JoelX

Winning Visitors With Meta Descriptions

Joel — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:10:25 +0000

Meta descriptions are a forlorn and all too often forgotten part of web design. Originally developed for the first search engines to tell what the webpage was supposed to be about, meta descriptions were heavily abused by spammers and now are a much smaller factor in search engine rankings. However, meta descriptions still do serve an important purpose: they are your advertisement in search results to tell searchers what your page is about and get them to click on your link. The title tag gets all the love from people since it is the anchor text for the link from the search engine and also is a strong ranking signal to Google, but your meta description will give people extra information if they want it before clicking your link. Below is where your meta description appears in search engine results:

I circled the meta description in red in the above search result.

Your meta description will help your visitors better understand what your article is going to be about. You have about 150 characters to explain what your page is about. I would mention your targeted keywords in the meta description not just for SEO purposes, but so that when the searcher’s eye scans down the page it is more likely to catch on your article. Mentioning the keyword once or twice is okay, but don’t do it more than that or you will look like a spammer.

Meta descriptions are an important part of good web design, so don’t forget them!

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5 Tips To Make Your Blog Unstoppable

Joel — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:23:22 +0000

In my journey to the top of the blogging world, I have occasionally found myself stuck on plateaus. If you are in a similar position follow these 5 tips and your blog will be kickstarted up the ladder of success! (Sorry about all the climbing metaphors, I’m going to be attempting Mt. Rainier this weekend lol)

Comment on other people’s blogs and link back to your own. Spam will not work (comment no-follow is now ubiquitous), you need to write genuine comments related to other bloggers posts. If you can contribute to their site, they will be more open to beginning a relationship with you and will be more likely to send links & traffic your way.
Use Wordpress software. Wordpress is the leader in blogging software and is extremely customizeable and offers thousands of themes & plugins for easy use.
Use free tools such as Google Adwords, Trends, and Insights to help you find what people are searching for and write articles based on this information. Be sure to pick topics that you are passionate about though or your readers will easily see through you.
Be more open & honest. Not only will being more open and honest make writing more fun for you, but it will also make your writing more interesting for other people to read and link to. If you use your personal “voice” people are far more likely to become engaged with your blog and keep coming back.
Hire a professional online marketer. There are many people who have a good understanding of how to drive traffic online and are able to help you analyze the technical details!

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Writing Better Title Tags

Joel — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:49:05 +0000

Title tags are frequently overlooked by web designers and other people who are unfamiliar with search engine optimization. A title tag is the text that appears at the top left of the blue bar on your browser and it is easy to ignore. If you do a search on Google using the query “site:yoursite.com”, you will quickly see how important title tags are. The blue link at the top of each search result is pulled directly from your title tag. You can see how it appears for my site below:

The links at the top of each search listing are my title tags, so for the top result I used a title tag of “Biggest Funny DeMotivational Posters Collection”. You will notice that each and every one of my title tags is unique- this is important because a title tag is a strong indicator to Google of what keywords the site is relevant for.

Your title tag functions as an “advertisement” in the Google search results for you to try to get people to click on your link and visit your website. As such, it is extremely important to think like your visitor. If you had just put in your keyword query on Google, what title tag would you be most likely to click on? In my case, for the first result I am targeting the keywords “demotivational poster”, “funny demotivational poster”, and “funny poster”. I wanted people who searched for those keywords to know that my site offered them what they wanted (and a lot of it), so I wrote that I had the Biggest Collection of demotivational posters. After ranking in the 2nd spot right after the originators of demotivational posters, Despair.com, for a long time I lost interest and stopped optimizing for “demotivational posters”. However, I am still in the 6th spot on Google and receive fairly heavy traffic to that page.

The most important factors to remember when you write your title tags are:

Keep your title tag under 70 characters
Each page should have a unique title tag
The first couple of words in your title tag gets more weighting at this point with Google
Use your keywords in your title tag, but also make it interesting for people to click on. You can test different title tags using Google Website Optimizer.

If you have any further questions on how to optimize your title tags, please feel free to ask in the comments!

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The Joy of Marketing BS

Joel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:39:45 +0000

Unfortunately, the marketing industry is full of BS. One example is this “study” undertaken by the Arnell Group for Pepsi. Pepsi purportedly spent an enormous amount of money on this project that is eminently cheesy. Quote: “Breathtaking is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy”. Arnell goes on to compare his new design for Pepsi to Leonardo Da Vinci, the Parthenon and other historical works of art. As I plodded through his 27 pages of absolute nonsense, I began to lose hope in the traditional marketing industry. Performance-based marketers like myself shudder when we see old-school marketers resorting to sophistry to cheat their clients out of money and brand equity. There is absolutely no empirical research in this study. Nowhere does he actually test people’s reactions to his re-branding in the marketplace.

However, marketing as a field is very young and eventually the hacks and cheats like Arnell will be washed out. Clients will go to marketers who can show proven success, metrics and data for their ideas.

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Fred Wilson’s Internet Investments

Joel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:53:18 +0000

I did a little bit of research today on Fred Wilson (Twitter investor) and discovered that he has invested in quite a few other businesses that I have used and really liked. Meetup is a web application that easily enables people with a common interest to meetup. I have been to two types of meetups so far (flag football & entrepreneurs) and plan on using Meetup.com to find other people to do things in my areas of interest. Fred Wilson also invested in Disqus (popular third party blog commenting platform), Zynga (of Mafia Wars fame), and Boxee (browser on your television). Zynga is enormously profitable already using microtransactions and Twitter is the hottest site on the internet among early adopters right now. I’m amazed at his success rate and will be avidly reading his blog (AVC) and trying to find out more about his techniques and strategies. He did mention in an interview that his “grand view” when it comes to investing is to try to find business models that the internet will disrupt. Fred Wilson says the internet is the type of phenomenon that only happens once every several hundred years and will impact almost every type of business in major ways.

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New York Times Scams Advertisers

Joel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:44:44 +0000

After having ads inexplicably open many times while reading the New York Times on the iphone, I finally figured out what was going on. When u double click on the text of an article to zoom in and read it, the edge of the ads is included. So even though you can’t see any of the ad you can still click on it. This is a clever ploy by the New York Times web designers and marketers to artificially inflate their click numbers and thus their revenue. I strongly recommend anyone who buys advertising on the New York Times to question the clickthrough rates claimed. Guess their integrity in writing doesn’t extend to the rest of their business.

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How to Improve Your URL Structure

Joel — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:25:12 +0000

URL structures are a subject that most web designers ignore. You visit many websites that have a couple hundred characters in their web address (sorting mechanisms, session IDs and the like). URL structures are important because humans are much more likely to click on a URL they see in the search engine that reads example.com/information than example.com/2387/592837/babcarseat2352/information?ie=UTF8&node=165796011&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd. Not only that, but it is important for search engines to include your keyword in your URL.

I recommend that people use the simplest possible URL structure that they can make work with their website. Ideally, you would only have a one-level deep URL like example.com/tree-article. If you view my URL structures, they have a number at the end- I had to include the post number so that Wordpress wouldn’t end up having two articles with the same URL. The number at the end of the URL structure is the post number, which is guaranteed to be unique. Other than that small concession to smooth site operation, my URLs are as simple as can be and are human readable. For example, when someone sees my site on Google or Bing or Yahoo, they can tell what my site is about by just reading the URL: blog.joelx.com/how-to-improve-your-url-structure/3377.

URL’s that are shorter also get a higher clickthrough rate so for articles that I expect to gain a lot of search engine traffic I try to make them one or two words added to the end, such as blog.joelx.com/demotivational-posters.

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Human Spam

Joel — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:25:05 +0000

I went to the Bellevue Entrepreneur’s meetup tonight and met some interesting people. Some of them had legitimate businesses and some were what I dub “human spam”. One woman was selling diet pills that allow you “to lose weight with no exercise or changes in what you eat!”. Another man was involved in a multi-level marketing scheme selling holiday cards. I get a sinking feeling in my gut when I talk to such people, so I left soon after. Human spam is somehow much worse than internet spam; I can giggle at internet spam, but seeing wasted human life is tragic.

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Reverend Joel Randall Gross

Joel — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:14:56 +0000

I signed up for an online “church” that ordains ministers to perform weddings. If you are interested in getting married, let me know and I will perform the ceremony!

Proclamation of Ordination

Thank you Reverend Joel Randall Gross

Effective 6/26/2009

Please understand that IF this is not your LEGAL name, this is not a valid ordination. If it is, there’s no need to worry. We are referring to everything after the “Reverend” part above. We ordain you as a member/minister of the Universal Ministries in a service on your behalf at the Milford church, not just through an online registration. You are now a minister of this church within the Doctrines and articles of Association of the church, with all rights and obligations thereof. You are now legally able to use “Reverend” as part of your name if you wish. Assumed names and “taken” names are NOT acceptable. ALL states require ministers to sign legal contracts with their legal name. This applies to your Ordination Certificate and any Marriage License you may sign. If this name is NOT your legal name, please let us know immediately and we will make the necessary changes. Also, if your name legally changes or other information needs to be updated, please let us know so that the registry has your current information at all times. Understand that only your legal signature on a license is valid, and with the church.

If you are an underaged person according to your State or National laws you are ordained today as a youth minister without marriage authority until legal age. The church does not limit this, but the laws of your area. For most people 18 is the earliest age you may sign a license of marriage, other areas may vary. When you reach legal age your ordination automatically becomes full without additional filing with the church. We do not limit you, but the laws of man often do. The license of marriage is a legal contract that requires people of legal age, or what is considered the attainment of adulthood to sign off on. When you reach the legal adulthood of your area you become without needing additional approval a legal minister in all rights.

I, Douglas E. Hickman, Ordaining officer of the Universal Ministries, do Ordain, Anoint, Appoint, and Select you for placement into our Registry of Ministry as a minister, and member in good standing. Even as you read these words now, I have already said them, and with your request accepted them in the Milford, Il., church in a physical, defacto service on your behalf. You, as with every member and minister of this church, were ordained in a ceremony this date with full rights of minister in the UM. Through your request to be ordained we have granted the legal authorities of the church in the world that faith grants you in spirit. Our contract of sharing can only be broken by people, as God ordains unto the foundations of the world. As in God, we have made our documents of legal establishment simple so they become difficult to violate as our goal is sharing forward in faith, not regulating members with complicated words. This means that from this day forward within the Doctrines and Articles of the UM you are granted ordination for life unless you request to be removed, or violate the Articles and Doctrines of the UM, you are a minister and member with the Universal Ministries. This being said, we welcome you into our Ministries of Universal Acceptance

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Can One Merchant Account Run Multiple Websites?

Joel — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:00:14 +0000

Merchant services is one of the most confusing parts of running an online business. Right now, I find myself asking “Can one merchant services account run multiple websites?” I have done some research and found a few options.

If you have a generic business name, such as “Internet Orders” you may be able to set up multiple websites in different niches using one merchant account. Unfortunately most merchant services providers that I talked to, including Wells Fargo merchant services, requires exactly one merchant services account per website.

Irritating…. Though I wonder if you can have multiple merchant services accounts without having to pay the monthly fee again?

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