Byte of the Week

If you have a web site, it’s easy to kind of forget about it. It’s built, you probably spent a lot of time on it at one pint but now it’s done. Today I’m going to Detroit Lakes to talk about giving your site a Web Site Check Up. Very quickly these are the things I think you should check on our site periodically:

1. Is the info on your site still true? – or are you featuring an upcoming 4th of July sale and a phone number that no longer works?
   1. Here’s a fun tool that will help you at least check out the links on your site to make sure that they are still good: http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/valet/
2. Can the search engines find you? Do a search on your name and a few keyword terms that someone might use to find a business like yours
   1. Here’s a tool that will tell you how your site ranks with major search engines: www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports
3. Are you supporting your site?
   1. Do you have an email newsletter? Do you mention your URL on your voicemail?
4. Are other sites linking to you?
   1. Here’s a tool that will show you who is linking to you: www.linkpopularity.com

There you go a very quick prescription for a check up.

Tomorrow, thanks to a really good sister, I will be spending one night in a fancy hotel in Chicago with my husband and without my children! In preparation I got to use a lot of the online travel planning tools and I thought I’d share what I learned.

Expedia.com
This site lets you do fairly elaborate searches, where you can pick area, class (or stars), dates, and more. They seem to offer good travel advisories, such as letting you know if the staff in a hotel are on strike and picketing. They seemed to track hotels in smaller cities too.

Hotels.com
This is a great site for getting an overview of the hotels in a given area – if that area is a fairly large city. They appear as if they will track hotels in any area – but I tried a few places and they came up with nothing. I did like their last minute deals section.

Priceline.com
Everyone else seems to have used this site – you select some criteria and then post a dollar amount you are willing to pay for a hotel that meets your criteria. The scary thing is you say yes to a type of hotel – not a specific hotel. But it seems like a great place to make a deal.

What I learned about all of the sites is that the closer to your visit, the better the deal. So, I checked back periodically to get a price that would let me spend more money on the great Chicago restaurants. In the end I got a 4 star hotel room off North Michigan Avenue for $100 from Priceline.

OK Today’s Byte is really long – but I’ve tried to break it up with a Q & A format. I think the Byte will be of greatest interest to nonprofit organizations that have web sites.

Last week I gave a presentation on online ads and sponsorship at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Annual Conference. I gave the presentation with my friend and fellow search engine junky, David Erickson. (David posted the presentation on his site http://www.e-strategyblog.com/2006/10/online_ads_spon.html.)  

A couple of question came up during the presentation and I thought I would answer them here:

Do you have a sample link policy for folks who might link to my site?

You can’t really stop anyone from linking to you. A “link” is an address and addresses cannot be copyrighted. Copyright becomes an issue when someone copies your content and posts it on their page.

The Texas Department of Information Resources does a good job of outlining the links they encourage and “links” they don’t allow (http://www.dir.state.tx.us/standards/link_policy.htm). The bottom stuff gets into government stuff – but the top paragraphs are pretty useful.

The March of Dimes has a pretty strict policy (that requires linkers to agree before linking) but it does allow folks to use their graphic for a link.

Do you have a sample link policy to help us decide which links to include on our site?

Above all else, you want to make sure that your links are helpful to your visitors.

The Educator’s Reference Desk (http://www.eduref.org/linkpolicy.shtml) has a nice link policy that I think actually helps you decide what to include.

First Gov for Kids (http://www.kids.gov/linkpolicy.htm) does a good job explaining their criteria to potential link requesters.

Minnesota Revenue (http://www.taxes.state.mn.us/taxes/home_con/link_policy.shtml) has a more business-like policy.

Do you have a sample sponsor policy?

We were talking about seeking sponsors for web site; in short people who might be rewarded for a donation with a link or banner link on your nonprofit web site. On the one hand it’s nice to get money; on the other hand some sponsors might have goals or reputations that conflict with your own. As I did the research I realized (and remembered from my days in service-learning) that this issue is much larger than the web. If you want a scan of all of the issues, do a search on “nonprofits taking tobacco money”.

For the Byte I can only say that I’d start by looking at the link policy (using resources above) and if someone didn’t make the cut without a “donation” then I’d have to think long and hard about adding them just for the money. Or it would have to be a lot of money. Ask yourself, is it a site that your visitors would find of value and would you be proud to be associated with them?

Do you have to report revenue generated from online ads (such as through a program such as Google Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense/)?

I talked to my accountant and he said, yes. He also said ask a lawyer – but I looked online instead. NonprofitExpert.com (http://www.nonprofitexpert.com/income.htm)  had a nice article on earned income or unrelated business income. It doesn’t address online ads specifically, but I think it addresses the issue.

Lately it seems as if I’ve had Bytes for folks in Minnesota, business people, or web site owners – well, today’s Byte is for everyone.

I had to make a flyer this week. Whenever I have to make something like that I always start with Microsoft Templates (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx). I did a search on “flier” and got 100 choices back. But revisiting the site just reminded me of how much I like it.

Right now they are featuring checklist templates. I think I might use their kids chore list (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC100760011033.aspx) – although the house cleaning checklist (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC100762411033.aspx) did not seem as appealing for some reason.

They also had Halloween templates (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA012301241033.aspx) and event planning tools (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT062640421033.aspx).

The search is pretty good. So, the next time you have to create a document or project on the computer – don’t start from scratch, start with the Microsoft Templates. I know if saved me at least an hour with the flier I created. (They even have template letters, such as cover letters for job and fundraising requests.)