<![CDATA[GURU MARKETING TIPS - Your Website]]>Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:31:53 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Most Important 10 Features of Top Ranked Websites]]>Sat, 13 Jul 2019 01:29:49 GMThttp://gurumarketingtips.com/your-website/most-important-10-features-of-top-ranked-websites
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Why Doesn't Your Website Rank When Searched For?
By Stu Leventhal - Guru Markeeting Tips Editor

When was the last time you checked these 10 vital aspects of your website?
  1. Easy of Navigation: Can a new visitor immediately understand why your website is online? Can they find what they are looking for? Is it easy to go from page to page and section to section?
  2. How Does your Site look on Every Type of Gadget People Use to access the Web?
  3. Can Your Visitors Easily Click Over to Your Social Media Stages? Do you have all the main top social media buttons on display?
  4. How Long Does it Take for Your Site to Load? Visitors do not want to wait long for your site to appear. Search Engines too, do not like slow loading sites!
  5. How Broad is the Subject and Theme of Your Website? If You are trying to include too many subject on one website you will have a lot of competition for ranking nicely on search engines. By making your website more special for a specific viewer or audience, you have a much better chance of being the best in your category (niche).
  6. Can a New Visitor Tell Whose Website They Just Landed On? Are you, as Web Host being as transparent as you can be? How detailed is your About Us Page? There should be no mysteries about you or your company or why you created this site; especially if your object is to eventually do business with your visitors.
  7. Are You Making it as Easy as possible for a new visitor to Contact You? If you have contact forms, and you should, be sure to add real time info verification to the form so whomever is filling in their info knows when they make a mistake and can fix it. You do not want to collect false info, bad phone numbers, bogus email addresses... Your contacting visitor will think you are ignoring their request when what really happened is they made a innocent typing error while filling out your form. Info verification alerts your visitor so they can immediately re-enter the correct info onto your forms. This keeps communications moving along quickly and efficiently.
  8. How Secure is Your Website for Your Visitors to Be On? If you want them to come and stay a while on your site plus come back in the future then you have to take measures to make sure they are safe when on your website. How confident are you that a visitor's data will not be hacked while on your site! Do you have protection against spamming-bots?
  9. How is Your SEO? Can Search Engines as well as people tell instantly what your website is about and who would like to be on it? Did you do everything Google likes? Plus, nothing Google hates! I hope that you are not publishing duplicate content (Stuff that is already on another website). Make sure you are posting original content, unique things. People too, just like Google, do not want to see things they already see plenty of everywhere else online. 
  10. ​Link to Lots of Other Places in Cyberspace that Talk Highly of You. People like to hear from others that recommend you and what is on your website. You, yourself, telling your visitors how wonderful you and your products and services are gets boring fast. You need to be able to point potential new customers and clients to review sites that rate you high. Link to any positive flattering news articles that feature you or your company. Also, link to star bloggers posting nice things about you. Listing testimonials from happy past customers is great too but adding a clickable link to the website of the person singing your praise builds credibility making your testimonials more believable.    
]]><![CDATA[GDPR General Data Protection Regulation For USA Realtors?]]>Wed, 22 Aug 2018 20:38:27 GMThttp://gurumarketingtips.com/your-website/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-for-usa-realtors
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Are You and Your Real Estate Website and Blog GDPR Compliant Yet?
      By Gerri Leventhal – Find NJ House
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Quite frankly everyone publishing online should be aware and concerned with the legality of collecting data about visitors to your web content. Yes, you could get fined if you are not abiding by the GDPR laws even if you are a USA business and not located in the European Union and do not do business there. But shouldn’t you want to be in compliance even if you are not required to be? Bear in mind, GDPR is going to be the new lowest standard for all websites and blogs everywhere soon.
 
Sure compliance may be a hassle right now for you but it is for everyone’s good and best interest. Foreigners do buy real estate in the States. Some foreigners will land on your website and blog eventually. So legally you could be in jeopardy.
 
Get into compliance and then Promote that you and your site goes even further than what is required by GDPR to protect data and you could win over some of your competition’s audience, fans and customers especially if they do not go that extra mile. The cat is out of the bag now and there will be no going backwards where data protection is concerned. Soon it will just be expected that your site is in compliance plus more. So I suggest we all do it now and just avoid any scandal and fines.
 
If a European Union Resident lands on your USA Realtor site or blog you will want them to sign up and give you some info and contact info. Now technically you could set your website up so it does not ask for data from the EU European Union location visitors but it is quite easy to mess up that screening process especially if you do have forms on your site.

It is easier to just conform to what you know is safer for your site visitors and then of course shout about having complied. Yes, say you are in improvement mode for site visitors and I suggest you also go further and even announce how you are going one or two steps better than the GDPR basics. This will endear you to your website visitors and set you apart in your field of expertise as being very professional as well as the Realtor who takes data security seriously.
 
When your web visitors feel safe they stay longer and they participate happily on your site or blog. Your visitors are also more apt to recommend your site to their friends when they know it is a safe real estate site. Your other networking partners also will be happier knowing your site and blog is in GDPR compliance. So what does GDPR Compliancy cover?
 
GDPR concerns the collection of names and identifying aspects of your website visitors; addresses, emails, phone numbers, even blog posts can put you into the danger zone of being fined. You need those things to communicate!

Yes, if a European Union Visitor simply decides to sign up for your newsletter to find out more about the available properties and the realty scene in your USA sales territory then you could be in violation, unless you have taken the steps to make your site GDPR legal. 
 
You simple have to gather and store your visitor data, especially contact info, properly, safely and securely! Anyone that publishes on your website or does IT work on your website needs to know the new rules concerning GDPR.
 
Every realtor’s site should have a privacy policy posted that makes it easy to understand what you are doing with data collected about your visitors and give them a way to opt out of anything they as visitors do not feel comfortable with. You should have easy to see opt/ins boxes that the visitor must check, in all the appropriate places on your site, whenever you’re asking for personal info.
 
It is also a good idea to ask everyone already on your opt/in email list to confirm that they still want to receive periotic emails from you. Also if you are asking for people to opt/in to multiple different things on your website then never just assume that an opt/in for one thing means they are opting-in to everything. You need separate opt/in forms for each! 

Think of GDPR this way; a lot of websites are already updating their privacy policies and making necessary changes to improve how they handle a visitor’s data. If you do not keep up and improve your website too then your visitors may get nervous about being on your website and not decide to return. Why risk losing fans and potential customers and clients over something that is so easy to accomplish. Get in GDPR Compliance and rest easy and your visitors will rest easy too!
 
TIPS: Make sure your visitors can contact you fast and easily if they have any questions about your collection of data about them or if they want to complain about something that they are not comfortable with you doing with the info you have about them. When a person opts/out you cannot hold on to their data; it is best to just erase their name and info from your system.
]]><![CDATA[What’s Makes a Great Website?]]>Wed, 15 Aug 2018 04:03:20 GMThttp://gurumarketingtips.com/your-website/whats-makes-a-great-website
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Your Website Design Tips
By Stu Leventhal – Guru Marketing Tips Editor

Who is your website supposed to appeal to? Why are you building this site? Do you want visitors from anywhere on the globe, international viewers and users?
 
People from around the world are online and some will land on your site. The Internet has become the primary source of information for most of us, so having a website means you will have to keep up with technology if you want people to enjoy coming to your site. Yes regardless of what your main subject matter is on your site, it will have competing sites. You have to supply a worthwhile experience for your site visitors.
 
Once you gain an audience your job is far from done; you will have to be prepared to constantly improve the content; text, graphics, images and videos on your web pages. Other sites, perhaps competing company websites will be trying to steal away your fans. You must keep people interested so they keep coming back. You also want your visitors to tell other about your site so your audience keeps growing.
 
Web design and constantly modernizing the look, usability and functionality of your website can often mean all the difference to the success or failure of a website. There are a few basic things to keep in mind when designing or upgrading any type of website. Sure you will have a theme for your site but first we should discuss making sure that your website has all of the basic modern site features that now-a-days are expected to be present on all commercial websites.
 
  1. The design of your web site must be compatible to all browsers
  2. Your website should be able to pass HTML and CSS validation tests
  3. Every business or commerce website should be able to cater to disabled users
 
These things won't be a problem as long as you’ve hired web designers that know how to adhere to normal web standards. If you are building your site yourself you will have to test each aspect to find out if it works properly. For example; pull up your website using each of the different popular browsers to actually see if the page’s look or anything else changes. Some browsers will alter the sizes of your photos or change the positions of your images or paragraphs on your page. You may have to re-code so everything looks the same no matter what browser the viewer uses to enjoy your site.  
 
Do not try to WOW your visitors with complicated things; your website should be simple to navigate and easy for all users to immediately understand as soon as they land on any of your webpages. No users like landing on a new site that is too confusing. People, today, will not take the time to figure out how to find things and places on your website. With a few clicks they can be on any number of your competitors’ websites which are easier to use.
 
Good webpages are those that do not strain the eyes. When writing, choose fonts and colors that are easy to read. Colors should stand out nicely against the background color of the page. Remember that those fancy fonts usually affect how fast your readers can read the information you are presenting, so stick to easy readable fonts for most of your text and use fancy fonts sparingly, just for artistic titles and important words and short phrases you want to be seen as special.
 
Black text against a white background is always a winning combination with all your textual links being of the same highlight color throughout your website, such as light blue, so that all your links are quickly recognizable.
 
When it comes to graphics, images and videos know that visitors like them all and they like lots of them too. Just bear in mind that your pages can get too overloaded because you are publishing too many images. Visitors want and expect lots of images but they also want your pages to load fast too, so choose your images carefully and for full impact. Be sure the images make sense to be on the page they are on. As much as possible, use photos, graphics and videos only to support the content being presented to your users.
 
People will not stay long on a website with pages that take forever to load!
 
Writing for the web and writing for offline print, differs! Your web content should be shorter and quicker to the point. You will be getting all kinds of folks on your site, they each have different temperaments. You won’t always please everyone but you do not want anyone to get so bored that they click away. There is no single best way to design every webpage.
Web designers must consider the subject matter and the audience that they are seeking to please plus factor in your goals. Do you want to make the greater majority of web browsers happy or are you hoping to appeal to a smaller specialized group? What are you trying to accomplish with your site? If this is a commerce site then just getting lots of visitors may not be enough to actually make you money.
 
I have found that the websites that are most successful are those that were set up for a very specific visitor. The more precise the type of fans you seek, the easier it is to give them something that they deem as being special and just for them. Also by going after a narrower audience, the less competition you have from other websites because no one is doing exactly what you are on your site and your publishing can be made quite unique and interesting since it is better tailored for your specific, designated, kind of fans.
 
One big mistake many new website launchers make quite often is thinking that their new website stands alone as a separate entity when in reality your site is an extension of all the other marketing, promoting, advertising and full ambiance that your company already has. This means it does you no good if your site is telling a completely different company story from all your other marketing tools and promotional efforts.
 
Adding a great new website or newly remodeling a dull website can be a super boost for any company. Just remember not to get too carried away on your site; you must coordinate the messages you are sending online to sync with the company as it really is offline. Use the same theme you use in your brochures and pamphlet handouts on your website too. Create a uniform color scheme and cultivate a universal company vibe that customers and clients can easily recognize throughout all your marketing campaigns online and offline.  
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