Since recently, most minds in the trade are in agreement that social factors such as Twitter and Facebook (among other things) are impacting the way a site is being ranked by search engines. In particularly Google is looking at social factors for ranking in a big way. Unlike other times, this claim is not vehemently rejected or hotly debated since most people understand that Google has some sort of agenda with the newly introduced Google+ platform.

There are a couple of things that you have to keep in mind when you try to go down the road on using social signals for rankings. First, social signals are still used to measure the social impact of a given website or a webpage. Search engine algorithms still reign high. However, getting a couple of hundred ‘likes’ for your website is going to be considered as a clear enough signal for search engines to consider your website seriously for rankings. Same goes for tweets and social bookmarks.

The beauty of social signals is that it’s hard to fake a social signal unless you are an uber social media junkie. Also, faking social signals is easy to monitor so it doesn’t make much sense for a business to do it. If more social signals are generated from the same set of people, that can mean only a few things like the following:

1. These people have very similar interests
2. The social signal generated is valid for a small niche of social media consumers
3. At least some of those social profiles are fake

So unlike most other ranking elements, social signals are a better signal for search engines. But there are some barriers which stop social signals from being used widely at the time of this writing. For example, Bing is the preferred search engine for Facebook. Also, with Microsoft owning 1.6% equity of Facebook valued at $1.36 billion, Google may find it difficult to get full access to social elements usable for search ranking any time soon.

On the other hand, Twitter lets search engines use its data. But consider this. Twitter users produce 200 million tweets per day. Considering an average tweet being 110 characters long and an average word being 4.5 characters long, Twitter publishes around 44 million words every 13 minutes which is equivalent to the word count of all the 32 volumes of ‘The Encyclopedia Britannica’! In any sense of imagination, search engines don’t have the capacity to crawl, index and rank most of the Twitter data at this point.

So do you have to worry about the social signals for search engine rankings? To be honest, it may be a good time to start considering the potential benefits. If you do not have a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account for your business, we would encourage you to start building your networks. Once you get into it, you’ll notice that it is quite fun and interesting connecting to customers in a new way.

Not considering any SEO implications, page speed is an extremely important web usability element. Consider the following example originally published on Master New Media .

• Screen 1 – The first test participant in the top gaze plot fixated a few times within the big empty color block before the content downloaded, then spent the remaining time looking at the rest of the page. This user never looked at the big promotional space after it had rendered.
• Screen 2- The second user (bottom gaze plot) happened to be looking away from the screen during the eight seconds when the promotional content downloaded. Thus, the first time he looked at the page he saw it as intended, complete with the entire promo.

The slideshow occupies 23% of the page and the user who had to endure the download delay spent only 1% of her total viewing time within this space.

In contrast, the user who in effect received instantaneous page rendering (because he didn’t look until it was done), spent 20% of his viewing time within the slideshow area.

So in essence if the page speed has been optimized, the marketing team would have seen some more traction with their well planned advertisement. But in this case, all that effort was spent in vain.

The most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to website speed is “let the audience be in control”. Remember, it’s the audience who interact with the website and it’s them that matters to you or your client. Every second of delay in website speed is a negative impact on the audience and lead them to realize that they are no longer in control. In such case, you or your clients are going to lose credibility which is not helpful at all.

So it might be a good idea to start looking at page speed. There are many free tools to check speed. We use a Firefox plugin called ‘Yslow’. Google is going one step ahead and offering a Page Speed tool for free http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

Check out this video from the Google dev team.

Twitter’s simplicity should not be underestimated, the real power is in harnessing ones followers. Hypothetically speaking, if Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) were to retweet one of your tweets about your product to his 6.5 million followers, chances are they in turn would retweet the same to their followers. Before you know it a tweet can go viral and be noticed by millions. If a company were to try to reach an audience say of 6 million TV viewers, they’d have to spend some real money. Twitter is free. Unlike many other social media, Twitter is always on the go, things are constantly changing by the second.

The good news is that it is easily accessible. It’s supported by almost all the smart phones and almost any internet device, so keeping your followers up-to-date is easy.

In some cases, Tweeps, as the Twitter users are known, tend to think out loud through their tweets. In fact there are many well documented instances where brands, famous people, journalists, sports personalities among others found themselves saying things that they shouldn’t be saying in the first place. Therefore it is a good idea to read up on twitter etiquette and establish a companywide protocol for tweeting.

So how can a small company find its way in this tweet-maze? It’s not difficult to start, start with meaningful tweets about your industry. No one is going to care if you just picked up Starbucks for the day, so keep the personal stuff away. First it would help to have a good idea what Twitter is and how to use its many unique features. For example, Twitter hash tags and lists are two of the most important weapons in a good tweep’s armory.

Let’s say that your company rents out party equipment. You could tweet about a new line of Gazebos that just came in and tag the tweet with a #gazebo hashtag. So let’s say a user in Miami is searching Twitter for a Gazebo rental in Miami. The tweet could be something like this: “Nice #party by the Virginia Key Beach #Miami under a nice blazing red #gazebo by www.sample.com”. The hashtag gives the user an opportunity to tap into more interesting tweet streams.

Start off by following people in your industry. Always try to keep the Followers and Following ratio close to each other. It is sometimes suspect if someone is following 5000 people but only has 2 followers. Keep posting meaningful content and you’ll see your follower count rising on its own. Share things about your area of expertise; answer general questions on your field; follow hash tags which have a good focused following; (This however does not necessarily include the trending topics!) and be a good tweep in general.

There are a few tools you can use to increase your presence in the Twittersphere. Start with the Twitter business section. It can give you really nice pointers on what you can do on Twitter to promote your business effectively on Twitter. Read this case study on moxsie available on twitter business section.

Take some time off to think through your twitter strategy. It can help you a lot with taking your brand to the next level of online visibility.

SEO for businesses today must consist of much more than using the latest design trends. Designers should also be designing sites that take the full range of people viewing the site into consideration. The largest and most successful companies know that they have to offer different versions of their web content so as to appeal to everyone who accesses their websites.

If a company fails to present its online information in ways that are suitable for all types of cultural audiences, it is sure to miss out on potential customers who cannot relate to how the information is being presented. Take a quick look at the McDonald’s U.S. website and then at the site for Indian customers and you will notice very stark differences in how the information is presented. The Indian site is heavy on color and is much more interactive. The U.S. site on the other hand is more minimalistic and straightforward in nature. This illustrates how web design for businesses should be approached – by understanding how people from different cultures prefer to have their information presented.

It is absolutely essential to the success of your business that you focus on the website user experience for so that your visitors, no matter where they are located, have a successful visit. Studies have shown us that if a visitor to your site has a successful visit, he/she is three times more likely to recommend your site than if they find the visit unpleasant. Successful websites are often customized or localized for foreign markets, taking the local language into account, social standards and aesthetic preferences. Localizing a website is a rather complicated chore but it is necessary. Making versions of a site for different cultures shows consumers that your organization is willing to accommodate their needs. When a user sees a version of a website in his or her language, even if they are proficient in English, results in that user having a very favorable experience.

Users from around the world have special needs related to entry fields on websites for names and addresses, dates and measurements and information about regional product standards. Considering all of the issues related to international usability, it is recommended that international usability testing with users is done. This testing can be done from wherever you are located as you could make telephone calls to users to ask them to think aloud as they navigate the site, assuming of course that you can locate these foreign users who speak your language well enough to complete a telephone interview.

The internet is called the world wide web for a reason and more and more web design professionals are realizing that the emphasis today must be placed on the first two words: World Wide. If you want to truly go global and succeed with your website, resist going with those web designers that offer those too-good-to-be-true web design deals and instead work with a team of experts who understand the importance of website globalization optimization and how to implement it.

• Where to obtain small business financing

• What a small business needs to qualify for financing

• How to easily and affordable remain connected with existing customers

• Where to find new customers and how to communicate with them regularly

During this session small businesses will receive live case studies from business owners who obtained financing and are successfully marketing their businesses through multiple-channels including email marketing, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and direct mail.

Speakers include small business marketing expert Lisa Sparks, Director of the SCORE’s South Palm Beach Chapter Hal Finkelstein and Certified Business Analyst Phil Scruton of the SBDC at Palm Beach State College.

When Friday, April 30, 2010, 8:30am – 12pm

Where Boca Raton Marriott
5150 Town Center Circle
Boca Raton, FL 33486

Once you have decided what type of website you wish to build, then you must choose the best resources to use. This will save you a lot of frustration when building your site and it is not even all that necessary that you understand HTML in order to build an effective site.

Web Templates

A template is a complete website layout without the text and links. Templates give you a layout and format from which you can create your web pages. Templates have many uses. They allow you to create a website without needing to know any website design as the layout is done for you. Templates also help you to launch your site quickly as you need only to add the text and then load your site to the web. You can either buy templates or get them for free and they come in a wide variety of styles and colors. Once you download the template you like, in most cases they’re ready for deployment. Your pages will load quickly and your site visitors will have a nice browser experience.

Content Pages

Providing great content will make your site a place that visitors will want to come back to again and again and a ‘sticky’ site is a successful site. The easiest way to make your site sticky is to provide helpful articles. Be sure that the articles you put on your content pages are keyword rich, informative, relevant and useful to your visitors.

HTML Editors

If you do not know how to write HTML there are many free editors available that will do the job for you. Choosing the right editor will determine how quickly your site will get online. The best HTML editors will allow you to quickly and easily add content to your pages. Depending on the editor you pick, it will make your life easy when adding graphics, icons, photos and background images to your website – in most cases it can be drag and drop.

Content Management Systems

A content management system (CMS) allows you to make changes to your content without having to hire a programmer. You can edit, delete, modify and remove any content you want even if you have no HTML knowledge or skills. A CMS offers consistency to all of your web pages. If you have a content-rich site and you need to update and edit that information on a regular basis then consider a content management system (CMS) to help ease the process of adding new content.

Blogs

[This bit is important! -->] The easiest way to publish content on the web is through a blog. Blogger and WordPress are two of the most user-friendly blogging platforms out there today that allow you to quickly input your text and then publish it. Blogs are search engine friendly, so if you want to spread your information across the web, a blog is a good way to do that. Blogs are indexed often and quickly by the search engines so if you have your website connected to your blog, you should enjoy a good deal of traffic. Be sure when blogging to make good use of keywords so the search engine crawlers or spiders will pick them up for indexing.

Using the right resources when building a website makes your site contemporary and users will benefit by receiving something of value which will help to contribute to the continuous growth of your site. Your website will become attractive when you use the correct tools and it will display as it should in the different browsers used by your visitors, resulting in them being happy to visit your site again.

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Some complain that this is a breach of privacy because the Google algorithms seem to be reading email content as it is being written. But this is no different than what Gmail does when it’s serving up ads while you type your email.

“…Ad targeting in Gmail is fully automated, and no humans read your email in order to target advertisements or related information. This type of automated scanning is how many email services, not just Gmail, provide features like spam filtering and spell checking. Ads are selected for relevance and served by Google computers using the same contextual advertising technology that powers Google’s AdSense program.”
Ads in Gmail – Google Help

Gmail also presented some advanced features to its service such as the much ‘celebrated’ (by some of course!) Drunk Email prevention tool called ‘Mail Goggles’. This is a service to prevent emails being sent through Gmail while one is “under the influence”. The service can also be customized to apply at different times and dates. Once activated, Gmail presents a set of mathematics problems to be solved before any emails are sent by the Gmail user. An example of the tool is given below.

With Google’s current domination of the global search market and aggressive expansion in many spheres of the internet, many are skeptical as to whether Google will keep true to its privacy policies.

In general, it would appear that many Google tools and features are geared at improving the overall user experience and maximizing the utility of Google products.  How much privacy you are willing to concede is of course entirely up to you.

Retaining a customer is by far a more difficult job since the audience keeps comparing your site to that of your competitors. If their product or service offering is better than yours, chances are that your customer may get disenchanted and eventually seek a better option. Bleak stories aside, let us see what you can do to improve the customer interaction.

Concentrate on usability

If you are not running the Smirnoff or Johnnie Walker website, the chances of your audience waiting for that huge Flash file to load is very very low. Audiences need quick relief for their needs and you as an online business need to understand that fact.  So simple is the best way to go forward. This is true for website navigation, content placement, shopping carts and gathering information.

It is also important in SEO. Neither the users nor the search engine spiders like to wait or look hither and thither for information. Keep it simple. It’s a lesser burden on your dev team as well.

Offer good, usable information

You have a great design and possibly killer marketing content that can make audiences drool. But what if your audience looks for something more than the marketing yada yada?

A buying decision is a long process. Let us refresh our memories.

1. Problem recognition

2. Information Search

3. Evaluation of Alternative

4. Purchase decision

5. Purchase

6. Post-purchase behavior

This process is something that you have to keep in mind when arranging your content. If you offer a product or a service, make sure that your audience is retained within the site on all these aspect.

Simplify the purchasing process

Most websites require a customer to register him/herself before any purchase is made. This is cumbersome and the chances are that a particular customer may not make repeat purchases unless the overall product offering is above par. So why capture all intricate details of a customer. Make it simple. EBay or Amazon having thirty odd data fields to capture doesn’t mean that you have to do the same.  Capture only the most important data to successfully process the transaction and then encourage the customer to register to get better deals or other incentives.

Writing a straight forward frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) page

FAQ is usually an accepted format of questions followed by answers, with the goal of reducing unnecessary customer interaction. FAQ sections are best done on a single page using HTML to allow readers to navigate quickly top to bottom. They can save your more savvy online customers a lot of hassle, and build business.

For more snippets on improving your online business, visit our blog regularly. Else, you can bookmark us, subscribe to our RSS feed or let us send a email once new blog post is available in our blog.  Keep reading!

Tip # 1 – Target Relevant Keywords

Keywords are the descriptors of your content. Be selective in the keywords you choose and try to use them throughout your website, links, meta tags etc. Just don’t overdo it Here’s a good article on selecting keywords.

Tip # 2 – Analyze Site Structure

Make sure your site is setup correctly from the very beginning. Each page on your website must have unique content, especially unique “Meta tags” – these include Meta Title and Meta Description. Sites that have similar Meta details run the risk of being flagged as having duplicate content. Talk to a professional website design company and have them analyze your site. They’ll make sure your site is SEO friendly and may have additional suggestions on how to drive more traffic to your site.

Tip # 3 – BackLinks

Backlinks (a.k.a incoming links, inbound links) are links from other web pages to your site. Try to get as many backlinks to your site as possible. The more, the better. Let’s say you’ve invented the next latest gadget that reduces gas consumption by 60%. Your brandnew website is going to get a gajillion hits and hopefully the same number of backlinks to your site. Not sure if you can get anyone to link to your site? Try this free backlink tool that will list potential sites that may add a link to your site. How do you know how many backlinks you have to your site? Copy and paste this line into google (link:www.yourdomain.com) . For a more accurate way of finding out the number of links, check out this article on How to Count Inlinks / Backlinks to Your Site using Yahoo.

The key with SEO is to be consistent – just 30 minutes a day can go along way.