Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines through search results. SEO with online marketing
can provide many benefits for all kinds of business websites.
Everyone knows that social media provides some great opportunities for marketing, but measurement issues continue to plague businesses. You know content is being shared, but you don't know how people who its being shared with are responding to it.
One of the metrics is its Audience Index, which lets publishers understand and compare their social audiences against 850,000 other sites (and soon against categories), find out what types of influencers your site attracts, and find out how well you connect with influencers, listeners, and engaged customers.
The other metric might be even more useful. That would be "Social Reach".
"We recently surveyed publishers (ours and others) and found that over 60% wanted (and were missing) social referral analytics," ShareThis explains on the company blog. "Social Reach measures the true value of shared media across the web by looking at outbound sharing and inbound social traffic and, in the process, gives proper credit to the listener/responder of a share as much as the original influencer/sharer. Publishers can now get a more accurate measurement of how a piece of content circulates around the Web after it’s been shared across any service, rather than just the simple number of shares counted by a single service like Facebook."
While Facebook may get more shares from ShareThis, email appears to be more effective, as people are more likely to click on an emailed link (31 percent out of the 34 percent, compared with 36 percent out of FB's 44 percent).
Either way, the metrics could prove to be very useful for publishers looking at optimizing their social media marketing strategies.
Online video viewing grew across all media categories in the second quarter with unique viewers increasing on average 2.8 percent per month, and consumers watched 11 percent more videos-month-over-month compared to the first quarter, according to a new report from Brightcove and TubeMogul.
Video consumption on newspaper sites grew the most over this period, surging to 65 percent more views than the previous quarter due to the coverage focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Referral traffic for online video from Facebook and Twitter is growing faster than from traditional search engines. At current growth rates, Facebook will surpass Yahoo within the year to be the second only to Google for video referral traffic.
While Facebook and Twitter are attracting more viewers, they are also leading to the highest levels of engagement for video on television network and music entertainment websites.
Consumers watched more minutes per view on official media websites versus online destinations with syndicated video content.
*Nearly 60 percent of brand managers plan to invest more in online video in the next 12 months.
*More than 65 percent of brand managers indicate that the primary focus of their online video initiatives is awareness, followed by lead generation (21 percent) and e-commerce (12 percent).
*70 percent of respondents said they plan to add mobile video to their marketing mix in the next 12 months.
*Consumers who find marketing and e-commerce video via Facebook and Twitter have the longest viewing times (1:24 minutes and 1:18 minutes respectively), while traffic originating from Yahoo! search (0:52 minutes) and display ads (0:52 minutes) tied for shortest.
Twitter has introduced a new redesign of Twitter.com with a two-pane format aimed at providing a richer user experience, and you can easily tell by looking at it that it does just that.
"Twitter has always been about getting a lot in a little," writes CEO Evan Williams. "The constraint of 140 characters drives conciseness and lets you quickly discover and share what's happening. Yet, we've learned something since starting Twitter—life doesn't always fit into 140 characters or less."
Twitter has partnered with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube to make tweeted content more useful directly from Twitter.com itself. Users will have less reason to click away from the site.
The first pane is essentially the single pane from today's Twitter - the timeline. In the second pane, referred to as the "details pane", users will see additional info related to the author or subject of a tweet, when clicked. This pane will also display things like @replies, other tweets from that user, maps, videos, photos, etc. Users can click the @username to see profiles from the same page.
The changes will be rolling out over the next several weeks as a preview. During this period, users will be able to switch back and forth between the new design and the old one, though frankly I can't see any advantage to using the old one.
Redesigns typically get some amount of user backlash, and this will be probably fall in line with that tradition, but this particular redesign has some advantages. For one, many Twitter users are already using apps rather than Twitter.com anyway. Secondly, Twitter has left a lot of people wondering what the point of the service is. This has been a problem since it launched. This will help people understand its value more.
Google has introduced a more secure sign-in capability for Google Apps accounts with two-step verification. The company says this "significantly increases the security of the cloud."
"Two-step verification is easy to set up, manage and use," says Google Apps Director of Security Eran Feigenbaum. "When enabled by an administrator, it requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account, something you know: a password, and something you have: a mobile phone. It doesn’t require any special tokens or devices. After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS, voice calls, or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. This makes it much more likely that you’re the only one accessing your data: even if someone has stolen your password, they'll need more than that to access your account. You can also indicate when you're using a computer you trust and don't want to be asked for a verification code from that machine in the future."
Admins for Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Editions can activate two-step verification from the English version of the Admin Control Panel now. Standard Edition users will get it in the coming months. Google says it will offer it to individual Google users in the coming months.
Google is also open sourcing its mobile authentication app, so companies can customize it.
People who use Twitter for business purposes should soon get access to a valuable flow of information. A Twitter employee indicated this week that Twitter is going to release a real-time analytics dashboard sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.
An important - and surprising - point: the product will be free. Which is great news for business owners and marketers, if a little odd since this would be an easy way for Twitter to earn money.
Otherwise, Justin Kistner reported after speaking to business development specialist Ross Hoffman at the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit, "Like their releases of ads and the new UI, this will likely start as a beta release and have a phased roll out. Because the conference was a sports marketing conference, Ross said it would be available to that audience, but presumably it will be available to all users."
Also, "The product will leverage algorithms similar to the Twitter Resonance concept in order to show users which tweets are spreading, who is influential in their network, and more. The emphasis is on real time in order to help users make adjustments on the fly to their tactics."
This development could cause professionals to start spending a lot more time on Twitter, and maybe help the site gain additional fans.
Let's just hope Twitter is able to remain in working order if a lot more information starts flying around, considering that there have been 12 posts on the Twitter Status blog in the last month alone.
Google has launched the Google Analytics Status Dashboard, which lets users check on the current status of components in Google Analytics, such as Data Collection, Web Report, and the GData API.
This means you can check on whether data from sites are being collected by Google Analytics servers correctly, whether users can view the reports correctly when they sign in to their accounts, and whether the APIs are working properly.
"The Google Analytics Status Dashboard represents an additional layer of transparency that we believe will benefit all Google Analytics users, from Fortune 500 companies to personal websites," says Yi Wang of the Google Analytics product team. "The Status Dashboard is the best place to check for service availability of Google Analytics anywhere in the world."
If you wandered over to eMarketer last week, you probably noticed their post entitled “Are Twitter Followers Better Than Facebook Fans?” Fascinating stuff! Just by reading that post, you can find out which Social Network you should focus on, right? Wrong.
Fans VS Followers
In the article, eMarketer noted that Twitter followers were 37% more likely to make a purchase, compared to 27% of email subscribers and 17% of Facebook fans. It also included some helpful stats, which indicated Twitter followers were 33% more likely to recommend a brand they follow on Twitter while emails subscribers were only 24% likely to do so and 21% of Facebook fans were willing to recommend the companies they follow.
This may lead you to believe that, if you want sales and recommendations, you should focus on Twitter. I’d caution you to slow down and look at things objectively.
Analyzing the Numbers
We all know that different segments do things differently. With this study, we’re not 100% sure what industries were covered. We also need to keep in mind that Twitter and Facebook only cover a small segment of Internet users.
Twitter, for instance, has more than 105 million users, not all of these are human, used regularly, or are unique (many users have multiple accounts). Facebook has over 500 million users. Again, not all of them are used, human, or unique. The Internet has an estimated 1,966,514,816 users, which is only approximately 28.7% of the world’s population.
With statistics like these, it’s easy to put this information into perspective. Does it mean these two social platforms should be ignored? Absolutely not. It’s simply means you need to be cautious about your approach.
The Ultimate Solution
If you really want to find out what target audiences are more likely to do, ask them! Don’t just limit yourself to Facebook and Twitter either. There are thousands of social media sites out there. Remember, it isn’t just the number of users, but the quality of the connections and conversions that will make your business profitable.
Facebook posted a note sharing some insights into who are the biggest "likers" of content on Facebook, and how engaged they are compared to other Facebook users.
"People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active and connected than the average Facebook user," Facebook says. "The average 'liker' has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook -- they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user."
"As publishers work to identify the best ways to reach a younger, 'always on' audience, we’ve found that the average 'liker' on a news site is 34, compared to the median age of a newspaper subscriber which is approximately 54 years old, as reported by the Newspaper Association of America," says Facebook.
Facebook's advice for reaching these people is to implement its various social plugins and publish interesting content to Facebook yourself. Meanwhile the company continues to partner with sites for deeper integration and instant personalization. They recently launched integrations with Rotten Tomatoesand Scribd. A partnership with Skype is expected.
The company announced this week that 2 million sites have added social plugins since they were launched five months ago. Of course, these days, it's hard for publishers to justify not having Facebook like or share buttons of some kind, particularly now that they're being directly integrated with Facebook search.
Advertisers are really going to benefit from all of this liking too, as the more information Facebook users get in their profiles, the better ads can be targeted toward them.
oogle has had its own URL shortener for some time. It just didn't make it available for general use. It was always attached to various Google products. That changes now, as Google has given it is own site at goo.gl. It's called simply, Google URL Shortener.
"We don’t intend to overload goo.gl with features, but we do want it to be the stablest, most secure, and fastest URL shortener on the web," says Google software engineer Muthu Muthusrinivasan.
"There are many shorteners out there with great features, so some people may wonder whether the world really needs yet another. As we said late last year, we built goo.gl with a focus on quality. With goo.gl, every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast, and it will keep working. You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you’re protected against malware, phishing and spam using the same industry-leading technology we use in search and other products."
Google says that since the service was first launched, they have invested in stability, security, and speed.
As pictured above, the service keeps track of the URLs you shorten, providing both versions of the URL, when it was created, the number of clicks its gotten, and other analytics.
Any Twitter historians out there may want to mark today on their calendars as a milestone of sorts. This afternoon, the company announced that it's hired its 300th full-time employee.
To provide a rough timeline documenting Twitter's growth: it supposedly had 22 employees at the start of 2009, 110 at the start of 2010, 140 as of February 14th, and 205 as of June 4th.
Please note that we emphasize the words "rough" and "supposedly" here - there's been some confusion about the full-time/part-time split - but the company's execs have in any event allowed themselves to be quoted onthese numbers.
Now it seems certain that Twitter's hit the 300-employee mark, too, and judging from the call for people to "JoinTheFlock," the company's still hiring.
These details may signal that Twitter's quite healthy and probably far from needing another round of funding. Or they could hint that it's healthy and knows it has more cash on the way.
Feel free to place your bets in the comments section. Regardless, things are looking good for Twitter right now.
Content is king, and Google needs backlinks to verify the quality of the website. After all, as clever as Google is, nobody could expect a machine to understand whether the content is correct or not.
Also I believe backlinks don't have much affect straight away, this way Google can aviod rewarding websites they pay for backlinks. So my advice would be to find a website that will provide a link that will last for some time, this is why relevant links are so valuable!
Try and do everything right, at the start of your project and start as you mean to go on. It's not necessarily a case of doing a lot, just do it correctly. I've worked on so many projects where SEO is a second thought and "just get it up there" is the word of the day and as a designer I can make sure that all the code and structure is clean and correct but this is only one part of the overall picture.
* Generate good relevant content
* Keep your articles and content semantic (so use Headings, lists, titles etc)
* Fill in the Meta content
* Get the links flowing (with or without keywords), both internally and externally. (This covers everything from twitter to forums, Press releases to site directories, be proud of your content and post links where relevant traffic will come from.)
* Get a Google sitemap and use it
* Install and use Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools
* Use the Firefox Rank Checker plugin to follow how well you're doing for the keywords you've selected, and make changes where you need
I'm a big believer in keeping things simple. A little goes a long way!
Have you ever thought about website redesigning? If so, you have come to the right place. Here, through this informative article, we will take a much closer look at some of the reasons that you may want to get a complete website redesign. We will also take a closer look at some of the things that redesigning your website can do for you. Read on to find out more.
Making Your Website Look More Attractive
Have you made yourself a website just for the sake of having a website? Did you just make a dinky website on your own since you have no experience in website designing? If so, then chances are that you may want to redesign your website. If you have a business, you want to get the best results. The key to your success may be how appealing your website looks. A website redesign can help your business a whole lot in the long run.
Organization Can Make All The Difference
One of the main reasons that you may want to consider getting a website redesign is because your website is currently unorganized. Chances are that there is information scattered throughout your entire website, without any rhyme or reason. If this is the case, then chances are that people may not understand your website when they do decide to visit it. By deciding to redesign your website, you could be making a huge difference in the success of your website.
Develop the Right Style For Your Website
There is no doubt that style can be very important for your website. Although there are certain things which you would love to see on your website, there are other things that you need to take into consideration when you go through website designing. This includes, what is the most suitable for your business, as well as what people are interested in seeing. If you decide to get your website redesigned, you will be able to have a website developed for the style which you are looking for. This can lead to the overall success of your website.
Promote Your Website
One of the main keys to your overall company success is website promotion. There are a number of different ways to increase your website promotion, some of which include search engine optimization, email campaigns, directories, and other websites. Of course, before you can experience the best website promotion, you need to make sure that your website is as professional and appealing as it can be. In order to have the most successful website promotion, you should definitely consider a new look for your website.
Get Better Website Optimization For Your Website
Chances are that you probably have your website listed in search engine databases. If so, you probably know the way that search engines work is through website optimization. This is when websites are arranged according to how well keywords match up to what a person is looking for, through keywords. In order to increase the search engine optimization for your website, some new website designing needs to be done. The best keywords will be chosen, to make your website more effective in search engines. For the best search engine optimization strategies and to increase website optimization, you should definitely consider having your website redesigned.
Change the Wording to Make it More Appealing
Are you unsure of whether or not the information on your website sounds appealing enough? Do you also want to make sure that people who view your website can easily understand it? These are both very good reasons to consider website redesigning. The way that your website is worded can make a huge deal to someone that is browsing through it. Making sure that it sounds as appealing as it possibly can be very important to your success, as well as your website optimization.
What Good Graphics Can Do For You
One of the main things which people want to see when they visit a website is graphics. There are a number of different things that graphic design services can do for your website.
* It can make your overall website look more appealing to anyone who visits it.
* Graphic designs can also add to the style of your website.
* If you have a company website, you may find that your overall success will be increased through graphic design.
Make Sure That Your Website is Easy to Use
One of the main things that people hate about websites is when they are not easy to use. When people use a website that has confusing navigation, chances are that they will not use the website again because they will get frustrated with it. Website redesigning can help you a lot when it comes to making your website easy to use. An understandable website can lead to the overall success of your business, by increasing the sales that you get.
Develop a More Professional Looking Website
One of the most important things that there is to know about website design is the fact that a website is the soul to your company. If you have a company which is very professional, chances are that you will also want your company’s website to be very professional as well.
If a person finds that your website does not seem professional or legitimate enough, they will most likely avoid using your services. If you decide to get your website redesigned, you will feel rest assured to know that your website is as professional-looking as it should be.
Match Your Competition
The truth is that industries are constantly changing. If your website is older, chances are that the content that can be found on it may be out of date. In order to match your competition, you should have a website that is just as good as your competitors. Having your website redesigned can be extremely successful when it comes to this.
Why Is Website Redesign So Beneficial?
* The appearance of your website will be improved through graphics.
* Your website promotion will be more successful.
* Website optimization will be increased.
* The overall success of your company will be increased, through encouraged sales or use of services.
About the Author: Rajesh V. Tavakari, Senior SEO of Website-Promotion-Ranking-Services.com
A logo is a simple representative graphic that allows people to remember with ease who you or your company is – That is its purpose. It should never be underestimated, it does create that memorable first impression, and even if this may not be fair, most people are pretty fickle and will base their initial impression on it – That is its importance. You have to get the logo design perfect first time and every-time.
The art of creating logos takes an enormous amounts of work, even if it at a first glance it may not look that way; creating logos implies talent and creativity but there are some rules to follow in the logo designs fascinating process. In this article, we will take a look at some of them:
Rules for Logo Design
1. Less Colors & Fonts
To establish reliable logo design rules, statisticians and designers analyzed an astonishing number of logos. Their statistics revealed: The majority of logos use no more than three colors and fonts. The use of too many fonts in addition with a great number of nuances makes if difficult to accomplish the logos initial purpose… to be retain-able.
2. Use Regular Fonts
The statistics revealed another interesting fact: numerous logos from large and popular companies use common fonts such as Arial, Times New Romans, and Helvetica.
3. Simple shapes put you in a good shape!
It is highly recommended to draw simple shapes in the process of creating logos. Have a look at the logos below, two of them respect this rule and one that doesn’t.
4. Avoid Highlights, Gradients and Shadows
This conceptual rule is strictly linked with the next one, but this is about the composition of the logo. Anyway, consider the positive aspects of a logo that lacks highlights, gradients or shadows.
5. A Good Logo Should be Easily Rendered on all Types of Media
We are living a radical revolution in media: before the internet, the methods for promotion were simple and few, with the most obvious being print. Nowadays the possibilities are far greater, but this has also become troublesome from the designers point of view, logo designers in particular.
A logo should look great on a website that can be accessed from a high performing computer with a display of 22-24 inches, from a smartphone that has a few inches display or from a simple mobile with wi-fi access capabilities. The client will probably want the logo displayed on a business card or on a poster or even on a T-shirt. All of these types of media need some specific treatment. Thus a logo that looks good on all of these is much more appreciated.
6. A Logo Should Always Look Good in Black & White
Its good practice to initially sketch on paper with a pencil your logo ideas, allowing for multiple revisions, and then proceeding to draw it with the help of graphic software – Photoshop or Illustrator – but only in black and white format. This rule helps to emphasize the idea or notion of a logo and not its composition …we have no color shadow, only the concept.
7. A Logo Should Respect the “KISS” (Keep It Simple Stupid)
The purpose of a logo is not to reveal as many chunks of information as possible, nor is to present the skills or the services offered by the client – it should only make the connections between a high quality product and you. To put it simpler, a logo is the small thing that makes people remember the big thing. So, to easily stand out and be remembered, having a simple composition is a must.
8. A Logo Should be Memorable
Here, unfortunately, nobody can give you any help or advice, it is impossible. To say that using TNR will make a logo memorable opposed to using Arial or that this color works better than color would be wrong. As was mentioned previously, the process of creating logos is an art and a science at the same time… In this article we have only covered the artistic part.
Maybe we can offer one small piece of advice: making a logo timeless will surely make it memorable for a long time. Here are some examples of timeless logos:
Conclusion
There are some rules, but nobody can guarantee that if you follow these rules you will be able to create exceptional logos. A good opportunity to find the positive and negative from your logo works is to post them on websites that offer you feedback, and attempt to act on it. You could try some of these sites below for feedback and inspiration:
With such visual and sequential prominence, it's little wonder why headlines are the number one key to an effective web site.
Without a powerful lead, your message stands little chance of being noticed in an increasingly competitive marketplace. If your headline doesn't capture attention and pull prospects into your sales copy, than your marketing effort is a total waste of energy and resources.
Nothing is more important to getting your message noticed than the first few words on a page. If you're not allocating a sizable percentage of your time and creative effort to the headline used on each page of your website, you could be losing out on a large chunk of business.
Top copywriters understand this concept well. They know how essential it is to capture attention by literally stopping pre-occupied prospects in their tracks. It's the reason why headlines command so much of their collective creative effort.
Here are five good reasons why your site headlines deserve greater emphasis and attention:
Why Headlines Are Crucial #1: Headlines Are Natural Attention Getters.
The majority of online prospects are quick scanners. No one reads the body copy of a page without first reading and being pulled in by the headline. Headlines are the first thing your visitors see. They jump out visually and command attention. Headlines are leads set distinctly above the rest of the text. Often the typeface, size, and style used for headlines contrasts with that uses in the body copy. It's a proven approach that naturally attracts eyeballs, virtually forcing interested prospects to grasp the message of the headline and to read on.
According to advertising legend David Ogilvy, 5 times more people read headlines than body copy. Although Ogilvy was talking about print advertising in general, the observation is certainly applicable to websites as well. With 5 times the readership, headlines have the power and capability to make any message many times more successful.
Why Headlines Are Crucial #2: Site Headlines Serve As Valuable Guides To The Busy Surfer.
Headlines reveal key details. They tip off readers as to what follows. They provide clear signals to help readers decide whether they should stick around for the full message, or dash off to something else - something better suited to their own special needs and interests. As a quick summary of the entire piece, the headline either attracts continued interest and readership, or they repel it. Without a headline, the reader is forced to wade through a portion of the text to understand the meaning. Forcing readers to do this is to risk losing them altogether. It's sales suicide. In effect, having no headline will cost you at least 80% of your potential audience.
Why Headlines Are Crucial #3: Headlines Prepare The Reader For What Is To Come.
Headlines stimulate interest. They captivate, arouse curiosity and stimulate the desire for more. It's the headline that starts the reader's motor running. A good headline sets up a feeling of expectation as the reader anticipates discovering more -- and can't wait to get it!
Successful headlines address specific audiences. They open prospects minds to new possibilities and expand their level of enthusiasm and interest. The best headlines involve prospects... virtually guaranteeing their sustained attention for the time being.
Why Headlines Are Crucial #4: Headlines Simplify The Learning Curve.
Every headline serves to introduce whatever follows. As an opening or lead-in, the role of the headline is to succinctly communicate the essence of the message it precedes in an interesting and compelling way. Effective headlines and sub-headings reveal key bits of information -- often with the added power of emotion. A review of the various headings alone can often provide one with the gist of a given message. This makes it faster and easier to understand, remember, and review. Use your headings to generate emotional involvement and you increase the chances prospects will go back and read more of your copy.
When you make it easier to read and comprehend your messages, you increase the chances of making the sale.
Why Headlines Are Crucial #5: Headlines Allow You To Deliver Your Biggest Bang Right Up Front.
Capture attention and interest at the outset, by using your most appealing selling point. If your strongest, most desirable product attribute (benefit) fails to pull prospects in, surely nothing else you could ever say would do the trick, either. They're your initial point of contact with visitors -- that's why headlines play such an important role.
The stronger and more compelling your headline, the more readers are likely to read on and spend more time at your website. Create every headline to grab attention and inspire interest. The more alluring and irresistible you can make it, the more genuine prospects you'll attract and ultimately, the more sales you'll record.
Headlines are powerful marketing tools when used effectively. Take a good look at your site headline. Could you add more intrigue, curiosity, or interest? Test different headlines by trying various appeals and offer combinations. Keep an eye out for additional headline opportunities throughout your sales letters, as well as on other pages on your site. Make your headlines impossible to miss and difficult to ignore... then, watch your results soar!
When you see the difference a strong opening statement makes, you'll see why headlines are the most important part of your sales copy.
More resources at www.makeyoursalessoar.com
Author Bio
Robert Boduch is an author of dozens of best-selling books, reports and articles on the art and science of selling. A free newsletter targeted at anyone interested in selling more of anything is available at www.makeyoursalessoar.com
Naturally there are many aspects to succeeding online but the nature of business hasn't swayed. You must have a professional image and you must provide a great service for your clients. This is what makes a business grow. This is not another article telling you to be sure you have Meta tags, linking and all the other wonderful Search Engine friendly includes. This is a bare bones old school reflection on how companies are losing sight of the bigger picture.
Put some heart into it
Most entrepreneurs have that essential vivacious approach to starting up a business and the truly successful ones will maintain that level of excitement to help cultivate a healthy and steady growth. A web site can help establish your business as a serious contender or just another hole in the wall. Which one are you? Some businesses place more emphasis on what they're going to have for lunch rather than the image they portray to their clients. Your excitement about your business shows in everything you do.
When getting a web site for your company be certain you place your trust and hard earned dollars with a design firm that is passionate about their work and has a proven record of accomplishment, understand why one charges $500 and another $3000. You will have a much better project if the designer has foresight and desire to see their work succeed and not just become another bank deposit.
If you surf online and scope out the millions of companies, it is amazing to see how many tired looking sites you'll come across. I can't imagine a company that sells from a brick and mortar store, allowing the front of their building to become decrepit with their sign barely hanging on by a couple of bolts. Not a good way of attracting customers off the street and into your establishment.
The heart of your business
Do what you do best. Sell the products and services that define you and earn the capital. Promote your business in the best way possible, keeping honesty and integrity at the forefront. Do not sell yourself short. Invest into your growth and future developments.
There are countless articles on Search Engine Optimization and how to make money quickly. Have we forgotten the core of doing business and how the market is stimulated? There are plenty of ways to promote your business online and expand your demographic just be sure to focus on the important facets that make a company great. Provide and honest service and quality product. More than just attracting customers to your web site you want to retain long lasting relationships which will only draw more clients as time goes on.
Search Engine Friendly
No doubt search engine optimization is an extremely important aspect for the success of your business but can't stress enough that the importance of having a solid image must tie in. What many articles fail to point out is that SEO isn't the only thing to achieving online success. The focus tends to be on one aspect and never the whole picture. Business like everything involving human interaction revolves around the senses.
Okay so your site gets to the top of the search results and gets a click thru. Upon arriving to your site, which lacks any sense of presentation is quickly scanned, forgotten and on to the next site they go. The attention span of surfer's is on the decline. Yes you must have relevant content but it better be presented in the best possible way so when your competitors are visited by the same potential customer you stand out. It's all about standing out and making your presence known. When you first write your business plan (you do have a goal right?), one of the main things is to define your sole purpose and what the business hopes to achieve and how you stand out from everyone else.
Building that niche
It is ideal to focus your efforts and find that little pocket where you can shine and grow. This is very helpful when creating your online image. Custom designed graphics, tailored to your business will help secure your position within your chosen niche market. A beautiful looking web site will not help your ranking but it will help secure client interest and entice sales. Many SEO specialists overlook the importance of branding, which is number one in order for a company to separate themselves from the pack. Don't allow customers the chance to forget your name. Be remembered and maintain your presence.
Author Bio
Tyson Fenech is the Creative Director for Core Creative Concepts. Designing web sites and print materials for the past 7 years helping both small startups and Fortune 500 companies. www.coregraphicdesign.com
The concept behind CSS (a.k.a. cascading style sheets or style sheets) is really simple. CSS allows you to create a single document of code, similar to an HTML file, that lets you specify the colors, fonts, backgrounds, etc. of a web page. The CSS file is then linked to from the web page(s) that you want to have the same styles that you specify.
CSS allows you to make changes to all of the web pages that link to the CSS file at once by changing a style in the style sheet, instead of having to manually change every style in every HTML file.
If CSS did this and only this, they would save you a lot of time to say the least, especially if you have a large or multiple web sites. This alone is worth learning CSS, however, style sheets allow you to do this and much more.
CSS also allows you to:
* position text and graphics precisely where you want to
* add rollover effects to links
* control the spacing between letters, lines, margins, web page borders
* specify the units such as centimeters, pixels, points and more
* hide content from certain web browsers in certain situations. An example of this is when you have some content that you want to appear only in your web pages, but not in print.
Some Benefits of CSS
* Your web pages load faster because there is less code to transfer
* There is less code to type
* It is easier to have a consistent look and feel to your entire web site
* Updating and maintaining websites is much easier and less time consuming
In the end, CSS can save you a lot of time and effort and is very easy to learn.
Author Bio
Jose Valdez is the webmaster of FreeCSSTutoria.com
Tables used to be the "in" thing when it came to designing web sites. As with many other things though, new techniques and methods standards are bound to emerge with time. When once tables were seen in most web pages, some experts now suggest that tables should be thrown out of the window.
In simple words, tableless web design is basically a method whereby page layout control is achieved without the use of HTML tables. Instead, text and other elements on a page are arranged using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This language is the brainchild of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). It was designed in such a way as to improve web accessibility as well as to make use of HTML for semantic purposes rather than presentational purposes.
One thing that has been making the headlines in the past year or so is the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. With search engines such as Google and Yahoo making big waves in the information sector, web designers are scrambling to get on their good side. The one main goal of a web designer is to get his site on the top pages for search results. How is this achieved? By making one's site search engine friendly.
Search engines make use of various techniques to index all existing web sites. Based on these various techniques, they assign a page rank to the web site. The higher the page rank, the more chances it will be high up in the search engine results. The higher up the site is in ranking, the more chances that people will visit the site. That means good news for the web site. That is where semantics and HTML come in.
So how about tables? Web designers who favor tables assert that they make the design process easier and less time consuming. More so, they assert that tables are more compatible with various web browsers. On the other hand, proponents of tableless formats assert that tables do not adhere to web standards and web accessibility.
Over the years, people have been trying to come up with web standards that are based on logic and that would make it easier for everyone involved to access web sites. Text readers, bots, mobile devices, and other elements were all taken into consideration. As such, the tableless format has come into popular use.
Why should you follow this standard? Here are a few reasons as to why you should go tableless:
. The current W3C standards dictate the use of tableless design.
. Practically all browsers in use today support CSS for controlling layouts. As such, your site will be compatible with most any browser.
. It is easier to make global changes to the layout with the use of CSS. That is, if the coding is properly done, of course.
. Web site accessibility for people with special needs is done more easily with the proper implementation of content into XHTML documents. In this case, CSS is used only for the layout and style.
. Unnecessary code is eliminated with the use of XHTML and CSS, making for a sleeker and more manageable code.
. Tableless formats make it easier for search engines to index a web site.
Though tableless formats are being widely used for page layout control, it does not necessarily mean that tables are not being used anymore. They are merely not optimal for presentation purposes.
About the author:
http://www.PSDxHTML.COM is an entity which offers conversion from PSD or PNG design to HTML / XHTM / CSS.
Are you launching a new website? There's no better time to think about search engine optimization than prior to launching a new site. By giving consideration to your on-page optimization factors, you can increase your chances of achieving top organic search results.
To prepare your site for easy indexing, be sure to follow these basis guidelines:
1. Design your site in html or similar format that minimizes the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engine spiders to read your content and prescribe the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
2. Make sure that your meta tags are coded properly and include the Robots.txt tag. Many individuals downplay the importance of meta tags. Although meta tags themselves won't drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta tags are search engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving click-throughs.
3. Apply the proper tags to your page. H1, H2, and H3 tags are a great wall to call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use each tag at least once, but don't force the issues. You want your text to flow and appear normal.
In addition to ensuring that you've made your page easy to access and presented text that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. So often, web designers get caught up with on page factors, that they overlook the requirements for establishing a foundation that supports long-term initiatives.In particular, consider adding pages that you can add to over time that support link building and accessibility for search engine spiders. Be sure to include:
1. An html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on you site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly. Your sitemap should be in both html as well as xml. Although users would not access the xml sitemap, search engine spiders use this version to crawl websites. Additionally, key search engine submission resources like Google's Webmasters Tools require xml site map versions.
2. Include a partners page. Previously referred to as a links page, the partners page is essential for reciprocal linking. This strategy isn't as powerful as developing one-way links, but until your site has been assigned a Google PR, one-way links can be difficult to acquire. So begin your link exchange program with a partners page that allows you add or remove link quickly and easily.
3. Submission pages that encourage new content. One of the most powerful seo techniques is the addition of new content. Make it easy for your users to add or submit content to your website. When search engines see new content, they rejoice. Don't underestimate how important it is to make it simple for your browsers to add or submit content.When focusing on search engine optimization, especially with a new website, follow the basic ideas outlined above.
There are a number of other factors to consider as well. However, you should always start with a strong foundation - a site design that meets basic SEO standards but one that also supports your long range search engine optimization goals.
About the Author:
Michael Fleischner
http://improvesearchenginerankings.blogspot.com
To error is human, but to not to learn from your mistakes can, at times, cost you more than what you can afford. In my ten years of offering web designing, web development and web maintenance services, I have come across many designing gaffes that can be avoided by being a bit more careful. However, I would like to mention a few web designing and web development blunders that fit to be discussed in this article.
Domain Misspell
One of the dumbest mistakes one can ever do is to misspell domain name while going for its registration. It may so happen that you might be doing the domain registration on behalf of your customers, and if you are communicating mostly over voice, you are prone to hearing things wrongly which can jeopardize their prospects. For instance, if you register CarTuneNetwork.com instead of CartoonNetwork.com, you have probably had it from your clients. Make sure you hear thing correctly if you rely mostly on the voice chat with your customers.
Expiry of Domain Names
This is another mistake you would always hate to commit. Imagine your domain name expires after a certain period of time because you probably have forgotten to pay the registrar on time to renew your domain. This could be quite embarrassing if you have already made a name for your website.
Flashing Your Cyber Undergarments
Some website management platforms offered by hosting companies store the site statistics in common folders named as /statistics/. Unless you password protect this folder, your visitors will be able to see the most confidential statistics of your site. In the process, you might end up showing the full traffic data to your visitors. Do not be surprised if you find some of your visitors informing you that they are pretty impressed with the last month traffic flow.
Displaying Sensitive Company Information
Often the web designers are not aware of the real portion of the webpage copy and can make potential errors of publishing the entire content on the webpage copy provided by you even if there is some private information that is meant just to assist the web designer in doing his work efficiently. It can happen to any organization irrespective of their size and stature. For instance, in 2006, AOL had published a search data report that contained private details of thousands of AOL customers. Though the information was taken off the site a few days later, it led to the sacking of AOL's chief technical officer.
404 Errors Page
The worst web design error you can ever commit is to design custom 404 Error Page for your visitors without being apologetic to them or leaving any clue for them to help them go to the page they want to see. This might seriously put them off and make them click them on the back button.
Site Closed For Maintenance
If you take your site off for maintenance even temporarily, you could lose your ranking that you have earned so painstakingly. Search engines do not understand the sign "back in fifteen minutes". If the search engine bots index your site when it is down for maintenance they will take if for granted that that pages they had indexed earlier no longer exist. As a result, they will drop your pages from their search index which means you will have to wait till they re-index your site. The simplest solution to this problem is to put up a mirror site during the maintenance period.
About the author:
Maneet Puri heads LeXolution IT Services (LIT), a renowned web and KPO solution provider in India.
Accessibility is a crucial factor in website designing. Investing thoughts and elements on how the website looks is all well but what is more important is how accessible the it is to visitors and prospective customers.
An ideal website design focuses on letting the visitors attain a higher level of accessibility into the website. Here are some tips that can help you create a website design that allows visitors to come through with minimal troubles:
ALT Text
Do make sure to include meaningful ALT text in your website design. Visually impaired users are able to browse through the site when their screen readers read aloud the ALT text. With the ALT text missing from your website design, your website will potentially be unusable for your blind visitors and you could end up losing out on potential customers.
Correct Spellings
Screen readers are not able to pronounce words that are misspelled. So, if the content of your website has any spelling errors the screen readers will completely ignore the word and the sentence will make no sense to the user. Visually impaired users have a sense of your web design through what the screen readers portray. And if they have a bad impression, you stand to lose business.Avoid AbbreviationsAs much as you can, avoid using abbreviations. Just like screen readers don't recognize spelling errors, the same way it fails to know abbreviated words. They try to spell it out and end up pronouncing some undecipherable word. For example you might be able to know that 'eg' is example but the screen reader may pronounce it as 'egg.' Thus, it is always better to use good website design practices to make life easier for your users.
Contrasting Colors for Text
Dark text on a light or white background is the tried and tested best for most people as it increases readability. Even if you are using other colors make sure to keep the text color in dark contrast to the background.
Readable Text
Make your text resizable so that people with poor eyesight are able to resize the content matter to suit them.
Colors and CSS
Adjust the colors of your website using web design solutions such as CSS. Thus, if by chance visitors find your default stylesheet hard to use, they can turn it off and use their own stylesheet.
Sensible Links
Make sure that all the links on your website make sense even out of context. Visually impaired people often skip through the links on a page. Links like 'Click here' does not make any sense to them. rather try framing 'Click here for more information about website design.' This would tell them what exactly are they for.
About the Author:
Maneet Puri is the Director of LeXolution IT Services, a leading web design firm in India that specializes in web designing and development.
Here are some website design basics that need to be considered on Ecommerce sites in order to ensure a good user experience, and to drive leads and sales.
1) Clear Navigation
Remember, people usually aren’t just browsing when they shop online – they know what they’re looking for. Have a separate navigation bar for your product categories. Don’t mix them in with contact us, about us, and other company tabs. A product search box is a must. Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for.
2) Get them Shopping
Your website home page should engage the visitor and get them shopping. Featured products, most popular, recent arrivals, or specials should be displayed in a product grid on the home page. A website home page with just company information won’t get the visitor into shopping mode.
3) Quality Product Shots
Remember, the visitor is not in a retail store. They can’t pick up the product, touch it, or try it on for size. The photos are all you’ve got to work with, so they’d best be good! Purchase a quality digital camera, and set up a consistent display so all shots are displayed against a similar background. Better yet, download free Photoshop style software like gimp.com and clear cut your images for a more professional look.
4) Show them where they are!
If you have a website with a significant number of products, your navigation should show their progression of where they’ve got to in your website e.g. home page > Category > Sub Category > Product. That way visitors always remain orientated in your website. It also might encourage them to find items they would like more which will convert better.
5) Cross Sell
If you have related products, make sure you suggest other relevant products to the visitor. If they’re buying moisturiser, offer them the complimentary skin toner etc. This is how Amazon.com made it big – suggesting related books based on customers past purchases.
6) A Secure Payment Gateway
Credit card fraud is a major problem online. Most people will not give out credit card information over the internet unless it is through a secure payment gateway. There are many options here like Paypal, DPS, Paymate etc. You want to choose a payment gateway that is not just secure, but has a smooth ordering process. This will reduce your checkout abandonment rate, resulting in more sales.
7) Get them Coming Back
Email marketing - There is no better way to turn past customers into repeat purchasers. Sign up to a web based email marketing system like verticalresponse.com or mailchimp.com. Begin to assimilate a list of past customers and contacts, and then email them out html visual emails with specials, news, promotions, and events. If they’ve bought from you once, give them a reason to buy again.
8) Search Engine Optimisation
If a great looking website design is like a well presented retail shop, the search engine optimisation is like the location of the shop. If you have a great looking store hidden down a back alley, it’s not going to do very well. Good search engine optimisation is vital for driving visitors to your website. If you’re not showing up on Google for your main key words, you’re missing out on sales. It’s a whole topic unto itself, which requires the employment of specialists, but it needs to be considered.
If you follow the above Ecommerce website design guidelines, selling your products online has the potential to bypass expensive retail rent, showrooms, and sales staff, to create a profitable, efficient business.
If you'd like to discuss your Ecommerce Website Design requirements with us, we’d love to hear from you. 123Online is a New Zealand web design company that provides affordable web design solutions for different size businesses.
Successful web design is all about making people trust you before they meet you. Here are 10 ways to make your website design reflect your trustworthiness as a business, rather than just your willingness to fork out on a flashy website:
1) Professional Web Design
Your website design must convey an air of professionalism and credibility. Poor quality web design leaves the visitor with serious questions about the quality of the company, their products and their services.
2) A Detailed Website ‘About Us’ Section
Don’t keep your website’s visitors at a distance – let them really get to know you. Your website’s about us section should reflect the character of your company. Team bios let visitors know your people. A company history lets them know where you’ve come from. Company Vision lets them know where you’re going. Company Values let them know what you stand for.
3) Guarantee It!
Nothing sets people at ease more than a guarantee – how can you structure your offer so the visitor has nothing to lose? Minimise their risk and gain their trust.
4) Partnerships
Do you have partnerships with well known and respected brands? Are you an authorised distributor or reseller? An official sponsor or supplier? Ask permission to use their logos and branding on your website and let your visitors know you partner with the best.
5) Testimonials
Testimonials are widely used on websites, but there is always the chance they’re not authentic. To ensure they are perceived as genuine, include the website address, image of the person giving the testimonial, or better yet, film a video testimonial.
6) Case Studies
Case studies are great to showcase the challenges your clients have faced, and how your service solved their problem. Visitors may see your customer’s problems reflect their own. This is a great way to build empathy with your visitors.
7) Returns Policies, Privacy Policies, & Terms
People like to know they’re dealing with an upfront company who is open about its terms. Publishing these on your website give visitors confidence - they know what they’re signing up for when they do business with you.
8) Blog
A blog is a great tool to become a “thought leader” in your field. Write articles and blog posts that show your expertise and experience in your field. People like to deal with knowledgeable companies. Become a trusted source of valuable information – your visitors will return to your website again and again.
9) Professional Certifications
Are you a member of a professional association? Have you or your company achieved a certified quality standard (Master Builder etc)? These certifications convey quality and credibility to visitors.
10) Video
Used well, having a video of a key team member explaining your company’s services or products can be incredibly compelling for visitors. The internet can feel impersonal, so someone talking directly to the visitor adds a much-needed human element to their online experience.
Remember, if they don’t trust you, they won’t do business with you. It’s as true on the internet as it is in the retail shop, the office, or the showroom. I hope these ideas will bring a new level of trust and credibility to your website.
123Online are website designers who understand the importance of a web design that will gain the trust and respect of your site visitors. Browse our websites portfolio online, and get a quote to get your website up to scratch or off the ground!
By Geoff Choo, TechRepublic
When Workforce Magazine, an 80-year-old trade publication geared toward HR professionals, launched its site in June 1995, it set out with the belief that the site should not be a mere online rendition of its successful magazine but a unique collection of content and functionality that made the best use of the Web for its more than 250,000 registered users. Recently acquired by Crain Communications, Inc., Workforce is a Costa Mesa, CA-based premier destination for HR professionals, concentrating on HR trends and tools for business results.
Three years later, it redesigned the site from the ground up and decided to custom-build a content management system (CMS). While the proprietary CMS worked well at first, by early 2001 it became apparent that the system was hindering Workforce’s efforts in growing the site to meet the expanding needs of its readers and its own editorial team.
The proprietary code base of the CMS and peripheral systems prevented developers from extending functionality and, more importantly, from fixing bugs in the system—specifically those that occasionally erased all the content within the site. Usability was also a big headache; many of the screens presented long, unmanageable lists of assets, with no ability to sort or filter the results.
The organization had little choice but to basically tear everything down and radically overhaul the existing technology architecture.
CMS is all about the process
Workforce wanted a sophisticated publishing system that could handle a high volume of content, but it didn’t want to build a custom system again.
“With the installed CMS we had, we found that its problems quickly became site-wide issues,” said Bob Dortch, VP of production at Workforce. “Because the system lived in the same environment as our live site, if the CMS went haywire and locked up the Web server, both our CMS and our entire live Web site went down at the same time.” The problem with the installed solution was that it had created too great a codependency between the main business needs: serving our live site and building new content, he explained.
“We knew that selecting a new CMS would be a major undertaking, and based on our past experience, we knew a hosted solution would provide the separation and business security we were looking for.”
Because Workforce had a limited budget, it didn’t want to invest heavily in software and staff to support and manage a complex application. It also required an application that could integrate with other applications, including ad serving, bulletin boards, user authentication, and a search engine. And the organization wanted an implementation partner that could perform the customization it required, and that could (cost-effectively) continue to modify the application as requirements changed.
Workforce chose CrownPeak Technology and its Advantage CMS solution because they “know the people behind it and their track record of both innovation and success in this space,” said Margaret Magnus, publisher and president of Workforce Magazine.
“CrownPeak provides literally all of the features we need today, along with other capabilities we will grow to need, at a much lower cost than anything else we’ve seen in the marketplace."
CrownPeak Technology is a content management ASP that provides content management as a service. The Advantage CMS solution delivers a complete set of features in a 100-percent browser-based interface, including source control, versioning, spell checking, link checking, comprehensive workflow, security monitoring features, multilingual interfaces, database management, and wireless compatibility.
“The experience and knowledge of the individuals at CrownPeak; [the] high level of trust that, if they said they would deliver, they would; and their ability to listen to the client and understand the client’s business were the key reasons we selected CrownPeak,” added Dortch.
A cost-effective solution
Workforce used the CMS rebuild opportunity to also completely redesign back-end systems. Workforce removed the proprietary CMS (which was doing double-duty as an application server), and discarded the supporting but aging Oracle database. It moved to PHP as the application server and MySQL to handle database needs.
This strategy streamlined support needs and gave a standardized platform on which to base future development. CrownPeak also agreed to provide Web hosting for Workforce, via a partnership with IBM.
“It’s a totally outsourced solution that’s given them a world-class application for a very reasonable figure,“ said Jim Howard, CrownPeak’s CEO.
Advantage’s open architecture made it relatively painless to integrate the CMS with other key technology components of the site, like DoubleClick’s DART Ad Management system, DoubleClick’s e-mail system for their newsletters, and PicoSearch for the search system.
[Source] Software Outsourcing Blog Section: http://www.techomechina.com
Starting Today, Facebook users can tag pages in their photos. Previously, only friends were able to be tagged and linked to within photos. A certain page can now be tagged by anyone on Facebook, not simply those who have liked the page.
Currently, the only types of pages that can be tagged are Brands & Products or People pages, but Facebook says they are “looking to expand this functionality to more page categories over time.”
As usual, Facebook is reminding us that privacy features are still in place, and that just because you tag a photo of a Coke with the Coke brand page, it doesn’t mean your photo has to appear on that brand’s page- unless of course you want it to. The privacy of the photo is always respected when a Page is tagged in a photo. If a photo post is published to “everyone,” then it can appear publicly on the Photos tab of the Page and the Page admins can see it. If it’s just published for someone’s friends, only their friends will be able to see that photo. Page Admins can always choose to disable tagged photos from appearing on the Photos tab by going into Edit Page > Posting Options > and unchecking “Users can add photos”.
Last fall, Facebook launched new features for photos, such as higher resolution images and that nifty black-bordered viewer for browsing. They also retooled the uploading functionality and allowed users to tag multiple photos at the same time.
This will obviously promote more interaction with brands on Facebook as well as celebrities’ fan pages. Just think how many times people upload a picture of someone holding a Starbucks coffee or upload a pic from a certain restaurant or sporting venue? If users have a picture with Kanye West and a bunch of their friends, for instance, they can tag him along with all their friends.
Since 2009, users have been able to tag pages in their status updates and wall posts. This just takes that to a whole new level.
As part of a study commissioned by Microsoft, market research company MarketTools surveyed 1,268 professionals and students over the age of 18 about their email habits and other forms of communication at home and at work.
45% of those surveyed said that their use of email at work will most likely increase in the next five years. 51% said that it would likely stay the same. Only 4% thought it would decrease. At home, 36% of those surveyed thought their email use will increase, 55% said it will stand pat and 6% said it will likely decrease.
This shouldn’t shock most of us, as email has become such an integral part of almost everyone’s lives. Hell, the AP stylebook recently decided to go with “email” instead of “e-mail.” It really is it’s own thing – not just an electronic type of regular mail.
What is interesting, however, is when the study talks about specific tools for communication in the office. As expected, 96% of those surveyed says that in the past year their email use has either increased or stayed the same. Social Media, SMS, Phone and Face to Face communication has also all increased. The only form of communication that has declined is instant messaging – 14% saying it has increased, 15% saying it has decreased and 71% saying it has stayed the same.
As part of this study, Microsoft has also given us an infographic about the history of email. it tracks the service from its beginnings in 1965 at MIT (I know, 1965!) to Facebook integration with Microsoft Office web apps in 2010. Be warned, it is a little Outlook – oriented, as would be expected with a Microsoft infographic. It does chart the 1998 release of the Tom Hanks – Meg Ryan romcom You’ve Got Mail, which obviously makes the whole thing worth it.
Source: http://www.webpronews.com/email-social-media-communication-increases-im-use-decreases-2011-05 About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a staff writer for WebProNews. He likes football, French New Wave cinema, and bacon.
Most gamers are thought to be people that live in their parents’ basement, drink Mountain Dew and energy drinks, and play video games until the wee hours of the morning. But, a new study from Mocospace reveals information that debunks this theory. The mobile social network conducted a survey and found that gamers are actually more social than non-gamers. Does this finding come as a surprise to you? Let us know.
Of the 10,000 people that Mocospace surveyed, the ones that played games socialized and interacted with their friends more than non-gamers did. Imran Malek, the chief of gaming at Mocospace, told us that gamers have an incentive to be social, since it helps them advance in games.
For example, on the game Happy Farm, users can help their friends with tasks on their farms. In other words, the more friends you have, the more help you could have in your game.
“I think the important thing about gaming from a social context is that you’re really incentivized to have more friends. ‘Cause the more friends you have, the more people you have working with you, and, in some cases, working for you,” said Malek.
Another interesting trend about the study is that gamers are playing more games on mobile devices. Malek pointed out that game developers realize that no other platform reaches such a large audience with an equally large attention span. He believes that people will stop buying computers and will go straight to buying mobile and tablet devices. About Abby Johnson
Abby Johnson is a reporter for WebProNews.
While this is not anything surprising or groundbreaking, the television medium is ate up with the idea of using Twitter to establish some kind of audience interaction. Again, this evolution has been fairly obvious, but the concept hit one of its many upcoming peaks during the recent Royal Wedding. Not only were would-be well-wishers huddling around their monitors/televisions, waiting breathlessly to catch a glimpse of the couple, they were also running to Twitter to share their reactions.
“OMG! THE KISS WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL!!!! I’M SO JEALOUS!!!” or something along those lines, anyway. Not only were the tubes flooded with these kinds of tweets, but many of the television stations broadcasting the wedding were keeping track, adding them to “how many have tweeted” pile. If ABC’s numbers are to be believed, it’s pretty clear a whole lot of people watch TV with a computer/mobile device with Internet access close by:
Judging by the frozen frame, it’s not exactly certain at what point that image was captured. Nevertheless, considering the fact the Royal Wedding was not a 24-hour event — although, the run up to it certainly exceeded that — that’s a lot of comments featuring the #RoyalWedding hashtag.
Our work with TV partners like ABC, CNN, ITV, Sky and BBC shows that broadcast prompts like hashtags on-air immediately drive double to ten-fold increase in activity on Twitter.
Another trend is for television shows to feature desired hashtags onscreen, prompting viewers to include them when they are tweeting about, say, the latest episode of CNN Money or the Comedy Awards presentation.
There’s a video of this trend, and it shows just how omnipresent Twitter is in relation to interacting with a television audience.
Clearly, if you aren’t engaging your audience with Twitter accounts and relevant hashtags, you’re denying your audience’s ability to interact in a more personal sense. Sure, message boards are still a chosen medium for those who want to react to visual entertainment — see the AV Club and Ain’t It Cool News if you need further proof — but the immediacy of Twitter, not to mention its ability to keep comments relatively categorized via hashtags streamlines the entire process.
Forget for a moment everything you think you know about Google and how they rank content. Put yourself in the role of a person who is tasked with ranking results. One result gets clicked often, but most of the time the user only stays on the page for a few seconds (if that), returns to the results page, and clicks on another result.
Meanwhile, another result on the same page gets clicked on a lot too, but when users click on that one, they stay on the page longer, and don’t even return to the results page to find another result to click on. Nor do they refine their query. Which page is most likely the one that has the better content for that particular search?
Should bounce rate be a ranking signal? Comment here.
Well, being a human, you have the luxury of looking at both pages and making that call. Now, pretend you’re not a human. You’re a computer algorithm tasked with ranking the world’s information for the majority of searchers. While you have over 200 signals that can help you determine which one should rank higher, wouldn’t this be one that could help?
This is not exactly bounce rate, but it’s related. In this case, it is the bounce in the direction of back to the SERP, and while there has been a lot of discussion and argument about whether Google uses actual bounce rate as a signal, it seems pretty likely that they are looking at this specific element of it.
SearchMetrics, after releasing data about the Panda winners and losers in the UK, said, “It seems that all the loser sites are sites with a high bounce rate and a less time on site ratio. Price comparison sites are nothing more than a search engine for products. If you click on a product you ‘bounce’ to the merchant. So if you come from Google to ciao.co.uk listing page, than you click on an interesting product with a good price and you leave the page. On Voucher sites it is the same. And on content farms like ehow you read the article and mostly bounce back to Google or you click Adsense.”
“And on the winners are more trusted sources where users browse and look for more information,” the firm added. “Where the time on site is high and the page impressions per visit are also high. Google’s ambition is to give the user the best search experience. That’s why they prefer pages with high trust, good content and sites that showed in the past that users liked them.”
WebmasterWorld Founder Brett Tabke wrote in a recent forum post, discussing what he calls the “Panda metric“, that “Highly successful, high referral, low bounce, quality, and historical pages have seen a solid boost with panda.”
In a recent video from Google’s Matt Cutts, on ranking in 2011, he talks about increasing site speed, and how this can keep users on your site longer (IE: not bouncing), you can increase your ROI. Speed is a ranking signal. We know that. Speed can reduce bounce rate. Even if Google doesn’t use bounce rate directly, there is a strong relationship here.
A reader (hat tip to Jordy) sent us this link from Matt McGee at SearchEngineLand, posted last June:
Bounce rate and rankings? Matt [Cutts] says Google Analytics is not used in the general ranking algorithm. “To the best of my knowledge, the rankings team does not use bounce rate in any way.” He tiptoed around this question a bit, choosing his words very carefully.
The part about tiptoeing is somewhat intriguing in and of itself, but it’s also important to note that this was nearly a year ago, and the Panda update was not announced until just this past February (and has even been tweaked since then).
We also picked the brain of SEO vet Jim Boykin. We asked Jim how important he thinks bounce rate is. He says, “I think that some aspects of bounce rate are very important in the post-panda world.”
“It’s important to note how Google defines Bounce Rate,” he adds. This is below:
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.”
He also points to how it is defined in Google Analytics:
“The percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page.”
“Personally, I don’t think that a single page visit is a bad thing. To me, it tells me the visitor found what they were looking for. Isn’t that what Google would want? If I were Google, I’d want a searcher to find the answer to their search on the exact page they clicked on in a search result…not 1 or 2 clicks in. If I were Google, I’d look more at ‘Who Bounces off that page, and returns to the same Google search, and clicks on someone else, and then never returns to your site,’ but I’m not Google, and that’s just my ‘if I were Google’ thoughts”.
Regardless, it can’t be a bad thing to strive to make every page of yours the best page of its type – the solution to the searcher’s problem. At its heart, that is really what the Panda update is about. Really, that’s what search ranking is about in general. Delivering the BEST result for the query – signals aside.
As far as links, while Boykin says it’s “kind of” fair to say that making sure your links point to quality pages can have a major impact on how Google ranks your site post-Panda, he says, “The final solution should be to remove or fix the low quality pages, and thus, all your links would point to ‘quality pages’.”
Again, this should improve bounce rate.
“I think most agree that there’s a ‘Page Score’ or a ‘set of pages score,’ and when that has a bad score, it affects those pages, and somehow ripples up the site,” Boykin adds. “It could quite well be that if you have a page that links out to 100 internal pages, and if 80 of those pages are ‘low quality’ than it just might affect that page as well. A lot of this is hard to prove, but there are some smoking guns that can point in this direction.”
“Bounce rate is important, and yes, many sites that got hit did have a high bounce rate, but comparing this to sites/pages that weren’t hit doesn’t exactly show any ‘ah ha’ moments of ‘hey, if your bounce rate is over 75%, then you got Panda pooped on,’ because the bounce rate Google shows the public is missing many key metrics that they know, but don’t share with us.”
I think the best advice you can follow in relation to all of this is to simply find ways to keep people from leaving your site, before they complete the task you want them to complete. That means providing content they want.
Numerous reports have been coming out that Facebook is taking down Facebook pages that are accused of infringing upon copyrights. The keyword there is “accused”. Apparently, Facebook does little (or nothing) to verify the legitimacy of the claims before taking action.
Several well-known tech blogs, including Ars Technica, Redmond Pie, and Neowin have had their pages removed by Facebook as the result of such a situation (though later the pages were reinstated).
“Prior to the account lockout, we had received no notices of infringement or warnings,” says Ars Technica’s Ken Fisher. “Truly, we awoke to find that Facebook had summoned a judge, jury, and executioner and carried out its swift brand of McJustice all without bothering to let us know that there was even a problem.”
“Further investigation has revealed just how flawed Facebook’s infringement reporting system is,” he adds. “To begin with, someone making a complaint can provide any third-party e-mail address they choose. So it is rather easy to spoof the origin of a complaint, while giving Facebook and the accused no chance for a direct rejoinder.”
Fisher also retweeted this:
@GlennF Glenn Fleishman@ashponders @kenfisher Even with this, FB is better than Google. Google has no good appeals for _anything_.3 hours ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto
NeoWin’s Dave Legg wrote, “We (Neowin) tried to file a countercomplaint, but Facebook just refused to acknowledge it, they simply ignored the content of the email and said once again that we had to contact the complainant and resolve it with them or take them to court.”
Here’s the form for people to submit complaints:
Facebook is developing quite a reputation for being hard to get through to at a human level. David Fagin is suing the company for a dollar to make a point about this, after getting blocked from sending friend requests, being labeled a spammer, and having issues getting through to Facebook.
We want Facebook to be a place where people can share and discuss openly while respecting the rights of others. We take seriously both the interests of people who post content and those of rights holders. We work to ensure that we don’t take content down as a result of fraudulent notices. However, when a rights holder properly completes our notice form alleging intellectual property (IP) infringement, we will take appropriate action including removing or disabling access to the relevant content. When we do this, we notify the person who shared the content so he or she can take appropriate action, which may include contacting the reporting party or following up with Facebook.
Submitting an IP notice is no trivial matter. The forms in our Help Center require statements under penalty of perjury, and fraudulent claims are subject to legal process.
Hmm. That’s it? They wouldn’t even say why they don’t validate email addresses, which is unfortunate, considering claims have been exposed as being bogus.
Facebook eventually responded to Ars Technica, simply saying it is “looking into the specific takedown request that was made.” Later, they followed with an apology and finally reinstated the page. Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng wrote in a later article, after the publication’s page was reinstated:
There are a number of things Facebook needs to fix, however. Let’s start with the vague notifications and slow responses: in nearly all cases, Facebook did not specify which content was supposedly infringing before taking down the entire page. According to Condé Nast’s crack legal team, a proper DMCA takedown is supposed to specify the infringing material, and that content is supposed to be removed immediately until a counterclaim is filed. Facebook did not do this—instead, it claimed “Ars Technica” was the infringing material, and subsequently removed our entire page.
Facebook also did not tell us who filed the claim until moments before the publication of this article—not technically required for the DMCA process, but providing the name of the claimant is industry-wide best practice. So, Ars has only within the past couple of hours found out who filed the bogus complaint against us, and we still don’t know why or for which content. (We’re hoping to follow up with this person, assuming he’s real, in order to find out his motivation for filing the takedown notice.)
This is the second copyright-related blunder Ars Technica has been a part of recently. A while back, Righthaven filed suit against a contributor to the site before realizing that it it didn’t have much of a leg to stand on and dismissing the suit, calling it a “mistake”.
Facebook can drive a lot of traffic to a site – particularly a news site or blog, so having a Facebook Page taken down can be a tremendous blow to such a site.
Facebook’s practice is drawing a great deal of criticism from the Blogosphere. The whole thing is rather interesting considering how Facebook is trying to cozy up with journalists lately.
Should Facebook be doing more to verify claims before taking Facebook Pages down? Comment here.
Facebook is developing quite a reputation for being hard to get through to at a human level. 