Recently active topics in PetWebPro

Here's a conversation with a client of mine, (local dog trainer), who would like her site to be in Google's rankings for keywords: "dog behavior". Thought i would share the insight -

Client said:

"when people google things looking for a dog trainer... I'd like people to just go on their google and type in dog behavior, and have my website appear. Is that a possibility?"

I said:

Ok, so we want to basically just push 'dog behavior' as the main keywords that you want to target, then.

I can't guarantee any placing in organic search results, Google is all about ranking websites by relevancy, content, and a number of other things, but I can do my best. (Or you can think about paid sponsored links, but for the sake of this email, we'll talk about organic seo)

The words 'dog behavior' are also very generic - you are going to have lots of competition for those by some websites that have been around for a long time. Sites established for a while will have higher ranking over yours simply because of the time factor. That's why I usually try to add something like 'dog behavior your city, state 'dog behavior certified dog trainer'.

'dog behavior' can mean lots of things - people can be searching that phrase for a number of reasons not just people who might be looking for a dog trainer in your region.

That's just a little info on SEO - just so you know that it's hard to use such a vague term and expect good results, quickly, with such a new site. But we can still try. Good organic search engine results take time and patience. It has taken me just a little over 1 year to get to page 2 of google for "pet website designers".

So - this is what I would recommend:

Competition website analysis - If you want to target this phrase, I would recommend doing a thorough study on your competition also targeting this phrase, analyze their meta tags (as below) and site content (note, the competition has LOTS of content on their sites - lots of relevant content is GOOD) and plan your seo based on those examples.

Please note, that this isn’t going to GUARANTEE any search engine placement - but it will make your site better noticed by Google, and other search engines in relation to your competition. In addition to the competition analysis, you should also (1) consider starting an incoming link strategy. As many relevant incoming links to your site as possible will be very helpful, and (2) CONTENT!! If you want to show Google that your site is relevant for 'dog behavior' than, you better show them! Write articles, gives tips and advice, make your site noticed. Google makes you work for your rankings.

Whatever their generation, whatever their need, when pet owners are searching for a pet care provider for their pets, it is highly likely that they will turn to the internet to find one, making a website a vital part of any veterinary clinic's strategic marketing plan.

PetWebPro.com specializes in website designs for the veterinary industry, building pet website designs for veterinary clinics, specialty veterinary practices, and animal hospitals all across the country.

Why is PetWebPro.com different from other designers? We have the hands-on expertise of working an an animal hospital environment, so we are one step ahead of other designers when it comes to understanding your business and what you want to achieve with your veterinary website project.

A website can be the first impression to many new potential clients. Having an website with both function and style will make or break the difference for pet owners choosing who they trust to be the pet care provider for their pets.

A beautifully designed and well-optimized website will deliver results to you and your clients allowing you to stay in front of and in touch with every day potential customers searching the internet for veterinary services, or new clients looking to build a long lasting relationship.

Reaching a New Generation
There is a new generation of pet owners emerging, the Generation Y, who like other generations are being shaped by the trends of their time.

The rise of instant communication technologies made possible through use of the internet and new media used through websites like YouTube and social networking sites, explains their reputation for seeking instant gratification when seeking information online. That includes the information they are seeking when trying to make decisions about pet care.

As Generation Y is quickly becoming more mature and taking on the responsibility of pet ownership, possibly for the very first time, that means turning to the internet to research the best information about local pet care providers that they can find. Any pet care provider without a updated and well optimized web presence is surely going to lose out on this potential to capture new pet owners when they are most likely going to make long-term decision about their pet's healthcare provider.

Staying in touch
It is not just new clients that you are trying to reach or impress, it is also your existing client base. Pet Owners expect their pet care provider to have an online presence. A website can serve as your clinic's 24/7 virtual assistant, providing general information any hour of the day or night such as office hours, directions, staff bios and much, much more.

If you are looking for more ways to stay interactive with your clients, implement an E-newsletter feature on your website, send out monthly birthday E-cards, seasonal health articles, notify clients of holiday hours or special notices that are important to them and their pets healthcare. A website can offer so many features and functions to help you stay in touch with your client base and retain your existing clients while building new ones.

Design with style, personalization
Typical PetWebPro.com veterinary website designs include content for existing and potential clients.

Specialty veterinary clinics may also include downloadable referral forms for the convenience of referring veterinarians, and downloadable Admission forms for the convenience of your clients.

Of course, ALL PetWebPro.com veterinary website designs are customized to meet your pet hospital or animal clinic's special needs.

www.petwebpro.com

DMOZ (www.dmoz.org) is actually one of the toughest sites to get listed in. But still worth trying.

When submitting a site there, they come right out and tell you that it could take months, and there is no guarantee that it will even be accepted. It is a human-edited directory and the editors work for free, so they are stretched pretty thin.

The great thing about being included in the DMOZ is that it is such a huge and reputable directory that if you are lucky enough to get a link to your site from that site, it is a very credible incoming link to your site, and search engines like that.

But don't just rely on the DMOZ for all of your incoming link seo strategy.

Any other reputable incoming links are always a great plan for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is always a work in progress and as long as you have a site, it never ends. Building a broad network of incoming links to your site is a great plan. Reciprocal links are good, too but be sure that if you exchange links with someone, that they are relevant and credible.

When sending email, you receive an immediate bounce such as the following:

Subject: RE: XXXXXX - October 27, 2005
Sent: 10/31/2005 12:40 PM
The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
'John Doe' on 10/31/2005 12:40 PM
503 valid RCPT command must precede DATA

This means you must check your email before trying to send mail meaning that our mail server requires authentication, which can be achieved using one of these methods:

A) Pop before smtp -- check your email for new mail before trying to send email. This adds your IP address to a relayhosts file and allows any email to be sent from that IP address for up to 30 minutes. After 30 minutes you have to authenticate again.

B) Configure your email client to authenticate automatically by checking the "my server requires authentication" box in your email configuration. You will be able to send mail without having to "pop" your mail box first.

If you are using Vertical Response on your website (or want to sign up for our PetWebPRo.com enews) here's an explanation of what the opt-in forms mean:

Single Opt-in: These are people who have submitted their email address via a VR opt-in form, but have not confirmed the action via email. You can not mail to these email addresses. (Vertical Response will automatically send them an email to make sure the recipient has access to the email address and wants to receive communication from you. This is referred to as a double opt-in and produces a higher quality of mailing list.)

Mailable (opt-in): These are people who have completed the double opt-in process. You can mail to these email addresses.

Vertical Response will only mail to your Mailable double Opt-in list.

Welcome to the mysterious world of Google.

You may be wondering why your brand new site is not showing up in Google's index, even after it has been submitted to Google several times, and you know that Google has done its deep sweep of the web since its publication.

You may even have multiple links to it from other reputable sites with high PageRanks in the Google index. So why is it that your site is not making it into Google's index? The culprit is a term used in the SEO community which is referred to as aging delay.

Aging delay means that Google will not index your site for a specified period of time, meaning your site is being delayed from indexing until it has reached a certain age. If your site is affected by Google's aging delay, the reality is that it could take six to nine months for you to start seeing results in Google's index no matter how well optimized your site may be.

Google's theory behing using aging delay is to maintain the integrity of the information provided to their end users. They do not want people to be able to manipulate their way to the top of the rankings in a short period of time by simply throwing a bunch of money at an SEO firm along with a list of keywords.

Google is using aging delay as a means of counteracting site owners that want to create a site and move directly to the top of the rankings for a specific group of keywords. It's Google's way of putting a new site in a sort of holding pattern before indexing its pages.

If your site is experiencing aging delay, don't panic. You are not being penalized, just being put through the masterrful Google algorithms or as we like to say around here, "The Google Gods".

Always remember that Google is not the only search engine out there. It may be the ideal search engine of choice at this time, but there are others that can produce substantial traffic. Continue monitoring your rankings in MSN and Yahoo, and before you know it, you will be coming up in Google too.

Over the coming months we will be making changes to our webmail software. This will streamline our servers and improve performance across the board.

We will initially be removing Horde. This will be replaced with Roundcube (already available on some servers).

We will then be analyzing performance with Roundcube & Squirrelmail (with a possible view to removing Squirrelmail).

First, you will want to decide what kind of email protocol you want to use, IMAP or POP (see the topic discussing that if you need more information).

Then, follow the configuration settings as follows, and TEST YOUR EMAIL when you are done.

E-mail clients like Outlook, Windows Mail, etc are all different and depending on your ISP server settings, sometimes it needs to be configured based on your unique situation, but here are your standard settings.

You may also need to use your ISP outgoing mail server settings if you have configured your email as follows, but are still having problems especially sending email. Contact your ISP service provider to get the outgoing mail server settings if needed, and replace it with the outgoing servers settings as noted below and disable outgoing mail authentication if you are using your ISP's SMTP servers. (see the topic discussing problems sending email for more information).

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POP SETTINGS

Mail Server Username: "your mail account" (for example: yourname@yourdomain.com)

Incoming Mail Server: mail.petwebpro.com

port 110 (SSL 995) (found under Advanced tab in Outlook)

Outgoing Mail Server: mail.petwebpro.com

Outgoing server requires authentication (found under Outgoing Server tab in Outlook)

port 25 or 26 (SSL 465) (found under Advanced tab in Outlook)

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IMAP settings -

Mail Server Username: "your mail account" (for example: yourname@yourdomain.com)

Incoming Mail Server: mail.petwebpro.com

port 143 (SSL 993) (found under Advanced tab in Outlook)

Outgoing Mail Server: mail.petwebpro.com

Outgoing server requires authentication (found under Outgoing Server tab in Outlook)

port 25 or 26 (SSL 465) (found under Advanced tab in Outlook)

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Happy configuring!

PetWebPro.com is a green company by choosing to host all of our websites on 'carbon neutral' servers. Our hosting provider has partnered with with the International Tree Foundation and sponsors a particular tree planting project in Western Kenya, now known as The Solaf Tree Fund. Not only does this help curb the effects of our carbon emissions, it also is a valuable labor source for a community that faces daily poverty.

From the International Tree Foundation...

The aim of the project is to plant around 1,400,000 trees in tree nurseries. The seedlings are distributed to local communities to grow for wood products such as building timber, fibre for baskets, animal fodder and food. The Solaf Tree Fund plants new and indigenous species of trees to reduce deforestation and soil erosion and to ensure that existing forests are conserved by providing local communities with alternative sources and income.

If your hosting account was configured on or after September 3, 2008 -

You can access your cPanel admin by going to admin.yourdomainname.com

Your account username and password were emailed to you when your hosting account was set up. Here is where you as the administrator will set up email accounts for yourself and/or your employees.

Then..

You and your employees can access your Webmail directly by going to mail.yourdomainname.com

Your username is the full email address you'll be checking, and password is of course the password you assigned to the email address in your admin section.

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If your hosting account was configured before September 3, 2008 -

You can access your cPanel admin by going to yourdomain.com:2082

Your account username and password were emailed to you when your hosting account was set up. Here is where you as the administrator will set up email accounts for yourself and/or your employees.

Then..

You and your employees can access your Webmail directly by going to yourdomain.com:2095

Your username is the full email address you'll be checking, and password is of course the password you assigned to the email address in your admin section.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ACCESS YOUR ADMIN PANEL AND EMAILS WITH THE EASIER-TO-REMEMBER SUBDOMAIN FEATURES (LIKE THE FIRST OPTION), YOU CAN EITHER CONFIGURE THE SUBDOMAINS YOURSELF IN YOUR CPANEL, OR JUST CONTACT US, AND WE'LL DO IT FOR YOU.

To configure the mail and admin subdomains yourself

go to http://yoursite.com:2082
create a subdomain (like mail.yourdomain.com)
redirect the new subdomain to http://www.yoursite.com:2095

Here's a brief troubleshooting guide to setting up email. 99% of all email issues result from improper settings on the client's email program. Be sure to follow through this troubleshooting guide, before you submit a ticket to the helpdesk.

Troubleshooting Step 1.

Make sure that the domain that is having email issues, has not expired. If the domain registration has expired, you won't have email access for that domain.

Troubleshooting Step 2.

Some ISP's actively block port 25 to other servers other than their own. The symptom of this would be a Time out when attempting to connect to our smtp server via your ISP's connection.

What should you do? Contact your ISP first to establish this if you are getting time out messages and the connection is not being made to our servers.

If your ISP is blocking port 25, you can simply change your outgoing mail [SMTP] to your ISP's mail server in order for you send mail through your ISP. Call your ISP for exact SMTP server values. Also disable outgoing mail authentication incase you are using your ISP's SMTP servers.

Troubleshooting Step 3.

Make sure that the email account's username does not contain any capital letters. So this is wrong - Me@mydomain.com and this is correct - me@mydomain.com

Troubleshooting Step 4.

If you are having problems sending email to a specific domain, which is on another server than your account that you are sending the email from, make sure that you have not setup that domain on the same server that you are sending from.

Troubleshooting Step 5.

Make sure that the domain having email problems, is fully propagated and using the correct nameservers for their DNS. You cannot use email before the domain is propagated.

Troubleshooting Step 6.

Make sure that the domain that is having email issues, has enough disk space assigned to it. If your domain is over its allotted disk space, then this will cause email issues. You can check to see the domain's disk space by accessing your WHM >> "Quota Modification" and then raise the disk space on that domain, if you have to.

Troubleshooting Step 7.

Also make sure that the email account has enough email disk space assigned to it. This is the amount of disk space that you have created your email account with. So check in your Cpanel >> "Mail Management" >> "POP Email Accounts" >> then click on the Edit Quota link [could be different for different cpanel skins] >> then add more disk space there.

Troubleshooting Step 8.

If you are experiencing email related problems such as:

- unable to login via webmail - unable to send emails - unable to receive emails (sender gets a bounced message)

AND you are using the main account to send/receive emails, which is the default account that only uses the username without the "@domain.com" part.

The problem is that this default account is supposed for the internal system usage. It can work as a normal email account as well, but in most cases it will result in above mentioned problems, that's why we don't recommend using the default email account directly.

If you are already using the account but don't want to switch to a new email address then you can simply do the following:

1.) create a new email account in your CPanel and name it like the accounts username 2.) configure your mail client software to use "username@domain.com" instead of only "username" in order to avoid any mix ups
3.) setup the default address to foward to this new email address

Example: You have a domain on server called "my_domain.com" with the username "vancouver" and you are using the following login details:

incoming- & outgoing mailserver: mail.my_domain.com username: vancouver password:********

Then you would create a new email account in your CPanel called "vancouver", which then gets created as "vancouver@my_domain.com", so changing the login details to

incoming- & outgoing mailserver: mail.my_domain.com username: vancouver@my_domain.com password: *******

Then the "vancouver@my_domain.com" email address will work just fine again.

If you follow those steps then you will be able to use the email address just fine again and it will work the same way as the default email account (regarding the "catch all" emails).

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS REGARDING EMAIL:

Question: What happens to mail when the server is down - is it returned to sender or lost?

Ans: Mail Transfer Agents (MTA) on the internet will continue trying to deliver mail to your domain if your server is down, or if the domain is over its resources and unreachable. Some MTAs will notify the sender if not able to deliver an email within an hour however they will continue to retry the delivery. How long an MTA tries is configurable but most will try anywhere from 3 to 7 days. If after that time, the email is still undeliverable the MTA will give up and notify the sender of the failure.

Question: How to block all mail to an e-mail address?

Answer: Making individual addresses fail:
If you wish to block all e-mail going to an e-mail address, simply create a forwarder for that address that forwards to:
:blackhole:

Please note that you must have the colons on both sides of the word fail for it to work.

Making the default/catchall address fail:
This method also works if you wish to make the default address (also known as the catch-all address) fail. Putting :blackhole: as the default address will make all e-mail addressed to an e-mail address/alias (that you have no made a pop3 account or forwarder for) fail.

keywords: block bounce mail fail :fail: blackhole :blackhole: spam forward forwarder

If you're having trouble sending emails on port 25 (the default SMTP port), try switching your SMTP port to 26. Most ISPs are blocking port 25 to prevent spam accross the internet. Changing your SMTP port to 26 will solve this problem.

Another convenient way nowdays is to change your outgoing server settings to your ISP settings. Just call your Internet Service Provider to get that information, if you don't already have it.

Our email servers support two email protocols: POP and IMAP.

When you are configuring your email accounts with an email client like Outlook, you will need to choose either POP or IMAP protocol.

What's the difference? Which one should you use?

The email protocol you choose will determine where your email is stored—on the server or on your computer.

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IMAP is Email Stored on the Server

IMAP keeps your email on the mail server so you can access it from multiple locations and with multiple email clients, even after you have checked your email with Outlook or any other email client.

IMAP is not suited to offline use.

IMAP allows you to read all of your email in multiple locations.

If you need to see your email when you are offline you should consider using POP instead.

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POP is Email Stored on Your Computer by Your Email Client

POP is recommended for people who need to access their email offline. If you need to connect to the Internet, download your email, and then disconnect, POP is a good choice for you.

POP stores your email on your computer in your email client (i.e. Outlook, or whatever program you use to check email).

POP removes your email from the server and places it on your computer.

With POP, you cannot see email you previously received when you use other computers or other email clients, including Webmail.

POP allows you to read previously received email and attachments when offline.

By default statistics processor is disabled for all customer accounts. It used to update the statistics automatically for all the accounts on the server within some period of time. We have disabled this option in order to decrease load on our servers. Besides, the only available stastics processor that you can use is Awstats. It was chosen because of very high performance and the best functionality.

If you want to view the statistics for your domain go to your cPanel, you need to enter section ‘Logs’ -> click icon ‘Choose Log Programs’ -> choose ‘Awstats’ and the domains you would like to get statistics for -> click on ‘Save’ (Please note that ‘Analog’ and ‘Webalizer’ are disabled.).

After these actions you will be able to view the statistics: section ‘Logs’ -> ‘Awstats’. You can also update Awstats manually, for this purpose please enter ‘Awstats’ (Logs -> Awstats) and click the button ‘Update Now’ at the top of the page. Please note that this function will be enabled after its first update. It will take 24-72 hours.

A free listing on Google Maps makes it easy for your customers to find you.
Millions of people use Google Maps every day. You can use Google's Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they'll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products.

You need a Google account (also free) to create a business listing.

Visit the Local Business Center at http://www.google.com/local/add
If you already have a Google Account, sign in with your email and password.
If you don't have a Google Account, click Sign up for an account at Google.
Follow the instructions to create a listing.

Here's a link to Google Help Center with more info

It can take Google and other search engines anywhere from a week (or so) to 6 months to start indexing and displaying your site. There are automatic crawlers that crawl websites every day continuously for all sites on the internet. And as you can imagine there are millions of sites to crawl and find it takes some time for yours to get in line to be indexed.

Then, it’s a combination of the search terms that people are using and your page description and your content on your site itself to ‘talk’ to Google and other search engines to boost your ranking when people are searching for your keywords.

Search engine results are never guaranteed (unless you pay for listings results in ‘sponsored listings’) but we can do our very best to make it as successful as possible by using good keywords and content on your site.

One very large factor of search engine rankings is incoming links to your site. Part of a good SEO plan is adding your link to as many reputable sites as you can – some sites offer free listings that you can add your site (Dogster.com, Zootoo.com, and the like) and others like local pet shelters you can ask for reciprocal link exchanges.

Generally MSN's web crawler, MSNBot, can find most pages on the Internet. However if your site does not appear on Live Search, you can send MSN the address (URL) -
Just follow this link: http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submi...