One really important set of statistics is "Sources" - how do people find your website?

Generally speaking, these break down into the following categories:

1. Direct / bookmark. That is any way someone reached your website other than by clicking on a link on a website.

It is a bit too general as, for example, it includes people clicking on links in emails (unless they are viewing the email in a browser). So if you are doing email broadcasting, you need to find a way to measure how many people are getting to your website from each different broadcast.

2. Searches. How many visitors came from searches? And from what search engines and what search terms did they use? If you are running click ads (paid search listings), how many were paid versus organic (free)?

3. Directory listings. There are several types of directory listings including the various online yellow pages, directories specific to a particular business category or geographical area, free and paid listings. Some of these can be major sources of traffic to your site as well as helping your search engine rankings (but only the free listings help SEO).

4. Online ads. If you're running online ads such as on blogs or Facebook or elsewhere, how much traffic are these producing?

5. Publicity. Links from newspaper, radio, TV or magazine websites and blogs can generate huge amounts of traffic. They may not have a link so may show as coming from searches, in which case you have to use other data to figure out where the traffic is coming from or how much traffic it is.

The classic is a huge spike in traffic from one geographical area that lasts a day or so. Traces to an article in that area's major daily newspaper.

6. Other links. A site can be so popular that it accumulates hundreds or even thousands of links from other websites, just people who like your site and are recommending it. This can be from blogs, social networking sites like Facebook, hobbyist or fan sites, etc. etc. And they can generate lots of traffic and improve your PR (Page Rank) and increase your search engine rankings.

You can see that telling where your traffic is coming from is not necessarily a simple exercise. With a good web statistics program, you can get the raw data you need to figure it out. Over time, you can get a good command of what is happening, and that is the key to making improvements.

This is not just something "nice to do". It is essential to making a success of Internet Marketing.

Getting high search engine rankings is a key step to success for many websites.

But it is only the first of several steps, any one of which can make high rankings useless:

1. Are these search terms important? High rankings for search terms no one searches for, or where the searchers are looking for something completely different than you offer, are just numbers.

2. What does your listing say? The title, snippet (description) and website address displayed all influence how likely someone is to click on your link. Your listing is the exact equivalent of an advertisement. It is also competing against 9 or more other listings.

3. What PAGE has the highest ranking for the search term? If it isn't the best page for these searchers, a high percentage of them will immediately leave even if they do click through to your website.

4. How well does the page then handle your visitors? The first barrier to overcome is getting someone to click through to another page in the site.

5. How well does the rest of the site handle your visitors?

6. Do you provide sufficient and smooth opportunities for the visitor to take action (contact you, sign-up for something or make a purchase)? A poor contact form or clumsy checkout process can all by itself waste most of your efforts.

Every one of these points is vital to success. Every one of them should be carefully examined and worked on regularly to improve.

This is how to get rich on the Internet.

Every once in a while I discover a REALLY BASIC point I've never blogged on.

Here's one.

YOU CAN'T MARKET IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE TRYING TO REACH.

In case this is not completely obvious, let me give you an exaggerated instance. If you don't know what country you are marketing to, how will you know what language your copy should be in? You end up with an advertisement in Russian running in a French magazine.

How can you decide what a marketing item should look like, what you should say, even what venue to use to get your message out, if you haven't determined who your target market is?

You can't.

Now when I say you need to know who your target market is, that starts with demographics:

Podiatrists located in major metropolitan areas Teenage girls from middle-income families
Napoleon Dynamite fans
Businesses with 100-2000 offices in the U.S.

That's far from the end of it: What are their likes and dislikes? What do they read? What kinds of searches do they do online? Who do they trust?

If you can't answer those kinds of questions, some market research is in order.

But the first question that has to be answered is: WHO are you trying to reach and influence to buy your product or service.

Google is constantly refining their search functions and results. They've now announced two changes of interest:

1. More useful related searches:

Starting today, we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

2. Longer "snippets" (the description in the results listing):

When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.

One of the FIRST things you need to know in order to do effective Internet Marketing is how to view and use web analytics (website statistics) to see how you are doing and where / what improvements are needed.

One VERY useful tool is "bounce rate" which is usually defined as the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.

That definition is very applicable to what is called "landing pages" - a page which is intended to be the entry point to your site of certain traffic, such as visitors who click on a particular email ad, or who are looking for a certain product.

There is another definition of bounce rate which is more generally useful. That is simply the percentage of "exits" from a page versus the number of page views. In other words, what percentage of the time is this the last page viewed by a visitor.

The more pages someone visits on your site, the more likely they are to turn into a lead or a sale.

So any page that is leaking too many visitors is worth looking at.

Our first target is any page with a bounce rate of 40% or higher.

There are several reasons why you could have such a high bounce rate:

1. It is an entry page for worthless traffic. For example, we have a client who is a book printer. He has a page that lists "standard book sizes." This page shows up #1 on Google searches for that phrase, so the site gets visitors from all over the world who aren't prospects for printing; they just want to know about book sizes.

That can distort web statistics. We've taken pages like that down, if they didn't contribute to the site's effectiveness. You can also use a "no index" tag that tells Google to ignore the page.

It can also be an issue if the traffic is coming from click ads. You're paying for that worthless traffic. It means you need to refine your click ad campaign.

2. Sending traffic to the wrong page. If visitors are coming from a valuable search term, but landing on a badly chosen page, a lot of them will immediately leave. A good example is landing on a glossary page rather than your home page or a page about the service or product they are searching about.

3. If it is a contact page, a high bounce rate isn't necessarily a bad thing. You got what you were looking for, IF they filled out the contact form. So the key number for a contact page is the percentage of contact forms actually filled out and sent, compared to total views of that page. If it's low (we like to see at least 20%) you'd better look into what's wrong with your contact page.

4. A page that badly handles legitimate prospect visitors. There are lots of ways this can happen, so if you've eliminated the other possibilities, it's time to take a close look at the page. Is it confusing? Boring? Doesn't answer prospects' concerns or questions?

Your analysis complete, take the appropriate action. Then check the stats again and see how you did. Repeat as needed.

Voila! A more effective website!

I've commented more than once on the importance of having a good website statistics program and I've talked about the advantages and disadvantages of a few different programs.

I've never written about specific statistics and how to use them. So here are a few tips.

One of the most important uses is to monitor increases and decreases in visits to your website over time, and generally where they come from.

This is best viewed on a monthly basis. Daily or even weekly stats don't mean much. There's too much variation. Weekly stats are useful for monitoring the effects of intermittent events (you can see the weekly spike from the once a month email broadcast).

If your efforts aren't increasing total visits to your website, you need to change something. That is the broadest possible measure of the success of your promotional efforts.

Total visits breaks down two ways. The first is "unique visitors" versus "monthly uniques" or "new visitors" or "repeat visitors." Most good stats programs count "unique visitors" rather than just "visits". This doesn't count twice if someone visits your site twice in the same day.

In most cases, the more important breakdown is by how they found your site: "Bookmark or direct" (meaning they got to your website some other way than by clicking on a link on another website), "Organic search", "Paid search", "Links/Directories" (meaning they clicked on a link other than a search engine), and "Other" are the main categories we use. You can see where your increases or decreases are coming from and take action.

We're also interested in page views per visit. The more pages someone views on your site, the more likely the visit will turn into a lead or sale. Amount of time (seconds or minutes) spent on site doesn't mean much as visitors could have left a window open on your website for hours and never looked at it.

These are the broadest statistics. There is a great deal more detail a good statistic program provides, that can help you improve your website and your marketing.

I've referred to this previously but it is worth punching up as its own point.

Art is an important part of marketing, but sometimes people think that's all there is to marketing or that art is the most or only important part.

Art is an extremely important part of marketing, to a point where if the art isn't good, the marketing will often fail.

Art can make the person stop and look. We've all seen commercials and ads that do that.

It can incline the person towards buying your product and service, as in a terrific looking car (or woman).

The curves may get you interested but you still want to know what's under the hood.

Art alone doesn't close the deal. There has to be a message there.

Great marketing USES great art to get the right message across to the right individuals in the right venue.

SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the pages displayed by a search engine such as Google when you do a search.

These days they combine several things. Here's a brief explanation of what you see after a Google search (Yahoo is very similar):

1. At the top and on the right you'll usually see "sponsored links". These are the "pay-per-click" or "cost per click" ads, what Google calls AdWords. Advertisers bid on position against other advertisers for different search terms and their maximum bid amount, plus a quality rating Google assigns, determines the ad position. This is the main source of revenue for Google. Most people skip the click ads though and use the organic search results (70% or more), in part because the amount of information in these ads is very limited. Plus people know the advertisers are buying, not earning their position.

2. Below that, if you are doing a search which Google recognizes as "local" (such as "plumbers Tampa") it will you show you a small map and listings of local businesses in that category. This is Google's version of an online Yellow Pages, which they call Google Maps. The listings give only contact information about the business and there's no real way to control how high you show up in these listings. Also Google can't always tell if you are doing a local search or not.

3. Below that are the "natural" or "organic" search engine results, the top 10 most important most relevant sites to your search according to Google. These are the most used and most valued results on the page, in part because they display the most information about the web page to help them pick out what they are looking for.

4. Google now includes some other types of material such as videos in with the organic search results. This is new, within the last year, and we are likely to see more of this type of thing as time goes on.

In some ways, Google is like a TV network. The viewers (searchers) don't pay the TV network. The advertisers do. With Google, it's "sponsored links" - the paid listings along the top and right side of the page.

But the advertisers are willing to pay only based on the TV network (or Google) bringing viewers to the screen (page).

And that means providing a visitor experience that brings people back to the network (search engine).

So Google's major effort is to provide searchers the best possible experience. And that means trying to serve up to them exactly what they are looking for - no matter what and how they search. Google has gotten very good at this - distinguishing sites with real content, the important from the unimportant and figuring out on a totally automated basis what a page is about.

There are technical details as to how Google does this, that we are aware of and utilize to ensure a site gets its just rankings.

But the heart of it - as Google itself says over and over - is to provide real, useful, desired content on your pages.

So what determines your rankings when someone does a search? It comes down to two things:

1. Relevance.

2. Importance.

When Google examines a page, it is looking for what that page is about. It decides this based on a large number of factors, primarily based on the content of that page. If the page talks about apples, than it is about apples. It is not about oranges and no matter how important the page is, it is not going to come up in a search for oranges.

But, importance also matters. Again, Google bases its evaluation of importance on a wide variety of factors, including the size of the website (number of pages), how long it has been around, and what other websites have to say about it. Google calls this "Page Rank".

How then, does Google work?

Google (and other search engines) maintain computers with huge data bases (called "indexes") that are queried when you do a search. So they aren't searching the Internet in real time. Instead, they have "spiders" - automated programs - that scour the net, updating their indexes periodically.

Currently, Google reindexes the average site about every three weeks. It doesn't necessarily do the whole site all at once but might do one page one day and another the next. Some sites might be indexed much more often, even within minutes of changes being made.

There's a lot more to it, but those are the basics.

Now and then, a lousy visitor experience sends me on a rant. Yesterday, I attempted to pay my Verizon phone bill online. I ultimately succeeded, no thanks to Verizon.

A website should be user friendly.

Things should be easy and obvious.

Apparently Verizon has other priorities.

First of all, if you go to Verizon.net, you are invited to log-in. This does NOT allow access to bill payment. You have two different logins, one for account, another for email administration. This one only allows handling of your email.

I never have found the login for bill payment from their main site. I had to do a Google search on "Verizon bill payment" to find it! You have to go to www22.verizon.com. The login is then hidden amongst a number of text links.

If you click on "login" rather than "pay my bill", you're take to a screen where it is again difficult even to find the "pay my bill" link, hidden in the middle of a list of minor functions.

In logging in, I was told current billing information wasn't available. Presumably that meant I couldn't pay the bill right now. On a chance, I clicked on "pay bill" anyway (once I finally found it) and discovered that the reason current billing information wasn't available was because before it would display it, it was going to make me choose a secret question.

I then had to validate my login by email, not just by clicking on a link but entering a 3 digit code and reentering login and password information.

Finally I get to bills payment, where it displays not the current amount due but amount as of the last billing date THEN warns you if you are now paying a different amount than you owed at that time (but describes it as "amount due").

I believe the Bush administration could have used this as an effective "enhanced interrogation technique."

You've picked out and registered your URL. Now what?

Getting your website designed and built, of course.

Then you have to launch it. Put on the Internet so people can actually see it.

To do that, your website has to be placed on a special computer called a hosting server which connects to the Internet and serves up your website when someone types in the URL.

The service that provides this is called "hosting" or "website hosting" and is usually provided on a rental basis with a monthly fee anywhere from free to hundreds of dollars per month.

Unless you have a LOT of visitors (thousands a day), you'll want a "shared hosting service" where you are on a computer with many other websites. This is as opposed to a "dedicated server" where yours is the only website on that machine, which is of course a lot more expensive.

The other basic question is Windows versus Unix hosting - the two types of operating systems found on hosting servers. We recommend Unix.

But with literally thousands of hosting services out there, how do you choose one? Generally, you get what you pay for. There are usually reasons why a service is cheap. These are some of the key questions to ask:

1. How reliable is the service? You want your website to be "up" (accessible) nearly all the time (don't count on perfect).

2. How good is their tech support? If your website is at all important to you, you want 24/7 tech support which is also responsive and helpful. This is far from true with all hosting services.

3. Also they should have a control panel that lets you do a lot of things yourself such as adding email addresses. Two widely used control panels are "cPanel" and "Plesk" - both excellent.

4. Most hosting services provide virtually unlimited email addresses. Most limit email service in other ways. For example, they may have a limit on the number of "concurrent connections" meaning the number of people who can be logged on to their email at the same time. There are almost always limits on the number of emails you can send within a certain amount of time. Make sure they provide what you need in the way of email services.

5. What special capabilities does your website require? These can include support for particular scripting languages parts of your website may be coded in (such as PHP or Cold Fusion), particular types of data bases such as MySQL, shopping carts such as Miva Merchant, blogging software like WordPress, etc.

Your website designer should be able to help you with these issues.

As discussed yesterday, it is no longer true that you have to do something - "submit your site to the search engines" - to get indexed or re-indexed by Google and others.

Nevertheless there are situations where you want Google to index or re-index your website or a new page sooner rather than later.

This is true when you do a whole new site. Also if you have a blog you may want to make sure your new postings get indexed as soon as possible, particularly where postings are time sensitive.

What can you do about this?

Submitting a site map is the usual solution for a new or completely redone site. Google, MSN and Yahoo (the big three of search engines) have established a common protocol. You can read about how to do this at www.sitemaps.org.

Many blogging programs such as Movable Type and WordPress have facilities for "pinging" search engines - notifying them of updates to your blog.

If your blog is on Blogspot, all you need to do is check the options to allow "site feeds" and "allow search engines to index."

Also weblogs.com and Technorati are services you can use to inform search engines manually or by setting up to automatically ping them when you make changes to your blog.

You've all seen "Break-Out Quotes" or as they are often called "Pull Quotes."

They are the punchy excerpt from a testimonial or copy, the key quote that distills down to a few words what you want the prospective buyer to know.

You place them on the web page, brochure, postcard or other marketing piece, larger than other copy and prominently placed.

If the reader doesn't read anything else, they'll read the break-out quotes and at least get the basics of the message you are trying to communicate.

"Throwaway copy" is a term we use here for copy that is completely ineffective. It might as well not be there.

It's "throwaway" because it produces the same response in a reader that most junk mail does.

What makes copy throwaway material? Most amateur copywriters write what they THINK copy is supposed to be like, usually imitating someone else. It's trite and B-O-R-I-N-G. It doesn't speak to the people you are trying to sell.

It's like the classic Far Side cartoon of what a dog gets out of a human's lecture. The only word they hear is their name.

Every time I see a mission statement on a website or in a brochure or on the wall of a waiting room, I cringe.

NO ONE CARES.

If you are going to sell people or even interest them, you have to talk about what they care about. Not what YOU care about.

So put yourself in your prospects' shoes. What would interest you?

A question from a reader:

I thought i saw on a previous posting (I could not find it again) that you said when one makes a blog post that they should ping the search engines right away. I thought i heard that that was not necessary with a Blogger blog. Is that true? If not, how would you recommend pinging the search engines? Thanks!

Actually, I said I was going to talk about making sure your blog gets into the search engines. I never did, so let me rectify the error.

You don't have to do anything to get your blog postings into the indexes. These days, the major search engines will pick you up and index and periodically reindex your blog.

The only question is how fast your new postings get picked up. Google reindexes the typical site about every three weeks. It can be a lot more often, there are pages Google re-indexes within minutes after changes are made.

The speed of re-indexing is based on Google's judgment of how often a page changes and how important it is.
Definitely, Google is moving more and more in the direction of faster updates for the whole Internet.

So, the only question is really, what if you want to get a page indexed or re-indexed faster? Answers to that tomorrow.

I don't know if he really said it, but it is a perfect sentiment for these times: “I was asked what I thought about the recession. I thought about it and decided not to take part.” - Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, in 1980.

Desperation is not a good basis for marketing decisions.

In the last weeks I've seen many signs of desperation.

I get calls and emails from people desperately seeking ways to make money with no clear idea of what to do and no budget.

I've also been contacted by many people promoting the latest fishy get-rich-quick schemes, hoping to take advantage of desperate or terrified businessmen.

Sometimes one person manages to fit in both groups. They joined some fishy get-rich-quick networking marketing scheme and are now desperately trying to get others to join so they can make some free money.

Guess what folks:

We aren't all going to die. We are not going into a depression. The economy has contracted by 2%. That's two percent. Unemployment has increased by 3-4%. That's three or four percent.

If your business is struggling, the first thing you need to do is greatly increase your marketing. So don't get desperate! Get busy!

There are a wide range of solutions to running an online store.

These range from not really having a store of your own at all (such as selling things on eBay, or through Amazon.com), to a fully customized website and online store which takes credit cards and looks and functions exactly the way you want it to.

There are many inexpensive to moderately-priced solutions in between these.

The more professional the store, the better it will work. Meaning the higher percentage of visitors who end up buying.

But, almost always, the biggest issue is getting visitors to your site in sufficient number.

Across a wide range of industries and products, we have seen a rough rule of thumb of 1%. In other words, maybe 1 in every hundred visitors will make a purchase. That is very rough, it can be considerably higher or lower.

The point is that it takes a LOT of visitors to make a viable online store.

If you want to have a successful online business, the first thing you should do is work out a REALISTIC plan for getting a lot of visitors to your site.

One sure way to make your business look small or technologically challenged is to use email addresses at an ISP rather than your own personalized domain.

Worst is email addresses at free ISPs like Hotmail, AOL, Gmail and Yahoo.

One reason for having a website is the image you present to the world. And part of that is your email address.

Virtually all hosting services provide email accounts for free. Make sure you utilize them.

There are actually FOUR completely different skill sets needed to build a good, effective website.

1. Computer Programming.

2. Graphic Design.

3. Marketing Know-How.

4. Internet Marketing.

Without all four, your website will be at best a partial success. Let me explain:

First, a website is really a sort-of computer program, so your website designer needs to know the technical aspects of making sure your website functions correctly. These days, that is less of a problem than it once was. Way back in the ancient Internet days around 1997, someone had to be an expert computer programmer to produce a website. Of course, since expert computer programmers are rarely good artists, that made for some really ugly websites, some of which are still around.

These days “authoring tools” handle most of the technical aspects. One way to tell if you have a professional web designer is, does he use professional web design tools? Probably over 90% of all professionals use a program called Dreamweaver.

Even with Dreamweaver, someone ignorant of the technical aspects of the web and web design, can easily turn out a technically incompetent website. For example, it isn’t difficult to produce a website that is invisible to search engines – depending on how it is built. Meanwhile, a site that looks identical might be very search engine friendly.

The second vital talent is graphic design. A website should look good – it should even be a work of art in and of itself, that makes a visitor go "ooh" and "ah". That artistic appeal is a function of the designer’s artistic sense and training and his skill in using the modern day tools of graphic design – highly complex and sophisticated programs such as Photoshop. Most professional web designers started out as graphic artists.

Unfortunately, far from all graphic artists are competent in the technical aspects. Every web designer claims to be an expert in search engine optimization (SEO). Few actually are, with many designers knowing only a few things about how to build a site for optimum SEO – and those often wrong or out-of-date. There’s lots of bad information out there.

The third piece of know-how is the one most designers are weakest in: Marketing. Websites usually have a marketing purpose – to sell a potential buyer, to create interest in your product or service, to build trust to a point where someone will pick up the phone. Confusing navigation, poorly written home page copy - there are many ways to waste your visitors. If marketing skill isn’t applied to the creation of a website, at best you end up with a pretty site that works properly – but doesn’t make the phone ring.

And that puts them in the same category as all the memorable, award-winning TV commercials that never sold a single car, beer or got someone to go see a movie. The fact that giant corporations can waste millions of marketing dollars isn’t much of a consolation when you find your website isn’t bringing in the customers. At least if you are a General Motors you know the US Government won't let you go bankrupt without bailing you out (or maybe it will....).

Finally, when you have a great site, you still have to drive traffic to it. For most sites, that takes expert Internet marketing, which includes SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as the most important aspect, but also can include "click ads" (paid ads on Google and the like), publicity, etc. It can be summarized under the term "Internet Presence." In short, if someone is looking for you, or someone like you, how likely are they to find your website?

Your best guarantee of a successful website is making sure that whoever and however they are supplied, that all four of these areas of know-how are well executed.

These days, every business needs a successful website.

Having seen every possible error in domain registration and management, it's worth listing out the errors and best practices.

1. Register the domain yourself. You need to be the owner of record of the domain. Otherwise, you don't own it. Period.

2. Use only registrars directly licensed by ICANN (you can look this up if any question). Otherwise you really don't know WHO you are registering your domain with.

3. Make sure that your correct email address is listed. Registrars will notify you, usually multiple times starting 90 days before a domain expires, so you know to pay for another year.

4. Register for one year at a time. You can pay for multiple years but I don't recommend it. Are you sure you'll have the same email address 10 years from now? Remember your password or where you wrote it down?

5. Have another notification email going to someone else you can trust. With our clients we make sure we are the "admin" contact. We also get notified when a URL registration is up for renewal. That's enabled us many times to prevent a registration from expiring.

6. That your URL is up for renewal is publicly available information, so you can expect to get emails and letters from OTHER domain registrars pretending to be your registrar to try to get you to switch your registration to them.
So know who you are actually registered with.

7. If your registration does expire, your website will be taken down, usually immediately. You will, however, have a grace period of 45 days or less before anyone else can buy the domain name and during which you can still renew it.

There are a few important rules for picking a URL:

1. It should be as short as possible.

2. It should be memorable.

3. It should NOT be a generic description of what you do. "Yahoo" or "Google" is better than "searchengine.com"

4. In almost all cases, ".com" is better than another TLD. Exceptions: Non-profit organizations (or businesses that want to look like one) should use ".org".

5. Don't use a variation on the URL you want because it isn't available. If "fredhouse.com" isn't available, don't use "fredhouse.net", "fred-house.com" or "myfredhouse.com". Why? You'll send traffic to the other site and confuse people.

6. In most cases, don't even bother trying to purchase the already-registered URL you want. The owner probably wants a ridiculous amount for it.

7. A good rule of thumb for any naming, not just URL: check and make sure it isn't easily distorted and made fun of. Names one sound different than an obscenity or something disgusting are a bad idea.

It's worthwhile spending a little time figuring this out. After all, you are going to live with that URL for a long time.

Just in case there was any question on the Obama Administration's orientation and priorities.

This week, Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, announced that they were opposed to tax exemptions for the oil and gas industry, but instead intended to increase taxes on them, because of their contributions to global warming.

Not the EPA or the Energy Secretary.

The TREASURY Secretary.

In the midst of the biggest banking / finance crisis in 75 years.

You "purchase" a URL by registering it with a Domain Registrar.

This is any one of thousands of companies which are licensed directly or indirectly by ICANN - the International organization that runs the Internet naming system.

Registration fees are typically paid yearly and often run in the $10 to $15 a year range.

Whoever has registered a URL, controls it. So never let someone else register a domain name for you.

We recommend using a company that is directly licensed by ICANN. We use 000Domains because it is inexpensive, their control panel is easy to navigate, and they provide all the services someone might need from a domain registrar.

One thing you can typically do with a domain registrar is to find out if a URL is available or not. Just typing in the address won't do, as someone might own the address but not have a website up for it.

The core service provided by your domain registrar is to tell the whole Internet WHERE your website is located. A website has to be hosted - meaning somewhere it is on a special kind of computer called a hosting server, which connects to the Internet. It is your domain registrar which sends out the information world-wide as to where that is. But you have to tell it, which you can normally do from a control panel by changing the "name servers."

The other services your domain registrar should offer are Domain (URL) forwarding - if someone types in one website address, it brings up the second URL; and Email forwarding - same, but for email addresses.

We frequently get called on to help a client pick a URL or URLs for their website.

Here are the basics.

"URL" is short for "Uniform Resource Locator" which is a silly enough name. All it is, is your website's address. It is how computers all over the world can find your website.

A website address usually starts with "www" for world-wide web but these days you never have to type that. Your browser will fill it in automatically if needed.

It ends (after a ".") with 2, 3 or 4 letters which are the "TLD" or "Top Level Domain", such as ".com". Every country has its own TLD, like ".ca" for Canada. In addition, there are TLD's more oriented to what you do or are - most famously ".com" - for commercial, ".org" - for organization, and ".net" for Network.

There are no limitations on the use of .com, .org and .net. However, in most cases .com is your best choice because people in the U.S. usually assume that is what your website address ends in - and if you use something else, probably a lot of people are going to try to go to the wrong place.

Now that we've got that out of the way, how do you go about picking the best URL for your business? Tune in tomorrow for the answers.

When you're getting a website built, make sure you have planned ahead. Because getting a website built is only the start.

AFTER the site is built and launched, what then? Because the launch of a site is only the beginning. If you're serious about making your website work, work as well as possible, and to continue to work well for you, there are going to be changes.

Here are a few of the questions you should ask and answer to your satisfaction in deciding who will build your site and where it will be hosted:

1. How will I get changes to the website done?

2. Will the site be built to make SEO (Search Engine Optimization) easy or even practical?

3. Will it be easy or even possible to make changes to the look, navigation or other common elements?

4. Will it be easy to add pages?

5. How do I get email accounts added or changed?

Perhaps not all of these questions are important to you - but I wouldn't bet against it.

There are many solutions to getting a website built that don't serve these needs well. And there are many people peddling solutions which they claim are great for SEO, etc. etc.

It's usually easy to find out. Google it!

But you've got to start out being curious.

I don't mind. I know our work stands up to the test.

There is a lot of misinformation going around - some of it being peddled around - about Google and Yahoo local listings. Here are the facts:

1. Getting your business into the listings is easy. Just set up an account, submit your business and put in the information. You'll show up.

2. Making your business show up first, or high, is impossible. This is not like Search Engine Optimization where Google is trying to serve up the most relevant most important page for your search.

No one knows how Google decides where your listing will show up. There are hints of possibilities of ways to influence it. These are unconfirmed.

Definitely do not pay someone to get you "high local listings positions." For one thing, it certainly depends on where the person doing the searching is located.

And you could show up one time and not the next.

3. As in Organic Search, whether your listing shows up on certain searches or not depends on what Google or Yahoo thinks your business is about. Unlike normal SEO, you can directly tell them by what categories you put your business in. Like the print Yellow Pages, the categorizations tend to be confusing and it can be hard to find what is most appropriate. So spend some time looking at what companies show up in your key searches, and what categories they've put themselves in, how they describe themselves etc. And spend some time exploring the possibilities.

4. It's one thing to get into the listings. It's another to get someone to look at your listing. Unlike organic search or sponsored links (pay-per-click) your initial listing has no ad. It's just name and contact info. And REVIEWS. So get happy customers to write reviews.

5. Then well-worded descriptions, pictures, videos, etc. all contribute to the likelihood of someone acting on your listing - picking up the phone, going to your website, etc. So work on it.

6. The number of people who see and look at your listing is going to be relatively small, compared to your organic listings or perhaps click ads. But a very high percentage of them are going to be serious prospects. So it is well worth while putting some effort into your local listings.

If you are selling goods or services locally, one of the places you need to be is in Google and Yahoo's Local Listings. Google calls this Google Maps.

These are Google and Yahoo's version of online Yellow Pages. When you do a search that includes a geographical location, such as "Dentists Largo" you will usually see a little map and some brief listings for up to 10 local businesses in that category and location.

This is in addition and completely independent to the "organic search results" just based on Google's indexing of your website.

To show up - and show up CORRECTLY in these local listings, you need to set up an account for that purpose.

For Google that is their "Local Business Center" accessible through "Google Business Solutions" from Google's home page or via www.google.com/services.

For Yahoo go to http://listings.local.yahoo.com to set up an account. You can ignore their efforts to get you to pay for a listing. Just use the free option.

In both cases one of the most important steps is to choose the best categories to list your business under. So spend some time figuring this out.

I don't think I've made this clear enough.

Marketing is about emotion.

Effective marketing stirs the emotions.

This is so true that there is a recent strain of marketing that seeks to make people angry or disgusted. The philosophy is that at least they'll remember you.

Well, at least it's an emotion. But, of course, what you are really trying to do is stir positive emotions towards what you are trying to sell.

If you can do that, you can create response. Logic, rational arguments, facts, can support your marketing but they aren't the heart of it.

The old saying is you're selling the sizzle, not the steak.

This is true of all marketing, anywhere.

The Addy's are the American Advertising Federation's Oscars. They are awarded at local, regional and national levels in various categories.

Last night at the "Addy Bowl" at Raymond James Stadium, Fast Forward won a Tampa Bay Addy for our website, www.BeverageDeveloper.com.

Submissions were judged by a team of four nationally prominent Advertising Industry professionals.

Our website was the highest rated in the "HTML Business to Business website" category.

Now we go to the regional competition. Wish us luck!