I believe we are at a digital tipping point. It is happening in slow motion as we speak but when we look back it will appear as though it took place in the blink of an eye.

The tipping point I am referring to is the death of traditional high street players in the face of an online onslaught. Take a look at my four examples below to see how this is playing out and how it is now at a stage of no return:

1. Retailers – Under pressure from the mass movement to online shopping and faced with larger overheads more high street shops are closing. This in turn makes the average high street a less appealing place to visit and therefore more people move online. This then results in further economies of scale for online retailers and they attract more traffic AND more shops close.

2. Banks – Online lenders such as Zopa are stealing vast market share through innovative credit worthiness tests and low rates. Banks cannot compete due to expensive overheads (and a host of other well publicised issues) so they are lowering their high street presence. This is resulting in more people using online solutions which in turn is resulting in the online portals such as Zopa being able to offer even better rates and attract more share from the high street.

3. Book shops – Under immense pressure from Amazon more shops are closing resulting in more Kindles being bought. This in turn means fewer footfalls for book shops and more will close.

4. Estate agents – They are under pressure from online only portals that charge less commission. This means the high street players are working on smaller margins with larger overheads. More of them are moving to an online only presence which will see the high streets importance in the property market diminish.

It is a repetitve and obvious story. The high street is in the throes of an insurmountable challenge and will need to adapt to survive.

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Sometimes you might come across a scenario where you might want the t.co version of your URL without tweeting it on Twitter publicly.

Usually this is mostly for SEO purposes where you want to copy/paste the t.co URL for sharing on other sites or you might want to see it just out of pure curiosity.

The only requirement is that you will still need a Twitter account to find the shortened t.co version of your page. Which is still a lot better than coding your own page, fiddling with the API to get the output, and having to remember the page you’ve created somewhere else in the first place – which can be a bit overkill.

How to get the t.co version of your URL…

This method is clean, easy to remember and doesn’t put anyone out. No need to submit to 3rd party sites.

In short, send yourself a Direct Message (dm). Just like you would send a dm to anyone else on Twitter. And that’s it.

1. Log in to your Twitter account
2. Click on ‘Messages’
3. Select ‘New Message’ (a new dialog box will appear)
4. Enter your username preceded by the @ symbol (like as if you were mentioning someone, for example, @elevatelocaluk. And make sure it is you)
5. Enter the URL you wish to be shortened in the message area
6. Hit Send.

When you have entered your URL, just before sending, you should see “Link will appear shortened”. If that does not appear then add a little gibberish until there are not enough characters for the unshortened URL to display.

Once you have sent the dm to yourself, you should see your new t.co URL in your Messages inbox. It should be pretty instantaneous, excluding fail whale time, and ready to copy/paste.

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Finally, the day arrives when Facebook plan to file papers with the US financial watchdog which will begin the process of becoming a publicly listed company.

This looks to be one of the biggest share sales witnessed on Wall Street yet!

They expect to raise around $10 billion with the flotation that makes the $1.9 billion raised by Google in 2004 look like small fry by comparison.

The two companies lucky to be involved in this flotation will be predominantly Morgan Stanley with heavy involvement from Goldman Sachs.

Reportedly staff at Morgan Stanley have been told to be prepared to work over the weekend of 19^th and 20^th May, so maybe this is the estimated IPO date??

During all the speculation, and there has been lots, Facebook have determinedly kept quiet.

The company’s reported value is said to be between $75 billion and $100 billion, which makes it one of the world’s biggest companies by market capitalisation.

Facebook has only been around since 2004 when it was started up by Mark Zuckerberg in his bedroom at Harvard and as we have all witnessed has achieved phenomenal success ever since.

Being held privately it’s accounts are not for public viewing but speculation says that net profit was somewhere in the region of $355 million in the three quarters of 2010, the biggest part being made through advertising.

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When link building in SEO, once in a while, you might want to mix it up a little. Particularly when it comes to blog commenting.

Blog commenting is still a main staple in the SEOs diet. It’s a little more refined than the SEO of yore where sticking your link in any old blog would do. I’ve personally never gone down that route, but obviously you see a lot of it about, and it still continues.

Blog commenting is needed for variance in your backlinks. And you need those quality relevant blog comments for those extra brownie points in the rankings.

Choosing the right techniques should help your comments stay a little longer as well. It only makes sense. Spammy and un-moderated blogs don’t last long – they’re either cleaned up or Google catches on and those comments lose value (that is, if they had any to begin with).

Contributing is a win-win

It also helps as SEOs if we contribute where we can and stop making moderators lives a misery. I help look after this blog, and Akismet [spam prevention] only goes so far, so I should know. Sifting through spam is not fun.

Below are a few techniques that might help when commenting on blogs. The aim is to save time, have a better success rate, and ultimately, longer lasting, better quality backlinks:

Firstly, quit wasting time…

1. Time is money.
   Check the quality of the blog and it is within the niche of the website you are SEO’ing for
2. Make sure the blog is active
3. Is the blog allowing outbound links
   …and if they are, then what are the quality of the comments and the links that are going out like

If there are literally billions of spammy links and comments on the blog it is probably best to stay clear and focus your time and energy on an organised site.

If you are failing to see any comments at all, check the blog’s front page and watch out for comment counts. If it is a ghost town with not one comment, move on.

If you can distinguish the difference between a spammy page and a post with genuine thoughts and discussions then you are half way there.

Don’t forget, niche-relevant backlinks are great for your rankings. Organised sites usually have a moderator checking what’s going on in their site and promoting sites within the same niche as the blog shows you’re legitimate, but deciding on what anchor text you are going to use is another battle. Look at other contributors on the blog and see what the moderator is allowing.

Secondly, read the post!

Reading the post you are commenting on goes a long way. You are more likely to pick out points, spot mistakes and be able to contribute to the blog showing the moderator/blogger that you read their post in the first place.

Remember, sticking in a comment “Nice post.” never makes the cut… Increase your odds by contributing.

Alternative techniques to blog commenting…

Here are some alternative techniques of increasing your chances of passing muster and having your comments up. Some are cheeky (in jest really), but hey, we gotta have those links right:

Important! Remember to contribute – increase your odds.

• Be human
  Prove you’re not a bot. This is basic. Read the post, contribute, mention the author’s name – anything to make your comment stand out as being genuine.
• Freemail is hate mail
  Bloggers and moderators like to see a real domain in the email addresses that come along with a comment. They’re suspicious of gmail, yahoo and Hotmail accounts. I am. Create a legitimate email address from the same domain you are SEO’ing for or create an email forwarder – a few blogs out there do create a bit of spam. Opt out of any newsletters if possible.
• The charm offensive
  This is the more evolved “Nice post.” technique and combining it with being human, as above. Basic stuff. Add why or what you liked about the post. For those who are desperately inclined you could even change your name to the opposite sex and improve your looks (Gravatar permitting) – this usually only works if the moderator is male though (the odds are still good though).
• Tweet Factor
  Blogger’s love a tweet. Using the charm offensive, further increase those odds by saying you’ve tweeted their post as well. They’ll reciprocate in kind.
• Recommend by proxy
  In-comment links are nice, when HTML permitting. However, a lot of moderators and bloggers dislike this. It’s easy if you have a good site or resource to back you up. Simply work your link with a recommendation into the comment but do not associate with it. Remove your web address from the URL field – don’t give yourself away.
• Integrate and delegate
  If you spot a comment with an unanswered question – reply to it with an answer. You’ve saved the site some time and they will appreciate it. Perhaps add something that will generate a reply back like, “let us know how you got on”. If they do reply back, well you should know the rest – more links (just make sure you have the same name/anchor text/url).
• Google is your friend
  If you are unable to integrate and delegate, and having problems generating respectable replies/answers. Google is your friend. Search somewhere else for the answer and paraphrase. Never plagiarise!
• Guest of honour!
  Guest posts can be exploited to a degree. Comment that you know the author like as if they were your friend. This is in the same vein as the charm offensive, but you’re putting an onus on the moderator/blogger to accept your comments because you say you know the author. An admin is unlikely to check whether the guest poster knows the commenter.
• The Long Haul
  If the moderator or blogger is easily contactable, ask them a legit question – get to know them. Then boom! Hit them with a comment.

The morale of the story…

Being a cold hearted cross-dresser on Twitter might get you so far in blog commenting. But it might be easier to just build relationships ;D

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In February Twitter is going to roll out branded pages for advertisers who spend over $25000. Twitter is one of the most successful social networks on the planet yet they have failed to find a lucrative business model. Let’s hope this changes things for them. I am always very sceptical about “customized” pages as they remind me of glittery MySpace themes…

Here is a screenshot of what you might come across from next week onwards.

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This is a question a client recently asked me – hence I thought it may prove a subject worth a quick blog. The client in question was pondering fragmenting their website into several microsites dedicated to each of their specialist areas. Our advice was not to do this and here are a few of the reasons:

Firstly it is not the best decision for SEO purposes. The creation of several microsites can appear spammy to search engines and therefore not help your organic rankings. You are better off investing in your main website which will have a greater domain heritage and therefore trust from search engines. If your website is structured well and the SEO work is carried out correctly you will find it is the relevant pages within your website that appear in search engine queries and therefore the users will be taken directly to relevant content.

Taking this approach means you will apply all of your attention on just one website. From an admin and cost perspective this is beneficial. You are more likely to make a huge success of one site than several. In most cases microsites will be neglected with time or forgotten entirely. Having a plethora of microsites will also mean plenty of domains to renew and multiple development fees as and when you wish to improve the sites. So focus on the overall health of just one site and you will be more likely to save money and succeed in your overall online marketing objectives.

Employing an army of microsites also runs the risk of fragmenting your brand. They will each start to have their own identities and therefore muddy the water on your overall brand communication. Concentrating on one site will safeguard your brand and provide your audience with a clean communication.

I am sure in certain cases there is good reason to create a microsite but my overall opinion is to create one powerful well marshalled website.

And if you don’t believe me then take a look at this quick video from Google’s Matt Cutts to see his thoughts:

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Perks for influencers on PeerIndex?

I am firm believer that Peer Index is the leading light in measuring a user’s social influence. You may have read a series of posts on our blog before about how it is possible to “Game” Klout and influence other social metric sites. To give you an idea, I spent a week away from the social world recently with very minimal activity. In that time Klout increased my score by 8 points. Hmm… PeerIndex however has held firm, make less knee jerk decisions about how influential an individual is on certain topics. This is why I was happy to discover this little gem on my peer index Dashboard…

How could I resist? It would seem that if you are considered influential in music by PeerIndex you can get a month’s free unlimited subscription to Deezer, a relatively new music streaming service to the UK.

They say that nothing in life is free… It turns out they were wrong! I’m not one to let an opportunity like this pass me by! So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give to you… (Insert Drum Roll here).

Elevate Locals Deezer Review courtesy of PeerIndex.

Firstly I would like to mention that I am already a premium Spotify user so naturally I will be comparing the two in a head to head, VS, Duel type thing.

An introduction to Deezer

Unless you live in France the chances are that you hadn’t heard about Deezer until late in 2011, if at all. I guess it can be considered one of the new kids on the block but Daniel Marhely has been chipping his way into the music industry since 2006. Deezer.com was launched in 2009 in France and only in 2011 was it made available in the UK.

Deezer by Numbers (Taken from their website)

• 20 million users
• 6 million unique visitors per month
• over 1.3 million subscribers to the Deezer Premium services
• more than 400.000 Facebook fans
• more than 100.000 Twitter followers

I am informed (by Wikipedia) that Deezer currently has 15 million licensed tracks, and more than 30.000 SmartRadio channels.

The web Interface

Deezer, unlike Spotify, is a 100% web based music streaming software. Meaning there is no need to download any software. At first glance the interface is quite pleasing. The top of the page is always taken up by the music player, and various player controls. It also displays the current track and a simple search facility.

The Deezer Dashboard

You get the feeling that Deezer have tried to make the process as simple as possible. The player is instantly loaded with Deezer’s own “What’s Hot” playlist giving you some popular tracks to listen to. The Artist and Album pages are very “Apple” in their design making them feel very familiar to the iPod/iPhone owners amongst us.

The Deezer Artists Page - Kings of Leon

One of the more interesting features is the Radio Channels page. Upon visiting the page you are met by a wall of images each representing a different Deezer radio station. The Stations are made from a selection of tracks based on an Artist a Genre or real life radio station. While listening to a station you are only allowed to skip a track 5 times in any 60 minute period. This can be a double edged sword, it’s great way to discover new music you may have normally passed up on, but if you do really dislike a track you will be more inclined to stop listening.

The Deezer Radio Channels Page

The mobile app

For Deezer premium+ members there is a multi-platform app in the offering. I am a proud iPhone 4s owner, often too quick to snap up any free apps pointed in my direction. Deezer’s mobile app is certainly one of the slicker music apps I have encountered. It is essentially a slightly scaled down version of the web app with a very tasty added feature. The mobile app provides the ability to download any Albums or Tracks directly to your phone. Great for those times when there may not have a 3g or Wi-Fi connection available. The download process is handled very nicely in the background and is very fast over Wi-Fi.

Deezers iPhone app - Dashboard, Download screen and Radio screen

I’m happy to say that the UI consists of larger buttons avoiding the pitfall that so many apps fall into. I have never understood why app developers create buttons that are smaller than my fingers surface contact. Touch screen devices only succeed if they are easy to use! +1 to Deezer for their efforts.

One observation I have made whilst using the mobile app is that it is only possible to have 1 track being played by any 1 account at any time. If you are currently using Deezer’s web app and start to play a song in your mobile app, the web app will stop playing instantly, and visa-versa. So think twice before sharing any login details with a close friend.

As a side note I have been listening to Deezer’s “Electro” Radio station whilst writing this review and haven’t felt the need to skip a track yet. Maybe the limited skip feature isn’t as much of a hindrance as first thought. Though I wouldn’t have put all of these tracks into the “Electro” category myself, each to their own.

Deezer VS Spotify – The Duel

I guess the time has come… Unfortunately due to Spotify’s success, all music streaming services, at some point, will be compared to the big green giants.

The accounts used in this comparison are Spotify’s Premium account and Deezer’s Premium+ account.

As you can see there is very little to difference between the two. The only difference worth noting really is the fact that Spotify requires a software download to use their service. Although the software is very well made I do have my reservations with Spotify. More than once I have had problems streaming music caused by the connection to Spotify’s servers. They also force updates on a regular basis. I am sure this is to make improvements and fix any bugs but it seems a little too often for my liking.

In the short time I have been using Deezer I am yet to have any issues streaming music or downloading tracks. That said I do think Deezer’s service is slightly cheapened by it being browser based. I find myself using the mobile app more than the web app. There is nothing more annoying than closing your Deezer tab mid album by accident. A premium music streaming service should feel robust and weighty and although it may take a little longer to set up, and it isn’t 100% perfect I think I will be sticking with my Spotify subscription.

Conclusion

The truth is, Deezer is a very good product. The only reason I can see anyone not being fully satisfied with its offering would be because it’s browser based. The interface is still very slick, the streaming quality is excellent, download speeds are ample and the mobile app does a very good job.

I would suggest that anyone looking for a premium music streaming service gives Deezer a chance. Being a Web Designer I am impressed with what they have achieved. The same way I was impressed when the Hype Machine was launched.

It’s not every day that you are given something for free so I can’t end this piece without saying thank you to PeerIndex for this lovely perk. I’m not sure if this is something they will be doing more of in the future for different influence topics but I certainly hope so.

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Here is the relevant video based on this announcement.

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Simply click and copy the following code to embed this infographic on your website.
<br /> <a href="http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/"><img src="http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-infographic.jpg"><br /></a>Infographic by: <a href="http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/">Elevatelocal</a>

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Last night Google announced the introduction of a latest update to its core search engine algorithm. The article written by no other than Matt Cutts himself titled Page Layout algorithm improvement sheds light on how Google takes UX into context and applies that to the way it ranks pages in its search results. Google states that they have “heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

This new update will hopefully get a lot of MFA (Made For Ad Sense) sites out of the way and will encourage web designers to focus on user-centred design. Yes, all designers should focus on usability and user experience but unfortunately not many do. Although Google makes specific comments about ads being above the fold, the truth is that if your main content is not above the fold then you will not rank very well even if there are no ads on your website. Furthermore, if your main content is not above fold and you have a clattered design then it is very likely that you will have a high bounce rate. 

Applying Golden Ratio to Web Design

So what is Golden ratio? According to Wikipedia, In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden number is 1.618 and this is the number that all artists, architects and designers apply and should apply to their designs.

Let’s say you have a 960 pixel width layout, therefore you need to divide 960 by 1.618. You’ll get about 594, which is the width of your main content column. To get the width of your side bar, subtract 594 from 960 and you get 366. Put it all together and you have a two column layout with widths of the golden ratio.

You can apply the same ratio to your design vertically. Assuming that your page has a fixed height of 760 pixels, you should divide that by 1.618 which will give you 470 for the top part and 290 pixels for the bottom part of your website. Your main content should reside in the top 470 pixels which will be above the fold and the “supplementary” content at the bottom, see below.

You can do the calculation yourself or use online golden ratio calculators such as this one. By applying the golden ratio to your layout you will make your design aesthetically pleasant and will increase engagement if you ensure the right content is above the fold.

What should you have above the fold?

• Main content with your target keyword in the first paragraph and headings.
• Link(s) to other important pages that are relevant to the current landing page.
• Call to Action(s)

It is important not to cram too many things above the fold as that leads to bad user experience and also degrades the quality of your main content. Your content should not be lengthy, remember that an ideal line length ”for text layout is based on the physiology of the human eye… At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches – about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 12 words per line. Research shows that reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width, because the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text.” according to Web Style Guide – Basic Design Principles for Creating Website, Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, 2nd edition, page 97.

How do I see SEO?

I will let the following illustration do the talking.

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