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The beautiful truth about the Apple logo

2011-10-06T00:58:00.000-07:00

It’s one of the most familiar icons around today and is showing up on sites across the globe as people mourn the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. But, what is the story about the Apple logo. The apple bit is obvious, that’s the name of the company, but what about the bite, the byte?
Rob Janoff, who designed the famous logo old school style using paper, pens, glue and art knife, explained in interview that there was no mystical undertone, no religious connection, no gay iconography (despite the colorful stripes):
“Adam and Eve didn’t have anything to do with it. The bite of knowledge sounds fabulous, but that’s not it. And, there is a whole lot of other lure about it. Turing the famous supposed father of computer science who committed suicide in the early 1950s was British and was accused of being homosexual, which he was. He was facing a jail sentence so he committed suicide to avoid all that. So, I heard one of the legends being that the colored logo was an homage to him. People think I did the colored stripes because of the gay flag. And, that was something really thought for a long time. The other really cool part was that apparently he killed himself with a cyanide laced apple. And, then I found out Alan Turing’s favorite childhood story was Snow White where she falls asleep forever for eating a poisoned apple to be woken up by the handsome prince.”
It is none of that.
“When I explain the real reason why I did the bite it’s kind of a let down. But I’ll tell you. I designed it with a bite for scale, so people get that it was an apple not a cherry. Also it was kind of iconic about taking a bite out of an apple. Something that everyone can experience. It goes across cultures. If anybody ever had an apple he probably bitten into it and that’s what you get.”
It was only after the design was done, that Janoff’s creative director pointed out that there is the computer term “byte”, meaning 8 “bits”. But, that was coincidental too. “At the time I had to be told everything about basic computer terms,” Janoff says. Computers were a long way from mainstream at the time.
[Interview cribbed from what I believe is the original source Creative Bits, if you know otherwise please let me know.]

Apple’s Steve Jobs Has Died

2011-10-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Apple cofounder, chairman and former CEO Steve Jobs has died today at age 56. Apple’s board issued the following statement about his death:

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

The Apple site has the image above of Jobs on its home page, along with this page and statement:

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com

Apple employees were also sent this email that Apple posted from Apple CEO Tim Cook:

Team, I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.
Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.
We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.
No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.
Tim

Jobs had stepped down from his CEO position just over a month ago, citing health reasons.
There’s really no way we’re going to do justice to his career or impact here. I’d suggest those looking for good commentary to start at Techmeme here, where stories are already being collected, and more will follow.
RIP, Steve.
Postscript: There’s now a statement from Steve’s family:

Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family. In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.
We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.

Google’s Sergey Brin has also posted thoughts about Steve Jobs:

From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino. Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now). And I have witnessed it in person the few times we have met. On behalf of all of us at Google and more broadly in technology, you will be missed very much. My condolences to family, friends, and colleagues at Apple.

I’ve also seen numerous people ask about a special Google logo in honor of Jobs. I’m pretty sure that will happen.
Postscript 2: Now a statement from Google’s Larry Page:

I am very, very sad to hear the news about Steve. He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me. He was very kind to reach out to me as I became CEO of Google and spend time offering his advice and knowledge even though he was not at all well. My thoughts and Google’s are with his family and the whole Apple family.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo also tweeted thoughts:

Once in a rare while, somebody comes along who doesnt just raise the bar, they create an entirely new standard of measurement.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has posted:

I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates has a blog post up with a statement:

Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.
For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

Postscript 3 (7:10pm PT): The Google home page now has “Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011″ on it, which links to Apple:

Apple 'genius' Steve Jobs dies from cancer

2011-10-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple's visionary co-founder Steve Jobs died from cancer Wednesday at 56, a premature end for a man who revolutionized modern culture with ubiquitous inventions like the iPod and the iPad."We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," the California-based gadgetmaker said in a statement from its board of directors.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

Tim Cook -- who had been handling Apple's day-to-day operations since Jobs went on medical leave in January, and was made CEO in August -- led the praise for the Silicon Valley legend.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor," he said.

"Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

Apple turned its home page into a tribute to Jobs, posting a large black-and-white photo of the bearded high-tech maestro in his trademark black turtleneck and small round glasses. The only caption: "Steve Jobs, 1955-2011."

When a user clicks on the photo, they are taken to Cook's message in remembrance of Jobs, who died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Apple fans were invited to share their thoughts, memories and condolences by sending messages to rememberingsteve@apple.com. The rest of the website and store remained accessible.

Jobs' family also issued a statement, saying he had died surrounded by his relatives.

"In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family," it said.

"We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve's illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories."

Born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco to a single mother and adopted by a couple in nearby Mountain View at barely a week old, Jobs grew up among the orchards that would one day become the technology hub known as Silicon Valley.

He was just 21 and Steve Wozniak 26 when they founded Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs's family home in 1976.

Under Jobs, the company introduced its first Apple computers and then the Macintosh, which became wildly popular in the 1980s.

Jobs was elevated to idol status by ranks of Macintosh computer devotees, many of whom saw themselves as a sort of rebel alliance opposing the powerful empire Microsoft built with its ubiquitous Windows operating systems.

Jobs left Apple in 1985 after an internal power struggle and started NeXT Computer company specializing in sophisticated workstations for businesses.

He co-founded Academy-Award-winning Pixar in 1986 from a former Lucasfilm computer graphics unit that he bought from movie industry titan George Lucas.

Apple's luster faded after Jobs left the company, but they reconciled in 1996 with Apple buying NeXT for $429 million and Jobs ascending once again to the Apple throne.

Apple went from strength to strength as Jobs revamped the Macintosh line, revolutionizing modern culture and launching a "post-PC era" in which personal computers give way to smart mobile gadgets -- the iPod, iPhone and the iPad.

His passing will raise doubts over whether the Cupertino, California-based company can continue its dominance in the hugely competitive technology sector.

Jobs is survived by his wife Laurene, with whom he had three children. He also had a daughter with a woman he dated prior to marrying. (AFP)

Facebook changes ‘annoying’; Google+ becomes ‘worldwide party’ public to all

2011-09-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

As Facebook made changes to its Web site leading up to what could be a major redesign announcement, Google’s social network competitor Google+ became public to all.

A cartoon by Salvadorian student Luchoedo shows Google calling Facebook a “chismoso,” or “gossip,” and Facebook calling Google a “sabe lotodo,” or “know-it-all.” The fight between their social networks for dominance just got a little bit bigger. (Image via Flickr user Luchoedo ) Facebook’s revamped news feeds that highlighted more “important” stories got — like many of Facebook’s prior revamps — a cold reception from users. Some readers even suggested ways to revert back to the old Facebook design, such as setting the account language to English (U.K.).
Meanwhile Google+, which rolled out tons of new and improved features when it went public Tuesday, got a rousing vote of approval for the first time. “If you hate Facebook's new update, try out Google+!,” technology blogger Ashley Esqueda wrote on Twitter.
Social network users brought out all sorts of comparisons Wednesday to make sense of the new changes on Facebook and Google+.
Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, compared the new Facebook to the Windows operating system, because in its new design Facebook is “always asking you to update stuff, verify stuff... behaves in strange ways. Super annoying,” he wrote on Twitter. Sixty people retweeted Hounshell’s comment.
About the new Google+, Swedish technology entrepreneur Anton Perlkvist, wrote that it was no longer “like a house party without alcohol [where] everyone is just standing around waiting,” a comparison he had made just 32 days ago.
“Update: it's improving. A lot. Things are happening. NOW,” Perlkvist wrote on Google+ Wednesday.
Could this be a turning point in the battle for dominance between Facebook and Google?
Facebook, at 750 million users, is the world's No.1 social networking service. Google won’t say how many people have signed up for Google+, but analysts estimated upward of 25 million users. That was before it went totally public today.
Google+ hasn’t lost all its critics, including College Humor, who roasted the social network Wednesday by releasing a video that called it “the antisocial network.”
But PC World points out that Google+ has got the advantage over Facebook in one category — it encourages people to have more followers.
Be prepared, Perlkvist says, continuing the metaphor, for Google+ to become a “worldwide ... interesting party.”

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/facebook-changes-annoying-google-becomes-worldwide-party-public-to-all/2011/09/21/gIQAenn4kK_blog.html

Google Introducing new and improved sitelinks

2011-08-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

Webmaster level: All

This week we launched an update to sitelinks to improve the organization and quality of our search results. Sitelinks are the two columns of links that appear under some search results and ads that help users easily navigate deeper into the site. Sitelinks haven’t changed fundamentally: they’re still generated and ranked algorithmically based on the link structure of your site, and they’ll only appear if useful for a particular query.

Sitelinks before today’s changes

Here’s how we’ve improved sitelinks with today’s launch:

Visibility. The links have been boosted to full-sized text, and augmented with a green URL and one line of text snippet, much like regular search results. This increases the prominence of both the individual sitelinks and the top site overall, making them easier to find.
Flexibility. Until now, each site had a fixed list of sitelinks that would either all appear or not appear; there was no query-specific ranking of the links. With today’s launch, sitelink selection and ranking can change from query to query, allowing more optimized results. In addition, the maximum number of sitelinks that can appear for a site has been raised from eight to 12, and the number shown also varies by query.
Clarity. Previously, pages from your site could either appear in the sitelinks, in the regular results, or both. Now we’re making the separation between the top domain and other domains a bit clearer. If sitelinks appear for the top result, then the rest of the results below them will be from other domains. One exception to this is if the top result for a query is a subpart of a domain. For instance, the query [the met exhibitions] has www.metmuseum.org/special/ as the top result, and its sitelinks are all from within the www.metmuseum.org/special section of the site. However, the rest of the results may be from other parts of the metmuseum.org domain, like store.metmuseum.org or blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen/about.
Quality. These user-visible changes are accompanied by quality improvements behind the scenes. The core improvement is that we’ve combined the signals we use for sitelinks generation and ranking -- like the link structure of your site -- with our more traditional ranking system, creating a better, unified algorithm. From a ranking perspective, there’s really no separation between “regular” results and sitelinks anymore.

Sitelinks after today’s changes

These changes are also reflected in Webmaster Tools, where you can manage the sitelinks that appear for your site. You can now suggest a demotion to a sitelink if it’s inappropriate or incorrect, and the algorithms will take these demotions into account when showing and ranking the links (although removal is not guaranteed). Since sitelinks can vary over time and by query, it no longer makes sense to select from a set list of links -- now, you can suggest a demotion of any URL for any parent page. Up to 100 demotions will be allowed per site. Finally, all current sitelink blocks in Webmaster Tools will automatically be converted to the demotions system. More information can be found in our Webmaster Tools Help Center.

It’s also worth mentioning a few things that haven’t changed. One-line sitelinks, where sitelinks can appear as a row of links on multiple results, and sitelinks on ads aren’t affected. Existing best practices for the link structure of your site are still relevant today, both for generating good quality sitelinks and to make it easier for your visitors. And, as always, you can raise any questions or comments in our Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Harvey Jones, Software Engineer, & Raj Krishnan, Product Manager, Sitelinks team

Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/introducing-new-and-improved-sitelinks.html

Top 20 Ways to Make the Most of Your Posts and Tweets

2011-08-19T15:23:00.000-07:00

The following are some easy ways to integrate your marketing efforts and surround consumers with branded experiences:

Include social media icons in your blog's sidebar.
Provide links to your branded online sites in your email signature.
Place your branded online destination links in your forum signatures.
Add links to your online content in the comment forms when you publish comments on blogs.
Put links to your content in your ads.
Include links to your content on your business cards.
Insert links to your content in your email newsletter.
Incorporate links to your content on your sales receipts.
Include Facebook social plugins on your blog or Web site from the Facebook Developer tools.
Include Twitter widgets from the Twitter Resources section of Twitter.com on your blog or Web site.
Add your YouTube videos on your Facebook page and profile.
Feed your blog content to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles and your Facebook page.
Share your blog's content in LinkedIn groups.
Use the SlideShare app to display your business presentations on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Include links to your blog in your online profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on.
The bio you include in guests posts for other people's blogs should include links to your online content and destinations.
Include LinkedIn plugins from the LinkedIn Developers Community on your blog and Web site.
Include the URLs to your online content in brochures and other marketing materials.
Consider listing URLs of your online content in your store or event signage.
Feed your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook updates to your company's blog.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220030

Top Five Social Media Mistakes

2011-08-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of the biggest mistakes I've seen business owners make with social media and how to avoid them.

1. Talking One-Way: Many business owners start posting status updates because they think that is all they need to do to grow their company online. But the way they do it cuts off any chance of having a two-way conversation. In today's messaging marketplace, consumers want to be heard. If you are just talking to customers but not letting them to talk back and engage with you, then you are wasting considerable time and effort online.

When you go online and post in a status update area, do not just talk at or to people; speak with them. Tag people in a post and ask them a question. Tagging simple means that you write directly to a person on their facebook wall or on their Twitter feed. On Facebook you put the "@" sign in front of their profile name, for Twitter this sign would go in front of their username.
Also, take a few minutes to stop by the "neighborhood" of each social site that you frequent and say hello, find out what your neighbors are up to, and post a quick reply. By actively engaging in these spheres, you keep your business top of mind.

2. Not Knowing When to Ask for Business: Many online businesses have conducted conversations with their connections for quite some time now, without translating this dialogue into any sales. Some companies fail to ask for business online or they ask too soon. You need to build some rapport first; people will buy from you only as much as they trust you. Set up a rule to convert conversation into clients or customers.
I follow the 3/3 rule, whereby I talk to someone no more than three times, for not more than three minutes on each occasion, freely offering tips, exploring another company's branding or directly helping them, before I ask that person for some business. When I do the asking, I send the prospective customer a closing script or a post to indicate how I can help further.

3. Shiny Object Syndrome: With all the flashy new websites and with social networking capabilities changing by the minute, no wonder you are swept up in checking out a new site or a fresh feature when you go online. Instead of spending countless hours exploring new dazzlers, devote only a set amount of time each day or week to review the new happenings online. Otherwise you will be sucked into a vortex of shiny objects and before you know it your week is over and you have not converted any online relationships into profits. Flag interesting sites or novel capabilities in a folder or on your calendar to revisit later for research and development.

4. Poor Messaging: A consumer can become overwhelmed by dealing with all the wrong messages that are crowding the Internet lately. Company owners are projecting the wrong image through what they say online. In some cases, their posts have absolutely nothing to do with their company, brand, or personality.
Too many entrepreneurs do what I call panic posting -- just posting for the sake of posting and sharing ideas that do not highlight their overall brand image. If you have a serious company, don't post jokes and funny videos; instead post statistics and updates about your company's team members. If your business has a relaxed image, inject humor into your posts; a funny YouTube video can go a long way.

5. Sales Faux Pas: Writing how much your product or services cost in a status update or post is not only a time waste; it is plain wrong. Would you walk up to someone before you have even introduced yourself and say that your latest product is now available at a certain price for a limited time? If so, you would probably end up not only talking to yourself (the person would walk away), but also you likely would lose the entire room of people as customers just from their overhearing your sales introduction.
Instead, try sharing the pros and cons about your industry or product category and ask people to provide feedback and participate. This is a great way to bridge the distance between you and your prospects and get them involved with your company's brand. Ultimately newfound fans will promote you without being asked because they feel included; the fact that you asked and listened goes a long way.
Whether yours is a one-person business or it has 150 employees, take time every month or quarter to examine your social media practices. You could save thousands of dollars and hours -- and have more to show for it.

source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220099?cm_mmc=Market-_-Outbrain-_-NA-_-NA

Google Confirmed Testing Frames For Search Options & Search Results

2011-08-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Google ConfirmedTesting Frames For Search Options & Search Results

Google has confirmed a new user interface test on the search results page where the left side search filters are in a scrollable frame, and the middle of the search results are in their own scrollable frame. Technically, they are not frames, but rather some form of AJAX or HTML5 like interface. I am honestly not sure, since I did not see it myself.
I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable and posted a video from a spanish blogger that captured it. Here is that video:

The Spanish blogger also notes you can try this yourself by changing your cookies. I have not tried this, nor do I recommend it, but if you want to take the risk, here is what you do.
(1) Use Chrome (2) Download this chrome extension (3) Then modify your cookies and in the field it says NID use

50=RbHwrmdgEAl6v3XPDKfJey5zpW7n84oRvsTZOK0LuYwW0m0UDFcPmts2HqKaZc2-Rdo7iLsrYKOUVKV4ztyb7JMDWavDVmvsyC2UldBcyFKsmyM_4Qhr761WpGHfoZPZ

A Google spokesperson confirmed this as a new test, saying “Google is always experimenting with new features.”

source: http://searchengineland.com/confirmed-google-tests-framed-search-filters-search-results-89909

10 more ways to help you get the most out of your Google+ account.

2011-08-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

Take a look through the gallery and share in the comments any suggestions you have for improving the G+ experience.

1. Check Your "Added to Circle" Notifications

A good way to ensure you don't miss any important circle additions is to hit up the "People who've added you" view every once in while.

To see this on your profile, click on the circles tab and then select the option. Once you're in this view, you can click on the drop down menu to view "Not yet in circles."

This will bring you the people that have circled you, but that you haven't circled in return. It's an at-a-glance method to catch anyone that might have slipped through your circle net.

2. Filter Your Notifications

The main "notifications" view is useful but it can be a little cluttered to work through with all of those overlapping updates in one list

You can actually filter those notifications by clicking the "More" drop-down option at the top right of your page.

Being able to view mentions, photo tags, posts by you, posts by others and circle additions is a lot more useful than the default view.

3. Select the Correct Thumbnail

When you add a link to a post, Google+ doesn't always automatically select the correct thumbnail to go with the content.

Before you hit share, make sure the thumb is right. If it doesn't, click on the arrows that appear on the top left of the image to scroll through the options.

Alternatively, hitting the "X" removes the thumbnail from your post altogether.

4. Save Time With the Notifications Toolbar Icon

The handy notifications icon on your Google+ toolbar can save you tons of time.

Once you've hit the icon, you can see more notifications by using the left and right arrows to scroll. You can even save time by adding comments from the notification window.

5. Tag People in Photos

It's not immediately obvious how to tag people in your Google+ photos.

To tag people, you have to open your photo in the lightbox viewing mode. To do this, go to your photos tab, select the album, then click on the photo. This should load it up in lightbox view, at which point you'll see the option to "add tag."

An important note: If you tag someone in a G+ pic they will have access to view the entire album in which that photo appears.

6. Enable High-Res Video Chat

High resolution video chat is available in Google+ but you need to take some steps to enable it. Click on the chat's drop-down menu and select settings. Now, check the "Enable high-resolution video" box.

7. Lock Down the Dimensions of Your Profile Pic

Google+ profile photos are 200 pixels by 200 pixels. Rather than chop down a larger pic, or worse still, stretch a smaller one, we suggest resizing the image you want to use as a perfect 200 x 200 pixel square before you upload it. This means your image will appear exactly as you want it to.

8. Display Your +1's

The default setting on Google+ is that your +1'ed pages from around the web will not show up on your profile. However, you can change this to let people see what you've been liking.

Go to your profile tab, click "edit profile," then click on the +1's tab. You will now get the option to "Show this tab on your profile."

9. View Your "Nearby" Stream on a Computer

One of the most popular features of the Plus mobile app is the "Nearby" functionality that lets you view public posts in your vicinity.

Until this makes it to the web version, we have a workaround that lets you view the location-based stream on your computer.

The URL for the mobile version of Google+ is

m.google.com/plus, however, entering this in your browser will just redirect you to an info landing page about Google mobile

Entering https://m.google.com/app/plus/, however, will load up the mobile version proper and let you tune into those local posts.

10. Send Invites Without an Email Address

Google+ makes it possible to send invitations to join the service without even needed an email address.

This is ideal for enticing friends and followers over from Facebook and Twitter respectively. The "Send invitations" option on the right of your Google+ screen now generates a link to invite up to 150 people.

We hope these tips would be helpful to all of you. Please be care full.

source : http://mashable.com/2011/08/10/google-plus-tips/?WT.mc_id=obinsite#228211-Check-Your-Added-to-Circle-Notifications

Now Appearing in Your Email Signature By Google+ Updates

2011-08-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

Now Appearing in Your Email Signature By Google+ Updates

Email signature startup WiseStamp has enhanced its Chrome and Firefox extensions Thursday with an email application for Google Plus.
The G+ email application will let you include your latest Google+ status update in your email signature. Your email recipients can then view your update and add you to their Circles directly from the message.
The Google+ update was included in the version 2.7.1 release of WiseStamp. Chrome users can instantly install the new email application. Firefox users will need to do a manual upgrade, pending approval of the release.
WiseStamp offers email senders a wide selection of social applications to spice up their personal and professional signatures. The startup’s interactive and social signature tool has appeared in more than 207,000,000 sent emails

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/08/18/wisestamp-google-plus/

Can Google+ Challenge Facebook for Social Gaming Dominance?

2011-08-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

Can Google+ Challenge Facebook for Social Gaming Dominance?

Technology expert Scott Steinberg is the CEO of high-tech consulting firm TechSavvy Global, and a frequent keynote speaker and media analyst for ABC, CBS and CNN who’s covered the field for 400+ outlets from NPR to Rolling Stone. A celebrated author and entrepreneur, he also hosts video series Gear Up and Game Theory, hailed as “the smartest take on the video game industry.”

Google has ignited a firestorm of interest in the social gaming space following its announcement that social network Google+ will play host to a variety of new video game experiences. But the question remains: Can the online search giant’s latest foray into social networking, despite being the fastest-growing service of its kind, give Facebook and its massive online arcade a run for the money? Based on initial selections such as Angry Birds and Bejeweled Blitz, we wouldn’t bet our PayPal account on it, but then again, looks can be deceiving.
In the latest episode of new technology video series Tech Industry Insider, we examine the space pioneered by companies like Zynga, Playdom and Crowdstar to see if there’s room for more than one Internet titan to play. Google’s determined to break Facebook’s stranglehold on the social games market by undercutting its rival on fees to game developers, but what’s in it form them? And will the gamble pay off? As we reveal in the video above, the answers may surprise you. Tune in to find out what the future of social games has in store.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/08/18/google-plus-games-video/

Google+ Hangouts Can Now Be Initiated From YouTube

2011-08-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

Google has quietly rolled out yet another feature of its Google+ social network, letting users click Share from any YouTube video, revealing an icon that suggests watching the video with friends in a Google+ hangout.
Google didn’t formally announce this new feature, instead revealing it via product manager Brian Glick on — where else — Google+, where he casually mentioned it like so:

You can now start a Google+ Hangout with a YouTube, directly from YouTube. Watch with your friends. :)
Just click on “Share” underneath any video, and then click on “Start a Google+ Hangout” in the bottom right-hand corner.

A few weeks ago, YouTube Live product manager Brandon Badge quietly mentioned the upcoming ability to enable hangouts from YouTube with live streaming video, and this must be the first stage of that initiative.
As we mentioned then, it’s been possible to watch videos with friends since the beginning of Google+, through a more complicated manual process that must be initiated in Google+. But this new button allowing you to initiate hangouts from YouTube with a couple of clicks makes it considerably easier.
[via TNW/Google+]
source : http://mashable.com/2011/08/18/watch-with-friends-youtube/

Will Google penalize sites which only link using the nofollow attribute?

2011-08-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

As many webmasters are linking only in nofollow killing the natural way of links do you think Google will penalize people who only link out with nofollow attribute in the future?

This will also be helpful for you. Just stay with for more SEO Updates.

How do PageRank updates work?

2011-08-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

On what basis you are increasing the PR for each PR update?

I hope this video will be helpful for understand how do page rank updates work?

Some Important Tips About Google Plus Circles, Hangouts, Huddle and Mobile

2011-08-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

What are Circles ?
Google wants to make sharing online more like sharing in real life - different things with different people. For example, you might want to catch up with your pals about your drunken Saturday night out, but you don't necessarily want your parents in your chat. You can keep your conversations separate by putting your contacts into 'circles' such as 'Work crew', 'Uni mates' and 'Parents'.

Google+ hangouts

What are Hangouts?

As the name suggests, this feature is all about hanging out with your buddies, virtually, or couse. You can choose specific friends, or circles, to invite for a face-to-face video chat and anyone in the Hangout can invite others to join as well. According to Google's demo: "Until teleportation arrives, it's the next best thing". We're not sure about that - it's basically just video calling.

The Google+ project: Instant Upload

GOOGLE + +Huddle

What is Huddle ?

You know when you're trying to arrange a night out by having several different text conversations with a number of friends? If so, you'll know how long-winded and confusing it can become. The idea behind Huddle is that you can turn all these exchanges into one big group chat to save you time.

Privacy
Most social networks, Facebook included, have run into trouble over privacy concerns at some point or another, so what is Google+ doing to address it? You'll be able to alter your visibility settings so that only your name and photo will appear online to people that aren't in your network. However, if you're in a circle on a friend's public profile, then your picture will appear on there (but clicking on it wouldn't go anyway if your privacy settings are on). You'll be able to assign different levels of visibility to different aspects of your profile. You can also choose whether your profile is indexed by search engines and, as with Facebook, you'll be able to block people

Google Plus big feature is Backing up data

One of the biggest worries with uploading photos to Facebook is that one day the site will retire from public life, taking our cherished memories with it. Obviously canny computer users already make sure that anything they upload is backed up at home and likewise, Google+ has recognised that we don't all want to live exclusively in the clouds.

You can use Google Takeout (google.com/takeout) to download data from your Google+ products to your home computer - that includes PicasaWeb albums and photos, your Google profile, Google Contacts, Stream and er, Google Buzz.

Easily available on Mobile

Supported by the Chrome, IE, Firefox and Safari browsers, Google+ will also be available on mobile devices - a vital element for any social networking platform. As well as sharing your thoughts and location from your mobile, you'll be able to check into places and make use of the group messaging feature, Huddle.

Making photo-sharing as simple as possible, images and videos taken on your phone will upload themselves automatically to Google+. That might sound a tad scary - what if you don't want everyone to see your snaps or footage? Don't panic - they'll be uploaded directly to a private album and you can then specify who (if anyone) you choose to share them with.

You can already download the Android app and there's an iOS 4+ app due to hit iTunes soon. You can also access the basic Google+ mobile site (m.google.com/app/plus) on Android handsets (1.5+) and Apple devices (iOS 3+) as well as on BlackBerry (6.0+), Nokia/Symbian and Windows Mobile. The Android app currently offers a wider range of functions than you'll see on the mobile sites.

There are no tablet specific versions of the project at present, but this is something that Google plans to work on in the future.

When can I get it?

Google+ can currently only be accessed with a special Field Trial invitation, which Google has been sending out at random to Gmail users. There's no set date for a full launch, but we would guess that it won't be too long before Google+ goes live to everyone. In the meantime, you can check out the demo, as long as you have a Google ID.

Article source: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/40785/what-is-google-android-iphone-apps

Do robots follow links on a page which uses rel="canonical" to point to a different page?

2011-08-11T22:28:00.000-07:00

On a website, if a page B implements a rel="canonical" link tag with URL of page A, do robots follow every links in page B? Ad, Paris

We hope this video will be helpful to you. If you have any questions or confusions. You can visit Google Webmaster Help Forum http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

Please stay in touch with us for more latest google algorithm changing news and matt cutts SEO News, SEO Tips, and Videos.

Matt Cutts talks 301 redirect limits & New Webmaster Tutorials Series Launches by Google

2011-08-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has been answering webmaster questions in short videos for quite some time now. The videos have often been quite informative, and have tackled numerous issues that common webmasters face on a day-to-day basis.

Now, Cutts is appearing in some longer more tutorial-driven videos.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve released over 375 videos on our YouTube channel, with the majority of them answering direct questions from webmasters. Today, we’re starting to release a freshly baked batch of videos, and you might notice that some of these are a little different. Don’t worry, they still have Matt Cutts in a variety of colored shirts. Instead of only focusing on quick answers to specific questions, we’ve created some longer videos which cover important webmaster-related topics. For example, if you were wondering what the limits are for 301 redirects at Google, we now have a single video for that:

Article Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-webmaster-tutorial-videos.html

Algorithm change launched

2011-03-14T23:39:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to give a quick update on one thing I mentioned in my search engine spam post.

My post mentioned that “we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.” That change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week.

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.

Thanks to Jeff Atwood and the team at Stack Overflow for providing feedback to Google about this issue. I mentioned the update over on Hacker News too, because folks on that site had been discussing specific queries too.

Article source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/algorithm-change-launched/

My thoughts on this week’s debate

2011-03-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was on a search panel with Harry Shum of Bing and Rich Skrenta of Blekko (and moderated by Vivek Wadhwa) and the video now live. It’s forty minutes long, but it covers a lot of ground:

One big point of discussion is whether Bing copies Google’s search results. I’m going to try to address this earnestly; if snarky is what you want, Stephen Colbert will oblige you.

First off, let me say that I respect all the people at Bing. From engineers to evangelists, everyone that I’ve met from Microsoft has been thoughtful and sincere, and I truly believe they want to make a great search engine too. I know that they work really hard, and the last thing I would want to do is imply that Bing is purely piggybacking Google. I don’t believe that.

That said, I didn’t expect that Microsoft would deny the claims so strongly. Yusuf Mehdi’s post says “We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop.”

Given the strength of the “We do not copy Google’s results” statements, I think it’s fair to line up screenshots of the results on Google that later showed up on Bing:

compared with

and

compared with

and

compared with

and

compared with

and

compared with

and

compared with

and

compared with

I think if you asked a regular person about these screenshots, Microsoft’s “We do not copy Google’s results” statement wouldn’t ring completely true.

Something I’ve heard smart people say is that this could be due to generalized clickstream processing rather than code that targets Google specifically. I’d love if Microsoft would clarify that, but at least one example has surfaced in which Microsoft was targeting Google’s urls specifically. The paper is titledLearning Phrase-Based Spelling Error Models from Clickthrough Data and here’s some of the relevant parts:

The clickthrough data of the second type consists of a set of query reformulation sessions extracted from 3 months of log files from a commercial Web browser [I assume this is Internet Explorer. --Matt] …. In our experiments, we “reverse-engineer” the parameters from the URLs of these [query formulation] sessions, and deduce how each search engine encodes both a query and the fact that a user arrived at a URL by clicking on the spelling suggestion of the query – an important indication that the spelling suggestion is desired. From these three months of query reformulation sessions, we extracted about 3 million query-correction pairs.”

This paper very much sounds like Microsoft reverse engineered which specific url parameters on Google corresponded to a spelling correction. Figure 1 of that paper looks like Microsoft used specific Google url parameters such as “&spell=1″ to extract spell corrections from Google. Targeting Google deliberately is quite different than using lots of clicks from different places. This is at least one concrete example of Microsoft taking browser data and using it to mine data deliberately and specifically from Google (in this case, the efforts of Google’s spell correction team).

That brings me to an issue that I raised with Bing during the search panel and afterwards with Harry Shum: disclosure. A while ago, my copy of Windows XP was auto-updated to IE8. Here’s one of the dialog boxes:

I don’t think an average consumer realizes that if they say “yes, show me suggested sites” that they’re granting Microsoft permission to send their queries and clicks on Google to Microsoft, which will then be used in Bing’s ranking. I think my Mom would be confused that saying “Yes” to that dialog will send what she searches for on Google and what she clicks on to Microsoft. I don’t think that IE8′s disclosure is clear and conspicuous enough that a reasonable consumer could make an informed choice and know that IE8 will send their Google queries/clicks to Microsoft.

One comment that I’ve heard is that “it’s whiny for Google to complain about this.” I agree that’s a risk, but at the same time I think it’s important to go on the record about this.

Another comment that I’ve heard is that this affects only long-tail queries. As we said in our blog post, the whole reason we ran this test was because we thought this practice was happening for lots and lots of different queries, not simply rare queries. To verify our hypothesis, rare queries were the easiest to test. To me, what the experiment proved was that clicks on Google are being incorporated in Bing’s rankings. Microsoft is the company best able to answer the degree to which clicks on Google figure into their Bing’s rankings, and I hope they clarify how much of an impact clicks on Google affect Microsoft’s rankings.

Unfortunately, most of the reply has been along the lines of “this is only one of 1000 signals.” Nate Silver does a good job of tackling this, so I’ll quote him:

Microsoft’s defense boils down to this: Google results are just one of the many ingredients that we use. For two reasons, this argument is not necessarily convincing.
First, not all of the inputs are necessarily equal. It could be, for instance, that the Google results are weighted so heavily that they are as important as the other 999 inputs combined.
And it may also be that an even larger fraction of what creates value for Bing users are Google’s results. Bing might consider hundreds of other variables, but these might produce little overall improvement in the quality of its search, or might actually detract from it. (Microsoft might or might not recognize this, since measuring relevance is tricky: it could be that features that they think are improving the relevance of their results actually aren’t helping very much.)
Second, it is problematic for Microsoft to describe Google results as just one of many “signals and features”. Google results are not any ordinary kind of input; instead, they are more of a finished (albeit ever-evolving) product

Let’s take that thought to its conclusion. If clicks on Google really account for only 1/1000th (or some other trivial fraction) of Microsoft’s relevancy, why not just stop using those clicks and reduce the negative coverage and perception of this? And if Microsoft is unwilling to stop incorporating Google’s clicks in Bing’s rankings, doesn’t that argue that Google’s clicks account for much more than 1/1000th of Bing’s rankings?

I really did try to be calm and constructive in this post, so I apologize if some frustration came through despite that–my feelings on the search panel were definitely not feigned. Since people at Microsoft might not like this post, I want to reiterate that I know the people (especially the engineers) at Bing work incredibly hard to compete with Google, and I have huge respect for that. It’s because of how hard those engineers work that I think Microsoft should stop using clicks on Google in Bing’s rankings. If Bing does better on a search query than Google does, that’s fantastic. But an asterisk that says “we don’t know how much of this win came from Google” does a disservice to everyone. I think Bing’s engineers deserve to know that when they beat Google on a query, it’s due entirely to their hard work. Unless Microsoft changes its practices, there will always be a question mark.

If you want to dive into this topic even deeper, you can watch the full forty minute video above.

Reference Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Google launches two-factor authentication

2011-03-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

Google just launched two-factor authentication, and I believe everyone with a Google account should enable it.

Two-factor authentication (also known as 2-step verification) relies on something you know (like a password) and something you have (like a cell phone). Crackers have a harder time getting into your account, because even if they figure out your password, they still only have half of what they need. I wrote about two-factor authentication when Google rolled it out for Google Apps users back in September, and I’m a huge fan.

Account hijacking is no joke. Remember the Gawker password incident? If you used the same password on Gawker properties and Gmail, two-factor authentication would provide you with more protection. I’ve also had two relatives get their Gmail account hijacked when someone guessed their password. I’ve also seen plenty of incidents like this where two-factor authentication would have kept hackers out. If someone hacked your Gmail account, think of all the other passwords they could get access to, including your domain name or webhost accounts.

Is it a little bit of extra work? Yes. But two-step verification instantly provides you with a much higher level of protection. I use it on my personal Gmail account, and you should too. Please, protect yourself now and enable two-factor authentication.

Reference Resource : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Off-Site SEO Tips for Getting Your Site Indexed Quickly

2010-01-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

There are two components to optimizing your site for search engines. On-site SEO tactics like the proper use of Title and Description MetaTags, using keywords with appropriate density, adding key phrases in H1, H2 tags and in bulleted text and a whole host of other techniques. The second being off-site SEO tactics. More on this later.

As most people know, on-site SEO takes time to take effect. If you rely solely on these tactics, you may be waiting months before Google and other search engines index your site or blog.

Is there a way faster way to get Google to index your site? You betcha! Using some proven off-site SEO tactics can get your site indexed in a matter of days or less than two weeks. There are documented success stories out there where Google indexed a new site in as little as a few hours after launch.

Let’s define off-site SEO first. It pretty much revolves around building in-coming links to your site. Gone are the days when you could just buy thousands of links from link farms. Search engines have become too smart for that. You need to get high-quality backlinks in order move up in the search engine ranks. That usually means getting links to your site from other sites that have a high PageRank, or sites that are updated often and are crawled frequently by search engine spiders.

The good news is that there are plenty of ways to get these types of quality links to your site without paying a penny. Here are seven off-site SEO tips you can implement today at no cost:

1. Pinging: One of the easiest ways to get indexed quickly is to ping your site. Two most popular pinging sites are pingoat.com and pingomatic.com.

Just add your site’s name and URL, and leave the RSS feed link blank. (It’s not necessary.) Sometimes this technique alone can get you indexed in a day or two. Next, you should submit your link to various social bookmarking sites.

If you use Wordpress for your blog, log into your admin panel and go to Settings > Writing. Scroll down until you see Update Services. Add the following to your list:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com/

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

2. Social bookmarking: Popular social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, del.ico.us, and Slashdot are crawled several times a day. So they can be a very good way to get your own site crawled and indexed quickly. You should get an account at all of the major bookmarking sites. If you use Wordpress, add a plugin like Sociable to bookmark all your posts.

3. Blog commenting: This can be a very good way to get indexed quickly. You’ll need to find blogs that don’t have the “nofollow” tag, because blogs that have “nofollow” won’t let search engines crawl the links anyway. SEO experts are split over this – some say the “nofollow” tag doesn’t matter, since some search engine spiders ignore them anyway. Others claim you may get a small amount of traffic from the blogs themselves, but “nofollow” blogs will do nothing to help you get indexed faster.

4. Forums: Popular forums have had posts on their site show up on Google just minutes after they’re posted. It’s very common for posts on very popular forums to be in Google in less than 24 hours. Posting a small link in your signature on some of these forums can help you get your site indexed quickly.

5. Link exchange: Exchange links with other webmasters in your niche. Not only is this a great way to build backlinks, but if their sites are crawled often, chances of your site being crawled and indexed quickly go up too. Link exchanges won’t penalize your site, either – unless you build too many, too quickly. Stick with a natural growth pattern (a few a day) and it won’t raise any red flags with the search engines.

6. Press releases (PR): PR can be very helpful in getting your site crawled and indexed quickly. Most of the popular press release sites have very good Page Rank and are crawled often. They can even get your press release posted on a number of different sites that pull news from the PR directories. Sometimes it can be worth submitting a press release simply for the speed and the ease of getting your site indexed. (See Writing Press Releases for Web 2.0.)

7. Article marketing: Not one of the faster ways of getting your site indexed but is another way to get high-quality backlinks. Submitting an article or two can also help you get targeted traffic to your site. Many article directories have very good PageRank, so it definitely has benefits other than just quick indexing.

Try these seven off-site SEO tactics to get your site indexed faster than just using on-site SEO strategies.

For More SEO Strategies

Google On Page SEO Tips & Strategies

2010-01-26T08:54:00.001-08:00

Google On Page SEO Tips & Strategies

Google On Page SEO Tips & Strategies

Top 10 Obstacles to SEO Success

2010-01-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

The following list discusses the top 10 obstacles faced by today’s interactive marketers when pursuing search engine optimization success. These problems result from a lack of strategic or technical optimization, but do not discuss the so-called “black hat” or unethical optimization practices still being utilized by many SEO practitioners. These methods would include link farming, paid link exchanges, hidden keywords and many more.
This article discusses both the issues associated with these organic search engine optimization obstacles, as well as how to take corrective measures and/or implement these effectively.

1. Competitors
In many cases a few industry leaders will dominate a web space. If you are starting a new website, or simply trying to topple a giant, you need to be aware of what the competition is doing well, and what it is not. Often the highest traffic keywords will have a group of 5 to 10 major competitors competing for them. In many industries, the large players will either have full-time SEO staff or will have SEO agencies on retainer, performing intensive organic search optimization. This can make it a time intensive and costly proposition to try to “dethrone” one or more of the leaders by getting a top 5 ranking in Google for a highly competitive keyword. To circumvent this problem, it’s often a good idea to start with a ranking analysis of your competitors. Determine what keywords they are ranking well for, and which ones they are not ranking well for. This will indicate areas of great opportunity for organic optimization. From there, spend time optimizing the keywords your competitors are not ranking well for. This will give you the advantage in niche areas where your website can be a leader.

2. Excessive Optimization
Excessive optimization, often called “keyword stuffing” is just as detrimental in 2010 as it was in 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006. People often ask me “what is the percentage of keywords” or “keyword density” that you can have on a page before the page should be considered “stuffed”. While we utilize a simple formula at Lucid Agency to give a general barometer, to be honest, it’s just as easy to follow this simple rule of thumb. If you can read a page and not tell that it is written for SEO purposes, and it sounds informative and readable for humans, then chances are it is not over-optimized. For example, did you realize that this section is optimized for “excessive optimization”? Probably not, because it was written to be informative and just happens to contain that keyword two times. Organic search rankings are intended to list the most useful and credible websites at the top of the list, so write with that objective in mind.

3. Not Utilizing Social Media in SEO Strategy
Social media is a great way to garner both traffic and inbound links, both of which are helpful for the objective of SEO – getting more qualified traffic to your website. While many search engine optimization strategies focus on the on-page and off-page elements of organic optimization, they often neglect social media. There are simple ways to utilize social media in search. A simple way to start is with a blog and a twitter account. Write a few good blog posts on topics relevant to your industry of expertise, providing useful information. These articles could be articles, picture posts, videos, interviews, white papers; really anything that your intended reader would find useful. Submit these blog posts via XML sitemap to the search engines. Then utilize a following of those interested in what you have to say on Twitter, and put up teasers to your blog posts. If you do this well, with any luck, some of your followers will put up links to your blog on their websites and blogs, gaining you both direct traffic from their reads, and also in bound links from their web properties.

4. Lack of Original Content
As they say in the world of search engine optimization, “content is king”. This has been the rule for many years, and is likely to prevail as one of the foremost guidelines in SEO. Search engines like content that is unique and new. And they like a lot of it. So just create a lot of good content and you’ll end up working wonders for your SEO campaign. If possible, lightly optimize this content and let the rest take care of itself.

5. Lack of Quality Links
Nothing new here…links are the foundation of the Google algorithm and what originally separated them from the other search engines. If you consider Google a great “democracy” of sorts, and each link from a credible website as a “vote” for your website, then it’s simple to see that he with a lot of votes and a clear, in-depth message shall be the winner. Recently, other search engines have followed suit, and it’s no longer just Google valuing these links, but the other search engines as well. In addition, it’s also important to make sure you have links from many websites and that the websites are credible (not link farms). Further, there is some value to the outbound links on your website. When it comes to outbound links, search engines like to see a few links to valuable and related websites.

6. Slow Page Load Times
From many accounts, the new algorithm Google released last year, fondly named “caffeine”, we noticed an importance placed on page load times. This makes sense. If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, and provide the best results to those searchers looking for this information, they wouldn’t be doing a great job if the top ranking websites loaded very slowly, or didn’t load at all – thus providing a terrible experience to searchers. To remedy slow load times, try cleaning up code, taking out extraneous flash or third party loading galleries. If this doesn’t help, try a “fresh rebuild”, i.e. having a developer go through and rebuild the website in nice clean new code.

7. Website Structure Issues
If your website has a complicated or unintuitive directory structure, you may want to think about redoing it. The directory structures that work best for top organic rankings are the ones that are simple and intuitive, as this will help search engines and website visitors identify where in the website they are. Search engines use a directory structure to try and determine a relationship between different categorical items and pages on your website. If your structure makes no sense, it can only be detrimental for your rankings, and often the user as well. Fortunately, this is easy to fix up-front, and if you have a website running on a popular CMS platform such as Wordpress or Expression Engine, there are many free plugins you can get to quickly and easily adjust the directory structure of your website. If you have a website that sells products for the construction industry, where you would list all of your welding supplies, which would be clear to both search engines and users alike.

8. Inaccurate or Duplicate Page Titles
Search engines give significant weight to website pages that are clear in their content focus. Titles are one of the best ways to indicate the intended focus of a website page. It is a best practice to include a unique, descriptive and lightly optimized title for your website pages. Don’t utilize keywords that are not relevant to the content of the web page, just write something that is useful and accurate, and if it can include the keyword then perfect. Remember titles are shown in search engine listings, so you want your title to be informative and compelling. After all, you are not only trying to get the top listing in Google, but you want people to click on your listing as well.

9. Missing XML sitemaps
XML sitemaps are a very simple way to make sure websites with many pages, and frequently changing content, are thoroughly and accurately indexed by search engines. Since search engines love fresh content, it is advantageous to make sure your website utilizes an XML sitemap, to ensure your “fresh” content is found and indexed quickly. XML sitemaps are simple to make and most web developers can implement them quickly.

10. New Websites
If you work in the SEO field, you’ve most likely had more than one potential client come to you with little more than a checkbook and a domain name. Often this potential client will want to “rank number 1 in Google” for their keyword-de-jour. While most agencies will gladly develop a plan to accomplish this, one of the largest barriers is something that cannot be fixed with any amount of money. Google and Bing (MSN and soon-to-be Yahoo) value the length of time a domain has been in existence. This is something often referred to in SEO slang as “the sandbox”. According to many industry experts Google reportedly puts new websites in something of a sandbox for a while, in an attempt to thwart large scale link efforts for new websites. While this is more theory than fact, Google engineer Matt Cutts has said that there are elements of the Google algorithm that may have an effect such as what has been described as the sandbox. What we can tell you is that we’ve noticed it certainly takes a little longer to get rankings for a new website than an older website. This is partially because of the generally lower number of existing links going to new websites, as well as the variety of other issues that are usually present with many new websites. To best counter this problem, get a new website up quickly, and slowly build up links to the website after the initial launch.

In closing, many of the issues hindering successful optimization aren’t particular difficult to solve, nor do they take a PHD in mathematics to figure out. Follow some simple tried and true optimization techniques, develop great content, get the word out, track your results and the rankings will take care of themselves.

Step-By-Step, Do-It-Yourself, SEO Guide

2010-01-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one internet marketing strategy that any internet entrepreneur would want for their website. Well maybe except for those that really established a strong name over the web, but as for those that started out in ecommerce would really need to learn about SEO. Let’s get to the point, SEO is used as a way to raise a website’s rank in any search engine like Yahoo! and Google (any of the top 10 slots will do, but It’ll be greater if it would be in top 1). By doing so, the possibility of visitors that visits a website would increase, thus increasing sales and profit margin. So long-story-short, SEO is all about increasing the visibility of a website in the world wide web by use of search engines. Now the question is, how do you do SEO?
SEO companies are now available for hire around the world, such as SEO 4 Tag Solution companies. Some companies have outsourced their SEO needs to these establishments. But it can also be done by anyone that knows basic SEO procedures, even at home. So here is a step-by-step, do-it-yourself, guide on SEO and how to increase visibility in the world wide web.
Step 1: Get Your Keywords
The first step that any 4 tag solution SEO company would do is to research on keywords that perfectly describes the website. Free online keyword research tools like Google Adwords Keyword tool or SEO Book’s Keyword tool are popularly used by many SEO specialists. Highly competitive keywords is the main ingredient in any successful SEO dish. But highly competitive doesn’t only describe single words such as “SEO”, it also emphasizes on the keyword structure, if it really describes the website like “SEO service in the 4 tag solution”.
Note: In a keyword research, always make sure that the keywords are relevant to the website to be optimized. Irrelevant keywords pointing to a website could earn a one way trip to “Ban“svill courtesy of search engines.
Step 2: Know Your Enemies
Well not exactly “enemies” per-se, but competitors. After doing a keyword research, It’s time to look up on your competitors by use of your chosen keywords. Try looking at what SEO tactics or strategies they’ve done. By viewing their source code (ctrl+U for Firefox), you can see the keyword density, meta tags they used, alt tags, and title tags (I’ll explain these later on). To learn the number backlinks (I’ll explain these later on) of a website, try using SEOpen’s free backlink tool, this way you’ll know what you have to beat to gain their spot. Using your competitor’s strength against them is one successful way to succeed in an SEO campaign.
Step 3: Start On-Page SEO
So here we’ll start the first pace of SEO, the on-page optimization. Actually, SEO is divided into 2 parts, the on-page and off-page (which I’ll discuss later on). On-page optimization involves making changes within the website to make it more “search engine friendly”. The strategies and tactics used here are as follows:

Content Optimization – This strategy involves changing the content of the website, particularly with it’s text elements. One way is to embed the researched keywords on texts found throughout the website, focusing mainly on the headers (those with the big bold letters). It is said that keywords used should be take about 7% of the total number of words in a content. Let’s say you have 400 words in a single page, so 7% of that 400 (which is 28) should be keywords. Note: Make sure that the content is still readable after placing those keywords. Remember that the users are still your prime target, not the search engine spiders. Site Map – Site maps are an important part of websites optimized for search engine. This way, search engine spiders (or robots) could easily crawl through the whole website by use of site map. Making it easier for spiders to crawl through the website is one way to make a website “search engine friendly”. Meta Tags - Meta tags are comprised of the Title, Description, and Keywords of the website. Other than the content of websites, meta tags are also the perfect place for keywords. The only difference is that these things are like a “Free Buffet” sign for search engine spiders, it’s the one responsible for attracting search engine spiders to crawl your website. But remember that it still depends on the structure of the meta tags. Alt Tags - Alt tags are those found in HTML image codes. Let’s say your keyword is “4 tag solution“, your image tag should now look like this: alt=“4 tag solution”> Just like the meta tags, alt tags are also an appropriate place to put several important keywords. Note: Make sure that only one (1) keyword should be placed on every alt tags found all over the website to avoid keyword spamming (which is part of black hat SEO) Title Tags – Like meta tags and alt tags, title tags are also an appropriate place to put some keywords in. By adding a keyword, let’s take for example “SEO Service”, in the title tag, the HTML hyperlink tag should look like this: title=“SEO Service Online”> Note: Alt tags are not seen by visitors, only the search engine spiders so it wouldn’t hurt to just leave it with the keyword. But title tags are seen by visitors, so make sure that the title tag is still readable after embedding the a keyword or two.

Step 4: Start Off-Page SEO
Unlike the on-page, off-page optimization involves SEO strategies outside of the website. This part of SEO is divided into two categories, backlinks and public relation strategies. Backlinks are links all over the world wide web that points back to your website. It has long been considered that the many backlinks you have, the more popular you’ll get. Another theory added is the weight or importance of the website where the link is coming from. Tools used to determine the popularity of a website is through Google’s PageRank and Alexa traffic tool. Here are some of the strategies used by SEO specialists to get backlinks.

Link Exchange - One of the earliest forms of backlinking involves exchanging links with other relevant websites. Article Marketing - This type of off-page SEO can be considered both for backlinks and public relations. An article commonly generates an average of 3 links (depending on the kind of article directory it was submitted). It’s also considered as public relations because these articles commonly promotes the business they’re trying to market. Blog and Forum Commenting – Forums and blogs are also a popular trend to generate backlinks by using their signatures as links linking back to your website. Blogging - Other than commenting on other blogs, creating your own blog and embedding links is another popular way for generating backlinks.

PR or public relation strategies of off-page SEO involves generating traffic not only through search engines but also with other types of media. This type of off-page SEO mainly works by marketing their service through word of mouth. These strategies involves the use of:

Social Media - Social media such as Friendster, FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace are the perfect place to start a buzz that could benefit the website through the marketing strategy they call “word of mouth”. Adding a link could also help in getting more backlinks. Social Bookmarking – By using the articles in bookmarking sites such as Technorati or Digg, people could easily learn about your services through your article. This is also another way for the articles to gain more importance in the web, thus increasing the chance for your websites to be visited through your articles.

Other forms of off-page SEO is submitting your website to search engine directories. Make sure to submit your URL for free to Google, Yahoo!, Alexa, www.altavista.com, www.alltheweb.com, www.excite.com, www.lycos.com, www.webcrawler.com, www.Jayde.com, www.whatuseek.com, and more. DMOZ and Yahoo Directory listings are tremendously valuable. There are a lot more free and paid search engines and directories to submit, but if you do not have time to search for and submit, you can also use our search engine submission service.

SEO Tips – Forget Google – 5 Tips For Alternative SEO

2010-01-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

Here are 5 tips to help you out with any alternative SEO campaigns you may work on.

#1 – The Rules Still Apply – Or Do they?

In succession an alternative SEO campaign is not an open invitation to start slacking off or to start breaking the rules. And when I say “Alternative SEO” I do not mean black hat strategies either. Each of the major search engines have different algorithms in place that contribute to how your site will be ranked in the search results, but excellent SEO practice still wins, each time. So stick with the whitehat strategies. Forget about the supposed latest and greatest new black hat tactic. These things do not last and end up hurting your campaigns.

#2 – Engine Value Factor

We all know Google is the Giant in the search engine game. This means it is always mentioned first and foremost when SEO comes up. Get on the front page of Google for your chosen keywords and you will get instant and targeted traffic.

This is also what makes it so hard. Everyone is gunning for that top spot, and the competition can be fierce for even the low-traffic keywords.

Getting ranked for your chosen keywords is not always hard just since of competition either. You have to keep in mind that Google does not work for you. Google works for their users…the searcher. People use Google primarily to find INFORMATION on a given theme, not to buy things. Google wants to make sure that when their users type in a axiom that the results will best match the intent of the searcher.

MSN (Bing) on the additional hand, seems to cater more towards shoppers and buyers. This is why in many cases, you will not get the gobs of traffic from MSN that you will get from Google, but your sales conversions will commonly be higher there. This has always been the case for me and this trend is only growing as far as I can tell.

Each of the 3 major search engines cater to completely different demographics. You have to keep this in mind as you prepare your SEO campaigns.

#3 – Innovate and Stay Sharp

So very few people choose to take advantage of the additional search engines online. This is to your advantage, BUT you are going to have to be sharp, stick to your guns, and remain consistent. You are going to have to innovate from the commencement. Don’t leave any loose ends and stay on through with your work. New strategies always require diligence when they are being implemented. Uniformity wins each time since unfortunately, most people are bone idle and cannot remain vigilant. Unfortunate for them, fortunate for you, IF you don’t go the bone idle route too!

#4 – Study The Search Engines – Get To Know What They Want

Marketing itself is pretty much simply an act of finding out what people want and then giving it to them exactly how they want it. It is valuable you carry this thinking over into your alternative SEO campaigns and make sure you give each search engine EXACTLY what they want. As mentioned before, excellent SEO still applies across the board, and many of the same excellent SEO practices will have a positive effect on all engines, but each has their differences.

For instance, I have noticed that when it comes to organic rankings, Yahoo does not seem to give as much authority to.org sites. This could just be my experience, or a eerie fluke, but some of my sites with the.org extension, which do very well on Google for their chosen keywords, cannot seem to climb on Yahoo.

If you pay close attention to these modest nuances, and adjust your marketing message to take advantage of them, you will rise above the competition.

#5 – Look To Future Sustainability

Too regularly I see marketers, newbies and veterans alike, make their SEO campaigns as if there is no future in it.They appear to delight in playing the “give it to me now” game. Long-term strategies, which would allow them to remain competitive now AND far into the future, are not their focus. Terrible go…

If you want to build a successful business you need to build it on a solid foundation, taking into account the future profit of a well-built campaign. This means that although you use alternative search engines you make sure that what you are building is being built to last, not just to take advantage of some loop-hole that is really no loop-hole at all. This also means that you must take up again to pay attention to your campaigns. For each individual alternative SEO campaign you build, one engine will commonly come out the clear winner for THAT specific campaign.

When this happens look for the answer as to WHY it happened. You want to be able to duplicate the same process across several different niches over time. If there ever was a secret it is this: Find what works, with each of the major search engines, build engine-specific campaigns according to those working models, then rinse and repeat across as many different niches as you wish.