Google Instant Preview is a new feature following the September roll out of Google Instant which completes searches while they're being typed into Google's search field, with the goal of significantly reducing time spent searching.
But is the new feature really going to speed up the searcher's experience, or is it yet another complicated layer on what was once a simple and easy-to-understand search interface? Google's own research revealed that on average searchers using Google Instant Preview are 5% more likely to be satisfied with the search results they clíck after seeing a visual preview next to the organic listing.
Google Instant Preview essentially gives users the ability to see a website before they visit it. Google accomplishes this by taking a screenshot of every webpage in its index and giving users access to it via a magnifying glass icon that sits to the right of every search result.
When a user clicks on the magnifying glass icon, a screenshot of the webpage in question will appear to the right of the search result listing. It's an at-a-glance view of the website page without actually having to visit the webpage.
One of the key elements to Instant Previews though is that Google sometimes highlights a section of the page where the page description occurs. This becomes a useful feature when you're trying to find information on a specific person on a page that lists dozens or hundreds of people. Instead of having to scroll through the entire page to find the person, you can just look at the Instant Preview and see where they are on the page.
"We realized early on that this kind of experience would only make sense if it was lightning fast. Not long ago simply downloading an image could take 20 or 30 seconds, and even today many websites take four or five seconds to load," Raj Krishnan, Product Manager wrote in the Google Blog. "With Google Instant Preview, we match a search query with an index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customised to your search--usually in under one-tenth of a second."
SEO expert Peter Bowen at First One On says, "while Google Instant Preview is designed to speed up the searching process what it actually does is to speed up the decision-making process of choosing whether or not to clíck on the link by previewing the visual screenshot of the resulting webpage."
"Google currently provides a lot more data to help the searcher. At one tíme search engines just displayed the first two lines from a webpage under a search result, but now they include information like site links, date, cached content, jump to links and even Google Places."
Instant Previews can be helpful for many kinds of tasks. For example, say you looked at a page before and need to find it again - with a preview, you can tell if any of the results look familiar. Or perhaps you're looking for an official website - look for a logo and formal style and you'll probably be able to identify it. Or maybe you're looking for a how-to guide - it's easy to spot a page with clear illustrations and step-by-step instructions.
From an SEO perspective the big question is how will Google Instant Preview affect our understanding of traditional SEO, and what changes should we consider making to webpages so that they can be easily previewed in a tiny screenshot?
When a searcher performs a search and sees the search results page displayed, they do have a choice of whether or not to activate the Google Instant Preview feature by clicking on the magnifying glass icon.
"However, clicking on the magnifying glass icon is less of a commitment than clicking on a link, and you still need to convince the searcher that it is worth their time to preview a website" says Peter Bowen. "Therefore it becomes more important than ever to have a well defined and well written description of what the website page is about and it has to fit within the 150 character limit. So the Meta content description is what you will have to change and be aware of here."
As we already know, Flash is not SEO friendly because it cannot be read by search engines and is even worse for Instant Preview as it shows as a black rectangle and cannot be rendered. The same is true for video files that also display a black rectangle in the preview, so consideration of this is important too.
It should be pointed out that because the image size of the screenshot is so small, unless the text in headings is large enough, it will be impossible to read.
So what does all this mean? Well, we have to start thinking about the overall page layout and if it looks good at postage stamp size or if it is just a blur of text with no images to make it look appealing. This means creating pages that pay more attention to navigation, titles and headers, spacing, colors and objects, such as call-to-action buttons. Having a good looking page with relevant titles now may count as much as the content on the page itself.
It is likely that we will begin to see a lot more webpages with well defined graphics and other visual aids designed to get a searcher's attention. This makes SEO even more important than ever, make sure that your images are named with keywords and their filenames and alt text are descriptive and accurate.
Google Instant Preview is here to stay and designed to make the search selection process easier and according to Google faster, but in the end, good SEO practices are what is going make the difference of whether or not you get discovered on the search engine results pages.
About The Author
Peter Bowen is a seasoned SEO Marketing specialist who has been involved with the internet since 1994 when he won the Entrepreneur of the Year award for developing an online internet shopping mall. He has developed software for learning and now concentrates his efforts on helping others to understand and market their products and services through effective search marketing strategies. First One On helps clients through the maze of SEO to get top rankings for their clients.
Friday, 26 November 2010
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Meta Title Tags are Gold
How to write compelling page titles
From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important, these are the words that describe what your page is about and it is the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.
The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result -so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searchers criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page will open.
It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.
Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let us explain how to write an effective and powerful title.
First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and hence spread your reach across search engine indexes.
The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword "Family Solicitors", then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.
It is important to remember that as the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, we need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is "About Website Design Company - ECommerce Partners". Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of "About Us - ECommerce Partners", we added "About Website Design Company - ECommerce Partners".
The reason is because "Website Design Company" is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced "About Us" with "About Website Design Company". This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.
Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to our clients.
The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.
Writing Title Tags
Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.
General Suggestion: you cannot promote all of the keywords in one page, normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The 'Title tag' should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page contents. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.
Title Keywords
Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters including spaces or less. There's no reason to cut off the last word and have it replaced with a "..." Note that the search engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.
Use a divider when splitting up the keywords, we generally recommend the use the "|" symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow ">" or hyphen "-" and both work well.
The H1 heading tag
Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they're reasonably certain fits their intended search query.
Article by Peter Bowen - Internet Search Marketing Expert
www.firstoneon.com
Killerwebs Bradford Web Design Studio
From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important, these are the words that describe what your page is about and it is the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.
The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result -so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searchers criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page will open.
It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.
Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let us explain how to write an effective and powerful title.
First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and hence spread your reach across search engine indexes.
The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword "Family Solicitors", then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.
It is important to remember that as the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, we need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is "About Website Design Company - ECommerce Partners". Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of "About Us - ECommerce Partners", we added "About Website Design Company - ECommerce Partners".
The reason is because "Website Design Company" is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced "About Us" with "About Website Design Company". This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.
Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to our clients.
The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.
Writing Title Tags
Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.
General Suggestion: you cannot promote all of the keywords in one page, normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The 'Title tag' should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page contents. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.
Title Keywords
Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters including spaces or less. There's no reason to cut off the last word and have it replaced with a "..." Note that the search engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.
Use a divider when splitting up the keywords, we generally recommend the use the "|" symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow ">" or hyphen "-" and both work well.
The H1 heading tag
Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they're reasonably certain fits their intended search query.
Article by Peter Bowen - Internet Search Marketing Expert
www.firstoneon.com
Killerwebs Bradford Web Design Studio
Google Place Search Changes
How Local Searches are Displayed
Google Local and Map have become a big influence on how people search and get results. We can demonstrate this by searching for 'accountant' and the search result returns a broad list of 'accountants', but perhaps too broad so we tend to search again by narrowing the result - adding a location to the search - 'accountant in city' and the results we see are now closer to home.
So it's no surprise that Google should be taking a closer look at how we search and attempt to refine the process and provide a more meaningful search result by changing the Google Local search algorithm to make it easier for us to find what or who we are searching for locally.
Today, November 8, 2010 we see searches that reference local business and all the relevant places in that location in a new clustered visual display located in the upper right corner of a search result page. The now familiar map displays each business with red lettered pins, and links to each business. And as you scroll down the page the Google Places Map will scroll with the page so that it is always visible.
In addition to the way we see businesses displayed on Google Places, a new product is being launched - Google Boost.
Google Boost is a Google AdWords product that allows local businesses to feature more prominently in local searches. It allows small to medium size businesses the ability to feature more highly in searches, and concentrates much more on the relevance and location of that business than ever before. Now searchers will see sponsored location searches appear on the Google Places map as blue lettered pins and in search results with the blue marker pin next to the content description.
Search results for the 'accountant in city' will now appear first below sponsored listings and above organic listings. What this means is that results for a business in a location will now appear grouped with the other search results, making it much easier for searchers to find what they are looking for in a local area.
Google reports that Place Search results will begin appearing automatically when Google determines that you are looking for a 'business in location' search result.
Google also says "We've made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Google Place Search, we're dynamically connecting hundreds of millíons of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don't provide addresses and use different names."
Google Places is being rolled out across the world and will be available everywhere, in 40 languages once complete. Google is hoping to provide a better, local search to users, while exploiting a different revenue stream. It's also competing with Facebook Places which was launched a while ago. Facebook was able to use very targeted advertising to provide a similar service to its users.
Google should have the advantage here though, as most Facebook advertising is passive, appearing alongside the primary content. Google's Place Search is active and should have the advantage when it comes to conversion.
Location-based services are seen as a growing market, with Facebook Places and location aware services like Foursquare enjoying significant growth since their inception. Placing Google Place Search alongside search results, Google can hedge its bets while not detracting from its standard offering.
From an SEO perspective Peter Bowen at First One On says, "One of the downsides to this new display of results is how it will affect businesses that previously enjoyed number one placements for 'business in location' or featured well alongside the old Google Map."
"Now with the introduction of Google Place Search in results it is quite possible that businesses that had worked hard to get top placements on page one now find themselves listed on page two! Other businesses that did not even have a listing on the old Google Map are now being brought to the top of the search results based on the location of their business and business listing in Google Places."
What this means is that in the long run it will be more difficult for businesses to rank at the top of a local search unless they realize that they will have to spend much more time and effort on local search engine optimisation. Businesses that had previously enjoyed a prominent position on the old Google Map without a website, which was possible before, will now find it almost impossible to maintain a listing without a well developed and locally optimised website.
Businesses will now have to have a visible and physical location if they want to be listed in a local search. In the past, businesses could hide their physical location and yet still be found locally through their websites, but now consumers searching for a business in a location will be able to determine if they contact that business or not based on their location. So as Google exposes competitors in searches, it is now revealing where those businesses are located - hopefully providing the consumer with more information before making a purchase decision.
Aticle written by Peter Bowen - Internet Search Marketing Expert
www.firstoneon.com
Killerwebs Web Design Studio Bradford
Google Local and Map have become a big influence on how people search and get results. We can demonstrate this by searching for 'accountant' and the search result returns a broad list of 'accountants', but perhaps too broad so we tend to search again by narrowing the result - adding a location to the search - 'accountant in city' and the results we see are now closer to home.
So it's no surprise that Google should be taking a closer look at how we search and attempt to refine the process and provide a more meaningful search result by changing the Google Local search algorithm to make it easier for us to find what or who we are searching for locally.
Today, November 8, 2010 we see searches that reference local business and all the relevant places in that location in a new clustered visual display located in the upper right corner of a search result page. The now familiar map displays each business with red lettered pins, and links to each business. And as you scroll down the page the Google Places Map will scroll with the page so that it is always visible.
In addition to the way we see businesses displayed on Google Places, a new product is being launched - Google Boost.
Google Boost is a Google AdWords product that allows local businesses to feature more prominently in local searches. It allows small to medium size businesses the ability to feature more highly in searches, and concentrates much more on the relevance and location of that business than ever before. Now searchers will see sponsored location searches appear on the Google Places map as blue lettered pins and in search results with the blue marker pin next to the content description.
Search results for the 'accountant in city' will now appear first below sponsored listings and above organic listings. What this means is that results for a business in a location will now appear grouped with the other search results, making it much easier for searchers to find what they are looking for in a local area.
Google reports that Place Search results will begin appearing automatically when Google determines that you are looking for a 'business in location' search result.
Google also says "We've made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Google Place Search, we're dynamically connecting hundreds of millíons of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don't provide addresses and use different names."
Google Places is being rolled out across the world and will be available everywhere, in 40 languages once complete. Google is hoping to provide a better, local search to users, while exploiting a different revenue stream. It's also competing with Facebook Places which was launched a while ago. Facebook was able to use very targeted advertising to provide a similar service to its users.
Google should have the advantage here though, as most Facebook advertising is passive, appearing alongside the primary content. Google's Place Search is active and should have the advantage when it comes to conversion.
Location-based services are seen as a growing market, with Facebook Places and location aware services like Foursquare enjoying significant growth since their inception. Placing Google Place Search alongside search results, Google can hedge its bets while not detracting from its standard offering.
From an SEO perspective Peter Bowen at First One On says, "One of the downsides to this new display of results is how it will affect businesses that previously enjoyed number one placements for 'business in location' or featured well alongside the old Google Map."
"Now with the introduction of Google Place Search in results it is quite possible that businesses that had worked hard to get top placements on page one now find themselves listed on page two! Other businesses that did not even have a listing on the old Google Map are now being brought to the top of the search results based on the location of their business and business listing in Google Places."
What this means is that in the long run it will be more difficult for businesses to rank at the top of a local search unless they realize that they will have to spend much more time and effort on local search engine optimisation. Businesses that had previously enjoyed a prominent position on the old Google Map without a website, which was possible before, will now find it almost impossible to maintain a listing without a well developed and locally optimised website.
Businesses will now have to have a visible and physical location if they want to be listed in a local search. In the past, businesses could hide their physical location and yet still be found locally through their websites, but now consumers searching for a business in a location will be able to determine if they contact that business or not based on their location. So as Google exposes competitors in searches, it is now revealing where those businesses are located - hopefully providing the consumer with more information before making a purchase decision.
Aticle written by Peter Bowen - Internet Search Marketing Expert
www.firstoneon.com
Killerwebs Web Design Studio Bradford
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
15 Reasons Google TV Will Make a Huge Impact on the Web
Google TV may have a much bigger impact on the web than a lot of people realize at this point. Here are a few reasons why I think this to be the case.
1. Google TV is Huge for Local Business
Google is good at geo-targeting advertising. People turn to Google more and more to look up local business info. Google is placing search at arguably the best place to reach a person in their home - the TV. Connect the dots.
2. Google TV is Huge for E-Commerce
Google TV puts the entire web at the fingertips of TV watchers all the time. Mobile does the same, but now the web is even more front and center in the viewer's attention. Anytime a user sees a commercial for some item or hears something mentioned in a TV show, they can easily flip over to the web, find it and buy it without leaving their couch. Even if their phone is charging in the other room, they have immediate access.
3. Google TV is Huge for Online Video
Google TV will make it so much easier for TV viewers to flip channels outside of what their cable/satellite provider offers. Nothing on TV? Oh well, there are billions of things to watch online. Google TV even goes out of its way to make YouTube a more convenient destination for watching video, and the options certainly aren't limited to YouTube. One could even envision TV stations coming out with their own paid apps (not unlike newspapers and magazines are currently doing for the iPad).
4. Google TV is Huge for Piracy
One side effect of this is that watching pirated content will be easier and more enticing than ever. This is essentially for the same reasons mentioned above. Those who engage in this activity will be even more tempted from their TVs.
5. Google TV is Huge for Internet Radio
Everybody loves Internet radio. Sites like Pandora, Last.fm, Grooveshark, etc. let users listen to music they are really interested in hearing, rather than being subjected to the same old stuff the traditional radio stations throw at them over and over again (with commercials). Internet radio on the TV is just another hub to tap into these outlets, and likely a better one than the phone in terms of quality. Your TV is probably hooked up with better speakers.
6. Google TV is Huge for Android
The more Google TV catches on, the more people are likely to flock to Android as their mobile OS of choice. People are going to want devices that have as much integration with one another as possible. Plus, Android apps will work on Google TV. It will be easy to use the same apps between devices if both of the devices are running the same OS.
7. Google TV is Huge for Google Search
Google doesn't need a lot of help in getting search market share at this point, but Bing is doing everything in its power to creep up. Combined with various mobile apps and social media, people sometimes find less reasons to turn to Google for info. Google TV puts Google search a click away on the most important screen in the user's home.
8. Google TV is Huge for Facebook, Twitter, and Possibly "Google Me"
People are spending a lot of time using social media these days, whether its sharing content, talking to friends, sharing status updates or whatever. They're doing it while they watch TV. They're talking about things that are on TV. If they're not, TV is probably taking up a separate amount of time in their lives, and Google TV will bring it all together.
I'm guessing many Google TV users will be Facebooking and tweeting from their TVs frequently. In fact, this could have pretty big implications for Google's own "Google Me" social layers. How many ways will Google let users socialize from Google TV? Besides offering the entire web, they can pretty much do anything they want with the interface. This could be a big opportunity for Google to push use of its own social features.
9. Google TV is Huge for News
People like to watch the news on TV. However, having the web on the TV provides instant access to a much greater selection of news sources, which means people will get more personalized news programming tailored to their specific interests. Remember what Google did for print news? Feel free to try out videos.webpronews.com from the TV.
10. Google TV is Huge for Gaming
Once again, this is simply a product of the entire web being on TV. This means web games, which are becoming increasingly popular (Farmville anyone)? Google itself has made various gaming-related acquisitions, and will likely continue to do so. They also have the Chrome Web Store for web apps. Suddenly there are a lot more options than what the traditional consoles have to offer. As the web on TV becomes more of the norm, online games will only increase in quality. And of course three is the "free" factor.
11. Google TV is Huge for Communication
The TV may become a primary platform for communication, whether its through Skype, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or other video chat options. People are going to keep in touch with one another without having to get out of their recliners.
12. Google TV is Huge for Chrome
Chrome is doing pretty well these days. It's got a long way to go before it achieves IE-like status, in terms of usage, but guess what browser comes with Google TV. Not only will it increase Chrome usage by default, it will get non-Chrome users accustomed to Chrome, and may in turn get them using Chrome from their computers.
13. Google TV is Huge for Online Advertising
Needless to say, Google TV will instantly put online ads in front of more eyeballs more frequently.
14. Google TV is Huge for Application Development
Smartphones have done quite a bit for application development haven't they? I wonder how many more people have TVs than smartphones. This will be huge for not only Android developers, but for developers of web apps.
15. Google TV is Huge for the Web period.
Google TV can really only help anything that is web-based for the simple fact that the web is on the TV. I realize this is not exclusive to Google TV, but Google TV, in my opinion, has the best shot at gaining real mass adoption, compared to any of its competitors. The DISH Network partnership won't hurt either.
The biggest obstacle that could potentially impede all of this is if Google TV flops. Given all it's got going for it, I don't think it will though. Google was smart to take the Netflix approach in providing a platform, as opposed to a device (like competitors). Netflix uses the model of offering its service on more and more devices. This is essentially Google's approach, and I would expect Google TV to launch for new devices much more frequently. One good thing for Netflix is that this means more Netflix-ready devices. This strategy will also allow Google to get the product in front of a wide range of audiences and price ranges.
Remember, you can't judge the offering entirely from the initial product availability. That will grow - maybe even to a device you already own. Upon Google TV's announcement, Sony CEO Howard Stringer was asked if consumers could expect Google TV integration with Sony Playstation. He said Sony was working with Google on one product at a time. Judging from the looks exchanged between Stringer and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it certainly didn't seem like the idea was ruled out.
Google is also smart to support not only Android, but iPhone as well, in terms of remote control use. This could be huge in gaining support even from Apple users.
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1. Google TV is Huge for Local Business
Google is good at geo-targeting advertising. People turn to Google more and more to look up local business info. Google is placing search at arguably the best place to reach a person in their home - the TV. Connect the dots.
2. Google TV is Huge for E-Commerce
Google TV puts the entire web at the fingertips of TV watchers all the time. Mobile does the same, but now the web is even more front and center in the viewer's attention. Anytime a user sees a commercial for some item or hears something mentioned in a TV show, they can easily flip over to the web, find it and buy it without leaving their couch. Even if their phone is charging in the other room, they have immediate access.
3. Google TV is Huge for Online Video
Google TV will make it so much easier for TV viewers to flip channels outside of what their cable/satellite provider offers. Nothing on TV? Oh well, there are billions of things to watch online. Google TV even goes out of its way to make YouTube a more convenient destination for watching video, and the options certainly aren't limited to YouTube. One could even envision TV stations coming out with their own paid apps (not unlike newspapers and magazines are currently doing for the iPad).
4. Google TV is Huge for Piracy
One side effect of this is that watching pirated content will be easier and more enticing than ever. This is essentially for the same reasons mentioned above. Those who engage in this activity will be even more tempted from their TVs.
5. Google TV is Huge for Internet Radio
Everybody loves Internet radio. Sites like Pandora, Last.fm, Grooveshark, etc. let users listen to music they are really interested in hearing, rather than being subjected to the same old stuff the traditional radio stations throw at them over and over again (with commercials). Internet radio on the TV is just another hub to tap into these outlets, and likely a better one than the phone in terms of quality. Your TV is probably hooked up with better speakers.
6. Google TV is Huge for Android
The more Google TV catches on, the more people are likely to flock to Android as their mobile OS of choice. People are going to want devices that have as much integration with one another as possible. Plus, Android apps will work on Google TV. It will be easy to use the same apps between devices if both of the devices are running the same OS.
7. Google TV is Huge for Google Search
Google doesn't need a lot of help in getting search market share at this point, but Bing is doing everything in its power to creep up. Combined with various mobile apps and social media, people sometimes find less reasons to turn to Google for info. Google TV puts Google search a click away on the most important screen in the user's home.
8. Google TV is Huge for Facebook, Twitter, and Possibly "Google Me"
People are spending a lot of time using social media these days, whether its sharing content, talking to friends, sharing status updates or whatever. They're doing it while they watch TV. They're talking about things that are on TV. If they're not, TV is probably taking up a separate amount of time in their lives, and Google TV will bring it all together.
I'm guessing many Google TV users will be Facebooking and tweeting from their TVs frequently. In fact, this could have pretty big implications for Google's own "Google Me" social layers. How many ways will Google let users socialize from Google TV? Besides offering the entire web, they can pretty much do anything they want with the interface. This could be a big opportunity for Google to push use of its own social features.
9. Google TV is Huge for News
People like to watch the news on TV. However, having the web on the TV provides instant access to a much greater selection of news sources, which means people will get more personalized news programming tailored to their specific interests. Remember what Google did for print news? Feel free to try out videos.webpronews.com from the TV.
10. Google TV is Huge for Gaming
Once again, this is simply a product of the entire web being on TV. This means web games, which are becoming increasingly popular (Farmville anyone)? Google itself has made various gaming-related acquisitions, and will likely continue to do so. They also have the Chrome Web Store for web apps. Suddenly there are a lot more options than what the traditional consoles have to offer. As the web on TV becomes more of the norm, online games will only increase in quality. And of course three is the "free" factor.
11. Google TV is Huge for Communication
The TV may become a primary platform for communication, whether its through Skype, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or other video chat options. People are going to keep in touch with one another without having to get out of their recliners.
12. Google TV is Huge for Chrome
Chrome is doing pretty well these days. It's got a long way to go before it achieves IE-like status, in terms of usage, but guess what browser comes with Google TV. Not only will it increase Chrome usage by default, it will get non-Chrome users accustomed to Chrome, and may in turn get them using Chrome from their computers.
13. Google TV is Huge for Online Advertising
Needless to say, Google TV will instantly put online ads in front of more eyeballs more frequently.
14. Google TV is Huge for Application Development
Smartphones have done quite a bit for application development haven't they? I wonder how many more people have TVs than smartphones. This will be huge for not only Android developers, but for developers of web apps.
15. Google TV is Huge for the Web period.
Google TV can really only help anything that is web-based for the simple fact that the web is on the TV. I realize this is not exclusive to Google TV, but Google TV, in my opinion, has the best shot at gaining real mass adoption, compared to any of its competitors. The DISH Network partnership won't hurt either.
The biggest obstacle that could potentially impede all of this is if Google TV flops. Given all it's got going for it, I don't think it will though. Google was smart to take the Netflix approach in providing a platform, as opposed to a device (like competitors). Netflix uses the model of offering its service on more and more devices. This is essentially Google's approach, and I would expect Google TV to launch for new devices much more frequently. One good thing for Netflix is that this means more Netflix-ready devices. This strategy will also allow Google to get the product in front of a wide range of audiences and price ranges.
Remember, you can't judge the offering entirely from the initial product availability. That will grow - maybe even to a device you already own. Upon Google TV's announcement, Sony CEO Howard Stringer was asked if consumers could expect Google TV integration with Sony Playstation. He said Sony was working with Google on one product at a time. Judging from the looks exchanged between Stringer and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it certainly didn't seem like the idea was ruled out.
Google is also smart to support not only Android, but iPhone as well, in terms of remote control use. This could be huge in gaining support even from Apple users.
Killerwebs Web Design Studio
Web Design
Logo Design
CMS
SEO
Monday, 4 October 2010
Friday, 10 September 2010
New Website Project Global Medicals Bradford Limited
Global Medicals Bradford Limited - We are a large well established and trusted medico legal reporting agency in the uk. We are committed as a medico legal agency to provide independent medico legal evidence to facilitate the Courts for the settlement of personal injury claims and medical negligence etc. We are delighted to announce that we have recently secured a number of new contracts which is good news for all concerned.
We believe in evidence based reports and excellent communication skills for furnishing medico legal reports for our valued clients at competitive rates.
We have a large database of medical experts who are trained and experienced in conducting medico legal examination and providing independent medical evidence. We also coordinate and provide opportunities to our valued experts for medico legal training as we believe in high quality medical evidence as directed by the local Courts.
We also believe in self-audit and research and modify our business to provide state-of-the-art services at all times.
The main benefits of using our services are:
- Appointments arranged within 4 working days.
- Medical reports emailed within 4 days after examinations
- Over 600 clinics throughout the Uk
- Over 500 experts on our panel Global Medicals has built its reputation over the past few years and we now work with some of the Uk's largest law firms, insurance companies and accident management companies.
Medical Legal Reports
We believe in evidence based reports and excellent communication skills for furnishing medico legal reports for our valued clients at competitive rates.
We have a large database of medical experts who are trained and experienced in conducting medico legal examination and providing independent medical evidence. We also coordinate and provide opportunities to our valued experts for medico legal training as we believe in high quality medical evidence as directed by the local Courts.
We also believe in self-audit and research and modify our business to provide state-of-the-art services at all times.
The main benefits of using our services are:
- Appointments arranged within 4 working days.
- Medical reports emailed within 4 days after examinations
- Over 600 clinics throughout the Uk
- Over 500 experts on our panel Global Medicals has built its reputation over the past few years and we now work with some of the Uk's largest law firms, insurance companies and accident management companies.
Medical Legal Reports
Thursday, 24 June 2010
5 Easy SEO Tips
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an integral component in increasing your website's visibility in search engines and directories. Here are five easy tips I've compiled to help you improve your SEO.
1.) CONTENT - This may be the most important factor in successful search engine optimization. The content of your website should include a high density of your keywords without sounding too redundant. (You can also strategically place your keywords in image tags.) Take the time to do keyword research, identify the most relevant keywords for your site, and implement them into your content. This establishes high relevancy and will help you get a higher ranking in search engines. Fresh content, new content added regularly, is also very desirable to search engines, so update your site often.
2.) META TAGS - It is extremely vital to optimize your meta tags. Meta tags are located toward the top of your page's code. You want to make sure your title tag contains main keywords and is present within the content of your page. Your keyword meta tag should contain the keywords you found in your research that you implemented into your page content. Your description meta tag should be keyword rich as well, and it's not a bad idea to take the description directly from the page content if possible. All of this also establishes high relevancy and assists in search engine rankings
3.) LINK BUILDING - Linking to relevant, complimentary websites that share similar keywords with your site and have a decent PR (page rank) is a great way to boost your own PR. You can achieve this by building relevant inbound (backlinks) and outbound links. It is crucial that you ensure the quality of both the sites that link to you and the sites you link to, as search engines can actually penalize you for having irrelevant, low quality links. There are a few free link exchange websites you can join. Avoid paid/automated link exchange programs because search engines can penalize you for using them, as well. Only join FREE MANUAL link exchanges, and be sure to trade quality, relevant links. This helps increase your site's search engine visibility.
4.) SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION - Submit your website to the most popular search engines in order to get indexed. It is true that searchbots (search engine robots) can find and index websites on their own (if they are properly optimized for relevancy), but it doesn't hurt to manually submit your site instead of waiting for it to be found.
5.) DIRECTORY SUBMISSION - Choose as many relevant and popular directories as you can find to submit your URL to. Some directories have hundreds of categories to choose from, and others are more specific to certain categories and industries. For example, if you have a web design site, you can submit it to some of the larger, multi-categorical directories like Yahoo!, and also to directories that are solely for web design and web development. All of this will help increase your site's visibility, bolster your web presence, and boost your page rank.
Bradford Web Design by Killerwebs
1.) CONTENT - This may be the most important factor in successful search engine optimization. The content of your website should include a high density of your keywords without sounding too redundant. (You can also strategically place your keywords in image tags.) Take the time to do keyword research, identify the most relevant keywords for your site, and implement them into your content. This establishes high relevancy and will help you get a higher ranking in search engines. Fresh content, new content added regularly, is also very desirable to search engines, so update your site often.
2.) META TAGS - It is extremely vital to optimize your meta tags. Meta tags are located toward the top of your page's code. You want to make sure your title tag contains main keywords and is present within the content of your page. Your keyword meta tag should contain the keywords you found in your research that you implemented into your page content. Your description meta tag should be keyword rich as well, and it's not a bad idea to take the description directly from the page content if possible. All of this also establishes high relevancy and assists in search engine rankings
3.) LINK BUILDING - Linking to relevant, complimentary websites that share similar keywords with your site and have a decent PR (page rank) is a great way to boost your own PR. You can achieve this by building relevant inbound (backlinks) and outbound links. It is crucial that you ensure the quality of both the sites that link to you and the sites you link to, as search engines can actually penalize you for having irrelevant, low quality links. There are a few free link exchange websites you can join. Avoid paid/automated link exchange programs because search engines can penalize you for using them, as well. Only join FREE MANUAL link exchanges, and be sure to trade quality, relevant links. This helps increase your site's search engine visibility.
4.) SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION - Submit your website to the most popular search engines in order to get indexed. It is true that searchbots (search engine robots) can find and index websites on their own (if they are properly optimized for relevancy), but it doesn't hurt to manually submit your site instead of waiting for it to be found.
5.) DIRECTORY SUBMISSION - Choose as many relevant and popular directories as you can find to submit your URL to. Some directories have hundreds of categories to choose from, and others are more specific to certain categories and industries. For example, if you have a web design site, you can submit it to some of the larger, multi-categorical directories like Yahoo!, and also to directories that are solely for web design and web development. All of this will help increase your site's visibility, bolster your web presence, and boost your page rank.
Bradford Web Design by Killerwebs
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Killerwebs Web Design Studio - SEO
Killerseo by Killerwebs
Killerwebs presently look after the SEO (search engine optimisation) for a large number of clients.
From Social Networking to Link building
Why choose Killerseo?
Please test our seo service type into your Google search box 'Bradford Removals' hit return.
DSD Removals & Storage www.dsdremovalsltd.com - will appear on the first page of Google
Have another go, type into your Google search box 'Bradford Plasterers' and hit return.
Heaton Bros Builders and Plasterers www.heatonbros.com - will also appear there on the first page.
These are just two of many happy customers, Killerwebs offer many seo packages to suit your budget from as little as £5.00 per week.
Ask KIllerwebs about your options and put your site where it deserves to be
Call now on 07708 862879 or vist us at Bradford Web Designs
Killerwebs presently look after the SEO (search engine optimisation) for a large number of clients.
From Social Networking to Link building
Why choose Killerseo?
Please test our seo service type into your Google search box 'Bradford Removals' hit return.
DSD Removals & Storage www.dsdremovalsltd.com - will appear on the first page of Google
Have another go, type into your Google search box 'Bradford Plasterers' and hit return.
Heaton Bros Builders and Plasterers www.heatonbros.com - will also appear there on the first page.
These are just two of many happy customers, Killerwebs offer many seo packages to suit your budget from as little as £5.00 per week.
Ask KIllerwebs about your options and put your site where it deserves to be
Call now on 07708 862879 or vist us at Bradford Web Designs
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Heaton Bros Builders & Plasterers of Bradford
Killerwebs Web Design Studio are proud to annouce the launch of their latest project.
Heaton Bros Builders & Plasterers are a well established family run business based in Bradford, West Yorkshire with over 20 years experience in the building & Plastering trade, during which time they have gained an excellent reputation across West Yorkshire and even further afield for an uncompromising approach to their building & plastering work.
Services:
•Home Extensions
•Plastering
•House Renovations
•Loft Conversions
•Fitted Kitchens
•Bathrooms
For more information please visit Bradford Builders
Customer comments " Excellent job" Heaton Bros were very pleased with their new website and very pleased that within days reached the first page of Google and Yahoo for their selected keywords.
Heaton Bros Website designed and created by Killerwebs Web Design Studio
Heaton Bros Builders & Plasterers are a well established family run business based in Bradford, West Yorkshire with over 20 years experience in the building & Plastering trade, during which time they have gained an excellent reputation across West Yorkshire and even further afield for an uncompromising approach to their building & plastering work.
Services:
•Home Extensions
•Plastering
•House Renovations
•Loft Conversions
•Fitted Kitchens
•Bathrooms
For more information please visit Bradford Builders
Customer comments " Excellent job" Heaton Bros were very pleased with their new website and very pleased that within days reached the first page of Google and Yahoo for their selected keywords.
Heaton Bros Website designed and created by Killerwebs Web Design Studio
Monday, 31 May 2010
Killerwebs Web Design Studio - Bradford
Killerwebs a web design studio based in Bradford West Yorkshire with many years experience in Web Design, Logo Design, content management systems and Search engine optimisation (SEO).
Check us out at http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk
Killerwebs have designed and created many websites from as little as £50.00, below are some of the most recent:
http://www.a2z-freight.com
http://www.dsdremovalsltd.com
http://www.kinkiz.110mb.com
http://www.acreroofing.110mb.com
http://www.bradfordremovals.com
http://www.hv-transport.com
http://moneymattersadvice.blogspot.com
http://www.bradford-pc-repairs.co.uk
http://www.heatonbros.com
To see our full Web Design Portfolio, please click here
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
Killerwebs are currently providing SEO services for
http://www.speednetuk.com
http://www.aztekintl.com
http://www.pdbannister.co.uk
Plus many more.
Our website packages start from as little as £50.00, check out our full range of packages here.
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/services
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully visit our site, you can also follow us on twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Or Facebook
http://www.facebook.com
Check us out at http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk
Killerwebs have designed and created many websites from as little as £50.00, below are some of the most recent:
http://www.a2z-freight.com
http://www.dsdremovalsltd.com
http://www.kinkiz.110mb.com
http://www.acreroofing.110mb.com
http://www.bradfordremovals.com
http://www.hv-transport.com
http://moneymattersadvice.blogspot.com
http://www.bradford-pc-repairs.co.uk
http://www.heatonbros.com
To see our full Web Design Portfolio, please click here
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
Killerwebs are currently providing SEO services for
http://www.speednetuk.com
http://www.aztekintl.com
http://www.pdbannister.co.uk
Plus many more.
Our website packages start from as little as £50.00, check out our full range of packages here.
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/services
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully visit our site, you can also follow us on twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Or Facebook
http://www.facebook.com
Thursday, 20 May 2010
10 Tips for Building a Successful Website
Do you have a strong desire to build a website, yet don't have a clue where to begin? That was me six years ago. Like you, I desperately wanted to be part of the online community and stake my claim on the world wide web.
What have I learned in six years? A lot! It has changed my life and can change yours too. Here are some valuable tips I learned from some of my biggest mistakes building a website and working online.
Let's Get Started.
Have you ever been to a website and been totally confused about what it is they actually offer or do? I know I have. I get frustrated with websites like these and quickly start my search again for a website that focuses on the information I am after.
Tip #1 - Find a niche market for your website. Don't try to be a website for everything. If your website is about recipes, make it about recipes and products that compliment your theme. Don't throw in insurance quotes, apartment searches and etc.
Tip #2 - Stay away from wallpaper and dark background colors. Do you want visitors to see your services or your wallpaper? My guess is the reason you have a website is to promote a product or service, so make that the focus. Busy wallpaper distracts from the services and products you are trying to promote.
Dark background colors make reading web copy much harder and can be a bit overwhelming to most people's sense of calm and well being. When in doubt, do as other successful online businesses do. Notice no wallpaper or dark background colors on Microsoft, eBay and etc. It's okay to add a splash of color to your website, just not the whole page.
Tip #3 - Avoid using flash introductory pages. Sure they look nice and can be quite entertaining, but what do they really do for your website? In my opinion, frustrate your visitors. In today's fast paced society we want the facts and information quickly. Remember, there are still plenty of dial-up users who will become frustrated waiting for your flash page to load and will move on to your competitor's website.
Tip #4 - Turn your speakers down for this one. Nothing scares a visitor off more quickly than entering a website and being blasted with music. Avoid using music on your website. It just isn't professional, unless of course, you are in the music industry and your website is about music.
Tip #5 - Focus your web copy for your customer. They are looking for "What's In It For Me?" Take time to write good web copy or pay someone who can.
Example of What Not to Do: Welcome to our website. We are excited you have found us. Notice in this example, all the words really focus on the company: our, we, us. Nothing is really about the benefits for customers.
Example of What to Do: Are you frustrated with website builders that don't deliver? You need a professional website with state-of-the-art ecommerce solutions and you need it now. Doesn't this sound a lot more exciting and interesting? Notice the "you" in this text. It is about the customer and fulfilling a need.
An excellent book and learning tool for writing good web copy is, "Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank," by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Lisa T. Davis. I highly recommend it and can say from experience, it is well worth the investment. You can find it easily online at Amazon.com.
Tip #6 - To bold or not to bold...that is the question? Bolding text can be a valuable tool for drawing attention to a product or service. If you bold each and every word in your paragraph, guess what? Nothing stands out. Use it sparingly to get your message across. Also, the same is true for using italics. Use it in moderation to highlight keywords of interest.
Tip #7 - Easy navigation. Can your visitors easily find what they are looking for or is there some secret passage they have to discover to get there? One way to determine how easy your website is to navigate is to send a friend to your website and ask them to find a particular product or service. Guess what? If they can't find it, neither can your potential customers. Keep your website clean and easy to navigate. A cluttered site will result in poor sales. Visitors become frustrated when they cannot quickly find what they are looking for on a website.
Tip #8 - How can your visitors contact you? I have browsed websites where there is absolutely no way to contact the owner and I am amazed at why anyone would do this. What this tells me is there is "no" and I repeat, "NO" customer service so why would I want to do business with them? The trust factor on the web is totally different than the trust factor of doing business locally. At a minimum, you should provide a contact form or email. It's even better to provide a contact phone number.
Note: Respond in a timely manner to requests. Generally within 24 hours is best. Anything beyond that and people get hesitant about the legitimacy of your business and service. They want to know there is a live, eager person tending the store. Not one who checks in every few days or weeks.
Tip #9 - Dead End - No Outlet - Site Not Found! By this I mean, are your customers finding those links to nowhere on your website? Sometimes it can't be helped, however, check your website often for dead links, keep it updated and the content fresh. Finding a bunch of dead links on a website will send a very clear message to your visitors. No one is tending the store. Not much happening here! This is a sure way to quickly devalue your website.
Tip #10 - Should you link up? Yes! Quality link exchanges do work. Exchange links with websites that compliment the demographics of your website. If your website is about recipes, linking with other recipe sites, cooking sites and such are a good move. Linking to real estate websites, for example, would not be a good linking strategy. It is also best to categorize your link partners for your visitors: Italian Recipes, Mexican Recipes and etc. And, when possible, house your link pages on your own domain, not with a free linking service.
In closing, I am sure you are reading this article because you want a professional website. If you have programming skills and can write your own code, great! If not, there are many affordable, quality online website builders available. Avoid using the free website builder services. It's that old saying, "You Get What You Pay For," and it certainly is true in this case.
Bradford Web Designs by Killerwebs
What have I learned in six years? A lot! It has changed my life and can change yours too. Here are some valuable tips I learned from some of my biggest mistakes building a website and working online.
Let's Get Started.
Have you ever been to a website and been totally confused about what it is they actually offer or do? I know I have. I get frustrated with websites like these and quickly start my search again for a website that focuses on the information I am after.
Tip #1 - Find a niche market for your website. Don't try to be a website for everything. If your website is about recipes, make it about recipes and products that compliment your theme. Don't throw in insurance quotes, apartment searches and etc.
Tip #2 - Stay away from wallpaper and dark background colors. Do you want visitors to see your services or your wallpaper? My guess is the reason you have a website is to promote a product or service, so make that the focus. Busy wallpaper distracts from the services and products you are trying to promote.
Dark background colors make reading web copy much harder and can be a bit overwhelming to most people's sense of calm and well being. When in doubt, do as other successful online businesses do. Notice no wallpaper or dark background colors on Microsoft, eBay and etc. It's okay to add a splash of color to your website, just not the whole page.
Tip #3 - Avoid using flash introductory pages. Sure they look nice and can be quite entertaining, but what do they really do for your website? In my opinion, frustrate your visitors. In today's fast paced society we want the facts and information quickly. Remember, there are still plenty of dial-up users who will become frustrated waiting for your flash page to load and will move on to your competitor's website.
Tip #4 - Turn your speakers down for this one. Nothing scares a visitor off more quickly than entering a website and being blasted with music. Avoid using music on your website. It just isn't professional, unless of course, you are in the music industry and your website is about music.
Tip #5 - Focus your web copy for your customer. They are looking for "What's In It For Me?" Take time to write good web copy or pay someone who can.
Example of What Not to Do: Welcome to our website. We are excited you have found us. Notice in this example, all the words really focus on the company: our, we, us. Nothing is really about the benefits for customers.
Example of What to Do: Are you frustrated with website builders that don't deliver? You need a professional website with state-of-the-art ecommerce solutions and you need it now. Doesn't this sound a lot more exciting and interesting? Notice the "you" in this text. It is about the customer and fulfilling a need.
An excellent book and learning tool for writing good web copy is, "Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank," by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Lisa T. Davis. I highly recommend it and can say from experience, it is well worth the investment. You can find it easily online at Amazon.com.
Tip #6 - To bold or not to bold...that is the question? Bolding text can be a valuable tool for drawing attention to a product or service. If you bold each and every word in your paragraph, guess what? Nothing stands out. Use it sparingly to get your message across. Also, the same is true for using italics. Use it in moderation to highlight keywords of interest.
Tip #7 - Easy navigation. Can your visitors easily find what they are looking for or is there some secret passage they have to discover to get there? One way to determine how easy your website is to navigate is to send a friend to your website and ask them to find a particular product or service. Guess what? If they can't find it, neither can your potential customers. Keep your website clean and easy to navigate. A cluttered site will result in poor sales. Visitors become frustrated when they cannot quickly find what they are looking for on a website.
Tip #8 - How can your visitors contact you? I have browsed websites where there is absolutely no way to contact the owner and I am amazed at why anyone would do this. What this tells me is there is "no" and I repeat, "NO" customer service so why would I want to do business with them? The trust factor on the web is totally different than the trust factor of doing business locally. At a minimum, you should provide a contact form or email. It's even better to provide a contact phone number.
Note: Respond in a timely manner to requests. Generally within 24 hours is best. Anything beyond that and people get hesitant about the legitimacy of your business and service. They want to know there is a live, eager person tending the store. Not one who checks in every few days or weeks.
Tip #9 - Dead End - No Outlet - Site Not Found! By this I mean, are your customers finding those links to nowhere on your website? Sometimes it can't be helped, however, check your website often for dead links, keep it updated and the content fresh. Finding a bunch of dead links on a website will send a very clear message to your visitors. No one is tending the store. Not much happening here! This is a sure way to quickly devalue your website.
Tip #10 - Should you link up? Yes! Quality link exchanges do work. Exchange links with websites that compliment the demographics of your website. If your website is about recipes, linking with other recipe sites, cooking sites and such are a good move. Linking to real estate websites, for example, would not be a good linking strategy. It is also best to categorize your link partners for your visitors: Italian Recipes, Mexican Recipes and etc. And, when possible, house your link pages on your own domain, not with a free linking service.
In closing, I am sure you are reading this article because you want a professional website. If you have programming skills and can write your own code, great! If not, there are many affordable, quality online website builders available. Avoid using the free website builder services. It's that old saying, "You Get What You Pay For," and it certainly is true in this case.
Bradford Web Designs by Killerwebs
Monday, 10 May 2010
Facebook Taps Former FTC Chair to Make Its Privacy Case
Facebook has retained a former Federal Trade Commission chairman to serve as an advocate for the company on Capitol Hill, according to a report. The move comes weeks after changes to the social network's consumer data policies sparked outrage from lawmakers and privacy advocates.
The Financial Times reported (registration required) Tim Muris will help Facebook defend its privacy practices to elected officials and agency regulators.
Muris was FTC chairman from 2001 to 2004, during a time when e-mail spam was the key Internet policy issue facing digital marketers and consumers. After that stint, he joined the firm O'Melveny & Myers as counsel. Before President George W. Bush named him to head up the FTC, Muris had a long career at the agency - including stints as director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection and of the Bureau of Competition, both in the early '80s.
Muris would not be Facebook's first privacy appointment. One year ago the company snared Tim Sparapani, a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he had strong ties to privacy advocates.
Facebook's former chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, quit the company to run for California Attorney General. Last week he appeared to distance himself from his erstwhile employer.
"Facebook's recent changes to its privacy policy and practices with regard to data sharing occurred after I left the company," he said in a statement. "When I am Attorney General, Facebook, like every company, will have to comply with its obligations to adhere to the law, provide truthful information to consumers and to keep its promises about their privacy rights."
Facebook declined to comment.
Bradford Web Design
The Financial Times reported (registration required) Tim Muris will help Facebook defend its privacy practices to elected officials and agency regulators.
Muris was FTC chairman from 2001 to 2004, during a time when e-mail spam was the key Internet policy issue facing digital marketers and consumers. After that stint, he joined the firm O'Melveny & Myers as counsel. Before President George W. Bush named him to head up the FTC, Muris had a long career at the agency - including stints as director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection and of the Bureau of Competition, both in the early '80s.
Muris would not be Facebook's first privacy appointment. One year ago the company snared Tim Sparapani, a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he had strong ties to privacy advocates.
Facebook's former chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, quit the company to run for California Attorney General. Last week he appeared to distance himself from his erstwhile employer.
"Facebook's recent changes to its privacy policy and practices with regard to data sharing occurred after I left the company," he said in a statement. "When I am Attorney General, Facebook, like every company, will have to comply with its obligations to adhere to the law, provide truthful information to consumers and to keep its promises about their privacy rights."
Facebook declined to comment.
Bradford Web Design
Friday, 7 May 2010
Why New Google SERPs Might Mean More Traffic for You
Now that the masses have access to Google's newly redesigned results pages, it's time to consider this in an SEO light if you have not already been considering it.
How do Google's New SERPs Affect SEO? Comment here.
Google has had its search options available for about a year, but they have not been in the face of the user like the newly redesigned SERP is. With this new design, users don't have any choice but to notice the options that are available. It's not too different from Bing or Yahoo in that respect (Danny Sullivan notes that Ask pioneered this design). The difference is that way more people search with Google on a regular basis (in fact, last month Google reportedly dominated the search market by even more than usual).
SEO Strategies and Increased Engagement from Searchers
The new SERPs may shake up SEO efforts, simply because users will start going to the different options Google provides them, taking them to different sets of results. Now that the options are in the limelight, users are more likely to use them.
Yahoo tells us when they added features to their left-hand navigation bar, engagement increased. "We've been steadily adding more filtering options and relevant search suggestions to our left-hand navigation bar...and have seen engagement and click-throughs for those features double over the past seven months." I can't imagine why Google wouldn't also see an engagement increase for certain features that are now more visible.
It's going to come down to evaluating the different options for any given query that you wish to rank for, and focusing efforts upon those. I'll refer back to the article I posted shortly after Google launched its search options in the first place you can find some tips in that. The same general thinking still applies, but it just got more important.
New SERPs Make Social Even More Important
The options in the left panel pull from "everything" - classic Google results (universal, organic, paid, etc.), blogs from Google Blog Search, Books from Google Books (which includes magazines), Images from Google Image Search, News from Google News, Maps from Google Maps, Shopping from Google Product Search, Videos from Google Video (which includes videos from YouTube and other sources), and Updates from Google's real-time search.
That last one is of particular note, because before users generally only saw Google's real-time search in action on select newsy queries unless they hunted them down. Real-time search for any query is now much more accessible, which makes real-time search a bigger deal for search marketing (here's some tips for getting found in real-time search). Here's how Google ranks tweets.
Social interactions are becoming more important. The new SERPs also place much more emphasis on social search results. The same goes for location. You'll notice "nearby" is one of the options. Discussions is another option. Google appears to draw from a variety of sources for this one, but it stands to reason that engaging in conversation throughout the web has some value to Google's results. There are definitely a lot of results from forums in these results - another reason forum participation can be a valuable use of your time. Forums and Q&A are actually a couple of sub-options, but I've seen blog posts in the discussions results too.
Emphasis on Diversification of Where You're Ranking in Google
What it boils down to is that ranking in all of Google's different search engines has become even more important for getting traffic from Google. Here are some tips for that. I expect traffic for sites listed in any of these to increase as a result of Google's New SERP. Keep in mind that Google has been testing this for a significant amount of time. If you think Yahoo was seeing increased engagement, imagine what Google will attract.
I would watch for Google to add more options to the left-panel at any given time. Though they have already experimented a great deal with this layout, I expect we'll see a lot more tweaking as time goes on.
Bradford Web Design - Killerwebs Web Design Studio
How do Google's New SERPs Affect SEO? Comment here.
Google has had its search options available for about a year, but they have not been in the face of the user like the newly redesigned SERP is. With this new design, users don't have any choice but to notice the options that are available. It's not too different from Bing or Yahoo in that respect (Danny Sullivan notes that Ask pioneered this design). The difference is that way more people search with Google on a regular basis (in fact, last month Google reportedly dominated the search market by even more than usual).
SEO Strategies and Increased Engagement from Searchers
The new SERPs may shake up SEO efforts, simply because users will start going to the different options Google provides them, taking them to different sets of results. Now that the options are in the limelight, users are more likely to use them.
Yahoo tells us when they added features to their left-hand navigation bar, engagement increased. "We've been steadily adding more filtering options and relevant search suggestions to our left-hand navigation bar...and have seen engagement and click-throughs for those features double over the past seven months." I can't imagine why Google wouldn't also see an engagement increase for certain features that are now more visible.
It's going to come down to evaluating the different options for any given query that you wish to rank for, and focusing efforts upon those. I'll refer back to the article I posted shortly after Google launched its search options in the first place you can find some tips in that. The same general thinking still applies, but it just got more important.
New SERPs Make Social Even More Important
The options in the left panel pull from "everything" - classic Google results (universal, organic, paid, etc.), blogs from Google Blog Search, Books from Google Books (which includes magazines), Images from Google Image Search, News from Google News, Maps from Google Maps, Shopping from Google Product Search, Videos from Google Video (which includes videos from YouTube and other sources), and Updates from Google's real-time search.
That last one is of particular note, because before users generally only saw Google's real-time search in action on select newsy queries unless they hunted them down. Real-time search for any query is now much more accessible, which makes real-time search a bigger deal for search marketing (here's some tips for getting found in real-time search). Here's how Google ranks tweets.
Social interactions are becoming more important. The new SERPs also place much more emphasis on social search results. The same goes for location. You'll notice "nearby" is one of the options. Discussions is another option. Google appears to draw from a variety of sources for this one, but it stands to reason that engaging in conversation throughout the web has some value to Google's results. There are definitely a lot of results from forums in these results - another reason forum participation can be a valuable use of your time. Forums and Q&A are actually a couple of sub-options, but I've seen blog posts in the discussions results too.
Emphasis on Diversification of Where You're Ranking in Google
What it boils down to is that ranking in all of Google's different search engines has become even more important for getting traffic from Google. Here are some tips for that. I expect traffic for sites listed in any of these to increase as a result of Google's New SERP. Keep in mind that Google has been testing this for a significant amount of time. If you think Yahoo was seeing increased engagement, imagine what Google will attract.
I would watch for Google to add more options to the left-panel at any given time. Though they have already experimented a great deal with this layout, I expect we'll see a lot more tweaking as time goes on.
Bradford Web Design - Killerwebs Web Design Studio
Sunday, 2 May 2010
New testimonial page
New testimonial page added to HV Transport & Removals website http://htxt.it/nGIn - http://htxt.it/nGIn/testimonials.html Also created new blog http://htxt.it/5LxW
Yahoo CEO: "Google Is Going To Have A Problem"
It's no secret that Google has, on a very steady basis, dominated its competition and managed to return big profits. And Carol Bartz may be in no position to question the company's methods. But Yahoo's CEO nonetheless chose to point out a potential weakness this week, and she may be on the right track.
Bartz told Jonathan Fildes, "Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search. It is only half our business; it's 99.9% of their business. They've got to find other things to do."
Also, in terms of how Google will be judged as it attempts to find those other things, Bartz observed, "Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting."
The 99.9 percent figure is obviously an exaggeration. Still, if you figure that Google has a market cap of around $169 billion and Yahoo's market cap is closer to $24 billion, the second remark doesn't seem too inaccurate.
So as Bartz indicated, that puts a lot of pressure on Google to succeed at something other than search. Whether that something's Android, Google Apps, the TV Ads program, or a different product doesn't matter, but in this light, Yahoo's rather scattered network of properties starts to look a little more attractive.
UPDATE: A regulatory filing has revealed that Carol Bartz received $47.2 million in compensation for her work in 2009, which is far more than either Eric Schmidt or Steve Ballmer collected.
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Bartz told Jonathan Fildes, "Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search. It is only half our business; it's 99.9% of their business. They've got to find other things to do."
Also, in terms of how Google will be judged as it attempts to find those other things, Bartz observed, "Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting."
The 99.9 percent figure is obviously an exaggeration. Still, if you figure that Google has a market cap of around $169 billion and Yahoo's market cap is closer to $24 billion, the second remark doesn't seem too inaccurate.
So as Bartz indicated, that puts a lot of pressure on Google to succeed at something other than search. Whether that something's Android, Google Apps, the TV Ads program, or a different product doesn't matter, but in this light, Yahoo's rather scattered network of properties starts to look a little more attractive.
UPDATE: A regulatory filing has revealed that Carol Bartz received $47.2 million in compensation for her work in 2009, which is far more than either Eric Schmidt or Steve Ballmer collected.
Bradford Web Design - http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk
Follow Killerwebs on Twitter - http://twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
18 Effective Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
18 Effective Search Engine Optimisation Techniques.
Proper Search Engine Optimisation, otherwise known as SEO, has quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference between whether or not you've incorporated proper keywords and phrases into your webpages.
Learning proper SEO techniques can seem like a daunting task, especially to those who are not familiar with the concept. The following list offers 18 simple SEO techniques you should keep in mind when developing and marketing your website.
1. Make sure your website is initially designed with your search engine optimisation needs in mind. Search engines look for text, not flashy graphics and cool layouts. The trendiest web designs will mean nothing if no one is able to find your site.
2. Every page of your website should have a title tag with text describing either your site or what is on the page. Be sure the text includes SEO-type keywords instead of the name of your website. Unless you're incredibly popular, no one is going to be looking for you by searching for your name. They'll most likely search for a product or service and the keywords you use will lead them to your site.
3. Consider canonicalization, or whether or not your website address includes or excludes the www prefix. If you choose to use the www version of your website, make sure the non-www version directs users back to the one you use. Make sure you use your preferred version (http://www.mydomain.com or http://mydomain.com) every time you place a link to your site on the web. Don't use both!
4. When designing your website, be sure to avoid too many drop-down menus, confusing image maps, and excessive images. If you must use any of these methods, be sure to include plenty of text links for the search engine spiders to find and identify. Without links, the search engines will not pick up your site information.
5. It does not matter what type of website extension you use (ie. .html, .htm. .asp, .php). Search engines do not look at the web extension and it will not have any impact at all on search results or ranking.
6. Every page on your website should include a link to your home page and your sitemap. Make sure every link is the same. Home page links should go directly to your domain (http://www.mydomain.com). Make sure your internal links do not include the additional /index.html or .php text as it is not needed (ie. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html).
7. Are you sharing a server with other websites? If so, you'll want to conduct a black-list check to make sure you are not sharing a proxy with someone who has been banned by search engines in the past. Being on the same server as a website with a poor reputation may damage yours.
8. You'll hear the same phrase over and over again: "Content is king". It is imperative that your website have fresh, unique, and quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Be sure to include your favorite keyword phrase within the body of the content!
9. People are more likely to input a phrase instead of a single word when conducting internet searches. If your business has a physical location, incorporate the name of your city into the text as well. For example, you might use "our Philadelphia location" instead of "our location". Including your city name will improve the chances of your site being seen in location searches.
10. If the information on your company website doesn't change regularly, or remains static, you might want to consider starting a blog. Search engine spiders are always looking for fresh content. Use your blog as an advertising tool and link back to your website within each and every post.
11. Write naturally. The worst thing you can do is try to cram a zillion keywords into your article or blog entry, making it messy and difficult to read. Search engines are able to determine whether or not your text is logical and they will ignore content with ridiculously high keyword density.
12. Building links to your website is essential to its success. As a matter of fact, links are like the queen to complement your king's fresh content. Choose a keyword phrase and network with other websites, asking them to place links on their pages. Don't hurt your ranking by having non-related websites place haphazard links. While it may seem great to gather 100s of backlinks, you're better off limiting your links to related websites. Ten relevant links stand a better chance than 100 irrelevant links.
13. Links within your website should be built with keyword phrases as well. Try to avoid using generic anchor text such as, "click here".
14. Don't place a list of links on your website. Always place a link within at least two to three lines of related content. The better your description, the more likely it is someone will click on the link.
15. Don't limit your keyword or phrase to text links. You should also incorporate your keywords into your image alt tag and domain name, whether it is part of the name itself or contained within the description.
16. Try to avoid using frames, Ajax, and Flash as much as possible. None of these functions are keyword or search engine friendly and will hurt your SEO results.
17. Before your website can be found by the search engine spiders, it must be indexed. Search engines such as Google have regular submission forms, but it can take days or weeks for your form to be processed. Having a highly ranked website place a link to your site is a sure-fire way to have your site indexed quickly.
18. No matter what you hear, don't be overly concerned with the Google PageRank of your website. A website that is properly developed and contains good content can outrank a website with higher PageRank.
Bradford Web Design and SEO Specialists Killerwebs Web Design Studio have been providing affordable web design and SEO services for the last 15 years.
Proper Search Engine Optimisation, otherwise known as SEO, has quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference between whether or not you've incorporated proper keywords and phrases into your webpages.
Learning proper SEO techniques can seem like a daunting task, especially to those who are not familiar with the concept. The following list offers 18 simple SEO techniques you should keep in mind when developing and marketing your website.
1. Make sure your website is initially designed with your search engine optimisation needs in mind. Search engines look for text, not flashy graphics and cool layouts. The trendiest web designs will mean nothing if no one is able to find your site.
2. Every page of your website should have a title tag with text describing either your site or what is on the page. Be sure the text includes SEO-type keywords instead of the name of your website. Unless you're incredibly popular, no one is going to be looking for you by searching for your name. They'll most likely search for a product or service and the keywords you use will lead them to your site.
3. Consider canonicalization, or whether or not your website address includes or excludes the www prefix. If you choose to use the www version of your website, make sure the non-www version directs users back to the one you use. Make sure you use your preferred version (http://www.mydomain.com or http://mydomain.com) every time you place a link to your site on the web. Don't use both!
4. When designing your website, be sure to avoid too many drop-down menus, confusing image maps, and excessive images. If you must use any of these methods, be sure to include plenty of text links for the search engine spiders to find and identify. Without links, the search engines will not pick up your site information.
5. It does not matter what type of website extension you use (ie. .html, .htm. .asp, .php). Search engines do not look at the web extension and it will not have any impact at all on search results or ranking.
6. Every page on your website should include a link to your home page and your sitemap. Make sure every link is the same. Home page links should go directly to your domain (http://www.mydomain.com). Make sure your internal links do not include the additional /index.html or .php text as it is not needed (ie. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html).
7. Are you sharing a server with other websites? If so, you'll want to conduct a black-list check to make sure you are not sharing a proxy with someone who has been banned by search engines in the past. Being on the same server as a website with a poor reputation may damage yours.
8. You'll hear the same phrase over and over again: "Content is king". It is imperative that your website have fresh, unique, and quality content that is updated on a regular basis. Be sure to include your favorite keyword phrase within the body of the content!
9. People are more likely to input a phrase instead of a single word when conducting internet searches. If your business has a physical location, incorporate the name of your city into the text as well. For example, you might use "our Philadelphia location" instead of "our location". Including your city name will improve the chances of your site being seen in location searches.
10. If the information on your company website doesn't change regularly, or remains static, you might want to consider starting a blog. Search engine spiders are always looking for fresh content. Use your blog as an advertising tool and link back to your website within each and every post.
11. Write naturally. The worst thing you can do is try to cram a zillion keywords into your article or blog entry, making it messy and difficult to read. Search engines are able to determine whether or not your text is logical and they will ignore content with ridiculously high keyword density.
12. Building links to your website is essential to its success. As a matter of fact, links are like the queen to complement your king's fresh content. Choose a keyword phrase and network with other websites, asking them to place links on their pages. Don't hurt your ranking by having non-related websites place haphazard links. While it may seem great to gather 100s of backlinks, you're better off limiting your links to related websites. Ten relevant links stand a better chance than 100 irrelevant links.
13. Links within your website should be built with keyword phrases as well. Try to avoid using generic anchor text such as, "click here".
14. Don't place a list of links on your website. Always place a link within at least two to three lines of related content. The better your description, the more likely it is someone will click on the link.
15. Don't limit your keyword or phrase to text links. You should also incorporate your keywords into your image alt tag and domain name, whether it is part of the name itself or contained within the description.
16. Try to avoid using frames, Ajax, and Flash as much as possible. None of these functions are keyword or search engine friendly and will hurt your SEO results.
17. Before your website can be found by the search engine spiders, it must be indexed. Search engines such as Google have regular submission forms, but it can take days or weeks for your form to be processed. Having a highly ranked website place a link to your site is a sure-fire way to have your site indexed quickly.
18. No matter what you hear, don't be overly concerned with the Google PageRank of your website. A website that is properly developed and contains good content can outrank a website with higher PageRank.
Bradford Web Design and SEO Specialists Killerwebs Web Design Studio have been providing affordable web design and SEO services for the last 15 years.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Nobody Can Stop Facebook Because Nobody Understands Facebook
Can companies turn confusion into a competitive advantage? It occurred to me when attempting to explain Facebook’s Open Graph this week that the social web has become increasingly complex — relating the full implications to a broad audience is a Herculean feat.
How do you explain the Open Graph to the average user so he or she can make an informed decision? Should we take pains to differentiate between the “Open Graph API” and the “Open Graph Protocol”, or should we just gloss over the specifics to make the story halfway digestible to a reader who isn’t either a web developer or a social media professional?
Every time Facebook() changes its privacy settings, we write a 500+ word post explaining what all the dials mean. Every time, it’s massively popular — Sunday’s article “HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization” has more than 4500 Facebook shares. Why the high demand for an explanation of what all this stuff means?
Have the nuances of online privacy become so complex that they’re beyond the comprehension of mere mortals? I’m not saying that Facebook has any intent to cause confusion, but the complexities of the open vs closed debate and the prescriptive vs descriptive nature of the “everybody” setting effectively act to shut down public discourse.
Perhaps this paves the route to success: After all, how can anyone stop Facebook if no one understands Facebook?
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Pc Running Slow or Freezing ? Bradford Pc Repairs
How do you explain the Open Graph to the average user so he or she can make an informed decision? Should we take pains to differentiate between the “Open Graph API” and the “Open Graph Protocol”, or should we just gloss over the specifics to make the story halfway digestible to a reader who isn’t either a web developer or a social media professional?
Every time Facebook() changes its privacy settings, we write a 500+ word post explaining what all the dials mean. Every time, it’s massively popular — Sunday’s article “HOW TO: Disable Facebook’s Instant Personalization” has more than 4500 Facebook shares. Why the high demand for an explanation of what all this stuff means?
Have the nuances of online privacy become so complex that they’re beyond the comprehension of mere mortals? I’m not saying that Facebook has any intent to cause confusion, but the complexities of the open vs closed debate and the prescriptive vs descriptive nature of the “everybody” setting effectively act to shut down public discourse.
Perhaps this paves the route to success: After all, how can anyone stop Facebook if no one understands Facebook?
Affordable Web Designs by Killerwebs - Bradford
Killerwebs Web Design Studio - Portfolio
Pc Running Slow or Freezing ? Bradford Pc Repairs
Monday, 26 April 2010
Google Places Wants To Help You?
Last week Google announced the name change from Google Maps to Google Places along with some changes to the local listing service that is so important to local search. At the end of the week Google also announced something that they are not real well known for: support. Here’s how the Google LatLong blog puts it:
With a new name comes a fresh support experience. The Google Places team wants to make sure that, as a business owner, your experience with Google Places is a good one, so we’ve taken some steps to expand and refine our support offerings.
Before we look at the details let’s make sure you don’t get too excited. Why do I say that? Well, there is no support option that allows you to talk (you know as in hearing a real voice of a Google employee) to anyone about your issues. As a result, I say that while Google claims to be “improving” its support experience it is really just doing the classic “putting lipstick on this pig” routine. Many may think that’s a harsh assessment but oftentimes the issues with Google Places listings really need customized answers and improved forums or FAQ’s are just not customized. As a result, I am playing the cynic and expecting that not circumstances will be addressed to the level necessary for Google Places listings.
Here is what Google is touting as improved support from their blog:
Google Places Help Center: Here you can learn more about managing your business listing on Google, new features and how to report problems. This includes a revamped user guide, support channels, and more.
Feedback for Google Places: Post your burning questions and awesome ideas to our new Google Moderator page. After you post, take a look at what other people are posting, and vote up the ideas you like the most. We’ll keep the page open until May 21, 2010, and then our team will review the top questions and record video responses that we’ll post in our Help Center.
Google Places Help Forum: Discuss with other users how to improve your listing, newly announced features, or issues you’re encountering. We have dedicated volunteers known as “Top Contributors” who can help answer your questions and discuss your ideas. Google Employees will also be monitoring the forum to facilitate discussions in this forum and provide assistance when needed.
Google Places Webinars: Sign up for our webinars to learn about a variety of topics ranging from “Adding a Listing” up to “Enhancing a Listing”. We’re excited about providing a learning environment that allows us to interact more closely with you, the business owner who all these tools are made for! If you can’t attend the webinars, don’t worry – we’ll post the videos on our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/googleplaces.
I have already taken in the first webinar and it is certainly Google Places 101. There were some tidbits here and there but generally it was a death by PowerPoint approach with no interaction. Ain’t that the Google way?
Bradford Web Designers
With a new name comes a fresh support experience. The Google Places team wants to make sure that, as a business owner, your experience with Google Places is a good one, so we’ve taken some steps to expand and refine our support offerings.
Before we look at the details let’s make sure you don’t get too excited. Why do I say that? Well, there is no support option that allows you to talk (you know as in hearing a real voice of a Google employee) to anyone about your issues. As a result, I say that while Google claims to be “improving” its support experience it is really just doing the classic “putting lipstick on this pig” routine. Many may think that’s a harsh assessment but oftentimes the issues with Google Places listings really need customized answers and improved forums or FAQ’s are just not customized. As a result, I am playing the cynic and expecting that not circumstances will be addressed to the level necessary for Google Places listings.
Here is what Google is touting as improved support from their blog:
Google Places Help Center: Here you can learn more about managing your business listing on Google, new features and how to report problems. This includes a revamped user guide, support channels, and more.
Feedback for Google Places: Post your burning questions and awesome ideas to our new Google Moderator page. After you post, take a look at what other people are posting, and vote up the ideas you like the most. We’ll keep the page open until May 21, 2010, and then our team will review the top questions and record video responses that we’ll post in our Help Center.
Google Places Help Forum: Discuss with other users how to improve your listing, newly announced features, or issues you’re encountering. We have dedicated volunteers known as “Top Contributors” who can help answer your questions and discuss your ideas. Google Employees will also be monitoring the forum to facilitate discussions in this forum and provide assistance when needed.
Google Places Webinars: Sign up for our webinars to learn about a variety of topics ranging from “Adding a Listing” up to “Enhancing a Listing”. We’re excited about providing a learning environment that allows us to interact more closely with you, the business owner who all these tools are made for! If you can’t attend the webinars, don’t worry – we’ll post the videos on our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/googleplaces.
I have already taken in the first webinar and it is certainly Google Places 101. There were some tidbits here and there but generally it was a death by PowerPoint approach with no interaction. Ain’t that the Google way?
Bradford Web Designers
The Google Duplicate Content Penalty: the Truth
The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea what it means, and then profess to be experts.
The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google's own words "There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty". This comes directly from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google's main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google 'duplicate content penalty'.
So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.
As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.
The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty
There is no duplicate content penalty. Google's major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.
Google's customers are not:
1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.
3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.
4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.
Google's customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.
If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).
So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google's customer.
This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google's criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.
All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as 'duplicate content', and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.
What counts in the long run is which version Google's algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn't it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn't want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?
No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.
You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term 'duplicate content' you are using a term that does not exist in Google's vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!
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The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google's own words "There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty". This comes directly from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google's main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google 'duplicate content penalty'.
So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.
As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.
The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty
There is no duplicate content penalty. Google's major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.
Google's customers are not:
1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.
3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.
4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.
Google's customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.
If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).
So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google's customer.
This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google's criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.
All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as 'duplicate content', and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.
What counts in the long run is which version Google's algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn't it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn't want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?
No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.
You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term 'duplicate content' you are using a term that does not exist in Google's vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!
More SEO News ....... click here
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Sunday, 25 April 2010
Google Delves Deeper Into Transliteration
As Google's made certain content and services available for free, some newspaper editors and book publishers have come to loathe the search giant, and it wouldn't be surprising if translators join that group, too. Late last week, Google took several steps to make switching between languages easier on regular people.
The most mainstream and noticeable change relates to Google Transliteration. This product has begun to support Amharic, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese, and Tigrinya, bringing the total number of supported languages to an even 22.
Then Google's Input Method Editor, which exists for the purpose of letting people convert words while offline, has also been upgraded with the addition of five new languages (although the group's slightly different: Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian and Tigrinya).
Finally, a post on the Google Translate Blog asked, "Now what if you come across a language that you can speak but can't read? For example, if you can speak Hindi, you may know that 'namaste' is a greeting, however you may not be able to read 'नमस्ते' in Hindi script. Our new Script Converter tool converts a given web page or piece of text from one script to another so that you can read it phonetically."
And Script Converter supports an impressive 17 languages at the moment: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
Affordable Professional Web Designs by Killerwebs
Bradford Pc Repairs by 2D's Pc Repairs
Pc Running slow or Freezing ? call the experts 2d's
The most mainstream and noticeable change relates to Google Transliteration. This product has begun to support Amharic, Hebrew, Oriya and Sinhalese, and Tigrinya, bringing the total number of supported languages to an even 22.
Then Google's Input Method Editor, which exists for the purpose of letting people convert words while offline, has also been upgraded with the addition of five new languages (although the group's slightly different: Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian and Tigrinya).
Finally, a post on the Google Translate Blog asked, "Now what if you come across a language that you can speak but can't read? For example, if you can speak Hindi, you may know that 'namaste' is a greeting, however you may not be able to read 'नमस्ते' in Hindi script. Our new Script Converter tool converts a given web page or piece of text from one script to another so that you can read it phonetically."
And Script Converter supports an impressive 17 languages at the moment: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
Affordable Professional Web Designs by Killerwebs
Bradford Pc Repairs by 2D's Pc Repairs
Pc Running slow or Freezing ? call the experts 2d's
Businesses Should Know About These New Local Features from Google
Facebook made some of the biggest news of the week with the anouncements from its developer conference, as far as online business goes, but Google had some significant news about local search that may have taken a backseat, but should not be ignored.
The Google Local Business Center is now called Google Places, as the company aims to rebrand the product around the Place Pages it introduced last fall. Place Pages are the pages for business listings that are found in Google local searches. They contain relevant information about a business from various places on the web, such as reviews and images, as well as other info the business puts up after claiming their listing.
Is Google's rebranded local business center a step in the right direction? Tell us what you think.
Google Places, the company says, is "just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local."
New features that come along with the name change include:
1. Service areas - Businesses who travel can show the geographic areas that they cover. Those without a storefront can make their address private.
2. Advertising with Tags - For 25 bucks a month, businesses (in certain cities) can use Tags to highlight their listings on Google.com and Google Maps. These are yellow markers that let you promote important aspects of your business. They can be used for thins like coupons, photos, and other select features. They don’t affect the rank of search results, but they give customers more information and may prove beneficial. You can expect Google to increase the number of cities where this option is available.
3. Business photo shoots - Businesses (again, in certain cities) can request a free photo shoot from Google to have the interior of their business photographed and added to their Place Page. We've seen Google do this in the past. Now we know what they're doing (learn more here). You can upload your own photos as well.
4. Customized QR Codes - Google is providing customized QR codes from the Google Places Dashboard. The code will take customers to your place page, and can be used on business cards and other marketing materials. Customers can scan them with their smartphones.
5. More Favorite Places - Remember Google's "Favorite Places" program in which the company sent brick and mortars window decals with QR codes? They're sending them out to 50,000 more businesses in the U.S.
Google also gives businesses using Google Places info they haven't been able to see in the past, like who's searching for them, how they're finding them, and where they're coming from. This is through the dashboard, as explained in the following clip:
"One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward," says Google Maps, Earth, and Local VP John Hanke.
The standard rules still apply to Google Places. Every listing must have a mailing address and there can't be more than one listing per physical location. Even doctors with multiple practices and services that cover multiple towns shouldn't have two listings. Google recommends in these cases that businesses use the description or categories to explain the different services offered. Google's quality guidelines can be found here, and may be helpful to businesses with questions about their listings.
Back when Google first launched Place Pages, we asked if Google would eliminate the need for small business websites(at least brick and mortars). As Google improves this and Facebook continues to provide more opportunities for businesses, I'll pose the question once again. To be clear, I'm not ready to give up on the website yet, but with the tools that are becoming available to businesses
Bradford Web Designs
The Google Local Business Center is now called Google Places, as the company aims to rebrand the product around the Place Pages it introduced last fall. Place Pages are the pages for business listings that are found in Google local searches. They contain relevant information about a business from various places on the web, such as reviews and images, as well as other info the business puts up after claiming their listing.
Is Google's rebranded local business center a step in the right direction? Tell us what you think.
Google Places, the company says, is "just the beginning of what’s to come from our efforts to make Google more local."
New features that come along with the name change include:
1. Service areas - Businesses who travel can show the geographic areas that they cover. Those without a storefront can make their address private.
2. Advertising with Tags - For 25 bucks a month, businesses (in certain cities) can use Tags to highlight their listings on Google.com and Google Maps. These are yellow markers that let you promote important aspects of your business. They can be used for thins like coupons, photos, and other select features. They don’t affect the rank of search results, but they give customers more information and may prove beneficial. You can expect Google to increase the number of cities where this option is available.
3. Business photo shoots - Businesses (again, in certain cities) can request a free photo shoot from Google to have the interior of their business photographed and added to their Place Page. We've seen Google do this in the past. Now we know what they're doing (learn more here). You can upload your own photos as well.
4. Customized QR Codes - Google is providing customized QR codes from the Google Places Dashboard. The code will take customers to your place page, and can be used on business cards and other marketing materials. Customers can scan them with their smartphones.
5. More Favorite Places - Remember Google's "Favorite Places" program in which the company sent brick and mortars window decals with QR codes? They're sending them out to 50,000 more businesses in the U.S.
Google also gives businesses using Google Places info they haven't been able to see in the past, like who's searching for them, how they're finding them, and where they're coming from. This is through the dashboard, as explained in the following clip:
"One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward," says Google Maps, Earth, and Local VP John Hanke.
The standard rules still apply to Google Places. Every listing must have a mailing address and there can't be more than one listing per physical location. Even doctors with multiple practices and services that cover multiple towns shouldn't have two listings. Google recommends in these cases that businesses use the description or categories to explain the different services offered. Google's quality guidelines can be found here, and may be helpful to businesses with questions about their listings.
Back when Google first launched Place Pages, we asked if Google would eliminate the need for small business websites(at least brick and mortars). As Google improves this and Facebook continues to provide more opportunities for businesses, I'll pose the question once again. To be clear, I'm not ready to give up on the website yet, but with the tools that are becoming available to businesses
Bradford Web Designs
Friday, 23 April 2010
Will Users Like the New Facebook Like Button?
Facebook has announced that it is giving people a chance to tell their friends even more about what they like. With the introduction of a “Like” button that will appear on partner sites, Facebook users can easily share content that they find “valuable” with their Facebook friends. So we are now left to wonder if the new feature for Facebook will be a winner or like, a loser.
The Wall Street Journal reports from the f8 Facebook developer conference
A centerpiece of the changes involves a simple button, offered to other Web sites, that says “Like.” For free, other Web sites can install a Facebook “Like” button that users can click on to signal their interest in a piece of content, such as a band or an article. The user’s approval then shows up on his or her Facebook page, with a link back to the site.
The idea is that other Web sites will drive traffic back to Facebook.com, and in turn receive traffic from Facebook. Other sites can also offer personalized modules, telling individual users what their Facebook friends have done on the site, such as review a restaurant.
The new “Like” buttons transmit data about user activity back to Facebook. If they like a band, for example, a link to the band could appear in their interests. Since advertisers can already target ads to users’ interests, the new buttons could give advertisers more data to target ads to, but Facebook said it isn’t currently launching any new ad-targeting products in conjunction with the service.
While the button itself is a big deal it will also be a big deal how Facebook and its partners address any privacy concerns. There are three instant personalization partners Docs, Yelp and Pandora. According to the Help Center these sites are required to show a Facebook box at the top of their site so you can get out of the instant part of personalization. I tried it on all three and the box did not appear on Pandora.
Here’s Facebook’s version of notification of the new service to its users.
From the leaders of Facebook comes this take on the privacy issues.
In a news conference after his keynote address, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives stressed that the new services would not loosen its privacy policies. They said that Facebook won’t share any individual user data with Web sites that implement the “Like” button, but may share aggregate data like how many people “Liked” an item. Whether Facebook would share that data with a user’s Facebook friends would depend on the user’s privacy settings.
As with anything related to Facebook and privacy it will take a little while for people to look for the “likeholes” (that’s a Like button privacy loophole). Considering Facebook’s privacy track record you have to go in expecting that they will try to get over on their users regarding privacy concerns that could block revenue opportunities and backpedal if they need to. Maybe I’m wrong but if history is any indicator I’d be, like, surprised if there weren’t some privacy concerns raised.
So do you like the idea?
Bradford Web Design & SEO
The Wall Street Journal reports from the f8 Facebook developer conference
A centerpiece of the changes involves a simple button, offered to other Web sites, that says “Like.” For free, other Web sites can install a Facebook “Like” button that users can click on to signal their interest in a piece of content, such as a band or an article. The user’s approval then shows up on his or her Facebook page, with a link back to the site.
The idea is that other Web sites will drive traffic back to Facebook.com, and in turn receive traffic from Facebook. Other sites can also offer personalized modules, telling individual users what their Facebook friends have done on the site, such as review a restaurant.
The new “Like” buttons transmit data about user activity back to Facebook. If they like a band, for example, a link to the band could appear in their interests. Since advertisers can already target ads to users’ interests, the new buttons could give advertisers more data to target ads to, but Facebook said it isn’t currently launching any new ad-targeting products in conjunction with the service.
While the button itself is a big deal it will also be a big deal how Facebook and its partners address any privacy concerns. There are three instant personalization partners Docs, Yelp and Pandora. According to the Help Center these sites are required to show a Facebook box at the top of their site so you can get out of the instant part of personalization. I tried it on all three and the box did not appear on Pandora.
Here’s Facebook’s version of notification of the new service to its users.
From the leaders of Facebook comes this take on the privacy issues.
In a news conference after his keynote address, Mr. Zuckerberg and other executives stressed that the new services would not loosen its privacy policies. They said that Facebook won’t share any individual user data with Web sites that implement the “Like” button, but may share aggregate data like how many people “Liked” an item. Whether Facebook would share that data with a user’s Facebook friends would depend on the user’s privacy settings.
As with anything related to Facebook and privacy it will take a little while for people to look for the “likeholes” (that’s a Like button privacy loophole). Considering Facebook’s privacy track record you have to go in expecting that they will try to get over on their users regarding privacy concerns that could block revenue opportunities and backpedal if they need to. Maybe I’m wrong but if history is any indicator I’d be, like, surprised if there weren’t some privacy concerns raised.
So do you like the idea?
Bradford Web Design & SEO
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
11% Original Content + 89% Duplicate Content = Google Buzz
“Andy, when are you going to add Google Buzz monitoring to Trackur?”
I think Google Buzz was barely a couple of days old, when I was first asked that question.
My response?
I wanted to wait and see how (if) people used Google Buzz, before deciding to jump on the bandwagon that other tools were so quickly willing to hitch a ride on.
Now–I’m trying to not look so smug–it appears that decision was a fortuitous one. PostRank is reporting that 89% of all content on Google Buzz is simply the duplication of stuff that can be found in Twitter or via blog feeds:
In other words, just 10% of the content posted to Google Buzz has the potential to be unique. Adding Google Buzz to Trackur would result in more noise and less signal. Add to that the fact that Google Buzz’s buzz has pretty much fizzled and it’s hard to see where the value is in the service–as a user or as a monitoring firm.
How are you using Google Buzz? Are you syndicating your other content or are you using it to create new stuff?
-------------------
Killerwebs Web Design studio based in Bradford, West Yorkshire providing cost effective web solutions, Web design, Logo Design and SEO services
Also offering pc and laptop repairs in the West Yorkshire area 2D's Pc Repairs
I think Google Buzz was barely a couple of days old, when I was first asked that question.
My response?
I wanted to wait and see how (if) people used Google Buzz, before deciding to jump on the bandwagon that other tools were so quickly willing to hitch a ride on.
Now–I’m trying to not look so smug–it appears that decision was a fortuitous one. PostRank is reporting that 89% of all content on Google Buzz is simply the duplication of stuff that can be found in Twitter or via blog feeds:
In other words, just 10% of the content posted to Google Buzz has the potential to be unique. Adding Google Buzz to Trackur would result in more noise and less signal. Add to that the fact that Google Buzz’s buzz has pretty much fizzled and it’s hard to see where the value is in the service–as a user or as a monitoring firm.
How are you using Google Buzz? Are you syndicating your other content or are you using it to create new stuff?
-------------------
Killerwebs Web Design studio based in Bradford, West Yorkshire providing cost effective web solutions, Web design, Logo Design and SEO services
Also offering pc and laptop repairs in the West Yorkshire area 2D's Pc Repairs
Monday, 19 April 2010
Killerwebs Web Design Studio - Bradford
Killerwebs a web design studio based in Bradford West Yorkshire with many years experience in Web Design, Logo Design and SEO.
Check us out at http://www.killerwebs.110mb.com or http://www.killerwebs.info
Killerwebs have designed and created many websites from as little as £50.00, below are some of the most recent:
http://www.a2z-freight.com
http://www.dsdremovalsltd.com
http://www.kinkiz.110mb.com
http://www.acreroofing.110mb.com
http://www.bradfordremovals.com
http://www.hv-transport.com
http://moneymattersadvice.blogspot.com
http://www.bradford-pc-repairs.co.uk
To see our full Web Design Portfolio, please click here
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
Killerwebs are currently providing SEO services for
http://www.speednetuk.com
http://www.truck-load.com
http://www.aztekintl.com
Plus many more.
Our website packages start from as little as £50.00, check out our full range of packages here.
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/services
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully visit our site, you can also follow us on twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Or Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Bradford/Killerwebs-Web-Design-Studio/321770449160?ref=ts
Check us out at http://www.killerwebs.110mb.com or http://www.killerwebs.info
Killerwebs have designed and created many websites from as little as £50.00, below are some of the most recent:
http://www.a2z-freight.com
http://www.dsdremovalsltd.com
http://www.kinkiz.110mb.com
http://www.acreroofing.110mb.com
http://www.bradfordremovals.com
http://www.hv-transport.com
http://moneymattersadvice.blogspot.com
http://www.bradford-pc-repairs.co.uk
To see our full Web Design Portfolio, please click here
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/portfolio
Killerwebs are currently providing SEO services for
http://www.speednetuk.com
http://www.truck-load.com
http://www.aztekintl.com
Plus many more.
Our website packages start from as little as £50.00, check out our full range of packages here.
http://www.bradfordwebdesigns.co.uk/services
Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully visit our site, you can also follow us on twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/killerwebs_info
Or Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Bradford/Killerwebs-Web-Design-Studio/321770449160?ref=ts
Thursday, 15 April 2010
More Relevant Results: Google or Bing?
Remember when Bing launched its recipe results? Now Google has launched a similar feature with recipe rich snippets. "For example, if you were searching for an easy to make thai mango salad, you can now see user ratings, preparation time, and a picture of the dish directly in search result snippets," explains Google. It may not be incredibly far-fetched to suggest that maybe Bing's offering nudged such a feature into development, whether or not Google would admit this.
This story isn't about recipes though. It's about the major search engines' quest for gaining or keeping you as a user. It feels like Bing has been around quite a while now, but in reality, it hasn't even been out for a year. Right out of the box, Bing seemed to make Google want to improve. Google is even in the process of testing redesigned search results pages that borrow some design characteristics from Bing.
Where are You Getting the More Relevant Results? Let us know.
Both Google and Bing still have their relevancy issues. We recently looked at an example of a query for "matt cutts" on Google (though we compared them to Yahoo rather than Bing, as Yahoo mentioned the same query in a blog post). Frankly, Google's results left a bit to be desired. It wasn't that that they were bad exactly, but personalized results pushed the more relevant results further down the page, and Matt's Facebook profile was MIA, despite Facebook being one of the most popular sites on the web, a good result for a search on a person's name (It was in the first few on Yahoo's results).
Microsoft may like consumers to think that Bing gives all the right answers. Those commercials would certainly seem to suggest they have a leg up over the competition in that regard, but they've got their own relevance issues. For example, for an article I was writing recently, I was looking for that site Bing has that showed all of the latest features they've released. I couldn't remember the name of it, so I searched (on Bing) for "latest bing features". Given Bing's philosophy of wanting to provide answers, I would expect to easily find what I was looking for through such a query, but instead the first organic result is an article called "The Latest News from Bing" from November of 2009.
Search Diversifying
In the latest search market reports, Google has lost a little bit of market share. Bing is gaining (and has the potential to gain a lot more for reasons discussed here). Another thing Bing has going for it, or Google has working against it rather, is that search itself is becoming much more diversified as a result of mobile, social media, and geo-location. People are simply using more ways to find the information they're looking for. It's not that they're not using Google anymore. It's that they're maybe using it less for certain types of queries. For example, where someone may have once used Google to search for a movie showtime, maybe they now have an app for that on their phone.
Is a Bingized Yahoo Good for Yahoo Search?
At some point in the near future, Bing's results will be taking over Yahoo's results to some extent. While most will agree that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be good for search advertising. Another question would be is it good for people who use Yahoo to search? Are Bing's search results better than Yahoo's? I'm not so sure, looking at the "matt cutts" example. For the "latest bing features" example, however, I can't say that Yahoo's results are really any better than Bing's.
I realize that just looking at a couple of examples is kind of grasping at straws and are hardly representative of all queries in general, but it's still a question worth pondering. Are Bing's results better than Yahoo's? Does it even matter? Will the average Yahoo user even notice a difference?
Google's Edge in Innovation
Google still seems to have the edge in getting out new and interesting features. Take real-time search. Microsoft and Google both announced deals with Twitter around the same time. Microsoft even had one with Facebook too. While Bing had a separate destination relatively quickly, where users could search Twitter with Bing, they didn't integrate real-time Twitter results into Bing results themselves. Google did this after a little while with not only Twitter, but many other sources to make up its real-time search results. Just this week, Bing announced that it is starting to include such results, and only from Twitter, and only to a small subset of users in the U.S. Google is even doing Twitter archive search now.
That's not to say that Bing doesn't do some things first (like the recipes for example), but Bing has a lot more to prove (and in all fairness, they do regularly release new features). Google is already established. Bing is still trying to win people over.
Google is frequently making acquisitions to better its search technologies. Just this week, Google acquired Pink, to better its Google Goggles product, which lets people search with their phones by simply pointing their cameras toward an object. They recently acquired Aardvark, a social Q&A search service (a space that is growing rapidly - see AnswerBag/MerchantCircle news for one of the latest examples).
Wrapping Up
With regards to relevance, you're going to find better results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing on a query-by-query basis. In reality, none of them deliver perfect results all the time, and that is why the diversifying of how people search is likely to continue, and for the better. The search engines can work to personalize results all they want, but in the end, it's the user that personalizes how they search, and right now, it's not looking like any single search engine is going to control all of that.
Bradford Web Design Killerwebs
This story isn't about recipes though. It's about the major search engines' quest for gaining or keeping you as a user. It feels like Bing has been around quite a while now, but in reality, it hasn't even been out for a year. Right out of the box, Bing seemed to make Google want to improve. Google is even in the process of testing redesigned search results pages that borrow some design characteristics from Bing.
Where are You Getting the More Relevant Results? Let us know.
Both Google and Bing still have their relevancy issues. We recently looked at an example of a query for "matt cutts" on Google (though we compared them to Yahoo rather than Bing, as Yahoo mentioned the same query in a blog post). Frankly, Google's results left a bit to be desired. It wasn't that that they were bad exactly, but personalized results pushed the more relevant results further down the page, and Matt's Facebook profile was MIA, despite Facebook being one of the most popular sites on the web, a good result for a search on a person's name (It was in the first few on Yahoo's results).
Microsoft may like consumers to think that Bing gives all the right answers. Those commercials would certainly seem to suggest they have a leg up over the competition in that regard, but they've got their own relevance issues. For example, for an article I was writing recently, I was looking for that site Bing has that showed all of the latest features they've released. I couldn't remember the name of it, so I searched (on Bing) for "latest bing features". Given Bing's philosophy of wanting to provide answers, I would expect to easily find what I was looking for through such a query, but instead the first organic result is an article called "The Latest News from Bing" from November of 2009.
Search Diversifying
In the latest search market reports, Google has lost a little bit of market share. Bing is gaining (and has the potential to gain a lot more for reasons discussed here). Another thing Bing has going for it, or Google has working against it rather, is that search itself is becoming much more diversified as a result of mobile, social media, and geo-location. People are simply using more ways to find the information they're looking for. It's not that they're not using Google anymore. It's that they're maybe using it less for certain types of queries. For example, where someone may have once used Google to search for a movie showtime, maybe they now have an app for that on their phone.
Is a Bingized Yahoo Good for Yahoo Search?
At some point in the near future, Bing's results will be taking over Yahoo's results to some extent. While most will agree that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will be good for search advertising. Another question would be is it good for people who use Yahoo to search? Are Bing's search results better than Yahoo's? I'm not so sure, looking at the "matt cutts" example. For the "latest bing features" example, however, I can't say that Yahoo's results are really any better than Bing's.
I realize that just looking at a couple of examples is kind of grasping at straws and are hardly representative of all queries in general, but it's still a question worth pondering. Are Bing's results better than Yahoo's? Does it even matter? Will the average Yahoo user even notice a difference?
Google's Edge in Innovation
Google still seems to have the edge in getting out new and interesting features. Take real-time search. Microsoft and Google both announced deals with Twitter around the same time. Microsoft even had one with Facebook too. While Bing had a separate destination relatively quickly, where users could search Twitter with Bing, they didn't integrate real-time Twitter results into Bing results themselves. Google did this after a little while with not only Twitter, but many other sources to make up its real-time search results. Just this week, Bing announced that it is starting to include such results, and only from Twitter, and only to a small subset of users in the U.S. Google is even doing Twitter archive search now.
That's not to say that Bing doesn't do some things first (like the recipes for example), but Bing has a lot more to prove (and in all fairness, they do regularly release new features). Google is already established. Bing is still trying to win people over.
Google is frequently making acquisitions to better its search technologies. Just this week, Google acquired Pink, to better its Google Goggles product, which lets people search with their phones by simply pointing their cameras toward an object. They recently acquired Aardvark, a social Q&A search service (a space that is growing rapidly - see AnswerBag/MerchantCircle news for one of the latest examples).
Wrapping Up
With regards to relevance, you're going to find better results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing on a query-by-query basis. In reality, none of them deliver perfect results all the time, and that is why the diversifying of how people search is likely to continue, and for the better. The search engines can work to personalize results all they want, but in the end, it's the user that personalizes how they search, and right now, it's not looking like any single search engine is going to control all of that.
Bradford Web Design Killerwebs
Twitter Gives 3 Huge Reasons for Businesses to Use Twitter
19 Billion Searches Per Month, 105 Million Users, 100,000 Apps
If you truly feel that not using Twitter for your business is the way to go, then don't use it. However, Twitter dropped some pretty interesting statistics at its Developer Conference, which may perk your ears up, if not make you reconsider your position.
1. Twitter Gets 19 billion Searches Per Month.
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan spoke with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who says Twitter gets about 19 billion searches per month. If you compare that with comScore estimates for the major search engines (as Sullivan did here, along with all the caveats that come with that), that puts Twitter in 2nd place, just behind Google - ahead of Yahoo and Bing.
Where Twitter ranks in searches compared to the search engines really isn't the point. The point is that people are using Twitter and Twitter apps A LOT to find information. I think you can see where this could be useful to know from a business standpoint. By the way, Twitter also just announced a little thing called "Promoted Tweets" - ads that will initially show up for Twitter searches.
2. Twitter has over 105 million users.
Last week, Matthew Daines, the lead developer of our own Twellow did some math and suggested that Twitter had probably surpassed 100 million users. It turns out he was right, because Williams said at the conference that Twitter actually has over 105 million, and adds about 300,000 a day. Once again, I think you can see why this might be of interest.
3. There are over 100 thousand registered Apps
There are so many Twitter apps out there that are making Twitter usable and more efficient to people. There are apps that shape Twitter around a person's specific needs. This no doubt plays a huge role in Twitter's growth, which will continue. It also means there are a lot of ways you can use Twitter yourself as a business.
At WebProNews, we recently revisited a Twitter app directory called OneForty. Now this directory has only a fraction of that 100,000 apps listed, but there are nearly 2,700, and that's still plenty. They are broken down into categories like advertising, analytics, business, email, mobile, monitoring, networking, shopping, etc. There is no question you will be able to find some useful apps there or in another Twitter app directory.
Bradford Web Design & SEO
If you truly feel that not using Twitter for your business is the way to go, then don't use it. However, Twitter dropped some pretty interesting statistics at its Developer Conference, which may perk your ears up, if not make you reconsider your position.
1. Twitter Gets 19 billion Searches Per Month.
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan spoke with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who says Twitter gets about 19 billion searches per month. If you compare that with comScore estimates for the major search engines (as Sullivan did here, along with all the caveats that come with that), that puts Twitter in 2nd place, just behind Google - ahead of Yahoo and Bing.
Where Twitter ranks in searches compared to the search engines really isn't the point. The point is that people are using Twitter and Twitter apps A LOT to find information. I think you can see where this could be useful to know from a business standpoint. By the way, Twitter also just announced a little thing called "Promoted Tweets" - ads that will initially show up for Twitter searches.
2. Twitter has over 105 million users.
Last week, Matthew Daines, the lead developer of our own Twellow did some math and suggested that Twitter had probably surpassed 100 million users. It turns out he was right, because Williams said at the conference that Twitter actually has over 105 million, and adds about 300,000 a day. Once again, I think you can see why this might be of interest.
3. There are over 100 thousand registered Apps
There are so many Twitter apps out there that are making Twitter usable and more efficient to people. There are apps that shape Twitter around a person's specific needs. This no doubt plays a huge role in Twitter's growth, which will continue. It also means there are a lot of ways you can use Twitter yourself as a business.
At WebProNews, we recently revisited a Twitter app directory called OneForty. Now this directory has only a fraction of that 100,000 apps listed, but there are nearly 2,700, and that's still plenty. They are broken down into categories like advertising, analytics, business, email, mobile, monitoring, networking, shopping, etc. There is no question you will be able to find some useful apps there or in another Twitter app directory.
Bradford Web Design & SEO
Sunday, 4 April 2010
If Google Indexing Goes Real-Time, What Will it Mean for Ranking?
Last year, we saw the emergence of the technology PubSubHubbub, which provides real-time notifications to subscribers of content when there is new content or updates being made. There has recently been talk about Google developing a system that would use this technology it its indexing process.
"Maybe some small site, you might only find a chance to crawl its pages once a week, but if that site is blogging like every 20 minutes, boom , you hit the submit button, and the search engines can find out about it," explained Cutts.
"Now the tension is that more spammers would use this as well, so you can't just say, 'I'm gonna index everything that everybody pushes to me.' So finding the right balance there is tricky, but the potential is really, really exciting," he said.
"You can definitely imagine the reputable blogs getting very fast updates - the ones that we think are trustworthy, and then over time, maybe ramping that up, so that more and more people have the ability to do...just like, instant indexing," he says.
And here we see another way Google may end up looking at the trust factor, with regards to ranking.
Can We Learn from How Google Does Real-Time Search?
Liz Gannes at GigaOm recapped a few things Google senior product manager Dylan Casey said at SMX last month:
Casey said perhaps the most complex project in real time is to determine when to trigger the appearance of real-time results in search results. "We have huge internal debates on: Is this a good answer to this question, or are we just creating a tool for low-quality content?" he said.
Casey spent some effort justifying Google paying to include Twitter’s real-time firehose of tweets, saying it was an intensive technical integration on both sides, and that tweets are a fundamentally different form of communication due to the restrictions of their form. For example, Google has developed a 'complex system' for removing users' public tweets that are later deleted or marked private.
Earlier this year, Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at Google talked about how Google ranks tweets. According to him, Google ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it's not just about how many followers you get. It's about how reputable those followers are.
Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that same kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google's real-time search.
"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."
Now Google's current real-time search product is separate from the whole PubSubHubbub-based system that isn't in place yet, but Matt's comments about blogs being trustworthy, indicates to me that trust is going to be key in being able to push content to Google's index in real-time. So, I wonder if a similar strategy to how Google ranks its current real-time and Twitter results will be employed in determining this kind of trust.
Does This Mean If You're Not Trusted You Won't Get Indexed?
"PuSH wouldn't likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google's existing index," says Marshall Kirkpatrick, who spoke in a session on the real-time web at SXSW, which also included Google's Brett Slatkin, one of the guys responsible for PuSH (he's in the following video explaining the technology in simple terms).
Lots of sites out there already have PuSH technology in place. For example, Wordpress and Typepad blogs have the ability to "PuSH" their content. That's a lot of content itself. A lot of user-generated content, and that means the potential for spam is huge, which is why the trust factor is so important.
If PuSh is to be heavily utilized by the search engines, and you want your content indexed as quickly as possible, you're going to want to do what you can to build community trust and a solid reputation. One more reason to engage in meticulous online reputation management, put out great content, and engage with the community.
Bradford Web Designs
Killerwebs Web Design Studio, Web, logo design and SEO
"Maybe some small site, you might only find a chance to crawl its pages once a week, but if that site is blogging like every 20 minutes, boom , you hit the submit button, and the search engines can find out about it," explained Cutts.
"Now the tension is that more spammers would use this as well, so you can't just say, 'I'm gonna index everything that everybody pushes to me.' So finding the right balance there is tricky, but the potential is really, really exciting," he said.
"You can definitely imagine the reputable blogs getting very fast updates - the ones that we think are trustworthy, and then over time, maybe ramping that up, so that more and more people have the ability to do...just like, instant indexing," he says.
And here we see another way Google may end up looking at the trust factor, with regards to ranking.
Can We Learn from How Google Does Real-Time Search?
Liz Gannes at GigaOm recapped a few things Google senior product manager Dylan Casey said at SMX last month:
Casey said perhaps the most complex project in real time is to determine when to trigger the appearance of real-time results in search results. "We have huge internal debates on: Is this a good answer to this question, or are we just creating a tool for low-quality content?" he said.
Casey spent some effort justifying Google paying to include Twitter’s real-time firehose of tweets, saying it was an intensive technical integration on both sides, and that tweets are a fundamentally different form of communication due to the restrictions of their form. For example, Google has developed a 'complex system' for removing users' public tweets that are later deleted or marked private.
Earlier this year, Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at Google talked about how Google ranks tweets. According to him, Google ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it's not just about how many followers you get. It's about how reputable those followers are.
Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that same kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google's real-time search.
"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."
Now Google's current real-time search product is separate from the whole PubSubHubbub-based system that isn't in place yet, but Matt's comments about blogs being trustworthy, indicates to me that trust is going to be key in being able to push content to Google's index in real-time. So, I wonder if a similar strategy to how Google ranks its current real-time and Twitter results will be employed in determining this kind of trust.
Does This Mean If You're Not Trusted You Won't Get Indexed?
"PuSH wouldn't likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google's existing index," says Marshall Kirkpatrick, who spoke in a session on the real-time web at SXSW, which also included Google's Brett Slatkin, one of the guys responsible for PuSH (he's in the following video explaining the technology in simple terms).
Lots of sites out there already have PuSH technology in place. For example, Wordpress and Typepad blogs have the ability to "PuSH" their content. That's a lot of content itself. A lot of user-generated content, and that means the potential for spam is huge, which is why the trust factor is so important.
If PuSh is to be heavily utilized by the search engines, and you want your content indexed as quickly as possible, you're going to want to do what you can to build community trust and a solid reputation. One more reason to engage in meticulous online reputation management, put out great content, and engage with the community.
Bradford Web Designs
Killerwebs Web Design Studio, Web, logo design and SEO
Thursday, 25 March 2010
New Web Pages For DSD Removals Limited
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Bradford House Removals
Friday, 19 March 2010
Is the Content Farm Strategy Just Misunderstood?
Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt doesn't understand much of the criticism geared toward his company, which Time Magazine columnist Dan Fletcher refers to as "the Web's least understood and most vilified juggernaut." I attended a panel at SXSW this week in which Fletcher and Rosenblatt discussed Demand's content strategy that has become the basis of so much controversy (Read here for more background).
Rosenblatt thinks it's just a case of a new business model getting picked on because it's not understood yet. He compared it to the early days of other successful companies like Amazon and Netflix.
Is Demand Media's strategy just misunderstood? Share your thoughts.
Demand Media evidently gets more traffic than the digital properties of ESPN, Time, or Disney. They claim to have more videos on YouTube than anybody. This isn't spammy content though. It's content created based on what people are looking for, or what a combination of Demand's algorithms and staff determine people are looking for based on extensive data analysis.
An audience member referred to a video she came across that was simply not the type of quality Demand Media wants its content to be known for. Rosenblatt acknowledges that there may be some of this out there, simply because the company began with a different model, but they are working to eliminate this, and only implement content that has gone through the company's exhaustive editorial process.
One huge misconception that Rosenblatt went out of his way to clear up is that of Demand Media's content being taken as news. He doesn't see what Demand Media is doing as journalism. Journalism is news, and this isn't news, he says. It's stuff that makes you laugh, solves your problems, etc. "Only the journalists call us journalists."
A great deal of the criticism that has been aimed at Demand Media is based around the notion that the company is somehow taking advantage of Google's algorithms, to get its content placed higher than other sources (isn't this what SEO/SEM is all about anyway?). Rosenblatt basically made the point that if Google doesn't think it's good enough content to be there, than it won't be there. To change an algorithm to not give an answer just doesn't make sense, he says.
"If people aren't looking for it on search, we're not there," he added. Demand properties like eHow often appear in search results for queries about how to do things. Well, that's exactly the kind of content that appears on eHow, and the mantra of the industry has always been "content is king" right? Demand simply wants to wear that crown, and make money doing it.
"We are driven by an economic model," Rosenblatt said. The company is focused on "evergreen, longtail, commercial content." They're focused on stuff they will make money from.
Rosenblatt says a lot of people think their content is auto-generated. "That's just wrong," he says. One criticism that Rosenblatt does think is fair, is that some of the company's content "could feel mechanical." In other words, some may lack creativity. "We need to learn, and we're trying to," he says. A lack of creativity does not necessarily mean a lack of accuracy, though, and through Demand's editorial process, there is a lot of fact checking going on. At least that is the impression Rosenblatt gave.
He says they have different models for different categories. With something especially important to the world, like health, he says they make sure professionals are writing the articles. With health, fact checking would also go to doctors.
If you are searching for information on Google about effects of chemotherapy, and you are met with an article written by an expert on the subject, with facts checked by doctors, is there really anything wrong with that? Would you rather get a Wikipedia entry? Remember, we're not talking "news" here. We're talking information, and in other cases entertainment.
Demand media does use some Google ads, as iEntry CEO and WebProNews publisher Rich Ord pointed out in an article a while back. He wrote:
The problem as I see it is that while Google is highly ranking the content of these mass production publishers it also has a financial incentive to do so. Almost all content farms use Google Adwords for their revenue. So while Google on the one hand encourages publishers to make content for their readers and not just for search ranking, it is in partnership with sites that do just that.
This should make publishers wonder about their business models. Should they spend thousands paying reporters and editors to create quality content for their users or should they simply create a content farm that pays little for bulk quantities of articles and videos but gets lots of Google love?
I guess if you can make content for the purpose of ranking in searches ... but make it targeted, unique and not horrible, then you might find that Google well reward you quite well.
The issue of Google's own practices with regards to this are really a separate issue from Demand Media's practices. As far as Rosenblatt is concerned, they're just producing the content that people want, and will find that through either search or discovery. And they're making a killing doing it.
Bradford Web Design
Rosenblatt thinks it's just a case of a new business model getting picked on because it's not understood yet. He compared it to the early days of other successful companies like Amazon and Netflix.
Is Demand Media's strategy just misunderstood? Share your thoughts.
Demand Media evidently gets more traffic than the digital properties of ESPN, Time, or Disney. They claim to have more videos on YouTube than anybody. This isn't spammy content though. It's content created based on what people are looking for, or what a combination of Demand's algorithms and staff determine people are looking for based on extensive data analysis.
An audience member referred to a video she came across that was simply not the type of quality Demand Media wants its content to be known for. Rosenblatt acknowledges that there may be some of this out there, simply because the company began with a different model, but they are working to eliminate this, and only implement content that has gone through the company's exhaustive editorial process.
One huge misconception that Rosenblatt went out of his way to clear up is that of Demand Media's content being taken as news. He doesn't see what Demand Media is doing as journalism. Journalism is news, and this isn't news, he says. It's stuff that makes you laugh, solves your problems, etc. "Only the journalists call us journalists."
A great deal of the criticism that has been aimed at Demand Media is based around the notion that the company is somehow taking advantage of Google's algorithms, to get its content placed higher than other sources (isn't this what SEO/SEM is all about anyway?). Rosenblatt basically made the point that if Google doesn't think it's good enough content to be there, than it won't be there. To change an algorithm to not give an answer just doesn't make sense, he says.
"If people aren't looking for it on search, we're not there," he added. Demand properties like eHow often appear in search results for queries about how to do things. Well, that's exactly the kind of content that appears on eHow, and the mantra of the industry has always been "content is king" right? Demand simply wants to wear that crown, and make money doing it.
"We are driven by an economic model," Rosenblatt said. The company is focused on "evergreen, longtail, commercial content." They're focused on stuff they will make money from.
Rosenblatt says a lot of people think their content is auto-generated. "That's just wrong," he says. One criticism that Rosenblatt does think is fair, is that some of the company's content "could feel mechanical." In other words, some may lack creativity. "We need to learn, and we're trying to," he says. A lack of creativity does not necessarily mean a lack of accuracy, though, and through Demand's editorial process, there is a lot of fact checking going on. At least that is the impression Rosenblatt gave.
He says they have different models for different categories. With something especially important to the world, like health, he says they make sure professionals are writing the articles. With health, fact checking would also go to doctors.
If you are searching for information on Google about effects of chemotherapy, and you are met with an article written by an expert on the subject, with facts checked by doctors, is there really anything wrong with that? Would you rather get a Wikipedia entry? Remember, we're not talking "news" here. We're talking information, and in other cases entertainment.
Demand media does use some Google ads, as iEntry CEO and WebProNews publisher Rich Ord pointed out in an article a while back. He wrote:
The problem as I see it is that while Google is highly ranking the content of these mass production publishers it also has a financial incentive to do so. Almost all content farms use Google Adwords for their revenue. So while Google on the one hand encourages publishers to make content for their readers and not just for search ranking, it is in partnership with sites that do just that.
This should make publishers wonder about their business models. Should they spend thousands paying reporters and editors to create quality content for their users or should they simply create a content farm that pays little for bulk quantities of articles and videos but gets lots of Google love?
I guess if you can make content for the purpose of ranking in searches ... but make it targeted, unique and not horrible, then you might find that Google well reward you quite well.
The issue of Google's own practices with regards to this are really a separate issue from Demand Media's practices. As far as Rosenblatt is concerned, they're just producing the content that people want, and will find that through either search or discovery. And they're making a killing doing it.
Bradford Web Design