What I can only describe as Google’s version of Wikipedia, Google Knol, is officially retiring. Which makes complete sense. Google should stick to what it does best, index and catalog content, not facilitate content creation. I have a feeling Google Plus will experience a similar fait.

From the Google Knol Team

As part of Google’s prioritization of product efforts, we will be retiring Knol. From now through April 30th, 2012, Knol will work as usual, but we’ve made it easy for you to download your knols to file and/or export them to WordPress.com. From May 1, 2012 through October 1, 2012, knols will no longer be viewable, but can be downloaded and exported. After that time, knol content will no longer be accessible. We hope that this timeline provides you ample time to transition your content. For more information, please visit our FAQ: https://knol-redirects.appspot.com/faq.html

Thank you,
The Knol team

What does this mean for SEO

If your SEO strategy focused on content marketing and seeding through Google Knol, or other low-quality content aggregators, it’s time to re-evaluate.

Quality keyword-rich content needs to be surrounded by other relevant quality content. When it comes to serious SEO, cutting corners just won’t move your rankings enough, especially in a competitive niche.

Were you using Google Knol in your SEO strategy?

Facebook Timeline for Pages is a more visually appealing and consistent method for managing your brand on Facebook. All Pages will convert on March 30th, unless you choose to launch earlier. This slideshow reviews the 6 most important areas of change.

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for ToluImmigration.com’s website design and development and WordPress customization.

Most small businesses can’t afford to hire full-time Web editors, and certainly don’t have the time to learn web programming themselves. If you find yourself having to hire a web developer every time you want to update your hours or add a new product, you may want to consider using a content management system for your site instead.

A content management system, or CMS, allows you to have complete control over your website’s content without ever even looking at the code. These systems are developed by people who understand how the the Web works, so you can trust that the code is clean, compatible with major browsers and search engine friendly—all you have to worry about is the information you want to present.

There are some excellent open-source CMSs available for free, the most popular of which are WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. WordPress has a very extensive selection of themes and plugins, so it is easily adaptable to almost any purpose, no matter how big or small. It has a very user-friendly interface, easy to learn and navigate even for the least web-savvy users. Drupal and Joomla! are like WordPress in that they are very developer-friendly, but their interfaces are less friendly to novice users. Their support and development communities are also much smaller than WordPress’s, so it is harder to get help if you need it, and also fewer themes and add-ons to choose from.

There are several CMSs out there made with small businesses in mind, many of which charge subscription fees. Magento is a very powerful eCommerce platform, with features specifically designed for online retail. Though they offer a free version, the commercial licenses cost either $3,000 or $13,000 a year and also come with warranty and technical support.

Even if you have to hire a web design company to set you up on a CMS and design a custom theme for you, it will still end up being less costly for you in the long run, because you can easily handle the day-to-day updates and maintenance on your own. Either way, it’s time to take control.

Do you use a CMS not mentioned here? Tell us about it.

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for PaintingAndDecoratingExpo.com’s website design & development, basic search engine optimization and WordPress customization.

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for GreenBridgeFilms.com’s website design & development, basic search engine optimization and WordPress customization.

Traffic data can give you some clues about what parts of your site are visited the most and where your visitors come from, but it doesn’t tell you anything about whether they found what they came for or not. It can, however, give you an idea of what areas need to be tested and improved. For instance, if your home page gets heavy traffic but nobody seems to make it to your product pages, that might signify a usability problem. The only way to be sure, though, is to test it.

The first step in creating a usability test is to identify a list of tasks that users should be able to complete using your site. Keep in mind who your target audience is and what you want people to use your website for. Some examples of tasks may be finding a particular piece of information, or purchasing a specific product.

Next, find subjects for your test. Draw from your target audience and try to get as representative a sample as possible. Remember that the larger your sample is (that is, the more people who participate in the test), the more accurate your results will be. Some factors to take into consideration when selecting your subjects: age, experience with computers/Internet, familiarity with your company/brand, etc.

The benefit of conducting a usability test is that you can get a quantitative measure of how user-friendly your site is. Instead of just asking customers how satisfied they were with the site or how easy it was for them to find what they wanted, you can gather a definite set of measurements and easy-to-compare numbers. Use measurements like time spent on each task, number of errors, number of steps and commands used, etc. You may even want to have users perform the same tasks on your competitor’s site and compare the results to see where you stand.

You also get to observe your subjects’ use of the site and find exactly where the sticking points are. You can note if, when and where they get confused or frustrated. It also helps to ask your subjects to think out loud so you can follow their thought process. Be sure to keep your own mouth shut though and resist the urge to help them, or you’ll skew your results.

As a designer, it is easy to get too close to your work—to know it TOO well. Something that seems obvious to you after working on the site for a long time may actually not be so intuitive to someone seeing it for the first time. Rather than making guesses based on your insider-perspective of the site, take a step back and let someone else give it a try. You may be surprised by the results.

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for AntechLabs.com’s website design & development, basic search engine optimization and WordPress customization.

1. Flash Intro
   Web users have incredibly short attention spans, so you only have seconds to convince them that your site is worth sticking around for. Your Flash intro might have seemed really nifty back in the day, but now that sort of thing is generally seen as a waste of time. Your users have a specific purpose in mind when they visit your site, and a sitting through a intro video is just an obstacle to that goal. A good rule is that if it’s long enough to need a “skip intro” button, get rid of it.
2. Using Frames
   Frames used to be cool because they allowed you to keep one part of your website still (say, a logo or a sidebar), while the rest of the page scrolled. Frames also allow your site to be ignored by search engines, have eyesore scroll bars all over the place, and be incompatible with most modern browsers. You can achieve the same fixed-position effect with CSS without all the problems, so frames are more or less obsolete now.
3. Hit counters
   I’m not sure that hit counters were ever classy, but including one on your site now is definitely tacky, and a little sad—like telling everyone you meet: “Hi there! I have 54 Facebook friends…and counting!” Besides that, it is an inaccurate term, as most “hit counters” actually count visitors, not hits.
4. Clipart/Animated Gif Overload
   These “design elements” just scream 1995, and will make it difficult for anyone to take you seriously. Animated GIFs are distracting and don’t add anything of value to your design. The same goes for blinking, marquee or sparkling text. Clipart shows that you didn’t go through the effort to develop graphics specific to your company.
5. Using tables for layout
   Tables should be used to present data, not to lay out your website. A table-based layout is a sure sign that either you designed your site in the stone age, or you just don’t know what you’re doing. Yes, grid-based designs are wonderful, but you don’t need a table to make a grid. Don’t believe me? Check out the 960 grid system.
6. “Website best rendered in [fill in the blank] browser”
   There are a lot of browsers out there, and they are all constantly being updated and improved. It is important keep up with current Web standards and make sure that your site is compatible with as many different browsers and versions as possible. Otherwise, you are alienating a portion of your potential audience. So, a note like this shouldn’t even be necessary. It can also betray how long it’s been since you updated your site—if you’re saying that your website is best viewed in IE6, that tells everyone just how behind the times you are.
7. Inconsistent layout and/or navigation across pages
   As your business or organization has grown and changed over the years, you have probably added a few pages to your website. Maybe a few different people have worked on it. This is fine, but it is important to keep a consistent layout and look throughout your site, especially in the navigation. Otherwise, users will get lost and confused. Many sites now are built with dynamic programming languages like PHP that allow you to add and update pages without starting from scratch each time, leaving less room for inconsistency.
8. Music begins to play when the site loads
   Automatically-playing music and videos used to be popular, but most users now find it annoying and unfriendly—especially when there is no easily-locatable mute or stop button. People browse the web in all sorts of settings these days, and not all of them are noise/music friendly. Bonus points if it’s a MIDI file (see #4: the part about 1995).
9. Using default fonts and colors
   Don’t be afraid to have a little style. Nothing says “outdated website” like black Times font on a white background, with blue or purple underlined links.
10. Click here
    Nobody uses the words “click here” to signify a link anymore, because it’s simply not necessary. Your users know what a link looks like, so you can use that link text for something more useful, like a description of where it leads. This will also help your copy flow more smoothly, and be less wordy. For example, instead of writing “To read more, click here“, just write “Read more“.

Did we miss any?

What would you consider old practices for website design and development?

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for the e-commerce website design & development, basic search engine optimization and WordPress customization for KMPBeats.com.

Accrisoft, founded in 1998 by Jeff Kline and Mark Zeitler, is nationally known for its commitment to developing software that empowers end-users to manage their own large scale website with little to no technical knowledge required. Customers can opt for a complete content management system packed with features like member and event management or pick and choose from a list of modules to incorporate into their core cms. Membership management, forums, online marketing tools, intranet options, event management, business directory and e-commerce are just a few of the many options available.

The real benefit for St. Louis regional businesses and organizations is having an experienced local solutions provider – Headway Marketing – and the nationally recognized software provider Accrisoft. The partnership provides the win-win combination of a local, accessible support system with the resources of a large company.

Tanner Hobin, president of Headway Marketing, is excited about the options he’ll be able to provide for his current and future clients.

We found that Accrisoft had a robust and clean system with little deployment time needed,

says Hobin.

It’s a complete package that allows us to provide our clients with the exact services and solutions they need to enhance their web presence.

For additional information on the partnership, contact Headway Marketing at (314) 266-9321.

Plugin Features Include

• Add the shortcode to pages, posts and widgets
• Sort media library documents by type
• Document ID column in the media library

Installation

1. Upload the ‘media-library-shortcode’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Navigate to ‘Media > Shortcode’ for instructions on how to use the shortcode.

Screenshots

Download: Media Library Shortcode WordPress Plugin

What makes installing WordPress via SSH better than FTP or using a one-click option that most hosting providers offer? Loading WordPress using SSH is much faster than FTP, and I like the control I have over one-click options to customize the install.

At the end of the day its a matter of preference, but if you’ve ever had to load WordPress via FTP you’re in for a treat using SSH.

For this tutorial we are using putty and loading to a MediaTemple (gs).

This tutorial assumes you know enough about SSH to navigate to the directory you plan to install WordPress in.

Secure Shell or SSH is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a secure channel between two networked devices. – (via Wikipedia)

How to Install WordPress Using SSH from Headway Marketing on Vimeo.

Step 1: Navigate to where you want to install WordPress

This is specific to MediaTemple (gs)

cd domains
cd {yourdomain.com}
cd html

Step 2: Get and Uncompress the Latest Version of WordPress

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xfz latest.tar.gz

Step 3: Move All Files from WordPress Back a Directory

After uncompressing you may notice that all files reside in the /wordpress directory. We need to move those files back a directory.

cd wordpress/
cp -rpf * ../
cd ..

Step 4: A Little House Cleaning

Let’s remove the /wordpress directory and the compressed file since we no longer need them.

rm -rf ./wordpress/
rm -f latest.tar.gz

Pat yourself on the back, you know how to install WordPress using SSH.

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for the website design & development, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click marketing (PPC) for KramerSaxl.com

Before we answer this question, lets get a better understanding of what constitutes Fresh, Relevant Content.

Fresh

After explaining the value of fresh content to our clients, most tend to migrate towards the idea of “re-purposing” existing content. For example, take an article from another site in their industry and re-write or fluff it and then re-publish. This is NOT fresh content. There is no problem taking an existing concept or idea and developing an original piece with your perspective clearly outlined, but simply paraphrasing an existing piece isn’t going to produce optimal share-ability. Plain and simple, regurgitated crap is still crap. Be original.

Relevant

Relevancy revolves around three attributes: audience, topic and time. One of my favorite examples of relevancy are highway signs listing food/gas locations at each exit. The signs are completely irrelevant until drivers need one of the locations on the signs. The audience are drivers, the topic is food/gas and the time is at-need. All three attributes combine to bring the driver and the location together.

Content

Content isn’t limited to text. Video and audio are the fastest growing mediums online, and as the adage goes a picture says a thousand words. The added benefit to creating non-text based content is that it doesn’t live in a vacuum as text tends to. Videos, audio files and images are very share-able and tend to engage your audience more. For example, one of our clients using video content experienced a 287% increase in time spent on their site.

How will you produce Fresh, Relevant Content? Easy…!

By doing this:
Create media that is important to your audience, the subject at hand and appropriate to the moment.

Services Used

Headway Marketing is responsible for the website design & development, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click marketing (PPC) for TOTALFreightPay.com

The plugin uses the XFN link syntax outlined in the Google Buzz API documentation.

Installation

1. Upload ‘google-buzz.php’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Navigate to ‘Settings > Google Buzz’ and simply insert your Google Buzz username.

Screenshots

Admin Panel Screenshot

FAQ’s

Can’t I just add the XFN link manually?

You certainly can, not everyone is so tech savvi.

Why isn’t my feed appearing in my Google Buzz stream?

Give it some time, Google must first crawl or re-crawl your blog to pick-up the connection/claim and feed.

Future Development

We hope to one day add submission features similar to Tweetmeme’s plugin. That functionality is of course dependent on Google releasing more API features.

Update: 2/11/2010 There is a plugin currently available but doesn’t seem to be on wordpress.org that adds a Buzz button. Check it out here.

Update: 2/15/2010 Mashable put together a great post on, how to integrate Google Buzz into your WordPress blog.

Validation and Compatibility

• Valid XHTML 1.0

Download: Google Buzz WordPress Plugin

We believe Google Buzz will be a huge success for three primary reasons:

1. Email is the Original Social Tool
   Email continues to be one of the top uses of the internet today. Google’s move to integrate Buzz with their email application means users that spend hours a day using email will inherently be exposed to Buzz features.
2. Gmail’s Success
   As of August 2009, Gmail was the 3rd largest web mail service in the U.S. The release of Google Buzz will most assuredly increase Gmail’s market share.
3. Mobile Integration
   Having all the features of Gmail integrated with Google Buzz is great. It’s even better on a mobile device. The geo-location features alone make Google Buzz’s mobile version one of the more robust mobile/social applications available.

What do you think? Will you enable Google Buzz features? How will this effect Twitter and/or Facebook?

WordPress Post Countdown Plugin Demo

See it in action in the sidebar here: WordPress Post Countdown Plugin Demo

Installation

1. Upload ‘post-countdown.php’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Navigate to ‘Appearance > Widgets’ and adjust the “Post Countdown” widget to your specifications.

Screenshots

Back-end Screenshot

Front-end Screenshot

How to style the widget

The list-item containing the widget is given the class of “post-countdown”. Simply add

li.post-countdown{"styles here"}

to your stylesheet.

Validation and Compatibility

• Valid XHTML 1.0
• Valid CSS
• Internet Explorer 7+ (PC)
• Internet Explorer 6 (PC)
• Firefox 3 (PC)
• Chrome 2 (PC)
• Safari 3 (PC)

Download: WordPress Post Countdown Plugin

St. Louis-based Internet marketing firm secures spot as agency of choice for industry leader Logistics Management Solutions (LMS). Small but fierce, Headway Marketing gives clients a head start over the competition by providing cutting-edge Internet marketing solutions and vibrant website design.

St. Louis, Missouri (PRWEB) March 2, 2010 — Logistics Management Solutions (LMS), a St. Louis-based logistics company, has made its pick from the pool of marketing firms vying for its business. And the pick is Headway Marketing, a six-year-old company with a penchant for client education and a passion for taking their clients to the top. Headway will be the agency of choice for Logistics Management Solutions (LMS) in a number of internet marketing and website development projects.