Google+, the latest social development from the search giant, is continuing to gain extreme hype. WebProNews recently spoke with several search and social media leaders including Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing, Steve Rubel of Edelman, Li Evans of LiBeck Integrated Marketing, Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick, Loren Baker of BlueGlass, and speaker and author Mari Smith to see what they thought about Google+.

While they all believe that it is definitely Google’s best attempt at social, they equally agree that there is still a lot that needs to be done to it. For instance, they would like to see further integration of Google products, an improved mobile experience, and better sharing capabilities, to name a few.

Even if Google makes these enhancements, the big question that everyone is pondering is: Will it have the power to control social in the same way that it does search? What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Google Social Search – Choose Your Friends Wisely
2. Customer Connections Now Important for Google Results
3. Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

Website designers often employ technologies like Flash, JavaScript, Ajax, and Silverlight to make their sites attractive, fast, and easy to use.

While there are great reasons to use these technologies, they can create problems when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Web page content that’s wrapped in a fancy package can be difficult – or impossible – for a search engine to “see.” That means the search engine crawlers may have a hard time understanding what your page is about, and so may not index all your important pages.

The search engines may also find it difficult to follow any links – internal or external – you’ve placed in web page content rendered in Flash, Silverlight, or other technologies. That matters because search engines use your internal links to discover other pages on your site, to understand how pages on your site relate to each other, and to determine which pages on your website are more important than others.

Designers sometimes incorporate the search function for a website into their designs. That can be helpful for people, but it may pose problems for search engines trying to crawl your site. If pages on your site are accessible only from a search box, the search engine won’t be able to see those pages, because search engines don’t type keywords into search boxes to find relevant web pages.

Below I’ll tell you about some of the popular technologies for creating attractive, people-friendly web pages, describe the potential issues, and tell you how to avoid them.

JavaScript Menus

Web designers often use JavaScript to make navigation menus with special mouse-over effects, animated drop-downs and other interactive features. While these design innovations can be truly useful for human beings, they can also be a real problem for search engine crawlers.

Today, Google’s crawler – fondly known as Googlebot – can actually follow many links created in JavaScript. But it can’t follow all of them. And while Google is the dominant search engine, with about 70 percent of people using it, 30 percent of your potential customers are using a search engine other than Google. Those people are even less likely to see your JavaScript links. If your business depends on people coming to your site from search engines, saying that the bots can probably follow your JavaScript links is a bit like your boss saying your paycheck probably won’t bounce.

A CSS menu can do pretty much everything a JavaScript menu can do, and without any of the issues that cause problems for search engine crawlers. Don’t forget that mobile phones, tablets and the other small computers that are increasingly popular for surfing the Web also have problems displaying JavaScript, but do fine with CSS.

There’s a nice CSS menu generator here: www.CSSMenuMaker.com.

JavaScript Click-Tracking Links

People who are serious about tracking the business performance of their website use some form of analytics. Seeing how visitors get to your website, and where they go after they land on it, helps you understand how to turn more visitors into customers.

Sometimes web developers use a single page with pre-set parameters to track clicks. The page captures the information about which links were clicked, and then redirects the web browser to the final page that will be shown to the person who’s surfing.

This is very similar to the Javascript click-tracking function, and sadly, it has similar effects when it comes to search engines. Even if the website developer does the redirect with a [Glossary/301-redirect|301], some of the goodness of that link is lost. I don’t recommend this approach.

Solution? Use a free click-tracking service like Google Analytics instead of click-tracking JavaScripts. Yes, Google Analytics uses JavaScript, but NOT in the links themselves.

Flash

Flash is an incredible technology that enables a richer user experience. Flash is often used for video, slideshows and interactive features on a website. However, search engines can’t “see” any content that’s rendered in Flash.

Many websites have everything in Flash. It can look great to human visitors, but to search engines, it looks like the website consists of a single web page – and one with very little content, at that. If the search engines think your entire site consists of a single page, they’ll think your site doesn’t have much useful content, and won’t rank your site high in search results.

Google has improved its crawler’s ability to “see” what’s in a Flash object, especially if the web designer has followed some fairly straightforward rules.

Still, it’s not certain that all text rendered in Flash will be accessible to Googlebot. At the risk of repeating myself, let me remind you that 30 percent of searchers don’t use Google. Do you really want to fence out a third of your potential customers?

Bottom line: Use Flash for decorative elements. Render your links and navigation menus in HTML, so search engine bots can see them.

Silverlight

This technology, created by Microsoft Corp., enables rich media experiences similar to what you can do with Flash. Googlebot has problems seeing the text and links in Silverlight.

Just as with Flash, you’re best advised to use Silverlight for decorative purposes, and use HTML to render links and navigation menus.

Band-Aid Solutions

Some web designers apply a Band-Aid solution to the problems caused by rendering navigation menus in JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight or Ajax. They’ll create an HTML sitemap with links to all the pages, and sometimes submit an XML sitemap to the search engines.

These sitemaps will, in fact, allow search engines to see all the pages on your site. However, the search engines still won’t be able to see how many pages on your site link to any given page. That’s important information – the number of internal links to a page tell search engines how important that page is.

If your main navigation menu is in HTML or CSS, and all your major pages have the same navigation menu, then all your important pages will be linked from many pages on your site. Minor pages on your site will have just one or two links from specific pages. The variation in the number of links to each page tells search engines very clearly which are the most important pages on your site.

If, on the other hand, your navigation menu is entirely in Flash or JavaScript, and you’ve got a sitemap as a Band-Aid solution, the only internal link to each major page that search engines can see will be from the sitemap. That gives each page on your site just one link, making it appear to a search engine bot that each page is as important as every other. That’s not accurate, and means that your most important pages won’t show up as high in search results as they should.

Google Webmaster Tools can tell you how many pages on your site link to any other page. Log in to Google Webmaster Tools, click on Your Site On The Web, then click Internal Links.

Pages Accessible Only by Forms

Some sites have pages that can be reached only by filling out a form. For instance, one of the largest automobile insurance companies in the world used to have a simple form on its home page that asked for your postal code. You’d fill that out, click on Submit, and be directed to the portion of the insurer’s site that dealt with your region.

It sounds logical, but search engine crawlers don’t type in postal codes, and they don’t click on Submit. To the search engines, this insurer’s site looked like just a single page – and a pretty boring one, at that.

Search forms pose a similar problem. While this is a tremendously useful way for a human to find information on your site, it’s not a navigation method the crawlers can use. Crawlers don’t type words into a search box, and they don’t click on a Search button.

The solution? Keep the search form – it’s great for your human visitors. Add a sitemap, and submit to search engines an XML sitemap that links to every page you want indexed.

How to Check If You Have a Crawl Issue

Luckily, there are a number of tools that can tell you which web pages and links pose problems for search engine crawlers. A few of my favorites:

Xenu Link Sleuth – Download this one for free. It can also create an XML sitemap
for you.

SEOmoz Crawl Test – Part of a tremendous suite of site analysis features available to SEOmoz PRO subscribers.

AboutUs Website Visibility Report – You can quickly check how many pages of your site the major search engines have indexed. If the number is lower than you think it should be, you can investigate further.

More Resources

GoogleGuide description of how a crawler works

Learn how to use robots.txt correctly

Googlebot and indexing Flash content

Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools

Google’s guidance on making Ajax applications crawlable

Read about other classic SEO mistakes even good web designers can make.

Related posts:

1. Website Redesign Best Practices – Part 1
2. Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven – Part 1
3. 7 Tricks to Get a Goooooooooooogle of Links

Some of you may already know about this service called LinkedTube. I just came across it recently, and thought it would be a great video tool to share with you.

LinkedTube is a free solution for embedding action buttons directly on your YouTube videos. It offers a very easy user interface (that even a caveman could use), and did I mention it was FREE!

Here is an excerpt taken directly from the LinkedTube website:

“LinkedTube is a Flash widget that adds link and sharing options to YouTube videos. With this you can transform any YouTube video into a useful viral promotion tool. Unlike standard YouTube players it links directly back to your URL, for example you can create video product listings linking direct to your shopping cart, music video links to the iTunes store or just link back to your website or blog. Plus, when others share your video they all link back to your own URL”

There are several possible ways you could utilize this service to help grow your business. Namely adding your affiliate link to a video, directing traffic directly to your site, squeeze page or blog

So how does it work?

1. First upload a video to Youtube.
2. Next go to the video page where your video is located and copy just the end portion of the URL – the part AFTER the =

i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_KYsVHVJyI — portion to copy would be- A_KYsVHVJyI

3. Then go to LinkedTube and paste that video ID into the Youtube Video field (see image below).



4. Fill out the rest of the information fields you’d like your link button to display and/or link to.
   NOTE: Use short catchy titles & descriptions to get people to take action and click onto the next step, site, product, etc …
5. Lastly, click the “Save & Get Code” and place that information on your site or blog or wherever.

See my example below …

Here’s the link to LinkedTube:
http://www.linkedtube.com/

Related posts:

1. Caw to Action …
2. Creating Web Videos
3. YouTube Videos in AdSense Could Drive Clicks

By Ben Kemp

Website redesign proposal checklists should take careful account of the current status of the existing website. Rather than just rush headlong into the web redesign / rebuild process, an assessment of the good and bad elements of the original site should be made. Include consideration of SEO aspects. All too often, the website makeover results in a dramatic downturn in search engine rankings! Don’t underestimate the value of the existing indexed pages… or the benefits of current organic SERPs. Run the rebuild idea past an SEO consultant.

The Risks to Current Rankings

Be aware that existing search engine rankings can all too easily go down the toilet! Why? Well, that’s the consequence of not planning and executing strategies to cover the threats.

Page Redirection

Without a trail of breadcrumbs to find out where the old content went, all search engines are left bewildered and floundering in a sea of 404 Page Not Found errors.

1. Top-Ranking Pages: Should be identified, preserved and enhanced.

2. 301 Redirects: Old page URLs should be rerouted to the corresponding new page names. If that’s not done, all indexed and well-ranked internal pages will suddenly generate 404 Page Not Found errors and will eventually be purged from all search engine indexes! All internal Page Rank will be lost, as will all client’s Bookmarked page links and all “deep links” to internal content.

3. Optimized On-Page Content: Previously optimized “good page content” should be moved to the corresponding new pages.

4. Image Alt text: Old alt text should be copied to the replacement images.

5. Meta-tags: Titles, descriptions and keywords should be copied to the corresponding new pages.

6. Sitemaps: Provision should be made for XML or HTML Sitemaps.

If you fail to do the above, Google’s search engine spiders and bots will be forced to start from zero! If they are forced to reassess the intent and purpose of the site, and you haven’t preserved the good elements, a drop in rankings is inevitable.

Rebranding

I don’t have a problem with branding per se. However, while branding consultants have great expertise in their sphere of interest, they usually have minimal understanding of the issues inherent in attaining top search engine rankings. Branding consultants have no respect for your 10 year old domain. Any recommendatíon to drop your aged / mature domain name in favor of a new “trendy” business name is a severe risk to your online presence.

Domain Redirection makes it possible to redirect all traffic from the old domain to the new domain. You can couple that with individual page redirection. However, that still leaves you with all your old links pointing to a ‘dead’ domain and at risk of removal. Don’t underestimate the value of an aged domain with lots of links! As an example, I just reviewed a rebuild proposal that involved moving content from a 1999 registered domain with 2900+ incoming links (including 100+ links from domains with a +7 PR!) to a 2008-registered domain with 35 links.

The Rebuilders

Ok, so you’re going to rebuild a mature site that’s generating business, but needs a more modern look and feel. Make sure you choose a designer / developer who comprehends the importance of the old content and understands the SEO aspects. Make sure the fundamental SEO elements are included in the design architecture.

I repeatedly see website design output from designers that amazes me such as the following:

1. An SEO module was loaded but not activated – so zero meta-tag content on any page!

2. A WordPress CMS with the Admin / Privacy settings set to “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.”

3. JavaScript main menus that SE’s cannot penetrate, meaning no internal pages indexed!

4. Flash main menu that SE’s cannot penetrate, meaning no internal pages indexed!

5. Splash / Intro pages with 1 link to the home page only, and Flash content – meaning zero Home page content!

6. No sitemaps, just to make it even more difficult to find internal content!

If you are deliberately setting out to kill off a website, these are very effective ways of doing so. There’s a lesson here! If you are going to rebuild your website yourself, or pay someone else to do it, you’d best ensure that the person responsible for the changes has a plan that includes at least the basics! Failing to plan is planning to fail, as these examples clearly show!

Do You Need Google?

While there are people out there who say that you don’t, you may rest assured that they are, in the main, not knowledgeable on the subject. Unless (or until) you are a household brand name, you are going to need search engines to deliver potential clients to you. To get an increasing flow of visitors from search engines, you’ll have to play by their rules, not yours. Whenever you cannot change the global reality to fít your perception, you must adapt… or you’ll simply be irrelevant!

New Site SEO Requirements

For maximum SEO benefits, there are some overall goals to aim for…

* Search Engine Friendly URLs: Page File Names should be explicit, and keyword-rich, independent of Titles or Headings.

* Off-Page Titles: Independent and unique page Titles are essential. Dynamic, with manual override will work fine.

* Description Tag: Independent and unique page Descriptions are essential. Dynamic with manual override is okay.

* Keyword Tag: Independent and unique page Keywords. Dynamic with manual override is okay.    * Image File Names: Imported image file names should be preserved, allowing keyword-rich image names.

* Image ALT Text: Dynamic based on file name with manual override is okay. Keyword rich image file names are important supporting elements of page content.

* Menu Item Names: Controllable, independent of page Headings, with manual set hyperlink titles.

* Page Headings: Formatted in H1, H2, H3 HTML tags, independent of menu name.

Make sure that the BASIC files are in place;

* Robots.txt: with a link to the XML sitemap
* Sitemap: XML, plus HTML
* Custom 404 Error Page: standard page template, full menu etc.

Make sure that the BASIC Hosting issues are sorted;

* www vs. non-www: Always use full canonical domain name, and prevent duplicate content being indexed.
* Hosting: Correct country TLD – or correct country hosting.

Related posts:

1. Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven – Part 1
2. Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven – Part 2
3. The Benefits of Installing Internal Site Search

Here is another take on SEO, when it comes to the design of your website by Rand Kramer …

Is it possible to design a great looking website and achieve a high level of search engine optimization (SEO)? It sure is and we see evidence of this all over the web, as well as in mobile platforms. In recent years the heavy emphasis on web standards has enabled designers to develop more creative, engaging interface designs without compromising SEO goals. Effective SEO is no longer a mystifying goal that only trained SEO consultants can achieve. Think of the combination of good SEO and quality design as just sound site development. To dig in further, this article takes a closer look at how to achieve both without having to sacrifice design principles or effective SEO.

Lessons from the Design Studio

Here are some things to think about well before, and during, the design process:

1. When setting up a page structure and composition, designers tend to start with a specific defined grid system. Designers look at the grid as a foundation for positioning elements on the page. You should take it a step further by considering how the grid can support elements for SEO. Not only where images and text will be placed on the page, but also setting up a clear hierarchy of information, logical page titles and text links, headings and sub heads. This approach not only supports users’ browsing behavior but also makes it easier for search engine spiders to move throughout the site.

Aarron Walter’s, Building Findable Websites, makes the point that designers should think about human interactions first and not try to trick the system to get to the top of search rankings. “Build for humans first and at the same time make sure our content is accessible to machines as well, which is going to help us reach more humans to make it more findable.”

The first place to start is clear page titles. The page title is essentially what displays in a Google search results page. It needs to be clear and express your brand and what you do. An example of how we set up our home page title is: “Interactive Agency, Web Content Management & Application Development – Siteworx.” It covers who we are, our top areas of expertise and company name. The same title technique should be applied to all sub pages so each is unique.

2. Search engine spiders read clean semantic markup and basic HTML. They read from left to right and top to bottom. It is important to make sure that unnecessary tables do not obstruct your HTML code. Most competent designers today would not consider building a site with tables and are on board with standard and validated code practices.

JavaScript at the top of your page can also inhibit search engine spiders. Some developers suggest placing the JavaScript at the bottom of the page. Be careful if you take this approach since it can substantially slow down page load times. In addition, for global drop down menus that may be overlooked by search engines it is recommended to have a set of redundant navigation links in the footer and as inset sub page navigation. Also be sure to use cascading style sheets (CSS) to emulate rollover effects and don’t use images in the place of text.

3. As a designer, I have always enjoyed the benefits of the interactivity of Flash and bringing Flash into components of a website. Flash as an early web tool allowed designers to think more about the emotional user experience and less about technical considerations. Designers could think about interactive immersive environments and less about the Web as a page metaphor. In addition, Flash allows typography and video to render uniformly across a variety of platforms, which removed design limitations found in straight HTML-based sites.

The catch with using Flash as it relates to search is that search engines have trouble getting into published .swf files and cannot effectively index the content embedded in Flash files.

One work-around has been to embed a smaller Flash component into your HTML page and keep your navigation links and supporting content outside of the Flash component. For example, YouTube uses a SWF video player and is a highly visible and searchable site. It uses effective titles and descriptions embedded in the HTML parts of the page to make the SWF videos more visible to search engines and more findable to users.

To learn more on this topic, I’d recommend a very good interview with Justin Everett-Church from Adobe

where he speaks about how to make Flash accessible. There’s also more information from Adobe at Adobe’s Developer Connection: Search Engine Optimization Technology Center.

4. Type should be type and not a graphic representation. Search engines do not see graphics the same way as text. They see only a single associated alt tag. If you present text elements as graphics, you are putting your site at risk for lower search engine rankings. Instead, use system fonts for text, which is also a basic principle when building a purely HTML site.

So much has evolved in the area of web fonts that there is no reason for a designer to render text elements as graphics. You can still start by laying out your text in your illustration or painting program of choice. Having the flexibility to try different font selections, move type around, and mix and match to communicate the brand direction is essential. Once your design is approved and you are moving onto the build phase, take the time to acquire your Web fonts and build the tags into your code. There are very affordable ways to license Web fonts if that’s something you’re considering.

5. An area for designers that is not discussed often enough as part of the SEO equation is information architecture and design conventions. The ability for users to find a web site depends not only on how well the site is built from a technical perspective, but also on good user experience principles. By focusing on-site architecture and sticking with some basic conventions, you’ll produce clearly defined content and pages for your site. Your users will find what they are looking for, visit more of your site, stay longer and tell others about the site. After all, that is what you should strive for.

Design conventions are somewhat like rules that have become part of a visual, non-verbal language for the Web over time. Conventions allow a designer to solve common design problems so he/she can focus on other specific issues around content, branding and features. Typical conventions for example are a company’s brand mark in the upper left corner of the page, while search typically is located at the top right. Underlined or blue text indicates a clickable link. There are conventions for button styles and link styles. Peter Lynch and Sara Horton have developed a site that touches on design conventions and other Web style suggestions that you can view at Web Style Guide 3rd Addition.

Ultimately, it is possible to have a well designed website that is visually appealing, content rich and emotionally engaging – while also achieving high search engine rankings. As designers, we shouldn’t ever pursue top search ranking to the detriment of usability, accessibility and brand integrity. If you plan for both, and realize that as a good designer, SEO and compelling design are your responsibility, this will lead you to creating findable sites and enjoying the kudos of happy clients.

There are many good books and articles about SEO best practices, as well as a wealth of materials at Google Books. Two excellent books on the subject for a more comprehensive view are:

* SEO for 2011: Search Engine Optimization Secrets Practices, Sean Odom.

* The Art of SEO. Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola foreword by John Battelle. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc. 2010, p. 239.

Related posts:

1. 16 SEO Tactics That Will NOT Bring Targeted Google Visitors

I just finished reading this article (posted below on SEO Tactics), from SitePro News by Jill Whalen, and really wanted to post it to my blog as well. I saw a list of 16 things that honestly I find myself still doing a few, and truthfully, usually to no avail.
What are your thoughts?

—————————————–

Article by Jill Whalen

In my day-to-day reviews of client websites, I see lots of things done to websites in the name of SEO that in reality have no bearing on it.

In an effort to keep you from spending your precious time on supposed SEO tactics that will have absolutely no effect on your rankings, search engine visitors, conversions or sales, I present you with 16 SEO tactics that you can disregard from your personal knowledge base and/or SEO toolbox as being in any way related to SEO:

1. Meta Keywords: Lord help us! I thought I was done discussing the ole meta keywords tag in 1999, but today in 2011 I encounter people with websites who still think this is an important SEO tactic. My guess is it’s easier to fill out a keyword meta tag than to do the SEO procedures that do matter. Suffice it to say, the meta keyword tag is completely and utterly useless for SEO purposes when it comes to all the major search engines – and it always will be.

2. XML Site Maps or Submítting to Search Engines: If your site architecture stinks and important optimized pages are buried too deeply to be easily spidered, an XML site map submitted via Webmaster Tools isn’t going to make them show up in the search results for their targeted keywords. At best it will make Google aware that those pages exist. But if they have no internal or external link popularity to speak of, their existence in the universe is about as important as the existence of the tooth fairy (and she won’t help your pages to rank better in Google either!).

3. Link Title Attributes: Think that you can simply add descriptive text to your “click here” link’s title attribute? (For example: <a href=”page1.html” title=”Spammy KeywordsHere” >Click Here</a>.) Think again. Back in the 1990s I too thought these were the bee’s knees. Turns out they are completely ignored by all major search engines. If you use them to make your site more accessible, then that’s great, but just know that they have nothing to do with Google.

4. Header Tags Like H1 or H2: This is another area people spend lots of time on, as if these fields were created specifically for SEOs to put keywords into. They weren’t, and they aren’t. They’re simply one way to mark up your website code with headlines. While it’s always a good idea to have great headlines on a site that may or may not use a keyword phrase, whether it’s wrapped in H-whatever tags is of no consequence to your rankings.

5. Keyworded Alt Text on Non-clickable Images: Thought you were clever to stuff keywords into the alt tag of the image of your pet dog? Think again, Sparky! In most cases, non-clickable image alt tag text isn’t going to provide a boost to your rankings. And it’s especially not going to be helpful if that’s the only place you have those words. (Clickable images are a different story, and the alt text you use for them is in fact a very important way to describe the page that the image is pointing to.)

6. Keyword-stuffed Content: While it hasn’t ever been a smart SEO strategy, keyword-stuffed content is even stupider in today’s competitive marketplace. In the 21st century, less is often more when it comes to keywords in your content. In fact, if you’re having trouble ranking for certain phrases that you’ve used a ton of times on the page, rather than adding it just one more time, try removing some instances of it. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

7. Optimizing for General or Peripheral Keywords: You’re not gonna rank for a one-word keyword. You’re just not. You are likely not even going to rank for a 2-word keyword. So stop wasting your time optimizing for them, and find the phrases that answer the searcher’s question. For example, most people seeking legal help aren’t putting the one word “lawyer” into Google. They have a very specific need for a certain type of lawyer as well as a specific location in which they hope to find said lawyer. So rather than throwing the word “lawyer” all over your site, ask yourself this: There are people out there who want what you’re providing. What are they typing into Google? Now focus on those words instead. And don’t even get me started on people who put words on their pages that are barely related to what they do “just in case” someone who types that into Google might be interested in what they provide. You won’t rank for those phrases anyway, but even if you magically did, they won’t make you any sales.

8. Targeting the Same Keywords on Every Page: The keyword universe for any product or service is ginormous. (It really is.) Even if there are one or two phrases that bring you the most traffic, why the heck would you want to miss out on the gazillions of others as well? Stop focusing every page on the same handful of phrases and start targeting each page to its own specific set that most relate to what you’re offering there.

9. Focusing on Ads as Links: Banner ads, Google AdWords links and most other forms of online advertising do not create links that count toward your link popularity. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use this form of marketing – just don’t be deluded into thinking that it will have a direct effect on your organic search engine rankings and traffic.

10. Mad-lib Doorway Pages: While you may provide lots of products or services that are extremely similar to one another with just one minor change, it’s not a good idea to create separate pages for each of them and making only minor keyword changes to each of them. While this may be okay for paid search landing pages, it’s a duplicate content spammy nightmare for organic SEO purposes. (In fairness, do sometimes still see this technique work, but it’s still not advisable to do it.)

11. Linking to Google or Other Popular Websites: It’s the links pointing to your pages from other sites that help you with SEO, not the pages you’re linking out to. ‘Nuff said.

12. Redirecting a Keyworded Domain to Your Real One: So you have your business name as your domain (as you should), but you have noticed the unfortunate fact that Google seems to really like domains that have keywords in them. Buying one (or more) and redirecting it to your actual website can’t provide you with any advantage because a redirected website (and its domain name) isn’t ever seen by the search engines. And besides, even if there was something magical about doing this, again, you’re only talking about one keyword phrase.

13. Republishing Only Others’ Stuff: While it’s fine to republish an article that someone else published first, if that’s all your blog consists of, it’s not going to help your search engine rankings. Instead of republishing entire articles, discuss them in your posts and provide your thoughts and opinions on what’s good / bad / ugly about what the others are saying. It’s all about adding value.

14. Making Minor Changes to Freshen Content: This is not going to help a thing. If any old articles or posts need to be updated, then update them. But just changing a date or a few words will not have any effect on your search engine rankings or traffic.

15. Nofollowing Internal Links: Perhaps you’re not looking for your privacy policy page to be followed by the search engines, so you add a nofollow attribute to it. That’s all well and good, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this will somehow control your PageRank flow and get you better rankings. It won’t.

16. Main Navigation That Links to Every Page: If linking to pages in your main navigation gives them more internal link popularity and therefore more possible weighting with the search engines, then surely linking to every single page of the site in your main navigation should be a good idea, right? Wrong! It isn’t. All it does is spread your internal link popularity too thin and confuse the heck out of your site visitors. Don’t do it. Choose to link only to top-level categories and perhaps subcategories (if you have a reasonable number of them) in your main navigation. This allows users to drill down further when they’re in the category sections themselves.

Did I miss any? I’m quite sure I’ve just touched the surface on waste-of-time SEO tactics. How about you? Do you agree with the above? Disagree?

Related posts:

1. Who’s Linking to Your Web Site and What Does That Say About You to Google?
2. Where Google Stands on the "Keywords" Meta Tag
3. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty: the Truth

Dave explains how the “Screencast Like a Pro” video training series might be for you (for both MAC & PC users) …

To start Screencasting like a pro yourself, visit Dave’s site for more information or to start learning …

About the Author

Dave Kaminski of WebVideo University is a professional copywriter, videographer and 10-year veteran of direct response marketing whose work in multimedia advertising has resulted in millions of dollars worth of sales. A former U.S. Marine, Dave specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to effectively use and promote web video in their marketing efforts, for both MAC & PC users.

Related posts:

1. How To Create Beautiful Video Lightbox Effects …
2. How To Create Transparent Videos For The Web
3. How To Make Clickable Links In YouTube Videos…

Growing a large following is something many new Twitter users struggle with. They see all these big accounts with 20, 50 or even 100K followers and wonder how did they ever get there?

Today we will give you some tips and tools on how to grow your following steadily and we’ll also make sure that you stay within the Twitter guidelines to avoid account suspension. There are certain practices that are not allowed and the last thing you want is to get your account suspended after you worked hard to get a decent following.

Quality or Quantity?

This is the first thing you have to ask yourself. Do you want a small number of followers where you can easily keep track of the timeline and interact with everybody or do you want to grow as big as possible and utilize Twitter lists to keep up with the tweets you care about?

If you have a Twitter account for personal use, the first option will probably work best for you. If you have any commercial aspirations and would like to promote your brand or business to the world market, your goal will be to reach as many potential clients as possible. Growing your Twitter following is an easy and low cost method to promote your business or brand worldwide.

Tools of the Trade

These are a few tools we use to manage our account. There are many more tools out there but today we will stick to the tools that work for us.

FriendorFollow

Simply enter your user name and it will show you who isn’t following back, who is a fan and mutual followings. If you connect with Twitter, it will also give you the option to follow or unfollow users.

Manageflitter

Similar to FriendorFollow but more advanced and it can filter your account for a variety of stats such as users without a profile image or users that are quiet or tweet a lot. There is a pro upgrade available but the basic mode has all the features an average user will need.

Socialoomph

When your account starts to grow exponentially it becomes hard to keep track of all your new followers. If you want to set up a welcome message for all your new followers, this is the tool to use. You can set up an auto DM and welcome new followers. DO NOT add a link to that message because that’s what everybody is doing and will only tick people off. Come up with something creative and original within the 140 character limit.

There are also features that will allow you to auto tweet status updates but that is NOT done as you should keep it real on Twitter, more about this at the end of this blog post.

Twiends

Fun and addictive would be the best way to describe this tool! You can actually use this to grow your stats on Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube. You can earn credits for connecting with other Twiends users and use those credits to let others connect with you. Sort of like a marketplace. You can even tweak your setting to get higher quality followers and there is an option to purchase credits if you don’t have the time to earn credits manually.

Twellow

If you want to find followers in a specific geographical area or category, this is the tool for you. It lets you search for users per city or from a directory of categories. This is great if you have a local business and you want to connect with all the Twitter users in your city for example. You can also follow and unfollow within this tool.

Now How Do I Get Followers?

All the above will help you to manage the new followers as your account starts to grow. Obtaining new followers can done in many ways.

* Follow users from follow back lists. Many users have created lists consisting of people that returned the follow so there is a good chance those users will follow you as well if you start to follow them.

* Just Google: “follow back list twitter”.

* Use the Twellow tool to find users in your niche or city and connect with them.

* Add Twitter links to your website, blog and email signature if you use one.

* Use the Twiends tool to get new followers.

As your new followers start to roll in it’s time to use the account management tools such as FriendorFollow and ManageFlitter. Find out who followed you back and who didn’t. You can also unfollow people that didn’t return the follow if you wish but DO NOT mass unfollow people or unfollow those who did return the follow. These are bad practices that could get your account suspended. We’re not celebrities that have 500K followers and only follow 10 users back. Your account should have a healthy follower ratio.

Remember that you can only follow 10% more than your follower count when you pass the 2000 follower mark. Example: 3000 followers will allow you to follow 3300 users.

Keeping It Real

This is what it’s all about. It’s alright to try and get a large following but don’t do any of the following:

* Don’t spam your product link over and over again.

* Don’t use auto tweet tools except for a meaningful auto DM perhaps.

* Don’t mass follow and unfollow since this could get your account suspended.

* Don’t unfollow those who return the follow just to make yourself look more popular.

If you stick to these guidelines and use the above tools you can easily grow your following to any size you want.

Related posts:

1. Simple Twitter Tips that Attract Clients and Partners
2. Would you prefer more blog readers or Twitter followers?
3. 12 Ways to Use Twitter for Social Media Marketing

Earlier this week, Microsoft shared some numbers from the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance (search and advertising deal), which saw Bing powering the back-end of Yahoo Search, and the merger of Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

“The data showed that from August 2010 to December 2010 Search Market Query Share for Bing rose 7.25%,” wrote Microsoft’s Paul Greenwood. “During this same period Google gained .61%. Impressions for adCenter advertisers was up 4%, clicks up 2%, and costs roughly flat. CPC was consistently below Google.”

We’ve seen some complaints indicating that there are some unhappy campers among Yahoo/Microsoft advertisers since the Search Alliance came into play. In the comments section of our last article on the subject, for example, one reader wrote:

I’ll also add that my company, as a partner of Yahoo’s, now Bing’s partner by default, a partner that has sent a lot of high quality traffic for almost seven years now, has been treated like dog dirt in terms of Bing’s new payout. Once the switch from Yahoo to Bing was complete Microsoft sucked the money, also known as a clawback, from their partners. What once was a .50 cent click payout is now a .12 cent click payout, for example. This is what partners like me are seeing.

If they expect to form great relationships with their partners they are doing a poor job of it as every traffic provider to Bing now is bitching about the absurdly low, crap payments we are now getting.

I left Bing just yesterday and did a deal with Google. You can bite it Bing……. until you respect your partners more.

Let WebProNews hear about your experiences as an advertiser with Yahoo/Microsoft since the Search Alliance. Have they been positive or negative?.

Microsoft has now posted the following bullet points from a Search Engine Strategies NY session led by Dr. Niraj Shah on the Microsoft Advertising Blog:

Stats of Paid Search Performance Relative to Google

- CTR was roughly equivalent to Google but declined from November
- CPC was consistency below Google; trending downward trend post-transition

Stats Search Conversion Rate and CPA

- Conversion rates dipped during transition but ended 2010 13% higher
- Cost per action (CPA) increased during transition but finished 17% lower

How do we wrap this up? Where do advertisers go with this information?

- Early movers can gain an edge.
- Instead of now having to manage across three engines you can narrow down. – Saving time and becoming more efficient.
- Favorable CPC’s and cheaper clicks and conversions.
- Improved reach and volume drivers greater consistency and manageability
- Favorable CPC and conversion environment (for now)
- Strong performance characteristics imply a higher ROAS than before

Best practices for search alliance success

- Identify coverage gaps between Microsoft Advertising adCenter and Adwords
- Pay attention to geo-targeting and match type settings when transitioning campaigns
- Bid adCenter keywords at the Match-type Level
- Adjust budgets to account for increased volumes
- Set alerts to identify and expand high performing terms

Microsoft also posted the following video to YouTube:

Bing Director Stefan Weitz said, “Because we’re actually powering Yahoo, and not necessarily being Yahoo, Yahoo has the ability (and are doing a great job) innovating on the front-end user experience. So they take our great core results, and on top they can apply their secret sauce…For consumers, what it gives them, is two really different experiences, and depending on which one you like for a particular query, you get to have those experiences. It’s great for consumers.”

As far as Yahoo’s front-end, the search engine launched a new feature this week called Search Direct, which appears to be Yahoo’s response to Google Instant, though there are some differences. This does in fact show that Yahoo is still focused on bringing its own front-end flavor to search, and not just becoming a needless version of Bing. Yahoo still has some things going for it that Google and Bing don’t in its original content that it isn’t shy about pushing into its search experience.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft and Facebook Adjust Their Partnership
2. Duplicate Content on Google, Bing & Yahoo
3. Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

A little known feature in YouTube is the video bar, where you can display a film strip of images on your web page and have those images open up videos. In this video, I show you how to use YouTube video bars.

Resources
YouTube Video Bar Wizard

About the Author

Dave Kaminski of WebVideo University is a professional copywriter, videographer and 10-year veteran of direct response marketing whose work in multimedia advertising has resulted in millions of dollars worth of sales. A former U.S. Marine, Dave specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to effectively use and promote web video in their marketing efforts, for both MAC & PC users.

Related posts:

1. How To Make Clickable Links In YouTube Videos…
2. YouTube Starts Automatically Captioning Videos
3. YouTube and Vimeo Begin Offering HTML 5 Video

Another great post by Dave Kaminski at WebVideo University

Adding a single video to a WordPress blog is simple enough. But what if you want to add an entire gallery of videos, each with a thumbnail image that viewers can click to watch a particular video? That’s actually simple too. I show how in this video.

Resources
Cool Video Gallery plugin

About the Author

Dave Kaminski of WebVideo University is a professional copywriter, videographer and 10-year veteran of direct response marketing whose work in multimedia advertising has resulted in millions of dollars worth of sales. A former U.S. Marine, Dave specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to effectively use and promote web video in their marketing efforts, for both MAC & PC users.

Related posts:

1. How To Create Beautiful Video Lightbox Effects …
2. How To Make Clickable Links In YouTube Videos…
3. How To Run Video Ads For Your Business With Jivox

Without a lot of explanation, I ‘still’ currently use Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Here’s how I import animated .GIF files into Photoshop for editing …

1.) You probably already have a version of QuickTime on your computer.
If not, you can download it from the Apple website.

2.) From the File menu in Photoshop click on ‘Import’, then click on ‘Video Frames to Layers…’.

3.) Locate the folder on your computer where your animated GIF file is located.
PLEASE NOTE: You WILL NOT see your GIF file until you do the next step!

4.) In the ‘File Name’ area, type *.gif and then hit enter. You will now see ALL GIF files. Choose the animated GIF you wish to edit and hit enter.

5.) A dialog box will now open in Photoshop called ‘Import Video To Layers’

6.) Select the ‘Range To Input’ you’d like to use (if unsure, just leave the default selection selected). IMPORTANT Be sure the ‘Make Frame Animation’ box is checked. (if it’s not, the image will load with all layers, but will only show as one frame on animation timeline).

7.) Click OK button then edit as usual. Be sure to save as a .GIF when you’re finished …

Hope this helps …….

Related posts:

1. Adobe Software and Avatar

“Where’s my excerpt box?”

After upgrading to WordPress 3.1, I noticed that editing fields such as post excerpts seemed to vanish.

I went to the WordPress forum and found a thread on “Just upgraded to 3.1 and post-excerpt field in admin disappeared“. Several people seemed to be having a simular problem. It seems by default that WordPress 3.1 now turns off many of these features.

I then came across a post from Otto Destruct where he pointed out how to simply fix this …

The Fix …

First, within your admin area on the left column, go to “Posts” and select either “Posts” or Add New”. Located on the top right of the page is a tab called “Screen Options”. Click on it and you’ll find several tic boxes which will turn on and off ALL features for your posts. (See image below).

Just click the boxes you wish to have visible and ….. wallah there they are.

NOTE: This screen options tab exists throughout your WP admin area and serves the same function for each area.

No related posts.

We are inundated with advertising messages from the time we wake to the time we go to bed. Some of these messages are welcomed and some are a source of irritation. The difference between noise and communication boils down to relevance, and relevance is a function of how advertisers deliver three basic ingredients: substance, style, and technique.

Our brains have a built-in spam filter that can filter out much of the irrelevant and absorb the significant. In a room full of people all talking and laughing at once like at a party, your brain is able to recognize your name being spoken while everything else is a cacophonous blur. The goal of advertising is to make your message significant like the sound of your name, significant enough to demand your attention. So, is your marketing communication significant, or is it merely noise?

Most Advertising Is Just Noise

The advertising industry has for the most part failed in making their clients’ messages significant. Instead they turn up the volume and boost the visual pollution in an effort to standout and be heard, but it doesn’t work. It all becomes background noise and confusing clutter easily filtered out by a brain designed to know the difference between significance and irrelevance. Any subliminal effect achieved is offset by the irritation that accompanies junk information.

If you want your audience to listen to you, you first must have something relevant to say, and second you have to know how to say it so that it makes an impression. Substance, style, and technique make a Web video communication significant and therefore worth remembering.

The Substance Every Business Can Deliver

There is a clothing store chain called Syms whose motto is, “An educated consumer is our best customer.” It’s a brilliant tagline and an even better marketing strategy. Educating your audience creates trust and that is one thing lower prices and more features can’t compete with.

It’s one thing to provide information, it’s quite another to provide understanding. How-to-do-stuff is a major industry because people suffer from what Richard Saul Wurman calls, “information anxiety.” So much to know, so little time to learn it. Your audience craves information, but what they really need is understanding.

If you really want to connect to your audience, gain their trust, and build a relationship. You should start by educating them about how to get the most out of what you sell – the real reason why they will continue to do business with you. In a world of copycat products and services, the difference maker is trust and trust begins with clients who understand exactly what you do and how it will improve their lives or businesses.

Everyone in our organization is constantly learning new things. Each of us receive dozens of newsletters on all kinds of subjects, some of which are directly related to what we do, and some help us better understand the world we live in and the needs of our clients. And some of it is just intended to make us think.

Substance Without The Pitch

I recently got an email with a video from the Editor of AE Tuts Plus, Adam Everett Miller. AE Tuts Plus produces a website that specializes in After Effects motion graphics. After Effects is a high-end software program used to create all those fancy motions graphics we all love. Most of the information is pretty sophisticated and aimed at a specialized design community but in this case they sent out a video that wasn’t about how to do something but rather why something was the way it was.

Would the video make anyone a better designer – no. Would the video provide its viewers with a technique they could sell their clients – no. The video merely explains to people why Hex Color Values are what they are. There is no sales pitch other than a subliminal message that AE Tuts knows what it’s talking about, is in business to help its audience, and can be trusted to deliver on its promise without always feeling the need to sell something.

NOTE: Video shows after a short commercial ad

Style Enhances Identity

From a branding and marketing point-of-view this video establishes an approachable, friendly style that helps define the AE Tuts brand, and indirectly makes their audience wiser and more informed. It’s interesting, memorable, and entertaining; and it makes viewers a more knowledgeable audience.

The style portrayed is not a random accident. The video uses a number of techniques intended to deliver a carefully thought-out image designed to gain audience acceptance as the industry knowledge leader.

A Casual Non-Pedantic Approach

The Web has changed many things not the least of which is how people expect to be taught. Your standard old fashion no nonsense schoolteacher approach is just so pre-Web and quite frankly turns people off. If you really want to educate an audience you better be approachable and entertaining in your delivery, and that is exactly what Adam has managed to do.

Everything from the casual monochromatic attire to the geek-chic glasses and beard are designed to deliver the impression that Adam is just like his audience: just one of the guys with some cool stuff to tell you. The presentation focuses attention on Adam and the accompanying mnemonics by placing everything within a plain white environment, slightly enhanced by a gradient spot to frame Adam, who is placed slightly off center nicely qualifying as a good example of the Rule of Thirds that provides space for the onscreen text and graphics.

The language Adam uses is down-to-earth, delivered in a cadence and rhythm that is just fast enough so the audience doesn’t get bored but slow enough so the information can be absorbed.

Each point is highlighted and emphasized with some onscreen graphic, text, or sound effect. Some of the points are accompanied by a humorous visual and verbal aside that maintains the presentations rhythm while at the same time allowing a small mental respite so the brain can absorb one idea and get ready for the next. And it’s all packaged with a Sesame Street style music score that goes unnoticed but is critical to the overall impression of learning can be enjoyable and doesn’t have to be tedious work.

The Last Word

It takes a lot of knowledge and know-how to make something look easy and this video does a damn good job doing it. Every detail from concept to content was carefully thought-out and the execution was spot-on.

Educational and how-to videos are very popular – there is no great revelation in that, but much of what is on the Web is quite frankly terrible, and that applies to both amateur and professional efforts. In order to benefit from your audience’s desire to learn, enhance your brand, and build confidence and trust in the marketplace with educational Web videos, you first must understand how people process information, and how to present material so that it is both enjoyed and retained.

Related posts:

1. Killer Campaigns Volume Four: The Color of Branding
2. Seven Deadly Video Marketing Sins
3. Video Microsites – The Brand Story Campaign Solution

Go to YouTube. It seems anybody can make a web video (or try to). Videos create attention, awareness, they entertain, THEY SELL! With faster broadband speeds, video marketing is now a “must” in one’s online business tool kit.

As statistics show, web video marketing/advertising is known to give you a higher percentage of sales BUT poorly done or thought out video ads have just the opposite effect.

<-- See this quality comparison video

Have you created a web video for your site, squeeze page or even YouTube and after the time spent wished it had come out better, was more professional looking? Have you wanted to make a video ad or presentation for the web, but really haven’t a clue how or what too do first?

Check out this excellent resource tool created by Dave Kaminski, WebVideo University. It’s a four-week online training course set in a “virtual classroom” environment. It provides step by step video-based lessons that show you how to create ‘professional looking’ web commercials from start to finish

Want to learn how to Screencast like a pro with a MAC or PC? Now you can create killer web videos WITHOUT a camera. LEARN MORE

Related posts:

1. Seven Deadly Video Marketing Sins
2. Ten Top Tips for Video Marketing Your Online Business
3. 10 Tips to Grow Your Business Using Online Video