My BIT

Nine ways to improve your business on online with Google+, it can help your business to promote through internet

2012-02-26T03:18:00.001-08:00

Why should you try Google+ -- especially if you are already using Facebook and Twitter for social media marketing? Following are nine ways Google+ can help your business.

1. Improves your search engine ranking. Which company do you think is going to get ranked higher on Google's search engine, the one using Google+ or the one just using Facebook? (That would be a rhetorical question.) "When you Google our company name - Brandignity -- the Google+ profile appears right at the top of the search results, which really helps," says Maciej Fita, SEO Director, Brandignity, LLC, an SEO and social media marketing company. "Clients and potential clients will often search a company name before inquiring further, so this has helped us spread our digital voice that much more efficiently."

2. A plus for collaboration. "Google+ is a must for CIOs trying to encourage collaboration," states David Politis, founder, BetterCloud, which provides third-party products for Google Apps. "In a flat world, social tools like Google+ support fast and easy domestic and cross-border sharing [of documents, images and so on], enabling productivity at a fraction of the price of conventional meetings" or videoconferencing.

3. Video chat with customers, colleagues and media -- for free. Speaking of collaboration, one of the most buzzed about features on Google+ is Google Hangouts, Google's video chat tool. "Google Hangouts works well for video conferencing with members in your circle," says Kenneth C. Wisnefski, founder and CEO ofWebiMax, a search engine optimization (SEO) company, who has used Google+ to video chat with up to six people (the service can host up to 10 parties currently). "The 'screen share' feature works great," he notes. However, "ensure you have a secure and fast internet connection, otherwise the video can be low quality and lower resolution."

Google+ Hangouts is particularly useful for those organizations with workers in different offices. "I manage employees and freelancers in North America, Asia and Europe," explains Casey Armstrong, partner and COO, webbbROI, an online marketing business. "Through Google+ Hangouts, we are able to collaborate in real-time through screen sharing, on Google Docs, and via video chat. In addition, even if I'm on the move, I can video chat through my iPhone on Google+. Talent is everywhere and Google+ removes the location barrier."

4. Get your message to the right audience with just a click. "Circles are invaluable," state Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson, co-founders of crowdSPRING. "Think of circles as your customer groups. Most businesses will have a variety of different customer groups and sometimes you want to communicate separately with each group," they explain.

With Google+, you can put customers into different groups or "circles" (by geography, by age, by interest) and then easily communicate with each circle separately, or with multiple circles at the same time. "For example, we created a group of loyal customers. We can customize offers and deals specifically for those customers without sending the same offers generally to the rest of the world or to other customers."

5. Free focus groups. Why pay for focus groups when you can use Google+ to get answers to questions or elicit customer feedback? That's what SEER Interactive, a search marketing firm, recently did. SEER used its Google+ page to host an hour long Q&A session covering SEO and PPC topics. "The result was a lively conversation on Google+ with more than 100 comments over the course of an hour," says Wil Reynolds, founder, SEER Interactive.

6. Good for B2B marketing. If you are looking to connect with other businesses, Google+ Your Business is designed to help. "We have found Google+ to be useful for acquiring new customers," explains Mike Rheaume, co-founder, SnapKnot, an online wedding photographer directory.

"Google+ is visual and participatory, meaning that photographers can easily share and comment on others' work. For us, this means it's easy to share photography-related content and connect with individual photographers [SnapKnot's target customers] beyond the major social media tools like Twitter and Facebook." Since using Google+, SnapKnot has achieved a high member conversion rate - and Rheaume considers it an excellent B2B marketing tool, especially for visual- and/or content-heavy businesses.

7. A potentially powerful PR tool. Using Google+ circles, you can target your public and media relations. "If we deliver a message, we know that it is going to be picked up by users who are more likely to respond, including key industry personalities and publishers," states Mike Essex, online marketing manager at Koozai, a U.K. digital marketing agency. Indeed, because Google+ allows users to tailor their message to a specific group (or circle), Essex has found Google+ to be a more effective PR tool than Twitter.

8. Can help promote brand awareness. "With the emergence of the social web, it has become essential for brands to build their reputation online," states Karim Guessous, founder and CEO of Tradepal, a peer-to-peer trading network. "Google+ gives a unique opportunity for an emerging product, such as Tradepal, to assert our personality and engage our user base." Through its Google+ page, Tradepal shares original content and tips, and has had dialogues with users, helping to solidify and promote its brand.

9. Another way to advertise promotions. With Google+, it's easy to offer promotions to those in your circles. For example, Arby's recently offered a coupon to Google+ users for a $2.99 Fish Sandwich & Small Curly Fries

from http://www.itworld.com/saas/252016/9-ways-google-can-help-your-business

Useful Great CSS Text Effects And Web Typography Tips

2012-02-11T09:57:00.001-08:00

1. Create a Letterpress Effect with CSS Text-Shadow

View Demo

2. Text Rotation with CSS

3. Date Display Technique with Sprites

4. CSS Gradient Text Effect

View Demo

5. CSS Text Gradients

Yet another very similar tutorial about text gradients, but maybe you'll like both variants trying to explain really how CSS text gradient effects work.

6. Add grunge effect to text using simple CSS

Article is based on the same technique as CSS text gradients using it to add grunge type effect to your typo!

View Demo

7. Two simple ways to create text embossing effect

8. Text Embossing Technique With CSS

Example from AlexBuga homepage.

9. Codename Rainbows

Beautiful CSS&Javascript code offered by DragonInteractive teaching how to get two-color gradient text effects, shadows and highlights.

View Demo

10. CSS Drop Shadows

11. Text-Shadow Exposed

Make cool and clever text effects with css text-shadow. Very detailed article teaching you a lot of hidden tips how to achieve text glowing, embossing,shadowing with just few steps.

12. Background gradients and CSS

Pretty cool CSS background effect, which can be applied on hover giving a lot of options use it in creative way!

13. CSS Text-Shadow in Safari, Opera, Firefox and more

14. Text-overflow

15. How To Implement sIFR3 Into Your Website

16. How To Use Any Font You Wish With FLIR

View Demo

For Further Reading – More Typography Tips In Sucessful Web Designs

17. How to use headings in HTML

18. Advanced Typography techniques using CSS

19. 10 Examples of Beautiful CSS Typography and how they did it…

Beautiful article explaining simple but very effective CSS tricks how to achieve beautiful typography effects with just a few lines of code.

20. Typographic Contrast and Flow

Nick La teaches how to apply right contrasts and flow in your webdesigns explaining why and what works and how to achieve that effect.

View Demo Overview

21. The Elements of Typographic Style applied in Webdesign

22. 5 Principles And Ideas Of Setting Type On The Web

from : http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/advanced-css-text-effects-web-typography-tips/

Tutorials for SEO Beginners from practicalecommerce.com

2012-01-27T02:39:00.001-08:00

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website to search engines. While that is a simple idea, putting SEO concepts to work can seem daunting to a beginner. Luckily there are a number of SEO tutorials to get started.

Here is a list of SEO tutorials for beginners. There are comprehensive guides, as well as shorter quick-start tutorials. There are SEO overviews, SEO blog tutorials, a SEO video tutorial, and a SEO case study tutorial. All of the tutorials are free.

SEOmoz

"The Beginner's Guide to SEO"

"The Beginner's Guide to SEO" from SEO management platform SEOmoz is an in depth tutorial on how search engines work. It covers the fundamental strategies that make websites search engine friendly. Topics include how people interact with search engines, keyword research, myths and misconceptions about search engines, and measuring and tracking success. Access the tutorial online for free, or download the guide by joining SEOmoz PRO for $99/month.

Google

"Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide."

"Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" is a best-practices guide PDF download available on Google's Webmaster Tools page. The document began as an effort to help teams within Google. It outlines how to make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand site content.

Knight Digital Media Center

"Search Engine Optimization — Basics."

"Search Engine Optimization — Basics" is a tutorial from the Knight Digital Media Center, housed jointly at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. The tutorial features sections such as keywords, site structure and navigation, optimizing images for SEO, additional training, and related links.

Search Engine Guide

"SEO 101."

"SEO 101" is a tutorial by Search Engine Guide, an online magazine for small business SEO. The guide is a fifteen-part series on the essentials of SEO. The series covers SEO basics, title tags, meta description and keyword tags, site architecture, keywords, SEO copywriting, linking, and more.

SEO Book

"The Blogger's Guide to SEO."

"The Blogger's Guide to SEO" from SEO Book is a tutorial on SEO for blog sites. It explains why blog SEO is different from SEO for other websites. It also features sections on keyword research, optimizing site structure, web analytics, and lists additional links to learn more about SEO.

Distilled

"Beginners Guide: Doing a Site Audit Using Google Webmaster Tools."

"Beginners Guide: Doing a Site Audit Using Google Webmaster Tools" is a tutorial by SEO agencyDistilled. The tutorial focuses on using the free tools that Google provides as a starting point for a comprehensive SEO site audit.

Yoast

"The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog."

"The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog" from Yoast is a comprehensive WordPress SEO guide. The content is also presented in video presentation.

Practical eCommerce

"SEO Case Study."

"SEO Case Study" is a Practical Commerce series from Contributing Editor Jill Kocher — an SEO professional — on the SEO struggles of The Motor Bookstore, a retailer of automotive manuals. Kocher writes frequent articles for Practical eCommerce and Ecommerce Developer — our companion publication — on SEO topics that help merchants and web developers, respectively.

SEO: Title-Tag Optimization for Ecommerce Sites - from practicalecommerce.com

2012-01-27T02:38:00.001-08:00

Optimizing title tags is a bit like eating your vegetables. No one wants to do it, but everyone knows it's good for you. Search engine optimization professionals universally agree that title tags are the most influential on-page element. SEOmoz recently confirmed the importance of title tags in a report that strongly correlated title tag optimization to higher rankings.

Remember that title tags are the primary text that defines a web page. They are required for all HTML documents. Search engine bots use them to help identify the content of a page. Moreover, title tags appear on search engine result pages and in browsers' tab and page views, as shown below.

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Title tags appear near the top of the underlying HTML markup, as shown in this Practical eCommerce article.

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Search results pages — this one is from Google — prominently display the title tag for a Practical eCommerce article.

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Title tags are shown clearly in browsers: at the top of the browser window and in the brower tab, as shown above with a Practical eCommerce article.

Title Tag Optimization Best Practices

The guidelines for optimizing title tags are simple. Begin the tag with the most valuable and relevant keyword phrase, use the exact keyword phrase, end with the brand, and keep the length to 70 characters or less.

The positioning of the keyword phrase relates to the importance the search engines place on text at the beginning of any element, whether it's title tags, anchor text or body copy. Using the exact keyword phrase is important because it will be more relevant to a search for that phrase than a title tag that puts other words in the middle of the phrase. For example, if the exact phrase the title tag is targeting is "free online games for kids," the title tag should start with that phrase rather than injecting other words like "free fun online games and puzzles for kids."

Many sites begin their title tags with the brand, resulting in every page sending a stronger signal for the brand and a weaker signal for the phrase for which the page needs to drive organic search traffic. Sometimes the site's content management system or shopping cart drives the order of the title tags to lead with the brand by default. In these cases, working with the vendor or in-house development teams can usually provide a way to customize title tags.

The last guideline pertaining to title tag length is related to the amount of visual real estate search engines will give to the title tag as the blue underlined link in the search results. The engines display 65-70 characters, truncating the rest with an ellipsis — a series of three periods. Because searchers won't see those truncated characters, spammers historically crammed the ends of title tags with repetitive keywords. As such, the search engines algorithmically discount the characters past number 70 or so. If the title tag is 73 characters long and ends with the brand, the worst that will happen is that the user will see the brand truncated. Rest assured the page won't face any sort of dampening or penalty for slight length variations unless the algorithms detect spammy behavior.

Applying Title Tag Best Practices in Real Life

Within those four simple guidelines lie many opportunities to improve or degrade the title tag's optimization. The most obvious way to go astray is choosing the wrong keywords for title tags. Conduct methodical and thorough keyword research — the Google keyword tool is a good place to start — and use it to create a keyword map from which to optimize the site. Every page that will be optimized must be assigned its own relevant and unique keyword phrase, known as the primary keyword. Depending on the depth of the keyword research, each page my also be assigned several closely related secondary keywords. These secondary keywords lend contextual relevance and help strengthen the overall keyword theme of the page without requiring as many repetitions of the exact same word. Consequently, secondary keywords that have been chosen well can make title tags, body copy and other on-page elements read more naturally while preserving the unique and valuable keyword theme required to demonstrate relevance to the search engines.

For example, a page that offers free online games to kids might assign that page the primary keyword of "free online games for kids" based on the phrase's 14,800 average searches a month in Google and its immediate relevance to the page's content. This phrase would be the first words in the title tag, as well as prominently included in other SEO elements on the page. In addition, several closely related secondary keywords could be assigned to the same page:

Search Term	Frequency
online games for kids	12,100 searches
kids games online	12,100 searches
kids games online for free	2,100 searches
kids online games	9,900 searches

As for applying the primary and secondary keywords to create the optimal title tag, experts disagree on whether it's best to include a single keyword in the title tag, or a mashup of related keyword phrases. Some prefer to use solely the primary keyword phrase and the brand in an attempt to laser focus the title tag:

<title>Free Online Games for Kids | MyBrand</title>

Others prefer to craft the title tag in such a way as to include several secondary keywords while keeping the prominence on the primary keyword:

<title>Free Online Games for Kids: Games Online for Free | MyBrand</title>

This example was both tough and simple, and the resulting title tag isn't a great example of grammatical eloquence. But it serves well as an example. It was tough because the keyword phrases are all rather long at three to five words each. That makes combining them creatively while maintaining exact phrasing much more difficult. However, it was also easy because the phrases were all so similar the title tag managed to hit the four most valuable phrases exactly and the least valuable phrase, "kids online games," in phrase match. It's important to note that punctuation is not considered as a separator in title tags. Therefore, the section of the title tag that reads "Kids: Games Online" is still considered an exact match, even though it includes a colon.

The method of title tag optimization that works best for your site can only be determined by testing. Perhaps start with the primary keyword and brand only, as it's easier to implement. While those title tags are live and collecting data, start working on a batch of title tags that include secondary keywords as well, paying close attention to arranging them to get the most exact keyword matches. After a month with the first set of primary keyword title tags, switch to the second set with secondary keywords for a month and analyze the impact.

Using Social Buttons to Enhance Search Engine Optimization from practicalecommerce.com

2012-01-27T02:37:00.001-08:00

Social "signals" increasingly influence search results in both Google and Bing. The search engines are coming to consider social signals as more indicative of how searchers value a page than traditional link signals — though links remain very important to search engine optimization. In addition, the engines consider social signals harder to falsely manipulate than the content and link signals that have traditionally driven SEO. I recently wrote about this growing trend in "Managing SEO and Social Media Together." Ecommerce merchants can increase social interaction with a site simply by including the right social buttons or widgets on the right pages of the site.

Search-Engine Access to Facebook and Twitter

Bing and Facebook have an agreement to include Facebook social data into Bing's search results, both as actual results and as a way to influence rankings of other pages that Facebook users "Like" or link to. Google doesn't have access to Facebook data as directly as Bing does, but signs point to Google's ability to crawl public portions of Facebook to cull some social signals. In addition, Google has its own social network in Google+, enabling Google to harvest all sorts of juicy user data about which sites and pages users like and link to. Both search engines have the ability to crawl Twitter for social signals as well. Social signals are clearly important to search engine optimization, but many ecommerce sites struggle with how to encourage more customers to behave more socially with their brands.

Give Customers an Easy Button

For starters, make it easy for consumers to be social when they're on your ecommerce site. Say a consumer is looking for a pair of wool socks that are warm when wet, not itchy and are comfortable enough to hike in all day or lounge around the house in. Wool socks are not that interesting, but to the right person the search for the right pair of wool socks is captivating. That person — and millions of others bent on their own pursuit of things interesting to them — will very likely Tweet, Like, +1 or blog about that product when he finds it. If the product page contains social buttons for Twitter, Facebook or Google+, that consumer is far more likely in his exuberance at having found the perfect pair of wool socks to Tweet, Like or +1 that product page on the spot. Conversely, if the product page does not contain those buttons, behaving socially may not even occur to that consumer. Or it may cross his mind and the thought of copying the URL, going to Facebook, pasting the URL, and thinking of something to say is just beyond the effort he's willing to make.

Including social buttons in the right pages and at the right stages of the conversion funnel is key to increasing consumers' social behavior. The payoff of that social behavior is that the consumers' friends who also search for wool socks are very likely to see that same product page in their search results. Of course, those same friends are also very likely to see the Tweet, Like or +1 and click straight through to the product page to shop on their own as well.

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Target.com provides the Facebook "Like" and the Google+ buttons on its product pages.

Which Social Buttons and Where?

The big three buttons are Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Choosing which buttons to include comes down to a few key factors.

Find your customers. Which social media sites do the site's target audience use most? If you're not sure, check some recent studies like KISSmetrics' findings on social media site usage by gender, income, and other relevant demographics.
Consumer or business? Is the product or service targeted toward a consumer or business audience? Business-to-business sites may want to focus on Twitter and LinkedIn sharing.
Communicate with the marketing department. Which social media sites does the marketing team focus on? If marketing is working hard to drive transactions from the Facebook channel, it will be important to include Facebook sharing buttons on the site.
Space considerations. How much space can be carved out of the existing page templates? Is there room for one button, three buttons, or one widget? Work with design and user-experience teams to balance the social and search benefit with the user and brand experience.

KISSmetrics can help merchants identify which social media sites their prospects use.

Choose the Right Social Graphic

After choosing the social sites to support, choose which types of icons, links, buttons and widgets are most appropriate on each different page type. For example, many sites include in their headers or footers a set of icons that link to their Facebook or Twitter profiles along with their email newsletters and RSS feeds. Icon links like these enable customers to interact with a brand over time, but do not encourage point-of-excitement sharing such as the wool socks customer would engage in. Linking icons are important for their own reasons, but they're simply not functional enough to encourage the sharing of individual pages.

Each social media site offers a variety of sharing buttons and widgets to encourage visitors to sites all across the web to share content. These buttons and widgets are free from the sites themselves and come in a variety of sizes, shapes and functionalities. Facebook alone offers 11 social buttons and widgets from the basic Like button to Facepile, which "displays the Facebook profile pictures of users who have liked your page or have signed up for your site." The other major social sites' button and plugin offerings can be found at Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Facebook's "Social Plugins" page.

Beyond Social Logo Links

For example, if an ecommerce site chooses to enable stronger sharing for Facebook across its site, it may use the following buttons, depending on the type of page.

Header or footer on every page. Insert icon links to the Facebook profiles for the site. The goal is to enable longer-term communication with customers via the site's Facebook profile.
Category pages. Place the Facepile widget in the side navigational channel to show customers which of their friends Like the site as a whole. The goal is to inspire confidence in the site based on the number of people overall — or friends specifically — that also trust and like the site enough to Like it on Facebook.
Product pages. Place the Like button near the product image or name. The goal is to capture point-of-excitement Likes regardless of whether that person eventually buys the product or not.
Shopping cart order confirmation page. Place the Like button near the images or names of the products purchased. The goal is to capture Likes from people who are proud of their purchase and want to show it off. Each product needs its own Like button, however, because the goal is to increase Likes for the product pages for purchased products, not to Like the confirmation page itself.
Blog and marketing pages. Insert the Like button under the main headline or near the primary visual. The goal is to enable customers to spread the word about initiatives and charitable programs to increase positive buzz about the brand naturally. The Facepile widget could also be beneficial on these pages to engender trust.
Email newsletter. When products or initiatives are featured, include a Like button at the end near the "Read More" link that the customer would click to visit the product or initiative page. The goal is to capture Likes from customers who have read enough in the newsletter to know they Like the product or initiative but have no intention of clicking through to the site to transact or read more.

Summary

This article has been a single example of using two plugins for one site. Major etailers like Amazon use all of these tactics and more to capitalize on the value of social buttons and widgets to their organic search and other marketing channels. The easier and more pervasive the social buttons are across the site, the more likely customers are to engage socially, but it doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. Consider dipping a toe in the social plugin waters with a single page type and a single social network to get the feel for how the buttons interact with the platform and how consumers interact with the buttons.

Longest Tips for SEO from - practicalecommerce.com - Part 3

2012-01-27T02:36:00.001-08:00

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 3: Keywords to Content

I discussed keyword research and content mapping in detail in the earlier two articles in this series on content optimization. But keyword research is like any form of data collection and analysis: It won't drive a single additional organic search visit or sale until it's acted upon. With their keyword maps firmly in hand, content creators and search marketers can effectively and efficiently create or optimize content that turns those potentially valuable keywords into real search-engine-optimization traffic.

Write for Readers, Optimize for Engines

It's obvious when content is written for search engines instead of customers. It tends to focus on high keyword density — having a higher ratio of keywords to other words — and tends to lack readability and interest. Instead of this, inform writers of the keyword theme for the page and let them write freely and creatively with the keywords and the brand messaging in mind. When they're finished writing, go back over the fresh copy with an eye to replacing some phrases with keyword phrases. Be careful not to kill the spirit of the content in the process.

Where keywords are placed can have a big impact on how strong a keyword relevance signal they send to the search engines. This is referred to as "keyword prominence." If a page is meant to rank for "online games for girls" but the keywords related to that phrase aren't used on the page in prominent places, it will have a difficult time ranking. So before we start flinging words around the page, keep these content optimization guidelines in mind.

Beginning. The beginning of an element is always more prominent than the end.
Phrasing. The order of the words within a keyword phrase matters. To target a keyword phrase most strongly, use the phrase exactly as it appears in the keyword map. For example, using the map from "Part 2: Keyword Mapping" — last week's article — a page targeting "online games for girls" would want to use that exact phrase in the most prominent elements on the page, not mutate it as in "online fun games forlittle girls." Similarly, the keyword research and map indicate that the exact phrase "online games for girls" is stronger than a rephrased version such as "games online for girls."

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Once the phrases have been categorized and analyzed, the mapping begins — as shown in this spreadsheet.

The Prominent Elements for SEO

Title Tags. The title tag is the most prominent keyword relevance element on the page. For detailed guidelines and examples, see "Title-Tag Optimization for Ecommerce Sites," my previous article on that topic. In general, place the targeted keywords at the beginning of the title tag and keep the title tag to 65 to 70 characters.
Headings. While less prominent than they were a couple of years ago, headings are still as prominent as bolded or italicized content. Again, place the targeted keywords at the beginning of the heading, especially the H1 heading that typically headlines the top of the page.
Anchor Text. Traditionally identified by its blue underlined styling, anchor text consists of the words that users click on to follow a link to another page. Anchor text is doubly prominent because it affects the keyword theme on the page where the words appear, and also passes a keyword signal along with a linking signal to the destination page. Adding relevant anchor text with links to relevant pages to the body copy described below is an excellent way to strengthen two pages' keyword signals. It's important to note, however, that a link that uses an image as its anchor does not strengthen either page's keyword signal, even if that image contains keywords.
Body Copy. Descriptive text on a page acts as an anchor for that page's keyword theme. As other features and products come and go, the body copy remains to consistently target the page's keyword theme. Any block of text that contains several complete sentences like this page at LL.Bean can be called body copy. A page that consists entirely of a grid of product images and names with no descriptive contentlike this at Bed Bath & Beyond has no body copy. The SEO practitioner's first challenge may be working with design and development teams to create a space in the template to insert body copy and a method of editing it. Regardless, the most prominent area of the body copy is the beginning of the text block and any anchor text that is used within the body copy.

The other textual elements of the page aren't as prominent, including meta data, alternative attributes for images, title attributes links and text locked inside of images. That's not to say that they are completely useless to SEO, they just do not carry the kind of prominence that the preceding elements do. In fact, meta keywords are no longer used by search engines as positive ranking factors. They only count as negative ranking factors if a site tries to stuff them full of redundant or irrelevant keywords.

While not a prominent ranking factor, the meta description is actually a valuable SEO team player. When the engines return a page of search results, the meta description can be used as the black descriptive text for the page's search result. As such, it's important to optimize the meta description with the same keyword theme as the rest of the page, because it may influence the searcher to click on your search result rather than your competitor's. Keep the meta description to about 180 characters and make sure to use the keywords from the map. However, since this element doesn't impact rankings, there's no need to be quite so slavish to using the keywords at the beginning of the element.

Where to Write

Many ecommerce sites are fitted with a content management system or CMS. If the CMS is familiar and pleasant to use, by all means go ahead and write or optimize a page's content directly in the CMS. I've never met the CMS that I felt that comfortable with, however. They tend to feel stark and intimidating, forcing my creativity into their little white fields. And then I forget what I'm doing as I multitask, close my browser, and the page of content I was nearly done with is gone.

I prefer to write content and optimize pages in Excel. It's fast, it autosaves, it counts characters, it sucks in keyword data, it enables me to concatenate — i.e. link — things that follow a predictable pattern like preliminary versions of title tags, and I can keep it with my keyword research and map.

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Add new columns to the keyword map to represent the elements that need to be optimized.

Even though it's difficult to see everything at once, I take my keyword map and add new columns to it to represent the elements I need to optimize. This way, every element and keyword I'll be using is represented in a single row for each page. As I get farther along in my optimization, I can look down a single column like body copy and see at a glance whether I've unconsciously fallen into a rut where I'm repeating the same phrases over and over on each page instead of writing more unique content.

With these guidelines in mind and a keyword map in hand, content optimization is much more effective and efficient than randomly optimizing pages for keywords that might be useful. The process could easily be spread across a team of optimizers, simply by assigning rows of the spreadsheet to individuals to optimize. Once the optimization is done, upload the content via the CMS or with the help of the developers and measure the impact it has on the optimized pages' SEO performance.

Longest Tips for SEO from - practicalecommerce.com - Part 2

2012-01-27T02:35:00.001-08:00

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 2: Keyword Mapping

Keyword research is essential to search engine optimization. It's the window into the words that real searchers use to find products like the ones you sell. But at the end of the keyword research process — detailed in "Part 1: Keyword Research" — search marketers can be overwhelmed by the vast amount of data staring at them from their Excel spreadsheets. Keyword categorizing and mapping help move the optimization process from the research phase to the actual optimization phase.

Categorizing Keywords

During the keyword research process, patterns start to appear. Different types of keywords emerge that can be logically grouped into different categories that reflect the site's business goals and core product offerings. For example, if my site sells subscriptions to online games for kids, my keyword research could be 12,000 phrases or more based on the research conducted in Google's freeKeyword Tool. But because each keyword is needs to be related to my core product offering, I can start to categorize them and delete the ones that aren't directly relevant.

Let's say that my site sells games. But it doesn't sell just any games; it sells online games for kids. That's three vital components to choosing keywords that are specifically targeted to my product offering: "types of games," "online vs. offline," and synonyms for the word "kids," as listed in the spreadsheet, below.

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By creating columns for each of these three keyword components, I can identify which of the 12,000 keywords are the most relevant to my business, and filter them to more easily choose phrases to optimize the different sections of my site.

For example, the keyword "free games" is huge, with an average of 823,000 searches per month in Google. That's a mighty tempting keyword to target, but is it not directly relevant to my site's core offering. I don't offer "free games," I sell subscriptions to online games for kids. A search for "free games" could represent someone looking for pickup basketball games, games to play as a family, pirated video games to download, or any number of other game-related desires. It's too broad for my site and even if my site could capture those searches, only a small percentage would convert. It may be worth a test to see if enough additional volume could be driven that even at a lower conversion rate I'd see more sales, but it's unlikely to be worth the effort.

"Free games online" is also quite large at 201,000 — getting closer because it represents two of the three key elements of a targeted keyword for my site. But still, the searcher could easily be looking for any type of free game online for any age group, and I still don't offer free games. Perhaps it may be worth discussing offering a few free games or some free trials to be able to target these larger "free" keyword sets. That's a decision that needs to be made at the executive level to ensure that it's in line the company's business goals.

Analyzing Keyword Categories

Regardless, to see the phrases that target my niche specifically, all I need to do is filter out the "free" keywords and all the blank cells in columns B, C and D so that I'm left with only terms that have all three elements: online, kids and games.

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By filtering out the "free" keywords and all the blank cells in columns B, C and D, I'm left with only terms that have all three elements: "online," "kids," and "games."

Now I can see that the largest generic keywords in my research that specifically target my niche are "online games for kids" and "kids games online" at an average of 12,100 searches each per month in Google. I can also analyze the most prevalent keyword patterns within the categories I've designated. For example, I can determine from my full keyword set that 56 percent of the keywords contain the word "kids" as opposed to only 3 percent of the keywords that contain the word "children." This little tidbit tells me that when I'm writing copy for my site I should use the word "kids" more frequently than the word "children." I can also see that 23.5 percent of the keywords relate to virtual world games, while 2.7 percent relate to fashion games and 2.1 percent relate to educational games.

In "Part 1," I explained how navigational phrases on a site should influence the seed list for the keyword research. In turn, analysis of the categories and patterns that emerge in the keyword research can also be used to influence a site's information architecture and navigational phrases. Of course, these statistics depend entirely on the accuracy and thoroughness of the keyword research. If the search marketer misses a category of terms accidentally, those keywords obviously can't figure into the category and pattern analysis.

Keyword Mapping

Once the phrases have been categorized and analyzed, the mapping begins. First, make a list of all the URLs that need to be optimized. This list may be the entire site, or it may be a smaller subset of the major categories and most valuable subcategories and products. Each URL needs a unique primary keyword. It's important that each URL have its own unique keyword theme so that a site's own pages don't compete with each other for rankings for the same phrases. In addition, each URL can also be assigned a couple of secondary keywords that are very closely related to the primary keyword.

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Once the phrases have been categorized and analyzed, the mapping begins — as shown in this spreadsheet.

In this example the girls.htm page has been assigned the "online games for girls," the largest relevant keyword, as its primary keyword. It also has two secondary keywords assigned to it that are nearly identical to the primary, except for word order and other slight differences. Assigning a set of very similar keywords to the same page enables the writers or optimizers to vary their copy to avoid the most annoying forms of keyword repetition while still maintaining a strong keyword theme.

If the map has empty spaces where URLs aren't assigned keywords, more research is needed to identify the relevant keywords for that page. Conversely, if a group of keywords from the research lacks a URL to map to, more pages of content could be created to target those keywords.

The exercise of mapping of keywords to URLs identifies which pages should be optimized for which keywords, but not how to use those keywords on the pages. The upcoming "Part 3" installment of this series on content optimization will focus on actually using the keyword map to optimize content.

Longest Tips for SEO from - practicalecommerce.com - Part 1

2012-01-27T02:30:00.001-08:00

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 1: Keyword Research

In its purest form, optimizing content for search engines consists of modifying one page to send a strong keyword signal for one keyword or phrase. The amazing simplicity of this concept is often lost on marketers, many of whom think of content optimization like taking aspirin: If two is good then four must work even better. Sprinkling lots of keywords on the same page will not improve organic search rankings, nor will using the same keyword on lots of different pages. The key to content optimization for SEO is matching one keyword to one page in a methodical and disciplined manner. Scalable methods of optimization become necessary if the site is very large, but even the largest sites still "manually" optimize a selection of critical pages by matching one keyword to one page.

Choosing the Best Keywords

Before keywords can be matched to pages, the optimizer must know which keywords to choose. Make a seed list of the words that will be used on the page. Think of as many synonyms as possible and record them in a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet. Be warned, these are not the keywords with which you'll be optimizing. The brainstorming process is only the start of the keyword research process. Optimizing with a seed list will result in content optimized for the way you think and search, not the way your customers do.

For example, a site that offers wedding invitations and favors might include the word "opalescent" in its seed list as an adjective describing a type of invitations. But searchers might not search on such a fancy word in high numbers, favoring the shorter adjectives "pearly" or "shimmery." Next, check out competitors' sites to see how they refer to their products. Especially note category names in the navigation, title tags, and words used as anchor text in links. If the company has been optimizing for organic search, these areas should be full of valuable keywords. Add any relevant words to the seed list that started with the brainstorm process.

In addition, I often brainstorm a list of adjectives, a list of nouns and a list of verbs, and use Excel to concatenate — i.e. join — them into phrases. For example, the adjectives "affordable" and "modern" might be concatenated with "wedding invitations" and "wedding invites" to form 4 phrases instantly, as follows.

Affordable wedding invitations
Affordable wedding invites
Modern wedding invitations
Modern wedding invites

Four phrases aren't very inspiring, but 900 phrases can be generated instantly with a seed list of 30 adjectives, 10 nouns and 3 verbs. The concatenate formula essentially takes the contents of cells or strings of text and crams them together in the specified order in a single cell. Find it in Excel in the "Formulas" tab by clicking "Insert Function" and entering "concatenate" in the search field.

Using Keyword Tools

When the seed list feels fairly complete, turn to a keyword research tool to understand the value of the keywords on the seed list and also to discover additional related keywords. While there are many keyword tools, I prefer Google's free AdWords Keyword Tool. The vast majority of most sites' organic search traffic comes from Google, so it makes sense to tap Google's database of keywords when deciding how to optimize a site. Other reputable keyword tools include Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, both of which tools have free and paid versions. Searching Google for "keyword tool" turns up a variety of other options, but be certain of the data's sources and biases before basing optimization decisions on it.

Using keyword research tools can be tedious, but well worth the time. Begin feeding words from the seed list into the keyword tool and exporting the results. For example, the wedding invitations site might start by feeding the four phrases shown above into Google AdWords Keyword Tool. The red boxes indicate the important boxes to fill and check to get the most specific keyword results for searchers in the US searching in English using desktop browsers. Change the settings to get mobile data, data for any country or language or other variables.

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Google AdWords Keyword Tool's user interface.

Highlighted with blue boxes, the keyword tool reports how many searches are conducted for the exact phrases on Google on average over the last 12 months and the level of competition sites optimizing for these keywords will face. Any keyword data worth researching is worth saving. Even if the data shows that some keywords in the seed list aren't worth optimizing for, the data should be kept as a reminder that those phrases are less valuable than others. Click "Download" to save the data in the report, highlighted in orange below, and save the file for later analysis.

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Google AdWords Keyword Tool's keyword ideas section.

The Google Keyword Tool also shows keyword ideas, which are closely related to the original keywords entered. Note that different phrasings have different numbers of searches, such as the purple highlighted phrases shown here. It's not surprising in this case that the grammatically correct phrasing "affordable wedding invitations" has more searches than "wedding invitations affordable," but the fact that the former has 38.5 times the search volume is very interesting. There will also be cases where the grammatical phrasing isn't the clear winner, which can offer an SEO advantage over sites that don't do their research.

Lastly, the words highlighted in green such as "letterpress" and "vintage" are interesting because they may not have appeared on the original seed list. Newly discovered keywords like these can suggest new content or subcategory groupings on the site, or perhaps even new products to offer. The process of feeding seeds into the keyword tool and exporting the results is long and tedious. Truly, no SEO professional enjoys this part of the process. The end result is a download folder filled with individual CSV files that need to be combined into a single file for analysis as a whole. If there are too many to copy and paste into a single file manually, try merging CSV files using the command line, which I described for Windows users on my blog.

The mass of keyword data compiled from the downloaded CSV files can be overwhelming. Where to start? What to do with this jumble of letters and numbers? The next "Part 2" installment of this series on content optimization will focus on keyword analysis and mapping, followed by a final article on actually using the keywords and map to optimize content.

Internet explore 6, 7 ,8 - CSS box shadow and CSS border radius - Tricks and hacks

2012-01-27T00:36:00.001-08:00

Plz folks these are the useful links to hack IE 6 ,7 and 8 .....9, we know that IE wont support CSS border radius and CSS box shadow..here the solution for this. ie 6 also support CSS border radius and CSS box shadow

here you go people

http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2011/08/24/how-to-simulate-css3-box-shadow-in-ie7-8-without-javascript/

http://dimox.net/cross-browser-border-radius-rounded-corners/

http://placenamehere.com/article/384/css3boxshadowininternetexplorerblurshadow/

http://fetchak.com/ie-css3/

http://www.boogdesign.com/b2evo/index.php/attempt-better-drop-shadows-in-ie8?blog=2

http://robertnyman.com/2010/03/16/drop-shadow-with-css-for-all-web-browsers/

div { background-color: #fff; zoom: 1; filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color='#969696', Direction=135, Strength=3); }

How to Check if mod_rewrite is working for my site and on Server- .htaccess works

2012-01-18T20:45:00.001-08:00

If you suspect mod_rewrite may not be working on your site, one simple method to verify is to setup a single redirect to test it.

Add the following line to the top of your .htaccess file:

Code:

 RewriteEngine on RewriteRule testpage\.html http://www.google.com [R]

Then re-upload it to your server.

Once the .htaccess file has been updated, enter the following into your browser:

Code:

 http://www.yoursite.com/testpage.html

This should automatically redirect you to Google.

If this works, then mod_rewrite IS working on your server.

If this does NOT work, then mod_rewrite is either disabled or setup incorrect. Contact the vBSEO Total Support Team via a the ticketing system:
http://www.vbseo.com/tickets/

way -2

How to Check if mod_rewrite is Enabled on your Server

Here's a tip I thought I would share. Many of the open source applications that are currently available rely on an Apache module called mod_rewrite to rewrite requested URL's on the fly. Applications such as Mambo rely on mod_rewrite being present and enabled on a server in order to produce Search Engine Friendly URL's.

Here is a way to check if mod_rewrite is enabled on your server...

Create a file called .htaccess (note there is nothing before the file extension).

Put only these two lines in your .htaccess file.

Options +FollowSymLinks
  Redirect /google.html http://www.google.com

Upload this file to your site root on your server.
Now point your browser to: http://www.example.com/google.html (replacing example.com with the domain name of your own website).

If you are redirected to Google, mod_rewrite is working.
If you get an error, then mod_rewrite is not working.

If mod_rewrite is not working, check Apache configuration.

Apache requirements for mod_rewrite

The Apache httpd.conf file has the settings to enable URL rewriting.
Two settings are required.

mod_rewrite module is installed
Search file for LoadModule rewrite_module and un-comment that line (remove the leading #)
AllowOverride All
Search file for AllowOverride None and change it to AllowOverride All

Restart Apache
Restarting the Apache web server is required for the changes to take effect.

NOTE: If you are testing whether mod_rewrite is enabled for your Mambo Open Source website, you need to follow these steps:

Rename your htaccess.txt to .htaccess, or use your existing .htaccess file.
Enable SEF URL's in your administrator backend

Place the following lines in your .htaccess file.

Options +FollowSymLinks
  Redirect /google.html http://www.google.com

If your site is located in a sub-domain, eg. "test", you need to include the subdomain in the path, like this for example:
```
Options +FollowSymLinks
  Redirect /test/google.html http://www.google.com
```
Point your browser to: http://www.example.com/google.html or http://www.example.com/subdomain/google.html (replacing example.com with the domain name of your own website and subdomain - if applicable- with your subdomain name).

If you are redirected to Google, mod_rewrite is working.
If you get an error, then mod_rewrite is not working.

How to Remove two Hard-Coded Home in wordpress navigation bar

2012-01-10T20:19:00.001-08:00

How to Remove two home link in wordpress navigation bar.

There are so many wordpress sites , blogs and forums try to explain how to remove home link in wordpress navigation menu , if you create a static page for your wordpress blog or wordpress site , you will get two home link in main navigation bar, so here im try to explain how i remove the first Home link, the other blogs try to explain something but i realize its not working in wordpress 3.3 and above.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/ - this link will help you to set static home page for wordpress

http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/hide-pages/#hide-from-the-navigation-menu - this link will help you to hide page on menu.

once you set a static home page , there are two home page will be display in main navigation bar, one is wordpress default and another is which is set by you. if you follow the wordpress default home as your static homepage. then you won't face this two home page problem, if you set your new page as static page , you will face this problem. so here we go,

go to your FTP - /wp-content/themes/themefolder/ - here i choose /wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/functions.php - download this php file and open it. you will see below code line nearly 358 , edit it and upload it. thats it.

open functions.php in /wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/ and change $args['show_home'] = true; to $args['show_home'] = false;

once you upload the file i to same folder and referesh your site, you wont see the first home link anymore..

List of Light Box Effect Tools and Scripts Which Lightbox is Right for You?

2012-01-04T00:35:00.001-08:00

If you only want to display images:
Lightbox 2 - the original, by Lokesh Dhakar, is a "simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers."
Framework: prototype, scriptaculous
Displays: images (with transition effects)
Lightbox ++ - based on the original Lightbox but provides more options for image re-sizing based on browser window size.
Framework: none
Displays: images
Litebox - a code-reduced version of Lightbox, uses the moo.fx library and prototype-lite. A good choice if page weight is a concern.
Framework: Prototype Lite, moo.fx
Displays:images
Slimbox - a lightweight variation of the original Lightbox, built on mootools.
Framework: mootools,
Displays: images
If you want to display html, forms, flash, video etc.:
Thickbox is a "webpage UI dialog widget written in JavaScript on top of the jQuery library. Its function is to show a single image, multiple images, inline content, iframed content, or content served through AJAX in a hybrid modal."
Framework: jQuery
Displays: images (no transitions but will resize images if larger than browser window), inline, iframe or ajax served content.
Lightbox Gone Wild! can be used to provide additional info, show an image or present a form for user input.
Framework: prototype
Displays: images, html, forms etc.
Multi-faceted Lightbox - prototyped based again, but offers a variety of options for different types of data that can be loaded in the lightbox.
Framework:none
Displays: images, html
Leightbox - very similar to Lightbox Gone Wild (prototype based, allows images, html etc) except that Leightbox keeps the lightbox content in the html, but hidden from view, so that it can be indexed by search engines.
Frontbox - self-contained script that doesn't rely on any other frameworks; degrades well, lightweight, cross-browser and can display images, html, ajax served content and hidden divs.
Framework: none
Displays: images, html, ajax-served, hidden divs
Lytebox - based on original Lightbox script but written to eliminate the need for the prototype and scriptaculous libraries.
Framework: none
Displays: Images (including slideshow option) and html content.
Bumpbox - an ajax lightbox script that can display images, html content, PDF's, remote content etc.
Framework:mootools
Displays: Images, html, pdf's, flash (in limited browsers), remote content
Lightbox++ - lightbox clone that's built to handle Flash as well as regular images.
Framework: prototype, scriptaculous
Displays: Flash, images
iBox - super lightweigh script that handles Images, inline divs, and external HTML pages, without any external libraries.
Framework: none
Displays: images, divs external html.
YUI Based Lightbox - a lightbox script built on Yahoo User Interface Library
Framework: YUI Library and dependencies
Better Modal Window - prototype based script that uses a hidden div in the html as content source for the lightbox.
Framework:prototype
Displays: anything you can put in a div.
Misc:
Almost CSS Only Lightbox - the author calls it a CSS Only Lightbox, but it's not quite that. It is mostly, only CSS though :)
Suckerfish Hover Lighbox - lightbox effect while keeping accessibility. Not classic lightbox-ish but a nice presentation, nonetheless.
Un-named Lightbox Variant - based on Version 1 of the original Lightbox script, this one adds subtitle and fullsize support, hides forms and Flash objects and works even when JS isn't on.
Execute Lightbox Scripts from Flash - a how-to.
AJAX for lightboxes - an informative article on bringing AJAX to lightboxes.
Add-ons to other scripts:
Slightbox - adds lightbox functionality to JonDesign's SmoothGallery.
Lightbox 2 for Wordpress - bring lightbox functionality to WordPress based sites with this script built on prototype and scriptaculous.

Textpattern Lightbox - lightbox script for Textpattern based sites.

Greased Lightbox - greasemonkey, creammonkey and Opera user script for adding Lightbox functionality to sites like Flickr, DeviantArt, My Space, Wikipedia
Galri - lightbox add-on script for Picasa
Did I miss any? Let me know via my contact form.
Added: Highslide JS - a simple thumbnail viewer script that differs from traditional lightboxes, in that it doesn't prevent the user from scrolling the containing page. It also degrades nicely and doesn't require any additional framework install. (Thanks Trevor, for passing this one on!)
Added: jQuery Lightbox which is an images only port of Lightbox 2 built on the jQuery Library. (thanks Tom for sending this link along!)

from : http://www.fortysomething.ca/mt/etc/archives/006978.php & usefull proxy - http://www.d44.info/

Capture Google Maps - How to Capture Google Maps

2011-12-22T01:40:00.000-08:00

How to Capture Google Maps for Printing and Poster Design
Its Really Works - i suggest you to get this. you need firefox and this add ons
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/screengrab/

Tools Required:

Firefox Browser.
ScreenGrab extension for Firefox : It will capture what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection, a particular frame… basically it saves webpages as images – either to a file, or to the clipboard.
Notepad.

Let’s Start:
1. Open up Firefox and install the Screengrab extension.
2. Go to http://maps.google.com/ and open a map of the location you want.
3. Zoom to a level that would be right for whatever purpose you are finally going to use the map for. Just don’t bother about the size of the map now. We will deal with that later.
4. On the top right hand side of the map you would find a link called…..’Link’. Click on it. In the little pop-up that appears, click on ‘Customize and preview embedded map’.

5. A new pop-up window opens up where you can customize the size of the map. Select the ‘Custom’ option and enter the width and height (in pixels) that you want your final map to be. For example, you could change the values to 5000×4000. The preview map will change to reflect the new size.

6. Once you are satisfied with the size of the map, copy the html code that appears below the preview map.

7. Open Notepad and paste the above code. Name the file anything you want but make sure you save it with the extension .html. For example, you can call the file mymap.html.
(Tip: In the Save dialog box enter the name as “mymap.html” including the quotes to force Notepad to save the file with the extension .html and not .txt)
8. Open the html file you created in step 7 in Firefox. You would see your map displayed in the same size you selected in step 5. Of course, much of the map would probably be beyond the screen and you may have to scroll horizontally and vertically to view the hidden area.
9. Now that we have the map of our desired size, all we need to do now is to capture and save the map as an image file. Here is where the ScreenGrab extension for Firefox comes in handy. Assuming that you have already installed ScreenGrab, you would find the ScreenGrab icon at the bottom right corner of Firefox. Click on the icon and choose Save>Complete Page/Frame. After a moment, a save dialog appears. Save the image as a PNG or JPG file.

That’s it. Your large size map is ready.
The above trick can be most useful for grabbing maps for use with your GPS enabled mobile phones . Of course, you would need to calibrate the image file before use with the GPS device.

usefull proxy - http://www.d44.info/

Simple Mobile Friendly WordPress Theme - Optimize with mobile

2011-12-22T01:37:00.000-08:00

Optimize a Mobile Friendly WordPress Site

In this section we will share all the ways that will create a mobile friendly version of WordPress for your users.

1. Mobify

Mobify is a free service that makes WordPress, Drupal and other websites mobile-friendly. Supports iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and 5000+ other devices. Many top brands including, MTV, Sitepoint, Boingboing, Smashingmagazine, Discover Magazine and others are using Mobify. WPBeginner’s mobile version is also powered by mobify. Mobify allows you to customize your site design and it is a great pack for designers. WordPress mobify plugin.

2. Mofuse

Mofuse has a free option to make your blog mobile friendly for various devices including, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others. Top blogs like Mashable, Readwriteweb, Makeuseof are using Mofuse. Mofuse displays your RSS Feeds to your users. Their free option does not give you enough freedom which is why we did not use their service, but it is very easy to setup. They also have a WordPress Mofuse Plugin.

3. WordPress Mobile Edition

WordPress Mobile Edition is a plugin by Crowd Favorite. This plugin shows an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device. Mobile browsers are automatically detected, the list of mobile browsers can be customized on the settings page.

4. WPTouch

WPTouch is a mobile plugin/theme for your WordPress website. It automatically transforms your WordPress blog into a web-application experience when viewed from an iPhoneTM, iPod touchTM, AndroidTM, or BlackBerry StormTM touch mobile device. WPTouch has a very good admin options panel. Make sure you check out their gallery for screenshots.

5. WPTap

WPTap offers both free and paid themes that lets you display a mobile friendly version to touchscreen phones like the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android and Blackberry. It is compatible with other WordPress plugins that can be used with older devices. This plugin leaves your regular theme as is, and it only displays the tap theme when a smartphone/touch phone user accesses the site.

6. WordPress Mobile Pack

The WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog. It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.

7. MobilePress

MobilePress is a free WordPress plugin which turns your WordPress blog into a mobile friendly blog when viewed on a cell phone. MobilePress also allows you to create custom mobile themes for different handheld devices and mobile browsers such as the iPhone, Opera Mini and Windows Mobile.

For Administrators

In this section, we will share how you can create a mobile friendly WordPress Admin Panel for administrators (you). This will allow you to manage comments and create new posts using your mobile device.

8. WordPress for iPhone

Official iPhone app that lets you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.7 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.

9. WordPress for Blackberry

Official WordPress for BlackBerry app allows you to write posts, upload photos and videos, edit pages, and manage comments. Both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.7 or higher) sites are supported.

10. WordPress for Android

Official WordPress for Android is an Open Source app that empowers you to write new posts, edit content, and manage comments with built-in notifications. Download it now and get blogging in no time.

11. WPhone

Wphone creates the option to use a custom admin interface designed for mobile phones. It has two options called Rich and Lite. Rich option is designed for the iPhone / iPod Touch and other phones supporting full Javascript and CSS featuring fancy AJAX and sliding menus. Lite option is a lightweight, simple version designed for all other phone types (no Javascript or anything else required).

Which plugin are you using? Share your opinions about these plugins in the comments below. If we missed a one that you would like us to include feel free to suggest it in the comments. Also, if you find this article useful, don’t forget to share it with others.

Create a WordPress theme with Mobile Web Templates

Tips to Optimizing your website for mobile devices

Wordpress Site with mobile support - optimize with mobile 2 in 1- two in one

Web and Mobile Optimization

Should Learn about Screen Size - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_display_standard

World Wide submarine Internet Cables - This Free Map Shows Location Of Undersea Internet Cables

2011-11-13T02:26:00.001-08:00

Did you know that 99% of the internet traffic flowing between countries travels through underwater cables. And now we have a fairly comprehensive map of these pipes, available for free on the internet.
This map data was compiled by Greg Mahlknecht using resources he found on the internet. It shows the major pipes flowing from Europe to North America and those from Asia to Australia and Africa. The map is a work in progress and Mahlknecht is asking for help to improve the detail and accuracy of this underwater map.
Take a few minutes from your busy day to check it out. It's always interesting to see where the big pipes travel, especially those string across long distances like the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean

Dtive here : http://www.cablemap.info/ or http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

SKETCHED UI WIREFRAMES AND MOCKUPS - 18 GREAT EXAMPLES

2011-11-11T23:32:00.001-08:00

For this post, I’ve collected 18 great examples of sketched UI wireframes and mockups. A lot of these look so good that you may be inspired to start your next project with a sketch.

NationWide / NASCAR

5 Years of Firefox

GEOINT2009 (Microsite)

Coastal Capital Partners

New Local

Vimeo Profile Page Idea

Layout for BPgraphics

Vimeo Clip Page Top Nav

Cartoonity.com UI Sketch

CommLogix Wireframe

Early Ember Sketches

Wirethumbs

More Ember Sketches

iPad App Sketch

Web Layout Sketches

Librespeak interface sketch

Original Twitter Concept

Here's some other articles that you will definitely find useful.

11 UI Kits for iPhone and iPad Development

10 Free Printable Web Design Wireframing Templates

10 Excellent Tools for Creating Web Design Wireframes

A UI Design and Prototyping Treasure Chest

The Four Key Components of a Great Web Design

original : http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/18-great-examples-of-sketched-ui-wireframes-and-mockups

Easy Ways to Promote Your Website

2011-11-09T23:27:00.001-08:00

The Web Marketing Checklist: 37 Ways to Promote Your Website

This article is designed to introduce you to website promotion, getting visitors to come to your website. It gives you the basic information, which you can then explore through dozens of links to other resources, much of it entirely free. As one of our most popular articles, this was revised most recently on April 19, 2011.

How can you get more visitors to your website? What can you do to stimulate traffic? Here's a checklist of 37 items you need to consider. Many of these may be doing already; others you meant to do and forgot about; still others you've never heard of. Of course, a great deal has been written about this. You'll find links to thousands of articles about website promotion on our website.

While I'm not breaking any new ground here, I've tried to summarize some of the most important techniques.

Search Engine Strategies

Perhaps the most important -- and inexpensive -- strategy is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in "organic" or "natural" searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot "spiders" to index the content of your webpage, so let's begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about. This approach is called "search engine optimization," abbreviated as SEO.

1. Write a Keyword-Rich Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page -- rich in keywords you want people to find you with -- using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title (such as "the," "and," etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format: <TITLE>Web Marketing Checklist -- 37 Ways to Promote Your Website</TITLE>. (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Ammunition, Inc.," use "Silver and Platinum Bullets -- Acme Ammunition, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

2. Write a Description META Tag. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. Don't include keywords that don't appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the <HEAD></HEAD>tags, in this format:

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links.">The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.

When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (#1 above). Then I write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It's no longer used much for ranking, but I'm leaving it in anyway. I think it may have some minor value. So to summarize so far, every webpage in your site should have a distinct title and META description tag. If you implement these two points, you're well on your way to better search engine ranking. But there's more that will help your ranking....

3. Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3). Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

4. Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it.

5. Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags. This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors(www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

7. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don't read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don't set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

8. Create a Site Map. A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/xml-sitemaps.htm) to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way, Google Webmaster Central(www.google.com/webmasters/) has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

9. Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords. SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let's say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search (www.google.com/insights/search/) or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) to find the related keywords people search on. In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword "teddy bear," "teddy bears," "vermont teddy bears," "vermont bears," "the teddy bears," teddy bears picnic," "teddy bears pictures," etc. You'll write a completely different article on each topic. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.

10. Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition's Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine's preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. The best set of SEO tools is Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). You can find links to many SEO articles (www.wilsonweb.com/seo/) on my site.

Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization. If you'll explain your needs to me on my online form, I can refer you to appropriate SEO firms that I know and trust(www.wilsonweb.com/recommendations/seo-services.htm).

11. Promote Your Local Business on the Internet. These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you, include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see #15 below), you should request links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide.

Also create a free listing for your local business on Google Places for Business (places.google.com/business), Yahoo! Local(local.yahoo.com), and Bing Local Listing Center(https://ssl.bing.com/listings/). That way your business can show up on a map when people do a local search. For more information, seearticles on local marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/local/) on my site.

12. Promote Your Video, Images, and Audio Content. Google's "universal search" displays not only webpage content, but also often displays near the top of the page relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses (see #11 above), and audio clips. Therefore, consider creating such content appropriate to your business and then optimizing it so it can be ranked high enough to help you. For example, if you were to get a top-ranking, informative video onYouTube (www.youtube.com) that mentions your site, it could drive a lot of traffic to your site. For more information, search on "optimizing images" or "optimizing videos." You can see how I use videos to promote my business on my Web Marketing Today YouTube Channel(www.youtube.com/WebMarketingToday).

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites drive additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website ("link popularity") as an important indicator of relevance, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google has a measure called PageRank that reflects the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links aren't all equal. Links from trusted, popular sites help your site rank higher than links from lower traffic sites. You'll find articles on linking strategies(www.wilsonweb.com/linking/) on our site.

13. Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. A directory is not a search engine. Rather, it is a hierarchical listing of sites sorted according to category and subcategory. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer editors. But if you don't get listed right away, don't be impatient and resubmit, or you'll go to the end of the queue. A link in this directory will help you a lot.

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) is another important directory. Real humans read submission, so be careful to follow the instruction given. Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don't have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Yahoo! Directory Submit(https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) requires a $299 annual recurring fee to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days. Other paid business directories that might help areAbout.com and Business.com.

14. Submit Your Site to Trade Organization Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member directories. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link from the organization, it may help boost your PageRank.

Marginal directories, however, come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up, so don't try to be exhaustive here. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, a premium ad is a waste of money -- but the (free) link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.

SubmitWolf (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/submitwolf.htm) is a directory submission tool I've used with good success . You complete a listing form in the software interface. Then they submit your listing to all the appropriate directories they know of, plus links to sites that require manual submission. It's a timesaver and works well. Just be careful to submit only to actual directories, not "linking sites."

15. Request Reciprocal Links. Find websites in your general niche and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one, see #24 below). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that generate a similar amount of traffic as your own site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don't have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.

Check out Ken Evoy's free SiteSell Value Exchange(sales.sitesell.com/value-exchange/). It (1) registers your site as willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic content and (2) searches for sites with similar topical content. Additionally, two automated link building software programs stand out -- Zeus (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/zeus.htm) and IBP Link Builder(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/arelis.htm). Both of these search the web for complementary sites, help you maintain a link directory, and manage reciprocal links. However, use these programs to identify the complementary sites, not to send impersonal automated e-mail spam to site owners.

When you locate sites, send a personal e-mail using the contact e-mail on the site or to the administrative contact listed in a Whois Directory(www.networksolutions.com/whois/). If e-mail doesn't get a response, try a phone call. Warning: Only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with your teddy bear store. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It's not just links, but quality links you seek. Reciprocal linking as hard, tedious work, but it doesn't cost you a dime out of pocket! Keep working at this continuously, a little bit at a time. Patience and persistence will get you some good links, so keep at it.

16. Write Articles for Others to Use in Websites and Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time. You'll find lots of information on how to do this from the most popular article marketing site,EzineArticles.com. When you create a free membership account, they begin sending you instructions and ideas each week.

17. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for several months and will temporarily improve traffic to your site and increase link popularity. Use a online news release service such as PR Web(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/prweb.htm). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity temporarily.

Two additional linking strategies, discussed below, are to ask visitors to bookmark your webpage (#20) and to develop a free service (#23), which will greatly stimulate links to your site.

Social Media

Our next type of website promotion comes from the mushrooming field of social media, in which people are encouraged to interact with each other, and respond to each other's blog postings and comments. You should be aware of four types of social media: (1) blogs, (2) social networking sites, (3) social bookmarking sites, and (4) forums. Don't be upset if the distinctions between types of social media tend to blur. Social media help promote your site by sending direct traffic, producing links to your site, and generating awareness. The subject is too diverse to go into detail here. You can learn more in our social media articles (www.wilsonweb.com/newmedia/).

18. Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank. Consistency and having something to say are key. If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

19. Become Part of a Social Media Community. Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook(www.facebook.com), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), and Twitter(www.twitter.com). In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg (www.digg.com), Delicious(www.delicious.com), StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), andGoogle Bookmarks (www.google.com/bookmarks/). Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your site), link to you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your PageRank and brings traffic, see #21 below).

One important reminder, don't join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your business. Like any community you must listen, comment, and make a genuine contribution for the good of others. Don't hog the conversation. Otherwise, your self-serving links and comments will hurt your reputation. By the way, to get started, why don't you visit my social media pages and become a Facebook fan(www.facebook.com/pages/Web-Marketing-Today/85187746383) or aTwitter follower (www.twitter.com/ralphwilson) -- please! Thank you!

20. Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists -- "old school" social media. The Internet offers thousands of very targeted e-mail based discussion lists, online forums, and groups made up of people with very specialized interests. Use Google Groups(groups.google.com) to find appropriate groups. Search online for blogs or other forums.

Don't bother with groups consisting of pure spam. Instead, find groups where a serious dialog is taking place. Don't use aggressive marketing and overtly plug your product or service. Rather, add to the discussion in a helpful way and let the "signature" at the end of your e-mail message do your marketing for you. People will gradually get to know and trust you, visit your site, and do business with you.

21. Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site. It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. I use a widget called AddThis (www.addthis.com). When you put the AddThis JavaScript on your webpage, it automatically determines the title and URL of that page. When visitors click the button on your page, they are automatically taken to a page that allows them to choose which bookmarking service they prefer, and then pre-populates the appropriate form with the title and URL of your webpage. I use AddThis throughout my website, as well as in my newsletters. If you have good content that people want to bookmark, this can generate hundreds of links to your site and significantly raise your rankings.

While you're at it, would you be so kind as to bookmark this pageusing the button below? Thank you!

Traditional Strategies

Just because "old media" strategies aren't on the Internet doesn't mean they aren't effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective.

22. Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. Make sure that all business cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company's URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the http:// part and including only the www.domain.com portion.

23. Promote using traditional media. Don't discontinue print advertising that you've found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers' attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.

24. Develop a Free Service. It's boring to invite people, "Come to our site and learn about our business." It's quite another to say "Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site." Make no mistake, it's expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site -- and a motivation to link to the site! Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales portion of your site.

E-Mail Strategies

Don't neglect e-mail as an important way to bring people to your website. Just don't spam, that is, don't send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship. Many countries have anti-spam laws.

I'll mention just a few important elements here. You can learn more from our articles on e-mail marketing (www.wilsonweb.com/email/).

25. Install a "Signature" in your E-Mail Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs allow you to designate a "signature" to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.

26. Publish an E-Mail Newsletter. While it requires a commitment of time, creating a monthly e-mail publication is one of the most important promotion techniques. It could be a newsletter ("ezine"), list of tips, industry updates, or new product information -- whatever you believe your customers will appreciate. This is a great way to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site, but aren't yet ready to make a purchase. You distribute your newsletter inexpensively using e-mail marketing services such as: iContact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/icontact.htm),Constant Contact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/constantcontact.htm), and AWeber (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/aweber.htm). If you have a very small list, some of these services let you use their services free until you grow larger. Blogs are very popular, but don't really replace e-mail newsletters. You have to go to a blog to read it, while an e-mail newsletter appears in your inbox asking to be read.

If you haven't already, would you please sign up for my free newsletter,Web Marketing Today (www.wilsonweb.com). It is published weekly and will keep you up-to-date in the fields of Internet marketing and e-commerce. Thank you!

Subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter —Web Marketing Today^®, published to 108,000+ confirmed opt-in subscribers worldwide. Just to encourage you to take this step, I'm including three free e-books that you can download and read: The Web Marketing Checklist: 32 Ways to Promote Your Website, 12 Website Design Decisions Your Business Will Need to Make, and Making & Marketing E-Books, each worth $12 -- just for subscribing. No catch.

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We respect your privacy and never sell or rent our subscriber lists.Subscribing will not result in more spam! I guarantee it!

27. Aggressively Ask for E-Mail Sign-ups. If you want to get subscribers to your e-mail newsletter, you'll need to work hard at it. Include a subscription form on every page of your website. Promote sign-ups through free whitepapers, e-books, or other products. If you have a local business, ask customers to sign up for your e-mail list to get "special Internet only offers." Also ask other businesspeople when they give you a business card if you can send them your e-mail newsletter. While only the e-mail address itself is necessary, I always ask for a first name also, so I can personalize the newsletter and the e-mail subject line with the recipient's name.

28. Send Transactional and Reminder E-Mails. A transactional e-mail is sent to an existing customer to initiate, remind, confirm, or thank the person. Be creative. If you keep careful records, you can send e-mails to customers on their birthday to remind them to return to your site. Subscription confirmation e-mails can also mention several popular products. You might remind customers that it has been three months since their last order and ask if it's time for a refill. Thank you for your purchase e-mails can offer a coupon to bring your customer back for a future sale. Use your imagination, but don't pester your customers. You're there to serve them, not the other way around.

29. Send Offers to Your Visitors and Customers. Your own list of customers and site visitors who have given you permission to contact them will be your most productive list. Send special offers, coupon specials, product updates, etc. They often initiate another visit to your site. If you have a regular newsletter, you can include many of these in your regular e-mailing.

30. Exchange E-Mail Mentions with Complementary Businesses. You might consider exchanging e-mail newsletter mentions with complementary businesses to reach new audiences. Just be sure that your partners are careful where they get their mailing list so you don't get in trouble with the anti-spam laws in your country.

I'll mention renting e-mail lists in #37 below under Paid Advertising approaches.

Miscellaneous Strategies

Here are a couple of strategies that don't fit elsewhere.

31. Announce a Contest. People like getting something free. If you publicize a contest or drawing available on your site, you'll generate more traffic than normal. Make sure your sweepstakes rules are legal in all states and countries you are targeting. Prizes should be designed to attract individuals who fit a demographic profile describing your best customers.

32. Devise Viral Marketing Promotion Techniques. So-called viral marketing uses existing communication networks to spread the word exponentially. Word-of-mouth, PR, creating "buzz," and network marketing are offline models. Promotion strategy #16 above, "Write Articles for Others to Use for Website and Newsletter Content," is a kind of viral approach.

The key to the best viral marketing, however, is create something that generates buzz and is so cute / fascinating / fun / bizarre that it gets passed by viewers to their friends via e-mail and social networks -- thousands of times -- so that it propels more and more people to your website, and, hopefully, helps enhance your brand, produce sales, and ultimately boost profits. Internet marketers often seek to launch viral campaigns on Digg (www.digg.com) or YouTube (www.youtube.com). Digg is a social bookmarking site with such power, that if enough people "Digg" you, you appear on the Digg front page and receive a huge number of visitors in a few hours. If your video goes viral on YouTube, you could get tens of thousands of visits to the site you promote in the video. However, viral marketing is difficult to do well.

Paid Advertising Strategies

None of the approaches described above is "free," since each takes time and energy. But if you want to grow your business more rapidly, there comes a point when you need to pay for increased traffic. Advertising is sold in one of three ways: (1) traditional CPM (cost per thousand views), (2) pay per click (PPC), and (3) pay per action (PPA) or cost per action (CPA) approaches. Examples of the latter are affiliate program and lead generation programs. Banner ads get such a low click-through rate (0.2%) that I don't recommend paying much for them. Banner ads typically cost about 50? to $1 per thousand page views, except on targeted sites. Do some small tests first to determine response. Then calculate your return on investment (ROI) before spending large amounts. Here are some methods to explore:

33. Advertise in an E-Mail Newsletter. Some of the best buys are small text ads in e-mail newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in your products or services. Many small publishers aren't sophisticated about advertising and offer very attractive rates.

More effective (and more expensive) is to send out an appropriate solo e-mail to the targeted list's subscribers. These often get a good response.

34. Begin an Affiliate Program. Essentially, a retailer's affiliate program is a CPA program that pays a commission to other site owners whose links to the retailer's products result in an actual sale. The goal is to build a network of affiliates who have a financial stake in promoting your site. If you're a merchant, you need to (1) determine the commission you are willing to pay (consider it your advertising cost), (2) select a company to set up the technical details of your program, and (3) promote your program to get the right kind of affiliates who will link to your site. Software and service companies are available to facilitate the process. The problem is getting enough affiliates who will actually work hard to promote your products or services. These "super affiliates" will probably consist of only 1% to 3% of your total number of affiliates.

35. Purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads with Google AdWords(adwords.google.com/select/), Yahoo! Search Marketing(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/overture.htm), or Microsoft AdCenter(adcenter.microsoft.com). This strategy is way down the list, but it is vitally important. Most Internet businesses will want to explore using Google AdWords to drive targeted traffic to their websites.

These PPC ads appear on the search engine results page, typically both above and to the right of the organic or natural search engine results. Since they are keyword-driven, they can be quite relevant to what a searcher is trying to find. Your ranking in this list of paid text ads is determined by (1) how much you have bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses, (2) the click-through rate on your ad, and (3) your Quality Score, which reflects the relevancy and quality of your ad and the landing page it points to.

PPC ads can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link. But I strongly recommend that you study this carefully and expect a learning curve before you invest large sums of money in PPC advertising. You can findarticles on Paid Search on our site (www.wilsonweb.com/paid-search/).

36. List Your Products with Shopping Comparison Bots and Auction Sites. If you're an online merchant, you'll want to consider this. Shopping bots compare your products and prices to others. Some work on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis, others on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis, perhaps with a listing fee. Bots to consider include mySimon(www.mysimon.com), BizRate (www.bizrate.com/), PriceGrabber(www.pricegrabber.com/), and Shopping.com (www.shopping.com). Shopping sites that include comparison features include: eBay(www.ebay.com), Yahoo! Shopping (shopping.yahoo.com), andAmazon Marketplace(www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161232). You pay to acquire first-time customers, but hopefully you can sell to them a second, third, and fourth time, later on.

37. Rent targeted, commercial e-mail lists. The last website promotion technique I'll mention is renting targeted e-mail lists. We abhor "spam," bulk untargeted, unsolicited e-mail, and you'll pay a very stiff price in a ruined reputation and cancelled services if you yield to temptation here. But the direct marketing industry has developed targeted e-mail lists you can rent -- lists consisting of people who have agreed to receive commercial e-mail messages. These lists cost $40 to $400 per thousand or 4? to 40? per name. Do a smaller test first to determine the quality of the list. Your best bet is to find an e-mail list broker (www.google.com/search?&q=e-mail+list+broker) to help you with this project. You'll save money and get experienced help for no additional cost. Realize, however, that due to the high cost of renting lists, many businesses won't generate enough businesses to justify the cost. Run the numbers before you invest.

Whew! That's it. We certainly haven't exhausted ways to promote your site, but these will get you started. To effectively market your site, you need to spend time adapting these strategies to your own market and capacity. Right now, why don't you make an appointment to go over this checklist with someone in your organization? Make this Checklist jump-start for your new Internet marketing strategy.

If you've read through this entire article without subscribing to my freeWeb Marketing Today e-mail newsletter (www.wilsonweb.com), here's your last chance. It's your best source to keep up with ways to enhance your Internet marketing.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm

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Use Full Information and powerful tools for Web and Internet SEO

2011-11-09T20:19:00.001-08:00

this list is mostly free and power full web based tools to check your site profile and errors . make use of it.

http://www.nameintelligence.com/

http://www.dailychanges.com/

http://www.iwebtool.com/tools/

http://www.domaintools.com/

http://triphp.com/webmaster-tools/

http://tools.seobook.com/

http://www.freeseotool.com/

http://www.socialseo.com/the-top-15-free-seo-tools.html

easy way to get Better Search Engine Optimization

2011-11-01T03:22:00.001-07:00

SEO basics from YAHOO to get Better Search Engine Optimization

Search engines help connect Internet users with the information they're seeking. Here's how search engines work:

Search engines analyze the words on webpages, especially words that are repeated or otherwise called out: in boldface, in a headline, in a link, and so on. The engine records those important words and phrases—the page's keywords—on its servers.

When you type the words you're looking for into a search box, the engine tries to match your words with the words from webpages it has analyzed, and it then delivers a list of matches. The engine organizes that list from best to worst, ranking the results according to a variety of criteria (such as how many other sites find a page valuable and link to it).

People usually click the links on the first page of results, so sites at the top of the list are more likely to get visitors. And more visitors can mean more page views, more leads, more sales, more ad revenue, and other business benefits.

A search result showing the top two sites returned when we searched on "yahoo finance"

A number of SEO (search engine optimization) techniques exist to give sites an advantage in this ranking, and many of these apply to Web design. But as a content creator, your best SEO techniques are (1) to write information-rich copy that people will want to read and link to and (2) to figure out which words people are likely to use in searches, and then embed those keywords throughout your copy.

SEO copywriting is about using the exact terms that people are searching on so that it's completely obvious what your page or article is about. SEO copywriting is not about trying to trick search engines by stuffing content with unrelated keywords or with so many keywords that the copy sounds silly. Good SEO copywriting makes your page more readable for both search engines and humans. It helps your website attract visitors, but it also helps your visitors find substantial, relevant content.

Best practices in brief

SEO is competitive: There's no guarantee that you'll be able to get your site on a first page of search results. But as a content creator, you can help bump up your site's ranking just by optimizing the text and links.

Here are the basic principles of good SEO for writers and editors:

Offer original content with genuine value and relevance to your readers.
Strategically seed your copy with keywords that describe your content and that correspond with the phrases people are using to perform their searches.
Embed keywords where they matter most: in the title, headings, links, metadata (part of your page's source code), and image and video tags.
Make every page of your site unique: In addition to original content, each page should have its own topic, title, and page-specific keywords (though you can use the highest-volume keywords throughout your site—see "Keyword research tools" for assistance in finding the best keywords).
Deliver on the promise of your keywords: Don't lure people to your site with words that don't accurately represent your content.
Link to other relevant sites, and encourage those sites to link to yours.
Optimize your site for people first—through clear, concise writing—and for search engines second. Implement SEO without turning your text into nonsense.

TIP

All the SEO copywriting skill in the world won't help your site if a search engine can't read it. This is the case with text saved as an image: The image looks like a blank portion of the page to a search engine. Avoid saving text as an image.

How search engines read a webpage

Even though people and search engines scan webpages differently, there are some similarities:

Page title. Both people and search engines need to know at a glance what a page is about. The page title, sometimes called the <title> tag, is inserted in the code of a webpage. You'll see it in the top bar of a Web browser, as in the following example.

Example
The <title> tag for this page is "The top news headlines on current events from Yahoo! News."

See "Coding basics" for examples of other HTML tags, both in page code and as they will appear in a browser.

Headlines, emphasized words, and lists. Both people and search engines know that anything called out in headlines or subheadings, in boldface or italics, or in bulleted lists is likely to be important. Make sure headings, links, and lists in your Web copy are called out with HTML tags.
Introduction and conclusion. Readers will scan your opening paragraph or your summary for quick information. And search engines, to understand what the subject of a page is, look for keywords throughout that page, including at the top (the introduction) and the bottom (the conclusion). But don't just shove keywords into the top or the bottom of your page—distribute them evenly throughout.
Related links. Humans appreciate options for more information. Search engines, too, like to see that you've linked to other websites and that other websites have linked to yours.

Search engines and people both like:

Verbosity. In the search engine world, verbosity means substantial, relevant, original content. Do fill your page with words, but write succinctly: Make sure that every word you write is relevant to your audience and to the topic you're addressing.
Good writing. To a search engine, good writing means using variations of your keywords, including those with different endings. For example, if you are targeting the phrase job interview, use the singular, plural, -ing, and -ed forms, such as job interviews and job interviewing.

Search engines and people both dislike:

Bad writing. Search engines are more likely to penalize your website when you stuff your copy with unrelated keywords, strand a list of keywords at the bottom of your page, and rely too much on headlines and links. Your entire page should be relevant: Like a muffin with the right amount of blueberries, it should have juicy keywords distributed evenly throughout, but not so many that they overwhelm the whole.
Broken links. Search engines want to provide a great experience for their customers by directing them to a useful and informative website that works properly. Broken links tell peopleand search engines that a site is poorly maintained and will give people a bad experience.

(To follow the steps we took in optimizing a fictional site, see "Example: Seed copy with keywords for SEO." In Chapter 17 of The Yahoo! Style Guide, you can learn more about choosing ideal keywords and inserting them in your copy.)

Yahoo Guide : http://styleguide.yahoo.com/resources/optimize-search-engines/seo-basics

Google Guide :http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Google Answer :http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291

Google Answer : http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

http://freelancefolder.com/10-top-seo-techniques/

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-basic-seo-tips-everyone-should-know-2010-1#monitor-where-you-stand-1

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-quick-seo-tips-even-your-mother-would-love/6760/

http://www.inlineseo.com/seo-course.html