A dry cleaner making sales in China – wow, now that is a great idea for a second stream of income.

Today’s Articles

Website Design and the Meaning of Colors

Get Your Website Into China Using Baidu

International Business Development With an Easy 5 Step International Marketing Plan

5 Factors to Consider When Marketing to Different Cultures – Multicultural Marketing

The Right Mindset for International Negotiations

Communication Across Cultures is Better With a Whole Brain Approach

The Impact of Color and Its Different Associations in Multicultural Marketing

Your Guideline for Successful First Time Cross Cultural Negotiations in Any Culture

International Business Expansion – Target Your Global Market Understanding Their Demographics

How to Prevent Most Cross Cultural Miscommunication by Examining Your Own English Communication

How Top Submit Your Website to the Leading Russian Search Engines – Yandex and Rambler

Cultural Blunders in Telesales

About Cindy King

Cindy King

Cross-Cultural Marketer & International Sales Specialist

Over 25 years field experience in aligning cultural offers for international sales.

International content strategy

Custom publishing in English to build international markets

B2B international lead generation

Contact me
40km south of Paris, France – GMT+1
Cell: +33 6 98 91 86 11
cindy@cindyking.biz
Call me on Skype
Follow me on Twitter
Get International Clients

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But this one is slightly different…

The author DID contact me first and asked me to read his book. I answered that I only like writing reviews of books that I would recommend to close friends. I feel strongly about giving any sort of publicity to things I do not like.
As it turns out, even if Andy had not asked me to read his book, I would have done so anyway.
- After 8 months of blogging and an online business, the non-geek that I was then is now ready for a closer look at some serious website optimization.
- His publisher, O’Reilly, is one I like a lot.
So I read Website Optimization because I was actually excited at the prospect getting something I wanted out of it.

First, let me say the author is not a family member. King is a fairly common name. And there are even quite a few Cindy King’s out there. That is one of the reasons why I use online visibility enhancement techniques.

Who Should Read This Book

This is a book to read if you want to take your knowledge of website optimization above just about everyone else out there.

Website Optimization is not a book for an internet novice.

It is for website designers with knowledge of how a website should be designed and who want to improve the speed of their website.

It also targets website marketers who are interested in finding ways to improve their conversion rates.

Finally, it is for project and business managers who may not know all the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) but are at least familiar with the concepts and already understand their value.

I recommend you read this book if you:

• Already have a website,
• Work closely on one,
• Have any responsibility or interest in improving online results

Website Optimization gives you information you can use.

The book is in 2 parts.

Part 1 – Search Engine Marketing Optimization

The first part is “Search Engine Marketing Optimization”. This explains how to increase website visibility and boost conversion rates.

King clearly explains the steps you need to improve natural SEO. A major part of natural SEO is using your keywords in the most effective manner.

King breaks natural SEO into 10 easy to follow steps that can be posted next to your computer as a to-do list for each page that you create.

Pay Per Click

This section also includes two very descriptive and very useful chapters on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It includes a wonderful case study showing the results of one company in a small, competitive niche market that changed their PPC practices and had an immediate 100% improvement in their conversion. This conversion rate increased to 600% a short time later and eventually leveled off at 500% over their starting conversion rate.

These two chapters alone will make Website Optimization worthwhile for most readers.

Conversion Rate Optimization

The final part of the first section of Website Optimization covers Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

King lists the top ten factors a site owner must know to maximize his conversion rate.

For a marketing expert, these 10 factors might be obvious. But all too often several, or at least one, of these factors are ignored or not given full consideration,

For example, you should give the most important content on your website the best placement on your website. Since readers begin scanning a page at the top left and consider the bottom right to be the least important, the most important content must be at the top left.

Many readers now associate the right side of a website to be associated with advertisements, so this area is best for testimonials or links to your products.

Again, for many readers, this chapter alone can dramatically increase conversion rates and is worth the cost of the book.

Part 2 – Website Performance Optimization

Part two of Website Optimization is about “Website Performance Optimization”.

Website performance is how to design your website at the early stages to deliver content as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A page that takes 10 seconds to load is one that your readers will not see. Readers will use their ‘back’ button and move on to your competition if your pages do not load fast enough.

King includes some tricks to combat this, such as using the best format for images and placing your slower loading pieces lower on your page and initially out of sight if possible. This gives your reader a better experience and increases the chance that he will remain on your site.

Let’s face it. Keeping people on your site increases the possibility of making a sale.

CSS Optimization And Ajax Optimization

Part two also as two chapters that are more complex and aimed at website designers.

These are two chapters are on CSS Optimization and Ajax Optimization. They cover optimizing the programming code to speed up your websites loading time. These chapters may be too difficult for a nonprogrammer to understand fully.

However, understanding the ideas, if not the actual practices, will help you decide if you need to work with a programmer to modify your site to deliver better performance. Website Optimization is often a team effort. This knowledge is useful for all team members.

From personal experience, I can say that you do not need to be an expert in CSS to put in some of the code. I am in the nonprogrammer category. Of course, I had an initial learning curve when first faced with HTML and CSS, but now I know the effort was well worth it.

In fact, when I first started using CSS on my website I did not even know I was using it. It was just a little bit of code I used to make my site look better.

Website Metrics

The final chapter covers website metrics. There is an old saying that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”.

King divides metrics into four distinct groups:

1. Volume – how many visitors, how many page views, how many downloads and so on.
2. Content – helps understand how readers respond to presentation, layout and the persuasiveness of your pages.
3. Objectives – are the readers doing what you want? Buying, signing up, commenting, voting or other objectives.
4. Means – this is directly marketing. The paths the reader follows into, and away from your objectives.

As a marketer this is the section I hooked onto first.

Although not mentioned in Website Optimization, the two tools I use to measure metrics are Google Analytics and woopra. Both of these has its own strong points. And of course, there are many other tools to choose from.

Website Optimization gave me further insight into how I can use metrics to improve my own results.

For Serious Website Contenders

On top of King’s 15 years of experience, which comes through in his own book, King also references all the other books, studies and websites where he gathered information or verified his personal findings.

This is very useful information. It gives you the places to go for more in-depth information on any particular subject that interests you. A great bonus.

Anyone who takes website optimization seriously, and is committed to improving online results, should read Andy King’s Website Optimization.

It is not a lazy afternoon read. It delivers a bit more than thought provoking entertainment. You can, however, easily read this book section by section in the order they interest you.

This book has brought my own website optimization skills up several notches.

It is extremely useful. And it provides a depth of information I have not found in any other book.

In addition, it is a great reference tool to keep handy, with bullet point action lists and how-to guides to solve specific problems. My copy now sits in my “one meter away from me” personal reference section. Website Optimization is one book that has definitely earned its place in this group.

And yes, I have already recommended a close friend to read it.

Here are a few more Uniquely Cindy Sunday Book Reviews:
- Influencer: The Power To Change Anything
- How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders By Catherine Seda
- Mastering Online Marketing By Mitch Meyerson
- How The Internet Works By Preston Gralla
- Dotcomology The Science Of Making Money Online By Stone Evans
- Bit Literacy On Managing Your To Do’s
- Bit Literacy Tips On Managing Email
- Bit Literacy Tips on Managing Your Media Diet
- Bit Literacy Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload By Mark Hurst
- The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy By Ed Rivis
- The Culturally Customized Web Site By Nitish Singh And Arun Pereira
- Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish
- Landing Page Optimization By Tim Ash

The colors of nation’s flag usually have special meaning and often invoke strong emotions in people that see their flag. An American seeing red white and blue will have different emotions related to the colors and the flag itself. There are 24 countries with red white and blue flags and using these three colors in your website design can bring out a feeling that you may, or may not, want with your client.

Here is a partial list of what the colors represent for some of those 24 countries.

Secretary of the United States Continental Congress, Charles Thompson, said in his book “Our Flag,” that the colors on the American flag represent: Red – hardiness and valor; White – purity and innocence; Blue – vigilance, perseverance, and justice.

In Cuba the red triangle stands for the blood shed to free the nation, the white stripes symbolize the purity of the patriotic cause and the three blue stripes, represent the sea that surrounds Cuba.

Panama believes that the red star represents the authority and law in the country; the white was intended to stand for peace and purity; and the blue star stands for the purity and honesty of the life of the country.

Chile views these colors as red standing for the blood spilled to achieve independence; white is for the snow-covered Andes; and blue symbolizing the sky.

The same red white and blue of the French flag represent the three main functions of the Ancient Regime society: red – nobility; white – clergy; blue – producers

The national flag of Iceland has a fiery-red cross inside the white cross with the blue sky.

The flags of Russia and Slovenia have colors of red, white and blue that appears in the flags of Slavic countries.

On the flag of Norway the red symbolizes volcanic lava, the white represents the snow and glaciers and the blue represents the sea.

On the Liberian flag red and white symbolize courage and moral excellence. The blue represents the African mainland.

In Burma, the red symbolizes courage; the white color symbolizes purity; and the blue symbolizes peace and integrity.

Nepal uses white, but does not give significance to the color. The blue border denotes peace and harmony that has been prevalent in the country since the age of Gautama Buddha, and the crimson color is Nepal’s national color, and it indicates the brave spirit of the Nepalese people.

Taiwan, the Republic of China commonly refers the flag in Chinese as Blue Sky, White Sun, and a Wholly Red Earth.

For your website done properly you will control how people are seeing red white and blue. You will target the different emotions related to the colors flags themselves. The 24 countries with red white and blue flags are not the only future clients that you will have. Use your website design to help you get international clients.

Are you committed to speeding up your international sales cycles? Learn how to combine cross-cultural marketing tools and international sales strategies for faster sales. Join us on the International Sales Road Map Would you like to develop your international business? Are you a beginner at international sales and marketing? Read the Beginners Guide Discover Your International Business Cindy King is a Cross-Cultural eMarketer & International Sales Specialist, aligning businesses with different cultures. She has over 25 years field experience in international business development and helps mid-sized business owners create international business development strategies that shorten time to profitability. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cindy_King

]]> http://dermalclinic.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/website-design-and-the-meaning-of-colors/feed/ 1 dermalclinic Cindy King - EzineArticles Expert Author http://dermalclinic.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/weekly-review/ http://dermalclinic.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/weekly-review/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:26:53 +0000 dermalclinic http://dermalclinic.wordpress.com/?p=31 Continue reading →]]>
Want to know what else I have been up to this week?

Here is a list of the thoughts, ideas, requests and articles I published this past week.

On Get International Clients

As usual, the Sunday Blog Carnival starts off this week:

• Get International Clients Sunday Blog Carnival #21

Guide 2 – Plan Your International Road Map

• How Do You Create An International Marketing Blog?
• How To Get Your Computer To Read Foreign Characters

Guide 7 – Run Your International Sales Strategy

• What Is The Biggest Barrier In Cross-Cultural Negotiations?
• Phone Negotiations
• When International Phone Negotiations Go Bad

On Cindy King .biz

This is where I share more of my personal opinions, experiences and frustrations… on anything cross-cultural and on international business.

Uniquely Cindy

The weekend’s links to marketing articles and book review:

• International Marketer Review Blog Carnival #19

Cross-Cultural Communication

• The Cross-Cultural Classroom
• How To Get Your Computer To Read Foreign Alphabets

International Business Development

• Market Research For International Business Development

International Content Creation

• Culture-Free Communication
• English For International Appeal
• Focus On Your Cultural Communication

… and what have you been up to this week?

Let me know if you have come across anything interesting on the vaste subject of international business development on the web.

In Russia, Google holds a distant third place in the search engine domain.

Yandex is the country’s leading search engine and Rambler is second. Google only has 17% of the market share in Russia. Google is behind the two Russian Language sites that control nearly 75% of that market.

All told there are about 290 million Russian speakers worldwide in Russia and the former soviet satellite nations.

First Step – Russian Content Page

Submitting your website to the Russian search engines requires that your website have at least one page in Russian. The best way to do this is to create a new page or blog post that is a translation of your product descriptions or of the services that you offer.

How do you do this?

Go to the Google English to Russian translation page. You can find this page by replacing the ‘www’ with ‘translate’ in the Google web URL address on the top of your screen. Select English to Russian, paste in your text and hit enter.

The text is instantly translated and you have a Russian document to work with.

Like all web pages you must format the document with headings, include keywords and be sure to put emphasis on the important words.

All these translations can be done with the Google translation tool and creating a page is only a little more difficult in Russian than in English.

Second Step – Submissions To Russian Search Engines.

Once your Russian page has been created and is live on your website you are ready to submit your website to the two leading Russian search engines.

How To Submit Your Website To Yandex

To submit your Russian language page to the Yandex Webmaster Tool:

Go to webmaster.yandex.ru and paste in your URL on the line marked (URL) and enter the “captcha” code to prove you are a human.

Use the Google Russian to English translation page if you receive any message in Russian.

If you experience several error messages do not give up. Methodically work through the messages using the translation tool back and forth and you will get your web page registered on Yandex.

Submitting your website to Yandex like this takes well under 5 minutes.

Submitting your Website to Rambler

Rambler is the second most popular Russian search engine.

It will take a little bit more effort than the Yandex submission, but not speaking any Russian and relying exclusively on the online translation tools from Google, this can be completed in less than 10 minutes.

Following the detailed instructions outlined on my website, you will be able to register your website there in two minutes. Instructions can not be posted in some forums because the Cyrillic character set can not be read.

Each line of the registration page has been translated by Google and included below.

All you have to do is to identify the same field and enter in your appropriate data.

Remember this will be like the Yandex submission, Rambler requires you to submit one Russian language web page. You will need to link the Russian Translation web page you translated in the First Step.

Keep in mind that no translation tool is perfect, but these translations will get you through the process.

Now your website can be visible in Russia! Isn’t Russian an easy language to work with?

You have just opened your website up to a potential audience of 290 million Russian speakers.

Are you committed to speeding up your international sales cycles? Learn how to combine cross-cultural marketing tools and international sales strategies for faster sales. Join us on the International Sales Road Map Would you like to develop your international business? Are you a beginner at international sales and marketing? Read the Beginners Guide Discover Your International Business Cindy King is a Cross-Cultural eMarketer & International Sales Specialist, aligning businesses with different cultures. She has over 25 years field experience in international business development and helps mid-sized business owners create international business development strategies that shorten time to profitability. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cindy_King

But how do you get people to your site? This article comes from Cheap Keywords and is a good starting point for people that need to start.

Pay Per Click? It works, but you have the risk of not breaking even paying for your advertisements.

Posting comments on blogs and forums? This also works, sometimes. It is hard to know who will follow a link back to your site.

Social Media? Probably the best way for someone without the budget to advertise and you can be pretty sure to get traffic, even if it is not always targeted traffic. You sell and Apple computer and people searching an apple  pie may land on your site.

But, for the time and money it is probably still your best bet. Since you can never have too many visitors to your website, even if they are not always the perfect.

I don’t even remember how, but I landed on a site called StumbleUpon Exchange. Go  to the site and sign in and post links that you want stumbled, and stumble sites for people.The members to go through each other’s blogs, and if they happen to like a blog, they Stumble it.

You earn points each time you stumble other user’s sites and these points give you the oppertunity to post more of your posts. You get one point for each site you stumble and you ‘pay’ 3 points for each site you post.

You are mailed each time someone claims to have stumbled your site. You can verify, or not, and then approve the stumbler. I don’t verify because it is a waste of time. I’d rather approve the few that cheat than troll through my stats. Your call, do as you wish.

You start with 3 points on sign up, so you can automatically post once. You will need to stumble a few sites to ‘pay’ the people that visit yours. It can become a never ending loop, but it does get you traffic. I always give a quote for the first reviewer to use and ask for a specific category. Some people do as I ask, others ignore me. Life’s like that.

I joined and have made some Stumbleupon friends that I didn’t have before, and often don’t use the system, I just ask the new friends to stumble for me.

If you want to increase your blog traffic, this is not a bad way to do it. Sign up using any of the links here and I get 10 points for your having signed up – the mini-affiliate program.

Join StumbleUpon Exchange. Every bit of blog traffic helps.

Remember to Stumble This Site!

Cindy King
Get International Clients
International Business Ideas
Cross Cultural Sales
Culture Customized Sales
Faster International Sales
More International Sales
International Marketing Tools
International Success Basics
International Lead Strategy
Market Across Cultures
Simple International Business Development
Research International Markets
Culture Customized Website
International Cheat Sheet
International Marketing Road Map
International Sales Road Map
International Success Stories
Internationalize Your Website
International English Copywriting
International Marketing Mentor
European Business Coach
International Sales Resources
Culture Widget
Free Translation Widget
International Marketing Widget
Les Createurs D’Affaires
Artisan77 Questions Pour Cindy King Questions Pour Cindy
Oh, the Places You’ll Go
Cheap Keywords

Whether it’s the different types, celebrities who may or may not have had any treatment, reality make-over shows on TV, or just your friends or work colleagues, it is one of the most increasingly popular topics of conversation.

www.botox-dermal-fillers-treatment.blogspot.com features various sites that discuss information on this interesting topic.

Advertising Age comes out with a yearly list of the 150 top marketing blogs in the world. My blog is not marketing, so I am not on the list. Their list was mainly American, and since I live in Europe I have made a list of the top 100 European Blogs. This list is 3 days old, and the list changes as each site changes in their PR, Alexa or Technorati rank.

No matter what our profession, we are all marketing to someone and I have recently been spending more time reading about copywriting and marketing to better understand that aspect of the business. Well worth looking at these, because we can use the tricks of their trade in our business.

European Placement	Blog Name	Blog Country
1	Adverblog
2	AdLand
3	I believe in adv
4	AdverBox
5	russell davies
6	Niche Marketing
7	Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog
8	David Airey
9	Osocio
10	Yoast – Tweaking Websites
11	NevilleHobson.com
12	Blogstorm
13	Only Dead Fish
14	adliterate
15	Web Ink Now
16	Crackunit
17	Media Culpa
18	ViralBlog
19	Talent imitates, genius steals
20	PR Blogger
21	Krishna De’s BizGrowth News
22	The Engaging Brand
23	Joe La Pompe
24	Coolz0r – Marketing Thoughts
25	HERD
26	The Hidden Persuader
27	Invisible Red
28	Welcome to Optimism
29	Make Marketing History
30	Cross The Breeze
31	mindblob
32	Because The Medium is the Message
33	Modern Marketing
34	The Kaiser Edition
35	Search Engine Marketing Blog
36	A PR Guy’s Musings
37	Spinning Around
38	Mastercom Advertising and Communication Blog
39	No man is an iland
40	SEOCO Blog
41	A Source of Inspiration
42	Blog Till You Drop
43	PPC Blog
44	Technobabble 2.0
45	Faster Future
46	Social Hallucinations
47	Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
48	Fresh Creation
49	BeRelevant: Email Marketing Best Practices
50	livingbrands
51	Wiep.net
52	eWritings
53	Some Minor Issues
54	AdOfDaMonth.com
55	Hobo SEO UK
56	Life Moves Pretty Fast
57	Drew B’s take on tech PR
58	Nick Burcher
59	Duckeldanny
60	greenormal
61	That Canadian Girl
62	Murphy’s Law
63	Interactive Marketing Trends
64	General Marketing Blog
65	Simonsays
66	Beyond PR
67	Living in a digital world
68	Get International Clients
69	Crenk
70	Wadds’ tech pr blog
71	London Calling
72	Brand Strategy Magazine Blog
73	The Way of the Web
74	50-Plus Marketing
75	mediations
76	Business and Games Blog
77	This Is HERD
78	Rubbishcorp
79	Cross-Cultural eMarketer And International Sales Specialist
80	Blendingthemix
81	Raw Stylus
82	FreshNetworks Blog
83	Bad idea, indeed
84	Words of a Broken Mirror
85	Pudding Relations
86	Simon Wakeman
87	The Rosemont Loving
88	Nicola Davies
89	Shiny Red
90	Event Manager Blog
91	Marketing Safari
92	renaissance chambara
93	BSI – Research Blog
94	Vincent Thome’s Blog
95	Confessions of a Wannabe Ad Man
96	middledigit
97	A Mountain Dweller in the Thames Valley
98	MobileWeb.be Blog
99	[Bluurb] stuff and things
100	All Things PR