A little while ago I discovered askmrvideo.com and have referred to the resources there on many occasions to assist in my own and client video production. I’ve found the information on the site to be generally useful. As a minimum, askmrvideo.com will get you started in the right direction … more often than not, the information can be treated as definitive.

askmrvideo.com was started to help Videographers, Internet Marketers, and Business Owners boost their income by showing them how to easily produce videos that SELL.

Perry, the site publisher has been in video production for 20 years and has produced, shot, and or edited videos for many mainstream companies.

Mr Video claims to be able to answer, or find the answer to all questions you submit.

I recommend that you at least take advantage of the free content on askmrvideo.com, and consider signing up for the paid membership if you are indeed heading down the video path. The risk is pretty low as you can sign up for a 21 day trial for just $1 (USD).

• create a short, obvious URL for a commonly referenced page
• create 2 differnet URLs which resolve to the same actual page so that you can compare the effectiveness of an advertising or other promotion campaign
• correct a spelling mistake
• migration of a previously static page into your Joomla content
• make a often used URL unforgettable (eg you might often refer visitors who raise questions to an FAQ area, wouldn’t it be easier to send them to http://mydomain.com/faq?)

Anyway, whatever your reason, it’s easy to do.

There is an effective, simple Joomla Component which makes redirection URLs possible. Download it from here

Install it (or have your Webmaster install it for you) and then watch the short Video Tutorial on how to set up redirections the painless way.

Don’t forget that the author of the component (Adam van Dongen) accepts donations for his work. We recommend that you make a donation, particularly if you use his Component on a commercial site,

Camtasia is an extremely usefull tool for creating screencasts (video programs of what is shown on your PC screen). It can also be used to convert Powerpoint slideshows into video programs.

The software does exactly what it claims and is dead easy to use. Until I found this software I wasted hundreds of dollars on Web based “services” which were always difficult to use and required constant attention to make sure they were working. In fact, they were so costly and prone to problems that I stopped adding audio to my sites, even though my testing showed that adding audio increased my sales!

Adding professional grade streaming audio to your site is virtually guaranteed to grab the attention of your visitors and greatly improve the number of those visitors who will take the action that you are seeking.

Read the full story about Impact Web Audio

You can easily find related sites by using Google. For example, to find sites related to this site, I would enter related:www.ebiz4results.com as a Google search phrase.

Armed with this information you can refine your development of inbound links, and gain a greater understanding of the nature or context, of your visitors.

However, most modern sites make the prefix optional. For example, both http://www.ebiz4results.com and http://ebiz4results.com are valid URLs for this site.

The main upside of this flexibility is that potential visitors will arrive at your site regardless of how they type your URL into your browser. Another advantage is that the “abbreviated” URL takes up less space in printed material and is much easier to say!

On the other hand there is a potential downside to the dual URL. This is that some search engines might consider the shorter and longer links to be different pages when indexing. This means that your search engine ranking will be lower than necessary — a definite disadvantage if you are trying to maximise your site’s traffic from “organic” search engine listings.

What you need to do…

Firstly, the absolute minimum is to make sure that both the long and short forms of your URL are operational. This is easily tested by typing each into the location bar of your browser and making sure that each takes you to your home page. If either URL results in an error, it is most unlikely that you will be able to make the required configuration change yourself. So you should immediately ask your Webmaster or ISP to correct the position.

Secondly, if your site’s search engine ranking is important — if it isn’t, you should be seriously questioning why you have a site at all! — you need to decide whether you want the short or long URL to be the standard.

The choice is generally one of personal preference. But, if your site is relatively mature you should probably Google one of your primary keyword phrases and check if the Google link to your site uses the short or long form and adopt the result as your standard.

Then ask your ISP or Webmaster to configure your server to “rewrite” the non-standard URL to the standard URL, and designate the change as permanent. Feel free to refer them to this article if the need more information!

To see what I mean, click on this link… http://ebiz4results.com and look at the address in your browser’s location bar… You’ll see that, even though you entered the short URL, your browser has taken you to the full URL, including the “www”.

HowTo force long URL’s

Forcing a long URL (ie all links to your site include the “www” in the URL) is simple with an Apache server…

• make sure that mod_rewrite is installed
• add the following to the site’s top level .htaccess file, replacing “domain.com” with your own domain name

  Options +FollowSymlinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{http_host} ^domain.com [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

HowTo force short URLs

The equivalent .htaccess entry is…

  Options +FollowSymlinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www.domain.com [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You can see this in action at http://www.nigelball.org

Notes

1. The .htaccess file is simply a text file with the filename .htaccess, and it should be stored at the root directory of your site.
2. Be careful when editing .htaccess — wrongly inserted commands may break your site altogether — if in doubt, seek professional assistance!
3. If you are using a CMS such as Joomla, or blogging software, such as Wordpress, you should also check the software configuration to set the site URL to the preferred form.

See it here

But this problem can be solved extremely easily.

How can you get easy, fast links to your site? Go to LinkMetro.com and either sign up for a free account and manually exchange links with over 20,000 other websites listed in very tightly themed categories OR upgrade to an Advanced membership where you can get links even quicker and easier.

Start now my exchanging links to existing pages and whenever you add new content, add “linking” to your checklist. If you would like help with this, give me a call, or use the Contact Us page.

The Course curriculum looks awesome, and it’s being promoted by some of the other big names in the field including Rick Raddatz, Russell Brunson and Brad Callen. I also have previously bought and still use ideas and services of these guru’s.

Well it seems that the Course is stirring up some heavy interest — in fact, 2,534 copies were sold in just 7 days after the launch! Why is this relevant? Just because the Course is a blow-by-blow account of how to create and run a million dollar a year Internet business… and the Course leaders have generated over $2 million in sales of this product in just 7 days. I guess that it’s reasonable to assume that they do really know what they, and the panel of experts they bring together, know what they are talking about!

As always, the pricing of the Course is heavily discounted during the “launch” phase which is still only in its second week. So I strongly recommend that you read all about the Course and grab a copy before the price goes up.

Whilst this is a bit off-topic (these posts are targeted at owners of small businesses who want to get results from the internet) the Newsletter which I send out every few days contains hundreds of tips and ideas which can be applied to any web site or internet promotion.

I suggest that you get this newsletter using the Free Signup form on the right.