Top 10 Internet Marketing Ideas for 2018

November 27, 2017 by Ray

attract attention to get more customers — Attract attention to get more customers

Convert your prospects into customers!
Here are my top 10 marketing ideas to start the new year with economical website improvements that bring results. When your prospects “google” the goods or services you provide, list of results does not allow your business to stand out from the rest.
Using my clients as examples:

Brandywine Auto Repair could be just another automotive shop.
Be Well Life Coaching could be just another life coach.
Gianni’s Pizza could be just another pizza shop.
Wilderman Physical Therapy could be just another physical therapist.
Annex Marketplace could be just another furniture store.

Stand out from your competitors
You know that you’re better than your competition. But you need to show your prospects why to choose you. Here are top 10 gifts that you can give your business this holiday season to get more attention, more clicks, more calls, and most importantly, MORE SALES!

internet marketing

Landing Page(s)– Improve your conversion rate from Facebook Ads, PPC, LinkedIn posts and just about any advertising you do. Make your marketing costs pay off. See this Landing Page I created for Sherm’s Catering (I didn’t do his website, just the landing page). The idea is to target the exact service/product that you’re promoting, rather than come to your general landing page.
$150-200
Marketing Video – Excite your prospects with 30-45 second pitch where you can quickly outline all or most of your services. Images, voiceover, captions, background music all included. Post to your website, facebook, LinkedIn, emails, YouTube.
$400
Google Reviews – Prospects love the affirmation of happy customers! Get twice the benefit by having customers write brief reviews on your Google Maps listing – which helps you stand out with gold stars. Get twice the benefit, since you can easily copy and paste onto the Testimonials page on your website. For example, write a brief review of me here – and give me 5 stars if I deserve them! Included is a similar link on your own Reviews page.
$75
Mobile Website Upgrade – If your site is still not mobile-friendly. Optimized for best visitor experience on all devices, plus I will train you to update most content yourself on ALL pages of site.
$600+
Start a Blog – Share your insights with prospects and give them reason to contact you by providing the information they seek. Write short or long posts in minutes, adding photos to enforce your message. Then double or triple your value by sharing in social media, emails to your list, or send to people who’d have interest in that specific topic. Solve problems, display case studies, provide your opinion, highlight a new product, etc. To install Blog with 2-5 categories:
$50
Additional Domains – Create a descriptive domain name to lead to a particular page of your website or to your home page. There is no cost to “forward” a domain name, so use it for specialty items.
$10 for .com
Accept Credit Cards – Start online payment processing on your website. Take a deposit to ensure sales from impulse buyers. Include dropdown menu of payment amount choices. You create a PayPal account and I’ll install the button. Or if your volume is $3000+/mo, I’ll get you best deal on a full Merchant Account like I’ve got.
$50
Email Marketing – Create and grow your mailing list with the original email marketing program, ConstantContact.com. Easily add to your mailing list, send newsletters, and most importantly create an opt-in form that you or I can add to your site so you can gather emails! Cost depends on size of list.
Free 60 day trial
TV Commercial, Online Ads– Yes, really. Call me with your ideas and I’ll get you in touch with a friend who will give you best deal for quick results! Cost is kept down by targeting only those who are most likely to show interest.
$150 – $1500
WordPress Care Plan – WordPress software updates, regular backups of your site, highest rated security & website optimization plugins to maintain site performance.
$120/year

mobile marketing Share this post with other business owners
Share with a friend who’d appreciate more customers or higher profits. They’ll always receive unbeatable prices from Webmaster Ray. Or call me to discuss your own marketing needs!

302-633-1482
Ray@AttractWeb.com

Attract Interest. Attract Business.

SSL Certificates Required by Google Chrome

September 25, 2017 by Ray

wordpress website security This is a very important post for any business, organization or individual with a website. Starting now (October 2017), most sites will display a “Not Secure” warning in Google Chrome browser (and eventually others) if they have not upgraded from “http” to “https”. In particular, the warning will appear if information is collected in any of the following ways:

Search fields
Contact forms, opt-in forms that capture information for mailing lists, forms to enter a giveway
Online payments, donations, shopping carts
Comment boxes: Name, website, email address, and comment
Any other ways a visitor may type something on your website and that information is transmitted to your server or any other server that collects the information.

Benefits of Upgrading to HTTPS
As Orpical Group (a Philadelphia marketing agency) notes on their website:

Trust – HTTPS notifies users that all data provided from the website they are visiting is trustworthy and has not been altered. Users are starting to get messages from browsers when they visit a web page that is Not-Secure. Sites with HTTPS display a “Secure” message, helping build trust.

Confidentiality – HTTPS confirms that all the activity complete on the website will be encrypted. This also means that the website and activity cannot be visible to someone who is trying to sniff through network traffic.

Protection – HTTPS protects sensitive information. Website users want to be confident that their sensitive information, such as credit card or personal information, stay secure and do not fall into the wrong hands.

Search – Security is a top priority for Google. They invest a lot in making sure that their services use industry-leading security, like strong HTTPS encryption by default. Now, more than ever, they are putting emphasis on HTTPS in the search ranking algorithms.

More reasons to upgrade:

Google ranks secure sites higher (penalizes non-secure sites)
https sites load faster
Eventually, Chrome will show a Not Secure warning for all pages served over HTTP, regardless of whether or not the page contains sensitive input fields.

Webmaster Ray Can Help

Webmaster Ray More background information is below, but bottom line is that Attraction LLC offers low prices:
From $50 for one-time installation/configuration plus $50/year for the annual renewal of the SSL Certificate. Prices will vary slightly depending on your hosting account. For example, this compares favorably to GoDaddy’s $70/yr renewal rate.

A temporary option for some would be to remove any contact forms on your site and replace with a simple email link. Contact me asap to discuss best options for your site!

FORBES ARTICLE 8/22/17:
Chrome Will Soon Warn You About Unsecure Websites. Should You Be Concerned?
“Google is trying to do something about this by pressuring companies to provide more security for the people who visit their websites…

…Google is pushing back against webpages with URLs that begin with “http” – no “s” – because they don’t encrypt communication between the user and the website. Communication may not be secure and the user’s interactions with the website can be hacked…

…Beginning in October, Google’s Chrome browser will display the message “Not Secure” in the address bar when users interact with an unencrypted webpage.”

“Chrome dominates the global browser market to such a great degree that more than half of the world’s internet users will see the warnings when they interact with unencrypted websites.”

Search Engine Journal article:
Google Is Requiring HTTPS for Secure Data in Chrome
Does your site collect sensitive visitor information such as passwords, credit card information, or personal data? If so, be warned: by the end of January 2017, Google Chrome will begin marking sites without HTTPS as non-secure. … If you have not done so already, protect your visitors and your site with an SSL certificate and migrate to HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure).

All you need to know is that HTTPS is a secure connection, whereas HTTP is unsecure. With a standard HTTP connection, it is possible for unauthorized parties to observe the conversation between your computing device and the site…

Chrome Warning Added:
– In past http shows “i” and when clicked says “This site is not secure”.
– https shows “Secure” in green, along with green padlock.
– Starting 10/17, http will show “Not secure”.

Process to Install SSL:

Purchase SSL Certificate from a Certificate Authority
Generate CSR, CRT, and KEY files and install in host control panel
Backup site content
Change all internal links (http to https)
Check code libraries / test
Update all external links that you can (from directories & other sites)
Create a 301 redirect

Webmaster Ray Can Help

More background information is below, but bottom line is that Attraction LLC offers low prices:
From $50 for one-time installation/configuration and from $45/year for the annual renewal of the SSL Certificate. Prices will vary slightly depending on your hosting account. For example, this compares favorably to GoDaddy’s $70/yr renewal rate. Contact me asap to discuss best options for your site!

Book Travel Online for Hotel & Flight Deals

June 14, 2017 by Ray

Wilmington Delaware online travel booking

Hotels, Flights, Cruise Vacations and other online travel booking items have always been popular internet searches, either for personal or business purposes. I re-designed a website I originally built over 10 years ago to sell travel services through my affiliate relationships with Travelocity, Hotels.com, Trivago, Priceline, and other vendors.

My new website is mobile-responsive and a great example of how anyone can monetize a personal blog or website, or add an income stream to an existing commercial site by placing text ads or banner ads to items that are related to the main theme of your site. Visit www.TravelUSAandWorld.com/ to see how I optimized it with my own keywords so that I had a chance of ranking in Google search results. Make hotel or flight reservations while you’re there, and you’ll be helping to support several gratis websites I’ve built for local Wilmington, Delaware area non-profits!

Contact me anytime if you’d like to brainstorm how to incorporate affiliate advertising or other income streams into your own business model. Of course, it’s more appropriate to add these types of links to personal sites, hobby sites, or home business sites where you’re not as concerned with distracting your visitors from the main goal of buying your products or services. For example, the first website I ever built was my www.WorldofBeerBottles.com. That’s where I first gained experience with adding affiliate advertising banners for beer posters, “Beer of the Month Clubs” and beer themed books & posters. Pitching related products or services is a benefit to your visitors and could even motivate them to buy from you if the see that you’re affiliated with a well-known brand!

Travel Agents in Wilmington, DE
In many cases, it’s best to book travel through an agency. I’d be happy to refer you to one of my Delaware area friends, so just email or call me at 302-633-1482. If you just need hotel reservations, last minute flight deals or a rental car, you’ll get the same great deals by clicking the links at Travel USA & World, which I specifically built as a shopping mall of major travel providers such as Travelocity, Priceline, Flight Network, Cruise Direct, Ticket Liquidator, and other travel links.

Travel Tips
To improve SEO and to make it visitor-friendly, I include valuable information such as travel tips and other useful information for travelers. Wilmington Delaware travel! There are articles submitted to me by other websites who were happy to provide me with business & pleasure travel ideas in exchange for links to their own websites. I feature the very first video I created over 12 years ago, along with tips for travel safety, trip planning and packing, how to get the best airline seats, airport parking secrets, vacation destination suggestions, and more!

Remember, you can’t just borrow some text and images and put up a junky site. Treat it as a business and put effort into quality content and search engine optimization including title tags, meta description, image alt tags, submitting to search engines and all of the other little jobs I include when building a website for a customer in Wilmington, Delaware or anywhere else in the USA. Adding travel posters helps me cross-market!

If you have a special interest or hobby to write about, let me help you share it with the world and you may be able to work in some affiliate links to websites to earn some revenue!

WordPress Security & Maintenance Plans

February 21, 2017 by Ray

Wordpress websites

WordPress is by far the world’s most-used content management system (CMS) for building websites. It’s estimated that over 25% of sites are WordPress websites. The good news to the business owner is that most web designers are familiar with it and that it’s easy to find help or plugins or themes if you do it yourself.

The downside of WordPress being so prevalent is that it’s a big target for hackers, viruses, and other people with bad intentions. Keeping your site secure and up-to-date is becoming more and more important. There are numerous plugins to choose from for you or your webmaster to combat threats. I will share some of the ones that I recommend.

Website Maintenance Plans
Many designers now offer bundled packages to ensure that your site stays online and doesn’t crash. Simply not installing WordPress updates, Theme updates and Plugin updates can make your site vulnerable or could cause it to stop functioning. Typical plans cost anywhere from $100-800/year, depending on how many features they include. WordPress software updates and regular backups of your site are important for security and site performance. Features include any combination of:

Regular backup of content (text, images, documents)
Regular backup of WordPress theme (site structure and design)
Installation of software updates
Installation of plugin updates
Removal of comment spam
Security & Malware Scans
Free Malware Cleanups
Website Support
Monitoring of your site for alerts or issues

Wordpress maintenance plan

Hosting Plans and Security
Some designers bundle maintenance plans with the yearly or monthly hosting fee. They may jack up the price by showing you the long list of features. Hosting alone is typically $60-120/yr for small business shared hosting, but adding the maintenance package can bring it to $50+ per month or $600+ per year. To pay just a fraction of that, see my Attraction LLC WordPress Care Plan and Web Hosting prices.

Support & Content Edits Included!
I even include Website Support (email & phone) and 4 minor content updates per year (1-2 images, 1-5 lines of text, spelling corrections, 1-5 price changes, embed one YouTube video, add links, edit page footer, additional administrator instruction, etc) in my low cost. This has the added benefit of encouraging business owners to at least update their content a bit, which helps google rank as well as human visitors.

Maintenance & Security Terms
Core updates – WordPress provides core updates periodically for the entire platform. Always check the website afterward, to ensure that nothing has been corrupted or made non-operational.
Plugin updates – Plugins can be broken or degraded after updates, so don’t allow revisions to pile up.
Theme updates – Themes and theme frameworks need updating on a regular basis.
Content backups – Data should be backed up daily, weekly or monthly, depending on how actively the site is managed. The entire website should be backed up on weekly or monthly, should there be a need to revert to an earlier version.
Security monitoring – The extraordinary popularity of WordPress has made it a very inviting target for hackers, so more and more hackers are being drawn to WordPress sites.
Uptime monitoring – Software should be used, to be aware of weekly and monthly uptime.

Best Security & Backup Plugins
You can install and maintain these yourself, search for alternatives, or just contact Webmaster Ray to integrate them for you:

Wordfence Security – Secure your website with the most comprehensive WordPress security plugin. Firewall, malware scan, blocking, live traffic, login security & more.
UpdraftPlus – Backup and restoration made easy. Complete backups; manual or scheduled (backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, FTP, email + others).
W3 Total Cache – improves server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times
Email Encoder Bundle – an obfuscator to encode mailto links, email addresses, phone numbers and any text to hide them from (spam)bots. Mailto links protected automatically.

Secure your site today!
If your small business website runs on wordpress, log in to the control panel to update your plugins and install security measures — or call me at 302-633-1482 and I’ll start my WordPress Care Plan to keep you protected right away.

Webmaster Ray’s Bio

February 9, 2017 by Ray

Wordpress website security I tell prospective website and mobile app clients that Attraction LLC is different from other web designers in that I create sites from a business perspective, rather than from an overly technical or artistic perspective. That’s why I believe that my product will be more beneficial. The bottom line is what matters: attracting traffic, generating interest, and selling your products or services! Our goal is to give you an online presence that brings results!

This no-nonsense (vs. overly “cool” sites or using heavy technical jargon) business approach is based on my background in operations management.

New York & San Francisco
I grew up in Queens, New York and graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, then learned leadership skills as a Naval Officer for a few years. Living for 12 years in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Delaware, I held sales, retail management and operations supervisor roles. When the internet was born in the ’90s, ISPs competed with each other for business by offering extras such as “your own website”. With my beer bottle collection as the topic of my own site, I enjoyed it as a creative outlet and quickly became intrigued by the power of the internet.

Beer affiliate marketing Technical Experience
The vast majority of my web design, SEO, internet marketing, HTML code, video, social media, and now mobile app skills were self-taught. With over 11 years in business full time, I still enjoy going to my office every morning (all the way across the hall from my bedroom). Not only does a home office help me with low overhead, it makes working with clients more personal when they come to my “Beer Room” to discuss their goals. I tell them how collecting beer bottles actually helped lead to my business. But dwarfed by the shelves of bottles in that room, I have my 27 marathon finisher medals displayed on one wall.

Although not as prominent, the medals represent my hobby of running (since 2002) which has been a much larger influence on my life. The training for and successful completion of these races has not just given me the “runner’s high”, but it’s greatly improved my self-esteem and confidence, both personally and as a business. I can literally say that “I go the extra mile” for my customers, and I have the resolve & determination to provide a winning result and help you reach your own professional goals!

Nun Run race coordinator 2016 Community Organizations
Besides treating my clients’ projects as if they were my own, I also donate my skills toward community and charity groups. I’ve created websites for Pike Creek Valley Running Club, my Knights of Columbus council, my USMMA college class, and the Little Sisters of the Poor, where for 6 years I was coordinator of Nun Run 5K, which raised over $100,000 for the needy elderly over that time period.

Constantly Learning
Because online marketing is constantly evolving, I learn something new on every project and enjoy each challenge. I also enjoy playing an important role in the success of my customers, so I learn lots about their individual businesses. Every day is exciting, so I know that it’s unlikely that I’ll ever want to retire.

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