I have been working on several projects this week to help improve my web presence. Two of them I thought that I would share here, because they are a little bit unique. I mean, why does someone need to hear that I joined digg? If you have been around the internet for a bit, you probably know about sites like digg, Technorati, Furl, Reddit, or Shadows, so that is why I am going into something a little different on this post.
Do you keep track of yourself with Google Alerts? I have it set up that once a week, I receive an alert for my name and the names for my websites. I am sometimes surprised where I show up (my name travels around more than I do). This is a great way to check up on what is being said about you. Have you considered using this alert system to help your web presence though? I am setting up alerts for some keywords to see what shows up. When I find a blog dealing with a topic I am interested in, I go and comment, leaving my URL in the appropriate space, creating a backlink to my site. I started with a generic keyword “home inspections” as a test for this strategy. It was interesting to see that this past week, only Charles Buell and myself showed up on the alert for this keyword, which shows that some inspectors here in the Rain should think about their posts and keywords. Your alert could be more specific, like “Houston home inspections”, if you want to see what is being said about a specific keyword or general like my first one, if you just one to create backlinks where ever they may be found.
I have been going through my sites, looking at the codes, trying to improve performance, appearance, and functionality. I came across this post discussing the 400 error pages. The link will discuss his method, but I found that I could simply set this up on my cpanel for my website through an editor there, which is much simpler than his method. Here is the basic idea. View a page on your website by going to View> Source (or Page Source) so you can see the code. Copy this code into an editor like Notepad or Notepad++ (Notepad is standard on Windows, while Notepad++ is available at sourceforge.net for free-donations appreciated). Remove the information that does not pertain, and recreate an error page with your own redirects. For example, if you take your “About” page, remove the information about yourself and replace it with information for an Error Page. Something like “Sorry, but you are trying to find a page that does not exist, but how about going here (link to your site) to see if there is something there for you!” You will then have an error page that looks like your other webpages instead of a plain white page screaming Error! It would look much more professional on your part. On my cpanel, under the Advanced Options, I can edit the information on my different error pages. My editor looks just like the Notepad format, so I just copy and paste, then save.
Well, I hope this gives you some ideas on how to improve your web presence. If you have any ideas, please share them.
Your Houston Home Inspector,
Frank Schulte-Ladbeck
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Wow Frank-this is GREAT information!!! I had no idea what Google Alerts was, and would have never thought about it to track keywords. I have known that I need to research my keywords, but haven't known where to start! Thanks for sharing!