Customer Support

Articles, tutorials, and videos for Nockpoint customers. These posts are listed in order of date posted. To find specific topics select a category from the "More Information" menu on the right.

Do Those SEO Emails You Get Work?

Once your site is live, you will probably receive several emails regarding SEO topics. Many of my customers have asked my advice on whether there is any validity in these emails and if it is something I would recommend. There are cases where legitimate SEO companies may approach you via email, but in general my answer to this and most other offers that come through mass email is NO. I don’t recommend them, and mostly they are not legitimate.

How can you tell if the email you received regarding SEO is legitmate?

A professional business will rarely use a free email account such as AOL, Yahoo, Gmail etc. They may use them for personal accounts, but when representing their company, they will use their website email such as Joe@ACME.com to help further their name recognition.
Serious businesses won’t approach you with a short text email. They will use an email service such as Constant Contact that will have a graphically pleasing look prominently displaying their logo, tag line and a can’t resist offer. After all, if their goal is to get new customers wouldn’t they want to make a good impression?
These emails will also have an opt-in and/or opt-out link to conform with anti-spam regulations in various states. If you don’t see that any where, the email is a scam. A business that wants to improve their image would not risk getting black listed with all of the major hosting companies.
If they guarantee to get you on the first page of Google – it’s too good to be true. There is no way to guarantee that your site will be on the first page within a specified time period, or ever. If that were possible, that person would not be wasting time sending you emails, they would be collecting millions of dollars from Wal Mart and other companies with larger advertising budgets than you have.

These guidelines are true, not just for SEO, but any business that may approach you through your email. If you are curious to find out more, don’t click on the email to reply as it might have a virus embedded. Instead, do a search on the company in the email address. If you get to a real website, then make your judgement from there.

Filed Under: Customer Support, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized

Are You Listed on Google Places?

If you have ever looked at a Google map and seen a business display with it’s address and maybe even pictures, you have seen an example of what Google Places does. You can increase your visibility with Google by taking the time to complete the additional information for your location and contact information. You can include photos, business description, website, email address, hours of operation, up to 5 You Tube videos and even coupons. Best of all, it’s FREE.

Go to http://www.google.com/places/ to begin.

Just one word of caution, the email you use is likely to get abused by spammers, so don’t list your most valuable email address with Google Places. You can get a special email account just for this purpose from your hosting company.

Filed Under: Customer Support, Search Engine Optimization

Using Spam Filters

Having a website makes you a huge target for spam. If you are careful with who gets your email address, you can keep the junk mail to minimum. However, on occasion I have had customers getting hundreds of unwanted emails per day. Here are a few things you can do to prevent that:

Get a spam filter for your email account. Your hosting account offers Postini for $12/yr per account. I have this myself, and only get a handful of junk mails daily. You can add the spam filter at anytime.
Usually the email accounts hit the hardest are ones that are published directly on the site. Don’t post your most used email account that you don’t want to part with anywhere on the site. It is better to have a generic email account on the site that is forwarded to your regular email. This way if it gets too bad, the address can be deleted and replaced with a new one without affecting your personal accounts.
Encourage employees to not use their business email address when joining social forums, filling out surveys, or any other online activity that is likely to harvest email addresses.
Have a “Captcha” widget added to your website forms. Most spam is propagated by automated “bots” . These are the input boxes you see on forms that require you to answer a simple question, or to type in words that are partially obscured or distorted. Adding a captcha to all of your forms will help to cut back on spam by making it difficult for the bots to respond.

Filed Under: Customer Support, Email Tagged With: captcha, email, postini, spam

Setting Up Outlook For Your Email

When your email account is set up for your website, you will receive confirmation along with your user name and password. Once your account is set up, you can change your password. Keep that password in a secure location.

If you are familiar with setting up accounts for outlook, you can use the following settings:

Set up for a POP3 account
User name: full email address ie Joe@yourwebsitename.com
Incoming Mail server: mail.yourwebsitename.com
Outgoing Mail server: mail.yourwebsitename.com (check the box “server requires authentication”)
POP3: port 110
SMTP: port 26 (outlook usually uses a default port 25 so make sure this gets changed or you will be able to receive email but won’t be able to send)

If you are not familiar with setting up accounts follow these steps:
To add an email account to Outlook (xp):

Open Outlook. Click on Tools and choose Email Accounts.
Click on View or change existing email accounts and click Next.
If you attempted to create any email accounts but were unsuccessful, you can remove them from here. Otherwise, click Add.
Choose POP3 and click Next.
For User Info, type your name and full email address. For Logon Info, type your full email address as the username, and your password.
For Server Info, type mail.yourdomainname.com for both SMTP and POP3. If you are unable to connect to the SMTP server, your ISP may be blocking port 25 from 3rd party use. Contact your ISP if this occurs.
Do not click Test Account Settings. Simply click Next.
Your account will be shown in the list of email accounts configured in Outlook. Click Finish.
In Outlook Express, click Send/Receive.

Adding an email account to Outlook Express (Version 6.0):

Open Outlook Express. Click on Tools and choose Accounts.
In the Internet Accounts Window, click Add and choose Mail.
Type in your Name and click Next.
Type in your email address and click Next.
Choose POP3 as the incoming mail server. For the server names for both Outgoing and Incoming, type mail.your-domain-name.ext. (ie mail.yadayadayada.com)
Type in your full email address as your account name. Also type in your password and click Next.
Click Finish on the Congratulations screen.
Click Close to close out of the Internet Account window.
In Outlook Express, click Send/Receive.

Note: If you are unable to connect to the SMTP server, your ISP may be blocking port 25 from 3rd party use. Contact your ISP if this occurs.

Video How-to for Outlook 2010

Filed Under: Customer Support, Email Tagged With: email, outlook, support

Accessing Your Email Account With a Browser

Open your favorite browser and type : http://www.typeyourwebsitehere/webmail
Sign in with your user name which is your full email address: example joe@typeyourwebsitehere.com
Enter the password given to you.
You will get to a page that has 3 different email programs for you to choose from. It looks like this:
Hostmonster's email page

If this is the first time you are accessing your account make sure you change your password by
selecting the “Change Password” icon in the bottom row. Record this password in a safe place as there is no way to retrieve it.
Select the email program you want to use.
You can use any of them interchangeably. Horde has the most features, Round Cube is the most user friendly, and Squirrel Mail is there for compatibility with older browsers.

Filed Under: Customer Support, Email Tagged With: accessing email, email, email setup, online emal, support