What’s in a name you ask? Uncle Arthur is here to explain that there is a lot in a name, especially in the world wide web. What you name your website has many meanings and effects. Now center yourself for these words of wisdom Superbloggers!!

Today Uncle Arthur brings you 5 Truths of the domain NAME. When you buy a domain name you can’t just say, “I want what I want dot com.” Buying a domain name takes thought and some planning - so read these 5 Truths:

1) Keep your domain name as simple as possible. Keep it easy to read, easy to say, easy to spell, easy to remember. The reasons for this truth are that a long and complex name has a much higher chance for misreading or misspelling.

2) Make the name as keyword relevant as possible. This makes it easy to remember and gives better search engine rankings too.

3) Buy each form of the name with plural or hyphenated variations if possible. This strategy lessens the loss of customers who might misspell your primary domain and it protects your name from the competitors who buy domain names similar to yours to forward to their website, and take your traffic.

4) If you intend to have a web site for commercial or business reasons register it with the .com extension. The .com extension has more appeal, it’s what most people will automatically enter when going by memory. So if the .com version of your domain is not available, choose a different domain name. You can also buy the other extension names for further protection.

5) If you already have brand recognition then use your name as the domain if possible. And you might buy a set of two domain names, one that includes your brand name and another that includes keywords. But be sure to have one as the primary to be submitted to search engines, and that the others are set up for forwarding only, not to be submitted to the search engines to avoid confusion.

These truths will get you maximal traffic from people and search engines - Uncle Arthur promises!

The Magic of the Name
Uncle Arthur “Merlin” Browning

Atlantis, the Island of Atlas, is the name of a legendary island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues “Timaeus” and “Critias”.  Plato said Atlantis was “beyond the pillars of Heracles” and was a naval power that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9500 BC.

After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune”.  The civilization of Atlantis left it’s mark on many ancient civilizations - Greece, Egypt, Crete, Phoenecia, Chaldea and others.

Atlantis has been credited with many incredible technologies that are not fully understood - amongst them a magnetic application of gravity to power ships, and clairvoyance.  Vestiges of Atlantis’ knowledge is found in many ancient civilizations.  One of the most startling discoveries was a pair of columns in ancient Egypt that could not be fully translated.  The Egyptian hieroglyphics named Atlantis and gave information about the lost continent, but the Atlantean glyphs remained uncipherable until I compared those markings with the account of an ancient seer’s scroll found in Ephesus some 3000 years ago.

The translation was a startling account of the future that contained a list of “10 ways to get search engines to pay attention to your website.”  Needless to say, I will wait for no authorization to give that list here to you now Superbloggers!

1 - May the sons of your sons always optimize for keyword content.

2 - Let each title tag be written with a unique title.

3 - Write quality content into every Meta tag.

4 - Content is ever the king and always the king.

5 - Be ye wise in writing image alt text.

6 - You will create a Robots.txt file as a map of your web site.

7 - You will create a Sitemap.xml file to tell engines of all sections and pages of your website.

8 - Let there be no duplicate content from one page unto another.

9 -  Create custom error pages that look like the rest of your site and keep search engine robots from reaching a dead end in your site and leaving.

10 - Make sure that your website is fully validated for well-formed HTML.

Although this was just one bit of the Atlantean technology in the glyphs, Uncle Arthur is proud to bring it to you first.

“When Content Was King”
Uncle Arthur “of the Ancients” Browning

My fellow Americans I want your vote to make SEO a “kinder, gentler” place to show your webpage. Uncle Arthur “Get’s it!!” Uncle Arthur knows the web needs a “thousand points of light,” and “the vision thing.” Uncle Arthur already knows “It’s the economy, Stupid.”

SEO can be done with “family values” in mind, to “bring real change,” “not just the same old gridlock,” we’ve seen on “both sides of the aisle,” from “Washington insiders.” Uncle Arthur is ready to lead this nation into the 21st century and to meet all the challenges of an SEO future.

“When I am President, you will be able to say no more scandals, no more cut and run, no more stay the course, no more benchmarks, no more deep dish pizza billboards in Baghdad.”

Fourscore and seven years ago there was no internet, only telephone, but now. . . these are the days of our lives, like sand through Shawn Hannity or Rush Limbaugh’s hourglass.”

Here is Uncle Arthur’s program for SEO policy. And if you can’t offer a better policy for this nation then shut up! No child left behind, with the highest pharmaceutical prices on the planet, forever!!!!

1) Research your Keywords - Ask what keywords someone might type in when searching for products you sell. After a  brainstorming session write down all you were able to think of. Now take two keywords from your list that you feel potential customers will use most frequently. Try to make your keywords the ones most related to your business.

2) Site Text - Your website text is made of wording on your web page. Text content is king. Search engines love unique content and your keywords should be placed in the best locations in your content. Make sure that your copy reads well around them as it needs to make sense. Keywords should be placed in headings, top of pages, in bold or italics, used as link text for other pages of your site and in your title tag.

3) Link Building - One good way of thinking about links is that for every link from a website that leads to yours is a “vote” for your site. Every quality link you receive can improve your search rankings. The quality of inbound links is more vital than quantity.

Over time you should watch and record your search engine rankings by doing a Google search for your chosen keywords  to see where you rank. You can also monitor where your visitors are coming from by watching your hosting reports.

I am pleased as punch to present this environmentally green program for SEO. When there is a chicken in every pot and we have a microwave in every restroom, then and only then shall we rest. Well, don’t let the souless communistic regime keep you awake nights anymore, listen to Uncle Arthur - because he is politically correct and “he gets it right,” the first time, not 16 years later.

I do not believe that the American citizens and the American economy are like a fat cashcow, to be milked, and milked and plundered under threat of slaughter by the corporate interests in Washington. Nor do I think the underhanded corporate practices of thrifts, credit card banks and mortgage credit entities should go unnoticed, as they essentially rape our citizens of their earnings. NO DOLLAR LEFT BEHIND!!!

When’s the last time you got to vote for a policy instead of a politician?
Arthur “Hanging Chad” Browning

You had to be there! What a dream! It all goes back to when I was kid - even younger than you. I saw a movie titled “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.” Sure, I saw the movie because of a single poster of a giant woman in a swimsuit - good looking girl too. But it was what the poster said that made it my “Must See Film of 1958.”

So I decided to write a followup to my article “Uncle Arthur’s Super Tips: Headlines & Titles for SEO” of 12/12/2007. So this article is all about writing stimulating articles, super headlines and riveting texts for your blogs and websites.

The original movie - “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” (1958) had a Tagline: “See a female colossus… her mountainous  torso, skyscraper limbs, giant desires!” Wheweee! That’s what I’m talking about. The possibilities that this line puts in the head of readers are many and very strong.

Then it had a Plot Outline: “When an abused wife grows to giant size because of an alien encounter and an aborted murder attempt, she goes after her cheating husband with revenge on her mind.”

The movie was almost without plot, used the few special effects of the day, but it made the most of getting people into the theatre with these ideas. It was good enough to cause a remake with Daryl Hannah - “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” (1993) (TV). One Tagline: “People always called Nancy the little woman… They’ll never do that again.” Plot Outline: “While a woman by the name of Nancy is driving home from yelling at her husband at a motel who is with another woman, she is encountered by aliens that zap her with some kind of laser. As a result, Nancy finds herself growing everytime she gets angry. Her incredible anger makes her 50 feet tall and now she’s a walking giant searching in a terrfied town for her husband who is with his other lover.”

A different Plot Outline for the same movie reads: “A remake of the 1958 original. After an encounter with aliens, a wealthy women grows to, surprise surprise, 50 feet tall. With her new found size she decides to get revenge on her husband and others that annoyed her.”

And then there was a spinoff, sort of a copycat - “Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold” (1995) But the big deal here is: what you write about these movies that takes a single picture and makes it represent a whole movie. What you write creates scenarios in the readers’ heads that causes a decision to read on or click off.

Here are some other taglines that could have been used depending on who you wanted to attract courtesy of Uncle Arthur:
“Think you know how much love it takes?”
“Mama’s Home - Time to Take Care of Business.”
“So Big - When Her Period Was Near”
“When ‘What to Wear?’ Spelled Disaster.”
“Sometimes . . . A Submarine Was Not Enough!”
“When She Attacked - Every Man Was Spellbound!”
“When Menopause Comes, It Can Get Out of Control”
“PMS - The Roughest Days of Our Lives.”
“She Wanted the Mother of All Weekends!”
“You’ll Laugh, You’ll Cry, You’ll Become Engulfed!”
“The Scream that Wakened a Nation.”
“What a Woman! . . . What a Woman!”
“Feminist Revenge Mutant Goes Berserk in Central Park”
“Super Model Admits Illegal Hormones Helped Her Leap to the Screen!”
“How Many Men Knew Her - How Many Would It Take?!!?”
“Hear Her Battlecry - ‘Don’t Want No Short —- Men!!!’”
“She Knew She Had It Comin’, and She Didn’t Mean Global Warming.”

Well that’s enough laughs for now, all you techies, newbies and Uncle Arthur’s Super Bloggers - oh! and write each day like it was the last thing you’ll ever get to say.

A Freudian with Gestalt Tendencies,
Uncle Arthur Browning

Uncle Arthur has a big fat suggestion for you! Read through your website traffic statistics to tell what the metadata, supplemental data, can teach you. Why? The Universe is waiting - and because I said so - and because it contains a lot of helpful information like your visitors’ IP address, geographic location, what browser language, what are their domain extensions (.edu, .gov, .mil), their connection speeds, which operating system they use, the keyword or phrase searched, the referring URL and the screen resolution.

Now let’s think a minute here - just ask “how can this help me?”

The IP address, or Internet protocol address, gives the specific internet service company the visitor uses. If the visitor works with an Internet provider then the web page will show the speed of the connection - if working with a specific company, then the website will show company’s name and logo.

The geographical location tells about the approximate address of the visitor. With this information, the server can search and display information that is specific for the people of that location. Information like climate, temperature, local happenings, and time for accurate display.

Web pages may be written in different languages. By knowing the browser language you can help a visitor with a web page that is easier to understand with different language sections and more international symbols in the icons, buttons and titles.

Many organizations and various sectors of the web have different domain extensions. A website with a .gov extension means that its a government website and a website with .edu extension refers to an educational organization. This means your content could be customized to target or deflect a sector’s ease of use.

Internet connection speeds may enlighten your planning on file size and downloads speed. There can be different resolution versions of a particular file or feed so that if the speed is low then the lowest resolution will be downloaded.

Operating systems have different requirements and their functionality varies. Some websites provide downloadable software and updates which will not be compatible with all kinds of operating systems. These limitations can be
determined without interrupting the user.

Search keywords and phrases can be utilized to apply search engine optimization techniques to your website to improve relevancy. The linking of data to a specific keyword, which is displayed automatically, makes the visitor feel that his query was dealt with effectively.

Knowing the referring URL helps the website owner to understand traffic patterns as well as to compare data with that of the previous page. This can help you improve your webpage’s competitiveness with the referring sites - if that is a desired outcome.

Remember that if a visitor is surfing the internet with a hand held device or mobile, the content of the website is cropped to fit the screen size and resolution of the device. If the amount of data that is viewed on a normal monitor is displayed over the hand held device, the images would be overlapped and illegible.

So now you should say, “Thank you Uncle Arthur for your wisdom and encouragement.”

The future of the Universe may be an unknown, but try anyway.
Uncle Arthur Browning

Artists need a good website to get maximum exposure. Here are 18 super tips from Uncle Arthur - the artist’s friend - on how to make that website a pleasure to visit. This goes beyond a bio, artist statement and recent resume.

Sometimes I feel like Vincent Van Gogh, don’t you? Vincent would have had a website, you can count on that. And Uncle Arthur would be right there looking in to give Vincent some tips too.

1. Keep your color scheme simple. Don’t blind your viewers. Bright colors can be difficult to look at on a screen and detract from your artwork’s impact. (Just because Vincent liked yellow is no reason to do the whole site in yellow, right? So choose a good template!)

2. Keep your website simple. Don’t try and put every piece of information about your career or display every single piece of artwork you ever created. (You should save something for a conversation with an excited buyer.)

3. Keep file sizes low. People viewing your site don’t all have a high speed connection to the internet and too many images or too many large files can slow a site down.

4. Make navigation simple. Do not try and have too many categories or too many layers in your navigation system. Keep the placement of the navigation buttons consistent: if you choose to have your links on the left side, keep them there throughout the site and don’t scramble the order of your buttons from page to page! (Even Mondrian wouldn’t do that!!!)

5. Have your own domain name. Impress galleries and collectors, make sure they know you take your art seriously. Registering a domain has become quite affordable: typically between $10 and $15 a year with hosting costs between $5 and $15 a month. (You don’t have to be Toulouse-Lautrec to afford that. And check out the beautifully designed webpage templates for any type website here! )

6. No under construction page. If you are not done building a page, don’t link it to your site. (Uncle Arthur mentioned this kind of cheesy practice in earlier articles - so don’t forget it this time.)

7. Prominent contact info. Your site is too sell or at least connect with interested viewers (Duhhhhhhh!!!) Collectors and galleries need to know how to contact you.

8. Label all artwork. Labeling your work with price can be valuable if your aim is to sell online. (Uncle Arthur reminds you to price realitstically - not $5 for one and a million for another - that’s New York stuff.)

9. Include a brief art statement and your resume. A few paragraphs for an art statement, and a 1 page resume. (Even Picasso could whittle it down to the main points.)

10. Keep the texts simple. Sans serif fonts such as Arial are easier to read on the screen. Don’t overuse bold and italics which make text harder to read and can get confusing. (An art site doesn’t need all that drama - it should express an air of serious art!)

11. Avoid underlined text - this should be reserved links.

12. Do not use a background image. They slow down the website and can ruin the look of your texts and other images.

13. Avoid music. It could sound good but your viewers might not share your preferences in music and music files are large. (Even if you play the violin - save it for your music website!)

14. No stupid mouse animation or idiot smiles in navigation. This would bother your visitors! (Uncle Arthur tries to be patient, but if you do this I will pass out.)

15. Refrain from using frames and Flash. Both of these coding methods tend to be search engines unfriendly.

16. Make sure your site is looks good in all browsers. Different browsers can display the same code in slightly different ways. Adjust code accordingly. (That’s right, it’s not all just nudes and lunch on the grass, you need to consider technical matters!)

17. Check each of your links. Visitors don’t like dead links and neither do the search engines. (Would Vincent have a lot of dead meat links on his site?)

18. Open external links to a new window - in a new browser window - better looking and more convenient.

Uncle Arthur has done his best to simplify this process for you artists out there. Now don’t make us both look foolish with a sloppy portfolio. Paint your heart out!!!!!

I want a large sofa painting in blues and mauves for my living room,
Arthur “Artistic” Browning

Online Marketing can be difficult if you are in a competitive market. Getting a reliable and honest SEO company to handle the SEO for your website can also be a big problem.

Search engine optimization takes time, in some cases in a particularly competitive field it may take months for real progress to be observed. The search engines have changing systems in how they rate a website but a good SEO specialist will know of all recent changes. A professional company they can achieve a high rank by dealing with competition, mechanisms and strategies that can be employed to make your website well visited and making money.

The top 3 search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN, receive over 1.5 billion searches every day. But if you don’t have good search engine optimizing techniques you will rank lower and lose traffic. Finding a professional search engine marketing company that does good work for a fair price may help your business.

Search engines work automatically, but there are sometimes unapproved ways for a webmaster to get better ranking. Using these unapproved ways can be risky business. If your website is found to be using unethical ways of getting rank it could be banned by search engines. If that happens it could take a long time and a lot of work to achieve some rank in search engines again. The SEO companies that use these unethical ways to get high rankings for your website may get only temporary results and could really hurt your website in the long run.

Some the unethical ways that SEO can be done: 1) Unneccessary keywords repetition 2) Copying content of other websites without permission 3) Increasing the number of links by linking with irrelevant websites.

There are some good tips you can use for selecting an a good SEO company. 1) Study some basics of SEO so you can talk about your situation 2) Be careful of big promises of quick results 3) Know what you need so you can choose from SEO companies offer 4) Get a form of guarantee for the goals outlined by the SEO company 5) Ask for references on the people who run the SEO company.

Finding a good SEO company will take your time and some knowledge but you can also ask around in webmaster forums on who is reputable and reasonable in their fees.

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas. . . ”
Arthur Browning

Hey Team!!!! Uncle Arthur is back with another Super Tip - so open your eyes!  Today it’s all about the headlines and titles in your webpages.  The keywords in your titles and headlines are important, but those headlines and titles must also be interesting to humans as well as search engine spiders. Here’s the reasons (You know Uncle Arthur always gives you the reasons.)

One important way in which the wording of your headlines, subheadlines, titles and subtitles is important is HOW your webpage will appear in the SERP, not just HOW HIGH.  If you have the right keywords and SEO for your page there is a good chance your page will appear high in the listings.  Maybe not #1 or #20, but no matter how high it is it will only be chosen by the human searcher for reading if the title or headline or description is interesting to them.

Case in point:  You search the term “seafood wholesaler.”  Let’s say that on the first page of ten webpages displayed you read three different titles and headlines:

1) “Wholesale Seafood Supplier | Fresh Seafood Distributor | Dungeness … Leading wholesale seafood supplier ships fresh frozen seafood worldwide! Request wholesale quotes online now for all your fresh seafood needs…”

2) “Learn about sea food wholesalers in Australia.  Learn about sea food wholesalers in Australia. Get the details of these wholesalers and other details. Click here now! …”

3) “Seafood Supply Company - Wholesale Seafood Distributor - Fresh …Seafood Supply Company is a government inspected wholesale seafood distributor in business since 1974 selling fresh whole fish fresh fillets and frozen …”

Now, Uncle Arthur wants you to choose which listing is best for you. Now, after you choose think about your reasoning for choosing the one you selected.  This type of reasoning causes the searcher to click on only the interesting headlines and titles even if you have to go to a lower ranking webpage, maybe the next page before you click.

If a number #1 webpage in a SERP gets only a few hits, but a number #7 or a number #27 gets a lot of hits, especially for it’s lower position, then the search algorithm will move the listing up in the SERP.  This means that the traffic that your subtitles and subheadlines can generate may actually raise your page in the rankings.

This increase in traffic can also get incoming links to your webpages from appreciative visitors - who came to your website, not because it was number #1 but because it was an interesting number #25.

Your headlines and titles are critical to your SEO.  Webmasters have had to create interesting titles and headlines that leave out some of the keywords and still get good traffic and a raise in the SERP.

A title can have the exact keyword you want but make for very uninteresting reading - so Uncle Arthur is telling you that you must adjust your headlines and subtitles for both spiders and human readers to get the best possible results.  So an excellent headline can attract readership and ultimately more incoming links - more than a poor headline with the exact keyword phrase at the very beginning of the headline.

“Row well number 44, and live,”
Arthur “Ben-Hur” Browning

Making sure that you get good SEO ranking depends on just a few important factors. Uncle Arthur has provided this invaluable article - a quickie review of those factors - to give you the summary for success. Here are the factors:

1) The design of any website is important to the way search engine spiders read your website. Search engine spiders rate your code and content by it’s position in the webpage. Keep your keywords in the content as high on each page as possible so that it is credited with more weight in the page.

2) Optimizing content is all about using keywords that you want the spider to find. There are three parts to this process: keyword density, formatting, and overall website relevancy.

Keyword density is the frequency of use of a particular keyword in a text per 100 words of text. Keyword density of 3-5% is optimal.Get your content into a format that the spiders like to read - this means use keywords in all titles, header tags and content. If you capitalized, bold or italicize this will also increase the spiders notice of your keywords. If you emphasize your keywords about on fourth of the times that they are used, then you will get a maximal effect.

Whole site relevancy is important because if your website has all its content about dogs and dog care it will do better for those keywords than a competitor site that has many different keyword groups for cats, squirrels and aquariums.

3) Building inbound links is extremely important. These links should be built from many types of sources. Here are the main sources:

Submit your website to directories. This provides links and brings traffic to your website. Some directory listings are free of charge. The more relevant the directory listing is to your content the better.

Send out articles to ezines with your links at the end of the article and leave comments with your links on various relevant blogs to spread out some inbound links.

Write for your own blog and add links to your content pages. Swap blogroll links with other relevant blogs.

Use more internal links on your website from one page to another to increase your website’s weight.

5) Use social media for SEO to get the links from the social networking websites themselves, which have value, and you can network with many relevant webistes for further collaboration and reciprocal linking. Any relevant sites that are in your community add to your relevancy.

Uncle Arthur knows that if you do these simple things you will get better SEO rankings because you will keep your visitors, including the spiders, coming back for more relevant content on more links. That’s the quickie! Whoo! Hoo!!!

The SEO Love Slave,
Arthur Browning

Ecommerce has made unbelievable inroads into several markets. Price comparison shoppers love the ability to surf the price comparison websites that show prices for a particular item from six or seven major bricks and mortar chains or other online retailers.

Ecommerce shop owners must do everything possible to increase and maintain business while controlling overhead to compete is this toughening field. The absolute lowest price does not always make the sale however, even though many shoppers have price as one of their two or three top criteria in shopping.

Perhaps the most underrated single thing you can do for your ecommerce business is to grow your customer loyalty. Loyal customers return because they know you have good pricing - but you have many other desirable features. These features are not just FREE shipping or BONUS gifts of a sample of new face cream.

The most important features are listed below - remember them the next time you are shopping online or returning to your favorite seller to make a purchase.

1 - Customer Service - When your customers need help or have questions they want email and telephone support, and it better be good, fast, courteous and to the point from the very beginning. Haphazard support in customer service has cost the very biggest websites in various industries as much as 50% of their return business, which could be estimated to be 50-80% of their potential volume.

2 - Involve Visitors - Shoppers want to belong to the best outfit possible, they can quickly become loyal to you if they feel good about you. Does your website make them feel good, in control, enjoying their visit, knowing they are doing good business with a good company? Your website must be attractive, interesting, even inspiring or fun or mysterious to get visitors to continue to involve themselves with you.

3 - Excellent Branding - Customers should automatically feel all the good things they know about you every time they read your emails, see your website, get letters or bills, pass on a great deal to a friend, etc. When they feel this way about your logo and designs and colors you create very good loyalty with your imagery and signage for your products and services.

4 - Know Your Market - To fully understand your own market means you can determine what they want and how they want to know about it. Learn everything about your buyers - demographics, favorite products and features, etc.

5 - Know Your Competitors - To really know your competitors you must understand their strengths and weaknesses. You must see their strategies in order to surpass them in one or all areas of your ecommerce business.

6 - After Sale - Your buyers want to understand that they are important to your business - that you realize how much they help your business. You must express this to them without boring them. Ask for their suggestions and complaints and requests. After a sale, it is the natural time to ask, but you can’t be demanding or bothersome to them to get results.

So, protect your customers. Once you have won them, make sure you keep them. It is the most cost effective way to continue making sales. And a good return customer is the best word of mouth advertising you can get. If you accomplish the above guidelines you will have a very competitive market strategy for getting and keeping ecommerce customer loyalty.

Big 12 Championship Prediction: Missouri 38 - Oklahoma 21
Uncle Arthur Is Here For You,
Arthur Browning