Starting a new blog?

[Cratima]

I've read that blogs are seen better by search engines, because of their continuous update.
We've tried this thing before but we've got little results.
We want to create a new blog. My main interest is to bring traffic for cratima website and new business for the company.
Before we'll decide to transform this thought into reality I have some questions.
1. Should we put the blog on Cratima 's domain name, on should I make a blog on blogspot, myspace...etc.
2. Regarding the content. We want the blog to be about new internet solution that can help new businesses. a) We can search the web, find out news, filtered them and then put the most interesting in our blog. b) We can add value to different news on the net, value from our knowledge and business.
c) Use both articles with added value and some funny stories related to the businesses.
3. How many blog administrators are necessary to make it interesting (with quality and enough information)

Thanks!

[theengel]

Before putting too much attention on getting people to your website, you might want to fix it. Before reading your post, it took me several minutes to figure out what the heck the site was about. If you're driving people there from online sources, you've got about 5 seconds (and that window gets smaller every year) to give people something that interests them.

[blitzen]

TheEngle is right.
I went to your site and saw that countdown and waited ...
and waited ...
and would have left if I weren't visiting to help you.

I did abort.

"It's deadline --- it's done" ??????????????????
I waited...
and waited...

Your deadline was met a long time ago.
That clicking was annoying. Use the heartrate beat. It gets people excited.
And get rid of it during the text parts - it was distracting and annoying.

I say 3 seconds to get them to go further.

Forgot that darn rollover to discover something.
Show it up front.
Forget the games, you provide serious business.
"Games" (guess that it's a rollover) are for fun.

Think about what would entice your target market to go further.

Here's a good example of what I mean
JWT
Notice the obvious instructions of what to do....

HTH!

[EliteAF]

Use the flash for a splash and as a component within your site - if you really think it is necessary. As I am interested in SEO and Content, it irritates me. If I didn't want to see what you were all about, I would have left - quickly.

The Blog and other content is where it is at if you want people to:

a) Find your site
b) figure out what you do
c) find a clear path to a deliverable conversion metric.

It should all be hosted together, but not as part of the flash thing you've got going.

[john@kapoo]

I have to agree with both theengel & blitzen, even though you didn't ask for that critique, I do however believe they are very right to point these things out.

Now, as for Q1 - Yes, host blog locally - not on blogspot etc, etc.

John

[SemAdvance]

Unfortunately most webmasters seeking a design team are not going to do a blog search to find talent.

Most people online run by what they read and not by using basic business and marketing principles which typically leads to spinning wheels and going nowhere.

You dont need a blog, you need a business plan and marketing plan that make sense......

[rdarling]

Since people are having trouble with your site (and I am lazy - did not go there!) I'll address the blog question.

The ROI on blogs is in direct correlation to what people put into them. Having multiple authors can help so long as those authors don't keep passing the buck assuming someone else is doing the blogging. One engaged person can be much more prolific than a team of 4 - it is very specific.

I would not recommend blogger aka blogspot. The site goes down, is harder for people to customize, comments and RSS are messy, it's not a great system for business use.

The blog on myspace is not really a blog. You can have a page there and post stuff to build your audience perhaps, but don't use it as a blog. People have to join MS to comment, and a lot of people will stay away for that reason alone.

If you want free, use WordPress.com » Get a Free Blog Here You will get a domain like cratima.wordpress.com and it is the most flexible and easiest to use of free services. You can also point it to blog.cratima.com or whatever domain you want.

If you plan to get and stay serious, get the free WordPress software from WordPress › Blog Tool and Weblog Platform (ORG) and install it on your server. That gives the most flexibility. It's easy to add unlimited "ping" servers, which is the part that lets your blog software talk to other blog tracking sites and blog search engines.

Blogging takes time and has great payback. Plan to have an internal or external blogging coach to build the behavior in the organization over the first few months. Once people start commenting, that usually inspires people to keep on writing!

[DoneInStyle]

Ditto on what everyone else said, though I have broadband and had no trouble loading.

Re the blog, it needs to be part of your current site, though if people can't find it it won't do you much good. There are some accessibility issues with your current site, and search engine spiders happen to be blind.

[subsystems]

I don't know that I agree with theengel. He is being too kind. It only took me 2 seconds to get the feeling I wanted nothing to do with the site. The clock thing is too much like a welcome page and seriously takes away from the site. Next it took me several more seconds looking for the skip link before I realized there wasn't one and that the annoying clock was part of the actual site navigation/entry.
Then there is the split menus and navigation strewn all over the place. People are not going to want to be hassled with the learning curve of the site.
Lastly, there is the ticking clock that won't shut up and is way too loud. I switched browser tabs to webproworld and could still hear that blasted clock ticking. Then when I clicked the clock it split in two and to make matters worse I could clearly hear 2 clocks. I clicked one and finally when I thought both were gone another one started up again.
Are you trying to time how long it takes to force visitors to leave the site to stop the ticking? At least Pink Floyd ended the ticking with an orchestra of various chimes. Your clock just keeps going and going.
The blog location is by far the least of the issues you are facing.
Want proof? Build a simple html version of the site (with traditional left side menus, top and bottom navigation and content area) and put a link to it at the top of your page. You will see for yourself by the number of people that give up on trying to figure out what is information and what are links and no clear navigation scheme.

Ask yourself one question. Exactly who are you building the site for, you or your visitors? As much as you may like the single flash app style of the site, I feel most people will leave and not give it a chance.

[amazonian]

I agree with everything that has been said. Your ticking clock simply reminded me how much time I was wasting trying to find out what the heck the company does. Even clicking HOME brought a new set of moving targets. Create a static page or at least a "Skip this" button to allow people to cut to the chase.

ALL a search engine coming to your site sees is this:
web design, software applications, web applications, e-commerce, cratima, flash animation, animations, identity, multimedia, video analysis, integrated systems, databases, interactive presentation, SEO, CRM, Windows, Linux, cratima interactive, cratima software

...given that they don't all read meta-descriptions anymore. (Or is it the other way around? they read descriptions but not keywords?)

You have absolutely no valuable text on the page.

Others have already covered what a turnoff the website is the the human visitor.

Why don't you create a little user-selectable movie that shows the sexy stuff you can do? With TEXT on the page for those who don't want to take the time to watch the movie.

Since fancy websites do not sell as well as readable and clear ones, who would want to buy your services, and pay obviously high prices for you to drive their customers away as you have driven your own away?

This is the result of your site being created by graphic artists and programmers to wow the president and chairman of the board.

There's not a nano-byte of customer/visitor respect on the first page.

Spend some money on a marketing department. You need a person who can sell a million dollars worth of something to advise you and control the customer experience.

Blogging works. I recently set up a little site and in 10 days of daily blogging, with only five static pages, garnered over 225 absolutely unique visitors who read an average of four pages each. With no advertising, of course. (Not that that's bad; just illustrating what nothing but blogging can do from buying the domain name to creating a bit of momentum.

Both humans and robots can read blogs.

[jackit_chick]

Yeah I was confused about what the company does, and during the rollover clock thing I just sat there thinking maybe the second hand would hit hte 12 or something then it would start. After a slow, complete circle I moved my mouse over it and realized I had to click on it to enter the site. It was very confusing.

I understand that maybe a lot of people who come to your website are referred by you or handed a business card, so they probably already know what you're all about. But if your goal is to attract new visitors and generate new business, I'd definately think about reconsidering your intro and maybe have a little write up about what you do on the very first page people see. Or changing your "It's deadline. It's done." to another slogan that all you have to do is read a few words and understand what you do. Like "We are the future of web creativity." or something like that.

[datetopia]

We use a blog for Datetopia to present the big version of the news that don't fit on the main website and also to keep an archive for older news: Datetopia Blog - Dating Software for Online Services

We don't get a lot of traffic from it but it's indexed in most important search engines. Currently it lists as the #1 Dating Software Blog in Live Search: Live Search: dating software blog

Answering to your questions, this is what we opted for in this sample: 1. hosted it on blogspot, 2. content is based on the main website's news as it's a blog about it, 3. no administrators are required to post special content as it just contains the main website's long version news.

[spronger]

I did figure out you could click on the clock, and mute it, but obviously many people here were confused which means many of your customers will be too. Give them information. Benefits. That's what people are there for.

But, you asked about blogging. You absolutely, positively, must be blogging. NOW. The train left ages ago. Your competitors are out there marketing themselves, effectively, right now. Or they soon will be. In a nutshell:

Use WordPress. I've used Blogger and WP. WordPress is WAY, WAY better. Don't use a hosted service. Buy a domain and hosting account which offers Fantasico. This is a program which installs WP on your account. Simple.

Install the following plugins, at a minimum:

Ultimate Tag Warrier
Add Meta Tags
Optimal Title
Any social bookmarking widget (I use AddThis.com)

Develop an extensive ping list. Do some searching - you'll find them.

Create categories (based on keyword structure) and assign each post to a category.

Put your researched, targeted keywords at the start of each post.

Tag your posts with Technorati tags.

Submit your RSS feed/Site/Posts everywhere, in particular:

- MyBlogLog
- BloggingZoom
- Flixya
- Zimbio
- ppnow
- Propeller
- HubPages
- Squidoo

Join and participate in social networking sites. Some welcome you to submit your own posts. Others forbid. Others get annoyed if you ONLY submit your own content, so submit others as well. There are hundreds out there. Find them. Some better ones, in my view:

- StumbleUpon
- SpicyPages
- DropJack
- PlugIM
- Marked

Create profile pages at all of these sites and add links to your sites/blogs/feeds.

Bookmark your profile pages/sites/blogs/pages-that-link-to-you at all the major bookmarking sites:

- Technorati
- Simpy
- Spurl
- Furl
- Magnolia

Does this stuff work? I recently created a WP blog on affiliate marketing (affiliate-sales-programs.com). Within a very short period of time it is ranking page 1 on Google (#8 as I write) for the keywords I targeted (affiliate sales programs). A couple of the posts I did (product reviews) appeared at #1 on Google within hours of me posting them. No sand box here. Of course not every post has achieved the same result. A lot depends, as always, on the level of competition for the keywords you are targeting. And even on competitive keywords, where the post itself hasn't done that well, links to the post have appeared in the SERPs from the sites I've mentioned above. These are AUTHORITY sites, and Google loves them.

The social networking/bookmarking sites I've mentioned above are just a drop in the bucket. There are hundreds, with more added every day. To ignore the trend in social networking, blogging and "Web 2.0" is just plain foolish. Get involved, research and learn.

[Norman]

I'm trying to do my own with WordPress.

[colincartwright]

I agree with almost everyone else. You need to really re-do the website, get rid of those very irritating ticking clocks, get rid of all that irritating flash, and just provide your customers with a simple, standard website with standard navigation and properly constructed pages of text that explain who you are and what you do. Beleieve me, no one is going to get past those reaslly annoying clocks - they will just leave.

Others have said it - land on a page and you've got less than 5 seconds to grab someone's attention. The internet is all about information. No one cares about fancy websites - they really don't - look at almost any research or stats publishjed about website uers, and you will find that people just want simple to follow fast loading sites that get them immediately to the information - they could care less about almost everything else.

They EXPECT to see, infomative text, the information right in front of them on page 1, a menu or navigation system that they can follow (across the top, or down the left side), all neatly written and perhaps the odd image to hold their attention - no-one likes site pages laid out as yours are. Don't worry about the blog until you have got the site right - and get rid of those really annoying clocks!

[Veikoh]

The blog is not for getting traffic to your website. There is no difference between blog and website besides some new technical issues that can be implemented to your website anyway. Like RSS feed or XML sitemaps. In my blog there is static pages and articles which should be part of any website, like you have your news in your website. If you will use RSS instead of Flash for your news, those could be better ranked by search engines and when ping'ed to news aggregators like techorati (take a look to Blog and ping | Pingoat for full list of news aggregating sites) could make you a necessary traffic. For a conclusion, I will agree with everybody else here. Use less Flash and more XHTML in your site so you could get your visitors without having a separate blog.

[theengel]

Wow...I'm looking through these responses, and if you're the one who designed the site, it might seem pretty harsh. I imagine that if I were the designer, I would be looking at this thread through a set of closed fingers...occasionally peeking through hopoing to see some good. You should understand that these are objective views from a group of people who understand the internet as a marketing platform.

The fact is, the site looks great. But a website can't look great on its own...it must serve a purpose. Just as a well designed car must, above all things, drive well - a well designed website must, above all things, convert well.

But if someone went to your site, knowing what it's about and why it's important, it could serve as a showcase for smaller businesses who are looking for such sites (not knowing any better). And in that case, it is possible for the blog to help you.

Someone lands on the blog from google, searching for 'using flash in a header'. They read your take on the issue, and decide that they'd like to hire you...so they click on the main site link, and marvel at the art work, reinforcing their desire to hire you.

Maybe that would work...in which case your best bet would be wordpress...because it works well for newbies and you should be able to work up a pretty nice theme for it.

[kula]

aloha from chinatown maui,

as I have been saying for about 10 years, eastern europe and the fsrs have a tremendous pool of design and tech talent, waiting to be focused! your site looks great and showcases "out of the box" design. it does need to be focused on conversion goals. the rule for site design is show em what your selling, give them a reason to buy now, and get the heck out of the customer's way!

well you've heard all the bad news already, except for one point:

the author obviously knows enough english to get his point across, but the small mistakes would be enough to make most small site owners wary.

Once you have come up with a design that works for your conversion goals, have someone with fluent knowledge of standard commercial english review all your content! i wonder how the non-standard english would play in a blog?

[Cratima]

Right now we expect ideas for design for the new Cratima web site in HTML.

On the flash web site: click the watch and you will get 2 watches one for Cratima Interactive and the other for Cratima Software.
You enter on each of them and you will get all the info you want.
The ticking can be stopped, there's a "sound on/sound off" on the clock down right.
I think that you haven't succeeded to get to the info because you were to busy and impatient with all that clocks and not because it was THAT difficult.

Thank you for your replies regarding the web site and the blog!
Thanks theengel - for the encouragement!

I wasn't that surprised with your opinions but our clients were very impressed with Cratima 's website!

If anyone has anything else to add please don't hesitate! Info is a very valuable thing!

Thanks ones again you're a very valuable community