What if you have eight downloadable files and you want to know which of the eight is downloaded the most?

The easy option is to use the Site Overlay feature. However, I found, on a low traffic site, that it did not record clicks on file download links. Please let me know if you find otherwise.

Google provides another option, adding a javascript tracking code to each file download link. This bit of javascript assigns a pageview to the clicks on your file links which Google easily tracks.

Adding the Google Analytics code to your links

a href=”folder-name/file-name.pdf”
onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’folder-name/file-name.pdf’);”>
This is a complete code sample

a href=”folder-name/file-name.pdf”
This line is the path to your pdf. I didn’t need to change anything here.

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’folder-name/file-name.pdf’);”>
This line is the tracker code. This is the new Google code that was added.

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’folder-name/fn.pdf’
The file-name.pdf in this line can be any text that you choose. Here it is shortened to fn.pdf.

Bonus: Try a shorter link name

I shortened the file name text compared to the acutal file name so that it would fit nicely in the Google Analytics display.

• Simple cut and paste
• Consider shortening the file name
• Works with any kind of downloadable file, pdf, avi, doc and so on.

Give it a try

Don’t expect to see the results immediately. Google suggests waiting one or two days. I saw results within 30 minutes.

Here is a link to the Google Analytics Help page. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55529&topic=11006

You are invited to share your comments below. Thanks for visiting.

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What will you find inside Search Marketing Standard?

My latest issue includes articles on:

Google, Social Media, Linking, Analytics, WordPress optimization, AdWords, Flash, Social Media Marketing and an SEO event calendar. There is even a crossword puzzle.

Articles are authored by long time experts and up and comers alike, including:

Eric Ward, Kim Krause Berg, Chris Boggs, Joost de Valk, Bryan Todd, Grant Crowell, Gord Hotchkiss and Cameron Olthuis.

The magazine publishes four issues per year, which is nice flow of information that will not overwhelm you. With this discount you have a great opportunity to develop and affirm your own Search Marketing skills and pocket some change as well.

Take the first step in subscribing to Search Marketing Standard magazine.
And remember to enter this coupon code at checkout: “FRIEND15“.

There is good reading here.

What’s your take on the Search Marketing Standard magazine?

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Here is a story of business engagement. Engaging the audience and developing a conversation.

I asked a simple question of the presenter, which was asked and answered by the speaker during the webinar. Nothing spectacular here yet.

Then the speaker offered to look over my blog and offer suggestions after the webinar. I took him up on it and he followed through. Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing over at HubSpot provided substantial suggestions. Many are on my to-do list.

Mike also referenced a few articles on the HubSpot blog so I spent a bit of time reading and found many useful articles. This exceeded my expectations of the benefit of joining the webinar, as did Mike’s email that included eight suggestions for my blog.

So, as a way of showing my appreciation, I would like to offer a few suggestions on how to improve the usability of the HubSpot blog. I willingly admit that I do not yet practice all of these suggestions here at www.jbspartners.com .

Let’s Start the Overhaul Recommendations for HubSpot’s blog

One of the important factors of good usability is predictability or accurately indicating what is ahead. This dictates a common-sense order of events. Order and relative position are themes you will find illustrated as you read on.

Click the thumbnail below to see a full size screen shot of the HubSpot blog page that is being reviewed. Opens a new page.

Promotion

Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and reddit are valuable tools to help spread the word about quality articles. Below is a snap shot of a HubSpot blog title with social bookmarking links.

How can this be improved?

Could the social media text links be shifted down and placed on the same row as the Digg flag, instead of on top of the Digg flag? Stacking them leaves a large amount of blank white space to the right of the Digg flag, which is often restful, but not needed here. The post title is quite lost because it is placed so close to these links and graphics.

And for the posts that have not been Dugg, still move the social bookmarking links away from the title.

In fact…

Could you move these links to the bottom of the article? I might feel more genuine about voting for you after I have read the article. Why make me scroll back up to the top of the page to click the link? Move the social media links to the bottom of the article.

Byline

Who is the author? Introductions generally come before conversation. Place the byline at the top of the post instead of the bottom of the post. If the blog post is low on graphics, add an avatar or a photograph of the author as well. This kind of personalization is helpful when you meet the author in person or see the same photo elsewhere on the web, even in the comments below.

Date

When was the post written? Please don’t make me scroll down to the bottom to search for a date that is presented in tiny, faded font. Readers care. Information does expire. Don’t be afraid. Trust your readers. Include the date at the top . Many subjects on the Internet are date/time sensitive. Get this information out in front of the article.

Comments

Same as above. Honor your commenters by placing the comment author’s name and the date above the comment. Those that comment are often a part of a community. They will be looking to see if others that they know have commented. Books and newspapers place the author name before the text.

Place the commenters name first and date (and time information if needed) after the name.

A long column of comment text is boring. Instead, modify your comment styling to alternate the background color of every comment. This adds a bit of visual interest, breaks up the column into readable chunks, and aids the reader that is scanning the page. We know that readers scan, this change will make that easier.

This is a sample of alternating comment colors taken from www.cameronolthuis.com

Displaying the number of comments at the start of the comments section further enhances usability by providing the user with information about what is ahead. Nine comments is very different from 256 comments.

This is a sample taken from www.copyblogger.com

The HubSpot blog authors are very proactive about commenting on the blog comments. :loud applause: This encourages the sense of community that results in more comments.

Readers are interested in what the author has to say and who the author is. They also want to see if the author is reading and responding to posts. Uniquely style the comments of the author. Choose another background color, add a one pixel boarder, or what ever works with your style.

This example is taken from www.pearsonified.com Chris is the author. Here he uses bright red next to his comment.

Day of the Week

Providing the day of the week, month, date, year and time of the post might be too much information. I vote to remove the “Wednesday” portion of the date. Do not eliminate the year.

Spacing

Evenly spacing everything gives equal importance to everything. This does not provide the visual queues to aid the reader and provide good usability. Add extra blank lines before new areas of the post. At the end of the article add a blank line. An orange colored “Comments” title is very helpful. Give it some room by adding a blank line above it.

After the comments section, add a blank line before the comment form.

Remember to place related things near each other. Even in this blog post that you are reading, the bolded title “Spacing” that begins this section is nearer to the text about spacing than the text above which is about the Day of the Week or even the text below which is about the Comment Form.

Comment Forms

The button says “Post Comment”. “Post” is a technical term. Let’s be more welcoming and friendly. Try; Leave a comment, Leave a reply, add a comment.

The captchka is regrettably necessary. The explanatory text could be placed next to the text box and the word “code” could be replaced with the word “text”. Nothing wrong with adding a please here either, since this requires an extra effort of the visitor.

Required Fields

There are asterisks by the required fields. Many visitors are new to blogs as well as commenting. The form should make it as clear and easy as possible for them to participate. Add required field explanation text so that visitors can see what is expected of them before they see an error message and leave.

Email Notification

I always appreciate the ability to subscribe or to be emailed when there are comments made to a post that I have commented on. Great idea. This develops the feeling of engagement and starting a conversation. However, using the term “someone” is less supportive of this objective. What is being offered here is the ability to “Notify me of follow up comments via e-mail” So, we could just say that.

Quick Summary

2. Social Book Marking tags belong at the bottom of a post
3. Bylines belong at the top of a post, along with the date
4. The comment author name and date of the comment should appear before the comment
5. Alternate the styling of comments
6. Provide unique styling of the blog author’s comments
7. Display the number of comments at the top of the comments section
8. Keep day/date/time information simple
9. Space related content near each other
10. Space unrelated things apart from each other
11. Explain required fields
12. Email notification is awesome

Two questions?

1) What did I miss?

2) Why would you do something different?

I look forward to reading your comments.

If you would like to learn more about styling your comments in WordPress specifically one place to read is here - http://www.pearsonified.com/2007/11/professional_stylish_comments_for_blogs.php

If you like this article, click on the little green “Share This” icon below. It will help you share the article in the manner of your choosing. There are two tabs and lots of Social Bookmarking choices for you as well as “email a friend”.

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Chris Hass, chapter President and Usability Consultant at Bentley College presided over the meeting and quickly introduced Steve Krug, author of the best seller Don’t Make Me Think .

The two magical points;

1. Effective “You are here” indicators
2. Prominent Page Titles

That my friends is the core message. You can go home now, as long as you are not disappointed. If you are, then stick around for a little more detail. Steve anticipated the same disappointment, and we all stuck around.

You are Here

Ways to highlight the current location in the primary navigation are numerous. You can make the text

• Bolder
• Larger
• Change the color
• Reverse the background
• Indent
• Italicize
• Underline - and there are many more options to fit your needs

However, designers love “design subtleties”. This is what they are most proud of. And the users, well they miss them every time. Steve was clear that designers “have to be louder than you like to be, because the visitors move so fast.”

We need to help visitors navigate. “You are here” helps people navigate. Steve mentioned that visitors who give up on the navigation and instead click in the content area to find what they need are disappointed 99% of the time and leave the site. Much better odds with the navigation.

Tabs are a recommended interface for primary navigation and StumbleUpon was offered as a very good example. Pretty clear that we are on the home page in this image.

Notice that the tab is the same color as the page.
There is no line between the tab and the page content.
The Home tab is also the most visually prominent tab.

This makes a compelling case for making your “at state” tab the same color as your primary background.

It was also suggested to be sure to include a Home page button with the primary navigation. Kind of surprised me, but ok. It does make it clear that here is the navigation scheme and similar looking links are primary navigation. Relying on logo clicking to get Home is not good enough.

Including a Home button also draws the visitor’s eye to the navigation at the start.

Another suggestion, make the active tab a little taller than the rest, a little bigger or consider bolding the font.

Consistency does not trump Clarity. Consistency is not always best. Shocking but true. Be flexible and be clear.

Text Links

There is an implied social contract with text links. The visitor sees the link and figures where it will take them. If it does not, you have broken the contract.

Steve implored that, “the text link has to deliver what you promised, they have to be what they say they are.” Otherwise you violate the social contract with the user. The most likely outcome is their immediate departure.

Page Titles

Prominent, well placed page titles is the second point.

They should always be at the top of the content space.
The text of the primary navigation should closely match the page title.
Page titles should be bigger, bolder and prominently located, though they need not be biggest.

Useful Tips

Feel free to break the navigation into two sections simply by adding 10 pixels or so of space.

The type face of your navigation should resize along with the body text.

Contrast is more important than type size for legibility. Good to know.

Steve recommends using the three differen sized A’s icon for visitors to resize the type themselves. This will become more accepted and valued over time.

Bread crumb navigation should include the current page, but the current page should not be clickable.
For example, In the following navigation scheme,

Mens > Boots > Walking > Brown

if you are on the Brown page, Brown should not be clickable.
This is similar to the Home page link not being active when you are on the Home page.

The best pointer for “at state” navigation is the sideways triangle pointing at the text.

A couple of sites that do all of this quite well,

www.harlem.org - continue clicking on the photo for more information

www.scottmccloud.com - very clear where you are

In addition to great information, I met some wonderful folks and am encouraged to visit again after my first UPA meeting. An impressive group of people. Thanks all. Oh, and Steve has a certain fascination with boxfish. A yellow rectilinear form found under water.

Chris Hass, Jim Spencer and Steve Krug at UPA Boston meeting
Three more photos here; http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbspartners/

Please click on the green button below to share this article.

Please leave a question or comment about this article and include a favorite usability tip.

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He began by establishing the benefit of a news release and provided some facts based on heat maps and comparing organic with pay-per-click (PPC) traffic from search engine result pages and on and off page search engine optimization (SEO).

• 75% of clicks come from organic results
• 25% of clicks come from pay-per-click ads

Apparently more highly educated folks use the organic listings more, while those with less education use PPC comparatively more.

• A Phd uses PPC only 1% of the time
• A high school educated visitor will use PPC 50% of the time

The next battery of stats were about on page and off page search engine optimization.

• 25% of SEO is on page - title, copy, H1,2,3 and meta data
• 75% of SEO is off page - links

Links to your web site were described as having three importance factors, from good to best.

• a link
• a link with the specific anchor text of your choice
• a link with the specific anchor text of your choice on a trusted web site

News Releases include links and are a great way to distribute them to trusted sites.

The overall goals for news releases are:

1. Build improved ranking for your site in the search engines
2. Increase your site’s find ability through distributed content
3. Gain press coverage

Content suggestions

• Make it interesting, about your industry
• Trends, survey data, case studies
• 300 to 1,000 words in length

Style tips

• Spell out abbreviations, it’s better for the search engines
• Type out full names more than once in a release, same reason

Key Word notes

• 1-2 key words per release is sufficient

Love Links

Text of the link, Anchor text of the link, Page title of web site linked to, and the the on page text should all use the same keywords. This shows relevance.

• Place your link in the first 250 words. Some services will truncate the article at that point.
• Include one link that is the full URL.
• Link to your properties, not to others so much
• Link to interior pages of your site that focus on the same subject.

Your Boiler Plate

This is the text about your company at the bottom of the release. It should be key word rich and include a few links.

Post the news release

• Post the release on your blog or site
• Submit it to your RSS feed
• Tag your release on social tag sites

Distribution of your press release

Choose a wire service that allows links with anchor text. If you need multimedia support, look for one that supports that.

Send your release to only one service, not many. Remember that you get what you pay for. Some agencies are free and others are expensive.

Distribution is offered by these services, among many more;

www.marketwire.com
www.prweb.com
www.prnewswire.com - Steve did not recommend using their regular service at all.

Frequency

Remember that the release is intended to reach prospects and not the media. Some may choose to send them out as often as four times per month. Consider your audience and competition before deciding when not send out a release. A bad time to send a release may be a time when there is also less competition, like at Christmas time.

Measure

Before and after review your and track your

• Google page rank
• key word ranking in the search engine results
• the number of links to your domain name
• review the quality of those that are linking to you
• review the anchor text of the inbound links to your site
• the number of visitors
• the number of leads you get or conversions (downloads, signups etc.)

Focus future PR efforts on the media that brings the best results.

Social Media News Release

www.shiftcomm.com has a template for social media news releases. Consider embracing social media and multimedia press releases.

www.pr-squared.com has further resources.

Add your press release to your Facebook news feed

Write a Press / News Release Today about

• A story around the founder
• Staff you are proud of
• Customer utilizing your produce service in a unique way
• Results of a survey or poll
• Awards
• Unique story angle on something familiar

Visit this link to see the entire presentation on in-bound marketing press releases. Mike remained on topic and provided a lot of value in this webinar. Since we are both in the Boston area, I look forward to thanking him in person one day.

What tips might you add to this? What have you found successful? Please leave a comment below and click the green button to share this post.

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Technorati Profile

And MyBlogLog
Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

And Bloglines
ckey=”4ED64CEB”

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Here is a quick summary.

1. Define your purpose and target audience
2. Domain Name
3. Hosting
4. Web Site design
   1. images
   2. text
   3. functionality
5. Key Word Research
6. Link Building
7. Internet Marketing
8. Regular updates and maintenance

 
Domain Name

The domain name is your unique address (or URL, Unique/Universal Resource Locator) on the Internet super highway.  Without a domain name, the average Internet surfer will not find your web site.

The URL for this web site is www.jbspartners.com.  See the name up in the browser address bar?

Like a car registration, Domain Names are registered and need to be renewed each year, or else they expire, which is not good.

Registering for as long as makes sense of your situation is recommend. Ten years often.

Please read the article on choosing domain names.

You may also like to read about various uses for a domain name. You can register a new domain name at www.jbspartnersdomains.com Privacy Protection, available when registering a domain name, hides your personal information.

Hosting

The is the special computer that holds all of the text, images and other assets of your web site. It is connected to the Internet and accepts requests to present your web site to visitors.

These computers are called web servers and generally run on Unix, Linux or Windows operating systems and use Apache or IIS or other web serving software.

The web hosting server may also support databases, content management systems, e-commerce functionality, audio and video content, private client areas that require logins and so on.

After a domain name is configured to "point" to your web server hosting account, there may be a delay of minutes up to 36 hours for the updated information to propagate across the Domain Name Servers (DNS) across the Internet. Only then will the web site be visible.

 
Web Site

Web sites may appear to be simply comprised of text and images, and those are primary components. However let’s start here

Purpose and Motive - Why a web site?

1. It’s the thing to do
2. My competitor has one
3. My daughter, Uncle, Grandmother told me to
4. People keep calling to ask for hours and directions
5. Need an easy way for people to contact us
6. Show off our latest work
7. Attract new employees
8. Parking and driving directions are better in pictures
9. Want to sell beyond our local area
10. Preparing to sell the business
11. Required to meet our future growth forecast
12. Reduce walk in traffic
13. Improve customer service
14. Offer a wider range of products
15. My business coach told me to

Who is your target audience?

1. Current clients
2. Prospective clients
3. Government
4. Competitors
5. Current employees
6. Prospective employees

 
Describe the following about your target audience

1. Geographic range - town, state, national, international
2. Age group - 10 yr brackets
3. Gender - two choices
4. Position in the buying process timeline - research vs. ready to buy now
5. What other web sites do they visit?
6. Who are your most profitable clients?
7. Which clients will take your business in your chosen direction?
8. What do your clients have in common?
9. What are their education levels and income ranges?
10. Are your most frequent customers your best customer?

Conversion definition or What is the desired out-come?

1. Phone call
2. Email
3. Fax
4. Instant Message
5. Engage through social media - Facebook Twitter, Linkedin
6. Download
7. Sign up for newsletter or other
8. Drive to your location
9. Login
10. Purchase, complete e-commerce transaction
11. Click on an ad
12. Complete the Contact or Request form
13. Attend an event
14. Listen to a Podcast
15. Watch a video
16. Leave a comment
17. Donate

The information above really drives the remaining decisions.

Additional context questions

1. Is there an existing logo?
2. Is there a tag line or slogan?
3. Is there an existing color palette?
4. Does the web site need to coordinate with existing collateral?
5. For how many years will the web site exist?

What pages will contain the information presented on the web site?

1. Home
2. About Us
3. Services
4. Employment
5. Testimonials
6. News and Events
7. FAQ
8. Resources
9. Map / Driving Directions
10. Contact Us
11. Privacy Policy
12. Terms of Service
13. Site Map
14. Thank You page, custom 404 page
15. and many others

What graphics or images will enhance the web site?

Providing three to five web site addresses with a description of the aspects or components that could be applicable to the project can point the designers in the right direction.

The Copy, Content, Body Text, Words, Messaging
A professional writer brings tremendous benefit to every project.

1. Will interview the business owner
2. Will maintain the "voice" of the business
3. Can interview satisfied customers to obtain unique testimonials
4. Can incorporate completed key word research into the text
5. Will use a style and format appropriate for the web
6. Will write copy that is compelling
7. Will write copy that is free of grammar, spelling or punctuation errors
8. Let you focus on running your business
9. A professional writer always saves time
10. The business owner reviews and approves all text

The Process

Web Design

The designer will assimilate the information provided and produce a "mock up".  This is a graphic image of the new web site design which we will review together.  This is the time to make suggestions.  Three reviews is the maximum.

Photo Research

Photography can be a vital component of the project.  There are a number of options to obtain legal images.

1. Hire a photographer for all images
2. Purchase images.  www.gettyimages.com or www.comstock.com have a vast choice of professional quality images
3. There are lower budget image web sites but copyright infringement becomes a trickier issue.

Finding the image that comfortably fits with the color scheme and the design can be a very time consuming process.  Obtaining approvals from the client can extend this portion of the project.

Writing

The copy for each page will be produced and reviewed with the client.  We will review body copy, as well as headlines, callouts, testimonial snippets, tag lines, button names and any other text on the page.

Production

Once the design mock up is approved, it goes into production and is converted to HTML or xHTML.  At this point the design is set.  A possible next step would be to install the web site into a Content Management System.  This is software that makes many web site editing tasks very simple to complete by the owner.

Key Word Research

What are the key terms, related to the project, that the public is entering into the search engines?  Rarely does the client know all of them.  We need to generate a list

These terms have a couple of factors.

1. Competition - How many other web sites are "competing" for that term?
2. Relevance - How relevant is that term to the project?
3. Quality - How often is the term searched for on the Internet?

The selected terms are then incorporated into the pages of the web site.  This aligns the active searchers on the Internet with your new web site.

Link Building

Links to your web site are very important for the popularity of your web site in the search engines.  There are many ways to build links.

1. Press Releases
2. Articles
3. Gaining listings in directories
4. Local Search Marketing
   1. Registering with local search web sites
5. Registering with relevant social media sites
6. Submit to DMOZ and Yahoo
7. Request links from other web sites
8. Newsletters and Discussions
9. Write reviews
10. Interview other business owner’s that also have a web site
11. Offer an ebook or something of value free in exchange for a link
12. The list is endless

We can tailor a program with a one time or monthly link building program, or both.

 Additional Marketing and Promotion possibilities

1. Pay-Per-Click advertising
2. Print Newsletter
3. Electronic Newsletter
4. Social Media Marketing
5. Brochure design and printing
6. Video marketing
7. e-cards
8. e-books
9. Corporate Identity packages - logo, stationary and business cards
10. Blogging
11. Podcasting
12. Speaking
13. and on and on

Updates and Maintenance

The web site needs to be kept up to date. It should be monitored and the information about visitors should be tracked and analyzed.

Please read more about web site statistics and analytics here

I encourage you to leave a comment or question below.  Thanks.

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Ever want to compare who is following and who is not?

Twitter Toolbox is the answer

A nifty Firefox (and Flock) plugin that adds a sidebar with three tabs.

Compare Twitter followers and following in three ways

1. Who are you following, that is not following you?
2. Who is following you and you are following them?
3. Who is following you, but you are not following them?

Install Twitter Toolbox and compare the following and followed.

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Miscellaneous

www.CORONASINGLES.COM 26-Nov-2004
www.CUSTOMPIZZABOX.COM 19-Sep-2006
www.DRYCLOTHES.COM 22-Sep-2006
www.ALLAMERICANHOMEIMPROVEMENT.COM 6-Apr-2005
www.LOSANGELESFITNESSTRAINER.COM 27-May-2005

Mattresses

www.MATTRESSINABOX.COM 2-Jun-2004
www.DANNASMATTRESS.COM 20-Jan-2005

Golf Cart / Exotic Car

www.EMERALDCARCLUB.COM 19-Sep-2006
www.GOLFCLUBCAR.COM 19-Sep-2006
www.PRESTIGEGOLFCARTS.COM 20-Jun-2005

Short Company Names

www.ATWCO.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.HANGCO.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.LDDZ.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.RDFCO.COM 22-Sep-2006
www.RTRCO.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.SSKCO.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.UMERCO.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.ZYRCO.COM 19-Sep-2006

Design Industry

www.COWGIRLCREATIONS.COM 21-Nov-2000
www.VALDESIGNS.NET 7-Nov-2003
www.VALDEZIGNS.NET 7-Nov-2003
www.VALSTENNISWEAR.NET 7-Nov-2003
www.VALSTENNISWEAR.COM 22-Sep-2006

Bridal industry

www.VICTORIANBRIDALHATS.COM 25-Oct-2003
www.WESTERNBRIDAL.COM 25-Oct-2003
www.WESTERNBRIDALHATS.COM 25-Oct-2003

Web Site Design

www.1800BUSINESSWEBSITES.COM 27-May-2003
www.BUSINESSWEBDESIGNPROS.COM 18-Sep-2003
www.BUSINESS-WEBSITE-DESIGNS.COM 23-Oct-2004
www.GRAPHICWEBDESIGNER.COM 6-Feb-2002
www.JOHNSWEBDESIGNS.COM 7-Feb-2002

Web Site Sales

www.HOWTOSELLWEBSITES.COM 18-Jun-2004
www.WEBSITESALESPRO.COM 20-Apr-2004
www.WHYINEEDAWEBSITE.COM 20-Apr-2004
www.BUILDYOUROWNDOTCOM.COM 13-Feb-2003

E-Commerce
www.SHOPPINGCARTWEBDESIGN.COM 18-Sep-2003
www.MERCHANT-ACCOUNT-ACCEPT-CREDIT-CARDS.COM 23-Oct-2004

Auto Responder
www.ADVANCEDAUTORESPONDER.COM 10-Jun-2004
www.AUTORESPONDERDOWNLOAD.COM 10-Jun-2004
www.AUTORESPONDERUNLIMITED2.COM 10-Jun-2004

Web Site Miscellaneous

www.DSNAMES.COM 26-Sep-2006
www.AUTOMATEDLINKPRO.COM 1-Jul-2005
www.BUSINESS-WEBSITE-HOST.COM 23-Oct-2004
www.OFFICIALKEYWORDREPORT.COM 24-Jun-2005
www.ONEADMINSUITE.COM 29-Jun-2005

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1. FTP (I prefer FileZilla) to your hosting account.
2. Download the header.php file.
3. Navigate to the file location: You path may look like this /public_html/wp-content/themes/<your theme’s name>/
4. Find the </head> tag and paste your code above it. See the specific instructions for your code.

Tracking codes you might be using:

• Google Analytics - Analytics
• Crazy Egg - Heat Map
• Hit Tail - Long Tail Key Words

What tracking codes are you using?

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Goals:

1. Canonicalize the URLs. I chose www.jbspartners.com over http://jbspartners.com because it is what people expect, it is easier to type and I like it. Others may choose to drop the www before the domain name.
2. Apply the above consistently throughout the site.
3. Force the Home page to resolve to www.jbspartners.com, rather than to www.jbspartners.com/index.php, which is the default for WordPress

Here is what the regular expressions look like.

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.jbspartners\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.jbspartners.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.jbspartners.com/ [R=301,L]

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

How it works:

The first RewriteCondition deals with resolving the URL to www.jbspartners.com

The second RewriteCondition deals with resolving index.php to www.jbspartners.com

The last two RewriteCond come with WordPress

The # (number sign) is used for comments, which the parser ignores.

The % is the variable symbol

The ! means Not for pattern matching. As in when the URL is not www.

The ^ means start of string.

The L stands for Last and tells Apache to terminate the rewrite rule and rewrite condition. Notice the L is used at the end of each paragraph.

The R stands for Redirect. 302 is temporary and 301 is permanent. This redirections is visible in the URL window of the browser.

-f matches an existing file name

-d matches an existing directory name

To Read more visit http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html

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1. TwitDir - allows you to search for Twitterers.
2. TwitterMap - shows a Google Map of Twitterers and their Tweets.
3. TwitterVision - shows a Google Map live view of Tweets around the earth.
4. TwitThis is a plugin to allow blog visitors to send a Tweet about your blog.
5. OutTwit - allows you to use Twitter via Outlook
6. Snitter - an Adobe AIR powered Twitter tool w/ additional features
7. TerraMinds - search Twitter for your friends or specific Tweets

To see more interesting uses of Twitter see this article at Read / WriteWeb

What is your favorite Twitter Mashup? Really?

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Who did I meet again?

Stephen Turcotte of Backbone Media.

Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting

Chris Brogan of Chris Brogan

Andrea Mercado of www.librarytechtonics.info

Mr. Best

John Cass of PR Communications

Jeff Glasson of www.diecastaudio.com

Who did I meet in person for the first time?

David Cutler of www.eatmedia.blogspot.com

Yianni Garcia of Social Media Guy and Digital Influence Group.

Jeff Glasson of www.diecastaudio.com We had never met in person.

Larry Weber, the founder of the Digital Influence Group and author of Marketing to the Social Web has had a long, successful and well connected career. He told some great stories during his headline presentation to the audience of 50+ social marketing movers and shakers. He was credible, humorous, occasionally humble and far seeing. I look forward to reading his book, which he was kind enough to hand out and autograph. Thanks for the book and for hosting the event Larry!

What did I hear?

• The web is not another channel like tv, radio, print, direct mail etc. One way media.
• The social web is a two way conversation.
• Social media and marketing will kill the traditional media listed above.
• Building community is key.
• The Large company “need to control the message” will have to break down.
• Marketing is influencing opinion through compelling content.
• Marketing is a set of dialogues.
• A mix of user generated and professional content will become more common.
• Larry does not blog or use Twitter. He said CEO’s should not blog. Line folks should.

Social Media Business Models

1. Large companies will underwrite communities
2. Advertising
3. Subscription

Summary

It is good business to meet people in person.

Users will be in control

Blogging, forums, Facebook, Ning and other community building platforms will continue to grow.

Expect to see the web consume traditional media.

What are you doing to allow visitors to engage with you? What makes you hesitate? What benefits have you seen?

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Sometimes the only way to learn something new is to try it. That is the approach I chose with Twitter. Here is the story.

I opened an account in April 2007 (not an early adopter) and abandoned it out of shear ignorance. After meeting my Twitter evangelist friends in September I decided to give it a try.

Chris sent a message on Twitter, called a tweet, to let the folks know that he had met me and I was worth following. I had 20 Twitterers following me in about an hour.

Explain Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging social media tool.

You can send a message out that is a maximum of 144 characters.

It will be sent to anyone that chooses to “follow you.

How I started

I opened a free account. While out in real life I meet some Tweeters, by accident.

I visited them on Twitter, read their profile page and clicked the “Follow” button. From then on I see all of their Tweets. Most are quite judicious in their tweeting, so it is not overwhelming at this point.

Now, every time they send a Tweet (yeah, a message through Twitter) I see the message.

“Following” is voluntary. So, is following no longer.

When you follow someone, they will often follow you. It is a sort of courtesy, but not automatic.

There are a few metrics associated with each account.

• How many follow you
• How many you follow
• Number of favorites you follow
• Direct messages.

I ran across one account that showed over 7,000 for the follow and following stat. Yikes.

In addition to sending message to everyone that follows you, you can send a message to one person by adding a “@” before their Twitter name. Then the message goes only to them.

Laura answered a handful of questions in the first few days. This combined with observing how others were using Twitter left me feeling relieved. Thanks Laura.

A Huge Laugh

The first Tweet that I ever sent, back in April, was short and sweet indicating that I was adding memory to a slow computer.

The first Tweet that I received was Laura saying that she was laughing her “head” off at the five months intervening and agreeing that the computer surely was slow. Five months slow. She included a nice welcome to Twitter as well.

I was laughing, which really endeared me to the potential of Twitter.

So What is the Verdict?

The jury is still out. What has impressed me?

1. Received two referrals for potential clients
2. There are many Tweets about local social media events in the Boston area
3. Discovered some useful resources - people and web sites
4. Provided needed information requested by a Twitterer
5. Received updates during events that I could not attend
6. Discovered a few locals that I look forward to meeting in person
7. Opened my eyes to micro-blogging
8. The need for a Crackberry became obvious for mobile Twittering. Mobile’s half the fun.
9. Twitter as a source of immediate assistance grows as you have more “followers”. Lost in New York?
10. Early Twitter adopters are professionally tech focused and evangelistic

I think the benefit is really dependent on who you follow and what you are looking for. I appreciated real time updates from an event I could not attend.  Chris described being lost in NY and getting directions immediately via Twitter.

How do you use Twitter?

Happy Twittering from fairminder!

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What click link words should you use?

Here were the differences in clickthroughs:

o “Click to continue”: 8.53%
o “Continue to article”: 3.3%
o “Read more”: (-)1.8%

As always, test in your industry for vocabulary that is appropriate. Test using more informative words, like words that relate to the topic.

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Social media for Firefox places five indicators down in the status bar, near GreaseMonkey and SeoQuake etc..

Manual / Automatic - Click it while you are surfing and it provides the count.

Manual / Autmatic - Automatic is the best choice when visiting Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon or del.ico.us because the tool inserts the counts below each listing on the page.

Digg - Displays how many Diggs

Reddit - Displays how many votes

StumbleUpon - Displays how many reviews

del.ico.us - Displays how many book marks

You can also click on each icon to vote, bookmark etc. the page your are visiting. How cool is that?

Keep socializing, but not so much as to pollute the waters.

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A Warm Welcome

It always feels nice to be greeted in personal way by organizers, in this case Jill Whalen and Pauline Kerbici. Pauline somehow remembered that I am from Winchester, MA.

Search Marketers Old and New

I met some great people that night before the speaker began. I met an employee of an old aquantance, Hans Reimer of Market-Vantage.com. What a great surprise. Sounds like Hans is doing well. I need to call him.

I met Rori Stumpf whose entire business focuses on AdWords. I said, oh, you need to meet that guy over there, pointing to Todd. They talked until the presentation begain. I accepted a LinkedIn invite from Rori the following day.

I of course talked with Todd Bairstow, who I had met previously at SEO Meetup in Arlington. He is the sharpest guy I have met with Google AdWords. He was kind enough to answer a few email questions after that first meeting.

Pay Per Click Presentation (by no means an exhaustive record)

The presentation started and finished on time. Hurray! Matt provided incites into Google, Yahoo and MSN, but Google writes the rules here. He even cracked open an attendees AdWords account and reviewed it on screen.

Oooh the Content Network can really eat up a lot of impressions and money. It has it’s place, but not for most of us. This is where the most click fraud occurs. It is better for branding than sales. Remember those boxes of ads you see on web sites and blogs, AdSense, that is the content network in action.

It is important to understand negative keywords, and the matching choices. Broad, phrase and exact match. Each have their place. If you don’t understand them and use them properaly it can really bite you.

GeoTargeting is very important. Did you know that you can draw on a Google map to delineate where your ads will be displayed? Very specific and very cool.

Did you know that Local ads can be presented across the country? Maybe not what you expected.

A New Hampshire Pizza Parlor selects the key word phrase Pizza New Hampshire. Because of “intent” if a searcher in California types in New Hampshire Pizza, the ad will be presented to him in California. Makes sense. He is probably flying to NH for vacation and is hungry already.

Another bit of advice. Set your daily ad budget high enough so that you don’t run out of click cash before the end of the day. You are only prolonging the learning curve towards which ads and key words to use.

Don’t search for your own ads! As search gets more personalized, just imagine Google sees you searching and searching for your own product, say beads, but you never click on the ads. Eventually your ads will not be displayed to you. You will see your ad showing up on the fifth page. Meanwhile, the rest of the world sees your ad on page one.

Instead, use the Google Ad Preview Tool. Yahoo does not have one. Bummer.

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In the room with one way mirrors and multiple cameras and microphones we talked about hosting. There was a range of experience in the room - from someone that has nothing whatsoever to do with hosting (I think she stayed because she was too embarrassed to leave) to folks with co-located, dedicated and host-your-own hosting solutions.

In the end they pointed us to a “fictitious” company that offered platform independent hosting. That means that you do not have to choose either Windows or Linux / Unix for hosting. Instead they offered both, in one account. A novel idea for sure.

I host on Linux and have turned away websites written in .asp, which is a windows only scripting language that is not meant to work on a Linux server, only Windows (repress commentary). So, this idea intrigued me.

I did a bit of searching that evening and found that just such a company exists. It is called Mosso.

I called and spoke with Mike in sales back in July, 2007.

Mosso offers a virtual server solution that is clustered. Music to my ears. That means for a typical account, you can’t run out of disk space or through-put. If you land a story on the front page of Digg your web site won’t go down because of all of the visitors. Mike said they could handle 100 million database hits per month without taking your account to the limit.

Clustering means that hardware issues are not a problem.

The data center is located 182 miles from the Texas coast in San Antonio - which is geographically stable. They feel that they have the most stable network on the planet.

One difference if you are used to having root access, is that you don’t have root access, since it is a virtual server. So, you can’t install whatever you want. The admins allow about 10% of what is requested for installation. So, they run a tight ship and intend on keeping the network and your site up.

They offer a full service model, so no email only support.

So, why haven’t I moved? Migration. Moving is a pain. It is a time consuming inconvenience that clients will not pay for. Besides, the company that I host with has provided great service by phone or email and helped me with ever issue that has come up.

For those that are not stuck, check out Mosso. A Rackspace company.

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IContact’s delivery rate is reported as 99.1%, which is very good. They send 93 million emails.

In addition to newsletters, they offer surveys, auto-responders and list segmentation.

A unique feature: They provide an RSS feed of your newslettter that posts them on their web site. The result is that folks searching the web may find your content on the IContact web site. There is a public newsletter archive available. David reports that 50,000 people come to the web site through non-competitive search terms - means they are not searching for IContact or newsletter services.

The company is based in Raleigh Durham and was incorporated in July of 2003. March 20 2004 was their commercial launch.

They do have an affiliate program, however there is no support for the affiliates.

I almost switched from being a Constant Contact business partner. The reason that I didn’t was the templates to get a newsletter put together fast are better at Constant Contact. I have found that the support at Constant Contact has been great.

The reason I considered switching was because of the additional featues of surveys, auto-responder and list segmentation. Constant Contact now offers surveys and has list segmentation. I am staying put. I think that the other reason is that I had lunch with Gail Goodman. The ties that bind.

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