Volacci Internet Marketing blogs

5 Features You Need in Your Webinar & Conferencing Platforms

Volacci — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:49:10 +0000

iMeet's Steve Miller presents his bi-weekly installment on the Volacci blog.

Shopping around for a webinar and web conferencing service that fits your company’s needs can be a chore. With dozens of products all claiming to be the best, it can be tough to differentiate the good from the wannabes. Plus, who wants to test 50 different online meeting services?

To help you sift through the clutter, we’ve identified the five needs of every webinar and online meeting, and the web conferencing feature that meets the need.

1. Need: A real, meaningful conversation

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the bells and whistles of a product. There are some genuinely amazing online meeting features out there. But the truth of the matter remains that if you’re not able to have an engaging, productive discussion with the product, then why are you meeting in the first place?

Solution: Audio and video

The best web conferencing products put audio and video at the forefront. It should be simple for anyone to join and engage in the meeting without a complicated initial dial-in or download for video. If the platform does not keep the basics basic, then move along.

2. Need: Document sharing

Nary a meeting goes by that I don’t need to either share a file or sit in on a presentation. So whether you’re taking part in a design review, reviewing your quarterly sales or just showing pictures of your family, file sharing is a must.

Solution: File and screen sharing

Almost every product has some form of file sharing, but the ease of use varies a massive degree. Make sure files are both readily shareable and downloadable. Bonus points for services that allow you to store files on their servers for Dropbox-like access from anywhere.

3. Need: Ease of use

Web conferencing products have not traditionally put a premium on the usability of the interface, making scenarios like this a reality: Your meeting was supposed to start at 1 p.m. Someone shows up late, can’t get signed in and holds up everyone else as you bleed dollars and minutes. Before you know it, your 30-minute meeting has been whittled down to 15 minutes just because the product was hard to use.

Solution: User-friendly interface

You and your guests shouldn’t need to think too hard to take part in a meeting. Features like persistent URLs and browser-based platforms make it easy for anyone to join your web conference. Take some time to play around with whatever product you’re considering. Is it easy from the get-go? Is it hard to understand the first time? It’ll be the same case for your guests as well. So save time and money by investing in a product with a simple, user-friendly interface.

4. Need: Security

There’s an inherent security threat when you’re sharing files, webcams and ideas over the web. A recent article by The New York Times revealed that most video conferencing platforms are vulnerable to hackers. How can you be sure that your data and conversations are safe?

Solution: Robust security measures

Not all security is created equal with web conferencing. Keep your online meetings safe and secure from hackers and unwanted guets with these safety measures:

Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP)
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
HTTPS
Secure, alphanumeric passwords
Secure document and file management

5. Need: Notes and recording

Whether you need to share your meeting notes with a guest who couldn’t make it or record a training session for viewing later, recording and note-taking are two crucial features in a web conferencing product.

Solution: DVR, audio recording and notes

No one can remember everything, so the easier it is to record and access your meetings, the better. Chances are you’ll also need to share your meetings and meetings minutes, so make sure you can send and receive record of your meetings with ease.

Runner-up Bonus Features:

Mobility (apps for tablets, iPhones and Androids)
International Access (international passcodes and phone plans)
Simple Guest Invites (from your own email client)
Social Integration (access to you and your guest’s social networks)

iMeet is your own personal meeting room online. It’s a wide-open space, where you can get together to talk, meet in video, share documents and socially connect with people.

top photo credit: www.avedas.com/

Why You Need Advanced Segments in Google Analytics and 9 Examples to Prove It

Steve Joiner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Google Analytics users are familiar with the standard, prepackaged reports that come with it. But how often do you find yourself drilling down endlessly in an effort to find the exact data you're looking for? Have you ever pulled a pencil to jot down and add numbers from a table because you only wanted to include certain keywords, landing pages or conversion goals? Have you repeatedly set up the same advanced filter only to set it up again the next time?

Well, custom advanced segments are just what you need to make your website analytics life simpler, easier, and more effective. Not only will it help you better analyze your company's website in less time, it will also provide much more targeted and informative reporting to present at your next marketing meeting.

Google Analytics advanced segments allow you to segment very specific types of traffic for analysis. Google includes a dozen or so predetermined advanced segments including all traffic (the default), referral traffic, direct traffic, paid search, and non-paid search. However, there are dozens of other metrics and parameters that can help you segment and analyze the exact demographic you're looking for.

You can find the Advanced Segments menu on the Standard Reporting tab of Google Analytics.

Clicking on it will expand an area that includes the predefined advanced segments, plus an area to create custom ones.

When you create a new segment, a familiar system of defining statements appears, which allows you to create very specific and useful advanced segments. You'll choose the elements you need to define the segment, such as an include/exclude, dimension/metric, operators, and text match. You may also combine statements by using and/or statements. A sample screenshot follows.

Once you've defined your segment, you should name, test and save your segment.

Now that you know the general procedure for setting up custom advanced segments, let's brainstorm a bit about their potential uses.

Non-branded vs. branded keywords. No more fiddling with advanced filters on the keyword page. Create separate segments for branded and non-branded keywords to easily view search results. Use the Keyword metric to accomplish this when setting up your custom segment.
Geographical segments. Do you wonder how many people visited your site from North America? Create an advanced segment showing visitors from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Or, exclude U.S visits to summarize and target all international visitors. Use the Territory/Country metric to accomplish this. You can even set one up for cities too!
Connection speed. Worried a page might load too slowly for your target visitors? Google Analytics records connection speed, and your segments can reflect this.
Custom social media segments. Using regular expressions you can create segments that match the social media visits of your choice. For instance, include Facebook and Twitter, but exclude LinkedIn. This is easy to do with custom advanced segments.
Combine similar landing pages. Want to see how many visitors visited all pages in your product description section? Go directly to this information from the standard reporting page using your custom segment.
Blog pages. It's easy to see how many people visited your main blog page, but what about pages buried deeper in your blog? Combine all visits for all page in your blog section into one custom segment. You can do this by including any pages with /blog in its URL. You could also set up segments for each of your bloggers.
Visitors who convert. Use custom segments to analyze activity and behavior of all visitors who converted on your site. After all, isn't conversions what it's all about? Tie visitors to the conversion goal or goals of your choice.
Mobile visitors. With the rise of smart phones, the importance of mobile visitors is on the rise. Create a segment for mobile visitors only to conveniently analyze their data.
Visitors by OS. Is your product a PC-only product? Set up a segment that excludes Macintosh and Linux users only.

Advanced segments can not only be used as part of the standard, predefined reports in Google Analytics, but they can also be included in modules on your dashboard as well as custom reports. You can also have Google Analytics plot multiple segments in one chart to look for trends.

If you'd like to post some cool advanced custom segment ideas of your own, we'd love to hear them!

photo credit: www.out-smarts.com

3 Myths That Internet Marketing Pros Avoid

Mitch Holt — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:31:14 +0000

Internet marketing doesn’t have one single path to profitability, but in our years of doing marketing for companies that span dozens of industries, we have discovered some specific marketing myths that have evolved our approach to Internet marketing. Not only that, but they've allowed us to save our clients lots of time and money along the way.

We’ll share those with you now.

1. “One Internet Marketing plan fits all”

There are no cookie cutter solutions in the Internet Marketing world. Yes, plans are good but a good salesperson will help you craft the plan around your company's needs. Make sure your Internet Marketing business plan is custom to your needs. Here are a few guidelines to get you started:

Website size & age - Number of pages, how long you’ve owned the domain
Competitiveness of industry - How many keywords need to be targeted and how frequently are they being searched? How extensive are your competitors’ efforts?
Effectiveness of current marketing efforts - What components does your site lack? Maybe you have an effective blogging and content creation campaign and you need to focus your efforts to on- and off-page SEO and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization).
Budget - Your company might not be able to afford to buy everything it needs on the Internet marketing level, but with a concentrated approach, you can build out gradually and effectively. If you can only afford bits and pieces of certain services, focus on one or two areas first, then expand as you build your foundation. Better to concentrate your Internet marketing budget on one area than to spread it out among several.

2. “If you build it, they will come”

Building a spectacular site is not enough. Without proper Internet marketing efforts, your site is invisible. It doesn’t matter how good the site looks if no one sees its pages. Build a well-rounded marketing effort for your online presence. The below are a few traffic-creation must-haves:

SEO - Increasing your site’s visibility on the search engines through on-page, off-page and local optimization best practices will exponentially boost your site’s profitability.
PPC - Paying for text ads or display ads through Google’s AdWords program can be effective if understood and set up correctly (max bids, spending caps, types of ads, targeted keywords, etc). If you have a knowledgeable PPC person behind the wheel, it can be very beneficial (if not, it can be a money pit).
Social Media - Social media has become the vehicle that transports a company’s message to an audience. Without social media, your message is stuck at the station. It’s important to understand which social platforms are must-haves in your industry (not every social network applies to every type of business) so you can effectively connect with your audience.
Online Reputation Management - What are people saying about you online? Do you have negative reviews on Google Places and Yahoo! Local, or Yelp and Bing? There are various things you can do to enhance the web image of your brand. Do you know what people are saying about your brand online?

3. “Traffic and rankings mean more sales”

It is frustrating when your site ranks in the top three results for multiple keywords and your site is seeing some significant traffic because of it. Traffic doesn’t necessarily convert to sales unless you have an effective conversion path through your site. This path should guide visitors to do exactly what you want them to do when they land there.

Conversions come about from a few important on-site elements:

Established Conversion Goals - Decide what you want visitors to do when they land on your site and adjust your messages accordingly. If that means filling out an application or contact form, tailor your conversion path to that goal. This is an important first step in increasing sales.
Calls to Action - Ask visitors to act on every page based on your conversion goals. “Download our White Paper”, “Get a Free Quote”, “Apply Now” - you get the idea. Give them a chance to convert every step of the way using buttons, active and concise language, strategic colors and compelling design elements. Here are some calls to action on Volacci.com.

-Established Trust - Display your expertise and integrity through concise, scannable text and header tags, as well as badges that convey industry certifications.

-Simple Webforms - Don’t make your visitors fill out an SAT-length questionnaire. Eliminate as many questions as you can from the webform without sacrificing the information you need. Keep it to three to five questions and follow up with a call to get the remaining details from the prospect.

Main Photo Credit: http://loistuzeneu.com/

Using Google's Social Media Analytics to Measure Social Media Campaigns

Lauren Tucker — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:34:29 +0000

As a certified Google Analytics fangirl, I love playing around and sorting traffic to see different data and trends. And since I started getting my hands dirty with social media, I’ve been trying out new configurations in GA to get the clearest picture of my social media successes. Here are some of my favorite GA tricks of the trade that help me track social media:

Use Advanced Segments to breakdown the referral sources so you just see what’s coming from your social media accounts. Here’s what the Volacci Advanced Segment looks like:

Filter out just the Twitter traffic using Advanced Segments. There are a lot of different Twitter clients sending traffic to your site, and it can be quite a chore to try to individually section these off over and over again. So we set up an Advanced Segment that catches all of the Twitter clients we could think of. It can be helpful to add all of these to your social media Advanced Segment above, for a more complete picture. Here’s what our Twitter Advanced Segment looks like:

Depending on the intent of your social media campaign, you should set up some goals. If your social media marketing plan is to gain more customers, you should have a goal set up showing conversions on your “Contact Us” page. If your social media campaign is to attract talented employees, set up a goal showing conversions on your “Submit Your Resume” page. Once your goals are set up, create an Advanced Segment that shows social media traffic that converts. It should resemble something like this:

Have any other creative ways to track social media traffic on Google Analytics or otherwise? Let us know and we’ll augment it to this post.

5 Ways to Make Your Meetings More Efficient

Volacci — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:28:46 +0000

(image from laforceteamwork.com)

iMeet's Steve Miller presents his latest installment on the Volacci blog. iMeet is your own personal meeting room online. It’s a wide-open space, where you can get together to talk, meet in video, share documents and socially connect with people.

So here we are in the second week of January. Remember those New Year’s resolutions you made so long ago? Those old dusty proclamations about ‘wasting less time’ and ‘being more productive’ this year? Well, it’s high time you got back on track with those resolutions. Let’s start by knocking 15 minutes off your next meeting so you can have more time to ~~send videos to your coworkers~~ finish that important presentation you’ve been putting off.

Schedule 45-minute meetings
Instead of an hour-long meeting, try 45. Set the expectation of the 45-minute meeting when scheduling it, but subtly set aside an hour in case the meeting runs over. This miraculously makes your hour-long meetings that run late now 45-minute meetings that run late.

Identify and stick to the objective
A meeting without an objective is always a waste of time. Fashioning your agenda around one or two specific goals is sure to shave some time off any meeting. The expectations will be set, the dialogue guided - all because you thought to assign an objective to a possibly aimless meeting.

Set expectations early
By telling the meeting’s participants what to expect during a meeting, you’re adding a much-needed structure to the meeting, as well as setting parameters for the meeting’s subject matter. This doesn’t mean it won’t change every now and then, but most of the time, it will knock some time off your meetings by eliminating off-topic banter.

Stifle the meeting dominator
Many meetings have a person who dominates the conversation, often because of a strong personality or natural openness. These individuals are quite frequently the reason meetings run late. If you are facilitating the meeting, keep the conversation balanced. If you notice one person dominating the conversation, ask someone else to weigh in. Make sure everyone that needs to be heard is heard, then move on.

Summarize the talking points at the end of the meeting
By summarizing the meeting at the end, you’re quickly covering any potential areas of confusion before a long-winded recap breaks out. This somewhat obvious task will certainly shave some minutes off your meeting.

Drupal SEO: Duplicate Content & the Global Redirect Module

Ben Finklea — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:12:48 +0000

There is nothing more embarrassing in the world of SEO than duplicate content. If you are caught with duplicate content, it’s a one-way ticket to Internet detention in the eyes of Google. Sure, the first few times you walk away with a sore wrist and your content taken down. But if you continue to consciously duplicate your content, your website could be wiped away from Web existence. Now that’s heavy.

Duplicate content can happen to anyone, at anytime, and most who are guilty don’t even know they are doing it. In fact, I would say it is one of the most common mistakes, in terms of SEO, that people do who are running Drupal sites. For your Drupal site to rank well in the search engines, it is critical that you eliminate your duplicate content.

But before I show you how to do eliminate duplicate content, let’s take a look at exactly what is considered duplicate content. What exactly does it mean to have duplicate content?

I’m glad you asked. Duplicate content generally refers to, per Google Webmaster Central: “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”

 Examples of non-malicious duplicate content:

• Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices.
• Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
• Printer-only versions of web pages

In regards to SEO, if you are using duplicate content, then you are hurting your own rankings by competing against yourself. Google will recognize this duplicate content and, in some cases, not distinguish the original source. When this happens, Google spreads out the link juice among the pages evenly, causing your content to compete against itself for rankings. If your site does contain multiple pages with very similar content, there a many ways you can indicate your preferred URL to Google. This is called canonicalization. I will get to canonicalization a bit later. If you are running a Drupal-built site, there are a number of ways (and modules) to prevent Google’s vicious slap of shame dished out for duplicate content. One of the main modules we highly recommend (and comes bundled in the Drupal SEO Checklist module) for superior Drupal SEO performance is the Global Redirect module.

The Global Redirect Module

What does the Global Redirect module do? It takes care of some housekeeping issues that come up when clean URLs are enabled in Drupal, eliminating the duplicate content issues that you may not have known you had.

Let's say, for example, that you create a new website and create the first node that you call the About Us page. Later, because you want the front page of your site to be the content of that node, you go into site settings and make node/1 the front page of the site. Sounds pretty harmless, right? Well, right at this moment, all of these URLs on your site would show the exact same content:

http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/
http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/?q=node/1
http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/node/1
http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/node/1/
http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/about-us
http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/about-us/

The search engines will think that you have six pages of the exact same content. That's never good. Global Redirect fixes that by redirecting all the URLs you don't want to the one URL that you do.

Here's the logic that Global Redirect uses (sourced from http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect):

• Checks the current URL for an alias and does a 301 redirect to it if it is not being used.

• Checks the current URL for a trailing slash, removes it if present, and repeats check 1 with the new request.

• Checks if the current URL is the same as the site_frontpage and redirects to the frontpage if there is a match.

• Checks if the Clean URLs feature is enabled and then checks the current URL is being accessed using the clean method rather than the unclean method.

• Checks access to the URL. If the user does not have access to the path, then no redirects are done. This helps avoid exposing private aliased nodes.

• Make sure the case of the URL being accessed is the same as the one set by the author/administrator. For example, if you set the alias "articles/cake-making" to node/123, then the user can access the alias with any combination of case.

That's a lot of work for one module and it does it quite well.

Thanks for this module, Nicholas Thompson!

How to install and configure the Global Redirect module

Carry out the following steps to install and configure the Global Redirect module:

The Global Redirect module installs just like any other Drupal module. Download it from http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect To configure the module, point your browser to: http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/settings/globalredirect or click on Admin | Site configuration | Global Redirect You should see something like this:

The default settings are the right ones for most websites. However, it can be helpful to know what's going on with Global Redirect. Here is a quick breakdown of what you see above.

• Deslash: Set to On. If enabled, this option will remove the trailing slash from requests. This stops requests such as yourDrupalsite.com/node/1/ failing to match yourDrupalsite.com/node/1 and creating duplicate content. On the other hand, if you require certain requests to have a trailing slash, this feature can cause problems and so may need to be disabled.

• Non-clean to Clean: Set to On. If enabled, this option will redirect from Non-clean to Clean URL (if Clean URL's are enabled). This will stop, for example, node 1 existing on both yourDrupalsite.com/node/1 and yourDrupalsite. com?q=node/1.

• Remove Trailing Zero Argument: Set to Disabled. If enabled, any instance of /0 will be trimmed from the right of the URL. This stops duplicate pages such as taxonomy/ term/1 and taxonomy/term/1/0 where 0 is the default depth. There is an option of limiting this feature to taxonomy term pages only or allowing it to affect any page. By default this feature is disabled to avoid any unexpected behavior.

• Menu Access Checking: Set to Disabled. If enabled, the module will check the user has access to the page before redirecting. This helps to stop redirection on protected pages and avoids giving away secret URL's. By default this feature is disabled to avoid any unexpected behavior.

• Case Sensitive URL Checking: Set to Enabled. If enabled, the module will compare the current URL to the alias stored in the system. If there are any differences in case then the user will be redirected to the correct URL. Click Save configuration. Now your site is protected from duplicate content.

Great job! Thank You For Engaging!

How to Configure the Meta tags Module for Drupal SEO

Ben Finklea — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:57:35 +0000

The Meta tags module is important to your site because it tells the search engines what the content you have is all about. That is right, it's pretty much data about data. And while this seems redundant, it is incredibly important for the overall optimization of your site.

The Controversial Childhood of Meta tags

A controversy occurred during the dawn of the search engines (circa 1997) when many people abused meta tags by stuffing them full of keywords. While they were invisible to visitors, search engines gave a lot of credence to the meta tags, so it was a viable way to get to the top of the search engines.

These days, nearly all search engines ignore meta tags as a ranking mechanism in their algorithms but do take them into consideration for other things, so they are still important to maintain on your sites. When it comes to the meta tags on your site, there are about half a dozen that you should absolutely maintain:

Downloading the Meta tags Module

Thanks to Drupal, it is very easy to set meta tags for each node with the Meta tags module. This module gives you some extra fields on each node that you create so that you can put in a description, keywords, and other meta data as you want. This incredibly useful module is maintained by Robrecht Jacques and Alberto Paderno, and can be downloaded at http://drupal.org/project/nodewords. It may be confusing at first, but the Meta tags module is one in the same as the Nodewords module.

The early versions of the module focused on adding keywords to nodes, but over time the module has grown to include more than just the keywords meta tag, so the name needed updating.

Configuring the Meta tags Module

Correctly configuring the module can be the most confusing part of this process, so follow these steps to ensure you have configured it correctly:

Step #1: Click on Admin | Content Management | Meta tags, or go to http://www.yourDrupalsite.com/admin/content/nodewords. You will see something like this:

Step #2: The Global copyright, Global GeoURL, Global keywords, and Default robots meta tag are the site-wide defaults. If you don’t specifically set these elements in the node, then the Meta tags module will display the ones that you set here. Here are some examples of what you might put into these fields:

• Global copyright: © Copyright 2010 Your Corporation. All rights reserved.
• Global GeoURL: 30.4368239, -97.7716253 - (do not use parentheses around your longitude and latitude)
• Global keywords: computer, servers, Drupal, gaming Mac
• Default robots meta tags: ALL=INDEX, FOLLOW

Step #3: The Auto-keywords vocabularies field allows you to select the taxonomy categories that you would like to include in the keywords field. Here’s how it works:

• Select any taxonomy on the Meta tags configuration page.
• When you create a node, include terms from the taxonomy that you selected.
• When you save a node, the terms that you selected will now be included in the keywords Meta tag. You can verify this by looking at the source of the page in your browser.

Step #4: Scrolling further down the configuration page, you will see this:

Step #5: You will probably want to leave these settings alone, but let’s review them so that we understand what we are leaving be:

Text length: Defines the maximum length of a meta tag. Most search engines won't look beyond 255 characters.

Tags to show on edit form: Specify which meta tags you want you or your content creators to be able to edit on a node-by-node basis. For most, description and keywords are all you should allow. However, if you want users to be able to opt content out of Google, give them control over the Robots meta tag. GeoURL would allow users to define their pages in a different geographical location than the rest of the site.

Tags to output in html head: You can turn on or off any meta tags that you want or don't want to appear on your site. For example, if you're not a geographically focused business, you might turn off the GeoURL meta tag.

Repeat meta tags for lists: As you build up content on your site, you'll notice that some pages, like the home page and taxonomy pages, will use pagination. That means that they'll show the ten most recent nodes and then offer links to subsequent ones. This option allows you to specify if you want meta tags to show up on the paginated pages of a long list of content. If you uncheck this option, you'll have meta tags on the first page of paginated content only. Check it and meta tags will show up on all pages. Most sites should leave this option unchecked.

Use front page meta tags: The Meta tags module allows you to specify meta tags for the front page of the site. In Drupal, there are many ways to define the front page. You can make it a node, a list of nodes, a view, a panel, and more. You could even specify different front pages based on the role of the currently logged-in user. With this option, you have an opportunity to define the meta tags no matter how the front page of the site may be defined. Most sites should check this box and then.

Step #6: Next, you will define the front page meta tags by going to your Administer | Content Management | Meta tags | Front page. Hopefully, you will see a screen like this:

Description: Enter the description of the front page of the site. This is usually a two or three-sentence description of the content of the page that is used by many search engines in the search results as the text under your link. It's very important because it's what a search engine user will see before they click on your link.

Keywords: Enter a comma-separated list of keywords about your site.

Step #7: Click on Save. Now that you have downloaded and configured the Meta tags module properly, you are ready to specify meta tags for all the content that you currently have or will be creating.

Thank You For Reading!

5 New Year Resolutions Every SEO & Business Owner Should Make in 2012

Mitch Holt — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:17:18 +0000

(image from http://internetmarketingonlinecourse.org)

2011: Good riddance. We appreciate you, but your SEO loins were fickle, your algorithm updates were disorienting. We hope for a 2012 full of predictability and fruitfulness for quality sites.

Here are a few ways to make your SEO dreams come true in 2012.

1. Get more social
Instead of trying to “do it all” in social media, pick two or three social mediums that really pop in your industry and develop those accordingly. Integrate your social media efforts with new content that goes up on your site (or your partners‘ sites) and online contests or giveaways.

2. Post fresh(er) content
Google recently launched the Caffeine search index -- one of multiple updates to the Panda algorithm in 2011 -- which provides fresher results for people searching in Google. This means Google’s henchmen (crawlers) will continue to favor the sites that display freshness with content. Do you want to know how I decipher this freshness update? One word: BLOG. A blog is a sure way to keep your content fresh, marked with dates and consistent.

3. Schedule your content
Scheduling is the act of posting content on your site but specifying a publish date for the future. Drupal’s Scheduler module allows you to post multiple pieces of content at once, but instead of immediately pushing them live, you can specify which day and time of day you want the content to go up. This serves us well at Volacci because we can create multiple blog posts on a day where the workload is not as heavy and post them for a later date.

4. Update the bad or old content on your site
Perhaps you used to put up less-than-desirable content to fill the space on your site. Well, it’s not too late to update it and make it relevant again. Make a resolution to take old principles and ideas discussed in your blog, clean up the language and make them relevant. Not only is this improving what your site has to offer, it’s abiding by Google’s freshness guidelines, as well as improving old pages‘ chances of being indexed again.

5. Get yo’ infographic on
An infographic, as I’m sure you know, is a visual representation of information that communicates a large amount of data quickly and clearly. It’s true, images don’t have nearly as much SEO value as text, but a good infographic is shared over and over. Each time the graphic is shared, your link portfolio expands. Over time, one infographic could provide significant SEO value for your site.

Ace SEO 101 with the Drupal SEO Grader

Erik Wagner — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:52:01 +0000

Wouldn’t it be cool if your site could notify you when it fell out of favor with Google? “Oh hey, you need to put an <H1> tag on the homepage if you want those first page rankings, buddy.” Well, your wish has been granted!

On November 29th, 2011, Volacci and Acquia released the new Drupal SEO Grader. Volacci and Acquia partnered to create the Drupal SEO Grader, which is available to customers using the Acquia Network. Acquia hosting customers will now be able to utilize the new tool for free when they are logged into their hosting dashboards.

When you are logged into your Acquia hosting dashboard, you will be able to use the Drupal SEO Grader to get an “optimization grade.” The optimization grade is based on 60 different SEO elements. These elements range widely, but generally fall in five separate categories: page structure, crawlability, findability, user experience, and best practices.

Don’t have an Acquia hosting account? Sign up for a free 30 day trial so that you can use the Drupal SEO Grader. All you need is a simple module to be installed to connect to the Grader.

The Drupal SEO Grader makes the job of optimizing your site easier, because it identifies what changes you need to make on your site to improve your rankings and organic traffic. Using the Drupal SEO Grader, you can avoid making mistakes on your site’s SEO that may drastically reduce the number of visitors that you get from the search engines. The site analysis will tell you how severe a particular problem is and what you need to do to fix it. For instance, your Drupal 6 site may not have the Page Title module installed and the Drupal SEO Grader would be able to detect this and make a recommendation to resolve the issue.

Short on time? Then you can hire Volacci to fix any errors that are reported by the Drupal SEO Grader.

So I’m guessing you want to check out the Drupal SEO Grader? Click here to get started!

5 Benefits of Coworking

Mitch Holt — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:55:21 +0000

(photo from BusinessPundit.com)

iMeet's Steve Miller presents his latest installment on the Volacci blog. iMeet is your own personal meeting room online. It’s a wide-open space, where you can get together to talk, meet in video, share documents and socially connect with people.

We’re at an exciting time in the history of work. Where the prospect of working outside the confines of a cubicle was once an unattainable dream for the everyman—an elite privilege reserved for the artistic or the fabulously wealthy—it has now become attainable to just about anyone whose work allows it. That probably means you. Or it will soon.

However, as fantastic as working alone for days at a time in your PJ’s may sound (and as fabulous as your PJ’s may be), it will get lonely after a while. Take it from me. The six months I spent working from home were some of the hardest in my career. Not because the work was any more grueling, but because being alone simply is not that much fun.

Enter coworking: working in a shared environment but not necessarily employed by the same organization. Here are five benefits of coworking—the happy medium between the office and working from home.

1. It’s more social
Think about all of the greatest moments in your life for a second—the experiences that shaped you, the conversations you had, the milestones. They all probably share something in common. They were with the people who mean the most to you. Heck, they were with people in general. The same goes for work. Being in a place where you can talk to people, bounce ideas off others and feel connected to the world outside your house helps make your work more vital. You might even make a friend or two.

2. You gain access to office amenities
Collaborative workspaces take the coffee shop idea a step further by (depending on the space), providing access to conference rooms for private meetings, printers, computers and even mailboxes. Not being required to pay for things like a high-end printer, Internet and having a place your clients and customers can meet can be invaluable.

3. You get to pick
Not feeling like making the trek downtown? For $20 a day you can work down the street at that shiny new office space. Coworking office discovery sites like Loose Cubes, Desks Near Me and WorkSnug make it as easy as entering your address to find an open desk for the day. You can shop around until you find the space the suits you the best without breaking the bank or just desk surf to keep things interesting.

4. Get dressed for success
As simple as it sounds, coworking forces you to have a daily routine that you otherwise might not settle into it. Most people need some semblance of a routine to be productive. Even if it’s not daily, the process of getting dressed (highly encouraged at most coworking spaces), making coffee, brushing your teeth and getting out of the house will help keep you sane.

5. Boundaries = Good
One of the complaints that my wife has (she works at home full-time), is that at the end of the day she has a hard time separating her work life from her non-work life. Whenever she sees our kitchen table and computer, she immediately has flashes of spreadsheets, Outlook email and the pressure to enter in another sales order. Whereas, I just see a good place for a pizza. The separation between work and life is an important distinction that coworking can help solve.