I have a nice email address through my hosting provider, but I hate their webmail. Can I check my email in Gmail?

Yes! There are two ways to do this – one is to change the MX records through your host, but how you do that differs from one host to another, so if you want to go that route, call your host and ask them to walk you through it. These directions from Google can help: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=140034

The second way is to add the account to your gmail using POP3, for which I wil give you detailed directions below. In order to do this, you will need to know your email username (frequently it is the full email address itself), password, and the POP server. The POP server is usually mail.yourdomainnamehere.com – for example, if your email address is john@tacos.com, frequently the username will be john@tacos.com and the POP server will be mail.tacos.com

1. Login to Gmail
2. Up in the tippy-top right-hand corner, click on the icon of a gear and click on Mail Settings.
3. Click on the Accounts and Import link at the top.
4. Next to Check mail from other accounts (using POP3), click on Add a POP3 mail account you own.  A new window will pop up.
5. Enter the email address and click on Next Step.
6. Enter the email username (frequently the full email address).
7. Enter the password for that email address.
8. Enter the POP server (usually mail.yourdomainnamehere.com)
9. Check the box next to Label incoming messages . . .
10. Click Add Account.
11. Leave “Yes, I want to be able to send email as  . . . ” checked. Click on Next Step.
12. Verify your name is correct, leave the box checked and click on Next Step.
13. Leave Send through Gmail checked and click on Next Step.
14. Click on Send Verification.
15. What happens at this point is it sends an email to the email address you are adding to make sure it is really your email. You will need to log in to your host’s webmail and look for the verification email. Open it and click on the link in that email.

And you are done! All of your emails will now show up in your Gmail.

The post Ask Websy Wednesday : Check email with Gmail appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

I am a freelancer and have always just sent my customers Paypal invoices, but lately everyone wants to pay with a credit card. I also have trouble keeping track of who owes me what.

Dear Freelancer,

Thanks for writing to Ask Websy! I am going to tackle the second part of the questions first.

Sending invoices and tracking payments

I used to do this very old school. I made an invoice myself in InDesign (you might use Word or a similar program) and emailed it to the client. The could send me a check or, if they requested it, I would send them an invoice through Paypal. Then I had a spreadsheet where I kept track of due dates. This was fine when I just had a handful of clients, but as my business grew, it just became impossible and too stressful to keep up with.

My number 1 piece of advice is to use a professional invoicing system. Google “invoicing for freelancers” and you will see that there are a lot of options, with a lot of different pricetags (some are even free). I kicked the tires on a bunch of them (and I recommend you do, too) but the one I fell in love with was Freshbooks. It was designed specifically for freelancers, lets you input all of your clients, sends nice invoices by email, accepts payments by several different methods, and keeps track of when payments are late, sending out periodic reminders. It costs about $30 per month, but it more than makes up for that in saved time and speedy payments.

When you look at different programs, make sure you look to see what payment methods they can accept – many will only accept Paypal, and some don’t offer any kind of payment processing at all – they just create invoices.

Accepting Credit Cards

People CAN pay with a credit card through Paypal, but it always defaults to them using their account and has all kind of links trying to get people who don’t have an account to sign up for one. This can be a turn off.

Up until recently I was offering Paypal and Google Checkout. Google Checkout has the advantage over Paypal of being pretty straightforward credit card processing, however unlike Paypal, they REQUIRE people to sign up for an account to pay. It is also pretty buggy.

Then I found out that Freshbooks integrates with Stripe! Stripe is, I have to say, awesome. You cannot use it to send invoices by itself, but used with a system like Freshbooks, it is just about perfect. It’s free to sign up, no monthly fees, and the transaction fees are identical to Paypal’s. But your clients don’t have to sign up for any accounts—they never even leave your invoice system. They just enter their credit card info and BAM! Secure credit card processing made really really easy. 7 days later, the funds show up in your bank account, like magic.

I also still offer Paypal, and people can still mail me a check – the more options you can provide, the better.

Good luck!

The post Ask Websy : Credit Cards and Invoicing for Freelancers appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

Use the form below or in my handy dandy sidebar (over there >>>>) to ask your questions – completely anonymously! – and I will try to answer as many questions as I can every Wednesday. Be sure to follow me on Facebook to see if your questions have been answered!

Ask anything about:

• Starting a website
• Writing content
• SEO
• Social media
• Starting a small business
• Working with clients
• Etc

But I can’t help you with:

• Your love life
• Fashion advice
• How to deal with the in-laws
• Anything personal in nature.

That’s just not my bag.

Enter your question below!

The post NEW! Ask Websy Wednesday! appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

In Part 2, I told you why you need to focus on attracting people instead of driving traffic.

In Part 3, I discuss how having a blog can be great for SEO. Or not.

I highly recommend reading at least Part 1 and 2 before you jump to Part 4, because if you haven’t changed your mindset from “tricking Google” and changed it to “attracting customers,” then nothing I describe below will help you much in the end.

But if you have the content you need, you know who you are talking to and what they want, then there are things you can do to make it easy for Google to know what you have to offer, easy for people to share it, and ways to spread the word.

Pretend Google Is Stupid

Ok, so the people who work at Google, the engineers, the programmers, they are all pretty darn smart people. Their search algorithms are VERY sophisticated and understood by pretty much no one. But the robots that “read” your site are not people – you have to give them all of the clues you can to help them understand your web site.

There are some old SEO tricks that people employed for years, successfully, to make their sites rank better in Google. Things like keyword stuffing (filling a page with hundreds of keywords so Google would think that site was about all of those things), keyword domains (like lose-20-pounds-fast.com), trading links with hundreds of sites (I’ll link to you if you link to me!), and creating multiple websites with the same content and having them link to each other. Not only do these things no longer work – they can actually count against you and cause your site to not only fall further down in search results, but even in some case be removed from search results altogether. With a recent upgrade, thousands of sites saw themselves devalued by Google, because of using some or all of the tricks above.

But there are still lots of tried-and-true things you SHOULD do – not to trick Google, but to help it. These may be things you can do yourself if you are using a Content Management System, or they may be things you need to ask a web developer for help with.

1. USE TEXT! I love beautiful photos and graphics as much as the next girl – and think they are an important part of a great-looking site. But remember, Google is stupid – it can’t look at your photos and then deduct anything from that. It only reads the text. Yes, you can add “alt tags” to your images to tell Google what they are images of, but Google isn’t as interested in those as it is in the text people can see on the page. Making your text part of a graphic is just as bad – Google still can’t read it. As much as possible have actual text on the pages, and make it good.
2. Speak like your customers: If your web site is a highly technical one that only other highly technical people will read, then by all means, use your technical lingo. Otherwise, skip the buzz words, the lingo, and the fancy terminology and use your customers’ language. If you sell socks for dogs, call them “socks for dogs” and/or “dog socks” because that is what your customers will search for, and that is what Google will know your site is about. If you instead call them “canine pawsies” – that is what Google will decide your website is about; your potential customers won’t find you, because it is highly unlikely they will search for that phrase.
3. Unique Title Tags: Title tags are what appear at the very top of your browser window – above the address bar. They are also what Google shows in Search Results. Every page of your site should have a unique title (and I don’t mean “unique” like “Unicorn Farts” – I mean “unique” like each page has its own title, rather than every page of the site having the same title.) Title tags should be briefly and specifically descriptive of what that page is all about. This is a great place for keywords that are specifically relevant for that page.
4. Unique Description Tags: Description tags are what appear in Google Search Results as the description of the page. Every page of your site should have its own description that is specifically relevant for that page.
5. XML Sitemap: This is a file which is just for search engines. Sitemaps are an easy way to tell search engines about pages on the site as well as additional info about each URL (such as when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site).

There are a lot more, but those 5 are really crucial.

You have to think of Google as a marketing tool – not a marketing plan. You need a full toolbox to do the job right. Below are some other ways to spread the word.

Old School Marketing

What would you have done before the Internet to promote your business? Probably things like direct mail, buying advertising, sponsoring events, networking, car magnets, bumper stickers, elevator pitches, press releases  . . .  you should STILL be doing these kinds of things as much as time and budget will allow. Your web address should be prominently featured on every.single.thing that leaves your hands. This includes things that are of the Internet era, like email. Be creative, and look for opportunities everywhere!

Social Media

These days it seems like having a Facebook page is almost as important as having a website! Posting links on Facebook, Twitter, and Google + are easy, free ways to attract people to your site. Plus, by the way, Google gives a lot of weight to web pages that get a lot of attention on social media. You do have to take the additional time to promote these social sites, because if no one is following you on them – then your links won’t be seen by anyone.

Be an Expert

If you are an expert in your field—have real-life expertise that makes you an qualified source of info on the topic your web site covers—reach out to other web sites with similar audiences and offer to write guest blog posts. Comment on relevant blog posts (nothing spammy! Keep it relevant.) Make sure you include the link to your web site – people really do click on them if your comment is interesting.

The post SE-NO Part 4: Now what? appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

In Part 2, I told you why you need to focus on attracting people instead of driving traffic.

A large part of what was discussed in the above posts was about having relevant content on your site, and a blog CAN be a great way to deliver that content. But there are lots of caveats to that.

Will you make time?

If you are using a blog to not just deliver news, but to actually provide useful content and potentially help with search engines, then you need to do it consistently. One post every 6 months is not going to cut it. There is no magic formula, but if you can’t find the time to blog at least a few times a month, then just know that you are not going to build an audience, and you are not really providing much useful content.

Do you have anything to say?

Don’t blog just because someone told you that you have to for SEO. You have to have something useful to say, interesting to share, information to provide, entertainment to bestow. You should not just post random, rushed junk content to keep it updated. Quality content is much more important than quantity. If you sit down right now and can’t think of 3 or4 things off the top of your head that would be useful to share with your visitors, then you may not be able to provide enough quality content to make it worth the time.

Can you write?

Be honest with yourself here. You do not need to be a professional writer – but you should have some basic writing skills and be able to turn out interesting content. Or have someone on staff or hire someone who can. If people come to your site and read a blog post that is poorly written, it won’t reflect well on your business.

The best blogger is going to be someone who loves to write and can come up with interesting, informative content at least once a week. Note that I myself don’t post anywhere close to that often, but I am not really trying to build an audience or boost SEO. I write when I feel the itch and have something to share.

How to write it

I could write a long post about writing a great blog post for SEO, but I think the following article really covers it well, so I will not repeat it all here:

Blogging for SEO

But remember, first and foremost you must be providing useful, relevant content, or else the rest really doesn’t matter.

 Stay Tuned for Part 4: Now what?

The post SE-NO Part 3: Blogging for SEO appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

Who are you talking to?

I find one of the biggest problems people have when formulating their plan for a new website is that they don’t actually seem to know who the website is for. Remember – your website is NOT for you – it is for your potential customer.

So who is that? Imagine your ideal visitor. Who are they and why do they need what you have to offer? What are they looking for? Why are they looking for it?

For example, I recently had someone – let’s say she was a doctor (she wasn’t) – email about creating a site. We had several emails back and forth in which I asked a lot of questions trying to ascertain who her site was for and what she was going to offer them. But every response I got from her boiled down to “I need to be #1 in Google. Can you make me #1 in Google? You were #1 in Google so you must know how to make me #1 in Google. I just want to be #1 in Google.” She was not even considering who she wanted to find her site, what they might be looking for, and what she would offer to make sure her site was the best resource for that.  Nor was she interested in considering it. But without considering that, she would never in a million years have a shot at “being #1 in Google” (which as we have already determined, doesn’t mean anything anyway).

Even if she did manage to get a decent ranking by Google, it is likely that a high percentage of her site visitors would be people who weren’t looking for what she was offering, and would thus just leave. Getting traffic doesn’t help if the visitors don’t have a chance of becoming customers.

What’s their problem?

Every time you visit a website, you are trying to solve a problem. Sometimes the problem is just that you want to know a particular store’s phone number. But that’s not the kind of problem I am talking about, because in that case, you already know about the business, so it doesn’t matter what content they have, as long as they have a phone number. The problems I am talking about are things like:

• I have a weird green bump on my ankle!
• My baby never sleeps.
• I’m bored and need to read something funny.
• I really want a pair of vegan running shoes.
• I want to be learn more about this political issue.
• I need to lose 20 pounds.

Etc. If your website is only about you (your contact info, where you are located, why you are so great) then your website is not solving anyone’s problem, and thus is not going to be useful to anyone who doesn’t already know about you.

How can my website be useful to solve that problem?

Once you know who you are talking to and what their problem is, your goal should be being the ultimate useful source for solving that problem! This offers 2 big benefits:

1. People will share and tell others about your website because it is so useful.
2. You establish yourself as an expert who is uniquely qualified to help them.

If your website is full of useful, entertaining, and/or unique information – then people wil come to it again and again, they will share it with others, they will post it to Facebook, they will blog about it, and over time Google will start to see it as RELEVANT. This is called “organic” SEO, and is what Google is constantly trying to refine its algorithms for – ranking sites based on how relevant their content is, how many people link to them (not on link farms, but as relevant links), how many people stay on the site and come back over and over again.

People aren’t cars, so why are you trying to drive them?

In the end it’s all in your mindset: Instead of trying to drive traffic to your site, try attracting people to your site. You do that by giving them something they need, something they want, something they are searching for, whether that be information, the perfect product, entertainment, or news. Google will notice.

Part 3: Blogging for SEO

Part 4: Now what?

The post SE-NO Part 2: Being #1 for Customers appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

Say this with me 3 times:

• Your customers are more important than Google.
• Your customers are more important than Google.
• Your customers are more important than Google.

(Replace “customers” with “clients,” “readers,” “patients,” or whatever is most applicable to you.)

You now know 80% of what you need to know about SEO.

What the heck is SEO anyway?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which many  people believe (due to the extreme and misleading marketing done by some SEO firms) is a magic tool that someone can add to your site to make it soar to the top spots in Google search results. It’s not. There are no magic tricks. Anyone who tells you there are is trying to sell you the proverbial bridge in Brooklyn.

SEO means a lot of things. At its heart, it means making your site search-engine friendly – making it easy for search engines to read and organize what your site is about and what it offers. In the broader sense, it means anything that gets more traffic to your site from search engines.  It isn’t something someone can just add for you. It isn’t one thing.

But I want to be #1 in Google!

Who doesn’t? But for what? I get emails all the time from people asking me “to make them #1 in Google,” but that is a fruitless goal.

What Google serves up depends on what a person has searched for, i.e., what “keyword phrase” the person has typed in the search box. For example, if you search for “duck farms” you will get one set of results. If you search for “how to farm ducks,” you will get a different set of results. Some of the links may be shared by both searches, but they will almost certainly be in a different order.

How many times have you searched for something, not found the results you were looking for, and then tried changing up your search phrase, adding more words, rearranging the words, changing the words, to try to find the result you are looking for? I do it all of the time. Just adding or changing one word can drastically alter what results you are served.

It also depends on where the person searching is located (someone in New York may get entirely different results from someone in Dallas), what that person has searched for and clicked on before, and that person’s web browsing history. To reach its goal of showing the most relevant results, the results each person is most likely to be looking for, Google actually shows different results for different people!

So when you enter a phrase and click Search, Google use an extremely complicated algorithm to attempt to find not only the most relevant results, but the most relevant results FOR YOU.

Therefore, saying “I want to be #1 in Google” is too vague to even be meaningful. A better goal might be “I want to show up in the top ten results for this specific search phrase for people in Podepunkville, Minnesota.”

This is where you say “But Jenny, different people will use different search phrases, and you just told me that Google will give different results to different people based on a bunch of stuff I can’t control!”

Yep.

Your customers are more important than Google.

This is why, instead of spending all of your energy, time, and money trying to “be #1 in Google” – you should instead be trying to be #1 for your customers (clients/patients/readers). Stop trying to trick Google into thinking you are the most relevant search result for what your customers are looking for. Instead start trying to BE the most relevant result for what your customers are looking for.

Is this easy? Heck no. But it is a meaningful goal that serves who you are supposed to be trying to serve—your customers. If you are successful in doing that, and assuming your site is well built to be optimized by Google (more on that in a later post) the results in Google will (eventually) show that.

Also read: 

Part 2: Being #1 for Customers.

Part 3: Blogging for SEO

Part 4: Now what?

The post SE-NO Part 1: Being #1 in Google appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

I build new web sites to replace old ones all the time, but one of the great perks of having been in  business as long as I have (almost 9 years!) is that occasionally I get to makeover sites I originally built! Sometimes when I look at sites I created years ago, I get a little itch thinking of all of the neat things I could do to make that site better today; things that would not have even been on the radar 5 years ago. So when a client comes back to me, ready to start again, I get to scratch that itch!

Over the past few months, I have had the chance to makeover 5 websites, all from long-time clients – businesses whose original websites I created over 5 years ago. Take a look!

Diva Hosiery

Diva Hosiery sells pantyhose specifically and specially designed for cheerleaders and dancers. When I first built their site back in 2007, they only had one product (in assorted sizes and colors) and only needed a small site with a simple shopping cart. However, their product line has expanded, they needed better options for their shopping cart, and were ready for a new, more sophisticated look. I also built the site in WordPress to allow them more freedom to update their content as needed. See the Before and After below!

After

Before

B and B Muffler and Automotive

B and B has been in business since 1974, and I created a website for them back in late 2007. In the years since, we had added, and added, and added – so many pages that their vertical navigation went on forever,  and we had links stuck in everywhere. Finally – it was time to step back, rethink, and reorganize. They wanted to keep the colors and overall feel of the original design, but they had a new logo, and I expanded the design to make better use of horizontal space. We switched to a horizontal menu with sub-menus, and added lots of bells and whistles that weren’t possible before. I even replaced all of their Flash videos with YouTube embeds so they would be viewable on all devices. See the Before and After below!

After

Before

Oliver Blu Designs

I have actually created this site 3 (or 4??) times! When one is selling stylish things, it can be a good idea to make sure that you keep things fresh, and Christine at Oliver Blu Designs does just that by shaking things up with a new design every few years. See the Before and After below!

Before

After

Gianna Viola

Gianna Viola is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and I originally created a site for her in 2008. It was a unique design then, and the new site is unique as well, just brighter, cleaner, and more open. See the Before and After below!

Before

After

Thai Fresh

I created a site for Thai Fresh in 2008, but oh how they have grown since then! Owner Jam Samichat has grown her tiny cafe into a restaurant, coffeehouse, bakery, and live music venue. So in recreating the site, things needed to be reorganized a bit to make it all cohesive. We also wanted to feature larger photos and have it all be easy for her to update herself. See the Before and After below!

Before

After

The post Who Doesn’t Love a Makeover? appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

The following sites were all designed by Alison Sauter of APSauter Design. She has done design work for such big name brands as Whole Foods and Snapple. Previously based in San Diego, CA, she is now living in Austin, Texas, and does really beautiful work.

NurturMe

This is the first site that Allison and I worked on together. Nurturme invented and markets an innovative product – quick-dried, all-organic, preservative free fruits and veggies for babies and toddlers. Just add water or breast milk and you are ready for meal time! Allison’s design is clean, bright, and modern, and the large volume of content is well-organized to make the site easy to navigate. There is even a fun recipe section complete with pop-up printable recipes, including instructional videos!

FXFit

FXFit provides fitness classes, camps, and personal training services in Austin, Texas. The design is crisp and sophisticated, and manages to make a huge amount of information really easy to navigate. It presents this fitness team as the top-notch professionals that they are.

Simple Squares

Kimberly Dobbins created Simple Squares when she herself needed a whole-food, simple snack. Simple Squares come in 6 flavors, contain only 5 ingredients, and have no syrups, fillers or preservatives. Allison designed a site that really encompasses the Simple Squares brand – evoking organic, simple goodness. In addition to the informational side of the site, I also set up the eCommerce store in BigCommerce, which seamlessly continues the branding and user experience.

The post Collaborative Projects appeared first on Websy Daisy, Austin Texas Web Design.

15% off New Sites or Site Makeovers!

Don’t have a web site but sure wish you did? Have a web site but it’s outdated or no longer serving your needs? Now is the time to change all of that! Get a brand spanking new web site for 15% off my usual rates!

What’s the catch? You have to book between now and November 30th, 2012 – I can’t keep this up forever, ya’ll. I can build your web site after November 30th, but by that date I have to have you written on my schedule, or all bets are off.

How do I get some of that?!

Just head on over to my Contact page and click on the huge orange button to fill out my questionnaire, and I will get back to you in a jiffy with a quote. In the SPECIAL OFFER CODE field (which I just added!) enter 15OFF2012

Spread the Word!

I almost never do this – so spread the word to anyone you think might be in need of a beautiful new web site. The time is now!

You can use the handy social networking links below to share this post, use my handy Referral form, or heck, be old fashioned and just give a friend a call.

Notes: This offer is only for new web sites or sites that are essentially being started over with a new design, and does not include smaller updates or additions to existing sites. I must have a signed contract and retainer between today and November 30, 2012, in order to book a project and apply the discount. This offer is not available retroactively.

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