Adding Driving Directions to Your Website or Blog

by Jonathan Ginsberg on January 15, 2013

Are you trying to figure out how to add driving directions to your website or blog?  If you Google “embed code for driving directions” you will see several results for a Google Gadget that is supposed to do this, but currently, the gadget does not work and no code is generated.

I needed to add driving directions to one of my sites so I dug around and found code that works.  Credit to BillMyers Online.  Here it is:

<form action=”http://maps.google.com/maps” method=”get” target=”_blank”>
<p><label for=”mapsUsSaddr”>Your Address (street, city state)</label>
<input type=”text” name=”saddr” id=”mapsUsSaddr” value=”" size=”20″ />
<input type=”submit” value=”Map It” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”daddr” value=”123 Your Street, City, ST” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”hl” value=”en” /></p>
</form>

Make sure to replace the 123 Your Street, City, ST with your desired destination address.

Here’s what this code will produce:




The “destination” in this example is my office address.  I assume that Google will eventually fix their maps gadget but until they do, this code will do the job.

Inserting Directions Code into WordPress

If you are inserting this code into a WordPress page or post, make sure to select the “text” editor instead of the visual editor.

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How to Preserve Your Site Rankings if You Convert to WordPress

by Jonathan Ginsberg on December 21, 2012

Several years ago, before WordPress was a mainstream content management option, I used an HTML authoring program called NetObjects Fusion to create my websites.  NetObjects was and is a great tool for creating websites – I find it much easier to use than Dreamweaver and it is much more robust and full featured than many of the free web page editors on the market.

NetObjects also has the advantage of not being widely used in the United States, although it has a large user base in Germany.  This means that there are a large number of themes out there for designers.

As good as NetObjects has been, however, it is not a web based solution.  Over the past few years, most web designers have moved to web based content management software like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.  WordPress, in particular, has evolved into a very robust solution that is accessible to non-techies and techies alike.

Earlier this year I decided to port one of my NetObjects sites into WordPress.  This particular site had ranked very highly for a number of highly competitive terms in the consumer legal services market.   For several years, my site held top position even though it was, quite frankly, somewhat ugly.  I decided to refresh the site and move the content into WordPress so I could more easily edit it and not be tied to my office computer.

Within a few weeks after moving the site, my rankings tanked.  I assumed, wrongly, that because my new site had even more and better content, as well as videos and all the latest schema and Google + integration that all would be well.   Instead, Google saw about 150 well established pages disappear from view.  I realized that I had failed to set up what is called a “redirect” – in which I signal to the search engines that references to an old page should be immediately and permanently redirected to a new one.  WordPress has a very simple solution – a plug-in called Simple 301 redirect.

Now that the redirect is working, my site is coming back but it will take some time.  Here is a brief video showing how the 301 redirect works and how to perform this function using Google’s webmaster tools.

 

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Solution to Disappearing Visual Editor

by Jonathan Ginsberg on December 18, 2012

Over the past few weeks as I have updated several of my sites to WordPress 3.5 and moved to standardize with the Thesis theme (I’m currently using v. 1.85 as my main theme, as there is not yet sufficient documentation for v.2.0), I have run into a recurring problem – my visual site editor has stopped working.

Generally the visual editor buttons are there when I create a new post or page, but the minute I save the draft or go back into re-edit, I am faced with a totally blank editing box when the Visual editor is selected and a blank editing box when the Text editor is selected as well.

If I refresh the Visual edit page, nothing happens.  If I refresh the Text edit page, I do see the html code which I can edit.

Obviously, WordPress posts and pages are a lot easier to edit with the Visual editor.  There are numerous threads at WordPress.org discussing this problem and numerous solutions, none of which seem to work.

However I have found a solution that does currently work for me in my set up.  A WordPress.org forum member named Baki Goxhaj posted the following solution  back in 2010, and it is working for me:

Open your wp-config.php and add this line of code at the bottom of the file before the “require_once” line:

define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false );

Thanks to: http://www.techiecorner.com/1656/wordpress-visual-editor-not-working/

In order to perform this fix, you will need an FTP program.  Once you FTP into the directory where your WordPress installation resides, copy the wp-config.php file to your local hard drive.  Open it with a text editor (I use metapad on my Windows machine) and insert the define line before the “require_once” line.  Save the wp-config file and upload it back to your WordPress directory.

Click on the Dashboard, then proceed to edit your pages and posts.  The Visual Editor will be restored.

It may be that this solution does not work for every instance of the disappearing Visual Editor but it worked for me.

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Marketing Tip: Don’t Insult Your Prospect

by Jonathan Ginsberg on April 21, 2011

the birdThis morning I received a direct mail promotion addressed to me at my law firm from an ad rep at one of Atlanta’s largest media companies (they own Atlanta’s main daily newspaper, a several radio stations and a network TV station).  Proving once again that size and financial strength do not convey intelligence, the direct mail piece began as follows:

Mr. Jonathan Ginsberg:

A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.  Let me suggest that this well-known adage pertains to legal marketing as well….

I don’t know what the rest of the letter said because I stopped reading.   If I was in the market for TV, radio or newspaper space, I don’t know that I would want to do business with an ad rep who managed to both insult me and to condescend to me in one sentence.

What does this bozo know about me or my business and who is he to tell me that I am a fool, or that I am such a simpleton that I cannot possibly succeed without his help?  I wonder (but I think I know) how much of his own money this fool has risked in an advertising campaign.

The rest of the letter (which I have now scanned) is even better.  I have learned that:

  • television and yellow page advertising….is unprofessional, unpromoting, overly dramatic and targeted to vulnerable people
  • the legal profession is among the least reputed institutions in American Society
  • the ABA (American Bar Assn.) has advice for me about marketing (with all due respect to the ABA, which does some fine work, marketing is not their strong suit)

Thank goodness there are people like this ad rep who is willing out of the goodness of his heart to sell me overpriced radio time on a station that does not reach my target demographic.   Where do I send the check?

At least the paper stock used in the letter was good – it makes a heck of a paper airplane.

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Google Gamed by J.C. Penney?

by Jonathan Ginsberg on February 15, 2011

dishonest dealingsThis Sunday’s (February 13, 2011) New York Times ran a front page story in the business section entitled The Dirty Little Secrets of Search.  The story discussed how J.C. Penney appeared as the number one result for hundreds of search phrases for its products.  In some cases, the J.C. Penney result for a brand name appeared before the brand name company web site – the example given was the phrase “Samsonite carry on luggage.”   J.C. Penney’s sales page for Samsonite appeared ahead of Samsonite.com.

J.C. Penney’s organic search results topped Google’s rankings for months, including the critical holiday season.   The Times researches determined that J.C. Penney’s rankings were due in part to incoming links from thousands of pages, many of which had nothing to do with consumer retail goods.   In other words,  somebody created a huge network of bogus sites that existed primarily to generate “link juice” that benefited J.C. Penney. [click to continue…]

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Search Engine Optimization Instructions…Directly from Google

by Jonathan Ginsberg on November 23, 2010

SEO checklistBecause I spend a lot of my time tweaking and optimizing for the search engines my own sites as well as client sites, I have a good sense of the various strategies and tactics being discussed by SEO professionals as well as business owners interested in finding an edge.   Generally the strategies for achieving good results on the search engines are well known – produce quality content for a human audience, produce it regularly and figure out ways (tactics) to get other web sites to link back to you using descriptive link text.  I currently own or manage over 100 web sites and blogs, many of which appear on the first page of search results for several relevant keywords (search phrases)

The marketplace of tactics is a lot more fluid – methods to achieve your strategic goals change frequently.  Ten years ago, most web sites contained pages titled “recommended links” and there was even software available to automate this process.  Today, we know that Google and other search engines ignore pages that exist solely to exchange links and a much better tactic involves guest posting articles with links embedded therein. [click to continue…]

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Generate Backlinks by Commenting on “Do Follow” Blogs

by Jonathan Ginsberg on November 10, 2010

blog comment strategyI recently read a blog post written by a marketing consultant who set out a strategy for getting backlinks pointing to your blog.  The strategy calls for posting thoughtful and relevant comments on authority blogs.   When done correctly, this strategy operates as a “win-win” – the blog publisher gets additional content in the form of your comments and you get a backlink to your blog or web site.

This all makes sense except for one glaring admission – you must find blogs with the “no follow” attribute turned off.  Otherwise your comments will not create any backlinks.  Ironically the marketing consultant who described the blog comment strategy had “no follow” enabled on his blog!

What is “no follow?”  No follow is an attribute that is now the default setting in WordPress.  It signals Google and some other search engines not to follow a hyperlink, in this case, your link text.   The blog publisher must turn off “no follow” in order to send his commenters a backlink.

In order to turn off “no follow” in WordPress, you need a plugin, which you can find by clicking on the link.  Install the plug-in and activate it and your blog comments will become “follow links.” [click to continue…]

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Why “Content is King”

by Jonathan Ginsberg on August 29, 2010

The Internet Marketing educator who has most influenced me is a gentleman named Ken McCarthy, who is well known for his work producing the System Seminars.  Back in 2004, I attended my first seminar, where Ken and several other speakers offered up a basic rule that underlies successful commerce on the Internet – namely that “content is king.”

  • Content is king because your clients/customers/site visitors expect that your site will educate them
  • Content is king because clear, thoughtful and education content functions as currency and your customers will trade their time and their business for that currency
  • Content is king because new content is constantly being added to the marketplace of ideas – if you put up a 10 page web site three years ago that has not been touched since, there is absolutely no reason that anyone will assign any value to that content
  • Content is king because very bright people working late at night are constantly devising new distribution channels for that content – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, etc.   Content is so valuable to the publishers that the owners of these distribution channels will host your content at no cost to you because they know that the public demands fresh content.
  • Content is king because the Internet is primarily an educational tool.
  • Content is king because clear and concise writing is rare.
  • Content is king because human beings yearn to learn and to connect and the Internet offers a place for both.
  • Content is king because the Internet is like a television with tens of millions of channels – and good content helps you get found.

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How to Get Links to Your New Site

by Jonathan Ginsberg on July 7, 2010

I publish several blogs about legal topics and have done so for several years.  My Atlanta bankruptcy blog, for example, has been around since 2005 and contains close to 300 posts.   It has a very solid search engine presence and links from this provide a significant amount of “link love” for the recipient.

Almost weekly, I get emails from blog or web site owners that go something like this:

I am in the process of developing a more substantial online presence.  I noticed your blog and that it receives a lot of traffic, and am wondering whether you would be interested in a reciprocal link arrangement whereby we link to your blog and website and, in return, you link to our website on your blog.  Our site is at _____.   We will be adding a “Resources” page that will include links and brief descriptions of useful sites for bankruptcy information, and would include a reference to your blog on that page.

Here is how I read this message:   “Hello, you do not know me but I see you have an established blog that has been around for 5 years, appears regularly in the organic search results and has a high Google PageRank.  I have a new website that has a few pages of content and has not yet been indexed by Google, Yahoo or Bing.  I want you to give me a site wide blogroll link from your site to help put my site on the map.  In exchange, I’ll put you on a “links” page on my site, when I get around to adding such a page.  I sincerely hope you don’t know that “links” pages are ignored by the search engines, meaning that a link from a “links” page is totally worthless.”

Not surprisingly, asking for a link from an established site when you have nothing to trade is a waste of your time and it is a waste of your potential link partners’ as well.

Similarly, if your site still contains a “links” or “resources” page, you are shouting to the world that you do not know what you are doing and/or that your linking tactics are vintage 1990.   With very few exceptions, “links” pages have no search engine value.  Next time you see one, look at the PageRank indicator on your Google Toolbar (or at PageRankLookup) you can check for yourself.

So what should you do if you have a new site?  Here are a few suggestions that would work for me:

  1. if you have another, more established site, offer a link from that site
  2. offer to write an article for your target site – but make sure that your article has some relevant, meaty content.  If you really want to impress your target’s editor, offer to write a second article that you will include on your site that contains a link back to your target’s site
  3. if you have friends or colleagues who have established blogs, ask if they will accept a post (written by you or by your target) that contains a link back to the target
  4. offer to write an article for the benefit of your target for EzineArticles.com or another major article directory.  Even better, offer to write several articles for multiple article directories
  5. offer to bookmark several of your target’s blog posts on one or more social bookmarking sites.
  6. offer to write reviews for Google local, Kudzu, Avvo if applicable
  7. offer to pay for the link back to your new site
  8. offer to distribute video content on behalf of your target on TubeMogul
  9. offer to record and produce a screen capture video for your target
  10. offer to translate (or have translated) one or more pages of your target’s site into Spanish or another language
  11. offer to write and set up an autoresponder series for your target on AWeber or Constant Contact
  12. offer to buy 50 stock photo credits at iStockPhoto or another stock photo site
  13. offer to locate 5 or 10 badges for your target’s blog – badges are seals that look like awards that may help a blog’s credibility
  14. offer to record an interview with your target and to provide target publisher with the audio file

Generally, put yourself in the shoes of a busy blogger – what can you do to help your target blog publisher save time?  Any other ideas about what a new site owner can offer an established site owner to justify a valuable link?

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Tips for Search Engine Success

by Jonathan Ginsberg on May 3, 2010

A topic that could never be covered enough when it comes to SEO: How to get the best results from search engines. Not only are search engines free, but they drive the majority of visitors to your site. Statistics show that your site is seven times more likely to be visited through a successful search engine search than by a pay-per-click ad.

These are some of the most effective strategies to get the best results with search engines:

1) Speak Your Audience’s Language – This means use the exact words and phrases that your visitors would type into search engines. Don’t use scientific or unfamiliar jargon when writing about your products or services on your site. Make your phrases simple and use common words to describe your product or service. When people use a search engine, they most commonly describe what they’re trying to achieve, or what problem they are attempting to solve rather than your specific product or service, which may not be popular yet.

2) Make Search Engines Happy – Once you speak your audience’s language, it’s important to appear high on the search engine results page to increase your visitors. Certain information can be used in your site to appeal to the search engine spiders, which will be determining your rank. Search engine spiders like keywords that are relevant, valuable, descriptive, and informative.

Spiders look at your title tag first to figure out what your site is about, and because it also appears in the actual search engine results, it’s important that your title tag appeal to both potential visitors and the search engines. Include your most important keywords in your headlines and use them again in your content to show search engines that your site’s content is all related and relevant.

Organization is also very important to search engines. Trying to trick search engines by including words that are not relevant but may increase your ranks will not work and will only anger the spiders. Make sure all your information and content is clear, relevant, and easy to navigate. In short, the more clearly you indicate what your site is through use of quality keywords, the better your chances are of getting higher rankings.

3) Continue to Update – It’s inevitable that search engine optimization strategies will change and search engine spiders will continue to get smarter and develop new ways to determine rankings. You must constantly keep an eye on your keywords and be flexible to making changes to make sure your site keeps its ranking.

Another good way of staying up to date is by adding a blog to your website. This is easily achieved and can have extraordinary effects on driving traffic to your site.

If you have any further questions about any of the above-mentioned techniques, please contact Rent-My-Brain or leave a comment on the blog.

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