not a very good house.

Probably a building, maybe with 4 walls, but probably in danger of falling down and made of foil and Lincoln Logs.

Knowing the importance of good shelter for my family, I will refrain from building my house.  Instead I will trust quality construction and real estate experts. Because, that is their profession.

Web development is a profession, too.  It is a neat one, and rather trendy, which is why so many folks like to try their hands at it.  But just like building dwellings, it takes experience and on-the-job training to build a quality website.

Is it important to get your website online? Absolutely.  Do you have access to do-it-yourself tools? Probably.  But if building websites and learning “clean” coding techniques is not how you spend most of your time, your website is likely to look like a result of “spare time”.

Here are just a few reasons to hire a good professional web designer like WEBii:

• We won’t put your website project on the back-burner, behind all of your clients
• We will probably code your website using seo-friendly techniques
• Your website won’t be a replica of the 100 other websites that used “that template”
• Your website will be an efficiency tool for your business, instead of an excuse
• You won’t avoid printing your website address on your business card

If you have started your website because you know it is important to have one, kudos.  But before you get in too deep and start making excuses, consider the importance of a website that was made professionally.

Styling this link is quite easy with a little CSS.

Add the following style class to your stylesheet (in your theme):

.cart .totals .checkout-types li {/*my awesome styles go in here*/ }

In one Magento Setup, I created a graphic button background similar to that “big orange checkout button” and included it in this style class.  (Of course you would only want to do this if you are not using one-page checkout, because then you just have 2 duplicate looking buttons on top of each other.) If preferred, you can include the text label on your button graphic and disguise the default text label (which is quite long) with your CSS.

A simple dress-up without modifying any core Magento files.

Magento is one of the many feature-rich shopping cart softwares that WEBii works with to develop customized e-commerce websites for small and medium-sized businesses.  Learn more about our e-commerce services.

Check out the video interview below. You’ll learn about WEBii, get advice on website development and design, and understand why it’s important for a business to have a website.

WEBii and Structural Environments are both in the business of building – though, we build websites, and they build sustainable, environmentally-friendly homes and offices. Connect with Structural Environments online to learn more about their services. You can view other videos on their website or YouTube Channel.

But wait – do not click on that link.

Yes, this is yet another disappointing scam email.  It’s not really from Twitter.  It’s not really a nice message about how amazing your tweets are.  It’s someone who wants you to click on a link to spur some type of negative consequence.

For safety, delete the suspicious “Twitter” email notice, and just visit your Twitter page directly in a web browser.  If you truly have messages and re-tweets waiting for you, they will be there.

Now, you can see the search results changing as you are typing in your search keywords.

This week, Google launched another new feature, “Instant Preview,” which allows you to see individual websites before you actually visit them. When you click or hover over the magnifying glass that appears next to each search result, a screen shot of the web page will appear on the right side of the search results page. This allows you to see the website’s content, before you decide to actually visit the page.

Instant Previews allow you to compare search results, so you can choose which one is right for you. They also help you pinpoint the most relevant content, as the search terms you enter will be highlighted on the web page in the preview.

According to the Google blog,

“people who use Instant Previews are about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click. The previews provide new ways to evaluate search results, making you more likely to find what you’re looking for on the pages you visit.”

The Instant Preview is the next step in search engine evolution – making searches faster, easier, and more relevant.