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Need a Personal Assistant?

by on Aug 04, 2008 (0) Comments

Recently, I found a way to be up to date with news, using an RSS Aggregator. Say, you need to know about Beijing Olympics and what its main attractions are. Instead of your going through tons of unsorted data until you find what you need, an RSS Aggregator brings the “headlines” at your doorstep (or should I say Desk-stop?) – in this case, say who won the latest gold! Once you subscribe to an RSS feed, an aggregator checks for new content at intervals you specify, retrieves the update and provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application. Aggregators with pod-casting capabilities can even automatically download media files, such as MP3 recordings! Amazing, isn’t it? As you will have probably guessed by now, it saves a tremendous amount of your time. Or conversely, you can read many more feeds in the same amount of time, which just wouldn’t be feasible otherwise. Additionally, you avoid those ads too.

You are spoilt for choice, when it comes to what aggregator you want to use. It depends on your own needs – You might prefer an aggregator that shows news items as a news ticker on your desktop or a full-fledged application to read RSS feeds in. I will help you out with a list of some: -

Web Based – The web browser Mozilla Firefox comes with built-in auto discovery for news feeds, a one-click-subscription icon for feeds and a mechanism called Live Bookmarks that lets you access feed items as bookmarks. Using extensions, the Open Source browser can also suite more advanced needs. Opera and Apple Safari have their own lists too. Some reader applications on the web are hosted on remote servers. Popular ones include the Google Reader, My Yahoo! or Bloglines. Google Reader even allows you to view items offline.

Desktop Software – There’s a lot of software across platforms and operating systems which are Free! Windows users have a choice of Newzie, FeedTray, QM Nooze, NewsPiper and many more. Some even read out the items aloud. Linux and Mac users have Liferea, SnowNews, Raggle and a whole lot of others to choose from.

Windows based phones and the Blackberry’s are coming with RSS Aggre(sive)gators!

“…. Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career, a family… Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players… Choose good health…” – Trainspotting.

You might just add an RSS Aggregator to it!

Website Analysis: SEO Starts with a Thorough Analysis

by on Aug 04, 2008 (0) Comments

SEO starts with a thorough analysis of the website to conclude which aspects of your site need optimization. Why let coding errors or poor site architecture impact rankings for the worse? With search engine algorithms changing daily, there are no guarantees that the immunity you have today (from a favorable pat on the back) will pass value tomorrow.

A typical website analysis SEO sweep would look for things like:

Link Optimization - Links leaving each page (even if pointed at other pages in the site) should all have something link worthy to communicate. A link that says “click here” is a candidate for a makeover to something more consistent with the topical theme of the site, such as click here for more information about “main keyword and qualifier” as the link instead. 50% of your link profile is up the the webmaster, make good use of internal links.

Site Architecture - does your site employ a flat or robust site architecture? If you have everything in one folder (the root folder) and are just using random or diffused titles on each page, then you could optimize your information architecture to be more conducive to a search engine friendly website. Without making the topic complex, I often use Wikipedia as an example of solid website architecture.

The use wikipedia.org/wiki/main-keyword as the optimized naming convention then, the title is the main keyword and on that page are inbound links pertaining to all manor of semantic variations of the keyword, singular, plural, analogous keywords and more importantly multiple paragraphs about the keyword.

Combine this with a few million other pages and a few million other links and now you know why Wikipedia ranks so well in search engines. The take away is clear, create consistent titles and content and link to yourself (meaning the target page) with other related pages using the main keywords on the target page.

Aside from constant refinement, the need to create performance benchmarks, asset the competition and their methods as well as prune words, links and make adjustments to code (unless your rankings are stable or improving) is just another day at the office for an SEO.

Content development – Content development is crucial (fresh relevant content is king), but you have to make sure you are not diffusing your main keyword with lots of filler as well. By publishing content frequently you are flagging the attention of search engine spiders who will visit more frequently to index your new pages.

How to do Negative Keyword Research (Part 1)

by on Aug 04, 2008 (0) Comments

Negative keywords can often be overlooked by search marketing managers eager to expand their keyword list and get as many searchers as possible to click their ads and follow through to their site. However, negative keywords can play one of the most important parts of your paid search marketing campaign by eliminating the traffic you deem not relevant, thus raising Click Through Rates (and therefore quality score), conversions and conversion rates.

For those unaware of negative keywords, these are elements in your PPC campaign that will ensure your ads are not triggered and displayed when this keyword is included in the searcher’s query: if I have the negative keyword “boat” in my “rentals” campaign, then my ads will not show when someone types “rent a boat” into a search engine.

The absence of negatives in your campaign may lead to a complete waste of your budget if you are not careful. It is also very important to include these keywords from day one to your campaign, and then add new negatives as and when you find them. The other thing to note here, is that the simpler your keywords are, the more you will need to use negatives: if you are bidding on “rental” for your car service, then you will need to exclude anything else in the world you think people might rent. (boats, planes, flat, power tools…)

So how do you research for negative keywords that should apply to your campaign?

When you use your favorite keyword tools to build up a keyword list of terms relevant to your campaign, there are usually more suggestions you reject than ones you accept. Well instead of simply dismissing these terms, put them aside, and factor them into a negative keyword list.

Once this is done, type in the most generic keywords of your campaign into the keyword tool (the shortest ones: usually one word, possibly two words). This will churn a long list of keywords in which you can select irrelevant keywords, put them aside in your master negative keyword list. You then need to go through your negative keyword list, and make sure you DON’T want to appear for any of these terms.

Now you have a decent list (10-20 terms can sometimes be all you need, but it can be anything really) you want to add these to your campaign. In AdWords, it’s never been easier: go into your campaign page, and there should be a link there to the campaign negative keywords. Copy + Paste your negative list into the box, hit enter, and your negatives are now active and refining your campaign objectives.

Web Filtering Moves to the Cloud

by on Aug 04, 2008 (0) Comments

Zscaler, a new security company by a noted serial entrepreneur, brings Web filtering into the cloud, allowing employers to more easily manage which Web sites workers can visit and what they can download to the corporate network.

Web filtering software is moving to the cloud — that all-knowing, pervasive, sometimes unreliable cluster of computers in the digital ether — and it’s going to watch your every move online and tattle to your boss.

Headsmacking Tip #4: Use Keyword Variations with Matching Intent Together

by on Aug 03, 2008 (0) Comments

Posted by randfish

For this week’s tip (see #1, #2 and #3 in the series) , I thought we’d quickly run through an issue that, early in my SEO career, frequently confused me (and seems to trip up lots of sites today, too). The concept is simple – given a page that’s ranking well for keyword “A” some folks make the mistake of targeting close variations of “A” on separate pages without good justification.

Here’s a quick example:

Example of Multiple Pages vs. Single Page Targeting Keywords

Sometimes, it can be wise to target variations on different pages, but you need to think carefully about why. In our example above, the intent for a searcher seeking “electric scooters” vs. “buy electric scooters,” “electric scooters for sale,” and “cheap electric scooters” isn’t substantively different. Therefore, it might be unwise to create a multitude of pages to target each of these variations when a single page could target each effectively. In my experience there’s no need to even venture into spammy territory here. Let’s look at some title tags:

Spammy Version

TITLE: Cheap Electric Scooters for Sale, Buy Electric Scooters

Good Version

TITLE: Buy Electric Scooters at Scootermoz – 1000s of (In Stock) Electric Scooters for Sale

In the good version, I didn’t use cheap in the title, and I probably wouldn’t in a real example either. From experience in retail SEO, I’ve seen that “cheap” (as a keyword modifier) is often a low conversion rate visitor, and it may even lower the conversion rate of other visitors. Instead, I’d probably opt to put it in the text of the page (and even then, relatively sparsely). The other phrases are valuable, and I’ve included them in the title and would pepper the page appropriately with mentions. Typically, with a variant that’s best to keep on a single page, the broader phrase is included (as in “electric scooters” being included in the phrase “electric scooters for sale”), and thus, mentions of the longer phrase will help with keyword prominence of the original as well.

Obama Campaign Launches Document Archive On Scribd

by on Aug 02, 2008 (0) Comments

Barack Obama’s campaign has posted a blog post announcing the launch of its official account on Scribd, the online document repository. The page, which can be accessed at http://scribd.com/barackobama, will serve as a resource for documents related to Obama’s policy, along with official statements.

Y Combinator-funded Scribd is a “YouTube for documents” that allows users to upload an array of filetypes that are converted to a Flash format viewable on most computers. The document viewer, called iPaper, can also be embedded in web pages. Since its launch in 2007, Scribd has seen explosive growth, and now claims to see nearly 20 million monthly unique visitors.

Scribd’s inclusion in the Obama campaign isn’t surprising given the candidate’s adoption of web-centric services like Twitter (his official account has over 52,000 followers). In contrast, opposing candidate John McCain has admitted to not being particularity tech savvy, though as we noted in our endorsements for the candidates, his policies will matter far more than what web 2.0 services he’s fond of.

Welcome to Web 3.0: Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center

by on Aug 01, 2008 (Comments Off) Comments

This guest post is written by Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation with honors such as the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the SDForum Visionary Award, Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, and being ranked No. 7 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT survey by eWEEK.

For almost ten years now, we have been witnessing a decisive shift from client-server software to software as a service. Google, eBay, and Amazon.com established the value of multi-tenant internet applications in the consumer market, and salesforce.com, Google, and others have been proving that this same multi-tenant model is winning in the enterprise as well.

This shift to Web-based applications has generated two powerful waves so far. Now, we are seeing a third wave—one that we are calling Web 3.0—and it may prove to be the most significant and disruptive yet to the traditional software industry.

While the world doesn’t need another buzzword, I feel that both the emerging generation of entrepreneurs and developers, as well as traditional software ISVs, need to grasp the enormity of Web 3.0 and its potential to create change, disruption, and opportunity. Web 3.0 is about replacing existing software platforms with a new generation of platforms as a service.

To put Web 3.0 into perspective, we need to look at all of the major waves in the history of the Web. They are not defined by distinct periods of time, but are best seen as overlapping waves of adoption.