March 2008 - Posts
Using
Pluck SiteLife,
Imaginova launched a new suite of
community tools on LiveScience.com, Space.com and Aviation.com that will allow
visitors to engage directly with other members and editorial staffers within
those communities.
Pluck's SiteLife platform includes community tools that allow readers to comment
on and recommend original content such as breaking news and feature articles,
videos and images. The new tools also facilitate lively discussions in topical
forums and allow users to create persona pages.
“Because of the passionate interests of our intellectually curious audience,
social media and community interaction are at the heart of Imaginova’s digital
media strategy,” says Dan Stone, President and CEO of Imaginova Corp. “As we
continue to expand our offerings, the Pluck reader participation and social
networking tools will power stimulating conversations and enable our already
devoted audience to become engaged in our dynamic communities.”
Yahoo unveiled a new website for women today called Yahoo! Shine and is
hailing the site as not just another site for the 25-34 female crowd, but a "smart,
dynamic place for women to gather, get info, and connect with each other and the
world around them" according to the formal announcement.
Shine has brought in content writers from some of the most noteworthy
publications including Glamour, Self, Bon Appetit, Redbook, Cosmo, and even
Yahoo! properties like Yahoo! Health, Yahoo! Tech, Yahoo! Good and Yahoo! Green.
Yahoo! Shine even lets its visitors get in on the action with their own blogs,
the ability to comment on articles, and vote in polls.
So will Yahoo! Shine hear the roar from women? While it does represent a
significant shift for Yahoo! towards a more vertical strategy (which is great
for advertisers looking for behavioral-based targeting within a highly active
demographic group) it's a stretch with so many others already in the market
including iVillage, TeamSugar, Fabulously 40, and don't forget Martha Stewart.
Zoho has launched
Zoho Invoice, a solution which gives users the ability to create estimates and invoices. Website Magazine has covered
many Zoho applications in the past and this latest development brings the Zoho suite of free and paid solutions to an even larger group of professionals.
A run down of the Zoho Invoice features:- Create and send branded invoices, quotes or estimates.
- Automate repeated invoicing through recurring invoices.
- Track outstanding invoices and customer payments. Accept payment online.
- Send overdue reminders, acknowledge payment receipts.
- Expand your business overseas, with support for multi-currency.
- Data security and backup. SSL encryption of data on transit.
- Powerful reports to see how your business is doing.
The solution is integrated with PayPal, so invoices can be generated and sent to customers, who can then make payments directly through PayPal. The application is free for sending up to five invoices per month; four monthly subscription versions range from $5 to $35 and allow from 25 to 1,500 invoices to be sent each month.
WordPress 2.5 has been released and the improvements are numerous for both
users and developers. There is a 4-minute screen cast of the new interface in
action but the improvements are so significant to the millions running Wordpress
installations, it's necessary to outline all of the features in detail. The
change users will first notice is that WordPress has redesigned its dashboard.
It now features a much improved (read cleaner, faster, less cluttered)
interface which offers a series of widgets, revealing stats about posting,
comments, inbound links, as well as new and popular plugins.
Other features or WordPress 2.5 include:
- Multi-file upload with progress bar - select a whole folder of
images, music or videos at once and the system will show the progress of
each upload.
- Search posts and pages - Previously, Wordpress only searched
posts. With the new system, search also includes pages - a helpful
development for those using WordPress as a content management system.
- Tag management - users can now add, rename, and delete tags from
inside WordPress - no plugins required.
- Concurrent editing protection - for multi-author blogs, WordPress
prevents someone else from editing it by locking them out until the other
person is done.
- Few-click plugin upgrades - WordPress will now update your
plugins for you. Previous versions would notify you that updates were
available, but indicate your FTP information and you'll never be out of date
again.
- Friendlier visual post edtior - using version 2.0 of TinyMCE, the
chances of your code being "messed with" have been reduced thanks to better
compatibility with Safari. The new version aslo features a "no-distractions"
mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
- Built-in galleries - Those taking advantages of multi-file upload havea
new shortcode that allows for the easy embedding of galleries in your posts.
Registering and renewing domains is about to get a little more expensive.
Verisign, which manages the generic TLD's (top level domains) .com and .net will
increase the price of base registration fees. VeriSign announced that the
registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.42 to $6.86 and that
the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $3.85 to $4.23.
Verisign has said that the increase is necessary as significant investments are
required to increase security measures and sustain the growth of the traffic
volume due to Web connected wireless devices and other services. VeriSign
processes a peak of more than 33 billion DNS queries per day under normal
traffic conditions.
 |
The Web Marketing
Association is announcing the 2008 Call for Entries for its
12th annual WebAward Competition.
As we've noted before, winning a Web award is a great opportunity to
secure some recognition in addition to being a powerful marketing
opportunity. There are 96 industry categories from Advertising and
architecture to real estate and restaurants. |
Entries are judged by industry experts using criteria such as design, ease of
use, copywriting, interactivity, use of technology, innovation, and content.
Being a WebAward judge myself and seeing a few of our readers sites the past few
years, I encourage readers to submit for review in hopes of winning an award.
Chances are good - nay great - that you will secure some attention! The deadline
for entry is May 31, 2008 so sign up today at the competition website at
www.webaward.org.
WebDex Media Group, an Internet marketing company, is offering a
free workshop at their offices in
Carrollton, TX on Wednesday April 9 and April 23, 2008 from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Paul Slack, President and CEO of WebDex Media Group, will be presenting the
2-hour session that will bring attendees up-to-date on the latest in Internet
marketing.
"This workshop is intended for senior management executives, sales and
marketing professionals, and anyone wanting to leverage the Internet to help
improve the quality and quantity of sales and leads from their website,"
said Slack.
WhitePages.com announced today that it is making its data available for free
in a beta Web services API. To jump start development, WhitePages is sponsoring
a contest awarding either a 50" HD Plasma TV or a 15" MacBook® Pro*
computer for the best iPhone™* application and the best social networking
application. What are you waiting for - learn more within the
WhitePages Web Developer Portal.
Developers will have to register for a usre account and apply for an APY key,
but once you've got that administrative stuff taken care of, you'll be able to
dig in to some serious data. In 2007 the company more than doubled the size of
its database to nearly 180 million people which equals 80 percent of the U.S.
adult population. Included in the company's database are 25 million at work
listings which give consumers the flexibility to connect with others during the
workday and offers an alternative to calling a home number when it is not
convenient. Developers have the ability to submit 3 types of searches against
WhitePages.com data including the ability to search by a person's name and
location to return complete address and phone number and even reverse phone and
reverse address search.
"WhitePages.com has always been focused on helping you find contact
information for the people you care about," said Scott Ruthfield, vice president
of engineering and technology at WhitePages.com. "The API enables
people-centered developers to integrate the high quality data we provide into
their own user experiences. Providing contact information in the context of
other applications helps make the Internet a more connected place."
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, March 31th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors.
Blackbaud Releases SaaS Online Marketing and Web Management Platform for
Nonprofits : Blackbaud NetCommunity Universal provides a CRM
database-agnostic option for marketing-driven organization.
Read the release :
Visit Black Baud
:
Comment in the forum
mPay Gateway Expands Business Development and Distribution Efforts
: mPay Gateway, a Minneapolis, MN company specializing in point of care patient
payments, today announced the appointment of John Wallace as Senior Vice
President in charge of leading and expanding mPay Gateway's continued sales
growth. In his new role, Wallace will be responsible for business development
and distribution of product and services throughout North America.
Read the release :
Visit mPay :
Comment in the forum
Two-Thirds Of Employees Have To Bypass Data Security Controls To Do
Their Jobs, Survey Finds : Sixty-eight percent of employees admit to
bypassing their employers' information security controls in order to do their
jobs, according to new research from IT Governance Limited. This suggests that
managers are failing to understand the correct balance between the
confidentiality and availability of information, and that best practice
standards should be more widely adopted.
Read the release
:
Visit IT Governance :
Comment in the forum
Learn to Design Web Themes and Templates with New Wiki :
ThemesWiki.org is a new website designed to provide users with comprehensive,
free guides for designing Web Themes and Templates. This site intends to ease
the web design process by providing tutorials for a large number of systems at a
common location.
Read the release :
Visit Themes Wiki
:
Comment in the forum
3 Terabyte Backup Cartridge Sets New World Record : Highly Reliable
Systems announced today a hot swappable backup system which provides the largest
capacity removable media in the world. The 1 bay version of their RAIDFrame™
backup system retails for $2306 with one 3TB cartridge and is intended to backup
fileservers via an eSATA port. The 3 Terabyte removable cartridges, called
RAIDPacs, are based on low cost SATA hard drives. Each 9 lb. RAIDPac contains 3
hard drives, a cooling system, and a RAID controller.
Read the release
:
Visit Highly Reliable Systems :
Comment in the forum
One of the most time-consuming aspects of running a great SEO campaign is
keeping tabs where your website places across Google (international and
domestic), Yahoo, and Microsoft. Aaron Wall of SEOBook, has unveiled a free
Firefox extension dubbed
Rank Checker which
tracks rankings and allows users to check their progress (or slide) over time.
A handy video tutorial, instructions for downloading, installing and using the
tool, and of course information on the theory behind it all is available.
Other SEOBook Rank Checker Mentions from around the Web:
Personal shopping engine StyleFeeder.com
has launched an open API (meaning authorization is not required). The
development will allows social media developers to create third-party
applications and Widgets while integrating StyleFeeder's key functionality into
any e-commerce website.
The API is a set of RESTful/XML-over-HTTP web services, which developers can use
to leverage StyleFeeder's capabilities. These services can be used to build
applications for the desktop or mobile environments, platform-based applications
such as Facebook, Friendster, and OpenSocial. Other uses include AJAX or Flash
widgets, search and bookmark plugins, and other uses that haven't even been
invented yet.
Learn more about the Open API
from StyleFeeder.
Other StyleFeeder Open API Mentions from around the Web:
There's one sure-fire way to make sure your website never gets visited again - release it to the public before it's ready.
MyHomeShop.info took a very good idea - video classified ads - then turned it live before it was even close to being ready. What happened is that it was discovered by some random blogs. These blogs didn't care to look too closely at the site before reviewing - and recommending it - but it was put out there in the very large and far-reaching blogosphere for anyone to read, visit the site and discover how bad it really is. Now they can be sure that this early effort will be chastised by early adopters, resulting in a slew of negative attention in search results, the blogoshpere and everywhere else. So instead of working on getting the site ready, time must be spent on damage control. The site claims to be in beta, but they should really be in pre-alpha.
It's supposed to be free video classified advertising but right now its horrific page of nothing. The logo is regretable, the text is small and hard to read, the entire presentation hurts my eyes and there's no usable content. They are using Magnify.net, which puts some limitation on the design - I personally feel that software is cluttered to begin with. Right now there are ugly place holders instead of the promised video ads, horizontal scrolling *gasp* and a very out-of-place MSNBC news feed (I came here for classified video ads, not news.) Perhaps the only saving grace for MyHomeShop.info is that their URL is lousy. Maybe they can get a new one and re-brand. To see a better (but still cluttered) use of Magnify.net, visit the
ContentAgenda Magnify site.
MyHomeShop.info may not have an real plans for usability outside of being a Magnify affiliate, but take this as a lesson to not publish your site before it's capable of what's being promised. Sure, you want to beat the competition to the punch, but while you're making your unusable site public, your competitors are perfecting their service behind the scenes. They can then ride your coat tails while flaunting a superior service. Test your site without making it available on the Web before presenting it - you never know who is going to stumble across your site and promote it for you before its ready.
There are plenty of excellent reasons for video classified ads. Showing
a tour of a rental property, demonstrating a product's uses or
showing potential employees your excellent work environment. If you want to see a better example of how this can work, head over to
ChosenList.com. The page is clean, navigation is easy and they deliver what they promise ... sort of. There aren't many videos to choose from, and it's limited to the Phoenix area right now, but you get the idea. My only real complaint about the usability of the site is that it takes several clicks before you can watch the video. But if they start expanding their offerings and available locations, this could be a winner.
Aspiring domainers and industry professionals looking to leverage their
domains in new and exciting ways might want to head on over to the
2008 Domain Roundtable Conference
in San Francisco on April 18th-21st.
The agenda has something for everyone, from sessions on domain name
valuation, analyzing parking and portfolio management. The second annual
DomainTools Live Auction will also be held and webcast online. To round off the
fun, GoDaddy will be announcing all the details of the .me (dotME) sunrise and
landrush at the conference. Google's Matt Cutt's will be keynoting the event so
it's definitely an event to attend.
I'm not sure when I first heard the price point "$19.95," but something about
that combination of letters impressed me - perhaps it was the fluidity the sound
those numbers made and the sense of attainability it provided. Apparently, I'm not alone.
via
NPR: Researchers at Cornell University say they've discovered something
strange about the way consumers absorb price information. They say when the
price of an item is in a round number, people perceive it as higher than an odd
number. In other words, people think a $3,000 car is more expensive than one
priced at $3,129.50. The finding has implications for people trying to sell
their homes.
It's easy to see how this can be applied to anything at all -
especially the Web. So what's the lesson? Don't round off those numbers - get creative with your
pricing and test out various pricing schemas with A/B testing to ensure maximum
sales.
Keyword research powerhouse
Wordtracker is offering a free
1-week trial of their entire service.
If you're struggling to find the right words and phrases for either search engine optimization or paid advertising, or simply just want to gain more traffic, more sales and more revenue for your business, this offer (
worth $98.00 U.S.) should not pass you by. Sign up and you will also receive a 7 day video tutorial called "Profit from Keywords" which discusses how to get the most of the Wordtracker system, and a course on Keyword basics.
The One Element Every Local Small Business Should Have On Its Website
If you are serious about local online advertising for your business then you
must optimize your website for local search engine optimization. There is really
just one clear and effective way to do that: You must ensure that every page of
your website has your business address on it.
You’ve optimized your website real well for your important keywords, but you’re
not getting local traffic. Now what? Go in and add your business address to
every page of your website TWICE. Put it once in the footer and once somewhere
in the copy of the web page itself - preferably near the top of the page.
I always recommend putting the business address of every local business that
wants to attract local clientele to their website to add a business address in
the top right corner of the web page so that it is visible and easy to find. You
also want to include your phone number and cell phone if you can. Then, you want
to add the same information to the bottom of the page, in the footer.
The reason you want your address on your web pages twice is because that will
clue the search engines in to the fact that your geography is important. If they
see the same information twice then they will put more importance on that
information. Another way to add importance to the address is to bold it. You can
even link it to your Google Map or, better yet, embed Google Maps into your
website so that local customers can find you easily and you’ll get that added
local search engine optimization benefit.
About the Author: Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing who is the “Local Thursdays” weekly contributor.
Don't have the budget for the latest full-featured version of Photoshop?
Adobe has taken the cue from the myriad of
services online such as
Picnik and launched a
free version of its Photoshop image editing software.
PhotoShop Express is a
browser-based service (Flash 9 is required so many will have to upgrade to use
the service) that gives those that want to manipulate images a resource to do so over the Web. Users must only register for an account but they will receive 2GB of free storage to store their cropped, rotated, tweaked and twirled images. Perhaps the best part however is that the solution
has ties to social networking sites like Facebook and other image-sharing sites.
There are apparently more premium features on the horizon including a printing
service, more storage, support for audio and other media and the ability to work
with file types other than .JPG's - which the service supports now.
Google's YouTube launched a free Web analytics tool dubbed YouTube Insight.
The solution enables video marketers (or those that upload videos) to see how
popular video content is over time. The information is even combined with a
global map to show exactly where it's popular - let's hope it's not in your
office.
YouTube Insight shows how often a video was viewed in different geographic
areas and its relative popularity to all videos in a market over a period of
time. For those looking for deeper metrics about the success of failure of their
video content, Insight users can even check out the lifecycle of their videos
(how long it takes for a video to become popular and what happens when
popularity peaks.
Users can find available metrics under the "About this Video" button under My
account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, March 27th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors.
OpenOffice.org Releases New Version of Free Software Alternative to
Microsoft Office : The OpenOffice.org Community announces the release of
OpenOffice.org 2.4, a new and enhanced version of the leading open-source office
suite. The free software package provides a viable alternative to Microsoft's
Office 2007 product - and an easier upgrade path for users of legacy
MicrosoftOffice products.
Read the
release :
Visit the
site :
Comment in the forum
Hosted SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 Now Available to groupSPARK
Resellers : Customers previously reluctant to purchase Windows SharePoint
Services 3.0 can now take advantage of the new enhancements and upgrades SP1
provides.
Read the release : Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
Lavasoft Delivers Solution to Address PC Intrusion with Personal Firewall 3.0
: Well-known anti-spyware pioneer, Lavasoft announced today the release of
Personal Firewall 3.0, redesigned with the latest in firewall technology to
protect computer users against today's IT security threats, such as hackers,
keyloggers, botnets, and other forms of malware that attack through unpatched
security holes. Read
the release : Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
Transcard Introduces Transcard Mobile for On-Demand Payroll Statements :
Transcard Mobile includes a new, updated, WAP-enabled Transcard website (www.transcard.mobi),
and cardholders will have the ability to conduct account balance inquiries,
receive text alerts for balances, confirm transactions, and transfer funds
securely all on the card holder’s cell phone.
Read the
release : Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
The beauty of email is that it costs little to produce and even less to distribute. The result is a perfect promotional mechanism for a recession. Let's look a little closer at how to leverage email in a way which will
result in a stronger brand, more sales and even a more influential network.
Email Should Be Personal
Go ahead, talk about yourself, your business and your life (it's often more
intertwined that we think it is.) While there is always a segment of the
population that wants its information straight up, others genuinely want to know
about you as a person. People do business with those they know, like and trust,
so it is the responsibility of every professional (or novice) email marketer to
put a little personality into their emails. This can be achieved by having
sections dedicated to the goings' on at your office, photos of other readers,
even your local weather.
Believe In The Investment
This post wasn't subtitled "Just Do It" because we think it's a good idea to
waffle on starting an email marketing campaign. Successful email marketing
campaigns require consistency - one-time shout out's do little for producing
sales, users need repetition. Developing a formal schedule (and sticking to
it), developing new programs or offers and the content that supports them will
benefit not just your email conversion numbers but your sales number as well.
Email works - if it didn't you would not read so much about it. Trust that it
works, follow the best practices and commit to just doing it.
Interactive Is Not A Buzzword
I am of the belief that people are task oriented. This means that if you give
recipients (let's call them people) an opportunity to participate, if it's not
too time consuming, they will most certainly give you their time. Make it fun
with quizzes, jokes, games, cartoons and give away prizes or offer up incentives
to take certain actions - perhaps even an affiliate program. The more fun it is
the more your customers will look forward to receiving your emails and reading them. Ask and
you shall receive. Don't ask and you get squat.
A stable and reliable e-commerce solution is now a necessity for retailers.
So what are you waiting for?
FastCommerce recently launched a
product submission service to Google Shopping (formerly Froogle) also known as
Google Product Search. Online retailers can post products to the Google
catalog and even sell directly through the service via Google Check-out. This
could be a good alternative to those not ready to launch a full-scale e-commerce
enterprise.
From the release: Google's popularity coupled with the recent
addition of its new Shopping tab on the Google homepage, has the effect of
driving targeted searches for product directly through Google Shopping. With
Google Shopping, shoppers can view multiple listings for a given product and
either purchase directly on Google, or proceed directly to the merchant's own web
store.
FastCommerce offers integrated Web software that processes orders,
tracks inventory and is compatible with large payment services such as
Authorize.net. Submitting to Google Product Search costs the online retailer
nothing, presenting an exceptional promotional opportunity for small business
e-commerce start-ups that cannot afford the sometimes prohibitive cost of
running a business alone.
Backing up your important information is about as fun as a root canal but,
alas, it must be done. LADom, LLC, in cooperation with Enveloc® and ACES,
this week launched EZStash, its online back-up storage service. EZStash is aimed
at consumers interested in automatic, remote back-up for their personal
documents and financial files as well as digital photos, music, and videos.
EZStash provides users with a simple and secure back-up solution for
scheduling how much, what time, and how often you wish to back up critical data.
EZStash is automatic, so once it is installed there's nothing else you need to
do. You set the time, day or night, for your data to be
automatically backed up.
"EZStash was developed as a solution for anyone and everyone who has
something important on their computer. If your equipment is suddenly destroyed,
lost or stolen... important financial records for your home or business, and
work documents with mission critical information---with EZStash, you can quickly
and simply recover your important data. This is the stuff you can't necessarily
get back unless you use off-site back-up," says Lisa Dominisse, CEO of
EZStash.
Pretty interesting solution for the social media networkers among us.
(Let's see how many times I can say "social.")
Mobile social network Wadja.com has
launched MediaBox, a social media sharing service that allows users to manage,
display and share social media content from a variety of providers to any mobile
handset, PC or notebook. MediaBox enables users to upload social media files
(videos, photos, music) directly from top social content websites (YouTube,
Flickr, Last.fm, etc.) to a mobile device and share them with their friends.
Definitely an interesting twist on both social networks and mobile
communications.
For the record, "social" appears eight times - nine including this sentence.
For business owners who want to name a new product, find out what products their
competitors are selling or license their brand to a larger company, there is a
pretty good, free database in
FindOwnerSearch.com, a resource that enables users to access brand and
category information.
When you type a brand into FindOwnerSearch.com, that brand and its owner
information will be retrieved from over 1 million database entries. Users can
also search for thousands of categories with results featuring brands associated
with that specific category. For example, the category "magazine" results in
thousands of entries. These can be sorted by owner and brand name
(i.e. we can see the brand name owner, the address, website and phone - if
available - for all of these publications). If you don't mind the liberal use of
Adsense and simplistic presentation it's a resource to check out in your spare
time.
BlogHer, a popular Web guide to
blogs by women will present its second annual BlogHer Business Conference on
April 3-4 in New York City.
 |
BlogHer Business
'08 has "recruited a variety of social media mavens and online
marketing gurus to share how to build online communities and reach women
online by leveraging content, community and technological proficiency"
according to the release. The conference, sponsored by companies
including Microsoft, Intuit, Wiley and Cisco, will feature keynote
panels, break-out sessions and a free-form "Ask the Experts"
micro-consulting opportunity, all aimed at providing attendees with
experiences that are interactive and educational. |
BlogHer Business '08 will also mark the release of preliminary data from
BlogHer's latest community survey, created in tandem with Compass Partners.
BlogHer and Compass posed questions to a representative sample of the U.S.
female online population and across BlogHer's network reaching more than 8
million unique visitors per month. The results illuminate the motivations,
interests and influences driving women as they flock to the blogosphere in
unprecedented numbers.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, March 24th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact Website Magazine
editors.
Video API Enables Viral Movie and Music Promotions On Social Networks :
Internet Video Archive LLC announces new enhancements to its comprehensive Video
API offering direct access to Video Detective's library of movie trailers,
television previews and game trailers as well as Singing Fool's massive catalog
of music videos. In addition, the newly added forum allows developers to learn
from each other how to take advantage of this essential resource.
Read the release
:
Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
Forum One Communications Breaks Out Online Community and Social Media
Initiatives : New division focuses on helping commercial organizations with
online community and social media via events, research, and strategic
consulting.
Read the
release :
Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
New Programming Tool Helps Developers Produce Higher Quality Code
Faster : Have you spent countless hours trying to find a particular code
snippet in your source control system, text files or on the Internet? Do you
want to organize code snippets in a meaningful way and be able to use them with
any editor or IDE? Do you work on a team that wants to share HTML or other code
to ensure consistency? Then Snip-It Pro from Mtelligent Solutions is a tool for
you.
Read the
release :
Visit the site :
Comment in
the forum
Impact Systems Webinar: Solving the Top 10 ECM Configuration Pain
Points : Join Impact Systems for Solving the Top 10 ECM Configuration Pain
Points, an hour long Webinar for IT decision makers to discuss what enterprise
content management and configuration pain points organizations are experiencing
and how others have solved similar problems.
Read the release
:
Visit
the site :
Comment in the forum
First Domain Sold Via Fusu -- The Domain Stock Exchange : First
sale of a Fusu-listed domain brings returns of 55-80% to its investors.
Read the
release :
Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
EstDomains, Inc: Credit Card Processing System Improved :
EstDomains is glad to introduce its latest achievement. The secure and reliable
credit card processing system is now improved and available for every EstDomains,
Inc customer worldwide.
Read the release
:
Visit the site :
Comment in the forum
SES NY Universal Search Session Notes (Part 3)
Optimizing Press Releases, Images, Local Business, and Product Submissions.
Sometimes note taking doesn’t lend itself to long winded paragraphs. Sometimes notes are best served as bullet points and here are some good ones. Below you will find the no-nonsense ‘nitty gritty’ notes on universal search optimization taken directly from this years SES NY session. Just the facts, nothing but the facts - Enjoy!
Optimizing press releases and media relations for news results
Press release optimization for news search engines is 5-step process
- Conduct keyword research to find two to three relevant search terms
- Make sure release includes terms in headline and lead paragraph
- Add links intended to help people find interesting, related content
- Use one of the leading press release distribution services
- Measure results of a campaign in PR outputs and business outcomes
Conduct keyword research to find two to three relevant search terms
- Think about words users would type to find your news
- More than half of search terms are 3 or more words long, so use longer phrases
- They often convert at higher rates
- What about my brand?
- Unless your brand already well-known, don’t use it as a search term
- Instead, use a search term for your product category or customer benefit
Make sure release includes terms in headline and lead paragraph
- News search engines scan the title, headline and at least the first 100 words of news articles
- So, make sure your press release actually includes your keywords in the headline and first few sentences
Add links intended to help people find interesting, related content
- “I’m not against doing press releases; press releases can be a useful part of getting traffic and building a brand."
- “For ranking in Google, however, the main benefit of a press release is not direct links or PageRank from the press release directly; it’s primarily the people who decide to write an article and link because of that.”
World of news search SEO larger than press release optimization
- News search SEO should include media relations focused on the top 20 general news sites in the U.K.
- News search SEO should also include blog outreach focused on group blogs that are Google News sources
- 93.9 million unique visitors a month visit general news sites in the U.S.
- You should continue to optimize your press releases for the major news search engines
- But, you should also focus your media relations efforts on the other top 20 general news sites
Source: comScore World Metrix, Dec. 2007
From Google News, users head downstream to a variety of sites
- Google News drives traffic to several other Google sites
- Google
- Google Image Search
- Some news sites and wire services “punch above their weight”
- New York Times
- Reuters
Source: Hitwise, Jan. 19, 2008
90% of journalists say that visuals are important to their stories
- 41% of the journalists surveyed said that visuals could dictate their content
- “A release e-mailed with a jpg or tif file has a much better chance of making it into our newspaper,” said one editor
Source: Bennett & Company Media Survey, Aug. 15, 2006
Articles and posts referred 34.4 times more visitors than releases
Referrers Articles Posts Releases
- PR generated a total of 166,984 non-paid referrers in September
- 139,768 referrers from news articles (83.7%)
- 22,502 referrers from blog posts (13.5%)
- 4,714 referrers from press releases (2.8%)
Source: SEO-PR Fortune 500 client, Sept. 2007
SEO PR can generate web traffic more cost effectively than PPC ads
- Average cost per click nearing $2.15
- So, PR generated equivalent of $359,000 in PPC ads for 166,984 non-paid referrers
- $10,000 (2.8%) from releases directly and $349,000 (97.2%) from media relations and blog outreach
Source: SEO-PR Fortune 500 client, Sept. 2007
Optimizing Images
Images – How Google Treats Them
Google analyzes the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content.
Google also uses sophisticated algorithms to remove duplicates and ensure that the highest quality images are presented first in your results.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_images.html
Images – How Google Wants Images Identified
Use the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, we recommend using a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353
First, Optimize Your Site’s Images by giving the images meaningful names such as pineapple.jpg and not 0156a.jpg
Here's an Example of Optimized File Name Combined with ALT Text (Use ALT text and add keywords in Photoshop during creation):
Use ALT Tag to Convey Message
- No ALTs on decorative elements
- Instead of “dog pushing cart,” there is the call to action conveyed by the dog pushing the Cart
Online Photo Galleries
- Photosharing
- 23
- AOL Pictures
- Care2 Connect
- dotPhoto
- Faces
- Flickr – owned by Yahoo!
- Fotki
- KodakEasyShareGallery
- MyPhotoAlbum
- Picasa – owned by Google
- PBase.com
- Photobucket.com
- PhotoSite
- PictureTrail
- Pixagogo
- Ringo
- SmugMug
- Webshots
- Zoto
Optimization
This is how it should be done:
- Title – Keyword-rich
- Caption -- Meaningful
- Tags – Use like keywords Links
- To other photos
- To other sources
- Anchor text – Use it to help define Keywords in Caption and Title should be reflected in the tags
Optimizing pages and submitting listings for local business results
- 143 million searches a month on Google Maps from within the U.S.
Source: comScore qSearch, Dec. 2007
- Use the Local Business Center to create free listing on Google Maps
- Use the Local Business Center to edit your listing whenever you like
- Your Google account gives you access to Local Business Center
- You can create separate listings for each of your business locations
- Google business listing description is limited to 200 characters max
- Choose up to five categories or sub-categories for your business
- Specify when you are open and what types of payment you accept
- Add up to 10 photos, images, diagrams, illustrations or logos
- Fill in other details customers may want to know about your business
- Let Google know how you would like to validate your business listing
Majority of online product research leads to offline conversions
- In 2007, a survey from Accenture reported that 58% of respondents said they locate items online before going to a store to purchase
- The Kelsey Group’s research indicates that with purchases of more than $500, where the Internet is the starting point, more than 90% of the transactions finish offline
Source: Kelsey Group Blogs, May 11, 2007
You can create coupons for any active listing you have submitted
- Coupons can include an expiration date, an offer code, and other related information
- If you have multiple businesses or business locations, you can create coupons associated with any or all of them
Google’s My Maps feature lets you create your own custom Maps
- You can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos.
- Your map automatically gets a public URL, or you can publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results.
- Google shows organic local search results with red pushpins; user-generated results have blue pushpins.
Product Submissions - The Process
- Create and register the feed
- Upload the information – Up to 20MB via Google’s own interface
- Google processes the data
- Verify that upload and processing was successful
- Do it all over again, as needed
Selling Requirements for Items Listed
- Attributes must fit item type and be included in the submission.
- Shipping must be across the continental United States.
- Prices on feed and landing pages must be in US dollars.
- Products must have a fixed price – no auction type pricing.
- Landing pages must be eCommerce-enabled.
- The landing pages must not have required cookies.
Attributes Describe Items
These Are Required
- Title – The name or title of the article, up to 80 characters
- Description -- Maximum length of 10,000 characters, write for SEO
- Expiration Date – YYYY-MM-DD
- Product Id – Your own number, once submitted don’t change it.
- Image link -- Use your full-sized images; do not use logos or graphic that states “image unavailable”
- Link to Landing Page – Can be a product page on your site
- Price – in US dollars
- Product Type – Long list of pre-defined types at
http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=59451&hl=en
Attributes Drive Traffic
- There are many pre-defined item attributes including:
– Model number
– Payment types accepted
– Payment policies
– Pickup vs. delivery
– Price negotiability
– Quantity available
- Shipping
- There are also specific pre-defined attributes for product types
Creating the Feed – 5 Formats
- Tab-delimited– can be done in Excel
- XML formats 4 types
- RSS 2.0
- RSS 1.0
- Atom 1.0
- Atom 0.3
Try Getting Found in Universal Search
- Video
- News
- Maps
- Images
- Products
All lead to revenue
Credits for these notes and for an excellent session on Universal Search are due to Greg Jarboe
Search Engine Optimization Public Relations, and Amanda Watlington,
Search for Profit. Not enough can be said about how informative this session was and how appreciative the search world is to their efforts.
Dante Monteverde, Website Magazine Contributor is a Search Strategist specializing in Search Engine Optimization. He founded SpiderBait.com in 1996 and has over 10 years of SEO experience. Visit SpiderBait's SEO Expert blog:
www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert for more useful resources on a variety of search topics.
SES NY Universal Search Session Notes (Part 2)
YouTube has grown to be such a phenomenon that optimizing for it alone requires its own in-depth review. So let’s take a look at what it takes to optimize video for YouTube.
What are realistic expectations?
- 70% of videos get at least 20 views
- 50% of videos get at least 100 views
- Fewer than 20% of videos get more than 500 views
- Fewer than 10% of videos get more than 1,500 views
- 3% of videos get more than 25,000 views
- Around 1% of videos get more than 500,000 views
What about Video Production? What’s best for YouTube?
- What is the best length for a YouTube Video?
A: Most popular videos tend to be much shorter than 10 minutes
52.3% of videos in the all time most popular category were between 3-5 minutes long.
Median length of video clips in study was 2 minutes.
- What category is best?
A: The one the fits your topic, but most popular are:
- Entertainment
- Sports
- Music
- comedy
- News and Politics
- Is it wise to let viewers rate the video?
A: Yes! Most videos earn 4+ ratings, and viewers watch rated videos.
- When is the best time to upload a video?
A:
- Upload during the week
- Plan to upload on Wednesday or Thursday
- Submit your video between 12p.m. and 1 p.m. in time zone where you want it viewed
- Be sure to allow time for YouTube to process the video – don’t expect instant results
- What is the best resolution for Videos on YouTube?
A: YouTube displays video at 425 (width) by 355 (height). For best results render as close as you can to this without creating massive files.
Steps for YouTube Optimization
- Create an optimized channel – branded visually
- Socialize the channel – use the community
- Optimize each video submitted
- Seek subscribers – they are the key to views
- Seek ratings – they are the key to prominence
- Aim to be page 1 – “Featured, Most Viewed, Most Discussed, and Top Favorites” – each requires a slightly different focus of activity
Tips for Optimizing YouTube Tags
- Use Relevant Tags -- Make sure your tags are relevant to your content.
- Use Tags Like Keywords -- Spread tags across your clips. Using a variety of relevant tags on many clips can increase long tail searches.
- Use Adjectives -- As with text search, they help users makes choices.
- Include YouTube Category Tags -- This will help pin your video to a category.
- Match Tags in Title and Description -- Use tags as you would primary keywords in a page optimization.
- Omit Stop Words -- Remember tags are not long sentence like phrases.
Optimizing your channel
One suggestion: Do a promo as your main video on your channel! Offer something!
Tips for Socialization
- Your Profile is ‘Your Channel”. Treat it as if you are a TV channel that must build viewers for its shows. Your videos are the shows.
- Build a friends network concurrent with posting of first video. These contacts can be anyone familiar or likely to view the videos on YouTube. Keeping recent is important so line the connections up early.
- Ask friends to subscribe to your videos and view them – drives most viewed, do it ASAP to drive featured
- Subscribe to others’ videos via their channels.
- Rate other videos and ask your friends/subscribers to rate yours – to drive top favorites. The votes count in the relevancy algorithm.
- Write comments and include notes and links that point to your video if relevant; otherwise it is spam
- Join groups that are interested in the topics that are in the videos – there are lots of groups, once in a group use the group to expand the video’s friends and contacts lists.
Next up Hot Tips and Tactics (More notes on the SES NY Universal Search Sessions)
Credits for these notes and for an excellent session on Universal Search are due to Greg Jarboe Search Engine Optimization Public Relations, and Amanda Watlington, Search for Profit. Not enough can be said about how informative this session was and how appreciative the search world is to their efforts.
Dante Monteverde, Website Magazine Contributor is a Search Strategist specializing in Search Engine Optimization. He founded SpiderBait.com in 1996 and has over 10 years of SEO experience. Visit SpiderBait's SEO Expert blog: www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert for more useful resources on a variety of search topics.
SES NY Universal Search Session Notes (Part 1)
Why is universal search important? It’s the next evolution of Search Engine results. And since people’s eyes scan from top left the Universal results are going to be the first thing they see. A study from an earlier Universal session at SES NY showed that currently 17% of Google searches result in some type of universal search being displayed. That number is expected to increase.
Another interesting observation is that, in terms of news stories, Universal search sends traffic directly to the news sources rather than to the Google news page. And optimization is not too difficult. Just target the key terms of the story –
- Who: Company and executive names
- What: Brands, products, categories and industry
- When: Business and financial news
- Where: Places
- Why: Pictures, photos, pics, images, diagrams, cartoons, illustrations, logos, and videos
- How: training videos
So what can you do to optimize for universal search? One strategy is to try to get ahead of the curve by ranking for non-competitive keywords. But regardless of the keywords you target; optimizing for Universal search requires planning. Here are some things to help you begin that plan:
Review all of the types of files that you have both on your site and available to you – images, pdfs, audio, video, etc. Google currently uses 13 types of file formats in their results beyond html. Yahoo uses 7 types beyond HTML. Go to Google and Yahoo and use the “invisible” tabs for additional ideas – maps, predicts – are examples.
Review the status of your overall optimization. If you are struggling with the basics of html optimization because of your cms or other site challenges, consider optimizing for YouTube, flickr, maps, etc. that don’t require spidering. If you have the basics down revisit how you are handling images, pdfs, or other elements.
Be ruthless in your evaluations, but be kind to yourself. For example, for you your business in the past there was no compelling reason to optimize images, now there is!
Look for the low-hanging fruit. These will yield the most bang for your effort. Maybe it’s the pdfs, maybe products, maybe maps. Build the systems and plan for optimization of other elements. For example, how will you handle images going forward?
Determine whether it makes sense for your business to fill the gaps in how you face universal search. Is video appropriate? What about audio? Develop a plan of action for moving forward based on your needs not just what the engines show.
Draw baseline data to ascertain in your current performance. It’s helpful for making the case for doing more. Then, monitor the change.
Here are some Quick Tips for Optimizing for Universal Search:
Optimizing for Flickr
- Title – keyword-rich
- Caption – Meaningful
- Tags – use like keywords
- Links
- To other photos
- To other sources
- Anchor text – Use it to help define
- Keywords in caption and title should be reflected in the tags
Video Optimization
Challenges
- Many formats for video production and players still Vying for prominence with users
- Most users do not know where to look for video – there is a lot of niche market video
- YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! and Brightcove get most attention
- Professionally done video competes for attention with consumer-generated video
- As more video is optimized, users will be able to find video more easily
- Monetization schemes are ill-defined
Video Formats
- QuickTime Movie (mov)
- Windows Media Video (wmv)
- AVI Video (avi)
- MPEG Video (mpg, mpeg)
- Windows Media Video (asf)
- MPEG-4 Video (mp4, mpeg4)
- Mobile Video (3gpp, 3gp, 3g2)
- Matroska Format (mkv)
- Flash Player Video (flv)
- DVD Video (vob)
- Ogg Format (ogm)
- Nullsoft Video (nsv)
Optimizing Video Files
- Offer video in multiple formats – for high and low bandwidth.
- Optimize video files by encoding ID3 tags with full metadata.
- Be sure that you don’t lose the ID3 tags as you save to multiple formats
- Use keyword rich filenames for videos.
- Create video thumbnails for maximum punch.
- Protect copyright with watermarks and visible cues
- Submit your video to the video search engines.
- Place video offering prominently on your site navigation
- Create a video sitemap for Google. Note: the XML schemas can assign a thumbnail. The thumbnail is very important as far as user selection on the SERP’s.
Optimizing On-Site Videos
- Create video with branding in it
- Create site map – video blog with RSS feed for distribution is easiest
- Create tags to identify subject
- Write clear Titles and descriptions
- Create landing pages for each video
- Be sure to offer a player on your site
- Offer viral marketing opportunities for video distribution
There were so many good tips at the Universal Search Sessions we couldn't fit them in one post. Next up, Optimizing for YouTube (See what SES NY Universal Search Sessions had to say!)
Credits for these notes and for an excellent session on Universal Search are due to Greg Jarboe Search Engine Optimization Public Relations, and Amanda Watlington, Search for Profit. Not enough can be said about how informative this session was and how appreciative the search world is to their efforts.
Dante Monteverde, Website Magazine Contributor is a Search Strategist specializing; in Search Engine Optimization. He founded SpiderBait.com in 1996 and has over 10 years of SEO experience. Visit SpiderBait's SEO Expert blog: www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert for more useful resources on a variety of search topics.
It's official. After much speculation, Yahoo has officially joined Google's OpenSocial project. OpenSocial was created to help unite the social Web by providing a common mechanism for developers to create apps that will work across many different networks (more about OpenSocial
here.) MySpace and orkut have already joined and with the addition of Yahoo, a whole new crop of developers will be able to begin developing new applications.
Along with the announcement comes
OpenSocial.org, the main documentation hub and source of information about all things OpenSocial.
Last week Website Magazine posted that
YellowPages.com would be replacing
SuperPages as Microsoft's source of local information and sponsored listings. On the heels of that development comes a Comscore study into national Internet Yellow
Pages search activity.
The study revealed shifts among the top sites in 2007 --
due in part to new strategic partnerships. While the information presented
by Comscore does not take into consideration activity on the main search engines
(which is where a bulk of the local query volume comes from) it does provide us
insights into the relative success of these networks when analyzed by
themselves.
From the release: Yellowpages.com Network (20.2 percent share) edged out
Superpages.com Network (20.0 percent share) in Q4 2007 to lead the IYP search
market. Like Yellowpages, Superpages’ new partnerships provided a boost to its
search activity, with the new Local.com relationship and the Infospace FindIt/Switchboard.com
acquisition contributing to its gains. However, Superpages discontinued its
affiliation with both 411.com and MSN Yellowpages, offsetting the positive
impact of the new relationships. Although Superpages saw an increased number of
total searches in 2007, it did not grow as fast as the market, and as a result
its share fell slightly.
The popular social network LinkedIn has added profiles for companies. Don't
roll up your sleeves and start crafting that compelling corporate profile just
yet though. LinkedIn company profiles are not user-generated but instead is a
feature of that property which, according to
Mashable, has taken "six
engineering, product and operations teams and iterated the company profiles
based on LinkedIn’s own data, including recent promotions and hires, search, and
analytics in order to create these company profiles, which act as an integrated
and interactive aspect of the LinkedIn network."
LinkedIn company profiles are simply an overview of a company's industry data
in combination with LinkedIn data along certain key metrics. There are currently
over 160,000 profiles of companies ranging from Fortune 500's to philanthropic
organizations. LinkedIn users can find these profiles by selecting the logo
right next to company titles in any individual's work history. When you arrive
at a company profile the information is separated into several modules including
people in your network, new hires, recent promotions/changes and most popular
profiles. For those of us that simply can't get enough of the valuable
information contained in the million of profiles at LinkedIn, the new feature
also includes key information modules such as related companies and key
statistics.
Adwords advertisers will now be able to enjoy the fruits of demographic
bidding at Google - a feature that lets advertisers target ads to users of a
particular age group, gender or a combination of the two. Demographic bidding
can be used with contextual or placement targeting and with both CPC and CPM
bidding.
From Inside Adwords: Overall, demographic bidding gives you more
control over the demographic groups who see your ads. You can also use
demographic reports, available in the AdWords Report Center, to get
insight into how your ads perform for specific demographics. These metrics
can help you decide how to adjust your bid modifiers and restricts to reach
the audiences that give you the most clicks and the best ROI.
It's important to note that demographic bidding is different that demographic
site selection, which helps advertisers find and target entire websites (based
on Comscore data) that have the audience that is trying to be reached.
Conversely, demographic bidding lets advertisers modify bids or restrict the
visibility of the ad based on the demographics of the users viewing that
advertisement in the Google content network.