What does this mean for the average business with a web presence? It means that you want to optimize your site – not just for Google and other web crawlers, but also for small screen browsers.

Although there was some talk of needing a “mobile device only” version of every website, this kind of duplication is not necessary.  In fact, a cascading style sheet, or CSS, can be written into your web page, instructing the device as it loads your page, to optimize your site for the phone or PDA that is requesting it. So writing in CSS is the first step to optimizing your page for hand held devices and smart phones.

Use a program like the Openwave Phone Simulator to test your web page and see how it will look on a “generic” cell phone type device. If you know the specific parameters of a particular type of device (say, an Apple iPhone), then you can increase the parameters and get an accurate view.

Then optimize your content. Remember that too much text is too much for a smartphone device, and keep the articles short (no more than 500 words, on average). Many small articles with relevant links are better than one long article.

Make sure that the most important elements in your page will load in the center of the phone’s screen, and are accessible without scrolling.  Make sure your pages load quickly. Cell phones and smart phones have slower internet connections than most broadband providers, and you don’t want a clunky website that gums up the works. The customer will click the “close” box after a few seconds.

Many cell phone users will block the photos on your site from loading, so be sure to have relevant and interesting ALT tags that identify your photos. You want your page to make sense to the viewer who has no photo access.

With a little planning,  you will have a great website that is optimize for both PC and smartphone use.

As we all know, Google is committed to retaining that top billing, and they have responded to Bing and created some innovations of their own. Bottom line for both search engines is more relevant results for their users, and that means that SEO – search engine optimization — is even more important than ever.

While details will be coming forward for the next many months, many bloggers and some other sites have noticed a drop in their SERP rankings with Caffeine and Bing. This doesn’t need to happen, however.

In fact, smaller websites actually have a better chance of raising their rankings, if they use carefully targeted SEO.

Relevant Content
Good content becomes even more important than it has been in the past. If your site can match more precisely what the user wants to find, then you have a better chance of a high ranking.

Be specific in your content pages, and they will have a better chance of rising to the top. Carefully choose your keywords; if anything, specific keywords have become more important.

Be sure to include long tail keywords that get specific about your offerings: red mardi gras beads for parties instead of mardi gras beads or party beads. Think about brands, too: Canon digital cameras instead of digital cameras.

The titles of your pages are important. Each page should have a unique title specifically matched to the content you’re featuring. And you don’t want to ignore the Meta descriptions, even though they still don’t figure into the SEO searches. But if your page lands high up on that SERP, then you want to have an engaging, accurate and catchy Meta description to encourage the click.

The bottom line – although it will take more months to really see how Caffeine and Bing are going to respond, SEO continues to be highly important to web design. Money spent on SEO is money well invested, with the new search engines as much as the old.

Save yourself a lot of time and trouble giving directions by embedding a Google Maps locator right on your website using Google Maps API.

This tool allows you to use JavaScript to place a Google Map into your site, pinpointing your location with the superior accuracy that internet users have come to expect from Google Maps.

You can add different utilities for manipulating maps that are the same as the tools your customers are used to using on the Google Maps page. You can also utilize the numerous utilities available for manipulating maps, and add content to your maps by using various other services.

The Google Maps API will let you create a robust, customized map environment that is familiar to your customers and unique to your business. You can choose from normal, 2D maps, satellite maps, and hybrid maps showing some photographs and prominent roads.

There are many other features you can add to your map, like street view, street view points of view, geocoding and reverse geocoding (converting physical addresses into geographic coordinates of latitude and longitude), and a local search bar.

If your website is free and open access, then Google Maps API is free for your use.

You can actually earn advertising revenue from using your Google Maps API. The new GoogleBar has advertising beside local business search results. You can earn from this advertising if you have a link from the GoogleBar to an AdSense account. It’s easy to sign up for an AdSense account, as well.

For an overview of the Google Maps API and an introduction to the many features, check out the website at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/.

For instructions on how to utilize many of the features of Google Maps API, including the advertising feature, click here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Advertising

This new Add-on gives you an advertising-free, direct way to get a website IP address you need when working on site development.

No doubt you, like ourselves, work with many different internal and external sites during development, and find it difficult to remember which website uses which server. We thought it would be convenient if there were a Add-on that would display the current IP address as you were working on a page.

However, we were unable to find any that didn’t direct us to an advertising-filled page before getting us the address. Others bombarded us with unnecessary information before giving us the address, and others required an extra command prompt step before getting us the address.

So we created a direct, easy to use Add-on that avoids all those extraneous steps and information.

Simply add the Current Site IP Add-on to Firefox. It will show you the IP address for the site you are browsing in the status bar at the bottom right of the Firefox window.

We hope you find this new Add-on useful, and we’d appreciate any suggestions for additional features or reports of bugs. Let us know what you think at firefox@webdatamation.com

Here is a link to the Add-on on FireFox.com

There are a number of strategies through which one can optimize their own website. Of these, the one that is worth mentioning is the “Cloud”. Many of you might have this question in your mind as to, “what is a cloud?” and “what does a cloud has to do in SEO?” Well, let me throw some light on this. Clouds can be of many types, such as, profile clouds, link clouds, content clouds and so on. However, the most commonly, or rather the only form of cloud used or discussed in the SEO works is the tag cloud. When you are looking in some website page, you must have come across a section headed “Tags”. Under this head you will see a bunch of words, placed one after another, some appearing small in size, whereas, some big and bold. The difference in the size is dependent on the number of times each word or tag has been associated with an item. This whole section is called ‘word cloud’ or sometimes called ‘tag cloud’. In general, the tag cloud helps a visitor to have an idea about the well-liked tags that are present in that particular site. The individual word or tag is actually linked to a page where you will get contents related to the tag you clicked.

This has been a very useful tool for search engine optimization and is gaining widespread acceptance by websites who want to optimize their keywords for search engines. Actually, the whole idea behind a tag cloud is to help you “visualize” content that is most relevant to a websites based on certain keywords or the keywords you searched for.

However, I am sure, you might have come across a funny situation where you have seen a website having certain keywords in its tag cloud in the boldest forms and yet it does not contain any content related to that keyword! For those of you, who have not, watch out!

The most popular search engine spiders cannot read JavaScript or images, just as they read and process plain text. However since having a tag cloud requires some logistic optimizations on keyword history, such clouds are represented by either using JavaScript code or images. This accounts for a cloud that contains misleading tags. The answer to this problem is simple; pictures alone DO NOT best define your website. No, they are not at all friendly to search engines. They may be professional enough to attract the solitary attention of a friendly customer but they are like alien material for crawlers and spiders!

The best practice is to make good use of the “alt” and “title” tags for your images. This will allow the web spiders to crawl your web page in the most efficient manner and mine information from the content of your website. Identify your perception of the tag cloud; for example, which keywords should be bolder, and then compare it with the actual results. Modify or edit the “alt” or “title” tags accordingly.

If you spend some time on this, you will soon come up with satisfying results. Yes, “Tag” is the new SEO language that is creating waves, why shouldn’t you capitalize?

Marketing through search engines can be done in usually two ways, namely organic SEO and inorganic SEO. Organic SEO, as the name suggests, is nothing but the natural way for optimizing a website in the search engine pages. Since, this does not involve any sort of monetary transaction, good content of the web page full of creativity and relevance is of utmost importance. Another thing that one should keep in mind while using organic SEO is that, the content should continue to advance according to the need of the people searching the net. Moreover, optimization of this kind helps the websites to achieve a higher order of ranking for a longer period of time. This means that organic SEO has a natural, long-term impact.  However, the only shortcoming here is that one might have to wait for over a month or so in order to “see” the desired results i.e. to get one’s website ranked higher in the search engine pages for a particular search criterion.

Now, talking about inorganic SEO, the first thing that I would like to mention here is; this type of optimization involves a substantially larger amount of money from the respective website owners. The website owners, who aim to attain maximum popularity of their website within the shortest time period, are advised to exercise this artificial form of optimization. In this form of SEO, the website owners pay an amount for making their ads appear on a prominent part of the search results page. Consequently, substantial amounts of inbound traffic are drawn to the website. Compared to organic SEO, this is a bit expensive, and hence, inorganic SEO is best suited to those who can afford an enormous “flow of funds” to be paid for the optimization. Unlike the organic way of optimization, inorganic SEO can bring in the desired results much quicker, but the impact or the effect of such optimization is not that enduring.

People have their own reasons and opinions regarding the debate that which one of these two forms of SEO is more effective. On the basis of the evaluation made on search engine marketing services, both Organic and Inorganic SEO have their own shares of advantages and drawbacks. You can choose any of these services, which you feel suits best with your requirements, strategy and budget. In my opinion, I would say that a balanced combination of both the services could bring in the desired results, wherein, your website can be seen at the highest position of the search engine pages for a longer period of time and also, draw inbound traffic faster.

And that’s a mistake. Good testing can not only help you get rid of stinker ads and landing pages, it can also help you optimize winning campaigns, improving their conversion rates and making them even more profitable. And testing needn’t be difficult or time-consuming, especially if you have the right tools. One of the best tools for helping you test and refine your search marketing campaigns is Google’s Website Optimizer. Even better, Website Optimizer is a free service.

Google deliberately designed Website Optimizer to be easy to use, even though the tool allows you to run complex, multivariate tests. At its most basic level, the tool lets you test different pages or combinations of elements on a single page to see how well they perform against a “conversion outcome” that you define. Google even claims that “you can launch a simple test in five minutes” in the video tour of Website Optimizer.

The problem is that to be effective, tests should be carefully planned to measure your desired outcomes. Another problem is that the results of your testing need to be interpreted properly so that you can be sure that any implementation based on the results will perform as expected. Testing is as much art as science, and it shouldn’t be done in an offhand or cavalier fashion.

Not sure where or how to start? Try Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer, by Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-vonTivadar with Lisa T. Davis. It’s a comprehensive guide to Google’s free testing tool, written for search marketers who are more interested in enhancing the performance of their search marketing campaign than in the analytic joys of multivariate testing. The authors don’t shy away from technical explanations when necessary, but the focus is always on the “whys” of testing even when looking closely at the “hows.”

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is a general overview of website testing and tuning using Google’s Website Optimizer. The first few chapters focus on the tool itself, but after that the focus changes to case studies drawn from the authors’ own search marketing campaigns. These are valuable not only as examples of how to test, but because the authors also share the processes and best practices they have developed to maximize the impact of the testing process.

Part two “What You Should Test” looks at more than 30 key factors that can impact conversion rates. These factors differ based on how conversion is defined, which also differs for publishers, retailers and lead generation web sites. Most of the chapters in this part follow a similar format, with sections on “questions to ask,” an exercise, “what to test” and “apply this to your site” tips. This is one of the best—and most thorough—guides to the overall website testing and optimization process I’ve read.

Part three, “Diving Deep For the Technically Challenged” goes into even more detail about the testing process, how things work, behind the scenes details of how Website Optimizer works and more. Meaty stuff for the more advanced search marketer who wants to know everything to gain a competitive edge.

The nice thing about Google’s Website Optimizer, apart from being free, is that it can be used to test campaigns running on Google or any other search engine. And the general practices discussed in the book can be applied to any testing tool, not just Website Optimizer.

Always Be Testing is an excellent book that tackles one of the most important aspects of successful search marketing. If you aren’t currently testing and want to know how to start, buy the book. Even if you are already testing and tuning your sites as part of your search marketing efforts, the case studies and best practices discussed in this book make it worth far more than the cover price when you apply the principles to your own campaigns.

However, what does that mean specifically? We know that doubling conversion does not necessarily mean you have to double your traffic.

It means that you just have to create more lucrative cross-sections or co-occurrence of keywords (or pages) that appeal to your target audience. This feat is easily accomplished with SEO and within the context of your pages using cross-sections of keywords that will draw an audience based on the content and market focus.

This is the principle of funneling, which implies funneling relevant traffic based on “broad match” and “exact match” traffic as a result of information retrieval. What happens next is pure synergy, a person inputs words, search engine identifies patterns and based on indicators of reputation and relevance return a page from a website.

Considering there are millions of ways for each visitor to arrive at the same page or same conclusion, depending on their personal experience or manorisms. Since no two people are alike (although there are common denominators) each inevitably searches their own way.

Also, since most searches are unique (meaning they have never been executed before) that represents a tremendous opportunity for sites that target low hanging fruit (available keywords) while targeting more aggressive key phrases.

Keep in mind that every word when combined with another word is a potential keyphrase. Also, since you have no control over what a person may type in a search engine to find your website, you essentially do your best based on traditional keyword research tools, common sense and other metrics to gauge popularity and anticipated traffic.

However language barriers, personal preferences and other components of distinction can create hot spots as a website can double as a hub or springboard for other useful content. The gist is, by targeting enough low hanging fruit (root keywords within range), you systematically increase the volume of traffic and potential interactions with prospects.

This is the way a website can showcase a stable increase in traffic each month. By using content as spider bait, linking to more relevant pages in the context of each post and targeting non-traditional, less competitive keyword combinations.

Every top 10 ranking you produce is an indicator of your websites strength to search engines. Eventually your pages become powerhouses and funnel tremendous surges of link juice into different areas of the website which continually emerge is unique and uncharacteristic ways.

The conclusion here is to look beyond keyword research and tap into the raw and latent potential of LSI (latent semantic indexing and phrase rank) within each of the pages in your website.

JQuery is dual licensed under the GNU General Public License and the MIT License and is hence, free and open source. This allows you to either manipulate the source or implement its range of functions in your scripts for free.

Recently, Nokia and Microsoft have announced plans to bundle JQuery on their platforms. Nokia has plans to integrate this tool on their Web Run-Time platform, while Microsoft is gearing up to provide this framework with their ASP.NET AJAX and ASP.NET MVC framework in particular and the Visual Studio environment in general.

We had a brief discussion on MooTools last week. Though JQuery and MooTools are similar tools by nature and provide the developers with almost the same set of features, however they have minor differences and are unique in their own way.

Chaining of functions together to perform multiple operations on the DOM at the same time is a default and beautiful feature of JQuery that developers can make use of to develop code rapidly. It also has support for CSS 1-3 and basic XPath and hence gives you more control over the design layout of your page. JQuery has a nifty set of utilities to offer that include browser version, each function, AJAX and support for JavaScript plugins to mention a few. This tool also provides you an event based control over your page and manipulation of the DOM based on events.

Effects and Animations can also be developed using the JQuery platform but however, I personally felt MooTools scores over JQuery in this regard. So, if you want rapid code development with standard animations and a neat look and feel, go for JQuery. If however, you are on the lookout to deliver more eye-candy animations all over your page, MooTools should be the obvious choice.

We know that timing and layers all play their role, but knowing when to do something and how are the true qualifications of developing results that transcend just being a part that ultimately serve the whole. Building and leveraging website authority is on of such things which is why we encourage you to follow the links to these posts from the past for further elaboration on the topic.

• Authority Sites and Authority Site Building (how to leverage website authority)
• Phrase Rank and Trust Rank (Looking beyond just links)
• Don’t Just Build Links, Build Trust
• How to Improve Search Engine Placement (and Develop Authority) for Your Site
• Combining SEO with Time and Authority

It’s not just about code, links or content it’s all about building website authority and gaining the trust of search engines.

Once authority is attained, all of the SEO techniques and tactics you glean from other facets of search engine optimization work that much easier. Particularly when targeting moderate to competitive phrases since most of the keywords you simply mention on a page become low hanging fruit and rise to the top of the SERPs (search engine result pages) based on the virtue of the reputation your site has accrued.

It’s not always the tip of the iceberg that matters, its what is beneath that you should concern yourself with. They always say age before beauty. Well in this case it’s build authority and trust before trying to scale competitive rankings.

There is no shame in being where you are at, you just need to know so you can gauge the impact your website has, so you can condition it into a website capable of attaining the lofty goals you establish, despite how competitive the arena may be.