@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

SEO

Google Analytics and Greasemonkey

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Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates statistical information about the visitors to your site. It is aimed at marketers, small business and website owners. It is considered to be the most often used statistic tool, currently used by 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites.

Google Analytics tracks visitors to your site from search engines, display advertising, PCP networks, e mail marketing, and even links within PDF documents. Users can track landing page quality and conversions. By using the Analytics users can determine which ads are performing and which don’t.

Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make changes to the way a web page displays or behaves by using small bits of JavaScript. The changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is opened, making them permanent for the user. Greasemonkey can be used for adding new functions to web pages, such as embedding price comparisons, or changes to the way the site appears. There are many scripts for various functions such as providing information within shopping sites, fixing bugs and combining data from multiple pages.

To help Google Analytics users with insights into their website’s traffic and marketing effectiveness, various Greasemonkey scripts are available for free and can be used to enhance Google Analytics. They have different functions; some are aimed to enhance cleaner profile switching, others for quick content search, exporting to Google Docs and more.

Here are some of the most interesting scripts:

  • Social Media Metrics – this plugin allows users to observe social media, and link statistics to your specific pages.
  • Twitter and Google Analytics campaign tracking variables. Adds Campaign Source,
  • Campaign Medium and Campaign Name to your links for easy tracking of the traffic they drive to your site.
  • Enhanced Google Analytics. This script allows users to get up-to-date information on new referring sites or those who have had a substantial boost in traffic.
  • Profile Switching. A cleaner way to switch between profiles.
  • Insights for Analytics. Helps perform Google Insight searches on keywords in the report. Select up to 5 keywords in Google Analytics and view traffic patterns for these keywords on Insight.

It is important to note that on March 17, 2011, in a conference in San Francisco, Google Analytics unveiled a new version in beta trials. In order to make it easier and faster to get information and to enhance the Google Analytics platform, it is rumored to have an updated look and feel. Many of the changes in the new version are the result of user feedback, Goggle Analytics people say, including multiple dashboards, new links for specific reports and new names for reports. It is available for a small group of users for testing. The launch date is yet known.

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Basic Guide to Understanding Code

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Making a website can be a complicated process, especially when there are all different types of code out there that you can use. Each type of code is a little bit different, with the end result going unnoticed by most casual viewers. However, the real results are highly noticeable by professionals in the web design field, as well as in the management and maintenance of the website itself.

The purpose of this post was to give a short introduction to Small Business Owners on a variety of codes. This is to provide a basic understanding and help you navigate “what my IT guy said”.

Scripting Languages

  • PHP

Scientifically known as Hypertext Processor, PHP is a scripting language created for the development of web pages that have been prepared with fresh information for each individual viewing. This is known as a dynamic web page. Although most people do not choose to run their website around this programming language, there are many great websites that are based on PHP such as Facebook and Digg.

  • Java

Widely used from web applications to an intensive variety of software, Java is still a top programming language across the net. Java is highly used for the creation of programs from applets to massive full-blow applications, that are incorporated into websites to make them more efficient, and ultimately faster. Created from C and C++ syntax, Java was first created for an idea in interactive television. However, it ultimately proved too advanced for its time. This was in 1991.

  • Flash

Flash is a scripting language developed to create vector animations for web site usage. From the creation of interactive websites as well as e-stores and even high tech digital management systems, Flash is a leading competitor for Java in the coming years. Flash has fast load times and can save on download times due to its vector base. Creating caches so future viewings do not require reload is also an incredible feature of flash programming. Viewing Flash scripting gives the viewer the impression of viewing a movie instead of a still picture, regardless of how digitally enhanced. While there are disadvantages to flash not running on Apple products and some of the SEO limitations a good programmer and/or web developer can overcome this shortfall rather easily. While there are disadvantages to flash not running on Apple products and some of the SEO limitations a good programmer and/or web developer can overcome this shortfall rather easily.

  • ASP

Similar to PHP, this language is for creating dynamic webpages. ASP is formally known as ASP.Net. It is a form of web application framework created by Microsoft. ASP assist in building dynamic web applications, web services and web sites. Web pages officially created as ‘web forms’ are some of the largest building blocks for application development in an extensive amount of areas.

  • HTML

Which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML is the basic building-blocks of webpages.

HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags, enclosed in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags normally come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags).

The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visual or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.

HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embed scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML webpages. (Wikipedia, 2011)

  • FBML

FBML is Facebook’s mark-up language but these elements will take any HTML as well. So you have the ability to add newsletter sign-up forms, e-book downloads, and other HTML based elements. It is like HTML, but it lets you include social content inline in your markup. It is Facebook’s version of HTML, the language that web pages are written in. For the most part, knowledge of HTML is all that is needed to utilize the functionality of the Static FBML application. (Pitt, 2011)

Summary:

Although a random casual observer may not know right away what scripting language your web site uses, it is important to the type of niche, features and opportunities your site will employ. When it comes to making a decision on which scripting language is best for your site, you should always consult a professional, or at least be willing to invest many hours of research on the topic to understand it enough to make a remotely educated decision.

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Google’s New Algorithm

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Do you stay glued to financial news for the biggest trends, or failing ones, to keep your business thriving and productive? If so, you may want to take a seat for this one. Designed to improve search results, Google has initiated a new algorithm.

For those who have made a habit of providing the highest quality content, you are about to be rewarded. However, low ranking sites that regularly copy content or provide low quality information, should expect to take a bit of a beat down.

The new algorithm will target a few key issues about the way content is promoted by their search engine. Content that is rich in helpful informative information, charts and graphs,  properly key worded and updated regularly, will get high priority by the new implementation, while those with second hand content and low quality outlines will be bumped further down on the search results regardless of their current page rank or unique visitors. In fact, the new algorithm is likely to change the latter aspects for those fluffy sites altogether.

Google’s Goal

Google says their goal is to provide users with the most relevant answers to their search engine queries, and as fast as possible. They intend to achieve this while also reducing the search engine rankings of things like content farms and over advertised spam ad.  Considering the user ship of Google, it is fair to say that when we refer to us, we really do mean, the huge collective US, that will be greatly affected by these changes. This could literally make or break some online businesses.

Although an algorithm change such as this may likely turn the search engine world as we know it upside down, the service it should begin providing, with the changes having taken place immediately, should definitely be a positive one.

Positive for the effectiveness of the search engine users that is. For sites who may have raised their page rankings and traffic with less than notability informative content, they may have already noticed a significant loss of traffic due to their new rankings on this algorithm system.

Some Win, Some Lose

Google also acknowledges that any changes to their algorithms, including the most recent ones, can cause some websites to achieve much greater results in readers or consumers, it can also cause previous winners on this path to suddenly be set back greatly.

However, take note also that if your rankings have dropped you may either be the false positive, or a unfortunate casualty of Google’s new algorithm, or you may need to sit back and take a longer look at your site and determine the best course of action to ensure that it provides helpful and informative content, not spun or copied content.

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Google’s Social Search

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A few days ago Google changed the way the company is dealing with social media.

Since the launch of its Social Search in 2009, Google’s social media was kept a little hidden from the general public. You had to know about it and opt-in through Google Labs. Once you did, Google’s search results page would display the results to your query as it is vetted by machines (logarithms) and by people – what did your personal contacts on the social  search wrote about it. The results of people’s recommendations were displayed at the bottom of the page. All that would appear only to those who signed up for the service.

On Feb 17, 2011 Google unveiled its changes to the Social Search, publishing it in beta and turning it on for all who are signed in, in English (so far).

With this new integration, which includes Google images as well, Google is introducing a tie to social search outside its own circle, from Twitter, Flickr and Quara. It uses social profile connected to your profile on Google to deliver items such as photos or blogs and tweets that come from you friends.

The search results will not appear, as they did until now at the bottom of the page, but will be integrated in the search itself, blended throughout the page. This is done through a system that lets you know when a friend shared a specific link or search result in the subject of your query. It appears in the search result page under the site’s url.

In other words, now you can see what your friends have recommended, not only what the logarithms have found out, making the search more personal and specific.

The other change is in its appearance in the search results. Any comment done by your friends on Twitter for example will appear as an annotation saying that your friend “shared this”. The more recommendations, the higher this site will go in the ranking.

Users have control over what gets displayed in social searches. The user page gives the ability to connect their profiles publicly or privately, to their other Google accounts, Twitter etc.

One thing this update does not include is a connection to Facebook. Not at the moment anyway. While still in beta, the rollout will occur in the next few days.

What does it mean?

Even though this announcement went through pretty quietly, it might create a shock wave as far as SEO goes. Search Engine Optimizations means making your site as visible as possible. To be visible, your site should appear on the first page of Google. The ranking on the page is determined by rules Google has put in place years ago: the size of the site, the activity on the site, the backlinks and the keywords that relate to the specific query, among other things.

Now, with the new Google social search – what was written about the subject using social media will have an impact on the placement on the page. The more people wrote and commented about the subject, the higher on the page the article or site will go. Social media, especially those sites connected to Google social search, have become more important in the placement of the search results.

What’s more; the search results may appear differently to different people depending on their circle of friends! If many of your friends talked about a ski resort in Alaska – this resort will move up in your page, but not in mine. Those who didn’t sign up for the social search will get different search placements without the comments, since only the user of the service will be able to see those elements.

With this swipe, Social Media has become more important in Search Engine Optimization. That is, if this service will grow in popularity.

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What is a Creative Commons License?

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With so much business being conducted online these days, it has become imperative to have methods to protect and copyright our works in a manner just as remote as how it was posted. Regardless of whether your work is writing, photography, or even coding or programming, you will want a means to ensure that regardless of what happens with those items, you are given credit for producing them.

When you apply for a Creative Commons license you can keep the copyright to your work, while allowing others to copy or distribute you work, as long as they give you proper credit, on the conditions you get to specify. You may choose to offer your work freely with no desire for crediting, or you may determine exactly the manner in which you want to be credited regardless of its use.

There are some more reputable websites that can help you to create your licensing for your work.

CreativeCommons.org  is an example of a reputable licensing site. You are able to choose a license and once done they will provide you with an HTML tag that will list your work as copyright restricted. However, CreativeCommons is not a registrar and will not retain records of your selections.

Flickr.com also offers create commons licensing and the format to help you protect your work. Flickr and CreativeCommons both have things in common. Their licensing types mirror one another perfectly.

CreativeCommons offers the following licensing options.

  • Attribution: An attribution license will let others tweak, change, build on, remix, distribute or otherwise alter your work, they also have to credit you for the original creation in the manner you request.
  • Attribution NoDerivatives: This particular license allows for commercial and non-commercial use, as well as redistribution, however, it must remain unchanged and all credit must go to you.
  • Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike: Like Attribution, users can tweak, alter, build on and distribute, however, they must credit you and license their own product or creation under identical terms.
  • Attribution ShareAlike: An attribution sharealike license will allow others to alter, tweak and otherwise build upon your original work for commercial purposes. They must however, credit you and license their own agreement under the same terms.
  • Attribution NonCommercial: Others can tweak, alter, rebuild or build upon your work for non-commercial purposes. Any new works should acknowledge the original creator and also be non-commercial.
  • Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives: The most restrictive license, this one only allows others to download or otherwise save your works and even share them with others as long as you are properly credited. This license does not permit users to alter your original creation in any way.

If you are new to creative commons licensing it may be important to read up before making the decision on your license choices.

This is also likely to be one part of your copyright policy and protection practices, an example of how this is used as part of a policy or image see: Copyright Info

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How to Protect Your Digital Brand Online

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One of the first things the small or large business manager needs to learn is how to protect your digital brand online. Your digital brand is comprised of everything that is online about you so it is important to know what is already there before going any further.

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Damage Control

One of the easiest things to do is to go to a search engine such as Google and perform a search for your name. Googling yourself will give you a good place to start if you need to do some housekeeping on the web. You may be surprised at what you find and see the need to start performing some damage control.

Social networking is the way many people communicate these days and almost everyone has or has had a Facebook or MySpace account possibly beginning in their college days. If these sites do not project you or the brand that you represent in the way that you would like to be perceived, either clean up the site or take it down. Be aware that traces may remain on your friends’ pages.

Don’t Forget About the Good Old Days!

Go back through old history that you may have forgotten and delete comments and pictures that project you in a less than favorable light. You may still appear on your friends pages so if there is something particularly bad, contact your friend and ask them to remove it for you.

Training to Protect Your Digital Brand

When setting up social networking sites for your business, it is important that the people responsible for setting up these accounts realize their possible impact on the digital brand. Twitter can be one of the worst offenders as many business rush to have a brand presence on Twitter. An untrained employee can cause irreparable damage by tweeting unprofessional comments that may poorly reflect on the digital brand.

If you find untrue content on the web that is unflattering to your brand, you can ask the webmaster of the site to remove it. Many will do that just to avoid any possible legal consequences. Depending on your circumstances you may want to check the web for fake sites that are plagiarizing your content or products that can affect how people see your brand. The important thing is to stay informed so you can perform damage control.

Create a Positive Online Image

An online presence is a must for a brand to be successful in today’s competitive marketplace. A positive impact from your digital brand can be expected if you stay on top of the situation and take control. Make sure there are many positive images of your digital brand online which also helps bury any bad content that may exist.

Make sure that those who are trusted with the responsibility of maintaining these social networks are aware of the language, tone, and values that you want your digital brand to project. This is how to protect your digital brand online and make it work for you.

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Can you buy Reviews? The new marketing tools to beat the system?

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There are many sources for reviews on the web to help your product or service get the attention it deserves. It is also a great way to find out what the public thinks about you.  Some are well known like Amazon.com but there are many others that can be a valuable resource too. Some of the sources for reviews are targeted towards specific products but most are varied.

If you are an author of a self published book you might want to check out Kirkus Discoveries reviews. This can help your book get noticed by readers and includes a review of your book on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. If chosen your book review may be featured in a monthly newsletter that is read by journalists, school librarians, publishers, and booksellers. To have your book read and reviewed can be quite pricey, starting at $425, but the rewards can be great.

Another site that is recommended by many people is ReviewMe.com. They do not allow advertisers to require positive reviews but note that at the worst case most reviewers will only give constructive criticism even if they are not particularly pleased with the product.

SponsoredReviews.com is another well rated source for reviews. They have a great selection of blog writers and start their pricing at just five dollars per post. Smorty.com is another source that has strict requirements for their participating bloggers which should ensure that reviews draw in the right traffic to your product or service.

Many of the sources for reviews pay bloggers to write about your product and post it on their blog. There is also the opportunity for link backs through the information posted on the blogs. The more popular the blogs the more traffic you should receive from link backs.

There are many other sources for reviews that might be of interest; BuyBlogReviews.com, Linkworth.com, and ReviewParty .com are just a few of them. Reviews can add to your brand image so you want to connect with reviewers that will review you in a positive light.

There are many marketing tools on the web today and product and service reviews are one of the best. There is also a market for blog writers who don’t mind writing a review of products and services that they have tried and use. These sources for reviews will help you connect with people who want to tell people what they think about your company.

Beware:

Customers are not without intelligence, if you get caught with false reviews they will leave honest ones, especially with companies like yelp that have strict protocals to et your name be dragged through the mud.

Take A One Up! Lets look at how someone is using reviews in a positive light and pushing away the chance that you think its a fake review.

Petri Plumbing & Healting uses scanned copies of their review cards that have been hand written by their customers! It doesn’t stop there as they also have text copies of some of the reviews, likley for SEO purposes.

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Picking the Right Social Network for your Brand

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As for internet visibility, or digital brand as it is being called now, 2010 proved, without a doubt, the power of the social network. Facebook just passed Google in the number of hits per day. People are using the internet to connect and be connected more than they use it to perform searches.

Aside from it being a sociological phenomenon that no doubt will be talked about and researched, it opened a world of advertising not used before. Facebook makes it extremely easy to connect with almost anything that is a digital brand, with one click of a button. Just type into your Facebook page that you liked a certain television show and immediately you will be connected to their site, to see more.

As a way to advertising your brand, it is a goose that can lay golden eggs. And why not? It is free, it is simple and everyone with a little understanding of how the system works can join in and be effective. Right?

Not so fast. The problem with social media is that it is multiplying. New sites, with new possibilities for connectivity between people are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. You can join all of them and spend most of your time updating and chatting while neglecting your core business. You can hire people to do it for you, believing that bigger is better and the more sites you join will yield better results, only to find out that the ROI (return on investment) is not worth the effort.

Before you embark on the social media voyage, you should know that not all sites were born equal and knowing which one to join is the most important aspect.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

–          What is the strength of the site?  You have to do a little research. What can Twitter do for you? What can Dailybooth? Evaluate the site to see if it fits you and the character of your business. Think of a strategy; what do you want to achieve, how can this or that site get you there?

–          How much time you are willing to invest? How much time you can afford to spend on social networking? An hour a day? A week? Social media is, after all, just that – social. Scott Stratten (1), a man with over 74,000 followers on Twitter says the amount of followers started to grow when he dedicated time and interacted with others. You have to maintain presence for social media to work.

–          Do your customers use social network at all? Most businesses have communities. Check them out. Are they talking about your kind of business? Maybe they do on a forum of another kind. It is a bit of a detective work, but you have to find out where your potential customers are.

–          If you had to pay for the service, would you still do it? How much are you willing to spend on this form of advertisement? Granted, joining is free, but maintaining it will cost you a lot of time.

–          Social media is a long term commitment. Having a page up then not updating it for months has a worse impact than not having one at all. It shows you don’t care, don’t follow through and maybe you are out of business. If it’s up there it should be maintained.

Thinking ahead about a strategy before embarking on this trip is important. Treating social media seriously, as part of an advertising campaign, is important as well. Those are the things that will yield results. Use the questions above to get organized and start thinking in the right direction.

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Google Aims to Save you Time

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Google Aims to Save you Time

The long tentacles of Google are everywhere these days – in a good way.

The company is thinking ahead and making life more comfortable, more connected, more immediate than ever before.

It is no longer just a search engine. Google Chrome is gaining in popularity among the web browsers. It had 10 million users at the end of 2008, 30 million at the end of 2009 and in mid-2010 already had 70 million active users. How is that for a growth spurt?

G-mail is popular, simple to use and basically works in a “cloud” – all your information is stored on servers, not on your home computer, accessible from anywhere at any time. It can store all your contacts, all your e mails; you don’t have to back up that information because it doesn’t matter if your computer crashes. The hardware became less important and the information is safe behind strong firewalls.

Google Docs  enables you to hare documents and collaborate with others on the same page, set appointments on Google calendar, and see what’s new with Google Reader and Google Reader Play.

Google Reader

Most of internet savvy people, and especially the young ones, have a few website they like to visit often to see what’s new. The sites can be blogs, professional sites, membership sites etc. Going to each website separately takes time, and then you might find that there was nothing of interest for you this day.

Google Reader comes to the rescue. A program which was launched in 2007, in now becoming very popular. Google reader is an aggregator of feeds and news from your favorite websites, all in one place. Once you go to the site and list your favorite websites, one click only will show you all the new stuff from all your favorite websites in one place, in a headline form.

If you are interested in the subject matter, another click will get you to the website for more in depth information. It saves time and effort and makes getting updates from the sites your anyway go to, much more concise.

Google Reader Play

Lately, Google introduced the Google Reader Play which presents the information in images with a big image at the top of the screen and the different items as thumb nails at the bottom. This is information aggregated from different web sources. You can click on the right and left arrows to scroll through the items or you can click on the thumbnail to enlarge them to the main screen.

The idea that the good stuff is mostly visual is behind this service. It adapts to your tastes as you click on the icons representing marked for later, like, and share. It is still in the experimental stage and can be accessed through Google Labs. This service doesn’t come to replace the Reader but to augment it. While the Reader gives you feeds from your chosen sites, Reader Play gives you information aggregated from sites all over the web.

This forwards thinking and development in many directions at once, is what make this company what it is today. A major player and developer. Where is Microsoft gone to? Google is overtaking them by leaps and bounds. Microsoft seems to be stuck in the browser and office arenas and coming up with new things that just complicate matters instead of making them simpler.

Visibility Marketing Trends for 2011

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As for Businesses and visibility, what can be predicted to be the trends for 2011?

Here are some thoughts:

Web Design – As the reliance on websites becomes widespread for small businesses, so does the competition. How to retain the visitors and make them go to other pages on your site has been a question may want an answer to. The trend for the upcoming year in websites, points to the fact that a basic page is not good enough anymore. Sites are expected to engage, entertain and interact with their visitors. The design process has become simpler and many sites are offering, for small amount of money, templates that and already set up, making them hipper, more fun to use and interactive.

Mobile Connectivity – Smart phones are gathering speed and offer possibilities that we never had before. Almost 50% of business owners already own smartphones. Mobile devices will change how we do business. They offer another platform for advertisement as well.

E Commerce – will continue to grow in popularity. A research done in the beginning of 2010 showed that only 30% of small business websites have e commerce capability.

Social Shopping – and interacting with customers is becoming increasingly important. More businesses will get into the social media plains. First hand recommendations in a saturated world are more important than ever.

Social Media – In the past year many business owners spread themselves thin over many social media platforms. The important thing is, and will remain to be, a consistent message and brand, with exposure to consumers.

Cloud Computing – In the beginning of 2010, a group of internet experts and mavens got together and announced that “we will all be leaving in the cloud by 2020”. It seems to be happening faster than they have predicated. Many business owners realized that cloud computing is very beneficial. It eliminates the need for an office and a desk. Everything can be accessed from mobile devices (laptops, tablets and smartphones). Having the ability to see everything that goes on, wherever you are anytime you choose to, is becoming a reality with cloud computing. It is the ultimate “virtual office”.

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