The Web Strategy Blog

HOW TO: Share Voice Notes via Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs

2009-05-28T15:05:00.002Z

By Ben Parr Mashable

When you need to send a voice note or a dictation to multiple contacts, Phonevite has always been a strong option. However, while it does have an iGoogle Gadget, Phonevite has mostly been limited to voice-to-phone sharing.

That was until today, when Phonevite opened the social media floodgates of its voice services. Starting today, you can not only send voice messages to your friends via phone, but you can also share recordings via Twitter (Twitter reviews), Facebook (Facebook reviews), MySpace (MySpace reviews), email or just embed the audio directly to your website.

Once you have made a voice recording (either via a recording browser app or via phone), the recording will appear in your recording inbox. Now, however, you’ll see five small icons at the bottom for each of the key social services and embeds...

Full article.....

How Twitter Was Founded (CLIP)

2009-05-28T15:01:00.002Z

By Nicholas Carlson

Here's Twitter cofounders Biz Stone and Ev Williams at the All Things D conference explaining how Twitter was their second idea for a startup after the first one they tried after quitting Google failed.

The other interesting part of the interview comes when Walt Mossberg drops a telling stat: 51% of people with Twitter accounts don't use it once a month. Twitter CEO Ev Williams says the number raises a question the startup knows it has to answer: How does Twitter go from a thing everyone's heard of to a thing everyone uses everday?

Full article....

AOL Officially Sweeps Embarrassing Bebo Saga Under The Rug (TWX)

2009-05-28T14:51:00.002Z

We hear it's a bit early in the morning for high-fives over at AOL HQ, but that doesn't mean AOLers don't have plenty of reasons to celebrate after Time Warner's (TWX) board approved an AOL's spin-off last night.

Not the least of them: As a part of the re-org that will follow the spin-off, new CEO Tim Amstrong plans to take a stiff brush to its $850 million social network Bebo and firmly sweep it under the rug

Bebo, as well as start-ups AOL has bought recently, such as the Userplane social media apps unit and its Truveo video search service, will be “relocated” into AOL Ventures. Each will operate on their own, and AOL will try to get venture capitalists to invest in them.

Full article....

The Culture & Economy of Participation Presentation by Gerd Leonhard at Emergence 2009 in Cyprus

2009-02-19T21:56:00.002Z

Here's great presentation by Gerd Leonhard at Emergence 2009 in Cyprus yesterday morning on Tourism and Web 2.0 Basic theme of the presnetation is that Web 1.0 connected people to information and data while Web 2.0 connects people to people and this fundementally changes many indutries (think how internet file sharing has broken the music industry business model) including tourism.

We have gone from the pre media age (run by the state and the church) through the mass media age (run by the professional media) and are entering the social media age where the consumer dictates. Google becomes Twitter, Web Search becomes Social Search and Data Context becomes Social network as context. Don't ask Google as your friends on Twitter or Facebook. When did you last trust a stranger to give you advice on a holiday destination?

Information Culture to Conversation Culture Tourism businesses need to offer conversations using the usual tools;

Blogs
Micorblogs,
RSS
Widgets
Social Networks
Photosharing
You Tube and others.

It seems to me that tourism lends itself naturally to this new environment. the key to future success is around personalisation, sharing, engagement,transparency and participation. Let your fans do the marketing for you. Its all about attention. Where-ever attention flows money follows.

"You used to use your budget to buy an audience. Now you have to invent ideas to attract an audience" Think the recent Cadburies Dancing Eyebrows video on You Tube as a silly example of this.

What this means for a tourist business:

Open communications via blogs twitter etc
Shift marketing to video, social Networking (take a look at the iPhone App Open Table)
Maximise Google Juice
Customer Experience becomes drastically more important.

But read this blog post on social media first

Attention is the new Currency
Content is the new Advertising
Engagement is the new Marketing
Participation is the new Consumption - not quite sure what he meant by that one.

Gerd Leonhard has a website at www.mediafuturist.com

Top 5 Web Site Redesign Mistakes

2009-02-15T09:28:00.005Z

Just read this post on the Top 5 Web Site Redesign Mistakes from Craig Menzies via the LinkedIn E-Commerce Network which are as follows:

1. Thinking you know your customers, and not actually talking to any of them
2. The “we’ve only got one shot at this, so we have to make it count” attitude.
3. Failure to get educated or the “I can’t let them know how little I know” corollary.
4. Not enough money, not enough time, not enough planning, not enough testing.
5. Junior people doing senior jobs.

Especially recognise the first one - very rare to find organisations using real user centred design processes. Also have often come across organisations who have failed to make the conceptual leap from website as a one off project to a continuously developing business process. Thats why you get junior people doing senior jobs. Many marketers do not understand that digital offers a complete paradigm shift in whats possible for their business. You get the same attitude with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which is often seen as a one off job that can be done at site launch and then forgotten about. With tools such as Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer everything is measurable (SEO, PPC Campaigns, conversion funnels, site conversions, form completions, email marketing, offline advertisng etc etc....) and able to be tested opening up the ability to continuously improve the effectiveness of their website and internet marketing.

Go here for expert advice on Google Website Optimizer or implementing your web analytics

The Future of Search Engine Optimisation

2009-01-22T20:43:00.004Z

Just finished a great webinar given by Mike Grehan at www.acronym.com called New Signals to Search Engines which has given me glimpse of what the future probably holds for search.

As the major search engines are beginning to provide blended search results the standard 10 blue links search engine results pages (SERPS) are beginning to show significant vertical creep. Organic text based results are getting crowded out and pushed down the page by paid results, Google Maps, images and other media results. At the beginning of SEO it was important to get in the top 40 results or you wouldn't be found. Then 3 years ago it was the top 10 now it could perhaps be the top result only that gets found. Even if you’re at the top it is difficult for a text based result to compete for the user attention amongst so much exciting imagery.

In the beginning search engines relied completely on text based crawling using the vector space model to establish webpage relevancy. Then when the number of web pages became too many, the search companies became very interested in network analysis. Meaning analysing the number of links to a page - which became the Page Rank score. When Page Rank became too easy to spam the search industry began looking at keywords in hypertext link anchor text. But in this model only individuals with web pages can influence the relevancy of a page. What about the end user?

User generated media content out numbers mediated content by a factor of 5 to 1. It is very likely that the search engines are paying attention to all this web 2.0 social media out there. The new signals will be how many times a page has been tagged. How many times a page has been bookmarked on www.delicious.com , Digg.com, rated on other similar social media sites or linked to from You Tube.

Most of us use toolbars of one sort or another - the Google Toolbar is one of the most commonly used so Google can watch and understand users search trail and look at specific landing pages.

So we are moving beyond traditional web page text based search engine optimisation to a new environment where digital asset management is the name of the game. Making the most of a clients html, video, pod casts, images, blogs and social media. Rather than concentrating on placing the best keywords into Page Titles, meta descriptions and body text.. Mike Greham used the term Connected Marketing by which I think he means joining up all those web pages, blogs, tweets, You Tube videos, mobile applications and RSS feeds into a coordinated marketing strategy ensuring prominence across the whole digital space.

Increasingly organic search will offer diminishing returns as it looses share of voice and has shrinking relevance to the users. Search engine ranking reports will be misleading as users will not look beyond the first result if at all.

The future SEO expert will therefore need to offer full digital asset optimisation There's a download at http://bit.ly/new_signals_to_search

Labels: digital asset management, digital asset optimisation, search engine optimisation, seo

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Quantcast - New Permissions Functionality

Quantcast is a great web analytics tool which uniquely blends panel and javascript web analytics methodologies to provide valuable competitor and sector data at zero cost.

They have just introduced new permissions functionality that will allow you to share your audience reports selectively with other Quantcast users now making it much easier to share data selectively with colleagues and business partners while keping you in control.

This "User Privileges" functionality is available for all publishers and empowers them to:

Share their data internally across different business groups (web development, ad sales, executives)
Provide advertisers, agencies and media planners unique insight into their audiences across the network, individual sites, or segments, without having to reveal that data to everyone
Enable partners to access data on a project basis, while having full control on when that access is removed

Get the full instructions direct from Quantcast here.

Quantcast - New Permissions Functionality

2009-01-08T20:38:00.002Z

Quantcast is a great web analytics tool which uniquely blends panel and javascript web analytics methodologies to provide valuable competitor and sector data at zero cost.

This "User Privileges" functionality is available for all publishers and empowers them to:

Share their data internally across different business groups (web development, ad sales, executives)
Provide advertisers, agencies and media planners unique insight into their audiences across the network, individual sites, or segments, without having to reveal that data to everyone
Enable partners to access data on a project basis, while having full control on when that access is removed

Get the full instructions direct from Quantcast here.

Measure Your Influence in Twitter

2009-01-08T20:20:00.002Z

The guys at Web Anlaytics Demystified have come up with an interesting little tool for measuring your influence on Twitter.

"Web Analytics Demystified believes that influence is a function of your reach, noteriety, and the likelihood that you will repeat the ideas of others and have your own ideas repeated ("retweeted"). Enter any Twitter username to see their influence in Twitter or have a look at the Twitter Influence cloud or top 100 Twitter influencers!"

Here's how our feed scored - SLOWLY DEVELOPING - looks like we've got try a lot harder:

ju2ltd's influence in Twitter is SLOWLY DEVELOPING. About ju2ltd's Twitter activity. The Twitter user ju2ltd has 80 followers and 21 friends. In the last 30 days, ju2ltd has Twittered 0 updates, been referenced 0 times by 0 by his or her followers , retweeted 0 times by 0 unique individuals and has retweeted updates published by other people 0 times. WHOOPS.

By our calculation, ju2ltd's relative recent influence in Twitter is SLOWLY DEVELOPING. For the past 30 days, the components of this score are as follows:

Relative rate at which ju2ltd's updates are retweeted: NON EXISTENT
Relative rate at which ju2ltd is being referenced by followers: NON EXISTENT
Relative rate at which ju2ltd is retweeting friends: NON EXISTENT
Relative reach based on 80 followers: DEVELOPING
Relative velocity based on 0 updates: NON EXISTENT

Here's the link to how they calculate the score

Google TV Ads

2009-01-04T17:28:00.003Z

Have I been sleeping at the wheel? While looking around our Google Analytics Account I stumbled on Google TV Ads

Amazing service and it was the obvious place for Google to go next and I am guessing a great way for the TV companies to fill remnant TV ad spots. Google TV Ads allows you to use all the targeting (region, demographic, TV network, prgrammes, dayparting) thats standard on AdWords but for TV. Not sur eif the service is available in the UK yet however.

You upload you're TV ad there and then. If you don't have an Ad you can search through recommended agencies that will create one for you.

Ads are charged by 1000 impressions (cpm) and you can set your daily budget as with AdWords. As you would expect everything is measureable and TV ads integrates directly with Google Analytics so you expert web analysts out there will have plenty of data to campare with other campaigns.

There's loads more information on the Google Lets Take It Offline blog When we've recovered from the Christmas break we'll get back to you with more information on this new potential marketing strategy.

Scotland to Get its Own Domain Name

2008-12-14T15:19:00.005Z

After recent surveys showed strong support amongst Scottish organisations and the general public - Scottish Government ministers are likely to apply to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) regards the creation of a .scot top level domain name. Catalonia set up the .cat domain name 2 years ago and has been highky successful with 30,000 registrations. Scottish ministers hope they can repeat this success and hope that the .scot TLD will help strengthen the Scottish community across the world.

More expert advice on website optimisation and analytics here

Discounts for UPA Members

2008-12-13T17:34:00.003Z

The UPA have recently announced their latest member benefits: big discounts on useful tools, software, services and conferences.

As a UPA member you can now get a:

$89 USD discount on Axure RP Pro 5 wireframing, prototyping and specification software
10% discount on Mangold International eye tracking services and software
25% discount on Optimal Sort online card sorting tool
20% discount on TechSmith Morae usability testing software bundle
25% discount on WebSort.net web-based card sorting subscription

Find out more about these discounts and how to claim them by visiting the Usability Professionals' Association . If you're based in Scotland come along to the Scottish UPA meetings - more info at Scottish UPA Events

Oh My God! Search is Changing Forever! SEO is Doomed! Run for the Hills!

2008-12-07T17:26:00.003Z

I saw an article by Aida Edemarian in the Guardian Saturday 6th December on the subject of search engine optimisation and the dark arts of the blogger.

"Can some artfully placed keywords attract billions of bloggers and instant fame? Not any more, say the experts. The dark arts of the web have grown more subtle, and new media are not so different after all"

It reminded me of a recent blog by randfish at SEOmozBlog.

"With the release of their new yippdy goobledy wobbledy, Google has changed the search game forever. Forget classic SEO, from now on, it's going to be all about blah blah blah"

But the name of the game is still the following:

It's not that Google's other shifts haven't had an impact on SEO, it's just that they haven't been earth-shattering or groundbreaking or given us new paradigms to conquer. SEO remains, at its core, remarkably similar to what it was in 2002:

-Make pages accessible
-Target with keywords that searchers employ
-Build content that users will find useful and valuable
-Earn editorial links from good sources

It's just common sense - nothing much has changed. Research your keywords and write relevant content - its good journalistic practice to include keywords in titles, headings, image labels etc.

But what most organisations forget is the measure the success of your SEO campaign using web analytics. Not only will web analytics tell you how much traffic you are getting from search engines and individual keywords but it will also give you information on bounce rates. Bounce rate may or may not be part of Google's algorithm but they sure are a great way of establishing whether users are finding your content interesting and are a proxy for landing page quality. If your bounce rates are high for specific keywords - you need to look at your content in all the usual places: page titles, headings, body text, images, images tags, anchor text. If you're running an SEO campaign get yourself an web anlaytics expert.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

2008-12-02T21:58:00.004Z

Now that it’s too cold to cycle into the office in the morning I have been able to catch up some reading. And one book which I have found particularly interesting is The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference by Claes Fornell. Somebody at Foresee Results was kind enough to give me the book at Web Analytics Association E Metrics 2008 Conference in London.

The basic thesis of the book is that the satisfied customer is your company’s most valuable asset, is not currently accounted for on your company balance sheet and often not recognised by investors. Basic economic theory states that the customer seeks to maximise utility (satisfaction) while the seller is supposed to maximise profitability. The marginal cost of making a sale to an existing customer is much less than acquiring a completely new customer. A satisfied customer is more likely to recommend your company to friends and family and is less likely to leave you for the competition.

In perfect economically efficient market companies with consistently high customer satisfaction levels will be rewarded by increased profits and which will be reflected in the stock price. While those with poor customer satisfaction levels will be punished by their customers and the value of the company will fall. The book talks about industries where the relationship between satisfaction, profitability and share price s not so strong. These are in markets where choice is restricted (airlines, utilities, cable TV,) or where the cost to the customer of switching supplier is too high (rented accommodation, mobile phones). In these sectors the customers’ power to punish poor service is limited. But in many sectors a drop in customer satisfaction has been able to predict a fall in profitability and company value. Dell Computers and Wal-Mart are used as examples of this.

How to measure satisfaction. Claes Fornell was instrumental in developing the
American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) which is used by many of the biggest organisations in the US. The ACSI can accurately measure satisfaction across elements of your company, benchmark against other companies in your sector and predict which areas of improvement will make most difference to customer retention and recommendation. Fornell has put his money where his mouth is a set up the ACSI Fund which out performed the S&P 500 by over three times between 2001 and 2006. - proving that customer satisfaction leads to share holder value.

What’s this all got to do with digital strategy and website optimisation? Well how well do you understand your online customer satisfaction. Have you ever listened to the voice of your customers in any systematic way? Web analytics experts can tell you how people are behaving but tell you nothing about why they are behaving in the way they do. Listening to the genuine voice of your online customer can tell you loud and clear which parts of your site are not working, are too slow or not as good as your competitors. What a mine of useful information that should be exploited to help you ensure you retain valuable return visitors. How much money do we spend chasing customer acquisition that could be spent more profitably.

The great thing is that there are variety of tools available that can help you capture voice of customer on your site. From there is direct step to improving customer satisfaction and greater profitability Customer Satisfaction matters so measure it - read the book too.

The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference

Building the Usability Profession - Scottish Usability Professionals Association

2008-11-27T19:14:00.002Z

This months meeting of the Scottish UPA is happening on the 3rd of December at Microsoft Scotland, Waverley Gate, 2-4 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3EG. Tom McEwan, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Interaction Design, Napier University will be discussing "Building the Usability Profession" Attend this meeting to find out how you can raise the profile of usability in your organisation and enhance your career.

The meeting kicks off at 6:30om and the entrance is free to UPA members and £10 for non-members (£5 for student non-members). SUPA will stand some early Christmas drinks in a nearby pub afterwards.

More details on Building the Usability Profession here.

Discount Usability Engineering

2008-11-26T20:03:00.002Z

Take a look at this post from Jakob Nielsen's on the subject of Agile Development Projects and Usability. Summary - Agile methods aim to overcome usability barriers in traditional development, but pose new threats to user experience quality. By modifying Agile approaches, however, many companies have realized the benefits without the pain.

"Agile's biggest threat to system quality stems from the fact that it's a method proposed by programmers and mainly addresses the implementation side of system development. As a result, it often overlooks interaction design and usability, which are left to happen as a side effect of the coding. This, of course, contradicts all experience of the last 30 years, in which user experience's importance in system development has steadily increased as we moved from mainframes to PCs to the Web. As the user base and the use cases have expanded, the need for top-notch usability has grown. "

As discussed at the recent Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) and BCS meeting in Edinburgh this articles reaches very similar conclusions. With a pragmatic it is possible to maintain a user centred design approach in an Agile environment. Really liked the idea of discount usability engineering - a tactical way of user testing with-in the time lines of Agile development.

Haven't yet had time to read the research linked to in the post Agile Usability: Best Practices for User Experience on Agile Development Projects but will report back shortly.

See here for more background on usability testing

User Centred Design and Agile

2008-11-17T20:49:00.008Z

Have just attended a joint British Computer Society and Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) meeting at Edinburgh University last week on the conflicts between a User Centered Design and an Agile software development process.

The central conflict appears to be that UCD involves learning everything there is to know about the user before starting development. While Agile emphasises teamwork, customer involvement and the frequent creation of small, working pieces of the total system.

User Centered Design is an approach to design that grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. UCD processes on users through the planning, design and development of the product. It tends to require a more waterfall project management process and it can be difficult to fit into a typical short iteration Agile/Scrum process.

Usability (expert and user) testing forms a major part of the UCD process and in my experience recruitment of users fitting a specific user profile can be difficult and time consuming. Any potential project slippage during an iteration can be a problem to accommodate.

Any important usability issue identified in testing can also be problem when new user stories will need to be created, estimated and prioritised. The consensus at the meeting was that these issues will always occur regardless of what project management methodology is used. It was agreed that Agile provides an excellent framework to make discussion and management of project implications overt. Thus avoiding rushed periods of development and pressure on project teams to deliver against impossible deadlines.

This has got to be a good thing - more information on usability testing here.

Google Adwords Keyword Insertion

2008-11-04T19:06:00.006Z

Using dynamic keyword insertion into any field of your Google AdWords ad variations is an important driver of click through rate (CTR) and therefore an important determinent of the average cost per click (CPC) you will pay to maintain your ad position.

The Keyword Insertion Tag Format

The keyword insertion tag format is as follows: {keyword:default text}. Use only one colon, with no spacing, in the keyword insertion tag. The AdWords system will not recognize the tag otherwise. Correct: {keyword:videoconferencing}Incorrect: {keyword : videoconferencing}, {keyword::phones}, {keyword,phones}
The text after the colon (:), shown as default text, appears if AdWords is unable to insert an appropriate trigger keyword for the user's search from your ad group keyword list.

Keyword Capitalization

There are various ways to insert keywords using capitalisation

keyword - simply inserts the keyword with no capitalisation
Keyword - sentence (first letter of first word)
KeyWord Initial (first letter of each word)
KEYWord Entire first word and First letter of each remaining word
KeyWORD First letter of first word and All letters of each remaining word
KEYWORD All letters of all words

AdWords ads cannot include excessive ad text capitalization (for example, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION). Capitalization may only be used where the natural spelling of a word requires full capitalization, such as in acronyms, technical terms, and trademarked terms such as SEO.

Great Online Tools October 2008

2008-10-23T21:33:00.006Z

Here are just some of the great tools we've discovered at JU2 this month.

First up EventBrite which is an excellent tool for organising, managing and promoting events. Its easy to integrate into your website and can even handle the financial side of things for a small percentage.

Next up Powwow Now which is a free conference call provider who give you a personal conference call number that is yours for ever. This number is availabe for you to use at any time. They even send out a handy credit card sized reminder to put it your wallet.

Also take a look at Drop Send which is a handy little tool to share or move large files across the internet. Its free and allows you to upload files to a directory structure and subseqently share, send or download.

My favourite this month must be Conduit who enable you to create and share a fully branded browser toolbar. Take a look at the JU2 Web Analytics Toolbar or click on the download button below.

Last up is SheerSEO which is a great little tool for tracking your search engine rankings. You shouldn't be embarking on any search engine optimisation campaign without the ability to track rankings over time. Well thats all from JU2 this month we'll be back soon.

Great Discoveries of the Month - Feb 08

2008-02-28T19:26:00.003Z

There have been a couple of sites that have caught my attention this month.

Thinkature

First up Thinkature. On the Thinkature website they describe the service as follows:

" With Thinkature, you can create a collaborative workspace and invite coworkers, friends, and colleagues to join you in just seconds. Once inside your workspace, you can communicate by chatting, drawing, creating cards, and adding content from around the Internet. It's all synchronous, too - no need to hit reload or get an editing lock"

As a person who spends most days teleconferencing it can be really difficult to explain things without drawing a diagram. Well this now makes it easy. Everybody can be looking at the same workspace.

Zoho Wiki

Next up create your very own wiki in less than 30 seconds with Zoho Wiki. Not used wikis extensively but this just makes it so easy. Now have my very own wiki just to save notes and various ideas somewhere where I can access then easily.

Telebid

The Telebid site looks like such an amazing deal. At first glance there appears to be some amazing bargains available. Nintendos for £30 iBooks for £70.

According the the site itself:

"There’s a few key things that are different from other auctions you might have used online:

Bidding on our auctions starts at just 10p, with no reserve prices.
The price only goes up by 10p with each bid placed. (7p on international auctions).
If a bid gets placed in the final moments, we extend the auction by up to 40 seconds.
There’s a small charge for each bid placed: this helps us offer you such amazing bargains."

This site is genius each bid costs 50p, and are available in "BidPacks" of 20, 50, 100 and 200 bids. So every time you make an incremental bid of 10p the site makes 40p. This is amazing - bargains appear to be available right up to very last seconds until everybody piles in. And each time somebody piles in the bidding period is extended by 10 seconds or so. So what may have looked like an amazing bargain at first can very quickly look less attractive. But Telebid make 40p on every bid!

Doing some rough maths if an auction for a Wii closes at £120 thats 1,200 bids at 10p but Telebid have made £480 - just on the bids. Plus the £120 towards the cost of the product. They are quids in. But the winner can still get a bargain provding they haven't made to many bids.

I wonder whether this site was designed with the help of an Economist or somebody who knows a lot about Game Theory. The rules remind me of the auction for mobile phone radio spectrum in the UK which netted the UK government £Billions.

Scottish Usability Professional Association Event

2008-01-11T20:06:00.000Z

January 29th - Implementing usability changes on an already successful site, Tamlin Roberts, Mercurytide

Entrance will be free to UPA members and £10 for non members (£5 for student non-members).

Venue: Scottish Enterprise Atlantic Quay Glasgow

Time: 18:30

If you already have a site that is doing well, have lots of visitors and they are using the site as you want them to, then should you be changing it? Many will argue that ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ but others will say that you have to constantly update to keep ahead of the competition.
The property market is highly competitive and in Scotland this company is no small player, but when they we were asked to update an already successful site we had to be sure that usability was a priority and that we were going to add something to the mix rather than take it away.
Come along to this case study presentation to learn how usability can be applied on a commercial site with a wide audience and extensive content. A wide range of user centred design methods, as well as AJAX web design were applied to provide an overall positive user experience.

If you would like to sign up for this SUPA event, please do so via our website at http://www.scottishupa.org.uk/events.html

Pandora Shuts Down in the UK

2008-01-10T22:30:00.000Z

As did many others, on Monday I got an email from Pandora, my preferred internet radio station, telling me the following:

" in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible"

It appears that both the PPL and the MCPS/PRS Alliance have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so one of the best internet radio stations has had to close.

This seems to have happened just at the same time as DRM and digital copywright legislation are being dropped making music much more freely available. I am now using Last FM

Great Discoveries of the Month

2008-01-10T21:47:00.000Z

January has so far been a great month for discovering fantastic tools on the internet - mainly because I finally started using Stumble Upon properly.

I first have to mention a company called Carbonite who provide a great online backup service. Carbonite is really simple to instal and use. It takes a couple of days to complete the initial back up but after that is a dream to use. Whats more its a fraction of the cost of my previous back up solution.
Take a look at this SEO tool from Quinu - its got everything including the kitchen sink. What I like about thids tool is that it provides data on Back Links, Indexed Pages and Social Bookmarkinig all in one page.
Next ever want a temporary email address try Guerilla Mail which gives you an email that lasts 15 minutes - what a great idea.
This is an old one but I've just started using it - http://tinyurl.com/ which is so useful particularly for printed material.
Compete - I've known about Compete for sometime but I must have been on vacation whne they launched their Search Analytics service. Compete Search Analytics provides you with the most common keywords used to find a site as well as the domains that are most commonly found against your choosen keyword. It provides the sort of information you get from Hitwise but is affordable to the smaller company.

Well thats all folks.

Google Artificially Promotes Recent Web Pages

2008-01-03T14:03:00.000Z

Google paid a big price when it started to index pages faster and show them in the search results minutes after they're published. The problem is that you can't rank a page that has just been created because it has no backlinks so Google artificially inflates the rankings of the recently-created pages based on historical data and the few backlinks that are detected.In some cases, if Google sees a lot of searches for a query that wasn't popular before, it assumes something has happened recently and shows more recent results.These two changes are extremely visible today. If you go to Google's homepage and click on the special logo that celebrates 25 years of TCP/IP and the New Year, you'll be sent to the search results for [January 1 TCP/IP] and you should normally see a Wikipedia page as the top result. But the first page of Google's results has changed dramatically in the past hours and all the results are new: most of them are from spam sites, pages that discuss Google's logo and quote from Wikipedia. Most notably, the top result is a Digg page that links to a newly-created blog with a meaningful address: january-1-tcp-ip.blogspot.com and a highly-optimized title: "January 1 tcp/ip". Obviously, that blog hoped to take advantage of Google's new logo and succeeded: the two top results are Digg pages that link to that site and they're followed by that blog's homepage and a post from the same blog.

See full article here...

Online Videos – How Old Media, New Technology Is Driving Search!

2007-12-31T13:46:00.000Z

Video search is growing rapidly. It is considered third most effective online advertising media today to reach your target audience. More and more newspapers and conference sites are adapting to the multimedia challenge by adding video to their web sites. Video search results are blending in to the main universal search. Currently there is no cost per view for online video. It is time for businesses to get a head started and use it effectively. It is one of the most effective media today to reach your target audience. Interested to see an example?

Here are a few tips and best practices for video production and submission:

Make sure each video has good call to action in the end such as URL address of the website or phone number to call.
Use professional talent to do voice over.
Create a compelling story highlighting all the reasons to use your product or service
Make sure to use right web friendly format. You do not want to have large file which no one can download or view.
Make sure to encode your video with Meta data and create RSS so your video can be found on search engines.
Make sure you have video site map and separate page allocated for each video. The page where you are posting your video should have search engine optimized content, meta data, RSS etc for engines to crawl your page easily.
Submit your video on top ten video sites and track video viewer ship.

Full article

Nielsen Online: Nov. 2007 Search Stats See Google On Top

2007-12-30T03:30:00.000Z

According to Nielsen Online, formerly Nielsen NetRatings in November 2007, Google is leading the pack, (no surprise there) followed by Yahoo and Microsoft. You'll find the press release here (PDF format), showing the top ten most popular services. Here are the top five:

Google: 57.7%
Yahoo: 17.9%
Microsoft: 12.0%
AOL: 4.5%
Ask: 2.7%

The figures above are the percentage of all US searches handled by the leading search engines.

Become a Social Media Marketing Maestro

2007-12-29T13:17:00.000Z

I recently came across this site flogging an ebook on "How to Become a Socal Media Marketing Maestro". The eBook costs $29 but you can take a look a good number of sample chapters which seem include plenty of valuable tips. I'll review the eBook once I have had chance to read it properly."This is the website for the ebook, Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook. If you’re a marketer in a company, agency or small business, this book will tell you how to market products and services through social media channels like blogs, podcasts and Facebook." See full article

The Search Engine's Love Affair With Blogs

2007-12-28T20:17:00.000Z

Here's a post from Juan Tornoe on GrokdotCom which says everything I have recently been trying to say about blogs and SEO.

You’ve heard it time and time again: "Search engines love blogs." You’ve read in one too many places that your website should include a blog in order to get better positioning in search engine results.

It's not as simple as some may lead you to believe.

First, there's the issue of relevance. A blog won’t magically give you a top ranking position on Google, Yahoo! or the like. The content your blog has, the frequency with which such content is being updated, and the amount of relevant incoming links to your site are some of the factors that will make-or-break the effectiveness of your weblog.

Don’t add a blog to your site if you're not willing to consistently invest time and effort. An outdated blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company.

Some bloggers are a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to “keeping it fresh." No, you don’t need to add 10+ posts per day; what you need is consistency and relevance. You can update your blog daily, weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, but you need to do it on a regular basis.

Full article here

AOL Says Goodbye to Netscape Navigator

2007-12-28T20:04:00.000Z

Netscape Navigator, once the dominant Web browser back in the 1990s, will no longer be supported as of February 1, 2008. In a posting to Netscape’s blog, Tom Drapeau writes:

“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.
AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be.”

AOL originally acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion in November 1998, a landmark event in the first Web boom. For an interesting glimpse back in time, check out CNET’s original coverage of the deal.

See full article in Mashable

55 SEO Interview Questions

2007-12-28T19:53:00.000Z

Here's some weekend SEO reading for from Marios Alexandrou's All Things SEM blog:

55 questions you should ask any SEO company you are thinking of hiring. Questions covering:

Technical and Tactics Aspects of SEO
Web Analytics
Industry Involvement

and some other open ended questions that will give you a better idea whether your company really cuts it in SEO.

Full article

Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) Glasgow Meeting Interactive TV Usability - Is EPG Dead? 23rd October 2003

2007-10-10T14:09:00.000Z

The Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) will be returning to Glasgow for our next event which looks at the current and future usability of interactive television.

Tuesday 23rd October, 2007 - Interactive TV usability: Is the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) dead?
Jonathan Marshall, Zype

Venue: The Lighthouse, 11 Mitchell Lane, Glasgow G1 3NU

Time: 18:30

The landscape of interactive television is changing rapidly, with implications for usability. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has arrived, bringing with it the challenge of finding, watching and managing video content from multiple sources. The traditional grid based EPG is less relevant in this new, on-demand world. We will look at some of the existing IPTV offerings including OpenTV, Joost and the BBC to compare features and functions. Jonathan will also showcase a new Unified User Interface which seamlessly integrates live broadcast programmes with on-demand and stored content using an innovative 3D spatial environment. This event will be a great chance to learn about the current usability challenges in the world of Interactive Television, as users control various content from several different sources.

Further details: http://www.scottishupa.org.uk/events.html

Sign up on http://www.scottishupa.org.uk/contactus.html

Social Networking Making or Breaking Company Reputations

2007-09-16T16:59:00.000Z

I read this thought provoking article on the power of social networking at E-Commerce News

"You've heard the hype about viral, homemade TV ads on YouTube . You've read scathing peer-to-peer product reviews on blogs. You've seen brands evangelized or slammed by teens and twentysomethings on social-networking sites.

On Aug. 8, for example, Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) launched the Roommate Style Match group on Facebook; 1,000 members joined. The idea was to market dorm furnishings to college-age audiences, but several hundred vehement comments surfaced about Wal-Mart's labor practices, hijacking the brand's message."

While in the UK HSBC has been forced to back down on student overdraft fees after a campaign on the social networking site Facebook.com. More than 5,000 students got the bank to reverse its decision to stop free overdrafts for graduates after joining Facebook's Stop the Great HSBC Rip-Off!!! group. Read more...

Companies beware!!!

Facebook Working on an Ad Plan

2007-08-23T18:26:00.000Z

From The Wall Street Journal

Facebook Inc. will unveil an ad system in the autumn that will let marketers target users based on the information they reveal on the social-networking web site about themselves. Eventually, the system will allow the company to predict what products and services users might be interested in even before they mention an area. Read more ....

Online Sales Set Record in July

2007-08-23T17:58:00.000Z

Online sales set record in July

Many shoppers are happier to sit at home rather than hit the streetsWet weather in July drove online shopping to record levels as consumers surfed the net rather than sloshing down the High Street, a report claims.

Internet sales rose to £4.2bn in July, up from £2.34bn in the same month a year ago, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).

Sales are also picking up as retailers improve websites, and as consumers get faster internet connections, IMRG said. Read more....

Vendors: Web Design Horrors

2007-07-31T17:55:00.000Z

A salutary lesson can be found in this article frm Business Week

WHOSE DOMAIN IS IT?

Small business owners are getting a lot less than they bargained for from some Web vendors. "This happens all the time," says Jan Hulswit, a sales associate for Chesterbrook (Pa.) Web hosting company 1&1 Internet, where Holmes' domains are registered. Hulswit says he gets about eight calls a day from business owners in similar predicaments. "People think they are getting someone reliable to build their Web site, and they don't think about the details, such as actual ownership," he says. "When things go sour, the designer comes out on top. It's almost like [small business owners] are being held hostage."The most common problem is that the Web developer, rather than the business owner, will register the domain name. Other times designers vanish before a site is finished. And a business owner whose expectations are unclear is asking for trouble. Full Article

YouYou not WeWe

2007-03-25T19:05:00.000Z

A great a little reminder on the importance of writing copy from the visitors perspective not yours. See http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/25/how-to-measure-your-we-we/ Use words like "you" rather than "we" when writing webcopy will help inprove the persuasiveness of your copy.

Web 2.0 A Definition

2007-03-23T09:30:00.000Z

Web 2.0 can be really difficult to define but I've just a read this post on web 2.0 by by Sean Carter at ClickZ Experts which makes some real sense.

So what is Web 2.0? Here are six elements that define the change in how we all think about and use the Web:

Web 2.0 is about data abstraction. All those Web 2.0 functions people love to talk about, such as tagging, sharing, XML, open APIs (define), and mashups, only became possible because we now understand how to free information from containers. Though the Web credo "information wants to be free" has been around for a while, we've only recently been able to make it happen. Pulling information out of proprietary containers allows you to do pretty much whatever you want with it, whether driving collaborative sites, interfacing with mobile devices, or something else.

Web 2.0 takes broadband and Moore's Law for granted. Sites like YouTube and Google Docs & Spreadsheets wouldn't be possible in a non-broadband world populated by powerful computers. All Web 2.0's multimedia features, especially video, start with the assumption bandwidth is basically free and readily accessible.

Web 2.0 is about connections. Connections between people, between sites, between the Web and mobile worlds, between buyers and sellers. Web 2.0 includes all of them. At its heart, the new Web is about moving from a one-to-many publishing model to a many-to-many one.

The Web 2.0 revolution puts people first. All the tagging, social content, social networking, blogging, and virtual communities people point to as examples of Web 2.0 come out of this. It's perhaps the most widely recognized aspect of what's changing. But putting people first is more than just connecting them or allowing them to post content. It's also understanding people use the Web. The needs of the user (not the programmer, marketing director, or information architect) come first.

Web 2.0 is about allowing people to manipulate data, not just retrieve data. The AJAX revolution isn't that it lets you make zippy interfaces that kind of look like real desktop applications in a browser. It's that it does away with the old Web 1.0 model of request page/get page/view page technology all of us were used to. Contrast the old MapQuest "point and zoom and pan with buttons" interface with the revolutionary interface Google Maps deploys. All of a sudden, we're actually in there with the data, moving it around, playing with it, and interacting with it in real time.

Web 2.0 is about doing stuff on the Web that can't done in any other medium. Functionalities that have generated so much Web 2.0 hype are all things that wouldn't be possible without the Internet. Period. Much of Web 1.0 tried to shoehorn old media models into the new technology, often with bad or even disastrous results. All the bad thinking of the past decade or so revolved around the misperception that the Web is "like medium X, only different." The Web isn't TV with clicking. It isn't print with the ability to link and embed multimedia content. Podcasting isn't radio you can download.

You get the idea. To truly do Web 2.0, you must do something that absolutely can not be done without the Web.

2007-03-20T12:02:00.000Z

Email Marketing Why Bother?

• A well-targeted email marketing campaign is an extremely responsive way of raising awareness or prompting any given action. Open rates and response rates can vary, anything from 10 - 50% are not uncommon depending on degree of targeting
• It allows you to send very targeted messages to specific customer groups
• It allows you to reach very large numbers of people very quickly
• It allows you to take advantage of other “media” owners email lists through placing your content onto a well-known and trusted media portal’s newsletter or outbound email
• It is very easy to track open and response rates as well as resulting behaviour e.g. which web pages were visited and for how long, what content a visitor interacted with etc.

Email Staying on the Right Side of the Law

• Email campaigns must comply with Data Protection and Anti Spam Law
• Websites must use a Data Protection Notice when collecting personal information such as email addresses.
• You cannot send unsolicited marketing communications by email to individual subscribers unless the recipient has given his prior consent.
• Websites should obtain prior consent by including an opt-out tick box as a part of the data protection notice.
• All marketing emails should provide an easy way for users to opt-out or unsubscribe from receiving future email.

Email Lists and where to get them

• Email works best when it is relevant and timely - campaigns should always be segmented.
• Outsourced email lists are expensive but if well targeted can provide high response rates.
• Response rates vary between 2-5 % from outsourced lists to 3-40% for own customer lists
• Your own customer email list can be built organically using traditional marketing to attract customers to your website
• Make sure the email list you do use is permission based

Top Tip: Email works best when it is relevant. Relevant campaigns drive 9 times more revenue and deliver 18 times more net profit than broadcast email. Jupiter Research.

Email Marketing - How To Not Get Lost In The Spam

• 40% of all email is considered to be spam – 12.4 billion spam emails are sent everyday.
• Filtering out spam from genuine email is achieved using content filters by ISPs and individual users.
• Content Filters differentiate spam by identifying spam techniques or “spam signatures” with in email. Increase delivery rates by ensuring that your emails do not contain these signatures by mistake.
• White lists and Safe Sender Lists are compiled by Internet Service Providers and by email clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2003. Messages from white lists will always be allowed through.
• Emails where delivery has not been possible are said to have been bounced – bounce rates should be monitored as they are a measure of the quality of your email list.

Email Filters and How To Get Past Them

• Make sure your HTML code confirms to W3C standards - broken code will trigger email filters.• Avoid using inappropriate punctuation such as @ and ! with in words.
• Do not use phrases such as for free! and order today in the message body.
• Do not use white as a text colour.
• Marketers can encourage recipients to add you to their safe sender lists by including an Add To Contacts button on all emails.
• Make sure your emails are always relevant and timely so that recipients do not add you to their Junk Folder.

Email Marketing - Bounces & How to Minimize Them

• Monitor email bounce rates - if your rate continually rises above 5 percent, you may have list input or quality issues.
• Add an e-mail address update link to your e-mail and a profile update form to your web site.

Email Marketing - Designing An Effective Email

• Emails can be sent as HTML or plain text - most newsletter subscribers today prefer the attractive nature and usability of HTML emails.
• HTML creates well branded, usable and attractive email messages that have much higher click through rates.
• Email promotions seek to get the recipient to take an immediate action.
• Email newsletters are about building long-term relationships with customers
• In the commercial environment Microsoft Outlook has a penetration of 75% and Lotus Notes a further 5 to 10% of the market.
• In a consumer environment AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail/MSN comprise almost 66% of email recipients.

Email Marketing - HTML Design Issues

• Keep emails between 500-600 pixels wide
• Use fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman
• Do not use white as a font colour.
• Include a link to a profile update that allows recipients to update their format preference.
• Message file size – aim to keep message size down to 40-50Kb

HTML Dos:

• Code emails as a single web page
• Make sure your HTML code confirms to W3C standards. Check your code as broken code will be picked up email filters.
• Keep emails between 500-600 pixels wide – the message windows of popular web based email services such as MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail are 500-600 pixels in width. Wider emails will force the recipient to scroll horizontally.
• Use universally supported fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman.
• Use a font point size no smaller than 10
• Cascading File Sheets (CSS) – avoid using css if possible as many email clients do not render css correctly. If you have to use CSS then choose embedded styles known as inline. This means that the link to the style sheet is placed inside the HTML body tags.
• Include a link to a profile update that allows recipients to update their format preference.
• Message file size – aim to keep message size down to 40-50Kb

HTML Don’ts

• Do not include scripting
• Do not embed images in emails – images should be hosted this ensures proper rendering and minimises file size.
• Avoid using forms as these are stripped out by MSN/Hotmail
• Beware of using white as a font colour as many spam filters are suspicious of the white font tag as spammers often use white on a white background to hide information from recipients.
• Phishing is the online industry nickname for the effort to collect sensitive personal and financial information by sending forged emails that purport to be from authorised agencies such as a bank. Mozilla Thunderbird and AOL 9.0 feature phishing scam detection that will effect how your email is treated. These email clients look for where the display text is a URL. If the displayed text is different from the actual url then the recipient is alerted. Most email providers encode urls for essential tracking of clickthroughs therefore always use a word or phrase as the hyperlink anchor text.

The Subject line

Top Tip: Subject lines should be branded, brief and convey urgency

The Sender Line

Top Tip: Configure the Sender or “From” line to show the company or brand name
Email Marketing - The Message Body
• Always put the most important information at the top left.
• Place hyperlinks throughout the email and make sure that all images especially logos are clickable links – the more hyperlinks the better!
• Use images with strong calls to actions to encourage recipients to click through to the website.
• Use image Alt Tags so that recipients on dial up can see the information during loading.
• Make sure you have a balance of text and image links in case images are disabled.
Email Marketing - Measuring My Return on Investment
• Integrate your email campaigns with your web analytics programme so that you can track return on investment.
• Marketers who integrate web analytics with their email marketing programs improve the results of their campaigns.
• Campaigns that are integrated with web analytics on average produced much higher open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates.
Track the following metrics:
• E-mails sent
• E-mails delivered
• E-mails bounced (hard bounces, soft bounces)
• E-mails undelivered
• E-mail forwards
• HTML open rate
• HTML click through rate
• Text only click through rate
• Time and day of responses (as a chart)
• Unsubscribe requests

Email Marketing - Testing & Optimisation

• Time of email delivery is an important driver to campaign success. Avoid weekends when most spam email is sent.
• Wednesday is the most popular day for opening emails.

Good Calls To Action

2007-03-20T11:38:00.000Z

This post at grokdotcom.com compares the calls to action appearing on web browser sites:

"First off is the Firefox page. Their Call to Action does so many things right. The non-standard shape stands out from the background of the page, and has been given a persuasive color that draws the eyes to it. They've even used it to reinforce their brand. Within the Call to Action, Firefox lists the benefit and tells the visitor exactly what he is getting. Directly below the Call to Action, Firefox provides links that answer visitors' questions if they aren't quite ready to take the action Firefox wants them to take.

Opera is up next. There is a lot going on with this page, and the Call to Action isn't necessarily the main focal point on the page. The arrow doesn't necessarily speak to me, but the button is a bright green and stands out some. There are no links to answer visitors questions and the shape is pretty standard and ordinary. The shadowing certainly helps it stand out as something that should be clicked. Opera does a good job, but can certainly find ways to improve.

Example 3 last (and least) is Internet Explorer. The Call to Action doesn't stand out anywhere on the page. In fact, the only thing that stands out here is their branding. This seems to be all about them. The only thing they could have done to make it stand out less is placing blue text on a blue background. The key is having your Call to Action stand out. Microsoft needs to distinguish its Call to Action so people can tell that this is where they need to click to download their browser. Highlighting some text in blue isn't enough."

The post then goes on to out line a small number of recommendations for good calls to action: which should be:

*Distinctive - they should look different from other actions people can take on your page.
*Obvious - don't crowd your Calls to Action or confuse people by making the click anything less than intuitive.
*Communicate benefits. - tell people the value behind taking the action.

And the one I had not really thought about before and will be addressing from now on:

Answer questions - if there's a reason someone might hesitate to click, address it as Firefox does.

Good Calls To Action

2007-03-19T11:42:00.000Z

This post at grokdotcom.com compares the calls to action appearing on web browser sites:

"First off is the Firefox page. Their Call to Action does so many things right. The non-standard shape stands out from the background of the page, and has been given a persuasive color that draws the eyes to it. They've even used it to reinforce their brand. Within the Call to Action, Firefox lists the benefit and tells the visitor exactly what he is getting. Directly below the Call to Action, Firefox provides links that answer visitors' questions if they aren't quite ready to take the action Firefox wants them to take.

Opera is up next. There is a lot going on with this page, and the Call to Action isn't necessarily the main focal point on the page. The arrow doesn't necessarily speak to me, but the button is a bright green and stands out some. There are no links to answer visitors questions and the shape is pretty standard and ordinary. The shadowing certainly helps it stand out as something that should be clicked. Opera does a good job, but can certainly find ways to improve.
Example 3

Last (and least) is Internet Explorer. The Call to Action doesn't stand out anywhere on the page. In fact, the only thing that stands out here is their branding. This seems to be all about them. The only thing they could have done to make it stand out less is placing blue text on a blue background. The key is having your Call to Action stand out. Microsoft needs to distinguish its Call to Action so people can tell that this is where they need to click to download their browser. Highlighting some text in blue isn't enough."

The post then goes on to out line a small number of recommendations for good calls to action: which should be:

Distinctive - they should look different from other actions people can take on your page.
Obvious - don't crowd your Calls to Action or confuse people by making the click anything less than intuitive.
Communicate benefits. - tell people the value behind taking the action.

And the one I had not really thought about before and will be addressing from now on:

Answer questions - if there's a reason someone might hesitate to click, address it as Firefox does.

Target lawsuit tests limits of US web accessibility law

2006-10-02T09:20:00.000Z

A claim by disabled internet users that Target's website discriminates can proceed, a judge ruled last week. But she stopped short of suggesting that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) puts duties on all websites.

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), a non-profit group based in Baltimore, and one of its members, Bruce 'BJ' Sexton, a student in California, are suing the retail giant. The action was filed on behalf of all blind people in California who are denied access to Target.com.
The complaint cites various problems with Target.com: alt-text is missing from images, preventing screen readers from describing them to blind users; purchases cannot be completed without a mouse because keyboard controls do not work; image maps are inaccessible; and headings are missing that are needed to navigate. In short, the site is badly designed, says the NFB.

The lawsuit was brought in February, alleging breaches of the federal ADA and two state statutes, the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Californian Disabled Persons Act.
Target filed a motion to have the case dismissed. On Wednesday, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel dismissed that motion. But her ruling is not a hands-down victory for web accessibility: Patel did not rule that Target.com or any other website is required to be accessible; and she threw out part of the NFB lawsuit.

For full article from Outlaw.com see http://www.out-law.com/page-7285

New Toolbar PageRanks visible

2006-10-02T08:43:00.000Z

Here's a short post from Matt Cutts New Toolbar PageRanks visible: Roughly every 3-4 months we take a snapshot of PageRank values and export them so that the new values are visible in the Google Toolbar. I believe that another set of PageRanks started going out on Friday. New PageRanks are visible at many data centers, but not at every data center. Why not at every data center? Because some data centers are using a slightly older infrastructure for a few query types that are off the beaten path a bit (info:, link:, toolbar PageRank queries, etc.). Check you Google PR by installing the Google Toolbar

Top Sites in the UK

2006-08-17T15:13:00.000Z

Just been looking in at the Alexa Top 100 for the UK by traffic rank. The top 10 is dominated by US companies with the BBC flying the flag at #6. (reach/million in brackets)

1. http://www.google.co.uk/ (23,400)
2. http://www.yahoo.com/ (298,000)
3. http://www.ebay.co.uk/ (7,950)
4. http://www.google.com/ (278,000)
5. http://www.msn.com/ (256,000)
6. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (22,900)
7. http://www.myspace.com/ (37,650)
8. http://www.live.com/ (119,500)
9. http://www.amazon.co.uk/ (3,500)
10. http://www.wikipedia.org/ (47,550)

YouTube continues its remarkable success appearing at #11 and the Myspace wannabe Bebo at #17. Orange is the first real UK brand to appear in the list coming in at #15 with Autotrader next at #22. Guardian Unlimited performs strongly at #25 while the business directory Yell.com appears at #33

There is some evidence of Alexa’s slight geek bias with Digital Point Solutions at #47 The Register at #58 and SourceForge at #60

Microsoft adCenter to Launch in the U.K.

2006-08-14T12:59:00.000Z

Microsoft adCenter to Launch in the U.K.: "13 August 2006 Microsoft announced today that adCenter will launch in the U.K. this week! For the last couple of months they've been piloting in partnership with a number of U.K. advertisers which they claim has been a huge success. From Tuesday 15th August, Microsoft adCenter will serve 100% of paid search traffic on Microsoft online properties in the U.K., principally MSN Search and Windows Live Search. Paid search traffic on MSN Search will stop being delivered by Yahoo/Overture completely. A couple of inspiring quotes for you: 'We expect Microsoft adCenter to shake up the U.K. search advertising market--people now have a third option from a major online power. We're giving customers improved audience intelligence, increased conversion rates, and great customer service.' Sharon Baylay, General Manager, Microsoft Online Services Group 'Our trial of Microsoft adCenter has been a great success across a number of campaigns. We've seen very good return on investment compared to other search engines. We've also enjoyed an outstanding level of customer service, making the process of uploading and running adCenter campaigns very smooth." Jim Brigden, Managing Director at The Search Works"

Getting The Call From Google!!!

2006-08-09T15:34:00.000Z

I just got a call from Google - what a surprise. I didn't realise Google employed real people! But to receive a call out of the blue from the Google AdWords Jump Start team offering really useful help with AdWords was quite a shock. The person on the other end of the phone was really helpful offering to send reports and market research papers and to help build out my AdWords campaigns. Support lasts 30 days and is free of charge but is limited to advertisers spending over £30 per day. Higher level support is available to corporate customers spending over £150 per day which works out at something like £54,000 per year. I am guessing this is a reflection of how important pay-per-click revenue is to Google. I am also guessing that this new interest in customer service is connected with the iminent launch of Microsoft AdCenter in the UK sometime this month. We will keep you posted.

Google maintains top spot with 56% market share

2006-08-09T11:52:00.000Z

Google maintains top spot with 56% market share: "Google is still the UK's leading search portal with a 56% share of the market compared to Yahoo!'s 37% and MSN's 14%, according to data from Hitwise"

What are the Strongest Directories?

2006-08-08T09:04:00.000Z

This is a great article from the people at Aviva Directory who have applied the Seomoz page strength tool to rank the relative importance and visibility of paid directories. The top 10 were as follows:

dir.yahoo.com
www.dmoz.org (not a paid directory)
www.business.com
www.exactseek.com
www..elib.org
www.familyfriendlysites.com
www.uncoverthenet.com
www.botw.org
www.chiff.com
www.ezilon.com

For a more comprehensive list of directories take a look at this post from Bob Mutch.

Sitemaps to Google Webmaster Central

2006-08-07T08:35:00.000Z

Here's a great in depth review from SEOmoz of Google's new Webmaster Central service which replaces sitemaps (and including its old functionality). See the full article here. There's a lot of material to cover, so let's dive in: Above, we can see the start page for Google Webmaster Central once you've verified a site (this can be done by uploading an HTML file, or by editing a meta tag on the site). Once I'm in, I see both www.seomoz.org and seomoz.org are listed as verified, and there's the additional tools, including report spam and submit a re-iniclusion request. Almost ironic in its dichotomy, eh? Next, we've got the indexing summary page, showing me the variety of problems that Google's had when crawling the SEOmoz.org site. They give you the last crawl date and let me know that I should consider submitting a sitemap and reviewing the files they're having trouble accessing. When we dig a bit deeper, we can see exactly which pages they had trouble crawling full article.... For more info on how to use Google Sitemaps see www.ju2.com

Billy Bragg 1 - Rupert Murdoch 0

2006-08-04T14:51:00.000Z

Thanks to the people at Outlaw.com for giving an excuse for posting a story about Billy Bragg who has forced MySpace to change its terms and conditions. The site is owned by owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and changed its terms after lobbying by Bragg.
"With respect to the guys at MySpace I have to accept that within a week of me writing a letter to Music Week they had complied with my suggestion to change their terms and conditions, so more power to them, I respect that," Billy told OUT-LAW. "I think MySpace acted in the spirit of the internet." He has been campaigning for MySpace to change its terms and conditions, which seemed to give rights to music posted there to the Murdoch-backed company. Late last week the site did change its rules to reflect Bragg's wishes.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com & LookSmart Team to Fight Click Fraud

2006-08-03T15:16:00.000Z

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com & LookSmart Team to Fight Click Fraud: "Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com & LookSmart Team to Fight Click Fraud The top search engines are teaming up with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council in what may become a major effort to combat click fraud. Following a landmark click fraud class action suit against Google, search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live.com, Ask.com & LookSmart are making the effort to stop or control the spread of fraudulent clicking on sponsored link advertisements. The Click Measurement Working Group's mission is to establish guidelines for what constitutes valid clicks and invalid clicks on ads. Guidelines can help the industry measure how prevalent click fraud really is. Third-parties who sell click-fraud combatting services to advertisers claim that click fraud rates are as high as 30 percent.

Getting a Piece of the Podcast Pie

2006-07-28T20:53:00.000Z

Getting a Piece of the Podcast Pie: " Podcasting and blogging have proven to be explosive phenomena. Last year 'podcast' was declared word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary -- having only been coined in 2004. Consumer interest is huge; comedian Ricky Gervais recently beat his own record for the most downloaded podcast, with an average 261,670 downloads per episode. With Microsoft confirming that it intends to roll out an MP3 device to rival Apple's iPod under the brand name 'Zune,' the market is undoubtedly set to grow.

Microsoft to Distribute IE7 as Automatic Update

2006-07-27T20:15:00.000Z

Microsoft to Distribute IE7 as Automatic Update: " Microsoft on Wednesday announced its intent to distribute Internet Explorer 7 as a 'high-priority' update through Automatic Updates for Windows XP. The software giant's goal is to help its customers browse the Web in more secure environments. 'To ensure users are prepared to upgrade, AU will notify users when IE7 is ready to install and show a welcome screen that presents key features and choices to 'Install,' 'Don't Install,' or 'Ask Me Later,'' Microsoft Group Program Manager Tony Chor wrote in Microsoft's IEBlog."

Microsoft adCenter First Impressions

2006-07-27T20:14:00.000Z

Here's a generally positive post reporting on Microsofts new pay-per-click service. Microsoft adCenter is not available in the UK until sometime in August 2006. Also note that the anticipated launch of Yahoos updated service has been delayed until the beginning of 2007. Microsoft adCenter First Impressions: "A few short months ago Microsoft quietly introduced adCenter, their Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform. My first impressions of adCenter are relatively positive. Based mostly on the setup process here are my thoughts on the newest player in the PPC industry.

Click Fraud Settlement Approved

2006-07-27T20:09:00.000Z

Click Fraud Settlement Approved: An Arkansas state judge on Wednesday granted final approval to a class-action settlement between Google and advertisers who alleged Google allowed third parties to drive up fees by fraudulent use of its Web search advertising system. Google will have to pay up to $90 million in online credits to customers and legal fees, according to court documents. The Google settlement hearing is part of a broader legal action by plaintiff Lane's Gifts and Collectibles originally filed in February 2005 against Internet advertising industry players over the issue of so-called "click fraud". However, in March, Google broke ranks with its pay=per-click competitors electing to pay up to $90 million in a settlement. In June Yahoo reached a preliminary settlement in a separate "click fraud" lawsuit filed in California.

Google, Yahoo, MSN what's the difference?

2006-06-20T13:36:00.000Z

X-Ranks: The shaping battle of quality methodologies: "It's been a long time coming but a picture is beginning to emerge of how the Big Four search engines really differ from each other in terms of ranking algorithms. Yahoo! remains the most secretive of the engines. Google's increasingly complex algorithm is the best documented, though least well-understood. When Yahoo! brought out its own search engine (April 2003), it supposedly combined the best features of Altavista, AllTheWeb, and Inktomi's technologies. Inktomi was the first major search engine to place significance on linkage. Inktomi relied on true, unweighted link popularity. Altavista's chief strength, in my opinion, lay in its ability to..."

Google Calling: Click-to-Call and the Future of Paid Search

2006-06-19T22:03:00.000Z

Google Calling: Click-to-Call and the Future of Paid Search: "You may notice a new icon while cruising the Google search results this summer. Once again, Google will be testing a Click-to-Call feature.Expected to be in place by the end of June, the Click-to-Call phone icon will appear to the right of select paid search results. The phone icon indicates that the searcher can speak directly to the business indicated in the ad.Here's how it works: when a searcher clicks the phone icon they will be asked to type in their phone number. Then the searcher clicks 'connect' and Google calls the number they provided. Once the searcher picks up their phone they will hear ringing on the other end as Google connects them to the company running the ad.The call itself is free to the searcher and the company. However, the company will be paying on a pay-per-click (to-call) basis.For the searcher, Google Click-to-Call will provide an alternative to traditional internet sales and service by allowing the searcher to speak directly with the company of interest. The feature will also give skeptical searchers"

How Web Analytics Can Increase Sales and Profitability

2006-06-15T15:17:00.000Z

Why analyse your site? Most companies measure their web activity because they have an interest in how well their marketing and advertising budget is being spent. Your average online business manager is likely to be responsible for email marketing, banner advertising, pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation, internal search, developing content, usability and online branding. How can you hope to make good decisions with out data?

Whether you’re in charge of site design and development, usability, marketing, customer communication, customer support, lead generation or online sales you need web analytics to help inform your job. What is web analytics? Web analytics is the statistical analysis of every individual visit to your website. It is a powerful way of understanding how people are interacting with your organisation online. Web Analytics also measures marketing channel effectiveness enabling you to maximise your marketing spend.

Fundamental to web analytics is a technique called conversion funnel analysis which looks at how visitors pass through the stages in your site from the home page through to payment. Funnel analysis looks at progression rates identifying poorly performing pages that loose you customers and sales. Ongoing development and monitoring of your websites key conversion funnels will help you maximise your sales.

Web analytics can measure the performance of your site against your business objectives and provides you with the information dashboard you need to drive the sales and profitability of your company.

To find out more about how web analytics can help your company's profits visit www.ju2.com/web_analytics.html

Net Advertising to overtake national newspapers

2006-05-31T15:40:00.000Z

An article in today's Guardian newspaper reports that the internet will account for 13.3% of the £12.2 billion UK advertising market overtaking the national newspapers at 13.2%. Thats a whopping £1.6 billion. Athough the gap could be even bigger because this figure does not include the £1 billion spent on affiliate marketing. Whats more search advertising in particular is highly targetted at potential customers who are already searching for an advertisers products or services. Want to learn more about how pay per click advertising can help grow your business contact us at www.ju2.com

Microsoft adCenter UK Launch

2006-05-27T09:57:00.000Z

The JU2 offices got a call from adCentre this week conducting some market research regards their proposition. Microsoft's expected launch of their pay per click advertising service in the UK has been put back from June to August 2006. We'll let you know what we think of their offering soon.

Jim Williams
Managing Director
www.ju2.com

Microsoft (MSN) adCenter to Pilot in UK June 2006

2006-05-08T16:56:00.000Z

Microsoft (MSN) adCenter to Pilot in UK June 2006: Discovery reports at Search Engine Watch Forums that MSN adCenter, now known as Microsoft adCenter is to pilot in the United Kingdom in June 2006. Microsoft adCenter recently came out of beta and part of that beta launch was the the announcement that the UK can play with it in June. For advice on ppc contact us at www.ju2.com

Yahoo Upgrades Search Marketing Product

2006-05-08T16:51:00.000Z

Yahoo Upgrades Search Marketing Product: "ClickZ reports Yahoo will today announce a series of upgrades to its Yahoo Search Marketing platform.Upgrades being rolled-out include:...keyword grouping enhancements, IP-based mapping features to support geo-targeting, better scheduling capabilities, the expression of business goals such as cost-per-acquisition, and indirect conversion tracking.Yahoo also plans to move to a quality-based ranking model, which we reported they were testing, and which they denied existed."

JU2 can give you advice on how to take advantage of pay per click advertising.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Go For CTR Model!

2006-05-05T08:58:00.000Z

We read rumours that Yahoo! Search Marketing formerly Overture are testing a new algorithm that ranks PPC ads based on CTR and max CPC similar to Google AdWords. Up till now Yahoo! have ranked ads by bid with the highest bidder getting the top spot. Google operates a much more sophisticated model where the ad placement is ranked by CTR, Ad Relevance and max CPC. Watch this space. Yahoo! PPC could be about to get much more interesting

For more info on possible implications to your ad campaigns contact us at www.ju2.com

Is this the Future of Online Advertising?

2006-05-04T09:22:00.000Z

Forget Banners, Half Banners, Skyscapers etc check out what could be the next big thing in online advertising from Rovion's inPerson technology . This isn't the first ad technology to live outside the box. In many ways, inPerson is similar to floating ads, which have wooed advertisers for years. The difference lies in the way inPerson is typically used. Advertisers who employ spokespeople or recognizable characters can use inPerson to better interact with their target audience and appear more true to life. Great for emplying those fantastic calls to action.

Google AdWords for Wineries: How NOT to do it

2006-04-20T19:14:00.000Z

Here's a good article about the importance of using appopriate landing page when using Google AdWords. If you are going to spend money on Google AdWords, you need to preserve the "scent" of what your visitor is searching for. The page they land on needs to preserve continuity and minimize distraction. This is exactly what you would do in a face-to-face situation with a customer. When someone is looking for Pinot Noir send them to the information they are looking for otherwise you'll get the click through but not the conversion.

(By the way, if you're using Google AdWords, and the person taking care of your Web site doesn't know how to set up a search-specific landing page, you need to find someone who does.)

Jim Williams
Managing Director
www.ju2.com

Starwood Blog Misses the Point

2006-04-13T17:11:00.000Z

Starwood Blog Misses the Point: "Starwood Hotels and Resorts is the first major hotel company to make the leap into the blogosphere, says the Wall Street Journal, with a blog called TheLobby.com. "

The Del.icio.us Digg Effect

2006-04-03T09:30:00.000Z

Mark Daoust wrote an interesting article on the effect of social bookmarking. The basic concept behind social bookmarking is that when thousands of people get together, bookmark their favorite pages, and apply descriptive tags to each page that they bookmark, certain websites will rise to the top as being more popular. The result of this is that surfers will be able to see what websites are currently popular among users.

Check out Del.icio.us and Digg which are the most successful social bookmarking sites. Why should you be interested? Well these 2 sites can deliver 1000s of extra visitors per day to your site.

So check out the full article and get Digging!

Google Analytics Challenged to Stay Unbiased

2006-03-21T15:18:00.000Z

Here's the first of a series of articles in E Commerce Times on Web Analytics E-Commerce News: E-Marketing : Google Analytics Challenged to Stay Unbiased The article contains background on the Web Analytics marketplace and on Google Analytics.

For more information on Web Analytics visit http://www.ju2.com/web_analytics.html

Web Analytics: Client-Side, Server-Side or Hosted?

2006-03-21T14:33:00.000Z

Here's one of a series of articles in E-Commerce Times on Web Analytics E-Commerce News: E-Marketing : Web Analytics: Client-Side, Server-Side or Hosted?. This article discusses the pros and cons of various ways of setting up data collection. At www.ju2.com we offer clients the choice of Client-Side, Hosted and Server-Side data collection. For more information visit www.ju2.com/web_analytics.html

Eurostar Set Up A Marketing Blog

2006-03-21T14:19:00.000Z

This link Voice of a City Paris takes you to Eurostar's new marketing blog. Its a rare example of a company using a blog as a marketing tool. Seems to be only for Paris at the moment but clearly London will be next. We've not had much time to read it yet but it looks to be well populated. It would be fascinating to find out what bsuiness objectives they are trying to acheive. Also interesting to see the effect it has on backlinks etc - will keep you posted.

Want to learn more about using blogs as a part of you web strategy talk to us at www.ju2.com

Find Products for Your Customers Not the Other Way Around!!! - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video

2006-03-21T14:03:00.000Z

Seth Godin is the author of six bestsellers, including Permission Marketing, an Amazon Top 100 bestseller for a year and a Fortune Best Business Book. His newest book, All Marketers are Liars, has already made the Amazon Top 100. Watch this video of Seth talking to the people at Google.

"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video

Its packed full of good ideas on online and offline marketing and talks about how to give your customers somethimg remarkable to talk about. For me the presentation is summed up in the phrase "Find products for you customers not customers for your products"

Pay Per Click Adopted by 80 Percent of Advertisers

2006-03-08T20:09:00.000Z

For the full report go to Center for Media Research but the top line is that pay per click is the fastest growing advertising sector growing 26% in the last year. Print spending grew by 3.3% and TV/Radio 2.4% both losing share. Pay per click is now used by 80% of advertisers, a massive adoption rate not broadly acknowledged. Its expected that this figure will be 90% by 2008. Google is generally though to be more effective than Yahoo! & MSN

Total online marketing spending will grow by 19% in 2006, 8 times TV/Radio and 6 times Print. Blog marketing spending is still small accounting for less than 2% of online budget but is expected to grow 43% next year.

According to Outsells Advertising Tracking database the breakdown in marketing spend in 2005 looked like this: Print Media 29.2%, Events 22.7%, Online 16.2% and TV& Radio 31.9%.

Jim Williams www.ju2.com

Microsoft Rolls Out Revamped Search Engine

2006-03-08T19:31:00.000Z

E Commerce Times reports on the roll out of Microsoft's new search engine Windows Live Search which marks a shift in Microsoft strategy away from software towards online products.

The key goal with the new search engine will be to give people more control over how they search for information. New features include:

(1) A search slider bar that offers previews of data in various forms, perhaps just the Internet address of a Web site, or a snippet of text. As the slider is adjusted, more or less information appears.
(2) A "smart scroll" function that displays all search results at once rather than on separate pages.
(3) Various ways to view pictures, as small "thumbnail" shots or full-sized images.
(4) An ability for users to save their search parameters as macros that can be run to perform the same search in the future. Microsoft promise that people will be able to publish their search macros so people with similar interests can use them.

All exciting stuff lets see what it looks like. The market will decide!!!

Jim Williams www.ju2.com

How to Design an Adwords Campaign that Works

2006-03-07T22:41:00.000Z

Setting up an Adwords campaign is easy isn’t it? You bid on your chosen key words and the visitors will come rolling in. Well it’s not quite like that and its all because of the fiendish way Google decides when and at what position to display your ad.

Your ad is ranked on search results and content pages based on various performance factors, including maximum cost-per-click (CPC), clickthrough rate (CTR), and the relevance of your ad text to the keyword you have chosen to sponsor. The name of the game is to write relevant ad text, have a high CPC and a strong CTR.

How do you achieve all this? The answer is structure. The Adwords service has a strict hierarchy. First up you will need to set up an account, each account can be divided into campaigns and each campaign has at least one Ad Group. The Ad Group contains the keywords and is associated with the actual advertising placement.

The maximum CPC is similar to the bid on Overture and it is directly related to your available budget and can be set for individual keywords or automatically budget optimised across a whole campaign.

The CTR of your ads depends entirely on how well you write the ad copy. Using the keyword prominently is a good idea. If you’re looking for “blue widgets” then you’re more likely to click an ad with “blue widgets” in the title and ad copy than one mentioning “red widgets”. Having a strong call to action is also a good idea so go for words like “get”, “buy”, “order” and “purchase”. The third part of the equation is relevancy which means that your copy needs to relevant to the keyword and here’s where the structure comes in.

You need to group your keywords in closely themed ad groups so that you can write relevant text. It would be difficult to write relevant text for blue widgets and red widgets so set up different ad groups one for blue widgets and one for red ones. If you end up with 50 Ad Groups with one or two keywords only don’t worry. This might seem like a lot of work to start with but it will make you life a whole lot easier in the long run because the structure gives you control.

At campaign level you can target Ad Groups to geographical regions so if you’re products are called widgets in the UK and something else in the US. Don’t panic! You can set up a campaign called “Widgets US” and create Ad Groups based around US terminology.

You should also take a look at keyword matching. If you want to advertise on the phrase “French lessons” you probably don’t want to display ads or get click throughs from people looking for “French polishing lessons”. You can handle this by adding negative matching on the word “polishing” so you ad group would contain the keywords “French lessons” and “-polishing”. This action will reduce your ad impressions but increase your CTR and ranking and save you cash. Use the Google Keyword Tool to identify possible negative keywords they’ll always be pretty obvious and sometimes surprising too!

Now with the structure in place you can activate the campaign and see what happens. You’re going to have to manage the campaign quite closely at first but pretty quickly you’ll see which ad groups are performing. When you find an ad group that has low CTR change the text or even better create a new ad group containing the same keywords. Then write some new text taking a look at your competition for tips,. Running two parallel ad groups will allow you to objectively identify the ad placements that work best for your campaign.

If you want more advice on running pay per click advertising campaigns take a look at www.ju2.com

Web Content Mass + Keyword Optimization + Links = SEO

2006-03-07T22:32:00.000Z

How does web content really affect SEO? It's often said that the answer is simply that content does not affect SEO very much–it's all about more technical issues. Yet a website's content still plays an enormous and fairly direct role in search engine ranking.
Of course, the whole goal of the search engines' ranking schemes is precisely to deliver good, relevant content to users. The mechanism for how search engines select and reward good, relevant content is essentially just a technical issue, though admittedly an extremely important technical issue.

But even in purely technical, mechanistic, terms, web content affects search engine rankings three ways:

1. inbound links 2. website mass 3. keyword optimization

1. Web Content and Inbound Links

Inbound links are the number-one factor in getting search engine rankings. They also yield plenty of traffic on their own. The importance of links is what has led many people to say that content is no longer important. But those people forget that content really does play a big role in getting links in the first place:

At the very least, good content will make potential link partners more comfortable with linking to your site. No one wants to link to a link farm, splog, junk site, or even just an unprofessional-looking site. Lots of good content gives other webmasters (and particularly bloggers) a reason to link to your site spontaneously without being asked. You can allow other websites to post your content in exchange for a link back to your site.

2. Web Content Mass

More web pages of content = more search engine traffic

Here’s why:

Adding pages to your site is like putting out extra nets to catch surfers. Search engines see bigger websites as more prestigious and reliable. The more content you have, the more reasons you give other webmasters, particularly bloggers, to link to your site spontaneously, without being asked.

3. Web Content Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization used to be the most important step in SEO. Now it matters little in ranking for highly competitive keywords.

Still, keyword optimization can really help you get traffic from searches not on competitive keywords. While you may never rank number 1 for "finance," you may still show up tops for a search on "household finance rent federal tax deductions" if you have that phrase somewhere in your content. Such non-competitive searches make up a very large proportion of total web searches.

Web Content Keyword Optimization Checklist:

There are four legs to keyword optimization:

* Research/selection * Density * Prominence * Stemming/Variation

Keyword Research and Selection

You need to identify keywords searched on by your target audience. Use tools such as those offered by WordTracker and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture).

There are two big pitfalls to avoid:

* "Negative keywords" that look relevant but are not really searched on by your target market. For instance, "website copy" is a synonym for "website content," but most people searching on "website copy" are looking for software that copies an entire website to the hard drive for offline browsing.

* Impossibly competitive keywords that you have no realistic chance of ranking high for them. How do you know if a keyword is impossibly competitive? One rough measure is to look at the PageRank of the webpages currently ranking in the top three for that keyword. If the PageRank of those pages is much higher than the PageRank your site will likely have in the future, you will probably never outrank those pages.

A pay-per-click campaign with Google Adwords of Yahoo! Search Marketing will help you to find which keywords really are searched on by your target audience.

Keyword Density

Keywords appear in the content the right number of times for search engines to recognize the page as relevant, but not so often that it looks like keyword stuffing. The longer the content, the more times the keyword should appear.

Keyword Prominence

Keywords appear in just the right positions within your web pages for search engines to recognize them as relevant. The page title, headings, and first lines of the page are often considered the most prominent positions.

Keyword Stemming/Keyword Variation

* Using variations of the keyword will help ensure web pages appear relevant to the next generation of more sophisticated search engine algorithms.

* In the meantime, variations of popular keywords helps your site appear for the "non-standard" searches on variations of the keyword.

There are three main types of keyword variations:

* Word-stem variations. A stem of a word is its base. For instance, "optimize" is the stem of "optimized." Other stem variations of "optimize" include "optimizing," "optimizer," and "optimization." You can also shuffle the component words of multiple-word keywords. Variations of “website content” would be “web site content,” “web content,” “content for websites,” and “site content”).

* Synonyms (such as “web page content,” “internet content,” or “writing for the web” for “website content”).

* Related terms (such as “internet,” “SEO” or “web page”).

For many people, the SEO side of content feels like a moot point. You need to create content for your visitors even if no search engine spider ever notices. But there is a case to be made that an extra page of content is good not just for visitors but search engine spiders, too. Every website budget, both of money and time, is finite. If you're ever choosing whether to invest in another link to please search engines or another page of content to please your visitors, don't forget: search engines still like content, too.

About the author: Joel Walsh is a writer and owner of UpMarket Content, a website content provider. Request a no-cost, no-obligation proposal for your website content www.UpMarketContent.com

Want to know more about SEO for your site speak to us at JU2 or take a look at www.ju2.com

Web Analytics And Why They're Important

2006-03-02T22:22:00.000Z

What’s the difference between web stats and web analytics? It’s a question we hear all the time. Well web stats can give you lots of information on traffic, search engine referrals and page downloads but they can be difficult to interpret by the average business user. Web Analytics on the other hand gives detailed information on visitor behaviour and is a much richer source of information for marketers.

Typically web analytics solutions collect session information for every visitor to your website. This data can then be analysed pretty much in any way you want. So you can find out which search engine and queries people are using to find you. But you can also study the behaviour of those users who went on to sign up to your service or make a purchase. Users can be segmented and followed through the site to identify patterns of behaviours. These patterns of behaviour can then help to identify which pages or content produce most sales or show up usability issues which cause users to exit your site.

Combine this with ability to overlay visitor data over a live copy of your website and you have a really powerful tool for developing your web strategy. Perhaps you have a button on your homepage that you want visitors to click on and download a demo piece of software? The click through rate on this button is probably an important metric for your business. Does your web stats package tell you what the click through on this button is? Web analytics will not only tell you this but also allow you to track this metric over time. May be you decide to make the button more prominent or change the call to action. The analytics can tell you whether these changes have worked and suddenly you’re developing your site using objective information with a clear business strategy in mind.

If you manage some pay per click campaigns you are probably tracking the average cost per clicks you might even be using Google Conversion Tracking to give you some idea of the return on your advertising investment. Most web analytics packages can do this for Adwords and Overture but also for email campaigns as well so that you know which campaigns are the most profitable or effective in achieving your business objectives. However the real advantage over conversion tracking is that web analytics tells you what the visitor gets up to between the landing and final check out page.

With out web analytics you are pretty much driving your website blind but for a relatively small investment you can get the full dashboard plus satellite navigation.

To find out more about how web analytics can help your online business go to http://www.ju2.com/

Search Engine Marketing - The Full Package

2006-03-02T21:06:00.000Z

After conducting extensive research I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the subject of Search Engine Marketing. The greatest misunderstanding is in confusing the terms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

One would think that those individuals claiming to be SEO experts should be knowledgeable about the subject and recognize the clear distinction. Apparently this is not the case; the internet is full of misguided information, from so called experts. Proving, I suppose that the industry is liberally spattered with cowboys.

To start, let us first define the term “Search Engine Optimisation” (henceforth referred to as SEO). SEO is the process of manipulating the structure and content of a website in such a way that it will perform better in the search engine’s organic listings. The techniques involved can be sub-structured into several areas of activity, as detailed below.

1) Page readiness – Search engines expect to crawl clean HTML code. Every page of a website should be validated to eliminate errors and sloppy coding.
2) Site readiness – Search engine web bots follow the links on your web pages and thereby find new pages to index. If a web bot meets a broken link it cannot continue spidering your site. Make sure you have no broken links. Also, provide a site map. A tool for creating site maps is available at my website, proSEO Zone.
3) Keyword selection – It is vitally important to select the right keywords for which a particular page is to be optimized. The most obvious keywords are not always the best choice, and are often mega-competitive. Choose wisely.
4) Site structure – Your website should be structured in such a way that each page can be optimized for a maximum of two keywords. Do not try to optimize for a lot of keywords on one page. Remember, you have to write for your users. Writing copy is a balancing act that keeps both users and search engines happy, and is better achieved on a well structured site.
5) Copy writing – the visible text on your web pages should be structured to include the two most important keywords for that page’s content. Get the keywords into headers. Work the keywords into paragraph text, having your keywords appear near the beginning, near the middle, and near the end. Make some keywords bold, some italic and some underlined.
6) HTML tags – The most important of these is the Title tag. Get both keywords for that page into the Title tag, without repetition. For example, if your main key phrase is “diet plans”, and your second phrase is “diet supplements”, the Title tag should read “diet plans and supplements”. Do not repeat the word diet, to search engines it may look like spamming. If your main concern is to improve your Google ranking, you may have overlooked the Meta keywords and Meta description tags, don’t, there are more search engines than Google and they can all bring traffic. Also, get the keywords into H1 tags, H2 tags, alt attributes, and very important, your link text.

And after doing all that for every page in your website you may be asking: so where does SEM come in?

SEM includes SEO plus all the other things you can do to boost your visibility in the search engines and increase targeted visitors to your website. A condensed list may be as follows:

1) SEO (see above).
2) A link building strategy
3) Pay per click (PPC) campaigns.
4) Banner exchanges.
5) Press releases.
6) And any other activity that will get your website noticed. SEM then, is the full package.

Whereas SEO techniques are a vital, but not the only, component of that package.

Richard Brennan is a search engine optimisation and marketing consultant, and founder of proSEO Zone. proSEO Zone specialise in improve Google ranking techniques.

For more information on Search Engine Marketing go to www.ju2.com

Blogging for Business

2006-03-02T20:58:00.001Z

While there are some exceptions to the rule, a blog can help most businesses. Weather you're blogging to help promote a political party, blogging to market a dinner preparation business or blogging to offer debt advice for your visitors, the effort needed to maintain a blog is usually outweighed by the results that it delivers. So how can you use blogging to your advantage? After installing your blog you'll simply post information relevant to your web site that will be useful to other people on a regular basis. This information can range from currently events in your industry to tips that people can use to better their business or themselves. This helps to keep both your web site visitors and the search engine spiders coming back on a regular basis because your content is updated more frequently. It can also help your web site to be viewed as a resource, and as a result other web sites will often link to it. Over time you will have developed a substantial archive of useful information, along the way you will develop more loyal visitors and improve your ranking in the search engines. If you're ready to get started you can take a look at Blogger, Wordpress or b2evolution. These are the three most common blog programs and are powerful, customizable and free. The installation is pretty straight forward and you should be able to have a blog up and running in just a few hours — though customizing the appearance may take a bit longer. Once everything is in place you'll just have to link to your blog from your main web site and then start posting on a regular basis.

Article provided by www.wildfiremarketinggroup.com/

Craig's List Murders Newspapers

2006-03-01T11:07:00.000Z

Ever heard of Craig's List? If you're in the local newspaper industry you should have! Craigslist started in 1995 as an e-mail newsletter that Craig Newmark sent to friends informing them of San Francisco cultural events. As interest grew, the newsletter became an online flea and job market and an essential community bulletin board. Now almost every major city in the US has its own list and its also growing in Europe too. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as other UK cities have their own Craigslists.

The list contains small ads on anything from bikes to musical instruments as well as not so small ads for houses, rented apartments, cars and business services. Their are job vacancies, personals, community chat rooms and information on gigs and local events. In fact Craigslist is performing the role traditionally played by the local newspaper and it is said that the Craigslist has bought the local newspaper market to its knees in the US.

However, if you're not in newspapers, Craigslist is a fantastic cost free way of advertising what ever you have to sell. For further information on marketing opportunities on the web take a look at www.ju2.com

Its Goodbye to the Butler.

2006-02-27T20:18:00.000Z

Say good bye to the butler - Jeeves is being retired as Ask.com roll out their re-branding. As part of their re-branding exercise Ask.com have rolled-out a whole host of new features.

The New Homepage has a sleek new design, which is cleaner and more straightforward. But more importantly contains shortcuts to more than 20 new search tools, including maps, images, weather, dictionary, local and desktop search. Due to a hectic weekend we at JU2 towers have yet to play around with any of these features but we did notice a new blogging tool. We’ll keep you posted.

For further information on what search engine marketing can do for your business take a look at www.ju2.com

Keyword Selection - Overture vs Wordtracker?

2006-02-21T17:11:00.000Z

“Why are the Overture and Wordtracker figure always so different? Good Question!”

Selecting effective keywords is vital to any search engine optimisation campaign. Finding keywords that are going to be effective in attracting the right visitors to your website is a matter of trying to put yourself in the mind of your potential customers. How do you find out which search queries your customers use to search for your products or services? Well you can ask your customers directly but properly designed market research doesn’t come cheap. You can look at your web statistics although this only tells you the phrases used by visitors who have already successfully found your website. It tells you nothing about the hordes of potential customers who gave up or went to one of your competitors. What other tools do you have at your disposal?

Most search engine optimisation professionals rely on the Overture Keyword Analysis Tool and Wordtracker. If you enter “swimming pool” into Overture you get 46,239 searches for January 2006. Compare this to Wordtracker which returns 1914 searches. Why the disparity? To understand this you need to understand how Overture and Wordtracker arrive at these figures.

The Overture Keyword Analysis Tool is designed to help advertisers choose effective keywords as part of a Yahoo Search Marketing pay per click adverting campaign. It gives you the total number of times a search query has been entered into a search engines with-in the Overture network in the previous calendar month and includes searches from Yahoo! Search, AltaVista and MSN as well as others. On the other hand Wordtracker gets its figure from entries made on Metacrawler and Dogpile - meta search engines that query all the major engines simultaneously.

Also because of the way Overture provides search results to its partners a single search often generates multiple queries. On top of this Overture combines plural, singular, upper and lower case searches where queries can have potential entirely different meanings. While searches can also be inflated by automated queries by tools such as automated bid optimisers, search engine ranking monitors and some web analytics packages to name but a few.

How can you minimise the effect of duplicates and automated queries? Do what Wordtracker does and go to the meta search engines. Metacrawler and Dogpile, have a much higher ratio of human to automated queries because there is little value in pointing auto-bots at them. Automated bid optimisers, and search engine ranking monitors are typically conducted directly at the search engines themselves. Additionally, duplicate searches are eliminated because query counts are being tabulated from a single source instead of combining results from a network of partners. Unfortunately though the Dogpile and Metacrawler combined market share in January 2006 was less than 0.75% and are seen as niche search engines whose users tend to be much more technically literate than your average Yahoo user – can you assume that searches on Dogpile are similar to Yahoo? Probably not!

What’s the answer? Providing you understand that Overture and Wordtracker are measuring different things both tools are an invaluable help in selecting effective keywords for your search engine optimisation campaign.

For more information on keyword research and selection contact Jim Williams at http://www.ju2.com/ or call 0845 890 8855

Which half of your advertising is working – it’s the online half!

2006-02-13T19:50:00.000Z

Ever wanted to find out which half of your advertising budget is working for your business? The trouble with traditional TV advertising, radio, mail shots etc is that it’s very difficult to measure return on investment. Who knows which ad is bringing in the sales and which one is loosing you shed loads of money? Increasingly businesses are using internet search marketing techniques to promote their products and services. Search marketing is a set of marketing methods used to increase the visibility of a website in search engines. Pay per click advertising accounted for 83 percent of the $5.75 billion invested in search marketing in the US in 2005. Pay per click advertisers sponsor specific search terms to display their ad paying only when a visitor clicks through to their website. Google’s Adwords service has the lion’s share of the market accounting for 40 percent of all searches.

But why is pay per click advertising growing so fast? For one thing it’s highly targeted only displaying ads to searchers already looking to purchase your product. But unlike traditional forms of advertising it can be shown to work. Advertisers can track visitors entering their online shop and follow them right through the store to the checkout. Not only does this give marketers valuable insight into customer behaviour but it can also answer that age old conundrum – which bit of my advertising works? Precise information on the cost of each click through, on conversion rates and on the value of online transactions can be used to calculate the return on advertising spend or ROAS with a high level of accuracy.

Suddenly, you have, at your finger tips, all information that you need to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. Designing an effective pay per click campaign and installing the tracking software can be tricky. Selection of sponsored keywords, structuring the campaign and writing relevant ad copy are all important to get right. If you don’t have online marketing skills in house there are a growing number of specialised web strategy consultants out there that can help.

Which half of your advertising is working – it’s the online half!

For more information on setting up effective pay per click campaigns speak take a look at www.ju2.com/pay_per_click or call 0845 890 8855

Google Sitemap Generators

2006-02-09T20:02:00.000Z

Can't make my mind up about Google Sitemaps as the jury still seems to be out as whether they make any difference to search engine optimisation for your average website. Probably useful for large dynamic ecommerce sites but for your average punter I am not sure what the value is. Although to be honest half the problem was with our perception that they were a lot of hassle. Well that's all changed I have found a couple of really good tools that create a sitemap in seconds - check out PortalApp and Sitemapspal and there's a list of other third party tools and CMS plug-ins at http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html. I'll let you know how we get on.

Jim at www.ju2.com

BMW Removed from Google

2006-02-09T12:56:00.000Z

Google claim to be getting serious with spammers internationally. This week Google caught a high profile spammer red handed. BMW.de were discovered using dodgy JavaScripted cloaking techniques to mislead the Goolgebot and were consequently thrown out of the Google listings. Read Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Ramping up on international webspam to get the details direct from Google. However it seems that BMW quickly submitted a reinclusion request and are back in the listings already. Would a smaller company get such a quick reponse we ask ourselves? I wonder what BMW said to their SEO company? Are they still working for BMW?

Accessibility Case in the US

2006-02-09T12:22:00.000Z

A student in California with help from the National Federation of the Blind are suing the retailer Target.com claiming discrimination as their retail web site is inaccessible to the blind. The lawsuit charges that the alleged lack of access violates two California laws, the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Disabled Persons Act.

Take a look at the news story as it appeared on NBC .

The case rests on the lack of image Alt Tags - labels that appear when you mouse over an image on a site. Alt tags are easy to add and are not rocker science. This simple ommission may lead to a large fines and legal fees. Which goes to show how accessibility is being treated seriously in the US. In the UK we are still waiting for a test case but incorporating accessibility features into your website is not expensive - so don't be caught!!

Get your site some "Link Bait"

2006-01-25T11:24:00.000Z

Here’s an interesting idea from Bill Hartzer at www.searchengineguide.com on Link Bait although he originally read about it at www.seobook.com. Link bait is particularly useful if like many of our clients you are in a competitive field and you are finding it difficult to build links naturally. What really is link bait? It's something on your web site that causes someone to link to you. Although I hate to promote Burger Kink on this blog check out www.subservientchicken.com which was so popular that it got 24,000 links and ranked 1# on Google for the term "chicken". Other examples include the case of an employee of a high tech company with lots of competition. Ring any bells? Andrew took his digital camera to an industry convention where he took photos of many of the attendees, the booths, and some of the after-hours events. Although there may be some privacy issues here he posted the photos on his web site, sent out a few emails to his colleagues and other industry insiders he met at the convention. Before he knew it, most of Andrew's competitors were linking to his web site and the photos he took.

We've even got some advice and more examples on the subject of link bait from Matt Cutts at Google so we'll be definitely brainstorming some link bait ideas over the next couple of weeks to see if we can come up with some ideas of our own.

www.ju2.com
http://ju2ltd.blogspot.com

Rumours of Google PR Update

2006-01-25T11:05:00.000Z

Keeping an eye on the blogosphere today I have picked up rumours that Google has updated the backlinks for numerous sites. Apparently there was definitely an update this week which makes it around 95 days since Google did their last PR update. The longest wait for a Google Page Rank update was 111 days. It seems that Goggles has also started indexing and de-indexing sites which means that in the next couple of days we expect to see changes in Google ranks for our client sites.

www.ju2.com
www,ju2ltd.blogosphere.com

RSS Specifications

2006-01-23T20:12:00.000Z

Whilst submitting the JU2 Web strategy Blog to long list of RSS and blog directories I discovered www.rss-specifications.com which contains enormous amounts of information on RSS and its history. To quote from the homepage "This site is a comprehensive rss reference detailing everything you need to know about RSS." More importantly for me it contains a comprehensive list of directroies where you can submit you feed with direct links to the submission pages. This is good as some submission links are purposely difficult to find to discourage spamming. - but you can find them all here. Haven't had chance to read everything on the site because there is just so much. But it seems to be great for an introduction to subject or more detailed research and who knows it may help you to take the next step and get blogging.

Check Spellings

2006-01-23T11:56:00.000Z

Use this too l to quickly check the spelling on your webpages.

Blogs SEO and RSS Directories

2006-01-23T11:19:00.000Z

The guys at v9designbuild.com posted this article reporting on how they had incorporated a blog into clients website. In the article they point out that the days of of reciprocals links, unless of specific benefit, are now gone - thankfully.

To increase link popularity v9designbuild.com installed WordPress as a seamless addition to their clients website, filled it with highly relevant copy, with Technorati trackbacks, registered all of its pages with Google Sitemap and submitted to a hundred or more news aggregators. Blogs now dominate the referrers list and traffic has quadrupled in a couple of months.

The point to all this is that blogs, newsfeeds and forums are increasingly becoming one of the most important strategies in Internet marketing. and one that www.ju2.com will be actively encouraging our clients to use. For a list of places to submit your feed take a look at this post.

Tracking Blog Backlinks

2006-01-23T11:13:00.000Z

If you're putting a lot of effort into blogs as part of your SEO strategy then it wouyld interesting to know how many blogs link to your URL. This can be down on Technocrati using their Search URL function but I saw this blog this morning which contains a handy little tool. drag the TT link to your toolbar, then click while visiting a blog article to see Technorati's roundup of posts commenting on the article.

Affilliate Marketing

2006-01-20T11:20:00.000Z

A lot a clients have been asking about Affiliate Marketing recently so I have written a few words to highlight what we at www.ju2.com see as the important issues you need to be aware of.

A recent report from e-consultancy.com put the value of UK sales generated from the affiliate network channel will be between £1.1bn and £1.35bn in 2005 rising from £600m in 2004.

Wikipedia.org defines affiliate marketing as follows:

"Affiliate Marketing is a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay-per-click), registrant (Pay-per-lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay-per-Sale).The most attractive aspect of affiliate marketing, from the merchant's viewpoint, is that no payment is due to an affiliate until results are realized."

Affiliates use banner ads or other forms of advertising to attract traffic to a merchant’s website. Through their expertise in paid search or search engine optimisation they calculate there earnings per click and sell their traffic at a higher price than they pay for it.

Amazon.com is often credited as being the first company (merchant) to set up an affiliate scheme and they still run their own affiliate program. However, most e-commerce vendors use third party services provided by intermediaries called Affiliate Networks. See Affilaites4U , Affiliate Window , Affiliate Future Link Share, OMGUK and Zanox

Why use a network? To start with economies of scale! Networks are an attractive option for merchants because they save on administration, they can deal with hundreds of affiliates, they handle all the tracking, have anti fraud capabilities and collect all the fees. Affiliates also like networks because they are a single point of contact but more importantly they can be confident that the tracking and commission reporting is accurate and trustworthy.

Commission and fees paid out to Affiliate Networks in the UK is expected to reach £83m in 2005. Some networks charge set up costs (anything from 0 to £5,000) and/or monthly management fees. (0-£500) On average expect to pay between from 5% and 8% of total sales to your network although costs vary. Compare this to what your paying Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing and you may find that Affiliate Marketing might be worth investigating.

Google and Jaggers Aftermath

2006-01-16T12:35:00.000Z

Came across this article in ZillionBits which discusses some of the implications of the recent update to the Google Search Algorithim which took place somewhere between September 22 and November 17, 2005, which shook up the search engine optimization (SEO) community and millïons of website rankings. The update has been named Jagger and is apparently finished.

We are advising all our clients at www.ju2.com to chase backlinks from WebPages that are semantically related to their keywords especially from sites with .edu or .org suffixes. Outbound links should be embedded in text using keyword rich anchor text. We are also actively encouraging clients to write articles and get them published online as well as getting them to regularly update thier site content to keep it fresh and useful to their users. Out go reciprocal links or involvement in linking schemes such as Link Vault or link co-ops and be aware of increasing link popularity too quickly as this can negatively effect rankings. Reciprocal link trades will hurt your rankings particularly when you link to sites that are considered ‘bad neighborhoods’ by Google, such as link farms or sites that are banned by Google

Overview of Google's AdSense Programme

2006-01-16T10:59:00.000Z

Google AdSense enables website owners to get paid to display ads, similar to adwords placements, on their webpages. An article appeared in the New York Times recently which gives you a good overview - so if you need a quick introduction to AdSense take look.

Search Engine Marketing Up 44% in 2005

2006-01-10T20:49:00.000Z

Advertisers in the U.S. and Canada spent $5.75 billion on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in 2005, a 44 percent increase over 2004 spending, according to a report released today by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). The report is based on an industry-wide survey of 553 respondents conducted in November 2005 by Radar Research, LLC and Intellisurvey. The survey found the bulk of the SEM spending was spent in 2005 on paid placement, accounting for 83 percent or $4.7 billion. While four out of five advertisers report they engage in organic search engine optimization (SEO), organic SEO accounted for approximately 11 percent of overall spending; paid inclusion accounted for just 4 percent of overall spending; and SEM technologies, including leasing, agency solutions and in-house development, accounted for less than 2 percent of overall spending.

Google hits 40% in the US

2006-01-10T19:42:00.000Z

According to a recent IDG News Service report Google nabbed almost 40 percent of all searches in the U.S., a commanding lead of more than 10 percentage points over Yahoo, which took second place, comScore said on Friday.

Google increased its share of searches by 5.2 percent compared with November 2004, while Yahoo saw its share shrink by 2.5 percent, the market researcher said.

Your Next Job Depends on Google

2006-01-10T19:10:00.000Z

Take a look at this recent article in the Ecommerce Times. What is the most important factor that will influence executive pay and hiring in the technology industry this coming year? Is it globalization? Data management? Business process improvement? No. None of the above. It's Google - failure of a company to factor in how Google will influence its own bottom line could well lead to its premature demise, according to a new survey just released by New York City-based headhunting firm Christian & Timbers. If your company does not have an eye on Google or globalization, your company won't make it to 2010," Umesh Ramakrishnan, vice chairman of performance-based executive search firm Christian & Timbers, told the E-Commerce Times, "and the executives who understand these dynamic market forces are in high demand."

Domian Name Expiry and SEO

2006-01-10T17:39:00.000Z

I thank the people at www.spectulise.com for the following bit of advice - Google has a patent on checking the expiry of domain names – the theory being that a domain name which has been around for longer or is paid upfront for the next 5/10 years shows that the company has a serious long-term plan and isn’t on the web for the short-term or just to create short-term spam/directory websites. Therefore, when registering your domains, to do so for at least 5 years at a time. This will potentially show your site to be of a higher calibre and professionalism to those which just renew from year to year. This probably makes little difference at present but it may become a feature of the Google algorithm and would then become important.

Latent Semantic Indexing - What Is It

2006-01-10T17:13:00.000Z

Take a look at this blog from Andy Hagans who seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to link building. As I tell my clients link popularity is increasingly important part of search engine optimisation. Gone are the days when we could rely on a reciprocal linking strategy - it is widely assumed that Google discounts these types of links or in extreme cases penalises sites with large numbers of reciprocal links - particularly if the number of links have increased rapidly. Google in particular is looking for links between similarly relevant WebPages. This makes sense as a webpage with loads of information about laptops with many links to and from other WebPages also with loads of info about laptops is probably going to be very relevant to the subject of laptops.

However, if you then artificially create lots of backlinks with anchor text all containing exactly the same keyword phrase then the major search engines are increasingly going to smell a rat. Naturally occurring backlinks will be from a variety of sources all using slightly different terms and anchor text. Latent Semantic Indexing LSI uses complex statistical algorithms to look for patterns. On the upside this means that links from WebPages containing semantically similar terms to the word laptop such as notebook will be judged to be relevant.

So if you’re building your link popularity don't get too tied up on using those keywords all the time try looking for sites with relevancy for terms with similar meanings.

Microsoft AdCenter Generates SEM Buzz

2005-12-23T16:09:00.000Z

The first half of 2006 seems to be a firm commitment from Microsoft regards the launch of AdCentre its pay per click advertising service. MSN is committed to take sponsored ads from Yahoo until June 2006. Adcentre is creating a lot of exicitement out there because it offers real competition to Google Adwords and Yahoo Sponsored Search but rumour also has it that keywords will be competitively priced. The results of the beta testing will be released first quarter 2006.

Eco-friendly Flip-Flops

2005-12-22T15:01:00.000Z

Yet another Search Engine Optimisation article in the mainstream press. This time in the Guardian - nothing new here. The black hat SEO tactics in the article are tactics that the big search engines already know how to handle. The amazing sucess of the spoof site optimised for the words eco-friendly flip flops is not that amazing really. If you search Google on eco-friendly flip flops you come up with 16,800 hits. These are web pages containing the words eco-friendly AND flip AND flops somewhere on the page.

If on the other hand you search on the precise phrase "eco-friendly flip flops" you get 20 hits and a good number of these are relating to the original article. These are web pages containing the exact phrase and as noboby would be mad enough to promote such a product it is not surprising that it proved realitively easy get to number one position. Especially if you can generate a couple of quality links from Unlimited Guardian to help you along the way.

There's only one effective way to get to the top of the search engines and stay there and that's by hard work building a site with lots of useful content rich in information that your target customers want to read. And if your site has value quality websites will link to you and you get into a virtuous circle. Thats how you get to the top of Google.

2005 According to Google

2005-12-20T20:40:00.000Z

Take a look at Google Zeitgeist for some interesting search statistics for 2005. Top 3 searches are (1) Janet Jackson, (2) Katrina and (3) Tsunami. How in the hell did JJ beat the natural diasters for the top spot? Loads of other interesting stuff on World Affairs, Movies and Celebraties!!!!