There are roughly 3 ways to install a WordPress plugin. I will show you the easiest method on how to install a WordPress plugin using the automatic method which is already available within your admin area.

First, log into your admin area and on the left column locate Plugins

Click on “Add New”

 
Then toward the top locate and click on “Upload”

 
Click on the “Browse” tab and select the ZIP file which contains your WordPress plugin.

Then click on “Install Now”

 
Once the plugin has finished uploading, you will need to activate it.

To do this, simply click on the “Activate Plugin”

 
Your WordPress plugin is now activated and can be located in the Plugins area and in most cases, will now have its own tab or dropdown with you left admin sidebar area

Article by: Pat Friedl

There’s been a little buzz, and frankly some people freaking out over Facebook’s plan to force all fan pages to be secured by October 1, 2011. As of this writing, that leaves us fan page owners about a month to prepare. According to Facebook:

As the web evolves, expectations around security change. For example, HTTPS — once a technology used primarily on banking and e-commerce sites — is now becoming the norm for any web app that stores user information. We feel that HTTPS is an essential option to protect the security of Facebook accounts, and since Apps on Facebook are an important part of the site, support for HTTPS in your app is critical to ensure user security.

Just a quick look at the comments shows that this sweeping – and unstoppable – change is not being taken well by a lot of developers and fan page owners. Myself, I feel that forcing developers to secure fan pages that are displaying basic content with a fan gate, video and images is a little over the top.

The effects of this is that every single fan page on Facebook – whether they use free tab apps, custom code, Fanpage Connect Free or Pro – all of them have to be secured. So the bottom line is, whatever your feelings on the upcoming change, it’s really beside the point. It’s going to happen. So what can you – or what must you – do about it?

As of right now, you have until

Until Facebook flips the switch and requires all fan pages to be secure.
Are you ready? Let’s see what securing your fan pages means, and more importantly, what it’ll cost you. It’s not as bad as you think!

What is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. Basically, it’s the technology whereby a user’s browser and your server talk to each other using encrypted data. This makes it much harder (not impossible) for hackers and other nasty people to get personal data.

To secure your site, your server needs to have a secure certificate installed, either shared by your host (works for a lot of domains), or a single certificate for your site/domain only.

If you’re going to be using a single site certificate, then you’ll also need a dedicated IP address for your site.

Shared SSL vs. Standard/Dedicated SSL

Shared SSL can be provided by your web host and generally doesn’t take too much work to get going, and is typically no additional cost. Basically, your host will give you an additional domain/URL that lets you access your site securely, like yourWebSite.yourHostsSecureURL.com. While the URL is ugly, it’ll work, especially if you’re pages will be inside Facebook’s iFrames.

The downside to shared SSL is that WordPress doesn’t play well with it, and while your web host may provide shared SSL, it might not work on your blog. If it does work, then you’ll still need an extra WordPress plugin to make it work well – but we’ll get to that in a minute.

As an example, we use IX Web Hosting for some of my sites, and their shared SSL is working very well with our fan pages. Our shared SSL URL is: fanpageconnectdemo.c9.ixwebhosting.com (wow that’s ugly) and you can see that our Fan Gate example works pretty well. However, we’ve had some reports that other hosts’ shared SSL doesn’t work so well with WordPress.

Standard SSL will most likely be the solution for most fan page owners and developers. To secure your site, you’d need to A) buy a secure certificate, B) get a dedicated IP, and C) have your host install your secure certificate. All in all, the process is not overly hard.

Ok, So How Much is This Going to Cost?!

This is what’s been freaking people out, and really it’s not bad. Seriously! How much are you paying for hosting – 7, 8, 10 dollars per month? Typically, a dedicated IP address will cost you an extra $4 per month. That’s less than one grande latte per month. One of our hosting accounts, IX, costs about 8 bucks a month, and we get 15 dedicated IPs. That’s a great deal.

Ok, so let’s talk SSL certificates. Right now, GoDaddy has a sale on secure certificates: $12.99 for a 1 year certificate. So that’s what, three lattes? For a whole year?

Usually, SSL certs aren’t that cheap and they normally run about $89 per year per domain. Ok, so now we’re up to about $7.50 per month. And if any cost is too much, then StartSSL.com has SSL certs free for one year!

So while your costs might go up somewhat to market your product or company, it definitely won’t be breaking the bank. In fact, it’s really more of a nuisance to do the the work of securing your fan pages.

How Will This Affect My Fan Pages, or Pages I Create for Clients?

If you’re a social marketing developer that has clients, then there are some considerations when using Fanpage Connect, either the free version (ZIP) or the premium pro version of the plugin.

If you’re creating fan pages for your clients on their own domains, then your options are pretty clear – your client will need to purchase a secure certificate and get their site secured. Of course, you can help them secure their site gratis, have them purchase the secure cert through your affiliate link, or handle the whole thing and pass the charges on to them.

Now, if you’re hosting the pages, you may consider securing one domain and host all the pages there. In that case, you could just run the pages on the site and manage them yourself, or set up WordPress Network (the subdirectory install would only require one certificate) and let your clients manage their own pages.

The bottom line is that it shouldn’t impact your fan page business at all. When you consider the cost of setting up fan pages (we’ve seen upwards of $700 for a single page) compared to the cost of a dedicated IP and SSL certificate, one client would more than take care of the additional costs!

So What’s the Next Step in Securing My Fan Page?

If you don’t have good hosting, then you’ll need that first. Here are just the links and some info I pulled up from some basic research:

StartSSL.com – free, 1 year secure certificates.
GoDaddy (hosting/secure certificates) – $12.99 certificate sale, regularly $69.99/year.
IX Web Hosting – Their Unlimited Pro plan is $7.95/month and comes with 15 dedicated IPs. You can also use Shared SSL, which is confirmed working with WordPress HTTPS.
DirectGlobalDomains (hosting/secure certificates) – $29.99/year standard SSL certificate, $99.99/year premium SSL certificate.
DreamHost – $15 secure certificates, a dedicated IP, and hosting at $8.95/month

Securing Your Facebook Applications

However you secure your fan page, either by Shared SSL or your own secure certificate, you’ll need to make the appropriate change in your Facebook Applications. To do this, head over to the Facebook Developer App. Once there, you’ll need to edit your application’s settings.

In the settings, you would need to add the link to your newly secured fan page URL in the Secure Canvas URL and Secure Page Tab URL. In this case, you can see I’m using Shared SSL:

That’s it – your fan pages are now secure!

What Else You’ll Need

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to use Shared SSL, then you’ll absolutely need to download and install the WordPress HTTPS plugin. This is the plugin that will actually force WordPress to play nice with Shared SSL and also make sure that any graphics or other content is secure.

Even if you’re using dedicated SSL, I’d suggest using this plugin. Otherwise you’ll chase away fans if they start seeing warnings like this:

These warnings will pop up if any content on your page – scripts, theme files, images, etc are sourced unsecurely. WordPress HTTPS makes absolutely sure that all your site files are sourced securely.

Test Your Pages

Even having WordPress HTTPS installed, you’ll want to test your fan pages to make sure all your content is secure. Normally, this involves viewing the source code of your page, searching for “http:”. However, we developed a plugin that’ll do all that for you: Fanpage HTTPS Test.

This handy little plugin will chew through your fan page and highlight any unsecured content – forms, on-page links, images, everything. It’ll also show you a list of those unsecure elements with a click of a button.

Download
WordPress HTTPS Test

Using Fanpage HTTPS Test

Simply install Fanpage HTTPS Test either by FTP or through Plugin > Add New in your dashboard. It’ll work for both free and pro versions of Fanpage Connect. When you enable it, you can view your fan page, and a button “Test My Site’s SSL” will be displayed. Click it and you’ll see all unsecure items get highlighted and another button will show “View Report”.

When you’re done testing your page for unsecured content, simply disable the plugin.

So, to Recap…

So we know that Facebook’s going to require you to secure all your fan pages by October 1, 2011. But now we also know that it’s not the soul crushing catastrophe that some users are claiming it’ll be. With a little bit of research, a handy WordPress plugin, and minor elbow grease, your fan page can be secured well ahead of the deadline.

If you have any additional suggestions, hosting or secure certificate links, leave Pat a comment here!

– Download the FREE Version of Fanpage Connect Here (ZIP)
– Get the Fanpage Connect Pro Version Here

Searching

You’ve probably spent a good amount of time developing the articles and information on your website, so you may have some pretty incredible content loaded up just waiting for the right reader to find it. However, if you don’t make it easy for users to find that info, it’s all pointless. Website content searches are more important than ever as websites commonly store dozens, hundreds or even thousands of articles across many topics.

But how do you make it easy for users to find that info? There are many extensions written for Joomla websites that provide search modules and various types of results pages. K2 does this as well, and there are several things that K2’s tags are particularly good at, including providing great search results.

One of the main benefits to using K2’s tags is the control you have over how your articles are found and displayed in user searches. This is very much like keyword Search Engine Optimization on the wider web. You can think ahead of your users or watch their searching behavior and set the tags on each item for all relevant content in each article. Performing this SEO within your website is a great way to make your users able to find the information they are looking for much more easily, and it also provides some other great search features that we’ll discuss in just a moment.

Linking

One way to keep readers on your site is to make your content sticky. Web content stickiness is important if you want your visitors to stay longer than a second or so. Stickiness refers to content that drives a visitor to stay rather than click away. It can be an amazing image, some information that will change their lives or simply a big shiny object…we’ve all been there. But if you’ve just found that article that you really needed, chances are you will follow a related link if you’re given the option.

What K2 tags can do to help in this situation is to provide you with a very easy way to display related items. You can show articles (called items in K2 if you’ve forgotten) with links to related information based on similar category and the same tags. If you’ve paid attention to our recent article on writing good titles, then your readers won’t be able to help but click on that article title link below the amazing information they’ve just finished reading … tagged with the same keyword.

Tag Clouds

So, we mentioned that big shiny object, and who doesn’t love a nice tag cloud? K2 provides a feature to build a tag cloud based on, you guessed it, K2 tags! These are actually very good ways to suggest topics and articles to your readers, and to show what’s popular. Everyone needs to read what everyone else is reading. And if you aren’t happy with the built in tag cloud feature that K2 provides, there are several extensions that work well with K2 tags.

How to create them

So how do we create these things anyway? It’s actually very easy to do. You can go about it a couple of different ways though, depending on how you like to organize.

You can either:

Create the tags before hand and use them each time you create an item in K2.

Or:

You can just create your item and then create your tag fresh each time. When you tag an item, that tag is placed in the database and is accessible on the Tags page in K2. The main benefit of having them created and stored this way is that as you type the tag in your K2 article, K2 gives you auto complete hints so you can keep using the same tags instead of only similar ones.

So go to the Tags page in your K2 Dashboard:

This is where you will keep track of all the tags that have been stored for your items. You can’t do much beyond change the name of the tag, but that’s really all you need to do with them. It is nice to be able to see what tags you have at a glance if you need to.

Here’s what that very basic page looks like:

And to add tags, whether they’ve been pre-defined or not, we do that from the item page itself:

Let’s say we’re revisiting the ukulele blog we started a few weeks back. I would like my readers to find my articles more easily. I would most likely begin with something pretty general, “ukulele”. When I type that in and then hit enter, K2 lets me know that it has created the tag by turning it into a green…tag.

Easy confirmation, instant gratification.

The last thing I would do is make sure I’m tagging this item with the proper tags. I like to start general and go very specific. Try to stick to four or five tags; don’t overdo it. For this article I might also use “martin” for the make and “mahogany” for wood type.

Tags on their own actually don’t do all that much, but when you combine them with front end tools like tag clouds, related item links and very directed and personalized search results, you have a very powerful solution that can keep your readers stuck on your site for quite a while.

This is an excellent article I found called WordPress-eCommerce.com about how to create a pay per view video website. This is a great plugin with many uses!
 

Article by: WordPress-eCommerce.com

Selling Pay Per View content online is very profitable. It allows your customer to access content for a short period of time. The good thing about Pay Per View content is you don’t have to worry about the security of the product as you are not giving away any product. The content is on your site. You are just giving certain content access to your customers temporarily once they pay for your content.

So how does Pay Per View Content work?
A customer lands on your product page where you have the pay per view content (e.g. videos). The customer chooses one and pay for it. After the payment he/she gets redirected to your site and can access the video.

In this tutorial I’m going to show how you can setup the pay per view content with WP eStore, a very popular WordPress shopping cart plugin.

Configuring Pay Per View Content with eStore
1. First we are going to create a normal HTML page with a video in it. We want our customers to come back to this page once they successfully pay for the video. Sometimes It’s really easy to navigate to a WordPress page by clicking on different links on your site. But we don’t want anyone to discover this page. That’s why I just created this static HTML page and uploaded to my server.

page containing the video

2. Now let’s configure a product which will be used to charge payments from the customers for this video. So click on Add/Edit Products under eStore menu on your WordPress Dashboard.

eStore Add/edit Products

3. This is how the Add/Edit Products menu looks like -

Add/Edit Products Menu

4. You need to enter a name and price for the product (e.g. video)

Add/Edit Products – Name & Price

5. Now go to the Digital Content Details section. In the Digital Product URL field you need to enter the URL of the page where you have the video. Check the Pay Per View Content option (that way the plugin will know what type of product this is).

Digital Content Details Section

Click Save Product at the bottom of the page to save the product.

6. After you save the product, it will be assigned with an unique product ID which you can see at the top of the page. You will need the product ID to use within the shortcode later.

Product ID

7. To find the product ID of any product you have configured so far you can go to eStore->Manage Products.

eStore manage products

8. Now that we have configured one product we are going to create a page and place an Add to Cart button on it. We need to use the following two shortcodes on that page -

The first one creates an Add to Cart button for the product ID – 33 ( the one we just configured) and the second one display the items in the shopping cart once the Add to Cart button has been clicked.

This a sample Test Product page -

Sample Test Product page

9. Once we publish the page we can see an Add to Cart button on it.

Test Product page (published)

10. Now Let’s create a Thank You page where your user will be redirected to once they make a successful payment. You can place the following shortcode on this page if you want to deliver the URL of the video page to your customer via Thank You page.

Don’t worry the page URL will be encrypted so the customers won’t know know the actual URL of the page.

This is a sample Thank You page -

If you publish the page you won’t see any page link. The page link will be only visible after anyone purchases the product.

11. Now Let’s go to settings (under eStore->Settings).

12. There are many things that you can customize in the General settings. I’m just going through the basic settings. The first thing you need to do is specify the URL of the Thank You page in the Return URL field. It will allow the customer to be redirected to the Thank You page after making a successful payment.

13. Make sure to keep the following checkboxes checked -

a) Use Automatic Post Payment Processing – Which allows the plugin to do post payment processing (e.g. sending out email to the buyer with the encrypted video page link).

b) Use Automatic Customer Record Removal – The plugin will delete the customer record from the database if refunded.

c) Enable Transaction Result Display – Allows you to display the encrypted page link on the Thank You page after a successful payment.

14.Once you are done click Update Options at the bottom of the page.

15. Now go to the Payment Gateway Settings tab at the very top of the page

16. If you want to display the encrypted video page link on the Thank You page you need to also specify the PDT Identity Token under the PayPal Settings. (please click here to learn how to retrieve the PDT Identity Token from your PayPal account)

Click Update option at the bottom to save the settings.

17. Now that we have configured the settings we can now go back to the Test Product page to do a test purchase and see how everything goes. First click on the Add to Cart button. You will see that one item has been added to the shopping cart. You can now click the Checkout With PayPal button to proceed to the PayPal payment page.

pay per view content checkout

18. After the payment your customers will be redirected to the Thank You page where they will be able to click on the encrypted page link to go to the video page. The seller and buyer will also receive separate emails containing the transaction details.

Thank You page with encrypted link

19. Once the customers click on the link they will be redirected to the video page.

Video page after the transaction

As you can see that the plugin has masked the actual URL of the page so that the customers don’t know the URL of the page. Even if the customers copy the mask URL for later use they won’t be able to view it until they pay for it again.

Want to Try eStore?
If you are interested in setting up your site with pay per view video
you can get eStore from here WP eStore Plugin

Also, check out other great WordPress plugins at: TipsandTricks-HQ

By Dave Kaminski

Jumio Netswipe Review – How To Accept Credit Cards With a Webcam

We’re all familiar with placing orders online. You manually submit your payment information into a form or sometimes several. But a new service called Netswipe from a company called Jumio plans to change all of that.

With Netswipe, customers can pay for things online using their webcam. Specifically, they just hold the credit card up to their webcam, enter their credit card security code and they’re done…the order has been placed.

It’s free to sign-up and begin using Netswipe to accept payments on your website.  Integrating it into your website is as simple as filling in some fields and pasting some code on your web pages.  Jumio will keep 2.75% of each transaction as their fee for the service.

How do you get the money Jumio processes for you?  They send you a check every 30 days.  They also keep 10% of your money in a rolling reserve for 180 days.  So if cash flow is critical to your bottom line, using Netswipe will stretch you a bit.

That said, Jumio claims that Netswipe is not only more secure than the traditional methods of accepting online payments, but it also provides higher conversion rates (less shopping card abandonment).

Want to try a live demo of Jumio Netswipe?  Just click here.  It’s a demo site I setup so you can see everything in action (don’t worry, you won’t actually be charged anything).

And if you want to learn more about Netswipe from Jumio, you can visit their website here.

———

About the Author
Dave Kaminski is a professional copywriter, videographer and 10-year veteran of direct response marketing whose work in multimedia advertising has resulted in millions of dollars worth of sales. A former U.S. Marine, Dave specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to effectively use web video in their marketing efforts.

Dave also offers online coaching classes on how to create web video, as well as tips on how to promote and market them, for both MAC & PC users. I have taken these coaching classes and highly recommended them. For more information on creating web videos, go here

Google Tests Infinite Scroll For Web Search

Last month we looked at video that Alex Chitu at Google Operating System shared, showing that Google was testing a new design concept for its search results page. In that concept, we saw Google keeping the top search box and navigation bar, as well as the left panel in place while the user scrolls through results.

In the video, you can see that the results pages still end with the pagination that matches the default Google user experience of today. You still have to click to go to the next page if you wish to see more results. However, we speculated at the time that this could open up the door to infinite scrolling in web search results, as Google Image Search, which already has this feature, has a similar design concept.

Tecno-net that shows another design (via Search Engine Roundtable) Google appears to be testing, with scrolling panes:

Barry Schwartz reported that Google is indeed testing infinite scroll of web results. He shares another video from Waebo showing this:

If Google moves to this kind of user experience, which it very well could, given that it’s already in place on Image Search, it could be good news for sites that rank beyond the first page of search results. Most people probably don’t click through to very many second, third (and beyond) pages when they’re searching. At least not most of the time. They may, however, be more inclined to do a little more scrolling. Granted, they may have to click to show more results (as seen in the video).

As one reader pointed out in the comments, DuckDuckGo already offers infinite scrolling of search results, so you can mess around with that and get a feel for it. It’s a pretty nice user experience in my opinion. They don’t make you click at all though. It’s more like scrolling through your Facebook News Feed or Twitter timeline (both of which are pretty popular activities).

Google is always talking about improving the user experience, and I think this would do just that. Another reason why I believe they may end up going forward with this is the speed factor (also discussed in the comments). Google has been all about speeding things up lately. The most notable examples of this include the launches of Google Instant and Instant Pages, which loads the result Google thinks you’re going to click on before you actually click on it.

That’s not to mention Google’s initiative to make the web faster, its constant emphasis on speed in Chrome, its Page Speed tools and its declaration of speed as a ranking signal.

Infinite scroll seems like a no brainer in terms of simply making the search process faster. Of course, that might also highlight the fact that Google isn’t giving the user what they need in the first result, let alone the first page. We’ll see what happens.

By John Casey

Command, Contest, Cause and Connect

“We’ve got to have a Facebook page!” That’s the exclamation of every small business. And, while many pages go live, they sit almost lifeless, as one of an infinite number of silent trees in a dense forest.

Many small business owners are increasingly recognizing that Facebook is fast becoming their number one public relations tool. But in order to sustain the life-blood for that page, they need to incorporate public relations tactics to generate traffic and build brand awareness. An easy and creative way to do this is to incorporate 4C’s to “PR” your Facebook page: command, contest, cause and connect.

Command

Creating command of an issue or topic is central to establishing a niche authority in your industry. Apple commands the portable music market. Google is the search authority. Nike is the running show king. They all sell other products or services, but have commanded a niche. Let’s say you’re a baker, with shelves full of cookies, cakes, pies, donuts, breads, etc. Pick one of your products. In this instance, let’s take the cake!

Establish your command as the local cake authority. Some suggestions might include posting fun articles on your page about cake related stories (Kim Kardashian’s desire to have a “William and Kate” cake), contacting local reporters offering yourself up as the local Cake Boss, and posting any ensuing coverage on your page. And, while we’re talking about “cake” TV shows, post comments that critique episodes of Ace of Cakes. Encourage your fans to send in their favorite cake recipes, or have them vote for their favorite cake. Gradually, your command of the subject of cakes will begin to spread, inevitably drawing more customers to your business, who, while there to purchase a cake, may pick up a dozen donuts and a loaf of bread as well. Substitute “cake” for any of your product offerings, then “command” becomes “cookie” cutter!

Contest

PR driven contests are a great way to build traffic and fans on your Facebook page so long as the contest raises and reinforces awareness about your service or product offerings. MasterCard and American Airlines, Dunkin’ Donuts and Captain America: The First Avenger, and EA Skate and Miracle Whip, all non-competing entities, recently teamed-up for co-sponsored Facebook contests.

Similarly, for a small business, Facebook contests are more successful and effective when co-sponsored with a non-competing local partner. Let’s go back to the bakery! We can indulge ourselves in pastries – almost guilt-free – as long as we keep up with our exercise. How about hitting the gym, literally and figuratively!

For example, the bakery works with a local gym for two weeks on a mutually beneficial promotion, and offers fans of the gym’s Facebook page 15% off of its whole wheat bread and gluten-free products; in exchange, the gym offers a 15% discount on products and services available at the health club to the bakery fans. During this promotion, new members of the bakery’s Facebook community will be eligible to wín a month’s free supply of whole wheat bread; similarly, new fans of the gym’s Facebook page can enter to win a free one-month membership. This “out of the box” contest and unlikely pairing allows the bakery (also the gym) to spread brand awareness to a brand new audience online.

Cause

Nothing spreads goodwill like supporting a local cause, particularly one that has an active fan base on Facebook. Every major corporation and business helps support a variety of causes, i.e. Toys “R” Us and Autism Speaks, Macy’s and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Kmart and the March of Dimes. Local businesses should adopt the same big-business mentality, and not only help support a local charity, but engage your fans (and theirs) in a clever campaign to raise awareness for the cause and for you. Let’s go back to the baker who is in the food business. Inevitably, the baker is providing day-old bagels to soup kitchens, which is noble, but is it helping grow brand awareness and business, particularly via social media?

So, let’s cook-up a cause campaign! Suppose the baker embarks on a “Pie-Us” (notice the synonym for noble) campaign to help the soup kitchen. The first order of business is to partner – again, as above, two heads are better than one – with a local restaurant (preferably one that the baker works with as a vendor, or any non-competing food business) for a new pie recipe contest via the bakery’s and restaurant’s Facebook pages. The champion pie (named after the winner), prepared by the bakery, is then sold to the restaurant and served there for one month. For each pie sold, the bakery and restaurant make an agreed-upon donation to the soup kitchen. The campaign helps a worthy cause, promotes brand awareness (for all three entities), solidifies the bakery as the local authority on pies, and creates excitement and new fans on the bakery’s Facebook page.

Connect

By its very nature, social media is meant to connect. Thus, Facebook initiatives should connect your business with new and potential customers. For every new fan you gain on Facebook through unique cause programs, contests or promotions, you’re automatically connecting with your new fans’ Facebook friends, introducing your brand to scores of potential new customers.

Many businesses “preach to the choir” by keeping their posts and activities limited to bland (can we say “stale” at this point) and business-centric posts, links and comments. Moreover, they treat the page as a circular, posting endless sales and specials. This was not how Facebook was intended to be used, and this will not connect you with new customers.

A famous automotive CEO once said that the secret to success for a business was to “communicate, communicate, communicate.” Today, that word can be replaced with connect. Connect by commanding an issue, connect with local and non-competing businesses, connect contests to causes and promotions, connect your brand to new customers by connecting PR to social media campaigns on Facebook!

Google+, the latest social development from the search giant, is continuing to gain extreme hype. WebProNews recently spoke with several search and social media leaders including Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing, Steve Rubel of Edelman, Li Evans of LiBeck Integrated Marketing, Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick, Loren Baker of BlueGlass, and speaker and author Mari Smith to see what they thought about Google+.

While they all believe that it is definitely Google’s best attempt at social, they equally agree that there is still a lot that needs to be done to it. For instance, they would like to see further integration of Google products, an improved mobile experience, and better sharing capabilities, to name a few.

Even if Google makes these enhancements, the big question that everyone is pondering is: Will it have the power to control social in the same way that it does search? What do you think?

By Ben Kemp

In this third article on redesigning a website, we are going to look closely at off-page content issues, such as meta-tags, links, domain names etc.

Off-Page Content

The page Title tag is the single most important on-site element! There are also other opportunities for increasing the density of key words and phrases – some are listed below;

Title – The No.1 On-site Element

The maximum recommended length is 8-10 words, or 70 characters. Full manual control is important. In a CMS or ecommerce scenario, if all that can be offered is dynamic, it should be ordered as follows: Product Name + Category + Tagline :: maximum 70 characters. Do NOT use stop words, or irrelevant words. The best Title tag is one that is unique and strictly relevant to each individual page, and this is crucial to attaining top search engine rankings.

Meta-tags

Items such as Titles, Descriptions, Keywords are essential off-page elements which significantly influence the search engine’s appraisal of your site, and have an impact on whether searchers actually click on the search results link and come to your site. Use Them, Wisely! In a CMS / Shopping site, especially if very large, it is probably best to have a dual-action system. e.g. populate the Title / Description / Keywords meta-tags automatically from page content by default, but allow manual override as / if required.

Description

Unique Description meta-tags must be provided on all pages. The maximum recommended length for a Description is 200 characters (Google will display 150 only, but other SE’s will show 200). Manual control is best if possible. If dynamically generated, then an output string like this is best; Product Name + Category Name + 1st Paragraph of Product Description :: maximum 200 characters. It is extremely important to search engine rankings that a carefully crafted Description, unique to every page, be provided. This helps the search engines to properly categorize the site. A well crafted description will also be used verbatim in most search engine results displayed to searchers, meaning you can control what is shown to searchers in SERPs. And, of course, the Description should in fact describe the page it’s on. The Problem: when descriptions are not supplied, the search engines will do their best to generate one from existing content, which can often look like rubbish, or be duplicated on all pages. Where a “generic” description is provided, all the pages look the same in the search results. Your Descriptions are meant to help “sell” the product…

Keywords

Unique Keyword meta-tags must be provided on all pages! Manually controlled if possible. If dynamically generated, an output string like this is best; Product Name + Category Name + 1st Paragraph :: maximum 250 characters. NB: strip out special characters – e.g. & : ; etc, and it’s not absolutely essential to place commas between words. NB: This tag is not heavily relied on by most search engines. However, it is a useful discipline to insert the targeted keyword phrases for the page into the tag – as a reminder, if nothing else. However, the terms must focus on the page content, not simply be stuffed full of vaguely related words. Every page must be set to target a specific relevant set of keywords / phrases!

Links

You need to be careful about Links – simplified, it now works this way…

* A link to your site from another site is a vote for you and is added to your total vote count.

* A link from you to another site is a vote BY you, and is DEDUCTED from your total vote count.

Reciprocal links are neutral…

* Outward links can bleed away your Page Rank.
* Outward links to inappropriate sites WILL hurt your rankings.

Sculpting outward links so they don’t count as a vote outwards is done by adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the links. Wholesale use of nofollow is unwise… it’s unnatural and potentially you may be penalized for it. Its introduction was to cover “untrusted” links only, but abuse of the original intent and purpose is forcing Google to rethink its use.

Domain Names

Be aware that any move to switch domain name as part of a rebranding process is fraught with peril. This was covered in Part 1 of this series of articles. However, sometimes it makes sense to switch domain names. If the current domain is only a year or so old, is badly named, has no incoming links to speak of, and current rankings are negligible, there may be much to be gained by a new, more relevant domain name. There are a variety of Domain-related issues that impact on your search engine rankings.

* Use relevant / specific keywords in the Domain Name, but not excessively so. Two or three keywords is regarded as sufficient…

* Separate them by HYPHENS because it helps make sense to viewers!

e.g.: newzealandrugbytours.com vs. new-zealand-rugby-tours.com

Hosting

An aspect overlooked by many site owners is the importance of the Domain Name “Country Code” to your site rankings, traffic and consequent success. The problem here is the “decentralization” of search – the way in which the major search engines have split their indexes up into country-specific search opportunities. Google (and other SE’s) know where you are, or where you should be associated with, by either the Country Code (.Co.NZ) or the IP address allocated to your site. IP addresses are allocated in numeric blocks or ranges, by country.

Web Redesign Summary

The examples shown in this series of articles illustrate that it’s not the tools, it’s the quality of workmanship that makes the difference. If you’re a website designer, you owe it to your clients to ensure you do more good than harm! If your stupidity causes the newly rebuilt website to vanish off Google’s radar screen, it does not matter one iota if the site looks stunning! Page redirection is such a fundamental requirement, its verging on criminal negligence to overlook it! Not using freely available, fully automated sitemap and meta-tags generation tools is quite unprofessional. It confirms the designer’s incompetence, so by all means, add your name to the footer credits to let the world know who to avoid! Of course, if your underlying objective is to keep people like me in business, feel free to ignore all my well-intended advice.

Online market research firm Compete recently released a report that reveals some very interesting information about Facebook. The study compared the Facebook traffic of over 40 brand pages to the website traffic of those same brands. Interestingly, the Facebook pages that drew the most unique visitors were Walmart, State Farm Insurance, BMW, and Best Buy. However, iTunes drew more traffic to its Facebook page than its website.

As Lincoln Merrihew, Managing Director at Compete, explained to WebProNews, the report shows that companies are finding extreme value in Facebook not only in terms of branding, but some companies are also using it to create a “storefront” platform for their products and services, such as what Apple has done. He did point out that, before brands jump on board with Facebook, they should consider their customers and whether or not they are more comfortable on their domain or on Facebook.

How does your brand’s Facebook page compare to your own website?

Do you have a Facebook Fanpage or Like page? Does your business have a Facebook Fanpage or Like page? Get one today, it’s easy! Just contact us and we can have you on Facebook in no time! To get started – go here

By Ben Kemp

Site architecture can make or break a site’s chances of achieving prominence in the search engine results pages. There is usually no one single element at issue, more a combination of items that collectively add up to an overly high impediment to search engines. Improper use of Flash and JavaScript are common culprits, as is failure to use the most basic of website building blocks.

Site Architecture Issues in Detail

Search Engine Friendly URLs:

* URL’s should include a relevant keyword phrase specific to every page generated!

* Avoid capitalization AND spaces in file names. Use hyphens to separate words instead.

Search Engines can now cope with URL’s with multiple iterations of ?, & and = in them, but they are incomprehensible to HUMANS! But nonsensical URL’s do not provide any clue to the search engines as to what the page content is about. Search-friendly URLs are valuable components in the process of categorizing page content.

Explicit Image File Names:

Use keyword-rich explicit Image file names e.g.:

* http://www.mysite.com/images/new-zealand-rugby-tours-hdr-4.jpg

* http://www.mysite.com/images/school-rugby-tours-nz.jpg

Image URL’s should include relevant keywords specific to every page generated!

* Both Google and Yahoo have specific image functions that can generate a lot of traffic if images are properly named and tagged (ALT tags)

* Avoid capitalization AND spaces in file names. Use hyphens to separate words instead.

Image Alt Tags:

Use Image Alt Tags on every image – a short keyword-rich, relevant sentence that describes the content of the page / image is what’s needed. It’s essential to reinforce relevant keywords in every area of the page – Image ALT tags are an important location to insert one or more exact match search phrases.

Site Maps are Essential:

Sitemaps help shorten the “levels” to the main content – the Products. In many Shops, the nested Categories drive the real content down far deeper than 3 levels from Home. Anything lower than 3 levels in the internal link hierarchy appears far less valuable to SE’s – and rarely gets a Top 30 ranking in the SERPs! Two forms of sitemaps are essential;

* An accessible HTML version, with links to it from the Home page.

* An XML version that should be linked from the robots.txt page (and submitted to both Google and Yahoo for indexing)

For example; in very large osCommerce sites it’s possible to dramatically improve the number of indexed pages on Google by using the All_Products modification as a site map and placing the A-Z links it generates on the footer of every page.

Custom 404 Error Page

Add a Custom 404 Error Page: According to a recent poll, only 23% of visitors that encounter a 404 page make a second attempt to find the missing page. That means 77% of visitors that encounter a 404 error will immediately leave your website! By creating an effective Custom 404 Page, you can actually improve visitor retention by ensuring they find what they need.

JavaScript & Flash Disasters

Keep the use of JavaScript and Flash throughout the site to a minimum. While everything contained within <script language=”JavaScript”> and </script> is not actually processed, the SE’s are thought to assess the ratio of code to content, demoting pages with excessive code!

* The Search Engines don’t much like JavaScript (or Flash or FRAMES) – so minimize its use.

* It is better if external JavaScript (and CSS) files are “called” or “included” and the minimum amount of code is embedded in the pages.

* DON’T EVER use JavaScript or Flash for the Main Menus!

Like it or not, Google cannot “see” anything contained in either JavaScript or Flash. If you use either mechanism for your main menu system, you are consigning the site to relative oblivion.

robots.txt File

Make sure there is a robots.txt file on the site because search engine spiders look for it! In there you can specify which, if any, directories or files are NOT to be indexed. In the majority of cases, you allow all spiders access to everything. If the file is missing, the requests for it generate 404 Page Not Found errors – and you should always try to minimize these errors. The robots.txt file should also include a link to your sitemap e.g.; Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

On-Page Content:

Pages need text content. Without it, there is nothing for a search engine to work with as it attempts to establish what the website is about. If you seriously expect a page to rank in the Top 10 for competitive keyword search phrases, the minimum amount of content you should aim for is in the ordér of 800-1000 words of content. Previously, lesser volumes may have sufficed, but Google’s quest to provide the most relevant pages for any given search has upped the stakes a little. Does it seem logical that a page with 400 words of good content is likely to outweigh a page with 1000 words of good content. That content should be original, well-written, interesting, engaging, thought-provoking and/or provocative. It must be focused toward the specific keyword search phrase you are planning to rank well for. The content should include 1 or more images to add interest with relevant keywords in the Alt text. There must be some form of “Call to Action” where you specify WHAT it is that you want visitors to do, and How/Where to do it.

Page Headings:

This is the most (SEO) important “On-Page” location to specify to the search engines what the page is about. It is important to both load your Headings with main keyword phrase/s (most important at the beginning) and to ensure that all are in H1 / H2 / H3 format.

First Paragraphs:

This is the 2nd most (SEO) important “On-Page” location to specify to the search engines what the page content is about.

* It is important to place primary keyword phrases at the start of the first paragraph, and to highlight them in bold if possible.

* It is important to include text anchor links on main internal pages. Links TO these anchors (bookmarks) should be provided on the Home page and sub-pages, to pages below, and at the same level.

ext Anchors / Bookmarks / Hyperlinks

Place some keyword-rich anchor text links to internal pages from within body text because this helps set keyword relationships to those pages. Adding anchors on internal pages, and links TO those anchors, also raises the keyword count of both pages. Linking to anchors on internal pages from the Home page raises the perceived importance of those internal pages, and provides additional pathways for search engine spiders to find and index them.

Navigation / Main Menu

* This should be CSS / DHTML text-based to gain maximum traction

* NOT JavaScript / Flash because these cannot be accessed by Search Engines

* Page Rank is passed downwards through the site via accessible internal links

* The keywords in internal links are also what SE’s will associate with the internal pages

If possible, allow addition of hyperlink titles to the menu item links – dynamic links, based on the internal page’s 1st heading are not as good as the ability to manually add titles to menu item names. Hyperlink titles in the menu and in the text anchors (above) can significantly raise the keyword count on a page, as well as reinforcing what the page (that the link leads to) is about.

Health and Legal Queries Show Importance of Authority

By Chris Crum

There are a lot of elements of Google’s Panda update to discuss, and we’ve certainly discussed many of them over the last few months, but let’s not lose sight of the reason the update was launched to begin with – to improve search quality.

Do you think Google’s search results are better now? Tell us what you think.

While quality is often in the eye of the beholder, there are certain kinds of queries where the information being retrieved is simply more important than others. We’ve talked about this before, as it’s been a problem in some Google results.

One example we’ve looked at a few times is where an eHow article written by a freelance writer with no clear authority on cancer (and whose body of work includes a lot of plumbing-related articles) was ranking at the top of Googe’s results for the query “level 4 brain cancer” above numerous other sources that would seem to be of greater authority on such a subject.

In fact, the article did get bumped down after the Panda update, but it does still rank number 2, followed by another result from eHow. Granted, this is just one example, and Demand Media has efforts in motion to improve its own content quality, but you get the point.

Queries related to things like health or law demand authoritative advice. Not SEO’d content.

We had a conversation with Mark Britton, founder and CEO of Avvo about this subject. Avvo is a site that offers Q&A forums where consumers can ask medical or legal questions and get responses from qualified doctors and lawyers. It provides apparently authoritative content in these two areas from certified professionals.

This seems like the kind of content that should be ranking well for a lot of these types of queries. Does it not? Britton thinks it’s “very important” for commentary from experts in the medical and legal fields to surface high in search results for relevant topics.

“There is a lot of noise both online and offline regarding health and legal issues,” he tells us. “This comes in the form of lay people, professional commentators and even celebrities who often offer advice that is well-intentioned but inherently inferior to that of a doctor or lawyer trained in the area. However, it is not always easy to get doctors and lawyers to speak. Some still look down on the Internet as a publishing or marketing vehicle. Others just downright fear it, as they have seen too many movies where someone says something on the Internet and they are subsequently hunted and killed by terrorist hackers.”

“There is always room for improvement — especially with our newer pages,” he says of Avvo’s own search rankings. “We just launched our doctor ratings directory and our free medical question and answer forum in November, and it will take some time for those pages to rank as well as our legally related pages.”

Look at the results for a query like “Does type 2 diabetes shorten life expectancy?” Avvo’s page on the subject ranks on the second page, while eHow ranks at the top of the first. The Avvo result has actually fallen since I began writing this article. It used to be right below the number one result from eHow and the number 2 from Yahoo Answers.

eHow’s is an article (not very long by any means) by a guy whose bio says he “has been a freelance writer since 2007. He writes extensively in the fitness, mental health and travel sectors and his work has appeared in a range of print and online publications including Scazu Fitness and USAToday Travel Tips…[and] holds a Master of Arts in community psychology.”

Keep in mind that USA Today has a deal with Demand Media for travel tips. So that presumably means his Demand Media content is simply published by USA Today. Does “Master of Arts in community psychology” indicate more authority to answer a life/death question about type 2 diabetes than say a licensed and practicing MD? That’s who provided an answer on Avvo’s page, which just got pushed further down in the search results.

If you change the query to something simpler like “type 2 diabetes life expectancy” eHow still ranks close to the top, and Avvo’s result slips to….get ready for it….page 18! That’s with various articles from places like eHow, EzineArticles and Suite101 (all victims of the Panda update) ranking ahead of it. Now, I’m not saying that Avvo’s result is necessarily the one ultimate result for this query and should necessarily be the highest ranked, but come on. Interestingly enough, the result was on page 3 for this query when I started writing the article (yesterday) and it’s slipped that much further into obscurity just since then. I wonder where it will be in another day.

Google has given publishers a list of questions to ask themselves about their content, as guidelines the company goes by as it writes its algorithms. The very top one is “Would you trust the information presented in this article?”

While neither of the articles provide any helpful links to sources of information, the Avvo article comes from a medical doctor. I think most people would find that slightly more trustworthy, even if the article isn’t as long or as well SEO’d. Here’s the eHow article. Here’s the Avvo one.

The second question on Google’s list is, “Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?”

While Google makes it clear that these questions aren’t actual ranking signals, they must be used to determine the signals at least, and you have to wonder just how much weight authority on a topic carries.

Britton maintains that ALL of the site’s advice comes from qualified professionals, claiming that this is one of the site’s “greatest differentiators.”

“We CERTIFY every doctor and lawyer offering free advice on the site in two principle ways: First, we verify with the state licensing authorities that the answering doctors or lawyers are licensed and in good standing,” he explains. “Second, we rate the professionals from 1 (“Extreme Caution”) to 10 (“Superb”), which was unheard of prior to Avvo’s entry into the professional ratings arena. We are big believers that not every doctor or lawyer is ‘Super’ or ‘Best’ which was the steady-state in professional ratings for decades.”

“This was really just an extension of the Yellow Pages model, where the ‘recommended’ professional is the one paying the most money to advertise,” he continues. “But consumers are getting wise and demanding greater transparency regarding the qualifications of their doctors and lawyers.”

“We have three ratings that speak to the expertise of our contributors: The Avvo Rating, client/patient ratings and peer endorsements,” says Britton. “For the Avvo Rating, we start with the state licensing authorities and collect all the information we can regarding a professional. We then load that information into our proprietary web crawler, which we call ‘Hoover.’ Hoover goes out and finds all the additional information it can regarding the professional. We match the licensing data with the Hoover data and then we score it. The scoring is based on those indicators of the professional’s reputation, experience and quality of work.”

Britton says Avvo was not really affected by Google’s Panda update. “We saw a small dip, but things came back fairly quickly.”

“While I understand the intent of Google’s latest update, I’m not sure they entirely hit their mark,” he says. “We noticed a number of pure lead-generation sites – i.e., sites that are selling leads to the highest bidder — jump ahead of us in certain key terms, which is not good for consumers.”

Avvo encourages people to ask questions on the site, claiming it its Q&A boasts a 97% response rate.

Avvo asked us to let readers know that in support of Skin Awareness Month, it is donating $5 to the Melanoma Research Foundation for every doctor review during the month of May.

About the Author

Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237

Website designers often employ technologies like Flash, JavaScript, Ajax, and Silverlight to make their sites attractive, fast, and easy to use.

While there are great reasons to use these technologies, they can create problems when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Web page content that’s wrapped in a fancy package can be difficult – or impossible – for a search engine to “see.” That means the search engine crawlers may have a hard time understanding what your page is about, and so may not index all your important pages.

The search engines may also find it difficult to follow any links – internal or external – you’ve placed in web page content rendered in Flash, Silverlight, or other technologies. That matters because search engines use your internal links to discover other pages on your site, to understand how pages on your site relate to each other, and to determine which pages on your website are more important than others.

Designers sometimes incorporate the search function for a website into their designs. That can be helpful for people, but it may pose problems for search engines trying to crawl your site. If pages on your site are accessible only from a search box, the search engine won’t be able to see those pages, because search engines don’t type keywords into search boxes to find relevant web pages.

Below I’ll tell you about some of the popular technologies for creating attractive, people-friendly web pages, describe the potential issues, and tell you how to avoid them.

JavaScript Menus

Web designers often use JavaScript to make navigation menus with special mouse-over effects, animated drop-downs and other interactive features. While these design innovations can be truly useful for human beings, they can also be a real problem for search engine crawlers.

Today, Google’s crawler – fondly known as Googlebot – can actually follow many links created in JavaScript. But it can’t follow all of them. And while Google is the dominant search engine, with about 70 percent of people using it, 30 percent of your potential customers are using a search engine other than Google. Those people are even less likely to see your JavaScript links. If your business depends on people coming to your site from search engines, saying that the bots can probably follow your JavaScript links is a bit like your boss saying your paycheck probably won’t bounce.

A CSS menu can do pretty much everything a JavaScript menu can do, and without any of the issues that cause problems for search engine crawlers. Don’t forget that mobile phones, tablets and the other small computers that are increasingly popular for surfing the Web also have problems displaying JavaScript, but do fine with CSS.

There’s a nice CSS menu generator here: www.CSSMenuMaker.com.

JavaScript Click-Tracking Links

People who are serious about tracking the business performance of their website use some form of analytics. Seeing how visitors get to your website, and where they go after they land on it, helps you understand how to turn more visitors into customers.

Sometimes web developers use a single page with pre-set parameters to track clicks. The page captures the information about which links were clicked, and then redirects the web browser to the final page that will be shown to the person who’s surfing.

This is very similar to the Javascript click-tracking function, and sadly, it has similar effects when it comes to search engines. Even if the website developer does the redirect with a [Glossary/301-redirect|301], some of the goodness of that link is lost. I don’t recommend this approach.

Solution? Use a free click-tracking service like Google Analytics instead of click-tracking JavaScripts. Yes, Google Analytics uses JavaScript, but NOT in the links themselves.

Flash

Flash is an incredible technology that enables a richer user experience. Flash is often used for video, slideshows and interactive features on a website. However, search engines can’t “see” any content that’s rendered in Flash.

Many websites have everything in Flash. It can look great to human visitors, but to search engines, it looks like the website consists of a single web page – and one with very little content, at that. If the search engines think your entire site consists of a single page, they’ll think your site doesn’t have much useful content, and won’t rank your site high in search results.

Google has improved its crawler’s ability to “see” what’s in a Flash object, especially if the web designer has followed some fairly straightforward rules.

Still, it’s not certain that all text rendered in Flash will be accessible to Googlebot. At the risk of repeating myself, let me remind you that 30 percent of searchers don’t use Google. Do you really want to fence out a third of your potential customers?

Bottom line: Use Flash for decorative elements. Render your links and navigation menus in HTML, so search engine bots can see them.

Silverlight

This technology, created by Microsoft Corp., enables rich media experiences similar to what you can do with Flash. Googlebot has problems seeing the text and links in Silverlight.

Just as with Flash, you’re best advised to use Silverlight for decorative purposes, and use HTML to render links and navigation menus.

Band-Aid Solutions

Some web designers apply a Band-Aid solution to the problems caused by rendering navigation menus in JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight or Ajax. They’ll create an HTML sitemap with links to all the pages, and sometimes submit an XML sitemap to the search engines.

These sitemaps will, in fact, allow search engines to see all the pages on your site. However, the search engines still won’t be able to see how many pages on your site link to any given page. That’s important information – the number of internal links to a page tell search engines how important that page is.

If your main navigation menu is in HTML or CSS, and all your major pages have the same navigation menu, then all your important pages will be linked from many pages on your site. Minor pages on your site will have just one or two links from specific pages. The variation in the number of links to each page tells search engines very clearly which are the most important pages on your site.

If, on the other hand, your navigation menu is entirely in Flash or JavaScript, and you’ve got a sitemap as a Band-Aid solution, the only internal link to each major page that search engines can see will be from the sitemap. That gives each page on your site just one link, making it appear to a search engine bot that each page is as important as every other. That’s not accurate, and means that your most important pages won’t show up as high in search results as they should.

Google Webmaster Tools can tell you how many pages on your site link to any other page. Log in to Google Webmaster Tools, click on Your Site On The Web, then click Internal Links.

Pages Accessible Only by Forms

Some sites have pages that can be reached only by filling out a form. For instance, one of the largest automobile insurance companies in the world used to have a simple form on its home page that asked for your postal code. You’d fill that out, click on Submit, and be directed to the portion of the insurer’s site that dealt with your region.

It sounds logical, but search engine crawlers don’t type in postal codes, and they don’t click on Submit. To the search engines, this insurer’s site looked like just a single page – and a pretty boring one, at that.

Search forms pose a similar problem. While this is a tremendously useful way for a human to find information on your site, it’s not a navigation method the crawlers can use. Crawlers don’t type words into a search box, and they don’t click on a Search button.

The solution? Keep the search form – it’s great for your human visitors. Add a sitemap, and submit to search engines an XML sitemap that links to every page you want indexed.

How to Check If You Have a Crawl Issue

Luckily, there are a number of tools that can tell you which web pages and links pose problems for search engine crawlers. A few of my favorites:

Xenu Link Sleuth – Download this one for free. It can also create an XML sitemap
for you.

SEOmoz Crawl Test – Part of a tremendous suite of site analysis features available to SEOmoz PRO subscribers.

AboutUs Website Visibility Report – You can quickly check how many pages of your site the major search engines have indexed. If the number is lower than you think it should be, you can investigate further.

More Resources

GoogleGuide description of how a crawler works

Learn how to use robots.txt correctly

Googlebot and indexing Flash content

Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools

Google’s guidance on making Ajax applications crawlable

Read about other classic SEO mistakes even good web designers can make.

Some of you may already know about this service called LinkedTube. I just came across it recently, and thought it would be a great video tool to share with you.

LinkedTube is a free solution for embedding action buttons directly on your YouTube videos. It offers a very easy user interface (that even a caveman could use), and did I mention it was FREE!

Here is an excerpt taken directly from the LinkedTube website:

“LinkedTube is a Flash widget that adds link and sharing options to YouTube videos. With this you can transform any YouTube video into a useful viral promotion tool. Unlike standard YouTube players it links directly back to your URL, for example you can create video product listings linking direct to your shopping cart, music video links to the iTunes store or just link back to your website or blog. Plus, when others share your video they all link back to your own URL”

There are several possible ways you could utilize this service to help grow your business. Namely adding your affiliate link to a video, directing traffic directly to your site, squeeze page or blog

So how does it work?

1. First upload a video to Youtube.
2. Next go to the video page where your video is located and copy just the end portion of the URL – the part AFTER the =

i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_KYsVHVJyI — portion to copy would be- A_KYsVHVJyI

3. Then go to LinkedTube and paste that video ID into the Youtube Video field (see image below).



4. Fill out the rest of the information fields you’d like your link button to display and/or link to.
   NOTE: Use short catchy titles & descriptions to get people to take action and click onto the next step, site, product, etc …
5. Lastly, click the “Save & Get Code” and place that information on your site or blog or wherever.

See my example below …

Here’s the link to LinkedTube:
http://www.linkedtube.com/

By Ben Kemp

Website redesign proposal checklists should take careful account of the current status of the existing website. Rather than just rush headlong into the web redesign / rebuild process, an assessment of the good and bad elements of the original site should be made. Include consideration of SEO aspects. All too often, the website makeover results in a dramatic downturn in search engine rankings! Don’t underestimate the value of the existing indexed pages… or the benefits of current organic SERPs. Run the rebuild idea past an SEO consultant.

The Risks to Current Rankings

Be aware that existing search engine rankings can all too easily go down the toilet! Why? Well, that’s the consequence of not planning and executing strategies to cover the threats.

Page Redirection

Without a trail of breadcrumbs to find out where the old content went, all search engines are left bewildered and floundering in a sea of 404 Page Not Found errors.

1. Top-Ranking Pages: Should be identified, preserved and enhanced.

2. 301 Redirects: Old page URLs should be rerouted to the corresponding new page names. If that’s not done, all indexed and well-ranked internal pages will suddenly generate 404 Page Not Found errors and will eventually be purged from all search engine indexes! All internal Page Rank will be lost, as will all client’s Bookmarked page links and all “deep links” to internal content.

3. Optimized On-Page Content: Previously optimized “good page content” should be moved to the corresponding new pages.

4. Image Alt text: Old alt text should be copied to the replacement images.

5. Meta-tags: Titles, descriptions and keywords should be copied to the corresponding new pages.

6. Sitemaps: Provision should be made for XML or HTML Sitemaps.

If you fail to do the above, Google’s search engine spiders and bots will be forced to start from zero! If they are forced to reassess the intent and purpose of the site, and you haven’t preserved the good elements, a drop in rankings is inevitable.

Rebranding

I don’t have a problem with branding per se. However, while branding consultants have great expertise in their sphere of interest, they usually have minimal understanding of the issues inherent in attaining top search engine rankings. Branding consultants have no respect for your 10 year old domain. Any recommendatíon to drop your aged / mature domain name in favor of a new “trendy” business name is a severe risk to your online presence.

Domain Redirection makes it possible to redirect all traffic from the old domain to the new domain. You can couple that with individual page redirection. However, that still leaves you with all your old links pointing to a ‘dead’ domain and at risk of removal. Don’t underestimate the value of an aged domain with lots of links! As an example, I just reviewed a rebuild proposal that involved moving content from a 1999 registered domain with 2900+ incoming links (including 100+ links from domains with a +7 PR!) to a 2008-registered domain with 35 links.

The Rebuilders

Ok, so you’re going to rebuild a mature site that’s generating business, but needs a more modern look and feel. Make sure you choose a designer / developer who comprehends the importance of the old content and understands the SEO aspects. Make sure the fundamental SEO elements are included in the design architecture.

I repeatedly see website design output from designers that amazes me such as the following:

1. An SEO module was loaded but not activated – so zero meta-tag content on any page!

2. A WordPress CMS with the Admin / Privacy settings set to “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.”

3. JavaScript main menus that SE’s cannot penetrate, meaning no internal pages indexed!

4. Flash main menu that SE’s cannot penetrate, meaning no internal pages indexed!

5. Splash / Intro pages with 1 link to the home page only, and Flash content – meaning zero Home page content!

6. No sitemaps, just to make it even more difficult to find internal content!

If you are deliberately setting out to kill off a website, these are very effective ways of doing so. There’s a lesson here! If you are going to rebuild your website yourself, or pay someone else to do it, you’d best ensure that the person responsible for the changes has a plan that includes at least the basics! Failing to plan is planning to fail, as these examples clearly show!

Do You Need Google?

While there are people out there who say that you don’t, you may rest assured that they are, in the main, not knowledgeable on the subject. Unless (or until) you are a household brand name, you are going to need search engines to deliver potential clients to you. To get an increasing flow of visitors from search engines, you’ll have to play by their rules, not yours. Whenever you cannot change the global reality to fít your perception, you must adapt… or you’ll simply be irrelevant!

New Site SEO Requirements

For maximum SEO benefits, there are some overall goals to aim for…

* Search Engine Friendly URLs: Page File Names should be explicit, and keyword-rich, independent of Titles or Headings.

* Off-Page Titles: Independent and unique page Titles are essential. Dynamic, with manual override will work fine.

* Description Tag: Independent and unique page Descriptions are essential. Dynamic with manual override is okay.

* Keyword Tag: Independent and unique page Keywords. Dynamic with manual override is okay.    * Image File Names: Imported image file names should be preserved, allowing keyword-rich image names.

* Image ALT Text: Dynamic based on file name with manual override is okay. Keyword rich image file names are important supporting elements of page content.

* Menu Item Names: Controllable, independent of page Headings, with manual set hyperlink titles.

* Page Headings: Formatted in H1, H2, H3 HTML tags, independent of menu name.

Make sure that the BASIC files are in place;

* Robots.txt: with a link to the XML sitemap
* Sitemap: XML, plus HTML
* Custom 404 Error Page: standard page template, full menu etc.

Make sure that the BASIC Hosting issues are sorted;

* www vs. non-www: Always use full canonical domain name, and prevent duplicate content being indexed.
* Hosting: Correct country TLD – or correct country hosting.

Here is another take on SEO, when it comes to the design of your website by Rand Kramer …

Is it possible to design a great looking website and achieve a high level of search engine optimization (SEO)? It sure is and we see evidence of this all over the web, as well as in mobile platforms. In recent years the heavy emphasis on web standards has enabled designers to develop more creative, engaging interface designs without compromising SEO goals. Effective SEO is no longer a mystifying goal that only trained SEO consultants can achieve. Think of the combination of good SEO and quality design as just sound site development. To dig in further, this article takes a closer look at how to achieve both without having to sacrifice design principles or effective SEO.

Lessons from the Design Studio

Here are some things to think about well before, and during, the design process:

1. When setting up a page structure and composition, designers tend to start with a specific defined grid system. Designers look at the grid as a foundation for positioning elements on the page. You should take it a step further by considering how the grid can support elements for SEO. Not only where images and text will be placed on the page, but also setting up a clear hierarchy of information, logical page titles and text links, headings and sub heads. This approach not only supports users’ browsing behavior but also makes it easier for search engine spiders to move throughout the site.

Aarron Walter’s, Building Findable Websites, makes the point that designers should think about human interactions first and not try to trick the system to get to the top of search rankings. “Build for humans first and at the same time make sure our content is accessible to machines as well, which is going to help us reach more humans to make it more findable.”

The first place to start is clear page titles. The page title is essentially what displays in a Google search results page. It needs to be clear and express your brand and what you do. An example of how we set up our home page title is: “Interactive Agency, Web Content Management & Application Development – Siteworx.” It covers who we are, our top areas of expertise and company name. The same title technique should be applied to all sub pages so each is unique.

2. Search engine spiders read clean semantic markup and basic HTML. They read from left to right and top to bottom. It is important to make sure that unnecessary tables do not obstruct your HTML code. Most competent designers today would not consider building a site with tables and are on board with standard and validated code practices.

JavaScript at the top of your page can also inhibit search engine spiders. Some developers suggest placing the JavaScript at the bottom of the page. Be careful if you take this approach since it can substantially slow down page load times. In addition, for global drop down menus that may be overlooked by search engines it is recommended to have a set of redundant navigation links in the footer and as inset sub page navigation. Also be sure to use cascading style sheets (CSS) to emulate rollover effects and don’t use images in the place of text.

3. As a designer, I have always enjoyed the benefits of the interactivity of Flash and bringing Flash into components of a website. Flash as an early web tool allowed designers to think more about the emotional user experience and less about technical considerations. Designers could think about interactive immersive environments and less about the Web as a page metaphor. In addition, Flash allows typography and video to render uniformly across a variety of platforms, which removed design limitations found in straight HTML-based sites.

The catch with using Flash as it relates to search is that search engines have trouble getting into published .swf files and cannot effectively index the content embedded in Flash files.

One work-around has been to embed a smaller Flash component into your HTML page and keep your navigation links and supporting content outside of the Flash component. For example, YouTube uses a SWF video player and is a highly visible and searchable site. It uses effective titles and descriptions embedded in the HTML parts of the page to make the SWF videos more visible to search engines and more findable to users.

To learn more on this topic, I’d recommend a very good interview with Justin Everett-Church from Adobe

where he speaks about how to make Flash accessible. There’s also more information from Adobe at Adobe’s Developer Connection: Search Engine Optimization Technology Center.

4. Type should be type and not a graphic representation. Search engines do not see graphics the same way as text. They see only a single associated alt tag. If you present text elements as graphics, you are putting your site at risk for lower search engine rankings. Instead, use system fonts for text, which is also a basic principle when building a purely HTML site.

So much has evolved in the area of web fonts that there is no reason for a designer to render text elements as graphics. You can still start by laying out your text in your illustration or painting program of choice. Having the flexibility to try different font selections, move type around, and mix and match to communicate the brand direction is essential. Once your design is approved and you are moving onto the build phase, take the time to acquire your Web fonts and build the tags into your code. There are very affordable ways to license Web fonts if that’s something you’re considering.

5. An area for designers that is not discussed often enough as part of the SEO equation is information architecture and design conventions. The ability for users to find a web site depends not only on how well the site is built from a technical perspective, but also on good user experience principles. By focusing on-site architecture and sticking with some basic conventions, you’ll produce clearly defined content and pages for your site. Your users will find what they are looking for, visit more of your site, stay longer and tell others about the site. After all, that is what you should strive for.

Design conventions are somewhat like rules that have become part of a visual, non-verbal language for the Web over time. Conventions allow a designer to solve common design problems so he/she can focus on other specific issues around content, branding and features. Typical conventions for example are a company’s brand mark in the upper left corner of the page, while search typically is located at the top right. Underlined or blue text indicates a clickable link. There are conventions for button styles and link styles. Peter Lynch and Sara Horton have developed a site that touches on design conventions and other Web style suggestions that you can view at Web Style Guide 3rd Addition.

Ultimately, it is possible to have a well designed website that is visually appealing, content rich and emotionally engaging – while also achieving high search engine rankings. As designers, we shouldn’t ever pursue top search ranking to the detriment of usability, accessibility and brand integrity. If you plan for both, and realize that as a good designer, SEO and compelling design are your responsibility, this will lead you to creating findable sites and enjoying the kudos of happy clients.

There are many good books and articles about SEO best practices, as well as a wealth of materials at Google Books. Two excellent books on the subject for a more comprehensive view are:

* SEO for 2011: Search Engine Optimization Secrets Practices, Sean Odom.

* The Art of SEO. Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola foreword by John Battelle. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc. 2010, p. 239.

I just finished reading this article (posted below on SEO Tactics), from SitePro News by Jill Whalen, and really wanted to post it to my blog as well. I saw a list of 16 things that honestly I find myself still doing a few, and truthfully, usually to no avail.
What are your thoughts?

—————————————–

Article by Jill Whalen

In my day-to-day reviews of client websites, I see lots of things done to websites in the name of SEO that in reality have no bearing on it.

In an effort to keep you from spending your precious time on supposed SEO tactics that will have absolutely no effect on your rankings, search engine visitors, conversions or sales, I present you with 16 SEO tactics that you can disregard from your personal knowledge base and/or SEO toolbox as being in any way related to SEO:

1. Meta Keywords: Lord help us! I thought I was done discussing the ole meta keywords tag in 1999, but today in 2011 I encounter people with websites who still think this is an important SEO tactic. My guess is it’s easier to fill out a keyword meta tag than to do the SEO procedures that do matter. Suffice it to say, the meta keyword tag is completely and utterly useless for SEO purposes when it comes to all the major search engines – and it always will be.

2. XML Site Maps or Submítting to Search Engines: If your site architecture stinks and important optimized pages are buried too deeply to be easily spidered, an XML site map submitted via Webmaster Tools isn’t going to make them show up in the search results for their targeted keywords. At best it will make Google aware that those pages exist. But if they have no internal or external link popularity to speak of, their existence in the universe is about as important as the existence of the tooth fairy (and she won’t help your pages to rank better in Google either!).

3. Link Title Attributes: Think that you can simply add descriptive text to your “click here” link’s title attribute? (For example: <a href=”page1.html” title=”Spammy KeywordsHere” >Click Here</a>.) Think again. Back in the 1990s I too thought these were the bee’s knees. Turns out they are completely ignored by all major search engines. If you use them to make your site more accessible, then that’s great, but just know that they have nothing to do with Google.

4. Header Tags Like H1 or H2: This is another area people spend lots of time on, as if these fields were created specifically for SEOs to put keywords into. They weren’t, and they aren’t. They’re simply one way to mark up your website code with headlines. While it’s always a good idea to have great headlines on a site that may or may not use a keyword phrase, whether it’s wrapped in H-whatever tags is of no consequence to your rankings.

5. Keyworded Alt Text on Non-clickable Images: Thought you were clever to stuff keywords into the alt tag of the image of your pet dog? Think again, Sparky! In most cases, non-clickable image alt tag text isn’t going to provide a boost to your rankings. And it’s especially not going to be helpful if that’s the only place you have those words. (Clickable images are a different story, and the alt text you use for them is in fact a very important way to describe the page that the image is pointing to.)

6. Keyword-stuffed Content: While it hasn’t ever been a smart SEO strategy, keyword-stuffed content is even stupider in today’s competitive marketplace. In the 21st century, less is often more when it comes to keywords in your content. In fact, if you’re having trouble ranking for certain phrases that you’ve used a ton of times on the page, rather than adding it just one more time, try removing some instances of it. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

7. Optimizing for General or Peripheral Keywords: You’re not gonna rank for a one-word keyword. You’re just not. You are likely not even going to rank for a 2-word keyword. So stop wasting your time optimizing for them, and find the phrases that answer the searcher’s question. For example, most people seeking legal help aren’t putting the one word “lawyer” into Google. They have a very specific need for a certain type of lawyer as well as a specific location in which they hope to find said lawyer. So rather than throwing the word “lawyer” all over your site, ask yourself this: There are people out there who want what you’re providing. What are they typing into Google? Now focus on those words instead. And don’t even get me started on people who put words on their pages that are barely related to what they do “just in case” someone who types that into Google might be interested in what they provide. You won’t rank for those phrases anyway, but even if you magically did, they won’t make you any sales.

8. Targeting the Same Keywords on Every Page: The keyword universe for any product or service is ginormous. (It really is.) Even if there are one or two phrases that bring you the most traffic, why the heck would you want to miss out on the gazillions of others as well? Stop focusing every page on the same handful of phrases and start targeting each page to its own specific set that most relate to what you’re offering there.

9. Focusing on Ads as Links: Banner ads, Google AdWords links and most other forms of online advertising do not create links that count toward your link popularity. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use this form of marketing – just don’t be deluded into thinking that it will have a direct effect on your organic search engine rankings and traffic.

10. Mad-lib Doorway Pages: While you may provide lots of products or services that are extremely similar to one another with just one minor change, it’s not a good idea to create separate pages for each of them and making only minor keyword changes to each of them. While this may be okay for paid search landing pages, it’s a duplicate content spammy nightmare for organic SEO purposes. (In fairness, do sometimes still see this technique work, but it’s still not advisable to do it.)

11. Linking to Google or Other Popular Websites: It’s the links pointing to your pages from other sites that help you with SEO, not the pages you’re linking out to. ‘Nuff said.

12. Redirecting a Keyworded Domain to Your Real One: So you have your business name as your domain (as you should), but you have noticed the unfortunate fact that Google seems to really like domains that have keywords in them. Buying one (or more) and redirecting it to your actual website can’t provide you with any advantage because a redirected website (and its domain name) isn’t ever seen by the search engines. And besides, even if there was something magical about doing this, again, you’re only talking about one keyword phrase.

13. Republishing Only Others’ Stuff: While it’s fine to republish an article that someone else published first, if that’s all your blog consists of, it’s not going to help your search engine rankings. Instead of republishing entire articles, discuss them in your posts and provide your thoughts and opinions on what’s good / bad / ugly about what the others are saying. It’s all about adding value.

14. Making Minor Changes to Freshen Content: This is not going to help a thing. If any old articles or posts need to be updated, then update them. But just changing a date or a few words will not have any effect on your search engine rankings or traffic.

15. Nofollowing Internal Links: Perhaps you’re not looking for your privacy policy page to be followed by the search engines, so you add a nofollow attribute to it. That’s all well and good, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this will somehow control your PageRank flow and get you better rankings. It won’t.

16. Main Navigation That Links to Every Page: If linking to pages in your main navigation gives them more internal link popularity and therefore more possible weighting with the search engines, then surely linking to every single page of the site in your main navigation should be a good idea, right? Wrong! It isn’t. All it does is spread your internal link popularity too thin and confuse the heck out of your site visitors. Don’t do it. Choose to link only to top-level categories and perhaps subcategories (if you have a reasonable number of them) in your main navigation. This allows users to drill down further when they’re in the category sections themselves.

Did I miss any? I’m quite sure I’ve just touched the surface on waste-of-time SEO tactics. How about you? Do you agree with the above? Disagree?

Dave explains how the “Screencast Like a Pro” video training series might be for you (for both MAC & PC users) …

To start Screencasting like a pro yourself, visit Dave’s site for more information or to start learning …

About the Author

Dave Kaminski of WebVideo University is a professional copywriter, videographer and 10-year veteran of direct response marketing whose work in multimedia advertising has resulted in millions of dollars worth of sales. A former U.S. Marine, Dave specializes in teaching entrepreneurs how to effectively use and promote web video in their marketing efforts, for both MAC & PC users.

Growing a large following is something many new Twitter users struggle with. They see all these big accounts with 20, 50 or even 100K followers and wonder how did they ever get there?

Today we will give you some tips and tools on how to grow your following steadily and we’ll also make sure that you stay within the Twitter guidelines to avoid account suspension. There are certain practices that are not allowed and the last thing you want is to get your account suspended after you worked hard to get a decent following.

Quality or Quantity?

This is the first thing you have to ask yourself. Do you want a small number of followers where you can easily keep track of the timeline and interact with everybody or do you want to grow as big as possible and utilize Twitter lists to keep up with the tweets you care about?

If you have a Twitter account for personal use, the first option will probably work best for you. If you have any commercial aspirations and would like to promote your brand or business to the world market, your goal will be to reach as many potential clients as possible. Growing your Twitter following is an easy and low cost method to promote your business or brand worldwide.

Tools of the Trade

These are a few tools we use to manage our account. There are many more tools out there but today we will stick to the tools that work for us.

FriendorFollow

Simply enter your user name and it will show you who isn’t following back, who is a fan and mutual followings. If you connect with Twitter, it will also give you the option to follow or unfollow users.

Manageflitter

Similar to FriendorFollow but more advanced and it can filter your account for a variety of stats such as users without a profile image or users that are quiet or tweet a lot. There is a pro upgrade available but the basic mode has all the features an average user will need.

Socialoomph

When your account starts to grow exponentially it becomes hard to keep track of all your new followers. If you want to set up a welcome message for all your new followers, this is the tool to use. You can set up an auto DM and welcome new followers. DO NOT add a link to that message because that’s what everybody is doing and will only tick people off. Come up with something creative and original within the 140 character limit.

There are also features that will allow you to auto tweet status updates but that is NOT done as you should keep it real on Twitter, more about this at the end of this blog post.

Twiends

Fun and addictive would be the best way to describe this tool! You can actually use this to grow your stats on Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube. You can earn credits for connecting with other Twiends users and use those credits to let others connect with you. Sort of like a marketplace. You can even tweak your setting to get higher quality followers and there is an option to purchase credits if you don’t have the time to earn credits manually.

Twellow

If you want to find followers in a specific geographical area or category, this is the tool for you. It lets you search for users per city or from a directory of categories. This is great if you have a local business and you want to connect with all the Twitter users in your city for example. You can also follow and unfollow within this tool.

Now How Do I Get Followers?

All the above will help you to manage the new followers as your account starts to grow. Obtaining new followers can done in many ways.

* Follow users from follow back lists. Many users have created lists consisting of people that returned the follow so there is a good chance those users will follow you as well if you start to follow them.

* Just Google: “follow back list twitter”.

* Use the Twellow tool to find users in your niche or city and connect with them.

* Add Twitter links to your website, blog and email signature if you use one.

* Use the Twiends tool to get new followers.

As your new followers start to roll in it’s time to use the account management tools such as FriendorFollow and ManageFlitter. Find out who followed you back and who didn’t. You can also unfollow people that didn’t return the follow if you wish but DO NOT mass unfollow people or unfollow those who did return the follow. These are bad practices that could get your account suspended. We’re not celebrities that have 500K followers and only follow 10 users back. Your account should have a healthy follower ratio.

Remember that you can only follow 10% more than your follower count when you pass the 2000 follower mark. Example: 3000 followers will allow you to follow 3300 users.

Keeping It Real

This is what it’s all about. It’s alright to try and get a large following but don’t do any of the following:

* Don’t spam your product link over and over again.

* Don’t use auto tweet tools except for a meaningful auto DM perhaps.

* Don’t mass follow and unfollow since this could get your account suspended.

* Don’t unfollow those who return the follow just to make yourself look more popular.

If you stick to these guidelines and use the above tools you can easily grow your following to any size you want.

Earlier this week, Microsoft shared some numbers from the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance (search and advertising deal), which saw Bing powering the back-end of Yahoo Search, and the merger of Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

“The data showed that from August 2010 to December 2010 Search Market Query Share for Bing rose 7.25%,” wrote Microsoft’s Paul Greenwood. “During this same period Google gained .61%. Impressions for adCenter advertisers was up 4%, clicks up 2%, and costs roughly flat. CPC was consistently below Google.”

We’ve seen some complaints indicating that there are some unhappy campers among Yahoo/Microsoft advertisers since the Search Alliance came into play. In the comments section of our last article on the subject, for example, one reader wrote:

I’ll also add that my company, as a partner of Yahoo’s, now Bing’s partner by default, a partner that has sent a lot of high quality traffic for almost seven years now, has been treated like dog dirt in terms of Bing’s new payout. Once the switch from Yahoo to Bing was complete Microsoft sucked the money, also known as a clawback, from their partners. What once was a .50 cent click payout is now a .12 cent click payout, for example. This is what partners like me are seeing.

If they expect to form great relationships with their partners they are doing a poor job of it as every traffic provider to Bing now is bitching about the absurdly low, crap payments we are now getting.

I left Bing just yesterday and did a deal with Google. You can bite it Bing……. until you respect your partners more.

Let WebProNews hear about your experiences as an advertiser with Yahoo/Microsoft since the Search Alliance. Have they been positive or negative?.

Microsoft has now posted the following bullet points from a Search Engine Strategies NY session led by Dr. Niraj Shah on the Microsoft Advertising Blog:

Stats of Paid Search Performance Relative to Google

- CTR was roughly equivalent to Google but declined from November
- CPC was consistency below Google; trending downward trend post-transition

Stats Search Conversion Rate and CPA

- Conversion rates dipped during transition but ended 2010 13% higher
- Cost per action (CPA) increased during transition but finished 17% lower

How do we wrap this up? Where do advertisers go with this information?

- Early movers can gain an edge.
- Instead of now having to manage across three engines you can narrow down. – Saving time and becoming more efficient.
- Favorable CPC’s and cheaper clicks and conversions.
- Improved reach and volume drivers greater consistency and manageability
- Favorable CPC and conversion environment (for now)
- Strong performance characteristics imply a higher ROAS than before

Best practices for search alliance success

- Identify coverage gaps between Microsoft Advertising adCenter and Adwords
- Pay attention to geo-targeting and match type settings when transitioning campaigns
- Bid adCenter keywords at the Match-type Level
- Adjust budgets to account for increased volumes
- Set alerts to identify and expand high performing terms

Microsoft also posted the following video to YouTube:

Bing Director Stefan Weitz said, “Because we’re actually powering Yahoo, and not necessarily being Yahoo, Yahoo has the ability (and are doing a great job) innovating on the front-end user experience. So they take our great core results, and on top they can apply their secret sauce…For consumers, what it gives them, is two really different experiences, and depending on which one you like for a particular query, you get to have those experiences. It’s great for consumers.”

As far as Yahoo’s front-end, the search engine launched a new feature this week called Search Direct, which appears to be Yahoo’s response to Google Instant, though there are some differences. This does in fact show that Yahoo is still focused on bringing its own front-end flavor to search, and not just becoming a needless version of Bing. Yahoo still has some things going for it that Google and Bing don’t in its original content that it isn’t shy about pushing into its search experience.