Welcome to the sixth issue of the Carolyn Hasenfratz Design and Carolyn's Stamp Store email newsletter.

Contents:

• Fall Art Walk October 11, 2008


• My Entry Into Social Media


• Connections '08


• Take One a Day For a Healthy Web Site


• Featured Craft Project from Carolyn's Stamp Store: Floral Mosaic Card

I will be exhibiting this coming Saturday, October 11, 2008 from 10:00 am until 5:00 pm. at the Fall Art Walk at Garden Heights Nursery in Richmond Heights, Missouri, located in Mid St. Louis County. I hope you'll stop by if you can attend. I'll be exhibiting some of my photographs, and rubber stamps from my Carolyn's Stamp Store collection. I will have samples of things I've made using rubber stamps on display - with the upcoming holiday season, it's a good time to get ideas for gifts you can make yourself. I invite you to see me to enter a drawing to win some stamps from my collection - you don't have to be present to win. And meet other talented artists and craftspeople from our area - see the web site for images of the work and short bios of those exhibiting. I hope to see you there!

Over the last several months I have been getting more involved in social media, and I have written about my experiences so far on my blog. Click here to read my article: My Entry Into Social Media. Your comments about your own experiences are welcome.

If you are currently on any of the following services, and want to be my friend, here is where you can find me:

• Facebook
• Plaxo

Last month I attended with colleagues from Webinar Resources the ExactTarget users conference, Connections '08. ExactTarget is the software that I used to send the email message you are reading right now. We brought back a lot of new information and inspiration about email marketing, lead generation, social media, customer acquisition, and more. I'll be blogging about some of the topics that inspired me soon. In the meantime, here is a link to some photos of the conference. Enjoy!

If you own a web site and want to get better rankings in the search engines, here are some tasks that you or your webmaster should be attending to on a regular basis. I won't lie to you, these tasks, while well worth doing, can be time-consuming and a bit tedious. Performing each of them once per day will take away the tedium and encourage you to continue your efforts as you see increasingly greater traffic to your web site, which you need in order to boost your lead generation and customer acquisition plans.

You won't know when you're doing better in the search engines if you don't know how you're doing now, so it's important to keep track of how you rank on your target keywords and phrases. I recommend that you start a log, noting the date you tested the keywords, where you ranked in the results, and any other notes that are relevant such as which search engine it was, did you use quotes around the phrase when you searched, and things like that.

Not sure what words and phrases to test for? If you supplied your webmaster with a list, use that. If the webmaster or a consultant picked them out for you, get the list from him or her, or you can look on your website by right or alt-clicking, viewing the source, and looking at what is in the keywords meta tag near the top of the page.

Weeks or months later after you've put some consistent effort into your site, test these keywords and phrases again. You will get encouragement as you see yourself move up, and you'll want to keep going.

Daily Task 2: Submit to One Search Engine

Here are the basic steps to follow to submit your web site to search engines and directories:

1. Start a log, and at the top put your URL, your Title, your Description, and your Keywords. This is a handy place to keep this information for cutting and pasting into submission forms on the various search engines.
2. Consult a directory of search engines such as the Internet Search Engine Database and look for appropriate places to submit your site. Don't worry if you've never heard of most of them - even if they send you no traffic directly, the fact that your link is there will help you in the major search engines. The more links pointing to you from other sites, the higher the rank you can achieve.
3. Record in your log the name of the search engine or directory you want to try and the URL. Do a search to see if your site is in the directory. If your site is there, note that in the log, if it is not go ahead and submit your site after reading the criteria and making sure your site is appropriate for that directory and that you agree to any terms and conditions they might have, if any. In your log, note the date of your submission, the category you chose, your password if needed, and any other comments about the site that you think might be relevant.
4. It's fun to go back later and see who has listed your site. You can try resubmitting if you don't get in (I'd wait three months before trying again), but unless you think there is a specific reason your site didn't get in and you have since fixed the problem, your time is probably better spent seeking out new search engines instead.

Daily Task 3: Contact One Potential Link Exchange Partner

If you have a place on your web site for links to other web sites, you will benefit by a link exchange campaign. Here is how to do that:

1. Seek out sites that you would like to have a link from. These should be sites that:
   • Are not direct competitors
   • Do well on your target keywords
   • Appeal to the same audience you want for your site
   • Appear professional and respectable
   • Contain valuable information that your visitors might like
   Whenever you find a good site, add it to your log.
2. Once you have a list of sites and a place to put the links, it's time to contact the owners of those sites to see if they are agreeable to the link exchange. Make sure to say specific things about their site so that they know you have actually looked at it and are not one of those people who send link requests to everyone on the planet with a web site. State what your site is about, where you want to put the link to their site, and where on their site you would like your link to go. If you come to an agreement, add their link to your site, email them to let them know their link is up, and make notes in your log.
3. Be sure to check back later with all the web site owners that you have made agreements with to make sure they have added your link.

Until next time,

Carolyn Hasenfratz

• Volume 1, Number 1
• Volume 1, Number 2
• Volume 1, Number 3
• Volume 1, Number 4
• Volume 1, Number 5

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