May 01
Twittering Our Way Toward Truth on the Social Web
in Search Engine Guide
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by Karri Flatla

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May 01
WSJ: Yahoo Poised To Announce Google Ads Deal
in Search Engine Land
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According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo is ready to formally announce a deal to incorporate Google AdWords into its search results — potentially within a week. The deal could be part of a larger “open” system in which Yahoo serves the most lucrative ad in search results from its own platform, AdWords or potentially other players, including Microsoft.

Click to continue reading…

May 01
How to Simply Create Your Own Mobile Website
in Search Engine Guide
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by Ross Dunn

Mobile web
browsing is gaining popularity and acceptance thanks to the extensive
proliferation of iPhones and other mobile appliances with surf-friendly interfaces.
As a result it is becoming more and more important to offer a mobile-friendly
alternative to your current website.

The reality is, however, that many website
owners seem to have no inclination to spend money on a medium that (as far as
they know) is unproven and could generate zero income. Fortunately there is a
way for every website owner to create an alternative to their website and not
only is it exceedingly simple but it is FREE. Now no one has an excuse to
ignore this growing medium!

Before I
begin I have great news for WordPress users! If your blog or website is run on
WordPress there is
a simple plug-in you can install that will make your website instantly
mobile friendly!! That means that part of this article will not be useful to
you but I can assure you a great deal of it is still worthwhile reading; I
touch on mobile optimization, promotion, and mobile behavioral profiling.

 

First Make a Plan

Before you
create your mobile website you need to determine what it is going to offer. For
example, you may be a service provider and wonder why would  anyone would want to visit your website using
a mobile device. According to this InformationWeek
article, Google breaks mobile users into three behavioral camps that really
rings true, according to my personal mobile experience. These are:

  • Repetitive Now: users that are
    repetitively checking the same information (i.e. stocks, sports scores,
    weather, etc.).
  • Bored Now: users who want to
    surf the web while they wait.
  • Urgent Now: users that need
    information immediately. These are task based users who want a fast, clean
    and efficient mobile experience.

For the
purposes of this article let’s accept that that anyone visiting your website
from a mobile device falls into the Bored Now and Urgent Now ballparks. So in
this context users want to quickly acquire your contact information or they
want to read your latest blog post. Great, the hard work is done! Now that you
know why people may visit your mobile website you can begin creating it.

 

What Free Mobile Website Solution is
Best?

There are
many ways to create a mobile website that cost you money but very few high
quality options are available for free. I offer two options that I prefer so far:
one is using mobiSiteGalore to
create a website very simply one page at a time, and the other is meant only for
those with an aim to provide mobile access to their RSS feed content.

Option 1) The Answer for a
Complete Mobile Website
I started this
article researching and writing about various free mobile solutions but
ultimately I found mobiSiteGalore.
I realized I was wasting my time so I deleted all of my research; none of the
competing tools seemed to measure up. mobiSiteGalore was the only 100% free
service I found with an amazing site creation wizard and the option to host the
freely created website wherever without strings attached; they openly state
they make their money from donations and licensing agreements with large
hosting companies.

Here
is a link to a web viewer that will allow you to see the mobile website I
created for StepForth this week using mobiSiteGalore. Unfortunately it isn’t
perfect quite yet but its getting there.

Option 2) How to Easily Provide
Access to Your RSS Content
Do you have an RSS feed from a blog or a great news mashup
you created that you think would be great for your mobile visitors to read? If
so Google offers a mobile conversion tool
that happens to do an excellent job of converting RSS feeds into a
mobile-friendly web page; it also tries to convert complete websites but that
isn’t often as successful. All you have to do is enter the URL of your RSS feed
and voila! The result will be a beautifully formatted page based on the feed
content.

Here
is an example of how Search
Engine Guide’s RSS feed looks after this simple mobile conversion. Note how,
if you click on any of the articles, you are taken to a page that is also
formatted for mobile; so at no time within the first level of content (one
click from the main page) are you shown unconverted content. This capability is
exceptionally slick because if you were to simply point mobile visitors to your
unconverted RSS feed and they were to click on an article they would be taken
to the non-mobile version; a very bad idea that can cost viewers a lot of money
(sadly this is especially true in Canada) while they try to download unwieldy
images on their mobile device.

Once you have converted your RSS feed just copy and paste
the URL into a note pad for later use. Now in order to provide access to this
new mobile content you or your Webmaster has to create a 301
redirect in a section of your website which will be used to send mobile visitors
to the mobile-friendly content (the URL you saved).

So what area of the website should be home to your mobile
content? I recommend using either www.xyzname.com/mobile/ or m.xyzname.com or the
.mobi version of your domain name (xyzname.mobi) which you have hopefully
purchased already.

Ultimately, pointing your mobile users to this external Google website (even if
it is still your content) is not the most desirable option but if it means not
having mobile content at all I would suggest at least having this option until
you are ready to invest the time to create a complete website with mobiSiteGalore
or hire a professional designer.

Mobile Discovery

So now you
have taken the time to create some mobile-friendly content for your website.
How do people find it? No I don’t mean SEO (that’s coming later), what I mean
is how can you send your mobile-friendly information to a visitor before you
scare them off with the unfriendly content? The answer is dependant upon the
programming language your website was built on. If your website is built using
PHP, ASP or ColdFusion I have assembled
instructions for you to properly redirect mobile traffic. If your website
is simply using HTML then you may need to try the less accurate .htaccess
redirect option I presented in the “Other
Options” section of the redirect tutorial. If you are not using any of
those programming languages previously noted (highly unlikely) then I am afraid
you will have to invest in your own research; when you get the answer please
let me know (email me: ross at stepforth dot com) of the solution so I can list
it on the page.

 

Mobile Content Optimization

Mobile
content is optimized similarly to normal web content except that optimizers must
keep in mind that they usually have significantly less content to optimize so
every word must count. 

Here are my
top tips specifically for optimizing mobile content:

  • Make sure the file size of the
    page is as low as possible to minimize load times.

  • Order the navigation keeping in
    mind what links visitors are most likely to want to click first.

  • JavaScript, Frames, Flash, and
    pop-ups are examples of technologies not
    supported by most mobile devices with the exception of most Smartphones.

  • Choose to optimize only
    keywords comprised of 2 to 3 words because mobile searchers tend not to
    type in more than 2 or 3 word searches.

  • Title tags, description Meta tags, heading tags and filenames should be carefully
    crafted with target keywords to maximize the little optimizable content
    available.

  • Ensure that all phone numbers
    within your mobile content are formatted to be clickable; this will allow
    visitors to call you simply by clicking on a link.

  • For those creating a site from
    scratch you will want to design the website so that the main navigation
    utilizes “accesskeys” for faster keyboard navigation; this is
    automatically done within mobiSiteGalore. For example, for a person to
    access the first menu item they would press the #1 on their phone. Here is
    an example of how a simple hyperlink can be upgraded to offer this
    functionality:
    <a href=”http://news.stepforth.com/blog/
    ” accesskey=”1″ target=”_blank”>Press #1 To Visit the StepForth SEO
    Blog</a>

  • Ensure your mobile website
    offers an XML sitemap for search engine spiders to rapidly index it. This
    option is already brilliantly included in mobiSiteGalore.

  • If your mobile content has its
    own top-level-domain (TLD) such as StepForth.mobi then you should register
    this domain with Google Webmaster Tools. Once you are registered submit
    your mobile sitemap so you can monitor how Google is crawling your mobile
    website and address any issues that may arise.

    How
    To:
    Submit your sitemap under “Sitemaps” + “Add Sitemap” and then select
    “Mobile Sitemap” from the types of sitemaps available to submit. Once
    you have it submitted the “Mobile Crawl” report is found under
    “Diagnostics” after you access your verified mobile domain in Google
    Webmaster Tools. Here are some concise
    instructions from Google     on adding a mobile sitemap if you find you
    require assistance.

  • Submit your mobile sitemap to
    Yahoo Site Explorer as well after you have verified your account. Here are
    some tips
    from Yahoo on creating a great mobile website    .

 

Mobile Content Promotion

Once your
mobile content is online and ready for prime time I strongly suggest creating
some buzz about your achievement using the following techniques:

1) Launch a
press release using PRWeb;
aside from the added publicity this action will provide some short and long
term link popularity to your new content.

2) Submit
your mobile website to the growing list of mobile-only web directories. Here
are a few sites to start with:

3) Include
your mobile content address on your business card and other stationary so that
prospects can preview your services/products at convenient times. In this day
to day hectic world it really pays to have sales content available at nearly
any stage of a prospect’s busy day.

In Conclusion

The advent
of a great number of web accessible mobile devices over the past year is
radically increasing the validity of having a mobile website and thanks to
sites like mobiSiteGalore it is not that much work to make one. Take some time
and invest in the creation of a small but efficient mobile website so you at
least know you have another base covered in the realm of online marketing. You
can also take some satisfaction in knowing you are one-step ahead of the
Jones’… for now.

 

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May 01
Daily Search Forum Recap: May 1, 2008
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

May 01
Daily Search Forum Recap: May 1, 2008
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

May 01
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 1, 2008
in Search Engine Land
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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web

From Search Engine Land:


  • Video SEO Can Give Small Businesses An Edge
    Many of us in the online video advertising space have been encouraging small businesses to deploy video to stand out in search results and level the playing field with larger competitors. Some colleagues and I have been working with select clients to test, learn, test again, and learn again…

  • What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability - Part 2
    In part 1 of What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability, usability experts Peter Morville and Susan Weinschenk answered the question, “What should SEO professionals know about usability?” For this installment, website usability guru Jakob Nielsen and Kim Krause Berg share their observations and perspectives. Enjoy! Jakob Nielsen’s…

  • Google’s CEO Discusses DoubleClick, MicroHoo, Don’t Be Evil, Googlephobia And Mobile Search
    CNBC news anchor Maria Bartiromo interviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Tuesday and discussed a wide range of topics, from MicroHoo to advertising on YouTube, mobile and Googlephobia. There are no real surprises and nothing especially new (other than the statement about new ad products for YouTube this year). However…

  • Google TV Ads Available To All US Advertisers
    The Inside AdWords Google Blog announced that all US-based advertisers should now have the TV ads option in their account. In fact, you should see the option after logging in to your AdWords account at the bottom, where it says “Other Campaign Types.” Here is a screen capture of that…

  • Video Advertising: Branding Opportunity Or Direct Response Platform?
    We’ve all seen the stats on video advertising growth. eMarketer suggests $4 billion by 2011 and Jupiter goes as high as $7 billion. As is often the case with these numbers, they are largely a black box, in that unpacking the elements that actually get us there from where…

  • SEMPO Institute Now Offering Agency Training Certification
    The SEMPO Institute, a training division of SEMPO, is now offering agency training certification. The certification basically is a seal of satisfactory completion of their course work. SEMPO Institute is offering Gold Seal level certification and Platinum Seal level certification. Gold Level requires 20% to 49% of their search marketing…

  • Live Twittering The UK’s Microsoft Live Search Executive Symposium
    I’m in London today for Live Search’s Executive Symposium, designed to educate key thought leaders, company executives and others about what Microsoft is doing in search and what’s happing in search generally. I’ve twittered the morning sessions, which were interesting and full of stats. Below, the raw twitters. If time…

  • Microsoft Willing To Raise Bid, But How Much Is Enough?
    The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft’s directors are collectively willing to authorize the company to raise its bid for Yahoo to up to $33 per share but perhaps not to the levels that Yahoo has signaled it wants to be acquired. If such a sweetened bid did occur…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Microhoo

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

May 01
Ask.com Search Engine - A Brief History
in Search Engine Guide
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by Scott Buresh

As of this writing, there are five top Internet search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com, and while Google and Yahoo! get a lot of the press (particularly lately), the Ask.com search engine is a rather interesting engine that deserves a closer look. This article will cover some of the highlights in its 12-year history, from its start as Ask Jeeves to its innovations, as well as the most recent developments behind the scenes.

The Beginning

In 1996, “Ask Jeeves” was founded by David Warthen, who had founded EyeGames - a children’s video game company, and Garrett Gruener, a venture capitalist. At its start, the concept of the Ask.com search engine was to allow searchers to type questions in natural language in order to get results, rather than to type in a random string of keywords (although that would work as well). The Jeeves character, based on the butler in the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse, was designed as the company’s main identifier. (However, the company did not ask Wodehouse’s estate for permission to use this character and legal action was threatened, though the issue was later settled for an undisclosed amount.[1]) Jeeves was phased out in 2006[2] in a humorous manner, with the engine saying he was retiring,[3] and the company was renamed simply Ask.com and the search engine was reborn.

Ask3D and New Innovations

In June 2007, Ask, still one of the top Internet search engines, launched “Ask3D.” Part of this new direction was to allow users to add “skins” - or customized images - to the Ask.com search engine home page. The 3D offering also meant that results would be customized based on the user’s search. This meant that, in a similar manner as Google’s Universal Search concept, a user’s search for a location would get not only pages about that location but also maps and details about it. If the user searched for music, he might also be able to listen to song clips or read news stories about the artist. In addition, the Ask.com search engine included a preview feature for its search results. When available, users can click on an icon of binoculars next to a result and see a small screen capture of that page. Plus, a new toolbar was added to the left-hand side of the page, giving searchers options for narrowing down a search.

Missteps

Ask isn’t shy about going after its main competitors - Google and Yahoo!, two of the top Internet search engines. In early 2007, the company ran a series of ads, primarily in England, without identifying itself as the entity behind those ads. The ads touted an “Information Revolution” and declared that Internet users needed more choices - for a short time, users searching on the Ask.com search engine for Google were given a link to information-revolution.org - an anti-Google site sponsored by Ask.[4] This initiative was not well received,[5],[6] as it was seen as attacking the very users it sought to attract.

Also, in mid-2007, the Ask.com search engine introduced “Ask Eraser.”[7] This was Ask.com’s response to searchers’ concerns about privacy and security breaches - a simple way to opt in and have one’s searches erased automatically. The site explains it by saying, “When AskEraser is enabled, your search activity will ordinarily be deleted from the Ask.com search engine servers within a number of hours.”[8] The concept is sound, but many bloggers[9] are not impressed.[10]

What’s Going On Today

Today, Ask is searching - pun intended - for a new direction as it tries to keep its small piece of the search engine pie or regain its state of being at least one of the top Internet search engines. Layoffs are happening, although the company is holding onto Teoma, the technology that powers the engine,[11] and the company is looking to focus on a specific subsection of searchers (women, although the company isn’t specifically saying this[12]) rather than to try to serve as a competitor to the other top Internet search engines, like Google and Yahoo!.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Ask.com search engine can hold onto its existing niche and/or expand its search engine market share. The company seems to be working on finding a direction and a focus, but it just hasn’t yet. I will update you in future articles as to what the status of Ask.com is and whether or not it has managed to remain a key player in the industry.

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May 01
So How DO You Pitch a Blogger?
in Search Engine Guide
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by Mack Collier

One of the highlights for me, as a blogger, during last week’s Small
Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston, came when Jennifer
Laycock instructed the attendees on the proper way to ‘pitch’ a
blogger.  As a blogger that has received hundreds if not thousands of
horrible pitches over the last 3 years, it was music to my ears!

For some reason, PR firms, agencies, companies, and even other bloggers, take something as simple as a pitch, and often find every reason to make me not to want to write about the item they are pitching.   Many refer to me as ‘Blogger’, or not at all.  Often a press release is sent with no explanation for why I should care. 

I am going to plagiarize heavily from Jennifer’s presentation simply because she did such a good job, but here’s my criteria for pitching bloggers:

1 - Refer to me by my name.  It is ‘Mack’.  Not Mark, not Matt, and not ‘Blogger’.  Any pitch that doesn’t refer to me by my correct name is deleted immediately without being read.

2 - Do NOT simply send me a press release.  I also delete these instantly.

3 - Read my blog.  If you read my blog, then you already know whether or not your pitch is relevant to me.  And don’t try to fake it because we will figure it out as David Armano did when he received a pitch from someone claiming to be a regular reader of his Logic + Emotion blog:

ArmanoTweet.jpg

4 - Before you send the pitch, ask yourself ‘Why should he/she care?’.  If your answer is ‘because this campaign rules!’, then don’t send the pitch.  If your answer is ‘Because this campaign is a great example of empowering customer evangelists, and since Mack blogs about customer evangelism often, he’ll likely be interested’, then you’ve done your homework, and should send the pitch.

5 - Make every effort to establish relationships with bloggers BEFORE you pitch them.  The simple fact is that I don’t have enough time to respond to most pitches, even if I want to.  Right now I actually have 3 good pitches that I want to write about, but don’t have the time (and it’s rare to have one).  But the one I will make a point to follow up on came from Tara Anderson, who is the Community Catalyst for Lijit. 

Several days ago, Tara, who I met in NYC a few weeks ago at Blogger Social, sent me an excellent email pitch for Lijit.  She opened her email by referencing our brief meeting at Blogger Social.  Then she briefly mentioned that she’d like to talk to me more about Lijit and better explain what it’s all about.  Then she closed by telling me to enjoy my trip to Houston (For Small Business Marketing Unleashed), and to tell Jennifer Laycock that she said hello (Tara says hello, BTW Jennifer!).  Now by mentioning my trip to Houston, that tells me that she reads my blog, because I posted multiple times earlier this month that I was going to Houston for SBMU. 

So I’ll be checking out Lijit, because Tara gave me an excellent pitch. 

The bottom line is, be considerable when you pitch bloggers.  Understand that we little time for pitches to begin with, so if you do pitch us, make sure it’s a good and relevant pitch.  If it’s not, we definitely won’t blog about you, and if it’s bad enough, we might just blog about your crappy pitch on our blog, Chris Anderson even called out hundreds of bad pitchers on his blog, and blocked them ALL!

Be considerable, respect us and our time, show us that you actually read our blog, and we’ll do our best to blog about you.

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May 01
Video SEO Can Give Small Businesses An Edge
in Search Engine Land
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Many of us in the online video advertising space have been encouraging small businesses to deploy video to stand out in search results and level the playing field with larger competitors. Some colleagues and I have been working with select clients to test, learn, test again, and learn again from placing video in search and other distribution points. The early learnings have been interesting and reinforced some tips outlined further below.

Click to continue reading…

May 01
Abby Prince at Small Business Marketing Unleashed
in Search Engine Guide
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by Sage Lewis

Sage Lewis interviews Abby Prince from WebPro News at Search Engine Guide’s Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference in Houston, Texas. We not only learn that Abby was covering the conference for WebPro News but also that she comes from a traditional journalism background at a local TV news station. Abby points out Matt Bailey’s analytics workshop as one of the many informative sessions at Unleashed, and she talks about how the internet creates more opportunities within the field of journalism.

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May 01
Small Business Marketing Unleashed Speaks K. Lea’s Language
in Search Engine Guide
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by Sage Lewis

Want to know what conference you should attend, especially if you’re “green” in the web marketing industry? Karen Lea of Brainwavestoys.com extols the virtues of Search Engine Guide’s Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference during her interview with Sage Lewis. Karen says that one of the best things about the conference is learning she has a whole community of support available to her.

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May 01
What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability - Part 2
in Search Engine Land
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100% Organic - A Column From Search Engine Land In part 1 of What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability, usability experts Peter Morville and Susan Weinschenk answered the question, “What should SEO professionals know about usability?” For this installment, website usability guru Jakob Nielsen and Kim Krause Berg share their observations and perspectives. Enjoy!

Jakob Nielsen’s formula for website success

“The main thing SEO professionals should remember about Web usability is the formula for website success,” said Jakob Nielsen, Principal at Nielsen Norman Group.

What’s the formula?

Click to continue reading…

May 01
Small Business Marketing Unleashed Gaps Divide to Australia
in Search Engine Guide
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by Sage Lewis

Wayne Small from SBSfaq.com in Sydney, Australia shares his
Aussie input about Search Engine Guide’s Small Business Marketing
Unleashed Conference during his interview with Sage Lewis. According to
Wayne, one of the most beneficial aspects of the conference was the
presence and participation of speakers in sessions other than their
own. Wayne touches on the usefulness of Matt McGee’s SEO Pyramid and
Stoney deGeyter’s website architecture class, while emphasizing how SBM
Unleashed really focuses on the fundamentals of web marketing.

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