Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Google’s new Latitude Web app for iPhone is so hamstrung that Apple customers may be wishing they had a BlackBerry or Android handset instead. Why? Because lacking multitasking, Latitude really isn’t Latitude.

Google Latitude iPhoneHere’s what the free Google Latitude service does: It allows you to make your location available to other users in near real-time. On the color BlackBerry models, Android, Symbian/Nokia, and Windows Mobile–lets call these “real” mobile platforms–this is done constantly and in the background.

This is how God–and Google–intended Latitude to work: Without user attention or intervention. And this is the functionality that iPhone users have been waiting on for months, only to receive a third-rate version of a first-rate application.

But, there’s more: On the iPhone and iPod touch, Latitude isn’t even given application status, but is delivered as a Web application in the Safari browser.

I have a number of potential uses for Latitude in my business and volunteer lives. This is an app I’d been anxiously waiting for, smug in my knowledge that my iPhone was always the better platform.

I’d even imagined that Apple would open up multitasking on the iPhone, just for their Google buddies, if no one else.

Obviously, I was wrong–and I’m also disappointed. Which is bad news if other platforms that turn multitasking into a key feature they have (and iPhone lacks).

On its Google Mobile blog, the company bravely tried to turn this lemon into lemonade. First the bad news:

“Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile.”

Followed by the lame attempt at a save:

“Nevertheless, your location is updated every time you fire up the app and then continuously updated while the app is running in the foreground. And, of course, you can check in on where your friends are, so we think there’s plenty of fun to be had with Latitude.”

In other words, Google expects the iPhone to be a mostly one-way Latitude device, used to find your friends all the time, but able to send your location only when Safari is the foreground application.

That’s not plenty enough fun for me. I want a tool, not a toy.

OK, I won’t junk my iPhone over this, but my love is diminished. And maybe my anger shouldn’t be directed at Apple. Perhaps, Latitude generates enough network traffic that AT&T put the kibosh on it.

Either way, my smug iPhone superiority has been pierced and now I have to make excuses to my friends who use Latitude on platforms that support it properly.

This seems like a small thing, but it has me thinking that someday my next device won’t be an iPhone.

Good work, AT&T and Apple!

(For the record, here a list of the handsets that Latitude supports, besides Apple: Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1, most color BlackBerry devices, most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices, and most Symbian S60 devices such as Nokia smartphones.)

Source:

• PC World

Brand loyalty is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to technology. Consider the battle brewing now between Google and Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  Even if Bing proves to be just as good as Google, it might not matter because of the strength of Google’s brand. An independent usability and consumer preference study, which we’ve obtained and embedded below, suggests as much. It was conducted by the Catalyst Group, a usability research and design firm located in New York City.

The study was an intense focus group in which 12 subjects were monitored with eye-tracking cameras as they conducted searches. Afterward, they were interviewed and completed a survey. Prior to the test, all the subjects used Google as their main search engine. Following the test, 4 out of the 12, or one third, said that overall they preferred Bing. The other 8 said that they preferred Google because they were already familiar with it, used other Google products, or that Bing’s improvements are simply not enough to make them switch.

What is amazing is that when the test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria (visual design, organization of features, filtering options, and relevance of results), Bing handily beat Google in everything but result relevance. Arguably, that is the most important criteria, but most of the study participants thought that both search engines tied on result relevance. So even though Bing ranked better on design, and tied on relevance, that was not enough for most of them to switch.

Catalyst CEO Nick Gould concludes that Microsoft “created something as good as Google and that is not good enough.” Overall, the test subjects “were not swayed.” No wonder Microsoft is spending up to $100 million on Bing marketing.

Remember, this is only a dozen people so it is not a statistically valid sample. Consider the survey results anecdotal. What is more conclusive are the eye-tracking results.

About half of the participants found and used the Explore Pane on the left side of Bing’s home page and results pages to aid in refinement and navigation, while all of them ignored the navigation/refinement links along the top left of Google (Web, video, Images, Maps, News).

Also because the Explore Pane on Bing takes up the left hand column and then stops, creating white space underneath, people naturally stop there. Heat maps generated by the eye-tracking data showed that people scroll much farther down Google’s search results pages, perhaps because there is no visual cue telling them to stop or they were not finding what they were looking for. It is not clear they got better results with Bing, but if the result they wanted was not above the fold, then they might use the Explore pane to refine their search.

The way results were displayed also had an effect on how long people looked at the ads along the top. The amount of time spent on the ads varied by search, depending on what kind of additional navigation information was presented just below the sponsored results. For instance, a search on Bing for “digital camera” concentrates attention there with navigational links to filter results by top brands, prices and guides. Participants spent 150 percent more time looking at the ads just above that activity zone than on Google.

A search for a local hotel, however, produces similar results on both search engines in that area just below the top ads (a map with local listings). So there was not much difference between the two in the how much time was spent looking at the top ads related to that search. In all cases, the ads on the right were only noticed about half the time.

Source:

• Tech Crunch

Citigroup conducted a study comparing 200 queries on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The study found that Google is much more relevant than Bing, in returning relevant results. Google returned the most relevant result 71 percent of the time, compared with Bing at 49 percent of the time and Yahoo 30 percent of the time.

The queries picked were pulled mostly from Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft’s xRank and Yahoo Buzz in the categories of Entertainment, Health, Local, News, Retail, Sports, Travel and Other. Then after running the 200 queries, Citigroup picked the winner based on two criteria:

1) Relevancy of the organic search results; and 2) Robustness of the search experience, which included factors such as image and video inclusion, Search Assist, and Site Breakout.

Here are some of the charts from the study:

Search engine results pages — known as SERPs in the search engine optimization (SEO) world — have gotten increasingly complex over the past few years as search providers look for new ways to help users reach their destination in fewer clicks. Google is leading this effort, with its standard “10 blue links” — which have long-defined SERPs — taking a backseat to real-time stock quotes, news articles, pictures and sports scores, allowing users to go right from the search box to the information they’re looking for, without having to click on any results.

Search for “Weather Boston” on Google, for example, and you can get the current weather and a 3-day forecast right on the results page, saving an extra click to Boston.com/Weather, the top “blue link.” Benjamin Schachter and Thomas C. White, analysts with Broadpoint.AmTech, write in a research note issued today that going forward, while search functionality itself is unlikely to change much, we will continue to see changes in how search results are presented.

The four key upgrades they see coming to SERPs are:

• The integration of data or applications from third-party web sites will appear within the search engine. Bing does this extensively for some results, particularly on the “reference” tab.

• More search results that lead directly to commercial transactions. Google has been doing this for years with Froogle (now Google Product Search), and Bing puts a huge amount of focus on shopping, offering product reviews and pricing information right on the SERP.

• New interfaces for finding and ranking search results, like Google Squared and the Wonder Wheel, which Schachter and White “believe more and more search properties (particularly smaller ones fighting for share) will begin to experiment with.”

• The option for real-time search. In an attempt to provide “fresher” search results than “static web” search engines, real-time search would kick newly created content like news articles, sports scores, Tweets and Facebook status updates higher on SERPs than older articles that perhaps have not changed in a while. A search for “Kobe Bryant” on the day after the Lakers won the NBA finals could provide links to video and commentary on the night’s game, for example, rather than a link to Kobe’s official NBA.com player profile.

All of these are evolutionary innovations, rather than revolutionary ones — and all can be made within the confines of traditional search engines. However, as Schachter and White note, “[A]ny meaningful change to how search results are presented creates risks and opportunities for all of the major players.” Microsoft is making a good attempt with Bing, and Google is playing with lots of stuff in “beta,” though they may never make it to the main search page. “Google has the most to lose if search evolves in a way that allows competitors to gain share,” the analysts noted. However, Google is so synonymous with “search,” and the company “has the development talent and resources to almost instantly mimic any innovations that do gain traction,” that the company is well positioned to respond no matter what happens.

Source:

• Gigaom

The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are thousands if not millions of consumers that you can tap in the internet.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives you as much competition as you can imagine. It is too crowded and congested.

Having a website is not enough to make your business running and able to compete. You must take other alternatives to give way for the online community to access your website at any rate or chance possible.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

Invest in marketing your internet site.  There are basically two options available to you, the SEO and PPC. These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% – 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

To get a search engine optimization, you will have to build on your own internet site frequently hit internet links to web site pages. The process will involve IBLN or Independent Back-Linking Network, wherein hundreds or even thousands of pages will be utilized to promote a particular website of a client.

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It requires months, 6 months at the least, before the proper outcome is fully achieved, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. It gives way advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on any of your ads. There will first be a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first listed in the search engine.

With this kind of advertising, you can still basically control your campaign as you get to create your own ad. You will also manage the target audience and still stay within the bounds of your budget. Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. You can also very well check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the rest.

There are some guaranteed benefits when you get to maximize the PPC strategy.

*    PPC lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

*    At first glance, PPC advertising may seem very expensive. Could it possibly happen that someone out there will go on clicking on your ad? This will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. If this provides a lot of worries, be rest assured that there is a protection for you. Networks are able to recognize fraudulent clicks.

*    You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period you want it again displayed.

*    You will also be able to adjust well to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. They definitely offer benefits and advantages that will work for your good. The better way to approach this two is to evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO if you have long term ones.

There world is out there for you now. Just make sure you do what will work best for your entrepreneurial endeavors and visions. The secret to success lies in your hands. Just study your options well and you’ll get exactly what you want.

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site’s theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone.

On the Internet, by the end of the day, it’s all about traffic, and more so, it’s all about relevant traffic. Relevant traffic is the lifeline of your online presence and you need to make a continuous effort to keep getting good traffic to your website. Now, you can get targeted traffic from:

The search engines: The search engines are the primary source of your relevant traffic, in most of the cases. It doesn’t cost you tons of money to get traffic from the search engines. Millions of users conduct billions of searches every month.

Pay-per-click programs: Maybe there are not quite as hot as some of the search engines but they do guarantee targeted traffic more or less instantly. Sign up for a pay-per-click program like AdWords and you’ll be getting traffic within fifteen minutes. Pay-per-click advertising options are present on independent content publishing websites too.

Inbound links from other websites: If you publish compelling content then many website owners put your link on their websites to add value to their existing content. Such links can be put their voluntarily, or through link exchange. Link exchange is discouraged these days, so the best way of making others link to you is to produce high-class, linkable content, on a regular basis. You can even interact on various online forums to increase your link visibility.

Emails: Up till a few years ago email marketing was considered the most effective advertising tool the world had ever witnessed. Spam killed its charm but in some quarters it still performs well, especially the opt-in email newsletters. Email advertising campaigns, provided they are done properly, are still the best way of getting highly targeted traffic.

Blogs and RSS Feeds: Only the most ignorant can discount blogs and RSS feeds as highly productive tools in terms of generating targeted traffic. Blogs are a constant source of quality information and hence they get instant traffic from other websites and the search engines. RSS feeds, without being intrusive like emails, instantly notify people whenever you publish something new on your blog or website.

Social media and bookmarking websites: Some of such websites are: Digg, Netscape, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.

Offline sources: If you prominently display your URL on your visiting cards, letter heads, brochures and other stationery you can get some good traffic from there too. I have seen people printing their URLs even on their T-shirts and vehicles.

In order to get traffic from all these sources, you have to take care how you create your website and how you organize your content. Given below are a few things you should constantly keep in mind while creating and maintaining your website, and while writing content for your website.

Stick to your central theme as much as possible; if you can keep consistent with your central theme, the more expert your content will appear. Don’t try to create content for every interest under the sun (or the moon, or the stars). Think vertical if you want to get high-value traffic. Cover all the topics that belong to your central theme. It acts like fodder to the search engines. Search engines love specialized content; give it to them and they’ll give you loads of traffic in exchange.

Sticking to your central theme also earns you great respect and loyalty, and also hundreds of inbound links. When expert and linking to you becomes a prestige factor. It also increases your keyword-density across your domain.

Provide information that helps your visitors; this is what keeps them coming back to your website. Realistically it is difficult to constantly this thing or that thing. More than that, develop a bond with your visitors. Show them their happiness matters to you. Make your website a resource of useful information. Publish content that adds value. This is a sure-shot way of increasing traffic as well as loyalty. Information that provides help, for instance, how-to articles, get linked to a lot by other web masters and blog publishers, and this leads to higher rankings on various search engines.

Conduct a thorough keyword research before generating content; Most SEO campaigns fail to zero-in on the right keywords. You’ll be surprised to know what all keywords and key expressions people use to find businesses such as yours. Target a few wrong keywords and you can bid good bye to an effort of six months of SEO. It’s not always necessary to use keywords that your competitors are using. First of all, they might themselves be optimizing for the wrong keywords, and second, there might be a slew of keywords that are being used by the users but are being ignored by your competitors. Use your keyword research to find out such keywords and optimize your web pages for them. This will increase your traffic manifolds.

Create a simple, accessible but elegant design; when you create quick-loading, stylish and accessible web pages you accommodate the entire spectrum of your prospective market -you don’t exclude particular sections of the society. Even search engines prefer accessible websites because almost all accessible websites conform to the W3C web designing standards. Good design also means using the right colors (that cause no eye-strain) and right contrasts to assist seamless browsing. The navigation bar should be designed in such a manner that all your important pages should be reachable within 2-3 clicks. A well defined sitemap referencing all of your pages help your human visitors as well search engine crawlers. Do well-organized onsite optimization; Onsite optimization means using your keywords at all the right places like within the header tags, as anchor text (and especially in your navigation system and again within your bulleted lists). In addition, try to highlight (bold) the occurrence of your keywords here and there, but don’t overdo it. Although this is not necessary, use the keyword at least once in every paragraph. Create a title (the text that comes between) that not only carries your keywords, but also represents the true highlight of your page content. Never try to deceive your visitors with a title that does not completely represent the content of your page. Your title shows up on the search engine results pages when your link appears on them. A compelling title makes people click it, and having those keywords in your title that people are looking for increases their probability of being clicked.

Regularly create new, relevant content; People come to your website again and again if they are expecting something new there. Similarly, the search engines index and re-index your pages with greater frequency if you update your website regularly. Having many pages increases your chance of at least few of them getting ranked higher by the search engines.

Remain active on the Internet; Known people get more traffic on the Internet. Keep the buzz alive by maintaining an active blog, participating in the comments sections of other blogs and various subject-specific online forums. Blogs are a great way of getting high quality traffic both from the search engines and from other blogs and websites. If you continuously generate quality posts and encourage productive conversations on your blog more and more people gradually start coming to your blog and some of that traffic gets spilled over to your actual business website. Another benefit of maintaining a popular blog is that if you put your business website link their, it gets extra point when the search engines rank your website.

Link to others; Link to them and they’ll link to you. Getting links on the web is a two-way activity especially if you are not well known (if you are a celebrity people tend to link to you anyway). If you select the outgoing links with caution it also tells the search engines that you link to quality information sources. People who are looking for such links will visit your website repeatedly knowing that you constantly add new links.

More often than not people, to whom you link, link back to you.

Well, I could have written a 101 Ways of Increasing Traffic to Your Website but my main purpose was to give you exactly the pointers you can use to increase traffic. Follow the steps mentioned above and you’ll definitely notice a surge in your online traffic.

Although search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask will no doubt play a major role in sending users to your web site, there are other areas of promotion that you should not overlook. These include social networking sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon, online forums, blogs, online directories and of course article directories.

You need to make your website search engine friendly and properly communicate to their algorithms what key phrases and keywords are important to your website, in order to derive maximum traffic from various search engines. Let us quickly go through a few steps that can help you make search engines fall in love with your website.

Write for the people and not just for the search engines: Some people have this misconception that you need to manipulate text in order to rank well on the search engines; partially this is true but most often it is not. The best way to fair well in the search engines is to write and organize your content in such a manner that it is best suited to human reading. The more human-friendly content you have the more search engine friendly content you have. The search engines will favor relevant, well-organized content so that they can present quality results to their search engine users.

You should be very clear about what keywords you want traffic from the search engines and research your keywords in the beginning; all your effort will go to waste if you focus on the wrong keywords. If you’re not sure about what keywords to focus upon them go head and hire a consultant but never underestimate the importance of keyword-research. Don’t postpone the selection of your key words until the completion of your website because during many stages you will need to know what relevant keywords your website is trying to target.

Organize paragraphs under headings and subheadings Headings and subheadings quickly tell your human readers as well as the search engine crawlers what your pages all about. Headings and sb-headings are used to summarize the overall content of you page so it is important that you place your keywords here; preferably use your keywords and key phrases when writing them.

Emphasize your important words when you highlight or emphasize your important words it conveys both to your readers and the search engine crawlers that these words are important to understand your message.

Give distinct titles to your web pages just as your name is important to your existence, the page titles are important for your web pages. Never have a single title — your company name, for example — for all your pages. Your page title should a property represent your web page and in fact use the central sentence of your web page as your page title. Avoid creating esoteric and confusing titles although they may seem attractive. Always use a title that clearly defines the message of your web page. Preferably use your keywords with creating your title but make sure you don’t unnecessarily stuff the title with all your important keywords: this will end up spoiling the effect of your title. Organize your keyword-distribution carefully although he shouldn’t manipulate your content for the sake of search engines you can arrange your keywords without seeming spammy. For instance, use your main keywords a new title, in your headings and subheadings, twice or thrice in your first paragraph and then at least once in every paragraph, highlight your keywords once or twice on your web page, use your keywords as hyperlink text when you link to other pages of your website and when you are organizing your thoughts using bullets then use your keywords did to.

Submit your link to niche directories there are online directories available to all niche markets and some of these online directories are highly trusted by the search engines, that is, if your website appears in one of these online directories than it automatically gets a higher ranking in the search engines. There are many business and consumer directories; very carefully select the most appropriate category and then submit your website under that category.

Publish a blog Not having some blogs is so passé; a blog is such an effective marketing, branding, combination, awareness and SEO tool that it is highly recommended that you have a blog for your business. Highly targeted blogs are quickly indexed by the search engines and whenever you post your blog posts they get the text quicker than your normal web pages. Also somehow the blog posts get ranked higher than the normal pages for the same sort of content. There are many other numerous benefits of publishing a blog but here are just talking in terms of SEO.

Use bread crumb navigation Bread crumb navigation is a system that you often come across on category-based websites. Take for instance a directory listing: initially ago on the homepage, then you click one of the categories, then you click one of the sub-categories, then you click one of the sub-sub-directories — and so on — until you arrive at the desired page. On top of the page you will see something like Main->Clothes->Shirts->Men->Large>Striped. This type of navigation system allows you to click on a parent directory and immediately move to another section of the website. This is good for your SEO.

Search engine friendly URLs You get an SEO boost when you’re URL contains some of your keywords. The search engines don’t appreciate dynamically generated URLs much; they prefer URLs that make sense in the real language. For instance, doublesparkseo.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/ is always better than doublesparkseo.co.uk/page.php?p=34. Manually it is easy to achieve but if you are using a content management system that make sure that your content management system generates search engine friendly URLs and not dynamic URLs that require a parameter to access a page. So these are a few things that you can do on your website that will make the search engines fall in love with it.