Web Analytics, Getting All The Information

Not all web traffic stats packages are equal. In fact, your favorite web stats package likely does not provide you with all the important pieces of metric information. Using only one or two methods to track and understand how your website is being used is like a doctor who only runs one or two tests on a patient. You may be missing out on critical data and you don't even know it!

The first and most common divide is log analyzers versus web trackers. There are endless internet debates about which one is “better”, but the fact of the matter remains that in order to best understand how your site is used you must have both implemented and used properly.

Log Analyzer
A web log analyzer is important to diagnose search engine crawling and indexing problems, as well as thwart scrapers and find broken links/missing file problems. The web log analyzer excels at gathering server centric and raw data which most other systems cannot.


Web Tracker
On the other hand the tracker has become so advanced, that there is rarely a better way to understand and discover the traffic of real people visiting your site and the fine details of how they interact with your site structure. Many trackers are even advanced enough to give you good insights as to the quality of your referring traffic and helping you to find and isolate the value in your promotions.

Even if you do have a tracker and web log analyzer installed – are you using them properly and to the fullest? Do you have important reports setup to view on a regular basis and compare historical trends?

Within the sub set of web trackers there are many important distinctions in how the data is presented and processed:

1. Realtime (instant) or processed on a slow schedule?

2. Granularity – do you get detailed information on specific stats?

3. Trending – can you compare different time periods and see trends in your granular stats over time?

4. Per-Visitor Detail – this is an important one especially if you are running wide reaching advertising campaigns on various large networks – seeing a direct sample of how your paid traffic is interacting with your site in the form of a visitor detail path, is critical to seeing how effective your ad is. (Combining this with realtime stats is a a sure way to save a lot of money on big ad campaigns which may not be properly configured)

5. Data Alerts – combined with real-time reporting, data alerts can tell you if there is an instant problem with one of your metrics. Knowing immediately about a metric problem (such as a broken landing page, or a order flow error) is a very fast way to respond to solid site problems and rescue significant value.

Most trackers do not contain all of that information, so it's always a great idea to have multiple trackers which can provide you with the full spectrum of critical information for you site.

If you are missing any of those details, GoStats free or GoStats Pro can certainly give you an increased insight into most of your critical metrics. Many people make significant promotion savings and increases in site value with additional information provided by GoStats in realtime.

Author by Richard Chmura

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KIDO’Z Operating System for Kids

What a novel approach! A startup developing the right tool for a highly focused and important demographic - parents with little kids.

Unbelievably, I started this article 3 days ago, and have revised or rewritten it 6 times. The reason it has been so difficult is the intent I suppose. I originally intended, with Loren’s consent, to plug a very nice startup called KIDO’Z, a web browser and operating system for kids. With all the things superb and viable about this service in mind, I could not help but associate the niche targeted model of KIDO’Z with all that is wrong with so many other Internet ventures. An ethical and philosophical dilemma born out of giving a damn I suppose.

Great Expectations
Part of the problem with what was supposed to be Web 2.0, is something that many of us warned about some years ago. In one fearful (but inevitable) scenario, traditional business practices would eventually superimposed old methodologies atop what nearly all tech journalists evangelized as a paradigm shift. Web 2.0, the coming of “the discussion”, a sort of socially euphoric space where people really go forward, or for lack of better imagery – users (people) as the center of a new universe -these were the ideas we had for this tool called the Web. Quite obviously, an exact replica of physical world mediocrity now obscures any idea of rosy wonderment we may have envisioned back when.

I Wanted on the one hand to simply reveal something of worth, while at the same time looking back on thousands of instances where “worth” became a buzz word, a door to door salesman methodology for marketing. If you are ever frustrated, late at night, wondering why your Twitter marketing campaign just isn’t bearing the fruit you wanted – well, maybe you got the idea already. In case you have not, consider the case of Facebook. Five years, half a billion dollars and 200 million users later – add people, shake well, and POOF – nothing happens – it may never happen.

Enter KIDO’Z and the Re-emergence of Software
Digressing is not always a bad thing. Take software for instance. Low cost to mass produce, effective, feature laden and only limited by the systems at which it is leveled. In short, digitalized tools that compared to puffy “cloud” variants, seem almost tangible, touchable and real. KIDO’Z, the children’s OS and companion to the Internet, is but one of several superb examples of software that has come out under the shroud of “cloudy” propaganda lately. Let me illustrate why this fairly obscure (so far) development can perhaps refocus development, marketing, advertising, and ultimately the progress of the greater tool – our Internet.

KIDO’Z, though a complex development internally, is a fairly simple business proposition – it resolves a point of pain for a narrow but crucially important niche – parents and their children between the ages of 3 and 7. The issues there are; safety, refined content for children, parental guidance and control, age specific usability and universal (global) individualization.

Content for users is very refined and specific to them

I will not go into the minute specifics of features, nor microanalyses of the platform here. For the sake of this argument, please accept that this Tel Aviv company is leaving no stone unturned for KIDO’Z success as a superb product for kids. The reader can easily download and test the application, and you absolutely should, especially if you have small children. Here are a couple of screen and a brief rundown of some KIDO’Z aspects.

KIDO’Z – A Kid’s Browser, Filtered Search and Operating System
The following list of aspects of the KIDO’Z platform are very general, but the reader can glean a good idea of the impact of this tool if they imagine a 4 year old, who cannot yet read, learning to browse the Internet as it was really meant to be – as a fascinating, educational and entertaining data base – an interactive library – with content tailored for the individual. What KIDO’Z has really done is created an operating system, browser and filtered search platform in one fell swoop.

• With KIDO’Z, children can send and receive richly designed e-mails, manage photo albums, diaries and blogs, create content and share it with friends. They can also view personal video channels, browse safe websites, learn about buying virtual products and send them as gifts, personalize their own virtual environment. Kids can and also do the things resident on other children’s websites, such as play games and color pages.
  
• KIDO’Z is constructed as a Web Operating System (WebOS) which is continuously renewed with innovative tools, features and possibilities, keeping the product fresh and interesting and ensuring long-term user commitment.
  
• KIDO’Z sets the safety of children as its primary concern and is centered on an active protection system enabling parents full control and tracking capabilities. This multiple redundant system allows for an unparalleled degree of security. In addition, a statistical system provides parents with reports on the child’s use of the system, tracking his/her pattern of use of KIDOZ, and eventually this aspect will allow for much more advanced organization and presentation of content to children..
  
• KIDO’Z is a new concept for a rich and safe internet experience for children. It allows children to perform activities that had previously been impossible for them to do, and provides a personal environment in which every child can express himself and find his own path on the internet.
  
• KIDO’Z is already available in 20 languages. Not only that, but the platform distributes content based on any number of demographic criteria. In example, kids in China receive entirely different and more relevant content for their needs, while other demographic/geographic user bases receive content based on their particular set variables.
  
• KIDO’Z is also community centric. Community can be derived from any number of shared interests, as we know. The KIDO’Z interface, tools and content support systems are geared to embrace community from many perspectives including; friends, regions, hobbies, brands, languages, education streams, location, nationality and of course family. No other service or system we know if is so directed at engaging users (especially children and their parents) in such a refined and well thought out way.
  

Of all the startups our firm, or our partners as individual Web analysts have worked with, KIDO’Z is the first to have not only built the right tool and targeted it, but to have localized it for the world, refined it technically and flexibility wise, and captured the essence of a powerful future market.


With the upcoming Version 1.0 release, KIDO’Z will actually provide a tool for the Web that has no equal. Kidzui is the only remotely similar platform of good quality, but its demographic is far older. As a first time tool for pre-school and even early elementary children, KIDO’Z will stand along. This does not often happen for early stage developments, and given their transparent and viable business model (free services underneath premium ones), I think marketers, developers, and the Web tech community might capture a glimpse of one viable path to success where so many are obviously failing miserably.

If Not Now, When?
Targeted products and inherent narrowly targeted marketing are the holy grail of every company. Except apparently, most large scale Internet startups. Even those that are narrowly focused fall short for any number of reasons. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed, none of social media or networking, no bookmarking or aggregation entity, none save one of 100 search startups, Wikipedia (Jimmy never monetized it), Wikia, nor any but one video startup has turned the proverbial dime of substantial profit for their investors. Digest this fact for a minute. Maybe $2 billion or more invested in 1500 startups, and no return in sight.

So what’s the big deal about KIDO’Z? From one standpoint, the inherent value of making nice things for children is far greater intrinsically than some college bozos making tools that appeal to narcissism. Secondly, from a business standpoint, engaging parents with refined services or even products that enhance their children’s lives is, well, a no brainer.

The example however, runs much deeper than this. The bottom line for us as either marketers, communicators, developers or investors is directing development toward something people are willing to pay for in the first place. It is called making a valuable, needed or wanted product. When the investment gravy train runs out for all these “puffy cloud”, glorified chat rooms runs out, perhaps better thought out ones will arise, or people will write more blogs etc.

Conclusion
Not every niche is as well defined or supported as the one KIDO’Z is targeting. Also, the argument for localized and controlled computing represented by this development, or even another recent one I wrote about in FileRide, will grow geometrically when and if these “cloud” entertainment networks begin to crumble. The social Web really has little need in most cases other than connectivity between desktops any way. As for detractors of “walled garden” or compartmentalized content, if we all admit it, we would love a degree of segregation from undesirable content. Instead of trying to make the Internet into a vast TV network, which it will never be, we should be focused on “grown up” commodities. It is ironic that the most adult startup in some time is a cute but wonderful kids tool.

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Google Image Search Lets You Filter Results with Specific Color

The Google Operating Systems Blog is running a post on a little tweak to Google Image Search that lets you filter your results based on a specific color. You won’t see the option to filter image results by color in the main Google Image Search though. But GOS was kind enough to share this trick to get the option running.

Say for example your use the keyword “blue lagoon” on Google Image Search, this will give around 1,2500,000 hits according to the Image Search results. Now this is all well and good, but the results could actually contain other irrelevant items.











Now how about using the URL given by the Google Operating Systems Blog:

http://images.google.com/images?q=bird&imgcolor=red

replace bird with the word “lagoon” and the color red to “blue” and compare your results with the previous image search using “blue lagoon”. They are definitely different. You’ll get lesser results using the URL right?










It’s really a pretty simple search filtering option but could save you a lot of time scrolling through numerous search results when conducting image search. No words yet though as to whether this will be rolled out as a full-blown feature of Google Image Search.

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Twitter Hashtags guides

What is a Twitter hashtag?
A hashtag is a way to unite global Tweets around some particular topic. Basically, these are tags that that help those who seek similar content discover your Tweets. According to the official source:

"Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag."

Hashtags are getting more and more popular (despite the fact some people are against them wishing their Twitter stream to be metadata-free and “as human a form of communication as possible”).

Anyway, I do use hashtags and find them fun, so I am sharing a few tips and resources below.
Where can I find what hashtags people are using?
#hashtags.org is the first place to find most recent and hot hashtags. It also shows each hashtag popularity trend when you hover over:













Twemes.com is another useful resource for discovering new hashtags and tracking those you are interested in. It has a hashtag cloud and also offers RSS subscription to any hashtag stream:










Wthashtag.com is a user generated wiki of hashtags. If you don’t know what any hashtag means or how to use it, you can use the site search and get a well-compiled entry explaining the meaning of the hashtag:

* When it was first discovered;
* Description;
* External links;
* Live stream using the hashtag:













How are hashtags used?

Generally, a hashtag is a great way to increase your Tweet visibility. However they should only be used if your Tweet adds value to the topic (so don’t insert # sign before each word).

Remember, that hashtags are tracked by people, so don’t waste their time by [I #eat #ice-cream #now] type of messages (this is also likely to rip off your followers). As an example, here are a couple of cases when using a hashtag makes sense:

* To categorize your Tweets based on a particular topic or for a particular purpose - e.g. #followfriday is a fun tradition to recommend your friends (and the whole universe) new people to follow:










* Hashtags are widely used to live-blog an event. This makes following an event much easier (check our recent post on how hashtags help Shane Jones to follow SEO conferences). It is recommended to set your hashtags before starting to live-blog;

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PPC Landing Pages: PPC Visitors Have ADD

This week I'll pick up on the introductory discussion of PPC landing pages. If you haven't already read the first installment, go back and do so now. Also, a few caveat/plugs: the confines and scope of this column make it impossible to treat some complex topics thoroughly. Landing page design and testing is one of those topics.

For a truly in-depth, expert, A-Z description, I highly recommend the book Landing Page Optimization, written by my friend and fellow Search Engine Watch author Tim Ash. And for those of you faced with the task of creating and testing many different landing page versions, I encourage you to take a look at the landing page design tool/platform LiveBall from Ion Interactive.Before diving in, I want to clarify a few things. First, the advice here will pertain to landing pages that are the destination of pay-per-click ads, and not necessarily to home pages and other site pages. Second, you don't need to worry about the SEO value (or potential to hinder SEO objectives); these pages are not intended to be browsed, and in fact it's probably a good idea to exclude them from spider examination by using "nofollow" mechanisms.

As usual, I'll start very simply. I'll refer to the very stark mockup below. I'll start with the most important concept in this article:

The first and most important objective of the landing page is to convince the visitor that they've come to the right place.

If this crucial first step doesn't happen -- immediately -- many (and possibly most) visitors will hit the back button and click on one of your competitor's ads.



Landing page designers should assume that most people visiting the site via PPC suffer from Attention Deficiency Disorder. They're rushing through their day with the usual thousands of distractions, trying to accomplish a task quickly: buy what your site is offering.

They do a Google search. They click on your ad. They start at the top left corner of the page and try to decide whether the page (and by extension, the site) matches their need/desire. If it does, they continue scanning the page, and possibly convert. If not, they're gone -- possibly forever.

How long does this process take? You'll read various estimates. My educated guess? Less than one second. But you can find out yourself: use your web analytics package to find out the bounce rate for your current landing page, and the duration of the visit for those who bounced off the page.

I'm betting you'll find that the bounce rate is alarmingly high -- like, over 50% -- and the time on site for the "bouncers" is no more than a second or two. The bad news is: that's bad. The good news: you're on your way to improvements.

So what's the best way to ensure visitors conclude they've come to the right place? Reinforce it using the communications medium they've already used: words.

You'll improve conversion rates significantly by doing just one thing: mirroring the language of the PPC ad in the area just below the landing page logo.

So if the search term was "red nike sneakers," and the ad text included "Free Shipping. Delivery by Christmas!", the headline below the logo should be "Buy Red Nike Sneakers. Free Shipping and Guaranteed Delivery by Christmas!"

By now it should have dawned on you that the best strategy may be to create a separate landing page for each ad group. Some companies can afford to do that, others can't. I'll show you some shortcuts in future columns.

For now, since I'm running out of space, I'll list additional landing page design guidelines, and explain them in detail in the next column.

1. Keep the logo small. Take a look at the landing pages of prominent retailers - the size of the logo has shrunk steadily over the years. I personally believe the logo need be no larger than 200 or so pixels wide by 50 high.
2. Most people, including ADD site visitors, don't read content formatted as paragraphs. Put your content - benefits, features - into short, bulleted items.
3. Graphics can be very helpful -- product photos, pictures of happy people benefitting from your products/services -- but keep the graphics relatively small. They should reinforce your textual messages and help guide the visitor to a quick conversion. See #6 below.
4. The button or link that allows the visitor to take the next step in the conversion process should be big, prominent and "above the fold" - visible on the screen without forcing the visitor to scroll to see it.
5. Limit or exclude off-page navigation. The more specific the search term, the less likely that the visitor arrived on your page without conversion intent. For that reason, pages we design often contain only three links - the link going to the next step in the conversion process, plus one each for the Privacy Policy and About Us pages. The latter are included for those visitors who need to feel the site and company are trustworthy. But we want to keep the visitor on the landing page - so we usually open a new window to display these two, leaving the landing page visible and accessible behind.
6. Adopt the attitude, "If it's not helping, it's hurting." Any text, graphic or filigree must help focus the attention of the visitor on completing the conversion.

My column enjoys a hiatus over the next two weeks, so the next installment will be published January 9. I'll continue describing PPC landing page design. Meanwhile, here's some homework: do a Google search on the term "buy nike mercurial aero vapor sneakers." Then try to figure out which ad and landing page combinations convert the best. Let me know what you think by hopping over to the Profitable PPC forum. And I wish you happy, healthy, restful holidays -- and a 2009 full of juicy conversions!

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Search Shifts and Predictions for 2009

Last year brought us few new innovations besides, or course, the Google killer Cuil (you've heard of them, right?). In my humble opinion, 2009 will see search engines focusing less on new product innovations and more on new revenue streams during our economic crisis.Google has seen a significant drop in its stock price; Yahoo continues to tread water and await a buyer to save them; MSN continues to plod along at 5 percent market share with the industry questioning why Microsoft is even playing in the space; and Cuil, well, let's just hope they get to see 2010.

Consolidation

Speaking of Yahoo, my first prediction isn't much of a stretch. There will be consolidation within the search engine market space in 2009. The jury's still out on who's buying who, but if you've followed the news over the past six months, it's a good bet that someone will buy Yahoo.

Yahoo's not the only acquisition target. Ask.com may not have the market share, but the floundering search engine offers a good product line that could enhance someone's capabilities portfolio. Perhaps there's a buyer out there that's looking to build an application backline to challenge Google. Ask.com could prove a huge asset in that case.

Recession Boost

"Free" gets the attention of many people, including marketers. With the cost of paid search terms going up, the organic search folks may see a lot more attention in 2009.

Although organic search traffic is often touted as "free traffic," it truly isn't. Developing rankings for key terms in an industry requires an investment in all the elements that go into building a Web site: content, coding, design, and strategy. Though the traffic isn't free, the ROI tends to be better.

Organic search marketing just might become the bread winner as cash-strapped client become wary of increased media costs in traditional space and an up-turn in bid competition in paid search.

ROI on the Prize for SEO

It's about time! ROI will no longer be a "nice to have" for those who practice SEO in 2009.

Again, the economy will dictate scrutiny of every marketing dollar spent, and clients are going to want to know ahead of time what they can expect from their SEO programs. ROI models, all with their own flaws, will control the landscape of organic search programs as search marketers hope to woo marketing dollars away from less successful or measurable competing tactics.

As part of a global agency, I welcome a shift to focusing on client returns. This may help the SEO profession gain acceptance and operate at a higher standard.

Local All Over Globe

In the coming year, if you own brick-and-mortar locations you better get familiar with local search and put a program in place. Local search will be the big thing in 2009 for search.

Local search is far more measurable than a traditional organic listing and, therefore, lends itself better to demonstrated ROI benefits. Additionally, the number of mobile searches will only increase as mobile phones become more sophisticated. Marketers must make sure they show up in these results.

A Paid Inclusion Rebound

If there's one paid search service that can thrive on '09, it's paid inclusion. Yahoo offers a unique PPC program called Search Submit Pro, which provides marketers with the ability to feed results directly into the organic listings. As organic results become more important than ever, marketers will try to get into the listing by any means necessary.

So far Yahoo is the only engine to offer this service, but I predict that we'll see similar offerings as other engines look for new revenue streams in 2009. These may not be straight text search results, but I don't think we've seen the last of paid inclusion.

The Year of Monetization

This year will be interesting for search engines. As factors from recession to emerging technologies convene, engines will have to create new revenue. Only time will tell whether that revenue comes from acquisition and increased market share or new programs like Yahoo's SSP.

Marketers will also look toward search to drive additional revenues, but they will only make the investment if the ROI is there. This will be an interesting year for the agencies and practitioners of search; they will have to be even more creative in their search programs. Money talks, and this year SEO must answer the call to prove its worth.

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MySpace Puts The Hammer Down On Project Playlist

MySpace is getting back into the business of blocking third party widgets, it seems - today they’ve banned embedded music widgets from the fast growing Project Playlist. But unlike previous 2006 and 2007 blocks of iMeem, Photobucket and many others, this time MySpace is doing it under threat of litigation from the major labels.We first got word from MySpace users that their Playlist widgets are simply vanishing from their MySpace profiles earlier today. When we contacted MySpace they confirmed the ban, noting that they have received infringement notices from “major music companies”:

MySpace is an open platform that welcomes all developers to build rich and legitimate applications for its global community. We take copyright issues very seriously and our goal is to help developers build a substantial business by creating an environment that respects rights holders and protects their content.

MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist. Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform. Any third party widgets (including any music widgets) are welcome on MySpace so long as they do not include infringing content—we encourage our users to utilize the many legitimate applications found on MySpace and across the Web.

Those major music companies are likely Warner Music, Universal Music Group and EMI, which have been in litigation with Project Playlist since April 2008. This is both a ban and a scrub, meaning users can’t add new widgets and all old widgets are being removed from the site.

Apparently this isn’t the first time the two companies have come to blows. MySpace also blocked Project Playlist earlier this year in March, but the company was able to evade the block with some success.

An industry source also confirms that Facebook has been served with the same notice of infringement. As of now, Playlist is still live on that site.

Project Playlist recently hired former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta as CEO and raised an undisclosed round of financing.

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Facebook Stares Down Labels Over Project Playlist Takedown Demand

Earlier this afternoon MySpace scrubbed all traces of Project Playlist music widgets from the site, and users are unable to embed any further playlists. The scrub was the result of infringement notices from the major labels, all of which are in litigation with Project Playlist.

The labels, sources say, sent the same takedown notices to Facebook, which has 660,000 users with playlists from Project Playlist. But Facebook has refused to comply with those demands, our sources say.

Facebook for their part are refusing to comment, as is Project Playlist. But our music industry sources are calling Facebook’s refusal to comply “irresponsible” and saying that a lawsuit is inevitable if Facebook doesn’t remove the application and widgets.

It’s not clear Facebook is fully aware of what they’re stepping into (although the experience of Mark Zuckerberg’s friend Sean Parker, who is the founding President of Facebook and the cofounder of Napster, with labels should give them some indication). The labels aren’t screwing around, and their fury with Project Playlist, who they say have been stalling on a music licensing deal for months, is unchecked.

Expect users to give Facebook a big thumbs up for staring down the labels. My question is, how far is Facebook willing to go to protect Project Playlist? The potential litigation exposure is massive.

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10 Advertising Words to Avoid in 2009

The economy, unemployment, companies folding, people losing their homes--2008 has left consumers wary of businesses. And that lack of consumer confidence requires straightforward, honest advertising messages to regain marketplace security. In 2009, perhaps more than ever, the words you use in your copywriting can determine whether you make a sale or lose a customer.
Here are 10 words to avoid in your 2009 copywriting.

1. Free
Ads that include messages about a free product or service promotions can work well during an economic downturn, but consumers need to see the products perform well. E-mail spam filters are tough on messages that include "free" in the subject line. While it might be tempting to use a subject line that says, "Open now to get your free widget," that's an e-mail spam filter red flag that will send your message to most recipients' spam boxes. When the economy is tough, you can't risk having your e-mails not make it to the intended recipients. Replace "free" with "complimentary" or "gratis" to sneak by spam filters without compromising the effectiveness of your message.

2. Guarantee
Few people believe in guarantees these days. Unless you can prove your guarantee is real, use the valuable real estate space in your ad for a more effective message that consumers are likely to believe and act on.

3. Really
If you want to waste space in your ads, include "really" in your copy. This word does nothing to help your messages. Instead, it slows consumers down, and they are not likely to wait around for the complete message. Don't risk losing them by loading your copy with useless filler words. Make sure every word in your copy is there for a reason.

4. Very
Does a message sound more compelling with "very" in it? Is "When you need very fresh flowers, call ABC Florist," more effective than "When you need fresh flowers, call ABC Florist"? If you answered, yes, reread the last paragraph.

5. That
Once you finish writing copy for your ad or marketing piece, reread it and make note of every time you use "that" in your copy. Chances are, you can delete 90 percent of them because "that" is a filler word that doesn't advance the consumer through the message. Instead, it slows down time-strapped consumers. Deliver the messages your audience is likely to respond to, and deliver them quickly.

6. A Lot
Don't use vague copy with words like "a lot" that do nothing to differentiate your business from your competitors. Instead, quantify your messages. If you offer 20 varieties of roses in your flower shop, say so. If you respond to customer service calls within five minutes, tell people. Which is more compelling: "You can choose from a lot of shoe styles at Sally's Shoe Boutique" or "You can choose from more than 100 shoe styles at Sally's Shoe Boutique?" No doubt, "100 shoe styles" is more intriguing than "a lot of shoe styles". A lot can mean different things to different people. Don't leave room for guesswork in your copy. Make your messages extremely clear with no room for confusion.

7. Opportunity
You're not helping anyone when you offer "opportunities" in your copy. Consumers don't want opportunities. They want to feel confident handing over their hard-earned money. They want to know they'll get the results they want and need, not the opportunity to perhaps get those results. Don't let them wonder what they'll get when they pull out their wallets. Tell them.

8. To Be (or Not To Be, For That Matter)
Write your advertising and marketing messages in the active voice, not the passive voice. If any form of "to be," "has been" or anything similar appears in your copy, rewrite it. Writing in the passive voice doesn't command action. Writing in the active voice does.

9. Synergy
This overused piece of jargon has had a long life, but it's time to move on. Leave jargon and 10-dollar words out of your advertising messages. There's no room in copywriting for buzz words and words that consumers need a dictionary to understand. Consumers don't care about your "unique value proposition." They care that when they pay for your product or service, it will deliver the results they expect. Naturally, there are some exceptions to this rule, such as B2B copywriting, where jargon might be expected. In most copywriting, however, keep it simple.

10. Drinkability
Budweiser is already using "drinkability" in its ads. Seriously though, the point is valid--don't copy your competition. Instead, differentiate your product and business with unique copy and messages that your target audience is likely to respond to.

The rules of successful copywriting don't change from one year to the next, but as the marketplace and environment change, so must your messages. Use the list above as a guideline to writing great advertising copy in 2009.

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Shopping Comparison Engines Will Boost Sales

Customers viewing results on a comparison shopping engine are twice as likely to convert into sales. That means if you haven't already submitted your site and products to the web's top shopping comparison sites, you're missing out on a ton of high-converting traffic.
Essentially, shopping sites are mini search engines that put shoppers in touch with a wide variety of products. Shoppers can search by product category or keyword to bring up a list of products from a variety of merchants. Many shopping engines allow searchers to compare characteristics such as price, product ratings or customer reviews.

Chances are you've landed on one of these sites before, if only by accident. In fact, a majority of shoppers find shopping engine listings while searching on regular search engines such as Google.

The big search engines love these shopping portals because they're:

* Loaded with millions of frequently updated product listings
* Chock-full of keywords
* Valuable to visitors because of their comparison and review features

Because shopping-engine listings rise to the top of the general search engine rankings so quickly, a shopping site can be your pipeline to a top ranking for your top keywords and products--without doing any of the extensive optimization work yourself.

However, it's not enough to submit your products blindly to each site. According to Shopping.com, the top three listed merchants get 50 percent of all clicks, so the higher in the appropriate listings your website appears, the better.

So how do you get your products to the top? Well, each shopping site uses a different set of criteria to list products, so you'll need a unique strategy for each one. The good news is there's only a handful of strategies to learn.

Let's take a look at your top shopping strategies:

* Pay for an enhanced listing. Some shopping engines, such as Nextag.com, will allow you to pay your way to a top listing. The ones that charge you based on the cost per click usually give you the option of paying more for each click to appear higher in the results. Others will allow you to pay a flat fee for top billing or to display an advertisement for your products across their networks.

* Compete on price. On shopping sites such as PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and Shopzilla, the products with the lowest prices appear at the top by default. Other sites allow users to sort listings by price even if that's not the default. So in a highly competitive area, you may want to discount your product to attract shoppers. These lowest-price shopping engines work best if you're selling collectibles or hard-to-find items; otherwise you're competing against the likes of Walmart, Sony and Office Depot.

* Boost your merchant/user rating. At sites such as Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com, your merchant rating increases as you attract more customers and get glowing customer reviews for your site and products. The higher your merchant rating, the higher you'll appear in the listings. So encourage your customers to review your products and website for you. If that doesn't work, offer an incentive.

* Optimize your product listings for relevant keywords. Shopping engines such as Google Base and MSN Live Product Search display listings based on their relevance to keyword searches. You upload your product listings to shopping sites through data feeds. These provide fields for you to describe your product in detail. It's essential to optimize your data feeds if you want your listing to appear when someone searches for what you offer.



Home > Online Business > E-Business Columnist > Shopping Comparison Engines Will Boost Sales
Derek Gehl: E-Business
Shopping Comparison Engines Will Boost Sales
Get your products to the top of search-engine listings with the help of these portal sites.
By Derek Gehl | December 12, 2008
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Customers viewing results on a comparison shopping engine are twice as likely to convert into sales. That means if you haven't already submitted your site and products to the web's top shopping comparison sites, you're missing out on a ton of high-converting traffic.

Essentially, shopping sites are mini search engines that put shoppers in touch with a wide variety of products. Shoppers can search by product category or keyword to bring up a list of products from a variety of merchants. Many shopping engines allow searchers to compare characteristics such as price, product ratings or customer reviews.

Chances are you've landed on one of these sites before, if only by accident. In fact, a majority of shoppers find shopping engine listings while searching on regular search engines such as Google.

The big search engines love these shopping portals because they're:

* Loaded with millions of frequently updated product listings
* Chock-full of keywords
* Valuable to visitors because of their comparison and review features

Because shopping-engine listings rise to the top of the general search engine rankings so quickly, a shopping site can be your pipeline to a top ranking for your top keywords and products--without doing any of the extensive optimization work yourself.

However, it's not enough to submit your products blindly to each site. According to Shopping.com, the top three listed merchants get 50 percent of all clicks, so the higher in the appropriate listings your website appears, the better.

So how do you get your products to the top? Well, each shopping site uses a different set of criteria to list products, so you'll need a unique strategy for each one. The good news is there's only a handful of strategies to learn.

Let's take a look at your top shopping strategies:

* Pay for an enhanced listing. Some shopping engines, such as Nextag.com, will allow you to pay your way to a top listing. The ones that charge you based on the cost per click usually give you the option of paying more for each click to appear higher in the results. Others will allow you to pay a flat fee for top billing or to display an advertisement for your products across their networks.
* Compete on price. On shopping sites such as PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and Shopzilla, the products with the lowest prices appear at the top by default. Other sites allow users to sort listings by price even if that's not the default. So in a highly competitive area, you may want to discount your product to attract shoppers. These lowest-price shopping engines work best if you're selling collectibles or hard-to-find items; otherwise you're competing against the likes of Walmart, Sony and Office Depot.
* Boost your merchant/user rating. At sites such as Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com, your merchant rating increases as you attract more customers and get glowing customer reviews for your site and products. The higher your merchant rating, the higher you'll appear in the listings. So encourage your customers to review your products and website for you. If that doesn't work, offer an incentive.
* Optimize your product listings for relevant keywords. Shopping engines such as Google Base and MSN Live Product Search display listings based on their relevance to keyword searches. You upload your product listings to shopping sites through data feeds. These provide fields for you to describe your product in detail. It's essential to optimize your data feeds if you want your listing to appear when someone searches for what you offer.

Each shopping portal has different allowances when it comes to how much information you can include, so read the fine print.


Now that you know the secrets to landing a top shopping portal ranking, let's take a look at some of the biggest and best shopping sites--and what you can do to land in their top three.

Free to list
Google Base--Optimize your data feed and website product pages.

TheFind.com--Optimize your data feed and your own web pages, paying particular attention to your product pages.


Free, but you can pay for better placement or sponsored listings
Live Product Search--Optimize your data feed and web pages, compete on price, boost your user rating.

PriceRunner.com--Pay for better placement, compete on price.

Nextag--Pay for better placement.

Cost-per click
MyTriggers.com--Optimize your data feed and web pages, compete on price (best if you're selling collectibles or hard-to-find items).

Shopping.com--Pay more per click, compete on price, boost your "trusted store" rating.

Yahoo Shopping--Pay for better placement, compete on price.

Amazon Shopping--Optimize your data feed, pay for better placement.

Pronto--Optimize your data feed, boost your store rating, write product reviews of related products.

Ask Shopping--Pay more per click, boost your rating.

PriceGrabber--Pay for a higher listing, optimize your data feed.

Shopzilla--Pay for better placement, optimize your data feed.

Shopping sites are online malls. They attract people who are primed and ready to buy. So they're where you want to be, too.

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The Science of Getting Repeated Website Visitors

The visitors that once came across your website or your blog might never ever return. Or there is a possibility of them returning back to your blog. Just imagine, if you get 1000 visitors on a day and then on the second day you get 1000 new visitors and the 1000 that came yesterday. Ya, on the second day you will get 2000 visitors and if the trend follows, your website hits will increase in geometric progression. Doesn’t it seem awesome? Ya, it is. Now, an important question.

What decides return visits?

Think of going to a shop. The goods you see there are available at many other stores too. Then, what makes a shop your favourite? It is the way the seller speaks to you, the surrounding ambience, the convinient location, the quality of the goods and of course, affordable and cheaper items.

These all are what your blog or your website demands. Of course, some little modifications are necessary to the statement. Your blog demands “to-the-topic content”, easy to understand language, good layout and last but not the least, concern for your visitors. You can show this concern by replying to the comments of your visitors. Giving them help they need with your “niche” and allow them comment their freaking minds. Of course, please do moderate spams.

A great web development project or a niche blog development requires repeated visiotrs if you want to sustain the competitions in your niche. I have often dropped plans of websites because I wasn’t able to figure out my jobs in order to get reapeated visitors and sustain the web-idea.

Your competitos always survive for a reason and that reason must be found out. You must know why people trust their brands or go to their site. Everything that your competitior has achieved is your bare minimum. You must further overcome your competitors in getting repeated visiotrs if you want them to beat in their own game.

Here is five questions that you must seek answers to:

1. Is your blog theme competent to your content?
2. Is your blog full of ads?
3. Do you conduct polls or open discussions with your readers?
4. Do you provide them freedom to express their comments?
5. Do you reply to the comments and queries made by your readers?

And, last Does yourblog fulfill its mission statement or promise to the public?

Once you have answered all these questions successfully, you will be able to understand your mistakes and would attract repeated visitors, increased traffic and (if you own an e-commerce website) an increase in sales.

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Advertisers Beware: Why CMF Ads Sucks and You Should Avoid It

If you’ve been a member of Entrecard for very long, you’ve probably heard of the advertising system called CMF Ads (aka Changing Marketing Forever). CMF Ads is an advertising system made specifically for Entrecard publishers.

The advertising network is made up of 20 of the “top” Entrecarders with their widgets above the fold. Each member has roughly around 20,000-30,000 page views per month.


Advertising costs $2.50/1000 page views. The owners say it is a prime condition and highly sought after since it is located directly beside the Entrecard widget. This means it should, at least in theory, contain a higher CTR than other ad placements.

Whats the problem with CMF Ads?
If you have marketed your website for any amount of time, you would know that $2.50/1000 page views is rather high, especially for run of network ads. In some areas, this may be seen as OK. However, not all page views are created equal.

1. Medicine, technology, and automotive industries generally have high CPM rates, but when you include personal, romance, and other areas the value is diluted.

2. Most traffic comes from Entrecard, a very low conversion type traffic. The traffic isn’t inherently bad, but it contains a large amount of unrelated visitors which may or may not come to the blog due to its content. This will inflate the page-views dramatically without any real benefit to your advertising efforts.

3. The huge array of differing categories makes advertising to a specific group impossible.

4. The ad space is unconventional (123×125). You have to create an ad specifically for them.

5. Advertising on blogs notoriously has a low CTR rate, which results in advertising costs being lower than traditional websites. Even in niches where $2.50/1000 page views is common, the price is cut dramatically.

Although the value of advertising changes depending on a sites category, a general run of network ad traditionally sells for $0.20-$0.50/1000 page views, which is usually for a 300×250 or 160×600 ad. Entertainment, political, and personal blogs are lucky to receive $1/1000 visitors for advertising directed specifically towards their visitors.

Honestly, you will receive a much better value for your money from other networks and through direct advertising. Even blogs like JohnChow.com sell advertising for $0.25/1000 page views ($500 for a 30 day 125×125 ad block at 2,000,000 page views). So why spend 10 times more to advertise on a blogging network which offers untargeted traffic? And to be perfectly frank, most websites within the CMF Ads network offer direct advertising at a more reasonable price.

Advertising through them just doesn’t make sense. Save your money and send it elsewhere. Don’t buy into the Entrecard hype.

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7 Proven Strategies for Improving Your Alexa Ranking

After spending two years building my own website, I was very disappointed that my Alexa ranking was still higher than one million. Alexa ranks each website based on the number of visitors it receives. The top ranked website, Yahoo! has an Alexa rating of 1 or 2. Less popular sites could be ranked up to 5,000,000.In order to improve my Alexa rating, I spent about three weeks combing the web to find tips, secrets, and proven strategies for increasing my Alexa ranking. Unfortunately, many of the sites offering advice didn’t even have a high ranking themselves. Finally I discovered a number of sites ranked within the top 100,000 that were all applying the same “Alexa techniques” to improve their ranking. I’ve begun implementing a number of these techniques and have improved my Alexa ranking by 250,000 spots in just one week.

Here’s what you need to know. The basis for many of these techniques is the fact that your Alexa ranking is based reach and page views. However it only counts those who visit your site and have already downloaded the Alexa toolbar. Anyone can download the toolbar for free which is automatically added to your browser and tracks the sites you’re visiting. Increasing visits from those who do not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not help your Alexa ranking.

I’ve summarized the 7 strategies that I’ve discovered and applied to my own website to increase my Alexa ranking. Apply these strategies to your own website and see your ranking climb towards the top.

1. Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website. Alexa even gives you the ability to co-brand the toolbar with your own logo and give it away. You can download the toolbar here: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/associatetoolbar.html

2. Use Alexa redirection whenever you can. No matter when or where you provide a link to your website, be sure to use the equivalent Alexa redirect URL. For example, when providing a link to my website, I use http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com. If you copy this URL into your browser, it will take you to MarketingScoop.com. To use this technique, simply replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours.

3. Encourage your website visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa’s detailed listings page for your website. This can be done by placing a link to the appropriate Alexa page on your website and asking visitors to “Click here to rate this website”.

4. Write your own site reviews on the top 100 rated Alexa sites and include your redirect URL. The top 500 domains, according to Alexa can be found at http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 When you write a review, be sure to use the redirection URL we discussed in number 2 above specifically for your website [http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com].

5. Download the Alexa ranking button, traffic history graph, info links, and other traffic counters onto the page of your website that receives the most traffic. For example, at the bottom of my home page http://www.marketingscoop.com, I’ve added the Alexa ranking box. You can do the same for your own site by visiting http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup You’ll notice that I haven’t added the traffic history graph. This is because it wouldn’t look appropriate on my home page and because Alexa is only providing detailed history on the top 100,000 sites. So if you’re not in the top 100,000, site stats would not be available.

6. Take an inexpensive advertisement out on the ExactSeek search directory for only a few dollars per month at ExactSeek.com Search engine results are directly correlated with Alexa rankings. You’ll notice that if a website is highly ranked on ExactSeek, chances are that it will be highly ranked on Alexa.

7. Get listed on as many search engines as possible by placing a free listing in DMOZ. This is the largest human edited directory on the web and is co-branded among hundreds of thousands of sites. Be patient though, it often takes up to 5 months before you see your website listed after submission. Even though it takes longer than it should, you have little say in the matter because it’s so widely used across the Internet.

These simple Alexa strategies are easy to implement and will make a huge difference in your Alexa ranking. Ultimately you want visitors to do more than visit your home page, you want them to interact with your site. Be sure to optimize your home page for SEO purposes, ease of use, and interaction. Creating a positive user experience will get visitors to return again and again.

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. Visit today for free marketing information and marketing blog directory. Michael has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit his marketing blog for further details.

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Promoting Your Blog: What You Need to Know

There are many ways of promoting your blog. But, there is no science or reason to believe one works better than another. Although, there are general agreements to the process to help insure the best results.
1. It is a long process. - Nothing works overnight.

2. Link out. - Linking out is a great way to gain exposure. Use your pings and trackbacks.

3. Content is king but marketing is queen. - The old ‘content is king’ still holds true today, but if you don’t prepare your blog, no one will see it.


4. Follow your stats. - Don’t just listen to what internet marketers have to say, do your own research. Find what works best for you and continue doing it and learn how to do it better. Which brings me to

5. Use your strengths. - What are you good at? Use it to your strength to help advertise your website and keep visitors.

6. It’s easier to keep visitors than get new ones. - Find what your visitors enjoy and keep doing it. Not only are return visitors easier to receive, but they are much cheaper.

7. Be consistent. - There is no bigger turnoff to potential subscribers than being inconsistent with copywriting. Keep your theme in order and present content in a uniform manner.

8. Implement SEO techniques. - Search Engine Optimization is the cheapest and most targeted traffic you will ever receive. Utilize it.

9. Be creative. - Find a way to market your blog like no other. Remember bum marketing? Even if his original idea didn’t work, he created national media attention–the best type of promotion.

10. Use social media. - And use it wisely. Don’t just use it to promote yourself or you will get banned quickly. Do your research and find what social media site will benefit you the most. Join it and be active.

11. Follow industry leaders. - No, don’t stalk them. But, do interact with them. The more they know about you the more they will be willing to link to you. That is, if you aren’t spammy. How to do this? Join Twitter and add them as a friend. Converse with them. Oh, and it does help to comment on their blog.

12. Diversify. - Don’t put all your eggs in the same… wait, that has been used. Don’t eat too many… er. Hm… I know, don’t eat too much turkey on Thanksgiving or you won’t be able to eat the delicious pie. If you spend all your time and/or money on one marketing adventure, you are doomed to fail. Instead, branch your marketing out into several areas.

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Nofollow: Why TurnipOfPower is Wrong and How He is Hurting Your Blog

The nofollow has been labeled a tool used by SEOs to try to game search engines and has been given a bad name. This is the farthest from the truth. nofollow is a tool used to help all websites and although shouldn’t be used on all links, it should definitely be used on untrusted, unrelated, and links in comments.

1. Giving dofollow links in comments helps no one. It takes PageRank from you and distributes it through all dofollow links. By doing so, each dofollow link receives only a portion of PageRank. If there are 10 comments, the 10 people must share it along with all the links on your page. This takes away from the links you should really promote, the links in your content.

2. Using dofollow on all links will only hurt you. Search engines know everything you link to. If you are an SEO blog and linking to a car blog, Google knows. If you also link to a personal blog, a blog about cats, and a blog about dogs, Google knows. Chances are, you will be penalized for being a ‘link farm’. This will give your links less page rank and no one benefits.

3. If a visitor comments on your blog and leaves quality information, reward them with a link from your post. Lets be honest, not all comments deserve a link, so why treat them like they do? If someone says something interesting, talk about it in a post. That way, the commentator gets “full” PageRank instead of just a portion.
4. Nofollow was originally created for untrusted links, but Google themselves stated it should be used to ’sculpt’ PageRank (for lack of a better word). Use nofollow on contact pages, TOS, and unrelated links. Don’t send PageRank to a page which doesn’t need it or won’t benefit from it. It only hurts your page and helps no one.
5. It isn’t just about trust. When you link to a website, search engines look at who they link to and who those link to. If the site you link to is OK, then they link to another site which links to a casino, pornography, or alcohol blog, you will still be penalized.

If you are still confused:
A link farm is a site which links to various types of unrelated pages.
A bad neighborhood is a page, blog, or website which links to ‘bad sites’ like pornography, alcohol, sex, drugs, or gambling/casinos.

The problem is, even if the site in the comments is related, you never know who they are linking to. By allowing dofollow in comments and all links, chances are you are linking to a link farm or bad neighborhood.

And this isn’t just about PageRank, it is about traffic. PageRank (the one you can’t see), helps generate the search engine results pages. This in turn allows visitors to search and find your pages for related keywords. If your page receives enough traffic, chances are your commentators will receive clicks. If your page doesn’t receive traffic, your commentators won’t receive as many clicks.

So by using dofollow, you end up hurting your commentators by giving less click-throughs.

PageRank is just PageRank, but traffic is what we all crave.

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Top 5 Strategies and Tactics that an SEO Company Does

SEO… Know anything about it? Well for one, SEO is considered to be among the newest of the many forms of Internet Marketing. And, it’s also considered to be among the most popular trends in internet marketing. But why is it that SEO still frightens a lot of us? Although SEO is one of the most popular, many of us still considers “It” as among the most complicated strategy for internet marketing.

But you know, despite the techno-R2-D2 dialect things that the dudes from an SEO department throws at you such as SEMs, Page Ranks, Keyword stuffing or density, Algorithms, SERPs, Alt Tags, Anchor Texts, Inbound or Outbound Links… SEO is as simple as it gets. It’s as simple as it’s called - Search Engine Optimization, and all you have to do is to optimize the website for search engines to find it easily. The only thing about it is that it involves a lot of work. But if you look at it on a different point of view, it’s quite enjoyable.

But what does SEO do actually? Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche - you’ll naturally want your site or content to be at the top of the líst. That is what SEO does for your website. Keeping the traffic in and letting it do that for as long as the website stands. Now, isn’t that a good thing?

To let you know what SEO companies do on an SEO campaign, let me give you the top 5 techniques and tactics that the dudes from an SEO Company usually do on their campaigns.

Keyword Research

Knowing your keyword is very important to achieve the highest rank in search engines. SEO Companies usually use software tools such as Wordtracker and Seobook to research for their keywords. These tools give them a rudimentary number of searches. Relevance is also very important in keyword researching. The design of a website must be relevant to its keyword. Another thing that SEO Companies do is doing some deep-linking to these pages on their sites. SEO companies usually find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to their home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition is something to consider as well. This way, it’ll be a lot easier to achieve higher rank.

Want SEO? Then visit SEO Philippinesat www.myoptimind.com.

On-Page SEO

On-page optimization and web design factors play a very major role in SEO campaigns. These are the first things that search engines look for in a website. It’s important for an SEO company to make sure that their website is as SEO friendly as it can. Also, SEO companies make sure that all of their pages are easily reachable from their homepages. This is easily done by a strategy called navigation bars or menus. Navigation bars lead to other webpage in a website. Sitemaps also play significant roles in SEO. SEO companies generate XML sitemaps and upload them to their website. This technique makes the search engines very happy, because this makes it a lot easier for search engines to crawl your website through that.

SEO companies prioritize website’s title and description as well. The title and description should contain some of their selected keywords. Dudes from an SEO Company also make sure that they use them to draw and attract interested visitors to their site and content, and not just the search engine. They also make sure that their title and URL contain keyword relevance for maximum effect. Having some of their major keywords in a domain name also makes this a lot easier for search engines to visit their website.

Want to make it to top 10 in a search engine? Then visit SEO Philippines at www.myoptimind.com for more details.

Link Building

There are many strategies and tactics developed within the SEO, and Link Building is still the most popular and most effective way of boosting a website’s rank on any search engine. Backlinks from relevant sites are as important as the keywords themselves. An SEO company makes it their top priority to make sure that the ‘anchor text’ is related to their keywords, while making sure that the text and overall quality of the content linking to their site is relevant. These guys make sure that they link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in their niche.

Only the latest SEO strategies and tactics can be served by SEO Philippines. Visit SEO Philippines at www.myoptimind.com.

Article Marketing

Article marketing, though not as effective as link building, is still a well-established way of getting some quality backlinks or inbound links. Doing a 500-800-word article with backlinks included within the article itself or on the resource box is still an effective method to receive a lot of traffic. Longer, more informative articles also work for many SEO companies. This is by using intensive network of press releases and distribution in article submission sites like SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters, and other major online press release sites. While doing all that, SEO companies still make sure that they’re also talking to users, users whom might become their clients. So these guys make use of their imaginative juices to make their article SEO-friendly and reader-friendly.
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Blogging and Social Media

Search engines are inlove with Blogs. Blogs are the most favorite spot that search engines visit. Newly updated entries, articles, live comments, and chain of communities, these blogs are what’s making SEO more and more fun. SEO companies usually use WordPress blog software for their blogging purposes. Most of these guys use WordPress because it’s extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easier to install on a website even if they do not have any knowledge in installing server-side scripts. Other SEO Companies also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blog hosts to help distribute content. Search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. Social bookmarking is becoming very important on the web. Social media sites such as Friendster, MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter and media news such as Digg, SlashDot, Technorati are now among the targeted media that SEO companies use. SEO campaigns include joining these sites and using them to their advantage. Though very time consuming, SEO companies are still using this strategy because of its great benefits and conversion. But apart from those things I said earlier, planning is still the heart of an SEO campaign. Planning is the foremost important part of an SEO campaign. In our every undertaking, planning is the least element that we would want to forget. Planning and strategizing is very important in every SEO campaign. Understanding what SEO strategy to use is integral. This way, we wouldn’t run into some major problems where we would have to resort to resetting our efforts and start again from scratch. Now, that would be very costly and time consuming. But first, you should take into mind that SEO is not complicated. A lot of work yes, but not complicated. As I had said, with a right point of view, SEO efforts are very enjoyable, especially when it comes to blogging, article writing, link partnership, and social media efforts. When used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffíc you’re seeking. Just do what we do and you’re on your way to success.

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5 Tools for On-page Image Usage Analysis

Image optimization is both vital for “search engine friendliness” and web accessibility. Let’s look at a few top tools that can help you analyze both the aspects of image proper usage:



1. Juicy Studio Image Analyser is a handy online tool that will look at each image on a given page and evaluate the following parameters:

* image width / height;
* alternative text;
* an URL to an image long description.
Note that some of the “errors” found by the tool should not necessarily be corrected (e.g. very seldom an image needs a long description URL), so use it rather for informational purposes than as a call to action.

2.Alt Text Checker (by Durham University) will list an alt text information next to each image found on the page:








3. Page Size Extractor will give you a quick idea of how the page images influence the page size and hence load time by giving:
* total number of on-page images;
* the largest image size;
* the total image size.









4. Web Developer FireFox: Toolbar offers an array of image analyzing tools:

* display alt attributes;
* display image dimensions;
* display image sizes;
* display image paths;
* find broken images;
* outline images missing alt attributes;
* hide images / background images;









5. Firefox Accessibility Extension offers a most useful feature summarizing all page images in the form of a handy table (the feature can found under “Text equivalents” => “List of images“). The table is extremely easy to use as (1) it highlights “the problematic” images and (2) it can be sorted by any of the following parameters:

* Image alt text;
* Image source link;
* Image width;
* Image height;

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