SiteProNews |
- New TLDs, boom or bust?
- Online Scandals Raise Issues of Employer Interest in Proper Social Media Policy – A SPN Exclusive Article
- Video Strategy ‘No Brainer’ for SMEs
- Website Translation Strategy You Need to Know
- Google Panda Update: 11 Important SEO Facts You Should Know
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 07:46 AM PDT 
Sure, Ford may be able to purchase the “.truck” domain and then have their very own www.ford.truck URL. But then what? Google, Bing and Yahoo still convert keyword searches into potential domain targets. They tell searchers where to look for relevant information. And I don’t see that changing just because Ford or GM buy the “.truck” domain. Buying a new top-level domain will not guarantee you a stampede of visitors. Of course, Microsoft makes the Internet Explorer browser while Google makes the Chrome browser and has a deal with Firefox for built-in web search. So the top three browsers are under the control of the top two search engines. I just don’t see Google and Microsoft suddenly making their search advertising business irrelevant by making these new top-level domains the default go to sites. Search will remain a viable business. And for search to remain viable, the new TLDs must not come to dominate by default. The search engines control it, and the search engines will not let it happen. So where’s the boom in new TLDs? Well imagine if you were a large national association, take the American Bar Association, for example. The ABA claims to be the largest association in the world. If I was ABA president, I would be writing that check for $185,000 right now, and I would want to own the TLD “.lawyer” for my association. Why? Easy, I would give every member a free email address forward like “firstname.lastname@ABA.lawyer” for life. This will greatly reduce the association communications cost because you now have every member’s email address. Then I would offer to sell domains to member law firms so you could have “firstname.lastname@firmname.lawyer” as an email address. This generates income for the association and makes sustaining membership more valuable. The “.lawyer” domain on one’s email address is like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Of course, having the email address of almost every lawyer soon becomes a viable advertising vehicle. The association will be able to sell ads in weekly/monthly email newsletters. My guess is, come January 2012, you’ll see the American Medical Association, the Auto Dealer’s Association even the AARP or the ASPCA lining up to buy their own top-level domains. I don’t expect Ford to purchase the “.truck” domain, but I’m pretty certain they’ll purchase “.ford” and every Ford dealer will get a new URL. In addition to their “.com” address, not instead of. Mike Poller runs a Miami, Florida advertising agency involved in Online, social media, radio, TV, print and outdoor. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Posted: 13 Jul 2011 07:36 AM PDT 
Typically, issues are brought to the attention of an employer after an employee is offended by a co-worker's online behavior. The first inquiry for an employer should be what relevance the issue has to the workplace. Situations often exist where the material posted online is false and not actually attributable to the suspect employee. A diligent investigation should always be implemented first as it is quite simple to establish false social media accounts. Recently, employers have gotten into the habit of compiling policies against employees mentioning the company in social media postings. However, such practices necessarily raise concerns regarding running afoul of National Labor Relations Act protection of "concerted activity." The NLRB is involved in several cases where employees were disciplined for social media use. Basically, the NLRB assesses two things. First, what does the employer’s social media policy say? Second, what does the employer do to enforce it? As a general rule, if a policy is too broad, the NLRB is going to say that it has the effect of chilling protected activity. If an employee uses social media and states that a particular employer treats employees like garbage, that employee is potentially speaking on behalf of other employees, which is protected. Conversely, going online and stating that one has witnessed an extramarital affair between a manager and a co-worker is not protected activity. Interestingly, the NLRA's "concerted activity" protection does not apply to management. That said, employers should strongly consider instituting a company-wide, written policy that managers are forbidden, under any circumstances, to use social media to say anything negative about the employer, its executives, business operations, products, and/or services. Often times, such language is incorporated into an employment contract that specifically defines improper conduct, prohibits disparagement, provides and establishes a morals clause, and forbids the appearance of or the actual possibility of a sex scandal. Everyone from the highest-level executives, down the chain, should be held to this standard. However, it is generally the high profile executives and managers that can do the most damage to a company because their conduct generally receives more attention. In today's digital marketplace with breakthrough products and technological applications always around the corner, more and more employers are finding that the biggest risk for a scandal is the disclosure of corporate trade secrets and proprietary information. Social media's impact on corporate privacy and confidentiality is a significant concern. The slightest indiscretion by employees who are "in the know" can put millions of investment dollars at risk. Employees must be made well aware, up front, early, and often about the personal consequences of loose lips. These consequences should be spelled out clearly in employment agreements containing unambiguous confidentiality provisions with stiff legal and equitable penalties for violation. While it is almost impossible, and perhaps even unwise, to stop employees from utilizing social media entirely, best practice dictates establishing "how" and "when" and setting forth what is and is not permissible to do in social media. Employees should be advised in writing, via legally enforceable agreements, that they will be held responsible for their actions. Richard B. Newman is an Internet Law Attorney and Business Litigation Lawyer at Hinch Newman LLP in New York City. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Video Strategy ‘No Brainer’ for SMEs Posted: 13 Jul 2011 07:30 AM PDT 
According to a recent roundtable debate held by hosting specialists UKFast, small firms can now enjoy the benefits once exclusive to the big corporates because of the transformation of the online video industry. Byron Evans, presenter and founder of Wallop explained how SMEs can use video to enhance their marketing strategies. He said: “We can cut costs down and production values don’t have to diminish so much. The common consensus is that a video should be used as a tool to complement other areas of a campaign and to coincide with social media input.” Nicky Unsworth of marketing agency BJL, reiterated this, saying: “Most of our clients are beginning to recognise that there is a real opportunity for brands to benefit from video. There are so many different ways that they can tell a story – they can host it on YouTube, on their own websites or they can use it at conferences.” The panelists agreed that video advertising has become an accessible medium for consumers, and that creativity rather than cash dictates how successful a video will be. Brian Barnes, film producer and MD of Activideo, said: “There are no real barriers any more. In the old days if you could spend £300,000 on an edit suite, you were in business and that tended to keep other people out of the loop. Now you can even edit on your phone, let alone a laptop – it has gone astronomic in terms of access.” Unsworth reiterated the increasing importance of amateur-style footage in the advertiser’s portfolio: “The latest Disney ads feel like someone has done them on a hand-held in their sitting room – they reveal to the kids that they are actually going to Disney and they film their reaction. User-generated content is definitely becoming more of the advertisers’ portfolio.” She continued: “Marketing companies have embraced online video; the clever thing that advertisers do now is seed an idea that lives beyond the original advertisers’ concept. Brands that have done it well are Dove with the Real Women campaign, Old Spice, and T-Mobile. They have gone out and generated an idea that their audiences have adopted and developed as their own.” Panellists discussed the increasing significance of online outlets for video. Unsworth said: “There are ads that run maybe once or twice and actually they begin to live then on YouTube and the views that they have on YouTube are so much more significant than they get on TV.” They agreed that the key to maximising the success of any online video is to take it ‘viral’, but achieving this with a commercial video isn’t easy. Barnes said: “It’s creativity, something new and engaging that stimulates people enough to respond. It’s got to spark that user engagement.” Evans highlighted the importance of a video’s ‘packaging’ in its potential to go viral. He said: “It’s not just about putting it on different networks, it’s how you label it and what tags you give it. It’s a precise art that needs to be mastered before you can stick this amazing piece of work out there and get the world to embrace it.” UKFast is one of Europe’s fastest-growing technical companies (as ranked by Deloitte) and has been at the heart of the UK internet industry for more than 10 years. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Website Translation Strategy You Need to Know Posted: 13 Jul 2011 07:22 AM PDT 
The following outline on website translation and localization strategy will briefly introduce you to some of the more important, and often overlooked, areas that will save you considerable time and money before you begin. Your nitty-gritty plan will include: * A good, clean file and server management strategy. * A very flexible site design. * A far-sighted data management plan. * A well defined roadmap including milestones and budgets. The first critical step to a successful technical strategy is to review and clean up your file and server management. Having access to your original site files and not just the served files is a must. You cannot make the necessary improvements and changes through a browser. Take the time to clean up your file naming conventions, file structure, and hosting environments. Create a system that allows for multiple versions of the site to co-exist (the translated versions) and allows for easy management of all the files. Make sure that this file system is able to grow and accommodate the number of future sites you anticipate. Better organization will greatly reward you later on in the process. Think of it this way, for each language, your file count will at least double. The possibility for error increases exponentially. Creating a long term plan for the hosting and serving of your websites is another important strategical element. For most businesses it is adequate to host your foreign sites alongside your current source site. As your international business grows your need for local hosting will also grow. Your search engine ranking will also be affected by these choices. Once your server file management is organized, the next investment is to review your site design for localization issues. Translated text will either shrink or grow by as much as 30% depending on the target language. Determine if your graphics are going to need to be re-sized or converted into a different format; preferably text links. Look at dynamic content served on your site. Is your design going break when the translated text is served? What if one of your target languages is Arabic or Asian? Is your site design able to display right to left text? Speaking of dynamic content, do you have a plan for your dynamic content to be translated. This includes external data sources such as news and blog feeds as well as internal data sources. If your site uses data tables, it is critical to have a strategy to manage the data within the tables. Similar to your server file management, your data tables will get unmanageable as you add additional languages if you do not have a good data strategy. Included within certain data strategies are content management systems. Many different systems exist, but each handles multiple languages differently. Spend the time to research the best solution for your particular company needs. What sort of global gateway are you going to serve your website though? Easy navigation for your foreign visitors is the first impression you are going to provide and will often times become a critical factor in your success. You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Many different options are available to direct your visitors to the translated versions of your site. You will have to choose the best one that fits within the needs of your site. Finally, you will need to define your success milestones. Before you move forward into that actual process of translating and localizing your website, you should have a budget and timeline defined. After mapping out your international and technical strategies, a project budget and timeline should fall naturally into place. Knowing how much you are going to spend and for what, and how long it is going to take are critical questions you must be able to answer. Succeeding in international business is extremely rewarding as long as you have the proper processes to guide you. Many different resources are available on the Internet. Search around or ask your language provider to help you write your localization strategy. Taking the time to think this through will give you the foundation necessary to make the most of your international efforts. In subsequent articles we will begin to put the project together and begin the actual translation processes. Russell Lundstrom is an expert in international business and website translation. He has been helping companies succeed overseas for more than twenty years. You can learn how to grow your own business internationally by joining the community at http://globalsitesecrets.com and by following Russell on Twitter @gssguy. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Google Panda Update: 11 Important SEO Facts You Should Know Posted: 12 Jul 2011 10:00 PM PDT 
So what was the reason for this catastrophic and “game-changing” update? Well, according to Google: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.” (Source: Google Blog) Mission accomplished. Anyway, in the aftermath of the Panda update, there are 11 important SEO facts I’ve learned based on my own personal experiences, the experiences of my clients, and from listening to top SEO professionals across the Internet: 1. Waiting to Exhale Think you survived the big Panda storm? Don’t exhale just yet. Google will introduce around 550 or so improvements to its algorithm this year. Yes, 550. (Source: Wired.com) 2. Relevancy Matters More Than Ever In their aforementioned quote, Google says it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded. It goes without saying, Google places a tremendous amount of value on relevancy. So do everything you can to make sure your pages are as relevant as possible. That includes making sure your keywords are relevant to the overall theme of your site and accurately reflect your site ’s actual content. 3. Quality Trumps Quantity Sites like EzineArticles, Buzzle and Associated Content got absolutely hammered by the Panda update. But why? Those sites have been around for years, and have a ton of quality content. Unfortunately, much of their content is also low-quality (although, to be fair, EzineArticles has been deleting much of their sub-standard content for a while now). However, by punishing the titans of article directories, Google sent a powerful message about quality. 4. Links From Article Directories Have Been Diminished Personally, I think links from article directories were diminished long before the Panda update. Most article directories are notorious for the amount of low-quality content they contain. They’ll accept articles from just about anyone – regardless of how poorly written the articles are. That being said, despite being smacked down by the Panda update, EzineArticles has consistently had the highest quality standards among article directories. And after Panda, they’ve tightened their quality standards even more. So, I’m certain, they’ll bounce back. Authority sites are considered authoritative for a reason. It’s because people trust their content. That’s why authority sites rank so highly in Google’s SERPs. Authority sites have quality content and consistently show keyword to content relevancy. If you write articles, instead of submitting them to article directories which have diminishing link value, instead, submit them to top authority sites like SiteProNews, WebProNews, PromotionWorld, SearchEngineJournal and others. And while it might be considerably more difficult to get your articles accepted and published by those sites, the fact that Google places higher value on links from authority sites makes it worth the effort. 6. Social Media Matters While only Google knows how much impact sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn actually have on search results, the fact that Google is providing real-time social sharing is an indication that Google takes participation in social media networks seriously. And if Google takes social media seriously, then, so should you. Besides, participating in social media networks will expose your content to an even wider audience. So, from a purely business standpoint, why wouldn’t you? 7. Avoid Excessive Advertisements or Images Be mindful of having too many advertisements on any of your pages, in relation to “meaningful” content. There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of advertisements on a page (especially above the fold advertising), and the overall ranking of a page. Make sure you have plenty of quality, relevant content to balance out your web pages. 8. A Picture’s Worth…Unfortunately, Not a Thousand Words What I just said about excessive advertisements applies to photo-centric sites as well. Try to strike a proportionate balance between meaningful content and images. 9. Google Loves Videos Did you notice that video-centric sites like YouTube and Metacafe were largely unaffected by the Panda update? Videos have always done well in Google’s SERPs, and long before Panda struck, I had been adding YouTube videos to my website. In addition, I’ve converted many of my “How to” articles into videos. 10. Seek Blog Balance Some of my blog posts are what I like to call “quick bites”…extremely short articles, usually around the 200-300 word range. I realize Google could easily construe such short articles as shallow, low-quality content – even though they’re actually quite substantive – despite their compendious nature. That’s why I make a conscious effort to also post plenty of meatier content. I have a ton of articles on my site that are well over a thousand words. If you have a lot of short articles on your site, either flesh them out or add lengthier content. 11. Age Matters While this final point doesn’t have anything to do with the Panda update per se, it is SEO-related and important nonetheless – and a topic of considerable debate. Does the age of a domain matter? Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different answers to that question. Heck, there’s even disagreement among SEO experts on this topic. Not satisfied with the conflicting information that I was getting, I decided to do my own research. Over a 30 day period, I viewed hundreds and hundreds of search results in dozens of different categories. My conclusion: The age of a domain is definitely a factor in the ranking of websites – no question about it. How much of a factor? Only Google knows the answer to that question. And while my research is far from scientific, I’m absolutely convinced, older domains have an advantage in Google’s SERPs. But, don’t take my word for it. Do your own research like I did, and draw your own conclusion. David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
Starting next year, ICANN is willing to take $185,000 plus $25,000 annual maintenance fee to sell you your very own top-level domain (TLD) to replace the “.com” domain you are now using.
Considering the recent twitter debacle involving former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, many employers and human resources personnel are well advised to reconsider their approach and stay ahead of social media. To begin with, social networking and micro-blogging messages on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be seen by millions, instantly. The information can be accessed worldwide and seen by competitors, customers, and potential employees. While it is a given that former Congressman Weiner's antics went high-profile very quickly, for numerous reasons, the reality is that the average impact of social media on the workplace is usually less dramatic. 
The transformation of the video industry has created great opportunities for SMEs to improve their marketing strategy at little or no cost.
The basics of website translation have been covered in numerous articles around the internet. What you won’t find is real information about the nitty-gritty of website translation. The boring, technical details that are never covered. The following strategies are often overlooked,
On Wednesday, February 23, 2011, a category 5 hurricane named “Panda” swept through the Gulf of Google devastating businesses large and small alike. The hurricane was reportedly named after one of Google’s engineers.| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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