New CityMax.com partner

We are excited to announce that CityMax has partnered with Nightlite Media.

One of the most asked questions we get is: “How do I get visitors to my site?” Nightlite Media are experts at helping people successfully draw visitors to their sites using:

• search engine optimization (i.e. getting your sites ranked highly on search engines like Google)
• social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook)
• email marketing

We know it’s sometimes difficult to learn and then find the time to promote your site. The reality is that for many of you, getting a company to help you is the best choice. So, our marketing team searched out the best of the best online marketing companies and then put together custom packages we thought made the most sense for our customers. Check out the special packages here.

How important is it to get your online marketing started? Here are some facts that Nightlite Media has put together:

• 97% of potential customers are searching online first
• 61 billion online searches were made in August 2010 alone
• 77% of North Americans are online (that’s a huge 266 million people!)

You can contact Nighlite Media for a 100% free consultation by going to http://websitedynamics.nightlitemedia.com or by calling 1-888- 418-3839. Why not jumpstart your online marketing today!

Have you ever thought about moving your blog from one host to another, but were afraid of what might happen to your search engine ranking?

Should Double Dragon Jewelry move their blog?

Cindy of Double Dragon Jewelry Ltd. is deciding that exact scenario. She’s debating whether to move her new blog from BlogSpot.com (one of the most popular blogging software programs) to one that will allow her to keep her blog as part of her jewelry website.

Just to make this clear, her jewelry is being sold on:

silverjewelry-sterling.com

Her blog is currently at:

doubledragonsilverjewelry.blogspot.com/

Her web host, i.e. CityMax which is us, has added a blogging option so she could have her blog on:

silverjewelry-sterling.com/blog.html

If Cindy moved her blog to silverjewelry-sterling.com, she would have to weigh the following:

1. Potential to improve the rank of silverjewelry-sterling.com

Having her blog on her CityMax site will do 3 things that may increase her search engine rank for silverjewelry-sterling.com. First, every blog post is new content on her site. The more often you update your site, the more often search engines will re-index it (i.e. check out your site to see what new info is posted so their links are up to date) and rank your site higher.

Second, each blog post Cindy does will hopefully result in more links to silverjewelry-sterling.com because people like her posts. Each link or “vote” helps your search engine ranking. If a website with a high search engine rank links to your page, this is even better. Their “vote” for your site is actually worth several votes.

Third, each time Cindy posts a new article, this will result in a new page that can be linked to from the search engines to her site. This in turn will mean more opportunities to draw people to her site. The more people who visit her site, the higher her website ranking will be.

2. Cannot take search engine rank of doubledragonsilverjewelry.blogspot.com to new blog

If Cindy already has a good rank for doubledragonsilverjewelry.blogspot.com,she cannot transfer that rank directly to her new blog pages. This is because her blog is moving to a different domain. The search engines will recognize this change as doubledragonsilverjewelry.blogspot.com has shut down and then when they index her blog on silverjewelry-sterling.com/blog.html, they will recognize this as a new blog.

3. Beware of duplicate content as it can get your site delisted temporarily

If Cindy plans to move over articles she posted on doubledragonsilverjewelry.blogspot.com to silverjewelry-sterling.com/blog.html, she could get silverjewelry-sterling.com delisted temporarily. The reason is search engines don’t like duplicate content or even very similar content. It looks like someone who isn’t an authority on a topic, just copied someone else’s content. Everything is automated too, you cannot tell Google: “Hey, I just moved my blog to ______.”

Cindy may want to only post new articles on her silverjewelry-sterling.com/blog.html blog at first and not copy over any of her old articles. After her old blog has been closed for a considerable amount of time (many months) such that the old page content is no longer indexed on search engines, she can then repost the articles.

4. Potential to increase sales on silverjewelry-sterling.com

Cindy is likely to get more people to click to other parts of silverjewelry-sterling.com since her website navigation will be right beside her blog posts. This may result in greater sales. Note that if she didn’t move her blog over, you could argue that she could simply have a link to her jewelry online store.

5. Functionality and Convenience

Cindy needs to weigh the functionality of the 2 blogs. To BlogSpot’s credit, they have had many years to develop their site and blogs are their primary focus. CityMax is an all-in-one website builder and must balance the benefits of developing the blog further against other features that are requested. When it comes to convenience, Cindy may like that she can manage everything on CityMax instead of having to monitor 2 websites.

If anyone has any other reasons to move or not move a blog, please post them in the comments.

Image by jronaldlee

Do you find yourself saying any of the following statements?

“I want to sell to everybody.”

“Everybody can benefit from my product/service.”

“I want to cast a wide net – everyone should know about us.”

If so, I want to give you a high five for your enthusiasm – but I also want you to read the rest of this article so you understand why your marketing consultant looks really uncomfortable when you say any of the above.

The world would be a wonderful place if everyone was the perfect candidate for your product or service. But the truth of the matter is, we’re all different. We all have different wants, needs, tolerances, and preferences. We’re all drawn to different things and we’re all trying to solve different problems. Which is why when you try to sell to everyone, you end up wasting a lot of time, energy, and money on people that are never going to spend money on you.

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We’re moving! Tomorrow we’ll be saying goodbye to our legendary office of the last two years, and joining our friends at MeZine Inc. (our parent company). It’s been a magical time, and as this is my last day with CityMax.com, I thought a little retrospective of our highlights in our Gastown office would be fitting.

From having two office dogs, to street hockey and yoga, to hosting 300+ entrepreneurs and City Council for Spirit Day, to even having an Alaskan king crab run around - it’s been an amazing place. Check out the videos/pics if you don’t believe me.

Shaw TV Feature

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So, it’s my first week here at CityMax.com, and as a dedicated web coach one of my first assignments was to dive right into the easy business website builder. After getting used to making my way around the application and understanding how to take advantage of all the tools available, I’ve found five helpful tips for the newbie CityMax.com user!

1. The “Edit Site” tab will always be your go-to button.

When you sign up for your free 10 day trial, or if you’ve just made your website active, the “Edit Site” tab when you login on the top left beside the “Dashboard” tab is the most important tab for navigating your website. This tab will have five helpful sub-tabs: View Site, My Pages, Add Page, Design, and Domain & E-mail. You will be able to access all your pages here (under “My Pages”), as well as change and customize your template (Under “Design”). This is the best place to keep your website organized.

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Is there a steep learning curve?

As an entrepreneur, you wear many hats and juggle many different roles: so the last thing you need is to figure out how to use a tool. If you can’t get set up within minutes and understand intuitively it’s features on offer, then it is not the right tool for you.

A great example of a tool that is `oh so easy’ to set up and use: Rescue Time, a personal productivity tool that tracks the way you spend time online, showing you where you’re wasting time and how you can be more effective.

Simply download their software, and it installs within minutes on your computer. During the first 24 hours, it asks you a series of questions via pop up prompts to gauge how you work, then quietly works in the background to discover what you’re wasting time on.

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Image by Arria Belli

Inspiration comes from a lot of places, and one of the best sources is from the words of experts. At CityMax.com, we’ve got a library of books on all sorts of topics, including design, programming, money management, sales, and marketing. More often than not, I’ve walked away from these books with at least one great idea.

If you’re looking for a little insight, here are some of the books our team has found helpful!

The Dream Manager – Matthew Kelly
If you have employees and want to avoid high turnover and low morale, this book will help you create a workplace that fosters teamwork and loyalty.

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This week CityMax.com had the great honor of being named a runner-up finalist for Best Employer at Small Business BC’s Successful You Awards. While we’re not one to toot our own horn (really!), the best part of the process was finding out what really makes a great workplace.

As I was putting together our presentation, I thought about all the cool stuff we have in the office and all the fun things we do, but then it came to me. It all begins with the people I work with every day.

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Search engine optimization.

You’ve heard about it from friends and all the experts say you should do it, but do you know why? According to Wikipedia, SEO is “the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.”

In plain English: how will anyone ever buy from your business if they can’t find your website in the first place?

A good chunk of customer questions we receive at CityMax.com revolve around improving website search rankings, so we thought we’d point you towards some helpful resources to get started. Keep in mind many people devote their entire lives to SEO so this is just the tip of the iceberg!

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In this week’s Small Business Roundup, we picked out our favorite small business articles from the week covering topics such as: how marketers can channel their inner Charlie Sheen, a couple of useful accounting tools to help you find those hidden dollars, and a look at how Google’s changes to advertising affects your small business.

1) While millions are wondering how a man can be powered solely by #tigerblood and illicit substances, Sean Platt and David Wright dig deeper to unearth several keen business insights in The Charlie Sheen Guide to Winning! at Online Marketing.

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