You Already Know That Twitter Is Exploding, But Do You Know How To Turn Twitter Into A Traffic And Cash Machine? That’s Where We Come In — Get All The Products, Read All The Books, Watch The Videos And Test Your Strategies. Ready? Read On…
In the decade or so since the search engine was first invented, the field of Search Engine Optimization has evolved. Some obsolete information and old wives’ tales still persist, and these can damage your standings.
The myths and obsolete techniques fall into a few broad categories:
- Keyword density: There are many number of magic formulas touted on the internet, claiming that if you reach the perfect number of keyword instances per page, your rankings will go up. While you do need to have the keyword somewhere in your text in order to have your stated keywords considered relevant, artificially inflating the number of instances is a bad plan. First, it simply decreases the quality of your content. Second, the search engines may begin classifying your site as too spammy, and actually downgrade your rating.
- Tags and META: Loading keywords into your page headers and the meta data of your site is also an old trick that’s now likely to get you classified as spammy. Only keywords that are relevant to your content and specific to what your users are searching for should be included.
- Links: Some fraudulent SEO services, and some outdated pieces of advice, will associate your website with link exchange systems and link farms. Since the search engines keep track of these farms and exchanges, and using them is considered trickery, being part of them can actually significantly downgrade your rating.
- Submission to search engines: Once upon a time, submitting your site to search engines was a long and arduous process, which was nonetheless necessary to get a good place in the rankings. These days, search engine submission is generally not needed at all, since the engines automatically search for new sites. If they don’t find yours quickly, manual submission is quite easy and there are a few top search engines that have most of the market share.
Conversely, there are a few relevant and current strategies for climbing the ranks of search results. (It should come as no surprise that these are broader and more difficult or time-consuming to implement than the myths would suggest.)
- Unique content: Consistently offering high quality content that is valuable to your users, unique on the web, and from original sources is by far the best way to attract users – and search engines – to your site. If your site consists of copy, providing a unique value in information filtering, commentary and analysis, or other user-friendly services.
- Voice of authority: Along with unique content, offering an authoritative voice is a good way to increase your links and therefore your page ranking. Either become an authority yourself or offer interviews, quotes, or guest content by noted authorities in your field. If well-respected people and organizations recommend or reference your site, your popularity will rise.
- Professional networking for link sharing: As a web master, blogger, marketer, or business owner, professional contacts matter for a wide range of activities. Additionally, you may ask these people to link their sites with yours, or to provide expert and authoritative content for your site.
- Crawler files: Having a robots.txt file that is updated, accurate, and properly configured can make your site easier to catalogue correctly. Building the site’s architecture in a crawler-friendly manner can give your site a slight edge that may be worth pursuing. Do remember that search engine developers are concerned with their users and serving them appropriate content. They’re smart enough to outwit most technical tricks.
Google added a couple of nice changes to Reader to serve the goals of improving your discovery of new items and personalizing your feed reading experience.
First up, they’ve introduced a new Explore section designed to enhance discovery. A new “Popular items” section helps the most interesting new stories bubble to the top. Popular items surface the news stories or viral videos gaining attention around the web, not just from within your own subscriptions.
The recommendations feature has been renamed “Recommended sources” and moved over into the new Explore section. It makes use of your web history if you’re opted-in plus your Reader Trends to recommend new sources you might want to subscribe to.
The next change is a great step towards an even more personalized feed reading experience. The new personalized ranking feature re-orders the items in your unread feed based on your own past reading history and overall activity inside Reader. It gives you a view of your feeds informed by what you’ve liked and shared in the past.
To turn on the personalized ranking view, go to the Feed or Folder settings dropdown in the feed or folder you’re viewing and select the playfully named “Sort by magic” setting. If you don’t like the results, you can improve them over time by liking and sharing items in your feeds.
Let us know your thoughts on popular and personalized addictions to Google Reader. Does it enhance your information-gathering experience? Will it increase your usage of Google Reader, or have the potential to make you switch RSS programs? Or is RSS just plain dead to you?
Tags: feeds, Google, google reader, personalization, Recommendations, rss
As you probably know, today is Windows 7 launch day. Leading up to the event, Microsoft has been promoting the idea of having a Windows 7 launch party in your own home – if your application was approved – complete with its own series of awkward videos.
This of course created brilliant fodder for parodies. While we’ve already seen a number of them, today Funny Or Die is out with “Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party,” for those of you who may be obtaining your copy of the operating system by means other than the Microsoft Store.
The concept is basically a can’t-miss for video success, but be sure to throw your headphones on as there is some NSFW language towards the end:
One of the best known video game franchises of all time, Sid Meier’s Civilization, will get a Facebook version under the name Civilization Network.
Originally released back in 1991, Civilization is a turn based strategy game so fun and addictive that players kept playing its various iterations (by the way, am I the only one who preferred Colonization?) for decades. Sometime in 2010, we’ll also be able to play it on Facebook.
Here’s what Sid Meier wrote on the official Civilization Facebook Page:
“I wanted to let you know we’ll soon be looking for beta testers to help us develop a unique new way to play Civilization. Ever since we finished Civilization® Revolution™ last year, I’ve been looking at ways of expanding the Civ gameplay experience to include solo, competitive and cooperative play to take advantage of the uniqueness of social networks. We’re calling this project Civilization® Network™ and the full game will be available next year on Facebook.”
Details on what the game will look like are sparse, but Meier says you’ll be able to do almost everything you can do on the standard version. Most importantly, it’ll be free:
“You can coordinate your strategy to win great battles, share your technology to jump ahead of your rivals, lobby your family and friends to form your own government and win vital elections, manage and grow your cities to maximize production and happiness, spy on your enemies, and work with your friends to create the great Wonders of the World. The game will offer everything you enjoy in Civ in a fully persistent environment – you can play as much as you like, whenever you like, and it’ll be free to play.”
A closed beta should be coming soon, if we get access, we’ll make sure to let you know how we like it.
Tags: Civilization Network, facebook, Sid Meier
Tom might have been officially removed from power at MySpace, but he’s still officially a “friend” to millions of the site’s members.
However, he’s now poking around the social network that supplanted his own as top dog: Facebook. At least in the world of satirical Facebook profiles.
Complete with pokes from Rupert Murdoch, wall comments from Mark Zuckerberg, and astute observations about the differences between Facebook and MySpace, Comedy.com [click for full img] has done a stellar job at this one:
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Walt Disney Company is close to unveiling new technology to allow entertainment companies to distribute media to consumers using computers and cell phones, rather than on DVD and television.
The technology is code-named Keychest and sounds like its the for-pay web service that Disney CEO Bob Iger announced back in July. The service would basically let consumers pay one price for permanent access to content from a number of different devices — like set-top boxes and mobile phones.
As the WSJ points out, this type of system could really bring the idea of movie downloads to the mainstream — because content would be stored and accessed from the cloud on your different devices, rather than downloaded and then stored for playback.
Think of the service kind of like Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace — content you buy via your set-top box would also show-up on your mobile phone or on your computer. The advantage is that the content can be easy to access from multiple devices from the user, but the content provider ultimately has control over who gets to watch the content (making piracy much more difficult).
Even content purchased on physical media, like Blu-ray or DVD could still work with the Keyset system, because a customer could either type in (or in the case of Blu-ray, have the key transmitted over the Internet) a code that would then “unlock” viewing options for that product on different devices. For consumers, this would be like the iPod friendly digital downloads that now come packaged with many DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Only instead of a download, you could access the content over the cloud.
Of course, all of this content seems to be based on the idea of ubiquitous connectivity. How consumers would (or if they could) access content when not online (say you’re on a trip or in the car) hasn’t been discussed.
Although Disney hopes to to bring other studios and content providers into their system, another competing digital initiative is underway, called the DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem). Its partners include Sony, Comcast, Intel and five of the six major film studios. Disney and Apple are not part of the DECE (Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple is also Disney’s largest shareholder), which attempts to solve the digital distribution problem from the opposite end. Rather than creating or licensing compatible devices that work with already existing digital file formats, the DECE would create a new set of standards and formats that would be then licensed to new devices.
Disney doesn’t see the two groups as being unable to work together, but the very fact that it hasn’t signed on with the DECE makes it look like a format war might be brewing. Only this time, it would be in the digital cloud content space.
This is hardly Disney’s first foray into the digital-content distribution market. In 2003, Disney licensed some of its Buena-Vista and Miramax films to online video-on-demand service Movielink (Movielink has since been acquired by Blockbuster and no longer exists as a separate project), later that same year, they partnered with CinemaNow, which also offered PC video-on-demand rental or purchasing options. CinemaNow is also now part of Blockbuster, though it still operates as its own entity.
The company also tried unsuccessfully to launch its MovieBeam service, which was basically a set-top box that could deliver Disney content, for a fee of course, for 24-hours.
It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out, and Disney plans on unveiling the technology next month. What do you think of the idea of content being purchased, delivered and stored in the cloud? Is this something you would like to see in the future? Let us know!
(Photo Courtesy of Lock & Alarm)
Tags: cloud content, DECE, digital video, disney, hulu
Ambassador must be the word of the day. We just reported on Charmin’s quest to find bathroom ambassadors, Ford’s looking for Fusion ambassadors, and now Coca-Cola is looking for a few brand ambassadors themselves.
The Coca-Cola variety, however, are on a mission to find happiness in the 206 different countries that sell Coca-Cola products across the world.
With the Expedition 206 campaign, Coca-Cola is tapping regular people to be their “Happiness Ambassadors” and travel the world for the whole of 2010 and document their quest via blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos, TwitPics, and other social media mentions.
They’ve already narrowed down the playing field to 9 competitors, separated into 3 teams, and have just opened up the final selection process to you. You can visit the site, watch team videos, and vote once per day on your favorite between now and November 6, 2009. Here’s a video intro:
The winning three-person team will begin their journey on January 1, 2010 and attempt to travel more than 150,000 miles in 365 days, visiting each of the 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold. On the way, they’ll get to experience the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and the World Expo in Shangha. Their duty is to engage with local denizens and uncover what makes them happy, openly document and share their experiences online, and complete tasks in each country as determined by online voters.
It’s a pretty impressive undertaking, and one of the most unique and involved social media marketing and travel campaigns we’ve ever seen.
Image from IceNineJon on Flickr
Tags: coca cola, expedition 206, social media, social media marketing
Today sees the launch of MySpace Music Videos, a searchable collection of music videos from all of its major and independent label partners.
With the wide array of players MySpace Music has in its pocket, the music videos archive could shape up to be a comprehensive and always-on music video library heretofore unseen — a sort of on-demand MTV for the Web 2.0 generation, or a Hulu for music videos but even better since videos don’t expire.
There’s also good news for artists and labels, who will benefit from a new Artist Dashboard product (screenshot below) providing detailed analytics surrounding their content hosted by MySpace. Free access to the beta Dashboard starts today, with various charts, graphs and data including 7 and 30 days trends, song plays, demographics, and even incorporates analytics from other sites via partner data from iLike integration.
And last but not least, MySpace has announced that users will be able to purchase and download music from both iTunes and Amazon MP3 directly through MySpace Music. It leaves us wondering what kind of cut the social network might be getting from those transactions.
It’s several rather hefty announcements in a long string of big news today — what’s your take on MySpace’s bid to re-energize itself?
Tags: amazon mp3, ilike, itunes, music videos, myspace, myspace music
Story time!
The phone rings and i pick it up to hear the sweet little voice of my 9 year old daughter say “hello daddy”.
Immediately my guard is down… her cute, innocent little voice always makes me so happy.
But suddenly her tone changes… she is excited about something. Her cute little voice starts to get a little hyper and suddenly i hear the words “kittens”
NO.. I say with my tough father authority… we are not getting another pet!
For the next 2 minutes an argument takes place as to why. She throws everything she has at me but I simply say NO… cause I can!
Her last ditch effort is to cry… yes the one trick that seems to make me do almost anything for her… she starts to cry. But I am firm on this, I will not budge… I am the father!
The conversation ends and I am victorious… or so I thought.
Moments later the front door opens, I hear it is my daughter. Then I hear foot steps coming up the stairs and suddenly i hear a “meow”. Not the meow of a full grown cat, but this extremely light and high pitched noise that sounds like a kitten.
She didnt, i think to myself… she wouldnt have!
I immediately get up from my desk and am faced with this tiny little orange ball of fur.
“Jillian”, i say with authority, “I told you no”.
She then continues to tell me that they let her take it home for a few minutes to play with.
Ya right I think, I knew what this was all about… show me this little fur ball and try to get me to fall in love with it. Well no way was i going to let that happen.
Then suddenly my daughter hands over the kitten to me… and something starts to happen… something strange. And what happened then…? Well…in Katzenback-ville they say That the Grouch’s small heart Grew three sizes that day!
That darn free trial got me… i had a sample and i could no longer deny that i wanted it.
The moral of this little story (which is 100% true by the way): If you have a quality product then you should highly consider testing a free or $1 trial… get it into their hands, show them how to use it and let them see the benefits.
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