April 2008 - Posts
Perhaps the most frequently asked question by "newbies" of the "experts" at
forums for Web professionals is "how do I get more traffic?" As you can imagine,
the standard replies of "SEO", "Google" and the random spammy link drop make
their way into the replies. So what's the real answer? You should know by
now that there are many ways to generate traffic to your website. One we'll look
at today is Yahoo! Answers and it's ability to send traffic to Web properties.
A few days ago, Matt McGee of Small Business SEM cited some interesting
figures for growth at Yahoo! Answers. The number of users and answers in the U.S.
and worldwide has grown considerably since August 2007 (four million new
users in the U.S. over a 7-month period, and 40 million new users worldwide - 77
million new answers in the U.S. over teh same period, and 150 million new
answers worldwide), perhaps signaling the availability of an excellent
opportunity to promote ourselves and our products, build a brand and make a few
friends along the way.
So does participating in Yahoo! Answers work? Based on my own experiment, I
would have to say the answer is yes. Take a look at the chart below.
I answered roughly twenty questions in the past week which resulted in one
best answer (yeah for me!) and a handful (four conversions) for Website Magazine
(subscriptions). What was impressive about the miniscule amount of traffic
is that it is actually real people - the average time on site was just over
three minutes. In addition, the bounce rate was about 59% percent - not the best
I've seen but certainly better than many traffic sources touted across the Web.
Some Best Practices For Using Yahoo! Answers To Drive Traffic
Save time - subscribe to relevant feeds: Those that have little time
to participate will enjoy the fact that Yahoo! has provide RSS feeds. I
subscribed to four different feeds relevant to my own personal knowledge base. I
subscribed to that feed and I would periodically check the new answers
throughout the day. This enabled me to sort through those that I could answer
and those that I could not.
Provide meaningful answers: Contrary to the belief of many - you can
not fake it till you make it. Providing meaningful answers to the questions
proposed by other members will get you closer to securing some "best answer"
commendations' (which boosts your exposure) and helps you establish yourself as
someone who know what the heck they are talking about - not one that simply
drops the same URL repeatedly to questions that are not relevant (which could
get you banned).
Be "liberal" in the use of URL drops: It's not a good idea to post a
link to your site, but it's not a bad idea either. Fortunately, there is a spot
for it - although it's a "nofollow" link. Yahoo! has provide a "source" section
which should be used. If you are sourcing other information, include it in the
body of your answer - those that watch for new incoming links will appreciate it
immensely and you'll find that your "friend" counts go up as a result.
yahoo
yahoo answers
website traffic
free website traffic
yahoo seo
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 30th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
Audience Measurement Meets the Mobile Internet as AdMob Launches
Comprehensive Free Mobile Analytics Suite : Private Beta Signups Begin
Today.
Read
the release :
Visit AdMob Analytics
:
Comment in the forum
eCommerce Merchants and Pepperjam to Launch Revolutionary Managed
Affiliate Network for Online Merchants : eCommerce Merchant Trade
Association (ECMTA) members will be able to implement their affiliate programs
with a premium affiliate management service at a discounted rate.
Read the release :
Visit
eCommerce Merchants Trade Assoc. :
Comment in the forum
BlogCatalog.com Partners With Amnesty International For Bloggers Unite
For Human Rights : BlogCatalog.com is partnering with Amnesty International
to expand a global social awareness campaign for human rights by launching a
major initiative on May 15.
Read the
release :
Visit BlogCatalog :
Comment in the forum
Affiliate Speedpay Announces the Introduction of New Currency Options
: Affiliate Speedpay announces the introduction of new currency options.
Affiliate Speedpay (www.affiliatespeedpay.com), "the payment solution for the
Affiliate Industry", has added 6 new currency options to the service, meaning
marketing professionals can now get paid in a choice of up to 6 currencies in
total.
Read the
release :
Visit Affiliate
Speedypay :
Comment in the forum
DiscountASP.NET Named Best Hosting Service by asp.netPRO Readers for
Fourth Consecutive Year : ASP.NET hosting and SQL hosting leader,
DiscountASP.NET announces receiving the "Best Hosting Service" award in
asp.netPRO Magazine's 2008 Readers' Choice poll, making it the fourth
consecutive year to win this prestigious title.
Read the release
:
Visit DiscountASP.net :
Comment in the forum
Happy holidays! Ok, so it's not a holiday today, unless you're playing hooky.
Holidays across the world however provide an exceptional opportunity to increase
your sales. And micro sites are an excellent (and brand-reinforcing) way to
accomplish this.
A micro site is a separate page of a website or a unique website all it's
own that has a distinct URL and theme different from your main website. This
site is used to provide information about and promote something that is indirectly related to the main mission of your website. Micro sites are often
called mini-sites but they serve the same purpose - informing and educating
users on the relevance of one thing (like a holiday) to another (like the
product or service being promoted.)
Micro sites can be very effective if they feature high-quality content. Micro
sites should never be used to display the very same content as the primary
website, and every effort should be made to prevent duplicate content
between the two sites. And that shouldn't be hard to do, considering that the great
benefit of micro sites is that they provide us with a forum to target by
audience demographics, and more importantly focus our keyword usage. With
Mother's Day fast approaching, now is a great time to consider creating a custom
micro site (or two) to showcase products.
So, consider yourself challenged. If you create a micro site for Mothers Day
(whether it's a subdomain or a independent URL) log in to comment and share your
hard work (and link - WM features do follow tags). Mom will be so proud.
There are many link strategies available to help your site achieve
exceptional (traffic garnering) rankings. Articles, press releases, forums,
blogs, social media resources - all provide accepted ways to generate links that can positively influence search engine rankings - if it's done well and
thoughtfully, of course.
Directories, however, are both good and bad. There are many
quality directories where you can submit your website and gain traffic - for example, the
Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ (if you can get in) and others. But directories get a bad rap, for the most part. That's becuase
there are thousands of low-quality directories which many
webmasters don't discriminate against when it comes to submitting their sites, even though they probably should. The reason these directories are bad is
because most are no more than vast link farms - massive collections of
links. Leveraging link farms has been practiced for a long time and it continues today. It should be something you should avoid. If for no other reason
than that Google penalizes these sites. And by linking with them, your site will be penalized too.
Conceptualizing Link Farms
The initial idea behind link farming was to get as many links as possible. It didn’t matter if the sites were relevant or not, as search engines
would supposedly consider a site more popular than another because it has so many links
pointing to it. Most of the links in link farms have no relational subject
matter to each other. They will most likely have a page on a site with a
extended list of hyperlinked keywords - called anchor text - pointing to the various
sites in the farm. When search engines see that a link farm has formed, they
will penalize all involved, thus dropping ranks. Some have reported increased
rankings at first, but soon after report a drop lower than where
they started.
So how do you know which directory is a link farm and which is not? There
are a few indisputable signs of a link farm you should look out for:
- Requires reciprocal linking: Directories that mandate a
link to their site before they link to yours is a sure sign of a link farm.
- Link value diluted: Farms often list of hundreds of sites on a page
several levels deep with little or no description about the site being linked
to.
- Unsolicited link requests: If emails arrive telling you how great
your site is and you should form a partnership with them, watch out.
- Tell-tale sign posts: Link farms are all the same. If the directory or
site features a page called “Link Partners” or “Links” - run away.
- No discrimination for sites included: Without a review period, you can
be sure that all sorts of irrelevant sites will be featured.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 29th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
AOL Introduces Open Voice APIs : Allows Developers to Easily Integrate
the AIM Call Out Service into Softphones and SIP-Enabled Devices.
Read
the release :
Visit AOL :
Comment in the forum
Sitemasher, a SaaS Company, to Launch its Public Pre-Release at
Software 2008 & Interop Las Vegas : Sitemasher, a Vancouver-based start-up
SaaS company, announces the public pre-release of its website lifecycle
management platform at the prestigious Software 2008 Innovation Showcase in Las
Vegas (co-located with Interop).
Read the
release :
Visit Site Masher :
Comment in the forum
'Local Search' to Become a Key Application for Over 30% of Mobile Phone
Users by 2013, According to Juniper Research : Nearly 1.3 billion mobile
users - 30% of the subscriber base - are expected to utilise local mobile search
services by 2013, according to a new report from industry analysts, Juniper
Research.
Read
the release :
Visit Juniper
Research :
Comment in the forum
Cast Iron Systems and SPS Commerce Team to Provide Rapid B2B
Integration Between Suppliers and America's Largest Retailers : Cast Iron
Integration Solution for SPS Offers Fast, Cost-Effective Integration of SPS
Commerce's EDI Services and Major ERP, Database, and Warehouse Management
Systems.
Read
the release :
Visit SPS Commerce :
Comment in the forum
There have been quite a few interesting screen casting solutions (here's
a free one) that have hit the Web market which are incredible for creating
presentation worthy video content. Here's another. Debut, a simple video capture software
solution is another which is getting some buzz. The solutions which can be used
to record screen casts (in a variety of formats including AVI, WMV, MP4, MPG and
MOV) and take screenshots. There are some powerful editing features including
the ability adjust resolution, framerate and colors of the output video.
Debut, created by NCH Software, also enables users to setup timed recordings by
hour, minute, and second and when the recording period is over can be set to
automatically send the video via email once the recording is complete.
WordPress has released a security update for version 2.5.1 of the blogging
software. Users that allow open registrations (for user comments or for
multi-author blogs) should update immediately. The update also includes over 70
other fixes for the media uploader, widget administration and layout. WordPress
users can download these corrected copies of
wp-includes/pluggable.php,
wp-admin/includes/media.php,
and
wp-admin/media.php.
Simply replace your existing copies of these files with the new copies and avoid
the inevitable exploitation when the hole is publicly announced.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 28th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
Fifty-Five Percent of U.S. Small Business Owners Anticipate Strong
Sales for Mother’s Day in 2008, According to Constant Contact Survey :
Mother’s Day holiday sales forecasts for U.S. small businesses mixed amid
challenging economy.
Read the
release :
Visit Constant Contact
:
Comment in the forum
GeoWeb 2008 Registration is now OPEN : GeoWeb 2008 Conference
Organizers have opened registration for this year's incredible conference. Don't
miss this opportunity to register and hear from industry leaders as they share
their knowledge and to network with your fellow peers.
Read the release
:
Visit GeoWeb :
Comment in the forum
Socialcast Announces New Client Acquisitions, Pilot Programs at the
Software 2008 / Interop Conference : Retailer Hot Topic deploys Socialcast's
corporate social networking software; Jet Propulsion Laboratory signs on for
pilot program.
Read the release :
Visit SocialCast
:
Comment in the forum
SEMPO AZ May Event to Feature Microsoft adCenter : Host Microsoft's
adCenter team to discuss leveraging keywords across all search engines to drive
leads and sales.
Read the release :
Visit SEMPO AZ :
Comment in the forum
Brooks Research Releases Genius Marketing : Genius Marketing, the
first automated paid search and web design management application focused on
profitability was announced this week. This application equips the Internet
entrepreneur, marketer and small business owner with tools to maintain profit
margins and increase efficiency for selling products or services on-line.
Read the release : Visit Brooks
Research :
Comment in the forum
SWING DocPublisher 4 for e-Manuals : SWING DocPublisher helps
organizations ensure compliance with government regulations and industry
standards, as well as internal company standards.
Read the release :
Visit Swing Software :
Comment in the forum
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 23th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
LongJump Partners with Jamcracker to
Deliver On-Demand Applications to International SMB Audience : LongJump
Extends its Platform-as-a-Service Reach into Global IT and Telecom Industries
using Jamcracker's On-Demand Ecosystem.
Read the release
New NYC Marketing Event Teaches Solo
Professionals How to Thrive Online and Offline : Most solo professionals
are well-trained in their field, but many struggle when it comes to promoting
themselves and building a thriving business, especially in a tough economy. Day
of Marketing, a new, live training featuring 10+ private practice marketing
experts, aims to turn this around. Day of Marketing will be held May 16-17, 2008
at Columbia University in NYC.
Read the release
Get Text Messages on Your Keychain with
TextCu.be : Introducing TextCu.be, a brand new electronic device that's
small enough to go on a keychain and keeps people connected with all of their
social networking activities.
Read the release
Vocus Webinar Explores How to Use Public
Relations to Drive Sales : Small Business Experts to Explore how to Generate Publicity, Increase Website
Traffic and Drive Sales Leads with Public Relations.
Read the release
Schedule Announced for cPanel
Conference 2008 : cPanel today published the official schedule for their
third annual conference to be held in Houston, TX this June.
Read the release
2007 Online Payments Market
in China: Market Overview and Major Players : More and more China's
consumers are realizing the benefits of online shopping and online payments. One
in every five Chinese Internet users has bought something online and many have
paid online as well. The e-commerce market in China has been growing by over
110% per year on average since 2002. China's online payment market, which is
expected to record over CNYH195 Billion (USD 27.85 Billion) transaction volumes
in 2008 alone.
Read the release
Association of Virtual
Worlds Announces Virtual Worlds Person of the Year Award : The
Association of Virtual Worlds is proud to announce a first of its kind Virtual
Worlds Person of the Year Award.
Read the release
Silence Isn't Always Golden: The New
Employee Rights : New Information and Consultation rights, in force
since April 6, require companies with 50 staff or more to consult their
employees on major changes. According to Simply-docs' Managing Director Iain
Mackintosh, this has always been considered good practice.
Read the release
Online Marketing In Midst Of Major
Transformation : SplashCast CEO Warns InnoTech Attendees: "This Is No
Fad - Wake Up Or Be Left Behind".
Read the release
Three videos recorded recently at the Ad:Tech tradeshow in San Francisco are
now available at the Website Magazine On the Road weblog. Special correspondent
Dante Monteverde interviewed ABCSearch CEO
Daniel Yomtobian, Epic Advertising
CEO Don Mathis, and Reply.com Chairman and
CEO Payam Zamani.
Incredible information from some very smart and savvy
individuals - definitely worth a look and a few minutes of your time.
Check out the Live Video at Website Magazine
Whether you’re new to local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or have added some localized SEO pages to your site, finding the right keywords to optimize will determine whether they help drive targeted traffic to your site effectively or not. For most any Internet marketing strategy, keyword research is the foundation for success! These tips will help you find the perfect keywords to help your business achieve results with local SEO.
Local SEO Keyword Research Tips
- Plan and organize your research with research tools! – It bears
repeating that the time you spend on keyword research and the quality of
that research are the foundation for your success with SEO on a local as
well as national and international scale. You can use keyword research tools
like WordTracker and Google AdWords, and others that will tell you which
terms people are actually using to find things online and you can modify the
results in a number of ways.
Since you’re after local SEO, look especially closely at keywords that
contain references to your city, region, and nicknames that local people use
in everyday language. Common abbreviations are often great local SEO
modifiers also!
- Make lists – Using the results from your research, make lists of
your preferred primary and secondary keywords and make note of which terms
are and are not highly competitive. Make sure to be objective instead of
subjective on this as your preconceived notions on what keywords will be
effective may lead you to choose search terms that will not achieve the best
results!
- Focus on one or two keywords or phrases per page – and use them
in the title, subheads, meta tags, and copy of the page. Also use keyword
variations in the text to enhance the keyword’s relevance.
As an example, let’s say your business is called Las Vegas Floral Boutique.
You could use your business’s name as one keyword phrase and ‘Las Vegas
flowers’ as another. Since most people will be using ‘Las Vegas flowers’
rather than your business name in their searches, mention Las Vegas Floral
Boutique occasionally but focus more on the more generic term and use
variations like ‘Las Vegas flower shop’, ‘flower shop Las Vegas’,
‘affordable Vegas flowers”, etc.
Even under the best of circumstances, proper local SEO techniques take time
to mature and achieve results. Be patient and create new pages, link your pages
to each other, and be prepared to conduct ongoing keyword research so you can
capitalize on new industry and search engine trends!
About the Author:
Nick Stamoulis is the President of
Brick Marketing and
Website Magazine's “Local Thursdays” weekly contributor.
seo
local seo
keyword research
seo research
local keywords
website magazine
It seems like we're Wordpress crazy over at Website Magazine this week. Yesterday we posted five WP theme generators and today's resouce of the day is the
Seesmic Wordpress plugin which enables uers to post videos and participate in video conversations, straight from their blogs.
Bloggers can record one or more Seesmic video's to a post and then accept authenticated or anonymous video comments. Worried about abuse? Don't be, bloggers can moderate video comments exactly like text comments.
"
We warmly welcome Wordpress users to the Seesmic community. With over 70 million blogs worldwide, there is always a need for bloggers to differentiate themselves, and to engage their audience in different ways. Seesmic enables people to engage in video conversations, straight from their webcams, and now also straight from their blogs," said Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic. "
Now, most bloggers can create and participate in live video conversations directly with their readers."
wordpress
wordpress plugin
seesmic
video plugin
wordpress plugin
Although budget cuts seem likely in other areas, businesses will extend their tight budgets for the sake of security.IT security budgets remain stable despite an impending economic recession, according to a recent survey conducted at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA, April 7-11 by
Astaro Corporation, a vendor of integrated security appliances. Of the over 300 conference attendees surveyed, 67% said that they do not see their security spending behavior affected by the recession in 2008. Despite the news, growth in IT spending for this year is relatively conservative compared to previous year.
According to Gartner Research, “small businesses expect to increase their IT spending by approximately 3.25% over 2007 spending levels. Midsize businesses expect to increase their IT spend in 2008 year over year by 5.34%. While positive, these expected increases are more conservative and below the increases we saw during the past two years.”
Jan Hichert, Astaro CEO, explains, “
Many SMB administrators are looking to consolidate and simplify their security solutions in order to cut back costs and workload. Astaro helps to bring IT security costs down by merging all necessary features into one easy-to-use, robust security solution, giving businesses the best total cost of ownership and ultimately stretching tight IT security budgets even further.”
Integrating network, web and mail security and managed through an intuitive browser-based user interface, the Astaro Security Gateway offers the latest protection from Internet threats, while simplifying the administrative work. It is available as a software, hardware or virtual appliance. Not only does this UTM product cost less than traditional point products and many of its UTM competitors, but it also requires fewer man hours to deploy and maintain, leading to substantial savings.
it security
astaro
rsa conference
gartner research
security solutions
internet security
Microsoft announced the general availability of
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Online this week, an on-demand customer relationship management service
hosted and managed by Microsoft. The new Internet service delivers a full suite
of marketing, sales and service capabilities through a Web browser or directly
into Microsoft Office and Outlook. The solutions offers access to business that
want a full-featured CRM solution with little to no IT investment or setup
required.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is initially packaged in two service offerings:
-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional delivers a full suite of CRM
capabilities with extensive configurability and extensibility options.
Businesses get 5 GB of data storage, 100 configurable workflows and 100 custom
entities. The Professional edition is priced at $44 per user per month, with an
introductory offer of $39 per user, per month.
-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus delivers all the capabilities of
the Professional version plus offline data synchronization with expanded data
storage, workflow and customization options that give businesses 20 GB of data
storage, 200 configurable workflows and 200 custom entities. The Professional
Plus edition is priced at $59 per user per month.
So how does the solution stack up against Salesforce?
- 5 GB of storage versus 1 GB in Salesforce.com Professional Edition
- 100 workflows versus none in Salesforce.com Professional Edition
- 100 configurable entities versus 50 in Salesforce.com Professional
Edition
- Significant cost savings and a dramatically lower total cost of
ownership at $44 per user, per month versus $65 per user per month or more
for Salesforce.com Professional Edition.
microsoft
crm
microsoft crm
microsoft dynamics
salesforce
It's helpful to look back in order to see where we're going in 2008 and
beyond. I meant to post this yesterday, but hey, I'm working hard over here so
cut me some slack, will ya? Remember, if you've got news to share or are interested in
being a guest contributor, send an email to
editors@websitemagazine.com.
Back on April 24, 2006, Website Magazine discussed the following:
Your website IS mobile...
The 2008 May issue of Website Magazine is covering the Mobile Web and asking;
"It is Hype or Hope".
Behavioral Targeting Will Start With Tech's First Adopters
Much like mobile, it's amazing that it's taken this long for behavioral
advertising to really get going.
Microformats for SEO
Same goes for Microformats, but Yahoo's inching towards a Web where tagging is
quickly becoming the standard.
And on April 24th, 2007 the topics of the day were:
POSH : Plain Old Semantic HTML
I was so impressed at the time, that I went and bought Poshify.com.
Build A Robots.txt File
A key part of SEO, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Cashboard: Accounting Done Right
It seems that managing your business well will never go out of vogue.
Could Advertising Save Internet Radio?
When was the last time you listened to Internet radio?
SiteSpect unveiled new
Mobile Web
Optimization functionality within its multivariate and A/B testing solution this week.
With nearly three billion mobile device owners worldwide, 75 percent of
whom have access to the Internet according to the
Online Publishing Association,
a huge opportunity exists for web markers to deploy and optimize mobile content.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to perform mobile content optimization such as
testing and targeting due to compatibility issues across the more than 2,000
types of cell phones and PDAs used worldwide. For example, many mobile devices
have limited or no support for JavaScript or cookies, making it impossible for
traditional optimization approaches to work for all visitors. The risk is that
by testing and targeting only compatible devices, campaign data is biased
towards certain demographics, thus leading to incorrect analyses and missed
opportunities.
SiteSpect’s Mobile Web Optimization may solve the problem of
device compatibility because it is the only multivariate testing and behavioral
targeting platform that works with all mobile devices. The SiteSpect solution
does not require JavaScript or cookies, and is able to test and track behavior
across any type of content including WML, HTML, CSS, streaming media, and more.
This capability enables mobile site operators to non-intrusively test variations
of any content and track visitor behavior, revealing which versions are most
engaging and persuasive.
sitespect
mobile web
multivariate testing
mobile web optimization
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 23th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
Traffic Growth, Time-On-Site Move Network Delivers Advertisers' Value :
Consumers Continue to Rely on The Online Real Estate Leader in a Challenging
Market.
Read the release :
Visit Realtor.com :
Comment in the forum
Search Engine Marketing Agency Launch Mobile Search Marketing Service
: With close to 3 billion mobile device users worldwide, Search Engine Marketing
Agency Neutralize has responded to client demand with the launch of Mobilize.
Read the release
:
Visit Neutralize.com
:
Comment in the forum
10 CEO Recession Success Tips To Implement Right Now To Grow Revenues
: The Value Forward Group, a worldwide CEO management consulting firm focused on
business performance improvement best practices recently published an article in
their newsletter, Value Forward - BDM News, which provided best practices for
companies to use to grow their revenue during a recessionary times.
Read the release
:
Visit ValueForward.com :
Comment in the forum
Anchor Intelligence Launches ClearMark Real Time Traffic Scoring for Ad
Networks : New traffic scoring system enables ad networks to combat click
fraud and identify high performing traffic.
Read the release :
Visit Anchor
Intelligence :
Comment in the forum
ad:tech Awards Select NETexponent Client's Affiliate Program as a
Finalist : ad:tech selects NETexponent's affiliate program management work
on iChapters' account as a finalist for Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign.
Read the release
:
Visit Net Exponent :
Comment in the forum
Software Testing to Survive the Credit Crunch : NMQA releases first
piece of software aimed at helping the software testers left behind by the
credit crunch.
Read
the release :
Visit NMQA :
Comment in the forum
The community of developers supporting popular weblog and CMS platform
WordPress is active in an almost obsessive way. With millions upon millions of
Wordpress installs to date, there are more extensions and plugins than you could
test out in a virtual eternity. In addition to that amazing extensibility, the
themes which bloggers and site owners deploy on their WordPress installs has
become a micro-economy all its own. There are many themes freely available in
every corner of the Web (and
themes on the WordPress site), but what if you wanted to create a
custom WordPress theme? If that's appealing to you and you're moderately savvy
installing and working out the bugs on themes, then here are a few WordPress
theme generators that allow for the creation of themes from scratch for personal
and commercial use.
Have you been trying to find tools to help you make your own WordPress
themes? If you need to find tools to help you create WordPress themes
from scratch, I’m going to tell you about 5 WordPress
theme creators that will help you on your way. These template generators allow
you to create themes from scratch that you can use for your personal and
professional projects. The WordPress Theme Gen tool allows you to create themes
offline. The rest of the tools provide you with the ability to create WordPress
themes online quickly and easily. Take a look at the WordPress theme creators
below and see how easy it is to create your very own WordPress themes.
CSSEZ :
Templatr :
WP Theme Gen :
WP Pal
Bonus WordPress Theme Generator:
WordPress Theme Gen* is actually a downloadable software that allows users
to create their own themes without any HTML, JS, PHP or CSS knowledge.
What is your favorite Wordpress theme?
Log in or register
now to post a comment!
wordpress
wordpress themes
blog themes
weblog themes
wordpress
According to the
Lyris ISP Deliverability Report (PDF), nearly one out of every five
permission-based email messages sent to U.S.-based ISPs lands in the junk mail
folder. That means slightly more than 76 percent of invited email
successfully makes it to the inbox. Worried yet? Good.
From Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2007, Lyris HQ EmailAdvisor monitored the full
delivery trajectories of 436,558 production level, permission-based email
marketing messages sent from 69 different businesses and non-profit
organizations to multiple accounts at 59 ISP domains in the United States,
Canada, Europe and Australia. See below for how those ISPs fared.
“These are messages that have been invited by the recipients, and yet so many of
them still aren’t making it to the inbox,” said Blaine Mathieu, SVP of
Marketing, Lyris, Inc. “ISPs base much of their delivery decisions on a sender’s
reputation – and that reputation is governed primarily by how often that
sender’s recipients click the ‘Report as Spam’ button for its messages.
Marketers can improve delivery by better managing their relationships with their
subscribers – to reduce those spam button clicks.”
Author of the report Stefan Pollard advises marketers to embrace the new,
broader definition of spam. “The definition of spam has moved beyond the legal
requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act to include any message that is unrecognized,
unexpected or unwanted. With the spam button, ISPs have given recipients
increased control over what messages they wish to receive and this feedback is
used to gauge a sender's reputation and future delivery. This puts the onus on
senders to overcome those hurdles with every recipient – to make their messages
recognized, expected and wanted. Until they do, invited email will continue to
be delivered to the bulk folder,” said Pollard.
Easy Message Content Fixes
Lyris also ran 1,716 unique emails from the sample through a content score
application using the Spam Assassin rule set to see how they measure against ISP
spam filters. The top three most frequently triggered “red flags” were emails
containing images with little to no text, a “from” name that isn’t real and
messages that are 60 percent or more HTML. “Several of the triggers stem from
poor HTML coding and design, and can be easily corrected to improve inbox
delivery,” said Pollard. “Message content doesn’t carry the same weight as
sender reputation in determining where a message is delivered, but there’s still
value in doing everything you can to tip the scales in your direction.”
How the ISPs fared on deliverability
In the United States, the ISP with the highest inbox delivery rate is
AIM.com, with 93 percent of its delivered messages
landing in the inbox.
RoadRunner SoCal is a close second at 92 percent, while the rest of the top
10 have inbox delivery rates in the 80s. Hotmail is second from the bottom, with
just 57 percent of its delivered messages reaching the inbox.
The U.S. ISPs most likely to relegate invited email to the junk mail folder
include XO Concentric (62
percent of its total delivered permission-based messages were sent to the junk
mail folder) and
SBC Global (23 percent of its messages). MSN Network,
Hotmail and
Yahoo all hover around 21 percent. AOL is closer to the other end – with
just 1.2 percent of its delivered email landing in the junk mail folder. Outside
the United States, European ISPs had the highest percentage of junk mail
delivery at 19 percent – compared with 14 percent for Canada and 10 percent for
Australia.
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Photobucket has released an
API that allows external third-party developers to create applications
that include content and functions from the photo- and video-sharing Web site.
The popular service has had an API (application programmer interface) but it was
previously only available to a hand-selected group of developers. This should
nicely extend Photobucket's relevance.
Most of the photos and clips hosted by Photobucket are displayed in other
sites, like MySpace (which is a sister company of Photobucket owned by News
Corp.) and Facebook, and such will probably be the case with the applications
built using its API. The API will open up about 50 Photobucket functions,
including video uploading, obtaining metadata about an image, editing photos,
creating and accessing albums, and searching for content.
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now to post a comment!
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Pay-per-click advertisers understand (albeit grudgingly) that not all the
clicks they receive are "good". If you are a Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser,
you're now about to use the new Click Filter Report to find out just how many
clicks are being thrown out before you end up paying for them. You have to
admire the transparency and Yahoo!'s empowerment of advertisers to monitor their
own traffic. No word on if this announcement is a result of their recent partnership with ClickForensics.
The report is intended to help advertisers understand how many clicks Yahoo
records and how many of those that are recorded are invalid. This information
can be compared to raw server logs (or third party products, eventually perhaps
IndexTools - Yahoo!'s recent acquisition). Yahoo claims they typically discard
12-15% of all clicks but that number varies based on industry as click fraud is
undetectable.
The Click Filter Report displays any timeframe on accounts or campaigns, and
can be customized to include impression data, invalid clicks, invalid click
rate, an daverage cost-per-click. Advertisers using Yahoo!'s analytics tools can
also track conversion rate and revenue.
Will this development encourage you to advertise at Yahoo!?
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The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 23th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
Dallas Interactive Marketing Firm WrightIMC to Host Free Site Clinic :
Noted Dallas search firm WrightIMC is set to host the firm's first site clinic
on May 8, 2008 at their offices at 101 E. Park Blvd. #600 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The site clinic is designed to teach area businesses how a strong Web presence
can benefit them financially in troubled economic times.
Read the release
:
Visit Wright IMC :
Comment in the forum
ProductCart e-commerce software now integrated with Google Website
Optimizer : Users of Early Impact's shopping cart software can now easily
take advantage of Google's optimization service to improve key landing pages on
their e-commerce Web site.
Read the release :
Visit Early Impact
:
Comment in the forum
groupSPARK's Private Label SaaS Services Now Available through Ingram
Micro Seismic : groupSPARK significantly increases reseller channel with new
Ingram Micro Seismic agreement. Private label hosted Exchange Server.
Read the
release :
Visit
GroupSpark :
Comment in
the forum
SpamButcher Releases "Anticipated Sender" Standard to Combat False
Positives : Spam filter "false positives" pose a problem for both legitimate
commercial email senders and end-users. Anti-spam software provider, SpamButcher
has published an open standard called "Anticipated Sender" to help deal with the
issue.
Read the
release :
Visit Spam Butcher :
Comment in the forum
SPS Commerce and NetSuite Host Webinar to Unveil a New SaaS Integrated
Business Solution : Event Features Experts from Largest Outsourced EDI
Service Provider, the Leading On-Demand Business Software Suite Provider, and
Energy Beverage Supplier, Mad-Croc.
Read the release
:
Visit SPS Commerce :
Comment in the forum
TubeMogul Shows How To Easily Distribute and Track Online Video With
New Partner Howcast : How-To video site Howcast.com joins TubeMogul
Distribution Network; Contributors get Web's best video analytics.
Read the release
:
Visit TubeMogul :
Comment in the forum
I've been on a domain buying rampage the past few weeks and have been
investigating a few domain parking solutions. A few are pretty standard in that
they simply offer paid advertising links on the domain, usually with a direct
line to the domain owner if it's being sold. Good, but not great.
Many of the domain in my domain
portfolio are being listed currently at Sedo,
perhaps the most popular solution for the domain management trinity (buying,
selling, parking) for professional domainers (there is no cost for Sedo parking)
but there are many others worthy of note.
GoDaddy's CashParking
service offers a basic plan for $3.99 a month and a premium plan for $9.99 a
month with a 60% and 80% ad revenue split respectively;
RevenueDirect and
Parked.com also offer exceptional domain parking
services. While my personal preference is to develop custom content on domains
and feature some lead generation or straight affiliation programs, those who are
strapped for time should look into managed domain parking services if splitting
the revenue is not a real concern.
The one domain parking service that caught my
attention recently however was WhyPark.com
- a service which essentially adds actual dynamic content to parked domains. The
rationale is that instead of advertising being displayed on the site (which
visitors are quickly becoming used to and avoiding), WhyPark lets domain owners
optimize their domains with keyword rich content. Content is updated daily
and an automated XML sitemap is created for submission to search engines. The
price for this customization is a one-time fee of $99.95 and you are only
allowed 100 domains but for those looking for alternative parking solutions,
this may be the best of the bunch.
What domain parking solutions do you use?
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Webassist announced the release of
SiteScribe today, a solution that enables DreamWeaver users to create a PDF document of any website. The extension should make creating print-quality versions of sites and their disturnution easier and allow for a more seamless review cycle as users can insert comments.
Features include the printing of entire linked domains, the ability to manually select page options, flip between various screenshot sizes, remove or insert images from PDF and include metadata just to name a few.
The initial release of SiteScribe is for Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, or Windows Server 2003, and requires Java 1.4 or higher. SiteScribe supports Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 and Dreamweaver 8.
Website Magazine contributor Dante Monteverde discusses behavioral
targeting with AlmondNet CEO Roy Shkedi.
WM: Give us the bare bones – how do you define BT?
AlmondNet defines BT as enabling Internet users to see relevant,
privacy-sensitive ads wherever they go. Basically, delivered ads are based on
Internet users’ recently demonstrated purchase-intent behavior.
Where did the need for AlmondNet materialize?
We recognized that the Internet advertising market was inefficient. Most
advertising inventory is unsold or sold for very low rates, and moreover, most
delivered ads are untargeted. We saw a solution. By enabling the delivery of
targeted ads to consumers wherever they go, we help all online constituencies---
consumer see relevant, privacy-sensitive ads, data providers receive incremental
revenue, publishers sell their ad space for a higher price, advertisers reach
their target audience.
What are the top three factors that make AlmondNet different from your
competitors?
1) Largest aggregator and distributor of data online;
2) Focused on purchase-intent data that delivers conversions for advertisers;
3) Pro-active approach to privacy
What are “Post-Search” ads and how do they benefit consumers, advertisers and
media owners?
Post-search ads are behaviorally-targeted ads delivered to consumers wherever
they go based on their recently conducted search or demonstrable purchase-intent
behavior. Consumers benefit from relevant, privacy-sensitive ads wherever they
go, instead of irrelevant ads. Advertisers reach a target audience that is in
purchasing mode, wherever that audience goes, for a lower price than on search
engine pages and with minimal clutter and competition from competing
advertisers. Media-owners receive a higher price for their inventory, since they
are able to deliver targeted ads for a reasonable price instead of delivering
lower-priced run of site ads or no sold ads at all.
Behavioral Targeting advertising often has negative connotations; how does
AlmondNet allay privacy concerns?
We allay privacy concerns on a few different fronts. First, AlmondNet is a
member of three self-regulatory organizations (Network Advertising Initiative,
Truste, Internet Advertising Bureau) and exceeds the privacy principles adopted
by each of them. We feel it’s important for companies like us to be ingrained
within these groups.
We also uphold more than a few privacy polices internally. We do not collect
personally-identifiable information. We use non-persistent cookies that expire
after 60 days. And, AlmondNet does not permit its media owner partners to use
AlmondNet data for more than 30 days OR to link it with personally-identifiable
information of any kind.
We also have a privacy officer that audits the privacy policies of all data
provider partners and requires insertion of the NAI consumer opt-out and other
policy modifications prior to integration. AlmondNet requires all of its partner
data providers to insert an NAI opt-out link in the privacy policy of all sites
where consumer data is collected.
We’ve always taken a pro-active approach to privacy. For example, AlmondNet was
the first company to call for an industry-wide “opt-out within every
behaviorally-targeted” banner.
Are there any challenges to deploying your technology correctly?
Integration with AlmondNet is seamless for data providers and media-owners.
How do you emphasize privacy to new partners?
We require all data provider partners to sign a contract verifying the
following:
-They will not pass personally-identifiable information to AlmondNet;
-They will amend their privacy policy according to AlmondNet recommendations;
-They will insert an opt-out link in their privacy policy
We also require all data distributors to sign a contract verifying that:
-They will post an appropriate website privacy policy;
-They will not merge AlmondNet data with personally-identifiable information;
-They will not use AlmondNet data for more than 30 days;
What do you see as a next big trend in BT in the next five or ten years?
Behaviorally-targeted and other data-driven ads will become commonplace
(i.e. the majority of delivered ads online) as they are the only solution for
monetizing content that is difficult to monetize via contextual means.
Are there are any other trends in BT that you feel are important to website
owners?
We’d like to emphasize to website owners that the behavior of their users within
their site is valuable information that they should be monetizing outside their
site via partnerships with companies such as AlmondNet. No website should allow
any ad network or other company to drop cookies on its users within its website
and use that information elsewhere without compensating the website. Websites
spend lots of money to drive traffic to their sites. It is time they started
leveraging the behavior of their site visitors when those site visitors are off
their sites--- 99% of their time!
Voip provider Skype, an eBay subsidiary (that may eventually be spun off) has introuduced a new unlimed international calling plan for an almost criminally low $9.95 per month. The plan allows for unlimited calls to any land-line phone in 34 supported countries, including most of Europe, plus Canada, Austraulia, Chile, China, Japan and others.
Skype has already been selling unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada for $3 a month. It is expanding that offering with another plan, for $5.95 per month, that gives free calls to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, and a discount on calls to other places in Mexico.
Skype said its subscribers called phones for 1.7 billion minutes in the first three months of the year, compared with 14.2 billion minutes used in computer-to-computer sessions, which are free.
The following are press releases that caught our attention today, April 24th, 2008. If you have a news announcement you would like to share with the
Website Magazine community, please
contact the Website Magazine editors.
Acuity Mobile Partners with AlphaTrek to Provide Advanced Location
Targeting for Mobile Marketing Clients; Expands Patent Portfolio : Acuity
clients gain ability to geo-target mobile content down to 3-5 Feet indoors or
out -- enhances Spot Relevance™.
Read the release
: Visit Acuity Mobile :
Comment in the forum
Symphoniq Announces TrueView 2.0 Real User Monitoring Solution for Rich
Internet Applications : Latest Release Extends TrueView’s Web 2.0
Capabilities to Include Real-user Monitoring and Diagnostics for AJAX, Flash,
and Silverlight.
Read
the release : Visit Symphoniq :
Comment in the forum
FranklinCovey Releases New Project Management and Task Management
Applications to Increase Microsoft Outlook Users' Productivity :
ProjectsPlus for Microsoft Outlook and TasksPlus for Microsoft Outlook Launched
by FranklinCovey.
Read
the release : Visit Franklin Covey
:
Comment in the forum
Buzzdaq - New Blog Mashup Application Shows Daily Internet Buzzwords :
UK digital marketing company, Refreshed Media unveil their latest digital
breakthrough called Buzzdaq, which allows visitors to see, at a glance the most
mentioned words from hundreds of specially selected blog and news articles.